good evening I'm Berard green chair of the Brookline flood board and this is the a special Workshop meeting of the SEL board for June what is it 18 2024 um first I want to go into executive session for a local 950 International Union of firefighter and and ask me contract discussion uh I move like for going to the executive session for the purpose of discussing strategy related to bargaining with Union employees discussion of strategies related to bargaining with Union employees must be discussed in in executive session because an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargain position of the town and the chair so declares an exec session therefore to be necessary all in favor please indicate by saying I Sandman hi V on uh SL board will reconvene an open session following the executive session ex session I can't you anyway so there's no point yes I do e e e e e e e e e e e e board meeting at the golf course in Workshop session for June 18 2024 um we start off but first item on the agenda is uh opening remarks and that's opening remarks that I will here to talk about why we're here what we're doing what's going to come out of this so uh we've had summer workshops over the past few years uh and but this year I want to use the workshop as a way to incorporate the select board's goals and priorities into the budgeting process and the final budget voted by town meeting and more effective way than in the past the budget starts with uh the financial report which is a pulling together of the requests of the Town departments uh and is put together by the Town Administrator in the financial plan following the financial forecast and preliminary Capital Improvements plan that we hear about in December it's reviewed by the select board and the advisory committee and the advisory committee makes its recommendation to town meeting who must review adjust and pass the budget by the end of the years the select board as the chief executive body of the Town must play an active and strong role in the financial management of the Town even though the budget is not our budget this includes making sure that our priorities are considered in the budget process and if necessary the reasons why Town departments U may not include our priorities in their budgeting but that's a conversation that uh uh we have to understand their points of view we do that with a goals and priorities report that we will produce in preliminary form in this workshop and I see we have paper up there uh we will receive comments from town staff after the uh Workshop uh and finalized this so-called report during uh select board meetings over the summer so that it is ready when the budget process kcks off in September this Workshop will develop the S board's fiscal 2026 goals and priorities report that will include fiscal year 2024 accomplishments and fiscal year 2026 budget priorities and non-budget priorities the purpose of the goals and priorities report as I said is to make the select board's views known to town departments as they begin their budget work in September and to the advisory committee when they begin working on the budget in the when the select board begins to review the financial plan on or around February 15 it can have a conversation that includes the extent to which some of the select board's priorities are included in the budget request submitted to the County Administrator and the reason why others may not be later Charlie uh Charlie young will discuss goals and priorities in the context of best practices and what rating agencies are impressed by so these goals and and priori you have have some important purpose so with that uh unless there are any questions or comments I'd like to turn it over to um Christina Meda who's going to discuss the community survey that we we initiated back in the summer I believe and um you know what what we've heard from the community that you we should use to um develop our goals and and priorities as well as other things we heard out in cre so good morning so we're just going to go over the the national Community survey poal we're going to cover some of these different topics Community design Mobility utility safety education arts and culture and so forth um just a quick uh information about the study so this is the fourth time that has done the national Community study um previously in 2013 2016 and 2018 um this year study was conducted from March 15th to May 9th um uh a group of randomly sample 3,000 residents were households were selected and we got 471 responses received our open participation survey which was sent out after the um randomly selected house was about 800 um so we got about 1262 responses total and they did um weigh the results to uh overall and there's about 95% of confidence with that small Marg than there um poal does more than um 500 comparison communities Across the Nation so when later we're talking about the different benchmarks when I say it's you know about it's standard or higher or lower than the national Benchmark we comparing to the 500 communities that have done this Across the Nation and that about 50 million residents um so just uh the national benchmarks we received 42 higher than normal uh noral than the national benchmarks similar about 103 and four received low reading um comparing to the previous survey done um pre pandemic in 2018 five received higher ratings 54 receiv about the same and 39% 39 re ratings we don't believe I think um that is along with the National Standard as well and it's not much much lower there are a couple that are significant and we can um will be addressing those later um going through they gave us this Gap analysis which um if you look at it the um slow down just sure sorry trying to make up for last time that's you don't need to make up for last time sure um so this Gap analysis and in the green will show where where it's rated as quality so permability um Quality was rated at 64% and the importance was rated at 88% um so that is something that um the the large gap is something that we need to address did I I sent you a note you did and am I off the beam on this no I believe you're correct and so if we look at um if we go down to uh safety um safety is really high quality and um at 97% but 72% important so um from what I gain from that and I think that you did too is that it's rated really highly so it's not as important if it was more important it would um if it was less quality it'd be more important because we weren't such a high level it seems to me that the Biograph is flipped um but um oh I no right so yeah so they're comparing the importance versus the quality so Mobility is something that we should take a look because there's a large gap between the quality at 64% versus The Importance so that's that's a problem that we need to an area that we we should address utilities is very close so the smaller the Gap U I think the better we're meeting residents expectations of how we're doing again there's always room for improvement but utilities economy Community design we uh inclusivity engagement um were right on the the half of the expectations versus um the importance um things like um and I'll go over more of these in detail um individually um but the natural environment Parks and Recreation they're quite the same where they're they're rated highly quality at 86% each um the importance at 76% so I think anywhere where you see the blue dot in the higher percentile and the Green Dot in the lower is an area to to look at and address so Mobility utilities even though there's a small Gap and with that one I believe it was the the lowest rated um utility was access to highspeed Internet um to look at that um same with Community design there is a importance of 74 versus the quality of 72 so there's a small Gap but again looking at that to improve our safety is great um education and arts um is set is has a good Gap so um we're doing well people aren't going to think that it's more important it's almost like they're you know it's not taken for granted but it's expected that this service is going to remain as high so it's not an important point to to keep on doing as long as we keep the the standard that we're setting right now um and same with health and wellness um theimportance is low um and the quality is high so going to safety um it's not like as high as important as as in quality um yeah so I think we we just run over that but it's rated higher than the national Benchmark for quality and lower for importance um if you look at the police STS in the annual report from uh there's a comparison from 2023 to 2022 and they're roughly the same in terms of uh part A crims I think it was 810 this in 2023 versus 82 in 2022 so that um those step stats are staying steady and safe and um looking at um the different things so um you know the some of the other stats are you know 79 74% of those um arrests or were committed by people outside of bookine which is um about 206% inside bookine so can I ask a Qui question number so you addressed the overall response rate and the breakdown did every question get answered by every responding or could there be could this be higher or lower could someone skip a question um I'm I'm not sure I can ask that question but I think that every question was answered as far as I'm aware but yeah the overall feeling of safety it's it's label is much higher than uh the national Benchmark so we're doing great there um except for the shooting last night um one thing um one thing I not is so one of the things that um I I noted with you know fire prevention education and emergency prar were the lowest rated among safety so just um you know looking at to increase fire prevention education emergency preparedness um they don't have a lot of I I just met with them they don't have a lot of um social media reach and so we're working with them to um put their information out via Health police fire other channels that they work closely with and align with with their office and so that we can get their messages out there and increase their reach and um make my presidents more aware of emergency preparedness offerings that um that office work so hard to to do education art and culture so um it's similar to safety it's rated higher than the national Benchmark and it's similar in importance versus quality um something to note um education that 50 uh 58% of the respondents are 55 plus so um seeing the education rated so highly when um 50 almost 50% of our respondents may not be a typical um uh parent age um and maybe on on the higher end of that um kids in high school just uh something important to note um I would note that I'm the exception to [Laughter] that okay that's why I said typical but um again there's all that um many people may be to the school themselves yes so that ask clarifying question um I'm sure a lot of people going look at this and sort immedately say with the earlier slide oh they're you know that that's in reference to our Police Department um and they'll look at this and say this is in reference to our Public Schools but it really isn't that is it isn't this sort of just asking people um you know uh how satisfied are you with public saf do you feel safe you know that um and how how how important do you think or how how much do you think bookine is a good community for Education um it's not exactly the same it's sort of the same but it's not exactly I was a different because there's a lot of people who send their kids to private schools there's a lot of people who when they hear that question think oh everybody in Brooklyn's really well educated it must rank really high in education um and it's a well-educated community um or it's a safe Community but for a bunch of reasons like she mentioned fire is are they thinking about the fire protection are they thinking about EMTs are they about the police department you know it doesn't get very granular at all it's but it's they're rating the surface or or we don't have much crime whereas we're well aware that in nearby neighborhoods they do have a lot of crime um so it's a it's a general do it mean so give me the what it means so when you I'm just trying to the distinction that you're making what help me with that I should be interpreting this question reference how do you rate the Brooklyn Public Schools it says how how do you feel about the quality of Education in Brooklyn and it doesn't say how do you rate the Brooklyn Police Department it says how do you feel about the level of Public Safety in Brooklyn those are two different things I I agree with John's point and it does make it a little more difficult to evaluate our own departments what we need to do internally if we just have sort of a more macro level assessment by topic and not so much the specific as John's mentioning uh so and I think John explained it well in terms of Education we also have private schools we have universities it can also be to some people a question about uh we have a lot of people with phds in Brookline so we re we rate education highly but that doesn't really answer the question about our people satisfied with our public school system and similarly with public Public Safety fires included in that and just sort of uh compar comparatively speaking to other communities we have lower crime but that's not necessarily only a reflection of our police of course the large part of is but my point is you don't really know what motivated some of these answers so when we're looking at this there's a question I think it's a distinction okay move on um so all these graphs that we're doing is the overall opportunities for education and col show the overall feeling of safety so it does get a little bit more granular in terms of um you know please break the quality of services in Brooklyn the police services crime prevention Animal Control um there's questions about how how safe do you feel in your neighborhood how safe do you feel in the downtown commercial area how do you do you feel safe from property crime violent crime blood and fire so that comes later yeah so we do get more Grand I'm just trying to give an overhead view a high level view um this and I have made some some notes of things that I think would help hopefully inform your strategic planning ear later in the day um so continue on with the arts and culture so um the K12 so K through2 education um was rated 86% it's higher than the national vetar so that specific is saying that the you know the schools and bookline are rated highly um Adult Educational opportunities are also rated affordability of child care in preschool um kind blump together with the education arts and culture I'm sorry Mike yeah there's one thing that me ahead a little bit one thing that um struck me is that a very substantial number of people didn't really know anything about government structure and and I'm wondering how people who don't know anything about government structure know that they're in a town uh have a a valid have a useful opinion about some of these questions so they know they feel safe when they walk down the street but you know but it's still a valid it's still a valid their opinion is still very valid if they feel safe whether they know we're a town or a city well that's comp other communities around the country where the residents are equally equally uninform right okay and it's important to note that this these questions are standard across the country yes so my point with the um about town government those were our custom questions this time so we may not have as much um I don't think see with the national compar but it's probably a valid probably not so different from the rest of the world okay sorry and we will get that so natural environment and Parks and Recreation they were both um as you saw earlier with the Gap analysis very similar to the National Benchmark mul for quality and importance um so the quality again I think you're seeing with safety the quality is really good so it's not going to rate super high in importance but it is still it's still up there um and there's work for improvement so and our Brooklyn open space we do maintain um higher than average that one of the questions um parks and wreck um one of the things I noted was a fitness opportunities were were down a little bit it's similar to National but um I think those probably could be pandemic related is you're not going to see it um all those people who were teaching classes and things I think found it found it hard to come back M after the where people going go to group classes and things like that so um and again uh the town parks recreation program and we're all down a little bit um but um it's on par with the national or nationally except we we are a pin there because that is a concern that many people have the availability of fields of of recation resources so and this so this is 8 6% positive rating right what was how was it how was what was the importance versus that was back it would been great if that was on the sh um the importance for both parks and parking Rec and National environment were 76% and what was the quality 86 for both okay so the quality was high and the importance is relatively High yeah health and wellness um so again similar to benchmarks it's low but similar um the lowest that we were seeing in this it um for the health and wellness questions were um that went down significantly were the uh availability of affordable quality food affordable Quality Healthcare availity preventative Ser health services and affordability of quality mental health care so and that's all related to affordability um access and we're talking about this is a survey being done after a period of inflation and so it's inter not surpris not a surprise yeah but overall the health and wellness were um the one of the questions was um rate your overall health and it was rated higher in 2024 at 86% versus 2018 at 78% so people feel really healthy but I think that if we were able to provide more access to services and Affordable Services um that people would take advantage of those so I think you phrased it as affordability with quality but is that later separated out so that we know are people responding to the affordability issue of of food or are they responding to the quality food um the the question was phed is availability of AFF affordable quality food um I think that there does get to in the economy um I believe that there's uh like the cost of living I think and um I guess not not really a lot of that that breakdown unfortunately and the way they did it because these are one of their standard questions that they just anecdotally I hear complaints about both so I I'm just wondering which is really the driving force here I think it going into economy um it's you know similar overall it's a great place to work great place to visit but the cost of um living is a significant pain Point um is rated at uh 15% which is actually lower than the the national Benchmark um in terms of um how do you rate each following so they rated it very very low cost of living so I think that goes along with the affordability so uh it is the same development as well um as vibr of downtown is a percent off but um it's 1% off of pre pandemic number so the fact that we're already back there I think it's good sign um commercial uh we're doing commercial area development restaurant Partnerships working with the new chamber of commer executive director um and so I think that there's low expectations on the economy if we looking back at that previous number um that the quality is 79% and the importance is the same 79% so going hand in hand um I think that um there's low expectations that the economy will have a positive impact so I think how looking at how we can address that and going back to good work affordable um affordability of quality food and mental healthare is something to to per with that joh I'm just going to make a clarifying point I hope it's clarifying for people who are watching at home um but first a question we we are going to release this entire report y have have we released it going going to present it here and we will release it after this after this presentation at some point today people will be able to click on a link look at the entire report and what they are hearing um Christina recite as sort of sub level uh ratings within each category those are all in the report yes and so um people will get a good sense of the general overall uh score that people have given to Brook line in these various areas but they will also be able to see all of these subcategories and which of them were you know better and which of them were not so hot you know um so so that that's why there's more than just what people are seeing on the screen this report yeah right um this one just think about that Gap analysis SL that comparison between what people expect from people and what they feel they getting um which I think is the the best way to put youate raing I just I think we have to be really careful with that because of take Public Safety as an example the fact that people feel very safe and they don't relate it you know their the importance of it is some diminished perhaps because they do feel safe it's not an invitation to C Services uh and make places less safe than common line with expectations and so and vice versa that's also true right if they're very happy with our Park of recreation yeah but you know it's high quality and they're rating it a little bit lower doesn't mean we're going to go cut Park and right right yeah that's exact and so the Gap analysis thing I think we have to as I said we need to be careful about that talk about certain talk about that Sal and just a quick a quick point if I may in for John's point there is for each one of this pie chart there's all the questions behind that are in in the report on page 12 uh as an example shopping opportunities within Brookline went from 75% I assume is the quality level in 2018 down to 67% for this survey so there is you can see the trends and some of them are I don't know what significant would be I think they said plus 6% yes yeah the Devils the details um so moving on to utilities I think we I touched upon it before that really um it's rated higher than the national Benchmark it's either all higher or similar and affordable highspeed internet access is the lowest um with no comparison in 2018 but everything else is higher rated than um so in terms of garbage collection drinking water sewer Services storm water management power utility Utility Billing um all of those were rated higher or similar in terms of um the quality and again the ACT affordable high speed internet access was the the notable low um point for for the utilities and and when you say higher it's not in comparison to the last survey it's to the National Benchmark yes so when you so when people are looking at this online and there is notes um to to to to delineate that but um so you'll see where it was ranked in 2018 when we last did it in 2024 and then it says similar higher lower that is compared to the National LK uh who design so um again the quality to importance is very similar it's a little bit lower than 2018 but it's higher than the the national Benchmark um overall design is at 72% it's very similar to the National Benchmark um the well plann ditional commercial growth is something um that is a little bit lower that we um around 44 45% respectively so I'm looking to be improved upon but I know that with a comprehensive plan coming up um I think that will be hopefully addressing that we can get that information to the planning department to to B and fact that again they also the quality new development is a little bit low but they're you know looking at the Chestnut Hill area study and other things that we're going um that they're looking at and studying and making sure that we're you know creating residential growth responsibly and in the best areas um we'll hopefully address some of those concerns yeah a quick Point what's really interesting is and I again this there's a danger with saying comparing us to the national average versus comparing us to us um public places where people want to spend time decreased by 10 points went from 87 to 77 that's significant um not that could be Co hangover I don't know but um I certainly think that's uh that's something to pay attention also you know most of these are down yes neighborhood um overall design is that your neighborhood a good place to live um just it's it's as compared to us not National John well and to that point um it's my understanding um just based on a little bit of briefing that we've had on this that that is consist National that there's gen there's kind of a Malay you know in all the communities that are included in this survey that is uh uh a little bit across the board and people don't quite rate things as highly as they did before Co in many many of these instances and and we're kind of consistent with that did we get National Trend as part of I don't think yeah she said we we we talked yeah we talked with pul we asking additional information that we can then distribute about the national Trends but they guard that information but what they what we were told is it is on Trend with the national averages we are exper you know all communities are experiencing a decrease postco the one area where they did point out that they they didn't see this uniformly across was open space um our decreases in open space are a little bit different than what they're seeing in other areas so this idea public space and open space that is different and I think that also you know we we kind of hypothesized internally what does that mean and I do think you know Co is still obviously a part of it the fact that those facilities were used you know heavily during and then this question of more people became familiar with them more people became familiar with the programming more people became involved and therefore there's a desire for increased services in that regard increased maintenance and we trying to be and you know frankly things like the problem trash collection problems you know we want to be responsive to those issues and that could be what we're seeing driving those numbers but we do need to be careful just because it's a national Trend we don't have to accept that that's right just because everybody else is grumpy does yeah no like Christin yeah yeah all the points um so going next to Mobility um the the quality is rated low um and the importance is rated high so again I um pointed out earlier something to take a look at and factor in it it is higher than the national Benchmark but um still um uh so public parking was rated lower um the uh the ease of travel by car public transport bicycle walking is higher than before and much higher than the national Benchmark so we're creating um you know the ability to to walk ride to bike go through the town um a little bit easier um public transport and walking and biking is the national um Benchmark and then MBTA Transit Services um that was rated um a little a little bit lower um from 66 in% to in 2018 to 60% in 2024 it is again higher than the national Benchmark but um hopefully with the the new NBTA accessibility at um award money that we just receive that that accessibility will you know increase over once they're completed and allow for a little bit more billing maybe that will be um part of the ease by public transportation also just making sure that you trains are running yeah I was going to say needs of travel by public transportation may be that improving the stations which will do with that NTA safy Z and but it also has to do with the fact that the NBTA service went to help the last and so you know I I think that that reflects as much something that's beyond that Direct Control as something is withinin to only go down six% isn't too bad I if you ask people what the their rating was of D in particular I think would drop you know precipitously then going to incl inclusivity and engagement um there was no 2018 data so right now we're sitting at 62% for um the residents connecting engent with their Community um they felt like it 62% on excellent good there for um it is a great place to raise children um we could do a better job with um the data is low for making residents feel welcome um attracting diverse residents and making people feel valued and respected uh another point was um do people have the opportunity to participate in social events activities volunteer and participate that's also fairly low um when looking at the the data and has didit um and so um looking to you know working with staff to put information out on social media um and my role in making sure that we're promoting early often we're getting that information out there and working with office to to further um respond to to those feelings and then make it more inclusive and engaged Community just just a quick point to highlight um don't don't start talking you said Paul yeah I know but you started talking with four so and I'm trying to keep this under control because everyone wants to talk so okay um 11 Point reduction in Brook lines that could place to retire so 74% to 63% don't know why but that's a significant reduction I think that's probably one of the largest reductions we've seen in the report since 2018 since 2018 right um there a couple this is actually U this section is bit disturbing uh the to participate inunity matters openness and accept of community towards people of diverse backgrounds is down pretty substantially and okay it may be similar to the rest of the country but that's that feels really remember the environment we've had over the last few years and and the talking book line down I think that had L um okay um DAV you going to say to Paul's point about the 11% drop in Brooklyn being a community to retire and that might be a reflection as we've heard many uh suggest that we aren't going as far as we possibly could to help our seniors which are a growing share of our population so I wonder how much of the D motivating factor uh was sort of the senior input about feeling that we're not really addressing their needs fully which also ties into the mobility issue to some extent uh so the question about that we had about Mobility seemed pretty broad but I understand that it uh breaks down into greater specifics but I don't think it's squarely an assessment of bmta it's all looking at can people get around from one part of town to another for instance and can they do so in a safe Manner and is there sufficient lighting and as we work on complete streets I think it's important to look at all those factors J uh I just want to mention a couple of things uh that it's 2018 is a it's very important that we're talking about a comparison to 2018 here 2018 is not only preco 2018 pre George Floy okay and there's been a national conversation going on since 2019 or 2020 um about these very deep issues of whether America broadly speaking is a place that you know diverse popul feel welcome him um it would be extraordinary if Brookline wasn't part of that conversation and we all know who oberved on this select work we have been part of that conversation and you know the the whole question of how can you be inclusive how can you be inviting how can you be welcoming to diverse populations has been something that we have been obsessed with and working on justifiably and something we should continue to work on but it doesn't surprise me at all people don't quite feel as good about that right now as they did in 2018 2018 comparatively was kind of a a more innocent sort of a time before before we started to have these wrenching National conversations yeah you said you know I think what this suggests is that we ought to be conscious of how we have those discussions yeah because I think how we had those discussions really influences people's percep of accounts and mention one other thing um some of these questions for example whether the brook line is a good place to retire really is a question about Boston and Massachusetts right so I mean I think we have to be aware of that fact Mike yeah I was that's true certainly um affordability is a key key question here and the the other thing I was going to ask um but was you mentioned that the um average respond the age of the average respondent was 55 60% of those 471 respondents were um 6 right a young a young group well compared to us but I guess um but relatively relatively close to retirement a lot of cases I I just I wonder whether I suppose that's the that I I was I was going to say that I think if you survey younger people they might have a different opinion but on the other hand we're talking about people who are closest to the actual actually thinking about you see but if those 40% of the 18 to 55 year olds that I'm not you know I'm I'm here for my my the first part of my career and I'm probably going to retire somewhere in state that could that could possibly spe that number and I can take a look at that the other thing David is is the specific thing I was talking about with um uh uh Mobility was the the the rating on U public transportation uh and whether your older young the m is yes we're going to get into those custom questions so um how familiar at all are you with re of government so um as po suggested about 43% close to half if not at all familiar some familiar 33 and very familiar 23 people who are um you know very participating or they know how to to get their um questions and concerns to over well overall how well you think the CL government has performed ensuring your needs are met um very good excellent so you can see here um those percentages it would be nice to be a little more on the excellent but I think we're um a total of about 67% 66% um excellent to good yeah um I'd like to know how people can who say that they they're not familiar with government can rate how well government does but we just that's an odd but it's a good point yeah I think you there's a tendency to say well I don't know I don't know so I'll take a middle number I take a middle choice just that one point made I think it is actually possible for people to rate how effective a government is without really understanding how that government works because they probably look at it from the picture of I feel comfortable in my community I like how things are running I don't know the specifics of How It's run but however it is they're doing a good job um working with members of town meeting on Town related problem or individuals again a small a very large number have not looking for city council care and then those who those who have worked with members of the Town um uh about 59% 60% have had a good interaction only 17% had a poor interaction Paul I do think to go back about this your comment about city council um I I actually think that we should take this lack of understanding or interaction with town meeting that we could actually help with that by improving accessibility how do you find out who your town meeting you need to go to Brook line Town meting bios and download a spreadsheet in order to be able to get the the list of Tom meeting members in your community I I think there you know there are certainly ways that we can improve accessibility to our elected official but the first thing is you have to know this that's true well I mean that's Communications is we had a discussion with the incom with a new moderator about this issue and we're going to have more discussions over the summer about how to more generally make legislative files and information more accessible um and working with town meeting to build out um you know increased capacity on that how how do you give residents a civics lesson on what type of government we have and you know that that there's a need to look for or identify the town meeting members we try you know we you know we've since I've come in even before you know Melissa and her and the whole team have done you know we do the budget 101 we do you know try to basic form of government things now that we have a dedicated Communications capacity we're going to try and expand that out um really we want people to know who they need to pick up the phone and call if there's an issue uh or how if they want to Advocate on behalf of a certain position who do they call and more importantly when do they do it how can they be most effective at it rather than saying you know coming coming to town meeting with the expectation that I can you know change something overnight versus knowing that where you actually have to come into the process is much earlier um or you know that it takes a long time for you know systemic changes to be made but they can be made through Community you know feedback so all of those are you know things that we're working on to better reach out to the community and make sure that they know that you know we're here we're here to serve their needs and we want to be responsive to their concerns great I have seen other communities and I may be saying this and maybe creating more work myself in the future but um cies and so we talked about that y um just they're just you know different are you involved with Town governing bodies no is overwhel so we have the small part of people participating today I think that's actually I that makes me feel a little bit better about the survey yeah well because it's a survey of the answers that com back from s of the general public as opposed to town meeting members and boards and commission meeting to that point numbers coming from the General Public so I think you said that this portion had about 470 respondents is that considered a statistically significant sample on a toan of the size um that's a question for PTO but I know that we again we had sent out 3,000 of the random sample what they call it it's a probability based random sample so it absolutely is like the highest level of statistical you know basically a representative sample it is a representative sample that's much so so their metric is that you you send to 3,000 people homes homes and then whatever response rate you get is what you get right and then they also and then we also did the open part of the survey and I compared the the um custom questions that we had done for the um the closed directed portion of the survey is 471 and compared it to the 791 we results we got from the open survey and they're within two or 3% of each other so was a very representative of um whether you were targeted or you participate in the open survey and the open survey was that the one that had 700 something yes almost 3,000 is about 10% of the household so and ie it's waited for North I know it was waited I'm not sure if it was North versus South but I believe that the yeah it's yeah it's waited it's weighted based on demographics so it's not weighted based on geography it's weighted based on demographics but I think to Mike and David's points the one area where you can see that they can't really control for demographic or control for the sample or where it may sample may be somewhat un unrepresentative is the question of how many of you voted in the last local election because that response rate was 68% and we know for a fact that typically in local elections we get a turnout of around if we're lucky 20% so this is this sample is demographically weighted and so is demographically representative of the town's makeup but it is a more engaged population than the town as a whole so you are getting responses from people who are are already more engaged than the average person is what I would say Mike disagrees that's the easiest question to lie about that is true people do lie about that so for in 2023 from the annual report it was 30% of people voted in annual Town election 20 the special State primary and then because of this this special state election um 125 of the 2 um eligible voters for C I was just going to add that um one thing that was positive is the response rate I believe was higher this time around the 16% response rate on on the 3,000 was higher than the last yeah 300 do we any sense because I I would think that you'd get more responses from houses and sth fund and apartments good question but I don't think that they factored that in I mean I'm not even sure that might be something that they could tell us if they dug into the data by looking at addresses but we would have to give them all that information to do that say South you know there one thing to that if we do it in I'm assuming 2027 that we could have that data sorry David just in followup to what you're asking Bernard I think it would be useful to look at those addresses and the response rate just because North Brooklyn and South Brooklyn are very different in terms of of lifestyle and so to sort of know what it is that North Brooklyn is saying what it is that South is saying what it is that the two have in common what the two have different I think would be informative yeah it tell us where we need to maybe Focus some resources and you know some attention right that might be the kind of thing that would require them to basically redo the whole analysis they might charge us for something like that or it could be so we could look into what that what that looks like or as could be the basis of the next survey look we really want to do two surveys North and South per line and then combine the results and be able to look at separately um because what my concern is like for example let's say they have 3,000 households and they're demographically controlled but a greater percentage happens to be on the northern half of brick line and the South half of brick line and so now basically all the statistical significance in the study could be thrown out of FL because you're looking at a specific smaller group um which they maybe not they maybe didn't control for when they put together the study so we can we can ask them if it's Poss possible for them to just slice the data like that but it might be something that have to be done sort of Happy outset the next time you your I was just thinking about zip code that's a very rough 02467 is chest Hill um that could be an easy way to have them slice the data because you have a very simple you know you don't necessarily have to tell them which streets and addresses be a lot Street or or prync that's a good that's a good way to think about it collected fre yeah we could use did they collect freeing I don't yeah we'd have to well any that's something might take a little bit more set up but I think it's an interesting idea okay so just to wrap up on high priorities um people were asked to rate um 14 or 15 different um Public Safety Road sidewalk all all all these different ones and these were rated as high priority um for for clim in the next five years these are rated the high medium there was like 40% 40% high medium uh medium high libraries um and then medium were the uh the remainder none were related low or not important at all um and at the end they were asked to rate out out of those 15 which is the very most important and the top 72% were Public Safety schools planning Community Development Road and sidewalk repair and Lance and so the rest of the 11 or 12 that were didn't even great um in the double digits for per for being important so so just this reminds me when we were looking at one of the earlier slides about uh benchmarking through na uh National Trends we saw that Public Safety was not the highest priority macro level but here it comes out number one and so I think that speaks to the point that uh Paul and Mike addressed earlier that um just because relative speaking we might be satisfied doesn't mean it's still not something that's important to the community but I also just wonder how you square these two numbers where off the national Benchmark I think it was something like 59% so they found it important and yet on this one uh it's the number one to meate reasons they want it to remain like as a priority to make sure that we're keeping on top of it and that we continue to have that 97% excellent service that we're that we become that the the town has become a customer do andess sure yeah I was just going to add that I think it's when you give people the opportunity to weigh several options you know what I mean they have a lot more they they um think of it more of a spectrum you know what I mean a spectrum of what's important but when you say to them what is the single most important thing Public Safety still rules so I think it does likely support what's being said here which is like oh even though Public Safety is rated lower importance on that s on the The Gap analysis it will remain the most important thing so if you cut it you will that will greatly dissatisfy you greatly dissatisfy uh I I also found this one interesting though and that choose one um really gave good results um I think yeah yeah I um I don't know if it's possible to put that original screen up that had the you know importance versus cap analysis but I don't want people to get carried away with u you know oh but Public Safety didn't get a very high rating and importance on on that General rating no that's not that's not the case um if you look at the things that are rated higher than then Public Safety with the exception maybe of of Parks and Recreation some of these are things that the Brooking town government um and services don't really enter into all that much you know Mobility it's kind of you know MBTA um and whether you have a car utilities we don't you know well water sewer but you know um I'm not even sure whether you know um what is the person to say about how important is water to you right you know of course it's really important and economy could just be that General Malay people are feeling right now about ination you know whether they have a job or not blah blah blah natural environment we're in the era of you know the floods hurricanes you know climate right so I think police actually and safety safety not police but safety um really is still ranked important in both by both measures this first one and at the very end what's the most important to you um the think about it from the perspective of where we put whatever discretionary resources we have um uh the the 14% the the significance of of the % Road and sidewalk or the fact that that's on the list um very much uh reflects the what Paul heard from the people that he his his email list and uh very much reflects what we did or it certainly validates what we did with the budget this year in terms of moving funds over to uh DPW but it tells us that that's something we can't light up on yeah um I would say that these four things are the top things that I heard yeah in my last year surve yeah it's it's consistent yeah good okay so this is very helpful um but you know the original purpose of this was more to get a sense of um uh what people uh understand about our form of government what things uh we could um s see that could improve our current form of government in the context of the you effort to um develop the charter commission so I wonder if you know there's anything in here that really helps in that respect I mean what what we've talked about is very very helpful in terms of identifying the issues that people are you want us to focus on ter of budgeting Etc yeah I think um I think okay former govern is I just mentioned that if that was the original Ander than that right but that was the intent of the specific questions that he asked him to ask about Brookline but the overall picture that we're getting um and even some of the questions about Brookline should be pointing us towards where we're you as a very practic matter where we spend our money yeah uh and uh and I think that as I said I think it validates what the direction that we started to go in um we are to take another very careful look at this make sure that we still that we're doing that we we fine tuning of where so I um to answer your portion of the question I believe that the survey our custom survey results are telling us that we need to we need to help we shouldn't be on the the town tmma Association back but as the executives of the town we should improve access and transparency to elected officials including Tom many members and I I don't think this is a heavy lift frankly to put something on um the town's website that's easy and accessible to understand here's here's your I think people generally understand the select board but here's a select board here's how you get in contact with them here's your town meeting members here's their responsibility here's how you get in contact with them it is most residents that I speak with do not know their town meeting members they have no idea um even how to engage with uh with with Town other than maybe Brookline the you know Brookline online app they do or they have found a responsive town meeting or responsive select work to reach out to but generally they don't know um who their representatives are and what those Representatives should be doing yeah for them so I think we can help with that so one way to maybe address that the uh state Secretary of Secretary of State's website basically has a feature where you type in your address and they tell you who your elected officials are but they don't quite do it to the hyper local level so perhaps mimicking sort of that format so you type in your address here are your select board members here are your town meeting members Etc because on the state one it says here's your president and here's your congressman and but it sort of stops there after state representative okay John uh and I think too that for us to uh put this in context we need to know what kind kind results um are um seen in cities you know when people are asked um to what extent do you feel that you know who your city counselor is or that you feel engaged government yeah if not worse well yeah I mean uh certainly as measured by voter turnout I've never been able to see a dramatic Improvement you know in cities versus Town depends on the town but um you know book Brookline last couple elections especially has done as well as the city of Boston in terms of their turnout for city council elections um but it's it's an important reality of across the board that so few people um feel you know uh connected to their local government um that's something we all got to work on I'm just going to give a quick example um so there's a meeting W into particulars but if you can imagine a meeting at which on the agenda is the question of whether um the ability of dog owners to use a particular Park to exercise their dogs is going to be decided and maybe some people who have been using the partk for their exercise the dogs are going to find out they can no longer do that imagine a meeting like that and there's nobody there who is a dog owner there's like five people attending the meeting and that decision gets made is there such a meeting there was really not too long but I see that happen time and time again it's kind of like wow I know there are people who are going to be really really charged up over this decision but they apparently don't realize the decision is being made at this meeting that's shocking actually I yeah it's common I it's critical lot of yeah but but what do we do about it good question what we I yeah it comes up in the of concerns the seniors have about not being part of various boards and commissions that make decisions that affect them to different and you know we have to figure out how to how to break down that that problem okay you pull everything together yeah so I think you know survey result to your strategic planning just aligning the select board with the survey respondents goals and priorities and use that towards resources and funding um and let's show the ca effect so let's take the survey results and if we take an action on that let's advertise that and and let people know what we're doing and that we heard them and go from there and show our progress and wins we one of the um things that I had seen I think it's in um a part of compliance is like their you know compliance was low when people wanted to have an enforcement officer we just um Stephanie o coin from DPW was just put in that position so you know those small wins and showing that we are listening and we took it into effect and and putting that on social media in our in at meetings and things like that and Sh that we're listening and acting based on the feedback we're would it be appropriate for me to ask you to sort of pull together all that stuff and and give some give the select board some s sense of you where we need to begin thinking about these issues we could use a little Direction too on that I think okay to a certain extent like we can maybe draft something up and and send it around and make you say well this actually was more important to us like for example in our convers we thought the Gap analysis was really useful but we're hearing that you know the question at the end of what's your most important you know um service what is maybe more indicative for you folks um so you know if you have comments feel feel free to send them our way outside of this conversation okay David now just addressing this last point I think maybe and if the board agrees having sort of a digestible list list of take-home points from this survey of and maybe it's just a list of 10 or whatever might be a manageable number and that can help in form a discussion we're going to have later today I think about sort of our strategic planning around what we would like to accomplish this year obviously we're not going to have that list discussion but the point is if we can have sort of just sort of highlights of what uh are the important take home points from the survey that we can work on as a board and as a community and listening to that that conversation say will help better for me but that look together afterward he this is what you know you're looking to do and this is what the data supports okay let's move on uh it is 5 minutes to 11 um and we're going to start our 1040 goals and objetive best practices um discussion um so so what we what we're doing here is we have to come up with Ser Bernard we're trying to do is come up with some goals and priorities uh of the select board and I want Charlie to talk about how that document which we've always had and never used I think effectively uh plays a role in um you know best practices as viewed by outside organizations in particular um ratingen right right so I have just two slides uh I'll take no more than five minutes because we are running a little bit behind schedule um I'll pull those up right now um and I want to just say that I think Bernard actually framed this conversation pretty well both in terms of what the uh select board itself wants out of it and what we kind of should be doing in terms of best practices um so am I sharing screen no screen sh yeah there it okay so um yeah as I said Bernard kind of framed this very well which is you know we've been hearing from the board that they would like to be more involved in the budget process in terms of setting their goals earlier and distributing those to departments um and having departments have some chance to you know Factor those into their own goals and objectives um this is of course a best practice that the board does this and I think in the past you know it's been done more informally you know like uh my first year I worked with each board member we we sort of tailored the list of goals and objectives that already existed and distributed that but I think the the idea this year is to maybe start fresh a new at the workshop and um try to articulate these next year budget goals so on this first slide I just wanted to to sort of differentiate between this conversation we're having now and the one we're going to have later this afternoon about strategic planning and strategic goals so your strategic goals are really high level long-term goals they are refreshed you know every five years or so they inform each Year's goals but um the the main point here is they articulate where or what your organization wants to be someplace down the road um so I I wanted to distinguish between sort of those long-term fiveyear goals and the goals we want to set in this morning session which are really the goals for FY 26 so they're the they're your FY 26 budget year goals and objectives they are for the next year financial plan um they may be specific they can be broad like strategic goals but they're distinct from long-term strategic goals and that they're focused on the next budget year um and then sort of both of these are intended to address financial and capital planning Bernard mentioned you know non-financial planning as well um but uh so that is a similarity they share but I just wanted to get you folks in that frame of mind of okay if we're going to put together our FY 26 budget document and at the top we would like to have the goals of the select board for that Financial year what should they be um and so my next slide just quickly gives some bullet points of what the government Finance Officers Association the G um gives out for Best Practices on setting goals um now this is an organization that um you know sets the standard develops and distributes best practices nationally to municipalities for finance for budget and Fin Finance practices and they say that the financial plan should be a guiding policy document an operations guide and a community tool so what that means is that residents are able to go into the budget document understand the logic and reasoning behind how the financial plan was developed um and you know get a sense of where uh the community is headed so here are the uh the few bullet points that the gfoa gives us and we can keep this up or I can bring it back up as needed throughout the conversation um but here are the few points that they want us to to to stick with and they're not very different from what you hear for example from smart goals um if you ever heard that um acronym before so they they they're looking for clearly stated goals and goals that can be accomplished within the given time frame so we're looking at really specifically they'll run up to FY 26 and the budget year of FY 26 as the time frame um they're looking for measures that are measurable or sorry looking for goals that are measurable they have measures for success or they have some action item towards success that you can later look back on and say did we meet our goal did we actually achieve this objective um and the next point which I think is important given what Bernard has said these goals should really be written in a way that they can be utilized by Administration that's us in the select boards office and departments in setting our goal our own goals and objectives and in making Financial allocations or or um operations decisions um and then you know uh these goals should be aligned with broad organization wide goals now at the at the moment we don't have a strategic plan with long-term strategic goals is something we'll talk about later today and the value of that later today but gfoa also wants to see your your budget year goals aligned with your long-term strategic goals so that might be something that we work in in the future after we have a strategic plan and strategic goals I just wanted that to be on your minds so again you know B the basic summary is we're looking for goals that Focus budget decisions on the executive's desired results and outcomes and which effectively communicate those to internal and ex external stakeholders So today we're we're going to start I think Bernard is well I'll transition back to back to the chair in a moment I think we're going to start by looking at the object or the accomplishments we made in the prior year um so in this year right now that we're finishing up FY 24 um and then we're going to talk about goals for um for FY 26 um because we're entering fy2 um and we'll be planning for FY 26 starting this fall um so uh with that I mean uh Chaz would you like to pull up the goals and objectives or would you like me to do that uh I'm happy to pull them out thank you okay um so I'll I'll I'll unshare my screen but you know just just to just to again to quickly quickly go through we're looking for clearly stated goals that are FY 26 select board goals they should be measurable or have some kind of measure of success even if it's just you know an outcome we're looking for they should be aligned with our broader goals or your broader goals I should say um and ultimately they should be helpful to to us in departments um so uh with that um I'll I'll unshare my screen but I'm happy to pull that back up at any point if you folks want a reminder of sort of what are the key key things we're looking for in developing FY 26 goals um and I hope that was a helpful uh framing of the conversation very so CH you're pulling up goals of these and ones I um what what is the I'm I'm pulling up the old the old document for the past past Year's uh accomplishments and what you wrote for fy2 your goals and objectives and then I can pull up yours as well one second though did you still want to start with accomplishments Bernard or do you want to jump right start with you going to do that right yeah I mean I'm happy to um I'm happy to if you want a brainstorm accomplishments we can do that you know that might be something that if you want to we could do you know given we're a little short on time we could do you know after the fact or we could just focus on goals okay maybe we should focus on goals and at some point I'd like a list of accomplishments that you suggest that we would then work on that that produce the final document and they are important y right no I think if you want if you want to talk about accomplishments I'm happy to do that but T but typically right in our fy2 document it says fy2 goals fy4 objectives and so these are really for fy4 accomplishment this would really be fy2 accomplishments which we haven't really gotten to yet right well why wouldn't it be fy4 accompl we've already done we well technically we could add to that list but but what I'm trying to say is when you publish the budget document it is the next year budget so we published the f25 budget which had goals for 25 and the accomplishments were for the prior year which is 20 I don't know what you guys are up to yeah I know we're kind of we're kind of off the kind of off the be P so right um CH is going to bring up the prior year document which um which which will indicate what we're talking which is goals versus a and I can mean I can pull it up okay but I I was asking Berard because I think it actually might be more effective if we circulate a list of accomplishments in just just that's just a suggestion given where we're at [Music] with so the the FY 25 budget which we just completed we went through that process includes sorry in the budget book a whole bunch of objectives fy2 it's listed it's very it's too long it's for both yes it is yep but um is that what you're talking is that what you're thinking Bernard is that existing list or or you want to highlight tr get everything s aligned and since we've been through FY 24 those are the accomplishments we want that fiscal year is already over okay or will be over uh so so we have so we can identify accomplishments we' achieved in that period um and that's different from the priorities want to set for the next budget so you're saying FY 24 accomplishments not FY 25 accomplishments FY 24 accomplishments they can't let's make sure we no no you you I I hear what you're saying Bernard and the reason I the reason I wanted to make like a wanted to slightly correct that in a sense is we the fy2 document includes FY 24 colish so basically we we solicited from departments and from you know other people you know other staff what are the things we hope to that we actually will achieve this year and so Chaz has got the list up here right now um so as you can see things like produced division statement that happened over last summer um this that's current FY 24 fiscal year so this is the existing list that was published in the financial PL um and so we can certainly add we can start by adding to this list if you'd like Bernard going through this okay let me get this straight uh the financial plan is going to come out in fiscal year 25 correct right but fiscal year 25 will not be over y exactly when it comes out so we don't really know what we've accomplished in that fiscal year right I think you know duplicating fiscal year 24 accomplishments makes sense because that that's something we can say we've done yeah um you know we can edit it a little bit to yeah so I Bernard I I just just a suggestion I think that the the board did remarkable work um in the planning of the FY 25 budget we we look squarely at um certain items in the CIP um we made an investment in a decision to invest in a sustainability division these things aren't completed yet but it's our it was our intent to have them to initiate them which I think is more important than what we did back in f24 because we you know we're on a trajectory and type of the board making certain types of decisions about Investments um maybe we're talking about calendar year per perhaps but you know when I when I think about accomplishments for I'm going to say Paul it the last period I think the fact that we made a very conscious decision um to uh you know come to an agreement with uh the police department and the union to be able to get out of Civil Service uh you know retain employees uh put us on a trajectory to help continue to have very robust Public Safety uh uh capability I think that's a major accomplishment I think our significant investments in roads and sidewalks was a was a major accomplishment and there's more that I'm sure others can speaking done and that's different maybe I shouldn't be fixated on getting the time frame exactly okay think yeah so maybe so ber you circulated a document that of um you you circulated a a a kind of first pass at a more um condensed goals and objectives goals and objectives document do you want me to share that on screen and can react I circulated it to you yes sard yeah so can I circulate that to can I put that on screen yeah okay stop sharing the old document and I will share yours yeah I do think it would be worthwhile to spend a little bit of time just brainstorming what the board felt it accomplished um that was important to it uh you know I think various individuals may have things that they um you know think that was important we may want to continue doing that's that's kind of how I was thinking about accomplishments want do that first or shaking his head back and forth it's not so much what we did but what what has town government done we had we had a set of goals that set of priorities rather that we use in in shaping the budget a bit to what extent has that worked yeah that's really you want to compare your accomplishments to what to what you said you were going to do right uh and so and I I don't think that it's very productive to get too wrapped up in accomplishments it's just you know I don't want to turn into oh yeah we did this and we did that let's think about what we need to do going forward okay but let's talk about priorities and um I I structured this uh in two parts uh first of all you know what we want our priorities to do and that is informed staff of our priorities as the select board um encourage staff feedback of course and write it in such a way that can used to create outcome based performance indicators I mean that was concern that someone had um you know in in the past so that's important and then from that you know I suggest following select board priorities for the town staff and these are basically things from last year's uh uh goals and objectives and uh issues that uh you have brought up over the last few months that I want he identified as important uh priorities for the SL board so that's what that list is it's U it's more concise than our previous list but I think it covers all the things that um that people thought were important should we go through them sure so you had to observe prudent and transparent Financial practices to ensure sustainable studentship of public funds protect the AAA rating pay competitive wages and appropriate benefits to all employees ensure uh resources are available for roads and sidewalks uh for maintenance and Improvement of roads and sidewalks that's a key distinction both maintenance and Improvement um if working group monitoring the town and school's finances on a continuous basis facilitating coordination fincial activities between the town and the schools provides the select board with early warnings of upcoming needs for an override um taking steps to include knowledgeable senior residents and membership working proposals of town boards and commissions to incorporate the perspectives of seniors and all such bodies uh to ensure that appropriate levels of resources are available to address senior needs including the maintenance expansion of town facilities that designed to support them such is the senior center um to ensure resources for Public Safety including steps to ensure gender equity in public safety buildings and the recruitment retention of critical mass female staff to ensure sufficient training necessary to support Equity including gender Equity um developing Innovative programs for racial and socioeconomic diversity through marketing and Outreach programs as well as internal department policies and practices to complete the community inventory of available social service resources you use that information to evaluate how best to develop and Implement an effective case planning focused safety net model the cost of such a model uh support the comprehensive plan uh look for opportunities to diversify the tax base develop strategic planning process um identify intensify consideration of commercial development around chestman Hill West ch's Hospital in Brookline Village and other areas um to start the process of community discussions around the long-term uses of Newbury college and financing for that uh to facilitate uh constructing housing that is Affordable for low-income and Workforce people for classified as low-income and Workforce housing um watch the next phase of the housing stability office using the tools in the CPA yeah um to launch the next phase of the housing stability office to acquire resources for tracking complaints for L to short-term property rentals uh and update the regulations involved for lodging houses to uh help ensure the effective integration and sustainability to develop plans uh including identifying impediments for conversion of the fossil fuel free municipal buildings and full electrification of our Fleet uh to facilitate the use of electric vehicles by Town residents by investing in charging infrastructure and entering into public private Partnerships where appropriate toward that end um to ensure that sustainability goals and priorities are reviewed by the select board and incorporated into the town's policies Municipal projects uh to provide the community with education and guidance and sustainability and to plan for the protection of town physical resources including public land in Open Spaces recreational resources public parks the tree canopy um and reporting to the select board on a regular basis the efforts of National Grid to undertake appropriate mitigation and restoration accidents to address gas leaks that often harm trees so from a longer document you've kind of paired it down to 21 goals um and priorities I would say um what was it before 60 it was was separated into a bunch of different you know it was like four pages long so each category at 20 yeah so 36 okay so how do you want to proceed um you know this is you know not a final document of course and you know it's like board members think that that somethingis who should have um but I'd like to come out of this meeting with a first draft first generation of uh goals and priorities so that we can get reaction by Town staff and and finalize something over this F I think ideally what we would like to do with that is what we usually transmit operating budget guidance in September Capital guidance actually goes out pretty soon beginning of July but that we would kind of be able to give some of what you've been able to give for feedback to the Departments as they're building the budget requests that's I go ahead um I feel like we may need to take a higher level step back because what you just mentioned was you know budget guidance so the first the first and most important thing is our revenue forecast right and we've had significant questions raised by the community about our how we're doing our revenue forecast it's valid as far as I'm concerned but is that a topic of discussion that we should have of how we're um you know forecasting local receipts and even free cash because that's a major driver as to the input into the budget so I think we are discussing that in the on in the beginning of the afternoon session but I also think it's important for us to have guidance from you you know you have you have limited discretionary funds available and that's going to be the case kind of regardless of how we project Revenue how we you know the any modifications we may make to that process or the free cash waterfall are not going to be so significant that they would um that they would inform I think your discussion of goals at this level for example if we said we're going to modify this we're going to you know revenues we will project revenues in this manner we will change the free cash waterfall in this way um I don't think it would change for example your focus on public safety and roadways and Senior Services and you know those things we just change the amount of money potentially available potential amount of money available and it would it would inform it would help us then prioritize how to spend that money that's fair so before I before we can talk about where the money's come you know where the money is coming from and going to we need to know what's important to you so we can build that okay that's fair no comments I do well I think he just mentioned that the big three right now uh are members of the board and Ms that those are sort of the three what were the three I said so I said public I said Public Safety roadways and Senior Services I would add to that the fourth thing that Christina brought up which is planning um planning and and um development well the second highest rated priority and the survey was schools yes you know what control do we have there although we have some and we have so there's been a lot of it's in here in most things list and the conversation talk we we talk a lot about Senor services and representations but when I look around the roomm I think shouldn't we're pretty well with sen representation um but uh the question is we serve so obviously that's a white but we're um the question is are we serving the people who are not sitting around the really is is is the issue but I don't want to overemphasize that we have a you know we have a a community of uh we have a large community of um uh younger people who are in town they here for graduate programs or they because they finished school and starting off life and they come to book line uh because Boston is attractive place to live and they you know man for Brook line uh for some per time uh there's a whole we need we we shouldn't ignore any part of the um community and um so uh I'll stop there I me I think your senior s of also includes other vulnerable populations and maybe we should well maybe we should say that because that's really I kids here for colleges are not you Al though they're poor and vulnerable in certain s they're not you know the real vulnerable populations in in our community so I think something that would really boost all of our residents and improv quality of life and is of great interest to me is renegotiating our pilots and I say that not because I think that we're going to suddenly have an influx of Revenue but in terms of use of their facilities and their amenities uh so to the extent that we could coordinate with with the uh universities and uh private high schools in town for access to their fields and do it in such a day that maybe Monday it's uh Brookline residents and Brookline Recreation has access to uh School A's facilities and then on Tuesday at school B and Wednesday at school C that could realize cost Savings in terms of not having to rent such facilities elsewhere I think that some of the nonprofits within town would want to generate Goodwill in doing that it's potentially uh cost neutral to them to uh make an agreement of that sort and it's not just about Athletics uh Dexter has a planetarium and uh Pine Manor has a a library facility and so there are all kinds of ways I think we could improve quality of life for seniors for youth for lots of people by renegotiating pilots in that manner also Mike mentioned in the cont in an uh earlier discussion well I guess I can't touch on that but other ways that I think we could work with uh nonprofits in terms of meeting certain needs of the town and and I think you know Lincoln can you sort of clarify this a little more we do that we've always done that um and and I guess the question is is there room for growth there um and what does that mean if I can touch on that um I think I think one thing you if that's set as a as a priority for the board of full the executive I I I I know one one way that I want to approach that is to get a list of specific needs from schools and Recreation about what they're seeing their needs are um I think those are the two sources particularly with respect to the educational institutions that that that you're talking about you know to the extent that it's um educational facilities let's talk with the schools and Recreation probably to get a specific list of what the needs are I just want to go and have a be part of a negotiation for field usage for particular kind of feel that isn't needed right so I'm I'm not sure what those needs are so so get the list of needs and then move forward with talking to the various nonprofits I I just I I don't really see a downside to it I think it can only help and maybe maybe it doesn't work but if it does I can point out on townside I mean I just think people are not being realistic about what what cards we hold in negotiation if you go to one of our nonprofits that is currently paying um some kind of a pilot to us uh and say oh you know we're thinking about renegotiating that they Pro they might just as well say we've been thinking about it too right we don't understand why we're paying one and this person that you know down the street isn't paying one and you could end up losing money on a pilot what what cards do we hold in the negotiation what do we what do we say to them is the reason they should voluntarily give us resources or money so to the extent that that might be a concern we don't necessarily go to those who are paying us money but there are many who are not pay us and many of those don't have a cash flow to to to add so right but not asking for cash asking for other well I mean if you're if you're a church for example what they don't have Fields they don't have they make they may have meeting rooms and things like that but I mean that's a conversation I think that if you're interested in that you should you know talk to Lincoln jline and and see if the if there's any possibility of getting anything out of that um any juice out of that rock I I I'm sorry okay um I I do I do think there's some potential there in terms of services orent rental space money always an upper uphill climb but to your question John you know what do we say to those folks we often say well you know you don't pay taxes we provide you with Services which are effectively services for free um we want to continue providing you with the high quality of services we currently do but you know not to put too fine a point on it if you don't pay into the system you are kind of a free rider on it and that's your prerogative you can be but if you can come up with a process if we can come up with a process where you may not pay your tax value but you pay something some some organizations are willing to do that especially the commun we do that already so the question there there's not as much room for uptick in terms of money on that front there really you know we we have the relationships we have with the organizations we have we want to maintain and grow those um we want to figure out ways to keep buildings from coming off the tax roles which is why we negotiate those agreements when you know with regard to sales and permits and so forth um but I do think there is room for growth with use of services and facilities and to Lincoln's point we just need to do that survey so I think we'd be happy to have that conversation David if you want to be a part of that um you know it's always I think it's helpful to have an elected representative you know kind of leading the conversation about this is a community need um you know we we've just you know we do have for example with um the Beaver Country Day we have an agreement about the use of the fields um they use SCH Recreation fields on occasion and we use their fields on occasion um there's no reason why we couldn't expand that outward to other community other Community Partners and we've heard some preliminary interest from them um so it is it's possible we don't want to open that door because a lot of nonprofits have their own reasons for paying less vience the one point of caution I would say too from a policy perspective if the board's desire is to go and seek you know these non-monetary agreements it is a possibility right that other paying entities now are going to see that and say Hey you know our pilot I can cancel our pilot agreement on a on a three-year basis I'm going to next time so that's a possibility if that's a if that's a possibility that we're fine you know or the community is fine from a policy perspective that there's a possibility that we would lose some monetary pilot contributions now that's fine but I want to be explicit that that is a distinct possibility so oh I I was gonna I'll make a comment about the pilots and I was going to move on to something else but um I don't think we should be fearful of having these conversations it's almost it's almost like it's adversarial that you know if you approach it as a partnership opportunity and before you even approach I wouldn't do a broadcast all pilot all you know agreements say take a step back and look at what the priorities are you know the cost for us to build a field like what North eastn has like would be you know a lot of money um so if we not it would be great if they did but my point is we should approach it from a perspective of it's an opportunity to have a conversation versus we're worried about losing something we may value access to a facility more than the amount of money that we're getting in R there there's the reason why um u schools and schools particular universities in particular will pay pay a pilot and they they're doing it for their own purposes just as as we're asking them for money for own purposes and it's not totally out of the goodness of their hearts so um I think the uh the idea that we're going to take that that Boston University is a well we're going to give you a ganis instead of uh instead of giving you money I I I don't think there's very high risk of that I think the important thing is the look at what prox and W would like to have um as Lincoln said I don't I don't know he said you know I don't know what what we need so the sensible thing is to go and find out what need and then identify which schols might have and just as a broader philosophical Point that's not specific to Pilots but also would be applicable to Planning and Development I don't think we should allow fear of what someone might do to preempt having a conversation it's important to talk to our partners always and that doesn't mean that you go in as a bully and say if you don't do X we're going to do y to you but just have an open line of communication I think we would always want to do that uh a couple points um I was reacting mainly to I I believe David said renegotiate and um and then the conversation shifted to the people who are not paying as Pilots now maybe we should be talking to yes I'd be more inclined to be doing that I do hope people realize that the way Pilots come about is that in fact when a nonprofit takes over a property in Brook line they are build the same tax build that the prior property owner was built they have to then make the claim that they shouldn't have to pay that bill and and then we say to them well maybe we could take this to court or maybe we should talk about how this parking lot that you have actually is taxable and then that process leads to the negotiation of a pirate payment and we've done okay I don't know exactly how you measure how we do compared to other communities I will point out that there was an interesting story in the news within the past week the City of Springfield gets no pilot payments from any of the nonprofits in Springfield and they have decided maybe we should get some pilot payments from some of these nonprofits it isn't the easiest thing in the world I think how we go about it now has led to a certain degree of success um and we should be very careful about just you know in a casual way saying we should be getting more money out of these pilot um we we could end up losing money if if we start reopening deals or for example let's say we had a shopping list of think we want go to the school department go to this department that what would you like to have if you could have something from BC or and they come up with a list and then all of a sudden that list becomes known and then all of a sudden the people who are actually making Financial payments to us say I I just realize I could be providing you with something from that instead of my financial payment and the things that are on that list of you know oh we'd like to have use Community use of your this facility or that facility sometimes they're useful and sometimes they're not depending on whether the community then actually uses so um let's be a little bit careful about how we talk about this a constructive suggestion if I may offer one um is can we have a proactive policy of trying to prevent further takeover of taxpaying properties by nonprofits um by being very watchful as to properties that might be going on the market and attractive to nonprofits and have a policy of when and under what circumstances do we think the loss of a property would be significant enough that we ought to actually intervene if we can to be to to control how that property is disposed of and um that's not a conversation we have had since I've been on the Cy call okay can we s move on but M no that's fine I think it's time to get off David has agreed to talk to Lincoln regarding you know what is practical what what is um you appropriate and you know you'll come back and report to us okay you know your findings Paul I'm moving on it might be a segue to what John had just said um about potential property so I'm thinking for Melissa uh asking that you give us some direction because we ultimately we need to allocate money right and the budget is really what you're trying to get down to um so one of the uh the things that's been on my mind is just um attracting and retaining our existing our commercial tax base um I'm not just it would be nice to have new facilities like you you're working on like in chest Hill West but um actually making Brookline an attractive place to come open your business um because of you know because of the type of environment we are we're I don't know what all the things we could do I'm sure we could make it easier to open a business in Brooklyn uh through permitting and and Licensing and things like that but um you know i' i' I'd ask us to consider is there value in allocating some funds towards a more formal uh you know commercial marketing and retention program we rely on the chamber today Bernard and I and Mike went to uh the opening of a small business Child Care Center it was the first time we've ever actually did a ribbon cutting from with the chamber which I thought was great um but you know being able to make Brookline uh and get the word out that Brookline is a commercial friendly place to to do business um and you know and and we'd like to see you come um I don't I don't know if we have a formal uh there is a there is an item here that is related to U uh ratio integration marketing Brook line to attract mainly middle class Black and Hispanic families and I think that that that initiative could also include um you know marketing to businesses um they're very they're very different focus on they're different but you know it it is a Communications issue um that um you know can be expanded and and address I guess I'm thinking more like a business development type of activity within our that it is but putting more more emphasis there and maybe some more resources to help you know identify um properties that are available that could be becoming available uh doing some sort of uh effort um and networking within the business Community outside of Brookline or even within Brookline to expand businesses I just I don't that would turn into revenue for us yeah um or protect Revenue that's exist I think we have to do both well I I have been thinking Paul and I must have had a mind now because it's exactly um along the lines of something I've been thinking about a lot lately because I happen to be the select world's design on the on the small business advisory committee um and um you know if if you folks you know have the time to attend some of the the meetings of that particular committee what you will hear is an awful lot of concern by our local independent businesses especially uh that they're on the knives Edge you know and they feel like that they are always on the KN Edge and they need help they really are looking for help and you know one of the areas where they're looking for help is you know can and I know is very concerned about this too and he's working on it you know can the whole process of Permitting be smoothed out made maybe a little bit less expensive for them um they're very concerned about future loss of some commercial area parking spaces so they want to know that there is you know somebody listening to those concerns um at Town Hall but they also um you know feel that they they don't have many resources to promote shopping and booking you know have a chamber of commerce but you know um there's a limit to that um and what do we do as a town to sell Brookline yeah what do we do as a town to sell Brooklyn you know as a place to grow your business um or as a place um to discover a restaurant that you may not have realized this here or to experience the incredible you know diversity of our offerings of food from every culture all over the world something like that I'm not sure we do much that promotes Brookline um as a place to do business or as a place to shop or as a place to dine or etc etc and I think we should be thinking about it because uh otherwise um some of those vacancies are going to stay vacant you know longer than they have to stay vacant when they could be you know productive and yielding some tax revenue greater tax revenue to to so that's a priority you think we should include here related to what John was just talking about I've noticed when I'm at Logan Airport I don't know if they still have it but at least a year ago they would have these gigantic murals from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce with pictures of Brooklyn and basically saying come to Brooklyn and it would have pictures of restaurants and the Puppet Theater and certain cultural icon institutions I think in terms of uh advertising and messaging we really ought to focus on what makes Brookline special compared to other communities we do have tremendous history that does attract some people to come in and possibly to engage in business as well but at a minimum I think it helps facilitate tourism and uh so the airport is a good place to advertise I'm glad to have seen that but also if we think of other methods of Outreach where we emphasize the birthplace of Kennedy and here's where we may play down the road and sort of focus in on historic figures and why people would want to come visit Brooklyn there the midnight ride of Willam do yes there you go so I guess um that you know that this discussion could translate into um allocating more funds in the budget to an enhanced position or using services for promoting Brook line yeah doing more work with the chamber to partner with them I don't know but that I could see that turning into money you to put in a line item in the budget yeah and I would just say you know right now you you we're very fortunate the the planning department and the economic development team the division there is a real strength in this community they do really good work um and they're really want to be Innovative and to know that that they have the support of the board and that it's a priority that gives them the ability to then use their resources more proactively to say all right the board's objective is you know promotion retention and attraction of commercial opportunities and so all the efforts can really be focused in that area you know the the dream and the you know the short to midterm hopefully is you know turning coolage Corner into a business improvement district a real public private partnership the same way that that was really how Downtown Crossing was revitalized that was how Central Square was revitalized to be able to have that partnership with landlords and businesses to be able to build out the the sharing of responsibilities and then marketing and IT it basically just increases your your I wouldn't say purchasing power but your cache and so the work on that the fronts like that is going to be really important David just a followup question I have to that Chaz so you mentioned coolage corner I'm just curious why coolage Corner in particular because I would think that coolage corner is probably one of our most successful commercial areas so I'm wondering would it make sense to look at Brooklyn Village or other area it would actually businesses in corner would say the exact opposite there a lot of problems there well I mean I I think you're you know from a outside perspective right vage corner is generally viewed as a you know a destination in Brookline and you know to to lesser extent you have the the village and Brooklyn and Washington Square as kind of um those areas and then you have JFK Crossing as a satellite and then you have St Mary's which is very up and coming on the Boston border um you've with coolage corner you do have some vacancies and you have you know the desire to make that more of a place where people go and stay rather than go for one activity and then go home um it's also the place where we will probably have the greatest uptick from landlords in order to make a business improvement district you need landlords um you don't need the tenants um so being able to convince the landlords there and develop critical mass we're the closest there um and hopefully the proof of concept will be look you know this area you know experence did this and experienced this growth now we want to replicate this in other neighborhoods and try and see how we can do that in different parts of the community right so let's get to the Practical question Paul ask how we be allocating money and the question is is there if this belongs in in the on the plate of the time Department I it does um what do what resources do they not have person is it a something else uh and how would you how would you as you're thinking about putting the budget together what we going be doing with the funds that we have available well this is this is why this exercise is so important right hearing this discussion coming out of this at the end of it you know the message that we give to departments is this is a priority for the board so it won't be you know it will be primarily folks like Cara and meredi but will also be you know DPW on roadway repairs and maintenance in those commercial areas and so forth they will be coming to us as we begin to build the budget with a priority list of expansion requests and they will say the select board wanted us to do more of this this is the highest and best way to do that uh and we'll try and figure out a way to make that work within the limited resources we have yeah and we're not we're not allocating the money we're just allocating priorities I appreciate that but that from that should flow allocation of money not by as an example um weekends our commercial districts operate seven days a week often till two in the morning um one in the morning hopefully one in the morning but you know but but an allocation of funds to get somebody to come and take the trash to pick up the trash to make sure our commercial districts are attractive even on the weekends when everybody is not working um you know that that would take some funds and a reallocation of of resources in order to make sure that we're keeping you know uh our our business areas uh places where people want to go to and on weekends by by the time Sunday comes around they're long in the tube uh with respect to trash and trash it overflows and you get a pizza box put next to a trash bin the rats come over it's it you know so I could see that um I could also see us focusing specifically on the permitting process and what it takes and actually mapping out the time and the sequence of how long it actually takes to permanent a building we we went to with the chickpea I forget yep uh she said it took two years now I don't know what that two years took I do know that uh State LIC I I do know as as an example there was a a sandwich business that came before the board we licensed it um and then it turned out that they had a small little sink that wasn't in the wasn't there in the right place it delayed the opening by like five months I mean this you know this is not an this isn't helpful to a small business uh to take on that level of cost without generating Revenue no maybe they should have done something ahead of time but anything that we can do to help shorten the cycle lower the costs help people get up uh opening quicker and supporting them through those first three years of having a business is really good and you're you're beginning to do that Chad right so this is our our summer project Tiffany Tiffany and Michelle are really going to work through this and it is it's a it's a Monumental undertaking because we've done this for so long but I'm you know it's this is why I'm so grateful we have Tiffany and the whole team you know we have two great marketing Specialists and Tiffany and Michelle so I mean Mark licensing Specialists so be able to do that over the summer we're going to start hopefully seeing some real results from that it's going to take some time but we will get through it yeah one of the things things Paul and I were talking about the um it was in the context of getting getting help for housing but um the you have to to to get a permit you have to open an account online in the system that is perhaps not the most user friendly and I think it would be really interesting for you um to take a look at try it yourself say to yourself I'm going to open a restaurant I'm going to open a storefront and pick a location and go through that process and see what it's uh what it's like without any help from anybody and it would be a good exent okay um do you have other priorities or goals for us in other areas name on yeah so the um one thing that's reflected in the in the survey certainly and and I think what we was that we we put a fair amount of money into the budget in an area that had been sted which is DPW and I don't think there's any question that we want to continue that uh and expand we Poss can but certainly continue that uh and uh for roads roads and sidewalks yeah roads and sidewalks and and uh it along those lines would be really useful maybe it's too soon uh but sometime maybe in the middle of the year um to get a report back from uh from Aaron as to Okay now what's been accomplished that had wouldn't have been accomplish before without These funds so that we can make the case to the to ourselves and to the public that this is a they're getting subject today so D back to a point that John raised a bit earlier around being very mindful of buildings that might come off our tax role and also the reverse of buildings that could come on our tax R so looking at both of those opportunities and finding a way to try to maximize our tax revenue now obviously we have limited funds as a municipality and it's not like we can just buy up these properties but to the extent that we can engage with Community Partners and encourage uh for-profit uh entities to acquire these buildings and be proactive about it so I hear what Paul's saying about make the permitting process less cumbersome make it so that new businesses can come online quickly uh but even before that stop or or simultaneous I think engaging in proactive outreach are the type of businesses that we would want to come to Brookline so not just making it easier for businesses to open here and then have the businesses magically find us but to actually go out and say um you know business X I think that you'd be a great match for Brooklyn what can we do to make you come here and try to well well and here and here's why you'd be such a great match for Brookline sell them right sell them on Brookline and actually affirmatively engage in that Outreach to bring them over here yeah yes and maybe that includes buying public buildings that come for sale there's one that's about to be for sale now I think we all know exactly but yeah we really need some guidance or made policy on that because you go out to a business they're going to say give us money and we'll come so I mean we really have to have a real focus in terms of what we can offer you what what um we can offer well I would trust the expertise of our staff on that of course but then also I think there are some non-monetary inducements so for one one obvious ones we're very close to Boston so that certainly helps another one depending on where in Brook line is if it's the appropriate size spacing if it has other amenities around it that would be conducive for drawing in a customer base so those are all uh point but I think that our uh planning department Our Town Administrator other staff would know how to engage in that type of Outreach more specifically I would just like to make sure that we see that happening especially as we're dealing with a comprehensive planning process and chess on Hill West but this really applies everywhere in town uh so I'd like us to be proactive my concern is that we have policy or guidance or whatever so that we don't you see an opportunity and just sort of jump at it without thinking about all the consequences that that may may I I'd be happy if we could at least agree that we want someone to maybe jump at it right right now we're not we're not we're not taking that initiative no it doesn't mean we have to do it but someone just needs to focus on it I did have a different line of uh discussion for other ways to spend money which try to help Melissa with the budget um so we've heard um from multiple people within the community about speed will been reine people just are driving too quickly on our roads and I know we have one particular street that has a lot of advocacy but like you I've heard from others as well within Town Boston has a unique program that they've launched this year where they're they're looking at neighborhoods and Citywide for Speed bumps um for for for traffic coming and they're being very very aggressive um in in the planning an installation of real traffic Hing speed bumps not the the rubber thing that you did stick but they they're design properly um and I wonder if that's something that we potentially should look at as part of uh the CIP or of the the DPW budget because I know we're hearing a lot about people are are just driving too fast down our our our our neighborhood streets um we do it in a a planned way that if we're looking at a street it's a complete Street they do traffic calming as part of that but I don't I don't think it's a uh it's the Boston's program is very aggressive um we had we had a conversation with um Aaron about um looking at the complete streets program modifying it so that it gives her more flexibility to move quickly on repaving and so forth um speed bumps are one of those things that require a little bit more thought than just putting down a layer of and they also require some if it's a dra if the drainage changes in they can be um uh expensive especially ra foxwalk kind of thing um but uh so uh I'm just trying to think about the consequences of I just I've raised it as a priority right we're hearing it from the community uh people aren't feeling particularly safe on our streets um and actually repaving the actually make you know so I I just raise it because uh this is something that Boston's doing um with with with quite a bit of success so yeah it's a it's a very good point we're we're looking at this um when we come back you know the board designated you Paul and Mike as the kind of folks taking point on reevaluating complete streets we're going to talk about we're in the process we had that we had one internal meeting with stakeholders about this they the consultant is now working on revised policy um and procedures um kind of omous document um that we will work through internally so I will take this back to them and see if we can incorporate language about speed control in there and how to prioritize for that um because we want to balance it out OB with the limited amounts of money that we have you know how we balance that out with everything else but I mean darn tell me you know DPW also talked about just Rising the traffic cling policy anyway yeah and so that's something that I think will kind of align well yeah that comes out of the conversation we had yeah okay just along those lines very quickly um someone uh offered a very helpful suggestion in an email just a couple of days ago uh along these lines which is how about if we first look at school zones and you should there be whether do not all of this um speed bumps speed pumps whatever um as almost a routine part of the traffic control in school zones that's been part of traffic of the traffic policy since was written but not all schools have no not it hasn't been executed all schools but it's certainly looked at oh so I guess what this this raises because we're kind of getting into CIP land right is is really taking a look at how and I think we're probably going to cover this later this afternoon how we're prior prioritizing and allocating CIP funds um because it all fits into this right is is is a speed bump more important than a bike lane is it more important than refurbishing a park you know one of the things that's been on my mind is that we have a a policy of refurbishing parks on a on a a certain schedule um you know whether it needs it or not I think and I wonder if we tweak that policy a little bit um by a year or two is that then free up additional CIP funds for other things that we may want to do that are just as important um without damaging or lowering the quality of our Recreation facilities something to consider I think somewhat relatedly to what Paul's talking about Capital planning more broadly with u Municipal properties so to the extent that we could look at whether uh there's a way to consolidate certain sites or at least just explore it because if there could if we could open up a potentially Municipal owned site somewhere for something for some kind of community benefit or other it would be worth at least knowing about it yeah so I want to change the subject a little bit um quite a lot um one of the things that came out of the survey that um explain to us was uh the question of affordability of you're not food Health Care Services housing and so forth and um the issue of uh healthc care services and uh service Human Services of that General nature uh and we've um have a housing office and we uh sustaining that effort is I think going to be important seeing what kind of demand we get from it you know how much uses it and and um perhaps going back to them and saying well what happen U but uh what do we want to what do we want to uh uh consider in terms of funding or additional funding for um for those sorts of services is that something that um has a priority uh over and above some of these other things or been below it where where do we fit that in oh one of the uh the things that came out of the survey was Child Care the affordability child care which I know you've been a strong advocate for we've done some allocation of arpa right but that's really not a sustainable uh certain not uh solution um but that that certainly is a significant barrier for residents and lower income residents to be able to afford to live and work within Buon so that I would certainly support the continuation that type of program if we could find a way to do it uh let me bring up another issue and that is north south South book line versus W Brook line and I'm not sure what that means other than um you know trans there is a proposal for a bike lane um between South M and in the high school I don't know all the details but I think that's something that um uh should be a priority because you know we get in a situation where almost like two towns in some ways in some respects um and I'd like to also suggest that we should think about how we can sort of address the issues that seniors face in terms of transportation to the senior center or maybe even long term thinking about uh um satellite senior centers in South Brooklyn or using existing facilities which town or or others for um for some program um I mean that's a I don't know I don't have any specific proposals but I think that that's something that people are very concerned about at least in the senior community um and in South Brooklyn respect to transportation between especially the high school in South Brooklyn I think that will come up as part of the comprehensive plan um but certainly if it's a higher priority something that you wanted to start now to do Commission a review on the feasibility of doing something like this is not really comprehensive plan issue is it will certainly come as part of it I guarantee uh services in self Brook line transportation in self Brook line um accessibility of s workor line to mil work line will come up as part of um so speaking as a cyclist bicyclist I would say that bringing a bike path is is I or separated bike L is a great idea from South book line but that doesn't solve the problem that you're raising because we're where where the vast majority of the population is not going to come to Cru por on a bicycle yeah from from South Street well yeah South Street but um the uh um yeah I meant that as just an example the way actually trying to broaden the the conversation uh to thinking about um transportation um for seniors Newton has a program uh that um in which uh it's it's kind of a substitute for the mbta's rather lackluster um ride program new has a substitute for that and I believe that they've now outsourced that to a um to a um an organization that provides that could provide that mul town I'm wondering whether there's a way to link up with that newon and see what done I have a news flash news flash okay breaking news it happens to be an area I was just looking into this past week um and yes Newton had something called numo um and uh I happen to see in a newsletter from the mayor of Newton that they are moving beyond numo to a program called Goo uh with an outfit goo that does this on sort of a contractual basis then I discovered to my delight Brook mine already has goo so we' have gone from being one step behind numo Newton and numo and to we got to go go before they got to go and goo goo is like calling an Uber or a lift and you get sort of the idea of l a lift but uh you know for mainly for like medical appointments proc seniors within a certain prescribed area and you get a break if you're low income and you know it can be complicated but it can also be of value to people need so who knows about this and what are we do about the name I mean to be fair if you go to the Council on Aging page of our website and then you'll see a sub page for Transportation assistance and then you'll see information about goo that's how they they've been doing it yeah yeah oh Sor raise my hand I would find it helpful I don't know if others would if if if we put aside the language of you know goals this that the other and just said to-do list you know what is our to-do list and I'm just talking about in fy5 you know what is our to-do list because I mean I you know I could name a few things others could probably name a few things um and and we are you know up against the clock in terms of we were going to finish this part of our meeting by noon um would that idea be helpful to people to-do list instead of yeah it's like do this in FY 25 you know I'd like to see this done in that that can be part of but I think we need to according to Charly um make sure we have a go objective document that um is both useful for departments but also useful for U best practices yeah yeah metal and we do have your lengthy but you know workable list of objectives from the prior from you know which include you know the all five select board members provided input on these um and you know um and they include both broad things like you know um observe prudent Financial practices specific like develop develop an approach and plan to adop non-emergency request system similar to 311 um you know that's a very specific to-do list you know begin um you know complete the disparity study uh complete the Human Services assessment all of those are concrete goals for you know the to-do list for fy2 in addition to the broader overarching objectives so if there are things that are not on that list that you think we should be V or there are things on that list that you think we need our particular Focus than we're happy to hear sorry I don't mean I just wanted to frame this a little bit in the sense that you know thaty 25 budget is set right so what we're looking for our goals and objectives for the next year to help us develop the financial plan so it seems like both there's s you know Sans for both right like the select board could have a running to-do list of what are we working on over the next 12 month period but what we're looking for is either to say well we're happy with these goals as they stand for 26 or realistically we need to make sure we spell out our commitment to roads or we need to make sure we spell out our commitment to small business whatever it happens to be because we we haven't set the financial priorities fraty 26 yet we need feedback to do that that's sort of what I think that's sort of the framing of the conversation but both things could be useful and I think if you want to pursue that you know to-do list it's not a bad idea we've had an action list before with that's specific to the select FL assignments as well so it's not a lot well so I so far I've heard continue our commitment to Public Safety I assume that includes both Police and Fire have a to-do list what's that are we talking about talking yeah priorities in general I thought the to-do list would be things like I mean I think this is important to develop a fiscal working group that monitors um school's finances that's to-do thing that we can say we want that set up as opposed to um you know some of the more Pi Pi prud and St to pay competitive wages I that that's more of a this is a priority we want you to figure out how to do that whereas setting up a committee is you just do this now made a couple other things that are along those lines just one question on that particular example how does uh that differ from Town School partnership this is an idea that I got from Chaz okay so well I mean so I I'm happy you know when I'm really talking about what I was talking about more was for the 2023 override there was a working group there was a small working group um that featured you know citizens who had worked on past overrides people with experience in tsp the select board member it was Mike um and and Melissa and myself uh school committee member um advisory committee members and that group met on a regular basis to develop the Contours of the 2023 override at that point it was assumed that we needed an override and the general Contours of the override on the schools side were known um that is we knew that the schools had an operating shortfall that would make up the core of the override and then the question was what would what were the other things that we would do as part of this plan and if you will recall from the override presentation over the course of that winter in Spring we tried to identify whatever possible non non Levy sources of revenue that could be used to accomplish the goals that that group recognized they said all right we know there's an operational shortfall we know that's there what are what are the other goals that we're hearing from the community that need to be addressed how are we going to you know parcel that out what is the community willing to bear in terms of a voluntary tax increase and where can we get creative to find other sources of funds to deal with that so that happened on a very truncated schedule and when you compare that to the two for example the 2008 override that produced I think like a 70 page document um it was it was by necessity more of a compressed process so my hope would be that you would potentially start that start a similar working group now well in advance of the end of this current override cycle so that we're having those conversations not the winter before before we need to put something on the ballot but a year or more out before so that we have clear guidance from all the stakeholders about what's necessary and creativity about how we're going to get there um you know because before we go to the voters to ask to voluntarily increase their tax levy we want them to have confidence that it's a necessary ask versus a you know wouldn't it be nice ask yeah and the way I look at this is this is a continuous process it's not you know reactive to needs that we you know see you know year by year a continuous process of monitoring you know our our Revenue expense expenditures and being able to anticipate that maybe next year two years down the road we're going to have again consider an override Paul I think I I think the language and how we describe this is really important so we're automatically saying we're gonna have an override study committee um I think let me let me get the words up hearing override we need to plan for the operating override we need to plan for the next uh question on the ballot and I I'd like us to maybe modify the language a little bit and and have some balance where are the opportunities in the existing budget where we haven't found efficiencies have we ever taken a very hard look at trimming the fat um and you know I I would I think that's an important exercise to go through uh before we start talking about going to um to the voters for an operating right um we may still have to go but I want to have the confidence that we have scrubbed um the budget in a way that we've aligned priorities with services and service levels to to a sufficient extent that without going and ask for additional tax levy we wouldn't be able to provide core Services I agree with Paul and also furthermore I want to make sure not just that the verbiage but also the substantive work of the group reflects that there's not a presumed outcome as to what the recommendation will be uh from the membership of that committee and in addition to seeing where further efficiencies can be realized also looking at how we can as rapidly as possible uh expand our commercial base in particular to try to expand the revenue that comes into the town which is why earlier I was talking about some of my priorities being affirmative Outreach to businesses that we would want to bring into Brookline and taking a look at what John said about um public um about nonprofit properties that might be coming off the tax roll or the reverse to make sure that we're really proactive about that because those are potential Revenue generators and that can help Forstall uh potential overheads except that we can't say or suggest to people that will never have an override the question is are we have are we putting an override on the ballot when it's really needed as opposed when it's just convenient or in reaction to to something you know the structure of of State govern State finances is such that we are required to have an override if we're going to survive long term because you two and a half limits you know amount of money that we can naturally uh receive over time and it's intended to you push us into the override well I'm not sure we're ever required to have one you can always not to have one but only if you want to keep operating yeah only if you want to keep operating right but but again I think you'd agree that that the language that we use to describe a review should include actually making sure that we are as efficient and focused as possible in the operating syst before we ask for additional money now how much how well again it's how you describe it we're going to have an override study group I I I I oppose that but no one's talking about an override study group okay that was not specifically not Pur we have used that language in the past I'm just saying can I finish I just want to finish finish or we could debate um I just I I believe that the the probability of the voters supporting additional funding above the levy um depends on how confident they are that we are have used every dollar efficiently as possible um and I I'm not going to presume that it's an automatic that they're going to do it we saw how close the last one was so that's that's um that's what I'm saying we need to be very cautious about how we approach it and I for one would want to make sure that we have wrong every bit inefficiency um and possible opportunities for cost savings out of the budget before we add additional request to jar yeah and that's it's Point well taken and we are certainly on our side we're really trying our best we we are we've already taken those steps in this fiscal year to pay for the Police contract right like I went through with with a fine tooth comb we everyone's you know outside Services budgets and I looked where we could recogn realize efficiencies and we had to make some tough decisions you know we had to say in good in you know it's not you know you you may have to do more with less here in some of these departments and so we are making those decisions on a regular basis given you know our current economic climate um but I I think your point is very well taken we don't want to presume anything and there's if there's any if if something is to pass the voters will need to believe that it's truly necessary and I think you see that too with how the last override was structured 2A passed 2B which included discretionary wouldn't it be nice if we had a composting program failed um and I think the message from the voters was pretty clear we want the town to have the resources it needs to do what it needs to do but we are not in the mood to spend more money on discretionary services at this juncture unless we think they're really vital to the community so that's that's the mindset that we would approach this kind of work from okay okay um we're 123 bre I assume some people want to take a break to oh we've lunched well there are two priorities okay when shall we return um well I thought this was a working lch or you did you change that no we didn't we didn't change it initially we had budgeted in hour with the idea that if you know if there was play in the joints we needed to go earlier uh you had suggested 12:30 in working lunch um given that we're at 12:15 now do you want to split the difference and say 12:45 or do people need till 1 which is fine but I thought okay so you changed the um schedule here um what we talked about no I'm sorry it was this was how we initially had initially post this we had posted it this way and you would put together the Run of show to kind of Max I my understanding was you would put together the Run of show to try to maximize efficiency um so all the postings on the original schedule are approximate the board can do what it wants to do um do you want to come back at one do you want to come back at I'd suggest coming back at one and a lunch and a break and a walk and a stretch works for me we will still have enough plenty of time in set schedule yeah um you know I just think you okay so it's going to be a regular working yes I think so if that's okay with you fine with me just wish I no I'm sorry e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e yesim Carol me when I think I think okay good uh good afternoon this is a re um the return of the select board uh to our Workshop session and let's start off with discussion on Town fiscal policies revenue and planning a briefing and discussion by various people Chaz Melissa Char young I will turn it Char Charlie unfortunately had to leave he had a uh he had a conflict there but he's going to be training Us online momentarily um but I'll turn it over to Melissa and Lincoln to kind of discuss um fiscal policy overviews and um you know Braden the discussion as we were talking about about how we you know shape these policies to prior to reflect your priorities um so I'm gonna share my screen as well um and this is kind of coming off the town meeting discussion I need um screen sharing prives thank you coming off the town meeting discussion um I think it makes sense to um kind of start with the fiscal policies because um you know as we're allocating funds it's the policies that kind of come off the top in terms of Revenue allocation and then everything leads from there um and I've got Lincoln Hinman our finance director here to assist with some of the some of the finer points of the policies and the discussion um we are probably going to be looking to present some revised policies um given the change in Moody and the um the guidance that we've received from Moody's on our targets for undesignated fund balance um and so while we're while we're at it we do know that there are other tweaks to the policies that we would like to make as well um we'll probably bring those to you uh later on this year but I think it would be good there are some questions that we have just to kind of either reaffirm where we are with the policies or maybe re visit the prioritization that is that exists in the policies and I think it would be kind of a good starting point to have that conversation with the board today um so you know the primarily what we're going to be talking about are our policies for our CIP um the allocation of our reserves free cash and then our unfunded liabilities policy and so these have been in existence since the late 90s and um you have been looked at and tweaked over the years um most recently in uh so these all these policies relate to each other so um to the extent that you are tweaking one it will have an impact on the other um so you know it's important that we kind of look at the overall picture um as we kind of go through uh you know changes that we might want to the policies so we have our CIP policy which says um first start off with 6% of PRI year net revenue then you add free cash to get to 75% um and then within the 6% policy um we have a goal of having 4 a half% debt and 1 and a half% in tax financed or Revenue financed CIP um so you know we we know we need to twak the policy to acknowledge that the override funds are added to the 6% policy so once the override funds are fully implemented that's what we'll have revised CIP policy um but I think just a broader question is you know should the 75% be Revisited and so you know that that is an amount that would be you know close to $5 million that we've been allocating cash um is that enough less you know these are kinds of some of the things that we've been thinking about um we've been historically uh funding above the 7 and a half um given the constraints and the demands on the CIP um you know as an example this year um we had1 million of free cash go to support the CIP so that was an unusual uh year for free cash and we'll talk a little bit more about that and some of the factors that went into that um it also drives some of the decisions around um Revenue projections as well you know there are things that are in our local receipts that we are being conservative on and then there are things there's activity in the local receipts that we consider to be one time in nature that we don't want to build recurring expenses against and so um there kind of an intention under budgeting in certain areas um and so we can talk about that when we get to the revenue piece as well um so the reserve policy so we have our operating Reserve um which is the current Target is 1% of per year net revenue um one of the things that we um should talk about is whether or not that 1% would need to be adjusted um if we decide that we want to change um you know this year for example the school department is potentially coming coming for Reserve fund transfer and that is a rare occurrence for use of the operating reserve and so the question is if we want to acknowledge that this could be a regular occurrence is the 1% Target enough um or is there a way that we can do something separately um we've talked a little bit about H potentially having a special education reserve and so whether or not that needs to be added to the list of of reserves that we currently have um so we the second area of reserves is our unreserve fund balance uh Slash the stabilization fund also counts towards our undesignated fund balance um the prior goal was to have a minimum of 10% with a a goal of 12.5 we're now hearing from Moody's that it's total governmental funds so before it was just the general fund now it's expanded to Total governmental funds which includes water and sewer and the golf course and that the target really is 20% um as of the minimum and um Lincoln and I had been talking about kind of comparing ourselves to the other communities that are also in the AAA Moody's ratings and trying to strive to be at the median of where of where they are and we'll have um some measures at the end of the slideback that show show where we currently are and by the way we figured out when that sort of Universe of uh tripa entities includes just municipalities like cities and towns yeah so we we know for the Massachusetts we're we're comparing ourselves to the other Massachusetts municipally rated communities by the cities and town municipality yes yes correct the the only Municipal entities in Massachusetts that are AAA rated are misss to as opposed to say a fire district yeah Regal school districts or state Authority or state Authority State Authority sure um next Reserve that we have is our liability catastrophe fund so we are self-insured for the most part we do have insurance policies on buildings and certain high level Vehicles like fire trucks um so the target for the liability fund is 1% of Prior year net revenue um given our claims experience um it seems to be working well for us I think it would be um a rather costly Endeavor to try and secure Insurance uh instead of being insured and so that that is kind of where we are with the the liability fund um I think the Town Council will likely want to have conversations with the advisory committee about the potential um use of the liability fund uh for certain expenses but I think that's more of a future conversation um on the way that being used whether not it would make sense to fund it in this liability fund or whether or not it belongs in the operating budget so that's kind of just a a future conversation that he would be looking to have um then we also have the overlay Reserve which which is um you know for uh to protect us in case we have ta tax challenges to to our assess values um we just recently had the board of assessors certifi $3 million to support the CIP um and that is in compliance with our policies which say that the overlay should used for one-time purposes and specifically for CIP um so we know that there are going to need to be tweaks um to at least bucket number two and potential discussion on some of the other um areas of our Reserve policy then we have our free cash policy and so our free cash policy maybe this is like an area that we could probably dive into a little bit more um you know it builds off the reserve policies so the first two buckets are coming or first three buckets are coming from the reserve policy and then we have our Capital Improvement plan to get us to the 7 and a half% then the next priority area is the affordable housing trust fund um we've been talking that you these policies were established before the CPA was in existence so whether or not the board um would like to reexamine that prioritization um and then we also have our special use which is our other um trust funds for things like workers comp um OPB we've put in the past before um and so you know the the question is really you know are these still the same priorities are there any changes to the level of funding that we have for these areas these are things things that you know we'd like to talk a little bit further with you about um then we have our revenu so you know once we know what the prioritization is for um Reserve levels and CIP um you know if we are in compliance with all of these policies I need to be able to generate at least $9 million in order to hit the current funding targets and so um the given that um you know we raise the levy fully every year the one area where there is flexibility as in the local receipts and so that's where I'm trying to generate that money because the operating budget doesn't always produce surpluses that we can rely on for the following year can you rewind just for a second Bernard the N when you say 9 million 9 million and one I need 9 million in free cash in order to hit policy targets that that are required uh for use of free cash okay thank you can you go back to the list waterfall just sure y ladder waterfall ladder yep and how how do you generate more free cash and what what so free cash is coming from a few different places so free cash is coming either from excess Revenue over what we budget or it's coming from turn Backs from departmental budgets so to the extent that we don't spend everything like for example this year we had a very uh easy snow year so our Reserve fund is turning back money that otherwise would have been spent for snow so that that's part of what we'll get in free cash uh next year um then to the extent that there are collections from prior years that come in after the year is closed that that supports free cash as well um and then it also um is dependent on the way that some of our grant money flows in and out because do will put a hold on any grants that may not be um you know they may still have obligations out there that um balance that would reduce what we would have otherwise have available only covering it all got it well and the one last major pieces any free cash from the previous fiscal year that we're keeping in reserve appropriate and which is you know traditionally been in case so TR traditionally we we don't allocate $2.7 million in order to ensure that we at least have that the following fiscal year so so what you control is UN our fund balance at the end of the year so control quote unquote what we have the most flexibility to make to ensure that we're producing the free cash number that we need to hit is the local receipts to to be conservative in local receipts in order to ensure that we're hitting that the the number that we need in order to hit the policy targets one follow sure um turn backs yes operating budget turn backs not the reserve Do you have a a sense of how that's been running so I would say that we are more pinched because we are now doing things like taking salary Savings in departmental budgets where we never had before um so that varies year to year and I would say that you know for this year for example in DPW instead of we had about less than $400,000 for snow and ice we were able to cover that with turn backs so you'll see that kind of the beneficiary of that is the reserve fund but the snow and ice hit every year can vary so I guess my question is is it if you could just give me an order of magnitude is it a half a million dollars typically that's going back to free cash is it two million do you have a sense well I I have I have a sent it's not consistent I would say okay what's the range um I'd have to get back to you on I'd love to see a chart yeah yeah that yeah I I can give you something for that but I would say that it's definitely our budgets were fatter probably five years ago and we are you know we've been making reductions year-over-year because the needs are to are great every year so you know I would say that um you know we we've never taken salary Savings in departmental budgets before in the past two years we have um so that is definitely we've been able to usually provide flexibility to departments and that flexibility sometimes turns into turnback um yeah um looking at this reason I asked the slide back the last one special use um you meant mentioned that go into that so that would presumably be over and above the stand the standard amount that we have programmed into the budget yes yeah okay yeah yeah so I think you know the question is are there new areas that need to be added to the waterfall or are there exist areas that may need more funding as an example you know the CIP you know more or less um you know if there are other un unfunded areas that we want to address you know does that make its way into the waterfall as well see it seems to me the key question is we need $9 million of free cash order to make policy work and is fit all of these various pieces together what is the um risk that we have that we'll miss that Target so I would say that to the extent that we fall short in our Revenue projections the first place that will take the hit is the CIP because that is the area that we then revisit after we fulfilled all the parts to obligations so the CIP is always the beneficiary of additional free cash okay that's useful to yeah okay for piggy bank when you ra the piggy bank and sometimes you tell well it's one it's one it's onetime money and so there the CIP has projects that are one time in nature so you know it it basically will constrain what we can do in a given year oh I just um so the 20% Reserve uh I would assume that's either means we're going to increase free cash or we're going to take away from something correct so we're saying that um the way that we think the the easiest way to preserve the unreserved fund balance is just to keep putting money into the stabilization fund and so there used to be a Target on the stabilization fund that was um kind back in 2011 it was just say well get to 10 but we don't have to put a prescription on on what the actual funding level is um Lincoln and I have been talking about you know strategies to get to the 20 well to get above the 20% because we want to be at the median for triaa communities um and you know whether or not that requires regular infusion of of uh stabilization since it's the second bucket in the overall prioritization um you know we can just set the target ourselves uh instead of having like a specific number but my point is you're item number two on the ladder you would increase the amount of money instead of being minimum 10% you might say minimum 15% or 20% that means that mon that number is going to go up yes so does that mean that we either have to increase the overall free cash from 9 to 10 million or we're going to take away from CIP I think what will happen is that the lower rungs of the of the ladder will not have as much money includes Ops right because no we don't every year we don't necessarily fund Ops but when we have a good free cash year we generally do it includes the additional money over above the $250,000 increase that's programmed after each year okay the the state's general rule of thumb is that your free cash number should be 3 to 5% of your revenue from the prior fiscal year um which we have hit consistently over the last several years and just these last two years that have been anomalies right we've usually been in the four and like three4 range like on the high end of the state's good balance range and then these last two years for oneoff reasons we were above it um can jump into the oh sorry that's um just to put a number on we're talking about so people understand it understand that we're talking about increasing the overall reserves by essentially 2% of total revenue of tax of of of so that is 10% and when we're talking about the 20% minimum now that that Moody is looking for for tripa massachus municipalities right that's that's that's 10% of total prior year Revenue okay so that's $3 million is the title correct it's well closer to 40 closer to 40 right so it does indicate over time a significant new investment in reserve specifically stabilization okay and that's the total balance it's not how much you have to put in each year right it's just as as Reser has that total so we would need to get to four we would need to get the 40 right but the don't forget that the 383 whatever million dollars is it goes up every year as collections go up as well because you 20% of the right go at least two and a half% a year yeah that's right and and in the third year the override right it's it's G point it's over and above the the regular Levy increase yes right so an override actually costs us money in terms of reserves and you know AET result of money but you have to add to add to reserves as are consequen over so then to just go back to revenues um so um just looking at local receipts um and I think that you know we can probably dive further into some of the intricacies of the projections when we talk with the working group um but two areas that I just want to highlight as as kind of intentional surpluses if you will I'm sorry for those that are seeing challenged could you make this a little bigger um is that possible I don't know how to blow it up presentation okay um that's okay keep going okay so as an example interest income this is this is kind of the one of the main reasons thank you who I was doing that um the interest income um the actual in fiscal 20 was almost $6 million that is an anomaly that we have not seen interest income at that level ever um and there's there's reason behind that um if you look at the prior year the actual was 244,000 and so part of that is related to the high interest environment um and part of it is also related to ARS as well Lincoln can probably elaborate on the interest in so so there's several things going on there and to be clear that fig year for fiscal year 2023 will not be repeated for fiscal year 2024 so to Melissa's Point um there was a direct Grant of arpa monies on which you know remember uh in the last two years two years from this time ago until now the federal funds rate um by by which banks uh lend to each other overnight has risen four percentage points yeah so we are we the town are receiving you know funds are in money markets and in in the legal list of set stocks you know money market funds are earning 5% do we know what that's going to look like a year or two years from now no but I think that is anous to Melissa's Point regarding arpa uh we have the direct Grant of arpa monies um that we've been receiving that higher interest rate on um those monies are going out the door right so we won't be in the future and the final big piece of that for fiscal year 2023 is um is an an accounting change in how so the other thing the two major things that the town is invested in outside trust funds is um money market accounts and in treasury bills and uh notes and so the strategy that um one of our that our financial advisor one of our financial advisors done done is um duration is timing varation of Treasury Nots so we had a significantly less amount in 22 fiscal year 2022 for a variety of reasons one of which is that um because the interest rates were Rising so much the price of the bonds was dropping right the inverse relationship there so that um and and uh the do rules used to be that those losses were taken in that year and so there was a loss on those but then a subsequent gain in FIS year 2023 um because those maturities because those treasuries were coming due uh as a point of comparison at the close of May while our um while our investment income uh it was at $3.3 million for fiscal year 2024 so again higher than the than than what's normal so to speak certainly because of the interest rates but less significantly than fiscal year 2023 absolutely because of this time in the treasures you're if we're we're probably heading to period of lower rates you would um uh you would expect that Bond rates would um would similarly drop values of what we currently will down that's right so you would expect in the short gains that you can book but then once they actually unless you sell them except now the Department of Revenue has changed that and so that you take the gain or loss at the not in the fiscal year but when they are sold when they sold when they're sold you still have a treasury operation that makes some sense right and just not book the result correct so this kind of volatility is why we don't assume that as the budgeted amount because it goes away and you don't want to book recurring expens ens against that if it's not going to be something that's going to be um Regular recurring last question about um stabilization funds that that those are on deposit similarly they handle through the same process of uh money market and so th those those can actually by law be uh invested slightly more slightly more aggressive they are still nevertheless on the legal list a list of 22 stocks that uh the that the de the bank sets out that that municipalities May purchase for that for funds other than trust funds and then and then there're also certain Bond instruments but so it's a little bit more aggressive allow to be a little more risk all right Andes does that interest flow back into the stabilization fund what can doing run no so by definition the stabilization fund uh invest income interest income stays in the St all right thank you all right so that helps a bit helps us get to our goal yeah a bit yes um can I ask absolutely so I just want to get my head around the the issue of uh what we're budgeting for local receipts and then what actually comes in and what we're expecting as the Gap so for fy2 what is the gap that we're expecting to have to fund free cash I know is is there an idea do we have an idea of that or do you know what I'm saying yeah I think that we uh are assuming well so fiscal 25 fiscal 20 you're basically asking how 24 is because the free cash that we're going to get next is going to be okay that's just that's that's what right so we will have a revenue Surplus it will be less than what we had last year um because this interest income it'll at least be you know probably $3 million less than last year um and we know that we have a healthy Reserve fund right now um to the extent that we um don't need it for snow and ice so that's probably another million and a half that we would you know that would probably get turn back um if we don't drain it for other things which the only other things that we have coming down the pike are fire overtime and potentially um the school request um and so you know we're we're seeing that it will be less than last year but um kind of within the norm of where of where we typically will be landing so um I would expect that that we'll be able to meet our policy requirements one thing too to keep in mind when we're talking about fiscal year 2025 revenues is that the pieces that we had seen that we think maybe perhaps are not one time in nature that maybe some sort of continuing Trend they were conservatively uh increased in terms of the projection so specifically motor vehicle excise hotel motel meals um and and meals excises uh you know those projections were increased for fiscal year 2025 because we are seeing coming out of coming out of the pandemic that you know while we can be conservative and we should continue to be conservative we can increase those sum so looking at that chart so the increases are uh um well for example parking parking was mostly meters we increase the meter fees and that's part of the reason why but but in my brain um 25 cents equals a lot more than $200,000 on a met Fe and uh we're also seeing reduced activity as well so that's that's part of it as well and recall you increased meter rates halfway through the fiscal year right um and um and and uh uh motor vehicle excise by 100,000 okay the the key question is do we want you to be more aggressive or equally careful about this batch yeah so the the other area that I would say that we would want to talk about is building permits because that is another that is the area that you know take aside the interest income um issue building permits has been deliberately lower than what we have bring bringing in you can see the 9.9 million and you know the 4 million that we're budgeting and most of what's in general government is building permits and the way that I've always been describing that line item is that that is what's feeding your CIP that Surplus is specifically generating around $5 million that is going to support CIP um everything else um can fluctuate for example you know um local options I'm probably going to need to bring down the marijuana estimate because that I'm seeing that come in um still less than what we had already pulled it down by um you know licenses and permits has been very consistent over the years I'm hearing today a discussion about wanting to make sure the build the business Community is supported so even though we may not have increased fees in that area in a while I'm not hearing that there's reception for that um you know parking and court fines I think that's around the activity of the you know whether or not if we're fully staffed in police maybe that number would go go up um but at this point it's a it's a lower number than we have historically had some of it is pandemic related and some of it is related to Staffing as well um so you know and then the pilots those are um most of the activity in Pilots is related to our largest pilot which is BU um and you know the other the other Pilots are RA are smaller so Pilots are pretty predictable um and then the refu speed um we raised that in fiscal 24 and so fiscal 25 is consistent with that um and I think we'll we'll have to look at in terms of um you know the pilot that DPW is wanting to do um and what what might be necessary in order to kind of address increased costs in sanitation as well so um that's kind of just an overall discussion of local receipts and some of the some of the thoughts that we have behind some of the estimates as well we can do you know deeper dive you know in a in a different conversation um um but you know this is kind of the fund balance uh prior to Moody's changing everything to the left of the red bar is kind of the way that we were measuring ourselves and so you can see how our fund balance was declining and we were you know making concerted efforts to bring it back up we had put you know one year we put 4 and a half million in this coming year we're putting in another 2 and a half million as a way to try and boost it and then you can see how the target is now changing based on that revised guidance as well um and so this chart just shows with the new guidance um the first half of that chart is getting a little bit cut off um but it basically just shows where we are compared to um the other AAA rated communities this was presented at T meeting as well um so you can see we're at the low end of where we would like to be um and we've had some conversations both with Moody and also with our financial advisor and there are a lot of metrics that they measure us against and the one measure that we feel we have the most control over in order to improve that rating is the level of five balance and so um that's why we're recommending that our Target really should be the medium um which is that 37.9% um you see on the chart big big number yeah it's a big number and even putting a an extra million dollars a year into it gives you know sort of by the time I'll Tire you might make it well I think we also you know we've been talking about that potentially these numbers might shift down a little bit because a lot of what you're seeing is getting propped up with Arps okay and so some of these numbers May decline um based you know once you take arpa out of the equation um you know it may not be as high as 37.9 but at least for fiscal these are fiscal 23 numbers and so this is kind of where we are in 23 we're about to close 24 we'll recalibrate and see see where that leaves us you know we have been putting money into the stabilization fund maybe that'll help us out a little bit more um but but our arle money is in there as well well it's I mean they the why isn't this Apples to Apples basically so I think that it's about the [Music] um yeah would it would yeah so so to to Melissa's point right so so we are of the 15 aaa's right we are second to last we're second to last number 14 Right In terms in terms of uh in terms of um reserves as a percent of overall R right but so but to most's point so and the median in Massachusetts is 37.9% as opposed to our 23.1% the the most point the medium will probably drop because the arpa monies are being spent out across Massachusetts below the 20 what we think will happen right right that's what I'm app right so so to the extent that say the Massachusetts median drops to 30% we still want to get to 30% and we're below 30% now is that over time yeah yeah yeah what do you think the time frame well I think that's part of we want to talk to you about how aggressive do you want us to be in trying to started um well we invest the the fund Reserve fund what what's our earning from that facted in here it's part of the overall unreserve fund balance the stabilization fund part interest yes so so so we do um we're not going to get there we interest so long I think every but just to sort of say it out loud yes and Lincoln and I talking about that potentially a good Target would be to time it with the um full funding of our pension system so if we can say let's get there by the time that we're fully funded that way we're not worrying about still needing to shovel money into the stabilization fund as we're freeing up funding from fully funding our pensions Sy is that like 20 years out no yeah we have a a bonus coming at us so you want to get to the 20% reserves within 5 years so it's not competing with other priorities that are going to be talked about as we're dealing with what to do with the the um the funding that's coming off the pension system just just to be clear we're at we're at we have been at 23.1% we've done the math now for the first time in with mood's new metrics that we learned about you know earlier this calendar year so for fiscal 23 based on close of you know the close of fiscal year 23 where it 27.1% but um what what we've been talking about and I think what we like your guidance on is getting attempting to get to the median at this point 37.9% years which we think is too high right now right or it's going to come down potentially poti but it will we still have work to do our 27% is going to come down as well so it's yeah at the minimum we get we need to get to 20 still there's still a temp % Gap yeah basically and again 10% is almost $40 million and so if you're going to try and do that over five years that's $8 million a year that's a big fight how could we do that it would be less funding for this the CIP that's how that's how it or more conservative projections or what's M's tolerance for us saying well we're working on the pension and when we get to that point we'll put some of this money around all I think their tolerance is probably the same as their tolerance for everyone else on that so and so so I would say I you know to Melissa's Point earlier there are factors outside of our control yeah you know our financial advisor and Moody's both know you know we know this is the factor where we can where we have control right and and where and where you know this their scorecard of all the their scorecard IND Ates that we should be at aa2 not AAA or aa1 yeah and and so how can we improve that you know that expectation is here's the one area that we can do that so it is a large number but here's the one area that we have within our control one other question and how much does um does the current Bond uh trip rating save us eily what's the payback I asked Ken L question so i' be interested knowing what is your answer I I'd like to do a little more I I don't have the answer right now I I think to for me to properly answer that a little bit more I want to look at what is the effect now today in today's market as opposed to say five years so I I personally I'd like to do a little more research to look at okay aa1 mun alties in the last six months what rates were they getting on what size of bond so but it would be help you understand the question what's the payback to go spend add $40 million 8 million a year to get to this goal is is it worth [Music] itli 40 per year for 40 in total um well the choices are have to um either you if you um project local receipts more aggressively you're going to end up with a smaller uh free cash at the end so six and one half isn't the other right I mean but then there are other funding areas like as an example and I'm not suggesting that we do this but you know your oped funding does that shift to the stabilization fund until you hit that Target for undesignated fund balance you know that's that's another area where you would you would have flexibility okay but that's $250,000 what's that oh increase okay Goa got you gotta so we're spending five five and a half now do you have a recommendation well I think this is what we thought we would have a conversation and then we would come back with a recommendation once we got a better sense of like how the board is feeling about all of this um and I think I ja oh sorry um my question there is what about a slightly longer time Horizon um if we were to say not five years but 10 years and have it four million a year um demonstrating A Renewed commitment to it but also question right is you know something is better than nothing and C you get credit for booies for yeah I think they do they do recognize that we do have you know they recognize that we do have you know an opep plan that where other communities don't and we are at the the top of that chart for in terms of funding for Ops um and they do recognize that we do have a community that's been very supportive of all these overrides and debt exclusions and our track record with that is something that you know is important as well so there are multiple variables that that basically result in our rating but this is the one variable that we have control over could we put opep up a few years and use the extra money to um put a reserve fund well I think that's what we may want to look at is whether the 250 would be better you know dedicated to the stabilization fund whether or not we pause you know these are things that we would want to try and come back to you with a formal recommendation based on kind of the feedback that we're getting or maybe you need to give us some options that that so digest think through allation sorry oh sorry um so uh my understanding recollection of uh how we do the opep is that we we've basically have been throwing in an amount over and above what we have a waterfall amount but then we in a couple of years rep putting this past year we've had gone beyond yeah so we we have 250,000 annually coming from the operating budget added to what we allocate for Ops and then in addition to that this past year we put addition about a half half million dollars coming from free cash into op as well so the second part of my question is and is it not the case that essentially what we have projected out for the future is that we will finish paying down the pension liability Yeah by 30 2030 um and then we will start using that amount of money to pay down the op liability y That's what we've been saying yeah so you know we can get a head start on paying down the opep liability by what we're doing but it doesn't feel essential to me um because once we pay down the pension liability it's all oped Li well I think there'll be a lot of competition for that fun that fun so to whether or not stricted discipline it's still a question but I think that that would be our recommendation for us of those HS yeah but uh you know bottom line of what I'm suggesting here is if we had to preserve our AAA rating by finding money somewhere I would find it in the amount of money we're putting that I think I've heard other people suggest too I'm just not sure what that amount of money so there's 250 out of the operating budget yes and then that's and then what else do we put another 500 so we put another 500 coming from free cash okay so it's always 500 and then sometimes it's 250 always 250 by 250 every okay R by 250 every year from the operating but this year because of the strong free cash position was an additional 500 so I just want to make sure I'm clear we're putting we're putting there's an account has a balance we're putting 250 into that account or we're putting in a couple of million and we're adding 250 every year additional 250 how much money is flowing into opb's every year is it four million is it two million way more than 250 job that's my point it's like five no I'm just saying Pro problem the amount of money we put in op right now we could find the money to once you pay it off you've got $5 million no understand I'm just I'm just asking what is the total amount of money that we deposit to we transfer to Ops each year each year yeah so in fiscal fiscal 25 it was 5,931 that's $250,000 and 500,000 of that is coming from free cash so that's one time it's not going to be there next year so every year we put in every year we add 250 of operating work 250 above we're putting in so it's 5 million [Music] um okay three sources of money for for what are they operating revenue and free operating Revenue 250 per year weer number by okay so what is the operating it's like 5.4 million 5 plus this one time right 500,000 but all things being equal if you're going to continue this would be approximately 5.65 in FAL year 26 so I don't know if this should be crazy or not but there's an option to take that five million right and put it towards Reserve reserves that and that's one of the suggestions that we're saying we need the four feedb on because the oped money is not counted as reserves it's it's a designated account so moody doesn't give us credit for having it it's not it's it's important give us credit on another so that is the other so that is another factor in our control that we're doing great at or well we're doing well then so I do not believe that we would want to recommend going to zero zero right but if if the solution was say reducing that amount or at least positing the 250 and then in addition to that using a higher amount of free cash and the combination of those two things together then that's I think more the likely place where where we wouldn't be um doing better on this Factor but then doing worse on this Factor right that that Moody is evaluated what's debt on Deb uh little over 50 million it's about 5 yeah 5 I have I have 600 million scri down Okay so let's say just so let's say 600 million it's a half difference on interest rates to go from one rating to another you're talking about $3 million a year basically that's the well except some of that been borrow no no that $ million is that that would be the cost per year to fund to to in additional interest costs in order to now some of that those those R for new debt those rates already set so new debt be a lot less than well it would still be would still be we reissue the debt gets rolled over existing debt gets right but you still because you also have debt that's going to be issued in the coming year have the branch for fire stations and for Pierce which are both big projects so I I'd wanted to in answer to Paul's question I'd want to look to see what the experience was for A1 over the last six months I'm not sure yeah was my scientific yeah it's yeah yes the it's it's not outside the ballar right but it's not TW and it's not $200,000 it's you know it's somewhere in the low M um okay another question yeah how do you weigh the advantage of doing it uh from oped monies against uh the possibility of doing it by stretching out our final down our final payment on pension liability another two years three years so that doesn't save us any money it basically just reduces the future amount you can't reduce the pension number you can only reduce what going forward you would paying into it so um I would rather just get rid of the obligation I mean I think that's that's the higher priority of this uhuh okay so you'd have to stick with the 5 million a year plus the 250 you'd want to put as much as you can in terms of I would rather make sure that we try and see if we can stick to the 2030 for the pension fund oh the pension I would like to you know try and see if we can get rid of it right op a little different because we're so far away still um we're better than most communities but we're still pretty far um we're at what like 38% yes yes okay well I just say I'm kind of surprised that they would accept this as a solution since although somebody asked the question do they not have that as other funds seems It's just basically the open yeah yeah so it's so it's not so the the state law we have a special act in book line but but send then right the the the state law has has set out a process by which municipalities can sort of take the off-the-shelf op trust but it's it doesn't it doesn't count towards Reserve because it's for a specific purpose right so it's for this specific purpose and and when Moody is looking at Reserve amounts they're looking at amounts that could be um that could be allocated to towards paying down debt in an emergency or paying another necessary cost during emergency so that we're Sol right opep couldn't be using that for that purpose but to Lincoln's Point earlier they evaluate us on that too uh and the question is you know it's a we and we can you know this is all in the budget score card but there is some play in the joints there because to you know there's a reason why we're Triple A even though the scorecard says we're double a double a two um so but that was my point about you know 61 a half do the other one comes to even if you include Ops one way or another right either you have to find an additional X number million dollars per year to reach your stabilization goal and or um you have to reduce the CIP basically or some other extense but the C is the obvious one or you have to well really there is no other or those in two things you either use because there's no way to increase Revenue you can forecast higher Revenue but that doesn't make it real no but you could reallocate repurpose opep money yes Absolut in the near term right right now maybe not 100% but there's some B and you're going to figure out where The Balancing Act is but but oh so moody is saying well said they get so many points for this and so many points for that and so many points for that and so they're going to get fewer points for there because they've cut back on opad but they kind of get more points because they've increased the I think they probably value that more than I don't know and that's and that's where we want to dig really have that conversation yeah yeah I mean they're always to say both are important right but but but but I we know we know from we know from our financial advisors and we know anecdotally even though they're never going to be explicit about it that increasing our reserves is the key metric okay without without decreasing oped too much could we you know could we maybe you know take a little bit from oped I mean do I do I think it would be a good idea to REM to go from 5 million to zero no right um but you know it come down a couple million in combination with with an otherwise increased in stabilization all right and what's the size of the Gap that we're trying to close 38 49 correct well they're saying five years maybe you can stretch it this is all about how much you want to pay stretch it out as long as you can and still get maintain and Triple A it's a long stretch well maybe not that long I mean I think the hope would be maybe you know again five years is ideal because that aligns with a pension um but if you if we were to say 10 years and we go back and we talk to our financial advisers and kind of get a sense of that um it sounds like the board is amenable to that option of trying to both trying to minimize the shock to the system of suddenly going to need to put millions of dollars into a new rung into the this rung of the free cash water fall and have it lost further down but also balance it out with the potential maybe lessening Ops uh and so you know again we don't think we're going to see another 20 million plus free cashier this year we think it's going to be probably in the realm of 17 yeah um that would be my guess um like 15 to 17 but that's back of the envelope wild calculation to your point I don't know um but that's where we were before um and so again thinking back to Melissa's point you need nine to satisfy the basics of where we are now add four to that um now you're talking about a the end of the waterfall going from $6 million to $1 million or two or one two to2 million um that is still funding all the requirements that we have put in for the CIP the the ideal requirements but it will mark shift in policy because the the the flush days are over we will have less money to say oh that looks like a good project let's invest in that now those projects will fall in the out years because we won't have the additional money to do the work yeah and I would just want to add that you know some of the things that have been boosting our free cash over the last few years has been the building permanent activity coming from large scale projects and there are no large scale projects in the pipeline so is but it's not even not even in our estimates right now because it's still too far out right so um they they won't proceed in this in this market you know the interest rates are too have to wait till interest rates go down otherwise it doesn't look go down right yeah all I can say is Right letter to the FED H up good but I do think it' be helpful ver just it's great that you're going to come back with some options but I think limiting the impact on the operating budget clearly is important and limiting the impact on the CIP um I think is also important as well so well it's probably second to the yeah I agree but I'm just saying that's that's kind of find a way to balance that and I think this goes to you know the Town School partnership is likely meeting next week um and I think you we should just put it out there the pressure from the schools is is going to be to increase operating Revenue uh and say give it to us um you know don't do the don't worry about stabilization don't worry about this and again I'm not putting words in the school committee's mouth that's the pressure that the school committee is under right now right but that two or three million dollar or whatever it is in increase Bond cost is related to that's right I just think that's that's that's going to be you know the me it's that's not as attractive a message you know you know at the end of the day we're going to pay for it elsewhere as to well schools have an operating shortfall fund our schools um this is where to your point about the revenue working Loop U when we have to talk about how we're going to maximize our budgets and and clean them we need that commitment from the school side too um if the town alone does that and schools say you know we prefer to take our chances on the ballot um it's not going to be a fruitful exercise would it be helpful to you or would it be a distraction if you had uh a couple of Select board members working with you on a regular on a s a monthly or quarterly basis or something of that sort to look at this sort of thing and or help if it's a distraction then there's no point but just think about it you don't even need to answer that I think I mean yeah yeah this is kind of the hope of this revenues working group is to then have that discussion take it back make sure that you know the three main bodies that deal with this advisory school committee and select board are in alignment um so that we all agree that the way forward here is you know on the operating side maximizing revenues and maximizing efficiencies um before we start thinking about you know tax levy as an alternative source of Revenue D Melissa you mentioned that Waldo durgen is still far off in terms of realizing new revenues but what about smaller scale projects that are around town adding them all together do we I would assume we have a list somewhere that tells us what those anticipated numbers will be so we do I mean in our new growth numbers um you know this past year was kind of an interesting Year and that most of our new growth was coming from the residential side which previously had not been the case it's coming from you know the hotels that we were building and things like that um so some of the 40 BS have been providing some some uh boosts in our New Growth um and our fiscal 25 estimate I think is what 2. um 2.6 of yeah and so that that is kind of based on the current activity that we're seeing so that's a little higher right than than in previous years but um so it's it's built in there but we we don't know right and and we we we certainly wouldn't want to have a large projection increase on that relatedly uh do we perform sort of impact studies in terms of yes there will be new tax revenue growth from residential but at the same time there's also an increase in demand on services and do you do you look at that in terms of seeing what the Delta is so I think planning may do some of that especially with some of the 40b projects um but uh you know in terms of you know getting estimates from departments in terms of their expansion lists being related to a new development um that we don't we don't have that it's yeah it's almost like individual projects on their own don't contribute enough quite enough to that to fundamentally reshape they there are difference there are exceptions to that I think hanock Village is one of them where there is just a large scale growth um in in a certain area of town that does put an increased Demand on services but even then we don't look at it as oh this is the hanock village expansion request it's more in general you know we need to you know do we need an extra FTE to handle service in this environment okay um it's it's less reactive to you know individual developments and more reactive to what we see the strain on on the resources being um because you know if we try to gain that out um we tend to be I think that's an area where being conservative and gaining that out then leads to potential for Waste um we don't want to say oh I see growth coming I better staff up now um because the reality it may be we may be over optimistic in terms of or in terms of how or over cautious in terms of how that the development is going to Impact Services I'm not I'm not trying to suggest that we would add staff now in anticipation but more in terms of looking at the tax benefit that we derive from residential expansion and weighing that against anticipated increases in Services uh you point out the Hancock Village project that that's a lot allinone but even if you have 20 little ones that that adds up to something and so being able to track those numbers I think it's important from a planning perspective because it also informs on comprehensive planning how we grow as a town and then a lot of these ongoing Revenue discussions and yeah and I think the issue there is it's often Apple St oranges with the smaller projects for example if you have if I have 15 projects going up in Washington Square yes I could probably game out a little bit better what the impact on Services is there but if these 20 projects are conversion of a single family home into two family replacement of a two family home with another two family home like that that building on Aspen Hol that everyone hates um you know um those those have different impacts and it's hard to measure the Delta depending on what you see depending on what the type of project is small projects produce disperate results even if they have the same dollar amount or the same amount associated with them but we can talk to planning about it because I think you there's some projection we can do but it's the when you talk about smaller scale projects it the the noise just become overwhelms the possibility okay um yeah this time I was so uh one thing that we have a high school partnership meeting next next week I think we ought to lead off in that meeting with some of this discussion so that we convey that there's a problem here it's not just the pressure that you're feeling but there's pressure on the overall stabilization fund that we need to respond to and we're all going to have to share the pain here and there's no there's a there's not going to be a lot of pleasure available John so uh before coming to this meeting today I happen to be listening to a bit video of a meeting last week of the park and rec commission and one of the items on the agenda was um was very short um you know they were basically prepared for the fact that at their next meeting they're going to be looking at the results of this programming study that they did relative to uh future ice rink complex and whether you know the advantages of a single rink two double ranks one rink open one rink covered one rank open one rink indoor blah blah blah you can expect that at the end of that discussion somebody's going to have to decide um are we going to spend some more money to now play out sort of which of these options do we think is the best option to pursue even though we don't know where we would put it and so are we're going to spend some more money on that question even though we don't know where we're going to put it then later in the meeting they had a discussion of the fact that because town meeting because the advisory committee recommended it approved I think it's 8 ,000 for more study uh of a pool but they don't know where they're going to put that and so some of the members of the committee of the park and rec commission literally said we don't know why we're doing this and the answer was we're doing it because town meeting appropriated the money and told us to do it but we have no idea where we would put this pool and we actually studied where to put a pool in 2020 and came to the conclusion we don't know where we put a do we need to send a message at some point that given what we're looking at here we can't afford to be spending money and then money again and then money again on possible projects that are going to require appropriations of millions of dollars in money if we don't even know where these facilities are going to go I we don't it doesn't feel to me like we're in the kind of position as a town that we can afford that luxury but nobody seems to be getting the message well we've been we we've been waiting we were supposed to hear this a month ago or maybe six weeks ago we're supposed to hear um an update from Park and Rack or somebody about the skating it's Tak a long time um and I um I'm still waiting waiting for that to happen I don't know do we know when it's going to take place but but but I now have their stud agree with you we keep throwing money at at ideas of an idea that might to try to whittle this idea down um all of it leads to a $50 million structure yeah that needs to be paid for that I'll go and I want support yeah well once again come before select you can make give well maybe it would be useful it's a very good point John um maybe it would be useful to make more of a public statement now is to you know this what we're hearing is sort of the thing that pushes it over the over the line for me that we really need to be saying these sorts of additional Capital expenses for significant facilities they're just not the money isn't going to be there my concern is that if the issue is not right for us to make a statement like that could have some billback um you know when do you make the statement well once they come before us with with you know some ideas and okay so you ra you rather wait till somebody comes back and says here's what we'd like to do and then you can sit and no you can't do that well yeah David I agree with Mike because I think sometimes ideas develop a certain momentum behind them and then it become it becomes very difficult to say no once some other group has already put a lot of effort into trying to make some viable the one caveat I would make to the point I think I'm hearing from John and Mike and it's not necessarily specific to a rank I agree with you I would oppose it but uh in general if there is a plan for something anything I think there needs to be an economic impact study on it because sometimes there's the old refrain it takes money to make money and if you're going to make money off of something it's worth knowing and seeing in how many years would you recoup it and I think that should always be a part of any analysis so I wouldn't automatically turn down any project because of upfront money but I think we would have to know what is going to be the return on investment how long will take and that was the last that was this piece of the study that we were waiting for this programming study this idea of looking at these options how would we build this out and what kind of money would we be making if we looked at these options for the rink so now parks and wck has that and the task as I understand it they understand I hope the select board's guidance which is we'd like a recommendation from you please um and that can be transmitted to you in short order and you can apply on what you want to do there the rink is an anomaly because you have to do something and it's going to cost money no matter what you do um the rink is failing the rink will not survive another five years um and especially in this warming environment um so your options are replace it in kind um which would probably cost at this Point closer to $10 million demolish it should cost around three to five um or um uh replace it with something um some different uh iteration perhaps a covered rink of some kind uh not enclosed but covered that would provide additional assistance there additional assistance for running the rink in warmer winter months um which could provide additional Revenue but would cost significantly more um that's probably more the $20 million range and so parks and wck has had this information they're working through it my hope is that they're going to come to you sooner rather than later with that so that you can make the choice unlike with the pool where the response could be look that would be everyone agrees a pool would be nice to have but we have already done the research and there's no place for it can we please stop spending money on this um this is more of a doing nothing is not an option eventually the rink is going to fail um and then you're gonna have to do something about it so Paul I just I want to we were talking about free cash at the CIP um and we're now talking about an ice rank which I appreciate but I wanted before we lost track because I know we're going to switch the agenda uh free cash policy um you're going to come back with recommendations to tweak it or do you need any anything additional from us we talked a little bit about Housing Trust and the intersection with the the CPA and maybe we increase maybe we decrease what do you need from us for the free cash any adjustments to the free cash policy yeah I think it was just a general sense of whether or not these are the existing priorities and that you're comfortable with them and whether or not the funding levels were appropriate given kind of where we are right now um okay so we still need to have a deeper discussion about the CPA and the Housing Trust Fund right because we do fund the Housing Trust Fund and that I don't think we came to a conclusion on that yeah and then um for the CIP I just I wanted to make a talk a little bit about this before we get on to the next subject um this year uh advisory made significant changes to the CIP um it ended up we agreed with it end up going to town meeting and there wasn't a problem but there was a significant uh adjustment in the CIP um and we had made some even before I think they they got a hold of it um I uh we had talked a few weeks ago about uh the the the need for better communication during the planning process between um staff the select board and advisory and and even schools right um and I I wanted to suggest that only for the CIP not the operating budget but start with the CIP there's uh within our our budget policies um the budget process there is a working group of staff that talks through and vets CIP items I think it would be helpful to bring uh the probably the chair of uh capital subcommitte for advisory into the CIP discussion earlier in the process versus them getting something that's complete and actually make that as part of our formal process um you know my sense is that advisor is reacting to the budget they're reacting to the CIP and that creates um you know the potential for a lot of variability and it might be better to be more inclusive and partnering earlier in the process so that's my I wanted to get the sense of the board of that yeah um I don't and I don't know whether this requires did you get this set the board I mean I haven't talked to anybody I don't want to switch to no topic if Paul hasn't sort of gotten what he's looking for here why hav no one has spoken since I spoke so and I can't read anybody's L we'll all talk to you privately about that but um I had a question that ties into you know what I said in my previous comment because what you'll often hear and I I have to you know concede this the answer to what I complained about from some people will be but we will be able to afford it um because we can always get um a d solution um for a project you know even if it's a $50 million project we got the debt exclusion and the rating agencies have always said Brooklyn is so property Rich that as long as they keep approving these things it's not going to impact their uh rating their triple at the beginning of this meeting we also had survey results where people were talking about affordability so I think that's the balance there well there yes thank you for bringing that up but don't even the rating agencies at some point say even Brooklyn can't endlessly accumulate debt without it impacting their AAA rating and know we know you're a big Rich Community with lots of property but you're borrowing so much money that you you've kind of gone too far you know even for a community with as much property value as you have there's a limit yes yeah there's a limit you know and a lot of municipalities do have uh a a policy that um says that that excluded debt shall not exceed x% of Revenue or X excluded debt costs each year should not exceed um x% of Revenue or um x% of the total Levy Etc there is an upper limit from the state but that's yeah we're not anywhere near that but other municipalities you know for example say shouldn't be any more than 12% of that excluded debt cost shouldn't be any more than say 12% of the tax levy in a particular year so um you know I think it's another policy question for the board about is that something that You' like to pursue well we don't we have a metric in our within the 11 we do it might so you may recall I I take point but you also recall that when in in the bu projection FIS plan that that we talked about when we talked about Pierce um that looking forward 5 10 years our debt load actually goes down because we have some debt that's been we have some things that have been closed out now there's no question that we're g we have lots of opportunities to build that debt back up but when you think about debt remember debt doesn't just go you don't just acquire thatb you also add on so let's just keep that that balance in mind um oh can I answer are we still talking in the context of the skating rink I'm just I'm confused about this way it's took John's comic which is his Ro com okay yeah the skating I'm I I kind imtion that there are many boats on the like for skating fored not not the Super not we don't need to have Boston Garden rebuild uh Dave just a question I have so you mentioned 12% as a metric in other municipalities for excluded debt approximately what percentage of our budget are we at we have have to look we have it I don't remember it's high but it's higher than 12 yes okay and what's the state liit oh uh that is a um it's a percent of total valuation in the town I believe it's sorry can't remember what I think it's I think it's I think it's 1% excuse me it's two and a half% of the total of the total valuation equalized valuation to so we're nowhere near 2 and a half% of total valuation it's the other two and a half in proposition two and a half that no one thinks okay um you done to Paul's question I do I do want I I know John scooted past my CIP question but this is an important question yeah um you know we we Face a completely different CIP than what was proposed to us because advisory changed it dramatically and um I think that we should find a way to get ahead of these types of changes later in the budget process and I think the way you do that is we bring some folks into the tent into the circle of trust during the budget development I'm not talking operating budget I'm strictly talking CIP because it is done outside of the view of everybody um it's done by staff only which is fine but it eventually comes to us but I think we could be more collaborative with advisory and not not see stuff going over the wall M chess chess sorry you know historically Melissa mentioned this a couple meetings ago historically in the December forecast briefing we had more information about the CIP because we would have free cash certified or we'd be close to it last couple years because of various issues we haven't had free cash certified in December and as a result of that the CIP is more speculative um and so we can talk about projects we can talk about ideas but we until we know what the free cash number is and therefore what that overage is that goes into to the CIP it's difficult to make concrete statements about where it is so I think the the issue you've identified is is a real one um and I think we can aimed one of the things that Melissa suggested was that that meeting we repeat with the ad with the advisory committee with the initial forecast meeting and we really Endeavor um to make sure that we have a more built out you know proposed CIP at that juncture yes so I I guess there's two things I'm talking about I'm I'm I'm concerned about the Topline number which is not really what I'm talking about I'm talking about the policies and priorities of the CIP right that should be done in a collaborative nature process with advisory I would suggest the CIP sub the capital subcommittee because they have a lot of opinions about where we should be investing Capital when and how um potentially the select board um as well I'm happy to get involved early or someone from the board to help set priorities um and then have that uh when when you finally know the number then of course you could pick which projects but I'm there's a broader issue here about collaboration that I'm talking about right that's that's that's what I'm talking about so I was wondering whether it would make sense to um bring a couple of Representatives of the advisory committee into the same kind of discussion that we're talking about having um uh uh on a regular basis to look at um look at Financial issues Financial policies as we you could do that as well Mike but this is a very simple very simple ask if you go and look at the budget process that's in the budget book there is a meeting early in the process that is meant to identify and V yeah CIP projects I'm talking about that specific I'm not looking at the boil of the ocean here very specific there's there's a small group that meets to vet the projects there is policy around prioritization for the CIP that's in our budget book I would suggest that that body that's meeting revisit the prioritization get feedback from the select board and I just I think that since it's the advisory committee that ends up putting the budget to town meeting they consider it their budget I would pull them in earlier in the process start with the CIP we can talk about Opera budget later it's a bigger problem but I will start with a safety okay anything else let's Enda okay after after our break strategic Vision discussion how long would you like how long would you like the break to be what people read 10 minutes 10 minutes 235 e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e um last two miles of this Marathon uh blackb strategic Vision uh Tiffany that's you I'm I just wanted to brief set the set the stage for the discussion so we've gone from the in the morning session where we talked about the findings from the poll uh from the uh polling and then your goals and objectives for the next year which is a narrow time Horizon to discussing policies and procedures for finance for how we're going to start trying to effectuate those goals and now we're taking that step even a little further back to a mid-range time Horizon where we're looking at strategic plans and Tiffany has done really great work at kind of looking at other communities that have done strategic plans kind of looking at Best Practices and then at the end of this we have some questions for you about how to how to guide us in this process uh if you think this is a valuable U road to go down um we can then use your responses to form the Contours of going out and asking for an RFP to do the certain to begin you know mid to long range strategic planning initiatives so but Tiffany's got the got the slides and it's going to walk through them with you okay and I'm gonna probably have to bounce back and forth here I'll you SL it's been very laggy for me there we go okay um so objectives for this conversation are to discuss medium and medium to long-term goals uh Beyond the Horizon and just the next fisal year to discuss the value that strategic planning could provide to us and then also to entertain a proposal to um issue an RFP for uh strategic planning services so Charlie assisted me with this we pulled together some different literature around what strategic planning is and I'll read this just for verbatim the rest won't be verbatim but strategic planning is a deliberative disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization or other entity is what it does and why it does it and that comes from Bryson and the second one comes from poer who are both considered to be kind of leading folks in this field um strategic planning takes a big picture approach that blends futuristic thinking objective analysis and subjective evaluation of values goals and priorities to chart a future direction of action to ensure an organization's Vitality Effectiveness and ability to add public value so wanted to bring forward the vision statement that you all worked on I believe it was at the last work session and you all came up with Brook line should be a diverse community that is well integrated socially economically and racially making it a place where people of all backgrounds can can and want to live and work and a strategic plan really should work towards that Vision um this is probably hard to see on the TV but um wanted to talk a little bit about what's the value ad over and above what we're already doing and so obviously we spent the morning working on budget or uh goals and objectives and how that feeds into the budget conversation and that really takes on a one-year time Horizon but there are also other directives and recommendations coming into the town so that includes town meeting developing different warrant articles uh which also creates directives for us as the town and then also Al all of the boards and commissions that we have and some of those do issue directives some of them make recommendations so strategic plan is going to take more of a five to 10 year view out um from where we are today it does establish goals and objectives I know you all are developing those who can really build on that um they are time phase it's meant to be measurable they'll include performance indicators timelines who's the responsible party for a particular Focus area a strategy under that Focus area um and you routinely Monitor and track it so a strategic plan is meant to be more about the operations um and then we have the comprehensive plan that takes more of a 10 to 30 year Horizon and this is more about the pH physical development of the Town how does our town look and feel um so I kind of laid these on along the time Horizon and if you can go to the next slide I also wanted to point point out all of the plans that we have as a town this visual does not have all of the plans um this is just what I was able to collect over the last few days from our different departments but really the goal of a strategic plan is to put all of these plans in conversation with one another kind of creating you know how the board select board's goals and objectives interface with that strategic plan how does the comprehensive plan talk to that strategic plan how does the police strategic plan talk to that um overall Town strategic plan what I thought was interesting one was that DPW has a strategic plan already I think police already has the Strategic plan the Council on Aging is looking to do a strategic plan and so what that says to me in looking at this is that our departments really have an appetite and a desire to think more strategically um and so we really have the opportunity to kind of do that collectively as the town rather than just just on a department level and so I put in here this also comes from Bryson um this is just just one view of strategic planning it's called the building block View and when I looked at this I could see there's already a lot of things that the town has done and that you all have done in terms of thinking through goals and objectives thinking through who's our stakeholder what what do our residents what do our citizens want from us um and as a part of these strategic planning processes that other Massachusetts communities have done they have issued these Community surveys so we're kind of one step ahead of the game in that process so um Melissa and I talked to a couple of communities um we talked to Nantucket and we talked to Westford Town manager Westford Town manager used to be at Shrewsbury so we got some insight into those three the other two on here chelsford and Westboro I did not speak with um but did collect some information from and then in the folder that I sent to you yesterday it also contain Danvers that's not included in here because it was a late arrival of information so first Westboro Westboro developed their first strategic plan in 2018 they used noac Consulting Group which is now rapis several of these other communities also used novat consulting or rapis the time Horizon for their plan was two years and they developed um 10 Focus areas they called them critical success factors so different communities use different terminology for what their kind of strategic directions were n Tucket who we did have the opportunity to speak with developed their first strategic plan in 2020 also with Novak Consulting Group now ra us their plan was a three-year time Horizon and they consistently update that um to show what's the progress they're making in each of the focus areas and within each of the strategies they have six Focus areas um something I thought was neat about n Tucket is that they have the actual kind of physical printed document or pcket of the Strategic plan but they also have a strategic planning website um and so this is a snippet from that it's still down um this is the a snippet from that website and if you actually clicked into view project uh if you were on the website you could see all the different strategies each Focus area has a lead on staff who monitors progress and works with different departments to make sure they're achieving all of the goals within each Focus area another neat thing about Nantucket is they've really operationalized their strategic plan so it comes um up when they're thinking through decisions about which capital projects to undertake um they have a scorecard so if a project meets one strategic uh priority area it'll get a certain score if it hits two strategic priorities it'll get a higher score um if it's not on there it will get a lower score and so it really has become a decision-making framework for them just a quick question on that do you know how uh n Tucket selected those six categories um so in conversation with uh rap Tellis it was also I believe a community survey working with department heads and kind of collecting all that information to develop what they called and and kind of what Falls within those right um your description of this is very interesting because uh to some extent it mirrors it's partially mirrors the um strategy map concept that chess and I talked about so this is an interesting modelage n Tucket was very interesting and they did point out to me also uh some of the projects they've been able to accomplish as a result of having the plan so I think with their sidewalk Improvement plan they're hadn't been a lot of movement on completing sidewalk projects and as a result of this plan and it being under one of these strategic priority areas is started to move the Le needle and they've gotten more projects done as a result of that and it's also helped to make decisions in terms of what staff to hire uh for those projects so the town of Shrewsbury um they launched their strategic plan just last year um and I should note that all these plans take at least a year to develop some of them took two years to develop um their time Horizon is a little bit longer um it's a seven-year time Horizon and they have six strategic Focus areas um so I took a snippet of their plan um one of their focus areas is sustain becoming more sustainable um and so they have different strategies and then different measures within that on what it means to be more sustainable in shrewbury and then these next two communities their plans are in progress can can you go back just second it's just interesting to see one of these things upgrade C facilties and equipment is very specific compete Vel a plan to preserve and detect Open Spaces it's not it's not as specif I suppose it has to wait for the the specificity has to wa for the plan to be developed those kind of seems to sort of mix yes yeah and the plans do vary on their specificity and I think that just depends on you know who's on their select boards um kind of the the appetite from the public and the department heads as well and and you know they start out with a a goal sustainability M and then you know strategies I think that's an important way of making sure that we don't talk about s Pine Sky goals that have no real connection to our ability to carry them out right so as I mentioned the next two chumford and Westford um are both in progress so chumford earlier this year just selected Barry dun to do their strategic plan um I haven't mentioned cost um but this one costs not 9,500 this has a 10year Time Horizon so that's probably on the max end of what you might do for a strategic plan um on average you really want to stick to the five to six range um they're still obviously pending on the number of strategic priority areas they'll select and then but they do intend to have a a liaison for each strategic area um to really track the progress and then Westford also working with raap Tellis the time Horizon will also be 10 years and obviously that's still pending um but we do have some of their rfps um and other planning documents available in the folder that I sent yesterday I should just note also in talking to Westford so they used arpa funds in order to um develop their strategic plan um they recently had an override that failed at the ballot this past May so the Strategic plan is going to actually help them as they're needing to reduce their budget by over $3 million in fiscal 26 they're going to need the Strategic plan in order to make sure that they're addressing the priorities so that's that's really what I found um again the average from the group it's a small group was about six years on time Horizon um something that was interesting is that a couple of the community said okay we're going to set this number we decide on the Strategic goals not the number but we develop these number of goals whatever that may be um and it later on if three years four years from now we want to add something that might mean that we have to take something off the plate um and so that's something that's been critical too for um decision-making is knowing that if you're going to make a new commitment on the Strategic plan you have to take something off or if you're going to add a strategy on you have to take something off that way the Strategic plan doesn't evolve into a 40s something list of um priorities right so well we started off with a list of 21 things that's what our so um and that's an impossible list so a mi there obviously but there there um the point of getting down to a managable and achievable list is very important I do think that there's some there will be overlap between this and the comprehensive plan and I wonder about them happening at the same time in engaging the community around the comprehensive plan because we're going to be doing that in the next several months um where how does can one leverage the other um because I think be going after the same people the same community and many of the topics that we're talking about here also a city confidence in plan so it's it's a it's it's something that's important it's just there's certainly some overlap I think so I guess I I see you know comprehensive plan and strategic plan not being I mean they they sort of meld into each other right and you goals and objectives are priority M into the Strategic plan that M into the comprehensive plan so it's not as a they're not mutually exclusive that's what I'm saying there's there's overlap and one can leverage the other um definitely and the data sources will obviously be the same I'm sure for the comprehensive plan you all look at the community survey um you would look at the community survey for the Strategic plan so it's definitely a kind of a conversation between the two well David you did this with uh the school committee uh strategic planning process you have a document I think you're the the school committee is now tying budget objectives and activities back to the Strategic plan which I think is really important can you speak a little bit about so I think one potential difference what I'm seeing here although it might not be is that it was a very Community Driven process and yes there was a consultant who was involved but the consultant was more uh in the role of facilitating discussions with community members and so the school district uh selected a broad cross-section of people representing various communities constituencies demographics and held multiple sessions early on it was more sort of a generic brainstorming the uh consultant would then facilitate some narrower uh discussions in terms of building what the priorities would be uh there were a couple of school committee members that were designated for this as well and it became more of a collaborative team effort uh with the volunteers and again the consultant more in the role of facilitator rather than saying this is what it should be and so I'm just wondering to what extent uh with what you found in terms of these communities he selected was this really more the consultant driving what the plan will be with feedback from the respective select boards or there are big Community Gatherings to come up with this I think the it almost sounds like two different questions to me one is the role of the consultant um which in all these cases was meant to be more of a facilitator with whatever groups you wanted them to facilitate in so some communities did do more of the community engagement piece some did less of it um it really so one the question of facilitator and which groups you want them to facilitate with um and to what degree and then to the community engagement side um given that we'll have the comprehensive planning conversation going on at the same time given that we have um the PCO survey results what level of community engagement do we want to do do you all want to do as the select board so I think two decision points right but it wasn't on the school side it wasn't just at the outset it's in terms of building out what the Strategic plan will actually be it included representatives of different con scies so it wasn't a uh just sort of a single take this survey and now the community engagement part is done the community was engaged throughout in terms of building it I actually think that's very helpful and trying to make sure that all the bases are covered because comprehensive planning that's obviously critically important but it doesn't cover absolutely everything that we could be looking at in a strategic plan and so I would recommend adopting or that model of having uh people who represent various constituencies were part of building this out and then also of course some elected officials on there and um it was a large group for the school side it was about 50 people how long did it take um say about a year a little less than a year so so in Brooklyn we'd have to do it that way we slow things down maybe make it much very inefficient but I think that that's probably the way that would be demanded of the community by the community the second part of Paul's question though that I think is also critically important is the the value of having a strategic plan is then when you are making budget decisions you try to tie everything to your strategic plan saying well the reason we need to allocate X for y is because look at our strategic plan it says that this is what we need to be investing it and to the extent that a potential allocation doesn't really match up what the Strategic plan is saying that doesn't necessarily mean not to do it but as you were saying you might have to then make an adjustment uh to the Strategic plan or acknowledge the departure another strategic plan in forms doesn't direct right yeah John you had a Yeah question um uh I I will confess that I am by Nature s of a cynic about these things um and having read some of the Strategic plans U that other communities have put out I think you know that what you have to watch out for is they can be very generic um and and I mean at one point I was looking at the material sent to us and thinking why don't we just adopt Chels plan because sounds like a lot of things people in bookly too I mean you know the statements about you know respecting you know the earth and the environment and we will pledge to do this we a plan to do that and then you know you sort of break it down well what did they actually come up with you know in some of the constituent elements um not all of them but you know some of them tend to be the plan is to have a plan you know or the plan is to develop a plan you know blah blah blah um it doesn't solve the problem of if if we as a select board you know who um are the you know are elected and and are as well sit as well situated as anybody in town to kind of have a feel for the various interests that come into play in Brook line and the needs and our resources and the limits on our resources um and the sort of priorities that Bubble Up from the town God help us I mean if we don't have a some sense of the priorities of the town after going through town meeting after you running for reelection after this after that after hearing from the public every single time we have a meeting then we're just not we're not working at it you know and and you know I I I worry that we will rely on someone outside to tell us you know what what to think um and and basically just repeat back to us what we already know but we've needed somebody for some reason to validate that actually what we think we know are the priorities of the town are in fact the priorities of the town so um I'll say spent 25 years as a consultant and um one of the jokes about Consulting is that the a client asks you what time it is you take his watch you the watch time is you keeps the watch yeah and you have to be very can possible have to be careful but um one of the questions that I have is well what do we want a ro consultant to be and the a consultant expect the minimum for cons the facilitator you'd also expect that they would help you put something together that does lead you back to operational decisions uh because if you it's just to your point it's great to have something that says well we're all in favor of an environment great because so what are you going to do about it what's the operational decision well um so you need to change the the compl of vehicles you need to therefore in order to support that you need to install electric power facilities for you know charging stations and you there's a whole list of things that need to be done all the way down to training the person who's going to maintain that which is what we were talking about with DPW um BAC staff so it's that kind of complete process that that has value if you don't go all the way through those steps then you're right well so I wonder if I worry about what John wors yeah um similar issue um I'm wondering if there's something in between something that's in between what we did today yeah which was good but not complete right to a strategic plan which is gather the community spend two years create the big presentation is there something in between that is more geared towards a facilitated session for us as the board that gets at some of these issues that John says I think we're all pretty well plugged into the community yeah we sit through to meeting for you know many many many hours we hear from the community we have surveys um I'd like to see more of what we did today but expand it we covered a few things that were important but I don't think we covered all the topics that would potentially be in what you can call it a strategic plan but really a strategic initiative that's going to help us drive the budget for the next two years I think there'd be tremendous value in that um if we could could make this extend this conversation into something that's a little bit broader across more topics um without creating the big strategic plan with values and who might it Jes yeah I I think you know for us and on staff this issue kind of came up as a result of what we did last summer um which was having that facilitated session having that conversation because that was very helpful to us to Think Through how we want to prioritize things in the budget but it also it had a couple of shortcomings one is it's it's only you know it's it's a snapshot of time um it is inherently was inherently narrowly focused on the issues there issues are still mutable if we have is if a what we have is a facilitated session rather than a directive of some kind the the priorities necessarily shift um and you know Community pressures necessarily shift one thing that's helpful with a strategic plan or a document like that is you're able to point back to it when there's an e and flow of you know what the community is asking for and saying no no we're looking at on a broader Horizon what fits into these goals and objectives so if what the community is telling us is we need to have a focus on this then either the plan needs to change or we need to really understand you know that where you know where where that needs to be prioritized it gives you the opportunity to say when you know someone puts their hand up and says this needs to be solved right now being able to say well take a pause and look at this and have an broad understanding of how it fits into the community's priorities as a whole it gives you stability over a longer time Horizon and that gives us stability because we know when we make when we have to make decisions about how to operationalize things that we must go back to this strategic plan and make sure that we're fitting into it we're we're we're kind of The Last Mile right you set the priorities and we have to pick up the slack at the end of the day and make sure that that gets translated into operational activities and having a document that gives us the ability to do that and to should demonstrate why we're prioritizing what we're prioritizing is is helpful to us yeah and I'm not well he did reply I just wanted to follow up so I'm not suggesting that we not do that I'm just saying that if we if we do this over an extended period of time with this group versus a broad engagement that takes a year and a half or two years I think that you could there's a there's an in between state which still gets you what you want what you need which is a written document with goals objectives actions and measurable outcomes but I don't necess necessarily think we need to boil the ocean to do that and I worry about Consultants boiling the ocean so I I agree with Paul that we wouldn't want to drag it out but I do think and I'm not suggesting anyone said otherwise that the community engagement part is important because uh even though we can predict what it is that will be important to people you never know with 100% certainty what someone based upon his or her particular experiences might contribute and provide as very useful input and occasionally there are some golden nuggets that you get from that process and so I wouldn't want us to lose that in terms of the accountability part of it on the school side even though there was a fairly large group of people who were actively involved in development it was ultimately school committee that voted on what the Strategic plan would be based on the output from that group so I would Envision that when we are undertaking this process it could function similarly ultimately we the select board would vote on what the plan States uh responding or not to the uh input that we receive from the community and from anyone else we work with on it as John mentioned and I agree I'm a little skeptical about the value of the Consultants because if you look at a lot of the Strategic plans they all start to look the same they're not that different and so why are we going to spend I see chumford almost at $100,000 for something that is already out there that we could look at ourselves I don't even know that we need a consultant I think that we spend a lot of money in consultants in general to run all kinds of different studies and facilitate all kinds of different things I don't know that they're really adding a lot of value when we already have these templates out there uh I would rather just dive in and do it ourselves so I think the the one advantage of um Consulting after my wise cack about keeping the watch um is is the question I asked is do we expect the consultant to facilitate or add value some other way I think that having somebody to help us walk through the process that you're talking about is useful that's a one day two day two meeting you know it's a relatively shorter a lot shorter engagement um and uh if we can give them a model to use or ask them for the model that they use and take a careful look at it uh I think that would that would help you know give it some uh some focus and we you know I talked about that a little bit talked about we chat and I think maybe that's a place to start um and then see where we want to go from there so if we need more help uh then uh then and we need and if as David says we need to engage more Broad in the community then I think we doing some outside house well let's take it kind of one bite at a time yeah I mean and maybe it's a difference between a you know um operational objectives versus a full-fledged strategic plan yeah right I mean we've again I think what we did today was good we got some good stuff out of it but I don't think we did all of it no and if if there was more time or spread over multiple meetings yeah like a week a month or like a day every couple of weeks together yeah to do it facilitated someone who's done it before they can walk us through it with a template um but I think it's some in between doing it ourselves and having you know all the suits and ties show up uh to do Consulting in agement so in other words um we we start out with our strategic goals and facilitator help us understand what that means you know operationally um you know what what implications that has for um for example you know uh environmental goals you know respect electrification of our vehicles you what what what does that mean in terms of the infrastructure of both our electrical connections invol the uh the U the the the U what do we need for staff to support that staff that supports thatd you know capability the grid to actually handle it like that I think what Paul just mentioned and might have been to that specific example but more broadly almost as important is a strategic plan itself as the metrics and how you measure success and I think it's important to come up with those metrics at the outset about how you're going to measure success rather than waiting until later to develop that and I've seen in Prior strategic plans that that can be the weakness that you say this is what we want to do but you have no real way of evaluating it in preparing for this I I did some research in Googled various plans I looked at a bunch although I didn't save them um and one struck me as particularly good it was only a few pages it was like four pages and it had strategic objective it had four sub four or five sub activities and then how it was being measured now brilliant right you can that that's to me is high value you know there's actually model that does that in one page but okay right but you but you understand and so I I I think that there's just an in between what we did today someone that is good at facilitating and drawing out information from a group like us it should be facilitated we had someone do that last year yeah right it was it was on a narrow we need that help we do need that help I mean you want to be able to participate instead of trying to facilitate um and then helping once that's drawn out then helping us convert that into subobjectives or activities and then what the metrics are to measure those yeah that that we could do that over a six month period um you know meaning once a month once or twice a month you could then get if you wanted to do community feedback you could do community feedback through the interative process as you again it depends on do you want members of the community when do you want members of the community coming in do you want them to be checking your work or do you want them to be co-developing all public all public meetings uh public comment at the beginning give us your ideas um I think again I I think that it would get us really far uh in what we want to achieve and it'll help inform if we do want to do a broader five or seven year process so what's the next step so I think what I'm hearing from you the general consensus of the board is something more akin to a smaller you know a compact document that has strategic goals and objectives over a longer time Horizon whether that's three years five years you know we'll set that time Horizon you want to develop it internally you want to develop it with the board the board is going to be the iterator here um with a facilitator's help coming together within some sessions developing these goals and objectives with met with qu you know qu quantitative and qualitative metrics um so that you're you know outcome based metrics along with that you know not just you know number of people serve but like what's the outcome you're going for um and then um with the option of soliciting some sort of community feedback is that do that with a survey right or you know some some sort of right Community engagement to David's point because right even with public meetings you do want to have at least one touch point of active community outreach when we go to them we could build that into it I think that could be so does that sound right to the board is that kind of the like because this is how I think is for the minutes to reflect that sort of summary of what what we do next yep yes we'll make sure that the minutes of this meeting reflect that and we're going to build that out we we'll work you know internally in our office to build out a proposed RFP um and then we will circulate that to the board for your review and approval and each each segment of this Workshop should also have that type of summary so that you know we know where we're going for those of us who don't always remember uh and so the public do yeah we have our we have our action items so um I'm sorry my watching we're we're done but I'd like like board members to do is to look at the goals and priorities document and you know CHS you're going to circulate and come up with your you know your thoughts in terms of whether something could be uh stay a little little better whether you know identify things are missing things that you think are important and uh you know want town saff to also give our comments so that uh you know we have a document in September that reflects both you know our you thinking through it carefully as well as incorporating Town staff's U thoughts and and and uh Town staff's sort of warnings that you know we may be going uh into something that we can't really B through could we um put that on the agenda for maybe later in July or August we that's what I was thinking that we would do it you know maybe in July it maybe another meeting it's a conversation yeah we can uh we'll put that on the Futures list for the 23rd ju it's gonna take a couple times I think yeah yeah um given that 25 years of experience that I refenced uh I'm happy to be a resource but I don't want to push that have a lot of skills and knowledge on this point I don't want to push that in particular offering to help us that's correct yeah I will not keep your watch I've already gone chess the individual that um facilitated us last time um what what was that person's name Rachel Rachel so yeah we can look her she had done stuff first before yes well no she was she was new to Brook line she this is her bread and butter she just Sheil she did a pretty good job getting right stuff out of us and and she only knew it was one day so right we can we can reach back out to them you know they that's their CBI right um they they they do this kind of work um it seemed to be the right they weren't was that heavy overhead consultant versus was more facilitator and guide would you circulate your what you saw that you liked the four page documents I need to find it actually one of the documents that Tiffany circulated was like four pages in and not great that was Shrewsberry or I'm not sure I don't remember the page link very pragmatic like it was my kind of it short enough for me to it out so one about they're deeply invested they go every year and they reflected every year well they've also assigned an assistant Town Administrator specifically for um maintaining that so but I know I think their financials look a little bit different that's but that's what you need I mean you need that and they go out to the beach for the retreat the level of Engagement and the investment in the plan that keeps the priorities on track well and and they were the one too that I mentioned has a dedicated staff Le on for each of the focus areas as well to oversee that make sure it's still moving sounds like one happy Island depends whether you fly in a jet or not okay I guess well done Berard you did a good job keeping us on track thank you and everyone did a good job adding their their two cents and and and and and sometimes that we earned great interest from I welome okay end the meeting I actually before we go up we're here we're here okay I I want I think I think I'm and this was without without a lot of work by you guys this would not have come up at all as well thank you thank you thank you thank you to us very luy the food was yeah a chance