##VIDEO ID:ZjVvlA066HQ## finance committee meeting to order uh in accordance with the requirements of public open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadcast over lurg Public Access Channel and on Facebook live on the public access Facebook uh and it will be uploaded to the lunenberg access YouTube after the meeting um this meeting will be held um here at Town Hall at the Bola meeting room members of the public are invited to attend in person or via Zoom if we do lose connection we will continue on with the the meeting though um on lunenberg ma.gov under the calendars is all the information to join remotely if you want to including the zoom link um all topics anticipated by the chair are in the agenda uh votes will be taken tonight um and we will also have a public hearing that I'll open up uh partway through the the meeting and with that if we can stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for stand one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all all right by way of announcements um we have a new member um Tanya do has joined us um so we now have five members of the board uh so one of us can be absent and still maintain a quum uh we do have two vacancies um if folks are interested in making a difference for the town um I don't think I have any other announcements does anyone on the board have any announcements I do have one other I actually now it's probably the best time um I actually got called off on business travel for the uh the night of the um special town meeting so Gan will have to um lead the finance committee through that and I hope the other three members are available for that um I don't know what happens if we don't have a quorum at town meeting probably go off the rails or something without a finance committee but maybe not uh so that's all I had for announcements um is there any public comment from the public sorry uh good evening John Bowen 162 Highland Street uh I'd like to open with Chris uh uh thank you for filling Evan shoes uh Evan was a good chairperson for uh this committee uh but chairman not I'm sure by no means you're equally if not maybe even better qualified for the slot outside of your time commitments that you have with family and work uh I'm here tonight on three points my first point is the wasteful spending by the cemetery commission under the present board uh ex um except accepting rather uh newly elected member Michael clock who just got elected at our last town meeting as I spoke on Tuesday before the select board about the commission's wasteful spending and misuse of the sale Lots funds which if you remember I contested it uh at the uh at the annual town meeting and wanted to know what the money is specifically used for if anyone here remembers the chairperson screaming at me about misinformation and disinformation and that they somehow use the money to buy gas uh all this is really far from the reality I have here with me um I did bring them with me but I'm sure you guys may have seen them but you may not have seen them are the expenditures from 2021 through the fiscal year and I have dissected all of it on 11:14 2023 the commission engraved a bench on a personal plot for a former board member in the amount of 1,028 uh has any other citizen been offered this patronage luxury well I think not then on 11:14 2023 they paid two payments to Lake View Landscaping who over a holiday weekend who did a grass cutting study when the DPW director and superintendent of cemeteries already gave them the numbers of time and cost this was clearly money spent to attempt to prove William Bernard is wrong who received the information from Todd Holman the superintendent basically to attack Todd Holman which we now see with the recent defamation lawsuit against n far yasco by Todd Holman will shed light on some of these issues I'm sure this has been dividing the DPW cemetery and the commission all together with this existing board Dave Doran and Nancy ASCO in the common denominator are the two of them even Heather the mule had highlighted that in her email to them in July of 2024 with regard to the issues with the West Street terrrace Cemetery there'll be more on some this later let's continue on 926 2023 and 1114 2023 the commission paid for a news article in Ledger that caused confusion in town meeting about building a 2oot knee wall on the North Cemetery and a vote for an article Amendment at town meeting as a vote uh for a wall this was raised by Dave McDonald who accused selectman Jeff of a backdoor deal uh that cost um let me see was $228 to create foam boards and $347 for making photo posters for those boards and then a cost for running and adding the paper totaling 575 altogether we're talking about a $553 expenditure which is done in a 12-month period which is half the money that we all lot at town meeting and what did we get what did we get nothing I asked at town meeting that the itemized expense their expenses because of these issues now maybe you folks and the folks in this town will understand why I pulled all that information on the cemeteries oh uh one more expense sorry I just recently found out uh from uh slick and ref through a a communication he actually made with you former member Dave pasio so I'm just going to read it real quick Dave pasio says I'm hearing that the DPW has solicited pricing for hired services to mow the cemeteries why do we pay a superintendent whose job it is per his job description to maintain the cemeteries Mr Jeff responded Dave to you me the cemetery commission and the public at lodge this seems to be a very clear Personnel issue I encourage you to make a public comment about this at the next select board meeting I am frustrated beyond measure that the current Cemetery superintendent is employed by the town that was May 12th 2024 and cin copied Heather Lemieux the total is wasted equal in this town $855 of wasteful spending is where we're at now we pay for grass cutting with DPW wages hire one more union worker and deal with the problem not use the money that we entrust to Nancy um to uh Nancy and to Dave Doran uh and that Commission okay to go on a beauty Campaign which unfortunately folks this town can't afford to take care of the cemeteries as it is I have been pushing for a cemetery Corporation but David Nancy would have no control so they continually oppose me on that or even allowing me to speak at their meetings why because right now they haven't any checks and balances except the DPW and town manager it's time that we re in their finances and not allow them and protect our past neighbors and friends oh and lastly um the Article Five in the warrant I have a grave concern I spoke with Ezekiel about this and if you put us the sale of lots from the cemetery into that fund he told me they borrow money from it and cannot pay it back because they're a they're a trust fund that basically has limited expenditures in their trust funds they're limited to what money they take in he said that if they don't pay it back um their revenue stream which is basically $800 for the sale lots to go to uh that fund and 600 for Perpetual Care on the purchase of of a grave which is a full burial that if they borrow any of that money and cannot pay it back the penalty will fall uh on the town and the amount borrowed will have to come out as well as the penalty out of the general fund so we got to be very careful about who we put in there okay uh and whether not they're going to be able to pay the bills that they actually are taking okay the cemetery uh the cemetery sale lot fund is not one of those funds now this is not a good idea if we are not scrutinizing which groups like Parks they get money conservation they get money these are valuable places that we can use this particular uh article for but there are other places like the sale lots and stuff like that that we can't and I hope you'll focus on that and I thank you very much for your time patience and I know I went over Mee is being recorded I appreciate it thank you thank you um any additional public comment and I do have you as a scheduled meeting too yes unrelated good evening my name is mik Ray Jeff 1170 Massachusetts Avenue um so I'm here tonight uh as a public comment for the board so you're going to hear a presentation a little later from our interim Town manager uh and a couple articles related to the sap that are going to be in front of you and I just wanted to offer a couple plugs here um based on my perspective and things I encourage you to to look into you know when the town manager interim Town manager presents these articles you know for me with this highlight is you know having been on the select board for several years um changes slow and sometimes too slow um but when we look at our employees you know what we're asking for are common sense Solutions and changes um right now you know we don't have it in our rules that when people have jury duty that we have to pay them this is a legal requirement we need to have it on the books another conversation about creating a sick Bank uh for our employees and when we think about those moments in our lives where why why would we ever need to have sick time donated to us you know it's it's because of cancer it's because of a significant lifechanging event that changes our physical health like a car accident it's because of a stroke and right now if you work for the town of Lunenburg um and you don't have the sick time and you're at the lowest point of your life there's no way that your fellow co-workers can donate the time to you this is a common sense solution to resolve some of these things also you know when we talk about our employees and onboarding full-time sta you know the way that our policies and of course sitting in the chair a lot of this has been news to me um but you know when we have employees and we bring them on board we are in a situation right now and I want I want you to think about your own college experience if you have children I want you to think about your children I want you to think about your life and I want you to imagine the mom who gets a job working for the town in September she has to go six months before she can take a day off with pay that's unreasonable I mean March with a with young kids not having one day off uh and if we think about some of our you know as we age and we have more doctor's appointments for this and for that and imagine going 6 months without being able to take a day off uh and get paid for it it's unreasonable and they accumulate the time during this period they just can't use it and so one of the solutions that's being asked for tonight is to allow there to be immediate dump of some of some leave time when they start their employment you still charge it you still take it away from natural acrw time but you but you you you're human to that employee and then also our part-time employees when we look at some of the work that we do across the town the recck director as an example I mean all the programs that happen in the summer all the families all the parents that depend on that programming but the person who's doing the job you know when you have the holidays that happen in the summertime Memorial Day on a Monday you have um 4th of July now we have juneth that that part-time employee has to take the day off with no pay it's not reasonable and so you know what we're what the interim Town manager is going to propose tonight are some common sense solutions that really when we look at our the situation we have in town we know that we need employees we know that we're we're that we've had high turnover especially in these part-time roles and so I urge your support uh for what's being proposed tonight ask the questions you need to figure out what that Financial impact is but no matter what it may be and in my presumption at this point it's not going to be too significant but what we get out of it is is we as an employer we say to our employees we value you we care about you and when these things happen in your life we're going to support you so I encourage your support uh when that comes up later on your agenda this evening thank you thank you thank you all right any additional public comment and if anyone has it online just uh raise your hand and we do have public comment um later where we can talk about all articles as well um any public comment from the board did I already ask all right so next on the agenda um we don't have to be labored at this meeting but is there is there any Town manager or Finance director reports the only report that I would give you tonight is that uh all of our values including New Growth have been submitted and certified by the state we're advertising the classification hearing for November 19 uh but we will know the estimated tax rate going into the special town meeting excellent thank you all right and then eie I see that you have been joining in dropping maybe having some difficulties did you have any report all right I'll take that as a as a no okay so I have two scheduled meetings uh first um Mr Jeff for the U Municipal design committee um update and then second uh Miss shipers for the Parks Commission presentation on the uh Marshall Park um borrowing in in status um so I can ask you know both of you if you want to come up to the table or the M the microphone um I have um Michael Ray I have you first uh on the agenda but there's some back and forth between the two so however you you both want to do it is fine with me and and just by way of leading into this I I have talked with with both of um both of them and as we think about some of the big projects coming up uh within Town whether it's the buildings or or our Parks um you know we got to got to come in with a a unified plan I know the two of you have been talking about that so just um I thought it was wise to have both of them at the same meeting to to to discuss it so I'll turn it over to to you Michael Ray all right thank you um well you know first I I know many of you are familiar with the plan for Marshall Park it's an exting plan I'm not here to discuss it in too much detail but it is an exciting plan um you know one of the things I think as a community that we have to think about are the services you know I think I we provide services as we know um to the children the education of kids which has impact on all of us throughout the course of our lives uh we provide services at the adult Activity Center uh largely to the senior population here in town um but there's a lot of people who live in the community who don't have kids in the school system uh and who aren't in the the 55 plus range yet um and who may not you know take advantage of the services at the adult Activity Center not that you need to necessarily be 55 to do that but typically I think that that's the target age so I think some of the things that that that's important and I'm happy that the Parks Commission has been doing this as well as Municipal Building design committee is looking at Solutions um for our community that addresses the needs of of all of those members of our community and so on the municipal building design and why I wanted to meet with the board tonight is we are going to have an update article uh at the special town meeting coming up in November but I want to start the process now of socializing again uh what this project is what our history is a little bit so I'll just take a couple minutes and go backwards so we can go forward um you know back in the 1980s the towns uh created a a committee to look at you know kind of long-term use for buildings um you know unfortunately the work product that came out of that didn't result in uh in the community moving forward uh in the early 2000s or 2010s uh we cre what was called a building reuse committee that's spent approximately 4 years looking at what to do uh with some of the old schools old buildings and the center of town area and and really just how to get the center of town to be a little more vitalized and many of the proposals that came out of that work unfortunately uh weren't endorsed and move forward uh and so over the last several years what we've done is the selectboard created what was called the TC TC pasos um building use committee and we were focused on the TC paals you know when schools um stop being functional schools they become coming uh as we know our buildings are our most expensive expense as a community uh and so we were trying to look at ways to repurpose the TC pass deals building uh we spent several years working with Engineers we had several studies done and and what came out of that was roughly uh 55,000 foot building um could definitely meet many needs of the communities price tag though when we when we got the first cost estimate $23 million and by the time we were ready to kind of come forward for a vote uh that price shot up to about3 million and we said don't vote on this um because of course it didn't it did not address the uh Town Hall it didn't address Ritter building uh and what we're going to do with these buildings so the select board uh took another look and re repurposed that committee um to be the lunenberg municipal building design Committee in which we in in membership Mr Gray is one of the members we have members from the finance committee we have members from the school committee we have members from the select board myself uh we have members from the community at large and I'm sure I'm blinking as I'm saying this on who are other member planning board we also have a member from the planning board so that way this is a really comprehensive look at how to solve um some of the challenges we have with buildings I I've said several times you know that we have a struggle with what to do with old schools and how to get them to be better uh it's comforting that the school committee has really uh heard that and and has been working diligently on the Turkey Hill um project so that way you know when that building that that building maintains uh its health so that way it is in a much better position uh in the future to either be turned over for municipal use or continue its function as a school building um so the the summary of what we did was we took uh we looked at our buildings and we came up with three distinctively different plans and we said we want to have three different ideas for what we can do with these buildings um and we worked we we met with so many members of the community um and then the result of it was we came up with a hybrid and we said we're going to take the best out of all three of these plans and merge them together and to summarize what that hybrid plan is that we've presented to the board before um it's to turn this building into what we call a meeting house uh the original function of of New England communities typically uh before the town hall era we meeting houses but the benefit of having one one thing that's that's great about this building besides it's being historical is that we have the Pack control room that's here right and when we were looking at uh TC paals what we identified one of the things we identified was that when you start taking these very expensive cords uh that come out of this room and bring them across a large building your cost significantly goes up uh and so looking at this room and and saying we get rid of the HR office behind me we get rid of the town uh manager's office um you know to my left uh to your right behind me and we get this room back to kind of this original footprint we take the first floor we break it into three different rooms you know and it kind of lends itself of where those rooms are going to be that now we have you know four meeting rooms that that can accommodate and and and it replaces two of them that are at the Ritter building and then uh and adds another one into to this to look at long-term needs and and one of these rooms can be a community purpose room or or more than one but it gives those artists in the community the opportunity to display their space you know it gives some of the the support groups the AA groups the allanon groups an opportunity to have a meeting space as well and when we look at our calendar of how many meetings occur the most meetings that occur in one night uh it's often uh four and sometimes five and so now you kind of build in some space uh for many of those meetings to occur now as a town contines to grow I should note that we do have meeting space at the at the library we have a couple meeting rooms there they have a lot of programming that happens there as well and if we needed to we know that there's collaborative rooms at the uh at the high school area for larger things but the idea is to turn this into a meeting house to look at the Ritter building to have administrative offices for the school in the Ritter building uh and then uh we've said Annex but really it's a standalone building to have a town administrative building across the street so when we talk about you know this building 6500 Square ft R building roughly 5,500 ft and in addition somewhere 4,000 5,000 is square ft that we get out of it is we get a a a singular location uh for a town administrative offices for all the functions that currently happen between this building right now the Ritter building right now and TC pasos um you also get the school offices U located in an easily accessible building and it takes these historic structures preserves their use and allows us to continue to use them for the foreseeable future um and and again this is part of the first phase of the project and then the second part of it uh which really addresses the TC pasio um portion of it we recognize that that's tied into what happens with the future of Turkey Hill and so you know we've kind of paused a little bit on that building so that way we can make progress in the areas where where we where we know we have agreement and we know that the disposition of the TC pasal building is inherently tied to what's going to happen with Turkey Hill and what I mean by that is Turkey Hill is situated at the corner of a parcel if the town were to take over that building it would be great that is a wonderful building for the town to have uh as a municipality uh you know the struggles with it though and because it has separate entrance on the on the lot separate way to get in and out of the building it can accommodate the Boys and Girls Club it can accommodate uh in the kitchen the the the Lions Club food pantry there's a lot of good things that we can do with that building um but right now it's needed to be a school if the school decides that they're going to expand their footprint at Turkey Hill that then we know the answer for TC pasos if the school decides that hey they might need another school where is that school going to go and so TC pasos becomes a viable location as well as other parses in town so we know that I know that many members of the community want this large comprehensive plan but we have to bite off the sections we can chew um when we talk about square footage and cost and you know we're trying to develop a project that keeps this cost below 15 million bucks I mean just being real um you know when we think about $500 a square foot which is a high estimate for REM for building or renovating space but if even if we assume $500 a square foot let's go $600 a sare foot we are still well below that $15 million threshold that we are certainly I think as intentionally as trying to stay Beyond or below so I want to socialize this with you there will be other presentations uh in the future I just want to again bring this up bring this to your awareness so that way as we go through this budget cycle that we come forward and have more ideas but again it's it really is tied into what the parks are trying to do as well uh and being able to have these spaces that work for all ages all generations across the town and it really I mean you know Anita is going to speak here in a second but Anita is very impressive person generally as are many members of The Parks Commission in the in the deliberant and how they've really approached this and looking at the needs of the community and I think working together looking at the needs of the community figure out how we can better address them um in the most cost effective manner going forward and so I'm happy to sit here with Anita I support the Marshall the Marshall Park project I know that there's some cost questions about it um but but as a theory of what we're trying to accomplish um I think I'm here to ask for your support and endorsement Anita thank you Anita shers I'm the chairman of the Parks Commission I live at 63 Chestnut Street um thank you Michael Ray for you know giving that history in terms of how long the town has been looking at Marshall Park for improvements that would be um something that would be attractive and suitable for residents of all ages and abilities um that whole discussion basically began in 2020 and um in 2021 2022 there was a lot of um public information gathering sessions so that the town could decide exactly what the public would be looking for in any improvements that might be done at Marshall Park as a result of that um the town meeting did approve some initial funds to go ahead with some early design schematic design of what Marshall Park improvements might look like so uh the town did hire a firm called wola and uh they did do a schematic design uh that schematic design estimated that the park would be approximately $5.2 million to construct with what we were looking at for components that included improvements to the fields Playing Fields added basketball court pickle ball uh a pavilion um playground um that type of thing dog dog park and um walking paths accessible walking paths so the um Park commission went back to town meeting and received additional funds to further that design of the park um the Selectmen voted to allocate $1 million of arpa funds to that Park project so uh the town felt comfortable allowing the Parks Commission to move ahead to hire a um owner project manager who was by law required to work with us before we hire any designer to work with a project of that value so we hired scansa for our owner project manager we then this spring hired rdla who is a landscape architectural firm and they are working on the design for us because we changed from the design firm that had provided those early schematics to this new design firm that's doing the full design of Marshall Park it required that we do an updated cost estimate the last cost estimate that we had from MOA the original design firm was $10.2 Million for Marshall Park construction so we felt comfortable in going ahead and applying for Grants we applied for many grants we did receive a 500,000 excuse me $500,000 Grant from the for Park Grant um from the state and we received um early Authority on a $1 million Grant from the land and water conservation fund so that was fantastic we were meeting Our obligation that we told town meeting we would seek Any Grant funds that might be available to help reduce the cost of the project to the town but when we hired rdla the new design firm with the new cost estimate that we just received we now are looking at a project value of $14 million from Marshall Park which far exceeded any increase that we expected the last estimate was only January of 2024 now here in October we're getting this updated cost estimate from the this new firm of $14 million you can imagine how shocked we were um we did find out by doing some very careful analysis over the past two weeks that there were a lot of inaccuracies um and bad assumptions that were made in the wola cost estimates um the design firm hired this new design firm rdla hired a well-known cost estimating firm pcnm who I have personally worked with um to do some U Municipal Construction projects in my past life as a town manager um and they're very credible and we trust the numbers that we have now but what this does is it puts us at a very disadvantaged position the um original assumption was that the money that we already had in hand would be enough for us to start Phase One Construction of Marshall Park and that we could go to the special town meeting and ask for the remaining funds to finish the project of phase two what we have now is a situation where with this increased cost estimate we do not have enough money to do phase one we were committed under the park grant that $500,000 grant that we would have certain components that would be completed in phase one that included the uh playground it included the pickle ball basketball courts it included um Pavilion it included um restroom concession stand facilities Etc um we do not have have enough money in hand now to do that so the um other thought that the um Parks Commission was looking at was well could we cut back on what we're doing um could we limit the scope of work under phase one and make it still be feasible to move ahead with this but obviously we had commitments under the grant programs and we did speak to the grant administrator at the state level and they very clearly said that no that we were committed under that Grant contract cont that we' already signed for the $500,000 Park grant that we had to do everything or we would not get the reimbursements from them for what we were spending so we basically would not get that $500,000 so the Parks Commission um had a very difficult decision to make last night and um after much discussion we decided that we would not move ahead with the borrowing article at the special town meeting basically We'll be asking town meeting floor to pass over that article and what we would like to do is to move ahead and um figure out what our best options are moving forward we'll be meeting again on November 6th um I have reached out to the OPM firm and the design firm and ask them to let us know what would be the additional costs for us to complete the Marshall Park design so that we would have that full design done with the updated cost cost estimates so that perhaps we could go back to the voters at the springtime meeting instead of this November so that's one of the options that we're looking at um I don't know what the final decision of the Parks Commission will be um but obviously as soon as I know you will all know um but I you know this is a different conversation tonight than I thought we were going to have before last evening so um that's where we stand and um be glad to answer any questions that you might have and if I can just add one thing and you know I think that it's I told you Anita is a really impressive person uh and I think that you know the Parks Commission the amount of work that has gone into helping the community get to this point um you know as this is being um noted tonight you know over the next couple of months I have no doubt the parks Commissioners are going to take a look at this figure out how we can get this accomplished and so you know it's important for us to be in front of you tonight we're not asking you to approve anything tonight um but we want to get that conversation started we want to make sure that we are engaging with the finance committee and and you know all um as many boards as we can throughout this process and we understand that there's a you know the third person that should that that that I think the next time we going to be is going to be someone from the school committee U because there's actually three projects that we all are trying to that need to come forward um and that we understand that we don't want one to box out another we want to make sure that that we're all moving in a way uh that's mindful of what our capacities actually are U what's a reasonable request to come to the community on but what we have I think is a real strong willingness to do the right thing for the community uh and and a lot of energy of course behind all of this and I would like to make an additional comment I do have to thank the Parks Commission for all the work that theyve put into this I'm I'm a fairly new member to the Parks Commission and you know I have to say that all of them have put many hours into this had put a lot of commitment into this concept working with the public to try to decide what this Marshall Park project should look like um but in particular I would really like to thank um both Anna Lockwood the previous chair of the Parks Commission and Kieran Menard another member of the Parks Commission for the hours of work that they put into applying for all those grants that we uh were looking to try to achieve to offset the cost of this project um so I can't thank them enough I can't thank the entire board enough for doing what they're doing and I and I'm grateful that they're still willing to keep this project moving and not just you know just say we're done so hopefully everyone will recognize that you know the commitment is still there okay thank you both and I I appreciate you both coming at the same meeting um I know we had talked I talked to both you about doing this um I agree that if you know in the future maybe schools could be that third seat there's actually a lot of overlap between what the schools does for projects and what the parks do and there's a lot of sharing of um you know they both have playgrounds they both may have pickle ball courts timing of availability of assets is obviously different because when school's in session you know you can't be having a pick a ball tournament but um I I think collaborating across all three groups is absolutely essential for us to move forward as a as a town um and then you know the final thing I will say is I'm also on the capital planning committee um there's a lot of projects being pursued and there's a lot of discussion about without those projects what's the operational cost associated with maintaining for example TC pasos you put a lot of money on an annual basis to operate the building um so this this is a complex problem but I think collaborating across it and getting all the boards um looking at the future of uh what the next 5 10 years might look like for lenberg is important and maybe we can come up with savings on operational side that can benefit the you know new facilities Etc and have a you know have the right um parks and buildings and facilities for uh you know for for the community so again I would I'd like to thank you on that so I guess what I would first say is the next thing on our agenda is is the public hearing so we'll open the public Hearing in a minute um and you know yours is a report right but U but Anita you have a Parks has a couple on there too so if you could stick around for at least a few minutes um before I go ask for a motion to un open public hearing um I will ask the members of the committee if there's any specific questions outside of um what we would discuss during the public hearing to either either member yes Mr chair my only question to the P commission is how does what's the status of the million dollar ARA funding because that has to be committed and spent with a uh deadline yeah um I did um reach out to our interum Town manager this morning after we had our decision last night um to ensure that we could still continue to use the arpa funds for the um design work that would still need to be done to finish the design of Marshall Park so I'm waiting for a confirmation of that from him obviously it would not take all of the $1 million um so I've also asked both the design firm and the OPM firm to give me numbers as to what their cost would be to complete the design through you know before town meeting in the spring and I'm waiting for those numbers that's why I asked the Parks Commission to meet on November 6th so with that information we could make decisions if once we know how much we might need then we would be able to go to the board of Selectmen and say this is all we need you know um basically turn back the amount not necessary for the parks design project and allow some other board or committee or Department to use those funds and with the support of the interim Town manager we we kind of have a running list so far of where this money is going to go uh any money that's left over in Aro where we're going to how we can expend it and get it under commitment by the end of the calendar year I just had uh this is the in my short memory and my memory is not that good this is the third time we've had some kind of situation where we've had good people doing a lot of good work and then getting a sticker shock at the end we had that with the um primary school and the uh air conditioning we had it with the as Mr Jeff mentioned with the original uh TC Pao and some of that might have been just it was crazy it was Co and prices showed up and we couldn't do it and then in this one I'm just it's the third time it's happened so it's and good people are working really hard and then we go oh no we can't do that or we can't do what we wanted so and I know it's something that the capital committee has been talking about how do we do a better job of that so that's just not a question but just a statement that you know what can we do as a as a town to to to be better at that I mean and again we did get somebody to do it but they gave us bad numbers I guess so and that that can happen in the real world so what can we do and that and that's it's frustrating for I'm sure not just for the town but especially for the people who were putting all the work into it you know I can say that the commission is very frustrated yes and and and uh so you know I I appreciate all the effort and uh and continue to support whatever you you guys who are doing all the hard work can come up with and hopefully present something that the town can afford and will value for uh for the future yeah thank you yeah it's it's a really good point and I I don't know maybe inter Tom manager can have some thoughts on this at some point or um when we have a good time manager maybe they have thoughts on it maybe it's something we can go to the state to other Finance committees or um for for how to best do this but um just as another example you know schools has put forward a u playground project as a potential for the for this year and they had a number in there um and then I saw the number that was associated with the parks and I'm like well that's of similar sizes and they're way off again um so we we've got to do a somehow arm our you know our our department heads and our boards and commissions with an ability to come up with good cost estimates uh before we even you know give the money for the planning um aspects of it because you know we do spend money in many cases the parking lot at the senior center was planned not executed you know so it is a recurring thing T and I I totally agree that we need a solution for it any any other questions comments All right so i' um I'll entertain a motion to enter into public hearing so moved second uh all in favor say I I I all right so um what what we typically do on this um Anita I don't know how long you were planning on stting we could deal with okay um the way we I'd like to handle this is um um for Carter for you to kind of give a summary of the warrant article um and then if anyone online or in the room has a question or anyone here this is now a public public forum um we can we can ask them we'll go through all the Articles we'll close the public hearing and then um the finance committee will will vote on recommendations and I know we owe recommendations um to the town tonight so that we can go to publishing of the the warant article um so that's the way I'd like to to do this and I emailed everyone the latest um waren article list um just before this meeting called final booklet good evening my name is Carter tanini and I am the interim Town manager uh for the most part this is the warrant uh that we discussed uh at your last meeting there is one article that has been added and one article that has been split into two pieces uh the first article is a legacy article uh that I understand you have at each of your special Town meetings in the fall and that is to amend the fy2 5 Town budget to the extent it needs Amendment uh on this issue um we do have more New Growth than was anticipated and it's my understanding it's the intent of the select board to seek that Delta that extra money uh for appropriation to the FY 25 budget is that a sufficient explanation yeah I think so yeah and if there's any questions from you know anyone in the audience or or here um you know we we can do that so any additional questions from from last week I think this is a standard article and you said that you would have all the um the certified New Growth figures and everything at at to meeting we'll have it before then okay all right any questions from the audience my only question is we don't know what the Delta is right now it's approximately $115,000 uh it may be a little bit more um when I get a chance to look at the final uh that was submitted and approved but please come up to them yeah good evening on a lock Lockwood 91 Main Street what is U where are you planning to appropriate the $115,000 to uh I don't think that that has been settled yet I can tell you that we received the retiree health insurance rates today uh they went up approximately 19.3% I don't believe that that is in keeping at all with what was projected so we have to do a little bit of what was included what were the assumptions where will we actually end up look at the Delta on those uh and then I suspect it'll be the November 5th select board meeting before I'm able to present a formal proposal okay um one other question and I don't know if this would be the right time but you know I as I was doing reviewing borrowing different parts of the Town budget over the years I noticed there are free cash has grown tremendously from you know from maybe we used to have2 $300,000 8 years ago to two years ago we had $2.5 million in free cash um and and I'm starting to get curious about where the free cash is coming from and if the budgets are petted if you will and you know because some of the talking about cost going up the way the money gets certified is right now we're going to be reconciled fy2 4 next year we're going to be reconciling at 524 and it just there is seems to be like an 18 months delay after we appropriate something money that doesn't get used so I feel like with inflation and so much money being cost going up as much as it's going you know I wonder if it if we the town would benefit for getting more for the their Buck if we are more diligent about having a tighter budget to really understand how much we're spending and maybe not deal so much with free cash but be more intentional with how we're spending so that's I'll take that sitting that my last question um I I honestly don't know the history of your budget uh 2.5 million 2 years ago uh was um about 5% um and probably about 6% of your budget 5 to 6% of your general operating budget is not out of the ordinary at all that also was in an era uh which unfortunately uh many towns were not able to undertake projects uh pay employees uh get material out for projects and because of the supply chain uh issues related to covid uh and a lot of projects simply didn't get done so I think that you would need to look at where did the free cash come from we refer to the free cash as a general number but also you need to look at what I refer to as normal and ordinary free cash that is what free cash did you throw off from your operating budget and what was the total free cash what was the difference and what generated it two years ago I believe you got something on the order of uh 325,000 plus or minus I don't remember the exact number uh in the state's reimbursements for smart growth project that was a one-time event uh there are other one-time events that happen in a Town's uh budgetary cycle and so it really is important to understand those and beyond that I really can't can't comment yeah I I I think the comment is good it's one that I think we broached a little bit towards the end of last budget season I think it would be unfair to you to have all the history associated with it um I I do think that that where do where do we derive free cash from historically would be a good exercise for um you know maybe Ezekiel to help us with um so I agree with what you're saying um all right we have uh Dave Dave pasos go ahead I will I guess sponsor you I don't know the rules on I think go ahead Dave um we can't hear you I don't know if you mute what was the Delta number what was the Delta number he was talking about 15,000 can't hear you Dave well I have one quick question right that 19% you mentioned just off topic but the 19% for the uh was that a final number or was that just a preliminary number uh one no no that's that's the final number we have a number of policies uh and they ranged an increase from 16 five plus I'm going to say plus or minus because I don't have that image of that uh quote sheet burned into my head uh to 19.3 all right to the booth do we have um Zoom hooked in properly Dave appears to be off mute you want to try again Dave for all right is there anyone else that has while we're working through some technical difficulties here on this one uh we we can come back to it um why don't we go on to uh number two so the town has received roughly $31,000 in Chapter 70 money that's aid for Education uh the school committee asked that it be allotted to them the select have concurred um you asked at your last meeting how they intended to use it uh Chris I believe I forwarded um uh uh oh Mr the chairman did forward to you that explanation um essentially it is to supplement uh their salary reserves uh to address critical Staffing and compensation short FSE um did you get a chance to distribute that to the full did I send that to everyone yeah yeah yeah so that was uh you asked for the explanation and that is uh what we were provided okay all right are there any questions or comments on this one no or from the okay so just I I'll make a comment on this one right now um I do think that you know Chapter 70 should be um applied to the school as voted on from the the legislature um I just will make a comment that sometimes Chapter 70 goes up and over the last 15 years at least three times it has gone down um so you know I think we could probably build the budget up off of Chapter 70 saying Chapter 70 is where you start with and then we build up from rais an appropriate uh Chapter 70 increases over the last year were about one and a half percent um they added about another quarter percent um through the process um so I do think that Chapter 70 should go to the schools um but I I think we got to be cautious of the way we do it um and if it is reduced I guess the schools gets reduced it shouldn't be the town side being reduced because of Chapter 70 but uh we can have those discussions as we talk about how to build budgets going forward um do we have any other comments and I I'm not sure if our Zoom is working well for some reason um there were some audio problems in the beginning which I guess have been overcome but we're now not able to hear people what did he say no no can we try somebody else to see if it's a Dave issue or it's a Dr Burnham are you able to speak just using you as a test case maybe or Tony skull reini are you able to I'm just looking for someone to test audio here yeah it looks like everyone's trying and not being able to come through all right again my apologies all right any other questions on article two all right article three article three is an authorization to pay late bills in this uh instance it is one bill it's $4,180 you asked what it was for it was a late bill from Canon uh for the copers in the school department it would be paid for by a transfer from our overlay Surplus we set aside monies each year to uh cover our abatements that's called the overlay Reserve from time to time it has more money in it than we need the assessors declare that excess Surplus they have declared $225,000 Surplus that is then set aside on the book as overlay Surplus reserved for appropriation this $4,180 would come from that overlay Surplus okay any questions on this one seems pretty straightforward all right article four uh article four is one we've discussed previously uh the Mart has had a program to provide subsidized rides for uh seniors those with mobility issues uh teenagers uh workers who cannot use uh the dialer ride service if you will that we have with Council on Aging uh we have uh been delivering about 400 rides a month to 70 unique users uh they had enough money to extend it into uh midt this board was kind enough to give us a $5,000 transfer to keep it going until the special Town meet the rides will increase modestly from $3 to $4 4 to5 and5 to $7 and at this board's request uh we have arranged that any person anywhere in ludenberg will be taken to uh Emerson hospital and that ride will be only $7 each way uh so this money is for $20,000 it also comes from the overlay Surplus reserved for appropriation and uh should get us through the balance of the fiscal year now um always with any program uh it will depend upon ridership uh the the good news is we've got strong ridership the bad news is the more Riders we have the the more uh dollars we'll need for subsidy but we have increased those rates modestly uh so as to try not to hurt our users but to keep the cost to the taxpayers relatively low uh and we have achieved a goal of this body which was to make sure we could get the folks to Emerson and the mark people will be present the night of the special town meeting uh and should there be a little bit of a shortfall during the course of the year the Council on Aging uh director sudor uh has explored and uh informed me that they will be able to provide some modest backup out of their formula grant from the state they can't entirely back stop it because uh there are users of the service that are not elderly persons and their formula grant is geared to the elderly uh population all right any questions Rond delissio 181 Reservoir Road I actually do have a question on this one so do I have this straight that it originally started through a state Grant I don't recall if it was state or federal cuz it predates me okay because it just I I was leaning towards I thought it was a state Grant and I just wanted to say that you know it seems like the bait and switch that we're always falling victim to by the state as far as they'll give you a grant and then people get used to the service and then the state doesn't back us up on keeping a hospital close to us and then it becomes the local birth bur it it just is so frustrating that's my comment thank you I don't know if this was state or federal uh but if the participant would send me an email be happy to get him an answer and get this board and answer as well okay why don't I pause and see if we've gotten the audio working Dave do you do you have volume yet Chris I've got it on this end can you guys hear me now yeah it's been fixed all right y okay I thought it was um speak out in in response to the uh Dave just just name and address please yeah uh formly 56 Whiting streets still for the foreseeable future registered voter in the town of lunenberg presently in Jefferson New Hampshire um I'll I'll send an email to you to explain why I just said what I said okay uh in the future uh in response to the last speaker um I believe this Grant had a sunset uh time frame on it built into it it just was kind of missed in the shuffle that it was mid fiscal year so that's why this is happening now the the original Grant was not funded through the full fiscal year I think we discussed that before I got off the finance committee um I don't know the other particulars about it but I do remember that piece um if I may go back to article one and it it would be it's a very quick comment um again to a previous speaker on that article uh there is some Merit in looking at our free cash uh but we'd also have to look at the way or our practices as to how we fund uh capital projects and uh we have had a former Town manager and a number of people stayed over the years that and many towns do it they actually fund 80 to 90% of their Capital within the budget within the annual budget so that it's firmed that at least they know a high percentage of the dollars they're going to have on an annual basis and can do that 10year plan because the timeone is going to be there thank you thank you Dave all right any other questions or comments on Article 4 all right Article 5 prudent investor uh so I believe you've had a um considerable presentation uh on this uh it allows uh we are currently restricted as to the uh type of Investments we can make the the types of stocks the deposits that we can make this allows a little more flexibility uh there's a little bit more risk but they're still considered extremely conservative uh and prudent if you will we think that this will increase the yields on the trust funds remember this is only for the trust funds not all of the general funds and we think it could increase the yields by about 1% uh I did have a question from the select board uh the other night as to how many communities uh have adopted this our first cut in trying to get uh that answer out of Tuesday night was our treasure collector sent an email to their Association about 180 uh members in total um got about 19 responses which is pretty good uh and we do have a list that was used in the town of Arlington uh as of May of 24 we're going to do some additional research um but you've got 20 plus communities at this point ranging from Brookline uh in Newton to Sterling uh initially this group to the right that I'll give to you in just one moment I'm actually before I keep blading get this so on the right you'll see through home rule petition and you'll wonder why uh and that is until the state passed General legislation that any city or town could adopt these communities had to submit special legislation and get permission just for their community and you can see they're from Brookline ranging down to uh Sterling in terms of population now as far as we know at the Town meetings based upon this presentation from Arlington and we'll continue to do some work to give you slightly better answer uh there's about uh another 15 communities that have adopted it as of the survey that was most recently done uh and they range from smaller communities Groveland and uh Princeton uh right up to North attelboro Malden and uh Kingston some wealthier communities duckberry uh so we'll get you some additional information but you can see that in the short time this General legislation has been in place uh based upon this one presentation that there are a number of communities that have adopted it we'll do some more research over the next uh couple of weeks try to sharpen this up a little bit uh but I did want to share that with you since the select board had asked for that information thank you all right again any questions from the board or the public all right let's go on to article six Clauses relative to T tax exemptions so the state has a number of Provisions for uh tax exemptions and how they're calculated uh and you accepted two of these Provisions a number of years ago you have been increasing the income and the exemption uh the asset limits uh over the years so that as infl impacted those statutory limits adopted in the mid 80s you increase them the problem is you did not adopt the statute that allows you to do that this would now adopt those Clauses so that going forward you can apply a cola to the income limit and the asset limit for people who apply for the program uh the assessors will be able to provide a much more indepth uh but in essence this is going to um put you right it's going to let you legally do what you have been doing in practice there will be a one-year hiccup you've got about 23 people uh based upon the count as explained to me who are using these uh two of the participants may not be eligible for this year uh going forward they'd have to look at their income limits and their assets uh but that is the impact uh on the current participants excellent any questions how did we find out we didn't adopt what we supposed to adopt when we did this uh so my understanding again it's not meant as a as a fail safe but this predates me uh my understanding is that there's a chart in the assessor's office which laid out these limits and your new assessor noticed that they didn't quite match up with their experience and so they started to dig into it couldn't figure out exactly where the numbers came backtracked with the the help of our of our town clerk uh as to when were these other Clauses adopted uh reached out to the Department of Revenue which maintains a database of all of the financial statutes that a town adopts these Clauses were not in the do database that could be as simple as they hadn't been submitted nor were they on the books that the town clerk was able to find by searching the actions of your town meetings so the assessors have spent a great deal of time trying to make sure they they had it right uh this will put you right um and uh we're certainly hopeful you'll be able to support it because it does mean going forward the colas that have been adopted will be able to go back into effect thank you all right I don't see any other questions if anyone has a question at any anytime or a comment just raise your hand please online all right um article 7 water supply Protection District I think the town knows this very lengthy article pretty well so we don't have to probably blabber this um and I do not want anyone to read it um tonight live uh but is there any questions from anyone in the um On the Border all right with that let's go on to question 8 or article 8 Council on Aging revolving fund I just got to get to it so currently uh folks pay for make a contribution for uh the meals and that cash is held at the adult Activity Center uh and then used over the coming days and weeks to purchase supplies food stuffs cooking oil all of those kinds of things now I want to be absolutely clear that we have no question about the honesty and integrity of our employees uh of the Council on agent I want to be crystal clear on that however handling C cash in this manner is neither conforming to statute nor good accounting practice what this article would do would create another revolving Fund in your schedule of funds and those monies that are received for the meals program would be put on a turnover the same way as the parks department or uh the planning department or or anybody else submits their revenues to the treasure collector we then uh and we've started to do this already would set up accounts with the vendors that are used by the Council on Aging those vendors would submit a bill to the Council on Aging the Council on Aging will submit that invoice to accounting and that money would be charged against that account exactly the same way your other revolving funds uh operate uh now two things with respect to this under the statute you are supposed to have created all of your revolving funds by July 1 so before the fiscal year starts there's a provision that you can establish a revolving fund when the accountant can certify that there's a new source of money available a to fund that account uh aie um has and we'll speak to it uh I think you can see the new source of money it's pretty pretty clear uh the second piece that we want you to understand is the $116,000 uh the program is running 300 plus or minus a week in revenues um we thought it most prudent to calculate it for the entire year given we haven't run this before uh and so we've set that limit of $116,000 in expenditure each year now the way a revolving fund operates is whatever money goes in there stays in there other than any interest generated off of it so uh they can expend whatever their actual expenditures are provided there is money and it does not exceed the cap that has been set thank you any questions all right I don't see any online um the next article is a similar article for parks department revolving fund um so I think we know this one pretty well but if you want to give a quick summary to anyone sure we've been we've been through it a few times now uh you currently have a revolving fund for your parks department under a provision of Statute uh chapter 44 section 53 D that is a revolving fund for parks and Parks only has a couple of Provisions in it as to what you can expend on and the like but the biggest provision in it is that at the end of every f year any monies in it in excess of $10,000 are supposed to come back to the general fund now I don't know how many years you've had this or when this happened but you have been keeping more money in there than you should so the proposal is to create a revolving fund which does not have a cap on how much can be in there it only has a cap on what can be expended under 53 e and a half that's exactly the kind of revolving funds you currently have and what we are proposing for the Council on agent once you create that fund we would set a limit at $77,000 that is uh the number that I've been given by the the Parks Commission we would transfer at the time the new fund is opened and we don't know exactly when that happens because when you pass a bylaw at town meeting your clerk has to certify those results submit them to the Office of the Attorney General they can take as much as 60 days to review it they send it back to your clerk saying yes it's approved excuse me your clerk then has to post it certify it was posted and that is when it takes effect then there's depending upon when that happens in the week there can be a few days to two weeks to get the monies transfer so this is written so that once it's effective whatever monies are in the 53d account would get swept into the 53 e and a half account then the fourth step is once the 53d account balance is zero we close it and this article effectively revokes your acceptance of section 53d there is a risk in all this I've shared that with you um I've shared it with the the chairman I've shared it with the select board when the Attorney General's office looks at this they may wonder what had happened they may send it to do do may say it's nice that you're finally correcting this but that Delta belonged to the general fund and has to go back to the general fund so if that happens uh we would be back here discussing uh a potential transfer from uh the reserve fund to get these monies back to the Parks Commission the problem there is it would have to go into their operating budget which means they have to get that spent by the end of the fiscal year the other way to deal with it is through an appropriation at the annual town meeting you cannot appropriate money directly into this account we did explore that route and you cannot do that I think everyone is in agreement uh that the risks are relatively minor and the most important thing is to get this accounting issue um and I don't know how long you've been talking about it uh but I think we've all are in agreement and I I hope the finance committee is as well that it's it's time to make this right yeah I mean I think I talked about this my first year on the finance committee um Peter it was probably even before maybe before that um and the park chair here is if you'd like to address any questions to them as well as well yeah I think well maybe Tanya doesn't because she wasn't on but you know we were one of the ones that initiated trying to get this um Mr pasos when he was on the board was pretty adamant and um so I think we understand it unless but if there are any questions or any questions from the from the public and I think any risk associated with money's moving around with how this money is I'm sure we can find a way to deal deal with it within our operating budgets and others so um I think doing the making it right is the correct course of action okay all right um the next one is Brooks house so the uh architectural preservation District commission uh we've worked with them uh their article would have the town meeting make a request of the board of Selectmen and that request is that the select board uh undertake a study of the Brooks house property uh in consultation with the school committee and others to determine if it is possible to sell uh the Brooks house together with a certain amount of land or to lease it for a long longterm lease such that the building through private investment would be rehabilitated and put back into use uh how much will this article cost essentially zero we believe that we have the um capacity inhouse to do the relatively minor study that this requires uh you know we might have to find a few hundred to have someone do a quick CAD drawing and and make it a little bit more presentable uh part of the study would then also uh determine what might be needed to move forward title exams environmental exams uh and the like and so when the study is presented to the annual town meeting it would also present um assuming money is required uh I'm assuming the associated appropriation um I don't know if Mr scull brini can be heard if he's online he is online am Mr SC you want hear me speak go ahead um I think that uh I I I think this is a great way to explore how we can save a historical asset that the town owns um probably the the trickiest piece is how do you do parking for a commercial facility that's now owned by a private individual or private Corporation and I think there's many ways of dealing with that uh you know we have a village District uh and we have zoning to make the village District work and parking is addressed in the village District uh zoning uh requirements and I think that what we would like to see is to have those used in order to make uh the Brooks house something that's viable and maintained and uh you know continues to be a part of the landscape uh in the village District which is also the architectural preservation District um I spoke to um the library uh director today and he is uh supportive of pursuing uh what options are available obviously he is concerned about parking uh because we're right next to the library I think there's way ways that we can satisfy their requirements as well as any prospective uh commercial entity that might want to take control of the books house you know um we've heard a lot this evening about projects that cost a ton of money and if we keep the Brooks house and we should because of its historical significance the t is going to have to step on step up and spend money on the Brooks house and we we believe that by pursuing um this pathway we can turn this into an asset rather than a liability uh for the town of lunberg so are there any specific questions that you might have for me um any questions from the board any questions from the public uh Mr pasos yes uh did pasos um I have a different take on that small piece of land that is carved out with that building and I have a serious problem with putting Perpetual parking easements on Town property for a potential private business entity um there a reason why the town has not put money into that building uh I'm not going to go into it this evening but I disagree with what uh is proposed here uh I'll leave it at that thank you good evening Glenn McLoud 436 Reservoir Road I essentially would Echo what Mr pasos had just said um other otherwise I'd say I would have an open mind to a lot of options on that property but specifically I think selling the property would be a terrible mistake but I'd be open to other other um uses but again actually losing control of that small uh parcel within the larger parcel would just be a terrible terrible idea thank you thank you I'll say now like my opinion on Brooks house is it's time to make a decision what we're going to do with it we've explored the options of picking it up and moving it which can be done um leasing it you know and to a to something that fits into the nature of that area might be an option this is a study to be presented um I would probably be in support of this um but lacking any movement on leasing it or moving it um my own personal opinion is that it is time that we're not going to spend the money to rehabilitate that program that building given all the other needs in the town um I've made that my you know on Capital planning I've consistently said stuff like that so I think that this is kind of that last ditch effort to save um a historical building maybe an architecturally significant building but at some point we've got to be prudent with our money and um if if this doesn't you know come to fruition I I am in the camp of I think it's time to to demolish the building but that's my opinion um both as a individual and as you know someone in Rik and recommendations on how to spend you know Capital Money on a on a building that's really not used so but I will may I may I make a comment yeah yes of course I've been a participant in the public meetings for the master plan and two things come out two things have consistently come out in those public discussions one is people want to preserve um our historic uh look and our historic feel to the town of Lunenburg and the second one is that people want to see more things in downtown lenberg they want to see um you know more commercial opportunities for you to go to you know the the village district and I think that's one of the reasons why the town adopted the notion of having a village District you know there's there's two ways you can create those uh those attractions that you know that the public has asked for be to be cons considered in our master plan one is that you have somebody build them and land is at a premium in the village distri you know the other way that you could do it is to reutilize an existing building um and turn it into something that would then have commercial value and I think that the Brooks house uh can fit that bill quite nicely and it not cost the town money you know if we tear the Brooks house down then we have a a green patch of grass and then what do you do with that build more parking for the library that's not needed I think that that you know what we need to do is to get out of the box you know and go look for someone who might an idea to how what to do with the Brooks building that doesn't cost it time money okay uh Peter did you have Peter beard Mar 282 Pleasant Street um I'm a member of the school committee and the capital planning committee um speaking on behalf of myself this evening um but sharing many of the opinions uh pertaining to the Brooks house that that Mr manard just uh just shared um I'm about to ask a question that's one of those I should know the answer to but I just don't um I really should know the answer to this does anybody know who who controls the property that that building sits on uh and I ask this because there's another item of ambiguity relating to the property that TC Paso sits on that the town went and transferred the building but not apparently the property that's under it or if it was transferred it never actually transferred in the registry of deeds and I'm curious about you know do we know do we know what how that property line lies relative to the the library and that sort of thing today because I I'm just I'm worried that we're going to spend a lot of money on a study that's going to go really deep and there there may be issues relative to property lines that we just we we want to have well in hand before we go and decide that we want to go embark on a on a study that includes the rehab of the building and commercialization and parking and all those things I I do not does anyone I no idea on a Lockwood 91 Main Street so when the Brooks house came up for sale I think was in the town meeting of 2019 we tried to sell 53 Acres right it it became an issue at town meeting because the property had not been divided there was no lock plans there was nothing that was a that was a big issue um in terms of what money is going to cost uh Mr tanini already said that we're going to be doing for the study Mr already said that we have the resources in house that you know this this study is really we have a well accomplished someone here has worked in I think in the city of SAS is our new new land use director so he's going to be doing it it's not an indeep in-depth study is more of putting a report together with possibilities of what he knows and that's what they're looking to bring for um but just yeah the the TCP building is not finalized nothing other than than that initial town meeting vote of the schools passing those buildings back to the town no other action was taken then and nothing has been delated I I just want to State this and I'm stating this again for myself but I am a member of the school committee and I I think it just needs to be stated for the record that if these properties are sitting on school property and the school committee maintains super superintendencies of all of its properties then this needs to be discussed with the school committee and the school committee has not taken this up and I wasn't actually aware of this until tonight so I I just this this is something that really needs to be aired out I think a little bit before town meeting not not to say that I'm opposed to it I I think it's a a pretty good idea and I I think that there are some really good potential opportunities here if if uh this is done correctly thank you yeah and Dave I'll get you in a minute um I I would agree with what you're saying there you know cuz it would be right on the driveway for most of the building so there's a lot of potential issues associated with this and I think the um select board um and the apdc would have to work with the schools to make sure that you know whatever is whatever is done as part of the study and the report um you know all those all those are are taken into account so I agree with you um Dave did you have another comment your hand was up or just was that residual yes no I do have a couple of comments uh there are to my knowledge uh definitive property lnes for the parcel that TCP sits on um on the TP TCP redesign committee that I was on the number of years ago that was one of the things that we identified early on that needed to be done and done formally and recorded the previous administration in town hall pushed back and said it's all Town property we don't need to spend that money and uh Town Council backed up that Administration and here we are again talking about uh honestly I can't tell you for sure how the um the building you're talking about right now fits into that footprint but I do believe that uh that those boundaries do go out to 2A but I cannot guarantee that if you go back to the schematic design that was proposed for TCP with the tear down and rebuild all the property WIS are documented in that report thank you right thank you any final comments on this one uh if if I might uh I'd like to answer a question that the finance committee asked me when we discussed this last which is what is currently stored in the building um effectively it's some uh Surplus Furniture filing cabinets uh Dead Files and the like uh so we will be mothballing it subject to periodic uh visitations that I explained to you so we don't get caught into a surplus property Lin uh the next issue is is uh uh you know it's a bit of a conundrum the land that sits that the building sits on is all currently under the control and supervision of the school department while my understanding is they had declared the Brooks house itself Surplus so uh the important piece here uh is I think paragraph 4 which requires that the select board consult with the school committee and relevant parties on the recommendations uh the recommendation to be contained in the report uh so what this does is it it asks the select board to carry out a study which would be done uh primarily in house uh but includes a requirement for the full and complete uh well I'd like to think it would be full and complete uh conversation uh between the staff the select board and the school committee all right I'm sure there will be a lively debate at town meeting on this one I do think moving in the direction of a decision on Brooks house though is the right move to make financially um article 11 um in article 12 I know you broke them apart um one of the questions I think was asked last night was what is you know the um the financial imput of this they probably direct financial implications but um sure we have a a chart here I'll distribute and speak to so I don't think it's news to Anyone who reads the news who is an employer trying to hire people or who is employed watching positions around them sit vacant the job market has changed dramatically uh also there has been considerable discussion about the satisfaction and morale of our current Town employees so we did have several listening sessions about 40 of our employees participated in that uh and we applied uh some of our experience and I'd like to walk through this uh as briefly as I can but touch upon the the points uh in section a right now you must hire people at the minimum rate unless the town manager goes to the Personnel committee and gets approval for a higher than the starting rate so uh right now we don't have a Personnel committee which means the town manager has cart blanch I don't think that's a great thing and that's quite something for a count manager to say uh the other thing that happens is you may not be aware of it but there's a uh 15-day ratification period so for any person to be employed by the town of lunenberg who is appointed by the town manager but first we would have to go to the Personnel committee they would have to quickly find out what date people can meet they would have to make that 48h hour posting and then that's assuming they're all available ailable in 48 hours uh and then you have to hope there's a quorum on top of that we then have to make sure that there is a select board meeting coming up and we can get that nomination on their agenda for ratification and they can take up to 15 days now I've not seen that happen but that is a possibility what we're trying to do here is uh give the town manager a little bit more flexibility uh while while clipping their wings at the same time this would allow the town manager to consult with the chairman of the Personnel committee so there's still a communication that has to happen the Personnel committee chairman can inform the balance of their board what had happened why it was done and at any point the Personnel committee thinks the wheels are coming off they can come back in and try to get this revised once again right now without a Personnel committee the town manager is cart bludge what this proposes is that if there is no Personnel committee the town manager cannot go above step four so we're trying to uh accelerate the process at the front end while keeping the Personnel committee and I for anybody out there who's interested in volunteering with forms right on the the town website and in the absence of a Personnel committee clip the Town managers Wings a little bit so that's that's the big thing that we're doing there uh the next thing that we heard uh that's from the recruiting side one of the things that we heard from the retention side was that we should create an award program of recognition for our exemplary employees uh this next creates an annual merit award in three categories uh Communications efficiency and then what we call Pinnacle of Excellence uh we solicit nominations from the community at large from department heads from fellow employees from committees such as yourself uh this is done once a year on an fiscal year basis uh and then the town manager May is not required to that's why it says may not shall uh make an award in each one of those three categories if there's not a worthy nominee uh this should not be a popularity contest uh the town manager will have to have enough of a backbone to say sorry I just I got nominations in in categories and I just I'm not seeing it there these people get a certificate that goes into they get handed that uh in one Community um when I was there I I paid for a luncheon the new town manager that followed me now does it at the the town me meeting I guess he doesn't want to pay for the lunch in as much as I was willing to uh but it's still quite an event uh where these three employees are called up on stage uh in front of you know however many participants are at that town meeting given that award given a check for 250 bucks recognized by their peers and it's live on the web page as to who has gotten which award uh every year with photographs and the like uh so that is to address uh retention and respect issues with respect to recruitment uh incentives uh right now uh if someone comes to work for us uh they acrew sick leave over the first 6 months they are not credited with any of that sick leave until they've completed 6 months uh as was spoken to earlier uh imagine u in in our part-time employees would we we got quite a few and we try to keep them under that 20 hours because of uh chapter 32b which defines employees requiring health insurance and pension at 20 hours they really are quite a bit of the lifeblood of our Workforce so what this would allow the town manager to do is to deposit into someone's leave Bank 5 days it's not a lot of time when they first start and that gets clawed back as it is earned but imagine someone single mom coming to work for us 20 hours a week and perhaps they have another job and their child is sick and they need to stay home with them right now we don't give our under 20s and we don't sick leave at all that'll come up in the next article but our 30-hour employee that we're about to hire in one of our our offices they've been here 2 months child is sick their choice is to go without pay for two or three days or to come to work and try to figure out how to take care of their sick child this is a very small incentive that costs us zero I I suppose somebody could work for you for two months and use 5 days and you lose three days uh but this is a very small hiring incentive that we hope will help our Recruitment and show us to be a more Humane employer uh I think the heart of the matter is you got to look at how you acrew and credit vacation and sick that's a completely different issue that you got to deal with over the coming months but this one is geared towards uh the recruitment side of the equation the the next uh piece here uh is on page 25 uh it is paragraph G imagine you have 25 years of service your three Towns over or you've just moved to the area and you get five weeks of vacation with your current employer who happens and you happen to be doing the exact same job we want you to do four municipalities for 25 years now you come to work for us and we tell you you're going to start all over again and you'll get 2 years vacation for six years before you can start in at three there are other communities Southborough is one in which they give you a year foryear credit if you got 25 years over there you got 25 years coming in with them I'm not sure I want to go that far uh but what this would allow the town manager to do is to look at the experience of the person coming in how specific is it to the job you're asking them to do was it done in the municipal sector What relation it had to the municipal sector and to start them on that acral chart further up so we can say yes we understand you have four weeks of vacation we can put you on the schedule at 9 years we're going to give you 3 weeks CU it's capped at 3 weeks can't go any higher but in 2 years you'll be right back at your four weeks isn't the time you're saving and commuting worth that isn't the new job we're offering you worth that we think that this will help us in our recruitment efforts we have a DPW director who had 30 plus years of experience get to start over at the bottom at two weeks now he did it for reasons personal to him but just think if you were interviewing for a job how you might react so we see that on the recruiting side of the house next is paragraph B below under holidays we see this on the retention side of the house if our employees and many of them have second jobs uh are working on a Monday and it's a holiday they don't get paid and they can't in some cases they lose the day completely Counsel on Aging you can't serve that Monday meal twice on Tuesday you simply can't move the day or perhaps they have a job on Tuesdays and Thursdays they can't say Okay Monday's a holiday I'll come in on Tuesday because I need to pay so we are proposing to extend holidays to our part-time employees if they are regularly scheduled to work on that day and only for the hours they are regularly scheduled to work and there's a specific prohibition against trying to move their schedule around for that week so if they worked on Tuesday normally oh we change the schedule on Monday we owe them a holiday no that becomes a management issue if you see a supervisor doing that it's up to management uh to take care of that now on the chart that I've given you uh Nancy oor uh one of our stars on the uh uh team as far as I'm concerned uh went through each employee to tell me how many hours they work and on which days over the course of the year so Tuesdays through the other it rolls and you know you just don't know um Monday holidays we absolutely know and there' be about 180 hours give or take the average pay of our part-time employees is in the neighborhood of $25 $20 in change to 2750 2830 in change we have taken the 177 hours at that $25 and the cost is roughly $4,500 but is it really it it is it's not fresh new money I'm told by the finance director that the budgets are built assuming everybody works there 19 hours for 52 weeks so it's not fresh new money you have to put up front but it would be a reduction in free cash that might roll back that said we think the real cost is frankly in a bit of loss of productivity but they're not getting paid you're going to lose a little free cash we think that the goodwi that is generated with the staff will help address some of the issues that we have with retention uh and be a great signal to our staff that we respect them and uh want to take care of their needs they would not be eligible for the floating holidays that everybody else this is only for the number of hours they work if they are regularly scheduled to work on the holiday the next one is uh what I would call a retention issue it's on page 26 and it is the sickly Bank you do not have a sickly Bank no sometimes you do if someone in an apartment is sick and if the department has yeah I guess we can all chip in and if the town manager says yeah I guess we can do that that's kind of what I refer to as singularism and favoritism and it's a one-off situation and it can make for ill will amongst different employee groups this proposes that the select board no later than June 30th of 2025 in consultation with the Personnel committee and again I'll put a Shameless plugin for anybody that wants to volunteer for it develop a sickle Bank um for the workforce there would have to be discussions with the unions I don't want to go to any Great Lengths on what those discussions might be or what we might recommend to the select board and finally uh we address jury duty which has to be paid to everyone and currently your policy does not address those who work less than 20 hours a week uh I say finally next to finally because the very uh last issue is changing some of the definitions uh to adjust what you call intermittence but they're on a regular schedule they're they're not on call you put them on a fixed schedule 9 hours on this day 10 hours on this day so the definitions need to be adjusted now the last element of this article is 70-30 an amendment to the code of Lunenburg which would allow the town manager with the approval of the select board to enter into employment contracts not to exceed 3 years with department heads and you say well why do you need that well the statute thanks to the lobbying forces of different organizations police Chiefs Fire Chiefs Town managers accountants has a provision for a number of your department heads but without a local bylaw the legislature has not yet carved out Provisions for others so you can give your police chief and your fire chief a contract but under the statutes there's not a provision for your DPW director or for your planner or for your building inspector this has created a sense of differential why me why did they get a contract and why don't I get a contract it all also makes it clear that for 3 years at a time it puts a cap right now you're using sort of an evergreen provision if you will whereby the town manager appoints somebody that appointment is like essentially forever more and the contract just kind of keeps rolling or gets renewed this puts a definitive cap on it puts everyone on equal footing and we think is an important recruitment Tool uh those are the elements of uh this now uh truncated bylaw uh and we can deal with the Amendments uh number two uh after there we've addressed any questions on this one okay so you see the cost as being this 4425 plus the 17550 uh that's if if the second article passes we've we truncated these uh are bifurcated them I should say okay the holidays are in proposed amendments number one that's the um 4500 roughly and that's not new fresh money but I do need to acknowledge that's money that wouldn't necessarily roll now some of the people do if they're if it's a Monday holiday try to figure out how to work a little extra time so it it's hard to do that exactly right uh but that's our best estimate okay and uh that is money that does not roll back to free cash but it is not fresh money to be appropriated as as your budget process has been explained to me okay any questions from the board or the public uh Glenn McLoud 436 reservoir reservoir Road I would like to thank the board of selectman and the interim Town manager for spearheading the effort to make the town of lunberg a better and more attractive employer and of course the finance committee for for taking this under their um advisement I was a Municipal Employee for 29 years and understand the frustrations of having a local government as an employer and I truly do appreciate the the work of Mr tanzini um on behalf of the employees from watching the previous meetings I believe he is getting the appropriate feedback from the employees that that he is listening and he's reacting what I would suggest and I won't get into what you know more the details I have here because I realize you can't change articles it would come more in the the line of a motion at town meeting an amendment but I think where specifically where he got into um a you know we'll use me as an example a 29-year employee of a municipality not not lunenberg I did recently move here to lunenberg about a year ago if you wanted me to bring my expertise here assuming you wanted me and I have my five weeks vacation and you you know which is a much better proposal I do can they're moving they're moving in the right direction and I commend them for that um but it's not enough um the analogy I was was he's clipping wings I see it as clipping a rope and that rope is hanging the town of lunenberg and their hiring potential and this is simply shortening that rope you need to eliminate that rope it's common sense that if I were willing to bring my expertise here and you are willing to to extend the job offer that you would at the minimum match now in your private lives you would probably never lateral to another job typically you want to go to you know better pay better better benefits what have you and that you know that's that's not the case here um you know I just think it's very important and second to that is the pay rate if if they're limited to go to step four I don't know how many steps they have here in lunenberg but if to for me a lateral is a step five or a six or a seven I believe the town manager should have the authority Consulting with the chair of the Personnel Board to come forward and say we're we're going to go to Six for this gentleman or four or or five uh I'm not saying that they have to you know there would still be that check and balance of the the Personnel the chair of the personnel and no I do not want to be the chair of the Personnel committee um what's that you can be a member yeah I could be I've I've spoken before boards before and I became a member of the board so I'm being very careful now I've learned from I have learned from experience although it's very it is very rewarding but so those it's those two points it's just the town I have complete confidence in the town manager to be the expert in that he is that's why we hire Experts of the Departments and those those we should rely on them and if if if they if they can't attract you would I would simply not even apply for a job where they're going to start me at two weeks vacation because that four my four week my five weeks that I had was my Baseline you know you have your personal time you have your sick time um you know so you leave I was I was at Max I very rarely called in six so I was at Max sick time because we can build it up you you transfer you know so that's a concession an employee would make coming here you lose all your sick time that's fine but I think um I I'll just start repeating myself but that's it thank you thank you one this I think this is Rec considered you're going to join the personel yeah yeah I I I think a a really serious reflection question you should reflect on and I would suggest that if you do not support this if you think you should stick with the um abhorent current bylaw uh use that use that in your search for a town manager there's two tiers here you you you apply a certain level there's a employee not assistant plan the um what is the plan sap salary adjustment plan that's sap that you use that to apply to people like me a line worker if I if I come before you as a manager you put on a different hat and you can negotiate and say oh this guy's great we're going to give we're going to give him four weeks we're going to you'll do what you want you come to an agreement you use a different standard for the department heads than you do the line workers and that's a terrible message thank you thank you all right um any other on a lock with 9 And1 Main Street um I spoke about uh these articles at the select board meeting the other night in 2022 the Personnel committee had made recommendations um to improve you know to make lunberg lunenberg a better employee employer and uh one of the recommendation was part-time giving uh paid vacation and seek pay to part-time employees you know I know the recreational director is one that we talk a lot about it but the you know the ego house I think there is like four or five employees there um I it's quite a bit like a lot of our infrastructure of what we count on employees are part-time and and you know there's really no incentive to work in lunenberg being not getting paid uh health insurance not getting paid anything I mean you might get might get better paid down in McDonald's um and you know and at the time I actually watched the town meeting where you know there was an amendment two amendments made that basically gutted the the two the work that the Personnel committee had done and um and I watched the meeting and the justification was well it's not in part with what the other units do but the reality is the unions have a lot more protection and and at the time the person who made the amendment spoke about you know the consequences for the long term and I'll tell you the consequences are the consequences are we have a lot of positions we cannot fulfill we have employees that are not happy with you know us as an employer and we are suffering like as a as a town that relies heavily on part-time employees we we can't afford turnover rate the turnover that we have I mean the Conservation Commission has that the assessor's office has it has two positions now I mean how much are we really you know are we going to be a employer that's worse than McDonald's really it's where we are talking about now so I hope we can push this through and um I was trying to look it up if the finance committee of 2022 had suggested that to be approved but uh the the report is very long it's not loading my phone but uh yeah I hope you all support this uh all the modifications that Mr Terin asked for thank you all right we're in the home stret chair um Amendment two which was discussed last week as well and um uh it was I have uh split it out um hoping to uh isolate the the elements that I thought could perhaps uh support gain the most support and isolate the element that I thought might be the most challenging to talk about the second second proposed amendment would provide Prada um sick leave and vacation for our employees who work less than 20 hours a week uh we have capped it at two weeks of whatever their normal regularly scheduled week is uh so someone who works 19 hours a week would get 38 hours capped the same on the sick Lea uh we believe that uh everyone would utilize 100% of the vacation time that we have calculated and 50% of the secl based upon that that is approximately 700 hours uh which is about $117,000 once again this is not fresh new money but it is a reduction in what might be returned to free cash uh the number is a little bit larger than I'd hoped for quite frankly uh but you will have to weigh out objectively uh whether or not these caps are reasonable or excessive uh and you think that the satisfaction level of our employees um would Merit this loss in productivity any questions and the number that was on here was 17550 17 yeah that's um that's the uh uh basically the 700 hours at 25 bucks an hour right so we're not appropriating that it's just that that's what the indirect costs associated with this if if what I understand to be your budgeting procedure is in fact accurate which is basically everybody takes that 19 hours a week or whatever it is times 52 it's not fresh new money but we do have to acknowledge it is a reduction in what might be turned back out of the operating budget to to free cash right to the comment before we General a lot of free cash this may be one of the mechanisms by which we have his folks may decide that you you know you you don't want a two we cap on sick leave you decide one is a way to get it started but I do think um I understand this may not have gone through the normal really elongated vetting process that some have but I think it's pretty straightforward it's been talked about I understand for several years now uh and I was tasked uh yes U not necessarily to make any major changes but I was also tasked with listening to our employees and trying to make proposals that could improve our Recruitment and Retention I I think there's more work to do educational incentives uh and the like but I think these are a modest first start uh towards letting our employees and our recruited uh potential employees know that we value them we respect them and they need an opportunity to refresh and relax um without having to worry about finances you know can I afford to take a week off of work and and relax with my family go someplace or with my partner or whatever okay any questions on this one all right and again I I second the plug on trying to get the uh Personnel committee um reestablished I know uh there was kind of a mass U resignation on that one um I hope we can get some fresh blood maybe even some blood that was on it before back into it and um take a Fresh Approach to all these issues that have been been raised I think that is a very important probably over looked um uh board in in town um or so um I will leave on on that um we'll have volunteer forms and if nothing else maybe we'll stir up enough energy in the room to get some folks to fill those out okay um I think the next article is you know presentation by Tom bodies um so that would be the uh Municipal design committee and the budget task force um I don't think we need to belabor that uh and then the final two and I will ask um again I think Anita gave um you know the the parks recommendation to that we will that they will seek to pass over this um at this meeting and continue to try to make it a viable project but with that said is there any questions from the um board or the community on I'm going to say with article 14 okay um I will put um Miss Lockwood on on the spot and we talked about this beforehand um she was the citizen petitioner for Marshall Park um former chairman of the Parks Commission um but I would just ask um you to either go over it if you intend to keep it or just tell us some background and what you intend to do given Park's decision thank you sorry if interrupt um my intention is to ask to pass over okay yeah um that that was the goal of that of that articles was to ensure that if the Parks Commission wanted that on the article on on town meeting that if they were to into any issues getting put on the warrant because the final decision is by the select board and I felt like that it should be the Parks Commission so I wanted to make sure it was there so I collected my 100 signatures and I copied the exact wording that they had and I put it there but both made it which I think is great I think it's important to be respectful the work of other boards but at the time I wasn't sure based on some activity on select board but my intention is to ask to pass over okay and certainly lunenberg has gone through a lot of um drama over this past year um both you know in the in the spring where this was intended to be in the first place um and then with the the the town manager resigning interim Town manager New Town manager coming in to what should be an exciting budget season so thank you for um being a good citizen to to try to keep it going and um also aligning with Parks Commission on most certainly thank you uh but are there any questions on that we got Dave yes Dave Passos again um relative to the issue as a whole both articles that are going to be passed over um in the presentations the description of Grants and again I I commend the people that were involved in learning the process and getting these grants approved and there's still one I believe out there outstanding um but the comment of applying for many grants could I get us a specific or a closer number share as to how many grants were actually uh applications were put in for and I have a reason for asking this question that I'll follow up with I I don't have that information well let's ask Anita I think she knows don't have the list between and I mean I think it's at least I think I'm getting the answer so it was the park Grant the land and water conservation fund Grant it was the um Trails Grant Trails Grant which we did not get it was the Ada Ada Grant which we have not heard of yet and and it was the dredging grant for Marshall Pond um/ toown Beach okay the so six okay um I just want to make this comment because the money is sitting there and I and I don't understand some of the responses that I've heard over the past couple of weeks um the excuse me uh when I was still um an active member on the finance committee um going into last year's budget season and ultimately got it approved uh we added a line item in general government for $50,000 for um grant grant writing services well grant writing services in my eyes and during our discussions includes you identify a project that you have and you use that money to hire a consultant who is an expert in that particular type of a project and helps you identify the grants that are available and helps you apply for them in a chronological order that makes sense so that you don't get pushed up against the wall on a deadline or a match that you can't match um I'd just like to leave it at that I I think that money should be used in this fiscal year to move that process forward and help the Parks Commission get to fruition on this project it's a fantastic project more than I ever dreamed when I was on the commission uh but we got to get this funding thing straightened out thank you thank you Dave thank you thank you any other followup or questions um okay then with that I would entertain a motion to close public hearing so moved second all those in favor I I I and I for myself um passes okay so what we will do next is um make recommendations our recommendation on the warrant articles um so for um those that don't remember or those that are new and have not watched in the past we tend to either defer um as a recommendation meaning we will um we will make a recommendation on on um town meeting floor a recommendation to approve a recommendation to not approve um we can have a recommendation for no Financial impact so over the history of our recommendations um sometimes maybe we've only made recommendation if there is a direct Financial impact I think a a lot of what we've talked about throughout this for example the couns all aging revolving fund and the parks department revolving fund don't have a financial impact but I think it is something that in my opinion we should make a recommendation on because it it falls into the financial system so um just as a lead into most of that a prudent investor would be another one that kind of falls into that as well so um I will leave it up to the board as a whole on as to how we want to make our recommendations um and what I would ask is that um Tom you kind of keep score so that Carter can um get it into the warant article sometime around midnight tonight and we'll meet our deadline um or it's really Annie right that we'll do it well yes I mean I got to acknowledge it's really Annie but yes we're trying to get it pushed out okay and it is good for us to have it in what is mailed so um the first one uh amending the fiscal year 25 budget um we don't have final final numbers it was talked about being on the order of 115k so I could either uh CS recommending approval or deferring um I recommend we defer to town meeting we have the final numbers okay second so we have a recommendation for deferral in a second um um let's take a vote on that um all those in favor say I I okay so we're going to recommend defer um 5 to Zer uh the next one is amending the school budget um there's a 31882 um doll uh transfer um so I will take a motion on that recommend we approve need a second second okay we have a uh recommendation and a second for approval uh all those in any comments uh all those in favor say I I all right so that is also passed 0 so we recommend approval 5 z um the third one is late bills uh for 4,180 um we'll entertain a motion on late bills recommend approval second all right we have a recommendation and a for approval in a second uh all those in favor say I I I that also passes 5 to zero so we recommend approval uh the fourth one is Mark Transportation um I will entertain a recommendation for $220,000 amend that we approve second all right any further discussion no all right all those in favor say I I I I all right so we recommend approval 5 to zero on MAR Transportation uh prudent investor is uh number five uh my recommendation is that we do take a position on this one I I think just because we could earn more money or take more risk is a financial thing anyway so it's probably even more than the other things which I do agree on you with the other ones too but I would recommend we approve it second all right we have a recommendation in a second all those in any discussion I'm just going to say I support it but there's no budget number so it's really no direct Financial impact well it it it's it's going to it could earn more money for the fund or take more risk so I think that's the financial impact it's not a budget number per se because budget be that's indirect that's an indirect there's no budget number okay so I I'm going to I think historically we' have taken the position on that I don't think it's written down that that's the the way we need to view things I think that's the president that's been set there usually a budget number if there's not a budget number we usually defer to town meeting but there is no direct Financial impact it doesn't affect the budget like I said I support it I know it's going to make us more money but it's not an actual I think a line item in the budget okay um I think we do a lot of things in Town based on precedent and historical reasons and I think we've got to get out of that um mindset so you you can vote any way you want right you can you can vote you can abstain right we all can um I I would like at maybe in a further discussion how we take these kind of things but I think we should take a stand on this one so we have a recommendation for approval in a second uh all those in favor say I I uh uh I for myself opposed I'll abstain you'll abstain okay so this one is 401 uh approval uh the next one is tax exemptions so I think this one makes us right financially um so I think it's a good practice I would also recommend approval on this um oh yeah this is the one with the U Cola the cola yeah what was this so this is incre this is not the budget is the budget but ultimately we had no right to increase it so this is if uh legally if you you know we couldn't increase it uh as far as the exemption I'm sorry the exemption not the budget 23 people that you've given exemptions to that's that's your cost right um You have two that are going to go off microphone they'll possibly come back on when this changes microphone please thank you my my apologies uh you currently have 23 people on the program that's lost Revenue uh when you make these changes will there be a few more people that are eligible we we don't know so I I cannot quantify the Lost Revenue that you might realize as a result of this we want discussion on it what is is what is everyone's thought on it um just again there's no there's no budget number I I support the article but there's no budget number here all right I'm going to uh make a recommendation that we recommend approval on this um even if there is no direct Financial impact I'll second that all right all those in favor say I I opposed I I'll abstain and you'll abstain okay all right the next one's the water protection district I do not think there's a um any Financial um on this one so I would um recom I would recommend that we take uh no Financial find no Financial impact on this can I have a motion to that effect I'll make that motion yeah second second all right um any discussion all those in favor say I I I I all right uh so uh no Financial impact I have nothing uh next one is Council on Aging revolving fund I think that this is um the proper financial mechanism to do it um probably no Financial impact uh but I would still recommend that we recommend approval what your discussion well it's the same as before there's there's no budget like but I it is correcting something right it's correcting something that's been broken and it's housekeeping yeah it's housekeeping is there a direct Financial impact no I mean even they would it was being done prop it was being done this way anyway even though it wasn't the right thing to do um so I don't think there's a direct I don't think in this case there's a direct Finance impact um but it is fixing a problem so I think it's and but it's not really a financial problem it's more of a problem so change in the process I'm I'm kind of up in the air on this one I recommend no Financial impact do I have a second second um all those in favor of no Financial impact say I I I I okay okay the next one is Parks Department revolving fund um I I think this one actually could have a financial impact if not direct because we could be losing money we're doing things improperly um so my recommendation on this is that we recommend approval on it I second discussion I didn't make a motion do we have discussion sorry I'm strongly believing in that one obviously do you want to make that I'll make a motion that we approve second okay um any discussion I'm I'll just say the same thing I support the article but there's no budget number okay all those in favor say I I opposed I'll abstain yeah um the next one is uh Brooks house um I think there's no direct Financial impacts well um agree at least for now there's no money until action is taken that would be uh no there'd be no monies at this point in time there may be a request for monies at the annual town meeting as set forth in the report title exam survey work that kind of thing but at this point there's no request for monies so all the things that like Peter had mentioned those will all be done in house or if it's if necessary yeah truthfully there's not a great deal the planner will look at uh the zoning bylaws look at the potential for zoning variances carve out some lot based upon potential uses so quick sketch of representation graphic representation what it might look like the the rest of it really is verbiage developed through the process so would this be through the facilities budget I would expect it to be done through the land use Department doesn't Brooks house fall into facilities no but sound planning does and economic development does I don't believe that Chris Ruth is um an expert in our zoning bylaws he's very good in his Lane but I think that when it comes to uh Economic Development potential reuse of properties and Zoning it would land better in the land use Department what does the land use have for a budget we believe that they have the talent in house to do the vast majority of this work yes once he carves out a parcel has a sense of what it might be used for we might need a few hundred dollar to have a landscape architect or an architect or um you know someone do some quick CAD work for graphic representation of the possibilities I believe we can find that within your operating budgets okay all right so I I think it's no Financial impact do we agree and can I have an motion I'll make a motion then say for no for no Financial in do I have a second second second all right um all those in favor say I I I all right five nothing all right what's our general thinking on the next two that there well there is okay so let's take it one by one salary Administration plan number one um we've identified potentially $4,500 4425 may not um go to free cash at the end um so there's not a we're not appropriating a budget but I think there is a financial implication to this um even though even though minor um are we generally in support of this across the the team or do anyone have issues with any of this I I have some issues with it I'm there's no there's no budget on but just in general um there are some issues I have I think it needs to be Ed by the Personnel committee there's there's some work I agree there is work to be done there are changes to be made but the way this is now I would have a hard time supporting it and actually there's no there's real no budget number either we know there's going to be some cost involved but there's no actual budget number yeah I will say we're not the budget committee we're the finance committee um so I will go back to that um and there is financial implications of this so I think we should take a position or defer um I I would say I am in support of the next two articles and I do think that uh the Personnel committee ideally should have done this but I don't think we should wait on um what is pretty low dollars um affecting multiple multiple people in town um when we have as such Staffing shortages so that that's my opinion I don't I don't know what others kind of think of that I would agree it's it's almost like lwh hanging fruit these are things that are what I mean I'm I'm looking at these things and going like this is things that should be should be done uh and for um for no other reason that it's the right thing to do yeah it is there's a there's a there's a financial cost there's a productivity cost in certain areas on both of them but I don't think it's um I think it's the right thing to do I I think uh you know the whole special Merit thing which is I think in the first one is is um you know 750 bucks is is is actually a dollar amount that we would be spending that we wouldn't but I think the morale and the uh and the importance that we place on our on on the people that do work to do the physical work uh to keep this town going uh will be worth a lot more than $750 and U so I I think it's a admirable um move and I I think it was pushed on by our our interim Town manager and I thank him for for doing it I think it's well well needed and and I approve it and I and I would I would make a recommendation we approve it do second all right uh any further discussion all right all those in favor of approval say I I I I opposed uh no no okay so it's approval recommend approval 4 to one um I think the same one the next one falls into the to the same bucket um but are there some subtleties on our thinking on on any of this this one all right I I'll make a recommend I'll make a motion that we recommend approval of of article 12 do I have a second second uh any further discussion um all those in favor say I I I opposed uh no okay so 4 to one um presentations of by Town bodies I would say that that's probably no Financial impact other than the lights being on for an additional half hour on Tuesday night um so can I I'll make a motion that we find no Financial impact on Article 13 second um all those in favor say I I I I all right it passes 5 to zero and then I would recommend that we simply defer um 14 and 15 based on the fact that they are uh recommended to be passed over any objections to that I'll I'll second that recommendation that we defer on both okay um all those in favor of recommending deferral on 14 and 15 say I I I okay all right right thank you we've got through all 15 we now have recommendations um maybe you can make a copy of Tom's he was taking notes um I'll give you want I give you the is that that copy or if you need something signed or I want to thank you guys for joining Anita and everyone thank you thank you uh procedure question if I might Mr chairman yes um in publishing the book I've noticed that generally even though it might be 401 or 4 to1 uh the book generally just puts whether it's recommended approval or disapproval is that would you like me to continue with that practice we tend to put our votes as part of it we will do that yeah I think the select board as well puts their votes as well um I noticed in the copy that it just said approval and to me I assumed that meant that it was unanimous but sometimes it actually showed the vote I think with two exceptions they were all unanimous okay yeah in the past we've always had the the votes in there and and I think that's just let people know is this like you know is it 3 to three or is it 4 to3 or is it you know seven to nothing that that helps that sure I follow whatever local custom you have because every community's can be different um May I quickly review this page with you yeah okay so um in terms of the cost article one I had TBD because we don't know the exact New Growth just yet yep we determined uh 31882 for Article 2 4180 for article 3 20,000 for Article 4 um I have 5 ,000 on article 11 and I'll go back to the source for explanation in a moment and 17,500 on article 12 okay um I'd like to change the word source to explanation if that's agreeable then under one it would be raise and appropriate Andor transfer from available funds number two would be raise and appropriate number three would be to appropriate and transfer from available funds number four would be to appropriate and transfer from available funds number five as an explanation would say it's an potential Improvement in investment yield on the trust funds we we don't know exactly what that is MHM um there's in my view no need for explanation of of six 7 8 and N we can certainly put one in if you'd like on article 10 it's staff time there's no cost on 11 and 12 we would say that budgeted monies currently turned back to free cash may be less or lower or something like that okay the only other thing I noticed was that um article 15 probably should have said $5,200 th000 right it does doesn't cuz that was in the article itself even though it's deferred for completeness that was so we will uh add that amount um under explanation I'm just going to put bonding for the moment yeah and I'm going to make a copy of this and give it to you so if you have any last minute thoughts before midnight an article two is to us quickly wait he had a Jay had a question article I apologize isn't that a grant chapter no it's it's um it's state revenues so that offsets any monies that you uh raise inappropriate it's not a grant it's Direct Cash but we're not raising and appropriating it's coming no you need to raise and appropriate you tax it and then you offset it with this state revenue that you receive on your cherry sheet so instead of saying let's by example let's say that you had a $10 million school budget and 8 million in Chapter 70 now you're going to have a $1,320 school budget and $8 milon 32,000 in Chapter 70 and I'm just using numbers for illustration it it brings up a good point though cuz the whole cherry sheet changes from when we start the process and the reconciliation of that to the budget is is a little I don't know how we do that and maybe that's what is meant by number one and it's with that there's other ways to do it I'm an interim I will leave you with vocal custom you know the cherry sheet comes out depending upon where the governor is in their elected term anywhere in the last 2 weeks of January it's due around January 15 a new governor gets an extra I believe 3 weeks in the Constitution that number you can almost always rely will go up cuz the house wants to do something with it and the Senate wants to do something with it rarely does it go up so much that it impacts your local budget you can deal with that by simply adjusting your overlay your local revenues but doing it all on the recap sheet um I've never found it to be so much more money that you had to sit back and wonder what to do with it I think in my experience that oh Anita is not here anymore so I can't pick on her experience um in my experience there's only been a couple of years in which the final cherry sheet was a little bit less than what the governor proposed and again it was just a little bit less it wasn't a dramatic swing yeah I yeah we just we had a long school debate earlier this year that ultimately led to an override for the schools um and Chapter 70 was definitely part of that discussion and it has gone up a little bit um but again reconciling the books is something that I've never quite understood to be honest with you um and I'm I'm someone that likes things written down and if there's pictures and Graphics um it's even better for me I'm not going to ask you to do it good cuz Cherry sheets don't work that way but I'm hoping the new town manager will be able to show me the flow of money and you have an excellent buy the the way um you have an excellent Finance director as as well I think I think you got one of the rock stars you're very lucky to have gotten anyone in this job market and the municipal level uh but you you you had a great find I'm going to make a copy of this so you can distribute it and if there's any second thoughts um Chris just mark it up and send me a a photo of it okay um so the next item on here was Lea's own reassignments and I I don't want to go in exhaustive on that but um Evan did have the um budget task force which is about to wrap up I think you were second on it but I I I'm assuming you will just become the primary on that for whatever remains on that right assumes that I would be okay yeah um and then we also had the ability to have a second I guess if you were unavailable um I don't know if we want to do that or do you I think the time is short I can do that if you're not able to do it but it's it's ending so only one meeting left all right so I don't know I but they decide to have more then that's fine yeah I don't know the I haven't seen have a couple more meetings um I won't be like I said at uh I am real interested in the budget task force maybe coming and presenting to us um at some point um and having more of a uh ability to ask questions and that sort of thing so maybe if everyone is in agreement with that that that might be something we want to do um prior to budget season um I didn't want to go into an exhaustive leaz on reassignments on that I probably need to figure out what everyone thinks they have at this point um and then Tanya what one of the traditions we have is we we um have certain boards that we have Lea zones with okay um or other committees that we're part of so like I'm part of capital planning committee um does anyone have schools right now is there leas onto the schools right now that was Evan I think right I'll take it SCH you want to take over schools if there's things you're interested in Lea oning with or we'll we'll work over um we won't overwhelm you to begin with if you want to be chair um I am willing to I'm interested in that personel when that comes when that comes up okay when people are on it I saw your uh your volunteer form all right um anything under old business that anyone is particularly interested in nothing we need to talk about tonight what's that nothing we need to talk about tonight I know um okay the um Town manager search hasn't met since last time um I we have um minutes from August 22nd September 12th and September 26th have people read those if so I would like to get them approved yeah I I'd entertain a motion to um approve um August 22nd September 12th and 9:26 minutes can I have a motion on that like motion okay second second okay uh all those in favor say I I I I'm going to abstain abstain I I have to abstain and you abstain too okay but that's fine it's 30 302 and then um Tom can you um just PDF those they're in the folder they're in the our share PDF those and um as clerk do you want to take that okay so PDF I don't know what to do PDF them to town clerk town clerk okay yeah and then just send them and then move them into the approved folder or whatever the other one is there's an in review folder and then an approved folder for our own records and then you send it to um Kathy herck and well there's a town clerk email so it goes to both of them okay I usually just put both of them but you can do that to go to both and Ellen either way right and then just make sure we're kind of up to date on everything on the website if you don't mind yeah I thank you for that um any committee reports that we want to be labor at 9:45 no I I did watch or um yeah Sewer Commission YouTube they uh cuz they're looking for a sewer business manager and they had a prospect and it doesn't like that prospect it's going to work out they didn't they weren't able to do references and the prospect wasn't able to give them additional references and hasn't there been little contact so the changing um Direction and lookss like they're going to try and hire the part-time sewer business manager CU they had several applications for that so they kind of work into doing that and then there was a project they working on it's about 60 something $65,000 and then they ran into an issue with the shut off valves that they need to use to be able to shut off water or Frozen it's going to add an additional 20 or so th000 to the job and I forget which station they mentioned it was they're working on good uh Capital planning did meet twice this week we heard schools on Monday and we heard um the um facilities last last night um if anyone's interested in those they're on online um and Tanya for your um awareness if you're not aware the capital planning committee is a five- member board ultimately what we try to do is rank we come up with a ranking of capital projects and then Town manager uh takes that as input into the budget season ultimately we draw a line um all right any actions for future meetings Okay um important dates on November 2nd if you want to learn more about town finance committees there's an MMA conference at the community center and Sharon um otherwise 11:12 is the special town meeting at 7:00 p.m. I do apologize for not being able to be there but I have to prioritize work um upcoming meetings would be 11:7 if necessary um I will also be away that day too um I don't know if there's anything pressing for us I had it there in case it was anything leading into town meeting that would not be a normal date for us it would be the uh 14th um I I'm basically unavailable in November though just for people's awareness so do we have a pressing need for November or do we want to rest up and get ready for um December and then budget season carbo load or whatever you want to do yeah all right so I will um I guess we'll get back to a regular scheduled meaning the second week in December if everyone is okay with that unless something pops right all right um is there any public comment from the public Mr pesos sorry I promise I won't extend your meeting more than five more minutes Dave Paso again uh registered voter in town of lonberg presently and Jefferson um couple of things I just want to bring up Chris do you know if the edits to the minutes that I sent you before the last meeting got injected into those meeting minutes yep they did okay that's fine I'm good with that done with minutes um two items that uh I was hoping the uh interim Town manager would still be in the meeting but I understand with the lightness of the hour so I will email him probably tomorrow morning but just to remind this committee that number one smart growth needs to be applied for every year just because we lost it last year doesn't mean that we won't get it in a consecutive year uh so that process needs to be followed through with and I don't know what the deadlines are uh for that but all there needs to be is a change in the number of students in our smart growth area or a a little adjustment in the numbers that are calculated in that wacky formula um and we may get it again okay so just just a reminder that smart growth is still on the table uh but we have to apply for it m yeah um lastly um obviously there are have been and maybe still be a number of holes in our standard operating procedures with the town um we're seeing it uh especially in this warrant for revolving funds and um the way we've adjusted uh abatements for uh our veterans and so on that are involved in that group there um at the last Association of finance committee uh meeting in the spring uh Sean Cronin mentioned to everybody at that meeting that DSL has a program that's Department of local Services he's the head of it that they have a program that if the select board votes to invite them into the town they will do a top to bottom inside and out uh audit of procedures and and everything involved with the town operations for free and at the end of the day they come out with recommendations and corrective actions like we're doing now but these were not these were not found by D DLS or our Auditors who audit every year and we pay them to audit our accounts and we've been doing things wrong with revolving accounts for you know decades or more so I I think that it'd be well worth having BLS come in lunenberg while we're in transition and make sure we get everything corrected and start the next fiscal year everything in with everything in order thank you thank you Dave any other public comment from the public any public comment from the committee all right uh with that I'd entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second all those in favor say I I I all right we are adjourned thank you everyone the recording has stopped