Finance Committee: March 28, 2022

Transcript machine-generated with Whisper speech recognition (the source video has no caption track). No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:00 Well, thank you everybody for joining tonight. Especially we know how difficult today and the last few weeks have been for the whole Marblehead community. On behalf of the Finance Committee, I’d like to express our condolences to the Galante family and all those personally impacted by this tragedy. It’s clear this is a loss that will be felt forever in our community. Special thanks to the School Department and the School Committee with us tonight for their willingness to join on such a difficult day. And we really appreciate everybody in attendance tonight. So we have a long meeting scheduled for tonight. We have a number of very important budgets to review. Our first line on the agenda is to approve our previous minutes for actually four separate Finance Committee meetings. I shared those all as a file with the whole committee last night and we’ve all reviewed. So with that, I’d like to make a motion to approve that. I shared last night. Second. Second. No discussion. Oh, you roll call. This is, this is we’re doing all four at once. Yes, fine. Yes. Okay, that’s fine. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

1:41 I can’t seem to Yeah, I’ll be muted. I don’t want to disturb anybody. Alright so assessors his first budget to review tonight so Karen. Those aren’t zoos. I’m sorry. I guess. Thank you. I’m Kelly the chairman of the board of assessors and I’m here with Karen Bertolino. I think it was a full time assessor though. Their title is assistant assessor. It sets the policy and the thought. Karen is in our full time assessor for about six months before that she was in the office as an assistant for five years. She’s done a great job. And I can speak for the rest of the board to say that we’re really pleased with what she’s done. In fact, we’re so pleased that this is Karen’s budget. Karen has delivered. So,

3:12 this is my first budget meeting I know we met preliminary. So I’m not quite sure exactly what you want to hear but the, we would ask some questions and I think, yeah, you know I, Tim and I met with Karen, I think it was November we’ve had to reschedule this a few times so it’s been a while but the budget hasn’t changed nonetheless. And so we shared meeting minutes with everybody already. But yeah, let’s just kind of focus on the differences from last year. Sure. So the difference in the assessor salaries that is decreased primarily that was the difference between what Mr. Timothy was that and what I started in my position with assessors expenses that went up. And the difference being really is the two primary categories, which are information technology and real estate appraiser so as we discuss information technology really is feature properties is our vendor. We use the assessment database and the collection database but really is primarily the assessment database, the value, the cost to services have increased year over year over year. And then, for real estate appraisers the new thing now is that we are required every year by the Department of Revenue to value the utilities and the amount of growth that we received from doing that more than offsets the additional costs to them and that is really the two big impact to the line items.

4:59 And in the prior years I think when that kind of guidance from the Master Department of Revenue first came across Mike had indicated in the past that it was at least 40,000 more, not more than growth as a result of this new kind of special evaluation or expert evaluation. Yes, is that about the same now. I think it was a little bit less than that, when I looked at the difference in valuation, year over year. It was first. It was approximately 8 million additional. So, in excess for the bottom line revenue in excess of 10,000 bucks. So, it’s definitely still a generator. And then the only other thing we really discussed him in that meeting was the contract with Patriot Properties I know it’s not a huge increase here but you know the potential and maybe locking in a longer time. And then the other thing we discussed was the work of business and talking with them about a longer term contract to maybe. I don’t know what the contract is written now but to prevent maybe inflation from increasing that year over to the extent possible something you said we consider absolutely.

6:30 Any questions I know I’ve kind of shared all the notes that we talked about already, but pretty straightforward budget. I just had one question that’s slightly different than the interpretation I have that is, you said that you value the utilities. Each year, is that what you just said about any appraisals. So, you acquired now under the Department of revenue every year, the utilities need to be down so they fill out a personal property return for how is that different than the individual property assessment because that’s what I thought was every three years on a rotating basis. The expert appraisals of the corporation property that is not required. Okay, so, okay, of the utilities of the utility properties code. Oh, for us, for now, and that’s independent of the period, the, the rotating appraisals of individual homeowner properties. So, real estate is every year, we value property. And every five years, there’s a certification year so property is valued every year, why the reason why they went to the schedule, as opposed to no interim adjustments, and then it was actually I believe it was every three years and then all of a sudden people were going from, say 200,000 to 800,000 with no interim adjustment so the news, the schedule is, excuse me, certification year. So, we have, I started here in the department in September 2016 as the administrative assessor, that was a certification year that was fiscal.

8:16 And then we just came off the certification year which was fiscal 16. We value intermuse 1718-1920, we had another re certification year in 2021 so it’s a deeper dive into valuation, every year property is valued in town. Okay, okay. And for the newer committee members you’ll see in the extended fiscal year 21 expenses you’ll see that’s like that’s a mass certification year so those are happening every five years now. So we’ll, okay, you’ll be staying in a couple years right we’ll see 30 or 40,000 more. The difference this year is that under mass department of revenue guidance, the 504 utility property needs to be in heaven, but that’s actually leading to additional revenues and excess of the cost so we went to adjusting values every year just to sort of smooth out things but there’s not that shock before we have a readout. Yeah, I know that’s great. I was looking for a differentiation between individual property, personal property tax assessment versus utilities it’s just that it was a term I wasn’t used to associating the budget. So that’s the only reason I’m so good question. Any other questions. Alright, so as the chair liaison I’d like to make a motion to approve the assessor’s fiscal year 20 three budget requested of $265,000.

9:50 $265,766 and 25 cents. I’ll second the motion. Approved. Tim. I can’t. I approve. Approved. Yes. Are you waiting for me approve. Yes. Thank you very much. I was here. Okay. Okay. Water and sewer. Water, I would say, start with water.

11:20 Inflow. How are you. Thanks. So, I’ll take this time the finance budget liaison subcommittee chair for water and sewer, along with Tim and Mike, and we met in middle of February 17 and to discuss water to a budget. We have shared notes from our meeting with the finance committee, hoping they’re relatively self explanatory a couple things just to preface water and sewer departments are both enterprise departments funded by their respective fees and the budgets, and their budgets are not rolled into overall tax fee for the overall tax rate for the town. So that’s a significant differentiation, compared to most of the budgets there. Just the three enterprise budgets for the town water so we’re in our waters. So, as a result, but we obviously look at the budgets to for reasonableness and, and because if there were something untoward, it would end up being passed on to the customers, as through the water rates, and so I’ve been doing this for several years, very straightforward

12:55 and very minimal changes to the to the budgets I included everything that I thought was significant in the notes. I could just run through a couple of the high points. The And Amy can probably hit a couple of these with a little more detail. The primary amount dollar value amounts for water and sewer budgets are for was since we’re doing water Massachusetts Water Resources Association that’s the water that we buy from MWY for the town. It’s clearly the biggest line item in the budget. It’s often not completely nailed down by town meeting. That’s the case this year. We’ve got a reasonable estimate that Amy has provided and we’re, we think it’s really close but that number could actually change and therefore the water budget could change prior to town. So just so you know that in advance. See, most of the salaries, and this is a general comment for all of the budgets that we’re going to be reviewing for the years, reflect the new Gov HR position assignments that have just went through an extensive townwide.

14:34 All department budget for all department of townwide position reviews and reclassifications in order to bring us to a mid range of comparable towns where we were where it makes it generally across the town, more much more equitable to all the employees of the town. So that’s a general statement you’ll see. Sometimes if you’re looking at the budgets on a percent basis it’s might look like this work a little higher than you would have seen typically in the past, but that’s because it’s just there a lot of adjustments that are that are being captured in this year’s budgets. That’s certainly the case in the in the water department. Salary budgets, the, the really isn’t too much else to that’s other than our stated going in position, the beginning of the budget season which is level funded plus contractual requirements. So That’s Amy do you have anything you’d like to specifically add for Nope, I did find one hour on my part. And it’s just on page three the operational expense.

16:05 All right, in fiscal year 22 appropriated that 31,000 is, which is down about three quarters of the way, which is the line. It’s a 5846 it says water improvements that actually should be a should be zero and that 35,000 should be moved down to water meters. So, you’ll see, which is that’s two charges that are here they just are on this more than on my phone, and pull them down. So that’s the only, it looks like it’s way out of place when you start looking at the increase and decrease. And that’s actually a water meter was 35,100 water meters and fiscal 22. And, oh, yeah, and that is increasing your contract rates and doesn’t I just put it in one place. It is really six up. Yeah, thanks. So that is an increase it’s an increase of over more than $8,000 in water meters and that’s contractually. We have five years, a three year contract going with them, and there’s an increase this year, and we have to add touch pads on. Okay. I just have a general question for the benefit of the new committee as we all know, a lot of new members this year so this is the first time through, unless they’re on the liaison teams. So, to Pat and Amy when you say this budget is, you know, an enterprise fund funded by revenues of the 5.4 million in total requested as any of that amount, not funded by revenues that are collected by water and sewer.

17:42 All of this funded water is all funded by revenue and sewers all funded by what you can. And the only thing that does get funded by the general fund would be the indirect cost of the size of wages, or there’s a charge right here to and you’ll see that on there actually There’s not a dollar within what we’re reviewing tonight. That’s actually funded by. Correct. That’s correct. So we also go through a read study in June, and that’s when the rates are set so we take in, we take this budget into account, and our future construction budget or capital improvement plan, and then they review all that and then we work backwards from what we need to make. Yeah, that’s right. What we will sell the water. We’re all just now. Yeah. It’s an interesting budget it’s done by your 46 water communities so it’s done as your percentage of the whole. So first they figure out their budget, and then they break it down into your percentage so they haven’t finalized their budget right now they’re around 3.84 for water. But then we’re a percentage of the hundred percent so we’re only 1% this year, last year we’re 1.1 once we saw a dramatic increase in our cost, even though we’re small it’s just with cold with Boston dropped all their water use and so they had to spread that cost out so we become a bigger part of the whole. But we’re bad bosses using water again so we’re coming back down again so that’s why you’ll see a decreases here it’s not because it’s cheaper to make the water that is because our percentage of the whole went down dramatically this year.

19:18 And we’re going out dramatically last year. Usually you don’t see fluctuation like that. Can I ask a basic question to sorry if there’s ever if expenses end up being less than you think or for whatever reason you know you have retained earnings do you keep those similar to the Harvard, where you can use it for capital improvements, and I’m not sure how it was wanted. But the way we do it is our retained earnings become our construction article two years out. And so when we do our rate study we actually try to figure what projects we’re going to have what projects we’d like to have two years out. And then we set our rate, try and cover that cost. Now, if you don’t sell enough water, you’ll find out this year that you sold less water last year said, so our construction article for that year will be reduced by the retained earnings that are reduced. And that actually is that it works out very well we work off a five year capital improvement plan so we can move things around to adjust for a fact that we had a white year, and nobody wanted them on, but it’s usually long watering that causes the biggest change in water use. So I’ll just touch on for a second the salary increases and what some of some of the reasons that we’re driving them, getting people license and then leaving the community. So what we do is we call out all of our positions that are filled but in water and sewer we’re really trying to train and to get people to take on more responsibility.

20:54 So we will carry a, an increase or a promotion in this budget, hoping that one they’re going to perform, which usually everybody does but the other one is we have to be state licensed. So you have to carry a distribution license which is offered, or which you obtain through the DB. And that is a state exam, and it also is certain college courses that you have college credit courses you have to take to be able to take that exam. And as you’ll if you read our job descriptions that license increases we are a distribution three community. So, you know, our special labor doesn’t have to have a water license or heavy equipment doesn’t have to have a water license, once you get past that you have to have a D one and then a D two and it increases as you go through the steps. So you will see like a larger percentage say in the mechanic pipe better to this year. I don’t know if it’s just it’s been so are we see that but those increases are hoping that someone’s going to pass that test and be able to take on more responsibility. So the longer we don’t we lose the town is don’t lose the money that invested in the. Yep, so that’s the goal. It’s a goal. Yes, and you know to be able to, as you move off you we are 24 seven department. So we do have people that are required to carry the phone or form and are required to carry the phone all the time. And then we also have someone who’s on call will carry that phone, but you are able to carry that phone unless you have the acquired licenses and you have learned the skills to be able to deal with the issues right away.

22:32 So, you know, our emergencies are something that happened unexpectedly and fast, so we can’t spend a lot of time having someone trying to figure something out if it’s water break they need to know who they need to call in what happens next and to get that. So, you know, we do have a really skilled labor force and they are training. They have at least 10 hours of emergency response training every year and then they have training required to maintain the licenses also. Thank you. Any other questions. I’d like to make a motion as chairman of the liaison subcommittee that the finance committee approved the water department budget in the amount and I’m hoping this is the right number. This is what I had the last time we looked at this 5,000,471,087 dollars. Second. Mike approved Sarah approved. Yeah, can. Yes. Thank you. Again, enterprise fund department.

24:05 None of their budget and light on line items have any impact on the contacts rate. Same story for salaries, lots of adjustments for position adjustments for the new schedules and sewer has an assessment for the south Essex sewage district sewage sewerage district. That is the line share of the budget and this this year, the assessment is, is two point blue is 2.16 million dollars so the total budget for the department is just over 5 million so it’s a substantial percentage is the actual fee that we’re assessed by the south Essex sewage district. And there’s also a pipeline, we’re still paying off the pipeline replacement loan, which is one over one just over one million dollars per year. So if you look at the through 2026. Yeah, and then that will go away but we’re still carrying that this is from six years ago right five years ago, so whenever when they had the failure of the pipeline. First you can the superintendent.

25:37 Wasn’t. That is included in then it’s rolled into the. The thing in the end everywhere I forgot to mention is there is a zero percent interest loan that we have taken out to improve our water system from them to be worried that is included in the end everywhere. So other than that, it’s consistent with the information from my notes. Any questions. Yeah, that’s the, that’s the number because I’m looking at the wrong number but budget. They said to me 96 but I’m looking at frequent when I’m for what is that includes the pipeline replacement that includes the charge. I’m just talking about the connections here what we want to call is the 2.156. Yes, but in terms of the total charge that go, you know, the amount of money that goes to South Essex, yes, it is 3.2. Sure. Yeah, and our loan is tied into that 3.3 194 that we get from SDSP that is our loan it’s not a one time thing that is tied into our noise and debt payments times. So it’s broken up over four times, but I break it out on the water and sewer conditions budget so that they can see what the cost of running the plant is and treating the sewer and then what the cost of the payment is, but we don’t have that option.

27:19 So the act is the expectation that that when that rolls off that will be replaced with something different. So my expectation has been up until the he told me it would be different was SDSC is the plan is aging right now. They are on their hundred anniversary review of the whole system. They are coming up with a new 20 year plan that it is aging infrastructure it is going to start to cost us more money. So I’m hoping that that million that we’re putting in right now into our pipeline will be able to offset the cost of all the upgrades are going to have to happen at that plant going forward. We will have a 20 year plan, but we also being an old system have a lot of infiltration and inflow in town. And that’s what we’re dealing with right now and DP has required us to start taking out big percentages of that inflow or infiltration. So right now we’re in, we just did full monitoring will be doing smoke testing will be doing inspections video inspections to try to find the areas that really need to be tightened up. We have a new program called resum, which is to try to explain to people that some pumps and groundwater should not go into the sanitary sewer it’s actually a legal connection. But we have we see a huge increase in a rainstorm as we watch our skater control panel we can see flows coming. We see a huge increase about 20 minutes after it starts raining and that’s about how long it takes for that some pump to kick in.

28:53 So, you know, that will take out a whole bunch of flow which is water that doesn’t need to be treated but we’re paying to treat it so it is costing us all money. And then the sewer system started going in around 1927 and 1930 a large chunk of it went in the 30s, and it really has just been running for that time so we are looking at lining projects, and we offered a 20 year plan to the DP, but they said we had to it’s we had to make that more expedient so when this loan money comes, comes back and we don’t have to pay it anymore a big chunk of that will have to go into satisfy the environment environment. But it also will help the town I mean I expect our folks to come way down. What is the piping now it’s not orangeburg is it No, orangeburg actually was never used in town maybe in a couple of private services but it’s vitrified clay. Now we got to translate and now we’re up to the HDP or Dr. Tim has some special knowledge in this. Clearly. I’m not going to lie. Full disclosure. So with that, I’d like to make a motion to approve the Seward Department budget in amount of $5,065,431. Second.

30:25 Okay. Another discussion. Emily. Approve. Mike. Approve. Tim. Yeah. Yes. Molly. Yes. Approve. All in favor. Yes. The motion and seconds are obviously. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the detailed notes. They were really good. Yeah. Yeah. As all of us guys, the best at the meeting. Five stars.

31:22 Very well. Makes my job easier too. So the school department. Sure. Yeah. How’s everybody doing? Good. Good evening. Good to be back. It’s John’s first time here ever. In the morning. Yeah. Mary Ellie. Last time I was in this room, I was interviewed. So we have some new members of our committee as well. Molly. Cam and Tara on the lines. I guess take it away with your presentation for the budget. Sure. I’m pleased to present the proposed fiscal year 23 school department budget in the amount of 46 million and 606959. Just how did we get to that number? The former county administrator had asked us to start earlier this year. And so we followed

32:58 accelerated process. In October, I worked with the school committee on developing our budget directives. The track obligations. The tuition for kindergarten piece that you see in our budget. Technology, curriculum, personnel. These are all reflected in this budget. Also, we completed a strategic plan. Although I could not use that word. It is our success plan. And each element of the success plan is reflected in the budget you see before us. So when we began the budget process, I asked each of our stakeholder groups, our principals and directors. To build the budget according to the following framework. What do you need to effectively manage your school or your program in order to provide an exemplary education? So. Teacher voice is represented in this budget. Principles and directors begin with teachers through faculty meetings or workshops to gather their input. Then principals and directors meet with Michelle and me. One of the first questions that we asked them are any anticipated retirements or fluctuations in enrollment. So you will see both of those things reflected in this budget. We were in December, generally where we were in February, March, and that might be a blessing in disguise as we had a change in town administration. And it has enabled us to

34:32 have multiple meetings with our budget subcommittee and the finance joint budget subcommittee. We’ve considered various things along the way, and we have complied with multiple requests from each of our stakeholder groups. We’ve worked closely with the interim town administrator to consider moving things from capital to the operating budget, which you will see a change in the tracking sheet, the inclusion of the security cameras into the operating budget and vice versa. Moving things from operating to capital, which was the smart panels and I’m sure Emily can say we had a lot of conversation about smart panels and whether we leased them or buy them. Another example of our desire to collaborate on this budget is moving the benefits piece into our operating budget. So I think the school department has come a long way over the last several years. We were asked to address some of the structural and systematic concerns that led to past issues, and I believe we have done that. I’ve made it a priority to forge relationships between the town and the school department as well as the finance committee. This budget represents moving the district forward. It is what we need to effectively run the district to provide an exemplary education. And from finance perspective, we kicked off

36:04 earlier in the season, which was very helpful, especially with myself being a new liaison member, Cam as well, new member of the committee and new liaison, and then keeping everybody up to speed as much as we can throughout this process. And everything Dr. Bucky just said is to think that they have the tracking sheet, which I believe is right behind me here, it’s in front of me right here, that the request has moved throughout those four meetings and we’ve collaborated with the school committee to come up with ways to maybe move fun things in other ways. And other strategic ways that things could go into their capital override and things like that. Obviously, when the former town administrator and we were copied on that message back in the fall about the new process, requested a new budget from each department this year, it was based on the kind of forecast, we requested kind of a contractual obligation increase budget only. Obviously, thinking about things beyond salaries and wages and well that could be contractual in nature. The fact of the matter is, and it’s been discussed in prior meetings between the two of us, these two committees, that there is a structural budget challenge in Marblehead that the finance committees notes and town finance has indicated something to show in his state of the town that is being navigated and is something that needs to be addressed in the near future. Based on discussions with town finance, our expectation is that this year’s budget will

37:38 balance without an override to address that structural budget challenge. And there should be additional free cash leftover after using the amount appropriate or the amount certified to balance that budget. So the issue or the challenge with what the school has done, what school has presented here, we appreciate and respect the process they went through, but we just explained because and we did scrub that process and as you can see, once we go through the details here in a minute, there’s some significant increases to the budget that are not contractual in nature. And that goes back to the whole goal of the whole process to deliver their exemplary education as they define it. So from the get-go, at least from my perspective, from the first FinCon liaison meeting, my first comment, if you remember, was I’ll be interested to see how we fund these additional requests. So I think Steve and his team and John have been collaborative with the school committee to determine what the town can support of this $46.6 million ask and what it may not be able to support with the general operating budget this year. I think I’ve tried to at least give everybody on the Finance Committee a brief introduction to this, but this is really the first time tonight that a lot of our members have heard the details. So if you don’t mind if we could just go into some of the details, maybe I would think the best place would start with the request to break down.

39:08 But it’s up to you guys how you want to present it. And first, feel free to respond. No, thank you. And through the chair, if I could. So David Harris, school committee member, and also liaison to the budget with Megan Taylor, who couldn’t be here this evening. So, you know, the meetings that have been talked about, you know, Megan has had a lead on that for several years and just couldn’t be here this evening. And I thank everybody for the time that we’ve taken to get through those meetings. In addition, we took the opportunity when John McGinn came back to town to reintroduce John to Michelle Acosta and Dr. Bucky and realizing that with Steve there that, you know, this will ramp back up again and get through this process. But, you know, John’s a quick study, so we haven’t had really worried about that. But still, I mean, there was the opportunity to be able to do that. I think everybody understands and appreciates that. So, and I also come into this process with a little bit of a unique perspective, having been on your side of the table for 11 years and four years as the chair. And I just would like to add seven years on school committee that this budget that I’m presenting and Dr. Bucky and Michelle Acosta and Sarah Gold is here representing us as our chair.

40:42 I’ll speak for myself, but I think it’s consistent with other members of the board, is, you know, I have the full faith and confidence that what’s before you has been discussed. Questions have been asked. We’ve vetted it. As Dr. Bucky said, it’s about providing an exemplary education to move the district forward. And it’s also about, you know, some of the work that was done with the success planning that took place, you know, during the pandemic, but was held outdoors under tents in June and July to move the district forward. And, you know, I think it’s, I want to start with just a brief reminder. So Bill McCaldiff came to this district as an interim superintendent and did an outstanding job of getting us through the year that he was here. And Michelle was thankfully his first hire. And so this is Michelle’s third year with us, you know, first year, you know, she came in midstream in January. Last year, it was a pandemic, extra funds, grant monies, other things going on. She’s trying to, you know, line up items where they need to be accounted for at the various schools, whether it’s an administrative expense. And, you know, Michelle’s done an excellent job in bringing the budget forward. So, you know, the money, the monies are where they should be, you know, they’re not in other items that get underspent. We transfer them at the end of the year to the best of our ability. The funds are in the buckets that they need to be. And then, you know,

42:15 you bring Dr. Bucky into the situation and the administrators, once again, last year during pandemic, unlike anything we’ve ever experienced, certainly not the time to be, I mean, we had enough challenges going on to try and deliver remote hybrid in-person education to be challenging the administrators with, you know, what could they, you know, what’s needed for the exemplary education, which I think, you know, everybody certainly had some ideas, but the pandemic changed that. But going into this year, you look at the experienced staff that works with Dr. Bucky, as well as our new assistant superintendent, Nan, who’s not here tonight. But, you know, when you look at Dan Bauer, Matt Fox, Mandy, you know, very experienced senior educators that have been doing an outstanding job day after day in Marblehead. And I feel very confident that when you look through the numbers, and we talk about them tonight, that they’ve been thoughtful in their consideration about, you know, having been here for, you know, Dan’s probably going on his seventh year, Matt, 10, Mandy, you know, there’s a lot of experience here. So they’ve had some time to think about this and work through it. And so I’ll just leave it at that, that I think what we’re putting forward is, has been well thought out at least and deserves an opportunity to be

43:49 heard and for people to ask questions. We’ll have our public public budget hearing also, and people can ask questions there or comment. And also I want to thank Steve and John, as Dr. Bucky said, for working with us on, you know, capital versus operating, you know, we put it in a capital budget, there’ll be other things I assume tonight, Alec, we’re not going to talk about, for instance, you know, the need for the roof at the high school, we’ll wait till the warning, more adhering to, you know, to talk about that specifically. So with that, I’ll turn it over and you had asked at the end of your comments about a summary, maybe of details. I guess I think that thank you, Michelle, for the request to break down the different buckets, because that’s really the buckets we’ve been talking about the whole time that are driving your your increases in your budget, starting with the contractual obligations and going from there. I do want to just mention that, like I said earlier, there is the structural budget challenge that we’re navigating with an intern town administrator. A current town administrator is being interviewed. I don’t know the process where that’s at right now, but that’s my understanding to replace the former town administrator. And John’s been very helpful, like everybody else said, he’s been amazing in this process. From our perspective, some of the asks I’m here that are increasing the school department’s budget don’t necessarily address that challenge that next year, based on forecasts, even at level funded, we may need some sort of

45:25 override to balance next year’s budget. So I just want to be very clear on that with people listening in that this potential override, as we get to tonight, that we’ll be discussing in a minute how we actually or how the school committee will actually attempt to fund this is a challenge, because it asks for additional costs this year for things that they deem necessary, but there could be another one next year still as a result of the structure of budget challenges. So yeah, so I guess contractual obligations was agreed upon between Steve and the committee, right? So I think I’m up with a figure of 1.294730. Yeah, so that’s pretty straightforward. And that was finalized and agreed upon. And then special education, tuitions and transportation request was a very significant topic we discussed. We discussed potentially moving that with financing and moving a higher funding of the special education reserve, which was established a few years back, has been funded at 250 a year. We noted that that 250 is not a building number. So that’s always gone back into the general fund when it hasn’t been spent, which it hasn’t been spent since it was established. So I guess I’ll turn it over to Michelle and Dr. Bucky to kind of present the special education as to begin. So this year, we are asking for

47:00 out of district tuition increase of $783,000 and transportation for out of district placements of $65,000. These two numbers are not really any, I should say non-committed at this time. Since we actually put these figures into place and submitted them back in November, we did have a lot of potential costs on the radar. And unfortunately, all of those costs have come to fruition at this point. So originally during our budget talks, I thought maybe we could put $400,000 or $500,000 into the reserve because they were possible costs at the time. In our analysis over the past two weeks, there is no flexibility within that number, which actually makes me nervous going into the budget season in March for a budget that doesn’t start till July. And just knowing the rate of placements that are occurring and the amount of needs that are occurring within our student body. So at this time, the whole $783,000 and $65,000 are essentially committed for the following year. So I really appreciate the support and understanding on that fact because it’s not a cost that’s really questionable. We have to fund that. We have to find a way to fund that. So that would bring our total out of district tuition costs to $3.5 million within the budget. And I don’t have our transportation figure, but it is within my budget summary line. I believe that’s… You know, there are costs to $65,000.

48:35 I have a total line to bring that to. Special education transportation to $125,000. Yes. Yep, exactly. So a good portion of our special education transportation actually comes from a grant as well. So you have about $400,000 built into a grant. So that is just the general fund piece of the special education transportation number. Okay. So it doesn’t include the unfunded mandate from the state. Along with lots of this, that’s a different subject. But that essentially is an unfunded mandate. So yes. So unfortunately, that’s a large part of our budget ask for this year, but it is what it is. It’s what we need to fund at this point. And at some point, I would love to… After this year, we get to this year, we figure out what we actually need to close this year, figure out what we can do in terms of reserves. If this is something that’s going to be recurring, then we need to have a bigger discussion about how to look forward with these potential unknown costs. And my understanding and speaking with Tom finance and the school committee and department over the past week, that that was one of the last items to figure out how are we going to fund this? What are we funding? The special education reserve app, which comes out of the general fund, so everybody knows, versus what goes into their

50:07 operating budget that they’re requesting tonight that we’ll vote on tonight. My understanding is that an agreement was made that the town can support this piece of your additional ask above and beyond. Well, contractual obligations, but one could argue that special education is contractual obligation nature as well. Is that fair Steve? That was agreed upon. And that number’s 848,840. And if I could, so we’ve also heard for Michelle, we had another we had an earlier meeting tonight, but take the transportation. Michelle has a staff member who’s very experienced in this area. We’re exploring such things as, you know, sharing rides, for instance. So rather than having an individual ride that might need to go to Beverly, that maybe we can join with other districts around us to consolidate rides and help reduce costs and help me out here, Michelle, if I’m missing out, but there is also Michelle’s looking to expand the bidding opportunity for our transportation beyond some of the traditional transportation groups that we’ve used to try and get some more competition. But we certainly recognize, you know, cost of fuel and shortage of drivers is impacting all transportation providers, but having others in the bid could help give a different perspective. And those are the kinds of things that Michelle’s been

51:37 working on since she got here to help, you know, manage our costs, but could have an impact on, you know, that 200 and 290 for next year, exactly, 225 for this year. And I have a comment, but I think you had it first. You know, I just wanted to comment about, you know, we’ve had a lot of discussions on transportation. This is since I’ve been on the finance committee, this is a topic I’m sure, you know, that you have. It’s yearly, this is our discussion is how do we manage to fund this. And part of those discussions that you had was increasing the reserve fund, and I was a huge advocate of that because I feel like that would remove a lot of volatility from your budget. And I understand the tape this year of putting these funds into your budget. These are known students that are going there. These are known expenses that we’re going to be that are there for next year. But I agree with Michelle. I think in the future, we really need to work out some sort of mechanism that’s going to take the volatility out of your budget, but also allow the funding to be there when you need it. Part of my concern about putting this into your operating budget is in the future. I mean, the cost of special education goes up and it does come down. I mean, students who got a district,

53:08 they age out. So my concern is you need to earmark this money only for special education. And next year, if all of that funding isn’t needed, let’s figure out a mechanism. Can we put that on a reserve fund? Can we turn it back to the town? What you know so that it’s available for the future? I don’t have big concerns about this money being shifted over into general operating expenses or to headcount or other things that are not special education related. I think they really need to stay as special education funds. And then yes, in the future, let’s definitely have more conversations about how to handle this. This has been the discussion we’ve had for many years. Love to figure it out. Yeah, Michelle, you talked about potentially another type of reserve that could build and maybe I know that’s not created yet. We have the one from the general fund reserve. But even if we don’t end up getting to that point, I do think that from a review perspective every year, we really want to see all of the data as to what is being spent every year and then any amount that’s not spent should not be spent in other areas, because it’s really something we have to navigate both ways. Absolutely. And I couldn’t agree with you more. And actually, me personally, I am an anomaly. I work for the school department, I handle school finance, I have been a finance community member for 21 years. I’m still a finance community member in my hometown. So I completely understand that I have sat on both

54:40 sides of the table. We have this continual discussion in my hometown as well. And we actually came up with a solution where anything that’s not spent in the out of district tuition cost actually goes into the reserve from the following year. And you know, you will have my commitment that I would not spend out of district tuition costs on anything else operating wise unless we have a budget crisis. And obviously, you guys would be aware of that. So you have my commitment as long as I am in Marblehead, I will not spend that frivolously on any other budget item. Because I understand that that components and sometimes schools get a bad rap because we do have line item autonomy. And that’s that’s not the intent. So if our budget’s going down, then you know, we want to be transparent with that and work with you guys to make sure that we’re important either meeting other budget needs or we’re using that to turn back to the town. And you know, in the past when we’ve had, you know, during the COVID year, you know, you turned a fair amount of money back to town and that’s much appreciated. So that’s that’s some of the collaboration that we really, we really appreciate and like to build on. So so, you know, these these discussions will continue. Absolutely. We will figure it away. If I may, then I’m going to remember on the screen, if you allow her to speak out as well. You know, this the special education lines are what caused such a problem a few years ago. And, you know, I know I can’t speak for future committees, but I know no one on this committee has any intent of ever going backwards with any of that. And we also have no intent of letting

56:15 Michelle go. And and, you know, as you mentioned, you know, we have turned money back over. What we’ve also done is prepaid some of our district tuition over the past two years when we had a surplus, which I think then has sort of kept it out of some of the rises that we’re seeing and having to navigate through right now. We haven’t seen them because some of it’s been cushioned from previous budgets. And so, you know, this these costs is for the four years that I’ve been on the committee. I think we’ve made a lot of improvements on how we’re looking at them, how we’re identifying kids who may be moved out of district. But I also think that there’s probably, you know, there’s probably never going to be a time when we’re going to be able to really pinpoint it all and nail it all down so that we have everything. And I think that speaks to why there is the reserve and that, you know, I would be completely supportive of adding to that or, you know, doing other mechanisms that will, you know, take some of the volatility out because it is really scary, especially having been on the committee and started on the committee when all of this really imploded a few years ago. It’s really scary to sit in this spot knowing that what we’re asking for is already fully accounted for with our children next year. And these are our children. They are barbell head public school students who are just going to attend school elsewhere. And you’re right, you know, kids do come in, kids come out, but a lot of the time it isn’t, unfortunately, just a one-year out placement as much as we would love that to be the case. So, you know, I have

57:48 the full confidence in Michelle that she manages these numbers and keeps the committees abreast of any changes. But, you know, I just, I sort of had to put that forward from my perspective on the committee. And then Sarah Fox has her hand up here. Sorry. Sarah Fox. Hi, thank you very much. Just to build on what the others have said, as we look at the volatility of the out of district placements and things like that, because that really is, you know, not to overuse the word volatility, but that really is where it is our weakest point as far as being able to plan and budget. Where all of this is already spoken for this full amount. And we talk about $65,000 for out of, for transportation just for the FinCom members to understand. I think the school committee to us, it just seems more native in that we talk about this all the time. That’s $65,000 just to give you a scope of what we deal with as far as volatility to transport one student out of district. So, that shows you how much we can swing one way or another. If we have one more out of district placement with one more transportation, large numbers and very large swings that we just simply cannot absorb in our operating budget when someone moves in out of town or, or we have another

59:20 placement. So that’s what I feel very strongly that we should not be doing a plan reliance on a reserve fund at this point, because our reserve fund being the number it is right now, you know, if we had one or two more out of district placements this year, which to be perfectly honest, we looked back and none of us could find a time period when we started the fiscal year and haven’t had additional after that. So to start that year with the planned reliance and what we know we may need to educate our students later on, I would argue is poor fiscal management and I’m very proud of our committee and Michelle and Dr. Bucky for saying that we really need to be transparent about what it costs to educate all of our students, because as Sarah said, these are all of our students in the way that has been deemed appropriate for them. So I’m glad to see that this is in our operating budget. To take this a step further, when we look at these other items, you know, on the budget that we proposed, none of these are wish list items. I think that was, I heard that at one of the meetings previously. This is really a needs-based budget. We look at things like security cameras, technology. I mean, if this pandemic showed us anything, it’s that how much of a role the proper technology plays in educating our students appropriately. None of these items that have been put forth to you are anything that anybody in our administration or our school committee feels like our hope to have items, wish to have items.

1:01:02 This really is a needs-based budget. This really reflects what is appropriate and what is needed to educate our students in the Marblehead Public School System. And I’m really hopeful that as the FinCom, the Finance Committee, that you can stand with us. We’ve heard for many years that if we brought back numbers that were backed up with data and that we did our due diligence, that we would have your support. And I’m very helpful that tonight we will see that support. You know, two years ago with Bill McCalduff, he gave us a very clear statement that our budget could not go any further with level funded. That level funded would no longer be level services. We would be drastically cutting into services moving forward. We were able to leverage some of the CARES Act money that came into our community and different grants that came in to get us through one more year. But as we heard from our former town administrator Jason Silva last year during finance meeting, he very clearly articulated we are no longer cutting fat. We are now cutting muscle and bone. And that struck very deep because this is not just muscle and bone of, you know, numbers on a piece of paper. This is children’s education. And if we don’t fund what our administrators are telling us we need to fund, then we are taking away the educational opportunities of the students in this town.

1:02:43 And so I’m very, very hopeful that you will support this number and bring it forth to the town with us because at the end of the day, what this is is a vote to say that we want to keep a level service of education or that you want us to cut the level of service we give to our children. And I think at the end of the day, that’s what this comes down to. Do you support educating the children of Marblehead in the way that our professionals have said that needs to happen? Let me just respond for a couple of minutes. I mean, nobody has said anything in this meeting at all about cutting anything from the list that is presented to us. The schools that presented us with a number, we’re discussing it, and we’re discussing how to fund that. There has been no requests from anybody in any of the meetings I’ve had to remove anything from this budget. The Finance Committee does not sit here and tell the schools how to fund the schools, how to run a school. That is not our job. Our job is to review the budget that is put forth in front of us from the school committee. And that’s what we’re here doing. Nobody is requesting anything being cut from this budget. Yeah, and just to put it in the minute, but the structural budget challenge, and I do want to make a point, the structural budget challenge exists, as we all know, and it’s been discussed at State of the Town.

1:04:14 It was discussed in some of the meetings where. So if we if we were voting on just a level funded budget this year, like I said, our expectation from town finance and the Interim Town Administrator is that this year’s budget will balance, and there will be additional free cash reserves available, meaning this year’s budget we’re not out of money at level funded for the most part across all the parts. Next year, based on forecasted amounts, that may not be the case, which means that if we vote just a level funded budget tonight, and no additional costs were asked for next year that level funded budget that we vote would actually have to come down next year. So, these additional asks beyond contractual obligations and special education will need to be funded elsewhere outside of the general operating budget warrant article this year. And we’ll discuss those in a minute here but I do did want to make that point that the structural budget challenge which impacts the schools and all the markets, right? So, the level funded budgets across all departments, based on forecasts, may not be able to balance next year. So, take that as it may, but that’s just the facts of the numbers that we’ve done. Yeah, and the other thing is that, I’m sorry, the current status of the budget for this year, if you look at the State of the Town.

1:05:45 There’s a, there is a, we’re in the black by a very very small amount. We’re not in the black to the tune of over $3 million additional. That is part of your ask. So, just so that, I mean that’s that’s the reality of the current situation. So, I’m sure I know you guys all understand that you’re all nodding your head. So, just for the purposes. Yeah. And what I’ll say is before we, because we do want to hear everything right before we move on to the next line item here. I think we all clear and I think you guys already know this that the number we will be voting on pond tonight from a process perspective is this leader 22 budget, plus your payroll contractual obligations, plus your special education, and transportation costs, which by my math is about a 5.12% increase in your budget year over. So that’s what we’ll be voting on tonight, anything else in addition to that won’t be voted on tonight, but we’ll be off. So just from a process perspective. So everybody listening in understate. I can certainly, you know, this is a little jumping the gun but from everything I’m understanding is that if we should be successful in our requests and at the override level this year, that when the town goes back in and has their structural needs addressed in what we’re all assuming will be an ask that we will be within that as well and that if we can be successful this year and if no one is successful next year that it’s all for not.

1:07:23 So I do think that there’s, you know, that’s a piece to be communicated that, you know, we have our ducks in a row right now and I have expectations that we will continue to, and that you know we are all, you know, I’ve said it many times we’re all working together. And that, you know, we are all one marble head, and, and that we need each other. Yeah, we appreciate that comments there because next year, which I believe will, and we’ll talk more about this at the warrant article and town meeting from our perspective but next year we’re really going for this as a full town and obviously impacts the schools very much so being the biggest line item in that budget and need the school’s support and rightfully so because it impacts you guys more than anybody else so that’s a very valid point. Thank you. Steve, didn’t you tell us at the beginning of the year. What was some of the differences in the amount per student that we don’t cost us more marble head per student and surrounding communities. I know that’s why we’re just illustrating that the cost for people was increasing at a larger rate reduction in increases in spending cost per student was increasing. I don’t know that it addressed. What was the question about how it was affected. I don’t know. Why address. Who’s just, who’s just data that show based on enrollment, that’s per people expenditure across 21 communities.

1:09:04 Okay. Yeah, can I also the deal we does publish by district. The cost per people, you can see I think the latest data is 2020. So a lot could have changed since then but from what when I looked at that recently, it looked like we were slightly below just a little bit below sort of the average of all 400 districts across the state on an average basis, but then come a few years back so yeah even if costs if students went down presumably it might be more in line without the figure. But I think it certainly is not raising us to the top percentages, which we actually do when you talk about how our schools perform, we do sit at, you know, very way at the top of the state performance. You know, this year I think there were 29 in Boston 19. Okay, so yeah, I just again wanted to be very clear as the process right so we’re going to vote on the number is going to be fourth in a little bit here 43 million 982 273 which is basically your 22 budget, plus contractual obligations, plus the special education tuition transportation transportation request 5.12% increase. I guess let’s move on to the rest of the presentation for everything else.

1:10:34 If that’s okay. Yeah, I’m happy to entertain any questions you have each of the buckets if there are specific questions. If your intention is what you just indicated to vote that number I’m happy to answer questions above and beyond that. I do know I have my colleagues burning holes in my back, because they have the same thing as well. Right, and we, we did want to try and understand if this was how you’re going to vote so that on when we hear the warrant articles, we would give you the. Now that we’ve heard the number. So, if I could pat so for instance, you know, at 43 982 that the gap comes down somewhere to about 2.6, and we would be prepared to present. Yeah, for that article on what on what’s on what’s. contained in that. Yeah, the line item at the bottom there was a request, and which school committee and department met was we were concerned that of the 1.5 million or so additional salaries are new positions that the 500,000 or so should be covered as part of that and that’s included now so and we’re happy we’re all compared to touch on the high points but given that you do have a full slate of presentations tonight I mean, we can, we can, we can go through the other, because the priorities list that we sent to all of you that’s been consistent with the last couple of months.

1:12:17 You know, we can just go through the subtotals of those priorities, just want to hear those numbers one more time or not. I mean, for me I’ve heard all the details but I just for the benefit of our committee might a high level of presentations might might be okay certain members is the first time. Yeah, Dr. Martin you got the priority areas, this list them all out. One of the major pieces is tuition free kindergarten, or one of, I think you were the 10 districts in the Commonwealth that still charges tuition for full day kindergarten. Then we have some safety and security things cameras in our schools for the high school system that is no longer functioning middle school that does not even have a system to them the Glover in village school updating those number of personnel pieces introducing steam into the district the new Brown School has dedicated space for steam with our program or teacher, certainly we saw through the pandemic with lack of substitutes so you see a number of permanent sub positions custodians groundskeeper. We have some supplies materials and equipment. They’re just won’t fully outdated.

1:13:47 You have science equipment that doesn’t work is broken needs replaced. Kill in the art department, a world cultures textbook at the high school that doesn’t even have 911 it’s 20 years old. And so it doesn’t have a number of things so these are just things that over the course of time, not keeping up have put supplies materials equipment textbooks resources at a deficit and so those are the curriculum pieces that you see, in addition to personnel safety technology, the out of district piece which we talked about this evening, and then the benefits piece for the number of new positions that we have added. Stephen and Michelle got together, integrated on a number to put that in. Yeah, yeah, and we can go more depth in depth at the launch hearing as that’s finalized. I do want to make one other comment. So the 2.6 million that you mentioned David, which is where we’re at right now. I don’t know if that’s what we’ll be right here. So, but soon we are. It’s our expectation, based on how things have been presented to us and given that, as you can see, the total request is 11.4% all inclusive. Right so it’s our expectation that should an override past to increase your budget for that amount of stuff, the school department should be able to live within that budget for a number of years here, because this is a longer term plan that you’ve developed and that’s the way it’s been presented to us so I just wanted to ask is, is that

1:15:30 the expectation from the school committee and the school department as well. I would be hesitant to make that to make that commitment. You know, it’s a committee that we’ve got two members up for reelection this year. And those, you know, we can swing either way, you know, in support for budgets and I think you know we have, we have chipped away at the education and what we’ve provided to students and to the kind of the detriment of our teachers at this point, because, again, we do still perform quite high. But I do believe we rely a lot on the parents of this community which you know as a parent, you know, I can understand some of that, but there is a line to that. And I think what we’ve got here covers what we can do for next year, and maybe that next year that they’re going to come back and say you know what yes our teachers, we’ve heard this year is that our teachers are need a little bit of a pause as to any new initiatives that are going to be put forward. So what you don’t see is a bunch of new curriculum we put a math curriculum in this year. And so they’ve been working on that and that’s a lot for teachers to push forward and to learn how to be you know the new way of teaching and implementing it. So, we do know that we are going to need additional curriculum in various subject matter lines throughout the district. And so when we are ready to ask for that, I would expect the committee to come forward and ask for that.

1:17:06 Whether that’s next year or in seven years, I doubt it’s seven years, but you know, I would like to leave the space for future committee to listen to the administration and their well thought out plans similar to what we presented here tonight to be able to ask for what we need, when we need it. Thank you for that, sir. And if I could just add so so this budget does also and we’ll outline that some of these are one time asks. So within that 2.6 as opposed to, you know, a recurring cost that would go forward. You know, much as we’ve given the commitment to the committee that you know we need to understand what our one time asks are and would those be there next year. I mean, you know, the tuition is an example I mean if it was the preference of the taxpayers, Marvel had to have full day kindergarten be tuition free. I mean that we would never have to come back for that again. That would be done. And there wouldn’t be an additional ask so that that component, you know, as an example would cover it but I want to just point out that I think I know going back to my days of 2007 2006 the town has always had a desire to stay current with technology. And I think we’ll probably hear tonight that there’s there are town budgets that are talking about, you know, the finance director being the technology director and is that the best setup or, you know, having in our case we have software in our district was with our Steve Kwai check that came on board.

1:18:48 Thankfully in January, just when we were building out the Brown School to help us with our technology rollout. And he’s really bringing the district to the forefront that, you know, we have Windows 2007 software it just, it’s not being supported anymore and I think we, here we are at a hybrid meeting we might be a voted town meeting to continue hybrid meeting, but all of the technology we all desire to have that so that’s one example that I would just say that I know of, I think you, I think we need to think strategically as a town about having a regular technology replacement schedule so that we can have two grants that came in. That was great. Every teacher received a new laptop as part of a grant right and we bought some new iPads but five years those laptops need to be replaced. And I think the town is probably looking at the same thing where you know we, we would need to think about, it’s just an example that I would say to answer your question Alec doesn’t yeah we’re probably there are areas that are covered but that’s one example of technology I think we signed the memorandum of agreement to work together with the town side of government, and we’re very heavy on technology and we have technology professionals that maybe the town could come together to look forward so that’s just one example that I wanted to put up. So I guess I just say that we understand that anything can come up at any given time, but at least from my perspective, this, not to discount the ask at all, we understand the asking we appreciate the process you went through but it’s a fairly significant

1:21:02 question. Just can’t see something so this looks like I just really quickly want to just make a comment about that so this ask was put together using your plan for success exercise that’s essentially five year plan correct. So I would think and this is something we can discuss further especially before the warrant hearing that you’re asked what whatever you need to fund that five year plan is in your ass for us. I mean that’s for the town is not just for us. And I think it’s important to know that because this is you’ve taken a time, you know where you want to be in five years now you know you need to know how to fund that. And if there are no costs associated with that that are not included in this I think those should be thought through before you come on April 11 to the warrant hearing with your final number. I think that’s a little concerning to me, because if we know that we need a social studies curriculum but we know that we don’t have the bandwidth to put that curriculum in place until you know maybe two years or three years from now. I don’t, I don’t find it just be responsible from the seat that I sit in to ask for it. This year, knowing that we’re going to be sitting on that money. Until we can. We do have the bandwidth to be able to implement that. And so from the seat that I said and I want to be able to come and say here’s what we need for next year and we have this five year plan.

1:22:37 And then you’ve covered this aspect of it. And now we’re covering this aspect of it. And, you know, maybe we don’t get to all of it in the five years and then some of it carries forward into that next five year plan, but that I, I would, I would feel very uncomfortable asking for things that I know that we are not going to get to next year. Well, I mean, I’m looking at those the priorities just I don’t want to belabor this too much more but there’s a whole list of one time costs that are going into your operating budget. There’s a one time costs, one year. So you’ll have yeah and I would say half a million dollars or the one time costs that you can use for the future or more curriculum and any of the needs. And we want to continue to say we want to see a commitment from everybody here. Not that you’re not committed to this but that there’s going to be costs year over year that come out of your budget. Sometimes people retire, right? We saw it in the assessor’s very small budget but easy example, right? Like I said, my expectation is that for the near future, the school department had a 12% increase year over year can live within that budget growing at contractual obligations, obviously moving forward, if this was passed. That’s my explanation. Well, let’s do Cam. Okay, sorry. Because Emily pretty much covered what I was going to say. Yes, thank you, Alec. I don’t know if you can hear me very well but

1:24:09 I guess I just want to add a few things. One, I think that this has been to me a very collaborative process and one of the things I appreciate is the transparency that the school department has shown and I think at the point we were just discussing transparency going forward about what’s phasing out that was one time what are the new one time expenses in the coming years is going to be really important and I think I understand it changes year to year but I think just being very clear about what you’re expecting to have next year what you’re expecting to have in two years. And the savings that have been reached I think is going to be an important part of continuing that low of support that that I think we’re, you know, hoping to provide. Excuse me, Alec I wanted to know if you could just mention the process on April 11 because I think there is perhaps not an understanding that the extra items that are being requested will be before us on April 11. So I think we can vote on them today. Excuse me we can vote on them a couple weeks. Yeah, so, again, this is uncharted waters for me but I’ve been collaborating with john and Steve and his well about what we’re going to vote on as a committee on April 11. So we’re approving and all the budgets earlier budgets tonight prior meetings and this budget, the amount that we’re actually going to vote on tonight goes up into the operating budget warrant article that captures most of the town department’s

1:25:40 budgets I think a few might be in some other articles that there’s Steve, but the additional asks below if you look at the bottom of the request to break down below the contractual obligations and special education everything else. The number is not second stone at this point but my understanding is as of today it’s about 2.6 million as Davidson, and our expectation is that that will be in a separate warrant article after that article that we vote on April 11 will be presented before the finance committee, and we as a committee need to vote on whether we recommend it or not to the, you know, town taxpayer to, to make a motion that town meeting and then further, if it gets to the ballot box vote on. I’m going to cover your question can so there’ll be kind of two aspects of the total $46.6 million total budget presented for us will flow into two different ones are simply simple. Yeah. I have a question kind of goes all the way you just said about you don’t feel comfortable saying, going forward we’re not going to make an estimate next five years. And we said this is a big percentage 11% percent of just all of us in this room are on the same team we want the best for our children the best education possible. But we know as a town as community that we’re going into these structural challenges. And we know that we have to look at things all over and make hard decisions. It sort of begs the question, I know there’s been a lot of talk about this, but holding off on a vote this year, coming in line with the rest of the town, the rest of finance committee

1:27:32 and the rest of the departments in the direction that they’re looking to go into. As we look at the structural challenges that we have ahead. Because it’s really hard for us to get in, you know, I mean what we asked of all the different departments that come in with a level budget. And then getting, getting this with a warrant asked, knowing that next year there’s going to be a warrant asked. And I think to speak to that, what I had said earlier is that if we are successful this year and no one is successful next year. This year is new. What we get going into the next school year. And so, you know, I would expect nothing other than for us to be fully on board. I also think school committee has one of the most interesting constituencies, because a big portion of our constituency cannot vote. And does not have an actual vocal say in what’s going on. And those are our school kids. And four years ago when we had such an issue. I stood up and I said, I know we need money, but I can’t tell you where we need it. And when I can tell you, I’ll come back and let you know. And so this is us coming back and I can get behind this. And I fully understand that we represent multiple constituencies and one of the things that we’re doing is, We represent multiple constituencies, and one of those is absolutely the taxpayer, which is where I got caught four budget seasons ago was that I knew we needed it, but I couldn’t with fidelity, explain it.

1:29:11 And I needed to be able to do that, to really be doing my job as an elected official in the school committee. Well, and that is what we’re here with tonight and that’s why I wouldn’t commit to no additional acts in the near future. think you’ve seen this committee and the committees of the past few years be very supportive of the town and work really well and really shore up some of those relationships that were so damaged. And I would expect nothing less moving forward as well. And as I mentioned previously, we have turned money over. And so and we have used our retirements to fund other things and use grant monies to fund the things that we can have as one time.

1:30:30 Really appreciate that, Sarah, and I think Steve can chime in here since Steve’s had a chance to work with Michelle. There were years when I sat at that table where we couldn’t even agree on what the step and lane changes were. You know, it was one number was here, one number was there, but it’s a big number. You know, it’s 1.4 million in this budget, and as a School Committee member, there were a few years back. I couldn’t even agree or reconcile those numbers, but I do have the full faith and confidence that we have, as Sarah said, have done a lot of work in the last three years to make sure that those things are clarified, and we’re able to answer those questions, and we’re able to account for those expenses. And if there are, I mean, one-time expenses, then we need to be held accountable for those, and they don’t just disappear the next year and say, oh, well, they’re gone. They’re real, and we need to work together because, as we know, the last time we had an override was in 2005. John McGinn’s first year as a town finance director, and here we are in 2022. So we understand that they don’t come off in ALEC, and I think that’s the point you’re making, and I hear you that we need to be respectful of that. Yeah, and probably interesting to navigate moving forward in the future years with respect to how the structural budget is actually handled next year, because that

1:32:02 will be the town of Marblehead as decisions to make as the town wide how we want to fund things, and I think there needs to be a comprehensive process with the new town administrator reading the way. It’s my hope with us supporting the schools, all our departments, select from everybody, coming together to come up with that to address that challenge. All the departments, we’re going to be, for next year, clearly there’s going to be an issue. We’re going to have to have that same kind of three, five, seven, ten year plan from, have every department in the town be doing the same work, and clearly this is a significant improvement over past years. But all, but, and it’s, you know, we’re not in the business of trying to tell you, or try to tell the school administration what they need. That’s, that falls to the school committee and to the administration. We’re constrained. We have a box with X number of dollars in it, and our job is to try to put together a plan that will work, that will balance, and that’s all we’re trying to do, and that’s all we’re going to be doing next year too. I think we’re all aligned. We appreciate the process that has been presented before us, and look forward to, you know, the next step of this on April 11th where we finalize it.

1:33:36 I do think we, did you have any other comments? I just wanted to say that Sarah Fox has her hand raised, and there is, looks like there’s a new public comment if there’s… Yeah, everybody’s welcome. Before we vote, Sarah Fox. Hi, thank you. Just to, I wanted to answer a couple questions that Tim has presented in the last little bit of time, and thank you Molly for having that data. So the most current data put out is that we are, you know, a bit below the average or the mean per pupil expenditure, and hopefully we can, you know, get up to, you know, average. And then to speak to the, will this carry us several years, I want to piggyback on what Sarah Gold said, you know, we did do this planning for success, and we do know that we have things that are coming down the pike. We know currently in Marblehead, we do not have a social studies curriculum in our K through 6. That means if you have a kindergarten or through a sixth grader, they do not learn an aligned social studies curriculum. We know we’re prioritizing that, we want to do that, but we don’t want to over-tax our staff in doing all of these initiatives all in one year. So I think it’s fair to say we will have more asks, because we do need to appropriately educate our students, and that’s always our goal.

1:35:08 It’s been 17 years. One of the issues the schools are faced with everywhere, not just in Marblehead, is when new initiatives come out, Jesse gives us a time period that we need to implement them within, you know, it’s within usually five years. Quite often, more often than not, Marblehead implements these things in year five, and it’s fiscally driven, because when we’re legally obligated to finally do it, we sneak in under that. But education is constantly evolving, constantly moving forward, and we want to make sure as the Marblehead public schools that we’re constantly staying at the forefront of that, and moving with these new initiatives. So I think it is really hard for us to say there will be no new initiatives, and we will not be at the forefront of moving with those, because, you know, we want to make sure we’re providing that for our students. Will it be another 17 years? No. Going 17 years has kind of gotten us to the position we’re in, where at the high school, our history books don’t reflect 9-11. So we don’t ever want to see ourselves in this position again. That’s why we have the team put together that we do, and Michelle’s doing a phenomenal job, and we have really transparent numbers. So I guess if the question I think Tim was asking was, is this the year? You know, I joke, there’s not many things we and our school committee were unanimous on, but I think it’s safe to say we are unanimous. This is the year. I think there’s a additional comment. Catherine Martin. Catherine Martin, 29 West

1:36:50 Shore Drive. I just want to make sure I’m unmuted. Like Sarah Gold in 2019, I remember standing at that budget meeting saying, I know we need the money, but I didn’t know where it was going. So I stood with the FinCom members, and I stood with the selectmen, and I was like, no, I can’t support this. And since then, every single year, I have heard our selectmen and our FinCom say next year. I’ve heard it in budget subcommittee meetings. I’ve heard it on the periphery, and it’s not okay. Our kids have suffered, our education has suffered. We should be clutching our pearls when we hear that our history books do not include 9-11 because they are that old. That is disgraceful in a town that has this rich of a history. When we talk about volatility in special education, not every kid needs to go out of district if we give them the resources in district. If we really invest in social emotional support, if we invest in language-based learning, if we really invest in initiatives, then we’re on the forefront of education. We would probably reduce that volatility. Things like paying for kindergarten, STEAM, social studies, these things are not big asks. These are baseline asks across most towns in the Commonwealth. And the fact that every year, our superintendent and our school committee

1:38:22 members need to come in and basically lay before you and ask for these basic educational needs is disgraceful. It’s time to fund this. Last year, what did we get an extra $300,000? And then you pulled back some of that money and said, well, it wasn’t in writing. This is not okay. This town, people are buying 1,500 square foot houses for a million dollars in this town. And we have 20 year old social studies books. We don’t have STEAM curriculum. We don’t have co-teaching special education models. Go anywhere else in Massachusetts. And that is the standard. So they’re right. This is the year. You’ve kicked the crayon down the road too many other years. We need to go for it. And they’re also right. We need to come back every few years because we need to be on the forefront of education. We need to have STEAM. We need all of these things. The fact that we just, it’s so infuriating because I’ve actually attended all of these meetings for the last four years, whether they be subcommittee, whether they be full school committee, whether they be FinCon. And I’ve seen the wink, wink, nod, nods of we’ll get you next year. I heard last year from the chairman of the FinCon, it’s been really hard for the schools. And it looks like next year is going to be the year. And then to have you sit here this year and be like, well, it looks like it’s next year again. And at this point, they need to go for it. They need to go for the override. They need to go all in with whatever they need. And if it’s

1:39:54 more than 3 million, maybe it’s more than 3 million. And if they need to come back for 2 or 3 million the following year, they need to come back for that. This has just been obscene. It’s time to focus on the people of this town and the children on this town and focus on our education. We’re slipping in our rankings. Our teachers are burnt out. At what point do we, you know, do we just like say, we’ve got to make this investment? And listen, I’m not going to say that we don’t need to do our sidewalks and our streets. And I see our poor police chief online looking for youth gym equipment. It’s time to invest in our town, our people, our citizens, our education and our infrastructure. And it starts with you and you’re letting the town down. Thank you. I just want to remind the finance committee that all of our warrant articles are voted on at the warrant hearing on April 11th. If there is an additional ask for an override that goes beyond what the number of we discuss, that will be discussed and voted on at the finance committee meeting. And I’m sorry, though, at the warrant hearing. And tonight we were only voting on the budget of the town can afford. Yeah, I would just add, yes, Tim did ask a question about going for next year, but I think everybody sitting before us can agree that at no point as finance committee chair, vice chair, or cam on the liaison, have we suggested that at any point other than,

1:41:27 you know, in an ideal world? Yeah. When one year to hold off to go with everybody else? Yes, makes our life easier. But we haven’t suggested that you need it’s up to you guys. So I just want to be clear that there’s been no winking this year. I can’t confirm whether that happened in the past or not. But that’s not happening anymore. All right, so I think we need to vote on this number. So do you want to do it? So be clear fiscal year 22 budget, plus fiscal year 23 payroll contractual obligations, plus special education, tuition and transportation requests, totals 43 million 92,273 dollars. I’d like to make a motion to prove that tonight. Take a roll call. Approve. Mike. Approve. Tim. Tim. Yes. Molly. Yes.

1:42:41 Tara. Approve. So all in favor. Thank you all so much. You know, it was a long night. Thank you. I really appreciate it, especially given the date. And thank you for putting the special education into that operational that is a big relief to us. Yeah, since I’ve been on the finance committee, the largest of its town has been able to give to the school. So it’s really phenomenal that you’ve been able to find that money. It’s not funny. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

1:44:20 As a walking. Yeah.

1:44:51 And all of our board members be unmuted as well as as well as John. John is Alexa.

1:45:09 I’m here. Okay, good. Erin, I’m here. Okay. And Moses are in person. That’s correct. Thank you. So good evening, everyone. Calling the meeting of March 28 to order three of us, Aaron Noonan, who wants a singer and I Jackie belt Becker are doing this. And Jim Nye and Moses greater are doing this in person. And our town administrator is also doing this remotely. So we have one thing to do before I turn it over to you, John. We have to approve some minutes and we’ll do it all in one vote. We need a motion to approve the minutes of February 16th, two meetings on March 1st and March 16th, 2022. No second roll call, please. This is there. Present. This is Newton. In favor. Is the greater favor is tonight. Then Mrs. belt Becker in favor. Thank you.

1:46:35 Turning it over to you, John. Okay. Thank you, Madam chair. I know that you’ve been already meeting for a couple of hours at this point, so I’ll try to be as brief as possible. The, you know, we met with the bin calm liaisons a couple of weeks ago and went over the details of each of the selectments budgets at that point. And I believe Steve has just put up a summary document, which is a summary document. Basically gives the highlights of the budget in terms of by department. And what what I’d like to do is just start off by saying that the selection, but it’s really driven by, you know, three major areas. One contractual obligations, which I think we should spend a minute talking just about in general, the fact that last year, two of the municipal unions were not settled. And so one of the things driving salary costs in the various budgets is that we did not have a police contract last year. In, when I say last year, FY 22, the year that we’re in right now, as well as the contract with the MMEU. So what you’re going to see this year is going forward, the cost of budget with the now both,

1:48:08 there are now settlements in place for both those unions. And so there is two years of compounding in the salary accounts. And you’ll also see additional costs when we talk about the Warren articles that the Warren hearing associated with those and the third municipal union, the fire union, we’re still in contract negotiations with. And so the hope is that we’ll settle with the firefighters union before town meeting. And if that happens, there’ll be additional monies that’ll be needed in the separate more nautical for the fire contract. The second sort of major area is you’ll see in some cases, we reinstated in a handful of places, some cuts that were made over the last couple of years. And we can certainly talk about those as we walk through each department. And then there is a significant increase in the expensive lineups, particularly within the finance department as it relates to technology. And that is basically because you need to think of not as not as technology for the finance department, but the technology that cuts across all town departments. And there’s been a lot of discussion about some of the technology that we’ve fallen behind on. And this budget attempts to address that. There is also a couple of other areas that sort of fit into that category, which we’ll talk about as we go through.

1:49:39 But what I would I can give you a brief overview of each one. And then I believe most of the department heads are here. And we can certainly either between myself and each of the department heads can answer any questions that any member of the finance committee might have. Police is the first budget, which you see the fact that the salary line item is really driven primarily because we haven’t had, you know, we’ve got two years of compounding as it relates to the police in terms of salary costs. The biggest reason for the increase in the expenses that the chief is anticipating the need for an assessment center for promotional purposes. And there’s a $15,000 increase as it relates in the expense budget for that, which is something that would only need to be budgeted for in years when we have to have those assessment centers. Also, there’s an increased cost in his technology costs associated with the system that police and fire use for their technology communication needs and record keeping fire again. Contractual obligations as it relates to salary, there is there’s some small increases in expense of it, they’re driven by contractual increases.

1:51:12 Haber and water is a little bit different in that it’s an enterprise fund. So similar to what you talked about with water and sewer earlier, the Haber and water budget is funded solely by user fees associated with our Haber Masters operation. And, however, salaries are driven by some of the contractual increases that we talked about in terms of at least in one part union and also anticipated salary increases because of the reclassification that was talked about earlier with some administrative and MMEU positions. Their expenses, they’re anticipating a new software package, which is the bulk of their increase in the expense line budget, as well as the increase in their assessments for general government and a few contractual increases that they have in the expense side. Highway, again, contractual obligations as it relates to salaries, the increase you see for building and maintenance is really to bring that item back to buy sufficient material at the level that we had it in 2016. This is an area that was reduced over the last couple of years and there really is a need for

1:52:45 this budget to increase so that they have the proper materials to deal with routine repairs, pothole repairs, sidewalk repair, what have you. Moving on to veterans agent, it’s simply that the veterans agent also manages the Memorial Day celebration and weights and measures. All the expense items are level funded and it’s just salary increases due to the reclassification and contractual obligation as it relates to the salary item you see there. Same with the engineering and salary increases and their expenses are level funded. The building inspector, all contractual obligations on the salary side, there are some small increases in their expense budget that’s really due to a number of cost drivers which we went over with the liaisons. The public building, which is the second budget that the building commissioner is responsible for, contractual obligations as it relates to the salary increases and that the 15,000 that you see on the expense side is for the maintenance and upkeep of the new geothermal heating and air conditioning system that’s been installed at Abbott Hall and to have a maintenance contract in place to protect that investment.

1:54:19 The council on aging is a little bit different in that they, a lot of their budget is covered by grant funds and so what you see here are all, their expense budget is level funded and their the salary increases are due to the reclassification and contractual obligations as it is with moving on to finance. The salary pieces are contractual obligations and the reclassification. You have a little bit of a difference here. I’m going to let Steve talk a little bit in a minute about the expense increase which is all related to technology as and the debt, the town’s budget for debt service is within the finance department and what you see there is what the debt schedule is calling for in terms of the increase in the principal and the decrease in the interest cost. The Medicare piece is the increase there is that’s the 1.4% tax that the employer match tax on the Medicare tax that has that goes up as salaries go up because it’s 1.4% of salaries and the group insurance is the we get all of our health insurance through the state group insurance commission and this is for the expected increase in the rates that they are promulgating and that

1:55:56 we’re going to be subject to and the non-contributory retirement this budget has been with us for many many years but unfortunately the last non-contributory retiree has our survivor of a non-contributory retiree has now passed away and so there that item will no longer appear and you see the reduction of 63,000 and then there’s funding within the other post employment benefits at the 250,000 and stabilization funded 250,000 as we funded for the last few years in stabilization this is the second year we put it in and we self-insure as it relates to workers compensation and we’re funding at the same level as last year for that self-insurate fund as with the parking clerk the selectman budget the increase in salaries is contractual obligation there is a ten thousand dollar increase you’re going to see in two places one for town council in the separate budget below and one for labor council and the budget above it’s really case driven in terms of the number of hours we anticipate needing to use those services and the other items for zoning legal services the training budget out of state travel uh at town reports the annual audit of the town finances street lighting is all level funded the

1:57:35 increase in other insurance is our property and casualty liability insurance we’ve seen significant uptick in in that insurance and this is really covered by this the increase of 201,000 on our premium cost is covered is a result of increases that we experienced this year in the anticipated increase for FY 23 the utility reserve is level funded as is the energy reserve and the salary reserve increase is increased primarily to give the board the flexibility to go up on the salary of the town administrator as they search for a new town administrator recognizing that they may need to adjust that salary upwards depending on the on the experience and caliber of candidates that they receive and that is it obviously happy to answer any questions i would like Steve to touch on the technology piece of his budget um but other than that would i’d be happy or certainly if i can’t answer it any of the of the department heads that are in attendance can certainly answer it

1:58:55 i’ll go first and we can follow up any questions so i don’t know how much john i don’t know how much john now how many how much context he added to the technology piece but technology all technology needs for the whole town to reside in the finance department’s budget so when you see an increase in technology it’s really for for all departments that includes the police station the fire station both fire stations council on aging cemetery commission it’s all all satellite locations and also mary alley here abbott hall the data center so our our servers and everything that operate keep the whole town even the schools to some degree where because we we house the accounting software there so they have them there’s some overlap with that with that you know there’s a large increase this year we’ve identified a number of

2:00:30 Comes out of licensing because we’ll be moving to Outlook 365 and utilizing their multi-factor authentication. So with the with that we’re moving off the exchange server and we’re also running a majority of Windows 7 machines. So a lot of our licensing is dated or very minimal. So we’ll be needed to add licensing to run Outlook 365 as well as Nutanix, which would be essentially a VMware equivalent. This budget also reflects the need for additional managed services for the new data center as well as support for the town and strategic planning. It also includes full-time employee who would not be a employee of the town but would be an employee of the consultant. So all benefits and things of that nature would be taken out on by the consultant and it would be an individual above a help desk technician. So we identified a network engineer which would be the most useful so that you can essentially be on the ground and helping us problem solve a strategically planned barber loop and how our satellite locations are connected and our security risks and exposures and how to rectify them. This budget also includes a computer refresh. Right now as I mentioned, I’m with right over machines probably voting right now are still on Windows 7. So this will

2:02:06 include a computer refresh of all power users we’re targeting around every three years. So it will get next year will get all the computers that are currently outdated, which is a Windows 7 machines will be all modern machines, Windows 10 or better. And we will then be able to maintain a three year refresh cycle for all individuals who use that computer on a day-to-day basis to the power users and then any virtual terminal or guest or public facing terminal computers that run various informational kiosks or things like that will be targeted for a five-year cycle. With that, there’s also a part of our capital proposal is the one-time cost for the setup for multi-factor authentication on the network side, not just the email. And the multi-factor authentication also has a reoccurring cost and that reoccurring cost is reflected in the operational budget. Thank you. From our finance committee liaison meeting with the department departments, just so everybody knows we share meeting minutes, which has been very reflective of everything John said and Steve’s saying, but specifically on this technology piece,

2:03:36 I recall you saying a couple of things. One, the Windows 7 isn’t even supported by certain support systems that are in place right now any longer. Microsoft hasn’t been eligible for security since I think it was January 1 of 2020. So that’s concerning. So it’s a new address from my perspective. And then also, I think you mentioned, and correct me if I’m wrong, but that when you meet with the AAA bond rating agency, that technology risk has been on major things that they’ve been bringing up in more recent years. Yeah, we’ve actually spent a lot of time and the most recent, and I’ve been on one a year for probably the last 10 years, and this was the first year that they brought up cybersecurity. A significant amount of time on it. And it’s also becoming on the radar for casualty insurance. So my casualty insurance provider, they’re looking at what fail states you have in place, so like multi-factor authentication is one that’s becoming essentially a requirement and also L365. So we have the remote capability with the multi-factor authentication and then cybersecurity, which is really important and something that the credit rate agencies appear to be waiting heavily because they see the risk. It can be the best run financially institution, but if you get hacked because you’re

2:05:14 technology is a big liability. And then on the kind of outsourced non-town employee, who’s going to, it’s almost full-time, it’s not full-time. Yeah, it’s five days a week. And that’s a one-year contract. I think we put that in our notes, but it’s an experiment per se. Let’s see how that goes. The good news is that that person probably has managers above them, so you’re not getting just one person, you’re getting, you can ask that person questions if he doesn’t know the answer, as opposed to, does the town eventually need an IT director? I think the schools have one, but the rest of the town departments don’t. So that’s something to navigate moving forward, if this works out well. I think that’s a great point. Yeah, that’s definitely the conversation we got was, we try to find an IT director, and you try to staff an IT department, schools have eight or nine full-time individuals. And so we had the option to go with a three-year or one-year, we decided to go with the one-year with this managed services, with the live support that’s on the ground. And the idea was the depth of the bench, so the ability for this individual to be one, he or she is more capable than what you’d get a normal health test technician. But if the situation arises that he or she is unsure how to address, he comes with a deep bench of professionals in all areas of technology, so that with one phone call, we can have some sort

2:06:49 of remote support connecting in and figuring out what’s coming on. Yeah, just for me, I didn’t realize this in years past, I probably should have picked up on it, but all town departments outside of the schools right now, Steve is the IT department, which I don’t know, I guess that would have been the past finance directors were as well, so that seems like a lot with all the specialized IT needs of the town, and then every for-profit business out there, it seems like a big responsibility for one person to handle on top of all the finance students. So I like to see this being addressed, and I like how we’re experimenting the other way, where maybe we don’t need a full-time person, if this is acceptable. We do have a remote health test that assists, it just seems like in the same age technology is growing faster and faster, and the needs you fall in one or two years behind the eight ball, and you’re way behind. Yeah, so it’s becoming something that really needs to stay on top of. Absolutely, I think these upgrades are long overdue, well, I mean 2007 overdue, so I think it’s great, and I think it’s a great creative way to, as I was experimenting trying to get the IT units, 2022 technology moves faster than most people do, so I think it’s a great way to get that involved. Yeah, did John cover the rest

2:08:26 after, so I can comment on this one. He did, believe I did. Okay, so yeah, so again, I shared detailed notes, which were pretty much covered tonight, so it was a great presentation from John, and it was the discussions we had a couple weeks back, so there shouldn’t be any surprises, but I guess I’ll open up the floor, I don’t have any additional questions at this time, but maybe some other members of the committee. Yeah, I was on the liaison subcommittee, so I’ve seen it before, it was very well covered by John, and in the notes, so it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask any questions.

2:09:13 So I guess if there’s no questions, and Emily reminds me of how we historically do this, can I go one by one? I believe we go one by one, and if I could ask if we could take a left-wing budget last, so I can reduce myself. Okay, so I’ll be making a motion right off of this list that John just went through one by one, and then we’ll just run through a bunch of times here. So, I think we can, can we just let some of them in and vote? Okay, so make a motion for everything, go to San Antone. Yeah, I think it’s a week or two. Do I don’t have this up until now, do I? No, I would just go ahead and order. In your head, I don’t have my calendar. I’m pretty good with that. Not under pressure, three out of needle. Okay. Tara would like to be unmuted. Oh, okay. Tara would like to be unmuted. Oh, sorry, I’m in my back. Thank you. You’re welcome. Tara, did you have a question? No, I just was going to unmute because that looked like we were getting close to a vote. I was just getting myself ready for that. Good, okay, so I’m gonna go, I’d like to make a

2:10:44 motion around the list, police, this, and we’ll unmute. Okay, all right, so I’d like to make a motion to approve the fiscal year 23 budget request for police of $4,619,604.74, $4,824,000. Animal Inspector, $2,400. Fire, $4,844,424,428. Harbors and Waters, $1,048,768.68. Highway Drain Tree, $1,784,028.70. Veterans, Agents, $122,439.11. Memorial Day, $7,050. Weights and Measures, $250. Engineering and Conservation Administrator, $195,644.92. Building Inspection, $624,190.51. Public Buildings, $245,159.80. Council on Aging, $335,348.05. Finance Department, $27,482,080.29. Other Post-Employment Benefits, $500,000. Workers’ Compensation, $397,169. Parking Clerk, $12,650. And Town Council, $112,000.

2:12:27 Could you just read the number that you said for fire? I don’t… Fire is $4,844,428.20. Thank you. Thank you.

2:12:45 And one other thing, Mr. Chairman. Yes. On the other post-employment benefits, there’s actually two items, $250,000 for other post-employment benefits and Stabilization Fund, $250,000. Oh, okay. Yeah, I said the total $500,000. Okay. So Stabilization Fund, $250,000. Another post-employment benefit is $250,000. Still second. I didn’t know. I’m skipping this line. All right, so I’ll take the rope thought with this. Emily? A broom. Mike? A broom. Cara? A broom. Kim? Yay. Molly? I don’t believe Kim is with us. Yeah, he had a flank. I think we had a flank. So on, Sarah. Yeah. And I’ve just been over… He’s my help due to the appearance of a conflict of peace. Last folk of the night. The selectmen department for $2,259,271. I’d like to make a motion to approve. Approved. Mike? Cara? Approved. Molly?

2:14:23 Thank you all for joining me. We really appreciate everybody staying late. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. So, do you have the emotion to adjourn? Yes, I would like a motion. I even wrote it down. I need a motion to adjourn, please. And a roll call, please. Mrs. Singer, she’s muted. She’s muted. Thank you. In favor. Mrs. Newton? In favor. Mr. Nye? In favor. Mr. Grader? In favor. Mrs. Belkpecker? In favor. Thanks, everyone. Motion to adjourn.

2:15:23 Good night.