call the finance committee meeting to order at 50:2 PM for March 18th 24 you guys want to call your select board I will call our meeting to get o um at 5:04 tonight okay um first up is reviewing minutes from the previous meeting I move that we accept the minutes of um March 11th do we have a second second it any discussion yeah I have two points okay I at the beginning of the meeting last week I mentioned I wanted to recuse myself from many discussions of school transportation okay and I would like that to be in the minutes okay to be officially on the record I will do so okay pardon I will do so okay and the other thing is I thought an account maybe it's me account 422 5110 General Highway payroll I think somebody voted no on that I have 51 Z yeah I think so my mistake I didn't catch that good catch good job all right um I move to amend the minutes to correct that eror I'll send out a a second movement to minute okay um so do we have a second on amending the minutes as you seconded all right any discussion on the Amendments recommended all those in favor of amending as said uh against abstain all right so that passes one two three four 51 no must be 601 that build think I'm on count I'm on the finance that town building General Highway General High okay then I'll move this yes it's 422 5110 I think General Highway pay all right so we have um um agreed to an amendment to the minutes so any further discussion on the minutes all those in favor of approving the amendes as amended against abstain that passes 601 all right okay now we're ready so we now have South County EMS um that should be in Tab 10 and I handed out a new one last week so you should all have the most recent version of it for it says 311 Down at the bottom yes okay yep and have all of you met Joshua Sparks our new Chief we hi everybody well I'm seeing some of you again welcome to Deerfield we're happy to have you here thank you I'm Julie Chan I'm chair of finance committee do you want to why don't we just quickly uh Mark Brennan Finance Beth Brown Margaret Nardo itz joh pesy glad to meet you Dave sharp James campas there won't be a is at the end Joshua Sparks s p a r KS all right so I just had a grad student who spelled his name j u so that's that's not acceptable all right we're ready sorry okay so it's been has it been moved in second no it hasn't okay do we have a motion uhoh your mic is not working uh where's Trevor when we need him can we move it while we do this oh maybe I kicked it off oh that's what that was y That's it back on you I'll try not to kick it was a very subtle movement when I felt I kicked everything what I wanted to do is ask um my my skims budget has 311 and then it has the second page it says oh no it's updated three for 31 so good I've got everything thanks okay sorry about that 10 one I recommend the skm's budget for on 3 second I have a pen I can borrow an extra pen thank you all right all right so um Tim and Joshua have done I think a a really good job with this budget I think your original version was showing um deerfield's portion at 532,000 and it's now showing at 4 62,000 I just thought I'd point that out um I think what I'll do is I'll just hand it off to Josh and he can talk um and then you can ask questions does that sound good you can talk about the things that might be changing sure so overall we are looking at uh something of an increase this was to be expected uh as I understand it uh there was very little put in into retained earnings from last year uh which would normally help offset uh the budget so the big changes for this year are the addition of me uh within the payroll uh we do have a step increase and a 2% Cola uh for all of our uh employees uh so that makes a big difference and then on top of that we have a provision here a new line item uh which is is for uh overtime for training um and this is uh in Personnel cost below call staff it says training on the amount of 16938 I'll come back to that and then because of our anticipated Revenue uh we've put in uh the uh expected retainer earnings uh up from uh 625 uh up to 800,000 which I still view as being a bit conservative uh we stand to do a bit better than that but just airing with uh some caution so those are the big ones and the CP the CPE of course uh I also believe is uh a little bit low but not very much uh does does everybody uh know what the CPE is is that why don't you go ahead and cover it yeah sure so the CPE uh is a program uh in the Commonwealth that any ambulance service provider can apply for uh and not a lot of them do but uh people are starting to wake up to it and when we go on an ambulance call if a patient has Medicaid or Mass health uh they're great about paying I'll say that uh but the amount that they pay is typically far lower than even what Medicare pays it's kind of the lowest payment we're going to receive um below that we tend to not get paid at all so what the CPE program does is attempt to pay some of the difference between what we bill for Medicaid patients and what we actually receive and so it's basic off of all kinds of expenses there's uh uh it's kind of an onerous process to go through it uh but definitely worth the time uh where we look at our operational costs everything from vehicles to buildings to equipment to personel to utilities you name it uh really forces us to take a very detailed look at uh our operational expenses um and then we look at our calls how much we build for them how much much we've received for them and then we break that down by different payer groups um and this attempts to determine okay how much can we pay out and it's a big fund um that uh is shared so uh we get a percentage of that based upon uh the expenses and so this year uh we do stand to do pretty well from it it's essentially a way to uh collect some of the money that we make maybe should have gotten in the first place right that's one way to look at it um but it's it's not a mandatory participation so uh that's a nice program um that can hopefully help offset uh some of the increases is there a line item where that's showing yeah on page two um revenue from service and retained earnings so right below medical service fees medical service fees is what we receive for billing insurance Medicare Medicaid uh self pays uh things like that right uh so the CPE fund uh is a new line item uh we estimate a $45,000 um payment we will get a payment um somewhere in that range what is the expense window to determine that payment is it the prior year it what is yeah what's the window for that yeah so it it goes by uh is that fiscal or calendar I think it's fiscal year so it looks at the previous fiscal year uh so the reporting period generally opens up in September or October and uh you take a couple of months to collect data and submit it and then there's a step review process um by the agency who oversees it and uh typically we can expect to see that paid out around the beginning of the next fiscal year when do you know know the the actual CP number when do you learn that number when the check comes in the mail yeah they don't they don't give you an there is a yeah there there is information um there is a calculation um and that's what we have is the $45,000 but it could vary slightly is the retained earnings lower because we spent that on something yeah so um last year uh there was the cardiac Monitor and Lucas uh spending uh we were able to recoup some of that because of a successful uh uh Grant being awarded um and so we talked last week um about shifting some of that funds around uh but that's why we had been saving um for the ambulance at $50,000 a year but then when we went to order it it's to we waiting line and which we decided we had to do that but also it was 475,000 instead of 350,000 and it was such a price jump5 375 yeah that's correct I think originally 275 was the thought right right yeah and then so that that's where the additional 100 went I'm going to just say that 375 five for an ambulance like that is a good deal uh they're not getting any cheaper um so uh you know we're in process uh the board of oversight and I uh at the next meeting we're going to start a uh Capital plan uh moving forward uh but at least we're able to put some amount of retained earnings into this budget uh anticipating that we're going to need that right we're uh it takes 2 to 3 years from the time we order an ambulance um to the time we actually see it so it's something we really have to plan ahead for and stay ahead of so just a point of clarification how much has been appropriated or how much has been set aside for the ambulance so far so far going into this budget uh there's $80,000 the of retained earnings uh so we have not developed the capital plan yet um did can I clarify that yes yeah please um so we we voted on an ambulance last spring and we used 100,000 and retained earnings and then each Community um had a capital line item to to put into that to make it to the 375 so the most recent ambulance that we need to order is is we've got the funds for it got it thank you very much so now we're probably going to end up using all of this retained earnings hopefully at the end of this fiscal year the way things are running we're going to have a good amount to put back into retainer and then they can start saving for the next one thank you yeah and is that ambulance on order already and is the price guaranteed or is it going to go up yeah the uh well I mean yeah the price is guaranteed uh it is on order the chassis's already arrived uh we won't see it for at least another year if not longer but it's in process nice can I ask a question Brenda um did I understand you correctly to say that the money for this new ambulance is already in place or did I misunderstand what you said so in other words is there 375,000 somewhere we should yes so with that said I haven't build the other two communities for their share yet but I was going to wait till we got closer to the end of the fiscal year but deerfield's portion was was voted I know that each Town voted their share and the retained earnings was voted so it's all set ready to go just the process of getting it in there so when all that's done there's going to be $375,000 available okay so it's the next ambulance that we're worrying about okay good thank you one that hasn't been even considered yet just trying to stay ahead of it so retain I mean not retained earning the the service fees went up quite a bit from last year can you talk about that a little bit absolutely so this is based on a couple of things first is we did do a rate increase uh last year um which has made a marginal uh impact uh just because we charge more doesn't mean we receive right right so um but on top of that our call volume is increasing you you can expect year to year you're going to see see a small percent call volume increase um and at small levels we don't really worry about wear and tear and a massive increase in cost uh to operate those additional calls but we do see additional Revenue coming in for them so one of the things that's very important uh for our organization moving forward is uh doing as many calls as we possibly can uh essentially I'm paying people whether they're on an ambulance call or if they're sitting at the station so hopefully we can Avail ourselves to a greater call volume we put our three communities first of course um that is our primary objective um but the idea is that we can capture additional revenue and help offset um the assessments uh moving forward so so looking at even what we've received this fiscal year uh I believe the 800,000 uh that we put in here is conservative uh we're looking to do better than that and uh Brenda I believe you came up with that formula yeah I I looked at what we had received through the end of January at this point in time and and then just averaged it out and said okay if we uh that average was like $68,000 a month if we did $68,000 a month between now and the end of the fiscal year we'd have $823,000 now what interesting is February a short month ended up at 77,000 so it just confirmed that things are um uh we're in a good position so I I felt pretty comfortable when Josh and I were talking about it to make that decision on the 800 I'll be very happy uh to come back to you you know next time and say hey we did way better than 800,000 but seems like reasonable uh based off the uh the projection is um is EMS is it cyclical at all with the season or is it steady or yeah when when's your um when's the season we should be worrying so things uh well let me just there's out a caveat here that uh I'm new to this area so uh it may from what I know um typically the Autumn is one of the busier times of year and things actually slow down in the summer that may be different here sometimes you see um you know the exact opposite of that so but it is cyclical uh it's based on tourism it's based on School attendance colleges uh it's based off of Transportation Voodoo phases of the moon uh I'm not sure uh all what goes into it right right sure so but yeah it has its season this is not typically one of the busier seasons have you been doing much in the way of intercepts not as many as I would like uh but we have increased our availability for intercepts so there are a just a couple couple of standard definitions here an intercept uh so that everybody knows is when a ambulance uh basic life support ambulance or another paramedic ambulance says hey we need help can you send us some paramedics and we will meet up with that ambulance there's a patient in that ambulance already we take our bags we jump in the back of their truck and provide patient care we then go to the hospital we cannot bill that call we cannot bill for mileage we cannot Bill their insurance we're not the transporting provider so the only way that we can uh receive compensation for that work is to build the calling provider uh we usually have some type of agreement with the different agencies saying hey if we come do this can you throw me this much money it's a determined fee it varies between 275 to in some places as high as $450 depending on the agency um personally as much as I like gaining revenue for uh the organization I like to keep it on the lower side of things um because they're not going to receive very much as reimbursement for their own call right so it's it distributes it more fairly so that's in contrast to a mutual Aid call in a mutual Aid call what happens is Wego is the primary transporting ambulance because the calling Community does not have an ambulance available or there's something precluding them from transporting the patient and so mutual Aid has in either way we're sending a crew out of town to go do work somewhere right so whether they go in our ambulance whether we go in their ambulance our crew is still tied up uh thankfully we're in a really good position uh during the week that we're able to do that because of our second ambulance being staffed uh so you know my goal is that we can make ourselves more and more available uh to do this kind of work keeping units available for our own communities but when able going out to help because we're really one of the only well we are the only Regional Advanced life support service in the area uh so that's an amazing resource and it stands to reason that people would want to use us if we're available historically we have not been so uh that's something that you know we've we've made a lot of progress on that I hope to continue um one thing I just want to say is we're moving in the right direction um when I heard about the CP money um randomly at a Homeland Security meeting last year um I wanted us to move on it and really when Tim came on board he started the paperwork and it was pretty um significant so that we couldn't collect this past year but it is in line we're going to make be collecting for this year and um you know we have meetings with we had a meeting immediately with Comstar and and straightened out some of our payables and the huge amount of um writeoffs that we had and I just have to say that even though Josh has only been here for a few weeks it really is continuing the direction that Tim has really um tried to get a handle on and it it's been wonderful because we've had you know issues and we feel so much better about what is happening so I just want to say we're going in the right direction are you caught up on your write offs and and how frequently are you are you doing this Tim has been doing it monthly and I I'm assuming that Josh is doing the same thing correct difference once we had the meeting with Tomar um can I speak question go ahead salaries and wages if I back out the director's salary increase 133% um from 2024 I guess why sure I can speak to that so one of the proc so in addition to the step increase in addition to the cola increase um excuse me we've had a vacant deputy chief position uh for some time that I would like to fill in the foreseeable future this is budgeted for half a year um so to bring somebody on uh nearing the beginning of the third quarter of the fiscal year in addition to that uh I am seeking a uh thirdparty national accreditation process for the agency and one of the things that's going to be really important for that process is having adequate supervisory coverage 24 hours a day 7 days a week so right now we have a gap overnight and on the weekends so this adds uh a increase for existing employees this isn't looking to put on additional people but this does add for uh another uh half a year of supervisory increases for two people and Al also just want to mention that um the the position that Joshua took um when he joined us was slated to have an increase to like 102,000 this year so it went from 102 this year to 115 this year so it's not quite as dramatic although it is still dramatic increase in the in the super in the chief's role so I'm sorry say that again what went from 102 to5 well in 2024 um the director's salary was um what was it budget at 96 it was supposed to go up to 102 if if the person hadn't left right okay person left and we paid what we needed to pay to get the person we wanted you couldn't take a pickup what was the um certification you said you were going for uh so it's going to take me probably a year or two for us to develop uh the process but uh what I'm looking for is C accreditation which is a uh it's a third party accrediting agency uh for ambulance services and what's the benefit of having that benefit is huge uh basically it lets us have benchmarks right so uh it's thing to say we think we're really great and we Pat ourselves on the back and look at what a good job we do and everybody can love us but are we uh what are we measuring that against so it's measuring uh against uh very high performing national standards on top of that it gives you a road map which is really amazing uh it gives you a process to follow uh which says very successful uh agencies um have different processes that they can follow uh to remain sustainable to increase revenues for safety uh for reliability for optimal patient care and just being allar around Progressive as an agency so uh really the only drawback uh to pursuing that is just the time I put into it can I ask one more question yeah um I feel like maybe last year we talked I know you weren't here but um for the mutual Mutual Aid calls that that that was one of the reasons about the Staffing and having the extra ambulance so why do you think those are going to continue to increase like what what was holding us back from perception okay like of our own perception of what we were able to respond to or like other people's resp okay certainly okay so like I said we can anticipate there's going to be a call volume increase to a small percentage annually what was it last year Tim we went from 1130 to 1352 so this last calendar year we did 1352 calls and 2023 we 11 11 something I can't remember the my top of my head it was just about a 200 call last year and this year sure and so yeah we did 1361 in 2023 so we can reliably predict that there's going to be some increase the world just gets busier it doesn't get slower so that's great but there's a lot of calls that we're not available on I've sat in our station and watched other communities respond to calls that we're closer to because we weren't available to go do it and we've got a crew sitting in the station uh to me that's just absurd so by making us available to go do those calls we can capture that Revenue when we'd otherwise be missing out on it and you know there is of course a a you know a greater ethical reason to go do the call uh in addition to the money and I I don't like to speak in purely financial terms about the work we do but this Finance Comm this the finance committee so um but uh I believe that there is a golden opportunity right now if if I were able to throw massive resources at this right now which I know we cannot do we could do a lot so if you respond to a call and then we have a call within Deerfield do we then reach out to somebody else for Mutual aid for our people correct it's it's an interesting thing there is in the emergency services World whatever the department this could be the fire service this could be EMS unless you're a very large city and in the Commonwealth we're looking at Springfield Worcester Fall River Boston and really big communities with large departments there is not a single agency in the State uh that is capable of handling its own operational area by itself it's just not possible there's no way that we can do every single call with one and a half ambulances in the three towns that we cover there's no way that Greenfield can do all of their volume with the two and 1 half to three ambulances that they have sometimes not to pick on Greenfield there they're a great bunch of folks so we have to rely on each other uh it really is a it takes a village mindset when we're talking about providing emergency services but there's no reason to be siloed uh we can actually extend that offer and make ourselves more available to it so right now we're in a really good position um one of the examples that came up uh my first meeting uh with the board of oversight was responses to Greenfield and I don't think there was concern I think there was a question of why are we going to Greenfield so often and it turns out we're really not going to Greenfield that often at all in the first two quarters of the Year we'd gone there 60 times right we' missed uh less than 10 calls in our primary service area so there is a tradeoff there but we generated a lot of revenue from doing that so to me those numbers work in our favor absolutely so that's a circuitous way of answering your question for sure but uh you know that informs it so if we're out doing something then somebody else will come from somewhere else to cover our call and we have to do this if we didn't do this on a normal day nothing would function uh it's essential to the way our system is set up you know this isn't otherwise you'd be way over staffed well that's the thing I mean this isn't you know a nationalized Health Service ambulance that has Single Payer funding or anything like that this is very Insurance driven uh that's just the way our health system is set up so so can you say again for the national accreditation you're going to look for supervision for nights and weekends because you're there during the day during the week um so and you said two people so is this like you pick two of your people and they become supervisors or is it like they're people who are qualified to be supervisors and on the shifts that they're on they get I don't know a stien or how does that work yeah so that's great so the short answer is yes we'll pick two people but uh that's going to be quite a task in and of itself uh the way we go about it is through promotional exams um interviews and assessments to try and make it as Fair as possible and to exclude ourselves from it as much as possible uh ultimately yeah the choice is ours who we're going to put into that position but you know that decision can be informed by third- party data uh which is really helpful for us and being non-discriminatory uh you know we certainly don't want to be in a position of nepotism or favoritism or anything like that so we try to make it fair um and from there um you really do uh for a supervisor you want them to be trained you want their duties and obligations to be built into their actual job description um somebody who's receiving a stipan to be the supervisor today um is not a supervisor it's just somebody getting paid a little more right to make an uninformed decision so yes um for the next year you're budgeting 53,000 for overtime a h for holiday pay and there's not there's no such line item for earlier years so in previous years that line had been blacked out um I'm not sure why uh this is a uh town of Deerfield bylaw that bylaw employees um earned time such as holiday sick vacation time do count towards the calculation of overtime within a week I've never seen it before it's unusual uh I guess it's very generous um but this is just based off of the Town bylaw so this has not been budgeted for uh in the past so it's important yeah it was always budged for in the past it was just blacked it was reflected in the Total Line in the budget just blacked out because I'm I'm not sure what stop my blacking out was but the only difference this year is the cola increase whatever it is this year minus the step minus 2% is what it was last year but for some reason when I started doing the budgeting it wasn't in that it was blacked out I think I think in fiscal 24 it could be that this particular spreadsheet just blacked out that line but but if there those two lines were separate last year that's my recollection and that maybe that's an error on my part that that's blacked out but the number is there so it's included in the 998 salaries and wages I I think so that without actually adding it up I believe that's that's correct you could add it if you want but um I think that was in response to why is your overtime so high so Zoe had separated that out in fiscal 24 that's does that sound right to you yeah we remember we had a few issues with overtime last year huge discussion right and so the that was why the holiday pay had to be separate because that was always consistent you were going to pay holiday we pay no matter what so what we were looking at was the actual overtime that we were paying for work rated versus the holiday time we we have to have our Personnel bylaw changed to um not pay the holiday time as overtime that has been um a consistent issue for you know the last five or six years I don't I don't remember Brenda when we first discovered it but it was a while ago and we have not been able to um have the Personnel um bylaw changed yet so that's going to be changed at the annual town meeting with the change in the entire Personnel bylaw um I think we're going to attempt it right I think so yeah it should right here but we'll see um good so this it actually I just added it up so it was it was 50,596 last year so yeah so I just have it blacked out but it's there and so it looks as if in years before that they were Amalgamated because the the figures in 22 23 21 Etc are considerably larger yes and I think that's why that line was blacked out because it was added last year and the previous years were blacked out uh uh question um back to the deputy chief position I actually have a couple of questions um did you did you state earlier that the service has not had a deputy chief to date that's something that you're looking to add or had did it have one and it's been vacant my understanding is that the position has been vacant I don't know when the last time that seat was filled six months ago so uh you know I think that as we look to increase Mutual Aid as we look to get busier and as we look to accredit and uh a whole another initiative that hasn't even come up is uh Community EMS which is another thing we're going to need the additional layer of administrative support so you said it's budgeted um for FY 25 for half a year what is that amount um built into the salaries line so I well again we have to um work with this but I put in $45,000 how perilous it's no secret that the town is having a buiness of a budget crunch um this year where we we have a bit of a deficit how detrimental or how perilous would it be to the service if that had to wait one fiscal year well I mean there's always room for flexibility for sure I think not having that layer of administrative support beyond what we have right now will hold us back in some of our initiatives um a lot of the initiatives are very low to zero costs which is in community EMS which is great so you get a lot of value but you need somebody to support it or else it just doesn't happen um on top of that uh I like my job a lot I feel like I've hit the jackpot here um but I don't want to be working 100 hour weeks every week so uh you know it would be fair helpful so what's the argument for having a deputy versus I didn't ask this right but you there there's the possibility of having admin assistant right there's an admin person in police and in Highway and stuff and you guys don't have an admin so I trust me that'd be great I'd love to have an admin in the building uh would be wonderful uh the difference is that deputy and I during the day when we're both in the office can hop in a car and go do intercepts that Deputy can handle daytoday operational oversight including things that involve a lot of institutional and uh industry knowledge uh that I suppose an admin could learn and develop over years of time but they're never going to be able to go do a call with me okay how much do you um so when you have training or say you have somebody calling sick or something could you Andor the deputy fill in for people when they were gone it's a possibility uh at this point I still cannot uh I've been so devoted to office work uh that I haven't even uh been cleared by our medical director to work on an ambulance yet uh that'll happen at at some point uh but ultimately the reality is that's a staffing problem that we should seek to solve instead of taking away from something else right if I if I try to cover another job I'm not doing my primary job right um and that other job doesn't have the support that it needs either so the way that it works currently is if there is a call out uh we'll then first come first serve we're going to page that out and if you can work it please come do if we know about it in advance a week or two out and we'll page it out to uh non-overtime prum employees and usually get it filled yeah so if you were to get this this Deputy you said they would they would probably be you know able to help out with intercept calls would they be able to help out with mutual Aid as well so or would that be practical I should say it would be magical yeah um can I get another ambulance I'll need garage too um well okay so I guess going back to the um intercepts then how many um additional intercepts would we be able to do with that Deputy it's all going to depend on what type of agreements we make over the next year and two uh with some of the surrounding communities and it's really hard to estimate estimate that because we have to Trend this and we have to be very careful about it we need to approach it very slowly um I could easily go to every town around us and say hey give me a call but the reality is is if I do that we're not going to be doing our own calls we're going to be doing everybody else's and we need to avoid that right I'm happy to do everybody else's calls too as long as we're doing our own so really we need to look at the data we need to see how does this look what are we missing in our primary service area um is it acceptable is it not do I need to put that second ambulance up 24 hours a day do I need to increase our own uh coverage or do I need to scale it back and we just don't know uh we've only had this process rolling for five weeks now so it's just not there yet uh so if you were to do um a uh an intercept uh what What's the average revenue per intercept if you do that it varies uh so most of the time we're getting uh $275 and up which doesn't seem like much right but it certainly more than covers the cost of the call I'm more than covering payroll on it um and again right now I'm paying that same crew to not make that money so I'll take that any day so if you were to have a a deputy with a $445,000 increase that would for 275 calls would uh or 275 per call that would be another 163 intercepts you would have to do to break even on the revenue for that that's not bad at all is that doable oh for sure that's for year yeah for a half a year and then you know if we were to do it for a full year it would be uh let's see I went to Public School uh 327 yeah yeah so I looked uh just doing fictitious uh napkin math right I looked at a hypothetical Turner Falls scenario uh we're not obligated we're not committed we don't have an agreement in place with Turner Falls I'm just using this as an example so if I did 60% of their call volume annually and we just said that's $275 I'm looking to bring in $130,000 in Revenue off of that one town at only doing 60% that's pretty good now the reality is is we'd be doing probably more than that and on top of that many of those would not be intercepts they would be primary ambulance transports which allow us to bill in some cases thousands of dollars more MH so uh you know at its most conservative low ball number we're looking at $130,000 with the community like Turner Falls if we look to other communities and you know we are so perfectly positioned for this like it's it's a jackpot and it's a time when all of of the other services around us really need the help and we have it to give so uh strike while the Iron's hot right this is a little bit different attitude um we were worried um that we were pulling away from our ability to answer our own calls but joser has done a lot of analysis of this and and the additional calls even with wear and hair and um it it seems like it's doable and and so I just want to make sure that um you know we're not just committing we were hesitant as a Buu oversight board doing anything like this before and there was no desire to to reach out but since Josh has been here he's analyzed this and he's seen that we need more Revenue to be sustainable which is what um has been really critical is to get Revenue up without impacting our service NE um negatively and obviously like he pointed out there are times no matter even if with all our crews sitting in the um Bays there are times when there's multiple calls coming in and then you cannot obviously answer more than two ambulances worth at a time but he feels that we can do this he's analyzing it and I think with this experience that it is not going to be negative that we are in fact going to generate more Revenue which will make us more sustainable which was the pro or which is what our problem is right now so when you go on an intercept do you take an ambulance with you I'm glad you brought that up well that yeah wow that was good timing it's going to be an intercept vehicle right so uh yeah so you know right now if we went on intercept yes we would we would take the ambulance with us and some of the times what's going to happen is we're going to show up and they'll be patient loaded in the back of their ambulance already we'll meet them in front of the location or we'll meet them on the road um pull over to the side and hop in back of their ambulance and do our thing we have uh this came up at finance committee uh two weeks ago I believe last week um so CPC Capital yeah yeah Capital that was it um so one of the things we have a uh very ancient Ford Explorer that was uh graciously handed down from the police department and as I explained it at Capital uh it's kind of held together with rust and medical tape and uh we are looking to replace that by shifting around other capital projects um that weren't utilized um and some amount of retained earnings too to replace that that gives us an intercept vehicle a fly car you nailed it um which can be staffed during the daytime initially by myself and that deputy and then as time moves on uh if we need to staff that fulltime that's something we can look at the cool thing about a vehicle like that is it can also be staffed as a uh single uh provider which is really nice uh so in that capacity it gets to do a lot of good as a rapid response vehicle it can also be used for Community EMS resources so um Brenda informs me that you know there's another meeting tonight so probably a good idea to broach the subject but when you hear about it that's what it's for so yeah I actually had a followup to the um Intercept in mutual Aid so I see that the fuel cost is going up from 12,000 to 18,000 m um but I also see that electricity is basically level funded so if this goes to electric vehicles you know for the the interet vehicles are we going to shift from the fuel budget to electricity or should we be adding electricity here how is that going to work it's all a guess right so at this point we can reasonably expect that our fuel will increase as we go do more calls fuel prices go up and down uh but we can expect to be using more fuel if that's in the form of an electric vehicle which you know I don't think the majority of our intercept work is going to be done on that vehicle but a good amount of it will um then yeah we just transfer one line to the next okay and then um one of the other questions I had was uh the software fees could you elaborate on the increase from the you know 7800 to4 ,000 on the software increase y so we have added um or budgeted for a station alerting system uh which has a annual fee um oh I see so there's going to be the capital and then the Opex correct okay so the Opex goes in this line okay that's correct and hopefully that decreases once again substantially in the ensuing years but to get it off the ground uh takes a little bit more okay and then also I see that the uh telephone and internet jumped pretty uh pretty high could you explain I'd love to get rid of that entirely uh right now I'm budgeting it as a worst case scenario because uh I don't know why we pay so much uh for some of these telecommunication services that we do uh it's beyond me so that's another thing that uh I know Casey was working on uh to try and get us invol uh into the municipal plan uh for internet for tele vision for things like that uh the phone provider that we have uh just the phone provider actually isn't all that bad um but there's a lot of things that get paid out of that okay that's all my questions thank you we're pushing to get that fixed great soon I was to say let's get you some Netflix or something you know so just just a question on Logistics and timing um you noted that you're not you're not certified yet to be in the ambulance you've been very very busy working on administrative things um you're looking at adding the deputy chief position for what the second half of the Year correct the second half of the year so do you anticipate that you would be ready to go by then of course and so we're also looking uh use of the fly car in addition to the ambulances so you'd want to be sure that you still have your Staffing to staff the existing ambulances and have the staff to be able to ride out in the fly car is that is that correct you've got it okay okay Jos can you just uh explain the certification and how when you talk about being cleared you have to it's it's paperwork and stuff so it is it's there's a bit of process involved so I am certified um I I'm a nationally registered paramedic um I can go authorize in most uh I can practice in Most states uh in the nation uh I've been working as a paramedic in Massachusetts for over 20 years now um I can absolutely go work on an ambulance when you start at a new service they have different medical directors through their affiliate hospital um and they all have different rules uh about authorization to practice um out here the way that it's done uh is there's a minimum threshold it's kind of a Line in the Sand number of calls that have to be done charts that have to be written uh things like that um so it just means I'm going to have to tear myself away from the office and go third right on an ambulance but that's really achievable and probably more fun well third writing on an ambulance you know I don't know arguably yeah do you have to sit in the middle I'll I'm sitting up front is where I'm sitting so he is in charge um and and any other questions on the budget can you so you have some Capital we aren't voting Capital tonight but since we won't see you again probably um can you talk a little bit about the capital your Capital requests absolutely so the capital requests um I don't have those in front of me um thank you sorry thank you Brenda all right so uh the first thing here we're looking at is the exhaust system uh this we have an opportunity to obtain a free vehicle exhaust system for our stations so we basically said now we don't need that anymore uh which is pretty great um the cardiac monitor replacement uh from last fiscal year uh this was $150,000 uh because of uh Lori mom's efforts um we were awarded a grant and we didn't end up spending $44,000 of those funds so we're looking to shift those funds uh and I believe that was going towards the towards the intercept vehicle so that's pretty snazzy um The Intercept vehicle itself we're looking at $60,000 for the vehicle which is pretty standard for that type of vehicle and then we're looking at we estimate around $115,000 um for the installation of the electrical charging uh we hope to pay for that out of um our rent uh line item right um and then uh the station alerting system is re reallocated from the exhaust project we're getting a free one from Greenfield because they have one in there you know temporary um station so if if you understood that the vehicle will be covered with with two pots of money part of it out of retained earnings and part of it out of the 44,000 that we didn't spend on the cardiac monitor if that makes sense yeah and we finally get to use rent and we get to use rent which is great right um so uh you know that's the gist of it uh there was another Capital project to replace a uh stretcher uh that desperately needs replacement that's kind of a make or break thing we just we can't not have a stretcher right this one I think comes out of retained earnings right that's correct yeah have any businesses been approached about donation of stretcher that's a that's a pretty common one for municip um EMS services to have things like this donated by by local business Commercial stakeholders um I'm wondering if there's been any any effort to reach out to anybody to see if they might be able to do that um Yankee Candle used to give um considerable uh when it was locally owned considerable gifts but um pretty much now they give a standard gift that rotates between the communities and it's what around 5,000 say 4 4,000 maybe maybe 5,000 I don't remember which 4 5,000 so it's not nearly enough to how about our new how about 4500 what's that our new social you know local social establishment the big place it's drawing a lot of people three house oh there you go yeah we're already having some conversations with them thr that it too huh fuel the fire uh so uh thank you Casey for these uh so yeah the rapid response intercept vehicle uh we're estimating $775,000 this is reallocation of the cardiac monitor funds auction of the current vehicle retained earnings uh from service fees um I'm also hoping that we can roll this into um and get some more credit uh for the purchase of it uh because it's not the only Electric vehicle uh purchased by Deerfield uh so that might be helpful I know there are some incentives for that so hopefully it helps to offset it a bit Yeah I think that was the fleet replacement credit right yeah yeah so that's that one uh the station alerting system really once again the value of this is that we know where we're going and we know we're supposed to go there so you know we're essentially working with a our equipment is very nice but the system which supports that equipment is fairly antique and it makes a lot of sense for our regional dispatch out of shelburn Falls to do what they do I get it because there's lots of services it's not just us it's police it's fire it's ambulance across the whole County so it makes sense for them to kind of go with this paging Network that kind of works okay um because it's achievable but for us uh it is not optimal uh it leads to some issues and I I do worry as we transition to the digital paging system that we may just miss calls uh without putting a more expensive equipment onto our building so I'd rather just do it this way that way when we get a call maybe it's the middle of the night we get woken up um there's graphic information about what the call is so it decreases radio traffic which is really amazing uh in emergency communications uh sometimes less is more uh and then we have that same view in our ambulance mapping and it's just it's 2024 so I mean this is you know nothing new this is something that a lot of services have been using for decades right so time to catch up and it's compatible obviously with the certainly so that's that one and well gosh I think that's it that's it so can I ask a couple of questions about the car the whatever you're calling it uh intercept vehicle The Intercept vehicle um it can be any kind of electric vehicle have you settled on one do you um and if so what is it I'm working with two different vendors right now to try and get the best price um the two vehicles I'm most interested in right now uh there's the Chevy Blazer evv ppv it's a mouthful basically it's a Pursuit rated police car that's uh an electric vehicle It's a Small Chevy SUV it's all-wheel drive by being Pursuit ated essentially it can go fast it can break hard um it has a really great ground clearance uh lots of uh skid protection underneath things like that and it's already fitted out with a lot of the components that we would have to add uh as aftermarket if we were to upfit it through a vendor so uh it actually works out in our favor um so that's probably the leading contender its purchase price is $60,000 with no modifications so if we can get that down that's absolutely what I'll go for the second vehicle that I'm looking at is this a used vehicle is this a new vehicle this will be a new vehicle okay and it's already got equipment in it but you're saying that you it's not fully functional yet yeah so it would be wired for emergency um Communications it would already have a number of warning lights and siren module some of the Cabinetry and back uh for storing equipment that's already been thought of now it's done with police in mind right so there are modifications that need to be done I just don't need a vinyl back seat um with doors that don't open um what I do need is secure cabinet space and back to store um medical equipment uh and keep it climate controlled that's that's what's important to me right so uh these things are really achievable the other vehicle I'm looking at is um uh the Ford Mai uh it has a Mustang tag on it but it's an SUV it's not a little sports car and uh these are substantially less money um than the Chevy But ultimately it's going to be about the same because uh none of that stuff is included in it so I would bring that to of you upfitter um there's a few of them around um that do the police vehicles and you're generally looking at around $60,000 for a vehicle like that and um these are new vehicles do they qualify for any federal tax in incentives so is that included in the price or is that something that you would deduct later we would deduct it later so instead of being 60,000 it would be 5 525 or something cross your fingers in Hope yeah uh but I can tell you right off the bat the purchase price of that vehicle is $660,000 and it that's without it saying South County EMS on the side that's without anything y that's without a radio um put into it yeah good and the other question I had is about charging stations so I own model y I have a 60 amp circuit in my 100 amp panel that charges is at 44 M an hour so that's not not tremendously fast but we're about to put in three EV Chargers so I wonder if in the short range you put in a 60 amp circuit and you charge it at 44 miles an hour and if you really need to charge the thing you bring it down here plug it into the town equipment that that 15K covers an L3 charger no I understand that so I'm just thinking if we have a if we need to delay something for a year yeah this is $155,000 that we could delay you get an electrician in for 500 bucks he puts this in you plug it in and um you save yourself 145 in this case like since it would come from um you know the the rent the money's already there yeah yeah yeah so the money is there and the other thing um and it it's a very valid question but you know the concern there is are you willing to not be able to use an emergency vehicle because it's charging you know the the on these things uh their capability the technology of them we've arrived we can absolutely use this in our industry now yeah and that's fantastic uh but we need the infrastructure to support it recognizing that it is an emergency vehicle that has to be ready to go 247 so Y no this was just a shortterm question but uh you know retained earnings used are also retained earnings unavailable to offset the budget so um well from the rental account money is there yeah yeah any other questions on the budget in front of us no okay I've got to turn my [Music] P I wrote down Mark but that might be wrong it was about joh okay um so we it has been moved and seconded for the skm's Enterprise fund at $462,500 thank you thank you so much thank you everybody I appreciate it so do you want us to act on it or no if you want to go ahead yeah we'll just table it okay I think it's going to be adjust all right Canada cheer up no you sent us new stuff do we have new handouts or are they um she sent it yeah there was the the PDS yeah [Music] okay you ready I think so so we're going to go to the Tilton library and that is 61054 and um in your books would have been her um note that went with the budget I I didn't reprint it it looked like it was the same budget that we had voted or that you had given me previously so um so the total of that budget is 25,39 they're just going to move and second and okay okay so do we have a motion I'd like to make a motion that we recommend um 25,39 for Tilton library account number 61054 second okay we're ready okay okay so um Candace went to a lot of trouble to um get this budget within a reasonable percentage increase by uh finding more money in um the other funds that she has access to so um with that I think I'll leave it to you and you can talk about a few things that might be changing or things that have changed and then they can ask questions okay do you want me to go through the whole budget or just the things that may have changed just that anything that's interesting interesting okay well changes or whatever yes they're pretty minor um the head of Young Adult Services that we had uh we've had for a little while now she took another job that offered more hours and since we're moving to a temporary space where we'll have less space for um the duration of construction I'm not going to hire I'm not going to fill that position until um probably next January so the second half of fy2 so that would be half that amount so the amount is 16,1 33 so you know around $8,000 um just for next year it's actually the timing is good because as we're going to be moving to a bigger space we're going to need to um prepare for some more um technology maybe some more supplies it'll just be onetime purchases that we'll need um and I think that would be a good place to put that um and then when the person comes on next year um then they will fill that that um whole year role um so I'm sorry say that so you have 16 133 down here but you're saying you're only going to spend 8,000 on it and you'll spend the other 8,000 on stuff yeah just because this happened before she left got it and I want to keep the position open um and and as far as anything else well the main thing is that the building maintenance um there's a lot that um I'll find out after we're there for a couple months as far as what the cost will be so it's hard to make predictions um what's going to happen is the building um some of the utilities like the heat electricity I don't think the water and sewer um will be left on and the contractor will pay that bill and then I I I talked with Kevin Scarboro and we agreed that we would just keep the instead of switching the accounts at the temporary space at the church or the former church that I would just pay those bills um the library would pay those bills um the electric and heat water all the utilities so I don't know what those will be yet um there just has been some um Mini Splits put in and insulation so I'm thinking that'll help keep the price down and we've been told to put the fans on the ceiling fans um so that we don't lose heat or yeah don't lose heat so um so I just did kind of basic I mean level funding except for um an elevator which we won't have in that building um and there will be a gutter put on so I'm not sure what that will cost to maintain it's only annual fee um and then we did get a little bit more money this year from the Dickinson Library fund or trust uh about double that we usually get so that will that helped um bring keep the percentage of the increase down and I think that's I think that's all I have that's different all your people are on the class comp plan so that increases dictated by the yes class but a student but the student employee yes hi so um I have a question about the books video but um just what if you could elaborate on why that has gone up when we're going to be you know presumably downsizing the amount of books we're going to have that that is a criteria for um for the state for the master Board of Library Commissioners that we yeah I know under the nblc grant we have to have a certain number of of books and stuff just to get the grant but um is is this the the the grant obligation or are we above the grant obligation for it we have to be at 20% of the total budget which is what that number is oh I see okay yeah so and then there's also a mandated increase right year on year yeah 2.5% is the is the um oh it's for for the collection or for the entire for the total the total yeah 2.5 of but of the last three years right so this is higher than it needs to be it's the average of the last three years and then half% above that so but not a lot little bit just point of clarification um and this question I think is for Brenda where the Tilton library is budgeted as a single line item and not payroll and expenses you don't anticipate any issue with that um young adult librarian position being cost being spent on other expenses no not at all and and the reason the the payroll and everything is in one the one line item is because of the requirement for the book purchases yeah all right thanks any other questions goad you expect to move into the that is the qu that's the question of the year uh we're getting really close I've been in conversation with the movers it's basically the timing around the construction bids which are due in 2 days um the 20th of General construction we already got the subcontractor bids and um when the building committee goes over that if there's any questions that could push it out a little bit but if it looks clean and um everything is you know meeting the criteria then we'll move forward and so because it takes about 3 weeks to get the contract ready um for the contractor we'll be moving our our um tentative date is like April 7th April 8th wow I think she misunderstood you you meant the brand new library I mean the brand oh the brand new new oh okay so we'll take what I just gave you and add a year okay and probably that's what the schedule according to the architect is he's laid out as a year schedule but I figure you know with the nature of construction projects maybe add a couple months so I'm anticipating May or June 2025 be exciting yeah it's exciting but still during this fiscal year that we're voting right here so that'll yes going into it any other questions anybody or discussion as every year we are um still figuring out the budget so we will vote this tonight and assuming that it passes tonight every like every budget line item is open for us to revisit um so it's not you know it's the the the vote is not set in stone until probably about 3 to 4 weeks from now close but um okay it it's at least a provisional any other discussion or questions no all right so it's been moved and seconded for Tilton library for $215,300 one right great thank you very I'll the select board um approved this budget as well uh second all those in favor Carolyn nessi Tim Hill GI all right thank you thank you thank you all right we're ready for you guys so you wanted to share your stuff or you want me to share I've got you've got hard copies okay okay that works then I don't have to figure out where it is in my email it's um uh in your book it's um oh boy Franklin T it's 320 5410 thank you is the uh assessment and then The Debt Service is 3 20- 5800 thanks prob got have 36 hello Russ Hi how are you good how you doing nice to see you apparently apparently I sweat too much what are those numbers again oh it was uh 320 5410 is the assessment um and then the 320-8001 without them they were on the table one night you know every night every time I do that something gets missed so I'll here I'll make [Music] no is this the vager of number of students yeah why it's a 40% increase yeah basically you have more kids can more need to get more college [Applause] kids can see just around all right I think we're ready do you want to go ahead and do your presentation well no let's go let's get a motion on the table and then make a motion that we recommend $660,000 7 to the Franklin Tech assessment account number 320 5410 I'll second that all right that has changed no good that's all we're [Laughter] recommending um thank you for um allowing us to address your committee thank you for coming down here my name is Russ cobras I'm the business manager at Franklin County Technical School been there 25 years plus now um I have with me Liz buard Liz is my my assistant Liz is our chief procurement officer Liz is our budget Bulldog um Liz ran one of the most successful school lunch programs in the probably in the state when you were doing school lunch for us so I promoted her up to the I stole her and brought her into the business office awes so Liz is here with us Rick Rick Martins our superintendent Rick had a previous appointment and we've been splitting up we have 19 towns we're probably going to do about a dozen fincom and then we try to get out to town meetings too so we usually split it up and you guys kep the Short Straw so I am here our um our budget was we had a budget hearing in February we had school committee vote their final version of the budget uh just a week or so ago in March so the numbers that you have are the final voted school committee numbers uh if you look on my little packet I'll just going to wing it from the first page of the packet which is just a general budget summary I've got other pages in there if we want to get into the weeds uh we don't necessarily have to cover everything so we are presenting a or we presented to our school committee a 15, $372,000 budget the top part of my sheet here is the budget funding sources bottom part is how we spend the money so if you look at the top part of the sheet very first line is the assessments that we um ask from our 19 member town so on average or or in aggregate we ask for a 3% increase to our town assessments um Capital assessments there were um as you had stated earlier you've got another motion for a capital assessment that is a 15-year bonding that we did for school improvements uh we re-roofed or resurfaced our roof uh we didn't do a tear down and rebuilded the roof we did some parking lot um projects and we did some U Renovations of our fields and field lighting and things like that so we're halfway through that bonding a little later on we'll we'll discuss a msba Mas um School building authority project that we're in the pipeline for uh I won't hit that quite yet so top half of the page you can see where our sources of funding are coming from to balance our budget again Ask on average 3% mileage may vary by town because it depends on how many students are enrolled from your town at Franklin County Tech um and we'll look at your 40% increase uh on a page a little bit later on we uh we got a little bit of a surprise for us for state aid Chapter 70 so we're growing school we we've grown in the last handful of a years from 532 students 9 through 12 to about 571 570 something is this year we're probably going to grow by another 30 or so next year uh we got a smaller senior class going out and we have 230 applications in for probably 180 slots um for freshman so we we're we're in the growth mode being in the growth mode we expect Chapter 70 to increase for us we're out of hold harmless we're growing school we expect chapter 78 to incre increase for us each year that our population our student population is increasing this year even though uh the governor promoted herself as a education friendly Governor whatever happened in the formula we didn't get anything we had 11 student increase so if you look at the Chapter 70 Line three across as it goes across the page you'll see $500,000 jumps right $300 $700,000 jumps we fully expected superintendent and I thought we'd have about a $350 $400,000 jump based on 11 new students didn't get anything we got the basic hold harmless here's your $30 per student that they hand out to every school in the in the county so we were a little bit shocked by that we came up we we absorbed the 3% increase to Our member towns helped absorb some of that shock and then the rest of it we absorbed it into our budget and if you look down on the bottom half of the page under instructional Services line two and uses of of funding you'll notice we had about a 3% drop in instructional Services the reason for that that's a position and not a person the reason for that is as we grow in enrollment growth we try to start to build in project in the future what we need for special ed teachers perers Etc just like when a school shrinks it's not a straight line decline as far as Personnel it kind of goes in steps same thing on growth so we had a special ed instructor position built into the budget and we had some Paras built into the budget based on knowing that we're going to get a bunch more kids next year and you know banking on maybe some of them going to need additional special ed services so we had it built into the budget we took that out to balance our budget we might have to do some scrambling when we find out this summer by the time all the applications are done everyone's accepted we filled every last gap for students coming in we'll know this summer what we need for instructors and we're going to have to live with what we've got here on on paper to do that so that's how we balanced our our our perceived shortfall in Chapter 70 we uh we also use tuition from non-member towns and now I know I've got some questions from the chair of your committee and I can address those um a little bit later too but we we also as a funding source have tuition from non-member towns kind of sort of like school choice um funds that are there for Frontier for your other high school we uh were're not a school choice School we're Vocational Technical High School but non-member towns so we have 19 member towns any of those other towns that come in pay full Freight for tuition for a student so they're probably paying $24,000 for a student to come to Franklin County TCH so we use that as a revenue source to help balance our budget also we use last line line8 on sources of funding is end so that's our version of your free cash so we only get a one bite at the end pi as school districts per Mass General law and that's at budget time so if we come up with a short fall during the year we can't go have a special school committee meeting and vote from me and so we get one shot at it that being said we pretty much use what we have for certified end to balance or put towards the upcoming years's budget so that $580,000 we put towards 2025 I had about $581,000 certified by the state so we used all that up we have again we'll go back to the to in students we have a non-resident tuition fund that acts as our stabilization rainy day fund whatever you want to call it we've got about a million dollars in there gives us enough coverage that if we have emergencies or short Falls during the year we can use some money out of that fund so that gives us our budget flexibility so how did Deerfield fair and again I had said you had gone up 40% if you flip to page two page two is our calculation of how we come up with the dollar amounts for our member towns so you'll see our towns listed on the far left column you'll see the October 1 enrollment this past October 1 you'll also hear that called the foundation enrollment for schools um prior to education reform in the 1990s you would basically take deerfields 35 students divide it into 571 come up with that percentage of six 6.29% and you would pay that portion of the assessments when education reform came in that went out the window State came up with this thing called minimum contribution so they have a foundation this fictitional Foundation formula for every school in the district uh in the state they decide uh how much money it takes to run your school they decide what the state's going to pay towards that share and what the towns at a minimum need to contribute towards their member schools so that minimum contribution column gets dictated to me from the state so everything to the right of that minimum contribution formula is based on your proportional share of the 571 students so what we can control it's all proportional so that that minimum contribution that's the same equation they use for for our high school that like Frontier or Deerfield or whatever yep same same formula different different different Foundation budget different calculation because of a regular High School versus vocational school vocational schools the state views them as being one and a half times more expensive than a traditional academic high school so it's a different equation it's actually more money for the vote we they they yes it's it's supposed to be more money for a vote okay I I can share numbers with you later that everything's getting skewed and it's not so much in that's representative of the vocational education the Machinery the equipment that would be needed and things like that correct correct correct so on this on the formula Again State dictates the minimum contribution so this past year when the state calculated Franklin County Tex Foundation formula even though we had 11 more students even though there's a student Opportunity Act that's supposed to give us extra funds when they calculated that Foundation formula they came up with an increase the entire amount that increase in the foundation formula the state shared no part of the increase so that's why we got Z dollar and all of it got pushed into minimum contributions from our member towns called Rob O'Donnell at desie as soon as the numbers came out to my shock and my delight he actually picked up the phone on the day the numbers came out because I figured there's probably a hundred other schools calling him had him walk through the process and said Rob what what can I tell my towns what is the trigger here and why we didn't get 11 I mean we didn't get additional Aid I found a vocational school over by Worcester who had 11 more students just like we did they got 250 $300,000 more an aid we didn't get anything so I had I had him on the phone trying to walk Rick Martin the superintendent and I threw this he couldn't come up with an answer he kept saying well if you look at this number well no it's not that if you look at this number no it's not that I wealth I don't know what's driving you know I couldn't give me an answer to say oh there's some rich folk who moved into town X and that's what that's what drove your numbers the way they did still don't have an answer to this day so the airfields portion as you had put in your motion 6607 that's our operating assessment page three is a 4-year Trend and this page is actually informational for you because you can see for Deerfield that's highlighted on page page three if you go to the far right two hand two uh two columns your assessment Changed by 40% pretty much coincides with what your enrollment went up 40% so that's that's the driver in your in your enrollment um quick switch to page four that's the capital assessment so this is this formula is based on half of this formula is based on the US Census population for your town as compared to to the other members of our district and then the other half of the formula is eqv your share of eqv as compared to the total eqv for all 19 towns of our district so at that calculation being the way it is we came up with 18, 18284 for de failed for Capital assessment then the remaining Pages excluded right that is not Deb excluded okay no that's that's based on how our member towns do it right yeah that's not that I get asked from some towns that's not something that we dictate to towns and something can I just ask a question sure I I don't think it matters I'm just curious why do you spend money money on school choice tuition like do so one of the questions I got from the chair um is we there's one school near us montachusett Tech Monty Tech we call it um for whatever reason decide to be a school choice school so you know school choice is an option that you opt in opt out as superintendents or School committees every year montytech Ops in every year so they get if one of somebody from our 19 towns decides to go over to Monty tech for a program even if we offer it they can ride over there do the program Monti Tech's only going to get about $5 or $6,000 for that kid to me that's crazy we get $24,000 $25,000 per tuition in kid to our school And if Monty did out its calculations the full Freight of tuition for them would be in the mid 20s also I have no idea why they chose to be a school choice school because that $5,000 or $6,000 seat for a seat in the vocational schools to me is not financially worth it so that's why so that'll come off of our chap our chapter 78 if somebody and I usually get one or two students from Orange cuz they're close right they'll go a student may go to Monte Tech so because it's a school choice tech school you have to pay the school choice yeah but if they didn't opt into that then orange would have to pay the full amount to them so orange Dirty Little Secret orange gets build for the full Freight Franklin County Tech I build them for what they owe Franklin County cuz they're on my Foundation formula our whole Foundation formula is based on an October one count that student going to Monty is on my October one count for orange so orange pays the bill to me I pay $5,000 off it to there so I can actually make2 or $3,000 on that student that doesn't show up that's why I think it's just completely crazy that Monty Monty Tech does your choice but they they decide to do it that's pretty much my presentation unless you all want to dig into Chapter 70 formulas Foundation budget and can you talk about uh can you talk about future plans are you guys are talking about building new building or something so so thank you on the bottom half of the of the sources page when we were going over my budget summary on page one you'll notice there's a line down on the bottom half of the page that said um rental lease of equipment and that line is now zeroed out you'll see a few years ago it was 500,000 517,000 now it's zeroed out that money was for we did a performance energy performance contract with Seaman building Technologies oh a bunch of years ago now um so we we look redid our rooftop units became more energy efficient as as best we could through that program that 15-year lease ended in 2023 in 2024 and in this upcoming budget we decided to move the $500,000 down on line into the transfer to Capital stabilization fund because we we have some big ticket items that we either got to address through Renovations systems upgrades or we got to start looking at building a new school or doing a major renovation with msba being a partner so again Mass School building authority for Franklin County Tech will pay somewhere in the 60 to70 cents on a dollar range for a project if we qualify for it if we don't get that we're pay we're paying or Our member towns are paying 100% of whatever we have to do like the new roof the roof that we did seven eight nine years ago that roof coating is only good for about 15 years so we know and we can't do a recoding next time there going to be a major tear down of the entire roof put on new membrane very expensive our electrical systems of infrastructure is failing and outdated we've done some upgrades to our main switch gear to get us by so we're hitting the stage like we do as consumers when we have a car and you start pouring money into the car you got to decide is it time to trade the sucker in and get a new car or can we continue to get by with maintenance so we move the money from from that line I want to be very transparent on this because in order for us to do this move we can only have 5% of Our member Town's Assessments in a capital stabilization fund or moved into a capital stabilization Fund in any given year we've exceeded that so I had to I had to petition the commissioner at desie for permission to put in more money than we are legally allowed to have so he's got to give me permission to do that and the reason for that is we want to do a feasibility study we got into the msba program so we we're we want to qualify for the7 cents on the dollar 65 cents on the dollar whatever they'll give us to help us with a project their requirement is before they even put a penny towards us is do a feasibility study hire an onus project manager hire The Architects and Engineers come in and do a study look at your options and then we'll start to talk about whether they'll dance with us and then again it's going to take votes from our 19 towns to to say whether we can do this project or not so a feasibility study when we did one 20 some odd years ago when I was at Franklin County Tech I think we did one for $250 $300,000 they are now Liz and I looked up researched all the feasibility studies at msba required of vocational schools one near our size and it was around $1.5 million for a feasibility study so that'll give us you know a thicker probably thicker than your binders a thick study that's done you an educational consultant comes in The Architects Engineers they'll give us the rough schematic drawings to get estimates for construction and they'll they'll look at every system in our building how what condition is our electrical system and what condition is our Plumbing Systems go through the whole school and then give us a guide book on here's what you need to either continue to maintain your building and keep it running or look for either a major renovation project which they'll participate in for vocational schools they like to do tear downs and rebuilds for whatever reason I think it's because of the equipment and the space needed in shops from 1976 when we built OSHA and all those standards are different now a lot of our shops are undersized and kind of grandfathered in um so that's the major piece that's coming down the line for us and that'll probably take the feasibility study Liz and I are putting together a request for services that'll go out sometime in the next couple months we'll find an enormous project manager they then help us find the architect of the engineers Architects to help us with the schematic drawings and the the rest of the project so that's going to take probably a year and a half maybe two years from now so probably three budget Cycles from now you'll start to either hear from Franklin Tech whether we think we need to go forward with the project and we'll come and sell you on it or we'll look at we got to do major Renovations and we'll sell you on that too or whatever we need to do to keep the school viable for another 50 years as we're 50 approaching a 50y old school any other questions I that hit you with a 40% increase in potentially a huge amount for Capital outlay easy can you spell your name what's that I've got an easy question can you spell your name k last name k a b is in basketball I don't R I S as in Sam I think it is first name is Russ R Us SS a r i s s Sam two s's or [Music] one so I'm not suggesting in any way that we would do this but can you talk about like what if a town doesn't vote for the budget so when we last went out so we did a actually the the the project that the bond the current bonding is that you're dealing with from us that small bonding is the mechanism for us to go out for towns is we hold a countywide election so there's an election day for our 19 towns and it's straight majority vote from that so okay Believe It or Not Greenfield or one of our biggest bigger towns could could vote no but if the rest of the population in the count is all voting yes as long as we get a 51% vote from our you know all those members who are voting on that day we get a yes for our project okay can you um can you tell me what the um I assum you're using um your Capital stabilization balance to do the Fe ility study correct yeah so we threw in 750 last year we're hoping to put in this 750 this year that'll give us the million5 that we are estimating and you've been putting money away all along in capital stabilization have you pretty much been saving that for the future no so we we had a we had almost a catastrophic failure again with our electrical switch gear so we you know you get these main switch rooms in a in a high school the switch gear is oh boy if there's electrician in the crowd help me it's something Pacific Federal Pacific Federal Pacific doesn't make Breakers anymore they don't break make them that size so when we were looking at our my head of Maintenance was trying to reset the building one day wouldn't throw the switch wouldn't reset it would break again throw the switch finally got it to reset so we decided Well we need we need to renovate this switch gear or buy another piece can't find them new on the market can find rebuilds so we spent a few hundred th000 on the electrical switch gear in our building to have now we have a backup main breaker so if this breaker fails at least we can call the company school might be down a day or two and they can switch out the breakers but before if that thing had gone we would have been down we would have been shut down for months because you can't find somebody would have to rebuild help us rebuild the breaker um so that's where the Capital as we've salted away the money that's getting siphoned off just to keep us functioning and going if you come to our school looks fantastic very wellmaintained we got a we got 500 laborers in the building that know the trades so they do a great job of keeping the school up but if you look you know Peale the onion back a few layers it's old thank you yep why is deerfields um per pupil cost plus the highest so in the 19 yeah so you'll see a handful if you go to page two of the handout and you look at the far rightand column assessments per pupil so again this is the education Reform Act that says hey if you're a richer town you contribute more for each student and get less state aid poor town for for instance our poor town is is orange a poorer town will get more state aid and their resident don't have to kick in as much so if you see any of those that are in the $188,000 range Deerfield is now considered just as rich as some of those Towns over by Boston you've maxed out so the maximum that you can get for state aid is 175% of our foundation budget so once you hit 82.5 there's a minimum contribution deerfield's going to give Franklin Tech 82.5 of its foundation budget of this calculation state will give 17.5 that's the same as Newton's all the other really rich towns and if you look through this column you're going to see we we got four or five six towns out here in western Mass that are considered rich towns um I don't think uh Dearfield or the nonprofits property has been pulled out of this calculation that's what I was wondering looking at yeah I don't think so what was that um like the head of school 9 900,000 right so what we've done a bigger battle yeah I I have no idea what the state puts into it what what what we've done for the last couple of years is um this is Julie and I are taking a new webinar I mean a webinar to update it but um we ask that the not our 01342 ZIP code is the same as Newton and Welsley and all that so what we've done is I've asked um the Department of Revenue to pull out the income associated with all the nonprofits and um and then that changes our calculation and I don't think it's happened for this school so we're getting whacked for those and then um are we also getting affected by the people in weightly that have the South de Fields yes I've asked for the you know we um that actually is pretty significant yes because Ninja Turtle people are in our ZIP code so what what what we've done is um you know line by I mean every property we've taken it off the ZIP code we've taken it off the um property list I mean and we asked for a waiver and I don't think that they do it for Franklin Tech or they haven't done it for Franklin Tech because it skews it but they have for Frontier Regional and for well the last two years we don't you know we have to ask for it every year this is something that I I discovered and so I asked for this I worked with do to make this happen and we for two years they adjusted our Aid based on that but you have to ask for a waiver every year and it has to get individually improved but I don't think if you look at this calculation I don't think that we ever that it was ever applied to Franklin Tech truthfully are are we like do we still have time to address that we we ask for it every year or I have asked for it every year well I'm just wondering did we miss the boat for for for for this F year well no because the budget's not set okay it but but it's it is granted to US every year I mean for two years in a row this will be the third this is a third request it's several $1,000 on our calculations for the elementary school and the frontier here but I I I don't think if you're looking at this it's not done here I would say so how would the money get made up to ex Franklin Tech if ours was reduced work yet well I'm just checking I don't know I mean I have to I have to call we would have to call and make a separate request I guess but we have increasing students going there it seems yeah well no what it does is it just recalculates the AG because it's pulled out the income so we don't look as I mean our our EV our valuation isn't as high yeah but I guess like if if um that changes the minimum contribution does that mean that all these other towns are going to have to make up the short yeah okay which is as it should be right we we don't collect any taxes that my argument was we collect no taxes so you can't charge us it just seems like income yeah zero something yeah but this is something that is a request our request every year I mean I can't guarantee it but I mean it's worth an effort obviously yeah David just pointed out something interesting that sundelin Conway and even weighty actually are all high up there they don't have the nonprofit so I'm not sure what's going on there well it it's based on the income Margaret so if if people live there that have income we're just saying we do not collect taxes from the nonprofits in Old Deerfield so you can't you should not be able to collect Count Their income towards our evaluation and in fact do did agree and and helped us you know um petition desie but desie if if what happened one year this was the first year that I found out this under the new formula desie would say well we don't have the authority and then I you got to ask do and do says no we can't go to dessie so what we did when we went to J um the MMA conference is we went to person at do and said look this is what's happening and she said oh my gosh yeah that doesn't seem to be very fair so she hand walked it over to desie and sat there and said this doesn't seem to be fair and then they granted it for us two years in a row and hopefully we'll get it this year too I don't know but I don't think they asked for Franklin Tech I didn't I didn't actually I mean it's never been really an issue so I didn't uh I mean obviously with more students it is down become an issue but at the time you know when we I was doing this three or four years ago it it really we were just paying our assessment without really paying attention I would suspect though for Deerfield that the the wealth and not that calculation is used for all schools I think if you fixed it it fixed it for all three of your schools in the foundation formula when they start to calculate it in the foundation formula certainly be worth confirming yeah yeah yeah I would yeah and you're right we have tent Irving has um you know the power company with they've got a ton of property that's not on the tax roll so it if you can get in the game I suggest you guys get there first and you probably get maybe it helps and give you a break but I think eventually if all towns are doing it it's probably becomes a zero sum game well we also have that issue of the mailing address or the zip the mailing zip code for certain people in I lived in weightly for a while and I had a yeah I had so I know there's long Plane Road River Road there's a there's a fewer there yeah yep it just it's just a lot of work every year and it's not guaranteed so I mean I don't want to promise anything I don't I don't any other questions anybody no okay so it's been moved and seconded for Franklin Tech assessment at $660,000 any discussion or questions all those in favor all those opposed abstentions all right so I make a motion that the select board approve this as as well second all those in favor Carolyn nessi Tim HG all right you want to do that on the let's do Debt Service um so the next one do we have a motion for Franklin Tech Deb service next page I'll move to recommend the sum of $1,183 as the Franklin te Franklin Tech debt service assessment line item 32058 for FY 25 second any discussion all those in favor opposed extensions that passes 601 um I will make a motion the select board to approve this as well second uh all those in favor Carol n Tim Hill gii thank you so much for coming all the way down here appreciate your thank you very much thank you very much for the all the information too so I would actually like to go to 7:30 if you guys are okay with that because we have a lot to okay yep um Brenda what do you want to do do you want to do the other school ones or do you want to do um some of your miscellaneous stuff uh we certainly can um how about I'm trying to remember which one I not um having not been here today um makes it hard I not as prepared as I should be um I did hand out the K9 control budget that did come to us from Greenfield how about if we vote that one first let's do that okay it's 292 d5400 um I'm not trying to be picky but it it's really control officer oh it is yes you're right and I did change that in the system at some point uh yes y I did not change it on here the only reason is because they handle bats and skunks and yes yes yes no I I'm quite aware missed uh which has dropped from the Board of Health um responsibility so I'll move the sum of $22,266 for animal account number 292 5400 for FY 25 second discussion uh we split this with monteu and Greenfield we pay 25% uh Mones um pays 25% and Greenfield pays 50% Greenfield is the host on this um and uh I know every year we are asked if we you know get our 25% um service and every year that we um that I check we are well over 25% so we we don't say too much about that but um we get our services it's a pretty hefty salary increase question I did notice that too you take any questions yet yes why did health benefits go down I mean I'm glad it did but everywhere else it's up um does that mean that Greenfield's health insurance plan had a decrease no but um I think he changed plans but I'm not 100% sure John I can verify that for you maybe we should look into what they're doing maybe we should do it no theirs has gone up double digits ours is actually increased less than greenfields but um I think uh when you go from a family plan to one uh to spouse plus one there is a drop in price and I think that's what happened but I can verify it for you I'm okay with it I mean I just okay I don't think I don't think it's worth a lot of Investigation it's it's it's based on their expense but I can tell you Greenfield um has a double digit increase in um because the new mayor I I I've been meeting with the new mayor and she wanted to know what our increase was and she was um envious envious yes I I don't want to say too much all maybe they made some sort of plan design change or something who knows uh no he switched I think to spouse plus one but I'm not 100% sure that's just anodal I could verify it that's a big salary increase though 11% from like 10% increase or something it could be based on hours too I don't know be hour decrease I'm not sure right anybody have discussion do we want to go back to it's Greenfield who hires the person yes are we okay with this or do we want to go back to Greenfield and ask for details on any of the increases or I'm fine with this you directing that at me because of the health insurance so I'm fine no anybody in the room I mean like 10% salary increase seems heftier than many that we see um but there's nobody here who knows the answer so it's not enough to worry about maybe we should vote it and then still look for the information since what I was thinking okay I I can find out that information oh great okay thanks all right and we have a motion yeah we have a motion out there any further discussion or questions anybody Carolyn if you could get a copy of the employment contract if it is a contracted employee that would probably help greatly um we have an IMA but I don't I don't for their employment contract Greenfield Employment contract for the employee I I think he's just a paid person okay yeah I don't think he's under contract okay but I I think there's an hour increase but I I will verify that okay that would make sense then yeah any other discussion or questions no all those in favor uh that's unanimous 700 okay can do this yeah um oh go ahead I make a motion to approve this as well second all those in favor Caroline nessi Tim Hill gii thank you I'm sorry I always forget that um do the schools and then uh if we have time I know we've tabled uh Board of Health salaries um at one point in time uh we table let's do schools that might take us the whole rest of just going to say I I I don't want we have to sort out that board expense budget okay I already asked told Julie about that that we're going to sort that out before we do the final one in case we have to change it again okay but we wouldn't be able to do that until you had some time to look at it let's start with I guess Dearfield Elementary since it's first 354 3 yeah 300-400 5400 sorry do we have a motion did that get handed out in the meeting oh it very well could have been Sor I I can just share Brandon let's keep it I don't want you to have to go little information little information oh that's it okay sorry okay yeah it's not not a big thing okay great I'll move to recommend the sum of 5,423 55 for Deerfield Elementary School account 300- 5400 for fy2 second I don't know why I old one okay all right so this so This does represent a decrease from their initial uh budget that they proposed um I know Margaret you went to that meeting I I can't remember now what the it seems like they took 87,000 out but I can't remember exactly why um I wish Trevor was here because he'd be able to it off yeah I think it had to do with the paving is here I can't speak to that pleas my head car is on the chair of the dfield school committee this does that work high enough does that work yeah that we can hear um so it was 87,000 when we realized how high the transportation costs were coming in uh we did have 87,000 from leftover Ral aid funds that was going to be designated to repair the driveway the loop where the bus is pulling right in front of the school needs to be repaired but this felt like a more urgent need so we'll put off driving the little portion of the driveway there and apply it and that helped reduce it down from 4.65% increase down to three okay all right which is greatly appreciated this year's budget which is you pardon me how do you spell your name Carrie c a r e y e t c h e l LS c h LS got it's probably a question for Carrie sorry um what is the date of your next meeting and have and because I know they have not voted the budget yet because they wanted to have more discussion on the transportation contract yeah let me check um it is next Tuesday the 26th at 7 okay thank you okay I'm a bit confused Brenda you said they reduced it from previous estimate the previous estimate I have here says 5,397 this 5 that that was a very preliminary budget that that Trevor passed off to us in January but then they had voted a much higher increase yeah so if the school committee hasn't voted it yet may we should wait till they vote it make a motion to table this until the school committee votes on the budget second all right any discussion on the motion to table it um I would just like to make a comment about the budget so if we're tabling it i' would like to discuss it first yeah so I guess I would oppose the motion to table just cuz I have a few comments can I just make my comments anyway it's discussion sure okay okay uh and I'm just partly because I'm I'm afraid I'm not going to be a good member and I'm probably not going to be here in the next couple of meetings and so this may be discussed in the next couple meetings um and Carrie I don't know if you can answer this or or Brenda but I'm just wondering in the current proposed budget what the school choice um balance line Looks like year-to year if you give me a minute I sure and I'll explain why I'm while she's looking for that I just I think I just can pull the microphone over I can I can tell you what the school choice fund was the balance of it as of uh February 2019 it was a 54,000 okay so I um and car just interrupt Carrie if you get a number just interrupt if you get a number scr okay so obviously you know the schools should be funded to the Max uh as far as I'm concerned but if in fact we are going to have a difficult budget year and we're going to need to make some decisions um most of the years that I was on the school committee and I can't remember how many years I was on it maybe 10 or so but for almost all of that time we were led to believe and I say LED not in a in a bad way but there was some disconnect between I think here and the former business manager at the elementary school and that school choice balance which is kind of like a rainy day fund which just is there and goes year to year was We were always happy because it was at about $500,000 and somehow all of a sudden that balance got up significantly higher and while I'm all for conservative budgeting principles and having an emergency fund in there for a certain amount of time um it just struck me over the last few years when I learned that it was up to a million that that is money that could that it's the kids money or it's the town's money uh and and if it's just sitting there I think it's too much to have as a reserve fund it's almost 20% of the total Elementary School school budget so if again depending on how hard our times are it seems like you can work that down sorry Brenda you had your yeah so I remember a discussion last year when we were reviewing this budget and talking about school choice yeah that um Darius or Shelly had said that they would be using maybe $2 $300,000 of that this fiscal year for some things that they didn't want to ask us for so I think their intent was to have it have it built up but they were going to be using it in this fiscal year I I could be wrong so the and the only I totally agree with you that often that's talked about as a reason not to be more aggressive with it but as you've just said the balance right now is a million 54 still right so you've only got a few more months true to take it down and then the next fiscal year starts and and the and the additional 250 to 300,000 gets put into it yeah so again all just it's not I'm not complaining about anything that's I'm just saying there was something was ay somewhere in those years because we always were happy that there was 500,000 in it right and iump I wasn't too concerned about that at this point because I thought his comment was that they would be doing that in the latter latter quarter of this year but that's my recollection maybe the rest of you remember remember the comments differently there was discussion at the school committee meeting that they are using some of the school choice funds I can't I don't know how much and and absolutely you do every year you do and the question is how much should be deficit spent if in fact the town is needing to look for some monies got it yeah and and not at all to cut anything at the school it's to use funds that are sitting there to be used for the school for the school right because it's not earning 5% I mean it's not no it's just sitting there I'm sure not yeah so the handout from two months ago um had 326,000 of school choice going to offset the general um fund which isn't a lot but how much but then you've got the revenues coming in on that right so so how much is how much are we taking off of the million that's there year years over you know the the state is reducing that number all the time um the which number the 5,000 per student what's that which number they reducing the um school choice money uh has has been dropping every year and I want to say 326,000 is about what what the state is giving us this year maybe it's dropping because we have less school choice kids not the number per student is the same right yeah right the 5,000 has been the same the entire time Carrie car's ready to talk please Julie was right it's 326,000 this year I'm sorry I cannot find uh the document that shows what what the historical total has been um but it we have been using it um and we because the past few years we've reduced class sections in many cases we have fewer less much greater less capacity for school choice students going forward so in the past there's been sever students per grade 10 per grade sometimes it's going to be one or two students per grade for almost every grade next year and the following years so we are going to be looking at a decrease in school funds coming in in the future so the 326,000 or whatever we're putting on it in future years would significantly eat away at that uh so that's something we're considering for the future how we can move things off the school choice budget into general fund so we do appreciate your concerns but we're we're doing what we can y so I just putting that out there because it's it's uh seems like it's but it's a possible Source if we're desperately looking for yeah the $100,000 for the right the difficult budget or something sort of political piece of it it's not anything one can grab it's basically a message to say you need to spend School needs to spend their budget differently they need to take money from the there and ask for less from us yeah right yeah yeah okay any further discussion on this before we don't vote on I have other questions related to the transportation contract but I don't have there's nobody here to answer them so I'll okay I have no qu no more questions okay so we have a motion on the table to table this um item any discussions on that motion no all those in favor of tabling this item uh against extensions so that passes 601 so we've decided not to vote on this this week um I moveed to table this as well for the select board and we'll second that all those in favor Carn I to okay um we still have 12 minutes so see if we can do Frontier Regional Frontier Regional three 10- 5400 and then we've got their capital and their transportation the two budgets right after that so okay so we have a motion for Frontier Regional I move to the 4,377 770 for Frontier Regional School account number 310 5400 a second all right um could see so any discussion on that one anybody do you have anything no this is this is the same uh number that they they gave us initially in February that hasn't changed um what they did do was they removed their request for a capital item in the amount of $48,000 123 from their um from their request from the for the town U so that's that's and I can't remember I I know it was um I know it was a discussion it was a question you had yeah brought up yeah um I can explain that if anybody cares so what they had done they had funds in hand they used the funds they had in hand to pay off the um essentially the entirety of the item that we had voted several years ago to debt exclude which was a whole bunch of various things I don't I don't it's like Auditorium repairs and roof I don't remember there's a whole like a whole category of stuff um then they had a new request for $100,000 on a fire alarm system so that item would not not be debt excluded so what I asked them to do was to pay off all except for $100,000 of the already debt excluded item and then pay off pay for the fire alarm using the funds they had in hand so we are paying the same amount and our percentage it comes out to like 48,000 or something so we're paying the same amount we would have except it comes pre debt excluded because we already voted does that make sense ra with me on that okay um work but but that's not in the body of this do no and it won't even be in fiscal 25 that'll be something we'll pay in fiscal 26 I'm guessing because I didn't see anything in their newly revised budget that left it in there it took it out completely yeah see I'm a little confused because I I went to the budget meeting that they voted and I was told it was going to come in at 08 and so the the increase from 1.65 was 8 um I I only have it in my text and I don't know which text it's in because because you were maybe looking at the total well no that wouldn't have it was something transp included it happened in March so it was the last Thursday or maybe it was the it was last week I I believe this was the most recent information that I had from that week that they voted so if there's something else I think I think this is outdated but I could be wrong I'm going to table this until we have further information second okay well we got real far there didn't we oh my Lord you got white noise here oh what happened that worked I'm not touching it um any discussion on tabling the frontier stuff no all those in favor of tbling this item post um exstension that passes 601 I'm sorry I didn't write down Margaret voted who who seconded it I seconded it okay I'm sorry I moved it in seconded um so let's let's skip all three of these I think until um gives us a week to figure out way we'll table selectboard will table we don't need do we want to do oh do you guys already did that do you want to do maturing debt 7 yes we most certainly can that's uh 710-5902 00 all right so we discussed this once before and we tabled it pending the discussion about the wastewater treatment plant um correct portion of it so everybody found it 710 5900 I thought we already approved that no we didn't vote it we tabled it so we we discussed it we discussed it but we did not vote it yeah the 19 yep do we have a motion I'll make a motion to uh recommend uh $41,600 number [Music] 610-595-5411 Bond um principal payments at 25% because your wastewater treatment P plant pays for 75% of it so those are in here the only thing that could have even been a variable would have been the 100,000 on the short-term borrowing that we're doing on the rest of the wastewater treatment plant project and we had decided with the wastewater treatment plant vote that we would pay down 400,000 300,000 of it was coming from the wastewater treatment plant and 100,000 coming from here we did discuss at one point in time seeing if we could pay down 600,000 but after looking at the um the sewer Enterprise fund and what we could do there we decided that that was not an option so this is left at our idea of doing a $400,000 ban pay down so this is the correct amount this is where you you recommend that it okay any questions discussion nope all those in favor at unanimous 700 great um um I make a motion we approve this account as well second all those in favor car n i Tim LGI you unfunded sick leave have we done that one uh we was Ted also we tabled that with the idea that we were going to go back and look at it um this is uh 91058 um Casey and I did discuss it and felt like it could remain as it as it is and we would split the money with the Department from which the person is retiring um and and it would just absorb it it'll be fine so we've decided to leave it at the 10,000 if you're if you're comfortable with that did you did the did the select board discuss it again or not no we didn't discuss it but I think we agreed that there was yeah cuz we're talking you know it might be another $45,000 more than that and and the the uh Highway budget can can absorb the difference yeah okay any discussion oh no we don't have a motion I'll make a motion to recommend $10,000 for unfunded sick leave in vacation account number 91058 Mo a second I'll second that any discussion all those in favor oh sorry go ahead you discuss we we just had we talked about the highway department budget last week or two weeks ago yep and discussed how how tight the General Highway well General Highway expense I know he had made some reductions is there really room I mean is there room is there 8 $9,000 $8,000 $9,000 it's it's really hard to say okay um we don't have an exact retirement date yet um we don't know what it's going to take to get a new highway superintendent um we usually don't spend quite as much money on overtime as we plan to so I think I'm I'm fairly comfortable with it with with not knowing not having answers to some things before before the person retires the select board was going to work on reorganizing some of the job descriptions and the and the in the in the general organization so I you know I is it going to what does it cost to go out and go get a new person it always costs more so but is there going to be a gap potentially so I I mean I I feel like it's it's unknown but I feel comfortable that we can cover it Margaret okay I I apologize for the late question I just that's fine no we want to make sure we discuss everything any other questions no all those in favor that passes 700 I make a motion to approve this budget as well second all those in favor carollyn SI Tim Hill gii okay okay I think that's enough we have three minutes left to adjourn so anything else to talk about tonight oh um yes I'm going to be here oh no uh is anybody willing to volunteer to fill in for gym next week I can't even read my anybody Monday it's coming Monday is the 25th yeah that's the 25th and David you said I can you're going to be doing something fun aren't you mhm I just hope that it's I hope that it's taped because I'm not not going to be really reliable all right thank you for volunteering to do that um anything else we need to talk about before next week no okay do we have a motion to adjourn a second all those favor against abstentions pass 6 one of no vote who didn't vote John oh I don't know maybe I just didn't see I'm sure that too all right we're thank you so much day and um capital is moving in so we need to vacate our spot so that they have Casey um did you did you have that motion for us to award the contract is the item not anticipated for the select board I do not um give me I thank where you where is that let me read the email I sent out it is it is on Wednesday to rote is with Thursday you know the and then it's Easter week so I wanted to do it tonight and revote it if there was any questions so was this for us or this for you okay so I sent an email out this afternoon um thank you you would ask me to develop something for tonight's meeting that um we received two bids for the roof repairs one was from sxo LLC Baseline bid was $235,800 oh I'll do it now or I'm going home everybody asked me why don't you just go up for but I my response is I know for March is like in April no we're not not we're just okay well I'll stay I'll stay right plus you know there's always the chance of rain rain here in Austin there's stuff there left pretty much done I said to one of my friends do you know Texas stuff that's definitely on the she TMX I know some of my friends are more musically inclined than I am so probably be going somewhere these for well that's not tell are you uh keeping your meeting open Caroline yes okay oh we're just we're just going to vote this one thing Mark sure it'll just take two seconds the only reason why I ask is we have to switch zooms but we have yeah that's fine no you oh we have to switch zooms that's the problem okay so what do we just need to do we just need to make a motion to AC yes okay make a motion so yeah I make a motion that the select board uh accept the uh the bid from sxo LLC for um $235,800 to fix the uh the relish and for alt one3 uh three $ 37,7 two for a total amount of $273,500 I second that all those in favor Tim HGI Carolyn nessi thank you we will further discuss this on Wednesday um thank you Casey you guys have to um I make a motion to adjourn second all those in favor mil Caroline n okay