##VIDEO ID:NxWpn3eRjaA## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e recording in progress got it all right good evening it is 710 p.m. is your microphone on no there a bit of an echo uh I am calling the lunenberg finance committee meeting to order I apologize for us starting late we had two members that were late tonight it could not get out of work fast enough this evening uh in accordance with the requirements of the open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadcast over the lunenberg public access Channel and on Facebook live on the public access Facebook page and will be uploaded to the lunenberg access YouTube channel after the meeting this meeting will be held in person at the location provided on this notice members of the public are welcome to attend this inperson meeting please note that while an option for remote attendance Andor participation is being provided as a courtesy to the public the meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast unless otherwise required by law members of the public with particular interest in any specific item on this agenda should make plans for inperson versus virtual attendance accordingly this agenda lists all topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the chair votes may be taken as a result of these discussions not all items listed May in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by open meeting law would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for [Music] all all right do we have any announce ments from the committee this evening fantastic let's open it up to public comment from the public Mary foil 985 flath Hill Road um but I'm actually here wearing other hats um other than a resident so I am the my I hope what I'm going to say this is based on what I saw in the last meeting um that you guys had which I sadly watched at 11:30 last night I should have written things down but I didn't um so I am here kind of in two roles um and I hope I am going to inform as opposed to opine um but the first one I might slightly opine um I'm the president of the teachers union um and just this is in regards to Insurance conversation that happened um so I will say one of the things that we did to prepare for negotiations this past year was to survey employees who had left um and we asked them a bunch of different reasons as to why um they left left we're going to do another round of that after recent leaves um and and what people said which was interesting to me when we asked what was the best contract benefit health insurance was the answer as the best contract benefit it was really interesting to me because technically it's not part of our teachers contract um it is contractual but not part of our teachers contract so now with my other hat um I happen to also be the chairperson of our PE our Public Employee committee um so I'm really here with that hat on and no one from the PC even knows I'm going to be here so when there's the discussion of health insurance there are a lot of questions and I I do understand um to an extent good questions about health insurance how it works on in town um there are a number of questions of like oh what do other unions think how do we get these people together so since 2009 we have had a Public Employee committee towns will either have a PEC or an IAC an insurance advisory committee um because we enacted section 19 of laws 21 through 23 or something like that but because we are section 19 Town um it requires that PEC that Public Employee committee and not the IAC the Public Employee committee is made up of bargaining units and units representative from each of that group um in town to bargain health insurance so it is bargainable in other places you won't see that um we are one of the few towns where it is actually bargainable so changes that occur do need to be bargained um it is a weighted vote um the amount of members retirees get a 10% % vote and then the other other votes are weighted by how many people are in your bargaining unit or your union we actually meet throughout the year in fact I was just in a meeting Monday um with the PEC and the town so we do meet to discuss health insurance things and we obviously meet when we negotiate because we have to um but we usually meet when um it comes up um with insurance rates what premiums will be um we just met because Medicare which I'm learning a lot more about Medicare um but Medicare um those renewal rates are in January where the rest of us our active plans our renewal rates are in July so that committee already exists and when people are asking a lot of questions of like oh what can we get for feedback how will people know about this there actually is that structure and process in town in a committee that actually legally has to exist um and so I I know um I'd be more than willing to answer questions when people have them um the assistant Town manager was at the meeting that we just had um we do have a health insurance consultant who I don't think every Union person would say this in other towns but like I love sushu from Cooking Company our health insurance person um I think she's just really honest and fair um when she gives her presentations you know we've already asked for certain information um we are actually are asking for numbers well the town came to us but for numbers on and what does a higher deductible plan look like if people opt into that I'm not actually sure we're going to see the money savings that the town might want to see from that um as an optin um but we'll wait and see what the numbers say um you know we we've had plans where we've moved on to other prescription plans we had to ratify that kind of mid year uh in order for some of those changes to make I will say and sushu the consultant would say this too the PEC and the town have worked really well together um over the past we were went through the bylaws because I didn't remember CU I didn't start on the PEC when it started um we've existed since the fall of 2009 um and so obviously we've had lots of ups and downs in health insurance for that too so a lot of the questions that you have if you go back and rewatch what you had for questions the answers are actually really readily available and that group does exist for those discussion points to actually happen so thanks does that group meet under open meeting law or do they meet in no it's not under open meeting law that's my gut answer I don't think it is because it's never been put out to the public I will also say too at certain times there are actually negotiating meetings that occur and that wouldn't be open to the public uh anyways um but no they have I don't think those have to be open to the public are they posted meetings no because the one we just had we all decided when it was going to be okay um so no they're not posted I know I'm trying to think I think I've been on this committee since maybe 2011 so really I'm the person who's the chair because I've been on the committee the longest at this point I kind of got volunt onto it and now I just know more about health insurance and an average person should know so I kind of feel like I might as well stick with it um so I I know it's the town actually usually calls a meeting together for us to meet and the town manager is often the one you know who does this so we want to think about this sometimes the select board will ask the town manager to do it um but that was the case in our previous Town manager um before Heather as well because I think she was the one who we had when this formed so should we be directing this letter from Mr Leighton towards the PEC as they would like to I would actually direct it towards the town okay that's where it's gone so far yes and I think and honestly I found out what what made me go back CU it's been summer I haven't followed the town meetings quite as regularly as I usually do um we met on Monday to talk about renewal rates and things like that um and um the assistant Town manager actually asked me like who is this Brian I was like oh he's the chair of the school committee I was like why do you ask and then she said that um so yeah those questions really um would go through that and much of what we've discuss like we've discussed these things over the years things are always worth discussing like we do not have we have an individual plan and a family plan we do not have an employee plus one plan um and that's something that we look at every year um in our last agreement we put in a um stien for lack of other words for people who have been on the health insurance who get off the health insurance and go into someone else's U because it does save the town money so we've been asking for numbers on that we actually asked for for the length of the contract to see how it would go and and the town said no um but then they came back and said hey can we do it another year um so we did ask as part of that meeting like what are those numbers going to look at you know so we do occasionally we've even looked at GIC how do we compare to GIC in the past GIC would have not been in money savings for the town so there's all sorts of things that we look at plan design like we we do especially the officers who have been this into this a bit longer I'd say we do our due diligence of really looking at Cost Effectiveness across the board has has the PC looked at a high deductible Plan before we have looked and we're on a smaller deductible now um we have looked at the high deductible um it came up to us as something to to kind of have our thinking caps on about it um over the next few months because we will start negotiating our contract this year um probably on my union end I have some qualms about it um looking at it more pragmatically my gut tells me I'm not sure we have the amount of employees to switch over to it that would actually then be a savings um because I don't see us agreeing to it at all without an HSA um and and I know some of the conversation the other day or on the eth of the meeting was like you it's more money in your pocket but like if you're actually doing it right and I know not a lot of people do it this way but if you're actually using your HSA right that premium savings you have you should actually be putting that aside so that you can use it for for the rest of your deductible so it's not as much money in your pocket like it's it's there for an emergency but really you should be putting that aside um to make up the difference of what the HSA doesn't cover um so yeah those are are things that that we've looked at you know on a on a more I don't know personal level I do know employees and I can speak more for the school side than the town on this one have either stayed in this District or taking a job in this district for lower money because our health insurance benefit has been much better than others like that's it's like I'd say to my students like weigh your benefit package like it's just not the salary I so I'm heading into my 23rd year as a town employee here I've never seen us Hemorrhage employees like and I I feel like hemorrage is the only way I can say it and so I'm really concerned that too many deep substantial changes are just going to take away what at this point is one of the few benefits we have compared to other areas is like my cautionary side of me has that sitting in the back of my head but with that being said we we do look at everything I do say that like a high deductible with the HSA is a really good option like I have that and I was scared because you know the word high deductible sounds really bad right right but um my financial adviser even tells me he's like this is like double tax advantaged you can Max it out you can invest it and you can use it for your entire life right and there are because that like rolls over differently than your FSA does and yes and and understand that and you part of what I would look at is okay and and are and it should work this way but like are you paying less for co-pays like looking at that whole picture of it and honestly I'm the person probably since 2012 um because the teachers because we have the most members we're it's really others are catching up not in a bad way but like it's our vote like the teachers have to vote something through for it to go through um the others don't equal what the teacher vote is it it's just it's the numbers I'm sorry um but I think I'm a good person to be doing it like I I think I can be pragmatic enough but I'm also the person who's had to go in front of the teachers um because like when I first started here we were 9010 for coverage you know so I'm I'm the person who's had to go before everyone and convince them to take like to take this hit here's why you should to take this you know so it's not I don't I'm the one who does it I don't relish it um but I think that just shows how we can be pragmatic um and move through things and yeah we work with the numbers um and everything like that too yeah so as the discussion kind of comes around then because right now it's with the inm toown manager at this point and it's up kind of to him about what's happening next um but I think for sure we should include this new committee that I been around for decades that I didn't even know we discuss it with the I I would discuss it with the committee um I'm sure we would be I would be open but I don't want to speak for the committee uh I would be open to having other people at the meeting you know if if they want to kind of know more about that information or or how we interact you one of the things too that we are that PE instead of the IAC we we can't and this wasn't explicitly said by anyone but I heard like maybe undertones of it like in the corporate world I'm our insurance carrier not my husband in his corporate world they can just change the insur like hey July 1 here's what your insurance is going to be we can't do that because we are contractual and not every town can say that um if you have an IAC you're most likely negotiating your premium split you're not negotiating plan design because we that section 19 in the PEC we also negotiate plan design so it's just it's might be different if people are talking to oh we do it this way in this Mo that municipality we are a rare municipality with our setup okay thank you so much no problem thank you is there any other public comment from the public all right any public comment from the that's right now excellent moving along um I don't see oh I'm trying to get in the meeting now if you wouldn't let me if you would mind um I don't see our interim Town manager and he never responded to an email that I'd sent him so I need to actually get in touch with him to um recording in progress to uh um figure out what the plan is moving forward with him because he hasn't indicated that he's planning to attend our meetings or anything but I am curious he does have some options he's been sending me a few emails to get our opinion on some stuff and I was hoping he would be this evening so we could discuss some of it um but I will try and set up a meeting with him I know he's meeting with other boards I know yeah um so I have a feeling that he will I'm just not sure why he's not here this evening so we do not have an inum Town manager report um do you want to skip the since we're going to go right into something else okay so we're going to skip the finance director report as well and go right into new business um so this past Monday or last Monday on the uh 12th the budget task force had another meeting and one of the topics was to go over the Investments and our investment strategy with all of our um $27 million that we had in FY 23 at the close out and um Izzy I believe got in touch with Bartholomew one of our our companies and our investment companies and we had a meeting with them we discussed some of the options um and then he also set up the plan to have them come here this evening just to get into a little bit more granularity with us so we did some kind of top level stuff we went over the three buckets primarily um and actually I can pull up my notes I was going to go over all this anyways when we had the uh committee reports so the big one is and actually let me share that slide that Izzy had sent along a while [Music] ago there we go [Music] okay so these are the three buckets that we can use for investing our money um currently we are in place actually first I'll introduce our Our Guest here I believe uh it's it's Chuck correct okay so uh Chuck Patterson is here with Barth and we have Izzy as well so please feel free to jump in at any time when I mess up on this slide and then we can get into a little bit more of the disc session um So currently we are in buckets number one and buckets number two the left side and the and the middle the middle section where we are able to um use our money the leftand bucket you cannot invest it is strictly for covering bills and uh payroll and and whatnot so you are not those have to be in liquid assets basically bacon counts effectively the middle bucket the cemetery Perpetual care stabilization funds scholarship funds Library fund those ones you can put into longer I believe it was up to three year CDs is that correct good evening everyone Mr chairman um the 3 a CD is in the first bucket the first bucket okay and then the middle bucket um you can in theory buy a 30 okay so you can go a little bit further on that one the third bucket we don't currently have that requires a vote a 20 3 C votee which is a little bit different um now because it's recently changed the law it used to be where town had to vote it and then it would have to go to the house the state house and it would have to be approved um with the latest signing of the governor's budget I assume um it just has to be approved by the town itself and we can automatically be allowed to um start investing some of our other funds our opep and whatnot we are not allowed to do special stabilization funds those are not allowed to be invested um but it would fit under what's known as um affordable housing money and oped money as well um just a question these are what are allowed under each of these buckets correct this is what they're currently in that's what's allowed under those okay it's what's Allowed by law and what we currently have um so we did also go over is that going to change or no yep we go we did also go over um the current document that we have for FY 23 about the um the treasures year end cash report and we sort of looked through it as well and talked about what money falls into each one of those categories um so we have category number one bucket number one fits into the checking accounts the interest bearing checking accounts and then it does get into some of the liquid invest ments but not all of the liquid Investments because we don't know what some of them are all of these liquid Investments under category D Are banks they're local banks with the exception of the mmdt uh Massachusetts Municipal depository trust depository trust uh but without looking at the actual accounts we're not going to be able to figure out what investment accounts are um some of them obviously we have a better idea the sewer Enterprise fund the trash entprise the water Enterprise we know exactly what those are so some of those can be moved currently and and can be invested slightly differently without any changes to our what we currently have set up with the 203c so letter D liquid investment those all which of these three buckets do they they fall into buckets one and two It's a combination of both of those but none of them would fall into potentially being able to be in that 203c okay what you have there um those are your general banking accounts and Mr chair clearly articulated um It's a combination of both um bucket one and two um to go in invest further you would need to go Toc being that M the town does have opep and opep is is currently the statute under 23 so what um Jim put up those accounts there in most cases they're going to fall under bucket in most cases again not digging in with the treasure or find out okay what's this for what's that for um I think it's pretty safe to say it's going to fall into that bucket one chapter 4445 so that's for category D for the most part our liquid Investments but that doesn't mean that all of that will for example the ones that we kind of touched on at the budget task force what were the investment accounts where without actually going and speaking with the treasur and finding out exactly what those accounts are are labeled to um where they're just where they're pointed towards we we don't know whether that would fall under bucket one or bucket number two but it certainly could be found out um when we get down to e or term investments and F are trust funds um those I believe are what would fall under the 203c for the most part trust funds both the trust funds and the the term investments where we have opep in here this is a stabilization fund but it's not a special purpose stabilization fund so everything in that your stabilization funds your health trust and then any of the trust funds would be in um the middle bucket oh would be okay and then where you reference opep that okay so all we would really be moving and all we would really be getting with um I believe you put it as going prudent which is approving 203 see would be would be able to have that OPB in a higher yield account the the opb's already there what you would have in the reason why the town would want to do you know make the decision to go prudent you would have your Cemetary funds your conservation funds your scholarship funds your miscellaneous funds would all be runs about about 1.5 $5 million M so if the town chose to go that at they would then come out of um that middle bucket and go into that prudent investor bucket okay um and getting away from the legal list okay um and currently we that bucket then allows us to do we have choices with that bucket I believe correct how we choose to invest if we want to go more aggressive that's the 70 70% Equity 30% bond which is currently um averaging 6 to 7% I believe correct correct the opab account currently as of June as of June 30th Mr chairman uh the op count 1.4 million and your total return on that was uh 5 % mhm and uh currently uh the town is at a 6040 aset allocated okay um that's in the range um as treasurers have moved through this process they will ultimately uh through our recommendation get to that 7030 and okay 60 stocks 40 what's the 60/40 um very simply it's 60% stock 40% bonds are fixing okay but we would be we could push it to a 7030 if we wanted to be more aggressive with it and since that is sitting there for much longer we have the ab we have a little bit more cushion can the interest on the OPB account only go back into the opep account or can it go anywhere um in your opep in your stabilization pretty much anything in that middle bucket and to the right um by St all of those funds forceed their interest okay so your stabilization account any interest that's earned on the stabilization account stays with the stabilization account your cemer Perpetual care stays with the cemer okay um and same with the op same with your Yours by St okay so opep has to stay with opep correct and what are the special legislation funds are those like the the park fund and stuff like that or you repeat well it says the right hand bucket says special legislation funds what what's an example of those is that the affordable housing one yeah that would be that okay um there there are other funds out there that um you would have special legislation and spelled up in the um the originating legislation like for instance had fund or something like that it dictates how you invest you know when you can go chapter 4454 or whenever it's Prov uh for savings so I'm getting into meets there but that's what about revolving accounts pardon revolving accounts Revol the accounts would all be in that first bu and think of um when the laws were written whatever and that's what we teach our Treasures whatever is needed the daily appropriation that has to St so a revolving account you're going to need that for the par depart that for um whatever other you know fund so anything that you're going to budget is yes I'm so sorry this I can't get these microphones to Works they don't they sound horrible we can just have you to figure out a I'm really sorry that thank you though matter probably um I like this this is uh easier to talk um so anything that you have with the the town has that you're going to pretty much you guys would be in charge of would be in that first bucket and and think of it as your checking accounts MH uh that's what those other accounts were so cities and towns um have their main depository then they have a Peril account and accounts payable account and then when they're not having to pay those bills that's what all those accounts in the middle were those were all their money market accounts very common they could have 10 15 different banks that they're dealing with and what the treasurers would then do is shop around for rates and then move the money accordingly um and then now you're seeing here in the world since the last like year 18 months where interest rates went up so fast uh for instance the peg account those are all treasuries so Peg account fall into that first bucket M so the duration on that account is um less than a quarter of a year okay so I hope I answer that question so the left account can be invested maybe I misunderstood this but only in CDs and the middle and bonds but okay can they or can it be any mix of those um so when you look at the left bucket yeah you're going to have those in all liquid so it's going to be bank money market accounts checking accounts CDs up to three years treasuries for one year agencies for one year very very very liquid what was the last one sorry uh government agencies so Fanny May Freddy Mack government agencies the middle bucket have all those same Securities but there's no duration so you could buy a bond for 30 years then you can buy corporate bonds you couldn't Buy in the first bucket and then you can go on to that legal list the legal list is about 20 stocks highly concentrated um for instance there 20 stocks and one quarter of them are drug companies so there's concentration risk that you have a quarter of the funds that the town can invest in is in one industry then saying staying in that bucket if you chose to vote prudent then you'd go off and pretty much invest in anything that's legal and prudent the last bucket opep is anything prudent so pretty much if you look at the Wall Street Journal any of those funds you can buy any of those you can buy um bonds from various corporations whether it's you know not Amazon um caterpillar um Bank of America so those are the things so it's very very liquid not so liquid extremely um diverse those are the three layouts okay but you could buy into like an S&P 500 fund or an ETF or something like that correct and you would be able to do that in the middle or the right hand bucket even the middle could go into a yep yep and we do we do so that's where you would have um you'd have funds so if um the town voted uh to go prudent in the middle bucket we would buy funds currently if you looked at the portfolio today uh there is 20 stocks individual stocks because that's what it's allowed today and that's where and why you would want to go prudent to get away from that concentration risk So currently as we stand right now we can't go out with the Middle with the middle bucket we cannot go out and get S&P stock corre because we have to we can only use those 20 or purchase those 20 different stocks correct but if we did decide to go prudent you explain the local option going to change this year sure m so to get to that new level um towns have always been able to go prudent always but then they would have had to come to town meeting have town meeting vote in the affirmative then your local state center State Rep would then take it into Boston present it to the House and Senate get it through there have the governor sign it as a home rule petition the governor last August August 9th in the outside section of the budget she signed into law The Prudent investor statute for cities and towns so here we are that second step of going into Boston's all done for us now you still have to come back to town meeting to get the authorization from town meeting so now you know having town meeting voted then you're good to go as prudent and we have provided um a copy sample language of what it is and pretty much all it's doing is taking chapter 4454 that middle bucket law and adding the section that says may it may allow the town to invest trust funds in a manner of pro prudent 203c do you know if um that can be done at special town meeting or only at annual town meeting um they are doing I'm I'm certainly not Council but they are doing it other towns are doing it at specials okay and is it a usually a bylaw change um it's really the adoption of a state law now whether you convert that into a bylaw I i' defer to your local government but it's really just adopting uh a provision of the state law I think most times in the past we've just adopted the Mass General law and as long as we've adopted it and that's recorded then we're covered that's why we always have that struggle of trying to find information as to what we've adopted and what we've put into a bylaw and what we've put into the charter and they contradict each other sometimes because they weren't meshed together at the time we need a let of all that that we don't have and that's common so when you adopt the state law then any subsequent changes they automatically happen right so it sounds prudent to move forward with this prudent investment see what I did there as as speaking as an investment advisor uh it would be uh probably prudent to increase your diversification you know some people could say you add more risk because you have more options I would argue that more options and more more diversification actually reduces your risk so if for instance like I said that one quarter of the um list consisted of drug companies if something happened inside that industry how much risk would you have with the stocks that you would own because of some issue in a particular IND industry did the state create that original list is that is that you sure how how long do you have I'm very very simply um the list was there for Savings Banks in the Commonwealth okay back in the 70s the Savings Banks Exempted themselves from having to use the list that left cities and towns private trusts and Credit Unions to have and manage and deal with the list the list has not changed uh or changed minimally and the only way you can add a stock or firm to that list believe it or not three credit unions had to petition the commissioner Banks well Credit Unions really aren't using the list and that left that cities and towns here in the Commonwealth really are stuck with the list so the list goes back to State chared Savings Banks and then now cities and towns and private trusts and they're reluctant speaking to the Commissioner's Office they're reluctant to make changes to the list because they don't know how many PR private trusts refer to it so if you had a private trust and your trustee was going to manage your funds they're going to manage it in accordance with the legalist and they didn't know what the impact would be um dealing with that so um long history but I hopefully I summarized it oh I actually have it paused uh oh do the trust funds no I I just need to spot something real quick here Peg ax stabilization see these are H well I know where it is on that one I just had a comparison question there's two lines uh that I believe and I needed to see the other one that uh are described as Peg access stabilization account the one I'm looking at right now is showing an earnings of 0.75% with 720,000 and change in that account and then there was another account exactly the same wording but I I need that to pull down or I need to find it to see what the interest earning on that was there it is Evan back up a little bit more oh here we go yeah there it is right there okay it's in a different institution so I I probably can't get an answer as to why we're looking at what seemingly is the same bucket of money a portion of the same bucket of money in two different institutions and one's earning 3% On's earning 75 those those are the things that we keyed into that we're concerned about so we also learned that we shouldn't be looking at interest rate what we want to look at is the yield to maturity instead so what what ends up happening that is a state form that all treasurers in the Commonwealth um should provide to the the K the vision local Services um in September what you're looking at I believe is last September is correct yes so then it's an education process for our treasurers so what you might be looking at and I do not know back in June of last year that could have been current yield your current yield to maturity on that account is 4.97% so the difference is current yield is very similar to what you would get in your local bank you know you see it on the advertised and all current yield is and not getting into the weeds is current income divided by current market value that's all it is what yield to maturity does when we buy bonds we might buy a bond $100 Bond and we might buy it at $95 okay but at maturity you're going to get the extra $5 but the coupon on that might have been only 2% but because you're going to get that extra $5 your yield to maturity is much higher uh may I of course please so as he's digging that out it it clicks in my head that we should be at some point developing a spreadsheet that shows yield to maturity the treasure does have that okay that's something I don't think we've ever seen probably not probably CU there's really no method of giving that to you unless it's developed here so for instance on Peg AIS as of June 30 your coupon was3 basis points but you yield to maturity was 5.15% and then how you get that this is an actual bond that you own this a US Treasury that's going to mature in um September 15th we bought it at $248,300 current price as of June 30th was $252 4 $252,400 but when it Murs it's going to be $255,000 okay so we bought it at a discount and it was uh the coupon on that was 375 so what our team does we're always looking at how do we maximize the income that any account gets that's why we're buying discount coupons or discounted uh treasuries um then there's another one here and it doesn't have an interest rate it's what they call a zero because it's going to mature at a level so for instance we had one here that we bought it at $250,900 and it's going to mature at $257,000 so it doesn't pay you interest it just grows in value and then at the end you get your your full principal back so what treasurers have been using on that report because there's only one column it says interest rate as you saw um even on your uh OPB your OPB you know your interest on OPB because we're not managing the OPB for interest we're managing opep to grow it okay so the interest we might buy um mutual funds that don't pay dividends we want it to grow so you're yield to mature I mean your current income might be 1% but it's return turning over five six or whatever so similar to your your mutual funds that you would own in your own portfolios not all your mutual funds pay a dividend so it's that's what we do as a as a team to come up with how do we maximize your money and tie it to what you need it for and that's why you have the three buckets of money that first bucket of money is very much driven on that interest income the middle bucket it's kind of sort of and then the one way over on the right it's all driven on growth and that's some of the notes that you see yield to maturity current yield and then uh time weighted excuse me um one other explanation we got excuse me um the last time we had our um financi uh what's her name my in mhm was that especially with the accounts that need to be very liquid which would be the checking accounts and um I just saw a whole bunch of them here but the ones that are paying money in and out all the time um some of the tradeoff there she claimed was um giving up a little bit of interest to wave get fees waved is that a balancing act that that is a common practice that is a common practice okay uh here in our industry where you're going to get paid less of an interest rate to pay for your deposits to pay for your uh checks to do y a transfers that is a common practice in our industry I'm not a bank um okay but that is common yeah and and those aren't investment instruments those are just U money handling instruments I I don't know what the correct term is but simple they're regular uh transaction accounts in the old uh I don't know if the banks still use it DDA accounts okay um so you're going to have you know a very low interest in your payroll and accounts payable y a little higher probably in your depository so that's the account that myen has all her money come in and out of and then you have all those other accounts that you have were all money markets at the various banking institutions and they're paying much higher right okay that that's great I just wanted to verify that I had that correct um and then the other thing like I said we've keyed into these accounts that we know do not have to be fluid such as the cemetery's uh Perpetual care account that's a chunk of money that we can't touch by by law correct so I would assume assume if it's allowed that that should be invested aggressively as possible but principal protected that make sense it I believe that's in your trust fund account that we have it is so it is in that middle bucket okay and currently the town has 10% Equity 90% fixed income if the town chose to go down the path of prudent what we would recommend is calling out like I said earlier when we were talking about the different um uh items that were on that trust fund report we leave the stabilization accounts in that account and then take out I believe I said like $1.4 million bring that on over into its own separate bucket and then we change the asset Cal asset allocation from 1090 to 64 okay and then now as you say you cannot spend the principal on the cemetery Perpetual care so now if you're not going to spend principal why not take some risk why not grow the principal so yes and what we would then do um which is kind of neat now in our world of doing this whole prudent thing for for the towns is go what we call 20 rolling quarters currently towns only spend that in income well why not spend some growth so if you have a stock that you bought it at $10 and now it's worth $100 there unrealized gains in that well the only way you can spend that is to actually sell it so we want to be able to uh work with the towns and then we come up with a a calculation of what we call 20 rolling quarters 5 years and then that way there it smooth out you know if you recall years back um when interest rates were near zero the scholarship committees or the cemetery how come we're not getting enough money to support my budget right so then now if you can use you know having it Go prudent and then you know use 20 rolling quarters you might be able to smooth that money that they're going to get from their funds which then would be less V draw on you guys how do you account for that over the years though we come up with a calculation um so how we would do it is how much do you need and then we'd hedge not hedge we' adjust that for inflation and then we would Target our investments to meet that and then so what could happen is you know you have a year that you saw great growth you're not going to spend it all you're going to have another year that you saw negative growth so by coming up with that average and treat it just like a real endowment that's what you're doing you're you're going to start to treat these Perpetual funds as pure endowments so that's that that's how we would do it and that's what is being done throughout the Commonwealth in regular in endowment funds and what's Community Foundation or whatever that's how they're being done now mm in towns aren't subject to like capital gains taxes and all that right no you don't pay tax could probably go all night but we did say that this would be a more in-depth meeting um do you know if like MMA or any are they doing seminars or webinars or anything on this I can't speak them what seeing in this three bucket that was going to be a breakout um session at MMA and then um that was the MMA at the last week cancelled uh the MMA conference okay um so that's what that was going to be used for um to educate Finance committees and powers to be um whereas this has just happened I do not know what the mma's position is on it it's law yeah I can't speak for what their plans are in educating all of you guys there is a white paper that Bartholomew has put together on going prudent that they're going to distribute I believe to to e and and we'll pass it around as well right and but that's coming from us as far as MMA I uh we believe it's it's a good thing um speaking to the people that voted it um at the State House you know we made a good case and mass collector treasurers made a good case on why treasures and the Comm needed it or needed that legislation not it Evan do you think that'd be something that we might suggest to the Massachusetts um Association of Finance committees where they meet twice a year a small presentation at that meeting I think would reach a targeted audience and those are all finance committee people and that was the intent of um this presentation and that's why we were selected to make it y um because it would get to um the people that have an impact on budgets mhm and what is this law that we're we're doing and what is a lot of times you know you guys were aware of it but a lot of times people in finance committees don't understand the money they know they have the authority to spend it but what is it and what are the restrictions you know more times and not we'll be in a meeting and well why can't we own Amazon you know why can't we have 100% in the S&P 500 you know Bitcoin pardon Bitcoin yeah Bitcoin yeah exactly we we can't sell Bitcoin at commwell so good for you but how is Bartholomew paid are you paid asset under management or yes so uh for those at home uh and the committee there's two ways advisors get paid um one way would be to have markup and you buy a bond at or something at you know $95 we put it into your account at 100 that's a commission and that's how in the old way um that's when the pure Brokers um Washington and the um U powers to be didn't like that because you didn't know how or we didn't know how much we were paying so now it is based off of assets under management and what we do is we take all the assets don't know how much we got it's same for I don't know [Music] sorry about that you're about $7.5 million so you're probably don't hold me to this I can get it for your next meeting you're probably between 35 and 40 basis points and I will get that um Ezekiel and then he can provide it um for your next meeting I just don't have the the sheet that's fine that I it I do have it here okay sorry about that okay so call it I was right um between 6 million and 10 million you're at 35 basis points okay um probably should have a quick discussion of who we are um we are bolun company we're independent investment advisory firm out of Worcester we manage just shy of5 billion and the municipal aspect of that 5 million is just under $3 billion we deal with about 325 Municipal entities so that's who we are our broker dealer is commonweal financial Network they are out of uh walam um and they are the largest independent broker dealer in the country and then all of the Town Securities are held at National Financial Services which is a subsidiary Fidelity so that 35 basis points pays for your custodian National pays the broker dealer and also pays us it covers all ticket charges all wire fees covers everything and then as more money goes in so if you got all over $10 million it goes down to 30 you go over 15 million it goes down to 20 and 20 million that's at 20 basis points so we believe that our and it goes back to dollar one so when I was looking around we take all the bank accounts add it up and then that's how we establish the fee that's it a lot I was expecting way more questions I could probably go for more but I don't need to Chris you're starting to get like me you know um the recommended draft language that was sent over for special town meeting um it's pretty simple from Bartholomew is just says to see if the town will vote to accept the provisions of General Law chapter 44 Section 5 for b c and d to allow Town trust funds to be invested in accordance with General Law chapter 203c the so-called quote prudent investment rule or take any other action relative there to so very straightforward very straightforward should be easy to to present and explain I think and the key is what you're doing is you're increasing the diversification right on your trust funds and that that's the main reason why you want to do that and you know remember this does not affect the stabilization account or any of your other monies so in that being said if you took you know an Apples to Apples comparison you're making sorry not having in front of me I apologize so for instance when you comparing Apples to Apples on why you want to do this your total return on your trust funds is 2.08% versus your total return on your OPB and it's at 6040 is 5% MH there's your rationale how much is in million and a half uh 1.4 right now remember this is old yeah currently on June 30 is 1.4 so quick math says we're 72 minus OPB is 6 million and we 1.4 5.2 is your trust funds and 756 th000 in the peg that's your number um your opab this past fiscal year did over 10 so we saw all that in our own accounts so and then the Benchmark on opab that is so we use a blended Benchmark The Benchmark did 507 and you did 501 since Inception so right right on the mark have you seen towns that have gone prudent before that have been able to use some of these I know you mentioned sort of equating it to an endowment in a sense have you seen towns that have gone prudent been able to say fully remove the investment or the appropriation portion of funding like Peg access or opep or anything like that strictly off of Investments I cannot say that um um because it's really just happened a year ago and most towns are just starting to move into it or just going with the 203c in general I I can't say I don't know what what's going to be needed from these accounts versus how much is um being made now and I I I would not be able to have that information okay but I think optimally we would be able to at least say that we could reduce our need to appropriate to portions of these accounts to cover other bills that we're going to have to do for the year that would always be the whole okay yes so in that scholarship in that Cemetery Perpetual care um you're if you're supplementing those budgets you know whether it's a library or any other supplemental uh your hope would be to have those funds that are being being uh invested to allow them to generate more income so they don't have to come back so ideally you know the cemetery Perpetual care you know you can only spend the income so if that was able to generate enough money because they need the next pickup truck they need the next backo the ideal situation is to be able to generate that income or uh have it grow enough so that you'll be able to use that fund to pay for those items okay um so it does sound like B pulling on that that there is ways we can structurally change the way we Finance the town correct that's what I was getting at exactly it would be a structural change well just I guess the way we approach how we fund the town I I suppose the answer would be yes but it's just another Revenue Source exactly now other words we wouldn't it would reduce some of the theoretical tax burden in theory yeah and but and a lot of times townstone when I was in shury a lot of times departments never knew that they had this money here and then now as budgets get Tighter and Tighter and Tighter then finance committee Finance directors begin to look at other sources of revenue so I I would assume yeah okay is it possible to to run a a predictor of sorts or or I guess to look through all the different accounts um to pull out what we could move into specifically like all of the funds that we could I know some of them we we don't know specifically like the investment accounts and whatnot and and get a relative idea as to how much you know the the 6 or 7% conservative is um return to kind of get an idea as to what we would be looking at for comparison to what we've been earning on those accounts what you're dealing with here with us in particular are you trust funds if there are other funds in those other bank accounts um certainly um the treasurer could look and say okay can I move this over because it's ABC fund that it's designated long term not having that with me and certainly not having myene here uh she would have to be the one that could you know determine is there other ways to increase her yield on that particular fund okay but like we said earlier a lot of those could be just your monies that you have in the general side of that bucket one and is very limiting you know so you're you're limited to bank deposits in treasuries and you know and Peg as we saw you know that was a great move uh by the town to take that and invest that in treasuries you know CU particularly where treasury yields are today so well the stabilization funds are ones stabilization funds are in this trust fund right um so they're with us and they're at that 1090 mix they're in that middle bucket right so if we went 6040 or something stabilization cannot go into prudent by it can't I thought you said the middle could yeah so that's why I said you have to break off uh that middle bucket because of this new legislation the stabilization Community preservation has to stay with the legalist and that's if call I'd said okay um there's about $1.4 million we'd car that out into its own account sorry uh move that into its own account go prudent 6040 and then the stabilization would have to stay at that you know 1090 we could I always um am I'm always careful on increasing the equity yield on the stabilization cuz we know what can happen a 2/3 Ved town meeting and then now you've just taken down a million bucks because you had to buy something yeah um so the most being a former Treasurer I used to be the treasurer at shury um the most Equity I would ever want to put into a stabilization count would bean maybe 20 25 at the outside 20 25 what uh percent okay the vehicle stabilization fund is the same though all stabiliz ation funds have to stay so whether you call it ambulance vehicle if it's um created under the stabilization statute they all are the same you just were allowed to break out for special purpose okay but Peg is outside of that for some reason I don't know how that was established I don't know I just started I don't know how it was established the peg access you know that's operating you know that those funds need to stay liquid the the um 700,000 that's in there um that's for investment that's I'm assuming that determination at that point in time was made but we can save this we're not using that on a on a daily basis you know the um will say that first bucket you keep say in liquid but you have to keep in mind there's a lot of activity daily it could be account payable it could be um payroll but it there's also Daily um changes between the revolving funds the general funds there's a lot of activity in the background so in order to that's why they're in their first bucket and that's why you see the yield so low there's a lot of activity we don't have to pay the fee for that mhm is there anything statutorily restricting us from grouping together some of those accounts and just keeping the the account on our books but grouping together multiple accounts in One bank account that that is U totally the treasurers responsibility and like I said those are um the banking relationships that all treasurers have um you know as we talked about you know having money in certain accounts as a compensating balance account that pays for the payroll or um you know your account reconcil a on um for payroll and accounts payable uh so the treasurer will then have those banking relationships that I articulated earlier and they will move the money around trying to get the best rate for for the community okay and there's um a very very competitive banking industry uh on the governmental side um as you've seen in that sheet and there's way more Banks than what you know myene is currently using okay then there could be probably 30 or 40 Banks here in the Comm wall that are very active in the municipal Market you know uni bank Harbor one um I better not go down CU I'll get in trouble because I forgot one of my colleagues so but there are many many many banks that work with your Treasures mm the the main reason why I ask is is we have you know the security street we have $6,000 in there a r r a e e CG Grant we have $298 in there is there is there anything stopping us Mass General law from actually if it's a grant it may have to stay separate great right okay fair enough um but the security streets the deputed deposit stuff like that can we combine those into a single account that's earning 4% rather than .01% again all depends on what the accounts for so you have all the Student Activity accounts by Statute the treasurers have to have a a bank account for each of the schools yep and then they then transfer money out of that bank account into a bank account at the school okay so that's what those are um then if you have B subdivisions Bond mhm those are all and I I don't recall call off the top of my head um those would be some of your subdivisions okay so depending on the planning board in their involvement saying okay uh we're going to accept $200,000 in this Bond uh from this bank so they're all unique in some way and you just have to one by one and I'm sure my's done that trying to maximize her yield okay but again what you're looking at is last year right things are way different a year later and so when you see those interest rates you know I'm sure they're higher I'm sure they're higher um but we'll see uh what the town Treasures put out in September MH uh to see what the new rates are amongst all the banks okay any other questions for tonight NOP thank you so much I really appreciate the deeper dive have a great night I've got one question for Ezekiel before he moves away from the uh microphone um on page one of this uh spreadsheet that we've been looking at down towards the bottom um in in fact Chris mentioned it a few minutes ago vehicle equipment stabilization and I've seen that same designation in the new policy that we're reviewing at this point what is that count which account is that is it what's been called special purpose stabilization up to now yes you're correct that's a special purpose it's the vehicle equipment stabilization it's the the two terms have been um intermingled that okay yeah personally I've been fighting that battle for two or three years I it really concerns me that we've really changed the name of that account that the public because and again I'm still trying to find the article that created that account but depending on the exact wording of that article that is not specific although we that's what we've used it for it may it's not necessarily specific to vehicles and equipment and I've been trying to make that point for a number of years that everybody needs to understand that town meeting I believe the last time I read I got an interpretation is that town meeting can spend that money for anything with a 2third vote not just vehicles and equipment and I always get pushed back that well that's what we always use it for I said that's fine that's what you always use it for but I want the public to know going forward and and you know until it's changed that it can be used for other uses es may not be prudent from a fiscal point of view but there may be extenuating circumstances at some point in the future where we need $500,000 and that's the only place to pull it from absolutely I will tell you in the general ledger it's still called vehicle equipment stabilization it took me some time to figure out why it's being called special purpose because that's the way it was created and called out in the article at town meeting I'll have to pull the original article to review if you if you find it please send it to me because I've been trying to refind it and I haven't been able to recently yeah I'll dig through there's a lot of papers in my office all right thank you thank you all right next up we have Mr Bernard go over some chapter 90 stuff you pull up the presentation all right see if I can move this so I can actually see all right so Bard I'm the DPW director here to talk about the chapter 90 funding I'm sure you have my uh presentation in front of you yep just open it up now so I can sh I can screen share it all right so what is chapter 90 chapter 90 is money is provided by the Commonwealth of mass and administered by mass do it's authorized by Mass General Law chapter 90 section 34 and chapter 90 provides funding to municipalities for the implementation implementation of Capital Improvements on local public ways and every municipality in the Commonwealth is allotted a portion of the total program dollars so what the funding levels so the funding levels are established by the Massachusetts legislature and approved by the governor on an annual basis um the base amount is approved um based on each of the comms 351 municipalities and allocated overall to each spend municipality every year uh every fiscal year which is July 1 through June 30th and the the total amount in the program has been static since 2012 it's been $200 million of course everybody knows inflation has grown so hopefully that fund grows that allocation grows at some point how much does the town of lunenberg receive so they they have a formula to figure out how much each M municipality gets and it's um 58.33% is uh how many miles of Road you have and 20.83% is based on population and employment is makes up the other 20.83% so I've listed what we've received in since FY 20 which was 456,000 then it it dropped the next year 4 almost 16,000 dropped again in fy22 415,000 little bump in FY 23 to almost 420,000 FY 24 they the regular funding dropped a little bit 418,000 but then they came up with this two other programs a fair share program and we got got 240,000 out of that and another program called rural roadways program we got almost 22,000 out of that and I'll explain those a little more uh and then this year fiscal 25 we have 48,000 so pretty steady for the past five years do we anticipate getting the fair share later in the year I'm not sure I'm not sure how that legislation works I don't know if that was a one year thing or is when did we get the fair share last year do you know it kicked in later ieki do you know when it came in I um it came in about I think it was May the fair share yeah it was late in the fiscal year yeah okay is there any reason why so if 20 almost 21% of this is based on population we had a large jump in our population after the last census is that reflected at all in this is that the fy20 number possibly I would expect there to be somewhat of a jump well it also depends on all the other municipalities right if they're okay jumping you know so I don't know I can't answer that one okay probably held harmless yeah and so U why do we get more chapter 90 funding in FY 24 again it was that um fair share and that Royal Roads programs so that fair share was an amendment to the State Constitution to provide resources to education and transportation through additional taxes on um Millionaires and the Roy roadway funding Act was another legislation State legislation to support construction and reconstruction of Municipal roadways and more rural areas and the fair share in the roal rural roadways funding can you be used just like the chapter 90 fundings this that's the same so how much do we have now so since fiscal year 2020 we've spent $800 $891,000 so right now we have 2.4 million however we've already have programed uh projects approved for $821,000 and so right now I have almost $1.6 million in funding that we can use does this include the FY 25 418,000 it does okay yeah that $821,000 though will be reimbursed right it has not yet been reimbursed right right so I I think I get into it a couple slides down so it's project it's sidewalk project yeah so that the paving has been done we sent in for reimbursement we haven't heard back yet should be when you do get reimbursed does that go right back into the DPW line item or just back into General funds general fund and then probably ultimately becomes free cash right well I believe so correct cuz you you're essentially utilizing your general fund cash to fund the project it's just a first so it's just it's minute now okay the net is zero great all right uh talk about eligibility for chapter 90 funding so only roadways that are reported to Mast start as locally accepted roadways can be factored into the abortion that we get in those roadways that's the only place where we can spend that money so m d says we have 82 mil roadways uh we say we have 87 miles is about 5 miles uh trying to we're trying to get those five miles into Mard right that's more money right yeah and to to do so you have to find the vote from the town meeting and we tried to find some we sent some in they said no it wasn't good enough so we're still working on that um why don't we just revote it can't we just revote it that might be the the way to do it yeah well it do we know what these five miles are that are aren't being accepted or yeah yeah so we so basically maybe that's the that's the thing just simply have another Vote or confirmatory vote if we think that's the proper way yeah I'll that's legal council about that yeah maybe we could do it at the November town meeting yeah with with the warrant open that should be a real simple one to to write up yeah and and put through um Bill if I could interrupt just a moment U what you just spoke about I had down here as a note for waiter but I'm glad it's in the presentation um you and I actually talked about this uh face to face sometime in the last couple of weeks so just to be clear what you just stated is that chapter 90 funds can only be used on roads that have been about accepted by the town okay so what is the designation of the cemetery roads they're not accepted roads they just exist on Town property correct Drive they're basically driveways correct okay and then you also stated that we do have a number of roads that are not formally accepted outside of the ones we're debating about in town did did I make any sense in that so you've got the five miles that you're arguing with them about one way or the other but we have additional roads above and beyond that 5 miles that are definitely not eligible that's correct right fire roads and there's a lot of fire roads and private roads yeah right okay I just like to get that out there because U people do listen to these meetings and Y they get quite a bit out of it if we put that detail into it Jo that was a good clarification y thank you all right so what kind of projects can be funded by chapter 90 so uh the sidewalk ramps BMS curb bike Lanes drainage there's a huge list that pretty much anything on the roadway I any and any kind of Maintenance of the roadway different kind of um Paving and maintenance chip sailes crack sailing um it can be used for traffic items um warning signs pavement markings pedestrian signals and traffic signals it can be used for Bridges and culverts and um it could be used for RightWay Acquisitions uh it can be used for Street lighting and and tree planning and there's a lot more it could be used to purchase equipment to maintain roadways it's again you list any anything you can think of to repair or maintain a roadways probably on the list right the air compressors cranes uh excavators generators greaters right loaders you can buy trucks they have to be over 27,000 pounds so I have two questions one what is what is a rip wrap in civil it's stone rock yeah it's it's rock yeah you see it on the side of the roads live oh so we have a dra big rocks that are next to my house yeah all right I've never known that that was what that was called for uh the second one different sizes the tree planting and Landscaping in association with the project right what type of project are we talking about a project or can you like a park project no well Park's not a road so but if the but do we consider the entryway into Marshall to be one of our paved roads drive it would be a driveway it is yeah it wouldn't be an accepted roadway yeah it would be a like a complete streets project where you're putting new sidewalks you're you're putting bicycle Lanes M there might be a grass strip between the roadway in the sidewalk you might want to put plantings in there you might want to put trees in there that that's where that would be used for can you use it for um engineering like to actually develop plans or you can that's the next slide all right so the next slide so transportation engineering design so one of the projects I I have out there now is a sidewalk project so I'm using chapter 90 money to pay the engineer for that project um bill which project that was the one that was the oper money oh so Northville Road over near Turkey Hill yes that the school committee requested Opa money the only reason I brought that up is that there's been discussion about three different locations for sidewalks over the past couple of years that one that you're talking about um Highland Chestnut Street Improvement that way and then over in wh at The Rotary so I just wanted to verify which project you were talking about right now thank you right and then also in that project I'm going to tie in maintenance of some of the existing sidewalks we have and what else you can use the money for um for planning purposes and you can do other consultant services and you can use it for garages and parking facilities and pavement management and salt storage sheds uh talk about the roles that mast in the town plays and how it works so uh Mast provide provides guidance and assistance they they man if we had a mark stop could we pay for parking associated with it can you say that again we have like that Mart bus that drives around and picks people up if we put a Mart stop at Marshall Park could we make that the parking lot related to mass transportation Transit you might be able to yeah maybe then can we put Plants along the side of that that maybe well for Creative yeah anything to bring the cost down yeah I can ask the question to M do so back to the roles um M manages contracts and accounts they confirm eligibility so if I want a project they have a new uh web portal it's called Grant Central so I put the project in there it gets approved online it used to be all paper now it's online so that's better is it all reactive or proactive do you have to have already spent the funds before you can actually you see if you you would qualify for it no okay NOP nope we have to get qualified first before you can even do the project correct okay right and uh sometimes you want your contractors to be pre-qualified so the the maintenance the uh Paving contract I put out I went through asked for chapter 90 funds they said yes and then we had to get a list of pre-qualified um contractors for that so mot does that and then they once we do the work request the money they'll they uh disperse the the money to us so it's our our job to plan and prioritize projects and we have to submit project requests like I was talking about um we have we it would be our responsibility to hire contract Consultants to design a project or I'll try to do a lot of them inh house myself and we have to advertise and get the contractors uh we oversee and the the work and then we request reimbursement uh so uh this is just a followup on that the implementation process again we have the request a project um lot of times you want pre-qualified um contractors right again we have to procure the contractors we have to oversee the work and then we request reimbursement does it all have to be done within the same fiscal year it does not okay and again I I just want so the process from our perspective is we would give you the $600,000 or whatever we give you for road maintenance you would seek to do some of that road maintenance out of this so chapter 90 would be on top of the 600 but you would have to pay out of your budget before you get reimbursed right correct how would that work though if you roll over between uh uh fiscal years is but we pay out of the general fund right equ right it would come out of the general fund and then when we get reimbursed it goes back into the general fund okay but that's Ezekiel is he talking about appropriated funds that he's using and we don't get reimbursed for them until the next fiscal way it's set up in the general ledger we have the chapter 90 funds set up as a separate bucket so essentially you're using the town's cash to fund the project and it's coming out of the separate account that we have it's not bank account is line item in the general in the general ledger and it gets reimbursed so it's like I said earlier it's a net zero so that's how that works so we track them the amount spent through that Fund in the journal Ledger okay so so when they close out that account doesn't get calculated into correct it doesn't get calculated in in the overall free cash certification it gets rolled into the next year the funds it's it's treated like a grant okay thank you and I wanted to say since I'm up here the fair share I said May time is going by way too fast is actually we received it June 24th and we will be getting it again in theory because it's it's the millionaires tax it's supposed to be annually is isn't it right it's supposed to be self funding on an annual basis it's that 1.6 billion that they got I'm I'm assuming yeah it may change the amount but we should expect to see something hopefully on a yearly basis but last year from year to year last year was the first year so right probably building the fund that first year before appropriating it to T so was it only chapter 90 money in that fund that get so the chapter 90 money so we keep record of these separately so we have the chap 9 fund we have the fair share and the rural rat we also have the r Grant which is a separate entity as because the fair shared is not eligible for reimbursement with chapter 95 no the fair share it's an upfront it's an upfront money but it has to be used for roads and and what trans corre from you have to report out what you spent it on okay great you know as we go through the capital planning process I think we got to bring these chapter 90s and other kind of in front of the committee as potential funding sources for projects cuz if there is an additional funding source besides free cash you know we may want to you know acknowledge that and bring it forward as a as a potential project or seek funding for that project that way so just kind of a I don't know I think we've talked about that before amongst the board and at the capital planning are there some capital projects that have been approved that are chapter 90 eligible well like the air compressor was one that was I think you just missed the cut or something on that this year right and then you had like jackhammers or something right didn't you I mean that compressor and Jack camea so I did purchase that with chapter 90 money yeah so we have that now Bill you're engineering for like uh Culvert projects that are engineering one year in the project the next year that's all eligible also isn't it it would be yes yeah so we've done yeah multiple projects like that and we've done it through free cash whereas chapter 90 funds can be used y i I agree we we really need to take a deeper dive into Revenue sources when we're looking at those projects thank you especially once we got those five extra miles 5.3 extra miles all right so the following the last of the slides is kind of a where where I envisioned spending the money in the next few years so the fy2 24 which we just came out of right um that $800 plus, is is here right so I use it to to Mill and pave number of roads I purchased the air compressor and um have a contract with a engineer to design the sidewalk job that's what you see here um so fy2 which we just started um going to use it for um roadway maintenance fog sailing on a number of Roads um I have a bunch of drainage sale drainage Improvement projects which I had on my Capital planning list and um potentially they come out of here and once I get the engineering done on the sidewalk project you know we have to pay for the the construction somehow we pay for it out of chapter 90 uh I talked about this a little bit about the the payment management so we have a payment Management program um our um consulted they would call beta group so they forecasted how much we were going to going to spend each year that's the the blue columns so the the white is what my budget is so the yellow makes up the difference in chapter 90 funding so an FY 25 I'll need a little bit FY 26 um you know 47,000 and FY 27 need 62,000 to supplement our budget to to meet goals of the the payment Management program does that have a ceiling at any point in the plan where we stop adding 50,000 every year it was my understanding we were going to stop at a million dollar okay well but this beta estimate this is actually they went out and surveyed all the roads and this is their estimate over the next five 7 10 years or something that's how we ended up with the $50,000 incremental increases right no I think that this is recent right this this one you just did right we did it oh that's right cuz it just expired we we made it through the 5e the plan yeah so this was the new one okay right so this is the new plan it started in FY 23 so Bill the the supplemental Amounts is that driven more or less by cost increases more than total work you expect to do in each one of those years it's well it's combination yeah okay I wasn't looking for specific say yes or no it's fine thank you if we continue to get that amount of money that's what I'm saying we should be getting something similar to that on a yearly basis unless we drive all the millionaires out of Massachusetts well that's happening that's happening yeah that's what they say enough is enough we're going to have long ambulance rides too so going forward I I tried to predict how much money was going to come in so I just chose 415,000 hopefully that's on the light side and again um looking to do roadway maintenance fog Hill uh I have Bridge repairs in there so right now we have a consultant working on a um um Bridge uh plan they went out and inspected our bridges now they're G to come back with recommendations on what work needs to be done and try to prioritize that um I went out with them looked at the bridges when they went out uh they're in tough shape we we're going to need a lot of work um I have $450,000 there that that won't get you too much on bridge repair not going to get you too far uh some of the bridges will need replacement and note that some of them going to be multi-million dollars yeah could you do a comprehensive study on um like you did with the roads for Bridges that's to predict what we need to do in the next similar what we're doing at maybe not as comprehensive but um that's similar program right we're looking at the condition and coming up with cost estimates of what it would cost to fix them or replace them and then prioritize very much like the payement management plan but I don't see any in here that says you want to bring in a outside consultant to it's it's already in process oh it is in process yeah I expect to have the report I I think they told me in October November okay good bill have you got any I know we've been picking away a critical pending failures the last few years to do with culs and bridges do we still have critical pending failures that are going to have to be jumped on in the next three years or so I would say yes yeah I'm not asking you to identify them because people get all freaked out but I'm just wondering if we have a lot of them or just a couple or there was some I'll say funky designs out there okay yeah but is it design failure or is it structural failure that that I'm more concerned about structural failure I don't think we're going to have any structural failures but yeah there's there's stuff that needs to be up updated yeah okay thank you and you know drainage pipes um I'm forever fixing drainage pipes we just did one out on mopus road we have we'll be on whm Road in a couple weeks so I I think I think I read or or heard a report as you know up in um Northern New Hampshire over toward especially towards the Vermont Vermont border and over into Vermont they're rethinking totally rethinking their engineering for drainage and and those types of things and uh I don't know what I don't know what the multiplier is but The increased volume required now in in engineering for those types of projects is you know out of this world because the water runoff they're getting in in a matter of 4 hours there's just no way the systems can handle it yeah and I've been saying that here in front of the this board select board and others um yeah the the drainage in town it was put in 50 60 100 years ago and it worked but it's not working now the storms are different yeah the only the only concern I have is and the challenge is Bal to balance how much money and how much infrastructure you're going to improve in that direction is the fact that the events up that in that area anyway over a 3M per uh 3 m stretch of land you've got a difference in rainfall of 1 in 3 in 8 in in the same 6-h hour period so yeah what are we going to do put uh 60in uh drainage covers everywhere yeah all all over New England right you can't do that obviously yeah and that that happened what September 11th lemon got what 11 in we got about six right we had an event up there um in New Hampshire and spilled over into Vermont and uh it was incredible yeah yeah so how do you design for that right you can't really you got to do what's prudent right yep so I think this is really good I I think that fair share um we need to kind of try to get an estimate of how much we should expect in that fair share on a and at what periodicity we actually get those revenues cuz that could really augment this plan yeah that'll change this plan significantly is there a way of reaching out to someone and the state to understand how that is going to occur yeah I I'll start with the uh the Mard district office see if they know about it well you can take a look at what I mean they brought in 1.6 billion last year if you look at what's if it's the similar similar appropriation this year you could at least get an estimate from it mhm I don't actually know what was appropriated in the budget for it this year I if I count on that so much FY 27 28 29 30 they all kind of look the same right I put in the 415,000 anticipated um you know I put money into drainage and pavement management basically right that's what 27 is 28's the same 29's the same 30 the same it's hard to predict how much we're going to get and but we know there going to be drained it's sto Bridge repairs in in those years you going to make it are you about to make us happy no um I was just looking at the fair share yeah Amendment so um so this recent funding 100 million went to each of to the 351 municipalities uh 50 million is distributed based on the chapter 90 formula the second 50 million is uh distributed using a formula based solely on each municipality share of Road mileage so that's how so really want we got to get those miles was that last year can we steal a few miles from another town Ezekiel by roads Jay was asking if that was last year the 24 the 20 well the 23 formula that's what the 23 formula is funded in 24 like I said earlier the 23 is to build the bucket and 24 to distributed 100 million but fiscal year 25 what do we don't know yet it's um I'm guessing it's going to be the same for I can forward the link to that so we should be expecting a quarter million I think so unless something drastic changed how much fund we get I read something in the the governor's budget that they're looking at that money for it's going to be fair for something else I don't know if I'd rely on Fair Share I thought it was written in the law what it could be used for yeah transportation in schools yeah yeah so you thinking it's going more toward schools no I had I had think it had something to do with um the cost of this new um the immigration and managing those people and school having to do with the schools and transportation being involved with that I remember reading something in the paper about they're looking that money as an alternative so it's still going to be transportation schools just not how we have been traditionally using it don't hold me there but I know I read something somewhere in the paper about something changing in in the budget yeah I mean we should run that to ground and we should be talking to our legislators to make sure that that does not happen I don't know how how well that works all right all right any other questions no very good thank you is there I just have one question um so I noticed in the later years we're spending down chapter 90 basically all the way down is there a reason why we were sitting on 2 million 22 million for so long without spending it well before I arrived I don't know I'll take a little blame for that you know kind of new with this so it took me a while to realize it was there and get going on it okay so okay it's not it's not current pra it's current practice now is to spend it to use it right CU it doesn't do any good sitting in the bank right you don't get money on it well it doesn't yeah doesn't do any good sitting in in the in the comms Bank exactly all right thank you so much I've got one other thing I little bit off tiny bit off subject but um I haven't been following it close enough to know where we're at there was quite a bit of rumbling a year or so ago about bringing forward a storm water department or entity of some sort in the in the near future is what it sounded like a year ago and I haven't heard much at all about that did it just get tabled while we got through our fiscal mess and and it'll come back up around again in a year or so or yeah so the storm water task force has been meeting regularly talking about establishing a storm water utility utility that's right so um yeah we we want to get it in in front of a town meeting it won't be this here um maybe in the spring right where I think we need to do a little uh um PR on that you know public relations get people to understand what it is what it's going to pay for how it's going to help okay and uh please correct me if I'm wrong because I hear a lot of numbers um at that time and it may change by the time it comes forward to town meeting the um initial launch for that utility is in the million dollar range is that what it was and I'm saying that's the line that not that's not necessarily the expense year to year but to to launch it and get it set up properly right so it'll probably be less than that um there'll be a user fee like you pay for your water you pay for your sewer you're going to pay for your storm water um we want to keep it under $100 per household um businesses because they have huge pocket Lots huge buildings they should be paying a little more we're working formulas for that there's different ways to calculate it okay again just a little piece to get it out to the public now as you say PR if they hear a little bit now a little bit 6 months from now and then when you really push it a year or so from now they will have had been exposed to it a little bit at least right if anybody's following the storm water task force you can you can see what we're talking about there right great thank you one thing I had heard on that is that there was thoughts of you know how much driveway you have but I think it should be driveways that head into the road not driveways that head into your D your well that's that's one way to calculate a fee right you you look at impervious surface so your driveway your roof um that's a lot of work right you would have to hire an engineer to look at every property in town yeah be a lot easier to say about $60 per household and but then calculate the impervious surface for businesses because obviously they have way more than the typical homeowner right they're causing a lot more runoff than a typical homeowner is it's kind of like a split tax rate type of setup yeah and and the rationale that you're saying right now makes sense to me but I'd have to digest it a little more so for FY 25 it looks like it's still 100 million in supplemental chapter 90 for cities and towns so the same as it was for this year and then also another 75 million for regional uh Regional Transit not that one um the same as last year for both of those two different accounts so so good yeah hopefully we get that hopefully what Jay wrote is wrong excellent thank you very much appreciate it um Bill one question Bridge repairs how do we like qualify for small Bridge grants for these this bridge work yeah yeah you have to apply so we we have a small Bridge Grant now for the uh Bridge work at ill of the catacon M Bridge uh Brook um by the way that work should be starting in October um still trying to get a schedule out of my contractor but that's when the water in the lake is lowered so that's when they'll be starting yeah so I think you can only have one Grant at a time so we'll have to finish that one out and this The Bridge management program we're looking at that'll tell us which one we should Target next and yeah I I'll apply for another Grant okay and there may be other grants out there um so we'll keep looking we have access to grant writing services now we don't know what to do with them or how to get them but we have them we don't actually have the grant writing service yet do we we have the money for it we have the money we don't have to have the consultant better run thank you very much thank you thank you you're welcome all right so next up is budget review process uh suggestions for improvement I did find out that the town the inim town manager went home sick today okay so that's why he's not here um so um what we talked about 2 weeks ago was the possibility of tripling up instead of doubling up um thank you e thanks Ezekiel uh tripling up instead of just doubling up on our presentations during budget season to try and get us a few more weeks of time at the end yeah um to putting we've also discussed um I have notes on it do we create a template that we distribute to all department heads to whether it's even just you know this is kind of the outline of what we want 10 minutes of this 10 minutes of this 20 minutes of this out um do we have a time limit Associated so I just I wanted to have this conversation with Carter because I think it it's going to really depend upon what he decides to have as well what his intentions are but I do want to be able to present something to him at least for our preference yeah one thing I was thinking is well two things one the first was um last year sometimes we were confused as as to whether they were presenting their their desired budget the needs budget the town managers so we should stick with one on that and that's why that's one of the reasons why I think a template we we we say you know please do a slide of this a slide of this a slide of that anything else you want to do in your 10 minutes of allotment feel free plug whatever you want but please make sure that you are showing us this this and this with needs based or whatever we decide right and you know the other one I was thinking about today is money Tech we might as well just do now because in the end all they say is here's your bill so why are they doing it at the end of the year we probably should do it before they do their budgeting so that we get input into the budget versus just here's what it is everybody else decide well we do have a vote right you we have one vote it's true Pittsburgh has three we we have a vote though it's kind of like the the the teachers the you just don't have an input and I think the way we do it now it comes after all the votes I think we should do it before the votes cuz then we can advise maybe we can influence otherwise why even bother with it I mean just just send I mean it's always nice to hear what they're doing but we could do that in in May cuz there's nothing we can do about it I would be fine with that I mean I'm also fine with if that's not an option is there any reason to have do we do we need to have Monte Tech come in and tell us how much we need to pay them I don't think it's time critical I mean cuz it it's just a bill in it's not an advertisement for something in the town it's not saying like here's what the library is doing for the community here's what the council and aging is doing for the community here's why their money is needed it's saying you're going to pay us this money regardless you can send a couple kids here see next year yeah and it's always nice to hear what they're doing but it's at a time when we just don't have the time for so again my recommendation might be to bring in our rep prior to their budget season which is probably coming up in the next few months I don't know yeah [Music] maybe and then maybe get a final report even later cuz it's we could even just do the final report could just be tacked on to sort of the the what Heather used to do with her her final one where she would just kind of lump in a couple different categories together and kind of just run through them just say oh by the way here's the final mon Tech number and then you know with schools we met with them several times this past year we may need a preliminary meeting with them to see how they're I mean to some extent last year I think we were like the arbitration board between Town manager and superintendent but that's what our charge is right the natural Arbiters um I'm curious to see what Dr gillson her uh she's the new Finance director what her method is for budgeting and getting all that together because I I think a lot of it may also depend upon when she has what she needs put together I have no idea when that's going to be but they usually present to the school committee in December November time frame with at least something um the trouble with having them in earlier though is that unless it's approved by the school committee it's it's really tough to justify having them come in yeah I don't think you need to have them come in and give them the full thing but it it may be wise for them to hit on the top top issues that they're if they're dealing with anything this year like they did last year ideally I'd like to also back that up from same issue that we run into every year we talked about this as well is having we have histo like this past year we had it on the 21st and the 22nd or the 20th and the 21st Wednesday and Thursday school committee was on or school department was on on Thursday the next week we had our public hearing and then that Monday after that weekend we had our report due yeah four days after take three weeks out of the schedule at a minimum and that's sort of one of the reasons why I was saying do we do we try to back dat weeks up start earlier yeah I agree do we try and triple up so we get them done even faster I think if we're limited by the school department we could at least do the towns side farther in advance and then we at least have 50% of the budget that we could work off of we could at least address that in a report to start with and then we have the school which it's effectively sort of in a way like money teac because it's presented as a single budget single line right has the is the intern Town manager made any changes to the schedule not that I've seen no and I think he should make a recommendation on what it what he thinks it looks like well he in his interview he said it should be four months yeah so if we consider the start of that to be call but October November should be done January February which allows you to have a town meeting in March or April like some like some towns do what allows us to debate things too well that's what I'm I'm saying for us with our Charter we have plenty of time to actually discuss stuff and allow for changes to come through and and and work on them yeah versus cram it all into the very end and scramble and then say we don't know what we're doing well the town manager budget is preliminary is January 14th it was Heathers that's Heathers though well I'm going by what's on here present the 5year financial forecast and capital plan looks like we don't even stting after a special town meeting in November okay um yeah I will reach back out to Carter and see if I can get his opinion I'll just set up a meeting with him and actually talk with him in person um to go over what his idea for at least what his experience or his previous time frames were when he's back in the office again um do you think or or as part excuse me as part of that conversation uh maybe plant the seed that this schedule here gets reworked based on his intent so that we're not looking at this all the time saying oh this wasn't produced by the person who's actually going to be bringing this schedule forward right absolutely from what I've gathered he's sort of working towards special town meeting now he's kind of getting that up and running and trying to make sure that there isn't a need for reappropriate or anything like that he wants to to be able to do everything that he can with special town meeting now yeah sort of where his Focus was see as you mentioned that I'm a little bit concerned because I've heard him say it two or three times that his goal is to go into special town meeting without appropriating any new money mhm that concerns me a little bit until we know a little bit more um because there's almost always a need for adjustments in November and that's why we have that I mean it used to be well if we need it we'll have it now it's an annual we need that every year and and I think we're going to in the in the next month or two I think some numbers are going to come out and um some new contracts are going to flush out that were not as devastating as we expected so I think there's going to be money out there that's going to either need to be reappropriated or it ends up letting it fall to free cash mhm and you know my feeling is we revisit what got cut in anticipation of huge increases in in contractual uh possible contractual increases that I'm hearing through the grap Vine that some of them are not actually happening or they nowhere near as bad as the predictions at the trash I wasn't going to say it but I'll say it anyway yeah how mucher if you're hearing it it's not super secret I guess yeah no but I think we're going to see that in a number of things I think we were we you know last year year was a year where I I think we padded money into the budget in a number of places even as much as we said the you know our fiscal position was in not in good shape I think there's still plenty of money hiding in our budget that we'll see roll out to free cash if we don't reappropriate it somewhere yeah he sent me an email earlier saying that he's trying very hard to avoid any raise inappropriate or free cash cash transfers at the fall toown meeting so I'm I'm wondering why is what I I wanted the I mean I would question I really want to have him in here so we can find out what his budgeting practices are like yeah I still have no idea um just so I don't forget to bring it up as of my Watch Dog hat is on right now um and we talked about this I think um our last conversation about smart growth with Heather I believe it was was that uh we needed to make sure that we appli to that process September can we check to make sure that we've done that or we don't miss a deadline so that you know oh gee next year oh we're not getting that smart growth more because we didn't go through the process more than we're not eligible if we have to we'll have to uh move some kids into that project so that uh we make the numbers you volunteering I don't have any kids I'm sorry or or eligible kids excuse me could be a foster true well that's true all right um I do want a workshop then I mean well before I say we want a workshop is is there a general consensus about putting together some type of a of a template for presentation so that they are more consistent from Department to Department I I think that makes a lot of sense and and you know this would be the first year it's done and see how it works and tweak it for the next year yeah I'm good with that um I'm not volunteering for it because I'm a little taxed right now hi you didn't have to start the alternative is we wait till the new to manager comes in to to do it but yeah I do think get some input from him when he's looking for I do think at a minimum though we we need that consistency at what we're looking at but I think even with the new town manager it's it's they're going to be asking for what they need from the department heads to develop their budget I think that's not necessarily what we need to have presented to us no but if they come in and they have something that hey this is what I've used oh already really good and I want an award for it then wow we should hire that person I don't know if there's awards for that well I have a feeling that we're probably going to have Carter on at least through the winter that's my suspicion yes I think he'll be here for at least 6 months which means it's going to be his budget this year so that's another question for him then okay it's going to be up to the board of selectman I'm sure but if we do go past December into January or you know in sometime into next year I hope they build in some overlap because he's going to be the one that you know as you just said has gone through the process to get it to whatever point it is that the transition's made and uh you know if if it's anytime after March a new town manager coming in and getting on board to go into town meeting with the budget that was created by another person is is without them there is going to be impossible or not impossible but difficult I'd say impossible I would call that I would not want to do that I'd start April 7th it's either that or we get a new rendition of the uh budget a month before town meeting stranger things have happened okay um um so depending upon what I hear from Carter then I I may I will probably put it on the agenda for our next meeting to if there isn't a magical document that already exists I'll um put it on the agenda for workshopping it I'll see if I can find something on other finance committee websites too maybe there's something already out there that award- winning one just poach that one all right any suggestions for improvement for the budget Improvement to the budget budget process spefic process darn I had know you almost had your chance I had my head spinning to come up with a quirky answer but you changed it too quick no again I mean there the financial software and the reporting and yeah I mean I don't know if Carter has any takes on that either but there's been a lot of talk about it but I really think it's important that this town get to a point where everybody's and and that's basically what you're talking about but everybody's working with the same systems same softwar as they talk to each other they interact with each other um you know as as we saw last year there's 10 times more work being done because they're not interconnected properly or they're not the same system system um I saw that in Private Industry 30 years ago where this department was doing it this way and back then it was very little on computers but it was still being handled very differently this department that department that department and you couldn't merge any of that stuff so you know well the budget software is definitely something I know the budget uh task forces at some one of their big items the other issue is I guess schools use Google we use Microsoft the town does and it's a it's a budget thing it's a they get a discount and the town doesn't so the question is I I I don't know if that's important um yeah do they is that I mean is that is that hard enough um would it caused more trouble if you switched over that everybody had to switch over to the others thing it's it's a that's it's a very big project but the the budget the software budget I think is a no-brainer yeah it's it's been interesting cuz we're using this this Dr Burnham is running the Google Drive for the budget task force and Ezekiel Renee and myself all had to get and Carter all had to get school email accounts so that we could get into mhm the Google Drive so we could then see the documents that are in there it's just one more layer of of yeah I agree but I'm sure there's plenty of reasons why they don't want to merge the two for that for that one as well but I I was under the impression that the school department uses munus still that I'm not sure they had a presentation on it for payroll but they had they had a presentation I I believe um a couple weeks ago so maybe there is more more overlap than we know it's just yeah Unice doesn't seem to be working so well one of the concerns or problems with migrations quite often and and I don't know that you know I'm not an expert at it by any means but some of these migrations that we've gone through recently um once you get past the migration and you do all the busy work to transfer your existing documents from the old software and manually transfer them into the new software because they don't automatically merge apparently that that's the push back that all of these documents that a particular person in One department has stored in one set of software has got to be converted over over one by one one document at a time in many cases into the new software once you do that then everything think's great but it's either that or you got to have two computers and and jump back and forth between the two yeah all right anything else on this one for tonight it's already getting late um I H unless anyone wants to talk about it I'm happy to skip over the financial policy manual draft again sounds good we've gone through a whole bunch of financial Financial stuff tonight um do we have an update from the town manager search committee um yeah so we met with uh the Chiefs uh we invited all the the department heads the Chiefs showed up a couple of the other department heads sent um letters on you know what they would be um having us look for as it relates to um um a new town manager you know a lot of it just came in on um you know collaboration and communication and um helping with you know employee morale and and and stuff like that um across the board um recognizing that we're not really a small town um that was kind of kind of one thing that kind of came out and um what's that what was that we think of oursel as a small town but we're we we're getting up to be a pretty large Town um is kind of the thought you know don't think of us just as a small town so I mean I don't know that there's an official designation and we cross some threshold but U there's a lot that to be dealt with across the to town Quirk gave me a number of just over 9,000 registered voters really and I think I propy ation is pushing close between 11 and 12,000 so yes we are we have 9,000 registered voters that's what you gave me for a number this morning I thought it was in the 8,000 I thought it was in the 7,000 so 2% well I guess I better get an official number um they also you know a lot of people said yeah you need strong financial but we got Izzy now and you know we I they they kind of said like the leadership aspect of things the management aspects of things was kind of the really important thing uh so that was the input from the from the um the department heads uh and superintendent also gave a um an input they were all read out if you want to hear them all um it should be recorded and hopefully you can hear it Peter had his laptop on one end and they sat at the other and talk so I got through the chief's part of it and then I had to interrupt it but those those the audio for those were pretty good it depends on whether or not the person has a soft voice that's sitting at the Fire end of the table Yeah Chief Elise camell has a pretty loud voice um and he'll only be our chief until October so I don't know he also kind of made that so um he'll be a big loss to the town in my opinion um the other thing we talked about there was um the RFP for the um the consultant to help us through this um so there was a document put together by Julie for an RFP or whatever it's called um it was sent out to four firms replies are due by by noon on September 5th um I do think if they're compliant it's low bid um I don't know what makes it such that some bids you can have other criteria or not but this one has you can exclude someone because you deem them non-compliant but other than that I think it's it's low bid so are they non-compliant if you don't like their bid what's the what's the compliance you have to respond to certain well so there's basic requirements that we had in there okay so we said so they don't a certain percentage you should you know you shall have had three successful Town manager searches okay so if they came in and said oh yeah we did it once but we'll do it for five bucks got you can say they're not compliant yeah we're not compliant okay um so I think that that's kind of it you know so we'll probably meet I guess the week after the 5th I guess and we'll we'll select someone they'll negotiate it and then um we'll stop moving out on uh putting out I think they'll they'll have discussions with folks and do their due diligence and put out um the um the requisitions and stuff like that so uh they'll also you know help the select board and and maybe standing committee you know for what a salary range is that sort of things so um in in my opinion you know as finance committee I think we're going to have to be paying a lot more than we did so I think we should maybe have a discussion as to whether we support that across the board but um I don't know my mind somewhere around the $230,000 salary range but um I don't know how my mind got there but have you guys done comps comps can be hard I think um cuz sometimes you'll see a town manager for a city mhm uh but the these firms will have all that okay that's what they'll help us with and I think it's not only it's going to be hard to find a comp on a town with as much turnover as we've had as much you know internal issues that we're kind of maybe dealing with right now so um you know I think salary maybe my opinion we should be ready to be considering higher salaries for what we hadly so are these firms strictly Massachusetts or are they Regional they don't have to be Massachusetts but we did say that they had to have done searches okay um so and we had something in there about um in the north central region okay um I don't know how we enforce that we had a little bit of debate on that but that's just go of an engineer I'm right there with you Chris have you discussed a requirement for uh domicile distance from lunenberg cuz that's something that's was dropped a number of years ago and and I think that was a big mistake we used to require that a town manager and or CFO or whatever we had moved to lunenberg I believe it was actually moved to the town of lunenberg within this period of time after they were hired and maybe that's not appropriate nowadays but say where are they going to move just like it's going be had to do well if you pay them $230,000 they can live anywhere in this town um and I will don't make that comment that that number in my eyes is too high and to to jack it up just because we've had turnover we know why the turnovers happen and we shouldn't start paying absorbent salaries because we've had turnover yeah personal personal opinion I'm just passing that on to you as a member of that committee I I don't think that's an exuberant salary but um we did not talk about where they had to live um I've heard that Carter lived in New York City and was a yeah manager and he was driving multiple times a week it's insane so I think that could be a compensating Factor if somebody lives very far away and you ask him do you think you're going to move they say no okay well that's that's you know when you when you you guys are doing your chart on what you think that would probably be less advantageous to somebody that would want to live around here cuz if they're living around here they're probably going to be more knowledgeable about the area which is going to help them in their job but there's a zillion things that make up what a good town manager would be that's just one so it's just it's probably to me it's a it's a thing to think about you're right but I think it's probably not the the only thing yeah I mean I can I can bring bring that feedback or you know public comment yeah you tend to go to meetings oh yeah um and and I was just going to say too it just came to my mind the um I got to get it right is it Littleton or lankaster New Hampshire I I can't pin it down right now but one of those two um towns up there I think it was Lancaster to tell you the truth there were without a town manager for more than 8 months and they hired a woman out of Maine and she relocated to Coos County which is right there of course Coos is half half a New Hampshire but she moved to New Hampshire um almost immediately or was in the process of moving um so it isn't that people won't do it if you strongly suggest it if the terms and the desire to work in the in the job here is is there the other thing is that and and I hear this again out on the street all the time if you're not a local you don't have a true solid ve and you're not truly solidly invested in the town yeah I yeah I guess we could debate that but I'm not sure I would want to live in the town I was the town manager for especially if I had kids in the school and and all sorts of things but um you tell politics can be pretty nasty and uh have your family be in that town could be could be difficult the the difference the difference of the 21st century versus the 20th century true anything else on the no selection Comm okay uh so the budget task force like I said we met last Monday we spoke with Bartholomew we went over everything we far more detailed this tonight than we did before um we are getting a new plan presented for trash on September 3rd apparently so that will be coming from believe I think that was from Carter I'm not mistaken so that will be presented I think September 3rd is the is the select board meeting so that would probably yeah select board meeting um the next yeah what was that date September 3rd 93 um so we looked at a we we spent the most of the time looking at expenses this time rather than uh Revenue um we compared some of the the or Renee put Renee and eie put together another presentation about uh the comp towns and whatnot um there was some information to pull out of it but it was it was honestly just from it was a lot harder I think than the than the income the revenue streams to to compare them um I think it was it was a it was a trickier ask to to try to do mostly because the categories that money is placed into are different from town to town There's General expenditures that that seem to show for example um AOL and Oxford both had like 20 to 25% of their budget spent on education versus but they also had an additional like 30% spent on General so but we have no granularity on that one so it's it's a lot harder to kind of compare between the two um however we did look at the school side of things as well and among the school comps um we spent we are out of the 10 Towns that we're part of uh we are ninth out of 10 for the per pupil spending and we are 10th out of 10 for salary so we spend the least on kids and we spend the least on staff from the other comparable towns that we look at um so there was Mary should have stayed what's that Mary for the state have been very excited to hear that um what I pulled out of that was that mayard actually um is is interestingly similar to our town even though it's vastly different at the same time I think it's like under three square miles is the entire is the entire town of Mayor but population is very similar um valuations are very similar percentages of of commercial industrial and personal real estate is similar um School enrollment is similar their budget is similar they Levy I think 38 million where we Levy 31 million so it's pretty similar as well there but they're getting I think $3 million more in state aid than we are and income levels are very similar so there's there's a curios I it as to why mayard is is getting extra money that is not coming out here when so many of the of the of the I guess check boxes are very similar so I've started looking into some of that they are a split rate community so that's a little bit different um Evan do you have any idea at all uh what their split commercial versus residential is Dave I've got a spreadsheet on it that's why I asked come on I've already done all this um so if we look at it from a valuation standpoint strictly valuation not percentage of the levy because they are split and we're not right so their total percentage of valuation for residential is 90.3% or 91.7% there say that again they so Maynard's residential percent valuation is 90.3% of their total valuation is residential and we're 91.7 for commercial they're 4.6% and we're 4.1% interesting industrial they're just under 2% we're at 1.3% personal they're at 3% we're at 2.9% and they have a split rate yeah from that perspective that's a great comparison that's exactly why I have this spreadsheet going yep um and I'm going to bring this to the budget task force as well um and sorry to interrupt that that that blows the criteria for splitting the tax rate right out of the water that's exactly what I was saying push back that we've always gotten yep so one town but they're not failing how do you know I've driven through M the shops are open they don't have closed stores I don't have stor valuable area but it's they're a lot closer to Boston they're closer to Boston Mal they are there it's not the only metrics of course but I mean there's a difference of you know if we were to one second yeah so right now with their split rate their residents even though it's 90% of the valuation the residents cover 87.5% of their Levy here because it's not a split rate our residents cover 91.7% as you'd expect if we were to do a split rate and I ran a number just to get the same Levy overall our us at a split rate would be at 87.1% and they're at 87.5% so it works out very similarly in terms of the generation and that pulls $1.5 million off of residents that's that's not a small amount of money something to think about yep so um yeah using the the 14 the last year's evaluations that puts residentials at like 13 .38 and the CIP at 22.1 to generate the differences so and I mean if you if you do that I mean if you could work into it a debt exclusion at the same [Music] time and cover what $500,000 of that and still return a million doar to the residents then three years from now you get permission from Boston to impose a local income tax and you split that for the residents in town seniors and and by yeah it it's sort of a millionaires tax type of setup but you know if I won't rant for too long but if if you really want to support the seniors and the young families coming into town to attract young people and families into town which okay the schools are going to scream there's more kids but you know the the one longevity of a town is its growing families uh but we have an increased school size the enrollment numbers have not changed in 20 years 10 years they've decreased decreased I agree but but shifting shifting that burden off of the seniors and the lower income families coming into town and you don't have to do a lot a couple of percent is a huge help for that that demographic y um and it also gives the town a bit more flexibility in in Levy capacity because I don't know exactly how that works when you do it your uh revenue is coming in from two types of sources I don't know how you how you balance that but you wouldn't necessarily have to Levy to the limit on real estate M on a particular year so it gives you some Levy capacity um and and it should be able to smooth out your your need for U revenues I that's that's my thought but unfortunately that's a 2 to threee process at this point well this is a two-month process because the assessors are going to be presenting to the select board in a few months yeah so we'll see what the budget task force has to say about it on Monday mhm I'll put something together for them um so yeah we're meeting again on Monday I honestly don't even remember what the schedule is it's been so much stuff going on um but I'll report back on that in two weeks grant writing services I don't have an update on it I haven't heard anything from anybody something else to ask C about yeah isn't it yeah I did um just on on that subject I did have have a um that was actually turned out to be public common I was out of town but I did make the presentation to the Parks Commission as I mentioned at our last meeting here that I felt that they were in a position to be one of the first boards to actually try to take advantage of that service and the money in that lne item by identifying some additional grants that they have not had time for to pursue and put a proposal together to the town to the interim Town manager and say we we think that these grants are appropriate and we feel there's more out there but we don't have the bandwidth or the expertise and request 5,000 10,000 whatever and see what happens because it's you know best like we could tell and best I've been able to tell so far that money is directly under the purview of the Town manager at this point because it's in the general right yeah so I I think that would be a very good test case and there's a huge need for additional grant money there as we all know I like the idea of a mark drop Mark parking lot yeah saves you a couple $1,000 they actually may I wonder if they could do it at the um Senior Center too I think the Mart actually does go from there they do go by there I've seen them in there before all right I don't want to talk about consolidating Services unless you guys do no good um the the only yeah of course I had to do something um in conjunction with that my public comment at the select board meeting uh Tuesday evening at the end and I I need to make it clear that I do not intend to be the face of what I proposed Tuesday evening um and it's going to take uh dedicated group to bring it forward so unless we use one of the other ways to bring forward a charter Review Committee in the near future instead of waiting for the 10-year cycle um I've got to study it a little bit more the easiest way and might even be able to pull it off is that the select board votes to seat uh a Review Committee and and I think honestly I think this is the time that that a committee of that type needs to be seated and take two years as we step through what needs to be reworked in our town operations I I think we need to look at our operations from a totally different point of view and revamp almost everything we do um from the es especially the movement that has happened in the last two Charter reviews to consolidate power to a very limited one or two people and remove checks and balances I think those need to be the the strongest concentrations as the committee is seated and input from all the Departments uh is probably the first step as to what issues do you have or have you seen trying to maneuver your operations and and what's blocked you within the charter U so and and that includes what we've been talking about here in consolidation because it it could be done a very much different way it's it's like uh I had this conversation with somebody two days ago um this town the the grounds that are under the perview of the town are under multiple contracts and administered by two or three departments that's ludicrous to me we should have a grounds a a town grounds department and a separate grounds facil facilities buildings and building maintenance Department uh again that speaks to the fact that we are not this little bedroom community that we used to be we need to grow our government operations to the size of what we've grown to as a town and if that's all done concurrently then we could come out the end a very well-run flourishing town but it it takes commitment I I agree completely with the uh the charter review I think you look at the mma's association of town finance committee's first page everything it says is that it should be checks and balances and that it should not be presented it's like having the governor present a budget and then show it to the House and Senate and then say this is what it's going to this is what's going to happen there there's power right there there or just no it should be that the CEO produces a budget and then it goes through committee yeah and then it gets brought back forward and then gets presented to the town yeah but not inter I don't want to interrupt you but I was going to say we need to apply that to what we so-called called day-to-day operations also mhm that you know what we've pushed ourselves into is this tunnel vision and and everything goes through this little tiny uh tunnel or or Alleyway with day-to-day operations and nobody has the right I guess is the way I'll put it to question anything under the charter because it's all that power is handed to the town manager through the charter mhm I've always disagreed with that and many other people people in this town including paid employees agree I look forward to you spearheading that campaign I I just told you oh I know I still look forward to you do I I started it with and that was my one my one take when I ran through the tape again my mistake and that is I do not intend to be the face of that but I I hope I can generate enough interest from especially the Next Generation that uh hope hopefully we'll step up and start to get involved and Run This Town into the next half century even but at least two or three decades and that's another thing we need we need um younger brains to move us into and away from we we've always done it this way Y and into the new ways absolutely I'm starting to think we've always done it this way as the argument for why we need to do it it differently versus why we do it the same Butz I do hear that all the time but I mean even our first half hour or 45 minutes however long that was discussions um with bar barthol there's as we see there are things that could have been done sooner than this but somebody had to drill down to it and find out what what the ramifications are can we do it uh and so on rather than well we've always done it pretty much this way we tweak it a little bit but we don't change things a lot um but if we don't take that extra step or somebody doesn't take that extra step then it's business as usual and you in in that case you earn a half a percent per year or U and you got your money's not working for you the discussion on this one all right one set of minutes in the drive or not in the drive emailed to us um unless anybody has uh any edits to it uh I move that we approve the minutes as presented and I honestly don't have the oh you have it right there 8824 I have not read them yet so I would have to abstain I don't know if I don't think I've read them either I think I think I missed them have you three read them I read them I read them works for me we have a second second all in favor I I opposed abstain I I all right move the minutes 3 to Z2 committee reports I'm going go on down the line Dave you got anything uh green communities met Monday evening uh we ended up doing it via Zoom just because of logistics um still a little bit frustrated that uh it looks like we are going to go into uh the fall round with a lot less uh applying for a lot less money than we'd like to but we've made a fairly it's a tentative decision but probably we will follow through with it that we've already skipped one because of not getting some projects we had hoped for were at least a higher dollar number um at this point we're looking at potentially 45 to $50,000 in the application um but we don't want to go a year and a half without pulling some grant money in so potentially it's looking at um I don't remember the other infrastructure or um facilities projects but there's a few in there that look like they'll be able to come through but there's they're all relatively small dollar amounts um because of the change in the um K9 vehicle purchase we now have two vehicles eligible for $55,000 worth of grant money each so uh that will be in there there's going to be some training in there for uh I think they're applying for two people to train on I'm going to get it wrong business uh uh Facilities Management operations or something like that there's there's a training excuse me Mr wander did it a number of years ago when we had it in the grant uh money so that's in there um very disappointed that uh it looks like we will not be able to bring either phase of the Mini Splits forward for a number of reasons and I think um if you want to know what some of those reasons are please listen to the meeting because I'd rather not bring hash through all of that again tonight uh lastly to Chris um I think if the capital planning committee has a a meeting where they've got a white agenda or see one in the near future with a white agenda I think I'll do it or Dave blad or both of us would like to come talk to you guys because there are some things that have to be considered when we're contemplating projects such as the mini splits that have to be I'm not exactly sure ba basically you have to be using purchasing or planning to purchase equipment from a state vetted uh list of uh vendors or manufacturers of equipment so if if you take a project forward and and you're the equipment's not on that list you can't even apply for green community's money um and and it isn't like you know they're they're that they've got mediocre equipment on these lists they vetted uh Brands and so on and so forth It's just unfortunately if it has X stamped on it and Y is on the list and X isn't they won't give you any money for it the other thing being uh and we've had this argument too is the um the way you bring the proposal forward um you know potentially green communities could have brought money in from two Grant rounds for the mini split system but because we were brought into it or we forced our way into the process too late then it was already well known through green communities that the school was only going after cooling we can't turn the clock back on that and say oh no well now we're going to do heating and cooling uh it was as simple as that that that's another thing that shot those projects completely out of the water for green communi fundings and there's you know a couple hundred, that we could have brought in over two Grant rounds for that um so my rant and one other thing Chris too for uh anything any projects involving Energy savings whoever is driving that project needs to be in contact with Unitil and even if we don't get Grant uh green communities funding there's energy incentives and if you don't ask Unitil to uh calculate that for you then you don't get get it I mean it it's absolutely free money um that comes through these incentive programs and comes directly from unito I believe that's my rant we're going to meet again a week uh what would that be September 56 that Monday after Labor Day whatever that Monday after waer day is the week after after that yeah the 9th 9th okay yep so we'll be meeting on the 9th and and kind of finalizing what projects we are going to bring forward uh we're going to invite Kelly Brown our representative from Green communities uh at the state level to U be involved in that because she's the one that can look at the look at the projects very quickly and say yes no yes no yes no don't bother here yes go forward with this and then within the next meeting or two then we will make sure we have all the data that we need for the application and then the application goes in an October excuse me one more rant um one of the frustrations and um I and I get it from the department heads uh because they have not been trained on the process that is necessary for these green communities grants IE the data that's required that should be kept on a regular basis not thrown together just because we're putting in an application uh fuel usage uh electric usage uh solar production all that stuff there's there's a um database where all that stuff is supposed to be entered on a regular basis again John Wanda was in on the ground floor with green communities and he was I'm going to call him the expert along with Dave black but John imported all that information on a regular basis so it was already there when we were uh ready to go into a grant round um the town has nobody at this point that I'm aware of doing that and that's something that you know for the long run we need to look at that and see where who could be trained to to coordinate that data ENT a lot that has to do with the change in Staffing or lack of Staffing yeah oh yes yes oh I I totally agree um and you know it isn't something that people walk in the door with the knowledge of even if you hire somebody that's been in municipal government for 10 years uh it's very rare that you find somebody that's been involved in that process have department has brought forth projects for green communities I'm sorry have department heads brought forth projects for green communities presently yeah um yes but as I said they're the ones that um are eligible are very small dollar amounts um some are missing the energy audit if they're involved with a bu if it's a project within a building they also require require an energy audit because now you're required to have weatherization and whatever else you're upgrading as part of the pro that particular project so uh yeah there's Hoops to jump through but it's free money free money with a cost for applying for it you got you got to do the work for it it's free but they don't just give it to you it's it's free but they don't just give it to you you have to work for it you yeah you have to work a little bit want the data right and and we do get support from mrpc I mean Karen Chapman on once it's all pulled together and the individual projects are uh vetted and the information is there she pulls it Al together and actually fills out the application and submits it so it's not all on the department heads and it's not all on the administrators here in town hall we do have outside support that's also helping us too and Kelly Brown is is just you know she she from our perspective she is green communities because you ask her a question and she'll give you a a 20 minute answer but it's clear concise and accurate right Mr Gray nope nothing Mr seon uh SE commission met last night briefly just to ratify um appointment of the sewer business manager that ker brought forward and they're um they're short two members I believe the chair is also supposed to be stepping down at the end of the month so they're looking for volunteers for the commission all right Mr Berard so Capital plannings met was supposed to meet this week it got postponed um uh we are trying to get information from Carter um I think a lot of people are and he's coming up with curves um Rob Bowen has joined the committee as the out large member um so we're back to a five member committee there um the parks commissions had a couple meetings um they interviewed three design firms and selected rdla which is Ray dun's Landscaping Architects um he's the one that did the schools MH uh 30 School Street um so he's now the design designed firm uh but the contract's being finalized uh so I guess he's not yet they have to finalize him and they help have on board in the next few weeks um they are working with Town manager to determine if they can bring the article forward for that uh 53d to 53e and a half um that we talked extensively about um Carter was thinking that it may not be able to be done at a special ton meeting so he was looking into that yeah I heard that I'm not sure um yeah so if if you know if not they they will um go forward with that and then they said the uh Beach is closing on Sunday August 25th um you know just as an aside I know that there's been a lot of communication between that um members of that board with with Izzy as well as with um Carter to to get them all up to feed and stuff so uh that's what they got going on uh bunch of task force met I was wrong it was actually earlier this week that's how bad the weeks are messing with funding together so it was on the 19th Monday wasn't it it was literally just 3 days ago feels like six months right it does I L I thought it was last week uh we are not meeting next week cuz it's um Labor Day so we're meeting again on the 16th so up we will start doing um putting stuff together and start generating recommendations because we have to give something together or have something together for a special town meeting and then a full report for December 31st other than that that's all I've got topics for future meetings I had one I forgot what it was I have to write it on my forehead next time you can read it you think of it send it over an email otherwise yeah I will we still have a boatload of stuff to get through uh there are no important dates coming up which is great our next meeting is scheduled for September 12th and then September 26th um I had asked the treasurer if she would be available on the 12th um and she likely will not be yet just because they're still working on closing out the year we won't be able to get this report until it's the middle to the end of September before we actually get the the 2024 version the FY 24 version of what we have tonight that we've been looking through so my guess is we'll probably have her in on the 26th so the 16th is relatively light why probably a good night for work shopping um and then we're into October now look budget season starts early there any final public comment from the public we have Renee only she fell asleep probably so yeah any public comment from the committee yeah I've got one um just to keep everybody up to date from at least my experience uh talking with our town employees um I'm going to just come out and say this even though the select board is being blocked from speaking to them as far as I'm concerned I'm a private member and a taxpayer in the town of lunenberg so I will talk to whoever I want to talk if they want to talk to me um and the issue I just want to keep in the Forefront is that there are still serious munist issues um two out of three employees that I've talked to in the past week or so so we're sitting at their desk and very willing to talk with me because they couldn't do anything on their computers muness was Frozen um so uh I don't know honestly I haven't kept track of how long this has been going on but it it's just destroying the the productivity of our workers and exasperating their frustration so we still we have not fixed it at at this point um and I dare say that if it goes on for another 6 months we're going to see some more turnover all right any other public comment from the committee anybody want to make a motion motion to adjourn second all those in favor all all it is 10:13 and we are adjourned and you ended before you even got the say that