tonight is June 24th uh at 7:01 p.m. uh I will call the meeting of the mayard town finance to order uh and as a preliminary matter this is Jillian past I am currently the chair of the finance committee please permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me Members when I call your name please respond in the affirmative Linda yes Peter yep Katie yes Nathan I saw you say yes but you're on mute yes okay awesome uh great thank you um so volunteer to take notes um I think you did Linda last time so I I can this time thank you thank you appreciate it um so good evening this is a open meeting of the mayard finance committee it is being conducted via Zoom speakers on the agenda will be participating remotely and the chair may allow for the public to provide comment um please note that while an option for remote meeting attendance and or participation is being provided as a courtesy to the public this meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast to individual attendees unless otherwise required by law accordingly Please be aware that other folks may be able to see you so please take care not to screen share your computer or to share anything with your camera uh anything that you broadcast will be captured by the meeting recording this meeting is being recorded and will later be posted to the wavm YouTube channel um for boarddocs um all the meeting materials can be found on board dos um except um as otherwise noted and that includes basically everything on the meeting tonight um and we will now turn to the agenda because I think we don't have public comment tonight uh it is always welcome but it is not a public hearing uh yeah so the first item on our agenda tonight is um talking about the it's not a tri board meeting it was like a quad board meeting uh so our June 11th meeting um yeah so the multiboard meeting debrief and discussion so I did circulate some material around that also included the um material that the Capcom presented so um I did want to share with the committee I went before the agenda was released I did go to the select board meeting where they talked about the preliminary agenda um and it was much different than what we talked about in our last meeting so um I envisioned that this was going to be a meeting that focused on the capital needs of the Town um and sort of some upcoming things for you know the town and also maybe like the school um and that we were going to talk about those Capital needs and prioritize them in this meeting um but that is not what Chris uh had in mind and it sort of ended up being a little bit more like the February budget meeting where every board sort of gives a little update and um that wasn't what I was expecting so that's why there was no presentation on our side uh so I did want to share that with you that it was a little bit different and uh I was on that select board call I don't remember June I don't remember exactly what it was like a week before the June 11th meeting but it was after our finance meeting um so yeah I was going to send an email about it but I thought that might violate open meeting law rules so that's why I brought it up here instead so that was something I did want to mention in the committee that I and the chair of the Capcom committee went to that and we were both a little surprised that that was what the topic was going to be so um so I don't know if anyone else felt a little surprised by that but I did want to bring it up um that's something that I noted I was expecting it was to be yeah I mean yeah you're right I mean the February budget meeting is a good analogy which I guess is a fine meeting but um yeah I was more interested having discussion yeah it just didn't seem very productive yeah although yeah I mean I um as much as I wasn't thrilled with the idea of just presentations I have to say for some reason um Jeff's demographic and you know comparison presentation got through to me more than it had in other meetings or before and it's not like I haven't certainly heard it before but um I have to say I left the meeting thinking wait a minute you know I left the meeting less likely to be in support of a school override that's for sure and I do think there's some things to think about with what Jeff has presented that you know need to be talked discussed figured out you know probed a little bit um certainly before you know I don't know that the school overrides likely either but um it's certainly been discussed and I thought Je made a compelling case about hey wait a minute um you know is that really the answer so curious what other people thought oh you're muted Nathan thanks um yeah I I liked Jeff's presentation and I my big takeway from the meeting was thinking about communicating with like the town and getting more information out there um you know we just got that that fly I'm sure you all got the one from the water department with the quality of water and why has like fincom ever done anything like that send out like a mailer like a state of the Town finances to every household in town I mean we don't we have like a small discretionary budget we could probably afford to do that ourselves I don't know that we've ever sent a mailer out but I think Pete you've been on the committee longer than me I know we have included p in the ATM like they print a little thing and put it inside the thing they hand out at the meeting so yeah we've done a more comprehensive report on the budget um and yeah the vehicle to distribute that is generally town meeting and we try to release it before we talk about the annual budget I'm sure there's an older one on our website um and certainly I mean it it's part of the kind of multi-year planning thing that we've always been talking about um yeah just for by line I mean mailings actually are kind of expensive but I don't know that we could easily do that I mean we we could make the case if we had a really good thing to present but uh um well even like a having a I think someone brought this up at the meeting having a website and I know there'd have to be someone who would administrate it and like create it and that's work but having a website that people could like scan a QR code or on social media leag can go out to direct them to talk about these things um rather than like a physical mailing but yeah I'm like something like really simple like uh I was just thinking about what the upcoming quad board um subcommittee whatever they're discussing like what information can we get out like what would be most useful um if we just had like one side of the page is like these are the three or four major Capcom projects that we're expecting that there might be an override about in the next like two years this is what it might cost just so it's on everybody's radar and then on the other side have I don't know whatever like the two or three most relevant Graphics might be like not not getting into the weeds but just like so everybody can have like a little you know little primer on the town and then have um you know our part of our function is to like investigate you know the town finances um and you know a lot of people in town talk about it but don't really have like a source for like investigating further we even just had like an an email address for fincom for people sending questions that we could like respond to and just have that be like have that be on like a mailer that went out or something that would like publicize that might give us some good direction we'd be informing people's like direct questions that they had and also like informing ourselves in the process we do have the main finance committee um email that I do check before ahead of the meeting that people are always welcome to send um questions or comments to so that's um that's the I do get questions around ATM usually I'll get there's a couple of citizens that usually will send questions in every year um sometimes they send them directly to Greg but um it's it's fincom at Town of manner.net is the main like um like not owned necessarily by like any one of us I know some of us do have Town email addresses so there there is that possibility like it could be TI back to that assful cool yeah I'm just thinking about like how at annual town meeting there were a couple people came up and had question and then the response was like okay well it's town meeting right now we have to vote but we can get back to you in like a week or so with an email and if we had like a little bit more publicizing the that your email um like the rest of the year but maybe I I would just note that the one mailing the town does do every year is the annual town meeting warrant which then has a big notice about our budget hearing which is where people can come ask questions and you know we do get some people showing up but I don't know that we could actually do more than that um or expect different result by doing something you know I don't know that's my concern yeah I mean the warrant for beating is like thick you know um I'm thinking about sending out something that's basically like a postcard or like a single sheet of paper and color but just the thought I was having yeah and I had some examples from other um Finance Committees of what kind of reports they put in and I'll talk about that on the next um topic we have for the future planning I can pull up some examples and show you what they look like so I got an example of what that pitchbook software could make a website look like but I don't know how much it costs that's a mystery to me right now yeah um you know both out of last meeting and particularly you know for upcoming meetings um I'm a little concerned that we don't well I don't it's not diverted but there was some discussion at the last meeting um toward the end of it about informing people and how do we you know get the message out whatever that message is um and I get a little concerned about that that that takes the place of people who do really know something and are you know pretty informed about town stuff trying to you know make a decision about what they would at least you know recommend to town meeting or in some case make the actual decision itself that the kind of let's educate everybody that doesn't get us a decision um and we are going to be faced with serious decisions you know upcoming one should we be Jo and bleachers is that the most pressing need and I just don't know that telling more people about it gets us a better decision um people I mean it's people who have stepped up to spend some time learning about the issue um that I I would argue it's not that we're the ones who should make the decision but effectively we do because we participate and um I just think there are some hard decisions coming and there's no consensus out of telling everybody about it is my my short take on it so I just don't want to spend half of a you know meeting where we all get together talking about ways to educate people um we need to make some hardcore decisions um so and they're not really fincom decisions but we certainly get to waigh in and the select board whether we think you're right or not and then Rec make recommendations to our meeting so um anyway all right [Music] um yeah so I don't know if since we're on the topic of June 11th it would be good for me to pull up the minutes up for us to review or we could review them at the end with all the other minutes we have three minutes to review this time I feel like I took a copious amount of minutes so I don't know if you saw the select board minutes that Greg took they were a lot more concise than the minutes I took so I was like oh I haven't taken minutes in a while this is a little verbose yeah I'm sure that Gregs would be brief yeah so um so I put that it was [Music] opened uh and then we talked about the fiscal conditions I took notes about Capcom um so basically they were talking about their fiveyear plan they talked about all the different assets and what a capital expense is considered and then they talked about their different scenarios which I appreciated so they talked about having a certain amount of money uh for Capital spending per year and so this is made up of some line items that already exist and some additional line items that are like from free cash um and they talked about how you know right now it's really hard using just free cash to do more than half a million dollars um of any item so like large items would like like have to be either like a debt fund like an override or there would have to be some like line item for Capital added that's a little larger than the current line item I think of $50,000 for Capital um and we talked about the debt uh threshold so trying to stay under a 10% threshold for the debt like overall debt of the town to make sure we keep a good Bond rating um and that was sort of their recommendations um then we we had our time we discussed um I sort of briefly mentioned um without a formal presentation how we're talking about these threeyear plannings going at least five years back in the past to try to look for Trends um and how we're going to start talking to other um Finance committees in the area so I'll show later on tonight I'll show an example from Groveland um the school committee talked so they talked about the future planning of their budget um going from 2.75 to 3.5 sort of showing a couple different scenarios there um and they talked about how they can do shortfall funding by this that and the other thing uh and then the select board talked about that demographics that was presented that Peter mentioned um and then we sort of had this open discussion section where we talked about you know the bleachers and how there's challenges because they would also need to run water and Sewer there which I thought was a good discussion to have um but we didn't really end up ranking anything necessarily um so and that's sort of how I ended it we didn't really prioritize any funding but we'd like to have another meeting in August those are the notes oh like I said a little but uh I'd move that we approve the minutes of June 11th then seconded all right we have a first and we have a second um so I will stop sharing I will take a roll call vote um Katie yes Nathan yes Peter yes uh Linda Z all right so uh and I am a yes so that's four yeses and one abstain so that carries thanks for that um yeah so I think that is the main topics I had for um for the June 11th meeting unless we have additional topics I have a topic that bleeds into it so I'm actually going to pull up something from so this is something that um I shared the capital committee presentation which was presented at that meeting but they also shared um they've prioritized so you know how we were asking them about their prioritization of all the things that they have in cleargov this is that list so this is the list with all of their scoring scale so it shows the uh you know what the cost is and then they rate it I think it's on a scale of 1 to 10 for safety compliance cost uh efficiency master plan uh new growth and then they get a total score and that's how they rank all of these different things so these are ranked by the score um and then there's a little chart at the end that sort of shows you how each of these breaks down what bucket they go into um but you know you can look at the raw list here and there's you know a bunch of storm water things on here which we talked about are not part of the water sewer Enterprise because they're not covered in that fund right now um and then there's there's other things so like the the roof for the clubhouse and um a couple other items here so I think it's good to see all of these things in one place and to get an idea of how they ranked so this is like the a aggregate score from the capital committee um so far I haven't really seen a ranking like this from other boards so I thought this is like a really interesting place to start from um to start thinking about what's coming up and what might not be captured in our future planning scenarios because like I don't have foresight on some of these in that model because they're not going to be in the past for me to predict from there so now Jillian and remind me are all of these things paid for through like there's other sources that cover some of these items correct like forway yeah so some of them might be covered by like grants um some of them might be covered by De servicing well could be covered by Debt Service that would be you know if we did a debt issuance but no this is I think the GF in the name this is general fund now we a little the ambulance I think is supported by the ambulance rece fund but that's really the only one right this is so these were some of the things they covered in their scenarios where they said if they did a certain override to get some debt servicing they can cover a certain number of things is my understanding so I can I think it might help if I share this one so this is like this is in one of their examples where they were talking about you know free cash would be a certain amount of money and then debt and receipts could cover a certain amount of other Capital items so this is how they got there 1.25 million and I think the other one was 1.5 million sorry what what are receipts in this context uh I would assume that receips would be ambulance receipts because ambulance is about 300K gotcha so um so this was this was presented by the capital committee uh at that June 11th meeting so this is some examples of something it could cover but you know I think this is assuming we're going to have 800 million uh 800k in cash and I think going forward that's going to be very unlikely in in my opinion I think that's I think that number is getting smaller every year cuz we're not going to have like large developments anymore so um I think I also shared with you or I forwarded you the memo from Justin about how we like literally don't have water to support some new building um buildings they would like to put in town like complexes so I think this is the main concern currently is how can we grow if we don't have water so that's sort of a whole another can of worms but one thing to note about that those two memos and correct me if I'm wrong but my recollection is those were both like 400 unit developments they were really big they were really I thought they were really big too and I'm not sure that's likely to happen in mayard anyway um but it was useful to see the analysis yes yeah and I think it's useful to think because if something does go into the areas where we the the NBTA zoning passed I think so something that big could technically go in that area I think I'm not on planning board so I'm not an expert there on Powder Mill yes on Powder Mill yes on Powder Mill it could you're right yep yeah so that's not the two memos that got sent around um wait one of them was on powder milk though wasn't it was it oh shoot yeah it was yeah yeah I don't think it was that site though uh actually I don't know where that is 111 power me anyway can I ask Katie a question so I'm looking at this list of um the prioritized projects yeah yeah and one of them fairly high on the list is storm water at assabet and Fletcher Street yep and I'm assuming this is about storm water and it's not really just Paving Fletcher but I mean I don't know so Katie and I both live in this neighborhood and probably drive down Fletcher quite a bit and I mean it rains there's water that rushes down the street but I guess I wouldn't have had that as a very high priority on a capital list for 1.2 million I this yeah I think that's all the storm drainage that they're going to have to do prior to Paving the three roads that were accepted so I it doesn't include Allen but um just because Jenny Allen Drive I could see that's gonna cost the town of Fortune yeah Al's going to be bad I don't know Fletcher though like that's where the bus picks up the kids and it's it's really sketchy down there so I don't know if if it's a you know like a danger um thing that came up what happens is the water doesn't you know drain and it pools up and then in the winter it becomes ice um and as cars come down it's a pretty steep hill um and and it's sometimes they don't stop you know but I so I don't know if it's a danger thing but I but I feel that it's not just Fletcher that it might be drainage but I don't know because Heights Terrace isn't listed on there either so I'm not sure it's interesting it gets up pretty high rating for cost savings which I'm not quite sure um I think if they pull the that's why I think it is the three roads because from what we were told or Justin told us is that if they pull together the three roads and do the project kind of all at the same time that they get a discount for um for things and so there's three roads that um we are supposedly told that they were going to pay before winter this year um and it was as not aset but Fletcher Heights ter Allen um so I'm not sure if that has to do with with all three of those roads but but that is a big number so I would think it's more than just Fletcher right is is there any reason to think storm water is going into the sewage or they is it separate because I know some towns that's a problem the storm water goes in right into the sewer line I don't think this one that's a problem it just doesn't drain okay yeah it's more so our storm water is generally separate from the sewer yeah it should be but not if it's old or it's an unaccepted Street maybe it doesn't and I do remember Justin when he came to us he was saying the cost to pave Fletcher versus do also the storm water drainage it's only like a three to $500,000 difference and so I don't think that 1,200 is just for Fletcher okay all right I just and I hadn't I forgot about the water and the ice at the bottom and that may be big short okay I'm sorry I just was looking for a reality check from so okay that's fine it is a lot I'll assume they're right then I didn't do the math but Jillian do you know do they weight the different factors or they just is it simple average of the seven things of the six that's a great question two three four five six I didn't do the math but I don't know my eyeballs my guts say that I think it's just a straight average and a straight average yeah um but that's a great question doing some quick math because it's not a spreadsheet it's a PDF so it's hard to do it yeah that's okay yeah it's a straight straight average yeah yeah so I thought this was this was useful to think about um the thing that's not really on here is an indication of how long it's been on the list so in the past my understanding is that like some things that have just sort of languished on the list because they're really expensive and they can't be paid in one cycle or you know some other reason but they're still high priority um and I'm not sure that that's necessarily captured in this current list but it is something that we've talked about as a committee in the past and just trying to understand you know like is something on the list or is it going up the list a certain amount of time yeah I'd be interested to see after a year or two like how much stuff has been acted on and how much stuff is like just sitting at the bottom yeah and I think this might be better captured on the cleargo website on the tool that um they shared with us which is funny because the right now the rankings are not captured on that tool so C can I ask is the um DPW Garage on here I would have thought that would be like right in the top 10 though I think that happened after they finished their rating cycle okay okay well no I think that would be too large to be on this list they would think that the general funds ever going to do it okay um that that would to be a Deb issue okay I think yeah I and then I noticed the golf course the roof is on there and then the building envelope is on there which is kind of curious so it's it's almost like it's double counted I thought so the envelope is everything except the roof so that's like okay other building areas like the doors the it's basically everything that's on the walls and the floor is my understanding of what an envelope is it's everything except the roof okay I'm surprised that Country Club roof is right at the top right I think it's at the point where if it's not repaired it's going to make such damage to the building that you're just going to have to get rid of it is the impression I had maybe that's why it's near the top and I know it's also important right now because that's where the senior center is currently meeting but um but yeah this is this is sort of a list I just wanted to share to give you an idea of how other committees are looking at um so in particular this one is obviously the capital committee looking at Capital items and ranking them um and I also wanted to sort of put on the radar the storm water like is a big cost so I think having us having the town figure out how that's like are we going to have a Enterprise fund for storm water like how is that going to work I don't know but there's lots of lots of items up on that list that are most of the big ticket items on there are storm water so um yeah so I didn't have too much to share um from this list just sort of other than saying this is the list and the ranks and this is something I know we've thought about in the past um but if we are going to jump into the future planning I can give you an idea stop sharing let's share this screen so one of the things that sort of came up at that meeting is like what is finance committee thinking about so I've made I made a base projection um so this now includes I updated all the figures here for the 25 that were passed at the ATM uh I am and I did want to bring it up maybe so on the committee is is uh has better eyes than I do maybe I made a mistake here but for some reason I'm $10,000 off in the expenses like it doesn't equal to this number here which is what the number was in the warrant um like it doesn't zero out so I don't know where I'm missing $10,000 in the expenses but uh Greg's on vacation so I couldn't get an answer before our meeting tonight so I was like Greg where's my typo because I'm pretty sure I copied these all from the the ATM but obviously something something's off um so I did want to flag that but then I started projecting out so I'm taking the averages from the past couple of years and projecting forward um three years so and this is something I'm not sure if it's the best way to do it but I was doing the year-to-year difference to get the average and then doing the next year to year and the next year to year and the next year to year and the next one and then taking all of those and making an average so it's like an average of an average and I feel like that's not great math I feel like there's a better way to do it um but regardless the other concern I have is that some of these categories are really variable so um can't so I'm not sure if there's a better way to estimate them going forward um but that's so that's sort of how this is laid out and and I think we've talked about this in the past the next thing I want to start doing is adding stuff in so for example what would a $3 million override look like that's like a one-time expense so this would be an override it would not be a what do they call them an operational override so an operational override would add would add to your debt ceiling like forever like if it's a onetime override it would just add that money and then that's it so it would not add and we'll see if I did the math right because I could have messed it up so if it's not an operational override so for example if I put a 3 Mill million doll override in 26 going forward it should not carry into your Levy limit that make sense yeah um so so this is set up where it does not so this is not an operational override it's a onetime override and it's just to show people that if we have an override for $3 million in this year it's only and then it will be taken out $3 million in the expense side for very specific costs so for example here I put it's half a million dollars for new gas tanks at that the DPW Garage on Winter Street because those are toast uh half a million for the roof the other would be the rest of it seven7 was it 770k would be paid from their receipts and then the building envelope for million dollar and a million dollar for storm water say these are just random number they're not random but I'm just saying this is an example for $3 million um so and then you would use that to use for exactly that thing you would still have like 425k almost in in the red for the budget as it currently stands with the current trends because you're using that $3 million for a very specific purpose you're not adding it for operational stuff so you're still going to have the same challenges you have in the budget like to me this is very obvious but I'm not sure if this is the type of modeling people are expecting us to do do you know what I mean like everyone thinks like an override is going to fix everything but it's not going to fix anything because it's for very specific cost yeah um but is is are people getting a feeling that's what like needs to be presented so people understand that's how it [Music] works yeah so different because the capital Planning Group it sounds like they wanted a line item in the operating budget so they would have a a million point2 every year right and then they would pick off their projects and this would be a different model for funding some of the top priority projects is you keep your operating budget the same because we're are you g to find 1 point two in the operating budget every year that's smelling of a of a systemic operational override and this would be a different way to do it it's kind of a one-time thing knock off some of those important capital projects and then you go back oops these numbers are wrong but um yeah so I mean I could make we could also you know any of us and I think I sent the spread sheet around so anyone can feel free to play with it but you know we can say something else like you know say that we don't want the government to increase by 4% we want it to only increase by 2% like and then you can see how that changes the numbers like further down the street now Jillian are are these percentages averages that you've seen over the past like timeline yes so these are averages from uh from 20 19 to 2024 okay so I didn't factor in 25 to them yet because um because that's it was just so new and I think having six years is pretty good for those averages I was trying to get years before covid um because maybe we'll settle back into those kind of budgets I mean one of the quirks with this that gets tricky but anyway the G General government number isn't right if you get out of the expenses for a second um there was some structural change to the budget in one of these years that shifted expenses into the general budget line item I think it was this year because Greg did all the utilities in his budget well that's there was one before that too even before yeah from the 2.8 million in uh in I can't see the year but whatever the third column in to the 3.3 million I don't think that's a real increase um and even the 3.3 to 3.5 would be high but um so there just are a couple of tweaks like that that make it tricky but um yeah I think it would almost be I mean we'd have a better sense just to put a number in um right and some of the numbers and I talking to Greg about it he was like you know instead of using these averages it might make sense just to use like two and a half% and then just see what it looks like if you're just like nothing can go above two and a half per. so um so these are examples for the averages let's look at the expenses so so there's that year you're talking about Greg where the general government increased by 15% um where um where I think Greg was saying that they switched FTE into General government from the schools or something happened I don't remember exactly but um you know a lot of these are smaller so this is these are the ones year to year the the differences and then this is the average of these differences that's how I'm currently calculating it now but I feel like there might be a better way to do it and for some of these ones that are really variable because the way in which they're structured change so like other accounts went somewhere else um you know like this 16% is a really big outlier and I think that was when the DPW took on some school grounds FTE or something I don't remember to be honest I'd have to go back and look at the notes from 2022 and three but so it's also possible we could look more closely at these and sort of figure out what are outliers and exclude them to get closer to what we think it might be but you know even the schools they had a couple years where the increase was almost five 5% and then the other years are closer to 2.7 and I think these like these the Capital Service things are not going to be super accurate because you know the schools have we had the fer School come off and now we have the Green Meadow go on so these numbers have changed quite a lot um but I feel like they are somewhat predictable because we know the structure of the loans so maybe we should think about that instead of using like averages of percent to do these predictions so I mean I still have my separate version of future planning that's like more line item based um that is updated with our most recent budget but you know I have made like I have amended little bits and pieces to it all along the way um that I could share my screen if I have permission to uh if you don't I can share I can um I can also make you a host but don't don't hang us up don't hang up the phone so let's see here yeah okay can you see my spreadsheet here yep so blurry but it could just be my old eyes oh yeah sorry it's like can you maybe zoom in a tiny bit thanks oh yeah mine too so let see here so for in and this is this is where it starts um my projections uh so for the school and this is what um the superintendent uh just said at like the quad board meeting um I think he said that it was a 3.1% increase for the teacher contract so I just set the salary sum to go 3.1 3.1 and then he said it was 2.8 there um so that's that should be that's pretty that I mean that's exactly what the school is saying it's going to be right now same thing here for maintenance I mean this this was more of an estimate um yeah average annual increase and then I think he suggested 3% here um and then down on trying to think of another one that Solid Waste you know we know that our current contract for hauling ends um after this fiscal year so for FY 26 I just punched in 20% I I think that's what Justin said at our meeting we had with him at one point and this is when the 20-year incinerator contract ends so our Solid Waste bill is going to go up really high um I don't know if I I don't remember if I put in 100% or if that's a something he threw out um but you know this is something where we could punch in if we have like the fire department I don't even know if it has if this is where like the uh where like the vehicle s are um see but you know if we theoretically if we knew when a capital expense was coming up if it's in one of these line items in a department we could punch in the uh R increases at that point um this is you know more like micromanage e um but is probably gonna would be more accurate than doing an average of the uh increases over the last six years go detailed um at one Greg had suggest had thrown out putting a 2.5% salary increase for every position so that's kind of what's in here and and that rolls up to the top of the category so um I'm assuming here that all the library expenses are the same each year except except for the salary increasing and if that's the case then the total of that is a 2.2% increase each year okay and um taking you know superintendent hoses that is that how you say it hos using his numbers where you know salary goes up 3.1 and well expenses go up 3% it averages out to slightly less than 3.1% and then here where the teacher contract goes down is 2.8 and solid waste same thing go up theoretically 13.4% and then 17.2% when when that second incinerator contract expires um yeah okay is there any way to push the receipt side Jillian did you look at at receipts or did anyone talk about receipts I know there was the possibility I think the state allows towns to increase taxes like restaurant taxes and some other taxes is there anything there that we should look at we can um I I have not modeled such projections I think that at one of our last joint board meetings it wasn't the one in June but it was the one before that I think um one of the select board members was pretty adamant about you know looking at meals tax and some of these other tax um but other members were worried that that might discourage people from eating in mayard I know we have a lot of restaurants um so I'm not I'm not sure but that is something maybe we could ask I don't know who the right person would be to ask about that maybe Greg and then Greg might refer us to like the assessors or the collector's office for for more information and I think oh something else I did want to bring up is that right now the select board has a 30-day Open Notice period um for they are considering entering the hole of mayard into a collective bargaining isn't the right word but it's basically you know how you get those pamphlets in the mail for um deciding who will Source your electricity so you can decide um decide that and they can lock your rate in for a certain amount of time and it only you know there's the like the delivery fee and there's so there's two fees that the is made up of the electric bill this this company would just do one and you would still get your bill from eversource but you would get your electricity sourced from whoever this vendor is and there'll be a couple different choices this was at one of the past select board meetings um so that's something that they're looking at potentially enrolling the town in and one of the things that could be added on to this is a like basically like a management fee for the town to provide this service to the town's people they could add on sort of like a tax so it would sort of be like a a receipt um so it would be like another source of potential income if they do decide to add that on but it's a lot of unknowns like I don't know how much that would be like how many people in the town are going to enroll um what the rates would actually be because they won't tell you what the rates are until they know how many people are going to enroll um but the thing I thought was interesting is that it's an automatic optin for every single resident in the town if you don't want to do it you have to opt out and fill out this paperwork so um if you have anything any input there I think the 30-day period is probably up in another couple weeks but that's all on the select Board website on board doc so like something like that could potentially be another receipt if they do go that route yeah I think that receipt would be very little and really only cover you know whatever administrative cost there might be I don't think that's going to be much of income generator for the town I don't think that this program is supposed to be pretty good though um it should result in cheaper electric rates so I was just going to ask would that lower our overall cost which would be great that's the goal yes it's one of the you know there's all the scam stuff with energy suppliers you know everybody calls you trying to get your this is a real thing and it's supposed to be a pretty effective good thing awesome at least from what I know yeah so I think that's um that just popped into my brain while we're talking about receipts unrelated but um I did want to let you know about that that that is existing as a potential way to hopefully save the town's people money where on their site is the uh is the information on that on that electric thing um it should be on the select Board website um if you go Che in board docs or the uh like the page on the town ofer website that is a great question I went to that meeting so I'm not sure supposedly they were going to put a link on the actual select Board website too I think it was on the main um it was on the like the main mayard website so uh it's under latest news um so I can just I can't there's no chat here ohop I got to reclaim host or I can't share anything let's see I think you might have to give me host back think it's gone forever let's see how do I do that got it we're good so if you're on town of mayard website it's this first one right here mayard power Choice 30-day public comment period period so uh public comment until July 8th so and this is the link here is the website so there's a email you can email to if you have questions or anything like that um and then that they have the draft so this is basically I guess what was presented at the select board meeting so there's a sample opt out documents and also a draft plan so or you can go to town hall they also have physical copies there too cool um okay sorry I was a little tangent I got a little distracted um yeah but I think the Fe planning we have some some interesting stuff there and I think now we have some ways that we can start to think about what what we should start putting in there um I think that the capital committee brought up the some interesting you know if we want to start thinking about some of the main things so um got too many pages open so for example the capital committee at the June 11th meeting said you know these might be the four biggest Capital things that are coming up so the school has obviously already passed and that's already captured in my future projection models so the annual debt is is a little around $3,000 uh $3 million but you know they're saying you know if we build a senior center maybe that's 12 million these are all estimates the bleachers might be three and a half uh the DPW building might be 24 million so um you know and they put in some suggestions of maybe when we want to think about starting these projects so you know the DPW in 2030 the bleachers in 2027 these are all estimates that they were talking about um of when we might want to think about putting them on but you know obviously need the town might need some of these things sooner than later um but they were saying if we went with a 5% rate which is just an estimate you know like if the DPW cost $24 million that would be about 1.5 million a year so these are like if we start thinking about different scenarios where we put these in we can get an idea of how much the budget costs but this will end up just like that scenario I presented where it's in the income as a 1.5 million and then it's in the expense as a 1.5 million because they're assigned to a specific project so it's not going to change any shortcomings we have with the operational costs does that make sense um so in your in the budget you showed the revenue increased in the initial year um but he and then went back down the following year but if we were if we were uh taking out a loan you know if we were bringing on like debt to do it then we're paying off that you know 1.5 million a year or whatever the the for the DPW garage so is that the same thing or is that something different is this is your three million doll um override like assuming that we just like rais the tax and we pay it in cash so it's a capital override so it's so like right here this is where we start adding the school right this is the first year in 2025 when we had the school here MH and it's a debt exclusion so it's excluded debt so that means it's not up here and it's not touching your Levy limit so if we do an oper operational override so this these numbers here so this number is a sum of your prior level unit your 2.5 increase and your new growth and that's how you get your total New Growth and then that becomes your next number here is your Levy limit if we do an operational override that'll increase this number by $2 million or whatever number we have gotcha that's that's right Peter right that's how an override an operational override works you actually change the levy limit it gets added yes it gets added to the taxes for the pr year that's subject to the two and a half% increase okay but the way that this is broken out now I don't think that's how Green Meadow is because it's excluded right uh correct okay I just wanted to make sure laid the spreadsheet out correctly then okay good yep yeah so this is this is how that's this this uh tab is is laid out right now so it's laid out as not changing the levy limit it would just be like what we did for the school so it's like we collect a certain certain amount of money to pay directly for the school so it's not changing your operational cost at all so if we did the same thing here it would just change the numbers um but you have it taken out in the expenses so it's sort of like it's like you have one number on your numerator and the same number on the denominator so it just zeros it out so it doesn't give you extra money to change this $423,000 shortfall in your operational costs but I mean we could make a new scenario where we actually do an operational override to see what that does but you won't you can't have positive money like this number the expenses and the revenues always have to equal zero so if we add like $2 million for an operational override to increase our revenues then you have to make sure that the number at the end of the day is still zero does that make sense so like we would have to put a line item in in expenses and say you know we're going to do a blah blah blah override so we're going to I don't know put in a 500K Capital item we're going to increase the school budget by whatever and we're going to increase this other budget by another percent so basically you would play with these expense numbers until it would zero out and these are all scenarios that we could propose um but I think something that I don't have on the spreadsheet that Greg said is not easy to do is to tell me you know if our total budget is this number what for a single average tax bill what does that equate too so like you know if the total budget is say we did like a $3 million operational override to make the budget closer to 60 million what does that mean like how much would that raise someone's taxes and I think that's something that's important to know but it's not something from my understanding of talking with Greg like he can't just plug a number in like if I have what the total budget is he can't tell me what the single tax is correct but we can actually I think yeah um we can say how much a $3 million override would be not so much the overall tax bill but how much an extra $3 million would be about 600 bucks per average family so but override right yeah the same thing it's $3 million more charg the taxpayers how do you how did you get to $600 from that um so there was a sheet Angie mana and I'm sorry I'm gonna butcher her last name who used to be the assessor um did for financing the Green Meadow School where she walked through um a couple of scenarios and you know one of the scenarios was a $46 million Town contribution to the school which would have been you know a yearly debt payment of 2.99 million which she said resulted in an average increase in taxes of $613 per family you know per tax bill so that's where I'm getting that from and it you know for that per for those purposes it doesn't matter whether we're spending the 2.99 million on capital or a debt or on operating yeah it's about no that's the debt number right you know what that was called maybe I have it in my files I can pull it at um Green Meadow New School yeah um I'll send it around [Music] um it's called um new school FY 23 estimated tax cost breakdown um which if we want I mean if you want to let me share I can share it but I just email to everybody there you go you can share um let me see if I can make this share what I want all right can you see this yep okay uh so this is her estimating it um and this isn't exactly straightforward because she starts talk you know here she's saying is estimated 1205 that's for both current debt exclusion and new school debt exclusion so you have to look at just this you know the cost of just the new school so for 37 million she was saying it would cost 567 and that someplace she has where did I get it um I thought she had yearly amounts on here oh yeah this is the yearly about so you know here um I don't know how to shift this around and I can't you guys are blocking my view but this um estimated for 40 6 million so the new school debt exclusion you know 446 million would cost this 2.99 million and she was saying that would cost you know that 2.99 million per year would be our debt payment for the 30 years um and she was saying that would cost $613 per average family average something family tax bill family know what the S stands for average single average single family tax bill right um so that's where I say you know three million dollar additional taxes is roughly 600 bucks per average single family house um and I did email this to people so um any questions or I'm going to stop sharing and okay and how do I give can you just take this back oh wow I have all these little buttons I've never seen before yep a security button I wonder what I can do with that um but if you want to take it back Jillian yep for the back um yeah thanks yeah I forgot that's that's uh that's one way to look at it so that's good um oops okay yeah is hesitant to share any kinds of numbers like that you really got to push to get any kind of just you know just ballpark numbers they hate to give them out because they might be wrong so um right and I I mean I think we just need an esate to be able to talk about this to people intelligently yeah exactly um wait will you put your forecasting thing up again for one second yes uh will you go to the top yep wait I'm sorry what's the fy2 column that's a typo it should be 26 let me double check are these the same no these are the same so this is 25 so I need to actually all right that um I was interested that we only had a deficit of 150,000 the thing this spreadsheets particularly useful for and it I don't know what you have in for an education increase but people start saying oh you know we really should be doing 5% increase for Education say and it creates this huge deficit in the budget and well let's do an override but the problem with the kind of operational override is it really just solves it for one year we spend the extra 600,000 we then you know have the same 5% increase on everything and we have the same deficit the following year um it does yeah so this was my projection so I wanted to see using my averages how close it was to what the ATM actually was does that make sense so I was yeah quite 150ish off which is probably the health insurance cut probably or I get so I mean you were saying earlier we won't have as much free cash and one of the big things will be the health insurance we're not being as liberal about budgeting that right yeah so and you can sort of go down here and see like how different I am from the yellow column which is what was in the ATM warrant and this is you know using my average is what these numbers actually ended up being so um not terrible yeah but um like I wanted to use it as a proof of concept which is also why I didn't roll this this last year into the averages I was making um is this in the materials is this on board docs or yes this is on board dos the spreadsheet is all right I'm still not sure entirely why I'm $10,000 off though which is why I'm kind of annoyed uh for what was in the ATM warrant um because the total expense number is10 ,000 different than all the line items and I'm like what the heck so yeah but it was pretty close so using my averages um I was kind of close to what the number was it was like 150 different so yeah I think it's pretty good I mean considering the budget is like you know $50 million or whatever like 150 million uh thousand is is not a large percent off I think I would say it's probably within it's less than 10% um error so I think that's not terrible it's impressive so so that's sort of my proof of concept saying like you can actually project it's not perfect but it's not like disgustingly wrong um so yeah that was that was uh that was a new update I wanted to share with you all so going forward I was trying to figure out what those numbers might be for the next two years and then you know I could extend it out another year to 28 but um you know I feel like if we're doing uh more than one year that that's a great thing so let's try two three years and um and go from there but that was sort of my sanity check is this model even close or is it garbage and I don't think it's that bad um but you know I really like Nathan how you're laying out very specific things but um I'm trying to think of something that you know Town Hall might actually update I I think that we could definitely go through and do like line by line and you know maybe you'll you'll say there's a certain number here that you might suggest I change like you know General govern shouldn't be 4.9% based on my big line items it should be like 3% or some other number and we can adjust it that way and I think that's where your Spreadsheet will come in really handy is like for some of these ones that are really different because different line items went into different budgets or they just moved around a bit that's something I can't capture in this one but if we can sort of get this in a place where we're comfortable with it like this might be something we might be able to get other people in the town to use and like think about and so like someone would feel comfortable saying you know I want $3 million override for the bleachers or whatever they want it for what does that do and you're like well it's not going to you're still going to have like a shortfall in your operating budget because an override doesn't touch that you know so I think this is this is sort of where I'm hoping to bring this tool to like make help people be educated on that um at like a high level and I like that it's like you can read this pretty easily it's not you know you don't have to like dive through the weeds to really see um the important numbers which makes it a little more um easier to for people to understand I think too yeah um that's the whole just sorry on the $10,000 um is the DPW it's the DPW a typo there yeah should be 2657 265 the catch thank you that was bugging me public work we'll just change it on both of [Music] them perfect thanks Peter sure yeah so um and obviously we don't have what the new growth is yet for this year either so um you know that's that's also something to consider too so but as you can see like it went up up up when we had this is the developments here and now it's going down down down potentially um and that's something to consider with some of the future budgeting that'll also directly impact what free cash is do you know and is 350 the right number going forward is it going to is it going to go back to being closer to like 250 again so in 2019 it was it was closer to like 290 so yeah so this is something I encourage people to play with this is on board docs I did also email it around to y'all with everything that was open tonight um yeah I think that's all I want to say can I just throw one thing in for Nathan um you know I I'm sure you probably see it too but just I mean it wouldn't be that hard to look at that detailed stuff you were doing and have that roll up into this format um I mean that stuff all has you know Department numbers and stuff that we could you know could then correspond to the general government public safety Public Works lines and so that you know you could do something like okay we're going to do 2% on all the line items except salary should be X and we think this is going to you know some significant line item might be slightly different than 2% um and then have that you know essentially pulled into a be summarized into a spreadsheet that looks like this that people are all familiar with um but it you know it does increase the maintenance of it take somebody a lot better in Excel than just you know typing in the warrant numbers into this single piece so yeah that could be cool it might be complicated but once you sort of get it set in place put new numbers in in the future would be the hardest part was making the spreadsheet like making the base of it so yeah awesome uh oh shoot I shut up all right um do we have any additional topics that you want to touch base on for this future planning stuff all right um okay yeah so I might um you know share this around so I think it sounds like our next like quad meeting might be some point in August so I think maybe at that meeting it might be good to present something like this to them I think that's um that might be helpful might also be helpful to get some feedback from Capcom on how and understand exactly where some of their scenario planning what lines their money comes out of because I don't think all of it was from preash I think some of it was from us stuff that already exists like um there's some Capital items that we're paying for already I I know there's a $50,000 line item for Capital but um yeah right um yeah one of their biggest funding sources that you know they're trying to advocate for is that as we as we stop having to pay for debt because it's paid off that we don't cut the capital budget and use the money for other things so right it goes into Reserve fund or something yeah or yeah some kind of so if you look at the difference so you know even so there's on Jillian spreadsheet um you know the debt service non-exempt um if you get down a couple of [Music] rows yeah so here you know we had Debt Service non-exempt as 253,000 in I don't know whatever that is fy20 and right now it's down to 120 or 106,000 rather than save that money as debt or to use for debt we you know essentially used it other places in town so their biggest art thing for debt funding is that we don't let the budget fall and if you know we just take the money and put it in the capital reserve or they get to spend it or it's used to do you know some new debt that they just don't want to see the budget it reduced and the money spell spent elsewhere that's one of and even you know as you look at well I mean this is weird because you got Fowler dropping off from the 3.5 to 2.5 so that's not a fair one but um I mean if we had just not let this Capital line decrease I mean we would have now a capital budget you know for the 125 150,000 a year um that they're trying to advocate for yep Peter how do we get non-exempt debt does a department or through gray can just say we're gonna we're gonna borrow this money is if it's under a certain level okay um yes I mean certainly we'd have to go to the select board it's not something Greg could authorize um I think one of the bigger pieces we've done some small stuff but yeah I think I mentioned this a meeting or two ago but we did do a $3 million bond issue to do Capital Improvements around town um whether we were wise or not whatever we had a Town Administrator who's really hot to start doing improvements and he convinced us to do a $3 million um debt issuance that then is funded through this line through this line yeah um okay all right I think we had a very productive discussion gave me lots of ideas so I appreciate that um okay for um for one of our other topics I did put on here the end of the fiscal year updates and any reserve fund transfers um Greg's obviously not here so he's on vacation so um so I'm hoping to revisit that at our future meeting so um we have a meeting on July 8th but he didn't think the transfer who will be ready by then so I was talking to him and and to Kevin they want to have um they want to talk to us on July 22nd which would be our next meeting in July uh after the July 8th meeting okay um so I just wanted to put that on your radar I sort of asked them when these transfers have to happen because I thought it was July 15th um but maybe there's some flexibility there and I also want to make sure if we have any questions or we want to do follow-up diligence on them that we would actually have time and we wouldn't have to approve them at that meeting or I don't know what would happen like the do would be mad at enough um because we didn't improve budget transfers so that's something I want to understand the logistics of because if that's the case then I might reach out to you or we can talk at our July 8th meeting if we have to if it would be better for us to have another a meeting than next I don't know what date that is July like whatever the the week after that is um basically the 15th yeah yep so um like the 15th instead of the 22nd but I'll see because I'm not even sure if he'll have them ready by the 15th so um but that's something I wanted to let you all know that it's on the list I'm probably going to continue to put it on the agenda just in case something is ready for us um it will be on our agenda for July 8th which is our next meeting um which leads into our next topic so July 8th is the meeting that dick Downey opens so the town moderator always opens the first meeting of the fiscal year um and then he'll call the meeting to order he'll sort of set out his vision of what the finance committee is going to do during the year and he's going to talk to us and sort of re review our performance in the last the last year and then we'll vote uh as a as a committee for the chair the vice chair and um The Scribe or the secretary um so and I think that was that's one of our agenda items tonight is to sort of talk about um the roles on the committee and so when Dick is like who would like to be the chair let's vote for someone uh we're not like no I don't want to do it so um so I think I wanted to sort of talk engage people desires for different roles in the committee um I'm not asking us to take a vote tonight but I'm just asking like if people would like to do other other roles so uh I will say that the chair is a lot um and I am not really interested in coming to in-person meetings and I'm not sure that that's effective for us as a committee for the representative of the committee to not be in person um um so you know I'm definitely open to changing roles um and I also have some personal items that have come up in the last couple weeks so you know I think my two and a half dog year old dog might have cancer so I might have to step back um from the committee a little bit so if someone else would like to be share uh that might help me out so I did want to bring that up as a topic um so that we could sort of have an idea at the July 8th meeting of who would like to do what and who would definitely not want to do XYZ so and I think one of the other questions we have is you know I think cin has not come to the past couple meetings so maybe I need to send him a message to see if he still would like to be on the committee um I can't remember the last meeting he was at maybe it was in May but I haven't seen a message from him saying that he's going to be absent either so I'm I'm a little concerned is there a volunteer to take kad's place that you know of yes yes so we do have a new appointed member so we will be back to seven members um on the July 8th meeting so um this is going to be tricky for me Nathaniel not Nathan um is going to be joining uh the committee so um I do believe that they know each other though but um that uh he will be joining um so he's very excited about it um so we do have a seventh member now we also have another person who expressed interest in joining um which is why I'm going to double check and make sure cin would still like to be serving on the committee um so they could potentially be another member are we allowed alternate members as a committee like as is I don't I am not aware that's a good question don't think the charter has anything about that but I mean I think we could we could make someone an honorary member I know we've talked about having like a subcommittee before where they like work on certain topics and I think that from my remembrance of those discussions like something like that is allowed um but they wouldn't be like a voting member uh Julian in reaching out to Cavin um yeah are you in you're keeping dick down in the loop or uh that's a good point you think I should seec him on that email I mean kev's been a while now so I mean if we have someone who wants to be more more participatory um you know I would makes sense I I mean I don't know uh in some ways it yeah dick could be the one to approach cabin and say hey what's up dude um but yeah up to you totally I don't yeah I don't yeah I don't want to be ratted out Cav to Dick Downey but um I gotta check my sent folder because I feel like I sent him one last time uh but I'll do that offline okay um yeah so I think that's you know sort of getting the pulse of people if anyone else would like to be chair all right um um I guess I'm going to lead off by saying um I most of you don't even know this so I apologize for seeing like the old guy but um I was chair for like 10 years and feel like I've done my bit on that um so I you know am not interested in being chair so I'm just going to throw that part out there um which doesn't really help but um just so people know where I'm coming from on that um yep I I was aware but I appreciate you sharing with the the committee and we appreciate your still coming and that we have that Knowledge from you so thank you well what do you think [Music] Katie Vice chair I always feel like I don't know enough yet that every every meeting I learn something new and it's like oh I feel you should know everything as a chair and like you know I I don't know the time commitment too Jill how much time do you think you know a month you spend on preparing documents and research and I mean I guess it I me after every single meeting I would say I spend like an hour after the meeting sending out you know the draft notes the the posting for the next meeting the the meeting to be posted the recording and so I probably spend like an hour after the meetings which is why I try to like end before like 10 o'clock so I can just finish it before 11: um and a lot of it is sort of chasing chasing people down for the next meeting and being like can you come and do this presentation and things like that so um and then I have to post everything on board docs too so um you know and that could potentially be like something maybe we spread out too um you know so like if someone who if if we want to do that so like you know if the Scribe wants to send the minutes to the clerk that are approved and things like that and you know the vice chair could post things on board docs or like if we could spread some of the stuff out it would be helpful if no one else is going to be chair so um um that that's that's my two cents um it's it's like the mundane things that are just driving me crazy I just don't want to do them anymore but like I want to like get really dug into my spreadsheet and the future planning and I feel like I can't do it because I have to do all this other stuff yeah we should delegate that stuff yeah I think I think that would be yeah def definitely um like one of us could be in charge of you know contacting the people to come to our next meetings one of us could be in charge of posting to board doll you know we can maybe divvy up those tasks I'd be a fan of that okay all right so what I'm hearing is that no one else wants to be chair is that what I'm hearing you don't want to be chair yet ktie still I'll even do all of those mundane tasks but Jan you've done such a good job I know it's the running the we got through so much work I'm not going to go to in-person meetings and the remote access is only until 2025 so I just want to let you know that that if the remote access runs out and it's not renewed like I'm just not on the finance committee anymore so I I I will do it then Jill I promise okay I don't think going away I I don't think it is either but um I mean I hope it isn't like I love and appreciate all of you but I just don't want to sit in town hall for like three hours every other Monday so much easier to do it just on Zoom um I think it's more accessible personally okay um all right so if no one wants to be chair who wants to be Vice chair I can stay in that position yeah and then I I delegate like all to most of that stuff i' it probably be good for me to learn how to do all that anyway um so I'd be I'd be happy to help take your load off some okay I think the first thing would be board dos because I absolutely hate posting things on board dos okay maybe we have a zoom like an offline Zoom together and you can show me kind of what you do yeah sure okay yeah that sounds good um I could be thebe if you okay you take not unless somebody else wants it I I won't fight you for it but I could I could do scribe stuff Linda I think your notes are great I think it's a perfect fit for you I think you take fantastic notes Linda all right well if you want you could be the alternative if uh Lind not able to make the Miss I'll be Vice scribe sounds good all right okay that's helpful um yeah so um we obviously I think we were well we obviously were I would assume at the meeting last year where dick opened it so um let me I'll just pull up the schedule for next time if you can get an idea oh I have too many windows open okay um so this is going to be the meeting on July 8th so basically the town moderator will open it um we'll delegate he'll delegate a temporary secretary whoever he feels like it um and they'll take notes until we open up the uh until we do the actual nominations of the different roles and then they'll take over from there um and then we'll just go into our normal meeting so I'll put on here end of fiscal year budget updates and Reserve fund transfers in case we get them but I don't think we'll get them until the next meeting in July uh I'll put future planning on there so if we want to go over the scenario like we did today again um I might have time to make a couple more estimates um like changes and things to the budget um and then there'll be sort of the routine stuff um are there any other topics for our meeting next time that people are like super passionate about that should also be on this agenda that I'm missing I'm I'm not even quite sure how to like uh like Define or describe this um I think it would be helpful to have a discussion at some point about I don't know like our what our parameters about like what we think the budget should be like should we be advocating for any specific like positions on the budget like should we be advocating that the Capcom gets a $100,000 budget or that we put x amount of dollars into paying down debts that we have um yeah yeah I just I think it would be helpful to have some idea um of like our general goal for the town budget so I would say just as one person that uh this in the future planning we've done in the past so Bob McCarthy was a big advocate of this and I think you've heard me talk about him before he made a bunch of different scenarios so that people could see what things look like and a lot of the scenarios at that time were sort of based off of um things that other people brought and said you know if we only did this this way then it would save everything so you know if we only increased you know the town school budget by 5% every year it would save our education and blah blah blah so we sort of listened at that time to all these different big items that people or you know key items that people were talking about that were important to them um and you know some people might have said it's all about the trash stickers so we actually looked at the trash sticker lines and things like that um so it doesn't necessarily have to be like a very large cost item um but it was sort of what people were talking about at the time and they wanted to see modeled because they felt that they had the answer to solve different challenges that were being faced um so I would say my feeling was that at the time we did a lot of things based on sort of the public sentiment um but I think we are free to do this modeling ourselves as well the main our main role is sort of to inform the town Town's people of uh to let them make informed choices at the annual town meeting and the special meeting especially on things that have impacts on the budget um you know you can look on our Charter and things like that so [Music] um for example update transfers here it is so I'm going to open so if you go to so as you see this is this is board dos so this is the meeting for today so I was looking this is the the finance committee that was recommended to us that uses the budget book and then this is sort of this cleargov website is what we have posted right now for Maynard so this this sort of gives you an idea of the population the incomes and all these other things and the revenues and expenses but but we've this is only updated to 2021 for mayard on the line so it's a couple years behind but it gives you an idea of the revenues um you know where does are the money that we raise every year most of it is from property tax some of it's from state aid local receipts transfers and other stuff so um so if you look this this sort of breaks down our budget but it only is up to 2021 and then the expenditures so so if you enter your property tax amount you can actually see this can be customized so if you know what your property taxes every year uh like I don't know maybe it's $10,000 um and then it'll tell you what your contribution is towards education employee benefits Public Safety Debt Service so like this is another way you can sort of get an idea of how your taxes are spread out over the year to what what like the big line items that I have in my spreadsheet um but it's it's you know it's a little it's older so if you look at and this is sort of the the vanilla version of clear drove if you will this is the town of Groveland and they pay for the budget book so if you look they have history of the city uh they got demographics so this is very similar to what Maynard has and it sort of breaks out the population and what they look like and all this other stuff and this link is on the website the board docs website there's also a link to their financial policies um so we also have Financial policies as like a committee and they're on the town of mayard website they're not directly linked on cleargov but they are on the website and you can click and this would open their financial policy um there's an overview of the budget so theirs is broken out there's more words here and it's telling you like what what it actually funds and all these different things so like if we had this budget book we can make something like this and so this could and this is kind of similar to our annual report that we give but that's not necessarily on the website like this um and then this tells you like all the different like overview of the budget and then the budget goals so like what the goals are uh and these are pretty consistent I would say across the towns um and then you can actually look by department so if that's important to you so say you want to look at the I don't know oops want to look at the trash and recycling collection department so and this is you know typed out for each of the different departments and it gives you a little write up about like a blur and then it tells you about the expenditures over the past couple years and then projected out um so it gives you the actual un budgeted but not you know the actuals aren't ready yet for 24 and 25 um it just has what the budgeted are so and you can actually click and open the spreadsheet too so and it gives so this is sort of like your spreadsheet where it has the account IDs and everything's broken out and the percent changes are listed too so this is um this is what that budget book software can look like and it also has the Enterprise funds on here too um which are separate from the general fund budgets so thought it was kind of interesting but it's definitely I would assume this is a lot of work to maintain um can I respond to that question though yes from Nathan I'm just I mean I guess I'm gonna say I have a slightly different take um so you know a lot of our function is to you know I guess educate voters and Town M and town uh meeting and stuff um I definitely think there's a role for us to Advocate stuff like that though you know I don't know what the specific you know whether it's 100,000 of capital let's say um and I think it kind of takes two forms so one um you know you as an individual member can Advocate stuff like that um you know just through our regular meetings when Greg is here saying Greg I really want to see Capital line in the budget I think that's totally appropriate um as a second kind of level you could Lobby that fincom take an official position and I don't know that that's a slightly higher bar and we generally have not done that we don't I mean in the past we have not come out saying you know we think the DPW needs a minimum 5% increase um instead you know we tend to operate more as individuals and then you know ultimately we're all trying to Lobby Greg or then the select board to make changes to the proposed budget you know it all feeds into you know you could be saying I really not sure I can recommend a budget at town meeting unless it includes a capital line I mean that's our ultimate stick you know both you as an individual and then we as the fincom that's our ultimate stick um but I think it's yes I I think in some ways it would be better if people were advocating more strongly for things they favored in the budget that you know too much is Greg doing it on his own and you know I don't know how much lobbying Greg gets from the select board that they you know maybe he gets a lot of private communication saying I really want to fund DPW more I don't know um but in general they're fairly milk toast in public um and don't really Advocate anything and it's all you know we generally operate from Greg's budget and that's really it and we make make very few changes after he presents it in February um so I would certainly ad encourage people to Advocate things that they feel strongly about so um part of why I bring that up is at just at the at the quad board meeting um one we had to make they were expecting us to make like a presentation or something and I'm not really sure like if like fincom as a was like speaking on a topic like what like position we're coming from as a as a group um but also uh one of the things that came up during the quad board meeting was um how it's easy to hear about like one project from one person it sounds good another person talks about another thing and that sounds good and it's helpful to have all of the boards together in one room to discuss all of the different things in relation to each other and I was thinking about the last last year in fincom um you know everybody came to us with like a different project and explained why it was already developed it was like a really good idea and we you know we voted in favor of everything and I don't know if that was like an unusual year where everything was well thought out or if it would be helpful to have a baseline that we're referring back to saying this sounds really great but it puts us above a 10% ceiling on debt that we want to have as a town um and like lacking some you know standard guideline that we've developed as a group to refer back to I don't know how to how to like assess what people are telling me aside from like oh sounds like you thought it through very carefully already It's Not Unusual that we recommend everything um part of I I mean I like to think that part of it is that we offer feedback on an ongoing basis um so you know I think the bleacher thing got pulled from this Springs toown meeting because all of a sudden a bunch of people were expressing reservations about it and so there you know that kind of feedback I think does have a real impact um but I mean some of what you're saying yeah I mean I think we approach it if somebody were you know to propose the senior center that you're going to say wait a minute that really puts us at like a 15% debt limit and you know the recommendation is more of 10% um but we don't I I don't know that we have those formal standards to evaluate a budget against um that you know maybe it would make sense to develop yeah and to be clear I wasn't advocating for you not to propose things so I think it's totally fair for us to say you know these are a bunch of things we think are happening around the town and these are the things that you know we think might be the most important so like we don't really have a formal system like the Capcom does to like rank things um but I think we can definitely use this as a forum to discuss things together and you know in the past members of the committee have said you know this is my opinion as one member like um we you know presenting something as one member of the committee I don't think is unfair as long as it's presented in a way that makes it clear like we can align together and also vote on things too if that's helpful um but I think like Peter said in the past we haven't said you know like this is the fincom budget or something like we've never done something like that where we're like this is what we recommend to Greg for the budget to be because that's sort of I feel like at at some level we're sort of Watchdogs of the budget but we're not really in this town we're not people who say this is what the budget should be we can Advocate and say you know this is what we think would be best for the town going forward and make different scenarios but um and I think that would help people because I think like Peter said I have a personal opinion right now that people are kind of floundering because they don't know they can't see like they're not exactly sure what what is coming up and how to model some of these things and how to think about it as a whole picture like you were saying Nathan so I think if we started making some examples of what that whole picture could be that might actually help people and might help the discussion I think right now like a lot of people are stalling because they sort of have one passionate project and they're not necessarily considering some of the other ones um so I think if we have a bunch of the pieces maybe we could start to put the puzzle together and show people more of a fuller picture and I think that would be really helpful as a finance committee for the town's people I don't know I feel like it maybe rambled a bunch right now but maybe we could have a future agenda item to discuss like how we can take some like concrete steps towards that yeah and um that's sort of what I've been like schlepping under this future planning bucket but if you think there's a better English word for that I'm totally open to it like I don't know scenario something or I don't know if you think of a good word let me know because I don't I I'm totally on board with you I just don't know what to call it which is why I just keep calling it future planning discussions yeah well I mean even even something as like specific as as like for the next meeting come like come with a projection of what it would look like if we made a senior center or like come up with some I don't know just like how to something like specific and concrete that we can have ready for like a a next meeting okay so like future planning and like scenario discussions you want to call them scenarios do you want to call them something different I mean let's talk about branding branding is important get people excited about it I mean I I I love like tinkering around in like spreadsheets um it it would be helpful to have like a concete like okay on by the the next fincom meeting have like a specific thing ready and prepared to discuss you know do do the research into I don't know what something so the model is already done prior to the meeting and it's gonna be brought to the table for a discussion is what you're saying yeah I can tell you what I would love to see if you're like if you're excited to Tinker I would love to see this is what the Capcom presented on the fourth I would love to see like the senior center the bleachers and the DPW like in future planning scenarios cuz I mean I think these are the school is already on there but I think these three other items are like really big items that we have coming up maybe like if we also want to model another I don't know $3 and a half million dollar or something for storm water that's not on here but that could be like another big item that's important so it could be like a mix of this and that other spreadsheet that I brought up that was the capitalized prioritized items so that's what I started to do and then I sort of ran out of time Nathan you're the spreadsheet guy I think it would be good to sort of and then look at them as we model against the benchmarks that we have like when are we getting above our 10 % debt limit or is there sort of a benchmark and then where our our reserves I forget the financial policy said five or 10% of the operating budget I think it's 10% so it should be about five million and we're way under that um and so what would it take to to meet the benchmarks that we might be sort of advocating for right these are like being a fiscally responsible town but yeah I mean I think I think that would be really good to to say okay now we're getting ourselves we're digging ourselves in you can't just spend because will our bond rating will go up blah blah blah blah blah sort of have some triggers I think that would be real useful Nathan yeah and random question on the bond issuance amount I mean rates are likely to drop you know maybe twice this fall and a few times next year did did they factor in is that just an average they take or do they factor in potential you know 5% you know even if it lowers to you know 3.5 could make a giant difference in what we pay over time do you know if that adjusts in projections in past projections whenever I've asked for like the thing that Peter showed where he showed the Green Meadow School estimate those numbers they always use a 5% interest rate and I think that's because it's conservative and they want to be conservative yeah um so I'm not sure if there's like another number but every single time I've asked for estimates of these they've always used a 30-year 5% um as sort of the base for those projections okay have you ever seen anything else different Peter uh the CL Bing interest rate um I mean I think they're doing it based on um expectations you know I think it used to be a little bit lower than 5% when interest rates were ler think using 5% now because that's what they expect it to be so it does vary based on interest rates I guess is the short answer okay was that helpful Nathan or did I just ramble and make it more confusing uh a little bit a little bit okay okay I'll try to consolidate um and forward things around before ideally before s Sunday of our next meeting so like you could actually look at it ahead of time um so if I can take the spreadsheet I'm working on and you can probably work magic in your line item spreadsheet and maybe it's a little more concise than what what I'm thinking of in um some of the scenario planning I'm I'm going to try in my more General spreadsheet but I mean I think those are the big things that are coming up it's like and that might be on the STM and it's going to be the DPW the the bleachers are like two big ticket items and how we're going to think about those and advise people you know are they a good idea at this time or you know what are the Alternatives I think the capital Committee in some of their documents was talking about how we could like rent bleachers however at whatever cost we're renting them right now for like 30 or 40 years instead of like paying for this three and a half million dollars for bleachers to build them so I don't know I think they so like I think they've done some like scenario planning for like some of these Capital items that we could probably learn from um it might be on their board docs or on their website if not I can reach out to the um to Doug who's the the the leader of the committee if there's certain documents we have more questions about but like that's only for Capital stuff so like if we want to say model something for the schools and model an operational override for the schools because their Reserve funds are getting low that could be another scenario you know if we want to model giving them more money for the budget what what does that do to the general fund and I think spoiler alerts really going to increase our our uh deficit so those are those are the sort of the big ticket items I'm thinking about right now and how I could try to model them um but maybe there's something that you're passionate about like employee benefits or something or you know I think all the salary negotiations might have just happened and you you showed a bunch of those in the spreadsheet so maybe that's not something we have to model right now um but you know I think you had nice modeling of the trash stickers I think that's another thing that that people are passionate about too and how those costs are going to change in the next couple years I don't know if there's a way for us to think about that as a committee but that could potentially be a pretty big cost because we offset that money through the general fund okay so so I updated the topic to say uh future planning and scenario discussions but if you think of another word before then let me know thank you for your suggestion I appreciate it cool all right um I do want to be mindful of the time so um I have a big report on the senior center committee so I need to have some time for that all right yeah so I wanted to jump to the routine agenda so maybe we'll talk about that before we do the prior minute meeting approval how's that would you like to go next Linda yeah I think well we still have some gas left in the tank so on June 18th the senior center committee did a presentation to the select board um and they talked about their work they have a a really nice website with all resources research that they've done they have a FAQ section um and there's a basically the strategy is a shortterm and a long-term plan and the the shortterm term is for a lease um and the select board agreed to publish an RFI a request for information um that will probably be released maybe as soon as July 8th because it was dependent on Greg's vacation um and it'll be out for 30 days but a draft of the RFI is in the select board's um uh agenda on board dos from that June 18th meeting so they're basically asking it's no commitment from the town but looking for 5,000 square feet of space for a term of five years at least and so what they're trying to find out is who's interested what the what the cost will be for leasing ballpark is it's going to be around 20 to anywhere they're thinking around 20 to $30 a square foot so that puts it like in 120 to 150,000 a year um they think if with the RFI then they'll have a solid number that they'll bring before the special town meeting in the fall and the advice that we're looking for I'm looking for advice from the fincom on you know the before they had a similar number and they said fund it through free cash and that that just didn't apply it wasn't the best way to do it so how when they get this they'll have a solid number from the rfis but then the next step would be to do an RFP to actually would put would then put the town on the hook for leasing leasing space and I just I just did the math and you know a 12 M and then the long term is looking at building out a SE a senior center at the cost of around that the 12 million seems like a reasonable cost um the recommends like four square feet per senior we've got about 3,000 seniors um $1,000 a square foot so it comes to 12 million But the lease you could you could have spend that lease money for eight you divide it out it's 80 years so I think I don't know what the committee after they do the RFP for lease will they look at the lease bill decision more carefully too because I think it's one option that will be um on the you know should be under discussion yeah there it is so this is the draft um and so at the at the select board meeting they authorized Greg to release it to do an RFI um and he said he would add some you know some language have have Town Council look at it so but it should be I think the parameters of the square footage the length of the lease some of the other parameters you know that they were asking for about what would be in it I'll say if anyone knows of anyone who might be interested in leasing space if you can pass the RFI along to see to see who might be interested in providing this to the town but here's my question is how can they why how can how what advice could we give to them about structuring an article for a special town meeting do they have have to go for an operational override to add something because this would probably come potentially within FY 25 um or could we create a budget line item and then identify some funds that would cover the cost of the lease um and I just have some ideas I don't know if any of those like reserve fund transfers that we'll see in a couple weeks weeks could possibly be used from that um I don't know if like the golf with those 50,000 of golf course receipts that we're putting into that roof fund that's you know we're never going to make the roof fund if we and since the senior center is the tenant at the golf course who would take those golf course receipts and fund the lease or partially fund the lease I know the state provides some reimbursement for per senior I think it's at the of $14 a senior we got from the state could that you know go to it um I don't know if anyone's a representative to CPC but to the extent the senior center is considered recreational could could they fund part of the lease um what did you say the number was again I didn't see it's gonna be in the range of 20 to $30 a square foot so if you multiply 20 time 5,000 that comes to like 100,000 and if it was 30 it would be more like 150,000 so they'll know within um they we should know by August right if the if the RFI is released July 8th or soon thereafter by August we should get responses back and know about what um that lease will cost and Linda that's annual that's annual yep and so it would commit the town for for five years so it has to be you know to to execute a lease for five years would H you know would have to be something in the town budget because the town would be committed for multiple years and I know they had the idea of free cash um and I don't know if like right now we know when we meet with Greg on the fy2 budget do you even have it's it's early in the year but do we have some sense of where that free cash might be coming from and we could move you know we had a mild winter can we move money from I know we don't we put the snow and ice at the end but is there any place where we can anticipate moving money from to fund it in fy2 I know we have 180,000 in our Reserve budget is there any other reserves that when they craft an article for for the fall town meeting that would you know be reasonable and I don't know if you've been to the golf course but that that that building is just in terrible terrible condition I mean it's just you know there's no question they should get out of there very very soon so that's what I was looking for some ideas to bring back to the senior center committee as they're as you know as they're working on um crafting an article after the RFI they get the good information information where they would fund this lease from I think understanding the COA budget Trends would be helpful for me because I don't know if I've seen that pulled out as a line item before and I'm used to looking at the high level items yeah because if it's $166,000 right now understanding what that's usually used for um yeah used for yeah it's used I'll I'll see if I could get some more detailer Nathan do you know it's mostly salaries and programs because they have two staff um yeah someone might look at that and say that's more than 150 why don't you just use that to pay for it and I I know that it pays for other stuff well it pays for they have two they have the director and a and a and a um you know an an administrative person so it's mostly it's mostly the staff um um also some of the programs that they run yeah that's a uh so their salary is $130,000 um their utilities are about $7,000 the main thing is uh after the salaries is $25,000 for their programming and then yeah uh dues membership and other things add up to that 6,000 office mostly salaries yes so we wouldn't we I don't think you would I'm not sure about utility ities um we could look to that to see if in a lease if we would save on the utilities when they went into a lease or if you're going to be responsible for the utilities in a lease yeah I mean I would say just off the top of my head negotiating a lease for longer than five years you'll get a better rate but then you'll be locked in for a longer time yeah I think that did the RFI say five five years with five to seven or I I forget some options for renewing yeah I know we looked at Acton and Acton is most of the senior centers are not lease but Acton does have a long-term lease and they're very happy um they got a very good you know they got a very good deal they locked in a a tenure rate um and they had considered building and they they just decided the lease at the time was more cost effective um because I've done this in the past where I've calculated um so I'm for lab space like laboratory space yeah um basically in the cycle of a biotech company you're lucky if you're a company for like three to five years but everyone negotiates like 25 year leases because breaking the lease is cheaper in the long run which is I don't know if how how that works out but um the the cost you would have in the Clause to break the lease was actually cheaper so you negotiate the upfront and you're there for like 10 years and then if you decide you need to move and get a bigger space you either sublet it or you just break the lease and pay whatever the fee is yeah but does anyone have ideas about where how they could craft an article or where they're going to find the money from I mean it go for an override I mean it's a small amount of money for an override um I would say if they're I mean Greg's talking about potentially bundling a couple million dollars for Capital stuff like the gas tank failure at the Winter Street Garage is like half a million he was potentially talking about putting in the golf station Improvement uh the golf um situation like the roof and building envelope there so if it's something that can be bundled with something else was is that mostly debt is that mostly debt Jillian was was he thinking of or because this would be operational yeah right that that's a debt thing not an operational override yeah oh right this is operational that's a good point this is Operation yeah I think at leaste I don't know that you could borrow for a lease I don't know I don't it doesn't sound right but I don't know that for sure yeah I don't think so that's a good question I will put that on the list to ask to Greg but off the top of my head I I do not have any golden goose eggs suggest yeah it seems like as it sometime in the year they must know where the free cash is coming from we could move you know move it into a leas line item I don't you know yeah they're not going to know that in October they want know that by October Noe yeah I mean yeah for a lease payment for five years yeah I think the only choices are you do an override or you cut somebody else's budget yeah I'm I would not support using the reserve fund uh we can't use free cash [Music] um yeah I mean trying to trying to fit in 100,000 uh or 150,000 at fall town meeting is going to be quite difficult even trying to fit it into an FY 26 budget is you know very tricky also [Music] all right are there any other uh topics on that that you want to bring up yeah any other options does anyone know about CPC do you think it's considered recreational at all somebody I don't know since it's a lease that would be a question to bring to them I don't know if they're off covered leases okay I'm pretty sure they can't pay for operational stuff not operational yeah okay because otherwise we would have tried to shift the recreation department into CPC okay they only buy stuff okay all right I I mean certainly worth asking them but I'm it's it I was thinking about it just now and it's like I mean we would have if we could have we would have tried to shift operational budg onto them okay all right well thank you I said I said I bring it up here override or cut budget um and I don't know can you do any fee for service I mean I don't know if seniors you know how that would fly like do you think the seniors are going support $150,000 fee for service that seems like it' be a big burden to them yeah yeah because I think based on your the presentation there there was a cost breakdown per senior or something yeah all right well thank you this is not the last you'll hear of it I'm sure yep all right um um are there any other updates wait one word Linda just I mean is feedback to that committee if you're so inclined um I think they're frequently asked questions um doesn't address regionalization enough okay I I I don't I'm not compelled by their answer and part of it is the Acton one that they site positively elsewhere is you know 50 feet over the mayard Border yeah that was actually at the presentation to the select board we had questions about other things that the committee had considered and one was like using um other Town resources like the library the boys and girls club for programs another was regionalization um there was a third option that they wanted to see I guess other Town buildings you know other things we'd considered besides leasing so we do have to make a strong they the committee does have to make a strong case of all the other options that they considered yeah and I'm sure part of where the slack board is coming from is it's just really going to be hard to shoe horn in another another $100,000 yeah that's exactly it it's just priorities right it's just you know lots of good projects sorry Jillian um I was just looking at they frequently Asked question so yeah all good I did have a Green Meadow building um committee meeting tonight and at 6:40 6:30 they were still going and I popped off just to get myself um prepared for this meeting but um it was mostly about design they're still in the design phase so permitting comes in August 2024 um there's some bids due just I think next week um for some of the Contracting things um they voted to approve the solar design um as part of a carport type of thing and that was about it there wasn't anything giant that seemed to change or be voted on thank you for sharing all right um any other updates from any other members on those different topics no all right um I did share with you the memos that came around from the DPW about the current water capacity restrictions uh those are also posted on board docks so um that's something you consider going forward is that we could potentially be limited in our new growth opportunities um because we might not be able to supply water to large development um so that's something to consider I know that in the past there was a committee that looked at um getting water from one of the nearby ponds because we have easements and other things to be able to do that but we'd have to uh it would be quite an Endeavor um and it would need to be supplemented by state federal funds um because it'd be really expensive um was it Whitehead whiteheads Pond um so on on the mayard website there's actually that report that they made um several years ago at this point might even be 10 years ago um but yeah that's I I'm sure we are all aware of the restrictions that we have uh for growth that was my only update um on other topics all right um and then if that's that um I got two other meeting minutes uh that we can vote on so we got the meeting from May 20th and um I recognized that my after seeing the most recent one my Reserve fund trans are off so we'll have to update that I updated it oh you're so good all right thank you so um so uh this includes our public hearing so this went over the different articles and it also had the articles that we did not yet vote on um so those are nicely captured here um and then there was a motion to close the public hearing and then we talked more about the cemetery trust fund so 133 14 those articles that we still had some questions on and we voted on those after um as well and then we talked a little bit about um budget subcommittee meeting and some other meetings um and then kadesia was not renewing her term so and then I updated the reserve funds at the bottom so that should be the correct uh most up to-date numbers that I am aware of thank you thank you for taking notes yeah I move to accept these minutes I will second to approve the May 20th minutes okay so Nathan moves ktie seconds uh any other further discussion on the meetings minutes of May 20th no all right so I will take a roll call vote Linda yes Katie yes Nathan yes Peter yes all right I am also a yes um so these minutes uh have been approved great uh and then we have one other meeting minute notes from June 3 all right so um this is the meeting from June 3 so this is where we have the capital planning committee also joined us um and talk about the scope um of their planning and the projects that they look for um we also talked about the inventory of the different vehicles and we talked about clear go um and then it definitely the consensus that it was a valuable conversation so uh the annual town meeting we had a debrief there and then we talked about routine agenda um and we did some updates um so we talked about the upcoming multi-board meeting that we already voted on the minutes um and and then we did some future planning so talking about our next meetings coming up and the openings which uh has currently been filled uh can you scroll back up to the section about the Capcom presentation oh um okay uh in the third paragraph funding for capital projects The Debt Service for the town is not about 8% to 10% of the total budget what is should that be is now about I think that's correct Nathan thank you okay and then um in the second to last paragraph there um the software tool it says cleargov but I think it's cleargov and it's a do yep I will make a motion to approve the minutes from June 3 as amended as amended perfect so Katie has made a motion is there a second I second all right and Nathan second all right so I will stop sharing I will now take a roll call vote Linda yes hiy yes Nathan yes Peter yes I am also a yes so these are approved as amended so I will save that perfect um awesome so those are all the minutes that I had for our approval tonight um yep so our next meeting will be on the 8th and dick will open that meeting and that is all of the items I have for tonight unless anyone has any pressing topics Andor business uh Jill you're gonna you're gonna follow up with Cavin is that what you decided yep I'm GNA send Gavin an email to see if he'd still like to serve on the committee um because he's been no call no show for a couple meetings here so which makes me a little nervous so I hope everything is okay for him and his family and then jillan can I um I don't know how the open meeting thing but can I email you maybe um potential dates that we could hop on a zoom and maybe go over ways that I could learn to post on war dos or or some of the other tasks yeah I think that it's fair because we're not a quorum um and you're asking me specific things about how to post um okay I will do that yeah just to note there um the Quorum is the key thing that I mean any two of us or even three of us can get together and talk in as much detail as we want to um is whether we have a quorum or not that becomes an issue for open meeting that's that's why we can't s send an email to the entire committee ah talking about stuff um or you know in deliberations but you can definitely talk to people oneon-one um you know in as much detail as you want so okay I wasn't sure how that works so that's good to know thank you so just something I never quite understand H how is it that the um that like jillan can send an email out to all of us to disseminate like materials for a meeting is it because that's duplicated on board Docs or uh because it would be counted as informational and not deliberative so you you can't be part of in the process of making a decision or having deliberations via email so you know we can't send an email saying to the whole committee saying you know I think there should be a capital line for $100,000 we can send an email saying here's the presentation the Capital committee gave you know I can send out the spreadsheets the budget spreadsheet I do to everybody I can't send it out with a whole commentary of which line items I think are good and bad is my understand and if someone if someone replied all to the email that I sent out that would could potentially be counted as deliberation so that's why if you have a question um just email me directly like one on one don't like email all because then that could potentially violate open meeting law which you know it's also another reason why I didn't send an email after I went to the select board meeting was like I went to this meeting they told us we have to give a presentation and that's not what I thought was going to happen because that's not necessarily informational it's more guess it's deliberative it be a little more gripey I guess but um yeah um because then I couldn't pull you all for your opinions on a presentation because then that would be violating open meeting laws so um so that's honestly why I didn't send it out because I didn't want anyone to reply at all like I think this is what the presentation should be or something so that's why I just didn't send anything so hopefully they'll post the meeting more than 48 hours ahead of time so that we know that what the agenda is and if they expect a presentation because that was a surprise for me yeah so I could have made something but then it would have been my presentation so I didn't feel like that was fair either but anyway I digress all right if there's no additional topics I would like to entertain a motion to adjourn what do you all think I will make a motion to adjourn at 9:41 p.m. I'll second all right Linda second all right roll call vote Linda yes Katie yes Nathan yes uh Peter yes I am also a yes so we are adjourned thank you very much everyone much appreciated did