on the on the school stuff we you said before we all good evening and welcome to the meeting of the Arma select Board of March 12 2024 this is a hybrid meeting which requires that the following notice be read into the record this is the formally advised that is required by general laws chapter 38 sections 18- 25 and pursuant to chapter 20 the acts of 2021 an act relative to ending certain covid-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency signed into law on June 16 2021 as extended by chapter 2 of the acts of 2023 the yarma select board will hold a public meeting on Tuesday March 12th 2024 at 6 p.m. in the hearing room yarma Town Hall 11:46 through 28 South Yarmouth Mass the public is welcome to attend either in person or via the alternative public Public Access provided below and those access um directions and instructions are on our website allowing um anyone that wants to come in by computer or telephone to do so please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice okay our first item is public announcements and we're going to hear from our town clerk Mary maslowski I imagine we're going to get a little wrap up about the presidential election and perhaps other good things exactly thank you for the opportunity as you stated Mary maoski town clerk um first I'd like to just uh thank everyone who uh assisted us with the successful presidential preference Prime that was held on March 5th we had 6,985 voters participate which is just under 32% which is a pretty good turnout for a presidential primary um we were this was the first election that we were able to use the new equipment that town meeting authorized so we uh successfully used the new Precinct tabulators and the new high-speed tabulator uh due to the volume of vote by mail ballots that we had which was we mailed out over 4,000 we processed just over 3,000 uh the Saturday before the election which really made a huge difference for us on Election Day and not uh having to fit that in during the course of uh what was a wasn't the busiest uh state election we've had but it was certainly steady um so processing that volume of ballots is really uh difficult to do with the polls even with an additional um set of two or three people process processing them through throughout the day so we were fortunately able to do that ahead of time um again all part of the new uh 2022 votes act that allows us to do that um so it what it amounted to was staff and election workers working pretty solidly for the entire month before the election uh with perhaps two Sundays off and working Mondays through Saturdays throughout uh so I'd like to thank them for that and I would just like to express a a thank you to um everyone who was involved in helping us accomplish what we did it was uh from the police department the uh fire department uh Department of Public Works who always helps us with signage uh Diane Kane and her staff at the senior center who uh as many of you know host six of our precincts there uh it is quite a um an Endeavor to have all those precincts in the one location but makes it certainly a lot easier for us um on Election Day uh all of the finance department because they have provided assist to my division of finance throughout the election process we borrow employees when we can and we are fortunate that they allow us to steal them on Election Day so that we have extra regular employees at the polling locations to assist with all of the new equipment uh HR with helping us on board all of our new um election workers uh Lori Sullivan who was uh a great assist to us with not only the website but with some of the social media messaging that was put out uh it and the building staff who among other things made sure that we had a security camera covering The Ballot Box that will be there throughout the uh entire year um additionally thank you to my staff who worked tireless hours and uh crazy hours over the last month getting ballots out ballots back and processing them and making sure that we everything everything was in the right place and everything got processed when it was supposed to um also like to thank the Dan and John Holmes who do all of our election set up for us and have for years uh I think John Holmes mentioned it was somewhere around the 43rd year that he's assisted in setting up elections here in Yarmouth uh starting with his father and now he and his brother take over um again thank you to Mr ritow and all the Administration and to you the board of selectman for all of the uh support you've given us over the years and particularly to the taxpayers who funded the purchase of all the new equipment that is going to make this year's uh election season uh much easier to deal with than 2020 so I would just like to to express our thanks there and my thanks there um I guess the next step for us if you have any questions on the presidential primary I'm happy to answer them next step for us is is moving right into town meeting season and town election season we are still uh able to issue nomination papers for anyone wishing to run for a town office uh as we mentioned there are two Board of selectman seats available uh for re-election this year we have issued four sets of nomination papers to date none have been returned as of yet and a couple of additional people have expressed interest and there is also a seat open on the Dy school committee which uh no one has s papers for yet so we can issue nomination papers up to March 29th so those are still available for anyone that's interested they can contact our office and come in and fill out the paperwork the last date of register to vote for the town meeting is Saturday April 20th 2024 we will be here from 9:00 a.m. to 8 to 5:00 P p.m. that is a Saturday we will the T clerk's office will be open to assist with voter registration um up until that time 5:00 p.m. is the deadline uh here in town hall to be registered for that town meeting and then for the town election the last date of register to vote is uh Monday I'm sorry is Saturday May uh 11th for the May 21st town meeting so Town election sorry so uh again so Saturday we will be here 9 to um 9 to5 on that Saturday for voter registration for the the last minute voter registration that needs to happen uh we have already received over 3600 requests for vote by mail ballots for the town election so just slightly under the the um presidential primary a lot of that is due to people checking off the box and the cards that says all elections this year uh we are we have not we are not coming forward to ask toop out of vote by mail we understand that people do like it um if there is if there is someone who really doesn't want a vote by mail ballot for the town election and they think they requested it inadvertently they can certainly send us a letter or send us a note as long as it's signed in the town clerk's office and it's received we can uh remove that request but as of right now there are over 3600 requests for uh vote by mail ballots for the town election so we will be getting ready to process those as soon as those ballots are available and back to us which will probably be the last week in April first week in May could you do a point of clarification the election date you mentioned when excuse me the town meeting date you gave the election date and is May 21st when is town meeting town meeting is April 30th Tuesday April 30th the last Tuesday in April under our code unless the slackman choose another date under under the statute anyone have any questions from Mar or comments it's in the bylaw Mark yeah thank you Mary for that update could you repeat that number again on the number of mail and ballots that are going out for the municipal for the town election yeah we currently have over 3,600 requested okay I just want to make sure I was hearing that correctly you heard that correctly 3,600 I believe 23 which were the account that I took about a week ago M based on the requests that were received in the system already we are still receiving cards every day um the state doesn't send out a set of cards for for local elections but of course they are mandated under the 22 votes act to send them out for each of the state elections so they have sent a round out for uh for the presidential primary so these are coming from that postcard mailing and as many of you know and others may not anybody that doesn't have an application in the syst in the computer system for the state come the middle of July will receive another card so if you're a person that doesn't want the vote by mail card there was no opt out of that system the state statute doesn't provide for an opt out so the state is required to then mail another round of mailings for the September election and then after the September election another round of mailings for the November election so got it I have another question Mr chairman um are there any races for school committee or for Housing Authority there is no race for Housing Authority but there is a there is a race for there one vacancy for D school committee okay thank you here Mary I I voted in in person to to save to save you the frankings cost and stuff and and the the polling place that I went to I worked very smoothly and very nice and everyone there was was very helpful and very polite so I I appreciate appreciate all the work that they do uh and and the work that was done for the for the election thank you very much thank you Peter we have a good group of people okay thank you very much Mary appreciate it um next item is um I do have one more and we going to have um a brief announcement about it happening on Thursday by Our Town Administrator Bob rittenhauer thank you Mr chairman I I do have an announcement that on Thursday March 14 we're going to have our groundbreaking ceremony for the f 1 town of Yarmouth Wastewater project and that is going to be once again Thursday March 14th this Thursday 10:00 a.m. at the um 170 Southshore Drive location of Parker River Beach we have ample parking there will be refreshment served the public is cordially invited to join us at 10: a.m. for the groundbreaking and some of the highlights I I will tell you um we will have Gary Moran Deputy Commissioner of the D on hand um representative William keing and a host of other dignitaries not the least of which Speaking will be our chairman of the board of Selectmen Michael Stone and the state delegation so should be a great event and everyone's encouraged to come out and attend thank you all right uh next slite on public comment anybody want to be heard on public comment yes time to Canelo in the historic River the historic village of Bass River good evening Mr chairman yes uh Tom Niel from the very historic town of yth and the wonderful Village of Bass River you know we are quite old in just 15 years we'll be celebrating 400 years here in our community which is Quite a feat but I rise tonight in front of you to give you a status of the community event we had just last weekend as you know we've had two now big community events on the shoulder season which is very important here in our community but uh we had no incidents in the St Patrick's state parade uh as far as I know we had one fire truck break down but we won't talk about that um it was very successful the parade committee thanks everyone uh to the Max uh this is probably one of the only events that touches just about every person in town just about every Department in include you know Town Administration and the board of Selectmen participate in some fashion to this event and um you see the superintendent here today and all his kids I have to tell you if I can show you the photos on my phone there's not one child that has their frown upside down it's just amazing the uh the community came out you folks were uh very gracious in helping the Town Administrator ex extremely important uh Lori Sullivan communications director in her bit did a wonderful job it's on YouTube it's 2 hours and 3 minutes I encourage everyone to go watch it there will be several edited versions coming out the one that is on now is just a live feed it'll be dressed up it's going to look fantastic um Paul chaffy uh all the Departments like I said DPW outstanding Police Department so with that it was a great Community event and uh thanks to everybody thank you Tom anyone else you know I'd like to underscore one one point on this on behalf of our Communications team which you know really partnered very strongly with the parade committee for a a great event I received some statistics today that just astounded me if there's um ever any question as to the importance of this community event uh you know for the the people in our area the the um you know we had the first time production really went great Frank Frederickson did a great job there but as we were promoting this parade through the social media uh the report I received indicated that um on Facebook alone the parade social media reached over 50,000 screens and that is without a doubt um a record for the town of Yarmouth events um in social media and and it really is a number that astounded me so um what a a just a tremendous outpouring of support from the community folks on um social media were so anxious to hear about it and and our our team I I thought really did a good job bringing the message out to people so was it actually filmed on Facebook yes or viewed on Facebook it was viewed on Facebook so you could watch it on Facebook live and it's on YouTube now um and it it is also being shown on on Channel 8 and here's something interesting that that you might not know it's been picked up regionally uh not only uh cable origination channels throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but uh the public television stations in Rhode Island are going to be showing it Statewide down there on St Patrick's Day and so um all all of a sudden the town of Yarmouth is I think on everyone's radar screen for St Patrick's prade so does that mean we can do Facebook for town meeting perhaps I don't see why not yeah I think that would be a great that would be a great service if we're now good at doing a parade and people on Facebook can watch it live that would be great uh to do town meeting that way well you we'll have to talk about you know is it a good idea to do town meeting live I mean it's it's great if people come to town meeting it's not so great if they watch it on TV well there may be some folks that may not be able to make town meeting but it might be a way to promote public engagement for those people who you know need Zoom or they're disabled or their Mobil is limited to be able to find ways to reach out to people I think is always important so I I understand we like to get bodies in the seats but there are people who unfortunately aren't able to leave their seat or to get out of their home so I think having that option is incredibly important thank you anyone else is there anyone in the screen no okay we'll move on to our licensing matter we have a hearing for an alteration of premises Captain Parker's Pub 668 uh Route 28 West Yarmouth somewhere in here I'm sure there's a legal notice I would think here it is I believe yep okay we will read this notice into the record at this point um the Arma select board acting as a local licensing Authority has received an application from Captain Parker's Pub Inc doing business as Captain Parker's Pub Inc Jerry Manning manager 668 Route 28 West jth Mass for an alteration of premises to enclose a portion of the premises from seasonal to year round seating and to increase the total seating capacity within the premises to 170 seats from the present 129 seats the hearing will be held on Tuesday March 12th 2024 at Town Hall 11:46 through 28 South Yarmouth the select board's meeting begins at 6 pm. written comments will be accepted until 4:30 on Friday March 8th 2024 at the administration office at town hall or can be submitted electronically to public comment at yarmouth.ma us verbal comments will be accepted at the hearing so representing um Mr Manning tonight is attorney David Reid and we will hear from you evening Mr chairman members of the licensing Authority I am attorney David Reid with me is Mr Gerald Manning who is the president of Captain Parker's Pub incorporated as well as the manager of the restaurant facilities uh as you've indicated this is a request for modification of existing license the current uh restaurant and all of the physical premises that are we discussing tonight are currently licensed for restaurant use and for alcohol services within all of the areas defined uh the change however today involves two portions of the restaurant the area to the right hand side if you've visited or by driv by recently the area underneath the Red Roof is referred to I think on the last plan is the enclosed patio area and the uh Oyster Bar and raw bar area that has been in the past a seasonal use because there were no walls and windows and doors that enclosed it for poor weather conditions uh the current modifications and the request for before you tonight is to make that a yearr round area it has already been physically enclosed with walls and doors and windows and heat uh and a restroom has been added to the rear of that portion that now contains a total of 43 uh seats the other area to be discussed really is the front patio area which is open to the sky and to the and to the sides there is no walls roofs or windows that will remain as such and will be used predominantly as a staging area or waiting area for patrons seeking a seat within the restaurant however as demand and weather permits we will also have the option to move tables out to that area from the main restaurant as long as the total does not of seats does not uh exceed our seating capacity uh this has been made possible for the restaurant because we were able in 2019 to upgrade the septic system in order to take additional capacity uh and from that we have now received the approval from the health department for that septic system and for the increased seating capacity for the restaurant from 129 to 170 seats that license has been recently issued by the Board of Health uh so for purposes of your review tonight it's important to keep in mind that the two areas that I've mentioned the front patio area which is open and the enclosed patio and and raw bar area which is now to be enclosed are both currently licensed by you for alcohol service so we were not certain that we even needed to come to you tonight for this modification since the premises in terms of physical footprint is not changing but your licensing clerk a former licensing clerk contacted the abcc and they said indeed we should come back to you for your local approval of the changes that are basically to increase the seating capacity from 129 to 170 and to make the enclosed patio area now a yearr round rather than seasonal use the proposal will not change the uh operation of the restaurant other than the capacity uh the management will stay in the same the hours of operation will remain the same all servers will continue to be tip certified usually through the Yarmouth Restaurant Association uh service but we also occasionally have someone who can't make make that scheduled event and we provide otherwise for online training for any new employees who are not available for that service uh the standard for you one of chapter 138 for alcohol licensing for all licenses is for you to determine that in this case a modification will serve the public need and will be done in a manner that protects the public good I can assure you that there would not be an investment of this magnitude to the restaurant if there were not a public need for people who wanted to fill those seats uh this is a significant Improvement to the restaurant this is a restaurant that has been present under current management for many years with an excellent reputation in the town uh and we uh hope and assure you that this will be a an improved asset to the community and to the clientele visiting the town of Yarmouth and we would ask for your approval of this minor modification is it is it fair to say that I'm trying to streamline this that as you said all of the premises under consideration tonight are currently licensed correct with the exception I guess of the rest restroom that was added to the rear of the with the exception of the bathroom we don't tend to serve anything there I hope oh but it's it's a physical addition um and so is this really um is it fair to say this is a reconfiguration of presently licensed premises yes and increase in the SE in the seating capacity and an increase in the seating capacity and so is there going to be some some interchange between there's a there's a portion now that's outside that's going to be closed in correct it's under a roof but it's not enclosed on was not enclosed on the walls and and doors until Parts going to be left open Parts going to be enclosed correct and there's going to be an interchange perhaps of seating between the inside and outside yes but the outside adding those two totals together it's not going to exceed the license capacity is that correct correct okay that's my understanding and the area that will remain Outdoors that is that front patio is only accessible from within the restaurant not from the outside of the of the property right okay um so before I go to the board is there anybody in the public that wants to speak either for or against this application and predictably Mr Nic canello will come to the microphone thank you Mr chairman uh Tom nanelo one of Captain pac's Pub uh precious patrons that's a hard a hard one to say but I'll get it out there so you know uh Mr Manning and his team for many years 35 Plus as a staple in our community does an outstanding job landscaping for you know is just impeccable he is the bar that we like to stand up to uh far as the business Community people come here and they want to you know be part of C Parker's Pub and being a businessman myself with many businesses I've calculated this man has served over 4 million people thank you very much thank you does anyone else want to be heard for against it all right um we do have some um other departments that have commented on this application I wanted to just look at those comments Health Department addition of deck what does that mean I don't know 2724 license or permits required excuse me I don't know what he means by what's that word addition you have to read it with the the line above that says Health Department okay with addition of deck oh they're okay with the addition of deck okay um so I don't think there's any negative feedback by any the town departments is there on this no certified by building Health fire they're okay with it all three of them yep at the 170 all right building does indicate that they will require a final uh sign off on the permits sure but that that's routine and there's no direct bearing on your hearing tonight that's pretty standard um all right let's go to the board Mark do you have any questions or comments um no Mr chairman I'm I'm fully supportive of the application I don't have any questions or issues no I'm all set thank you Peter just fully supportive of it um the butt that goes with that on the flex seating how is that how is that um serviced watched followed I'm sorry on your Flex seating on the out the patio seating yes uh it will have to be internally supervised so that tables that are brought out to the area will become will be from the interior so there is no net change in the total number of seats available for restaurant service right Mr Manning who who follows that and makes sure it's it's followed correctly so you don't go over the 170 seats well I understand well we've been in business for 43 years some of my uh staff members especially the bar bar staff uh front of the house people have been with me from 39 35 25 many many years of experience and uh there's always a very experienced person in charge and uh we're very uh keen on not being overcrowded as far as the occupancy of the building now you I I've eaten at your restaurant on several occasions and it's always been well run and and well taken care of I just did have the question on the flex seating to make make sure that it is followed closely thank you Mr chairman thank you motion to close um you ready for a motion to close the hearing yeah I'd like to entertain a motion to close a public portion of the hearing so moved second all in favor I I anyone opposed do I have a motion motion to approve the petition second have a motion a second any further discussion all those in favor say I I I anyone oppos passes unanimously best of luck Mr Manning and thank you attorney Reed thank you thank you oh no no next item is a article review by our planning board stand your this side for you okay good evening ladies good evening good evening Mr chairman I guess tonight we're going to be reviewing the short-term rental Sunset Clause extension yes Mr chairman members of the board thank you for this opportunity to review the proposed planning board zoning Amendment for the 20 24 annual town meeting the planning board would also like to thank the public the residents of Yarmouth who have joined us at our most recent public hearing some of whom are here tonight um their interest and uh participation is always gratefully appreciated the board will be presenting one zoning article at the annual town meeting with the sole purpose of extending the sunset clause for Section 48 short-term rentals from November 13th 2024 to November 30th 2026 planning board held their formal public hearing on March 6th 2024 with four members of the public in attendance and no written comments uh had been received uh at the meeting at the close of the public hearing the planning board deliberated and we voted unanimously uh to recommend the article for town meeting as outlined in the attached memo to the town moderator that is in your packet um also in your packet this evening is a more more detailed discussion on the reason for this very small but important change of date um Kathy Williams Our Town planner has a brief presentation on a little bit of the history of this um and then why it is so necessary for this amendment at Town Meeting thank you thank you Joanne I think she's done an excellent job of summarizing it so I'll try and go through this uh very quickly um nothing's working tonight all right we we do this as Joan mentioned the purpose of the only zoning article for the annual town meeting in 2024 is to extend the sunset clause for our short-term uh rentals we really want to do this to ensure the continuation of this use and the ex size tax the revenues that it bring to the town uh while we take a look at some additional studies um and some um further analysis we might want to conduct I think most people know what a short-term rental is but it's that renting of the rooms apartments or home for 31 days or less so it's your kind of your traditional U vacation rental in 2018 the state put into effect um a state um short-term rental registry as well as the cape and Islands water protection fund which we all know is good for our Wastewater as well as an excise tax on short-term rentals both local and state town of armouth has a 6% uh local tax and it brought in almost $1.5 million in FY 23 I believe we're up to 1.7 through January um of this fiscal year we've also dedicated 75% of those funds um to our Wastewater program um but in 2021 there was a case law it was the styler versus the zba of lynfield that really brought into questions whether short-term rentals are allowed in residential zoning districts unless they're specifically mentioned in your zoning bylaw so in 2022 at the annual town meeting uh we adopted a short-term rental bylaw that especially allows this use and also included some Provisions to kind of protect our residential neighborhoods from this particular use it was done in a relatively expedited fashion in order to be sure that we uh didn't have any impacts to the short-term rentals for our 2022 summer season um because of that expedited fat um process we did have a sunset clause in there that did allow us some additional time uh to see how the provisions worked see how the bylaw worked and also to conduct any additional studies so basically without amending section 418 um the short-term rentals in the bylaws will expire on November 13th in 2024 uh and we would no longer um be in allowed use in our zoning bylaw and we would lose the excise taxes so I think right now people may not be aware that we do have the certain Provisions within our our bylaw we have ineligible units so if you have a capital A affordable or if you're an accessory apartment or if you're in violation of various codes you cannot be a short-term rental we continue to require the registration and inspection by the health department and they also require posting of a 24-hour uh local contact we have some general Provisions regarding prompt removal of trash uh and also some specific requirements with regard to parking you need to have at least one on-site parking space per bedroom uh no parking on lawns we don't want halfhazard parking we also don't want overnight street parking and then there's no parking uh street parking uh that impedes traffic or safety allowed at any at any time in order to minimize the over the turnovers we do have a minimum of two night requirement no RVs no campers no tents and then of course you need to meet all of our uh local and State uh regulations oops and the general other continuation on the general provision is we have identified the type of rentals we want to be sure that this remains residential in nature I think um and not allowing things like large scale events like weddings or um photo shoots or or class or family reunions I think those are some of the things that were happening at short-term rentals which kind of brought about this iser case to begin with so no events that include tents or Amplified music and no adverse uh impacts to the neighborhood and of course that Sunset Clause that Joan mentioned of November 13 2024 so this bylaw this very simple thing it does is it extends the um Sunset Clause from November 13th 2024 to November 30th of 2026 we're bringing this um before you at the annual town meeting because we're not sure of when the fall special town meeting will be scheduled because we want to avoid conflicts with the presidential election we all know how much work they do in the town town clerk's office with early voting and we didn't want to uh have any pressure on them to have it before our deadline so what are some of the further studies and Analysis you might be doing the affordable housing trust has voted $50,000 to do a short-term rental study as you may recall this is one of the housing preservation strategies in our housing production plan so we're going to look at compiling the specific data and statistics for Yarmouth with regard to our housing and our short-term rentals and kind of look at the relationship between seasonal and short-term rentals and our year-round housing availability how it impacting prices U what are the revenues that we're receiving kind do that statistical analysis and then basically identify any recommendations or strategies that we might want to implement that amplify all the great benefits that we get from short-term rentals but also uh mitigating any identified impacts from the study we're also going to look at collection of data through the open goov online permitting program which is our new permitting program and also input uh from town staff um and talking about uh complaints we did um talk to the Building Commissioner and there's about 1,300 short-term rentals that are in town right now uh in the last season he received about 10 complaints four of them were for the same property uh for a relatively minor trash issue uh he did receive two parking uh complaints that were resolved the next day when he contacted the owner so there doesn't seem to be a significant number of of issues that have been identified to the town uh related to um to short-term rentals so as Joan mentioned we did have our public hearing on March 6th and we had four people in attendance and we had comments from three people um one of the comments had to do with making sure that that data collection and Analysis is but been done by area of town so West Yarmouth South Yarmouth and yarmouthport not homogenizing the whole town and then making sure that that information is made available to the public I think there'll be plenty of opportunities uh to do that also questions regarding details on who should be contacted with any issues where to find out information about uh whether property has been inspected and is a registered short-term rental and the number of occupants and cars allowed and then also ensuring that the excise taxes are paid I think with regard to who to contact we talked about if it's a noise during the 11 to4 noise ordinance or if there's someone parking that's actually impeding or causing a traffic safety issue or impeding emergency vehicles then you would call the police otherwise contact the building department and they will coordinate uh with the owner about any identified problems and on our laser Fe on our town website we have all this information we are having a little trouble with open gov uh coordinating with laser fees because they're creating a new address and we already have an address set so we're working on on finalizing that and open go will also allow us to document complaints so people will be able to see whether a a property happens to get a lot of complaints um related to it and then there was just a general inquiry about what you was the impetus for the short-term rental zoning bylaw which was that Styler case that we mentioned and then also just getting an overview of the process for zoning changes so people are unaware of it um so after the uh public uh hearing was closed in the deliberations the planning board voted 62 recommend the article thank you I'm going to go to the board first this time and then the public look Peter do you have any questions or comments um yes the you talked about you talked about the uh the importance of the excise tax but it's also also important that you also mentioned but but didn't necessarily emphasize is the important that these places are inspected that they're kept clean that the that the police and you guys are keeping track of who's renting who has violations who does not have violations and stuff and I I highly recommend that we move forward with the uh with the extension than you thank you Peter Dan actually just along the same lines um we're all 1300 inspected we do have two full-time housing inspectors right now I don't know exactly how many have been inspected oh well frequently are they inspected is it an annual process it's it most supposed to be annually yes okay all right thank you Mark now I'm I'm want to Echo the sentiments of my uh colleagues here on the board um I am very interested in if we can get through the administrator uh details on the number of inspections okay um I think it's important for us to be aware of the challenges uh in the inspection department and to the extent to which we need to do more to provide adequate staff um I think every time I speak with the building inspection staff they're just out straight and um I think we need to really make sure that they have adequate resources to do what's expected of them um the issue of selective enforcement um you know is is always a concern so it's then if you can't inspect everyone then what's the rationale for the ones that you do you know so and that becomes a whole process so I think that's a conversation that we need to have I think it's long overdue this whole business of which ones do we you know in some cases if it's all complaint driven then that that has its own set of problems so um no I'm very much interested in looking at the numbers looking how we're doing and then seeing where the problems and issues are and making sure that we're doing more doing whatever we can to to address them but with respect to the proposal itself it's in my my book it's a no-brainer and it's clearly needs to be done so uh I'll be supporting it and voting that we recommend it for Town Meeting thank you I just had couple questions that are more motivated by curiosity the 2-year extension period does the current bylaws is written allow for two years or is that something the board decided would be a reasonable measure by which to extend it I think we just just we and a discussion we decided that that was a a reasonable amount of time for us to do the evaluation that we had initially uh committed to uh when we accelerated this for annual town meeting in 201 22 for fear of the Skyler um uh decision and and quite frankly we didn't get to it um we we would have liked to have had better data as as uh um selectman Forest has suggested uh but the planning board and our team quite frankly uh spent an awful lot of time on Accessory dwelling units yeah you had a lot of other things too so we got a little you know all good we we we we were successful there but this got a little sidetracked and so we want to get it back and we want to look at it correctly and we think we can do it in a two-year time frame I think the sunset closet was originally in there was short I have the same sentiment as my other board members I'm highly supportive of the article as well great is anybody in the public um yes Christine good evening Christine gy from West Yarmouth um I was one of the participants uh the other night and the planning board and Kathy have done a very good job summarizing a lot of the comments that were made and much as you some of you Selectmen have U mentioned tonight a lot of the concerns really had to do with sort of understanding who has gone for their permit and been inspected um the kind of things of who do you call about what you see because unfortunately living down by the water we have some pretty you know impressive kinds of properties that attract a lot of people and so um I think it's important because because we do see overcrowding we do see quite often a lot of cars parked uh things that some traffic impairment things like that and I also have been very worried as you are about um the fact of how well can our staff really enforce a lot of this if they're so overworked and I keep wondering if some of the revenue generated by this couldn't be towards hiring of someone who's actually a licensed inspector and really making sure um that that people are you know doing what they're supposed to do in order to do this because it is for the safety of both the people renting and for the other people around in the neighborhood who are paying taxes and I do think that um you know one of the things about it um is the whole notice of not knowing to tell you the truth as a resident who do I call if I've got an issue and you know are they this property already registered or do you know about it things like that so some of the information and the the ability to know you know who what when where how kind of thing uh would be really helpful around this but I do support the idea of you know the sunset you know extending the sunset and I know that this group unfortunately the planning board has done a great deal of work on a lot of issues but um with this one in particular that those are some of the things I think as someone living in the neighborhood and seeing cars parked at houses that you know quite often don't understand who you know who or where you go or what if you have concerns and are they indeed registered have they done what they're supposed to do legally thank you thank you Chris anyone else yes Peter one one quick comment if if the sunset Clause is not approved and everything dies as at the end of November of this year does that mean there would be no short-term rentals in the town I think the Building Commissioner would would say that it's not allowed use in the town of Yarmouth i i i i that's what I assumed but you always get in trouble when you assume so I figur I'd ask the question straight out Mr chairman yes yeah um I want to follow first of all I want to Echo what um Christine gy said about the the commending the work of the planning board um I too very much appreciate all the hard work that that you folks do um and I'm glad to hear that there's also you're interested in this question of inspection and enforcement as much as we are and what I'd like to ask is if this is a I mean you could be a big help to us by as you delve into this and increase your understanding of it I think perhaps report to us or give us some insight as to your findings I think this is a topic that would benefit from having your engagement and then in turn providing an informed update and briefing uh to the board rather than having duplicative efforts I think I think your insights could be very very helpful to us I'm very mindful of the very spirit a debate that we had a town meeting about adus and as we could tell there are some residents that were very concerned about this issue and I think we owe it to everyone in town but also to those that were somewhat skeptical of our ability to stay on top of the enforcement to stay on top of this issue to see how well we're doing and to find creative ways to address any deficiencies on the enforcement side so um and then it begs the question about selective enforcement if we don't have the resources then what's the process how do we go about doing it I think we really need to think that through and have a conversation about that um you know a complaint driven process um I'm not sure that serves the town well that's not to say that we shouldn't respond to complaints of course but um we we really need to think through the methodology and the approach to that so um I'm pleased to hear that you're very very interested in this topic and I think um I think it's important for when we debate a public policy you know we I think we all want to listen to hear what maybe some of the critics of what we're proposing might have to say and I think the Enforcement issue was something I want to I want to I think we should jump on that and stay with that I think we owe it to folks in the community to be on top of that subject so I'm happy that you're you're interested in and I very much want to request and urge you uh as you delve into it feel free to keep us posted because there'll be things that we'll need to do most most likely if indeed something is identified as an issue or a problem okay I think the affordable housing trust report will be beneficial to the planning board because that will provide a lot of good statistical information uh and then they can take that in addition to the information we we get from local staff that that report i i as you know I serve on the affordable housing trust and um I brought this issue up because we're increasingly seeing other towns very concerned about the extent to which the short-term Rental Mark market and the pressure in that market is actually displacing you know affordable yearound housing and I think that's something that um I've been impressed with the manner in which other towns have been able to sort of monitor this phenomenon and understand it and then tweak their bylaws to address it um I hope we can increase our level of awareness and understanding at a level where um you know where we're if indeed if indeed there's more plac it and more of an issue uh we can better understand what measures or tools we might be able to adopt to limit the extent to which this Market displaces um you know uh our year round affordable housing market we know that there is an impact we just don't know what it is and we don't really understand it that well I don't believe so thank you is anyone else any uh public want to be heard a question have any questions anybody in the board right thank you very much ladies appreciate it thank you now we're going to go to public hearing on budget and capital plans first starting with the finance committee for a report and overview good evening um I'm Richard Simon your finance committee chairperson uh I'm going to be kicking off uh tonight's four part public hearing on the operating budget and capital uh Improvement plan as required by Town Charter section 7.5 can we move that forward [Music] Advance good evening Richard thank you for being here on behalf of the finance committee I am joined tonight by the way uh one of our finance committee members uh Robert Harding is also in the audience tonight you're in charge sir I'm in charge uh the finance committee's uh role and responsibilities are mandated by state general law as referenced on this slide so our job our job is to review and provide recommendations on the warrant articles related to the proposed budget prepared by the Town Administrator we do not set policy goals or priorities which are the purview of the select board uh we do not dictate how those policies and priorities are to be implemented but look to the Town Administrator and his leadership team to make those tough decisions and we do not approve the budget that power rest slowly with the voters who attend our annual town meeting what we do do is we uh spend two plus months doing a deep dive into the proposed budget with every department at a very granular level our reviews start off by getting an update uh on each Department's operating indicators of the constituent Services they provide to put their budget in context and I'll reference some of the specifics in a few minutes but the sheer magnitude of the level of services being provided is truly impressive across every Department our town is not a n to5 operation our police and firefighters Chief is behind me are therefore every day all day so are the employees who make sure our drinking water is pure and our roadways are safe to use Mr Colby and many other uh departments operate Dawn to dark with only a few days off during the year and we are fortunate to have so many dedicated resourceful staff who make that all possible got the table uh Recaps the work of the committee by the time we complete our reviews this is my budget binder we have a very full uh big book of all of the data our meetings are open to the public either in person or online most meetings are scheduled on Wednesday starting at 6:00 the agenda for each meeting and the packet materials we review are posted in advance and can be found in the agenda Center in the lower leftand corner of the website of the town website video recordings and minutes of past meetings are also available on the town's website so at our February 28th meeting we voted 5 with two absent to recommend all the operating articles 2 through 7 and N which can be found on pages 7 to 16 of the warrant article that is in your packet uh for those watching online uh there's a certain I think it's page 155 to 160 that they can review that online L and uh we on March 6 we did vote 70 because everybody was present to recommend uh approval of all 14 capital budget items that were contained in the warrant and we will be meeting tomorrow to consider the remaining T articles including the uh Dy School District budget the major theme for all departments is the post postco Rebound in demand for services and with the property taxes constrained well below inflation rate keeping up with demand within a level funded budget takes real creative problem solving budgets for recurring expenses must be covered by predictable recurring revenues and departments are working both sides of the equation they're finding productivity on the cost side and identifying non-t tax revenues also known as local receipts on the income side oops on one more the grand total for the town portion of the fiscal 25 balance budget is in article two approximately $50 million found on page 12 of the warrant article you'll see that the budget is about 2.7 million higher than the current fiscal year one of the major components of the increase is for the fire department budget found on page nine of the warrant the fy2 budget adds four more Fighters firefighters on top of the four new firefighter positions that were added in FY 24 ambulance calls have grown from 5,220 in 2021 to 6,369 in 2023 that is a huge increase that's a 21% increase in just two years ambulance receipts also grew as a result of changes in our fee structure from 2 million to 2.8 million in the same period which helps offset the added cost of providing these Services another example of town expenses with revenue offsets is the user fee based construction and demolition CND operation at the transfer station and the town's other business-like activities which are not part of the Town budget including Golf septage and water are generating revenues to offset their cost the golf and water department budgets have been increased to reflect the capital project cost for their overdue maintenance at the links course in the case of golf and the replacement of the water mains in tandem with the installation of the Wastewater collection system both of these projects are already underway shovels are in the ground it's amazing um and with Bond rates relatively High interest only shortterm Bond anticipation notes will probably be used for about 2 to 3 years until the bond rates come back down another common theme from our departmental reviews is the challenge of employee recruiting and retention retirements and voluntary separations are about 9% per year right and many departments including uh Highway and water have had positions that have gone unfilled for months and in a few cases years this budget includes funding to help hold that line article 22 which is going to fund a comprehensive uh compensation and classification Ru uh uh review is another action to to help us address that longer term issue of employee retention and recruiting and while there's been some relief on the energy front electricity rates are still continuing to rise and so these continue to be some of the pressures that really put the Town Administrator in a very challenged position you know in terms of staying within that prop two and a half level funded in addition to the four firefighters that are included in the budget uh there are additional new positions also important uh that are an essential component of the town's Wastewater and employee recruiting and retention priorities one is the assistant Wastewater superintendent with which is obviously provides us with expert on-site um expertise while the construction is underway uh the HR benefits coordinator this is um you know as our benefits plans uh increase in complexity um we need to have somebody who is able to work with them you know we just cannot have a single stream HR director who handles all of that and finally uh the uh DPW is going to try a creative way of building skills from within they would like to hire a new uh entry-level labor with who can free the people who are actually doing the licensed work and at the same time train them up so they can gain the appropriate um skills that they can so that they can backfill some of those other critical uh jobs which require certification oops I met did I go too far how do I go back backwards oh no good um I'm going to I'm going to switch I'll just keep going um now I want to stress that this is only the second year that I've been on the the committee um and there's been a huge Improvement in the uh mechanisms and processes that the Committees both the uh finance committee and the capital budget committee use obviously we know um the work of uh assistant Town Administrator Mr Scott on the capital budget side with his uh and they are going to be talking in detail about that in a few minutes uh and our new uh town finance director uh Jennifer Mullen is they have together made uh it possible for us to literally go through all of the details in a single pass they're giving us comprehensive uh information consistent information on a very timely basis with all the supporting documentation that we needed to make an informed decision so uh the other piece that we worked on is during our summer Hiatus uh the committee compiled an operating and financial indicators database so most of this data was already readily available from town State and other resources but all of that data is always presented in a subject perspective so what we did is we turned it on its side we just made it a Yarmouth Centric database so that when we do go uh with the Departments to re review their work we have 10 years of past history so that we can actually put everything in context and we share that in advance with the department so that you know we're all talking from the same common database so um I would you know again I'm going to say that you know every bit of the data that we need to look at is already in the warrant which you're going to re be reviewing later on tonight I'd be glad to take any specific questions that you have at this time or I'll be here for the duration so I could we or you so you may want to hear uh field questions at the end of the day after we've heard from all the other dep departments thank you Richard um I'll go to the board first mark thank you Mr chairman um I want to uh commend the chairman of the finance committee for his presentation and um you're doing a great job thank you um I'd like to go to a slide on the uh employee recruiting and ret with the employee recruiting was discussed can we go back to that slide roll oops oops there we go this one or that's that one is we can go to that one first but let's let's let's talk a little bit about this one for a moment um are are you taking any positions are you just suggesting that these are things that we need to no study they they are already in the budget well we know we got the modest increase for the uh we know we got the colas The Raid hikes what's can we talk a little bit about the where are we on terms of the raid hikes for the health care um I think I could refer that to the town yes yes we we we can't talk about that the um average as you know we offer a range of health insurance um options and they're through the Cape Cod Municipal Health Group it's a joint purchase group that covers um all of the public instrumentalities on Cape Cod and for fiscal year 25 um the as a result this is the first year we've seen some medical inflation over the past several years and the work working rates will be increasing by approximately 8% for the coming year for the existing programs in addition to that um we have we've moved forward with with the public safety units in the previous year and we're um prepared for the HMO plans which are the town's most efficient plans best written plans um we are prepared to increase the contribution from 50% uh Town employee contribution um to 40% which would be the town contribution going from 50 to 60% so we're going to we're going to have a 6040 split if an employee accepts the um most efficient plan designs and I I would add that those those plans are comprehensive there's no drop in benefits from from selecting those they just have more modern contracts associated with them so the change in the overall health benefit assuming it's like a health insurance that would be because I think in the in the currently we're at 50% right isn't it 5050 up to 60 so we're going to pick it up to 60 or 50 did I see eight is that 8% no it's 8% is the cost cost that's the rate increase of the Prem right so we're going to go to 60% yes on that we're just matching what the unions have with the non-union employees exactly very good I would like to also perhaps just again a littleit I want to make sure the finance committee supportive of that oh yes okay just we just want to check yeah now the U the other thing that is um relevant here is going back to the HR benefits coordinator uh one of the options that uh all employees have is the use of uh an HSA healthc care savings account which has a lower premium which obviously even so with a 50-50 or 6040 it's still a lower premium and the town kicks in uh a amount of money I think it's $1,000 to help fund that as HSA every year one of the things that pops out of that is if you contrast our experience the number of employees who sign up for that option versus the total Universe we constitute I think we have 73 employees who have chosen HSA options which is all over half of the total for every place else so not only are we helping our employees out but we're also saving the town money that by using that particular option thank you uh the other slide dealt with the positions yep um so I just want to be clear the finance committee is supporting the added positions that the administration is looking for so you're in support of that as well support of that the firefighters the Wastewater superintendent the HR benefit coordinator in the highway libr position is there any position that um you you may have shot down or recommended we defer we at this point again the Town Administrator has done an outstanding job of creating no no we know we know that yeah but I'm just saying we're well aware of that let him go he told he told us yeah yeah no he's taking my time Mr chairman i i i time is precious here so we just want to get get through this I just want to make sure we're clear on your recommendations no we we know our administrative team has worked very very hard um you know these These are issues we care deeply about and and we know they're working hard on it I just want to make sure we know where you guys are your board is or your board is on some of the things that we've been really trying to do here and it's nice to see that you're very supportive so I just want to make sure that that was all clear because we've talked about these items on numerous occasions particularly the health benefits and the need to do more there to be competitive and uh this has been an issue that we've raised several times with our administrator and with Bill and I would encourage the voters to uh approve article 22 as well uh for exact for the that's why we're going to bring you to our public forums and our public discussions to help educate the public on the importance of some of these changes thank you thank you p no significant uh questions great presentation um how's the committee itself doing you fully U staffed at this point we are although uh I've heard from Stephanie Cox who is our past chairperson that she uh would like to spend a little bit more time uh having a real life uh but we but we have had um some an excellent addition John Anderson who is also a uh working professional uh like U uh rapael Gutierrez who's our energy expert he's an eversource executive so yes we have a very strong committee Mr Hardin is of our expert on all things debt so we actually are in very good shape that's good I I know You' gone through quite a bit of turn over there uh for a period of time with uh we are going to continue recruiting though right no absolutely and you know it's just hard when you lose that kind of historical perspective but um as you said now um we're taking things to a new level with this new um programming that's been initiated uh so really great presentation and thank you for all the work thank you Peter you mentioned you mentioned the um ambulance of 21% increase year-over-year two year over two years right although actually it uh between 20 and 20 21 and 22 it actually increased almost as much so it yeah it's it it it's the ambulances are very important it's it's almost a shame because it's a misallocation of medical dollars it's real hard to real hard to go to go to the ER and sit for 6 hours but if you show up in the with the with your ambulance you can get seen a lot faster um it's we're not here to talk about talk about misallocation of medical dollars and stuff like that but it's it's extremely important um to to make sure that we are able to take care of take care of our our our customers our our citizens uh and our visitors and everybody else exactly exactly um and at some of the some of the time we can we can talk about reallocation of medical dollars I think um you know picking up on the point Peter raised and I'm glad to see that we're going to start adding um some EMTs and paramedics to the police to the fire department we have you know demographically a older population than most places in Massachusetts and therefore it increased demand and um I've talked too many of these guys had in addition to the impact on the patient there's an impact on the workers so they have to keep getting called in and there's a lot of time away from home these these guys aren't sometimes getting adequate rest between shifts which can promote injury and burnout and employee attrition so that's all it all comes in the mix it's not just patient care so I'm glad that's getting a addressed I think initially um the chief wanted eight but we you know we can't afford to do that in one year so we're going to try to do a four and four over time but it you know in addition to all of that the population is growing you're getting more people more calls more demand and um it it's it's really at the point of Crisis if we don't do something about it we did Identify some additional uh areas to get some better understanding of at our March 21st meeting we did a deep dive uh into EMT Services as well as schools uh so those are working papers at this point and we're working closely with the chief on some of those issues I'm going to go see if anybody uh in the audience would like to ask you a question or have comments is anybody out there that would like to do that I think I would have wanted to ask whether there is any uh um kind of interest in looking to see what what has caused such a large increase in did you come up to the microphone VA so everybody can hear you could you come up microphone I I okay so let me rephrase so uh the question was uh have we done any uh analysis or research in terms of why we have had such a significant increase in ambulance calls in such a short period of time and so we have done some of that that initial research again I referenced that is part of our March 21 uh packet so uh but it's still preliminary so we we do need to do a deeper dive uh my prior background is uh industrial uh analysis Six Sigma and again typically what you would do is a real Source cause analysis using proch chart anal uh techniques don't have time in the budget cycle to focus on that but we will continue to follow up with it Miss Boris was that your question okay anyone else okay thank you our work is almost done it will now be up to the voters on April 30th thank you capital budget committee is next report and overview then we're going to hear from Cape Cod Tech and the Dy School District I'm right what's that for that's the advanc for over here good evening ladies good evening hello good to see you I'm Judy Connor Tarver and I'm the chair of the capital budget committee and with me tonight is cindy5 who is my uh my right arm that's why she's here we have Lindy behind y um and our other members are listed uh Lindsay Petro is President and she has been with us for a few years now and brings a lot of insightful commentary to our conversations our other members are Andrew Lear who's an at large member Ken Smith who represents the planning board and George Perkins who is our link to the finance committee so so in December we saw you and that was the official handoff of our document to you to the fincom and that all happen then in December and the initial document was to facilitate budget and capital conversations that were going to be happening and then we returned to the process in January to finalize the plan after the warrant was developed and after Dennis had had some votes uh on joint projects and so tonight we are going to be providing an overview of the do I'm sorry let me stick with uh December we gave you an overview of what was going on so we're back here now in March and uh the purpose tonight is just a little bit different in that the December plan was submitted to meet the charter requirements but we needed to have some more development so we considered the capital Improvement plan as a living document rather than something that's static um and this is able to happen because of how we're doing things so from December and that capital budget committee um that helped us follow the town meeting process so that we were meeting certain deadlines and we review the pending Warren articles to adjust the plan to the town meeting process updates are made to coordinate the planning process with the implementation process and in March we update the plan to coordinate that living document so in the past they were all kind of static documents and then we um would hand things off and there would be some editing and this is a little more fluid and a little a little more realistic so the capital budget committee is kind of an a subsidiary of fincom and our charge is to review all requests for Capital items and make recommendations back to fincom to you as the board and to town meeting and we have a strict definition of capital items being $110,000 or having a useful life of at least 5 years so examples are buildings Vehicles computer equipment roadway sidewalk and Waterway construction costs so big ticket items our committee's recommendations will take the form of a 5-year Capital Improvement plan and a 10-year facility plan and those should be serving as the town's overarching planning documents each year these items are budgeted for and then are presented to town meeting as the capital budget the capital budget is separate from the town's operating budget and that covers expenses like salaries employee benefits uh office expenses recurring expenses that keep the town operating so that's our piece of the puzzle so this has been our second year with our cloud-based portal and it's an ongoing system for entry rating and management of the projects the Departments entered their information and their supporting documents into the online Capital Improvements portal the Town Administrator then reviewed the projects and sent the recommendations to us via the portal so we only see the things that that the Town Administrator approves so he's already done a bunch of work before we see it the system facilitates a more rapid movement of the CIP process which means that the fall town meeting articles are entered as they're moving toward a town meeting date we can now track everything submitted in fact the system now holds projects which were bypassed in Prior Capital plans so sometimes those things got lost things would be presented to us they didn't get approved and they would go somewhere and we wouldn't necessarily see them and maybe then a different version might arise but this way we can track what's going on and if a department wants to modify that they can just go into the database and modify it they they can pull it up and then we'll see it as a modified presentation so this is our schedule and we showed you this before too um with all the color coding and you can see this is a lot of interaction the capital budget is the blue boxes and so you can see we had a very active period in October and then it kind of thins out when we present to you in December and then we've been active as a we've had one meeting in January or actually I guess it was later than that um and subcommittee work and now we are bringing out the results of all of that work back to you in the meanwhile fincom who's the red has been much more active so you can see how we interact so we have a process and we use a rating system and we can access whatever the Departments entered that was forwarded by the Town Administrator and then provide ratings and comments so the town can and the town departments can put in bids they can put in photographs of the equipment that they're trying to replace or the building that needs updating or an outdated generator all these things are examples that we looked at this year um we initiated our liaison approach again and everybody on the committee reaches out to the Departments we go out we talk to the key members in the department We Tour the sites we look at the projects not the whole committee then we have somebody within the committee who is kind of the main contact when the department comes and presents to the whole committee the other thing is that our CBC people can help the department clarify their presentation by asking the questions that we know the committee will ask so it makes a much more I system um CBC then requested each department that's what I've just said um and then the meetings are just so much more helpful that way and then we move into our rating so we have two scores the significance and the Readiness but it's weighted so significance is 70% of a score and Readiness is 30 there are specific criteria we'll look at in a minute and and we can mix and match scores for projects so we don't have to give the same score for Readiness and significance and these are the four essential groups that a project is essential desirable acceptable or defer uh so um bill has worked with our you can go ahead yeah bill has worked with our consultant to streamline this definitions and they're very very succinct now and very clear so an essential project is to remedy a dangerous conditions a critically needed program this possibility of losing funding funding or something that's mandated by state or federal government that's pretty good definition of something that's essential uh something that's desirable is none of those above however it's something that would benefit the community it has validity of timing it is mandated perhaps within 5 years as opposed to immediately uh and other limited sources of funding are available so if we do it now we can get this outside funding to help us if we don't we'll lose that acceptable is none of those above so it's something that's adequately planned but it can be postponed if budget cuts are necessary and then defer is again none of the above it's not ready there's no mandate it will not pose a threat to health and safety if it's deferred so these are much clearer and much more [Applause] succinct so now we get into the numbers this is the plan for 5 years by funding source so down on the leftand side you see all the various categories of bonding grants CPC funding and then as we go across column one is actually our current fiscal year 20124 and then moving forward into 2025 which is our conversation tonight uh and you can see the entries you can also see uh as you go across that some of those items are have a nice line across where you can predict a little bit more clearly what might be happening others maybe have some openings there and that's reflecting things like let's go down Midway and you'll see free cash and so we know some numbers we can anticipate some numbers and that goes across uh on the other hand next line down golf Enterprise some pretty clear numbers there but anticipating what those numbers might be going forward might be a little more difficult so you want to add anything there SL yeah so then this goes to the next five years bringing us out for the 10 years and again um anticipating what we'll need and what might happen some is more predictable than others grants are pretty unpredictable we don't really know where they're going so there's a lot of blank space in those kinds of categories so this is an interesting bar graph um because what um bill has helped us do here is to show what the funding would be over 10 years um with debt included it so spreading out the debt and this is just for demonstration it's not really actual numbers but showing some of our major projects spread out and what that does for the overall uh funding with debt for the town as opposed to looking at isolated projects with Wastewater coming up here and that sort of thing and then this is our funding by source for 10 years and you can see really you know the nice big pieces like bonding Wastewater and that green area and then there are some that are just such small slivers they hardly even show up again the bonding is projected it's not things that are already bonded but as we project for some of our major projects this would what the distribution would be looking like [Applause] okay so here's where we are right now um the fall town meeting has already occurred but that is information since our last year's pres presentation to you so that's fiscal year 2024 those have already happened uh so the bottom part is what we will be bringing to Springtown meeting there are the categories pretty much the a little capsule of what is going on so for examp Le golf Capital there are multiple projects there for the for the 310,000 water again multiple but if you go down to parks and grounds it's very simple it's um a trash truck lease sanitation generator replacement the details are in our um links you see over on the right hand side there the profiles um and that gives you all the profile sheets that have been submitted and all the details what the project is how much it will cost if it's a lease if it's how necessary it is and all of that is linked there lot of detail is available I just want to add that all this detail will be on the website so the public also can access the profile sheet for each item that will be recommended in the warrant okay so here are some things that we keep encountering and what we might want to look at going forward so the charter may need some updating because we've had a linear process and that was designed to here I'll you take my project and then you go do what you need to it but it was a sequence rather than collaboration so it's very difficult to get any long-term conversation going if you're just doing one thing and meeting a deadline and shutting down and then we're done where we can keep long-term issues alive and this is really facilitated by the software that we're using the other thing and we talked about this also in December is Market fluctuations and we keep hearing about the supply chain issues and that can be very tricky so we we're talking to people in October and then we finish what we're doing in December and then we're going to vote in April and then they can the funding will be available July 1st so from October to July what is being um reported to us is prices are going up when the Departments come to us with bids they're good for 30 days so that's not even the length of our our process never mind how it goes so that's just something we're going to have to face in a different way U you know we can't do business the way we used to because that is a change that we're all going to have to live with and then free cash has been something that's been really available um but we really think that that should uh only be used for projects that are not annual things this should be that's that's our operational budget so a possible suggestion is that the use of free cash in any year should not exceed a certain percentage of the balance or further free cash should be where possible set set aside for certain projects that are in out years so we've got a bunch of big projects coming along and maybe some of that should be reserved instead of spending it down just because it's there rolling stock has been an issue um since I've been on this committee so it's years and years and a different way to approach this will be to develop a plan across all all the Departments with a uniform investment so if they want a 150 pickup truck then they'll be one kind of 150 for 150 that we buy and that's what everybody will get um we'll set aside funds as possible and applicable we'll create standard vehicle types and then purchase them across departments so that there's a little more fluidity and how Vehicles could be assigned facil ities um would are we're in good shape now in fact we're moving forward with an assessment and we want to create a capital maintenance plan across all the municipal buildings that would bring facilities up to necessary standards and prioritize that plan to improve buildings based on need and avoiding requirements for emergency work so you know some departments are more tuned into the condition of their building and that's kind of of how we've been operating if one Department says you know our uh heat needs attention and somebody else needs something else but they may not be looking at the building as a whole may maybe they're not looking at their H HVAC maybe they're not looking at their roof condition uh so we need an overall view of that across all of our buildings um and then moving into project management to we need to review the obligations of departments for project management and prioritize prioritize projects based on the organizational ability to implement so our people as we've heard tonight a few times are already doing a lot of things and then when you develop a new project and have them managing that that's increasing the load and Alternate funding is always a really favorite topic and so to schedule alternate funding for CIP projects over multiple years and plan to seek that funding and to sequence internal funding processes with CIP to facilitate coordination anytime we can coordinate things it's an improvement so we definitely want to thank all of the Town staff because we work with everybody and everybody has been very generous with their time and just very accommodating ating and answering questions and helping us to uh develop our uh Pro our whole process and our document that we present to you um I also want to thank marielis Florio and PM Barnes in the administrative office because whenever we have a question they're there they answer the phone they the email comes right back with an answer and our major liais on of course is Bill Scott who's always there with oodles and oodles of information which you know um and guidance for us and just questions to help us do our job better thank you thank you start with questions and comments from the board Peter the the presentations have been have been fantastic from all the Committees and Judy I want to thank you and Sandy thank you for all the all the work that you've done the one item I haven't heard about and I'm stealing Thunder from the gentleman at the far end of the board here is are are Town records and they Town archives um they're in a building that's yes doesn't look the best best shape and those records are important to be maintained so they don't deteriorate um I I know that it's not going to hit the Springtown meeting but it it is something important to important to be look looked at I got one I got one other thing which is a pet project of mine is the is the pond that's opposite Smuggler Beach mhm Bass River Beach fand beach depending on depending on what you what you want to call it it was a a Warren article several years ago to reopen the Culvert and I think that should be a capital budget to correct that because that creates a lot of pollution a lot of smell and it hurts that neighborhood yeah but again again I know this there's there's a lot of things and and you listed the the various priorities and stuff and and and I know the two items I read up may not be the highest priority but they are things I I think that should be looked at if there's money in the budget rolling forward again thank you very much for all the work you've done it's been fantastic and the numbers and and the and the the numbers we can see and look at and stuff it makes it so much easier though there's a lot of numbers it makes it much easier to see and understand what's going on thank you thank you for that comment um we did have an a proposal a few years ago for that building uh that's housing the records and it was for like $400,000 to do some repairs to it um again we don't generate the projects so um and we haven't seen anything again uh I would hope that that's going to come under the facilities assessment and then then it would spring back to life uh and then that on that archives building the repairs to that have been completed through the water department so is if you Rec call uh there were water leaks uh it was neglected and um so the the repairs have been completed um I was over there touring the facility recently it's it's very dry um it's a solid building it's secure um maybe a little too small but the next step is there is funding in place to um study the storage of the documents there and consolidate and potentially digitize some of them to try to free up some space there so um and and that funding had been put in place through um capital and CPC so uh there's a project ongoing to to kind of digitize the records and the and the building improvements have been made uh it it may not be a permanent solution um you know forever but it certainly has has come up quite a distance since we started and and then the same comment with the Run pond that's what you're talking about yeah um we had seen that for a number of years consecutively but we can only deal with what comes before us yeah so yep thank you like Peter I'm just so grateful between you guys and the finance committee you do such important work for the budgeting process of this town and keeping us moving forward I know the programming has made a huge difference and it certainly has made a huge difference in our understanding and planning forward so I thank you for that um I'm glad that you said something about possibly looking at the expenditures of free cash especially with the expenses that are coming because we've experienced you know some unexpected delays and fluctuations with um the Wastewater project already and I think it's fair to say that we might experience those going forward and um I wondered myself whether or not we shouldn't be um scaling back a little bit on cash and um anticipation of those types of expenses um you mentioned the um the supply chain issues and increases is there any way to build in an uh a factor uh in the expense to try to accommodate some of that increas well I think some of the departments were doing that so they would take their bid and bump it up by 10 or 15% but again that's like throwing darts yeah um so they're trying they're really trying to to help no it's a significant period of time between you're looking at it and then town meeting approval so um yeah I think we've seen that uh on several occasions come forward so um but I'm glad you mentioned it uh these are important things um and I really appreciate the presentation it was very good okay thank you Mark um another thanks uh for all your hard work um I I want to just emphasize the two projects s that um selectman Smith raised one of the reasons why department heads don't really come forward with projects is because they're tired of getting shot down and I think that's and what we need to do is figure now the Run Pond Road Project um had a fairly significant amount of federal money attached to it it was just in what was missing was a local match but that isn't the only Coastal project that has been by the wayside now we talked before about a coastal initiative I don't know where that stands but that was a couple years ago we had talked about packaging a lot of coastal projects and pulling them together um you know I think there's still a need to do that so I I think we've got to figure out how we can revive that conversation and figure out where you know the Run Pond Road Project is um there's a significant amount of federal money and state money for environmental Restorations so um you would think now is the time sort of keep those alive but I do believe I mean you know I I don't want to call out any department head but what I hear from the Department is that they've given up putting them in and asking and um I do think the we all have to collectively prioritize archive management I'm glad to hear that the the the leaks in the roof have been taken care of that's great but our problem is we need a lot more I mean we we need a better way and a faster way let's put it that way to to sort of manage all that I I think that's that's been a huge challenge at some point though we're going to need to improve our facilities um but that's something that probably requires more discussion about having a project manager somebody who can just keep that project moving along because um it's it's a pretty um daunting task to pull all those pieces together but at some point we're going to need to really prioritize the facility enhancements um it's often overlooked in municipal government but um I don't think we can afford to sort of let that one slack much further so um whatever you can do to sort of bring that up in your conversations I think would be helpful so I the facility assessment is in the warrant I know but it's going at some point we're going to have a dollar figure associated with it and I think uh that's something that in the past was discouraged but I think in the future we need to really prioritize it I would put that up up up at the essential level so just keep that in mind as as as we scrutinize uh that request when it comes before you okay thank you and we we had talk we have talked about just the coastal infrastructure um and I think maybe the way the software can store these projects might help with that whole idea of departments being here I am again and I got a no but that keeps it alive for everyone rather than you know we're talking in our isolated way and somebody else's talking in their isolated way that way it would keep that project um alive so that when funding sources are available there could be a little prodding for yeah the Run Pon funding was made available I think in the early 1990s and it's amazing to think that it still may be available to the town of yarma generally money money like that doesn't stay around that long it usually goes pretty fast before my time yeah okay um I to would like to thank you for your well-ordered presentation and all your hard work on the uh capital budget I'm going to go to the audience and see if anyone has any questions or comments V Morris uh V Morris uh did I understand you correct ly that it is your committee that determines uh what type of vehicles are being purchased by the town entities or uh that I misunderstand that the reason I'm asking is this uh I'm very concerned that uh you know uh there at least in the police department I think they have gone from a hybrid uh uh vehicle to an all El electric one and uh every time you turn around everybody's a genocide sending uh electric vehicles I mean the Ford company is is is no longer I I guess producing the trucks and things like that so I'm a little concerned about uh what the situation is okay that's a valid concern uh we don't necessarily decide they come the Departments come to us because they have a description of the vehicle that they find um will serve the purposes for they what they want and you did hear us say that we want to have a little more uniformity um so yeah there was a problem that was actually with the Department of Natural Resources was looking at a um a vehicle that then had some very bad press about it um I thought Chief do you have all electric vehicles I thought you had some hybrids right and and and uh you're moving away from those right because of the maintenance okay okay so there are no all electric vehicles the police department at the uh fall meeting uh there was a man in front of me who uh referenced the fact that the uh the uh uh police department had just purchased some vehicle I think that was all electric he said he the man was even actually asking where is this vehicle parked in relation to the other vehicles because some of those go on you know spontaneous combustion and go on fire uh so maybe he was misinformed Mr chairman I can answer that you I hope that gives you some relief if I may the vehicle that's all electric is in a uh division of natural resources and it has not had any problem yeah and they have the appropriate charging equipment and everything else Joe thank you Mr chairman just uh real quick um you guys were talking about the Run pond project um I'm going to take my school committee hat off and put my other hat on I'm I'm board on the board of directors for the friends of Bass River and we were um proud to hand over the upper Bass River restoration project to the town um after a lot of work from Rick Bishop our executive director to get that up up and running and funding and things like that um some people are like okay well your job's done let's not our next project is going to be the Run prom project uh we've already started looking into that and looking at funding and Design and things like that so um we've already started um looking into that so you'll hear be hearing a lot more about that in the upcoming year so so it it is in the works it's going to take some time to get that up but it's you're right the thing is is a mess and it's been like that since the 90s if I could respond I I think that's great that you folks have taken it on um it's going to need a lot of community support I think that's what's missing the most there is a design the Army Corps of Engineers did do a design what's what it's waiting for is local funding and if you can help us figure out how to get a local share together um that project then can probably move pretty quickly right that's and that's kind of what um Rick and the we're working on is that the funding piece at least the design funding piece to finish to get that all in place because that all has to be updated it's 20 something years old um and then the community piece because I think that's going to be a huge piece because there's a lot of concern about what happens when we open that up is everybody's backyard's going to get flooded and things like that and um so that but we're in the infancy stages of that but just to let you know we are working on that so that'll be something that we'll take care of yeah I if I can yeah I'm glad you mentioned the flooding concern because one of the things that we're learning is that when we allow these Wetlands to degrade they lose the ability to retain water right and as they lose the ability to retain water they can become a real serious flooding concern and that's a very real issue there um I as a kid I used to of fish off the U The Jetty right by the pipe that would feed into that area and that actually when that was when the ecosystem was healthier that used to be one of the best places you know for a kid to go fishing um I used to hang out there all day I would it would be incredibly productive um that pipe is s not any not anymore no not at all it's like it's almost like the water comes through and there there's very little Marine activity that's being Nur that was like a nurtury for Fisheries in that area so I'm excited to hear that you folks are taking that on and you're going to be be champions for that because that's what it needs we have so many of these small estuaries these small embayments that often get forgotten and um they need Champions so it's great that you folks are stepping up so department heads like when when um Carl was around he was he was a he was a real advocate of the Run Pond and he really got that going in the '90s um but was an advocate for a lot of these I think what his challenge unfortunately was that as a town financially we were in a very different picture we were very much pressed and um and back then there were a lot of other things that came in ahead so but I I I give Carl a lot of credit for hanging in there pushing for this as long as he did I think what's terrific now is that we've got this capital budget team we've got Bill working with the committee we've got a Town Administrator and a finance director and they're all working hard to strengthen the town's financial position uh we're able to do a lot of things before we used to have these capital budget discussions and we've been talking about a lot more projects that would never get done so we're make we're making progress we're getting more things happening uh to happen and I think quite frankly now is the time to put this back on the everyone's radar screen along with some other uh things that you folks are thinking about at the friends of B River um we very much appreciate all the work that you're doing and uh we need your help and your support uh so it's great that you've put this on your list of things to do we're here for the town thank you thank you great anyone else hey ladies thank you very much thank you I just want to say that we do have one open position so if you're interested you can fill out a talent survey and uh you can do that on the town website to join us it's a great group now we're going to hear from the cape C technical Regional High School good evening evening uh good evening thank you B all right he going to save us a few quid this year is that true is that that could be true I I think it is maybe a dollar I'm not we're not happy with that we like more kids from Yarmouth to come to Cape contac but um anytime we can help that's great um so uh for first of all I'm joined by I'm Bob sanbor superintendent Cape croud Regional Technical High School actually Dr Robert Sanborn as of this year thank you very sorry uh Chris gy is joining me um and we also have Norm M show uh on our school committee who representing Yarmouth and Norm sits on the finance subcommittee so um along with Tony Tulio and Steph Kazi uh and the work of that subcommittee along with uh my business manager Aaron orcut and then all of our department heads and uh and staff um that make this budget possible it starts in April and it it come it came together in January the school committee will be voting our budget on March 28th so I'm going to present that this evening so first a little enrollment picture we're pretty Ste steady in enrollment um but uh in Yarmouth we're down four students so uh chairman Stone referred to uh saving a little quid I think was the comment um that's where the quid comes from in the decline in enrollment in the town of Yarmouth um we have 662 students uh at this time it's annually I like to thank the taxpayers of Yarmouth for supporting our building project back in 2017 and we're now in the fourth year of providing Vocational Technical education in a in a state of state-ofthe-art facility and thank you to the taxpayers of of Yarmouth um a little more on the enrollment picture barnable and Yarmouth make up B basically half of almost half of our enrollment um and then it goes down from there um with I think harwitch is our next uh biggest uh contributor to the enrollment uh you see that um a new facility the cost of college education and uh a Renaissance and Vocational Technical education I think are some of the contributors and the efforts of our staff um we did we did a lot of work around admissions um over the years to uh to get the word out to students of what we can do for them and their families um so we're up 90 students since 2020 fiscal 20 um which we're excited about um and uh so that's where we are we were built for 650 students um and we can have more than 650 students because msba assumes about an 85% utilization rate of a facility but um we are Max coming close to maxing out the facility so the budget I'm presenting today uh is the a 4.38% increase over FY 24 uh you see over the last several years I think we've been good stewards of the taxpayers money um but many of the things that you've heard in the excellent presentations that preceded me the accelerators uh of of like supply chain and and inflation uh wage inflation in particular um is uh is contributing to an increase uh that we haven't seen in many many many years um and you see FY 24 it it started on that path um but I I believe uh so that's that's where we are for this budget where does the money come to pay for this it comes from the 12 towns primarily that's the 12, 694,000 figure there um state aid is just under $4 million um and then we have a local contrib excuse metion of uh $815,000 of which 750 comes from our excess and deficiency excess and deficiency fund end which I think you're very familiar with with the Dy district has the same thing uh this graph just shows the uh the operating budget and those three sources of revenue um we did get a nice spike in 24 and a little bit in 23 from the student Opportunity Act passing the legislature and and they started to phase it into Chapter 70 state aid and uh so that that has has helped to defay the cost of a ments a bit and the and along with our local contribution but you see the green line is what where the money comes from the towns in the form of assessment this is a history of our operating budget the state aid as you see a significant increase in 23 to 24 for state aid um and then if you look at the assessments you'll see some ups and downs and some of that is us uh we have returned money to the towns in the last uh couple of years um you'll see from 23 to 24 we we are asking Less in in the form of Assessments from the previous year also in during the uh during the pandemic we uh dialed back um if you see there's 2 21s there uh we re reconfigured our budget because of savings that were unfortunately the savings of covid uh came into effect so we adjusted our budget downward um and we're able to supply more local Revenue to uh to defay the cost of Assessments there you see that decline so um because we are prettyy much right at our Max at 5% so anytime our end is audited and it is over that 5% um we are obligated and and we do so we return it to the towns either during the budget season or in the next budget cycle uh the second most important people in our building are our teachers and they account for 35% of this budget 76% of this budget is is teach is is all staff including their benefits and um one figure in the in the insurance as you should note is that we are now spending $700,000 on retirees health insurance um which I'm sure that uh my colleague behind me also experiences that but um that's those are not people that work at the school now but they've served our district and we are obligated to do so um but it's it's just uh it's important to point out that that that number is significant uh these are the numbers of that chart we just had um as you see the the uh 35% for teachers in in there on the bottom uh Capital requirements um we uh those are the last four line items in our line item budget that we've supplied you um and that's for new replacement equipment new and replacement equipment our technology needs and building Improvement uh which I think is at $200,000 in this budget so those four budgets uh are $4 $95,000 in total so uh a little bit about the debt on the school we're actually in year six Believe It or Not of paying off um the debt for the school and uh I think you're going to you although it it is a declining debt schedule because it's based on enrollment the decline has accelerated a little bit for Yarmouth in this particular year um so uh we look to pay that off in 2039 so the capital uh assessment for this year for Yarmouth is 1,255 679 for a total uh Debt Service of 5.7 million for the district and then the operating budget uh the assessment for the town of Yarmouth is $2,656 18115 so putting those two together the uh total is 3,912 $494 so I mentioned the retiree benefits um and uh We've made we made a decision in 2015 my business manager came with the idea to to move funds and and start funding the Plymouth County opab trust or for us through the Plymouth County opab trust and we've made significant inroads into funding that liability of retirees or other post-employment benefits OPB is the term that many people know now um in this budget uh $300,000 there's a title in the Insurance's area is for OPB obligation and that that is uh going straight to that fund um which is uh now it's that's an older figure but it's well over two million $2.5 million now put aside Untouchable for only one thing and that's Healthcare um and really we're letting it grow our plan through the finance subcommittee is to retire or to fully fund by 20 38 and um that's going to be utilizing the Barnstable County assessment too because they're supposed to Sunset their assessment as they fund their retirement system as that happens we will double down and and take that assessment which is already in our budget add it to this $300,000 figure which will now not change going forward um it was going up in increments of 25,000 a year um which would then allow us to put more effort in the later years of our plan to the uh OPB uh issue hope hoping to uh fully fund the liability by uh 2038 I believe uh that's a before I open it up to questions I wanted to mention one thing a couple things uh before I left the office today I talked to our Co-op coordinator and we have 91 student seniors out in the workforce on capot uh which is 62% of our senior class that means every two weeks they're out making money while they're in high school and learning the skills on the job and those are our seniors and we have 44 of our our our Juniors out already um and that number is rising um and that's about 28% of our Juniors and they only get to go out really in the second half of their junior year the other thing I want to mention is we have more applications than we have seats and we are we have an admissions process at our school um we have tweaked our admissions process over the last couple years to um to to to make it more um Equitable and uh I think uh we we now are emphasizing attendance and deemphasizing grades as as much um and we the initial uh admission season is showing a difference in the in the calculations that go towards uh ranking the kids for admissions to our school but there's still going to be a waiting list and we are we are looking into uh we we've signed a lease with an intermunicipal agreement for 25y year lease with the town of Harwich for land at 374 Main Street which is a 33 acre parcel of land that has three Cranberry Bogs which we're not getting in the Cranberry business um and it has 20 it has 22 Acres of Upland some of it wood it um and we're going to uh we're in the process of fundraising um also we've submitted packages for two programs to the uh Department of Elementary and secondary education for veterinary science to trained vet veterinary assistants and environmental science and technology which uh involves environmental science but also some of the things you were talking about here tonight uh under the under the offices of natural resource management so um and we' be training students in that area our goal is to start that in the fiscal 26 um but to all the to it's a two-part thing we want to offer more opportunities and we want to bring down that weight list that we have at our School uh that when all when that's all up and running and that's a big if there's there's still some question marks um in in in developing that land um but uh it would offer another 80 students acceptance into our school and another thing is that we Although our weight list is is around 102 students this past year um we offer well over 70% acceptance uh to our school meaning that some kids don't accept the offer of of coming to our school so it's not um um just we have 186 seats and we have 450 applications and that's the Delta no we offer more students acceptance than than that we it's almost it's over 70% in the last several years but we want we'd like to get it down to every student who wants a vocational technical education can get one and uh hopefully developing this land will offer more opportunities so with that I would open up to questions thank you very much uh Peter thank you very much for the presentation and and I I think you've done a very good job of keeping the budget at uh at a at a 4.38% increase and I know it was I know it's been tough and and hearing about I get this correct 64% of your seniors are out working every couple of weeks and roughly 30% of your juniors are out working that's fantastic both for the student both for the for the the folks that HVAC guys who need people to to work and learn and plumbers that need to work and learn to get work done um I mean that's that is fantastic it's just wonderful and I I I think you do you guys do a very good job at at Cape cot Tech I like your hat very much um and and again keeping the budget is as tight as you can at 4.38% increase is is is very good given given uh some inflation pressures and the like yeah thank you and uh the the you mentioned the employers and we had uh we had a job fair at our school this past week um in our gym was filled with 50 employers who were desperate for and I think we had we had some Recreation Department yes I think yarm Recreation was there um and by my daughter works for the sailing program by the way just one disclosure anyway just wanted to throw that yeah that's good yeah no I don't have any questions it's solid presentation as as always you know you do an amazing job down there the building is beautiful and and um you know you're just turning out some fantastic uh Workforce for all of the towns here on the cape so thank you for that thank you for our um school committee members I've been working there for 30 years and I don't want to graduate so yeah and we're holding them back we're not giving Miss final credit so he can leave Dr Bob yes yeah I like that sound thank you um I I want to join with my uh colleagues here um every time you come here you give a terrific presentation you do a wonderful job on your budget um the least grief of any probably any group that comes before us you do a great job every year so once again thank you and congratulations on the outstanding work that you do um one of the shortcomings in your presentation I've never had a short I've never had to say this before but that building that you had the new school is just beautiful and I would urge you in future presentations to put more pictures up more photos and really brag about did you hide some in the back just but no this facility is fantastic well if you give me a minute okay so um that that's the front of the school obviously the restaurant's right there in the front to the right with all that glass and that's one thing you're going to be marveled with is the natural light in the entire facility but we also improve the grounds greatly we got two new fields for the kids cuz our sport programs have really grown exponentially I don't know all of a sudden we're a volleyball school um um girls volleyball is is very very popular and successful but so the the way that and we then we got lights on two of those fields as part of this project um we've got a new track an actual track it used to be a asphalt road it's a track um and uh we just really improved the entire complex the the the comments I get is that it's more collegiate in and feel when you go there there are gathering spaces within the building I really if you haven't seen it I'd love anybody to come on up and see it um it's uh I've been there numerous times for a variety of groups and um I'm just blown away every time I go I would encourage you for town meeting to to at least add maybe a few photographs so that the the folks in Yarmouth can get a good look at some of the great work that you've done it's out it's outstanding and uh it's it's almost award-winning uh really it is and we did this for $123 million which that's a lot of money I know it's a lot of money um but today that would be 250 I I don't dispute that at all um it's just gone crazy so uh I think the timing was right as well we got a lot more than yeah we've become very familiar with cost increases in project I know it's tough one of the things I was going to point out is that under his leadership there was an incredible planning process done with Focus grouping and a whole variety of people during the course of a year uh in which we brought together for multiple days at a time to talk about elements of design and what was important both in the academic and the vocational component parts of a school and there's just some extraordinary planning that was done uh in order to lead to the development of this building so the fact that it looks so beautiful outside the interior in terms of the functionality between academics and and the vocational programs and everything is extraordinary uh what went on but it was really under his leadership there was an incredible incredible process that took place for you know more than a year probably with large groups of people coming together to work on it and so that's part of what led to that kind of design there yeah that photograph doesn't do justice to the great work that's been done I mean it's nice it looks nice but I mean clearly I got more pictures yeah I no I think think I mean you know a taxpayer funded project I mean I think uh it would be good to show the voters and the taxpayers what they got for their money because they they will be very pleased yeah and one other shortcoming I'll point out another shortcoming if you drive down Pleasant Lake or Route 124 there's no entry sign there is one coming right well signage is part of the signage is always an issue the other thing that I wanted to mention to you I I mentioned to this briefly that I'm particularly interested in following up on is this talk of expanding the whole agriculture yeah um I'm glad that you raised that because um creating institutions to sustain agriculture are going to be critical for us going forward into doing more in terms of uh partnering um now I know cranberry production you know this this expansion that you're talking about has a great deal of Promise the r um I can just say from the other work that I do with uh with the cape cut Conservation District in the nrcs there's talk about expanding uh a need to expand their facilities and where there may be opportunities to collaborate quite frankly would be in the area of coastal restoration I don't know if restoration Coastal ecology if any of that fits within the curriculum but that program is expanding there's a tremendous amount of federal money being spent on Cap Cod to restore coastal wetlands a lot of the money is going to the friend of Bass River there's a lot of money being spent in Yarmouth and virtually every town here on the cape and it might make sense to be thinking about where there may be opportunities for vocational education and and some of the work that's related to actually doing it I think the environmental science and and Technology Program when you dig into those Frameworks would be a perfect fit for what you're describing yeah well if if you were to partner with them and again the countyy is looking to expand its egg Center uh there is on their capitalist a sort of a new office and farm quite frankly so you may have some potential Partners okay that are certainly worth and I I'd be more than happy to help you uh build those relationships thank you very much thank you Mr chairman thank you um as usual he had made a fantastic um presentation your school's reputation speaks for itself the success of the students um is incredible I've known and worked with a lot of those kids over the years and they do extremely well the ones that are motivated um I like your approach where you really have that emphasis of not just doing classroom work but getting them out into the workforce because not only are they going to become more skilled but they're going to get an opportunity see if they like doing that kind of work and they something they want to stay with and you're also who very cognizant of prob you know program expansion to accommodate these other students into look at what the needs are in the community and try to fulfill those needs um it's an amazing school it really is and it's come so far over the years I can remember that school back into the 1970s what it was then and what it is now when it's night and day the question I have is when you you you have uh obviously more kids that want to apply than you have POS positions for similar to the nursing program at Cape Kai Community College I hear from a lot of young ladies oh you can't get into that program everybody wants to get in it yep and do you have like a how do you screen it out do you have a selection committee and if you do who's on how does that work in terms of you mentioned kind of some kind of Equitable participation in the school how how do you um accomplish that so we have a we have a admissions policy and it's basically attendance um a personal interview they those two categories alone uh account for about 66% of 100 Point 66 points out of 100 the next the others is uh grades which is about 20 20 20 points uh and this is all in seventh and eth grade uh discipline is really not a big U marker unless they've committed something egregious and then there's a demerit of 10 points um it used to be a much bigger part of our our emissions policy and then there's a there's a personal recommendation or from the counselor from the from the sending District so that's an online thing they they fill it out it comes to our admissions we have a c a counselor dedicated to admissions um and he he his name's Kevin Fury uh conducts almost every personal interview with ex few exceptions um and he uh compiles all the scores they gets ranked by number uh of that admissions uh score and then we offer acceptance based on those scores so it'll we probably be giving out about 200 acceptances in the next uh week or so and then we'll hear back from those who want to come and then there'll be another round where we offer more acceptances typically as I said before that it's about 70% of the students are offered uh enrollment in our school when all said and done which is that's that is uh it used to be much higher than that it used to be 90 to to 100% yeah it's very objective and formulaic except for I guess there be some subjectivity in the interview right correct that's and what that interview is about sorry Chris is just uh gauging their interest it's asking questions that are you really interested in coming to C Cod Regional Technical High School so there's there's a series of six questions that the kids answer and there's a rubric for for scoring it yeah I don't think you can beat that you know in the educational process in in any field I don't think you can beat that um practical experience at the same time you're learning the theoretical issues um and curriculum so I think that's one of the strengths of of Cape Tech one of the things that happens too that I think is very important is that each of these students are coming from VAR experiences you know sort of prek through 8 and then they're having to come together into our school in a lot of ways they're leaving their known friendships and the sort of the life they knew in the schools and also um very maybe perhaps very different academic or educational experiences that now they have to come together to meet sort of our standards of that and one of the things that I think is very strong about the program is that during the first year during the freshman year there is a lot of work done by peers older class uh classmates um other classes you know to help support them with some of the you know anxiety and change uh also our staff and counselors work very very hard with them on the transition because it could be it's the first time they were encountering some rough math classes or something else that they've never had but we also offer an exploratory program during their entire freshman year and maybe Bob you want to talk a little bit about because I think that's important for the kids because they may have come in thinking oh I want to be an auto mechanic but things change so oh definitely yeah so they get to see every program one day yeah then they pick and that takes several weeks over the two week cycles and then they choose five to six programs that they want to investigate for a week and then you get to around February and then that whole time they're being graded in that process by all the teachers that they are go before in that exploratory process and then the students with the highest scores in that process get their first choice of shop um and then it goes forth from there so kind of like the way they do medicine they they do six or eight weeks in this section that section and they yeah kind of decide where their interest level lies and they specialize right in one of those fields right so uh I would be remiss if I didn't mention Eric tally and Nathan ladley who sat on our building committee yes uh who were really very very very helpful yeah Eric does a great job I also think he needs to mention uh the fact Ain orcut and the entire crew of teachers and administrators at the tech all work together very very hard on this budget there's a lot of exploration a lot of questioning done in terms of the rational the need for what they're requesting and how they put that all together into the kind of budget presentation that now suddenly shows as five or six screens here on your your projector but that the work that has been got done through the past year and with the subcommittee uh from the school committee members too has incredible I mean they really do very very hard work in terms of looking at sort of how every dollar is spent okay I'm going to go to the public and see if anybody has questions or comments no then I'm going to thank you very much for your excellent presentation thank you very much take care now we're going to go to Dy Regional School District I don't think this one's work all right good evening so evening how are you tonight I'm well how are you guys doing good so before uh we start two comments or maybe three so one I want to congratulate Dr samorn I didn't realize he had completed his doctoral program so first starting there two I agree he is an absolutely beautiful building second only to the most beautiful building on the cape which is uh exists on Station Avenue uh also tax Bard funded and supported which we are very thankful for um and three uh just to set your expectations appropriately we did not bring pictures of that building we did consider bringing pictures of Emy small to maybe drive a different point home but uh we didn't bring those pictures either so just my comments to get us started uh on the Yem Mall you don't have to bring pictures we were very well aware of that I figured I figured we' we'd keep things positive tonight it was our cover picture last year right um so uh we do have uh several slides in here which are largely just backup so that everybody has the detail there's several of the slides that we're going to move very quickly through and not really comment to because they have like the detail information that we've gone through with a lot of detail with the school committee if there's something that you want us to pause on or you want us to go back to just signal and we'll pause but there's several slides in here that we're going to go very quickly through so that a we can respect your time and get you get out of here um but they provide back up essentially in more detail for the con the larger conversation but there are a couple slides that we'll pause on help set some context uh so again just sort of the big picture so uh the school committee is set to vote the final budget tomorrow night um stand along with all of our timelines and we took a consensus or the school committee gave consensus at our last meeting which was just last week so everything that you will see tonight the school committee gave a consensus direction that this is what they wanted to see in front of them tomorrow night for their final vote uh so this is this is again in align with everything that we've been working on since last October and they also did take a vote which we will talk about when we get into some of the later slides uh in the direction that they wanted David and I to put in front of them uh the use of end so they did actually take a formal vote on that last last Wednesday oh sorry and I forgot to mention we have Joe Tierney here from the school commit I know he's already spoke um and David Flynn my uh superintendent for business we know Joe yeah uh so as I mentioned when we were back here I don't know what is six weeks two months ago our overall goal as a process has been to maintain a level Educational Service budget and while also really taking a deep dive and looking for efficiencies and and ways to develop an effective budget that provides all the needs for our students but doing it in the most efficient way possible to to meet our educational mission for students which is to allow them to achieve Excellence uh to empower them to achieve Excellence as when we were here last time we talked about three big factors that were driving sort of this perfect storm for the budget since then there's been a fourth Factor that's been added uh so those big factors are you know a lot of people have talked about it these staff the cola increases for us there was also an added layer in which we've been extending the school day over multiple years which drives there's a there's a staff cost with that we've been we will see at the end of this year the expiration of the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds which were which were all these covid relief funds or yeah covid relief funds that are all dissipating at the end of this year and there were C there were things within the budget that were being supplemented by that which now have to be absorbed into the general fund upward inflationary pressure which again has been discussed already a lot tonight and then we were holding con what we thought were conservative numbers for state aid and state aid came and even lower than we thought that's sort of the fourth factor that that fed into our perfect storm for the fy2 budget I want to pause here just for a second and I again I've showed you this slide before but there's a been a trend on the cape for years of declining enrollment and if you look at the trend line the trend line is of declining enrollment however in the last three years Dy has seen the number of students physically walking in the door has increased with a market increase in the last year to the point where we have more students coming into school I just double check the numbers this before we were across the pond meeting with with the other select board 39 or it was 3088 when I just double checked that we served today uh is the highest number we've had in 10 years and it's holding steady and I just want to emphasize this point that I would Hazard a guess that we're probably the only only Town Department that's cutting 5% of its staff when we have the highest service level that we've had in 10 years and if this trend continues it's just something we're going to need to keep an eye on as we move forward for future planning and you know we talked about this there's a our students are also made up of different U subpopulations one of those is what the state defines as high needs and that group is further broken out into four different subpopulations where we've seen the in largest increase in especially in the last year is in students receiving what's referred to as English language learner service we've SE just over a one-year increase so from last year to this year that's been a 5% increase in students uh so 5% of 3,000 kids um I David could do that math much faster but it's it's a lot of students uh so again there's service needs that are tied to that which you'll see sort of when we've decided what positions we wanted to add what positions we wanted to subtract it all makes sense at sort of at the end of the presentation this just gives you a sense of who where kids are coming from what's the breakdown Yarmouth versus Dennis versus kids who school choice in from other towns and then so that previous ones was looking at students who are physically walking in the door and then this is foundation enrollment which I know we all know is what d drives the assessment so these are the students who actually reside in the towns they might go to other schools but these are the students who actually reside in the towns and we can see over 10 years there's been a shift from roughly 3565 split to uh 30 70 split roughly so the the shift continues to move towards Yarmouth um and I I think that trend is going to continue again so as we think and try to work to plan together as as communities I I don't see this shift I don't know moving in a different direction yeah I think this is a trend and a pattern especially when you look at it over 10 years and this is just the same information shown in a graph all right so I'm going to hand it over to my partner here he's going to get into some of the specifics so as we know as a Regional School District yeah the um know a lot of the revenue does come directly to us the state aid as we mentioned that the state aid was a little bit less than anticipated on the one hand we're fortunate that you know the revenues are up several 00,000 from the excuse me the cherry sheet revenues as well as the school choice tuition is about the same so 15 million up to 15.4 million kind of like on the towns we also have cherry seip charges as a Regional School District so the school choice is actually down which is good the chart of school TW is down 400,000 so it's a moving in a positive direction for us the state aid wasn't up as much but also the charges are down from where they had been so we take our revenue is at 14.7 million the assessments at 4.9 million the school choice leaves a total net state aid of $10.5 million so we alluded to the fact that the fourth bullet of The Perfect Storm was lower than anticipated we are grateful that it's going up9 159,000 but based on the past 2 years we were really hoping it was going to be about 1.2 million so it's about 250,000 lower than what we were hoping it was going to be but if you look over the past six years know only three years ago we were receiving $5 million in net state aid now we're all the way up to $10 million so the state has been putting their money into our district and it the vast majority of that the student Opportunity Act relates back to those student sub groups that Mark showed a couple slides ago with know two-thirds of our students being high needs in various categories that's where the state has been putting additional funding and we have been seeing it you know realize to us this just shows it graphically you can see it declining for three years in a row and then the purple bars once the student Opportunity Act was implemented you can really see the gains that they've been giving you know I was kind of hoping that that last bar was going to be a little bit higher like I said but it is still in the end almost a million dollars higher than the year we in right now bless you so that all leads to you know the chapter 7 increase of the $872,000 just real quick the foundation enrollment is up 58 students 55 of those 58 are from Yarmouth so the state in its most basic form chapter 78 is the difference between the foundation budget and the minimum amount that they feel the town should contribute so the net of those two you know the foundation budget is at 53 million required District contributions a little over 40 million so the Chapter 70 is a difference at 12.5 million throughout the band of additional Aid we can receive are based on your lowincome figures for the percentages of your students there are 12 different bands that you could fall in we are in band number 10 which is 54 to 70% low income families and we're at if I can read my note 61.2 6% so as that steps up it's higher and higher per pupil amounts that get added into the student Opportunity Act formula so when we started the budget back in October the very first step was what would a level service budget be to maintain everything that we currently have this year and start that as a baseline cost so we want to retain all staff and then address all our contractual increases for special needs tuition Transportation the health insurance as you spoke to earlier tonight property and liability insurance facilities retirement Medicare taxes these next few few slides just put the dollar amounts in context to those major bullets so to return all staff hair over $2 million the implementation of the longer school day $1.7 million retain positions that were funded through the Esser grants would be 1,250,000 I want to point out that 16 positions but later on 10 of those 16 are being recommended to no longer maintain tuition and services for special needs students and placements outside of our own schools the state sets the rate for the private schools and then collaboratives make up the other schools which are collaboratively agreed upon by the school committees and superintendents making them up it's between a 5 and a half to 6 and half% increase on average across the programs that's 333,000 he is a positive with the charart of school and school choice tuition projected to go down $192,000 transportation for regular day and special needs we have our 32 big buses as we call them that were contracted with five star we're going into year two of a 5-year contract it's a 5% increase in that contract the remainder is for the out of District students going to the private placements you know one there aren't many placements on Cape Cod so we're going over the bridge a lot during the day number two the Cape Cod collaborative is kind of getting out of the business of transporting off Cape so they'll help transport to programs on the cape not off the cape so when we do have a student in a program in Plymouth say we're trying we need to find a vendor not need to we're ending up having to find a vendor that's off Cape to drive all the way down here pick up the student dentist and Yarmouth drive all the way back to Plymouth in this example in the morning and then do the whole thing in reverse and it's just very expensive to get a single driver potentially a monitor on a single vehicle to pick up one maybe two students and do a trip like that so we're just seeing rapidly increasing cost for out of District transportation as you all know we're in the same Municipal health group as you 8% increase in our property and liability insurance is going up as well the major driver in that is bringing our big beautiful new building on board and those two together $737,000 maintenance and utilities our custodial contract we Outsource our custodians there's about a 5% increase in that contract the major driver in this one is the capite compact contract with the generation portion of the bill those rates going up from 8 something cents per kilowatt per hour to almost 14 cents per kilowatt a rough what 70 80% increase on the generation side leading to a projected increase of 35% on the overall bill for electricity it's a double-edged sword of that this in the past for the past 5 years we had a locked in rate so we enjoyed a stable rate for generation for five years this is the best I mean I believe you guys are in the same group as we are so unfortunately it's a big spike but at least that will be locked in for the next couple years our assessment to Bro County up 75 ,000 and then that leads into what we've been doing to back down from that figure to get to a more palatable figure and realistic figure for all of us so like David said that was where if we just rolled everything forward that's what it would have cost us that was the initial start and it ended up with a 9.35% uh overall budget increase uh when we started so then we and I think when last we were here these were like steps things we were going to do next so we went through a process of looking at how do we right size the district and put some processes in for establishing some staffing models that were consistent across the district uh made some recommendations for programming looked for other offsets we let we essentially level funded all non-contractual obligations and then we uh included because at the time we didn't have all the state aid information plus the health insurance information Etc so again I'm going to go through a bunch of slides very quick quick I gave the school committee a lot more um information on this but the next several slides are going to give you the details behind uh each of these bullets so we've gone through and we're ultimately based upon some student needs we need to add some positions so largely you'll see that uh we needed to move some curriculum and software items forward this is where I said we largely level funded there's $992,000 of stuff that we're funding through Esser that we need to move forward that was at1 $92,000 but our most recent iteration uh we were able to R reduce $100,000 out of that and then we need to uh move some uh or create some staffing positions largely it's mostly English language learner teachers to meet that 5% spike in students uh and some of like the speech and language Pathologists you'll see it's actually offsetting the fact that we're actually Contracting that service out currently uh and then like that grade level teacher and the special ed the those special ed teachers are again we're we're we're getting rid of a contract Service and replacing it with our own staff the grade level teacher is balancing case load sizes which you'll see in a second it's adding in one um school but reducing multiples in other schools so then we end up with multiple reductions on the other side um so you see like I mentioned those contracted Services we're paying a vendor to do multiple services within our special education department so we need to bring our own staff in to do that service instead It ultimately ends up saving us money uh we're going to be cutting uh all those listed positions there uh from our uh staff and I'm going to then show you how that breaks out in more detail over the next couple slides so this is we went through this process with the school committee on uh as we looked at Staffing positions across the district and how we would get to those consistent uh class size ratios essentially the middle col is what would we do if we didn't make any changes and then the middle column is what change are we recommending so that we can get to the class siiz recommendations that uh I had suggested to the committee we also look closely at our high school um schedule and found we were under uh many sections were under enrolled so that we found there was room to make reductions in uh Staffing within the high school due to section under enrollment we looked within our non subpar programming for special education getting consistent case load sizes across the special education department found we were able to make a make reductions there and then actually use those reductions essentially reallocate those full-time equivalent positions to create the two special program uh teachers that we need um I can get into the Weeds on this if you want but essentially uh we need to reinvest how we're using Staffing uh to work with tier one instruction versus tier three which is again I I don't know how much weed this the select board wants me to get into we spend a lot of time talking about this at the school committee level um but we have lots of people who are working one-on-one with students and we need to have those people working with groups of three and four to free up uh uh to have them working with larger groups of students have larger impact the data isn't showing that our current model is actually getting us the results we need so it sort of goes back to some of the earlier slides that we're not getting the impact for the investment and so we need to change our strategy and when we carry that impact all the way forward all the way across the district we find that we're actually able to reduce some staff here uh and re reinvest in a different way so then when you lay all that out from the teaching staff you know there's some additions some some subtractions which ult ultimately ends us in a net reduction of 14 and a half teaching positions and then we have a net reduction of 18 par educator positions and then a couple of other uh miscellaneous reductions which gets us to another three reductions overall which gets us when you add that all together gets us to a net reduction of 33 and a half positions from where we currently sit so put all that together and so again so David showed you sort of where we were in I think it was early January and then we went through a process from early January to U get to where we are today to what the school committee is going to vote on tomorrow so we added the revised net state aid information based upon the governor's budget we uh added again the sort of the information on the um I just lost the the term but we added the school choice and Char Charter information we d did some real some hard looks at what we were getting for um like interest rates and where some of our money is sitting as far as some of our revolving accounts was able to add some ad just additional projected local Revenue um we did the right sizing we're ultimately ending up with 35 a half left positions I mentioned the reduction of $100,000 that was most recent uh real hard look we had all of our principles look at their supply lines that was we were able to find an additional 100,000 there and then the school committee voted just last week to apply 500,000 in end to help offset the assessments with the idea that next with the idea that we would scale that over the next three years so this year we'd apply the school committee would apply $500,000 in end toward operating next year $250,000 in operating and 100 or Z in the third year they can't sustain using to offset operating but understanding that we need to find a way to work collaboratively with the towns to absorb this over a few years and that we do have end to help um if I can steal a phrase with from Mr rittenau to soften the blow and uh uh ramp us into this hand it back to David to talk about the assessments so just a quick recap so where we were this brings us to the operating budget of the 76 m890 th000 as of January 8th we are at 78 m900 th000 so we've been able to reduce the overall request by $2,142 52 so the calculated impact on the assessments would be an increase to Dennis of 733,000 3.9% and an increase to Yarmouth of 2,319 1815 or a 5.9% increase this is just showing based on the foundation enrollment with the students you know that's all driven by students and inflation this goes into how it's calculated so you know the driver more so here than in than in our predecessors we one of 11 towns you know we're one of Two Towns so it's all student driven and minimum driven by the state formula as to why the percentage increases aren't the same between yarm and Dennis so as we go through the formula we take our operating budget we subtract off the state aid that comes directly to us of the 14 million subtract out our local receipts including applying $500,000 of end for million 570 so that leaves $60 million is to be assessed to the Two Towns step number one is to take the required minimum is set by the Department of Education for every community in the state so on the Yarmouth column that's 27.3 million Dennis is 13.2 so then that still leaves another 19,95 a,0 to be allocated across the Two Towns this is where the regional agreement formula kicks in with the 5-year average of the previous 5 years Foundation enrollment which is the 69.9 1% for yth so then that adds 13 m789 th000 to the formula for the operating assessment of 41 milli1 68,9 in the debt on the two buildings that still have debt the high school has two payments left fiscal 25 and fiscal 26 and then just the debt on the new Intermediate Middle School the armest portion of those two pieces is 2,588 368 oops did I think you skipped one I did I double clicked it anyway so this is just the uh this an overall summary from year to year so it's 38.8 million this year is the operating assessment under this budget scenario would be 41.1 million next year an increase of the 2,319 1815 or the 5.91 7% and then that's a recap summary once again of where we were in January 78.9 million since then we've recommended a reduction of a net 35 a half positions we've addressed all of our contractual obligations we've reduced the principal's allocations by $100,000 and applied $500,000 of end towards the operating assessments for next year and that is the end if anyone has any questions okay thank you very much um we go to select Mark Forest thank you U Mr chairman before we start um I'm very much interested in hearing from Our Town Administrator because so am I it's a good suggestion bye do you want to comment yes I I certainly do and I think it's very appropriate before we jump into the questions you know I really want to start by acknowledging and expressing my appreciation for the office of the superintendent uh between Mark Smith and and David Flynn you know we knew and we've gone over um and we've had a lot of discussions at this level um you know of the the many reasons why we're experiencing difficult with difficulty with the school budget this year and it is a very difficult year and um I I just want to say that the the communication that has been established by the superintendent's office um to me to the town of Dennis to all of the officials here has really been Stellar that that we focused on these issues from the start and it was the superintendent's office as well that coordinated I I thought was a very pivotal meeting where uh we had the chairman of the border of selectman chairman of the finance committees chairman of the school committee and and all of the um key administrators in both the district uh and the towns met together to review these um issues and to to try to figure out ways that we can collaborate uh to make it so that it's possible to keep the educational system going you know without having major disruptions and and really there were a lot of threats um that that were in front of us and um I just want to say it was that meeting where we started to outline a general strategy that um we discussed in detail at the board of selectman's level at at the last meeting and and I want to say that um as a result of those Communications and it's not just the communications um I felt like the superintendent's office um followed through with um each and every one of the suggestions that we made to to try to get a better handle um on the budget situ situation I mean it started with um uh luckily with the um budget going down a little bit from the reduction in students at Cape Tech um there was uh some funding that was um excess that we had estimated what our assessments were going to be that we were able to reprogram over to the school department we also worked collaboratively to reprogram a small amount uh maybe 150 a little bit more than that, that we had pledged for Capital items that could be deferred and and move those funds over into the um the the school budget but you know that that really you know wasn't enough I I I think that to utilize that soft Landing over a multi-year period where we step down on that excess and deficiency fund um usage coupled with uh the school Department's efforts to go back in and and and try to make some additional reductions to try to be creative uh all of those things that were uh just like there we we talked about four or five different problems that made it so the budget couldn't stay within two and a half um our solutions that we worked out collaboratively there wasn't one solution there were four or five individual items and the the key thing we knew we couldn't have um a budget that was under two and a half what and we know that we require an override for FY 25 to get this budget in place but we had really made a strong pitch to try to keep keep that override to a manageable Level under a million dollar so that um we could try to go as easy as we possibly could on the town's tax rate and and that was a Yan's effort to to get there based on the fact that we started off 1.7 million with a shortfall you know from the two and a half and um you know the the these folks did it they did everything that that we asked and um I want to say the communications through throughout the process were also um extraordinarily High our communication levels also with the town of Dennis I was very proud of were were're very high as well and I and I think that the three Partners in this with the two communities working together forming the Regional School District we have the best plan possible and um you know yes it's a difficult year and we're going to require uh the support of the voters to exceed uh you know by by that amount the prop to half for this year but um I I feel it's a budget that um I support and I encourage um the you know the the board to support it as well and I I think what the hope is that working collaboratively on this we can start with this process that we build on these communications present an override request to voters have public Outreach on it where um all of the partners share in the process and and support that and that um we also know we've got a lot of work moving forward I'm very encouraged by the level of communication we seem to work together very easily um we're going to have to start that process as soon as we get through town meeting and the election for working on the FY 26 budget and and what that's going to hold it may have additional challenges we're we're sure but um um as I say I I thank the the superintendent David and the school committee for their efforts and it was very consistent with everything we discussed throughout thank you yeah thank you and I thank you Bob for that report because prior to tonight um we had some really grave concerns and I'm glad to hear the report from the Town Administrator so we're looking at an override at roughly what amount it's 800 and um something thousand maybe in that range that's clearly a significant adjustment based on what we were talking about before yeah um with respect to the presentation um I've I don't really have many questions I think you I like it when you go into the weeds and you go into the details and and you lay this all out for us so I think I think that that is is incredibly helpful um I do think though that you do have a new school facility that you can certainly brag about it's a beautiful building and um I would encourage you to put more stuff on the public access channels because I think there are people that haven't had the opportunity to get there God knows when they're going to get a chance um I know that our last town meeting there we had a a very sizable crowd there and I'm sure some of it was the appeal of just getting in to take a look at the new facility and people were happy uh I know it was quirky we had some technical glitches and I'm understanding that all of that stuff's going to be worked out so we we're going to everything's going to work with smoothly for our next town meeting so that's all good to hear but um no I think it's good for us to get the details and to get into for the weeds with you on this so there's nothing there to apologize bless you um the I think what we we just need to be able to do is collectively is and if the administrator is recommending and we follow his recommendations it's really explaining to people uh in putting in English as as you know we've been through this before it's sort of laying out what what the difference is and what it means and in the level of effort and the work that's gone in to try to bring that the numbers down now I just want to make sure I'm clear when you went to the staff reductions can you go back to that slide yeah I just want to make sure I got this right because I saw a number 35 is that correct 35 Staff reductions that's that's a fairly significant number right there I think and so I I appreciate I just want to make sure I'm reading the numbers correctly yeah like I said before you know it's about roughly 5% of the the current current staff so as I mentioned and the highest enrollment that we've had I do and I've said to the committee that I do believe we'll still be able to provide all the same level of service that we provide as a district I think part of it is you know coming in as a new superintendent really looking hard at you know how we staff having consistent Staffing models looking real closely at um what programs both due to that were put in place with the covid funding and things that existed prior to were we essentially for lack of a better phrase getting a return on investment and determining were those things that now is a this I don't know I had a previous superintendent said sometimes a crisis is a crisis opportunity it's an opportunity to really kind of look at things from a from a sense of are they really getting you what you intend and what you want right so this is really an opportunity for us as an entire David and I are the I don't know the Bob Sor talked about it you know we're the we're the point of a of a large gigantic pyramid that got us here there was an entire team of people that got us to this presentation so you know there's a I could spend the next 20 minutes thanking all the people that helped us get us where we are here today um and that that took a lot of internal work and are really looking at the efficacy of of all the all of all the internal work that we do so long story short which now at this point it's probably too late but I think I do believe as I've said to the committee I do believe this is actually going to really make us operate more effectively and efficiently as a school district moving forward now if the enrollment Trends continue to head in the direction that they're heading and the the needs of our students keep heading in the direction that they're heading we're g to you know and I know we've had a very short conversation about this and I think we've learned some things about how this how we want to plan together I've learned about what the town's needs are and so I think we're to start some conversations a lot earlier and think about how to plan two three multiple years ahead um but I do think if this these Trends continue which is something is odd for the cape you know I I've worked nowhere else you saying Yarmouth is odd I'm saying something other than than declining enrollment on the cape is well I out of character yeah and I think it would be helpful to get some at at some point if you can help us understand what's going on I think that would be be helpful for everybody because I look at those numbers and it's it's it's it's it's a dramatic change right from what we're used to seeing um the other thing is is obviously you've in the reductions that you've made those aren't easy reductions to make and uh we know they're painful these are PE real people who really care deeply about the work that they do in serving the kids we know that and we know that that's a difficult that's a difficult bridge to cross for for many folks so I appreciate the the level of effort and the work that's gone into this so thank you for all the work that you've done on this if I could just add in is you know I don't have a fiscal 26 Crystal Ball but it really is I just want to reiterate The Kind of Perfect Storm this year of a couple things that are really just driving the cost that really should be a one-time bump and then go back to semi-normal such as you know the full Implement implementation of the longer school day which we as an entire School feel is the right thing for kids the electricity going up such a giant amount in one year you know a couple things like that which we certainly hope are not going to repeat themselves in 26 so it's I really see a big big hunk of this as a one-time bump and then hopefully back to normal you know I cringe a little bit when I hear The Perfect Storm because I would say electricity costs are clearly they're a surprise I'm not sure I would categorize some of the other increases I think we we'd have a difference of opinion there but I do realize that they are certainly challenging and maybe they were just unanticipated what those increases were um I don't know how we solve the electricity problem because we're all in the same boat I mean no matter which government unit you're looking at they're all getting nailed with very very high electricity costs and it's a much deeper more fundamental problem that we all need to take a look at you know we thought the cape like compact was the solution to the problem but it doesn't seem to be or at least something's going on that they they can't even control certainly not as competitive in a market as we had hoped but again once again thank you for uh for for the for the presentation and for all the hard work that's gone into this working with our administrator as you can tell we have a great deal of confidence in him and in those discussions he speaks for us he has our complete confidence and I know our finance director has participated heavily in this so we very much appreciate your work and also their work so thank you so I would just say it's been a great work in relationship I would Echo everything that that Bob said I would agree it's a lot of hard work painful work um I said to Bob the last meeting I've never seen this type of communication collegiality between the two towns and the school committee I've just not seen it and it's encouraging to me you know it came together at a time that we needed it really needed it um and I credit Bob to a high degree but also you as well because it doesn't none of this communication Works unless you're on board and you and your committee have done a really good job you know it saddens me to see these positions cut um I know there's going to be an impact to that and it worries me but the numbers just um were untenable otherwise and I appreciate apprciate that that you've made the tough cuts and I hope you make that case to the voters um when it gets to town meeting time um you've talked an awful lot about right sizing and um I get the concept I just don't understand how we got there in the first place with things were so diverse in uh class sizes and stuff and I'm not sure I understand why that was even necessary yeah I I I I I don't want to I don't want to speak to anything prior to prior to my time I don't think there's any advantage necessarily to that so I I all I can say is as it coming in I noticed you know some inconsistencies from like school to school and grade level to grade level on you know how many what the student to staff ratio was so then when we established on the previous slide a consistent Staffing ratio to student St student to staff ratio that was both research backed and regionally competitive right because unfortunately we we live in a school choice environment if you talk to other superintendents like from off gape that they were like school choice what school choice it's really just the cape and the birk shears um I know it's like the reality that we all live in but it actually isn't everywhere just in the side um but um so we do have to sort of take that into context we have to do think about regionally competitive um class sizes so when we thought when we applied a consistent standard then that just when you just start to think about that from how to staff that really shook out a whole portion of this and then like going back to that intervention slide that I didn't want to get into the Weeds on there is research that supports what what percentage of your students should be in those different tiers of intervention and then when you apply that percentage to the number of students and then you say okay well then how many staff do you need and in order to support that percentage of students and then that allows you to look at how many staff do you currently have and then you're able to then make some decisions right so that that was just really applying either what does the research indicate and and or what would a consistent Staffing model that's both research-based and regionally competitive and just start from that ground up sort of it wasn't 100% zerob based budgeting but it was at least coming from a consistent place of um our existing data plus research plus regionally competitive and a consistent model and then see where that got us it was about the positions not the PE it is always about the people at the end of the day but really starting from a position based look at things first from an objective lens I have to unfortunately take like a almost clinical look from my position and then then from a humanist once we get to actually talking about the people then we have to look at it from a very humanistic standpoint no and I appreciate that that um I think I made the point only that you've walked into a situation that um need needed some adjustments no nobody's interested in pointing fingers at this point you've done an amazing job working with Dennis and Yarmouth to to make this override um achievable and I appreciate that very much and um I hope the quality I trust the quality of the education for our students will remain um solid uh going forward uh but it's the transparency um that has just not been seen um we've not seen this before and it's your first um go around with us and I'm really truly encouraged by leadership on the three towns your leadership the school committee's um willingness to take hard looks um to make um this budget workable and to do its job which is really protecting the education of our students um Bob made the point last meeting that um none of us is served if um if this goes down in flames and it seems like everybody got that message really well and have put together a budget that um I think we can feel comfortable with um recommending to our voters so thank you for the presentation um I did have one question at the very beginning you talked about three factors and you mentioned the colus was was that unusually high I I didn't understand why that was a part of your uh not the colas but when you're extending the school day everybody's working longer I so there's so there's a there's a an adjustment B built into the teachers contract for the fact that they're working longer okay so that that comes into full effect next year so that's sort of where all of these things are all happening in the same fiscal year okay so that that's sort of the the piece I just heard this term caller there is a there is a cola and there's an adjustment for the fact that the school day is longer okay right so there's a normal Cola plus the adjustment plus the fact that yes our money's going away plus inflation plus the lower you know so it all just happens at the same year yeah the coal earning of itself was 2 and a half% okay so that's well within the the realm of What U people are getting and if I just really quickly chime in if I'm I'm correct because you I've been wrong before that's what my wife tells me um the the longer school day is just the elementary schools the the the rest of the grades um four through 12 already have a longer school day oh so it's just the lower it's the lower grades that was this just a a last uh phasing in so you've already phased in the other two it yeah it was um it was something that was we had been talking about for a number of years with Carol and things like that and we had put it as part of our most recent teachers contract that we wanted to implement that and what it would look like to to implement it so um by adding that you know that's where you get the the higher the higher increase um and real quickly um I know when we hired Mark we said he wasn't going to get much sleep he was right you know so I don't think he's gotten much sleep in the past but he's done a phenomenal job and I think you're right Dan and I know you're right the fact that the communication piece has been tremendous you know um in in past years it's been kind of the norm and this is what you got and swallow it and you know we're not going to give any water with it but at least now that open communication with both towns um is there and in um you know I'm excited to hear that they're going to start earlier you know Dave will bring out his crystal ball a little earlier to see if he can get a number to the towns that they can understand and they can stand behind so when it really comes time to looking at the numbers it's not a surprise to anybody um with the reductions also that I think you You' mentioned 10 of the 16 positions that were part of the Esser funds that were lost were were were reducing so there's 10 positions right there um and a lot of those positions from what I understand were positions that you know when when we had to separate by six feet you know we had to go oneon-one and we had to go that those positions were still there and Mark and Dave did a great job at really digging into each grade and each teach teacher in each classroom in finding out the right sizing of it and it did take a lot of work on their part um to really do it and which was for me as a school commem was was great because he's really looking at the the effectiveness and the efficiency of the school district and that's how I I I'm comfortable with those positions again nobody wants to see positions lost um but I'm comfortable and it comes down to that trust piece and that confidence piece that you folks have with Bob and we have been developing with Mark and Dave over the past few years that we have that confidence and trust that that's the right thing to do and still keep our our our um School District moving forward so I think that's a big piece from the school district or the school committee side standpoint so okay I think that's you know that's pretty much the the nutshell of it okay thanks so much for the presentation the only thing I'd like to say is um we we moved a long way since that meeting I think it was in February 15th or thereabouts when we had the summit conference I'll call it um there's a lot of advocacy there there was a lot of um what I want to say um expressions of need by the towns and Bob took a a leadership role and I think he showed a path of um promise to resolving these problems um the question I had is when we left that meeting you know what was going to happen then and fortunately the dialogue continued um the key to solving these kind of problems is getting on them early which historically we did we have not been doing to really get the kind of dialogue that we had in in this context with knowing that there there's there's three actors here right the two towns in in the school district and um there has to be that kind of dialogue has has to continue there's got to be that kind of collaboration um we have a lot of resources in both towns in in in the school department we just need to do the planning so that these people that understand these issues have sufficient time to work through them I I think that's a really key important piece and have some um respect for the other parties and and what their needs are um you know nobody's going to walk in any kind of a negotiation session to walk out with everything that just doesn't happen that's not the real world but um when you understand you know the demands on the towns and the towns understand the demand hands in the schools and there's some honest um dialogue I I think that's when you're going to get Solutions so I want to commend everybody for their best efforts in um moving from where we were to where we are now yeah I mean I was I know David and I have had this conversation I believe I've echoed it to Bob I think one of the biggest takeaways from me from that particular meeting was the fact that we need to have some version of that meeting much earlier right um and I think that um that's you we've already had an internal conversation about what information can we get much earlier get down have and then secondarily some type of a like a longer term strategy and you know I'm i' like give myself a little bit of a break it's only been eight months so um I don't have a full-fledged long-term strategy yet but I will have one and we will get there um but that's definitely been a takeaway from this experience okay anybody in the public like to um comment or question these folks yes uh V well I'm I'm really glad that uh the three parties have come together and uh are working apparently in in good faith uh with each other uh I'm still very concerned about the uh the assessment number um and uh very grateful that the uh Mr um uh uh uh see I uh Mr rittenau has been able to uh Whittle down that number to something else I don't know how how well he had a little bit of help I guess from the uh tech school and and some other uh uh places um uh it's still I think a a very very high number and I uh uh I I want to bring up something and see if if uh we could uh uh uh put our fingers on on a little bit more of U of the money um I uh called uh this morning I had a a hold of the finance director for d and uh to clarify some things and um uh I got some information from him and uh uh actually um uh David had already told me that uh he had gotten the first payment for the Immigrant kids uh uh uh and uh Mr uh o Donald the the the man with whom I spoke uh told me that the payments are going to there are going to be three payments uh over the year and uh the um uh the second payment uh the period for that second payment just ended on March 1st but anyway I was thinking uh is is that money available anywhere that we can still use uh you know to bring down the assessments further because uh obviously you're going to get at least two parts of of that uh payment uh depending on whether or not the uh some some promises that have been made about moving the the people out of the motel you know come through but two two parts of that at least uh should be U available and I I don't know I don't I don't see I asked um uh Mr odonnell if they had laid out a u uh some kind of guidelines for you how to deal with with that money that's being uh sent to to to to the various districts and he said no he did not but he would assume that it would show up somewhere in the revenue stream so uh and I don't think I saw any of that uh you know in uh in in the presentation so I'm hoping that uh maybe um uh uh you can clarify that a little bit uh also he um explains something for my benefit uh people have been talking you know yes the uh the financial responsibility for any student does rest with the students residence and a particular town uh however if uh that it was I think everybody was under the impression somehow that uh if once a student leaves a a district let's say goes from Dy to uh mono or someplace like that uh that the town becomes responsible for that student uh for however many years it takes them to to to get the education depending on where they the level at which they entered the other school um and a 5-year period has always been mentioned as being something and Mr Orono couldn't figure out what that meant he said no I mean you could you could be responsible for the student for 12 years uh if if that student uh um goes to the other uh uh District provided that student Liv continues to live in let's say yarm wherever he left and and and went to the other place so it could if if the if the child is taken out in the first grade uh and so we would be responsible but if that child if that family moves from Yarmouth immediately that the Yarmouth is no longer responsible for that so that five fiveyear period that that was floating around was an incorrect impression uh apparently um anyway so uh um the uh now I was uh the the the I'm a little uh confused I think about that uh but uh I don't know can can you answer the question about the the money coming from uh from the uh state right now for those immigrant CH children yes so that particular funding stream is reimbursement for cost and FY 24 so we are currently uh we happen to have added a staff member to support uh those particular students and that is reimbursing that particular cost so that's an FY 24 expenditure that the state is we're using those to offset expenditure in this current fiscal year and and it's necessary to to uh use all of that uh money if you hire only one person because the uh reimbursement is at $104 per student per DM um um of school uh um that the school is open it's about it ends up if the kids stay for the entire year it would end up being about 18,000 per something like that for times 23 kids I'm have to do the math off the top of my head are we down to 23 now uh again I'd have to the last two numbers you kept mentioning was 26 so it I'd have to I don't know the exact number right now I'd have to it might be 26 it might be 24 I don't I'd have to I don't have the exact number yeah right I don't know what our our last claim was you know last at least one family that moved to New Bedford so it's it's been fluctuating plus or minus two or three students and as Mark alluded to it's a reimbursement program in thirds right so as far as planning they've only sent us onethird of the funds we did hire an additional staff member we had to provide some you know all of our students have iPads we had to buy additional iPads so the funds we've received to date have already been committed for in this year what knowing how do I State this right knowing the the nature of not knowing how long they may or may not be here I think it was prudent to this point in time to keep projecting at infinitum into the future of getting that $104 per day especially when we're hearing that potentially some of the families may be moving as I said even though in the past couple months while the num has been relatively the same it hasn't actually been the exact same students there been a couple come in a couple leave to go somewhere else so given the amount of cash received to date versus the commitment for adding the staff member in the technology it's been kind of a wash year to date can I ask you how much the that first payment was you know I I don't want to give the wrong answer so I off the top of my head I could I could let you know it was more more than a 100,000 right it was approximately that amount something I don't have the exact amount with me okay but I I assume you you will still get the the the second the the second period uh you know uh reimbursement because that period ended on March 1st according to Mr odonnell uh and so now it's a matter of them you know cutting the checks or whatever that they they'll be doing you know but uh and if uh if well I guess I guess you still have time now to in terms of for FY uh 25 to no you don't the FY 25 uh what kind of Provisions did you make or did you for those students those imigrant can you repeat the question uh what kind of provision in the FY 25 budget did you make for for the they're part of our student population so just the same as every other student they yeah they're part of like we were underst staffed already so we we need five additional English learner teachers whether or not those students are here or not because we are significantly already underst staffed um this just gave us a reimbursement stream to allow us to add a staffing position that quite frankly we already needed but I guess I was thinking in terms of if if the reimbursement continues now Mr odonnell did say they even don't know I guess he said uh we will continue paying out until you know the poth empties out right so they don't know you know when that might happen so but I was thinking you know uh when you were thinking of of fy2 uh uh whether you figure that maybe the reimbursement will continue or not you know yeah so I guess taken into consideration so I guess that's that's the Challenge from a budgeting standpoint is is two factors one everything that we've gotten from legislator from our legislative delegation that have gotten from the department at Ed um and now the commissioner's left so there's even more uncertainty because the commissioner C the exiting commissioner was the biggest advocate for getting that current funding stream um and that person is no longer in that seat um is that there's no nobody knows how much more how much more funding there is that's a part A so trying to project something that nobody knows how much more of it is left is really irresponsible for for us on our end and the second level is it's per student per day and they're consolidating all the UN um supported and what's the term they use un I think it's unsupported yeah I think it's unsupported shelters across the state we are one of about half a dozen unsupported shelters left in the state and they've Consolidated all the other ones across the state so tomorrow and they could decide to consolidate that shelter into one of the other supported shelters across the state and then the funding ends that obviously for us to project into next year's Revenue something that is not really stable um either on how much funding is left there or and part of the supported shelters is that they a supported shelter is that um the state provides funding to some type of a nonprofit organization to provide Staffing to their so I would I don't know but my my get my best guess is though that's coming from the same pocket of money at the state level so I what I sort of see if I look through my crystal wall at the state level is they're trying to consolidate all of their resources in one place um so I don't anticipate that this model is going to stay in place into the future again I don't know the communication about how right so it's really hard for USTA school system to set up uh anticipatory around a revenue stream that is unstable okay can do I have a a minute uh could we go back to the U chart uh that showed the enrollment uh uh uh with the the the the trend Down's there it is uh so you I think you have to still go by the way the trend is the line is going it keeps going down you during the uh the uh Co you see how how much it went down the enrollment went down there below that trend line and so now it's just working its way back up and I wonder if most of those students are the ones because I believe Mrs Woodbury said at one point that there was a rather substantial number of homeschooling going on students in homeschooling and so a lot of those I think are finally coming back again and uh so that uh a lot of that is just uh you know the students that were there before and are returning now the the data wouldn't support that it's homeschool students I'm Sor just our internal data does not support that it's homeschool students there there that's not home I'm I'm just telling you from our internal data that is not homeschool students returning to the D School District where are they coming from they are students who are moving into the town and and living in the town yeah and and deciding to come to the Dy school district and and again I don't I don't have a crystal ball I don't know if that's going to trend's going to continue but that is a that is a change in in the and all I was pointing out is that is a change in the trend um and something that we need to pay attention to as we move forward um just just like the you know the earlier when we were talking about the ambulance Trends um the this is just a three-year Trend will it continue next year I don't know I'll be able to tell you at the end of the year where our enrollment is and I'll be able to tell you next fall where our enrollment is and we'll be able to pay attention to this over time um but that that is that's not homeschool we we haven't seen a correlative drop in homeschool um to say that it's all homeschool students returning um there are more schoolage children uh coming into the school district um and they're in the grades from kindergarten through 8th grade so there's a cohort of kids they're it's not like they're all high school age kids they're going to age out they're in a pocket of age group where there's it would suggest they're here for a while um so anyways that's that's just what the internal data says but so in other words you are you also saying at the same time then that a lot of homeschooling is still going on uh a very small percentage of our students homeschool I don't know the exact number I can get it to you if you want to email me I just I wondered for mean every every family makes individual decisions and some families choose homeschooling yes okay thank you Miss Morris Mark do you have anything else you want to ask no okay I want to thank you very very much for the work you've done and for the presentation tonight tonight thank you very much what's next uh the next item on the agenda is warrant review of the warrant the second review to review any finance committee recommendations so to do some pushups [Applause] [Applause] leg just so Bob is this next agenda item yours is there anybody else joining you with it or is it just no um I can run right through it and um I think we need a quorum yeah to to get to get roll maybe make recommendations yeah but we can probably at least start I'm fine if you want to go one thing um let's see I I want to point out that the um we talked about this with the finance committee the finance committee recomend recommendations except for a handful of articles are incorporated into this draft warrant um and um one thing to look at the the schedule coming up at the March 26 meeting it's set for the board to uh V on the warrant so if on what day uh March 26 so one thing that that we had talked about a little bit um earlier with with the chairman if it might be possible on um any of these items to get a jump on your recommendations while we review them um that might what like tonight yeah um less than your load littleit just just concerned that we have two people missing here yeah that's my concern too well we can just go through the warrant at this point do the recommendations other than that I thought you know if we had four we'd probably knock a lot of these right off but do you feel the same way Mark that we yeah I do I do I think um you know um I don't have to add anything else I agree so you just want to get the finance committee's input um what's our dead what's our deadline on this we're going to be um executing the warrant at the uh March 26 meeting 226 okay yeah I know we've talked about this before about possibly needing another date before then and I'm I'm still open to that Mr chairman I think that other date was the 19th we have to meet then I don't have a problem with with that well why don't we um why don't we contact the other board members yeah and uh if they're available on the 26th we can do it then and if they're not then maybe we can moving it Forward I know well the I think if there's one item on here in terms of um that I'm interested in getting into it's the uh and I've learned this because we've had some miscommunication and that's with the uh Economic Development Committee um we've had some disconnect in the past um I think it would be helpful before we act on their proposal to hear directly from them what number is article I would so I would hold that until we actually speak with them so I I don't know what article that is but that to me is article 27 27 yeah so that's one that I wouldn't want to act on right now um I think the other ones are relatively routine we like to have the community preservation folks come before us right so you want them to come in and talk to us about 27 I think I well I think we need to have um the economic development committee to come in to talk about their their proposal for town meeting um I'd like to know a recap on what they've spent their money on past expenditures what's been approved and then kind of go over their program in the future um this just happens to be a committee that for whatever reason the communication hasn't been as good as it should be um we had the disconnect on the the on the St Patrick's Day Parade that was unnecessary but we did um I don't want any more disconnects uh with this group I think we need to hear clearly uh and this is a group that um you know they they they're looking they're always looking for guidance from us so I think we should we should be talking to them so I would put that on hold um I don't know if we need to I mean maybe we just need to go through this list real quickly and figure out which ones we might want to hold for some at at least getting a briefing by the department I would put that on there um I makes sense it'll help us determine whether we need the 19th or not yeah I would put on the community preservation folks we need to hear from them we typically do CPA y y um we've already heard from the planning board so so I'm looking at these 33 articles and um in my view the biggest one has been schools and we made I think we made significant progress tonight um or or actually the progress was made over the last several days but it was reported tonight um I think we can handle Wastewater financing within the context of getting briefed on the warrant um but I I would say those are the two I was going to say library but I actually had a great briefing from the Consultants on the library they're superb yeah um I I Have No Reservations about going forward with that proposal whatsoever but those are the ones that I think we need to hold on if so if we're stuck if if we if we can't move Beyond a 26th date then I mean I don't understand why we can't recommend a couple of those afterwards or from the floor and then just try to deal with everything on the 2 text okay that's what we have to do how does that sound we can do that we've done that before yeah sure sounds great so you would want to hold on which you would want to hold on 277 28 29 through 29 31 27 28 29 30 31 30 and 31 right those are the ones that I would hold off on and so hold until the meeting yep and then what we can do is we can get briefed after the 26th sure have plenty of time to do that we'll have plenty of time in April okay to dig into those but I think the other ones we should be able to get through all right so do we want to have uh Richard go through the yeah I think it would be helpful for Richard to to go through the Articles quickly through the finance committee's recommendations on these articles absolutely does everyone see their memo in their packet that also has the and again there maybe some recomendations there may be some changes in the numbering because I think they we added and maybe took away some articles is there a way we could work from this warrant that we have in front of us um you could just go through each one they're in there we have all um the one we got is marked second draft for review in the left hand we only have 33 we only have 33 articles well when U if I may when they took it up the truck was moving from the table to the warrant the trash truck now it's moving from the warrant back to the table I I don't know what that means do we have 33 or 3 struck in uh that is Article 13 that was in I'm sorry just so I could clear this up real quick um there were two artic articles there were 35 articles on the um on the other warrant and the trash truck was put into the large Capital article for free cash and the recy um we were using recycling money for the sanitation generator we took that out and that's in the larger article for free cash so that's why there's 33 articles so they're 33 they're not 33 yeah and again that was just changed it was just changed literally just today to we talked about it yesterday and then it was changed at the end of the day all right so let me just quick we have a list of 33 articles can you that are in the warrant here that we have in front of us can you go through this and your recommendations I can because we're going to follow this list okay uh so uh articles 2 through 7 which are all the and article nine plus nine plus nine those are 5 we had two people absent when we took the vote 502 absent okay and then uh all of the other Capital expenses so I'm looking at this so starting with article 10 can we just go to what what you do on article one article one was TBD so we have no so that's that's on hold we're waiting for the final numbers I'm just I want I'd like to just go down the list like 1 to 33 in order right so starting with number one number one is still pending yep articles 23 through 7 are 5 yep article 8 is pending wait a minute hold on article 8 is pending yeah well that's the uh Dy School District we we didn't have final numbers go ahead yep um capod Tech 5 what what number is that number nine nine 5 Z yep 10 10 is 70 11 is 70 septage is 70 that's article 12 and what's 11 11 is 70 yeah um septage was 70 number 12 number septage number 12 12 70 y yeah then those two that's out okay so then Article 13 uh which is the mass authorization 70 uh 1470 police cruiser financing 70 what's that 15 15 70 okay 16 fire department is 70 yeah uh Capital expenses various articles number 17 is 70 yeah um collective bargaining wage adjustments that is pending that's 18 number 18 pending Okay so and we hope to get most of these approved tomorrow night great okay number 19 which is the m Keys expense pending pending classification and review is pending wait minute what's that 20 20 21 Town seal is also pending okay Wastewater financing is pending although again I expect what that 22 number 22 to the pending yep okay we have uh right now na for not applicable for number 23 what's that one that is the adoption of the Mass General law betterment law let me hold on one second let me look at 23 I think it I think it's it didn't have us as requiring right a recommendation on that so I'm 3 adoption of Master Law chapter 883 and that authorizes the the what do we stand on that one that authorizes the board to do the betterments we need that that's a big yes right so the two recommending that 23 and 24 you have not voted on not voted on it not going to vote on it that's what that's what he's telling you're going to pass they going to pass yeah it's a policy one I mean it's policy okay go ahead uh number 24 which is the yarma seage uh bylaw is also not our purview all right so you're passing on 24 yep okay Police Department generator is a 70 vote that's 25 number 25 number 26 is also a 70 yep uh just like you number 27 28 29 and 30 uh we and 31 we are waiting for information so those are all they're pending 27 through 31 yep okay and then uh according to uh number 32 which is the wetlands bylaw again we're not required since that's policy so in number 33 or we are not required2 is not a okay and a that's it that's great you got you got a number of Articles you got to still work on but when we meet on the 26th you'll have your recommendations by that well unless we don't have the information I mean that's the only reason why we wouldn't say we wouldn't vote on so do you have the is possible you'll be recommended from the floor and some of those if you don't have the info that is possible all right also I'm also getting a little concerned today because I've had I have one of the one of my uh uh never absent guys underwent surgery today for shoulder problem and and uh so Raphael I don't know if you know him uh he's a very he's one of my keep the lights on guy so he's out and I just got a note from Nate who is again one of our older members who said that he may not be able to make it tomorrow so I'm not getting nervous about Quorum got it thank you it's our pleasure all right thank you Rich and I'll see you tomorrow there anything else I have to do what's that think so no I think you're good you're good to go right in there going to have to get you on the overtime on any of the committee actions you can stay board and committee actions next TR Dorcas obviously isn't going to be here so I'm fine with acting she wanted us to go forward she did oh good asked us too I'm all on board with that that's okay with you guys I think it's a great idea all right so I don't see anything in there that raises any red flags so I think we're good to go the first one's community housing one regular position for a threeyear unexpired term to run through January 27th two alternates you making a motion Mr chairman um her recommendation is to appoint Miss Sor as a regular member of the community housing committee appointment is to fill a three-year unexpired term which will run through January 7 January of 22 27 so moved second all in favor I I it passes unanimously and to appoint Miss Perry and miss wheeler is alterate members of the community housing committee's appointments are for onee term to run through January of 2025 so moved is uh Mr Wheeler and second all right all those in favor all right anyone oppose so you just did you move just Mr Wheeler no I was just correcting you said Miss wheeler it's Mr oh I see what you're saying so you moved M Perry and Mr Y is Mr Wheeler supposed to Miz wheeler no you said Miz I did I misspoke okay so you you moved and we voted on those as printed yep all right so those are done next one um reappointments golf Enterprise committee see what she says here she's recommending that we reappoint Mr Deco Mr leard Mr Fe M Chapman as regular members of regular positions three-year terms to run through April 2027 recommendation to reappoint Mr Deco Mr Le Mr frappy and M Chapman as regular members of the golf Enterprise committee these appointments are for three-year terms which will run through April of 2027 so moved second all in favor I anyone oppos passes unanimously we go to energy next is energy I can do it if you want you got it goad y so the recommendations is to reappoint Miss Flynn Ms wood as regular members of the energy committee the appointments of for one-ear term to run through December 2024 so moved second second all in favor I I unanimous to reappoint miss cashion and Mr Duffy as regular members of the energy committee these appointments are for two-year terms to run through December 2025 so moves second all in favor I I I unanimous finally to reappoint Mr margolin and Mr palmary as regular members of the energy committee the appointments are for a three-year term to run through December 2026 so moved second all in favor I I I unanimous and then we have the and now we got the minutes of July 11 July 11th 2023 um okay so Mark wasn't there everybody there I'll vote in to support them out of necessity they can make the cor we can do that I'll move um that we set the minutes July 11 2023 second all those in favor I I I this is approved unanimously upcoming agenda review we have to do I don't think we need to do an agenda review right now do you nope we'll skip that individual items anybody well I want to give kudos to spaghetti spaghetti for her new bullk CF at the Taylor Farm on the front page of the Cape Cod Times today called meall you talk about photogenic though that was was that was definitely a photograph that could catch your attention so um kudos to Spaghetti congratulations um no I I the only other thing I would like to add and I'll be very brief is I you know I really want to commend Bob and the team on being on top of the school department stuff that has historically been really problematic IC for us and for the other select board across the way and and it's and it's been really an incredible bone of contention so for him um I think it was important that we as a board make it very clear to everyone early on that uh he he's he's quarterbacking this for us and he speaks for us and I think they you you guys went into your meeting and you were very firm and um and it was great to seize on the situation and I think this this show where you know your experience having been in these School battles before um you know comes through so kudos to you Bob I think I think you did a great job in handling that and uh it's very much appreciated thank you thank you very much you did a very good job and uh after everybody had their say and as it got the meeting got near the end he laid out a path for um a resolution to this issue and and I think that that was a great Catalyst in getting everybody to continue on looking at that and seeing you know how much sense it made to them and um what they could live with and the dialogue continued and he saw that he saw the thing too he did an excellent job thank you so those are my that's my individual those are my two individual items thank you okay um anyone else consent agenda I'm happy to move the consent agenda second go ahead did so moved and so seconded yep yep all in favor I anyone opposed sent the agenda passes unanimously Town Administrator updates okay I know it's late I'll I'll try to be quick there were a couple of items on the um I wanted to make sure that you folks are up to date on the the D issues with the groundwater permitting we've continued to have our strong meetings and um we've made a I think a pretty significant change to our team um that we've added the firm of horley and Whitten which is our Region's Premier Wetlands expert firm where we've been really uh the communications haven't been as Stellar with the D as I think around Wetland issues and um you know by the town taking extra leadership on bringing a Wetlands expert in we've also engaged the Conservation Commission at a much higher level um I I think that it's all designed to enhance the confidence that D has in the town to Steward those issues forward and I I want to thank uh Mark forest in in particular for you know the communications that that we've had and you know assistance in kind of getting the strategy in place um he you know he's been a great advocate for this project and um you know stay on top of what's happening with the D we had a meeting today we had horley wh there I thought you know we made more progress on Wetlands than we had in in in the past and and I'll tell you the D is you know very difficult to work with I I think you know once we get through this there's some issue boy we really have to get resolved because that's an agency that has not had our best interest at heart but um I I wanted to make sure that you were aware of that so now we've got right Pierce as the OPM we've got CDM working as a designer and we've got horley and Whitten as the wetlands experts trying to map out a strategy and I and I think it's much needed and um so who who's going to be uh at the the groundbreaking all three of you folks right we'll be there yeah I think I can be there yeah and Mark you interviewed them didn't you didn't you who that member that firm um I've done a lot of work with that firm yeah um and I should disclose that I've got them under contract at the Conservation District working on the Bay View bog project um my recommendation to Bob was not necessarily for a firm um although he I do believe he picked the right firm um my recommendation was to make sure that at least based on the the meetings that I've been in on my own with other projects with d that I thought it was important that we have a Wetlands expert that understood Wetlands hydrology Wetland systems because um we want to I I learned this working with Congressman studs you want to be the smartest people in the room you want to know more than the other people that you're negotiating with you really need to be uh at a point where you basically have you know the questions and you have all the answers I think adding this capability to the team helps us immensely and it sounds like in the meeting their presence was was helpful yeah they're leaders and and I'll tell you what the um the D officials know them and have a tremendous amount of respect for him and and they could help d as well set the ground rules for the entire cape on this issue and and some of the ideas that they came up with are things theep hasn't thought of so so I know I know the principles of the firm Scott horley and uh so you had already known them prior I'm very familiar with them when Bob had told us that and again I wasn't aware that there were the discussions going on but when I was informed that they were hired to do this work I was very very pleased they have a solid reputation like I said they are doing the hydrology work and some of the wetlands work at the uh at the bayw bogs restoration project uh and they're involved uh in a number of critical Wetlands Coastal restoration projects that the district is funding so and the nrcs is funding so uh they're very busy they're very active there are other firms that are just as capable but um I think you made the Smart Choice um a lot of times it's you want a firm that's capable but if you've got people that are available and can be hired one day and then be jumping into the meeting the next day and hit the ground running I mean that kind of capability is just you know it's it's you can't calculate the value to it it's it's incredibly important so I think our town manager made the right choice getting the right addition to the team and now you've got all your positions filled with good talented folks and and we have all hands on deck on that D that U we are not dragging our heels on that so it's um as aggressive as we can be and just another thing that I just wanted to um mention this evening that you'll see it it's in the um upcoming agenda but we've scheduled Chief lenon and chief Aras um and I I would like to present before the board at your April 23 meeting on an update for the Regional emergency dispatch program that we made some real strides success working out a potential intermunicipal agreement for that to happen but we need to present the details to the the board I think it'll be a real benefit for the town and I'm happy to say that you know my team has been our Public Safety Chiefs and um and I've taken a lot of direction from them but we've worked together as as a real team and I think you'll hear from them directly on on their support levels for enhancing the whole dispatch function and so um I I think that's something to look forward to it'll be great uh Mr chairman one quick item um while you're on I did speak with uh folks in the governor's office about the governor coming oh yeah Thursday or or the lieutenant governor and uh they're both committed but they're very excited about oh nice the project and um I used as an opportunity to brief them a little bit further on on how we're doing you know because the governor's office has been briefed on our delays the lieutenant governor I've spoke to spoken to directly on our delays and issues um and there you know there there's there's a lot of interaction between environmental Affairs and the governor's office about Wastewater on Cape Cod um I've raised two major issues one is is the permitting Challen Alles involving discharge the other point I've raised is money um you know we we need to make sure that the cap and Islands water protection fund is well capitalized and I sent you a memo on that there's some changes going on that are getting good reviews from Our Town Administrator and from some of our other Finance uh experts here in Yarmouth which is good to hear I'll have more on that later but that vote is coming up on that before our next board meeting so I'm going to have to vote uh on what approach to take and I'm basically going to re you know I'm I'm following Bob's recommendations as well as uh our finance team and uh like I said so far everybody has given two thumbs up on at least the initial outlines of what's being proposed so but that's I while you were on Wastewater I wanted to get that in so yeah thanks very much and and also what we will have the Deputy Commissioner on hand and um I I know he's know in close communication with the governor's office and and so he'll he'll want to hear any uh you know uh signs of desperation down here is that look let's get this regional office hopefully working with us yeah I think I think yeah we might we we might want to use the moment with him to urge him to continue to help get us to uh the goal line here on this so that we don't lose our money I mean that's that's really that's the talking point is is we we need our discharge permit and we can't lose our money right time is money delay is money yeah and you know while Congressman King's there we can always ask him to weigh in with with okay I have a motion toour so moved second all in favor I we're adjourn