right I'm going to call this meeting to order late at 6:15 I guess I will also take notes today uh okay uh J Kurt is not here so I am chairing the meeting for today uh this meeting of the finance committee will be held in person at the location provided on this notice members of the public are welcome to attend this inperson meeting please not this option for remote attendants and our position via Zoom will be provided as a courage to the public the meeting SL hearing will not be suspended or terminative technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast unless otherwise required by law members of the public with particular interest in a specific item on this agenda should make plans for inperson versus virtual attendants accordingly this meeting will be live on Zoom the public May access the proceedings by joining Zoom meeting ID 860 8777519121 for additional information about remote participation please contact Carl antonelis assistant Town manager at ATM a. ma. us or 978 77282 to0 extension 100 prior to the meeting calling meeting order that's done uh review and approve the April 18th 2024 me meeting minutes I abstained cuz I was not there okay well did you read the minutes I did okay do you have any notes on the minutes no Jen did you uh read the minutes no I I have no objection and I moved to um approve the minutes second okay uh all in favor I again hi okay look at that uh hold on I'm taking minutes at the same time okay so we're me to talk about the town meeting is next on the agenda what do you guys think of the town meeting great that was probably the best town meeting we've had in a long time what did you think I enjoyed it I wish I had uh spend more time with uh learning about the purchasing of that um 71 C Pound Road um issue um I didn't know the town overpay but it seems like a I trust that the board of Selectmen and town manager were careful with the town fines so anyway that was the only thing I had a little worry but no I realized it was too late to to Really debate about it that time so other than that I think it was great yeah you you Pro you PR land or not prand well um I am proland I'm going to be interested to see how they use it you know one of the fellas brought up good point is going to be a parking lot or can we you know use it for other uses as well so that's going to be I think that that process is going to be interesting to talk about so me too I don't think we'll have any say in it they didn't even ask us for our opinion on an article I don't think for that town not that I'm aware of no at least not in our meetings yeah yeah I don't think so I thought it went pretty well too actually yeah was no divisive issues we didn't have to go up and give any opinions like last year so hopefully that just means we're doing a good job um next item is the 2026 budget planning Barbara yeah do you know when that whole thing kicks off again that's not for quite a while now so it is early for that so I'm going to estimate that around the end of August September you'll start see hearing about the budget calendar coming up for the fiscal 2026 and there's a lot of um just planning on when things will happen like budget forums and different things so I'm going to tell you probably around the end of August beginning of September you might start hearing about it do you know if um is the forward projection stuff end up in that clear go platform or is that just the past stuff the forward projection yeah like can I see 20 26's stuff in the clear gov when that gets put in there um so as they do the budget process they can put it in there and they can update it I don't know what the plan is yet um that's under the accountants uh she's the one who enters the budgets into Clear G and updates them but yeah you know if you had any insight on that one presumably we'll do it again now that we have access to it yeah and as as the years pass we'll build up more history so start seeing the history as well yeah I really like it I only play with it a little bit thank you yeah thanks you play with it yet not yet Jan youever play with that clear gov platform stuff yet can you repeat yourself here did you ever have you played around with that clear gov software for the finances no no what what's the name of software cleargov you can get it on it's on our our yeah it's on our page on the website among many other places okay it's accessible I will take a look at it um yeah you should take a look that has the uh next year's budget information what no next year's budget information won't be available for some number of months okay so so what what uh what am I looking at on that website well it's just the the past budgeting but you can see graphs and all sorts of other stuff on spending and Cur I remember I think I remember Rob mentioned it before he did he gave her presentation real quickly I I'll take that as an action item for everyone to take a quick quick glance at it before our next meeting or maybe uh I'll put together a presentation we can look at something interesting yeah it's a good idea thank you very much for for that out yeah it's cool I haven't played that much either but it's any instructions or you just wing it I mean it's not that hard speak for yourself yeah well maybe for our next meeting maybe we'll put together something okay we can just pick a budget and go through cuz if we have some number of months we can just pick one of the big budgets to look at and just see the spend and the where they are in their budget process and then we can kind of use it as a as a catchup to where we thought we would be what they said they were going to do yeah a good idea y I'll write I think that's a really good idea to to analyze the past budgets and and it will I think make us understand better how this thing works yeah I'll take that as an action for myself to get to cue that up for our next meeting sounds good um and I guess for next year you're new so I'll ask you first um having the department heads comeing and give presentations it seems to be our standard thing but is there anything else you think we should be doing or less we should be doing or more we should be doing based on my current knowledge and experience y uh no I'm sure I would come up something it's a lot of information right like Dan shows up and he has all those departments and stuff it's a lot right right yeah Jan any feedback for next year's process I honestly haven't got time to think about it so but um but I think that I really like your suggestion of kind of reviewing a past years you know um the the to budget and uh maybe I think that would help us when we will be a f I think I think that it's true I I still find that every time one they just give one presentation it's way too little time to understand all the detail so so it's hard for me to kind ask questions or you know give some crique so basically I feel like that I need to overall learn about how T government works much more before I can actually become a critical you know yeah not a critical in a negative sense but actually you know being constructive you to well we could have an offseason uh budget time where we could invite Dan and the fire chief and all those people sorry Dan DPW director and all and the fire chief and the police chief to come give us midyear updates or something like that yeah I do think that that um life idea so we should use the offseason time to try to you know catch up on the back inform I also found that um what I remember from not this year's presentation but last year's was that the um especially the fire chief he had his own language so it doesn't matter how many times he explain things he always explain things in certain ways and that I had a whole time understanding everything said not that I didn't understand English but what the terms he use what they imply it's like a every discipline they're using their own like a terminology yeah and to us lay people we don't quite know exactly what so so I thought like there is a communication issue and that that's the same thing that when they answered the question from the general public that same issue exist too because I think that he had to explained himself very clearly or he thought so but he could not convince the other guy because I don't think the other guy fully understood what he said so so if we can understand the better and then translate those rather you know terms that have special meanings to people who are in that profession translate them into more general you know terms that that this is truth of every this you know for you to communicate effectively you need to you know turn your your your your you know terms that's specific to your discipline into some more you know General accessible terms okay I feel I I feel like a lot of times there's a you know at least for me that uh communication is is a a part that can be improved sorry I agree with you and I I mean you know the The Habit is to use a lot of acronyms you know for terminologies and I'm uh I'm always wondering exactly what they are you know sometimes I know but a lot of times they're specific to their their particular industry I think it's good to ask specifically and then it's on the record and then if someone rewatches it it's even if you know what it is it's always good to get claric I usually do I see one second paing that's it yeah wouldn't be a bad idea to maybe give us a homework assignment you know I really didn't put any thought into your question about things that we could change or improve on so maybe it's up I mean I think about it all the time too I'm like what what what do you do I'm not sure I'm not sure there's anything specific you know if you're trying to keep the meetings to an hour and that's reasonable for people to show up to then you can only pack so much in and the budget time is so short but I think maybe to jy's point if we did a little bit more in the offseason it would kind of stretch that that time a little bit more y go ahead Pauline thank you Andrew and Jen I totally understand and support your um concern about not understanding the Lang anguage that the Department's use but I think your suggestion of using the quote unquote off seon because there is no off seas in a municipal government to understand I can assure you Tim would be more than happy to come and or or Jeremy be more than happy to come and sit with you and and help you understand I think I suggested this with the school committee a year or two ago um and Brian Gil and uh Jen would also Al be more than happy to meet with you in your off seon because they really do need your support and and it's a it's a learning curve I appreciate it having spent as many years on it as I did and I'm always here if you have a question I'll give you the best answer I have available thanks Pauline yeah so so so we should you know if we analyze the P this and we have some question regarding an item that's related to one of those major departments yeah I think we should try to contact them and and see if they can come and give us a little explanation yeah and when there few people maybe we can just i s feel that need to ask back and forth because I mean I know that in my own technical field there are a lot of terms that that mean specifically you know have specific meanings to us that you know other people would understand and I think same is true with the fire department with police and and and T so so you know if we understand how they communicate I think in the future we'll understand them I'm happy to uh assign curve the task of scheduling the uh well well we can set a uh a schedule like we do uh when the new budget comes to we'll go through the the this is the midy year I guess right mid year right now is mid year cuz we're on a in July 1st end of the year we're at year end for fiscal 2024 yeah okay okay end of year update how about that cool that is now Kurt's task um okay everyone gets an action item for today uh all right moving on outside committee updates uh there haven't been any by board meetings that I've been to at least I don't think there have been any since we last met yeah you haven't had any riew committee J you've been to the storm water they've been having their meeting still yes in fact we just had one yesterday oh how did that go um I feel like they always went really well um I mean actually yes there was by comparison there was one point that two people had some slight disagreement but most of the time they went really smly so yesterday we spent a lot of time cuz that meeting had a um several different parties there was I the I consultant and uh and then the town DBW and then the bo member select board member and then um and then other people so yes they it was a fairly um I thought busy meaning because they were uh trying to review the uh regulation they are proposing either a bylaw or regulation before this is you know uh propos the storm weather until we F and uh uh so I had to go through I think those 16 pages and and try to see if you know the language was appropriate and and so I mean got several rounds of that so but I feel like at the beginning of this serious meetings I was kind of skeptical if much could be done but I actually thought that you know we made progress over time okay interesting bylaw versus uh regular law exactly I actually wanted to understand that uh I think that um one thing is a uh determined by the massachusett general law and the other one is determined by the to so the the there two different terms I think the other one is correct I mean um Barber was that mean too so bar can probably correct um I think maybe B law this is uh drafted and defined by the CH yeah b b laer Town yeah and then the regulation I think is something that sort of you had to go along with the Massachusetts General law and then sort of a it's almost as if this is a um Prodigy I'm not not Prodigy I'm trying to use a biology sorry not not Prodigy for genitor you know this like the upspring of the the bigger State my law sort of like you know you know how go Branch out Branch out for branch so I wonder if it's like that so anyway leave it to a biologist to explain okay I actually have no biologist so so that's why I not use a term okay stay stay corrected okay thanks yeah so so yeah so they had a lot of you know every meeting you know there were some different emphasis things to discuss and uh I felt like a you know by large they achiev that so cool it sounds like there a long road ahead but making progress yeah I'm still worried if they did enough of publicity but you know Dan said he had done cuz he said that he had the the material at the um annual town meeting and I don't see that but he did you see any hand out from from DPW at the uh meting uh I don't remember um no wait a second I think they did have a it was a slide presentation I think it was something that we'd already seen oh yeah oh maybe that I don't know yeah I mean you didn't come to every committee meeting but only only Pauline saw that 18 times um okay I mean p is so familiar with the top government so I think everything has this process if you are familiar with the way of doing you exion faster go ahead Pauline um just to clarify I think what Jenn is referring to is the storm water bylaw came before town meeting a couple of years ago and was resoundingly defeated because it was an added tax or fee to people's tax bill and the select board and uh DPW superintendent are working toward bringing the Utility Fund back to to meeting but there's a time frame for that they've had number of discussions and J been on the committee so I don't I'm not sure if Dan meant this past to meeting because no there was nothing at this P okay I I think he meant this one because he had a in our um monthly meeting um he show us a timetable that what he was going to do in terms of public and one of the things he was going to do FL is that at this C the the April time meeting to have a hand out about this this idea that we're going to you know try to propose the the install Water Utility Fund and uh um yeah afterwards the next day I sent an email I said I see your but he reply to me so I okay go ahead Pauline and then we're going to move on um one last comment there was nothing on the warrant for storm water utility we may see that in October at the right so it's not currently and I don't know where it's end up no it's it's not this pass it's not discussed at all it's not in touch but I think the idea is try to propose that in the fall and so that's why they're trying to do the PO now to prepare people mentally for this but I feel like a I I don't feel like theyve done enough but I don't know I I probably don't know enough so I'm sure we'll see him again don't I think could probably visit the um the bigger uh industrial customers soon cuz those the companies are um okay we'll take that as the gospel um thanks Jen uh okay so next item is our next meeting we've been doing the second Thursday second Thursday third Thursday the third yeah third Thursday this is just a weird month right yeah third Thursday which puts us at June 20th does that work for you I believe so again June 20th sure as long as we do Zoom I had do okay I've already got it in my calendar okay cool all right we'll set that for June 20th and I will get with Kurt and we'll figure out what we're going to talk about and see if we can get someone to talk about their their budget yeah cool uh any public comments Pauline you got any parting remarks are you good I'm good thank you Andrew no problem you're the only one here so monit Andrew what what about we um try to take a pass years budget I think we should as a group sort of make the assignment first that we among ourselves discuss first and then um maybe next meeting ask because otherwise which of the four major dep way ask them to come to give T I guess not then just s you know and and then I I feel like we need to um do some more homework on our own first before we get people to come okay otherwise at least for me I wouldn't even know what to ask and then if you just ask you to give you a general presentation I think it's not as effective I thought i' rather if I um kind of like do my homework review something first then I have certain points that I don't understand and ask them specifically for those um I think that will be a better okay I'll take that why don't we do a um we'll sit down as a committee and do a uh a clear go run through together and pick someone's budget we should maybe kind of like have one or two round of email to decide that which year budg were going to pick you know probably hopefully what of the motivation was so that you know things are more relevant and and that and then go through that and and kind of like exercise go ahead bar I just want to remind that you have to be careful with emailing yeah I was getting there okay we're not allowed to deliberate over email J so no no I'm not saying deliberate like I'm proposing which what I see I'm a scientist so oh rather like a student so my approach to everything is like the study homework or study a subject all right so what I was composing in email was that we do the assignment say that you know we agree like Kur said that we're going to take a 2021 budget and analyze that or we could even divide that say that you know after five of us each one read like a you know five or six articles and then um we then come back and we discuss that first and then I think among ourself as we discuss and we say that oh you don't understand why this one is this one and then I feel I will learn more if I then go to the person and and that pres okay well we'll tely pick 20 20 what what what are we in 2024 we can tentatively choose 2022 but I I'll leave I'll leave I'll talk to Kurt about it and have him he'll send out a decree and we shall follow the decree that shall not be deliberated that's right okay um cool would you like to make a motion to I will motion to adjourn all right I second there you go uh all those in favor i j i all right we are Jed Thanks Jen