all righty I will hereby call the order this regularly scheduled meeting of the Sunderland select board the time is 6:34 p.m. uh we do not have minutes to approve so our first order of new business tonight will be to review the first draft of the annual town meeting
warrant um Wendy uh the first draft is under the car taking of the town clerk gotcha and um I'm used to a different pattern so she has been inputting the the Articles as they come
in I have we have the one article I wanted to make sure to discuss with you tonight that I had sent out which is the article to add airbnbs uh to our excise tax um program
y so we can collect up to um I think it's 3% I think we're signing out and the state collects six I believe but it's a potential source of Revenue that we should um start collecting
absolutely wonderful um do is there you want to discuss that and potentially approve it tonight then if you well I don't have it there I just want to make sure you're supportive of the the direction that I'm going in and then I'll bring the so do we
know roughly how many airbnbs I know I think I saw it somewhere around you thought maybe 10 but do we know what the actual usage is on on those airbnbs no I do not but I can get I need to get a
state report and see what they're reporting for revenue from Sunderland yeah that would give us a good idea okay and then it's um yeah it it'll be interesting to see it it might be quite a bit more than 10 you just never know
for sure um but I know um in this area October where fall time especially in this town is likely to be u a higher time than um winter but Summers typically even in
shutesbury with Lake wola we were getting I think we got like $32,000 from that little um the little Lake um just from airbnbs in town so it's it can
be it can be very helpful MH okay I mean I'm I'm all for the town collecting Revenue um I think airbnbs are a not going to Grand stand by our questionable business practice and our questionable way of doing business and
in a lot of ways are damaging the the short-term the the non-short term rental market the regular rental market and homeowners abilities to purchase homes um whether or not we're talking about individuals renting out their houses or
you know real estate develop velers real estate interests buying up properties for their use of Airbnb um either way um it presents a drain on Town resources and a drain on you know the the town's ability to to make to to run itself and so I I'm all
all for opposing said tax and collecting it um so all right great anything else you want us on that one or no that's I and the I will will
be sending out the warrant for you I'll put it in the in the Google Drive um this week Wendy's gone been updating it and I just I've been adding some of the things but it's it's just about
well the main articles are missing so the budget yep um which brings us to our next item of new business which is to review the 4-year 26 budget um and discuss ways to balance said budget um um did you have an over you wanted to
start with or do you want me to jump right in um you're welcome to let me just give a little parameters so um what I did do is I got in all the the increases in wages from the different sources that we have
um um being conservative I I added in the police chief's at his request um we have an unsettled contract that will be talked about later but but um I want to have a sense
of what direction you would like to go um there was talk uh at the capital stabilization meeting on Thursday and that's where Nathaniel can help inform us but I I'm trying to get a sense of
the magnitude of our hole um having put in the salaries um and a potential what we I think it's going to be the health insurance um Hole uh where I'm at about $440,000
shortfall um round it up to 450 because there's still a couple of items um to be resolved that gives us an idea of what problem we're dealing with if we're able to you we have over just over 600,000 in
free cash the potentially 300,000 could be used us from that fund and still have half of it remaining and potentially we have um the capital um stabilization fund with
200,000 but right now it's actually at negative2 200,000 so we need a minimum of 200,000 to fix that problem and then we would still be looking for another 150,000 for the
budget our stabilization funds are just at 575 so on the capital stabilization front great conversation this past week with the capital um subcommittee and the consensus of the
committee is a couple of things one um if we're talking about being poor in some accounts and others not the capital stabilization account is account that we can't transfer money from that into anything else it's there for a reason we can't use it to balance the
budget next year we can't use it to for emergencies we can't use it for anything it's it's locked in capital um and so the consensus among that group is that we'd rather be poorer in that account than the general stabilization account for example or the free cash or
other accounts because you can always transfer money from free cash into Capital stabilization next year again it's much harder or not necess even possible to transfer it from Capital liation money because that's been earmarked for certain things it becomes a much bigger deal to try to you know
move money out of there um to that end the con the consensus was um the most we want we want to put in would be enough to get us to zero which would be the 209 is24 something like that, and that so that's the amount that we should have
gotten from the bills that's that's so we should we should have collected 409 plus had 200,000 just sitting there from from carryover okay we didn't collect the 409 so we spent the 409 so right now now the in the end take the 200 we had sitting there minus the 409 we're we're
sitting at like 205 or something like that okay and so we need to put at least 205 in to make it at zero we were also talking about potentially putting the four the full 409 in to get us back to the buffer that we had wanted but the consensus amongst the capital group and I tend to agree with them is this is a
hard year this is not the year to put extra money into into Capital when we don't have to this year um we'd much rather get to a point three or four years from now where we have to ask for a DE inclusion override or something like that because we don't have money there then be squirreling all this money
into a capital account this year and also asking for the toal for override for Budget reasons when we have a path that doesn't involve both those things see um the other thing that we discussed which was very helpful and I want to make you know publicly thank Becky for all the work on this is um Becky did a
very nice breakdown of all the capital accounts that we have for the last three is years for we you know approved $50,000 for this this thing this is how much money has been actually spent out of that account for the work whether it some some of them are just the full
50,000 sitting there cuz nothing started yet some of them is oh yeah that product's already done and there's $2,700 still sitting in that account and that kind of thing um the good news is there's somewhere between1 and $200,000 worth of money that's sitting out there
that may or may not be like the product's done and we're still just nailing down we Beck needs to figure out a couple of things about you know making sure that this this the product is in fact done and the dollar amount that's in that account is the leftover amount so that can go back into so that's going go back into st capital stabilization
the good news on that front is that we might be able to take that $200,000 that we need to put in capital even lower if we can move some money from these accounts that are just kind of sitting out there not doing anything back in capital stabilization we might be able to put 100,000 in or 120,000 in to be
able to get us to that zero Mark sounds right if the project are done yeah which is then much less money coming out of our general stabilization fund especially because going back to the general fund um we're most likely going to have to transfer something out of General stabilization just to balance
the budget this year um if we're taking $525,000 and putting half of it into capital and half of it into the the the budget we have no money left over if we can put 100,000 into capital and maybe 150,000 into the budget we still leave
ourselves with $300,000 in that General stabilization fund um and then also back to free cash um if we put 300 in from free cash we would end up with 300 in free cash 300 in general stabilization
and a balanced budget okay it's not a great place to be necessarily because we're using up half of our reserves from both of those funds in order this year um but we have already discussed to length how unique of a year this is with all these different things all hitting
us at the same time um so now if we can do some work in the next couple weeks to try to take those numbers down a little bit um so that we're taking less out of both free cash and less out of General stabilization
the better um but sort of to answer the big question nobody asked um we do have a path out of this without an override um it's not a great path and the question Still Remains do we want to you know get really really you know money
poor by taking so much out of free cash and so much out of stabilization in order to balance things um but again it's not a foregone conclusion that we have to go straight to override so just saying if um okay so so we the bills didn't go out we
technically you could say we're owed the 4 except that the Bill's in gone yeah well no we're not owed it because we can't bill for it now but could we could we do do an override to cover that clerical Omission mean that's we we we can we can go for an override of the
same amount and and it as this is why yeah the the main the main reason why so so the problem with overrides is if you ask for an override this year it doesn't go off the tax rols next year so it's a a much big bigger conversation with the town it's not just hey can we have an
extra 409 this one year and we're good it would be asking for an override which would then increase the the the tax rate for the next forever the the L capacity and the you know over 2 and half% um I wish there was a mechanism to just go to
town and say hey can y'all just give us 409 call it even will be good there isn't really a great one to do so surprising there's no way to do that yeah okay um no that's what we tried to do right away well and so in a roundabout way that's sort of where we
got to with the capital committee is we'd much rather have a big cushion sitting in that account going into the school roof we know it's coming we know it's going to be a million dollars or something like that in five years or three years or a year and a half depending on who you ask we know that's coming we were hoping to have 600,000
you know sitting there a couple years versus having 200,000 sitting there a couple years um and so it's either we go to town and ask for more money now or we hope that things work out better than we were fearing they do and maybe we don't need to go to them but if we do that's a debt exclusion override which that only
goes on the the roles for a couple years and then it comes back off and that's a much more appetizing to town because then they know that it's only for the next 5 years I'm paying a little bit higher for the roof right versus well that's just the new tax rooll that's what I'm going to be paying for the rest of the time I'm here um so that's kind of where we were at is and and maybe
that maybe next year is better for the town maybe maybe things change maybe the roof isn't as bad because the quotes come down okay can we do a debt exclusion override for the negative2
200,000 I think they uh dead exclusion is usually for a a project actual and in general that's a good question I I just have you know it's usually for a new school a library right no no I understand that because of
this mistake that was made it wasn't made by any of us you know it was a mistake that was made that portion of the tax bill didn't go out out right that was voted by the
town that was voted by the town is you know I know we can't just send a bill to everybody and say Here's your 2 and a half% pay us right because we haven't appropriated the money but if we go back in and raise it through a debt
exclusion is that allowable but when would it it would hit next year's tax bills so those tax spills would include our regular override for Capital plus
this year's override so right we could and we could make it a exclusion for 5 years let's say and so basically the town would be paying a fifth of the missing tax money every year for 5 years yeah on their tax bill um and we don't necessarily even have to to make it second we don't have to necessar make it
be for the missing money we can have it be a a Deion override for this year's Capital expenses which are projects which are but we're already doing that H but we're we're going to do that piece
what I'm saying is it's a little bit more it's a little bit less above the board to just borrow money to put into an account for next year and so if we borrow money for specific projects for the $300,000 worth of projects that we need to fund this
year for the capital thing and instead wait no CU we need the money to go before the new money I'm never mind I'm sorry I'm you had a question think operative word in debt exclusion is debt most of when you vote for debt exclusion
is because you're borrowing the money paying it back over a certain number of years and that's why the Deb exclusion goes away so if we borrow the money I think the good news is that while we had meant to get the
$499,000 but the capital commit only uh used 200,000 last year we left money on the table and so we don't really no it's in the negative right now it's in the negative I know but we could have we
could have spent all of the reason that you're saying is only in the negative no it's it's actually because we spent the full 400 we we put an extra 200 out of free cash into that fund and so it was it was it was forth thinkinking on our part of like hey let's put extra money in there but no the full amount that we
collected we had we spend yeah cuz originally the accountant said stop spending and I'm like it's too late yeah you know the the cruiser was committed for and it's being buil yeah we're just trying to find a way to I feel like we like we lost out on
the money that should go in there ex and that was what everybody voted so it's like we should but I don't want to double up on people either right I don't want to d right and that's why you know it's just it's there some creative way to get that money that's what I really pushed for
when in at first and she's just like didn't appropriate it well and again if we're going to borrow money to replace the 409 what makes sense to me from the most above the board the most
when we know what the number for the thing that we're Bor know what the number is and so instead of having the instead of having the million waiting for us when we get to the roof it'll be we have half of it and we have to borrow half of it but at that point it's for the specific item it's easier to sell to the town because it's not oh W but we need to put money you know it's not a
whole big card shuffle in the game where we're trying to put money back into account and whatnot it's we have a roof it's old it needs to be replaced that's a much more straightforward somebody has to remember this story associated with it too right because that's how we sold or
how we Justified that override was so that we wouldn't have to be borrowing money and now we might be in that situation where we have to borrow money and we're going to have people going oh but you told us that override we wouldn't have to borrow
you were going to start putting it away just a year behind yeah it might not right but $400,000 on a million doll roof is well we wer going to set aside 400,000 but we're losing 400,000
yeah I I think I think in the end yes obviously we need to we need to maintain that story because you know in two years or something like that if we're asking for D overide that's going to come up from town reading I think it's worth mentioning
even if we don't need even if we aren't doing something that requires the town to sign off of which whatever we do we have to move some money into that account so we're going to have to have a test that meeting but even if we're not asking for a big ass of town I think it's important that we pay the picture of what happened and make everyone a
town meeting aware you know this is why this is looking this way this is what we're doing this is what this is why we chose to do it the way we did is because we're trying to not hurt the taxpayers in town unnecessarily if we can avoid it um and lay the groundwork for and
there's a in renewed chance of a debt exclusion override for the roof because of this um and then we hope people's memories hold up over 2 years um I again we're not talking about 10 years from now for the roof you know they're they're they're talking about
getting the money next year not this year but next year to do the study and then the following summer we'll be putting a roof in so you know two summers from now we could be putting a roof in so they're going to do so maybe they do the study and they you get four more years I don't
know the the I don't think this the stud is going to be more about the the the replacement then that is about the efficacy of keeping the current roof um pretty sure the consensus is that the roof needs to be replace is just the question of can we get through a period of time before we have catastrophic
failures that are you know damaging to equipment and whatnot um so yeah okay it's a lot um but anyways s to summarize from the capital standpoint the most we will need will be
$24,000 out of the general stabilization fund but we're hoping that between now and then we can come up with some large chunk of that to recapture from these accounts to be able to lower that number even lower um it could potentially be
only having to ask for $100,000 from from the general stabilization fund I wouldn't hold my breath on it being a full $100,000 savings but it'll be somewhere in there um and then um yeah I'm I'm of the mind
that I think 300 out of General stabilization and 300 free cash is not ideal but doable if that's what it takes to get and that would be for both that would be for both the the the operating budget and for the capital station
account okay um that leaves us with again 300 each um and obviously this would not be a year where we're transferring money from General from free cash into the general stabilization fund like we have
when we can um because that would defeat the purpose any other questions or discussion or anything like that on this any other ideas of how we can save money or come up with more money we'll have we'll be going over all the line items next week right with the
with the finance crew yeah is there any other information anybody would like um like follow up on that what are the limitations on a debt exclusion I I'm I'm curious now too it's like could that be used just to
raise um money yeah do it over five years or something do yeah I mean p feel I never like the idea of borrowing money for operating expenses for like that kind of thing because that's just stealing money from PR from future years
in order to to to you know deal with something this is a situation where it's an unexpected you know think we need to know what all of our options are because what happens if next year we're in this same yeah predicament so if we have the
ability to at least research those find out the answer now you know we don't know that next year we might not be facing 30% increase in health insurance and you know we just don't know no and
not to be alarmist but we have no idea what's going to happen with the federal government either ref funding corre going forward so yeah no I I I mean just cuz we get an answer yeah no I'm I'm with you let's find out options do we know what we get that's
federal dollars really we get the Medicaid I mean what we get direct is Medicaid I'm less concerned about Direct Federal dollars as I am about a lot of the money we get from the state that's what I mean a lot of that is same thing so a lot of schools yeah a lot of school
money is actually Federal money under the I'm curious what the cut what the percentage is but more than I want it to be I'll think into that yep all right any more discussion on the budget this was very helpful thank you
wonderful all right um that is our new business for today uh under old business we have selectboard updates U my only update was that we the capital uh Capital committee met um aside from the funding side of things um we look it to be in pretty good position to to um be
able to spend about 300,000 this year to meet the town's Capital needs um and that does include some money that is going out for mini splits that we will likely see come back on the other side um I don't have the exact number in front of me but 30,000 or something like that dollar some there where are the Min
splits going in 1,000 that were installed at the school okay so um okay so these are for ones that are already existing but we're looking at getting the rebates on them yes and Ben said the money's coming to the town they were
checking on it they hope to see it maybe within a month great U so just just that was just the update just that you know that we assuming everything goes well otherwise we were going to be able to meet the town's Capital needs um without obviously going over budget and being
able to come in less than the amount that we have from the override allowing us to put at least a little bit of that money again towards the roof that we're trying to build that fund up so you know this year we might see a little bit of diping our savings there but we are trying to going forward do the opposite
um Crystal any updates for us I have no updates but I do have an a question I don't know why it just popped into my head but the P issue we were having in Sunderland I am are there any expenses associated with that or potential that
are not here uh yes cuz I'm trying to get them to re give me a lower price I've been they came in with a $75,000 quote the St stat uh yeah and um
I think so I I'm asking another LSP to review it and get feedback and I'll be um hearing from him hopefully tomorrow just CU i u their approach and I
have yeah on the filter that they wanted to install I asked I redirecting them there too because it was about $7,500 um I think they were doing a
second um filter just to remove sediment that cost almost as much as the main filter and that that was my why I had it I mean I'm having that looked at too because I don't think there's the town shouldn't be responsible for their
sedimentation filter is my argument yeah that's not part of the people assets right and so I um especially I'd never heard of one that expensive I'm I'm not sure why anyway so I'm working through those issues trying to whittle the amount of that down which budget would
that end up going under would that be under the Town Administrator budget like um I think part it's there's some funding in the water treatment plant for the regular well testing and but this is
this is much more expensive this is like an extra $50,000 um so that could go into Capital but I really hope we to get that amount down okay um because that's that's a lot more but that's a very good question
it's not in the budget at this point okay may Cal no no just a senior center uh for at the library on Wednesday at 2:00 um just be welcoming everybody talk
about the senior center what it does to support the community U the results of the feasibility study and looking at the two sites for the new building uh in weightly in Darfield so anybody's interested uh 2:00 Wednesday at the library
great thank you very much all right uh time minist updates anything else for us Becky um I have set up well today we I met with the insurance um advisory committee and we will be meeting again
on Wednesday and again on Monday and again on the next Wednesday uh in preparation to meet with the select board on the 31st um to make their recommendation on um plan design they will be putting together um a survey
that we hope to finalize on Wednesday to get out to um all the different units the school the um all the town departments except for fire and we will be collecting that data um they're going
to try if we get it out uh Thursday morning we'll ask for it to be returned by Monday if it's out after that we'll ask for Wednesday uh survey return and that'll give um an up or down thumbs up or down answer on the plan design I
think the the committee has a really good understanding now of what we're asking and you know we want to give an overview of the situation why we're asking because in their first survey when they started um in 22 and 23 the
survey uh response was they didn't want any changes to the plan so this is just going out saying our current situation is this we're faced with a 20% increase that will hit the town and the employees
and we are um asking whether you would support the plan design or not and we need a majority uh response to get an answer okay um as part of
that I think we're we're really trying to keep it simple and focus on that one question um but it gets complicated very quickly very quickly so um I'm sure there'll be a lot of questions okay coming in but we
hope we potentially might have the answer for the finance and select board on Monday night but um maybe not till Wednesday okay thanks for keeping us updated on that that's uh good news all
right anything else from you not tonight wonderful I do not believe we have any correspondents tonight Lauren did you have any public comment yeah um I just wanted to update you on the graves Library project so it's out to bit Becky work with our architect um St Lauren
could I ask you to come oh yeah oh so we can hear you better yeah so the graves project is out to bid um Becky got all the good documents out um Architects done a good job I think putting the package together they did
bid it as um a base uh project with six alternates he's concerned about the cost so he wanted to give us some options when you did something with alternates you can accept them but you can only
accept them alternates so um it's we'll see what happens um the bids are due April 9th uh there is a pre- bid walk through mandatory I think Wednesday at 10 a.m. so are you going be there yeah
okay um so uh I believe people have taken documents out and so hopefully we'll have some options wonderful that's great news and I think I had three more oh good so we
have eight requests for documents and if you guys are interested I printed out I printed out the report it's about an inch and a quarter thick if anybody would like to review um the M predominantly masonry project what's
what's the masonry and then what are the alts what are the alternates it's just uh he starts with the most the sides that are need the most work and then kind of goes around and then the last thing is the greeing alternate six is
greeing um I mean Essen it all needs to get done but he felt like this would give us some options see what happens but our goal is to know before County and what the total and that is it anticipated I mean you
already have the funding we have the funding yeah but you just want to announce information I want I want to know where we're at so just tried to get I think he put along U actually not sure we discussed him I'm not sure when he said the work
needed to be done by because we were willing to push that out but we wanted to get numbers so there's a chance it could go above what we have funded oh yeah yeah okay no I mean yeah just yeah okay but a
uh an estimate of the cost is in the central register so yep hopefully they don't go Hog Wild great any questions from the board any I'm good thanks sorry thank you very much we appreciate the update
yeah all righty thanks uh we do have a executive session tonight so uh at this time I would entertain a motion for the board to move into executive session uh when we get to the end of session we will uh call ourselves back into General Session just to adjourn um so have the
time under attend motion I motion we move to Executive session second all right we have a motion made and seconded to move to Executive session I believe you need a roll call Vote for This is that correct yes yes all right I Nathaniel wearing i crystal director fire all Dan Murphy all
right 3 nothing and the time is 7:08 p.m.