##VIDEO ID:GUHNS4ZUcHQ## e e and I realize God I gotta go walk and buy coffee somea I could not start a day without coffee fact I was going to boil some pasta and I get rid all my pans I don't have a single saucepan in the house put my uh pressure cooker out with the free stuff at the end of the driveway and waiting to see how quickly that gets and then I've got a an aluminum roasting turkeys and stuff my mother had when I was she's up there throwing darts at me and giving it up you think you're going to be ready to go outside of uh on the first I'm ready to go now I mean I haven't anything cleared out enough yet for you well pretty much I'm at the point where I've got a guy that's been picking up a lot of stuff on a daily basis for two or three weeks and he came back today to just check on a few things and stuff I told him I was taking with me today I have that you have that you have that what do you mean you're taking that I no I'm not I'm good I done gets to a point you just can't deal with it and I've already over Stu house upth stuff I brought up and another Lo no hi guys not yet pulling out of town I still got two extra Vehicles down here figured out the logistics on that I could on my trail to do that a full tank of fuel when I'm pulling the car I'll figure it out one guys we'll just throw it on my trailer I'll I'll tow it up there they said and I'll ride back with you and get the other car that'll work was Market it wasn't I sold it to a flipping company and then I got six other people asking me after that oh you still in your house uh yeah my neighbor that does all the W work and his girlfriend or actually his girlfriend is on the new house on oh was staying in town just oh yeah yeah they needed they've been together for two years now or a little more and you know it was funny because couple they had him they were talking you know longterm Financial plans and all this other stuff already yep he needs more space for his his he he has like a full on um he does lumbering so so she sold her house up in Garder and and they put a substantial what I heard do some more work on the so potentially there'll be two houses side by side on the market next spr which won be bad no thanks looking forward to getting up there if I make it that far yeah it has been a lot of fun I don't know how many years he had assignments but he had 47 on yeah the chief mentioned it to me two weeks ago at the board of Select meeting he was that one was the yeah when he couldn't go that that put a in his way mm he used to go I don't know two three times no he went I think it was four times a month and he always went during the week when on the boat he had his his system on figuring time timing the tides and all that stuff of course minute this is the first time yeah this is the first one I've been to that we didn't have a forum for chis here I didn't hear anything from Chris or Tom so I just assumed they were going to be here I don't think I have in my notes if they weren't going to be here J just joined there he probably heard not yet he hasn't joined in yet still connecting his audio evening Jay sorry folks not a problem you were we were one minute away from calling no Quorum sign on all right we are ready in the booth thank you I got all right good evening it is 7:2 20 p.m. on September 26th and we now have a quorum for the finance committee so I am calling the finance committee meeting to order apologies for the we're getting a little feedback apologies for the the slight delay but we are technically in a quorum now in accordance with the requirements of the open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadcast over the lunenberg public access Channel and on Facebook live on the public access Facebook page and will be uploaded to the lunenberg access YouTube channel after the meeting this meeting is being held in person at the location provided on this notice members of the public are welcome to attend this inperson meeting please note that while the option for remote attendance Andor participation is being provided is a courtesy to the public the meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast unless otherwise required by law members of the public with particular interest in any specific agenda item uh any item on this agenda should make plans for in-person versus uh virtual attendance accordingly this agenda uh I'm sorry the information the following information is provided for members of the public that would like to participate in the meeting remotely to participate remotely from a computer please use the link below to join the public meeting webinar this agenda lists all topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the chair votes may be taken as a uh because of these discussions not all items listed may be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for the dis uh for discussion to the extent ENT Allowed by open meeting law would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all all right are there any announcements for this evening should save it for the end or put it in the beginning up to you um yeah I just like to announce to the public that uh this will be my last finance committee meeting for the town of lunenberg um as of Tuesday October first I will no longer be uh a property owner in lunenberg we'll be moving on with my decades long plan of retiring in Northern New Hampshire um just a note I will be remaining on green communities for a while longer to help them get through the next Grant round uh turns out the charter and Mass General law does allow that um it's it's been a real great experience for me to give back to the town for the many years that I've put into these meetings and and uh the positions I've held over the years um and if I had it to do over again I would do it exactly the same and uh thank you for all the support I've had over the years and and the people that uh have come to me just because I've had the knowledge and collected the knowledge over the years uh to help them make decisions for themselves uh working in town government thank you thank you and Dave thank you very much for all the service you've done for the town it's been inspiring to to see the amount of work that you've put in on this town for the years before I moved here and for the years since I've been here and all the times that we've worked together on finance committee and all the other the Myriad other committees you've been on and Boards you've served on so thank you for the dedication and uh certainly wish you the best in Northern New Hampshire thank you um other announcements uh I just have a few quick ones um today the food pantry did an official um ribbon cut cutting ceremony um to open the newer space at TCP they've moved out of the kitchen and they've moved into the full cafeteria so it is officially a grocery store like atmosphere able to service a lot more of the public um and Senator Cronin and rep Kush Merrick and Scarsdale were in attendance as well to hand over a 25 ,000 check that was earmarked from the governor's budget for fy2 so that will go a long way to helping them as well um second the second annual Town official meet and greet At Low Places Ranch on 441 goodr street is technically still happening until 8:30 p.m. I was there a little bit earlier this evening um it was a not a bad turnout considering the amount of rain that's happening they have plenty of tents and uh warm coffee from smoke and lots of food donated by all the local area restaurants so if you're a business owner or just want to get out and see some horses and have some free food they're open for another hour or so um and lastly uh the PTO reached out to me to request um they have updated their um products for for the coming year and removed a little bit of the sports aspect to it so they have additional options which are more strictly along the lines of a lunenberg theme itself so sort of just if you'd like to represent lunenberg rather than specifically a sports team or whatnot or or anything like that it's sort of just dedicated towards the town itself um their website can be located by doing a quick Google search for Just lunberg Blue Knights PTO it's the top link and you can search through there uh they are doing shipping I Believe by the early part of November so Christmas gifts are available um and there's quite a few I was actually looking through it earlier today other than that that is all I have um public comment is there any public comment from our one public seeing none any public comment from the committee this evening yes go ahead Jay I just want to thank Dave for his years of service all his um you know time Comm m not just to this committee but all the other committees that he was involved in has sat on and contributed to and his uh knowledge of the town and also like bylaws and the charter has been very um helpful and insightful uh and appreciated so I just want to thank him for all that he has contributed to thank you thank you Jay you J if I may of course Jay brought up something that's been near and dear to my heart for a number of years and um hopefully with the new Administration we have presently and the one that will follow um I truly hope that a deep dive will be uh taken into the charter as the town is taken forward into a new era and I I think there needs to be a restructuring of the Town operations at the same time that the charter is adjusted to accommodate those changes uh it needs to happen side by side and it's not a short process it's probably a year two or three years probably um as those involved in town government know at this point there are a lot of issues um our interim Town manager is tackling a lot of them headon and I'm hearing one wonderful things out on the street uh that's always been my my barometer of how we're doing is that people have been willing to talk to me and uh I'm able to bring that back and and know that uh the town is headed in the right direction if it continues to go that way thank you thank you I agree completely I think we're somewhat overdue for a charter review and I think a deep dive is very warant yeah and I think the the big issue too and I've seen this in a couple companies I work for over the years is that the company started as a small family-owned business and then became this family-owned corporation uh and kind of grew out of its Brites well the town has done that and we need to start acting like uh a large substantial town in the state of massachus it's not this little bedroom community that we were back in the 50s and 60s yeah I think it's it's time to embrace our Identity or at least identify ourselves of some as something whatever we want to be I think it's tough to say we are a farming Community anymore we certainly have farming in the community but we are not tiny anymore that's for sure I agree um so that brings me to my one comment which is just that with Dave's leaving of the finance committee and Miss tar is having left after her term completed over the summer we are about to enter budget season with five committee members for the finance committee um we are a board of our committee of seven Quorum is four so we have one person as we can see we have a couple people that aren't here tonight and Mr simion is remote um so if there is any interest whatsoever it is a really good way to get an A good insight into the workings of the Town um it's laborious certainly during budget season but I think there is a large payoff for it as well um there are volunteer forms on the website which I believe are going live digitally soon I don't know if they've actually Gone live yet yeah I haven't looked um but they're easy to fill out so I encourage anyone I heard rumor there was one person that was planning to fill one out but I don't know if that's been submitted yet or not not that I've heard um I us I'm supposed to get it as soon as it gets submitted but I haven't seen anything yet um I I will um there was also the so this was interesting as well the I don't know if people watched this during the select board meeting where they appointed three sewer Commissioners and they actually had four applicants for three positions which has never happened that I've seen um and it sort of all came down to they responded to a little mailer that was sent out and said oh I would do that not specifically saying I would like to be on the Sewer Commission just that's that sounds cool so I I think that's we should try that exactly I think selectman Anki mentioned that it was I'm sure not coincidental uh but the fourth person that was not um selected um I be reaching out to make some suggestions if you would like to move over here as well um but yes I I think it's certainly worth looking into as to whether or not we can do Flyers it's easy enough to do all right with that we have uh I didn't bother updating sending out an an amended agenda the um Izzy will not be here this evening the town finance director uh he had another meeting to go to so he I'm just going to skip over the finance director report and we can move right into our new business um so I have it on here is special town meeting warrant summary so the interim Town manager has been communicating with myself and um the moderator and on occasion the chair of the select board as well just to kind of go go over the formalities of the order of the the warrant articles and how we've historically done the warrant pamphlet um and how we might want to do it instead and he's sent over a couple options from pre other towns as well and basically it's going to be or at least at the last iteration is going to be the usual verbage of the actual article the legal the legal ease and then below that is a bolded summary either written by the town the interim Town manager the finance director whomever was was actually putting it forward a little blurb and then the usual um votes for the select board the finance committee and then there's the option to have um an additional comment that we can put in for each individual warrant article so this is something somewhat new so I I told him that I would be interested in that I think it could be beneficial just to have additional voices if we're not unanimous I think it would be good to have sort of explaining why we may not be unanimous to the public before we actually get to special town meeting floor I think is important um so for that I believe he needs our final vote by early October I think if I'm not mistaken I believe it's be I think it's like October 13th f vote on what on what we would have for our actual um the format just talking about possibly even the language let me pull up the email just to make sure I don't want to miss quote your summary not mine exactly sorry that was a different one Mr chair yes go right ahead uh the uh the summary voting thing that comes around for elections M when articles in there A lot of times uh they give you the summary and then they sell what a yes vote means or what a no vote means summary something like that could be helpful if it's not a lot of language could you repeat the the last part I just quite hear the well you said you have the article then you do the summary of the article yep in the in the uh the voting guide they they tell you if you vote Yes it means this if you vote no it means that oh oh oh okay A little explanation sort of like what they send out from the state yeah the consequences of voting yes consequences of voting no okay that's a good suggestion yeah and I think you're going to I haven't seen the draft articles but I think you're going to you're going to see some interesting uh articles coming through in November to address some of the issues that have developed over the past couple of years financially and and and pay scales and so on and so forth I honestly I don't know what specifically is coming forward but I think you're going to see that it's going to be uh manipulating funds around in an unusual way so I think the more information and more understanding that the voters can have at town meeting the smoother it's going to go MH agreed um so the schedule that the interim Town manager has put together is that so the draft warrants were sent off to Town Council today uh yesterday and we should be receiving them back from Town Council on the 1st of October so I have a feeling that's when we'll actually see them I have not actually seen them I've seen Snippets here and there and parts of some of them here and there but nothing concrete um and then the draft warrant will go to the select board on the 4th of October so they're asking for he's asking for our final report by the 17th of October so we have a meeting scheduled on the 10th which is where I'm sure we'll go over all of this um I really don't want to have to do another meeting on the 17th but we may have to do another meeting on the 17th just to I want to give opportunity for for something to be to to be reflected on and for people to have a chance if there is disagreement with the votes to make sure um because we will not have a meeting between now and when we are supposed to technically vote on them so um yeah we may end up having to put together a meeting for for the 17th so I will write that back to Carter and let him know as well um because it has to go to the printer by the 18th that is the drop date for them um so we can get them mailed out by the 25th which gives us time for actually having the town meeting on the 12th um kind of trying to understand how we got back up already on this so tight because there there isn't anything unusual usual about when the warrant open when the warrant closed um is is it because the schedule for a special a fall fall special town meeting needs to be adjusted also just like we're talking about the uh Spring Town meetings I mean nothing unusual has happened since the warrant opened yet we're backed up solid against deadlines that can't possibly be made properly right I think that would be a charter review I believe because it is again it's the warrant is open for 60 days by Charter mhm um when the warrant opens I'm not sure if that's set in the charter for number of days prior to town meeting I but it closed only 10 days ago right so it hasn't really closed for that long it's just from there it gets really compressed everything kind of has to happen right away yeah um but I agree yeah if we had had this closed on the second if we had backed everything off by two weeks then we would have an extra meeting in between there to do it yeah and it would just be two weeks seems to me there are X number of days either from town meeting that it has to close or something but again you know that needs to be analyzed and if it doesn't work then it needs to be fixed start the fall town meeting process in July all right think that is a very valid question as well I will happily bring that one forward um so yeah that was basically it um those were really his kind of main questions were is there something that the finance committee would like to put in there if you know we don't have to put anything in there um I did let them know that we do take a vote on every article regardless and we just say whether or not has a direct has a financial impact or not um that's really about all I had for that one there wasn't much more for it it was pretty simple um as soon as I actually get something formal from somebody as far as it as far as a draft goes I will send it around actually I will email Carter and just see if they can if we could just have access to the draft that just went to the Town Council if it's already gone to Town Council it's close enough I think it's gone to Town Council without the select board reviewing it it's usually the other way around but uh I mean six one half doz another it needs to get reviewed not held up anyway but no went to the it's the only dates that he has in here is the 16th it closed the 25th it went to Town Council and then the select Board gets it on the on the 4th of October M and they finalize it on the 15th so yeah they only have they'll get it on a Friday they'll get it on Friday the 4th it has to be they'll get the final version on the Friday the 11th a week later and then on the 15th that following Tuesday five four days five days later they have to vote on it themselves so they're backed up against it as well MH there are some pretty big articles on there yeah all right all right I will request that from Carter and send it if I can get that as well okay the DLS Financial policy manual draft this this is just keeps on coming up um the interim Town manager would appreciate the finance committee's opinion on it I have not heard back from Izzy whether or not he believe it was Izzy that was going to reach out it was either Izzy or Carter that was going to reach out to the DLS contact to see if there was a Redline version available um I have not heard back from that I think I mentioned in a select board meeting within over the last couple of weeks in regards to that um oh yes because they've had it on their agenda to start uh reviewing it m and I suggested to them that uh I looked at the financial part of it um where the uh borrowing limits and so on are are set in there and they're identical to what we have now MH and that's one thing that over the past few years has been discussed that we haven't adjusted that in a lot of years um and it isn't something you do lightly you you need to understand why you're doing it before you do it so I don't know maybe this isn't an appropriate time to uh make any changes there MH but I think that should be kept in the background because uh what's coming down the pipeline for needs and the need for funding for those needs may bump us back up against those limits and it it may be prudent somewhere in between to bump those limits up um there's no around it the town's going to need more money to operate we're a bigger town we have requirement for more services costs are out of this out of the uh out of the sky MH excuse me as much as I used to be the one that would never agree to increase taxes or or increase borrowing wait write that down yeah well i' I've I I think I've uh come around over the the past few years that back then it was appropriate but again because of the size we've grown to and the needs that we have and all of the things that we've put off for 20 or 30 years if we had spent that money incrementally over those 30 years I think we'd be in a much better position but now we're going to come to a point where we're going to be forced to spend it all at the same time and if we have those spend uh borrowing limits uh handcuffing us then there's going to be a problem the former Town manager used to always tell us that the reason we don't go above those limits is because it affects our bond rating and i' again I I believe her but I still have yet to see evidence to suggest that show me anything that says if you do this this happens and here's the precedent for it and here's the evidence for it exactly we pushed that issue a couple of different times uh there were some extend extenuating circumstances going on at the time uh that would help kind of soften any type of a negative effect on our bond rating but my understanding is it would take a large dollar amount to affect our bond rating you know yeah it might slip a little bit and if it's a quarter of a per or or less how does that weigh against what we need to get done correct I also noticed that we don't have a AAA Bond rating we only have an aa+ right and I'm curious as to why we only have an aa+ and not a AAA is it because we aren't borrowing enough money in other words you that could be a good piece of it if you're not using the credit that you have yep if you ever watch your uh ratings on your credit cards exactly if if if you pay them off every month and you keep your balances low your your uh credit score goes down yep your limit might go up but your credit goes down right yeah i' I've wondered that as well cuz some of the surrounding towns have AAA Bond ratings I don't know why they're doing anything different or how they're doing anything different it's not like we've missed payments to my knowledge y so I'm curious as to how long we've been in a A doua plus and if we've ever been a AAA right the other thing I'm I'm going to start bringing it up now um there is a proposal to uh float a bond that's coming to a special town meeting I I have some strong feelings about it from a diff couple of different perspectives um but that's another one where the Public's going to really need be need to be educated as to how that affects us over the long term and the only comment I make about a bond is that we just uh finished paying off a bond was it last last year or the year before last last year I thought the last fiscal year yes um oh no we have $4.20 left on I'm sorry um this year we finished paying it off but just be aware that one of the things that was done with that Bond was to pave the parking lot between the uh TC pasos and the um the old high school that parking lot was destroyed when the new building was built and the athletic fields were made and we were paying for that up until this past year so you you got to understand that if you start paying using bonds to pay for things just be aware that it may be Beyond its usable life well before you pay it off not only that but it's if it's a bond am I not Mist can you get an ex not an excludable debt Bond or would that be this would be non-excluded debt no my understanding is that um and and again I haven't because it hasn't been brought forward in its entirety yet right um it's it fits within our ability and this let me just say that I was told it fits within our budget to be able to pay the payments over the term of the bond now how that suddenly came about where we were told during the budget season last year that we had no capacity to take on short-term debt because we wouldn't be able to make the payments mhm so what's changed in six months um there's something unless I've got something a detail wrong I yeah that was because that's my concern if it is not if it is excluded or non-excludable debt that means that it comes out of the operating budget which means we have to pull the money from somewhere right to pay for it if it's excluded that we it still comes from the budget it just comes well it comes from the levy it's just everyone's taxes increase um so that would make for a very interesting conversation that we should have been having already I think most definitely September 26th and we have to vote on this on November 12th and we don't know what the number is we don't know what the plan is I realized that there are still there's still information that's needed to be gathered um but I I do look forward to and I believe the chair of the Parks Commission is going to be joining us at our next meeting I have not confirmed that entirely but the last time we had spoken she was planning to attend our meeting to discuss it something again I know this is uh you know on my way out the door but you can say whatever you want you know I I I I struggled with actually my closing date CU I could I had the choice of when I wanted to close on this property I could have waited till December February whatever um but I just decided it was time to go um for many reasons but to bring a proposal for spending money or appropriating money excuse me that's the way I wanted to State it so we don't lose a grant allocation or something like that I I'm tired of the taxpayers being pushed up against the wall and being told well if you don't appropriate this we're going to lose this well in some cases that's just the way it is if if town meeting decides not to uh fund that particular proposal then it's not lunberg taxpayers money it's grant money that's coming from other sources MH and they'll just have to regroup and and you know go at it a different way um it's kind of like with the ARA funds you know you don't yeah that's another concern I have yeah well well opera is is yeah me too I I'll leave it at that yeah I at the same time though I think it is it certainly is at least worth bringing to the voters they should get to have the say it I I I appreciate the attempt to to to do the work and and bring it to the voters to say here's here's our thought here's what we're thinking here's all the work that we've done yes or no and then it goes out to the legislative body and they get to decide but I yeah I would like to have additional um information as soon as possible because I am curious as to what it's going to do we know what our percentages are for our excludable debt we know what our percentages are for non-excludable debt we know where we are for our debt service currently and we know the capacity that we have in our debt Capac in our current debt capacity and over the long term where that kind of stands um but DLS has a calculator that you can go in there and you can put what you're borrowing the total that you're borrowing Y what your expected percentage rate is at and the term and you could look at whether you want level principle or or if you want um I forget what it was it was two different options basically you keep the payment the same for the entirety or you pay more in interest overall and you have a difference in something to that effect yeah but if I'm not mistake it was like half a million dollars a year for 30 years which isn't a small chunk of change um but to go to your point if we are if we do have that in the budget where was that last spring exactly why was that not available right where was that hiding and and again coming up against what whether this town does it or not what this town needs to do to get its infrastructure where it should be now and definitely is not um is pulling at the the availability of all those funds also mhm so there's going to have to be a decision and the taxpayers mind well if I fund this then we can't move this forward right you know it's it's going to be a swap off we we come back to the same to the age-old we we need to have a plan a long-term plan where we say this is these are the priorities and this is where we're going to do them we expect to build a school on this around around this time we expect to have to fund this project around this time we'll need a fire truck around this time and I know we have bits and pieces of that but I don't we don't have a cohesive document which I know the master plan steering committee is supposed to be working towards but the only downside I have with that is it's sort of a pie in the sky if money wasn't an issue what would you want sort of a thing it's it's not a reasonable attempt it's it's it's an appreciated document that's coming forward but it is it's not necessarily guiding for financial policy and and planning for for Debt Service and and all of that I have a uh longtime family member that's been been in um Financial forecasting for the construction industry through a a government run entity and I was talking with him a couple of months ago actually about the you know the push for a 10-year plan and he said to tell you the truth honestly personally 10 15 if you can go out 20 you know the margin of error increases as you go out further mhm but you have this plan that if you stick by it and only adjust it where you need to then you know where you're at every year for the next two decades mhm and when you're developing that plan you initially need to ignore what the economy is going to do during that time period and you just adjust for what it does what it actually does when it happens right right if you know you're going to need to build a school 15 years down the road you need to have your debt capacity there so you can get a grant for or get your msba money for that and actually get your your your your excludable debt for that and and build your school you can plan for that if you don't have a plan of what you're going to build something then you just sit here either with tons of capacity but no way to to pay for it because you've spent all of your all of your money on the Omnibus budget instead of on your your excl your non-excludable debt to pay for Stu stuff and and you everything has to be excludible debt and everyone's taxes just have to continue bumping up for each of those which that's a really hard sell to the public to say hey we're in year we we just realized 20 years ago we had to build a building but we didn't talk about it until 5 years ago now we need to build one and your taxes are going to you know increase by X percentage all of a sudden it's yeah I I think there's certainly flaws in in the way that we're doing it currently and back in the days of a $20 million annual budget you know you you you didn't have the surprises that you get m in in the past decade or even past few years it it pretty much ran by the way you planned it and there weren't these huge surprises and year after year mhm you know you came out the other end in good shape and you went on to the next well we've seen what the last five years have been like and uh it's not likely to improve much in the near future so the planning part is going to be hugely important right not to mention that we've you know we're going to come back to it again at some point there's going to need to be discussion for more overrides because we we the correction was made last year this past spring to help get schools to maintain some level of service but that doesn't track with inflation and where it's been and 2 and a half isn't going to keep up with that if you continue taking steps where inflation goes up here and two and a half is only doing this and next year it's this and this that Gap keeps on growing and you can only squeeze the budgets so much and looking at them they're they're squeezed across the board yeah this isn't a popular statement but I've already made it once or twice and that is that you know just excuse me two collective bargaining Cycles on the school side is going to eat up that override over a three-year contract I'm curious as to what they're I don't know what they're going to negotiate but you know the way I look at it is when you take a look at the salary Reserve budgeted amount mhm $300,000 for 2025 if I remember correctly on the school side I believe it was 700,000 I I believe it brought the salary reserve line came up to 700,000 by the end after the budget season went through it may have been a $300,000 increase but I believe they had around 3/4 of a million doll in there well that's reflective of what they expect they need for the first year of the contracts that are in negotiation correct so you multiply that times three and that's the cost over the three-year term of the uh right right contracts which from a budgeting standpoint if the budget is increasing by 2 and a half% on a yearly basis and your net net of salary increases just to stay below minimally competitive with what your salaries are is 4% you're never going to have money for anything else and you're always going to have to be saying sorry we're going to you know we're we're going to have to let people go CU you can't make that right so I I think we are in I think we scraped by last year this past spring um but I think we are very much going to see it not just on the school side but on the town side as well I think we're going to run into a massive issue coming up with personnel and just people leaving for for money elsewhere it's it's non competitive and and I dare say that it's you know our our inability to or our lack of bringing our finances forward to the needs of today mhm that have got us in that position um and there are ways and and Carter mentioned a few of them that you know there there are other things that can help you um on the salary side if you take care of the people you have and you know have them give input and have them them happy in what they're doing mhm I mean uh I did it in Private Industry for a lot of years for a couple of different reasons I chose not to take the higher salaries um because I was happy where I was and I I wanted the flexibility to raise my kids and and so on and so forth so there's there's a lot of things that play into it and it's not all just dollars and cents mhm yeah I think we we need to do a very big look and I think the budget task force is planning to do this as well as to look at I mean it's tall order we don't have that many meetings left before we have to do a report um but to sort of look into how much of a hole we're in salary wise across other different departments comparative you know regarding comps and whatnot from other sounds um because even if you if you simply just use that as a number for an override I think you're well into the $1.5 million override easily just to get salaries to a point where they people are being paid you know a living wage or at least you're somewhat competitive and you have you know you're boosting morale at that point you're you're having people say I'm not coming in because it's not worth it why am I going to come in to get paid nothing basically for extra but then it's a million and a half it's a large number that's that's that's a big increase which comes back to your you know are we still a farm community or are we a community that's grown and we're some you know a large town that you have you have you you can't have both sort of the large town without taxes where you can't have the large town and not have taxes unfortunately there there aren't ways to do it taxes and or Revenue sources right right which there's not a lot of Revenue sources out there there AR there aren't many options Beyond taxes right yeah um but um as yeah so I I'm going to keep the financial policy manual document on here until we see something from somebody I don't have any reason to read through it more than I've already read through it as far as I'm concerned mhm I I don't know what the plan is I don't know if we're going to the select Bo just going to adopt it so I I'll reach out to Carter izy and um Caesar and just see kind of where they stand with that and send that around if there is a docu a Redline version because I am curious I don't want to go through it word by word and compare them side by side that's not what I want to do with my time right right that's that's not good use of anybody's trying to do that not unless they're getting paid to do it right all right um moving on to the budget presentation template which I completely forgot to S down around um so my apologies for that one but I do have at least the notes that we had made uh before I can open that up now what I would like to do is at least kind of get some sort of a finalized version to an extent um that we can send out because I did tell Carter we would send something out by earlyish in um October so he can submit it to his departments and whatnot for the budget season so um I guess first and foremost what do we want to see in terms of a budget from the Departments we had a discussion last time as to whether needs-based was the correct terminology whether level service or or actually it was needs-based versus minimum service um and I I do want to kind of make a definition and I think what this should be what should be included with that is sort of definitions as to what we're expecting those to be so I would like to one decide are we requesting level service needs-based Pie in the Sky minimum Ser whatever we want to call it what budgets do we want to see presented to us and then how do we Define those budgets so that everybody knows what they're asking for yeah it the last couple of years it uh well obviously last year got totally confusing because dozen budgets out there floating around especially the school budgets um I kind of wonder why we can't go back to you start with the town manager's recommended departmental budgets or the dollar amount developed by the department uh heads based on what the town manager tells them they have to spend mhm okay so you have the rec uh the how man recommended budget Town manager recommended yeah okay budget but it's put together by the department heads uh she just or she or he excuse me um just gives them the dollar amount they've got to work with and then they plug it into their budget the way they see those dollars fit and then we used to have a presentation of the items that that the department head was very strongly pushing for above the town manager budget Target above Target is what it was called okay so then all you're working with is the budget with the dollar amount that the town manager has allocated to that budget and then you have the department head telling you but we really need this and this is why and we need this above Target and this is why and leave it at that don't go don't try to give fancy names and end up with three different iterations of uh of the budget out there that's my feeling we used to do that with the previous Town manager and you know it was still a long budget season but you weren't working well which one was it the you know however we identified him the last few years by color or whatever you had the original Target budget and you had the above Target budget yeah and ultimately the town manager made the final decision on what they brought forward uh as the budget proposal to the select board and town meeting I think that's a much simpler process and and a doable process so that effectively would be a akin to what we have with the school department right pretty much they're told how much money they're going to get and we're told and we're told this is this is you know this is what we have what we were told we can we can use this is what we need right and here's why y um I guess the issue I I have with that is if everybody says this is what we need and everybody doesn't everybody needs more and there is more to do at what point do you then say well we think that this one is worthy so we're going to take it from this one or your department there's always going to be that discussion what's that J there's always going to be that discussion right and I agree with what Dave say we need what the target budget is and above Target and above Target needs to be justified by the department has and sometimes there are mandates that they can show justification for sometimes there isn't but you can't just ask for more money because you want it you have to have a justification for it mm and I also think that the adjustment to get those dollars should come from within that department first and then negotiate with the town manager if it needs to come from somewhere else if it seems to be that important then it's very understandable I mean you got two terms yep and once you put in your $2.5 million override then you'll have plenty of money to do that Target no it's 2 and a half million there there's a lot of variables that go into the budget right there is between the Cherry sheets and the state and the Chapter 70 there's so many varibles that come in at different times of the year that you know make them adjust the budget I mean ultimately it's not our decision how that process goes but we have some input into it which I have my own gripe about considering that's not what finance committee is supposed to be for well we could really push or you guys could really push in the charter change to put the finance committee back in a strong position to develop the budget not develop it I think they need to be back into the position of the Ways and Means Committee okay it's a check and balance that's what the finance committee is designed for at the state level that it's it's the executive that puts the budget together and then hands it over to the legislative the house the house takes a look at it they change things they meet with with the department heads they say they get justification as you're saying they adjust the budget and they put that one forward to town meeting and then the town decides that's I mean read MMA Finance 101 and that's exactly what it says it's right now it's executive we ask a couple questions but executive and then we ask a couple questions but executive and then we say okay now you can vote there there's not a lot of oversight with which I I take great um yeah I don't like it uh I do feel that through our efforts and members previous to us in the past five years or more have brought the finance committee back to a committee that really has some effect on the budget process you know for a few years back a while a while back it was just a yeah okay rubber stamp type of committee and and whatever came forward from town manager and the select board was what went to town meeting M we actually have developed um I was going to say the the power to make change but I don't like that the power to power of influence you could say at least yeah influence there we go yeah yeah I I agree and and that's I think that's a testament to everybody that's on this been on this Committee in the last five years or so I think it's certainly a step in the right direction I just I want to keep going yep I don't think it should stop there right and that's that's my argument for a charter review is that I I'm curious to know I I know how it happened and I know when it happened but I'm curious to know as to the why it happened what was the impetus for for kind of centralizing it and removing the checks and balance exactly from the budget making process and how was that framed and sold and voted on cuz that's that's a charter that's a 9/10 requirement right that's that means it probably got a unanimous vote at town meeting which is the cards nobody voted against those right okay so well see as I'm not going to be here I'm assuming we're not voting on minutes this evening but that set of minutes that I asked we push off uh there's a section in there that I was talking about the charter and it's not worded properly because I was talking about a charter commission MH um I I'm sorry I didn't get to it with all I've got going on but if I can edit something or put something together real quick I may just send it off to you as sure the replacement paragraphs for those two sure yeah yeah I I don't have any plans to vote on any minute cuz I haven't seen anything updated um it's just important to me that it diff that the minutes differentiate between what it actually says and the fact that I said Charter commission not a charter Review Committee or anything like that because it's it's comes under Mass General law and its task and the way it's created is totally different from what we do with the Review Committee interesting okay so it's another grant writing services not Grant yeah do you still have that on the agenda the grant rating Services yeah I do okay and and yeah I I'm concerned about it we we'll get to that one okay um I mean I certainly do like the Simplicity of only having those two numbers I I just wonder are we doing our due diligence by not looking through the budget the the target budgets or are you suggesting that we still look through the target budgets but that's what we're requesting of the Departments is the target the town manager Target and then I I think the target budget is the major focus and then piece by piece the pieces that the department heads come forward with with I'm very strong on I need this above Target um so you're the budget you're really doing the fine look through is is that Target budget okay and that knowing what's in that and you're if you're comfortable with that then you know how the over Target items are going to affect what you've already reviewed okay so I take it back then it's not like the school department because we are you you're still suggesting we look through and comb through the target budget to an effect line by line in in and not in the meeting specifically but have the actual line by line item yeah and that's where I think you get your strongest check of your proposed budget that way and then you can make the adjustments with whatever either Town manager or the department head pushes forward as a very strong need that's not covered under this target budget okay and then it's not our place to decide whether it does go in or it doesn't go in we just make a recommendation and at the end of the day it's Town manager's final decision at present right if the money's there to do it or moves it from something else but that does give a public meeting for the department head to say this is if there was to be an amendment on town meeting floor this is what we really need mhm y okay so I guess so originally I have for slide uh three is a summary of the pre previous year's budgets that's easy to do and then slides four and five I have as proposed Target budget for the upcoming year so we would want to change that to just Town manager Target budget right not to harp on it but I think something that this committee really needs to D be able to digest before you get into dealing with a Target budget for spring meeting is to have been able to dive deep into the close out for the previous fiscal year and see where the surpluses were and the the shortages and so on so that you understand where they maybe some issues that need to be adjusted going into the next budget cycle mhm you know that's what I always used to do the minute I could get my hands on the close out of either a quarter or preferably the fiscal year I watched all quarters when they were given to us on a timely basis yeah that way you knew where the shortages were and yeah you can Shuffle money around for the close out to cover shortages but you need to know where those were when you go into the next budget cycle and say okay again it's not our purview but we need to know that there were holes in certain places in the budget so that when we review the budget that comes forward next we look to see if those holes were pluged mhm okay yeah I agree that's go ahead J that's where um the actuals would come in handy to see those on a quarterly basis then you can see where uh they are spending where there are surpluses and and overages expenses I guess would that reflect interdepartmental transfers if they had to pull from from we wouldn't see that at that level right you wouldn't see transfers but you should be able to see L item the line item budgets how much has been expended for that quarter if it's over or under okay yeah that would be really yeah because if if there's a transfer I would assume that the appropriated number would stay as the original appropriated it would I'm just thinking if go ahead good J don't the transfers come to us yeah inter departmental transfers are supposed to come through US almost like the uh Reserve account okay so we just we may be using the WR terminology within within budget Lines within a department those can be done those department head and the town manager signing off but if you're shifting money from DP W to library or something like that that is required to come to us right no I'm talking about within a department itself if you were to say our office supplies expenses were 10 times higher than we expected them to be and you've transferred funds from your I don't know beautification budget line yeah that really shouldn't happen till towards the end of the year if everything is appropriately budgeted unless there's been some sort of um you know an unexpected emergency breakdown something to cause you know a storm something that has a significant effect on on that on that budget they shouldn't have to make any transfers basically towards the end of the year if everything is properly budgeted but we would see that transfer if it did have if it did actually take place correct I don't know if we see that or not some we'd have to ask the town manager yeah and I mean that ask that question again would we actually see evidence of a transfer going from one line to another line if there was a an unexpected expense that had that had to come out of somewhere in other words if there was yes we're reconciling how well they budgeted but are we able to reconcile to the to the granularity of this this specific line or this section of lines was not budgeted correctly at all and you had to you had to like emergency fill from other areas and why wasn't that filled correctly what happened yeah right and and I don't know if we see that though yeah no I don't think you will and I'll bring up something that happened over a period of years um that reallocated money from a basically a facilities department now to Pavement management mhm and nobody knew about it until a couple of us members of The Parks Commission started trying to figure out why the why the numbers didn't make sense on the close out for three or four fiscal years in a row uh that's the only way you pick up on things like that the way in our present process um I mean for more transparency it'd be really nice if the town manager is signing off on a major into departmental transfer or in within Department transfer that yes there's a comment made you know it'd be nice if there was or Finance director right yeah anything above you know five grand or 10 grand or whatever you want to make it what whatever number it is generates a required hey we did this to X Y and Z committees boards whatever right M that would be nice to have that's a separate so everything I've encountered in the last 10 years is coming out tonight Yep this is the this is the meeting to air it all out but that again comes back to the needs for checks checks and balances Y and how far into the process do you go with those checks and balances yep that's a decision decision that needs to be made as a town as a whole I think okay so couple slides for the town manager Target budget and I've defined Town manager Target budget as the total proposed budget that fits within the town manager's Target increase or decrease from a high level and then ideally 3 to 5 years of percentage and dollar amounts compared to the previous years I'd like to see I want to see Trends how how have you you know what what did you get last year did you get a 5% increase three years ago that we forgot about or did you get a 1% decrease last year MH um and then I would so then I think that we would drop the slide six and seven proposed minimum service budget for the upcoming year and change that completely to the above Target needs needs requests I guess needs oh request well so I guess do we want to see just the requested stuff or do we want to see only what they feel that they need above the Target that they were what are you defining as need so need is basically to maintain the level of service that they currently have yeah but that that's something the department head should make a make that decision I think make that call do I need to go for level service or do I need to go with what's allocated to me but identify these items that seriously need to be included if we find the money for it right and that's what that's why I'm calling them above Target needs that there that their needs that yeah I I hate that word in budgeting because you can you can there's 10 different definitions for needs that's why there's going to be definitions in here so that it can't be mistaken and J Do you have do you have another word in mind you had request I would say request oh yeah over budget uh yeah over budget request or where we're at there request over above Target request above Target requests yeah with justification yep I used to have to do that in Private Industry it was not fun some years yeah and that was only with $800,000 budget where are my bullets I lost my bullets we'll just do it this way okay so above Target requests with justification with commas for the upcoming year um so how do we want to define the above Target requests well one would be if something has been mandated a new mandate that has an effect on the budget okay yeah I think uh do we want to go to the level of unfunded mandates or just mandates oh yeah 99% of them are unfunded but you'll by mandates it could be yeah it could be um a new law regulation that's going something like new unfunded man mandates that are not covered in that have not been part of the budget yeah new stal F stal federal state mandates I I think we should not put unfunded because there are funded mandates that may be partially funded well the mandates they just don't come with funding right they may not but I mean we know that the majority of them are going to come unfunded okay so new federal or state mandates um other other justifications by the uh Department had I mean that's we we can't identify why the department head feels that this particular item in dollar amount is needed no I just want to give some kind of guidance for the direction of them just you know if it's we need more number two pencils then that's probably not likely to be justifiable but we need a new police cruiser is it operational or administrative capital what's the okay um so and one of the narratives that we've always used for uh capital projects is uh oh I just lost it I get it back in a minute um it'll have to come back out when it when it's ready um oh efficiency Improvement or something like that there something to that effect but again that I think that's part of the justification rather than right that would be yeah rather than us putting it in here as a uh for instance um yeah and that would fall under like the unanticipated expenses as well or something like that unintended unanticipated expenses from past year or prior year or something like that again that's justification that's these are all I guess yeah so maybe we just list a few examples of and just say um above Target requests um don't overthink it Evan what's that don't overthink it keep it simple oh yeah yeah well that's that's the problem I think if they want additional money they're going to tell you why and they're going to provide the justification okay and on top of that at the end of the day if the town manager who's doing that budget does not agree it's not going to happen any right you but the lease gives the department heads an opportunity to express that to someone other than just the town manager definitely in a priv in a public setting right which then allows the public to be involved and start sending notes and and I mean potentially uh with an educated public going into town meeting if it does didn't get added into the budget it could potentially get put into the budget by a group of people at town meeting with the adjust yep mhm you know y but that that's the key to it the the uh transparency and knowledge that's what drives a good town meeting I agreed and helps it be 3 hours instead of eight good luck yeah all right so above Target requests we could just say um present funds requested above the T manager Target with ample justification okay good enough yeah mhm and we'll just we'll let them decide what ample justification is do you have something else CH no okay okay so we'll just keep that one simple-ish yes yes so we don't give them a 16 page document exactly yeah you have to keep yours to 10 pages but ours is 15 um all right Personnel costs salaries and wages overview Personnel related expenses including any increases due to contractual obligations step increases or collective bargaining agreements um and those used to be identified as oh Carrie was the one that was good with that um your colas basically no there there was a term for it because they're they're the expenses that you have no control over and you have to fund no matter what non-discretionary non-discretionary there it is okay exactly and that's how she used to present the budget she would give those non-discretionary ones first mhm which eats up a percentage of your Levy and you have no choice you have to spend that money I mean it's how you budget at home right I have to pay my mortgage right then you allocate the rest into she had actually two more levels of urgency the way she split up the uh available Levy mhm yeah I appreciate that that approach as well it it just makes sense you don't have a choice you have to pay these bills and here's what it's going to cost you no matter what you do um if you would like a fire department here's what also you need to spend you got to pay the water bill right that's only if you want a restaurant um benefits Health Care pensions other benefits um I did realize that I know I've brought this up a number of times but I think we should still discuss healthc care and that's that the school department budget took a long time primarily because they didn't have a large a lockdown number on the healthare budget number until into well into February right yeah so if go ahead Jay not much you can do about that no exactly and that's kind of exactly where I'm going with this is that if if that is going to hold you up and that's 50% of your budget that can't be voted on by the school committee until they have that locked in number and they can't present to us right but as we found at MMA it pays to have a good relationship with the deputy director or whatever his position was for mm Maya or whatever Maya yeah Maya Maya because everybody should know that we got that number probably two or a good firm number that we could work with two or three weeks before we would have gotten it because we had a private conversation with the director at MMA correct so you know somebody advocating that this is why we need this and he was very responsive MH and also a good working relationship with the local agent because Heather was able to get our number a couple weeks even before the State numbers were put out to everybody right because she had a good relationship with our rep y so I I agree yeah those relationships are are necessary um but that said this this brings me to another suggestion of you know pulling healthc care lines out as just a single budget line as making it its own line that it it's not negotiated by the cbas it can't be because it's it's run by the by the town right um and it's a number that the school department has to wait for before they can do a budget if it's pulled out of there you pull the funds out of there as well I mean obviously you don't just take the the $3 million out and say Here's $3 million more dollars but you pull the $3 million out of their budget and you put it into the healthc care line and you pull the health care budget out of DPW or fire or whatever and it becomes just the healthare line and that's on the town to figure out because it's their negotiation anyways I I think doing so may allow us to get a school department budget a week or two earlier maybe which could be nice y um so but I know that not everybody on this board agrees commit agrees with that but um I I would like to at least have some discussion in the next few weeks probably after special town meeting between special town meeting and the first of the year maybe about how we do the uh the budgeting and I think that'll be a conversation as well for whomever the new town manager is MHM when that person comes in as to what makes the most sense um and then lastly on that one is just headcount comparisons for upper down are they expanding are they increasing their are they meeting their 5-year Staffing plan are they losing X number of people um can you change that to Employee Staffing I certainly can head count does sound a little bit aggressive that's specifically why I asked the U DPW director if he was fully staffed M at was it iwest meeting it was uh couple meetings before yeah right but you know you need to when you're talking about operations and how they're going and you know what the challenges are you need to know are you working with the staff that is allocated for you or are you still sure mhm all those numbers and if you're fully staffed and you're still unable to cover your responsibilities under that department then that's when it says okay what other positions do we need to be looking at adding in the next year or two toh to augment that Workforce and again that goes to Growing your departments as your town grows right right and I think that would be theoretically covered in the above Target requests ideally right yeah that that's where it should come in right definitely okay um in terms of the Employee Staffing as well do we want to get into the level of detail where we ask them if they have information as to why employees have left or why they're not fully staffed if they have any indication yeah I know cuz it it's it enters the HR I think that's something they'll tell us if they want to yeah yeah I don't want to be the HR department right and and yeah right exactly no okay good maybe an idea of uh like how many have full time how many a part-time breakdown um okay uh that would be in yes uh so staff or chart or listing of full-time SLP parttime employees or I guess number of something to that effect Jay yeah okay some of the Departments it doesn't make sense to have an work chart some of them very much do it's very appreciated with the fire department or the police department Department I would hate to see a school department or chart okay um after Personnel into operating so summary of operating costs supplies utilities maintenance Etc um do we want to include unanticipated or I figured they'll probably just put them in there anyways sort of just this is what was increased this is what was decreased we thought our Target was this we ended up spending this um and then that's kind of covered here with key cost drivers identifying factors causing increases of or stability and increase in operational expenses increases or stability no not stability that's a typo what's that this is a typo yeah increasing any identify any factors causing increases in operational expenses there we go rising cost of utilities um unanticipated the repairs SL expenses stuff like that what's the upper line of key cost what's the oh the key cost one above it yeah just the operating costs a summary of them sort of what they the high level of you know we spent x amount our our utilities adds up to this our maintenance adds up to this okay drop down and then key cost drivers what's what's driving those specifically yeah um class could also be plus a minus yes and causing increases SL decreases thank you on operational expenses so changing utility cost I'm sure they don't go down but um does it make sense to ask for historical Trends or anything as well because we're asking for it with their with their budget do we want to see how their historical Trends are for for expenditures on Personnel versus operating and we already asked for for that further up we did yeah from the general budget but that's like the high level of just the budget itself which maybe we don't need to get into that level of detail they can kind of explain yeah down here just okay fine by me we can keep it shorter um Capital expenses if applicable so ongoing capital projects I'm curious I'm curious to know like what they actually have that's currently been appropriated approved at prior Town meetings and sort of just these are the capital projects that are currently funded um not under this budget though uh so just highlight any existing capital projects funded under prior do we want to do that at the department head level or do we want the town manager to produce that cuz that's got to be that information has to be produced for the capital plan uh committee process anyway okay so maybe we just want a doc a presentation from the town manager every now as well during this to say here's where we stand with that the capital projects that are ongoing from you know previously funded 201 yeah okay all right so I mean that document is supposed to be what's that J and from the facilities director right y so we don't necessarily need any ongoing we would just want potentially planned Capital Investments this is their their their sort of forecasting right um you talking about the future or you talking about for this one I think it should be see there there's where you just flipped you flipped from what's going on and what's previous yeah what's in progress and what's future so I don't I don't know that do we want to see any Capital then I think we should have at least a glimpse of capital well you're going to see you're going to I think what's been lacking is the previously funded and what's in progress from the data we've received over the year few years um the other end comes out in the capital the recommended Capital plan budget mhm from the town from the Comm and the town manager mhm and usually we see both of those we see the ones that are currently well I say that only because I've been intimately involved in the process I don't remember ever seeing the ones that are currently under Pro the only ones that I ever call seeing with capital projects are the list of what makes it to town meeting floor we see the ones that are below the line we do see we see them here but at town meeting we only see the ones above the line right historically not sure what it's going to be from now on um and then we we have a we have an article to reappropriate non-expendable it's it's it's the funding sources for the capital plan right right exactly so I don't recall ever seeing this is what's being done currently I I retract that well that's usually in the town manins report if anything been completed or was in progress usually major projects right like and and that Jay the last year or two we did not really get I don't even think Capital planning got a full report yeah no there's a lot of times projects get put on hold like you know Bridget FL Hill Road is going on for a couple years and I think that's going to be important going forward there are a lot of things that um information like that that needs to be disseminated and potentially because it has not been the last 2 or 3 years that doesn't mean it should fall off the edge of the Earth and never come back again I think members of this committee Capital planning I hope will say hey we used to get this we want this back mhm as as we bring the town back around to some semblance of normaly in operations does Capital plan keep track of what's currently being worked on they get a report at some point in the early stages of their um analysis of the capital projects for future okay that's I think that's about it okay do they keep track of historical projects like we've spent capital on this department this is the expended Capital that we' spent on this department this is the expended capital in this department yeah no I have emails the only the only thing they've tried to do in that respect is if there was unexpended money from say a Parks project they try to allocate that left over balance towards a park parks project okay a new parks project okay so even though it gets lumped into the giant article that on once that's the the the process of you know yes okay it's a funding source within the overall article but the thought process is that it's actually helping fund that same departments project okay well that's good at least I have emails from Mr beardmore then ask for more of that okay um so we should specify what type of capital expenses then are we looking for current requested Capital expenses are we looking for future planned Capital expenses are we looking for what what do we want to see during the budget presentation both both well Pro capital projects that are in progress yeah and and capital projects that have been funded and what the stages of those are dur okay what's bouncing around on my head is do you want to ask about projects with that are stalled for one reason or another or Pro that have been funded there well technically supposed to be in progress but maybe St because of lack of funding right or lack of as things out with Co lack of you know supplies yeah we've had a few projects over the past uh three or four years that were on the capital plan got funded and then they re-evaluated the the the needs for that project or you know they they hadn't looked at it the right way so it fell off the list again yeah um and and that's where Capital planning's got to be careful because you can tie up a lot of money real fast in Appropriations that are going nowhere you know we had that we had that issue a few years ago and there was you know it was brought to light that we had $2.4 million I think it was sitting in either unexpended leftover money or projects that were stalled for one reason or another and Heather did get that cleaned up over a 2year period or so yeah at this point I I don't think there's probably likely to be too much that unexpended but I do I am curious do we have any projects that are still around from 2015 that haven't been worked on since or 2017 that that would be on the report of of uh the initial report of what's in progress and what's still on the books okay um so I've renamed this one funded capital projects statuses or status of maybe status of statuses of funded capital projects that's a pretty simple way of putting it Jay don't you think status of funded capital projects yeah yeah then it gives the uh department head the option as to how to interpret that and present it right and then next year you can fine-tune that because you get seven different types of presentations exactly so for that one we would want to highlight any existing capital projects funded under prior fiscal years mhm and updates well on progress mhm well why you didn't make a progress report on any existing Capital project funded under prior fiscal years I like that one much better yeah yeah that does sound good progress report yes report thank you finded from previous fiscal year mhm yeah okay and then I would assume probably a another one then for requested do we want to see there's where I think we drop it off to the capital planning process I agree yeah because it'll be presented from the town yes this town manager will present it from the Capital planning committee and we're not the capital planning committee right so the capital planning presents it right or have Capital planning come in right okay well they usually do so that so but if you're you're asking this to the department heads this is what you're asking from the department heads on you correct so from the department heads we want to was the status of funded projects that affect their budget which these wouldn't right because this is this is capital it's Capital but it has to do with whatever in their their budget their operation within their operation do we want it okay then do we want to say anticipated operational expenses of those capital projects due to capital projects right and the same thing if we're doing sort of a a progress report on current existing or existing capital projects do we also want to see anticipated operational expenses or upkeep expenses or whatever you want to call them well we want to know the status of ongoing capital projects that were previously funded where those are at yep because some some of them can be a repair whereas others just is just a purchase right right and then you have plan capital investment I think that should be on a new slide and how that is going to well affect the budget and improve their you know efficiency of their their operation okay the capital project is so basically what we're asking is is it going to cause more challenges or is it going to improve your operations well yeah improving your operation and make it more efficient yeah okay I I see where so that technically should reduce your expenses y or help you Staffing right right all right fine we do it this way we go um Okay so another slide with planned Capital Investments and then or would that be are we talking about planned or requested I mean for us likely we're just requested because Capital planning will see the five they're requesting the 5e the 10year capital plan yeah so we have just okay um this this would be for future years current fiscal year um yeah requested Capital Investments or capital projects I guess well yeah for FY for that fisal year that you're working on 25 25 we don't need to excuse me we don't need to see the request 5 years out that's capital plan no uh perview right so current fiscal year so requested capital projects current fiscal year um it just puts it on our radar so that we can yeah expect it to be coming in more detail through Capital planning right right this probably you you want to know what they're looking at in the future mhm so we do want further than just the current fiscal year then no we want to look for for the coming fiscal year okay whatever project that c project are and how that's going to benefit them okay got it uh mention any c CPC approved planned investment so we can get rid of that planned investment five 10 year preferred and then I love that we have a stenographer there I I just love that you can do that I've never been that person I can take a tractor apart and put it back together but I can't type A I can't edit a document as I'm going uh let's see list any CPC approved um capital projects well it wouldn't be approved yet by Capital planning at that Point Capital planning would have already done this right cuz we're going to get these in they done they would have done it last year when does Capital planning usually have their votes it's early yeah but they we're voting it for the new fiscal year this is a reminder right but this is for that fiscal year this is this is theoretically for fiscal year 26 yeah we're not asking about anything beyond that so that Capital planning priority is prior prioritized list should be complete by that time but they won't sure fed what's that J you think it'll be completed before they'll at least have the priority list but we won't know where the line is by that point because that'll depend upon free cash and all sorts of other funding yeah but the the CPC list will be done by then so I mean it'll give it'll allow them to give a plug for their projects so list requested I we see yeah requested if they request change y l reest we want to know what they requested and how it's benefiting whether gets whether it gets funded and is another story y so let's get rid of that make this bold put a in there and delete that guy out okay so list requested capital projects and then this is um benefits to benefits Department to the department yep it affects you know operational efficiencies uh how is it benefit how is it benefiting the department what is this Capital benefit going to do for do for the department and the town yep benefits of the department SL toown um operational well could be operational or administrative depending what the yeah what it is could have effect on either or us operational SL administrative I would just leave it oh just umit the department in the town but we still need to we still want to know how it's going to be how it's going to how what the effect is going to be on the on the future budgets too yeah okay yeah benefits to the town depart to the department in town and oper uh and expected or anticipated yeah operational SL administrative costs savings or or expenses costs and expenses something like that so benefits to the department SL toown and anticipated operational or administrative costs and or expenses equipment replacement building repairs Etc yeah I like to say cost savings or expenses oh cost savings yeah well hopefully a capital project is some sort of a saving you know a financial benefit to the town usually exp okay I can add that in as a third one then um anticipated cost savings yes okay so we get a good thing two good things and a bad thing we should make that a sandwich right we're supposed to put the bad thing in the middle yeah he B jelly ex all right so that's likely not going to just be one slide so just put that as slide xx and then we'll continue on with 12 is justification for cost increases if applicable so this is I guess sort of this is reflecting again the person on operating expenses I guess and why that's inre increasing so I'm wondering if that's even necessary anymore cuz we already have the legally or contractually required increases that's from the collective bargaining portion and from the mandates um and we also have the yeah that's already this is all in here already so we could just drop this one right out get out yeah fantastic one down budget efficiencies cost saving measures highlight steps taken to reduce costs while maintaining service levels example renegotiated contracts energy efficient improvements Etc and then operational efficiencies discuss any process improvements or technological Investments that are saving money so this was just an attempt for them to plug this is where we've tried to cut costs this is where we've tried to get additional money sort of an an option for them to plug if they want to or not um anything we want to change on that reduce reduce expenses instead of cost okay I just love not putting in s it's SE I always do CES instead of SES for expenses it it might be worth maybe just you going back through and editing where appropriate cost out and put expenses I'm just wondering if jumping back and forth between costs and expenses from one paragraph to the next yeah is is not really uh what's the word for it well well that's in here nine times the word cost n times provide clear explanations for any expense cost increases that's for oh that's notes okay that's not terrible if we go to the top one Personnel costs oh boy expenses yeah mention any Initiative for improving Service delivery without increasing expenses for the Department goals yeah yeah no you all right summary of operating expenses expenses key expense drivers and utility expenses all right benefit to the department slown anticipated expense reduction instead of expense savings mhmh yeah reductions and anticipated operational administrative expenses oh we already have expenses so we yeah I got it once yeah okay and that leads us to just the last two which are in the in the notes BEP provide clear explanations for any expense increase any increases or changes and expenses from private from previous year and ipate questions on justifications for expenses potential savings or service impacts okay so no longer do we have the word cost anywhere in here thank you Dave all right we're almost done um so we are on we did the budget efficiencies next is slide 13 impact of not fully funding the ah here we go so this gets back into the above Target budget well Target budget how man a Target budget impact of well but so the do we want to say impact of above Target requests right of not fully yeah full funding above Target request did you say I just said yeah cuz that's what we want to know the ramifications if we do not or the budget does not fund the above Target requests okay impact of not fully funding the above Target requests no service reductions detail which services or programs would be cut or reduced if the if the above Target requests are not fully funded and then operational impact explain the potential consequences on Staffing community service and service of quality or and service quality and and I like the word potential in there because you cannot predict right yeah yeah right you know you could figure out what the service reductions the the the positions and the programs you have to cover but yeah okay we good on that one yeah all right Revenue sources if applicable Town Appropriations portion of the budget funded by the general funds just simple enough I I guess we don't even necessarily need to have that um maybe we just have the other revenues mention any external revenues grants user fees federal state aid that help the Department Services fund the Department Services or no I guess we could no town we could say the portion of the budget that's funded by the general funds um and maybe the portion or the the percentage of the total budget as well that it Con that that this department would con that this budget would constitute whether it's 3% or 40% or whatever so percentage of or departmental percentage of Omnibus budget and have the COA coming to you with 0.5% I know or 0.05 I don't know what it is but so department so the departmental percentage of the Omnibus budget and then portion um I guess just that is all we really need because after that it's just because we know it's it's going to be dep it's going to be funded by appropriation unless it's other revenues that they have which is external revenues grants user fees federal state aid that help fund the Department Services I think Capital planning is added um I think they were talking about it anyway specifically asking if it's green communities appropriate I don't know if we want to asked for a comment or not in this process or do we just leave that in because there are projects that are not necessarily Capital that are appropriate for funding through green communities especially if they're approach properly and that's something that I think the green communities committee is starting to help educate the different departments as to what is appropriate for a potential project for green communities funding the pro the only problem we're having is that that program is morphing and it morphs faster than we can keep track of it sometimes because of the overall push specifically lately towards electrification and weatherization mhm but you know some of these projects going forward are going to be weatherization and if you tie it together with another energy saving project for the same building then it's intimately appropriate for green communities it's just whether or not the timing works MH I I I wonder I think that might be more for green communities to handle um because once you're gone we're not going to know if they're if it's available for green communities um and I I think that's certainly something that they should put forward but I think for this one it would just be sort of you know this is not that she'll not that she'll still be here unless they can convince her otherwise but this is um sud's chance to show how much you know grant money she's p p in to run the COA and to reduce the amount of of appropriation that they that the COA needs to function rather than saying you know you may want to look here I would I would think maybe during that that presentation we would say oh hey have you thought of this for a funding source or have you talked to our grant writing services don't have yet um all right slide 15 what's that J um I'm just was thinking myself okay uh next one is challenges for the upcoming years external factors discuss any external challenges example inflation regulatory changes economic uncertainty that could affect the Department's operations or budget needs good enough okay internal pressures identify internal challenges example aging infrastructure Staffing shortages that could impact service levels all the above right exactly uh and then a conclusion summary or conclusion and summary uh summary of the key points recap the budget request and emphasizing that it is designated to maintain current Services no no longer that emphasizing that it is or I guess just recup the budget request from a high level what what do you mean by high level um not to the granular level that we've been seeing previously basically just you know this is oh jeez um more of just a summary view of what their budget is this is how much we've increased sort of just a okay now we've talked about everything let's just bring it all back together and say this is what the budget is is currently this is what we need to see this is what our requests are to tie it all together in one last time I guess rather than kind of getting into this is what we need for this Personnel position or this is what we need for for this service position okay we can change I have no problem not having high level in there no either I'd be happier with just the uh summary of key points just leave it as that yeah okay done oh see and then I don't think we need to yeah I don't think we need to have to reiterate the importance of the buch no okay um and then questions and discussion invite questions leave time for committee members to ask questions or raise concerns contact information provide your contact detail for follow-up discussions or clarifications easy enough um okay this is where we have a chance to put definitions in so additional notes for the presentation keep the slide simple focus on High level summaries and key data points use visuals charts graphs where appropriate less is more uh be transparent provide clear explanations for any increases or changes in expenses from the previous year that's where I'm hoping we'll see this we didn't have enough in this line so we had to pull from this line it's my subtle attempt at saying please tell us that uh prepare for questions anticipate questions on justifications for expenses potential savings or service and pin packs um detailed budget documents please send line item spreadsheets of TM Target of the TM Target budget and uh what have we called them we called them above Target above Target request Target request to fin Comm a minimum of 7 days in advance of the schedule presentation including 5 to 7 years of detailed budgeting documents ideally basically just give us your spreadsheets give us your M bid whatever it is your miny documents um so we can see them um do we want to Define anything further I'm kind of leaning towards leave that alone and see what happens see what the push back is edit it edit it after the fact after you see whether it worked or not okay um I did not read over the first few slides so just really quickly to make sure we have that finance committee Town Department budget presentation template slide one title slide Department name presenter's name and title Presentation date easy enough Department overview mission statement summarize the Department's purpose and role in the community whatever they want to put for mission statement key Services provided briefly outline the essential services the department offers Staffing overview number of employees breakdown oh I did already have breakdown a full-time and part-time I guess we can an or chart yes do we want to keep this in this portion or do you want to allow them to put it into the Personnel portion oh they usually show it in the beginning the usually show the organization CH is part of a overview envirment so then we cut this one back to just the if any staffing changes are proposed highlight them here when we actually get to kind of the meat of the Personnel this stays more high level and we just see we have 10 employees we have 500 employees part-time staff and then an order chart if use if useful yeah I like okay organizational chat what's that you b or AAL chart yeah I have it right here organizational chart if desired I guess I'll take actually make it spelled out okay um and then I think that was it everything else we went through after oh I didn't do I don't think I did this one summary um slide three is the summary of the previous year's budget previous fiscal year uh total budget highlight the total budget in significant categories Personnel operations Etc actual spending briefly discuss how funds were used and then key accomplishments mention notable achievements or or or Services maintained under the prior budget going to change these to XX as opposed to just limiting them to just two slides because I don't think they'll be able to limit them to one or two slides uh this one's through xx and I think that should be it okay anything else anybody wants to change initially looks good to me perfect once Dave walks back upstairs we can officially vote I suppose um so my plan here is just to send this off to the interim Town manager um with a request to please send it to the department heads as well um or I guess actually I'll request of the town the inim town manager that I can send it out to the department heads or something we'll figure it out so that can get to the department heads um with a request for you know conversation or questions or dialogue ahead of it if there's any questions um and then we'll go from there and see what what we end up with and hopefully this will make it a little bit more consistent between departments timing wise is there enough time for the if he chooses to the uh interim Town manager to review this whole document and if he has some serious concerns before he sends it to his department heads that he comes back with those suggested adjustments I think so I I think yeah he had asked for it so if if we vote on it tonight I send it to him tonight he'll have it tomorrow he can read through it over the weekend if he wants um if I I doubt he'll have too many issues but if he does have you know issues we could always just I I can work with him on the timing if he does want to send it out immediately we could sort of just strike something initially and then we could I I'll bring it back up and say we we struck this how do we want to rechange re reorganize this or reward this and then we can resend it out with that but at least they'll get kind of a meat of it hopefully at that point okay all right anybody want to make a motion yeah I make a motion we oops hang on y go ahead do we know how many department heads he's sending this to because I know we have all the big departments what about the smaller one how many are we just doing the ones we have well you You' got the smaller departments punched under one department head so it's going to the in my eyes my thought process was like who's doing who's doing it I don't even want to answer that question do we still have I assume we still have their contract right that's General government so that's the town manager but we always get a presentation from it well not always we did last year I I'll let you guys chew on that one a little bit I I mean ideally this would be for anybody who's going to be presenting to the finance committee right I know we have all the big the big department I assume so yes Le by a DPW school facility right exactly but then there's other an other one is a town manager going them you know building land use historically yes but I guess that's a question for whomever is going to be the town manager that does the presentations for that if they want to do right Those portions at this point I'm fine with just having Carter send it to any of his department heads that he feels he would like to send it to with a minimum of these listed okay I I I think that's appropriate you know we give them we give them that to decide and a review and I'll cover it my motion do we want to at least run through the Departments we want to send it to first or do you want me just to use the the the this is this is our this is our department head presentation request format template format request okay and then let him disseminate it okay that's my feeling Jay does that work for you yeah then I guess I would just ask him about who's covering the these small you know or if he's going to have a list of who's actually going to use this and respond to it I will make sure that gets included in the email we're starting a motion I think Dave yeah where was I I think it was IM move do you want to accept or approve or how do you want what word do you want in there um I move that we approved the format that we have just completed editing and uh task the chair passing it on to the town uh interim Town manager and authorize him to work with the interim Town manager if there are some minor edits that he feels are important how's that perfect second all right motions made and seconded any discussion no all right roll call vote then Mr Simone I Mr pasos I Miss Russell I and an I from myself we have a template thank you very much that was not thank you for doing that work EV oh no problem wasn't terrible terrible but it was work all right so that brings us to the Mart taxi and Livery Grant update um so the I I do have an update from March that uh the question about whether or not I think it was Mr monard that brought it up um whether they would allow for anyone in lunberg to be transported to Emerson Hospital has been approved um we're not exactly sure of what the cost is going to be just yet I guess they're still working that out um but I believe we will know that Carter I think Carter's pretty confident will know that by um the special town meeting so that request is still likely to be $20,000 to be found somewhere um which would carry the program through until the end of the fiscal year and then we would ideally have that we'd figure out what we want to do in the spring whether we want to continue it or or whatnot but the program is officially ended we are just continuing to subsidize it ourselves at this point okay and that agreement included uh mileage over the original limit only for Emerson only for Emerson correct it was it's up to 20 M unless you're going to Emerson okay and then it's Emerson right there and back y um and the rate I believe will be going up it's currently 34 and $6 and I think it's going up to four five and $77 or something like that per trip so still very reasonable yep um and hopefully the state red do that cuz that's I think a really good program um otherwise I don't have any other updates on that one it was just the good news um split tax rate discussion and presentation so I I I went forward and I presented it to the budget task force for a painstakingly I think it was an hour and a half presentation so if you really want to sleep listen to that presentation um what it basically all boiled down to and I did not show the committee this one slide um which was sort of my thesis at the end of it so I just want to show this one slide not all 50 of them that I showed the other night um but this is so the argument has always been for the reason for not going to a split tax rate is that if our CIP is too low our commercial industrial and personal property percentage of the value valuation is too low will drive businesses out of town um and while that certainly still may be true I I want again I want to see the data that says that this is this is what happens there are not many communities in Massachusetts to be fully honest and candid um that have a split tax rate with CIP value percentages under 15% we would be a minority community in that regard um that said I looked at what I was focusing on was two things so so the CIP value in millions of dollars is on the XA on this y AIS oops let me use my little pointer makes it a easier on the left on the y- axis y- axis over here and the the residential and Open Spaces value in billions is on this side the kind of brownish curve is the CIP the greenish one is the residential what it basically shows is that from 2002 so this is all or 2003 I believe fiscal year 20 3 through fiscal year 2024 the CIP value in lunenberg has increased about $3.5 million per year on average over the course of the time our housing has our residential has increased by about $36 million per year on average as well over the same years with mayard looking at the same spread their CIP their CIP value increased by $85 $850,000 so there is a difference they did decrease they did not increase as quickly as we did um they do increase about the same 32 million per year for residential so what I did do though is I I wanted to look at kind of a this is from 2002 so this is a very large data set so I I backed it down to 10 years so I started in 2014 and looked at a 10year spread instead and if you look at at 10 years it's a it fits a curve a little bit better I also want to make sure that I wasn't starting here and saying look at how much they've grown cuz that feels a little disingenuous look at just I think I called it the hockey the hockey stick equation um but if you look at it from a 10-year spread lunenberg CIP has increased by about $6 million per year on average and our residential has increased by about $100 million a year which is a ton of money every year mayard CIP has increased by about 4.8 million per year and their residential has increased by about 86 million per year so it's it's much more in line that their residential or their CIP has increased similar to ours over the past decade so it's not as good that's certainly true it is about a you know 25% Less in of a of a of a growth than we're seeing but at the same time it's not necess it's not decreasing and if you look specifically over since 2020 they have been really increasing they've been really putting money into I believe that's the the shops at mayard on the old digital footprint that 53 Acres where they put in a ton of Housing and shops and all of that y so that was that was the entire gist of it it was just those two little graphs um to say at least to have the conversation with the committee of let's look at the data from the other communities if there if it exists that says no no no we tried it and we failed hard and I don't want that to happen I also don't want to put too much on the backs but I think the discussion is at least warranted and that was pretty much it this was the only thing that I I didn't show the committee two weeks ago so that was the only update that I had for this one nothing extravagant I think at the end of the day you know as much as the the sky is going to fall if you do that mentality really is not I can't imagine it would happen right yes there might be some departure but uh I guess I guess my only other question is what does it accomplish once you make that does it well is it a shift and burden or is it strictly a shift and burden okay it becomes nothing more than a shift in burden um but how much it depends upon what your CIP shift is yeah what you set that how was that decided the board of assessors from what I understand is there a formula so it is so you the maximum in the state is is 1.75 a 1.75 shift so basically that means you take the residential um rate and multiply it by 1.75 and that's your commercial rate your CIP rate that's the maximum on dls's website they list what the maximum can be and lunenberg has been listed at 1.5 since 2003 so I did actually because I wasn't doing anything else I I calculated out exactly what it would look like um and this is what a shift looks like for the for fiscal year 25 um oh jeez that's way too much there we go um so blue or red on Orange on top here is CIP blue is residential and it's basically as the shift goes a 1.0 shift which is what we're at there's obviously no difference 1.1 you're shifting $267,000 off of the residence and onto commercial and that increases up to 1.5 where you're shifting 1.3 million off of the residence and onto the commercial if you go to 1.75 uh I don't even think I C yeah I didn't even calculate I didn't even bother calculating out that far cuz it's millions of dollars at that point I I feel like there is a limit so this is basically what you'd be looking at is somewhere between 250,000 to about 1.3 million depending and you can choose anything in between it's not like you're limited to integer numbers or you know single decimal points numbers um but when you start playing around with that it's kind of interesting you can start sort of looking at what happens if you do an override simultaneous to a split tax rate and what the average tax bill looks like at different CIP shifts with different override numbers so this might be a little bit tougher to see there we go um but this is on the $481,500 CIP shift and no override if you just do a $3 million override that house bill jumps up to 7 $ 7,432 that's a very large increase at the same time if you go all the way out to a 1.75 shift on a $3 million override that bill goes from 6788 to $69.99 so it's not as drastic of an increase because it's borne on the backs of the the commercial industrial and person and personal property if you look at the $1.5 million one it's actually a tax break um from 6788 to 69 or 669 uh 6 $ 6,696 so it's actually technically a small tax break um and there's a $1.5 million override that takes place at the same time so I I think the board of Assessor certainly is going to needs to talk about and they always do um it's always up for discussion with them but the select board eventually chooses what the whether they're going to split the rate in November so that I think is the first part of the conversation that needs to happen is they need to decide whether or not they're going to split it out or not so not sure I mean the other option is you do a 1.75 shift and no override and that house drop DRS down from $678 to $639 they get a get a $400 tax break but you put a lot of that's a lot of burden on the CIP I mean that's a ton of Burden it's like $4 million or uh like $3 million on on the CIP itself which is a lot to Bear when there's only it's only worth about $200 million um additionally there is no break that can be given to small businesses that does not exist so that is a big big issue um the break that is available is to the land owner so what but at the same time it's the land owner that's paying the taxes it's it's not the business that's renting the building that the land is on that's going to pay the T the property taxes it's going to be paid for by the the owner of the property itself but person properties is included in that too right person but it's personal property that's outside of residential property right yeah yeah our personal property I think totals up to so that would be born by the by the business uh correct correct but that at that point so if it does well maybe I'm not sure that's a good question um because the property Comm property owner is not going to own the equipment that a company is operating on his property right leases leases the property mhm it's not his equipment it's the company's equipment so if that's the case then I would expect them to be able to apply for a small business grant uh exemption if it's under x x amount of employees mhm which would be good then um personal property is a commercial yes it's lumped into the the commercial industrial and personal property so I believe yes it is the personal property related to Commercial and Industrial excuse me property of of the business correct which just remember also for all my Farmer friends that includes Farms farmer does does it yes arm is not exam oh yeah they found out the hard way when when the town hired a company to go around and assess and update personal property inventory that's the Farms got clobbered because there had been a you know a local assessor that kind of gave the farmers a break on their equipment and they got they got hit hard okay and again the Just Just for information yeah no that's all this is I have no specific agenda here I'm just looking for I know we're going to need more money where do we get it from yeah the residents really don't want to pay it how else can we make make money but not actually make money M Jay you were going to say something I think how the Weir now is personal property taxs come into play what's that the personal property tax where does that come into play is that in addition to so personal property in FY 24 was was $64 million in town that was the revenue created no that's assessed value assessed value assessed value only so Revenue created on that specifically 1410 uh 14.1 * 64 91 1463 $915,000 so yeah I I think more I certainly need more understanding of of exactly what the breakdown is and I'm very curious to know what the breakdown in town is of corporate owned versus family in lunenberg owned um and the the sort of distribution of who owns the land is it owned by people that don't even live in lunenberg and they're just renting it out to businesses or is it you know the new Proctor complex that that's up the street that's owned by the Proctors that's that's that's on them entirely um that that's you know an important thing to know I think there's a lot of missing information here for sure that that the board of assessors can fill in so I will reach back I have not heard from them again um I sent them some questions I haven't heard back from them so I'll reach back out to them again and see if I can get some more answers but that was that was about all I had for that is there any is it is it any tier levels in commercial and the way they're taxed any What level in the in the weights tax you know teer levels you know for small business versus large businesses so from from what I know is that there is a small business exemption that can be applied for but the way that the interim toown manager explained it was that that any any Grant any granted um exemption goes to the pro the land owner yeah property owner but I I take property owner to be as well the business it could be right so it's going to probably be split you'd get the you know it you'd probably get I guess if the if the if you're applying for a small business exemption this is an assumption which I'll check to make sure but if you're applying for a small business exemption on personal property you as the business owner would likely be the one awarded the exemption but if you were were applying for it on if you were the land owner of a small business applying for the small business exemption then you as the land owner would be getting an exemption and I don't know if you can double up the exemptions on that like I there's a lot of guess there's a lot of unknowns yeah yeah but that is the only existing in in all of Massachusetts statute um exemptions which is really unfortunate CU it does not not it does not give any help to or assistance to small businesses really makes it really hard to start a business we have a lot of big business in town when we get that Newberg Central yeah it's completely but at the same time we're making tons of money on that without having any other expenses is that still empty 100% empty as yeah but if business is moving in there they should be uh we should get something from personal prop correct yeah right now we're strictly collecting on the commercial property yeah now my former I tried to talk my former employer into that being the perfect expansion building for them in the New England operations but nobody would listen typical corporate yeah you no we got a property that we don't fit in but we're going to stay here mhm yeah I I would like to know a lot more CU because I certainly you know I don't even know who owns the property that Walmart and Hanford sits on I imagine it's probably not Walmart and Hanford or Hanford no there's a development or or management company I think that owns that Jay do you remember cuz it used to be on the signs going in I don't know I haven't looked at paid attention to the sign in years that might just be the management company but not the actual owner it's true oh okay yeah contracted Services yeah exactly yeah that's that's those are the you know if those are the companies that are taking the majority of these taxes then I'm sorry but okay I don't feel bad if it's falling on Walmart and corporate I I right I really do not mind taxing them much higher than I mind taxing you know Hilltop for example um but yes all right any other discussion on that one for tonight um I don't think we have a town manager search committee update unless anybody knows anything I don't I haven't watched any meetings I haven't either um I already gave the budget Task Force update that was basically I talked uh grant writing services I am very concerned that we are going to get to to annual town meeting still having $50,000 appropriated for grant writing services and not a single person has reached out to anybody and I'm not quite sure whose responsibility that is to get people to reach out or how to start the process well the only comment I'll make is I tried did and it resulted in no action from one committee that should be putting a proposal forward but is not instead is going to town meeting for uh funding so I I think go ahead Jay I I think it was a good idea I think just don't know how to implement it the problem is is nobody driving the bus we bought the bus nobody driving it that's kind of exactly what I'm getting at we don't have a template we don't have a list of preferred y Services service providers or anything we don't have a way of contacting who to contact who to talk to we just have money and a line MH that I worry is going to be absorbed very quickly into a different budget line item in FY 26 if it doesn't show that it can bear fruit the town well the town manager should be handling it with that we have an permanent right yeah that needed to be vetted as soon as the fiscal year started and you know departments made aware of how what they were required to bring forward to uh you know potentially tap those funds and I did weigh that out like I said to one uh one committee and I think it would work well that way but so far it hasn't mhm that's why I asked Carter was I think the last meeting has anybody come forward with a request nope nobody yet that I know of at least right but I don't I don't think it's going to work that way I thought the whole purpose of it is for a grant writing services company to to find us the grants correct yeah yeah but Jay you got to have you got to have some idea of what you're trying to fund so that you can bring the appropriate company forward to through contracted services to go after those grants for you well I look at as as a municipality we know we all we know the Departments that we have and that agre writing services should be familiar what Municipal needs are with police fire DPW schools and they should be able to provide you a listen here here's all the grants that have come up which ones do you want to apply for what do you need because there may be grants out there that we don't know exist that they even ask for yeah that's the part I'm not familiar with it town that I work yeah what you're saying is that there there must be entities out there that do General Grant writing for municipality needs mhm they do ex yeah I think there must be companies out there that must follow the federal government state government and know where these grants are or when they pop up mhm and and that was actually the intent because we were talking about all the the uh money coming out of the federal government filtering down to the state level yes and and that was going to be Grant grants and somebody had to be familiar with the process and and be on top of when those Grants open and I can't believe there was entity a business entity out there that's not doing that I mean there's there's money to be made doing that sounds like you have a job ready so I had brought up in July 11th that there's a company called Bailey boy associat in situ Massachusetts that are Grant Specialists they are a boutique firm specializing in Community Development they have been successfully funding and implementing Community Development activities for over 30 years they do community housing infrastructure projects compliance project management Economic Development sustainable employment opportunities and it's all Grant Specialists our national reputation for aggressive Grant work including research writing and project management places Bailey boy Associates at the top of Community Development Consultants with over 140 million in funds secured Better Business Association or BBA consistently helps clients meet their project goals that was a 30- second Google search that I used that I did and they're in Massachusetts so see that's where you've got to have the client goals developed in advance and then you hire this company to help you realize those goal realize those goals yes exactly but do you need to put an RFP out for that depends on how much money you spend initially find out what their fee schedule is right we have $50,000 and each Grant I think would be different depending on the need y some grants may be simple and some may be more complicated or requireed consider more data I guess we're looking for basically a person that wants to to take on the task because I think we do I I think I think we need to have somebody that knows I agree with with Jay I think we need to have a company that knows sort of here's what we do here's what the like let's let's look at you and your community here's we we've told them we can show them what our letter our grant writing services letter was that you and Miss tarz drafted and say these are our departments here's what we're looking at we have Parks projects coming up we have school projects coming up we have a building infrastructure Pro problem in town we need some grant money to start moving on stuff we have a $50,000 line we would like to have a nice return on that investment are are you able to do anything for us and then let them do the work and say yes we have X Y and Z grants that we think you'd be fine for what what just came through my mind was Is it feasible and with the smaller no smaller committee doesn't matter um if sen as the finance committee pressed to get that line item if the interim Town manager were on board for the finance committee to initiate and execute that first phase mhm do you think as chair that's doable sure only takes a phone call yeah yeah but but I foresee you know a phone call and maybe convincing them to come in and give a a basic presentation on what they could offer mhm um and that that might trigger requests from department heads or or however that needs to happen mhm in other words have see if see if one they would be willing or able to knowing what our line item is and then two if they would come in and have a sit down with the department heads and us or something to that effect yeah sure you have a workshop type of thing that involves right all the users right all the potential users Bo I'm winding up work for you guys you really are you offer Consulting Services right I mean that's the only way I see it getting off the ground to tell you the truth that and that's what I've realized as well without someone to Champion the effort it's just going to sit there Y which means in FY 26 it's gone yep I agree okay I can reach out to Carter and I will call the boids again anything else on grant writing services no I think now what departments do we want to consolidate Dave do you want a last harah at consolidation of departments and services well you know what's in my head is again the fact that the town needs to grow and grow its departments uh I'm not some it's a consolidation but it's not a money saver what I have in mind and that is that you know let's see if I can pull all this out in a short period of time I'll start with facilities only because that one's clear in my head uh I feel that this town is big enough now so that it needs a facilities administ istrator the next tier under the facilities administrator are the two positions we presently have and then you need a Workforce under them MH which they kind of have they don't have a sufficient Workforce but they kind of have a Workforce but I think again that needs to be a grown to fit our needs type of Department Stand Alone um and that's probably just the first phase of that and there'll be a need for growth there probably in the next five years if we continue growing the way we are mhm um the other thing is I think there should be some shift of I got to say this correctly shift of responsibilities within the DPW present DPW structure in that if you're going to have facilities actually it's called facilities in grounds mhm okay if you want to the the potential growth down the road would be to separate grounds from facilities I don't think that's appropriate yet but if you grow the facilities Department to an administrator to Su uh to um what are their positions right now facilities directors aren't they maybe okay I'm I'm sorry if I'm getting the terminology wrong but you get the point you've got an administrator that's 100% administrative and then you have the two positions that we have now operational Jay just had it I didn't hear operational operational okay and and then your your your as many of us call them worker bees yeah okay the labor force so so you've got that but down the road or even you could do it now but be thinking down the road that you're going to separate grounds from facilities and I think cemeteries should be rolled into that mhm um that portion and cemeteries could be rolled into the ground BRS management uh purview now as far as I'm concerned D DPW shouldn't be involved in grounds cemeteries are grounds yes you need an administrator of some sort to handle dealing with the public and you know there there's a lot more that goes on besides mowing the lawn over there and everything like that and I think those two parts of that operation need to be separated MH you you shouldn't have a grounds keeper taking care of administrative tasks in a department like that if that makes sense okay so you move that towards facilities and grounds right now with the intent that down the road it goes with grounds on its own but it's all the same type of workflow it's mowing lawns it's taking care of grounds it's trees and trimming and you know that's all over town so you have a department that does that MH including school grounds and that's the big nut to crack we we have a Turf War and that's all I can call it is a Turf War because no matter what you propose to merge anything between the townside and the school department it's met with absolutely not we're not giving up our turf as much as I'm sure there's people sitting at home right now if they're listening or they'll see it on this tape no it's not it's not that way yes it is and I don't know how you break that cycle other other cities and towns Do It um I know a former member of the select board that just retired very recently and he was in um a town in Massachusetts where the DPW and or facilities I'm not sure exactly how they were set up but they took care of all buildings in town M including school buildings and they took care of all grounds including school grounds this separation is ridiculous the schools should be involved my feeling this is my statement personal statement the schools should be involved in educating children and the town should be involved in maintaining the buildings and the grounds that's how I feel it should be especially as we've grown into a a more closer to a city than than a little village mhm uh so I think that's where the it's not inherently there should be efficiencies in doing that but not necessarily and definitely not a cost savings but that feeds in again to my uh adamant feeling that we've not grown to where we should be anyway mhm and that's what that accomplishes and there are other little areas that we could probably work on but those are the the biggest areas where there's potential for you know uh consolidating similar operations mhm into one entity so I'm glad I'm not here after to say yeah I I I can see it sort of from both sides in terms of at least the the the grounds with with sports requirements and and lining and all that stuff but at the same time I mean I I don't think there's any reason why our facilities Department can't also handle or a combination of facilities Department can't handle the logistics as well yeah we're in the day and age where you contract out 80 to 90% of that anyway even the school district contracts out some of the grounds work right you know um I mean and oh the concern is well you know we want to have control over who's on the property will you build that into the contracts that's that's absolutely required of any uh contracted service that comes onto a school property mhm they're required to have their employees vetted so that argument gets thrown right out the window yeah I think it's certainly I would love to see the conversation happen I really would um same with it I think done properly we go back to a townwide IT department and it it will work better than anything we've ever had but the key word is done properly that would require a new another merger though because the schools are on Google and the town is on Microsoft so just I'm just saying it would requ again mean no migration no migration is easy right lunberg is going to have to the towns side's going to have to do a migration anyway in the near future because munus is you know either they're going to have to do a migration with munus to an upgraded software which they're already aware of mhm or they bite the bullet and they do a a transition to a totally different platform mhm so we know what we've had for problems up to this point with munas bite the bullet and may do the transition instead of doing it with something we already know doesn't work do that Mig ation into something that does work yeah Jay you were going to say something um I was sorry I I'm not yeah I don't agree with mering the it departments I think if the school's on Google Wear Microsoft they should be able to stay that way the school has so much more IT issues to deal with and on the town side right and I think there should be a separation but why couldn't we be an offshoot of of the school's ID it Department if we if we have a lot less need then we we should be able a piece of their Opera their it Department because I think it comes down to one budgeting issues because the school department has their own budget that we have no say over and then it also comes down to uh Staffing is how much uh time are they going to be able to provide on the town side versus the school side because I think the school side just with the amount the staff and the and the kids that they have they just have so much more it need yeah that could certainly be a limiting factor for sure having having budgetary constraints on the school side where right now they have autonomy over sort of how they handle snow and ice how they handle Mowing and where they fall on the list of of prioritizations and if you if you conglomerate that into a full townwide I could understand concerns about do we fall off the list and do we lose some of the uh the you know work that we've had done and or the speed at which we get work done or the and whatnot plus budgeting if if the budget gets cut down does that come from everywhere across the board evenly or who who's in charge of the budgeting of it at that point there are it it certainly is it becomes messy but I don't think it's unsolvable all I know is there's other towns in the state that do it with absolutely no problem and function very well yeah well I think some of those other towns might be better staff too because well yeah yeah and that and that plays back to what I said earlier about we have stagnated our our service departments yep with no growth no increase in funding per se to keep up with the needs that we've we've grown into yeah we've we've constrained our departments to the point to as far as they can be constrained under prop two and a half we cannot constrain them any further otherwise we're going to be saying sorry you can only mail out 50 warrants instead of you know 5,000 or come pick it up instead or It's All Digital it's just we're getting to the point where we have to count pennies our departments have to count pennies rather than you know just operating as they're supposed to okay anything else on that one no I've stirred up enough business I'm sure for now all right no minutes uh committee reports any committee reports to report on um green communities and school was supposed to have a meeting this morning it turned out to be uh I'm not sure exactly what happened something to do with links and stuff um but the update basically is that is still pushing forward to uh put in a Grant application in the next couple weeks um with the hopes that the Mini Splits phase two for the primary school will be the major project in that application including uh and then on top of that two police screws is at $5,000 each and um I forget the dollar amount it's it's oh maybe it doesn't come out of green Communities going to be applying for two uh training for two people for business um I mean uh building management systems MH uh we did that a few years ago John Wanda took it and I don't think we ever used the second one cuz we never had anybody but the the two facilities Direct are planning I believe if we do get that they'll be uh participating in that so that's that's it at this point um we have a meeting coming up on the 6th or 7th of October M okay any other committee reports to pass on no I mean either topics for future meeting now's your chance Dave how to get a $3.2 million override push through 3.2 yeah started off at 1.5 now two and now it's 3.2 wasn't it the one back in u the the one that we've talked about the last time they tried and failed it was it was huge well I don't know what the I think it was I Jay do you remember wasn't that a $3 million attempt cuz I remember when we go ahead was that to do with the buildings no no it had nothing to do with the new school building it was an override for townwide operations or something like that I don't remember exactly but was that under uh was that under um B guses when he had a plan to do with like the school the public facilities and the police or something it was it was a big number yeah and and and I remember when the spreadsheet came out on that on the like we did the breakdowns on how it was going to affect the tax bill it was extrapolated out over 5 years with a 2 and a half uh multiplier and and all that stuff and the number three years down was just out of this world that's what blew it out of the water yep but on the other hand if you can't find Revenue sources from anywhere else that's what's needed I'm not saying it's it's the to notable but that's what's needed yeah yeah when we have the bulk of our Revenue coming in is from tax levy that's that's kind of have to move along with it and that's what in that's what overrides and under rdes are designed for it's either that or drill a hole in the ground go far enough so we hit oil on the other side of the world bring it up in lunenberg any other topics for future meetings I think we have plenty to go with so far yeah perfect none uh important dates the MMA and Association of town finance committee meeting is happening on the 2nd of November in Sharon at the community center from 9:00 a.m. to 2:15 I will be attending I believe I recommend anybody else who wants to go it's a good it's a good good time to go I think um it's it's certainly helpful it's specifically for the finance committees so yeah um second MMA that's a great meeting to go to it's no longer MMA it's connect 351 oh that's right I did see that I'm sorry yes it's now connect 351 and it's happening at the uh seport Hotel the Omni seport yeah so and that'll be in January uh other one is we have special town meeting at 5:00 on the 12th of nober at the lunenberg Middle High School auditorium 5:00 5:00 that's what everything keeps on I keep on seeing 5:00 posted from the town and everything else which is new to me that's an odd time really is that way maybe it'll end at 10: problem with 5:00 is that you're not going to have people getting out of work get yep I'm going to check really quickly just just because that's no I I think you're right I remember this discussion a few weeks ago somewhere all right special yep select board special town meeting 5:00 p.m. it's listed on the town calendar as 500 p.m. y we'll see I don't see an agenda yet well if it's a nice evening I'll sit by my fire pit and although it's a that that's not why televis that's uh recorded right Town meetings uh they tried to live televise it it wasn't able to I don't believe um from the chair from the select board to all interested parties in accordance with the town Charter Article 2 Section 22 to5 special Town special meetings the select board opened the warrant blah blah blah uh of articles on August 13th 2024 for a special town meeting scheduled for Tuesday November 5th November 12th 2024 at 5:00 p.m. at the lunenberg midddle high school auditorium there you go it's official so yes that will be on the 12th at 5:00 p.m. otherwise our upcoming meetings we have one on the 10th is anybody other than Dave unable to make it on the 10th Jade you think you'll be okay okay 10th of October 10th of October yes um yeah I should be okay we're now at the point where I have to double check with everybody um what about the 17th of October if it turns out we need to have a meeting to finish up our votes for special town meeting is that an additional meeting possibly I want to talk to Carter first just to see um because we're only going to have the 10th to discuss vote on and and summarize um our votes for the warrant okay so I ideally no but realistically probably yes maybe we just move the 24th meeting to the 17th and not have the 24th or something I'm fine with that um and then the last one will be the seventh right before the special town meeting so we'll go over that one at that point um before let's see is there any public comment from the public I just realized I didn't record the meeting so thankfully they recorded otherwise we have to do that whole thing again all right seeing none any public comment from the committee yeah just a public service announcement um I hope I get this right because I meant to have it up in front of me um The wenberg High School lumni Association is sponsoring the annual uh alumni lunch on Sunday October 20th at the Bull Run tickets are still available please reach out to the U Alumni Association uh for tickets and uh it's usually a pretty good time and uh that's uh homecoming weekend so the hopefully be a lot of alumni in town and uh nice networking to get uh to see people you haven't seen for a while thank you and also congratulations Dave yeah I I didn't feel it was appropriate for me to mention that what is it that you're you're getting the alumnus of the Year Award alumnus of the Year award so congratulations yes exactly oh congratulations being being h Ed along with Lance May is yeah something that is a real privilege to me I Lance was in my sister's class my oldest sibling and uh you know what he did for the town and the Republican Party in the in this area is just incredible he he worked en you know he had so much energy and he was on the go all the time so I I feel really honored to be honored along with him um at the same event excellent congratulations again thank you all right I will happily take a motion to adjourn so mov second uh roll call vote Mr Simone hi Mr pasos hi Miss Russell Hi and an I from myself it is 10:25 so much for a short meeting we are adjourned thank you everyone David thanks Jay