##VIDEO ID:JQU051GGc64## e e e e e hey hey everyone hi guys yeah there we go there we go April and Ryan and nice to see everybody dressed warm C out there I see a down vest I see a scarf two turtlenecks got a hat on oh yep and no snow I know what's up with that I don't know I've put in a request I think it's the the state I think it's clearly the state government is not responding to our request for snow another letter to the governor another letter yes you don't have to double it though I don't yes my snowshoes are getting rusty my skis are just get out there well I've been getting out I haven't let the weather stop me but you know in the long range forecast doesn't I see none although they say there's a chance on Saturday we're all here there we go wellow hi everybody I guess we have to work huh is that thanks for being so prompt everybody you guys notice the packed agenda tonight so good get and get going uh so I'll call the finance committee to order at 629 and I think I see Ryan our Treasurer uh so R we can get started like 15 minutes early with you if you're if you're ready to go now I certainly would not complain okay all right let's do that I'm gonna um yeah so our first topic today is uh to review um Ryan's proposed FY 26 budget for the treasur department and I'm gonna share my screen uh oh uh let's see uh Gabe if you're there I think you might need to give me sharing privileges I if he stepped away or I'm sorry I had a customer in my office no problem um so I was killing two birds with one stone all right so I will give you host all right thanks yeah I'm Gonna Make You co-host because I'm staying on yeah perfect all right and let's see sure I pull up the right one having trouble oh here we are yeah okay all right how we doing for font size is that readable bigger please little a little bigger oh yes yes there we go all right great okay Ryan um so you've done this a few times uh can you kind of just walk us through um the line items here and it looks like you know a number of them have um essentially are holding the same levels uh as as fy2 but we've got some proposed changes so maybe we can kind of talk through those yeah absolutely um a lot of it uh a lot of it is a standard 3% just based on Assumption of increased wages things that tie into that but there's obviously a couple varying ones here and the big one we should just get out of the way is the health insurance line um as you can see here I put in in an estimated increase of 15% which I think is a jarring number however I really do genuinely believe that we'll see an increase in rates somewhere between 12 and 15% I think it might actually land at 13 but I really wanted to be on the safe side with sending this in um this is from what I understand I've tried to get as much the insurance trust hasn't met yet so they haven't officially voted anything but I try to get as much ahead of time so that I can come prepared to this meeting and from my understanding there's a substantial increase in weight loss drug use and this has driven up the cost of insurance substantially and the trust itself has used a large amount of its reserves and as a result they expect to see a substantial increase in rates so that's where this number is coming from it's not because I thought it would be fun to shock everyone okay what was the second what was the second thing the first one was the weight drugs and the second one was that that they as a result of that they've used a lot of their reserves I see yeah okay thanks and how is this year doing are we on schedule this year are they using their reserves to meet the OIC and fy2 well we did have an increase last year so when we budgeted for last year I prepared for that so we're on track right now with our expenditure on there and who's they and of course that always um the insurance trust itself Hampshire County Group Insurance our insurance company okay Hampshire County Insurance okay a trust thank you hey uh Ryan yes Bob I just want to the the in in FY 24 we had 446 585 now it's up to you ask for 598 and is that reflective of of of the employees or just general cost increase in cost in health because that's a wall wall up of an increase yeah it's substantial I mean obviously this year's over last year is is a huge difference um I don't know you probably won't recall but there during the pandemic um there were some years where they chose not to I think it was it was either oh excuse me either two or three years in a row where they didn't incre increase rates at all um which I don't necessarily agree with that decision and I think that is What's led us to have these larger increases later I understand the logic behind it was to help alleviate the financial burden on people during the difficult time but coming off the pandemic health insurance costs have just continued to rise and rise and you compound that with the fact that they didn't have an increase in rate for those couple of years we're now seeing it at this this end of time unfortunately that so that's the best I could do to explain it this is not based on change in Staffing really it truly is just an increase year-over-year with the insurance rates so it's not based on members it's it's not based on Staffing it's not based but it's based upon this anomaly because of the co that's your interpretation can I my interpretation is a combination of the covid and this weight loss drug is the real current hit right now I mean I'm happy to hear gab's point of view she has substantial more knowledge and insight than I do on this okay thanks can I jump in for just please so when you take the 520,000 that was last year's based on the employees that Ryan has and multiply it by the 15% increase they're estimating it does come out to 5 198,000 so your employee situation is stagnant it's staying the same the OIC problem they're paying out $500,000 a month o zic alone that's a huge that's one drug you're not even talking about all the other drugs out there and that is a huge increase the other issue is they have some very very high claims um if a child is born and it's an ICU and it spends its first two years with heart issues we've got a couple I'm not saying that that's the situation we have but they have several huge cases that are costing millions in medical care and that affects your rates and that affects the increases that blue cross it eats into the reserves so Ryan was spoton in how he explained it um but the pharmaceutical are the driving force we are a country that prescribes drugs for everything and this weight loss thing is absolutely huge thank you very much for that uh one last other question Ryan about the uh further down the the page here about the uh the computer visioning didn't we have a contract that was going to hold that number I mean it seems to be increasing really really rapidly too what what are you pointing to forgive my I'm missing what you're talking are you the other budget sorry yeah that's the tax collector right sorry no you're fine um Ryan I I have a question just about sort of timing in process related to the health insurance assumption here so can you can you just explain to me kind of what the process so it sounds like the trust has a of some process where they essentially vote on uh setting a rate for for the up an upcoming fiscal year is that is that how it works yeah so that meeting takes place at the end of January so I had initially sent over a budget I think it was due in October uh which just I really didn't have I didn't have the any close of an Insight that really provided which is why last week I sent you this one and it was so drastically different so all right so that that's helpful so basically we can we can put in this number of $598,000 as a placeholder for now but it sounds like like by the end of this month or sometime shortly after that we'll actually get information about what our actual rate is going to be for FY 26 yes we'll have it will have a a set increase all right got it okay that's helpful uh Susie which is the only real the S oh I'm sorry go ahead no no go ahead Brian if you I just gonna say that's really the only that's the only fixed um variable in the situation is what the rate is there's always the chance that you know someone will leave the school this year who's not in our plan they'll hire their replacement and they'll have a family plan and that alone is a huge increase you know and if that happens a couple times over it's obviously it's hard for me to factor that in into the situation but but you're probably are you going to recommend essentially the making the same uh an assumption that the employee number and the number of plan the type of plans they're opting into is going to be consistent with FY 25 and and then okay got it so the so the the the what will impact the number we actually put in our final budget here is going to be whatever the rate is that the trust uh uh proposes for for for yeah the only reason why I would change that would be if you you know you know for sure you're meeting with the police department and you're giving them a new benefited employee or you're giving the highway an extra benefit employee I would if say you're going to do two of those I would probably factor in a fair assumption that at least one of them would take insurance and then I would probably add a little more to this but if you're you know you're this isn't you know happening then there's no point in me try to assume that there'll be this drastic change and who's taking it or not okay thank you and Susie and so uh because we learn every day uh maybe we want to put Ryan after the likely meeting in the in the future I mean we don't really have to spend a lot of angst on this if we meet after the trust votes so maybe we would put Ryan like in the second week of February or wherever our next yeah if if you think that's predict enough Ryan yeah that should be fine like I said I try to get I have a good relationship with people so I try to touch base of them ahead of time so at least we have somewhat of an estimate here as opposed to me assuming you know a couple percent to be like coming back to in a month with 15 would be wouldn't be a fun meeting yeah okay um all right well why don't we move on to some of the other line items here do you wanna okay so just going down if everyone's okay with just going down the list here Medicare this is tied directly to what your wages are so I'm simply assuming there will be a generalized 3% Cola across the board for wages and that's how I've budgeted this line um your opep your opep Actuarial we put money away in order to um we don't do the opep every year I believe it's every other year so we put money away every year towards it so then when we go to actually do the Actuarial review we have the funds already sitting there um last time we did it they mentioned that there would be an increase which is why it's 2500 over 2,000 um the next line is the actual OPB contribution I put in 50,000 obviously the finance committee usually as you navigate the budget process you make a determination there it just it falls under my Department's perview so I feel it's appropriate to add that in there got um short-term borrowing is just the cost associated doing borrowing itself so when we go out to bid um you know when we have to renew a debt Etc it helps with the the cost uh with working with our financial adviser Etc the next one that has a a larger increase you'll note is the tax title account to be totally transparent with you I actually think that I could increase this a lot more and I and I do think I could benefit from increasing it a lot more but I'm trying to uh stay somewhat reasonable here we have um we've had a lot of activity in our tax title um accounts and there was some time trying to figure out how to word this so forgive me for a second two major changes to tax title one the state itself is changing the way tax title is handled and it's just making the process in my opinion a little more expensive there will be um involvement of real estate agents is trying to dispose of proper before you go and just simply sell it at auction like you used to do before things like that that's now actually changing it to make it more costly the other thing is that there was a time where we had a couple issues with some um activity that took place in the assessor's office I think we had a new admin assessor and things maybe got a little wonky between the assessor and the collector's office and as a result our tax title attorney has had to put a lot of work into a couple projects and that has just it's it's eating away at my my tax title budget so the best way to describe it is you have someone in tax title which means they owed the town taxes The Collector turns it to the treasurer and then the treasurer works the tax titled attorney to try to recoup those taxes from set individual which requires filing paperwork at the registry of deeds going to court Etc and your tax title attorney handles that um unfortunately there were a couple errors with parcels and documentation when it before it got to the treasury side that our tax title attorney has uncovered through this process of trying to collect this money and the longer an attorney works on something the more expensive it is so it's it truly is it's really that simple it's a direct relation to the amount of hours being put into it so along with the couple little clerical errors historically that have taken place and now with this new tax law and the effort that's going to take on the tax attorney's uh side is just going to cost us more money to try to recoup from those people who are not paying their taxes in town so that's why there is the increase here that issue regarding the error that was a current fiscal year issue not necessarily something that's going to happen in 26 you'd be surprised how long it takes a court to move so you think that the costs associated with that are going to spill into the next year yeah right now my our tax attorney I actually told him to stop working on it because uh it was I'm going to completely expend that budget without a doubt if he continues to work on it and we're not accomplishing anything but that one project so right now there's a good amount of it that's on under the courts Port perview which actually takes a lot of time so i' I've asked him to basically stop doing anything for a little bit because every time he does not just him but anytime the attorney does anything it costs a ton of money so even if he's like just checking in on it it's costing us a ton of money so I've just I've asked him to stop let the court move a little and then we'll revisit it in a couple months rather than this continuous effort being put towards it because we just my budget simply can't support it yeah I noticed that you're you're pretty heavily spent on that line already yep for the year you're at 79% spent yep yes that's why he's on pause yeah uh Susie and the good news is that if you get it over the Finish Line there will be more tax dollars paid into the town so it's not like some projects where there's no no better fit back yes it is one of those few that um there's a financial benefit to the town in the end it's just the uh it's the frustrating of costing some taxpayers money to get other taxpayers to pay their taxes but unfortunately it's the process um moving right along yep to the treasurer expenses I have a 3% increase in here which is putting us at around $350 or so in that Treasures expense line which is I'm G to I'm basically going to take a little bit of I'm going to try to cut back a little to offset an increase in my line of actually $500 with our payroll company but I'm trying to work with our payroll company to create this new onboarding process where all our new hire paperwork will get sent electronically and they'll be able to complete everything electronically it automatically gets imported to our payroll software it's saved there um that is actually a pretty decent expense however because I represent so many towns with them they were willing to like break up the expense by Town rather than what it would normally cost because so much of my paperwork is the same so there will be a change in service that hopefully will be really smooth and help the town with its audits in the future and just overall personel happiness at really nominal increase in our in the budget so I'm I'm pretty happy about that right uh Bob I was goingon to ask you about the next line veterans benefits I know we had some issues with that line this year I think we actually had to augment it or supplement it where does that stand where do where did that that line stand this year and going forward we are pretty much on the same we're on the same trajectory there if I understand this and you know this actually I I'm happy to take advantage of of gab's work with the town at the moment because the veterans benefit is one that we had there were years where we didn't have one and those were my formative years in the role so we do have a veteran living in town right now where we are paying this out but I was always under the impression that we were reimbursed so maybe I just don't quite understand it and I'm hoping that Gabe could said some light on it because we are on track right now we do have a veteran living in town we are on track to um overextend that budget the moment so you only have one veteran and their benefits are based on what their earning potential is so if they're a lawyer their benefits are going to be on the level of a lawyer's salary they take their salary if they're a truck driver their benefits are based on that their benefits are based on their situation if they're collecting unemploy employment or whatever so usually when you get a vet he cannot collect anything and the Veterans Administration works with him he gets full benefits in the beginning and then gradually it gets reduced so the vet you have started out at a very high rate and currently monthly is at a low rate and when I came to you to tell you we were in trouble on this account we Gail and I projected this one person to June when we asked to um get that supplemented so we are reimbursed 75% from the state of Massachusetts it usually doesn't come in till it's two years down the road so what we pay out this year we don't get sometimes we get it next year sometimes we don't it depends upon how the state rolls with it so but you may be getting income now from you probably aren't CU you haven't had a vet for years so you've already gotten reimbursed for past years you're not going to get reimbursed for this person for a little while um but it comes in your cash Revenue side it does not come in on it doesn't come in and get helped it doesn't really help you it comes back to you in your Revenue side right so when you do your recap sheet if you're estimating a refund from the Vets you can put it in there um to help you recoup some of that money but if you get anybody that moves into town that's a vet that is unemployed and has a situation automatically gets benefits so Ryan has no way of predicting that tomorrow he could have a whole family move into town and then he would have another vet that he would have to pay out on a monthly basis so this is really a what I call a what do you call it when you look into a glass ball and you try to predict the future roll of the dice yeah it's a roll of the dice budgeting yeah you're L you're lucky you only have one I have seen them be as much as $3,000 a month with one person okay well thank you uh I very grateful Gabe is here uh so yeah no I actually just before this meeting filled out another uh voucher for this individual you know you're looking at just shy of $1,500 for the month of January for them so I know that that line is going to be um it's going to be shot so I I'm obviously I'm happy to see the line increase it's it's hard to predict I mean if you were to do quick math on this one you'd be looking at a substantial increase in the budget there but I don't know how long they will be here and how long they'll receive benefits but right now that person is being um compensated at about $1,500 a month is that yes okay now it sounded like Gabe you you suggested that that number will decrease over time but is that like is that a pretty gradual kind of process or right if he if they get rent aid for him or they get oil fuel for him right now the veterans money that's being paid is a composite of a lot of credits for oil fuel rent whatever his expenses are he he or her has to bring the expenses in so say they get into subsidized housing then the benefits get reduced that's how that works if he doesn't they stay the same until he's off if he suddenly get Mak sense Social Security they will reduce it AJ yeah go ahead is that George I'm sorry to interrupt my react isn't working I don't see my I can't raise my hand I we can't assume that that assistance is going to happen right I mean we have to assume that this person's getting 1500 a month that that's probably going to continue right well I would like to um the 1500 I thought was high because I don't recall it being this high so I did just go back and look it hasn't been that high uh it's only been near that twice now but gab's Point makes sense if it's helping covering the cost of heating Etc that the varying for this month is going to be on the higher side so it hasn't been 1500 consistently um how how how long have we been has this person been receiving this benefit is it looks like they lived here few years ago and then left and now they're back uh came back in 24 in March it looks like okay um or maybe they I not to say they didn't live here but they haven't been being paid regularly until 2024 I mean assuming that you know from March through you know I don't know what the most recent month you've processed I don't know if that was December or some earlier month like could you do kind of a back of the envelope sort of estimate of what you think this person is going to be compensated um over the course of a year 18 $1,000 if it's $1,500 a month yeah right but I thought Ryan said that some months were like we only hit that ,500 a couple months yeah through through December the spending was 6,500 I'm looking at the expense okay yeah so that might be March through December yeah so 13 to 15,000 June December July June through December because March through June would have been last year of course of course yeah yeah yeah uh all right I don't know what I don't know what others think but it sounds to me like we probably ought to budget something higher than this $5500 here just knowing that this is this is not really spec I I know we've had this discussion in the past and it's been more of a speculative kind of discussion about like well what if somebody moves into town but we have somebody here right now who's getting this benefit and so we know that unless this person were to leave tomorrow or whatever you know like that we're going to we're going to be spending more than $5,500 um so it sounds like some some increase is warranted here that's my that's my gut reaction I don't know what others think sus so if we go with 11 if we take those six first six months and divide it out it's about um 1,100 so if we do that times 12 for next year we'd be at 13,020 I mean 13,200 so 5,000 looks pretty inadequate I'm sorry this is my this is my first experience with it so forgive my no no it's not your fa ignorance on it yeah no I I remember like we had a run of of like several cons I've always just said if someone moves to town we'll have to pay for them yeah and that's been my Spiel for this line yeah we when we've always pushed back on that as a matter of fact well you know we have our fincom Reserve so we always felt like if it changed we could cover ourselves for at least one year but this looks like something that could go longer yeah uh Bob I want to suggest that uh because of all the uh unpredictables that Gabe and and Ryan have pointed out that uh we I think we could probably be uh safe or safer if we if we if we committed about 10,000 in this budget and then we could always supplement it if we had to but that would be a significant increase to cover these these possibilities I think that might work for me okay so you're suggesting maybe budgeting $10,000 fory 26 April actually I was thinking along the same line but I was thinking of just doubling the 5500 with the idea that we could use Reserve funds if we needed okay so that would be something closer to like 11,000 yeah call 12 yeah um okay so obviously we we don't have to make a decision on this tonight but it would be helpful to have sort of a different placeholder in here I I haven't heard anybody from the fincom um sort of push back against the idea of increasing this by um a pretty significant margin so I don't know what do you think should we call it 1100 1200 sorry 11,000 12,000 something like that does that seem reasonable to folks yeah's idea makes sense okay all right uh so maybe I'm gonna just put in 11,000 just to make it a nice easy round number how's that sound good okay all right uh Ryan was there any other um kind of background that you wanted to share on uh the next line or any other lines that we've already talked about uh no uh unemployment um the only thing is I just did a quick calculation as to what we would have paid out if we just paid into the state we probably would have paid around 32 to $3,300 last year directly to State um and we didn't expend that much here and continuing to fund it this way I think does make sense for shet spray okay great okay okay um any questions I see we have a question or hand up from member of the public before I get to that person do fincom members any other fincom members have questions or need any clarification from Ryan thank you yes I do have a question for Ryan all right George um so Ryan at some point so we've approved three projects and we funded them with short-term notes because interest rates were high and I believe that's the advice you received from our our bond counsel or whoever and so those are coming up and We the finance committee are going to be interested in what decisions you're going to make and I don't know maybe we even want to be involved in those decisions because we're planning on having having Capital planning meetings and looking at what's coming up down the road historically we look at our cash reserves our current debt service and we try to figure out what's the best way to finance the current requests the requests that will happen at the town meeting this spring but um these are three wild cards right now for us because we don't know what the plan is and so I don't know I might be speaking for the whole fincom but I would recommend if you don't mind if it's appropriate for us to be involved in that decision making just so that we're aware of what recommendations we can make when we write warrant articles for the new ATM because yeah no you under just just to finish that you understand our concept what we've been doing is funding Capital stabilization to the tune of 2% of the budget and decreasing from that funding any amount that's in debt service so essentially we're always funding Capital purchases in the operating budget at 2% right yeah absolutely we do have the three uh we did a ban which is a one-year borrowing for the uh I think it was a covert dump truck back maybe a back home some back home some type of equipment for the highway department yeah um I did have a chance to touch base with our financial adviser just recently because there was uh you know we had an inauguration a couple days ago so that usually changes things and what they're looking at um it's possible that we'll probably renew for another year to get an idea as to what rates are going to look like but it's still too soon to really have an idea on that so I'm happy to um keep you in the loop in that keep you involved in the process as we get closer to that coming due and deciding whether we're going to go out to borrow for another band which is basically a renewal or going out for a longer term it really depends on what happens with our rate market right and it's unfortunately it's not moving the way we all hoped it would um would that mean that you might need to increase the short-term borrowing interest on this on this schedule it is if well the rates would have to be yeah it's possible because rates the three of them combined were about half a million dollars yeah it's like 546,000 so depending on what happens with rates it is possible it could become more expensive okay but we'll figure that out later thank you uh Jim yes um Ryan U concerning tax title have a question how many delinquent um uh taxpayers do we have or are you wrestling with right now uh wrestling with is a unique term um I will say I'm not necessarily wrestling with anyone you know people are communicative for the most part those that are interested I'm just looking for my list here yeah I think we asked this question most every year I'm just curious to know whether there more more people than normal or less than normal I guess is what I'm sort of trying to find out for the it's no we're pretty consistent we've got about 15 it looks like in there and it's it's been pretty much that same ball ballpark for the last few years okay um it was right before honestly coming off the pandemic I think is when is when you notice there was an increase and that increase has stayed consistent since I see okay thank you of course Gabe in Ryan's budget seats I don't see his treasur certification so Ryan just passed his testing so he's now a registered Treasurer and we have A1 th000 stien that we give them and that needs to be added to this budget it does thank you when I completed this I didn't um it's not on your yeah it's not on your budget here but on page one of your expense report um it looks like it got removed and we need to add it back in congratulations Ryan yeah thank you I appreciate that very much I'm happy to have completed that uh so maybe I'll add a line under treasure expenses no if you go on your expens well unless you your spreadsheet it already exists yeah it's already there okay and funding it at zero y oh I see I see I see okay so there's actually a separate line on our budget other um apart from treasur expenses uh okay which we're not seeing on this I gotcha Okay so we've been funding it at zero that needs to now be $1,000 for um cor and is that something that gets is that an annual like expense or is that just yes it's an annual thing you you pay it out to your tax collector your accountant your assessors and your Treasurer got it all right so we'll have to make note of that and Gabe you're going to put down on the sheet yeah I just wrote it down right I just wanted to bring it to your attention oh that's helpful um only other question I have for you Ryan was on I can't remember when we last were um delivered the OPB Actuarial report um was that last year or was that two years ago and um you might not know the answer to this uh but maybe you can get back to us about when we would expect to see um that report because that that that has some useful information for us to consider when we're making a decision about what level to contribute to the opep fund you know which which we've been consistently doing $50,000 for a while but you know based on that information I don't know you know we theoretically we could make a different decision I believe the next time we're doing it is 45 uh fiscal year 4 and 24 and 25 so I would imagine that means that they did it for 23 and 24 uh 22 and 23 excuse me so I would expect that so that would suggest that maybe we get one for oh no wait you searching yeah I have it on I have that we're on the schedule for 22 23 and then we do 24 and 25 so I would expect that we'll have one presented probably by the end of this year okay Pro I think the depending on how quickly they get it done it'll either be the fall or the spring okay I can't find a copy of the original one from Parker for the 2223 but I'm sure it's in it's in here somewhere I just can't find it off all right I'm gonna assume that it's not something that'll inform our discussion about what to fund uh have to use the right we'll have to use the same assumptions from the last report yeah but maybe but it sounds like we will have kind of an updated picture for for when we have this discussion about FY 27 okay yes all right great anything uh else for Ryan before we let him go all right Ryan thanks for for being here and for the very clear uh presentation and uh of course thank you very much I forget I apologize again for my hiccup especially and the veterans benefit so thank you everyone for your patience and thank you Gabe for your help you're welcome have a good night all right have some fun take care all right okay um let's see I think there was a hand up but it looks like it's was lowered so I'm gonna assume that we can move on to our next no it's no Mary Lou hi my name is Mary L cona I'm um a SHP resident live on wendle road and I couldn't help but um be a little concerned when you all were speaking about the veterans benefits it kind of sounded like a burden on the town um so I wanted to make a comment I I for one would not mind my texes being raised or contributed to such a fund okay then I have a question how I know there's another veteran in town so how does a veteran become aware that they may be eligible for that benefit and then number two is it you guys decision only to um decide what kind of money goes in that fund or does it become something the whole town can vote on so I'll just I'll give a kind of quick answer I I mean this is is an obligation the town has and will have to pay um and so the only question for us is about sort of managing the whe the budget so that you know we um uh so that we can kind of adequately prepare uh but we have no we have no a no discretion and nor should we about whether I mean those are those are that's a benefit that veteran is entitled to and they're going to be paid that that benefit um by the town regardless what anybody in the town thinks and so it's really just a question of how to appropriately budget for it that that's what our discussion is about and then I have no I couldn't I I I couldn't speak to anything about the process for um how to apply for um those benefits I'm not sure anybody here would have that thato okay uh when when you when you get the amount you know when you decide it sounded like you were you said 11,000 I heard someone say 13,000 could we not say and then somebody else said 50,000 about some other thing like it was nothing but you were struggling you know your whole group to come up with a good solid High amount when we think of it for a veteran for a gentleman or or or a woman who put their life you know which which I'm I don't agree with on the line for us so I'm just saying I'd be happy to have my taxes raised I'd be even happier to know that we are taking care of such people thank you sure um okay so I'm just gonna just G repeat one one thing again it's not our um it's not our role to determine what that veteran is compensated that and it is Our obligation to to pay them and so all our discussion is only about what can we do to to essentially prepare for um whatever that um level of compensation that we're going to be requ requ ired to pay is and so when we were tossing around different numbers it was strictly a matter of saying well what's the best assumption we can make about what we're going to be required to pay that we're not going to have any discretion to say well this person should be paid more or should be paid less that's not determined by us right I assume that's the Veterans Administration or some some other entity that makes that determines that our our resp responsibility is simply just to make sure that our budget has the appropriate funds in a in a budget line to so that we will be prepared to pay that obligation that that the town has thank you Susie find out about the veterans benefits you can contact our veteran services that are on our website and you can talk to them about the process it's not determined by the town all right okay so um all right it's just about 7:15 so I think what I will do is um pull up the budget for our next budget review which is for the assessor Department uh let me share that document all right George should do we need to call our to order that's a good point April because there's two of us are on the committee yes I I believe that is correct so I'll move to call us the Assessor's board to in to order I will second that okay right okay and so I think we have David Burgess um and uh let me first make this bigger so that we can actually read it thank you thank you thank you how's that that that readable yes okay hi David can you hear me okay yes and I just discovered how to unmute so um do you actually before we we move forward do you w to just um share who we have from the kind of assessors Department with us tonight and uh obviously we have a couple of our fincom members who are part of um the assessor board I think that's the right ter okay I can't see who else there but I'm David Burgess and I'm the principal assessor and I can't see who else is there all right Les is that Lesley yeah Leslie Bracebridge okay Leslie's the quk and she does little work great all right um okay so uh usually what we do um with these budget so first of all I should just explain because I can't recall if we actually met you with you last year uh in um preparation for the fy2 budget but we so the purpose of these meetings we do them with each department uh head is to look at their proposed budget for the next fiscal year so in our case FY 26 um we ask that each department to kind of makes um their you know kind of the best assumptions about what the uh budget levels ought to be and and then we review that with each department and it's an opportunity for the fincom to sort of ask any clarifying questions it's an opportunity for the Department to explain kind what assumptions went into um the specific budget lines um we pay particular attention to any budget line where there's kind of a propos a significant increase or decrease in the proposed amount for the next fiscal year um so maybe what we could do is just kind of walk through your budget kind of line by line and you can share any information that you think is important for us to know about what what assumptions went into um the the proposed number that you have how does that sound sounds good okay um so you want to walk us through this sure not really a big budget all B are Level funded and that's going to be for the uh whatever we need in the office the uh day-to-day running of the office and um stuff like that now this is admin assessor certificate that is something that Becky put on um they thought that I might want to do it and I really don't so uh that $1,000 in my opinion is cplus unless you want to leave it there in case the next person comes in um want it uh but I mean that would be up to them to ask for it in my opinion um next two items there's really nothing uh they've gone up by 20 25% on the first one uh from 4,000 to 5,000 and that's really because cardgraphic who are our mapping company and also our GIS people uh their fees have gone up it's just that simple and also with vision who also hosts our um Cloud if you log on to see um if we need that to operate our CH system our computer assist Mass appraisal system and then we have two items at the bottom um the revaluation we use an outside company every year um to cover up the um necessary reporting to the do each year to that our Vues and the final one is for personal property he and a fee for class 504 utilities 504 utilities are the utilities that we are obliged to Value ourselves that the value does not come from the state and Roy bishop and Associates our vendor company then will analyze the report report from the um companies the utility companies and verify that they are giving us the right amount of money and actually will increase what they give us because the way the state has changed it now we're allowed to change a little bit so he does all that for us um David my my assumption on that um on that line in the past was that that's essentially like um an out an outside firm that we use to Value things like telephone polls and other sort of infrastructure that the utility companies operate in our town is that that's that's correct the he the outside company which is in this cases Bop and they will analyze with the form of list that are send into US each year and they will go and dig out the new growth and any increase in valuation and as say nine times out of 10 we increase the valuation a little bit each year got it so that that that $5,000 that we spend uh as kind of Outsourcing to this firm actually results in um some value greater than that coming back to us in terms of assessed the value on this property and then Associated taxes I would assume all right well the 5,000 doesn't just cover the utilities also includes the other personal property accounts in time and town I see yes it does come back okay um okay so I think uh what I'll do now is just open it up to fincom members for any questions or clarifying questions that folks wanted to ask Jim yes um does the vision software and the cloud hosting does that protect us against ransomware attacks uh should we because we're like any other any other Town vulnerable to this kind of um hacking that's going on out there in the real world you know in the real world and I'm I'm curious if we're protected in any way um if if all of our real estate accounts and everything else are protected properly well since they're in the cloud they are protected yes uh whether we be protected from a basic attack on our hardware and other uh operating systems I can't answer uhuh but but the records that we keep the you know you know all the account all of the you all of this the software does protect that part of it at least apart from the hardware yes okay thank you um if we wanted to could we back this stuff up on diss uh be hell of a disc I I assume we do really okay okay we I mean we put in after we got hacked by ransomware there was changes made to back up all our networks was there not I don't know if anybody this well can answer that question but I certainly remember that was a conversation I think Ellen actually we might want to hold that question for Ellen okay this actually happened to us yes yes twice when oh gosh five years ago seven years ago yeah five I think about five years ago yeah it was a while ago that is amazing okay it's happened to a lot of municipalities wow how did they even find us but it's a constantly changing uh environment you know you just can't it's hard keeping up with with all of the stuff that's going on out there in the so-called real Digital World in small towns were easy targets they don't we very easy targets yeah yeah they don't have sophisticated IT staff yeah wow uh I had a question David or any other folks from the assessor's office um on on the I guess I guess this pertains to both the cardgraphic uh um software GIS software and the vision are these do we have sort of like multi-year uh contracts with these or licenses with these or are they essentially able to set a fee and change that fee every year how does it how does that work okay if you look at the CI the web hosting you see that that's for 23 through 26 so they are ramping it up a a little bit each year see so that buil into the contract yeah yeah and similarly seers Vision okay got it okay so they they the way they're the contracts or the LIC license contracts for those that software structured is they they build in increases for for for each year seems no matter what you do with the technology is just more and more every year okay uh Gabe so I I wanted to assure you about Vadar and how they handle our security they have the mega storage sites and they have four or five sites across the United States of America so they have a site in Massachusetts but all of our information in every other town that they do business with is backed up in these other sites Across the Nation they also have C cyber security they back up daily so they are on The Cutting Edge of security as far as assessing programs and accounting programs go because our accounting program is also Vadar so as far as them getting corrupted if they get corrupted then we're all getting corrupted across the country because these megga sites I've been in it I've seen it they dress you in this white suit you know and they scan your eyeballs and they show you how they're storing everything so it's really interesting but I think you need to feel comfortable about how they're doing it that was it thank you yeah uh I was just going to mention Gabe isn't the tax collector's data also protected by Vadar yes your three yes you have all three systems now are on Vadar that was your recent conversion yep thanks super any uh final questions for the uh assessor team yeah um go ahead George when we met Leslie uh in our last meeting we talked about the expense line um actual spent was 783 last year and we're asking for 3711 this year and we budgeted 37-11 this and or for fiscal 26 we also budgeted that same amount for the current fiscal year year to date we've spent $800 and given what you know are you really anticipating another $22,900 in expenses uh I I would defer to David is he still here I'm still here oh there you are up at the top I'm sorry but uh one thing that that I had said a year or two ago was that right now you've got two people heading for retirement uh when Kevin was here he went to a lot of training in a lot of conferences he charged for mileage which isn't being charged for for just running around town and looking at properties there's there's things that are being overlooked here on purpose because Justice David isn't applying for his thousand for his excellent uh skills certification it doesn't mean that it's not going away we do I would it with David um I would say that we may spend another $1,000 um to get the property cards updated uh there's postage which uh I would need a new box of before the end of the year so you know you might want to take a thousand off but I wouldn't want to take more than that especially with the fact that there will be a new uh well at least there's going to be a new assess clerk someday who will need training there could be a new assessor at any time although I'm grateful for the board that we've got right now they've been as steady as one could ask for but so I don't know how you want to handle it well we we just want to make it yeah we want to make it um want a reasonable estimate I mean if if you're telling me you're saying $1,000 I forgot what was that again I off the top of my head I'm saying uh David you may remember better than I how much to update the field cards but I I'm guessing that we could easily spend another thousand and I don't know how you prepare for when new people come in and need the training because that's where your expenses come in well yeah hopefully we can know in time the budget for it and if we had if we hadn't we can always rely on fincom reserve or account end perfect yeah so so how about if we if we trim $1,200 off it and went with 2500 I think that would be reasonable yeah as I see in the budget that I'm looking at we're always trying to worry about what's coming next which is great and if we need new assessors there going to have to assessments going to a school and that all cost money but at the moment we're pretty good I think it's the case that sometime people believe it want have got it I don't want to give it back yeah right right well we're open to giving it back if you really need it I mean you know we can be reasonable but can be we were worried here we can be yeah it can be all right so we've got a proposal to um fund this at $2500 any fincom members have any concerns about that or any other ideas okay all right good so I'm going to put that in as our new sort of placeholder uh which helps because we've got a couple other lines that right increase okay great any other questions uh Bob yeah well David said that he was not interested in getting the administrative assessor certificate line funded is that something we can change David or as long same same guidelines as long as you're willing to put it back if somebody else when somebody else comes in yeah when the time comes we can we can talk about that Abol for now we don't need that in there okay I'm just curious um David why do we is it that you do not need to be certified or somebody else is going to pay for it or what I am certified and with my certification I'm entitled to another $1,000 and I wouldn't be bothered with it to be honest we F $ paperwork but it's not an actual like it doesn't cost you $1,000 to get certified is that no no I've got all the I've got all the certifications I'm going to need good okay thanks got it I I think right now you've got a very strong department and people who are retired and are being very generous yes and I'm saying that of the board members as well as the office staff we appreciate appr especially our assessor clerk yeah do definitely that is but you do Leslie is phenomenal thank you April you're very kind to say that and it's very true sure it's true run gr just out of curiosity just out of curiosity if there's when there's extra money at the end of the fiscal year can it all be moved into free cash it does that's what happens okay right okay fine fine and on the other hand if we needed that extra thousand we could probably get it from the finance committee's Reserve fund no okay so what let's take out the Thousand for the administrative assessor so we're going to zero certification we're going to zero this out for FY 26 and we'll bring it back when when it needs to be in there okay and FY 25 has has not been spent yet is that also true the fy2 that's on that's in there that was already approved last year yeah it's not been not been spent okay no no sounds like that's gonna that's one that's not going to be again just as you asked Howard that'll end up getting turn free cash okay thank you thank okay um all right any final questions before we let our uh assessor's office off the hook for so the assessor board should adjourn because we did yeah yeah okay um I move that we adjourn okay I vote I okay thank you very much everybody appreciate it thank you AJ well thank you you know you also convened at 7:15 you just didn't hear it oh thank you okay so thanks for the whole thanks to the whole team for um putting together this information and for joining us tonight I really and answering questions I really appreciate it you're welcome good night everybody thank you for your support good night good night all right let's all right okay stop share all right okay great um all right so we've um finished our kind of budget reviews that we had schedul ual for tonight um I think the next couple things that I think we want to do is one we want to look at and discuss the new um school budget with the new much easier to digest format um but I think uh I I know there are a couple members um a couple of um uh Town residents that um are in the meeting and I think they probably want to um hear or participate in our discussion about a public request that has come forth so I'm going to move that up in the agenda and then we'll do the sces uh budget after so um I think I shared uh an email about this uh with the committee so um I think essentially we've got uh uh members of citizens of our town have expressed an interest um It's actually kind of an interesting process like how does you know if it's not if it it's usually Capital um projects are sponsored by you know a specific Department um and in this case there's a sort of Interest or proposal to for the town to invest uh in a in a a a Capital project but that's really coming from residents of the town and it would be to essentially subscribe to a system called open checkbook which as I understand it is um kind of a a an online [Music] um essentially kind of like accounting system that um promotes kind of public transparency into um kind of the spending that and municipality that's subscribing to the service um is making so in sort of real time I guess residents have access to information about um Town spending um on kind of various lines that make up the the municipality's budget so um a Mandy you sent the initial email to me about this I know you've also communicated with um I think the select board and uh our town manager about this is did I do an okay job of summarizing the um I guess the the purpose of what what open checkbook is designed to do um yeah hi everyone thanks AJ for for bringing this up for us um yeah yeah very quickly I I could expand on that a little bit for a minute if you'd like to give everybody a better idea I mean if you if you think it would be helpful if there's information that you think would be helpful uh to share and you know I minute sure take take take the time okay this is mostly information that Diane and I got from interviewing Mike oen um who owns uh open Che LLC so partnership um so let me just start out by saying that the cost is minimal for this program um according to the division of local Services property tax impact calculator the initial startup cost of $5,200 will only add like $397 $3.97 to the average fiscal year 25 shutesbury single family tax bill um which is they say $626 for an average assessment $395,900 is effectively not going to impact tax bills or the tax rate at all um I can go over a few of the benefits just to give people an idea and then just say where they can find this information themselves um there's a lot of benefits it's an account payable only system and the information will be available to everyone Town officials Town departments and the public pretty much in real time 247 which is nice um of course it increases transparency accountability and public trust in public in local government and it was created and administered by a local business person which is nice and I think it'll help residents understand the financial workings of town government which is pretty complex when you get right down to it it'll reduce public requests for financial information I expect and it may even increase resident interest in participation in local government which I think we all want so it'll in it's according to Mike it will integrate very easily with the system that the town is already using and it auto the system automatically gleans the financial data um each week after it's all set up and you apparently it's very easy and also it will um because it makes a recent payment information available to all Town officials maybe having more eyes on things will help everyone be aware of expenditures course departments have heard in the past there's been some problems with things not being paid on time maybe this will help it may help to resolve problems more quickly and even Aid in planning um if you'd like to see a demo the open check LLC um website has a demo there and it's pretty easy you know and cool to look at and of course you can just if you want to plug in the numbers yourself you can just go to the DLS site and get on their little calculator but that's basically it we're just we just think it's a really cool thing for the town and for the public and it's it hardly costs anything okay I had a follow-up question for for and I guess this would be maybe for both for either you or Diane since guys have done some of the research um which so we we have a kind of new development which I think is really quite welcome um which is that we are we now have a process uh whereby our expense reports that are produced by our accountant and in the past were were sort of distributed via email to um the town manager and you know the fincom would get them um they're now being posted um routinely on the shsb uh you know town website um I can just quickly uh perhap perhaps you're aware of this yeah yeah I've seen and so I'm to if it's possible for you to just kind of if you if you have a thought about this what I guess what would be the value ad of a system like open checkbook um above and beyond the information that would is available to all Town residents by you know looking at the most recent expense report that gets posted to that's now being posted to the to the website which which does give you year-to-date spending on every single item in our budget it gives you the prior years uh you know uh spending level uh as well so if if you could if if there's any information you could share about kind of what this system would what additional information this system would provide Above and Beyond seeing um a most recent expense report it'd be helpful to know I I think I can help you with that AJ can you hear me yep I can hear you awesome um the open check system gets a lot more specific like to the vendor level so you would see the names of of of of of vendors that were you can see the names of vendors and the like if a certain vendor is serving multiple departments in town it will be split up by the Departments it's just the information is more specific and more more Grand granular okay I can actually show you a little bit of it if you wanna if you allow me to share a screen well I think what I what I'll do is just because we I I I appreciate you offering that we do have a really packed agenda tonight so and I think you've you've told us about where we can um view a demonstration so I was going to ask fincom members if if they'd like more information to kind of check that demonstration on their own time and then will um you know at some point I'm gonna also communicate with with Gabe because I think I think this this project is going to need input not just obviously not just from the fincom but from all the Departments that are involved in um you know kind of running the finances of the Town including the the accountant I think probably most importantly but but uh but the Town Administrator the the the accountant uh Treasurer so um you know I think at some point there'll be a kind of um an opportunity for them to chime in as well so I I so so um why don't we have fincom members take a look at that demonstration on their own time okay it if it would be helpful I'm sure Mike would come to a future meeting okay and demo the software all right good good to know um Jim yes Diane and Amanda um would this include the um the MLPs um activity as well or not just a quick question on that I'm curious if you're right checks I imagine so yeah well because it's the MLP is in a completely separate economic world so to speak I didn't know whether it would be more expensive to include them as well or even appropriate I would I wouldn't expect so but you know Mike would really be the one to talk to about this we're you know we're just the raahr department okay thank you okay great AJ all right uh George go ahead yeah again I can't raise my hand unfortunately I don't know why that is um a few things I think your point about the new report is really important I think the most important thing for the public is to see what the budget amounts are and how they're spending how a department is spending against their budget um I think it's really important point this tool I went to northampton's website and I looked at it and it does what Diane described you can go to um you can go at you can pick the levels so we have basically 12 different levels of spending one of them is personal property schools so you can go to personal property then you can drop down on fire police and then you can look at how they're spending their money so you can get details of how they're spending their money I don't know how the B benefit the public will get from that but it does get to that grure level it's a great accounting tool and when I worked in business those are kinds of tools I used all the time um I see much more I mean if the public wants it they're going to use it I think they're going to get confused when they just start seeing lists of names and dollar amounts unless they see a name on there that they want to question I I don't know I I think the higher level report is much more important but I think for us I think for the accountant when we have a meeting and I say to Leslie you spend $800 what' you spend it on I'm going to be prepared I'm going to have that information before the meeting starts so I think for the financial people it can be real beneficial and I think your point about the financial people being involved in the select board because they're the ones who decide what the you know I think they have an interest in in looking at the public and transparency perspective I don't know what they'll say I assume they'll agree with us so I'm definitely open-minded to this I see real benefits to the town if the public thinks they're going to benefit from it great um my my I think we should maybe have a little team together to have this person come in and demonstrate it to us and as far as the financial team goes in particular the accountant um the question is $1,200 a year yeah okay minor impact on our taxes how much for the maintenance and the work behind the scenes that's going to be required by our staff we'll need to understand that I doubt I I assume that once it's set up that's probably going to be seamless it's probably a tool if I read correctly I thought I saw somewhere that they do integrate with Vadar if that's true then it's probably not going to be heavily intensive but you never know how these things work they advertise oh it's integrated with Vadar and then the account says yeah integrated uh not exactly you know what's the definition integrated but that said I'm definitely open to this app and quite honestly I think I would use it and so I think we should research it I think your point is is important though like that it would be it would be a deal breaker I think if if this was not a system that integrated seamlessly with Vadar like to me that like we're not going to we're not going to um completely like change our whole entire um accounting system and process um to make you know like a tool that while certainly sounds like it you know be it'd be valuable like that that that would would really concern me um so I'm I'm I'm happy to hear that there's at least an initial indication that it does integrate with Vadar but yeah that's I think that's an important point that would have to be investigated um let me go to Bob and then Amanda yeah I just sort to say it seems like a a great thing to me I mean we we struggled with getting expense reports in a timely way I'm really happy that the town through somebody's intercession has now I think maybe partly through our own and gabes has now managed to get them posted on the website that's an extraordinary Improvement both for our purposes and also for the public and I think this would actually improve the Improvement if you will and so I think transparency is a good thing if there's no concern about um any kind of Corruption of our system I I don't see how that would be so but on the other hand what do I know about cyber security but I think if that were if that were the case and it was not a threat to our security then I think it'd be a great Improvement for a very reasonable amount of money so I think it requires a little more research but I think sounds pretty good at first glance I did go to the demo and I thought it was pretty cool too okay uh Amanda thanks I just wanted to uh say that and I think Diane can back me up that Mike did specifically mention Vadar as being a system that they they work with pretty regularly and yeah and it was a and that it's quite seamless and he indicated that it actually saves staff time um I can't really say how but anyway he would be able to so thank you all right so um let me I just want to thank Amanda and Diane for um kind of do doing some some leg work on this and and uh I think it's very positive uh to have um Town residents uh take this level of interest and kind of pursue uh a project like this so what I what I'll commit to is um like coordinating and speaking with um Gabe Our Town accountant and Treasurer um kind of getting you know part getting some some well I was going to say get their feedback but I think it's really it's gonna have to be kind of a bunch of people providing feedback on whether this is worth pursuing and um so there there will be uh followup with those folks and you know we'll see we'll see what concerns or level of interest is on the part of those folks and um we'll we'll we'll see where to go from there so thanks for for bringing this to our attention thank thank you P thank you so much everybody for listening thank you all right sounds good um okay uh let's talk uh school budget so I'm gonna share I think I have this open let's see find okay here we are all right so Susie um want you maybe uh kind of give us some background on this this new well I guess it's not a new format it's really old format but it's uh um we uh it's been uh updated for for for FY 26 is there anything you wanted to share about this yeah I want to I want to say that um Caitlyn Sheridan started just a couple years ago and she's taken a lot of trainings and she was told that it was not appropriate bookkeeping to have operating lines in your budget that are paid out of Grants and when you train people and we want them to be trained um then we need to understand where they're going next so we went through a process of her um trying to understand how the information should be presented and um in the past the operating costs would be um uh demonstrated on this page and then that total cost would then have another line called uh Revenue sources and then um we would have the town appropriation so in some ways it's the same information it's just in a little different order um and in fact the next page is the one we should probably look at so um we have the fact that the O operating costs that the town will be responsible for are there and then the application of spe pafic Revenue areas school choice rural Aid um the federal and state grants and um then we have if we add all of those pieces together then that um um three yeah that number could you make it a little bigger for me sure yeah I I got it on my paper that three million 37 um something number is really all all the expenses that it takes to run the school and you can see that the town appropriation is 2 million 591 blah blah blah so um so this is meant to give a a little more clear picture of the total cost for the school and then where the revenue sources come from thank you very much and um in in doing this process and really trying to understand it it was interesting to me what I didn't understand before and what I understand better um in the town appropriation part of the pie we actually get um Chapter 70 money now in the secondary school um that Chapter 70 money is taken out of the picture and then everything else becomes um other other fundings and um what's left for the towns to divide up but that's not how this budget has ever been presented the revenue that comes in from Chapter 70 for our elementary school is on the revenue page um and they of course take out some monies for this and that and then there's a net of that so in this town appropriation for our elementary school we actually get about 600,000 in Chapter 70 money so we are not paying from the taxpayers are not paying the 85 um, I mean 85% they're paying um less than that so that's an interesting thing when we look at all the pieces how we've seen it in the past and how the two budgets the regional and this one don't exactly show the same path but all the pieces are there can I ask just one quick clarifying question so if I understood you correctly there um this figure would be um actually a combination of Chapter 70 Revenue plus um town uh like tax uh Levy that uh pays that that value there okay got yeah so that's kind of a an interesting um different picture um but in any case um when you look at the uh change from fy2 to FY 26 you can see that that's this rep budget represents a 4.93 increase and we know that they negotiated the contracts I sent you out the information about the contracts that were negotiated um I want to just say that um shsb shutesbury Elementary was cited as a school of Distinction because it it was a met um its mcast scores and other goals um were above the expectation performances that for the mcast and then the other thing they did is it is one of the top 10 schools in the state for improvement in attendance and as a result they were awarded a um basketball signed by all the Celtics um these are these are notable efforts that the school has accomplished and when I looked at the Staffing pattern I think they figured out how to use par Educators and teachers in an effective combination so they could flexibly meet some of the needs of the kids that they have it's not that our kids don't have these needs it's in fact that they have a staffing pattern and some leadership that really meets those um needs so when I look at a 4.93 increase with a contract that was negotiated um there are a few notes in the margin that tell you some of the other increases um but I feel like the evidence for the effectiveness is um is in the performance that they've had and were recognized for all right that's super helpful um okay uh let's open it up for questions so I think um our goal for this discussion I think we've got a couple goals one is to just um well I think the kind of most important goal we have is to give is is to share with Susie any additional clarifying questions that we have um for for Caitlyn uh in advance of them coming to actually meet with us for their budget review which I can't February 4th feary uh so Bob yeah I just wan to uh say first of all at the last meeting we had about this uh we did discuss that the budget presentation was a little wanting in the sense that it was kind of confusing and and part of the part of it was confusing was the marginalia and I see there's a lot of that here and for me it's still confusing because you know I see an item like say line number 44 and it's going down 9 9.61% but in fact it says 71,000 grant money was applied to that line so maybe I'm misinterpreting this but way I interpret that line is that actually it went up about $44,000 and it's being shown as going down nine and a half percent so to me that's not clear that's not uh doesn't represent what what I consider to be accounting I think I don't like the idea that this notion that Grant whatever supports the budget uh makes a difference whether it's accounted as an expense or not I think that the budget should be the support of the budget should be also represented in this I don't find the revenue uh page in my documents so uh I think that I submitted a example which was the pelum budget which did show the total operating expenses of the of the school uh line by line and this particular budget presentation I see some of the lines that are being or the expenses that are being supported by grants aren't even listed see as far as I can tell on the expenses so did you did you see the the app the final page that has each of the grants listed and each of the I did yes I did Susie okay making sure you see that information yeah I looked at this thing several times today and tried to make sense of it and you know it just was not clear to me and what I did take away from that was we still have this kind of separation between the diff the determined by the the sources of funding that somehow distorts what the cost of running the school is I'd like to see the cost of the running School listed out and then the supporting revenues listed out and then we know what the town's obligations are through the uh draft uh what what the school needs from the town we can look at the the particulars of why that request was made uh both uh on the expenses the projected expenses but this with all these marginal it gets really confusing and it it's hard to understand what what's going on now I do see there's a a summary on a c couple of P charts and another summary and a chart but I I still don't like the way this is presented and I don't see why if pelum has presented their budget and Amis presents the budget in a different way or the way that I'm trying to describe here why we can't have it done that way I don't understand your point about how her training would not allow her to do that I don't get that so we have a union and we have a business office and she does support the four schools budgets and um I have known other people in school finance and there is um actually the people I knew um all were in Regional Offices Regional Offices usually make a presentation that's why pelum has a presentation um because they have original business office she's coming from um writing up the budget in all these lines and we see them she put in the pie chart that does show you where the money's coming from and shows you what the total cost is and that is where um Union 28 is at will they get into a full-blown separate presentation model like pelum does because pelum works out of the ammer um system I don't know right now I felt like the information that F uh she had to follow some guidelines and the information is summarized in that second page that has the two pipes charts and a table up above that shows you where the money is coming from and the detail in the back that shows which of the grants funds which of the projects so that's why I feel this is a clearer um a clear effort that meets both her budgeting requirements and our information and if we decide it has to go further in a different direction we should talk about it in the long run but what you can see is there's a 4 93 increase and um you can see that there's a decrease in Reliance on school choice money because that is something that they um have agreed needs to happen and so some of the increase at 4.93 is absorbing some of the costs for the mm uh MLL um position into the budget and some of the margin notes explain that uh Jim yeah Susie couldn't we to simplify matters at least at least to me and I'm no accountant of course um couldn't we just separate the the grant money like on line 44 which you've got up on the screen here um just not it seems to me applying the rural a money at this at this point in in in in characterizing the budget just confuses things couldn't we just put that or you know just pull all you know all of those Grant monies you know to one side or put them in a separate place because after all you may make you know the school might make changes as to as to as to where they want to spend rural Aid and all of that grant money all you know and and there's so many different sources but but to put it right here in you know in the main budget I think is is is just a confusing mistake the rural Aid is not in this main budget the rural Aid is taken out of this main budget because grants and um are not supposed to be in the operating part of this document all of those grants are listed at the end in the narrative more in a narrative form where you can see what they're planning to spend on Rural Aid we've had um you know questions about how they decide what to spend that these that last page with um uh title grants idida grants all of that stuff shows you where they are spending those Grant monies for what positions some positions are split because they um took um school choice uh let's see what did they do they stopped funding um any of the school choice the 32,000 last year they took it out of the school choice and they put it half of it into a grant and half of it is in the operating cost because they didn't have a grant that would pay the whole thing or because they make those kinds of decisions but I don't feel like the information is not available it could be confusing because it's different than it has been but what you see in all the lines are the ones that are being paid out of the Town appropriation which includes chapters 70 money what you see at the end are all lines that are being paid out of Grants and in order to do that she noted in the margins where the money's been pulled out and she put the addendum of all of the grants listed at the end yes so Jim in other words like this 71,3 that's not included in the budgeted amount here right that's that that's because that's being Grant that's a a grant contribution so the total cost is really 249 656 plus 71336 so uh if I can just kind of share my I I I found this format to be quite good actually and and um um address sort of my my concerns like I I think we I think I think to your point Bob like I understand your point like if if if the point was to to understand exactly what the change in total spending for par educator special education salaries was from FY 25 to FY 26 so the the total expenditure including you know Town appropriated expenses and you know Grant and school choice um it yeah it you know it just would it requires additional step which is um but you know the information is here because even even in that addendum at the end I mean we see both what the FY 25 and the FY 20 sorry I should look down realate here both what the fy2 and the FY 26 you know values were so I mean I think you know if that's a specific question that you have the information is here it just you know might might require a step or two but I think the combination of having um for me the both a clear understanding that the increase in our appropriation is 4.9% but also now having information about the total spending um representing an increase of 3.33% answers the sort of big question I had which was really hard from that last format which was to answer the question well like basically like what is the in terms of the total uh spending for the district it wasn't clear last time how much that was increasing from fy2 to FY 26 because we weren't you know we we weren't seeing um you know the we weren't seeing you know these numbers on this slide which include like all of the different sources of funding the appropriation the grant funds the school choice all in one place so um and then so the combination of having this information here and then you know the very detailed information at the end that shows us exactly what these additional sources of revenue what they're being used for I think I'm I'm quite happy with that but um that's just my my take on uh Jim yes could could you go back to line 44 again yeah okay okay now should in FY 26 it's 249 656 is the real number of what it of what that of of what this sped salaries is going to cost us is it really 249 656 plus 26531 oh no 71 plus 71 plus this but again when you say the real amount I think I think the proper way to say it is what is the total amount the the the the school is spending on par educator special education salaries right so that would the total amount that the the school is spending on that line is 249 656 656 plus that yes well why not put the two together so that so when you come back next year in FY 27 and you look and you say well let's see what we spent 186 251 276 and now we and now it's 249 but this year it's 300 and something OD thousand it just seems to be a a it just seems to be confusing in in the long term if I'm making any sense uh George could probably explain it a little bit better than I can but I I I I just want why we put those numbers in in the in this report at at this time when we could just leave them off to one side I don't know that's just my impression um Susie this is an in this is an in transition time she went back to fy2 to um to help you see but in the as we go forward that those change cost columns will look um more familiar and it is I can hear you saying it's about change and I understand that and I've explained why it got changed and um remember this woman does this budgeting for four towns and so I feel like we got some information we worked on it and maybe next year we can move the ball forward down the field a little bit more but I feel like if you um can work on it this year um and see how the two pages relate to each other and if you have any questions I can bring them to her um not a question of format at this point but a question of um I don't know what your questions are but again just just to be clear we now have a very clear picture of what the total amount the school is spending how that compares from FY 25 to FY 26 right so these numbers on this slide um are inclusive of all of the sources of spending whether they come from town appropriation um grants school choice right so um the you know the thing that the thing that yeah does take a little you know a little bit of extra work is if you have a specific question about a specific line in the budget and want to know like the one Bob um and Jim were discussing like this this line here it's on the chart it says you know 99.6% decrease and I understand you know that's a little bit less clear um as to what that is but again the information is here we can see what you know H how rural Aid and school choice um were being used for both fy2 and FY 26 so if you have a specific question about a specific line and what the change is from fy2 to FY 26 it is possible to calculate that using the combination of what's in that um you know in the line item budget and what's in the appendix here well I agree we can figure it out um you know especially after all this explanation that I've just received from you and Susie but but I just don't know why um um we can't have you know the uh income on one side and costs on the other and and not mix the two up a little bit I I I it's it's just it's just my way of looking at things I'm I'm okay right all right yeah I just want to say just to repeat I'll be very brief if I can uh something that that jimway just said and I think George would recognize this is basic accounting you list your expenses for operating your your department and then you list the supporting revenues on another page and that's how it's done that's how it's done in the town of shutesbury uh when we do our budget here it's done that way tell them it's done that way in a lot of places why do we have to have a number that's not accurate representing a line and then have to do a calculation to say oh that's because it's funded from this grant or this grant or this other source of Revenue frankly we don't have any control over how the school committee decides to spend their Grant money we just are controlling what we're going to what we're going to ask the taxpayers to provide to support it and then all these little variables that are being shifted around oh there's 70,000 coming out of here and this one half is being half supported by this grant half supported by that Grant no we just need to know what the cost of the line is and then what the supporting revenues are and what the bottom line requirement for the town to support the draft budget would be and I think it would be clear very clear if it was done that way and this is not clear like you say you can find the information here it's where's Waldo and we could do a couple extra calculations you're right I do appreciate and I do acknowledge that the the total numbers are present in that graph and that that page that that is an improvement over the last uh version that we saw so that's good but I still think we could improve it massively by just being more clear about the accounting part of this and I would appreciate uh if you know other members of the committee George Maybe or someone else could weigh in on this uh that's my that's my opinion though okay all right so let's let's do this um if there are like you know so so I think everybody's kind of clear on what this how how to read this latest version of the the um budget is if there are any follow-up questions for Caitlyn there's really sort of only one opportunity between now and when they come in which is our next our next meeting so um and that might even be I don't know if that's enough time for her to to respond but um if you have a substantive question um you know about a specific budget line or what not you know um please be prepared to share that at our next meeting um the only other thing I want to say is I think it's really important for us when we meet with Caitlyn in a month to um like in addition to like talking through some of these um issues around kind of how how to read information and how to get answers to different question I think it's really important that we express um appreciation for the like continued like there's clearly an effort to be responsive to our our um requests and i' I've found that from the from last year to this year every time like we we produce this list of questions she comes back with really kind care thoughtful you know responses we ask for different format I I I know it's maybe not 100% of what people want to see um it's certainly for me I felt like this was a big improvement over the last one and I just think it's important that we express some appreciation for her responsiveness to our requests because you know that's that's that's fair and it's also that like I I want to encourage her to continue to be responsive to our needs uh in the future um okay anything else uh April yeah I just wanted to mention in in support of this is is that she's also doing this for four towns we're we're not the only one at the party and I I think we need to respect her process as well um and she's she's clearly working with us yeah it's a work in progress definitely yeah but we're getting closer I think to yeah get having a format that I think allows us to kind of get good answers to various questions George I'd be curious to hear how the other towns are reacting to the new format I I wonder if you know if they're getting the same conversation what kind of feedback they're giving her I I I understand Bob and Jim's point I think they're valid points um I do do know that the data is here and I can see and I can certainly work with this data and so for me the question is is this method saving Caitlyn a lot of effort when she puts together her budgets and starts running her expenses during the regular year is that really what's driving this and I can respect that and support that um we have seen it the other way in the past and it's been very informative and if that had the um school choice money in it like this does then that's that's a big win but if it sounds to me like she's saying regulatory from a regulatory perspective she needs to present it this way and I have a feeling it's because it's the way it works in her system if that's not the case you know I I I tend to agree with Bob and Jim yeah well we can ask her that right you know I did and she explained it okay and she said that this it was not proper accounting to have grant-funded lines in your operating budget and that's why she made the change that's what she has been told and I you know Having learned how to be a a town clerk at some point you have to go with what you're being told and sometimes you can work past that but you have to start somewhere and she was told this so that's what she's doing she's not doing it for fun in games okay all right um let's uh let's move on um okay uh let's see do we still have Gabe yeah great Gabe I think you had a couple of um items that uh you wanted to kind of check in with us or discuss with us I think one was about getting a volunteer from the fincom for the um negotiating right we have we yes we have two we have two contracts that are expiring and we're tackling the police chief first and then we'll tackle the fire chief next um the police chief contract is expiring so the select board has asked for a representative on the fincom because we are negotiating wages and other benefits um so we want to get that started soon so that we know what we're putting in our budget for her for the fire the police chief okay all right um I I uh saw that um Susie I guess in response to seeing this uh on the agenda said that she was interested um I don't know if there's anybody else from the fincom that's interested in taking this on I'm also I'm also interested but I could also do that through the Personnel Board not be a problem all right that that would be awesome because we are asking both sides to give us a volunteer okay so April could your group talk about that I did yeah we're next we're next meeting on uh a week from this Thursday person on board so who's your chair bring it up okay awesome you'll do that okay yeah Peg Ross is our chair but I'll bring it up okay so Su Susie um right Susie you're still interested okay great I don't go ahead no I was just wondering if I could nominate Susie to be the fincom representative to the police chief's um uh contract negotiation great so I'll second that uh so I think this requires a vote so let's let's go ahead any other discussion nope George I Roes i m i gashu i Mo Salvador I and Stein I okay great so Susie is gonna be our volunteer great um Gabe I think you had a couple other things like to me yeah I actually have a little list here going so um the select board is wanting me to ask you to consider moving your town meeting date to the middle of May or towards the end of May they are definitely willing to have a joint meeting um their concern is the ammer pelum budget and all the transition that's happening right now we're going to start interviewing Town Administrator candidates Ates you might have a to a New Town Administrator in February March right in the middle of all of this and um with all the transition that's going on we we really think that pressing for an April date might be aggressive how do you guys feel about that it's good to me awesome with it makes sense so then then the next question would be when in May what Saturday in May would you guys want to consider you don't have to answer me that tonight unless you want to um I can report back to the select board they are going on every other um Tuesdays again we're going to try to be opposite of you so we're going to go 1428 that's why I asked for your dates for your meetings so that we could get ourselves on an opposite night um which we're going to do so do you want to take time to think about a May meeting or I'm looking at the schedule in the choices in May are 3 10 17 and 24 I go for 17 just about to say that uh not that day my son is graduating from college that weekend so challeng y it's from my wedding anniversary so what did what was remember for decades since I've been in town up until about seven years ago we always had our annual town meeting in May was it always the first or second weekend or was it the last weekend before Memorial Day it was when weather was really good yeah that's why we moved it up let's go for the 10 yeah yeah I would be happy with that yeah that's fine the 10 so I will take back May 10th to them okay and so I H have a couple of budget items sure go ahead so one of them is I we need to talk about how we're going to handle PS that's the elephant in the room really MoneyWise we've gone through close to $300,000 so far and we have maybe 20 some odd thousand left till June the constant testing is a drain on our finances our loan money is spent um the 150,000 that we are borrowing we haven't borrowed that yet um but we're borrowing so I'm trying to think budget wise do you do a maintenance plan or do you with some money in there for new homes it's $800 for every poet system that goes into a house it's $2 $59 every time we run a report on a house you have 70 houses so the reports are run quarterly is my understanding but the dollars are big and I don't know if we should do a line item that's $50,000 in a permanent budget to handle pasas until this is really a global problem and I'm hoping that the state and the federal government will do something about it but right now our town and our taxpayers be bearing the burden of this and truthfully it's just hellacious um so where do we start I'm going to have to come to you for a reserve fund transfer probably not me probably your next ta I probably have enough money to cover the bills that are coming through right now we had a ton of bills that had not been paid so so the admin secretary who's working with she's a temp who's working with me right now we just put through a passle of bills so I don't know what the total of that was Gail's running the warrant but it's going to chew up a lot of that um 20,000 we have left we have four or five PFS bills from May of last year that are going to go on your town meeting um so we have finally dug in and figured out that piece of it but what it has made me realize is the expense of continuing testing on all these houses is huge so do you want to keep funding it with an article and use free cash and keep it separate or do you want to make it a budget item so don't answer me now think about this because I think it's something that we need to put on the next agenda and I will have a firmer number on what I actually have left after we run the warrant this week but it is a very huge concern I have that that's going to impact you guys not only does the ammer pelum school budget impact you but and the school budgets but this is really going to impact you and your spare cash if you have any gab ask a question sure yeah go ahead what do you anticipate uh coming up like in the next say 12 months can we do we have a a reasonable grip about what number one we got have $150,000 loan that has it landed yet right correct and we have no idea is that is that being paid was that a debt exclusion vote I think it inside the budget I don't even know if there's been a payment plan been devised by that I think it has not it has right the payments were deferred when it comes due it's going to be Debt Service in our operating budget that's what I was afraid of no interest right um I don't think it's no interest the water pollution people clean water they do charge interest well if we could get this information together it' make it easier to make some kind of a plan I would love to Bob but a letter was supposed to have been written over a year ago that wasn't written and we couldn't borrow and I'm trying to piece this all together right now and I am meeting with the D on Thursday because evidently the town declared emergency right and Susie and I worked on this today and we've we're getting closer to being able to write this letter to get the borrowing completed um so I feel really good about that but with with Becky leaving in November and the holidays it is really this has been all I've been doing is trying to figure this mess out honestly I think I think we're there but can't tell you what the loan rate's going to be until we go out to bid and I need to complete this letter and get it to bond counsel which is on the agenda this week and then we can go out to to borrow the 150,000 George just gave me a very important piece of information and that's it's inside the debt it's in our budget so you're not only going to have to think about ongoing P costs for future you're going to have to think about how you're going to pay for this loan one of the things I have to to tell the the Clean Water trust is are we assessing the houses specifically for their PS and I think the answer to that is no p is pay because it's right so now your whole tax base is bearing the burden of it um so anyway that I didn't want to spend a lot of time on it because we could spend the whole night on it um I I I will definitely put it on um if not our next agenda um because we do have three budget reviews planned for the 21st which is a lot um but definitely the fourth when we were're only planning to meet with the uh school good okay may maybe we could we can tackle that question on the fourth sure and that's all I want to do I want to get the juices flowing get guys thinking get you guys thinking about it and getting you to understand that this is I'm sure you do understand it but the dollar amount is scary um and so the next thing I have is the select board is yep I can't ra my hand again course so just ju thinking back on this Becky did tell us it was interest free loans um okay I'm certain that she did and I also believe she said 10year loan payments so we were basically thinking $15,000 a year for each of the 150s and I think we've pulled 150 twice no yes a and they said they could forgive up to 40% of the loan 40 yeah I thought it was 20 yeah so so there is that possibility too so I am talking to Greg Divine Levine Divine tomorrow or Thursday at 10 o'clock to try to nail that down the other thing is this as you said this is a national problem the states are going to have to deal with it and there's lawsuits out there and so I I know we're not going to talk about this next time but putting in the operating budget really I think has to be delayed to make that decision because we just don't know how this is going to be what we're going to have available to us to manage this in the future right and that's I'm not asking for you to make a decision tonight I'm just asking for you to think about it at your next meeting or when on the fourth when we come back together you know an article might be the way to go so it certainly sounds like it a real quick question what's poet stand for I forgot I used to know oh I don't know it's a I don't know filter worry I'll find it filter no worry yeah filters right maybe I'll P that in the minutes filters very good uh Susie Aaron Saunders will be in shutesbury next Monday at one o'clock we have pressed him and he did respond when the D said this has to be dealt with immediately he did help um find the way to the Clean Water trust emergency fund we need to keep pushing him on this and you know I um put out a letter to Governor Healey um we need to continue to push her um and we should probably be sending this as a letter to Mary Warren and about comford govern yeah so when is he here Susie he's on whatever Monday that is it's just next Monday the 11th first Monday of no of the month second Monday of the month at one o'clock February 10th okay I will not no 13 13 January 13th so can one of you maybe go meet with him I cannot George and I often meet with him I will definitely be able to be there that would I think I'm gonna be there too okay I think it's important okay so the next thing is the um Administrative Assistant we are changing that to a 32-hour a week job so in your budget under select board secretary we're asking for $41,600 in the budget and right now it's at $ 29564 what sorry what was the proposed amount the proposed amount is4 $1,600 and is my oh I'm sorry go ahead so this is a proposal I'm just giving you the number to plug in um the town is not staffed very well during the day and we are not you have had two or three people now working here since Linda Scott is gone you guys had a jewel in Linda Scott Jewels don't come along very often yeah and so we're we really to make this job where people are hired and stay and not constantly changing to have staff here from 8:30 to 4 four days a week Monday through Thursday so that you have somebody in this building to sell your trash bags I have chased people down the street I have delivered trash transfer stations tickets to homes that that's not the way to run run a professional office and I think that is what Becky did she she was so good at trying to help everyone that it overextended her and we really need a consistent person in a consistent hour a consistent time in this town hall where people know they can come in and get help I can't tell you how many times in the four or five weeks I've been here people are just standing out there in the hall not knowing who to talk to or where to go or where to buy trash bags or where to get a because our hours are just all over the place so to solve that problem we've gone to the Personnel Board we've Rewritten the administrative um secretary's job description we're trying to streamline bill paying because a lot of bills weren't paid there's a huge change going on in that specific um office to try and service your residents better and support your Town Administrator the way they need to be supported so those are the two key things support your Town Administrator support the website so that stuff goes up on the website calendars go up on the website all of that um without having that person in that other office that is so limiting in what your ta can do I spent a whole week and a half doing an admin secretary stuff and not concentrating on what I needed to do just to keep things running and so we need to pay well and we're talking about paying $25 an hour 32 hours a week so nobody's Staffing on Friday Monday through Thursday eight hours a day so that somebody is here to meet the public to run the bills to put stuff up on the website to do the selectboard agenda on time there's just a whole multitude of things support things that need to be done and um unfortunately we need to pay a decent wage to get somebody to stay we did interview one of our previous employees who went to another town because the the dollar amount just isn't good I mean people can't make a wage we all have run into wage issues everywhere so that's where the change is 32 hours $25 an hour um so it's $41,600 which is an increase of $1,036 it is not an increase in health insurance or Medicare because that was already built in that job was already a 28h hour week job it already had the benefits so you're not paying extra for that you're actually getting more for your money money by going to 32 hours cuz you're still paying the same dollar amount for all your benefits your work you are none of that has changed so um so that's what they're asking for um and you may not be able to do it I don't know but we are asking that you put that 41,600 in the admin secretary budget if you're talking about like the open checkbook only being $5,200 and that sounds reasonable then I want you to consider that $10,000 to service your community on a consistent solid basis and to support your ta the way she should be he she should be supported $10,000 is not much money in the whole scheme of things so that's the biggest proposal we're bringing to you everything else we're going to do is going to be steady but the big change is that that change there um so I'm sorry go ahead any questions Bob yeah I wanted to ask you about the fire station was anything happening there what do you mean by the fire station well there was a pollution issue there and we had an order from the state to uh address it and I'm not sure I haven't had an update at least that I can recall on that subject for quite some time but there was an expense uh we had some pollution that was detected in the wells is that something that's been solved and it's that is not something I'm aware of Bob to be honest with you my whole Focus has been on the P so maybe you and I can meet and try to go through what that is I'll look up in the minutes and see if I can locate it I don't know if everybody else remembers it but I think it was it was a hot item on our agenda last year um you know 24 last year I know there was a gas issue at one point you know I don't know how that got resolved I so we had all thought it was resolved and then it reemerged as an issue okay because they have test well there that have to be okay monitored you know so right so it may be something my time can't handle right now um because I am I am I thought you might know something about it but it might be an expense for us to have to handle so yeah I will make I'll make note of it so the last thing I have before before you get to that Gabe um I just see April's had her hand up sure yeah I I just wanted to clarify this the new position it's going from administrative secretary to administrative assistant so it's really that that's really giving it more um Gusto yes we are it's not an not a town admin it's not an assistant Town Administrator but it's a step up from um a secretary what's the new title again Administrative Assistant okay so yeah yeah thank you for that that because I know I get caught up in my Spiel um I do um yes we are trying to beef it up so that that position has set responsibilities um to support the the Town Administrator Bill running reappointment SL you know all the major things some confidential things taking over the PFS making sure the paaps reporting gets out on a timely manner um a lot of important tasks that um need to be distributed so you don't um overwork your next ta okay um what else Gabe okay so the last thing is a a question from the highway boss to you folks so his tree Warden budget and you know we've had a lot of wind storms and a lot of trees come down so his tree Warden budget is expended it's like at 85% he's got $779 left for the year and it's only halfe Point his question to you folks is should he stop cutting trees and doing the work that he wants to do or will you support him by giving him some more money if so should he give you a number that he needs um what's your take on that because he right now we stopped except for emergency trees but he's got a tree plan that needs to be worked on yeah years yeah I mean I think I think he should make an informed uh estimate of what um what he thinks is going to be required okay and then I'll come back to you do you consider that a reserve fund or do you consider that yeah I think I think we would handle that via fincom Reserve transfer okay does anybody have a different view uh Jim yeah yeah I'm um I I'd like to point out that Nelson tree is taking down a phenomenal number of trees along at least where the three-phase lines are I mean that which which means our Highway boss doesn't have to worry about about you know the the Leever shury road lock Pound Road or wendle road because um a I mean unbelievable amount of St is coming down um trees are marked up and down the road so at least that should take some of the pressure off yeah and I know um the power company is doing some as well yeah yeah Nelson is being paid by the power company by National Grid but they're doing quite quite the job I I've been talking to them all the time to see see what they're doing and how they're progressing right to hear so what I should ask him after you telling me that is what specifically is he going to do do what area and what dollar amount yes exactly we want to know okay and then I think what we could do is we could discuss and vote on a uh a fincom reserve transfer at our next meeting get you that info okay but I definitely I don't I don't think and I saw a lot of heads shaking no I don't think I don't think the message should be stop doing uh work yeah not trsb okay well we did stop because we only had $700 left so he and I'm not sure what road he was on when he came to me and I said I just don't Gail told me that she won't pay if there's no money in the accounts so I don't want to get in the position where we have a bill and no funding without talking to you first I'm trying to be proactive and not reactive um so okay that was it for me uh Susie I see your hand up yeah I want people to remember that when we had the former tree Warden he did not cut down trees so yeah this is backlog of work and it's time to do it and the other piece is that the even though the state we give it a lot of crap it they did come through with 109,000 for the highway department where they talked about boosting the um doing a boost on the chapter 90 and that came through and it's 109 I'm sure that's a drop in the bucket in the long run but we can say thank thank you state for coming through on that one yeah can I ask some questions to gab yeah please go ahead Jos so Gabe a couple things um so you're doing okay with the budget in terms of how you have everything you need I know you need to do a lot of leg work but I had sent you a list y seemed to make sense to you so to be honest George I had to put that on the back burner until this week so we printed out Monday I have to remember what day I'm in all the budgets that I had been sent to start entering them into the sheet um I just had to get through the P problem that I had sure understood understood I just want to make sure I'm not asking you to have you started it I just want to make sure you feel comfortable with what you have and you feel like you have access to everything you need I do I really thank you for sending me this stuff and once I get going on what I start plugging in I'll holler if I am needing any please if I can help in any way you let me know okay that would be great and and another thing I want to ask you is we get on an annual basis the personel board when I was on the Personnel Board we were receiving the furog wage and salary survey you're probably familiar with that yeah you just have to go online and get it yeah I was well I yeah um I'm willing to get it myself if you can provide me the information I'm was just curious if it's even available yet for fy2 I don't think it is we haven't done it yet for a bit early yeah okay yeah so 24 I think is up there because I've looked at it um because we'll need to use it during the police negotiations and that sort of thing yeah well we have that I definitely have that okay and I usually get it in the winter and that's why I'm asking if when you do come across it if you would forward it to the Personnel Board and me as well um sure we we rely on it for a few things yeah I understand that's good okay it's a great resource it is I use I use it all the time yep okay guess it's is it the wrong time to ask about the Town Administrator search how's that going so it's not the wrong time um we have um seven applicants currently none of them our previous Tas except for maybe one um so we're going to start the the committee is going to has been appointed and is going to start we're sending out a doodle poll um tomorrow to pick a date to have the first meeting okay thank you okay um looking at the time I think we should probably wrap up our meeting um I think the only thing on my list that we didn't get to was uh reviewing minutes I think we can do that next next time um I also wanted to see if there was any four towns debrief that or any comments uh but again I think we can handle that uh for our next meeting bye Gabe thanks for all