##VIDEO ID:EKIxj9ZXztI## e L how was the vacation it was great it was nice live all set great good even evening and welcome to the hopkington select board meeting for Tuesday September 10th 2024 uh I call the meeting to order this meeting of the Hopkins select board is being held both in person and remotely using the video conference platform Zoom select board member Shah Mountain will not be participating will be participating remotely and all other members of the select board are present for this meeting at town hall room 215 216 in person at this time I'll ensure that selectboard members participating remotely can hear and be heard Mr Manning can you m Manan can you hear please does our Zoom coordinator have any contact with Mr Man so I haven't been I have to get promoted as a panelist till I can see so well done okay all right we're going to come back to that the public has the option of attending in person here at town hall or via zoom zoom using the link posted in this meeting's agenda so he's not on Zoom yet this meeting is being recorded all votes will be taken by roll call vote because we have one person on Zoom um okay I move okay I move to enter into executive session pursuing Massachusetts general laws chapter 30A section 21A purpose three to consider strategy for litigation in Bank of America versus Michelle bson AKA Michelle Bolson Brant AKA Michelle B Michelle Oteri uh the town land it's a land court number 24 uh with a a date it says M miscellaneous 0450 because an open session meeting may have a detrimental effect on litigation position of the board pursuant and then pursuant to Massachusetts general laws chapter 30A section 21A purpose two to consider strategy for negotiations with nonunion Personnel Town manager to allow elain lassers and Brian beram to participate in the executive session to reconvene an open session at the conclusion of the executive session so we have a motion on the table to go into executive session is there a second please second any discussion um Shel is on Zoom now so is he on Zoom now okay so let me just go back uh Mr Man pleas if you could please let us know that you can hear us and you'll be able to participate uh remotely he is muted you may be muted or he could have gone on in Executives in the other room or we could be gone into the executive session room could be gone in there yeah all right we'll see you in executive session we'll we'll make sure you can hear us but we don't need him for this particular vote so we have a motion in the table on a second specific the executive session any questions comments Mrs ritterbush Amy Rush yes Joe CLK yes Brian her yes Mary J fer yes okay we'll be back folks as soon as we can thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e yeah hi can you hear me yeah great you can hear us I can hear you and everything you can hear us I can hear you yeah thank you all right thanks yes I can hear you sorry about the confusion earlier um I think we are back live and ready to go correct yep we are okay so with that uh the select board just wrapped up an executive session and we'll begin public session with the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to iedge ALG to the rep it stands one nation God indivisible liy and justice for all thank you so we are a little early this evening that clock is slow slow uh the world's clock is at 617 right now I want everyone's cell phone so we're going to go with that not that uh but we have uh typically we have public forum at 6:30 so because we're early we're going to go ahead and do a couple of other things and then at 6:30 we'll come back the public forum so that we don't keep people waiting nor do we uh go too early and people lose the opportunity to come in and speak so um the first item I think we can tackle uh in advance of sort of the typical schedule would be the consent agenda item number five uh there are two items on the consent Agenda One is a new employee the select board will confirm the town manager's appointment of William Burke as a dishwasher at the senior center great I think that's been open for a while and secondly we want to accept a gift the select board will consider accepting a donation of $100 from the public library or for the public library from Chari rapar renara on behalf of her children's lemonade stand for purchase of children's books that's really cool uh anybody want to make a motion on the consent agenda or break anything out I move to approve the consent agenda okay is there a second second any discussion on the consent agenda thank you to the for the donation it's very kind yeah that's great and the kids did it through a lemonade day I love it okay uh Mr Manana any questions comments no same um thanks for the donations and I appreciate all the good work we'll do our best this evening to come out to you Mr Manan but if I forget you and you've got something please don't be shy I'm sure you won't but u i don't mean we don't mean to ignore you if that happens uh okay so with that uh um Mr Manan how do you vote please okay Mary Jo Mary Joel yes Brian her yes Joe Clark yes yes Mr Manan sh Manan yes okay great thank you so the consent agenda uh is passes goes forward I thought the next thing we could do with a little extra time is the town manager report it's rather brief given the lack of the Town manager last week so we want to give that go uh is that is that okay you okay that now if you would please so just an update on the Main Street caror project um all 12 Transformers have been delivered and installed uh crews are working on the preliminary work associated with them and should be completed within the next month um and then the start of the cut over from Electric uh from overhead electric to the underground uh will begin late September or early o October um and then the other utilities will will follow from that uh the overhead transfer work um will be occurring on the remainder of the um of the project and the utility poles between the police station and an Street will be moved once the new underground infrastructure is operational but in the other section that will be removed as soon as the all the wires are transferred to the new poles the Old Poles will be removed um so we won't have double polls there uh the um the work on the removal of the uh defective paint and the new paint on the various uh structures infrastructure um uh signals and so forth is ongoing and uh should be completed um in the next couple of months uh amarello is back on the site working um and uh working on uh the brick work the landscaping and the other work that needs to be finished up um along the right of way and that's basically where we are right now great anything else to report no any questions of the Town manager about the Main Street Corridor project I did want to ask about the double poles and the wires it's been since at least Fourth of July especially at the corner of wood in um West Main that there's been a very leaning pole and about half of the wires have been moved to the new pole and the other half have not so it just seems like a really long time especially in what bad shape that pole is in do we know any more specific when they might move the rest of the wires um I don't know the specific date but I know it's been a topic of discussion and uh each of the utilities uh will go in order um and I know a couple have been couple have been bundled together and be done at once so I know the polls do get smaller as the the wires are moved so it is coming okay but the pole is braced so it's secure at the moment anything else Mr Manan any questions about the uh Main Street Corridor project thanks for asking just a quick followup so that's good progress Al I was wondering do you see any risk or anything um that you might need help to keep it on track or um we are looking okay for the timeline I think the uh Mass do has signed a contract to that extends the project into next year um I think it's hoped that they'll be finished as soon as possible but they did sign a contract for an extension and what is the new timeline I'm not I think it was March of 2025 but please don't quote me on that date it's sometime in the first half of 2025 if I remember correctly I think I agree I think so yeah they are tearing it up out there right now it be sorry go ahead yeah no I was just saying um once we have the final um we may want I communicated and shared the new Baseline okay great thank you that's yeah they are tearing it up there right now like I drove through the corridor the other day I mean I do it 10 times a day cuz I work in town and uh there was two eversource Crews three amarello Crews the folks doing the wall down at the end there the brick people are going I mean it's just really taken off right now so all good um and I know that ever source is working hard under around on those Transformers so okay um so with that and we still have a few minutes before 6:30 do we want to tackle liaison reports I think that would be a good one to do now as well there the front a uh I met with Sue cues and she's getting ready to make a presentation to us um and I met with her over the weekend and it's going along I talk with Daddy ferer uh they're making arrangements for next year's Boston Marathon and the uh the baa has stated that I I believe this week and next week the applications are going out for the runners or right away they're out they're out so if you're interested get in touch uh and I uh I was going to meet with the assessors but they weren't meeting tonight and uh oh I just want to congratulate everybody who had something to do with the Poots and the blooms and Bru and the porch the the porch uh musicians uh it was a a great weekend last weekend was beautiful weather and it was a great weekend I just want to congrat it's a lot of hard work goes into the those I want to congratulate everybody and remind people that this weekend is the family fund day on the common sool that's all I'm done it's at the high school H it's at the school it's not on the common it's at the school now okay common last year okay all set yeah Mr Clark I've got nothing new to add this week okay Amy um I well I do have a little bit of liaison from historic district commission Commission on disability ncpc just that um the commission of disability is working with the historic district commission to improve approve to improve the accessibility of the front of the library to try to get a um a push button door and a better railings so any hopefully that will be a t meeting okay so that's all I have thanks Mr Manan any the aison reports uh not a lot just uh had some continued discussion on budget and framework related with uh some of the stakeholders but U we'll form it up as um things progress and we get it on the agenda okay great uh I have none myself I was able to attend the poly Arts uh Saturday morning to your point it was awesome uh the number of booths was amazing the number of people there enjoying it was great I mean it was a really really nice day so great to see Hoppington enjoy such a great event it's been going on for a long time I think it's like 30 some years isn't it so uh really well done okay so with that uh we'll check the liaison agenda off item off our agenda we still have a few more minutes um let's try going through the future board agenda items quickly we know we keep this list and we publish it not that we're going to be doing all this this evening but just to everybody knows what we're working on and I don't think there's anything here that we haven't either begun to address or have addressed if we have addressed it and it's done we'd take it off the list we're going to talk about a couple things tonight and next week for sure uh but does anybody have anything else they want to add to this list that we have not to add but the upper Tri Trail was scheduled for September oh okay that'll be next time okay that's still on schedu yeah correct yeah anything else no so no m no other than you know Sue's getting ready to make a presentation to us okay that's it uh Mr Manan anything for future agenda items you want to add we've got the stuff that we've been working on still here yeah not at this time thank you okay great all right so we'll cross that one off our list for the agenda and it is now 6:27 Bo we're getting a lot done here uh can can we affirm this new employee uh do we have our new employee here CU I think we're early for that aren't we no not yet Elaine no okay all right U 628 I'm assuming we have a full house now so by the time we get started people should be here okay yeah I think we're ready to go all right so now we'll move to public forum uh we are a minute or two early uh the public forum is opportunity for residents to share ideas opinions or ask questions regarding their town government uh we ask that comments be kept to two to three minutes and uh uh we'll time that we're not crazy about timing things but we'll try to keep it reasonably timed so that we can keep the meeting moving along does anybody want to come up and address the board for any particular reason please join us right here hi my name is Margo Roman and I have been a veterinarian in hackington for over 41 years and I you know this is a place to share ideas and and you know listening to the Pledge of Allegiance we say that with our heart and we put our our our our allegiance to it and I just want to read the veterinary oath to you guys because that's my allegiance as a veterinarian being admitted to the profession of veterinary medicine I solemnly swear to use my scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society through the protection of Animal Health and Welfare the prevention and relief of animal suffering and the conservation of animal resources the promotion of Public Health and the enhancement of medical knowledge I will practice my profession conscientiously with dignity and in keeping with the principles of Veterinary Medical ethics I accept as a lifelong obligation the continual Improvement of my Professional Knowledge and competence and so I've been saying that for 47 years and I was so hurt by the fact that when I tried to reach out to the town during our pandemic experience when I've studied biot terrorism preparedness for in the 90s I was the only one who was able to do that at the expert as a veterinarian and I was learned and I studied zoonosis because I myself have immune compromised and I will continue to wear a mask now for a long time but I try to use that knowledge and share it with my town and give my 47 years of experiencing sosis and studying this and instead of helping to bring that forward it was basically I got turned into the MD for mentioning medical ozone which has been proven and shown to help animals and humans and I'm insulted because I I feel like I've used my scientific skills and knowledge and it should not have happened it should have been a curiosity by the public health department versus just shutting someone off and so I stood up and because of that I've gotten cracked down and got my license taken for 2 years for a private email to my private clients and I find it very insulting as an intelligent person who lectures around the world who speaks at universities who writes and writing two books and to have that insult done and have my license taken away because of the way the the board of the Board of Health reacted to it so for that I'm I'm very upset about it and I've been a service to this town as much as I could you know whether it was taking care of the marathon bomb sniffing dogs or whatever or working on the solar committee I've tried to be Progressive and I've done this oath in my in my C you we do a pledge allegiance are we supposed to go against the allegiance of what we do and the same thing with the rabies vaccine I've been doing titters for animals that have cancer or autoimmune disease for 29 years and suddenly now they're attacking it that I cannot give these medical exemptions to these animals and so I did vaccinate my dogs last week and I am very scared that something might happen because the ant of these dogs died from the rabies vaccine and these dogs had high antibodies protecting them and I was literally felt like my arm was being pulled behind my back and jerked up that I have to put my own animals at risk when I am doing my job using my scientific skills and knowledge protecting Public Health protecting my animals health and so I'm it's like you're going against your Pledge of Allegiance I went against my oath and I feel like the should be like we should appreciate people that are thoughtful and thinking about things and maybe at a little different angle but are trying to help protect our public which was they didn't want to hear it nobody wants to hear how to protect the public when they've already decided how to do it and I'm I'm I'm sad because a lot of people died that maybe didn't have to but I'm not I'm not a human doctor I recommend them going to people that can do that but I am a veterinarian and I take this oath and I took this oath very seriously and now I've taken something and put it against my oath and vaccinated my own animals who I felt were at risk because one has cancer and the other ones have autoimmune problems you know they're healthy but they're they're subjected okay time's up thank you Margo thank you very much appreciate your comments anyone else for public forum give everybody one of those great thank you please thank you hi Kelly depalo 6 hyway hopkington two minutes is simply not enough time for me to express what I want to express but something needs to be said tonight about last Friday's decision by the commissioner of the post commission whereby she commissioner kazarosian reversed her own agen August 15th suspension of Tim brenan's post certification thereby allowing Tim brandan to immediately yes immediately return to work at the Milford Police Department I am sure by tonight each of you have read that order and at the very least it should have given you great pause as you contemplate your liability personally and the liability you have exposed to this town as a result of the things the commissioner has now pointed out in her order again there's way too many things to read tonight to point out tonight that are important facts from the commissioner to discuss in this two-minute window that I'm limited to however for now I will read some key findings in that order and then tomorrow I will send into you a summary of that order where I will break down for you the very obvious messages from the esteemed commissioner attorney kazarosian the the bottom line well is shocking to you not to us Chief Bennett wrote a notable letter and I quote notable from the order that was released on Friday that was submitted to the commissioner she found that letter to be quote telling one reason she found that letter so quote telling was that she put it clearly and I'm quoting her words clearly proves that the hopkington police department officers are trained to basically stand ready until the victim decides to move forward arguably she said that is exactly what Brennan did the part of the letter that speaks to the Hopkin and police department's position that with a reluctant victim the type the officers serve the victim to the best of their ability and Tim Brennan was in compliance with the policy that is consistent with the victim and I quote victim centered and Trauma informed approach taught by the common wealth adult sexual assault law enforcement guid guidelines so there you have it folks Tim Brennan complied with policy bottom line is that Tim's actions were in full compliance with the hopkington police department's policy and with Chief Joe Bennett's policy please look forward to the letter that I will send you tomorrow outlining further details about the commissioner's report and hope that you take action accordingly to set the ship right thank you thank you k anybody else hello hi I'm Karen Crum 12 Joseph Road at the July 9th select board meeting attorney Brian buram spoke about an outside third-party agency who looked into the illegal releasing of a victim's protected identity in the origin of the unredacted reports that contain this information at one at one point he spoke about how good it was that we had the Northwest da investigating this because they are an independent and thereby objective Body uninfluenced by any connections within hopkington he pointed out the value that we didn't pay or direct them either likewise last week an equally independent uninfluenced unpaid agency issued a decision that impacts the sergeant Tim brunning C and I would think that attorney betam would respect that decision in the same way he respected the Northwest Das this third party who reviewed these findings against Tim Brennan was the commissioner and Secretary of post she found that others from post had aired in the suspension of Sergeant Brennan in addition to her review that was specific to reinstating his post standing she also reviewed all pertinent reports that led to Sergeant Brennan's termination from the h hington PD and reported her findings in addition to her statement supporting how Sergeant Brennan handled a sexual assault victim she pointed out the deficiencies in a letter Chief Bennett submitted supporting his decision for terminating Sergeant Brennan and the deficiencies in the hopkington police department's policies at the time and that simply supports my request tonight even more which is to ask you to review all documents submitted to the post Commission in the report generated from reviewing them and act on the voters request at town meeting that you reconsider the decision that was made to terminate Sergeant Brennan thank you thank you thank you evening good evening please Sabine St Pierre one Woody Island Road I have some concerns about the redaction policy that's being written and headed by Our Town Council attorney Brian Bertram why are we asking paying and trusting Harrington Heap to write a redaction policy for our town when they are the entity that provided hopkington with an insufficient redacted document in the first place and knowingly allowed it to stay online for 3 Days attorney butram said that that document the interview transcript of Tim Brennan the first complaint witness in the trial against J repor was reviewed for redaction by a member of Harrington heap's legal team but attempted to exculpate his firm by claiming that this person on his firm's legal team also assumed assumed it had been previously redacted by someone else at croll investigations Bertram stated that maybe the person from his firm who was reviewing it had had a false sense of thinking it had been reviewed and redacted more times than it actually had and had that false sense because he or she knew that the document had been circulated to the team a team of people at Harrington Heap after the Northwest DA's office investigated how insufficient redacted documents was released to the public Ada George gagy referred to interviewed Witnesses claims that croll investigations had had its transcriptionist du the redactions and that after that was done nobody at croll conducted any further review because of this mistake there have been severe consequences impacting the Survivor and will no doubt cause a financial burden to the town and the taxpayers and with the upcoming budgets that's going to wreak some Havoc all of this could have been avoided had a dozen or so people that had looked at this supposedly looked at this document had they actually reviewed it and done their job attorney Brenan and his team Bertram and his team of lawyers no doubt are under scrutiny for their past failures relative to the release of this victim's personal information as a result of failures both by them and others appropriately redacted others to appropriately redact a certain transcript I would submit to you that as a result of this present scrutiny both in the town and inevitably in the courts attorney Bertram and his firm are in no position to be responsible for the development of redaction policy for this time I would like to ask you the select board to review these findings and take them into consideration when deciding on our Town's legal council or what Investigative Services we pay for our current ones have failed us thank you thank you anyone else that mat Kisner 21 Curtis Road I put the shirt and tie on why not come up I wanted to take a moment to actually thank each of you and Mr Manan by extension virtually I've had the opportunity to serve in town government for about 7 years now 5 years on cic starting my third year happily as its chair in the five years I've been on that committee I have no recollection of the committee ever being requested to come before the select board and I can certainly confirm in my 3 years serving as chair now this would be a first for us I don't highlight this as a negative or to bring any skepticism to previous decisions rather I highlight it to reflect as an indication that the board and the town by extension are having a serious conversation about our fiscal situation that through transparency and open acknowledgement and discussion in this form and many others we can find a way through the challenging situation before us benefit from the opportunity of reflecting more on our fiscal planning and fiscal discipline find a better way of doing the things that we all want to do and that is by supporting and enabling the development of the Services Industries buildings everything that makes this town exactly what it is so to each of you I look forward to the discussion we're going to have there will be tough ones there will be easy ones and if you let me out my way there might be some math and some technicality too but but I look forward to each of you and the town behind me and virtually being part of the discussion there's work to do I'm ready to do it I hope you all are too thank you thank you thank you anybody else public comment seeing no further takers we'll close that item now and move ahead to the next item the next item item is specific to the town manager's contract the select board will consider voting to sign a contract with Elaine Lazarus Town manager normally I go to the town manager and ask for input before we don't get into an agenda item this one we own it ourselves so we'll give her a break um as you may or may not be aware the board has spent some time uh over the last several weeks uh since selecting uh elain Lazarus to be the next town manager uh working on the contract cont ra uh the board went out to uh to do a what's called a market survey we went out through surrounding towns we went out to towns similar to hopkington size Etc uh and understood you sort of what the town manager Marketplace looks like uh for compensation and the like uh we also looked at the contracts we had for previous Town manager uh as well as the contract submitted uh and requested by Elaine uh to be considered as well and we put all that together in into the into the pot and stirred it all up and figured it all out and we have settled on a contract that we feel is fair we feel uh motivates the town manager to do the million things she will have to do uh almost on a daily basis for the next few years and uh we're excited to uh kind of get it wrapped up so with that does anybody have uh a motion they'd like to make to start the discussion and we'll go from there I I moved to sign a three-year contract contct with Elaine Lazarus Town manager second that okay so we have a motion on the table in a second to sign a threeyear contract with elain Lazarus to be our town manager any discussion Mr Manan any questions comments no I I'm excited Elaine to have you on board and uh it was a very thoughtful and U thorough discussion as uh uh Mr chair Brian uh mentioned U with the market analysis and all so happy to um have this uh contract and looking forward to a bright future working with here thank you anybody else Elaine any thoughts comments questions um no uh but thank you very much for the opportunity and I look forward to continuing to serve the community very excited great okay uh hearing no more discussion all those in favor wow sorry we got to do a roll call because Mr Manan is remote uh Mr Manan you want to start please sh man yes Amy Rush yes Joe Clark yes Mary Joel frer yes Brian her with enthusiasm yes okay congratulations Elaine you now have a contract you are now the town manager it's time to go to work well done okay great we are on to item number six six now please we did jump around a little bit early on so forgive me item number six new employee the director of Municipal inspections Elaine so tonight uh we're presenting Christopher McWhite um for the position of director of Municipal inspections would you come forward with Jessica so as many of you may know Chuck click retired uh at the end of June and uh so Mr McWhite replaces Chuck click who has retired um the position of director of munic Municipal inspections is in the land use planning and permitting department and uh this position oversees most of the inspections in that department primarily building related permits um the role performs highly skilled organizational supervisory and Technical work related to the provision of inspectional services while actively supporting the land use Department uh the department includes building zoning planning and conservation functions uh the director is challenged daily to ensure compliance and enforcement with all related Town state and federal regulations and laws and codes uh the position also issues building permits uh so Mr mcwhite's experience uh most recently has been with the town of Smithfield Rhode Island for four years as building and Zoning official with prior to that with the city of LEL for 8 years uh with the city of Newton for 2 years and with the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership for two years uh education uh includes an associate degree from hotel and motel management um and restaurant and food service management he's a certified building official a mass certified inspector of buildings a certified plumbing code specialist a certified building code specialist and serves as the International Code Council Northeastern region Coalition code Development Committee co-chair uh references revealed that Christopher is extremely technical he knows the codes inside and out and can apply them fairly uniformly and consistently uh Christopher has invested in staying on top of changing codes and laws and make sure he attends conferences hearings and meetings to stay informed another reference described Christopher as versatile he's able to assess and align Department goals with Town goals he was described as a great listener who looks for input from the team uh and was also described as an educator who relates well to others and helps people understand why a code exists and can explain it to people in a way they can understand the first round interview panel uh included uh John guch principal planner Nicole bratos inspector of construction utilities and Engineering Tim Healey fire prevention officer Ki Oba Health Services agent and Kristen Merill HR generalist the second round interview panel um was uh included Gary D fire chief John guch Anna Rogers Environmental inspectional services coordinator Jessica Len HR director and myself so we're happy to recommend uh Christopher white for appointment great thank you very much welcome Christopher thank you that was a great introduction by Elaine thank you for coming in this evening uh we generally are trying to get away from live interviews like this and just we're going to be affirming things as we go but Jessica do you want to share a few thoughts about the candidate yourself uh yeah um we um we had four people apply and three went to the first round and two to the second round and I have to say um Christopher really stood out as an exceptional candidate uh very well-rounded has a a very good demeanor about him uh we felt like he would be a good fit for the Department um he has a lot of experience um to bring to the table and we're looking forward to um his community approach um which um if I remember correctly he said that when he sees a problem he's his view is how do we support that person in reaching the goals that they're trying to reach rather than just saying um these are the codes we have to follow which we do but how do we help that that entity get to where they need to go to accomplish their goals so that was impressive to me so great thank you Christopher would you like to say hello and introduce yourself real quick no need for any kind of prepared speech please not that you have one in front of you well I'm not entirely sure what I uh could or should say other than to say thank you for this opportunity um if you see fit to uh I'm to continue forward with it but this is a a tremendous community and um as I I did mention in the interview that one of the great things I've seen about this town is that there is a firm foothold in its history um and also into the future and I think that that's a a testament to the type of people that live here that they want to see something beautiful continued forward into the future and uh who could who would not want to be a part of that great thank you for that I appreciate that very much uh board members any burning questions because we're not interviewing but any burning questions or any comments you would like to share Mr Manan will go to you first no question welcome on board and thank you for choosing Hopkinton you have an awesome background love the resume great thank you m theer I just want to say as an assessor uh or having been a professional assessor the importance of the job of building inspector a lot of people do not realize what impact it has on on the budget on the town's incoming money on the new growth uh Figures it's it's imperative that we have a a good inspector who's out there all the time and gets those building permits to the right people uh in a timely manner and uh I thank you very much for stepping forward to accept the position this R yeah I don't have any questions but I just want to say that is an impressive list of ICC certifications that you have I can't even fit them all on my screen at the same time I have to scroll so it was nice to hear from everyone looking forward to having you on staff um loved hearing about your approach to like solving problems for our residents excuse me um I think that's the most important thing right cuz you know how you interact with our residents is really kind of the most important thing here you deal with them probably more than a lot of people in the town hall on a regular basis so um I love that approach and look forward to having you bring that to hopkington welcome as a as a fellow member in the construction industry uh you know the inspector as a key player in that process whether you're building uh School a solar array or something else uh inspectors in their communication style and their willingness to do some of the things that Jessica mentioned uh not do but like listen and facilitate and follow and find a path uh it's a really important skill set to to navigate along with the code itself so uh sounds like you're a great fit and uh we welcome you to Hopkins thank you very much great so with that I believe we have a motion for this appointment I move to confirm the town manager's appointment of Christopher McWhite as director of Municipal inspections second we have a motion in a second I believe correct any discussion on the motion okay uh we'll start with uh M theer mayor Joe theer yes Joe Clark yes bu yes Mr Manan Shah yes Brian her yes welcome Christopher congratulations thank you thanks for coming this evening thank you Jessica if you a few minutes I think Connor would like to administer the oath to me okay do you want to do it right here yep okay uh Christopher we're going to do the oath right here I believe just for for my o oh you're going to for my oath Town manager oh your oath so is does he have to have an oath too later okay all right well let's do yours then that'd be great all right cuz we are a little bit ahead of schedule here so do that I think we should do that out here yeah probably right hang on it's the modern world okay do you solemnly swear you will faithfully and partially discharge perform the duties Inc com upon you as Town manager for the town of hopkington in accordance to the Charter and bylaws of the town of hopkington and the charter and the laws of the Commonwealth massachusett congratulations now it's really official thank you Conor you just IGN me mess great idea well done okay um item number seven Police Department promotions the select board will considering consider the recommendations of Police Chief Joseph Bennett to promote the following police officer rank of Sergeant odod Normandin and Shannon Belo did I say that correctly Belo and chief Bennett is on Zoom Bennett is on zoom and we have others here to join us Scott Scott Van ralton is here and we have our candidates okay uh Chief can you hear me I can hear you I'm just getting just just join the meeting and uh starting my video okay there it is there twice there you are would you like to uh take the floor Chief sure uh through the chair I'd like to thank the board for the opportunity be here tonight um you're going to you're going to see two officers who I'm recommending to be promoted to Sergeant after a rigorous rigorous promotional process I think youve uh if you've met them you you'll know that they're both very smart they're very well educated and uh they they represent the department and serve the community in an outstanding fashion um Shen bin came to us from Providence toown she started her career in September of 2018 and Cody came to us straight out of fitzburg state uh not only have they done exemplary work here within the department but they also went and back finished their coursework to get their master's degree while while working with us I had I believe Jessica is there with you to speak to any questions about the process sergeant lieutenant van Walton managed the process um I did my own evaluation and uh they both they both did so proud to introduce you to Cody normund and Shannon bin as candidates and I hope you'll affirm my recommendation for promotion to S great thank you chief for the intro Jessica do you want to go first and describe the process a little bit for us please in accordance with um the promotional um policy um the exam was posted on February 27th of this year um it was administered on May 31st and uh four individuals took the test um two individuals proceeded to the interview process which was um the interview was held on September 3rd um with myself Lieutenant van ralton and chief new from Southboro um Chief Bennett uh shared his evaluation scores um for both individuals on 93 to me as per the process um I withheld the scores of the interview until after I received those I shared them on the 4th with him to be able to compile um a total final score for the two individuals great thank you Scott anything to add the only thing I would add is that the uh you know it's long process the test is 100 questions uh these individuals studied for three months um in preparation for that test um that test only affords you an opportunity to interview and in our contract or in their contract um 40% is the test 40% of the interview and then 20% uh accounts for the chief's assessment which is essentially their background um any their seniority things of that nature um so between both of these candidates I couldn't ask for anything uh more out of them um I'm very excited to see um how they turn into sergeants and become leaders in our agency and um you know lead our younger officers that are coming on board in the very near future okay do we have our other candidate with us would she like to join us please at the table here please feel free um so thank you for that Scott um you know we're again moving away from kind of live interviews and going to the affirmation process uh but I I have a couple of business questions so please don't read into my business questions that's normal stuff that I ask and when whenever we do something like this especially when it comes to budget tonight um but m r Bush any questions comments that are burning oh I guess I was just going to say it was explained to us in advance about the promotional policy and how it works now because it's a little different than how we've done it um other times than I've been on the board so I just want to make sure that's going to be accessible to the public too I mean they can hear Jessica explain it and everything here too but it'll be a change for the public I think but yeah but otherwise um we have the information in the packet we have the policy and we I was able to speak to Chief Ben on the phone to ask other questions you good okay Mr Clark no questions you know congratulations to both of you you know I know your work sometimes might feel like it goes unnoticed or underappreciated but that is not the case with us at the select board we appreciate what you guys do and what you do for the town so on behalf of all of us thank you thank you thank you was the FR here I I uh read your resumees again and uh you both been in town what four or five years now corre and on the force so you're very familiar with hington and I think this is a great step for you thank you you been working hard for it Mr Manan any burning questions or comments uh no particular question um thank you for your service and uh for uh keeping our town safe and providing all the great work that you are doing we certainly support um your work and uh your continued uh effort and wish you all the best I did speak to Chief benett and you both have a great resume and uh we talk about uh some of the areas specifically just to know and as um um Jessica has explained and Amy has explained uh we are going through the process and I just want to congratulate you and thank you for your service and uh we are here to support you any way we can thank you great thank you I'll be back with you folks in one sec Chief Bennett um the two positions are budgeted yes okay and no issues with that uh for fy2 and going forward correct no sir okay I'm good there actually through the chair um Chief where are we now out of the 29 positions sure um we have four in the academy which brings us to 24 we have have offered out to an additional two which guess that's to 26 excellent thank you so back to the two uh candidates for sergeant I wore as much Blue tonight as I could possibly find in my closet uh I have blue jeans on that I've hidden behind the desk here uh I think it's a great opportunity for the town to promote and I'm excited that you two have earned this and I know the town is as well uh we are with you 110% and I love seeing you guys out and about uh as I run on the corridor and inspect the corridor and pick up weeds on the corridor and everything else on the corridor um but uh you know really excited to have this uh promotion this evening and you've earned it and congratulations thank you thank you okay I believe we have a motion that we want to read with great enthusiasm gladly okay I I move to accept the recommendation of the police chief and promote Cody nen and Shannon bin to the rank of Sergeant second second de so we have M lefr our motion uh Mr manan's second sorry he was a little faster on the draw uh any further questions or comments okay we have to do a roll call because we have I'm sorry I coughed sorry I was just coughing sh man yes okay thank you Amy R yes Joe Clark yes may Joel yes with great enthusiasm Brian H yes congratulations well done thank you Scott do you have the pin do you want to do that this evening yeah yeah so we're going to do a pinning and then we're going to do a picture when we get the pinnings completed so if anybody wants to join for the pinning please come on up so the cameras are over here so we need you folks to kind of do it that's there you go right here even a little closer would be good through the chair we'll take a picture if you guys just wait okay we got some pictures going here that's great very well done thank you so scottt can you join us for this pick please and uh Elaine um if we can get a photographer Ray be one two three one more one two three okay great thank you very much congratulations guys see you out there [Music] huh oh yeah it's nice okay um thank you all for coming this evening it's always nice to do those sorts of things um chair thank you okay chief thank you all right we are on to item number eight we okay with moving ahead now Lane you think do we have everybody that we need for this there are some on Zoom I think too probably some folks in the hallway so why don't we give us a minute I think I see Appropriations is here Capital Improvements is here are there any school committee members out there do we know or I don't see any yet I'm sorry okay Mark Logan is on one of the financial committee right yes yeah so Mark Logan could be live and up right there over here wherever you want yeah please join us wherever we can find a seat that's power come on up come on myself that so also on Zoom is there a Mary Z on one of the financial committees Mary z u Donald souland I know is on some committees but I'm not sure if it's on okay but not a financial committee okay come on in and join us up front please we got some seats uh don't be shy this is a team you are if anyone's going to present they probably should be towards the front okay so Elaine do you want to introduce this item on the agenda for us please and explain why we have an Entourage of Highly skilled professionals and volunteers sitting in the room with us yep so um the charter uh requires a couple of things uh first is that um uh the town manager gains consensus on the budget calendar before October 1st and post that calendar so we've distributed that calendar for this evening uh the other thing is um this is the time when we start talking about what the board's budget message might be so we start talking about you know overall Town finances and planning this process and uh discussing when when um when various things are going to happen and uh on our budget uh calendar um we've um noted October 1st as the date when the board will vote its budget message so this allows for two meetings in advance of that for a discussion of all of the things that will go into that message so we're starting that discussion this evening okay great thank you uh thank you all for coming does anybody need to uh open a meeting or anything like that is everybody good as far as public meeting stuff goes everybody's all good everyone's good about you good R we're fine okay um all right so uh unbeknownst to me and I'm off my game a little bit still in this new term uh we had 10 minutes for this item okay now we all know that's not going to happen um but we've got a lot of other stuff in the meeting done already so we've got some time here so uh don't feel rushed U but if anyone's giving a PowerPoint presentation it should be 5 minutes or less okay so blow through those slides um I didn't see the number like the bottom line number when I looked at the slides earlier so we'll come back to that but um welcome everybody and uh why don't we just go around in room and everyone introduce themselves real quick so the residents at home even if they may not get a camera shot on everybody will know who is here and we'll start with the gentleman hiding in the back corner over there first Master school committee great I'm Nancy Kavon the chair of the school committee Carol kav superintendent Susan Ric assistant superintendent for Finance St Stevenson school committee KY M school committee Jamie brona I'm the vice chair of the school committee great Mike Eric KY and appropriation committee I'm Mike car appropriation committee Bill Flanery appropriation committee Jean Burman appropriation committee and Mike Manning appropriation committee Dan everol Capital Improvements committee I defer to my member on digital yeah I'm Matt Kisner chair cic and do we have anybody on on Zoom for this we do have Mark Logan on Zoom I'm sorry Mark Logan Mark Logan Mark you out there hi good evening yeah Mark Logan Capital improv great good to see you did we miss anybody uh we have a couple other folks in the back Fire Chiefs here town clerk's here town council's here Kyla Kyla laier CFO okay I think that's everybody so how shall we proceed well we could first talk about the budget calendar and make sure that everyone is okay with the way it's laid out in the and what was in the packet has everyone had a chance to see the budget calendar okay I think it's a fairly typical budget calendar right yes it's our standard budget calendar we're trying to um on the town's end move up our process a little bit wherever possible elae do you mind sharing the first two or three dates of the budget calendar don't read the whole thing but just the next few kind of deadlines and so so the resents can get a feel for what's going to start here following your budget message on October 1st uh the CFO will distribute budget materials to town departments um and so people will start working on their budgets uh at that time um on November 1st the those budgets are due to the town manager um and then the select board will hold some listening sessions um as we move forward into November okay uh does anybody do any of the Committees maybe we should check with each committee is everybody good with the budget calendar as laid out start with school committee okay Capital Improvements yes okay Appropriations I believe so we're good okay any professional staff here that wants to chime in on the budget calendar everybody good okay I think that covers all the teams right all right great thank you for that um anything else you want to share Lan before I kind of go into a very short speech uh no I think uh I've been working with Kyla on you know setting forth uh getting our our numbers together uh for your information in the next month um and uh as you know prepared their residence guide uh to the town's finances as some background information so we'll be working on preparing that information for you great thank you did everyone have a chance to see read or at least hear about the message that uh Kyla put forth uh at our last meeting about you know what's coming at us in the next several years certainly you know with the tax uh impact for the average house from 800 $850,000 house going from 125 to 85 everybody everybody's aware of that right so I think that's a good place to start this discussion for FY 26 um we have um the town has decided on two separate occasions and two you know subsequent annual Town meetings to invest in the community in a big way we're building 1990 million give or take uh of schools uh that's ongoing like right now uh Hopkins is already underway I think charleswood is underway too so um we've made those decisions as a community now we have to find a way to make it work but going from 125 to 185 for the average home in hopkington is a significant number and we'll present some significant challenges for a lot of our residents so anything and everything we do in my view anyway over the next couple of months as we get ready for next year's town meeting we can never forget that fact because there's a lot of pressure on the community as it is for good reason great assets are coming right but we have to be crazy Frugal like we've never been before to make this work uh with that n yes KY sorry and I just want to um I looked back through the past issue or discussion papers from Tim O Larry the prior CFOs and this has been a consistent message from 23 as well as 24 where he actually said the debt was going to increase um 50 to 60% and it's something that we need to be aware of so I know last two me or two weeks ago the message might have been alarming but it has been consistent year over year great thank you so why don't we start with just that s of Baseline um and again hit each committees if they want to touch on that topic I start you have any thoughts on that or you want to share you know I mean I think that's something that we all as taxpayers are mindful of and I think as a committee we try to come in where we can um with what we need not just what we'd like and what we think would be great but what we really need for the students and for the school of in hopkington great it's a great mindset uh anybody else in the school committee want to share anything okay Capital Improvements just want to reinforce we mentioned that 185 so about 500 a month 50% growth number I think it's important to reinforce to people that that number is reflective of no new additional Capital spending and borrowing during the interim period that's not a fun thing to say and I don't like being the one to say it but I do think that it needs to be said often clearly and openly that's the number now thank you Matt anybody else from Capital Improvements want to share anything okay appropriate ations anything yeah I just want to make note that when we're talking about these increases you know I I looked at Timo L's model when he had done it before that we have the tax impact from these capital projects being believe it's like 950 for one and 500 for the other over the life of the over the next couple of years as they roll in but getting up to that point is really just the uh what is our operational budget going to be a lot of the modeling said if we you know and and our our our growth you know um if we we're we're we're at buildout for you know Legacy farm so that that new growth is going to go down so we have to cover that in our operational budget plus we have you know if we if we come in with uh we have operational budget has to be 6% 8% or can we keep it at 3% that so it's potentially going to be 12,000 to 18,000 but we we have the ability by watching our operational budget to to go under it okay and we also have the ability to go over it if we don't so that's that's the message that Appropriations Committee has been trying to say for the last couple of years that we have to be very mindful of our operational budget from this point and watch what other projects if we want to approve or not approve for the next couple years to till we get used to what we've just approved and we're going to be paying for in the next couple of years okay great I would like to say something Mr chairman as a citizen uh I know the school what getting into a political argument the schools drive a lot of the operating budget for the town what I'm seeing in hearing is I'm thinking about the fixed income older people that are going to be heavily taxed uh you know how are they going to handle it are they going to be forced to sell and move out to go somewhere else uh I know it's pride of us being a great school education but sometimes uh I hate to see that if we build a new school and all this money and Float the bonds that if the students or the numbers don't materialize like it was said in our uh fiscal year discussion uh then we've spent money and we could have empty rooms so I just want to make that you know as an engineer uh got it great anyone else on Appropriations U you know through the chair I know in the past it's there's been discussion the town does own some assets I'm not referring to the schools and things that we know that we're trying to figure out what to do with I'm curious is there a comprehensive list that's available what kind of assets the town does own and could that possibly be used to maybe help lessen some of the financial burden it's a great point and I think that's certainly something we should look at you know holistically as we go through this process you know what can we sell to generate some cash to offset the expense of The Debt Service and everything else that's coming out could the chair cuz I got asked this last night too but um at at historic district commission but there was a nice presentation by the permanent building committee about that sort of thing in not our one of our June meetings so if you look that up I think it was June 18th does that sound right so it was in our meeting packet it's a really good um presentation about facilities that we have existing and plans okay anybody else from Appropriations I know I've been ignoring my colleagues here to get this enrolling but I'll come back to to the board so any other thoughts comments just kind of kicking it off no just to Echo what others have said we we really when we were voting on the uh charleswood project and the um and the Hopkins project I think we all knew that these were the really big ones that we were going to have to slow down our Capital after this because you know to make it work so I hope everyone in town and all the Departments know that that we did those big expenses but now we have to slow down a little great well said Mr Clark um nothing new I really appreciate you know the comment around the operating budget how actul that is the decisions we make on that this fall will be just as impactful as what we do with the capital budget next year so certainly agree with you on that front well I just want to make a comment I think the list of of town assets is a good idea but when I was uh an assessor we had done that and the state inhibited us with the law that said you can't sell an asset just for money it has to replace it with another asset so it's it's like how we we got to get around them somehow are we going to negotiate with them or talk to them about what we're going to do if we sell an asset what are we going to do with that money to make it another asset uh you know it's just it's a really complicated uh little issue there wouldn't we be able to bring bring that into free cash though and then get that certified and then have it available the following fiscal year if you can sell it if it's an asset that we can the state will allow us to sell oh that we can money I thought you were trying to sell do about how we were trying to do this the state says you you can't just sell an asset for money you have to sell it for another asset so uh that that's well if we sell a school for example we're building another school I think we could make that argument right possibly okay I mean I I don't know I'm not I'm not the state I know I ran into that problem trying to sell an asset for a town so I I love the idea of getting into the asset piece what we can do with it we have not made any decisions to sell anything yet please don't anyone think I'm s selling everything off okay uh Mr Manan are you out there still I am yes can you hear me okay y hear you fine yeah no as I'm listening certainly that's that's the very common them we all have uh you know concerns how our taxes are raising uh but at the same time we want to make sure we have the quality of life that we uh enjoy and we want to see uh Excel with our town uh and our schools are our assets so we want to keep a close eye on that I think the bottom line is we need to have a laser beam focus on our budget both capex and Opex and with all the things that we have done uh we uh hopefully have um to take a hard look as to how we are going to do our Capital planning going forward and maybe you know we'll have to really go uh slow tightening our belt at least for the next decade and have a very wellth out uh criteria principles and financial discipline among ourselves and seems like we are all aligned how we are going to uh uh manage this going forward for the betterment of the town for the residents and and uh manage the burden of tax and that said it's not an easy easy task we all understand that and for that we initiated this discussion and I think we'll um talk about it in the subsequent sessions how we can come up with that uh common framework and a more quanitative criteria based uh disciplined uh uh way of evaluating all of these as we get into the budget uh session last year we had a great um you know discussion and very I think both thought out and smooth Journey to our budget process a lot of it is because we were upfront and had good discussions and found our ways to compromise on some of the asks uh we'll continue to do that but the biggest challenge as we all know is that we see so far the growth not uh slowing down as much there are some uh and then there's Revenue impact too but then also our contract negotiations and our various contract obligations and how do we manage that within all these perview so we at the same time have to keep our our eye and mind open for uh you know new opportunities on economic development on uh public private partnership where we can uh and you know this is just having some open open mind and creative ways to look at those opportunities where we can have uh private uh or seek some private partnership to uh do some of the Public Works along with um private interests uh it's it's again uh more to come in the coming days but I think the message is clear we definitely want to have laser beam focus on all of these and last thing on this is on the opic side also we have uh been very um you know cognizant and well thought out in all of these all the stakeholders here from cic to uh Appropriations to uh CFO and town Administration everyone here have um spent you know hundreds of hours dedicated time analyzing and projecting all of these for the good of the town and I appreciate it and I've enjoyed working with them throughout the years for a long time but I think we need to also take a fresh look where we can uh because this is little bit of uh you know uh challenging time that we are entering through looking at the numbers looking at the forecast as we have seen in the past is that can we manage our risks little more fine-tuned fashion can we manage our budget asks and budget uh prioritization early on a little more planned fashion and we have discussed this we'll discuss this more I'm sure you all have heard me saying again and again and I take every opportunity to repeat it just so it is in our head head and mind which is that uh we don't want our cash uh reserve of 3 and5 million at the end of the budget we would rather want to do little bit of uh planned allocation and I'm not saying it's I know the reasons as well it's not always in our control how we can allocate it better up front so we don't you know uh dry the um uh Parts where we may need it uh to really continue the service and things of that sort and also managing the risk we don't want to compromise with the risk but we also don't want to over manage in a time like this we don't have the you know luxury to do some of that and I'm not saying we're doing that I'm just saying we need laser beam focus and many of the things that we have done how can we tune it better going forward and last thing on this is last year also we had a practice and I see some of it reflected but we can look at it uh if you can look at it is throughout the final um December January timeline we had some touch points with um school being our um you know biggest partner in uh budget in some ways town and school to visit some of the Gap areas or potential ask areas so we can align them ahead way ahead of um well ahead of the town meeting last year I think we had that um um yielding pretty good results so timeline and touch Point wise sorry I didn't fully look at all the uh touch points but if we can embed couple of those checkpoints I think that would help so I'll pause there more to come but thank you all for um your help and contribution to this and looking forward to our budget journey and U um doing the right things for our town great thank you uh Elaine let's talk about the um uh working Budget Group or committee or whatever we've called that in the past what is the plan for that for this coming year how did that work in the last couple years and how do you what would you all like to see happen this year for who's going to be in on the the the conversation and discussions so typically it's the uh chair of Appropriations um a member of the select board and a member of the school committee the budget Advisory Group is complied with that uh with the town manager and CFO and unless it's sh do this year right I believe so Y and so um there's regular meetings um I forgotten whether it's weekly or bi-weekly can you just back up can you just give me the the who's going to be on it again the budget Advisory Group and it's the uh chair of Appropriations um the select Bo liaison um and a member of the school committee school committee chair yeah and town manager and CFO Town manager CFO superintendent and uh assistant superintendent for budget and operations or what right is that close yeah Susan all right so that's one two three four five six 7 those open meeting uh discussions those are typically daytime kind of like business meetings right they're daytime and there's not votes taken or anything like that no it's it's updating it's keeping people informed of what's going on okay so let's just make sure we're all on the same page with that is the school committee good with that group of people on the budget Act what is it budget what budget Advisory Group budget Advisory Group you guys good with that's the way it's we've done it for as long as I can remember I don't see any okay you guys good with that you guys good with that appropriate uh Capital Improvements you good with that we were notably absent from that discussion I would love to be part of it okay so let's talk about that while we're doing this um you would like to be part of that budget Advisory Group yes I I recognize we don't play the same role in shaping OPC but when capex and Opex work together we can be more informed and strategic okay your thoughts on that it's a great idea do anybody want to ban cic from joining that group okay great idea I think it's a great audition all right so you're not banned that's great you're on the island okay any any other thoughts okay so you guys good with the budget Advisory Group everybody good there good there you guys good with the budget Advisory Group makeup adding cic to it I think it makes great sense so thanks for thanks for speaking up are we all good with that group good Amy I missed what you were saying a minute ago about oh we picked the Liaisons already so sho's listed as the budget advisor group liaison okay and I have often put myself down as an alternate because they are during the workday and occasionally they come up Suddenly and then if he can't go then someone else should be able to go it could be any of us okay great everybody good with that so we have that group that group will start to come together maybe we'll create some kind of email list obviously and get that rolling a little bit names to the different we'll schedule those meetings okay all right great so the budget Advisory Group will get together and the budget Advisory Group will meet on a regular basis right and they'll start chipping away at what everybody's needs from all the Departments including schools and they'll start to build a recommendation that would come back to the select board would go back obviously the school committee it would go to Appropriations cap improvements will be there so then we can all kind of disseminate what we're hearing from the budget Advisory Group over the next several months right that's how this is going to work that's how it'll work once once we get some numbers going and in the past uh the group hasn't made necessarily recommendations but it certainly could it it's often an exchange of information so that for example as we're going through our budgets uh for the schools if there's something big that we can foresee it's we try to bring it to the group and say this is a concern we have versus um something that you know Appropriations or cic or the select board could bring information in the same way to try to make sure that all the boards stay connected okay I've been through this in the past I've forgotten all that I've been through um so I'm a little rusty around it but I know that when we work together as a team and we talk which that requires meeting together and you know regular interaction uh it goes pretty well when we don't it can get a little dicey because been through a couple of those as well way back one so the more we do stuff like this the more the budget Advisory Group communicates with each other and then communicates back to the individual boards and committees I think the better off will be so it's all keep talking and we're all in it for one reason to advance hopkington moving forward that's it nothing no other thing but move Hopkins forward as best we can I think that's the job um okay so I know that school committee put together some uh trory information uh to share with us this evening I think it would be great if we could go through that quickly because we're not obviously making any decisions tonight I don't think there's all ton of detail in there but it's good to get all of us level set as to what we're looking at from a school perspective there're a major driver of the budget obviously uh all the school department all the other departments in town will also have an opportunity to give us their feedback and their ideas and this won't be the last time the schools present to us or to the budget Advisory Group uh but it's a good good way to kind of kick off this discussion I think so if you guys are ready to do that uh and we can get that onto the screen that'll be great yes I think someone has our slides too I think we should slide a microphone over though Kyla or Matt or some I'm do that [Music] I was kind of half joking about the five minutes really we presumed you were not really joking they want to cut in half all right as you said we want to just give you a little snapshot of where we perceive our budget to be heading uh we like to always include for you next slide please the historical increases so you can see where we've been at 6.63 6.6 5.4 2.88 7.9 5.35 and one of the things I hope that that illustrates is with the variation we really do ask for what we need so this year we anticipate that there will be three major budget drivers student enrollment increases special education needs and fulfilling all of our contractual obligations next slide please so we'll start with enrollment what you see on the screen are the numbers from our demographer Dr Arthur Wagman in the 2425 school year Dr Wagman predicts that we will be at 4,290 students by the end of the year today we're at 4,234 and so you can see we're about 56 students away we are building a budget currently for 4,355 students which is the projected enrollment for June of 2026 so when you see our FY 26 budget that's the number we're working with uh we like to show you this slide because it shows you the school year and what the projected budget enrollment was next slide please and then it shows you the actual enrollment according to the October Sims and then the end of year actual and if you go down that last column that shows you the end of year actual you will see that in every year except for the year of the pandemic we had more students than what was projected at the beginning of the year so for example in 189 the projected enrollment was 3557 at the end of the school year we had 3 , 741 and even though that Gap might close a little bit we typically end up with more than we thought we would have next slide please okay um so if we have a September enrollment to 4,246 and a projected enrollment in June of 2026 to 4355 the difference is about 110 students when we calculate how many FTE we're going to need we batch our kids in groups of 20 because we say that every 20 students needs about 1.4 teachers and so when we take our 110 we have 5.5 groups of 20 we take our 5.5 groups multiply it times the 1.4 and we have about 7.7 FTE or 7.7 new teachers that we anticipate needing to hire just based on student enrollment alone the dollar value on that is about $577,500 and we do it that way because we just budget about $75 ,000 for each new teacher next slide please and so then we can take a look at special education next slide those numbers are also growing um so if you take a look at the slide I have up there now this is provided by the department of Elementary and secondary education in 2020 we had 3,893 students according to desie in 2024 5 years later 4,223 in terms of students with disabilities the percentage of students in our district was at 12.2 in 2020 and it's at 14.2 today which is still actually a very low percentage if you look Statewide so we have had an increase of 330 students in those five years and we've had an increase in about 2% of the kids on IEPs so if we go to the next slide you can see what's happened when we hadn't been adding staff to cover the students who had um different needs in our Public Schools so in 2019 we had about 10 um FTE for every 100 kids with a with an IEP or with a diagnosed disability so if you're doing the math one teacher would be responsible for 10 students over time that dipped to 7.3 and that became an unacceptable and really unwieldy number in the previous slide desie went all the way to 2024 the most recent data we can Harvest right now only takes us to 2023 in in this domain in the rate our domain that they offer to us so we're going to see where that gets us when we added three new special Educators in fy2 so that 7.3 should come up but we always anticipate special education costs because there are programmatic needs and everyone individual kids IEP dictates what we need in terms of Staffing and programs so we just want to put that out there as special education will in fact be in need as always um and then on the next slide you can see that we have the special educ ation stabilization count which we have funded historically at 1, 94,000 when you look at the rates of inflation and you look at the increases in numbers of students while we are very grateful for that number it has less buying power when we have more students and more inflation um but we are anticipating needing that as well because we still have many students who are educated outside of the school district when we look at our contractual obligations this is going to be a very tricky year for that because this is a year where we are negotiating with our custodians with our teachers and with our nurses we just finished our negotiations with par professional so they have a brand new contract this year so one thing that we should note is that in addition to whatever the percent increase is for all of those bargaining units teachers also are entitled to something called steps and Lanes meaning every year of service is another step for them until they get on the stop TOP Step and if a teacher for example is moving from having a master's degree to 15 credits Beyond a master's degree a teacher would also move a lane so we have to be aware that they have a cost of living or a percent increase however you want to call that and then also step and Lane increase when we looked at the salary increase alone for the operating budget in FY 25 it was 2.5% but when we took the contractual obligations all of the contracts for FY 25 it was 3.07% and that's just contractual obligations so it doesn't count things like you know turning on the lights um when we say how much is 1% worth in terms of the whole operating budget uh it's about $631,000 is 1% of the budget uh one thing that you we know absolutely positively for sure you're going to see is you will see 3.0 FTE special education par professionals because just based on student need from the start of school till today we've had to add three par professionals to our our ranks all right so where does this leave us we promise you as always that we are going to ask all of our building principles and our directors to have data to support whatever they are asking for when they do that they need to be considering the needs of all of the children of Hopkinton and they need to focus on the things that are needs to have need to haves not nice to haves and we are very serious and each year we try to publish for you a list of things that folks had asked for that didn't quite make it into the budget because they didn't either have the data or they didn't have need to have sort of status according to um sort of our view on things um so in addition to the 3.0 special education pair of professionals I'm sure you'll be seeing increased teacher Staffing at 7.7 you'll probably also see other special education asks we are trying now to grow incrementally the administrative team we have about 800 more students uh here today from the time I started and we have added only an assistant principle in terms of building level Administration so it's getting very hard on our building principles and assistant principles to monitor the numbers of kids we have doing that job kind of independently which they've been doing for a number of years and then of course the contractual obligations um which are both salary and other contracts for example School Bus contract or other things that this will be the last slide that I show you and I show it to you all the time this is our per pupil expenditure um prior to this meeting the school committee met and we were looking at the the um per puple expenditure for the town of Weston which pay spends about $30,000 a year on their kids we're spending somewhere just under 16,000 but you can see and I I think that this is something in some ways to celebrate but it's also something to say thank you to our teachers and our administrators and our par professionals custodians everyone who works with our kids because we are getting very good school for in the hopkington public schools and providing a very high level of education and when you look at this slide we are in the bottom in terms of funding the bottom 25% if you have a red circle the bottom 50% if there's a blue circle and the singular green circle that came from fy21 is that something that was in the top 30% that year professional development was in the top 30% so I've gone a long way to say in terms of per pupil expenditure we get a lot of great education for a very very good price and so I thank you for giving us the time to share with you our anticipated needs and we're happy to take any questions so tonight is not to dissect that proposed you know those Concepts and those issues so much uh a couple of thoughts real quick though Hopkin 10 has been in the mid teens per pupil for a long time we've always been very low at the state level per pup spending for a long time that's great that's called Roi right so we get great scores great great kids great great whatever all you know all the kids the things that the kids are accomplishing through the teachers and the administration but we've always been in the mid- teens so it's not a it's not a per pupil spending expansion it's a growth expansion I guess what I'm getting to here uh it's the sheer number of students and the growth in the town that's driving this thing up year over year over year so uh second thing I would say as you talk to the administration in each of the buildings if you would please share the average household tax bill today and the average household tax bill 5 years now which is already baked just so they understand they may not live in town they may not hear some of that stuff make sure they understand that our residents are going from 125 to1 185 for $850,000 house that's already baked right so please let them know that so they understand what we're all going to have to deal with here and there's nobody saying what are you talking about there's plenty of money in this town there is plenty of money in this town it's going to be spent to build the Great buildings that we're going to build so I just want to sure everybody understands in the budget process and those folks you mentioned are key to this whole thing because they're the ones that going to you know start bottom at bottom build their budget up what they need um does anybody have any burning questions or comments around what the schools have just shared with us anything anybody yes sir U I'm curious um the return investment is really amazing it's a wonderful number but does it add burden to our teachers and their ability to do their jobs do we see a how long on average teacher stay with the district is it uh does it result in them moving to different uh positions uh before we would expect them we actually do have a very high retention rate um but I think that maybe the question the best answer to your question is that we have a lot of teacher loyalty our teachers feel very passionate about hopkington about the students Hopkinson and about their work here and I I do think that they you know they they give without hesitation so yeah new parent in the school system I do see that with a lot of teachers so it's it was really amazing to see so that's really a lot of congratulations that great thanks for that question anybody else any other burning questions for this evening Mike I did have one um the increasing teaches that the I think was uh 170 or 677000 when these teachers Come Aboard is that based on current contractual negotiations or is that figure going to go up when they do have another contract uh redo so the when we we budget we estimate that we'll start a teacher about $75,000 but they really get placed on the salary schedule based on the experience they bring with them um and what degree status they have so if they have a master's degree with with 5 years of experience they would be Master step five and whatever that dollar amount is is what they would be paid that when we negotiate a successor agreement all of those numbers will change so whatever the percent increase is all of the numbers in the salary schedule go up accordingly so is that a figure based on future contracts or is the current contracts when these teachers Come Aboard that 75,000 is really just kind of a guesstimate at kind of what the average you might hire someone with lots of experience you might hire someone brand new out of high school out of college so what we do is we just say maybe 75,000 is a good estimate Mark in the middle anything else theair um um if you could just um us not briefly not going into detail um I'm more cous the special ucation um student I'm sorry we can't hear you actually sorry yeah we need a microphone SL slide over there please okay there you go yeah I can use this one all right sorry um yeah I'm Caroline uh new appro commit um the question is I would like some um insight into the uh increase the percentage increase on the students um not sure like what's causing the consistent increase like from 12% to 13 to 14 are we looking out into even more you know go beyond maybe 20% like it it's just kind of like um not so I I don't know what's causing this is the assessment changed or is it because we more student with disability moving in or why is that as student graduate leaving the district we still seeing this trend um how do we prepare for this are we going to hire more like every year teachers it's entirely based on student need and so what happens is there's a series of testing and if a student qualifies for special education we are required to give them whatever special education services are deemed necessary for that student to succeed and so can we pinpoint you know exactly what's causing that 2% I I don't think that we can pinpoint exactly what's causing the 2% but I think if you look at the and you can look at this on the Desi website if you look Statewide at what special education percentages are across the Commonwealth 14 is a pretty low number actually I know it feels like it's getting bigger but it's actually a very small percentage okay any other burning questions the chief here I shouldn't be saying Burning uh to the board level anybody have any questions they really got to get out tonight or ask right now about I just had a quick ask if you could email us the presentation afterwards CU I know we hear all the talk in the community and if we have the numbers it's easier for us to explain things sure thing okay everybody good yep all right so Elaine do we owe you anything else this evening no does this crowd owe you anything else this evening uh no but we look forward to continued discussion okay and the budget message which is a formal part of the process per the charter that's due on October 1 that's when the board is scheduled to do that yes okay so that's the next big step is the budget message that'll come out and I think you can kind of figure out what it's going to be so uh okay great uh with that we'll move off this agenda item thank you all for coming this evening I hope everybody had a chance to participate as they hoped and uh we'll keep the dialogue going thank you have a good night all right I'm want to move us around a little bit we have um I think we should do the redactions policy item number 10 next silly question uh and then we'll come back to the water and sewer Advisory Board Brian Berman is here to discuss the redactions policy uh with the board um but I'll turn it over to Elaine to introduce it the board reviewed the draft redactions policy at a previous meeting and requested a couple of edits um and those have been um accomplished in this draft including uh at the end a uh proed procedures flowchart flowchart is in there I saw that okay one of the edits I mentioned I didn't see is was it the definition of what would be a sensitive record verus not I believe it's in the text in the text yeah if you okay Brian do you want to like grab a mic and you want to walk us through kind of from last we spoke about this uh any adjustments changes you've made to the redactions proposed redactions policy I'm sure and just to miss rter Bush's question if you go to the top of um page three it's defined in the text I did take the opportunity in this draft to bold text Define terms so they're a little easier to to pick out of the draft but it is it is in there um me just find it no no worries the top of Page Three okay you know and if it's if it's helpful we can um as we're talking about this now I know you know we want to wrap this up but we can always add this add something even if you approve it um would be maybe at the end we could do a table with just the defined terms and then that way someone could locate those definitions easily yeah it's not exactly specific as I was hoping um I guess some people we wouldn't do this but people could think that we were that we were using this policy to hide things that we should not be able to hide that should be transparent so I so defining sensitive as being you know crimes and thing things like that or exactly what it is I think would be helpful for the public trust but I otherwise I think the policy is good that makes sense I think we would we would Define it by a non you know um exhaustive list of examples just because I wouldn't want to guess at every potential right sensitive situation we could have um you never know what you're going to come across but um we could certainly enhance the definition with um you know examples that sort of give you the idea of what this is supposed to be without you know making somebody think well if it's not in the list then it's not a sensitive record that's the real danger to me I wouldn't want people to think that we were hiding things that might be embarrassing because we were calling them sensitive so I just want to make sure right that that that's a good point yeah okay thank you yep um so just to uh get back to the chair's original question I I think probably one of the biggest things that we did at the suggestion of Mr Manan was to create a procedures flow chart um which there is a lot in this policy so I I really sort of like flow charts to be on one page when people start flipping Pages it's hard to follow those so I managed to get it in there um it is a little bit dense I was unavoidable but um you know the goal is is that somebody can just step through this and and sort of see exactly what sort of the basic process is which is the blue on the left and then there's sort of call outs when you get to sensitive record records and notes where people should be thinking about things as they go through this process um I know another comment that we had in the last session was training and so I added a section at the end of this policy uh that addresses that I did want to give it a little bit of flexibility um you know certainly we should have people who go through a training you know with my office or with whomever else the town manager deems appropriate but you know as we really get into this over the Long Haul there'll probably be times where someone who's done the redaction process many times and has sort of a non-sensitive record set could probably train a lower level employee to do a first pass I think with some of these things you know we need to get into it and and we need to take it slow to start with and sort of figure out how we settle into the actual processes you know the people how they implement the policy that we've written here but those are the two those are the biggest changes from the last last um last version there weren't I don't think there were any other directions to change it but you know I I fully recognize that you know every time you go through something and when you enhance it it's quite likely that you'll see something else that should be added and so I certainly welcome tonight any further suggestions at enhancements yeah whatever we were to put in place that doesn't mean that's it and we're done you know adjusting we can always exactly Clark yeah kind of kind of with that in mind I did not think this was something like oh we'd be approving this tonight you know we just kind of started this conversation that last meeting what was it a couple weeks ago um so you know while I've been thinking about this in between a couple things came to mind like one kind of you know I think we talked about it but we never really put it into motion was you know redaction softwares you know I I I think that needs to like there's way too much technology out there and I think we need to figure out how to incorporate that because like I I I do think I look at the flowchart flowchart looks great by the way um room for human error right like this this is what we talked about from the start so if we're doing this process after a software is coming in and being applied that gives me a lot more confidence in the process um I'd love to know and then really kind of the only other thing is um I'd love love to just know what our neighboring towns have for their policies is this in line did did we look at and and Brian maybe you looked at that as putting this together um I'm sure it's not something that's like standard for every down we obviously didn't have one but I'd love to know if there is some sense of consist I certainly looked around and I can continue looking I'm not aware of another town that has a redaction policy I think you guys may end up being the leaders on this um so I I I will look more I certainly you know sort of did searches just in other contexts right like it's not just municipal government that has redaction policies um you know I went out and looked at business you know other other levels of government you know to try to inform this to make sure that I'm not missing any best practices but I I was a little surprised too actually I didn't I didn't see anything from another municipality yeah no I I didn't think there's obviously nothing apparent missing but just figured you know if we had peers that went through this or towns that had issues and put something in place but for me the biggest thing would be how do we incorporate a a software some type of program to yeah I think this should reflect how that software would get worked into the process right so let's think that through a little bit sure a conversation I can have with it as well cuz they're going to have to you know I'm just a lawyer I need to to work with it yeah no I Elaine I think you said didn't you say you'd done some research on this in the past or some someone from town did you looked at some records management um software and looking at those yeah because I feel like that to your point Brian that would change the flowchart um just just by nature of incorporating that so com yeah so I as is you know again realizing kind of late that we were looking for a motion tonight I probably wouldn't feel comfortable with a motion knowing that this is very likely to change that's just my opinion okay so I don't mind waiting another um week either but um I was going to say to get the software would be expensive so that wouldn't happen probably till the next year budget so I don't know if we might need to maybe not tonight approve a preliminary policy until software can be purchased okay good point yeah if I if I I may uh through the chair I mean it may make sense to schedule it again in a couple of weeks I can have discussions with it and we can at least do some due diligence on you know the cost range of what that might be um both for I think there's been sort of almost two different types of Technologies discussed here um one being the artificial intelligence to actually go through the records and provide AI assistance and actually redacting the documents and then the other one was um more formalized management system that would keep track of Records requests and just you know sort of put bones to you know as these things come in keeping track of it and applying the actual uh specifics of the policy through the chair uh just to add I think um yeah definitely I have been also um an advocate for applying and finding the right NLP AI driven software now it's an emerging technology and there are a lot of progress that's happening especially in the legal sector but I I kind of think and I don't um have any problem delaying it um to kind of review and come back with some more uh research work on that uh but I do think that um that may require time for evaluation and time for testing and then budgeting and all those so we may uh add that as a provision uh to keep that room for that uh but wouldn't hard probably in our next session we can review that and discuss that that and have um this policy with you know further review if necessary I I think it looks good for the most part that I've seen kind of um institutionalize this for now so we can get the ball rolling while we are doing it and I do see that it's a it's going to be a living document because in the next couple of years there will be tremendous progress in in AI space too and we may be able to fully automated it in next couple of years too but I think uh it's worth checking uh what we can do now uh but also have something um get to get the ball rolling in the next couple of sessions okay thank you P Joo uh I just I I like this the flow chat and I like the way we're headed uh I know we're not there yet and I do agree that I think we are going to be the Pioneer Community as far as as this goes and this kind of operation goes I mean I've been in municipal government in a number of communities for years and nothing like this have I seen anywhere and uh it's an unusual situation and and I think it's it's too bad that communities don't do more about it until they till they get hit with it like we did and uh they're going to be looking to us so I want to do this slowly carefully and exactly right Mr Degan town clerk Conor Degan town clerk uh through the chair I was just uh wanted to have a chance to remark on some of the conversation around software um I had done a lot of looking into different vendors who provide different types of software in regards to uh looking at redactions managing records requests uh a lot of different communities use a few different vendors and I've managed to talk with a bunch of other Clerks uh about who they use and their experiences with them uh I know I've talked with elain a little bit which I know she and Brian mentioned the last meeting uh some of the vendors that that we've been looking at a few different vendors with different softwares and they have been have one at least that was kind of a top Contender I know we had talked with the uh with the police chief about they were their vendor was I think recommended by the Chiefs Association as well as someone who would be a good use because that you can do different types of redaction as well as they I think are working on redaction software for body cameras and things like that as well uh different things that are kind of new for us to be able to handle and this allows us to control the workflow to allow us to flag it so that Council can review it when needed uh and then also make sure that raos record access officers for different departments are in charge of making sure that it gets from the initial request through the process with records custodians and then finally to the resident or entity who has requested that record um I I know there are some that are willing to work with us on you know Finding ways to fund it creatively to make sure that we can actually do so with kind of the tight budget stuff that we're working with um and I'm willing to work more so with the board and the town manager's office to ensure that we can potentially have some options uh that might help us make this more efficient going forward okay uh it seems go ahead just a question yeah so to clarify though and and I appreciate that Connor that was kind of more of a comprehensive one that did both records management redaction we had a lot of other potential uses that we probably don't need today but could in the future right yes so there are some that are you know combined um there are a lot of this is uh primarily most of these are specifically around handling different volumes of Records requests which the town itself handles quite a few records requests on you know a monthly basis different departments have some more than others some go with es and flows uh but a lot of departments handle quite a few requests each just every month this would allow for that to be better managed and also to eliminate the redundancy of sending out the same document multiple times when it would allow if someone starts entering in a form saying they want X Y and Z it will autofill and here's is this one of the documents you're looking for it has already been redacted by a previous records request and it's available for public viewing uh it also allows us to flag certain records as only available for the requester based on its current redaction level what was the name of that software do you remember that one was um that one was request Foya I think it was it's um there's a c there's like three major ones that operate in Massachusetts no I was just curious thank you yeah you're welcome okay uh it seems we have a couple of other things we might want to consider and have a look at so not a huge rush at the moment I don't think there's a massive redactions task in front of us today as a community uh that I'm aware of anyway uh so with that maybe we could table this uh item again for another future meeting maybe either the next one or the one thereafter maybe early October uh we want to get this uh it won't be done you it's always going to be a live document we want to get as much Incorporated here initially as we can uh and that'll give you a little bit of time too so there's not a huge rush but I think I think this idea about getting into the you know the software and how that could all play in would be very helpful y there's not a huge rush but we're in it and we should get it done that's you know we have AUM love to getu and and for the next step uh through the chair one thing to clarify um we want to add the provision of software selection and possible inclusion in this process for augmenting uh the capability of elimination of error it's a so I think something of that sort we uh I mean we all are aligned we should be including this in I'm just trying to separate out the policy and the execution or operational aspect of things uh so I don't think in the next two weeks we need to on next two sessions we need to or we would be able to identify the software but from a policy perspective uh what I'm hearing and correct me if I'm wrong the suggestion is we should include the software provision and uh have it included with uh in a proper evaluation when and where we can have it uh available but in the meantime um say the software process would take 6 months or one year we don't want to live without the policy for that long just my two sents on that yeah know that makes that's a really good point let's work it in if it's not readily aail aailable then that's another step in the process but we want to get this policy you know understood and circulated so yep okay thank you for that um so with that I think we'll go ahead and table this for now everybody's good with that Elaine you good with that Brian you good with that good and uh we'll revisit here very soon okay let's move to item number nine on the agenda the water and sewer Advisory Board in the packet there was a document that's been kind of worked over a couple of times now I believe um it's a two-page doc that spells out the water and sewer Advisory Board charge um and provides the purpose uh the charge the composition uh you know open meeting laws and things of that nature as part of the the process and expectation um elae do you want to speak to this real quick and sort of what we've done so far to get it to this point yes is a draft for the board to review um taking into account the things that have been said said uh by members at U your meetings um and other you know just ways that this board could be organized and uh members um appointed um a lot of it is standard the way we appoint all boards and committees um but what's unique to this one is what they're charged with doing uh which is probably something that the board wants to to review in in Greater detail okay thank you uh why don't we start with Mr Manan on this one uh he's put a lot of energy into this uh over the his time on the boards uh Mr Man if you want to speak to the doc that's in front of us uh thank you I think obviously um um elen putting a lot of effort in uh putting this thank you for that and I like what I'm seeing elain I think this has farmed up well and I like the inclusion of the pasas and our specific um uh regarding some of the the overall structure and the charge that makes total sense I am looking for and sorry I I'm bit under the weather so I may have missed it uh did we include the pricing and financial aspect as well that's one uh in the purpose it talks about the finances of the water and seore Enterprise funds in the general sense as one of the things that they'll be looking at thank you so one thing for the board um and my colleagues to consider is do we want to add um you know pricing recommendation or evaluation and advice because that's something I think we um are charged to do as a board and we always seek advice so that's uh one thing I wanted to point out and then the second one is I like the uh standard structure and all what would be kind of the um structure for the representation from various uh bodies within the town that may have interest or do we need that uh again I I want to balance it that we don't overload it so it has cor challenges or uh you know consensus challenges or just uh too big but something along those lines uh we may want to incorporate or think through but otherwise I like the structure I like the charge I think it covers U broader vision and the goal that we have talked about so thank you I like it a lot let me just read this one sentence maybe this will help clarify a little bit here the purpose of the water and sewer Advisory Board is to advise the select board Town manager and director of Public Works on the following one policy matters involving the municipal water and sewer systems two the finances of the water and sewer Enterprise funds so that would be that rates and you know things of that nature balanced out with cost and so so forth Regional water and sewer system matters and opportunities AKA MW issues pertaining to contaminants P health concerns and the like that affect the Municipal Water Supply or sewer system so that would be like the four key elements that we would go after uh with this group uh or this group would kind of lead the charge on and report to us and the town manager and the director of Public Works you know their their findings and then um specific to the the composition I think the the comment Mr Manan was on the composition uh you know the water and supervisory board shall consist of five members who are hopkington residents and appointed by the select board initial members shall be appointed one two and threee terms to achieve stagger terms and all members appointed thereafter will serve threeyear terms no member may serve more than three consecutive terms that's kind of a new one on me I'm okay with that I think it's a great idea but we don't typically do that do we we have one other committee so the tcmc the trail committee has that in their charge as well cultural Council oh the cultural Council it's under the state statute and then it goes on to say all members shall be familiar with state and federal regulatory framework for municipal water and sewer systems including State permitting the membership shall include one residents with environmental science civil engineering or public health background and experience two residents with experience in the water and or sewer utility or Public Works Fields does that address some of the thoughts that you were having there Mr Manan uh yes it does thank you I think those are pretty well covered and structured uh one one thought was do we uh um how do we manage the kind of representation for say planning board or sustainable green or selic board over a silic board I think will uh be involved of course it's advising silic board is that of a is that necessary or would that add too much burden on the size or B uh should we think of adding any uh specifics on that regard that was one uh detail and I don't have a strong position on that I think we want to make it effective uh transparent and um uh be able to work with all the key stakeholders and they will accordingly so that was the thought anybody thoughts on that particular comment um I I think composition as is is kind of I prefer that you start getting in all the other boards and it's like well you know why don't we have a seat or you know I don't know I like I like the current composition I'd rather keep that as opposed to opening it up and then to Mr manan's Point um they can go work with all these other boards and committees right like so I think I think we leave it as is anybody else right Joe that's it Amy yeah I oh I'm sorry no I had I had quite a bit of difficulties with the former Water and Sewer board and I have high hopes that this will be a different board okay am on Mr manan's comment about pulling others in from other boards I don't have anything to say on that I do have other comments when it's my turn my thought on the other boards and and I certainly understand you know making sure we're connecting to these other boards and committees but I think the work of this Advisory Board could be substantial and if they're on the planning board and they're on this or if they're on historical and they're on this I mean it's just it's just I I think we need five folks that can focus on this and not get distracted and not have meeting conflicts and you know you know stress at home because they're always at a meeting that kind of thing so um that's my my take on it anyway Elaine do you have a thought on you know the composition and whether they should be from other boards or not you know I agree uh with you the forming this um you know the Specialty Group based on their experience and their background makes sense um and it is difficult to schedule meetings and to um to have the workload when you're bringing in people from other uh boards and may already be oversubscribed okay thank you um and Mr Manan you didn't have a real strong feeling on that so I think you're okay leaving as is I am yeah that all makes sense that's what I was thinking but I wanted to uh point that out uh and one last item just to clar I uh uh El all members shall be familiar with all those that that's great I think we want that um should we keep an option if we don't find anyone um who's willing to uh you know have some of the backgrounds but not um fully acclimated uh and willing to be trained or familiar to have that in consideration maybe it's minutia it's probably implied but just wanted to also point that out and that would be my last one I promise and let everyone else be I think if we don't find people if people don't volunteer then the board would revisit the the charge I'm assuming okay fair enough Mrs R thank you yeah I had a few comments um I'm hesitant about this Committee in general but oh we did have a water and sewer board a long time ago I think when I first moved here when was but I looked back at some Old Town reports and I couldn't find it um um a reference to when we ended doing that it was quite a while ago in the 2000s I back to when it was ended okay I looked back to 2004 and couldn't find it but okay so it must have been around that time yeah I got first left 2007 so okay and then um so I just kind of wonder why I bring it back when we've already moved forward now we at the select board or the water and sewer Commissioners I wondered if this is supported by the DPW director and the water superintendent do they feel this will help them with their work or will it impede in SL done their work I think there are some concerns um concerns there um but I think it's intended to to be a support and a help and I think that's the way it's worded uh both to the board and to to the staff okay and then um nobody will report to this Advisory Board I saw that in the charge but then I'm then I'm kind of like well what is the point of it The Advisory Board does not have any employees that's not going to change but she brings up a good point because you know it says the one thing I didn't like was make recommendations to the select board's fine right like we we asked for this we thought it was important for us but the DPW may not feel that way and I feel like we should get their input on that specifically because if if they might they might want to be part of this right as opposed to just residents but we should hear them out on what what they think over there see where it says make recommendations select Board of town management DPW works on policy matters in capital plan cap including Capital planning expansion or extension of water sewer systems that's exactly make recommendation select Board of town management director of Public Works on the proposed expansion extension of water I mean I think there's some references to that here is that that's what that's what I'm calling out because I think we don't know how the DPW feels about that them getting recommendations from them we want the recommendations right because because we're getting recommendations from the DPW this is kind of a separate Focus board so them making recommendations of the DPW might become a burden for them I got what you're saying so it's small flow through US DPW reports to the town manager correct the town manager reports to the select board so it should all flow through us and then she can take it off to the DPW if she wants to that so we I just want I just want to take the the board away from the DPW like the DPW out of that part so that they're not going to the DPW with the recommendations that yeah I I had put it in there because I didn't want them to be left out but you know we could make it work so that they're not left out that also talk to them and see what they they would prefer but it's just before we finalize this I think that's one thing that we need to make sure we're all on the same page not adding a burden keeping a separate like specific Focus that we wanted right without buring like our departments that we yeah I don't want them all of a sudden have to go to all these meetings with these guys and not fix our clean water issue right and you know like all of a sudden they don't get to extract all this government support from the DPW for their committee right like that's it should FL because they this committee reports to the select board correct and the DPW reports the town manager who reports the select board so ultimate should all flow through here or the town manager's office so how do we clean that up Elaine and maybe talk to Carrie about that and could I I had a few more comments to we'll come back to Let's wrap this one up first yeah if you're considering removing uh DPW I can ask uh what they would like to to have in there as a formal it's not to exclude them we're trying to help them not get five more bosses yep right that's what we're trying to do here right and they don't have to attend the meetings I mean I wanted to make that clear yep okay all right so talk to her about that uh Amy you had some other thoughts yeah the the the part I like about it the component would be public Outreach and I thought the Forum that shul did with staff um in the spring was really helpful about the whole Pas issue and really comprehensive and helped communicate to the public and those slides are available on the website the whole scope of the problem so I I like that this group could do some public Outreach and explain it to the public maybe better and save the DPW director's time from also having to explain it all the time you referring to the um session at the senior center yes but then I guess my main worry too is that um large infrastructure projects as we know and have experienced recently are delayed by years like we tried to install this temporary filter on well six and it took I think a full year longer than we expected and so now well well six is all clean but this that only our temporary Solution that's going to last a a few years and now with the new EPA regulations with the lower um quantity of pest that's it's almost zero if is allowed anymore and we two of our other Wells also have small amounts of past so we're going to be required to clean those up and I just I just don't really want to delay that process because I know any large infrastructure project negotiating with town of Southboro and the DCR and the um and the MW is just going to take a long time longer than we probably thought so I just don't I'm really hesitant to slow that down clean water is important and we need to move forward with something permanent okay so I don't think we have a fully baked dock yet because we have a couple of ideas that we want to explore with a DPW right um so why don't we table for Now Elaine we could look at that over the next couple of weeks and we'll come back to it again is that okay with you Mr Manan you've been leading this for a long time so yeah no that's perfectly perfectly fine and just a couple of things one is uh I I agree with Amy the goal is absolutely to promote and ensure clean water for the town residents and also have full transparency on how we are tackling how we are strategizing and what's our best path forward not to slow us down so we need to incorporate or you know I'm fully open um to suggestions and um these are great feedback I think elain U to incorporate how we can clarify that U part uh uh and we cannot forget the larger goal which is you know when we have a $30 million MW versus you know three fixes for couple of millions or 3 Millions what are the short-term repercussions what are the long-term uh objectives and fulfillment we need to really have thorough research and um you know um thoughtful minds and leadership in that and then there are process going through all of these um through the state and others so it is to help uh is is the main goal so more clarification is always welcome and in terms of the DPW in the original one I had a representation for from DPW to exactly from that uh collaboration information exchange and uh you know more support than than the other way around how can we clarify that open to that it's it's uh I think the goal the strategy the uh philosophical theme uh we are all aligned how can we reflect it better uh if not already ready um all for that so it's all I think something we can consider and incorporate and hopefully we'll get that going thank you okay great so with that with that all everyone sharing their comments we're going to table this for now couple of things we want to tweak and look at maybe we'll try to take a vote on this at our next meeting or meeting thereafter okay all right let's move to the next item on the agenda and I believe it's the last item on the agenda I'm a little confused because we bounced around but I I think this is it uh the new employee hiring review process there was a doc circulated in the packet I had a chance to take a look at it looked pretty good to me not overly uh uh bureaucratic I don't think uh if everybody had a chance to look at that does anybody thoughts comments or Elaine do you want to talk about it real quick first and then we'll go around the room yeah just uh tried to put into uh words what the board uh had discussed about how um it would like to view um proceeding with hiring um after you know looking at the budgets and so forth and uh Capital planning um so this lays out um what the board would be looking at what it would expect um moving forward okay uh any thoughts on the dock or any thoughts on the concept in general I mean we kind of had the thoughts on the concept discussion before but anything Mary Joe you want to share no I I I think that everything has to be looked at and I think it has to be uh brought out however I just want to caution when we're looking at this having worked at the town and having the non all Town non-un employees wind up with less than everybody else I mean when they got uh yearly increases it was 2% when everybody else got 3% and every time we go and look at hiring or or that you know reducing salaries or trying to save some money it all comes down on the you know the town hall the DPW all the N the non-union employees have been the ones who' have been getting hit over the years and I just want to keep them in the Forefront and and make sure that we don't forget about them in our in our Zeal to cut the budgets I had just that same question clarifying question Mary Joe um does this apply to Union employees yes it would apply to Union employees I have other questions but new Union positions new Union positions do someone leaves and whether or not they can fill the union position they have to go we'd have to look at that and make sure yeah we look at if it's obligated it's obligated we go from there okay soorry I didn't mean to interrupt marriage J all set you good y I'm good go ahead and okay um the other things I I'm really supportive of anytime somebody leaves resignation retirement or whatever that we relook at that it's a good time to review the job description and see if the position is needed or should change um but I I also don't want a microm manage so I'm comfortable with it if it were um if some if we're if the department head and the town manager both decide this you know this position is still needed it hasn't changed very much we've just it's recently been revised I would like them to just be able to go ahead and post that as is but if they need to change the salary scale or change the job description significantly or if it's a brand new position like trading getting rid of one position and adding a comparable other one I would like that to come before the board but I don't want I'm worried it's too much micromanaging if you know just someone quits and the position has already been posted about a year or two ago and it doesn't really need changes that we need to review that this policy would bring it back before the board I no so that's say I don't agree with the policy that's fair okay and I I guess we should we should check with the Union contracts to see if um if that would affect it anything else Joe so I I hear your concerns and I certainly have those because elain and I spoke about this and you know one thing for me it's not like everything else we've been doing in here has been kind of affirming Town manager recommendations and stuff I see this as no different um I think it's veryimportant important to just be reviewing things at this time when we look at our budget and stuff I I think this should be a relatively you know once we get up and running with it informal process where we're coming in and if there's a retirement or someone resigns you know it's maybe it's part of the Town managers report every week right that we talk just talk through for a few minutes she says hey we we lost this employee at this position for this reason um and then really kind of a to Amy's Point she gives her recommendation that department heads recommendation and we take that into consideration like we do with everything else like CU I I don't believe that like we run the day-to-day of the Town that's that's Lane's job officially tonight right so keep keeping with that thought in mind we're just talking about things as they come up and we're putting a level of oversight over them without us actually getting involved I think we could go through this after the first one maybe you know maybe the first one we spend a little time reviewing you know if there's a plethora of openings that have been out for a while but after that what's changed in the last two weeks and I think um to allow things to continue to move on because I think Ela we talked about when like if someone leaves you guys go to post the position it takes about a week or two to kind of get the paperwork in order right if you want to um chime in feel free to but I think we said it takes about a week or two to kind of get the paper process going if we're meeting every two weeks I think you should you should post the things or do the process that you normally would right away and then on that next meeting somewhere less than 14 days from when that person resigns likely we just talk about it for a minute and just take your recommendation I think we we lean heavily on her recommendation in these things that we're not spending a lot of time and we just have a quick discussion then we move on it should not be a big formal process it should not be drawn out I don't want the town employees to think that we're going to review if every time someone leaves that we're just going to not allow a back fill because that could be detrimental to employee morale I'm very conscious of that so I think that that's kind of my take it's it's kind of a middle middle line approach where we don't have full control over this and you know we trust Our Town manager um to make the recommendations in the best interest of the Town yep okay Mr Manan yeah I I think we talked about this but um just to reemphasize again I agree with what Amy said and What U Joe is mentioning we want to be careful about uh upholding and promoting that our Town's uh employees moral and we value their work and how we can support don't want to overburden or don't want them to burn out but at the same time again we had the budget discussion we want to um always it's a good practice to have um more transparency and um more I think uh re view of things as we get the opportunity to see now in in that regard I I agree the process needs to be more about uh information uh update sharing and the recommendations and whether and if it's within budget if it's something that has the proper rational uh as it was when the budget was anticipated and the rational still holds 6 months eight months into the budget and it wasn't a position that has been you know stayed vacant for example for three years in a row and we've been fine without it those are the interesting ones in my view that may come up for a little more discussion and opportunity but in general it's again I agree with the core principles not to you know take away and put more burden uh not to have any demotivating effect or um get into the operational aspect or day-to-day uh uh um micromanagement of uh our uh trusted Town managers work but more so in such uh time as uh we are having laser beam focus on everything it's good to have that kind of practice uh in some shape or form to have that visibility transparency where we are time to time what are the recommendations upcoming and are we still aligned on all of those and that would be the that would be the format in my view and I spoke to El in terms of some of the uh you know aggregation of reports and others for the town residents um and that can be shared in the select board forum and it's on her and the HR they will um continue to work on that we had some of these reports coming from Norman last year from retention attrition as well as you know prospective hires metric perspective so we see where we stand at any point in time and we would want to know as a town resident as Town leader uh that type of thing but what I think is uh with these and having that room um uh but also the uh a sense of the discipline we may want to see what it looks like in couple of sessions and then tune it according to that philosophy and the objective that's my Des yeah I think it's a good point we can always adjust and we can adjust the the the dock or the policy if you will um and we can you know after we test drive it a couple of times if it blows up in our face we'll make adjustments I don't think it will uh you know My Philosophy is all levels of supervision require supervision it's business 101 this is a business that's $125 million business I don't think it's going to slow us down my current uh employment situation takes us two to three months to approve an existing position or a new position for hire so businesses do it I think they do it rather inefficiently I think we're going to be way more efficient than that uh which is great that a you know a governmental body can be more efficient than a business uh so we have some work to do maybe it work but um I think that uh uh the do the doct the draft is written makes a lot of sense and uh ideally I think we should if anyone's inclined take a take a vote on it this evening anybody want to make a motion to adopt the temporary hiring review process we don't have a motion docum we don't have a motion uh yeah I was just wondering do we have some more feedback to incorporate or what are we looking to do well I think I think it's outlined pretty well I think it's fairly clear what you know how this would work I think Elaine's comfortable with it I think the department heads will get comfortable with it it's not going to be a big deal like this is not you know this is not the end of the world for folks um so I I I think we should just go ahead and and take the vote and if it passes it passes if it fails it fails okay we move on uh so the chair will entertain a motion to approve the temporary hiring review as drafted is there anyone want to make that motion so moved okay is there a second second any further discussion discuss hearing none Mr Manan man yes M friend here I'm going to understand I'm not ready okay right now Mr Clark Joe Clark yes Amy Amy R abstain say abstain abstaining okay Brian her yes okay so we'll go ahead and get that review process rolling we'll see how it works we'll adjust if necessary uh the goal is not to be punitive or stop anything the goal is to make sure we have all levels of supervision having supervision you're supervising this entire process of hiring for the Town come to us tell us why you need it and we'll say okay and my goal is to be as efficient as possible and you know as positive um having been an employee for a number of years I've been on the other end of it so I know how people feel sure I know how they feel to I manage a lot of them and and through the chair I think El we'll do pulse check time to time and if you feel you know how the you'll feel right how your um department heads feel how the town employees fill and we can of course correct if needed but I think um it it'll be coming out well let's let's just leave it with with this final thought I mean we've already taken the vote and we're going to try and give a grow we have our average home going from $122,500 to $188,500 we have have to do some things different that's just business 101 we cannot afford to do business as usual in Hopkinson for several years this is a very small step in that process we can direct Our Town manager to do it rather than us my managing it she owns it we're going to be that level of supervision to make sure she's doing it right because once you hire somebody you own that position for a period of time good or bad there's just no way around it so it's a it's a high-risk proposition of hiring and we want to make sure that we do it right okay uh with that I have a question yes ma'am I have a question for L cuz I didn't see it and I didn't notice it and I know that um I was told that the stop Gap uh pest is already and that we don't have to buy water anymore and and the water's fine to drink and everything's fine uh has there been a notice out for that do people understand because I didn't see it anywhere we announced it at our last board meeting well we announced it at our last board meeting as well well I know I mentioned it at the last board meeting but it's been about two months out there said to me I'm still you know they're still buying water so I just uh I just want to make sure everybody knows that they can drink the water yeah there was a press release we can issue something else just to reinforce that maybe know that it's fall and people are back in town I would hurt yeah okay thank you very much okay with that the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn I'll make a motion that we adjourn the meeting to next Tuesday second we have a motion to Second any discussion uh Mr Manan man yes Mrs Rush yes Joe Clark yes Brian her yes mayor Jo fer yes thank you all have a good night thank you