##VIDEO ID:2xHcaWxs-BI## [Music] so I guess in the interest of time gentlemen I will call this meeting to order um so we uh this is the Halifax finance committee on the 4th of November of 2024 having our bi-weekly meeting uh starting at 8 at 600 p.m. uh in attendance our friend Johnston Mike Retta and Bill Smith and myself from the committee uh also present are KDs bazito our secretary and Cody Hadad the Town Administrator a couple of housekeeping items this meeting is being recorded by area 58 as a virtual meeting all votes will be taken by roll call as it is a virtual meeting um so uh without further Ado uh we will go ahead and uh get started so we have some minutes to be approved I believe there's three sets one from October 7th and two from the 22nd one for our fincom meeting by itself and then the board of Selectmen um meeting a joint meeting with the finance committee so um for we'll start we'll do them one by one so I'm going to presume at this point unless someone has an objection that we've all had a chance to read through them and make any corrections that need to be done uh so for the minutes for the uh 7th of October do I are there any ads changes or deletions that need to be done nope I'm I'm good Jim I'm good all right very good so can I get a motion to approve those minutes for the 7th of October so moved second outstanding and roll call vote uh Frank yes on the 107 2024 minutes very good sir uh Bill yes thank you Bill Mike yes thank you Mike and I'm a yes as well so that motion will carry 4 to zero next Set uh we'll do the uh hour meeting by itself on the um on the 22nd uh so this is the finance committee meeting uh for the 22nd that was held at 5:00 p.m uh any ads changes or deletions for those minutes of those meetings right anybody I'm good n very good motion to approve so moved second thank you everybody Frank uh yes on the 1022 24 um of the fincom meeting thank you sir Bill yes thank you Bill Mike yes thank you Mike and I'm a yes as well so that will also carry all in favor 40 the last set is the board of Selectmen fin finance committee joint meeting where we covered the uh budget memo that went out by Cody uh on 10222 24 at 6 PM uh any adds changes or deletions to those minutes or discussion items I'm good with those minutes NOP good very good gentlemen a motion to approve the minutes soill moved second thank you Bill Frank yes on the 10 2224 uh joint meeting with the Border selectman thank you sir Bill yes Mike yes and I am a yes as well so all minutes are current and approved as of this vote so thank you gentlemen for taking the time to look at them and getting any changes done we're all caught up on minutes then huh yeah that's except for yeah we are up to date yeah great great thanks Katie yeah Katie's doing a bang up job on that of course okay uh the next agenda item that we had was we were going to have Steve join us um Steve had declined this meeting um I responded to Steve and asked him since it was the third meeting that he declined I asked him when he could attend and he has given me a date of the 2nd of December is the first available meeting he has to come and chat with us about his capital budget so um we'll pass on on that agenda item at this point and we will put him on the schedule for the 2nd of December uh and hopefully he will uh we can and if we and Cody uh should we just send him like some questions so he can come prepared or or what do you think we how do you think we should uh work with Excuse me yes I think that's a good idea maybe what you can do Jim is put it on as an agenda item for your next meeting so the group so you all have an opportunity to talk about it right and I um I'll make sure all those questions are captured sent over to Steve and he has everything prepared then there might be some things on my end that you may need so that way they while he's here you can make sure you use the opportunity to its fullest yeah no that's that's a that's that's perfect so we'll add just a discussion for the for the committee next for the next meeting to just talk about what information we are going to be looking for from um Highway Steve uh to make it the best use of everybody's time yeah you could probably have Katie just put an item uh preparation for discussion with uh you know highway department or Highway surveyor very good sir thank you very much for that guidance okay um so uh that's it for that item so the next item was going to be returning to in-person meetings um I think we'll push this to the next one also because I think everybody should be here to chat about that and uh just not have four of us say we're all going to do it and then make seven of us do it so um I think I don't think that would be fair uh just giving the considerations of people's time so we'll just we'll just push that on to the next meeting uh that we have I think which is already on the calendar for the 18th of uh November um so uh I think that's probably the next that's probably the best way to handle it at least from my perspective anybody have any objection to that no I agree that's fine I'm good with that very good thank you gentlemen appreciate it um okay so uh next agenda item is uh committee liaison updates um I think I think Cody we're just about wrapped up with his zoning bylaw committee stuff right that's just about done yeah we'll probably have look to have another meeting um probably after town meeting so sometime in December wrap some things up there's been a couple of small developments with this Adu stuff that you know that's come out we just want to make sure our bylaw is consistent with that but yeah we're pretty close to being done with that perfect we we're going to get a uh kind of a final draft out then Cody associated with that and then get review of that and then make it public or yeah once we have it finalized Ed has has come across a couple more small things in his review and now that you know he's been here a little bit longer and we have a little bit more time um he wants to talk about but and yeah we'll we'll look to you know send out a public document by you know early 2025 and start doing some public meetings kind of like we did with the MBTA communities uh meeting earlier in October do that with um the Z regular zoning changes just to try to make it easier to digest so what people understand it prior to town yeah yeah that that' be good get it out to everybody well ahead of time perfect okay Jim Jim I one quick question on the um yeah on the aison thing what is that folder I can't find it in the one drive with the assignments on it um oh the spreadsheet that has like who who's assigned to which departments I know I have library in parks and rec I just can't remember the third one you guys threw at me and I couldn't find it in the drive myself sure let me um I think it was Housing Authority housing yeah that sounds familiar so do you have you have access to the folder though right Mike I do yeah I have the one drive open now yeah yeah yeah it can be sometimes confusing trying to bump around on that uh fincom folder to look for things so what I'll do Mike is I'll go I'll go in and dig through it I'll find it and I'll just I'll just email it directly to you if if you would rather have that yeah no worries yeah I can I'll take a look at some of the previous documents and so forth yeah thank you I think as we're getting closer to January if you guys want to fire out just like a I guess just an introductory email like hey I'm you know I'm your little aison from the finance committee uh for and you know anytime you know when we and Cody I don't know if we doing the same thing we did last year where they're just setting up meetings and you're going to be there and then our guys come in and sit with you and the department head to go over that is that I think so yes so once we get once budgets start coming in I'll send out those introductory emails well some of them will be introduction be introduction um with all of the budgetary material in um in one folder for each department and then we'll look to what I'll do is each of you I'll get your availability and then we'll try to bang out all of your departments in one meeting so you're not coming back and forth nice that'll work okay um very good so that should unless anybody has anything else to add we can move on to the next agenda item and close out liaison updates um so correspondence or as may arise um I haven't gotten any public emails uh to me or sent to me for the finance committee's um uh attention uh I did send out the last response I got from the uh Kingston Finance chair uh to everybody for everybody to look at and it has the chain of all the other emails in there also uh just with the two towns so you know pretty positive stuff I think at this point um again just to dovetail into what we heard on Saturday you know there's a few towns out there that are already kind of approaching uh Regional schools as one group um and that seems to be working out well for them so hopefully we can get that kick started here uh with the other news out of the talking to different individuals from different towns is a lot of them are receiving the school budgets in January February at the latest right so however we can lean on them to get it out soon we did we did um the school committee had asked me if I would apply for a grant on behalf of them to to explore full regionalization so um Kingston and Hal act School committees supported the just exploration I just want to make that clear all this would do is fund a consultant to come in and and study you know pros and cons of full regionalization so Kingston and Halifax supported that we submitted a Grant application um and we're waiting to hear back so what are we what what are we saying as full you mean all the schools being regionalized yeah so not just this uh kind of semi- regionalization where it's only um 7 through 12 and prek and that would benefit Halifax how well that's what the study would look at but for one you have a lot of repetition of cost so for instance right now a lot of our elementary special ed we're paying um to to send out outside maybe because we don't have enough resources internally where if you had a regional level right and you or approaching on a regional level you may be able to do a lot of it internally and create programs internally that the region pays for as a whole um transportation is another one that um the school administration has has said would be a a cost savings because then you could again approach it on a regional level for all the grades rather than just uh individually for the uh K through six okay okay should be interesting I think um yeah I mean it doesn't hurt to to explore it and see what you know what are the pros what are the cons it's definitely I'm not going to say it's super unique this kind of split but the way we operate is definitely unique with our schools sure no understood I just I'm curious if that would address the like the um the the head account reduction the enrollment reductions you know if that would kind of amarate that in any fashion odd okay um so I guess just one quick update and I just thought about this over the weekend Cody this so is our accounting software consultant all finished and we're good to go or we still kind of pecking away at that yeah so we ran into we started building out the some of the back well not backend we started migrating the data and then we were building out um kind of some of the way the segments the way our accounts work and we ran into an issue where they weren't able to um create we call control accounts it's it's so we've had a few meetings with their engineering team it looks like it's going to take longer than anticipated the new um anticipated go live date is July 1 of 25 um the the positive is you know they've agreed to basically give us the software for free for now um so we got a significant credit um that's almost $40,000 that we can use during this implementation so we kind of they kind of recognize that um we're going we we could potentially be very beneficial for them and being one of the you know first full Massachusetts clients that's fully integrated but again I we kind of got across to them that we're happy to do it but certainly not at a cost to Halifax and um so longer than anticipated but I think it'll work out the what we what we found out was a lot of the towns that are currently using it are having to utilize two different softwares you know one software only does so the new one only is built out so far and they're using the old one and I just it's not a good idea for us to to have to use two soft you know two different systems I'd rather wait until the system's built out so we can utilize that one system and so that's where that build out is occurring are are we their first is is our town their first client no um they have several other clients in Massachusetts but they're they're utilizing multiple software systems because it's not built out completely yet and then as far as they're they're newer to the Massachusetts Market they're around the country and they're imp in several municipalities out of state but the way that our state reporting requirements are they're not able to just migrate it from the way that they operate in other states to Massachusetts um and like I said there other other municipalities were okay with using the multiple systems while they kind of work out the Kings but we had said we we we were not okay with that right okay [Music] odd very good sir I appreciate the update thank you so much no problem all right anybody have anything else they want to chat about while the group is here for as may arise I just wanted to say thanks to to Cody and and Halifax for allowing us to go to that event on Saturday oh did we find the invo Cody yeah they've been they've been processed it was just a we we watch them all together so we waited to send out a check one check with everyone's on it um so they're it's in the mail that's fine it was just kind of funny they were like uh you haven't paid yet I'm like you're from Halifax huh oh really talk to you over in the corner yeah oh that's that's funny because the um the invoice says just you know some we we'll send you the an invoice and submit payment when you get a chance it doesn't say it has to be prepaid or anything like that it was just it was just kind of funny and I think she the the woman that did it just felt a little awkward and like calling us out when we're all in there glad I missed that part yeah and uh we we didn't cut her any slack no that's good was there a lot of people there um I'd say there was probably at least 50 maybe 60 so I thought it was pretty well attended for where it was fairly well attended yeah good yeah you guys found it beneficial useful I did it was it was nice to hear from other towns that's that's what I would say so just kind of hearing what they're going through and you know comparatively with what we you know are dealing with on a year in year out basis so some towns have it pretty tough glad we're not stoen um that's recorded would want to be in that zip code um but other than that you know I think we're we're on par with all the other towns I think it was Medford who did the budget or the school budget presentation oh Mansfield Med it was Medfield and Holliston did the budget one in the beginning it was the uh the assistant TA from Medfield and the TA from Holliston did the budget presentation that was very good yeah yeah talk L about the that whole thing about the gfoa yeah yeah but that cost that you know they want money to belong to that course right and to get their quote unquote free tools get the gold standard yeah we did hear that that Jim Walters was going to uh become a member of the uh what was that board we signed you up for Jim Walters they we nominated him they looking for for something when Jim wasn't at the table so we know yeah so I think Jim has been looking to be on this committee for a long time now you g talk to him when he comes back he wants to do that guy that guy last Ed you so fast he did he tracked me down chased your right out into the parking [Laughter] lot too funny but yeah it it was it was a good meeting thank you yeah it was good I think it was good that we went and really have the chief on oh yeah okay so anything else for as may arise no don't think so all right all right so we'll close out that agenda item and we will move to public participation um anyone have anything anyone from the public wish to comment or ask a question of the finance committee okay going once all right so we will uh close that part out um and which leads us to the last bu point which is the next meeting planning so we have uh 11:18 uh as the next meeting that's already on the calendar will it will be a virtual meeting where we will discuss some of the items that we pushed forward also if you guys could take a few minutes and review the code of conduct that Cody sent out today uh you know I'd like for us to have a discussion and vote on the adoption of that uh as part of uh how the committee will operate with respect to the rest of the Town Fair very fair Cody do we have to sign off on something for that or no okay what we've adopted it so when when new members are appointed we're having them get they're getting a copy of it when they when they're warning with the town clerk yeah but um you know for ex any for existing members no need to kind of sign off on it it's it really just really you guys already operate under It ultimately it's it's really just making sure that everyone's acting respectfully uh treating others with respect um but no no need to sign off okay okay very good so Jim we gonna talk about that next meeting a little bit or yeah no after I'm going to put it on as an agenda item okay so just take the next you know the next couple of days review what Cody sent out uh if you have any questions we'll be happy to chat about them uh on the 14th uh and if everybody's okay with it I said we'll just vote to to adopt it as our operating as our operating policy as the finance committee good good I'm good good good good all right well jents I think that'll be a pretty brief meeting for us this evening um I don't have anything else on the agenda anybody have anything else they want to discuss while the group is here I'm good tonight all right I don't think so so may I get a a motion to adjourn so moved second thank you gentlemen Frank uh yes uh to adjourn please very good Mike yes to adjourn thank you Mike Bill yes thank you Bill and I'm a yes as well this meeting is adjourned at 624 thanks everybody for attending good night thank you have a good night [Music]