##VIDEO ID:_2ctuX4Hqbg## call to order the select board meeting for Tuesday October 8th um we will begin uh with an executive session and then uh at 700 p.m. we will rejourn out of executive session but we're going to start with a motion for that but I guess first I have to do a roll call vote of the people here so um Reed re here kriola here Barney Arnold here Travis Snell here and David Modell here all right so we have a quorum and do I have a motion for entering I move to enter executive session pursuant to Mass General Law chapter 3A section 21 Reason 3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares Massachusetts Coalition of police local 201 and 2011a um to um yeah to reene convene uh an open session approximately 7 p.m. great second great and as the chair I so declare the executive session so um well it says it says no it says the chair so declares and so but we will vote we will vote to go into executive session all in favor I okay so we are back in session um again this is the select board meeting for Tuesday October 8th um we have a full agenda tonight we're going to have Community input um execute the state select state election warrant appointments and resignations then the ESC is going to present a municipal landscape policy for our review um at 7:30 we're going to have a budget planning joint uh joint session with the finance committee to talk about the capital plan planning and budgeting and uh at 9:00 we're going to uh have the public town administrative evaluation and discuss the fiscal 2025 goal review then we'll have a Town Administrator report warrant and minutes Cemetery deed transfer requests liaison reports and then finally Community input at the end of the session so I'd like to start the meeting um and uh we've already uh called the meeting to order so we'll start with Community input is there anyone online or in the audience who wants to make any have any questions comments seeing none last chance um all right we will move on to executing the state election warrant um so you all saw that in your packages do you want me to put the motion on the floor or have a description first um I would ask if there's anyone Ryan did you need to do a description or we so this is as shown the town clerk is transmitting the warrant for the election to you for your approval so that it can be posted timely and they can run the election great has this been reviewed in oh I love it Night Rider awesome you were saying on the recording no l pulling up I got to go um you know is everything in order with with the warrant or with the election hours or I mean I perused it but I didn't that carefully I just want to make sure whatever we're doing is has been vetted yes and the town clerk's required to submit this to the state as well great and the hours described for Carlile um I just so this is Rosemary and Alana our our temporary town clerk interim Town Clerk and then the assistant they're they're good to cover all these hours that they're describing here cuz uh it's a lot of hours I most of it's walk-in I guess but there are a couple of Saturdays two Saturdays so that's the difference most of this is the hours at the town clerk's office is open already okay and everything else is what's required by law to hold include the Saturdays all right great can I ask one other question is on this there says deadline to submit an application and apply to vote inperson absentee how can you vote inperson absentee I can't answer that without Town CLK okay um let me read where is that on the first or the second it's on page five of the packet in total but it's the first page of the M first page of the memo well the schedule the schedule M vote in state election I I thought and apply to vote in person application absente maybe meant to be absentee I don't know I wonder if that's a November four typo deadline to submit an application and apply to vote before it's the day before the election too oh well I think what you have to do is though show up in person in order to ask to vote absentee the next day that's a is it the last day that you can show up in person in person oh I was going to send it ask to vote that that would not under the schedule Friday November 1st is the last vote early here at town oh so that's a different didn't vote early can't vote on Election Day wants to vote absentee the last I think correctly that's their last chance to submit an application to get an absentee ballot okay is and they have Monday and by the way they have to do it in person because there's no no time for them to so actually really it should say deadline to submit an application and an apply to vote absentee to submit an yeah to person you know in person submit an application you know I think that's what yeah this meaning this is what I remember from past elections that they were that sort of thing it's uh we might ask somebody to clarify that language but I believe that's what it is that you have to come in person to get that application they'll give you that but you have to do noon on Monday before the yes election that's not is that part of the warrant or is that just a memo no that's a memo so is that part of what we're voting on no we're just warrant is the language below it I think right yeah the warrant that says Commonwealth of mass warrant yeah so the question is is what we're questioning part of what we're no it's the we're we're voting on just the warrant okay good the town clerk's also not allowed to break the law so yeah they're not so I I'll move that the select board vote to execute the warrant for the November 5th 2024 state election as presented second okay any further discussion seeing none let's take a Voice vote all in favor I any oppos none all right unanimous so moving on um we are going to do appointments and resignations um I believe there's one employee appointment Kathleen M yes me you you me we're very excited to present for you for appointment Kathleen Bond who's been serving as our transportation and office manager in the Council on Aging and Human Services she's extremely professional she does a great job the the residents enjoy working with her as does the staff she has always expressed a desire to do social services in the town and progress in the uh Council aging and Human Services field however we did an internal posting to make sure there were no other internal employees we did interview her she was the only one who applied but um found her to be extremely qualified and competent so we're excited to fill this just for your information we will be backfilling her position we've modified the job description to include Service Coordination and delivery to create some more redundancy in the Council on Aging and Human Services rather than the office manager role there'll be a a services coordinator and transportation coordinator worked this all through with the council aging with Carol and uh with some of the members here on the board serving as Liaisons so we feel really good about this appointment and the future appointments to come excellent move to appoint Kathleen bond to the position of social services manager for the Council of Aging and Human Services and with an anticipated start date of October 9th second great I uh had a chance to look at her resume I thought it was really impressive and especially the number of Publications I mean she's quite qualified it seems like so any further discussion okay seeing none I'll take a Voice vote all in favor I I any opposed none okay so she that's voted unanimously all right moving on to the next is the ESC Municipal landscape policy so if uh Christina I see you here if you want to come forward and um we did get some information on this in our packet and a presentation I think you've got something for us I do yeah welcome hi thank you thank you for your time um this is just uh another attempt uh effort to embed environmental sustainability and policies throughout the town and um it's pretty simple and straightforward um just a a proposal to have a policy for any Municipal Landscaping not on conservation land that is different but on Municipal land uh for instance town hall or police station fire department um to have uh if there's any um completely new Landscaping um to have a minimum of 7% native non- cultivar plants uh a maximum of 20% native cultivar plants and a maximum of 10% non-native ornamental plants um and then then if it's a portion of an existing landscaping that's being altered um slightly more stringent um being a minimum of 80% native non- cultivar plants uh a maximum of 15% native cultivar plants and a maximum of 5% non-native ornamental plants and then um also include obviously if they're doing work in landscaping um that is a great uh opportunity to remove any invasive species that are there so pretty much that's sit in the nutshell and I've included in the um proposal just definitions of terms and uh some resources so I had a one question yes um and that is um our ability to create such a policy for all Municipal lands I'm thinking about the schools in particular and possibly even the fire station for other you know for all the reasons that we have been discussing around some other things so you know how how we would want to couch this or if we need an extra paragraph describing this yeah what paragraph you talk about describing describing the ex because there is there's no uh it's the in the applicability the policy applies to all new Landscaping any alterations to to existing Landscaping on carile non-conservation Municipal land well that would include then as far as I can read it schools and fire station so I think that has to be polished up because I'm not sure we can make that policy or or we should just find out right because I thought in our discussion about um was it the Highland building we were talking about how though the land is different from the building uh well the Highland building the Land We Own the building and the school owns the land so we'd have to determine if land owned by the school would be exempt from this policy I would want to check with Council but I do believe that it's under the policy of the school committee but it's the town's land so the school committee would have to allow it but it is the town's land so it would be applicable it's always very thing yes okay anyways I think that some reference to that policy and and all that has got to be made in this so that you know y so this would largely fall on either if we're Contracting with somebody to do work on Town land then it would have to be included in the contract what we're asking them to do it'd be included in all the rfps yeah that's what I'm saying right that or if it's something say our DPW is doing then we'd be asking then that those staff would be required to figure out how to do this and and learn what's about the different plantings and then removal of invasives they are um I've um included links for with lists yeah so have you um have you checked out other towns that have that are trying to move in this direction and any sense of of how how it's going other towns have um in in various degrees um I um it's either Arlington or Sommerville has gone completely native um on all their public lands um of course it's pretty much a city so we're talking small par Parcels small little bits um so I have I don't know of um I've not actually looked to see if there's any uh actual native species policy and then I guess I have another question about Fields so um I well most of them are under um our conservation land and that would beely that's how you that's how fields or Rec Rec Sport and bant Davis are under conservation no no no no no no I was thinking like to field oh oh Sports field oh I was thinking of sports fieldi well and like that's grass I mean because grass ain't native I mean the kind of grass that they're playing and I was thinking of something like if the bog house we have a lot of ideas for the bog house if it becomes a habitable place for families or whatever and they may want to decide to put a yard out there for playing or whatever and in you know would they be able to plant grass or was that you know going to be well if they owned it at that that's still our land I don't know that would be their decision right if they were homeowner that's true if we well it could be for just the condo sometimes these are delineated as just the structure and then the ground is retained by the town gotcha I'm just if you Le again that's a matter let's take Benfield the ground is ours but it's least and so when it gets leased it really you know the control of the whole property then goes to the L SE so this is for any new um new Landscaping or like any major alterations it's not for maintaining what's there I understand I understand but I'm just thinking let's say Benfield wanted to to change whatever they've got there um since it's our land um do they have to you know do they fall under this policy or not and so there's there's lots of squirrly things you have to do a whole education think about before we yeah well and I was thinking about I the definitions would be helpful I I'm not as familiar with them and I actually looked at the links to try and educate myself on it and I thought you know cultivar plants and not um and non non- cultivar you know what constitutes a cultivar plant and you have a definition here which has been cultivated genetically modified clone to enhance attributes desired by humans and I was thinking you know human beings I think have done that for centuries you know even mendle was working with peas trying to you know do the different thing and so at what point is it a cultivar and what point is it not in so um I think horticulturally speaking um plants native plants grown from native seeds have not been genetically modified a cultivar is something that's been genetically modified and I know that there's sort of like a everything up to a point has been genetically modified um but I think I mean there is if you go to like a nursery it's it's sort of clear if it's you're buying a native plant from native seed or if it's something that is engineered um it usually has like a a cut SC name and quotation marks or a trademark next to it so it's really been manipulated to alter um to be hardier hardier color the double blooms you know um so it's it's sort of on that that level but and a non- cultivar is more than just a native plant no not changed by humans it's not changed by humans there there are a lot of nurseries that um sell native plants but they're not actually native they've been modified okay so let me try again you can have non cultivars that are not native they're native to somewhere else but they're still non- cultivar correct and you can have native plants yes which could be modified or not correct so what you're asking really is that you would like mostly native non- cultivar you have to have both those things yes okay that's a lot okay so if um let's say the dog park weren't underway and we had this policy and this policy was then in place so they would have to do something radically different than what they're currently planning yeah and it wouldn't cost any more it's just like a great opportunity to have a meaningful Landscaping as opposed to and it can still look beautiful as opposed to having um pretty things that don't support yeah the idea is I think they were going to do PE Stone and then they were told that's too hard on the dogs so that's why they're putting in grass so you know peace don't dog parts yeah yeah yeah the grass won't stay green for long I mean we can add something like for playing for existing playing for playing fields and you know for obviously for like recreational like pathways whatever you know um this is more for the actual landscape okay lands okay so maybe we have to do some yeah I I just I'm I'm just saying I'm not I'm not at all opposed to this policy I'm just worried about whatever ramifications uh it will hold and trying to foresee the practicality of it yes and I'm not I'm not a municipal Landscaping expert by any means the existing landscape how would you classify that in terms of what percent is percent is it all just non-native ornamentals or most of it is non-native yeah yes and then in the case of if you're maintaining existing landscaping and say plants die can you under this policy could you replace those with the same plant or does that then become um a new new I would think that that would be the the alterations to existing landscaping and so instead of replacing a a plant with something that's not beneficial you can replace it with something that is and who who is this mostly DPW that does existing maintenance yeah and have they have they are they in support of this this policy have they been involved in this policy I have not spoken to them okay I mean we should we should make sure that I mean I'm not opposed to it in concept I'm just more opposed my questions are all about practicality who's doing the work because sometimes well-intended policies can have unintended consequences so I'd like to vet some of those some of those aspects of it I agree and similarly did you do Outreach to school committee or schools because of that issue that that would be that would certainly help us with the school U question that I had they should be on board with they were onp they could adopt thec or it doesn't really affect I have spoken to syvia I have spoken to land stewards um for support Sylvia was like well it you know anything on conservation land should go through them and I'm like well yes this we're talking non-conservation so we got you know we kind of got into this thing with the board of I'm going to draw an analogy that might not be great but the Board of Health wants to change some RS right and one of the sticking points is I want to upgrade my kitchen but I'm going to get thrown into like a whole tens of thousands of dollars of sanitary upgrades because you're saying all new construction or whatever they call it now falls in the new rules so I wouldn't want to like we want to replace a you know a mum with something else out here and like no no no now you have to root out all the invasive species because you're like we shouldn't write it in such a way that a simple project becomes very complicated well and to add to that I mean Christine you did mention earlier you said well it really wouldn't cost more and and that's you know that's great if that's the case but I don't I don't I'd like to see something about that because when I started looking through the plants and I've had to buy some native species for wetlands and go to to Framingham to do that and I found you know buying High blish blueberries and you know winterberries and things like that are more expensive than if I had used some other species actually they have a a huge discount for municipal um plants for plants Municipal purchases yes huge discount this is the the the the nurseries or the state provides something the one in Framingham Garden in the woods Garden in the woods that's it um so you'd have to know where to go to get the discounted but the list is the lists are included yeah yeah and um as far as cost for work I mean the work is being done anyway the work is the work the work is the work right it's more about the plantings because if if it does you know cost significantly more I'd just like to know that so we can evaluate that as our part A consideration of this is there an opportunity to informally pilot such a policy on a project that oh that's a great would make sense like the dog park or something that's upcoming that requires some alteration or oh we just did the front of new Landscaping we just did the front of the town hall and how was that process I mean was it they took who did the work looks great by the way LSC members and myself yeah right and I I'm guessing you don't want to do all the new Landscaping it's like whoever whoever will be doing the Landscaping you know the work they're going to be doing the work regardless right but I but if if it's DW and they're not familiar with the list and what go you know what I mean like I don't know I have no idea how this work so um I would just want to vet that right I can I can speak to Jim and I'll also say that once this establish native plants tend to be a lot harder so they actually require less maintenance so it' be less time to maintain the Landscaping once established right and and for a totally new project where there's new construction it's not the DPW who does the installation they will do the maintenance later but you'll hire a landscaping company to to do the installation of those things right I think I would want to at least allow again I think some more work needs to be done here but at least allow for maintenance to be a little more like so you don't necessarily always have to replace an existing plant with because I could see you know I just think we have to think through some of the aspects of this um good goals and there's are there any grants that might be available if we adopt such a policy grants for what well I'm just thinking of like this is almost like an extension of the climate leader where you're you know that was about energy and this is this is a different tack on but does the state does the state of Massachusetts have encourage this you said there's discounts or other other opportunities to to get funding from the state if you if you were to pass a policy like this I would think that perhaps they grants if you're willing to rip up existing landscaping and replace it with all Native um but that's not what that's not what sgg I don't think that grants would cover something that is going to happen anyway yeah well this is you know this is the plant that died of you know frostbite uh and you have to replace it and do you replace it in kind or do you replace it with a native plant and it's asking the town to consider strongly to replace it with a a native plant yeah yeah with a little bit of leeway because the percentages right it's the new stuff is it's a Max of 10% non-native ornamental and then alterations it's 5% so there is a little leeway right for right so donates a plant and memory of someone or whatever that's not native it's yeah but if I'm replacing one say I have a we don't need to go too far down the rabbit hole here but if I have an existing landscape and I'm replacing one plant and it's 100% remember this is Municipal land we're talking about this is not private land so but how does that what well if I'm taking a native plant and say I have to replace two bushes out of 50 I'm never going to get to these percentages so you're just it's minimums and maximums as well so so there's there's leeway right and I mean another example is like the police station when they ripped up part of the Landscaping to put in the ramp and then I don't think they've actually planted anything no in the fact they're talking about trying to screen it so um but if they do that is you know yeah I'm just say I think this is a great thing to move toward and I think what we're just saying is you know maybe flush it out a little more and get more input from U the we do we need an actual policy is the other question or do we just have guidelines like that's well right if if you're talking to DPW and get them on board anyway they may start doing this just because there's interest into the good thing about go ahead so sorry if an architect comes by comes back and says well no I want this looks better um but we could put it in an RF you could put that in an RFP though is terms of some of the project requirements you can articulate those things well but having it as a policy the good thing about that as a policy rolls over whatever staff come and go or whatever Architects come and go it's there as a something the town expects we're trying to embed environmental sustainability and policies y different departments and so um I'll speak to Jim Hall I'll reach out to the school um and um it would also the other random thought I have is I have a daughter in high school who is actually interested in government and town and keeps ask me ask what high school students can do I don't know if there's any way to pair up with something at the high school or even at the elementary school where you could get kids involved with through biology class something like that working on that I mean that would be a great way to I think both generate support for such a policy but also involve the community and kids and education in this effort um great idea yeah especially at the school Yeah we actually have an idea of um proposing a miow garden I won't get into it um but it's um an interesting approach um to um creating dense habitat dense native habit yeah because it doesn't just have to be pretty you know if the kids can learn through the landscaping that's a that's a win-win win and that's a lot of our Municipal land anyway I think one other thing I'd add is just you know to follow up on what people people said about the cost it'd be helpful to not as the policy but just as a piece of information you know what the comparison of costs and then if you go right so there's when people ask so what's this going to cost us we can we have some info and then some language in relation to like playing fields um yeah I think you'd have we'd have to have I mean some information about that because okay right and and how you know how do you landscape a playing field without using grass even I don't even is it Landscaping I don't even know like what's Landscaping the thing is we're talking about plants on Municipal property for whatever use yeah so it is Landscaping yeah we can just say excluding playing fields and yeah mean the thing is that's why yeah that's why we were happy you came tonight this is a good discussion to gives you some ideas questions I think tweaking the language under alterations to existing Landscaping you could probably because I don't know that we're planning on any new athletic fields in the time being you could probably answer a lot of those questions if there's just more leeway and there some more speci specificity in that language we do need to move on because we've got uh we're Beyond Time and we've got a budget discussion here that's important so thank Christina thank you for coming yeah thanks for coming good all right um we're going to move on to our uh fiscal year 26 budget planning joint session with the finance committee packet for that and I don't know if they're a joint session I don't know if they are so I'm it's probably my fault so I did extend them the opportunity to come here I I did present to them on Thursday so um and I was there I think they saw it as optional oh okay more to see the information and uh what they did did relay at their meeting on Thursday not not speaking for the committee but trying to relay information is they're interested in your goals as it pertains to this information to start the process and to make sure the budget's being shaped in a way that that they have clear direction for you I I was there as the liais on and just interject and one of the the uh Ryan is correct the overarching thing is that they wanted some guidance from us um and there's some specific things um that Brian's going to go through that they wanted to have us weigh in on so we'll talk about those can you good Slide the little so I'm going to give you a thre minute walkthrough of the tool that is behind the presentation and then start the presentation there's a ton of time for this so that you can dig in um the goal here to show you this tool is not not to talk about the tool necessarily we can dive back in it's just to show you that it comes from from data so this is the financial forecast portion this is ejecting out expenses for the operating budget the operating budget only for the next 5 years excuse me a second you need to make it bigger but is there a way to I'm just walking you through I know but I still want to see I really don't want you to see the numbers I want you to see okay all right there is a tool and it is a spreadsheet okay there are numbers in the spreadsheet there lots of numbers so it's very don't want you to get into the he wanted to just blind us with a lot of numbers okay so each tab represents something that is that is building data into the presentation the sum and the tabs are on the bottom yes so on the expense side every line of the budget is multiplied by a variable and extended out over five years in order to create the summaries in the budget request that you'll see okay same is true of Revenue okay and I'm sorry Ryan for expenses is this assuming kind of a a level level service budget this is to maintain existing versus this is our projection of What expenses will be okay um what you do for policy in those terms is is a a yeah no but he's right you you must make an assumption that I'll show you the Assumption okay so then uh you're starting to become familiar with this this tool so this is a levy analysis and I really don't want you to get into these numbers yet I promise you'll get a chance to in um but this feeds into an analysis and I want to talk about this this tool a little bit so um really going to Blind you with numbers so I worked with Brian on this in order to try to make the levy analysis tool even more impactful so the reason why this is the way it is we mostly have single family homes which drives this the average uh tax bill in town so most of the average tax bill is built by single family homes however this year a lot of the value of our of our property shifted towards non single family homes not a lot but enough to skew the number away from the average tax bill in addition new houses that were built this year were well above the average which which dragged everything up which diffused the taxes out in a good way right so it made it more dispersed so we modifi the tool a little bit to account for some of that it'll never be perfect but it is a way for you to measure the impact by isolating the variables of the budget so all of these Tabs are are building that tool and then Revenue projections is my way of looking at the past in terms of Revenue and seeing how much give we have in in specifically local receipts because state aid is pretty pretty pegged to whatever decision they make local receipts is where you have some wiggle room okay so there is some data that I can dig into at any level you want um that is underlying the following presentation thank you for your patience and uh I will say a lot of work went into this so Kelly and and Brian in particular spent a lot of time on this David has helped me in the past in creating this model and so has Craig from the uh the finance committee so a lot of people built this tool and it's capable of doing whatever you want so we can change the variables and we'll talk about what is in the assumptions here okay so the tool itself is just for planning it's not an exact budget so we're not saying it's going to be this cost we're projecting out the cost so you can see what would happen in various models the um expense side for for sure has a lot of assumptions that you can change if you want to see how that impacts the budget and this is a a tool that you can use during the budget process if you want this is just the first look at what we think is coming and then um it does consider town debt levels and capacity but it doesn't include the full Capital model but you're going to get that presentation next my goal is for next year for these two to be combined into one presentation so we're not jumping back and forth so some basic Revenue assumptions again I can dig into the data if you want to is that state aid will continue to increase at about a 1% level for Carlile last year we were around two and a half um maybe two would be would be less conservative but it's it's not going to be a lot so if you're following the State News the uh state budget is not in the shape it was 2 three years ago so we we should not expect relief from the state local receipts we've increased at 2% and there is some ability to increase the or decrease the conservativism in local receipts which would allow for more revenue and for more use in the budget that would offset taxes however that will also reduce your free cash generation which you'll see in the capital plan is is has a big impact and then property taxes uh two and a half is the allowable so so we use that for for this model we did not use free cash in this model which you did use the last couple years to offset some some costs so if you project out Revenue using those assumptions what you see is for next year a 2.85% increase in Revenue that number doesn't have a lot of meaning without the context that comes in the presentation however you see it's it's a little bit less than the future because you're not using free cash like you did before so you injected some free cas cash and you're taking it out which means you have less revenue for FY 26 but then a more steady increase in the Years pass assuming you don't use free cash again so there's no free cash there's no free cash applied in this model in this model no okay besides the 150 25 25 is yeah we're 26 okay all the numbers spitting out next yeah I mean we spit out more than that any okay so this is certainly where there is the most ability to change um this is this is what we believe as a staff is the best guess at what the numbers are and I'll walk through them quickly employee wages most of the contracts and others are tied to some type of 1% Merit plus any Cola decision so about three and a half is a conservative number employee support and contracted services are tied to the 2 and a half% increase that that we are allowed uh utilities are fluctuating somewhere between 5 and 10% so we took the lower number supplies that same 2 and a half% health ins ins last year we saw a 10% increase and we're going to continue to model it that way until the market indicates otherwise and we're also stepping up right the our contribution yeah so we were able to do that step up and absorb last year's big hit for 10% so 10% is the high end and where are we at in that process just as an aside do you know how much is the town covering um we're we're going to be putting together another Advisory Group to look at okay look at that um we won't get those numbers until January's um MMA meeting that's where Maya releases their health insurance but in terms of our our contri the town's contribution I think it's are we at 43 now I'm sorry 5 no 50 57 are we did five and then three yeah okay okay 57 Ryan you're going to provide this to us right okay I see yeah because it wasn't in our packet so well I just want to remember so yeah I get it all right so retirement assessment we we got absolutely we already know this number we got absolutely hammered so the increase for this year is 26% which is little over $400,000 in our budget which is a lot they are offering a smoothing option which is 19 and 19 there's a little bit of an interest penalty for that and that'll become a budget decision but 19 is a real number so they're trying to catch up for the sins of the past in Middle sex and small towns are being hit particularly hard I have an inquiry with them in order for them to explain that cuz bigger towns aren't being hit as hard but we don't have a lot of legal room here and then liability insurance we were able to sign a a two-year rate lock with Maya so 5% is a pretty good estimate then schools somewhere around 3 and a half% um just in the model and again that number can that number can change that's the high school and the local school is is a transportation for the schools is that under Contracting Services or is that under the school budget or it's in the school budget okay we also hold debt and opep contributions constant you'll see reserves and debt show up later l in this presentation and then the fincom reserve uh gently increasing that it is no longer 1% of the budget as you level fund that 15 year after year so if you look at what those variables do to the projected budget you'll see um a budget increases in FY 26 um and Beyond well over four and a quarter percent so pretty large jumps basically for level service well I don't know what the assumption well we haven't and you've not layered in the debt I know but I mean that is just held constant so it would be I'll show you the debt and don't forget you're only seeing half the thing because we got building projects that need Debt Service so okay so um to give that a little bit more context so expenses versus Revenue the town um is not bringing enough money short answer to keep up with it its expense Trends and you see that over the years so although there's more Revenue in FY 26 than we are spending that that goes that goes down as you as you go along 2030 where we are now eating heavily into our excess Levy capacity but before you hop to that so I mean you can make any assumption you want right but I think basically what Ryan's been saying is as we get more accurate with our assumptions we can cut finer to the the amount we budget for and what we end up spending gets close the you know we we because we were inaccurate and also not for nothing you know just our inherent conservatism especially going back to Larry Barton we would essentially over tax so we were always spinning out 500,000 or more free cash and then we'd use the free cash so it would sort of self adjust but if we're going to be more accurate and especially if we're trying not to basic over tax on the operating side then there's less of a cushion right we get more accurate so we kind of come in at the we spend the number we budget than we actually right and so you're you're you don't have that free cash lever the other piece of it is which get to Capital is if you do have free cash it might be better you know well better another use of free cash is to apply it toward debt on projects right because we generally I mean the operating rule at the fincom level you know well scottt is don't really get in habit of using free cash to patch up your operating budget you should only use it when you have a special thing you need to use so so far the takeaways I wanted you to see not a lot of Revenue expenses are are pretty reasonably estimated and are exceeding our ability to pay and U the revenue versus expenses is showing a decline in capacity so Levy capacity what Levy capacity is is what you can tax versus what you are taxing so we have not been taxing to to the max the main project here is almost $2 million in school that that that wasn't tax so you didn't go above 25% in order to capture the cost of the schools which did decrease tax amounts and and was good fiscal conservatism however it created a situation where you have more that you can tax if you want to and that's a tolerance issue but if you see and were to expend at this level if you were to continue to spend it the way the spending is assumed that excess Levy capacity gets gets eaten away which we showed you last last year from almost 3.8 million to under a million which means you're taxing more than 2 and a half% for a little bit of context if you look at the towns around us if you look at my own dunable gron Harvard Acton conquered in the next couple years will all be going for operational overrides for this reason so expenses are went for one right and West's going for one and I believe it was went for one I was going like a large chunk of the state last year Martha was saying today yes today with another Act was the only one around that passed yeah West too so a lot of times are going for overrides for this reason so this is why you're not because you have this EXs Levy capacity so you can go to three three and a quarter if you want to whereas other towns have to ask you've already asked and didn't do it so you have this capacity but that's going away which again shows expenses exceeding uh capacity well just as a some commentary one of the when I did the select board training back in June the biggest concern or complaint was that uh from select board members in towns where they had no excess Levy capacity they needed an override the community was fatigued and wouldn't pass an override and they can't maintain level service so what's the impact you have to cut yeah and so I would I would say one of the things as terms of long-term goal is do we want to as a town we we probably don't want to get to a point ideally where we don't have any excess Levy capacity because you can get really boxed in at that point right and I think you know that's a great point and like there are certain trades that aren't you know at this high level summary but for example you know our policy of reserving for OPB like it's kind of self-imposed and it's Good Housekeeping but but I'd rather not spend that budget that money and save my override ship for sometime when I really you know if it those kind of things matter right and well the other thing is though we could go for debt exclusions and then you're not that helps I don't even think this includes any of that yeah but you have to service it sooner or later it comes back to you right I I know it's just an important strategic thing to keep in mind is I agree we should I mean we lived it in the 08 time and it wasn't happy right and we managed do we have it right I can't remember if we no I don't think so first one through we managed to squeak by without it but it was yeah it was tough I remember being tough and we had to make some big cuts 16 years ago I can illustrate for you so you did pass an override last year you passed it for the police station and the fir truck if you roll the firet truck into your operating budget as exists now and you don't increase taxes then your excess Levy capacity will go up because you didn't tax so you could tax more but you didn't the police station to so that might wash because you're increasing the budget and increasing the taxes to pay for that so the the levy would wash but if you if you tried to roll it all into the current operating budget then your ex Livy youan when you say we passed an override you mean we exclus that exclusion right kind of but that's talking about override two and a half% yeah it's an override for right but it's not like an operational strategically we need to protect some level of excess Levy capacity is my point right I agree with that y what that amount is I don't know but so this is important and um because the tax impacts are what drives most of your budget decisions please know these numbers are conservative so um this can change it may hold the uh impact of the spending as modeled here versus the revenue for next year would be um a I'm sorry 4 point I should look at my screen here 4.45% increase in the the average tax B with your target being three so at the bottom I modeled this for you so if you wanted a 3% increase you would need your proposed Levy increase to be 1.1 million and you would need to cut about 533,000 out of this expense model not the actual budget requests those haven't come in yet but this expense model which means all those variables we projecting 500,000 would have to come out of that or you'd have to add fre cash or some other Revenue Source state aid would have to go bananas some some way of cutting into this if you don't then your average tax bill for just the operating increase alone for FY 26 would be 4.45% then you can see it modeled over time so the more you control in 26 the less the impact in in fy3 there's a lot of modeling an assumption here if you want to get into well then then how much of that increas is even under our control when you talk about retirement and health I mean there even within you say half a million but that's not over the there's really level free cash no but I what I to cut like but the point I'm making within but yeah right within my high level point is within those expenses you can't cut your insurance and your world right of a $30 million budget there's probably well no I don't agree I think I think that that obviously is in every business and especially in all Municipal businesses like 8 80 something per is Wages right y you can't most of them well we just talked about bargaining units a big percentage of our town labor force is under a collective bargaining agreement and somewh people aren't and this has been the point I certainly made it when I was negotiating School contracts you can have what you want the lever we get is to cut heads that's all we get right if we cut if we have to if we have have to continue to increase the compensation package above that three or whatever your lever is to cut positions larger classes fewer police you know that kind of thing those we have that control the third of our budget we have less control over at the high school we have less control over well the high school yeah the high school we don't have control I'm not saying we don't have control but it's no but big chunks not little chunks right little you know insurance I know we can't do anything about that you know retirement etc etc so but wages really is the lever it's a we only have a very crude leverage on it is the leverage count is the lever versus wages right right I mean a little bit of wages but really we don't want philosophically to penalize our workers that are placey who are not under collective bargaining right and we have you know some limits on our collective bargaining and at the end of the day then we have to say you know like we did in 2008 I sat with a superintendent like we're cutting sections cuz what can we do got to get to the numbers so that again like not wanting to get into an override you don't really want to get there yeah and the only point I'm making is someone may hear oh half a million dollars on a $32 million budget you can figure that out and it's not that simple because no no no never simple that's why we get paid so much yeah cuz we're good at this right so um last year when we did the budget analysis we projected that the tax impact was going to be around 3.08% of the levy it ended up somewhere around 2.4% okay so we were very conservative with our numbers some of it was that that Levy modeling that I talked about in the beginning so that shift made our number overly conservative it can certainly go the other way but it is more likely in Carlile that it's not so that this number is is conservative right in its in its estimation so to put it exactly at three isn't the idea it's more to show you that at this spending level your 3% goal is going to be really difficult at the service level that you are you are saying the town needs which is why anytime any position comes up or anything like that I'm constantly talking to you about how to be more efficient with the budget because you've told me that 3% is all that would be tolerated in the operating budget that's why these things are coming around so every one of the budget decisions when you have the opportunity does matter because there's only so many places to cut to uh to Scot point this just shows you your tax bill it's kind of a mean slide for people who live here let see read the numbers on the left hand 17 18 19 yeah 21 starts in 25 crossing the magic 20K threshold here yeah the 20,000 average tax bill threshold would you'd reach it at this spending level in 2030 realistically 2031 2032 note to self roll off board time to time to try to move time to move to your new location yeah where's that exactly yeah all right so this is a dangerous slide but I believe information is powerful so this adds in the police station which has already been passed yeah so assuming you don't roll the police station into the off so that that number up top that 4.5% or that $500,000 cut does not include rolling the debt for the police station into the budget so this model is that for you so the payment for the police station at a full borrow of 3.6 million at 30 years 5% interest so there's variables there too we'd be about $160 a year to the average home which means in FY 27 you wouldn't be looking at a 3.9% tax increase you'd be adding a little bit under 1% to pay for the police station which would make the average tax bill 4.74% so if you're going to add buildings on top of the operating increase I do believe you need to start socializing in that now that this this is on top of the average tax one of three projects right which was approved by the voters but but you know and your model I'm sure you did you modeled the decline of the schools that's starting to come down I was going to show you that next okay so this is just not overall this is just incrementally adding a project yeah so this is I know that people at home can't see me stand up can you maximize the slide or does that mess up your Zoom if you go into present people that's Cecilia and read it cyia remember this is f27 It's a couple years away but if the average increase based on the conservative spending models and everything that's been shown here was $710 you would add 160 to that which would create the new tax bill so you you've overrided your ability to pay for debt which means you could increase the taxes that the residents have said that for the debt alone so that 160 would be that right this is for the side this is for the budget of the police project million6 million and that's that's Debt Service and take down on the 30-year yes loan it's everything right all in per average house and average house is around again 1.2 million so some pay less some pay more I think we're number four in this tied for there was a article on that yes we did very well top definitely top 10 might be top five now of what median median home value okay yeah so there's a lot more debt and others in the capital presentation but I wanted to uh just summarize this forecast so this is just the operating side and one of the assumptions in the um Capital plan is that you'll hold that 3% tax rate in on the operating side this is a whole presentation for just that one bullet Capital plan right so you will need to um grow your Revenue in some way in order to cover for this you can make the model uh less conservative right so you could increase revenue and spending but what that's going to do is cut into your free cash generation which is fine but that has an implication as well uh you will need to increase your revenue or decrease spending to meet the 3% tax Target regardless of what you do or how conservative the model is you're definitely going to be cutting something and then so let just stick on that for a second R so so if we said because you can only hold one variable and then the other shift around right so I remember last year maybe it was or two years AG we like like um uh we were kind of hard over on the 3% number right so we sort of pinned it we pinned it to the 3% and then we kind of looked at what everything else does if we do the other thing and we pin it to level service you're saying what it's four it's in the high threes something like that right at least the high threes yeah okay High threes let's call it four so it's for simple math mhm like it's simplified but let's just say if we again hold to a three and whatever that means operationally to cut then and we are a piece with a 4% tax bill we can the police station can get paid down if we go level service and we let that we use up that percent in the operating side now you go to five and if we say we don't like five like then we would say well okay then don't build the police I mean those are the kind of and the high level those are the kind of Trades we have to philosophically we need to think about that so if you wanted to have another session with me individually or as a group or with the finance committee so here's here's the power of the tool so if you said or health insurance comes in it's only 5% increase this year so if you look at the tax bill of 778 4.5% increase if you go to the expense side of this model you change health insurance to 05 you'll see a reduction the tool automatically reduces it so if you wanted to model different scenarios what would School spending be what would this spending be like if you deferred road maintenance or whatever you you could use it in this way PL in right so you you said that this model overall and your estimation was leaning toward the conservative side correct as kind of we so you're applying no free cash you're saying the model's a bit if the model is conservative is the idea we would have have then free cash that would be applied so where do if where does the conservatism reflect in Downstream more free more free cash right which means some of that deficit I have hope that some expenses will come down a little bit and that Revenue will be a little bit higher so I think the actual deficit you're going to be cutting if I had to guess today which is really early in the budget process in each year 350,000 so in that year where it's like 600 maybe it's only 350 when new starts what's your what's your growth assumption on housing 300,000 a year so in New Growth and what is that like 10 houses or 15 houses no but there's a wrinkle in that too because the houses haven't they the land value went up we had so land and the average home cost is high which means the projection of the taxes is a little conservative as well right so let's say you came in at 3.4% tax increase if you had the same type of year you had this year then that the tool would would be off around 3/10 so the average tax bill would be closer to three but I can go the other way too it's just hard to picture in Carl housing value is going down so low that it would go the other way right and I know a and where are we at I know a lot of what I've heard from individuals a lot of the complaint around tax bills sure there's the overall growth but it's in the reallocation or the the revaluations that just re no I know but my I guess my question is as a town where are we with that that because I know a lot of people have been they out their assessment has gone up dramatically and they're feeling the pain from a from a individual tax bill has that kind of been caught because I know we were we hadn't done that I think so that Ryan would know like Brian that stuff sort of Flushed through now right I mean people have absorbed deck House people have absorbed a big a big step increase they can piss them on but then they have it's there it's not going on more right it's so the only real doubt point I have to to give you as to whether or not things have calmed down is the number of people who are filing for a batement so a couple years ago it was over 90 I believe and last year was at 19 okay so we'll see this year they did pre-publish the values like they talked about they have increased the quality values right there was some chatter about it but but kind of right but I also know we hadn't done it in a like there were some years do you have new growth in in this the levy 300 he said 300,000 I miss that sorry so this year the New Growth number your sneak peek is going to be around 320 so Brian's estimates are pretty good that 300 is a good number I I haven't gone through this model obviously and run those scenarios but I would think that based on all those variables on that you can change the school is the most impactful when you change that one 0.1% you're going to have a bigger impact than you're going to have on any of the other values so you know in thinking about this that's what to your point David I mean this is but every little thing matters too throughout the budget but that's the where you're going to get the biggest bang for your well but schools what is what was your growth assumption three and a half three and a half yeah so I mean having done you know many of us have done a lot of years with school committee right so you got the wage thing and a lot of it is collector bargain like we talked about and they have the steps and lanes and there is an ebb and flow and I don't know now but it was we we kind of like we were talking about the police there's an there was an old older labor force so there weren't so many steps and then they began as that ebbed we hired younger so my guess is were in a step period now which means that I don't know I'm not sure but the average wage would go up if you're in where a lot of your teachers are still in steps your average wage is going to be more I think I I forget what the percentage is but I think I'm it's either somewhere between 40 and 60% or at the highest level okay still okay so you got that and then you've got um the the biggest uncontrollable lever is the out of District placements like a single out of District placement could be a sixf figure thing yep and it's very hard to handicap that in such a small District right so and outside of wages even like the the transportation cost of got Transportation another real and that's going up significantly in the new contract so I mean there's some so again things are hard that are hard to and that you it's that's hard to control control at any population level honestly at a maintain level service even like 3 and 12% is still difficult to do when you factor think about what we just went I mean we went through a period of was a year at least that was sort of 8% inflation or seven and now it's modulating to into the twos and threes but just now right and who knows so yeah it's where does the allocation project CS for the high school fit into this are those baked in for operating or for debt for for both are just our allocation toward like our ratio our ratio for the high schools we should know that right well yeah so they did predict that there would be another quote unquote bubble year but are those projections built built into the model yes okay cuz we we also I don't have strong Fidelity on those numbers though because conquered building a a middle new Middle School yeah plus the change in the economy is is trending that there we have less students than than conquer which is good but we we also it we benefited for five or six years our overall budget from our allocation decrease which really helped us sustain a lower tax increase by doing nothing just having less students and if if that were to reverse in any meaningful way or be more than what's projected that would have a substantial impact on our ability I think that I I go ahead s and that didn't isn't that what we thought was going to happen when we went through this process last year and you're saying now it's not they're changing the we're not sure uhhuh yeah the middle school is going to open next year old projections had car's numbers going up and we went down then we leveled out then we ticked up and thought we were going to come up again for one of the years 26 in a in two years a year even like soon but that's one of those numbers that that has well you wonder about private schools too like there are more people going into private school when they get to a high school level I don't know but it'll be interesting to know the statistics well it's the it's it's the yeah it's also the forward look like I can't speak the conquered but I know John Valentine spends a lot of time on here right yeah we have an old we skew as an older population kids are out of the educational system we're staying at home we all the things we talk about but that does come to an end there's a point time when those houses turn over right and families move in so there is some model that he has that I feel like 2040s will start to our school population my neighborhood is has started to turn yeah yeah I'm on yeah ours when I moved here ours was turn had I was the start of a turn and now I feel like we're getting back to coming up on but um I know the school I think they're they're projecting at least right now fairly stable for a while yeah not certainly not back to the 800 level that no and they couldn't in the elementary school yeah K through yeah we built that school at that time projecting it to manage 800 plus kids and we're still out of space yeah because the model of teaching has changed much more small spaces they they don't have enough classrooms what's our current School population at the elementary it's around it's plus or minus 600 in that so it M no it hasn't teaching and also Co had big impact there but yeah but we're teaching differently we're teaching differently we have a lot of special and you know special education requires little spaces with teams so y it's a CH yeah so you're proposing significant impacts on the on the tax bill in a lot of your in your discussions buildings Etc so I did want to show you who's propos youve asked me to model significant things model signicant so um me I didn't do it one of the controls one of the controls that's talked about a lot that that I'd like to just go over with he was part of this planning session is the the so-called School building debt so this is carried in the conquered carile budget and you're talking about the conquered Carlile School building not the Spalding correct conquered Carlile the high school so high school okay this school assessment repres represents the debt that's charged To Us by the conquered carile school it is declining over the next 10 to 15 years in the way that John Valentine talks about a lot so as the school projects come down you're going to replace that debt right so in the assessment though when we talk about the school assessment often the operating and the debt is put together yep and you're given a number increase that is one number not two so if the number increase is 3 and a half% and it's including the decline in the school debt then you're not capturing that capacity that's coming back to year so this is something to monitor now that's a 10-year-old building as it ages over the you're saying you're not not years we're not Capt we're not capturing that because we consider it all in an operating expense for it is there a way we can separate it's not our building it is separated but them but not by us right well when we get the assessment and it was talked about last year they said well it's only a 3% increase but the operating side was actually 3.74 it was the debt that brought down right but I'm asking a different question I'm saying we take whatever Bill we get and we say that's an operating expense could we take that bill disaggregate it and say this piece is a debt piece and this piece is actually I think that was the two select boards conquer and carile select board had gotten together and the two fincom and we did say that for this year we were going to make it very try to make it very clear to the schools that we want everything disaggregated because when we set that when the fincom were to set a guideline it meant for the operating budget right okay so that's a good point so do both those numbers the disaggregated U you know 922 and whatever the school side is they each are ratioed by the assessment ratio the debt is also right Y and don't forget that also includes OPB and health insurance yeah but that is on the operating side wouldn't you say they make decis they like they make the decision and they I think that's fully funded at this point too so when they describe it close four I think four more years they were is pretty heavily funded so that they you're saying that assessment will go that piece of I don't know should go down there's a lot of different I mean it's it's not just how they put end d right they they they um they model in an amount like 5% so this is I mean I do believe that that school Capital impacts educational outcomes OPB is definitely something that needs to be captured but it is not tied necessarily to educational outcomes right so as you're assessing the overall impact of taxes for the next 15 years I do think these are two buckets that you need to consider so this is enough capacity in this debt School assessment to cover the police station project in terms of impact on taxes however the schools are also going to need to borrow debt as you saw last year during during the school amenities building discussion which would have added $2 million in debt to them of which we'd get 500,000 which we'd get 500,000 so would eat into right this capacity right right so and the school picture from our side do you have that one modeled the Spalding that's included in our debt I know but how much like that ought to be pretty well I'll show you that when debt declines so um it's in our debt side yeah and I what's the sense of I mean conquer is taking on a new expensive middle school program shouldn't I mean they shouldn't that doesn't no but I mean for the conquered willingness to and and C it may impact their willingness to to fund new capital projects which is okay right right no that's my point is we have a sense of something they reject the amenities or they pulled it they uh the they conquer made it clear to the schools that they had a lot of deferred maintenance on all the rest of the municipal buildings because of this High School thing and that they were trying to wait patiently and that they were not going to be looking very favorably on new taking on new debt for the school before they had a chance to um yeah address some of their maintenance problems that they had I think they're G they'll yeah my hope is that doing the middle school project take some of the the conquer desire for for new capital projects that may not be as high a priority yeah well the school committee is a entity I'm I'm not other end ideas I'm not on the policy side right these are your decisions but I I do think that these priorities that you have in terms of buildings tax growth and they need to be communicated to to conquer in the schools so that that the carile advocacy is not just we want to spend less but here's what we're trying to accomplish right exactly because when that was brought up to this and during last year's discussions there there was some sympathy from you know from the side saying are you taking on these building projects you know this tax are we the chairs meeting or the where we go down there we talked about that right do you get a notification of the chair's meeting because they did they do monthly in conquered I have not received that since chair we should you should we can remind Carrie is yeah and and even if you were not I would certainly um reach out to the chair of the conquered select board and see you know have even talk with them they they should invite chair and vice chair yeah and they should invite you um and the chair I think the the chair of the fincom and you should also reach out to the chair of the conquered fincom as well and we had a little I think it would be good for you guys to talk and and strategize together and and present present I mean the whole idea last year was to set up the scaffolding and put the school on notice that there was going to be a unified front on both towns part that that the guideline was going to be the guideline for the operating budget and it was going to be the same guideline from both towns and you know so I think that's already set up you know the scene is set but you got to follow through now and get it done they didn't even invite usually don't get an invitation to townhouse for that it's usually late September that whole school thing do they still do that that I don't know would have a kickoff meeting on the whole budgeting process I don't probably seeing anything I haven't seen anything anyway talk to the chair I will who's the who's the um Regional Reit this year Sharon wh who is the region no the regional rep our reg did you have you reach that who's and is Sharon also chair no yeah Sharon is chair of the Sharon is chair but uh and the loal Sarah's local is Sharon no Julia Julia j Julie okay yeah is chair of the region no oh she's Sharon wit is a chair of the region Julie uh the uh is the chair of the local the is chair of the local oh okay well all right well then reach out I guess reach sh okay all right so there's going to be more questions I'm sure and this does overlap but I wanted to get into the capital side and then um just a review of what you did last year for budget goals and we have we have time so please ask questions and stop me well whether you want the time or not it's really OBS okay so the capital planning model looks at the capital side of the budget to include some debt considerations and Reserve which is why I'm going to combine all of it into into one model next year but building out the model in pieces and and understanding how you want it to work so this um this was a a heavily vetted process David was involved in it so was um Mark and who else came Mark and James came to a working group where I was working with departments to go through the capital and try to capture changes to this Capital planning model um we do have a version that uh will go into the budget process so this isn't prescriptive it is it is a plan it does consider Town reserves debt levels and capacity and then I do get into some building moning which I'm sure you'll have a ton of questions about so overall assumptions is that that first line right there that will limit the operating budget the 3% tax increase so that is just one line in this thing and and it obviously had a whole presentation on its own that you will continue to maintain a 12% Reserve that you're going to prioritize free cash generation that you're going to maintain current debt levels and the 12% Reserve so back in my day the the target range for ideal Reserve was 10 to 12% and somewhere along the way 12% became the minimum um and I would just question if if 12% is the right number there or if we should be at 10% I mean we're kind of told the rating agencies like it is what I heard we weall I would just second what Scott's saying though we all I know is it's always been 10 to 12 yeah disc somewhere along the way it became you got to maintain 12 when it was 10 to 12 I think that feedback we should ask it sounds like a little bit but it's it's a are we meeting with the B do we have some meeting with dude that's open we talking of the opep guys yeah but what about do they know the what the bond people think what the rating agency yeah we can certainly ask them yeah my my sense is that we've been encouraged to go to 12 let's put it that way now did we challenge it maybe not I just remember said ideal is 10 to 12% and we've come in above that and somewhere along the way don't give you extra credit for too much I think right well yeah so I would just I would just want to confirm that number and if it's 10% Like should it be 12% or are we now keeping a little too much in reserve so let's do some in face of all these other CH $40 million budget uh 1% is 400k so we could free up 800k it's a good amount of money if but you get once you do once oh yeah yeah but but we should just fair for statement it's first statement and the and the you guys right on the finance committee is talking about the same thing so how to offset future Capital costs with with potential reserves right so this assumes that you want to continue your policy I don't know is that a policy it's in the uh financial reserve policy yes um can you wait wasn't there a fourth thing on your list oh maintain okay you didn't mean to go forward this depos last year I'll show you where the the contingency is it's just a simple escalator to account for for unknowns we went through each department we asked them to identify things not in their operating budget over five ,000 that is certainly a talking point as well capital is typically defined by X doll amount and X useful life whether you want to set that at 5 or 10K the reason why smaller towns tend to have smaller numbers is because operating budgets aren't as flexible to account for things such as 10 $15,000 expenses unless it's been intentionally put there I like to recommend that you pull it out because you have more control over it if it's not baked into the operating budget you have visibility cuz they have to ask for the specific dump truck or well that's a big TI but you know a lawn mower like a lawn like a tractor the police haven't done this and it's you know I'm just trying to give an illustration hyperbolic in some ways but if they fund their Cruiser in their operating budget at the end of the year they say overtime created a bubble you would use that payment you don't have as much control over that Capital cost right so you're saying currently the 5,000 is baked in no it's pulled out it's been pulled out that's our threshold minimum threshold but like the you know the expense side on the town administrator's office the town Treasures Office like we can't afford a $5,000 piece of software without coming to right it's you're really worried about the DPW police and fire with these with these cost yeah and you the other flip side like as you guys remember the computer policy like at the schools used to be it was its own little like small cap site and one of these is only you know 1,200 or ,000 but you know there's lots of them but you don't do it that way so now it becomes an now it's almost a disposable right it has a threeyear life and it's gone so it's part of the operating budget okay just a quick legend for you so items in red have been removed from the plan items in yellow have moved or changed and items in green have been added so I'm going to take you into the plan um you we could certainly spend time debating a mower or not a mower I really want to get to the higher level stuff but I do want to show you the actual plan so you're not surprised when you see it we did take them down and again this is a projection and plan and model is not a budget so you have time to vet any of these requests so you can see there's a lot of price updating and movement and uh new things so um the school did a lot of adjusting of their costs as they contined to modify their Capital plan I think there's much more Fidelity in their plan now and as Stephen gets more um comfortable digging into the buildings he's he's discovering things that that are necessary and things that can wait so those are that represent some of those changes the wastewater treatment facility is really a year-to-year repair we have a 15-year repair plan that's 1.5 million which is why it's being divied out at 100 wasn't there's some talk of decommissioning you think that's I have been asked by the MFC to look into decommissioning the wastewater treatment plan huge conversation for another day okay you've been asked by whom to present information about the commiss the MFC okay um in favor of a septic system but there's a lot of politics there and there's a lot of um Health considerations Etc okay so just moving down uh again with your new DPW director and uncovering services versus equipment needs he's adjusted his plan I feel much more comfortable with Jim's grasp of the future of the project needs another important note here the truck that you purchased two years ago we still haven't received uh you remember that from the fire department and new diesel requirements or um environmental requirements on diesels means we probably won't see another truck for two to three years and that's not us that's the state but you only pay for it you authorize it when you want it but you pay for it when you when you get it get it and where's that money at the authorization or at the so this is we think we're going to authorize a truck the following year right but you w't actually pay the cash money for two years beyond that so if we authorize it for FY 28 we we would spend it in so this would be 27's annual town meeting authorizing it for the fall of 28 hoping it's delivered within a year okay but let's say it goes two years like it's going the cash actually doesn't leave us till we get it stays in a right holding account yeah road maintenance is a whole thing I'll get into that but this is part of the discussions that we've had and um with at this board and we talked about it with our working group and Jim went over and I went over a draft 5year plan that has not been finalized but it is represented here a lot of the fires the fire asks can be covered by the ambulance Reserve fund which is good it's another Reserve fund we have from ambulance receipts that allows us to pay for things that are related to to the ambulance um and other fire costs like building upgrades have been removed as you consider a new renovation if you didn't then a lot of the building costs that are there would come back in terms of one and two things cyclical Cruisers um other items as identified by by the chief chief amandola excuse me a lot of the recreation items are covered by potential CPA requests so we will scrub this whole plan for things like CPA and state and federal grants to try try and reduce these costs that that's not reflected in here unless we know for sure that funding is available and then I do want to call your attention to this one because it's going to be coming up we talked about it a little bit so the the elevators which were once 100,000 or 200,000 a piece we we had a design and construction documents done and they're ranging somewhere between three and 350,000 per elevator we can reduce the cost of that to a million or less if we do them all together so it's going to come to you from the MFC as a warrant article for a debt project for $1 million in the three elevators we have at this annual town meeting so that's why it's in there it will be covered by debt which I'll model for you in the presentation so we're not I don't really want to get into the nitty-gritty but are there any questions about this process or how we built this document and I'll give it to you so you can play with it so red is stuff you took out yeah but like the elevator for the library it got out here and then put back down there but right see just explained and the uh brick building is being paid for by wreck and it's being done now the vests for the police were it's all Grant funded right so this yeah obviously there's different Revenue sources for number well that's below though I mean he's not I think red means it got taken out of itot but this is this isn't necessarily net is something else entirely then you have to go to below the line and he shows this and these haven't gone through the budget process so taken out doesn't mean it's no F to complete one thing that came up at fincom though was did you put culverts in yeah another so the covert assessment is being done right now okay moving back into the show but you you cut the punch line there right that's the next one you guys like to know where things come from how much is it class all right so uh this is the plan in PowerPoint form how do we fund okay so the funding model and some options so always recommend using one-time funds for capital projects and not rolling big projects into the operating budget recommend using debt for larger project that's fairly obvious and then the funding sources just some notes on that so free cash requires an annual generation talked about conservativism in the operating budget equaling less buying power on the capital side debt obviously impacts your operational budget chapter 90 is relying on state Appropriations and other sources are not guaranteed but potentially available so CPA would have to approve you'd have to want to use ambulance Reserve funds and we'd have to maintain and and get grant funding arpa is also going away so that that is no longer a gift so this what Dave was talking about here is the recommending Finance recommended Finance strategy so the top line is your expenses or the requests so that's the summary of all of the the requests in that that spreadsheet and then the revenues are ways that you would pay for this so free cash is intentionally left blank because that's a budget decision chapter 90 I believe we'll get 400,000 next year but that does depend on state appropriation we've gotten it the last two years we're only really quote unquote guaranteed 250 so there is a little bit of Hope in that CPA funding has to be approved by CPA has to be available has to make it into that funding but um the pickle ball courts are the wreck is is going to try for this year would be a good CPA candidate debt million dollars for the elevator so before the out the out years of CPA you don't list it because we don't know there are no projects on that list that at this moment that you believe would qualify for CPA right okay and then uh debt is I'll model debt for you at a future slide but we're assuming that the the big projects would be controlled by debt and that other right there that's the an receipts for the power cut and loader that the fire department's talking about the reason why they're looking for a power cut and loader is there are there's a trend in larger patients that require a safer device like a power cut so that reduces the wear and te on our firefighters and allows us to safely process patients okay so considering before you can just go back so they can absorb that balance line right sorry I mean I think the takeaway here assuming those are good you know numbers which I think they are at least for three years upcoming you know we're in close to the $2 million of capital and that's without the buildings no police these are not the buildings right these are the things that go in the buildings not a okay right this is just regular capital and the biggest piece that Travis just identified that's not in here is is any major Culver we know of at least two we do think that they're good Grant candidates two that would be million plus expensive stuff and and uh at a general level the the road capital I I think was around 800,000 yeah and then what what exactly is that just more Paving so that'll be slide okay six slides from now is that that's I mean it goes back to goes back to the yeah yeah that's what it's com from I thought it was 500,000 per year so now I'm going to get into the you'll well that was to anyway so now I'm going to get into the big pieces that I just kind of glossed over that you're you're questioning okay so first of all Reserve so reserves are made up of the stabilization fund and free cash so our balances as of June 30th for stabilization were 1.3 million we know that interest is is high this year so so that is a conservative number but not not a ton we're looking at 12 15% interest already gained this year so that number could grow but not enough to cover the deficit free cash is just an estimate it's on the low side but that's what we think we're going to certify in the next month which if you calculate it through if you're looking at a 12% reserve of a projected budget that comes from the financial forecast so it is high you would need um 4.43 million in reserves to meet that 12% which gives you a free cash total of of usable money of 1.26 and this is projecting Capital um at 1.59 for which gives you a $300,000 deficit for for the request in FY 26 did they lose anybody no stabilization free cash take out the 12% which you're left with is about 1.2 million and you have to fund about 1.6 and I'm sorry 1.25 and you have to fund right 1.6 you also have 300,000 in your Capital stabilization fund so last year you had free cash above 12% you put it in cap stabilization for situations like this or some building project later David pointed out the capital is a lot higher in the next three years than it is in four five years so you might want to use your stabilization to get through that hump because we know we know more about what we have to buy now I promise you in four years but we're going to have to buy yeah which is why we have a stabilization Fund in order to try to carve that smooth it out yeah and I mean to Scott's point we could if we if we decided to reduce our Reserve we could meter that out as function as well or you do raise the taxes a little you know you you don't you don't totally squash the hump you might have to you put a ramp in yeah yeah right we just may be at a point where we're not on the high side of like yeah that's right you keep saving up for the rainy day it's starting to rain so I mean I'm not not saying you just throw caution to the wind but we have to strategically think about if there is an onus over the next few years how do we want to want to attack that yeah well we want to you know you want to me it's all about the rating I mean whatever the yeah absolutely want the good low rating so that when you need to borrow you can borrow cheapy absolutely okay so this is a this is more for the public than this board you're experienced enough to know this is how you close deficits yeah okay free cash generation I just want to emphasize that without generating free cash you have less less ammo for these capital projects so how do you generate free cash you're looking to project a 1% turn back from departments which means you don't want to strangle them with their budget however you do need to you know reduce the budget to a reasonable level so the more conservative you are with your budget the less free cash you generate state aid will need to hit the numbers that we're projecting in local receipts you would need to limit them to about 90% of actual right now we're at 83 which means we have a little cushion in our local receipts to increase our Revenue estimates however the more you do that the less free cash you generate all right debt let's talk about debt so the current this is our current debt load on the town side without the schools is 1.28 million we held that constant in this year's budget in order to assume future debt and here is that future debt so right now debt makes up 3.64% of our budget if you model in the costs here of these borrows from the capital plan so 1 million for the fire truck which has already been approved 1 million for the elevators which we talked about 1.1 for the town hall roof dispatch radios and school hbac and 750 for a DPW fuel pump which actually Services the whole town so DPW is misleading all right so that's just a light 4 million in borrowing you see the debt as a percent of the budget or the total budget impact stays fairly constant um and doesn't go crazy which would impact your operating budget so the the moral of this story is you can you can afford to borrow for the things you need but you probably cannot squeeze a building project into this debt load unless you significantly increase it as a percentage of the budget which means you're going to cut Services somewhere else which is acceptable decision I just want you to know the implications of that but on the other side you see it's starting to decline again for either future projects or if you wanted to weather or storm and model it so that again it's without buildings so it's part of the St right that's something else that we know coming start at all over you don't get paid for it by grants or really anything that's that is a lot of borrowing but these are these are going to be coming to you as projects that need to be done not want to be done yeah something like the town hall roof we talked about this in in capital right now it's scheduled for FY 27 could it last until FY 29 I think the consensus was sure will it last till FY 32 probably not at some point you'll have to do it so you can shift it around if you need to but it's not something that that you can just ignore forever the rtu also needs to be done so the timing of these projects is also important so the rtu is definitely not going to last that long but the roof might so you're going to have to figure out if you want to wait what's the rtu a rooftop unit and as I recall from you know 4 years ago when we were looking at this and trying to we just uh the MFC when I was still on the MFC uh we decided it was really important to do both at the same time because since the rooftop unit sits on a roof you don't want to put the rooftop unit on then have to take it back off in order to do the roof thing they both at end of life then well are to you more so than than the roof so the roof might last but then you would be redoing projects pushes the roof up on the I think the high level Point too I want to make is that we are digging out of the hole in terms of deferred maintenance and underinvestment in our buildings and infrastructure that I don't know how far go far back it goes but it goes back a long way so this is not us trying to build gilded buildings and all this it's trying to catch up on deferred maintenance and prevent extremely expensive failure yes and so this type of the investment in this deferred maintenance is critical not only because it needs to be done but if we don't do it we're going to have larger um unpredictable expenses down the road that you can't plan for so right so I think to to build on that point um when we think strategically about what what does the town have to provide what do we need to provide our citizens and what is nice to provide right and Tim H I was on a task force with Tim many many years ago and we kind of looking at that and he they called it bending the curve we were trying to pend the operating curve which we failed at that obviously but um security you know we go back now the master plan so like we can't have our buildings dangerous elevators that don't work culs that fail you know there's a bunch of things that we have to say to your point we've got to do those things I mean another way to look at the budget because we tend to look at it and sort of subtract but I think we should do an additive exercise I mean you could call it zerob based budgeting I think that's kind of misleading but you know we should lay a foundation of things we do that we have to do like protect our citizens fire police dispatch you know a Cs on you know Aging Services for that part of the population and those infrastructural things and you know so forth and then then there's a layer that's sort of I mean I'm just making it up as I go along but like schools I mean of course we have to educate our kids the question is to what degree and then on top above that honestly there's a lot of stuff that we do here that you know yeah we do it cuz I think it's a good thing to do or we do but it may not be Mission critical it just may not be Mission critical and you know I think we should think we got to think hard about how we stack that up yep all right a couple more huge decisions for you to think about okay here is um here's a train wreck here's the deadline thought it would be fun to throw some color into this presentation all right so the that's the dead line so in order to accomplish dotted line or the that's the trend line and the dead line is the solid Blue Line okay so there is a little Spike that you'll have to deal with in order to cover the 4 million but then it starts to decline again because the buildings are powering it down the old buildings the old buildings are coming off right and the equipment are the um the various things that were on that list that I just talked about y fire truck the elevator the town hall stuff yeah I don't mean to minimize it the town hall equipment and the fuel pumps yep okay okay I'm going to get into each one of these fuel consider Capital considerations and then that's the end so your fire truck Fleet is aging the 15 here Horizon has replacing a couple of those things and as you know they're very expensive so um $2 to4 million in fire trucks coming in the 15year Horizon which does match that that treadline but again doesn't allow for for absorbing absorption of building projects I keep saying that on purpose all right the um your major Renovations in in building projects and I do have a model for this to show you as well um so what 21.5 million in building costs okay which is just a number that I chose out of conversations that you've had that means nothing if you don't make actual decisions equals about 1.76 million annually in excluded debt so if you assume a 30-year borrow at of 5% uh if you assume 30-year borrow at 5% it's 1 Point 76 million okay so the tax impact and I just picked 1.8 million is 881 per average household at its peak and then it declines okay so that's on top of what we've modeled with the police station and the operating budget so 800 does include the police stations on a 20,000 does does on a $20,000 tax bill that's about a 5% up four and close to 5% increase on the average tax bill the 881 y he does no I so and I'm I'm bringing up John because he's here a lot and he talks about like big picture with these things so that $20 million number intentionally comes from the master plan and conversations you've had and that does include the the decline of the the town buildings the decline of the school buildings without replacing those with anything showing you on the town side we have to replace it with a lot of stuff on the school side to be determined but that capacity has been or will be eaten away which would not allow for new building projects without a tax increase how big that tax increase is is up to many different levers M and then road maintenance which we'll quickly get into so here is the tax projection for that uh discussion I just talked about so just taking and I know there's other buildings out there and I'm not I'm not picking favores I'm just talking about costs so you can see it it's a model it's not a policy decision so the the police building the fire and the DPW which are things that the town has to provide and I think will eventually come so is there a missing column of the year or what yes so this is just um this is just a model of of the cost when they start right but if you say police is I don't know next year then two years after that is fire and the year after that is DPW you should have had one more column and that could years yeah well I didn't want to well you could say t plus two I mean I all I'm saying is we already have the police station on the books so after you do the bond the what's the intern Bond the construction Bond whatever this kicks in the year after that right so is that like saying 26 27 27 so if line one is 27 that's just to calibrate 28 29 is fire and 30 is deeper so at its peak you'll see 881 added to the so-called 3% Target you have each year declining over time and if you don't do something to reduce the the impact or or gather capacity then that would be the cost so Scott our newest member don't go for a third term so what I want to talk about here is I talk a lot about what's the date on that 29 roll up in 29 started looking at properties 100 years from the stock market crashes perfect time it's basically another year of taxes these Building Products another year and a half of taxes the I just want to quickly talk about legislative priorities it talk a lot about the municipal building authority and adding a funding mechanism from the state that would defer some of these costs this is why so even in carile that has that has some wealth and some ability to pay these challenges are not they're not doable so if you do want to keep a DPW that's functional and safe for your employees and provides the services you know that might get squeezed out here because of its priority level you need some you need some help and the state should should be providing that everybody knows it every small town talks about it and that's why that's one of one of my biggest legislative priorities because this isn't a Carl problem this is a Massachusetts problem right but if you back out so 215 3.5 of that is fire right I mean police excuse me yeah so that leaves you 18 the DPW estimate is we haven't gotten no somehow I'm saying six so you're saying 12 and six right 12 and six so we're about to embark on a 12 for fire six for DP yeah we're going on a conceptual Journey those aren't big numbers by the way like they're not the MFC forward with something DP DP in November we're get to the budget right and that leaves poor op cohs community DPW you what about the Highland building that that's why we're having this discussion solu search of a problem right right no this is kind of trying to Big Picture put everything in perspective so that we as a board and the town can think about well what priorities right what what is our what is our role like what is the role of town government what services do we need to provide do we want to yeah to your point earlier point you know we haven't raised it in a while but yeah the regional ation word should be part of the conversation I will add again surrounded by five extreme much larger well-managed towns that do a lot of services pretty well and probably could incrementally add some things you know not I you know I get it not you know police not schools blah blah blah but you know there are things that could be added that they could probably absorb for us that would um might not be cheaper in the operating line but might in aggregate be more cost effective it's a thought but I think it's good that we're planning we now and that would be a benefit down the road if can I add another just general topic that I think at some point we we have a responsibility to at least put forward to the town to either affirm or reconsider is the CPA sech charge yeah cuz again percent is yeah 2% and again 2% of the tax the town has affirmed it but I think in the context of all this discussion so a $20,000 tax bill which is where we're angling it's up it's capped at a certain um it's 400 bucks is it that it yes is there Max that you can pay I'd be guessing but no it's it there is a cap it doesn't it's not on the entirety of your so it's not the whole thing no but but if we're talking about building project it might be the difference between if a if a police station's 160 I just bring it up as a as a it's it's an OP it's not part of the budget it's its own thing and I think is I think as for the taxpayers as we're laying out at some point this year or next year we're laying out all these things they should at least it's it's a you're in it till you're not in it so you should have periodically just either just put it forward to affirm right as we've done in the past or maybe Town looks what's the typical match at this point it's not great it was 17% this course where else are you going to get 177% on your money but it's restricted how you can use F I think what's important what would the important calculation would be uh because we're using CPA funds for some for things so what would the difference be if you uh because you'd have to raise that amount of money in taxes and you would not and 17% they can't take away what you've already already have or or in an option is also to lower it to 1% it doesn't mean has to be zero that's true but I I I think we do need to I just think it carefully it's part of the resident tax I think you got a clue you got a clue from uh it's good to just periodically don't don't know it and it's it's an it's a you got to it's just something that I think it's good policy the town should just affirm every however many years I think you have a window if if Ryan's he showed it in one of the slides there were three years of CPA usage and then there was nothing and I asked him the question was there were no projects on the projection list well the B I mean but there possibilities some of them are going to be big ticket so are you guys doing that long range sort of modeling or not modeling but at least we're trying we're trying we're not we're not as far along but yeah yeah I would say conservation consom has a lot of budgetary needs that we that if they weren't being taken care of in CPA would have to taken care of by our operating budget and that would cost us 17% more but again it's a modeling to Scott's Point modeling exercise of all that all the same what's the appropriate replenishment cost the taxpayers more it would cost the taxpayers more ultimately than the 2% they're paying on it now but the those projects that are approved for CPA funds if we did the prioritization and they were part of the budget we probably wouldn't do some of them well then that then that becomes deferred maintenance and possibly and I don't I don't know I think the I like I think my recommendation is that you have input from your committee on the projects and then we can ask cons come and we can model what the spend curve looks like compared with our balances which are pretty healthy right now and maybe the solution is like a 1% maybe we dial back and again I'm not saying for or against I'm just saying is if we're having this big discussion and we're showing people the tax things over time I think it's it's good to remind people that there is a sear charge that the town has opted into that we will be in unless there's a vote to get out right and it's good to just periodically does the so if we put in $100,000 the state puts in 177,000 or later when you spend the money they give you that how does that work you certify a total yeah then you get the match you get the match not necessarily for a project is correct no you get the money in the cof your job is to not spend and I forget where it was funded and there is a mo there is some movement to fund it uh higher than what it's been funded that um and to do it consistently when we first started it was 100% match yeah I mean we um that Mak sense 10 years we made a lot and it still very much Mak makes sense but it's I just don't want it to it's always good to reff a hidden tax that people have forgotten about it's not hid it's on there but it's but yeah people don't realize it's well actually some people it's the other way they think every time we vote on a CPA Grant that's raising their taxes don't realize we already have the money but whatever but it's I think it's just a good I got you um I want to ask one thing on this so Ryan you had talked um about the ability to use CPA funds to pay the interest on CPA eligible projects right if we had to borrow so am I saying that right I would want the lawyers way in but if the bog house was going to become a debt project you could use CPA to pay the debt yeah so if you wanted to take one of these big Community projects off the table then CPA if used strategically could be a way to do it but it would have to be housing wreck right fall within the eligible yeah so B house would qualify if we did the number one Community problem that CK might be able to solve that's a big big project right so that's good too yeah good all right but it's outside of the budget so we don't but it we need to think about strategically how how we utilize CPA right yeah well that's what Barney is taking the lead on and any legislative just sit there and just momentum to broaden the use of CPA funds would be great too um well and you know what discussed actually it raises also what we talked about not too long ago about doing more to um connect with our State Rep and state senator rather in addition to individual Outreach like maybe it's time to have set up time for them to come back which they've done in the past we haven't done that in a couple of years I process of reaching out to them on the issue of the TA bylaw so I will actually encourage them and say hey would you mind coming in and maybe we just have a session where we can talk to them yeah but I do I do see a potential need to communicate to the community if say we go down the road and we say well we're going to do this bog house renovation but we're not doing a community Center and people want to understand why are you doing this but not this and it's like well we're using these funds here but we can't use I think there's it's part of the part of the conversation we have with people because I think the Nuance for a lot of people of CPA versus not is not understood is not understood or where the funding comes from and I think whether it's a question we bring to the town I think it's my expectation is that we'll find use for CPA funds that people will look at and say well why are we spending money on this but we're not you know doing this which seems more important it's so well we can't do that with CPA funds but we have these funds we can so I I do think it'll be just be part of the communication regardless so I don't want to leave Scott hanging so road maintenance yeah um here is a just a very simple projection based off of the two inputs you've given Gemini which are to maintain the current PCI rating or around there plus include some parody roads so we did that which we're going to be presenting to you in an actual plan and this is what that plan would look like so it's somewhere between uh seven and 750 to 800,000 for the next four years and then it does taper off a little bit assuming you don't want to continue to aggressively address the backlog we expect around 400,000 a year based off recent Trends in chapter 90 you'll also know or remember that I advocate for this heavily when I talk about legislative because I think roads matter to people and you want to do more but of this Capital decision- making keeps you from this type of investment which is 400,000 a year which would be a lot so that's the delt so that would need to be in the capital plan why is it so high in 25 90 we got extra money didn't we oh that's the um excess we have because we weren't spending previous years okay so we got one time we were able to do some good that's going to be huge for us this well this is this year it's this year's so we're going to do everything we've already contracted plus some Ro assuming you agree and then we get into a more simple maintenance plan yeah so that's why those 400,000 are in the capital plan because it because of this but you haven't approved this plan yet and that certainly can go up and down depending on what you need just a quick thing so before we were talking about this am I right that we were saying 500 million a year just to 500,000 500 million that sorry sorry sorry 500,000,000 just to um sort of stay where we are not make any improvements improvements and it wouldn't address the parody roads like right traffic roads this is um this bakes in more it's baking in more than we had talked about before yeah this these the outlier roads these roads that only have six people on them we talked a lot about yeah whether it's fair that they're included or not and what service level do you need to provide so that's what this looks like yeah but we used to spend you know zero right now it's another catchup it's a catchup but I mean PCI parody I agree with it but you know it could be bumpier right it's kind of like one of those trade-offs yeah right people I've had multiple residents comment on the paving this year to me I don't know if you received those saying wow great have appreciated it right oh and and driving on from oh yeah it's much better one Monument oh my gosh yes all I hear the complaints about the guard rails being so yeah yeah guess depends on where you live if we take guard rails out of this yeah right we go with like normaliz guard rails does it cut the budget so I've already hit a lot of these conclusions um but maintaining this model does require careful attention to a lot of the things that you brought up plus operating costs and I think operating costs get lost a lot in this because as you look at each request each one of them makes sense so if you don't look at them in in its totality then you can't accomplish big things addressing future capital I do think you know how to address deficits the uh larger considerations outside of this model are the building projects keep talking about larger investments in road maintenance which includes those culverts and then uh something that's discussed occasionally in this board is major land purchases so that's not in this model either which is um some some of you say can we buy this piece of land and I always say of course we could but there would have to be some trade-off in this plan as well so nothing is ever bad it's just a trade-off yeah okay I did want to show you this before I'll talk about this all night but I know you going to send us all those slides and the tools and again this is not meant to be the presentation it's meant to be a thought-provoking conversation starter and then you can use the model to do whatever you want with it to say what would happen if I did this or what would happen if I do that yeah um but it's meant to start the budget process all right so this was sent to you last year for or two years ago for Budget goals 22 oh my god when you started I guess yep and we talked about setting goals so now you've seen the full model that you've asked me to build and its implications I'd like to go back to this so what priorities does the board want to communicate to departments in the budget process what directions do you want to give departments about um constructing their budgets to include increasing or decreasing Services Staffing levels debt levels okay and then your free cash levels your reserve levels and your Capital spending your goals should address all of these points so that uh the finance committee knows what to do so you they know how to shape the budget for you and your departments know what they're facing in terms of requests so if you truly are going to hold the operating budget to 3% then then that means a less than level Services budget for the Departments unless something gives in the budget process so that type of be really important for this first draft of the budget you get do you want it to look like your priorities or not the more information you input into the budget process the better that's going to be What's the timing of that we have to do that so we're delivering those instructions to the Departments around Halloween so the end of this month so that means we got to do that like next meeting and you have time on the agenda for it okay I would say back to the you know 3% the comment of three so prop two and a half I think was very cleverly designed what 40 years ago 50 years ago and there's there's a lot of towns pushing to increase that yeah and but it was designed at an era of inflation at about two and a half and so it really was subtle like you just should keep Pace with inflation you shouldn't increase what you're doing so it's kind of a in those days it was kind of a level service mandate and we've been fortunate in this country like everybody's talked about it I mean we lived with low interest for a long time and then suddenly prices started going up so so yeah I think 3% at least is the new two and a half in terms of if your if your mindset is level service but that's not the law the law is two and a half so that is another strategic question for us are we going to go in you know it builds on the other things we've been saying should we be looking at a dis you know discretionary let's call it discretionary service budget in other words certain things we'll do if we can and we won't do if we can't I yeah well in fact the thing is though regardless of what our decision is we we should know what that Baseline is so that we can present it to the towns people so they understand well we got great tools now yeah so we should be able to distill it yeah and we should you know we I I would say this is a little bit of a segue but um you know I've spent a lot of time in the last few months thinking about town meeting and with the committee that we have and Kate's been in a couple sessions we're going around to the other committees now and we're socializing all this and a lot of it I mean there's a whole bunch of stuff about could you have it on a Sunday and get more you know parents with the kids and stuff but but a big chunk is can we socialize these issues in advance to get people so they really come in more knowledgeable about it than just the three hours that they sit there like to really understand and and have really even if we can like these coffee table kind of conversations with citizens like you know what's important you know uh let's look at the we you know the NBTA community's um sub be having an open house exactly maybe uh let's take a look at um the response we get to that because I think that might be something that we should be thinking about we could do that houses we could have we can show you know um some of these choices and the things that we're wrestling with so that people if nothing else understand what we've G through to get to our recommendations you well we can't see who's on or not what is that's it that's it two reporters okay so I mean honestly they have they have they can help I know but then then they anyway know right we don't I like where that's going and I would say us and our staff um I would say that uh because people's institutional memories or their memories are kind of short that unfortunately we have to make certain budgetary decisions like in the now time but we really need to generate citizen interest and participation in the run up to town meeting yeah so that would be a time I mean we'll have a lot a lot of numbers will know where yeah getting people more engaged in this I think is good you know is really and it's the how how do how do you do you you know how to get people's interest you start talking about a big tax or or reducing services that say that's okay you know that's okay directions okay right so I mean quite honestly a lot of people aren't engaged because they're okay with how things we we do a lot of work and we hear from a lot of constituents but a a lot of this town is just let me write the check and go on with my day and right or you don't even write the check it's Bak into your yeah it's bit into your mortgage and you know and so again I think part of the lack of awareness and interest is people saying things are are okay at least okay enough where I'm not getting involved and so the way you get people out of that is you do something that they don't like or yeah and it's much more people tend to react more to something being taken away than something being added I think in yeah I think yeah yeah well I don't know I mean we we'll we'll see but on the other hand yeah if I were to kind of assess the if there's a consensus here though is that I think that at least what I'm reading is that we were kind of on board with many of the assumptions that have gone into this not to say that we're not going to tweak things or whatever but and Scott I see you G A little maybe not but yeah I mean 12% but I think those are those are minor changes but I'm talking about the if last year you know David you pointed out we we set a 3% Target yeah and then you're saying two and a half is just too low I I tend to agree you know in today's inflationary environment but I want to hold it down as much as we can for the long term because we'll be in such a better that's exactly what Ryan's tool is telling us exactly if you go to three in a prop two and a half world you eventually run it to your Levy limit you do and you face an operational override plus you're constraining your ability to the capital projects right but right you know okay maybe that's see you know that is another strategy and say we're going to crash into that we're going to crash into that line and we're going to deal with that in and and I just know from experience that uh 2third of our budget is schools Y and just contractual wage increases of service level accounts for about a 2% growth in the budget right that leaves you 1% for everything else and everything else is growing more than 1% right out of District transportation utilities and so insurance insurance 3% is not does not get you to service level right 3% sounds two and a half certainly doesn't two and a half doesn't three and a half three with some fa aable wins yeah you can you can kind of make it work I don't think you can make it work for the long term but you can get by um and I think that's the challenge is even at you could say 3% to me that's that doesn't get you to a level service budget it means you you're making some what are your comparable towns talking when you get together with you're the chair of the small town something right what what kind of percent increases are they looking at in their operating budgets honestly three four times more than what we're talking about three or four times three or four times like 12% so Dunville last year went for 26% no but but we can do service level for that so the caveat to that is your taxes are considerably higher than those those towns but didn't Acton just do a what was there I don't want to guess what their percentage is but it it wasn't three it was more like six or seven okay but the ones who aren't hitting overrides they're just there's not many towns there's not many so we're lucky cuz we have the CHR most towns are at their living limit we are and for everyone watching at home both of you um the um all this being said audience at watches L we are in a we are Carlile is an extremely good position I know this all sounds like Doom and Gloom but we are in a good position relative to other towns in the Commonwealth in terms of having some ability to make choices and make tradeoffs some of them just don't have that ability yeah I'm just want to Circle back to your point though and I asked the question earlier about the variables and which one has the most impact obviously schools and you say you know it's 23ds of our budget so this is the type of presentation that you and needs to go to the school committee so that they see the bigger picture of the town and the impacts that their budget has on all of us yeah that that's the thing that I I always say you know because they're such a big thing it's like you know when you're trying to say money in the house and you turn off the lights or something instead of um I don't know doing not buying a new car you know um there's such a huge right impact that even if you totally cut the entire rest of the budget out you know that doesn't make enough difference they have got to do some right but they represent you know school committee members run and are elected by run often I would say not always but run because they are parents and are representing the parents well they are elected by the entire understand in my six years in that seat I absolutely told everybody it's irresponsible to be parochial you have it's absolutely but but they're over there and their administrators are over there and their missions are what's the highest quality education we can provide our children very important goal and you know again it's at the margins I mean they have to be willing to stress test for example what's been pretty sacred for a long time which is class size yeah yes you know those are things they have to challenge and you know if but they have to we have to I mean we need to get with them we need a joint session we do kind of get those missions aligned and they need some greater understanding motivation to want to at that all right I got to keep us back on track here because thank you Ryan that's great Ryan that was terrific there Not only was it great we're going to roll right into the next kind of crazy saying that wasn't that was I did the presentation Y and now I I'm all dry and can't talk but the um the work was done by gelly the staff um and the the working group certainly informed a lot of the assumptions and everything so the motto was built by a team for sure yeah if you put in a capital item for a money printing machine I think we would is this a presentation worth giving to the school committee a version of it I think I always think that you know connecting people to the biger plan helps so maybe you and I can discuss because we're just kicking off they're kicking off the budget process right and so I think distilling some of this down to a you know a digestible right overview I think would be helpful and we can get on a school committee agenda and just give them kind of a similar distill down version of what we just went through yeah I think that would be helpful for them I think it would be yeah joint meeting I think it would be helpful for the administr everyone involved yeah I agree okay so we'll work towards that um we do need to move on so we're going to move to the Town Administrator evaluation um this is the public evaluation of the Town Administrator and it was published in the packet um but I do want to quickly go through that um for everyone's benefit and then uh have everyone can take a brief moment if you wanted to share any comments um that were published here or anything else and then the the TA and and the select board need to talk about uh the ta's goals for going forward so um this performance evaluation was part of our our plan to really standardize this this is an evaluation that's used by other members of the or other staff members in the town um it's just been tailored a little bit to the Town Administrator we went through this it was submitted to to each member each member filled it out individually their definitions of your rankings of outstanding EX four would be exceeds expectations three would be successful meets expectations two needs Improvement or one is unsatisfactory um and we're trying to standardize this evaluation um we went through the it included the town administrator's own self evaluation and assessment of performance goals the level of achievement as well as a final assessment of the uniform performance criteria um the final evaluation including the average score on each category was all that information was sent to me and I compiled it into this uh letter that was is a town uh is the uh official Town administrative performance evaluation as you can see in there um by the overall performance average in the leadership category the 4.6 the attitude judgment dependability and creativity 4.8 uh resident uh customer service 4.8 communication skills 4.6 job knowledge ability to learn new skills 4.6 and goals 4.6 for a subtotal of 28 we had six of these criteria and remember we came up with these criteria in um to of what we think is important in our Town Administrator as well as in our town staff and um the the the overall average ranking is 4.7 out of a five um and in summary I I put this in the last paragraph the chair would like to express the select board's sincere appreciation for the excellent overall performance of Our Town Administrator Ryan mlan as the overall score of 4.7 out of five indicates Ryan is a top performer and is well respected by the select board he objectively exhibits top marks in the qualities that the select board seeks to measure Annie holds himself to the highest high standards of achievement Ryan not only has the technical skills of a highly qualified administrator but also possesses the essential interpersonal skills needed to succeed in this the role of Town Administrator we're grateful for his continued service to our town so that is the official um evaluation um we did meet with you individually uh each of us um and there were comments that I had included in here as they were provided to me verbatim so if we want to anyone wants to make additional comments I think this was you know well done and I think well received I agree anyone else have anything to say otherwise we will move on to talking about his goals for the next year I I um I just encourage since this is a public document now I do encourage people to read our comments I don't want to redo them right now um I just and I just also would like to where is it live where would people find it it is in the meeting packet um I did see that there's a mosquito reporter on the um call maybe it will I mean people can always probe the depths of the meeting packet to find nuggets but yeah should we is this on the under ta do you want to put it under the TA select board um but it it it should good to have it get made public I mean you you know we always see something about the superintend school superintendent evaluation and that gets described in the mosquito I don't know where else that lives well we could be on our select I mean this is a different conversation I don't have tonight but we have a spot in the website we could redesign our area of like a select board spot mean all we have the minutes you got to read all the minutes you got to know which minutes to read I mean yes I think we have the control to design that part of the website true put things we want to highlight and maybe we should take that on as as if everyone wants to as a board have that published I'm sure that we could have that staff publish that on I would like to see that published yeah yeah I would too okay great you know where you'd put it like a cont can we do like a restaurant can we just put a little sign in the window that says no I think it's it's well and I hope you you you know understand that we are very happy with your work here for our town and um that the your evaluation reflects that yeah yeah and it and it's going to it it you know as I said briefly in mind but and when you think about the impact well it's it's really about you know making our town work more effectively work better um having residents feel better about how town government works um you know all of those things are you have a direct impact on that and um that very important thank so just briefly um I I would just like to say that that I am the face of a team and the team supports me very they cover up a lot of my uh many weaknesses with with their skills and I I think that's the point of assembling a good team so I think the comments that you're making and the conversations I've had with you I was thinking a lot about the staff and what the work they did that enabled some of those comments and conversations and the stuff that we've moved forward so I just want to make sure make sure I say that also when I interviewed I said I thought that I would be a good fit for this town and um I think it's because of the volunteerism here the willingness of the the people to engage to include yourselves and um the idea that that staff is looking looking to get some stuff done a lot of people are really surprised by how much Carl does how how active we are for a small town and um it's it's an incredible honor to to work here and to lead this it's extremely challenging and rewarding um but I'm very excited about the future and what I'm taking from your your evaluation is is to keep going and to try to accomplish these many many important goals that are are just a good model for small towns everywhere you so thank you for the opportunity thank you for the kind words and we had a lot to do I'd like to make a general comment that I mean one of the reasons I I uh decided to run and join the select board was I thought both on the select board um and through the Town Administrator and and your team and in general I thought there's a real opportunity right now to make some real positive changes in Carlile in in ultimately with the with the goal of providing the services to the town that they need that they demand in a way that respects uh the taxes they pay and how those expenses are being used and tremendous amount of progress has been made but I want to make the point to everyone that progress is not a straight line there are going to be missteps there going to be mistakes and one of the things I wanted to communicate to Ryan was we shouldn't be afraid of making those mistakes and when they happen I think we all need to you know be receptive to the criticism but keep pushing forward because I do think we have the common goal of of implementing change for the better in Carlile and fixing some things that haven't been working well and and putting some new things in place and so we just need to be patient with it we need to be tolerant of the missteps um and in Ryan I you know I just said I encouraged him to keep pushing and don't be afraid of that and and I think we'll get to a much better place it'll never be perfect we're never going to solve all the problems Massachusetts will make sure of that but you know real progress is being made and we need to keep driving forward on that but ultimately it's about providing the town with the services yeah that they need in demand right great okay that's well said um anyone else or you want okay um all get the pleasure someday of a public evaluation when they go like thisw his yes well and I still don't like you honestly when you're a boss you get kind of a public evaluation all the time all the time you get all the time you get a public evaluation PR much the time you get feedback right away your next one of the mosquito we'll that's different you're right now you're right we're on the website um the Town Administrator goals for fiscal year 25 Ryan had provided those um his proposed goals um one of the things that I actually had thought about in this I just wanted to kind of kick off this idea but you know when Ryan came in we we had tied this to basically it's it's contractual in timing and in nature because the these evaluations are done at this time of year just based on when he was hired but I in my mind most of you know Ryan's goals are really aligned with our goals as a select board and I want to figure out if there's a way to really meld those so that that when the select board sets our goals for the year those essentially become Ryan's goals not that I think these are too far from it and I think there are some Nuance too where Ryan has some personal goals which he's trying to have us adopt which are good personal meaning his professional development which I think is great that he wants to to undertake that but I do want to try and see if we can rather than have two sets of goals where at the end of the year we look and say well did we accomplish our goals and really that should be tied to Ry and and you know they're not on the same they're not on the same cycle and they may not be 100% alive and so if there's a way we can do that and I I asked Ryan to think about that as well but um you know I don't know if you want to go through this um go through your goals and I don't know if that changes our I mean I Ryan's doing a great job our evaluation indicates that so I'm not trying to rock the boat but I think that if we can somehow um tie them closer to our he doesn't I mean his goal cycle is a historical artifact of when he was hired right yeah correct we can change right he could he we we can put him on our we need to do our calendar based on the fiscal calendar so we we have less flexibility but is there any reason I thought his contract says that we will evaluate him next soon is a new contract right when's the next one it's in we are right we are in process with the attorneys to start that process we can do that with the next contract to have that so right so there's nothing statutory that says we he we can put him on our timeline right I guess just not this moment no no no I know but in the long run but I just throw that out there because I think that would be helpful and I you know okay well then just specifically thinking practically for instance about how we've done our goals in the past we've typically you know started in July talking about goals for that actual fiscal year because we want the if they're new board members they should be participating in that right but then we have this situation where right the we've done we're we're doing our goals in the midst of the actual year and that's our no but is our goals for our upcoming term or is it for the year no like the one our goals are for fiscal year 24 the ones we I mean 25 the ones we have right now that we did this summer Scott stepped into that position this year so these goals were already established no no I'm not arguing about that I'm just saying we were you were involved in the goal setting um for this for the select for yeah for the select for right but not these goals and right because this happened the summer before um yeah this is garbage I don't no no go to the 24 the section before we did before anyway to get back on track though I think if Ryan you want to go through these and if we as a board want to just you know confirm or change or whatever but it would be helpful I think for you to just talk a little bit about that okay so I did try to align I did try to align my goals with yours um I see the difference clearly there's a difference between our jobs but my job is to execute your goals and to try and help you accomplish them uh in certain pieces of them so I always have your goals as as my goals I just tried to make some quantifiable you want tangible things to hit that that meet your goals that can actually be achieved um did I say that out loud no so I can go through quickly Financial sustainability um the capital plan still has a couple layers that need to be added one that's that's clearly missing is ADA compliance and another one is horizontal construction layers which is your your colberts Etc so just making that model you've asked me to build better and then your shared services you heard a little bit about that tonight um that's a goal of yours that you've been trying to accomplish so I think my goal is to get you across the line with that in terms of getting the Grant and getting the people in here with your limited time to talk about it Carlo character finalizing that fire station renovation project so that we can understand if that is a go or not and then um I think there's a real need to finish the long-term maintenance planning for the bog because a lot of those questions are not only financial but the character of the to where is it going and I am helping them to bring a draft into the budget process that would that would start that process myob job is to to manage them to get to the financial solution not to inject a policy environmental stewardship you talk constantly about um when are we going to transition to Municipal fleets Etc I just like you to give information um so that you're not in every budget cycle saying well is this an electric vehicle and actually give you a tangible plan that you can you can work on and then there are there are parallel processes going on like MVP and climate leader that need to be melded into the capital planning I see that as a as a function of the Town Administrator for connectivity and access mirroring your goal and bringing Town staff to all buildings one of the things that we're doing is we're going to the library and we're all going to get our library cards and do a tour uh we have all our buildings yeah we've have we we beyond the bog have we been bog house have we been to any we get on that all right on that to me that's his goals digitizing records is a you know Horizon thing that needs to be started now so I'm just hoping to push that ball forward and it's a political thing so I've already poked um your chair to try and get get some of the boards in line online with a plan to digitize records yes it's caring Community Ada uh planning is important to to me the town and to the master plan so I just wanted to get that on the radar stabilizing the Benfield property um that's not very quantifiable or accomplishable but we should we should focus on it for your for your goals and then just to explain briefly the staff goals this is what I require of people that report to me so one goal connected to the master plan one goal connected to Department Improvement and one goal connected to improving themselves so I I mirror that in my goals by doing doing the same so my three goals that I report to staff and accountable for are secession planning for all Town departments um I think that reduces silos and all the things in the master plan creates plan for the future Financial stability all the things that the master plan preaches our department goal is creating a predictable and replicable Outreach calendar so people can have more access to the executive office in town and then my personal goal is to um to become a certified credential manager through icma which you've invested in and the state what does that mean icma it's the international County and manager association it's the top certification for a town or city manager I have applied they just have to say I'm worthy y are there any comments on this questions I guess sry I didn't I haven't thought through the other ones but certainly on the finance side I mean these are good and I I love the tool and I think you're in the wrong year oh I am on the old ones oh okay last year's um even so even more to the point I think um these are important but we've been just spent an hour and a half talking about the Big Goal yeah which is to help guide us to True Financial sustainability which is matching the town's willingness to pay and what they want and that has to be like our top priority and it also needs to be I think Ryan the the other one that came out of my discussion with Ryan and maybe it's there already is is really defining and socializing a vision for Town Hall and what it what it should become or be in terms of key goals I mean I I see I was kind of expressing my view of what how I saw Town Hall operating in the future to Ryan and I think your thing was you guys should discuss that I mean some of these big questions about how much are we investing in digitization how much do we want to like provide services on online versus in person what you know structurally we talking about the bylaws around the the org structure and all those things um I think there's work to be done on really making sure we're in agreement about the vision for for where you go with Tom Hall process-wise servicewise I think that's another big piece um that's kind of baked into everything okay that's one of my favorite right I think that car is it needs to be a Nimble small town that provides yeah yeah Innovative services and and attracts the type of employees who are looking for like to work really hard but in in a flexible and productive way otherwise I think the town you know 10 20 years from now will be in trouble because it won't be able to provide the type of services that have been provided for the last 20 years you won't be able to recruit the type of people that that work that way way so the faster the town transitions to that the better position you'll be in 10 years but that's a policy thing I mean that's just what I think professionally but that has a major impact on how the community gets services so really do need to talk about it yeah we really should it's an important Conversation Set ofers it's a high level initially with a lot of Downstream plus I have to say it's also kind of tied to the TA bylaw because U there are some departments that need well there there are some things coming up though Kate too about that like we're going to talk about hours Town Hall hours and as a board I think we're going to have to decide that in November prior to the tax bills going out so you we're going to make some of those pieces but you're right we should conceptually talk about that maybe we can carve out some time and I I think if we can articulate again not in we're not looking for a 800 page document but a vision right and then we as a select board need to evangelize it among the community and within town hall right so that you know if if we're hitting a roadblock in a certain area whether it be getting this record scanned it's like no this is what we're moving towards and and and then you know any bylaw would kind of feed into a larger Vision then you could tell a story right um but I don't know it doesn't sound like that's really been coales yet well you know things in min iple environment always move glacially no but I mean Among Us among us we can at least right we could try to get well it's the same advice that you gave Ryan like you know we can break a few things and some of them maybe we put back together and some of them maybe we just sweep up and put in the bin right so I think you know we should I I I think we've been okay at being bold I mean I we're certainly a bolder in my years of government service I think we this is the most proactive uh but we're we're reaching the point where where we want to go is in conflict with it's it's the future versus existing what do you keep what do you like how yeah and we're kind of getting to that point where he's I I feel like enough progress has been made now it's time to really well empowering him to do more I think we we're lined up on that right we just had to get there we got a plan right I'm saying we we've you know not that we've uncovered it's been long Ryan's model is putting in high relief quantifying a challenge that we know has been there forever we've talked about it all the 20 years I've been in regionalization and trades and blah blah blah so we have finally you know a tool that is really clear and we need to use it we need to go somebody said it evangelize I agree with that I we've got to go out to the other board I mean go to the other boards and committees most of them either work for us or look to us and I think we should be out there talking about it and both things right we need a strong Town Administrator we need to do certain things to be efficient that way and we need to do the we need to understand these goals really clearly I think a lot of it's on us to to kind of push that out and I think we need to figure out more ways to engage with residents yes and find out want right what do you know you talk about their demands well and and you know some of it is people are generally pretty happy with how things are going right but for us if we want I love Kate's idea of using the MBT let's see how that goes this month but right you know to an event I yeah are we allowed to have we can't have alcohol in public can no we'd have to have it at my house at the F FRS something no but seriously no you know you have a glass of wine and you talk about I mean that was something that's really come out of my um our I should say the committee my committee's foray to these other boards is how great was the kitchen table conversations how much do we learn when we actually get together with other citizens and have a real honest discussion about the challenges and unfortunately there's so few opportunities we all lead such compartmentalized life lives and there's no public space here really but I mean maybe we could rent ferns for night I don't know I mean we we should think about like out of the out of the box sounds cliche but you know kind of interesting ideas to to get more people to come if we have just coffee hour or something where like two people show up but if we could do something social yeah you know all right an effort to keep us on target I think we got I know this was good I think we're going to move on um do we have to approve those goals though at this meeting or do how what would you like to do what would we like to do sorry as a board well I'd just say we we we offered some feedback and I don't know if that changes how you're thinking about any of this Ryan um but maybe we should have a sort of another other conversation I don't know if you want to I mean what specific feedback though yeah you probably want some specific tangible goals right only if you're if you're GNA rate me on it then obviously but the you know feedback on should I be focusing on these things for sure yeah because I am right now and if you don't want me to then right I'm also focusing on personally goals we're giving you sort of big picture feedback and your most of your goals are specific yeah like that's the way they're supposed to be smart goals I like while you guys are talking I'm thinking okay there's holes in this Capital plan that they need more info on in order to make these decisions right so like my goal are tied to filling in those holes and making sure you're getting you're getting stuff so that's why I picked a lot of them um but you know if you want like the bucket of I think one of the most important things in town hall not the most important is attracting and retaining quality yeah quality people right and obviously we want to do some things that Empower you to to do that that's that's us that's our goal no but I mean our goal well no but well he's kind of right so if he were to put that down that's not specific and if we don't in fact he does that every day like he gets good people every day so but it's I don't it it's kind of it's a goal it's a high level goal but it's not a I guess my I don't know if the chair wants to take it on oneon-one with the administrator but I would like to see the big picture baked back in Som this is a lot of small discreet things that certainly Ryan can and will accomplish right the question though is as Ryan's saying if I'm raid on that is it because it's so big picture now I I tend to think that that that's a better approach because I think much of our evaluation here you know the written comments were the big picture right and we're we're focused on the big picture so as much as you have the specific goals and we know you're accomplishing them it's really about the big picture of you know our overarching goals and you're you're you're meeting those you're not you're exceeding them or yeah you are right right so but it's I it's tough because we have this very analytical way of evaluating him and so he's looking but actually actually we don't a year from now when you put that form out again we're not going to say well he did the said in my comments like oh these goals are nice but all of our comments had as you said so you're not going to be rated on these anyway you're going to be rated on big no it was one of the six it was it was did you look at any of that I just I did I didn't I'm like you didn't well management like I don't look at the the street L is he a good manager he's a good manager he hires well people like him but there were I'm say I looked at a couple never rating then looked at it no I I've been doing this a long time have a different I'm just saying we should we are big picture we want to be we should be the so my challenge is go back you can have you know a disc thing and a big picture thing rather do we really want him spending his time doing that or do we want him just don't put goals I don't care but that's the goals that we're going to have you know or do we want him filling holes in the in the you know he will do that doing actually what he's saying that he would like to do here you know I mean you know what Kate I'm changing my tune a little bit that's a good point at least for this year let's figure it out for the next thing so I would recommend that we may just these are because they are in ke I didn't see anything out of of and they are specific and you can rate on them because you can say yeah you did it no you didn't and and one of the things when I saw them when I did my evaluation with them was to say maybe these should be sorted into long and shortterm goals because the ones that you don't think you're going to be able to accomplish right away maybe should be put in a in a somewhat Start Plan rather than complete right but I I do understand how he categorized them and you know that was with the master plan and all that yeah exactly so I you know I I don't think we should be spending a whole lot of time on this all right anyone else if you weren't doing a good job I would would not be saying that and to David's point I mean the performance categories are like staff management leader we have those high level I think we all just populate those so I think it's probably good for you to have some achievable tangible goals versus like all right okay so do you want to vote to uh include these as his goals for 202 5 six fiscal year of 25 sure just so that it's does it have to be a vote yeah why not okay so I move uh we include these goals for um Town Administrator Town administrators evaluation of 20 fiscal 25 excuse me seconds okay okay I can almost not when is the his contract up for Renewal so is it June 30 well if we're to cancel I think it's what in February when is but it's in a June isn't it well your H date was August but by June we have to kind of have it all but can we you have to notify me by February February but let's assume what I'm trying to say is if we fast forward pass can first of all when you do the renewal can we line it up to June 30 so I I asked for that U mid contract and the the answer was and I respect the answer was we don't want to set that press in renegotiate but you absolutely can I'm going to sest so assuming that because these goals will take us out essentially that's my point right I'm fine with these goals they're going to take take us not to August take us to June and with the assumption that we're going to renew and that that's going to be in line with our own terms and that we will then develop not in August but in June or whenever we get around you know when we're doing our games goals we do our goal setting with him let's get them all lined up right that would be my rather than a separate polic that makes sense okay so we had a motion a second um so all in favor I okay none opposed so you now have some goals these are these are stubbier goals because you only have till June how awkward was that what was more Awkward the evaluation of the goals you only have very very clear and smart you cut two months out of your time okay we just cut back how long to get it done administrator report all right a lot of this I've communicated so I'm going to keep it that's F risk pace so the town hall space is being evaluated reorganized down here to accommodate more counciling Human Services and employee space while still respecting the Town Clerk and public interfacing space so more to come you will see two design options for that in the next couple months in terms of HR we have an update from Aubrey who's over here 15 applicants for the town clerk position so we're going to start putting together some interviewing that is excellent news that means we're yeah attracting attracting a lot of candidates we talked about Kathleen and we have extended an offer for a DPW heavy equipment operator which would come to you in the next couple weeks assuming everything goes well with that offer in terms of fall Outreach we had our town hall in the park there wasn't a ton of people as you can imagine for a first time you do things but the engagement was good Town Hall staff I saw Sandy in the street sweeper so when you get their treasure in the street sweeper and she understands a big picture that's kind of what you're going for so we hope to do that again I think it would just be probably 1 hour um off in the spring probably to to take advantage of being outside and in the park then I've been invited to judge the PTO trunker treat that cop costume is optional for me so I will take the option and I have sent this to you but the Revolutionary grave marker installation at the central bearing ground is Sunday October 27th at 3 p.m. I plan to be there I will be there too at least one be put it in my calendar great uh Community compact Grant so I put in for a $50,000 Grant to defer the cost of the cupboard assessment and I found out today that we did get the full 50,000 which means more chapter 90 for that big plan that we just looked at talked enough about the budget tonight the cemetery task force and Safety Committee have been meeting so the Safety Committee saw the installation of their four-way or your four-way stop sign today and they met with Mitch and our um Town Council in order to better understand how to understand things like putting in signs speed limits and other things that they're considering so they can make strong recommendations to you remember they cannot make any recommendations without you so everything will come to you Cemetery task force these people are tremendously dedicated already which I knew they would be they've been visiting neighboring cemeteries capturing Lessons Learned we have a meeting with a software provider that might help us to um better Mark and offer services for our residents that are in the the cemetery I don't know how to say that well so they're off and running they're going to riding I do want to put this on your radar that they have been discussing because it's necessary if you will or will not be supporting an expansion of the cemetery which would be a very big topic uh that's not on your radar right now so um there's not a a ton of space left in the cemetery so whether or not you're going to continue to provide that service and how will be a topic for the next 5 years or so so I'm looking for not a vote but just any disagree agent with we are looking to purchase a utility vehicle about $25,000 to help at the school the reason for this is they were requesting a truck we find the truck to be less safe in terms of maneuvering around students and buildings inside this would be a street legal vehicle that's heated so it would be better for the employees and accomplishes everything that a $90,000 truck would for 25,000 it helps the long-term plan I'm sorry I really would feel much more comfortable if you spent more money the reason why I'm bring it to is we're using FY 25 funds to do this we did reserve some debt space in the budget and that went to facilities we're going to use that for this and we're hoping to get up to a $10,000 Grant or we think it's around 10,000 for safety through our insurance company when do you need to make the purchase we're going to purchase it now if I don't see any objection here we looked for donations too no I'm just at some point no we did if we have 100 will they arpa money the next meeting I want to close out arpa so if we end up with like once we know what the fire station OPM is going to require I don't know if there's any money left over that can go to one of these things that that are out there that need to be funded I'm a little punchier now than I was earlier tonight going to require all of it fire station OPM for sure yeah okay um and before you get too much further uh beyond the newly created committees um I wanted to mention that there are two new stop signs now on Rutland Road at North which you said and somebody's already run them so I just just wanted to stop and maybe you know let's make sure everybody we know we tell that there's a new stop sign there be careful go slowly have we got orange Flags like we did when we yes they have the orange Flags it just must have gone in today right they went in today and somebody has already run them that's what I'm saying okay so we have the police on that we're doing a social um information campaign luckily it's a just trying to use this channel where the ticket revenues go they go how we're going to make fund the short full speeding tickets $1,000 tickets yeah okay all right Capital updates we did the walk through the final walk through the Greeno Barn project um just tremendous effort by the by the staff and everybody took Sylvia out there in conservation and everyone's happy with the project the last thing is the KOA needs to be moved to the historical society and the Slate is going to be moved to the DBW it's been seated so there's already grass growing um and we did remove some of the discolored it wasn't asphalt but it looked like Stone so that it matches the area so everything has been done to everyone's standards yeah I was just over there really it's amazing it is amazing you don't even you can't even imagine there was a barn there and and the grass is already growing and yeah they did a phenomenal everybody involved the you know the sustainability part is something I think we should really be proud of too as a town it's on Julie to Julie Julie did a great job about over 90% recycled yeah I mean that's incredible that is incredible all right Cory Auditorium lighting uh looking at a couple weeks left for this project we just waiting for little pieces of equipment we're going to put together a video using the the new lights for the town and we'll show that to you but another success story thanks again as I keep saying to Jeremy and his volunteerism I visited the dog park this week on a on a walk I was doing with a resident to see the progress uh you would if you haven't seen it you're going to be shocked it is almost fully complete they're starting to install the fence and it might be open for dog residents later this fall so I hope you'll all bring your dogs the uh contract for Central burying ground so this was one of the CPA projects approved at town meeting phase one opened up the trees if you look from Central Park you can see the Lichfield seat is much more prominent now and then all the trees that are being removed are to protect the graves that are in there because of their historic nature once the tree work is complete at the end of this month then the grave restoration will start so they're going to straighten them clean them and make sure that they they all look the way they're supposed to or the way they were intended to and lastly the roof on the Lichfield seats going to be repaired all the wood we're hoping to use a slate from Greeno to to serve as the the tiling there which I think would be a a great I think they were going to put wooden shakes but this will be much better we're going to try see if that's possible for building construction projects so the library building committee met Friday and they selected CMS you'll recognize that name from the police station as well so uh I am negotiating with CMS two different contracts one for the OPM services at the library and one at the police station and we are considering how much coverage we'll need considering they're concurrent but they are separate contracts and we can't negotiate them together the police station renovation same highlight from you CMS is the choice for opms if we're not able to negotiate a contract that's favorable to your police building committee and your library building committee then we'll go down to the second choice and then the third choice until we have an OPM and you've received all of the information about our October 15th meeting where we'll be reviewing all of the proposals the um we can review the proposals at the meeting the reason why we sent it out ahead of time is it does it is a lot smoother if you do it ahead of time so the more work you do ahead of time the easier that meeting goes but we're here have those proposals been vetted for completeness we don't have to do that right no I'm doing that y you did that okay I have not seen any defects in any okay good I just want to be sure because I'll do the we're throwing one out it'll be my my call on that one okay yeah okay I also can't vote in that just so you know because you guys are the design selection committee so you have to short list to some number you can't short list to one and then the negotiation starts and then it goes to the appointing authority which is the select board so you're I'm sorry you said you got negotiate with more than one so you create a list at least it's a ranked order list I negotiate you start with the one at the top of the list and you go down and I am allowed to throw them out but that would be awkward with you guys because you're the select Board of my bosses we would upcoming discussion points Town Hall hours you're having a a discussion with the cohs not only to talk about potential Community Center and options there but also service levels in the future of of um chos services so should be a good discussion when is that meeting that will be the 12 November it's our next oh no November no it's not uh it's in November it's not the octob meeting so that might be a good time to roll out a beta of like they should hear because they're going to want the their center right I think they need to understand our finances so I did do I did was invited to a strategic planning session with them and they have heard a lot of this information they did digest it maybe maybe they did really come with service sorry well they're they continue to have their meetings I think they're still every Friday aren't they every Friday morning the group it's specifically focused on the community center yeah I wonder if it would make sense to do yeah more because it was the session I was at right where you laid stuff out yeah this this makes it much more clear what what we're up against in terms of projects we want to do need to do y and then uh the town clerk appointment so you guys talked about that while I was gone and that's coming so be prepared quickly signed we approved the Savard light opera ball musical sign the friends of conquered Carlile wrestling sign the cpc's sign the umbrella stage company's upcoming theater sign two of them for the umbrella Stage Company and then one to note real quick the use of town property for the poppy display Debbie Bentley deserves a lot of credit for this as a veteran I certainly appreciate it it's a 10day display this year the number of poppies is 250 to honor the coming 250th celebration of Lexington and Conquer which is pretty cool so it'll be there for for Veterans Day and it just like when communities take the time to do that I think it's important for staff recognition I'd like to recognize officer Andrew Corwin who graduated from the national passenger safety certification program anyone who's had kids recently in the last 20 years 30 years knows you go to the police station and they they make it good yeah who knows how to do that besides people who have done this so officer Corwin went to this training he's a trained technician is providing that service to the community and I think that's great so um not only is that Outreach but it's Community safety and gives people U peace of mind so it makes the police department better and I included a link if you want more about safe kits some upcoming dates have interest um included the additional select board meeting on the 15th just letting everybody know about that we've had some questions about Columbus Day versus indigenous people's day in the Personnel policies it's Columbus Day we brought that to your attention last year um which is why we're calling it Columbus Day um we don't have an opinion either way but that is something that has come up in comments to to the staff why or why not is it called what it is so just informing the board of that and then then um you'll note that the Thanksgiving Day holiday also in the Personnel policiy say the day after Thanksgiving as a holiday so just those back toback days and that is my report so I got a question that the agenda that's in your part of the report is for the 22nd and has two hours of fire station OPM interviews yes is that really what I thought that's what we're going to do the 15th the 15th yeah next week we're narrowing it down oh and then we interview them we want to interview and then they come and then two hours of interviews wow yeah I'm good you remember when I said are you sure you want to be the design selection committee this is why but it is important it is important for really it takes like an hour normally appoint a whole committee to do this which is why but how many um of how many were we down selecting two so there's six usually you short list at least two or three okay and each interview is about half hour okay so you've kind of been generous here but well you need a little time to then discuss between what you thought yeah you all right okay and everyone please read Ryan's email from today which you know giv you some homework gives you some homework for people you reach out to okay for next week for next week so you got to get on that we do it this week this like tomorrow but I saw that even but are we do we have to talk to people or can we just read the packet we got got know you got ref given each of us one firm that we have to review we have to do it's kind of what but you're going through all the firms and Grading all of them right on the on the um on the uh scoring sheets yes right so they're going to be they're six right so they all put proposals together yeah but you have to read the proposal and then use the scoring sheet so that we're consistently right but scoring and then one of those six has been assigned to you and you're supposed to call and get references their references T next Tuesday can we just email them we need your references yeah you can just no they've given reference just need to email the reference and say hey and you think that staff should do this is what you're yeah definitely definitely that's a purchasing function seriously purchasing I'll do whatever but you know so so you don't think we're deflecting it to you the the rating has to be done by the designer selection committee so you discussing your references allows you to have the same footing the staff can give you that information but it well Gretchen's doing one of them because we have have six people and so Gretchen's so you are allowing a staff person to do it because I didn't want to give you two for this reason but I'm glad to take one you sign you take M it says David oh you beat me to it David um R went Aubrey no let's not let's not let's go let's go um I think we're reviewing of warrants and minutes at this point did you um before we do that do did have we done the agenda for the 22nd I just wanted to that's how this all came up well I just wanted to say you know Scott had mentioned arpa going on there and then also did we want to I'm just remembering that Aubrey was saying we need to make the decision about Town Hall hours by November nov before Thanksgiving basically and right and so I the 22nd basically we have one meeting after that that's in November that where we would have to sign off so do we want to at least have the presentation about what's being suggested Town Hall hours you know for us to digest a little bit we have we added we added we that's right right okay sorry gain you're right so we could we could do it one two in November the next scheduling session for the agenda we will review that yeah yeah I do have a question about the Town Hall hours meeting though and if we need to invite other boards that um to come in for participate to participate that will be affected by it but committees you mean other board chairs I was thinking I was thinking mostly elected boards that have their so that it's not down maybe we could ask the administration to send out an email maybe it's more effective from us but just to to the chairs of each of the boards to discuss it at their next meeting you know and give them except we haven't set the hours yet to be able to yeah so but I I I think if we actually invite them before their the hours are set for their input rather than after the hours are set we would be it would be better like the first select board meeting in November where we get a sort of a you know initial presentation we invite those chairs to join us so we can all be responding to the yeah then they could take that back to their that's only G two weeks it's likely that any decision you make wouldn't take effect until several months later so there's a lot to but it'll be it'll be printed up and sent out in the tax bill which is why we've got this deadline right so if you wanted the change implemented for the next tax bill January true yeah we're we're trying to force a decision here however I wouldn't I wouldn't have something take effect two weeks later because we still have to vet um staff with children and and other changes and exceptions to the hours it's going to be a roll out of of it's going to be a longer roll out so you're suggesting we would just leave the town all hours the way they are for that um ch January tax bill mailing I would decide what you want to do for Town Hall hours and then project a change in the future and socialize that change okay so all right has any information at one point I know Aubrey did some sort of a how how old is that information now do we have to revisit it I mean because we have a whole bunch of new employees sure so I did a couple different menal so um you know I canvased the residents I also canvas sta so I I think it would be good to have more up to-date um idea of um what that looks like and also um the information I I pulled together for other towns uming that so let me put that together for November okay so and then I think still when we have this presentation if at least the the chairs of those other things are notified that maybe they could come and listen to this presentation at the same time as we're receiving it yeah um it would not be a bad idea yeah good all right can we move on to the yes I'm sorry I have one more thing so the schools have vetted a list of Technology everything from a Sony cvd CD DVD player to uh printers and computers etc they do this every year yeah yeah so technically I am the chief procurement officer so I have to allow them to donate this the way that you do yeah so I'm assuming that that you're okay with that without seeing U everything or do you want to vote on it I'm good I'm good relying on your the Town Administrator gets donated to some worthy organization I think Bob suck comes in and then we're going to clarify this because this is technically operating funds from the school which should be done by the business manager or delegated to Jim from the school committee so we'll get that delegated so it'll be clear who who is the chief procurement officer for who um but for now but we've done it this way for years and no one's ever we've never got into trouble so I'm just letting you know about it and out of transparency and then we'll we'll have a better solution in the future okay I think that's acceptable everyone yeah fine school committee did vote on it so someone's voted on it okay they they've declared it a surplus yes we do to do that in the warrants of minutes all right so I move um acceptance of the minutes as corrected the did everybody in the everybody got the corrected ones uh in the packet second okay any discussion I wonder if she got the typo I had because I sent her one typo and I forgot to check that doesn't matter only the change I had was relative to um the the discussion we had with you know how we wanted the TA bylaw how we wanted it I just want to make sure that was clear that what the select board wanted okay all in favor I okay none opposed and then the last one Kate can you make it on the cemetery Deeds oh hang on or whoever is uh it's um is it up top or down the low page 66 I don't know if you following it yep I I can do the cemetery put that's good deeds I got them deed transfers move to transfer land in the public burial ground at the Green Cemetery described as follows lot D 349 Graves 1 2 3 and four to despa Anton of 1145 North Road second okay any discussion seeing none all in favor I I None opposed um and then we have liaison reports but because it's late I think we're just going to pass on that and move right to community input there's Community anyone Christina anyone online okay going once going twice all right um then I will take a motion to adjourn so moved all right all in favor I I okay very good thank you guys thank you