##VIDEO ID:QiKHzyzEJAQ## for all right recording in progress oops if I have the agenda open so I know what I'm saying all right good evening it is urday September 12th 2024 7:03 p.m. and I'm calling the lunenberg finance committee meeting to order 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 Facebook or 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 will be held in person at the location provided on this notice members of the public are welcome to attend this in-person meeting please note that while while the option for remote attendance and or 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 any particular interest in a specific item on this agenda should make plans for in-person versus virtual attendance accordingly 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 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 uh because of these discussions not all items listed may be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by open meeting law would you please stand for the Pledge of [Music] Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the the United States of America and theic for which it stands one nation individual andice for all Ed all right there any announcements from the committee this evening nothing Dave sorry I didn't get a chance to put my 20 item list uh the only announcement that I have this evening is that at the the select board meet or prior to the select board meeting this past Tuesday the finance committee appointing committee met and reappointed Tom grade to another 3 years on the committee his term actually expired on the 30th of this of this year of June however he was we were fine we were not operating outside of the law there is a carryover period until someone is uh appointed to replace him so he is continuing uh Miss tavar as I reached out she her term also EXP fired on June 30th and she has decided to not seek reappointment so we currently have one vacancy on the committee and we currently are lacking a clerk so uh Miss tarz was our clerk so at some point we'll just have to when we actually have our other two members um reappoint a clerk for now um I don't know if Miss I haven't heard anything from Mr Gray as to whether or not he'll be here Mr Menard should be joining us late on Zoom so any vote we have to take will be done by roll call vote otherwise that's all I have for announcements is there any public comment from the public this evening I think we just lost a pack we go off yeah we lost pack on Zoom all wait is there any public comment from the committee recording in progress excellent all right moving right on we have I left I left them on here an interim Town manager report and a finance director Report with how lengthy our our um agenda is this evening unless either of you have anything pressing you would like to do I'm Happy to Skip them and kind of I assume we'll get into the meat of them um I have do have two items outside of the meat of oh sure we have here the first is um I wanted to let you know that our Outreach in the sewer district has yielded four applicants uh we need three appointees uh the Sewer Commission and the uh select board will be in joint meeting this coming Tuesday I'm most hopeful that the uh the fourth person we can find a slot for them elsewhere in in town government perhaps the finance committee itself sure uh secondly I wanted you to know that I had uh three concerns uh budgetary wise when I first came here uh the trash contract however that has been resolved uh within budget so that land mine kind of goes away a little bit but I have advised the select board that over the coming 3year period I believe it is an area that needs an in-depth study as to the manner in which to deliver this service and whether or not to deliver this service because it is a tax paid cost even though portion of it is on the page of throw uh that could be provided by the private sector there Municipal collectors uh I'm sure you've seen them at waste management and uh all the others around town uh New Growth I've been concerned about that however I'm pleased to report that uh due to the diligent work in the assessor's office it will exceed the number that you used in your budgetary projections which will let us uh fatten up a little bit the uh allowance for a vacance account which is a little bit leader than I'd like to normally see finally um I'm you used 100,000 of free cash to balance this year's budget so I think we need to remember that that becomes a structural deficit going into the coming year even if every single expense were to stay exactly the same you'll have to fill that that Gap again um and um those are the things outside of the memorandum i s you Mr chairman thank you very much um as far as the trash removal did we did we sign a new contract with that at this point um have I put ink to paper or or uh script to DocuSign not just yet but it's going back and forth between the councils okay um I believe it's now before uh the vendor for their final review and signature there will be PR pieces uh in terms of on the website uh and I believe they're mailing a u i don't know if they're going to get it down to postcard size but they're mailing a a postcard type mailer to each of the houses there will be no change in the routes they may do them in a different order but if Monday's your day it'll still be Monday and there will be a change in the phone number people need to call for their bulky waste or mis collections but we'll be getting that information out uh over the coming days I've seen the proof uh I've seen the proof of the pr um but it hasn't gotone out in the B yet okay who who's the company who's the company GW sha and Sons out of Greenville Mamer they do Townsen they do lemonster um I can't remember the others off the top of my head but we did get very good reviews of them excellent are you allowed to say how long that contract is expected to be uh well it's it's essentially triple one you know it's a onee renewing renewable for the second renewable for the third and then I believe there may even be um subject negotiation in mutual agreement I believe there was a I believe there was a 2-year extension in it but I I I can't speak for certain I just can't remember it off the top of my head and is it renewable by either party or or do both part renewable by us only us okay so we have the option to say no they don't have the we have the only no cause termination and it is subject to appropriation okay they have the option to terminate if we don't pay the bills do the things we're supposed to do obviously right uh for a no cause termination that's that's ours okay excellent thank you any other questions on these all right um in the booth do we need to get you guys back on Zoom so that we can he's working on it EV okay he's on he's on the phone now trying to get a straight note okay if you need me to send you the link again I I can certainly do that as well all right I iie do we have anything for the finance director report all right go excellent all right that brings us right into our new business the in room Town manager so we received a report or a memo uh let me pull it up was extremely helpful in my opinion go all right so you guys will not be able to see this but I promise you that we can see it so the first topic on here um and I sent this around to the finance committee as well um and sort of explained it to the best of my abilities uh there are two potential topics that we have this evening that are well there's two topics that we have for discussion specifically regarding shortfalls or deficits in um appropriated funds that um the interim Town manager has brought forward and is has looked for Solutions outside of a reserve account transfer um and that includes line item transfers and and other locations uh so the first one I want to talk about is the weights and measures issue so um if it's probably better would you like to just kind of give the purview of of what it is specifically since you actually have the conversation well let me give you the the bad news and then possibly some good news in Massachusetts many functions are devolved down to the local level if you're in New Hampshire Vermont migan many other states the um seal that you'll see on the gas pump or the deli scale will be done by the Department of Consumer Protection or the Department of Agriculture or whatever they have here in Massachusetts it's at the local level uh you did have a inspector of weights and measures uh the salary was slotted at $3,000 um however they've resigned and uh you were not able to find a new one the final solution that developed was to in fact hire the state of Massachusetts to do these inspections going forward uh they I believe I included um a memor from the state explaining how they do it and a draft contract uh this will be a considerable increase you were paying 3,000 it will now start to cost you 10,000 plus or minus depending upon the number of devices that have to be inspected the good news I bring you is that I have gotten a list of uh inspections that were made to the the best I could tell in this calendar year and I may not need as much as I've requested so be happy to uh answer any issues or questions about it but I think Mr chairman we can defer this for 2 weeks so I can get a little bit more time to try to get my hands around it uh my apologies I'm doing my best to get up the speed as quickly as I can um but I will tell you that even if we can skate around this for this fiscal year you should expect to see uh a number of roughly $12,500 in your fiscal 26 budget request but I do think we can place that on hold unless there are questions about my memorandum or the efforts the town has taken put up to the committee any questions for this one so far how many how many hours a month does this require um what they do is they come in and they they try to punch them all out uh they my recollection is that they said we had around 25 or so um businesses that they would have to go in and inspect so you have a Walmart that's one business but it's multiple scanners uh same I think you have a um you have a grocery store also correct MH so they they identify the number of businesses but it really becomes the number of devices in there and they're about 100 bucks an hour plus or minus do the businesses pay a fee for this they do pay a fee and um let me say that uh we're going to be dealing with ambulance fees Tuesday night which have not been changed in 10 years it is my recommendation to the select board that whether it's a 3-year rotating schedule or a 5-year rotating schedule you take all of the Town departments break them up whether it's DPW or it's you know buildings or it's whatever it is and on that schedule every single you know third year or fifth year whatever you lay out in my view that Apartments should be looking at what their fee schedules are as part of that annual budget process as opposed to getting these long bumps I don't know when these were adjusted last but the businesses do pay a fee to the town and did that go towards the stien we were paying indirectly it becomes a revenue on the finance director's books and then that's part of the tax recap and the building of the budget and is this just done once a year once a year once a calendar year so they get done in calendar year 24 you don't pay the budget on the bill under the state contract till January or February so you see those calendar year 24 bills in fiscal year 25 even though they may have been done in a prior fiscal year but you still need to appropriate them in your fy2 exactly but I I would ask the committee place this one on hold so I can have a little more time I came to find this out a little late to the game I'm afraid it's not a problem are we going to get a breakdown on you know how many business how many scanners and what this is going to expect to cost uh the state has done their best job as to how they do it if you do not have this m I'm curious how we we're going from 3,000 up to $99,000 and up to $112,000 when we have the same amount of scanners in town and they're charging $109 an hour Y and it's once a year yep if if the committee has thoughts on uh you know more economical ways to do it happy to explore it I can tell you that in smaller towns like this this is not an uncommon problem they reach out to you know the next door town or wer and they try to get them to come in and do it my understanding is that you've gone through that process and we're not successful thus the proposal for using the statement maybe we need to increase a stien if if I might the problem when you have someone in a job and you aren't consistently looking at what's going on in the market is when something Chang changes you get this this shock yeah to the system and certainly going from 3,000 to 125 yeah huge it's a shot but how long had you held at that 3,000 due to the Goodwill of your previous inspector and that begs the question should we be advertising at 10,000 what do you mean 6,000 or double it yeah 6,000 whatever you we get sh I I could try it but I I have to tell you it'll be an invers expense without reward how many other towns around us are using the state I'd have to check so this predates me y i I can tell you of my last five towns three of them are using the state of at this point but I'll be happy to see who else is using it happy to explore the other option but we would need to amend the sap before I could advertise a job at a salary I and we have and we have no Personnel committee to do that well I I think that's a interesting conversation for another day okay we can propose amendments and will be proposing amendments to the uh Personnel bylaw I think you call it the salary Administration plan absent the personel and I'll be speaking to some of those in a little bit that's good cuz I've actually had a lot of questions moving into special town meeting and next year's town meeting if we don't have one if the charter requires us to have an approved by the Personnel committee um if they're going to put a warrant article forward to have us change salary levels or anything if that has to go through them first and be voted on or if there is a way to do it without that that will be an interesting conversation also Mr Mr Mard I see you joined us do you have any questions on on this uh no I think I'm kind of caught up but um but it's all right I'll put it on the on the agenda for next week or next uh meeting two two weeks from now all right the next topic regard is regarding Transportation with our with Mart uh so um Sue dhy is going to attempt to join us by Zoom she's on I assume she is Sue is on I assume that's Sue DH okay okay so I ask her to join me because this program is is used by the Elway to a great degree also the Mark has had a grant to subsidize transportation for a variety of individuals uh primarily the Alber uh working folks who you know may be working hard but they either have no car or perhaps there's one car in the household and the other partners working off in conquered or boxor or Littleton or active wherever um and juveniles and currently charge a rate for that and I we enclose the fire to show you what it was that Grant expires uh I came to learn at the end of this month I will be requesting approximately $220,000 at the fall town meeting to continue that program we have looked at did other ways in which we might support it so we've asked Mark to make their calculations on a slight increase in the fees I was trying to strike a balance between the users most of whom are using this because they don't have the resources to own a car or Camp drive or something else uh and working folks who frankly either don't own or don't have that second vehicle so we've gone up a little bit in the proposal on the fees to try to keep the price of the town down a little bit and I tried to strike a balance that I thought was fair to everyone you have about 400 rides a month that are being given to Lunenburg residents under this program to 70 Unique Individuals and why do I say Unique Individuals you may have somebody using it four times somebody using it three Sometimes using it one so we try to look at not only the total number of rides but the individuals using it to get a sense of of the worthiness of the program you have people using it for medical for after school and to get to work now should the town meeting agree that this program is worthy of support and I would ask Sue to speak to the impact back on the elderly uh we will have a gap between September 30 and let's say November 30 uh We've estimated that Gap to be $5,000 happy to talk with you more about the program you may or may not recommend the warrant article if it's going to be absolutely zero maybe we need to talk a little more about my request for a transfer don't want to continue a program and DOA um and I would ask uh Mr chairman if you might let Sue dhy speak a little bit to it absolutely Mr dity feel free thank you for joining us hi thank you Sue D the director at the lunber Council on Aging um we were approached about a year ago by Scott Rich from M on this program and um we thought it was a great idea and um as the interim Town manager said it's it's for everybody in the town um it works for after school sports programs to get the kids home it works for the elderly um that we can't transport for instance they will this the transportation service will go 20 mil out of town in any direction from the client's home and we can't do that in our senior Vin we do have um seniors who ride this van it's pretty affordable for them I did um email Scott rich and asked him if he knew how many were elders and he informed me that they don't keep track of that of the ages but um when the inim town manager um contacted me um and and told me about the Gap in between you know I thought about and and I know that our elders rely on this service also and I contacted executive office of Elder Affairs where we get our formula grant funding from and um ask them if it would be appropriate if we used uh money from that from that formula grant to you know offset this a little bit it's not much I was told it's perfectly fine to do we can do whatever we want um with that money as we see fit and the way I saw it was um we could Pro I could probably spare $1,000 to go towards that $55,000 Gap to um just lessen the blow a little bit I mean considering we do not know the number of Elders that are on there I think that that's a pretty fair amount um I do know people come in on a regular basis to buy tickets um to instead of using a credit card card or or cash well they don't take cash um or debit card with the drivers and um you know we we do a turnover with Mart on those receipts but it is used by the elders and it will be missed by the elders if um they can't take it it also runs 5 days a week from I believe it's 6:30 in the morning till 10: p.m. at night so it's a lot better it's just more easier for these people to use thank you Mrs dhy I can offer my own um on the opposite end of the age Spectrum we actually just found out about this two weeks ago I think and my oldest daughter is 13 and now uses this twice a week so their numbers are going to go up Mr Tom manager um by about eight rides per week or per month and I can tell you that uh it's it's wonderful having her be able to go to the Boys and Girls Club after school in our town rather than have to go to lemonster or somewhere else you can maintain friendships with people in town so I fully support this but I obviously will open it up to the committee for questions conversation comments yeah having worked locally down on Pioneer Drive for two years before I retired a year ago next month um there were a number of people that depended on that type of a service to get to work uh I believe the ones that I interacted with were probably lemonster and fitzburg but the the same type of uh service and that was the only way they were going to get to work and get home and the company needed the employees and the employees needed the income so I think you know on on the younger side uh people working without the means to get back and forth It's well worth the money and and they do contribute the the amount is uh uh I don't I don't know how it's calculated but it's a fair number that they contribute the um proposal that we have uh will increase the rates about a dollar a ride um and they'll go from four to five a five to I I forget exactly what it is 3 to four 4 to 5 5 It Go from 3 to 4 four to 5 and I think 5 to 7 or something we we tried to we we tried to keep it reason able because the people who are using this tend to be of lower income and so we try to be sensitive to the impact on them while projecting a lower number for the town expense let let me just say on the 5,000 the estimate from Mark was 5,410 so our Hope was if this body could see there where clear to a transfer and then we did have a shortfall sority could back fill that um should we should we need it because it is based on ridership and I've just learned of eight new rides you hadn't been given but they're only the $3 one she's 8.8 miles one of one other question I do have is where does it sit presently in our budget as as a grant funded program and for next year's budget it's going to have to land somewhere as a line item in our budget uh so it's not in your budget now at all okay the grant was received by Mark and has been implemented by Mark with the grant plus the $3 rides that we we're giving okay so next year where would it go well truthfully um we we'll talk about the delicate Balancing Act of me exiting and the new town manager coming in who actually does this in the midst of all that uh frankly I can see it uh in a uh in the warrant in what I call Capital and special articles um as opposed to being in the operating budget so that it's because then um I have to get it under the prop 2 and A2 cap whereas if I can put it in the stand ofone articles I'm working with free cash or or whatever we are going to work with so I I think that that remains yet to be seen as to where it would land um but were I to be a little bit deeper into developing the budget my tendency because your taxing as your Levy limit at present would be to put it in these capital and special articles okay Mr Dy um I just want to add um that it's also handicap accessible you can get um you can get a livery service that has a wheelchair left so you know that that's big also especially for the elders I mean we have a wheelchair left on our van and um a lot of people wouldn't be able to get to where they're going without it but this smart connect service also off is that too EXC okay I guess the only other question I'd have is the uh day-to-day operation of the program with that still be Mart handling that or would it be someone on our town it would continue as is you call Mart you arrange your ride um and as M dhy said you can pay for your tickets at the Council on Aging others pay uh Mark when they make that appointment as I understand it uh so there would be no change in the administrative structure uh and Miss dhy would know far better now exactly how that's being done okay yeah for us we just call one month one month in advance pay for that month as long as you book it I think by 2 p.m. the day before that's all that they really care about uh I only bring up the question so that we know clearly what the transition is going to look like uh there's always a concern when we carry a program that's Grant funded and then we get to this point where when it was started some some Grant programs we say well will we we make kind of a promise at the beginning that either if if we don't have the funding for it it's it ends or if we don't find other grant funding for it it ends or we'll evaluate it at the time that the grant funding ends um so it's important that the public know whether there's any other expenses that we pick up to accomplish accomplish the transition and that's the only reason I asked that question and and happy to put that in the voters guide the warrant book you know whatever we call it here um that happy to add that um issue to make sure people understand no change in administrative structure so no additional burden to what the town's been doing now and then it clearly ends June well I mean you might have 15 days into July or something depending upon where the money sits uh but that uh not unless there are additional funds which would most likely be Town funds it does end so that there's a sunset on it and people know happy to put that in the report okay th this is a little bit of a picky question but I just need to throw it out there um to approve transfers out of the reserve account it needs to be an anticipated cost correct or or an emergency yeah or emergency okay um I guess we could deem it emergency my my question was coming from we should have known that this was coming because there's a a I'm assuming there was a Sunset date right from the start on this grant I I'm not I'm not trying to push against it I'm just trying to cover all the the points that are out I put it under the The Heading of UN ipated I can sure tell you I didn't anticipate it I just I don't know I I can't respond to that p i i i just don't know that's fine that's fine I just wanted to verbalize it that's all I I would put it more Under The Heading of unanticipated Mr um when when they first came to us you a little over a year ago um the grant started on July 1st and it was only only going to be for a year and I was a little surprised that it was still continuing on into August and we didn't hear anything about it we had no communication but now we do so in your right you should be worried about um what's going to happen next year um that's a you know it is a grant and they do go away do we know if there's any I guess appetite on Beacon Hill to do another Grant or was this I assume this was a state Grant not a Federal Grant I would have to ask Mark I can only tell you that the support uh for um public transportation has not been what I would hope okay isn't one of the big fed programs supposed to include Transportation enhancements and so on and so forth I I'm just throwing that out as a fictitious you know get a chance to look at the package for the select board Tuesday night which will be posted on the web the full package in its entirety you will see that the state's solution to help us offset ambulance costs is to provide Capital capital's great but often at the end of the day especially esally at the local level the real issue is operational costs especially for communities that are taxing at their Levy limit Mr Bernard so kind of a two-part question do we know if folks are using this to get to noova Valley hospital and with it closing will they then be eligible for Emerson or one or the other I'm sorry I wasn't a I didn't get a I know that answer if it's if they only will travel 20 miles from pickup to drop off they won't go any further we've had um a couple of clients who um needed to go to Emerson and what they did was just kind of move themselves closer to the pickup point at somebody's house or something like that and be dropped off it is it's not better than no system at all with transportation that have to be worked out so I think what I heard you say and I don't know if I'm breaking up for you but um portions of lunber are within the 20 miles but others are slightly outside of it they won't go outside of it they won't go a half a mile outside of the 20 M radius yeah that's someone I asked that my question is is it sounds like like portions of lunenberg based on what you said are outside the 20 mi % and portions are within the 20 mi right well may I address that s it's 20 mil from pickup to drop off so all of wenberg is covered and if you're in the Fitchburg lster line you can go 20 miles if you're on the Townson line you go 20 miles I mean it's pretty straightforward pop Google open and they'll go 20 miles s right I'm not going to do that but I my question goes back to do we know if people are using that um to go to the Shell or were they Chris can you hang on one second they were can you hang on one second can we turn the volume up in the booth in the room here for the zoom callers it's just a little hard to hear them could you try that again Chris she answered my question that people are were using this to go to Nisha Valley where where do the 20 Mile come from is that a mark thing a state thing or something else that was just the rules that were given to us I guess it's a mar thing um I don't know if it has to do with that's what they told us 20 miles right I I would seek that we we do try to negotiate with Mark that we allow everyone in lunenberg given the Clos of that hospital to be able to go to Emerson with this um with this program but 20 is an arbitrary number you know anything that ends in a zero Nots arbitrary but other than that I I you answer good question so from this address right here the nooba hospital was 17 miles Emerson Hospital is 25 miles yeah so I it's certainly Within I think the distance for negotiating but I I I agree if this is helping our elderly Community they just lost access to one of their hospitals otherwise you'd have to hitchhike out to route two and get picked up in the middle of the highway right we'll we'll POS the question to Mark and we'll see what their answer is all right I I appreciate that thank you and that's that's the best I can do at this point happy to POS the question and get you an answer or fy2 six if we're looking at $20,000 to continue the program to the end of the fiscal year I assume correct basically 25 the end of FY 25 okay so would we theoretically be looking at I know this is an impossible number to calculate properly but somewhere around $440,000 if the town was then to pick up the subsidy for mean we are also increasing the rates a little bit here um my gut is you'd be looking more at 30 plus or minus depending upon ridership but that that's a crystal ball I really can't answer until we deploy this new of course if we go by if we just go by sort of the historical data I think it worked out to like $4.80 is the average Fair based on the numbers that you had provided um so that's on the larger end of the distances that's not the $3 or $4 it's more on the $5 side so I think you'd be looking at more on the $5 to7 side for the increase so I agree that it would be decreasing but if we were to use just sort of the numbers that we currently have and the costs that we're currently Char or that we're currently requesting that would be about $40,000 that would need to be appropriated in FY 26 if the town was to subsidize the program it's really hard to say because with every price increase there's usually some slippage in use that's the way that people cope with price increases okay and I I couldn't even begin to estimate that right now okay I also wonder how many people know about it like I said we didn't know about it until 3 weeks ago and I'm sure I've heard about it but I didn't know about it I didn't know what it meant um I mean we'll look at the web page with the the social you know media we're doing our best to increase uh the information we're getting out to people and certainly we'll we'll try to push this as well um people are busy they have other things on their minds and you know looking around for these Services when they have an issue is not the first thing that comes to mind MH is it possible to also put a request or I assume this might be through Mart more to our local delegates for just to already get ahead of FY 26's budget for ear marks so I don't know what your practice is here uh in Prior lives usually in January uh we've invited the delegation in let them speak a little bit about all their great successes hopes and aspirations and deliver to them the message that the most important thing they can do for us is bring the check now uh Tuesday night we will be asking the delegation to try to assist in um funding to offset the operational cost that we think we will incur as a result of the closing of the MOBA how many things we put on that list I don't know but absolutely we would put that on the list for discussion with the delegation would you put this on that list for the select board to put forward probably I would assume since okay since this is certainly one of the services Imp in mind my time with you has an expiration date so I mean if I'm not here I'll certainly leave that on the kind of outstanding issues list for your incoming Town manager your last job was what 4 months but four years and four months uh my last well last one plenty of time left yeah yeah um that one was 4 years and 4 months the last one was I think 18 months the the most I have gotten n two towns on time and you do have a charger requirement it's true one of the things it's really important to have a list at all times in our back pocket because the legislative team is noted for notifying you on Monday that we have to have your projects by Friday if they give you that much time if they give you that much yes so it it's good to be talking about it year round actually and have a have a list I I think the ambulance is frankly our highest priority right this moment in an attempt to gain additional funding any other questions regarding this so when do we need to take some some action on this September 30th is the last we do have one more meeting technically but it's right up against the line that's really up against the line because you know I have to tell Mark and they have to make plans are they going to moth all the buses and do they have Labor actions they need to dat frankly this is a little closer to the deadline than I'd like but we tried to ask expeditiously once becoming aware of this so from what I can see the issue tonight would be whether or not we want to consider a reserve account a reserve fund transfer to cover the gap for from September 30th to roughly November 30th and then allow the town to decide what it wants to do at this fall town meeting about the remaining $20,000 is dolls to carry through the end of the fiscal year okay now now I have my head wrapped around um I'm willing to say let's just do it what's that Chris I would be willing to say let's just go ahead and the transfer and move on to other issues and yeah could I could I have a dollar amount so the request on the memo was 5,000 the request of the actual shortfall based on the funds that Mart is providing is $5,400 and then the Council on Aging has $1,000 in their budget that they can finagle to cover it if it's overages so the ask is for us to transfer the full 5400 uh just just 5,000 Mr chairman oh just 5,000 and then if it is $400 okay if they if they comes up to the 5,400 then we take it out of counc on Aging is fine okay $5,000 uh with a increase potentially of a th000 from the Council on Aging if it needs to go that much higher okay if if there aren't any other comments or questions I'm ready for the motion I would happily entertain one I I move that we authorize the transfer of $5,000 from the reserve account for the purposes of covering the shortage on the mark Transportation program can you just amend that to say to the Council on Aging to the Council on Aging okay second all right motion has been made and seconded to transfer $5,000 from the reserve fund to the Council on Aging to cover the gap of five of uh October and November's smt transportation is there any discussion before we take a vote all right it is a roll call vote Mr Menard hi Mr pasos hi M Russell Hi Mr Simone Hi and then I from myself we are unanimous thank you for your support thank you very much for bringing this forward and thank you Mr or as well for all the help in this one getting this started didn't like I said I honestly didn't even know it existed so thank you thank you good night good night good night okay next up we have so I've added it in here it is a topic that I don't know what it is specifically but the inter Town manager asked to bring it up the future capital projects with without borrowing sort of just I'm assuming a high level this is up and coming very very high level um I wanted to let the committee know that I will be looking at your Charter in the next couple of weeks I believe is a 5year financial projection uh I need to produce I'll need to look at some history uh see some trend lines um and to talk with our counterparts at the the school committee the school department and we will produce I I can't remember when that's due to you perhaps I happen to have someone here can help me on that it is on our calendar so if we decide to stick with this calendar uh the 5year financial forecast to the select board was is scheduled for for the 14th of January oh yeah we could and then on the 16th of January to the finance committee well um I don't know how sophisticated or fancy it's going to be uh but we will produce something um and it's only as good as the assumptions we give you uh you'll decide if the assumptions are totally unrealistic throw it back at us and we'll rework it um after we have discussion about why we use the assumptions we used uh but within the operating budget itself towards Capital you only have a Delta of about $160,000 you can devote to Future borrowing to a new bonded item um everything else in your debt budget was incurred under debt exclusions so as those go down they don't open up anything for you at all they they provide some relief to the taxpayer and they're a little bit missley because when you buy that fire truck when that bond issue is done guess what you need a new fire truck anyway someplace um So based upon some some prior plans uh that number will be somewhere between 0 and $160,000 uh we are on track to have free cash certified uh in plenty of time for the discussion on Capital I don't want to give a guess uh but um the capital plans will not be extensive and I think it's something the community really needs to start to think about especially you know in the budget task force MH um I I just wanted to lay that out there just for people to start to think about especially given uh the fact of most of your capital projects are currently lul underfunded and they are unlikely to achieve the work that you initially had hoped they would um so I I think you've got some challenges and how you want to meet those challenges like that's it's your town but I think it is something you need to have a very serious conversation about and I just wanted to lay it out there thank you I appreciate that um Mr Bernard you want to go first sure just on that point do we have estimates on each of the capital projects as to whether they're funded properly or how underfunded they are and when can that be presented to us I I think I saw uh Chris Ruth at the drugstore buying Excedrin for the heading I've been giving them on this issue um the only thing I can tell you right this minute is we can project with a fair degree of probability that virtually every account is underfunded to what degree it's underfunded I I can't tell you right now because we don't have a cost estimator on board setting that aside it's my view that the fastest way to find out is to get some of the projects out the bid so whether it's arpa and the library project or it's this building in the roof or the Ritter building where I I think you know we need to pick what our priorities are um I've suggested to Chris that I would like to meet with him each week uh and and push some of these things along uh and if we can get enough of them out to bid we can get a more realistic handle Where We Are to either backfill them if there are any arpa funds that are loose on the table um or discuss with the capital committee how we backfill these projects that's that's the best I can tell you tonight one other question um TC passings how many capital projects remain open for TC b i I'm sorry I heard and then I didn't hear the rest how many open uh Capital requests are including on don't know about open requests my understanding is there's $300,000 uh towards that project um you have um I I can't remember the numbers completely you have about $100,000 here for roof masonry and some other things uh you have around um 250 Plus m is at the Ritter building uh and um I have sent out an email today after discussions with Chris to include our finance director representative from the schools Municipal Building design committee myself and to talk about here's the money we have where are we headed long term what are we going to do because we need a short-term plan as well to protect these building envo but the other issue I need to make you aware of is that you're running TC pasos without an actual operating budget so you're taking in whatever you have for and and please feel free to jump in here but again I'm the short termer I can take the it um you take the revenues in and then you pay the expenses out well that account is currently around $90,000 in the red and the ink is growing so what happens is when he puts his balance sheet together he's going to show that effectively as a liability and that reduces your free cash by that that number comes off the bottom line comes off the bottom line uh my biggest concern is um I always get a little nervous when we're on TV but I don't think any from from is watching this you know but my biggest concern is that's not really how you should be going about doing things and at some point are they going to say what what are y'all doing up there um so I'm hopeful and I think we talked about trying to get everybody together week after next you know to roll out some plans and talk about what's the school's long-term plan and how can we use these dollars most effectively to protect the building envelope in the short term while whatever the long range plans are develop is that any way towards answering your question Mr Berard yeah no it starts to so one more question or I have like three two small questions um I has the schools been paying what they had previously agreed to towards um the maintenance of TC pasos as the primary user of TC casos with the extended day program um the the program does pay some rent what the prior agreement was what exactly they're doing I really won't know that we have that that discussion and then the next question is in your experience what what is best practice related to reviewing projects capital projects once they've been approved with the finance committee cuz we kind of approve them and then they they just kind of go off our radar screen and we occasionally hear of overruns and potentially they're not needed and or maybe in a ra some under roads in the world that I come from and I think your Finance directors working towards this you would get a bud I would get a budget versus actual the town manager would get a budget versus actual and remember we're on cash basis here we don't want to go to modify the Dr uh not on a daily basis we don't uh and I would review that and ask my questions kick it back to the finance director he'd reach out to those department heads and get the answers and then we would provide that to the the finance committee towards the end of the month and once a quarter I would send the um Finance team into the select board and report and you would track it through those monthly reports reports and those quarterly reports um that's what we've done in previous lives and I think that's what the finance director is trying to work his way towards okay I I appreciate that I think that is needed and I don't think we that Happ so that's all I have thank you it's that Mon it's that monitoring tracking expending that hasn't been happening been recording back so the capital projects you know as the Ur they should be reported back to the capital committee as well as the finance committee and the select board as to what's completed what's not completed where are they at but stalling I think that has not been happening the only time we get I've been here 6 months but that I from what I see that has not been happening from us it's coming up the next timee for the next project yeah all I've ever seen since I've been on the committee is is we see it in the annual town meeting in one bill where we reapproved rate Capital funds from previous years that were not spent but we don't have any ideas to what other than I mean we could look at the pro the code and go back and to the pre to the year that it was actually appropriated and see what it was but we don't have anything beyond just we're taking $876,000 [Music] um I I'll collect that dinner later that said he has been shoveling against the tide to some degree uh and the accounting offices the finance officers frankly could probably use some more hours in there we're asking our people to try to do more work than they can do within the hours they have and I think there's some units that are going to have to be beefed up over time if you want the kinds of financial improvements that we may have experienced in our prior lives some of it's simply systems and expectation but some of it is also resources are needed in some of these units there there's been a call a number of times over the past few years to take all the time employees back to a 5-day week um I think that really needs a strong look over the next year or two um you know we say well we don't we get the excuse we don't have enough time to do all the work well you're also working four days a week with full benefits so I don't know what the numbers are to go to 5 days a week and I'm sure there's some collective bargaining in there that will maybe play into to it but I really think over the next year or two that's going to have to have a real good hard look taken on that because as we've had some rhetoric um over the past couple of months about the fact that lunberg isn't the little farm community it used to be we're not quite a city yet we could be we're our population is on that cusp but I don't think we want to go in that direction but we need to start acting like a good siiz Massachusetts town not a little bedroom farm community I would encourage you to look at number of hours for full-time employees to work as opposed to numbers of days so there are certainly communities that are at 37 1/2 and 40 but they may be on a 4 day week or they may be on a 4 and 1/2 day week and frankly that abbreviate that longer window on the weekends uh is is a um it's a good recruiting tool yeah so I think I think you look at what's the work CL frankly right now um you know I think most of the full-time employees are at 36 but you also have some at 32 you're paying those full benefits that's a much larger discussion than you want to have tonight but I would vot first at the number of hours and how you distribute those second and and the key to all that working is the fact that productivity needs to be the the problems blocking productivity need to be corrected I'll just leave it at that you know I I talked to employees in this town two to three days a week when I'm in town I have time to move around the office to office and uh I haven't heard as loud of complaints about munice just recently but in there at different times a day but they have time to talk to me because M they're waiting for munus to do something perhaps or perhaps they just enjoy your compan consider Dave that you're the reason well they're using the excuse they can talk to me be that software is frozen but uh yeah no I get I I understand what you're saying and we're we're trying to take some proactive steps uh Finance director is just engaged uh a user group to talk about do we renew do we switch to another software uh the network administrator the one who's filling in Cara um Cara Cara yeah has worked with um suar to revise you know we had this ticket where people would call souer then souer would go to we've kind of cut all that out so we're and we have some listening sessions coming up next week we next week with our employees to hear the concerns and and suggestions so we're we're certainly trying to do that um in a continuous Improvement effort Mr I want to add to this isn't um the administration telling the employees this is what's happening we want to make sure they're engag and involved so we want their opinion should we switch what do you feel is lacking is it our server capacity should we move to the cloud will that solve our issues you know this isn't we're telling you what to do join us help us find the an we want to make sure everybody's included inclusive environment not I just want to make sure that's clear just with one minor exception at the end of the day I have to put my name on the memo so you have to be comfortable the only push back on heard um and it's from spec A specific group within the employees and that is that the transition is just miserable well I don't know if it has to be miserable or if that's just the nature of the beast but if if we're confident that once we get through the transition that life is going to be much better then that's that's a decision our our person at the top needs to make and and just do it I can assure you whatever software program you're using someone will be unhappy with elements right 51% is Happy we'll do our best Mr P yep that's all we can ask um as far as historical um forecast there just to make you aware there what we did not receive one for fy2 find the um former Town manager was unable to get that done before she left it'll most likely be in an Excel spring she never had she wasn't able to put it together oh okay so to my knowledge mine will most likely be Excel sprit as long as it's locked and uneditable for us um what um what can we do to kind of help the process for for you in your eyes since since this is kind of a new this is certainly a new take or a new look at Capital well I I think that in terms of of capital there's really not much more we can talk about tonight um the capital committee we have um I got to give credit to me har is it um I work with Peter beore Chris Bernard I've been in on these conversations and and one of the things that uh Peter beore spoke with me about was a desire to have have better presentations more uniform Chris do you want to speak to this yeah I mean it was under the guise of capital planning in this incident but you know honestly we've talked about it within finances well um you know getting a little bit more to the point on things and um tracking Trends you know maybe some some years in the rear and what what the 5year forecast is for Capital plan it's probably more um showing that vision of where we are today and where we want to be in 5 years um throughout the presentation so that we understand the the capital plan um you know more like I'm expected you know I I see it work in a you know professional environment at work um you know that kind of thing so and you know once we have a plan in place it becomes a little easier to say year to year I'm tracking with the plan or I'm not tracking with the plan um I think police is done a good job of that historically um you kind of understand what their Staffing plan is when they need Vehicles Etc some of the other departments are a little tougher like DPW and Facilities uh but the idea just being let's have some uniformity of things and consistency and we saw some of that last year right we talking about town manager budget here or the you know the uh the budget I want Etc so that that's the idea have presentation and then roll out for the other organizations so in speaking with Mr beermore he he spoke of the differences in the presentation uh both in terms of the documentation of the numbers the impacts on operating costs and so on and so forth um so we struck upon the idea of having the best presenter of the group Mentor the other department heads unfortunately that was deemed to be a Chief gaml and The Rascals leaving us before I even truly got to know you know so uh the thought was then uh to um uh task uh subject to their agreement uh one of your staff that seemed to be well respected and a lot of people thinking they they've got some real room to grow and are and that's m Haron and he's agreed to take on that task he'll be meeting has met with Mr beards more Mr Menard um and he'll be making a presentation to the um various departments uh and we we think this is an exciting opportunity for him to grow as an individual to Mentor department heads on this aspect uh and to improve the presentations and the information for for the capital committee and I I just want to commend that department head for having such a willingness to step up to the plate and and stretch out of you know what you might think of the job as the the head of iian would be uh but we're we're hopeful that this will yield some improvements uh in the planning and I'll leave that for the the planning commit Capital planning committee and you all to decide uh at the end of this cycle and he was very eager to do it and um very positive with it and uh Chief gell did say that if he gets a dog it makes everything easier all right any other questions for this one all right moving on to our next topic review the budget process and suggestions for improvement um so I had let me share my screen with that one so when the former Town manager before she had left she put together a schedule to get us through the fall and through um annual town meeting and I've shared this with the interim Town manager and um there was a meeting that actually took place on the 9th of September just a few a few days ago um that was geared towards sort of the organization of of sort of stepping back from deadlines for um whether they be statutory deadlines with our Charter or post uh post office deadlines or printing press deadlines or whatnot to step back to say all right what's are drop dead uh dates and I I spoke as well with the superintendent um to try to get a a little bit more time at the end of our uh of budget season to give us an actual meeting or actually in this case two meetings in between uh or one meeting in between our public hearing and and when our our actual in report is due and so what I have done is on this document anything that is in red is is a change that I have made from what the original from what the town manager had actually started with and it doesn't do all that much but effectively as and initially the school department or the school department being Dr Burnham the school committee has not agreed to this yet uh the town the inter Town manager has not agreed to this yet so this is just sort of the the framework that we're starting from and then we can obviously have the discussion as to where we want to go from here um but our sort of Drop Dead date is historically the first Tuesday in April because that is the day that we need to get our finance committee report to the town so it can make it into the printed warrant we have missed that two years in a row uh two years ago I take full responsibility last year it was a little bit of a kuule year um but I think it should be printed in the art in the warrant and I think there needs to be a meeting in between our public hearing and the date that the report is due for us to have come back talk about what we what we what took place at the public hearing give us a week to actually think through it already have something workable and then kind of just finalize it and vote on it that meeting and then we can actually put it forward that day so to do that I have moved the our usual kind of Wednesday Thursday onew punch at the very end um I've I've gotten rid of those two meetings as budget review meetings and moved the Wednesday meeting the week earlier so we have our one two punch on the 12th and 13th instead of the 19th and the 20th and the school department has agreed the school committee has not yet agreed that they will shoot for presenting to us on the thir 1th ideally with having a school committee approved Budget on the 12th so in theory would be a finalized budget um and that would allow us then on the 20th the week later to have our public hearing a full meeting with the public hearing to vote on warrant articles to talk about the report and we would still have the week after the 27th for a follow-up public hearing if needed and we could actually finalize the report and get it submitted for Tuesday so this compresses the schedule only with I believe one meeting if I'm not mistaken um two meetings all there's two uh two meetings here so working uh thanks to Mr Menard's suggestion I arbitrarily moved money Tech I have no idea if this is reasonable but based on our conversations we had I believe at our last meeting um mon Tech basically just hands us a bill and says here you go um and there's there's no reason why we can't have them present earlier to my knowledge they have the numbers pretty well in advance they already kind of know what they're going to be doing so I've just arbitrarily moved them to the end of February whether it's the end of February the beginning of March it doesn't really matter but I think it's a short enough presentation we can kind of just tack it on to the day that we either have the police and or the day we have the DBW in facilities um on that March 12th day make this even larger it's kind of tough to see back there um on the March 12th that I had added I took the standard administrative uh unclassified Debt Service and moved that to that date I took sewer and pack and under other moneyed articles and also moved it to that date so that's usually a pretty quick series of of meetings to or presentations to go through um and then the town manager had actually already had the school committee or the school department presenting on March 13th so I have not moved that that was already sent out um and then we had based on our discussions that we've had throughout this summer um we need to consider inviting the cemetery commission for a presentation and the capital plan committee possibly for a presentation as well but those were the other we had talked about it semetary commission just so I have in my head for so we have a better understanding again as to sort of what now that we sort of know how it works it is still it's a lined item that is in the budget that is not a super small lined item they It's a larger line I believe than the calcon Aging so since it is a larger line it makes sense to have them come through and kind of present to the town to the finance committee as well cuz it's not they're not exclusively working on Enterprise budgets they are working on appropriated funds right as well as the 10,000 that they move correct into their other account okay corre yeah I get that yeah okay with all of that said um Mr interim Town manager have you had a chance to look over this to kind of get an idea as to what it looks like for from your end I know you had already sent around some some emails with times and and working backwards and I believe this still all falls within sort of that threshold and I think your microphone is off again you have to restart sorry about that that's good so uh working backwards um your annual town meeting appears to be on May 3rd I need a minimum of 23 days to put the report together and not to put it together but to get it to the printer and get the proof back change back to them how much do they have in the queue making sure that I've got 17 days for it to go out in the mail your Charter says 14 but I need to make sure it actually gets in the mail on time so I need a minimum of 23 days to have a final warrant and Report those calendar days or business days those are calendar days as I laid it out now that means I need to have a final warrant a final report tough for yall to do final recommendations reports till you have a final warrant um so I would be you know looking at the select Board of can I see that calendar I'd probably ask them for a if I were here um I would be looking at March 18th for them to approve a final warrant which would then give you a chance to complete your final review and we could work out you know what is this article all about I think that each proponent should prepare that and have that in the warrant materials that come to you um so I just give you that as a framework and I I won't be here but that's I keep saying that that's I mean I'm sure that Bernie L do a great job for yall he's really terrific uh to work with the other piece is if you're expecting me to present a balanced budget and I don't have the school budget until sometime in March I cannot present you with a balance budget and we do that either by we know what they have and we figure it out or it was always kind of nice fighting with a Regional School District uh in the one town in which we had an actual school department we gave them their number and that was it we said it and um that the ball got bobbed back and forth across the net until we kind of agreed it uh but given that the schools it's are under our tax ly cap uh that is something we need to work through with the schools as to how can I deliver a balanced budget if I still got a number out there so let me just say that's always a problem in every town so again you present numbers with certain assumptions so we have historically had trouble with the health insurance line that's that's one of the biggest ones that the school department and since they are the largest employer in in the town they have kind of the biggest chunk taken out of that so that is a large piece however um after going through my emails and talking to Dr Burnham we get in the fall late fall or late fall early winter we get kind of the the worst case scenario estimate I believe it was 10% was supposed to be FY 25 then the MMA conference comes around mid January this year is the 23rd to the 25th um this this past year or this past January on the Thursday at the Maya lunch they they report out sort of the the updated worst case scenario and it went from 10% to 6.7% I and then I believe oh I can't believe I didn't write down in my notes um I believe it was February 10th we actually received the final number of 4 something per 4.5 something like that um depending upon how much of a nuisance you are in your working relationship with your Maya rep y um you can sometimes get those within a week or two of the MMA meeting MH so we were close to that but we in Theory should have by early February kind of the finalized number or if you choose to use kind of the the worst case scenario at MMA which is likely to be a less worst case scenario you can use that number as sort of your this is how bad it's going to be and then if it gets better we can kind of fix that as we get to the finalized number if that does happen um look looking at school committee meetings and times that they have they are currently scheduled to have a meeting on the 22nd of January so right before MMA so they will not hear about the updated they will not have a chance to discuss any updated values until February 5th and then they will have they have a regular scheduled meeting on February 26th March 5th um and then March 19th which they're considering moving to March 12th so they would have theoretically four meeting meetings three meetings including and then a fourth meeting to have a vote on their finalized budget uh with updated numbers so if we don't hear about the final health insurance number until after this the 5th of February they would theoretically have two meetings to kind of finalize the budget and vote on it at the third meeting after that um if we don't have 15 budgets flying around the superintendent does feel pretty confident that she at least should have kind of a a grasp as to what the budget will be um she and I discussed whether we need to whether the the idea that we need to go to town meeting with expected absolute values versus best estimates given the information we have at the time I mean the the the annual budget isn't even finalized until July so we're still getting changes to to numbers that we've appropriated in April or May um sort of do we kind of draw a line in the sand or put a sort of a benchmark to say by this date this is the expected level of certainty that you're going to go with and that is what you sort of work under the assumption of and then obviously if something changes large changes the comes along after that you can try to absorb it as best as possible but that way you actually have numbers to go forward and you have time to go through the process of of finalizing the warrant so all of that together is basically it's diff it's going to be difficult if we don't say have some wiggle room I think to get a school department budget that's approved or at least discussed and voted on by the school committee much before the 12th of March it seems which gives you would give you an ethereum mon I a roal practice to you all I've noticed that the vast majority of your warrants are to see if the town will appropriate raise borrow a sum of money to do something the worlds I come from in there's lines in the sand and there are real numbers in the war the only thing I do want and I'll leave that to permanent Town manager the only thing I want to make sure everyone understands is that the town manager will be very challenged in proposing a budget for the town side of the house that together with the budget for the school side of the house is balanced within the levy limits of proper 2 and A2 if that budget remains um a a substantial work in progress mhm I'm sure that the superintendent understands that concern um and you're right you have to use you look at what MMA is telling you you look at what your own trend lines are looking at if you got a good working relationship but I think you have enough Souls insured where you can get you know experience data you you make that guess and you hope it's right um and if it's over sweep it into overlay Surplus um and if it's under you cut the amount you set aside for overlay Surplus and you do the same thing with house one you'll have it by January 15 17 18 those are the numbers the odds that they're going to change considerably during the legislative process yeah they're going to change are they going to change considerably no you can go to the bank with house one as a general rule it's never failed me yet I don't think there's ever been a year in which the legislature appropriated less local Aid than the governor has asked for this year there's 31,000 buckss we talk about the extra that's coming would you wait around for that number to settle your whole butt knock so um certainly I'm sure that my I will do my very best to be collaborative with the school side of the house as this evolves I'm sure my successor will as B will will be as well but we need to understand that without the numbers from both sides of the house it is impossible to present a balanced budget Mr Mard sure so just first of all I very much dislike the sum of money in the article I'd rather see the actual value that's just commentary um I think on this schedule the only thing I would like moved is the finance committee report for Warrant to the BOS office to be moved after the 43 meeting um because I think we need two full meetings to to review and then finalize that warrant um so I think that would be the 4 three meeting and the 327 meeting coming out of public Hearing in vs of articles I will add to this schedule that you've provided me uh what I think are the drop dead dates on um our side administratively to get the booklet out in the mail great started revision would be to send a postcard it's available at a web link in the library in town hall save you a lot of money and save you a bunch of time too uh but I will add those dates and get that to you within the next day or two okay I I would like to talk about the drop dead dates going forward into the fall to meeting also though oh yeah that's the more that's yeah we're already talking this is the more depressing one is the fall stuff um just really quickly um Chris I think that that's fine I agree as well if if the finalization to the select board is is sort of the drop deadline is the 18th I think if we were to push ours to the 4th to get an extra another meeting in there I would have to imagine that that wouldn't be too terrible but I I do look forward to seeing yeah I I just think we need two full meetings after the public hear meaning if the public hearing moves a week we move a week as well and in and that's happened in the past agreed now if we didn't have you know public meeting laws maybe that wouldn't be the case but we're pretty bound our hands are pretty bound on our ability to do that in one meeting mhm all right um so before we move on I'm going to switch it around grounded a little bit so I have I I put together a a template um but I think we we should probably discuss the fall town meeting first before we put together before we discuss the the Springs uh the annual town meeting budget template um and and The Prudent investment War article as well since we do have the town manager and the the finance director here um so let me shift gears and pull up btwn meeting perfect it's still up there okay so on the memo from the interim Town manager again um and I this has been circulated these are what we're looking at currently uh see there two pages here if you'd like to um Mr interim Town manager please feel free to take us through these uh the timelines or the propenal Articles um if you'd like to start with timelines that that's fine so the the meeting itself is on November 12th at this point I'm looking at needing your final report in hand the booklet in Hand by the 24th of October I don't know what your regular meeting schedule is is it 1 and third second and fourth second and fourth oh okay so that's I would need that the next morning so we my intent would be to have the final warrant to you um by October 17th we currently have so we have a meeting on October 10th and then October 14 24th so that would give us a week to kind of digest it then discuss it You' have the draft that was going to the warrant Y for the select board for the 17th M um happy to attend your meeting to review it with you on the 24th uh on the 14th by the time we get to the 24th it's to VAP okay I need your report the next morning we we don't our our report or just our votes for cuz we don't typically provide a report for the fall time meeting okay so um we we could have everything done except for your vote your recommendation um you know so we have a warrant that's a standal on document over here then we take the warrant which has the vote required your recommendation the selectman's recommendation and then has a brief explanation of what each article is about the kind of language that Mr pasos asked us to add to the um the transportation and that we can have a a of time um so happy to come in on the 24th if you think that's the best use um happy to come in and present uh on the 10th if you think you know whatever you think is the best use there happy to come and chat with you all well you'll have so the the the warrant closes in 4 days yes sir so that we'll have I mean there'll be ample time to have to for the select board to go through and choose what they're going to be putting on there so they should have draft versions available by the 10th I would imagine correct by the 10th of October of October uh yes we we'll have a draft by then right we'll have what's actually going to the sment the following the 15th oh my God is that Friday the 13th we'll make sure it's not Friday the 13th no Friday the 13th is in is in um is this month I think tomorrow tomorrow's Friday 1 okay so I mean when that packet that we're asking to select board to vote on I can get that draft out to you okay do you have an idea of when that might be started it okay um I have some and we can walk through it if you want which will give you a better handle on where we're headed um does the committee honestly have a preference I don't want to be speaking for everyone do we want to go through sort of where we're at with them now individually or do we want to these would just be 30,000 ft right level you know basic subject matter not indepth explanations we might as well yeah give us a first run through okay doesn't need to be in detail um so at this point we're looking at 11 articles subject to any late filers at the last minute uh we have a potential for some late filed bills the finance director has sent out a notice to everyone have you got I got okay um I have put on whether or not we need to make any internal transfers uh you know with the staffing issues we've been using some more Consultants than others and so we have at this point a potential place holder for some adjustments to the budget the state has sent you uh $ 31,8 182 more in Chapter 70 uh and the schools have asked for it and the select board have directed me to place it uh on the warrant as a supplemental appropriation to them uh we have The Prudent investor uh rule which I believe the director has has brought in um bartholomy mhm and spoken to you about that the um planning board has two zoning amendments one relates to the fact that the state has passed a law that accessory dwelling units must be allowed by right and there are certain amendments that need to be done to your zoning amendment to comport with that new state law which took effect next month uh secondly they've got some work on the water protection district we we we've I'm not sure whether you put those in your warrant at length or do you put a reference to them in' done both our previous yeah we've we've had six page articles before and then we've had C appendix this is at least the third time that this is come to town meeting yep so what is your DRS i' I've seen towns do it both ways if they're you know short I've seen the text if they start to turn into 6 8 10 pages I've seen here's the basic thrust here's the headings go to this link or get paper copies of the library and Town Hall we have not done the digital version we've done the print version for everything but we have done where it's it's all listed out in the article itself okay and usually the the person presenting whether it's the usually it's the planning board the planning board director so they'll have a fun fresh time to start this off um we'll go through a presentation to explain sort of what the changes are um personally I don't have a preference either way I mean it needs to be available for sure people need to be able to read what the I want to follow there are some things I'm changing uh in my short time with you but I also want to try to follow custom uh to the maximum extent possible I think in the past on those we've gone with the preference of the planning board yeah we haven't had a say on it right personally I'm done with the we've done it we've always done it this way so let's keep doing it this way so I say have about it okay so I'll reach out to the plan board where they want my my personal preference uh would be that a very basic short article is printed in the warrant and the entire document be available at town meeting and digitally available and at the library we usually make it available in paper copies also so right okay yeah it should be available at the Ritter it should be available at um Council on the adult Activity Center should be available in the school so uh we have a revolving fund we're proposing to add for the meals program do you want to speak to that um it's essentially the meals program it's just um bringing the program in line to um um State Standards really um it's already been functioning um to a certain degree but it's more to um bring everything in line like I said it's just to make sure we got our te cross our eyes to make sure we're compliant with um you know or law to make sure that so this meals program will go up at annual time meeting to appropriate you know at the what's the word the annual spending theual annual spending it will be involved included within those within those so what what chapter and paragraph is the particular um I believe it's we're doing it under 53 e and a half okay so basically right now uh the folks make their payment that's set in a box yep and um I do not you know we have absolutely no um concerns over the safety and integrity of that but it doesn't meet accounting standards that should be on a turnover sheet put into the revolving fund and then expended from there correct so like you would say um the funds are currently collected put in a box and then the funds are used to purchase items for the meals in order for the next meal um to be created you know at the senior center but um those fonts are not recorded on the general Le it's they're taken and automatically used right away we have no concerns we've gone over the reports and everything it's just it needs to go through the turnover process go through the treasurer's office be recorded and then the spending being done as as um it's supposed to be it will involve setting up a few vendor accounts uh so that we charge at Hanah Furs or wherever they buy their supplies get an invoice and pay them uh the second is a revolving fund for the parks department converting the 53d to a 53e and a half you have um my understanding is that there's a problem with it that some folks have been aware of for a while now at the end of every fiscal year any amount in that account in ex of $110,000 by rights I believe it's stand stand corrected I have 30 I have 30,000 it's 10,000 it is 10,000 yeah it's Finance director advises me it's 10 it's supposed to be swept to the general fund y that has built up to the order of 80 80 it was in the 70s yeah somewhere 80,000 plus or minus so this um would correct that now two wrinkles um the revolving funds speak to accepting donations of bequests that's not actually a perfect fit with statute because I'm not going to get all the boring stuff so we have to figure out how to deal with that uh the second is that you're not supposed to establish a revolving fund for any fiscal year after July 1 of the fiscal year unless you can demonstrate to Dr that there was some new source of funding um that becomes available so I'm I'm really not concerned about it but I just want people to be aware of it in case we come back and say oops you're going to have to wait till the annual town meeting but at least then you'll have all the wording and know how you need to to head in that direction could I could I ask one more question um back when I was actually on on the commission uh we had conversation with Town Council and there was some conversation about a process that when we changed the revolving accounts we also had to do something to transfer the money from the existing account to the new account or you either lost it or it got tied up in that so so it'll be a a multiart to see if the town will vote to a amend uh the bylaw upon the effective date of the approval because remember all bylaws have to go to the Attorney General's office for approval they review it it comes back your town CLK has to post it on the bulletin board and until that date it is not effective so the second thing is that we'll transfer whatever monies are in the 53d account at that moment of the effective date the treasurer will account accountants will will work to do that and the third element I think there was only three I keep thinking there's a fourth one in there and the third one is immediately upon doing that the 53d account will be terminated said that that yeah as you said it seems like there was a fourth step in there but you and I might come up with it in the next day or two whatever it it may be I just don't remember off the top May yeah y um we have currently the potential for a warrant article related to assessive you have accepted certain statutes uh with respect to Veterans exemptions 17d I believe and elderly um exemptions 41 C you have been increasing the limits of those both in terms of the value and the uh asset limit the income standards and the assets the problem is there's no record of you ever accepting the statutes that authorize you to do that you cannot find it in the records of the town clerk she's been very helpful and patient in in trying to help us locate everything they're not on file with the uh Department of Revenue you must accept these before you can continue to raise these rates and for fiscal 25 you are going to have to stay within the statutory limits and then for fiscal 26 you can start to bring those limits up again based upon uh the CPI escalators that still have to go to town meeting every spring now you do have some folks who may find they are not eligible in fiscal 25 for the credits they've been getting under the process you've been using we will do our very best to determine how many of those are and are there any things we can do to be helpful you know did we include social security income when perhaps we shouldn't have you know we'll we'll go through all those and be able to report more fully in a couple of weeks but you got to accept those statutes in order to take the action that you've been taken now as I say maybe you have do doesn't have it Kathy doesn't seem to have it and until it's on file with do it it doesn't exist the last uh two more potentials um we've had a lot of conversation uh about recruitment if you watch the school committee they're going through some with the same pains we are um we've had people who had you know 20 25 years of experience and when we tell them they're going to have to start it with their very specific job in municipalities and we tell them they have to start back at the bottom at 2 weeks of vacation it's like nope not doing it so there are some um things that we think could make the Personnel BW your your salary Administration plan uh better uh for our Recruitment and our retention well we know exactly what we want to put in here just yet we're having uh two listening sessions with our town employees one for Public Safety I think that's Tuesday the I I can't remember the dates Tuesday the 24th perhaps uh and then one for all the others uh on the 25th we want to hear what they have to say and we will finalize our proposals as a result of that conversation so I can't give you much more detail than that and finally the Parks Commission has requested uh an article to borrow a sum of money for the purposes of funding all the remaining costs of design and construction of the Marshall Park renovation project um I don't have a number yet and I will leave to them to present on that article and they will not have a number by our next meeting they will be getting their number in early October and they have asked to present to us at our October 10th meeting to discuss that number so that is a that's going to be well that that takes us back to the sum of money versus correct a number which that's millions of dollars that's a tough one to put in there without having number Point um and we'll be advising uh in what we publish what each article requires whether it's 9/10 majority 2/3 so it's right there in the warrant for everyone to see it what is the vote on a bond I'm sorry what what is the vote required at town meeting 2 2/3 for a special town meeting any town meeting really it's not an increase for special the um vote on your late filed bills is increased right but no debt limit whether it's at the fall town meeting the annual town meeting um or a special uh it's 2/3 no matter when you take the vote yeah Evan what was it that we pulled out of the capital and set it by itself because it required a 2/3 I I don't remember but there there are certain things that are 2third no matter what spring or yeah it was a very small amount that was going to drive up to a 9/10 and we pulled it out and had it as a separate article so that it could drop down to a 2/3 yeah but I don't remember what it was that was it's hard to keep track of all year ago so those are the articles that we have at this point in time to to go back really quickly to the the exemptions we have the personal property exemption amount correct uh 70D is the exemption for veterans on personal property I believe DLS doesn't have us doesn't report us having that um the according to the sheet that I got this morning they do have that from DLS yes okay they have not reported it I've been doing a whole bunch of DLS digging and I can't I went through their whole adopted local this has proven a challenging um Trail don't say that I have so much stuff I have to report from DS I mean if worse come to worse we'll we'll reopt it okay cuz the only one I see listed on here is the personal property exemption amount for 2500 that's the only one that they list they do not have the veterans one anything listed for the veteran I I'll make sure to provide you with the worksheet I I just if we have it we need to make sure we can use it or people can you know maybe we'll just do it pro fora I nothing okay nothing wrong with that Mr Menard you your hands up yeah one one question um we had some emails going off between Bill Bernard um Evan Carter yourself and um maybe Caesar but at the chapter 90 meeting uh that bill gave he presented on five miles of roads that um the town says we have not yet accepted um he sent me the list of those roads and I can show you most of them should be accepted and I don't know where they were not um it seems to me that a quick fix to that is to Simply put waren articles on to accept those roads and even if not all of them some of them um in you know as a result you know increase our chapter 9 funding um I think in a conversation I had with Bill he said maybe you were studying that or had some recommendations or something else I don't know if you could kind of comment on that sure um I had a couple questions about that the first were were they in subdivisions were they in long-standing public roads if they were in subdivisions what had been the plan for accepting them were they to be um you know actually deed to the town uh or were they simply to be laid out by the town and if they were in subdivisions what was the condition of the roads uh and if the road wasn't built properly or has deteriorated substantially what kind of liability are we taking on by accepting those ropes so I think that until you know the answers to some of those questions it would be premature to Simply add them to the list and try to accept them yeah so so I'm just checking um as an example in the list he sent you know like Rob's Hill and Sunset Lane are on those um and then there were other ones that Dat Back to like I believe it was like the 1800s on road so I I understand that on some of them maybe not but um if we've been maintaining them for 30 40 you know 50 years um it seems that we could quickly get to those answers and go ahead and clean up that um area and if there's a couple in questions we could do it in two steps but uh it didn't seem like based on that list that it would be a hard exercise to to figure them out I'm not sure we can get it done for the fall town meeting but I'll meeting with him and chief gam on some other issues tomorrow morning and I'll add that to the tick list of items to discuss right thank you other questions regarding the current articles comments thoughts um I do have one question uh obviously we don't have the number but where does this annual cost of a substantial bond that the parks is bringing forward where's it going to sit in the budget and how's it going to be raised so my understanding and I did look at the plan that the former Town manager sketched out as a possible financing plan um was that in the it would be fit into that 380 plus or minus $1,000 of debt that you have that's currently within your uh tax level um so You' got about 160,000 dropping off next year so if that comes in what drops off the next year I'd have to get that chart and lay it out but as I understood it uh the idea was to try to sort of do debt smoothing keep that 384 again I I I can't remember the exact number but keep that number flat going forward for the life of the bond and I'm assuming 10 years I is it I guess I'm asking what our what our choices are versus what they're going to bring forward well given that that's the plan I'd have to know how much it is um and then you'd have to talk seriously about you want to do level principle um every single year which costs much more at the front end or do you want to do um level payments which like your house mortgage is exactly the same this is much tougher to absorb at the front year because if you got 5 million bucks and um I'm just using a number here sir oh I know what the numbers are got 25 years it's 200,000 a year just on principal but then you know your interest starts dropping off considerably mhm over here you'll get a lower payment but you're going to pay more in interest so is the appetite of the town for the lowest cost or for the lowest impact upon the budget and the tax rate and you have to look at those and balance them out you also have to look at when are you going to float the bond because if you do Bond anticipation notes you got to remember that if it's a 25-year bondable project but you float Bond anticipation nodes for 2 years that comes off to 25 years so now your final schedule is only 23 years so that accelerates you got you got to have a better sense of the numbers and I I don't yeah um ju just be prepared for a lot of discussion uh sir you are more than welcome to have all the discussion you want with the pars commission yeah well I understand that it won't be for me well but but I you know and everybody's aware I mean it's the phone chains have been going for two weeks already I I just I don't know enough about the project it's it's their warn article um they do have the the financing plan of the former town uh manager they've got some grants they put together to help offset costs um I I think we just signed the contract cont with their uh designer to get final cost estimates um I I will not know enough to speak to that project I I can address numbers but nothing beyond that Mr chairman is there anything else we can do for the director and I do for you this evening um we wanted to just make sure that the there just to make sure there that The Prudent investment article was going to be all set and taken care of and there's nothing else that we need to do for that one if I if I did mention that you did I just I just wanted to check with the finance director as well just to say he's good he's going to put it forward or it's going to come from the executive Side Y which works for me um I mean I think the thing that we need people to understand is this will will invest one portion of your affect one portion of your assets not not everything I think we just need people to understand that mhm just a reminder it's um only affects our trust funds our stabilization funds will not be affected by this it's not part of the law so which is roughly about 1.7 million as far as Bartholomew calculated at that time I don't have remember I think I remember them saying about 1.7 I've seen a lot of apolog what have you been doing all day um all right I've got one question for um the interim time manager to date has anybody approached you to discuss the possibility of using um Grant Services funding no sir thank you all I needed was a yes or no appreciate that just a followup to that do we have a process in place yet on how to utilize that hear he was asking if there's as a followup do is there a process in place for how to use those Services have we developed one yet we we're not going to develop it because it's a general General government line item and it's controlled by the uh Town manager I think that's that's I think that's who Chris was asking question is to the town manager yeah yep for my time with you I look for the lowest cost no cost uh attempt to secure any future GRS whether it's a department head it's horizontal engineering an engineering firm that thinks they're going to get the contract or some such other service and should I be here at the time of um presenting you an FY 26 budget uh I frankly may be discussing with you uh some other needs of the community uh that I think could use all or a portion of those dollars I I think having some loose cash on the table if you will whether it's 5 or 10,000 is always good um I'm not sure what the discussion was about the 50 but at this point there has not been Outreach to the staff to say you know no Bob Barker come on down you know that's and I think part of that is because nobody knew or knows how to approach that there's nothing been put out there uh the previous Town manager and our cork were supposed to get together and and put some information together and that never happened and who sir our our clerk who is no longer with us well I I have to say you've got a pretty good team that's been I think pretty successful uh in getting a number of these things um but frankly all of our energies at this point are trying to get these capital projects on the on the street for bidding get these ARA projects out and funded and uh deal with uh getting the budget closed and having your free cash so we can get through the town meeting and get a good start on fiscal 26 that's really where we've been trying to concentrate the energies that I oh I yeah I totally agree that the concentration right now needs to be getting the town to survive through the next through this fiscal year and have a path forward that's successful beyond that where there a lot of work right there just in that statement I I think the former Town manager from my observation was a pretty pretty good be counter uh pretty tight with the dollars from my observation uh but these are very challenging times you fac one override what's next year going to look like um rainbow and puppies that's what it's going to be just just a tiny bit of the backstory about that where that 50,000 and that line item came from was that three of us uh attended the U MMA conference and we talked with a lot of people and I also attended the uh Massachusetts Association finance committee meeting in Sharon and talked with a number of people including the small towns out in western Mass uh that have grant writers on staff that they have more than one responsibility but part of their responsibility is grant writing for various departments that come forward with you know we we need this kind of money but we're not sure what grants to go after um and and she calls around to the town when she's finished with what she had on her plate calls around to see well what else should I go after that's where it came from with the intent that that 50,000 would hopefully bring in at least two or three times what we spend in grant money and then the conversation was too that it may take a year or two before that takes hold so then it it would flow to free cash maybe in the first year maybe two just just a little bit of the backstory thank you um the only other thing that I have is um the former Town manager had given us the copy of the dls's financial policy manual draft and we have done didly squat with it because we've been doing so much other stuff um our original intention or original request from her was just for us to kind of look through it and compare it to what we currently have and just see if we have any recommendations to to offer to the the select board and to the um the town manager in your current capacity is there anything that you would like us to or to not do with that document I would like your comments on it okay I've asked the select board for their com comments by I think it was 3 weeks out from their meeting M um we've had discussions with the school committee uh they they have some concerns about some sections I've reached out to them and suggested that I'm sure if I can understand what the issues are uh we can find a way to word things in a manner that meets their concerns in in statute and so for instance the select board has to vote to accept donations and Gifts in some communities theyve delegated authority to the town manager to accept anything under 5,000 bucks as long as they report to the selectman at the next meeting and you know anything above no they they still vote on that or they've made some Provisions with respect to Grants uh you know they can the town manager can sign off as long as it's recorded at the next meeting um and if you know I mean so I'm sure we can work a lot of that language out uh I did send out an email um I'm not sure who prepared that so I reached out to Zach Blake uh he does a lot of the the local Services assistance if you will to see if they have a red line as Mr pasio mentioned the other night um I would not expect to hear from them for a few days uh but if we can find an original Red Line we'll by all means share it with you I frankly have not gone through it on my own end cuz I want to see what everybody's comments were uh and then I got to look at the document to try to fix that and that'll be a great time for me to read it okay Mr okay perfect well I was just looking that up Heather had given that to us I was going to go right to Sean Cronin and she said don't yeah Mr chair just so you're aware I I did make a public comment uh I think I introduced it as unauthorized um at the select board meeting Tuesday evening that um you know I I personally had at least looked through the financial part of it for the um borrowing limits and so on and made the comment that over the years we've made the comments that we really need to take a a careful look at those numbers and see if they need to be increased because that policy was written I I can't even tell you how many years ago that that was written it was way before my time even being close to on the finance committee the finance committee wrote that entire policy and then handed it to the select board for their approval so I I don't know what we do with that or we don't other we don't worry about changing the numbers this time around I'm assuming we can change a policy just about anytime through the proper channels no better time to do it when the document is up for original that's why I'm bringing it up yeah yeah and sometimes it's better off to use percentages um because those live on yeah use fixed numbers you know you're you're willing to borrow no more than I'm just using a number here 10 million bucks when your total property Grand list property value is 500 million it's still 10 million bucks when your property's value go to a billion so you know maybe you look at some percentages there because those can live up the the three numbers that are in there are correct me if I get this wrong 4% for non-exempt borrowing 7% for Exempted borrowing and 11% at aggregate something in that it's it's pretty close to those numbers it is in there as a percent I would suggest use the term excluded from the levy because within the Le um there's a debt limit and then there are projects outside the debt limit which are not necessarily excluded from the levy limit so when you say you know exempt it has has a different meaning if what you mean is it's going to be prop two and A2 then I would suggest you'd say it's going to be prop two and a half cuz you're using a term that's defined elsewhere in the statutes and probably the only people that might get confused are the finance director myself but I just think it it's best to use the terms as everyone would best understand them um her name is Casey Bick k a s e y b i k I was just thank you so I'll I'll send a correction to Zack of oops don't mind this Ezekiel she's the same one that sets the U definition of U full-time employee you know that exchange we had a month or so ago I believe so I think she was the same person I never reached out to her it' be interesting to know you know we have like in uh it's actually in 53 and a half isn't it yeah there's this statement in there that uh talks about a full-time employee as defined by this particular person in the state at the state level so I was trying to get a determination as to what that really is uh 20 hours what is that that's the that's the definition 53d you cannot pay a full-time employment from 53 and a half you where you can so it it's in that language between the two the definition I don't have the word okay and then you have to pay a proportionate share of their benefits correct if you pay a full-time employee out of that fund you have to pay a proportionate share of their benefits as well and you can do that legally in a 53 and half as long as you put it in the permitted expenditures okay Mr chairman uh is it release time for us last chance Mr rard do you have anything else before we no shaking his head thank you very much for out take care I'll schedule out to you in the next couple that be great thank you and I promise soon your meetings will be a half hour shorter all right um it's 9:15 I have two presentations or one presentation and one slide that or one template to go through so I I'm happy to put it to the board or to the committee um so the first one is I sent it around it's it's a template for the budget presentations um for the annual town meeting so that's a little ways away but uh we would need to have kind of a decision on it by October 1st to give to the interim Town manager to get to the department heads so there is some time constraint there the other one is um more relating to the budget task force and sort of where we have been working through um and it has to where I'm kind of looking at things right now is the tax rate and and whether or not a split tax rate is is reasonably prudent to discuss for our report that's happening at at at fall town meeting just ahead of the select board choosing whether or not we're going to split the tax rate and it's it's basically a study into a comparison with mayard of all places um and how similar we are in a number of um categories and what their tax rates are and how that would affect the residents if we had a split tax rate so I'm one's a presentation one's a discussion I am happy to discuss either one of them does anyone have a preference for which one we go through first so you want to keep both of them on this evening depends on how fast we get through them I mean the first one I personally I would rather go through I think it would be better to go through the the template since we need to give that to the town manager um and it's it's I mean it's pretty we just need to kind of go through it quickly I think to see if there's anything people want to change on it um so unless anyone has objection I'll just plan to do that right share this all right so this is basically just my first stab like I said at trying to come up with something that we can offer to the department heads and to the town itself and the school department to say this is how we would prefer to have the presentations given to the finance committee in an attempt to to sort of normalize across all departments so we don't have so we make sure that we're getting the information that we need to have the discussions on the budgets that are being proposed um and an attempt to kind of I don't know about minimize but at least sort of streamline the meetings a little bit better um so I'm just going to kind of read through them if anyone has a a thought or wants a question or anything please just stop just say stop me and um we can talk about it but it's to start off with this is just a finance committee Town Department budget presentation template with the first slide starting off the Department's name the presenter's name and title and the date easy enough second slide is a departmental overview giving them a chance to do a mission statement to summarize the Department's purpose and role in the community give them a chance to tell the key services that are provided briefly outline the essential Services the department offers Staffing overview ner uh number of employees breakdown of full-time versus part-time staff an organization chart if that would be useful for some of the smaller departments just to kind of give us an idea and the town an idea of what the high very high level um overview of the department specifically is after that go right into a summary of the previous year's budget so looking at the previous fiscal Year's total budget highlight the total budget and significant categories for example Personnel operations so sort of a high level look at the of last year's budget then do a cost spending to see how close we were to targets and projections and then any just key accomplishments if anything notable happened um or services that were maintained under the prior budget if there was you know sort of a we did this with what we had option um for slides four and five cuz I think this is going to be tough to do on a single slide again this is sort of high level stuff um the town manager or interim Town manager is going to provide the department heads with a Target budget and He was discussing that this evening a little bit to say this is sort of here's here's where you get this is what you're going to expect this is your percent increase over your last year's budget that is what I'm calling the target budget for the upcoming year and my ask would be on these slides to have that budget presented something that fits within the town manager's Target increase or decrease from a high level not line item detail just sort of categor categorical sections there and then some sort of a three five seven whatever year Trend to show how we've actually been looking over the the course of time that to on the target budgets and and where we've kind of ended up I think that should be actuals in perhaps actuals of budgets for the last 3 to five years instead of percentages well just where it says dollar increase decrease it's it's used it's ambiguous as to whether the last 3 to 5 years would be budgets or actions okay I think we've recently seen more budget increases only what are the trends in the budget but um I I think we really got to be looking at what the actuals are well okay all right thank you Mr Bernard um after that a level service SL needs-based budget um to get kind of a better idea as to what's going so I am I know we had discussions last year of is this a level service budget is this a needs-based budget I kind of see them as one and the same that if you need to maintain your services that is a needs-based level service budget so whether we want to call it level service whether we don't we want to call it needs based we certainly would need to Define what we're looking for in that but basically the same thing as the previous one the target but this this time it's this is how far off we are of what we actually need if we need more to to to run this department as efficiently or as necessary as possible to support the services of the Town um or if the basically the differential of this is how much more we would need for this category because of inflation or a a um it's getting late a um increase in in in collective bargaining increase that was outside of what the Scopes what the what was in the salary reserve line or something to that effect to say like we can't meet the target budget because this percentage was higher so this is what we would need to maintain the service um I think needs based budget is confusing to me level service means I provided this service last year I'm going to provide the same service this year I think there may be something with like a minimum service level you know the police may say hey my minimum service is this level Services I'm not adding any and then maybe the other category is plan service so if they're going through and they've documented a 5year staffing plan then they may have more services but that's in line with the plan that they play them okay like needs base has always been confusing to me because it's it's ambiguous as to what the need is what I've kind of Taken needs based I mean is is always sort of if we had unlimited funds what do you guys need it's sort of the the pie in the sky this is what we would love to have you know we'd love to have whatever you know every police officer has two Cruisers or something something to that effect so needs based I agree I feel it comes off as ambiguous but at the same time it is what you can also Define it as it's the needs of the department in other words it's that sort of you I would almost say it would be a minimum service I think there's a lot of synonymous to those well I kind of think could wi both ways on that maybe inadvertently but to me if their plan is they want to get to um a certain level and you you it almost sounded like you said that was need place I think that should be the you know the plan Services um level Services maybe I don't meet that this year like the police went in with the level service even though they're plan had been to add staff to SCH mhm but again minimum service would be like in order to maintain safety if God forbid we're in a situation where we're actually cutting Poli leaks and fire and others we need three police officers right mhm that would be like a minimum service if we ever gotten close to them maybe the schools might have minimum service requirements um in certain areas other thoughts on but I think that plans is the next one I what's that well I again I don't like needs but minimum service I just hav taken it out yet plans maybe we just need to define those various categories a little bit better but yeah I think this should come along with sort of a definitions for what our expectations are um so then this would need to get reordered too present the total proposed budget that maintains the current level service level of services so it would be the to main that maintains or that to maintain the minimum level of service I guess in general we shouldn't be talking minimum Min level of service uh perhaps we typically talk compared to level STS meaning we're providing the same Services we did last we the library is not open any additional hours mhm well in that case then well see I would see minimum Service as a if you weren't going to get if we had to cut your budget what could you get away with right I agree with that so there may be statutes surrounding certain School Services the minimum we can go to on this is this after that we're in violation do we need to see that as a presentation though or do we just need to see I I guess my point being on these slides is it should be targeted towards something this year I am still trying to maintain my plan for increased services or I am going in with a level surface which may also be but you want to Anchor it towards like something so what are you thinking for here then specifically like what it what are you thinking for for this section of a budget why can't we just do department head proposed budget it's their responsibility to to come up with what they need so just tell them put your budget together as you see you need it so you got the the target budget and you've got the budget that the department head feels he needs and then background to supporter need is we get we get too specific in this so we're going to have five different iterations of budgets right I'm trying to minimize exactly I'm trying to minimize it so I mean they're going to have two budgets anyways they'll have the one that meets whatever the town manager puts forward and they'll have the one that they assume that they would put forward if they had if they were able to or respond back to the town manager to say this think asking for the minimum you can live with is a waste of energy no my point being is need is subjective right we tend to talk on level service however there may be a case where we they need to come to us and say these Cuts get me to a minimum service I cannot go anywhere and I think that that's what should be described through this process I'm not going to be here for this anyway so I still can we make note of that and just go through the rest of this okay Chris I am happy to have you uh do whatever you would like to that section and submit it if you have if you have something like a more like if you have some idea that you can write down I think it'll be easier just to kind of work through it I agree I I think you're right I think we need to have it needs to be changed from what it is and we need to just but it needs to be I think specific enough that they there it removes the ambiguity and it removes the potential for having multiple different types of budgets presented I'll try to take a step at it I you guys know how I like to okay all right um um so now we're getting into ones that I I threw out there just to have them I don't know if we necessarily need them but um this is sort of a more in-depth look at the budgets themselves this is this is kind of the 15,000 ft view so getting into the Personnel costs just again on one slide your salaries and wages overall um increases due to contractual obligation steps collective bargaining whatever it may be the health care pensions OPB stuff um and then Staffing changes this is where you would kind of highlight fiveyear Staffing plans or what or or we're changing this department around and we feel like we need to split this position in the three positions or whatever it may be changes to that effect um operating expenses is pretty self-explanatory just the day-to-day operations um but I think we do want to have this portion here identifying any factors causing increases or stability and operational expenses so that's sort of your inflationary or unforeseen expenses that pop up an elevator breaks and you didn't expect that to fix it something to that effect um I threw capital in here just to give because they are going to be requesting capital projects probably most of the Departments or some of the Departments will so this at least gives an opportunity and they usually have them in their presentations anyways but this gives an opportunity to just throw it into a slide and say these are the projects that we're looking for um obviously again we don't need the the granular view of it that's what the capital planning committee is for but we I would like us to at least have an idea as to what's going to be brought forward because it it does affect the budget substantially I think the one pages that are that are pulled together for all the ones that are recommended to go forward should just be reused in this should just be what reused in this area so if DPW has three capital projects that made it through the capital planning is just the three slides that equate to each of those three capitals yes okay I agree um to the extent that they that CPC has actually approved them or just they're going to put them like they're above the line yeah I guess if they're above the line or maybe even perhaps near the line okay okay um but again I I think they already have a one pager for these hopefully so just put in the one Pages yeah exact yeah I don't want to see the stuff that you know their 15th request that we're not going to see for a number of years this is just these are the things that are main the main ones and then again kind of the projecting out for some of the larger expenses we're going to need a fire truck in FY whatever it may be we're going to need a new school in FY whatever it's going to be something to that effect um this one I wasn't so sure about um justification for cost increases um I feel like this is sort of captured in the slide of the the key cost drivers portion um but it does at least take into account the unfunded mandates portion so this one I wasn't entirely sure of keeping in here um happy to take it out if we need to I I think the if Apple makes a lot of sense okay if they have something that's in there if you know pencils go through the roof for cost cost throw it in there okay uh next one is efficiencies so this one is an attempt to try to I know that their the department heads are already doing this but this is giving them an attempt or a chance to kind of show us and the town this is what we're doing to try to maintain our bu or keep our budgets as as thin as possible but here's what we're kind of up against um you know more of yeah basically just a that just to give them an opportunity to say we're trying to cut costs here's what we're doing to try and cut costs and here's what we're actually up against and here's what's changing um so this one I think kind of gets to what you were sort of saying um this is sort of the minimum service this is what would happen if you were not to if you were if you were to reduce Services below a certain threshold if you hit stat issues or operational issues basically this could also be an if applic yeah and we're just going to drop out these Bas cuz and we'll get back to level service afterwards uh Revenue sources so if this is just you know obviously where their funds are coming from through Appropriations but then also grants that are coming in or anticipated grants I'm thinking like Title One grants or um sale of cemetery lots or or whatever the extra funds may be or or Parks um user fees or program fees or whatnot just other things to help fund their their portions um then also it gives an opportunity for Grants to be brought forward if there's grants that they're going after so like for when would we introduce like chapter 90 funding into the next year so the chapter 90 funding is a reimbursement understand but we can utilize it to augment the operational cost of the of the pavement management plan and stuff like that um I'd have to go back through Bill's presentation but he did take us through where he was spending down chapter 90 pretty aggressively he had a forecast in there y that I I I'll go back through it as well um and I was only using that by way of an example there might be other ones highlight that one and I can come back to it okay um departmental goals so I know this is usually put towards the front but I really want to drive the importance of getting to the budgets since we are that's our job that's our task but I do want to still give them an opportunity to the Departments an opportunity to kind of give the general public a a this is what we're doing this is why we're here um so what if they do have service goals and and this could be your sort of fiveyear Staffing plans or or what it you know coming years I suppose um you could have Staffing plans here you could have equipment replacement plans here whatever it may be I almost think this should go up front to even cuz this may be where you all like Hey we're this budget is based upon our 5year plan to do X or this budget is aligned with our um you know just a level a level service budget so it gives us that context fate up F sort of right after that guy I assume yeah I you guys can put back on too that's my well that at least puts it sort of leads you right into your budgets yeah these are our these are our goals is what we're trying to get to now here's where we are and before that is here's where we were kind of sandwich it all right I will change that number um challenges for the upcoming year external or internal pressures and factors um yeah this is I this might be redundant um it could be year and years too right I'm sorry it it could be upcoming years yeah yeah looking forward we're expecting to have issues with these buildings or in 2 years is's a new law coming online that will require us to do this so y keep that in mind okay um and then finishing up with a conclusion summary just kind of a a one final plug sort of a slide um and then just questions and then I threw in um some additional notes where we can put in kind of the definitions of what we're calling level service or minimal service or needs based service or whatever we want to call them um but I did put a request in for the line item spreadsheets or whatever munice documents or whatever we're going to get of and we'll have to change these Target budget and whatever the we're going to call the other one budgets to the finance committee a minimum of 7 days in advance of the scheduled presentation so that we have a chance to kind of go through the lines look at things more more granularly but then we have the presentation with a higher level look at it and that way I don't want to repeat last year what we're doing it in the meeting looking every line by line I think that was this year was was an exception and I I would ideally like to get back to I trust the department heads to do their job and the Departments to do that and then we're just kind of funneling it towards the town at that point and that detailed budget documents I think also should have the the you know five prior years or something like that when you get this close to finalized one of the things I was thinking there was at least one paragraph if not a couple more that you said if if there's appro if they feel a need for appropriate comment and I don't remember which one it was but maybe we could put an aster next to those paragraphs so that they don't feel they absolutely have to have that slide and put a note at the end optional if if you feel appropriate or I don't know how you word it but it would allow them to drop off possibly two or three slides if they didn't really feel it was necessary or appropriate for the Department right I mean the the ones that come kind of to mind here would be the you know the count on Aging for example their the request for the additional meal service is person and if Sue was not able to pull as much grant funding as she was able to how those two would affect I could see her using these two slides to say here's what happens if we don't have this meal service person and here's what happens if we don't get these grants just the heads up you're going to be on the town is going to have to be on the hook for $20,000 um so yeah that was sort of my initial stab at it um I will send around kind of an updated version unless anybody want wants to change anything else for now otherwise um I just ask that you take a peek take a look over it make changes as you see fit but just send them back to me so that we're not violating open meeting law yeah I I think it was really good you know I think we may have to have some flexibility for us get through this um especially given the situation we in um and maybe even be able to reach out for help if they're struggling with what we need yeah I agree I I think if anything this is probably the better year to do it too since we're in between Town managers so can kind of say here's our policy here's what we request let's let's implement it that way okay so I will send that out okay thank you for going through that one um so the real kind of big takeaways that's not a presentation you guys can see that's my work presentation there we go um I don't want to go through this in any sort of highle detail or I want in in any sort of sort of granular detail um and I actually haven't even made it to conclusions on this presentation yet I have them um but it was more just a kind of walking through a method of looking at budgetary numbers that are large largely different um you know at 2 and a half% increase on a $30 million budget is very different than a 10% increase on a $100,000 budget and so comparing the percentages is helpful when it is over the long term to see how the percentages have changed I think on a on a net up and down I think looking at the the the raw numbers is okay to look at the same for the same same reason but if you're going to compare Department to department or town to town or whatnot it's you're looking at sort of skewed data that's that's going to change more as the years spread apart because a prop 2 and A2 increase in one town that levies $50 million is very different from a prop 2 and A2 town that levies at $30 million and especially the next year and the next year that Gap just keeps on growing so I started looking at weight average everything um and are you presenting something what's that are you presenting something no I guess I can I can throw it up real quick no that's fine I didn't know if you were no no let me why not what else are we doing right uh there we go so specifically I was looking at lunenberg and Mater and and for a whole bunch of reasons um I am going to fly through this so similar there's a lot of similarities that I found um population by the censuses in 2021 we were very close 11,800 for us 10,500 for them um our do reported 2020 income per capita is similar 44,000 versus 46,7 900 the FY 24 assessed valuations total valuations are within um $150 million out of 2.2 billion so very similar in terms of total assessed valuations that's residential and CIP and if you break that down the residential is is relatively close 91.7% versus 90.3 but our cips are actually very very similar both in percentages and in values the to the valuations so from a monetary standpoint and an asset standpoint we are quite similar the difference though is in the tax levy and capap I noticed the first one was the tax levy and capacity so going through just I started doing just from 2018 to 2024 eventually I get to like 2010 or 2003 so I'm going very far back for Trends um but just looking at sort of what the what the town is what the levy limit is of the Town versus the excess Levy capacity and for the most part um with the exception of fy2 24 um we are always levying basically right to our capacity interestingly mayor does not Levy right to their capacity but they're still within a sixth of a percent so they're really close to their capacity so not much of a difference there and then we get into my weighted budget so because it's you know 10:00 at night why not do some algebra um to wait these I'm just taking whatever the budgetary number is divided by the sum of the budgetary number so basic over over you know how it how it is affected by the entire budget so it brings everything down to a percentage and that allows you to see things like a trend line where you can compare side by side mayor versus lunenberg because as I was saying mayor's Levy limit last year was 38 8 million our Levy limit was 31.8 million those are obviously different but on a year-to-year basis they're not going to climb the same so if you do a weight average comparison you actually get to see what the what they are next to each other and you're not looking at these massively skewed plots um from a revenue side so these are just percentages of the total taxes so This Is How They we're how we're making our money um I took out for us FY 23 because that was the abatement year and it was vastly different it was it you know very different year an anomalous year um yeah we'll go over that but basically the the trends in in 7-year trends of Revenue how they've changed it really hasn't changed all that much between the two towns um in terms of other than taxes and state revenue where mayard has lost a lot of money in state revenue over the last 7 years but we have increased our taxes they've increased their taxes actually more than we have um local receipts in terms of how much we estimate versus what we actually bring in so this is the this is the conservativeness of our local receipt calculation where we don't necessarily where our actual value is how far it is different from our from what we estimate and for the last few years we have been exceptionally conservative with our local receipt where we've estimated around 3 million and we've pulled in over 4 million so is there room for maybe going a little bit less conservative and freeing up a couple $1,000 downend the budget that's possible in the last two years that's been our first place to look for a buffer to add to something else yep yep exactly so so we were even more conservative in the initial number correct so looking at it from a p from a a percentage standpoint the under estimation percentage we range anywhere from about 7 1/2% under up to about 35% under um and that value ranges from about $300,000 to about a million so there's and that's the minimum to the maximum so there has never been a time since 2017 where we have actually been incorrect um and if you by by doing that year after year and having that result you're you're starving something else correct so I think think we've been it's good to be conservative in that regard I don't want to I don't want to calculate it to the penny but I think we we can certainly say we we're really not as tight as we need to be and if you look at I think it's just how we arrive at free cash one more what was that about free cash yeah I think in the end all we do is turn this into free cash to fund capital projects yeah that's true um but we could potentially if we do narrow that down we could close up the free cash or the available we could draw the line lower for capital projects potentially it's either that or we could emit commit a percentage of appropriated funds to Capital right former Town manager what 3 4 years ago in in her suggestions at the end of the budget season she made some comments about possibly looking at Shifting the funding of Capital into the budget rather than relying totally on or not totally but relying so heavily on free cash mhm you do that then then you're not under budgeting or or you're not starving other accounts um there's a number of towns that do that I've mentioned it before there's there's one that I'm aware of they take 10% of their free cash and roll it back into the budget because it was appropriate it was raised an appropriate that that year and they had this huge overage so they take 10% of any um free cash on a yearly basis and throw it back into the budget M uh but this was the finance committee that creates the budget also so right um if you look at averages from 2017 to 2021 we were on average 15% underestimated for an average of about $500,000 um if you include up to 2023 were 20% under on average for $600,000 a year on average I think we can commit more probably so that's one of the bigger ones that I've found so far um I'm not even going to get into this one yet the weight average revenue it's it's basically what I found is that there's not a huge difference in Revenue choices other than the taxes the taxes are basally the only difference between the two towns um and who Bears the burden on expenditures this is basically just how um they've trended over the last s years um on General government mayard somehow spent less where we spent more and then I went into the weight averaging so because like I said the actual values here and the percentages are are skewed because it's they're vastly different numbers in terms of how much they're spending on it so a 6% difference is not necessarily that different from a 5 1/2% difference if the value if the actual numbers are different so on a weight averaged they really aren't all that different they actually overlay completely so we really haven't been spending any different on our general government compared to mayard and we actually have been relatively flat since 2002 as the as the weight version of the budget um Police Department I don't know what the heck mayor is doing I they're all over the place um but if you average them out we've actually trended pretty similar to them we're both growing at a similar as at sort of a commiserate rate and over the long term same idea we're basically in the same general location for how we're funding our our Police Department fire department is a weird one we've started skewing up substantially from 2017 um like when you're looking at a weight average difference any change any VAR any deviation from the average is is a substantial difference almost I put money on it that is a transition into 24/7 parameter B I think I think with the increases in overtime and and personnel and Y expenses yep so that is something that I I would like the the budget task force to kind of look into a little bit more as to why are we you know here we're line it's just a nice flat linear or nice linear line we've got a decent slope to it here we're noisy but we're linear here we're clearly parabolic we are increasing subst what is next GE going to look like um and is there do we need to relook at how we're funding the fire department and how much we're putting forward I'm not saying we need to cut the fire department I'm just saying we need to look at it and say why is it different what's what's going on here um and ask the question as to we can flatten that line out yep yep is there a way that we can right um other Public Safety this one is an umbrella so it's obviously not going to be it's going to be noisy more noisy for mayard but again similar we've been relatively flat for since 2002 education this one caught me off guard I was expecting us to be very different but on a weight average and what this tells me is I think that basically your your increases are sort of kept at a minimum and and to what you can do on a yearly basis and that unless you're investing a a substantial amount of funds that this number is not going to change because this number is basically trending with inflation I think that's just it's the largest part of the part of the budget it's you know it's how it's going to to to change over time is going to be sort of similar from town to town but it was interesting to me to see that for Maynard who spends we spend $155,000 per pupil I believe Maynard spends 187 $18,000 per pupil so they spend more um but I believe it's coming from it like I said the split tax rate is different so it's not as as bared as heavily by the residents Public Works um mayard is decreasing over time lunenberg is increasing over time I would argue that that is our roads that's that's my best guess for that one um but again it's really not that big of a change overall Human Services this is likely health insurance I believe in opep is my guess but I haven't dug through what human services works out to that we are increasing faster not sure why culture and recreation similar to the fire department but not as not as aggressive so another one that I think is worth looking into to say why are we kind of deviating from the slope the normal slope and starting to kind of move into a parabolic increase fixed costs are fixed so that's good um intergovernmental assessments increasing a lot faster than I would expect them to but I'm assuming that this is likely more sort of your unfunded stuff unfunded mandates and whatnot but again I'm not entirely certain what intergovernmental assessments falls into those categ um Debt Service that should be pretty level we haven't taken on too much extra debt you can kind of see the years that we do you get a little blip up so back in 20 2003 2004 I think that was the primary schoolish and then 2016 2017 the high school maybe something like that um mayard kind of follows similarly interestingly they kind of build something big on the same general timeline um but they are paying off their debt Services faster than we are over the time so this is this is not looking at the specific numbers again this is just looking at the the um how they kind of compare if you look at everything total expenditures all added together all evenly weighted we are basically the the same which I would expect because our revenues are very similar our expenditures are very similar um 7year Trends so we have actually seen a decrease of our this is this is now the ACT this is moving away from the weight this is the differential of the weight averages from the 7 years we are slowing down so basically our slope is decreased for Education by about a half a percent and our debt service has decreased by about a half a percent so we're paying things off um we've increased like I said for fire for police for General government for fixed costs um the other ones are relatively flat um mayard seems to be going kind of the other way there they're not as high for these ones and they're increasing their education and their intergovernmental assessments are through the roof for whatever reason so not too much of a surprise there that's as far as I've made it for so far the big thing that I have from this is that mayor does a split tax rate and we've always been told that unless you hit 20% or 15% CIP you're going to drive businesses out of town mayard is not driving businesses out of town they've had a split tax rate I know Rene is going to correct me at some point but I believe since at least 2013 so it's been a number of years um and if you apply the same if if I so I I did a I actually calculated out what in order to um to maintain the same uh to maintain the same Levy but splitting out the rate to um to basically fit within that Levy limit um obviously you can choose different percentages of how much you want the CIP to Bear whether it's 25% 50% 175 whatever it is but it's just a simple quick math it comes out to I think a differential of like $1.4 million shifted from residents over to CIP um which frees up an awful lot of funding for residents and then that kind of brings the sort of next logical step of well if that's a consideration do we then say you know we we give the break of a million dollar per year basically did it to the residents and then you do a debt exclusion on top of that and that same time period if it's a debt exclusion you're just going to pull it from it's going to be in addition to the levy anyways so it's essentially instead of your tax bill dropping by this much it drops by that much in a sense um there's other options that you could do at the same time with uh so that would give you the the ability to do buildings you could do it frees up a lot of cash the tricky part is it does shift that over to the CIP which I was going to say the C you you just gave that graphic with your hand but the CIP goes it well it's a difference so right now the residents are footing 91% of our Levy okay this ships it down to 87% of our Levy so still the the vast majority but it allows Walmart or whomever owns the the property that Walmart sits on and Hanford sits on um to to have you know more that they were putting forward there's other things things you can do as well with um small businesses for exemptions and whatnot you know under 10 employees for exemptions you you obviously can give them some breaks so you're not driving out small business but it at least allows the tax it would I think the conversation should at least be had to allow the the taxes to come down to allow affordable housing a little bit better so I I still in the back of my mind think that if you had local income tax to also Leverage against what you've just been talking about you'd have some real good flexibility take some pressure off the people that need the pressure taken off of them and and not hurt your ability to raise revenues income is not above there's a lot of wealthy people who have zero income true and you know I know we like to say you know Walmart and Haniford whatever but we are struggling with restaurants and small businesses and everything else so we're not me right mayard is in a different area of the Town surround by other towns where it's more vibrant it it is and it isn't I mean the CIP is almost identical so it's not the the biggest difference between them is the size we have 24 mil 25 s mil M has under three so it's it's massively compacted down um and and I I also looked into commute times between the uh between them how people are getting to work we're within like I think we're 35 minutes on an average commute mayor just 30 minutes on an average commute lunenberg actually has more people taking public transportation than mayor does and there right next to a whole bunch of public transportation there there's I I think that yes there are closer to other opportunities but if they've had this you know I think again it it kind of goes along with the lines of well we've never done it before so therefore we shouldn't do it now and I think that's while that may be the outcome I think the discussion still should be had I I just I don't know how much more you can tax our residents and if we're going to be doing debt exclusions if we're running out of out of SP capacity for debt exclusions or or just debt capacity spending in general if if go ahead what does the LBA think about this oh I'm sure they're not going to like it too much I can think of a number of of families in town that probably would not like this too much and and I but that doesn't mean that the conversation should not be had so that was I I just kind of wanted to bring it to the finance committee first before I bring it to the budget task force um I think next week so I need to finish those slides up pretty quickly um I what you said on what the split ta would be did you say that no because it so you choose so this is where the board of assessors would have to get involved because you choose how much you set the threshold for how much your CIP is going to Bear relative to the residence um and there's different I think it's you choose like 125 150 175 I think you can go up to 200% something to that effect I didn't actually calculate those what I ended up calculating oh God I I have so many spreadsheets open right now um oh there it is so with what I calculated that one uh let's see you don't have it it's not a oh I have it somewhere it's in here um there we go no this one yes all right um oh I'm going help if I share this so right now like I said lunenberg is funding 91% make this bigger 91.7 4% of the T of the levyan town mayard is around 87% um however if you look at the valuation the percentages of the valuation that's where you get similar numbers so this is where obviously if we're a single tax rate your your percentage of the valuation is going to equal your percentage of the levy so Maynard's actual percentage of valuation that's where I was getting the 9% the 90% for for residential and then CIP being the the remaining 9.68 where ours is 8.26% so not vastly different if you do drop it down to where our residents are are are in the same whatever mayard chose for their percentage of weight to be borne by the by CIP I just went to that similar percentage so the percentage on the residents was similar in that sense that the tax rate with that obviously that is not how you set a tax rate but the math still works and so with that it's ends up being a decrease of you know5 5.1% 5.1% and you split the tax rate this one works where it's you know $22.10 per th000 for CIP and 1338 for residential obviously that can be shifted around but that that's where you get your 1.4 million so that's where I put that one so I don't know it's a discussion that I think needs to be had and then because the select board chooses whether or not they're going to do a split tax rate after right after uh special town meeting like the week after I think so I would I think it's a it's conversation that needs to be had by the public at select board meetings coming up yeah I think the select board always goes with well they always tell us this and you know we've always done it that way all all the things that you've been saying this evening that well that us we need to look at these things from a different ones that got us that got us into a $1.6 billion abatement problem so I it's just yeah I'm not saying we need more oversight I just think we need to have more conversation and and look at things and consider things that we haven't done just not because we haven't done it but just because we should um and then interestingly if I make mayard a single tax rate Town their residents would have to eat up a $1.1 million increase in their taxes so similar thing similar similar numbers I'm kind of confused by that because it had the tax open it back up again I am very happy to send it to you if you would like Chris so this is this is pulled anything that has this B Levy percentage any of these categories up here at the top those were pulled directly from DLS so this is report that I pulled off right off of DLS for uh just make sure I get the yeah for I believe it was FY 24 must be FY 24 yeah cuz yes cuz we've closed that FY 24 by now so these are FY 24 values so I just pulled them directly from the DLS report um and then brought them into here so you could see them this way and then I just added in these call colums to to shift it over from percentage of the levy versus percentage of the valuation I'm just going on column g 18 what's that column G for mayard I think yeah is 1845 across all yep correct I put that in there cuz mayard is actually oh this isn't actually this one doesn't have it no this was when I was still messing around with the numbers to make it work um okay everything in here is all formula driven at this point so once I got to here once I started adding in my own columns that was where I went to formula driven so I I put in the 1845 that's not what they're t rate is this was me just trying to calculate what it would I wanted to make sure that what I did to one I did to the other one to see how it would affect the other Town effectively um but if you do it it's calculable or you can just go back and I can go back and look to see exactly what it is but when you have these numbers here you can just get their Levy and divide it by the percentage and you can find exactly what it is based on their valuation number they do come back um oh yeah then this was the chart the only thing that was left was the the tax burden by residentials um at 1410 per th000 which is where we are now versus at 1338 and 2210 so yeah I can send this to you Chris I'll clean it up there's there's I have so much TLS stuff in here um but I can clean up and at least send you over this one if you want to look through it it it's not important I was just wondering on that oh why it's actually 1845 yeah it's not mayard is not 1845 yeah their tax rate is over 20 residential and close to 27 for commercial for commercial in 2021 yeah they have really high taxes there yeah which is interesting because the their their CIP versus residential that ratio is very similar they have similar incomes they have similar populations they even their student sizes is almost it's within 100 kids um for schools it it's there's a lot of overlapping numbers there so and that is like I said the reason their taxes are you just get wider and wider when you put more pre more weight on the CIP carrying the difference and that's sort of that that's a that's done by the assessors they they put those reports together that's easily done by them they can just it's literally just a which one do you want to choose here's the different ones and here's what it would here here are the results for what you would get out of that miss m key hey uh can you hear me yep okay my air pods actually died during this meeting um I looked DLS quickly just to check I can go back to 2003 and it looks like the commander had a split tax rate going back that far to 2003 that's as far back as I can see in DLS yeah yeah for all the stuff that I was presenting that was all back to 2003 for that same reason yeah oh was okay and they are also a CPA Community oh I wasn't even to get into the CPA conversation yet but that's an addition that's like just more that's more tax for them yeah thats that gets into so CPA communities Community preservation act um and that was another thing that they you it's it's taxed by the residents and by it's it's levied money um but it goes to the preservation of what you consider to be lunenberg so there is that sort of lunenberg remaining lunenberg argument but you can pull F you get M some some matching funds from the state to sort of subsidize that as well and there's more grant funding out there for it that's another one to discuss but not tonight may be a new attitude towards that but it's failed twice on town meeting floor and not got past the board of Select them the third time just because it's failed doesn't mean it can't be done oh I'm not saying it can't be done I'm just giving historical fact if you tie it in with a split tax rate tax cut you can you might be able to get it if if your bill still goes down and you get to keep lunenberg looking like lunenberg a nice rural community to an extent 1 and a 12% to local income dexs Capital non non-realizable gains tax there you go all right um oh sorry that's you know looking at this I'm really surprised that the CIP is so similar between lunenberg and Maynard especially there's just a massive development that's been that's gone in on Route 27 in mayor that just continues it's still growing what year is this what year is this data from I pulled these data so long ago Chris I genuinely do not know I would have to go and look to see exactly when oh here we go uh 2024 fy2 24 yeah that development was already trying to think back I think some of the stores in there had already opened by then I mean so the Maynard has had a split tax rate for 20 plus years yep they have a large split and their rate the CIP takes a lot of the burden on that one and they just built a large complex where they're bringing in more business so I I think and they have a CIP of under 10% maybe they're an anomaly but I I think I don't know I just think it's that inside a 495 belt versus out in District 11 G reference I started doing far out I don't even know if it's in this one oh yeah we can get the pivot charts and stuff too if you really want to um I started looking at some of that not that one not that one I don't know I don't want to look into it tonight but I have other stuff that I was looking for that exact sort of purpose Chris to get into that a little bit more um where I was comparing other towns that had that were similar to us but outside of the belt based on on any number of factors um mostly I was my my main driver was the resident the residential valuation was over 90% or over 88% or something like that and the resident and then filtering it again to see the if their residents are footing more than 88% of the of the levy and there were 20ish communities in and around the area some of them were in western Mass some were down in Cape in the island some were inside the foreign 9 5 belt it's kind of like a little smattering like a little scatter plot um but that doesn't mean they're all split tax rates that doesn't mean that what the cips it was more just a sort of a higher level looking at it mean the cape has other issues what's that the cape has seasonal ownership weights yeah yeah I I I recognize very clearly that you can't compare everything for that exact reason um may not even be with this one it might be in another one of my my spreadsheets oh it is it's in the C it's in the CC Levy this one yeah I had started going through asset assessed by valuation in classes and whatnot so yeah I had started kind of sifting through all the DLS town it's just yeah could spend days in there um so yes I'm I'm I certainly want to if there's anything that anybody wants me to bring to the budget task force based on this I'm not saying I will I'm going to present that it is absolutely not the opinion of the finance committee that we go to a split tax rate just that I have presented this to the finance committee um but it's it's sort of next up in our discussion for for the budget task force for what to do for Revenue generation or expenditure decreasing or whatnot why it doesn't generate Revenue it just shifts the burden some anyone else want to talk about this or is it dead I think we're done The Night Le I yeah I'm good with skipping yeah everything else the only thing I have a question on Chris is um where are we with the town manager search uh we put that um the group that we interviewed I got that name I'm um under contract we met with them last night uh they're going to do interviews with a bunch of people in town to get an idea of the character of the town and you know a good assessment for potential candidates and get we have a meeting on the first Monday in October um to vote on kind of their um whatam call their requisition to go out to the advertisements the RFP not the RFP no no no the RFP is behind us we're already on contract for the um for the company and then um we're looking there'll be a whole bunch of executive sessions to to narrow down certain candidates the candidates names are never known even in the minutes of the executive session um and then we'll interview probably 7ish hopefully probably around Thanksgiving time frame and pass on at least two you cannot pass on one by law at least two maybe two to four to the select board for their final interviews shortly there after with the plan to have it negotiated by the end of the year for being hired so I think I kind of have that timeline what happens if you have a failed search and you only have one option yeah I think you got to go back in and figure out what to do okay statutorily you cannot yeah yep there's like Casey on I guess we discussed it in the last night okay he he expects we'll get at least 15 candidates really out of the norm for this area there's also they're going to make a recommendation for salary as well so that should be coming out in the next couple weeks okay is there a plan for the for the search committee to do anything at special Town meetings for updates or anything no I don't think so no okay all right any other questions for Chris excellent we have one set of minutes they've been revised you want to vote on them now just to get it done now I want to hold those to the next meeting I've got to make some revisions there's more to make okay they're in the drive that's the updated version so just feel free um does anybody have any absolutely necessary committee reports for the evening no just very quickly we're very aggressively pursuing the mini split Phase 2 system to be submitted to Green communities and we've got a group of five of us that are all hands on deck trying to pull this thing together and have it happen for the October Grant round okay that's about it for now um future meetings what we have plenty to talk about uh Town warrant closes on the 16th at 5:00 P PM there is an MMA Capital planning webinar happening on the 20th of September suggest people sign up for that it's an hour and 15 the associated town finance committee meeting is scheduled for the 2nd of November at the Sharon Community Center again I recommend members go I'll be there and special town meeting is not 700 p.m. that's a that's my mistake it's 5:00 p.m. 5 yeah that's what the that's what Facebook said from the town that was the town that posted that I always thought it was 7:00 p.m. usually is that was my thought but I second guessed myself it's either 7:00 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. the town Facebook page a flyer that said 5:00 p.m. it's on Facebook it's true exactly um but it is regardless it's on November 12th at sometime either 5:00 p.m. or 7 p.m. at High School uh upcoming meetings two weeks from today and then the 10th we will have the Parks Commission chair in the build in the in the room hopefully to present their ex their bond proposal for special town meeting all right with that any public comment from the committee any public comment from the public room's full he's going to full of chairs anybody want to make a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn at whatever time it is 10:30 on the dot second all right worried me motions made in seconded any discussion fantastic roll call vote Mr Menard hi Mr pasos hi Miss Russell Hi Mr Simone hi and and I for myself it's 10:31 we are adjourned thank you for sticking this one out and good night