recording in progress all why isn't that just wait until it kicks in yeah sometimes it takes a minute Bob it's taking more than a minute would you onia
just why do they lock that I don't know I think they're afraid we're going to raid them no it started it started yeah that's just on the delay on a delay big delay for safety purposes we may need to get out that way someday here we
go good evening this is to formally advise that as required by Massachusetts General Law chapter 30A sections 18 to 25 and pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 an act relative to extending certain covid-19 measures adopted during
the state of emergency signed into law on June 16th 2021 as extended by chapter 2 of the acts of 2023 the armor select board will hold a public meeting on Tuesday March 4 2025 at 6 p.m. in the
hearing room Yarmouth Town Hall 1146 Route 28 South Yarmouth Mass 02664 the public is welcome to attend either in person or via the Alternatives uh Public Access provided on the town website if you'd all join me in the
Pledge of Allegiance Ali to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivis with liy and justice for
all let me start off with are there any announcements tonight I wanted to remind the public about the cape and Vineyard solar program there's a solar loan that Joyce brought up at the last town meeting but
it's an incredibly great opportunity if you're thinking at all of solar power the rate is 2 . 75% and it is going fast so contact the cap light compact to get your solar loan and get your solar on your
house and um if we could call up the chair of the finance committee thank you madam chair I'm Richard Simon chair of the finance committee uh as required I am opening uh the calling our meeting to order uh we
do not have a quorum uh but we will still have a meeting in order thank you point of order uh Madam chair are we did we do public comments I just missed them no we I just he wanted to do his announcement I'm coming to public comments right now um okay public
comments anyone in the room anyone online Vita I see your hand up good evening you have to unmute vaita I I know but it didn't come on my screen until just now there you you can hear me
now I assume right I can hear you now vaita all righty I just wanted to double check and make sure that uh as indicated in the agenda the public will be able to participate in the discussion on the
School District budget is that still on yes you're going to have be able to participate in the section um slated for the finance committee and uh capital budget it's all public all public talk about school district budgets it's a public
hearing it's a public so they you can you can hold Feer I'll be happy to call on you at the time yeah that's what I just wanted to be sure thank you you're welcome any other public comments okay moving on then we will be
opening the public hearing on budget and capital plan we're going to be starting with the finance committee uh so if our chair could come back up to the table I have to have my partner in crime here yes
absolutely partner in dime me bring up the screen uh I'd like to S to wish everybody a good evening as I said before I'm Richard Simon the uh chair of your Finance committee I'll be kicking off uh
tonight's four-part public hearing on the town's operating budget and capital plans as required by our town Charter section 7.5 the finance committee derives its powers from massachusett general laws chapters 39 section 16 chapter 40
section 6 chapter 41 sections 59 and 60 and Chapter 70 section 6 the select board and the finance commit separately review and report on all articles that appropriate funds at town
meeting the appointed Yarmouth finance committee does not set policies goals or priorities that's the purview of the select board we do not Implement these policies in priority but we rely on the Town Administrator and their capable
team to make all the those tough decisions about half of our Town's budget is determined by the elected uh Regional School uh committee which again sets the district's uh policies goals and priorities and they inter rely on
superintendent Smith and his leadership team to determine the best way to educate about 3,000 pupils and provide fund funding for another 550 students who attend local Charter Schools other district schools as part as school choice and specialized schools dedicated
to serving the students with the most complex needs finally neither the select board school committee nor finance committee approves the budget this power belongs to the voters at town meeting so please come
however the finance committee does spend more than two months thoroughly reviewing the town administrator's proposed budget to advise the town meeting participants accordingly so if you move to the table that shows the work of the committee this table
overviews the work of the committee our meetings are open to the public either in person or online most of the meetings are scheduled on Wednesday starting at 6:00 the agenda for each meeting and the packet of materials reie review are posted in advance and can be found on
the agenda Center in the lower left hand of the town's website video recordings and minutes of past M meetings are also available on the town's website for public review and as you can see during the last couple months we've been meeting with
every single Town Department as well as schools and at our February 26 meeting we voted 7 to zero to recommend 25 of the 34 articles right of and for those who are
online the warrant can be found in the packet for tonight's meeting on pages 30 131 to 154 two of the Articles articles 7 and 31 do not require our recommendation and at our March 12th meeting we will
consider the remaining seven articles uh article 189 1926 33 and 34 where the uh details had not been finalized prior to our February 26 meeting so I'd like to
summarize um yarma proposed budget for the fiscal year 2026 is balanced and its financial affairs are being very well managed by the town officials so um
the I'm going go a little bit off script so the substance of what we reviewed uh really sort of goes into three overarching categories Financial stability Workforce Development and infrastructure
development financially stable municipalities generate revenues sufficient to to pay for the services the residents use while also preparing to weather rainy days prepared communities can soften the blow of unanticipated revenue losses or expense
increases but and that reduces the need to cut services or raise taxes ensuring yarm's Financial stability overhangs every finance committee deliberation certainly attending to the appropriateness of expenditures and the adequacy of revenues is an important
Focus but two but two is the size of the reserves and stabilization funds relative to our liabilities so the committee continues its intentional focus on deploying free cash to fund items in the capital Improvement plan
and other non-recurring expenses or allocating a regular portion of free cash to stabilization and Reserve funds Workforce Development is the second overarching issue the variety of services Yarmouth provides demands
committed skilled employees recruiting training and then retaining those employees has challenged All Cape employers for at least 5 years the cost of living here especially housing continues to ex uh exceed the increases in wages and other
compensation the town presents an otherwise level funded budget but we are honoring a commitment that began in fiscal year 2025 to raise the Staffing levels of the fire department in two increments and that requires a property
tax override for FY 26 of 845,000 EMTs being available for dispatch when the calls arrive last year at town meeting we agreed to address the Staffing uh by catching up on with hiring and equipping eight recruits over
two years four last year and four more this year stretching the staff too thin puts Public Safety at risk an expected growth in residential population and assisted living facilities is likely to increase future demand for ambulance
services Recruitment and Retention have challenged every other uh Town Department in recent years the town is engaged in a comprehensive eval valuation of salary grades and grade steps and at fall toown meeting we approved a limited employment
bonus pilot program as an interim measure the final overarching category holding the finance committee's focus is our natural resources in Capital stock like our Workforce Yarmouth must develop and maintain these resources to
adequately serve its residents responsible municipalities seek to preserve and develop and maintain resources and capital Yarmouth is a good Steward for our lands and beaches our Bays estuaries and our rivers and our ponds for the benefit of this and future
Generations we are practicing good stewardship when we acquire and maintain the technology and equipment that employees use to deliver highquality services that the residents expect and rely on we must be prepared to replace these productivity enhancers before
obsolescence or excessive maintenance cost outweigh their usefulness because of these considerations it may be preferable in certain cases to lease items rather than purchase them so now we get to the you know we're
all we're good so Town Enterprises and that's what the the last that slide is just won't back up town Enterprises like water septage and Gulf have significant projects capital projects ongoing which they fund from the revenues raised within their
Enterprise but our largest undertaking is the Wastewater project the plan to finance the $27 million cost of phase one conservatively spreads out the repayment obligations across several Revenue sources including State subsidies betterments increased property
valuations and other earmarked revenues plus user fees when the system comes online and we must continue to fund predictable maintenance or the replacement if necessary of the town's roadways equipment vehicles structures
including the schools police and fire stations libraries senior set Recreation sites and other facilities the finance committee acknowledges the finance director for her substantial contributions to the
professionalism of our deliberations starting with the significantly improved format of the FY 26 budget document uh which is much thinner than last year's and Publishing the town's inaugural uh
audited uh fiscal year 2024 annual comprehensive fiscal financial report this enhanced format of the annual audit is available for the public and investors several months in advance of the prior basic financial statement the public can access both of
these documents the uh the budget document as well as the uh annual comprehensive financial report uh as well as the capital budget details on the town's website by simply going to the government menu on our website and
clicking on the budget link so long- winded way of saying this uh budget process that we have just wrapped up I we are in excellent shape right now uh we have already pre uh previewed much
of the material in previous meetings we starting with the uh capital budget budget review that we had back in December uh we've already seen the fire department uh waste water um and um and
schools come here in previous sessions so I again I'm just sort of if there's any questions I could answer them now but again I think it's probably perhaps more useful if we just let people move on uh Liz any questions no I'm looking
forward to um the the capital budget committee and um and and the tech school in the back Dy again no questions thank you thank you Mark I'm fine thanks thank you um I see that Sandy f is um on Zoom
um Sandy can we have you un mute yourself would you like to call your meeting to order do we have to close on no I'd leave it open because there may be question question is going across I
see okay can you hear me yes Sandy we can right tell me when you're ready would you like to call your meeting to order please sure um I want to first I want to thank the board for this time to present
the capital budget committee program for 2026 I regret I cannot be there tonight but you can hear from my voice that I'm probably better off zooming so I don't share this with anybody so I'd like to introduce my committee we do have a quorum
tonight um myself Sandy pip I am the chair Andrew leair is there he is the vice chair um we have a new member Danielle newom we welcome her um board Ken Smith on the planning board is also
there I'm not sure if George Perkins since I can't see who's really there um from he's um representative from the finance committee um we have few members that could not be here because they were either out of the country or out of the state Lindsay Petro Joseph Jamal and we
want to thank juny tver Judy tver was um has left the committee but she was a big part of this process of of this year so we want to thank her also I'd like to thank um Daniel bill thought for all his hard work uh we couldn't do it without
him and for the department heads they really put a lot of effort into the capital portal every year they make it better and better and share more information with us and it makes our job so much easier so as I said I want to
thank everybody and I'd like to turn our presentation over to Bill he's going to go since I don't have a voice um he's going to go through our slides and then we'll be there to answer any questions thank you Sandy I hope I can mute myself so I
don't cough thank you uh Bill Scott assistant Town Administrator and what I'll do is go through the capital uh process and the Capital Improvements plan very uh
quickly so the you saw this in December and the reason for the December is to meet the charter requirements of December 1st so the plan was completed on December 1st and then made available and then uh just after that we usually
come into the board and we do a presentation so that everybody understands before you get into the budget committee what capital might be looking at so this is the official handoff of the plan that as it goes to Tom meeting uh the December plan also
includes and this plan uh items that were already seen in uh fiscal year 2025 at the fall town meeting so there is a crossover between uh two fiscal years so the initial document facilitates a budget in the capital and then it's
reconciled in January and the key to this is as we go through the process of getting better cost estimates and refining the warrant we want to make sure the warrant matches the plan so we tweak that so what's in front of you uh will up be updated to the
warrant so the focus is uh the capital budget committee is charged with reviewing all requests capital and make recommendations to the finance committee the board of selectman and town meeting Capital item is $10,000 uh doar with a useful life $10,000 or more five years
including building Vehicles computer equipment roadways sidewalks Etc and uh that includes sort of the aggregate uh so if you have something that is going to equival U be equivalency of 10,000 it's still in capital we also include in
capital studies that will lead up to something that will be over that amount so the key to this is as the chair had mentioned really the Departments bring the submittals to the capital committee through the portal system and capital
committee doesn't really initiate those things although they give recommendations on what they'd like to see it's really the Departments the are responsible for getting all this information together so the uh recommendations is a
five-year plan for the facility for for Capital and then a 10-year plan for facilities and that is in the capital report which is online so if you type in capital budget committee Yarmouth ma you'll get to the website which you'll have all the
2026 information it'll include the plan the presentation all the profile sheets which are online and also the guidance document which is mentioned so one of the keys that they believe believe is the capital budget committee has done a great job of going through Rolling Stock
there was a lot of deferred items there you know a 20 24 uh 20 2004 Honda and things like that they've caught up with a lot of Rolling Stock now they really like to see a catch up on facilities so that's the next sort of iteration of moving
forward uh this I'll do quickly everybody knows we have a cloud-based system now and the advantage of that system is that the department Ms can over you know the entire year uh submit information and update information and
change the plan as we see changes in needs for budget and capital so that sort of realtime uh approach allows us to you know respond and adapt to you know the process uh and the great thing about it is it gives us as you've seen
in printouts is a good history of what's been going on just in the past three years so we're updating the portal uh and I'll mention it later to include Rolling Stock a specific Rolling Stock uh platform that will help us track that
better this was the first iteration this is the one where we went through a process to get to December and the different colors are green is Administration blue is capital and red is finance and uh we were planning on
the 17th of December we were somewhere around uh January so this is sort of you know the initial schedule but uh we already done one presentation this is the second iteration as you can see there's quite a bit of fincom uh or
finance committee work as the chair mentioned and capital budget comes in and reconciles the warrant with this presentation this evening so the way the system works is the Town Administrator reviews all the
capital items and then recommends them to move forward or doesn't reckon them and to move forward so what comes uh pursuant to the Charter uh the Town Administrator is submitting to capital budget and that's all digital and if the Town Administrator hits recommend then
it moves forward for them to review and then uh again we were reviewing uh both uh fiscal year 2025 for fall time meeting and this Springtime meeting in the distant past uh past we sort of were
missing some of the Fall town meeting because as we doing Capital the fall town meeting warrant was being done now we're catching everything we looking at CPA and everything that expends any uh public money is going through the CIP
now so we have criteria which are uh very specific and uh they provide the CIP with sort of an apples the capital budget committee Apples to Apples type of presentation that is based on essential desirable acceptable and defer
and in discussion we realize that significance or the importance of something is more important than Readiness but Readiness is still something we should consider so significance uh would be if you have a past need that's very significant but as
the engineering and everything evolves that Readiness might not be there so we don't want to have a 50/50 split at 7030 where significance is more important than readiness but writin is still taken into account so the committee votes on
each one of those types of criteria so essential desirable uh you can see you know essential is remedy dangerous condition critically needed program possibility of losing funded mandated by state or federal government so clearly
Wastewater past and all those kind of issues are right up there and in essential and then if we see something that doesn't have that criteria then we're giving it a lower rating and if somebody rates below three we're they're not recommending
it this is the breakdown in uh by funding source so these are all the different funding sources and this is a fiveyear approach uh so the bonded items are up at the top and then all the various funds that go into uh the
capital program are listed for 2025 6 7 8 eight and nine uh so the great thing about the software is we can print it out by funding source by division by category that is what the project is things like that so you can see that we
have a pretty well populated first five years and so it shows there's a lot of activity and some of these like Wastewater funding that represents some of the the debt moving forward or other items are representing the debt so you
got about 110 million 998 and not all of those are actual applications we're sticking to 2026 right now other than debt you know those other things are still speculative until they come to town meeting but this gives
us a good picture of what's coming this is the next five years 2030 to 2034 and you can see there's 83 mil 835 or a total of 194 and that inv also
includes you know some of the Wastewater debt but you can see that you're starting to see you know some blank spaces so we'd like to see at least some sort of you know placeholders or speculation in the out years for facilities to say when are we going to
repair or improve or consider a new facility so that's one of the things that uh the CIP committee has always talked about is how do we sort of populate the next five years it doesn't have to be you know know very finite is just that you know take a look at what
could be happening in the next 5 years so this is one of the spreadsheets in your uh plan so this is the way it works out if we sort of do a debt demonstration excuse
me and uh if we were not to use sort of a demonstration I can remember when we did uh Wastewater in 2023 and we had everything in lumps some Wastewater was a bar that was this big and everything else was Tiny so we want to make sure
that as we move forward at least some sort of demonstration is there to show what the actual Capital obligation is for each one of those years uh this is the funding source 10year uh it's sort of a data review
it's an indication of where you're you know uh spending your money in each of the funding sources so we see obviously Bond Wastewater financing plan water Enterprise there's been a lot of good work there in uh both pasas and updating
the pumping stations and skada and things like that uh free cash is up at around 11% so uh this indicates you know where you're spending your money and as those things change you know uh this chart
will change each year one thing that the committee wants to see is can we look at sort of state or federal grants and because it's a lower item in this um chart so uh there are two sets of
spreadsheets there is your pending spreadsheet which is basically what has gone to fall time meeting and what will go to the annual time meeting and that's this series of spread uh spreadsheets and then there's the overall plan this series of spreadsheets does not include
any debt or any other obligation from a prior Year all it does is list uh the items that are moving forward in either the 2025 fall time meeting or 2026 and it sorts it by funding source so uh each of those projects where you
see ATM FY 2026 is annual Tom meeting FY 26 or FTM FY 2025 so this is still free cash and these are some of the smaller items uh uh as we move forward for a total about
uh 3.5 million in your table in the warrant uh free cash also has the roadway program but that's taking uh out of Levy so the table and the warrant isn't just free cash uh and one of the issues here is
the CIP committee as we'll point out later has been concerned about sort of planning for free cash and the Town Administrator uh has taken a step to set aside some of the free cash money in that vein uh for future use in future
years and that's in uh your warrant as one of the warrant articles so water Enterprise uh this is basically what populates that chart moving forward golf Enterprise a lot of that is FTM 2025 and
the reason for that is they like to get their projects in you know those smaller projects so they can go to bid and get them in the around before the season opens so they like to see a fall time meeting because of that uh bond rais an appropriate and uh
you know other projects state grants so it may be that you'll see a project listed three times in here because it uses three funding sources so by category and this is an important one because it shows us where
we're spending the money the other one was showing you where you're instead of using your Revenue infrastructure obviously is a leader at 58% uh building it's a little bit of a miser because I think the entire library
number is in there uh so from that regard if you were to take the library lump some out it's about actually 4% Rolling Stock is at 9.45 and the key to that is we've done a the CIP committee and the Departments
have done a very effective job of sort of replacing Rolling Stock so that might go down in the future because they already have a lot of Rolling Stock and we will be moving forward with a Rolling Stock portal that if they have let's say parks department uh vehicle a we will
plan that out for the next 10 years and even 20 years the way the portal works so moving forward some of the observations you know as if uh we move forward with Charter updates how we can sort of create a better schedule for the
CIP right now in a meeting before this we talked about maybe meeting earlier IR regardless of the charter the delivery date uh for the town administrators October 1 the delivery date for the CIP committee capital budget committee is
December 1st so we'll stick to that we'd like to see maybe in June a public meeting on CIP to say what are your you know observations about Capital so then we can carry it into the next year the difficulty in CIP because of that short
window is it's hard to plan long range when you're planning for the next set of town meetings so they we're considering something that doesn't have to be covered in the charter that we have sort of a public meeting and a long range uh
discussion then we begin our process in September a market fluu fluctuations ever since covid and still moving forward and depending upon tariffs and and things like that as we move forward there's going to be fluctuations in
price so to their credit the Departments try to give us the best cost estimate you know in October uh but that certainly doesn't hold till July 1 so we'd like to see if we can get an escalator there obviously sometimes departments would go out and get another
cost estimate but what would be a good sort of scientific escalator for certain things to be able to understand what the numberers should be in July or could be but given the fluctuation of markets that's tough to do but right now a
department that submits in October certainly isn't going to be asked to hold priced in July free cash we've already talked about that and as I said the town administrat has a warn article to set aside free cash so that as that depletes
we have that sort of savings account our stabilization account moving forward so that's a great step guidance document we like to see uh that increased and we can come back to the board on that from 10,000 to 25,000 10,000 is really no
longer a realistic number for for Capital per se Rolling Stock as I said we're going to have a Rolling Stock portal which will help the planning process uh moving forward a lot of the vehicles are new so it's really a good time to plan for
their sort of depreciation as it were it's tough to basically say let's plan on how to use that 2004 Honda but it's probably good now that it's been replaced to say okay how do we replace the next iteration and next iteration now facilities and I'll talk about it in
the next slide this was a particular concern and it's a concern for the committee to the extent that they want to move forward in more of an investigation or you know taking a look at any deferred maintenance and work with the Departments to sort of you know
move forward on work and I'll get to that in a minute project management you know the committee really appreciates the work of the Departments we just want to make sure that as you look at those projects is there project management capacity or you know is there something
that a department needs to do to keep up with everything that's in front of them and Alternate funding you know um Community Development has done a great job of tying CDC and CPA funding to our Cycles so those are sort of a good way
of alternative funding but thinking ahead if you're looking at Engineering in this year should you be looking at Grants in year three when you come out of there for the construction so talking about sort of those accessing those grants early uh the budget the capital budget
committee thinks is important so from a facilities perspective uh there's an line item in there for $70,000 for the senior center that is actually our understanding is engineering and to their credit the you know facilities
Department uh through Public Works has done a detailed assessment of at least five municipal buildings this building the fire station the senior center the old police station I forget the address I'm sorry that the chamber DNR and
Recreation are in and uh they have a good estimation of what the issues are so that's probably the first step what's wrong with the building what needs to be fixed as a first step and then you engineer those Solutions and if those
are mission critical issues or safety issues then you prioritize and say over a 10year span these multiple buildings should have these improvements so it doesn't mean that you're going to go into one building and do everything you're going to start with the things that really are crucial and move across
but the key is and this is out of one of those assessments that the senior center has you know a structural issue which is not necessarily you know an issue it will be when we go do work on it that we need to correct and we need a structural
engineer it's something that you wouldn't normally anticipate so uh what this tells us before we start and we have we're in the process of doing the architectural selection they'll know that that's something they should be looking for so
crucial to these issues is that assessment then the engineering then the prioritization then moving forward the actual Capital submittal over a 10-year period and what you'll start seeing is those outy years populated as a result
of that type of process beyond that as you move forward and you have a good idea of the work that you have to accomplish as you replace an haa system with another one what is the maintenance due diligence to not put us in a position where we're having to replace
them again you know know Outside Inside the manufacturers you know warranty period so I think you know we have the senior center has a 1987 furnace I think we could probably say that needs to be replaced given its
age alone uh and the assessment tells us that regardless but as we move forward looking at the manufacturers recommendations and creating an operational maintenance plan I think is the next step
so uh we want to or the capital budget committee wants to move forward with a guidance document and that is a detailed document telling everybody how do you submit how do we Rite and uh initiate the Rolling Stock
portal uh recommend the new schedule so we can get more involved in Long Range planning and then request all projects show some demonstration of bonding so we can understand what the capital obligation is moving
forward and if you have any questions I could probably answer them let me start with Liz sure okay um I um on on the pie chart that is the funding source correct yep you say free cash over 11% of all
the funding sources can you just explain what you mean by that uh if you were to add up everything in uh that spreadsheet it's about 11% of the total okay okay so that's so this is over the whole 10 years yeah your aim okay well not not the aim it is the actual so everything
you see here is the actual impact and not a sort of a programmatic uh goal okay and then um thank you Bill it's a great presentation by the way and um the committee the um senior Center's um
Capital item in the warrant the 70,000 I misunderstood that's for HVAC or is it for the structural issues no it's for HVAC uh the structural issues we have $200,000 for the bathrooms and as I said that we're in the process of hiring the
architect fortunately the architect will be able to start with being aware of that issue uh sometimes they don't bring in structural for something like a bathroom but in this case we're probably going to bring the structural in you know as we're hiring the architect so
the architect will have that report to design from so so that's not on our our list here no no uh we have funding available for that already uh so we'll move forward with that all right and I this is the when you say the guidance document going from 10,000 up to 25,000
and clearly the items that are listed in the this year's warrant are there's one that's a million um and very few of them are even in the $25,000 range but that's the list that's the guidance you're referring to right yeah I mean the the
guidance document is actually a set of de facto bylaws for the capital budget committee but that's a good point if you were to look at the CIP over the years you're starting to see a diminishing number of items that are 10,000 or below
25 you have one that's 25 and a camera system upgrade so we're recommending we go to 25,000 because we're rarely getting something at 10 yeah and my um question about the electric Mountain Bicycles where will the officers be
riding those is that in the profile sheet they describe it as the bike trails and areas off the bike trails where they can't get their vehicles to so in the event that they have people on you know uh on other bikes they'll be
able to pursue them okay my last note and I I asked bill um I asked both about Bob and Bill about the um the the list of the list includes as he as bill has said Rolling Stock replacement and it's
it's hybrids where for the most part and but I'm being um concerned about um and promoting EV mostly because it's so M low in maintenance um cost so I um asked him about that and he was pretty clear
on wherever it it can be hybrid it is hybrid and I I think as you used your chart and you start projecting forward and knowing that we um well we were um supposed to go towards EV to help with climate change um from the federal
government's mandates but I don't know where that's going and but if you replaced the stock with EVs and projected maintenance I think it would prove in the charting how um that's going to lower cost substantially I I think what we uh need to do we we looked
at EV for building but Building made a very good point in the middle of a storm when all the power's out and they're out on the street for a considerable amount of time they wanted they're using hybrids so we don't want to get in a situation where we have to plug in after
they're out there for you know so many hours uh going back and forth like the electrical inspector might during an ice storm when there's a lot of power outages uh and from the perspective of Public Works their heavy duty vehicles
are not really commensurate with some of the pure EVS so the state is working on a new approach to vehicles and is going to hand down legislation that right that the state's going to help a lot with this yeah yeah and understanding that and the difficulty obviously is beyond
the issue of operational capabilities it's availability of the stock yes so agreed but I and I would note though that with the new level three Chargers you can get 300 miles in 45 minutes W so you don't need to get
the whole for 300 in the case of a storm so but you have to make sure you have a facility with the that's got the emergency batteries built in okay thank you all right you're welcome Joyce oh uh thank you for a very clear presentation I'm amazed the difference it makes when
you have a pie chart but suggests three dimensions it really just hits at home better um I had a couple questions about the uh the whole thing with the inventory of the buildings I think the fa facilities condition assessment is a great idea and probably we would have
caught things in the past if we if we had done that more often do you forceed doing that say every two years every three years I think what you're looking at is you do a facilties condition then you engineer the items that need to be
engineered then you create the capital plan and then you evaluate the plan so if your uh assessment said this roof needs to be done you know you engineer it you put it in a capital plan based on its urgency and then you
might evaluate the buildings again but uh you wouldn't have to do that as much because you're improving them as you're moving forward so just updates really to yeah so I mean it's updates it's an evaluation of the program did we do this
work is it done or are we going to postpone it in the plan and things like that the advantage of the facilities assessment is what are your targets for engineering and architecture and then what are your T and how does that
sequence into the plan okay thank you then I just had one other question and that's um about uh putting together um New Uses for buildings I mean do you keep any um sort
of Ideal list of where say a new Department could go or where a building might be better used given meeting room space that's a good question because it's tough to land some of all the Committees we've been working with but
that's as much of a programmatic issue is is the building that is using being used by Department X sufficient for their purpose so as you do the engineering uh for the fixes you also
might do a program atic view and say why are we improving this building for a department that can't fit it in anymore so it's important when you get to the buildings that obviously have some programmatic issues you also take a look at the
programming uh because it wouldn't make sense to make a whole bunch of improvements in a building that isn't working for those departments okay thank you what was making me think of that was the colorful history of the old small fire building behind the West Yarmouth
Library you a a a colorful history of many uses and many promises right okay that's very helpful thank you Tracy thank you thanks for all your work on this um we've come a long way um in
terms of uh the information that's provided um the process has changed somewhat I was surprised to hear that Bob gets the first brush at kind of saying what goes forward that never happened in the past it was always went through uh capital budget that's
actually charter if I'm didn't want to interrupt the charter says he delivers yes so um I'm not sure that happened previous and do we have a definition of capital because that that's really you know when
you talk about the guidance it's it's the same thing like when we talk about school Capital right like that's something that we look at like what's the threshold you know people ask for a lot unfortunately we're not seeing any more the things that haven't been
approved um so I don't know what's not what's fallen off what what didn't get the opportunity so to speak uh we used to get kind of a list that this board had a little bit more influence on
the free cash than it does now it's pretty much all taken but anyway um one thing I didn't see and when you talk about the capital plan I'm used to um like long range borrowing Capital this
is this is basically short-term capital for smaller items you know like you know um what's the word I'm looking for like the fire station upstairs and you know the the the big
borrowing items that we plan for over a course of time for buildings or um remodel things like that that's what I usually think of when I think of a long range Capital plan this is kind of like a piece of that well in in the uh online
you'll see the 10year spreadsheet with everything in it the bigger stuff okay yeah and and uh this is just for the pending Town meetings and by funding source it'll break out you're right there's a lot of small projects but there's a pumper in here for 2 million
there's 4.4 million for the equalization tank so there's some large large projects in here but those are funded so the the tank is funded out of the receipts we already have there's not borrowing for that correct uh no that will be borrowing because the receipts probably won't cover it is that correct
Bob I think that is right it is a big project okay so the the other thing I'm surprised to see on here is the um the so to speak override for roadway improvements I thought at one point in time we had worked that back into the
levy well yes and and that's what um it's referred to as the override is that there was a period of time when we first started this process um that 1.1 million um was not being used for roadway maintenance right it was being used for
for other things and so one of the things that we did is we restored that full property tax 1.1 million that was voted by the town to that roadway maintenance and so it's reflected in his slide and it's also reflected in the
town meeting warrant right I'm and I'm looking at that but it's funded through free cash here no that's what this the explanation of this article says it it's funded through free C free cash you just got to look at it a little closer uh the the CIP has it under uh rais an
appropriate I'm reading the warrant no I know and then in the warrant together I'll show you it says at the bottom the Articles here for the capital Improvement fund are funded through free cash says Article 19 we need to delete that to see if the town will vote to
raise and appropriate the sum of 1,100,000 and to transfer and appropriate from free cash the sum of 3,52 1,289 so they go together the first
thing it does is it explanation need takes it 1.1 million and to to your point we need to delete that it's probably a transfer copy from the CIP that's fine as long as it went into the levy because that's what I thought it was and then I thought it was being funded back the Cruisers
marked and unmarked 10 years for 306,000 what is that that's also separate from the article for uh the 58,000 for the police cruiser financing so the Cruisers that are in there in Free Cash represent leases that were already approved at
town meeting and they're continually being paid uh the 58,000 represents a new series of leases and is required to go to town meeting for the authorization so this 306 represents the past multiple years correct and there's a pretty
detailed spreadsheet which you give the board which shows the entire lease schedule for the next 10 years um one of the things I didn't see in this plan is the debt drop off do we know um how much debt we have uh dropping off in this
cycle and what's happening with that and that's something that the CIP commit or the capital budget committee is mentioned is sort of incorporating debt both inside the portal and then showing you know where in that spreadsheet over
the years so let's take a look at that spreadsheet is a fiveyear and then the next the 10e by funding source we want to be able to show that also so we're looking at how do we incorporate debt when some of it when the item moves
forward it's speculative you know that we might not borrow for several years uh so we'll be working with the finance department finance committee to figure out how to demonstrate that in that there is the demonstration and then there's also the existing debt so what
we would have to do is go back inside the portal and add projects that are several years old to have their debt show up here so but what's the mechanism for for that drop off to then be replaced are we replacing any drop off
this year and how do I see where that um what the mechanism is what the article is that allows the levy to stay the same right and that's more of a function of the you know Town Administrator finance committee and uh finance department to
basically show that we'd like to show it here but when that debt drops off then they're basically saying we have more room in Levy so let's put these projects in it we but there has to be a way for us to approve that to fill fill the Levy
right we can't just do it without approval so that's what right and that's why the Town Administrator starts the capital process to basically say I have room here or there's free cash here okay maybe um maybe I maybe it's a question to to Jennifer um do we know exactly
what our our Levy is dropping off this year and how we're filling it yeah and where the article is that allows us to do that it's is it on okay um really it's an operating budget issue so so Yarmouth traditionally you have two types of drop off you have excluded debt
drop off and then you have debt drop off within your operating budget it isn't something that um we've talked about as a policy of moving that in the operating budget to pay Capital out of the operating budget it's not something that
you will see in this um in this uh FY 26 budget but there was a there was a little bit of drop off so you would look at from 25 to 26 in the operating budget and you also have to look at your excluded debt as well so I imagine in
the operating budget the debt was allowed by town meeting vote so you can keep that Levy the same right so when you have excluded debt that has to go away right or it has to be revoted on exactly so it really is what you're
talking about is the debt drop off policy and how we're managing the debt drop off policy I I think that's really what your question is just wanted to know if there was any excluded debt that were dropping off that would virtually reduce taxes this upcoming or next
fiscal year yeah good question um so you're let me back up so let's just focus on excluded debt if that's what you're looking at um so you have two not types of excluded debt but we have excluded debt um I think DPW is excluded in this some other smaller project but
also you have the school department so actually um it has dropped off a little bit your excluded debt from the school assessment that goes on your what they call the de1 on your tax rate so you do see that drop off um the best way to probably look at
that would be if you look at your budget and we have I have a budget overview and it actually calculates the tax levy it will show you the debt drop off from I mean the excluded debt from 25 and then the excluded debt in 26 and
the difference will be dropping off that and usually what you would normally do is if you had a policy to always have the same excluded debt you'd have a project that you would put in that would have to be voted and you have to manage it in such a way where your principal and interest or interest would be
filling those gaps of the excluded and the re the reason I'm asking all this was because um some time ago when we were anticipating um the sewer that was one of the you know we we talked a lot about
where we were able to utilize that drop off to be able to infill it for um sewer borrowing so I'm just curious when we're looking in the future for you know phase two so to speak if we are going to have any availability with that yeah it's a
good question actually Bob and I have talked about that um we've had several discussions and had talked conceptually on how we want to how he would want to present that to the board yeah and you know there's a couple of words that I I want to mention about the the debt
um structure of the community that have changed rather substantially over the last five years that really colors you know the present direction that you know right now we have very little debt inside prop two and a half very little it's um you know one of the things that
that was done um in terms of planning for the town's debt because of the Wastewater infrastructure uh the town took on very very little new debt so that um capacity under the town's debt
limit could be reserved for future Wastewater um but the the thing that is really most noticeable is that since 200 the 2020 budget the the growth excluded debt um has really about
doubled um because of the the new school projects that we've taken on so um currently now now the grow gross in FY 25 the excluded debt is is almost 5 million 4.99 and next year you know what we're
we're on a a schedule that it declines slightly um every year so um in FY 26 it's going down 45,000 to 4,951 408 and that uh reduction again
it's excluded debt um and it's we wouldn't have a small project that would um reallocate that what what we'd like to see is it when when that goes down um say you know 45,000 a year when
it gets to a point where additional capacity is there you can have new debt and it won't increase the tax rate so I I think that you know we've seen Market increases from educational spending um you know both at the um the middle
school we have a new school at the tech school um and we we don't have any new money for Wastewater but um as we move into the uh subsequent phases you know that may change because you know the
other sources non-property tax sources of funding um you know are not growing as they were in the past so okay well it's not related to this particular warrant but um it's still important my only other question was related to the
um 5-year review of funding sources and um the state grants and I'm wondering if you consider the um srf funds state grants and where that positions us with uh the potential new uh I guess
recommendations although I'm happy to hear that it doesn't affect this this round but you mean in terms of the capital budget committee recommendations I'm talking about the fing sources that you have here for state grants yeah I mean
I'm not quite sure as srf shows up a grant it's uh except for the Forgiveness it's aan uh what we want to see is if when somebody comes in for engineering they're already working to seek the grant so by the time they get the
capital they're poised to go after the grant that's what the capital budget committee is looking for so do we know what this 14 million in the next five years reflects in uh which in the state grants it's a third from the bottom but
you're on the second you're on the second set but on the right hand side it says 14 million6 yeah that would be in the first uh State Grant yeah it would be all of those and uh those out years
might be uh projected numbers that is people are looking oh I know what that is that's probably the library okay all right okay thank you thank you Mark um just a question on procedure are we going to be going through the individual
projects shortly is that the game plan uh we usually don't I mean I can call them up they're all online but we uh usually you do those as warn articles when you approve the warrant articles when you come up to those CIP items well we set this up as a public hearing so that the public can comment on the
individual projects so I I think it would be beneficial well I'll say yeah if you're going to hold a public hearing on your capital budget and then you don't show the capital budget I think that's that becomes a bit problematic yeah I think we need to literally go through slide
15 through 20 and literally explain to the public what it is that we're doing with each of these items am I incorrect I mean that's how we used to do these we used to have all the Department I think that's part of what the um the Public's waiting for it
makes sense that this is going to be one of our reviews of uh the town warrant and we're finishing up on the 18th so it kind of dub Tails into each I mean your uh your warrant has all of the capital items do you want to go there or I can
call up the profile sheets that are online I just need a minute to go I think it would be helpful to go through the the presentation material that you have um and go through so and and then maybe at the end of each section invite
if there's comment Madam chair yes and then that way we can go through them so as a group um and that that way we don't have to do this again okay you when we go through the Warren article we will have accomplished a fair amount of review but I think since we've
characterized this discussion as a public hearing I think we at least we need to give the public an opportunity to comment on the capital items that that we've laid out here so you know mind will focus on the ATM ones the annual time meeting and not go back to the fall time meeting so
there are there are fall time meeting ones there that that's what I think people are really interested in if you want I'll just start from the top in the funding source and I I know uh most if not all of these projects to be able to explain them briefly and now what I'd
like yeah what I'd like to suggest Madam chair is in the interest of time I know want to give the public a chance to comment so my suggestion would be we go through a group ask if there are public questions comments from the public and then questions from the board and I
would defer to the public first does that make sense sure just procedurally just so that we can get through this well can I just ask that we do it in order of the Articles then and not by this because the first article for Capital on here is Golf and then it goes
to the equalization this I'm not I don't care how you do but I just think it's confusing for people that are following I don't have any objections I just want to have a fairly orderly and thoughtful process by which we can present this information and get
comments from both the board and the public that's all I'm asking for I mean uh while we uh incorporate the warrant in it that's the plan that shows it by funding source so uh either way works I
can explain most of these projects is the person who puts them together I can either do the warrant I do the warrant Bill all right great uh I don't have anything to show up on the screen for that though moving forward all right uh let me get to golf
Capital here give me a minute there we go uh so uh golf Capital inv involves Pro Shop furniture and fixtur core Harvester replace a tractor and replace
an F350 truck uh there's 50,000 uh for the Pro Shop core Harvester 50,000 tractor 70,000 and the truck both of the vehicle expenses you can see is a 2001 tractor 2008 F350 truck both need a
replacement the core Harvester is a piece of equipment that actually picks up the cores uh so when they aate the golf course they take out cores and then they uh replace that with a different soil type to get better drainage uh and
also allow the sort of uh grass to grow to together much tighter it has a substantial uh you know reduction in staff time because usually they rake up the course so it's very important and a pro shop furniture and fixtures is
absolutely necessary some of the you know hanging racks and everything else are are literally falling apart so the total for that is 245 that is article 11 any question on that one I don't see any questions from the public um if any of
you have any questions as we're going through this process please put your hand up so we know okay Joe Glenn you have a question on the golf you have to yes can you hear me I
can yeah probably a naive question but uh I guess being from the public uh we're not going to know these answers that's why we're asking um the golf uh Enterprise Fund in the capital um how is
that separated in other words does any Capital expenditures come from the golf Enterprise fund or where does that stand now so the golf pays their Capital out of the Enterprise fund they retain earnings in the Enterprise fund as of
1119 2024 is 2, 388,000 uh 396 so they have sufficient amount of money to cover these expenses and it does not come from taxation do you have any other questions
Joe any other questions on gol moving on to the next uh is article 12 Equalization tank Rehabilitation this is a very important asset that upon detailed analysis by the public
department they discovered that the tank is beginning to wear away they actually drive trucks over this tank so uh this is to completely rehabilitate the tank as indicated in uh the uh explanation
the tank holds Ross septage before it enters into the treatment facility and they don't drive trucks over it anymore because it's in that bad of a condition they just finished an assessment uh that showed the condition they had camera work inside the tank so this is a very
important asset to the septage division and uh it prevents the leakage into the surrounding environment when they replace the tank and the amount requested it is $44 million and I believe that's being borrowed okay any questions from the
public or the board Madam chair I see any from the public okay Madam chair I I believe this this it's also an Enterprise account correct so that whatever the debt Services that's covered by the fees is
that correct correct thank you okay moving on to the next item so water department Capital various items that is Article 13 uh the Water Department usually comes in with capital items and to their credit their we're seeing a lot
of great improvements to catch up on some of their pumping stations and uh vehicles uh and their production system Hardware they're basically skater system so they have a distribution system improvements they
put a regular allocation in there to be able to M uh fix water pipes and things like that production system Hardware which I believe is the sker system which is a system that controls the entire system and they're doing a great job of creating one synonymous uh sort of uh
system that uh does a job of talking uh to many of the buildings that they control and then the new pickup truck and replace the utility truck are in there these again are all in the capital uh you know budget uh website as
individual profile sheets that are there so what they do is incrementally uh come in with improvements and in this CL there's a distribution system at 28200 282,000 production system Hardware
at 850,000 new pickup truck at 880,000 and the utility truck at 100,000 the utility truck includes a utility bed and plow all of these trucks normally require plows so they can get out there and do all of the assets that they have to take care of which is their pumping
station uh their Well locations and things like that so the total is 13,1 12,200 for water department capital and that's a usual uh sort of article every single
year and once again this is not coming out of the property tax dollars no it is not it is out of their uh Enterprise fund and how much currently do they have in the Enterprise fund uh as of 71
2024 uh 2 uh 2,540 611 okay do we have any questions on this item I see none from the public the board okay moving on to the next item uh
Wells number 10 and 11 P treatment system article 14 now this is the part of that very crucial program that you remember of the water department came to you and asked for study or analysis money to basically set up what is the
next exp expenditure to their credit they're sort of out in front of the curve of some of the people fast treatment demands and and regulations and this one is for uh $5 M50 th000 uh for Wells number 10 and 11 uh and this
is to design the P5 system for 10 and 11 uh and it indicates in the explanation that well number 10 exceeded the newly promulgated Mass ma maximum Massachusetts maximum contaminant levels and the proposed treatment system will
allow the water division to return uh well number 10 to service and we'll keep well number 11 in service uh meeting the EPA regulations of 2028 so this is a bond repayment and it is Enterprise fund
which is not tax levy any questions from the public I think it would be helpful if we knew exactly if you could remind us where the wells are that was going to be my question Jeff's here Jeff's here thank God I saw
you're like waiting for Bill's answer um uh Jeff Colby Public Works director these are two of the wells that are alha Forest uh uh just just south of the disposal area Okay so they're on the is it the west side of Forest Road that's correct the West Side yes do we know
what the source of the pasas contamination is uh we don't uh have a conclusive determination but because of the dense population around this well as well as four four and five that we just completed treat treatment for we suspect it's from Individual on-site septic systems okay that's very helpful to know
thank you okay moving on to the next item Article 15 water main Route 28 uh in 2024 15.6 million was authorized for this uh an additional 2
million is necessary and this will be added to the 15.6 million that was authorized in 2024 for a total project of 7 17.6 the construction is already underway commensurate with working with
the uh sewer project so this is an ongoing program that additional 2 million was necessary and I think the area is uh close to the uh uh Bridge area uh going over to Dennis uh at least
from my understanding of the scope it is in conjunction with a mass do Bass River Bridge Project and the installation of sewer along 28 okay there a little typo in that one just available for this purpose and to enter
into it's uh right in the middle line starts with available for this purpose you see it Bill yep okay in two so that's Article 15 watermain Route 28 uh $2 million for that
project and the funding for that is coming from steel Enterprise in uh I believe this is adding to the prior Bond authorization uh and it's fully supported by water revenues okay I don't see any uh questions from the public any
of the board moving on to the next item no no no no on the public you have two I think you have those just m okay just checking I got my eye on it okay so article 16 police cruiser financing uh as explained earlier in the Warren
article will'll see later there's $36 million for Cruiser financing that represents the leases that are already approved at the initiation of a lease it requires town meeting authorization then it requires you uh request the funds at
subsequent Town meetings and hence they usually move to free cash in this case it is acquiring four police cruisers and the amount annually starting in 2026 is 5885 repeating through 2027 eight and
nine um so this one is typically paid for uh from free cash as uh for this initial authorization the 2026 and then future authorizations so in Article 19
that 306 includes the 58 here no it does not so where is it it's authorized here and then it says it says that it's paid for through free cash but it's not on our free cash list yeah because it it it will be debited from free cash but we wanted to separate it because this uh
the initiation of a lease requires a separate article so we're putting it here and then we will debit from free cash and then when you get to free cash you're listing everything that was approved prior so we can't put the 58 there it
will be redundant essentially we can't put it in with the 306 which would be 385 something like that so this total it's about 385 or 386
total between the two so here we're basically starting the lease and debiting it from free cash I understand how much so this number of free cash is not the actual number of free cash we're utilizing no and and again I think going
back to the earlier discussion this table shouldn't reference it as being free cash solely which we will make that correction in the the warrant this is a mix where you see up in that table we're
looking at Article 19 Capital expense various departments uh item three roadway improvements that's the amount that's from the levy so this 4,621 289 is all articles that are free Cash
Plus the levy which is 1.1 million plus plus 58 and then the 58 will come out of there and then later there's an article to debit free cash for both Wastewater and a stabilization from that that will also come on a free
cash I know the question's going to come up the at the town meeting what is the new balance of free cash so that should be evident somewhere might as well ask me what the jennif do we have that it's
7, 7927 um we were certified at a a little over 11 million and then after after appropriation in this town meeting I think we're going to have about 1.7 this say 7.79
um well can I just make a a comment okay so when we look at the articles in the town meeting warrant booklet there's several articles that come from free cash so I keep a running tally on a spreadsheet just to make sure you know um where we're at if you put something
in the explanation on one of the Articles this is our balance of free cash it's the balance of free cash if everything has been appropriated so I don't know I think there's something in the warrant that might be a little bit confusing that we can take out but um it's something can be part of like you
know a presentation but it it I believe it's going to be about 1.7 maybe a little bit less you know we've moved some things around okay um after the appropriation and the the big issue is when you get to a later article is that we're moving a million into the waste water a stabilization fund and we're
requesting movement of a million into the capital stabilization fund but it will it will leave you know still have a you'll still have a balance of free cash don't see how that clear it up does that clear it up for you Tracy no I I guess we haven't gotten to the point
where it debits it so I haven't okay that's after all the Articles at in the warrant so if everything gets approved we would have a balance of 1.7 that's correct so how can we move uh 1 million to a
stabilization no so we were certified at $1 million okay after um last fiscal year we spent money in the fall town meeting that left us I think maybe a little over 7 million right and so everything that's
in this warrant if it is approved at town meeting leaves you a balance of 1.7 million so the stabilization is included in that yes transfers thank you it's all in that's question yeah so good if I may regarding the Cruisers in the CIP plan you can see the
combined 58,000 and the 306 under the Cruisers because that's all from free cash whereas you have the Lisa over here in a separate warrant article and then in the table which is not solely free cash uh you have 306 but in the plan it
shows replace Clues on Mark 10year 365 478 which is a combination of those two expenditures okay all right so where we were at police cruiser financing or uh Fire Department fire department Capital expense each year the fire
department uh replaces uh you know some of their technical equipment and their fire gear uh as they U are needed so article 17 is far Department Capital expense it is a Chevy towo replacement
at 85,000 payment to state stabilization is a payment uh that they're paying back into a stabilization for funds that were provided to buy a pumper I believe so that is a sort of a method to use a fire
department uh fund uh to replace you know engine 42 technical response analysis now that is an analysis which is uh a determination Under Fire codes uh 1710
uh you're uh supposed to locate facilities within four minutes and then 10 minutes B based on whether or not it's a life safety issue or a building issue this analysis basically tells you where might you want to put a station based on the best area for response
times so uh it's a very detailed analysis and uh the chief to his credit has already looked at some scoping in this area and has a good idea on how to proceed but this analysis is really required because fire stations um
respond from the building police respond from Patrol routes so fire stations have to be uh serve 80% of the population within four minutes if they wanted life safety and within 10 if it's uh preserving a building somewhere on that
don't exactly quote me fire gear is obviously their gear and their protective gear which they replace because there are recommend on when it wears out so that is from uh fire receipts reserved for appropriation as a balance
of 3,141 587 the total there for the Tahoe at 85,000 stabilization 100,000 response analysis is 62 when fire gear 100 is 347 is the request and
again this happens just about every year with either vehicle the fire gear here and and the stabilization the technical response is um new ask I don't see any questions from the public the board any questions no I just
Bill had noted that there was a dollar sign missing in front of the three million in the explanation you got that okay moving on to the next item article 18 fire dep Department Quint pumper now a quint pumper is a
combination pumper and ladder so they're looking at a variant of way a way of replacing the pumper the issue with this is by the time you order the asset it's several years out so this ask is to get
the authorization so they can move forward with the order and they might not be getting it for several years they can't make the order to the company uh until they have the authorization uh the explanation is pretty detailed in terms of they're
moving forward with their Rolling Stock U and this is $2 million uh for a quint pumper which is a combined ladder SL pumper and it's to set the stage for ordering the asset which several years later it's delivered
the build on uh these vehicles are probably four sometimes five years okay I don't see any questions from the public any of the board members moving on to the next item Capital expense uh various departments Article
19 uh so we'll make sure that we uh clean up the language on this but uh there are two uh separate funding sources here there's the funding source for the roadway program which is from the levy or raise an appropriate and
then the free cash sum is 3 million 52128 uh the free cas FLH is up on the screen uh with the exception of that 1,100,000 which is the roadway improvements program everything else is
uh pretty much the same you just want to be careful of reading a fall town meeting one versus a annual town meeting one and uh using the warrant uh we're showing a lease which is from a prior
year shows up here Wastewater Dr Ed be nment to the credit of DNR they're doing a great job uh working with the county to uh continually look at uh opportunities for W uh dredge and B uh
Beach nourishment and uh if you look at the CIP and the funding source you'll see that it'll show up in free cash but it'll also show up in a state Grant so uh they have some Grant funds for that roadway improvements is out of Levy replace security door uh there's a
security door in the police department that they need to be more effective in terms of being able to transport prisoners and uh there are better ways to do it and they want to make sure that is uh you know effective and so they're looking at 25,000 for that security gate
motor replacement uh that's something that malfunctions so they're looking at 20,000 for that pistol upgrade uh which happens periodically is 18 8 6,505 Cruisers marked uh 306
628 and that is all the Cruisers that have already had an approved lease the lease as mentioned before is 58,000 for the new lease the annual program Network the IT department uh has a very methodical program to improve the
network uh and they set aside $100,000 each year here to do that camera system upgrade uh the DNR is has cameras at key locations for Boer safety U in fact it was mentioned to me that you know sometimes
when they get a call they can turn those cameras to a certain location and help understand you know what some of the issues are as they responding so they're upgrading the cameras uh you know in that request annual PC program again
it's it sort of incrementally and methodically going through Senior Center HVAC that is basically to determine the U sort of what the correct fix is and design and I believe it's working with
rise engineering and uh Cape Cod is it collaborative or cap like compact like compact to determine what are the fixes for that there it's quite an extensive system that's there now storm water ms4
compliance this is an annual request and it allows us to keep compliance with uh regulations but it also is a great planning tool as they're doing Capital they know what some of the storm water implications are the engineering van is
desperately needed if you look at online portal it's a I think it's an old conol line van that's probably got eight miles to the gallon and things like that uh and those types of things aren't exactly the best vehicles to go off-road in which is you know something something
the engineering might need Tom Hall roof replacement they have a very detailed sort of cost estimate for that one of the questions uh that select board member Argo asked is what about the solar panels uh under the cost estimate those will be removed by and then replaced by
others so that's not inside uh the cost estimate but I believe the cost estimate was around 165,000 total so the 200 uh I believe takes in that and account replace cement walkway sanitation uh there is
considerable deterioration which you know uh is something that we want to take care of railings and other things that are necessary placement vehicle for recreation ex you know Explorer uh that's necessary because
their vehicle I forget what the age of the vehicle is we have it on the profile sheet but they're usually you know somewhere around the you know 2010 or things like that their vehicles and by getting the uh Explorer uh they're able
to put all their equipment inside the vehicle and and lock it instead of having a pickup truck Sandy Pawn uh tennis court resurfacing uh that's definitely something that needs to be done based on its condition chasebrook
Park uh that's 373 150 and uh I believe CPA is matching that uh somewhere around uh 820,000 for the total
project uh replace 2016 4x4 150 extended cab DNR that's 77,000 I think that will round out and complete their Fleet and that has certain equipment in it that has a fit up for because they
are Quasi Public Safety and essentially all the uh fit up on the equipment is within that cost and it also has the necessary towing capacity for boats and other things that they need to handle station AB Elementary School playground replacement
they have 200,000 they also are listed in the CIP under a separate account they're able to obtain a grant for that and they're working very closely with uh the recreation department on sort of coordination Kabota exavator is pretty
straightforward uh it's aged and the most important thing about that one is the current excavator doesn't have the load capacity that they really need uh in their business pickle ball quarts resurfacing um very active quarts and
they need resurfacing periodically I think they use a surface material that is sort of a not Teflon or something like that but it eventually wears out over time uh the forklift and that's another one where they need to replace
it but it's also another one where they need to make sure that there as you can see a 1999 forklift uh they're replacing it and it's also something that has more heavyduty C capacity me small Elementary
uh as the school department I mean they can probably explain better moves forward we want to be able to look at building repairs in the inter term without making a substantial investment in the building that we're going to be moving on from so those are repairs
based on some estimates to get to the more crucial issues in the building station a elementary school flooring that's been around for a while but um there were issues with the subflooring at one time
and I believe they've solved them so they can go and attack the flooring issue uh parks and grounds utility uh 880,000 uh that again there's it's a replace at
2012 uh F250 utility with a plow uh and that's necessary that's probably uh to their credit they went uh when as we went through Rolling Stock you know they went after the most you know uh crucial and vehicles that are in the worst shape
and they're rounding out uh you know replacing the rest of their vehicles xmart mower with a cemetery is $20,000 uh Mac Truck 19 1998 sanitation
$60,000 uh station a Elementary interior painting for 50,000 and purchase electric Mountain bicycles for 15 U so that is mentioned earlier is something that they're using for the bike trails and other areas that
are inaccessible by Cruisers so they can either uh help you know seek people who need Aid uh or pursue people in areas where they can't get a cruiser and again we'll change the language to make sure there's no confusion between the fact
that there's both Levy and uh free cash in the table whereas in the CIP it's purely free cash can I just ask one question about it I guess you know I've been reviewing our regional agreement and I know Dr Smith's here I'm I'm not opposed to uh doing repairs but I'm now
that the school department has their own Capital um budget or cap Capital uh stabilization fund how do we determine who's paying for what what what falls under the school district's
capital and what falls under our Capital so usually that's uh split based on the percentage so uh both our Dennis oh well if it's purely our school like uh Emmy small it's all us split the
school capitalization is only for a regional schools that's what you're saying no no I'm I'm IR regardless of the capitalization account in terms of How It's divided if it's our school it's 100% us if it is a school that's uh Dy
it is split in the CIP I I understand the percentage I'm just trying to determine how how we don't have a rule something has to be worked out okay there's no there's no rules right now okay I don't see any questions from the public any other questions from the board just a quick one go J no go ahead
just a quick one um I forgot I think you told us that the Cruisers that are marked and unmarked on item six are going to be uplifted that's in the cost uh well the 306 628 and item six is all the cruiser leases that were
improved at prior time meetings the 58,000 uh that has a separate War article is uh new request for a lease uh article 16 so it has to be listed as a separate article because it's a new lease right what about the 58 is not in
the 306 no there's a there's always the added cost of outfitting the Cruisers I believe they put the uh the outfitting in the that's my recollection and and Richard's back there shaking his head
yeah okay thank you Jo oh thanks I just had one question if you could give us maybe a a one to two sentence indication of the uh improvements intended for Chase Brook Park I know people are going to ask so I would love to know in
locating the wells uh let me take a cut combining the three the three Parks into one park and in addition doing all of the the work to um landscape and install there's a bridge that goes over
the the water there and invasive species management so together those will be one organized Park and is the maintenance is the maintenance included in that or in our budget upcoming I mean we invested to do it before and it's
overgrown so I'm hopeful that when we get this done that we have a maintenance budget for we'll have a maintenance plan for that okay okay any other questions no on the chasebrook uh I mean uh it is something that has uh to the credit of Community
Development Office they have done in uh really uh difficult task of bringing in a whole bunch uh different funding sources to sort of reduce the town side of the cost so it's a pretty complex spreadsheet in terms of some of the
federal funding they've obtained State funding they've obtained CPA and everything else so uh this is part of augmenting that the 37315 okay next article think that's it I think that's it for Capital you're off the hot seat
wow like a congressional [Laughter] hearing thank you thank you you got your appointment so yes lucky guy as the uh just uh for uh the
board everybody is here and the public uh if you type in capital budget committee Yarmouth uh Mass you'll get to their web page and the det detail profile sheets are there the actual CIP plan and other
things are there for this year and also prior years so it's a great way of learning even more than what you heard this evening thank you very much Bill you're welcome okay we're now going to be calling on the Cape Cod technical Regional High School Chris you're bringing out your
hat yeah of course did you want to check about the materials you guys have the presentation line item budget documents docents and this one the line item budget that you're talking about it should be both of these here
it should be both of these right we have them Chris okay everybody okay I've only been working at a technical school for 31 years You' think I'd figure it out by now the kids were here they could help you for sure they would embarrass me I
promise you for the sake of the public if you could also introduce yourselves for us please certainly I'm uh well first go Chris actually you go first sir okay uh Robert Sor superintendent Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich Massachusetts should mention
These doctor is this on Dr sborn I'm Christine gy I'm one of the two representatives from Yarmouth to who sit on the school committee for Cape Tech Norm m is not here tonight but he's been very actively involved in the creation of this because he's in our he's on the
finance subcommittee for the tech thank you so all Dr s Bor it's all yours thank you very much so uh as Chris said um this is our uh Finance subcommittee we've been working since we presented the first budget in October but the work
really begins back in April U the prior April um working with our departments uh my business manager Aon orcut working with the staff to uh develop an initial budget and that gets presented to this group in October and we came to a finalized budget that I'm presenting
this evening in uh in January uh was presented to our school committee in January and they voted on it and had a public hearing um in Fe so this is school committee approved budget at this point in time so look at enrollment at
Cape codc um this year we uh have increased by 19 students um the town of Yarmouth has decreased by five however so that'll that'll be reflected in some ways in the both assessments because of the decrease in students from 25 to
26 um of the overall population Barnstable uh contributes the most amount of students at 28.5% but Yarmouth is second at 20.6 and then you can see as it decreases from there you also should mention that Dennis has 10.7% too so
that they are actually combined the DIY population combined is greater than barnable yeah almost 60% of the school is is accounted for by those three towns yeah and this is a a a longer view um you'll see back in 21 we were 616
students um we're now at 681 1 the building was built for 650 um we have over 150 student waiting list as I speak uh this evening so the budget um I'm present oh I might have gone too far there yeah the
budget I'm presenting this evening is uh the highest budget I've ever presented to a a board of Selectmen uh in my tenure um as you can see the history from 19 um the last two years uh have been significant increases uh this is no
this one is no exception um I will get into the drivers of that as I as I move along but that's a $993,000 increase over 25 spending so what funds this uh primarily it's the 12 towns we serve the towns of
Provincetown all the way to mashby um so uh so the 13 almost $14 million coming from those 12 in the form of operating assessments um and then we have two sources of state aid just like uh Dennis Yarmouth we have 70 and chapter 71 which is transportation reimbursement um and
we have a small amount of local Revenue you will note that we decreased our contribution of local Revenue relatively substantially uh this year um if you look at the revenue page which is the front of your um of your line item budget you'll notice in the loc Revenue
we've declined significantly from uh a contribution of $815,000 down to 270 that is because we've devoted a tremendous amount of end over the last several excess in deficiency um and we we need to now slow that down um so that
we can uh start to build it back up to the 5% that's allowable so this is just a history of those of those changes during those years there have been givebacks uh in the form of uh assessment uh discounts um one one time it was uh based on the
interest we were earning on the msba money we had on hand during the time um but we also have given one other I think it was in the Years 23 FY 23 and 24 we did have um decreases in the overall assessment that um that we charged our
ti so like usually we give that discount in the fourth payment um so this is the the history um so going to what is the money used for um the 35% of the budget is going to the second most important
people in our Stu school and that's our teachers uh our vocational and our academic teachers uh who are in front of our students and then um you see the the other pop the other uh areas are in insurances and and
benefits um and plant and operations uh which I will get into a little deeper so uh and then it declines from there one one area I think is important to note is uh retiree benefits and I have a slide that goes a little deeper into that as well but uh four 5% of this overall
budget those are people who don't work for us um and that is ever become becoming an Ever larger portion of this budget these are people who have retired from our district and primarily that's the cost of their health and and dental insurance this is just a table uh
showing the same um uh percentages of the overall budget um so you see the areas we talked about we I'll get into more detail as I start to collapse the budget so as it collapses salaries start
to see what's driving this budget um it is a 5.68% budget overall um so uh but this 58 you'll see that the salaries are overall decreasing as a overall percentage of the budget very small but benefits uh are going down uh by
1.3% don't take that as health insurance went down um so uh that's I think it's a six and half% increase for the Cape Cod Municipal health group that we are a member of we've we uh I will also get into this we are decreasing our
contribution to OPB for the reasons I'll I'll I'll um I'll I'll say uh as I move along here um so that's really that decrease in our opab contribution which um I'll discuss in a minute see materials and services um that's going
up over half a percent from the previous year and as we come out of warranty on a lot of the systems in our building service contracts take their place and the I don't think I need to talk talk about the inflation it was alluded to in the previous presentations um in uh
maintaining buildings um and those service contracts have been substantial um transportation is also going up considerably uh this is a good bad news situation um we have a new five-year contract with cape destinations in FY 26 and uh you're
seeing the O the increase the total increase reflected in this slide for for a fiscal year so it went from 89 995,000 for regular transportation of 11 buses uh for a year to a69 that number will stay the same in
the next four years because it's a fixed contract so we're absorbing it all in one year so that's a driver of this 5.68% budget but that will alleviate in the in the out in the next four years um those are the three driving areas or two two driving areas um and
then I would say also insurances and I'm not talking about health insurance now I'm talking about property and liability insurances have gone up uh we were under budgeted in 25 and then then the increases in 26 um are why they they
become another half a percent of the overall budget um for this fiscal year so this this really just shows that more clearly I hope um with the salaries uh accounting for 5.46% of the budget
and I don't want to under sell that that is a substantial amount of money um our collective bargaining agreements were 2 and A2 3 and a qu 3 and a quar with our four unions however within that there was more there was there was changes within salary schedules uh this
collective bargaining season was exceedingly uh difficult and Rich um and challenging um but we are settled with all of our unions and our non-union and and administrative Personnel but the uh the increases were far beyond just 2 and
a half 3. 25 3.25 when you look in into the things the other other compensations that that uh that that changed for example I'll just give one example for the teachers we dropped the first two steps in the in the salary schedule for teachers so now now Step One is uh step
three is step one and and so forth um so you you see the benefits decrease again I will explain that you see the materials and services going uh change by 11.89 considerably over the 5.68 overall budget increase um for the
reasons I talked about also Transportation um and then um utilities and heating uh to a lesser extent but still a driver and then the general insurance is once again that's your property and liability I think we're seeing that at home and we're seeing it
at Cape Cod Tech too um we did decrease our capital budget which is really the last four line items in our budget which are called building Improvement new new equipment replacement equipment and technology and software um so so we did make a small uh disc uh cut to that
area uh then just is further collapsing it that salaries and benefits overall are 78.4 7 78.6 of the overall budget um M materials and service 8.3 I want to say that's flipped by the
way I think that's that's a Mis go it's because it's not consistent with what I've said so 78.6 uh 78.4 is is a FY 26 number I apologize for that um and going down all for the same reasons I've I've talked about before just grouping uh
expenses into uh larger bunches so I'm going to stop there um that is the operating budget I'm going to go on to the debt if you'd like me to but I would I would entertain question why we stop there for just a moment it does anyone in the public have any
questions I don't see any hands up anyone on the board no I had a quick question or maybe it was it's an observation what kind of renewable energy do you have on the plant so we currently have about 1% on our roof that
was part of the building project yeah and we are working with select energy right now um although the financials currently are not uh Fe um attractive so we're in a waiting pattern on a canopy over sense yeah a canopy over our bus
compound okay which will be a sizable installation but we need the we need the financials to change smart should be out soon yeah that's what we're hoping for yeah and and then I I did some math that probably is faulty but um if we look at
the budget from Dy and we look at the budget from the tech school and we divide it by the students we're paying about 13,000 or 136 for the per student at Dy about 27,000 per student at the tech school Richard's going my my math isn't
so bad good um so that's just an observation yeah um I would I would qu I won't go into why I would quarrel with the Delta between those two numbers because I'm I can only defend one of them and your your our number is correct um Vocational Technical education um uh
is more expensive we've got two educations going on uh we have 15 programs with very expensive equipment um that needs to be maintained and serviced and that kind of thing but but um the the analysis I've done on per p spending is not that significant it's
more in the 19 to 27 20 to uh $27,000 range and then I don't know if it's a Richard is oh if I could yes if I could just could uh when you compare K to 12 districts to a vocational technical 9
through 12 District you really it's it's really apples to oranges yeah yes I understand I also need to note uh we're transporting from provinc town um and mash p with students as opposed to just within a town or two which also in
affects it sorry Rich Richard I was just also going to uh add uh part of the reason that you're seeing these increases is also the uh amount of students being added to the campus so one of the other analyses that I do is I
look at the per pupil analysis and the uh compound annual growth rate over time of the per pupil cost and it's 2.89 so on a per pupil basis over time
their costs are going up uh under 3% per pupil which is excellent the other thing that he didn't tout was uh his energy plan with the school buses uh the fleet uh that has been acquired by the
contractor is all it's over $20,000 V you need to mute yourself wait until we call on you thank you okay is all you she of course I didn't hear the important word the all the new buses that the uh contractor has acquired are
electric buses this is the First Fleet of all electric buses wow can't believe you a little scared I know I know J something I want to hear just a little bit you should have started your presentation with that just just a little about that we do have
diesel backups for the first year um we are expecting bumps along the uh the Green Road shall I say so um but we are excited and and it was definitely influenced by financials as well um in in in looking for a five-year contract
excellent and I did notice special needs um it seems to be a a cost substantial cost in your in your yeah okay and it's new seems like it's new no not particularly no all right I shall leave
it go you're talking about transportation for special I think it yeah that is that is a a particular situation that that has occurred that'll be there for about four years oh and the police liazon officer that went up a lot too that was um because the town of harwitch wanted we we used to make a
kind of a token contribution of $20,000 um but it was brought forth by some citizens in harch we should be paying more for the for the police officer who we we would never give up um so uh we now pay $60 rather than
$20,000 that'll do it okay thank you vaita did you have a question yes I do uh did someone uh give a figure of 13,000 Plus or something for student expenditure in Yarmouth uh in
this pres you know when this presentation was made and not not the people presenting but somebody from the board of selectman I I thought that we've been having about 20,000 plus in the last several years per student so
where did that 13,000 come from you want me to answer it or shall I let it go Madam chair um well let's have let's have um Liz answer but we'll really that kind of question you want to wait until
we actually are on the Dy school budget to get an exact answer to it VA well I mean I'm just because it was brought up by somebody on the board and I thought where they come up with your math s i it was really um taking the
total budget from both of the schools and dividing by the total number of students and the math I have been uh as part of this conversation it's Fuzzy Math it's it's not real uh accurate it's uh very much of an approximation should
not be taken literally can can I suggest something there there's this has a big table uh that's available uh it wouldn't be of that particular year but it's only maybe a year or so behind and they give you a per student expenditure that they
come up with also I'm sorry that's okay thank you also you could have been taking our budget divided by the total number of students but the students aren't all ours so you have to add Dennis's budget to that that's right yep so fuzzy fuzzy fuzzier and fuzzier okay
moving on to your next part to the uh debt so I can't believe it we're already in the 7th year of paying off of the school in a 20-year debt schedule um which uh is as you can see a declining debt schedule um moving to the capital
debt for the town of Yarmouth for this fiscal for next fiscal year it's 1,1 14273 to and then the operating assessment is 2 milli 689 748 and then the total for the town of
armouth is those two numbers put together um for $3,832 480 then finally um we did decrease I talked about how we decreased our opab contribution our finance subcommittee
came up with a plan to re to fully fund uh other post-employment benefits which is primarily health insurance for re Ires and dental insurance um we have a 28-year plan we're two years ahead of it so uh rather than making other decisions
this for FY 26 we that number that 990,000 number was $300,000 we had been inching that up in our plan and got to three and we were going to keep it at three um the situation this fiscal year we we felt that with being ahead of our schedule
because of the uh gains that we've realized in the Plymouth County opep trust that we uh joined several years ago uh we're going to we're going to take a dip here in FY 26 and then slowly inch it back up to try to get back on track um in the outgoing uh fiscal years
we also look in that plan it assumes that the barn County assessment which is also in this budget which is about $500,000 which is attempting to fully fund that retirement system um when that becomes fully funded we would be adding we wouldn't take it out of our budget um
of course that'll be somebody else's problem uh um it would go on into that schedule and and fully fund uh OPB um and I think we had it at 2040 okay any I don't see any questions from the public any questions from the
board I just had one question and now this this may be something that's um handled with the the new building which is wonderful but when you had 600 students and then you added 81 where do you put them in the
Attic no I didn't see an attic no so we have uh we have we were built for 650 when they do that they say it's about 85% utilization so you can assume that we can put another 15% and then you can be a little creative after that we're
not at that point right now when we get to about 720 that's when we need to say enough's enough um and we are exploring a satellite campus which I think I talked about last year year and Mark I forgot pictures again I forgot pictures again I remember from last year I forgot
pictures um so uh it's at 374 Main Street we're actively fundraising um we're not looking for the towns to pay for any of the capital uh costs associated with that project uh it would bring on two new programs when we're able to do that um currently saying
September of 26 which is not this budget but the 27 budget um but uh there's a lot of fundraising to do a lot of hurle to to to uh go over uh to start environmental technology and veterinary science on that property it's 33 ACR uh
we pay the whopping sum of a lease of $11,000 a year wow um for the property as we investigate trying to do this programming it also also our horiculture program uh will benefit from this uh because I heard a lot about natural resource management prior uh and uh kids
that's part of the environmental program to learn about natural resource management town it's in harch same town as where we're we're located oh thank you that's but as as more comes down the road as more comes down the road I'll certainly be sharing
more Tracy you had a question I just have one question not related to this uh budget but I don't know uh we've been following the potential for the lottery um where can just quickly can you talk a little bit about that how
that could affect yeah I've been intimately involved with that uh every every month about 15 superintendant from uh vocational schools are going up to the board of ed um they're going to on March 10th we were March 10th they're going to propose regulations to
Institute a qualified Lottery that uh only takes into account um attendance and very very severe discipline which is the case now with our admissions policy we currently have an admissions policy where all the students from our our
district apply to us um they uh they get we get their attendance records we get their grades seventh and eighth grade uh their disciplined but typically it doesn't apply um as a demotion as as a 10-point deduction if
there's a severe discipline and then there's a personal interview and then there's a counselor recommendation from the sending school that's the current policy and that's the way it's been since I've I've been at at the school um but the the state uh in particular the
Healy Administration uh feels that is is inequitable um and we are uh we want to we want to maintain at least some admission standards for the school because um I mean we are training trying to train a lot of our students some do
go go on to further education but many go right into the workforce and uh the best ability is availability and if you're not in school and you're not in work you're not going to keep a job and you're not going to graduate so um we think attendance is important um and we discipline we certainly think is
important as I say it really it's severe discipline and there's not a lot of applicants that that applies to but they're around equipment that can it can hurt hurt people um and then we the interview is our ability to to get the sense of whether they're even interested
why are they interested in caping coming to Cape con Tech um only attendance discipline and interest are even on the radar for a lottery there could be any one of those it could be a lottery um blind Lottery any student that applies
is in the lottery or some some sort of uh admission criteria that would only rule them out of the lottery keep in mind with an admissions policy there's a score there will be no no more scores and the um and and so that once you have
the the students that are qualified for the lottery the lottery kind of similar to a charter school the numbers are picked and and you go from there yeah um with like to note that the fact is that the school committee has been very concerned about this for a number of years and has actually done a lot of
work on the whole admissions policy because we wanted to make sure we were not excluding students because of some P past isolated event or something like that and so that including even the interviewing interview and things like that has led to indeed having a group of
very committed students and we're not excluding kids we've actually lowered some of the grade things we used to have and things like that and it's been a process for at least several years now with multiple multiple school committee members working on that so uh the policy
that we have currently I think is very very Equitable um we do have kids um who really want to be there which is very important and I think as Bob said you know they're working around equipment and getting oosha certified and everything that that whole liability policies and things like that
you have to be very very careful about them I mean you're working on autome mechanics working with heavy farm equipment they're working with a variety of things that they need to be there learning the lessons every day and then following rules you know if you say teacher tell tells you don't go there you're not going to say who can you to
tell me it's and so it's been a real process of so we're very I think the entire school committee is very distressed about the idea of going to a general lottery yeah I think you know um as Liz pointed out vocational education
is EXP expensive um you know and it's it's a privilege uh should that privilege be expanded to more students absolutely I'm very thrilled to see that you're um potentially expanding that to give more people the opportunity um but
I I am a little bit concerned about the criteria of a lottery and and how it's going to um impact your budget um you know we see um well I don't want to get into that's another question but potentially
that's something that this board uh could maybe write a letter or at least have a discussion about to see if we could write a letter um or take a position on that um in the future but I'm I'm excited that you're going to
expand and offer it to more people I am a little concerned with uh what that means to your budget not that it should be uh put all the the public schools but a lot of the resources are there already
for a lot of the things so when you spread that out even more we're we're being we're going to be duplicit in a lot of our um programs um and as as pointed out it's it's expensive so if you don't have the
potential to utilize that and you're not committed to it you know I'm not sure that the taxpayers should fund that for you so um anyway I'd love for us to talk about that at some point I will point out in the early
70s I mean I was an educator and basically the technical schools were Dumping Ground I mean if you couldn't make it in high school that's where you went and that's become very very different now because our kids do go on to careers college and other um because they're really well educated when they
go sorry thank you no it it's true my parents didn't want me to go to Cape cutch but I I was there I was happy I was smoking my maror lights on the bus and I think about these days don't do thatmore no they don't do that anymore so not on my bus 500 ft of school right
it's just a different world okay well I see no further questions thank you very much very informative one further comment I wanted to state to you uh that um I I'm obviously a retired educator who is
responsible for zero basing multiple million dollar department and um I have to say that the work that Bob and both Aon orcot do is an amazing job in terms of really the attention to detail within the budget and very careful scrutiny and
a lot of the materials and things that you've seen tonight are things that we get on a monthly basis that are discussed by the full school committee um and really monitored and in addition to that besides the technical part of what's going on I do need to sort of
compliment Bob and everyone within that school building our mcast scores uh exceeded scores here on Cape Cod for other schools and including exceeded State growth um this year and so that what we have are a group of very very
hardworking teachers who are not just in the trades but are also looking at the academic issues and one of the most incredible perform uh presentations that I saw several months ago was by our director of curriculum during which time they had actually sat down as depart
ments and looked at the individual mcast results from students took a look at the patterns of where the learning was where the problems had B in terms of the scores and things then sat and talked about our curriculum to match an improvement within the curriculum and we
also offer after school classes there actually we have a video screen in the hallway you can know which room to go to and which teacher is providing support academic Support Services every afternoon after school so that they're not just getting the work within the technical part but they're actually
getting a very full education and it's really under the leadership of some pretty incredible things but the school committee is really really kept informed about all of this so what you're seeing tonight is not just a oneoff to sort of come and impress the armouth board of selectman or a town meeting it's
something that takes place on a monthly basis really for all of the full school school committee thank you thank you very much Madam chair before we before we leave and before Bob leaves um I just wanted to um commend him and and and your team on
this new initiative that you're doing this this new satellite campus that you're developing um and I think quite frankly it it offers a good excuse to come back in the near future so that we can get an update they're doing some very exciting things out there and I think the more we're aware of of this
effort in in the offerings that are going to be laid out there I think quite frankly um there' be a lot of interest and support here in Yarmouth for what you're trying to do people might think it's in harch but it's going to provide a valuable core set of programs and services that will be of interest to all
students here on Cape Cod to Tracy's point though I I don't want to I want to raise the funds outside of the the capital funds outside um I would be coming to this board for the teachers and the supplies in the future if that
if this does come to fruition yeah but I'm I'm braising this because I think it's just it's important to raise the awareness yes i' be happy to come back and and and the thing is I think there's a benefit to coming to a community like ours and raising awareness because I think there is support in the community
for what you're trying to do thank you all right so I think that it's worth coming here and uh showing the flag and sort of talking a little bit about what you're doing because it's very exciting and I do think there'll be Community Support here yeah and and Chris will be here too to to weigh in best cheerleader
for the school she is she is and once again your budget you always do a great job in the budget it's it's it's a very easy one to endorse and support and uh I'm sure we'll be doing that uh in the in the days ahead than thank you thank you thank you very much thank
you and now we have the Dennis Yarmouth Regional School District [Music] you must be sick of looking at us oh please take no never mind no comment for the very few who may not
know who you are if you'd like to introduce yourself please uh Mark Smith superintendent Dennis Yarmouth Regional School District it's nice to be back again uh had the pleasure of zipping across the uh Bass River Bridge I was at in your meeting with your colleagues
across the river earlier um for their uh select board meeting happy to be back again uh tonight so uh uh uh Mr RIT now and I had a conversation and we have a truncated version of the presentation I gave yesterday or not yesterday sorry
last week uh time's a flat circle yeah last week um so not to go through the entire presentation I can go back over any of the same information I have all that sort of here in my folder that I've been growing over the set of meetings um but um again I don't have all of the
same level of detail in this presentation as in the last presentation uh because I was just here last week but um and the uh the board should hopefully still have the the the budget detail uh that you had that I provided last week
and then that the finance uh committee has been provided as well so um you know as I mentioned last time it's all uh driven by our strategic plan in the the budget budgeting process this year we have three large objectives we launched
our strategic plan this year it's a five-year plan we have three major goals one is to eliminate uh disparities in our academic achievement and as I mentioned last time this is the overall picture is to raise student achievement for all students as we dug into the data
over the last year plus it's really a we have a student achievement issue across the entire District that needs work um and then b as we dig closer into that there are some students who are um being underserved by the district so it's like a two-pronged approach um and we have several initiatives that are geared
towards that second piece is around establishing better systems for how we operate as a district I know I talked about this last time I was here but you know as an organization we're roughly 630 employees somewhere between an organizational size of Cape Cod 5 and
anet Airlines and so we can operate more efficiently and effectively as a school district from standard operating SE uh procedures on how we make decisions as a district from the B Budget Building process and how we operate with the towns and understand the needs of the
towns to how we operate internally payroll accounts payable etc etc to consistent processes you know I've said as a sometimes as a district we operate as like six different fums between the six different schools where we need to be more unified across the the the
schools Etc and the last is which is already mentioned a little bit here today um prior to me coming up is having a we operate 152 Acres of T taxpayer property and a little over 600,000 square feet of taxpayer uh property so
we need to have a long-term capital plan uh uh which includes uh those facilities these needs over the next 5 to 10 years and keep and keep updating that you know as soon as next year happens we'll have to add to the 10th year right so we need to we need to get that first plan in place and then have something that we
continue to build off of and work with you know what's pieces that will be able to fund with our current uh funding mechanisms with parts that we're going to have to work with the towns but be able to come prepared uh and you all have a system for uh Capital funding and
Dennis has a system for Capital funding so we need to um work within both those systems um appropriately uh too many computers um here's where are here's we are in here's where we are in the process the school committee met last night and did vote uh
their final budget um I do have a slight update to provide to uh the board based upon that vote last night I'll get to that when we get to the to the end uh there were uh factors that drove the overall budget as I mentioned the Strategic plan is one of them uh
uh as uh Dr Sor mentioned uh collective bargaining does tend to drive a lot of our um uh you know we're a people business we were fortunate going into this year that all three of our major contracts were already settled so we knew those numbers way back at the beginning of the year when we started
some of the initial initial intermunicipal meetings our service CR contracts were already settled our transportation contract our uh jatori service contract those were already all settled so we knew what those increases were contracted Services were largely settled um the one thing that's been an
escalator um has been our out of District uh special educations uh tuitions and transportation costs as well as costs ass associated with mckin vento you know we talked about that a lot last time I was here and then obviously the most important things that
uh most important important service we provide are our students so student need always drives our um our cost um as a district um and then we have level funded the supply lines as a district um so Staffing levels over time you can
see the just basically this is showing the 35 and a half staff reduction last year going into the into the year and this shows where we um fall out uh as a school district compared to other school districts I explained this a lot last
year but largely this shows we are uh we don't have really any more staff or any less staff on average than in in these major groupings there are some districts that have a little bit more than us some districts that have a little bit less than us when you compare Us by
demographics and by relative wealth uh and I've talked about our enrollment I keep talking about this you know we're the only I meet with the other Cape superintendents every month um you know other than the the um you know Dr Sor and his colleague up at
upper Cape Tech because they operate a little bit differently um but like the the public school districts we're the only Public School District on the cape that has this trend um maybe Nantucket has a trend a little bit like this as well although she's a little bit more stable um where you're seeing the
opposite of what everybody else is seeing where everybody else is seeing declining enrollment except for Dy um and this is now going on a fiveyear trend where our enrollment is increasing um and this is again the students that are walking in the door every day is
different than the foundation enrollment um but it is the students that are walking in the door and uh last time I checked the numbers right prior to February break it was 3,120 students I'm going to skip past this slide because this one explains it a little bit more I did show that slide in
the last time um the um students that uh that make up this group these are our largest student population groups stud largest student population groups are students that are um uh socioeconomically disadvantaged um and
I mean the the ones that are rather that are gaining in percentage are students that are socioeconomically disadvantaged and our first language not English students um additionally we've seen an increase over the last 12 years of our students who are actively English language Learners and then we talked about this
slide a lot last um last time I was here as well which is that um the percentage of students uh rather out of District costs uh the blue is the tuition cost the Orange is the transportation cost cost those costs continue to escalate uh
the tuitions we don't set the tuitions actually set by a Consortium uh in the state and that there was a big 177% uh Spike uh between 22 and 23 which is why you see that big bump um between 22 and 23 and transportation we've had
this C we've had this conversation we'll see it on this next slide too when we talk about mckin vento Transportation cost our biggest challenge is the supply of um vendors on the cape uh you get uh there just aren't any so we have to
bring a lot of Transportation vendors um from off cape well I appreciated the comment made before about the fact that we don't have to transport from kids from Mash B to Provincetown Etc well uh but we have to send kids to Plymouth and we have to send kids to uh Bridgewater
and a lot further for out of District transportations and for students who are unsheltered uh and we have to often times get transportation from off Cape to come on Cape to pick those students up to then bring them off Cape to their off Cape placements um so that
Transportation gets very very expensive so again each it's not to say our challenges are better or worse they're just different um I don't think I gave the abbreviated slide deck because I'm looking at all the same slides um so I'm just going faster uh so we had a uh we
used a I discussed a priority rubric uh the last time this is how we determined our prior ities for the um uh what to move forward to the school committee the school committee ultimately uh voted uh
to move these three excuse me these items forward the items that were listed as a four or a three on our priority rubric um the top four were ones that were either items the items that were priority for were the robotics one was
things that we had been previously paying for every year we is never budgeted so we have a strong robotics program been in place for years um at the high school uh we always find the money somehow to pay for the supplies that are needed for that program but we actually are budgeting for it for this
year the next two are contracted settled stiens with one of our bargaining units the next is game officials that's that rate is set by um the MIAA so you know the referees that show up at games that rate increase was set by MIAA and then I
mentioned this last time I was here we've had for whatever reason a spike of enrollment at at second grade in particular at me small um we haven't added a teacher this year we've gone over our class size um uh uh standards
for second grade so when those students move up to third grade we're going to balance that back out by adding a a third grade teacher next year um at me small and then the priority three items uh which the school committee has supported is uh an director for so to
support that increase over the last 10 years in the students whose first language is not English and the students who's who were active English language Learners I do not have anybody in my leadership team who's in charge of that I I keep using the same analogy I just used it in Dennis it would be like operating a Wastewater program without a
Wastewater supervisor um or having a fire department without a fire chief or having a recreation department without a recreation director um I have an a significant portion of my student body a significant portion of staff that support that student body without anybody who's in charge of leading that
department um so this is putting somebody in that leadership uh position um and then the remaining items all support our strategic plan um the thought exchange is a is a tool we use for Gathering input from our school Community it's it's AI supported allows
us to take survey data and analyze it and give us feedback so we can respond back to our parents to our staff to students um and then arked is a tool that we'll use for negotiation they gather um contracts from across and
because we start negotiations um next year so they gather um contract um information from all groups that have settled contracts and let you know like this is what was the rate that was agreed upon in this neighboring district
and these were the um benefits for family medical leave that were so that you know sort of what the field is agreeing to MTA always comes armed with this information we normally aren't armed with this information so it'll help us um be more level um set in the
um negotiations and then the last is we're working over multiple years on replacing and updating the foreign language or World Language textbooks at the high school so last year I always invert these so I can't remember which we did the we did I think we did French
this year and we're doing Spanish next year I might have those inverse you um Mr Simon backck yeah it's the other way around all right um and then the last are all budget neutral they're just um it was informing the school committee about changes in Staffing that we're making um but we're moving the FTE they
don't have a budget impact and then these were all not funded these were prior two and one that were not in the budget the punchline is a 4.49 6% budget increase uh to the
operating budget the debt have an update from the a vote the school committee took last night so that debt number is actually going to change slightly um which I'll talk about when we get to the assessment in a minute uh but the the operating budget did not change when the school committee took a vote last night
so uh the 4.49% increase did not change from last night however The Debt Service number did change last night so again I will update that um when we get to the assessment in just a minute um all right so uh again there are
couple of factors I'm going to we talked about this last time I was here we've seen increased St um state aid over the last several years our foundation enrollment part of the things that we need to consider is the 5year rolling average so that's where they settle out
this year um is 30. 668 to your car ofarts across the river and 69.3 32 to Yarmouth um and that's sort of just how it's looked over time which you can see you know if you go back about 10 years it was about a 6535 split and it's moved
almost to a 7030 split at this point in time uh which then brings us to the process of assessment uh so we start with the state aid move to the minimum required contribution and then the last
bit is that um uh 30 roughly 3070 split uh and I know I slowed down a little bit here last time and I gave the the board some examples on this um and I'm just going to slow down a little bit more here just for those who were in the
public and weren't watching last time uh because I really think this is important I stressed it um because it impacted Dennis more this year um on the minimum required contribution so the minimum required contribution is the biggest factor in the
assessment um so this year the minimum required contribution for uh and and again folks always and it's a fair question why does the minimum required contribution matter both towns pay above the minimum yes and the minimum required
contribution is the first step in the assessment it's the first chunk of money that we are required as a regional uh District to to assess the towns first and that number is set by the department Ed set by the governor's
budget comes from do we get that as the first chunk that we have to assess and usually that number goes up sometimes it there has been times where it's gone down um but over the last several years that number's gone up it almost never goes up
proportionately and meaning that each Town's number goes up by the same percentage this year yarma percentage increase of their minimum required contribution was 6.125% and Dennis's was 8.44 5%
that's the first chunk of money that comes off and then and then there's a remaining amount that remaining amount is what gets split by this 30 668 I already lost that number basically the 7030 split so that that bottom of the Teeter
Totter is the first part and I showed the committee um so then when you add the remaining amount it's then when you average that together it's where you get the total assessment increase I gave the board rather sorry
um differ govern different governing models you're not a committee or a board um although you're small C committee big bbard um the um the I gave you all some examples last
time I was here is if you had all gone up proportionately uh to your your uh counterparts across the river the assessment increases if both had gone up both the minimum required contributions had gone up by
6.125% nothing and nothing had changed about our operating budget your uh yarmouth's uh assessment increase at the end when you run all the math back down would have been a
3.7% increase and Dennis's would have been a 3.46% increase and then if it had been inverse if yall had had a bad year and your assessment incre your minimum required contribution had gone up instead by 84.44% so this wrong
slide no this way this first piece that 8.44 five% had been on your side then your uh assessment increase would have been 4.17% and Dennis's would have been 2.46% when
you ran it all out and nothing changed about the operating budget for the for the district right right so the minimum required contribution again is a significant factor in the when you get down to the assessment piece again too many too many clicks or too many things for me to click so this
is again those were just fictional scenarios because that's not ultimately what happened this is ultimately what happened this year but this also shows it over time so last year not only were we dealing with a difficult CH budget
challenge you all also had the larger minimum required contribution increase so it's why Yarmouth was not only dealing with the the challenge that we were all dealing with you also had a larger proportionate minimum required
contribution increase which when we ran out the whole formula meant Yarmouth was carrying a larger portion of the assessment weight last year this year it's affecting your comrades across the river and the year before that in 2024
and the year before that in 2023 it was in Dennis nope that's not so that brings us to The Debt Service and this number has changed I have it in my notes here so last night the school committee took a vote um and they the school committee decided
to uh use $ 46,50 from end to pay the last high school bond payment so that changes the total debt service so that first Debt Service payment that would have been required
from the town of Yarmouth is no longer required so when you do the math as long as I did my math correctly uh um the new Deb total debt service payment for Yarmouth for this year would be 2,388
423 as opposed to the number you see on the screen there so it's less than 253 623 correct gotcha like that and that brings me to the
end I know I spoke fast it's because I apparently didn't send my shorten slides and I was going over all the same ones oh and um I before I finish uh just so that that I know you heard him speak
before but our school committee liais on for Yarmouth is on with me as well um Joe Glenn I just wanted to make sure we recognize that um I had a school Committee Member here as well um I want to just give an opportunity to any of the uh public if they have any questions
I'm not seeing any hands up if you do have a question um you need to raise your hand for us I don't see any questions from the public any we had a an ample opportunity last week to answer questions are there any further
questions I have two questions okay uh one question is what is your per pupil cost hello hello okay so you did you did have a question verer I wondered but your hand wasn't up I had my hand raised but you didn't see it I guess I guess
not go ahead V all right so I've been unmuted now right um okay so I have a question going back to the U student OPP uh no the U uh student population a graph there that uh shows uh over a
period of time uh what happens in the with the economically disadvantaged the English language Learners the special ed then the last number which is represent the last acronym is f l n e what does
that stand for uh first first language not English first okay so that's almost uh and and at that very same graph I think shows that uh the the yellow line seems
we seem to be getting uh uh people that are causing the increase in that population uh total total population seems to be the the only one that is increasing all the time so my question is going to be
uh where do these students come from uh from all over we have uh somewhere in the ballpark of 22 to 25 different languages uh in the district wow but I mean uh uh and and all of them
are brand new students I mean they're not coming from like choice or anything like that uh no I mean you can I mean you can see it's been an increase so you know it's it's been a steady increase
over you know from 12% in 2013 14 to 30 or just under 30% now so it's been increasing uh over time um so it's not like all of a sudden we had zero and we went to 30% so it's been an increase uh
in students so no and it's not our our Stu our school choice numbers um are not uh they're Steady As far as the number of students we are School choicing in uh historically we haven't had a surge of school choice in students these are
students residing in our both of our communities now let me uh uh I can't I can't increase about the image of of that graph where where did that yellow line start going off uh uh steadily increasing there was that three years
ago four years ago when I mean toine steadily increased it it's from 13 it's it goes if you start all the way back in 2013 it goes 12 13 14 16 17 18 20 but but but it uh it uh it kind of increases
whereas the red line uh decreases where where do they cross I mean at that point 2019 increase and it's the only one that keeps increasing all the others are decreasing uh I don't know the I I guess I would argue I would say the the economically
disadvantage has stabilized at between 55 well it was at one point and now it's decreasing so uh my my uh question I guess is going to be if you if these are the uh uh non-english speaking come from non-english-speaking families are any of
these uh uh the recent uh arrivals the ilal aliens um as a school district is we don't um of course our job isn't to um check for immigration status and a students whose
first language is not English is um can be a bilingual student um part of our challenge as a school district is we're responsible for translating under State Statute into the home language so if the student speaks more than one language because you have two different groups there right so you have the the light
blue line in the bottom which is the English language learner so those are students who are actively receiving English language instru instuction to become to learn the English language so the student is native language is not English so they could be in both those groups those students are going to be in
both those groups um but the student the reason you see a disparity between those two numbers is you have students who um maybe started as an English language learner maybe they arrived in with us in kindergarten or second grade or third
grade and um their first language was not English when they first arrived and they mov moved through our English language learner program and mastered English and now they speak more than one language um but their first language was
not English and at home perhaps the language native language spoken at home because I have some a few a couple of other questions is is this the graph that shows the the that these so-called as a group that these students
constitute 2third of the population of of the of the enrollment so that is whoops sorry I'm I don't talking about yellow I'm talking about as a group I I'm trying to get to that slide um so that's this slide so this slide is that group
all of those factors together the department creates this group called high needs so students can be in any one of those four categories so you could be a student that's special education and an English learner or special education and economically disadvantage or three
of those four or all four of those four and if you hit any one of or a combination of those four categories you're identified by the Department of Education as high needs and that's what makes up this this graph that you're seeing here this this is that one that
comes up at 67% is that it yep because I can't see on my you know yes yeah that that is there any other District on the cape that approaches that of a number that kind of a percentage uh I I don't
know their exact numbers but I do know we're not the only District that's um in and around this ballpark I don't want to step on Dr Smith's line but um I have actually looked at all of the data uh this is available on the mass doe site
uh and our situation is very the uh this District's situation is very similar to uh other districts uh not only in the cape but across the Commonwealth well somewhere off the cape I I wouldn't be surprised especially in the large
cities but but uh uh an area like the cape it seems uh very uh I mean um anyway um the uh uh all I can say is in general that when that uh student
Opportunity Act uh uh collapses and goes away are we going to be I mean we're going to be in some some kind of a situation but but we're just not going to get that kind of reimbursement from the state and I think somebody had
better start thinking about what will we will need to be doing because this where we're going on as though this is going to go on forever and it's it is definitely the way the state is going is probably going to go bankrupt anyway and that's going to go away and you better
start thinking I think of what you're going to do with the with when that goes away thank you thank you vaita Tracy I just want to know what the per pupil cost is and I I want to just make a couple of comments to say um first of all I I appreciate
the work that you did with the towns and I know um we happen to not be on the receiving end of the higher number this particular year but there's no doubt it flips and it goes back and forth so I appreciate the work that you did with the committee to utilize the end to try
to bring their assessment down and um I just wondered if you and I know you're really busy but if you had the opportunity to ever look at other districts that have an agreement that um utilizes some mechanism that that levels
out those Peaks that's that was always kind of like the challenge that we were up against and you know we try to renegotiate at one point in time to do the fiveyear rolling average to try to you know level that
highs and lows out but is there anybody who uses a mechanism that gets to um the contribution from the state or other ways to to try to level that so I I I'd have to do some research the district
that I came from um this was a you know it's a two Town District so when you're in multiple towns it it isn't at like it levels itself out a little bit better when it's across three or more towns um but when it's two it it's a bigger impact um and I'm
somebody who understands the math a little bit better if and if I sat down if I had a little bit more time to like run some scenarios I'd probably be able to explain it a little bit better but um I just know from my regional colleagues who are in multi- toown districts well I mean we're a multi toown but you know
like three or more um for whatever reason the minimal require contribution doesn't affect as much when you're in three or more um bless you um so but but anyways so the district that I came from this was the same same um
and for like multiple years it was always hit in the same town um and um so so I only know that and that experience is the same as this one right and because this is the um uh this is the statutory method right
so a lot of regions are set up this way um but so so the short answer is no I don't but I'm I can I'm happy to some interesting to spend some time after the budget season's over I know you're busy now but um I'm part of like a Regional
Schools Network so I'm happy to sort of put it out on that list serve and and collect and see you know are there other um for years we were playing with not using the statutory we actually had a different mechanism at one point in time we weren't using the statutory and then
when the budget would be proposed we would look at both ways for some time before we chose this one um but you know again I feel bad for Dennis this year I'm grateful for the work that you did to try to uh mitigate that for them as much as you can and uh all work together
so I think it's um great going forward but there's more to come on that unfortunately thank you U then I I when the conversation came up before I hopped on the department at Ed's website so it lags a little bit um just somebody made the comment comment um it I think it
might have been Vita who made the comment it lags a little bit on the department of Ed's websites but I did go and look it up real quick so our per pupil expenditure based upon the department of Ed's website um so this was I think fiscal
23 um and I just moved away from it to get you that information was 228 863 then I think the you know the um uh uh the conversation before was I think you were using the numbers based
on the assessment right sort of yeah right um I will say it's still lower than my comp I'm not going to give you his number but uh um but we uh but yeah that's the numbers 22863 based upon you know again it lags a little bit but
thank you yep okay thank you very much Dr Smith uh no other questions no thank you very much we really appreciate you're taking the time with us have a great night thank you well okay um with the end of the Dennis
Yarmouth Regional School District we come to the end of the public hearing on P budget and capital plan so we can assume that the finance committee and capital budget committee are now capital budget committee or the finance committee is injour ised are
adjourned okay make a motion to close the public hearing second all in favor I thank you very much so moving on on our agenda we have the Cape Cod chamber presentation tourism marketing um District
okay great good evening uh I'm Paul NSI I'm the CEO of the cape cut Chamber of Commerce um joining me is our chair of the board uh do you want to introduce yourself sure I'm Lisa Oliver I'm the chair president and CEO of the
Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod and currently this year's chair of the board of the chamber and uh we also have Katie Adon our uh executive director of our blue economy Foundation uh in the room with us tonight we really appreciate the time we know this is a really busy time of year so we appreciate you you're
getting us in here in front of you to talk about uh what's known in Massachusetts as a tourism destination marketing District that we'd like to create in the town of Yarmouth across the country they're known as uh tourism Improvement districts they're really built on a business improvement district
model um so just to to uh kick it off uh we're here to introduce the concept tonight uh and we'll run through it as as quickly as we can um so traditional uh funding for tourism are either
private or public um some of the private uh setups are memberships Partnerships grants event Revenue Contract Services licensing naming rights things like that the public Ser uh sources are federal federal or state grants especially federal grants uh during the co times
untethered tax allocations tether tax allocations property tax increment financing sales tax increment financing and assessments and so the touris improvement district and the the or the tdmd in Massachusetts is an assessment uh so when we talk about uh
tourism funding it's really about uh sufficiency and funding stability tourism on the cape uh in 2023 generated $2.7 billion doll in visitor spend uh it's responsible directly for over
14,000 jobs on the cape and uh it generated almost a quar billion dollars in taxes 80 million of those taxes back uh to the the 15 towns on the cape over 160 million uh up to the Commonwealth which is certainly more than we get back
in unrestricted local Aid uh so so uh figuring out a way that that uh we can fund this sufficiently and and stably is really important to us the Commonwealth that has historically
underinvested in tourism uh last year I think we generated over $400 million in room occupancy tax only 10 million was reinvested back uh into tourism uh many states repres will divert 50% um but but
Massachusetts is really sort of lagging behind main uh benchmarks there uh contribution to to to uh Market the state for tourism to 5% of the occupancy tax and the average uh among the 50 states is a $22 million
investment Massachusetts only puts in 10 so do you have enough to competitively Market your destination how reliable are your funding streams and can they be diverted um so the tourism destination marketing District uh it's a dedicated stable
source of funding designed to increase occupancy and revenue for Hospitality businesses the funds are raised through a small assessment um that generates funds that are used to directly benefit the businesses that are paying the assessment um in the community's districts the tdmd offer a Level Playing
Field there are no Free Riders this concept has a a five-year term um and it has to be renewed every five years and we have to as the regional tourism Council demonstrate a return on investment directly to those properties that are paying the assessment uh so the
state does collect collect the the tax for us through the department of Revenue uh to provide additional oversight uh uh transparency and reliability so the lodging businesses pay that assessment it's collected by the state government and it's managed by the regional tourism
Council uh which for bonpo county is uh the cape cut Chamber of Commerce so just some key elements of the TDMs in Massachusetts this a relatively New Concept for the Commonwealth it's passed as part of the economic development bill
in 2021 it's really been used across the country uh for decades uh over 30 years um so it's kind of new to us but the purpose is to create an industry-led fin uh funding mechanism to support tourism promotion activities assist uh with
recovery uh funds raised are used to provide services directly by and directly benefiting the businesses in the district those services are supplemental Services Beyond standard government services including Marketing sales activities events and other tourism and travel promotion activities
the enabling legislation as I mentioned is chapter 40x uh in Massachusetts the term as I mentioned is 5 years the assessment rate by the legislation cannot exceed 2% uh the formation any city or town in the state can form a A tdmd or they can
group they can actually cross boundaries if one Community chooses to be the lead Community as we'll get to it the only uh tdmd in the in the state that uh is operational right now is the TD DMD between Boston and Cambridge with Boston acting as the lead
Community uh so the governance the district will be managed by the regional tourism Council the management entity shall uh then appoint a committee to implement tdmd Services uh a marketing a district marketing plan must be written and updated every 5 years indicating the supplemental services and programs to be
provided and as a baseline the municipality is required to maintain the provision of of standard government services so just like a bid uh the funds raised here privately on particular properties can't be used to offset
public expenses that are already being spent for uh tourism so key elements um in Massachusetts related to The Collection the assessed lodging businesses will pay the tdmd assessment to the commissioner
of Revenue the do will then remit those assessments uh to the regional tourism Council so it requires a petition process to initiate the district the petition requires the signatures of 62% of the lodging business owners within a
proposed tdmd uh and we must file with the office of the clerk of the lead jurisdiction so we're going to go on a Town Bytown basis we had initially uh looked at going capewide but there were over 190 hotels on the cape uh in 15 different uh
municipalities and uh that was unmanageable to sort of to to to start off uh with so we're going to go uh town by town and pursuant to the plan we've actually set a room limit of 85 rooms so in order to qualify uh as a member uh a
participating member you have to have 85 rooms so in the town of Yarmouth that's 12 hotels um so the renewal is every five years the tdmd committee convenes to propose an updated marketing District plan the tdmd shall be renewed if a majority of
the tdmd members who have paid their assessments are present at the renewal meeting in person or by proxy to to uh vote to renew the tdmd there is a disestablishment clause as well so uh it has to be renewed every 5 years and the tdmd can be disestablished if proper
procedure for Renewal after a term of five years is not followed uh or if there are are other uh issues that pop up like funds being misappropriated so just to take a look at the evolution of tourism industry funding there are uh traditional models
we have out there membership models and bed tax the terms bed tax occupancy tax rooms tax used somewhat interchangeably here but with those traditional models there's no defined term it does create a competitive inequality uh because some
of these hotels pay a lot more than others but receive uh the same Services back uh it allows for non-participating businesses really to get a free ride uh there's an inability for long-term planning and the resources are not proportionate to the economic impact so
so the advantage of the tdmd is there's a specific term and a plan they're managed and approved by those that are paying the assessment it requires a notice in a public hearing there's legal accountability to the district plan based on the benefit uh to the tourism businesses the tdmd funds cannot be
diverted and uh funding is stable and protected for investment long term uh legal and political protections and there are procedures to Devol to dissolve the district midterm uh if necessary so just kind of look look at where we are right
now uh there is a political opportunity elected officials they they enacted 40x I think recognizing that they were underinvestigated during the pandemic uh and we are starting to see uh not just a return to
to normal but but decreasing levels of support uh for tourism moving forward there it's an excellent timing to request sort of a policy decision and to advocate for stable long-term funding uh to support the recovery and the growth of regions like the cape that depend on
travel and tourism so if we look at these uh tids across the country on average tids produce uh over a 2% lift in hotel room demand and almost a 5% lift and hotel room Revenue
uh the tids really do Drive economic impact um this comes from a study that looked at 29 uh cities that have tdmd across the Comm uh across the the country and compared them to their competitors that did not have uh tourism
districts so uh where do they exist there are this this is slight a little bit outdated there are two more now so I think we're up to 203 uh Across the Nation the most recent uh on this one were Louisville and provid own Rhode
Island was one of the last ones to come in Newport Rhode Island is was one of the first ones uh to do this uh decades ago so the annual amount raised uh in these districts can vary from just $10,000 which is a district that only has one hotel in it um I think it's in
Minnesota to the high of 41 million for a total of 462 million uh more than 462 million across the country in 20 States so just to point out where the states are the uh the blue states have active tourism districts and the
orange states are considering uh tourism districts so you can see the national shift uh towards um this kind of of operation and if we focus in really on our competitors and just uh on the East Coast you can see uh Portland Maine um
is a fairly recent one you got the Boston Cambridge uh Providence Newport and then down uh from Virginia Delaware Pennsylvania New Jersey uh and this is our our major
catchment area for tourists as well so if we look at a couple briefly a couple of those case studies just Providence for example Providence uh form the 21st tid they have a 2% assessment on lodging properties with 50 rooms or more it's estimated to generate over $1.6 million
for for uh Providence um the they're using it for contention convention trade and sports tourism marketing International marketing and public relationships uh incentives for strategic business support as I mentioned Newport also very close one of
the older uh the I think it is the oldest tourism District in the country uh and you can see I mean what's might be a little bit difficult to read up there but the first uh numbers in yellow are numbers from September to de
December 2019 so that's really offseason for them and you can see that the revenue generated offseason is approaching revenue generated um during peak season uh and that's in part because they can use this money to provide incentives and to sponsor Events
off season to to bring people here which is taking advantage of the infrastructure that they have in Newport just like we have here on the cape when we build infrastructure whether it's Transportation infrastructure Wastewater infrastructure we have to build for Peak flow capacity so we're really building
for two months out of the year um some more stats and ways that they've used it s to drive uh engagement in Newport and then taking a look at the Boston Cambridge tdmd Boston is clearly uh they're a lot bigger than we are
we're probably about 10% uh but the Boston tourism industry generates 22.6 million in economic impact oops the wheel there uh and produces 850 million in state and local revenues the occupancy
tax uh revenue of 318 million in Boston Cambridge and supports 140,000 jobs see because they are 14,000 their 140 we're about 10% um so the tdmd was formed in August of 2021 with a one and a half% assessment and it really it took so
Boston has a destination marketing organization known as meat Boston you might see that on Celtics on the floor of the Celtics games uh they went from a75 million organization to uh here it's 21 but really they're up over $30
million now so they're really driving Economic Development up there the Army Navy game was sponsored through tdmd money the uh FIFA World Cup that's coming next year is all tdmd money um so they're really making the most of it up there uh and just take take a look um
they're bolstering visitation Hotel occupancy uh and this is a really recent thing we're starting to see occupancy drop this year I mean January was off by over 10% which is a reason for concern but Boston held
steady we're also starting to see International Travelers um they're Mark Boston's marketing hard on International Travelers we're we're starting to see some of them migrate uh towards Boston instead of the cake so they they've been able to restore the
Leisure and Hospitality uh hotel jobs enhanced neighborhood experiences uh increased single property meeting sales and related spending they've allowed for incentive and special projects fund um International visitation and they're really uh resuscitating the hotel tax
revenue for Boston Cambridge and the Massachusetts general fund so with those uh examples in mind how would it work on the cap just process-wise we need at least 62% of the eligible businesses to sign a petition to form the tdmd so of
the 12 hotels that are qualifying in Yarmouth all have agreed uh to participate in the assessment and we have petitions from 10 of them so we we are at that point in the process so soort so that's why we're here tonight to sort of introduce the concept because
when we file the petitions with the town clerk it starts a 60-day window um for to to have a public hearing on it so the required notices for public hearing have to H happen and hearing has to be held within 60 days of the petition filing
but uh but no no sooner uh than than 30 days after the filing so there's kind of a window there uh and then the jurisdiction votes to authorize the formation of a request of a petitioning business so that's sort of the process there we have had for over 18 months now
sort of a pre-formation steering committee of of uh seven of the uh hoteliers from across the cape that will translate into a tdmd committee uh and so what we will do is we're going to make sure there are nine communities on
the cape nine towns that could qualify for total of 35 hotels uh Yarmouth has the largest number of hotels at 12 barnable second with 10 fouth would be third with five um so each we we will have on the larger tdmd committee each
town uh will be represented and then from that committee uh a a majority of them have to actually sit on the board of directors at the cape cut Chamber of Commerce uh for oversight purposes that's where the sales and marketing committee uh will will uh be located the
nominating committee the audit Committee of the chamber and the finance committee will all be responsible uh for the oversight of the funds that come in so the assessment rate that the pre-formation committee has put together is 1 and a half% and the district plan
that will be filed with the petition so you can read in more detail uh provides for 75% of the funds uh can be used for sales marketing destination development and special events uh 10% can be used for business practices and Workforce initiatives one of the other advantages
here is that compared to the state money that uh we get uh every year and we get about a half a million to market the entire cap but there are a lot of restrictions on that so if we wanted to use some of these funds to invest in say Workforce housing initiatives we could
do that there's a lot more flexibility uh or if we wanted to use them for other purposes the plan also callus for 15% to be held for reserves and administrative purposes uh so there are four key areas in the plan public relations and Marketing Group incentives Community
Development and events and Workforce housing so that's where the the spending will happen uh one of the major concerns of the hotels and really the business community in general is are the Bridges you know and we're looking at a 7 to 10
year uh rebuild of both Bridges it could be long could be 15 years you know depending on when they start and how they're staggered uh and the their real concern of the business Community is that people won't want to go to the cape because they are going to be afraid of the traffic associated with
the bridge replacement process even though the bridge replacement proc are going to be replaced next to the existing Bridges so the traffic disruption of the new Bridges will be less than the traffic disruption of the maintenance that occurs on the old bridges but that's not going to be clear
to everybody and so somebody needs to be out front sort of making sure that people are aware of that and just to underline the the importance of replacing those bridges they're 90 years old now they were built to accommodate a million trips a year they now see 38 million trips a year which is the equivalent of the Golden Gate Bridge in
San Francisco uh and uh Bridges now that are being built are being built with a 50-year lifespan uh so these Bridges have to be replaced I mean we only need to look to Providence uh Rhode Island
and the Washington Bridge down there if there's another inspection and there's a scheduled inspection on the Bourne Bridge in the fall and they find a sheared bolt you look at a potential clo complete closure of one of these Bridges Cape cut commission has just done an economic impact uh study that looks at
that and uh a major Rehabilitation of the born Bridge or would require at least a six-month complete closure uh a structural issue may require a longer closure even the shortest closure of one of these Bridges uh will cost us a third
of our economy and a third of the jobs associated with that um and it would in effect shift to Sagamore 10,000 more trips on average a day than it's ever seen so it can't happen we've got to replace the bridges uh and we've got to
as that replacement is happening we've got to make sure that we continue to let people know that the Cape is open for business so uh we can also use it for group incentives so tids can you can be used to subsidize hotel stays lowering
rates uh that drive business during off peak times what Boston does now is in January they give some of this money back to the hotels to provide $150 uh parking vouches if you come on and stay on the weekend you know just you know one of the examples of what uh is
happening now we've had some conversations uh especially in places like Provincetown where affordability has really been an issue up there of of maybe being able to subsidize hotel stays in May and and uh to expand the season up there so uh we can offer
discounts to Meeting Planners uh attracting new businesses and tax revenue uh we can invest in Sports Marketing tournaments and multi-purpose facilities uh we can provide restaurant credits to incentivize spending in local business businesses and we can drive international business recovery through
strategic marketing and just to highlight one of those uh there's actually uh a special report that they did on tourism improvements and sports tourism uh so tids are the really the next Frontier in funding destination marketing organizations and sports
commissions uh they provide dedicated funding to uh destination marketing organizations and sports commissions alleviating the Reliance on Public Funding and these districts can promote tour tourism through uh DMO Sports sales directs grants and events coordinators
and support for sports event infrastructure so uh very important that QR code might be dead Mark but I have a copy of the report with me yeah and and I'll leave it to you it's a fairly short report but it is
very informative you can leave that with us that would be great thank you we will do that so uh what's the cost of doing nothing you know place-based uh promotion marketing is significantly underfunded as I've mentioned this makes the cape in our businesses less competitive with neighboring
destinations other rtc's are in the process now Metro West Plymouth North of Boston Springfield uh in creating these tourism districts uh there there's current there are currently no resources to mitigate business impacts during the bridge construction uh or or to have a
somebody out front with the public relations to let people know that we're open and the occupancy and daily rates for traditional lodging will not be sustained at current levels without supplemental funding uh and what we're seeing it's a nationwide problem but is particularly cute on the cape is the competition of
short-term rentals with traditional Hotel lodging and so we're losing Hotel traditional Hotel lodging rooms on the cape uh and and we currently have 19,000 short-term rentals which is almost twice as much as Boston More Than New York
City uh so and that's with over 1100 added in the last 12 months uh to registration so even though uh 37% of the the the houses on the cape or second homes and that's been fairly consistent over a period of time the number of
those that are now registering on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO uh has grown exponentially uh so it you know trying to balance some of that competition uh is going to require some additional resources to Market traditional logic
uh you've got a couple properties in town that have recently changed hands in the last three years EOS now owns the red jacket and the Blue Water um they put $20 million into the red jacket in if you haven't been there it's it's a it's pretty impressive especially with
the beachfront uh and really uh would benefit and deserves to be marketed um especially offseason because I think one of the the really important things here for the town is the ability to put people in these hotels and in January
February March April because of group events uh could really stimulate your commercial tax base uh going forward so that's sort of the overview of the district I know it's been a long night for everyone we're here uh to answer any
questions uh that you might have we'll leave the the uh dedicated funding for sports tourism Report with you um Lisa you have any I'm not sure if I at this time of night would be the place for me to dig I
think it was is early for us no we started at 8 this morning and we got another meeting at 8 tomorrow so yeah um uh all I would add is first of all under under Paul's Guidance the concept of bridging no pun intended the
um public policy type issues we're facing also with economic development and growth on Cape Cod and how we support the inherent business economy here has been tremendous I think pulling it together and this concept of a tdmd having started as the treasurer of the foundation board and now being the chair
and watching the grant that we wait for from the state to come in to tell us how much we have in the budget to be able to spend across 15 towns and support initiatives across 15 towns is um it's a raise your shoulders and shrug
we don't know and our fiscal year starts in July we find this out in January and it changes is year to year and it becomes very difficult to budget so understanding over a period of time the rolling increase that we would hope to achieve going through um each of the 15
towns in in the appropriate um with the appropriate number of of um hotels that would fit the room size that we're looking at we begin to create a very nice pool of funds to really think strategically I think about the parade coming up in Yarmouth and being able to
Market that in a different kind of way it's one of the it is the parade on the cape um for St Patrick's Day what does that sound like with additional marketing budget behind it to support people coming for the weekend and provide incentives or fun or something um additional to to bring to the market
so um it's very exciting for me I think it's very critical I know I was going to pull Paul back he started to get down the Bridge route that's a that's a topic for another meeting but um also critically important and not to be underestimated how very important it is to have a voice
um as Cape Cod about what people can and can't do trying to get here and not get here and then the other hat I really wear as an employer of 180 people who work with business clients and consumers every day and the criticality of
continuing to leverage the hospitality industries that we have here lodging restaurants entertainment the service Industries we are a cape of 8,000 businesses probably 7,000 of which make less than a million dollars a year in Revenue it's a small business economy
that's supported through tourism or that supports tourism and the employees and the employment that's created to support the the ever struggling families that live here is really very important so this additional funding arm for us would
be would be very important thank you I'm going to start with Mark thank you um Madam chair and thank you Paul and thank you for being here and explaining to us how this concept Works um first question uh Paul is uh
when do you anticipate coming before us with the petition what's the time frame we're ready to go you are yeah okay so so we have all the paperwork so we could file tomorrow uh but I wanted to reach out I know it's a busy time so so I wanted to make sure that you know our
schedule didn't hamper your schedule no I appreciate that I just want to get a and I appreciate you coming in here early so we can have a conversation about this beforehand um initially when this was proposed I was a little bit concerned about how this might affect other things and uh you know there are a
range of concerns what I which I don't need to go over however I spent a fair amount of time doing some research on this and spending time with Paul asking a lot of questions and you know I've become increasingly convinced that something like this um has a real value
um you don't have to co think about the bridges to understand the impacts of construction on local businesses you can just drive down Route 28 in Yarmouth right any day of the week all right and we've all learned I think as a community
that you need to communicate with the residents that are visiting and you need to communicate with your businesses people need to know what's going on how to get to here from there um and we've been having this fearly intense discussion here in on this board and in
our community and in separate meetings with the business Community about how to deal with this it's a problem that can't be underestimated and I'm glad that you flagged it for the bridges but we actually have a bigger problem and that is our goal is to have a fairly robust
pace of Wastewater construction that will last probably well into the same period that the bridges are going and um if you look at what the state's giving us and giving you principally for marketing dollars and what I would call
tourist information dollars because that's a lot of what's going to we're going to need to do it's just doesn't come anywhere close to what we need so something there's a bucket of money that we need and you need um and we have our own tourism promotion fund which I know
you're well aware of um there just isn't enough money so I I think this is an important first step in helping us do a better job in communicating to the larger um constituents tourists visitors and we're going to be so hard pressed um I
don't want to get into a political discussion but I mean we just have launched a trade war with Canada the Canadians are basically advertising that they are not coming to the United States oh we're getting the emails yeah ex I mean I I've I've seen the ads I've seen
the messages we have um we have you know in the provinces we have public officials saying they're not just is going to do business with the United States so this is a very serious problem and if this trade War continues to play out we're going to have the same problem
in Europe and we're going to have the same problem in other parts of the world so we are as they say sometimes we're kind of on our own and having to figure out how we work through this challenge as well um the federal government doesn't
provide money for international tourism and international tourism support um and as we all know intern tourism is a huge part of our Market here it's a very lucrative part of our Market um you know we've been spending a lot of time in yarma talking about how do we get into
cultural tourism historic tourism Heritage tourism how can we get into these areas where uh the international tourist uh Market is is really strong um so we've got a lot of uncertainty that we're dealing with here so I've I've
come become convinced that uh something like this is necessary now I've been on this Mass do bridge advisory committee um recently and you know I've asked the question of mass do how much money are they going to set aside to help us deal with this stuff and that's not part of
the program so like I said we're on our own we have to figure this out so I I think this has real Merit it has real value and um you know I appreciate um you know you giving me a lot of time because like I said I was a little bit skeptical at first but you've answered a
lot of my questions and uh based on at least a lot of the home homework that I've done I've come to recognize that this has real value and and the most important thing is the businesses that are paying have all agreed to do it so we're not using taxpayer money we're not
taking money from the public coffers we're basically consenting to allow 12 hotels in the town of Yarmouth to put forward their dollars and their resources to allow them to be taken presented to the state given to the
state or handed over to the state taxed by the state however that mechanism works but essentially we're just saying it's okay and we would be agreeing with them but there's nothing else there's no other burden to us so yeah no the the main purpose of and the need for the
town vote is really to create the jurisdiction so that the Department of Revenue can be the The Entity that collects the ass assessment right uh but I your point mark about self-sufficiency is something that we've talked about at the executive committee and with our entire
board uh we are living in an age of diminishing you know government revenue investment in in the businesses that we thrive on that we live live on here so whether it's uh having businesses pay more non
tax revenue uh non-general fund uh Revenue to promote themselves or building facilities event facilities to to bring more people here on the offseason where we don't have to build bigger roads we don't have to build bigger Wastewater systems uh you know we
really have a unique opportunity as a region to be much more self-sufficient than we are now and I think this is the first step in in that direction it's also about collaboration coordination working with Partners I mean the Yarmouth chamber has been uh a great
partner to work with uh and so uh I mean we used to run a visitor center that was like quarter mile down from where the Yarmouth visit Center is that didn't make any sense to me so instead we we give the arms chamber 25,000 to run one
you know and and that's you know was one of the the first Partnerships that I did when I got here it made sense and the yarm Chamber will benefit from this dist the creation of this District as well and we would be able to use some of the funds to uh publicize road work that
that crosses in front of the 12 hotels that are that are subject to this as well so you know there's a tremendous amount of Sy I like the town by Town approach better than the cape wide approach quite frankly it's easier to sort of dovetail the spending with the town's initiatives uh that way so we're very excited about
this and I don't think it could have a bigger impact in any Town than than uh Yarmouth thank you thank you madam chair Tracy well thank you both for coming and making this presentation we have to always uh get creative I'm never a fan
of um taxing but um my only concern and like Mark we had the ability to speak about some of these things is is that is that number Max right that yeah that collectively everything adds up to and
as you know we're in the middle of trying to find funding for Wastewater and our future Wastewater funding and they had allowed some ability for us to do some raising for the rooms tax I'm very proud of the uh tourism Revenue
fund that we have that was an an agreement many years ago that we worked out with our business Community to give back to them and it's worked out very well um I love the fact that these are businesses that want to participate I'm
my only concern is if we add this and then we find the need in the future to have to add another percentage I mean I never want to do it all in the tourism but we do have to remember that our infrastructure has to be built for the peak right so so to some extent these
rooms are playing into the need for the size of the uh infrastructure that we have to build but you know so we have all those percentages now and if we had to get another percent for Wastewater in the rooms tax in the future and then we
have this you know where does that leave us where's where's the amount where people are going to travel elsewhere so I don't want to 20% yeah 20% nationally is where you start to run into issues where people make other choices and uh I
think with this would be around 16% 16 so we have a little bit of flexibility yeah and the other issue I just would would raise is that part of what it's part of what puts us at a disadvantage is the 2.75% that's put on traditional lodging and short-term rental uh rentals for the
water pollution fund you know that gives a 25% reimbursement for Wastewater projects which which is an important thing to do it's something the chamber um was very much in favor of but you know the the business model of a tradition of a hotel versus a short-term rental is very different hotels hire a
lot of people they're subject to local regulations short-term rentals are not and for the most part they do not contribute as much to the nitrogen problem as single family homes and neighborhoods do that are used being used as short-term rentals so from the hotel's perspective uh they're willing
you know they paying it uh they're moving forward I think what we we want to what they want to do here is if we can start to generate more business more offseason business and we can bring the commercial tax rate up as well as increase the contributions to the water
pollution fund so there are two ways to get more money in the fund and to get more money locally for uh Wastewater one is to tax the other is to grow the business and so we really view this as as that kind of invest investment in the business well and the other thing that
you said one of the things that you can utilize it for is to attract new business and that for our economic development is something that we're really going to need to do and um you know when you talk about the ReUse of madak keys and the potential and I know that they're talking about tons of things but um you know potential for the
sports a sports complex in combination with these hotels I mean it's it's a win-win on that you know on that front so um you know I would never you got you've got the people who want to pay it I mean that's that's an amazing thing
because they see the benefit in it so thank you thank you Joyce oh well thank you for all this work I'm very much in favor of anything that gives Cape Cod residents more financial stability stability and security I mean anything
that would increase the the yearr employment and the full-time with Benefits kind of jobs that I'd love to see them have so um I look forward to hearing more about this thank you Liz um so you were saying Paul that the um
Yarmouth chamber is on board enthusiastic they would get a cut I guess yeah okay you could put it that way and when you say we'd have to have a public hearing we're assuming we would add this to town meeting is that no it doesn't require town meeting it only
requires a board of a board of a select board vote oh okay pursuant to legislation gotcha and when you say you could use the money for housing initiatives for the for Workforce are you talking about creating Workforce housing or how would that money be
utilized it's unlimited how we could use it it's really only limited by the amount that we have you know because yeah the amount of money so I mean probably not enough to create housing well to add to a fund add to H to a fund
to manage you know some of the seasonal housings subsidized housing Workforce housing I mean there are a lot of different ways that we can I think we can be helpful there okay and then the last question I had who decided on the 1.5% was it it was the
tdmd pre-formation committee so it actually the hotels itself and I this is a I mean we're asking businesses to charge more uh and so they bed they're they're the ones that had to make the choice um but if if they're willing to
do it um I think they understand why okay great thank you I think it's um should be supported I think it's a wonderful plan um I I really don't see a downside for us sen it um so let me just ask you
timing you said you've already have all of your signatures basically for the petition so when are you looking for being able to take it to the town clerk well we we would like to file as soon as possible because because we can only
start to collect on a quarterly basis so there there would have to be the public hearing and a vote and then there's 30 days to forward those results to the do so we we're pretty close to being able if we if we were to move forward now to
be able to start collecting on July 1st um if we get pushed out uh 30 days we'll probably miss that and wouldn't start collecting till October 1st so that's the only factor from our perspective but very respectful of Town's process and what a busy time of year it is okay so
what would be the drop dead date for us to have to approve it for you to be able to make your make your deadline of July 1st 60 days uh it's probably 90 days 90 days from now yeah so 90 days back from July July right yeah so June May a
April yeah so I think Madam chair if we could take this up right after town meeting I think that would be great that would be convenient for us so that works for you yeah if we were to file it would be like May 1 yeah okay yeah I think
that that probably works okay and we're c yeah we're certainly willing to work with you on that okay thank you thank you thank you very much we' like to work with you too thank you very much very much thank you appreciate your staying for the late
hour I love it it's like the good old day you having flashbacks Paul of them thank you moving on the agenda we have I just want to say one other thing Lisa I just want to congratulate you on your upcoming retirement that you've
announced and you've been a real uh rock star to the cape and to um the industry so thank [Applause] you thank you wasn't expecting that I won't go far already trying to rope me in and I said do that salary is going to
have to go up Paul the unpaid R nothing from nothing leaves nothing right exactly thank you our next item on the agenda is the discussion and vote regarding the hero act for the warrant article
Bob cbody sure okay we had the discussion from the last meeting um obviously the new legislation that was passed this year um has several
components related to the um veterans exemption on property taxes which is currently um 400,000 no
4,000 and um let's see um the total cost of the exemptions currently is 50,000 and the legislation has a couple of Provisions one U the town could adopt a cost of
living uh increase um on those exemptions which we estimate that would cost roughly 7,500 per year um or the um town could increase that exemption up to 100%
which that would cost 150,000 per year or or the town could select a percentage that is lower than that with the minimum of of 10% and um we had our assessors look into it I know um Jennifer has
examined it as well and um I I think you know the the basic problem with this legislation is as it's been handed to the town There's no funding source associated with it so what happens is that total exemption currently it's
150,000 a year comes right out of proposition two and a half and you know we're uh you know fairly low income community that is right up against its proposition two and a half um limit so
that this budget that we've had the public hearing on this evening not only do we have 100% of that prop two and a half taken um we're having difficulty keeping our initi
iives within that amount um hence the proposition two and a half override that's proposed in order to meet the public safety standards um for Staffing that we have in the community so we're we're already sort of bursting at the
seams with prop two and a half and last year we had um again educational override so you know we've had repeated issues with with the prop two and a half so um in order to uh fund an increase in
that exemption um it's difficult immediately to accomplish because we don't have a ready available funding source where the budget is is set you know we almost would need to I mean it competes directly with police fire
Education Services so um I think the recommendation that Finance director has made um have indicated that I concur with that is that where this legislation is so new um it may not be the greatest
idea to jump in immediately and send this for approval beyond the cost of living increase at this point um I I think we would need a little bit more time to do some financial planning on
how exactly to fund it and um you know perhaps we could build it into next year's budget and I I would say even at the 100% level I don't think that that's a wise thing to do to um boost that up 150,000 in one year maybe we could try
to do 25 or 50% come up with you know a cost of either you know up to 75,000 but but we would need to figure out how that works in the budget um and uh you know I am very mindful some of the other
departments that you know when you've gone through your meetings you know you've you've heard when you level fund me that's like decreasing my budget all of our major departments have have basically said that so it's a concept
that I think we have a lot of support for but the way it was crafted by the state as being another thing that comes under prop two and a half um I just think that it's something that we need to grow into a little bit and study and figure out how best to implement it so
um Mark Madam chair I'd like to make a Mo just to kind of move move this along so I'd like to move that the uh Board of Selectmen accept Clause 22i of the hero act for fitsy year 2026 and make
22j a priority for consideration for the FY 27 budget second discussion all those in favor I I I you have a unanimous on that one thank you thank you madam chair
okay moving on to the next item we have our review of the draft annual town meeting we also have within it um a list showing the uh Board of selectman recommendations that we can make so we can as we've done I think in the past
kind of knock some of them off this week uh and then hold whatever we feel needs further discussion for um our next Mee on the 18th that's agreeable with everyone sounds good I'll make a motion
that we uh move and recommend article one two 3 4 5 six 78 nine 10 stop me if anybody has any
issues no you're on a roll you're going well there 12 can I yeah pause for a second I and this is language so maybe we approve them and I discuss this as a side
bar um with Town staff it's just that the the um explanation for Dy has some language well it has to be updated anyway the whole the article all these exp all these are going to be updated it's the just and the numbers because um
because the vote last night that will change our debt number so but but but it's just the basic article yeah yeah this this document is a constantly being revised and updated
numbers are being adj Bas on changes right so keep that in mind so if there's a revision somewhere or a suggestion Now's the Time and or later not right now but yeah not not at this moment but got there's plenty of time um so you
were on 11 right yeah I I actually don't have uh I don't know let me just look at the end because I don't have an issue with any of these articles nor do I well if you Mo so we can move the we can make a motion to uh
move place no we've already placed it and recommend 1 through 34 with you know with like the motion that Mark just made changes obviously that article but I I am not in opposition to any of these
articles sounds good to me do I have a second on that yeah with a with the modification uh and I think we allow the CPA the community preservation committee don't we usually allow them to move those articles Tracy yes they that's what
they've done in recent so I would say make the move at least we have to just recommend the CPA articles yeah and that would be the motion would be revised just to recommend the CP arle y okay I second
that same thing true for finance no they take their own vote they do their own in fact their recommendations are already in taken all but like Richard said earlier today they've got a few left just has a few left you just get to kick back during
town meeting okay any other discussion all those in favor I I any opposed passes unanimous thank you moving on board and committee actions
appointments okay thank you thank you thank you Tracy I uh would like to nominate um Ellie Tierney as a regular member to the Conservation Commission the appointment is for a three-year unexpired term which will run through
June 2025 and I have a question about this um I feel like I'm nominating but if I'm chair of appointments I probably shouldn't be moving it no is that right you make a recommend you should you should recommend the appointment and
then I recommend so moved so moved second all in favor I I okay that's unanimous and then I would also like to recommend Peter Malpass as a regular member to the community Economic
Development Committee this appointment is for a three-year unexpired term which will run through July 2027 so moved second all in favor I I okay and then we get to a more
complicated thing here that's um um about special Municipal Employees and uh I think Bob wants to just give a very oh no Mar wants to give us you're welcome to you're welcome to take
it waiting all night for this it's quite all right I don't mind you Mary maslowski Town Clark so special Municipal Employee status is something that's provided for many of our part-time
unpaid lightly paid employees um um the conflict of interest law applies slightly different differently to those employees um if they have special Municipal Employee status so for an for example uh an attorney that might sit on
a board that is designated as a special Municipal Employee could actually still represent um before other boards and commissions at the town and it wouldn't have that that wouldn't be a conflict of interest so in looking at some of your more recent appointments to positions
um that don't appear on the existing list were the um Constable position and the um Municipal hearing office or position both of which fall under the the definition with um being part-time
being either unpaid or paid less than uh what would be the equivalent of 20 weeks of full-time service to the town so it seems to make sense that these two positions be designated special Municipal Employee status we reached out
to Town Council and as a result of that they have provided uh two motions that are in the letter the recommendation is that they are each done separately I move that the select board vote to designate the position of constable as special Municipal Employee position in accordance with Mass General Law chapter
268a Section 1 n do I have a second okay any discussion all in favor I I move that the select board vote to designate the position of Municipal hearing officer as a special Municipal Employee position in accordance with Mass General
Law chapter 268a Section 1 n second okay any discussion all in favor I I both pass and unanimous thank you very much we will update the list thank you Mary as always if questions come up on those on other positions that you don't see or
newer boards that aren't included in this list then just let us know when we can can um through Bob we vet it through so you're the one that keeps track of all this information we do great thank you um and I will say this I found this list because this list is outdated
though there's been others in between the time before you started this list was end so the only one we've done since I've been here was actually the capital budget committee so I remember I I want to say it was that I know of young on um because the capital budget
committee came out of um question with I think a planning board member also serving on the capital budget committee and the school building committee may have to look at the zba I think at one point in time we designated them ZB is on here no it was there was one after
this since my time here since I've been sitting here we we designated people maybe it was the community Economic Development Committee because of Paul tart if it was one of them so if we we can do some research and make sure that they get added to the list if that was done since I've been
here because there anymore that was one that that I'm not aware of yeah I was involved with the capital budget committee one so I'm happy to make sure that if there are others just let me know and we'll we'll try and backtrack it through your
minutes okay thank you Mary all right thank you very much moving on to approval of the minutes this is going to be a vote by necessity I move we approve the meeting minutes March 12th 2024 second okay all in favor I I that's
pass unanimous all righty uh moving on to our um upcoming agenda review we just talked about the fact that we'll be putting the Chamber of Commerce on our May
6th um meeting is there anything else that needs to be discuss tonight no but we might want to move the regional agreement off until he has the opportunity to look at that I I'd like to look at some other uh
options for uh that if he if he could Dr Smith could find ways to mitigate um the Peaks that might be something we may want to wait to yeah good point it's not going to happen before town meeting I'm
sure okay so let's take that off the April first or put it back yeah lower we'll move it out further yeah we won't lose it okay we all lose we'll keep it we'll keep it pending okay uh moving on then to individual
items any individual items Mark pass Tracy well the biggest item is the parade on Saturday that we should make sure that every somebody was going to bring that up yes yes so we discuss our outfits well we're going to wear green and we are all Irish in Yarmouth on
Saturday so I invite you to be as somebody who happens to be 98% Irish according to according to ancestry.com I'll allow you all to come on with me I'm Irish so I can I can do it and we have the candy under lock and
key there's got to be a lot of candy b a lot of candy we ran out again last year Bob you can't get enough candy you can't get enough candy add whatever Mary Mary Alice is getting tell her to get more the kids are waiting not only the
kids the adults okay and uh walking in the parade will be Tracy yes and Joyce and Liz and myself I Bob I can walk and Bob will be there I have to say that due to my infirmity I
will have to be riding in the parade and anyone can welcome to join me if they like to but look at it I can be the receptical of the candy for you for one should we add to our agenda list the position taking a position on the lottery for the tech school writing
a letter I think we should have a discussion about it first I think we should yeah so that should go on the bottom of the agenda yeah items list we can yeah and we should talk talk about it after we hear from Bob right because they're going through a regular they're
going through a process right now well it'll be on the bottom so it won't come up for a long time okay uh consent agenda do I have a motion to accept the consent agenda so move second all right all in favor I I
thank you Bob you're up um I do have an item I I want to bring a board members um up to date on I'm more than a little bit excited having you know been working with Bill and Karen green and Community Development um on our Economic Development initiatives it's really the
timing on that is absolutely critical to begin to I mean we we have the um economic analysis of the the market data for the Route 28 Corridor we have the mixed use study um and we have some grant funding
lined up and obviously the um type of you know recruit we've been doing for our Economic Development position is not really available immediately to help in that process and we've developed a strategy uh to U make a more of a
temporary provisional appointment of uh a much more experience iced and seasoned Economic Development leader to come in and help us and to work with Community Development and Bill and get these studies off the ground in a real meaningful way and to begin to develop
this data that we need as a community to number one to shape and articulate this Economic Development vision and even more importantly to inform the capital and the comprehensive planning process that we're doing right now that without
that the economic development section of that is is not going to be completed and um we've been doing some um Recruitment and um you know we feel that that we found um a candidate that um is highly qualified and has a lot of skills and
can help us you know move this forward so that by the end of this fiscal year that we're um moved forward with that market analysis and there's um a lot of things with we look forward to having this board this select board be critical
stakeholders in the shaping of this economic vision and I think with a little extra help we're going to do that so um I wanted to bring that up with the board um we're working on putting the final touches on that right now and hopefully have um someone available by
the middle of March to start and that um as soon as is practical um you know we'll be in front of the select board laying out a scope of services and we we do have all of this study information um bill has just been um doing Yan's work
setting everything up for us we just need right now you know a little more work to help assist that along and so I just wanted to let you know um it's a high priority that none of us have sort of uh let out of our mind for a minute and you know we feel that Now's the Time
to start to move this forward and so I just need to understand what you're saying instead of hiring an economic development person you're going to use those funds to hire a consultant consult to work on a particular item yeah it's it's um less of a consultant and more of
um the uh a temporary provisional appointment of someone that it's not going to be full-time but it's going to be um actual time um working in the town coordinating these things so not there'll be coordinating Consultants but
also all of us the stakeholders working with the chamber working with the select board bring in the cedc and uh coming up with some Vision items so it's more of a consider it it's a a temporary provisional appointment um and you know
someone that that will be able to you know but the scope of work that they're going to be doing is the same as the position as if you would have hired somebody or are you some of the some of the duties it's not going to be uh conducting um ribbon cuttings for say
for example the new pizza place uh you know we're still going to work with the chamber and stuff that but it's going to be um immediately we have a detailed scope of services to coordinate um the studies involved in the market analysis the U mixed use analysis A lot of the
that high level stud work opposed to it I think it's a great idea because we need somebody to focus on it and move it forward but we also need this other person too so I'm hoping that we still continue to try to find a full-time person to do we're going to do that too
and the so the the vision is to to get that full-time and when when we do it's not likely to be uh someone as highly experienced as and skilled as we need immediately to conduct all of this maret maybe you need to split the things and
have task Masters right so I mean it sounds like you get a lot on your plate it' be great to achieve some of those short-term goals but in the long term I think having somebody here for the business Community would also be beneficial and and that's what what that's what we want to do so this that's right this is a temporary
thing to get the um Economic Development um okay Vision going we we see it as kind of the foundation of the program so that when someone comes in full-time uh that that they can have the benefit of the the type of analysis and that we can
have the benefit of the vision how it's going to look what we see the economic development and and that would help hopefully sort of jump start when we get the fulltime person here that's a permanent hire okay yeah the big problem my my in my
estimation is the big problem that we have is and it's not just Yarmouth but hiring a full-time person for that pay in that position has been and I think it will continue to be a challenge um you're looking you're we're just looking
for a lot and um we were fortunate that Kyle pandini was with us who came in probably at lower than than what he was entitled to um and he was capable but he came in here he learned He Got Talented he was mentored by good people and then
what happened he found a comparable job paying more at some other place so I think this becomes something that um I I think I think this is the only fix available so I think it's great that you're doing this but I think it's still and while we can work hard to try to
find somebody to step in um I think it's just going to continue to be a challenge so I think this is a perfect move I think this smart I if I may as as Bob said uh it's really about setting the foundation for when the person does come in they have a
program and a plan at the you know full-time position salary you're not going to find sort of the person who is gifted in some of the model running and numbers crunching that we would at this very strategic position once we get
through that phase where we've got the documents and the understanding of what's moving next we can bring somebody in to sort of operate it that's really what uh this is all about great I think it's a wonderful plan great idea so
we'll be back in um to talk to you about the scope and the process and everything and um don't give us too long of a leash all right we'll yank it soon okay do I have a motion motion to adjourn Madam chair second okay all in
fav favor by thank you all very much for your patience and attention tonight