all right thank you all right this is uh Chris manard U Vice chairman of the finance committee Evan's going to be a few minutes late so we asked me to start the meeting so I'll call us to order in accordance with the requirements of the open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadcast over the Lunenburg pack and on Facebook live on the public access Facebook Channel page it will be uploaded to lunberg access YouTube channel after the meeting this meeting will be held in person at the um bolada meeting room at Town Hall members of the public are welcome to attend this meeting in person uh note that while the option for remote attendance or participation is being provided as a courtesy to the public the meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast unless otherwise required by law members of the public with particular interest in any specific item the agenda should make plans for inperson versus virtual attendance this agenda list all topics which may be discussed during the meeting and those reasonably anticipated by the chair votes may be taken as a result of these discussions not all items listed May in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by the open meeting law uh let's rise for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for stand stand One Nation un God indivisible with liy and justice for all all right um are there any announcements I don't have any does anyone no no is there any public comment and I don't see any public all right uh Town manager is not online I don't see I don't think um Ezekiel do you have any Finance director reports um earlier this uh afternoon I sent over some sa Elation fund balances um for the request of the last meeting um so stabilization fund this is pre to meting uh these balances so the stabilization fund balance is 2,874 556 the zoning stabilization fund has $239,300 uh $216,950 the op trust fund has a balance of 1,324 38 the health insurance stabilization fund has a balance of $4,620 and the O opioid settlement stabilization fund has a balance of $183 uh 209 $183,200 n um the question came up last meeting um does the interest gained on these funds stay in these accounts and the yes so any interest gain um goes back to the farm okay and those are in our um in our SharePoint if anyone wants to look at those any questions from the committee on those yeah my reason for asking the question was that um if we have a discussion down the road of looking for ways to fund particular items on an annual basis or something to that effect um the state has started pulling interest income from their Reserve fund to fund uh housing and and a number of other initiatives and uh so I was trying to get a handle on what kind of revenues those accounts were actually earning on on say a quarterly basis um I knew there was a sizable amount of money there and just judging from what the arpa funds earned an interest over the short term that uh those were invested waiting to be used um it seems like there is a source of Revenue there that if we needed to and I'm not saying that we should at this point but if we needed to we could go to town meeting specifically I believe appropriate the interest as is done with many accounts uh to be transferred to cover some other expense in the town so that was my reasoning behind it so at some point I'd like to know quarterly or whatever what those accounts are earning and we get that report at least once a year I believe um on all the trust funds and everything so as long as we get it when with that information at the same time that would be great yeah now you bring up a good point I absolutely AB there's like $7 million in those three six funds alone and if they're earning just 5% which is not hard right now that's $350,000 a year correct kind kind of like we've done with the excise tax pulling $50,000 a year into pavement management this year we paused it but we've been doing that for a number of years you know we could potentially do the same thing with the interest income from these accounts um and fund things that we desperately need not things we just want but things that we de desperately need uh my big concern is the fact that supposedly we cannot take on any short-term debt in 2025 because we don't have a revenue source to pay principal and interest on a loan if we were to take it out I think that's a terrible position for this town to be in so uh I'm hoping we're going to be looking at all of these potential sources and I do understand that that would reduce the total amount available when we do go to take a withdrawal from these special accounts to say pay for a fire truck or or or big piece of equipment um but we're going to have have to make some hard decisions over the next year or two to get our finances straightened out including looking at and nobody wants to hear this but including another override which is why I did not support doing a partial Band-Aid fix this year for the schools knowing that there's a very good possibility that we're going to need to do that all over again this year or next for the town side um those are my comments right now Ezekiel were you going to say something related to that oh I was just going to say that I can absolutely uh furnish this uh portly so when I uh produce portly reports for the commit uh for yourself and select board I can add those members in as well okay and there's a bunch of other funds that you know Pages worth of funds I'd be interested in getting those posted um quarterly as well yep not a problem great uh any other comments or questions from the committee all right um and Ezekiel did you have any other reports for tonight nope that was all thank you all right thank you so much tonight I guess yeah at least for 15 minutes good all right um so that brings us to new business um maybe we can go kind of slow in case um Evan when he shows up wanted to talk to anything but uh um the first item was town meeting review so I guess are there any comments related to to town town meeting my take was that there were no real surprises uh throughout the meeting um I know there were a lot of people that were very impatient with getting to article 8 and uh I was actually accused outside of the meeting at the end of filibustering to make it later and later to get to article 8 and to tell you the truth if I had known there was a reason to filibuster I might have but I was not filibustering I was doing my due diligence with the Articles ahead of article 8 just like anybody else should do so um although I was disappointed it went the way it did um I think there was a better way that that could have been handled um and we'll just have to move forward from there from here and um see what the next year brings I was very happy that the the number of people that showed up I mean it was 430 I think Ruth said something in that range um I I that obviously for the override you get a lot more people I was very happy with that I thought most of the discussion was pretty good and you know like anything else uh democracy is messy and uh but uh we got through it and I was surprised it got done as quickly as it did so I was very uh happy that um that that went through and I I do you know the issues with long-term stability of the town is still an issue I I can't tell you um what next year's numbers are going to look like now I know there's a lot of things we don't know but still you know we we don't really have a good long-term you know fiveyear budgets three-year budgets we don't really I don't really see uh see those and and and uh and uh I would I think we really need to really focus on that because while that won't solve all our problems it'll give us things to think about uh in the future so we'll say well you know in two years we'll have extra money because this thing is happening or we'll have less money because that thing's happening so we don't have that at least I don't have that that's it Dean did you have anything or no no the other comment up Jay if you got something go ahead before I've got another no I didn't have any comment okay um the other thing I'd like to make for a comment is there was a lot of back and forth and and I may be as guilty as anybody else about special interest groups um it came up in the water department Water District's conversations and it came up in town meeting conversations about the override and and some other issues um at the end of the day every single one of us is part of a special interest group we may not be the majority special interest group but our special interest is we didn't want the override to pass the folks that voted yes that's a special interest group that wanted it to pass and and that's how a democracy operates so throwing out there special interest groups as being a problem um is a fallacy because we're all part of some special interest group it's just who turns out in the bigger numbers and who makes the better pitch for what they're trying to uh accomplish um I think there was a mixture of all of that in this past uh fiscal season and I hope we spend the next 12 months drilling down real deep and figuring out how this town's going to operate for the next 5 10 15 20 years uh because there needs to be in my opinion some very strong changes to the way we operate and the people we have operating our Town um thank you all right yeah I don't know that I thought there was any surprises at the meeting um pretty much went the way I probably thought it would um I did need to leave to get on a plane to go to uh the UAE right after that meeting so needless to say I had a a long day um but uh yeah I think that was good one thing related to the long-term plan you know certainly an infusion of almost a million dollars into the the overarching budget will help us holistically um we are kicking off Capital planning um in the next couple weeks few weeks um probably the second week in June um trying to get to those you know better 10e plans 5 10e plans uh honestly I think I think we need to do that in a lot of areas uh whether it's the schools for for all their projects um DPW um has a lot of projects ahead of them that they need to get a handle on actually what it costs to keep up with um things um I I felt like the through the budget process there was a lot of well that's what we get and when we're out of money we're out of money and we stop doing things well that's not a plan that's that's um that's reacting so I I you know I we need we need those plans in place for the for the fiscal health over the next 10 years I you know I think we just recently heard that inflation is probably not on the way down so that's going to hurt all of us the the state is not running well either so um the trickle down is is probably not there either but we need to continue to operate and and and keep our town you know the way the citizens citizens plan it to be in the end you know $50 million is still a lot of money um to be spent um all right any any final thoughts on town meeting review um uh Chris one other just real quick comment and you know um emotions and tempers were really high for this one for various re for logical reasons um and I've had this conversation already with the town clerk that going forward there needs to be much better security on the voting system at Town town meeting um openly admitted on Facebook oh yeah my husband handed me his clicker he had to go pick up my daughter I voted for him blatantly stated right on Facebook I mean okay I get it but you know the rules in the law is the law um so the town clerk is and uh Town moderator are very much aware of um what went on uh fortunately there were no votes that were close enough that would have appreciably been affected by the amount that it's believed the abuse uh entailed um but there's going to be it's going to be done a different way going forward well I I think well I I know it was brought up at the um the town um the water district thing he actually mentioned it and said that but I also I think um the moderator mentioned something at least I thought he did about you know you can't give it to anybody else so um I'm always I saw that on Facebook and I'm like well if you took a picture of it why don't you go go say something about to the person but I didn't say anything but it's like if you see something like that you should report it or you should say something to the person because you know why not right yeah but but yeah it's it's like anything else it's if you got 400 people in a building you know we can't monitor every single person but people should be trusted to do the right thing thing you got to be aware of is uh one thing that I hadn't really put much thought into until this came up um those clickers are assigned by number to a taxpayer's name MH there's no autonomy anymore as to who votes what there's record of every single vote who voted and which way they voted I don't know how long the uh file was maintained or accessible by whom but there is no more autonomy left um the way we're doing our votes in town meeting that's a that's a that's a good question I don't know if those records are maintained at all um they are at least for the short term because it they shouldn't be tied together I guess is my point point but they are at least temporarily well yeah they they give you they you get your clicker after you get approved as a a thing and then they write the number down so that clicker and you are tied together for that one thing whether they do anything with the data that's I don't know um in the old way where you had the cards I mean everybody knew what you voted for because you know yes had you held up and your neighbor who sitting next to you knows how you vote they don't know how you voted now with the clickers but they could find out somehow I don't know so that's a good question I don't I that's a technology has brought convenience because it is a big convenient thing to have that because it saves lots of time and lots of multiplication um and adding and things but uh it's just uh it'd be nice to know so maybe we can ask that of the uh Tom man manager how what the data is I think it's going to have to go to the town clerk but what town clerk oh somebody Whoever has that data but I'd like to know that' be okay uh next item on the agenda is Town ballot review not 100% sure what that means but that the election the election yeah yeah the election happened a lot of unopposed people were voted in you haven't seen the complete listing yet I I was somebody sent me page one of it the official numbers I haven't seen page two yet official but it's irrelevant really at this point but um there was one that said failure to elect but there was like a 100 people that were written in I don't understand how that's failure to elect cuz if you have three votes and no one else has three V I saw that actually tonight for the first time and that that doesn't make any sense yeah there's no minimum there's no minimum vote count if there's nobody listed on the ballot there's no minimum count you're correct because they changed that a few years ago so that if there was I don't quote me there there's something in there if there is a name on the ballot but then there's a writing candidate then there are policies as to how there's some policies in there but uh it'd have we'd have to review the policy they put it in place a few years ago when somebody got elected with h very few votes but you're correct I don't understand that either who the writings were I haven't seen it um I haven't either I just they just show to WR in with a number they didn't say who actually the writing actually was right I I saw a draft where they had names on it but I didn't see the final one all right so maybe that's forthcoming I'm sure going through thousands of votes and tallying names is not fun or easy on my phone that's what all right anything else on Talon ballot review the only other comment I'd make is that you know I I think somebody actually posted a day or so ago the the information and results of the uh no vote in 2017 16 17 whenever that was no I'm sorry the previous attempt I don't remember what year it was but there were 3,000 voters that showed up at the polls for that what did we what was this time I don't remember yeah what was it for, 1400 it yeah it was a four I think it was a $4 million override then the one that got was and and that's that's what I think the apathy came from here in this one was that it was such a small amount that you know people didn't get all fired up about it and I remember the the last attempt I mean we put together a spreadsheet that showed the increased cost for that override over a 5-year period with a 2 and a half% multiplier and it was in the thousands of dollars on the average tax bill so you know everybody and his brother came out it was a beautiful day there there were seniors with Walkers everybody you know disabilities everybody came out for that and and I think this this time around apathetic attitude and bad weather yeah there's a lot of apathy in T I think uncontested races lead to that as well I mean yep okay it's pretty much 50/50 yeah it was pretty close yeah so I guess we have to I don't know what the plan will be whether they're going to all seek to have a special town meeting or just do it at the November meeting to allocate that budget to the schools yeah I don't know that's supposed to be I guess I can wait I don't know why it couldn't wait but yeah um I don't know I thought I saw something oh maybe was just our agenda to talk about it but it seems to me the select board's going to bring be have some discussion no uh school committee I think's going to have some discussion about that in the near future okay you also got to remember too that if they don't renig on their promise there's a couple hundred, in Opera fund that should be up for grabs again yeah and I have no reason to believe that they would yeah no I I don't either just saying that it hasn't been officially voted yet for this by the school committee yeah I thought I thought it was vot they voted before the meeting before when before town meeting that they would return the funds if if the override passed okay so that was a definitive this is what's going to happen vote it was it doesn't mean they can't reverse it okay you test yeah my apologies for being late it's all right um did you have anything we have already talked about town meeting review Town ballot review did you have anything you wanted to add to those uh no probably not that's already been I'm sure it's already been said had nauseum okay do you have any insight on the U commissioners of trust funds being listed as failure to when there were 131 votes cast for others no okay just no idea if you had any idea I mean I'm assuming others had names next to them y the people I wrote in had their names so I didn't write anybody for the trust fund though yeah I assume the process would be that they have to Conta the people who had the most right in votes first to see if they want to accept it so maybe they just haven't reached out and heard from those people yet yeah okay um do you want me to continue or do you want to take over it's entirely up to you what do you want to do you're handing out test get practice let him get in practice exactly I don't need practice it's on here I think uh number number nine is for reorganization uh no if you want I just printed out agendas and ezekiel's um oh we went over that too I figured but I printed it out and then I also printed out um some stuff from theate okay for where they're at with the budget and I went through our minutes so we just so everyone has something to go for later there's 11 I know I move we approve all 11 minutes that are pending and it took me two hours at work to get all that done at least I was being paid for it all right um let's see override update we're on um I don't know if there's anything else anyone wants to say on that so the only update that I have is that there was an error in the presentation given by the school committee during the meeting of course that stated that at the very end that the process would require if the override passed and the ballot question passed that a special town meeting would have to be called to appropriate the funds that part is incorrect because the article and the ballot both included raise and appropriate it was already appropriated there's nothing to appropriate it's already balanced okay so I've already spoken with Town manager I asked her to speak with Town Council she was confident that there was no reason to okay well that's good so in effect the passage of the override was a blank check dollar amount to the school committee to allocate anywhere within their budget it always is which it always is I just wanted to State yes because it is a single line item that comes into the Omnibus budget I checked that as well that it's just they're going to get 948 136 and they can do whatever they want with it which I believe they went over last night in their um meeting if I'm not mistaken okay well that's good so it may come up that it was stated we have to have a special town meeting we do not have to have a special town meeting we were actually discussing that as you came in excellent we don't need one all right all right summer planning uh number one what was your intent on this U just topics we this is just going back through all of my notes that I've taken over the past few months of future topics that we've shelved and clearly we're not going to get through eight different ones probably but I wanted to at least kind of gauge the committee's preferences for where we want to kind of exert most most of our energy for the top two the top three the top four um so I have this is just the order that I have them they're in no particular order whatsoever so I'm happy to just kind of walk through them individually and see where people land on them okay do you want to take it sure um so we usually do a policy and procedure review at one point at some point during the summer um I don't believe we did it last year if I'm not mistaken so we are probably overdue for it yeah um just one on that that I think is we hear a lot of the informal policy is to I think if we have a policy then us and the select board should kind of state that as a policy that rather than these rules of thumb that may or may not make sense anymore um like the pavement management plan I don't know if it makes sense to go to a million dollars on that um I know that there's a they went through and they they looked at the comprehensive plan and I think there's dollar values associated with that so we should be able to take that plan lay it out over 10 years escalate based on anticipated inflation and determine whether we need to get to a million doll here on that or if we need to get to $700,000 or where we are is fine um but irrespective of that I think the policy should be written down if it is stated as a policy because otherwise it's just kind of like a rule of thumb or something over the years there's been a lot of talk of uh reviewing our borrowing policy which we never did a deep dive into even I'm going to say two chairs ago I remember it being done previous to me being on the finance committee um and it was a complete review of our borrowing policy that was recommended to the board of Selectmen and then they approved it um I think that's really something that's overdue you know we keep going back to the numbers that we have in place presently but we've never taken a good close look as to whether those numbers are realistic or not yeah I I agree with that Stephen and and I I know that that was put together when Karen was on the uh finance committee so she's been on parks for like seven years so it's at least 7 years ago that she was um that they had looked at that I mean that may be a natural byproduct also of the budget committee that may be something that Comm the task force should look at yeah um and maybe if it comes from us to to just reiterate that it hasn't been done in seven years and it really needs to have a good look taken at it as one of our suggestions as a topic to be reviewed I mean I think it would fall right into their purview if if they're dis if they're discussing where our budget is going to go and what we're going to be able to afford we're going to need to know what we can Finance yep yeah and how we going to how we're going to finance that with what money honestly I get the feel that it's going to be a while before this so-called committee or whatever it's going to be actually get seated because I sent some push back already in the select board conversations Tuesday night well if they don't set one up I think we should set it up and I think that it's necessary by the end of the year because we got to go into next budget season with this this behind us so in talking with select person empy um the only difference between the finance committee and her view of the budget task force is just the people sitting on it meaning that it would Encompass people from the different departments in the town which I think is fantastic but if it doesn't materialize it's the same group effectively we would just have to reach out to the different department heads and bring them in instead of having them actually Seated on a committee yeah or task force so I agree I think regardless of whether or not they do or do not have a task force formed I think we may want to give them a date by because it's it's a lot of work I don't want to start it in August um whose borrowing policy is it is it the is it the towns written by the select board selectman's policy okay yeah I think the finance committee created it and then the select board um adopted it adopted it and put it into okay all right I can send a fer out to Mr Jeff and just see if he if that's we just tell him Our intention not ask for permission yeah I mean one of the big elephants in the room obviously is the is the um the building committee so I don't know if there's any talk of them them meeting I asked our chairman uh for that committee and uh um there was a meeting plan but we didn't have it so um I'm not I'm still kind of I mean there's I there's a lot of stuff going on outside of that so I I'm you know I haven't had a discussion with anybody on the committee about it and then before you arrived we talked that um Capital planning committee is going to start meeting in June to start looking at that 5 10e plan in much more detailed oh excellent um that was promised to be done through the the the winter and spring but obviously there was no appetite for additional yeah can't imagine why I don't know okay so it sounds like policies and procedures should be at least tackled for a little bit if not a large amount um the consolidation of services and departments across the town that is going to be a task um because I believe there is a large amount of push back on both the school side and the municipal side as well yeah which is normal that is the way of the world um but I think our job is to if they are right that this it's not a good thing to do then let's review it and and discuss it and if they're right then they're right but if they're not and it's more of a thief thing or you know I don't want to rock the boat or you know I don't want to rely on them kind of thing then uh I think if it can save the town money and you know provide better service to the people of the town I I think we we need to look at it I I agree and I thought we had a promise from the school committee to look at it at least and I would have no problem recommend zeroing budgets out and giving it to the school if that was the only course of action to to make it happen except we don't have that Authority unless we get to until we get the town floor which we could do yeah you hold to line items and yeah recommended transfer but I mean we got to work we got to work on this together I agree um this isn't going to get done if it's just the finance committee waving their arms and saying Hey listen to us you guys should do this this makes fiscal this is fiscally responsible um so at some point we would need to have the cooperation of other entities within the town itself um especially when it comes to just trying to gather general information for the logistical portions of it and whether or not it makes sense in that regard yep so I mean I'm happy to pull together meetings with you know the DPW director and with the facilities directors across the town it just again it's it's sort of where does it fall on our list of important priorities for the summer we only have a few months before we're going to be right back into this again for special town meeting so I think a lot of what I'm thinking in related to Capital planning is that I I'd like to see plans put in place um the DPW as an example I want a tree management plan I want a pavement management plan I want a sewer in in storm water management plan put in front of us that is backed with data and what it really takes to make this thing operational in 5 years or whatever it is and then sustainable for for 10 or 15 years and it just can't be that well we historically get this amount of money and when we run out of money we we stop doing something right um you know our our septic lines need to be looked at um we had potentially um a telephone pole put through a septic line out in front of my on on paage Street apparently um and or roots coming up through it so there's a a breach in that line um after a year of saying that they were fine um it's just it's we need to we need to get on top of this stuff cuz it's going to it's going to hit us pretty hard if we don't we have a lot of Aging infrastructure and and um we need to fund it appropriately I I think if we approach the consolidation uh issue for now from the direction of trying to pull all the parties that you mentioned previously together and see what we get for their input because if all we're going to get is excuses as to why we can't do it then I say we pull the plug on it we sit and we rethink how we're going to approach it from a different angle which I believe should be spend some time reaching out to other cities and towns or towns basically uh and get the data that we need to prove one way or the other that it might make sense or it doesn't make sense once you have that then you have a basis to push forward with I'm not going to accept leaving something alone because I get pushed back right in no way I agree I agree but if you got to prove to me that it's it doesn't make sense to do yeah I mean I think that that's our charge as the finance committee is that we recommend how this town should be funded to operate most effectively and if we're going to just keep trying to get override and exempt borrowing after override and exemp borrowing I we're not doing our we're not doing our job I think yeah I agree I think we when we just asked the town to cough up another million dollars of their tax money of their money to shell a way to potentially save money I think would be irresponsible from us that's again I agree that's that's one of our tasks in my opinion is to find ways that we can make the most squeeze kind of every bit of work out of every penny right I I think we we would need the support or of the Town manager and of the school committee um and then uh at the very minimum to to do this if if they're against it then the people that report to them will be very hard to deal with so we need to get them to be supportive of it not again not that we're trying to do anything other than research and then make recommendations we don't have any authority to do anything other than make recommendations well we can put articles forward we can go to we can go to town meeting with eight articles and we can turn this town upside down right well yeah but then has to get approved it's a Rec our article is a recommendation so we could put we could put a an article up but it's not a recommendation it's an article put to the town's people right but it can get voted down as well V either way but we don't have the authority to act physically do it we no we don't have executive power to implement it right so to me it's that's one of our jobs is to and it might be that it's not going to save us a penny but we're going to provide way better service if we do these things that's that's also something that could be okay to do more with the same amount or to do more with less is even better but you know there's I don't know what the outcome will be but I it definitely sounds like there's things that we need to look at and to discuss and to and to uh to make uh to make recommendations I would hope both the school committee and the select board seek efficiency of government and that's what this is all about yeah and I would like if someone wants to counter that I would love to have a debate as to their opinion I for me the only absolute no is if there is some legal reason why we couldn't do it which I there's none that I know of because there are plenty of other towns in the Commonwealth that do this already so unless there's some reason why legally we can't mix the two together you've got to have a really good reason I think and even if it requires a charter adjustment we do the charter adjustment yep uh I I will tell you that I am toying with a legal article on town meeting 4 to bring a review up before the 10 years oh me too we could have two very good the Dave pasos and the Evan Waters get I'm sure they will starting to get like the legislature in Boston you know oh yeah that's a good idea let's all put our names on exactly I prefer just because it's hard doesn't mean you shouldn't do it and it might and this might not be something you can do in a year it might take three four years to to make all the changes that you want to make but that's okay you got to start at the beginning and the first thing is to to investigate I I can't imagine that's that's something that anybody would really have an issue with other than it's a waste of time but I I I just don't see that so from what I'm hearing from the committee is it say so I'm going to just do letter grades a b and c a being kind of a must do B being a we could we should do it and see being a well we might do it maybe next year yeah um I'm gathering that the consolidation of services and departments should probably be an a mhm yeah okay Jay any thoughts from that one you have more experience I'm open to looking at it but it's um I need to know what exactly what we're looking at right yeah right now it's a very ambiguous suggestion yeah yeah just just do it it doesn't make there's no plan there okay all right we had spoken before um about having a Maya health insurance representative present to us I believe it was Mr pasos that expressed how they're pretty Antiquated in their offerings um where they don't even offer a high deductible plan um to save some money that way I don't know what could be changed with it yeah and unfortunately the bulk of it's tied up in collective bargaining right um I I would put that as a c priority with everything we've you know identified that we want to get into yeah I think it would be great if something could be done with that but um you know I don't mind the presentation if there's something that they can come forward and say Here's options for the town to consider I mean I heard High deductible when I got in and turn out it's actually a pretty good pretty good plan it has a health savings account that is invested through Fidelity and um it's not it's not a bad plan to be honest with you so so they do have a high deductible plan I don't know but that's the point is we don't know and health insurance is going through the roof or or or not on an annual basis and it's one of the highest unknowns we have year to year I think if there's a presentation to be had I don't think it hurts us to get a presentation I know that it the policy exists on the school's website where you can look up all the information it's all public record maybe we're doing the best we can I don't know what the high deductible be an addition to the health insurance we already have it'd be another option yeah I think right now we have if I'm not mistaken we have a a PO and an HMO and then I and then usually like for example my work also offers a high deductible one which has the cheapest monthly rate and you just have you know $5,000 for a family deductible that you have to pay out of pocket before you can actually get coverage it's not going to work for everybody no of course not I tried it once and my son broke his arm the second month in so didn't work very well but again they have the health savings accounts which help um okay we can certainly revisit it I don't think it would take much to have someone from Maya come out and just give us a presentation and just say this is we can just ask them questions I I don't know if it all is tied up in collective bargaining I think it's see why that would make a difference yeah I think it's set at Maya itself I'm pretty sure they're the ones that set all the policy rates I don't know if there's much that the collective bargaining can do isn't it separate from Maya are insurance no a high deductible I know Maya has HMO hpo whatever is HMO I thought High deductible was done by a separate company these are all great reasons why we should have someone tell us again the the reason why I think we put it on here was just because it is one of our largest expenses that we have outside of yeah it's a huge expense I mean just in town in general it's millions of dollars um so that's one of the easier ways to start tackling bringing cost down is to go after the bigger ones you get more bank for your buck but I'll keep it as a c for now and depending upon how the summer goes I'll at least reach out to our Maya rep and see what is Maya isn't that mass inter Scholastic Athletic Association no this is the other one this is Mia a insurance something Massachusetts Insurance om m i i a something Association they're they're our insurance carrier Associated Association miss lemie you had an answer I didn't see yeah Massachusetts interlocal Insurance Association and it is linked to collective bargaining or units because any changes to Insurance have to go through the Public Employee committee and there's a representative from each of the unions on that committee and it has to get voted by each of the unions to make any changes what happens if one of the groups votes no it's um a weighted by each union membership okay so majority rules essentially yes yeah it's it's an electoral col system to offer a plan CH plan changes yep there's an agreement public employee agreement in place every few years that establishes the offered plans the coaches don't determine this one no yes the the there is an error on the nonunion oh the sa people yeah do they get a vote at all M mu the non-union employees I know there's uh retirees a retiree representative and look at that composition I don't think we need to solve it now though right I mean could I think it's worthy of a discussion if it if we can get a presentation on it okay and maybe it leads nowhere based on that presentation but yeah maybe that at least we're informed okay did you get one of these yeah okay ended two you have two of them Dave oh anybody missing one uh oh I I was pretty sure I did the correlating perfectly but probably not um okay so next is a discussion with the town manager on dead exclusion projects um this one was I honestly could not remember where we came up with this one but it was in my notes so I just added it to it um if anything I would think this is more a question for the municipal building design committee or the school committee or or any somebody like that I don't know I think if you look at the entire Capital plan and include the this the building redesigns in that entire Capital plan then we need to figure out how we're going to fund all that whether it's excluded or non-excluded debt or or other um so I I think once we gather some information on that this would be a a natural discussion maybe leading into next budget season I think some of that came from a non-official list of possible excluded requests coming down the pike including the Parks Commission and other entities that you know in general we haven't really heard about yet that are all going to pile on top of each other because nothing's been done in 10 years um I I think that's kind of the where the concern came from to generate that question okay I we could always have the mbdc come before us and talk to us about what's going on I know we have a member there but he hasn't been hasn't been able to have a meeting in six months but at this point apparently they're already decided and they have plans moving forward for $30 million this year for $32 million to um Annex the Ritter building put an Annex on the Ritter building um to work on TCP and to get turkey Hills envelope up and ready to go so they can get transferred over to the town and then leave the school department with about $10 million to build a new school with well we just passed the capital project for the schools to determine what it will take to get their building in order so just the envelope correct no that was that was supposed to be a full assessment comprehensive right okay that was both cuz the first part was Ada Ada and then then they added on the everything else the yeah the the plan is is both the Ritter and this building town hall and that's right the envelope of uh that that's the phase one um and I think the the plan was what is it going to cost you know and all those things and uh um and Ritter was going probably um um TCP was going to be um maintained at least so that it could be used um as a area to put the employees while we're doing the work on these other buildings but it wasn't really clear Beyond that mhm not to be labor it and I'll bring it up in a building committee if they ever meet again and that is that by the time they do this TCP is not going to have enough space to accommodate moving any town offices in there because one by one sections of that building are being cordoned off because the roof is going the esus 4 is appealing um the ship sailed already on that building being used for backup space so uh but I will make that comment at their meeting instead of tying up ours I I I still think temporary office space should be leased buildings around town we got plenty of open space around town to least temporary space on and my personal opinion is the TC paos is beyond repair mhm accidentally drive a bul exper into it a couple dozen times I got to stop making these jokes because if it ever happens I made the last one so Happ it's on me apparently of course I don't know how to drive a bulldozer to save my life but okay I agree though I think it I I think having it kind of work as a natural progression through the capital planning process that's going on over the summer with a 5 and 10 year plan as long as that's incorporated into it I think as long as we're kept up to date with it that's sufficient until mbdc has something kind of finalized or building committee or or whatnot starts putting things together and we actually see something in in writing so I will list that as probably a c as well and it's just kind of if it happens it happens you know one source of frustration for me as we come up with all sorts of plans and then the historical society says nope I'm going to put an 18-month delay on it even though I've known these have been the plans for 3 years I think I think they need to be part of these discussions all along and I think that they they do pose um Financial um you know onto the town so I I'd like to see that group get a little more proactive rather than reactive in the way they address things um do they have a member on mbdc the architect ual preservation design committee y okay yeah apdc does but not historical yeah but the apdc has control of all these buildings not the Historical Society I mean commission the apdc all these buildings you're talking about are within the APD [Applause] district and there's been discussion I haven't I haven't heard where it went but apdc was talking talking about expanding the district down to a I I would go the other way and eliminate the apdc before I did that but no I just threw that out there for information because I did see it as an agenda item I assume that would take a town vote though right y yep okay that's interesting if the apdc does have a member in the municipal building design committee you would think that they would be able to bring that forward ahead of time rather than hold it up well they I it's more than just that though I mean they come in on Capital planning committee things last minute right windows need to be the same as they were you know I it just it should be more collaborative and proactive than reactive you know there cuz it costs the Town Money mhm and delays and increased costs because of delays ET yeah Chris that needs to be a two-way street though and I'm not accusing anybody of not communicating two- ways but you know committees and and boards and and entities know what bylaws we have in place and and what the ABDC is is tasked with by those bylaws so you know my experience is that everybody tries to avoid letting them know that this is is happening and then they get worded and they step in at the last minute because they weren't brought in at the beginning we can agree to disagree on that one but they're also secretive in nature they don't televise their minutes are cryptic their agenda are cryptic another bylaw change coming down the road potentially or or just I mean we could request that we have more video recordings of it there's nothing stopping us or nothing stopping the town from requesting that their meetings are recorded I think that should be a bylaw that every town commission has to record every meeting be interesting to see a legal Challenge on that one well I don't know well you can legally challenge anything you want but secretive committees are pretty bad for Town they're open they're open meetings go sit and listen to them yep 4:00 with agendas that don't spell out the topics that they're talking about well when you create the agenda item then uh I don't think there's an issue it's an interesting idea though all right um chapter 90 briefing from the DPW I'd like to get this one as soon as possible I wanted this one like a month ago yeah why do we have $2 million sitting there no but I think I mean just what's the plan yeah there was a briefing put together for it I would like to see it um maybe I'll see it as part of capital planning as well but um I think chapter 90 does need to be brought into the overarching discussion of funding mhm it's a select board that got that presentation a month ago right yeah yeah yeah it was hard to see on TV oh yeah I agree um so I'd like to see it and just question yeah I just questions do the same presentation or an updated version of the presentation that's easy to do the other question I have in regards to that and and town manager still on she is um our inability for short-term borrowing does that affect our ability to accomplish projects that are reimbursable projects whereas we need to complete them before we get the reimbursement or does it just show as a liability not paid until we get the reimbursement it depends what type of project you're talking about like um we can deficit spend certain accounts okay um and you know those funds come in during that fiscal year okay and if the reimbursement doesn't come within that fiscal year then we have to do something at close out to correct that shortage right okay thank you um I just wanted to add also we have within 90 days after the close of the fiscal year to collect any of of those funds wow so we do have three months a three monthly way from which funds um any any revenues any receipts any anticipated receipts we have to report that to do okay did you get the gist of that because I didn't we can report the um anticipated receipts to do okay okay so I guess that's so in other words we're sitting on a wabil WI a wine item with the liability that's overspent but we reported to do with the anticipation that it will be covered right okay yeah okay so I'll reach out to Mr Bernard and see if we can get that done in the next meeting or two just to get that checked off uh we talked about having the cemetery commission come by to discuss how the process of the sale of cemetery lots works and working within their interest and all of that stuff yeah I'd also like to understand just their what they Envision for operations the financial impacts of that as well as um some of these Capital items that they are seeking to do um and you know alignment of that with uh with with DPW and the town managers goals associated with that any other requests from Cemetery I understand the process but let's go through it and make sure everybody understands it I'm glad you do I do not I'm glad you do okay I'm going to put that as a B for now y we can bump it up if we need to we run out of a so far we've already got two and they're not very small or one's a really small one um so review of the budget process and suggestions for improvement this is a very Broad and ambiguous typle longer meetings yes we have to break our own record I think somehow we need to move up the timetable and and I I know that Chris mentioned this we're always we're always pushed up against the uh the back end yeah and I don't know how we do it but we need to move this whole process forward and I know the first thing you we're going to hear is oh the byw or the charter or something says that it's due by this such and such a date well by that date doesn't do it we need to be a month ahead of that because when never ready at town meeting mhm or before town meeting it's it's like Mr manard said that you know how do these towns cities and towns around us have their annual Town meetings a month earlier than we do and they have all the numbers they need yeah they're making probably more assumptions than we are but they don't seem to have a TR any trouble pulling it together for a town meeting a month ahead of ours well this is this is a great time to refer to this to the to the blue paper that I sent to everyone paper so this is in our drive as well um this is from DLS the the division of labor local services not labor um this is just the cherry sheet estimates for fy2 as it's gone through the state so far so from the governor's plan to the house plan to the uh Senate ways a means proposal and we're just waiting for conference committee before it's finalized why is it blue this is from the state I didn't do it I just cleaned it up cuz it looked like crap there were just spaces everywhere there was things out of yeah I made it was the the dark blue was actually black type so you I fixed that could have fixed the blue um so what it's basically showing up top is that's the revenue expected and I added the house differential and the Senate differential that's just the difference in dollars between what the governor's original proposal was and what the house came up with and what the Senate came up with and it's plus you know basically it's plus $92,000 at this point is what the bottom line comes down to that goes through ugga that goes through Chapter 70 um libraries all that stuff so effectively we're looking at an increase of just under $100,000 so far below that is the receipt it's um or the expenses that are expected and those have actually been a net decrease we've actually incurred an additional $63,000 so far and that's all coming from tuition assessments Charter Schools tuition spending tuition and school choice tuition spending um actually in the vast majority of it is the charter school that's where $63,900 has been reduced from what we will be from what we would have or added on to what we have to pay on the Senate side so what the the net net of it is is that there's a $29,000 difference between what the governor put forward in February if I'm not mistaken maybe March and what the Senate has put forward in the last few weeks and the reason I say that is that I mean the house is even closer at $3,800 the Senate being at $30,000 I I don't think that we have to wait necessarily on our state delegation to get through the whole process which allows us to get to the town meeting quicker because we I know a lot of it is we rely on what the receipts are going to come out as we don't know what they're going to come out with we we we plan our our a lot you know 30% of our not 30% no it is 30% 30% of our of our of our yeah 30% of our actual budget comes from local receipts or um from cherry sheet receipts so to say that we you know we we should be responsible and hold off until we have as clear a picture as possible is reasonable but at the same time we're talking $30,000 difference we could use the governor's number and always make adjustments as need be which we do anyways because it never comes out to the same which I'm sure is what the other towns around us are doing too yeah I think the other thing that would speed up the process is is some sort of budgeting software that the um town and school both use and that we have insight into so that we're not asking for reports we're just able to go in and see the the data as it's it's changing and um you know to run a $30 million school budget off of excel um seems a little risky yeah I mean it's I I'm pretty sure there's software that that would do the is um and I think it would just help everyone to be able to see reports and and look at data quicker than than getting it you know a a day or two before the meeting even then um which often doesn't even happen with the with the schools because there had meetings the day before us so um I do think the school needs to be pulled up in the agenda somehow um I mean it's the it's the largest item minutes often the day before we have our um final votes and it's historically the last meeting we have the last presentation we have yeah I agree we need time is the is the key yeah I I think to have the public hearing a week after or to have public hearings shortly after that close to the to the ACT presentations it's just it's crammed in we don't have time to digest it and if it's our task to digest it and fully understand it and then have an opportunity to make suggestions it just it doesn't happen until we get into April and by then it's too late I do like the idea of a budgeting software I'm sure that it has to exist then that would be another consolidation it would certainly lead to efficiencies I would assume because I'd rather have the superintendent leading the schools not managing Excel sheets mhm I'd rather the finance director you know directing finances rather than managing ccel sheets so and for us if we can just have you know good reports that naturally spit out of things and and able to look into it then I think we're able to do our job even do our homework early in the process so that the meetings themselves go by go by quicker and yeah I work with software all the time that has user levels you've got super users that actually have the ability to change things you've got users that have the ability to look at things and then you've got people below that have the ability to you know email stuff to people and that's about it so it's in Trends I mean I was looking at school Trends but I had to pull that all together by myself and I don't even know if I had it 100% right but um it helps you to look at where where problems are and if you can graph stuff then it's very visual to see where where changes are occurring yeah so it also lends to non- selective data picking carry picking your data which is really easy to do off of a spreadsheet you can make it say whatever you want I know it's still easy to do off of something like this but if you have kind of predetermined reports and and graphs that are decided upon on as kind of a whole that this is how we look at these data then you're working off of the same kind of platform yeah I mean one thing that I saw was that if you looked at inflation over the last 15 years it was just under 2 and a half% on aggregate the problem is is that there were years where it was zero or negative and there's other years where it's 6 or 8% but I think that drives it towards if we can agree that two and a half% happens to magically be the average inflation over the long Halls maybe some of our policies needs to be that if you're in years of near zero inflation you do need to stock away you know some that 2 and a half% so that you can cover the five year 5% years um that kind of gets back to the policies and procedures but I I think lacking the insight into the forecasting as well as as historical aspects of budgeting you can I I think he just make better decisions and we can make better recommendations on things it's just easier to manage with with software that's built right for that Excel spreadsheets are fine but they're they're for taking data out and then playing around with it on your own not to run a $30 million school system in a 45 million $50 million Town it just you would I think you need to do that and then the other part is um I think you're right as far as um there are times when maybe and I I think actually the town did it when we had like no uh increase in the health insurance and they created a uh a fund for it they which was smart thing to do smart thing to do so I think the mindset of the town has been good in some areas like that and I think uh do more of that uh but I think if you don't have the data and the data is hard to get to and the or or it's hard to manipulate and people are spending a lot of time putting data in it it's it's wasted time we need to get and it's hard to share it we're sending emails to each other with attachments it's just doesn't I love a good by the way 2024 I think um even though the the average of the inflation was 2 and half% over that long period I I would be curious to know sort of what the mode is on that one as well what the spread is see looking just at the average is is great but it depends on the variability of the numbers as well what's what's the what's the deviation from the average um well yeah I mean it just means you can't be overspending in years of of low inflation because you got to account for the fact that high inflation is going to come while at the the same time covering yourself for the UN unfunded mandates that are going to continue to come in I'd be curious to know how much that's increased over the same time period yeah because that has to get factored into it as well yeah I I my I'll tell you man my my hat's off to Milton who said I hear your unfunded mandate but we're just not going to Y we're not going to play I think we should be doing that over and over and over again take the penalty yep take the penalty y take take it bring it on finance commit is going to have a lot of Articles special town meeting the the the the thing about two and a half proposition two and a half it has nothing to do with inflation because there to anybody who was alive in 1980 who uh when it was passed two and a half inflation was a dream yeah a magical dream that we wished we could be at so there was it has nothing to do with that it we we did have over from 1980 to now we've had a period some part of that was relatively low inflation the other part was demographics for schools as the the Baby Boomers were leaving school and the baby bus a the people that followed My Generation came in and we had fewer schools so you were closing down schools and saving money that way so you know two and a half has been successful historically for a lot of different reasons and not and um but it's uh inflation has been good but it's also other things but I think um we uh I do think that we need to uh because of this limitation um I think you're right if if we have a lwi inflation period we we need to figure out what to do with that extra money uh or not just spend it and say oh we have this extra money and let's grow let's do something we haven't done before um maybe we're going to need that two years down the road U we we will never know what inflation will be 3 years from now because that's just impossible to know so we we we have to be risk averse and have to have flexibility but again we do need software that brings to mind a question that I never got answered through the uh budget process excuse me and that was is there mechanism for the school department or the town to create a reserve account for the benefit of the school department you're getting ahead of us what's that you're getting ahead that's that's number eight oh okay sorry that's fine go ahead it bring us right it came to mind so I figured i' before went back out of my mind um I mean I won't even get into our discussion about our present Reserve account cuz that's for another day uh as to how that's being handled or not administered or whatever but uh I can't imagine there isn't a mechanism um that allows the school department to have let's just call it a rainy day fund because all we heard about all last year was oh this an anticipated breakdown happen and we don't know how we're going to fix it or you know afford to to do it there should be a contingency for that that's why we have a reserve account on the town side um that's just poor budgeting as far as I'm concerned and and like you said spending every penny that's allocated well I'm not so sure that's the best way to operate I agree that they do need a reserve fund but I I I think that it's diff difficult to budget when you're already running exceptionally lean so where do you pull the money from if you already have if you're already trying if you're already underfunding other portions of your department where else do you want to go lean in I mean the idea from what I understand was that they went and lean by taking away from those exact F those exact lines your maintenance lines your facilities lines those had to those went first so that they could keep teachers it's it's tough when you know 60% or 50% of your I guess it's more like 40% of your of your budget goes just a salary yeah health insurance was the one that kind of was strange just year because on the town side we did have a stabilization account for health insurance but schools seem not to have that so we probably in hindsight should have put money in that stabilization account for both both schools and Municipal and they carry what 60% of the health insurance roughly yeah he's got to qu hand up I guess but yeah maybe we did she'll correct me but that went towards both the overall budget so that wasn't specific to town our school that went towards the overall total of revenues to help balance the budget the stabilization funds from the health and sh stabilization fund okay so when that was created that was under the assumption that that was also going to coover obviously have to cover the school side as well because yes it's just a source of funding to cover the um the Omnibus budget right so it would in a way be unnecessary we'd have a second fund a second health insurance stabilization fund and that would correct that would end up kind of going the opposite direction it was for both town and school right yeah okay to your comment earlier Evan about um you know the high percentage that the school department has of their budget applied to salaries um given a scenario of a business with a $40 million a year overall operating budget in Private Industry you take a percentage of that overall number and you set it aside for facilities maintenance and upgrades and then you cover your salaries that's how PE how companies stay in business they don't have their buildings falling down around them like we do we don't have they don't have their critical Systems Failing in the middle of the winter uh that's a prudent budgeting process to go and add salary positions and let your infrastructure fall down around you is is not prudent in my eyes I worked in Private Industry for 60 years and uh the companies I work for would have been out of business if they uh operated the way the town does I do think the schools acknowledge the fact that they had a lot of building repair needs um that needed to be accounted for going forward and hopefully they get to the point where that can come before Capital planning committee and you know we get a better sense of what it takes to year on-year um maintain and operate outside of capital projects uh but that's again I think to one of our earlier discussions that doesn't address my point though the the budget is already lopsided in in a direction that is not sustainable for a good operation from a financial point of view I mean I would argue that they're not a Private Industry though they're a public entity they are they're they're a municipal entity so while it should still have tenants of that plan and that that foresight and planning I think that it's also reasonable to assume that their their mission is different than the mission of a company the mission of a company is to make money I work for a company their job is to make money that's all their job is at the end of the day they couldn't care less if I'm there or if I'm not the school's task is not to make money the school's task is to educate and I think that kind of to go back even further I think that just drives even more reasoning to look at the consolidation of facilities get it out of the school's hands let them take care of the kids let them take care of them make that their their job and let the facilities Department DPW take care of the buildings yeah I I would agree with that if we get to what we spoke about earlier to the point where we take on this study of consolidation one of the things that I'm going to push for is that a Private Industry educational facility be included in those comparisons as to how they spend their budget okay okay sure it just broadens the comparison yeah and and I understand you know uh it just drives me crazy every time somebody brings up municipal government is different from Private Industry it is in many ways but only because the people in Boston give Municipal governments all these things that they don't have to do the the general public has to do uh put it on an even playing field and and you would have to run a town the way the same way you run a private business I think a town should be run the same way as a businesses run I I see no reason not to run it that way I mean a nonprofit you're not trying to seek profit but that's about as far as I would go as an NGO yeah I mean laws are different the the concepts and the and management and the and the fiscal respon responsibilities are are the same the missions are different um I'll tell you that uh working in the financial industry there's plenty of um that Banks and credit unions and other financial institutions have expenses due to regulations from the federal government state government similar to you know unfunded mandates we don't call it that because we don't get funded by the federal government or anybody um but but um that's many Industries are like that there's a lot of government regulation and things like that that they don't say oh yeah there's a regulation oh by the way uh GM here's $3 billion to implement that GM has to go implement it on their own dollar so it's the same there there's some things that are similar but the problem with our town and many towns is buildings are the last things cuz it can be put off maintenance of buildings can be put off so if you if you're going to save a teacher or redo the U um put money aside for a new roof you're going to save a teacher because that's the most important thing today and that's just how it's always been and that's why you can go around to most towns I bet you and you can look around and look at the buildings and the schools there's tons of deferred maintenance that's just the way it is and you know it's not that I mean not every business doesn't have that if you're if you're a failing business you probably have defer maintenance too because you're putting you're saying I need more salespeople so I can generate more revenue and I'm not going to worry about corporate headquarters being fixed up to look nice cuz I want to I I need the revenue that's so you know it it happens in Private Industry too but I'm going to put that as an a yeah since we just 20 minutes on it yeah all right earmarked Cherry sheep money distribution so this I believe Mr pasos is what you were starting to get to um I from me i' I'd like to see the ability to if it's coming in for a specific if it's earmarked for specific use that it's distributed to that use rather than coming into the town as just a General and saying this is what sits here now um it funds the general fund which then gets distributed as needed so in other words if we'll just keep throwing it out there the Chapter 70 if Chapter 70 comes back and all of a sudden it gets this massive jump in funds it should go to the Chapter 70 Reserve fund or whatever you want to call it mhm um I mean are you willing to take the opposite of that though that if it comes in under that we don't augment the school budget with that's kind of what I was getting at as well I mean the the smart growth money right the smart growth reimbursement would have to come out but if it if we're looking at it from a sense of it goes into this account and it's working in that account then it should come out of that account as well it's worthy of a discussion I guess but to me it's like which pocket are you pulling your money out of I mean I got like five bank accounts and I don't I know why but sometimes I pull from this one and sometimes I pull from that one but I mean it's just counting at some at some level I mean it is accounting I mean it still is going to come into the town and go out of the town in the same way at the end of the day it's it's the same it's it's going to come down to a z amount at the end and you just going to take all the accounts together and funnel them down to a single total number but I think I think it does make sense that if you know other departments are getting additional state or federal funding that comes in that was unexpected and wasn't included in their original budget in the Omnibus lines then why should it go to the general fund if it's already been kind of worked out who's going to get what money all you're doing is just increase you've already got the different bank accounts you're just adding it to that specific bank account it seems to me the net effect of that would be that chapter 70's gone up by like 1% mhm and it's a third of the school's budget so if we go up by 2 and a half% across town we're going to say schools you get 2.2 because Chapter 70 didn't meet their their needs so well Chapter 70 is going to always be at best it'll be held harmless right you're going to get the minimum increase so you can already predict what that's going to be anything unless we get legislators that go off and actually fight for small towns could not agree anymore um and this is a massive problem across the whole state so I don't know how there's not a revolution forming on there's either Chapter 70 funding there's either 2011 or 218 there's discussion as to which number it is districts in the state that are held harmless this year I mean don't we have pitchforks out here mine's already covered in like in pig manure too should light up really quickly well I mean do I mean there there is I've had dis you know I've heard that there is discussion there been a lot of discussions by towns like us having this kind of problem so hopefully that can help but you know the um it appears to me from what I read is that they're really F the state focusing money on on um uh community colleges and things like that um rather than they're not not focusing on towns but that's their bigger Focus so you know I it would be uh advantageous to uh have our Representatives um the governor that we do exist we uh and U and not just us every other town would you know and so maybe they will put more in to that fund and yeah we get held harmless but that number is bigger there's also the to add on another layer of complexity we're in year four of six I believe of the student Opportunity Act so I don't think there's going to be much appetite at the state level for changing anything to Chapter 70 while they're in the middle of doing the the SOA which I disagree with I think if it's if the SOA isn't working as it was intended and Chapter 70 is now hitting negatively hitting every just about you know two three4 of the towns and the and and municipalities and the in the Commonwealth and stop waiting for the the data to come in and make the change but so that's what that was on there for I don't know if anyone has any other thoughts as to that one I'm happy not to or to to lower that one down on the list I'm not going to die on this mole hill I understand what you're saying I just it seems to me there's bigger ones to oh I agree I don't think it's high I don't I would at most I would say it's a b if not a c all right uh last one on here was to actually try to set a date for reorganization on a yearly basis rather than just a whim um and what I what I thought of is um to go a month after the fiscal year starts so that anyone who's changing out in theory would be starting well if it's ideal starting July 1st that gives someone a month to kind of catch up or or whatnot and just to kind of set it for the first meeting or the second Thursday in August each year good according to the website Tom you're up this year and you're the only one up this year which makes no no sense that's another project that's going to have to be done cuz it's three expiring in 26 three expiring in 25 and then just you this year yeah something's wrong so it's three years it's usually three so it should be 2 two three I think that had yeah 22 three yeah we've had people come and go off the board so but they're supposed to be reappointed to the remaining of to complete a remaining number of years yeah we don't seem to do a good job in town of keeping track of which seat is up and I don't know how there's not a ledger somewhere by law of of the seat in software I do know I do know that an Annie's been tasked with going back through all of the appointed committees to get the date straightened out because there are multiple issues across many many boards and commissions committees whatever you want to call them um that the expiration date of terms is is wrong on many of them I think I did look at the finance the minutes from the finance com appointment committee meetings and what's on the website aligned to what was appointed but it seems like they were fed the wrong dates for when some of these were were meant to meant to to be so and that's usually what feeds the error because I've I've sat in appointment hearings with the select board with all the appointments that they do every year and quite often in their motion they don't even have a a a year to expire in the motion because they don't know so is anyone willing to give up their position for this year to join Tom just do it ourselves I mean maybe it's just something you need to fix in a few years but but Tom it seems like you're the one that's right up this year now when I came back in I was reappointed to my seat I believe is that correct or no I don't know I have no idea I don't even think we have I don't think we get minutes from the appointing committee either they're online y there are minutes for it yeah in fact they hold their meeting and approve the minutes as the last action of the meeting yeah oh that's right they do yeah otherwise the the meetings the minutes would never be up there right right um so I mean if that's the case we could just work backwards and figure out who was taking whose position well yeah it seems as though the clerk should be figuring it out but it I mean it seems as though these people were appointed into these roles if I my spot checking was right but it seems like it needs to get on cycle again somehow if Annie was tasked with it though I'm happy to let Annie Work Work It Out initially yeah and I'm not and now that I think about it I'm not sure if she's looking at the finance committee because we're appointed by a by the appointing committee not the select board so I I retract that statement relative to this committee Miss Town manager can you confirm or deny any's plan to look at the finance committee um I actually did it for the Committees that the board the SL board and we found three terms that were needed to be corrected for the the various committees so it's not a multitude it's it was three um and finance committee we can do the same thing it's just it's a matter of going back to where it was um a correct distribution of terms and just sometimes someone resigns midterm and instead of fulfilling that term uh original term it's another three-year term and that's where it gets um sometimes that's I that's what I've seen my guess would be it's the year that Peter went to the school committee because he's the last one I can think of that's left midterm well we were down to five members for how long we had Tom left and but Tom left at the end of the at the end of the fiscal at after right at the end of his three year right so whoever replaced him should have been appointed for three years no cuz he started the same time I did yeah and I'm just ending my first term so get appointed for different terms oh maybe he only got appointed for two years okay one two and three yeah yeah we're not going to figure it out here toight no we're not honestly absolutely not honestly I think it's Jean's wrong because Jay and I were appointed did um in 2023 to 2026 remember they almost forgot about yours you had to do like an an emergency one almost yeah um and I think we were the only two for that 2026 but again that's a bit of speculation on it and but whatever I look forward to hearing what we find yeah the other one that um Dave and I will probably is the um the Capital planning committee is a three-year appointment um and I know like each board seems to just do that every year um we don't because we recognize it as a three-year appointment but um so I don't know I I I kind of feel like school committee and select board may not be doing that one properly who's the yeah and it's it's one thing if if you have you have a representative to cap capit planning that goes to their committee and says I don't want to do it this year then it's their responsibility to fill it for the rest of that three-year term um yeah that that's a funny one in the charter yeah most definitely I mean they I think they were kind of thinking the same way as as planning you know that's why those terms are for so many years that you know it takes you three years just to know what you doing but I don't think Capital planning is that intense yeah okay so are we okay with doing reorgs the first meeting in August yeah we would just have to decide whether or not we're going to go with do we want to do it with a full committee or do we want to do well full at the time with however many members we have or if we want to do well it should be full at that point if well I'm saying full if if we have seven members do we want to have wait for a meeting where we have seven members present or six members or just a quorum or I don't know CU It's tricky to pull seven members for every meeting yeah I guess I guess majority on this board would be five correct be four four yeah just a quorum I guess if the person who is unable to attend assuming this one has doesn't want to be appointed to anything then or stay with what they were appointed for they it's not right super majority is five I standed Quorum is for for us right it's just a majority vote I don't think it's a super majority it's not two3 I mean if we set it for a specific date the first meeting in August then if who who is not able to be here has knows exactly when it's going to be and has time to message yeah members what they're in rather than just saying oh NOP we'll do it the next time or we'll do it and all of a sudden it's November right I'm not put you on the spot but I'm going to put you on the spot you intending to yeah yeah she might want to it's I'm just getting to know what I'm doing I finally know I'm knowing enough to to mess things up first couple of years you just kind of sit back and other people mess things up yep I'll let you know when I get to that point okay um do we need to vote on that I don't know if we need to actually vote on that what that we're going to set that's it's like a policy for us but no it's just put you put in the agenda for that meeting and that we'll I move we set the first meeting in August of each year as our reord meeting second all right any discussion those in favor I I opposed fantastic now there's no now there's no question it's in the minutes could go in our little one rules which will approve by December yes exactly one other topic I I'd like to start thinking through in the summer is just um the um grant writing services Services how we're going to um how that's going to you know play out and um priorities and that sort of thing so okay yeah I should have put other on here my apologies for that that shouldn't just be my list are there any other topics that anyone is just dying to get to in the next 3 months I'd like to have us again with no absolute Authority given us by the charter or any other bylaw or whatever but I I think this committee needs to be extremely diligent over the next 12 months because we have things going on in town that are affecting us financially negatively and I think we need to have an update on all of these things that are happening that are costing the town loss of revenues weight fees uh interest on amounts due so on and so forth I think we should be the ones at least driving the communication of how much is it how much this is costing us so that when it's drilled down to what's causing the problem we know whether it's an a b or c priority [Music] okay if anybody watch a select board meeting Tuesday night they know exactly what I'm talking about I I'm also curious as to how much we've if if we have a total for how much we've spent on Municipal and school buildings for upkeep maintenance over the last decade or so I'd be curious to know where we're throwing most most of our money be it through Capital planning or through budget line transfers or or whatnot you should be able to look at the final of the budgets associated with those items I should be able to I just want someone to do it un unfortunately it's it's all been reactive right but still it just to I'm curious it would be nice to have an idea as to you know oh we've spent the same amount of money on the Ritter as we have on TCP why is TCP 10 times worse yeah I've always I've always wanted to have that actual number on TCP because it was built for what was it $1.2 million something like that with the addition added during construction mhm and if and I don't have any facts to back that this up but if we spent $10 million on that building since it was opened I think that's a lot mhm and that's about 50 or 60 million less than should have been spent to keep that building up and it I agree with your point it's either that or we build buildings for $1 million out of uh Tire paper and and uh paper paper mâché and we tear them down every 5 years or we have a bonfire every 5 years and we build a new one and if we're doing that intentionally okay that's fine with you know but if you're going to spend $30 million to build a building and then not do anything to take care of it 30 years down the road it's ready to tear down and you've got to spend 4 or $50 million to replace it all right any other ones all right moving on to Old business I had none sounds good excellent minutes I have some I've created a document that's the last one so I'm just looking at 2024 I did not go into 2023 because I'm going to start with the ones that we have so far yeah that makes sense um so in the SharePoint drive we have agendas for every meeting in 2024 so far I I checked that one we also have minutes for every meeting from the 1st of of January or from the 11th of January through the 25th of April all of those are available from what I could see going through the minutes not looking at videos or anything just look going through the minutes of everything that's posted we've approved five yet we have posted on the website 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Minutes seven different meetings of which only two have actually been approved interesting so we have some cleanup work to do okay I I don't even want to ask how that happened it doesn't really matter how it Happ I don't know either right no I I mean it's irrelevant we need to fix it correct yeah I mean again I I said this last time I think the folder structure we had where we put them in review and then approved and then posted helps with workflow yeah but again I would go one step further is that Microsoft 365 has workflow tools associated with them and I think when an agenda is established for a meeting it should start a workflow tool for for minutes um and then automatically get posted to the website um I think this emailing of minutes and emailing them to the clerk and everything else is is fairly 1980s in workflow um processing so as a town I think we can do better on this okay is that something we can adopt as a committee or does that have to be adopted by some other portion of this town government I think maybe we could pilot it if Town manager and suar right and the clerk would be amenable to to trying something like that um but uh I I think it would you know there is there is like actually laws associated with these kinds of things so we should be we should be seeking to to make sure we're on top of this stuff M miss mu is that something that we could look into possibly for the finance committee to Pilot I like a oneon-one meeting maybe with Chris and the to clerk Y and okay yep great we can do that in the meantime we have 11 sets of minutes in the 2B approve the minutes in review SharePoint folder um I did read through them all of them quickly today yeah I I was looking for glaring errors now okay that's like 44 hours worth of meetings I know it's a lot of reading um I mean I read through them as well that was just because I was looking for certain things that were in there but that's only two of us at this point okay so one question for you all of these minutes did they come in an email to all of us individually as well as go into this system as far as you know as far as I know I didn't so I know they were all emailed and Danielle's I believe really good at emailing everyone right I but I didn't look to see if everyone was included on every single one I don't think there are any that she's sent that were just to me okay so cuz she made a comment that she didn't have access into SharePoint to load it in there so I'm assuming yeah okay thank you but I'm assuming that up until Chris straightened that out for her they were all coming to us in that direct correct I'm I'm only asking that because when she sends them and they come into my mailbox I make a point to read them right then and there MH because otherwise I'll never get back to them okay so you've read them too and I've had no and I've had no issues with what I've read I I'm the same way if I I when I see them I read them right because if I don't I won't I think the last issue I had and I think we already approved that set was again a transposition of of uh grant writer versus grant writer Services right that's the only question I've had in any of that I've read well technically that means we have four people that have read all the minutes which is a majority so we could technically approve all of these tonight okay so I make a motion that we approve and if the chair would read off the dates I'd appreciate it January 11th February 20th February 22nd February 21st sorry reverse those February 29th March 7th March 14th March 28th April 4th April 11th April 25th all of 2024 submitted as or approved as submitted second disc discussion all right so we have motions made and seconded to approve all 11 minutes that we have to approve all those in favor I I opposed abstentions one abstention okay excellent I will send all of those out tomorrow and we'll finally be up to date at least for 2024 so I'm going to do the same thing for 2023 okay um there may have been 2022 that's going to be the next one we'll get there eventually okay and Danielle has the ability to go back and look at those and I would assume so um I don't see any reason why not but I will I will at least I'll talk with Danielle and make sure the other thing that gets confusing with the new website is sometimes there's a meeting agenda posted and the meeting doesn't happen mhm and I wonder what should happen in that case should there be like minutes posted that say the meeting didn't happen or cancel due to can or something like there should be a some kind of closed loop on that um there were some I think we had a couple cases back in like 23 and 22 where that happened and I think it might have got taken down but it seems that that's not proper either yeah um I haven't paid attention to it recently but when I sign in to get to the calendar and select agenda and so on and so forth when I get to the actual committee I'm looking to look at for uh agendas it always says minutes um you know that's stuff that should have been caught back when these changes were made to the website and I know I've commented about them and other boards have commented about them and they're not getting corrected so I'm I'm hoping we start to see some improvement in again some of the things that we know are wrong with the uh website yeah again to me it seems that if you're setting up workflows for these kind of things then it naturally takes as soon as you make the date with an agenda it starts it starts the FL yeah you you've got a flag that oh this didn't get you're missing this this and this to close it out some for somebody going into that system not knowing that that when it says minutes it's wrong I did it a couple of times a while back I clicked back out and went back in to make sure I I went after the right thing mhm and every single time it says minutes where you open it and it's the agenda I've noticed that before as well yeah yes so it looks like there's one from 22 and four from that's better than 11 three and again I don't know if some of them were can had the meeting or not okay yeah I think we clean that up I when I looked at this okay all right committee reports are there any committee reports to report yeah um not sure if green communities has met since we met probably has um but I don't remember for sure but anyway uh news from the green communities um at the very last minute I was actually on the road trying to understand what was going on but on the Friday before the deadline for application for the grant cycle for April uh the chair and I decided as Vice chair as we had discussed in our previous meeting that if anything went South on the sewer project that we would pull the application and wait till October that did happen we pulled the application uh on advice from Kelly Brown from Green communities for valid reasons um we still need to sort out the details a little bit but we didn't get the savings numbers until a couple of days before the deadline for those pump Replacements and well and behold it turns out that the save savings because they were already driven by vfds which are variable frequency drives and I don't know about the age of the motors but the drives were the important piece uh putting new Motors and putting updated drives did not improve the efficiency enough to show enough savings to really justify going into the process right now because we would have been asking for 50 $55,000 total and not allowed to apply again until next April so we pulled the application um to reassess everything we are meeting the first Monday of next month to uh start the process uh so that we are not pushed up against a deadline again without the data we need to know exactly what we're going for and that brings the uh Mini Splits possibly into the phase two anyway into possibly a very good position to be funded uh fairly well through green communities if the timing and everything works out and it will also help if we have other money available up to the $225,000 total available um the savings from the Mini Splits gives us enough of a savings to justify a couple of smaller projects that are on the fringes that way we maximize our grant ask and we have better return on investment numbers so that's where that stands at this point okay any other reports um yeah for Parks um last time we had a discussion and there was a comment made and maybe was it was made in the meeting and misinterpreted of a new plan associated with Parks there's no new plan I think the comment that was made referred to the you know the preliminary plan versus the current plan of record um so there's no new plan there the other thing is um Parks did work a kind of community project at the the town Beach building um where we ripped up the floor and there's going to be a floating floor put back down um so I you know materials were bought and a dumpster was bought and and that sort of thing but I I think it was a good use of you know Town folks to help um volunteer time to to improve a a building that was there was pretty nasty in there to be honest with you um and uh so it's it's worth mentioning and uh TJ llin was there and that guy works like a he's like did 10 times the work that any of the rest of us could do um so hats off to him on that um and then the other thing I will say is is as we reorganize we probably want someone on storm water committee cuz I think there's going to be Financial impacts associated with um that committee um in one way or another whether it's fees or um how to deal with it so that's probably one we want to have a a Lia on to or someone at least watching and Reporting out on board of assessors as well yep and maybe Cemetery commission I don't know if we have that one or not but okay any other committee reports the only one that I have is the um master plan steering committee met and we workshopped the fourth survey which is live or which will be live um no it is live I can't remember if it's live or not it may be live plan lunenberg .org you can find out if it's live um but there's going to be another public meeting at smok stack next Thursday a week from tonight starting at 6 p.m. where it's going to be uh heavy in the work shopping so there will the the they will have QR codes to take the survey they will have physical copies to take the survey and then they want to work in breakout groups and do a number of projects that night so get a whole bunch of information if anyone's able to attend I would recommend showing up at 6:00 they will have a full menu available they have the kids space so if there's kids that are there um and they do serve alcohol now they have a liquor license so what's not what's not to go can you drink during a committee meeting it's not a committee meeting it's a workshop it's a workshop are you posting an agenda no there's no agenda that still doesn't answer my question can you drink during that committee meeting I mean we'll help with the survey would have made this budget season very interesting yeah um last thing is uh the Council on Aging reached out to me to invite us I believe they mentioned it during the budget um process when they gave their actual presentation that they would love to have the finance committee come by for either breakfast or lunch so they have invited us to attend breakfasts either on a Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. for $2 a piece cuz we can't we have to pay um or Wednesday or Wednesday or excuse me Tuesday or Thursday lunch at noon for $5 a piece um to give us a tour to actually get to see what it is that they do there since it was determined that I don't believe any of us have actually stepped foot in the building recently been in the building I've been oh I can go whenever I want it's true God your old um but I I thought it was really nice of of um Miss Lincoln to reach out so I will plan on taking her up on the offer and stop by I'll probably just do a breakfast because I have to work noon's tough um but she did ask in advance if we could just let them know because they do have to make the meals ahead of time so they get a head count so if you plan on attending just send an email to Miss Deb Lincoln and let her know we have the invitation to go anytime was there a specific week on that or just any Tuesday or Thursday we could do it if we wanted to go as a committee we could try and do it but was post it but I'd kind of like have to post it right um are we going to deliberate on how good the food is exactly what on how good the food is I don't know it's it's up to you guys I'll let you deal with that I mean there are ways around it if we don't talk about anything but they want to talk about it so I think probably be safer that's my concern to do so yeah I would almost rather it not be a quorum so that we could discuss anything we wanted to with any of the people that are there without breaking open meeting I might not make it out Al live that's true at your own risk um no so she didn't have a specific date in mind but I'm planning on going pretty soon okay I'll send an email um one thing that came to mind Evan is sidebars you and I had a couple of conversations about percentages of population I think we should revisit that and and clarify that a little bit I think there's a common sense clarification but I'll talk to you some other time off the line about it happy to um we spent the entire meeting doing topics for future meetings so I'm going to skip that uh we are scheduled for our next meeting on the 13th of June and the 27th of June off hand is anybody not able to make either of those days there's a good chance at least one of those will be remote but okay that's fine okay me excellent so I'll plan to keep them um on the schedule and we can start diving right into our stuff our our break is officially over and we'll start going with the A's right away um important dates shouldn't really be on there anymore that's my mistake for putting keeping it on there uh let's finish up with is there any public comment from the public do we have a public yeah I know who that is I'm not sure if the hand ra uh Town manager has her hand up too I don't know if that's a yes I I um not really a public comment it's just some things I want to Circle back on that I made notes during your meeting sure on different topics L be interrupting um the discussion on the budget task force I think I had a different takeaway from the other night I didn't think there was any resistance to that um it was only brought up lman M to put it on the agenda for this coming Tu or June 4th meeting their next meeting the financial policies that you discussed reviewing I had mentioned previously that I had applied for a community compact Grant and DLS it worked on um putting together Financial policies so those will be forthcoming as far as draft policies and it will be pretty comprehensive Heather is there any input from us or anybody else in the town when they put a report like that together because that's got to be fashioned uh to each individual city or town uh there will be um input at that time they're brought forth so I would assume it would be a discussion by the finance committee and any other relevant committee that may AFF um for instance like there'd be a policy on the overlay um so we would Engage The Board of assessors on that as well but um ultimately um the select board would be the ones to adopt those policies but um I know they would want to engage each of the relevant boards on that you my only concern is that I'm sure that they're going to be creating their document based on so-called best practices whereas the people involved directly here in town the volunteers that create and watch and manage our budget may have some tweaks that they want to suggest before the select board just takes what comes from the state and adopts it that that's my only concern so it is um best practices but it also does take in consideration a review of our Charter and by relevant bylaws as well as um how General practices the the town when would they be ready to present to us is that pretty close to being done you said I would say sometime in June probably between June and July the um mentioned a long-term Financial forecast as you know I was um running solo on putting together the budget this year say so that was put on the back forner this year but it is something that the finance director and I have already started working on and so that will be forthcoming as well so we will be also engaging the school I have mentioned that to them about their long-term for forecast being built into that document when is that one anticipated being completed I have a meeting with Finance director I'm looking at the week after next um to go review that and it will take some time to put some of the data together a lot of it I think um is updated um it will just be working on um the new numbers so is that like September October time frame you think I think sooner than that the one of the long-term plans was mentioned for a bridge in Culvert that was another Community compact Grant I had applied for and received and we had awarded it to a contractor um to do that plan and that plan should be done they already started doing the work for that and that should be done around August I believe in time for the capital planning process excellent storm water I think was mentioned the storm water task force has been looking at a utility so that does obviously have a financial impact and they've been working with the consultant on that and I think eventually they'll be bringing more Outreach information on that Heather if I could interrupt for just a second do you see that as a year or two from Now launch or is it sooner than that I would have to go back to the DPW director and actually slman M ke sits on that committee as well so I can ask her okay thank you and the there was a Asset Management inventory grant that we received and conducted about half of our uh storm water assets of and I spoke with the DPW director this week and we plan on applying for another Grant to Do complete that asset inventory project the tree hazardous plan um I agree that there needs to be a plan for that but I I think there would be an appropriation that would be needed to conduct that and create such a plan um so there would be a need for funding for that unless um at any time I don't know of the grant but there could be some type of grant that would uh fund that I thought we had one recently on that I thought Bill said that there was one what's that for the tree the Hazardous Tre trees my understanding was it's seven years old seven right it's it's an outdated plan Heather if that pushes off to November we could use unappropriated uh free cash for that couldn't we free cash we usually Reserve U so certified free cash gets certified in the fall and we usually Reserve that for the annual a meeting and a big chunk of that goes towards the capital plan but if there were um a change in New Growth that would be another possible source to fund in the fall or um a change in local um cherry sheet numbers that would change our revenues it's another adjustment okay I don't disagree with the the the sources that you just mentioned after um free cash but bottom line we could if the citizens decided that this tree study was a an a priority as we've been talking about this evening uh then it could be funded at town meeting for it's not precluded from being funded through that Source correct thank [Music] you the DPW chapter 90 presentation I did put a copy of that in your SharePoint drive tonight so you can look at what was presented to the select board thank you and um just a question on the agenda is in minutes I think maybe it's um because I opened it up and the minutes show up as like a little green check mark M and the agenda is on the right hand column um that's there essentially there's two different columns one for minutes and one for agendas so if there's no little green check mark that means there's no minutes been that have been filed and uploaded right that's what I went off of when I made my list okay but if you approach it from a different direction and you scroll down below the calendar after you've selected the agendas you want at that point you can open the agenda but it says minutes does that make sense I I understand what you're saying if you bring up the entire page then there are check marks if they if those documents exist but if you go the other way and go under the calendar after you've selected the committee you want to see and you've gone into agendas then it says minutes but you click it and it's the agenda it's a different way going in there and maybe it's not the best way to go in but it's the way I've gone in numerous times especially on my phone okay yeah I would if you want to to so hether just on that topic by law I mean if you go back to like 2016 there's a whole bunch of missing ones um like as a town what do we what do we do with something like that like how far back are you grandfathered or I don't even know how you do official minutes have to be a permanent record with the Town Clerk and so that doesn't mean the official records on the town website but you know going far back as um there were certain committees those records are a permanent record with the town clerk's office yeah but when I've asked the town clerk's office in the past they've said if they're not there they don't have [Music] them yeah we would be in a conversation CU obviously we don't have men it's going back um to the 1980s on for instance on the website but for the ones that were missing from 2016 assuming that they're also missing at the clerk's in the clerk's office is there okay I see what you're saying so the ones for the years that are showing on the website there's saying if they're not there they don't have them right so if I pull down like 2016 they have them for August 25th but September 8th through December 8th there's agendas but no minutes all right I would assume what they're saying is um correct um but again that's a town clerk function they are in charge charge of putting those minutes up in the website okay anything else Mr mu no that was it thank you thank you uh is there any other public comment from the public there's one person with a telephone I see on Zoom that's a familiar number was it star Seven Star nine I think star Nine Star nine if you would like to speak on the phone go right ahead you can actually unmute yours I think now TR star nine seven put your hand up I think do you have the ability to unmute he can ask to unmute I don't know if he can actually unmute there we go there it is you got it all right uh Mr chairman members of the committee uh this is Dave Rogers I wanted to uh give you a a couple of uh uh historical perspectives the uh the um uh um committee uh that would like to to look at all of the various functions and see if there can't be some some uh combinations that that uh uh work together uh I I tried to do this when I was chairman of the finance committee years ago and it was uh uh it was unable to to to uh come to fruition uh and that's when there was only one person at the cemetery and one at the park department and it just wasn't workable but I I now with unions and stuff but I I'm sure you're a heck of a lot uh better uh equipped than me and but I just wanted to pass that to you um as a general uh comment um I think it's a a wise thing every once in a while two or three uh years to to look at the Personnel situation that we have in the town and and to to look at the potentials for reorganization not necessarily in retirement uh and I think that that there are some people in that regard um that that follows two um in terms of of uh depreciation uh that's that's how we used to do it in in uh industry um you know if you if you had buildings and stuff you you allocated a certain amount of money that you knew that you were going to spend per year for for repairs and what have you so I offer that as well um when I was reviewing things for the the override I I was looking at a whole bunch of numbers and stuff and I came across uh uh a spreadsheet that that indicated that the school superintendent um the last two years of her supposed contract uh was was not filled out it was just uh to be uh determined and uh I I I just mentioned that for your own edification because that obviously will have some implications um the other thing that that really concerned me but uh I guess it's a a blessing in disguise is that I I heard that there was approximately $2 million in the uh chapter 90 uh fund and I'm saying to myself why does that make any sense so um I that that's a a topic for discussion later on I think um we keep talking as a town about employee raises and how important they are and obviously that's going to have a a financial impact because I get the sense that there's a bunch of them that are out of sync but uh so that that is going to be something that we'll have to deal with uh I also uh got wind of the fact that that the sewer department is uh facing some some uh Replacements uh for the um uh the pumps and that's not the that's not the the the correct term but the at at each station they have uh uh what's the word I'm groping for here pump stations well no it's the actual pumps themselves the but you know um oh I'm having a senior moment but um they they have to replace a whole bunch of those things and when I talked to Paula uh about uh that situation um she indicated that there was um you know a cost of uh maybe in the uh $100,000 Ranch I I just mentioned these because these are things that that uh uh are lurking and um you know they all have a financial impact and uh so I I thought it was worthy of a of a discussion that's not tonight by the way but I I just wanted to share with you Mr Rogers just a quick comment Dave pasos uh following the uh sewer Department's um issues as you just brought up uh the entire system is aging it doesn't seem like it it to me it feels like most of it was put in yesterday but it's been in there for quite a while and um as per us usual there has been no periodic checking of these and and I can't remember the name of it but it's basically a a big septic tank where all the the affluent is gathered and then the pumps transfer it and pump it up the lines uh they're starting to see failures in components of those uh vessels uh and they don't even know how much of a problem they have uh they are in the process of reviewing and pumping down each of these vessels to see what condition they're in because they had a failure at Mass one and one other station that forced them to shut the system down for a day or so to do an emergency repair so you are correct the system is aging it has not been kept up uh and they still don't have a full handle on it yet and and I want you to make sure that you understand I'm I'm not throwing stones at these people it's a situation that we have looking as the town of resp responsibility for the town uh that you know uh at some point in time it'll probably raise its ugly head uh so it's it's some and it's not you know short dollars it's big dollars so anyway you you get the point and uh um you know I I it's a lot of stuff's coming down the the road is I I guess the bottom line of this as you brought up though that you know we we do things we install systems but we don't have a maintenance plan in place once we put things online and and that's the key to keeping up with this yep my my last comment uh sent us around uh free cash um and it just seems to me that every year um there there is uh some residual dollars that are left over uh and it is my understanding that it goes into free cash for reallocation uh uh uh in the various uh processes that you you folks go through and the and the town manages so um if that's the case then um it might be that the uh uh the budgets that we uh will be preparing as a as a community uh will have to be ratcheted down um and we won't have uh that uh leverage uh with the free cash but that's just the off the C comment I mean you guys in the town manager I think do a fine job doing all of this and I don't know how the hell you do it but anyway that's what I wanted to say and thank you for the opportunity to discuss it with you thank you Dave thank you Mr rers is there any public comment from the committee to expand on what Mr Rogers just said in his last comment um and and I'll just mention it very very briefly and then we'll we can discuss it at another time um 5 years ago when I was at uh the MMA conference in Boston I sat with two or three different Finance committees over the weekend that weekend and one of them in particular now they were a strong finance committee they they create the budget they set the budget and they monitor the budget but in their town uh in their budget process an automatic policy is that they yearly take 10% of free cash and build it into the next G's budget because that was raised in appropriate money in that year that it's coming out of so they put 10% of that back into the budget as as money to have to expend during the next fiscal year I just bring that out and maybe we can kick that around again in the future thank you well I missed my public comment in the beginning so I'll make mine really quickly um we had an override that passed I know it didn't make everybody happy I know it made some people happy I just wanted to say thank you to the um school committee the uh SOS action group that was formed um the town for coming out and voting those that did um and the students for advocating for keeping some of the programs within the schools that they wanted um that said there's a large section of the town that is not happy with the override being passed and I think that while we addressed the imminent needs of the students in the in the schools that was to the detriment of uh those on low and fixed incomes in town and I I want to ensure that we do not forget about them as well in the process so while we maintained we we triaged the the situation for the kids I think it's also necessary to go after um tax abatements or tax incentive programs or other ways to save money for either lowincome or fixed income seniors um in the in the district so for that I it's going to take a community effort between the board of assessors the Council on Aging the select board division of local Services um State reps can always go after them again um but while we want to have excellent schools in town we certainly do not want to force out people in the in the same at the same time so I think it was made an effort was made this past spring to go after additional money for the schools I think we need to now take switch focus and make sure that we are trying to keep as many of the rest of the the community in town as possible as well so I'm I'm hopeful that we can start working on other plans um within the confines of Mass General law to to save some of our our are less fortunate I guess or just even just ones those who are have lived here for a long time and don't have the the means to to stay with increased taxes that was all Mr chair is one of the subjects during those deliberations in the future I'd like to have a conversation about local income tax sure I'm happy to look at it from all angles at present that's outside of Mass General law but it doesn't have to be okay yeah I'm happy to look at it from all angles so uh with that oh also and thank you to the committee to thank you guys too thank you for all the hard work um I know it was a lot of contentious topic and discussion and whatnot but um it was it was still a very good um budget season I think and I think we did get through a lot of stuff so thank you as well um with that way later than I was open for I would happily entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second discussion none those in favor I I opposed we are adjourned at 9:35 thank you everyone