She's running late. Okay. Okay. Um, welcome to the May 14th, 2025 select board meeting. If you could all stand and join us. Oh, this meeting is being recorded. Pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And before we start with resident comment, I just want to thank uh Joe
Duet, Nathan Kent, and Nate Bishine for uh managing the uh video tonight. So we'll start off with public comment. Public comment is three minutes long. If you could uh just state your name and your address and just understand that
the select board doesn't comment on public comment. So, is anyone here for public comment? Mr. Ron, if you come up to the mic. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members of the Sic. Thank you uh Juno
for the important job that you're doing for the for the town of Swamscott. I'll take the three minutes. I'll divide it into few words about myself, my mission, how it can be accomplished and what I'm asking for you. I'm not asking for any checks. It's cash only.
My name is Ori. I moved to this country. Could you just give us your name and address? Sure. Orio 441 Atlantic Avenue. I'm a swanskot resident for 35 years. I moved to this
country from Israel 35 years ago, 34 years ago. Before I moved here, I am a veteran. I served in three wars in the Yipur war, in the first Lebanon war, and most recently in the 91 first Gulf War. I was the liazison between the American
Patriot missiles dispatched to help Israel and the Israeli Air Force. I've seen humanity at its worst. I came here with my family in in seeking for a better life. My kids went to the school system here A to Z. At some point, my
daughter decides to go back to Israel and uh literally 6 weeks before the October 7 war. A bunch of people realize that something is about to happen in the Middle East in the Middle East. I flew back to Israel August 25th. I put her on an airplane six weeks before the war
broke. I'm here today to ask you to help me to walk with me to enhance public safety at the Swamscot school system. We have an unbelievable SRO uh school resource officer, Brian Wilson. I met with him
over the past year and year and a half. I reached out to the school superintendent, to the chief of police, to the school committee, to the PTO, to Mr. Christa and uh I would say that with very few exceptions all everyone
welcomed the addition of another SRO. I know that there is no budget in town. There is a crisis. I I believe that I figured out how we can make it happen without tapping into a a budget. I did a little research myself looking
at FBI files and calling a whole bunch of people that are in this field of protection and they realize that there are certain deterren that work to protect school. Simple thing is having a police cruiser parked outside the school absolutely helps. Nothing helps more
than an SRO. Uh I analyzed the threats to the school system in this in a very long discussion that I with had with officer Brian Hitson here at the school. He divided the world into two categories. Threats that are already inside the school, God forbids, and threats that
are outside the school and can be deterred. I'm not going into threats that are inside the school. I believe that the plan that the police department has developed are are sufficient. I'm referring to threats outside the school can can be stopped before anything
happens. If we can pull our resources together and we have a bunch of resources in this town. If we can work together, I believe that I have identified certain paths moving forward to get another SRO and to which will enhance the public safety for
all our kids. What I'm asking from you is to recognize the importance of public safety. I mean that's a no-brainer. And appoint one person process. They were looking for the select board to initiate the process. What I need from you
specifically, set up one meeting with a representative of the police department, of the school department, of the PTO, myself, and maybe another member where I can lay out a plan. Then I can come back to you with a detailed plan what my plan entails. My plan
entails having everyone sacrifice a little bit, a little bit of resources from the police department, a little bit of resources from myself and other resources that we can raise between the PTO and parents of the school department.
Nobrainer. I I I I never want to say I'll take a no for an answer. I mean, it's an opportunity because I'm willing to fund some of it. If we work together, we'll make it happen. and everyone. It's a It will be a win-win to everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ron.
Okay. Is there anyone else for Mr. Okconor? Oops. Hi, I am Amy O' Conor, uh, precinct 6 and town meeting member and school committee member. and I'm here on behalf of my school committee, most of
who are here. Um, my original intention of coming to speak tonight was to thank everybody for what's been a really collaborative process. Months of meeting throughout the winter helped us to really understand that despite not having had a financial summit that we could work together to understand the pressures on all sides. We heard loud
and clear at town meeting last year that we needed to work well together. So I came to acknowledge that and say thank you to all of you because I think it was a really uh positive season between last year and this year. Monday brought us some surprises.
Um it was with great surprise and disappointment that there was new financial information that has come to light on the municipal side that then caused FINCOM to cut the school budget by $150,000 which is the cost of three pair of professionals. This information was
never shared with the schools. Nor did Fincom post that they would be discussing and voting on this cut. And so we're curious about who directed the cut because it really flies in the face of the select board votes that have been taken this year. I know that you're not the finance committee and I know that
you can't answer for them, but you know, this is something that the the three groups have been working on together. This was not a collaboration that we've come to expect. Um, and we are disappointed that town hall didn't share this information with us. There's been much discussion over the last year about
not having a repeat of this year's town meeting. And I think it's fair to say that the school committee and most of the select board members were looking forward to a smooth town meeting. But it seems, however, that with closed door decisions like this that we haven't made the kind of colleial process that we had hoped, which I think is a pity for the
town. So, thank you Mr. Okconor. Hi, Rachel Taylor 71 Middle Sex AV. I was here last week to talk to you about um figuring out how to expand bus access from the cut school bus. Um I want to thank many of you for reaching out and coming up with some possible ideas and
looking into it. And I'm just here to say that I hope we can continue that process. Um, and I really appreciate those of you who said, "Hey, let's figure out how we can make this happen." So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hardes. Hello. Uh James Andrews. I'm here on
behalf of uh my precinct this evening. I'm a town meeting member. Um I'm very concerned about the tax rises that are being proposed and I'm looking at the town warrant and the fact that we're going to have to have tax rises next
year as well. When I look at uh the average or the median household income in this town, it's $130,000. When I look at the median mortgage that people pay, it's nearly $40,000. When I look at the median
property tax that goes on top of that mortgage, that's another 8,000. So when you look at the ratio in terms of affordability for that in this town, that comes out at 36%. 30% is the affordable marker that's
generally used. If we add another $2,000 of property taxes on the average, so $1,000 this year and potentially another thousand next year, that gets us up to nearly 38%. We're headed in the wrong direction. And we make a big deal about
putting money into affordable housing and creating opportunity, diversity. All of those things are important. However, these numbers are telling us that it's the property tax rises that are making this town unaffordable for the people who live in it who are on a median
salary. So, I just encourage this board and I encourage the school committee as well to kind of look at that and figure out how do we get this $600,000 that's needed. As a town meeting member, I am a
little frustrated with the process. I have heard different things. I don't know what is entirely true at this point and I really don't care as a property tax owner. The same comment I have heard from multiple people. We're not ATMs to
keep funding everything the way it is. So, we're going to have to look through this. We're going to have to cut some things out of this and we're going to have to make it work because we can't keep going back to the medium people around here and saying you need to sacrifice another percent of your
pre-tax earnings. It just doesn't work for families in this town. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Andrews. Is there anyone else for public comment? Anybody online?
Okay, seeing none, can we go to the town administrator's report? We can. All right, I'll be fairly brief. Just want to let everybody know about the TA search committee is asking residents to fill out a survey about what the community wants in a new town
administrator. The link is on the town's Facebook page and its website and will be sent out. Working with the VFW leadership while Benet Brris conducting its site work. Rene was on site this week doing some boring on the site. As
many of you know, the annual Tom meeting is this Monday, May 19th, 7 p.m. We've got the room reserved for three nights. Hopefully, we can wrap it up in three nights. If not, I believe it's reserved for the following Monday, the first Monday in June potentially, but we're hoping it gets wrapped up in three.
Maryann McMaster is working on job descriptions for collaboration with NHAD for our building commissioner as well as a job description for our recreation director on I'll talk about in a minute. Heidi attended Governor Healey signing of the re-imagining agent 2030 plan for
Massachusetts which includes swamps opening minds through art program. The annual fourth of July fundraiser golf tournament was held this past Monday. 128 golfers participated and raised close to $13,000 for the
fireworks. And last but not least, we found out this week that Danielle Strauss, our recreation director, is a retired effective July 11th. Danielle has been the town's recreation director for nearly 20 years and has been instrumental in creating most, if not
all of our wonderful program we have today. Thank you. Do we have any questions? So, Gino, we had we had uh we had voted Rich Baldachi a few weeks ago. We did. And unfortunately, we were unable to make the terms work. You know, we
thought we had an agreement. We did have an agreement with Nhat to pony up another $20,000, but unfortunately, and Rich wanted a little bit more money. So, it wasn't about doing Swam Scott and Nant. No, he's
willing to do both. And to Nah's credit, they came up from the original 14 to 18 up to $20,000. They need a commissioner as much as we do. So, we're still in negotiation with them or what? Yeah. Right. We haven't totally
closed the door. The last number is what we have in reserves. We would have to come up with another 10 to make that work. And I know with a budget crunch, that's not going to be easy. So are we we're going to work with NAT
and post it. Are they in agreement with that? Yep. That was Yep. Maryann's posting that job offer. I reached out to Tony Bella, the town administrator to make sure he was still on board with the $20,000 if it wasn't going to be Rich because he knows he was getting a certain value with Rich being with the
state and being with us so many years. But he's on board and he has he has that authority, right? He does. Yep. And We brought on Bob Ives. That's what I was going to say. Bob started Monday. Bob's going to give us an additional 14
hours a week, but he just wanted to let me know and everybody know that this is just a stop gap. It's not He's going to stay till July 31st. He's already retired. He's here to bail us out a little bit. But he said we need to find a building commissioner because July 31st, whatever the Friday is before July
31st will be his last day with SW. Okay. Um, I have a question on the Marshall Street Outfall project moving along. Can you just Where are we with that? That job's just about wrapped up. We just have a small punch list that we're working on with Grenice and we
will do be doing some more testing and the last time we tested the outfall actually the catch basin behind 410 Humphrey Street, we had great results. So, does that mean with the results that you had, does that mean we can have the
recreation program down there potentially? I don't want to commit to that yet, but there is a very good chance that we will be able to open up Fisherman's Beach for testing. We're going to start a round of testing. We're going to do 30 days worth of testing right now. We have an individual that's working from the high school that's going to work with us and test seven
days a week for 30 days. Are they testing uh the Kings Beach area to and Marshall Street? Not Kings Beach. What we're committed to doing right now is Phillips, Eisman's, and Fisherman's. We know we have issues that we're addressing right now at Kings. But don't
we want to know what Kings is looking like before we start that um pilot program? Yep. But it's not necessary to test every day, but we do plan on testing that as well. Yeah. We have our new testing equipment of a base rate before the pilot starts and then we're going to be testing every day during the
pilot as well. We're going to be taste testing it before it goes to the UV and then afterwards. Great. I had a few more things I should know. So, um certainly road work has been happening all over town. Uh a lot of
residents have been uh have been saying thank you for for for finalizing uh the paving um you know, really in in all in all parts of town. I know in previous years you provided the select board a list of bonded streets. Yes. Can you just send us an updated list?
Absolutely. And then um I know that a resident uh had had come and was talking about laterals last time. Do we have an idea of the addresses of the laterals that have been repaired that have been repaired? Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Can we get Can we just have that list sent to
us as well for the for the addresses for the laterals and and the bondage streets? That'll be helpful. Yep. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. So, now moving to new and old business. Um, I would like to make a
request that we switch up the uh our our line item here and I'd like to move up the election of chair, election of vice chair. Um, if you guys are okay with that. Sure. Okay. So, um, starting with the election
of chair. Well, I'm going to Yeah. I would I I would just like to I would just like to make a motion um and consolidate so we can get to the to the business of uh of of looking at um the budget. Uh Katie Failen has served as the vice chair for
uh for two years. Um I this is her fourth year on the board. She just won re-election and I would I would feel comfortable nominating her as chair. Uh Doug Thompson is in his uh third year on the board and I would feel comfortable uh nominating him as uh as vice chair. I
think the motion you want is whether or not to consolidate. So we would have to pass that motion first. Okay. We can consider I don't want to get an open meeting. Consider we can consider a motion to consolidate uh the election of chair and vice chair. Second. Okay. All in favor? I. Okay. So
now you're in. Yeah. So now I I have a motion for Katie Failen to be the chair and uh Doug Thompson to be the vice chair of the select board for the 2526 year. We have a second. Second. All in favor? I I motion carries. Thank you.
Congratulations. Like right now like right this second. You're not even going to finish the meeting? Nope. This has been how it's gone in the past. Yes. Because usually it's at the end. That's why it's usually. Fantastic.
Congratulations. Congratulations, Katie. Congratulations. Do you want to switch seats with Doug then? So Doug and I can sit next to each other. No, next time. Something to look forward to. All right. Well, here we are then, I guess. Uh then taking the agenda
in order. Discussion and possible vote to extend the deadline for the TA search committee. We have a letter in the packet from Heather Roman respectfully requesting a 30-day extension for the search committee. Extension brings them
to June 25th. Uh based on the timeline presented to you at the May 7th select board meeting, they expect to request two more extensions after this one. Uh I believe Tavon spoke to this last time. We just didn't vote on it. So, we're
here to take a formal vote. Motion to approve. Second. All those in favor? I I um next uh presentation and discussion of the fiscal 26 water and sewer rates. Who do we have the pleasure of such
presentation? Patrick. All right. Diane, if you want to bring that up. And just before we get started, has this been reviewed and and agreed upon, recommended by the water, sewer infrastructure advisory committee? It
has not. We met with them earlier this week. So they had their preliminary review. They have all this information, but there has been no vote. They're actually discussing it tonight at their meeting. Oh, they're meeting. Yeah, they meet tonight. Um, okay. And do we what's the what's the time sensitivity here?
Um, I would just say first quarter water bills for FY26 will be issued in August. Okay. Um, so there is a runway, but usually we want to do it prior to year end so that people who are using water now know what it's going to cost. Yep. Um, so we've been trying to move the
timeline forward. Um, we're in May, so maybe like the following meeting if we're ready for a vote or the meeting after that I think would be a good timeline to be on. Thank you. We wouldn't really be since our advisory committee is meeting right now, we wouldn't really be expected to vote on
this tonight. And your agenda doesn't have a vote. Agenda just says the first reading presentation and discussion. So, no vote. Okay. I didn't see first reading. It does discuss.
Good. You good? Okay. Y All right. First slide, Diane. Thank you. So, I've got some background and just some historical information at the beginning of this that I'll run through. Um, you as the select board decide the water and sewer rates at
least annually and that power is given to you by Mass General Law. So, we do this annually. if something happens mid year, we can come back and adjust the rates if if need be. And we've done that a couple times in the past, just so you're aware. Next
slide. Um, this slide has some information collected by the MWR about average annual household consumption of water. The measure is in 100 cubic feet, which is what your meter reads, and that's what your build based on. And you can see over the past 10 years that
number has declined a bit and that's likely due to conservation efforts in general. Um more efficient buildings going in with more efficient fixtures and um so that'll play into the next few slides. This is expenditure growth over
the last 10 years. The sewer fund has had an average 5.5% uh year-over-year growth in expenses and water has seen a 2.9% average growth year-over-year. Next slide. Um this slide here
has a chart of the water and sewer increases that have been passed in the last few years on a combined basis. So that's water and sewer together. Um we've averaged 3.2% over the last 10 years. The MWR survey of 56 communities
in Massachusetts has seen a 3.5% average year-over-year increase. And obviously last year, to recap, the board passed a large rate increase, especially in the sewer fund, it was 18% and in water it was
6.2%. And so that's where you're getting this large anomalous number. in 2024. Um, if you take that out, we were only raising our rates on average 1.7%. Year-over-year. Next slide. Um, revenue growth over the last
10 years, same thing. So, for sewer, that average 2.3% and for water 2.9%. Next slide. Retained earnings. Um those are certified annually based on the balance in the operating fund and that has been
declining over the past few years. Combination of increased expenses, conservation and rates maybe just not keeping up with both of those trends perfectly and also use of retained earnings for um rate reduction
or or projects what have you. Um, so next slide. Here we're looking at average household costs um, compared to the 56 communities that are surveyed by the MWR annually. And you can see that we're a
bit below average on the 10-year change in the household bill. Um, with the average being $547 and we're at 529. Next slide. this lovely chart which is a lot um that
shows our position relative to the 56 communities that are surveyed and you can see horizontally um on the horizontal axis the water costs we are you know the ninth highest community for water costs compared to that peer group. However, in sewer we're
the 16th lowest out of 56. Um so there's definitely a difference there. Um, and we'll get into that next slide. Um, this slide has our budgeted expenses for water and sewer. We're
seeing a 3.7% growth on water, 7.1% in sewer. Um, those are driven primarily in sewer by borrowing costs for infrastructure upgrades. And in water, it's similar infrastructure upgrades for water main replacements, etc. And I'll
also just note that the largest expenses in both of these budgets are the assessments from the regional authorities that provide us with water or sewer treatment services. Next slide. Here you have the assumptions
that go into the 10-year rate forecast. You'll see um on the next few slides. These are assumptions we use to insulate ourselves from big swings in consumption that can affect the revenue results for the year. Um so we've taken an average
of you know consumption for water uh for the last few years and we've said we'll take our average and reduce domestic consumption by 5% to be conservative in case that does the result um doesn't meet our expectations. And for irrigation that can swing more wildly.
So we applied a 15% reduction to that assumption and then we take our average collection rate and assume that our account numbers are stable, our departmental revenues are stable because they have been for many many years and we use a bit of an aggressive operating
budget growth of three and a half% and then also our known about infrastructure upgrades are factored in for debt service. Next slide. And this is the whole um summary of what we've prepared for rate
options. So we prepared three options this year. Previously we've done two options for you. Um but given the costs and the growth, we wanted to come up with a 16% option that just represents a more affordable option to consider. Um,
but number one would be the most geared towards financial stability, replenishing our retained earnings to 20% which is our financial policy threshold by the end of the ensuing fiscal year. And that would result in average costs increase to the typical
home of $118 on an annual basis. And I also put on the second to last row there where that would is estimated to put us in a rank of affordability compared to the 56 other communities that are surveyed by the MW. So even passing that
level increase keeps us about middle of the pack compared to all those other communities that are surveyed. Next slide. Um this is a 10-year forecast for rate option one. I won't go really into these slides. They're the same, but for
each option, it shows you what is a hypothetical increase for the next 10 years to maintain an appropriate level of retained earnings and fund the anticipated budget and infrastructure upgrades that are known in both funds. And the squiggly lines you see going
across the top are your retained earnings balance as a percent of budget. So you can see that goes up and then it is somewhat stabilized. And then you know once we get through our infrastructure upgrades it continues on. And you can skip this one this
one. And this is the last slide. This is just a summary of the actual rates per 100 cubic feet that would be on the table for either of the three options. I'm open to any questions. Anybody have questions for
Patrick? It's a lot of information in a short amount of time. Yes. Sorry. That's okay. It always is. Don't have to be sorry. Um Allen under retained earnings. Yep. So it looks like from 22 to 25 our retained earnings
have dropped over $2.5 million. Yes. Is that correct? Yes. And especially from 23 to 25 are retained earnings have dropped just short of 2 million. Yes. And is that
just water or sewer combined? Marielen. They're both dropping on this. It looks like water has a steeper decline than water has a steeper decline but in the retained earnings. Well, it's just the retained earnings in both of these is very sew's down to
zero, right? Yeah. Essentially on on paper sew is down to zero with a $2 million loss in just under three years. Yes. So we've had several years where consumption was unfavorable and because retained earnings carries forward every
year, if we make an assumption on revenue and we know our expenses and all the expenses come to fruition but then consumption doesn't quite hit um then that leads to a draw down in the ending balance at the end of the year. and we haven't had a really up year to
replenish that and we haven't been raising the rates beyond what you know we reasonably anticipate are needed for expenses and what we anticipate for revenue. So that's why you're seeing another large rate increase suggested this year to get us to a place where
we're generating surplus at least in years one and two and then going forward maintaining to a certain level at least. Well, I mean, especially with everything else we're going to talk about, the last thing we want to be talking about is raising these rates. But like we this is
like Groundhog Day. We were here last year, right? It's the same conversation, I think you guys gave us a couple different options, 18 or 19% or something like that. And despite that, we just went the wrong direction. Right. So, the rate options that were voted
last year, the board supported um increasing the rate so that we hit 20% within three years. So this is year two of that plan. But we still went down. It still went down. It didn't increase. Correct. So what's
wrong with the projections? Yeah. That's what leads me to that much less consumption, right? That both water and sewer. So So where are we going wrong in your opinion? Your question? I think given the large swings we've seen in the last few years, which don't necessarily line
up with long-term history, they're unusual. I think factoring those in and being more conservative in the revenue assumptions going forward is going to protect us from these now that we know we might see larger swings than are typical. Um so I think that's factored
in here. I think it was to an extent last year obviously not enough. Um and then I think the additional just pressure on the expenses growing. So Patrick, was this just a utilization as we came out of COVID and people, you know, were not were no longer in their
homes 24 hours a day? We went back, right? We might have had a a COVID factor as well. And then just just on the detailed rate table, page 16 of the presentation, um, you know, our current rates certainly have a uh have a tiered
um, you know, have a tiered base rate. Mhm. Um but in these options it looks like it's it's a flat base rate. Any any thought as to Yep. And that's a good observation and that's something we're talking to the water sewer infrastructure advisory committee about
right now. Um but that came out of a recommendation from the DPW team um that prepares the water bills every quarter. Right now, when we originally opted to tier the base rate, we were hopeful that
the software system we use for this would accommodate an automating process where we can tear the base rate. Hasn't happened. We had an upgrade scheduled. The upgrade didn't didn't do that for us as anticipated. So, it's a large administrative burden to quarterly
um update those tiered base rates for the quite frankly peanuts of revenue that difference that that accounts for. Um and I think one of the things that was designed to do was to help a very very
low end user um avoid some you know flat rate costs that they otherwise wouldn't have to incur. But we do have an existing abatement program for the base fee. If someone is 75 or older and uses below a certain threshold of water on a
fiscal year basis, then they can apply through the DPW office for an abatement of their base rate anyways. So I think we can accomplish the same desired effect with also saving staff time that can be deployed better. Um, so that's
what that accomplishes and I'm glad you picked up on that because I forgot to mention that earlier. Well, yeah. So, to that to that point though, I guess that puts the onus on the youth the user to apply for the abatement and what is the education that we've given residents thus far that the abatement exists such
that they're utilizing it. Um, there's a communication piece and I had that thought too because instead of it being automatic now it's it's more you have to be proactive. So, um, it's on the website already. It's something that I think I'll put on the collector's
website, too. And also printed copies in my office, the collector's office, and having my staff also educate people as they come in to pay their bills, especially um some of the people that might benefit from this most are the people that physically come in to pay um
typically. So, there's an education piece there that I'll do with my team and hopefully that'll increase the utilization of that program. I think there's maybe a collaboration too at the senior center. Yeah. So the people who visit the senior center if there's some sort of educational pamphlet or something about it so we can connect
with Heidi on that get it out there and hopefully it'll help more people. Is there anything that drives um or restrains the delta between tier one and tier three? I mean you you could have that be a bigger delta as well, right? So I'm glad you picked up on that too
because that's something the water sewer infrastructure committee asked the about the spread between the tiers. how was that arrived at? What does it do if we change it? So, that was one of their questions and we're gonna try and talk about that with them a little bit, flesh out what that looks like. Um, and we can
give that information to you all before you vote. I think it would be helpful to next time we have this conversation understanding the sort of where we left off the conversation last time because I did think that there was sort of like a
three-year plan in place and this doesn't really acknowledge that we had gone down this path and maybe that path wasn't enough. So maybe understanding like whatever projection we had last year, how the model changed given the reduction in consumption and then what the
recommendation is going forward, why what we originally thought we the path we were going down isn't going to sustain us. Reconcile the two and then also here's the path forward. I think that totally we can do that. Um are we using the same
consumption assumption that we used? No, last year. Thank goodness. What? And how has that changed? Maybe you already said that, but just to say like Yeah. So I I you know, recent results to predict the future. Yeah. Yeah. More recent results
because that's more reflective of what's happening because when you're in a downward trend and you want to be conservative, you're going to use lower numbers. So um using the most recent data since then, we've we've tweaked that. Is that the 5% reduction in domestic
consumption that you had in this? Yeah. Yeah. So, we're taking, you know, the consumption for our, you know, most recent figures and we're applying that assumption to that. So, we're assuming we're going to get 5% less than we anticipate and 15% in
irrigation because irrigation can swing much more because it's discretionary. You don't have to have a green lawn. And is is there is there anything more out of the box that water and sewer is considering? Is there any
is there anything really different that we can be doing in this regard or are we just like as far as the structure of the rates and you know the programming of them? I don't have any new I ideas so far from them beyond, you know,
understanding the spread between the the tiers and seeing if there's anything that can or should be tweaked there. To be fair, we also they also haven't discussed it, right? Oh, yeah. That's no ding to them. They're just talking about it for the first time tonight as a full
group. So, how does the INI fee factor into retained earnings? So, someone's paying the INI fee. It does not. Where does that go? INI is a separate fund. It has its own funding. Yes. And then how does that how does that ini funding get
implemented into the sewer into into actual sewer operations? So the INI fees are reserved in their own fund and they can be used to pay for infrastructure improvements. So if you take it a step further, if we had enough accumulated
and we had a project we wanted to use them towards, then it would reduce borrowing cost or appropriation out of retained earnings if necessary from here. And how much do we have in that fund? I Oh, you don't have to look it up. Okay. We don't have it on hand, but we can get you that. But that's something
that, you know, if it was used heavily and accumulated a balance that was hefty enough, then that could support a project and that would relieve something out of the operating. Do we have a do we have a policy on how we use that fund? I think it's a statute. It's a statute. Oh, it's a statute. Yeah.
Okay. And is there any way to change that the the pol is there any way because right now if you take out a a permit for a house and you could say I'm just going to be using this as a playroom and then once you get your building permit it
really could be a bedroom. Is there any way of changing it from bedroom to actual just rooms or is that statutory too? I'll look into that because I know when we set it up it was set based off of bedrooms and we were able to set that
formula. So, I'll double check and see how much discretion we have on setting that formula. And the rate is in our discretion as well. Yeah, there's two parts of the formula rate wise that is the select board.
Question for you, Patrick. How is debt factored into the rates? We've done $10 million worth of sewer projects over the last five years, right? Longer. So, that's obviously factored into the rates as well, right? Yeah, it's part of the budget. So any infrastructure upgrades we're doing and we're funding through
debt is factored into the operating expense and that's baked in here. What we have for FY26 is baked in here. What we know about going forward is baked into the budget assumption for the forecasting. So that's if you take on more projects
and do more debt and have more payments, then the rate is going to have to pace with that if consumption isn't, you know, growing, which it won't. So without a So right now what you're saying at a minimum if we were to go in a in
a in a worst case situation what is the increase to the average the average consumer on what did we say here the three scenarios I that we prepared here it's $118 estimated last year it was 111
so that's an increase of $77 on top of what people are. Yeah. If you did the most affordable option that we prepared, that would be $77 estimated. And how does that fall in line with what the three-year plan was last year?
Um, I don't have that right, but we like we'll have that reconciliation for you. That's what you were asking for. Mary Ellen, we have uh $46,350 in the INI fees. Thank you. And that's the INI fee that was projected to
be half a million dollars in two years. Yeah, it was instituted. I think the original projection included that it would capture a development and it was implemented after the development had pulled the permits. So Gino, do we have any idea of the new
development on Essex Street? How how much will be generated from the for the the development over over on over on Essex next to Stop and Shop? Yeah, it would be based on bedrooms. Was it 160 bedrooms? Maybe multiply that by 2,200.
That would be the give that to you real quick. No, it's it's it's substantial in real money. Exactly. Thank you. $352,000. So, it's $2,200 times 160 bedrooms. It's 160 units, but are they
all one bedroom? Good question. Oh, great question. So, it's at least 35. Okay, perfect. 352,000. Thanks. Patrick, is uh anybody have anything else for Patrick? All right. Um so we'll look forward to
some of the questions we have remaining answered and look forward to feedback from water sewer once they do their reading for a recommendation. Thank you, Patrick. You're welcome. Okay, final item on new and old
business. The annual town meeting warrant review discussion and votes on articles for inclusion in the warrant. Um, so I actually think that that language might be wrong. We've already closed the warrant. So the inclusion of
articles in the warrant that's from KP law. Okay, so maybe this covers all sins, but we can't at this point exclude anything from the warrant because we've already closed it. So, um, but I have my list from last time, the
things that we skipped over that we still need to discuss. Um, and Amy, correct me if I'm wrong because I think you're the keeper of the list also. Um maybe we'll start with the easier of what was left which I
think are the transitional audit. Well, I think what's left is the transitional audit article 7 cola base increase article 8 and then the fiscal 26 budget article 4. Did you already vote the special
education reserve? Finance committee just voted it on Monday. Did we already? But you may have preemptively supported it. I believe we I have written down that we voted it. Anybody else? We did four. Okay. Four out. Great. Um so I believe those are the only three
that I had flagged. No, it should have been Oh, yeah. There's only four of us here. Great. So maybe we'll start uh in at article eight and go backwards, which is the cola base
increase. Um, so this is the one that the retirement uh voted for. $16. 16,000. Yep.$16,000. $16. Yeah. Uh, well, retirement voted 18,000. Amy, correct?
And then finance committee voted 16,000 to support 16,000. Right. Where do people want to Amy? Do you have a recommendation? You have an opinion on this one? So, I I was part of the vote. So, I I did vote in line with the rest
of the board at 18. I do also support 16. Um I something for the retirees I think is very beneficial. I think the benchmarks that were set forth, you know, definitely support 16. I
understand the my fellow board members position on the 18. Um, but I very much agree with something. Okay. And to catch up, this this doesn't really affect this year's budget. This is one of the things that pushes out the payoff date, right?
This this will not impact the general fund until 2031. Go ahead. It's not even they're not even looking to push out the payout date at this point in time. They are looking to just increase the amount owed in 2031 from like 5 point change to
whatever the I think it's a 37. Um the 18 would bring it up to 8.67, right? That's a 7.06 6 for so it was like a 1.7 million per
thousand increase for 2000 increase for so I'm sorry you're right for 2000 from 14 to 16 from 16 to 18 so um so we did not take a vote oh we did not take action on this last
time so we have to determine at what amount we would like to take action or if we want to take action at all. So, I would make a motion to um to go with the
16 16,000 based on the finance committee's recommendation based on the director of finance recommendation. Have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Second. Do we have discussion or you want to go to a vote? I'm good.
So this is really affects it brings up everybody, right? Um okay. Yeah, I understand. Good. Yeah. All right. And let's vote.
All in favor? I I I. All opposed? I Okay. So 41 you will um support the increase to 16. All right. On to article seven the
transitional audit. Um, so there was a lot of questions about this last time where what exactly the scope of the audit would be and we wanted to get some information before we voted uh whether or not to
support the article. I believe that information was shared with us today. So, when we brought this up in the fall, fall, beginning of the winter, um we had talked about doing an overall a a
larger transitional audit, but Jerry Perry, who's a resident of the town, a past chair of the finance committee, the head of DOR, um he went through a number of items and he recommended that we just
um do a transition audit. He actually first recommended we do a transition audit on everything. And then after looking looking at all the books and also recognizing what we could do for free, he recommended that we just do these items right here. Um he did also
he had recommended also uh the assessing department but the uh do came in and worked with our assessing department. So that's we could get that for free if we want to go even further on that. So the three things that he has here, the draft scope of services are for water and
sewer enterprise funds, the procurement um chapter 30B procurement and the revolving recreation fund. And the last what we heard on fino we only we had one estimate in late on Friday and then I
think Patrick was waiting on two more. So I don't know. Did he get anything today? As of the end of the day. No. Okay. So So we reached out to seven firms. Yeah. Got a quote from one who said they'll get back to him and I guess the other four weren't interested at this time. And what was the quote?
$30,000. $30,000. So what what precipitated that? So how did we decide what seven firms we were going to reach out to? What was that based on? Who decided that? Patrick did. So Patrick just arbitrarily picked seven
firms. That's it. Okay. And what precipitated the whole suggestion of an audit? This I I mean I don't know a lot about it. I don't know a lot about how it transpired or why we're doing it. If there's like I
think we talked about this last time. Is there been like a suggestion of impropriety? Is there like something that's like a red flag standing somewhere that we would, you know, want to allocate this much money? Like what precipitated that? Just a
conversation with Mr. Perry way back when I think it was right after I was appointed in November to answer the question. I'm not aware of any red flags. Well, I I mean I think I think Mr. Perry talked with several of us. I I think I'm
aware. Um, I know one thing was the water and sewer enterprise fund questions about whether or not we had accounted for things, right, or whatever, right? Um, I think my understanding a lot of that's been answered.
Um, so I I'll just say that I I originally was more in favor of this, but given our other priorities here and how tight the budget is, I'm I'm feeling less and less like this is a priority.
um especially for $30,000. Yeah. So, this is this is Can I please? This is um this is according to Mr. Perry, this is a um a best practice, a recommended uh a recommended audit, especially when
you're you're leaving one administration for another administration. I've been in place for as long as our administration was. It's not um that there's a suggestion of anything nefarious or whatever. It's just a it's a best practice especially um when you're
looking at the water and sewer funds or you're looking at procurement. Again, these are just best practices. The $30,000 recommendation will be coming from free cash, not from the budget. So $30,000 over eight years. The same
piggy bank, but yeah. Yeah, I agree. Pair of pants, different pockets. Right. Um, when did Wreck become a part of this? Cuz I just don't recall that in the original discussion. Um, he had he had added Wreck in there.
He had four and Wreck was one of them. But you know the number four with the the uh assessors, we took that out because we have that for free. Yeah. Because we can't get Wreck for free. Okay. And I'm sure And that's a that's a large
that's a large fund, the revolving fund. Yeah. So that's that's what I'm going to guess is such a large revolving fund. And has Mr. Perry like looked at each of these to some degree already?
He said he looked at a bunch and narrowed it down or whatever. Like how did he come to this determination that he even knew that we would have issues with these three specific items? Um I do know on procurement, procurement is a normal is a very vulnerable account and I know that that's he told me that's a
standard. Um recreation is a large account and water and sewer we have some questions. You know when you look at your water and sewer there are questions on why your water and sewer is dropping and whether or not you're following best practices. He also explained that a transition audit is much deeper. They do
more testing. It's not like a basic audit. But this isn't really transition if the former TA has been gone for six months. I mean I what do we we don't have a new one yet. So I don't know. I don't know. I guess the books you wouldn't even
start this until after you close your books uh at the end of June. My my my sense is I I'm not I'm not supportive of this right now. I think we have, you know, we're chipping away at the budget and what areas the TA has any
degree of flexibility with consultants or whatever it is. Um, I I would I would encourage us to continue to hone this down, whether it's with Mr. Perry giving free advice or whatever we can do um to hone this down into what's most critical
and then find those funds within our already limited budget. Um because you know I just I've got 20 other things I'd spend $30,000 on besides this. That's my opinion. I think that if we if we do anything, we
would probably do more like a real deep dive forensic audit. If we really wanted to document the change of administration from, you know, a predecessor to the next, whoever the new TA is. And I don't
even I mean, I don't know. I just I I agree that I could find a million uses for $30,000. I just I don't know what we're going to get out of it. What are where are we going to is it going to re, you know, reveal enough that it's going to be worth $30,000. I mean, what if I
mean, auditors find things to audit, right? They always will come up with something, but is anything going to be substantial enough to recoup that $30,000, right? I mean, yeah, I think that's my inclination in these 10 seconds. Also, given the other financial constraints that we have apparent to us
now is what's the costbenefit analysis of doing the audit is is the hope that it uncovers something future that saves us $20,000 next year, $20,000 a year after that we would just be perpetuating,
right? If that's the case, then I could understand I could maybe rationalize it, but I don't see that explained here that that that's the intention. And and you said that there were issues with water and sewer the the fund previously. Were those issues then
rectified? Corrected? As I understand it, there were questions and that you spent some time with Mr. Perry. Do I recall this correctly? and you know he kind of got some better understanding and that weren't really necessarily the issues maybe that we first thought. Is that generally correct? Yeah, Gino and I
had met with Mr. Perry and talked over issues um after in between um annual town meeting last May and uh this December. And what was the result? Was there was there something found at that point that
No, no, we had a timing issue at the end of last fiscal year where we had a debt project that um the treasurer hadn't borrowed for um so it was cleared up with our next issuance, but it was a timing issue and that's what resulted in the negative retained earnings that you
see. So that was the issue that that's what I understood. Okay. So yeah, it was a a full negative like we were in the negatives at the end of December. Yeah, we're certified negative 15,000 that will be rectified with. So that's been rectified. Yes. And you know how to proceed. I'll assume you, you know, know
how to proceed going forward for it. Okay. And what safeguards have we put in place to prevent that from happening going forward? I'm sure we have some now, right? Yeah. Patrick and I have worked together to put more safeguards in place to work around that. And we've also worked with Gino to make sure that we have a better understanding of the timing of when all the work's going to
happen. Okay. Great. for the second piece for the 30B. Are you an MCPPO? I am. You are. Okay. I am not on. Are you the only one on staff? No, we actually have a lot. Um, so Natalie Natalie Swanstrom is certified. She's our procurement officer on file with the
OIG's office. Okay. But I'm certified, Max Casper certified, Patrick's certified, Trang is certified. Gino used to be certified, still has all the knowledge. um and courses. Our town clerk is actually completing his
certification as well. So that's more than five people certified as MCPPOS's which are you know required for 30B, right? So I don't understand why that would even I mean with that many people in place I would have to think that you know how to send out bids. I don't I I
kind of I feel the same way as Doug. I don't see I don't even I I mean seeing Wreck revolving on here I know it's a big fund but this is that's news to me. I mean, they didn't know that that was the purpose of this or that was even a consideration and I'm the rec liaison.
So, um I'd have to agree with Doug. Um what did Fincom vote for this one? They didn't because they didn't have the meeting Monday. Yeah, because we were wait because Say again. They had no scope and no dollar amount. So, Oh,
that's right. Sorry. Yep. I just listened to that. Um Okay. All right. So, I guess we could go one of two ways. We could make a recommendation before Fencom. Um, traditionally, we because it
has a financial ramification, we would wait for their recommendation before we make it. But if we're all we don't have to posture, if we all have a feeling about it, regardless of what they say, we can make a recommendation where it's free cash, your motion would have to include the dollar amount as well.
So your question is do we wait or do it now? That's for now. That's and the dollar amounts irrelevant, right? Yeah. I mean, if you get all this for 5,000, then it would be maybe a different story, but you know, my my con so my concern is because we
are moving from one administration to another and this is a best practice. Um Mr. Perry has more experience in this field than anyone in our municipal government, including everyone at this
table. I I do I personally think that this is a good investment for us to make sure everything's going well and get recommendations on how to improve. So that's that's where I'm coming from. And I agree with you. I mean, when when
this was first brought up by him, best practice, you know, there's there's no doubt about all that. It's just that the circumstances, you know, the the priorities now kind of for me forced me to be much more critical of like whether or not this is really really needed. I
mean, we could always if it's really really needed and we figure out something down the road, one of these areas, two of these areas, there are places even in the what we've done to the budget where you could go if it was really a priority. So, one
of the one of the questions would be is if we're waiting down the road and there is something that could be improved upon, are we losing out on on funding because of that? And if there's anything in here
that is the biggest concern, that would be the water and sewer. And and look, I I mean, I had questions about the water and sewer as well. I think we all did. We all we all sat down. We all asked questions. I met with I met with Gino. I met with Amy Sero. Uh
I think those questions have been answered. Uh I would not recommend favorable action uh at this juncture. I do think that you know with a you know with a new town administrator coming in um we're going to have another bite at the apple in at during our fall town
meeting. There's been nothing there's been nothing within any of our previous audits that have indicated any uh types of issues. We have five individuals who can handle procurement. Uh I mean I know there
was I just I just can't justify spending $30,000 uh at this at this juncture. If something does arise to the point we can, you know, we have the language, we can put it in a in an article uh for for our f fall town meeting. But for our annual town meeting, I I would not recommend approval. And I will motion
that we not recommend approval on uh on article seven. Are are you asking for should we indefinitely postpone it or are you just saying no? I'm saying no. Okay. Um David, was that a motion? That was a motion. And Doug, I heard a second.
There was a second. Okay. So, uh we'll consider discussion or a vote. There's no So, I a couple of things. I I just Do we have an annual audit? Do Does your office have an annual audit? Yes. Okay. So is anything in here covered in that
annual audit that you do? Yes, they look at Are we still waiting for results on We are. So we are unfortunately in the municipal cohort of people who have powers and Sullivan Markham who acquired
CBiz and all of our audits are delayed. Um, historically, well, first of all, I don't know, you might not know this answer, but with the last change of administrator, did we have this type of audit? I know that. I have all the
audits on that. Not that. No, I have all the audits in my office and there wasn't one. This has never happened historically at change of leadership at all. Not at Swans. No. Okay. And secondly, do you know if any of these items covered here are normally part of the audit that your office goes through?
Yes. But you know like any audit not as deep a dive right the same on the surface not the same depth but the scope is included because I remember items included in the annual audit. Yeah. So it audits all of our funds. So it would get the revolving fund and enterprise funds and it gets procurement because
they audit our appropriations. So I remember I had questions about wreck revolving that I've asked and I think I asked you. Yes. specifically um to work with Danielle and in how we and the accounting of certain events and I had certainly questions surrounding that.
Have you had any experience with that? Have you had a meeting with her? You have? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Those are my questions. Okay. So, we have a motion on the floor. Um, if there are no further comments,
we'll take a vote to vote not to support rather than indefinitely postpone this article. Recommend unfavorable recommend unfavorable action. Not recommend favorable action. How about that?
Um, so so we have a motion. So we can vote all in favor to not recommend favorable action. I I I opposed. post. So 41 um the select board
will recommend not recommendable action double negatives. Okay. Um moving on to the final one which is Bill 26 budget article four. Which is this?
Okay, Amy, if you could just summarize what occurred Monday night such that it affects this budget and FINCOM's recommendation for the warrant budget, that would be great. Yes. So, as you may recall, at the March 5th town
administrator's recommended budget, we had just gotten the new GIC rates. Um, so part of my presentation had that February 27th update with the rates that were voted. Um, so originally GIC had told us it was going to be 10 and a
half% aggregate. It ended up being 10.5 to 17.1. Um, with absolutely none of our employees on the 10 12% plan, it was going to add an extra 145,000 to our projection. Um due to the timing um the
town administrator and I did not recommend making any adjustment to that at that time. We wanted to wait to see what happened with open enrollment and we were hopeful that you know people would change plans. Um, so open
enrollment ended on May 1st and I sent the memo to the finance committee and select board on May 6 with the results of that which resulted in an additional 30,000 of employer costs for all of the changes in open enrollment which brought us to the 176 that finance committee was
talking about at their meeting. Um, it was the decision of finance committee to u amend the budget at that time. Um, as you recall in the memo, I gave a couple different recommendations of how to handle that. They felt that given the
large dollar amount, they wanted to amend the budget before town meeting to cover that amount. Um, there was discussion on whether that would be funded through free cash, but because it is a structural cost, they felt it was best to handle it within the operating
budget. Um the motion was made to share the cost as with the employer share um with 75% going to the school and 25% going to the town. So they made the motion to reduce 45,000 from the town
operating budget and 130,000 from the school's appropriation. But they did they specified which 15,000? Yeah. 15,000 from their own finance committee reserve, 30,000 from snow and ice, which would bring it to where we are
anticipating this year snow and ice to end up. So, as part of the year end appropriation trans uh transfers that will be reducing so we will be able to legally deficit next year if we have a bad winter. Um and then the 130 would
come from the school. Okay. So can you can you just explain that to for the board and for the members of the public because you know in in the event you know we we may have spent more money on snow and ice removal this year than we have in past years. So how just explain how that how that works. So in
Massachusetts Mass General law allows a legal deficit only of your snow and ice because it's New England. Um the caveat is your appropriation has to be greater than or equal to the prior year. Um prior year actual or the prior year
appropriated the prior year appropriation. Okay. So as long as you are budgeting the same amount as the prior year you can legally deficit if we have another you know 2015. Um that is the big caveat. I have spoken
with do about this in previous years. I believe it was FY23 we were getting close to um going over we ended up over 9,000 so we were able to handle it in the year end appropriation transfer um so it doesn't matter when that budget is
set so it can be amended at the end of year transfer but as long as it matches you can legally deficit it which does mean you raise it on the next year's taxes so I don't I don't want to have any disillusions of where that money comes from Sure.
Okay. Okay. So, my first question, Amy, for you. So, the the way finance committee broke it down was 75% attributed to school, 25% attributed to town. Is that same breakdown attributed
to revenue that either side might bring in? In other words, is it split ever? No. You know, let's say for example, I remember um hearing in a presentation that there was a difference in MSBA money and we were getting more money back than we anticipated. Was that extra
revenue allocated the same way? No, we had worked a couple years ago um on trying to come up with a budget methodology. It wasn't supported at that time um by a number of key stakeholders. Um, but the previous school finance
director and I worked a lot on that. Um, and it was something that's been discussed with finance committee that we may bring that back to the table for the upcoming year. Um, right. Because it makes sense if we're charging for X because of their size of their budget and how much of the town budget it takes
that we would apply the same principle to revenue that they that's something that school related would bring in. Right? That's how my mind works. So yeah, you know, to me that's that's a point that Yeah. along those lines. Danielle, is it But did you do it based
on total expense or about health insurance? It's by population of employees who take our are on our health insurance benefits. Okay. So you're kind of sticking within that category. Yes. 75% of our health insurance costs are for the schools. And so that that's why
you did that's why finance committee did. Yes. Is is that a true number though or is that just a best guess estimate? That's true. So because originally I think in FinCom it started at 70 and then it ended up at 75. I don't I just wondered and then the the actual they went with rounder numbers so
it didn't come out to a clean percentage anyway. Okay. Does anybody have a additional questions about that particular I do have some side good news. Yes. So, I had a question. I had a question about when we raised fees. I think you were going to
get back to us and tell us. You had to steal my thunder, Daniel. Sorry. I have good news. So, when the select board voted the recommended fee increases uh last week that um the
result of that increases the local receipts for fees by $26,420. Um, I did go back after um some feedback from uh board member Gishman on some of
our other local receipt items um given some of the restaurant changes in town and other items. So, um I did meet with Patrick on this just to make sure that you know both of parts of the finance team felt comfortable with this. So, at
this time, we are estimating an increase of $10,000 in our meals excise due to the uh change in restaurants at Vinnen. Um an increase of $18,280. I have the subtotal for you if
you guys don't want to jot down. 18,280 to the Rome's excise. Um we were very conservative on our estimate after the local option excise size was increased. Um, and we've, as you saw at my last quarterly presentation, we've seen a
much larger increase in this. We feel comfortable increasing that line. Um, and a 20,000 increase in the cannabis excise tax. We were concerned and very delayed on this intentionally waiting to see if the two cannabis shops were going
to cannibalize each other. That hasn't been the case. And this has become a steady um stream. So, the result of all of those an additional 74,700 um to our local receipts
74,000 700 700 I I do want to caveat that all of these are estimates. Yep. Sure. But they're your best guess estimates. So that's what all of And we still feel that they are comfortably conservative that we are not overestimating any of
these. Great. So, so just on the uh just on the rooms excise tax because I'm I'm looking at the um I'm looking at when we started tracking this back in in 2020, uh we went from 17 in fiscal year 2020 and in fiscal year 24 actual numbers was
74,133. Um as many of you may recall, I certainly do. uh the spring 2024 town meeting, special town meeting, uh we actually had article 9 which increased uh the uh the rooms excise tax from 4% to 6%.
Um so the last year with the 4% was 74,133 in fiscal year 24. Um, so all else equal and just essentially leveling this out with a 50% increase to that
74,133 number. I I'm coming out to to $111,000. So there's even there would even be potentially greater uh revenue that would be generated from the room size tax. The only thing that's changing is the is the collection from the 4% to
the 6%. So would that be take effect for all of FY25 that we're in? That would be the actual data, right? Yeah. Well, that's Well, so year to date right now, it says year to date, well, as of 123124, we
collected 63,686. There's your point, right? Yeah. So with six months left, you're So no, no, no, no. I'm I'm I'm not No, because right now this this quart the last quarter would have, you know, the January to March would have been pretty tense because not much is happening, right?
You know, I'm looking I'm looking at the actual, okay, using the 4%. And then I'm just multi I'm multiplying the actual the 741 133 by one and a half. And that gets me to a number. I mean, we can we can be more conservative and say, all right, 10 100 or 105. That way it
gives us some some buffer. Mhm. Uh but that generates some additional revenue of close to $40,000 of which I I think I think we should we should look at that understanding this is solely a uh you know an a revenue estimate but um I
don't think we have fewer Airbnbs today than we did in fiscal year 2018. Yeah. I I would say anything above the 85,000 estimate for that at this time I I don't feel is conservative of an estimate. And
my concern would be if we estimate higher that we get to tax rate time and either that line or another local receipt line isn't hitting target. And I don't want to mislead any of the taxpayers in thinking that this won't come from the levy because that's how we
would have to balance it in the fall. That's fair. That makes sense. But that's room. That's all rooms tax. This is Airbnb and BRB. So So let me just uh I I don't I guess I don't quite
understand why you're being that conservative. Because you would need to have the exact same level of usage. I mean, we got 60,000 actual the first six months. Yes. But the first six months of this fiscal year were already inclusive of the
increase. That's what I mean. Yeah. Right. So you're running at a run rate of 120. Okay. Maybe you're going to have maybe you're going to have less January through March. That you're saying, right? Right. I get that. You could look at that data point in
years past and say, okay, where do we where do we have mid year that we end? Yeah. And sort of see what the differential is. But literally we have the we have the actual from from fiscal year 24 right 74 and we have our we have
as of the end of 12 1231 we're at 636 and the rate went up by 50%. So I mean like why would it be why would we assume you know well the rate went up by went from four to 6% four to six yeah so it's not it didn't go up by 50%.
Four to six. Yeah. Only 2%. 2% compared to four is a 50% increase. 50%. Okay. Fine. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't go by 50. Yes. Yes. Correct. 50% increase. Yeah. Not a 50% is what I mean to say numbers. My attorneys don't do math. Yeah. So, we had 74,000 in the entirety of
FY24. We've had 87,000 for the three quarters of FY25. And that's inclusive of the rate increase. Um so if we were to increase the
estimate to a hundred at best that would be the actual of this year. So that would be saying that every dollar we collected this year would be maintained next year. Well, if I may, I would say that if you
just said it's 87 through 3/4 and it was 60 through two/4ers, looks like it's clipping up at about 30 30k a quarter. So, it looks like we're going to be closer to 120k. And if your normal thing is to go what? 90% of actual. Yes. Okay. So, that's $99,900,
right? Sounds like 100,000. Okay. which would give us an which would give us an additional $33,000 of revenue here. Amy, just a question on the health insurance piece. Yes. So, what if there is extra money from the health
insurance, right? What if you know the school doesn't use as much or the town doesn't use as much, what do we then give that money back that what if we're alloc if we're charging this charging the school 75% of it? Yeah. So that was the discussion that was had at finance
committee was you know how would it be handled at you know the December TA meeting um with you know that our second biggest time of change is the school hiring in the fall right um because as
I'm sure everyone's aware not every single body that leaves in June is the exact same body that walks in in September October. So that was the discussion. Um and I believe the chair, you know, spoke up at the the school committee chair spoke up
at the finance committee meeting, you know, letting them know that if that money is reduced, they have to make personnel changes, even if they get that money back, it doesn't necessarily mean that person comes back, right? So my point is if we're charging the schools for 75% of the expense, but they're not
if they don't utilize all of it, we're taking we're still taking back any money that they would have saved. Yeah. So it's almost like we're double penalizing. Do you notice? It's not equal, right? We're we're trying to make it equal by by distributing 75 to 25, but it's not equitable. It's equal in
the fact that you're giving them percentage that you feel like it is owed but it's not equitable because they don't have an ability to to get it back if they don't utilize compensate that in their budget because they have to budget for people in building in September and if they don't get that money back to
December then those people are still not in their building right yeah in terms of the budget um obviously once that hiring happens we can do a new updated forecast And uh you can amend
the budget at any town meeting. Okay. So right now we got $107,000 between your 74700 and this additional 33. Right. What does it say again? Do the
math. 74700 for Amy for everyone keeping score. Yep. 33,000 and 33,000 from the rooms tax which is 1077 you said. Yep. Yep. Okay. I think we should probably stick
with Is there anything else on revenue just to be kind of methodical about this? Um I didn't come with that much good news. No. $107,000 is good news. Absolutely. We're not going to bury the punch line here. That's good news. It's just how we
figure out how we allocate that is right going to be important. Right. And I think there are a lot of other ideas that have been surfaced about additional ways to find a little bit more. But because I think there's I think there's at least a few of us that
want to first get to the hurdle of the $130,000 that was taken out of the school budget. Right. Mhm. And just just uh process-wise here, FINCOM has they have what? Amy, you want to go through like the there's something in
the warrant. Yes. Right. Since then, FinCom has changed. Yep. Right. So, they would be coming to the floor with kind of an update basically to what was in the warrant with what their motion is. Right. Yes. Okay. But the select board could come with a
further amendment to that. Any town meeting member can amend the motion on the floor. Right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. I was just making sure that number three said vote just in case. All right. Great. So
um if that's all the good news in revenue, shall we move on to the not good news then or like the sort of less sparkly part of it which is the expenditures
right the line items and just taking a pulse on the board. Is it the intention that you guys want to go through and go through some of these suggestions that were made that we are able to discuss publicly and talk them through now with Amy or Yeah, I think that I think we
have to I think that is part of the hard work that that we have to do on this side. Great. Does anybody anybody take Amy? I think you sent around a consolidated What is it? Um, you sent around something, right, that was consolidated
because I know Doug, David, myself all had Yeah, I signed colors. Okay. Did that get printed by chance? No. No. Okay. Sorry. That's okay. Um, this came from you, Amy. Yes, it was
around 8 o'clock last night. Beautiful. And then I think I recirculated one earlier today with um with percentages on it. So I think some of the bigger ones, if I remember, David Katie, would it be easier if I just reorder it to you? Yep, that'd be
great. Just fuel snow and ice from off the top of my head. Well, it seems like we've already tapped into snow and ice right now. And we have an understanding as to why it can't go any lower. Right. Right. Right. So just to that point was
um you know without belaboring this you know when we brought it when David brought it forward as a suggestion originally we didn't have wiggle room to help the schools but now that we need help on our side there's wiggle room. So
it was there a difference in the number? Was there a difference in the number? Great question. Was there a difference in the number that we were asking for? But even if David brought forth a suggestion of lowering it by X dollars and the the response back could have been, well, it can't go down by X
dollars, but it could go down by Y dollars. So, you know, I just want you talking about fuel now. Yeah. No, I thought he talked about I thought David brought forth snow also as part it was two separate snow and ice and then there was fuel. Yeah. So, snow
and ice. We just heard why we can't go any lower than that. which I I get. Yes. No, but when I Yeah. Yeah. I know. I had brought up cell phones. Yes. Cell phones were a big issue for me in the cost. I know, right? Um you know, spending
25,000 a year on cell phones. I felt like something that was something we could potentially look to cut if not 32640. Thank you. 32640 if not eliminate altogether because I really cannot justify in my head. Um
paying for cell phone use for department heads or whatever, you know, whoever it's comprised of other than a town administrator or somebody that is on call 247. So, that's I think something we could revisit or at least discuss. And where did the discussions land with
that? Really didn't get off the ground a little bit. We had two cell phones returned today. Mhm. So, at the request of the town administrator, I started having conversations with some of our department heads um just to start seeing, you know, the utilization of the
phone, you know, outside of town hall hours and work hours, like what utilization, like what reasons are you being contacted, like who's contacting you, what the need is. Um so, we started having those preliminary discussions.
So, as Gino said, we've had two employees who have already um this week after those discussions come forward and said, actually, I don't get a lot of contact outside of town hall like you know, voluntarily turned in their excellent. That's amazing. Amazing. And
just because they've been sitting there and they haven't used them, they're not want to be bothered outside of work too. Right. That too, right? Fair. And as they shouldn't be as they shouldn't be and some of them shouldn't be. It's healthy work life. That's what you do. So what is that? So on you know an average you know what
does each cell phone equate to roughly about uh $200 a year. 200. Okay. So how many are they how many are there that could I could do the math right? What are they 50 or so? How many people have it? So not including our public safety there would be about uh 3200 or 32,000
32,000. The math doesn't math then, right? Because like 32,000 divided by I I was going based off the town hall phones because I wasn't including the public public safety people. Okay. Sorry. So, police and fire have them, not just the chiefs, but lieutenants or right level. Yeah. So, there's emergency
management um phones and hotspots for when they have to do command centers. And that's a different cost I would assume than a regular cell phone. And then there's ones um that don't stay with the employees, but they stay with the vehicle. Um Okay. And my my takeaway
from our conversation was that we weren't talking about the public safety to endanger public safety. We're looking at solely administrative staff. And that's the fif and then so what's that number then? So if if we eliminated all of the town hall phones in its entirety,
it would be a savings of just over $6,000 a year. Um Okay. So if you I you know I would work backwards from there be like okay we want the town administrator to keep right a phone sorry Gino in the DPW
head fortunately for us that's a savings right um and then you know I would work back from there and be like okay do we contact Marsy a lot outside of ours right we probably do but should we how do we contact our finance director do like again we do but should we right so
there's there's a value to Well, even if we outside Okay, so the other thing to look at is like, okay, say you wanted to level the cell phones, right? So you say like, okay, at a department head level, maybe the expectation is you may be contacted outside of working hours, but
a level under that, unless your job description warranted it, you would not. We only have two, we primarily only have two non-EP department heads who have phones. Um, one of which is the assistant engineer.
Um, and the other is um, Diane. Diane. Oh, I I I was including her in the department head. Sorry. So, we have three non-EP department heads. Um, Diane, it's the assistant engineer and
Marissa. No, there there. Okay. Well, anyways, okay. So, if we apply that principle, right? So let's say, you know, we look at all of our departments in town. Perfect example is the school department where they pay for zero. Absolutely
none. No employee, including the superintendent, has a cell phone paid for by this town. So in theory, like, you know, do you apply the same principle for all town hall employees, right? Do you use that same methodology for all people that work for this town?
Or no, maybe you don't. But that's that's my first thought would be who inside the school system other than the superintendent would need to be contacted during the week. Maybe Max, maybe Garrett Baker, maybe facilities, I don't know. Max has a phone, right? Right. Max, luckily there's, you know, I
mean, there's principles, but Max has a phone. I'm pretty sure Garrett has a phone. Is that his call on it all the time? Oh, yeah. But it's not town paid for. It's his own personal phone. Yep. Okay. Well, we are talking about
All dollars matter, but in the scheme of things, we need to find I have to say it's a pretty stark fact. Committee is not schools aren't paying for any cell phones. That's it's pretty stark. Well, it you know, it goes with the equity piece, right? If we're
all one town, right? We're operating in different buckets, in different ways, in different budgets for different groups. Like, are we being fair? Are we being equitable? Yeah. Right. So that's why I focused on it to be quite honest because the number was big to me and I just
found it not common practice in any of the municipalities that I've worked in where I've been ahead of a department and I certainly have not paid for my cell phone from past experience. So you should also explore fire and is it just the captains who are the cell phone? It
stays with the vehicles. So there's um we sure Yeah. Yeah, they're not even labeled as people. Um, it's labeled as like ladder truck 21 and because you have captain cell phone number. So you assume this number is attached to this
person personally. Right. So to me that's that's concerning, right? Because if it's a vehicle, I could understand that from a safety perspective. But if it's just a person, that's the same principle we're just talking about as department heads, right? So it's almost like we need a revision of this whole
policy. So you kind of start from zero and then you build back. You add as necessary. If you feel like, you know, if the TA feels like safety is a is paramount and you want to increase, but you know to level set, you bring it to zero and then you go from there.
That's my personal feeling. Were there any legal reasons why we needed cell phones? It started because of the public records. So we we don't have anyone using their personal phones for work reasons because it can be um pulled as a
public records request and so we you have to maintain um all the records on it. But you can ask us for public records requests, right? And nobody's paying for the cell phone. So I don't know how that doesn't quite you know what I mean. That doesn't make a a whole
lot of sense. But great Daniel increase the budget. There you go. That's it, Doug. Okay. Um, should we So, do we want to make a recommendation or thought here about cell phones? So, my guess, what was the number we had in there? 30 32.
So, there's So, if we take out the If we take out the public safety cell phones, we're only looking at $6,000, you said, correct? So, we're talking about $6,000 that gets spent outside of public safety for cell phones. Yeah. Not to undoubtedly, but just to do
that math. What's 6,000 divided by 200? That's how many cell phones we have? 30 and then minus three. So there's 27 department heads in town hall. Absolutely not. No. Absolutely not. Math ain't math. So there's there's more people that have them than department heads, which is even more concerning,
isn't it? I'd say conservatively there's a $3,000 savings right there. So how many department heads are there numerically? Diane, you probably 12 maybe. Right. Okay. Okay. So, even if you took by I I I'd like to
take Gino up on his suggestion. I two, you said three. I accept your recommendation. Yeah. To three. Okay. That's another $3,000 you found. Okay. What was the next recommendation? Can Can I suggest maybe we like go in
order? Yes, please. That would be great. I don't have it open and I can't read it on my cell phone because it's so I would love So, um With no disrespect to our finance committee meeting, finance uh committee representative is here. Two of them are here. Two two thank you. Uh
like to talk about the finance committee reserve. Um so finance committee reduced that um for this health insurance stuff right to Can you tell us where? Oh sorry this is uh like which row? Line 14. Yep.
14. Thank you. So not on this usually 125. Katie, you want to go to the very beginning of the budget? It's under legislative town meeting finance committee reserve. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. So it's usually 125
was you know 125 that was TA recommended then finance committee brought it down to 110 for this health insurance stuff. Right. Um Amy very kindly has provided a lot of uh responses to us on various questions
and um you know that actual expenditure has varied greatly over the years from 10 or 20,000 to 110,000. Yeah. Which may be why you went down to 110,000. Um so I think in this type of environment
We should consider reducing that significantly. Um what's been the 5-year average of spend? Nothing gets spent from this because it's a transfer out only. Okay. What's been the five What's the fivey year average of transfer? About uh
the past five years it's low. It's only about 45,000. about 40. I suggested bringing it down to 50,000 because I I'll just say from the G I'm not trying to just solve for this health insurance thing. Correct. I mean, just make sure everyone's aware, right? Like right now where the finance committee
came out, we're talking about $2.1 million going against the levy capacity and an average tax increase of 700 something something, right?
That's average. So, for me, getting over this health insurance thing is just the beginning. Like, I'd like to start whacking down that 2.1 as well. Um, so that's why I propose going down to 50 on the finance committee reserve.
Can I comment? Yeah, please. So, the purpose of the finance committee reserve is to cover any unexpected unbudgeted expenses. So, if if you remember a couple years ago, there was um a leak at the middle school in the gym and I think
we spent $60,000 of the finance committee reserve to repair floor. If in future years something else happens where there is an unexpected expense and we don't have a finance committee reserve enough funded and we can't deal with that emergency or contingency and
we'd have to have I assume we'd have to call a special town meeting and either use free cash or you know do something else. So um you know 125,000 doesn't cover a major disaster but it does cover a lot.
So that's why we stuck with 110 because we don't want to, you know, you want to keep some contingency. So there's a risk in going below that. Totally respect that. And yet the average is 45. Could always be more than 45. But if we if we keep it at 110, then we are forcing
something else to be cut definitively right now that may not need to be cut. Whether that's a pair of professional or a town hall staff or whatever. Like that's 60,000. We're sitting there parking it may very well be needed. I
get it. It's a risk. But if we if we leave it there, then we are definitively cutting something else or raising taxes to have it sit there. I have a question. That's that's the tradeoff. Yes. Yeah. What happens
when what happens if the salary reserve on the town side is not adequate and we're in a situation where we we do need a little bit extra to buffer to get another employee to or to tie something out and we have to fall to the shuffle.
Often the often the reserve is the saver in the shuffle. So how does that how does that play out? Right. Can you further explain that. So what you're saying is that there's excess built into the fincome reserve
intentionally such that in the shuffle the other line items get covered. So the fincome reserve has it was actually um higher than this a few years ago and then we we brought it down but the fin reserve is always our emergency for an
unforeseen. Then if we don't use it as the emergency for the unforeseen because we're very strict strict on that if we ever even talk about a line item we can't we don't touch it again. Like actually the finance committee brought it up the other night saying that there's a possibility well why
don't we just use the finance committee reserve but you can't once you've already had a conversation about it. So what has happened it has to be unforeseen. So if we're saying why can't we use we'll use some of this money for for insurance you can't because it was
your responsibility to plan for the insurance. So you mean to say if a subject gets spoken about in advance then it is no longer unforeseen and therefore you can't use the fincome reserve. It is not that if you use something unforeseen out of income reserve you can never access income reserve again is what I thought you were saying. So, so if your finance director
informed you that your health insurance projections over, you cannot later say you utilize that. This was unbudgeted unforeseen health insurance overage. Therefore, we can use finance not for nothing. But isn't that what happened? I
mean, in March, we knew that we perhaps, although we didn't have a number, we knew that we could potentially we did not increase the line item in relation to the suggestion of the GIC's 12 to pass the budget yet. They're
saying once the budget Oh, got it. Okay. All right. Fine. Right. Once it's passed. So, just to get back. So, it's it's one of the small what's one of the small buffers that you have in the event you have to overspend any items in a line
item in the in the town for the town. You have to you have to do a shuffle at the end of the year if you're overspending anything. So, you've got to have something in there as an emergency. I totally respect that. I totally understand that. And I don't know
if reducing it by $35,000 is the answer, but keeping it at 110 given the climate and what we're asking taxpayers to to take the brunt of then maybe it makes sense that 110 is not the dollar amount that's appropriate. I
think so. My question my my point is going to be knowing what we have in our my concerns are knowing the numbers in salary reserve on the town side and not having any buffer. This is the skinniest
salary reserve I have seen in over 10 years and that's that's I guess we shouldn't go to that line item next then well we can't discuss salary reserves. I was just being I was being physicious but you know the other thing to think of is you know this year we're facing everyone's facing a lot of uncertainty
you know macroeconomic you know micro and that's the only buffer we have and so if you know if somehow you know the federal government cuts some you know revenue source then that could be something that could offset that or you
know unexpectedly right I mean there's a lot of things that that could be used for that we don't know or we can't effect. But even if we funded at twice the average over the last five years at $90,000, we would still have a savings
of $20,000. And conservatively speaking, that is double what we've used in the last the average of what we used in the last five years. All of this is a gamble, right? Of course. All of it is
projections. It's estimates. It's a case of, you know, wants verse needs. It's a case of what is more valuable to us at a given time. All of it. Every single situation that we're going to come through each line as we go line by line, we're we could have the same
conversation, right? But there are some that have more weight. Perhaps this is one of those, right? I I completely understand that. And maybe this isn't one we touch. Maybe this is one we should just pass and go to the next. But at some point we should go to the next
and see what we can what we can reduce so that we are not just putting the burden squarely on the people that live here. Right. That's this exercise. Go ahead David. Miss Arrow. Do you do you have an idea like you talked about the average over the last five years. You have the high point over the last five
years. Um the high is 110. I'm sorry. Yeah. In recent um but if I go back further um 23,000 the highest the highest that was in reserve or the high the highest that gets spent out of reserve okay in the last five years the
highest you said was 110 and that's how fincom got comfortable with going down to 110 but not further than that but I will also say in the last five years you've had an abundance of recaptor in ARPA y thank you which which is gone
which is gone. Okay. All right. So I think that there's this is still an open discussion as to fin reserve. I think there's not resolve that the idea may be a reduction but the dollar of the reduction is unclear. So maybe to go to the next line item get to the end we can come back to
it to determine what the gap is. You're up vice chair. Okay. So, just uh for anyone follow, I have like a whole slew of one and $2,000 cuts. Mhm. Okay. Um and they all add up.
Um so, put aside that $60,000 savings, the totality of all these one, two, three, and four $5,000 cuts that I have, there's like probably 50 of them, uh add up to $250,000. Okay. take out the 60, you basically got
$200,000. So, I I personally don't think that, you know, a lot of these anyone's going to notice much. Um, but does the administrator and Amy have that that list email? Yeah. Okay. I got it. I haven't looked at it real close. I did
get the email. Okay. So, so I'm just I'm just giving that preface because it, you know, somewhat conceptual. So I don't know if we need to necessarily go through every single line or anyone will want to do that take that approach but so for example um there's a line here for uh membership
for the select board $5,000 that's your MMA membership we have to pay $5,000 each of us unless the town is choosing to not be a member of the Mass Municipal Association. What does that get us? that gets you access to all of
their resources, their uh seminars. So, it's covers the entirety of the town, not just the board members. Okay. And do we utilize it? Do we actually utilize it? Yes. Yeah. Mhm. Okay. For sure. Okay. So, that one would not be able to be cut because then we would basically
be bringing it to zero. Okay. Office supplies for the for the select board, $2,500. Is that to print That's the printing of your town meeting warrant which I think is okay.
And do we is there what's the actual on that? Every year we have it's actually over. So the town clerk covers the other half of the cost. Okay. You still want to print the warrant? You legally have to print the I think we legally are required to do that. Okay.
We maybe don't have to print it and bind it with this paper. Maybe. I don't know. Just we'd have to upgrade all the copers at town hall to be able to print this in house because of its size. Okay. Can we send this out to print? Dear God, I
can't. Okay. So then there's uh this is kind of a category. So in this context, I had a suggestion
that all of the quote significant salaries across the board would take a $100 a month cut. So a
$1,200 salary reduction for all the significant salaries throughout town hall. And I think that this If you're going to do it here, it actually should happen with the schools as well. You're talking those on individual contracts, I assume. Yep. So, you're
saying every employee in the schools in the town significant basically people over $100,000. That's what it anyone over $100,000. Okay. But but the schools are under those are contracts. Well, I and so are ours. Ours
are contract. I understand that. Yeah. I I couldn't I couldn't support that at all. At all. Okay. Well, I mean I mean the rest of you might support it, but you know about you know asking employees asking
employees to take a you know take a decrease. Yep. And we're asking every single you know taxpayer to put the vote for this seven 800 increase on average. I had suggested
just the ones that have bonuses. What is that total? 35 $50,000 somewhere in that 20. Just ones that removing bonuses going forward. Going forward. What is it? 20,000.
Yeah. I think it's more than that. Nope. There's five people with $5,000. Well, there's some of 10 also. Well, we're not talking about discretionary bonus. That was already paid out though. Okay. That was That one was already paid out. that was already taken out. Okay. So, you're
saying not the discretionary bonus, the line item. What we're talking about is people who already have a contract. We've all negotiated in good faith and now go back and say, "Hey, we're taking back that bonus." All of those contracts say subject to appropriation,
which means I understand appropriation funded. When you don't have the money to fund it, they don't get it. Because if we and it doesn't exist in municipalities in municipal life. There is no bonus structure in municipal life. So these that were created by our former
TA should have never existed in the first place. I know two contracts that were created that four out of five members of this board voted for in good faith. And I think to go back to those two members and say we negotiated this,
we voted on this. We're giving this to you. And now to go back and say we're taking it back. I think it's I think that is a sign of negotiating in bad faith. I I I I disagree, Mariel. I I understand what you're saying. I I totally understand what you're saying, but that that's putting an intent on it
that's absolutely not true. There was good faith negotiations at that moment in time. Now, we are in a circumstance collectively where we're going to be making choices, right? I'm sitting here saying have everybody,
not everybody, but more people keep their job and everybody take a little pain or you're going to be saying to some people, everyone else you you keep riding the way you are and we're going to lay you off and you off and not hire
this and not hire that. So, and we're going to jack up taxes. But you're saying everybody take their pain. But the schools aren't in a position to be able to have people take that pain with the types of positions I'm talking about. They have contracts. We have contracts for senior people. I mean, I'm
not telling them what to do. I'm just saying that if we did that, I think that would be the fair thing to do. That's up to them what they do. But this is this is a place to go. It's just really hard to listen to people like Dr. Andrews who got up and
said, you know, the taxes are going up, everything is going up. And to justify that, Joe, and say almost like, too bad, we're still going to pay bonuses. Like it it is it is a want versus a need. Well, Diane, hold on one second. You
know, we have an issue on teams. I just I can't we could, you know, I I understand the premise that It's might disappoint some people that have it in their contract, you know, or or you know, the idea that it's negotiating in bad faith, but when those contracts are
executed and that phrase is put in there, that is up to the person that is writing that contract to make it clear what they're reading. They are reading a contract that says, "In the best of times, if we have the money available, we are going to pay you this bonus because we can or we think it it should
happen. But if we don't, it's subject to appropriation. And if we are telling people we are raising taxes by $700 a year, that if if this situation is as dire as we finance and everybody else seems to think it is, then how can we in
good faith pay bonuses for a select few when we at the same time will turn around and say cut some jobs, get rid of some people? How do how do you do that and not seem like a complete hypocrite? I don't I can I can I can answer that is if we've entered into a contract with
someone and we've said this is the amount we're going to pay you and you've included in that summary of money is a bonus that is that they could achieve to reach their highest price on that to me that that is the message that we gave
these individuals. There's not here is your here's your price and then by the way if you do even higher because I remember with these contracts the actual there was a price and then it was backed out to make to put a bonus. There is no metric for these bonuses, Mary Ellen.
I've asked that question numerous times to the former TA. There is no metric. There is no evaluation to decide whether or not someone gets this bonus. It is just built in there. I've looked at we've all looked at those contracts and we know it says subject to
appropriation. It is not baked in the base. There's a base salary and then at the end there's a 5,000 or a 10,000 retention bonus, whatever they want to call it. There's no metric. They don't have to achieve anything. They just have to exist bonus. We do have two different because a retention bonus retention
bonus you have to be here. Yeah, we we cover that has to be here, right? But that I my understanding in that bonus for the for those individuals is the bonus is subject to the town administrators the town administrator's evaluations the town administrator
performance bonus and it is subject to the town to go on record I asked for copies of his evaluations and he never could produce one. So let's be clear let's be honest about what has been asked and answered. I've asked the former town administrator to produce
what his metric was to to give out those bonuses and he couldn't. I was told that he didn't even do evaluations for some of these people. So, what are we talking about here? Well, how how honest are we really being about what we're doing
here? Right. Well, let's stick with the future, not the past, right? So, we're talking about going forward. What's the temperature of whether or not bonuses should be funded? At this point, I think it's a last resort. It's not the
first thing I want to cut. It certainly is not anything that would make me happy, but I don't know how you can not look at it. How you can just ignore it and pretend that, you know, it it's not there. It's not something that shouldn't be considered. I agree. Okay. I think it should be on the table. All right. Sure.
It's on the table. What else is on the table? Um I'm just going in order. Yep, that's fine. If anyone else I I just don't have it in front of me or I would um so there's a uh under the town accountant
there's an educational expense category which is already reduced by $1,000. Uh nothing personal. Um but you're so educated already. Um so um is the $2,500 uh what would cutting that by 500 or
$1,000? I would lose my certifications. you have to that entire fee is required for so certified to do your job. I don't mean this offensively but I'm just putting it out there. Yeah. So it's the certifications that um I've attained
here. Um so in order to maintain those that is the cost of it. So help me help me understand that. What what certifications are you referring to? Um that's the certified governmental. So, I have to go to um the
MMAA and then it is the MCPO. We have continuing education. What What is What do each of those cost? H what do each of those cost? I I would have to pull it up. Okay. But it's might not necessarily be that total amount. Is that fair? That's what it was reduced to because that's the cost for the upcoming year.
Okay. But it was more than that to begin with. Yes. Okay. It was 3500 last year. Now it's 2500. So did they increase in cost or change in cost? No. Um attaining and maintaining are two different costs.
Okay. So you attained last year then is that why it was at 3500 and then it was reduced to 25 because now it's a maintenance. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Next please. Contracted consulting services
under accountant went down from 3500 to 3,000 last year to this year. What? Went down from what to what? 3500 to 3,00 3500 to 3,000. Yep. So what is that for? That's for if we need any additional audit
work. Um so if there's a specific concern that comes up um where we can do an additional scope in the audit. So that's an addition to the regular annual audit. So the annual audit is like the set normal scope, but if something comes up mid year, um not not to harp on
recreation, but if a concern comes up mid year, we can add that scope on to do a deeper dive into recreation. How often has that happened in the past five years? It hasn't. You can zero that if you want. All right. Thanks, Amy. Team player. All right. Do Do you really
think we should It's either like kind of on or off the 3,000. Like should we have it at 1,000? Is it Is it You wouldn't be able to do anything with less than that. So, it's zero. It is. Yeah. All right. $3,000 sold. Um, take it.
Office supplies for your area, Amy. Uh, 1500. Is that clear thing like the warrant or anything or is that just general? That's genuinely we already covered the warrant. It's the town clerk and us. No, I'm asking if this is something else like that. That's it's for the checks
that we have to pay for all our uh accounts payable. Okay. So, it's the check paper. Yeah, it's the check paper and the envelopes. Gotcha. Okay. Um I'm sure postage is separate. I'm going to guess postage is in the treasury townwide. Yeah. Conferences and seminars
for your area, Amy, went up from 2,000 to 2500. Are those known, definitive, required things? Y. So, do we have to send you to a conference every year? Um, so it's the uh annual education program at UMass
Amherst. But are we required to send you to that conference? Yes, it was in my job description that I have to go. It was in your job description, but is it a requirement of the state that you go to that conference every year in order to do your job? No. We also sent Did we
send send um another employee to that conference? Did it come out of this? Yes, the assistant goes as well and that's a benefit to the town. Yeah. So, she's um so Department of Revenue uh co-hosts that. So, we get all of our updates on legal legislation um all of
that and then it's three days full of classes. Okay. So, maybe that's worth it. I mean, maybe half the cost is you, half the cost is these is Yes. Okay. So, to be the bad guy in the room, just to say it. We
could do one person. Why not? And it's not a it's not a forever situation, but if we are looking for the dollars and cents, if one of you could only go, obviously you would go and you would be able to come back and pass on the information or the educational materials. Often I think
uh at least in my world, one person goes to the conference, brings brings it all back, and we all try to gain the benefit that everybody got from going to the conference. Yeah. Poweroint presentation. We don't go to the same courses because there's four different tracks of material. Okay. Uh but yes, so maybe some years one goes, maybe the
next year the other go. Yes, we have to alternate if hopefully we don't. But in this current situation, maybe we reduce that by half. Yep. Something's wrong with this thing here. And then on the um
the audit itself, uh is that already bid out? And we absolutely positively there's no if ends or buts about negotiating that anymore. No, this is actually um part of a multi-year agreement with them.
Okay. Um more consulting assessing consulting services. Yeah, contracted consulting services under assessing. That's patriot property. That's you have to have. Yeah. And again, like who who is I mean if when
was the last time we bid that out? Are there options? Pretty tough. There's very few options in there. There's only one other company. There's very few options. But there is another I think Patriot Properties does the majority of those ones in the state. I
think Petri Properties is the biggest player. Okay. I mean, do we have a multi-year contract with them right now? We do. So, we This is a fixed thing right now. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So, last year educational expenses under assessing were zero. Now they're 500.
So, what is that for? Um, that is the assumption that your new full-time assessor is going to have to maintain their accreditation. Okay. And then that same assumption is memberships for that full-time assessor. Okay.
Back to I have to admit I I I skipped over the cateors that were less than a thousand to start with. Well, um not anymore, Doug. Keep going. Okay. All right. So, I'm down to treasury and collections and uh Danielle's favorite topic, the performance management uh
amount. Um, so, um, so that's I guess we left. So, I think we left it. I would say performance management. We'll skip over and go back to them at the end once we have a clear dollar amount. Yep. If you don't mind. Um,
contracted consulting services uh for Kelly and Ryan um for treasury and collections 377. So that is for the um excise tax bills and they are the ones who mail out the property tax bills. So can we not do
that ourselves or we would have to add a module into Muna and the cost of the module would be more than Kelly and Ryan. Gotcha. So is the is the cost of the module a one time? It's an ongoing SAS subscription. Can they run it and we can mail it or that's not there's no
cost saving? No, there's no cost savings. Um, and then they also we benefit from the fact that they have the RMV access to access those records for the motor vehicle exercise. Y makes sense. And when did we bid that outlast? Is there anyone else that doesn't? I
don't think there's another player in the game. I think it's just Yeah, lots of monopolies, too. Uh, okay. Townwide office supplies. I knew you were going to go there. Was 10,000 last year, down to 8,000 now. Um,
so is the way office supplies are in the budget that if it's a fixed known cost that is annually hit, you do a line item under each of the budget, but then this covers all other costs. So, what we did a few years ago was um while I was going
through the budget, I got annoyed by the fact that everyone had, you know, $5,000 paper clips and we just had, you know, everyone had their own little collective hordes of pens and notepads. So, a few
years ago, we um found an empty space in town hall and ran around with a dolly and stole everyone's supplies and consolidated it. And now it is streamlined that only uh two people in town hall can order any supplies. So, the 5-year average is low because that
was me stealing from everyone else to consolidate town hall. Great. So, you think you can get another thousand savings here? Instead of eight, get the seven. So this is pretty much where it's at. So the eight is the savings um of all
the discretionary that we could cut. Okay. Unfortunately, we're buying the off brandand postits already. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. We actually have enough post WB Mason. You're using I have so many pens that I don't think I think they will all dry up before they
can be used. Our previous town clerk had cases of them. Wow. Well, so there's no wiggle room here, you're saying? Okay. Not even a thousand. No, the largest part of that is buying the copier paper. Okay. And you you
procure that. I mean, that's a big, right? So, yeah. Okay. The next thing is the postage. It goes up by 3,000. Yes. Because stamp prices are going up. Yep. And every time
we do a town meeting, we have to mail it out and it goes by the weight of the warrant. So having specials and legally required that we mail it. We are required by law to mail them. We saved a few this year. H we saved a few a few uh
town hall workers that were Yeah. town meet members about these special. Yeah. We try to hand out what we can. I picked up John's appreciate postage there. Well, I mean we do with the beach stickers. mean people could come and pick up their town meant but if we're
legally required to postage it then okay um all right into information technology uh computer maintenance library computer maintenance that was um for the oh actually no skip
that um that was only five equip uh category equipment maintenance 36 $6,850. Is that a very specific contract or something? That is a contract. Yes. And what they come and maintain the printers, the copers, the things at town
hall that get utilized by not just by library. I mean by library staff and the public who come in to utilize those. Yeah. This So this is general actually. It's under it in general. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought So this is um it for every department. So police, fire. Okay.
Library, senior center, town hall. How often are we going out to bid for copers? We're actually going out to bid um soon because we it's very peacemeal. Right now we have six different companies and it's always just six because it's each what they had previous
done was as each machine came up they would bid the one machine. Oh god. Um so there's no buying power. There's no volume discount. No. So, so what we've uh I've been working with our procurement officer to put together a
bid to try to get one, right? So, that would be is that this category equipment maintenance? Um, that one is is that the copers? Yes, that's our copers. Okay. So, we're going to bid that this year. Would you anticipate any savings at all?
As of right now, it's not anticipating that we're going to get savings in the first year. Um I hope that we will even off the state contracts really. Okay. Okay.
Uh another big category financial systems. That's munas for the town and school. And it's going up by $6,000 absolutely positively. Nothing we can do about it. Is that licenses or is that just renewal? That's the renewal. Is that who negotiates that or how do you
We MUN does not negotiate. No negotiator. Ununice assesses. They are not the only player in the game though. There is one other company. I know. But they are the the gold star. Yeah, they are. Okay. Next. IT contract
services going up by 5,000. Is that high Q? Mhm. And what is the thought process on that? Because the FY26 is the last year of the contract. Okay. So, that will go out for bid. So, we can go out for bid then. Oh, this is locked in.
Okay. Uh, software police, the um, sorry if I could just take one second. The phone system contract services the 18. When does that go up? When is that up? That highQ as well. That is um that has four more years left on the contract. So, it was a five-year contract signed last
year. Wow. Okay. Thank you. All right. Software police. Yep. So that is the actual cost of their contract. So this is um their Aladde. This is the
um mugshot software that background. Yeah. So I assume fire, you're going to say the same thing but with a different acronym. Y and then public records was zero and is now 6,000 because now we're getting a software provider. Yes. So
this was a request of both the police chief and the town clerk. Um because with the volume of public records requests that we're getting by having the software, it will actually save a an abundance of staff time specifically on the police and it will also allow them
to reaccess um what was given. So if there's repeat requests, it's already there. Is this because of the body cameras? H does this have to do with a lot of the body camera? It Yeah, it has to do with all public records. Um so the police chief actually had two IT
requests. one was actually much more expensive and I was like I can't promise you anything but if you had to pick one and very surprising to me he picked this one. Um and since it was supported by multiple departments that was why this went forward. Makes sense. Okay.
Next category is uh wireless phones. We already did that. We've already done that 3000. Um so uh software building. Yep. So this is um open gov. So when you do your permitting um that is done through that software
contract locked in non-negotiable software subscription has gone up because that is every other SAS subscription that the town has. Okay. Okay. So, 35,000 for telephones, most departments. What is that if that's
not the service? That is every telephone not in town hall like landline phone. Wait. And wait, wait, wait. What? What? Landline phones like at the library or like off-site locations? Police. Yeah.
So, police, fire, senior center, library, and it also has the um internet lines. Gotcha. And how when was the last time we bid that? Or what's the contract for that? I think Ron did that right before he left. So,
21. That was a long time ago. That just seems Okay. All right, Doug. What else on that list? But you think we're locked in on that one? It can't be if it's that long ago, right? So, it's a it's a area for potential
examination, right? You want to recognize Mr. Andrews? He's a telephone guy. Sure. Mr. Andrews, go ahead. Could you just approach the mic though because people at home will want to hear what you have to say, too. Thank you. I don't want to go too deep down this
rabbit hole, but if you have something. So, helpful. 120,000 on software licenses. How many employees do we have and how much software per employee is that? It's a great question. So, are you hinting at that maybe not everybody
needs a license and we could reduce the number of licenses we have? I'm hinting at having done due diligence on buying three companies over the last two years, right? Um, that's always a line item where you go look at it and you go, "Oh, we're not using that. There's that. It's
120,000, right? You might want to double click on that would be Double click. I like your suggestion. Um, thank you. So maybe we can do You're not gonna have that answer today, obviously tonight, but if we can make sure that each license or subscription
has been utilized in the last 30 days, or if not, that it has a reason not to be utilized in the last 30 days and is so that we're not terminated employees have a license still. You know, sometimes you uncover that you accidentally have a license of somebody that's been gone for a year and nobody else is using it. So, let's see if maybe
we can find something there. Thank you, Mr. Andrews. Um, next, Doug. So, telephones, I mean, 35. I can't imagine if something hasn't been bid out in five years that in that type of area that you couldn't get some savings.
It's not under contract. Yeah. I don't know how many options you have because it's Verizon, so I don't know how well it services. We can definitely look. This is for the service or the the service. The service, not the physical
phone. It's like Verizon bill. Yeah. All right. Um Well, normally when my Verizon bill goes up, I call them and I say, "I'm going to cancel." And they'll take 10% off. Maybe we try that here. Or sometimes you get a discount for having the cell phones also. So, as well as the
IT, I mean the tech internet. Sorry. Bundle. Yeah. Exactly. So, let's Okay, let's see. I'm down to I'm skipping the parking enforcement area, although that would be a whole other conversation. Yeah, that's a
statement, I think. Uh, so I'm down to um town council contract. Ah, yes. This is something that we could potentially go out for bid for, correct? And we probably should, and I don't think we have in a decent amount of
time. I I think Katie was involved the last time. Yep. David and I were involved. Uh yes. Uh yes. Uh and it would be um great to understand what I don't know
that a cost ever came out of that. Um, there was meant to be a conversation about cost and I don't know that that information ever trickled back to us if there would be a increase in cost but also an increase in professional
services. We never got to that point in that process. So happy to take that back up but I don't think that's anything not going to solve a problem by Monday. No. Um, for sure and and not interested in under
um funding this particular line item, especially if we're underfunding the fincom salaries, I mean the FinCom reserve because as projects come up or issues come up. Yeah. But right now we've got a $60,000 increase programmed in, right? Because
of an increase in their rates bas based off the actual spend. So based on the budget, yeah, that was just budget. Here's the thing, though. It was budgeted short last year on the thought that it was going to be shopped around last year and then it never was
and then didn't. So what about what about just going to 225 instead of 250? Well, I I would venture to say that maybe if we overspent that's on us. Yeah. And that we need to hold ourselves to the same philosophies that we're holding our other department heads to, which is you
don't have the money, you can't do that. Right, Madam Chair? That's right. So then we'll enforce that. Maybe we at think about reducing it at least to Doug's point 225 or maybe leave it at 190 and say we need to be more
discretionary with the way we're using our funds. I think there were a lot of projects last year that probably went out with a lot of questions to town council. I don't think that we we misused any of that. No, I think there was a lot of
access to legal that might not have been um controlled, right? I think we allow a lot of committee board chairs, things of that nature to have more flexibility than probably they should in this financial climate, right? That's my
experience. I would maybe I would just caution Yeah. that we are going to be utilizing legal for contracts, large collective bargaining negotiations. Mhm. which we didn't. And and and the 5-year average on this line is $234,000.
Mhm. Okay. Doug, I wouldn't I I I still hold reducing to 25 if the fiveyear is that must have included some CBA um years ago. So 234 a little bit more discipline. At some
point we have to be accountable for how much we spend like you know in the same way that we have to hold each department accountable. Yeah. Right. We can't just pick and choose. Right. And I don't think we've done a really good job of doing that. Right. So I think it's a
little bit I agree. I think there's a little more discipline that needs to go in place. I would support reducing it to 225, but I think that makes me reconsider some of the depreciation income line item because if we're making
if we're losing all the fat on every single one of these, then you need a reserve. But we can't do that. We can't I'm not It's not apples to apples though, Doug. I'm not saying let's take 25 out of here and put 25 there. I'm saying let's take 25 out of here and make sure that there is still something
there and not that we're not reducing that to zero for a buffer over the five-year average. I understand. But we should just be aware like if we run over on this, you can't take it out of finance committee reserve. Oh, because it's on anyway, right? So it would have to come out of the shuffle. Well, come
in the shuffle. I mean, there's not going to be anything. Assuming there's no emergency that you assuming there's no emergency, whatever was in there drops anyways to the shuffle and then we reallocate it, right? So, okay. So, is there a straw pole consensus over
reducing by 25? I I am. Yeah, I'm I'd reduce to the fiveyear average. So, I'd be reducing by 15. You have to remember the fiveyear there's a increase in their retainer the retainer fee is going up this year too but not necessarily if you're going with a
different firm right that could entirely change depending on who you go with might not be the right time to change only because we're have three CBAs just well you know it would have been a great time to change two years ago but here we are so
okay so is the recommendation 15 then that's David I was That's That's mine, Danielle. I mean, I I I would go either way, but I could I could certainly Why don't May I propose we start at 15 and add a $15,000 savings to that line item?
Somebody writing all these down? Yep. Other than me. Okay, great. And we start there and we see where that gets us. And if we have to dip back, we dip back. Okay. Okay. Moving right along. uh human resources professional development townwide
uh 7,000 last year and this year. What does that entail? H what does that entail? Professional development. What what is the PD for that? Is any professional development? Um so can you give me an example of what it is they go to? So our previous assessor um wanted
to take courses to get the certification. Mhm. Um, so she went to the town administrator and sought request and was able to utilize that. Um, could we get away with a thousand less? Depends on how professionally developed you want your staff to be.
Is it a require? Is it always depleted every year? And it's a want versus need. Is it depleted every year? So every year for the last five years, this has gone down to zero. There's been no money left in it. Um, it's it's fluctuated. I we've also increased that amount over the years because um more
people say they want to go to more professionally developed. Yeah, sure. But what where's the limitation, right? Where's the you know, is this is this job required? Is this job related? Who's doing the double check to see that the course they're taking is applicable to the job they're do? You know, there's
all these checks and balances. Is that happening for every single request? Yes. Right. And who's making the determination? So, is it you? Is it you? I'm I'm one of the people, right? So, you know, are you really going to say no to someone that works for you that they want to go to a conference? Maybe. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Say no to a
lot of people. Okay. You know, um so it just it seems like, you know, subjective a little, right? Judge judgment is required. I don't know. I don't I propose a $1,000 decrease there. I I don't have an issue with that. No,
it's fine. Okay. Okay. So, that's $1,000. And employee recognition uh was 7500 last year and now has been reduced to 3,000 in the finance committee
recommended budget and town administrator's budget. Um now this is non-contractual employee res recognition, correct? Yeah. So, this is like the assistant library director just hit 40 years.
Um, so they, you know, were able to recognize her and I forget what they got her. When Gino hit 20 years, he got a little placard pat in the back. Yeah. In terms administrator, that's what you got. He got more
responsibility. All right. Okay. Maybe that's enough there. Piece of crystal. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the Listen, part of this is morale, too, right? So, like if employees don't feel recognized, they don't stay. And we're already cutting some this is $250 a month to have an ice
cream or pizza party or some type of recognition at town hall forest job well done to be honest I think you don't fund this and you put and you more put more funding into professional development because if you want people like a pizza
just in my opinion a pizza is a pizza if I want a pizza I'm going to go buy it but if you want to have people who have longevity and have professional responsibility and who are going to put the time and energy into the work you need them to, then you'd rather foster their professional development than give
them a cookie every month. But that's just my opinion. Depends. Certain people are motivated by different things. There's a balance. There's a balance, right? All right. There's a balance. I don't know. You know, but all right. So, we'll leave it as a because I won't like my answer.
Okay. I mean, we've depleted the employee assistance program. Yes. It was at 5,000 and that went to zero. And that program dependent went to five and now zero. And what did that program do? That's that's when you have all sorts of different employee needs. So employees
have someone to call having trouble at home. You you know referral for divorce lawyers. All sorts I'm just saying does it make more sense to put that money into that program? How often is that utilizing the metrics? It was it was our
determination to not fund that and instead fun the other ones. Yeah. So not utilized. Okay. So the next uh big category is I'm going down to the salary reserve. Um which I know is difficult uh
to discuss. Um there is no room in this. Eric, do you have a something here? It's gone up. We have a question somehow. It's gone up by $17,000. But yeah, obviously we have three generations. It's gone up by more
than that. Three CVAs. Three units. I would not look at a prior year trend on that. It's gone up by $220,000, right? No. From 140 or 257.
17,000. The budget book has 30 30,968. What are we? Sorry. I'm sorry. Typing. your warrant under salary reserve and end of employment section and then the salary reserve line itself. Oh, you mean the total the total line item 19. You're looking at the blue line across. You're not I'm not looking at the book. So,
it's spreadsheet. If you look at page five, the second section of the budget, the salary reserve 257618. The salary reserve was 30,968 and then we're in Oh, right. Now
we have Sorry, you were saying was only $114,000 difference, but that's not Huh. That's weird cuz on this sheet is different sheet it says 140,000 for last for 2025.
It was originally budgeted at 140 and then at last special when you um when town meeting authorized the collective bargaining agreement um that reduced it. And then in article three of this town
meeting we are transferring money out of salary reserve to fund the contracts that were already voted earlier this year. Um so 140 was the original appropriation. Much like the finance comm reserve, you can't spend from this. It only transferred out. Y Okay, that
was pretty impressive. I try. It's all that professional development or pizza, right? Um Okay. So, anyway, it's big increase. Yes, I feel like yes, there is a big increase. There's a lot of things
in here we can't discuss that are warranted and that we did not hyperbolize that line item in any way. That that's we hope that is conservative. It's probably less than conservative at this point.
It's conservative. It's conservative. I think it's more optimistic than Oh, sure. Okay. Well, let a lot of telegraphing here. Um, okay. It's optimistic. Optimistic. Optimistically, moving on. The warrant.
Can we print it but not mail it? Can we print it and not mail it and have people pick it up or give them the option for that? We are required to to physically mail it. Okay. Yeah, we we've obviously made exceptions like select board members and staff, but the Sorry, the
next one. Doug, I was hopping down to town clerk. These end of employment, school, town, uh, performance management's already zeroed out. End of employment, school, and town, I just assume are retirements, mathematical certainties. So, yeah, the
school provides theirs to us and yeah, we do ours as well. Okay. So the uh FinCom has already recommended a $17,000 reduction for the pole workers
section. And so when we're talking about our reductions to get to the school number, we should include that if we agree with Fincom. Correct. because what the town administrator recommended or unless you
figured out a way to spend that some other way. We've got to get beyond the finance committee recommended. We've got to find another $130,000. We can't count what they already Right. found. Okay. Right. So, it's that
right say something. It's on the tip of your tongue. Yes. Right. Okay. But you you took 17 out of there. seven. Yes, we we asked and uh because there's less elections this year. Yeah, I got it. We talked to the town clerk or I'm good with that. Amy,
talk to the town clerk and that's the number. So, there's an other comp section in the town clerk area. Is this the contractual stuff or it it is in the employment contract? Yes.
Dare I say that bonus word again? Yes, that's the same. The B word. the B word. Okay, we come back to that. Um, then there's there's another equipment
maintenance in the town clerked area. So, new new election equipment was um done through capital. So, this was a known operating increase. We bought new machines and it's now going to cost us twice as much to maintain new machines. Mhm. Well, do we
have more of them now? We do. Yeah. Yeah. And that's actually going to go up next year as well because we just got a notification um today that it's going to be even as of July 126. They are no longer doing a fixed fee. They are doing a per pole pad
per election programming. So maybe we need to go to bit. Seems weird in this day. brand new machines in the first year. You have a doubling of your operating. There's double there's double the machine. Yeah, double the expense potentially. They're brand new
machines. Okay, let's um What about the what about the election expenses? So, if we're having fewer elections, is there a correlation there to Yeah. So, there was a reduction made from 34 to 29. Um we the local elections are not
subsidized by the state or federal government. Um so when it's local it actually costs us more or comparably cost more. Okay. Okay. Next Doug. I'm down to the senior
planner line. Great. Let's talk about the senior planner. I mean the thing about I'll I'll start this conversation if everybody's okay with that. The thing about the senior planner is we've been trying to fill this role at
this even greater than this and we can't we have not been able to fill it in two years. So it is it is fictitious to say that we will fill a senior planner role at $80,000. So what is more fair to say is and and I know that the process was this to find
savings not to increase. However, to to facilitate that line item in a true way would either be to fund it at 110 to try to actually fill the senior planner role or to make it zero because we are never going to hire a senior
planner at 80. No, we've been we've been trying to Yeah. And we have had the market we're not Yeah, we're not Hamilton just hired one at 115. Okay. What was that? Hamilton. So, it seems to me that I am
I feel like this role similar to the building commissioner role is a must have a mustave. It's a revenue producer because if we are going to f we are not going to we have to grow our way out of this problem and the only way we do that
is by planning further into the future and we are not doing that. So, I see a real benefit to funding this line item at 110, actually filling the role and then seeing savings from that come years
forward through growth. You have to remember all of the projects that we have going on and coming up. I mean, we said this 18 months ago that this we sat at town meeting and promised that this role would be filled and here we are two years later underfunding the line item.
So, we're advertising it right now at 110. Wait. And where's the money coming from? You're only budgeting 80. I mean, what? No, because we we have So, we haven't used we we have it in our line item right now. It's covered in our in our budget right now at 110 right now. And
the 2025 budget, it's covered at 110. It's 105. We haven't We haven't used it for months and months and months and months and months. Okay. Okay. So we So what we have save in 25 you're going to use to cover the difference in a year. No no no. What we're saying right now is I
don't understand if if somebody if they hire somebody tomorrow morning you're you're fine with the coverage tomorrow morning because you're budgeting for year and you're not you don't have a year left. Correct. But then the next they're not budgeting for that going forward. So we have to budget for 110 if
that's what we're advertising for. I will say even at 110 we've gotten absolutely no one. We've only been advertising a short amount of time at 110 and we've only been advertising on one right on one um area say and you know so the question from the planning
board actually I spoke to the chair of the planning board over the weekend and he had given a list of recommendations on where else he wanted us advertising and some of the other things that he would like HR to do. So right I sent those over and HR should have a
conversation and get that going. But in the meantime, we unless there is funds available in salary reserves specifically to cover the not that much $30,000 difference between this line item and what we're advertising as we we
need to increase it increase it to 110. Okay. I'm supportive of that. I am too. And it's not 30 in salary or reserves. No. No. No. But how do we advertise that position at 110? Exactly. Because Marielle Allen is saying and it makes sense for this year but doesn't year
going forward is that we have plenty of money to pay 110 because we're not paying a whole year, right? Pror rate in the two months. Yeah, we prorate the two months and we still will have fall uh surplus addition surplus that will fall but we we need to then appropriate for
the correct amount going forward. Okay. So going forward Marielen says she's done with this conversation. Um, so increasing, but if the senior plan is worth 110, we don't think the building commissioner No, I think it's the same premise. I think potentially be
the same premise 110 the building committ we're working we have an don't we have an agreement with nant we don't need one what's the agreement with nant a potential agreement would be four
hours and $20,000 right potential potential but there we're still short $10,000 right so where what was what's the running building inspector. The building inspector is on the agenda. Okay. You want the chair saying take it off. I'm
just saying I don't want to be in a meeting. Budget is on agenda. The entirety of the town meeting is what I said the entirety of the town meeting warrant is on your agenda. Okay. So So if if we have an if we're looking at an agreement with with Nihant, we're at
110, right? And the negotiations took a turn that it went up another $10,000. So from 110 to 120 is what you're saying. Yeah. 20 coming from that. We have budgeted 90. We would have to come up. Now I'm going to get prickly.
You know 110 to 120. Now I'm going to I'm going to have a little bit of a problem with that. Right. Realistically. Well that's the total right now. That's the share plus. Yeah. But it's still we don't swamp scout would only be not only that's probably not the proper word. It would
be paying 100 and we have a deal tomorrow. Okay. Well, that's a little different. Y excuse me. I'm sorry. So the total salary is 120 inclusive of the nant contribution of 20. Right. Right. But that's what he's asking for in other
words or the candidate is asking and we have and we're prepared to give 90 plus 20 right from nant 110 110 inclusive. That's right. So was it 10,000? So Gino is saying if we're prepared to give the senior planner 110, why would we not give the building commissioner 120? Well, it's really 100 because we don't
have any money. That's why I I know conversation. I mean, unfortunately, that is what I would love to give everybody everything. Cookies and cake and bonuses. But just but taking a step back. Yeah. Investments.
It's an investment. And if and if that position akin to the senior planner position would come back in spades. I agree. I agree. I would I would also say unlike the mythical senior planner, the building inspector is a real person.
Yes. All right. One that we know and have identified. Actually fill a seat with. Right. Right. Yeah. I understand. I get it. I agree. Keep going. What What's the running to? I mean, do we have a running total here of where we're at? We're at about 100
because remember we just we just added 30 for the for the planner. So we had 100 just we're we're at 10 we're at 1077 for revenue. Okay. And then we're plus 3,000 all the all the other savings we
just found we just spent. 70 7500 down on the expenses. But let's keep going. Okay. So we're we're at 13950 and then when you subtract the 30 we're at about 100 David 100. Okay.
Next. Okay. Next. And maybe it's uh Okay. Yes. There's more on the table, Doug, to say that. Yeah. because it's really potentially some funds and income and bonuses. So,
yeah. And there's guess other things to talk about here about consolidated positions. Okay. Um All right. Um contracted consulting services under community development. Right. No, I didn't I didn't I have anything there? It was 5,000. It went to
10. Yeah. It went up. So, what's that? It's grant matching and study funds. Great. So, we don't want to cut that. No, that would cut off our nose to spider face. That's uh Okay, then I go all the way down to
uh in the facilities department. um to an outside services town line which can we just go to the educational expenses of Oh, actually there's one
before that that I I need to comment on. So go ahead. What? Under facilities building? No. Where'd you want to go, Katie? Sorry. Building educational building educational expenses $720. Okay. What is that? What is that? uh they're required to attend uh six
courses for continual education. Okay, great. Okay. And the fuel we did fuel, right? Yes, fuel is in different $100. Yeah, we have electric vehicles. F. Why do we We have electric vehicles and then we Where
are we? We're under the building. We're under the building. Uh community economic development under building. Yeah. Yeah. two line 252 page six. Mhm. Line 252 in this in section the second section. Fuel for electric vehicle books
$1,000 fuel 1500. That's not for the electric vehicles. No, right. It's for inspectors. Yeah, that's for the inspectors. It's the inspectors. So it's they they drive their own car and we reimburse them fuel. In a three square mile town. Yeah. Right. And we're spending 1,500 in fuel a year in a three
square mile town. Want them walking? No, but I mean really how much deplete that it's like 2,000 miles. We deplete that every year in the last five years. Have we depleted it? This is a newer agreement with them. A new a newer agreement. So So they used to be able to
utilize town vehicles. Um but we don't have sufficient town vehicles. So now they use their own vehicles. So this year are we using 1500? No, we don't know because we've never done this before. No, this year we have it in if it's a line item in fiscal year
25. And these are building inspectors, electrical and plumbing subs. Sub inspectors, right? Yeah, I know subs. Well, yeah, you're underneath the building commissioner, but So, it's been about $225 a quart. What are you talking
about? $25 a week here. $225 a quarter. $225. So, a,000 $1,000. $1,000. So, you want to save $500, Doug? Sure. I'll take you. Okay. You know, you okay? Yeah.
Well, but while we're at that, per that last conversation, we have Only 80,000 in this budget for the building inspector. I know. Not even 90. I can't. Well, it's tenant in salary reserve. Pretty confident about that.
Let that out of the bag. Okay. Yep. Okay. I can't. So, do we want to just deal with that now or not? I think we'll wait till we see what we have saved and then go back to that. Right. I shouldn't be speaking up. Is that all right? No, that's okay, Gino. You can be speaking
up. You can play too, Gino. Yeah. Um, yeah, we haven't gotten to the DPW section yet. All right, brace yourself. We already know we're getting $1,000 in books. Is that like a some sort of manual or something? So, whenever new
building code is released, we are required to buy them. I don't not a building inspector. Happy to give them what they need. Okay. Um, what sort of overtime is in public health? That's been zeroed out. If there's a p Sorry,
that's been zeroed out. Oh, look at that. Sorry, my finger. Yeah. Yep. Was over the punch line. Okay. It was $1,200. What's next? Oh, I know. I think Okay, so I'm going to We're going to go somewhere controversial. Flu shots. $7,000 in flu shots. I know that
is a public service that we provide. It's great that we provide this benefit to our I think maybe need travels a little to get flu shots and also we have clinics. Um so it's the most vulnerable population. Yes, it's the high dose flu
shots for our seniors. Okay. Okay. Is it staff too or just seniors? Just the nurse. Just the seniors. Okay. They offer it to but yeah. So any offer to um others it is covered by insurance.
Okay. Do we utilize all the flu shots every year to for seniors? We do less flu shots than we have demand for for budgetary reasons. Wait, what? What was that again? We could give out a hundred more flu shots
if we had the budget for them. We don't have the budget for them. So, we've already made cuts this line item. Yes. Okay. Say we didn't give out flu shots and we saved $7,000. Where would that vulnerable population get their flu shots from?
What other what other programming is available outside of us? Walgreens. Assuming people have insurance. If they're seniors, they have insurance. So, yeah. Most people have Medicare for most, right? Right. Doug, this is your
wheelhouse, not mine. So, it is right. You make a perfectly rational argument, right? Yeah. Is it popular that I That would be a very tough one for me to say. Yeah, I agree. Okay. So, let even
though there maybe many of those people really do have very good other options. Yes. Right. Is it just that we are not educating people about all the options so that then we become the default because we
don't have the money to be the default? Yeah. So maybe if we bolstered up the how the public health or how the public service, sorry, the the board of health and the p and the public health nurse is educating
folks on where else they could go to get these. It would be unpopular, but I'm just saying $7,000 Yeah. worth a conversation. Yeah. I mean, you I don't I don't think you'd be creating, you know, a flu pandemic by reducing that by
a thousand dollars. I think, you know, we already limit it. We have to limit it a little bit more. This is the environment we're in. It's not great, right? You're not cutting it all together, right? And maybe the education is when we do the flu shots is that we have a very limited number of flu shots
available. And if you have another way to obtain a flu shot that you try to utilize that way and you save it for the most vulnerable population instead of just anybody who just comes down and grab a flu shot. Convince me. Yeah. So
what's the savings then? Because you're not saying make it zero. No, I'm saying $1,000. $1,000 savings. $1,000. Okay. So it brings down to six. Okay. All right. Next.
What's next on that list, Doug? Uh, well, before I was going way down, but um historic commission. Okay. Uh before that. Okay. Sorry. Um outside services for public health was at 20
down to five. What is that? So, we were paying for a mental health referral system. Um and due to budget that had to be cut. So, this is just when we have to do um send out the beachwater testing um for when we have to do the secondary
tests. Okay. Um I just Are we mandated to do the um beach water testing if we're already doing it at house? Yeah. So, um I'm told that this is
mandatory that if our testing, if our initial testing that the state pays for comes back at a certain level, we are mandated to do a second test. Okay. Okay. Um historical commission, are we through recreation?
Yes. What are lifeguard supplies? H buoys, boards, lifeguards. Lifeguard supplies. That's what that is. Um, so that is actually when they put the floaties in and out. The what? What?
Like the at the beach, the no wake zone. Say again. At the beach, the no wake zone. The you don't know the where the swim area is. the the little floaty string. Why did that go up by 50%. 3,00 to 4500.
Any idea? Oh, they went up uh 1500 because uh they need to replace one of the beach chairs. And Jenny Armeni was um was able to contact another community that we were going to be able to get one for only 1,500.
Wait, the lifeguard chairs. Are we talking about beach chairs? What? What? Yeah, life guard chair. the life card down at Phillips Beach at Phillips. Phillips. Yeah, it was. We had somebody. Why doesn't something like that come out of recreing? No, because it's not paying the beach. The beach is public. It's
public. You don't pay. Yeah. I mean, even though you have a beach sticker, right? It doesn't matter. Okay. Yeah. But the beach Yeah. Um Okay. So, yes. Historic Historical Commission. Okay. So, this I heard they were willing to go down to zero, Doug. Is that true? No.
Okay, nicely tried. Um, the reduction I've been uh I'm curious why it was a reduction from five to two,00 Amy, do you know the rationale behind
the reduction? It had previously been uh two. It was increased to 5,000 this past year. Um, and I believe it was a specific request for that one year that they needed more money. Um, and
that was the only reason it was reduced back down. I'm sure they would continue to use money if it was available. Share the historical commission has u requested that it remain the same.
Do we understand the item that they needed money for last year and does this still exist this year? Do we know if that's the case? I think they've, you know, I think they've legitimately increased their um efforts in general.
Um, how much is this? $2,500. I agree that they've increased their efforts, but again, I mean, and I'm happy to help them to some extent. Don't they fund raise? Are they fundraising or is this part of that?
They do. The Glover. Is this the Glover thing? Well, that's not the only thing the historical commission does the most to date that Well, there actually are a lot of other things that they're engaged with. Um, you know, lots of the exhibits or other, you know, issues around town,
you know, all that stuff. So, that yes, there is fundraising around Glover, but yeah, not about their kind of core day-to-day activities. Year to I have to say I am a zero for this one. I'm sorry. I can't year to date. They've spent $1375.
I can't. So, $1,375 this they also received our funds. So, we we have financially helped them in the past for the Glover for the Glover. But they're the things they wanted supported. We tried to financially support them when
we could. I think given the budget constraints, I'm happy to leave it as is unless trends show they don't even spend 2500 and then I would reduce it down to whatever trends. The the 5-year average is is $4,3969. Okay. So, I say we leave it at 2500.
It's fine. Okay. Okay. Sorry, Doug. That's okay. Just It's all right because I wanted zero. Doug, you're lucky. We got to the average. All right. Um, I hate to be this person, Amy, but I
just sent you a text. Oh. Um, MGL 3910 says that the warrant does not have to be mailed. So, you might want to look into that. Okay. It has to be issued, but doesn't have to be physically mailed. So, there could be savings there, postage, and whatnot.
I didn't get one from you. I think it's the oh service. Yeah. Fair. Okay. So, the next one I had is in public services facilities and outside services town. It had
already been taken down from 125 to 120 5,000 and my suggestion was take it down another five for just completely random reason. Um, so what does that line item
represent? Meaning pulling it up. So the way Max has structured this is that the um building maintenance town is for the things that he and his staff can do and that is supplies for them to do it. Outside services town is for any of the
maintenance that they have to outsource. Um, and so looking at their actual spend, these have been um I have to assume he is going to spend the full amount on whatever line item we give him. I I will say Max's request for
all of these all of his lines were higher than were higher than what we're giving him. Understood. But considering the situation we're in. Yeah. So these have all been for um electrical and HVAC outsourcing that they've had to do. So I imagine Max in all of his wisdom
and experience and skill if he only has a budget of 115 he will work with that instead of 120. Yeah. The only caution I would like to say is when we cut maintenance and services to major
uh ser like major uh engineering services or I don't know what the right way to say it but like HVAC, electrical things like that like often you end up paying for it twofold. So, I'm inclined to keep this as is considering he already asked for more and we failed to give him what he asked
for. You you Yeah. You You don't pay twofold. You pay 10fold. There you go. Um and we've we're destined to repeat the same mistakes of the past, right? By cutting this. So, I I I just No way. We're only talking about $5,000. And he jacked up the m building maintenance
town. The internal stuff is going up by 10. The school does their own. The school has their own or does this include school? No. U number of years ago we split it so the the school got the funding for theirs and maintains it. So this is town only.
Okay. I think it's important to note Yes. Do you have a microphone though? Sorry. Go ahead, Eric. I I will say oh from experience uh with the schools I think it's important to note that when you do have that money set aside internally that they get a lot
a lot more done than if they would have to go out and contract it. So uh it could very well be money well spent. Right. So I'm saying we're going up 10,000 internal. We're only going down 5,000 external. It's actually going up.
I mean, I know things and construction is significantly more expensive. What's that? Construction supplies and services are significantly more expensive. I'm inclined to leave it as is, Doug. I hear your point, but
I'm inclined to take the 2500 from historical and put it here. All right. We've already we've already moved on from historical. So, let's We moved on from that line. I Let's move on. We're getting to that hour and I want to keep things productive. So, let's move on. We
can always circle back. What's next? And then there's an operating expense fuel and gas line. Is this the date? Is this the line David brought up? Up by 17,000 originally. So, these are the
utilities. So, electric and gas. Oh, these are so not Yeah. Not from gas. These are the actual utility bills. Gasoline. I understand. Okay. Yeah. Utilities. Both both of these lines are already over for this year. So, um, Max is trying to figure out where he can
stop maintaining the buildings this year to cover the rest of the utility costs. Great. The price of gas is going down. So, right. And I will say that he the overage is net of the 50,000 free cash that was given to facilities from this
year. Um, utilities reserve. Yes. He's still over. But just remember our he's over that 50,000%. He spent all the 50,000. They're projected to be 10,000 over. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Moving right along. Well, hopefully he won't have the Hadley
online. Mhm. In 26. So, he may see not a savings, but at least the depreciation in that line item he could and the clerk for that matter. The clerk isn't Well, he still has to he still has to maintain the clerk. Hadley would be out of his possession and in possession of Well, the clerk's in the
school budget, right? Today, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right, Doug. Next. All right. Uh, cemetery
personnel went up 7,000. Yep. Yep. Yep. New licenses. Guys that we hired at the laborers want to he acquired his hoiston license and his CDL license. So, they're collectively bargained.
Okay. I was going to say steps and lanes, but is that right? They've moved up. Yeah. Okay. They have grades and steps on our grades and steps. Okay. Equipment maintenance under cemetery went from 3500 to 5,000. Yeah.
The reason I boosted that one up is because the two lawnmowers in the cemetery uh five or six years old and backo's getting older. So, the assumption is with age they will require more maintenance, but they still work. still work today, but if we don't
maintain them. So, could you take a,000 instead of 1,500, Gino, for that line item? Sure. Okay. So, let's take it down $500. Um, almost done. Um public works um overtime up 10,000.
Did you hear my collective gasp there? Do you know Chris? Oh, that's up in overtime because what we started doing last year working with solid waste advisory where emptying trash barrels twice on the weekend and all the beaches in the towns. So we have two gentlemen
on standby and from Memorial Day to Labor Day, they come in on both Saturday and Sunday. And as a matter of fact, last year we started coming in twice on Saturday on the real warm days to empty Phillips and Fisherman's Beach. Okay, that's a necessity.
Agree. Well, it is in the trash. I mean, I've been to beaches that are carrying carry out. So I know we tried that and I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying in this wants and needs and do we have an actuals on that is
that do we have some experience? Yes. And we did that last summer. Just said and in total overtime last year that we had a budget of 40 in this year right now. Do we go over last year or
like this year that we're in? We haven't hit the beach season, but do we have to be paying overtime to DPW workers to do it? Is there another way to do it? Can we be utilizing high school kids, w staff? Like is there somebody else that can do it cheaper? Senior work. I'm sure
honestly like is there some other way that we don't have to pay overtime? We know my experience over the years volunteers don't work at the beginning. They're all gungho. Yep. We're going to do this and then when it's raining or something come not necessarily volunteers but less expensive
staff labor summer intern. I don't know. You know if we're paying people to check the water we already cut the summer. Right. I went from five summer help already to help out down to two. Right. But I mean, I'm I'm saying like the wreck staff, the parks leak people, like
is there any other Have we thought of anything else that Not going to say we haven't thought of it, but those bags get real heavy. So I think have a wreck staff member pulling trash out and putting it where they're going to have to dump on the back of a DPW truck to the cemetery. Back of the truck throwing
it. The wreck employees are not driving TPW trucks. 53,000 last year. 53,000. 53,000 in overtime. this year than we're in right now. But it's not No, that was FY24. We're at 41,000 this year with the summer not starting yet. We're going to have a month of beach
season. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So then that would It's also not just for trash. Yeah. It's not just We have two guys on standby. If something happens over the weekend, they get called in. The good thing news about being on standby is they don't get a 4hour minimum for coming in. What do they get? Hour for hour.
They only get paid if they come in. Yep. Well, they get standby. They get standby pay. Do we need two? It's contract. Yeah. Contractually. Yep. Okay. All right. Alrighty.
Um, we've got a three. Oh, that's already cut. Part-time staff and public works. Yep. Thanks, Gino. Thank you, Jino. Um, um, sorry to go backwards. I've received several text messages and emails from people that our bylaws specify that we have to mail the
warrant. So, our bylaw, it's in our bylaw. Okay. So, we can change that. Okay, great. We can certainly chat to the bottom there. Are we on Are we Are we being recorded? Okay. Okay. But we've just clearly lost the Teams on that. Just on this TV. Yeah.
Teams is still very much running. Okay. Great. Okay. Which means the recording will still exist. The increase in personnel line 17,000 I assume is just all contractual
math, right? Yep. 17500 in fuel. Fuel. Is that where you're going? Fuel. Yep. Favorite $2,500 increase in fuel. That's fuel for trucks. Trucks. Yep. So, it's broken down.
A third of it in sewer, third of it in water, and a third of it in DPW. Okay. So, it's 2500 total or $2,500 increase? $25. $2,500 increase. It's 15,000. Was 15,000 last year. It's 1755. Now, wouldn't we project for a gas price
decrease though? I mean, with gas prices down, does that not have an It would definitely have an impact, right? I mean, Amy, what the 5year average fuel DPW? David, what was the fuel line you had suggested a reduction in?
Facilities is one of them. Yeah, we've already passed it. Yeah. Okay. Uh fiveyear average is 9,000, but it looks like there was an anomaly in 23 where the line actually had negative usage. So, I wouldn't put
stock in that average. Zero sense at all. Right. So, if you remove that, what does the average become, Amy, if you don't mind? 15578. Can we get a thousand, Gino? So, yeah, looks like you could take 1500. Thanks, Gino. 1,500.
1,500. This is twofold. You know, trying to get Yeah, I know what you're trying to do, Cresta. I know. I got my eye on you. I got my eye on you. He's going to put all I know. I know he is. All right. Equipment maintenance.
Um 375 stayed the same. Yep. No wiggle room there. What is that? Are those contracts or No, that's my mechanic fixing the trucks. And when things get banged up a little bit, we exhaust that pretty much. Is actually a salary or No. Okay. This is the actual actually equipment maintenance on all our
equipment. Okay. Signs. Signs. If I had it my way, there wouldn't be a sign in town, but we know that's not going to happen. Not going to happen, Gino. Right. So we deplete this every year. Every
year. Amy, signs. Yep. Signs. Signs. Signs everywhere. Signs. Okay. Operating expense supplies went up by 5,000. Yeah. What's that? A lot of that supplies there is I want
to make sure I'm saying this right. You know what? You don't have to answer on the spot. Amy has answered for every other department. You don't have to answer for your budget for your department. Amy, what is in that line item? I was trying to get a break. A lot of back on spot. Well, I know a
lot of most of this and the supplies is asphalt for paving, right? All right. So, to to jog Gino's memory, um, Dunovan Equipment, Rental, Gilbert and Cole,
Delissio, Yep. cement. Um Barry Morse. Who are these people? What was the last one? These are Gilbert Morris contracts. Oh, Gilbert and Cole. Gilbert Cole supplies.
F AIA. I don't want to mispronounce FYA. FYA. Okay. Yep. So, what's the fiveyear average of actual spend? Well, we had a spike last year. 50. 50.
Gino, can we keep it at 55? We keep it at 55. 55 it is. 55. Still an increase, right? That's a $5,000 savings. But it was halfway to rich. Um, okay. I
heard at another meeting that we wanted to reduce the shade trees by $10,000, but I know we don't want another presentation from the tree committee about our issues regarding removing shade trees because this would not remove any Well, it wouldn't allow us to
fix the problem we already have. So, a reduction in shade trees would be a long-term environmental issue with significant impacts to global warming and other things, right? We did take a thousand out of the flu shots, though.
You know, I mean, listen, I'm just saying we have lost 10% of our It's like the pipes second the trees. Okay? So, we've had a long-term issue with the pipes. We're going to have that same issue as we remove more and more shade trees. You don't want me to continue the analogy about taking away the flu shots.
Okay. I'm just saying you went to bat for historic commission. I have historic commission. $2,500. I have to go to bat for the trees. Let's There are your flu shots in your trees. Okay. So, I I don't want to hear in the
shade trees. This unless the money that's going out of the shade tree is going into tree maintenance. Okay. Okay. No one's arguing about the shade tree. Okay. Great. Thank you. Just saying it. Uh contract field maintenance. Yep. 78
885 going up to 85. Yep. And that's because we've gone all organic instead of using the pesticides and herbicides and the price just keeps going up. And basically those are treats in town. The only ones we upper Jackson we treat lower
Jackson. We treat uh baseball diamond and the practice football field. treating it organically with overseeding it, airating. Okay. Just overall maintenance. Organic fertilizer. Wow.
And this is year five of doing it. Yep. Every year. And we spend every bit. I actually play catchup. He's already started and he's going to hold help me out and wait till July 1 to do the next bus. Okay. No, we would never do that. I stopped what I said. I said he's going
to wait till July 1st to come in. Okay, moving on. Questionable. Debris removal, $32,500. I assume that's like public dumping and then we have to pay for the things to be removed. Yes. Fiveyear average we spend it. Yes. Every year.
Debbie removal is when we rake the beaches. It's the seaweed and with street sweepings. We still It's not It's not public dumping. No. Okay. Great. Okay. Right. Electrical repairs went up from 5 to
$10,000. Go back to five. Gino. All right. I mean, is there is there any Why did that go from five to 10 and then we could just drop it down? I will say that you increased this and decreased your street lighting.
Um, street lighting is down by 21,000. I think it is. But that street lighting is building contractual that we have a contract with Hughes Electric. They have it's a contract. So I don't want to touch it. So he doesn't have any wiggle room anymore that one. Yeah. He's decreased it already, right? Yeah. No,
get that. All right. So let's bring it down to five. That's another 5,000. Electric. Electric. Yep. So And what is the street lighting? H What is street lighting? The street lights in
town, right? But is it is it to repair the street light? I mean, like it's Yeah, it's contract. Yep. For that to come in. It's contractual. Exactly. Okay. Just to say it, we're at 114,450 right now of just expense
reduction of just or is that the net of everything including that's net including the 3,000 we increased. Wait, what's your number? What are you at? 14,450. We were at 10,950
10,000. I'm sorry. 110,000. 100,950. It's the hour in my dyslexia. Um, okay. So, we're at we right after the increase to the planner, we were at 100,950. With the increase with the
decreases postplanner, it has brought us to 114,450. I have 110 2000. 110200. All right. Well, we'll reconcile after that. Well, it was Don't worry, we've got a tape. We can
rewatch it if we have to. All right. What else? Uh I'm down and I'm skipping snow and ice. We've exhausted that, right? Yeah. Uh now down in public safety, police.
Um let's see. Um, so, oh, this this is all part of my $100 a month plan contribution from lots of Okay, let's skip that. Skip that. Yep.
Um, educational Yep. Go ahead. I was just going to say things that are not CBA related are the only educational incentives goes down by 12,000. So this this is the Quinn and nonquinn
um compensation that is collectively bargained for the police officers. It goes down. Yep. So it's based off the census. So if you have um retirees and departures of your higher educated or full Quinn and you have newer hires on
baby Quinn. Um I was looking at equipment maintenance 22,500. I would assume that's police cars, cruises. Cruisers, things like that. Yes. And I assume we deplete it every
year. Yes. Okay. And I assume there's a backlog of maintenance that needs to be done every year. Yeah. So, we have um a recall on the electric hybrid vehicle. So, we've had to do a little more maintenance on the older vehicles to
keep the fleet rotating. Got it. Okay. And the fuel um was 31 and change last year and it only went up a $45, but that's depleted every year.
Okay, Doug. Yeah. Uh I'm going to go backward just for a second. Sorry. Um o overtime under police it's going up by $20,000. Mhm. It's based off their um their regular leaves and the average
overtime cost per uh grade and shift and um all the field training that they have to do when we bring on new cars, which are contractually obligated. I know we say this every time we talk about public safety and overtime, but
like making sure that we're having education about overtime and that we're keeping a thumb on that budget and understanding it not just as it relates to what we are contractually obligated to do from an overtime perspective, but as it's being spent by our chiefs. Yes.
Which is not happening, right? because well it's happening more now than ever before. Yeah, there's likely still room for improvement, but we should be going in that direction. So all all of this stuff is like totally
scrubbed and without going each individual line like every single one of these things is I mean we talked about flu shots, Doug. So, if there's something you want to just call out like No, I don't. I just want to go line by line. I'll say
ammunition went up from 30 13,950 to $17,000. Cost of metals has gone up. Cost of medals is up. So, ammunition is up across the board. And we don't have a reserve of ammunition. We use it every year. It's mostly for like training. It's mostly
for field testing and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. They're required to have a certain number of hours firing weapons. So, so one of the questions that I do have is on uh matrons. Yes. The police. So, now that we have female officers, do
we is is is the matron? Is the matron redundant? On the shifts where we have a female officer on shift, we do not need to call in a matron. On a shift where you do not have a female officer available, you do still need to call in a matron.
So then could we not cut this? I So before we had No. Well, we had one. Mhm. Right. So it was less frequent that we would have that one available. No, we have four. Are we not not now
that we have more than one? Are we not able to create the schedule where there we're not able to do that because of rank and things like that and shift bidding and yeah shift Oh, shift bing. Okay. But should this number not decrease based on the amount of folks that we
have now able to do that job? In in Danielle's words, it would be a gamble because it would be a gamble. Um but you would have to assume that when there is a female off a female brought into the station that you will have female
officers there, whereas they could be brought in only on the times where you don't. Do we did we utilize this line item to its fullest every year in prior in the last five years? So I can understand how we we have in the recent three. Yes. What we have in the recent three? In the recent three years we've
depleted it with less female staff. The prior two because of COVID they there were stricter rules about having people in the station. Okay. But that was with less female staff. Yes. So the question is, would the board like to
suggest a reduction or are we willing to keep it? I I think it comes down to staffing. I think it comes down to how I'm not familiar with how the police bid shifts or how many, you know, females are on any given time or, you know, but I think that's a valid question for the
police department. Why can't we ask that, right? I mean, how much how much is it? What's the line? 6,500. I mean, this we're talking a $4 million department. I mean, right? It just that was just one thing that but it it makes sense if when you have that many when we're touting the number of
female staff that we've hired, right? And that is a big plus for us like it that go that goes hand in hand, right? But it might not. It might not. Maybe considering the subject of the CBA, it's worth Amy, you could circle up or you know, you could
circle up with the chief to say that we brought up a recommendation to reduce this line item. Is there any room for reduction there even by $500 considering all the other places we looked? We to be fair we didn't give any of the other department
heads a say to say whether or not what we were doing was something that we could do but it's a little bit more convoluted on the police side. So I understand that I can talk to him tomorrow. Okay. So we will take nothing
from there now and see what's said. Anything else in public safety here? No, not for me. Okay. What's next on Harbor Master equipment maintenance goes from 5,000 to 6,500. The boat hasn't
been maintained. It has to have a sealant on the bottom of it. So, $1,500. That's $1,500. Mhm. Okay, fine. Easy. Um, and I'm down
to over Well, there is equip. Okay. So, there's equipment maintenance that went up $1,500. Y Oh, sorry. We just talked about that. Yeah. It's the hour. Okay. Go ahead. Fire. Yeah. I'm on fire. Overtime up by I just It just boggles my
mind. We know out of the shoot that we're going up $66,000 in overtime. How do we come to that number? Where do you It's not 65, it's not 70, it's 66. Like where where does that come
from? It's 66173. That's an incredibly impressive spreadsheet. Um you should see that spreadsheet. I'm so excited about my spreadsheet. Tables at all, I'm afraid. Yeah. So it takes the entire FLSA spreadsheet. It takes the average overtime by rank of each person. It
takes the allowable um time any of them coming off. It allows for the overtime for the 10 weeks of um academy that any of them have to go to and flushes the whole thing down. Right. But how close to accurate is it
over the past five years? We've overspent over the last five years, haven't we? The the overspents have been from the long-term stickouts, right? Um so if you pulled those out, is that an accurate yes number?
Well, I think it's best case, right? Because it assumes no like we don't have to backfill every shift year round. So that's where the buffer comes from. Right. Okay. So that kind of proves this whole exercise is a gamble is a best
guess, right? This is what we're doing. So Yep. Holiday pay is contractual. Contractual, but it's jumping by $34,000. We still have the same fire department, but somehow it's jumping 35 holidays. Every year they get more same number of
holidays, right? No, but it's like if you look at the spreadsheet, it's like you they have a base salary and then everything gets added up and like it's based on the so they end up the base overtime salary is like double what
the what the regular salary is just because of all the incentives they get get added in from. And then every year there's only a certain number of holidays and a certain number of people on the on the but their rate increases every year because of steps and other educational incentives. So then they get
more pay in the holiday. So 25% increase the contract same holidays. Yeah. And again we're spending that every the fiveyear average of that is
Yeah. It's higher than the fiveyear average when uh Junth was added at all. But yeah, and then the other thing is we have a lot of new employees in the fire and the police. So they're getting a lot of the bumps, but you would assume they committed a lower step. It can't be. It
came lower and then now they're getting their jumps are higher up. Yeah. Okay. Next I'm down to expenses building under the fire department 5,000 to 6,500. This is building. Okay. Yep. What's then the next one after
that? Equipment maintenance 50,000 going to 525. Yep. So building maintenance this year um is already at 17,000. Then what was the next? No one first was expenses building. Yeah, it's
already at 17,000 spent this year. So we already have a they've already had to take it from a different line in their expenses to cover it. Was that for an unforeseen circumstance in the building like did we have a leak or something or that just
normal expenses? Uh garage door repairs. Okay. Was the largest one in there. So looking outside of this year but prior years somebody backed into the garage door. Uh 61,000. 61,000.
Great. So is all that Amy on the equipment maintenance line? No, I'm just on the expenses building building. The average is 61,000 and we're budgeting 6,500. 6,100 is the average and we're budgeting
6100, not 100. Sorry. Sorry. It's the hour 10 o'clock. All right. Okay. So, and next one, equipment maintenance. We've been using 50 52 50,000. They went up to 525.
So, this is due to um the age of our ladder truck is costing more to get the repairs done to it. We're getting a new one, right? Are we getting a new one? Yeah. So, it's two years from when the capital gets
approved and when it actually arrives. Yeah. So it' be a gamble if we gave them 50,000 instead of 52500, right? Yeah. So we'd be out of laughter truck if if we depleted it. Mhm.
I don't think we should deplete it. I wouldn't Nope. No, you don't want to reduce it by $2,500. By 2500. I don't I would No, no, I'm not saying bring it to zero, but I'm saying keep it at what it was. Yeah. Get a new one. Like you don't need Keep it at what it was. I can't imagine that 365 days, right, is going
to give you $2,500 worth of repairs. If it needs a repair, it will likely cost a lot more than $2,500. They're going to go to another line item anyways to find that money. Yeah, but equipment maintenance is probably for a lot more than just Sure. more than the truck. The truck. Yeah. But that's their that's the
reason the chief used to say he needed $2,500 more dollars is because the ladder truck increased in age and therefore would need additional maintenance. Yeah. Okay. So, outside the maintenance we need is more expensive. The maintenance we need is more expensive. Yes. Because they don't make that truck anymore and it is much more
difficult to run the parts for it. Okay. So, nobody has an appetite to deplete it by $1,000. I will. Okay. Anybody else? A,000 bucks. Okay. So, let's take it down,000. Just he was negotiating down there. I mean, I'd take it $2,500 down and
bring it back to where they were, but I didn't think anybody had an appetite for I'd go there. You will go there. Say it again. $2,500 is the historic commission. I know Danielle, but does anybody have an appetite to bring 5250? A,000. Okay. So, let's take a,000. Let's take a win where we get it. Okay.
All right. Oh my god. This is so uh protective clothing. It's pretty hard to argue about that. But I think that's in their contract that they have. 5,000 though. That's contract. When we hire new people, we have to give them a whole I understand that. We hire people all the time. I don't know why it's going up
5,000. Okay. Fuel went up 18 to 20,000, right? Lower gas prices. What about conference and seminars? Oh, what about conference and seminars? Went from zero to 20,000. Is there a special conference this year they have to go to that they don't go to in years past?
You're literally nickeling dying. Yes. I mean, I don't know any other way that Yeah. We're going to be putting this on the back of taxpayers. We're going to nickel and dime every person we can. Yes. So they um they have uh a rotating list of three firefighters who go to a
uh the annual conference. Do we have to let them go to the conference? Are we required? Well, we didn't let them go last year because it was zero. Okay. So then it should be zero for next year. I'm sorry if it's not necessary like absolutely necessary right now. How
about a one? We just go down. How about one go? You let one go. Well, you're just going from two to one, right? Two to one. No, it's three to one. Right now, we let three now. No, I'm saying, $2,000. Oh, I'm sorry. To $1,000. Yeah, but I'm saying like if it
costs $1,200 to send two, you might as well give them $1,200 so two can then I have to pay overtime because they're not there, right? So, I'm just going to throw that out there like that's what happens. But if we're professionally developing our town hall staff, then this is a form of professional
development for them as well. So we did we did reduce the conference up there too. Yep. I just want to know if this is 2,000 for three people to go. Correct. Yes. Okay. So if we wanted to send two of them, we could reduce it by a third. Okay. Somebody do the math because
roughly $700. We'll make it We'll make it $1,300 if that's okay. That would send two people instead of three. Sure. There's a sigh. Does that mean no? I can't math like that. 7 savings only
does big numbers. $700. Okay. Fuel 18 to 20 more fuel. Project an increase in fuel. Like I don't get it. Level it. Level it at level it
to 18. I mean Yeah. To 18, right? Yep. So that's a $2,000 savings. Okay. Are we under contract with LIND dispatch? Yes. For how many years? FYI26 is the last one of the current contract.
Okay. Is that for 911 services that we have to contract out to Lynn? Yeah. So, they do all of our 911 dispatching. Is that something that we should evaluate at some point? We we brought that up in science committee and you'd have to hire the number of people you have to hire to
cover 247, you know, 911 dispatch is more than the contract because it is an issue for the police that they have brought up that it's not effective. So, I'm just wondering, it's so Say that again, Dino. Sorry. It's an issue for the police that they have brought up is not effective, does not work
effectively, that the service that we're getting is not worth the value we're paying. Mhm. That's not what I remember the police chief saying. Okay. Commas was a month ago, so I don't know. We'll get to the bottom of that. Okay. But not tonight because we asked about regionalization
and whether they could, you know, work. Yeah. You asked Oh, instead of Lynn, could you work with Right. Salem, right? Or But he said they work with a different dispatcher like Salem has a that has worse service than Lynn. Okay. And uh I he was gonna he said he was
thinking about reaching out to Marlhead. I think they do it in house. They do it in house. They do. I think they could if they joined Lynn, right? Then that could maybe reduce the cost for everyone. But it's a bigger discussion sort of organization. I mean, and I think Marblehead employs eight dispatchers.
That's definitely not solved. So, let's what? Let's keep moving into I'm down to library. I'm skipping over. I didn't have anything in senior center or veteran services or emergency management. I I will say our our
veterans is most likely going to our veterans is already over this year. We had additional veterans move into town. Um so that is most likely not sufficient for next year, but we're waiting to see what our veteran service agent gives us
for the update. Okay. Okay. Uh, so under library I was in building expenses went from 2,000 to 7500. Yes. Seems ripe for a cutting. So because the library has gotten more
popular um and we've had a lot more patrons in there, they are going through their janitorial supplies, um, all of their building materials, everything. at insane speeds. So, they are over all
of those lines this year. What are they at? Sorry. Thank you. Go ahead, Dad. Before I say cut the toilet paper because that's where I'm going. Carry and carry out at the library now. Bring your own toilet paper to the library. Yeah. Not the direction going.
We're trip. We're going up 200%. Okay. So, what what is the actual spend in that category on building expense? Yeah. Mhm. Um, this year we are at 4,39 right now and we're budgeted for 7500 next year.
Sorry. 5,000. 5,000. Well, wait. 6,500. 6,500. Save a,000. Okay. 1,500. A,000. A$1,000 there. We'll take these in the backyard.
Going home before you go. It's a three square mile town. outside services jumping $9,000. Yep. So that is the Noble Network. So um we have to pay that. Um and our library director is on
the board now. So they're working on reworking the formula for how that is shared for future years because right now the smaller libraries like Swampscott are subsidizing academic libraries. Everybody pays the same or
proportionally proportionately. Yeah, right now like the flat base fee is substantial. So, they're working on that. Okay, next line. Office supplies expenses going from two to five. Can we just go to two to four? Sure. That was quick. Well, was there a
reason? Are they like trying to buy a printer or a piece of equipment or because increased foot traffic? They're just going through everything so much faster. Okay. Who sets the fees at the library like um
for printing and copying and we do. We do. Did we look at those fees? Add that to the fee list only because if office if if the cost of supplies is increasing then proportionately the cost of copying and scanning and I mean um
those go in the revolving fund. So that's one of the articles okay in there. So any printing that's done there um is a revolving fund and that's why they asked to increase the spending limit this year because the cost of all of that has gone up. So we should consider the costs what it's costing us
to facilitate that. Yeah, that's part of the RFP for the copier services because um there is a cost to reprogram the copier um to increase the fee and that cost is not worth increasing the fee.
Ridiculous. Okay. Um why is the telephone here but also in the original? That's for their um elevator. The phone line in the elevator. Oh, the emergency line. Doug, you want to cut that, too?
Don't get stuck in there, Doug. All right. We got a cell phone. No, we don't. Yeah. When Stella gets We took him away. No, we don't. Nope. When Stella gets stuck in the elevator, it'll be a smoke signals. Okay, moving on. Um,
we're done. I'm Well, at least I'm done. You're done? We're done. Really? We're done. You're going to let library materials go? Library materials 34,750 is going up to 140,000. What's the increase? We are required by state to be an accredited library and it's a
very complex formula that I'm happy to share with you. Nope, not interested. Just tell me that it's required and that's fine. David's got something. Yeah, I just had so just about I didn't have any more expenses. So, continue on with the expenses. I'm sorry. That's
okay. Um I was concerned with the increase in the senior center overall though. So that was a concerted effort um by the previous town administrator and the select board to um as our population was
more gray and aging that we were going to make more investments to expand the senior center um in terms of staffing and services provided. I think the part-time staffing increased significantly. So that's um a shift. So, that used to be in the expense line and it moved up
to uh instead of having a contracted outside vendor, it's moving to a part-time person. Okay. Just a couple of questions about or yeah, a few questions. Um there was one about cannabis impact
fees and then there was another one about the 61B legislation which was uh voted on at our at our uh special spring 2024. Yes. Meeting. These are are these not reflected? No, no, no. This this is just a Okay. This
is just a general conversation. So, I just what I wasn't sure if you had an update as to that 61B uh legislation. I know it I know it doesn't necessarily result in cash flowing flowing in, but if you can explain how that would work and then uh those cannabis impact fees
within Vinnen Square as well as Pine Street. Yeah. So, I'll start with 61B. Um, so we are still monitoring where it's at in legislation, um, and keeping an eye on that and keeping the pressure on our legislators to make sure that that gets through. Um, as you stated, it's not going to bring any additional
revenue. It will, however, you know, appropriately shift the burden back to them and off of everyone else. Um, so we are keeping track on that. I will get a formal update on exactly where it's at in the process. Thank you. Um, for the
cannabis impact fees, we have tried. We've gone all the way to do. We've gone um with legal and we have not had an avenue to um get those. The communities that have tried have not been successful. We are still working um
we've even reached out to do legal earlier today because Journey um because they are a um specific demographic. They're saying we're able to get an additional one and a half percent um
from the state. So, we've been working for the last um eight months to try to figure out who we can contact at state to get access to that. So, um you know, even as of today, we were following back up with do legal to see how we can
pursue this. So, okay. So no one So no one within D within do or within our existing legal team at KP has any insight or or contacts at the CCC or No. So every
everything that we've gotten back as an answer is unless we can show that our community has been negatively impacted specific to that cannabis shop that places have not been successful. And due to our proximity to other communities
that also have cannabis shops within close to our borders, um it would be very difficult to prove that any impact to our community is directly related to ours and not other communities. Um, in the realm of fees coming from
cannabis, um, we do collect $2,000, I believe it is a month from Callus from Callus for parking. We give it to the post right now to subsidize
uh, the parking coming from them. I think we have to consider all money's on the table. So, should we be giving that to the post? Should we be giving all of it to the post? Just does that have an expiration
date on how long? Is it an agreement? I don't know if it's a formal agreement. Is it? It's a lease. It It is um is an agreement with Call that they as part of their lease that they will uh pay the town $2,000 for use of the parking spots. Then the town just turns around
and hands it over. Yeah. So, but the question is, is it an obligation that we pay to post? No, it is an a it was a decision made by the select board. How long has it been in effect? Since Call went into business, which was
what, 22? Mhm. So, multiple years for three, four years. So, can it subsidize any of the veterans line items here? It's general fund revenue, so it can go to any part of the general. could be used to offset.
So you could consider reducing it. The post is still going to be there this year, right? And probably not. Yeah. So it wouldn't be a shock to hear me say I don't really think we should do that. Okay, that's that's fine. I just putting it off. Didn't think everybody would
like it. I just thought it's worth the conversation point since we're going to be charging taxpayers for whatever funds we don't find and we are giving $2,000 to the post right now monthly. So
So my my totals Yep. So we have the 74,700 that Amy came in with over right with extra revenue. Thank you. Then David had a $33,000 contribution from the going from
the four to 6%. Wait, 74,700 you had. Maybe that's where my math is. Yes. 7 gave us 74,700. Okay, go ahead. Revenue. David gave us 33 33. Okay, we decided on 33k increase, right?
It's 1077. Then I had another 3K cell phon. Cell phones. Cell phones. Danielle, cell phones. Yes. Yep. Sorry. Um, it's 110. And then all the other reductions including increasing the
planner by 30. The net of all that was another 30k. I have 11200. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't I didn't get Yeah, I got You don't have three? No. Are you counting anything from legal or
contracts? I did not. I have 15,000 reduced in legal. The net of all the expense reductions and the one addition is 11,200. Yeah. I get I get right to Yeah. Okay. 120. I get 119, right? Mhm.
Yeah. You mean everything all in? Nice. Why Why don't we just add it all up without the 30,000 and come to a number like why are we getting why are we going in c like Okay. So, if you is it 30 or 40? Because I do want to say that if we are
allocating this money for the senior planner, then I really do think when we have an actual person ready to start as building inspector, that deserves as much if not more more consideration because technically the plan senior
planner position is still in theory there's not someone identified for it. But if we have somebody who can actually start and make a difference to the revenue in this town and the building issues, I think that deserves equal consideration. I don't want to say it,
but I I think that I just So we can comp we can watch the tape back and figure out the dollars, but I have 149,150. That's without taking the
additional money to the planner. Yeah. Which is which is 150. That brings you to 119 after you take out. So if you take out the planner, you're looking at 119150. That's what I have. Okay. What do you
have, David? I have 119. Okay. So we're in the realm. So we're looking at approximately $119,000 in savings on the town side that we've found. We should talk about the building commissioner then. So if it's going to take an extra 10,000 for the building or
what? I don't even know what number we landed on. Yep. That would bring us to 109. That is what I would suggest. That would that I would be comfortable with that. Well, right now the budget doesn't show that though. Right now the budget shows Well, it shows 80, but then there's we reserve 20,000 from the
house. Well, you have 10 in salary reserve for next for fiscal year 26. Yeah. Okay. So we have to come up with 10. 10 just 10. Okay. So that brings you to 109. So we got
109150. So then we haven't done anything with the finance committee reserve or the bonuses or the salaries or the salaries. Correct. So in just looking at that 10. So then
we need to take a vote to support the hund like for him to hire a building commissioner. That's not even on here. So we're going to have to wait until the Monday meeting to add that to the agenda that we can vote on increasing the allocation because it's it's already you
already have money. Don't you have money under the building inspector line item right now? Because you haven't had a building inspector. Yeah. Right. So just make the change in this budget. It wouldn't doesn't affect anything else. The senior planner. Okay. So we've already voted it. We've already
voted to support the the building commissioner. So I don't think we need another vote. Right. Okay. You you will need to appoint the building. Fine. So consider that Diane for the next agenda. Please. appointing. Well, not the next.
Do you mean the one in June? Yeah, we'll talk to Gino about it. Sorry. Let's make sure he's I'm not sure we need to vote on anything else. I don't think so. Okay. Yeah. Can he stop before the appointment? No. No.
Nice try, Christa. He's a top member, but maybe we can get him into a meeting. You can staff for free before if you like. We're meeting on Monday, so it's just a 5second situation. Then we can appoint him. What's the matter? Just the question is what what exactly was our vote? Did we already approve this?
Wasn't that you did contingent upon me? We did negotiating a deal with them. Okay. So, you negotiated the deal. Can we consider it done or do we have to vote to appoint him? You will still have to vote to appoint. So, we can't start until then. Okay. That's fine. Unless he wants to start. All right.
So, we still haven't voted to our suggestion on the article is going to be given that we have all of these changes. Mhm. We'd have to have a detailed amendment, but okay. So, let's get back to, you know, we did all that work and we got,
you know, what we got. What are we doing with the finance reserve? Technically, didn't you save another $30,000? No. And I was doing the audit. Katie, do you want to weigh in on finance reserve? That was coming out of free cash. I don't think we can. You can't. You actually can't. Have a
quorum. Right. Okay. Sorry. Say again. What? Miss I Eric. I wanted to see if Eric and Katie wanted to weigh in. Oh, on Finance Reserve, but they can't. Um, sorry. Well, they can speak to individual and you don't have another meeting before your meeting on Monday.
They have a meeting with us. They have the same with us. We're in a different room. No, they're in their own room. Oh, it's not a joint meeting. I don't think so. We have time to make it a joint meeting. I had requested that, but I don't know if we have time. Time with
appetite, Eric, to make it a joint meeting. Does it make sense for what we're trying to do? I don't I get back to you. It only has to do with posting. Meeting at the same time. It's a meeting at the same time. So, it just depends where you're posting your number B 208. We're at B. You're in. It's Wednesday,
though. We're in here. Mhm. There's still time to update the posting, right? It's not happening till Monday. It's Monday, so you have to post tomorrow. We have to post tomorrow. Tomorrow. So, you could change the location if you wanted to have Okay. Well, we can just I mean when I think we
kind of have a sense of what the finance committee is going to say about reducing the finance committee reserve, right? Yeah. Okay. So, I need a motion about article four or you want to talk about you want you
just still want to reduce. Do we still have those other items that we do? What other others? Well, the finance committee reserve the bonuses and any any discussion of salaries. So, talk about those. So, I would at least go with I think Katie said going down to 90 on the
finance committee reserve. I I'd be willing to go further, but I know it's late, folks, but people going from what to what? Go from what to what? Uh 110 to 90. So, I'm going to be blunt and say I want to do what is most
likely to get us over this threshold and get get us on the same page. So, if that means not making any adjustment to finance reserve, then I'm okay with that. But that that is the goal, right? Let's not lose sight of what we're all sitting here trying to do, what
everybody has sat here and watched us do, right? If that if we're still not all going to be united and on the same page, then what's the sense, right? So, we're not there. We're at 109. If we've if we're doing the building commissioner and we're doing the planner, we've only netted 109. Well, I guess we need 20,000
more. Yeah, I was going to say to be frank, what you're trying to do is you're trying to make up the 130 that you took from the that the income is suggesting taking from the school department's budget. That's what that is what you are trying to accomplish right
at a minimum for me. Yeah. At a minimum. Okay. And at the same time, we just reallocated resources to what we feel will help hire qualified personnel for valuable positions at town hall. So it
wasn't all just for this exercise. No, this was a very needed okay exercise and and just moving forward. I think this would be most helpful doing having having one day where we sit here. We have all of our various department heads
come in and they schedule, you know, 20 or 30 minutes with 15 15 to 30 minutes depending on the complexity and they sit here and they present their their budget and we can have this much earlier in the in the Oh, no. I have something much
more fun planned. Oh, I would think it would hard to it would be hard to say today how future town administrator, whoever that is, would like to see this process go. So they may have their own input about how budget process goes but
we can certainly explain to them the pains of this of the past the need for the financial summit and to avoid this going forward. Right. Okay. So again 109150 I think is where we're at unless my math is wrong. Okay. So we need
$20,000. $20,000. You want to go We can talk about any of these three topics. We can rule them out any order. Want to talk about the bonuses and salaries first before the finance committee reserve? I I don't care. What's your what's your suggestion
recommendation? Well, I mean I think you know my thing about the salaries is probably the the toughest one in a way. Yeah. Um so you know people don't have an appetite for that then well you're saying salaries across the board in the town. I just
don't see how I don't know how that's possible. Over 100,000 that would get you another $30,000. Uh $27,000. But how how would it be possible? You'd have to go back and tell people that, you know, they we need have to
renegotiate the contract. And that's school and town. Well, I mean, I'm only speaking No, we're only speaking for the town. Oh, we're only speaking for the town at 27. It's just in the town, right? So, we'd be telling employees, we have to renegotiate your contract. You're
under contract. We have to negotiate your contract. Those that make over 100,000, which is probably 10 people, 10 that are not part of collective bargaining, right? Because there are some making over 100 that are part of CBAs. And Amy, what are we paying out in
bonuses this year? 20 uh 20,000 per contractually. Oh, the retention bonuses. retention or performance. Y well performance is up to you to the discretion of the town minister. So how much is budget? How much how much is budgeted? He's asking in 26. In 26. Yes.
Uh 23,500,500. That is my I mean to me that is a much Oh yeah. easier cell than telling somebody their salary is going down by 10% or whatever. I mean it's actually kind of convenient in a
way. You can take 20,000 from finance committee reserve. You can take 20,000 from the bonuses or you can take 20,000 from actual salaries or you can take all three or and it's the same conversation of what is more valuable, want verse need. You know, do you do this? Do you forget this? Do you not do it? Do you
get to 109 and then say, "Okay, that leaves 30,000 and risk losing a whole body because that's on the table, right?" Do you do that? Do you try to take a little from a few? I was going to say, do you split the difference and you say take 10
from income reserve and take 10 from bonuses so that you still have some bonuses because I would say contract even though it's not guaranteed in your contract. The verbiage doesn't guarantee it. There are people who rely on that those funds and they work their tail off to try to attain those funds and to just
pull them out and not have any incentive for the hard work is difficult if that's your expectation and that could seriously hinder morale for those roles. So, but is it insulting to give them half?
Well, you know, I mean, right now you're dealing with companies that are my own has a hiring freeze, right? So we could freeze positions. We could say right now we're not going to backfill any open position, right? That would be one in police, one in fire, however many at
town hall and save that way. Okay? You know, my I work for Harvard. We're not getting raises. Okay? We we would get four to 5%. We're getting none. So companies make these are corporations. These are, you know, higher ed, whatever
you want to call it, but a bonus in a municipality town job is like a needle in a hay stack. It doesn't exist. So just because we had somebody that felt that they could write that into a contract doesn't mean that it's the
right fiscal decision for this climate for us. I I I just I can't in good conscience. I can't support it. But I understand if people don't feel the same way, you know, but um to me it is by far a nice to have, you know, or or even a
never have and you just luck out, right? Um I have I have no appetite to touch the salaries. Um so I'd be willing to take a little from the finance reserve. I'd be
com more comfortable, you know, taking a little bit from from bonuses and evaluating and then I think we've, you know, we've solved the the 130 problem. Um, but what is that? What is that
combination? I guess we really have to get down. That's where I am. 10 and 10 and 10. 10 and 10. So I just for the record I cannot touch a contract in good faith that we have negotiated. It just um I think it's a very bad signal. So what's the
suggestion then? And I also can't touch the legal line and touch. We already touched the legal line, right? But I'm saying that I'm really not supporting the legal line. And um if we're at 109,
well, if we took legal out, we would be at uh at $15,000 less than 109. Well, why is it we can't just stop at 109? Well, we're not at 109 if we take legal out. So, we're at 94. We can we can stop
anywhere we want, right? to your point, right? Seems like the majority then would like to keep to try to get to that 13. And the reason we're getting to the 130 number is so that we're not putting any
pressure on the schools whatsoever. You're asking me? Yeah. I just want to be clear. That's why we're looking for the extra 30. Yes. Okay. Yes. Right. So, so we're saying that the schools can't find 30,000 out of $33 million budget.
Well, we'd really be asking the schools to find 20,000 at this point. Okay. Well, 35 without the legal. Yeah, but we're Yeah, the majority supported the removal of the legal. So, we're keep So, if we're looking at 109,150
without touching bonuses and income reserve. I guess what becomes a uh crisis of conscious for me is how can we ask them to find $20,000 if we're giving out municipal bonuses. I understand your point to say like
we're contractually obligated. But I don't view it the same way. The verbiage in the contract says if appropriated and at the time we had full intent of appropriating based on the for financial forecast that we had available to us when we negotiated that contract. So in
good faith we made that promise. The climate we're in now we have to reevaluate. We shouldn't be making that promise going forward. That's for darn sure. But it's a difficult decision. It's a difficult decision. Yeah, it is. Just to
confirm, Amy, did you are you tracking with what the 109 or so? Okay. What do you think, Gina? Similar to what David said, I would not touch the salaries and then potentially
bonuses then reserve. Well, I'd flip that. You'd be the finance reserve. No. No. I would try to take the majority out of the bonuses. I guess it's going to impact me, too. So, no one's going to get mad at me if I'm doing the same thing to
myself, right? Like, everybody can get mad at me. I'm used to that now. You know, it it I worry about this board voted four to zero to fully fund the schools at the end of the day. And this exercise we just did should have been done three
months ago, three years ago, every single year because as we sit here and we, you know, nickel and dime every line item, we we proved why we did this exercise because things are that arbitrary. And maybe we did have padding
in extra lines that we shouldn't have. And how can we in good faith have padding in extra lines and then look at these people and say, "I can't help you anymore. figure it out. How do you do that when we have never done that here
and we just did. So now I at least can feel like we really scrubbed this to the extent we could. But I mean I don't I don't know. I don't know what else to say other than four of us clearly are trying to do what we think is the right
thing. I don't know. So, do you think it's worth coming back on Monday and seeing if Well, the school committee doesn't meet though. Yeah. Oh, you are meeting Monday. Monday and Tuesday. Well, not before.
Yeah, but not before we meet. So, what are we talking about here? A gap of 20,00 30,000. 20,000. 20,000. I mean, I guess 20,000. Can we ask the school committee? Can you find 20,000? I mean, we're putting them on the spot. Of course they have to. We can't
actually we can't even ask that. We can't even ask that you guys. You guys Yeah. You're not here forum. We can't even We can't even talk. Disgusting. You can't talk. Yeah. Okay. Mhm. So, does one of one of you want to leave? So, the other two No, just right. Three
of you want to leave one of you can say something. I don't know. Um All right. So, we just have I think the only answer is to question. We've done this six times.
We started insure, chair of the school committee. Um, just to make everybody feel better, we've done what you just did six different times. We started in November with a very high budget with a lot of wants and we whittleled down and by the
time we got to the tri chair meeting in February we've we did it five or six times. So that's why I could say with very clear conscious we had nowhere to go. Um you know again we can't really discuss much but I do want to let the
board know and just to make it you know I understand this is what you've done tonight. I agree with Miss Leonard. Should have been done months ago, but that's okay. Everybody learns, okay? And you guys will do that going forward, but I want to make you feel better. We've
done this several several times already. So that's why again, we can say every line item is absolutely been whittleled to the point of, you know, like one of the things we're talking about, if we go any lower, we're just going to come back. That that's all I'm saying. I want
you to feel better that we've done this numerous numerous times and what you've done tonight. Yeah, it's last minute. I get it and it's hard, right? Next year is going to be much easier on you guys when you do it earlier because you gain an
understanding. Granted, you know, the health insurance thing that happens, right? That that just it's like if uh a special ed family moves in town and we have a student that needs the services that we didn't budget for. That that happens. But when you guys go through this again next year, when we have a
financial summit and you know, you're sitting in February and you're going through some of these numbers, it gets much easier. It really does. That's all I want to say. Thank you. Thank you. Um, one thing, please. This isn't to offend anybody, but this isn't the first time in fairness to Amy who put a lot of hard
work into it and right, put a lot of time with me. This isn't the first time we scrub the budget. This is multiple times. So, I just want to This is now scenario 72 of this budget. It's not it's not on you guys. It's really
not because you have done the work and I appreciate it. Right. I know you guys right on the school dollar for dollar line by line. I know you guys have gone through it a ton. I I just I know that just from hearing it, but it really is on the elected boards
to go through it. I appreciate that. Okay. So, Doug, go ahead. Can I just ask one question? Do you have have you already taken care of your contract with your incoming superintendent? If you're asking signed yet, if you're asking me if it's signed and finalized, the answer is no.
No, you said sorry, right? You said no, you said correct. Yeah, the answer is no. It is not signed. Okay. So, here's my suggestion. I We're at the one yard line. Like, let's just finish it. Um, let's just get it done. Let's
let's do the either 10 and 10 or I would vote for somewhat backing what Marielle is saying. I I we don't but it's different than what Gino's saying. We don't want to touch the bonuses because we already agreed to them. Then that's fine either
way. Let's make a decision. At this point, Amy, do we have the option to take the difference from free cash or from the excess levy capacity? Yes. Yes. We We I mean, so what kind of difference does that make on what we're already taking
on free cash or the levy? Levy, whichever is a better scenario. $30,000 on the levy, right? 20,000 on the levy is an additional $32 to your median taxpayer. I mean, at this point, we're
talking about $3 a household on top of on top of what we've already We didn't find any savings from It would bring it from $732.93 to $735.95, which let's be clear that $732 is not the fault of the difference
between the school and the town budget, right? So, let's be crystal clear about that because that is a common misconception out there that $732 are going up because of the school department. That's not the case there. It was going up regardless. Is there a difference that it because of the
shortfall we have potentially maybe it's a $100 but it's not $700. Right. You mean the whole $700 isn't due to the extra $600,000. Correct. Right. Yeah. Right. Correct. Okay. So then the option
is we don't find it go to 10. We're at 109. We're at 109. We're just the rest is in the tax levy and the rest is in the tax levy or income goes lower. bonuses get touched. What's the straw poll here? I
know Danielle's made it very clear about bonuses. Sorry. You don't have to be sorry. To Miss Leonard's point because it's 10:43. Um because the bonuses are not
recurring, you could fund them through free cash. Um and it would not cause any structural issues. Eric interesting just different bank account just
better just to put it under. Do you have any levy? Put on the levies. I mean yeah the levy is at this point it's small right $3 more. or the alternative funding, the free cash, but we don't have excess free cash above our
Well, if there's excess free cash as we close out, as we certify the year, we could also put that towards the levy. We don't have to make that decision. We don't have to make that decision till November. The other consequence of tonight is as we budget with a sharper
and sharper pencil, there'll be less and less free cash, less and less cash, of course. And this year we're assisting the school with $600,000 in free cash, which, you know, with this budget, you know, I think the tailings for this year are a lot less than prior years, and
it's just going to get tighter and less and less free cash and ability to fund reserves. It's going to go away. So, um, that's the flip side, right? Yeah. I philosophically I get that, but then what's the alternative? We pad the
budget so that we have free cash. No, no, it's not. But it's I mean it's just a reality. Yeah. There's two sides to the coin, right? Yeah. Totally. And you have to And when you say we're funding the schools with $600,000 of free cash, you mean projected in 26 because of the reserves. Yeah. The other
two articles. Yes. Just to be clear. Yeah. I just don't know what other alternative we have. Yeah. What is the other option? I mean, and what the the other thing, right? Okay, you could say the you could say that out loud. That's no problem. Just
the other alternative is, you know, we currently have a certain percentage of sharing between employees and employers on the health insurance plan. And the health insurance is what caused this, you know, shortfall. And if under the CBAs of which there's four being
negotiated, the employees agreed to cover a higher percentage, you would get, you know, get that money on, I think the 734 people covered on the health insurance. So that's like 20 bucks a month per person.
So you know, so you're you're suggesting increasing the employ of the mechanisms. That's there's other there's other options out there. Okay. So, so we are so that would be a negotiation and that probably wouldn't happen before Monday. Right. Right.
Okay. So, I it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong, that we are going to stop at 1091 150 and we are then still need to take a vote on action
for article 4. So, I'd make a motion to uh support the finance committee's recommendation, what their last
vote with all of the adjustments we just made here to supplement it tonight with the balance to be funded by levy. We don't have to say how the balance is being funded yet. Correct. Correct. Revenues,
right? We don't we don't have to say how we're funding it. We can be upfront and honest about it when we talk about it at town meeting. We think this is how we might fund it, but that's not a today decision or even Monday decision. And Doug, I believe your motion would want
to include that you want to increase the school budget by the net of the changes tonight. I don't know. Danielle, do you think we want to do that? Yes. Yes. I think so. Yes. Okay. So,
what's the motion then for article 4? The motion is to take the finance committee's most recent vote. It would be favorable action for the finance committee's most recently approved budget plus plus $130,000 plus
uh plus but adding back $130,000 restoring $130,000 to the school committee budget and removing 109,000 I don't think you're restoring I think you're offsetting because we haven't taken any nothing's
been taken from the budget Well, but we're we're starting Well, we're starting with Fincom's budget coming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you're starting with FINCOM's as amended budget, right? And restoring $130,000 to the school committee budget to be
comprised of to be comp Oh, nice. Nice. To be comprised of um the cuts that we made to the town budget here tonight totaling approximately $109,000 with the balance to be filled
GBD. Okay. Second. I think we've had enough discussion. So vote. All in favor? I I Fantastic. Um Amy, do you have an update
on the capital situation? So we are still waiting for an additional update from bond council. Um, capital improvement met today at 11 and they are not in support of um, article 16 upgrades. Wait, yeah, it
is the 89 borrow street BFFW street amendment to authorizations. So, they did not vote favorable action on that. They did not. Um, so you're finding out from bond council if we need that. Yeah. So, we had heard from bond council prior to this vote that it would need capital
improvements support. We are clarifying with them now that we there is no support from capital improvement. Um I haven't gotten an answer as of today. So I will update you as soon as I have it. Were you at that mean did you want did they understand that that
possibly takes us out of the running for grants and funding? Yep. They would like to have they feel that more discussion needs to be had myself, Patrick and Max were he'll call me as well. Yeah.
Um okay. So we haven't assigned any of these articles for discussion at town meeting. Sorry. Uh but unless you want to do that Monday and everyone feels great speaking off the cuff, just do it Monday. I mean which which articles do we have
to speak to? I I would Is it possible? Are we going to re be reposting anyway? Could we just meet a little bit earlier or something and do it then? What time? Your meeting at 6:00. Yeah. Meet at 5:30. Yeah. Maybe. So, finance committee has
assigned all the financial articles. So, all financial and capital articles have been assigned for finance committee members. Okay. So the only thing we have to talk about So so just want to let anyone know that cares the Celtics won by 25 tonight. Great.
Jeez. Okay. So two, three, four. Well, we don't have to get up and hold on. I know. That's what I'm saying. We don't have to get up to speak about two, three, four, five, six. We have to speak about seven. We have to speak about seven.
Mary Ellen, you want to speak about seven? Yeah, I'll take seven. Okay. So, that's Mary Ellen. Uh, eight. I'll take eight. You sure you want to do eight? You want to do seven, Mary? Well, we voted not to support it, but And you voted against that. That's fine. I already ruled so I
will. Okay. Okay. All right. Thanks. Mariel's going to speak about eight. Um, article nine, article 10. Um, the board of assessors is going to board of assessors. The board of
assessors will take nine, right? It's 9, 10, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. 12 and 13. Okay. So, moving to 14 revolving funds. Is that finance committ? Finance committee 15, 15, 16, 17 are finance
committ. Finance Committee 18. Doug, you want to take this one? This is the CPA since you're the CPA spokesperson whether you like it or not. Um 19. The Iraq. Who's the leazison on for Iraq?
David. David, would you mind taking that one, David? Sure. Is that okay? Uh article 20 we recommended to indefinitely postpone, but we still have to speak to that recommendation. You'll make that motion to indefinitely postpone. If you're up there, do you want to just take that? I I'm happy to make that one if you don't want to make
it. Sure. Okay. So, I'll take that one to indefinitely postpone. Um, article 21 to establish fall meeting again. I guess I'll be up there. So, if we're falling into that, I'll take that. Well, if it's sponsored by the clerk, do
you do you need What' you say? If it's the clerk cannot make the motion because he's not Yeah, that's right. Got it. So, got it. So, some So, one of us can make the motion. So, I'll make the motion and recognize the ask the clerk be recognized and the clerk will speak to it. Okay. If not, I will. Okay. Great.
Um 22. It's this 22. If you're already up at 21, similarly, if you can make the motion, one of the two of us staff will speak. Okay, great. Uh
23. Oh, we didn't Did we pull this? No, we're pulling 24. Wait a minute. Did we mot Did we recommend either of 23 or 24? I don't think so. I have I was voting 40 in support. You do? Okay. Oh, okay. Yep.
But she But we pulled 24, right? Or weren't there questions on 24? On 24, can we take a You can revote. Can we take a revote considering the information that was available? The appendix is wrong and that the sewer water commission is now suggesting that
they would like to pull or they asked us to pull it so that they can retune it. So, can I make a motion to indefinitely postpone 24? Second. It's your turn. You made the motion. We can't do I just want to get
on. All in favor? I Okay, so we will address indefinite. So, opponent. Who's speaking to 23 then? Doug, will you take 23 and 24? Okay. No, you don't have to. David's the lesson on.
Seriously? Okay, David. Yeah, sure. Okay. So, David's going to speak to 23 and 24 and planning board. Planning board's going to speak to 25 and 26 and 27. 26 and 27. And we don't
speak to 28. See, that wasn't so hard. You'll still want to form an opinion on 28. Um Oh, we didn't before. How many? We didn't do that. You sure? You They usually take a vote on because it's a
citizens petition. We take a vote. I don't think we touched it. We did not take a vote for the last citizens petition. We didn't take We We haven't taken a petition any of them. Okay. Well, let's check on that. It will be on the Monday's agenda if we need to. We are not going to take
a vote tonight on that. Um, there's select board time. We wave select board time. Yep. Wave. Well, I just want to say thank you to Mary Ellen for chairing for the last year. Oh, you're you're welcome. We clearly have had our disagreements, but I definitely appreciate the fact that you worked
tirelessly sometimes to my chagrin, but I appreciate it. Well, thank you, Doug. I think we all echo those sentiments. Thank you all. Thank you, Mary Ellen. Okay. So, I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn. Okay. Oh,
all in favor? I I Thank you guys.