at this time it is 6:32 and I will hereby call to order the regularly scheduled meeting of the Sunderland Select Board our first order of business today will be to approve the minutes from our select board meeting on 3:24 2025
make a motion to approve the minutes from March 24th 2025 second all right we have a motion made and seconded all those in favor i I All righty three nothing thank you very
much our first order of new business is going to be to review the budget uh updated for year 26 revenue and expenses pull back up here all right do you want to start revenue side or expense side
[Music] um let's start with expense side all right we can on the expense side it's on page two three and four is
everyone okay oh I see this one that's your one sorry this one oh oh there's another one right there yes we got the SharePoint open thank goodness i was going to have to email
you okay um everyone's found the new the latest round of the budget okay so ask a quick clarification question yes please i just um I think I missed the last town meeting i just want
to make sure this is what town meeting will see right no they see a more simplized version that's right okay right they will see all the departments but not the parts of each budget salary expenses for each department i was thinking it was a little too detailed
for how I remember town meeting right thank you that'll I'll I'll that'll be ready hopefully at the end of the week too um there have been so many changes it wasn't just an automatic um be to the other to the other format
all right so at this point um I think we everyone's been through the budget one time but uh the changes I had um the luxury of having Margaret
come back and just go through the budget for me uh for those of you who don't know Margaret was the interim town administrator and she has a very meticulous focus on budget so I did ask her to to go through and check my
formulas make sure there wasn't a glaring omission this being my first time um working with this and having made a lot of changes from what was prior I felt that was important
um the only uh issue she found was the fuel line under highway had had um disappeared and so the fuel line is in the highway department you'll see
it um it's the third to the bottom row so I put the fuel line back in at the requested $18,000 um this budget is important um because all the
fuel bills do go to the highway department and then and then all the fuel is delivered um basically to the safety complex where the highway is next door and goes in to
a tank where there's an electronic um calculator so whenever the different departments take you know fuel up it calculates how much each department's using um and so what number is it in the sheet
18,000 it's um number 159 oh we're missing a page we're missing the page from 97 to Oh my god I did it it didn't do double-sided okay I if you'll excuse
me just go print your missing sheet thank you i wondered why we couldn't find it i I thought maybe it was me being the new person ever going to wait a minute so clearly I'm an arrogant person who is like you know you're just the experience
i'm just going to default to the most experienced experience this kind of some some of I live in the world of 18 to 20 year old 2-year-olds from so it's really rare when they're not the smartest person in the world so they come to me to fill out their first paperwork when we hire
undergraduates and it's amazing what they know and don't know then I go home to my kids and I'm like you need to know answer your emails leave your phone number when you make Answer your emails that's the most
important advice you can give anybody Oh every day I'm and I put that on the on the news most important thing kid going off to college answer your emails that's the most important advice but you can start figuring out who knows because they get emailed so much and so like what did you get email what's that did
you check it out did you get I just did admitted students day on Saturdays and that's the advice we gave the whole room at the end the one thing to remember when you come here and not answer your college emails did you do destination day two on wasn't that Sunday
the admitted students Saturday i did only do Saturday i don't destination day is Sunday right that's the isn't that the second one there's admitted student early admitted students day and then regular admitted students day and I didn't do the first one because I was at time with the second one I did it's
usually the bigger one is the early decision people haven't done that many places so they're pretty much um or not later on they're more trying to decide between and Ruters and UMass and Yukon or NNA UNH you
know private versus public you know they have a lot of good questions that's great thank you hey there's one thank you thank you all right let's try this again the 159
you said the highway fuel line perfect now we don't have historic data on that is that because that line item has never been there and was rolled in elsewhere or do we just not know the historic on that um I think if I look back I'll be able to get it back in um I do know it
was 17 well that shows but it's it's not gone up more than $500 a year okay um fuel is the only thing that's going up right now so at the moment that's not always true right
give it a week um what yeah exactly give it a week so that that's that's a increase from our last discussion of the 18,000 right correct okay okay that's why I brought it up and it's um a little you'll you'll see that the fire
department does not have a fuel line that you can visibly see but all their expenses are in their expense line they're all grouped together the police does have a separate fuel line yep I see that the police is a 15 and highway is
actually eight 18 yeah 18 yeah all right so it um that was the that was one big change and the other one outside of what we discussed
earlier was the um fire department had a $42,000 expense line and they reduced that to 39 okay [Music] you said was 43 it was 42 42 okay so we're down to 39 so
down 3,000 there okay yes um and I want to also say that on the highway expenses that the 20,000 I had taken out
of there it's become more and more of an issue as um as I've talked more with George um I at this moment in time I put back 7,500 um there there are a number of expenses
that come out of this account that aren't really chapter 70 like line striping 90 y sorry chapter 90 um like line striping so he and some others so he was concerned about not having any
increase in that account because um as we've been talking since I started almost everything he does the costs are going up at least 20% some are doubling um so he was nervous about being cut short without anything um so that's up
for debate um by the board but that's in here at the moment and other than that the other two changes that are in here were done prior to today it was the three um the select
board met with recreation uh coordinator Jim Euan and discussed the um reeding line maintenance of the field line and brought that back up to 9,000
from 6,000 he originally asked for 12 and then um the select board asked him to really think what he could do and he came back with that compromise of having it go
to 9,000 instead of 12 this year he will be putting together a CPC grant for next year um for um at least field maintenance i don't know what else he's also going to be likely bringing a capital request as well for new
equipment shed the not the baseball shed but the general equipment shed is falling apart leaking falling into sinking into the ground all kinds of things um and so we we discussed it with him and made it clear that you know it's too late to ask for for this year in the capital budget but that for next year um
and there also was some discussion this is kind of a side but was some discussion about possibly um working with Franklin Tech they have a um construction department there that builds really nice sheds uh in fact they build them to like house code because they're teaching their kids how to build
the house code um so you get like you know high quality stuff for basically um much better prices um and it would be a good opportunity for us to both work with the school um give them an opportunity to build something and have that partnership between the town and
the school just strengthen it a little bit um so those are all things that aren't on our docket for this year but coming up next year we will be expecting to see that i have a question about that um can CPA funds be used for that cuz it's recreation uh I believe so it shouldn't
be a capital request it' be another CPA request um it it'll I think it can fall under both buckets but I don't want to say that without talking to a lawyer first um so we'd have to be sure of that but I think you're probably right that it can fall under CPA i'd also think of like the CPA i know there's a fine line
between maintenance and capital and seating is like you just got to be careful if you regrade and you're doing something putting doing something significant it could be a CPA but I'm not sure just receding the field qualifies but for example the Hatfield when they
did it they called it rejuvenation oh um we restoration of the field restoration okay can you hear you might turn the volume up just a little bit if it will yeah that's what I especially because it'll be easy for us
to just talk over her if you can't hear her oh that's all right usually I'm too loud where is it never too loud you know where the volume is on the I think you just turn the TV volume itself up button is there Oh there is
yeah is there where it is is the question i think it might go on this side here on the side itself sometimes oh oh I think I found it there we go we got you try again Crystal can you hear me better
now no the audio settings that little carrot next to the audio microphone if you click on that that's all no she over here right oh yeah if you click on that little No not not not the Zoom one but this little No the Zoom one oh the Zoom
one yeah cuz it's the TV is all the way up so you can check with the audio settings in the Zoom maybe that's just using the internal speakers right but it can't you should be able to look at the if you click on that it doesn't allow you to look at the audio settings and see where the volume is and turning to J to Zoom audio settings yep
uh no it's all the way up too but no let's test the speakers go that rest of the way up there and then yeah there's three there's three audios there's the Zoom audio computer audio and the TV audio tv audio is already zoom audio is all the way up and
the L crystal can you say something again little better i'm going to just see if we can tweak this down here at all nope that's already Well that's as loud as it's going to go so good luck loud enough all right well congratulations
you're not going to have to listen to me as much today but we got you from both sides and we'll be able to hear you yep all right so um here on TV and watch it later um All right so so yeah Jim $9,000 is
sort of the meet in the middle budget for that um and then his other requests are going to be either CPA or capital for next year um and we did also discuss um both bringing back some sort of um committee vocation committee um as well
as um you know applying for things like CPA grants and whatnot we did discuss that with him preliminary last week okay all right thank you any other changes on here we should be aware of um those are the major ones in expenses so okay I
think we're So our bottom line expense from last time will have gone up by 7500 plus 18 18 18 for the fuel 7,500 for the um the
expenses for George and then also the three extra thousand for the recreation budget as well and the recreation uh went up and fire went down and fire went down 3,000 okay so that's so we're looking at we're
looking at 18 + 75 so 255 is our increase from our last budget okay all right and then on the revenue side okay so on our revenue side um um if you look all the way down to
the last box um the last white rectangle and focus in on the 10 million
493454 okay so that is the total of everything prior to that all the levy and the local receipts and the state aid then we add in the Comcast PEG uh grant we receive
which page is this on this is the Sorry this is revenue it was the front page and there's stapled together and it's in the bottom box yeah super line number please because I'm looking at it online and I don't have the same page
break you do oh okay so the line number starts at 55 55 through 65 gotcha okay okay so we add in um let's see if we went through yeah the um
Comcast PEG access and then the so um the sewer reserve which this year is 429,944 then we add those all up um and we to bal and and then to we put in
sorry this the last the very last line the minus 350,615 that is uh what we want to spend in capital this year you'll find that that matches this sheet with all the capital items listed on and that's the
spending way up in the on line okay line 11 right after line 11 420,12188 is the new capital estabilization amount that the town can
raise for an override uh upon vote of the select ward so we're adding that amount at the top and then we take it back out um in the last section and when doing that I found um
the difference between the two is $70,000 so that 70,000 um needs to be transferred into cap stabilization so I left that here to show you where it's going it's going to be transferred into cap stabilization
okay makes sense okay um and then I plugged the two you see the free cash figure line 62 for $250,000 i plugged that in as um was agreed to as we went through the numbers
earlier we use that $250,000 to try to balance the budget then we used the 50,000 of free cash for OPE and that left me um with a hole that um that we are filling with stabil the
stabilization fund of $138,44 good question on this i'm not seeing the $60,000 for the teacher buyback is that in accounting for on here or is that kind of just being handled separately it's being handled separately because it's not coming out of the budget okay gotcha because it's since it's not in
the budget i just I saw the OPED right and I didn't see the other one i just want to make sure they I just want And the reason I didn't put it in there because if I had put it it put it here and then a warrant article it could have been doubled gotcha okay and we didn't want to take it out twice nope makes a
little sense so just to if I can say this back to make sure I understand it so the the gap is about 320,000 which is up from 300 because of the couple of highway and other items we just talked about and that 320 is paid for between the 250 free cash and then
the net 70 roughly that's coming out of cap stabilization because 40 is going in and 70 is coming out no the only reason it's no is because the 70,000 is going into cap stabilization coming out we have two
stabilization funds we have capition in general nothing is coming out of capition so we're putting money into the capsization because the way it's done is we we appropriate that money i'm sorry i was misreading how these lined up so So the 140 is coming out of regular stabilization
and the 70s going into cap stabilization yes um and because the 70 is the balance that's after what we spend between we Yeah so that kind of has to stay in the account because it's not appropriated for general usage capital okay yep so do we know what the balance of the
capital stabilization fund will be it will go up by 70 this year right that's right which is our goal is to increase it over time because we have big stuff coming up so where is it going to start based on the transfer that we do short answer is we're going to be in
worse position than we wanted to be because of the snafu with the $49,000 last year um there are still a number of different scenarios in front of us for capital stabilization in fact we're going to be meeting tomorrow to kind of hash out the last of of those um ranging
from we only put the very minimum we need in to get us to zero so that we aren't negative to recuperating the entire 409 it's become very obvious that recuperating the entire 409 is not in the in the cards this year because of all the other stuff um and so the goal
is to put enough in plus to to claw back some money accounts that didn't get spent in the past to get us back to zero in that special town meeting before the regular town meeting so that we have a you know clean slate then 420,000 will
go in 350 will go out 70 will sit there and now we have 70,000 sitting waiting for the future it should be $270,000 right in an ideal world we're back we're back to a clean slate plus 70 with our planning yes um we are also and I talked to Becky about this earlier we are also looking into whether or not we actually
have to be at zero for that account because if we don't we'd actually have a third option which is we only put in enough to get us to $70,000 so that we take even less out of the accounts and at the end of this year we're at zero rather than being at 70,000 now the advantage of that is if
we put it in capital stabilization is capital stabilization money from now on can never unc capital stabilize it it's for capital only we don't have any choices general stabilization can be used for capital projects it can be used for anything so if we if we take less out of general stabilization we're more
fluid and able to to deal with who knows what's going to happen in the next couple years versus I'd hate to find ourselves cutting positions 2 years from now because we don't have the money in general stabilization to cover something and then sitting with this pile of capital money that we don't necessarily know to do at that time if it's the
other way around we have options we just don't if we put it in all so the the decision to do that or not is the cable was the meeting tomorrow that plus we have to find out whether whether we legally can um I don't know whether we can close the books at the end of one fiscal year with an account at $70,000
or whether that causes more trouble or not that's a whole other ballax assuming we get the the okay from the lawyer or the accountant or whoever it is that does know the answer to those questions or do or whoever um that will be an
option that's on the table um so again I I don't love making us capital poor but the choice between capital poor or general stabilization poor is you know it is what it is flexibility is good flexibility is good um exactly because
again we can always transfer $70,000 back in next year but we can't reverse it um so to that end and I I feel like I had this piece of paper there's a there's a piece of paper where it attempted to figure out balances on
different accounts that's this one yep so just to run through this our starting free cash is 6225 we're looking as it currently stands to put 250 of that into the operating budget 50,000 of that into OPED 60,000 of that to sick buyback
which is a total of $360,000 coming out of free cash leaving us with 2625 um the recommended cash reserves are 3 to 5% 3% is 290 5% is 484 so we would be just south of 3% um on that so
is it a little less than we'd like sure is this the year that's going to happen also yes um next up for stabilization this is general stabilization we're starting with 575 uh 699 and we'd be looking to move 186 into the um capital stabilization and
that's assuming we go to zero um and that's based currently on the numbers that we've run for what we can recuperate from accounts and this is getting us back to zero um that num number if it were to change because we find out we can do something shouldn't affect any other calculations it would
just that one line item would go down by $70,000 um below that is the transfer into the operating budget so that 138404 plus the 250 that we're putting in from free cash that is the money that we're using to close the operating um budget so that that's going to leave our
stabilization account with a balance of 250764 um so between free cash and stabilization we'll have a little over half a million dollars of reserve type money there be clear not reserve money that's a different thing entirely but reserve type money um title five I'm
going to kind of skip over unless anyone wants to talk about the $91 there beautiful um capital stabilization um it's showing an opening balance of 219 currently that is not actually the case that's what should be there um but then going down um you see the 409 you know
going in and going out that going out is our mistake basically um and then the capital budget from last year is the 405 change keep going down we have a transfer in from the general stabilization below that is the override money it's actually a little higher than
that by yeah $121 sorry but close enough for what we're looking at here um and then um going down further uh we have the the capital budget that we will be talking about in a little bit somewhere over here um that has the expenditures for this year um all that said and done
um should leave and these numbers again are um not based on reality currently um but so we're just going to ignore the bottom of that um and the the OPED sorry the the PEG the Comcast uh OPEG is that it's called OPEG um looks like it's starting
out at 103 um 53 is um going out is that correct yeah um and the closing balance on that will be 50,916 uh and then CPA funds we currently have a little over a million dollars and it looks like the total for
CPA um I did not update the CPA for this year okay sorry so we'll we'll last year this is last year's yeah okay so we'll we'll ignore that um and then the water treatment reserve is that one accurate yes okay water treatment reserve has a billion currently looks like the the um
budget is 429 um and that will leave them with 6746 um the question on that that account is not tied to appropriation that's money goes in for fees and money goes out so that's not something that we really even have access to right and nor should we be
transferring money out of that because that's money that's there for just making sure I that's my assumption but you know I see I see a million dollars lying somewhere and I'm going to ask a couple questions about it yes good idea all right um anything else you want to add or is that pretty much where we're at on That's where we're at okay any
questions from finance or from select board on those numbers a question that may or may not be very relevant but I'm kind of curious um I know there's been more and more kind of local cases where wells contamination in towns are responsible for the forever chemicals and blah blah blah can our
sewer balance be used for that for wells or does it have to be just used for that and the sewer system i would be very surprised if it could because by definition it can be used for that in the system just not in our if there was a contamination within the sewer system probably not in private well almost by definition the people who have private
wells are by definition not part of the sewer district right so if that happened in town and the town was partly responsible for that that would be a whole another hit correct yes want to make sure and again unless it was within the sewer system itself um but that that would be bigger of a problem so let's
let's not let's not go there yeah that would be worse but that one well would be bad but yeah which is definitely something that's that's worth bringing up because as that right now Yeah exactly we're dealing with that currently yes we have one contaminated
while in town and whether there's still Yeah there's one but it tested negative on the last test which is great but it's it's still an issue and a problem yeah um but yeah that's definitely a good question because a small problem in that kind of a case can turn into a large
problem really fast um and so we don't want to get you know caught without any way of paying for that um my suspicion is if we came into a situation where find five more wells or something like that over the course of the year that'd be something we could transfer money out of the reserve fund for
so or if we balance is pretty low in reserve it's only a $25,000 but if yeah if there's a small problem we could address it with that and if not then we have to have a special town meeting and transfer okay okay any other questions from finance on so
are cash reserves or what percentage of the operating budget now um three are talking about post this or currently post this yeah post yeah after we do all this how much we what percent of our cash reserves so our cash reserves what percent of our
overall operating budget so if you on the on the sheet that has the um this sheet right here kind of looking um and 3% is 290 and we're leaving 2625 so uh it says 3% here but it's going to be 2 825 or something like that percent um so
and the recommendation is between 3 and five um and most years we end up closer to the five mark at the end of the year um but there have been a couple of years where we're closer to the three end of it so but we're not we're not the recommendation is not 10% and we're coming in at two or something like that
we're still very much within that within that recommendation mine is WWTP is the wastewater treatment yep yeah yep um yeah and and no debt service right now
we have any debt service no that's the remarkable thing this year the the firetruck is paid off so there is no debt service we do have other than the CPA one which is Yeah well and we do have capital debt which is that's part of the capital budget which we can we'll go over a little bit includes payments
on vehicles that we've purchased but but that's not debt town debt like that yep so we have we're very lucky we have three open leases that'll go for the next three years three or four years um which does
leave us in a good position where if we had to borrow for the roof of the school because that's really the the big the big you know iffy part about all of this with the capital budget is that we're trying to squirrel money away from the school we'd be in a position where we don't have any any debt currently and we
have a a very reasonable story to explain why we're in position we're in um and really what it comes down to is do we want you know I'd rather have the risk of having to take on debt in a couple years than um you know again lay people off and make the town poor you
know in order to try to anyways um now in years past where we have landed around the $300,000 mark for free cash that has in years past included moving some of that free cash into accounts uh like for example moving
a couple hundred thousand into capital stabilization a couple hundred thousand into general stabilization um and that's because we've had a couple of years where we've had a real surplus there um so this you know we landing in a similar position but without being able to squirrel money into accounts that we
would have normally done so um just for overall town financial health reasons crystal do you have anything you wanted to ask all right excellent anything from the finance
committee before we uh continue on all right so we're going to switch from uh budget stuff over to the warrant article the draft of the warrant article all right and so we have two of uh in front of us one is motions another is
the warrant article i gave away my motions that was motion sir yep [Music] and I'll work with the um Heather and the WTP to figure you know to fill in the
numbers here in the in article three article four is the capital stabilization override um article and the figure from the list of capital items will go in into article
number four okay so that's 350615 that number yes okay yeah there was a $3,000 correction from what was in
um I think it was on the revenues that I'll have to correct looks like article six is a CPA transfer [Music] um no I hadn't said anything yet um article that's okay
bill's prior excuse me making sure go the right way have prior year bills so if we come up I I left this open this is we we're going to use this for the 13,500 for the audit but we're not using
that anymore but she left it in in case in review with Mel I find that we still have something outstanding which I think we might have that's the one we already voted on well we're chang now we're changing it okay so now we need to revote on that
yeah I think there's um there's a curs is um claiming that we owe them like $4500 for the April through June time period last year but they sent a bill
build us we paid it and then they recal then they said they made an error and recalculated something and came up with another $4,500 and so we've been going back and forth arguing about that we're hoping to win
but if we lose we'll have to pay it okay article six is another CPA project um this one's for the um a transfer into the Kong Trust Fund i'm sorry conservation trust
for land acquisitions and I think there's been some opportunities that have come up at different times um so Jen is asking for that i mean conservation conservation commission is and the CPC put the article together
okay and has already recom voted that it helps helps with matches and stuff like that um article number seven is a blank at the moment um they're waiting for the results from the bids to come in we had
um the sub bids came in subfiled bids came in today we had two successfully a third um came in after the deadline so we will be putting that number in on next Monday when we get the final bids in at 10:30
so the the finance committee can't recommend something we don't know the number so we just don't vote on it on Wednesday and there's just no recommendation for the finance committee at the town meeting is that how it works have a number next are you here next Monday or do you have meeting Wednesday
yeah is it meeting monday is not a joint meeting um or does it need to be another joint meeting if there's like like we could get on with I don't know where do we go would Would you Yeah could you come to the meeting
next Monday instead i know we didn't want you to waste your time so I think you if you go through everything else but that I'm so sorry this got delayed a week we can also if we do have new next meeting
we can make that the first order of business get get it done with and then you guys can adjourn and leave and then we can do the rest of our stuff commercial you could zoom in yeah you can all zoom in too yeah we can zoom in yeah why don't we So why don't we meet on Wednesday do everything that we can okay and then put whatever we can't do
on the agenda for Monday we'll try to get informed to zoom in or be here on Wednesday on Monday so I'll make it a joint meeting for the beginning and have you the first item but the other sort of answer your original question worst case scenario I believe it can still go forward without your recommendation it would just show up as not having been
recommended by finance committee so that would not be ideal but but then someone asked why you didn't and then we it's just whatever oh yes could you could they technically both like it's in the meeting to recommend that's a good question
sorry Crystal yeah we've had articles that we haven't re that we haven't voted on before correct any you know so they just they're just blank under select board recommendation so I don't know why you know if it came right down to a finance committee can't
have a blank it would be nice to have a recommendation but and you would also happen where you can't get a forum leaving it blank I don't think will be an issue and you will have the opportunity to be at town meeting so if the member of the public is like why is this blank you say oh it's because the
number came in after our last meeting we didn't have an opportunity to don't take it as as us not endorsing it it doesn't mean anything it just means we didn't get to it yeah um so I wouldn't worry too much about that but if you can that'd be great and I'll I'll check the bylaw it might be required by the bylaw
that's the only reason I I can think of but I I haven't I'll have to check unless we can't get quorum i mean we can only just try right but I mean even like the previous one like you know I don't have any objection to what is trying to be done in article 6 but I don't know anything about it like how is a like I
don't think the finance committee is supposed to be part of that process of review by CPC and select board but then how are we supposed to recommend or not something that we're not yeah because you're required to recommend or not any financial issue so it puts you in a
position you don't have authority over it but you have to learn about it well and and the answer the short answer is you always have the option of choosing to not recommend something and not for any reason but to to say that we're going to choose to our official stance on this is to to not take a stance on it
or something as long as you as long as you make a stance even if that stance is that we're not making a stance i believe you don't have enough information i think of the CPC articles it's also you're just looking at whether the CPC is making a financially sound
decision based on the money that they have like they've decided to spend the money would think that the only thing you would object is if it was if they didn't have enough money what were they thinking no it's like wiping out the account yeah
but I don't think our role is to make sure they don't have a negative balance in their account like create you're trying to opine in some respects on how they're spending money or how much they're spending it i haven't heard about I don't know if I was supposed to but I had heard about this before tonight now they probably like this isn't about what they're trying to do
it's trying to figure out the process because everything is so late that there's a lot of things we don't know much about or have information on that do we have access to the CPA minutes on the website oh they're meeting this week on Thursday
yeah um no that they tried to do a Zoom meeting and it didn't work when they discussed this i was at the meeting where they brought up the 100,000 for land acquisition and part of the reason there is there's already a balance there
but there have been a number of occasions where you know it it's hard to turn around quickly and to have to stop and arrange a special town meeting to be able to move ahead on an urgent you know sensitive property and these aren't
infrequent either we have fairly regular not necessarily yearly but close to that where where a property comes available that the the community preservation commission wants to move on um so it's not like this is something where we're going to just be sitting on this money for 10 15 years likely within the next two or three years we'd see
another property available so yes I absolutely want you to know what you're voting on so share your concern all right so that was seven we were talking about right all right so number eight this is also CP for community
preservation fund this is the one there was three bids two to three bids depending on whether you take the third one or not that was seven seven yes oh we're we're on eight now sorry but um I'm sorry going back to number seven maybe what you could do is think
through um how I don't know how much money you would think is appropriate like set a limit i don't know i mean in that one I have information because I'm on the library trustees so I can share with the finance committee
what that's about right and we've already spent you know it's already been kind of on list historically but um you know the other one's just more vague you know this is a very we need to fix some this thing like we all know what that thing is versus the other thing is fake so I think that's where it's
weirder for us okay right so article 8 this is the housekeeping article for the CPC so that's going to be $6,000 for their administrative expenses um 24,74921 for community preservation debt service um and then a handful of reserve
funds um underneath 23,000 23,000 23,000 and 132 any questions on any of that article 9 is um a request from Furcog they're making an amendments to their charter
um so they've asked that the town meeting um each of their towns vote the the changes just have this brought to the select board's attention we are aware of the wording that okay what are the amendments or what are
the changes oh something went there's a missing ticket up to here okay so we're going the wrong I was going the wrong way wait isn't this it where is it this thing
well no no no we're going back the other way cuz that's that's just the signature page actually that's the end um this is I'm not sure what happens here so
Okay so it's the page two/3 vote according to four cog chapter is the first words on the second page charlie yep yep that's right so that's the end of article n and then at the beginning of article 10 it says vote to enact the
amendments of per what amendments the amendments they put will be in the motion is it in the motion now basically doing a whole clean up of their I mean I don't remember all the
deep doing a clean up of their charter from it's just clean up 30 years ago yeah mostly yeah I I can't tell you off top of my head but I look at people and be like oh yeah this all makes sense and it's all so it's all clean up it wasn't giant it was it was like oh yeah why why
was that written that way kind of stuff um we don't use horses to get to work anymore a we will make sure we get you that that'll be in wording yeah um before Yeah if you share it before Wednesday yep we'll make sure we get that to you
before thank you all right next one article 10 this is um having to do with a uh Do we need to vote on that one if it's not money uh probably not right can't we just be like "Don't you can skip it." All right i never mind we
don't want that we don't want to know that then I won't send you the boring information that you don't care about okay we're not But I'm going to look at it and see if they mention money in it at all i don't think they did but if they do I'll send it to you i'm almost positive there was nothing monetary in there but I will review also um all
right number 10 this is having to do with a uh the Mass General law having changed to allow towns to collect fees for um short-term rentals aka um you know
Airbnb airbnb there you go thank you off my off my tongue um basically we have the option of of charging a rent a uh a fee and um that's what we are doing here in in accordance with that general law
um so is there any questions on that i mean what would the fee I think it's who decides it's 1% 2% or not to it okay yeah the state set up a system the money is collected by the state and provided to the towns it's
kind of like that dining one we did a few years back do we know what it is for Massachusetts the percent i think it's 3% it might come up and some might say what am I going to be six I think it's no more than six but
it's but the set by the state and right now we think it's three but it can't be more than six but we sign on to the whole thing they can change it to six next year we don't know which is honestly kind of nice because we don't we're not setting anything we don't have to argue that say go talk to the state if you want to be 2% versus 4% next year
that's not us are there any other strings attached to signing up for this for No just money in the bank okay and do we have any idea i know it' be an estimate because we haven't done this yet but like what we think would be like how many dollars might come back to us or what range
we're talking about we know it's going to vary seasonal you know seasonally um I don't know if they have a way you can do estimate but it's it's tough to estimate just for example um a little town like Shootesberry would collected
14,000 in the fall okay and fall I think is one of the se and graduation is the other big one graduation's going to be huge so and sometimes it was 3,000 got Lake
Wyola so their shortterm rentals are probably a lot more than we're going to see yeah although we get we get graduation and move in rentals that they probably don't all the New Jersey parents aren't shortterm no no I mean for like people
coming for a weekend two weekends parents weekend stuff like that but but two weekends is not going to make a bit much for money um it the short answer is it's not going to be a pile of money but it's going to be some yeah and it might you know it might be 3,000 a year it
might not be hardly anything but it's money left on the table if we don't do it so I have I do have a question about this so does this put any change on the
apartment complexes that have um apartments like furnished apartments that they're renting for just a month for a short-term rental versus a year question i can't say this for sure but
my understanding is is that they're they're already in because they're already rentals so we're trying to pull in pull in rentals that aren't already being considered rentals into the tax rule whereas they're already being taxed at a different rate because they're
already rental exactly so I I don't believe that's the case i certainly wouldn't hate hearing that from the state though um Right but I think these are all the individual homeowners who are renting their properties and they're all in the database they're not you know
they're not the apartment complexes and where's the database coming because you have Airbnb you got the Airbnb i mean how well I mean those places all have to report to the state know that the state's doing all the work and just pass it back right
correct right not reporting to the state we wouldn't see it but everything is reported to the state we Well if you're using one of the big operators you have to report to the state now or you're going to get in trouble that used to not be true but now it's not true right okay any other questions on article 10
before we move on wonderful 10 article 11 is that article 11 yeah that was 11 no that was 10 11 is revolving funds sorry um so this is the recreation
fund oh this is the fund that that Jim asked for so Jim also had asked for he has an account um that is revolving but lots of money comes and goes in and out of it um and he asked to make his maintenance fund revolving so that money can go in and out of that but it's much
more clear that this is maintenance money coming in maintenance money going out and it's a less of a nightmare to look at you know cuz he has like $25 for this paint can for all these little things in the in the main revolving account so his request was to just basically convert the non-revolving to a
revolving fund what that allows him to do is the fees he collects from other organizations and whatnot can go into this revolving fund for the maintenance and then he knows what that money is it's not getting chewed up for other things and it helps to provide a little bit of um delineation for him between
those accounts and I know that that's very much a finance question so if you have any questions on that please you know please chime in so that's actually the description of article 13 is where we're going to do the re recreation revolving account which is great thank you for that you got every detail there
um the 11 then you're just moving money into that account is that what it is um this is this is part Okay this is the excise money for the
short-term rentals no 10 11 is the revolving preference well it says fixing a maximum amount do you have the same sheet what I'm looking I was looking at but the limit isn't in there yet is there some reason why we haven't put
that in there yet yeah 11 looks like 12 just for the fields or 12 and seven for the other revolving that are already up okay so the 11 is I'm sorry I apologize I was looking at one that was a bit different
so the 11 is the new revolving fund um and then annually article 12 has to be presented to set the limits of spending so 12 is a constant voted every
year article 11 we're adding in the revol uh the recreation field maintenance account now we don't currently have a limit on that that's because we haven't talked to Jim about what a reasonable limit would be i had estimated it at 30,000 below okay
yes you down there oh so so we don't set the limit up in in 11 we set the limit with the rest of them in 12 i think so i don't think the limit this isn't um this box is going to change a little bit it'll it'll have all the elements of
um where is it it got crossed up on the warrant it it there are four things you have to notate when you open up a new account a new evolving account and they are in the um they are in the warrant
for article yeah this is crossed up too because that says article 13 and 11 so it's a rec um so it'll identify that the purpose is recreational fields um that we will be use the source of revenue will be field s field field use
receipts the body operating it will be the recreation committee and we'll ask for monthly reporting of receipts and expenditures to the accountant and that's what has to be identified for the new revolving account so in article 11
we aren't going to add the fiscal year expensing up the fund and in the next article if we set up the fund we add in the amount correct so really we shouldn't have that part there we're not going to fix the maximum amount unless we fix it up there and
don't put it down there either way we need to have the estimate and I use 30,000 based on a balance um about they've been going it's been between 32,000 and 27,000 so do we just want to put 30 in the
first one and not take it out of the second one so it's not redundant but then the next year it's going to have to be in that list i I I Yeah we're not going to personally I like it the way it is where we establish it in 11 and then we set the limit like everything else in 12
mostly because then next year when we go to do this again and we copy and paste this list over it's not missed um that's primarily my motivation there um but to your point we could do it so we basically the question is going to be like how much is it and then we'll have to say look at article 12 if we wrote
that that's how much the limit is doubt anyone is going to know or care to ask what the limit is when we get to article 11 i'd be very surprised if that's a question that if there's an empty box there then we aren't going to
ask that though take the box i agree that if you don't put it in 11 then yes the box doesn't the box goes away in 11 well the box is going to change in 11 but there's a box in article 11 too that's empty and that's the debate yeah
it's just people will ask you know where do the numbers so the 11 we're just saying that we're going to fix the maximum amount we're going to set up this fund and set the maximum amount and the next budget article we actually set the maximum amount as long as that passes otherwise we take it out of the second one we vote to fix the maximum
amount you actually make a good point which is that we actually say fix the maximum amount if 11 doesn't pass we can't set the limit in 12 on something that didn't pass we just take it out so in that case I actually kind of feel like it would be better if we take an amendment from the floor and say take out the thing we just didn't pass or we
or we just do it in 11 because then if 11 doesn't pass it just doesn't pass remember not better just do it in 11 yeah if we say if we're saying we're moving to fix the maximum amount we should say the amount right so it's back in all right so it's back in and then I would take it out of I'd probably take I
guess I guess have to copy and paste efficiently we're just going to copy and paste and then don't forget our other revol or we can cross out the 30 or we remove the 30,000 from 12 leave the line item in there and say see above or established above or something like that
so we know it's there or TVA or whatever you know or same as above or however however the lawyer decides because it's not an authorized funds yet yeah it's not like it's not and it's not literally it's going to be seconds away but it's not an authorized fund yet when they
move it and again for some reason the town votes that down i'd much rather have it be vote proof than have to go and make an amendment on the floor to remove that from there and then again we have a a we can't vote we can't get rid of it then how do we forward and and
it's a lot messier that way so I'd like it just 11 passes or 11 doesn't pass um my only question is are not what we're solving tonight so my only question for you Becky is just do we want 30,000 for the number or do we want to go higher my my my thinking is this is a limit it
doesn't mean that like we're not appropriating money for him we're not saying here's more money we're saying how much is the most you can spend in a year what happens if we end up with some kind of regional you know championship that wants to use our fields and they're willing to spend $10,000 to do it then
they have to get it back to the town because the town has other uses for it well just they can still keep that no but but if Jim let's say Jim has to to get six more portaotties for three weeks for that tournament the money's there to pay for it because the money comes in but he's been capped at $30,000 of
expenditures out of the account i guess what I'm saying is that that's at the end of the year so as long as he as long as he's gets the portaotties and spends it in the same year it can go up to 50,000 it just can't at the end of the year he only has 30,000 is that what that Oh
that's the most maximum outlay out of that account in a year and that that's all I'm saying is just that like agree and the balance could be I know I have found a number of things that are over I do not know that we have yeah I mean I understand there being limits because
you don't necessarily want one department to to like kind of like go off the reservation and raise a bunch of money and spend a bunch of money outside of the purview of the finance committee and the select board committee so putting limits on there makes sense I'm just concerned specifically about this one is if You're saying in the past it's
been 27 to 33 what if it's 33 next year and at the end of the year he gets a point that's what I'm saying is like I don't see any downside to making that number a chunk higher than what he needs okay let's do 40 does that work for everybody
but these numbers come from the last three years four years five years are they adjusted for inflation how do you keep these limits some of these numbers have been here for 10 or 20 years it's a long time yeah um
but we're going back through and and looking at them that's all we can do and but these these roll I mean these roll right every year it just say just grows as well yeah it's not unless we hear from the wiring inspector that it needs to be higher then we'll keep the word until you hear yeah and the the
electrical inspector Yeah i'm sorry the plumbing inspector is I think it was closer to 3,000 last year so is under they vary from year to year you just have to check them all the time
wiring and plumbing are so different uh I think it's because of all the solar activity Oh yeah is driving it i guess my big question is if if we have arbitrary limits and we have accounts that are going over them why do the limits even exist in the
first place if there's no teeth behind them if it's not like there there's obviously no like legal procedure that's kicks in at in November when they've hit their max to stop them from doing so they just continue to spend and then you go look next year and go "Oh they were over." So if this is all just sort of
arbitrary why is there a limit why is there even a limit it's statutory and you try to keep things within range okay you were going to have a limit because it's the law it's the law mama said so that's a perfectly financing um I'm
sorry so I I guess maybe we don't necessarily need to to but I wanted to also explain um you know we were talking this is a second recreation account yes but as you notice there's not another recreation account on the list and so we
had a fun time figuring that out and luckily when Margaret was here she said there used to be a special revolving account only for recreation and so it turns out in
1981 Sunderland adopted the recreation account under 53D not 53E and a half 53 and a half came later so and that has quite a low spending limit so it's important we
might have to open up another recreation account as well but for now we can start moving the overage of expenses into this account okay to get it under control even though it's arbitrary so it's still statute can you just answer so of all
these different accounts are there examples of them exceeding their spending limits set here in previous years we'd have to look i'd have to check yeah yeah the only one I know about is the one from 82 1981
the other one the So it's called the revolving fund for field maintenance but it's not just for field maintenance it could be like portaotties and it could be right you know so is it really field maintenance or is it for recreation activities around like you
know what I mean like we should call it what it does and and and to be fair I might have chosen a bad example of using the portaotties for that because I'm not sure that he would actually be including that in that i believe it's supposed to be for maintenance specifically and I don't I think you're right so if you have a big tournament you get a lot of
money for them using it and then you fix the fields with that money yeah they they tear up the field because I I think that's the case um check that she can certainly so I know when you establish a revolving fund that it has to be very specific like we had that issue when we
established the community room fund so we raise money people sometimes pay us fees for using the community room that can only be used for the community room which is kind of like it's very limiting but apparently that's the way they're done what if it was field expenses
because that could include we're having a lot of people here they're going to pay us a lot of money so we're going to get portaotties is that the main one's for no because field maintenance doesn't sound like you could use No no the main recreation Oh the main one that we think is small yeah and so that that I think again I think I
would just I chose a bad example pretend that they a muddy soccer tournament and they pair up the field and we end up deciding we need to do an extra reating that year but we have $3,000 they paid us for this giant soccer tournament so what you're saying is 30,000 might have been fine because there's no porta bodies 30,000 might have been fine but
but just for me what I'm looking at is if we're looking at looking at our averages the trailers we need to if we're looking at our averages being 27 to 33 that's what I'm looking at is saying even outside of a fantastic year or something outside okay with calling it field maintenance because that's
really all it can be used for to point and that's what he had asked for was for what specifically for field maintenance um so sounds like we're okay with 40 on that the rest of them those limits they are what they are no one's asking us to change them and so at least for this year we'll just I think we'll need to
review the plumbing inspector for next year because we have a new um we have two new plumbing inspectors now so the activity could pick up yes so um that's more of a takeaway for our offseason discussions is do we want to revisit these we want to talk to each individual
you know the people who manage each of these accounts and say "Is this working for you what do you look like?" That kind of thing but we don't need to deal with that between now and meeting so um all right so that was 12 what we got next 13 land recognition
so this is the land acknowledgement um we had a U representative come in um from the Sunderland um human rights commission I believe is their title um asking us to support asking the select board to support this
uh land acknowledgement um they also did their due diligence to get it on on the docket um but they did ask us um this one does not have a finance committee recommendation cuz it's not one and neither is the next one yeah um yeah so
both of these are citizen petitions okay um I mean you're I don't see a reason why you necessarily couldn't i think she's not asking for good for your wedding yeah um so in in an effort to try to keep things moving tonight because I know we have a lot of stuff to talk about um I'm not going to touch on those because those
don't really and they don't have to yeah um and and they're you're welcome to read them if you want but um we're going to move on to article 15 so the article 15 through 20 these are our consent articles um
these basically are the town giving um the different departments in town the authority to do our jobs is there anything that you want to go over on those Becky or just um they should be same as last year and finance committee does not have to vote them so we just
vote you don't We don't have to vote 15 through 20 inclusive just not on each one i don't think you vote on them at all you don't have to vote on them at all so then we should take it off on It says right there finance committee recommendation to Do we vote on all five of them together
15 through 20 you don't have committee to recommend it says finance committee recommendation to Why wouldn't you Why would I mean Yeah vote on them we vote on all of them as a group rather than in so yeah that's what we've done as a
select board is we voted on 15 or whatever those numbers happen to be that year as a as a slate 1920 so how does that work you well it sounds like the select board writes on each one and then we wrote on just the whole ballot the whole thing
together maybe okay so like if you guys didn't like one of them you could like the select board okay question okay i mean I would probably remove the select work recommendation from the
individual ones and leave that up top it's duplicate and just have the submitted by Yeah i don't know why you'd have it for each one i mean the only reason I can see is if for some reason board didn't want to recommend one of them but we recommend this is this is the most basic stuff in town this is
like five out of six i would cannot imagine a scenario in which one of us would be like no we don't want there to be a treasure this year like that doesn't that would not be I I am on board okay so I'll get rid of them all there just have that top line the select
board finance and that's it right yeah and the final thing is the boat and that's your all keep flipping I think that's That's all you got I think no it's if you turn
the whole Oh so what's after 20 i have nothing after 20 yeah that's the last of the the consents are always the last that we do all right and then we do also on the last page of our warrant we have the um
the list of the offices that are being uh run this year um again this isn't really a financial thing but uh just for anyone's listening um this year we have assessor's office uh one position for three years select board one position
for 3 years board of health one position for 3 years library trustee three positions for 3 years moderator one position for one year planning board one position for 5 years cemetery one position for 3 years elder school
committee one position for three years clerk one position for 3 years and town park trustee want to serve for 3 years and I believe that there's a frontier school committee member also and by that I is that the frontier school committee separate separate needs
to be listed here and it's not yes it is separate it is separate and and I know we're filling it because I heavily pressured the person who got nominated to to take the position so was there committee is not on here either the elementary school committee is the third from the bottom Um it's just the
frontier needs to be spiked out separately cuz that is a separate position and is it a three-year appointment it's a three-year appointment one position it should be the same as the elementary school just you can just different um and I believe that's all of them i don't
see anything else missing there any questions or discussion on those pretty standard all righty i would just have Wendy look at that list and make sure we're not missing something from there your um Wendy Wendy did do she did the warrant
she put in my I put in my articles and then sent them back to her but this is her first draft yeah so just But yeah I would agree if if you missed one have her definitely double check to make sure that the rest of the list is accurate um all right i mean the rest of this is
just um signature signature stuff nothing that we go over necessarily um any questions on the warrant article from either board i see Crystal shaking her head no so that's a good sign d the chair of the CPA if we wanted to get
Megan Kane or Quinn I believe that is also listed on our website as well all right and the capital committee is you i'm the chair yeah [Music] which is a great segue to move into our
next article of new business uh which is our capital stabilization uh and that will be this sheet here for those of you who have a thousand sheets in front of you um so these are the requests that we received this year um we are meeting tomorrow night as a group
to go over this one last time so at this point we don't actually have a capital civilization recommendation for the select board to vote on but we will most likely out after tomorrow for next Monday to have the select board vote on that um that being said I would be very
surprised if it's not this list so we're going to go through it um so the first one we have is the uh the safety complex is asking for um booking room video they have an old video system the chief came in and told us about this i believe that you guys were here for that a couple of
um couple of times ago um and so 14,500 is the the dollar amount to upgrade to new Wi-Fi cameras and system and whatnot um so that's that there uh Highway has four on here uh three of these as
mentioned before are lease payments on equipment that we've already purchased in the past um we have a backhoe we have a truck and a loader um so that's 34,000 40,000 and 50,000 and then the only new item on here is $30,000 uh for an
asphalt roller and small tractor um so the total highway is 154 61530 moving on to the library we have two requests from the library one is activity room door replacement um they wanted to replace it to I believe match the other style door they had on the
other room it's for safety thank you for safety yep um and that's $15,000 um and then $37,000 is for uh mini splits um which just a reminder to everybody that while we do spend all of that money out the door up front a chunk of that comes
back in the form of rebates um that's that's not the library that's this elevation library is air handling that's for the restroom floors doors not the library we won't get any money back for the library but we will get a working door so that's good fair enough no we're
talking second line item it says HVAC request oh the HVAC will get money back no I no library gets any Yeah I I had my I had my HVAC projects mixed up thank you well there are doors in both of them so yes um All right and then
uh for admin um um before we go on on the library I spoke with Katherine as you recall there were a couple of items open from the past on the capital list for the library um there was a
$42,500 item that's never been touched from two years ago there's a 11,000 for the school but the 14,500 for the library um Katherine said if you know we can if we keep this
37,000 for the HVAC system then we'll take back the 14,500 she's she's approved that so we're going to and just confirm the 37,000 that's the money that's to be appropriate every year for repairs on the HVAC system yes okay so
that 18 20 units they basically do two every year because on average a couple break every year but then sometimes they don't and we don't use it and then there's a $15,000 currently in this budget that
they have used about $10,000 of she's got some outstanding bills on that yeah well I was cuz it was about five or six so I'm hoping hoping she got those covered but I she was going to let me know but the 14,000 is good news for the
capital reserve um account wonderful all right next up we have under admin uh Vadar software 3,920 and the same will be handled in the budget yes um the point software
that the account I'm sorry that that we were using for our financial statements had a $12,000 a year I'm sorry it's a $12,000 Yeah it's a $12,000 a year service contract um the total
package to pay for Vadar over a six-year period is 9600 uh um a so we are able you know a year so we still are able to cover what we need to have a couple thousand dollars
left and we're paying off beta our point was just excessively expensive on servicing okay so we don't have to have it paid through capital or free cash that's good to know all right and then
our last chunk is the school so this is where those mini splits that I was thinking were for the library come in Um and so that's 97,500 for uh mini splits phase 2 at the school um and then we have two items for the restrooms uh one is replace restroom floors near the
library and there's replace the toilet partitions in that same rest room near the library uh those are each 16,000 um and the total school is 1295 all those requests together is 350,61530 and just a reminder that
$420,000 and change is our um appropriation for that account so that leaves us with the approximately $70,000 that we had discussed earlier um as being either left in there for the future or depending on how our conversations with do and whatnot go um could potentially be unfortunately
gobbled up by the gobbled up by the the um general civilization fund not transferring that funds in all right any questions on any of these items to school the 97 this is phase two this is the last phase right i believe I think they hit half of them already i believe
you're correct i think it's phase two of two y I hope so at that price well given it's 10 classrooms there's not that many classrooms no I I I'm pretty sure this is some other Okay um and that item will
obstensively assuming that the federal government doesn't get away with the program between now and when we collect it we should potentially get a good chunk of that back um 30ish something thousands out of that should be coming back our way um and we do we've had conversations with the capital planning committee about making sure that any of
those rebate monies that we get on capital funds goes back into the capital account because that's where that money is supposed to be going and we want to make sure it does um great any other questions on the capital budget just do real quick one on the on the highway leases it'd be helpful i know you all
probably know this to say like year three of what just so we can start to see when those will fall off very minor and I believe all three of them are five years leases that was going to be my guess um and then when's it six okay we'll have to double check that for you no not
doesn't like this this looks great uh the 420 and change that's the capital stabilization number how does that evolve year to year does that go up by a certain amount yep so we can increase that by the same two and a half% the select board every year votes to do so which unless there's a real unless
capital stabilizations in the future yeah which give me a year where we don't need the money and I'll I'll have a great year um so the short answer is that $100,000 was the original override that that went up by 2 and a half% for a bunch of years that got to 224,000 in change at that
point we added another 375 the override which brought up up to well 375 plus a little bit to get to exactly $400,000 or $4,000 was that first year um and then last year it went to 409 with 2 and a half% and then this year went to 420
with that so even though we didn't actually bail out last year we still got the increment of the increase yes you successfully voted the town the town appropriated it we just didn't collect it so the Yeah is the percent increase tied to the general levy increase can
they be different or they they can be different we've both done them separately but they as without an override they're cap by 2 and a half% and again there's I would have a very hard time not increasing that by 2 and half% every year um because that's just inflation right there i mean it's not even inflation to be honest that's just
trying to keep up with inflation every year so that we have the same effective buying power year to year in the capital account than we did well it's depreciation too it's like our old house yeah yeah making sure we're I mean and I'd love I'd love two and a half% to be the increase we're looking at but what we're looking at really is over 3ear
period items are doubling in price so um it's the least we can we can do at this point it's all we can do yeah all right any other questions on capital beautiful all righty next up on our C can I ask one quick question so
the next thing is is select board thing so we would have I we might want to get rid of the finance committee in a second but before we do that um I just have a couple questions if we could have a discussion about conflict of conflict of interest right because I did my training
this week so my husband gets $450 a year to be on the $550 a year does that mean I can't vote on the budget or that warn article does that mean I abain yes abstain from that art from that article
that vote didn't have the sele the the finance committee listed for which one oh no it did so this is the one this is more valid stains and then the other question that's an easy one which number is that i think that's
article two on the warrants so two people abstain we have four that's still quorum because it's abstensions as long as you're here as long as you vote you're fine okay i think and and I and we just someone's just going to ask us why did all these people abstain it's because our we're
married to people who are making rolling in the money making5 a year so someone's going to have to answer that why did the finance committee abstain because we took our conflict of interest training i know I the finance committee won't abstain you two will abstain
correct 202 right um then the other question I had is that when I first joined the finance committee it came up because I was on the library committee a library trustee whether I had to abstain on things that affected the library and the whole budget has the library in it no I
don't think which seems like it'd be weird to abstain on that i don't think because the same thing with school committee and I I checked with the state and they said I don't so So I just substain on Doug's 550 to don't abstain on the whole budget so what I would suggest and this is just my suggestion is just that you acknowledge that in
public session on Wednesday or whenever is I'm voting on this but be aware I have a potential conflict of interest as long as you're open about that i'm disclosing that I am part of this group that's overseeing this part of this budget okay you should be fine um
but yeah okay I think it's the same i specifically called him and he said "No you're fine you can go on the school committee." So when you vote on the budget I'm gonna say I'm on library trustees he's going to stand he's on the school committee we all know that and we're still going to vote on okay and really we get in trouble when when
things happen that we don't announce not when we say yes I have a conflict of interest and I'm still going to go ahead and do it that's for a large part fine i mean depending on how how conflict the the conflict of interest is but it the problem is when you don't say anything and someone says "Well wait a minute there's a conflict of interest there." Then bad things happen so certainly
would rather get it in front of that than anything else yes unrelated question um we talked about this last time just on local revenues there was a question about we've been using kind of a flatline approach you know what can we do about that or can they change i see that the
estimates are higher how did we land at that number is that a new path we're tracking now or what are we doing on local receipt revenue in terms of estimating budgets okay so on the local receipts and I apologize for not going over that the one thing I did do is I
went through it and took a 7 and 12% I I included a 7 and 12% increase on all the revenue local receipts okay so typically
um so that's cutting into what we will get back at the end of the year in free cash now is that 7% above what you would what you did already or that 7% because you hadn't changed it well typically yeah it was level from the prior year mhm and
then as we kept talking about coming up short um I I checked out you know I looked at what a seven and a half well I looked at a five and a 10 but a seven and a half brought us I think $56,000 it was a little over
$50,000 which I felt given our situation would be of great assistance at this point it it'll it'll come out it'll short our free cash the same amount next year but it seemed like it was a small enough amount to well and given
that every year we have more free cash but then we transfer a bunch of into the budget and we have more free cash we transfer budget in the budget it's okay like that doesn't actually it's six of one half dozen the other this is just being honestly a little bit more honest with ourselves upfront about what it's going to look like um
do you know and and something you don't have off the top of your head that's fine but do you know what we had increased that amount in previous years or has it been flat for a while it's been relatively level but it hasn't been flat it's been creeping up okay but not
7% most okay all right well for example I think it's the actuals we do have which here on the sheet 23 to 24 which is a couple years ago that's we have went up around 40,000 just for context so okay 55
yeah so that year probably was a four and a half 5% increase this is a 7% increase so but this treatment doesn't cause any issues with the way we have been treating it flat with the state i know you said that towns can kind of do one thing or the other thing no I think if you're a small increment is allowable
either way it's when you make a dramatic change like if if I had gone up you know 100% and gone they'd be like "What are you doing?" You know did your town Yeah so the small increments are fine okay
okay any other questions from you before we let y'all clarify we're going to vote on Wednesday on everything that we can and then wait on rate wait or revote on anything that changes before next Monday quickly at the beginning of the meeting
next Monday yes and we will make sure that you guys are if you do need to do that we'll make sure you're at the beginning of the thing so you can get in your stuff and if we vote on the warrant article and it changes it's not a big deal to revote right right so if we accidentally vote on something then it changes you'd have to revote but it's
not a big deal it's not a big deal okay and it's posted you can vote extra early posted every meeting Wednesday and there's agenda out there i think I did that is it 48 hours or 24 hours 48 i hope it's there there was a cuz there
was a tried to do it last Thursday right one said the date was the right but the day of the week was wrong or something that's out there that's on the website it has been posted we're meeting Wednesday and it's not hybrid it's in person we don't have to
think for the Wednesday meeting we don't have We don't have to have right right show up and you're going to be You said you'll be open for us i'll be here and I can We can meet in here if you want or downstairs wherever you want
yeah i just want to make sure that agenda is actually there h it doesn't show up on agendas on the website it should say Wednesday what is it april 9th like so it's not posted on maybe
it's just the link maybe it's the agenda i'm not sure what you're looking at so when you look on the website you're not seeing April 9 right that's actually Oh man how much time do we have to have 24 up
yeah I needed to do it at 6 48 but no is it 48 48 or 24 it's 48 it's 48 but if we post the moments I mean we can we um can you can we meet I mean can we meet at 8:30 is that today for people on
Wednesday if we don't we have to do a different day then we have to do a different day let's continue well we need to tell Becky right away get posted right now and then we're we're good to eight and
I'm so sorry cuz I can't do I should ask that i can do Friday night that's going to be a fun Friday night i can't do Friday night yeah we're set for when we just have to try so let's um have Becky post it for as soon as possible okay right i would say stop you know go do it
you know post it right now for 8:30 on Wednesday 8:30 on Wednesday yeah i do have two minutes I got to check with Mel okay we only have we only have one more item on the agenda and it should be a real quick one so we're going to blast through the five minutes we need to get
through this one and then we'll motion to we're not wonderful thank you thanks a lot we'll talk to you soon so to get Becky available to go do the posting um our last item is to select board needs to vote on the town clerk's request yes
for this um to approve early inbox office voting from April 28th to May 1st this is for our town elections any discussion necessary no crystal anything from you all right at this time I'd entertain
a motion to uh approve the town clerk's request for in office voting from April 28th to May 1st make a motion to approve early in office voting from April 28th to May 1st for the town clerk second we have a motion made and
seconded all those in favor i I three nothing excellent all righty that's the last new business we have no correspondence nobody is in the room or online for public comment no active session um old business i have no select
court updates dan any updates crystal any court updates so we had South County EMS meeting last week i don't know if you guys had a chance to look at um the goals the director had put
together for the year um one of the goals was regarding getting accreditation through CAS the board of oversight decided that
they didn't think that was a goal that um we wanted him to pursue great so we've asked him to replace that goal with a personal development type goal whether it's a management type class
whether it's a conference something like that but um just didn't feel that accreditation was was worth the money because getting this particular
accreditation doesn't allow you to charge more for an ambulance call doesn't allow a change in reimbursement from Medicare anything like that it's just an
accreditation you know to kind of kind of benchmark yourself against your peers but there's so few people that or so few ambulances that have this accreditation not really sure it's a
good benchmarking exercise and expense so yeah no I agree with you on that and I I I like the idea of moving it to more of a professional development kind of goal so great thank you so much for that Crystal because I was concerned how
expensive that could have been um yeah and that was the thing they're just getting accreditation and it gets you a better Medicare reimbursement nice but if if
there there was just no real impact other than a bench monarching exercise and it's a lot of money that Yep no I agree
great thank you anything else Crystal no we have to meet again um the week or next week um just finished going through um we never made it through all of our agenda items uh we've got another South County EMS meeting next week great more
to come we look forward to hearing it next Monday all righty uh town minister updates do you have anything for us that we didn't know yes quickly I want to report that um we've concluded negotiations with the police chief and I'll be bringing forward his contract
for the next meeting on um the what's our next meeting is the 14th of April wonderful and thank you Dan and thank you Becky for working on that we appreciate the the hard work on that wonderful anything else from you all righty at this time I would entertain a motion to adjurnn motion to adjurnn
second all right all right we have a motion made and seconded to adjurnn all those in favor i I I personal driver all righty 3 nothing 8:08 p.m thank you very much and that gives you 22 minutes to go get that posted