all right good evening it is 700 p.m 7:01 p.m. on Thursday March 14th I'm calling the lunenberg finance committee meeting to order 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 the following information is provided for members of the public that would like to participate in the meeting remotely to participate remotely you can find the agenda posted on the town website from a computer use the link attached there from a telephone dial the toll-free number 88847591 enter webinar ID 892 2688 7485 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 EXT permitted by open meeting law would you please stand for the pledge of allegiance to FL of the United States of America to the for it stands Nation indivisible with liy and justice for all are there any announcements from the committee this evening excellent hearing done is there any public comment from the public this evening the zoom as well all right any public comment from the committee this evening fantastic it's like the old days exactly uh do we have a town manager report evening everyone morning happy free sa Patrick's Day for those of us in green and P yeah so a couple updates that I gave to the board the other night uh we have a couple RFP and ifbs out the um well the request for qualifications for OPM owners project manager for Marshall Park those proposals came in this week on Wednesday so they need to be reviewed first to make sure they meet all the minimum qualifications and then there'll be a process um for the Parks Commission to come in and have them be interviewed um and rate those firms the invitation for bids for flath Hill culbert project those are due on March 27th and the bids for the cleaning services for the town buildings are due April fourth and the DPW director last week indicated the bids for road maintenance came in they came in under the office estimate which is about 127,000 under the office estimate so that was a good um results for that bid and that was awarded to PJ keing was that his $700 and something th000 estimate I believe um the actual contract total for one year was around 634 th000 and they were 100 and something under that yes yes no the the contract so it would be 127,000 more than that was the office estimate so the end result was around 634 okay and I emailed the finance committee the school committee the the S board the assessors everyone about New Growth and that certificate um the not yes it was approved at the 630,000 $20 and the money Tech assessment figure came in the same as my preliminary budget so that's unchanging and the um overlay is not going to change as as per a vote from the assessors so all the additional New Growth will be added to the school's budget and that was $236,200 doeses that include the the slight discrepancy with the the $5,000 in the board of accessors that were that's part of what I um I just referenced the overlay number is not going to change from the 120 that's in the budget right now got it okay so even though they voted on the $2,500 difference correct they decided to keep the overlay number the same and it will be absorbed into what they have already have in the entire overlay account okay and that's all for now all right thank you thank you so we have a finance director report this evening hi everyone I currently do not have a report um I did get any email from CH regarding capital projects get that not capital projects um the chapter 9 plus so I will get that to you uh within the next week thank you thank you all right moving right on to new business uh we have the fire department presentation for this evening I don't think I think I just sent it over email I can move it in right now real quick good evening you said you had the slides I do I do I emailed them to everyone but I didn't put them in our drive yet of course now I can't find where I put them there it is okay we are good to go okay all right good evening uh my name is Pat Sullivan I'm the fire chief for those of you that don't know me some of you familiar faces uh a little bit about the fire department uh if you can go to the next slide uh the dep departments consists of myself uh full-time Administrative Assistant three career fire offices uh six I'm proud to say firefighter paramedics now uh five career offices and nominally 27 to 30 on call Firefighters EMTs and paramedics next slide that Personnel uh covers the Department 24 hours a day 7 days a week we have three firefighter EMTs of paramedics on duty Monday through Saturday that's the career staff Sunday is three pum firefighter EMTs or paramedics plus a on call duty officer and that uh that Personnel are supplemented on most calls by the on call force and uh which is the off-duty uh career people coming in and call back and the call person El there most calls with three people on duty that can handle an ambulance call or a small fire call but most of our work as Manpower intensive and it requires a lot more assistance so they're coming in on a regular basis uh next slide for equipment we operate uh three Pumpers or engines one of which doubles our heavy Rescue Unit carries the jaws of life airbags heavy duty rescue equipment uh One ladder truck two brush or fire stre units uh a water RI Rescue Unit Two ambulances that are now licensed at the ALS level uh and three support vehicles and again next slide our duties we're an all hazards response agency other than law enforcement usually were involved in a Fire EMS hazardous materials technical Rescue Plus administrative support training public education and prevention which is a big part of the job too next slide just to give you a kind of a rough breakdown on our calls uh in 2023 we responded to a total of 2,33 incidents uh 1667 of those were calls basically emergency calls uh responses that's in the emergency calls that's about a 7% increase over last year uh and a good chunk of that is in EMS which you'll see later on uh we're getting much busier there and again just a quick show of what our responses have been I'm sorry next slide used to hitting the button here showing a 10e of how our responses have gone uh they stayed fairly steady until 2021 now we've started seeing a significant upti uh uptick especially in EMS responses next slide and just kind of give you an idea I've included this slide for many years uh there's always a question of what does a new growth do to the town what did these big developments due to this town I've been tracking our call volume out of the large plan developments uh whether they be the multifamilies like trown Rogers way arrive or some of the smaller multihousing or multi-house developments and what you can see in the slide is we see a significant increase pretty much every year in EMS calls the Lion Share of that is out of the multifamilies uh some of the other ones do make a bit of an impact on it but it's really that but the last few years we've seen a definite impact on how many EMS calls we're doing so next slide so just a little on the current budget in 23 uh currently salaries were on target uh expense is generally On Target we found we were running over in EMS supplies as we were running our first year at the paramedic level our initial estimates on what we were going to be spending on supplies was under what we planned uh we're covering it out of other lines in the budget making it work right now uh as we'll talk about later on in the budget that should be pretty well funded in uh the next year's budget uh next slide so the proposed budget for 2025 it's generally a level service budget it's an overall 2.21% increase uh from last year the increases in salary are contractual uh it provides us 100% paramedic coverage that we've been working up to since last year uh the above Target requests based on the town manager's Target budget were uh requests for increases in EMS supplies uh it related software and hardware and radio maintenance I'll touch on each one of those so again on salary lines uh this just is an indication of where we're at our overtime hasn't changed we've stayed within that the call firefighter and EMT salaries has stayed the same the career salaries bumped up from contractual raises we had a change last year with uh the retirement of a senior officer that officer position was replaced with a firefighter paramedic so there was some some adjustment there it was somewhat of a savings just a little bit on the paramedic training and the paramedic Service uh next slide s um just to give you an idea and a timeline on where we were at uh this has been about a six-year project that we've been working on this to develop the paramedic service get the Staffing uh we got the license last year in January uh initially we started out part-time uh because there's a training requirement that any brand new paramedic has to train with a more senior paramedic for at least 50 Advanced life support calls before they can work with a basic EMT basically work on their own we didn't have too many of those paramedics because a lot of our people are new so we had to work out training with other departments but uh in January we got our fourth person certified March we were able to hire a paramedic uh as a retirement replacement he was able to work on his own right out of the gate um by July we were operating 85 80 to 85% of the time at the paramedic level um our sixth career member was certified in October and she completed her Ride Along training uh in February so we're anticipating next month we will be 100% paramedic all the time time there will be a paramedic on duty 24/7 so again next slide I as I mentioned there was a training requirement so it took us a little while to get up to speed uh and again by you know April will'll be 247 how does that affect uh income and on again on the next slide uh we can build at a higher rate for paramedic service um again the building is where the you know what we provide for care not where um there was somewhat of an increase not as much as I honestly expected to see but again half the year we weren't running at the full paramedic level uh I honestly anticipate we'll see more of a revenue increase in 24 and even more in 25 because we'll be running it more and more uh the Savings in the third service ALS we have a revolving account previously we had to if we needed paramedics we would have private service in the area come in one of the other Municipal service that had that and we were paying out on that that we saw uh close to $37,000 Savings in that because we're doing it ourselves I expect in uh FY 24 25 that's going to go down even more than that because we'll be doing it ourselves when you say the billing is increased at this point is this is that lending our paramedics out to other areas in the there's there's always that possibility we have seen an increase in ALS request for ALS transport uh because the whole region has seen the call they're seeing the same kind of call volume increases that we have seen private service is suffering from Manpower problems and it's Fallen back in the municipal services so on certain days you may see a lunenberg ambulance in Fitchburg a lemonster truck coming to lunenberg we're all over the place okay uh as there is ALS intercept where we would meet somebody else's BLS ambulance and our Medics would ride in and we would bill for that just like they used to build us last year we had six of those so it's we don't really see it's going to be that big of an impact we think it's going to be more ALS transport out of town which you build for everything right so and that there's been discussions with the town manager about raising the rates we haven't raised the rates in a long time put it off last year because of some of the financial challenges around town uh we'll be talking about that again this year I guess the point to get across with that is that affects private insurance we can build more there a lot of people are Medicare Medicaid Mass health we have to take what they sign for that which is Pennies on the dollar compared to like a private insurance which are the flip side is good for elderly residents low-income residents that are on that they're not getting hit that hard but where about 64% of our calls are that increasing the rates is it's not the huge Panacea that everybody would think it would be but again we haven't gone up in quite some time so we will be looking at that could you get go into a little more details to what the rates are and what they're where they're used and I don't they go by I don't have the exact numbers right in top of my head in front of me but there's a rate for if you transport at a a basic life support level a rate if you transport at an advanced life support level with minimal skills and then a higher rate if you're doing it's a much more serious call that you're doing a cardiac monitor you're doing IVs doing multiple medications there's a higher rate for that there's a different rate for mileage and that there you can Bill individually for a lot of small ancillary things we've kind of allp lumped that all into one thing and this is built to the insurance companies to the insurance companies how quickly do they actually pay back uh sometimes it takes quite a while it all depends so it depends on the company how does the billing come back even at the time like into what it comes back into the general fund into the general fund correct doesn't we have one revolving account like we said that we use for paying the third service ALS companies that were coming in and to cover the expense of our billing company for EMS billing but other than that it goes right back to the general fund all right uh next slide sorry next slide it's there oh okay that's just what's on TV that one's always like 7 Seconds slower too okay um for our bu Target requests in the budget uh was EMS supplies we requested an additional $77,000 in that line uh when we originally did our calculations out figuring what we thought we were going to need for EMS supplies this covers a lot of this is ALS because it's covering medications covering Advanced Equipment some of those numbers were based several years ago uh as you're probably all well well aware inflation has hit hard and no more so than medications and some of that stuff uh so those numbers went up a lot the other thing we found is having our own paramedics on every call they're taking people in at the ALS level they're doing a cardiac monitor they may be giving them medication for nausea while before you might not have had that out of town truck coming in so we're doing more calls using more equipment that way so that's been addressed and it is in the current Town manager's proposed budget Chief have you been able to uh manage shelf life on the uh supplies sometimes without having Sometimes some of the medication is tough because it's it's very expensive and you don't always use it but when you need it you need it so yeah there is some wastage unfortunately we have a we have a machine that keeps it climate controlled keeps track of uh accountability keeps track of inventory but yeah you do run into that cuz some of it some of it's got a long shelf life some of it doesn't you have that under a contract Service it's a we pay a fee for a yearly maintenance contract on it but the machine is in our station we don't we stock it ourselves okay our people stock it but it's designed so like I can't walk in there and put a code in and take something I'm not supposed to out of there so only certain people can take certain things I but there is a maintenance contract am in it it was kind of a factious question because know managing shelf WIP on stuff is very diff that that is a problem thank you uh next Slide the uh in also an expense was above Target was our It software uh there's several software systems that we use that are proprietary to the fire department uh they're either cloud-based that we're paying an annual fee for uh the support for some of the equipment like the medol uh last year as soon as we started into the budget year we got hit with an increase and on one of them we told there's going to be an increase the next few years so we're trying to budget that in a little bit and also kind of keep a little bit of a cushion in case we get hit with another unanticipated increase because unfortunately some of these companies they don't always warn you on your budget cycle as to what's happening with it so we're trying to put that in there just to be ready for it in case it happens we did change software so there is a little bit of a decrease in cost on one thing but there was a little incre other increase on a different software that we didn't know about until we got into it uh and again that is also funded in the town manager's preliminary budget uh the next slide is uh radio maintenance Capital uh I had requested $110,000 increase on that that line has not gone up in probably 10 to 15 years uh and you're probably all well aware stuff's gone up considerably and that time frame uh the plan was to stop trying to replace some of our radios uh we applied for an assistance to Firefighters Grant a Federal grant last year we weren't able to get it the police were able to get a grant to replace their radios DPW did their on Capital we were trying to avoid doing it on Capital uh we were denied the grant uh next slide uh my concern is nowadays these radios are microprocessor control for the heavier Public Safety grade radios they run anywhere from $3 to $5,000 a unit uh and again like some of the old radios we had these things lasted 20 years these things are computers they have about a 10 to 15E lifespan so my goal was with that money in the budget that I could stop replacing a few units a year so instead of making a big Capital purchase and in 10 years I'm coming knocking on your well it won't be me knocking on your door but somebody saying we need to replace a hundred plus thousand dollars worth of radios again I wanted to try to phase it in like the turnout gear that we did right now that's not currently funded we'll figure something out are we looking at roughly 20ish radios total uh if if with the increase it would be about four or five radios uh a year we're looking at probably about 40 plus radios CU this would just be portable the de is everybody has a radio if there's an emergency on the fire ground or somewhere they've got a radio that they communicate with okay and yes they do make $3 or $400 specials but they're not something you want to use in a fire ground these ones that you know they're they're waterproof they're a little more armored they're designed to work with a glove on you know and I say 3 to 5,000 if you buy the top end they're eight or nine that's not even what we were looking at so uh to move along just touch on uh on capital for Capital plan for FY 24 the replacement of rescue one is still underway it was on the Opera money uh asked the other day when I had made contact with the salesman if they had any more of a date and other than early 2025 they can't give me a date they don't even see a VIN number for the chassis yet for it and until they takes about four months to build the truck once they have the chassis and they don't even know when they're getting a chassis last year I was told July and that was before the strike so so that's coming someday uh we're still working on the phase one of the radio infrastructure replacement we're working with the the vendor on that to get the equipment so trying to move along on that uh capital for 20 FY 25 the only thing we have on capital is replacement or the phase two of the replacement of the radio equipment um that would replace the antennas some of the microwave equipment an additional simoc cast site get some other work done with it to improve the Cabinetry that it's in so we don't have the mice moving into them all the time the the mice enjoy the heat in there unfortunately um and again this is police and fire not just us it covers both Public Safety departments and on the next slide just to basically give you a quick idea what this will do in an improvement the green areas on there are optimal radio coverage within the town of lunenberg the areas at are blue doesn't mean that we can't communicate it just may be the signal is not as good a portable radio may have trouble getting out um not completely optimal when the system is completely upgraded after the update you see the increase in the green area that's what they project that we'll have much better coverage in that so moving along on that hopefully just a touch on some other funding sources that the department sees uh again this year we've got another uh safety equipment Grant from the state this is year four of a five-year plan that they were providing money from the state out to fire departments for equipment this is where when we've had to move some money to cover EMS supplies this is filling in the Gap last year this grant we were able to replace several hundred feet of Hose some nozzles and other equipment this year it's replacement of some 20 plus year old power saws that aren't working so well anymore and starting our replacement of portable radios um empg Grant Emergency Management preparedness Grant is one that we get it's Federal money but it's through the state every year we usually see around $3,700 sometimes it varies a little bit this year we able to replace a couple of 20 25y old cold water rescue suits that leak pretty badly uh and some equipment to go along with our inflatable rescue sled that we can use for ice rescue it can be able to be used towed behind a snowmobile or an ATV on snow it can be used as a sled to move somebody injured or something like that just gives us a little bit more flexibility another grant that we see is uh safe student awareness of fire education and Senior safe uh again this is money that we get from the state every year this is for safety uh and fire safety education in the schools grades K through three we have several instructors that are trained to go in there deliver a curriculum teach fire safety uh this program has been around since the early 2000s and the state has seen a significant drop in child injuries and fire deaths from it so it's certainly a worthwhile program the other part of that is a senior safe that's targeted the other end for our older residents uh we do some safety training do presentations uh in conjunction with the eagle house uh it also helps fund our smoke detector project that we can buy smoke detectors and we encounter older people in town that don't have any smoke detectors or they have obsolete ones in their homes we can replace them for nothing um put them in one of our firefighters will go out and put them up for them and that we found a lot of people that don't have them or they have one that when you look at it dated from 19 76 and probably hasn't had a battery since 1985 but it's still there but unfortunately this is the last fire fatality we had there was no smoke detectors in the home so it's certainly an issue out there and that's in also in conjunction with the San for seniors project that we do with the senior center uh that if they need sand uh for their walkway they're over 65 or disabled we go out provide the sand in the same thing we can do a quick safety inspection if they need smoke detectors we can replace it for them those C oxide as well yes we can if they don't have them because those are those are necessary too the only thing we really can't replace as electric ones but battery ones we can do so so uh again impact is of the budget as recommended it's a level service budget uh it's maintaining our current operations maintaining uh paramedic level Service uh most of our above our the Departments above Target requests are in the town manager's preliminary budget uh it funds our It software needs it funds our EMS Supply needs at this time it doesn't cover the radio maintenance needs and the last slide I've just got a few things I'll mention that aren't in the budget they're not in the budget right now but I just kind of want to throw out things that may be coming down the pike in a few years right now again we didn't come in asking for Staffing we've built up a 5-year plan we kind of gotten to a plateau but it doesn't mean we won't be knocking on your door about Staffing some days things that we're seeing we're slowly Bleeding Out call people faster than we're getting them last year we only had one application currently I have three but two don't even live in town but I need to look at them to be able to cover pum shifts uh two of our most active call Firefighters will within 5 years will be retiring because you have to stop being a firefighter at 65 we will have two of our most senior uh career firefighters most likely retiring within 5 years plenty of talent to move up and fill those spots but it's coming in from the bottom you know we're going to be needing more people and we need to think you know look at that of if we don't have the call people are we going to need more Staffing and it's I'm singing the same chorus that you probably heard from other departments our schedule and our pay isn't 100% competitive especially when you're looking at firefighter Medics those people are like gold out there right now the last time we hired we had two paramedics nibble but they couldn't take the pay cut so we've instead we've paid to train our own people which is great and I just hope they they stay around the other thing is we're slowly dwindling out of the call Department of young people that want to be full-time firefighters a lot of them they do still have those people but they get hired somewhere else before we have an opening and that um that's my song and dance on Staffing but we will be looking at there's going to be need you know we'll need need something within a few more years looking further out on equipment I said I thought Mr pasos was looking over my shoulder somewhere along the way uh we currently spec the ambulances or plan them on a 10-e life cycle I think with the call volume we're seeing and the increases in the call volume right now we're looking at we're probably retire going to be retiring ambulances at well over 100,000 miles we used to retire trucks 15 20 years ago at 10 years with 40,000 Mi on them we're seeing a lot more mileage I think you're going to see the life cycle of these trucks is going to drop from 10 to 8 years and there's probably going to be a discussion at some point about a third ambulance not to staff but to have a mechanical spare available so if one of the other trucks is out of service we still have two ambulances not going to be next year that I'm knocking on anybody's door about that but these are some things that you you may see coming down the road in a few more years CU we're just getting that much busier is that in the 10year capital plan not yet I I brought it up at Capital planning and it was the same thing I don't have numbers I don't have anything in place in there but it's things to throw out that this could be coming along down it could be 10 years down the road but it would probably be good to plug it in there at the time so week my my look as we go further out 10 or 15 years the next this new replacement ambulance is coming I'm going to plan that on an 8-year cycle not not a 10 and and probably start looking at it from there and right now we're looking I want to see how many times both ambulances are on the road how often that we're down to one ambulance and we're having to call out of town we we've been tracking that since last August and that internally to see where we're at and that's also the question of again having Staffing how many times do we not have the people to staff the second ambulance well if we had four people in the station versus three under normal circumstances you could St both ambulances it's something to consider so and I I mention cuz I have so many people that tell me oh that the station is brand new people don't remember that station is 20 years old in this December when we moved in and that that building facil is doing a lot of work on it they're fixing a lot of things but it's a 20- year old building and it's aging we are maxed out on space and that and again not going to be my problem but it's going to be probably 10 or 15 years down the road but you're going to be looking there's going to be discussion about space issues you know with the way the town grows is it going to be a substation is it going to be additional space there cuz that lot has no more room on it unfortunately when it was built it was built to accommodate that building and that's it and these are things I I said I don't have an answer for them right now but it's something to think about in the future that it could be coming along so and that's all I have thank you Chief open up the Comm any questions Chief I've got one um and I again I think I know the answer to it in general um but now that you're uh you've gone through the uh Staffing plan and you're coming up on your full expected uh Staffing and so on do you see any opportunities in the near future to try to start mitigating a little bit of the overtime and I understand that you know training never goes away recertification never goes away um fact it's increased now yeah yeah so is that pretty much going to keep its status quo versus opportunities to maybe eliminate some of the overtime where you've the only way you end up eliminating over I mean right now some of it when if a career person's out if none of the career people want it we can fill it with a pum if they're available which is obviously a cost savings so we save some money there on the flip side if we don't have a pum on the weekends we may have to use a career person at overtime to fill that so it's balancing out we've been staying in there to be able to save on some overtime you've got to have enough Staffing that you can actually drop down a couple people and at three people were really not there that's I my old Department I worked we had a fiveman shift and we didn't drop you know the bit I'll give you an example lemonster has 19 guys and they can't drop anymore because they staffed up their second ambulance but but by the way I I wanted to bring up a guess this is my opportunity to do it uh there was a and I'm hoping you saw it there was a a picture posted on Facebook recently um there were uh four members of the fire department that was 70s wasn't it that was 1984 oh was that late okay 1984 I served with all those people that were in that picture it's the same picture I'm thinking of right and one of them was our chief and the then chief's son who was also a chief up in uh Guilford New Hampshire and uh two other members of the department so uh he just Michael just retired as a captain out of the Guilford fire department after 30 years of the four people in that picture three of them went on to full-time careers and we've had many many members of this department go on to full-time careers in the fire service uh in various capacities um and I congratulate everybody since I got off the department uh you know this the U training uh of our staff most of it done inhouse over the years uh has brought people forward that people have been uh reaching out to for full-time careers as they uh grow through the department I guess I'll leave it at that but it was fun to see that picture in the comments back that was 198 that was a 1984 yearbook picture for Steven Michael and uh Chris Wares yep I just I wanted to make a comment it really is isn't a question but I think this is a very thoughtful presentation and it's clear that you're thinking about all different angles of relevancy you know adding a fire truck or you know another ambulance down the road and how that's going to save on expenses in the long run from not having to Outsource a different municipality so and I I see a lot of great benefit to what you were saying earlier with the fire safety education awareness not just for the kids but you know for the elderly so thank you for your service and your entire team Service as well I'd like to have people around me they're a lot smarter than I am I have a great group of people any other questions for the chief no I don't have any questions thank you I've got one more note that I had written down here that I forgot to ask um with the federal infrastructure bills and Recovery funding so on and so forth from the federal government have you gotten anything through the grap Vine that there might be additional opportunity ities for money to apply for in the next couple years we keep I haven't heard the latest on whether they were going to refund the afg grant which is very the big ones for the fire service are assistance to Firefighters the safer Grant which is Staffing which is a whole another discussion and then there's a lesser one out there for uh fire safety education type stuff uh whether the feds keep funding those or not they have been right along but this day and age I'm not sure I haven't seen much other stuff there's a lot of different grants that are coming out but a lot of them don't directly apply to us M you know if I see them I try to F fund them off to or send them off to the proper departments we do a pretty good job I just got one about getting rid of P foam from the DPW superintendent the other day unfortunately we got all rid of all of the old stuff a long time ago but the new stuff now they say is bad too but they won't take that we're from the government we're here to help okay thank you I have a couple questions sure um at this point are we are we fully up and running to support 12,000 residents as you see it I know you mentioned we're we're kind of we we finished the 5year plan but are we at a point now where we are comfortable we're still it's it's a balancing act we are still getting call people turning out we're still covering a lot of the calls uh when we have a second call if the ambulance goes out call people will come back cover the station uh we're not we don't drop a lot of calls and have to call out of town but a lot of it's a juggling Act is the who's around we have less and less call people that live in town because they can't afford it unfortunately uh we see what I'm seeing more and more again is people coming in that want this is their foot in the door to become a firefighter or a paramedic and we train them we work with them and then unfortunately usually fortunately for them usually in 3 to five years they're getting hired somewhere unfortunately not often us and that and then they may stay on part-time but we may not see them as much right now out of a 40 some OD man Department I believe I have six that are true call Firefighters that have another job that do something else uh and they don't want to be a full-timer they're just a call firefighter and as I said two of them are over 60 and and actually two were well over 60 in are EMT hes at this point it's just it's a different demographic coming in so that so why I say are we good right now yes looking forward we're still going to need to think about something else we're going to need to look at another 5-year plan or something to cover it's getting a little more difficult to cover the prum shifts because most of those pums are career firefighters somewhere else they can work for us for $27 an hour or work overtime for their own Department at$ 40 or $50 an hour or more and that it's tough to make a decision the shifts right now are on Sundays a lot of guys that it's getting hotter to give up Sundays all the time so we see we see that and I see that coming down the road we're working we're trying to get some new people in and cover that but I think it's going to be I think what you're going to see is it's going to be less and less call people as time goes on and we're not as like same problem the police have we're not drawing the new generation in you can talk it up but it's there's not as many people that want to get into this line of work anymore that's seems to have all changed since 2020 so the ones we see are usually people that are in their they have family in the business mhm so okay um with the inspections decreasing and fire kind of plateauing over the last decade or so on EMS just skyrocketing are we getting to the point where we may need a third ambulance well as I mentioned I think I don't think to staff a third ambulance we're there yet but I think within within a 5 to 10 year range you may be talking about having a third one is that they call it the terms a mechanical spare the truck wouldn't be in service normally but if one of the other trucks broke down I had to go in for maintenance you moved the equipment over put that truck in service and now you're still running two trucks okay but we're not at the call volume or we would need a third truck yet I right I we hit we don't hit it that often that we get that busy but just the other day we had to because both ambulances were on other calls and I took the ladder truck to a call by myself met a couple guys on the scene and we had to wait for a private okay so which they were wasn't a long wait but some days that that's how it goes MH and we said the whole area is busier it's not just us I think they're all seeing equivalent percentages increases the cities are busier you know the other towns are busier and we're all starting to travel further and further because people are people are living longer with more complex medical problems that can't be taken care of at the local hospitals so we're making more trips to Worster we've had a couple that we've had to go to Boston and that which that was unheard of 20 years ago we never did that we you wer might have been once or twice a year now it's you know several two or three times a month that we're going to Worster okay and because that's if you're having a heart a true heart attack you've got serious trauma that's where you're going to get treated you know we got the stuff to keep you going until you get there but that's you know that's where it's going and like I say it's it's an aging population as they say so absolutely um when was our last salary comparison study done I mean are we are we that two year and a half two years ago last contract negotiations for the full-time people how did we look when we came out of that we were lower middle okay but our guys work a 48 Hour Week the average for most departments is a 42h hour week basically comes down to you work a day on two days off versus a one day on 3 days off and that and that's a tough one to compete there are not a lot of departments that are work 48 and the challenge also with that with a 42 is you're covering 7 days a week and that and that's that's a conversation I've had with with the Union leadership and myself they'd see rather see more people on the on the shift I'd rather see the longer coverage and we're working together we have a good relationship and we're discussing that so okay uh last question I have is just are we still going to are we set to make it to early to mid 2025 if we don't get the truck to yeah that that truck will probably stay with us once we retire it it it'll become the water rescue truck and replace a 1998 ambulance that's older than some of the people riding on it now and that and and again it's going to go from doing several hundred calls a year to probably doing less than 50 okay so which will we'll get some more time out of that for that purpose but as it won't run as an ambulance if anybody's ridden in that truck it's not the most comfortable ride because it's a heavy truck the newer ones are much more comfortable excellent thank you are there any other questions or comments for the chief before okay um are there is there any public comment regarding the chief's presentation before we move on to the schools seeing none I think you're good all right thank you very much take care thanks all right so next on the agenda is a is the school department however we're not getting the full presentation tonight um they are presenting the full presentation on the 21 after they vote on what budget they're going to have um and I had spoken to the superintendent and asked if we could have department heads available for questions that evening so that we could not have to come back to or have questions answered and sent back to us but actually have the full discussion right then and there um and for that evening there are two department heads that are not going to be available the facilities and the special education so they are both here this evening to kind of go over line items go over conversations um the facilities department has put forward a couple documents showing what's been done and what needs to be done in the buildings for keeping up maintenance um and I just wanted to have a chance for a discussion with those department heads now rather than have to ask questions and then get it pushed back so if You' like come on up okay since I know you have an early flight do you want to start with special education thank you okay um um let me pull up and I'm juliani hansum by the way director of special services let me pull up just give everybody a little bit of advanced notice that the the budgets that you have the most recent versions of budgets that you have um are now becoming outdated there are some updates that are not quite uh completed yet um so you may have additional question questions uh when we review the full budget but I don't believe that we'll have any significant changes in these two Department lines okay so the way you gave it to us last time was really good if you do that again then I can kind of quickly put it into pivot tables and analyze it and see where the there may be questions so y I appreciate that level of detail and that format worked out really well I'm glad that that it can get to be very overwhelming and very confusing with so many different variations y um we just as again point of information um we did receive some questions about um lines that didn't quite match in the different versions wanting explanation for some of those things um we did catch that um as an example the one of the cuts to the middle school guidance counseling position um there's a cut but it's actually going to be a split between the middle school and high school and in one version of the budget the half was carried in the right portion of the school half at the high school half at the middle school but in a different version the salaries all come out the same but it wasn't notated um that way so we've gone back and cleaned up some of those small details as well didn't change the bottom line um but just to have them properly notated within the budget okay I am going to pull up Chris your pivot table or your um your version of it which is it's the same version it's just been so the the last version that you all received is the last version that was publicly released there's been some ongoing conversation um with the town manager um obviously since the last version was released there's the new growth um monies that will be coming to our budget so we're updating currently to include uh those monies um and earlier in the week um one of the select board board members um mentioned the possibility of pulling some of our um some of the projects that we have budgeted in our facility lines um out um and maybe maybe funding through arpa money um so again that's something that that conversation is ongoing nothing definitive there yet um so things I believe are going to continue to evolve um probably right up until I walk in the door to give my budget presentation next Wednesday night to the school committee um and then that will be the update that I provide uh for this body as well the following night okay but I will do what I can to get you as much updated information in advance as I can um because I know that it's it's beneficial for you to be able to go through the lines and compare but hopefully you'll have some of of the information um in advance of that so you won't have as many questions perhaps are there any preliminary questions for at least the special education portion for Miss hansam Chris is looking at know I know that Mr manard had mentioned that he was interested in understanding the circuit breaker and I know that you attended the school committee meeting when we did the presentation on circuit breaker y so we answered questions that you might have had you may have answered them but someone caused problems at that meeting cut the volume let's not revisit that I I would like to go on the record and say that I continued on she did I ize the just ignore factor and you know we couldn't hear it on on the the zoom though that was the so unfortunately what ended up happening was if if you've come into the actual physical location where we have those hybrid meetings from the high school there's a cart with um all all the Tech equipment uh picking up the wireless mics the camera so on and so forth um that I log in and that is the one that is the audio for in the room and on zoom and uh somehow during that whole um thing that we were trying to shut down and manage that login was removed from the meeting so it took a couple minutes for us to figure that out and then I tried to figure out how I could get audio on my laptop so yes there was some missed audio happily uh pack was there videoing um that meeting so um I didn't see it get posted though has the pack version didn't get posted it is now I know they had some work to do did it have that con that presentation on the circuit breaker I don't know if I have okay if you have any questions about it you can ask me now or you can schedule a time and you can call me later and I don't mind walking through with you or you can even come in and I can sit down with you cuz it it does get really particular and and there's so many different facets and you may be looking at something different than someone else so so I guess my question would boil down to there are some large Auto District placements there are do you see circuit breaker coming into play fiscal year 25 fiscal year 24 and is there anything that can be done in the budget related to circuit breaker either now or at special ton meeting um and how's that all kind of accounted for is it just if it comes in it's it's kind of happy birthday but if not it it's not not exactly happy birthday but no so so I I do a forecast um because it's a reimbursement it's a true reimbursement so I can look at the district the added districts that we have currently right now and then based on the formulas that they give me the four times the foundation I can put that against the OSD um given tuitions and I can get a pretty good estimate as to what it is what what I've done in the past is I've come up with reimbursement at 65% 70% 75% and then felt out from October to January to see like what I was hearing what it might be reimbursed at the last like 3 to four years it's been reimbursed at 75% I haven't heard that that's going to change at all Kate's a little less optimistic than I am on 75% um because they' they've now Incorporated also some some Transportation reimbursement and so what we've been told is that they would do the circuit break or full reimbursement first before they would start reimbursing for the transportation so that's why I think we have some wiggle room for the 75% that being said I've factored in the transportation at a 50% reimbursement but I haven't put that towards the trans towards the tuitions for next year as far as an offset for that because we have no wiggle room whatsoever um whatsoever so so I really didn't want to eat up even that little amount of Transportation by by having it put in towards that my understanding is that the circuit breaker goes into its own account and that it can be rolled over for one year okay is that that's a reserve account I don't know if they classify it as a reserve account or it's just the circuit breaker account but we we put monies like this year we had we had um we had tuitions and we had some leftover monies from 23 that carried over and so we hit those monies first out of circuit breaker to cover those tuitions and now we're into 24 and so I'm working with the business people currently to figure out how much we have to roll over for next year um it doesn't look like it's going to be as significant as it has been in the past because we've been hit with two big years of that inflation um last year it was like 128,000 when OSD raised their rates by over 4 14% per tuition and this year it's 4.69 and I think that that equals out to about a $50,000 increase um just for having the same placement we have without even another student going out right and that said um I'm aware as is Juliana that um our collaborative our Keystone collaborative uh they're looking at raising rates almost 11% almost 11% so when you're thinking all right it's going to be a 4% and then you've got somebody that comes in at 11% um it throws it off it does and one of the um situations that we've had um you know uh a student let's say moveing to lunenberg who's already in an out of District placement we end up picking up that out of District placement even though we didn't budget for it um so yes Juliana is pretty good at figuring out this out and anticipating um like I said makes me a little bit nervous when we count on um the state following through at a past reimbursement rate especially looking at next year knowing that the state budget is struggling as well um but yeah it's what you see in those lines already factors in circuit breaker yes 50% though um 75 75 75 okay sorry okay I'm wondering that 14% increase you had last year uh can you give us a rough idea on how you absorb that I I don't want absolute details but if you can remember I mean we've been through we've all been through a Million numbers so I'm guessing I'm guessing that it was probably absorbed with a lot of the carryover for the circuit breaker monies and that's why we're seeing that account go down from the carryover from year to year okay thank you yeah and we're only allowed a certain amount that that can be carried over oh it can be carried over just one year I don't think it's like it is in the grants in the title one grants where they have to spend the 85% I think with circuit breaker you can carry it over um like I said for that full one year but yeah those that we did not expect that 14% And I can tell you even up until this time last year I was like there is no way it's going to be 14% because stum in the state is going to get word of it the superintendent are going to revolt leg and then it went through and I was like wow I've got to eat crow now because it really is 14% um that that was huge but but um we were able to absorb it I think with li year certain break of money but moving forward now it's that additional cost and now 14 4. 69 which um additional 49,000 for this year and still the uh Keystone collaborative rate has not yet been set um but we're way too deep into our budget development for next year to Pivot and and factor in those costs especially when it's not set yet um so that's part of our challenge too is that sometimes we just don't have all the information uh in a in a timeline that matches the budget development cycle here in here in town um we've mentioned this before uh we don't find out our grant allocation for our federal grants um until late July sometimes early August um we have to turn around our grant submissions and have them approved uh as quickly as we possibly can because at that point school's opening for us in about 2 to 3 weeks after we submit a Grant application if we can turn it around that quickly um so if if we're anticipating in this budget that we'll be able to fund certain positions out of certain grants or um offset some of the Full salary by applying some grant funding to that salary um and then if if the monies don't come in at the same level and we see a [Music] reduction we have to figure it out um but we we do the best we can um to anticipate and optimize the grant funding uh so that we can keep the local budget as low as we can I haven't been able to get a clear answer on one question that I've asked a number of people that I thought might would have the answer um and this isn't directly related to the budget but then again it really is and that is under your collective bargaining agreements there is an absolute drop dead date that uh members of those unions need to be notified that they are potentially going to be laid off that's correct do you have that date um I'm not sure that it's exactly the same in all of the different contracts I believe the teachers is June 1st but I'd have to verify that okay I'd appreciate that there there's a reason behind me asking but it doesn't need to be doesn't need to come up right now okay thank you so there is a cut in the needs base for a special ed teacher would what would would you be able to keep up with all your IEPs and your yeah for for all the cuts that we came up with it would not be impactful as far as us not being able to implement the IEPs it might just be a different way in which we're implementing the IEPs and consolidating programs um for example one of the teacher cuts that we the interent one of the teacher cuts at um Turkey Hill we know that for right now enrollment is low in those two programs for this year and for next year as it stands that being said if we get students that move in or if we get students that come from the primary and have that difficult time adjusting to Turkey Hill and need to be put in that sub separate that might increase the numbers because as of right now the numbers are low enough to where we felt we could combine those two programs and and just make the one program for this year and next year but then the following year we already see if the trajectory is the way it is we're going to have to reinstate that program but we were and and you know it's never never a great thing to separate then combine then separate then combine it it throws off the teachers it throws off the students but when we're looking at this kind of a fiscal budget I couldn't I couldn't say well no I I want to keep a classroom of three and a class class room of four with one teacher each but yet cut and and let's make class size go up to 26 27 in certain situations so it's not going to impact the IEP um the IEPs for right now no I I have kind of a follow-up question on that so if you can kind of give a little bit more information on those numbers that helps you decide on what you're putting down on proposed budget so the teacher speal specialist for each school is that based on how many kids have educ educational contracts and how do you anticipate more educational contracts and more children in need of special services are you talking about for those sub separate programs for all programs for special ed I I'm I'm not understanding that question so you have you have children across the board whether it's in you know the preschool Primary Elementary Middle High that have educational contracts in some form or another not just IEPs but you have other contracts and kids with services so when you're factoring in on a proposed budget for how many teaches you you need what is your mathematical equation to get to that what are the classroom size what are the students that are on said programs and how are you anticipating that I would imagine that it's a hard thing to anticipate how many kids in 2025 are going to require services at all of the schools so I'm curious how you work a formula to say this is how many teachers that we need and how does that affect the the the ratio between teacher and student and those needs so there's not really a formula there's not but but I know the students that are in the programs this year and I know which programs they're going to next year and so we do start on that process at the beginning of the budget cycle where we look and we transfer those students like from fifth grade to sixth grade from second grade to third grade and then we look at those sub programs to see if they're getting larger or if they're smaller um and then we reallocate as needed from that standpoint we haven't had that big of an increase or decrease to really warrant um looking at like my inclusive staff my inclusion teachers and and that being having to cut or or add due to those case loads because those case loads they R go up between like 15 to 20 per teacher which which right now is manageable depending on the severity of the of the students because even the students in inclusion some of them can be need have more needs than than others um but the inclusion the inclusion teachers roughly have that Cas so between 15 to 20 might some might have a few more than that um and then we may have additional par support for those that have a higher case load the sub program so we have a pretty good idea like I said from year to year because we see that trajectory plus we have a referral process in place to where we really make sure that we've collected the data um to place students appropriately in the least restrictive environment and that we've got that data to be able to show that they really do need that additional level of of support to be in a sub separate program okay and if and if it came up to where we needed more and if we had a boom I'm talking to key about it one of the reasons I asked the question is because I'm looking at the needs based proposed budget and again I understand that this is going to change again and this is these are proposed budgets and um you know I also appreciate the format that this is put in because instead of looking at five different spreadsheets at a time it's Consolidated but you know I'm looking at the ele elementary school special ed resource room teacher and the needs based budget's increasing by 34% and then the middle school is 177% so I'm just wondering how do you decrease that needs based budget at the elementary school by a third so that really is just connected to the salary that that percentage is the percentage change of the salaries in that line um the reduction at Turkey Hill is one teacher and it's to consolidate those two subpar programs into one based on the smaller number of students that are in that program for next year um the change at um the Middle School school m is um a position uh there's a salary change there because when we cut positions um some teachers may have multiple areas of certification and if their position that they're in currently is being eliminated but they have more seniority and experience than a a a newer um teacher to the to the district they can bump a least senior teacher out of that position so that's part of the challenge when you look across uh the three different budgets um I had one of the questions that we got was why is the the budget that has the most Cuts why am I seeing increases in salary lines in in different areas that's why because more senior teachers are bumping a lower salar person out and therefore that salary goes to that line with them so I appreciate the the answer to those questions because I think the community right now you know they're looking at the numbers and what's behind the numbers what's the thought process why are those decisions being made on a needs based budget or a proposed budget or any budget in general so it helps I think the community in general and that's my belief to understand the thought process behind what's on the paper because when you look at the paper sometimes it's scary yeah which is why um in the the latest version of what I now call the Rainbow sheet um we put the cuts for each of the budgets at the very bottom so if you follow the yellow budget all the way down you'll see all of the cuts that come with that budget so if somebody was concerned about 30% decrease in this Staffing at special ed at a particular building if you look down you you're seeing that it's actually just the one position that's being cut okay thank you in U one of the many iterations that we've been staring at over the past couple months um and honestly I don't know if it was just one of the early lists of what was going to be cut it may have been that but one thing I I kind of caught out oh I've got one question before I continue this we have an anomaly class are they in fifth grade this year or sixth grade this year you mean the large class the large class yep so we have a larger class size currently this year in the fifth grade fifth grade okay um next year they'll be in the sixth grade but when you look at the class size of next year's 8th grade 7th grade and sixth grade uh Mr santry is going to be able to reassign teachers who may this year are teaching at the seventh grade to teach at the sixth grade okay um therefore you know the class sizes won't um you know the reason I bring up the question and I needed to know for sure that it was the fifth grade I thought it was but I just needed to be sure in that list of uh eliminated positions there was one fifth grade teacher that's correct now that's a transfer from fifth grade to sixth grade correct not a loss of a of a position nope that's a loss of a position because we don't need to move that FTE teacher up to the middle school because based on this year's eighth grade leaving to go up to the high school and looking forward to next year's eighth grade class size 7th grade class size and sixth grade class size Mr santry can reassign teachers from the seventh or the eighth grade where the numbers are going to be lower next year okay so and we assign them to the sixth grade so we don't have to carry that FTE and transfer up to the middle school they already will have enough flexibility with the staff that they have currently to provide enough teachers at the sixth grade level and still not short Change um increasing class size at the seventh and eighth grade level okay my point is that what it boils down to is we're cutting a position here and we're shifting one in the in the higher four grades um but we're not counting that eighth grade shift as a eliminated position that's my concern so at the middle school we're going to give you a little insight into our world at the middle school um we're going to have two retirements um one of those retirements is going to be filled when another position is cut that person has more seniority and has that license and can bump in to backfill that that retirement okay and then somebody from that grade level with that retirement filled there's an extra teacher that can be reassigned to the sixth grade and then there's another retirement that just will not be filled so that's an actual cut okay thank you very much one second you just called my daughter an anomaly by the way I just want to make sure you know that now go ahead on that note one of your budgets I don't see it on the one that I'm looking at right now the most recent it affected the Middle School assistant principal and with that anomaly class going into the middle school I don't see that on here at on the needs based but that is a bigger class that is going into sixth grade I understand and appreciate the explanation on The Balancing Act for special services and students in general going into the sixth grade because you still have two other grades to consider obviously but not having that Middle School assistant principal I think is a really big deal you know not to say it in you know layman's terms are to be too blunt but I'm personally concerned as a community member as a mom with kids in school and not having that position at that school and right now Mr sry is the principal for two schools yes you don't have two principles one designated to middle and high so Mr sanry's plate in my personal opinion is very full and cutting that role of the assistant principal for the middle school I think could be very devastating which is why it's not in the needs based budget so that's when we have to get down or we're anticipating having to get down to that 2.9 budget that's when that cut came in um just for clarification around that I agree wholeheartedly um I think the actual job that the assistant principles do is significant in terms of um supporting families supporting students uh the climate and culture inside the building um they connect and make bonds with students and when you have students with social emotional challenges at the younger grades they tend to manifest as behaviors that are disruptive um when you have somebody that's in the building every day and that's your safe person um it it helps we have seen a a difference uh in the number of kiddos the number of restraints um that have to be done with the youngest of our students um that's uh in part a credit to our uh bcbas our board certified Behavior analysts that work with teachers on strategies um and they work with students on strategies that they can employ but it also comes down to having that assistant principal in the building every day when we had um shared assistant principles the model before we went to a full-time assistant principal in each building uh churkey Hill had a principal primary had a principal and there was one assistant principal split between the two buildings and you're never fully there to address if if you had been dealing with an assistant principal but today is not the day that the assistant principal is at your child's building he's at a different building the continuity for communication with families the continuity uh support for the kiddos in the building the continuity of support for the staff in the building again having a dedicated full-time person there to assist the principal to become the principal for the day if the principal is out sick and our principls do get covid like everybody else and they're out for several days you have somebody who who knows the building knows the kids knows the staff knows the families can step into that role and manage the building while a principal's out um it's less frantic and chaotic I don't know which building are they in today um at the Middle High School um originally we had planned for one principal one assistant principal at the high school one principal one assistant principal at the middle school but there was a circumstance uh where one of those principal ships was vacated and Mr santry was appointed as an interim to to manage both buildings it worked out really well the staff was happy having one principal for the building so in shifting that model we went from four administrators in the building two principles two assistant principles to four administrators in the building one principal three assistant principles so the cut of an assistant principal in our worst case scenario budget the plan was to have that one principle one assistant principal who could be on the high school side of the house one assistant principal who could be on the Middle School side of the house and they could be supported by a teacher with a stipended role as a Dean not optimal but it would have given some additional support to the administrative team again not optional I mean optimal we but we again don't make that cut and until our worst case budget I think in the worst case scenario I am just going to you know say one more thing about the the Middle School assistant principal you have someone with a lot of experience and to remove that person I think would still be devastating in the worst case scenario and I would implore you to look elsewhere to make different types of cuts because he's your boots on the ground and to replace that person with someone else and shift things around and I mean this isn't a good scenario one way or the next because you're talking about cutting people and there's going to be sufferance one way or the next but with the bigger class going into the middle school I think having someone that's built relationships that has the experience that has been there is is something that I again would implore you to to look at in a worst case scenario and it is exactly what it is it's a worst case scenario like there's I understand that you know so it's really not just you know as a finance Committee Member it's also as a parent as well thank you for that appreciate it we have any more questions for I had a couple of quick questions um the high school department heads there's a $25,000 MH budget line there was nothing there before was that something contractual or was that it is contractual it's a stipend that they get on top of their teacher salary uh for their responsibilities as department head uh previously that had been uh covered out of uh a revolving account um but it is contractual so is this new this year or just came from another line item that was somewhere else it was it was funded by a different account not in the local budget um but it is contractual it it really should be in the budget and the other one had to do with the curriculum special ed directors I noticed over the last three in now four years a lar is that additional people additional is it curriculum is that additional curriculum or what is so is that the curriculum line where FY 24 it was 90 91,000 and now no it's it was let's see 24 was 234 and 271 this time and it was 203 a couple of years ago so it just it just been growing a little lot faster than others and uh it was uh it's line 211 right so in that line the first breakout is the student services coordinator I think he's got and then the next lying down is the instructional Services director okay is that where you're at those are the two okay or are you down at the special ed clerical no it's the one right above that the title one director okay I'm looking at the at the uh spreadsheet that uh Chris created so I'm not oh okay I'm trying to find it on her spreadsheet it's it's it's line 2110 I think so you're looking at a combined it just grew a little faster than other is up 36,000 from last year to this year and it was you know that's a big over 10% increase I just didn't know what that would cause that was it curriculum was it was that part adding a staff and part-time from a prior year and things things like that so I think you're probably looking at a combined total for that section of the budget if you look at it broken out um in the the version that's posted on the District web page um you'll see there that it's the instructional Services director that's the curriculum right director um the reason for the jump is that when we put this position the last time the district had a curriculum director position was in 2012 um I believe June of 2012 and that was it then with covid and the pivot for teachers to teach a whole new way teaching remote teaching streaming technology they needed resources that they could use online um we pivoted and put a curriculum position in interim and then we moved to keep that position um it was something that the school committee had wanted uh even in my my very first budget presentation here in this District they were disappointed that I did not reinstate a curriculum director at that time so when we put that position in we partially funded the position in the local budget and had some offset uh through let's say the title one Grant but the goal was always to gradually add a little more FTE into the budget until the full salary would be carried in in the local budget so that's why you see it increasing each year um for two years it was at a 6 um offset with grants for 04 then it went to a 08 and now next year it'll it'll be up to a full FTE carried in the budget so nobody got big races I know that that's you know a lot of people are looking at that and thinking that that's what happened that's that's not what happened it's usually there's usually good explanations for especially after they've been looked at a thousand times by a thousand different people so that was my expectation something like that I think that's what you're seeing there thank you for that that was very good I think this question's been asked probably three or four times through the process um but collective bargaining agreements expected to be negotiated in 2025 so we are currently engaged with the teachers union and when I see teachers union just so everybody knows teachers are part of that group our nurses our school psychologists pretty much anybody who works in the school that isn't a part of a different group um our par professionals have their own group our secretaries have their own group uh custodians and our cafeteria workers so other than the administrators pretty much anybody that we hire um is carried in that teachers bargaining unit in general is that the Lea or or that is the Lea and we're engaged with them currently their contract their current contract expires June 30th okay do we have another one that expires in 25 that expires in 25 no in June that you'll begin negotiations and your funding in 25 we um have our first preliminary meeting um with our power professionals Union uh next week and those are the two groups that we're bargaining with um there are a couple of um individual contracts um that are also up June 30th um nothing of a Major Impact um but the the bulk of that it it's those two groups okay so the reason I asked that question is that if you track the salary Reserve account at least the way I have always tracked it is that you're looking at what is anticipated as the first year cost of the contracts that are under negotiation in that fiscal year so again rough numbers I did not put it in a calculator but across all three budgets we're looking at roughly $330,000 as an average so that means close to a million dollar increase over three years of a cont contracts excuse me not necessarily like you said that's the anticipated potential uh for the first year that does not necessar guarantee that whatever is um negotiated for year one of the 3 years is going to then be also year 2 and three um we have if you go back and look historically um there are contracts where um there might have been I don't know let I don't have the numbers off the top of my head but let's say year 1 was a 2% the next year was a 2 and A2 and then the following third year was a 1% um so it's it it doesn't necessarily carry forward that this is what the cost is for year one so this will also be year two and year three it was a number of years ago and before you came to lunenberg there was one uh contract negotiation that netted $1.2 million over 3 years um and that had a lot opened a lot of people's eyes and you know and and I understand you've got to some substantial group of people there but I implore you to negotiate hard on this um and I'm not going to try to quote percentages or pay scales or averages or anything like that but it's known fact that the teachers in lunenberg do get paid well and you can argue that all you want but out in the industry my ex-wife was in North Middle sex for 20 some odd years and the place to go for the salary has always been lunenberg so we do comparative analyses as well um and we do the comparison looking at the pay for entry mid-level steps highest level step um so no I understand you go through the process it's possible that um our entry level salary is a little bit better than some some of the other comparable districts but then it's also possible that on the high end not so much so we do we do look closely at that yep and if I remember correctly and again my memories uh getting fuzzy for those that back that many years and that was one of the things that happened in that contract was that on the top end there were I believe two steps added and as I said the other night at the select board meeting I've been talking for a decade and a half that you know those types of increases are not sustainable unless we do something different on our Revenue side yep and I will Echo what has been said relative to Staffing challenges for Town departments um you know the chief echoed you know that okay we get some people in we train them they go and they make better money somewhere else if we don't stay competitive with our salaries in the school department um what you will see is that that same routine will happen for our staffing as well where teachers come in they work with us for a handful of years get some experience and then go take a job somewhere else um the risk there is what I call the revolving door um it's hard to build community and culture within the school when teachers are coming and going all the time it's even worse when you have a revolving door for the administration running the school and we had that challenge at the primary before I I arrived I want to say they had three different three or four different principles in a nine-year period of time four it's hard to get that continuity um because often times when you have leadership changes there's a slightly different philosophy different priorities a different direction that we're going to go so you never get that consistent forward progress in any One Direction you take a step forward and then you pivot cuz now we're going to go that way okay but now something new comes in we're going back this way you need the momentum for that forward progress and having um stability in your Staffing gives you that so I hear what you're saying um but just just know that there are unintended consequences uh for not keeping Pace uh with with salaries uh for the school department and and that's in all areas um not not just the teaching unit there's there's another thing involved here too and and you know my parents and and probably I would say the generation before them um they got into jobs and they stayed in them that doesn't happen much anymore that's correct our Workforce today in all areas M all areas nobody has goes into a job with an intention of staying more than I believe it's 5 to seven years even if they're getting paid well they don't don't intend to stay in positions for long periods of time so yes throwing money at it does help stabilize it a little bit but it's not going to stem the tide yeah once upon a time my early years here uh we would see turnover in positions largely because a position opened up closer to home now I have children I don't want to lose time from my family in a commute I want to be closer to home or there was an opportunity for advancing their career um taking a a step up in a in a job um the last two years we are seeing much more I I can make more money yeah I have a better benefit over there and they're they're going I I have three staff in just one of my buildings two of them I know they told me left because they got more money somewhere else and that was it's been devastating for that one school this year from a special education standpoint to manage that school with the staff because we haven't been able to fill some of those positions adequately so I I think the tides are changing to a certain degree I also think people are going to leave for a very variable reasons right I'm just saying and I understand the the the longer people stay in a position for for your needs especially the better off you are the children are and everything but in Private Industry no nobody plans I've been a plant manager nowadays you don't plan for anybody to be around that long that's why mechanization is has gone rampid because you can't count on a Workforce that's going to stick around and know what they're doing uh for any period of time right but thank you to your point it is difficult when people move but I have done some research on this and for a town our size in Massachusetts our teachers are paid very competitively and I think people when you look at it generally yes yes like we're not on the lower end of things for you know teacher salaries in the town of Lunenburg and you know very respectfully I think there's a lot of different reasons that people do leave you know it's not just salary based you know it's relationship building and you know collaborative work in schools and when you have a lot of staff changes or changes you know with taking this person from this school or moving him over here or what you were saying about you know having an assistant principal both and trying new things there's ramifications to that so it it really does affect it I think to look at what we are paying we the town of lunenberg you know for our teachers in the salaries I absolutely agree with Mr pasio on that I do think that we are competitive and to stay competitive is fine but we don't need to you know overpay either we will never be able to overpay I that is something that I think the school committee fully understands my point is we we never heard that reason for people leaving until more recently now it it seems that that is most often times the reason that people are [Music] leaving um that's the reason they're giving us right that's the reason they're giving you right just the I think we have a union and we have uh and you guys are negotiating with him I think that's the proper place for that and you guys will fight to make to make sure they get a fair deal but the town also gets a fair deal I think that's ultimately what we can hope for I do notice that was looking at some other time you know it's it's lunar so maybe because it might cost a little more to live here people wanted to live here obviously that has to take it effect there's certain places in certain areas where you get to pay a little more but I think ultimately it's uh ultimately that if their scale goes so high that this town won't be able to afford it and then there'll be fewer of them to get paid the high salaries you are correct and they'll have a much worse working environment you are correct so it's uh they need to understand that side needs to understand uh like I think uh the fire chief was talking about working with his unions and it's not always like this correct it can be collaborative let's discuss what do we want to achieve together and how do I make sure that we you know because it's not just salaries it's also benefits and other things too and so I think as long as you guys have that attitude I I I don't know enough about the internals of those things that's what you guys have so I would support your effort of trying to do the best job you can for the town will do the reason I bring it pro tively up now and probably will repeat it again over the next few months um is that there there are checks and balances in place for collective bargaining agreements on the town side whereas town meeting has to approve the funding of the first year of the contract so that has to be brought to town meeting if if town meeting is paying attention and they really have an issue with what's been negotiated by the board of Selectmen and the town manager then they can say no to that first year and it goes back to collected bargaining on the school side and and I understand it's by law and so on and so forth you have a negotiating team and you have a five member school committee that are the balance check and balance against that Collective bargain agreement the rest of the town does not have a say in it other than cutting the budget so severely that you have to cut positions because you can't fund the salaries I I just as a point of information though the town manager does have a vote on the ratification of all of our contracts I neglected to cover that yes thank you um case in point and and it happened a number of years ago but um the city of Boston um and and I never heard how they ever came up with the collective bargaining agreement that they had with the firefighters in Boston it was just unbelievably expensive and the city council pushed back and said no take it back take it back to collective bargaining so you know city council or town meeting is able to do that whereas in our scenarios here with School uh collective bargaining agreements we don't have that extra check one other question I heard um selectman jeffre was talking about um maintenance for the buildings and we have the high school is maybe eight years old and the primary school is pushing 20 I think and we've talked a lot about Turkey Hill is there enough in the budget I mean I probably never enough in the budget but do you feel confident that you'll be able to maintain the buildings at a at a decent level before we get to facilities I want to make sure we finish up with special special education first no that's okay I just because Miss hansam is getting on a plane tun oh my husband likes to be the first one at the airport so it's leaving next week and you just get in there ear that's not a bad thing I missed putting my bag on the Belt by one minute and had to wait six hours are there any other questions for Special Education First okay thank you thank you very much thank you than you and now with that let's move over to facilities Mr Gray that's my question do you think you have enough money uh or enough to do the things that will maintain the school at a decent level so that's always a tricky question to answer um because unexpected things happen sure this year as an example um we had a problem with one of the elevators at the Middle High School somebody came in and assessed the situation it cost us $14,800 to repair and then State came in to do the inspection to get the elevator back online and it failed inspection because there was a leak in the Hydraulics um and uh the initial quote that we got from the same company that we dealt with uh was roughly another 15 ,000 uh but we're pursuing other quotes for that repair to see if we can get something better so in the end an unexpected elevator repair to the tune of 30,000 those are the kinds of things that come up uh we um have been troubleshooting HVAC systems in all the buildings for the last couple of years uh to Mr hee's credit he has pursued them um and gotten to the bottom of some things and has quotes for repairs for those um others we're still trying to troubleshoot and identify the point of failure if you will the the repair that's needed um so we're still in a process of trying trying to figure that out um so we we have attempted to to build some things into the facili budget but um honestly any any day something could go and it's the kind of situation that I can't always wait till the fall and put it on a capital plan to submit for Capital plan funding and then wait until July 1 one after that to do the repair so if we have a heating system failure in January we need to fix it whatever that cost is um so we we do the best we can um some of the larger ticket items like heating systems need to be replaced I don't know like let's say the primary school what I don't know what the average life is let's say it's 20 25 years we're getting close to that is that a capital plan that would be submitted at some point saying we need to upgrade or do a major overhaul or whatever is needed there are a few projects in the out years of the the capital plan um you know whether or not we want to Pivot and consider some of the uh more energy efficient upgrades to systems like that that are eligible for grant funding a lot of including the msba uh is moving away from um reimbursing or providing funds for uh facilities that aren't green um but I'll I'll let Mr heee speak to some of um what he's finding he he started with us in late October so he's had an awful lot on his plate and he's done an awful lot of work a lot of good work um and I think you know once he finishes one full year with us he'll he'll have the sense of the EB and flow the normal flow of utility bills etc etc um and I think the budget that we build for facilities next year for FY 26 will potentially have increases in these lines and it'll be really based on um his assessment of the actual cost the projected costs for repairs that he's seeing on the horizon uh Etc um but I'll let him speak to what he's learned in his short time with us thus far yes um when I first got here my my plan was to go through each of the buildings and and do a uh an assessment to see where we're at and I started at the primary school and first place I went was the boiler rooms and during my review I found that we had a circulation pump that wasn't working it it froze up so we needed to get that repaired and um we were able to get that rebuilt um to get get it fixed and back up and running and I believe that cost was about a $4,000 bill um and then I in my short period of time again we had another circulation pump go down which the Barons froze up on it um so we had to have that repaired so a lot of the maintenance that I see that really needs to happen is getting some service level agreements in place and that's something I'm looking at thanks J and um seeing how we can implement it um there are a lot of heating issues districtwide um when I went in and looked at the building system management for primary school um you into the system and it shows you a layout of the school and it'll show you your univ vents it'll show you your boilers and your fans your exhaust fans and the whole screen looked like a Christmas tree and it was blinking and what that tells me is there's a lot of communication problems there's a lot of um issues with valves could be actual uors it could be um uh controllers which we've identified that we had a bad controller um out on the floor that piece of equipment alone was $110,000 just to to replace I have that put into my budget for next year but those are the types of things that I'll come across as time goes on um but those are expensive things I found two controllers over at the high school that I need to replace the jce controllers and with it what that is is like the brains that send out Communications to the univent the fans the the uh air handling units Up on the Roof uh when one one of those goes down uh that's all computerized you need special software to get into those you need a technician with a certain skill to go in and be able to read that information and manipulate it uh that's stuff that we don't have so I had quoted out um a technician two technicians for an eight hour day because what I wanted to do was start going through the buildings and that quote itself was is about $3,200 for two techs for 8 hours and the hope is to slowly chip away at it um unless there's something that severely goes down that I have to get a tech in right away you know um will'll have to deal with those costs there some of it will be unexpected um but that's the type of stuff that happens in maintenance you never know um we had air handling units up on the roof at the high school we had seven units down up there and that was anywhere from free stats not working properly fan motors and other things um that we needed to address and that was a significant bill that was a $26,000 Bill to get a technician in there to fix that for seven units um and that's that's stuff we have to address I mean that's that's heat in the building that's controls I think there's two things at play here though there's an immediate need for what we need to get through next week and next month and in May on I've been the four years I've been on this committee I've been pushing for a really good 10-year plan for operations as well as capital capital planning was making Headway on that um and then everyone kind of got sucked into this budget season we do plan to kind of hit on that 10year That's essential is to get that 10-year plan laid out pretty well on the operation side I've said this again for for many years I I need to see the the school department and the municipal departments working together on maintenance and um facilities um to streamline as much as possible on that but I guess my specific question um for this for this budget is I I know we identified some it equipment that could be purchased as capital is there other things capital on this list in your budget in your operating budget that's just that could be exposed for that when we did the capital plan we did not know we were going to be in the situation we sit here today in I think the whole Capital plan needs a a relook before Town me meeting because none of these were known I don't even know if you'd still prioritize 3M equipment film in some of your Capital requests when that could be mean that it's a teacher or something like that that's at play right so I think that's something that needs to be looked at through this is what specifically could be pulled out of this budget identified it capital reassess the capital plan and um address it that way um cuz cuz every nickel we find you know can be a teacher or something like that so I guess that's a specific ask specifically you know as you're you're here today um I don't know if you have any comments on it it's not fair for you to like have a off the top your that answer but I think that the you know some of the things that were talked about um with with the town manager as well as some ideas that even Renee had this past week are all things that need to be put on the table cuz perhaps we can get through this this next couple months perhaps some money comes in through the final State budgets and it's not as drastic as we go forward if the 2 and a half doesn't you know go forward um but we got to make some hard decisions through this process so yeah for sure and you know relative to the capital request that we submitted from the school department there was a truck on that and it and it didn't make the cut two from the two from the line um but earlier this winter um one of our trucks that was that we were hoping to be able to replace if if that truck were approved uh we couldn't use the plow because we couldn't put it into four drive because Drive the drive shaft on that was rotted out and it just dropped out and uh I consulted um my maintenance guy consulted with the highway department to um have them take a look at it and they were in search of trying to find a new drive shaft for that yeah I I frankly don't think the school department should be plowing their driveways I just don't I think that DPW should I don't buy this argument that there's emergencies that you can plow the school driveway and then enter a road that's not plowed I mean it it's it's not Fe it's not practical in my mind and and even with the fewer days that we see that happening in the change in weathering pattern so I was always kind of skeptical about that budget request anyways um I think the DPW should be moving snow in in sanding and icing and and or not standing salting I guess but um again in the operating budget is there things that we can you know pull out his Capital reassess the capital plan and put him on to even this year's Capital plan I know we went through a process I don't care right I really don't I I think that process is flawed and you know that we I think it's flawed because we put finance committee put a article in a couple years ago to to kind of change that process but um it again that's just a little bit of a soap box but also maybe an idea for um where we can find some monies right so we went back and took a look uh through the budget with this uh conversation about the possibility of ARA funds as an example um money that's in here uh for upgrades to the network for cyber security um there's money in here for the 911 upgrades to the telephone systems in all of the buildings um you had budgeted monies for HVAC repairs um can you get on the phone same phone system that towns on now so that we don't have to pay a phone bill anymore that it's all you know these are the ideas I think we really got to pursue I think one of the challenges and I will have to consult with the it folks and have a better answer for you um next week yeah yeah yeah but the last I thought I understood was that not all of our buildings are ready uh to go uh voice over IP um I believe it's the Turkey Hill is definitely not the infrastructure for Turkey Hill is just not uh I think that was definitely the one that was not capable of making that move um but I I'll get some more information for you and have that next week and the 911 upgrade is going for a school committee warrant article as well to come out of free cash so they pulled that one out um yeah I mean to me that just one like that's just a go do and reassess you know what the capital planning committee came up with and you know perhaps make some changes right I mean yeah you got to prioritize based on the situation we're in we're in a different situation than we were right and it's it's hard when you don't always anticipate that something's going to become a significant uh Financial impact um and then to have to wait to address it a year and a half out from when you identify that it's a problem sometimes we can't wait that long because there are things that have to be done um and that's why some of these things are in this budget uh because they are that high level of priority they have to be done is it possible for you to send me or us a copy of the um the bus contract and the requirements associated with the bus contract yeah I I can dig that up I think I looked at I think maybe you sent it a few years ago or something but I I also wonder if there's requirements that could be essent on the bus contracts to allow for reductions in costs on it because if I recall they were like the buses can't be more than 5 years old what if we let them be six years old you know this if you go through those requirements is there's things that could just drive cost down just think if we had our own buses the federal government would have replaced them all this year with electric buses we we will be uh going out to bid for the next cycle in January de in January okay yeah we'll hear from d right we'll be getting our quote from d in Jan he'll force him right out um I I agree wholeheartedly about the snow removal I it doesn't make sense to me either I think the snow removal should be considered to be done by DPW um Chris brought up a point a couple of weeks ago saying that you know you can't get to the schools unless the roads are clear so the roads have to be cleared first in order to get to the school to plow the schools out and I think there is cost savings there by having that done the town should take care of the schools I think that's a line item that I think should be moved I am wholeheartedly in agreement about your comment on snow removal um so the only one thing I would offer on that thought is that um possibly under some circumstances um we may have to cancel school or delay if I have to wait for DPW because they won't come to the schools to clear out the Lots until the roads are clear to their satisfaction so if our staff were working on clearing parking lots while they were out clearing roads once I get the all clear from the DPW that we're going to be good to have safe travel to get to school maybe I still can open on time maybe we had a delay to get everybody time to clear out but possibly in that kind of a situation I'd be cancelling school for the day because I would have to wait until DPW took care of all of the roadways before they came it it is what it is if that's how everybody wants to move forward that's fine but everybody needs to understand that there are going to be possibly more more no school call days but I sat on the blizzard board a few years back and we've survived a pandemic as a world not even as a country like as a world so if school has to get cancelled a couple of times I think there's other ways for the children to learn we can't it's not allowable to do remote learning it's not allowable those days don't count we cannot do it theate the state ended that right after the pandemic because they saw that it didn't I think given the amount of snow days that we've had though I I still think this is a point that we should be looking at to try to save that money on the light item even if it means that you have to close school 5 days you know a year or seven days a year and there's there's so many allowable school days too before it affects your school calendar so I I really do agree I think it's something that should be looked at and the town should be doing and like I said that's fine everybody just needs to understand that there there maybe other imp PS um come from that I think this is a discussion that we can have maybe after the budget season because this is something B I mean it's not just snow plowing it's maintenance you're M you're doing a maintenance on this building or the school why do you uh cutting grass well you're doing the cemetery you're doing the you're doing the uh the uh the parks you're doing this it's all similar equipment everything um you know because there's the school then there's a town and whenever the two shall meet it's an accounting thing how do you budget it how do you do it it's also a management thing how do you set up it so that the if if the town is actually doing all the plowing how do you set it up so that the schools make sure that they're ready to open when they down it's a it's purely management communication processes thing and it's not something that's easily done but it's just because it's hard doesn't mean you don't do it so I think that's one of the things that we and maybe ask uh others to discuss for future budgets uh it might be something that might take a number of years or it might not be worth it because of whatever other reasons but I think it's something probably we're not going to solve today I think to go a step further I I think it's difficult it's not easy to initiate but I think I could easily see a situation where if after you get through the Growing Pains of it where it just sort of becomes normal and you you figure out that they figure out the little quirks I manage around 40 properties and this is scheduling matter that's all this is so once you implement that schedule and you have priority this building has to get plowed out first this road has to get out first there is that work in the beginning because you have to you have to plan for implementation but once it's implemented and that schedule is done and someone says okay every 3 weeks the grass is going to get cut and Larry John and Sue are responsible for X Y and Z it just becomes a natural routine you get up in the morning you brush your teeth you go to work you you mow the lawn you do the weeding you do this and you work it into their job descriptions and instead of trying to get your daily task list you know it's different Property Management you have all these unforeseen all the time and whether it's a school or a commercial office building or a Home things come up and you know looking at this is one of my questions your contracted Services given four school buildings I actually think that's a very low number for $225,000 so that actually is the line that one of our uh projects is in I think it's the I think that's the 911 is in that line so my question is contracted Services is that elevators is that filter maintenance on hbac is that boiler maintenance what is contracted Services is it fire alarm is it sprinkler are all the buildings sprinklered what are the maintenance and how much are your facilities people able to do I don't know how many facilities people you have that you manage but are they changing fil filters on hbac units are they capable of doing that so I'd like to understand that they're currently doing uh replacement of air filters and uh belts okay then we have uh service level agreement with one vendor to come in and service the unit on the roofs how often quarterly and then what is what else is a contracted service there's a variety of stuff under there which is what you mentioned um the fire suppression inspections the um fire alarm inspections these are all service level agreements that we have um what was that the boiler inspections in that the boiler inspections um right now everything is kind of lumped under that one line item and what I'm doing is I'm going through and I'm trying to sort out and break it down by school so I get a better idea of what it costs per school for each of the um service level agreements that we have so if somebody asks me well what do we spending for you know Primary School on on heaten I can I can look at my spreadsheet and and tell you uh right now there's everything's under one line item and it's uh it's tough to go through right and sort it all out and that's what I'm doing now seeing as you started in October I can appreciate the challenge that you have and it is a big one I am very interested to see that breakdown because this is my wheelhouse and if you don't pass your NFPA 25 that could cost you quite a bit of money you know just on Sprinklers and the preparation and the maintenance of those items leads me much to my next question is this all on a schedule is it in calendar does the superintendent see that is that just for you to see is that managed right now or is that something that you're building because I think all of those implementations they're going to save money down the road a lot of it um I'm putting together to get a better understanding of what we currently have um and that will get conveyed to the superintendent um but I'm still catching up on the on the budget and and the processes um and dealing with the day-to-day problems um but but I figure I get a year under my belt I next year I'll have a better breakdown of everything and um I think it'll be a lot clearer for you guys uh at least in my area um for facilities so I hear a lot throughout a lot of presentations about risks right this may happen that may happen a lot of times low probability ev ents even risk but we we bid it in we have a reserve account that has to come before us to get um to let in my four years and I don't know J you've been here longer than me when's the last time anyone's asked us to tap into a reserve account that Reserve account a long time so Jay do you remember I don't so I think that's another way you can yeah get to a more balanced budget is to identify all the risks through all of them put a risk could registry together on it and then manage it through the you know management Reserve through a reserve account um cuz otherwise you kind of sprinkle conservatism everywhere and all of a sudden all the the costs go go up through the roof yeah and I wouldn't say that the budget lines before you have a lot of cushion in them no they maybe have this much cushion in them um if that because most of these lines um again we we try to keep it really tight because to your point if we don't that's that's another staff position and the staff are directly engaging with the kids that said we have to have a physically safe place for them to come and learn so maintaining the facility making sure that the kids are in warm classrooms in the winter and not in sweltering classrooms when we get our heat waves now generally speaking in September um because the seasons seem to have shifted um it it's a priority so in in the process of trying to develop this budget you'll see that the facility lines are really the only lines that increased um because we have priorities to maintain the buildings the best we can with the funding that's available to us while balancing trying to prioritize what is the most important staff to attempt to maintain so that we can continue to meet the needs of the kids postco um we're making Headway with the academic learning loss um we're not 100% there I don't know that we'll ever be 100% there um but that's still something that we need to be working on and the mental health need is significant last year we had 12 Mental Health crisis hospitalizations requiring home tutoring so that's for a duration of time it wasn't a had a bad night I went I was at the hospital for a day and then I came home the year before that it was only 4 it's real we have [Music] kids as young as the elementary school at that level of crisis they need the support I I can't lose the social workers I can't I can't you need building for the kids to go to school in though and Turkey Hill is like a risky building that thing is scary want to talk about Scary Turkey Hill is scary and yeah it is and it's not just scary for the the kids it's scary for the staff too but you still need a building to teach in yes so I am looking forward to seeing what you're able and if you need any help I am very publicly offering my network of people I am happy to collaborate with you and help you find contractors to get this together because my children go to these schools and I want a safe environment for them also but I see the big task that you have at hand and I appreciate that you're doing this so thank you very much and if I can assist you in any way shape or form I'm here so please utilize my services for free has a decision been made on whether to pull School Services out of TC pasos and if there's anything left in Brooks house um so we're still trying to assess that the municipal building design committee it it's been evolving over the last number of years um initially when all of this started with the TC pasos Design Group um at that time we really didn't have other available locations in the school buildings to move our programs out or to move all of our offices out um anticipating a lot of cuts that's going to free up space in in buildings um so we were looking is there a possibility um to move offices and the need to move offices really is connected to if we move the Ace Program which is our special education uh program for 18 to 22 year olds that is housed at TCP um to move that program out because they're 18 to 22 at the time moving them into the Turkey Hill building because there was one classroom on the second floor that we might have been able to use not feasible I can't have 20 year-olds in the bathroom with 9-year-olds couldn't do it however um new principal down at Turkey Hill this year and she thought potentially uh the hallway where the kitchen and the cafeteria are there's a door at the end of that hallway there's a a single bathroom in that Corridor if we could relocate the music room and one other room elsewhere in the building potentially now the Ace Program could be kind of separated out in that area of the building and not throughout the rest of the building with the younger kids um the challenge is the nature of the program and what's needed for the program it's a life skills right the kids are doing laundry they're cooking they're learning to cook for themselves so at TCP it's not all in one room uh but in the building we have access to a a washer dryer the oven a refrigerator they go shopping right um if we move them down to Turkey Hill all of all of those things are going to need to be in the wing that they would stay in they can't be roaming through the building to go to the oven or whatever so we don't we're still exploring whether or not and how much it would cost and there was a line in here that I put 20,000 in um for any work that we might need to do to set up to move the Ace Program down to Turkey Hill um Plumbing you know if we're in a room on the opposite side of the wall where the kitchen is or near where the bathroom is if we can access water um so we're looking at that we also have to look at the uh the ability of of the building to support additional load on the electrical panels um so we're in process of that if I move the Ace Program down there the special ed offices have to be collocated because it is a separate program and Juliana hansum is the administrator for that program and she has to be collocated with the program so it's not just can we figure out the ace move I also need to figure out at least that office space move um so it just sets up a domino effect right if that decision can be made we can make other decisions on Municipal design perhaps we don't have to spend capital on um TC pacios um you know again we got to start making these decisions though cuz cuz we can't afford to be heating TC pasos if we're not going to be using it and so and and it's not for us to you know we can advise and we can we can guide and stuff but just wondering when that decision was was going to be made and if it had yet been made so we've got an electrician that's going to be coming in to um dig in a little further to see if the spaces that we're talking about uh we can support what we would need to be moving into that that space there's potential for additional offices to to be moved as well again it depends on whether or not um that load can be supported and we also need to look at the speed of um the network down there because there'll be more computers a burden on that load as well and that building is this probably the slowest speed that we have so we need to assess that situation as well doesn't make sense to move offices down there and then they can't you know effectively communicate because you know the internet keeps dropping them out or what have you um we are we I understand that this is a domino if if we make this move then there are other things that are impacted which is why we want to make sure before we say that we can make this move that we actually can make this move but it's something that we're looking at um that said moving extended day and Early Learning Center that's a separate a separate thing that's not going to require you know some sort of retrofitting of the building or anything like that so and that move we started talking about in an attempt to free up space on the buses and potentially reduce from 11 buses back to you know 10 or 10 and a half and save a little bit of uh money there D is pushing back based on our total enrollment because essentially the policy change anybody can take the bus now um so they're pushing back and saying they can't do it with less than the 11 buses that said we have the transportation forms that will be going out in a matter of a couple of weeks they're due back May 1st I'll have real numbers of you know students that are looking to be on the bus at that point maybe the number numers indicate something different and I can push back and and say that we we're going to reduce a bus but essentially if you've got 20 75 kiddos in the afternoon uh leaving Turkey Hill and primary and hopping on a bus and coming up and getting off at TCP that's 75 little bodies that won't be on the bus right so um we'll see that's still sort of in process um but I had hoped that we would have been able to reduce that line that just drives to square footage needs of our building so there it's more than just busing busing is one part of it but yeah that space that you're talking about is that what used to be the Woodworking Shop yes yep okay there should be fairly decent electrical infrastructure in there is I mean they were all the floor mounted woodworking tools that you needed for a complete shop in there but right we just need to verify that they weren't rerouted to some other part of the building y so regarding paper supplies paper goods like paper towels toilet paper soap so is that fall under your wheelhouse too yep for facilities so I have dispensers to donate to the school that are brand new and they commercial bre so I don't know if that's the same vendor that you use for your school office supplies like your actual copy paper printer whatever um the area rep in lunenberg is also an area rep that I work with I've worked with him for 12 years so I've done a lot of relationship building there and I'd like to try to help out and be a little bit more aggressive about saving some money there I think getting some free dispensers into the school although it's not going to go into all four buildings because there's not enough of them it could potentially help with cost for soap paper towels and toilet paper and then are there contracts that you have for those and I don't know if you have that answer you know to that question yet but the longer term contracts you have on those paper goods you're looking at maybe a 30% cost savings if you've sign a 5-year contract with someone like Kimberly Clark or you know Georgia Pacific yeah um I need to have a conversation with the uh our current vendor um there may be a possibility that would get those dispenses free it's just a matter of asking for them so for paper towels and and toilet paper dispensers so I have obtained hundreds of dispensers for free with a contract to say I'm going to buy your product but then you have some leverage too because they want your contract for that amount of time y so I do have those dispensers available I am happy to donate them and what what's the brand name of them I will have to go back I'm not sure if they're Kimble clock Georgia Pacific but they are one or the other I'm leaning more towards GP Georgia Pacific let let me know and um I can take a look at what we have and make sure they match up okay they would be very similar to ones that were donated um to Turkey Hill last year but I'll get that information to you by tomorrow thank you you're welcome I'm really happy to hear that um you know and and I agree it's going to take you a year to to pull all the information together and start to correlate it and get schedules and and uh identify issues and so on and so forth uh the way you want it to be um as you were describing the issues that you've been working on and issues you're finding like on the roof of the Middle High School whichever part of the building that was that tells me as a former plant manager that nobody's watching has been watching that equipment up to this point um and I describe it as oh we don't even look at it until it stops working and then we go see what's wrong well by that time it's probably cost going to cost you $25,000 more to fix it because you didn't do something six months ago um so I'm happy to hear that hopefully we're going to bring a program together that's going to get eyes on this stuff more often and eliminate these major disas FS uh that can happen if you don't catch a a bearing that's overheating or or whatever um the other thing too to Chris's Point earlier I actually had written down a note here um about a facilities Reserve account built into the school budget and and maybe the reserve account that covers the entire town is is is a way to do it but you know we have on the town side you know that are actually that money is available to everybody but we've got millions of dollars in reserve and some of those Reserve accounts as Chris was saying that particular Reserve account is just for that purpose so if you're one of your uh physical plant systems goes down boom it doesn't matter how much it's going to cost to fix it you need to get it back up and running because you need to get back into the building so that account can cover for the things like that um that that was just the feel I got when you were describing what you came into it just feels and part of the problem is if you don't have enough staff to do that stuff then your next step as a manager and I sure I know you understand this is that you hire those inspections and preventative maintenances out but if you don't have the money for that then that doesn't get done either so thank you yeah I I have I have full confidence that in inside of 2 3 years facilities are going to be in very capable hands budgeted appropriately there's a lot to uncover you know coming in the door there's a lot of stuff to look at a lot of things to understand you know and just as an FYI um during one of we had several like lightning storms back in August mhm um and uh we believe there was a lightning strike to the roof of um the middle high school because we were having difficulties with um the climate control uh when school opened uh and they went we had three different kinds of vendors trying to troubleshoot what what all happened there and what needed to be done to get it back online um not sure if any of uh what Mr he's uncovered relative to the units on the roof if any of that is any way connected back to that lightning strike um versus to your point people just not being very attentive to it and it might be a little bit of both um potentially I know will be very attentive I have no doubt I know in the private sector things like that are covered under your homeowners insurance does the town have any kind of coverage for events like that if you can prove that that's what damaged the equipment I don't know the answer to that question and I don't know that we we would have been able to prove that that's what happened that was the best guess based on what the the contractors were looking at in terms of you know the damage they couldn't imagine how would have happened any other way I don't know that an insurance company would accept that as proof positive that there was a lightning strike um I don't know the answer to that question it it's just you know my feeling is it's it's one of those things that would be worth pursuing and at least know so you have it in your back pocket because then you might look deeper and sooner into okay do you find melted wires in a conduit or something like that which I'm sure Mr heee knows that indicates that you had a huge surge go down that line thanks Mr he is there a BMS system for the high school because if the high school is 8 years old those rooftop units I'm assuming are 8 years old yes there is okay so is there the capacity when there is an outage or electrical issues on the rooftop there's notifications that are sent out through the BMS I don't know that yet um and that's something that I want to have set up um any power outage um that happens I want to be notified because um we had a situation where it did we did lose power and come to find out one of our boilers didn't come back up so the only way that we were alerted by we could tell that the school was cooling down pretty quick so we researched it and um come to find out it was just a matter of flipping a uh um breaker um cuz when the power came back on you know the breaker doesn't has to be reset manually right on a professional level like making sure that that BMS program for the buildings I manage I always budget some money in there and although it may take away from other things having that prevents those bigger items you know of 25 or $30,000 so I'm those are some of the things that I be I'll be looking at when I when I dig into each of the schools to see get those things set up perfect thank you you're welcome just a general question in terms of superintendency doeses the school super School depart or school committee superintendency over the property or is it over just the building to the to the edge of the envelope of the building or does it extend to the end of the property lines property okay just for future discussions as you're digging into these issues and establishing plans associated with it are you like documenting the plan so that when you retire or leave the district he's not leaving the same thing that's a serious question though like documentation I will I will document yes okay so relative to that I will say that when John L retired he had everything documented no he had it all in a binder and he had his digital files as well but with the turnover in between did he leave the binder he did okay he did that was and he had time with his successor there was some overlap when when the uh replacement started so that he could transition into the role um but somewhere along the line with other transitions in the last 2 years we don't know what happened to that binder that had like all of the important information in it so that's why it's taking him longer because we've got to go search through digital files lots and lots of digital files to figure out everything um what had been done so on and so forth whether it was a capital plan a specific project um history on repairs any number of things um Mr heee and um folks in in my office have been doing a lot of digging around to to get that foundational information from Mr he to work from a lot can happen in two years if it's an unmanned operation so I understand the struggle the struggle is real I was thinking it are there any other questions for Mr heie thank you very much for coming in and speaking with us really appreciate it we appreciate that you let us oh that's right yes we'll have that sorry you're not done yet maybe is uh is there any public comment from the public this evening before we move on and let them go Miss Lockwood well thank you um you know um I really appreciate hearing Mr he speak today about facilities um and everything I heard today is um it it makes me thinking think and be more we sure that we really need to explore uh creating redundancy in facilities in town creating a succession plan for um certain uh very important roades they're crucial to the town's finances such as facilities um you know the just the very last item that we spoke about it when we lost um Mr L he he was a great asset to the town into the schools for so many years just the a people that we have had since because there was no succession plan within that small Department um more than ever everything I heard today you know so many issues we are dealing and is a bigger problem it's caused by the fact that we are dealing with this very small group very small number of people working um and you know and I I do I have a small business I have mostly worked in small business and that is always the the problem and uh you know being able to create something done in a smart way is the best efficiency we're not talking about saving money in operations we're talking about being more efficient not losing you know I think Mr one the last three years ago not losing 3 years of we don't know what's happening on top of our boost we don't know like everything we heard today um by the way um cars any paring cars they Rock when they're not used so also me who I actually know a little bit about cars say that a drive check rotted out I'm saying that drive check was not driven enough um so one thing my ask here in my question is actually for the finance committee just as the capital plan have talked about meeting in the spring and continue the the work so they're not always talking about you know what can you do five your plan they had a a conversation about starting to meet again in the new year I asked that maybe the budget conversations for next next this school year starts in August and these conversations that we're having now they having ideas about it how can we plan how we can create efficieny we're not just happening within this month to month perod before um the warrant closes before town meeting we actually starting August and we can start developing some of this PL because year after year I'm seeing these great conversations start at and in this two Monon period of Bud budget season but I actually think that needs to start back in August and that plan needs to start developing then so my ask is actually for the finance committee to start this budget process with the department heads in August or September and you know all these great ideas and plans that you guys have talked about it um you know like Mr gr said yeah a conversation for another day well I think that conversation for another day needs to be in August and start planning that up I also say that I think lunberg has uh very blessed with a lot of really good you know really good people they're volunteering a lot of time um and but sometimes we can look outside lber to see what other towns are doing and I can tell you you know a town that I'm also sort of know a lot of their details is Westward because I have a business there one Westwood has had a you know a budget committee since April of last year for their upcoming coming we need to think that these budgets it's more than a two month period and and realize that it's just a little bit bigger now we need better plans we need more elaborated plans and so anyway so that's my ask um I think honestly running small business for Mr D I'll say that he you know one thing that is that small departments people that work in small departments they suffer is that they usually have a team uh peers they can work with and you know if we are able to consolidate um the facilities Department right there I think it would be a much more satisfying job for those Mr H and chis rots it's not not about who whoo's boss it's just about being able to do and deliver a good product to the things that they actually do and they believe in it so that's all and Evan thank you so much for adding this uh time to speak right after uh the presentations versus waiting for long hours thank you every now and then we listen to you Miss Lockwood thank you for the suggestion if I might offer a point of information relative to the truck uh if I'm not mistaken that was a hand me- down from the DPW already well rusted um so I can I can tell you it wasn't due to lack of uh driving the vehicle um it's passed its useful life quite frankly it it does speak to not being looked at though over a period of time to anticipate that it's going to fall apart because they don't rust overnight oh no we had pictures for the capital plan um we actually had pictures a year ago yeah no I've seen that and you are right that was a hand me down to replace one that was even in worse shape yeah um like I said it just takes time before it makes its way above the cut line for um Capital plan it's you know I know that people people have talked about having a regular cycle of vehicle replacement so that you don't have vehicles that get to this uh condition um it's been an issue that's been discussed and this has nothing to do with the school department but you know our vehicles uh as you saw even with the condition of that truck probably when you received it as a replacement is that we're not maintaining the vehicles to keep them from rusting out in a short period of time you know we don't at best i' the answer I've gotten is we've got a garden hose and once in a while we might rinse it down but you park a vehicle that's been out on the road salting for uh a whole day and you don't rinse that off ever that that truck's not going to last right no vehicle will last under those conditions we we've had some conversations about possible adjustments for future share truck purchases to minimize the potential for rusting through so and we've compounded that with now I'll make this very brief because it's DPW it's not you guys uh but for the last two years we've been using the smaller trucks with Sanders uh with Salter Sanders on basically uh with straight salt and I've got to I'll almost guarantee that that shortens the life of those trucks by at least 5 years because again we never used to have salt on those trucks except occasionally when we needed to get out in emergency and spread it with the shovel so you know every shortcoming that we have is costing us 10 times more down the road M lo you have another comment yeah you know I I I too much on the not but I can cannot imagine a truck a standard and a power for the school that cost $75,000 getting more than 10 times used 10 times a year that should be a hand down truck and if that truck after was handed me down to the school and lasted five years that's good we're getting more for money and that should not be a 7 I mean we are better off at that point Contracting that service out because that's a lot of clowing 75 $5,000 you know for one truck we can probably get 10 years of contracted Services it's not about you know I I understand this I've worked in small companies I have worked in larger companies there is a an idea of protecting your budget because the increases you get is from your budget and you know the chair of the school committee a couple meetings ago acknowledged that the reason that the the um benefits is on side of that it's on the school budget because the previous superintendent wanted to keep there so that when we it was less of an increase than the average they could use that for other purposes on the school and that's the thing the school mission is to educate the children it is not to manage benefits it's not to run facilities and although I understand to the the concept of protect your budget I think you're just you know now at the end of the day we don't think about this as a town and working together you are deluding the service you you you are providing and and the chair of the select board loves to say it over and over again how you know we don't have a problem with the school with Town buildings we have a problem with the school buildings and and that's just highlights you know some some of the things that we came up about here we really need to sit down and work as a we need to figure out how to work together how to get the most that we can in the fair way that we're honoring our our employees the services provide for the best way so please don't I mean if I hear about a $75,000 truck that's going to be used 10 times a year I I don't know how how financially that actually makes sense to I want anyway I if I don't hear anything else I regarding this probably won't break my hand again thank you goodby thank you Miss Lockwood we take the plows off and we do use the truck all year round Miss Lockwood is use for the what do you use the truck year WR I I didn't catch that what do you use the truck for out outside of plowing Grounds Maintenance um moving furniture from building to building uh supplies that may come in as an example during covid a lot of things came to TCP and then were distributed uh out from there so the heavier trucks uh we carrying that load um we use the truck all the time that that is focusing on not a gradation good luck with that thank you Mr Lockwood is there any other public comment from the public all right again thank you very much both for coming in and I would just ask if anybody has any specific questions relative to it if you could get them to me in the next couple of days um I'll make sure that I uh touch base with the folks in my it Department to make sure that I have the information that you're looking for um anything curriculum related my my curriculum director will be uh with me next week Dr Burnham it was talked about earlier but could you kind of D ask them to drill down with some information on what it would take to get the phone systems changed over in all the buildings I understand there's probably some um infrastructure stuff stuff that would have to be included if you're going to do it right away but it would be nice to know what that cost could potentially be um CU my understanding and and I listened only partially the the other day um that part of it is fiber optics and um I honestly don't know how expensive it is to install fiber optics but I think that's the key to the system I'll get some information thank you when you say a couple of days do you mean by Monday because I I missed a couple of meetings I was on leave and I have to catch up on the it presentation so I've not had an opportunity to watch that yet separate it Department not the school it Department the school has this completely separate it Department from our it department so I apologize cuz I I did miss the last two meetings so I'm not sure if they gave us anything from the school only what we have on their line items so far in my my budget all right so I'll take a look at that but when when is your absolute deadline for that um end of day Tuesday maybe oh perfect all right is that enough time yeah absolutely okay the same it systems and the same contractors as the other windmill that I've been changing for four years but than kill bird all right I am going to catch up over the weekend okay so thank you now I and thank you all for adjusting things so that we could have two two sessions together I look forward to another one next week we'll have you back in August I'll be here will you thanks so much everybody thank you all right moving on to Old business I'm Happy to Skip your Revenue expenditures recap discussion until August unless you want to bring it you want to discuss it I'm fine are we talking warrant articles or we got to skip that no we haven't got to that one yet there are no warrant article oh oh yeah warrant Artic oh man we're not done yet warrant article discussion um I put it on here we've received the draft copy of the warrant articles the town manager um I don't really have anything yet at this point it's still sort of is there anything that's kind of out of the you a lot of them seem to be the normal ones exactly yeah I guess just going through is there anything noteworthy that's different than what we tend to see every year they are mostly um so far all the annual articles reoccurring articles there will be an article from the assessors regarding decreasing the age for the lwi income senior exemption and um there may be another one that I'll be submitting for exemptions as well because this is something um I spoke with one of the the chairman the assessors today regarding that this may have to be annually voted on all the exemptions in their thresholds something has never been done since it was first adopted but um say that again why St that every year all the exemptions should be voted meaning the veterans Supply um senior exemptions and their their threshold as a w article is that an mgl thing or is that a our bylaw thing it's a mgl okay the frustrating part of that you know these senior um discounts whatever you want to call them is that the eligibility for any of these programs is a mute point for 99.9% of the seniors in this town um the reduction uh from 70 to 65 that number is so small because it's only about a dozen to 15 people that are eligible out of all the seniors that we have in town so it's you know everybody's been talking over the years about uh trying to get help for seniors with abatements from taxes and so on and unless something changes there isn't much out there that's that we can do that were allowed to do uh that I'm aware of anyway I'd like to just pass a byw or or a charter change to uh discount with criteria discount senior uh tax bills by 25% boom right across the board with criteria I mean there's got to there's other states that have got to be doing this um I still haven't figured out what South Carolina is doing but everybody in the country is moving to South Carolina when they retire and uh you can see it down there they they're they're senior population is percentage wise is much higher than even we have here for the whole state cost of living stuck in South Carolina no I have family there I have one question as I scan through these what it is here um letter L OPB trust fund what would be the practical if we skipped a year of putting $100,000 in OPB and tried to balance some things out just this one year that comes down to um a number of things the well bond Council looks at that when we're going to go out to borrow it's an indicator of um um not good Financial Health the town if we're not addressing our liabilities um do you think we would really do you think we would really see a bond decrease this one year a rating when we do go out to um when we'll need to go out for to get a bond yes that uh I went through that process for the last time we did and there were a number of questions related to that specifically oped that's a reduced amount anyway isn't it it's a 10 it's based on our policy it's 10% of the prior Year's certified free cash so that number fluctuates as free cash fluctuates and it's coming out of free cash not out of the uh tax revenue portion yeah okay on um the placeholder for the um uh saap comp class that's the one I think I heard about where they were going to readjust that is that going to affect next year's budget I wasn't really clear from what I yes at um it will affect this year's budget and next year's budget they did vote last night so um I do have draft warant articles for those as well and you'll be getting that information from the personel committee too as far as impact so this year um I have to review obviously their the impact and that would be coming out of our salary Reserve account um and any other other possible Surplus we have a large amount in the reserve regular Reserve account right now so because that was bumped up at the special town meeting what is our Reserve account at roughly uh 275 okay so for fiscal 25 it would impact the salary of Reserve account that's where it would hit first that account um and beyond that then it would be going into the the budget okay for letter E the um the $82,900 so I believe and I not believe it is on the agenda for Tuesday for discussion of arpa that is one of the things up for consideration as far as paying for that item out of arpon that would be then a known number and decision before town meeting and we could remove that article or just remove it yeah okay and then they could reduce their budget by that amount right what does ARA have in it about 160 is to be allocated 165 how many pennies at the end I know what what's the current 65 894 93 what's the interest as of today oh that I don't know okay other questions about any other articles any of the Articles so I mean they're straight two planning board articles um that will you'll get those as well I'll send them updated draft warrant one is the water district one that was um they went back to revisit the special town meeting article to make all those necessary changes and the other one has to do with battery battery energy storage systems so that we're allowed to do them now I don't know all the particulars but IT addresses yeah because it's not addressed currently in our bylaws and Unitil doesn't really like to let people use batteries for my understanding okay well that'll be good to know I think I think there's somebody that wants to do something there a town oh like an actual corporation that wants to do large scale battery storage what I got from listening to them planing board open space somebody who wants to do something he's trying to get a something in place before they apply I wonder if that'll trickle down to homes too that I haven't read it it's okay multiple Pages shocking it's very unusual for them there was an entity that was looking to do that over on Chase Road a few years ago wasn't it um in relationship to that system yeah I don't know what ever happened to that it just kind of disappeared but it could be the same one could be I'm just surprised they're not fast-tracking it to get in there before it's regulated well tell meeting's right around the corner so yeah I understand it just you know from the perspective of zoning regulations and so on and so forth getting discussed and put into place a lot of time times a lot of people rush to get in before the U before the drop dead date to get their application in or whatever and their grand could you explain a little bit more what article G is the uh transferring or raising a sum of money to defay the charges and expenses of the town for FY 25 and fix the salaries and compensation of all elected officials of the town and other items included in the budget of the Town manager that's Omnibus are that's just the Omnibus okay it's just worded in a way that y that's always the way it's worded is it mhm I just have selective memory when it comes to that budget okay few that c okay Heather if you get a chance if you can pull the email up that would have been from sometime in the last year or year and a half I asked a question about the original no wording of the article for the special purpose stabilization fund and I know Town Council got an answer from you but either I wasn't copied on it or somehow I never got the answer because i' I'd like the wording because we had the discussions back and forth about you know what that money can be used for technically based on the wording of the creation of the account I understand what our practices are I I included that in the special town meeting when the slides um actually with the actual slides that were presented when it was created because that was um discussion about the special purpose stabilization fund at special town meeting which town meeting there was this past one right um but I can pull that and send you okay appreciated it somehow I were you at that one H were you at the fall that's a good question was I there that was 6 months ago I that was five months ago I don't even know if I was there I know were I know you weren't I've been going in so many directions in the last year that I don't know where I was yesterday exactly so not necessarily on the um the articles but related to um the budget in general can we get an update at one of the upcoming meetings on the chapter 90 what the plans were I'm already asking about that feel free we can do it now if you want oh sorry and what the plans were to to kind of we heard there was like $1.6 million 1.9 1.9 million 1.9 million I can speak generally and then I can do more formal um so generally there is about 1.9 million in that account that also includes it's either RP funding or the fair share allotment funding that we received this year so that bumped up um our amount this year from um what it would normally or projecting out we um hadn't been using chapter 90 for for a little bit of period of time when we have the debt exclusion funds because those were being exhausted to uh get all those roads done that were on the old pavement management plan and at that time um so those funds were being used um then also um I think it was so in 2023 we exhausted the funds for the debt exclusion 20022 2023 we received rout funding um from the state so that helped pay for some items that are road maintenance related um and we're also working on getting a bridge and inil uh bridge and Culvert inventory plan together so that should be done by the Fall that was a grant applied for through the community Compact and we hired beta to do that plan so that's going to really inform our long-term plan as well it's most certainly not going to be paid for all by chapter 90 funds it will help supplement I believe but obviously all the bridges and culverts that we have in town are going to be millions and millions of do dollars over time um another plan that will tie into use of the funds that the DPW director referenced was the sidewalk um plan or Eda plan was done a few years ago also by Beta And that told us what we needed to spend each year we have a small amount in the budget um it's $30,000 believe for that annual amount we really should be spending more than that and the director uh DPW director referenced that the other night as far as um he does have a contract being put out for this year for sidewalks we're out of compliance with a lot of our sidewalks and ramps so that will tie in as well but there are other use that we can look at in long-term planning to as making sure that we're keeping up with our plan uh our 5year plan for the roads making sure that we do the same thing we just did getting an updated um plan when that one is a year out to expire so we keep on this continual cycle um but there's a number there's more use more needs than there is funding so one question I would have related to this is just you know the capital when we were putting the capital plan request together I don't think we realized that that chapter 90 was at that level um you know and the the cut line was one above something I think that could be used chapter 90 funding could be used for so you know the drainage swes at 181 Reservoir um so I do I do appreciate if we do get that kind of long-term view of it how we supplement the operating budget and its planned increases as well as chapter 90 and other funds for the holistic view but if there's anything that can be done this year for drainage whs or I I know Bill actually asked for um the um the catch Basin cleaning truck um it seems like we need that um and I know that wasn't in this 25 plan I think it was in 26 but again if it's if it's it I think there's a couple things that we could get high value for with having $1.9 million there understanding that there's future stuff too but there is some immediate needs that um I'd like to have a conversation about including even in this either if um annual town meeting or or a path toward a special town meeting funding those there's uh one item that's current the sidewalks for the schools that's currently being funded through arpa that um we've talked internally about paying out those for out of chapter 90 instead of arpa so that money could go towards the school budget um for something that's a one-time expense as well so those are the things that we're looking at to assist but that's another use that um we just need to confirm about engineering costs for that okay he we had a catch Bas and truck whe have it anymore they do there's a yes catch piece and cleaner you're talking about a back truck maybe that's up close to a million I think for the cash basing truck I don't have the 26 plan for me but whatever was in that could be contracted out though too yeah back back trucks are expensive to own an expensive to operate would there any other questions no okay thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you so that was my previous fy2 presentation discussion that's exactly what I was going to go no that's totally fine I'm glad you did it so I didn't have to do it I texted her I was like please don't leave have more questions um um are there any other um presentations that we've seen that we've received that we've gone through that we want to talk about again just before we move on to the next ones excellent I'm just waiting for finalized budgets to look at instead of floating budgets uh so upcoming presentations um we do have two next week two days in a row that's our biggest one the last two days so on the 20th we'll have money Tech uh Administration sewer unclassified and Debt Service Al together um I did receive bless you the presentations for mon Tech and for sewer I believe I got those I think today so I didn't want to overload so I'll send those out after this meeting um and I also have pack as well which will be the day after on the 21st so again if there are any questions you can think of ahead of time please either send them off to the department head or follow them through me ahead of time just so we can get as many answers as we want or as we need at on the day of um I hope you're letting Pat go first he's on the schedule first yeah he is he did that was was this question he sent he sent over the the presentation sent over his spreadsheet and what time can I start yes I'm sure they'll be first it's listed as first on here um all right uh we have some minutes I haven't forwarded them around I haven't even read them yet so I'm if if enough people have read through them I'm fine approving I don't even know what minutes we have to approve at this point I read the February 22nd one today so I don't know if anyone else has read February 22nd my first glance through I spotted three things that needed to be fixed but I could not find them today so I need to I'd like to be able to read through that one more time before we okay can we start putting them back in that to be reviewed fullly yeah that's my plan that's why I don't even know what we're looking at I've been so three sets that I would be ready for but I i' I I've purposefully left Danielle's emails unread so I can go back to them and actually find them nice and quickly move them over I just I have not had a chance to do it um yes I will put those in for our next meeting so we can actually approve some of those okay because I know we're behind by I think she's got at least three at this point probably uh committee reports do we have any committee reports this evening um yeah I I have one um for for Parks um um as Tom manager said they did get that OPM there were four um sub missions for that that there they will review but um more importantly they were granted a $1 million um Grant um so that brings them up to with our our $2.5 million of secured grant money so far um so that million doll one was their their big one um and they s that a few others that they're chasing that they will be chasing Chris they've got another big one too later this year don't they I think there's a $300,000 one that they're chasing and then there's some private ones for like I think the yeah I may be wrong but like dog park and stuff like that but the big one they just they just got the big one this week the million I thought there was an ADA one that was big too perhaps yeah I don't know I've been trying to follow everything at once and it's not not happening Miss Lockwood I see your hand oh yeah she tell us the a is um it's $200,000 the one that Chris just mentioned was the biggest prize and along with the aramon those are the big ones thank you and congratulations any other committee reports I just want to say congratulations to all of us this is an effort yes and yes I don't don't have any committee reports myself so I'm happy to move on uh topics for future meetings I have a couple notes but I don't think there's anything we need to get into we have two next week well the for future meetings right yeah thing we talked about about having talking about the consolidation of certain functions I think that should after the budgets are done and the other thing that I had was and I've heard people talk about um our health insurance is great and our health insurance is is not great I heard I had one recently hired employe employe employee tell me it's the reason why this employee came to lunenberg was because of the the uh the health insurance plan so I don't know anything I know very little about it so I think maybe sometime after budget to get a presentation of exactly what it is what what what exactly it is how and so we can take a look at it and see so we have at least knowledge of is this a good plan not so good plan is it overly good not so you know whatever I don't know but I think that's something that I know myself I'm lacking the the the detail information on yeah and there are other cheaper options that are savings accounts and yeah that could be one thing I can't make that judgment based on not knowing I'm sure May rep would love to come by and talk to us at some point yeah I oh not she left I had another question for her um one thing that I would like to to get into is M the at the last select board meeting the chair mentioned that um the townside employees do not have paid uh maternity leave true it is 100% true cuz I I went through I could not find it I I know that there there bylaw and I think it's going to be one arle the Chang by law this personel committee oh excellent well then I guess we don't have to talk about that well we will be talking about well yes so that is a topic for future was that both paternity and maternity or was it just paternity we they don't have maternity not paternity wasn't even mentioned it had to do with not being Le just six days for maternity leave and I think the issue was I was under the impression that it was like no paid sick leave what's no paid maternity leave whatsoever I so pfml has kind of been a little bit of a relief in that area for maternity leave I don't really know how that works on the paternity side but I do know that the pfml ACT does pay for that and it can go up to a 12we period so companies right I went and looked into it there there's restrictions on NOS and on Municipal side of things so there's there's a job I don't think it pays for it right right you the time off I'm I don't know how that works with like Municipal jobs I'd be interested to hear about that but I know that it does pay for like private leave like if you leave a private private sector but not in the municipal yeah yeah that's what I'd be more interested be hearing about that I gu that's I'm glad to hear that that's good there's there's a clause where the town was allowed to opt out gotcha okay that's coming I don't have to pay minimum wage either and for years we didn't y okay it would be interesting to know more about that though well if there's if there's a warrant article coming forward we absolutely will yeah it's probably one of the two that you said the Personnel is excellent start the website yeah yeah all right um any other topics for future meetings or summer is already filling up all right we went over our meetings coming up on on Wednesday the 20th and on the 21st on Thursday so we are doubling up for all those that are desperate to see two meetings we'll be here twice uh the town warrant is still open for another 4 days until 400 p.m. and then our our public hearing is scheduled for March 28th so that will be another long one possibly um we do oh topic for a future meeting we need to come up with a report for the warrant we're going to need to talk start talking about that and we're not going to have a lot of time because that is due on April 2nd is that the due due date CU we heard about a due due date for Warrant articles which wasn't actually a due du date for um well I mean for for printing it's it's early April though it's isn't that first week of April so when I completely dropped the ball in it last year the due date was roughly the same but then I was given like a two we grace period that I still completely blew right through but but you were new so ex I'm to win your Grant um how about we do one sentence it's been a terrible budget Year see you next year thank you too um I'll double check to make sure what the absolute drop dead by date is cuz I I think with all the turmoil and whatnot and finalized budgets coming through at the end um well it's 5 days after the public hearing exactly so I think it's unrealistic well it's yeah we don't actually have a meeting between public hearing and when the when when our report is due okay so I'll at least ask if we can have after the first meeting in April's date a couple days after that okay um Star Wars day is the town meeting and annual election is May 18th are we dressing up absolutely I don't see why not having cookies for the public hearing May Star Wars Day May 4th May the 4th May the 4th yeah oh yeah it's going to be brutal there will be jokes made um with that is there any final public comment from the public this evening seeing done any public comment from the committee yeah I've got a quick one um jumping off of my comments at the beginning of this budget season um just reflecting on where we are now compared to where we were then and where we're going to end up the week before going into town meeting or maybe the day before going into town meeting um as I stated back then that um you know there were many unknowns then there are still many unknowns now uh there's a lot of shuffling and dodging and you name it still going on and at the end of the day um the budget that's presented at town meeting is going to be exactly what I said the best budget we could possibly bring forward um there's still a lot of motion wrapped up in this and we need to separate that out as we go into our deliberations and uh really just focus on what's put before us as final budgets uh for our recommendations so on and so forth um as a personal note as far as I'm concerned the override has absolutely no chance of passing and um so the budget that we're going to be looking at when the finalized budgets are presented are what I believe is what we'll be voting on in town meeting and will run the town in 2025 and that's not to say that there are we're not capable of making adjustments during the year with either uh an extra town meeting or the normal November special town meeting um but at the end of the day with my contacts in town there is no way an override is going to pass thank you you I just wanted to mention that there was a couple articles in the uh paper one in the Sentinel I think it was Tuesday and then yesterday uh Wednesday the Boston Globe had an article on um not about lunenberg but about the entire State and the issues that they have with Chapter 70 with the schools and when I was reading the globe AR article it basically mirrored exactly what's happening in lenberg it was talking about the costs the lack of 70 funds the cost of uh Transportation special ed they went down the list and I'm going yep yep yep yep yep that's us so if anybody has a chance to read that article uh from the globe or the Sentinel a couple days earlier please do so it'll bring it into perspective uh as far as this is not the only this is not our issue although it is it is everybody's almost everybody every town is seeing something similar to this so that's all that doesn't help but it makes you feel a little bit better about your town one quick comment I left out uh I've had occasion to travel from here to wo uh through gron and U 120 225 to gron and throughout 40 out towards W and um you get a very clear picture as to how the citizens of Gren feel about their override both sides of 225 and Route 40 are 80 to 90% no override vote and a few scattered signs in between that say pass it so you know I I agree there's many many towns Statewide that are in the same position but the taxpayers have the same attitude in very many of the towns that no you're going to have to live within your means a smart man Dave Rogers once told me signs don't vote that's right in addition to people talk about the override you know I've heard in lunenberg water district is looking at a 50 million $50 million um pfast treatment plants um that could have a potential impact on people's water bills we have the Sewer Commission has some expensive maintenance repairs they're doing and they're talking about a 16% rate increase so you know we've had a revalue year where assessments are going up so people really need to educate themselves and inform themselves on how much they can afford to spend on tax ta and utility bills so you got to look at all your expenses guess I'll pile on a little on that if you want Solutions on this the solutions are in Beacon Hill and it's an election year so go pressure the people being elected right now and um they have a lot of aggressive goals outside of funding education so saying you value education is much different than actually putting your money behind it um again that's kind of directed at Beacon Hill because that's our money I pay a lot in state taxes I'm going to the NBTA yeah maybe we can get funding to pave over our beautifully paved roads it was one of the big big bills that they were pushing oh we're going to fix all the state the cities that have bad roads 10 years to wait for us so the only two things things that I have are MMA related mixed martial arts exactly not mixed martial arts um I sent it to the committee but I'm planning to watch it there's a webinar on March 20th at noon for understanding the for the formula or the funding formula for Education Chapter 70 and they're going to do it an hour and 15 minutes so you still won't understand good luck to them do you know if that's recorded because it's all recorded and you can always watch afterwards okay great y we have a meeting where they explain it to us here too that's recorded that you could watch and still still won't understand um and there's another one that's Chris you I brought this up a couple years ago on digitizing um Municipal records yeah I saw yeah that's another one I I could always add that one cuz that's another one you've been your other Wind Mill you've been chasing for a couple years now actually registered for that one uh is anybody to the meeting in uh on April 6th April 6th I'm registered for that so that is the association of town finance committees spring conference I went to the fall one so I'm fine not going to the spring one I would love to but I have a wedding can they reschedule um yeah I feel free go nuts it's a good time it's small but it's it was it was night though no a come on it's at Oxford Oxford there got to be a good place to stay down there what of the budget um and with that I would happily entertain a motion toour so moved second we don't have to do a roll call vote all those in favor all right have a great rest of your P day and we are Jour thank you