everyone and welcome to the Joint meeting of the select board and finance committee for the budget hearing for fiscal year 2026 here March 8th 2025 being held in the land use room um present this morning from the select board yes wonderful good morning folks we're
the finance committee side I need a motion to open the meeting Mo second second all those in favor Shar robbert Ro conle Jo DDI so everyone is in attendance on my side all right Jason what do you want to
start off with the assessors it looks like that's what we're starting off with all right Jason let's go hey come on up you know it's better right I was smoother I was trying to be calm I didn't pick on you see I'm going to get you involved yeah well you like to talk a great how
are you guys doing today good good I see you have your uh budgets in front of you anything you want to talk about no I was called two days ago to show us look at that wonderful that's the perfect thing
to say right there right so we'll take a few we'll through your budget the rebel L that you have to consult what's the increase I think it's outside costs so that's the it said the reval
it's a revalue the outside consultant goes through everything with many a reval three years they and I believe that the the head of assessment is going for need replacement
surgery maybe so the outside consultant is going to step in and keep her position up to speed while she is out so that's why that extra money is plugged in there it could all be used it could come up short so whatever whatever the
chips fall that's why that line item is so big yeah not want to talk to you it's a good experience thank I I say something absolutely um so typically the revil costs about this
much so I don't I don't know that we're adequately funding for a consultant the revil in I just did it in my last s in town before that and it was about 25,000 for each five years so I think we probably have to revisit this um and and
we will regular bu so Carl made a couple comments do you want me to yeah sure or do you want to I mean there was um staff development and I kind of agree I don't know that 1500 is really quit for I know that there hasn't been that much expended but I guess you
know she is retiring so we will be needing to develop some more staff um and uh he did also highlight conference and travel um depending on a new person and then also funds to train the
new assessor uh you know for the interim what to get trained right we don't really have anything in there so I guess things to think about or later on yeah thank you that really we can't cut 5% we're
going to have to increase it any others anyone done just the the 185 yeah is called out by the contract that's on the subsequent pages so you're right that is probably not the that's just the Consulting part
of the contract there if we need to ad lines I don't know if that's going to show up in somewhere else whether that's other consulting or whatever but the actual revalve consultant contractor is right in the book um but I agree with
the other part about you know getting ready for a transition in that department and then also calling out they are over budget in the mapping maintenance this year so we just got to make sure that that budget line is adequate
for 26 so there's an aberration year they're over 500 and something doar and with that reval going on like you say other stuff might come up for the mapping which could add cost for that is that the gis yeah yeah any basically everything gets
sent up to GI and there they're supposed to keep the maps you know try and keep as current yearly we get an update on all the maps so um but the more the more stuff we send to them to update consequently going
raise that price so obviously with the updates that'll go up this year next year yeah well I mean it's it's just an ongoing you know that's an expense that we'll always have because we just that's that's what we use for the Bible down there and so every year that has to get
updated so it's not say well hey you know what next year we're not going to do it that's not going to work so guys thanks for coming in thanks appreciate the links sure come on up forgot that those guys are name for
the record and Johnn now we have Mr Anderson okay morning morning sir how are you good e you say you say downsizing what are we downsizing
so um the bra um basically we have the um the bus we have the um military designed for you know we need
some Offroad capabilities high water type of thing but in reality today's dump trucks will do the same thing we need them um and as far as that vehicle there's so many other assets regionally
from whether it be from fire Services State Police um that the concept of that when it was designed was great but I just paid $500 for a new tire that sitting in a garage so um the really the reality of it is we don't need it um
maybe an old Cruiser someday with some radios thrown in it or something doesn't cost us much but that whole thing needs to be redesigned or so get rid of that yes sir and then um I think in there I mentioned
getting a bay of a garage so ry's wanted those Vehicles out of the DPW for 10 years more or more and I I understand that however the the one asset that we do have is the generators that are there um I know that
the Chiefs are working on new Radio Systems those an integral role should the radio system go down we can put a generator at some of the towers to help with the communications so we need someplace to store the the generators so if if it's explored to put up another garage or re you know I know we talked
about that in Capcom yes sir um having a bay of that would suffice and get that stuff out of Ry L when do you see the downsizing happening uh as soon as I get the paperwork from Nicole and how to suros
you guys will be doing that together yeah we talk about that right saying we we are actually exploring through Mima um there may be an interest in the sheriff's department in the in the bus so yeah we could you know sell to them for dollar whatever and maybe you still
have access to it if God forbid we need it um we're exploring that and they'll bring it back off shiny and new for you when we need it no no yeah understood I'll remind you to get the name yeah get the name for the record
the reference oh Russ Anderson oh we did well thanks 28 DAV I didn't want to step on your toes I actually said his name he didn't say what he was I said Chief he's always a cheat urgency
manage I think I met you Jason it's okay Mr Anderson um so he asked about the antennas last year you funded the capital for replacing the antennas they're about 95% there uh they did it right before
the cold weather couple a little bit of wiring um and that's kind of while you I don't know if you have our usage to dat but we're holding back on the radio repairs a little bit because in case we have to go over on a couple little things we're kind
holding that in reserve to to address that but we're in good shape 14,000 no so there's 400 left on the on the 14 I think and on our radio repair line item I have 3000 radio maintenance there's 3,000 we're just holding that in reserve
to the kind as we get to the year okay will races be able to do what they normally do without the bus yes and no so the radios that are some of the
radio most of the radios that are in the bus do not Evol races those are the hand bands if you would so they utilize the bus for something to work out of um and but as far as that
goes it isn't critical we could still work on a DPW we could still work at other facility um depends on if they choose to do that thank you thank you for your time sir good thank you
dep next good morning sir state your name for the record richardos current fire chief that again first of all thank you for adjusting I know I was scheduled for
last Saturday but I had a conflict I appreciate you making the with us today um before we start anybody have an immediate question so we just go typically like to go line by line explain littleit about what's happening and kind of what looks like the fire
department begin start with fire first and we'll get into EMS um just a couple of things of note again able to propose a budget that was 5% um below level funded and then level funded for this year um just by moving a few things around it worked
out um conveniently for us um you'll know right away mandatory away training um is a zero item we didn't put anything in there um some of that training um although it's not mandatory per se anymore um is available uh online so
there really isn't a training you know transport or or you know transation fees or overnight stays or anything like that need to be addressed in there um so that why just zero that out there's enough in our educational budget and and regular conference and travel to cover any of those things I didn't feel we needed to
do that um call for stiens um I'd like to be able to keep them the same um we always fortunately under spend there um but the reality is you never know um a couple of big events certainly could change what that bottom line Looks like
we've been very fortunate in the last 18 months to do quite a bit of Recruitment and uh the retention seems to be there as well too for Paul Force um so there's more members on the department so that will help fund some of that excuse me
and then we had um just a part-time clerical um Katie is been with us for about four years now and uh she has a grand grand grandchild um so she's going to be leaving in the summertime to take care of you know kind of help with the
family there so um there'll be a transition there Katie's hours um we're typically for um per pay period she liked that it was one day a week but we're probably going to add to that so I think that this budget would certainly help us with that just a few add a few more hours for administrative
costs so you think that line item is fine I for the time being yes I do okay yep yeah going into the next year I certainly do all right so jumping into operations um radio maintenance because we're in the process of a very large radio um replacement project it's kind
of hard to figure out what that would look like going for forward so I kept it where it is right now at the 2000 that's what we had last year we have as part of the new radio program all radios coming in um for all the vehicles which are part of the 911 Grant and we also have
Portables that have been supported by that so purchase why demain it's why are probably in very good shape because everything's going to be brand new and I'll talk a little later on about where we might have an an additional radio expense but that's something we'll discuss afterwards is that got something
so when we dispatch that whole project was there updated radios then just to the police side no no this is all part of it he can speak that to it I but part of radio completion build down we have
new sites we have new antennas we have new equipments um I'll be pretty much primarily 9op the new antenna Tien to that that is not no that is not that was a stand own project they happened at different times
basically yes have done um probably not because it's well I say probably not but this is funded because it's direct funds from 911 so 911 will fund things that touch 911 that wouldn't necessarily be part of the 911 although
it's because it's more of a local resource than it is the regional resource that we're working on right now although 911 certainly is a local resp really it's more about building up for the public safety for fire relas different frequencies couple other
things like that what they did what SE it did they need it desperately for sure you um I don't want to get into radio frequencies and how all it works it's a little complicated and some of it I don't understand too um but overall um our project is in for for the long term
and I know that the SE of replacement didn't it was money well spent all right um so inspections and repairs um anybody that's G to a service station lately to have your car service knows the cost of all that's gone remarkably
High um we have seen continued increases over the last five or six years of just the cost of Parts availability for parts and for technicians that are licensed to do the work also increase um engine one which we'll talk about later today is
nearly 20 years old and it took up a substantial part of that budget so of it was necessary and was held over for a year so that we could prare and have the funds available um but the trucks in tip stop shape right now we had thorough PMS
on every piece of apparatus and very thorough from Bumper to Bumper um and we spent the money necessary to get everything repaired that needed to be repaired so that passes all its annual testing that includes the pumps the mechanical portions of it as well um the
tower went out for its first U required service so in five years you have to set out so it's 5 years already and I'm hard to believe where they stress test the ladder and all that so fortunately everything passed um so no problems there all good um but it comes as an expense so that's pretty much a fixed
item I believe the increase um to the 50 you know the 52,000 um certainly will be adequate for the next for the upcoming year of where we are we have a little bit of money to spend on our brush truck as far as the suspension in be the bigger item there um contracts and
agreements um pretty much the same we did move a couple of things around um and we've changed a few uh agreements um we the Agreements are include some of the service agreements we have some of the contracts that we have for
organizations things like that um and they they they go up in small increments but they always go up so I think we'll be okay there um the Verizon we've added devices so we anticipate an increase there um we've always been every year um
short on account um and that's something that's managed by Laura Fletcher um they actually get the the processing for it part of all the town systems and things so when we have um mile devices in the in the trucks that we use an iPad so it is a Cellular Connection so it's part of the Verizon package and we've add a few
other pieces to that this year so that's where we can anticipate an increase there um the dues are pretty much the same Education and Training um and again a moving Target but again some of the stuff is available online right now we do have one of the contra with an educational service um and we've also
changed a little bit about U the requirements for training for career staff so that will be convenient and that should cover the cost there our medical requirements um again that's if anybody needed required hepatitis and vaccinations or anything like that we covered that but we should be fine there
um our food expenses I think we can hold at about 1,400 and considering the cost of of food increase over the last couple years um clothing allowance went down on both 5% reduction as well as level funding because that was an effort to replace some classic uniforms for people
and people took advantage of that so we're good there um that would be for anybody coming in new as well as some supplemental uniforms for a career Force um conference and travel uh again the Market's starting to come back for conferences and things so we'll see how
that holds um hose inspections of fixed cost and required annually for us minor equipment um again just everything in the fire service it's a piece of equipment that has to be NFPA meet the NFPA standard you just add 500 bucks to
it it could be a $30 item but now C $530 for the then FP approved and that's just the cost of doing business there really is no way around that excuse me around that um and supplies are going to be just pretty much our day-to-day operations as well as fire operations um
oxygen and excuse me extinguisher refills again that's an easy one to to keep at 500 and split between here and the unless we have it occur in both that's the oxygen and the extinguishers of around the fire apparatus um turnout gear so turnout
gear is worth a little bit of a discussion there has been a new mandate to change how the turnout gear is put together and they use past in some of the gear and there's a new legislative law new legislative regulation for
Massachusetts that you can not use past and turnue anymore and so it just drove the price to turnout gear up again we've been very fortunate that that doesn't become a mandatory requirement till I believe the fall July 2027 so we're in the process
right now purchasing turnout gear one of the things that we want to do is with the money that's actually in this current budget and going forward is to have just a cash of gear so that if somebody goes to a fire they come back and we need to clean their gear I can't afford to have two sets of gear for
everybody so what we're going to do is we're going to have an inventory so we're looking at five or six sets of gear that are just used while people are laundering their gear so if somebody comes in you know they're they wear the size a jacket and size B pants that's what they have okay and if the other person you know has the same they'll
just have to wait till the gears washed it takes about 24 hours to wash a full set of gear we have an extractor we dry it all um but what's what's happening is a lot of research has been done on carcinogens that are embedded in the gear and so we're trying to to make a you know A Better Effort all the way
around to make it less contamin by cleaning it more okay so there's less contaminantes embedded in the gear but you have to have gear if you're on duty we're on duty for 24 hours get fire in the morning and start washing your gear you need a second set of gear so we're very fortunate we had a state ear Mark um for $25,000 it was cut in half but
it's been restored so between that the balance of this year I hope to buy that cash of gear to half the second part of that is we've done very good with our plan for replacement so everybody body in the department right now has gear that only lasts 10 years it's only certifiable for 10 years through NFP
regulations so we're on a replacement plan where we can balance that out in the budget over the course of the next 10 years and so on and so forth so this allows for anybody that come to new hire and the GE they get damaged when we send somebody to the academy we get rental gear so they're not destroying their
gear first on so that's 6700 investment that comes out of that as well too um and hopefully nothing happens the gear but you with given all the contaminants and what can destroy a set of gear you can go to a carire and there's enough gasoline on the their turnout gear could
be deemed unsafe so you have to replace it and the current replacement set the last order I just placed uh the full replacement for just the gear which is the jacket and the pants was $3,900 for one set so yeah and that will go up I don't know what going to look like once
pass free gear um that's just something little quot for f fighters I I'm just curious are there instances where firefighters were getting cancer or something yes yeah well part to link
directly to the p and again like any other research you can pull reports and studies done that support your your cost um what you're finding right now is this might have been a little bit of new- jerk reaction by the state I know I know right imagine um what they're finding
out right now is it's actually not so much the p in the gear okay it's the actual way that the fibers are put together in the gear and there's better ways of doing that so the past binds the fibers together then in one of the adhesives um and that's what was staying so it's not so much the past itself it's
how the gear was assembled so it's hard to tell which is which but yeah but it's again it's a Hot Topic and it's an expensive topic all right um community outreach uh we're involved in a lot of programs this serves a good funding for
our smoke Det seniors program although we do get some grants that supplements that it has to do with our um advertising for call for firefighters and career members and so on and so forth so that's part of that um career clothing just the cost of a uniform just
a duty uniform anybody like to guess put somebody in a a job shirt which is like a sweatshirt a dress shirt and a pair of pants $310 guess again it's about 400 bucks for a pair of pants a shirt and a job shirt that doesn't include boots either
so for career we cover all of that then we have for our call staff we do cover a pair of pants a shirt and a job so that's got pretty pricey and uh I'm working with a new agent so hopefully we get that down they're H kind of like a wholesaler if you would retailer
guy so you know you may get pants that don't fit perfectly but they're 50 bucks less so we'll get them all all right um so that's the overall operations budget um oh hardware and software I'm sorry um hardware and
software has been um as you know Windows pen is going away um so we'll see some of those upgrades as well too for the machines that are actually in the physical building and then our software programs other the programs that we use for station alerting um our scheduling
software um so a lot of those things are included in that but those are right now pretty good fixed costs and we're very happy with what we're using anticipate those all be good um our capital budget from 2025 has been most part spent down a few
mous items there um the bunk room remodel um just a quick update on where we are with that so the project is ongoing um we appropriated money last year to go ahead hire an architect and start to get the
construction documents together and we are very very close on that I'm meeting with the specifications um specialist I guess um next week to just kind of fine-tune a few things um the process has been uh very good um
it's had a good Pace to it we've got a very wonderful design we were able to go through and because we're relocating a couple of things and changing a few things around we're able to reuse quite a few things and it doesn't sound like much but when you can relocate five
doors at $1,000 a piece it helps okay when you can reuse ceiling tiles um in the in the general space you're in that's a big big Improvement as well to because they are fire rated um even simple things like where the outlets are for electrical and where the outlets are for either of them so we've designed
around that got all of that working right now fire sprinkler system modifications would be minimal based on the the design we're looking at so um the new estimate that I got um again this is just an estimate from an estimator who has not seen the building he just looks at the plans and what's
proposed um in 2023 it came into 301,000 um but with some of the changes we've made and as well as removing HVAC system out of that we'll talk about that in a second um we've got that down to 215,000 so that's not the bottom line
for the cost of the project that's an estimate right now we're hoping to get the bid spec out um and get some professional um proposals back from the actual contractors um before the meeting um but so we'll see how that goes um the hbac project is something we've been
working on in part of the Improvement been happening there so what a large portion of that was sizing and the type of duck work that needed to be diverted to this space what we've done is we've moved to a smaller Standalone kind of a split type of thing they call them cassettes in the commercial world and so
each one of the rooms have have one of these cassettes in the ceiling which provides your heating ventilation and air exchange so you have uh air conditioning and all those things are controls that one device those are part of the Standalone project that we're doing anyway because we needed the tools
for those to happen before any of this can happen so the um we've hired Chief Anderson when he was facilities here Russ Anderson hired a new company called Apex to come in and take a look at our system they've recommended and they've already implemented some significant
changes that have been paid huge dividends in the comfort of the building but it is also building for the future of the building so anything we do going forward has been incorporated into that project so there was also $50,000 uh from last year's budget put towards just the HVAC problems we're
having in our building we're very close to getting those um that whole part of that project up and running that should only take about a month that will prepare us for some of the work that happens in B 12 too and that's all funded that's already funded and that work has to happen I know it's not part of this budget meeting but I just wanted
to update people that that part has to happen no matter what we did in the bun room or whether that's approv or not those improvements be made and a lot of it are the actual controls and the thermostat systems that are are there so there mechanical Parts in the ceilings that are AR working you've been chasing that for 10 years 10 years and finally
got the right guy came in he's been wonderful to work with he's figured everything out and so we have more than anything a really good solid plan so she excuse me the um so on this page where scuba remodel 80,000 remodel that like
all pre you know planning and all that for the 8 and right so exactly so so um 30,000 of that is part of the station alerting system which I was going to talk about next so station alerting is
also an ongoing project 50,000 of the 880,000 is for the actual design so the Architects work okay then there's 50,000 from facilities that's going to be doing the HVAC systems and our buildings the balance of that is the 30,000 which is part of station alerting station
alerting uh is also a system that touches 911 so it is covered by 911 services so we have two grants that are out there um and we're looking for a few subst small um support funds from
other grants that were 911 there was had balances that W spent so one of the projects that was happening in our building when we went to dispatch was we had looked at trying to create a lock in our vestibule in our lobby so that people come in be a safe
area um but we decided it's already lockedown anyway so the only thing that was not locked down was the elevator so we put a keypad control in there so in order to get to the administrative side um you can go to the second floor and come up to the office but you can't get to the PRI Department side so we put a
keypad in there and that was low money so there's money left over in that to supplement the station alerting station alerting is part of the quiet wake system I've talked about before um it's devices that are in going to be put in the bunk room throughout the station it has a low U low voltage system with
speakers and low ambd lighting um so it's a like a soft wake so the light comes on it get brighter it wakes you up what they did find is um for firefighters that that catastrophic abrupt weight every time the tones went off was really detrimental to health and health and wellness has become a really
important element of firefighting as well as a lot of professional organizations including Massachusetts fire CHS Association really um looking at some health and wellness and this is one of the things they strongly recommended is to to use some type of station alerting system so that's being
implemented and it's a lot to get into and where it's all coming together I spoke to Joe and to Paul about it there's funding from Grants there's some funding from the towns and altogether that system um should be all set to go I'm waiting to hear on whether or not 911 is going to take the balance of the
construction funds that we had on our project and put it be able to shift it over here if that happens where AO um we can start right away the electrical portion of this job came in higher than we anticipated so there's not enough r in there to fund everything down into two phases and
accomplish everything over the course of the year but I prefer to do all once so that's the goal R so we've been excuse me meeting electrical contractor I have a very good bid in place right now in fact the electrician the initial building back in 2000 so these are very
familiar with it um and there's also parts of it that would if the bunk project is fun funded some of it would di to that so some of the electrical that has to happen in that bunk space would be part of that project as well too or it could just be uh standal with prep for those spaces or just put into
the existing spaces right now and would need to be expanding later on um but that project again has three different funding streams so it's really kind of hard to follow bouncing ball there's an older Grant from 2022 that we received it was part of 911 we had a grant
recently that funds the station alerting portion of it as well as the interface with dispatch and then the other part of it was what the the to had given us the 30,000 for the town so with all those three funds and again none of them are huge monies the whole project itself is only about $120,000 when it's said and
done but it has gone up in cost for the equipment as well as the Li and the electrician so hopefully that'll get covered so I just wanted to understand the 96 on the seventh page is is that part of the so a lot of that was last year's budget and a lot of that's been spent down so um The Buck Room REM model
project is still ongoing the scbas are all set the canopy has already been purched the nozzles and Gates have all been added the aeds have been purchased and the overhead doors were from the year before okay so are you saying the 96 you're you spent
11699 are you done with that how come it's not in the bottom line of the 187 460 I'm sorry where are those figures coming from so this is your this is your main budget put it down here
18 18746 and then the second page has the the other items but they're not those are capital capital those are all capital oh okay and they've already been most of those have already we try to keep that separate so
it doesn't end up and disappears and all of a sudden something got really funded so we separated out so we know when capital's done questions on the current what we're looking at for Budget I just wanted to go over some of the uh operational and
projected capit operationally um we need to our completable boat it's one of those things the only thing we could find on it was the first registration which was from 2002 so it has sticker on it from
when you registered the boat you only have to B you don't have to register it once so we know it to be at least 23 years old um and it's probably a little older than that because my guess is we probably got it used so we need to replace that boat every morning somebody has to hook up the foot pump and give it about 200 pumps joke it's about 20 pums
just to keep it inflated it has very small pin holes to it but it's a very practical boat so we do need it um the actual engine itself is probably even older than the boat um it's currently the our engines it's Saunders we have a loner right now if we needed it he's going to try to upgrade it with
electronic start so that's an improvement so if we need to make it work we could make it work um but it's certainly something we need to so it's a PO start now is that it was yeah and not the not the best approach for emergency serves but with the best we had at the
time right so hopefully now um with with that we can at least get um this spring out of that boat that's the goal um but we're certainly going to need to replace that boat if not this year for next year and then thermal imaging cameras um they have a shelf life of about 7 to 10 years
they reach end of service life and that doesn't mean you can't use the device it just means it can't be upgraded anymore so as they add new software to these devices you can send it out they can upgrade it it'll do the new the newest things um but all of our images are past that right now so it's time for the
replacement project so we're looking at replacing um one of the thermal imagers on one of our front Lane pieces this year as well too and then of course the bunker model again with the bottom line on that right now about 250,000 I think is a comfortable appropriation um given
the risk of construction over runs Andes as well so I think it'd be okay there how many Thermo engine cameras do you have excuse me how many so we have um we have four cameras right now that are on the Frontline pieces and then there's a
smaller camera excuse me which is the second newest it's in my my response vehicle as well too so a total of five ohome so you're going to be looking to replace one almost every year yeah that's the plan yeah and then we'll be good for another five to six years before we have to start about
replacement again you can get 10 years out of them we do take very good care of them um we typically buy the batteries because we need those we buy those out of just equipment to line item but for the most part they held up really well we buy good ones for that
reason the 8,000 covers the boat and a motor it would yeah based on what I looked online there's several outlet for excuse me questions on fire oh let's look to Capital on fire
I'm sorry one more page so fiveyear projections um yeah with the thermal imagers would be would be one each year um fire hose itself um a single length of 100 foot hose is on nearly $1,000 um so I figured
in the next four or five years we need to replace that my Hope was that this year to actually apply for assistance to firefighter grant for hose replacement um but our hose is actually a little newer than I initially thought and um they have some pretty strict guidelines
on replacement for that so we deviated from that um but that's something that you know one way or the other we'll still put in for a grant but we still need to budget for it because every 10 years again NFPA standard says at 10 years your hose is no longer useful so
we have to replace those um for other capital projects allterrain vehicle we have an ATR um that again is best we can tell who's over 20 years old it was fully serviced last year um we use it for S of rescue we use it for Planned
events like the races that happen over at the Motocross um we'll probably be using it maybe in for this year for Iron Man as well too um but it's in need of replacement it's again it's emergency response vehicle it needs to be able to be ready to go at a moment's notice um fire and I'll come back engine one fire
chief's vehicle um just on a 10-year replacement in 29 as well as SCPA cylinders um we would restart that program for Replacements there would be the fiveyear mark the cylinders themselves um last a total of 15 years we're looking to offset The Replacements
over the course of five um engine one so engine one was purchased um with with a bottom line in mind it was purchased from a company called the France who in their day was one of the
best fire firetruck manufacturers on the on the planet um one of our claims to fame is that we have the last truck that LE France made so all the employees are getting laid off working on our truck is built on a
dump truck chassis um which any DPW director will tell you 20 years out of a fire out of a dump truck is a it's a big ask um and it's been a big ask for that truck the goal was to look towards a 2020 a 2030 replacement on it but I don't think it's going to make it given
the fact of the money we spent to keep it up and running the continue to upkeep of it the cost of the the body work that need to be done just on the cab itself that's not the body itself the body where all the cabinets are are is holding up pretty well um but we did spend quite a bit of money on the pump
um the truck has some very unique features to it that at the time we're done as a cost-saving measure and anytime that happens it pays a dividend sooner or later and we're starting to see that dividend so the lighting package on it is starting to get weaker uh a replacement cost for lighting
package just on that truck is $50,000 and I don't think it's smart to spend that money right now the problem with fire apparatus is you're looking at a two-year lead time so right now it's sted to come down you can get 18 months and there are a couple of Manufacturers that are back to building spec trucks
for the one-year turnaround and delivery which is great for the industry but the trucks are still $800,000 so the least expensive truck I was able to talk to a vendor about at recent shows was $735,000 so that's that's the low end you can go
over a million dollars now just for an engine which to me is remarkable the competition in the market is not what it used to be um companies have bought up Allegiance have bought up Rev has bought up all the small companies they keep their names on them so you're still getting the smeal truck
and things like that but it's owned by a conglomerate and they do that to avoid antitrust and all these other things um but eventually they'll all become one truck and so that competition level when you put your bid out you only get two bids and they all know each other and they know exactly what you're asking for
and they're $5 to $15 off in the bid specs it's a remarkable so in anticipation of that some fire departments have said we want to put a placeholder in there until rev group were interested they gave us a bid spec we want to do that so they approp money
two years before the truck is going to be delivered so that they can get their placeholder which I think is an okay idea but if you just say all right we know in 28 it needs to be replaced so in 27 we appropriate that money okay and if it runs over a little bit it runs over a
little bit we have enough apparatus in the station where we can move it back it wouldn't be the front line piece we could move another piece up there and meet that need although it's not ideal we could do that um that's part of what I'm looking at doing in the next couple of years so there's still a lot to look
at a lot to talk about there's a lot of vendors out there that we haven't met with yet and but I'm in that process right now we're starting to shop and I'm saying I need the 2028 price I don't need the 202 price because we're not there yet so hopefully as time goes on the next six months there'll be a few
more vendor visits and a few more consultations with them try to get a better fix on what we're looking at for spending but I think the reality is by 2028 that truck will need to be replaced I think that's what so so we had a truck survey done an inventory done um and they talked about what needed to happen
with Tower what needed to happen with Engine 2 what needed to happen with rescue and we've done all of that this is the next step this is engine one this we knew going into that would need to be the next piece being replaced so it's served us well it really has it's it's a good truck it's an easy truck to drive
and to for firefighters to to work with um and it is reliable it's still reliable but the cost of keeping it reliable is starting to go up so that's that's what's happening there are you getting triggered so we had DPW in over the rolloff and the emissions and the EV
is that what it's SP yeah so you guys stay clear of that there are some exemptions but we don't know how long those are going to stay in play little you know um Madison Wisconsin purchased their first EV fire truck um and one of the problems with the EV fire truck is it can't go over
half of the bridges because of the weight of the fire all the batteries in yeah yeah it's an extra 80 tons on a truck yeah so just the wear and tear on the roads truck that weighs that much is
ridiculous would even be able to go over the new bridge tires every six months get a vehicle like that oh yeah yeah they they're starting to spec out specific electric vehicle tires that are designed the last they destroy tires they just eat them we're going to be
going for another diesel smart yeah don't want a battery fire inside inside the firehouse already happen look at the bus fire they had in wam those are brand new delivery buses just sitting there questions on the
fireb so again our staffing comes out of our EMS budget we talk about that any questions on the construction project all looking at okay we're really close on that and very excited about the project we have a temporary plan for for
accommodations in place um some contractors that you know the that we've worked with have been extraordinary so we're hoping to continue that relationship all right EMS budget um daytime Staffing and overtime is yet to be determined um working with Laura on
both of those incl including holiday pay um call Force salaries this is for our PDM employees and we've been very very fortunate um to have Union firefighters who still accommodate for GM employees and so um we fill about I'm going to say
45 to 50% of the PDM shifts right now um because we've done this recruitment we've gotten a few more basic EMTs and a few more paramedics avilable but there's a process to get them on boarded and take some time we brought some new full-time employees in so we said let's wait on some of the the call force
people um so we've got more kind of in the wings that have already you know are already working with us right now um so that's a comfortable budget to cover that extra person that gives us that rounds us out to four on duty when we have a PM which is great because we can cover both Anin calls um but it's only
PRM it's not every shift and we can't schedule them it's when they select the shift and again they like working here which is great um some of them work a shift a week some work a shift a month and some work three shifts a week we just don't know what we're getting and a lot of them are firefighters paramedics
that work in other areas so they're on their offline they're working for us which is great it's great that their Department allows it and it's really been a bonus however um when we look to the Future I don't think it's a reliable source of Staffing although it served us pretty well um it's takes a lot to get
them equipped up and running and trained and you know they're not there all the time so we're looking again um in the future and I'll talk a little bit about that later about adding some additional staff um in the years to come all right um then officer charge fixed cost and
education incentives is going to be for um EMS um I'm sorry for our career staff for their certifications that they have as well as degrees and that just recently changed in the budget um radio maintenance and supplies um one of the
things that the grant didn't provide for with the new radio system which will be going to a digital format are the types of pages we use so our pages are analog so imagine if you would you're comparing your cell phone to a small am transistor radio that's how advanced the technology
is right now we all use our phones our phones have notification in it when a tone goes off however it's delayed um it's not reliable because it does rely on third agency cellular services and the internet and all those other things where the radios always always work because it has a redundant system built
in so the only other thing that might have to happen is we meant to purchase digital pagers um our pagers currently when you buy one is about 400 bucks a digital pager is about $800 um and it would be replacing the the digital pagers for um all the call call Members
career members have radios issued so they can use their radio to do the same thing but our call Force members are using those pages so we're waiting to see um we did put in a small request um as part of the 911 incentive Grant as an add-on to get some of those pages we'll see what happens
but that couldn't happen so right now it would it's a purchase that would have to be made at one lump sum um but we'll see what happens again radio maintenance and suppli is probably going to be minimal because of the brand new system so we might be able to purchase what we need out of that but it might also be a
little bit of a something that we have to consider next year when the project is finally done um we have two new ambulances our new ambulance is being delivered to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the week of March 24th it's only been three years um this is replacing the one that was lost in the
accident back in April of 2022 was the purchase but with covid and the lag and Chassis production and everything else um it's finally coming so it'll be at the vendor in Massachusetts in in March um they still have to do some decaling they'll be putting it some radios
program the lighting package doing a few other things weeks expect delivery um towards the end of April we did put in last year for a FEMA grant for the assistance to firefighter grants for power load stretcher and the actual power load itself on the truck um we had
put in for close to 75,000 FEMA adjusted that to 63,000 said you can buy the old version of the stretcher it works just as well as the new version does and they're right it actually works better because the new version's got all kinds of problems um so that will offset some of the increases that we anticipated in
the amb if you remember uh a year into the endless project after Co like the price is going up it's going up they said anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 added on to a contracted price there's nothing anybody can do about it but this will help offset some of those costs so um we'll be able to to get that up and running so that will help us um with the
new ambulances um with the two two new evanes I don't expect quite a bit in maintenance because we've been doing a good job of keeping um tabs on them the other is a 20133 we did spend some money on it this year after we purchased it once we because we weren't sure if we're going to purchase it once we purchased it we
did spend the money and it paid dividends on it so we had some new suspension system put on new tires a little bit of electronics were added on to it um and that will be our Reserve piece and there is a plan in the future to actually make that a full ALS ambulance but for the time being it can
be BLS to move it up to ALS you're looking at about $60,000 we're looking to do it with hand-me-down equipment as we replace for the front line evidences um contracts and agreements this has got a big jump in it let me explain what happened so at one point we were using
um our education and training with a company called Community 911 and they were doing our state mandated uh call reviews so we have quality insurance eqi program and that we um moved over to another company called Gerard Associates
to Standalone package so it's more of a contract than it is education so the education portion of it is to fund mandatory training for EMS um so every two years everybody is certified so that comes out of that but we were able to just to move that amount up to contracts and agreements so uh there was an
additional 21,000 just for the cqi stuff I anticipate an increase in that this spring um although I'm not quite sure how much um but that's what we're looking at and again we did see increases in small places in contracts and agreements the second largest
portion of agreements on the EMS side is the what they call Procare which is the service agreements with Striker who provides a service for our stretchers our devices which is automated CPR cardiac monitors and aeds so that is any
this year it's 18,000 it goes down next year a little bit but then goes back up again because we move from a three-year plan to a fiveyear plan and and all these things are moving AP we're trying to get it into one full agreement that service all of our equipment but they're hesitant to do that but we'll see what
happens um ambulance and billing is a fixed cost based on the amount of ambulance calls that we do um and that's been going up slowly but surely um confidence to travel I think we can keep the same minor equipment some inflation costs on some of the stuff we're using
um but nothing catastrophic supplies again um we typically don't spend all this every year in EMS but it's one of those where our medical supplies are very expensive and if we have a busy year and high acuy patients it's even more expensive to replace those because
we have the second ambulance staff more we're catching more the second clause which means we're using more supplies as well too so we have to go up a little bit there um and then if medical supplies over runs runs over the first place we look to supplement that is going to be um with supplies we have regular oxygen and extinguisher fillers
for the apparat for the ambulances um our insurance premium that's fixed cost every year same thing um medical supplies and again with the increase in call volume which also equals more billing we do see more U bigger demand for replacement materials um and
supplies for the ambiances and they're not going down um we had a a remarkable increase after Co it's leveled off a little bit but everything seems to go up about 5 to 7% every year um it's not the catastrophic 25% to 40% we saw after Co
but it's still up there and of course nothing was adjusted afterwards nothing came down um and then PPE so um this reflects um personal protective equipment like we needed during Co so suits masks face pieces all those things um and we just don't know you know we
don't know if we're going to have another pandemic so that one line item pretty much needs to stay there in preparation for that we do buy replacement you know coveralls and and PVE through our regular medical budget so this would be if there was an immediate need for something specific
especially okay um so that's operational on our Capital um we had infusion pumps which we have purchased and are up and running AED devices which we've replaced already and the ID has been purchased this year so that's going to zero up and then our again salary Reserve still
would discuss the Ling questions on any of those I'm sorry what's that how many runs the DM made last year last year um so we made 1, I get this right 1
153 but we had a total of 1,668 so the difference was a mutual a calls yeah an awful lot of calls yeah I know we're talking here about the expense side but what about U the billing side excellent question so one
of the things we've done really really well we collect anywhere from 86 to 90% the problem is a lot of those are Medicaid Medicare collections we're not quite sure what that's going to look like in the future the federally funded program so there could be a cut in those as well too okay they're fixed costs we
can argue with Medicaid all we want but they're like here your 400 bucks that's like $467 for an alsis level call that we get from from Medicare Medicaid that's a substantial part of our billing it's about 40% we're very fortunate in our community we have a lot of people with
private insurance and those insurances pay 100% and cover well what we are seeing is a little bit of change in high deductibles so the way the industry works is we make first contact with the patient we usually the first ones to bill the bills apply to your deductible
so back in the day you had $1,000 deductible we'd get the insurance payment and then the deductible would have to come from the client from the from the patient or the insurance company would say you know $500 deductible you've already met your deductible anyway in the course of the year it's all good but when people have $5,000
deductibles they're not paying so it becomes as almost as if they're self-insured and we're starting to see this creep up and up and up and up where I used to get three or four of these a year I'm 12 already this year of people at high deductibles entertaining building now again our it's fiscal year
so it goes back to July of last year when we look at this but that's remarkably high and so what happens is they end up being transported to the hospital the hospital is a large portion of that billing and so the hospital's billing but the deductible needs to be applied towards the ambulance because it's all first part first sounds like
you should delay the Bild there you go that's my plan a 30-day billing instead of overnight pretty much we do weekly billing every Monday we send the bills up wait 30 days and send it and hopefully get some of the insurance bills you know yeah because it is first in first out so yeah some of the doctors
and hospital bills aren't committing until 30 or 60 days for a reason right yeah everyone's we're billing out 100 days late you know right I'm not the first one to have this idea so we'll see what happens they know balanced billing I don't fully understand it but it's out
there and it's there's pros and cons to it you know um but I think there have also been suggestions about subscribers or the residents can pay a subscription fee and pay out of that that's something years ago didn't make sense for us but maybe it's
something we need to look at again okay but also the future of EMS is changing as well too we're looking at Community param medicine where we would be helping doctors and the nurses offices where they send our staff out just to provide income care and so there has to be a mechanism to build that and a mechanism
for insurance to pay that right now there isn't a mechanism for insurance to pay for that or the staff thing what's that or the St daing is the other part of it yeah so you most of those are scheduled so if someone's coming home from the hospital you know they need to visit in
a day we could bring somebody in and say okay you we have these two appointments for you tomorrow but you got to cover that cost right so yeah yeah upfront is covered and certainly offset with the insurance you know and the fees and the premiums there but we don't know what that looks like yeah like a call in like
that would that be something that could be like build like a detail like a p thing yep exactly yeah so it wouldn't be it would be definitely off duty staff that came back it's the only way it's the only way I do that all right um operationally again for EMS in 20206
just a few things the AED replacement program so um that's going really really well um we have a total of 10 aeds within the department and they're just on a replacement cycle and then the two laptops for the computers again um
they're out there every day on a truck they're heavy duty computers but they don't last forever and two of the three we have have Windows 10 so we're replacing those in October for sure because we've already been told they won't they won't take the upgrade all
right um fiveyear projected I said before I'm looking to supplement Staffing and I only put 27 in there because I would like to uh again apply for a safer Grant this is something we've done in years past this is my first discussion with both boards about
it NFPA says um they like to see an engine roll out with four people well some of my pdms are only paramedic so they're not firefighters so we're rolling out three and if two are already on the evidence that means I only have one um and we still really fortunate to have the call for us respond um but it's
not as strong as it used to be only because a lot of people don't work in town anymore so during the day we're lucky to get by so getting us to four as a as a career force on every shift is the ultimate goal the safer Grant in the past when
we've applied for that we've been denied and the main reason without them telling you for certain but the Rumblings you get if you're listening closely enough and your ears to the rail is that even if we give you this Staffing you still don't meet the minimum so the a in Staffing is actually for adequate
Staffing so in order to get the adequate Staffing you already need to have the base there so if I had asked for 16 employees we probably would have gotten them know but the town still needs to fund those people after three years so we're in a position right now we could probably put in for a safer Grant
there's a very good increase that we would be awarded that because it would get us to the NFPA standard of four out the door okay so that's something again I will discuss with the select board afterwards I put the provision in there for 2027 for additional Staffing to even
start thinking about it if not 27 28 but the Staffing Grant itself save for Grant does take some time so that would be a December submitt um notification typically in May if you've been awarded um and then the hiring process and all that so that would happen in fiscal 27
anyway that typically supports all operational costs as well as um insurance and um Staffing cost that doesn't cover the overtime for them but for for whatever people for a total of three years so that would buy the town some time to kind of plan for that but we'll see what you know we'll talk a
little bit more about that video lingos scopes this is new technology we're using those are going to be replaced in 2028 um they're both on the ambulances and again it's in 2028 that we'd like to take that third ambulance and get it up to ALS the hand me down would go to that truck we only have one currently um that
would fit the bill for a hand-me-down um but it would certainly be sufficient for that truck there's new technology there the big thing is the ability to record what you're doing which when you look at a you know a case that might go south the recorded intervention is a really
important one okay doesn't rise to the level of body cams um for like police War body camps but that particular intervention it could pay first of all they're great because makes it almost impossible not to to get the intervention complete but it also has a record so you can say yes we were able
to obtain proper Airway um and then for Capital cardiac monitor replacement um a Replacements EMS laptops cardiac monitors just on the the reoccurring cycle the cardiac monitors would anybody like to guess a Helm much the new
cardiac monitor from Life pack cost almost $60,000 so we said wait a minute we got to look someplace else so we looked at a couple other competitors and there are some options out there it lowers the cost to about 40 but one of the things we're looking at is a lease program so
they have a 7-year lease program and that would work up perfect for us because you pretty much pay the lease annually when it's done you get the new upgraded device and they're pretty much not a five to seven year replacement as far as technology is concerned the devices can easily last 10 years we take very good care of them and as I
mentioned before part of that care Procare product package takes care of them we have them serviced and qualified Quantified every year um and we do take very good care of the equipments and it'll last us for 10 years what we would do is again in 27 we need to replace one
of the monitors so and we'd be looking at going forward with a lease for that that would give us a reserve monitor which we would desperately need and that would allow us to move that then or the the used monitor and it would be the newest of the used monitors onto the third truck so that that would be ALS b
as well because that truck not only does serice backup um we're doing Det at the RAC track quite a bit now um so we can just put that over there with some detailed staff and not worry about it impacting our services within the department and we can build it you know if it calls if for transported would be
ALS level cost which is good so that's what I have going forward for 26 questions on El at all that's it thank you all very much I'm sorry I ran over oh well together thank you thank
appreci does anybody want I can send you the concept design construction cost report from the guy with the greatest name in the world Sean uh it's fantasy Consulting it's Sheamus fantasy great Italian Italian guy right
yeah but if you'd like I can send that to you all the detail ambulance or Dodge what's that is new ambulance or Dodge it is yeah yeah we stay consistent we've had really really good work but the drop shift was going to have a to it wor the $18,000 we'll keep waiting
thanks everybody that before I saw yous a minute think break apparently you know away yes I did they're in the back my thank you very much in my truck that's going
after put in the college Highway all the way down the road my life cans my trucku I got drop those good chairs off to now one of one I got is electric but I think the batter's bad on it do you want to
mess your battery when me just Chuck it no bring it to me because I have another one that um we thought the B we were told the battery was it was just not charged okay yeah so we'll try it okay okay maintenance will look at it for me if I I have to all right I'll drop them
off I had a blocker but I already loan that out you Omari and the king and the King yeah yeah a minute have someone for the U the Alexa
on microwave oh you do yeah okay cool yeah no she was like what he talks to me I know you're legally blind it will talk to you it will do what you say yeah it's kind of interesting how yeah yeah voice voice microwave yeah we had a guy that was in
the liance blub just passed away about a month ago they made he and he had a voice Opera microwave that's nice so you could just put stuff in the microwave and say cook for two minutes or popcorn pleas popcorn okay sir so pretty cool good afternoon
Lisa good morning good morning ceter Lisa Anderson go ahead um so you wanted level funded and five and that's what they did what you got in front G be able to do minus
five am I going to be able to do that is that what you're shooting for minus five noest like um I mean if you made me do it I apparent obviously we would you know
have to make end me but of course the amount of people that go in and out of there is a varying number as well hopefully the out number did I say well people going
out I'm just gonna leave that alone I screwed up there sold 40 plots in um4 we've had 43 varials and 26 cremations so cremations are getting to be at least half of our
um numbers um there was a lot of deaths in this winter but um with all the ice we had to close the cemetery just for safety reasons um on the roads and stuff there was two things to go in um so we
have a lot of cations happening this and it's now starting with the burials so this winter was a little rough for a few months um but we have our Paving project um going to be going we did put out for
bid so that Paving will get done in the next well whenever the season starts which is probably main J um that's po bariums we have another um it'll have to go out the vid we're
looking for po bariums those are what um the cement blocks that have the doors um that you put the pr in so we have a section that we made we have a part section section of wall it's all beautified it's gorgeous area um but
it's on Shale so we can't dig there and we can't even do a creation go down so we're going to do the um cibarium and then we're going to purchase those and that'll help save save from you buying a lot a huge 4
by8 um lot for a pole barrial and only be using it Prem that's a waste of bar um so one plot will take one one full burial and then we can do up to six cremations on top of that plot so there are burials that have already in the
cemetery and we're already starting to put cremations on top which is not a big deal but to to sell you a plot for 450 um and then you only use it for two cremations it's a waste of space so we're trying to figure out where we can
put cremations um you know that's all they wanted and this the PO bariums will give them that option and hopefully it it'll make our land lasts I have three more sections that I could do um once I get rid of a big sand
pile and we be out of land that me again cium cium how are those being funded um through our um so we have a trust fund that we have that we can use the money
um off the interest so the interest off that trust fund goes into an account and then if we need something we can use that so that's what we were used how much money is in that account I it was up there it was like last time
I looked it was like at 350 because I thought that we could buy the Bob Johnson property with that um but then they said no it's a trust fund you can't use it for like you can't you can't use it you can't buy it anything with it you could only use the interest
from it so that was like that would have been the right thing to do was to for us to be able to buy the Bob Johnson property that family because that's in between the old cemetery and the new Cemetery we could have flattened everything got rid of the house eventually and just taking our
time cleaning it up and you know doing that would have been perfect for the land but we can always wait for that new owner to he's kind of he'll be selling it might be moving in yeah they're doing
some type of plant farming there I guess but I hav't seen little de yeah yeah they're living in the trailer in the back right now sure what they're doing so that would have been the
perfect scenario right there enlarge that was four acres and that would have been plenty for another 20 years but it could always come back on the table it's just that we won't have any money to ourselves to buy it even though we have money in that account you can't
just take that big chunk out it's a trust fund so they set it up to where we couldn't get money from you for for a project or something then we could go to this the interest in that and then use that for projects so that's what we're we're doing could you two questions on
that and one could you would that qualify for for historical project for CPC and two is could you borrow the money secured by the interest on the
trust so you you would take out a loan and you pay the loan with the interest from the trust by obligating those funds can you yeah I'm sure you could do that the town would have to actually buy the buy land and and then we would make that payment through that but we could take it so much out every year if we wanted
to and we've never touched it um I think I think Laura told me when I first started that she might have touched it or taken money from it when they went over their budget or something or did something way back um I'm not sure
but we've never touched it but then before Carl left um he met with Bartholomew and I we said can you ask that question and then he said yeah you're good you're good to go and use whatever money or for the from the interest like if we so
oh you could expend the interest we could use money for the just on the interest out of that account so how much an interest each year I don't know I didn't really look at that I we just said um told them he the bolom you she said tell me what your projects are tell
me how much there it's going to cost and then we'll tally that up and I think we took 137 out of the interest that was already in in the interest just alone so we we're getting the cibarium we're buying purchasing
those because those were expensive um we have a new shed 20 x 20 shed coming for the old Cemetery which is well over we went to CPC they said no I said even if we kept up one wall of the old shed and built around it and they said no they don't give you anything new it has to be
St repurposed in the other the shed I mean it had no roof left and everything was destroyed with the weather and stuff from the inside so we have that shed coming yeah but if you know that you want to purchase that property can you reserve or stockpile that interest and not really touch it because you know you
want to purchase the property yeah that we could be here 10 years waiting for that guy to sell the property again so I mean I'm trying to like once the sand pile gets removed there's a whole another flat section and I have like three that would give me
three more sections a little smaller than the ones we just did a few years ago but I mean I think we have we have plenty of time and then we'll just wait them out something about domain to domain
take it I don't know I don't really see anybody really yeah they didn't have a whole lot when it went up for sale they didn't have a whole lot of people that wanted to live next to the summit there unless you have zombie apoc which no noisy neighbors so the the money we took out for these Pro these coming
projects the cium and the um shed um we bought the dump truck because we realized if we buy the escavator um we have to put the dirt in something and we thought we could initially we thought we could use dpws but they use that a lot and we wouldn't want to be saying oh we
need it for this week's burial and then it's not available and where am I going to put the dirt um you don't leave it next to the grave site kind of creeping so we move we remove it we put it over by behind the sand pile and then we go back and we get it so we had the
opportunity to buy um a dump truck so we have our own um outside of the budget how's that work what so you guys just bought a dump truck yeah from outside budget process
with our money with our Bal money from the interest that we took out we have that we took that 137,000 and put it in Laura put it in an account and we ended up the the board realized that we needed a dump truck so we squeezed that in there so maybe instead of buying three
caliari we might have to just buy two to start with but we can't buy the escavator and then not have something to put it in and none of that goes through the process um it was 14 I think it was $15,000 so
it was we didn't have to to go to do we got three quotes we went to three different places got the got the quotes on different three different ones but we didn't have to go out to bid for it it's a question on approval of use of funds which npole and I talked about she's going to research
whether that requires additional oversight or approval we don't we don't have an answer to that yet so we had a letter from the board goes out we have and there's no oversight basically is the escavator bought not yet no so can I
wait until you get some insight on how money should be traveled through the process or we're just going to keep what did you what did you hear from bar from all I was told that I I had to the board had to make a decision which we did at a meeting I had to put it in writing they
all signed it it went to the treasurer's office and it went to the Tom fler and we have Town equipment goes through a process even water department which is an elected board has grants money's come in we still go through the process so if
we need a policy on trust fund expenditures we are probably lacking a policy to address that understood and and that's what she's in process of
reviewing so we don't hold off we just keep buying without policy I don't our first initial letter that went to the treasurer in count had the things on there it was the shed the cibarium um the first letter didn't have
the dump truck but then when we realized we needed it um and then it had the escavator so there was three or four items that we were going to purchase initially that went to the treasure and the account and then when we realized we needed the dumpt um then we went back
had a meeting they they did the whole process again signed the letter and went to the two places I just have a question on the long term need for an excavator if um cremations are continuing to Trend
upward you said they're nearing 50% does it just make more sense to continue Contracting the excavation of plots we're still going to have that Fe of of digging that grave and we're never going to have control over what we charge you all the other
towns are up to $1,800 for a burial plot and then another fee to to dig that grave for you open and close yeah like I had a family that literally took their the mother out of another cemetery and it cost them $1,800 to do that to bring them to our
Cemetary um so I we're always going to have full burials it's not ever going to be just cremation correct but but why are we going in the burial business but why do we not continue to contract it for six $0000 you're not going to get that's what I'm saying it's $600 now it
wasn't $600 when I started it was like more like $400 so now we're up to $600 and I'm never going to be able to control that cost going to the to the person to the family and that's what we want to control we want to be able to say we can dig the hole ourselves and
that $600 fee let's just say will always be $600 20 years from now so have you calculated what your burial cost would be with an exavator that you own including maintenance Insurance interest on that excavator or you're going to buy it out right you don't have interest
have you calculated what you're going to charge we haven't gotten that for you that's well we're in the I should say we're in the process of figuring out what the the final price would be for that that family and and whether we have a policy or not we probably want to know
that before you purchase the excavator and see if that makes sense for the town we went through this process last year I we debated so you're going to override the board's decision I'm just see I'm just trying to figure out where this
comes from like the board doesn't the board doesn't have that capability of making a decision for the cemetery you just said the board hasn't completed the thought process but they've already made the decision well we are but we just haven't figured out what how how it's going to work for the
price so we're hoping to keep it down low and not have to be that $1,800 fee if if we don't do the digging ourselves then that fee is going to eventually go up to all the other towns you may exceed it but you don't know that yet and I don't mean to be argumented with you but
that's the process when you make a capital expenditure what's what is the benefit to you well we're not rushing into it the money was put aside for it doesn't mean we're buying it tomorrow so I can go back and and get whatever figures you
want I think there's two problems I agree with Mr scale in that I don't think you can in all fairness say that the cost will be fixed forever because the cost of putting the guy in the machine person in the machine is going
to escalate over time that's the given well not if it's our guy true you pay you pay $20 an hour now in 30 years I guarantee you you're not paying him $20 in 10 years you're not paying and I'm making up to $20 you're going to be paying him more right that's just the
natural progression of things the cost of diesel and everything else the cost of maintenance on the machine all of those things are going to change so you no one could guarant I mean we just talked about a fir Tru and you know and an ambulance and and other pieces of equipment and the escalating costs of
those over time at some point the cost you'll have to replace that excavator with another excavator and that may have a significantly higher cost than the one you're replacing so that's the whole process isn't she's not adding an FTB e just to do the excavation you're using
existing Personnel so you're you're folding same hour same rate that won't gange what do you mean well now he's got another job to do dig holes another task you're not you're not inuring we would have to
eventually No One's Gonna you know like you said it goes up every year so so I just think that you part of their job right but can't just say so you factor in a little bit yeah yeah yeah I have to get a certain Li in order to do run that machine so yeah I would think when were
you planning on doing this purchase we were looking for sometime this year to be working in into next year so like I said the money's there we just we're not rushing into it into which year fiscal 20 you want to buy it in fiscal
26 it depends they have the to buy tomorrow so if you're planning on doing that where are those incremental costs in your fiscal 26 budget for maintenance fuel insurance if I recall you guys didn't want that you wanted level funded
and you asked me for minus five so if you wanted me to put in what I want my wish list to put that in then so what's the cost it's not listed on your Capital Improvements it depends depend depends on what what brand they run from any are
you looking at new or no we actually found a few that were only like 35 40,000 and that wasn't new but it only had five years on it it's not listed in your Capital items either should be even though you're
going to Mone it's not coming out of it should be on here even though it's what rant items are on here even though they're paid for by a grants so it needs to be added then for the people that have a couns I believe so is that correct it's not for anybody
else that that was the second part my argument is that we don't we don't concern ourselves with the wear in these budgets right where it's getting paid correct notice any of these budgets they don't have the income side of this right and but you need to
put any expense item or any costed item in your budget because this is the process that approves those expenditures now if there's sources of funds that become available they may come out of the budget because they're funded elsewhere
but it has to go through the process to be funded now and you know there's all kinds of examples of that where we'll take something out of the budget for fiscal year 26 because we're going to take care of it out of free cash at the at the special ahead of the annual or
there's some other mechanism where it's going to go to CPC instead of being funded out of out of the budget process and it just moves around but it went through this process that I think that's the the piece that we're all trying to pull together and it has to go into the
tax rate regardless and then all the Rees right go into the tax rate calculation would have been nice to know that as well because this is the first time we're using money I was just about to ask how has this always worked for cemeter we've never gone in found
$130,000 living yeah without going through the process so let's use this example of how to set it up 100% And then if it's ever used in the future we can and and just buying the equipment I'm on the side of buying it only
because I have a trap rock driveway and my ex- neighbor decided to plow it and she damaged it and I already spent $220,000 to do it I looked out that the guy was up the road and didn't charge me thousands of dollars to bring the equipment on top of the fee to fix it
true so in the future she might have not have this guy digging and she's going to have some other guy who's not going to leave his equipment he's going to charge every time bring his equipment they bring it so the cost is going to get higher for them to be bring that equipment over and the new guy is
probably gonna charge I can say I've gone up $75 just to show up so where would I show this Capital under Capital so when they dig a on out it's a
pass through on The Cremation side when you dig that out what's the Fe for that that's by hand and who digs it the fulltime full-timer and then that or myself whoever and the funds for that is how much the Dig all 250 and is that going to general fund or where does that
money go no that um no he get that that's where he gets paid for that so we pay him to dig the hole then we give him the 250 yeah no we don't pay pay him to dig the hole well he's getting the 250 that he gets that fee it's always been that
way it was that way punch in to do that digging of the hole they get paid on top of that yeah because where's so so pay him anyways and then we pay him to dig the hole 250 so if we start d a cemetery holes does he get the 600 too I don't know no so the 250 doesn't
benefit the town right there's not not a not a piece of that that comes back NE neither does the six six 600 pass contractor and it's passed through there's no expense to the town of that 600 and yes next year it could be 800 to dig a hole and it's a pass through there's no gas no plate no maintenance
no bump for a raise for the guy to dig the hole no more hours nothing it's a price of doing business you lease the car is so much a month to lease that car and you give it back right it's a price of doing business so the 250 for the priation goes to the guy that digs it
yeah so so how many did he dig last year 26 so 250 time 26 is what 6,000 top of that he got 6,000 more to dig holes how does he get paid that is that through payroll yeah 65
6,500 so just be careful when we start digging Cemetery holes with a back hog it's not the town's not you know we're not covering anything on that it's just going right back to the guy digging the time emploee who digs the holes liation
or I do or are you if he's not available in it's off okay I'm you're saying that you or the full-time employee digs the holes so they're getting do they do it on their normal hours it depends it depends if if it's on a if it's for a
funeral that's on Saturday we have two days prior to to dig that hole if they do it on the hour they normally scheduled hours and then they get paid 250 on top of that remember diing what years ago when they did this the guy was making $15 an hour so that
was like a bonus to them that they they that money went to them because they they never the town never paid them what they they should have been paying so that was like you know here's your little here's not your raise but here's this I don't think that's a taxpayer understanding to
be clear that when they're approving the budget and the Sal well then he should have a real salary and then the that money can go into something else but it's never been that way it's been that way for 50 years so I don't know what to tell you okay you want it change then okay I'll go back to the board and I
think budget we're talking budget process here that means your truck was not an approved purchase either because it wasn't approved in the budget process and I don't know how that falls out in the numbers it's not in the total of this is where the it's always been this way
problem comes in you know and that's where we've gota this stuff has to actually doesn't like everybody says has to be reconciled we have to figure out how we're doing things and and make sure we're doing them all right and that's not whether you had the authority to spend the money or not to to write the
check it's it wasn't included in the budget to spend in an approved budget to spend it's not like supplies and you and you needed an extra stapler this year and so you're saying we should have came to you and said oh we're going to take
137,000 out of our thing to do these projects and then you're going to tell me no no the taxpayers need to tell you yes you can use that money for that and then whether you need a second signature whatever else is a whole separate question wants to be a southw policy
then we have to write the policy but it's not mass gener law and I don't think anybody did anything nefarious or try to do something illegal or were using these trust funds illegally and properly and I believe they were Guided by Bartholomew so again I think if we
want to CH the process Bartholomew only I think barol barthol only advised how to access the funds they didn't care they didn't ask you did you budget it and get it approved first they don't care no law so it's not something that the
law would dictate it would be a policy that the town has that we need to that we've had for years or we know this is the policy we've done for well I think nobody's taken trust fund money out so we have though after to my knowledge well I know maybe not a trust fund I don't know yeah that's a good point but
I just think from the legislative process right right to what everyone's kind of getting at here is even us we don't spend one red Penny of taxpayer money right town meeting spends taxpayer
money the budget that we put together is the expenditures and policy of the town as voted on by town meeting correct right we can't none of us really can spend one red penny
uh without it going to town meeting because town meeting adopts the budget right that's the legislative act that authorizes the expenditure now if there're I'm guessing you're you're right and I'm guessing that there was probably a
legislative act to establish said trust fund and we'd have to go back to that article from I don't know when good luck finding it oh I'm sure the clerk has the article that voted to create the trust and then that truck that that article at
town meeting would be should be specific on how those funds can be used so they are and I think they're a little even more ambiguous than we want them to be which can be updated but I I me I would argue with this trust fund sort of like our grants we get theming with the
cemetery through um the budget process right when we get any sort of Grant hundreds to Randy I haven't had a chance yet so I think that this is sort of this would fall in line with that um go to a
process but but we you should definitely have you know again I love policy and procedure so for sure we should have something that to look at to say okay if you want to spend this money this is how it goes um you know I'm think I'm trying to think now mostly their improvements with grants not necessarily assets but
when we do get assets with grants we do have to Ure them and and maintenance and Fuel and all those things too so those are also so it's I think this is all relative here together with trust funds and with I'm sorry no please even to apply for a grant they come through you to get
approval to apply for the grant so and it had been budgeted and I just want to throw out the C bariums would have needed to be here too right in in your capital projects all of that needed to be here
and approved a town meeting before you purchase however you're going to purchase whether it's grants interest right or the tax bill so do you want me to go and revise this so you have a yeah yeah I think so yeah and then so
all I'm revising is the capital section I'm just going to put all the projects that we have again so you bought a truck you have maintenance now so your your line items are going to be impacted as
well sure is you got to register the truck you got to Ure the truck you got to put gas in the truck you got to change the oil you've got expenses related to that well we have a repairs and maintenance L well is it enough that's what I'm saying you got
to make sure yeah that your line items reflect what yeah oh well that that we have plenty in repairs and maintenance to to cover that maintenance on that truck okay remember it's not going on
the road even though it's registered like we we'll use it to go to the dump because you know we've been using our cars and it's pretty trashy we'll be using it just to go on the road to the dump but it's not going to be going it's literally going to be going from like the sand pile the to the grave site to
the on the property it's going to stay on the property 99% of the time you got to put gas in the tank we get get the gas from the same place we get the gas from the lawn mows that's that comes out of the Town
that's where we get our our our gas Bo but you you got to drive it up goes on the road to get it on the road it's on the road so it needs insurance as well to be on the road y so
um and just and then I would still like to see um but there's not a line item for insurance again that comes out of the the town so I don't I'm not adding that I'm just asking the question I'm not adding
insurance or gas or any of that in any line item okay but so so if we didn't have this discussion here then the town accountant doesn't know that you have this truck to add into those line items either that she takes
care of part of the process you know what I'm saying right but she does because she did get the letter saying we purchase the truck so she would have a process to do I would think she would have the a process to take that information I'm not saying
it's the right way to do it but she it's not like she didn't know we fall there's a process involved which gets it right that's what I'm saying and what I'm asking I'm not putting that anywhere on these Lin put insurance or gas
is you I'd like to get a cost per hour estimate usually you got an operation you know with my machine you it breaks down to about four or five do you have a way to do it there's calculators online there's other ways to do it it calculates the fuel to wear and tear on the machine and that would be done
basically if you could figure out what the hours obviously look at what it's oh it's just a $600 set fee doesn't matter how long so we've got to figure out what it cost to dig a hole that's what I said I would like to see you got to take fuel
and all that type of stuff so you got you know like a per hour analysis because definitely that would help you Pi the determination if it's worth buying that machine what you think you're going to save and what you think you're going to charge People based on the cost to operate that I'm knowing what I know from having machine I'm kind
of on the same line as sher's thinking I think in the long run it would probably be beneficial but um we need all the numbers yeah but it's a it's a ex in a dump truck and he said you needed the dump
truck but you bought the dump truck but you don't have the excavator so the reason you bought the dump truck it was available and it was a good price okay but so we really need to factor in both pieces of equipment because you didn't need the dump truck
when you were Contracting it Contracting the work you didn't have a dump truck what were you running around with the dump truck thought process is if we're going to buy an excavator let's say we thought yeah the board thought we're buying an escavator this year the dump truck came up first so we purchased that
knowing we're going to need one understood so so the timing is you know but that aside you're now you're gonna do a cost benefit from Contracting the F versus owning both a dump truck and an
excavator so you got to weigh those two right because you wouldn't have the dump truck if you were so contractor you never had it you have to factor that into your cost right corre yeah the whole thing and just to finish my thought from
earlier in the annual town meeting I believe it's article five every year is the article that gives the vote of town meeting authorizes the select board to apply for and accept any and all grants from private entities federal government or the common one and by the way article
four allows us to sell or trade obsolete equipment so at the end of this process whatever the decision is we also have the ability to work our way out of a situation that we may find ourselves there if we have to but the same way we're able to dispose of you know old
police cruisers or equipment that's you know was purchased that's not needed any longer we were able to get rid of it so then this would be on the budget to go to the next time meeting right yeah I think we could come back absolutely we should come back to it and and I I don't
have any problem with the whole Theory right as if we can to what Mrs Gale and others are are saying is let's do the math let's put it on the budget let's vote on it and and you can we we do usually go into the source of funds for
things in the budget but we can we always use that as a reference to say okay this is going to be paid for out of um and it could be on the warrant article even this will be paid out of the interest on the trust fund right so
it's not a direct tax impacting number but at least everyone goes into this eyes wide open and we've done the math to say okay it's going to cost us $400 right now making up the number to dig the hole for the dump truck and the the
excavator and the person and all the ancillary costs that go with it and and we decide that okay it's a make vers buy decision so we decide that we're going to make it instead of buying it great but everyone it goes through this process that we always do for just about
everything we buy and then you've got a budget item and you can expend out of that budget item and you know other elected boards come in front of us and if they have you know if they have monies in in a gift account or some
other way it again at town meeting it we reauthorize those revolving to for them to spend out of so they don't come to us directly with like oh we're going to spend you you know it may have some monies that they're going to spend but they're going to spend it out of the the
gift account for example so I just think that this kind of is a process Escape that we need to kind of figure out so if we are going to be pay buying something out of the gift account is that going to be on here somewhere or is that just a given because you have that in the a
warrant right it's a capital well you've got the next page it shows gift accounts use Park and wreck as an example right park and wreck has a revolving right and they've got some you know they take monies in that go into the revolving I think it's mostly
parking right and then they use some of that money every year to offset the costs of operating Wally Park right it's in their budget the line items in there for what they're going to expend but then they they offset some of that from
Revol you know Finance offset some of that from revolving like I said in in all of this year in all of the budget we don't have the Top Line right you don't see the the income side of of the budget right you only we're only looking at the
expenditure side of the budget so if we were going to buy something out of the gift fund actually we again because we have nothing I might it right but that's the biggest problem is there's no definitive
there's nothing to go by um well they had a so let's say we were we were replacing old Stones we're replacing some old stones in the old Cemetery with
our you want to know that it would have to be on here I think that would be a vote of your board right I'd have to I'm get I don't want to conf might the she has 5700 bucks in Cemetery get
the count they won't because it's stone and you can't replace Sandstone we're not going to replace S Sandstone with Sandstone okay so it's getting it's a whole new one and they won't pay for okay a newer version but it's it's going to be like
$5,000 so is that something we come in front of you for I don't have a policy it's for gift accounts I think that's uh we'll come back to you because that it's also on the town meeting warrant
right we reauthorized the gift Accounts at the town meeting so we're covered that way I believe so if we go and we we can just look that up or we can come back late you know at a different time look up the article that reauthorizes the revolving that's what no matter what the fee not to get no matter what the fee
not to get overly complicated again but you have a cemetery Perpetual care Expendable portion that sounds like that why wouldn't it come from that because we don't get answers on What what we can do that if we don't get
answers on that account what we can do with it or if we could take money out of there because it's money going in go back to the town clerk and have her pull that and and research I've done that I did that when I first started let's see if I got with Michelle no answer she has
nothing in writing that tells her what we can do with any account did the same thing with accounting got no answer I don't know what to tell you we're we're just we're doing the best we can yep yeah no we're trying to help no doubt no doubt but let's get some answers then
this is this is kind of new here we're trying to figure it out we're not attacking you all right more to come on this one I think yeah so you want me to change this on my capital and then get this back to I put them on Capital and then let it go through the process and then we'll
figure out part of the budgeting process is figure out where the money is going to come D truck would go on there yeah the truck bariums and and your shed yeah cuz that's already half paid for yep okay and we'll get those answers we'll get those answers on the article on the
trust fund all okay that was tough thank you L hey building department I believe is that building inspector yes Mr online yeah can you
hear me yeah yeah how are you today sir good yourself great great so I'm painless Joe level funded can you state your name for the
record s sorry I st CL uh Kyle J Scott Building Commissioner South thank you sir and your budget is in front of us you said level funded is there the minus five is there thank you and I hope uh we don't
incur any cuts because it's hard to run a budget you a run a department keep getting caught but um that those numbers seem to work we can do it another year and um should be good y you do have a revolving account though
correct that the um I don't see it here that the Fe going into from your inspections yeah um meing for electrical pluming and gas Y which usually run about in the 60s uh for for balances on
each account if I'm if I'm correct and how come all these sheets are most of these sheets are blank I asked for them to be put in this year and I asked for them to be filled out by the department heads oh so some
did and some didn't oh and of course the next question will be well County you're going help me so that's your next well then the next question is can accounting fill them in for the next yes I think we can get accurate numbers moving forward I was so I I I assumed they
didn't have one if it was well that was new this year for me get that out so in Kyle's case all right he he runs a decent amount in that revolving account yeah um but you can't it's very selective where it can go correct what I mean yep and I think some some of the stuff you kind of have to look at corre
if it can be changed at all because I'm sure Kyle would love to purchase certain things when he sees is revolving account that just sits there because right it's you know everyone's getting paid he's doing his job correctly but he can't touch that money either I'm certain things yeah you know I mean there's not
a lot yeah there's not a lot for me to buy for the Department I try to keep it actually very approval if you look at my spending buy a few things for you that we're currently probably budgeting but we're not allowed to do that oh yeah even even for the town in general you
know and I thought said what did what where does that money end up going it's a lot of money sitting there you know yeah I'll do my best to get away from you not we take in more money uh year after year as it seems the revenue is very
good um I I watch it pretty tight so uh every every week um a in's running reports I run reports we keep an eye on income so thank you and Kyle how's e permitting going your
transition uh the transition's been a little rocky um they put a they lose lines on it they lose inspectors names uh it's been was the same way with the Board of Health a little bit the buildout wasn't so smooth but um day by
day we've been correcting it so it's it's getting there it'll be there it's still the lowest pric uh software available Tom and I Tom from boarded health and I shopped three four different companies to see if we could switch to another one they were all huge
huge money and by that I mean you're talking over 100,000 so Y and refresh me there's an annual license fee on these there's an annual uh subscription fee um and that is paid by it after the first
year so that goes through Jim midleton's budget okay and Tom Tom will have the same thing in his yeah wish I would love to take out of that if we could yeah if we could yeah anybody have any questions for the
building Kyle thank you for your time sir thank you thank you guys hope the rest of your day is a little smoother take care so do you want to go on a break or we have Board of Health sitting here you want to bangang them out
that's and then buildings and grounds is here too yeah yeah then we'll take because police will be forever so we'll take a break after buildings and grounds get these guys in B of H come on up you guys could sayate your name for the record I appreciate it good morning s Tom H morning Tom how
are you guys today are you wonderful thanks for having us thanks for coming in um were level funded just moving things around but then we had to add a cell
phone line item because hen County Health Coalition has explained on one of your pages no longer paying for the P's phone there was a change in federal funding so we had to add 600 there okay
then we move things around just going to talk about the grant we have y so we have um our shared services Grant um we are South is the lead agency um we are with Granville Colin uh blanford
Russell and Montgomery um so that Grant pays for we have a full-time nurse and a part-time public health nurse um and then we have a shared service coordinator who is in charge of running the Grant and making sure we spend all the money appropriately and um doing all
the deliver deliverables to dph um so that Grant we have at least through next year um obviously given all the unknowns with the federal funding I know the state uses some federal funding to supplement this grant um so beyond
our contract is through the end of next of FY 27 um so I think the state wants to continue it beyond that but we at least have it for another year and a half um and one thing that we looked at with the
grant last year was to add a um in part-time inspector who could supplement all six towns um so I put that in our five-year local budget um that didn't pan out but one thing we are working on is our shared service coordinator um she
is great and she had the interest in learning um to do inspections so she's starting to take some trainings and I think we might be able to use her for some um inspections it's not a significant need but it's difficult for me to get to all of the inspections that
need to be done what inspections are you speaking um all the mainly food inspections um but we could use her for um housing and septic once she's um once she's trained uh for all the towns for all six towns yeah um so I put that in
the town Budget on the fiveyear projection just if the grant goes away or if it doesn't work out um with doing inspections through the grant um I don't want to Blindside anyone in you know two three years and say I need an inspector
and have everything say what where's that coming from so hopefully we won't need it through the town and and we make it work through the grant um with the the total amount for the grant is um 300,000
15% of what we spend goes to the is the um agency administration fee that goes to the town um so we're trying to spend as much as we can to make sure the town gets their full share um and one other
thing with the grant that I will share here is um Ken and I um have been working with Southwick and the other towns were regarding the um and we're actually going to be coming to the select board in the next probably month or so um regarding the state opioid
funds um and pooling those amongst the towns uh despite being a much smaller town Granville got um actually more than Southwick did um so it's not won't be Southwick um you know paying for all the other towns they're actually going to be pitching in their their fair share but
um we're looking at pulling those funds and spending them across the six towns equally um so that's another separate funding um but something that kind of we do through the grant that would be a benefit to the town uh have we started using that fund at all no it's just
sitting there there's a lot of there's a lot of Hoops you have to jump through to spend it um so that would be one of the ideal things if we if we do go forward with sharing it is the um the grant staff the nurses and our shared service coordinator
can deal with all of that that work you know you have to um work with people with lived experience to see you kind of make sure that what you're spending the funds on would actually be helpful to people um so that could be attending
meetings or surveys and things like that before you can spend it so that the grant staff would be able to take care of that last year that was brought up that was probably just approving getting the funds yeah we got it back from the state and just basically sitting there sitting there in a special special
Revenue fund so um I think Southwick in don't quote me on it I could be a little off but um Southwick in total over five years will receive about $220,000 um and with all six towns the I
think the total amount was around 70,000 so thank you oh yeah and one other thing the grant pays for is we have um we have inspection software um that I so I have a tablet I have service on the tablet
that's paid for by the Grant and I use that for all my food and housing inspections so that's paid for by the Grant and then our licensing software is paid for by the town and the um just like Kyle the maintenance comes out of the it budget
got are there fees for inspections that off SE the cost yes um we pull in around the past few years it's been around $40,000 year in our um in our inspection
fees we did when we implemented the inspection software um so effective January 1 this year um we changed our fee schedule um the biggest change was to how we structure some of our septic fees so I think that should go up um
this calendar year um and more so next next fiscal year because we did it kind of halfway through the fiscal year so um so it should go up a little bit but we can always look at look at feeds to make sure they're appropriate and what do we use to pay out of it if we're collecting
money we're on the subject the money's coming in right but you don't have a revolving account right so that goes right into the general fund they needed to know yeah yeah building inspector a little different because there was a few different revenue streams of fees okay and that's and I've been watching that
build up so the question was you know how can we absorb some of that money what we constru the licensing fees alone would be great yeah you know we don't want to take too much of that Apple but it would use it just little bit in his case it goes right to the general fund
you have to use Town Council for Housing Court is there a general fund that that comes out of or does it come out of our consultant budget um we have a line item but we we are actually I went to court with them
and we're paying them out of the Town budget um not out of our specific budget I don't think so I think under General counsil and in in typical towns it comes out of just it's General Council it's part of the Town having to do business I don't think you know we wouldn't fund Grand bills or any of the other towns
right but but South yeah most of the time it's so planning board has an issue they'll go to the select board and say we're going to dip into the attorney side um and it just everyone's aware of it kind of thing but uh yes one general account so the followup question is what
do you use for your consultant line so the thing we would use I I in my head I had thought we might use the consultant for legal fees but um we have a backup inspector um currently who is um we haven't used much um I haven't taken a
lot of vacation time um but with that amount that's in there if I try not to use it but if I was sick or out for a few weeks that we could burn through that in no time so um that would you know if we needed
someone to do you know a significant amount of inspections for a few weeks or a month um that would might not even be enough but hopefully that won't come to that and we won't need to use it but okay thanks above um what amount is
considered minor equipment we're working on that right now don't get Joe going please we just combined the two minor equipment and supplies because we didn't use many supplies we went over in minor equipment that's another
conversation we're we're in the middle of that conversation between so regardless or minor equipment $225 right so so you're not going to hit the thresholds that we're having this beautiful you're nowhere near you can go mind so your supplies
you said you you wanted to combine supplies and minor equipment yeah because we don't we can use as many supplies so if anything maybe we can move some money into minor equipment off the supply line item sure like a hundred bucks or something we could do that but is it 250 is that no we don't We're Not
Gonna you're fine your number is fine we don't have enough time today like you said no it wouldn't hurt you'd be fine either way so you're looking to maybe move a 100 over well think about it and then get back to us before a bun of
process anything have any questions have a great day buildings and grounds come on on then we'll take the two-hour break before police a union yeah your name sirz thank
you in charge of buildings and grounds yes how are you this evening this morning good so Town complex looks okay we just go line item by line you you have it for parttime position for custodian
you want to go over your capital projects yeah so sprinkler valve that's the one downstairs yeah yeah the main Val shut off right it's dripping it's
been it was was the one that was leaking over the summertime so it's more of a maintenance thing guys but it needs to get repaired broken main power breaker power's on but there's something wrong with it switch down there yeah broke off
broke off we gotta get that first is that the one we talked about that like we talked about it yeah we got to go look at it pick and see what he's really talking about the three Bay preab garage is the um the thought process was the old p over there that is no longer the
fireman's Association building is to put something up there a bay for you and a bay for the generators not to be off but Chief what what are you looking at for the generators how big of a space we know he needs to put a tractor in typical garage
Bay okay I think 12 by 20 yeah I know depending on what you did dou mentioned you know I thought that it may be worth exploring was with the police with the boat the dimension of the boat
just don't have them measure they don't do well measuring but yeah you know whether it was utiliz the old Bays that are there now put there's a lot of variables yeah so roughly a bay though at the end of the day it's a
bay4 by well it's there yeah it's um it doesn't say three bags the pad that's already there I was talking about yeah the that's probably 12 by 36 or something at least overall 28 by that's a big
piece but not all all of it is able to put something on top no correct correct and then next is the key building with three Master
levels 11,000 so so in Capcom we had a good discussion with this young man about all that stuff and that is to just rekey the doors with the oldfashioned keys cor right and then
the 60,000 is if we want to go to the key fob World correct per it in so those are options those aren't what I would say on that is your Public Safety buildings need to go to
the key fob op they that's where everybody's going well I don't think this for Town Paul it wasn't for Public Safety yeah I believe Public Safety has that well you you got the good point they already have some of it some of it at police anyways and we were talking
about if we are going to embark on this type of endeavor that get a system that would work on the entire campus in in actually the entire town not just the campus so d PW fire police Cemetery eventually for the building not to No
One leaving and um sorry and you know etc etc right so I talked to Dan about it Dan's gonna have a look at I've showed some stuff the Parker just because I have some experience with this stuff and right now
the police the fire um and DPW all have disparate systems so it would make sense if we go in you don't have to do it all at once but you can no yeah instead of continuing to plow money into disperate systems eventually you would consolidate
yeah so 12 locations is all of the no I think that's just Town Hall there' be 12s at Town that's that's why I was I was confused okay got okay fa I 12 do yeah carpet building office
which one is that carpet building office warn carpet and building offices so that's Town Hall yeah that was a replacement plan some of the offices some not all yeah I was
wondering about the fire department now that it's 247 365 like uh is is any of that getting worn more so than it would have I think the in the police too but I don't know how much traffic is in there is opposed to the fire department and
and their upkeep of their building if that should be included police has done a threeyear project so far I believe on some carpets every year um fire they're going new right who knows what's going to happen with the bunk beds oh probably be new yeah that are or whatever and
didn't meet the department had to look through that type of stuff and it didn't come forward okay good okay head-on generator motor replacement that's the generator right off your f is that not working or it's just not
working to op it wasn't working for a while get some repairs on fuel injector and C parts of it it was needs new cylinder heads is that what this where is it in its life cycle the generator itself that 20 years
ago move that's when we moved I mean that was over here mooved from here to there we moved it to there and it was all I mean I mean generally they last 30 50 years the motors the we Fu I know my other
place we're just replacing our 50y old one now you're getting a new building over there are they going to name it after you the new building I'm going to try all right sorry no so I I assume it has another 20 years life but
yeah vendor did not say it at end of life just need a new need a re I believe you said once it's rebuilt it should extend the life probably 20 30 years yeah and that's that gas or diesel diesel honestly the older ones once they're fixed they're better anyways you
don't have all the electronic or death we moov it because of the smell because of know but we do have n gas on this campus right somewhere yeah y okay that would re like a whole maybe we could build a fiber Hut
and a generator pad all together well he has one two on the other side of the firehouse and this between the two of them you would have two sources of power but that one was really under once those the fire police side works but generally
speaking though I think n gas is preferable because it's basically the supply is essentially infinite right if you run out of that gas you got bigger problems unless the ground moves so true if you want an independent Source that's
why they do go with these yeah or someone blows up the one and done plan okay FES over the where is the fiber Hut in here nothing on the five year so now we are public safety building
maintenance it's all good public safety building [Music] maintenance five year Highway division maintenance [Music]
safy so we painted them four years ago three years ago we painted them and last year I think we the Motors that on the fire department doors so I guess next will be the doors but that's level of priority
three and that's a five year right I remember having a discussion about how heavy the doors are that's right we had to replace the motor original Motors were like a residential motor and some other lasted all that time now they have the proper Motors on the there least so the motors would still be good and it's just
replac it's all the energy effic stuff they're still double we didn't money on oh we never waste money in this town I mean they needed it just wanted to make sure that we weren't replacing what we just did no painting wasn't cheap either no the painting wasn't
cheap at all yeah so what you find out in seven years that the new doors would be so lightweight we could have kept the old Motors but we're not there that's what's going to happen we're not there I didn't want to say that but no okay so DPW Highway division
maintenance below insulation so these are new wall insulation in roof areas 20,000 what is that sir what does that detail roof wall insulation and roof areas is that the existing roofs that
are back there and we need to insulate underneath them yeah basically just finding better ways to insulate what's right there so you have an estimate for the 20K yeah okay at which building DPW now where do we stand on wasn't
there discussion about oh just me today okay there was there's been discussion about the we bought the building we bought the building the roof should be replaced some point yes we've been through it allies there you go they said take it
right down right no no no so we we looked at that for green energy the grant gotcha um as one of the options in one of the things they did say that the DPW building had some weakness in the insulation area they
wanted 70,000 to do it but we figured we could do it Prett and that was for the the spray spray and or yeah what need go the roof and and the the comprehensive building study we did with a different Grant probably don't spend one red scent
on that turn te operation over there I get that's needed I mean we spent we spent some money over there we did the what do we do the the glazing of the glass or shading of the glass in the front years ago tinted the windows yeah we brought a generator in over there so
yeah they need that for the pumps because that was a gap but Y and this is like almost it's m maintenance right yeah it is maintenance yeah so the 20 okay so then the next is Bay heat replace heating with radiant
that's um do that grin if you get it Green community it says green yeah it was on the list for The Greening right yeah right um C can you just give a quick recap what the initial Grant was being used for just so everybody knows
where that went for the fire yeah so um we looked at all the buildings there was a bunch of studies and we had quotes at 140ish I remember right yeah um one of the big items that came out fire department controls the thermostats were all Air controled which the airlines
were all leaking we had rooms that didn't get heat that got heat that didn't get air conditioning it got air conditioning um long story short what they're putting in is what they call digital controls that mandates what room gets what when the technology so the
efficiency will increase I forgot what the number was now but that would be biggest gain $100,000 to replace all the controls in building and now there's nobody in the room you don't eat it you on air condition Etc so that's that's
where that Grant's being used So based on our prior discussion does that need to be in capital on here but it's AG energy Grant but it's a but it's an expenditure regardless of the source of spending so
that probably needs to be put on here but it's already being done the lighting's already done too yeah so how do we usually would come in front of the selb to be accepted guess right and then bailed out where it went yeah that didn't
happen it as far as I know I mean this was a couple years ago that you got the Grant but it was accepted and then a select person was designated to work on the project and just come back and I actually did put it in a report what was spent what was left and what we used it
for so that as far as I know was the process in in and so reporting that to the select board so but yeah I mean I guess for next year or for going forward this is what we have to remember right to all
the BR we expect to get that we' be putting them budget that we know of at least the passord right so we see it and understand it seems inconsistent yeah yeah some are and some are not so but that was I think that was kind of part of
the yes absolutely generally but in this particular thing that HB was going to be part was in previous budget it was because it was part of the Renault for the dorms they needed or they need to do work they needed to do this so yeah it
kind of was it kind of was and and the article that allows us to accept the grant we already have that so right I think we actually mostly did exactly what you said we needed to do was done and again where that it gets funded out of that is part of the other process not
done through the budget hearing but the B you know the budget for that HVAC is in there net result scale is that the the money that wasn't spent out of the budget that was spent from the grant money rolled it's in your
free cash number it's up so it absolutely followed the budget process he do didn't mention green energy Grant when the CH wasn't saying there's the the money there to do it he said got that initial one now we are eligible for competitive grants to apply for for
those correct okay sorry that was the circle back I remember all that this poor kids on his first uh budget hearing and he's just going up you're doing great smile all
that told you we'll walk you right through it kid you're doing great yeah walk out shaking I said like what the heck was that I just wanted to clarify that wasn't that initial green energy grant for future competitive ones
yes all right DPW how division maintenance 5 years [Music] insation PES on the same on Library maintenance library library library going to CC they kind of came in
talked to us about that right put theum maintenance oh sorry I was on Library capital I skipped right Library Capital where they were talking about that concrete P from last week yeah Library maintenance which is the concrete B just
for an update we I um met with Dan we went over and met with a few other contractors she had said she was having an issues trying to get clotes the librarian so and and a few guys met and they're in the process of getting other numbers formed so how big is the
pad um it's it's interesting because it's not it's not a pad it's G to be a tree branch of sorts oh okay yeah okay you know depending on how you look at it and depending on what you like and they really didn't have they had a price on
a was the back of a match stick the kids walk or something yes yes CPC at one point did some of the funding for I think and and this is probably a CPC item in the end but um she just she needs some help over there and Dan and
the group are going to take care of that on Library operations are your values on the wrong lines they're inverse of History yes so that to [Music]
get one of their line items they were taking out contracts for automation so this corrects yeah we met with with um Finance and accting rather and straighten that out and also increase her values for what she can get
for Grant contract actually okay so what which is the number these two numbers just fli the future numbers are the correction correct any questions for this young
man now we got one hour break y all right thank you for your time sir you did good KCK thanks thanks Chief yeah we're gon have to go on break folks for an hour we'll be right back e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e all right folks we're back you state your name your name and your department sorry Bennett thank you love and you did minus five thank
you when you spend your animal control gift account on um things that are not covered under the normal line items and is that so that is um that's strictly just yes it's not a revolving account right
yeah it's just yes just okay yep and then you have the revolving account for the medical gifts right same thing yep operations do have you got an assistant yet I'm sorry have you do you have an assistant yet I see
no you want to move maintenance over to the PD budget because they vehicle yeah I would say that would be yeah because you know they handle all that anyway right it's incorporating everything and plus if you know it adds to their budget that's fabulous understood my stuff gets
done when it needs to get done right then you got the viers and divers those are the ones from um linmar to kind of get in line with what
the state animal control would like to see and it is disease prevention it's much more sanitary it prevents kennel fighting it prevents you know a lot of the issues that you find
it's pretty much required so we' like to follow the guidelines that you give us sure and that's all the dividers for 2000 yes I got a quote um the ones that we had spoken of there were a few
different qualities and I picked the the one that would be um the best fit so $235 yep in five years you have a [Music]
van says new [Music] AC in 2029 so will you be here in 2029 ah well okay espe with HR but yeah there you
go that's all I see yeah um we did we did we did um figure it out another way not yet we Haven we are doing a out of the gift
account um because when Mrs already class we had several thousand donated on her behalf so we're going to be getting a shed that's going or go chicken anything like that we
already have the caging to put around it um we've already got the approval to do the the shed so we're going to dedicate it to because he did the building so we it that would actually help with extra
room oh because I've had Gos in the kennel the chickens and tur and du in the tanel now this will put them out where they belong but that actually went to theel board yes okay question sell the eggs there you go I can sell the eggs 10 15 bucks a
dozen what do you guys wants 15 bucks a bu do I hear 15 yeah I know any other questions thank you thank you this is like a Christmas I love your
like good afternoon folks should you state your name and chief of police thank you thanks for coming in today so if you don't mind the uh fire department did a great job going
line item by line item so I think we should do the same I'm thinking that's probably Jo but really want me to doesn't actually I I it you're you know why not so contracts what do we use that
for let's go service contract y wonderful dues are the dues that you need to pay correct Che development train send me to seminars and all yeah so of course I got a lot of flack because we took some money out of that for your copier so
someone was trying to tell me that you don't get trained anymore and poor Brett Bish and I just get my head back a little bit going oh this is where Brett wanted to take it from Rhett I'm sorry Rhett wanted to take it from so what do you plan on doing with your development training sir and where do you see
yourself lacking in three years so the developmental training uh traditionally has been used the chief goes out to the uh International Chiefs of police seminar yeah this year it is in Denver so I'm gonna say if I were to go to
Denver that money is gone and then so so okay we'll cross that bridge when we get there but um you know in addition to that is's also other training seminars that we do too a western MTH Chiefs and mass Chiefs and stuff like that so thank you sir just want to get on the record
School expense School expense is used basically just for what it says it's um used for the training of the officers it could be you know the tuition itself it could be the lunch associate it could be travel time stuff of that nature so
that's any schooling any school yeah great active shooter training we know what that is self-explanatory yes dive service and maintenance same thing yep uh Citizen Police Academy supplies how that going
right now we're lacking uh people run it unfortunately that's us getting back there I do um I'd like to start running those programs we do have um we got several officers coming back in
the very near future one coming back two coming off of fto we've hired an additional one he still needs to go through the academy we've got one Elum long term so you know we should be getting our staffing levels up and with the Staffing levels we should start be able to offer some of our CPA type
classes rids they were successful you add them you really enjoyed them and uniforms are uniforms uniforms exactly that is the S and fre each officers built into there
y as sure incompetence and travel is for everybody um I think that's actually actually supposed to be for me I think gotcha gr training self explaning y yep the rad training you took out your question on ra yeah it looks
like it didn't make it all the way over well it looks like it combined on if you go to the uh operations the explanations one got no no understand we didn't get there yet okay we're going to combine rad with um some of the
Poli programs sure the boat is the boat little minor equ supp yeah computer suppli they're combining them all medical requirements you got big jump from last
year metal requirements is the same every year increasing budget was 842 and it's 6 6500 yeah unfortunately make the second side of
the somewhat embarrassing but what's the yeah I believe the number was 65 last year as well we level funded everything within the uh operations
foot okay I me was just which one was that dve medical requirements showing the 24 budget was 842 and 6500 this year okay and nether
was expended yeah it shows that you got nothing expended on that right now is that C your money out yeah sure yes sir we did we grabbed some on already oh yeah next crime
supplies what is that so crime supplies is almost like a catchall for a lot of the different things we have to buy over the course of the year um stuff for the DB stuff for the road caution tape caution tape yeah stuff of that nature
understood breiz I think at one point came out of that not the breath but new BS last CH to draw the body didn't say [Music] that security Communications what is
that one second yeah it's not much as 1,200 right right below I see it I'm just not 100% sure what that actually is no problem just email to me disat for that that's only 250 share so
far is that Alice and we were just talking about that what I was thinking I don't think it is because dispat pays for Alice but actually Westfield pays for Alice yeah agreement that was bought out of 91
Ms oh Harbor Master expense what does that go to you're doing actually different from Harbor Master stifen um but Harbor Master expense is generally used by uh Lake
management so I'm not really sure why it's in our budget but understood that's it's generally buoys and other stuff that they need out on the small stuff WRA the boat every year and all that comes out of there weapons maintenance and
reconditioning pieces and parts parts pieces to your existing guns yep flashlights site resource officer benefits I wonder you delve into that one you know more than I do on that one I do thank
you that's why it was just the one extra resource officer was the original correct so we have two right now one's covered by the town the other one's covered by there's a process in play there too I mean that'll eventually get looked at
and Stu the good news with all of that is I really think whether it be the school department or the finance committee or select board everyone seems to be on the same page to make sure it works all the way through the process you know what I mean but no one's offended no one's upset that one to's paying off or
another I think they've done a real good job of cleaning up looking at it in a much different way that we have in the past two Cruisers and one might be a truck right but either way it's a cruiser so yeah right now um that's the same number
we've used I think the last years 195 um that'll cover one line Cruiser replacement and then a new truck for the blue up yeah that's the
stand whatever we initially planned on two regular line CR this year we the truck so we're pretty good shaped mileage wise all one conversation out of time by just buy once the rot we've been I
don't want to say lucky because we've been down persons at this point let's try to stick to one conversation at a time my dad I think I asked a question no you're fine I just you got two guys saying two different things and you know
I'm a little hard of hearing got a haircut got a haircut you're right absolutely you doing one we'll go that's why I keep mine short saying about that cover both cars yeah and the thing was we're not fully
outfitting the truck as we would a normal car that's what we can stay within the budget yes thank you portable radios nothing to do with the radio program that we're talking about none of that yours will still work right because I think actually all the
radios that You' got since we did the 911 are the new digital right everything you're replacing with is the newer style correct yeah they're purchasing purchasing more for new offers and things like that because they're not they're not cheap no they're not no as they cycle
through computer equipment is that the laptops in the cars or is that in the offices or both yes where are we computer equipment 15,000 so the computer equipment would be the inhouse
computer Buton y right outfit storage buildings going away Patrol rifle so that is for how many rifles that is in the capital request that is for six for six but here it's 14,000 is
that for six of them 21 21 21 and actually that wrong quite honestly no that's fine I figured it at 35 instead of 35 and change all right so that's what that should be and what it's referring to is the new rifles
so the budget of 14,000 covered what two rifles back in the day the 14 was it was four that did four of them back we purchased last year okay so if we want six this year it's
35 so they jumped huh not much they were 35 this is this is a complete rifle so when we build before we got a rifle the rifle itself was just the rifle that you were paying for and all the acement were pulled out on different things so this is for the
complete rifle one not the same correct they're not they're not right so what you have is you have a rifle and this company is making everything the problem we were having was if something broke on it they would say oh it's not our problem oh it's not our problem so now we're getting a complete rifle from a manufacturer so something bre we go your
problem fix it okay thank you so are you saying that number supposed to be 30 something yeah1 are you revising that is that you're talking per R it's 3500 per rifle it's 21 I think actually hold more 21,000 is the
right 35 would be per5 3500 you through the Cruisers when you swap out Cruisers or do you have them dedicated to each vehicle dedicated to the vehicles that 35 was the original number you gave me
anyway yeah you gave me number 35 all right The copier is done did you all want go to Randy or no no okay the old's sitting for Surplus there you go so just clarify for
me we just did a new copier y was it this copier that it was in the 25 budget or is this a second copier that you just had to do so we don't need any copier right now y We Got The copier and that copier was obtained through transfer of
funds from other line items to purchase but is that the 8,000 in the fiscal 25 cop yes it's got to be so why did we have to move money if it would budgeted it wasn't 8,000 wasn't there this I think he just added
it that's not yeah yeah yeah oh yeah wasn't in the right that's 8000 you needed four it something right thatp all right grant and gift
accounts pleas SK account what do you use that for that is I really can't tell you but honestly talked that we probably have used a little bit of it but probably not much
at this point the first one police gift account 27119 a description can we make a description of all these like I'm encountering like people people are moving along and nobody knows a lot of these accounts are for we might need
a little something in the accounting department that gives us descrition of what they can be used for I'm pretty sure they know it's just not listed here and and this year I asked for this paper to be on everyone's packet and I didn't go out and beg first so everyone have the answers so here we are saying hey
what's in your gift okay so right they can answer their own question and they will he'll be able to email me that answer oh okay yeah it's called homework and they're going to do it called ask my assistant that's whatever you got whatever you got to do K9
account Community Police and Citizen Police same same same so anyways those are directed gifts generally from the public absolutely absolutely yeah but it still goes through the process so it's just nice to ask the
questions yeah I think what we found over the years is there's there's certain accounts out there that if they didn't get brought up in this meeting they don't get brought up so now that we need to look at every nickel and dime it's just nice to have that discussion not saying you can go attack them but you
know but somebody might say oh what do they call that now transparency that's the big fish word so here we are transparency any reason we have two drug takeback accounts I was just one's from the drug dealers and one's from the state
ear Revenue yeah um drug take back drug take back it's the right so no they're different they're different numbers numbers yeah that's the prescription box right one one of the prescription one of was the
other one I'm assuming I might to rename the account it's probably just one from one year and one from another that absolutely forfeiture account
5,000 the police cruiser fee 11,000 that does go towards the maintenance on those right that's the revolving account would set up a year or two ago and that would be for maintenance of those cars and whatnot maintenance and or equipment or whatever that's worked out well no so
far yeah that's the per per toop Fe no it's usually with the detail that is the detail you guys do for toofy on your toast no to is that like on toast that's something we do elsewhere where when you get a toe there's a fee that gets added
oh the toee the to to to take a bre there's a portion that goes back to the town we looked at that years ago and I'd like to look at it again I know you like to make sure our residents pay their full share it just gets to a
point time most of the time it's not the res a guy broken down and beat up you want to add that extra there there's there's it's $20 an hour for uh for a Cruis on the administrative feed like we
like we do in Westfield old Westfield I there's for sale signs everywhere over there what is the fure account for what is that that's drugs drugs yeah drug related we had a world famous K9 dog that uh put that on the
map a couple years ago correct ask yes yeah he did great we did well on that we really did we did really well that yeah all right and we we allocated money out of that for years to buy certain
things that were in the budget and they offset with for that truck replacing exactly even the truck yeah you're right you're right we got what's next is um records Clerk been looking for a
part-time one there two more additional officers no matter how many officers we give your boy you just you go through them huh you break them this is it's all good no matter who it is don't you laugh because you may have that same question in a couple
years I mean it's funny because I hate going back story but back when I started you know back in the 90s early 2000s we had 15 full-time officers and we ran the department yeah now we're up to 22 of those 22 we're still waiting to sell one
to training two are in fto one's out the medical and another one's out on leave so yeah the Staffing is different the people are different now as far as L to work overtime as
opposed to time off they earn a day they take a day try to take two sometimes so you know the burden on the Department's a lot more than it than it was you know 10 15 years ago um for us to be able to you
know not burn some of these people out fortunately we need more Personnel yeah when you can find them whole another project right that's a whole another yeah okay operations this is where you were going to do some
yeah we look to combine a bunch of different things so they're not going off they're just can being combined that's where you see some that PES what is the dive team working out so the dive team right now is limited as
far as members go um we are part of a regional dive team so that's pretty much where we see the most Acy yeah um in addition to the diet team we also have that underwater drone that sort of gets played out too y those same lines is
there enough room in the garage for that drone for the Drone a little thing it's right next to the boat right next to the boat we can put the door down capital projects is the locker room renovation
additional Cruiser Patrol rifles that's the we were talking about the [Music] 21,000 the fingerprint machine so unfortunately the fingerprint machine is on the older side that was originally bought through a state Grant uh the MSP I think actually bought it so
it didn't cost us a dime back in the day uh since then I think in fiscal 22 we had updated the computer in it because it was end life Windows 7 so we had had to bump it up so 20 2200 bucks there a few years
ago um there is apparently an opportunity to basically do something similar okay I just don't know that we want to waste money sticking into an old outdated machine that's right difficult to use and we don't really know how much longer it's going to last anyways gotta
you're talking probably 10 to 15 years old on that that machine yeah I think I recall using it as a younger kid so yeah no I can guarantee you didn't use that one you're that old yeah okay was P I think I had a
sketch [Laughter] artist how many arrests last year you know my had you roughly physical or total total number humorous
yeah 14 I mean numers down as far as a lot of now people can renew their license if it's not non renewable they can Ren on the road so instead getting an arrest number back in the day now it's like they renew all right here's your warning do it now
D toy yes sure you told him for the toofy ab hey replacement of computer which do not update to Windows 11 yes so we did have a few of
those it says to yes the mdts are the cars correct okay and then we have two defibs additional car spare is that for a new car or a car that doesn't have one that's for a car that has the spare in
it right now gotcha okay so we look to buy that one plus a spare Y update Department policy and procedures 10K so go outside we were looking at hiring a Consulting agency to do that um
I looked at a couple different ones um the more reasonable one I think is $10,000 for their initial um going through through everything there's two different levels of policies and procedures they'll give
you they'll give you the basic one or they'll give you the call it the better one okay so that's a two-year program it would be $10,000 per year so if that's a total of $20,000 the other company I looked at was one that basically would come in do
all the same stuff uh and their bill was somewhere in the vicinity of about $199,000 per going forward so that company did not um offer accreditation services company for
10,000 does so if Town's looking for the police department to be accredited that would definitely be the company to go with so it does bring in more money it does it it allows you to for certain you just got to see if it's cost effective yeah I mean if we were to assign an
officer to this it would be a full-time job yeah daily to go through research everything get it going rewrite stuff it's no small task it would take probably a couple of years so is this a one and done at the 10,000 so they offer
a basically an upkeep after this after you go through everything I believe I think it was in the $3,500 per year range and what that would do would allow them to come in and update policies as things change within the state right it really isn't town it's all state
oriented and probably Federal oriented too correct so much what is this really Capital procedures it's not really it just happens to be a document but yeah I mean going forward the
service would be something else that would be contract that would be a contract appreciate it I don't think all capital items appreciable we'll look and see where we should place it then but it's 10 grand for the two-year process 10
grand 10 grand depending which program You' pay so you need it on your fiveyear plan as well for the other half yes which it is there aable radios are different from the other
radios that was the standard one on the front already yeah okay Cruis five year capital for corra and greting years 40,000 the north pound storage wasn't
there something out there to do that already or or in the works building yeah so plans were all drawn up and everything but there was never any funding source identified so that's where I keep hearing about it so it's out there just not finished okay I know
dick was gonna try there you go was yeah you every cruiser with a shotgun in a rifle yes
interesting that's standard no it's not for us it it's depending on where you go yeah lot of departments have gotten away from shotguns completely except for L be yeah we have different but for shotg um
we deal with bear and a rifle is useless on a bear more beneficial for AAR than and you have any questions we good folks uh have a great day thank you take a quick break and then we'll be
able to get five minute break and then we school is there something wrong with your mouth ma'am are you okay yeah yeah this fine e e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e audio is on and video is on hello folks are you today Fant wonderful could you state your name for the record please Jen Willard superintendent Nick berier Director of Finance and operations Rob Stevenson chairman of the
school committee Nick welcome aboard where did you come from uh I most recently he's tamped um you had wonderful reviews by the way oh yeah good thank you for that there was a couple F boms because we got you somehow but yeah I'll take that as a compliment
and I would too yeah they didn't want to lose you so all right where we going to get started with we're just going to get started on the um page two at the beginning the foundation enrollment over time because that's what sets our chapter
78 what's that page look like oh right here page two on the slides okay thank you and then these will be supplemental materials that we'll refer to as we're talking about this as we go okay going back to school
that's doesn't look like sumers for you though but anyways all right so I just wanted to show you that again from fy2 to FY 26 we dropped a significant amount of students usually we see that as just a natural point of um declining
enrollment over time but this was mostly to do with the vocational AED districts leaving our budget right so this is a really I just want to set it it's like a reset year because the towns have not received a portion of Chapter 70 funding
branville and Southwick has and you also have your own net School spending page on the um nass yeah yeah like on the Desi website there's a Chapter 70 huge Excel spreadsheet where all of the
districts and municipalities in the state's agid is listed Southwick and in granville's in the past has been zero because you didn't have anybody in you know Affiliated everyone was through the district but now with the change with the chapter 749 resident vocational
students uh being part of the town's foundational enrollment instead you actually have data in there now okay and um we have sheets for you too so you don't have to go looking it up Nick I'll pack them for you and for Grand V have
we'll pass those out later that just on the Des your is that on DLS as well it's on the desie website this particular oh if you went to the DLS website and saw the cherry sheet you would find the chapter 78 there but you wouldn't see like the foundation enrollment and the n
school spending requirement there so um I think it would probably be best if we if we email that to you just so you can you can have it so um we'll talk about that and then we're going to talk about the foundation enrollment over three years which is the next slide so over the course of three
years Southwick has lost 39 students Talent has lost 14 which is a significant deine in their enrollment and will be reflected later and brandville has lost 25 the majority of those brandville students are uh out of District vocational tuitions almost all
the sou right a majority of them yes this year um so if we're going to talk about the budget now which is why I really why we're here and if you go to the top slide on page three you can't really see
it well but what I did was I categorized every single single uh t uh school districts in the state and I put them in groups of where they are with net School spending net School spending um at a 100
is the minimum that we um must spend on our schools and if you look at where South wake toing branville is we are at 102 which means that we only pay about
2% above the minimum that we have to pay and the school districts that we're in line with are molden haunton Springfield chabe Holy Oak who all are receiving a significant amount of money under the
student Opportunity Act there is one other District Spencer East Brookfield that pays less than what we pay in the entire state for net School spending um then I broke it down to well that's great that's the state where are
we compared to everybody else so I broke it up and you really can't see it that well on here I apologize but um if you look at it you can see going up um like I'll give you an example agam pays 154
in that school spending um budo about 134 uh West Springfield is the closest to us again a school that re receives um significant student Opportunity Act money then East Hampton then Westfield
Westfield another community that receives student Opportunity Act money and then quaven and quaven already jumps up to about 115 so if you look at that a lot of the smaller uh rural school districts like birkshire Hills Southern birkshire um
they're in the one uh 70s to 180s so what we're coming forward we've been as I promised from the GetGo I will bring in a very conservative budget and I and I have promised that o over the years but I think this is the year that
it's going to have to be more than the 102 of net School spending um and we'll go into the reasons why so any questions so far what's the basis of the number when you say one 102 so 100 is the minimum so we do not
percentage of something it's yes Nick it's the percentage of your like minimum net School spending required if you're under it oh you essentially get penalized The Following on what you um most of the time that never
happens um there are a few districts in the state that are just at the mark But as superintendent Willard said it's largely districts that benefit greatly from the student Opportunity Act mainly Gateway cities like you know Brockton and you know Taunton and chicke and
places like that there is no like maximum I mean there's districts in the state that are above 200% but you know those are your wealth in say we yeah your place you know5 state has like a formula for determining what the number
is and just tell them what how do they get 100% broken up between Chapter 70 of minimal local contribution yeah yeah basically you know they set a number that you have to spend based on a complex formula which involves your enrollment with the equalized valuation
of city property and income taxes and there's all this stuff that basically if you take your required minimum contribution as a town and add the Chapter 70 to it it will equal your minimum net School spending requirement and but there's a bunch of
blind items that are excluded from that that are fixed cost and what Transportation transportation's not part of it uh debt service is not part of it capital expenses wouldn't be part of it so the stuff that you would see on the we give you every year were marked is
non-discretionary that stuff doesn't count towards that school but teacher salaries is part of it yes correct yeah the operating budget is what so if you can start with the budget summary sheet I'm going to just do a
quick overview and then we'll go into some of the details um we went through the governor's proposed budget now for the past few years um you can look at uh the top slide and the second slide together um this is where we talk about
minimum local contribution because this is a reset year and because the aded district uh students were taken out of our budget they're they kind of reset everything so every year we bring forward uh fixed
costs health insurance uh the pensions the raises um maintenance uh School Choice Charter Schools special education all of these issues um those are our fixed costs that we can do nothing about and so in the
past we've always gotten about a $500,000 increase to our minimal local contributions not only did we not get an increase this year our minimal local contribution went down by
$300,000 so if you look at what southwick's increase was last year it was about $500,000 this year it's 57,6 2017 Grand bills decreased by $267,600
so overall we see a $300,000 decrease to our minimal local contribution even though our fixed costs went up and then um we also saw a decrease although we're hold harmless of
about $992,000 in our Chapter 70 Foundation so right there it's about a $400,000 decrease to minimal local contribution when we usually see a $500,000 or
$600,000 increase so keep that $900,000 Delta in mind when we get to the end because that's effectively what the district because of the switch and it ends up working out especially well for us because that was the whole purpose get those kids out of out District
tuition that we were paying 84% of the cost but only accounted for about 60% of the actual usage this whole thing got reset what we didn't account for we know the minimal local contribution was going to swing because the kids were moving what we didn't account for is that small
I mean it's 70,000 80,000 drop in in the Chapter 70 funds but everything else moved so instead of the town getting if we wouldn't have switched anything that minimal local contribution would have probably been up another 500,000 for the town but overall from the District side
there's a $900,000 Delta that we're looking at compared to last year to this year is this the appropriate time to ask what did we gain by doing this you're talking about the $900,000 swing we were supposed to be getting funds from Talon and Granville so you're
starting at the 900,000 so how much do we get for them to offset some of that 900,000 you're talking about understand what I'm saying no we were supposed to get money from Southville no no we were never going to get money pay no no here's the thing right but that them
paying their own took it out of our we didn't have to pay for exactly I didn't want them saying that there's a $900,000 swing without offsetting some of that that was already sent to the other two districts y so if we just look at the
vocational cost for FY 25 um and we broke it up in the operational budget um we had a 1.2 million in uh tuition and we had $150,000 in transportation so
southwick's percentage of that you might want to write this down was 1,147 n86 that's what Sal paid last year for vocational say that again please 1,147
n86 Talent PID and these are rough estimates because I'm just doing 1.2 and 150 I'm not going into pennies $33,750 and Granville paid $168,200 th000 no no no no no that's just what that's what that's what the breakdown was if you look at the cost
for the AO District locational and the in District locational Transportation last year those numbers that she just gave you were the costs that were attributed or allocated to each of the three towns for the 50 plus 60 kids that we sent to out of
District so you can see from a financial perspective the town of Southwick bore the massive brunt of that cost by moving these kids out that resets all those things J's going to have yeah some additional numbers here so if we
actually did it by the number of students who went to the added District vocational what should each town have paid which is we were trying to explain last year so Southwick sent 38 students so if you take actual attendance and
self- extion of Transportation you what you should have paid last year was $856,000 what Grand bill should have paid was $4 $93,500
that's the breakup according to the the towns and their attendance now this year you did get some chapter 78 to offset that so as I said Southwick got
$220,000 and 59 22059 and Granville got $1 139520 so with that being said the bill last year when Southwick paid 1.47 986 with all things being said and done
it should have been $636,500 well that's including that's what's going to be this year if those if those same numbers because that includes that includes the Chapter 70 offset so the 1.1 million that we did get build last year if we just looked at the at
the number breakdown should have been 800 some thousand that's when I was here at the meeting last year I mentioned my estimate was somewhere in the area of $300,000 that we could save a year with the Chapter 70 fund extra that we're bringing in of
$220,000 now that cost instead of it being a million one is realistically going to be 500 what is it 600 something, 36 which means it was a it's a savings to the town of Southwick of $ 51,54 by just paying for your actual
tuition okay and that exactly what I was pointing out so that $900,000 swing is only $400,000 no you're looking at you're looking at app you're looking at it's a different setup because the town of Southwick what the town of Southwick
paid is the million one and this year we're going to end up paying about 600,000 that's on the town side on the on the school district side it's it's you can't it's not a it's not a one to one I'm just saying that if you look at
what the school budget was in there is a $900,000 swing of Revenue coming in compared to what we had last year it's it that's why Jen mentioned it's a reset because it is it's resetting it's not a one toone overlap Karen it it it's involved but
it's not it's not that simple to go let's just take that 500,000 and subtract the the 900,000 it it breaks up differently but there there is a different setup in there because it's being restructured based on the number of yeah so it's all so it's all it's all
broken down students being mostly our burden it's been spread out yes so oh yeah but it's been spread out like appropriately well that's how you should do everything well so ranville even with their chapter 708 um they're not saving
money they're going up $185,700 two they're not saving money but the cost for the students from Granville is being properly attributed to the students from grandv so the nice thing is for Grandville instead of them being
hit with a $300,000 Delta which is what realistically it would have been because they got Chapter 70 funds they're only having to pay 186,000 which is exactly what they should have been paying for the last 15 years getting a good deal we were getting hosed for the last
15 years and it could vary based on each district so we all understand we could be doing this what we what we talked about but it's that's what way we talked about the other day the next the next challenge next year and the year after is once we have this reset year then
we're going to start looking at net School spending the T each town is going to have a net School spending that they've got to look at so depending on how many kids are in I asked Nick we're going to try to find out like the hold harmless the way we're set up hold
harmless works if the student population drops inadvertently like if somebody moves out or kids graduate they normally don't adjust the Chapter 70 funding so if if the town of cement is attributed with 38 kids and we're getting allocated
Chapter 70 funds to that level and let's say next year it goes down to 25 kits we may still get Chapter 70 funds that are at here they probably could be down there but the problem we're going to run into is that minimal local contribution and and your Chapter 70 funds added
together are going to give you what your net School spending is going to be we actually be run into a good problem that we may have to we may be there may be a Delta there and what we're actually cost us to send them and what the state is going to tell us we have to spend so as our predictions are right now so
Foundation is based on October one of this year so you had 38 students attending vocational school as of right now our prediction is for the town of Southwick you're going to have 33 students attending so that would be
another $100,000 savings even though your Chapter 70 uh to 20 is based on 38 students the actual bill to the district will go down uh Granville is still anticipated to have 22 students so theirs is pretty similar but to the town
of Southwick it looks like you're losing five children and out a district vocation so that would be an additional savings to the town but we can't predict that year to year it just as depended on the number of CAS who go out District but is is Southwick now that we are
getting Chapter 70 as a town versus just the region is Southwick considered a hold hold harmless Community the same way that South P Tallen Granville Regional School District is considered hold harmless that's what we don't it should be it just it depends on where those
students go because as um chairperson students said earlier we didn't account for our Chapter 70 funding as a district going down this year we thought we would still behold harmless I actually contacted the state about this because I I've never seen that before because we
actually had talked about that as part of this process I contacted robt okay with it we get it yeah when he contacted we understand that yeah I mean it's because the the students went here to the towns if those students would have went to Charter Schools or you know
private schools somewhere else it it wouldn't have changed for us but that they went somewhere where they were going to be part of a Town's Foundation enrollment is why so you know it depends where those students go but Ian once students are in a vocational track
they're not likely to leave it no but I thought during this whole discussion of this whole thing over the last year we actually had this discussion this that exact question was asked like it seemed counterintuitive that we would be double dipping Chapter 70 because
the it didn't drop as I mean if they were to do it like pupil for pupil I get it I don't think we l as much as we could have I think they made a slight adjustment and I didn't take into account because I didn't know it that if it isn't like we lost them to graduation
or they went to how did like Westfield they went and they got moved right to the town so it it did cause them to do an adjustment to chapter 7 but listen it doesn't matter how we look at it this is a net benefit for the town compared to what we've had from this cost structure
for the last 10 to 15 years so Karen I have a question I didn't want to jump so my question is now is when all that's said and done if we look at this year's budget versus last
year's budget wouldn't by your definition are the ml minimum local percentage go way up as a percentage above 102 based on if we level fund if we just level
funded the budget and your budget was level fun funded I know it's not but if it were because now the town is getting Chapter 70 to offset wouldn't our statistically wouldn't that move us up above from the 102 up into the I don't know the number now the percentage would
be higher but it's based on a lower amount so it's it's our med school spending requirements is down too as a district as a result of those students right it's one of it's going to be one of those unique setups done that from a town perspect perspective for overall
from this move we're spending less but that percentage from Jen's graph is going to move us up that that that percentage of next spending a little higher right yeah yeah so if you just want to look and I just wanted to share the special
education out of District costs again have gone up another $325,000 um this isn't unique to us as Nick came when he when Nick said he's like oh my gosh you only have this many kids out of District um we do a really good job creating IND
District programming now and uh if you look at the next sheet on the top of page five um where we are with the savings for in District programs we did create the social emotional classroom at powdermill right now um we aren't seeing
a savings in that program we um are actually at $2,000 deficit but that's a fluctuating program because next year we've got students moving up from Woodland school and then they need to go into that program so that's going to be a fluctuating savings every year but if
you look at this social emotional classroom at Woodland we're seeing a $351,000 savings by having that program in District if you look at the program for children with intellectual impairment at powdermill uh we see a $214,000 savings there and for the
program with children with autism we see a $235,000 increase and just so you know the three teachers um the only program that we had before Esser funding which these teachers were paid out of was we had the program for children with
intellectual impairment at Powder Mill School those other three programs were created during um the S when we had Esser money and we continue to pay for those teachers not in the operating budget we use our rural school aid to
pay for those teachers in that classroom so those teachers although and those programs are being paid for out of rural school aid they're not in the operating budget are these all Title One are these positions how many do you have Title One
teachers we have put two and a half so do you know what that impact would be if the doe had any changes the doe closes my understanding is that that funding will be shifted to a different depart federal department because it's tied to
legislation um we may see a decrease a slight decrease in our Federal grant funding but I I would not anticipate it disappearing altoe I know there's been a lot of uncertainty regarding that in the recent months but um I actually sat through a webinar um with put on by a
group called uoms which you know studies educational Finance at in pretty great depth and they didn't seem to be terribly alarmed by it and which gave me some confidence if they're not if that's not keeping them up at night I don't I think it should keep me up at
night the only one that we're really concerned about is universal um we breakfast and yeah the meals keep me up at night a little bit more um because the state does not fully fund that initiative to begin with if you you know
look at the state level they're always pacing a supplemental budget in May or June that cover the Gap doing what they actually spend in what they budgeted for it um that one worries me a bit the reason why is because the USDA threshold right now for being a c district is 25%
low income so any District in the state whose low income numbers are are above 25% we are we are uh the state will have a apply to be a c District which basically means that all the reimbursement money for those meals comes from the federal government not
from the state and that's how the state funds this it's by encouraging everybody that can to do it to increase federal dollars coming in so then the state only has to kick in money for districts that are below 25% low income however there's
been talk of raising that threshold um it used to be 40% when I first started in this work and then they they lowered it about a year and a half ago to 25 I've heard the number 60 thrown out there which means that there's going to be a lot of communities
that no longer qualify that they're currently do which means there's going to be fewer federal dollars funneling into the state which means if they want to keep that program going to have to increase their budget greatly or they're going to scrap it and say we can't do it anymore which means that the food service program is going to have to run
like it did before covid often in the red um and then you can't close a revolving fund such as that in the red at the end of the year so your operating budget is going to have to have a little subsidy in there to get it at zero we don't want to go back there so that's the one thing that does worrying but in
terms of the grants as you asked I'm not terribly frightened by that all right because what is attached to idea in chapter 766 and the odds of them doing it and that's for children with special needs the odds of them taking
money away for that I I cannot see happening and the other one is um so low socioeconomic I don't see that one happening either and we don't get a lot of money from either of those two grants but the money that comes from idea pays
for the majority of our special education par professionals and the chapter uh uh title one pays for two and a half interventionists at our uh Woodland and at powder
milk so again so to Karen's point she's like so if we're taking 1.2 million out of the budget that wasn't in their last year then you should have even though so would I think of it if the budget last
year was 1.2 plus 150 which is 1.35 and you're now saying that even though there was a $900,000 you know swing in Chapter 70 in minimal local contribution you should the school should still be good to the tune of about
[Music] $325,000 um so why are we coming to you with an increase if we just save 300 technically $325,000 so if you go to why is there an increase with no AO District vocational
that next slide I have to do what I just thought Jo to do is get out my camera and blow it up so our health insurance this year went up by $267,000 um a lot of that has to do they're saying with the new glp drugs out there it was like about a 14 point
something 14.84% 14.26% increase last year our health insurance went up $40,000 this year it's going up$ 26 $7,000 um the Delta this year between
eend and school choice so last year our end was certified at a lower rate we only were able to put in $650,000 for end this year we upped it to $900,000 because it was certified at 1.1 million so we're almost maxing out
our eend again to do this um the difference between school choice last year and this year was after our meeting uh we were asked by the south wake fincom um to really um lower the discretionary line item and so we did
have a little bit of a balance in our school choice so um Director of Finance and operations uh director trell he took four admin positions out of the operating budget and he moved them into
school choice our school choice is we're not at what even one .5 million in the bucket this we don't even have that to do so we had to take those for admin positions as a one was the one-year stop Gap we took them out of the operational budget I mean we took them out of the
operational put them in school choice they're now back in the operational school budget so that's to the tune of uh about $4 $30,000 that were in school choice last year that's now in the operating budget
um you'll also see the um so the Delta between e and d and school choice from this year to last year is 195,000 uh we have our raises um we are negotiating in good faith right now so we did put a number in there um that was
a reasonable expectation and we also have two years of raises in there for our Paras and for our custodians because last year we had to offset it with a salary Reserve because we were still we had we went to mediation with both
groups so you'll see like a two-year raise for them even though it's just a one year um but it affects the school district line items um out of District special ed again of 325,000 the decrease in minimal local contribution in Chapter
70 for 392,000 um maintenance increase of $120,000 and we had an increase in school choice in charter school um tuitions to the tune of 165,000 we also had our Hampton County
pension go up by $100,000 and um if you take all of those factors into consideration our fixed cost increas has went up $22.67 to million so if you take the.2 million out
of there you're at about um 1.3 1.4 um in a discretionary line item so if you go to this page right here that we sent out this will help you tremendously just discern everything I
just kind of went through with you so before we brought the budget forward to you we did actually make some cuts um they were difficult cuts um and originally we had cut nine positions out
of the budget because one of them was a grant funded interventionist um after meeting with our fincom meeting we do have a plan for all of the other Cuts except losing a grant-funded
interventionist what they do is they work with our kids at uh grades one and grade two which are the foundational years um with the science of reading it's really targeted instruction and to get kids reading it used to be we want kids reading by grade level at the end
of third grade they've now moved it back that we want our kids reading at grade level by the end of first grade so really targeted focused instruction um double we call it double dipping but in a good way at the elementary school so they're with their teacher but then they
get outside services that Grant funded interventionist does play a significant role it will keep our special ed referrals down down and we'll have more students reading at grade level which will help us all along the way so after that meeting we did put the grant funded
interventionist back in the budget that wasn't in there however we have a retirement this year um and we are cutting an additional one two three four five so we have six unit a two four five
yeah six uh unit a staff and we did cut two instructional coaches um one of them was one of the coaches who left last year to become a building administrator we did not build that position because we knew it was going to be a very tight
budget year and this year we um had a look at what our educational initiatives are and we really do need to keep um the remaining two instructional coaches was a very difficult decision um yes it's going to impact some of our PLC work and
some of our professional development work um but as we're considering this a reset year we're going to be py light again this year which means you're not going to see as much educational advancement in our teachers but we're going to strengthen and deepen what it is that
we're actually still doing with the science of reading okay so how many cuts are you making six teachers and there five five on un one two three and the retirement right so it's six positions and two
coach to the tune of $ 69,6 it's all right on the sheet K and if you remember Karen the coaches were a big topic of conversation last year to see that and I promised you that at that
time that I would make sure that we went back and looked very closely at all of the coaches to make sure that when we're coming in today that if we didn't need them and we could find a way to make it work without them weren't going to be on the budget so there's two of them that
are off from last year one that Jen said that left we didn't replace it and then when Aaron carrier moved into her new role into the curriculum development role that what I had a conversation with her and she went and took a look at everything came back with this decision that we were able to do it if one less
as well so that's that's where those two came from again not IDE deal however my philosophy and I you don't cut teachers if you don't cut people who work with teachers it's just um the teachers are
on the front line and we do need some instructional coaches because we don't have supervisors in our district we just have a director of curriculum instruction we don't have middle people like other districts do department heads and we do but they're not if you look at the
department head job description which is in the unit a contract it's really more of a clerical position they do the orderings they keep inventory they're not leaders per se District we were younger when the department heads took on the
responsibility no yeah no now and it's right in the unit a contract you can look at the job description so you were talking about you know cutting the coaches as you know can't just cut the teachers without cutting the coaches as sport staff I'm going to go even further
where's your administrative Cuts there are no administrative cuts because there's nowhere to cut administratively we run on a Bare Bones Bare Bones um this year we operated without a Director of Finance for a long
time things fell through the cracks um this last year we added a administrative position at the request of the Woodland School teachers again that that administrator is not in the
budget that that ad administrator that was added she is still operating in school choice she's not in the operational budget so there's nowhere to cut administratively we have two principles at now we have a principal an assistant
principal at Woodland we used to operate with one principal the teachers do not want to go back to one principal we look at powdermill they have two administrators and with more in District special ed programs those children consume a lot of
the administ administrator time you cannot cut there and we only have three administrators at the regional school and with the significant mental health issues social emotional issues
uh this phone The Bullying um everything that's going on they're the busiest people in the school so we operate with four people at a central office that do multiple roles our director of curriculum instruction also does rights they now do the Meco
program um they do the curriculum they are in charge of the nurses Nick our Director of Finance and operations he is in charge of Technology he's in charge of buildings and grounds he's in charge of food service um special ed is ALS in
charge of special ed they're also in charge of um mckin vento and as you can see special ed issues keep going up up and up um that's all we have for administration there is no other Administration grants and Aaron rights
grants as well there's just there's nowhere to cut administratively because you got multiple jobs with just one person yeah oh yeah and I mean look from from a hierarchal setup the way that the school district is there there's there's
it is a very thin administrative layer I mean there's not supervised and I mean they just there is nowhere to go I mean if if you remove somebody you would be you would be removing big
pieces of the puzzle that would not let everything operate and when Nick and I were talking if if we did too many more cuts the problem you're going to run into is you're going to run into a net School spending issue which you have to
meet that level and if we were let's say 100,000 under net School spending one year whatever it is next year we got to spend next school spending and the extra 100,000 um so it's it's a not a lot of legal room there so what
what is what is the projected student to teacher ratio curiosity that's a tough one depends on the school depends on the school and the grade so right now we have about 90 students um I would say k through six as an average between 90 and
100 um and we have uh five teach at that grade level so like 18 19 20 that flct based on how many kids are in yeah particular grade too and the more I just sent it to the school committee you might want to um we maybe
we can send it out to all of you too there was just a a training on Rural schools and um it's cost 22.7% more to educate students in a rural School District than it does in a larger School District because we don't have the
economy of scale so we we have smaller kids but you need the same number of teachers you need the same number of Administrators you need a food service director you need all these things that a larger School District needs but you don't have the revenue coming in by the number of kids so it is more it does
cost more to educate a student in a rural Regional School District than it does in a much larger town because of the economy scale and I can send that to you it's a great it's about an hour long it's put on by the Massachusetts Association of school committees um Nick
and I watched it and um it kind of really helps understand it why it's so expensive to educate kids in rural Regional School Districts um yeah this thing can be said for police and fire exactly the good measure is to compare
us to similar Regional schools in the state I don't know if we do that we stand Le I do and that's why I put them in for n spending too I can tell you I did just meet um yesterday we met with
legislators um Nick and I um at a meeting and we we really promoted rural school aid we promoted Regional Transportation um talked about the need to get rural school aid at the beginning and not part of the supplemental budget and uh I was also talking with beler
toown belter Town's going to have class size this next year of 27 and 28 due to their cut due to their cuts you don't want to go back there we're better than that you your kids are not going to get the education they need in a classroom
of 27 and 28 kids it is might be good for the budget but it's not good for your kids and um the one difference that you're going to see in this year's high school budget is we used to be a um student driven
schedule which means the kids sign up for their classes and then they put the schedule together um based on what the kids want to take um we can't afford that model anymore so we have to make sure because like that's why you see us
cutting French French had classes of four there goes that whole economy of scale these four kids are in French three we have to offer French three there might only be four kids in French three we have to offer that um so right
now what they're working on is our algebra two used to be broken up into Algebra 2 volume one and volume two we can no longer afford that model um because we have a math cut this year at our in the math department so we're now
going to be changing Algebra 2 to just a half a semester it's not going to be broken up into volume one and volume two these are the changes you're going to be seeing we can no longer uh do wood shop next year one we posted for that position we couldn't find anybody to teach it so we when we have a retirement
in our wood shop class kids aren't going to be able to do that as an elective um so other electives are going to get filled up so when we bring forward this budget know that even with these Cuts we have a plan but it is going to impact the
kids and that's the way it is that's that's just what happens when we make cuts to the budget and we we cut teaching there's got to be changes to the education of the kids um we're still
trying to hold band in all of our things that make us special sacred but that's that's really where we're going to be going to next is those kinds of electives because there is nowhere to cut at the elementary level unless you
want to see large class sizes nowhere they're bare bones or you want to minimize and take away prep time and that's going to have to be something that we negotiate which it's it's it's not going to work either there's nobody at the elementary schools
so which is why the majority of these cuts are all coming from the Regional School which does have an impact on our kids education is the trend to go vocational still I mean is what does that Trend look like is it still going
up as of this year are there any other ideas that been you know thought thought about in terms of you know implementing a vocational program I know you just said that you couldn't get a wood shop teacher but
there any other the cost of adding a chapter 74 program chapter 74 program is completely cost prohibitive when we're cutting teachers right now completely to run a Chapter 70 program you Jason can tell you what it cost to operate one program at Westfield Technical Academy
what we did do was we created two Innovative Pathways up at the Regional School in healthcare and in um information technology and we're working with Wall-E um for the information technology pathway for our kids which is a they leave with some certificates but it's
not the full vocational and we also do it for nursing and we work closely with Noble hospital and so our kids leave with like a CNA license from our regional school when they can leave if they don't want to do the full health care at ctec and they want to stay there
all day good so um and that's good start it is a good start I think Nur you told me once that you had contractual prohibitions oh correct we just can't create an agriculture program because a lot of the
yeah out of District vocational schools where they're going they have in order for them to be able to succeed and be and be successful they have mileage radiuses in which you cannot have program within that so the best route
like for example CC started um a criminal justice program this year so I mean being part of LPB and being that that allows us to kind of use that economy of scale to our advantage where if they're able to start a program they they will be able to get enough kids between us and llo and every where they
can pull them and make that work U where we do have the opportunities like The Innovation program that that Joe started a couple years ago that's super it gives us an option but um it's not as easy as just hey let's just do farming and and we'll have all these kids do it I mean
we've got we just can't start dat even if we wanted to if I came forward and told you I need $7 million because I need all the equipment for agricultural mechanics does it come with fiber it asking for a friend what I'm saying is you would all
say no Jen they can go to Smith and C that's what you'd all tell me but I did look at where our kids are going and we do have five of our kids do go to animal science at Smith we have no kids currently taking agricultural mechanics but what we do have is 15 students
taking electrical so I'm really going to be advocating with the lpac to try and create some sort of electrical HVAC program because um I think we might be able to get them to get a um electrical programming in there yeah Westfield cut
HVAC what years yeah I was there shame and that's that's one of the ones that there's a lot of demand for especially now and it would be LPC verse where are they going now for that uh they can go to either Smith or WTA they
both have that program but that's R into the same issue if there's any sort of morum on distances they not be able to start it even if they wanted to correct but I'm still gon I mean obviously I asked himim about it and it's like she explained it's it's what you said she said it's a very complex cost
prohibitive process extremely obviously the big push in our farming Community I know has been that and she said no she goes Smith's right there they're not goingon to let you do it no so they won't so here I'm gonna turn it over to Nick now that's kind of the overview and
the nitty-gritty of the budget um that's why I gave you the Powerpoint but I can tell you if I go through the grants I can tell you that in the title one Nicole um two and a half um uh teach uh reading interventionist for the Ida
there's one two 3 four five six seven eight nine 10 pair of professionals contracted Services contracted Services um and then in circuit breaker revolving we paid for um two of our uh
significantly um the two out of district tuitions for just two of our students cost $300,000 and um we have a a certified occupational therapy assistant in there and the two class two Paras at wooden
school to um keep us from opening up a new program we were just able to hire two new class two Paras the school choice revolving account has one two three four five six
seven 8 n 10 11 10 out of District placements and it has a special ed teacher the 504 coordinator and uh the assistant principal and the rural school aid has those three um substantially
separate programs that we created in it and we are also using it as a for a tech facilitator at the high school library um to help with um all the computer issues with the children and that's what we spend with our grant
money that's not in the operating budget turn it over to Nick to go through the last two all right so I think it's best to start with the summary sheet I I apologize it says draft FY 25 it
should say 26 it is in fact be proposed from for next year but did not catch that so we printed them um so starting with the the top you see the uh proposed their you know anticipated revenues um the top part of
that is the assessments for the three towns they're broken down by um you know the bulk of their assessments and then um the school building project project that was done several years ago the the depth service for that you'll see highlighted in green uh for each town uh
we anticipate about the same amount uh for Medicaid reimbursement um regional transportation we expect to go up slightly uh chapter 78 you'll see is is less than last year well it's looks more
but that's because it wasn't it looks more but it that wasn't the final one in the left side column um as the state uh debated their budget last year you know didn't land on anything till July if you you know remember that um so that that
figure in the FY 225 column is was based on the house one Governor's proposed budget it didn't actually end up coming in at that um so the 10,779 $246 figure you see in the FY 26 column represents a decrease of almost
$93,000 in chapter 78 um Charter School tuition reimbursement goes up you see that's a result of some new students attending Charter Schools the way the state reimburses that they they have a formula where basically you get some reimbursement for the students
tuition in their first three years of being a charter school student and it's it's like 100% the first year I think 60 the second it goes down to like 30 the third year so any student here that's been in a charter school for more than three years we're not getting any state
reimb urement for um but if you have one or two that decide to attend a charter school and that first year you'll see 100% of that tuition reimbursement which is why that figure went up we don't have a lot of charter school student we have like six or seven it's not not a high
number would they have had to start in a school system and moved out to a charter school no they could have started there yeah no because um the charter school students count towards our foundation enrollment okay because they live here okay but some do then leave that that does
happen but not private school private school students do not count towards our um Foundation enrollment okay HCHO or homeschooled or students that school choice hear from other places so if we have a Westfield student that school choices into here they're not part of
that 1204 Foundation enrollment figure you saw earlier but all of our students here that choice out to Westfield or agam or wherever they may go they are part of that because the town has to pay their tuition correct or the district I
should say has to pay their tuition uh you'll see next the $900,000 of um end that we plan on using which is an increase of 250,000 over last year and local tuitions and fees we we are just keeping flat we're not going to be
increasing any fees um and we anticipate about the same amount of preschool uh tuition students so we kept that flat um moving down to the expenditures uh portion it's broken down by by line item there you'll see General Administration
comes in at a little over 2.7 million um which is an increase of almost $400,000 after uh from this current year uh the reason for that is the money for um negotiations is
included there uh because there's we can't put it in Woodland Powder Mill or the region General school or special education yet because we don't at this time have a settled contract so we don't know what the raises will be or who's getting what you know you don't do that
until after you sell so next year you will not see that go up as much because hopefully you will will have a settled contract by that point and the only money that would be in salary Reserve would be for administrative raises it wouldn't be for anybody in bargain so
that's why that increas is the way it is this current year um employee benefits you see uh comes in at about $3.4 million which is a heavy increase uh superintendent Willard highlighted the health insurance
increase as the bulk of that uh that figure uh tuition is about $1.1 million that includes um our students that go to ctec at lpvec it includes our school choice students that choice to other districts and it includes the six or
seven charter school students that I referenced earlier uh you'll see that one down quite a bit as a result of the chapter 74 non-resident vocational students being affiliated with the towns this year instead of the district district um maintenance you see uh is
about $430,000 goes up slightly from uh from last year student transportation comes in at about $2.3 million which is a pretty hefty increase um
what yeah as question students went down but this goes up wouldn't you just change the routes around so no so last year when our fincom asked us to uh cut the budget we moved um $100,000 out of Transportation into the
Meco Grant and we moved 120 or 150,000 I can't remember off the top of my head uh of regular transp or special needs Transportation into school choice so that 437 is misleading because
about 250 220 of that was just moved into school choice for last year but it was moved back into the regular budget this year some of that will be offset by the $800,000 in know Regional Transportation
reimbursement we expect to get as well um next is Insurance uh which includes workers Comm um unemployment insurance dist District liability insurance things like that that's not employee insurance that they would purchase um but those are are
district insurances um that we need to be able to operate um technology lease stays the same um that's plat uh next is uh Capital Improvement Debt Service which uh goes down because some uh former capital projects have been paid
off uh the next in green is your debt service for the building project which you know is pretty flat and you know will be until what 2038 I think is when that finally gets paid off um then you
see the three schools um you'll see uh Woodland Powder Mill and the Regional School uh Woodland goes up a little bit more than the other two and that's a result of that interventionist that superintendent Willard referenced earlier going into the operating budget
and the principal returning to the budget and the principal Powder Mill as well the principal return uh you'll see that the Regional School only goes up 1.45% as a result of the bulk of the cuts being from that building uh and then finally special
education uh is about $4 million um it's largely out of District tuition costs um which which keep Rising I mean those those placements are very expensive you probably heard two years ago that they were going up 14% um you know two years ago they did
this current coming year it's 3.67% but that's still historically High um if somebody uh a couple years ago when the dramatic increase occurred put together a spreadsheet of like all every year from like fy10 all the way up to 20
uh 24 when the big increase happened and if you take the 14% outlier out of there the average increase was like 1.2 each year like they those placements did not go up very much and be they're very expensive to begin with but inflation didn't really you know factor in to too
much in there you know and then all of a sudden we hit the 14% which largely was a result of of some covid related measures and then you know now we're down to 3.67 which is like you know okay it's a ENT lower than 14 but it's still historically High um and the OSD sets
those raids like we don't have any kind of control over that in October they send a metal out to everybody stating this is what we think it's going to be and you kind of have to base your budget off of that most of the time it doesn't change after they give you that amount
um so all in all our um proposed operating budget comes in at 28,9 29,8 over the fy2 approved budget uh which represents an increase of
3.32% uh at the bottom of the summary sheet um is just a breakdown of some of the grants and revolving funds that we um we we use uh which which superintendent Willard already went through um what cost are in those um are there any questions before we move on to
the assessment what is the transportation percentage reimbursement the state that we're getting Governor Healey's proposed house one budget right now on the cherry sheet has it at 95% however I don't know that that's going to make it all the way through the
ways me so the question is why do you have it only at 35% 800,000 versus $2.3 million if we're expecting like 90% reimbursement comes straight from the
cherry sheet Karen only on regular Regional Transportation yeah you'd have to break out Transportation you'd have to break out Special Egg vocational homeless foster
care all of that does not get reimbursed 13 bus routes yeah okay that's all it is but vocation no I mean if we have as students decrease wouldn't eventually many again it goes to the same thing probably not because we still have to
cover all the same area no I know it's the same area but at when I was a kid the town was growing and at one point south Lumis was on my bus room and then there was enough kids they had to change it and then for the rest of my time the bus turned around and never went down that way maybe they just put it on a
different they they redo bus frots every single year based on enrollment oh sure but that was a dramatic it took a whole neighborhood half a street and like a good amount of even we had some on College Highway and I'm over at Mor Vin
so it was a significant change in the bus Ro so I'm wondering like how many kids go up and down does it hop a bus off because it's not it depends on where exactly they live let's say you have 12 bus RS and you lose two kids on each bus route you're probably not going to
you're not you're not going to lose enough to go let's get rid of a bus you may it may be something where depending on if you got 12 kids that leave and they're all on three bus RS maybe that's the other thing is the requirements on how you pick them up
when we were kids it was walk half a mile to your bus stop and now it's in your front door so oh yeah yeah houses they go by with people you don't know that you know the bus probably has in they want to ride it so and now I
know why you have a traffic light at that bottom of the hill now so one of the unique things that we do as a Regional School District and actually I believe him to wilam um they' contacted me because they're busing is through was through the roof and so they asked as a Regional School
how is it that um we do our busing because as a Regional School District you must provide busing for all of the kids in the district if they live like a mile and a half away from the school it's just part of the regional school but what we do is we do the opt in and
not opt out so you have to opt in to ride our buses so we can ensure because they also in order to get um um transportation reimbursement the buses have to be um filled at a certain percentage and I don't know what that percentage is off the by top of my head
75 I believe in the end of the year report yeah yeah 75% they have to be filled so don't think about the high school buses because that's what high school buses look like everywhere because kids drive but what we do is we
have parents opt in so that we can ensure now if we were just providing transportation to everybody I am sure that we would have more bus routs than we currently have right now and that's what wil Bram is looking at right now they've taken our letters they've taken
our templates they look at what we're doing because they want to decrease some of their bus routs because they were just providing it car loded to every single child in the Regional School District we we don't do that to be cost effective Y and where the where the state gets their number from is related
to the desie financial end of the year report that needs to be filed every year there's a certain schedule on there where you really have to break Transportation down by number of students Believe it or like and they categorize it by reimbursable and non-reimbursable the non- reimbursables are the ones that live within a mile and
a half of the school so that's why like you actually have to provide a bus route list with itemized by kids names so they can match it so they make sure you're not too many kids with their distance to the school yes yeah the bus company will give us that and you'll see all their
distance to the school right on there um so they calculate what we propos you know our proposed reimbursement rate based on how reimbursable students were on last year's end of the year report that's how they get back and they're not reimbursable even if they're on their on
our buses unless they live a mile and a half away from the school so we have kids who live across the street um I can't think of the uh street right across from Powder Mill the superintendent entr they might take they get a bus to school but we can't put
them in as part of our reimbursement because they're not a mile and a half away yeah they go on the fewer than mile and a half call right you know all in all our our regular Ed transportation is is looking to be 1.1
million but that number actually includes those two vocar for Southwick and Granville for those students that are now you know going to be part of your your enrollment so if it's 1.1 and you take away 150
it's 800,000 is pretty close to that number than you shall I go to the assessment sheet okay um so lastly our assessment sheet um it's based on on the house one
Governor's uh budget proposal so you know your minimum local contribution probably won't change but the chapter 78 a uh as the budget process you know goes through itself and finally
sometime they'll do it um so basically this is broken down by uh by Town um the first row you see the required local contribution that each Town must make for the district that is that does not factor in the required minimum local contribution for those vocational
students that we've mentioned many times that is a separate figure um the base chapter 78 uh which is what you saw in the SU there and if you total all that up our minimum net School spending requirement would be
22,38 680 um the next section is is revenues other revenues um which pretty much is a repeat of what was on the summary sheet there uh there's nothing new there so if you add the required uh or total net
School spending plus additional revenues that we anticipate getting uh you get 24, 325,000 uh next we get to the non-discretionary areas um which would be transportation and Debt Service um so Transportation
the numbers you see there I backed out the $800,000 of um uh the reimbursement that comes from the state there you know because you're only going to assess after that part is backed out you're not going to assess on the full amount because we anticipate
that $800,000 of Revenue there um then you see the debt service for Capital um those assessments are broken down by the capital formula that that gets reset every five years so it's the same exact percentages as last year because I don't believe we need to renew
that until February of 2027 I think is the next time we have to revisit that for the regional agreement um District services to towns you see a $12,000 assessment to Southwick which I believe appears there every year right um for the use of the
buildings uh and then I added a chapter 74 non-resident voke Transportation line there um to represent the cost of the the buses that are going to go to WTA and Smith because the towns will have to pay for that transportation for those
students um the reason it's appearing here is an assessment is because lpvec he reached out to me and they they didn't want to make an agreement with the towns because the towns themselves aren't members of lpvec the district is
so like you know they kind of wanted it to funnel through us which like we're fine doing that like we'll take care of that and work with them to make sure the roots are you know what they need to be and and all that but we would be paying the bill for that it's just gonna you
know we would assess it from the towns and we will just pay lpvec directly so that's how they prefer to do it we just need to make sure that sewi gets their bill and Grandville gets their bill we don't break that down between the 84% y That's Bren yeah this is broken
down that's broken down by percentage of students from each town going to each school and that this comes right from the state right this number that number came from me uh it was the cost of two bus routs one to WTA one to Smith and I basically looked at the percentage of
kids from each town that go to each school and I came up with a proportion for each school and then I added together for the two different ones and that's that's how I broke that up so that's not broken down by the operational budget you know the 85%
you'll see at the bottom that's it's broken down by actual students going to the schools from each town it's 38 and based on en yeah based on this year's enrollment because that's what everything is based on yeah so the 800
is based on just Southwick or the whole district for transportation no this is the 99 I'm looking at something different because I've got yeah what you know their Governor's proposed on this DLS is her transportation is showing 909 I'm
just trying to right so that's at 95% 95% and they're saying um we were just with all the legislatives yesterday they're like do not go be conservative with your reimbursement estimate because they do not think it's going to be even
REM was the high was last year 85 or 90 I've ever seen yeah it' be great if they could do 100 since they promised it that's what it's supposed to be yeah supp be but so transportation from circuit breaker right this year was 4 or
something like that yeah so you can't always Bank on what they're telling you it's going yeah it's prary I know so yeah um so the non-discretionary there is at the bottom and bold for each town and if you add that to the uh other an
ipated revenues you get 27,7 77,78 um going on to section four the total budget ask is the the same number from the summary sheet that you saw uh backing out the anticipated revenues and
non- discrepancy or non-discretionary rather uh you end up with 1,1 151,00 $36 in discretionary um going on to section five you just you can see the how the assessments are are
broken down uh line one is the minimum local contribution which is just the same figures in section one at the top of the sheet the non-discretionary is are the same figures in section three uh and then on line number 24 there you've
got the um discretionary broken down based on the operational formula for the regional agreement um adding all those together you see the total assessments for each of the three towns uh southwick's coming in at
14,44 483 comparing that to the FY 25 assessment it's an increase of just over $865,000 or 6.39% but also remember you have the
99,000 in there for the vocational Transportation so it's technically about 765 y plus where have to we'll have to pay LP separ LP V separately no that was no no
that's we're taking care of transportation for you sorry but the tuition for the kids that is going we're going to have to pay and a line item that we need to add to our budget that's not here yet corre students no no I'm with you the
out of District vocational sorry we're going to get a bill from those now that we have to pay that's not in here that's correct correct and so far not in ours in our book yeah yeah and you'll probably and I don't know what this is going to look like I'm G to have to do some research but somebody's going to
have to file an end of the year report for desie because you now have students and I I do not know what that looks like because I only worked in municipalities so like it was you're going to do great at filling it up I was going to say thank you for doing that for us we appreciate
what we did what we did talk about last year and and when we did meet with the state when we when we were talking about this is that they did indicate that we could do it but we would have to set up like a separate yes business line so
that we could charge the towns for that kind of work because to think that you guys have got somebody that can go in and do that report I I don't think train somebody if you want but I mean now way I mean it could be something that we bill out to each individual town so yeah
kind of was the sounds honestly it's not going to be that complicated of one because it's really just going to be transportation and the tuition like that that's it I I mean the you know the whole end of the year report for a whole school district
takes almost a month to do but I mean in this case it's going to be you know under 50 vocational students and their transportation like you're not going to have to break it down by special ed and this and that and all the other you know think it's going to be terribly complex to do that do you know since you have
the numbers you'll do those do you know what I should be budgeting though for the school for those kids going to school there's got to be a dollar value there say about 230 230,000 less the Chapter 70 that we're huh you're gonna get 220 so I just
did 33 kids time you have the new well your chapter set see the chapter set so you guys have your own net School spending sheet just like the schools do now and so it says technically next year um
required District contribution is about 4 151,000 so it's basically says you guys should be paying 671 minus the 220 which would be 451 that's based off 38 kids you're gonna have five kids less than that next
so I would say I would in a safe side I would say 350 350 do you give us that paper that you're looking at now yeah we don't have that yeah I don't have more copies you email to me yeah that's the that's the one I said earlier I would email perfect I I
think just for the sake of this it would probably be best for me to just print out your portion scan them and email them rather than sending you the entire so it's $350,000 but that doesn't include the reimbursement then we get a reimbursement on top of that so the net
would be l no that doesn't the that was n that was net 350 we got to add to our budget yeah unfortunately we can't tell you the exact tuition rate yet students either because the state sets them and they usually don't come out until like late April or early May which is you
know not very convenient for the budget right but although you're adding it to your budget you're not paying $500,000 of somebody else's bills yeah correct or yeah it
million pict remember the big picture the big picture yes yeah this year I I just want to make sure it's in our budget no this year and of course I don't have any prior experience here to speak to but it's been a nomally for sure just
because of the reset of where those kids are I I think next year we'll be looking at more status quo what you're probably used to when do we get when do we that the actual from last year's
budget we like end up you know being able to compare budget versus actual spend see how well we did budget last I think we can do that with our D and D we spent the F by 24 yeah yeah year over year you know
like like we do with our budget every every budget we have we look at last year's budget and see you know what the differential was that they need more
than so we can do that um just remember anything that we don't spend we don't get to keep it goes into end and that's we use that end to help our set the following Year's
budget so over the course of all of our years of budget there's been like let's just say right now like 1.1 million that the three towns have overpaid so if this just helps you give a clear little clearer a snapshot we're
using 900,000 of that to offset this year's budget so it doesn't like sit in like a pretty little Coffer for us back back general fund we certify the free cash the following year free and it
right back to the towns so for as I said we had a coach that was budgeted for $100,000 this year we knew it was going to be a super tight year we chose not to fill it it wasn't poor budgeting on our part but if we could get through the
year we knew it would end up going in end and we knew it would help offset what was going to be a challenging year so looking at end is the kind of like your picture what's story we're certainly going to see and we've seen it already and I I warned everybody about this last year and I think the year
before too as the school district continues to become better and better at keeping those budgets like conservative and and not spending too much what happens result of that is you get less and less
money that goes into end same with us no no absolutely I just want to make because it's it will it's going to get to a point where now yes we could put more in in end this year but the school choice which is another one of the revolving accounts that's dramatically less as to what we could put into the
budget to offset the cost as we continue to tighten and tighten that number will continue to go down so it's not because we're not doing a good job it's actually because we're doing a better job from a budgeting perspective it just affects that end and that school choice account same with our free cash but you have a trigger there you can only have so much
in end that's what I mean we can we have to keep so much there right which limits what we can give back so right and like you see last year we were able to do one .5 in school choice but we put in those four administrative positions for 430
that that that's not uh replenishing account when though that 400,000 was used we're only at like 1.1 1.2 right now in our school choice so it was gone it's not coming back so the so what we've done the last couple years is is we've had this meeting and then we we
get a call say hey can we can we can we move another couple2 $300,000 here and there example of what we did well you saw what happened what we did last year because we still had some end and school choice funds that we could use that with
it work but we couldn't do it this year because it had come back into the budget so that sort of little option I don't think is a real viable option this year like it's we don't we just don't have that flexibility anymore and I've worked in
two districts where they hit their school choice way too hard and they're paying for it now not necessarily advice that I told them I inherited it more than anything else but um you get to a point where you can't budget any more
out of school of choice than the revenue that you anticipate coming in you know you know what happened was honestly during covid um people built their school choice accounts up a lot because you still got all that Revenue even when kids were learning remotely like you the the districts were still paying the
tuition uh and the special ed increment when NE necessary I mean but the costs were way down I mean I mean you know districts were spending like you know $20,000 when they anticipated spending several hundred thousand so those accounts in a lot of places built up
during that time so you were for a couple of years able to spend more than you anticipated taking in to help offset the ass from the the town or municipality or wherever you may be um but that formula only works for so long and because of what was put there last
year we're at a point where the the revenue just not there to continue with what we had from and from the teacher side from the the cuts that were proposed that are in this budget um Jen and I and school committee had a
conversation we wanted to make sure that they were looking very closely do you need what you got what are the options if we can make some reductions let's see what they are so that's where she came up and her team put together the nine and we literally at the last fincom
meeting we went through a what I thought was a very productive Prospect I Bas we went down each and every one of the proposed L reductions in the cut okay what what are you doing who's going what's the plan is this going to
negatively affect the the the outcome detrimental and we got through eight of them and it was no no no no we're fine we got the last one which was one of the interventionalists and it was is this what do we have a plan no is
this going to significantly affect it yes it is and I said okay so then we had a long discussion and we put it back in um and then we were able to move a little bit of that cost from school choice so that we kind of reduce the the overall increase on that but it it it
was a very focused project this year to make sure that we were looking at everything so that what we're presenting you is enough to get the job done and there's not really any fact there any right and
just finally the capital requests um we did put the track in for 192 however we did apply for CPC funds you're welcome thank yes thank you thank you for your help yeah thank you for your help with that and um hopefully we'll hear soon and then we also have the two boiler projects at Woodland and the SRS study
and design for 300 and above 23,000 so hopefully all we'll have to bring forward is the 323,000 and Hope a majority of that can get paid for the track with CPC funds because it really is um a great it's the primary use of what CPC funds are for the towns use
that all the time at the last meeting and there's that chart I'm sure you guys found if it's here it's here it's so because originally it wouldn't have been but now the way they've changed the formulas it is and that's why I told you to change it not to a maintenance take that word completely Capital Improvement
to maintain it to the usable capabilities that's listen and I did talk to the CPC chair the other night said we got to just put it make an appointment and go and sit in front of him and like I said I'm going to sit there with you and say this is where we need to do this just tell us when and we'll be there CH I think we're going to
need to leave it in the budget but we can deal with it at town meeting right because we'll yeah we have to get organize it where CPC votes for it before we get to the school bu if they vote for it then we make an addendum to get rid of it off the school budget right I'm g p and even if they pay a
portion of it then we can just adjust what we're asking for for the track Project based on what CPC gives us and we can make that motion on the to like it better than a splash pad the did not you go back to the meeting I I'm not going back to the meeting if the
town voted the no I don't like this the town voted it we must do it but it wasn't the select Bo that put that through say was the town so just remember mon uh Wednesday we do have the public budget hearing uh it's going to be a lot it's going to be exactly the
same what you just heard right now say that again on Wednesday we have a public budget hearing exactly then the details might sink in a little more it's a very intricate budget what we can do I'm gonna Jen make sure we get your PowerPoint that you printed out
here in like the Sixpoint fun that we can get to everybody before we had to getal what time is that meeting Wednesday six o'clock and it's powdermill like usual caer have have you presented to
Granville and talland yet I'm going to Granville Monday night to meet with their select board I believe I don't think it's an all boards meeting were so but they'll see pretty much what you saw today I would imagine um and we have not
gone to to I don't think's reques T's got a pretty hefty dedu I I don't thinkle they have no stud you don't have to worry about us we'll vote for next year they could right any other question so
Wednesday night six o'clock if you didn't hear everything you wanted to hear outo school we go through it again and then we vote on the budget at the school committee level on our next meeting on the 25th believe 24th and if
anyone's interested I do know about the 21st if that's what you were calling me about at in love fast because we just put that together yesterday I'm good um and I called you yeah I know in the morning and then I had like we said we had the meeting yesterday and then on
the 24th if anyone's interested um we I'm part of the rural School Coalition we're creating t-shirts and we're going to be wearing them on March 24th if anyone's interested we're going to uh UMass amers and um my friend last night
she called texted me at 10 she made all the t-shirts with all of the rural schools on the back and I think they're going to be a bright color so that we can stand out for the joint Ways and Means Committee uh in ammer on the 24th but Nick and I are going to be there we're going to try and bring some
students um from AP Government to see The Joint Ways and Means and how they work their process but if any of you are interested in even buying a t-shirt just let me know that your size um because we really do need to push rural school aid just like they pushed the student
Opportunity Act um we'd like it's supposed to be funded at 60 million um the governor has in her budget this year a 16 million what we're asking for is to see um a step process to get us to that 60 million over time whether it's 20
million this year then 30 million then 45 million then 60 million but what we want to see is a commitment by the legislators that the same effort they made for 18% of the communities who reach who get um SOA money we want that
same um incentive for our rural school aid students to get their money because as we said the economy of scale is totally different in rural schools what time would you say what time is it on the 24th I don't know we don't have a time yet no we can't afford it I know that
that's what I'm asking definely benefit so here's thing so if we get additional money in R school aid we're not we do not start adding positions to rule school aid we use that money this is so this is how we operate
this is how you get your end so say we get an extra $150,000 in rural school aid this year we're going to take something that is in the operating budget and we move that we pay for it at the end of the year into rural School 8 so that that take takes up
$150,000 that was in the operating budget and then that moves into your end so that's how we operate as a school district sometimes we get some special ed costs that do impact that and we pay for them over the course of the year
that is how we try and operate if we can we had two teachers leave throughout this year we have not filled their positions because we're going to take the remainder of those salaries and we figured out a way to do it with long-term subs and whatnot and their remaining salaries will go
into the end next year so that is how we try and operate as a school district I'm just putting that out there that if we somebody leaves we try not to replace it if we can and if we get additional funding or whatever that goes into your end for the following school
year thank you you're welcome for next year we got to remember to break up fire police and school into at least a we had presented to the school committee right yeah they kind of get it for everybody else you're always the last
one though that's kind of how we yeah well thank you for hearing us I know it's a lot to digest but and I'll email you the Chapter 70 information and the old Joe going like this like great
idea what did I do you pH you were blowing it up that's I said I need I know was one of you down there I'm like can't see full color slides next we'll see it all Wednesday if we go to the meeting you
last Jean do you have any questions Jean do you have any questions line by L can see from them just like you did for I can email them and ask them for a budget and I will get it they did send me supplies what they're spending on the
what they're spending they gave that to us last year some money around we we as a community okay good good I maybe you want to join the team we keep sending you applications and you you don't respond we keep sending you applications
and you don't respond what team do you want to join that's what every department does now because I'm confused between health and inspector and school committee you know I wouldn't be a good advocate for school committee because I'm already a tight one yeah we
understand thank you thank you for your time text me your email address so I can get it to you pick up the chair yeah I'll gra it okay right guys we still have some more left in here we got moderator next nice try Shar that budget's
out she I think1 or0 differ she sent me a text your select board to decrease chief administrative officers got some numbers on it she's regular and decrease
[Music] to think we're off by something by $3 check fix it and do [Music] anything back or we go out together
no the authorization so Town complex for office equipment replacement yeah um 580 I don't I I don't know if the entire unless it says it's in ground
what's that that is or well no the office equipment replacement for the town hall um would that be a copier so oppos I can't I'm not sure what will die I'm not I really don't
know I don't know 80 seem specific yeah and it and it um and I'm not I'm not sure I mean I can certainly look in munus and see what is it's used for but if we're replacing
something I don't know that 580 would be enough it's just a comment I guess yeah and I don't think that's what it was designed for I agree with you okay um but yeah we can definitely look into it and see what it's happen what's that SP more than half
yeah right I almost think that's what it was don't call it minor equipment because then it's a whole another Trier sound meeting for stap an emotional trigger I have a general question you're all flipping yeah PD Dispatch cost 100
Grand a year 50 starts this year correct it's 100 and then we get a grant for 50 but we have a $50,000 Bill started is that correct did you see it in the the 5e pl for police
no right so we'll find out for you I believe you are correct yeah start up yeah 26 it start yeah yeah um and Nina said she was going to get a grant forist yes it so it's kind of staggered in yeah y yeah
three years we be at the pro of 100 or something and then I just wanted to throw out one more thing on $60,000 of grinder pumps every year I would like to propose we think
about modifying the regulation that the property owner is responsible for maintenance does the property owner impacts that grinder P yeah you can as a select board you guys can look
I'm giggling because I i' I've lived through this we tried elsewhere everyone who puts in a sewer yeah anywhere in any state phase one they always include the grinder pump they realize what a huge mistake it was and phase two doesn't
include it but no no property owner in their right mind would give that up because you now have a lifetime guarantee on a on a wearable replaceable item we modified it in 2008 y that any
new installation they have to buy it right that's pH or Phase 1 a or whatever you it's a regulation we can modify it it doesn't need a town vote I'm asking you to consider that $6,000 a year I
think I brought it up and I got I I I was given the same advice I just gave to you when I brought it up 10 years ago and we could phase it phase three started bringing up CPA phase three 100% could be either responsible
for half of the maintenance cost phase or in another five years it's 100 all right let's let's get back to the budget we'll talk about it absolutely thank you though good luck with that go ahead and have AG yeah that's
the agenda actually veteran services is we're combined with two other towns for veteran services itam is the lead Community um Granville is in there as well as Hallin
I think I knowville is a project last year that you um gentleman that took over the veterans who spok to Joe something to do with the thing in the front of the church our veterans thing that we in front of wasn't that part of that no so so
there was a CPC thing I put plenty of stones up over there over the last 10 years um our veteran service is in years past I don't think was adequate agam has got a new person in there the last few years and I think they're doing great
work over there you know before it was over they in agalon good luck he comes here there you go on thday there you go right so they've changed and it's for the good for the veterans um and we pay a portion so whatever you see for our veteran services oh I'm not question I
just wanted to know what it is what's that it's required by every town to pay your to pay your veterans um well depending on their disability to to pay them um a certain amount depending on their disability and so um we are in a
Consortium with awam and other towns and they're the lead Community we just had a meeting last week and uh they are doing a really great job working on it an IMA and we need um some sort of board of Governor's policy and procedure and so
Mayor Johnson is working on that right now and we'll have another meeting and'll just it'll be more of an administered it's our percentage of what's what's needed veterans it's for all different legal stuff you can find
out if you're eligible for disability benefit benefits they get Transportation they get it payments all the above some of everything yeah it just variety of services that are provided in this yeah some I think some
are invited are provided through the services and some some the town picks up a little bit on and basically if you're a veteran and you don't know what options are available I brought it up just quick Outreach Services to Veterans to educate on Benefit Services referrals to
programs taking applications the help State Veterans for 15 115 helping veterans access appointment and coordinates Veterans observances incling Memorial my uncle was a veteran at a west of Viet my uncle was a veteran
service agent on a Westfield for 20 something years Ling legs in Vietnam so I grew up with that whole process down in the Celler all so now they Senior Center and they are in the new Senor
office yeah it's working out it's nice to see that finally being uh utilized a lot of people myself included had no idea what additional stuff there is right like when I went to the MMA two years ago they're like you don't you haven't signed up I'm
like there's tax rate offs as well different things how many years of service do you have to got be discharge certain things you have to be a my looks like we're wrapped up on this is
anything else theend looking for a motion to close portion there was but it wasn't on there has made a motion to adjourn I I asked I thought there was something else but it wasn't on the agenda so we're we'll have to reconvene at another time
fair enough second we did that oh yes vot thank I need a motion for the finance committee to the Jour motion second all those in favor folks have a great day thanks for coming out we appreciate it