no don't let David in okay thank you good evening everybody um and welcome to select board Tuesday March 12th um hybrid meeting I'm going to quickly read the um agenda we begin with a community inp put appointments and resignations then we'll talk about Center Park picnic table we'll have an audit presentation Conservation Commission uh joint meeting uh and then we will be discussing the fiscal year 25 budget and the town meeting review we have a TA report minutes and warrants liaison reports and another opportunity for Community input before we start Community input last meeting we had had some issues when we recognized some citizens who wished uh to contribute to the community input and while carile residency is not a requirement for offering input we always do ask residents to identify themselves and to give their address and I will continue to require non-residents to identify themselves and to provide their addresses before I allow them to speak in addition I will be eliminating uh sorry if in future the Carlile resident wishes to speak and does not want to publicly disclose their address and we've had some people that were worried that if they publicly disclose their addresses they could be vulnerable to these gentle people um uh they may send me a brief note prior to each meeting indicating that information so I'll be limiting all comments to one minute regardless of whether those comments are coming from residents or other citizens and I will I will encourage residents uh to submit their comments in writing to be included verbatim in the meeting minutes and to only summarize their input during this Pro portion of the meeting and um so now I'm going to recognize some anybody from either uh in the audience or online do we need to call a meeting to order I just did oh you did I'm sorry is David's remote and then yeah to do anything we don't usually take a w call we don't okay all right we have a quorum right here at the table second sorry okay here comes David look at that and here's David great um and we don't expect uh Nathan to come so I do know I'd like to recognize um resident Rebecca ver Vieira for Community input her address in residency has already been verified thank you sorry um when I returned to Massachusetts after after law school I would drive to clear my head um I'd take random routes then see if I could find my way back to Boston without a map or GPS one day I I wound through the woods and I saw BLM signs and pride flags and what seemed like every house or driveway um and later I'd learned that it may have been in response to a resident publishing some um difficult letters into the mosquito but it was on that drive that I that I fell in love with carile and decided it's where I wanted to move eventually in my life um I love its Spirit of openness and acceptance and resistance um to hate since moving here I've seen you know some some more of that occasional hate but in each instance this community gathers and stands in its face and I now find myself raising one of those flags um and saying that we are a town of love and will not turn to hate no matter how loud and rude the voices come my child will be proud of his Jewish Heritage and queer family and know that Carlile will hold the line against hate I thank this board for its role in that that's all thank you very much thank you okay yes can you uh come to the microphone please identify yourself and your address thanks my name is Dr n i at 95 Hanover Road in Caroline massachusett I come here today because I spoke to Kate re multiple times I tried to speak to the chief of police and I tried to have my attorney come with me to the meetings with the chief of police but we got nowhere um last weekend I found a police officer trying to remove a worker from my property where I was uh cutting the dead wood and and removing wood within 10 ft of the drainage we have three feet of water in my backyard we have water coming into the basement and um the drainage is not working I spoke to Mr mavier he said fine go ahead and do the work so I put gravel and I put um um specific pipes for drainage so I could uh deviate the water from my house um I was met with hate mobbing um uh assault um um people who are calling me name the CW the B word word and and threats to my life I cannot live like that um I'm going tomorrow for a resing order against these people um they are my neighbors and they have brought in a bunch of other neighbors and they are have never met with me for five years I've requested a meeting uh my attorney requested a meeting and to this day we can't meet and I I met the hateful and anger and screaming every day I got cornered on my home driveway I can't get out of my house I can't go anywhere um when I come in I have to put some videos I look at my phone and I look at to see if they're hiding in the trees and the bushes because there's a restraining order they got by line and they have to be 15 ft or I have to be 15 ft away that means I can't come into my driveway because they are waiting for me at the driveway they actually install a video camera on Hanover Road that tells them at what time I'm coming in they get the message on their app on their phone and they meet me at my driveway and they're always there I I can't live like that I'm 63 years old I went to the council and aging I went to the state of massachusett protection against uh um protection for the elderly uh I went to the state police and um I got nowhere so I'm hoping to get my order tomorrow I don't know if I or not but those people are not nice to me thank you for listening to me thank you Mr Han thank you did you all get my uh email with an attachment we did the other night I was watching her thank you um on February 15th I went to a CA H I'm sorry you need to introduce yourself and give us your speak oh I'm sorry um I'm Mike Han hour 200 Long Ridge Road and I am starting my timer okay um on February 15 I went to a a cahs luncheon that was at the um Congregational Church here in town um at that luncheon as they've done in previous times um they did religious ceremony and prayer um before the meal that seems to be a thing that the Congregational Church likes to do um I had previously talked to the minister there and um frankly he wasn't interested in my concern in fact he changed the subject um at at this point um I don't think this should be tolerated these are secular events that we're H having um the other two churches in town respect that totally um but uh the Congregational Church seems to want to do their they evangelizing um I believe it must stop um I want to note that on the very back of the COA newsletter um you will note a statement with an arrow pointing to it that says the carile Council on Aging and Human Services celebrates the diversity of our senior community and strives to embed inclusivity dignity and respect in all our services programs and advocacy see I believe that the town and the COA should live up to that mission statement um I want to see the town to take responsibility for this and go to the Congregational Church and say that's unacceptable will you refrain and if they are on the fence or say no they want to do that then there are alternatives but I don't believe that um the town should disrespect our adults and our seniors with this kind of thing going on on our public secular meetings thank you thank you is there anybody else here for public input anybody online okay seeing none a little we're running a little behind on our schedule um we'll go to appointments and resignations would you like me to make a motion love for you to make a motion all right I move to appoint Amanda Kern as a member of the Carl cultural council with the term to expire June 30th 2026 is there a second second okay I spoke to Mark Levitan and apparently the cultural Council have met her and they're very pleased so um we'll have um all those in favor I any opposed and just that was unanimous and Nathan is absent okay Center Park picnic table I have a model oh Allison sailor Stern street thank you I have a model and I want to show everybody it's two scale and it shows the proposed custom designed picnic table so this would be the lawn shap with the Barney or the bed the garden bed you would approach from the parking lot and see it um and the cardboard that's brown underneath it would be wood chips for phase one and this is considered to be Furniture so it doesn't have to go to staral commission and underneath you can see that it's integral with the benches and that is so that people don't steal it but it will be also together and when it's time to possibly make a deck under here or stone or something more permanent you could move it and put it back so the material on the legs will be black Locus which is a bit like having pressure treated wood but it's native um massachus native tree and the tops of the benches and the table will be red cedar so this is an example of Live Edge red cedar what the carpenter who is Barry owes in Carly will do uh is take the red cedar smooth it out and lay it just as in the model in three big pieces on the top and one for each bench and epoxy it and then U um polyan to make it stable in the Sun and we this we have the sawmill in win Massachusetts that provides the wood we have Barry o who's made um some furniture using this technique already at Center Park we have benches there and at a public meeting last year it was brought up as a request to have a picnic table at Center Park the public input meeting is because I'm president of friends of Center Park and I represent the board our job is to work with the DPW the DPW mows the lawn we look after the fancy garden beds and the way we do it on a volunteer basis is we run free classes and so the benches have been part of our uh expanding the park to be more than just a lawn with flowers around the edge to include Woodland Gardens so we would like to um we are not the owners presid as um friends of sener Park we represent the select board but for something as big as this you need to get your permission so again just to um recap it's Furniture so it does not need historical commission approval uh we did ask for ARA funds for it I'm going to ask you to just sit and use the microphone for the rest of your presentation to make sure that I can hear you sorry the arpa funds have been requested did and if we cannot get arpa funds to fund this picnic table we'll have to do fundraising are there any questions do you want to see the model it's really cute Ryan would you mind putting that back up on the screen the thank you I map or the model uh I thought whatever she had up there before whatever you had wasn't it both or it's a map yeah actually that one yeah that one there there's the model okay that's um using oh and that's the one I want to look at yeah so the this cardboard that represents the uh green squares that are indicating where the picnic table will be if you compare that space to the full lawn it's 2% so we're taking up 2% of the lawn to do this and as I said it it's actually has twine uh from hay bales laid out there you could go anyone could go there and look at it um Jim Hall from DPW knows that it's there he hasn't called me back to say it's going to be a problem we think that it's plenty of room to mow around those three Circle things are the big rocks that are in the lawn so um what we like about this design is that it's handicap accessible anyone in a wheelchair can just go straight through the main Center pathway and go straight to the picnic table and that's a section without any benches so their wheelchair would come right up and uh be right at the level it's ADA Compliant level so we like it we think it's going to be lovely questions questions so you're requesting arpa no no not requesting ARP she has put in a request but it's it's not been granted so ARA said no so then you're at fundraising right are you asking our permission for fun fundraising just to just to move ahead with having this picnic table at Center Park in our budget NOP just that they would raise the money privately oh so just the permission to have it if they raise the money it's a pretty big piece of furniture for a group that are helping the town but we're not the town yeah because what's your estimate on the budget for this 10,000 10,000 yeah if you want to pass the um model around it's two scale literally done on a 3D printer um so that is what it would look like it's just you have to expand it up to being approximately 3 foot wide like a picnic table typically is and in a curve it would be about 23 22 feet uh long but that was in the picture yeah so Allison I you know I know I had the opportunity to hear more about this at your public meeting oh sorry that's right here go ahead okay at the um at your you know public information meeting that you had um recently um and I I guess I just want to raise the same uh question that I raised then which is um the this seems like a pretty even though I understand that that it's not taking up a huge percentage of the lawn there it seems like a very large picnic table you know 20 3 fet long when your average picnic table is what maybe six eight feet long and I and I think it's wonderful that you have designed it in such a way that it can be handicapped accessible me I think that's a wonderful aspect of this I I do Wonder though if it is um you know more than we then is um sort of in keeping with the aesthetic of the of Center Park and I know that um you know one other um one other um member a resident who was in the meeting you know sort of raised that same question and again I understand the the it it'd be nice to have that be available for a variety of reasons I'm just wondering why what what your thinking is about making it as large and sort of in a in a way almost massive as as this is proposing well one of the things that we do at Center Park is we have um events there that more than were in the past and every Monday we have um Garden classes I could see that we would use this every single time we have a class to lay out our stuff to use and sit on the benches to have a drink I think it'll be used a lot um it's really probably about the size of Two and a Half picnic tables um joined together and the curve is to help it to not if it was 22 ft all in a straight line that would be difficult but the curve actually provides stability as well as the custom look that we were going for it took us a long time to come up with this design because you can't just have a nor ordinary picnic table at Center Park it would be inappropriate it's such a fancy Park and the benches that we have in the Woodland Gardens are beautiful and customade and they're black walnut and red cedar um um so this is what we came up with this is what the board likes and that's why I want people to go at any time right now you can see this outline which is designed for the DPW to be able to go around it um and yeah so we we we like the size you finish okay um going to recognize Mark could you uh identify yourself you're muted you're muted for some reason can't hear you still muted it's on our end give us a he's on no we see your mouth moving but we can't hear you sorry okay uh you want to put your comment in the chat did CPA funds or if CPA funds could be have you tried at CPA I asked Ryan and he said probably not going to work so I didn't no it's um I can speak to that just as the chair of the CPC um it you know typically um CPC monies are spent on a um a project that fits into one of the four categories um and I'm trying to think about what it says around this would be under recreation in open space um but just off the yeah I should I should look at it further I guess because we haven't ever um that I know of entertained you know um using those funds for a specific piece of in a sense Furniture right something that's removable um right rather than something permanent oh so yeah yeah well yeah I I can certainly um any form of of fundraising would be wonderful um we can probably fund raise I can imagine doing it at friends of Center Park half of it I'm looking for matching funds yeah um I I'm going to say that when the friends were when when we had the Center Park and we were trying to save it from just kind of going to seed so to speak and the friends were um started it was with the provisor we gave some money like I hate to keep on using these gardening you know metaphors seed money um but the idea was the friends was going to take care of the park and I would say that if we the town were to spend anything on it it would be for the plantings and not for fuit furniture and for maintenance of it because that's where the rub was um so I don't I don't I would not support the town funding furniture for this so maybe I I'm basically asking today is not the we will fund raise for so if then I have well there might be some other discussion about you know the design of it but I in that case but if it's removable not I'm not as personally um invested in in that part because they'll want to have a design that they feel they can fundraise on and you know y if we get to phase two of the project it would have a deck underneath it this would be um black locust decking um that's what we're going to ask for um and that would be permanent but it can sit on wood chips for several years while we all get used to it and see how often it's used and how would that affect the maintenance of it then because wood chips you can just mow right over you know if your the wheel of your mower goes over the wood chips what the deck that we're proposing have a historical commission meeting U where we're going to be talking about this on tomorrow next week I forget it was supposed to be February and it got moved to March but it's going to be exactly in line with the lawn so the mower would go skipping over it in fact the dark line around here would be a mowing strip uh perhaps even concrete so that the mower would I I need to talk with Jim about it I was going to say that would want that to be very carefully gone over with the people the at DPW so that it's not causing them exactly but we would have lived with it for how long as wood chip so it be the same shape and then we just have to question the materials so that's Manana okay in wasn't CPA eligible itially Mist so I don't doesn't matter it's okay don't remember saying that don't know that you I was of towards arpa and then arpa didn't seem to work out so CPA might be I just want it might still be eligible for CPA and once you did some fundraising that would be the time to go to CPA ah okay good advice I would say but you know talk to The Madam chair over here see yeah often um it's helpful if a coming forward with a project where you already have some funds committed y yeah Mak sense right um I I guess the other thing I'd throw out there is if um that you could if it that if you scaled it back a little bit then it wouldn't be as expensive and it might be easier therefore to to raise the funds to cover the cost so just just food for thought y um I understand that that the garden CL that the friends are very I know how much time you've spent thinking about this um I I guess I want to say though that um one one of the one of the things that's so hard to measure about Center Park is um how many people use it what is it that they that people like to use it for and trying to understand as as you're planning for the future you know what um not just what the friends not just the vision that the friends have which is it's uh you know terrific and very um um detailed and um you know I I know how invested you all are but also un trying to get find a way to get um feedback from people in the community um because again I I just worry a little bit from the few comments I've heard and again it's only been you know one one person a couple of different times um there's I think you know the concern is is it going more and more toward a fancy park that's not really as appropriate for a town like Carlile as opposed to what you might have in a more urban area so I'll just I'll just throw that out there for you know for you to think about how you might more uh input feedback from people in town about what they would like to see there or how they use it sure okay thank you we're going to move on to our next um do I have permission to go ahead with fundraising and and say that the select board approved that fundraising by friends of Center Park when I do a straw poll or have a motion um you're looking at me well uh you seem the most knowledgeable and the most have an opinion on it whereas yeah I would point out that if for some reason it just didn't work out and what I think is going to be wonderful is horrible we could move it you know what what maybe the way to do this is to see what kind of response you get in terms of trying to raise funds for it that'll tell us something about the community support wouldn't it be harder though if doesn't Alison need to say that I mean I'm saying I I maybe we should give her permission to raise money yeah I'm I'm comfortable with um going forward to try to raise money for this particular project that's good yeah okay and then let's see I don't think we need a motion for that no I didn't think I think we're in agreement on okay great okay thank you for this don't forget your model yeah great thank you Kelly and uh would you like to come join us for our the audit presentation I Kelly please would you join us I'm not down our uh wonderful town accountant want to do this me woman minut to go for it okay this is Zach fos he was the uh lead on our financial statement audit this year he's with Markham LLP so they were a new audit firm for the town for the f123 audit thank you thank you so again my name is Zach fos I was the audit director in charge of the town of cares 2023 audit uh tonight I'm going to go over um take you through the financial statements go over some uh account balances and financial Trends and if anybody any if at any point anybody has any questions feel free to stop me we can go over them at that time before we jump in I think it's important to kind of have a takeaway or conclusion for my presentation here tonight and I think the takeaway and the conclusion is that the town's in a good finan position you have a good unassigned fund balance you have a good uh a well funded opep trust fund and you also had positive turn backs on your budgetary versus actual for your general fund so first I'd like to turn to page one which is the first page after the table of contents and the rcent here a little bit more rhyme there you go this is the first page of the independent Auditors report uh this is essentially what the town of car HED hired us to produce uh the town did receive a clean opinion which is the best opinion you can receive from an independent auditing firm U which again means there are no exceptions so if I could have you turn to page four which is the first page of the management discussion and Analysis and the management discussion analysis takes place on pages 4 through 11 essentially this is a narrative summary the results of operations so instead of just simply sitting here and reading this to you I'd actually like to jump to page 12 and we'll discuss uh the same items that are discussed here in the management discussion analysis on page 12 and some of the further Pages as [Music] well so we're going to page 12 you said 11 12 that's correct okay thank you current assets so tonight we're going to be looking at two balance sheets and the difference between the two balance sheets is one is a longterm Financial View for the town of Carlile and one is a short-term Financial View for the town of carile this is the statement of net position which is the long-term Financial View for the town of caral as you can see there's just one column of information here so essentially what is done is the town's general fund your special Revenue funds your stabilization funds your Capital project funds and your trust funds are all Consolidated together then the town's long-term assets and the town's long-term liabilities are included so for this portion of the presentation I want to focus on those long-term assets and those long-term liabilities if you see maybe two-thirds of the way down the page there's an item called Capital assets it's under non-current assets and it's the last one it's going to be your other Capital assets net of accumulated depreciation and that at a balance of 28,2 16,000 it's actually about a $537,000 decrease from the prior year now that decrease is due to your depreciation expense of 1.5 million exceeding your current year additions of about a million dollars I'm going to highlight some of the current year uh additions that you had to your Capital assets in in in fiscal year 23 the town spent $16,000 for new HVAC system at the library 141,000 ,000 on two new dump trucks 122,000 on two new police vehicles and $445,000 on some new roads those are really the long-term assets for the town if we could turn the page to page 13 we can go over to some of the long-term liabilities so this is really the second half of the statement in osition the first page was all of your assets page 13 is going to be your liabilities as long as well as your fund balance if you go maybe a third of the way down the page you're going to see a t an an item called non-current liabilities and that's where we're going to focus our attention the very first one is bonds payable net current portion and that had a balance of 10 million 234,000 it's actually about a $1.1 million decrease from the prior year now this decrease is due to the principal payments that the town made on your outstanding debt fiscal year 23 now what I wanted to the reason I wanted to bring this up is because your users of the financial statements your bond rating agencies like to see between 70 to 75% of debt paid off within 10 years and as of June 30 2020 3 the town of Carl is at actually 74% will be paid off within the next 10 years which is a good financial position for the town of Carlile to be in and will be viewed favorably by users of the financial statements such as a bond rating agency two line items right below that is the net pension liability and that had a balance of $3,493 th000 it's actually about a $4.7 million increase from the prior year and I'll get into that increase here in a second what this represents is the town's portion of the total unfunded liability for the middle sex County Retirement System now the reason for that ER take a quick step back it's important to note is that this liability is actually being presented as of December 31st 2022 so be mindful of that when we're talking about the investment results the reason for the increase in this liability is that the investment results for the middle sex contributory retirement system came in less than what they anticipated which led to an increase in your liability is not uncommon or shouldn't be say not uncommon it's not different from other communities in the Commonwealth most communities in the Commonwealth saw an increase in their net pension liability due to those poor investment results during calendar year 2022 what's important to note is that the middlex county retirement system is only at 52.6% funded which is fifth lowest in the Commonwealth um and what we see on average for our funding in the Commonwealth is around 75% Z what what number are we 53 you're at 52.6 one 52.6 one and the average is 73 and you said fifth flowest but how many counties are there there's not that many counties right there's also individual uh towns so basket we're fifth out of 30 how many 50 good question I'd say there's at least 50 all right so we're in the bottom Des over that's why I wanted to bring that to your attention yes um you know there are certainly there's a very few communities that are over 100% it's very rare but there certainly are some where does one go to Lobby that Organization for a hire because we don't control it we do what they tell us right so what where where would one go for you'd have to probably go to the County Retirement Board a board so that's individuals appointed by that's a good question I don't know who they're appointed by this this is the board that asked us for more money last year maybe we should have a meeting with them Ryan you can that will increase your assessment though whoops oops yes but okay it the discussion should happen anyway okay thank you right below the net pension no no need to apologize right below the net pension liability is net OPB liability and opep stands for other post-employment benefits is essentially the health insurance for the town of carile that had balance a 10, 328,000 it's largely unchanged from the prior year but the reason I wanted to bring this to your attention was to let you know about the funding percentage for the town of caros so I'd actually like to turn to the last page of the financial statements it's page 68 oh boy P eight 53 68 68 61 perfect close 65 five six 78 y so page 68 is some required supplementary information and I think it really shows a great illustrative example of how much the liability is how much funds you put aside and what your funding percentage is so on that very top piece we'll see it says the schedule the net OPB liability if you look at that very first column that 2023 column you'll see that the total OPB liability was determined to be 13 Milli 117,000 excuse me sorry one sec I'm on page 68 and I'm not so I'm not seeing what you're referencing is at the top right right there no you're not on page 68 68 is labeled not 68 of the PDF oh whoa whoa whoa sorry sorry I get it no no no that's not your go back my mistake sorry let me get down there thanks okay are you there uh yeah so right at the top you'll see the schedule of the net OPB liability so the town actually hired an actu to come in and determine what the value of this liability is and your act determined that it's a liability of 13,17 th000 but right below that that's the amount of funds that the town of car has put aside to begin funding this liability and the town's put aside about $2.8 million so you can see your funding percentage is at 21.27% now I know that is low and it does look low because it is low but when you're looking at your contemporaries and your peers in the Commonwealth generally what you see is anywhere from 0 to 10% funded for cities and towns for the town of carile to be at 21% funded is a good financial position relative to your peers and your users of the financial statements are going to view that very favorably what they like to see is a commitment to funding it year over year over year just starting to chip away at that making those annual contributions with the town of Carl does and again that's going to be viewed favorably by users of the financial statements I'm going to jump back to page 15 that was everything I wanted to bring to your attention on the long-term Financial View for the town of Carl I'd like to jump into the short-term Financial View for the town of Carlile act 15 page 50 did you say 15 15 yep that's on the report just before we leave opep below that you sh site a coverage for the current payroll I mean that's a different metric I guess what's the relevance of that metric that is a good question I'll have to follow with you on that one okay because I mean it's I guess I can say you know it's hard to say okay that's yeah let's just leave it so what page are we page 15 of the report not of the PF so page 15 is the second balance sheet that we're going to be looking at tonight whereas Pages 12 and 13 with a long-term Financial view page 15 is the short-term Financial View for the town of car as you can see that there are five columns here the very first column is your general fund which is your general fund and your stabilization funds your next fund is your major Community preservation fund which is your CPA fund uh the next major fund is your American Rescue plan act fund which is your arpa and then you have your non- major governmental funds which is the consolidation of all other special Revenue funds Capital project funds and trust funds that aren't uh otherwise presented then that far right column your total governmental funds is just a summation of the previous four columns but I want to focus just on that general fund column that very first column and I want to go three numbers from the bottom so Ryan if you can scroll down just a little bit that's your unassigned fund balance and this is the most important number in your financial statements in my opinion and that's for two reasons the first reason it's the kind of the it's not kind of it is the starting point for your free cash calculation so when you're certifying your free cash and Kelly's doing that uh for the town that's really the starting point for that calculation in that process now the government Finance Officers Association recommends two months of unassigned fund balance on comparing to your operating expenditures or about 177% and as of June 30th 2023 the town of carile is at 18% so that's a good financial position again for the town of carile to be in it's right where uh the government Finance offic Association recommends that you be in in uh for an unassigned fund balance now your unassigned fund balance did increased by $578,000 from the prior year and the reason for that is primarily due to your favorable budgetary results of operation in your general fund you had turn backs of $1.4 million on your budgetary results of operation in fiscal year 23 and we'll get into that here in in a bit more of a second I can show that to you in an illustrative example so the town increased your unassigned fund balance by 1.4 but then you utilized 374,000 for your Capital items in your fiscal year 23 excuse me and use 715,000 in your 24 budgeting process for your Capital items as well as a reduction in your taxes so that's why you see that increase of about 56,000 if I can turn to page 61 we can actually take a look at the general fund budgetary versus actual results fingers get a work so um before we get out of this sack uh everything else shows essentially no unassigned fund balance so unassigned fund balance is only a positive number for the general fund an unassigned fund balance and any other fund would only represent a deficit balance deficit balance so is because Ryan has identified parts of unused money that I'm guessing come out of that one two three fourth column they would be hidden inside the non- major governmental funds yeah but where would you find it if that would be sitting in your restrictive fund balance it would be in that 3.8 million that's correct and there's a breakout on page 40 of what makes up that 3.8 million okay 40 okay we don't have to go there right now unless you'd like I'm just going to make my own note because I mean that's part of what we're doing forensically not nothing to do with your audit particularly but you know how do we get at that yeah so page 40 actually provides a great breakdown of every single number that's in that fun balance okay it'll provide some really good detail for you all right good thank you page 61 so page 61 is your general fund budgetary versus actual you can see there's four columns here you have your original budget and that very first column you have your final budget then the actual amounts or the actual revenues or the actual expenditures for the town and then that far right colum which is where I want to focus our attention here tonight is the favorable or unfavorable variance When comparing your final budget to the actual amount 62 61 sorry 61 no one need to apologize um so if you look maybe about a third of the way down the page you'll see total revenue and that far right column had turn backs of 64,000 what this represents is the amount of revenues that came in greater than what the town anticipated during fiscal year 23 about two-thirds of the way down the page you'll see total expenditures and total expenditures had favorable turn backs of 522,000 what this represents is the amount of expenditures that came in less than what the town anticipated during fiscal year 23 then that last number on that far right ran if you scroll down just a little bit please that last number remember in that far right column which is your overall budgetary excess is 1, 356,000 this can be thought of what the town beat the budget by and again that's the primary reason for that increase in your unassigned fund balance was those turn backs on your budgetary versus actual results uh during fiscal year 23 now again the town did utilize some of those funds in for for for for Capital items in 23 as well as capital and reduction in taxes in 24 um okay but just just so this is kind of like the town's p&l right um I would say that page 17 is probably the town's pnl or I guess you could think of this as the town's B oh this is the revenues less expenditures right so specifically just for the general fund okay fair enough so in both but that's most of the money so in both cases we actually over we spent more than we e both budgeted and spent more than we took in but less than we you know favorable to budget I guess yes the Gap closing is in very bottom right and that's how you close that budgetary Gap how you balance that budget we didn't over no yeah no yeah I mean if you look at I just I mean it's not really the AUD million 3 is the 522 plus the look at the original budget we planned on yes raising 33 million and spending 34 million and the difference would be made up by using prior year fund balance which I guess is incumbrance is an article carry forwards okay all right and then we did better than that so we yeah I guess we still use the same amount of carry forward so where where did we actually pick up that so if you go up top if you want to look at revenues I can highlight maybe a couple if you look at miscellaneous which is the line item right above total revenues yeah that had a favorable variance of $125,000 that represents the amount of Revenue that came in greater than what you anticipated okay and for example the town did not anticipate $23,000 of OPB I EXC not OPB opioid funds coming in yeah so you didn't budget for that but they did come in as actual Revenue so that's why you that's part of the reason why you see that increase in in that favorable variance for miscellaneous okay it's not necessarily poor planning or no no it's not poor planning I mean it's great I'm just saying I just so we we ended up not using the carry fors I guess I don't know no you did so the actual amounts are oh there is car fors yeah so I'm not sure where it shows up then this shows up this benefits us has more free cash it increases your unassigned fund balance which is the starting point for your free cash So eventually when it flows through okay yes okay it can be thought of as it's closing to free cash okay so a a way of looking at this when we're talking about projecting revenue for the coming year and then um talking about how squeezing the expense side would would squeeze free cash so if you if you said we wanted to intentionally generate 1% on revenue and 1% on expenses that would be about 00,000 just work with me on the rough math this beat That by by 600,000 so if you for my mind and it's probably my only the investment income and the miscellaneous income which I don't think we can Bank on every year was about 250,000 of that and then we had some uh non-employee fills especially in DPW and Public Safety so that's another about 100 to 200,000 so that doesn't necessarily make it up and doesn't mean we won't do it again this year but that is where the excess free cash came from Bas off a calculation but this is also the 23 audit yeah we're behind this is a couple years ago no okay that was everything I wanted to bring to your attention in the financial statements any questions or concerns before I move into the management letter I cut you off though is that where you were going to the management letter yes okay which begins that's the next document um which is um after the wide 63 no no no it's after after page 68 after 68 okay thanks you're welcome yeah I see it thank you so in addition to proving out the figures and the numbers in your financial statements we also look at the town's internal controls to make sure your assets are being appropriately safeguarded and if we had any recommendations on how to improve those internal controls we would' U recommend them here in a formal management letter um if they were serious enough we'd either classify them has a material weakness or a significant deficiency and the town does not have any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies if we could turn maybe to the first page number three is the first recommendation that we have is to improve controls over the vendor dispersements during our testing of vendor dispersements we had a couple of um items that we identified as a lack of internal controls and we're just recommending that the town um improve those internal controls over those vendor dispersements halfway down the page Ryan you'll see that the second comment is to improve internal to improve controls over departmental receipts again we noticed some uh or during our audit we identified some areas where internal controls could have been improved over the dis dispersement process and the reconciliation of receipt actually not dispersement of receipts and then the reconciliation of receipts just to clarify on both of those both of those findings these are maybe short comings in process that could lead to errors not finding of actual errors right that's correct yeah um I I would maybe take that back that there under the vendor dispersements there were two findings not potential issues they were issues where there was a discrepancy that was not caught or not resolved that's correct yeah that was um I think that was during the period where we had an interim Town Administrator so we were having struggles with our procurement and one of them was me so okay um scanning a document that I lost but the the general takeaway from me is that procurement needs to be centralized and focused on yeah improved yeah and then the for number two we've just um approved some um controls policy policies and so I think we're going to get a handle on that pretty soon you we turn the page to page four at the very top there's our third recommendation which is is to prepare for the governmental accounting standard support statement number 101 this is nothing that the town did wrong this is just more of an FYI letting you know that there's an accounting Center that the town is going to need to implement for 2025 and it's called Uh gazbeard the governmental accounting Center report statement number 101 and it deals with your compensated absences will certainly help uh and be a a resource for the town to help the town Implement that uh accounting change uh but it's nothing you need to worry about right now this needs to be implemented for your June 30 2025 financial statements the bottom of page four that means it' implemented though at the beginning of fiscal 25 starting this July guess my question is are we considering engaging a consultant and is that in our budget or or implementing one1 yeah be gasby I have to get back to you on that okay well I me I'm just you look my initial gut tells me it's not necessary um usually from the audit side of the fence they will ass with kind of those initial feelers to put out what needs to happen what steps should be taken what the end goal is to help us get that done but I don't I don't foresee a need and thankfully you you did correctly identify that it needs to be implemented for July 1st of 2024 thankfully it doesn't need to be really implemented on July 1st 2024 it just needs to be implemented by the end of the fiscal year it's one of those odd ones where it doesn't really matter till the very end um so uh you really have to June 32 but the record keeping has to be in place so that when you reach back you've got the data right the I presume yes the the recordkeeping is the town already has compensated absences in their financial statements it deals with your uh your second vacation right and largely speaking what this accounting change does it it it just clarifies the terms and there may be some additional uh liabilities associated with it uh but largely speaking what the town is currently doing is is acceptable and totally fine for the um compensated absence uh calculation um it's not going to need to be a major overhaul to be probably a slight adjustment if anything and I just because I can't help it the um primary role in my opinion of the select board and the boards and committees here is to help us with decentralized HR and making sure that we have standards across the board so that we can record properly report and Implement policies such as these right now there's so many different approval theories Etc that although I do believe we have a good handle on it it it's not fully in our control got it centralized HR at least yes yeah that's page five that's what we recommend at the bottom of page four is our last recommendation it's our other recommendations it's just kind of an amalgamation of everything that we wanted to bring to your attention but we didn't think it was serious enough or to warn a separate uh recommendation um again I don't think anything in here to be concerned about it was rather some small smaller items again nothing that I would um you know be concerned about or keep me up at night and this I think is also the subject of another policy we just drafted about tailings so and in chatting with you Kelly you're you're working on all those things it's just yeah many many of the items on the list are either in the works have already been completed or soon to be completed pending you know certain for form formal approvals so I have a quick question if that's okay Zach you went through these recommendations and it was great um before that section you said there was another section you said we don't really have any of the recommendations on risk or were you talking about the material weaknesses and yeah the material weaknesses and I did see in there that you said you should consider a policy on custodial credit risk and I'm wondering if that was not in that letter but in the reports in the notes and the reports oh yes and and I didn't know if that would be considered a weakness or if we should consider a policy on that I don't know if that's necessarily a weakness in your internal control but it's certainly a good idea for the town to explore having a policy on that and making sure that everyone's aligned with what you'd like to do I believe that came up with our yeah we discussed it and I did we did discuss it in sort of a pre- meeting and I believe I did I forgot to bring my notes today but didn't we talk about meeting with Bartholomew and those guys and having that conversation yep and we've done a post meeting with Bartholomew with two of their reps right um and my recol Rec elction from that discussion was that we're kind of right in line with what citation is for municipality right so that that by I go to too many meetings and I can't keep straight but yes you're right we went to talk to Bartholomew my recollection then is to your point Kelly that we're in the band of where we should be but it doesn't quite address should there be a policy look or some other steering guideline that we you know have to make sure that we're always in that you know I mean just the fact that you're in compliance doesn't mean you have a process to maintain compliance it was only because they noted it that I no no no but I think we brought it up and I guess I didn't follow to that next step do we do we need to go further or do we just meet with them annually and make sure that we continue I mean that's I think we can continue an annual meeting okay I know they said that they would send out reports on an annual basis based on you know our performance and everything from that nature so thank you for bringing that up I forgot about that any other questions think that was an excellent report thorough I I would say just you know having dealt with both of our two most recent auditing agencies we got an upgrade yeah pleasure to work with Zach and his team I found them to be very uh clear and uh thorough yeah if I could I'd just like to make a quick statement an audit is not an easy undertaking uh we ask a lot of questions and ask for a lot of material and everybody in the town specifically Kelly um and Sandy were wonderful to work with everything we asked for was provided for us very timely uh and a first year audit does take generally speaking more time than a non-ir year audit um and having it done in in you know the time that we got it done I think is is of a great uh goal and a great task for the town just want to thank everyone for their involvement in the audit thank Youk you so much for having me enjoy the rest of your night everybody bye see you see you around great okay Conservation Commission and we'd like to start with the cranberry bog goals and capital plan and then move to the bog house repairs request put in that order do they need to open do you need to open your meeting no we have Dan I think the answer is yes I don't count oh okay no syvia she's the only one that no no no no are you going to ask anything on the MFC during this related to the B house and they want to open um will the MFC want to open a meeting during this discussion okay right hello hi hi hi oh Alex record Alex par I'm a member of the Conservation Commission Sylvia Willard is here um [Music] so this was build on the select board's agenda as a meeting to do with the goals for the cranbery bog tried to expand it a little bit as you can see from my memo but um so let me just run down and we can have reference to the memo where it's appropriate um but there really um three major things going on with the cranberry bog right now um the first category is the repair Dam number one and potentially the F Street Dyke um and the reasons for those repairs are partly because they're required by the office of dam safety and more importantly from the perspective of the town of Carlile um is we want to have the ability to uh manage um water levels in the pond and in the Bog uh without risking um you know failure of either Dam or the Dy so I've put in the memo which is long-term capital needs uh requirements for the crime re bog or repair of dam number one which is funded by a CPA article approved at the spring 2023 Town Mee uh we also anticipate submitting um a request to for CPA funding for repairs of the Fifth Street Dyke um we put in very Loosely a number of 150,000 that um um I don't know how good that number is is um and it will probably change by the time we submit the request um at the same time um we're hoping that town meeting and this is the second part of the overall plan we're hoping the town meeting the spring annual town meeting will approve the CPA funding request for a St study of water flows and water levels um and that article has you know been presented and voted by CPC um and that will inform um uh how the dam and the Dyke will be operated uh once they're repaired in terms of and maintaining water levels in the ponds um and so on and so forth so that's one and two part three is we have a three-year plan which has been uh um approved by the Conservation Commission notice of intent was filed with a commonwealth and it's been approved um and that's for maintenance of the bogs thems elves as wet Meadow habitat um and if you go to I had the maintenance activities list which I'll get to later but if you go go to it essentially um from the middle of the table on down oh sorry we're gonna yeah should go to the second page yep so you can see on the left hand corner we' identified land and the nature of Maintenance expected expenses and so if you start with uh approximately the middle fragm mites treatment you go down all of the activities identified as um you know being part of bog uh maintenance or activities that are proposed to occur in connection with the maintenance of the bogs as wet met habitat those are the essentially all of the new um you know maintenance categories that would occur um if we go forward with the wet Meadow habitat uh maintenance so that's the summary of the at least the three-year plan for the cranberry barn but those are annual Alex those are annual yeah those are annual numbers about 10,000 a year 7 68,000 a year 68,000 to I know about that you forget that talking about the bog no but he's talking about the bog itself being well yeah you're we're talk hang on hang on I I I do have a number I make it out for you the the bog maintenance yeah um is in total which includes stuff that's happening now and what we anticipate going forward other than the bog house would be 38,000 3800 and that would be I mean play per year per year and so things like invasive removal frag mighties blah blah blah that every year you got to do that every year right you got to stay on it you can't just do it and forget about it right I'll get to that okay no but yeah but no no not everything has to happen every year so for so for example a category there of mowing of the bogs you know for $6,000 one could reasonably assume that that might be every two years I see okay so and I'm trying to lay out all of the activity and at least as your proposed 2024 budget these things are in that are they in that operating budget now yes so requests that I'm going to make tonight where Ryan when we need him I mean it's in the numbers it's in the numbers rolled up to Ryan I presume right okay so let me just finish up is that with the with the plan for the bog is that um you know and kcom has yet to vote this but I think we're in agreement that cranber bog working group would be rolled up and to the extent that you know members of the cranbery bog working group would like to continue to serve um uh it would be rolled into the Lance Stewart committee and the reason for that is that there is the they have the resources and the talent to carry forward with the cranberry bog and one of the things that I think the land stewards would like to do um is to plan out Beyond this three-year plan for you know additional uh restoration activities and maintenance um and that's going to be a substantial undertaking that's a lot of work um so but I I think that's where the Conservation Commission is headed um and so hopefully that occurs um so that's the plan um you see the money I um so we had with respect to the budget we had made a request to fincom um and so you just so you understand our our budget is largely non-discretionary the I mean there's no room uh in you know most of the items and except for the very small items and you don't get any gain there um the the largest part of our discretionary budget um has been maintenance and that historically for the last several years until last last year was funded at 29,000 a year um and that was divided roughly 15,000 for the cranberry bog and 14,000 for everything else um given this plan we had submitted to income a proposed budget that would increase the maintenance uh part of the budget to 50,000 a year um uh we were um told that we need to reduce our request by 11,500 so in my backward mathematics that left me with a or conson with a maintenance budget of 38,000 uh 500 um I understand and Warren can speak to it better than I can but I understand that the SL board have indicated the willingness to fund interim repairs for the preservation of the bog house um at about $10,000 so I I threw that in there and that takes me down to 8,500 um which is clearly insufficient if we're going to start on the um on the uh restoration of the bog and all of these other items that we have uh laid out so the request that kcom is making is for an appropriation at town meeting this year 26,500 which would make up and that includes the interim repairs for the B house which would at least you know give us a start on the uh restoration of the bog and the implementation of the operation and maintenance plan that we expect the hydrologists to be recommending um so I'm happy to look at any of the numbers that Bo wants to look at um I tried to lay it out as best I could one other thing I should mention by the way um it uh um and I did make a mention of it here but the curve Street am um is uh not only going to need an emergency action plan according to the office of dam safety but Sylvia reminded me on the way here that it will also be requiring an inspection next year and that in the past has cost 7,000 ,000 uh the next year there will be a requirement for two inspections one for curv Street and one for the cranberry bog Dam number one because K Street is every five years and cranber Dam number one is every 10 years and they side every five years and that the last go round which was in 2015 was around uh 78,000 I don't know if it would be the same the the catch on that is at any time the officer Dam safety can ask for phase two inspection for a dam that they think has problems and that's a much bigger deal we just never know what they're going to order the office of dam safety has been increasingly tough over the last few years this year in particular they have made a lot of changes I I just would say with respect to Dan number one even though we're scheduled for an inspection next year you know I'm hopeful that with you know the funding of the study we'll be able to go to the office of dam safety early this summer and tell them you know what we're doing interm repairs that we want to make um and hold off on the other repairs until you know the study is in and uh that we won't be facing an inspection for Dam number one next year okay are there any questions from the board just one um not so much a question but Alex um maybe you mentioned this and I just didn't hear it um the this is um within the framework your proposal is within the framework of um in fiscal year 26 moving toward having the maintenance of our conservation lands be part of an overall Town maintenance budget right and not have it be just isolated within the Conservation Commission so that's the so the thinking is rather than try to raise their operating budget for fiscal year 25 which you know sets it up instead stick to the 3% maintenance budget that every other Department's being asked to meet and therefore the request to just fund what's needed for fi25 as a warrant article I don't know if that's making sense but yeah and just I mean just to follow up on that is um we would anticipate then that our FY 26 budget would um go down because all the maintenance would be you know in the town budget um and this conversation is you know developed I had a chance to meet with Ryan and spoken with Barney um and Sylvia and Dan and this we think this is a better way to handle the maintenance aspects so you know it's sometime around I guess January or February of 2025 we would give Ryan a list of this is what we think will need to be done fiscal 2026 um and to include for planning purposes and flagman we'll see that rather than um this just kind of being insular than the Conservation Commission so that that's that would be and hopefully there this sort of longer term planning right would be underway so it wouldn't just be um isolated to fiscal year 26 but we'd start to have a broader longer term um plan for the maintenance preservation of all the conservation lands in town that's is that the land stewardship committee that's really going to be focused on that or well um so like I said this conversation is um you know been developing in the past three or four weeks um again I think the land stewards you know have um you know the talent to help us do that you I I would hope that there would be having things thrown his way but yeah no I would hope that the land stewards could help with that as well because Conservation Commission spent so much of its time on butland permitting stuff sure I'd like to see that longer term plan as to what we're doing with how we're managing our conservation lands I think that's a good thing to focus on we should probably focus on that make sure that happens I think it's a select Bo yeah I think it's also helpful if you know that there's this um pot of money out there that you can do some long-term planning that um might not have had the ability to do before um an example I'm thinking of is for Forest stewardship we spent a lot of time recently on our um fields and meadows and might be a good idea to have um some of our forests looked at to make sure that they're in good health do we have any invasive bugs that are coming in and if they're not managed well that spreads to other human private property um so it's it's there's than just just the bog and just Meadows sure I think that dovetails into you know Municipal preparedness and you know the MVP grant that we have I mean you you can talk about how forced and you know understanding that and making sure there's not risks you know forest fire risks those type of things are important you might be able to Gan money that way you know as a as a focus can I ask I'd like to ask a few disper question questions so Sylvia you just mentioned you like I can't remember the words you used but like a reserve you you wanted to have money available for long-term planning what do you mean by that well in what he is talking about if you I if you identify um money for maintenance of of the conservation lands y um if there's money set aside for maintaining conservation lands but what do you mean set aside I mean we we budg every year and what we need right we don't set stuff aside in the same way that you budget um maintenance of buildings and Roads Etc yeah I mean it should go into the operating budget it's not like we would have a separate little fund for that right it would just be a standing under a an ongoing understanding what it takes to maintain those so I agree with that so the second question is David do you mind if I add so the the Deferred maintenance with land I see is similar to the Deferred maintenance with buildings right so when one one of the variables when we're doing the capital planning model that I bring up as an unknown is Land Management cost so the the idea behind using a Warren article to to get a hold of deferred versus actual operating would allow that picture to become more clear over a couple years so well that I guess leads to my second question so maintenance whether it's buildings or land is an operating expense not a capital item correct I just don't know the difference between what is the catch-up with the land and what is the ongoing cost cost right and this would allow the time to figure that sure so that leads to my second question which is you you're asking for 26,500 for that right to kind of catch up to I mean I see the the haircut if you will that says the the budget should be down to 38 to fit inside the 3% model if you have a warrant article for more money isn't that basically defeat the 3% model I mean what are you actually accomplishing there my recommendation is that you you are uncovering what the actual cost is so you can compare it to other deferred maintenance but why have a warrant article why not just decide okay this one you know not every Department can fit inside the 3% right they're all they all have reasons why they can't some are going to and some are not going to you wouldn't put warrant articles to cover the shortfall you just increase the budget and you live with what that sum is right so I can I can tell when vcom especially is UNC able with a budget ask when they say well what is this actually for the the department knows what it's for they have a strong understanding of the maintenance that's needed but it's not fit into the larger picture so the the reason why I think the budget ask in the operating budget feels out of place is because it's coming from a from a silo not from a full Capital plan the warrant gives you time to figure out I don't know I I think I see that as more obfuscation than real I think first of all it's not a capital item it's an operating item it just happens to be a catch-up operating item right if we have deferred maintenance that we have not done or we have a repurposing of the bog because it's moving into wet metal lands or whatever that's fine but that's an operating expense and I I think it's not transparent I think we should say if we have and this could be any Department if we agree that that particular Department's needs exceeds their when when a department comes and they exceed their 3% ceiling we have a choice we and say I'm sorry cut to three and come back then just that's that or we can say go find some unused pots of money like we're telling the schools to do and come back or we can say gee that makes sense we'll include it I think for fin come to say they don't understand it they explain it to Vincom I mean we need to have a single operating budget that includes all the operating things that we decide are worthy of spending money on in fiscal 25 I don't think you have a clear way to compare the ask on the land maintenance side with the asks that come from the Department so if a police if the police department said we want two Cruisers you would ask for a vehicle uh maintenance plan and a long-term plan if the MFC came and said here's what we want to do with maintenance you would ask for a capital plan I think the same thing is needed with land maintenance because if you leave it to the department they will always say we need to do more maintenance but you can't compare it to all the other needs but a plan I'm okay with a plan I like what Travis said I'm okay with the plan I'm just saying at the end why fund it through a warrant article but you're raising the base so the next year 3% of that's going to be that much more too so this is this is a way for you to to really be very all right fair enough my last question is is is goes back to Dam number one so the money that's being I realize it's not coming out of the operating it's coming from CPA but that's when and if this new study determines that the approach you've recommended is the approach right right now we're just funding a study on the dam right no the the study is being funded by CPA yep the construction has been funded up to 300,000 has been funded by CPA the intent is that uh some of the work work on the repairs will go forward before the study the stud's expected to be concluded at the end of this year the calendar year at the end of this calendar year yes okay um the some of the work everybody agrees needs to be done uh as soon as possible so the anticipation subject to ODS approval is that those repairs will go forward this year okay probably in August or September okay and the people who didn't like the approach and you guys reached at least as reported in the paper some agreement on a path forward they're okay with that part of the work I believe so it's some other part of the work that they want you to have peer review okay yes correct which which you're referencing it as dam number one it's is that Dam number no that you're correct it's it's about the spillway right but it's and so that's what's being separated it's going to wait until the Watershed stud that's all I want to make sure that it's a broader study than just okay thank you got it thank you very much any other questions about this portion a motion for the are they looking for a motion to well I don't know that we John sure come up to the mic to a mic in your school in your school John Ballentine 268 FIS Street um and also as one of the appellants on this whole conary bog Dam but I want to make two broader points which you just were talking about which was the Deferred maintenance and the Deferred maintenance has really the consequences of the past 14 years related to the school and so that's why you need the steady to understand it both for facilities and conservation land and we don't have enough information on that deferred maintenance to know what it is so Alex and Sylvia have put together their best estimate of what that is but we know that when you start looking at the details and this is sort of what you know land stewardship and everything else to say oh gee we've got volunteers that came out that helped clear parts of the the brush at the bog you have other volunteers that do the trails so how can we look at that and sort of get our arms around that and that's what I think War and everybody else is going to be doing so that's a really important part of really getting our arms around that so you come up with a deferred maintenance plan we've kind of looked at it what's the level of volunteers what are you Contracting out with and everything else so that's that's why I think this is important to look at it in those sort of long-term perspectives we're doing catchup we understand why we did that maybe it wasn't a good decision but that's life that's what the town decided once we built the two schools the second part and this is the sort of $155,000 increment that essentially what Alex was talking about that's the consequence when we decided not to continue the in-kind services that were provided by farmer Duffy of doing the bog and and and as um Lauren remembers when we went through that that was the estimate that we thought was going to be the incremental expenses for you know annually on the bog which in present value Finance terms was worth about essentially what it would have been cost to maintain it as agriculture we made it made a decision and the kcon made a decision not to do that so therefore all the inine services that we've had disappeared and so that becomes then the consequence of how do you then maintain it where there's really not a huge incentive for the current farmer to keep doing it it's you know it's a pain he has to go out there and do things and things like that so that's the part that we have to look at pretty carefully and that's going to take a certain amount of work so I think I'm very supportive of that we don't know exactly what that maintenance budet is it going to be and you should be looking at all the conservation lands and I think land stewardship and other people and all the volunteers are doing it are really important to that but John we're not thank you for that we're not I don't see a request for a funding of a study though is that a study that would be done by volunteers not that's the M no but the M that's land stewardship and all of us volunteers M rolling uh the cranber bug working group inward but they're going to make a plan that's looking is that going to result in a but we're sitting here on the cusp of uh fiscal 25 spend plan if they don't ask whoever it is LSC or kcom I don't care if they don't ask like in the now time they're not they're not going to ask for a year it's going to be another year I know Warren warrren is very hardworking and detail and he's going to get everybody doing all the work okay so you're not asking for money for it's people volunteer work that's great I love it I love it that's a good answer the other question with Warr on 180 and and as Alex you know mentioned in his presentation the the sense is that the land stewardship committee um has the expertise they have the know to be able to I think that's terrific and we got still some young bodies yeah now we have Mr Duffy and what I hear you saying is um the guy you know we're not farming cranberries anymore so stuff he used to do part of cranberry farming is not getting done we have to budget for that and I can hear John Lavery in my ear saying well what about the guy who lives in the B house so just to be clear the 10,000 that's in this last line item here we agreed last time or two times ago was just the necessary safety related fixes that's that's Julie and the B house is the next thing okay so we're we're we're coming to B house or I did I thought we were done with we haven't done the B house so anyway I'm generally supportive of this and that they're you know we're getting to agreement on all the details of things that you read about in the newspaper not been easy but we're getting there and I'm going to move us along but I don't we need a um I mean I unless we're going to come back to this warrant article at a subsequent meeting at least don't we want a sense of the board about whether we support a warrant article to this effect we're going to have a public hearing as well you could certainly give the the board of the consom a sense yeah so are we all in agreement about I I think it makes sense I like the planning aspect and I'd say it again I think that it's really important that we because we're looking out budgeting for buildings and everything else we need to think about our our lands and like how we're going to manage them and what that's going to cost going forward and I think that's really important that we get a handle on that because we also need to make decisions on you know how we want to use those lands we may not want to you know continue to support certain activities or whatever on those you know I don't know exactly what but you know we may choose to use them differently or something so it's important let's get a guide a map going forward I think this is the way to do it so I'm part of it okay great okay B house repairs request a you want to come back up and nothing pack it on that no but this is um sort of a revisit of our conversation that we had two weeks ago oh okay right where we and maybe ran you want to speak think that we should start bringing some of these ends together because there's some other things going on around the B house so that yeah I'm just wondering if so this was um a couple people asked me is it 20,000 is it 10,000 what what is the bog House repair warrant article so in preparation for a public hearing or the warrant I didn't know if the board wanted to discuss this again or if there was some consensus or if we're if you need more additional information and my understanding now is that based on discussion we just had that the um warrant article that was identified as bog house repairs is now I don't know what we're going to call it but that's now what this 265 is that includes money to do the minimum safety repairs on the bgh house is is do I have the correct understand been presented that's the way it's been presented so that that's the idea of this right I think we need to clarify that then Alex am I stating that correctly put together yeah okay already woring whether it's enough that's the problem okay so that is part of the 6844 and that you subtract whatever and you came up to the got to the 265 right okay got it there we go go okay um I'm just curious what is the plan with that relative to you know even if it's shored up and we spend some money $110,000 to to you know make sure the water doesn't infiltrate or whatever I mean someone said this is another Highland you know and and how do we how do we ensure like what's the next step so that we know what we're going to do with it so we're not just preserving it for the sake of preserving it which maybe is valid but I but I think we should know what direction we're going is that the study that's yeah that's a good lead into the um the bog house study yeah I don't know if we want to jump ahead to that or I think we should I think we should because it's it's not really my part but just let me say the Conservation Commission um voted to approve the affordable housing trust doing a study on the bog house for the purpose of Con in it to housing conson from a kon's perspective there now that the farming is no longer there's no real reason why kcom should have the ownership control of the bog house but it's it's harder to change that it sounds yeah so uh on our um 825 agenda which we're late for um we have some more In Articles and things and I thought we were going to do we have anything about that no we don't oh Warren uh come to you have to come to a microphone and identify by yourself so that people well wait wait wait wait wait till you get to only because then people online can hear you Warren yeah Warren Lyman 516 cross street I'm just here uh for myself not on behalf of any committee and having heard that you were going to talk I think maybe a little more about the future of the bog house I'd like to make a couple quick comments it might take just a two or three minutes if you don't have the time I have a piece of paper I'll hand you and you can read it at bedtime so uh if I can have just a few minutes I'll proceed if you don't um I kind of like to save it to the larger discussion or to the if we don't get to it to the um Community input at the end and just because we just have quite a lot of things still on our agenda and we are 15 minutes behind time more than 15 minutes behind time at this point so if you do have something written that you can um give us that could also then that can also go directly ver them in our minutes y so that we'll get a chance to read those MFC oh the CPC and the MFC is here I didn't know they wanted to talk about the bo all right so let okay so let us then skip ahead into our agenda to the Warren articles CPC articles and let's take the bog house tic CPC article so that we can bring everybody in to have this discussion so don't go away yet Warren and uh come ahead uh Jerry then you canite Julia and then yes that's right okay and then we'll have Julie up and so do you need to uh open your meeting Jerry yes I think since there are at least three of us here I don't know anybody else is on Zoom so like to open meeting of the municipal facilities committee at40 and um I'd like to just start things off by saying on on the municipal facilities committee is looking for some clarity on how to deal with the B house and that that means so if if there is a warrant article appropriating some money is the the MFC going to spend the money to do those repairs is kcom going to do it and then there's the larger the larger question of what are we repairing it for um all legitimate questions are we just going to patch things which is kind of a legitimate thing to do but it's nice if you're doing patches to do them in the context of of some longer range plan so we're not wasting money right agreed yes um I I would say that certainly the select board's idea was to keep it from uh burning down accidentally um so that we have a chance to do the studies and and think about what we want to do with it long term so it would just there also there are the issues of um the relationship to the people that are living there right now and that's what their responsibilities are for M maintaining the building um what they can do what they shouldn't do um yep all all those things need some clarification yep so I'm going to invite Julie forward no but you're not expected to we're not expecting you to do that I'm not expecting answers to no no but we really good things to raise in we're trying to have a larger conversation rather than a bunch of these little you know um blinkered conversations about you know just this part so that we have a a bigger picture yeah so this is just or may Ryan do you want to do a little intro to what Julie's going to present yes so so the the larger question of the bog house um we're finding that when we when we talk about when we talk about projects the difficulty is there's a lot of history and there's a lot of U people who have very strong feelings about what should happen and we're trying to bring the board um possibilities to either say yes or no to so that we can create the type of of goal that allowed the police station renovation to move forward which is consolidate behind an idea and move forward or not and I think if you continually do that you'll eventually find the thing you want to do or or or not do um without getting each conversation to be talking about every every version of of bog House history so one of the things we wanted to look at based off of uh many different studies and previous conversations in town was affordable housing um and its viability in the Bog house thanks ran um so yeah I always kind of jump into these things and I never know if I should back up or what you know and if I should go forward um so here I am again um presenting things back to you that were your ideas um so I was asked to try to figure out the components of a feasibility study um can you go to the next slide sorry I did it on my screen I need to not do this here I'm get ahead of myself so um you know the three main components as I see it is an architectural feas feasibility component um the affordability and funding stack so kind of figuring out what what the different housing unit configurations um might be and what level of affordability they might be provided at um and then an engineering feasibility study right and so each piece in my mind has certain gating items that would unlock like our ability to really understand the feasibility um and so I'm working on getting the the engineering visibility study scope and quote I was hoping to have it by the end of last week and then I was emailing back and forth with them today and so I think it's like imminent but I don't have yes I don't have a number on that but I was thinking it might end up around 20,000 um for a total visibility cost of $50,000 um the I should back up I did like ask around as many people as I could for existing documentation and I went through it and I tried to kind of figure out like what's been done already um I I found the Alternatives committee report that was really helpful it actually outlines uh housing as an option in the B house as alternative of 10 um there was as an asbes um study and some abatement done in uh the early 90s um and then there's some schematic diagrams um that were part of the Alternatives committee report which I have later on in the slide and then I learned uh just recently that uh the the well was put in the well was a new well was dug in 2018 actually with CPA funds um and I got some information about that today from Sylvia so um there there is still new information coming in as I continue to ask around but I think I have like a pretty decent handle I hate to say like I Hazard to say that but I think I have a pretty decent handle on what it is that we have and what it is we need um so next slide please Ry um there's a lot of considerations to this and this isn't really any particular order um and L Cody is probably the first thing yeah like I was trying to just kind of put all the you know the critical path kind of things that need to happen into one place so the land custody um trans the land transfer piece and then figuring out like the article 97 piece and that's something I actually heard back from the EA today on they want to set up a meeting with us so I'm trying to coordinate that and invite the right people to that next week so we could talk about the waiver process whether it would even be applicable and then think about you know if it's not applicable what our next move right Julie can you just give a two sentence explanation of article 97 for those who don't know and I welcome people to correct me if I get this wrong but article 97 is the the 150 acres of the B house is article 97 land which requires that it be used for a municipal purpose um and municiple purposes have have are defined differently um so in order to to convert the bog house into housing we' need to carve out a portion of the land um and so figuring out what that that square footage looks like like what's the minimum amount of land that we would need to support um whatever the housing program is in the in the house um it's something that I'm going to talk about in a minute but um the the the state has a carve out for 2500 square feet um it's not clear to me that that's something that we could apply to this and 20 would 2500 square feet be enough probably not um but we're going to talk about that with the state and kind of understand that a little better um and then just some other early considerations like I've just been thinking about the zoning right so we don't really have the zoning in place currently to do this but um there are are different options I've seen other communities use we have some things on the books that potentially we could modify slightly in order to make this work and then whenever I think about zoning I think about if we're going to do Zoning for for one area or one site like are there other sites we should look at as well so I've been thinking like trying to think a little more broadly about zoning options and then obviously we need to have legal advice for many of these different components um so I'm I'm not a lawyer but the question we get the most is is the use of the bog house currently so the um the Conservation Commission can license buildings and land for the purposes of the land so when this was a cranberry Farm you could license the building in order to run the cranberry Farm but when that agricultural purpose went away now they um they do not have the ability to to license the land or for the tenants right in the building legally so only the select board has that Authority for Town municipal buildings which is why we need to figure out the cussy of the building while still trying to maintain the building and make sure that it doesn't doesn't fall apart um in the gap between doing something with it and what it's doing now I think I got that right but I'm just trying to put it in place and that Gap might be that's a good point that Gap might be a while like these this isn't going to happen overnight like these projects take many many years um because there's so many moving parts and then the next slide um kind of talks about like funding opportunities some uh communities that have done projects like this you know they they compile 20 different funding and financing and grants and you know so many different um piles of money to to make it work so um one thing that I've been thinking about is you know there's historic opportunities this property is on the state list of historic properties um so there's State historic tax credits that could be available there's strings attached obviously um the national register listing is something that uh was I think considered in the past for the bog house but not actually um applied for that's takes a couple years um but it could unlock Federal historic TR tax credits that could be used um could could be beneficial that's it's actually one of the first things that other planners and other towns recommend when converting a historic property um into housing is get it on the the national Reg sister um just because the benefits of that can be really helpful so obviously understanding the pros and cons and and strings and process um is is important um and not up to me to decide but um I shouldn't forget to mention community outreach just making sure that the right people are hearing this information as we go and and are able to weigh in and um be involved uh is important and then Ryan mentioned the current occupancy like you know just understanding what that's going to what's going to happen with that and then eventually hopefully we'll get to a place where we're figuring out the local permitting process because we have a real project right and then we'll do some sequencing kind of like what we're working through with the police station renovation so um and there there's a lot of things like that are not here I think there's a lot missing probably a lot of steps but this is just the ones I was initially thinking of um next slide Ryan all right so just getting into the pieces of the feasibility so um we uh Gap Architects they're one of our house doctor architecture firms they came out to the site they thought this this structure had good bones they put together a scope it includes a number of different things um that are listed right there that these schematics um at the top of the page those are from the Alternatives committee study so um they're they're great but they're rough um and so Gap would put together you know architectural dimensioned uh floor plans of all the the four and a half stories of the house and give us a sense of total square footage and um potential opportunities uh for carving the space up into housing units um and some cost estimates and um next slide please we also had answer advisory they're uh affordable housing Consultants they do the whole gamut so they do front-end Consulting all the way through development um we had them come out to and kind of talk to us about the project um they provided a quote uh for $10,000 and really what they're going to do is kind of vet a whole bunch of different scenarios there's a lot of terminology that's being thrown around about with affordable housing right so we I think we need to kind of get clear on what it is we're talking about so are we talking about eight units or are we talking about families right there's only about 5,000 square feed I think um in this in this house and then you know is it Workforce is it affordable is it going to be qualifying for the subsidized housing inventory which will require us to put together an affordable fair housing marketing plan and do a lottery and you know there's a lot of terminology here so they're going to kind of help parse that out and give us a sense of what's feasible based on overall project costs and different funding sources and um so so that's that's their scope right up there um next slide please R and then there's the engineering piece and these are not really in any particular order because I I envisioned that they would be happening in concert and coordinated with each other um but we will need an existing conditions survey of the site done a Wetlands delineation um septic and well uh locations upgrades what's the capacity like um and then at the the bottom line there the bottom bullet there is just what's the minimum land area that we'll need to support whatever the program is that we're looking at right so what what would be that carve out of the art article 97 land um so those are the different elements of that question it's a good overview thank you you have do you have any sense I I I like your steps and it is a good overview of thinking about how we're going to you know move this forward and along the way but do you have any sense how much at the end of the day we would end up spending on something like like this it's such a tricky question it's not my area of expertise that planning board asked similar questions last night when when we were talking about it um there are people out there that do that kind of gross math based on square footage um last night some numbers were thrown around like I don't want to I don't know it's not my area but that's something that that answer advisory would kind of help us determine and do you think there are grants out there for sorry hold on one second Court the are there grants out there um you said initially for even the studies of this do you think you could get that Grant funded yeah so the Mass housing has a I forget what they call it planning for housing production Grant or something like that that has funded similar types of feasibility studies in other communities I have information about a project in Hudson that was a similarly priced feasibility study actually so I was looking into that and then there are a number of different financing and funding options available for projects like this um like at for you know every step of the way and I just want to clarify we're not talking about the town would be using the funding this would be for a developer that would be coming and working in partnership with us private developer so it's you know but I think the major cost will be in our doing these feasibility studies and making you know well yeah even I'm speaking the transfer of the land I mean this is all well that's legal Fe you know it doesn't it's not free no I I I understand that just I just don't want people think though that's the house the whole H whole project would be borne by the town because ultim I don't think it will be I think that's something we would need to investigate a little further yeah okay one one of the things that you didn't address is a timeline is a what I'm sorry we can timeline what what if if we got started on it as soon as possible when would we get to the place where we can decide to do something um we have agreement on the goal if so we can move very quickly yeah the goal building is the court I know I know okay uh court and then when he start I'd like to speak Kate after court okay yes thank you so the question is asked we can't really hear you hear you you're breaking up okay here I'll is this a little bit better I'll get back from my microphone yeah yes okay sorry about that so uh Fort herselman 41 Orchard acres and planning board chair so last night we had our planning board meeting and Eric Adams who is part of the planning board and a builder familiar with building in carile uh kind of came up with a rule of thumb estimate that he would recommend we use and his estimate was ,000 a square foot and so if you do some rough calculations that would put the update somewhere between 4 and $6 million total um at our last joint land use Summit we talked about uh having all of the boards and committees kind of consider the costs the long-term costs of of what we're proposing going forward and so what I think we're asking for is um to to sponsor the the funding for this study for a pro project that's just not viable um and so we you know that was a rule of thumb that was put out as part of the meeting but you know maybe have another couple Builders look at it but before we even spend a dime and certainly $50,000 with the taxpayer's money I think we'd want to make sure that we really do have a viable project that we would want to go forward with um and and I think that those rough numbers are easily obtainable before we go any further um thank you very much thank you David yep thank you I'm glad I came after court um so Court just a question that four to six million dollar if you were to go Green Field and build something it'd still be the same thousand doll right but you'd have to acquire the land I guess uh well so I'm I'm not a builder but um I have family members who are and generally speaking new construction is less expensive than renovation okay good so Julie and thanks for the thoroughness as usual but I mean I I kind of echo court and I guess I would say are the you you posed many layers of what I would consider to be go nogo you know Gates like if you went to the state and it's pretty clear you're not going to qualify to the 2400 s foot car Val so if you went to the state for a 97 waiver and they say no like what does that mean is that like a whole big deal like what I'm trying to get at is rather than spend 50,000 can we can we figure out what the real showstopper things are and get some Cheapo study that at least identifies whether we're at a showstopper because then we don't need to spend any more money and then decide because it sounds like now building on what Travis said that you know before we embark on this this is not a Springtown meeting 24 thing this is a consensus building and then next year thing if it all right is is what it sounds like to me so I'm curious and you know Julie what your feeling is about desc scoping that and just doing the bare minimum things to identify possible noos that would just end the project right there I don't know what to answer there so the um that's what we're trying to to try to find out what are the what are the showstoppers and the noos so some sometimes when we bring these projects you want to know not you David but the whole the whole board in town wants to know what are all the steps so that we can improve this uh we're trying to see if if there's any if there's any willingness to do this um there's not many chances to do affordable housing in town that we control um I I think for a small investment we can see whether or not the town wants to do it and then if you don't then we move on to the next purpose until we run out of purposes for the building I I would challenge you a little bit on that by saying that you know there are alternatives if you think broader you know we talk about accessory Apartments we could rezone areas and have other types of affordability rather than just this so thinking broadly I think is important because we need to figure out where we want to do affordable housing and how we want to do it and this may or may not be the way we want to spend our money right so as the as someone who's trying to drive the capital planning for the town then then I would then I would say what purpose does this building have then um and that needs to be identified quickly otherwise we're wasting money and that's why I would um there's a lot I'm sorry there's a lot of money wasted in not doing anything as well yeah so it has to be weighed so if the answer to everything is going to be no then I think the answer is the building doesn't doesn't exist yeah I I think that um because we have this building and because the usage of the bog has changed right it's now a um it's an it's an open it's a new open question for us as a town um what we might do with the with that structure and so I think um spending a small amount of money to figure out whether um some kind of community housing in that space is possible and and what what you know what does possible mean I mean that's what you want somebody to help us figure out right I think that is an important investment to make um because otherwise we then we are going to have um another building that is uh the town's responsibility because either either it no longer gets used for any kind of housing for anybody right and we might use it for storage or it needs to come out of the um kcoms hands and and be in the town's hands to figure out what we want to do with it we don't want to have it sit like we have some other structures in town right so we need to figure out what is it that's possible um without spending you know money that's not well you know spending the money well to figure that out but that's the question Barne and so do you how do you get to that quickly so we're not spending a lot of resources you know going through a lot of exercises to spend money only to get to an end that says oh we're going to not we're going to get rid of it or do something else you know and so that's kind of what David was saying and I I think you know I'd like to figure out how we can get there as fast as possible yeah I don't know if that's a reasonable thing to ask our town planner and Our Town Administrator as well as our um in-house design people to to to uh single out the the key questions that as somebody's using the phrase you know showstoppers whether there's whether that's doable is that something we could do um and therefore spend and if we need to spend money to get those answers well I think showstopper would be cost right would be one no see to me you have use you wouldd have use or what would you what are show see I mean I don't know whether let's say you I mean here you know you can throw out all kinds of possibilities let's say you could put six units of housing in there and if we were gonna you know sell the have have a developer come in and develop it then what are the economics of that I don't know what those are and um you know how much would the town have to put in on the front end to make it possible for a developer to come in and turn it into something or maybe we don't want to go that route we want to have the town own it and maybe we you know are we thinking about we get into you know rental housing that's affordable housing or work force housing that's rental housing I I don't know I don't know what those what that might be but that's why we want to have a better understanding of some of those options what what they might be what they might cost what are the economics of it um and if if there are some key questions like being able to move it out of whatever the right language was article 97 right so that's to me that's something worth figuring out sooner than later and then the alternative as David asked if we can't use the waiver which I I would be surprised if we could um is you know we need to find some land to give back to put back in article 97 or funding uhuh um at least that's my like really quick and dirty read on how that works um so that would be a whole separate conversation yeah a comment correct me if I'm not getting this history right that was made when we were touring this building with several designers with was um this building has already been studied a ton and there's 10 this is the 10th alternative discussed for so all of the different things that it could be are already known the designer was saying you just need to make a decision I think the Alternatives committee study was just 10 or 11 alternatives for the cranberry bog and so like one of them is focusing on the house yeah so um right right but but but back to you know what Travis said and what court said if the inbound condition is $1,000 a square foot doesn't matter there's no use where you would spend that money like you know and no developer would either right right because at $5 million that' be $625,000 a unit and how would you make an affordable unit out of that that's why right better off just we just build units if we want more more effective and affordable ways to subsidize housing rather than on a small project like this yeah but that's I think partly what that that is part of what the answer advisory study would would look at like they try to figure out what could pencil out for us well I have uh Warren and John three online oh and three on Zoom okay well get to those people when I get to them oops okay Warren linman 516 cross street again just want to address two of these potential showstoppers um one out of a long ago tour of the bog house with one of our better known local Realtors Laura B and I said what could we get for these apartment now as is and you would be astonished at what she told me we don't need $1,000 a square foot to make something that is going to be livable probably the biggest limitation will be building codes in the building uh inspector saying here's what you minimum you can get away with to make these liveable and they will sell they will rent maybe not sell but they would rent the other thing I want to um address and it's partly addressed in the document I gave you is that article 97 in the PPL public lands preservation act did not and could not take into account the special situation of our bog house so you got to throw some of their silly little limits away and rethink it the one about out this what is it 2500 square ft for example you could maybe argue it on the fact that it doesn't cover our situation it just doesn't fit but there is in my document a way to avoid it and get down the land that might have to be set aside to a very minimum of the equivalent of four parking spaces everything else can be covered by easements the land that is needed around the B house for Access utilities like electricity water septic all of those can get transferred for use through easements not to transfer the land and just so you know it this has happened a number of times for Town conservation land and even today we have two lands one including the bog house that have septic systems on conservation land um so what I'm saying is don't just read the thing um look at an alternative and I think that if you went to the state with a proposed plan this would help you see if you had initially one of these show stops put together a simple plan saying here's what we're thinking and here's how we would best fit into your regulation and yes we're going to meet the uh land limit and we're going to make this we just have a we need a little wiggle room here and we're requesting a waiver and you the last thing you want to do is is try and justify it by an analysis of Alternatives that that that's a document you don't want to write so what I'm saying is there are ways to get this done and there are ways to get it done cheaper than $1,000 a square foot thank you John Valentine still 26 Fifth Street since I worked with Warren on the Cranberry Bogs alternative committee and also and the whole drafting of the alternative seven which 10 which was the bog House of conversion of apartments and also helped draft the um memo that to the Conservation Commission for the Housing Trust we did do our due diligence in talking to several Architects and people who' con convert historic buildings so we ought to be very careful in throwing around thousand per square foot numbers and and I just respectfully disagree with that those numbers I mean we know Eric does really beautiful high-end work but I've talked to several people on that and we used an estimate of under around $500 per square foot would be pretty easy to do and coming in at around $3 million or under $3 million as just as as Warren said is certainly possible and then the market value there is you know on a cost benefit basis really works out but again you've got to do your your next stage of phasing it through go through it and say Here's a reasonable cost estimates we know they're good people that can do it they need a design a schematic design and all the other things and then say okay here's what it's going to cost and then how do you structure it so I think we just throwing numbers out like that we got to be very careful and kind of go back and do say okay here's what it is and this can make it work and so I just don't want a thousand number dollars to be the that's that's a highend fire station I think 10 million yeah thank you Moren I I think I agree with John and Barney and most of you I viewed that house it is a beautiful house I know that it's really important that we have affordable housing throughout the state and Carlos should be a part of that I'm sorry I live at uh 575 South Street uh that house could be easily used for Workforce housing it could be used for apartments and the only way that we can figure it out is if we do our due diligence and spend a little money to find out what's the best thing for car so I would support spending the money to make good decisions thank you thank you maren down thank you all right so that was the uh well and let me throw just one other piece of information in here I mean um this uh this conversation about um doing a study of the bog house um came up probably in I don't know early January which is how we ended up with a um sort of placeholder you know as a CPA article for the study of the bog house and over the course of the last couple months um I have along with the CPC committee um looked at whether and also in talking with Kate as chair of the of the Housing Trust um is there a way to use CPA money to do the initial architectural feasibility study and so the the thinking the the current um um proposal on the table uh before the CPC is to um allocate money to the CPC administrative fund and I can go into more of an explanation about that if it's relevant um but that um we could use we could um put $2,000 uh into the administrative fund which is separate from those four or buckets of funding um and and then and that would be used to uh cover the cost of this first study now it may be we don't want to tie it specifically to an architectural feasibility study I I think that's more Your Role Julie to figure out what's the best way if we have those funds to get the information that we're talking about in order to be able to make um you know a decision down the road about what we actually want to do with the house but that's that's currently going to be um that's supported by the CPC and that's currently going to be part of the recommendation that goes to town meeting to transition to yeah may I make a quick comment for ESC Christine Christina yes yes just two moments sure sorry thanks uh just a reminder From esc's perspective um a uh reuse as a rule anyways uh the ReUse of a structure is much more environmentally sustainable than um creating constructing a new structure from from scratch so I just wanted to say that just as a reminder thanks thank you I'm gonna try and put some um budget stuff in context for the next five minutes to include I think mour at this point thank you okay you didn't get your question answered but well you're not going to do we're taking it under consideration they'll be answered my understanding is that at least in the near term we and I'm not sure exactly who the Wii is will'll be maintaining the building to some minimal level yes until definitive plans are made assuming the um warrant article that we discussed earlier at town meeting gets passed the kcom 265 or whatever that is right because that includes the 10,000 for minimal bug house repairs yes yes and that could go to the MFC article or yeah either one yeah but just so five minutes of context uh Julie's here for the gis stay here for sit so let me start with the warrant articles wait a baby cry so the the financial warrant articles that uh you have heard so far so the OPB Actuarial study which was discussed actually during the um financial statement presentation is $33,000 that's an annual Warren article I'm sorry excuse me Ryan could you get me where I need to be on in our packet oh it's not in the or what are we are we on oh you've got something up here okay sorry sorry sorry okay got it we're starting with the number six item at the at the top trying to be cognizant of Julie's time here so the the um we're gonna go to the project the warrant the warrant articles that are cost money are the OPB study the gis um three-year investment which Julie discussed at length and she's here to answer any questions if you have any on that okay and we discussed tonight the bog house repairs article which has seemingly turned into a maintenance and bog house repairs article for uh 265 you said no it was 30 no is it no it's 26 um I'll fix it later yeah so those are the three um before Julie goes does anyone have any questions about the gis study the information was put in your packet she presented the Strategic plan uh this is a single warrant article to go in front of Voters I just want to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the information you've received so far I have one question Ryan um can you hear me yeah go ahead David thank you um in the in the budget I'm driving now so I can't cite it but there's the total cost which is low in the next two years and then higher in the third year and then there's some like red or something's in red already budgeted so the already I'm I'm is the Warr article asking for the whole thing or like the kcom the Delta between the total and some something that's already budgeted are you talking about the gis yes yeah yes GIS yes there's a chart in in her presentation right there's actually two charts that show those it's 45 for three years right yeah I think so so it's a great question um and the warrant article is asking for 45 um and the the chart here is to give a sense of like what the all-in costs are some of them are already part of current contracts that we have budgeted currently so there is a Delta between like what that 45 and like what we think we might actually spend um but the the 45 would be like the 15 per year is like the a real number of like like once those contracts are done and we have new contracts and we still have the annual so it's the Delta that's all I wanted to know it's the difference okay I got it thank you the warrant article is requesting the full amount because when we put the placeholder in we hadn't like specifically estimated out some of these costs um and so there is some wiggle wiggle room there but after uh we're done with our current contracts and we have to enter into new contracts and we still have the same ongoing costs that are identified here the the annual cost might be closer to the 15,000 that's you know and and if we look at different Staffing scenarios it could even be more than that but this is to give you a sense of what the actual costs are um I want to ask you about that the Staffing costs you know and you had a chart where you had a bunch of different different options and I know you're thinking through that what's what is your thinking at the moment as to how to best run this going forward so I think that it's a little bit of a lot of things right so we have in-house staff who have uh experience using Ark map we have some in-house staff who could be trained on using devices out in the field and doing it's pretty pretty easy um the devices are not not expensive um we have the potential to share services with a neighboring community that we need to explore further but that's something that's on the table um the way that I don't know if you read the whole strategic plan but Adam kind of outlined like different roles that different staff would have um and I think like a lot depends on like what kinds of requests we're getting and what the demands are like as people see what the site can do and you know have more and more ideas for what they want um we would have to like set up some parameters for how to manage those requests coming in and then and then fig and then see how it's impacting current Staffing levels um and the town would have to decide like do we need to to add somebody do we need to um like get some part-time hours with another Community um so it's it's uncertain at this point I think that it's um it's really hard to know it's pretty incipient I haven't had like a ton of requests for things yet but you know um um in my prior jobs I I used to have a lot of requests um and you know those were bigger towns and and you know private firm engineering firms so um I do think the potential is there when people see what this can do that there could be a lot of um different needs or requests that are made and then the time would have to decide whether that's something we're absorbing into current Staffing or are we adding somebody um some of the new staff that are being hired in town how they they come with like some experience um and that's it's it's there's benefits there um I think we have a lot in town hall right now that can be leveraged but I it's hard to speak to the Future you do you see in the future it kind of rolling up too I I look at like Google or and then I think of well the mass GIS you know they're they're doing it at a state level of parcels and stuff I mean is this eventually going to where do you think they get those is that where yeah okay well then we're doing I didn't know okay so we're paying for it and then giving it to them and then so yeah it's a it's a requirement of the state and then it actually unlocks funding opportunities for Public Safety um yeah but so the part of the contracts that we have now are were to like bring our Parcels up to date because they were a couple years behind and then we have ongoing uh parle updates for the next couple years already already budgeted for and so that's something we would need to continue to do we sell them our data these are it's funny how similar some of the questions that you guys ask are two questions that the planning board asks planning board are very keen on monetizing this whole thing yeah AG data I mean we should get for it all right I'm sorry I don't mean to no no it's no they're they're great like interesting questions for sure but so I promise this is building to something that makes sense so the CPC articles um again while Julie's here for just one more minute that we're discussed tonight so the bog house study fits in the $30,000 admin um bucket request which also includes uh some some needs for for CPA funding plus an assistance salary the 56,000 you heard about tonight from kcom cranberry bog Watershed analysis management plan which is part of the grand bargain that was made at the cranberry bog uh 50,000 for the council and aging rental assistance program the Benfield doors which you heard about uh we still owe you a um a better cost estimate which is in works and hopefully done next week for uh fixing the adaa or the accessibility of Benfield stores that's a housing request under CPC and then although it says Greeno Watershed analysis um there is funding that was done for the Greeno Dam that's going to be returned so the the they wanted to use some of that 30,000 in order to do a watershed analysis similar to the one uh that's being done at the cranberry bog but you can't quite do it that way so this will come as a new article but not really new funding if you um if you factor in what's being returned so these are the major presentations the one other thing from Warren articles that that you would want to discuss I think is the amenities building which I learned tonight via email it has been pulled uh for discussion study there might be a study cost but uh that will not be that will not be part of the fy2 budget okay okay um thank you Julie unless you want to stay I mean is that all it was too easy thank you no it's great I I discovered by using the gis that my neighbor's driveway goes over my land GIS is rep it's representational in nature may not be accurate um to get a survey do you see the disclaimer yeah read the disclaimer well okay it looks it looks like it's a my true but so it might not be true so as I as I said this was moving towards something so the thanks Julie thank you jie so the budget calendar has been updated why why am I moving you towards this particular document so tonight we are discussing and getting pieces of information as you need to make decisions the 26 which is your next meeting we're calling a deliberative meeting we're inviting the fincom if you want it you should get results from further fincom analysis but decisions on the operating budget the capital budget and these warrant articles is necessary so I wanted to call that to your attention so that you could have us gather any information you need or invite anybody you need for uh for final information pieces and we're trying to keep that um that agenda is open as possible so that discussion can be long rich and robust because there will be um you will have a meeting in so of fincom on the 2nd to present this information to the public we're going to invite the public heavy to that meeting on the 26th as well to get public input and then you need to finalize and sign the town meeting warrant on April 9th so you have two real meetings left of uh budget decisions I have a quick comment yes don't mind um so the public budget hearing on April 2nd that is you're saying that that's a joint select board fincom or is that just a fincom fincom does that and that's a placehold they haven't scheduled it yet oh okay because this is just a general comment and it you know we can take it up at the next meeting but I just want to get it out there so you know at the last town meeting one of the things we tried to do was the um info session at the beginning um I know we've got now a committee that's looking into you know how we run town meeting but I'm thinking whether we might want to consider having some kind of a community Forum or community meeting before town meeting about some of these about some of the bigger things that might be coming up at town meeting and we may not get much turnout I don't know but I think it would be wor I I think we should think about whether we might want to do something like that particularly if we push um it being a you know joining us remotely and being able to participate remotely ask questions you know whatever so for instance something like the it may not be the B house but maybe it's about the um police station right we're going to have and I know they're doing open houses Etc but it it might we might want to think about pulling out the kind of significant um decisions that need to be made at town meeting to focus on as some kind of a public community meeting sponsored by the select board so just a something to think about and speaking of things to think about the town meeting warrant mailing yes yes we have to make a decision have to Fisher cut bait on this one so this matters because of scheduling so it's part of this we need to make sure that we're ready to print um if it's a postcard we can send it out earlier and uh really Hammer people with the QR and update online if it's a mailing then that just takes more time we'll still try to um hammer is the wrong word but have people get information and access it online to include presentations and reports Etc and the mailed warrant would also have a QR code with all the same accessibility so the real difference is the balance between um history tradition and accessibility and cost so we outlined it in a gret and helped me put this together the full book mailing is around $4,000 and the um postcard option is $1,400 so this would be per meeting so it's about 20 is it $2,000 difference 2500 what was it 2500 yeah um and that's per town meeting so um it was two per year yeah that's about 5,000 a year you know we when we when we uh used the postcard for the last meeting um we got some feedback um I can't I don't remember how broad it was I do remember there were some specific comments that people were not happy that they hadn't received the book in the mail um you anybody remember how much feedback we got I think John was one of them um that he likes to write in it uh you know at home um and bring his notes to the meeting but that excuse me um this is not an either or even if we did the postcard there would be some print booklets available so that those people who really need that who want that yeah um can call and I think we even talked we offered that last fall though too actually directly delivered to their house so they don't even have to come and get it I'll be some at the library some at Burns it's less expensive to hand deliver for the number of people who would want to ask that listen I'm I'm not arguing for mailing the booklet NE I I actually would love to have us not do that for all kinds of reasons but I do want to be I want us to remind ourselves of the feedback we got and um because we offered those options last fall when we went to the postcard and we may not maybe we didn't maybe now that people have had the experience of getting to town meeting that wanted a book and didn't get one maybe they will take advantage of those things um this time around um because I'm I'm in favor of not of just you doing the postcard myself um I think as long as a postcard is well laid out and that it's it's the QR codes over here but there's a lot of information about how you can get the booklet if that's what you want because it I think it wasn't as as somehow I don't remember it being as publicized as publicized or as obvious on that uhuh as it will the postcard say if you want it delivered you will deliver it or will not say that it it did last year as well it did it did but I think the layout was you call you like a number you can call Jen's number did gret know that when we gret know that when we hired her I think she knows you can put my cell phone and I will bring it to your house you can talk about the the warrants yes okay um David let's have yes does he have any comments David you have any comments um no I I prefer the postcard as well okay so let's have a motion and so that it's Crystal Clear do we have a motion in the packet or no I don't think so okay well um I move that we um send a um postcard to uh to the usual list um to um announce the Springtown meeting with information about how um people may get a hard copy if they would like to have one there second that was very second yes great um we're going to do roll call Arnold I I think Modell I Reed ey Snell I okay that's unanimous all right uh quick operating budget update as quick as you want it to be the um major R Revenue recommendations this comes from the select board and fincom recommendation for solving the deficit and um trying to get all budgets within the 3% guideline was today so Revenue recommendations include using 50,000 of ambulance receipts a pending decision on increasing transfer station stickers which would result in a conservative $20,000 increase that is not approved and is up for public discussion and then a variety of expense recommendations um that help get closer to 3% from all departments take into account that um there are some things that we just can't we just can't cut and I can show you where all the Departments are at if you want so the total of the uh quote unquote approved or not is around 75,000 to 880,000 so cons conservation I had it at 10,000 they kind of tentatively agreed to give back 16 tonight so that would increase by six which is why I'm saying around 80 so the remainder to get to uh 3% average tax bill increase is 120,000 knowing that we have not heard from the schools at all yet yeah so getting there all right I was at the library trustees today and they were thinking about reducing their maintenance line by the 3776 and Martha sent that to me so this is just wanted to talk to her but I think it's confirmed okay the the excuse me quick question so the um the ones that are approved are these um departments then at a 3% increase o in terms of their budget from last year to this the FY 25 or is this just the amount they said they could reduce the response to have level Services as as close to 3% as possible okay there's still a little more cut room if you want I should also add most people know this I think tomorrow is uh the school committee meeting they're going to present I believe they're going to present their plan to get I'm hoping it's to get to 3% but whatever it is they're going to present uh if you aren't if you haven't gotten the invitation from Mary Reagan I think you can get on the website but uh you know you can listen in we're not calling a meeting but you may want to listen in because that's you know the biggest piece left right I plan to be you know know listening I don't know Ryan do you have any sense from your conversations with Jim about how they're doing on that they they asked for space they understand the guideline and said they would participate in that guideline so I feel confident that they are going through the same exercise that the town is trying to get as close as possible yeah that's my sense as well so okay so stay tuned on that uh so you've seen this before just one quick update so um the white or the clear is um free cash expenditure for a lack of better explanation red is chapter 90 yellow is debt and coral is the things that are being bundled into an MFC article one change in the MFC article so they were going to go ahead and update the town um fob entry system using a key card but decided through um a pretty good deliberation that that that was just coming out of nowhere needed to be prioritized so it's going on the Capital plan for FY 25 and then if you look here on the right this would turn into your warrant articles so a 657 650,000 $700 for um Capital the debt article for the uh engine 3 replacement the MFC article which would be a bundle of 510,000 and then um the road M maintenance from chapter 90 which end up being more like 400,000 if the governor's proposal goes through Ryan just to refresh my memory but did we talk about and we haven't gone back this in a while but for road maintenance what are we thinking it's 500,000 to keep the kind of level where we are right now correct we have about 750,000 in it's not extra but in unspent chapter 90 so we feel like we can hit that marker and a plan we're going to present to you for the next two years and then present a longer term plan that will meld into FY 26 and Beyond and the capital plan and that's coming to you in two meetings two or three meetings all right now I'm ready to really confuse you so one of the things that uh but in a good way one of the things that Zach was talking about was unspent Bond proceeds this was one of the recommendations uh Kelly spent a tremendous amount of time weeding all of this out so what happened was very simply we borrowed money and then we didn't spend it all so we we went ahead and borrowed the total amount for a project but then the project came in under so a good problem so anything under $50,000 can be used there's a lot of Master law in a lot of detail but essentially can be used to pay off debt so what we're going to do this year is put all of these if you agree and vote on it towards debt and that will close to free cash so you'll end up getting uh you remember when he talked about miscellaneous revenue and and other things that added to our free cash total this will be one of those things for FY 24 closure on the left side you see that a school project for the wastewater treatment plant uh saw $101,000 unspent so the way this needs to happen is it becomes part of a warrant article in order to fund a project of similar lifespan so the the best example in the capital plan is the wastewater treatment request of 143,000 so we can roll this into the capital article defer the cost of that and that will reduce the overall spend so um we'll just just give Kelly credit she found 200 grand for you woohoo hey well done that leads into it's our money your money just giving it back to and celebrating it yeah no but it's figuring out it's there and how we can use and the couch cushions so this is this is the the spend plan you're getting used to this this little chart but our total reserves which you can see is remarkably close to what Zach talked about in the UN I can't remember the name now but the money that isn't accounted for um I I said that terribly unassigned fund balance the target is 12% reserves in this town the reserve over Target meaning what you have available is 1.5 over your 12% this budget proposes a 100% $100,000 operating budget investment of free cash 1.1 million in capital plan and then 745 so those are all the different articles and and things I showed you in the previous charts for a total use of 1285 still L 300K so that leaves you a balance not including what I just showed you on those Bond proceeds charts of around uh 300 to 500,000 over your 12% if you were to fund everything in this budget so what I am the finance team is recommending is you put that into a capital stabilization to offset future future costs and here is why we've been working thanks to Sandy and um Bartholomew on really firming up the borrow for some of the big projects and this one right here is the police station so assuming you wanted to do a 20-year borrow which is a middle ground that is a Debt Service of 266,000 in year one so the year impact for the average tax bill using today's tax rate would be $146 or 0.85% increase on the uh on the average tax bill so that would take a regular year I'm just calling it that a 3% increase and make it 3.85 if you were to take 500,000 which you're putting away in capital stabilization this year that borrow would go from 3 million to 2.5 and obviously reduce that percentage or you could use it to offset future capital and have this be the only thing above 3% % if if you went that route and you can see it starts at 266,000 but it declines over those years so you would slowly gain back your um average tax bill or create capacity for adding in other projects I miss that 26 like 292 million oh 266 on The Debt Service yeah the Project's 2920 or no is that yeah what's the good question is that the police station it's the police station yeah so we have one of these for the fire truck we have one of these for the so Ryan I can't see the numbers but um Ryan yep we can hear you Ryan yes sir I'm back in Carlos sketching um but in reality if you didn't have the stabilization fund you could still it could well Flo a free cash and you could use free cash for the same purpose right correct so tell me the advantages of putting it in a lock box versus just having that flexibility the advantage is demonstrating a public plan for controlling long-term costs while supporting large projects okay thank you so the the remaining questions um for your next meeting your deliberation are finalizing the operating budget and the deficit in order to get near or at your guideline of 3% tax increase to to Really vet if you support all of the capital articles as you can see that turns into real dollars that you may or may not need for for other projects and then the warrant articles so what information what people do you need to talk to to feel comfortable about putting all of that on the final warrant and signing it uh just because you have the deliberation time and you have to sign the final warrant doesn't mean you don't have further time to recommend or not these articles so if you want to put them on but then still consider whether or not you're going to support them you have that option as well and then you will see between now and the 26 a 95% draft of the town meeting warrant so you can see it all laid out another couple decisions because I want to be transparent is the cola decision so we have to print the the town waging class plan and that has is built off of the cola whether it's at right now what's built in at 2.25% if that's going to go to 2% or you're going to make another solution or decision the other thing is this budget also includes a 1% increase on the health insurance so an update the um health insurance benefit so an update on that the IAC which is your group that was building a recommendation voted to not support a plan change which means our uh health insurance increase will be 8.95% the plan change would have increased deductibles and been a burden on our employees but it would reduce the overall cost to 5.5% rather than the 8.95% so that is a big cost and a big driver of the uh the future of our budget we also currently tie retirees and active employees together so I think the Board needs to make a decision on whether or not it's going to go with the current plan whether or not it it still supports an increase of the uh Insurance splits or what the long-term plan is there and whether or not to continue to tether retirees to active employees so they're all levers Within in that health insurance line item to control long-term costs or not they also have major implications on retention and care for employees as well so not a small decision just quick question um So currently the current operating budget has us going up uh the town picking up an additional 1% share of the health insurance cost correct correct that's built in right now yes okay it's that cost $155,000 right the the budget line is 1.5 million so just rough math it's 15,000 but it it's really like 13 and change okay okay so it's in certain respects small money now however I'm worried about the future and about uh future and what I'm also worried about is that we may not have control over the program later that actually the insurance companies will be the ones that are going to increase those deductibles and increase our insurance costs as well you know so going forward we don't know we don't have a crystal ball obviously but doesn't look good so we may not be able to do this next year I'm just I think pick up an addition addition yeah make it increasingly difficult okay yeah couple levers in there is to to really consider retirees and where they fall in the Spectrum so the difference between an active and a retire retiree is the activ still pay deductibles whereas retirees pay into Medicare so it's still a cost to pay into Medicare but it is cheaper and not as expensive as deductibles so some towns split they have an active cost and a so we will continue to March if these things happen as a way you can control that cost when do we need to make this decision with the operating budget with the operating so I I just hope people will think about it very carefully so that when we get I think it's before the April 2nd then March 26th meeting that we really should be prepared yeah fincom is going to ask do you want that to be part of your your cut scenario or not yeah to get to 3% so I'm sorry say that again part of their cut scenario to get to 3% includes do we want it to include we not want to increase it by 15,000 oh do we still want it to include the 1% ah gotcha okay all right is the I'm sorry I I'm have a little trouble following this is you talking about the 1% that where we take more share of the uh the health package is that what we're discussing okay yeah and it's how much a year around 15 less than 15K 15 15K to move to move the needle one more percent yes okay thank you and just quick question on the cola so say that again we're um you said we're we're currently planning for 2.25% that's what's built into the budget that's what's built into the current okay and and what was the and then your question about that was do we want to change that right so we need to build the wage class plan so we need to know what the percentage would be yeah um um well can I just before you ask this question I want to say um we have a couple of contracts where they're on townwide Cola but with a floor of 2.25 right so we wouldn't want to go lower than that but don't necessarily have to go higher than that got it okay and this is this a negotiation year for CPS next year next year okay thank you and so they're on a 2.25 as well right actually I think they're they're on a two they're on a two for this year on a two for this year okay all right thanks all right that is um what's currently in the fincom court and then coming back to you on the 26th I would like more information on the um I don't on this um you know pulling the retirees out of the separating the retirees from the active um employees but that's something I can just do individually I wrote that down too I think it's important I'd like to know more about that there's two tiers of retirees there's the ones that are already on Medicare and the ones that are not right right yeah so I would yeah that would be helpful to have some more information on that Ryan maybe just in writing so that they yeah see it beforeand and David you do you had something you wanted to say yeah I just um I heard there was a like a discretionary piece to whether we would have the fincom come in and have a joint meeting there's no reason we should do that right we should tell them we want them to come in right for the 26th yeah I I think you might have been mixing it up with my question David about um the public budget hearing that fincom is going to do and I was asking if that was a joint meeting so yeah that's separate yeah okay thank you GNA have Gretchen publicized heavily that there's going to be deliberation about the budget at the meeting on the 26th to invite the public to participate in case you want to hear from them yeah you're not here great I will be here virtually are you going to run me are you going to zoom be the zoom leader be the zoom leader you will okay well all right assuming they have Internet it's 10 minutes to 10 we haven't uh are there any other questions on the budget in town minute meeting review because we really need to get to the TA report and the liaison reports and the minutes I think okay hey is yes David's back welcome back two round trips to Lancaster Oh Lordy play soccer out there well usually we have a car pool and it all went away I'm the only driver so okay thank you for your patience good guy all right all right update so the employee uh furniture and expansion will continue phase two in April we have a date April 18th so you'll see some scheduling of um at least a partial Town Hall closure it won't be the whole building the good news is this came in under the arpa budget so we'll be able to return a couple thousand to arpa for human resource dates Juniper Freedman began this week stabilizing the long vacant position assisting the historical commission the CPC and the MFC so we're still working on training but she's adjusting well to all things Carlile it's a difficult position there's a lot of different Nuance between the three boards so it'll take a little time but we're going to get there regret to report that Mary Hopkins resigned from her position as a conservation assistant so we'll be advertising this vacancy we thank Mary for her service and I'm going to have a different few different options for the kcom in the town to consider to include maybe a temporary hire while we we consider some longer term approaches uh we did send an offer to a heavy equipment operator he has not accepted it yet but uh we are we are hopeful to fill that last uh he position and then I'm continuing to serve on the ccrs unit a negotiation team I think it's going well uh it's pretty amicable negotiation as we work through some of the long-term changes in the contract all right I think we talked about the budget I don't see anything that I missed there the DPW plow truck so some decent news here uh it reported last time that we tried to procure the truck they told us it would take four years and we could pay more for it we said that's not a great deal so they uh Jim found a 2023 option from a state um State bid List member it was 16,000 more but far less than we would pay with four years of increases so the finom approved a emergency transfer in order to cover that cost and we were able to procure that truck so we should see it in September you'll see in the packet we received 253,719 for chapter 90 and fy2 this is the normal increase that was part of the 2-year bill passed last year the governor has also included another version of the fair share uh act that gave us another 171,000 last year so we're hoping that goes through which would bring our total to closer to carry the two 420 so you were you know I was driving when you were talking about that chapter 90 sort of extra money and the road maintenance project so you're basically rolling that Surplus into your multi-year plan for road maintenance essentially yeah we're going to seek a two-year definitive approval from you to procure it and then work with you on a five to 10 year plan right along the lines of what was recommended by that Consulting study that is the base and then Jim is adding what we're calling Equity roads or roads that get a lot of complaints for you to consider that are within the scope of the uh Equity Relic who came up with that term that's great that's an interesting term it's the uh I would call advocacy roads man my kids don't like put the crappy roads saky wheel advocacy broken axle roads I regret I regret that word all right um down meeting mailing we made that decision so I was go able to go to school with several staff members did you read we read we read we read I read Kelly were you there Kelly hates reading so the I was able to go to Mrs Morris's thirdd grade class and read trusty town hall and Jim mosay called me out for not actually reading the book and trying to indoctrinate the students on taxes and I I didn't think that was true until I got the letters from the kids that were talking about how fun and interesting taxes are so it worked all right um The Garden Club is seeking several approvals from you so they would like to use the town common for the annual plant sale on Saturday May 18th from 10: to 2:00 they will have tables plants tents and Native Plant Workshop this is historically been supported by all Town entities and is supported by F FRS second the club seeks permission to plant native perennials under the young trees planted in 2022 the Garden Club will pay for the plantings and plant them during an educational workshop at the plant sale the project is called Soft Landings if the native plants fail to thrive the Garden Club Promises to reced the area circle of plants around the base of the tree will be six to8 that should be no 8 feet in diameter for the first year kept away uh knee high length and they will be giving attention so that these young trees and the plants will Thrive so we thought you needed to approve both of these measures I have a question about this last one have they um gotten approval from FS because this they need to have approval from them as well that is my understanding yep that they have had approval from not just for the town common but for the planting yes okay do you want us to do do the motion right now two let's do it I move uh to approve the request to the Carlile Garden Club for use of the Town common on Saturday May 18th 2024 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the car garden jul thank youn sale Twitter right goodbye you two you do a great job for our town thank you I the do I have a second second good uh any further discussion all those in favor I okay that's unanimous I move to approve the gar Carlile Garden Club proposal to plant native perennials under the young trees on the town common do I have a second second uh any further discussion all those in favor I I okay another support from in perpetuity for 2019 so the am race Amity day uh celebration will be a fun educational event geared towards children and welcoming for adults they'll have music poetry educational tables and early act and others it would be a fun game called Blind Contour look closely where two strangers sit across from each other one while one is drawing the other while not lifting their pencil and never looking down this is supposed to help people see strangers and make in a different light and make uh connections so to bring your own picnic this year but they're looking for approval for June 9th from 2 to 5 um I wasn't able to make this this year I'm going to try to make it this year but it sound like it was a great event I moved to approve the request of local organizers for use of town common Sunday June 9th 2024 from 2: to 5 p.m for the race Amity Day celebration second any further discussion all those in favor I that was unanimous all right procurement the sprinkler system is awaiting final inspection which is great news the dog park will be put back out to bid it's a smaller version that was approved by all permitting boards uh this week it'll go out to bid Corey lighting so uh you know that this bid exceeded expectations so we are awarding the um lighting contract to barberon and purchasing the equipment we are engaging one of our host doctors to redesign the electrical and we will either put that out to bid or hire our own electrician to install so we think this will be very close to the original appropriation maybe a little bit over but definitely less than than what was bid so is there a lesson here that we should basically do this stuff ourselves now that we have house doctors and smart people who know how to do things we we shouldn't let Consultants drive us I mean I'm being overly brought here but some of these things where you know we pay somebody to do something that we can do ourselves if we piece it out right and you have the house doctor plan it we have more control we can exhibit more cost control yes that argument goes there's a lot of upfront cost but it might save you money in the long run I missed that David you're saying we want to use the house do well what I'm what I'm hearing I guess I want to make sure I understood correctly so you know the school came to us with their hair on fire and said we got to have this it's like dangerous and the light bulbs and this and the ladders and you know all this Panic last year and all right so then we budgeted an amount and uh and then it turns out it was way more so we kept that it and now what I'm hearing is okay we've contracted with somebody to do something and then we're using our house doctors and check you know basically doing a redesign of what they told us and doing some ourselves and some vending out and we think the total will be less it'll be kind of back so the lesson to me the ab if it's if it is you know if that's uh extrapolatable right is is you know we shouldn't listen to what these experts tell us on these projects we should we have house doctors we should get our own analysis and we should decide in that menu what we can do and what we need to parcel out you're saying use our own house doctors yes the house doctors that we now assembled a team of house doctors right it's a question I mean I'm not really making a statement I'm just saying is that is that a better model going forward for some of these projects I I think being on the MFC I think that is because I I've seen that in action where we've you know done projects that if you do it you know you kind of don't have a plan and well engineered plan and then all of a sudden you know the cost goes skyrocketing right and um well you let somebody else who's maybe not as familiar with the situation or maybe is not as good of a like a contractor tells you what you need but he looks at it a certain way right whereas the house doctor doesn't have a dog in the fight right I mean they're just looking at the project and saying what's the best approach House doctor May I mean the contractor may forget their other components or you need to do drainage oh I didn't think about dra exactly right so okay so anyway that's thank you to to be fair to the school I agree with that overall sentiment but in this particular instance the company that we're awarding the the contract to for the equipment is perfect capable of installing and they do it for larger projects so they they bid it and would have hold held to that bid which was under what we appropriated however the state would not let us use them because they do not have a dcam certification so normally they work under a bigger firm they were not allowed to work under a bigger firm so we have petitioned the state to say that they are really hosing small towns by not um by making us do that so it's costing us about 40 Grand a state law that that is trying to protect us that is hurting us I think I can picture situations where it would help us but in this one it's not so is that something for example that we ought to be talking to Simon about that sort of thing I have and you should too um taking rid of getting rid of some of the bureaucracy of procurement would help small towns in that sense it also exposes you a little bit but we can talk about that all right uh speaking of procurement hurting us so the Greeno Barn we had to reject all bids received last week so two bids far exceeded our funding capacity uh two other bids which were more sustainably focused and geared towards our project were completed incorrectly and deemed unresponsive so I'm just going to be blunt when they were filling out the form they didn't put zeros in all the spots so is that another bureaucratic uh requirement yes so part of it is we tried to really dial in some of the some of the construction levels so we're going to ease back on that and make the form a little easier to fill out and um hit a different standard so we're going to rebid this and I think it's going to end up where we want it to be but it's going to take another month so uh Recreation Mowing and fleing contracts those are out to bid and have seen a strong return two signs on the rotaries in town land you'll see are the no m in the carile music festival some upcoming discussion points I'm going to be gone starting tomorrow until the 29th for military duty at Fort Bliss Sandy will be the U in-person Town Administrator if necessary I still will have a retain most of my authority but the things I can't do in person she will have like HR and then Chief Soros who already has a ton of emergency responsibilities will take the couple that I have during an emergency situation um the board will and others who need the select board and Town Administrator will go through Gretchen's capable hands and Aubrey will be back at the end of the month actually her and I come back in the same day budget we talked about the other things that are coming up climate leader and ESC work plans will be part of a special meeting on April second it'll just be your goals my goals and this ESC conversation about their work plan and climate leader and that's all that's scheduled for that meeting I have a quick comment oh go ahead well um you actually said earlier that there was also going to be the budget stuff on there and I was going to question it then but I'm going to question it now then the budget stuff really should have been on April 9th and you have it you wrote it in your in the budget um time off as April 2 so that's the finance committee's public budget presentation April 2nd is so they're having it on our same as our it's just a placeholder they haven't scheduled it yet ah that was the date that they kind of talked about we're we're layering in an extra meeting right yeah we're laying in okay that's sorry I'm just quick comment on the special meeting um which we talked about at the last meeting it came out of wanting to give more time to the goals the select board goals and then the town administrators goals um and looking at the draft agenda I know I understand that it's a good thing to be discussing the um climate leader Proposal with the sustainability committee but I I would just urge us to remember what drove us to have this meeting in the first place and make sure we really give the time to the goals discussion and my suggestion would be you know maybe what what I suggest isn't the exact right way but generally I think we as a board should do some work in advance of that conversation looking at the select board goals some way that we do some of our own kind of scoring or you know U how well did we on do on this what's missing what would you change something where we're having to do some work ahead of time and then similarly with the town administrator's goals which we've talked about bringing back and really discussing and we we haven't you know so I think if we had both of those documents with some direction from our chair um or chair and whomever else uh about what we should be doing in advance I think would be helpful and um I would I would in in reviewing that April 2nd agenda if you think we need more time for that part I would shrink I would recommend we shrink the aain sustainability which is down for an hour that the goals are down for an hour yeah but the the we got we said we wanted to know more about sustainability goals where we real realized that we really needed to talk to the es yeah but so but they want to present this lead this this new proposal about being a leadership Community yeah that it's going to be they can present it and we will discuss it but it has to be presented in the context of their goals okay and our goals okay for sustainability all right so um we yeah we'll look we can refine that time and that was that is a draft thing but I lik your idea though Barney if you can send out something ahead of time even sooner rather than later be helpful just to remind me like I guess I can look at the website and look at their goals but I know some direction some direction about what you what what how do we want to try to approach that conversation what we were starting to do was kind of just go down them in kind of a general you know yeah we did okay on this yeah we did oh we haven't done that but I don't know that if that's the most productive way to approach you know trying to evaluate where we are I'll let you take the lead chair thanks thanks a lot leave it in your capable hands that that agenda packet is ready to go already so yes we can just post it and get it to you and then add some Direction all right the uh fire station conceptual design will be coming back um of course it needs to be it needs to take a little bit of a backseat during this current budget but then we should ramp up again right right as town meeting hits uh so we can discuss the main point is do you want to put some caps on the RFQ this time in order to get a designer who's focused on um or knows what you want to focus on I should say the tsac regulations so they have been working on their regulations mostly around enforcement and stickers to include a recommendation to increase the sticker price and to increase enforcement so this is a document that was attached to the report it is a very significant Topic in my opinion that that needs to be discussed and deliberated more than just this couple minutes here so we're sending it to you ahead of time so you can consider it I would strongly recommend you read the enforcement piece because it it is what someone call a little bit more heavy-handed but it does allow us to more equ equitably um enforce the standard there and reduce some of the trash increase that's been happening I didn't say that well but Trans increaseing in cost increase cost but you know I was there the other day and somebody had thrown textiles and right on top of the trash and that's and then as I the worker there was putting the textiles in the thing he realized that somebody put a huge box in the paper recycle bin and the box when he pulled it out was full of Styrofoam and plastic it's like you know you can't coach stupid I I feel I'm telling you but the thing that you know maddening because I spend a lot of time I'm sure you all do you know carefully you know separating all my stuff and somebody who does this um is I find yes maddening very maddening and rude it is inconsiderate I agree I totally agree but what's the fix for it you wouldn't do it well the thing is they they do this when you turn your back they don't because well do they do it willfully or ignorant out of ignorance question may I suggest that we I know this see that's why Ryan's saying this deserves conversation it will be it will be so so when are we taking it up you have a schedule time to take it up uh Tac wants to bring it up in your next meeting okay we still have the budget stuff so talk about and this is the proposed regulation that we would be voting on at that read it before the next meeting again we're at least discussing and if we're not ready to vote come back yeah it does not include the um proposal about the sticker at this point right well this is a this is a policy it wouldn't it wouldn't it's not the where you have to fix it anyways it's a yeah it's a whole thing and it's going to be Lively yeah so uh we talked about the road maintenance plan the only thing I would call your attention to is we are recommending you have a public hearing about these plans as well to get input from residents you can hear firsthand the equity roads to hear understand that their road is not going to be paid some staff some staff recognition so I'd like to acknowledge Chief emundo and the Carlo Police Department for their Polar Plunge it was freezing I was very uncomfortable just standing there um and then they jumped into 40 degree water the fire department participated a lot of members of CPAC um I did not I did not fully understand the event and and have regrets but they raised more than 6,500 for Special Olympics very cool event they're going to plan on doing next year a lot of participation from our younger residents as well yeah a lot of students were there so just a great day great uh Athena didn't jump in did you jump she's supposed to be a water dog I thought I just didn't have time to go I would have jumped but it was awfully I was sick firefighter EMT Leaf Hansen graduated last week from the fire academy with his firefighter one2 certification it's a 240 hour program brings a lot of experience and professionalism to our already solid department so well done to Well Done firefighter Hansen okay on your upcoming dates you you don't have the 26th but we we are meeting on the 26th right 26 yes yes I wonder um if March 29th it turns out is Good Friday I'm I'm just hoping that doesn't affect the caucus is the caucus on a Friday night no that can't be right that's that is right yeah that's the date yeah we have a caucus on a Friday night yeah it's so it's odd that is weird Friday night and it's good Friday isn't it a time is isn't it based on a certain amount of time that should just wondering that's not a great time to have a caucus if she um took account of that you know she may have just counted backwards but maybe she needs to is it is there time to amend that because I think your participation will be down quite a bit I advise you to contact your elected official that's a good job for the chair I think and it's also a good segue for our our one of our ballot questions okay okay you'll do that right if we can move it I suggest we move it okay okay call Peggy right you know we didn't talk about the ballot questions in terms of the town clerk question but at some point I don't know if we should do it tonight but no not tonight we should talk about preparation for that yeah so that's that's the end of the TA report any more questions for Ryan comments um no have a good uh congratulations you'll be what you'll be fully trained then you're allowed to actually allowed to stay a sergeant major yes okay you're doing this in Texas Fort Bliss Texas for Bliss beautiful downtown Fort Bliss it'll be warm it should be warm not August yeah who's going to drive the kids to hockey hockey's done okay thankfully there a little bit of a break so okay okay very good minutes I sent I had uh two amendation but I think they probably hit your packet hopefully before you read them ah okay I had just one small what was it while she's looking um I I just in the community input section it makes it sound like the people were all reading one prepared statement but there were several people doing different things right yeah there was you one guy reading a prepared statement and then he kind of I don't know then there was somebody else who made sort of ad hoc statements I don't know if we should just tweak that a little bit to uh as they began to read a prepared statement I mean one person read a prepared statement but other people jump another woman right identified herself and she started to say I don't have edits I I didn't prepare edits but that might be something and then the last thing at the end of that paragraph the board placed them in the virtual waiting room but don't we everybody was didn't we make a decision that did we just move them to the virtual waiting room okay all right then those are my comments um being disruptive yes I think that should be put you should probably you should probably add that yeah I agree add the word disruptive so maybe take a disruptive yeah the people that were disruptive yeah um just to clarification on page five of the minutes the uh Second full paragraph I didn't quite understand this is talking about the bog house and it the first sentence says how the cost is currently or might be offset by in-kind work of the tenants or rent as in the the cost of the repairs is that what that's referring to yes okay might just be worth putting that in there because so it's the co the cost of the repairs see is currently what page I'm sorry it's the first sentence of page of the second paragraph on page five might offet no not the first sentence yeah of the second paragraph of the second par the bo further discuss how the cost of repairs okay yeah is currently might be offset by by the tenants doing in-kind work or us charging them rent is that what that's the board further discuss how the cost is currently or might be offset by inine work of the tenants or yes by rent paid by them yeah which they don't presently pay rent right yeah that's the thing we actually say that they have a are they tenants at will or is there a least this is the mess yeah that's the mess right and I would say you they're tenants at will at our will or somebody's will kcom kcom kcoms will okay and then the well okay and then the are we done with that one thing do you want are you recommending a word smithing well just just clarify that as for repairs yeah and then the SEC the next par the paragraph below that says um it's about the repairs on the bgh house can I can I suggest that you people send their send something specific to Gretchen and we'll take these up at our next meeting great I like that it's late and we have some other things no it's okay it's just know I had a couple of little things but I uh yeah okay okay um Lea on reports so um I was at planning board last night they uh have now um officially set up two new committees one is the MBTA committee and another was MVP um they wanted um a member from select board and I had originally when it was still a working group had volunteered for it but they wanted to have confirmation that um you still supported me being U the select board um representative and I would invite anybody who would like to be on it to take my place other but I'm H still happy to do the job if that's what you wish is this both committees yeah I I would say for both committees yeah you're a fine American I'm very comfortable with you serving as long as you're willing to continue y okay all good all right I chaired the first uh town meeting oh yes planning committee I don't know what it's called study study committe and it was good we had a great session we had two-hour session full of ideas lots of really interesting ideas uh we had one or two people virtually and everybody else was here we are planning to meet approximately every other Thursday until town meeting and we have already picked out a couple things to focus on that we might actually you know be able to with Wayne's help be able to do a town meeting and then really through the summer would be the hard work of the more difficult things that we would trial at the fall town meeting because that's a smaller easy meeting that maybe we can actually enact in the Springtown meeting of 25 but there was a lot of energy a lot of good ideas so U you know I'm pretty encouraged were were they all Eng like tell me about the dynamic because I was hoping we're going to get new ideas and new I think I think we did I think we did and one of them I mean I don't want to Rattle on here right now but uh one of the things is you know we we're focusing a lot on who doesn't come to town meeting like how do we get these people but we don't do enough to celebrate those who do come and one of the ideas is like you know like the mosquito publishes everybody who gives money like well put a list everybody who showed up to town meeting like put it in like people should be we want to well it is sort of public shaming and it's also recognition and it you know and but there was a lot more about you know ways to uh reach out to you know the other pools and we have two I think two uh people who are younger and have maybe you know parents of school AG children and stuff so so that's good you know getting that kind of opinion so you know the first day was organizational and just like a lot of free flow but it was a lot of energy good ideas so as we you know winnow them down I think we're you know I feel like we can come up with some things so now are you going to continue as chair reluctantly yes okay um so I was also at the uh Library trustees today and I want to make sure everybody knows that on Friday there the um adult uh spelling be okay and I'm going to be one of the judges and I want it to be known that I am open to bries in other words you would deem something incorrectly spelled as correctly spelled if you pay me enough and I just wanted let everybody know that all proceeds uh that I that I would receive from such bribes receive IE or eii judge i before e except after c we'd go to the library so there you are um oh gosh I forgot what I was gonna say oh well sorry okay um any other L and reports Community input there's nobody in the in the room Christina or Mark or Mark good for you mark even Mary Lynn oh that's okay that's good he's still here look at that's why I made you got an A for effort I just want to know if I can quote you on that Kate absolutely about taking bribes yeah yeah no um that all proceeds go to the but all I just so that but also let them know that all all the proceeds from the bribes are going to the library absolutely not very impartial judging no no no serious she's not going to use it to do her next decal on her [Laughter] car okay um MTA what motion toour oh my God a new topic please reaction yes yes so moved so moved second yep all right all those in favor I thank you all all right oh my go