well in that case I will only call to order the select board at 6:32 p.m. all right our first order of business will be to approve the minutes from our last joint select board and finance committee meeting um from 1:27
2025 do I hear a motion I motion we approve the minutes from 127 second all right we have motion made and seconded to approve the minutes from 127 all those in favor I I I three
wonderful all right so we have a bunch of budget request stuff to go over today so our first order of new business will be to review the highway department fore 26 budget request unfortunately um or is George not George is not the first one
here let me check on him so maybe if we will bump George to the end that is what happens when you're not here on time his loss is your guys gain cuz you guys will all get out of here faster so we're going to move on to the highway department uh no said Highway sorry the fire department keeping you on your toes
um with Chief Benjamin Chief thank you I would say if you want to go to the Building Commissioner he may be in he might appreciate that as well we're just going to forget about the order here and we're going to go Rogue and we're going to have fun so um please take it away whenever you're ready okay U basically
everything the same just the year of last year um youing heads up and maybe just discuss it while we're here is this is the only town I was able to talk the software company not going up and I don't know how because if the other towns I signed up for the first that I
worked at southam West hadle but we didn't get the 20% increase it's going to come I'm sure so what we did in in Hadley was we um was $2 went from $10 to to $12 we just that's charged additional
to the permit so I didn't know maybe something we could if it happened it wouldn't affect the budget if we just brought it in if we I didn't put it on we discussed it and do that if that changed I'm sorry so the fees are how much right now it's um we're based on 4,000 I think it's year
for the program okay and we we base it um for permit added to the program so it doesn't cost the people in but they're going to go up 20% they did go up 20% last year and we'd already put the budget through was after June so I
talked about not adding the 20% to Sun okay so it would have been it's going to be $400 that's what I'm assuming okay and didn't know if since it's not on the agenda if we could that would be the only change in my budget but um if it could just be added to the you know the
program to the $2 whatever it came out additionally to each permit yeah I mean that that would be how I would I would prefer to do it would be to have that that be reflected on the cost of the permit because the whole program is supposed to sort of be yep as Revenue
neutral as possible in general right so it won't cut into any Revenue know anything so yeah um do do any of you have a opinion on on that that's right so that be $4,800 I'm not sure they haven't it was 20% across the board so you're right it
be 48 so we look at increasing fees to cover the additional $800 right okay all right I don't have any additional questions about your budget it's very straightforward and we appreciate the work you do crystal Dan anything you want to ask no I think it's fine good
anyone on finance finance committee that wants to ask any questions call the finance committee since we have a forum now there we go um and uh wonderful well thank you very much for coming in and good call Chief on good to see you have a great one
thank you very much that's how you build camaraderie all right um now we will shift over to our fire chief chief Enderman thank you what I'll start with this evening is the capital
request forward for the oil separator the public safety and what this is is it's a settling tank when the the Flor drains
in need of the appar way or the police department selling for collect water from the vehicles there's always some grease some oil what have you that's in in there and this settlement tank allows that grease and water to separate out
before it goes into the storm s so it lasts a long time without being pumped out I can't remember the last time it was empty I'm sure it has been in the life of the building but uh the time has come for it to be emptied because in the
uh in the summer we lifted the uh the lid to the manhole outside and it looked pretty full now I cannot find anywhere in the construction drawings anything the size of the tank but I made a
presumption based on some of the rough measurements that we were to make and I received a quote back from Western Mass environmental on the the labor and the materials to uh pump that out in the disposal and that also was attached to
the request and um it's probably not one of those things that we want to wait on but U something that shouldn't be necessary again for quite a while just given the amount of the amount of time that's gone by the other thing that probably takes up most of the space in
there is the sand from the vehicles we do not wash the sand down the drain on purpose we have a a trough drained in the middle of the bay we rinse the trucks off in the winter time after every call get the salt and sand off of them let the water run down and then we
will sweep the sand up when it dries but inevitably you're going to get some sand and S findes that washing so it's probably uh if I had to guess inside of that sistern um probably 80% sand and
10% oil sludge and so forth and the other percent leav and water and mud but regrettably we're going to treat it all as hazardous maturity that's why the quote is a little steep but we're confident that
the $88,000 will more than cover it and if we lock out and that tank is a little smaller than we had estimated it'll be a savings okay is it so that's it's does it reach official to Capital
,000 yeah what was what was the dollar amount in that again I think the 5,000 yeah where we're at it's gone through you folks I didn't we have a discussion about upping that to 10,000 I don't know if we actually V you have two documents and one uses five and one uses 10 I
think they've both been voted yes um okay so we can we can clarify that at some point um but yeah I I I feel this this is close enough to that threshold either way that we're over one and we're close to the other one either way I'm uncomfortable that being a capital request um but yeah and obviously it
needs to be done and sounds like it's not something that needs to be done super often so if we you know split that over a decade or so you know probably less than $1,000 a year exactly yeah um all right great and then
in the general uh your general budget it looks like it's couple couple things in here that um might jump out at you try to print it big enough so try to find the right distance here uh going down the list uh
for fire chief wages you'll see that there's an 11% increase that's requested uh what happened last year and I can't quite put my finger on it but um that line item encompasses both my St in the St
for deputy chief um last year the in last year's budget process for this year's budget the stien for chief Zol was not included I suspect what might have
happened was somebody took a look at my stien and just put that in the budget but didn't also include the deputy chief statement so uh earlier this fiscal year we found a way to get that Sion funded
so that's okay but the figure that that is here represents that difference to get us back to where that was before and that's not um it's not including any increases or what have you that I'm sorry could you explain with
the number so it says um expended in 2025 was $784 is that right um so far yes okay and is that whose salary is that one that's for my Sten and the deputy chief
Sten if you look two years ago you can see what he's saying it was 21795 and up by 24 yeah the budget dropped and then it's coming back up but we didn't cuz it Doesn't but you have gotten it corrected
both of you have have been paid or are getting paid yeah we're we're working that through there's an email thread from the from to administrator as to how we were going to handle that could you share that with me sure
I'm sure it's there somewhere but there's a few thousand yeah I can move it back up to the top for you thank you okay and then further down for fire department wages I am asking for a bit
of an increase there because we have um we have not increased wages for the fire department um in a long time probably 5 six years and firefighters are getting $18 an hour for
call did a bit of an informal wage survey with my peers and that's about as low as I found and we even pay we pay minimum wage for drills $15 an hour for drills and we have good participation
for drills a couple of hours a week but um had a had a firefighter mentioned to me that he was looking for part-time work and this was in addition to being on the fire department this was the lowest uh
pay that he had seen was what we get on the department so um the idea is to um depending on what we end up with with funds to bump hourly pay up to perhaps $20 an hour and uh maybe have the
officers get another dollar an hour just to signify the extra time that they put in outside of calls I guess one of my questions would be um I'm assuming that your your off your firefighters don't fall underneath the
Personnel committee's purview because they're not Town employees in that way is that correct um they should I don't think we do I mean I guess I guess my question is is that usually it's because their Union I don't know why the fire department doesn't so so my question is
that we do a cola yearly that get applied for Town employees for people who aren't part of a collecting bargaining unit otherwise I guess my question be why are we not applying that to the the firefighters um it's it's a great question it historically it has not been applied
yeah so it's been part of my budget that make a request um and ask for generally more or the same MH that being said I I support a raise for the firefighters it's valuable work
that we all all very much depend on um and to be honest $18 an hour is too too little so thank you um for my for my for where I'm sitting at least I think that's a very reasonable ask to to make that more in line with other departments and More in line with just the general
labor market in in general yeah and then we'll take um to Personnel committee and say again even if it's if it's not FSE under Personnel committee I think moving forward we have to start making
considerations are we going to also bump these the same as the colas and not have this falling super far behind you know yeah I'd rather it be a
yearly thing than a every 5 years you come in here and we bump it up a chunk you know you know one the last time it got bumped up not off the top of my head it was probably I said five or six years ago
preo yeah that as AAR y Milestone yeah so so you're asking to go from 32 to 368 on that is that correct okay now the other thing you might see is the um the
expended uh expended in fiscal year 24 mhm that was a year where we had uh several long fir watches that we had to hold at the apartment complexes and remember that I build the complexes and
recovered those funds okay so that's why if you look in the out of that out of that account you'll see the spend was higher but it was funded by reimbursement from the property own
gotcha Sor yeah I do remember that that was a that was a whole thing for all of us yeah yeah that was a whole thing and a half yeah going down to the next one fire department expenses uh again I'm not exactly sure
why it happened but the budget was cut by $7,000 last year to um to make something balance out and um I was given some arpa money to make that Delta up this year which is okay
but I need that number to be back to its original figure for the coming year because we do have expenses um that we really can't put off in terms of purchasing so asking for that 7,000 to
get put back into the budget for year I'm sorry Steve where in the budget it was the 7,000 um I fire department expenses same so it's just expenses it's in that 35 to
42 to 42 so you want it 42 because of the 77,000 thank you y right like in 24 that was the budget was higher but yeah went down said low at least you got your suit right we got yeah the gears ordered it
should be here in a month or two wonder the other thing to bear in mind um with these with these expenses um in addition to that we're starting to plan ahead because if you may have seen in
the news the P polow Ral are not going to be allowed in firefighting GE any longer which is a good thing for firefighters but it's a bad thing for the budget because that here is you know a set of gear is about
$3,500 the nonpast gear is probably close to 4,000 4500 so we've going to just prepare ourselves for that additional expenditure we'll buy anywhere from two to three sets a gear a year to keep ourselves in the rotation so we don't
have this huge bill that comes do at one point for 4 or 50,000 and um want to make sure we looking ahead to build that in slowly and even potentially next year try out a set of that here instead of
until the last possible minute we've done that not only with the the gear itself but also with the hoods the hood is something it's almost like a Bic lava you put that's right up on your neck it's on your face um does a
good job of filtering out the smoke and the junk but any chemicals that are in that you're absorbing right into your so yeah I hear I hear p and I hear thunder in the background in you know like the Phantom toe Booth every time someone says Castle in the Sky cuz past
is a man it is a whole word around around this part um so yeah no we we we appreciate that you giving us that heads up um and also obviously being financially responsible now about looking forward to that that's important of course
um all right and then and then the the civil defense thing that's just a we have no no control over that that's the subscription goes up and either we still keep using it or we don't the the civil defense line item that is for the um code red reverse 91 we use
and there's probably different different tools we could utilize for that but the police chief uses that a lot more than I do we use it occasionally but we've determined that it for what it does it's a good value and darn it they're all
price for it about the same so have a lot of a lot of flexibility uh the F car radio system the line item below that is something that with any luck in a handful of years will not have to pay
into any longer okay because that's the the money that goes towards supporting the regional radio system that the the towns if you will are still responsible for we've transitioned over for our radios to a state system which the
Commonwealth is paying for um which is great uh it's a digital system versus the um analog system that we're still maintaining um digital system still has some holes in it it doesn't work everywhere it doesn't work all the time
state troopers have the same problem fireplace has that problem they're doing a good job to to get to a point where it's got almost full coverage or as full coverage as you could want M uh but the um the paging aspect with these devices
how we called out on calls is still in some areas running off of that old analog radio system so the the $88,000 that we're going to put forward is going to keep that radio
system going and then with any luck the digital system will fill in completely we can talk on the radio and Page digitally and then those Towers won't be a cost anymore okay I don't know how much longer that's going to and that's a f Cog level decision anyways that's not something that's you decide at this
level okay yeah and you know if the world was perfect the the digital system would be working for everything Y and we wouldn't have to worry about the anog um here in town we've got digital coverage in
probably 90% of the areas and it's getting better and better uh there are some towns where they're at 50% so it's kind of an all oring thing because depending on your graphy the different Towers being signals into different parts of different towns so
we're all in it together from that aspect and we kind of need fire coverage in 100% of the town so by the time you can actually see it it's too late to really do anything about it no um so the um the last two the town park or the
last one the Town Park um line there's nothing else to um to put in there that funding is sufficient we've been able to get some uh generous donations from people in town and businesses and so forth to make some improvements there
as time's going on Highway Department to help out an awful lot thr something over your George grading out the driveway and fixing things here and there is a is a huge help so and and a huge thank you to you and
the volunteer fireman Association for maintaining that property um and for everyone involved for keeping it as beautiful as it is so that's wonderful thank you that's what I've got prepared I will just say that uh last calendar year ending in uh
December uh 24 we had the most calls that we've ever had 194 calls fire calls in town um year before was in the 160s um 180s was the previous high water mark so we've done a lot more um fortunately
looking at my little fire chart here about half of them are false alarms uh we did have 18 fires they weren't all big fires that uh that made the news but 18 of those instances and then also um about 21% and this is a a rising number
uh was assisting South County uh because their numbers are going up and we found uh a lot more calls for Lift assists where Chief Sparks may send three EMTs
paramedics would have you but the patients are either can't move them with three people uh or they're in a position where going to go downstairs uh perhaps there's a a hoarding situation so sometimes you need five six eight people
totra patient so um across the board everything is sort of ratcheting up probably nothing that's new with you folks um in terms of services and and need but uh we are getting busy this year if the trend continues we break 200
calls in in the calendar year 25 okay any other questions anything from the board no no anything from finance committee that's a general question not
about a particular budget line um just around uh finding people who were able to fill in some of these shorter term assignments whether it's you know you know kind of part-time here doing uh you know some of the fire drills things like that when we were speaking about police
I know that the parttime police not that it's the same thing but that was kind of what You' seen there in terms of your talent pool that you're able to draw from as you need well it's a good point because we're still maintaining 20 firefighters that are that are active um
we've got a few that are um I'll say on the way out but for a good reason one of them uh is going to be in paramedical school just doesn't have the time um another one is nearing retirement age naturally slowing down a
little bit um for uh for for new folks I probably get five or six inquiries a year good good solid reasonable uh inquiries from people that are capable but um this year so far
um it's a early year but I'll say year because last year we didn't have any new members uh but this year we just have one member a new member that we re hired um know person that works in Greenfield lives here in town and so far so good
she's been really good uh filling in the the shorter term assignments if it's not a call where the tone goes out and people are responding we just plan ahead and uh a lot of the time I'll do the fire drills at the elementary school I
I'll either during my lunchtime if I'm working out of the house or I'll take a half a day of second time we do those um sometimes a deputy chief can do that when it comes down to the safe program where we're in the school and we're facilitating instruction on fire safety
uh there's a CPR component to that too that's planned ahead people will will take a day out of work off perhaps if they have that sort of a schedule and we'll make that fit um the thing that we have the hardest time Staffing is going
to be the um the fire call at 10: a.m. on a Tuesday when you might need two or three people and you only have one um sometimes we don't have anybody in town
or one person that's usually in town has Co so they can't go anywhere and that's when we have self deer field or M Center or Comm in mutal only happens a handful of times a year we really you know every every fire
chief cringes when that happens but that's the reality of it um we're still doing well Staffing calls that we've had um you know if you figure five times a year you've got to call Mutual Aid because there isn't anybody available
but you have 200 calls that's not a horrible percentage um especially when you look at the fact that no town is immune to it even the towns that have full-time fire departments they've got to call in mutual Aid sometimes because everybody's busy you know we have calls
I don't have that particular number here um with me but we have concurrent calls where you're out on a call and then another call comes in and then I think there was one time this year we had a third call come in three calls going at the same time um
so we're managing well with the the workload that we have could always use more firefighters um but it seems like the um the people that do
inquire uh either live too far away or once we talk to them about what the expectations are what the commitment is for time um they they say you know thanks but no thanks didn't know that there was uh that it was so formalized with training with you've got to make a
certain number of calls or else we're going to talk to you about if this really makes sense it's uh it's probably harder than ever but we're maintaining people and we can get one or two new people every year
that'll be enough to backfill right thank you sure I need to have a similar question gu so we talked to the police department we know that when they get new people they have to train them they send them to the officer of training when you get new people do we train them inhouse or do you send
them to another institution we train and where where's that in the budget so good question there's three uh there's three components to that uh we do train in house uh weekly usually Tuesday nights 7 to 9: p.m. that training and that
training covers a whole bunch of things from first responder training up we've got to have driver training for the trucks um ice rescue you name it you know cat out of a tree yeah we do that
um so that's in house that's that's that cost is embodying in the payroll because we're paying people to to show up and so forth the next level up would be a new were initiative that's been put forth in the county for uh countywide
train we call the Franklin six uh we're not too proud we stole that name from Hampshire County they at the Hampshire 6 and what that is is six weekends it's a Saturday and a Sunday where um the the
towns in the county each provide instructors and they switch off some instructors are there for one day some come for three or four some of there for the whole time and what that is is a a Bare Bones start to firefighting it's familiarity with and it's not that we
don't do this in house but training regionally is important because you're fire Mutual work uh working Mutual Aid with another town it's nice to have everybody train the same so we will send a new war firefighter that's been with
us maybe for a year or two has like the basics down and understands what the nure is and the names we'll send them there um again six weekends that is a nominal cost $100 and then we pay the
people for their time so again that's included in the in the budget and then the next step up after that would be the mass fire academy Commonwealth has several classrooms of closest from testles in Springfield uh East Springfield they'll do a
hybrid uh calendar part of the classes will be in Springfield when they do the burns sometimes they're at the South Deerfield fire station sometimes they're in sundland sometimes they're remote and what that does is uh it gives the
firefighters a lot of time uh hundreds of hours but they will graduate from that with a certificate so they are trained uh probably to the 80% level of a full-time career firefighter without some of the Hazmat and the more in-depth
things that the career firefighters would get uh we pay those people for their time out of the P budget but the Commonwealth provides that to us at no cost so uh the vast majority of our training is funded through the payroll
um occasionally we'll send people to trainings that we pay for but those are pretty pretty rare pretty lucky that we've got the uh the the regional support but also the state support for all that
education just one quick question what percent of your calls are medical about 20% 20% about 20% and that's again um a lot of those calls are supporting South County
ambulance there's maybe once or twice a year where the ambulance is at the hospital heading to the call and we'll be the first ones on the scene for you name it could be anything from uh someone going into labor for a a cardiac
event somebody fell down could be anything but uh the coverage from south county is good um but there's those times when you just need more hands and that's when you get get so how how what percent is traffic
related traffic related Mize that 's see here it's probably not broken out specifically here but just looking at the chart and what else is
here about 15% 15 so it's a relatively High number uh mostly fender benders yeah and uh people doing D things in cars occasionally we'll get a a high speed
action on 116 turn to a tree 47 up north uh Amazon driver L launching himself off small Cliff like we had last weekend but that was on private property so great thanks on
Fall any other questions from anybody I want to thank you for your annual event at the fire station CH contest coming up again probably April thank you thank you very much Chief we
appreciate it have a great day too stick around L as you are entirely welcome to do all right so uh next up is going to be South County EMS um I we you have some good news for
us today hi everybody U thank you Chief Benjamin we do appreciate keep it Comon um so this year um we've seen a number of
changes to uh the budget as proposed um primarily our increases come in the form of personnel costs um as one would expect we are looking at Cola raises and step
increases um the bigger issue here is we've seen a really dramatic increase in the cost of health insurance for our full-time employees um we've seen you know modest
increases in retirement uh and such um the good news is we've had a really nice year uh the revenues have been as we anticipated a higher or lower I think uh our estimate was fairly spot on and our
operating costs have decreased um there's been some consolidation of services if you Peru uh and I won't go line by line but I'm happy to answer any questions about any single line item um
some of the services have gone down quite a bit uh you'll see a couple of them appear to have increased dramatically but that is because of consolidation of dupli services uh this year we are putting um
$200,000 in retained earnings into the budget to offset so we're very pleased that in spite of the increased in cost to the department we're able to ask for
6.6% less than the previous fiscal year uh so a total sundland assessment uh ask of $ 22,36 any questions from the board I've had time to look at it so you guys I know haven't had the time I had
so anything from you D no already no okay great finance committee than how does it what's the formula for each Town's um allocation to do you have a copy of it I do yeah
but how how I know how it works in school here so it's basically it's shared um depending on the percent of service given to
community period or year year to year so right now if you look at this it says fiscal year 26 requested on the front page it's 414 T of deeri right so basically how many calls we do in a
specific and those numbers are consistent here to ratio we look at it but it hasn't change any other questions um find things look on the Personnel side you mentioned that's where the pressure is you know are you kind of in a stable
place in terms of the size of fulltime or part-time you like how what is the labor size what you guys are doing would look like yeah sure we are exceptionally lucky um right now across the country there is
um real difficulty getting us Personnel um there is an assume shortage um we don't have that problem right now we are very appropriate with staff we just
hired um a handful of per DM employees um these are you know non-benefited hourly employees who don't work regular shifts but um they really contribute so much to our department we have a core
group of time fulltime employees that are there 24/7 uh and then the pr F in the gaps so we are perfectly staffed for the time being that's subject to change as these things
anything else from finance committee I had a question so on the staff and wages um both director and full-time staff and call staff what kind of hourly increas is that implied in that in those so it total is a 52% it's 3% coal
and a 2 and a half% step step is something they get as um bylaw employees of the town of Deerfield and the cola um Loosely
parallels what the town of Deerfield applies towards its bylaw employes as of this year our uh payroll compensation is separated from the rest of the Town um so that we can
stay competitive with other EMS agencies um and that 5 and a half% is basically keeping us in line with the local and the direct was part of the contract when you were hired one more question just on health
insurance you know we saw it at the Town level I see it's doubled in two years you know how much of that is in pool increase or utilization versus more falltime employees versus the same full-time employees but just more people taking it like is there some Trend
underneath those numbers in it doubling years uh it's a great question and uh and almost impossible one to answer um I don't know I don't perceive that our employees are using the services anymore
and we don't have any additional full-time employees okay uh I will say that uh across the country the healthcare environment is in an interesting place right now um as um a
healthare administrator it's a world I live in uh and it's an interesting time uh it's very expensive for and I see that increasing in the
future s what what percent of your employees take your health insurance or this health insurance versus their spouses or yeah again we're very lucky to have pretty good health insurance so most and which one is
it uh so we have an option through the town I take it's the same thing that just to give you a sense of the problem we got a letter today from uh the Maya health insurance provider uh we
had been hoping we would be the a group that was closer to a 14% increase we were told it could be between 12 and 19 well ours came in at [Music] 19.97% SEL board on any of this
stuff all right thank you very much we appreciate it absolutely all right our final budget presentation of the day will be from our Highway superintendent George
welcome we are fantastic [Music] lot of the line items that we have here just small small increases try to keep up with some of the cost of everythingg 300 add a few more D and stuff like that
um all right the salaries for all the workers put in a number for that because the Personnel committee hasn't decided on what we're going to do for Cola um so
that get put off till you guys decide what we're getting that gets put in highly labor overtime I added about $500 to that because of all the extra call-ins wind storms in the
summertime um trees down lines down anything like that flooding we've been having a lot of a lot of heavy rainstorms that cause a lot of Havoc so cover some that time the extra
20,000 in my highway General expense that's going to help with us doing two approximately two days of crack ceiling the generally anything out of my budget generally doesn't like road work and stuff like
that doesn't come out of my budget it comes out of our chapter 90 so this is going to help supplement our chapter 90 just a little bit instead of taking it out of chapter 90 we're going to try to put it in the budget last year I talked to you guys about possibly doing this and Jeff said it would be best to try to
put it in the budget this year CU I wanted to do like a capital thing on it last year and so he thought it would be best to put in the budget this year um chapter 90 does not go as far as it used to at all so in the future I think we're
going to have to try to started supplementing some of our road work through budget um you know crack seiling I think it's a good good maintenance item to keep keep you know keep going through with that
stuff um it helps we in the past haven't done it because we've had other stuff to do that was that cost more than just the crack cealing so um that's what I want to put my budget this year to see if we can
start helping something like that okay and then the fuel expenses just fuel gets more expensive every year so okay um any question questions from the
board about the uh about the budget items I'll just comment that I totally understand the chapter 90 is a you're getting 60% of what you get a couple years ago so and I definitely think crack sealing is a smart thing to
do so is there just a typo on what's been expended on um Highway Fuel expense it just seems to be this far into the year and that's all you've spent on fuel
,500 yeah yeah that's okay that's fine it just you know it when you see that number you're going why are we increasing this if that's all we spent so far this year yeah usually it's like 5,000 Lo yeah yeah no
that's not a problem I just want to make sure that you know is a miles per gallon fery out there that's giving us really good miles I was gonna say that's like fishes and wine I don't remember buying a whole bunch of
electric buz [Music] motors all right uh any other questions from flick board finance committee just a chapter 90 question I'm sure we talk about this for hours into
that but you you mentioned crack ceing is that other maintenance items intended to be funded out of chapter 90 like as as we say if we don't have enough is it because we need to do more things and the program is not expanding or it's just so anything to do with road work or
maintenance or anything like that can come out of chapter 90 you can buy equipment out of chapter 90 but generally I do not like to do that because it takes away from doing your road work and all that stuff so I I tend to not use that money for that sure
um Paving crack sealing oil and stone um shoulder work you can actually put tree work in there when you're doing a project so if you're doing a road work job you can have tree work if you had trees to remove on that job so that all can come out of chapter 90 line painting
comes out of uh actually line painting has been coming out of my budget since I've been here um it's about doubled the same one yeah in line painting last year I I painted and it was almost 18,000 wow and
I couldn't believe it it's it's gone up a ton so thanks um but we are you are getting an extra 100,000 this year yeah this year of chapter 90 and the governor is they're trying to do another 100 million
to keep it going every year based on Miles only yeah that would be lovely and that I mean they've been talking about it since Deval Patrick was in office so let's hope they really get it done because 300,000 a year is what we
needed 25 years ago and we're finally going to get it so thank you George for making do yeah no we we fully fully acknowledged that what you're being given currently from the state is not
enough and so yep just uh made have miss any Capital expend expected coming up soon prepared because I thought my meeting was in two weeks she called me like where are you
I'm like I thought my meeting was in two weeks soly any trucks being replaced soon there is no trucks in the next four years probably um I did put in for a new tractor to replace our
1970 John Deere tractor that we have it's older than I am it's a classic so um it's been a great tractor uh we're having some problems with it right now we have to we had to put a clutch in it and the PTO shaft wore out
so we had to take the whole thing apart and we're in the process of trying to get parts and put that back together so um most of the work was done in in in house but there was some stuff that we had to sent out somebody with a little more knowledge of the guts of the
tractor to put it back together um that was the roller the roller and the tractor are the only ones I'm seeing on the list yeah the roller the second one you want I mean I understand we're probably going to be hurting this year so the roller can always go on the side
cuz we tend to We tend to swap out a lot of other towns with with equipment and stuff like that shared so we tend to you know I'm good friends with a bunch of other towns so we kind of B borrow and steel from each other it works well okay what's your hot
piece of equipment that they want to borrow all the time the hot box so they take that we steal their rer yeah and it's great to have those type of relationships cuz work for all the
towns everyone owning all that stuff and then you got to house it you got to house it and you only got so much room in that building yes getting tight any other questions from finance
committee so I'm wondering on the snow icine you the snow and Ice Line we all generally increase because we can we can deficit spend it so prior select boards always one to keep that number kind of small because if you have it too big you
can never use that else so they've always kept it small so we can always increment it for a little bit out of time and I put one in got [Music] my this like anally it's way different
like one year is one like it's we see last last year we barely used we barely used the extra deficit this year I'm already blown through it it's this year's been crazy that's why I was curious you just kind of so that that number stays kind of the
same each year I think one in one one year in the whole time I've been here I think they increased it a little bit I'm not much I think the other benefit is if you if it's a FEMA situation if we get a name storm going through um you know
then we'll get if the number of the amount of Town money is smaller we should get more federal dollars is part of the game yep that makes sense all right any other
questions I don't see anybody online so excellent thank you very much George we appreciate everything you do every year with the Sho stream budget that you do it with so thank you thank you George is also on the personel committee so have a great thanks thank you
everybody for your presentations we really appreciate the hard work thank thanks thank you all all righty so uh it's on the uh agenda but we are going to push the select board and Town Administrator budget off to our next budget meeting in two weeks um to try to
keep things fairly lighted so you were done with Finance for yes have a motion to finance second first second Mor allour two weeks thank you thank you guys we
appreciate it we'll see you in two weeks all right so that is all of our new business tonight uh under old business select board updates I have nothing Crystal I have nothing um South County got postponed from last Thursday due to
weather so hopefully we'll we'll make it there this week I have one that Senior Center study Community forums coming up it's going to be three of give them uh it's Wednesday the 19th of February 6:00 p.m. at
Frontier Friday the 28th 10:30 a.m. at the weightly Town Hall and Wednesday the 19th of March 2: p.m. sundland Library so those three forms I guess you maybe put it probably get on the website right yeah we need to make an announcement
yeah but uh you know so definitely we want to go again they get the two sites they don't the sun site isn't included but at least you'll hear what they're proposing what they have and what the costs are going to be and all that so uh if you're interested definitely definitely go attend now will they have
those online also or are they only inperson meetings do you know if they have zoom capability to do those I don't know the answer to that but I don't know I she wasn't planning hybrid meetings I don't think so I think they're just live yeah I think that's why they're doing
three okay yeah they must be live that's that's all like it all right great thank you very much Dan um Town Ministry updates Becky I have a couple I already shared the health insurance news um that came this morning and 20
Heather and I have are reviewing a sheet with potential changes um five and we can get reduce 55% by adding a$ 250 $750 deductible that does doesn't currently
exist as well as a few other things we think we can get it down about 7% um but we're going to be meeting with Wendy Carell the our rep um she didn't get back to us with a date yet but she had already told me second week of
February so we should be meeting with her soon okay now the increase that they that they're they're quoting us um is that largely based on our usage of in the last year is it we we had high usage of our plan this last year is that
why it's on the upper end of that range I think what you're talking about I I think there must have been a high amount of claims yeah but when we spoke to her in early December she said our claims had come down in
2024 and appear to be coming down some more this year so we weren't expecting to be the highest we knew she had told us our first couple of years we had a very high claim rate um so for a small
new group for them we've been very expensive um but we didn't anticipate being the top yeah okay from which um our Communications with her so that was shocking now is there a possibility and
again I know understand understand deductibles and stuff are all just more out of pocket money but is there the ability for the employee
to have options on their deductible amount so like I'm an employee with health insurance my rate would be X number of dollars for no deductible it would be a little bit cheaper
for a $250 deductible and it would be even cheaper for $1,000 deductible and I'm not saying those are the right numbers to pick but if
we no I see what you're saying and that would give the option to the employees yeah I don't know if we can do plan design changes at that micro level yeah the one thing I I have done before so I
know it's possible to do um like one of the items here is um a two adding a $250 outpace outpatient surgery co-pay it's a 1.2
percentage points off the plan if we were to do that um add the $250 fee um the copap but at the same time develop a Town Fund for ,000 the first
year and set it up with an agreement so that if anybody needed this service the town would pay the $250 deductible and that would take the cost out of the
employees and when we did it in shutesbury I think we had had I think we had one or two in five years so we more than paid for the deduction and brought down the costs and we were able to get a union
agreement um to this you just have to put together an education piece and make sure it gets mailed out to the um out to the subscribers but that that's one concept I was trying to think of something that
because I I believe the unions have to approve any design changes we make so it's not like Heather and I can go through and say yeah we got it we here 7% that's what we want we got to go check with the unions too what's the
current what now between employer employee um employee pays 35% and um the town PS pay 65% okay and that's all negotiated obviously yeah and that's yeah yeah that's where it's at I know
the Personnel Board has talked about trying to do a percentage Point here there we've always wanted to be able to you know start paying more but when the rates keep going up like this it's really hard to say yeah this this increase Heather's
original estimate was about just under 150,000 for 18% So 20% it's like 170 175 and it's also tremendous I mean the thing to keep in mind also is it's also going to affect the amount coming out of
the paychecks of the employees well CU they're paying that 35% so it's in it's in both the town and the employees best interest to find creative ways to save save money for both of us and hopefully not impact the out of pocket on their
end as much yeah try to identify things that we can do that'll be a limited in cost but you know add to the percentage like if we could get it down to a 10% increase but I don't know if we can y yeah and you know
unfortunately it's a loss of services to do that whether it's you know yeah paying a deductible or you know I mean we've all been there at one point we were you know 28 years old and we didn't care what our
deductible was because we didn't go to the doctors and we didn't you know yeah use the service and then you know you get to be 60 and you start going to the doctors more often and you
got you know little health problems that you want to and that's when the deductible starts hurting you so is there any way for us to incentivize Town employees using their spouse's insurance for example if if if someone
being on our insurance costs the down $15,000 at year or something like that can we have a some kind of a like a a stipend or a health savings account that we could offer if you don't take our insurance you can have this other
thing that cost the town less than insurance does that might Bridge the gra the gap between our insurance and so someone's spouse's Insurance um I'm afraid that I know the impact of an increase like this does that
automatically without us asking yeah but just being like if if employee a is costing them $10,000 a year out of pocket or 11,000 for their spouses and we offer them $2,000 to switch to their spouses we save money they save money
everybody's happy a lot of companies you know and I'm not saying municipalities but where I work for example if my spouse is eligible for insurance um from their place of
employment but chooses to take mine I pay $125 penalty a month for my spouse to be on my insurance yeah and I'm not necessarily saying I want to go in the direction of penalizing people but if we
can find a way to incentivize the offic some of these people may have going on to their spouse's insurance may have that type of thing already in place that's what I'm saying if we offered to pay that fee as a town we'll we will pay your spousal fee at your
company if you don't take our insurance it's still going to cost the town of Sunderland way less money than it would having that person on that insurance um and to be clear this is just of spitballing I have no idea whether this is even necessarily legal or not like that um I'm just asking whether it's
something we can so many laws about you know you're not supposed to ask you know even if they're you know when you're hiring you're not ever supposed to ask if they're going to take the health insurance you're supposed to leave that
area neutral so I will check it out if we had a policy that existed and we didn't ask anyone about it but they knew that if they chose to not take the insurance that there was an additional stipend or a health savings account or something like that that the town offered to to help offset the cost of
them getting their insurance elsewhere where um we still don't have to ask them anything about that it would just be something that was available again I don't know whether it's it's Kosher for a number of reasons just a thought in terms of uh cuz there's really only a couple ways to reduce our our health insurance costs and one of those is
having fewer people actually on the health insurance I'm not necessarily but I'm not sure in the end if that will reduce the cost or drive them back up oh because we we we benefit from having more people right the higher theost the more younger people you have
and they're likely to maybe jump when the prices go up it's almost like there's an entire industry designed around just figing out how to make it so you can't gain the system it's amazing all right because then you have less people now and then the with more older people
than younger people then it'll drive the cost up and that could be what's going on now right but then you have less people splitting that high number of claims from a few years ago right right but uh when amers am amers
had a health insurance crisis um about 5 years ago and all of a sudden shsy started getting all these people and it was all the spouses jumping off ammers on the shuberry but then they fix their problem and some of them jump back what we need
is universal healthcare CU then all this stuff goes away and we don't have to spend all this time arguing about it we can just have everyone be able to go to the hospital when they need to but that's a discussion for whole other day um anything else we want to talk about about the health insurance or did you have something else you want to I had a
couple other things to let you I have to ask you um so Natalie bla would like to come visit for a select board meeting and um they asked for when our next meeting was and she's talking about coming at our
next meeting on the 18th okay that'll be next Tuesday next Tuesday because ofay sounds um that's fine with me I'm assuming our budget has I mean our agenda has room room for her on it the only question I have I'm for some reason
I'm feeling like holding a dog hearing at that same meeting I would seemed like a lot but I'm sure Natalie has been to a lot of dog hearings yeah know and we can we we can put Natalie at the beginning
um so that she can she can leave after she does her you're good with a dog hearing at at the same day that's fine okay maybe can you schedule the time for the dog hearing can you do that okay so we can schedule for 7 o' for the dog hearing and then give Natalie a half
hour and we can do a half hour worth of other stuff and then okay yeah that that makes sense to me um okay and the last thing was is that enough time for the dog hearing for notification
to a butter short yeah the Tuesday day was a holiday it might not work out we might have to push it farther okay if you end up having to push that off for two more weeks to the next two more weeks yeah um just let us know via email if you have
to do that that's fine we'll do yeah cuz I need to confirm the lawyer was going to help with the letter and then he might not be turning that around by Thursday okay well just even for the neighbor and
stuff to be notified in enough time to attend you're right um and the only other thing I was going to share with you is Board of Health had a meeting today and Bruce has been is reaching out to the
Coalition um Meg todrin is um to ask inquired um with her to do some of the work Steve Ball has been doing for for septic um um permits and restaurant
permits so that's the approach we're taking Steve will be Steve Ball will be taking off for at least three months um starting in March so we're um Bruce is trying to solidify the arrangement with
the coalition to cover that period and potentially on to the Future we're not sure what's if what's going to happen now after that okay great can I ask just a can I just ask a general question like just planning more
anything from them on the adus yet I haven't heard anything I did see Dana talking with Wendy but okay I didn't get any feedback from B so it's basically it's taking effect but I'm just curious if we've done anything with our Rags or
done anything about it that's all maybe we just lean it on the state law I didn't know okay no and Dan kept noting at the MMA MMA did not touch the issue they didn't go near it the Adu issue at
all it's coming out in a week and they didn't even have a session on it Weist strange yeah all the new legislation and that is all I have for tonight wonderful all right um we don't have any correspondence today I don't
see anybody online or in person for public comment uh we don't have an executive session so at this time um I would entertain a motion to adjourn a motion we adjourn second all right we have a motion made and seconded to adjourn all those in favor I I I three
nothing the time is 7:42 our next meeting will be a regular uh meeting of Justice select board on Tuesday February 18th and our NE next meeting with the finance committee will be February 24th two weeks from today thank you everybody