all right the time is 6:30 i hereby call the order of the regularly scheduled meeting of the Sunderland Select Board our first order of business tonight is going to be to approve the minutes from three meetings 218 33 and 317 a motion we approve the minutes from
218 33 and 317 second we have a motion made and seconded all those in favor i I I three nothing on the minutes all righty moving on to new business our first order of new business is going to be uh with the insurance advisory committee um and their recommendation
presentation to the site board yes so we don't Hi I'm Ben i'm the uh the chair of the uh this is Ben Peters from the fire department oh um okay so we had formed a few years ago
um as a committee to address sort of the the rising cost of health insurance um premiums and uh a few years ago we worked to sort of work with the town to increase contributions from the town um this year uh with a really short time
frame we met to address uh an unprecedented increase from Maya of 20% to the town's health insurance um with the time that we had um it was a pretty uh easy choice to make adjustments to
the premiums that the current plan has to mitigate uh some of those costs to the tune of about 9 and a half% um a survey was sent out to all of the uh employees for the town and uh we received almost 30 uh responses to that
uh with an overwhelming um amount of responses in support of adopting those changes so it was about 7525 in terms of uh the members response to that in terms of increasing uh the premiums will be
deductible with this uh recommendation but again it saved 99 12% overall year-over-year and uh we as a committee reached that decision unanimously and and are hereby recommending that the town adopt those changes to the health
insurance policy and again our overall goal with you know meetings to come years to come is still to increase you know contributions from the town um explore things like an HSA health savings account um which was something that we solicited feedback from the um
survey that we put out and there was definitely interest in the HSA um there was frustration with the time frame um and obviously you know it's hard to have your your benefits change but this is what we came up with and this is what we're recommending so okay and do we
have a complete what those list of changes are yes and there's um I'm sorry it's um in Heather's office but there's a sheet for you to sign off it lists exactly what the plan design changes are it lists all of them and it
um the new deductibles 250 to 750 single and family um and that was that was the largest um change it was over 5% just to add that which um the other changes are for um imaging
and yeah this is this is a sheet that we have that's sort of one of the preliminary sheets that we were looking at and you can note that there's changes to some high cost imaging there's some changes to um so the deductibles are again going from
current of a zero deductible right so these And then it's changes in co-pays the um like the emergency room was $75 it's going to $100 um so in and those numbers on that paper
we had sort of worked with Maya um back and forth a bunch to get numbers that were a little bit easier to understand and then the final product that we had sent out for the survey was much easier to understand than that is right now um but essentially there's a deductible
that's roughly $250 for an individual um and then it goes up from there all the way to family plan to 750 and once that deductible is met again that's per person it's just the co-pays yeah and in the grand scheme of health insurance
those are still decent deductibles those are still on the lower end of deductibles we had a we've had a rich plan since the onset of our plan and this is the first time that we've made changes like this um but I mean here we are i mean 20 cent
was a 20% is is is massive so this is within the time frame that we had this was the the the Yeah no I mean I think those are I think you got a good deal on even still on your deductibles and stuff with
this because I know a lot of insurance companies those numbers are in the thousands yeah for you know deductibles and and it's not out of the question entertaining other um companies but that's something that we'll do in the future and it's not going to be you know
brush time frame format yeah and we did learn in this um situation all the other everyone's been impacted the other insurance companies have also gone up 20% so it's been you know it we really didn't have anywhere to look that was
that back for yours that was going to be less but the committee was amazing the amount of work they did and their focus and the school reps um Donna and Leela had the biggest am the largest amount of work mhm and um Donna I think three or
four different times held meetings and we did lunch hours to answer questions and really make sure people had a sense of what was happening everybody on the committee definitely came together quickly to deal with this you know in the time frame that we had so I'm very
thankful for that so we are too and my big takeaway here is just how much we appreciate the committee's work on this especially as you said the the short time frame um you know it was obviously to the benefit of the of the membership to save money on their on their upfront
cost but it's also a benefit to the town budget-wise and so um we certainly appreciate that and I want to pass that thanks on to you and to the members of the committee um they were um the savings to the town is over $56,000
so it it's incredibly helpful absolutely um do do you want to entertain have us entertain a motion to accept these changes yes okay do we have to do it today yes okay i will get the sheet um before we leave and so you can review it
and before signing it i'll get it from Okay heather yeah i just Heather can tell me if we haven't seen the sheet yet um I And the the issue is the it's an April one deadline that's why the
committee tonight's tonight that's why they had four meetings in two weeks oh no i I understand that and that's my bad i apologize i'll get Heather to I would also in general feel more comfortable being able
to look it over before the vote um that being said given the circumstances so okay i'll make a motion we accept it contingent upon our review after this meeting and signing it can I motion that that sounds very I love that second all
right we have a motion made and seconded to approve this contingent on our perusing of it later on and our signing of it at that time will be our acknowledgement and confirmation beautiful all right thank you uh sorry about that i just motion made and
seconded um all those in favor i I I three nothing and thank you again Ben we really appreciate everything all right next up is review the MIA plan agreement with IA recommendation that's the sheet of paper I we will see
contingent upon safely locked up in Heather's office that's the same thing so never mind then tells you how how much I knew about what that was all right um next up is uh we have Jim here today to talk about the recreation program review baseball being added um and the funding of our fields thank you
very much Jim thank you all so much thank you have a good one thanks which one's the least popular i don't know i'd probably take the one where the young man was sitting it's probably nice and warm so first of all I I would just like to
thank you all for the support of the recreation programs that you've given over the years um we have some former coaches uh of some of our rec sports um some of their children have come through the program and uh enjoyed all the
various sports um and um there's been a good support from the town um for what we've been doing so I appreciate that um so I don't know where you want to start i had given uh I think Becky sent you
some stuff copies if you need it um you might as well say I hadn't sent I didn't send that so you might as well hand them out since you have them all right so we'll start with field use okay so Becky had asked me to give her an
idea of what was most needed this year thank you are you good yeah do you need it no I think I have one still there may five but I counted right yes um so I can give you a little brief
history um we've been we were looking for field maintenance funds um for several years and the first time I believe that we got some um was either to 17 or 218 I don't remember exactly
which year uh which was $5,000 and I believe last year or the year before it was increased to six jeff and I had talked about uh the need to bump it up to 12,000 at some point and um so it got bumped up to 6,000 which is where we're
at in the current year um the the bottom line I guess is we started treatments at the elementary school the the area around the softball field and the soccer field uh 5 years ago we've seen dramatic improvement in
the turf um by those treatments um and that that's been that's been a good thing um we got approval at town meeting in 2018 out of capital stabilization money uh or whatever fund it is for
$12,000 to receive this soccer field uh subsequent to that there have been a number of u ups and downs and curves uh that prevented us from doing that project one was that twice with park
grant money i was told that the $12,000 was being used as a match to get town match to get the park grant money then there was a question about could we irrigate the field since we already have an irrigation system at the baseball field could we provide irrigation for a
soccer field and just hook into that irrigation system and um the water uh district said no um was there a study or something done on that there there was a study done and we also voted you also voted at
town meeting I believe in 2020 to do two uh to do a couple of uh drillings to see and and the result of that was there wasn't enough water pressure okay to provide the irrigation system that would be needed for the soccer field okay and
then we had park grant phase three which was supposed to be a kayak kiosk and rec shed where the present rec shed is It's I can't open the door that's how much it's sunk since last fall so I got to work on that tomorrow and the renovation
of the bathrooms and um a new wreck shed with the kayak kiosk subsequent to that it was decided that the kayak kiosk should be where the baseball shed was uh on this side of the bag cages right as you come in from the parking lot because
it was closer to the thing and in the process of that baseball got a new shed they weren't asking for it and by the time we finished with the shed and the kayak kiosk and the bathroom renovations which I believe ran over Jeff was not sure if there was sufficient money left
to uh do the rec shed so that was sort of put on on hold but again I was told that the $12,000 was being used as town match leverage to get the funds for the park uh so this fall I arranged with
Frontier and my own scheduling of our soccer teams to be done by the first week in October so the field would be free to be receded and um when we got the uh the go ahead to do
that the $12,000 doesn't exist so the field basically is mud it probably it may not be safe to play on this ball and it's a question of since
2016 or so when we first started asking about this um the time has taken its toll on the field part of the project was to redo the infield on the baseball field in the back which we call field two and to put in new turf on the
infield there um and subsequently that's no longer uh an issue um we use the back field for practices but not for games and it's sufficiently flat and level and you know can be used for that purpose but does not necessarily need to have
that aspect of it so the original $12,000 excluding that um the uh the price was uh $6,800 or $7,000 last fall and then of course the money didn't
exist so now that baseball is coming under wreck we have responsibility uh for some things at the baseball field the baseball field the baseball league stopped doing treatments on their field two years ago which means that's no
longer getting the treatments it needs to weed and feed uh the the outfield and the area or infield and the area around the baseball field and we need to start those up again um and the uh information
I had given Becky is this is the long sheet this is what the annual cost would be if we did everything that we wanted which comes out to be actually more like $14,000 but there have been some things in here that we can talk about currently
um we received no money from Frontier for the use of this field they also the middle school soccer team practices and plays on the field at the elementary school their JV boys and girls play their games uh home games on this field
and usually one team practices there but they did not this fall and Ultimate Frisbee from Frontier is now at the elementary school this spring um they provide us with new nets for the big soccer goals out here every two years new corner flags and they actually
provide the paint uh for the painting of the big soccer field so um it's not a lot of money but it's a little bit of money they also pay for uh one month in the fall and I'm going to hit him up for a month in the spring now that ultimately is at the elementary school
for the port body which is uh I don't know yet they haven't gotten back to me i ordered it to be delivered tomorrow but uh it is 180 bucks a month i'm anticipating it might be 190 this year okay uh we usually do April May and June
i get I we pay for one the Franklin uh soccer travel club pays for one and Frontier pays for one and in the fall um we do September and October only because we basically don't have any wreck there
unless we have softball in the fall and we haven't had that since before co so the Franklin uh County Soccer Club also gives us a payment for one of the treatments at the school which is $8,200
or $820 $850 sorry and there's a typo on this it's actually four treatments I'm sorry uh it's actually five treatments not four treatments at $850 a piece uh which comes up to the 4,200 so
we get some income we also have gotten some income from the Valley Storm Travel softball team that occasionally has used Merit Field and has given us a donation for the use of the field um so it in some years we we get donations of about
$2,000 so my sort of proposal here is is that maybe if we had $9,000 we could use the baseball money we'll be getting some money from baseball that they've accumulated over the years and if we utilize the uh the
income that I get currently there's no way for me to put it in the field maintenance uh account so it goes into the revolving account and then I pay some of those things out of the direct revolving account one of the things Becky and I had talked about is if if m field
maintenance was a revolving account that would be helpful because we could put money in and if there was some money left it could carry over mhm um the other aspect of this and it's it's a long there's a lot here but we add a
material called called Turpus to the infield uh at the softball field and I hope to be able to do it at the baseball field every two years that mixes in with the infield material and it makes it more absorbent i've seen that going and then we also
use quick dry which is from the same company and the quick dry and the surface and the material they all mix in to make the field more absorbent so every two years we've been adding um about 80 to 100 bags at at the softball
field um and and that's about $1,000 or might probably a little bit more now i'm assuming the prices have gone up it wouldn't be quite as much at at the baseball field uh might be more like 50 or 60 bags because you've got the grass infield whereas the softball field is
all dirt material so there's some expenses that would be every other year and that would be really helpful if there was a revolving account because that would be be helpful so I guess the bottom line is there might be a way for
us to use the baseball money um use the income that I get um and if we had 9,000 not 12,000 make enough money to receive sovereign um and this is kind of
preliminary and it's not set in stone but um that's a possibility um and I know the budget's tight and I know we're looking to find ways to uh to to balance it so um that's kind of I guess where we're at
but if you haven't taken a walk out to the soccer field you should just take a quick walk someday because it is weeds and mud there's a little grass on some of the corners where they don't play as much other than that it's it's basically
gotten to the point where it you know it has to be done yep um thank you very much in terms of the revolving account I think that's a pretty low hanging fruit easy one as long as we have the ability to do so I
don't see any reason not to turn it into a revolving account if that makes your job easier um he already there's already a recreation revolving account but it has a lot of activity already with all the programs and fees going into it so having a second one just for maintaining
the fields would make sense what would we need to do in order to establish i can just talk to the accountant okay and we have to add it to we'll have to do a special warrant article to get it added to the the regular okay revolving fund
warrant article so it'll take a new new warrant and and we have time and everything to get that done between now and meeting okay we can get that added yeah if you don't mind I'm assuming the board on the same page on that yeah that seems like an easy an easy fix on that one well because I think the the best part of that is that when I get the
money from Franklin you know uh soccer club or from Valley Storm or from anybody else then it can go right into the field maintenance and that's where it is y um I keep pretty good track of the stuff in the revolving account but there is a lot that goes in and out of
that account and um you know it is what it is yep it's pretty amazing to watch um so just a question for future not this year future i know there's been you know
grants and money and stuff you know that we have to definitely have to get back to the discussions and working on it but like for things like pickle ball courts and things like that is there any type of restoration anything like that that
could be funded through grants like in the future that you're aware of like restoration for the fields fields or this or that um I don't but we can we can look I'm sure other towns have done
that there would just be the one thing over the years I have suggested that Frontier should be paying us some money y now granted they're giving us some incind and they're now paying for the port hopefully two of them two two
months uh for the use of the fields mhm uh he also the paint that he gives me I also paint the field over there so yeah you know there's no cost to the town in terms of that and it's not insignificant a case of paint is
um uh case of paint's $120 for 10 cans of paint and I go through four cases on both fields in the fall so it's you know it's not like it's a hundred bucks it's it's four five 600 bucks yeah uh the
Nets the Nets go for 4 or 500 bucks uh corner flags are not that much but so they do do something but Weightley gets money for the use of Hurley for the baseball field and for the soccer field and now a softball field cuz that's the
where the JB plays its home games the middle school practices and plays their home games at the base the 90oot baseball field there and the varsity soccer teams play on the soccer field there and I know that they get money and
and I think it's somewhat substantial yeah I mean I'm certainly open to having that conversation with Frontier um it seems like it would make sense that they're we're treated equally among other towns in the region you know if if that's what he's doing I think it makes
sense for us to also have that conversation with them um procedurally how would that happen would we um just go to them and say we want to charge you some money well I could set up a meeting well I can feel them out i can call and find out and make sure
verify that they are paying other towns and what it how much so and again it's right we have you have the ability to talk to other town administrators y they must know what is getting paid at Hurley Park and again
not not that we have to match it dollar for dollar we don't it's based on use it would be based on use yeah right you know just have that discussion you know if we And again I I'm sure it's plenty of money you know if there's a substantial but you know if we find out
that they're getting $12 for use of Harley Park it's not worth you know extending that conversation if we find out that they're you know getting 12,000 it's a different
conversation and I'm not saying those are any valid dollar amounts but there's a big difference between $12 and $12,000 so yeah I would start there you know and see what maybe can shed some light on we like it'd be good to get an idea of what
Deerfield and Conway have and again it might only be or it might be as simple as calling Darius and asking him well that's what I was thinking you know he could tell you and you know obviously it's a little too late for
them to adjust their budget and put money in their budget for payment of a field this year but you know Yeah so I think there's two things here one is what we're doing this year and the other is what can we do for the future to set you up for better success in the future um I
think there's a couple places that we can look um you had mentioned the capital budget um we could you know we have we have a couple of things that in the capital budget that are like like the paying off the the trucks or police cruisers that are every couple years that need to come in that are regularly
regularly scheduled things um we could include in the capital budget a regular $10,000 a year um line item for fuel maintenance for example that kind of a thing um so it's just there and I know that we we have in the past and that
money disappeared but um if he gets his own revolving account Exactly it can't disappear yeah and and then there's two other things and I know you got a lot to do uh the first is I we need a new wreck shed i I've got cross country skis and
snowshoes stored downstairs that were going to go into the shed so that we could offer that in the winter if we ever get enough snow because three years in a row now we have it but we've done crosscountry skiing days at the school in the past when the skis were at the school but they cleaned out
stuff and made us take them back here um and uh the soccer so I have soccer and t-ball equipment and other equipment some of that T-ball equipment is going to go into the baseball shed because that'll just be all a part of baseball now um but we still need uh an upgrade
of that shed it is falling in the ground i mean C couldn't we do a CPA and we talked about CPA money for that or so that that was going to be my next question is no you asked that is is is any of this stuff stuff that can fall under CPA not this year again I know not
this year we're talking about for for future years um so and maybe we don't necessarily need to hash that out today but let's on our radar for next year's budget look at CPA look at capital planning possibly look at grants or whatnot and also talk to Darius and uh
the other towns about potentially collecting from the frontier um but back to the back to this year's budget um what I'm hearing from you is 6,000 was last year's numbers 12,000 is what you asked for this year um but you're saying if we came in more around 9 you could
probably make that work i think so i mean I'm I'm thinking we would take what I don't know what I said here $2,400 of baseball money mhm uh baseball i don't know how much they're going to have in their account um but they have a few thousand that's going to be coming
basically to us it should go toward baseball yep but that would be going toward the baseball field and its expenses um and then if I took the income that I normally get which is about $2,000 and use that money um that gives
us uh $4,400 on and um then if I had used part of the 9,000 we probably could get soccer fields received okay it would take it would take a stretch but I think I think we can probably do it um because that that was a number we were thrown around last time we were talking about
this um is that I'm not sure that we can fiscally this year go from 6 to 12 but we can probably go from 6 to 9 and be able to hit hit the 9 mark um with the understanding that we know that we're falling short of what you're what you're asking for and what you need um and hopefully move that mark up in
subsequent years either directly or as we're saying potentially through other funding like CPA or capital planning um which brings us back around to the the maintenance shed um is that is any is the maintenance shed completely separate from these numbers there so it's on this
page here okay but that wouldn't be the $9,000 wouldn't touch the maintenance shed at all maintenance shed still sitting there as a and he's looking for a significant building that would be you know it's not one of those $2,000 shed at Home Depot probably
talking about 16 by8 uh maybe a prefab from skips or one of those places that can be delivered you have to think about what it was going to go on whether it would be a concrete pouring out you know pad or whether it could go on blocks and be as
long as it's done well um so I I don't I forget what I put in here i think I think 15 to 20 good CPA we're talking a fair amount of money but it's it's needed um so one of the questions I have on that is I know that
the Franklin Tech Well that's what I was going to say they build small shetty kind of buildings as part of their supposedly they were going to build one 5 years ago but that never happened um was there a design uh John John Kerry
lives in town and he's the vice was the vice principal i know he still is and his kids came through the wreck programs and he was talking with them about doing that and I I thought something was going to be proposed and go forward but it never been moved yeah cuz that's what I was thinking is this something the tech school could take on as a project and
maybe the town still has to to pay materials and stuff whatnot but if we could get them to build it for no labor costs and that you know 15,000 turns into eight of materials that might be much more doable we'd need a couple hundred for pizzas yes absolutely
bottled water pizzas bottled waters yeah but just that that might be a way to be able to to take that that dollar amount down a little bit um I think either way we don't have money in the capital budget for this year nor a request for this and we don't have money in our
budget to be able to come up with 15,000 so I don't think just vehicle-wise we have a means of making that happen right now that being said if we make this a this is either going to be on a capital request for 2027 or we have a
deal worked out between now and then with Franklin Tech and make it a warrant article or something like that um the question comes sort of back to what do you need to get you through from now until when the ground was broken on that kind of a project
well we'll we'll manage yeah um you know I basically have moved most everything out of there um other than soccer goals and T-ball equipment um but when we have soccer season you know soccer balls bags of soccer balls and and that kind of
stuff is in there first aid kits are in there you know different kinds of stuff that I take out over the winter um and it gets put back in now some of that for T-ball is going to all get put in the baseball shed so that'll change that a
little bit um you know we we'll muddle through but it it is something that we need to get addressed it was it was supposed to have happened and um there was never any any sense of how much money was left if anything in the park
grant and uh so it didn't get done yep was there a CPA match for the park grant was there a CPA match for the park grant when they got that was it So that's the only time there's been wreck money well I I don't know what the matches were i was 12,000 for resetting the soccer
field was being used as match okay uh and what else was being used i don't I don't know okay and I I guess I do we want to talk about field use so the last thing in what we would like
to make more formal is to really look at uh fees that are generated um there are some opportunities to to use vendors that want to use the
property but I I think the vendors that want to use the property want to make their money on the property and leave so there's no benefit to the town except for the the experience in the program so we're trying to figure out how to keep
um the town facilities to use for town programs and then charge uh fees where possible if they're making it part of the use it makes sense for come prepared jim has thought about this
before a long time was first prepared and presented to the select board in 2016 16 act field usage request and I mean it's it's a lot to look over
right now but just again um we have had some usage i had a uh field hockey group that used the back field uh in in the spring two years ago and we had them fill out I had them fill out this form
got an insurance certificate from them uh showing that they had coverage naming the town as second uh as additionally insured yep and we agreed to a fee and uh they were here on 10 10 Wednesdays in the spring I think 3 years ago right
kind of after co um during CO we actually had uh uh Candace Yoga did some outdoor yoga on the property and again we had her fill out a form and she gave us a fee and yes she was collecting fees
and running her in a sense her business but she was paying fees um we've had a few other people that have have asked and have in fact done some things on our property without fees um
and should I bring this up or what not at this point okay but the other the other side to that is we do have in the fall in the late summer and fall uh Mel will be getting requests for groups canoeing down the river to camp on our
property we've never charged them we've never asked for insurance certificates um and they come through they camp overnight by and large hasn't been an issue they have no open fires they don't leave trash you know but and they're
formal groups they're not formal group this is aimed at formal groups yeah basically if it's a formal organized group whether it's a business or whether it's a group mhm should we not be doing this and just
there's a difference in the use of fields between the school and here yep as well because the school fields are Ben has to give the approval as well yeah i used to make coach one of the frontier of the soccer leagues and we used to send him insurance forms and
stuff but we pay I'm included in that decision um and I don't know if he collects insurance certificates or not we used to submit one but I'm not I don't know what's happening there i I don't right so there there's like groups like a bicycling group or something does a
overnight here so yeah we had them through two or three times uh in the past so and they brought in pot portaotties and all you know all kinds of stuff and they left a little trash but it wasn't bad but I don't think they paid okay so that that's really what
we're looking for is to maybe formalize some type of right of payment for that so that it does cover the time and and insurance and what I did I I took this from uh South Hadley Recreation Deerfield Recreation some of their ideas put this
together i have updated it a little bit over the years because I did submit this almost 10 years ago the first time so but I think there needs to be some sort of a more formal policy yeah um and if calls come in to the administrative
assistant how are they handled in the past Cindy basically handled them um and she would notify me she'd notify the fire department and the police department are there any problems with this you know that that all happened but I don't these groups
never and so they're businesses again I'm just shooting from the hip here cuz this is the first time I've heard it but could we handle this something similar like we do with a one-day liquor license could we call it like a one night
camping license or something like that and put a set fee around it that we need police department fire department rec director signoffs in order you know to make sure they all know and are aware yeah yeah
and then you know an insurance certificate and again I'm not saying exactly like a liquor license but a liquor license has a fee associated with it and it has a formalized procedure for how that's granted and how that's run
and it has a dollar amount assigned to it yes and the fees that I put in here basically are more toward youth groups sport groups etc etc so we might have to flesh that out a little bit more but um right again that would be money that
could go into the field maintenance fund or even a maintenance funding we now have new bathrooms that need to be maintained um you know there we have hot water heater and hot water in those bathrooms now it's like we've never had that before you know and and so it needs
more care than what it was getting in the past and again baseball always paid freight for the bathrooms um and that's not happening at this point so so I I didn't want to bombard you but I wanted
you aware that he's been thinking about this for a long time and it's a really important idea and formalizing it getting into a policy i just want to be sure no and and the fee usage also helps to drive the rest of it the collecting of the insurance information and whatnot
and it sort of just is like a one it's a thing that makes that makes it all kind together so you know right like did they pay they did okay that must mean they've also done all this right and then we just like add on to this an overnight camping fee or something like that an
overnight fee yeah i mean I absolutely I think that's a great idea um I mean the fee schedule looks very um reasonable it doesn't look overly punitive or anything like that $25 for a half day $50 for a full day seems very reasonable um and the season fee for teams $150 for a team
of 15 players again very reasonable um so yeah I've got no problem well like the Frank the Franklin Soccer Club has four teams that use the field there and what they give us is actually more than what four teams would be uh a little bit more but um that's a that's a
negotiation that we've worked out over the years and it started out they they got the paint and painted the lines on the field and they bought new nets every couple of years for the soccer balls and now we've gotten to the point where they're paying for one of the treatments and two months of the portaotti because
they're the main users of them that's great yeah um I think it sounds like we're all in favor of formalizing the fee schedule um so please work together to figure out the nitty-gritty of that um and then we'll approve it
great thank you thank you thank you Jim we appreciate everything you do your hat went that way though i know i I can't I can't leave without my hat uh I And again I thank you for your support over all the years um of the rec programs absolutely thanks
Jim have a good one thank you John all righty next up on our agenda we have the police chief's contract i see you got Eric here today thank you very much and I think the contract piece was not um we'll move on
to the second item the chief is here to talk about the the change from part-time to full-time and how that actually worked out and he had a great suggestion um suggestions are always good
today so uh it is the the hope that we'll be able to increase the staff like we've been able to do two or three years ago and that was the first time we were able to do that since 2001 um given the financial constraints
that the town has coming into next year um and the fact that we really wouldn't be able to publicize it or post it to July 1st anyways we're not going to fulfill it July 1st so why not take from the beginning of the year say 12 weeks
and remove that from the budget and then that will reduce I think it's $12,566.40 or something like that so in effect we be budgeting only for part of a year of fulltime officer if it's only part of the year so we budget for 9 months now the caveat to that is the
following year you have to budget full um but I think that would be a huge step to to go forward to try to get a seventh uh seventh full-timer uh giving us regularity around the schedule giving us
um more officer coverage to to handle all the things that we're already doing to include the the new mental health program that we started a couple years ago a year and a half ago off the uh JDP grant um and knowing that the part-time ability
is just not there anymore no part-time academy um it was hoped to try to start one in Greenfield uh but the municipal police training committee has kind of put a hold on any newmies going forward so that may not get off the ground in
the next 6 months or even longer um so the idea would be okay well the existing parties that we have and we've been losing some because they've been picked up by other bigger towns um and there's no more part-time category to pick
from we have to make a decision are we going to look at putting on full-time officers and just weeding out part-time contingent as we go we're still actively looking for part-time officers we just can't send them to an academy because the only academy right now is in
Worcester and that's part of a lightning uh so if you work full-time and you wanted to be a part-time cop you would go to this academy two three times a week for the next 10 11 months and once you're done you could do work part time
um we like I said we've been losing part- timerrs to full-time departments greenfield over here Berneston Northfield um so it's great that they're picking from what we have but we kind of want to keep them um but with the small
amount of partners that we have now I don't see maybe one might be interested in going full-time but the rest enjoy what they do they're not going to leave their full-time job they're not going to leave they're not going to do that so as a department as a town as a community we
have to decide do we want to have as many officers as possible responding to calls during the peak times during 24/7 or do we want to look at the schedule and say okay some of the towns around us don't do 24 hours is that something else we want i like to think that a lot of us
from you all included to other residents I've spoken to is they enjoy knowing that when they go to bed at night they can call somebody or they wake up or there's an accident someone's going to be there you're not waiting 30 40 50 minutes with state police and nothing against you know no bad remarks about
state work great with them it's just a matter of what do we want as a community so that's why I proposed it again this year um looking at the budget we took some of the part-time monies out so it was only a $15,000 increase between the
two so if we stop this position later now that position uh is an increase is only about uh 3,000 if there's a way to fine-tune that even more I'll be more than happy to sit down with Becky and the finance committee and do that so at the end of the
day hiring this full-time officer a new full-time officer is not giving us more coverage it's maintaining Yep it's maintaining the we have you're not going from I'm using fictitious
numbers again from two people working per shift to five people working per shift you're still keeping that same number of officers on per shift and you're using this full-time one
to fill in the gaps that part you know so this full-time guy again making it up but say his schedule now is going to be 11 to 7 5 days a week so now you won't need part-time officers 11 to 7 five
days a week so the concept with with the budget was the part- timerrs are historically scheduled for 18 hours a week that's their and then the rest of it is for holidays and benefit times someone takes a sick day personal day
vacation day whatever um we haven't been able to do that a lot of that's been very tight so the idea would be is to manufacture a schedule where we would have those open 19 hours now uh increased to instead of 9 and 9 it would
be 10 and 10 because the full-timers do four 10 hour shifts so those two will be covered by the full-time and then the other parts of that shift could theoretically be uh a second officer on say a Monday day shift and a Friday shift because the peak of the calls that
we have are historically during the day shift but that would typically be being felt by a part-time no we've been running them bare bones so we've been running them like say today I was the only officer on on Friday but but you want to run them you just can't find the the part-timers to fill those positions
we've got to cut the budget so we don't have the part- timerrs that we have now can really cover what we have open just for them forget about covering the extra spots we want to cover we've we've we've gone along and had one officer per shift for a long time and with the new
addition that we had we're able to maximize the amount of officers and put coverage on the peak times so make sure we have day daytime evening time definitely covered we have a midnight officer that works the second half of the week and the new officer we just hired works a split shift where he works
this evening and then three overnights so we can try to give give the town that 24-hour coverage as we're going towards July if we were to keep it maintained coverage we're going to run at least at least two shifts a week if not more of
open we're not no one's going to be on and that's usually during the daytime um so we can try to move it off of midnights to try to go to dayshift but now we have no one on midnights so we have to decide how do we want to go forward with this um do we want to try
to provide coverage to give during the peak times or do we want to just say no we're not going to bother with that make the schedule work as best you can and if you have holes you have holes uh and I like to think that if we can give the officers the ability to have coverage
around the clock give it to the community and give it to the officers there's going to be some overlap on like the evening and the midnights have an overlap part of the day shift the evening shift has an overlap but the peak time of uh the cause that we have
are historically Monday through Friday not discounting what happens on the weekend because we're very busy on the weekends so this coverage would enable us to get rid of the part-time that's already being squeezed way too much that we're going to eventually be losing most likely another part-time in the next
couple of months and then we're left with another two or three that do not want to do more than there are people um so what do we want to do as a community do we want to still heavily rely on part- timerrs when there's no more part- timerrs to rely on or are we going to
manufacture the schedule in a way where we may have to give up um midnight shifts to give us the coverage on the day shifts and the evening shifts i mean fundamentally what it is is at one point we were able to we had a large enough pool of part- timers to be able to both
cover regular shifts and also cover the the out the someone's out sick someone's on vacation that kind of stuff and we're at a position where we only have enough parttime hours to cover half of that and I would rather see the part-time hours covering the Brenda's out sick or on
vacation because then you know that that's the that's the cracks in the in the pavement that we're trying to fill um using up those precious part-time hours that we don't have a lot of to cover normal shifts hurts our ability to be able to do that kind of coverage
so if you had 24-hour coverage full-time what else what would you need an additional well in a perfect world 24-hour coverage would be nine full-time officers counting at least counting me um but nine full-time would give you the ability to have coverage across the
board 24/7 and give you potentially uh more than one officer on each shift in the town I used to work for there were 10 of us me plus nine so they were on a rotating schedule so on paper there was three three and three but the way the schedules went there was two officers
per shift per day and right now what do we have and here we have six full-time so we historically usually won one officer per shift uh there is overlap on the evening shift after 9:00 and there's overlap on the uh beginning of the
evening shift from uh 4 to 6:00 p.m on some days 4 to 5 on the days I'm there uh and then the two busiest days that we have uh for calls we have one officer at part of their shift and another officer does a split and that's on Tuesdays and
Wednesdays so there's two officers on those shifts and then also me so the way that the way it goes now that's how we have the best coverage as we can get if we weren't going to find the seventh officer we would shift schedules are due for May
1st so we have to present it to the union this is what the schedule's going to be come July 1 so we'd have to manufacture a schedule that you have coverage as best as you can 7 days a week and just know that there may be an overlap on say Wednesday on both the day shift and the evening
shift or we forego the midnight shift on half the week or whatnot so there's a mixture of what we have to decide what we want to do what is what do we want to do as a community what do we want as residents and what do we want as town officials so I certainly don't want to speak for the whole board but I think
that from my perspective I see the value and the the wisdom in shifting part-time hours to full-time hours given the pool of part-time officers and what was going on with that in the state um the question at least for us was always you know it was an increase in money that the town is tight on um but what I'm
hearing from you is if we make it a nine-month position for this year we're coming in $3,000ish dollars over somewhere reasonably i came up with um a total of 50,672 uh between what um was freed up from
both accounts okay and so and I think a uh new officers about 54 you're referring to the old the uh doing the budget normally or with seven full-time and that's the difference
yes is a lot of that difference also attributes to uh the contract yeah yeah no I um Yes i'm I'm talking about in terms of part-time going down by this much full-time going up by this much the difference between those two was somewhere in the $15ish,000
so the two budgets I estimated one was to do business as normal with the seven full-time and to do that with the seven full-time we drastically cut the five time budget like I said by 38,000 I think yeah so that was a difference of 15,000 yes so now we're looking at a
difference of less than five right and the only concern of course is we have to fund it next year and every year after that um which means that and like everything else in town once you approve something it's substantially harder to draw it back and not saying necessarily that we want to go roll that back but
just that that is a concern is that um next year is going to be 12 months not 9 months so again I think you always have that option of if by some miracle Greenfield does get a
part-time academy in the future you have the option of through attrition the next person that leaves you're not going to replace them as a full-time now we once again have a pool of part-time officers and you can
move in that direction if that's what you know if circumstances allow for that to happen in the future the chances of it is probably slim but again you have that option of through attrition
not you know making a change then so and you Let's look at the grand scheme of things there's a good chance that a decent amount of the full-timers could be retiring in the next 3 to 5 years correct you've got two officers that have been on since the early 90s uh
another officer that's been on for over 15 16 years here myself you know I'm getting old uh so at some point you're going to have a younger group of of people coming up and if you have an existing department that is able to then
see what this town has done and then move forward you might be able to pick from within or you know decide okay we're going to go and just interact with this and change the way the poling is done but there's a lot of things that a lot of people have seen in the past that they enjoy having somebody who's
monotonously driving through town and knowing okay this car was always here this is always there that's always there and again nothing against parttime i started as a part-time many years ago you're working one shift a week one shift a month you're not going to remember those things you're not going
to know those things so when you start enjoying having somebody on full-time is dealing with the calls dealing with the public knows somebody because they've dealt with it consistently they've responded to calls they read the logs every day so they're up to on what's been happening it's a little bit easier
than trying to be educated really quick in 10 minutes before a call well I mean and not not to be fortuitous about it but we were having a conversation with Officer Peters this the beginning of the meeting about his his relationship with with Crystal's son and that that like regular I'm in this the the store every
week every day of the week kind of thing um there is obviously value to that as well um so procedurally um this is not a decision that we'd be making today anyways um and it's a decision that we'd have to talk to the finance committee next week about at our next meeting uh that being said thank you very much for
bringing this in and for giving us um some wiggle room there with the $12,000 um and again the other option that we have to decide is if we don't find a candidate that has an academy and we want to send someone to the academy uh
you know that's going to be a question that we have to sit down as a town and sit down with the union and figure out what we have to go forward with on next steps on how we can hire somebody in a perfect world we would hire somebody already with an academy that would be
perfect and there may be candidates out there that have that ability or if there's candidates who are part of the older part-timer group and I don't mean by age older I just mean since the last four years they went through the bridge academy are we able to then put them on
as a full-time officer until they're technically certified through the MBTC and post that's always something that we could do as well and then the great thing about that is we no longer have to wait the six months while doing the academy right okay
great thank you very much Eric um and we will uh be discussing this at length next next Monday glad I have you um so I let Becky know that the uh our we our animal control officer has officially resigned she's no longer at the uh the
department so um we're not asking for any changes to the budget but uh we have to sit down and actually look at what do we want to do for the acco position so I've been looking for the past couple of months on what it costs for a regional service so
a lot of you may remember that the Franklin County Sheriff has a dog shelter as an original regional in animal control they have drafted up a potential contract for us to utilize if we're willing to look into it um this would be for the remainder of this year
until June there is a cost it's uh $2,300 and change um our budget for the animal control is just over $5,100 and that is almost all spent by now um to do the Franklin County animal control for
the year would be I would assume they quoted me on 8900 but that was for this fiscal year so I'm sure that's going to go up for next fiscal year so as a board do you want to try to look into the regional services or do you
want to see if we are able to offer this position back out to the public or before that to in-house employees maybe there's candidates who currently work for the town that are interested in the animal control position you know the perks are you get to deal with fluffy animals sometimes stinky ones sometimes
good ones um you do it for the love of the animal not yet you don't do it for the for the for the the praise but you do it for the love of the animal uh you get the joy of having a department cell phone or the laptop and answering all the state uh regulations um pour
yourself holding that puppy and he's just looking at you let me just from my perspective having an in-house person is cheaper from what it sounds like at least currently whether we can find somebody else to to do the same hours for the same price or not is a whole other
conversation but if we were to replace the person for the same contract the old person was on it'd be substantially cheaper by about $3,000 a year to to have that and we have somebody a personal person in town as opposed to being part of a larger region um and going back to the conversation we had
with the state police is if there is a a problem do we want somebody coming from Greenfield or wherever or would would be is it do we as a town appreciate having somebody who's you know in town and and that that's their job um so I'm I'm I guess I'm failing to see a lot of upside
to going with the regional one other than that we know we can do it and we might not be able to find somebody to take the position so I do actually have a question about doing the regional one would having a regional animal control officer put a
strain on your department if it by means of right now if there's a barking dog complaint for example i'm sure we probably don't get them in town but if there was one that comes into you or into your
department they go over assess the situation is there a barking dog or not that would now add another layer to it right now after your department assessed that then they would have to notify this
outside contractor whatever so officers generally respond to noise complaints yes so they would still deal with the noise comp when it gets down to the animal itself whether it be animal abuse or just simple yeah noise complaint for
a dog barking we would as we have in the past and if this was regional we would work with either person whether it's a individual employee or regional service we would work with them um so we would still handle the noise complaint it would just be hey notify them during
this if it's during normal business hours and they have somebody like right now this group also handles some of the towns around us so they may have a patrol car in the area that would respond they're usually in a marked sheriff's cruiser with a uniform and
they respond um they we utilize their services for a lot of things so this would just be one more thing for us to hold on to uh it wouldn't put any extra restraints on okay i just wasn't sure if you know the right now with that all being
inhouse you know it's leaning over hay we had a barking dog there versus you know I don't know what type of formality there is well so you know 8 and a half years ago when I started I was here for almost 10 months before I found out that
the animal officer was actually under my control i had always assumed it was under the board of health because that's where it was in my last time um so he eventually went through cuz there's a lot of certifications you have to do so we eventually went through and did all the certifications but then he retired
and then we ended up hiring somebody else uh that person worked for a few years and then uh took a legal license but now was gone so you know there's still regulations that the ECO has to deal with to be certified to be in that position um we also I think it's a $100
for like barn inspection we also have it listed as an animal inspector so locally we also have that person do that as well i don't believe in regional services and I've reached out to some of the ones around us from Hadley to Deerfield Greenfield and then the sheriff Monu all
those areas uh this is the only one that's gotten back to me um so I mean who knows I could finally get an answer back from the other two and they could be substantially less uh and then I'll bring that to the board and we can make a decision but if we were able to hire
somebody on the existing budget that we have um you know $500 of that or a little bit more than that goes to the dog shelter because that's where we would bring dogs if we couldn't find out who won but but they wanted to raise that to $3,000 this year and backed off
when everybody got hysterical so there it hadn't been updated in 13 years so they increased it and every town said "I don't think so." Uh but the sheriff came back and said "Okay let's revisit this." And they only went up by a certain amount uh but that's to say that in the coming years that's going to go up not
3,000 in one year but it's going to go up um so we use the sheriff's uh dog shelter which is a great resource to have everyone that volunteers for them and everyone that runs in that shelter is their heart is in the right place and you need people like that uh when you're
dealing with animals um so we already worked with them we just work them in a different capacity um so you know if we were to go with a say an employee that's interested in doing it then we would be able to utilize them the problem is they
go to sleep so they have full-time jobs so there's times where you may not be able to get them whereas the regional service you you would have for a good portion of the day so it's it's an option of what you want what you want to get is is there a good knowledge with that organization is there a good
knowledge base and just people who generally work together and do all that kind of stuff yeah I said we I go to their annual meetings i've worked with a lot of them uh in the last 8 and a half years that I've been here i know a lot of my officers have worked with them uh in fact they've even stepped up stepped
up and helped us guide us on a few things since the acco stepped down uh to the leave of absence in in that couple of months so they've worked with us they've bent over backwards work with us are very happy to deal with them and they understand budget constraints so they know that if if we don't go with
this it it doesn't mean we don't want them ever we don't ever want you know a system we don't support them they just know that we're budget you know you know and what what towns utilize that service a lot but it's it's most of Franklin
County um I think Le Wendle just signed on um I don't think Shootsberry doesn't Shootsberry might be talking to a soon soon so there's a lot of agencies that will look I mean um like I said this
fisc year would have been about $8,900 and change so I'm assuming that's going to go up next year our budget for the animal control like I said is just over 5100 and that's to include $500 that went to dog shelter so that when we could if we picked up a dog um so the
acco bought a new chip reader we went and bought a new chip reader so if the ACO wasn't available we at least had it we used it a couple times to figure out who the dogs belong to which is great otherwise we would have to drive the dog to Monagu drop it off there and then have the person reach out and say "Hey I
can't find my dog is it this guy is it him he's in." So what happens if you don't get the position filled um I we no I we need we need Well no I know that but I'm just saying if we get
so your animal control officer just left right is actually no is currently gone so now as of today you don't have an animal control officer going through the advertising the interviews whatever you have to go July
1st that's how long it'll probably take i mean we could try i mean I I would love to push it sooner but I'm not going to stick that on on anyone here because we have budgets we have things to get done if we can streamline and get it done faster great but if we're looking for a July 1st start date um you know if
we have a current employee that is interested and I don't mean police I mean town employee that's interested uh they would have to begin the process of getting the certifications through the state before they can take the reigns if you will going forward so and how much
did you say the the regional thing is going to charge us for the rest of this year for the rest of this year um I think I said 202300 okay uh I do so I kind of feel like I don't want to not have a dog control dog sorry go ahead
i don't think there's been a dog officer since I got here she been on president leave um in October okay end of October and because she hadn't resigned they couldn't do anything about it right so they've been handling this for a little while
um so I guess the question is do we handle it for a while longer or do we sign up for the the regional thing um even if it's to get as a stop gap measure to get us through and then we find out our own person or we decide we like the regional thing or well I don't
think you can go to the regional thing until you've pulled your or you know go to the regional thing now you're you got a contract right but we could sign just till June 30th yeah just through
June 30th but it's the $2,300 $2,233 um and we don't have that right right but I'm just I would think you have to advertise in town first see if somebody's interested before you go and
sign a contract it well I mean if if we're if we're maintaining it as a position if we're deciding to eliminate the position and regionalize with this service and out basically outsource a service to this to the Franklin County Sheriff um we're not it's not like we're
we're choosing one contract over a bunch of them we're not filling that position we're just buying a little time till we decide um so I I don't think we would have to if if we make the decision to forego the internal person and go with the regional thing i don't think we'd have
to offer any position because we're making a choice not to have that position anymore um but then what do we do for July which is you know the question of do we continue having it at $9ish,000 or maybe 10 next year or whatever or do we try to refill
the position at advertise now 5100 or 6,000 or something like that for the following for the following year um has anybody expressed interest that you not to me um there's been rumors that there may be an employee that works for the
town that might be interested um but I don't have that person's number to reach out to them and I just came back from vacation so sure um I can definitely I I don't want to go in ask them because I don't want to make it sound like I'm gearing it towards one
person i think that if we're going to we've already dealt with it for the past few months if we want to go ahead and advertise it out inhouse to local town employees that say anyone's interested in it in a control position the budget is currently this of that it pays for expenses you get a department cell phone
and you know and you get I think it's $100 a week um is what their agreement was so it's $100 a week and then whatever costs above that is paid by the town um but you know a lot of their stuff they
work in partnership with the police department dispatch like I said we give them a department cell phone so that way they could be reached so they can call residents that do follow-ups and all that stuff so um you know we're at a spot now
where given there's going to be a little bit of an increase in the dog shelter I think we're just going to absorb that into this coming contract and not ask for more but the following year we're going to have to ask for a little bit more cuz that dog shelter cost will go up and how much do did you ask her for
this budget for that position so she wasn't around to ask for anything so I'm assuming they kept it yeah I think you had it level so the only addition we made to this budget was the previous year it went from 4,100 to 5100 okay so um because we saw that the acco was
handling a lot of calls and that's just sort of my question more for Becky than for for you is one way the other we need to make sure we have money for the next fiscal year of this service whether it's for the person or whether it's for the for the task force um if that's the case
do we need to increase this line item to be $9,000 um because we can always hire somebody for less than that and not spend it but we kind of need to make sure we have enough to be able to cover a year worth of that oh yeah there is
52 5230 it's 5230 okay uh that's give you $100 a week with the 500 cuz this pays for the 500 $100 a pay sorry oh you just cut their salary in half
okay now I can make that work so so it's $2,600ish for the salary just the salary and then expenses and cell phone and all that stuff and then the 500 for the for 500 plus for the dog shelter and then I think there was an agreed upon rate many years ago of
like$,750 for per hour if they went above and beyond okay so if there's other calls sometimes that would come up um but historically it's $100 every payroll i'm sorry not every week every payroll so that is uh yeah $2,600 just for being on call okay
so and you're saying you that most of the $5,200 for this fiscal year has already been spent there's some money but not a lot left in there not 2200 situation where one of the dogs in town had to be removed and we had to pay for the shuffling costs and that's where
that money okay gotcha um so if we were to say from now till July 1st you guys are on your own unfortunately um can we roll whatever little money is left over in that account into our budget considerations for next year and then
bring that number up to $9,000ish um so that we have the money to be able to be part of of that program if if that's the way we go cuz then either way if if we are able to refill the position in house great maybe we save some money in town and that's fine but if we either
are unable to find someone to fill the position or otherwise the board decides between now and July 1st that the direction we want to go in is that regionalized service we have the money available as there um so that make sense to the board and to Becky
the number so you'd like this budget to be at 9,000 for FY26 you saying 98 or 8,900 is the is the quote for this year i don't know how exactly how much but it's going to be not less than that yeah so for this fiscal year would have been
um 8934 which is averaging $745 per month and that was the rate so um I'm assuming that will go up come FY26 so if we figure that to be let's say 9,100 we'd have to add an additional
600 for the dog shelter that we're now bringing to 97 so it's substantially more what we have budget um could you ask them in reference to the quote they just gave you what FY 26 would be yeah oh
yeah yeah because I'd hate to put in 91 and it's 95 and you know yeah no I can definitely ask that'd be great thank you um and we can have a discussion with the finance committee next week about the specifics of this but just I think that it it doesn't make it makes sense to to
to over budget for that and and cover our bases then to put $5,100 in again and have a special town meeting in the middle of the year for $3,000 it does not make sense to me um so okay okay makes sense any other questions for the board on that one
so I'll let them know that we're going to hold off on this for now till July yeah i mean we don't have the money for it and I don't know that we're going to be able to Yeah and just say you know we're interested in exploring our options come July 1st what are we looking at for our
price then most definitely um and and just to confirm we would still need to maintain the $500 for the shelter as well okay i'm assuming not i I'm thinking she might go up to a thousand you think it might go up to a thousand and there's no
consideration with the deal with the Franklin County with the Franklin sheriff to be able to bring dogs to them directly it just because it sounds like in our old scenario we were paying for the service plus we're paying for dropping off the dogs new one was paying
for more of a package deal yeah unfortunately um the this is the acco shelter okay even though they fall under the the top umbrella they're two separate questions okay and there's no discount for So there's there's plenty of times in Frank you ask that specific
question and they said "No next time." Okay had to ask you know had to ask okay um All right we we will certainly mull over that and figure out where we want to go uh January July 1st and on um but yeah I think unless the board feels differently I think we can't we can't really do anything for the rest of this
year we don't really have the ability to do so all right thank you very much Eric i appreciate it i'm good anything from Thank you so much welcome back hope you had a great vacation a great time we'll
talk to you soon good night Eric good night all righty uh next item is buyback retirement of two staff members request to use free cash and this is the um elementary school teachers retiring um warrant articles that had been mentioned in the past um
discussion around this is this just I just wanted to put it out there because we were talking a lot about free cash and this is another $60,000 of free cash that is referenced in the um the SCES budget a couple of different
times so I just wanted to bring that back to our memory because it it impacts our our overall reserve funds sorry so we're going to be another 60,000 lower of the free cash yeah on
the free pass or 30,000 lower in free cash and 30,000 more out of general stabilization or something like that but right overall 60 morgan did we freeze is the video dead no okay
okay sorry all righty um that's horrible news i knew I knew that was there i just I had I had forgotten about it so yeah think about that um which I guess so the last two items are the buyback
retirement and then also the budget stuff which is all kind of part of the same discussion so we'll roll together um so if I'm hearing you correctly going to our budget documents here the current difference you have here is uh 365ish difference plus
60 plus the money we need to put in the capital stabilization yes okay um and we and we decided the capital stabilization is like 180 or something like that that we're going to put in 183 I think 183 so 183 60 so
243 plus 3 250 300 for the budget cuz it's the 50 plus the 250 okay um so we're looking at two plus 200,000 plus out of each account
okay doesn't have to do here so oh and I um I did the free cash is with the budget file i'm sorry i didn't print it out
separately yeah I'm afraid I didn't print it but it's online um for your review it's online in the uh you should have the Excel file
for the budget uh it's not in today's folder it's in the I think I put it in today's and the budget folder so 331 so it's not in today's there's no Excel file in today's i guess it was a statement not a question i'm sorry would
it possibly be in the budget material folder um yes i've been if I can take a second while while you're looking for that to confirm 363
365 is the general budget shortfall 60,000 is the sick buyback and 183 is the capital shortfall correct okay all that together is almost exactly $600,000 um it's 600,000 and or it's $1,300 short
of $600,000 um so we're looking at 300,000 in in in general stabilization and 300,000 in free cash which is what we had kind of already talked about and is effectively half of each of those numbers because we have just shy of 600 in general and just
around 600 in in free cash and and that's without uh any takeback of the capital stabilization items that I think I I just got a lead on the the biggest one the 4500 i think I found it okay i'm
just it might be available i'm not positive i think it was um in 2020 it was $50,000 on the capital stabilization for um yeah the complete
streets engineering mhm but I haven't connect I don't know what project everybody every project seems to have a different engineering firm that I've been looking at so but there's hope i hope to resolve that one soon because
that's the biggest one other than that I know we have about $40,000 available to bring that down even further um and obviously we can discuss this in more depth uh next week with the finance committee but um I would I would be where I'd like to see
us be is 300,000 from free cash period and then however much we can take that 300,000 of general stabilization and shrink it down by crawling back some money from capital and whatever else we end up doing in the next couple weeks if we can bring that 300 from general down to 275 or 250 that would be ideal
um but right but then this still needs a few more tweaks to it so that number is going to change if we're going to put in there the money for recreation if we're going to put in the potential cost of
the regional animal control now this number here the 365 does that include 6,000 for gym or it's only six okay so So we'll be looking at three more for for Jim yeah and looking for another fiveish for the AOC aoc
account office library what do we do with that we're going um I spoke with Katherine today and Katherine officially withdrew their request for the 7,400 uh they're going to use the grant
money this year and it'll be a pilot program and if it works out then they'll ask for money next year yeah which is what we had discussed last time yeah good okay um so the library is staying the same the uh the police budget is going to um come down to a
$3,000 increase from the level services to the new budget that's in there now I put I subtracted out the 12,500 right just needs whatever he comes in with the number for the regional animal control so so we're
looking at probably about another eight on top of thisish um but potentially 40 maybe $50,000 coming off from the capital side um not out of the budget obviously but out of the calculation for the free cash and for
dental stabilization um so we could be looking at somewhere closer to 550 instead of 600 for from our two accounts when I think Yeah because we're adding back about 12 and and what's in here for the medical is
that the That's the 10.82 that's the best number we get tonight with what Ben Peter was talking about okay there's nothing more coming out there we're pretty close to being this is our budget with a couple of a couple of things tweaked yeah
okay and here is the plan that I need to print out i apologize again i didn't get that printed out ahead of the meeting i saw it okay all right um any other questions from
the board at this time on the budget or are we ready for next week i think we're ready i don't hear any other other uh questions or anything on that um where did they put my agenda somewhere here we go all right
um that's the end of our new business today may I interject new business right we spoken Thursday about possibly adding KSC to the agenda for new business today may I take a few moments i not on the agenda is that all right i sent you all material um we want to do
it during new business or do we want to go to public comment for that oh yeah just in terms of procedure I think new business okay that's fine um please my name is Keith Hitchell i'm with KSC Incorporated and the good news is I'm not asking for any money today uh I run a small uh research and
development firm down in uh on Ammeris Road across from the Tennis Academy and we have Across from where across from Old Tennessee Academy in front of apartments yes yeah shell 665 Ammerst Road we've been there for about 40 years we're a small research firm uh and we're
zoned for research and development and light manufacturing we're working primarily in the area of chemical manufacturer for biiobased plastic development we've been um the last uh six or seven years we've also been partnering with the uh Isles Center at
UMass their incubation center uh helping startups that go into their uh small lab space program that are trying to grow their business we've loaded them into our facilities at the KSC property we have extra wet lab space that they've been using and been able to grow their
startups from um you know what might call benchell operation to pilot scale operation and moved on and out into other parts of the of the state to grow their businesses we have an opportunity to apply uh in the next couple of weeks with Massachusetts Technology Collaborative for what's called a
Massachusetts Tech Hub that is uh an opportunity for us to just continue our existing relationships with Mass with the University of Massachusetts um select or uh partner with other startups that are trying to grow their business help them in the in the forms of uh
space to grow their business some mentorship activities involvement in the community um and help to grow business and uh uh in in the in the town and in the area um and it's also designed to help us scale our existing business into
our own pilot plant development for commercial activity all we need for this opportunity uh for this application is a the town's support uh I've created a a sample or draft letter of support just for your consideration uh but it simply
suggests that uh town of Sunderland is excited about new growth activity in the area uh bringing innovative new technologies to the area and want to support uh KSC's application designation as a tech hub i compare it for example
to the recent a couple years back the um uh which freeman I can't think of the center of the tech hub is out in uh what in Pittsfield I forget the name of this case off the top of my head but it's similar to that where we uh just have a reputation for growing new businesses in
the area and helping businesses grow currently our current uh tenant is called Florent they've uh added 10 or 12 new engineering jobs in the last 12 months in the area they also have a manufacturing facility that they're growing out in Deerfield um which is
helpful to attract business vitality in the area our synergies with the university are not only very close we've got a good lot of good relationships there that we've built over the course of decades uh that continue to attract talent to the area um so for consideration um we're seeking a letter
of support from the town to include in our application the Massachusetts Technetic Technology Collaborative the only caveat is that we're a little bit timestrong we have the April uh 16th deadline and so if you would consider it it'll be a request for a quick
turnaround okay any questions I can answer um my my my big question is what does it mean what does the what does the classification mean it sounds like there's a grant involved so that would be monetary support for you um beyond
the monetary component what else does that entail does is it Sure it's it's growth opportunity for for our company and for those startups that would be in the future affiliated with our company those funds would be used for staffing for our business for capital layout
we've also improved our space uh improved what I call shared lab space that the university might more readily or anybody I say the university because that's where existing relationships are but shared lab space that they come in and kind of step into and grow their business from bench scale wherever the
next step in the scale is um it also would it would include some fun funds for internships which we've participated in over the last decades also uh historically we've invited high schools and elementary school students in tour to try to generate interest in STEM
fields um so those that's what the monies would be used for uh in the next couple of years the grant that we're applying for is $5 million over a three-year term it's in coordination with uh an existing grant that's under negotiation with Department of Energy uh
for $2.5 million again for the the same purpose to scale our business uh and to improve our facilities for future business great how many people do you currently employ we currently currently employ five once this new award is in place with the Department of Energy it's
another four or five engineers uh and on the flip side of our property which is where our other tenant they currently have 10 or 12 uh engineer positions in that space as well florence is the name of their business right but it's on so
665 so the driveway that where the apartments uh the new apartment I say new they're 7 years old now that driveway is uh our side is KC is fronts on 116 their side stems off that driveway oh okay i thought when you said
across from the old tennis academy I was thinking the other side of the road and I'm like across the driveway yeah no I'm thinking there's a pond there and and I'm like I could not picture so you're right behind the bus stop that's right that's right got it
i just couldn't picture where you could even fit five people on the other side of the road near that pond do you have any questions Dan or No I think it sounds great um I mean I'm prepared to vote support this i had I had opportunity thank you for forwarding
materials i had opportunity to approve those earlier and it all looks good on my end motion to support second all right we have a motion made and seconded to uh write a letter of support all those in favor i I I three nothing we will do so and thank you very much we really
appreciate everything you're doing for ST field thank you all righty now that's the end of our new business uh for old business select board updates uh I don't have anything for this week crystal I have South County EMS on Thursday
hopefully nothing happens and we can actually have it wonderful it just seems like so much weather or maybe whatever i think personnel board for the cog this week but nothing nothing go back
any town ministry updates yes all right um today I interviewed with uh Beanie she her real name is Katherine uh Pierce is her last name there's a middle name but she is um interviewing
for a board of health 5-hour week position she's very excited about it and she was recommended um by Gina our one of our board of health agents she worked with Gina early in her career and um
since that time uh she's left Montigue as their town clerk well she actually hasn't left yet she's um she's using up all her sick and vacation time instead of um
having it paid out and um so she's going to be available on the 16th of April mhm and I will bring her name back for um consideration for appointment at the next meeting and um the board of health
is very happy wonderful no it's great to get that position filled and it sounds like a great candidate so yep any questions on that from the board beautiful thank you very much for taking care of that nothing off the checklist
a long list yes any other time for updates or is that future that's it all righty beautiful um the only thing we have in our correspondence is a letter from Mark Derso uh the former head of the Sunderland Youth Baseball um informing the town this is something we
got sent to us back in February I want to say informing the town that the the Citizen Baseball League is no longer going to be maintaining the fields and running the baseball program as we've discussed multiple times over the last couple months um so just letting everyone know that we did in
fact get an official letter to that to that end um from the baseball department and Mark um and just on that note I wanted to say thank you again to Mark for all the hard work over the last bunch of years um I know how much work it go takes putting into that um not just the day-to-day operations of running the program but also the the um
basketball tournament the the outreach stuff they do um just there's a lot there i know how long and hard he's been working at that and we really appreciate it um and completely understand coming to an end of that um and we you know we acknowledge that um so thank you again
Mark for all that um and thank you to Jim for taking it over all right um that's it for correspondence uh we don't have any public comment i don't see anybody on the screen or the one that's working definitely nobody over there as a hand
up um all right uh we don't have executive session today at this time I would entertain a motion to adjurnn i motion weird second all right with a motion made and seconded all those in favor i pi