Finance Committee: April 11, 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.

0:03 Okay, so I’d like to call our meeting to order tonight from the Finance Committee. Jackie, I think you will also. Thank you. I’d like to call the meeting of the board’s fourth and April 11th from the county’s Chief of Order. Jim Nye, Mr. Noman. President. Thank you. Thank you. So, first item on the agenda tonight is actually related to the cemetery budget we previously voted. There’s a slight change. So, Steve, if you might just kind of share some details and I don’t know if Catherine is on the line. Yeah, Catherine is here. Catherine, you want to unmute? Yep, I’m here. What we had presented before the FinCon before it was approved was what we had anticipated being voted on by the compensation committee for the reclassification of the superintendent’s position. And that was presented to be retroactive as of July 1, 2021.

1:44 So, that did not happen. So, it became effective 328-22, which increased our budget because, as you know, I had told you that I did it so that it was the least impact to the town and I was trying to save money. But now it’s going to be a $3,100 increase to the budget itself using the new figures that were given to us by the FinCon. Okay, thanks for that explanation. We were already made aware of all this. Emily has to share the use of the cemeteries. So, with that, I’d like to make a motion to amend the prior cemetery budget. We approved by $3,170.37 resulting in a new total budget of $446,107.7%. Second. I don’t think we’re going to do real call it because we don’t need to. So, that’ll be the process for all these tonight which we’re going to turn it back so all in favor. Okay, so that makes for letting us get that out of the way first. So, the main agenda item tonight is the review of our town warrant article, of course, so this is our annual town warrant article review meeting, hosted by the finance committee. My name is Alex Wilsby, I’m the chair.

3:15 The purpose of tonight’s meeting is to walk through each and every warrant article in this year’s town warrant. Allow each article sponsor to present and explain the details of the article. For articles with financial implications, the finance committee will have the opportunity to ask questions, and ultimately vote on its recommendation related to each article. For articles with no financial implications, the finance committee will make no recommendations. Before recommendation vote is taken on each and every article, there will be an opportunity for any citizen or public official who joined tonight to speak on that article. I’m sure you’ll have very much fun. Thanks. So, as a reminder to all the finance committee makes its recommendations town meeting based upon our own review of all available information. While the committee hopes that our insight is benefit to town meeting, and while we further believe that our recommendations are both thoughtful and thorough. It is ultimately up to town meeting to review what the proponents of the articles have presented to weigh the arguments for and against each article, and to vote the most beneficial course of action for our town as a whole. We have a long list of articles to cover tonight, so let’s get started. Article one, particles in numerical order, sponsored by the board of selection john again, you want to come up. Early on.

4:46 Mr. Chairman, I call one is a standard article that we adopted every year at town meeting, we just jump around, draw the mark that we just do the articles as well it does not have financial implications. Usually the board does support this. So anybody on the finance committee other than that. Does anybody in the public have anything they would like to say related to this article. Let’s look for answers. Kathy Martin. I actually don’t have a question about this article I just like you to clarify is this a meeting or is this a public hearing. Because we didn’t. Okay, so you need to call a public hearing, you have to open up the public hearing and this was not posted as a public hearing, just an FYI. So, I’m just letting you know that as we see forward but typically a public hearing. It states that the hearing on the agenda is a call to order, and then there’s an opening of the public hearing. Just procedurally, we should, we should be on like following how typically hearings are held. Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you. So, is that it for public comment on this article. Okay, so this has no financial impact and therefore I make motion to make no recommendation on this article. Just, John again, the board typically go to, to adopt, even though it doesn’t have any.

6:28 The reading may be no recommendation. Yeah, we’ve gone both ways. Yeah, so that’s fine. Okay, so article two, John. Again, a standard article, article two report of town offices and committees. This is the article that’s used in town meetings, primarily for various committees that may want to give an update on a project or what have you, and it does not have financial implications so. Okay. Anybody else have any questions for John. Anybody in the public have anything they would like to say related to this article. This has no financial impact again therefore I make motion to make no recommendation on this article. Okay, article three assume liability is again sponsored by board of selection and John is a standard article, which just allows the board has to be renewed annually, in terms of certain liability issues with the town, adopted regularly at each now. So this is an annual standard article that we generally adopt it’s just for everybody now. Does anybody have a bias for any further questions for John article three.

7:59 Does anybody in the public or town officials have anything bad. So, again, standard article I’d like to make the motion to recommend to adopt this article. Okay, article four accept trust property so again john my understanding tonight is that there’s no trust property to accept at this time this year is that correct that is correct so this article can be in that one. Does everybody have a class three have any questions. Does anybody in the public have anything to add, related to this article. I’d like to make a motion to recommend and definite postponement of this article. Okay. Yes. Again, john article five least on property. So five is a standard article that just authorizes certain kind of officers to lease land buildings and structures, and the terms that they may determine. This is generally adopted each year by town meeting. I would say that the, we would seek a recommendation to adopt by the, by the finance committee. So, for new members history week this is another standard article that we generally adopt each year. Anybody have any additional questions for john.

9:30 Anybody in the public have any comments on article five. Like to make a motion to recommend adoption of this article. Second. Yes. Okay, so we have six on the accounts sponsors, the voice of finance directors and you please present the summary of unpaid counseling, a brief explanation of this article. Something that’s on in the warrant articles for every year’s town meeting and essentially what this is, it’s a total of bills that these bills were either misplaced, or they were not, you know, we did not have our copy of the bill in time to pay it before the books close for the fiscal year. So same law requires us and we can’t, we can’t apply last year’s fund to current year fiscal year budget. So, with this article that it gives us permission by us, gives the department’s permission to pay these bills and funds that will be appropriated in article 30. So it’s not additional rate, raising additional monies it’s going to be money that will already be raised in article 30, but gives them, it gives us permission to pay. Okay, thanks Steve this is this is a standard article obviously the numbers change each year but very standard is on the on the town warrant every year, so anybody in the finance committee have additional questions for student.

11:13 Let’s be presented. Does anybody, any town citizens or public officials have anything to add on the cycle. Yes. It’s pretty best. So the total is 53,000. So, with that, I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the sum of $53,832, the appropriate period, per the table presented on screen to those that can see Yes. Article seven contracts and contracts in excess of three years, another sponsored by the board of selection article. This becomes standard article as well which allows a select man to assume to chapter 30 B which is the state state that governs the consumer goods and services to do a contract in excess of three years. Makes financial sense to do so. So, generally, recommendations to approve. And for the new members this is again a very standard article on on the warrant every year to generally recommend to adopt this, because I have questions for John.

12:43 How come we use this is this year, it’s not commonly used but occasionally make sense to do so it’s the exception reasonable, and it’s just for primitive goods it’s not for 20 contracts, it’s not for a plan contract. Do any town citizens or public officials have anything to add to the cycle. Again, this is annual standard article, I’d like to make a motion to recommend adoption of article seven. So, Article eight departmental revolving funds sponsored by the Board of selection. See, can you share on screen. So the town currently has 12 different revolving funds and for everybody who may not have the dealt with these issues before revolving funds are are funds that are collected by the town that have been authorized by town meeting in past years and by the board of selection to and the finance committee to be set up separate funds that the money comes in and money’s up to a certain dollar level can be spent out of that for specific purposes. So, for example, the Council on Aging you see up there for a revolving fund $250,000 that which would be this $250,000 that that’s primarily from fees that they collect from different programs they run and what have you and it allows them to spend that money to pay for expenses that are, you know, in that case directly related to those those types of services, those types of

14:33 programs that they run instructors. I can certainly answer any question on any for the most part the very 12 but he’s the board of selection have already approved these, and they total 4 million 42,788 dollars, the money does. That’s the cap on spending on each one it does not necessarily mean that that much money we spent out of each one, because they can only spend what they take in. Are these, did these change at all from last year. Yes. I don’t remember them didn’t but the two notable ones that changed. Up to top my head is the commercial waste for a health one is up from last year. And this year is being requested to be approved at a time million $485,000, the primary is primarily two reasons for that. The first off these commercial waste, the revolving the commercial waste revolving fund is from these they get in from commercial waste that’s being brought into the transfer station. And they’re going to buy a new piece of equipment you’re going to see in the in the next article coming up, which I think was $180,000 they’re going to pay for it with this revolving fund that’s directly tied to the operation of the transfer station.

16:06 And they also anticipate paying a portion of the improvements that they plan to make to the transfer station over the, the upcoming year, which I think they’ll speak to more detailed later on in the morning here. The other one that I’m aware of his pocket recreation and pot going up. And that is because of some additional funds that they want to spend on certain improvements associated with their programs.

16:44 The new one that that you haven’t seen before in the renewal is the hawks Memorial Building 7488 which is relatively small but the counseling center pays rent in that building. But the, the arrangement that has been agreed to with that is that the rent that’s paid goes into a revolving fund that gets spent to improve make improvements in the building. So that’s the first year that’s being reauthorized. I think that might be I think those were the those were the ones that they have changed in the previous. Yeah, this, this is a standard article, obviously the numbers can vary. There’s no impact on taxpayers. This is the maximum amount of the spend time for revolving funds so money is collected by these departments. So, does anybody else want to ask anything to have a question. So are these tied to a particular budget in those or they just, they’re not tied to a budget they’re tied to a particular department. And so, you know, I think in most times in most cases it’s apparent which department it is, you know, historic commission. That’s the gift that the gift shock and it’s run by the historic commission. Council on aging is so self identifying commercial waste is born a health flu vaccine, you know, there’s a revenue in their budget and this is how it’s funded. No, it’s not in your budget. This isn’t on top of their offering so it’s not targeted for any particular expense just mind they can use as they choose but it’s not it’s not really as they choose there is a, there’s in the, there’s a bylaw that

18:21 governs these and in the bylaws are specified when it can be spent on. So, it is restricted. We can certainly provide a board with copies of the bylaw. If, if you’d like to but that that we used to have to repeat the cut the purposes for which it can be spent each year in our meeting, but several years ago we adopted my law that that codified it. And so that that that restrict and the account would not authorize an expenditure that wasn’t allowed by a bylaw. Any other finance committee comments. Another question is rather evolving funds. So, for the amount that’s not being spent in this fiscal year, whatever sort of evolving funding stays in the revolving fund, and it can be used in future years. Any other finance questions or comments. Does anybody in the public have anything they would like to say related to this article I see. Is that Jen. Hi, can you hear me. Yeah, Jen, Jen Schaffner 20 casino road. Can you clarify first that the revolving funds, these are funds that are revenues that come from additional sources, or are they from the appropriation from town, and the special education tuition which is number 12 is that revolving fund different from the special education stabilization fund, and if so how.

20:01 My understanding is the special education tuition is different from the stable is stabilization account which we’ll talk about in a different article later tonight, and then that first question. Yeah, well, first off, what the chairman said is correct they’re not that they’re different. The, the, the stabilization fund is funded by taxation. This is funded Michelle sitting right behind. This is the money that come in our placement from other districts where they’re paying tuition to the town, and this obviously goes to pay expenses so shouldn’t special education. That’s typically for all of these are all in funds, whatever purpose they were brought in under, they can send on. So, in the case of special education tuition can only be spent on special education. So I’ll give you a couple of comments related to article eight. Okay. So I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the maximum amount to be spent during this year 23 out of revolving funds the 4,042,788 dollars as summarized on the screen that was just sharing. Yes. Okay, so article nine article nine 1011.

21:31 Quick with equipment needs and capital articles, sponsor all sponsored by the board of selection. John again again will help with this presentation, maybe share the summary of the various amounts to. Okay, so article nine is, is the article for the procurement of equipment by the town, and what is presented here is various pieces of equipment. In this case, or the Department of Health and Waste Cemetery police fire and sewer and water, and in some cases, you see what you see here is a piece of equipment that will be procured or being proposed to be procured in the upcoming fiscal year. Under the table that you have, if you see the total request, and then you see what’s being paid out of the tax levy, meaning the general fund, and what is being paid out of so called available funds that I can explain in each case what those available funds are. Yeah. And one thing I just wanted to point out for them applies to all three of these articles is the tax levy column that we’re looking at here. That’s related to the taxes, ordinary business not related to any overrides to increase taxes above and beyond proposition two and a half right now right that that’s related to ordinary tax levy prior year plus whatever we’re allowed to increase it by under the laws of Massachusetts.

23:07 I just wanted to clarify that versus something else we’re going to get to. So, in the case of the health department there’s a robot truck I alluded to this earlier, or under the question about the revolving fund that they have and that they were proposing to pay for this on a revolving fund of 188,100 so there’s no impact on taxation with that one, the cemetery department has four different items totaling $52,660, which they would propose to pay out of what they call their sale of lots fun, which is basically the proceeds when they sell a grave site, and they were, and that money has to be appropriated to spend it on and historically we’ve used the sale of lots money that’s needed by the cemetery. So, all that full amount would be paid for by their sale lots fun. There are traffic related speed monitors that total $10,400 that would be paid for out of the tax levy, as well as for the fight apartment portable radios, a new frame on engine one and undercoating on apparatus utility vehicles, totaling 206,000 will be paid out of the tax levy. And then, under the sewer department, there were three pieces of three vehicles totaling 199,000 will be paid out of their retained earnings in the sewer fund, and the water department one vehicle that would put 66,000 paid out of the water fund.

24:44 So those are both paid out of those enterprise fund retained earnings. So the total request and recommendation is $722,160, of which 216,400 is paid out of the tax levy and 505,760 is paid out of available funds. So just from my perspective, as, as various departments submit their capital request to town for these articles town obviously has to consider what’s available in our upcoming tax levy that we’re forecasting to pay for certain requests. What do we have available funds for within each department to pay those requests, and as we’ll get to again in our article, we’ll have anything we’ll talk about issues of that in a minute, but that’s my understanding of the process. Does anybody else on the finance pay of questions about article nine. My question is one question I see the cemetery department on there for snow blower and I’m just wondering we know that could be used to get the sidewalk. That’s actually an attachment. Okay, it’s not to a piece of equipment they have. And I, I don’t know the answer to your question, but, but certainly we try to work in the town as a team and generally the button share equipment if it can, you know, serve them on purpose. Any other finance questions on article nine.

26:17 Anybody in the public that anything to add or comments or questions on article nine at this time. Okay, so I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the summer $720,160 be appropriated and to meet this appropriation to hundred and 16,400 is to be raised by taxation and $505,760 to be transferred from available funds as summarized on screen. My favorite article 10 are still in our capital articles. See if you can share what article 10 is the, is the article that allows the town to pursue lease purchase agreements on various pieces of equipment. The town has done this in past years, and we’re recommending import apartments, the leasing of additional equipment, which would be done on a three year lease amount, the equipment at the end of that period of time. In this case, the DPW would be leasing a new international truck with wing cloud. The pack and record a wide area mower. It’s used primarily in cutting grass and fields. You know, pots and playing ball fields and that type of thing. And the school department, a pickup truck with cloud and two police cruises.

27:57 The full new leases would be $204,559.56 and added to that we need to authorize the second or third year of existing leases, $191,596 for a total of $396,155.56. And that would all be paid for out of taxation. Right. And just for everybody’s benefit on the finance committee and tuning in tonight. I did trace the existing leases number of $191,596 that was the same amount appropriated under this article last year. Nothing has rolled off yet so that’s like Jen said, two or three releases. Like he said, it’s all paid out of taxation. I don’t know if anybody on the finance committee have additional questions or comments on the lease article 10. Does anybody in the public have any comments on article 10. Yeah. No hands. So, motion, I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the sum of $396,155 and 56 cents be appropriated, and to meet this appropriation, if you raised by taxation for the purposes presented on screen.

29:29 I’ll go through john. Yes, I think we, we should talk about it, if I could Mr. Chairman. We should talk about this and in a couple of three or four pieces. I feel 11 is for capital improvements, which allows for not only capital improvements. The title indicates that the title is also for expenses associated with infrastructure and improvements to technology. So what you’re going to see in this article is the first slide that you’re looking at is various proposed and recommended improvements to public buildings, many of which are being paid out of taxation and two more significant ones that are being recommended to be paid by the Dead Exclusion Override. And I so I’ll explain in the case of the improvements of the police department, the old townhouse, the animal shelter, the DPW and Water and Shoe Headquarters, the seawall related issues, sewer, seawall related issues in O’Bario Hill, Hawke’s House, the Cemetery, O’Kos Building, the Minor Rupes to Roots for various town buildings, Abbot Hall and the school department.

31:24 The small but the replacement of the salt shed and the replacement of the boils at the high school are recommended to be paid out of taxation with the one exception of the alarm system at the cemetery, which would be paid out in the sale of lots, the $2,219. And then the $975,000 for the salt shed and the $220,000 for the replacement of boils at the high school would be subject to a dead exclusion override. And in that case, it would be the issuance of that 20 year bond, the proceeds of which would be used to pay for those two projects. I will, after we go through each of these I’ll be happy to talk about the tax implications on the overrides. But rather than jump around, maybe I should just go through what’s being proposed and answer any questions you have and then we can talk about the financing. Yeah, that’s fine. If I could maybe just ask you clarify, just on general concept of the issuance of that. So, just want to discuss the everything that will be presented tonight in this article related to issuance of death for capital improvements technology, replacement roads and sidewalks. You know, some of those will be issued this coming year some will be in two years, some will be maybe in five to six years, they really this by appropriating these funds to be spent in this way.

32:59 The town has the option as to how and when they issue the deck. So I just want everybody to be clear on that. So, an issue and so that does increase taxes above and beyond proposition to have plus new growth and appropriation of that authorizes that, but there is a strategy to it that town finance and the town administrator can take to kind of track prior to issues, issues is when they roll off. When one rolls off one comes on thinking about taxpayers at heart as they do so. So I just want to be clear for, we have a lot of new committee members and people that are listening in, but that’s my understanding of that is that fair. And, and I think one of the things that everybody will see as we go through all of these proposals. As the chairman said, this is really a multi year plan, and it will allow the town to plan as we get into some of the things that are involving roads and sidewalk improvements and roof improvements. And this is definitely a five to six year plan, which we’re asking for the funding so that the proper planning can be done in terms of staging these projects plan design a project, bidding the project doing everything, it’s, it’s not. It’s conducive when you’re every year, seeking the funds for the next year and then this is big leap time. After you get it to do all the planning and then you, you know, this is this was this is going to allow for a much more multi year approach.

34:33 I just said I, I appreciate the approach to that I know there’s been a capital improvement plan that was put together by the former town administrator, it’s been published there’s been meetings about it’s been involved in it, and by allowing or taking a vote to allow the town to, you know, utilize this plan and not have to do this every year I think it’s a good idea. So, obviously, like I said, the expectation of the finance committee that, you know, when there’s a new town administrator and town finance to be thinking about taxpayers and, you know, as they figure out when this deck this issue monitoring what’s rolling off and obviously keeping everybody updated on the plan for that as we go through. So, I’ll let you get back to kind of summarize. Just say one more thing. It’s also, it’s also beneficial on a multi year basis because you’re not required to expend the funds within the given year, as opposed to in a situation where you when you’re doing this on a yearly by a year by year basis. Oftentimes you can’t do the process to bid in contract and execute the contract within the year by year this gives flexibility in that regard as well. Yes, I guess, if you want to get back. Yeah, no, that’s fine. The. So, if there are any specific questions about this first section I’d be happy to answer them before we move on to the, to the proposals for the technology road and and that woods.

36:11 Right. So, looking at the house when you were describing the revolving funds. I thought I heard the rent just put in a revolving fund to pay for improvements to the house. And then here are improvements to the hogs house that are through a tax levy rather than available fun so how is that decision making around the revolving fund versus the tax on because in that instance, it sounded like the revolving fund was specifically for this type of purpose. Yeah, the problem is there isn’t enough revenue that’s collected in that in that funding you would have to. It would take probably three years of rental income to build up with we have enough for us to do oil replacement. So the, my understanding of, you know, historically, prior to the last year, the council was not paying right and no I don’t say that as a in a pejorative way it’s it was a policy decision made by the town that it was valuable to have that type of service for for taxpayers here in the town of I’m not allowed and so they, they were not paying rent in the facility the hogs house was left to the town by the hogs family.

37:44 And, and so it’s, you know, it’s been used by the by the counseling center for many years, and they made a decision that they would pay along with the time that they would pay a rent the stock market based for that for that facility with the understanding that some of that would go back, but it’ll find more ongoing smaller type of maintenance projects, not significant projects like you see here on the list so the town has historically invested money in that building, because it’s the town’s responsibility to cut the boiler in that building is at the end of life, and it needs to be replaced. So that’s why you see that request right here. Yeah, just one question I see in here talks about the sprinkler heads in the app at all and it’s not the amount about that but are there going to be other things coming down the line that weren’t covered in the avenue whole week. And something like this that we can expect to see coming down and move forward. Yeah, the. I don’t think I mean I don’t think so, but most of the most of the work that was done in Abbott Hall with the big renovation was associated with the exterior of the building the roof and the bricks and the windows and and the heating system that was the major aspect of the scope of that work.

39:22 And so, these sprinkler heads are sort of reached an age and there, they need to be replaced, and you know we work with the fire chief and me and the sprinkler company and where the concern really is if we don’t replace the sprinkler heads in a timely fashion, we risk the content of them going off on announced, and it would be the structure that we would not want to say what if those sprinklers went off when it wasn’t a real event causing it. Any other questions on portion of this related to public buildings. Would you mind just reading this smaller stuff under each of the headlines. Oh, so, okay so capital improvements for public buildings article 11 so the sub totals total requests 1,000,624 619. Tax levy portion of that is 427,400 available finances 2,219, and issuance of that is 1,000,195. Did you want us to tell us what the title for. For the individual. Yeah, just police station. Go ahead.

40:53 So police station is improvement to locker room flooring and new lockers old townhouse is remove and re flash second story window and paint the building is the second line animal shelter install mini split meeting system. This is the Zw slash, water and sewer headquarters upgrade vehicle exhaust vehicle fuel exhaust garage, various wiring plumbing and building repairs, and then replace salt shed and replacing it with salt shed is the, is in the debt exclusion override section. seawall related issues, replace railings at Gracie Oliver’s Beach. Old burial hill is restoration of gravestones. Hobbs house is repair wall in the rear of garage, soffit and fascia and installed gutters. And this second item is replace furnace cemetery, which again is from sale of lots. So not part of the tax of the or issuance of debt is an office alarm system. The ocoos building exterior trims, sills and gutters. Various town buildings, minor roof repairs. Have it hall replace sprinkler heads on fire suppression system. School department replace main fire alarm panel and high school and replace spoilers at the high school.

42:28 Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Okay, so next section of this article is the technology improvement section. Oh, we’ll take public. Yeah, people in the room. They’ve got some on their phone. Steve sharing the spreadsheets on your phone. Okay, so if you have zoom on your phone might be helpful. You can see a little bit better. Thank you. Yeah, I see Catherine Martin your hands up. If we could just maybe get through the rest of the article and then we’ll open up to public comment after John. Okay, so the next item on there is various technology improvements, which is you see, one point four million. One million, $4,000, $4,000 for the school department, which consists of the HPHVAC computer control system at the village of that’s and model that high school smart panels for the high school smart panels for the veterans middle school smart panels for the village school and smart panels for the global school. And then various IT equipment software upgrades for the town wide, the various town, the top of the three hundred and twelve thousand for a total of 1,717,000, which would be paid by that exclusion override. The also under article 11. And I would say, as it relates to article 11, groups and roads and sidewalks,

44:25 and so there is, I will tell you right off the bat, we are not doing almost $9 million of groups next year. We wouldn’t have the bandwidth to take on those many projects, but what we are faced with as a town is either groups that are at end of life or near end of life. And if we don’t take significant action, there’s been too much bandating going on and too much, you know, I’ve joked around about people proposing to put, you know, what’s that stuff you see advertised? Flex seal, you know, on groups and stop them from leaking. But you go into a lot of our public buildings and you can see water damage has been done for leaks because. So in order to do this right, we really need to start a program that will start next year and probably the I’ll be honest about it. The first order of business will be the tower way roofs, which are probably in the worst shape of any of them. And those would probably be the first area focused. The school roofs and they, you know, Michelle Cruster is sitting right behind me and she can add anything. I might miss, but I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. I just. And, but I know the schools have applied for potential MSPA participation in the high school and the veterans, the wing roof projects.

46:03 I don’t think that they’re going to get an answer on that in the short term and if they do get invited into into participate, then they that process will play out. And if that happens, these numbers at the current represent the full cost of doing those routes. And if we get MSPA participation, ultimately that will lower the towns share this, although MSPA requires you to appropriate the full amount in terms of the authorization as far as that is part of that. Yeah, so. So, and then these other roofs, we the non school roofs, we had an evaluation done of them and we have the outline of, you know, sort of the lifecycle of the when some of these will be coming due all within the next three to four years. And so you saw an item where there was some minor things we need to do to deal with roofs to give them enough life so we get them in a maybe two to three years. But they are going to need to be done and this would allow for the proper planning and so all total it’s eight million nine hundred seventy seven thousand not two hundred and ninety eight dollars, which would be subject to a debt exclusion override. The full amount, but as was talked about earlier, I will, you know, after we finish this, I’ll go through the ultimate cost of all of these, but it is not.

47:42 There is no sign with us with all the issue upfront and hit next year, it would be over a period of time and every effort would be made to to work that debt in so that it is a minimal impact to the people who are used to caring. And then an idea where things would roll off as new things come on. Obviously, sometimes there are exceptions. Yeah, yeah. But that would work perfectly. Exactly. So again, you’ll go over some of that. Yeah. So and the final piece of this, which has been all on a talk about in previous years, which which is the condition of roads and sidewalks in town and and what I will say to everyone is that the town had a pavement management evaluation done and brought ever. I know is here this evening and can speak to that more specifically if people have questions. The voice like, man had a presentation made at their last meeting by the consultant that did that study. We’re planning. If you recommend going forward with this, have that consultant come back and make a presentation at town meeting. And so that because there’s been, as I say, a lot of talk about it historically, the town has restricted its spending on improvements to roads to two sources. The money we get from Chapter 90 from the state, which is that’s formula driven and we get about $455,000 a year. The revolving

49:17 fund that you voted under articles eight ago allows us to spend about $150,000 a year, what are called street opening fees, which are paid for by utilities and what have you that like National Grid and open streets to put in new services and that type of thing. And the other thing is that the road and that type of thing. And we there’s a fee for opening that road and those fees are then put into revolving funding put back into road improvements. So that that gives us about $605,000 now. What we learned from the pavement management study that was done is that there were a number of scenarios submitted, but unless we spend a little bit of time on the road, we can spend a little bit of time on the road. And so if we spend a little more than $3 million a year, about $3.1 million a year, we will see very little improvement. And what I’m not touching on, we’re not talking about just roads, we’re talking about roads and sidewalks. And that’s an important distinction because the numbers that were developed by the consultant included, when we do improvements to the roadways, we would also do improvements and replace in similar make. And construction to what it’s there now. So if it’s an asphalt sidewalk, it would be replaced with an asphalt.

50:48 Some end sidewalk would be replaced with. If it’s a granite curving, it would be replaced with current granite. If it’s a Cape Cod burn, asphalt, you know, it wouldn’t be replacing kind. But the point being that we needed to spend about $3.1 a year to start to see improvement over the next five years. That leaves us with a shortfall of about 2.4, almost 2.5 million per year. And so what’s being recommended here is something that’s never done, which is to give us an initiative where we would spend the kind of money that it’ll take to do a significant upgrade over a five to six year period. If it’s successful and people are happy, the hope would be that you’ll renew it for another five years. And that would, and so we’re asking for a total of about $12,475,000 in a debt exclusion override that will be exclusively used for the reconstruction of roadways and sidewalks. Now, some of the work that needs to be done on these roads is maintenance oriented and can’t capital the debt money funded by debt can’t be used to do that because the life cycle is not long enough to fit enough to qualify. So what we’ll do is we’ll prioritize the use of the Chapter 90 and revolving fund money for those maintenance activities and use the capital money for the stuff that is eligible for reconstruction. So that’s the proposal.

52:29 Thank you. That was very detailed. That’s what I thought the numbers make sense to me. It’s good to see I know that that’s been something that’s come up with various things that I’ve dialed into not necessarily finance, but the roads and sidewalks specific career is definitely something that people around town, from my perspective are working to improve. So anybody else want to finance, any questions? I thought the study said that that would cut that’s what it would take to to renew or to refurbish all of the. No, that’s what it will take to make him to get beyond status quo. So, you know, we’re, we’re losing ground because we’re not, we’re not, we’re not making status quo just keeps going this way. So, in order to maintain status quo, where we are. We have to, you know, still spend a couple of money dollars a year. So, 3.1 will allow us to start to make progress on this. Does there is an estimate how long would take to have every road and sidewalk. They can answer that question I don’t answer that is never. You know, it’s, it would be an ongoing thing where we get our road rating system into a higher sense, a lot of this money is really going to be used in sidewalk areas. And when we choose to do a road. I work with me from water and sewer National Bridge and try to get all the utilities done underneath.

54:03 In the meantime, so I can maintain some of those jobs, the job was saying so much roads, we have different type of treatment, like a micro seal, not a chip seal any more. And I’ve different other things. They’ll bring our gains up, but it has a lifespan of like seven years, and that way, if a water job has to be in a five year plan down the road. We don’t mind coming into that road. So, so ongoing process. This will give us a handle on Saturday. Having run a stone quarry with asphalt plant and court, state town counties in New Jersey. The 600,000 laughable number each year for the roads, the call student me. The. Yeah, I mean and the costs are only going to go up as the asphalt oil prices continue to rise. And it’s something that we really need. We, we want to be marble head and have roads that are drivable. We need to make some of these methods. And for someone that doesn’t drive the sidewalks to work. Mike, you mentioned the money funded by that can’t be used for something where your life is too short or too low. Is there a number. It’s not what you mean. So, we’re anticipating we issue 10 year bonds on this, this program so you know we really would be limited to reconstruction, you know, so reconstruct the sidewalk is reconstructing the road.

55:46 Generally speaking, that will call that will qualify, but doesn’t qualify is like, you know, doing crack ceiling and that type of thing which will extend the light, but it won’t, it’s not gonna last for 10 years. So, that’s why we prioritize the non bonded money for those activities. And Thomas, do we have in that analysis and expected cycle of retaining where is there an expectation of being on a cycle. And what that number of years during the presentation, every three years, we’ll do others. We’ll take the right treatments for every region to be on the scene right online. We’re just for everybody knows and where would you find that online. On our town website. It’s not there now. Okay, well and we’ll we’ll certainly when it’s available will make sure everybody.

57:19 It won’t be a secret, but it’s not there now so before town meeting. Well, I don’t know. I think I just, I just have a sort of credible comments I want to make about this article in general so I mean we’re talking about a total of over $24 million in capital improvements to our town, and we’ve been talking about how do we maintain our buildings how to continually maintain our buildings, how to maintain sidewalks for years, and we’ve had this happen including a plan in place. And this is the next step is now we need to find it. And I think this is a really smart way to fund it over several years, where we’re not committing to everything all at once. And even when you get to the roads and sidewalks. There’s five year plan, and then hopefully possibly beyond that. So we can continue to maintain and this is the first step in that direction of maintaining our buildings and putting the money into our town buildings that are long overdue, in some of these cases. I mean, I know I’ve already just some money, but it is a big picture, but over the long term I think these are absolutely necessary costs that that that will have to one should be extended. And, you know, looking at this roads and sidewalks improvements just to get back to the basic comments I made earlier that there’s an example right there about there’s 12 and a half million dollars that there’s a there’s a plan for over five years.

59:00 So just an example of this article if adopted is not authorizing or it does authorize but it’s not necessarily if it gets adopted that they will send all this money. So there will be a plan, specifically for the two largest ones like john said, the roads have actual schedule right presents the forest might end of roots like john said will be over five to six years so I agree with them that this is a good plan and we have the next steps of the capital improvement plan that was put in place, the last few years. Does anybody tell us some of that’s good. How about public comments I see will take Catherine Martin. So I have a couple questions. First, I wanted to start with the article 11 so I just want to confirm that some of the items in article 11 will be funded by the tax levy are under the $10,000 threshold and are on bondable items. I don’t understand what you mean by $10,000 threshold. Well, the threshold, excuse me, not $10,000, I’m sorry, 10-year threshold lifespan. I got my number, my year confused. Some of them are under the… So they’ll be financed by the tax levy because they don’t have the lifespan of 10 years, correct? Not necessarily. They’re being fined. For instance, the boiler that we talked about earlier

1:00:30 has a useful life beyond 10 years. But, you know, we have traditionally funded projects that have a taxation that are of a smaller nature. And so some of it is just size-based. Others are people with a useful life. Okay, so I’m just trying to understand because when I was at the April 7th Budget Subcommittee for the school, the items that were not bondable had to be removed from this article, if I’m remembering correctly. And the explanation given was because they were not bondable and they, you know, they didn’t have the 10-year life expectancy. So was it just a cherry picking of the items that were allowed to be paid for with the tax levy? Or was there another reason why those were removed and moved into another article? Well, first off, I never made any judgments about what could be in and not be in from the school department. I just asked questions of the school department about what the useful life was. I think they made a decision about not pursuing certain things under a debt exclusion override. So the town wasn’t making those decisions. Okay, fair enough. So my next questions are probably for the consultants for the road and sidewalk improvements. I guess I did go on and I looked at the presentation and I’m trying to actually understand the scope. So will the majority of the scope be from edge of right away to edge of right away?

1:02:04 And is the expectation that the sidewalk will be replaced, the granite curb will either be replaced or repaired and reset with the six inch reveal. And then we will have new the two minutes concrete in the street area. All curb cuts will be repaired. Crosswalks will be painted properly. ADA compliance of reciprocal curb cuts will be added. If we have issues with street trees, we can expect a Massachusetts certified arborist to come in, route prune. I guess I just I’m very much in favor of this, but I want to understand the scope of this. And I want to understand that we’re doing it right because, you know, street design, all of the pieces work together. The curbs facilitate the drainage. They also facilitate the elevational controls that allow you to have an ADA accessible sidewalk. And what I’ve seen to date is a lot of times we’ll come in and we’ll pave and we don’t reset our rims of our utilities. We don’t give a lot of thought to the residential driveway. So they’ll end up with ponding. The idea that we’re going to put back the two minutes concrete sidewalks in kind is not really a best practice. You can use those for a kind of walkways, but they’re really not municipal sidewalk grade material. They do have a lot of issues with settlement, ADA compliance, ponding. So I guess I want to hear from the consultants.

1:03:36 You know, what’s the overall strategy? Because in my mind, I’d rather see us do less street better and maybe spread this out longer. But I just I really want to hear the scope and process behind it. I live, you know, adjacent to all the streets that were just repaved over back behind the new Brown school. And one of the things I noticed is like a lot of thought wasn’t given to replacing the granite curbs in that area. We paved over a lot of the structures. I’ve seen, you know, like almost firming in front of some of the catch basins. And these aren’t you know, these aren’t the things that are going to give us longevity in our streets. Longevity is going to come for like the solid plan that really takes us from edge of right away to edge of right away, not from curb to curb. So I’d love for them to give us like the one minute elevator pitch on what the scope of this is. So I’m going to let Rob Debra address this. How I get and everybody. Thank you. I don’t think that I think it’s a mistake to say that a lot of thoughts not given. There’s no money to do some of the things you talk about and this will give us the opportunity to have the money to do it from edge of right away to edge of right away. In a lot of places, the edge of right away is 20 feet up into someone’s what they would call their own property now, but it’s still our property. We don’t need to put a sidewalk all the way up there.

1:05:09 We’ll use the space we need to create the walking paths that are necessary for the ADA compliance and all of that. It will be money driven, but a lot of times on the main drags and the drags that go into the school, a lot of that is always done with concrete sidewalk and aprons with granite curving. Some of the streets you don’t want granite curving, you actually want the Cape Godburn so cars can drive up and get off in this town. We have very narrow streets. It’s not always looked upon nicely, but it keeps the traffic going and all of that. All of these things will be thought of, have been thought about. And this is going to give us the opportunity to plan that move forward. I appreciate that. And I do understand that we have wacky right away is in this town and I understood that we’re actually not going to put a sidewalk up 20 feet above street level and someone else’s yard. And I guess I was just more talking about what is the process for ensuring elevational controls, making sure that we’re resetting all of our utility structures. Like I said, and your company probably didn’t work on this, but I do notice that the streets that were just received the new bituminous concrete, I don’t think it was in conjunction with the school. It was just coincidental. A lot of the six inch granite curving had been removed over time.

1:06:46 So you have places where you have it. So you see breaks in the drainage and you actually see a lot of washout between the instance where you have a sidewalk and a grass strip. And what I do see is a lot of sediment finding its way into the catch basins, which I’m sure that’s not something Amy McHugh wants. It’s something none of us want. It’s management practice. So I guess I can ask these questions offline because it sounds like you’re going to do a presentation to the Board of Selectmen, but I would just I’d like to know that we’re actually doing this. The Board of Selectmen already had the presentation. I thought they said they were going to do another one. I apologize. They’re going to do another one at town meeting. Okay. It’ll be a presentation by the consultant. Yeah, and feel free to respond to anything. Can we get maybe the scope of the project put online somewhere? I saw the presentation. I understand how the assessment was done, but I’d love to kind of understand the scope that we’re moving forward with. Yeah, I’m totally in favor of this, which is well needed. I just I feel like sometimes we don’t always, you know, look at all the pieces and roadway design is really a concert of materials and they all work together. And I just want to make sure if we’re making finally making this investment that the thought is behind it that we’re really thinking about drainage, accessibility, you know, looks and street street. I’ll tell you that right now. That’s, you know, I came to this town and that is exactly how I feel about it.

1:08:22 You can’t do lip bits and pieces of roads, but there will be places that you’ll see different road surfaces going down, which are a cheaper nature than doing the whole road. Over because there will be things like water replacement, sewer replacement, natural gas replacement, underground. But doesn’t mean we can’t put something on top until those projects come. And we have safe badges passing through a lot of those faces that you see in between granite curves. There were trees there at one point that rotted out and no one’s ever been put back. We just don’t have the money to do the type of work that you’re suggesting. Witness will start that. Okay, I appreciate that. The only other quick comment I have was any thought given especially in our historic places in town at looking at sinking the overhead utilities as part of this project. I know that that is a massive cost driver. Just curious if that was like part of the thought process because the other day when I was driving through old town I just, I felt like, man, this is so beautiful and so inviting and we have all of this overhead infrastructure. It was, it was like department I don’t I don’t have a comment on that one. Yeah, that’s fun. We really appreciate it. That’s fine. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Two minutes concrete she was talking about his asphalt in case anyone was wondering.

1:09:53 I was. Same thing. Thank you. Is there any other hands up on. I see. Just one more. And Rob has reached out to water and sewer about plans going forward but we do have about 50% of the water on the stat are cast iron and online so they do have a lot of line projects. We always work off a capital five year plan, but we are in the process of getting a 20 year plan and hopefully we’re trying to coordinate it so we have smaller sections so that we can work with the world. But, you know, there are going to be roads that people think really need to be paid that I am going to have to excavate and I can’t, I know I can’t do it all in five years. So, we are trying to keep your water rates and sewer rates and in control also. So there will be places I’m sure people are not pleased that they’re not done but again you don’t want to go back down the road that you just paid. Even if you wait seven or eight years, as we did I think on to that still is irritating to see, but those two major roads Humphrey and to that will allow us to do to be able to work better with the town. Thank you. Jack.

1:11:24 Um, I think it’s commendable be bottom playing the town has been doing over the past few years to come up with numbers to put on projects like this, things like the payment plan and things like the DFOA document that we that we work up. And I’ve heard about the school room. A lot of times I’m sort of had a hard time getting my hands around it, but one, one project that I have a better understanding of scale is a smaller room, and I see that the roof of the Franklin Street firehouse and gutters is $130,000 is there. Is there anything that drives it up that high is a prevailing wage or is it a law this is based on prevailing wage. But that’s also the storm structure so there are some particular challenges associated with that. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing other hands on the zoom or in person, finance needs. Good questions. Okay. So I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the sum of $24,793,917 to be appropriated. And to meet this appropriation, 427,400 is to be raised by taxation 2,219 is to be raised from available funds and 24,364,298 owners is to be raised by issue instance of debt summarized on the screen.

1:13:00 I see. I’ll second that. Yes. Hello, you’re not getting rid of me. article 12 walls and fences sponsored by the border. So the recommendation here is that this be appropriated at $50,000 for wall defenses. The idea here is to create a fund of money to not only effectuate small repairs on town fences and walls on land but also some of the town seawalls. So, would the expectation be that that 50,000 be spent in the coming fiscal year. If. So, you know, sometimes particularly with see what we don’t necessarily have a storm can create a need that we might not actually be aware of. Finance many questions on this article it is an article that’s generally on the warrants every year some years it doesn’t have an amount appropriate in some years it does this year’s 50,000 questions. I’ll give you a public comment on article 12. Okay, so I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the sum of $50,000 be appropriated, and to meet this appropriation and all be raised in taxation.

1:14:37 Okay, so for articles 13, 14, 15 and 16 and I’ll let Pat, take over for a bit here. I think Amy’s going to speak to all these. You don’t do great. Sorry. Right. Well, I’ll make an attempt at this. Articles 1314 and 15 are construction articles, relative to the individual departments storm water and sewer. Is that right. So, what they’re, what the amounts are established. Let’s take green separated to the different animal is drains is drains is not a tax agent drains is taxation and water and sewer are both enterprise. So article 13 is, is the storm drain construction article, which we’re recommending be funded at $400,000. Part of what is driving the increase from last year’s level is the increased cost to clean catch faces associated with storm drains. And, you know, just to put that in context a few years ago we used to spend about $24,000 a year on some on storm drain cleanage and we just the contract for the upcoming ends over $100,000 so we can’t keep up with that.

1:16:17 So, I’ll make just one example but we have the whole MS for permitting process has to be funded out of this article and some of the brain project so Rob can answer any, any details questions about this but that, but we need to go at this point up to the water. Yeah, so we’ve come up, I think the past few years has been at $314,000 at 400. And I think we’re moving forward that this 400,000 will be consistent or do we foresee this continuing to go up in the future at some point we’re going to have to make a significant increase and in that and probably will, you know, eventually seek it that exclusion override associated with drain construction. Yes. We, you know, we, after paying our MS for consultant and paying the cost for the cat basically which is part of the MS for program. You know we’re left with $200,000. Okay, and that’s not much do small projects. So we can rebuild dash basis but when it comes to cleaning them out and fixing and wanting to be in the world. This may be a question that are there financial risks associated with associated with not increasing the seasons further in the near future. Like is there could there be a big financial impact as a result of underfunded this.

1:17:51 I think this will get us through this coming year. Yeah. And, you know, maybe we plan on with some of that money instead of actually doing some of the idea of a major thing we did some engineering plans together, and we put together a solid number. What we need. I might be other pieces that we, we talk more specifically about when we need to get the all the engineering work in place and you know, not just be in here asking for big number but a number that is backed up by proper analysis. Yeah, I just, I know. I’m a member of the office for a few years. I remember this was brought up a few years back. It’s nice to see it going up, because I believe it might have been when I was under the direction of water and sewer she used to say that this is underfunded so it’s nice to see it’s going up. I would like to also add that the MS for permit has changed. Four years ago, and it’s put a lot of stress on every town, it’s increased dramatically on them. Things that you need to do for the drain and the clean water to make sure that there’s clean water coming out. It’s going to continue to be expensive it kind of ramps up so it gets more. You saw our bylaws change one year that was due to this, you know, the catch basins the amount you have to clean and. How many times you have to do it has changed it you know it is pretty specific about how many things you have to do, and it is going to be more expensive each year, that is not looking at the maintenance that you have to do or all the requests that you get from this town for added drainage.

1:19:38 And there are a lot of requests for added drainage, you know, so you are going to have to look at in the future, the overrides is how we’ve done the added drainage where the repair before the major repairs, but you are going to have to look at something that does more maintenance, including everybody’s wish list, which is why. There’s no argument. Just one is the highway department to leave our own back truck for the. I will say the water and sewer is very kind and supports us any change the way. So we have like a water system set up so that you know you aren’t using your insta-view drainage but highway does fitting in different forms for us to. So, any other comments from the finance committee. Any public, I don’t see any in person here on zoom or anything else. Oh, Catherine Martin. Actually, but I’m here, can you hear me. Yeah. So I guess, you know, these comments kind of directly relate back to what my comments for the street override. We really need to be thinking about our storm drainage in concert with our roads so you know what I would urge you to do is when the planning piece of the roads I would look to do the roads first that don’t need major drainage improvements or new catch basins.

1:21:22 And then next year when you go for your drainage override, make sure that the work is, you know, they’re working one hand with the other because what we don’t want to do is pave streets and then have to come in and saw cut and put in drainage structure. So, I did hear Amy’s comment, and I applaud her because this that’s yeoman’s work but I just, you know, I just feel like we’re missing pieces of this puzzle and that the drainage component and the catch basins and the manholes need to be included in the thoughtful process of the street and it kind of was just codified with your statement so you know, I know that we are not looking for a large sum of money this year but I want to put the bug in people’s ears that these things need to work together. If we are going to have a successful street program, and we’re going to really get our most bang for our buck from that override so just putting that out there. I don’t think there’s any disagreement about all these things have to work in concert. Thank you. Jen. Yep. Hi, just piggybacking on Katie and Martin’s comment, I would hope we would also have conversations with the utilities and clean national grid and Verizon. I know that they’re constantly digging up our roads, but same thing I would hate to see any major projects, other than, you know, emergency repairs take place after we’ve spent $12 million to be favor roads.

1:22:53 There’s a lot of coordination with national grid. Sometimes it’s frustrating communication, because they’ll say they don’t have plans and then they may change their plans but no, absolutely. That has to continue to happen and be vigilant on. Thank you, Jen. Did you have something else, sir. No, that’s it. Thank you. Okay, so, with that, I’d like to make a motion that we approve $400,000 for the storm drain construction article number 13. Second. Okay, next. Water. Article 14 water department construction. We have Amy and Beth and you know, at the board, kind of on the diets. So, would you please just go over the construction and see it’s got it up on screen. Just the numbers. Sure. So, water and sewer is based on rates that we collect for water.

1:24:25 We’ll talk about water first. So the collection the sale of water and those rates is what funds everything that happens down in the water department. What happens is, we will go to town meeting with our budget for FY 23 and then in June we’ll have a rate study that we go through the whole process to cover our salary over operation and maintenance. And then we include what we hope to sell for water and our construction article two years out. So what you see when we come with this construction article is the construction article for FY 23 which was what we tried to guess back in FY 21. What type of sales we would have. And we were current we were trying to get $750,000 well, we obviously didn’t sell as much water as we had thought so our article, our free cash, which was the audited number came in at 590,106. We then have to take our vehicles out of that article, or out of that free cash, and that’s put into article nine. And so that will leave us with 524,106 to fund the water construction article, a lot less than 750 we thought so again, that’s why our five year plan does get changed around as things happen. So, you know, you will see that there are, it works very well because if we don’t, if we don’t sell as much water as we expect to.

1:25:58 We have knowledge in advance where we’re going to be that year for construction. So it’s not, it’s not like all of a sudden we find out we can’t do our projects we know in advance, you know, we know a few months before, what kind of what kind of construction we’re going to do. And my last is just the retroactive pay we also have to put it into our rig study to cover that and that is part of the union negotiation so that’s why that was there, which I think that’s going into our clients and then know what that’s talking about. So that’s water sewer very similar but it’s just on the collection of sewer. So, again, we go to town meeting with a salary operating and maintenance budget, then we go to our great study which is a public hearing in June, and we will set the rate and that rate, based on an estimate of what we think we’re going to sell that year and that rate is going to cover our budget and our construction article two years out. This also was $750,000 two years ago we hope to be but we again have a free cash of 619 924, and we have vehicles that we’re purchasing we also purchased those on the capital improvement plan that a rolling stock plan that’s out there. So, you can see that 199,000 went into that article nine you subtract that from our retained earnings and that gives us 420,000 for sales construction. So both of these articles start to be paid out of water and sewer retained earnings, no impact on taxes but obviously has an impact on taxpayers that they weren’t sort of right this is all done by rates and it is impacting rates.

1:27:47 That one and kind of go particle by article to ask for insurance committee in my public. So, are there any questions from the finance committee on article 14 water department construction, seeing none public comment on article 14. Okay, so then I would like to make a motion to approve the water department construction article 14 in the, in the amount of $524,106. Exactly. All better. All better. Article 15. The sewer department construction is very similar process, obviously. Any questions from the finance committee. None. I just comment on article 15. No answers. Okay. So, I would like to make motion to, to approve $420,924 for the sewer department construction article 15. Sorry.

1:29:18 No, I just have the numbers in my notes. Yeah, they were. They’re correct. And then, any, you want to also, there’s no number on this one but you want to touch on article 16. Right articles just things one of the standard articles that’s always here and it just allows the commission to work with border selectmen and the township liability or claims, put on a water to. Any questions. I would like to make a motion to recommend adoption of articles. Thank you very much. Okay, so we’ve got Zach and John. Okay, so Article 17, collected bargaining from the Fire Department. So we are still in quite the bargaining with the Fire Department, and I do not have a recommendation for the committee this evening. So we’d ask that you make a recommendation at town meeting. That works. And just to clarify, so we voted on a Fire Department budget that rolls into Article 30 that we’re going to get to in a minute here. The number that will end up voting upon prior to town meeting will be the adjustments to that in this article, and that is expected to be finalized before town meeting.

1:30:55 That is the hope. Okay, that’ll be a little bit different. And obviously I would ask that I work with the chair that scheduled meeting. Yeah, so I think just probably gonna have one more meeting to sort things like this out before town meeting so that’s all on that. Okay, so I’d like to make a motion that we will make a motion at a time. Thank you. Recognition. All in favor. Okay, Article 18 collective bargaining police. We have a settlement with the police union, and the recommendation that that settlement has been approved by the voters select from, and we’re in the process of signing on both sides signing off on a new consolidated contract with the police. We have a three year agreement, and Steve is working on all the. Because it was not a settlement this past year. This article will be used to fund the retroactive piece of the settlement, and the new pieces for the year will be funded in our funded in the budget that that you’ve already acted on. Steve will provide those numbers, but we would recommend approval of the agreement in in article 18 everybody got that just to be clear, the budget we voted for police for police and article 30 is good.

1:32:30 It’s already adjusted for this. It’s just the retro pay related to last year because at town meeting, this was not finalized as on last year. So, again, we’re waiting on that number from Steve and review and our army for time. I don’t see any public comment or hands raised at this time. So the budget for the police included for the piece going forward in in FY 23. So it’s a three year contract, it covers the year we’re in now, starting last June 30. This last July one to this June 30. And then that will be paid retroactively, but it will be funded in this article. The piece for FY 23 is in their budget funded, and then FY 24 will be next year. And that was specifically known when the police was correct. This settlement was reached before I came on board. It’s just timing of the negotiation when we compare 17 days. It’s a little bit of a different story this year versus last year. Okay, so I’d like to make a motion that we’ll make a recommendation sometime for time meeting on this article. All those. Part of my team my understanding is basically the same. Basically the same we have a, we have an agreement that’s been approved by the board of selection.

1:34:03 And the, we’re in the process of signing off on a new consolidated contract with the enemy you, which represents all of the municipal workers that are in the union, except for the police and fire. And that is also a three year agreement one year ago in retroactive the retroactive portion of that settlement will be funded in in this article, Steve is working through those numbers, and we’ll provide them to the committee, and the board of selection has approved this settlement and the recommendation is approved for this article. I mean, I asked any questions on this one. Don’t send the hands on zoom. Anybody in the public article 19 collective bargaining. I u e c w a local 1776 well that’s what we just talked about. Yeah, I’d like to make a motion. I’m sorry, I was just making my motion. I’d like to make a motion to recommend that we’ll make a recommendation before time meeting on the side. Second. Those. So article 20. Another one sponsored by board selecting article 20 is provide, we have town employees who are not represented in one of the treatment, that’s the unions, and they are primarily administrative people.

1:35:39 And generally speaking, the town under this article has approved a, the same cost of living increase the trend of one of the unions. And this, in this case it would be a 2% increase, and so the recommendation is to approve a 2% increase for the non union administrative people. And just for the benefit of everybody as a reminder, where applicable in the department budgets we’ve already voted that roll up into article 30 2% increases have already been reflected in those so we’ve already voted on this. And this article requires about a time being for that to also be appropriate. So, any questions on this one. Any public comment on article 20. Alright, so I’d like to make a motion to recommend that this article be adopted, but the 2% cost of living increase effective July 1 2020. Second. I understand is article 21. It’s very similar, very similar. This is for the traffic supervisors, so called crossing guys. And this would afford, again, they’re not represented in any union, and would be a 2% increase in their.

1:37:12 And I did one, one last thing which covers both pieces. I think Steve mentioned, there’s only 15 to 20 or so employees covered by these articles. We’ll be adding the administrative. There’s more than that in the admin. Just perspective the number of employees, nine because it positions first the entire time. I found that interesting. Any questions on article 21. Any public comments on article 21. Doesn’t look like it. So I like to make a motion to recommend that this article be adopted with a 2% cost of living increase effective July 1 2022. Second. Suppose article 22. Same story. Yeah. I go 22 covers the seasonal and temporary workers of the town seasonal primarily people we employ in the summertime associated with the hopper masses office, the seasonal. System have a master’s as well as the various people high in my pocket right that those types of seasonal workers.

1:38:42 And that we do have a few temporary positions that they get built throughout the year. And each of these we the recommendation will be a 2% cost. For the seasonal pay scale. We’ve already included 2% of the body voted on that 2% were applicable. Any questions from the finance committee on this time. Any public comment on article 22. Like to make a motion to recommend that this article be adopted with a 2% cost of living increase effective July 1 2020. Second. Article 23 compensation. I don’t know 23 covers the compensation for the town clerk who is the only full time elected position in town. And so the recommendation is 2% increase compensation. In line with any questions on this one. Any public comments on article 23. In line with the way we recommended in years past. I’d like to make a motion to recommend revising the compensation of the town clerk to 84,418 $418. Second. The 2%

1:40:16 Steve is not the correct review. Okay. It was intended. Whatever that turns out to be. Yeah. Thank you. Second. One favor. Yes. Article 24 ratification of salary by law, not sponsored by compensation committee. I am also the chairman of the compensation. So, the compensation committee is, is formed to Make decisions on any request to reclassify a position. The positions that are reclassified within the union grades that are subject to the collective binding process. In this case, Tommy needs to ratify the actions of the compensation committee as a relate to a district position. They were The three positions during since last year’s town meeting that were three were reclassified and one new administrative position was created by the compensation committee in the Department of Public Works. The reclassification of the position of assistant director of Public Works from grade nine to grade 10 at the cemetery commission the reclassification of the position of cemetery superintendent from grade nine to grade 10.

1:41:57 And the pack and recs it was the creation of a recreation program associate at grade two on the administrative pay scale. There are questions associated with the cost implications of these Steve, I believe as a number. We’re still working through the cost impact and will be available for coming. I’m seeking adoption of this article to confirm the actions that I just outlined. Okay. Okay. Anybody have questions on this one. Any comments on article 24 like to make a motion to adopt article 24. Okay. Article 25 financial assistance for conservation sponsored by the conservation commission. I don’t know if that’s well it’s not really it’s not really me but I can speak to it because I believe I don’t believe Charlie quickly with us. Okay. But the, this is a standard article that basically allows the conservation commission to seek grants and private funding sources for work that they do. So, this is, if anything it’s a positive.

1:43:28 Yes, no brainer. Yeah, it’s just authorizing them to apply for financial assistance. Any questions from the finance. Any public comments on article 25. Like to make a motion to recommend adopting this other. All right. And I think article 26. Max rose from the Senate. It’s here and I’m going to use the. Folks. I’ll get a short report that I’d like to read to you about our successes that that’s except the share. Mark stroke 40 maple street chairperson of the 20 member school committee for Essex North Shore agricultural and technical school district otherwise known as the tech or the 80 depending on what town you live in. Each year I’d like to give you a short update as to our progress at the school along with our budget figures. Now in our ninth year of operation Essex tech currently serve 1654 students from 17 member and 38 non member communities and offers 24 vocational technical and agricultural programs on our 125 acre Danvers campus containing 13 buildings and close to 1 million square feet of classrooms. Just last month we had approximately 1550 students from over 93 middle schools applied for next fall from which we will accept 450 members of the class of 2026.

1:45:02 Once these students are accepted for the fall that will bring our total enrollment up to 1734 students, which will max out our current facility. I’m very happy to tell you that this year Marvel head became a member of our afternoon partnership program along with Peabody Beverly Salem and swamps guide. The partnership program allows students in their junior year to leave their respective high schools at 11 a.m. where they are then bus to our dangerous campus until late afternoon, taking full advantage of our carpentry program. Those students that finished the two year program as juniors and seniors are then allowed to enter the carpenters union upon graduation from Marvel that high. Tonight I am most pleased to announce that of the 20 vocational technical school serving the Commonwealth Essex tech is the fourth most affordable. I’m also pleased to report tonight that for the second straight year due to an increase in revenues each of our 17 member communities will be assessed the state minimum required contribution as calculated by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. And in fact, many of our 17 member communities, including Marvel head will receive a reduction in their per pupil assessment this year. As well, it is my pleasure to announce that the administrative team this year has secured over $5.2 million in competitive grants today. These funds will allow students to earn certifications renovate space earn college credit outfit programs with specialized equipment and set the course to develop a more dynamic and innovative teaching and learning environment.

1:46:42 Further, Governor Baker has announced an additional $16 million in competitive grant funding over the next three years to support the extension of vocational education efforts throughout the Commonwealth, which we plan on taking full advantage of. This year 34 of our Marvel head students representing 2.597% of our overall student population took advantage of the following career and technical education programs. Advanced Manufacturing Carpentry companion animals cosmetology culinary arts and hospitality dental assisting design and media communications electrical engineering and automotive technology equine sciences health assistance natural resources resources management heating ventilation and air conditioning and veterinary sciences. Marvel heads minimum required contribution is set by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is $521,970. And when you add in our 2.597% share of the total student population. Share of the total transportation debt service and capital improvement budgets. The FY 2023 preliminary assessment to the town is $584,223, which is down from $652,392 last year. The FY 2023 per pupil cost of the town of Marvel head is $17,183, which is also down from $17,190 last year.

1:48:22 I’d like to thank the Marvel head business owners who employed our students in their co-op positions this year and last year, and especially typical time with COVID-19 restrictions. They are Atlantic veterinary clinic, Franklin seven, seven plumbing heating and air conditioning, Brenton gray development, Gilbert and cold building supply, Hurley electric, MRW mechanical, eat well kitchen, Mark H. Driscoll construction and shoobies marketplace. I’d also like to give a huge shout out to our carpentry and plumbing students who this year fully participated in the renovation of the strip ski house off of West Shore Drive. Our goal is to strive to be the finest vocational technical agricultural high school in the Commonwealth and to remain current to industry demands while meeting the high school demands of a college preparatory curriculum. In conclusion, our Marvel head students in their families and the staff of Essex North Shore would greatly appreciate your support in this article, and we thank you for your continued support over the years. Any questions. I think we do a good job. Appreciate that every year. Thank you for that. Only question would be, is the amount down just because of expected enrollment going to the enrollment are going up our revenues have increased. That’s really good. So thank you. Yeah, the number that you were expecting and for us to have got that right. You’ve got the updated number. Okay. Thank you.

1:49:57 Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions from the finance. Any public comments on article 26. Like to make a motion to recommend appropriating $524,223 to be raised by taxation. Second. Thank you very much. I appreciate you. Okay, article 27, which is transfer funds to the special education stabilization account, sponsored by the finance director, Steve and I can speak for that. Okay, so this is a special education stabilization fund that was established due to the interdrictability of special ed costs on time so to take, take off any piece in spending that may be occurred to the unforeseen occurrences by the schools in any year. The fund is currently currently has $250,000 in it. And has not been had to be relied upon several years, if at all. So we are. I’m suggesting that we post on this article. Yeah, so just to reiterate that there was this stabilization accounts established currently has $250,000 in it.

1:51:32 There’s no expectation as of now that that will be spent this year. We did increase the school department’s line item budget, which will roll into article 34 special education this year, due to forecast and increased special education costs by a fairly significant amount, 850,000. So, as you said the towns recommend me keeping the stability stabilization reserve at $250,000, not having any of that go towards the general fund, just keeping it at two. I am not sure if we’re going to need that this year or not, but our time I’m actually projecting and deficit and special education, two issues of $550,000. So there is a chance we may need to use that 250,000 so I don’t know if that would change, you know, if that process and possibly re appropriate and if you don’t use it. It’s still early on I mean I literally got a placement today that’s $110,000. So then I change my ideas committee things about that a little bit when do you think would be a, would, would the next few weeks you have a better understanding of that, or would it be helpful for us to hold off on making our. Yes, I will have a year end projection within the next week or so. But given that it may still change things are very unpredictable right now.

1:53:06 And that there’s no other funds within your budget to maybe cover that without the reserve with a shortfall of 550,000, probably not. I do have some carry over a couple hundred thousand definitely. Okay. So I just wanted to make you aware of that. If we, if we want to keep it at 250 tonight, by definitely close point in. Can we revisit it for the next few weeks for town meeting. If you have more information, or. We can do that, or we can wait until town meeting. Yeah, we could make a recommendation that time meeting based on updated information. Sounds like there’s more discussion that happened here. We’re going to have a meeting anyway. Yeah. So we can wrap it up. Okay, so that’s recommendation and tell me is what we’re going to go. I think so. Yeah. Okay, any other questions on this one. Any public comments on article 27. Doesn’t look like it’s easy. Okay, so I’d like to make a motion to recommend this town meeting. So sometime before time meeting, we will revisit this.

1:54:48 Okay. Article 28 available funds appropriate to reduce tax rate sponsored by finance director. So these are funds that if they can Uber or Lyft, there’s a fee a search fee associated with. Oh, I’m sorry, I announced their own article 28 release funds from transportation. So these fees are collected by the state and then reallocated to the communities. And it’s, we have to find we found a special revenue account with those money appropriate the money out. We’re estimating based on most recent estimates from the state that our allocation this year will want to be distributed. And we’re going to be able to get the funds to the state to be $2,511. Pretty small dollars. You don’t want to deal with it. Yeah, I think it was cold and related. I mean, not to say we’ve been back last year. And we use we use these funds to do rail trail. Yeah, so they’re collected and then you start the rail. I think what you’re seeing here is the reduction. Any other questions from the finance committee on this argument. Any public comments on article 20. Like to make a motion to recommend that the sum of $2,511 to be appropriated to be transferred from the transportation network receipts reserved for appropriation.

1:56:25 Post article 29 available funds appropriate to reduce tax rate. That’s one sponsored by C. So this is a recurring article, you can see it in every town meeting. The model has a history of using free cash to offset the tax rate. And the rest of this year will be no different. We’re estimating currently at about 10.2 million dollars of free cash needed to balance the budget. In addition to that, we, we utilize it pilot. We use it to balance the tax from the electric company. And that is in the amount of $330,000 which is consistent with prior years for a total of available funds. $10 million, $530,000. And I wanted to add that a little bit of color to that. Based on the information I have reviewed certified free cash before appropriation is approximately 10.7 million. So what’s he saying is based on the projections as of today there could be some stuff moving between now and town meeting, as we kind of just talked about that we need to appropriate 10.2 million based on the current projections. And I wanted to add that a free cash stabilization reserve fund has been funded for the second straight year here. So we funded at 250,000 last year, we’re going to fund it at 250,000 again, we already voted on that.

1:58:05 And so that, based on this example or where numbers are at today that means 500 of free cash after appropriation 500,000 and then 500,000 also in the stability reserve fund. So, we have some questions still after balancing this year’s budget. It’s very important for the town to have these reserves available should emergency costs arrives. And then like Steve said there’s 300,000 from the electric payment and little taxes I believe it’s called five. Any, any questions for Steve on this from the finance committee. What do we typically have a carries over an annual basis and cash. What we expect at the end of this year that would be available in addition to this. Prior years. Well, it never appropriation this year, we’re talking about 500,000 last year was probably closer to 3 million appropriation. You know, it’s as you know the state of the town highlighted and as a number of presentations prior to that has shown the increased reliance on free cash and that’s really not any other way just saying the structural balance so you have expenses that are growing faster than your revenue sources are. So, the recap of appropriation is effectively ours prior to last year we never see one so pretty good free cash net appropriation at the town meetings essentially a reserve fund, and the net appropriation amount has been decreasing over the years that’s why as you, you know, you rely a little

1:59:49 bit more on your total free cash amount increasing 10 50% that two years down the line reduces your starting some balance. So that’s the sort of the minimum appropriation amount is getting smaller and you are pretty approaching kind of that break even point of when you cross the threshold. But this year, as Alex stated, we will be able to balance the budget and it’ll still be about a million dollars and reserves available for our handouts. That’s right. And you know, there’s other aspects to free cash that we can talk about further. Budget turnbacks will have things budgeted that don’t get spent. So it’s nice to have that reserve fund. As Steve said, free cash is going down. On the next article here, I’m going to have a lot to say about that. So if anybody has any other questions on article 29, have a public comment on article 29. Do you see any hands? Looks like we’ve got a hand.

2:01:01 Jen. Jen Shaffner, Twinkesino Road. So just so I understand this, I’m a very simple person and need to understand things simply. The budget that’s being presented in its total tonight is includes all of the funds that are expected to be raised, including $10.2 million in free cash, which would then leave us at the end of this budget if it’s approved with $500,000 in free cash. Yes, free cash after appropriation, not including the free cash stabilization fund, which also has $500,000. And then free cash will be regenerated again next year. Every year. So that is not a desirable amount, it sounds like, from what Steve has been saying. I mean, it’s going down in years, but we do balance and we find comfort as a committee that there’s a million dollars. Historically, we haven’t had the tap into that amount. So, but what is, I mean, this is what I’m trying to reconcile from the state of the town. But what is the sort of best practice recommended amount, or I guess it would be percentage of annual budget that should remain in free cash, not to be used to balance the budget. I’ll have to say community by community kind of sets their net of appropriation amounts. There’s no record, then you’re saying now there’s no recommended best practice.

2:02:34 Not necessarily on free cash, on net of appropriation, depending on your level of state of the nation funding. So then there’s no issue. I just I’m trying to understand there was discussion earlier in the year. It’s stated reconcile that with what you’re talking about. I’m going to get into it under Article 30, as a statement I’ve prepared related to the future here. I mean, I think the point of the discussion right now is that we have enough in our budget that we have enough revenue coming in this year to hover our budget, plus have additional $500,000 in free cash, plus an additional $500,000 available in our stabilization fund, giving us about a million dollars in leeway. That is for this year. So yes, correct. We are able to balance our budget this year. Next year is going to be a different discussion. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

2:03:42 Sarah Fox. So to summarize, we will have in free cash after appropriations, and give or take about one, correct in understanding about 1% of our total, total spend. Reserves. Yeah, a little below that. A little below 1% in free cash. After appropriations. After appropriations. Okay. Thanks. Any other public comment? So I’d like to make a motion to recommend in the sum of 10,530,000, the appropriate from the following sources for the use of the assessors and making the tax rate. 10,200,000 from certified free cash, and 330,000 from electric department payments in lieu of tax funds. All in favor. So this article 30 relates to really the process that the finance committee has undertaken over the past several months, where they vetted all departments budgets, and improve them for

2:05:18 to come together and kind of form this budget. This article here. So really what it is, it’s just a total of all department budgets, including the enterprise funds. So in this, so essentially the total is 109 million dollars, 314,649 dollars and 28 cents. Of that comes through available funds, which is the enterprise funds, the water, sewer, and harbor. 11,048,230 dollars and 84 cents. The remaining amount to be raised through taxation at 97,766,418 dollars 44 cents. Thanks, Steve. And as I just said, when we’re talking article 29, I think it’s really important for me to kind of speak about our process here this year, and also kind of the outlook for the future. So although this article looks short, it actually captured what I would say is probably 80% or more of the work we perform as a finance committee on an annual basis. So what’s the budget season process. As we do every year, our current member finance committee forms smaller liaison groups to work with department heads, managers, administrators, and elected officials to review all department budgets in a series of posted liaison meetings. Additionally, we held three main budget hearing meetings to discuss and vote on budgets included

2:06:52 in article 30 on recommendations of the individual department budgets. As of March 28, all department budgets included in article 30 were voted upon and approved by our finance. I’d like to take a moment to thank all members of our current committee, the majority of which are new this year, for all their contributions to another successful budget review process. I’d also like to thank all departments, boards, commissions, and committees for their collaboration. Special thanks to John McGann, our interim town administrator, who came in right in the middle of budget season and has been extremely helpful in getting us to where we are tonight. Also special thanks to Steve Lewis, the town finance director, who was acted as a FinCom clerk this year on top of the many hats he already wears for the town. We really appreciate the collaboration from all involved. So let’s talk about the overall budget picture. Talk about the positive news first. As we kind of discussed already in article 29, the overall town operating budget fiscal year 23, which will be presented in the finance committee report in detail at the end of town meeting, is balanced without the need for an operating budget proposition two and a half over it. This will be the 17th year in a row that this is the case. Further, as we just discussed when voting upon article 29, there is a balance in certified free cash available after appropriation. Again, it is very important for the town to have reserves in place for unforeseen expenses in any fiscal year. We as a finance committee are happy to see we have some cushions still

2:08:25 after balancing this year’s budget. Now I’ll move over, move on to some challenging news. Based upon forecasts provided by town finance, as presented in January at the state of the town meeting, it is expected that next year’s budget adjusted for all contractual obligations will not balance without an operating budget proposition two and a half over it. I’d like to take this opportunity to briefly share some thoughts on what is driving the forecasted budget deficit next year and what has been driving the reduction of available free cash after appropriation for a number of years now. Town of Marblehead is up against a structural budget challenge. What do I mean by this? On the revenue side of things, Marblehead is a town which relies very heavily on property tax revenue to fund its operating expenses. Over 80% of its annual revenue is from property taxes. Under Massachusetts law proposition two and a half, absent voted overrides, the town can only increase its property tax levy year over year by two and a half percent plus new growth. For a town like Marblehead with minimal commercial activity and limited residential new growth, this law represents a real constraint. Our new growth yearly only increases property tax revenue by approximately half a percent to one percent, more recent years towards that half a percent, which leads to overall revenue increasing at an average yearly rate of approximately three to three and a half percents in total. On the expense side of things, on average,

2:09:56 bottom line total expenses are growing at a rate of approximately four to five percent each year. The primary driver of the year over year expense growth is employment expenses for salaries and wages, the majority of which are based on union negotiated contracts, or as we refer to them as contractual obligations. Additional significant drivers include increasing health insurance costs driven by market rates, increasing retirement obligation funding, which is mandated under state law, and inflation. The gap between expenses growing at four to five percent per year versus revenue increases, which are capped under mass law, growing at three to three and a half percent each year, is what I’m referring to when I mention the structural budget challenge. I want to be clear on that. So what’s next for the structural budget challenge? We as a finance committee expect swift action on this after town year. This will need to be a coordinated effort between town finance, our new town administrator, the board of selectmen, all town departments, commissions, and boards. We as a finance committee are committed to participating in this effort and being involved from start to finish. There needs to be a well thought out plan. Various options for addressing the challenge need to be presented. And ultimately, a well presented and documented conclusion on where the plan lands needs to be delivered so that town citizens understand what they will presumably be voting on next year. For me, the process should start with education on this topic. For example, a public meeting presentation

2:11:28 discussing the structural challenges, why Marblehead faces these challenges, and what our options are to address these challenges. I’ve covered things briefly tonight and I hope the high level overview is helpful. But there needs to be more town citizen education ahead. From there, next steps include a great planning effort to determine how the budget deficit will be addressed. I’m not going to get into these details tonight, but we felt an obligation to raise this tonight. And we will be discussing it again at town meeting on May 2nd. Again, we as a finance committee have a duty to town citizens to help them understand not only warrant articles being voted upon this year, but also what lies ahead in future years. I really hope our message is clear tonight. Some significant challenges still lie ahead. I am confident we as a community will be able to tackle these challenges and come up with a well thought out solid solution as we enter next year. Yeah. Sure. Thank you, Alec. That was extremely eloquent and I really appreciate that good summary. I think this is a message that we can’t say enough. This year, we had the funds to balance our budget. We are able to meet all of our contractual obligations and still have some money left over at the end of the year. Next year, as Alec has, there’s going to be a significant amount of work put into balancing the budget and the next steps that we’re going to have to take as a town to be able to level fund and hopefully also possibly increase funding to our departments

2:13:02 that have been level funded for so many years. So we have a lot of work cut out for us. But again, this year, we have the ability to balance our budget with our existing tax on me. So. Yeah, I agree. Any other Finance Committee questions, receive or comments this time on Article 30?

2:13:26 Let’s see some public comments on the Zoom. Catherine Martin. Yes, good evening. I appreciate that summary and hearing about what’s left for free cash. What I’m missing tonight and maybe this isn’t the four of us, we did receive a significant amount of ARPA funding. And I’ve waiting to hear where the allocations are going and how that plays into some of these asks that have come forward. We’ve talked about the tax levy, the debt exclusion, and I’m sure we’ll talk about the two and a half override, general override for the schools, but curious of how the ARPA money is factoring into this if we are less going to have less than 1% of the total spend left at the end of the year, because I do believe it was upwards around six or seven million if I’m not mistaken. Go ahead. I’m sorry, I’m less on or. I’m happy to speak.

2:14:32 So first of all, the number is $6 million. And that money is received over a two year period. So we’ve only received approximately half of that funding. The second half of it doesn’t come in. There has been some of that $6 million has been committed and spent associated with pandemic related expenses that were necessary during certain things in terms of rapid tests and that type of thing, as well as some other commitments with creating hybrid meeting space that was pandemic related, which is and we really need to focus on the fact that those monies are one time and will not should not be bought out for funding ongoing expenses. So it’s been a conscious decision to slow down that process as we focused on the budget process that obviously there has been a lot of work that’s been done by an ad hoc committee that has been looking at various requests that came in from various departments, as well as through a citizen survey that was done. And decisions will be made on the final decision will be made on this, certainly in the future. However, the, you know, it really is not a an avenue that we should look at to deal with the

2:16:10 structural problems of that were just laid out so well by the chairman. I think I understand that we wouldn’t be using that money for reoccurring costs, but there were a fair number of one time expenses that did come up tonight. So I guess, I guess what I’m asking for is there an opportunity for a record public reconciliation in the near future, obviously in favor of, you know, testing and owl cameras, but, you know, we’re talking about having only a million dollars left in our free cash. And we’re talking about $3 million this year, and then another 3 million next year. So that seems significant. And it seems like the public would really like to understand how that is being spent. And my question wasn’t to insinuate that we should use it for reoccurring costs. My question was more, where are we with the funds? And let’s, you know, let’s get it out in front of the public so we can all hear about how we’re using it and the plans for the future. Thank you for the explanation. Thank you, John. I think Sarah Fox has her hand. Hi, yes. I just wanted to hear you talk a little bit more about what the pieces that went into deciding this was not going to be the year. I mean, I’m very nervous about this idea that we have less than 1% of our operating budget when I think

2:17:43 the rule of thumb is you should, in order to secure our bond rating at the AAA rating, would be to have 5% to 10%. So I’m very concerned that we’re putting ourselves in a precarious situation right now. And as the fiscal watchdogs, I would just like to hear you speak to why you feel this path was the best path. I mean, sure. So just first, I’d like to, you know, as the finance committee, we wouldn’t be the one sponsoring an article for an over-ed or anything like that. So we would need an over-ed presented to us first before we would have to make a recommendation on that. But again, it wasn’t presented to us this year. It’s been a challenging budget season. Our town administrator left right during the budget season, we have an interim town administrator who’s now got up to speed very quickly. Like I said earlier tonight, he’s been so helpful to all of us in this process. So the challenges have been there. And, you know, there is free cash available after appropriation. We did fund the stability stabilization account again this year. Like I said, there are generally expenses that are over budgeted for that will come back into free cash. So it wasn’t presented to us. It wasn’t a decision of the finance committee. But I, you know, if Steve or John or anybody wants to also weigh in on this, would be helpful. So when I arrived, you know, we had a

2:19:21 very short time to put together the budget process and what have you and get things up and running. I can’t speak to, you know, the timing of the Farm and Town Administrator’s departure, but it is what it is at this point. The planning for a general override takes months to do correctly. I was involved with the last general override that was townwide in 2005. If you try to do this without the proper educational process, it will be a disaster. And the last thing that we should be doing as leaders of this town is doing things that are not well thought through and not well. You only really get one chance to present the case and do it in a comprehensive and well thought out manner. And that I believe is the route that’s been chosen and that we will embark on or the town will embark on over the next year, immediately after this town meeting, not only so that we can, so that the proper communications can be made in terms of with the general public and amongst the various boards and commissions about why this is necessary and how it needs to be addressed. And, you know, I would point out as it relates to reserves. In 2005, when the last override was done,

2:20:54 pre-cash was certified at $750,000, not $10.5 million like we had here, or $10.7 million like we have here tonight. It was a $2.5 million deficit in the self-insured health care fund. And the town dug its way out of that over a period of years and has lasted 17 years with proper financial planning to get to the point. Nobody ever said it was going to last forever. And at this point, we need to face the fact that we’re going to have to have a general override next year. It’s not a question of maybe, it’s a question of will, but it has to be done with the proper education. And that’s what we see. And I completely agree. And the planning is really important to us. And like I said, it’s been challenging, but, you know, we have a lot of new members of the science committee. You know, myself as new chair this year have really dug into the process this year and the budget. And everything I said just on this article earlier, I truthfully mean. And like I said, we will do what we can to facilitate this process and be as involved as we can. But I do still find comfort with the, you know, $1 million of free cash this year. I feel a lot less comfortable if it was less than that, but I feel good. Any other public comments? Okay. So I’d like to make a motion to recommend the sum of 109,314,649.28

2:22:31 be appropriated from available funds of 11,548,230.84 and taxation and other revenue sources of 97,766,418.28 which will be summarized in full in our annual finance committee report, which will start to be worked on next week. Second.

2:23:03 So we’re entering a stretch here of a fair number of articles that don’t have financial impact, although we are doing the town warranty and tonight, so we invite everybody to speak on articles they support and have discussion as well. So moving on to article 31 summer break from gas powered leaf blowers. That’s greater. I don’t know if that is on the line or in person here. Just be on this article. Doesn’t look like it. Okay. Like I said, this has no financial impact. So I will make a motion to make no recommendation on this article. All in favor.

2:23:57 Another one with no financial implications. We have land acknowledgments sponsored by the task force against discrimination. Is there a representative from the task force against discrimination that would like to speak on this article? No, thank you. Okay. Any public comments on this article? Okay. So again, no financial impacts. Therefore, I will make a motion to make no recommendation on this one. Second. All in favor.

2:24:37 Article 33 allocation of land for off road bike park sponsored by Rick Smires and others. Would someone like to come up and and students of this. I think it’s pretty quick. I’m Rick Smires. I’m here to represent the sponsors of article 33. We want to build a bike park at green street woods. We just want the town to kind of sanction this activity and approve. It’s an approved place for the kids to ride their bikes off road. We’ve got donors lined up. We’ve got volunteers lined up to do all the work and pay for it. So we don’t think there’s any financial implications to the town. But if there are any questions or concerns, I’m here to answer. Yeah. And as I read through this article, you know, I think it does seem like there’s no financial implications as interested in here. But I guess my first question would be, is there any sort of insurance costs that the town would have to pay for that? I don’t know. Have you thought about that? We thought about that a lot. And our understanding is that the recreational use statute would cover a facility like this, just like it would cover any other park or beach or anything in town. So that if there’s an accident, somebody gets hurt at the park, just like they would, you know, falling off a swing set, the town can’t be sued for that. And so there shouldn’t be any financial implications for the town on that. Okay. John, if you want to kind of speak to this, or if all the town council has waited. I think the council might be on the call.

2:26:10 Oh, yeah, Lisa, would you be able to provide some insight? Sure, Mr. Chair. Good evening, members of the Finance Committee. So in part, I think that the sponsor is slightly correct, although we still have to have our insurance company approve it notwithstanding the recreational use statute. Additionally, that is assuming that it’s constructed in accordance with industry standards and maintained that way. So there is financial implication in so far as that is concerned. And whether or not the people who were constructing it would be able to provide the proof that they were doing it in a manner that’s consistent with industry standards and or provide releases or indemnifications to the town. So I do have a concern about the insurance aspect of it. In addition, it would, you know, this is, in a way, it’s advisory because it actually requires the school committee to vote to give up the land. It would require an actual entity in town to be directed to take over the land. And all of that requires both a two-thirds vote of town meeting as well as a vote of the school committee. And so advising the board of selectmen or another board that they should or want to take care of a piece of property is something for those boards and their administrative authority to determine.

2:27:46 So in terms of the liability, the volunteer group that’s talking about actually doing this would be very comfortable getting insurance for anyone doing the actual work in there. We just don’t want to be liable if a year later somebody falls and hurts themselves. We think it’s only fair that the town would be the ones that would be just like any other park. They would be responsible for that. But we would certainly be willing to cover any of the costs of construction. And we’d be planning to work with the New England Mountain Biking Association to ensure that everything is done up to appropriate standards. And we just want to have some town committee that would approve that it had been done properly so that the town could take responsibility for the park. Right. So most, Mr. Chair, through you, most parks that are built by volunteers that have a certification process. And so that would have to be done. And again, that would be if the insurance company were to get it insured because even if the recreational use statute kicks in, all of our parks are continued to be recovered by insurance nonetheless because of the issues related to negligence and how they’re built and or maintained. Okay. So it sounds like there would be a financial impact no matter what, according to what town council is saying at this time. Can I ask a

2:29:17 question? Have you spoken, have you presented to the school committee or the select of your plans? Yes. So, so Pat Miller is another member of the group that’s sponsoring this, has been in touch with the school committee. They actually did vote to approve this. But there was some ambiguity about the liability question. And so our group wasn’t able to also sign on to it because we didn’t get insurance to do the things that we were talking about during. So that’s why it’s a, it seemed like they were in support, but we haven’t gotten through all the details yet. So Mr. Snyder just correct. The school committee did vote on these details. We had a lot of work done a year ago to approve the use of the woods. But then in the thought that we had the liability piece worked out at that point, then Bik more came back and there was some ambiguity to use the words. So we said, well, we can’t take the liability and we can’t take that on and then our budget. And so it just, you know, I spoke to it in the meeting last Thursday. It’s just kind of stalled at this point. And so I don’t, I don’t know how to move it forward. I can’t speak for the committee on if we need to reload, but I don’t think that there’s any issues with the current committee as to whether or not we would continue to support it. And I think that’s why we didn’t use the land, but it doesn’t, it’s that the piece with the liability insurance.

2:30:49 Have you met with the selection also when presented because they would be the ones accepting this land? Yeah, so Pat Miller did do a brief presentation to the selection at one point, but probably not very recently. Okay, all right. Yeah, so this one’s, I appreciate, you know, the explanation of everything, but for me, you know, I’m a finance committee member, some focus on the finances and, you know, for me, I’d feel more comfortable if we really understood the financial impact to the town of this. Obviously, the kind of speech I gave earlier about the structural budget challenges, something like this, if it were to increase our insurance costs, we’re not thinking about this cost right now. Although, you know, as we approach next year, I think, for me, if you could continue to take it to the next step to be prepared to come before the finance committee with actual dollars, if we ever are able to get there, we would consider it at that point. Yeah, we were in the way the article is written to intend that we would cover all the costs. So if there’s, if there’s an additional cost for liability insurance, we would fundraise to cover that as well. I imagine with the town, you’d probably get a better rate than I would get. Right, so we would be willing to raise funds to cover any at all costs, including construction maintenance insurance, whatever it would take. We just want the town to sanction a place for the kids to write up in a way, you know, they’ve been kicked out of every other place in town.

2:32:23 It’s probably gonna be too late for my kids to write in it because it’s been three years now, but we would just love to have the town say yes, it’s an approved place for the kids to write their bikes, and we will cover any at all costs. I just, if I’m looking at the text of the, of the article. Can you explain to me how having the park overseen by appropriate town department or commission doesn’t involve the town, and it was potential liability. Having having the having that statement in the, in the request for us to take a position on regardless of the financial implications which are unclear at this point. How do you, how did you come up with that language is it sounds very intentional that the town would have the liability, they wouldn’t be on the group of volunteers to have that liability. But our expectation was that in the town had to be protected by the recreational use statute and it has liability insurance already for all their other parts that it would be a minimal thing and we could we could raise money to cover it needed to. This seems like it’s been sitting for a while as you said, you got approval by a year ago. Is there any likelihood that you could get a resolution before town meeting on terms of what the costs are and how do we find it, we would love to, if we could, you know, perhaps work with, with the school committee and with town council.

2:33:54 So, we would love to just pull the article, you know, to get the agreement done with the school committee directly. It’s, we put it on here just in case we couldn’t essentially. John, I guess asking questions to town council, we keep saying the school committee, but are they the appropriate town department to be overseeing a recreational right. And so, that, you know, that kind of really cool business of the schools. So, the question is, that’s the first question but the second question is, say the appropriate committee organization with the pack and recreation within that business. And so, the process for the shot of the process being able to be completed where the school committee would vote to transfer the property and then town meeting would have to agree to transfer to the same pack and recreation. That really can’t be accomplished at this kind of meeting because there isn’t an article and that’s so that’s my question. So, I would agree with that, Mr. McGinn, the, you have to actually transfer the care custody and control or change the use of the land so it’s, if it’s going to be used for a recreational bike jump area. So, that’s what the school department use, which is what the land is currently under school use right so you would have to change the use of the land that would take a vote of town meeting.

2:35:32 And the school committee would have to agree that there would be a change of use, and then it would have to be under somebody else’s care custody and control, which would be a vote of town meeting. Yes, might be a good idea to maybe pull this at this. I mean, right recommended that he pull at this point in time and reevaluate it with the whole structural reevaluation going into next year. I mean, yeah, so for me, it seems like there’s a little bit unclear still in the financial impact. There also seems to be a little unclear as to whether this is even what Lisa was just saying, the right way to get this to the finish line through town meeting vote. So yeah, I mean, not that we’re saying we’re close to it. I just personally am confused by this still as to whether we could even make it up to support this at this point, given the facts that we had. Or is it, I mean, you know, there is that liability question, but what is the role of the finance committee in this article. We make no recommendation. It seems like there might be liability, which is my concern. I haven’t heard anything yet tonight to say we 100% know there won’t be a liability of the town with respect to additional insurance costs, things like that.

2:37:02 That’s anybody else. Even here on the street and the school committee I’m very much in favor of this and appreciate the efforts that you know for been there seeing the property. Spent a lot of time with my son trying to figure out where we ride bikes and the right there, pretty limited auctions on the rail trail. So the school committees in favor of this, my question I have for town meeting for town councilors, couldn’t this article be amended, so that the school committee could give up care and custody of it to the town and it could be included in article 33. And we could invent this so that there could be language put in, you know, that says, you know, pending agreements of liability and so on and so forth. So what’s the the keep this moving and just not stall it for another year. It seems like there’s certain things we can do to keep it moving, maybe not necessarily stop it moving. There’s a thought. We have a couple weeks for you to maybe make that happen. Is that possible Lisa. I don’t know if you can hear the question. You can’t amend it. The question is, what does the motion look like? Right. So you’re trying to accomplish a couple of different things under here. And you’ve got to have an appropriation to take care of the financial impact. That’s not addressed here. I don’t know what that would be. I haven’t I haven’t spoken to the insurance company and don’t know whether or not Maya would ensure a mountain bike park.

2:38:39 I know that skateboard parks, mountain bike parks, things like that require higher level of insurance. I don’t know if they would ensure it. So depending on how the motion is drafted as possible, you could would probably be with the was up to the moderator. The moderators could have to make that call whether emotion that would change the use of the property, which is really what you’re doing is changing the use of the property. From school department use to another use that is recreational, whether that would be in the four corners of the article. I think it’s a close call. It would be a moderator’s call. So it would be based upon the motion. You’d have to change the use and you would have to give it to somebody else’s care, custody and control. And even that being said, it still doesn’t address from a finance from the finance committee standpoint, what the potential financial implications to the town does it right. It still wouldn’t do that. We’re in the finance community. We’re we’re we got to focus and that’s what we’re trying to try to do here. We review all the warnings for and allow sponsors of articles to discuss but to me without financials that purely financial standpoint without without better clarification.

2:40:12 I guess I would suggest we do indefinitely. Because even no recommendation doesn’t. Yeah, doesn’t address the fact that we’re, we don’t have a financial. Yeah, it’s tough to make a direction and they should support right. If there’s no financial impact presented to us. If it’s a million dollars, that could be detrimental towards. What we could do is, is like you’ve done with a couple of the other articles earlier today, give us a couple more weeks if we can. I mean, so we could say recommendation that town. Yes, that’s what we will figure out the night. And we will figure out the night and if you’re ready at that point, you can come and speak to us that night. If you’re willing to agree. This is a great idea of the idea of a bike park and I hate to see it caught up in the spreadsheet that it seems like it has been for a few years. So if we could give you a few more weeks that I have the details. And yeah, please come back to us. Okay, so I think we’ll make the motion. I just think that whether your group was able to pivot using to let Mills site, the green street, I think was Admiral Roland. You picked up on what was being put down by a lot of people with your hand with it. This is probably the fourth or fifth site that we’ve looked at.

2:41:45 Looks like we have some public comments. Okay, thank you. This question, I think would be for the need. Am I correct in my understanding that the selection could allow the reopen the warrant up to 14 days prior to town meeting and allow us the school committee to put on a warrant item article to transfer the Karen custody of this land. So that this can then proceed. I mean, I, I really hate the idea of making these kids wait another year that the last two years has been really horrifically hard on on student kids, and this is a really healthy outlet for them and anything we can do as a town and as the schools to kind of facilitate moving this along. I would love to do so if we can reopen if the selectmen can reopen the warrant for us to put another warrant article on to transfer that Karen custody. I, I think the school committee would be very amicable to having that discussion through you, Mr. Chair. So the select me can’t reopen the warrant once it’s posted, they would have to call a whole new town meeting. So the warrant has already been posted. The vote of the school committee can happen before or after the vote of town meeting.

2:43:23 My, my point earlier was the motion would have to be accepted by the moderator to be within the four corners of this article to change the use of that land. And take it from the care, custody and control of the school committee to another entity in town. And the question is, is this does this article have enough in it to allow the change of use with the moderator find that to be appropriate and any citizens petition. The motion’s have to go to the moderator for review prior to town meeting in any event. I’m not sure if Gary is on this evening or not, but the you all could work with Gary to to draft the motions prior to town meeting. So the school committee can vote either before or after a town meeting vote. And as you know, Sarah may not know for a couple of years I’ve been working with the superintendent and with former town administrator drafting documents to try to help move this along. So this has not gone without notice for sure. So I think that the sponsors can work with the moderator relative to the motion to see if it’s within the four corners to change the use, which is not listed here. As well as get the information from the finance committee prior to town meeting.

2:45:01 Can I ask a question of Lisa. Lisa, Pat Franklin from the finance meeting. When you say transfer the care and custody from the school committee to who would you transfer the care and custody to technically usually goes to the select. But the selectmen are not going to be the entity that would be the appropriate town department or commission to oversee the right. So I’m not the author of the article. Right. That I mean, that’s part of the problem with the article. The articles vague about where the care, custody and control would go and it has to go somewhere. Obviously, other than the school committee because it’s no longer school use. It would seem it would be, you know, maybe park and rec, but they have a budget. So they are going to have to understand how to operate this and need to know whether or not it should come under their purview. So I don’t mean I think that’s the job of the sponsors in the town managers plural, so to speak, to determine who would be the best entity to do this. Certainly it’s not a school use. And I think obviously it wouldn’t be under the board selectmen either. But that’s not my call. I’m sorry. I’m probably trying to solve the problem without, you know, that’s thank you, Lisa. You’re welcome. Can you call on Moses, Moses. Yes, you know, Lisa, Moses greater I lost Moses.

2:46:44 Lisa it’s not just you I can’t hear yet either I think they must be looking up, trying to get it. They’re no longer on the. Hello. Yeah, you’re back. Yeah. Lisa the question is directed at you if there is a transfer to board selectmen under the parking rack. It doesn’t necessarily obligate the use of that receiving entity to implement a bike bike park right so you wouldn’t necessarily if you felt if we felt that the liabilities were too great, we wouldn’t necessarily be able to implement the specific use. That is correct. It’s up to the managing entity decide how to use the property. It would be advisory to either of those entities. Okay. Okay. Well, I guess the transfer of property use doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s an assumption of liability. Right, because they wouldn’t have to put it to that use. It would have to be the general use right general municipal use recreational use school use but the actual implementation of a specific kind of recreational use would be up to the management control of the entity that has it.

2:48:24 Yes, this is where the article I guess is quite specific around the use which may be problematic but hopefully we can get around it through the motion. Right, and that’s what I would suggest working with Gary on the motion. Thank you. Catherine Martin. Yes, I’m just hoping that perhaps all of this information although not financially driven can be the impetus to give this group a department had meeting, because it seems to me if our town administrator, people from Park and rec, our planning department sat down, went through a proposal that has been kicked around for three years, and then called in council, you could work with Gary space and get this worked out, I just let these people have a meeting, and let them get this done, give you know, everybody sit down and get this done. This is really not a Fincom issue. I see the liability piece of it. But the fact that we can’t get department head meetings in this town for citizens initiatives, when we actually don’t have enough money to support other initiatives and people are willing to pay for them, sit them down in a room, you guys figure it out, call Lisa meet in and get it done. Thanks. That’s it for public comment than the else in person. Okay, so I’d like to make a lot of time.

2:49:55 I would suggest, if I could, is that you make no recommendation, we will, you know, how so I think it’s been very clear about what, what the options are. I would recommend highly that the sponsors of the promotion work with the moderator, we’re certainly we will look into the liability issues. Now that we understand a little bit better what the proposal is. And, you know, in terms of, but the real the big hurdle is whether or not the property can be transferred under this. You know, that ultimately is the decision of the moderator. So, so we will, you know, there is more work to be done. I suggest we revisit this. I would say no recommendation. Yes, so I’ll make a motion to recommend that we will make a recommendation at town. Yeah, I mean, we can make no recommendation later. I just want to note more seconds. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Article 34 morning. He’s in my water. Mark’s is a harbor master. You’re here.

2:51:36 John, the work. Mark. I don’t know. I thought. On the screen. Article 34 basically is a request to increase the morning fees. As you all know, the harbor board orders that price on like the like department, like the order department. So it’s operation is funded outside of proposition doing that outside the tax rates. Funded from user fees that use the harbor services and the expenses or the expenses to provide the services. This chart gives you pretty much a snapshot of the rationale for the fee increase. Basically shows the trend over the last five years. 2018 was the last time that the morning fee was increased. The green line shows the revenues. The red line shows the expenses and over the last five years, the revenues are going up 1.3%. The expenses are going up 3.8%. So the gap between those is our operating surplus. And that, as you can see, is a result is dropped from hundred 57,000 to 74,000. Why that’s important is because the operating surplus is what we use for our fund balance or our surplus balance. The surplus balance is what’s used to fund our capital expenditures and capital outlay.

2:53:09 The main to the sea walls, the replacement of those. Any capital expenses are funded by through the fund balance as a result of the operating surplus. So because that operating surplus is decreased, that’s the need to increase revenues to counteract the increase, the greater increase in expenses. This will raise $116,000 to two dollars for the increase. And that will bring our operating surplus back into position where it will allow us to be able to find an increasing expense for the outlay. And is the new fee being requested in line with other towns around the towns is it very consistent? That’s hard to say because every town operating department, a Harvard department does different things. And Marvel has does a lot more than other towns do. I mean, we have 15 million dollars worth of water fund property that we maintain and serve. So it’s really hard to determine whether that’s in line with that because, for example, even though the sale is less, their department, because it’s more of a city, their department doesn’t do as much as Marshall County does. Any other questions from the finance please.

2:54:46 Any public comment on this? Catherine Martin. Apologize for not lowering my hand. Oh, no worries. Okay, so no public comment, no further questions from the finance committee. I’d like to make motion to recommend to adopt article 35. Second. My favorite. Article 35 adoption of diversity statements sponsored by Megan Sweeney. Megan Sweeney here on Zoom to speak to this article. So this article 35 does not have any financial impact. Nobody’s here to speak to it tonight so I will make a motion to make no recommendation on this item. Second. Yes, both. Article 36 procedures of operation and organizational structure instructions. Again, there’s no financial impact of this.

2:56:21 The sponsor representative is Megan Sweeney, same as last article. I don’t know, I don’t think Megan’s here, but we will not make a recommendation on this article. Is there any public comments on article 36? Doesn’t look like it. I will make a motion to make no recommendation on article 36. Second. Article 37 work associated with new transfer station buildings sponsored by the Board of Health. Good evening, and ready to direct our public health. I’m Bill Becker, chair of the Board of Health. So the Board of Health has been reviewing this project for quite some time. Obviously we went through a very large landfill closure projects. We came back to town in 2015 with an additional ask for a sum of money. We are unable to finish. We finished the landfill closure completed all of our required documents and everything certification for mass DEP. At this point, we do not have enough money to complete the proposed new transfer station building. Board of Health is currently working with Winter Street Architects. They had an estimate done for the new transfer station building as proposed. And then they also have an estimate of what we could do with the remaining sum of money. We currently have $1.25 million left to do the project.

2:57:53 The estimate for just the new transfer station building came in at $6.5 million. And that is just construction costs that does not include architect fees, owner’s project manager, any lawyer fees and stuff like that. The work associated with the existing transfer station building, which would be Article 38. So I’m kind of doing both Article 37 and 38 at the same time. The estimates came in for that at $1.6 million. But when we take a very hard look at those estimates, we understand that a lot more value engineering can be done, and the estimates are extremely high. Just for the swap shop itself, it came in between $300 and $400,000. Now we’re building, no, not just a simple garage, but a modified garage. So obviously there’s things that we can do to bring some of these costs down. The board feels comfortable working with Winter Street Architects that they can bring the project in the cost for approximately $1.6 million. We would use the $1.25 million left over from the articles and use $400,000 from our revolving account, which you saw earlier on this evening. And we would use another $45,000 from that revolving account from security cameras, and that would cover the cost of the project. The board voted at our last meeting for indefinite postposal for both articles. Okay, thanks for that explanation. It was very helpful. Since the board voted for indefinite postcomement, then of course we will also vote for indefinite postcomement.

2:59:24 It seems pretty clear. I don’t know if there’s any questions on this at this time. I have a public comment. I don’t see any hands up on this. Again, both 37 and 38 Board of Health has voted indefinite postcomement at this time. It doesn’t look like any hands are up. So, article 37, I’d like to make a motion to recommend indefinite postcomement. All in favor? Opposed? Article 38, the same. I’d like to make a motion to recommend indefinite postcomement of this article at this time. Second. Thank you both. Article 39 order of candidates’ names on ballot sponsored by Barbara Crenier. Is Barbara here tonight to speak to us? Well, sponsor of Article 39, I’m representing the League of Women Voters in Marblehead. We can’t bear attention that there is a state law requiring that incumbents be listed at the top of the ballot in local elections. It seemed to us, at least on the base of it, that the law is unfair to challengers. We formed a committee to study the matter and discovered

3:00:59 that where a candidate’s name appears on the ballot can indeed affect the number of votes they receive. The higher up on the ballot, the neighbor of the candidate, the greater the likelihood of securing more votes. We also learned that Massachusetts is the only state that mandates that the incumbents be listed first. Many other towns, cities, and states have laws requiring a random ballot order to be fair to all those running by leveling the playing field. In Massachusetts, incumbents still have the benefit of candidates for reelection after their names, and this article would not change that. Another advantage to making our elections fair is that it might encourage more people to run for town office. League members agreed that this is an issue that should be brought to the attention of the voters at town meetings to give them the opportunity to weigh in on the matter. We understand that you will not take a position on this article, but we want to thank you for the opportunity to come here tonight. Thank you, Thomas. I appreciate it. You’re right, just because there’s no financial impact, but we appreciate it. And if there’s any public comments on this, I assume no questions from the finance committee. Any public comments on this article before we make a motion? Still Article 39, I’d like to make a motion to make no recommendation on this article.

3:02:30 Second. All in favor? Opposed? Thanks again. Particle, I guess, Article 40, 41, 42, 43, Jackie. These are all no recommendations. That’s correct. I just wanted to tell you that I’m board voted to put this on the ballot. I’m board, and we know we don’t take the position because of no financial impact, but I just wanted to say that the board of Suggman voted to put it on the ballot. Thank you. So that applies to 40, 41, 42, and 43. So I’ll go in order. Thank you. Any public comments on any of those articles before we make a string of emotions? I have motions there. Okay, so Article 40, this has no financial impact. I will make a motion to make no recommendation on this article. Oh, there. Article 41, I will make a motion to make no recommendation on this article. Second. Article 42, I’d like to make a motion to make no recommendation on this article. Second. Article 43, make a motion to make no recommendation on this article.

3:04:08 And Article 44, open meeting law compliance sponsor representative is Rosalyn McDough. A gift for Rosalynn, an opportunity to speak today. Okay, so it doesn’t appear that the sponsor is here to make presentation. This one’s a bit tricky for me personally. To see if the town will vote to require all town boards and committees to fully implement best practices related to 940 CMR 29.10 of the Massachusetts Open Meeting law governing remote participation by ensuring the use of hybrid meeting platforms for all body members and for the public at all public meetings. Recordings of all such meetings must be made easily accessible, along with official minutes, links from the town website after the meeting at no cost to the public. Of course, as a finance committee, we certainly support transparency. My concerns with this one is, and I will use tonight as an example, generally would be an advocate hall doing this, but the advocate hall is not currently set up for hybrid meetings. So we’re here because this room is set up for hybrid meetings. So I question the sponsor, if they were here tonight, whether there would be a cost to outfitting every town meeting place

3:05:42 around town with the appropriate technology to be able to do this as a finance committee, what that cost would be. I don’t know if other members of the committee have some similar concerns, but again, one at the face, it doesn’t appear to have financial implications, but there may be indirect if this were to be adopted. So I guess I’ll put it to the other members of the committee. I think I appreciate the spirit of this article and I support it, but at the same time, I don’t think our town is there yet with having the facilities to be able to meet the needs here. Having every meeting, hybrid meeting is ideal, but I mean, the infrastructure involved in that is a significant cost. I mean, how much an hour cost, and it’s about $1,000, and this is pretty expensive as well, more expensive. And outfitting all of our public meeting spaces, we just don’t have that in our budget this year. Again, I don’t know what the cost would be. I don’t know how many meeting places there even are. I suppose there’s a lot of them. So for me as a finance committee chair, I have difficulty supporting this at this time without more information. Anybody else have comments before I make a motion to take public comment?

3:07:18 Okay, so I’d like to offer the public. Are you hiding in death? Okay. Public comment on article 44. I just don’t know how you can afford not to do this. This is how every town is moving forward. And especially if we’re going to be looking for a really large general override next year, you need to keep everyone engaged and allow for a lot of public participation. Even right now, a lot of meetings are Zoom, and they’re not even in person or hybrid. And yet we have a hard time getting them recorded and posted. It just helps with public engagement. And again, this is a, we talked about the offer money earlier, I’m guessing that this is something that we might be able to tap into there. It’s a one-time cost potentially. And it does seem like it is tied to the pandemic. So it’d be beneficial to really look into this. And I think it’s unfortunate that you choose not to support this. Thanks for your comments. It’s just that as a finance committee, it’s tough to make a recommendation without being presented numbers to us to make a recommendation on. That’s our role here. And the sponsor of the article has not even shown up to present the article, let alone share any amounts of numbers for us to vote on. So we agree transparency is very key. That’s why we made sure to be in a room tonight to be transparent and hold this hybrid

3:08:49 meeting in a different place than it normally is. Any additional public comment? Catherine Redmond. Sorry, I’m sorry. I understand your concerns. One thing though that this article does address is having official minutes listed on the town website after the meeting. And I think this is a really important thing to do. I know having be the minute taker for many organizations during my life, it’s a pain in the butt to get those minutes out and posted. But minutes appear on the town website many, many, many months after the meeting. And I think it would be a big service to the public if a minutes could appear within a month after the meeting and be posted on the website. And for example, are minutes of this meeting going to be recorded and put on the website in a timely manner? We certainly share minutes. We draft and vote on minutes at our next finance committee meeting. I guess we’re going to post them on the website. It’s a good question. I appreciate the comment. I

3:10:22 agree. Yeah, because it doesn’t, I totally understand the administrative drag of this, but it doesn’t regularly happen that minutes are approved at the committee’s next meeting and then posted often. It’s many, many months later. Yeah. And I hear it because we oftentimes, on budget hearings, we might go a month or so in between meetings. So I hear what you’re saying. Okay, thanks. No, as part of this, if that was the only portion of the article, I think we would make no recommendation because that would probably have no financial impact. But unfortunately, I think there might be financial impacts in this article as written now. So for me, yeah, and we’ve not been presented anything to take a position. Yeah, so I’d like to make a motion since we have not been presented with details as to how this would be funded. If there are financial implications, I’d like to make recommendations. It would definitely be postponed this article. Second. Hello, Taylor. I closed. Mr. Chair, I excuse myself. I gotta get myself a first thing in the morning. Okay. Thank you. That article 45, utility easement, Lucretia and Joseph Brown School

3:11:55 sponsors David Harris. My understanding is this one’s indefinite, postponed David at this time. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we’ve confirmed this was a placeholder going back to when the school was having construction in the event that certain easements were needed at the current point in time. The easements that have been needed have the ability to be approved by the board selectmen and everything is in order in place at this time. So we can go with indefinite postponement. Okay, thank you, David. Okay, if I answer any questions, any public comments on article 45?

3:12:40 None? Okay. Okay. So I’d like to make a motion to indefinite, postponed article 45 recommendation. Second.

3:12:55 Okay, article 46, supplemental appropriations for the schools. Oh, sure. I can invite the schools to the table. We’ll give you the presentation. Thank you guys for your patience.

3:13:22 Next to our article that the schools are in the first 10.

3:13:35 I provided you a lengthy presentation. I’m not going to go through that. Probably much to everyone’s delight. The school budget process really began in earnest last summer with our strategic planning effort. And we have aligned all of our budget requests with that strategic planning effort. We hosted public listening sessions as part of that strategic planning effort. So the budget request that you see before you have a lot of stakeholder input from parents and families, faculty, administrators, and it’s been, as my good colleague Bill McCauliff used to say, an iterative process. And it has gone through various iterations. It’s continuously evolving multiple reviews that we did workshops with the school committee where each principal or director presented their budget. Public has had an opportunity to ask questions throughout the subcommittee of the school committee has met regularly. We have met with the finance committee liaisons throughout this process. If you go to the next slide. So these are the focus areas for our strategic plan. And again, those workshops where

3:15:10 the principals and directors presented each request is aligned to the strategic plan. The next slide is a budget overview. It’s what we call our tracking sheet. And so you see the difference is 3,051,093, which would be the amount of the override. When I presented in December at a meeting, I indicated that this is not really a wish list, that these are priorities that the schools need in order to provide an exemplary education. And I think something that resonated with me tonight is one of your members said, well, this is Marblehead. We want streets that are driveable and sidewalks that are walkable. I would think that the same would apply to the public schools that we want to provide our students with an exemplary education. And so as you click through the next slides, that gives you some of the priority areas that this budget represents. We’ve broken them out into one-time costs and recurring costs. And so the major buckets are safety, technology, and you’re very appreciative for town for putting the bulk of those technology requests on the earlier warrant article. After that, you have curriculum or personnel. These are some of the personnel positions that directors and principals

3:16:44 have requested. Everything from an attendance clerk at the high school to adding STEAM teachers and STEAM curricula at our schools. The next one is curriculum. And this is really where, for me, the rubber meets the road, to have a textbook at Marblehead High School that doesn’t have 9-11, that doesn’t have the Iraq War, doesn’t have the Obama presidency, doesn’t have the Trump presidency. That’s not an exemplary education. And so many of these requests are supplies, materials, books, fundamental resources, professional development that staff have gone without over the years. And that’s why, at this point, we’re ready to move forward with the override request. The next is continued areas of curriculum that are funded through this budget. The next slide has tuition-free K. We’re one of very few remaining communities in the Commonwealth that is still charging families for full-day kindergarten. This ask would address that. The next slide is equipment and maintenance. At our last school committee meeting, there were some things that weren’t funded through our capital request from town. And so they have added those as a one-time cost in equipment and maintenance, in addition to safety, which was that original slide. Next is student services. Again, very appreciative of town, which was addressed in an

3:18:16 earlier conversation this evening, funding the 848 as part of the FY23 budget. Then the next slide is an overview of all of those priority areas, the one-time asks, and the recurring costs. And then the next slide will be the impact to the tax base and so about turn point out even shell and have her walk you through that. Yeah, so the override request is the difference between the FY23 budget that has been previously recommended and our total ask of the $47,033,366. So the override amount is $3,051,093. Looking at the tax rate, the cost to a median single family value home valued at $738,000, the annual cost would be $310.53. And an average single family home valued at $944,416. The annual cost would be $397.38. And below that, the first line is just the operating override that the school department’s requesting. The other lines below that are all the dead exclusion articles, not just specifically for the school department for all of the town requests that are included in this town meeting mark. So the next 55 slides are the deep dive into each of the requests. I’m not going to walk you through that in the interest of time,

3:19:52 but I’m very happy to take questions from the finance committee on any of the school department sites. Yeah, sure. All right, so as the chair liaison for the schools, I’d just like to say a couple words and share with me a shared statement. And I’m going to think about it also just bear with me a bit. First, I would like to thank Dr. John Bucky, Michelle Presta, Megan Taylor, David Harris, the entire school committee, John McGinn, C. Polos, and all the other town leaders who have been involved in this process. I’m going to start by saying that I’m in favor of supporting this article. And I’d like to explain why and give a little history and context to this discussion tonight. The school department has worked hard over the past few years to clean up their budget. The work Michelle Presta and her team have put into the school budget has allowed for the thin commonest school committee to have open and honest discussions about the needs of the school department. The entire school department participated in the plan for success workshops to put in place a five year plan that clearly laid out what they see our school’s needs are. From that they were able to assess what resources they needed to accomplish those goals. And that brings us here tonight. I have confidence in their numbers and confidence in the process that they went through to get there. Alec, Cam and I, as school budget liaisons have not countless times with the school budget subcommittee to discuss their process and how they plan to move forward. My decision does not come easily as we are all aware of the structural budget issues our entire town faces

3:21:24 next year. But I feel strongly that the people of Marblehead have always approved projects that they feel are important and necessary for our town. Thanks Emily. Does anybody else on the finance committee have any questions or comments at this time before I kind of share some thoughts? I actually wanted to follow up on a question that you asked last time and sort of thinking or thinking ahead, you know, what what needs will be down the road and I know that you said it’s hard to say, you know, and so I’m going to try to frame that a little differently within the context of your planning for success. Is there a way when you think about, you know, that, as you said on the last school committee call, that, you know, led that start of the process. That’s what led you through it. When you look at it from that perspective, can you just give us the sense of, so would you say this budget gets us 50% of the way through that? Does it get us 80% or is there a way to sort of frame it around those goals? No, I think so. I don’t think that I could quantify it in terms of like a percentage, but this budget gets us to a place where moving forward as we look at changing demographics, we look at changing workforce, will provide a foundation for funding other priorities in the planning for success. So there’s strategic initiatives this year that are specifically addressed. The one-time costs in the budget provide some funding

3:22:58 for future initiatives every place. Yeah, I have also as part of the subcommittee that I’ve met with you many times and I think one of the things I just want to comment, I agree with what Emily said, I also just think that it needs to be said that you did have a longer list and you worked with us and you took some things off the list and relocated some things. So, and I think you said one more, this isn’t a wish list and I think that’s right because we saw a larger list and I think really, I don’t think we ever questioned the need of any of the items that you have on this list. That conversation was really about timing, it was about the practicality of trying to get an override two years in a row, but it was not about the merits of what you were asking for and I think based on that, I would support this too. I think it is a challenge from what I understand to get overrides in this town, but I think I hope everyone who shows up to support your override in May will come a year from May and support the town override because I think these changes make sense. Thanks Ken. Yeah, I just, I would echo some of the comments that were made before. Obviously, I’m very pleased with Michelle and her team for the work they’ve done the last several years

3:24:30 to significantly improve the process of what we have, what we are presented to evaluate. And I very much appreciate the fact that you included the cost estimate so that there’s some perspective for the taxpayers to understand that this is a general permanent override to the tax rate. So this will be an ongoing expense. So yeah, I just again, I’ve listened in on many of your liaison meetings, both just the school committee’s budget subcommittee meetings and the liaisons with the finance committee to try to understand everything that went into this. And I do not pretend to be an expert in what constitutes a, or what is required to prepare and present an exemplary education to the students. That’s your job, that’s the school committee’s job to make that assessment and make that evaluation. But again, what I can attest to is the rigor of the process. Excuse me. And so,

3:26:02 yeah, I again, it’s, you know, I think that the bottom line is, you know, you will present to town meeting, town meeting will make, you know, it’s up to the citizens to be the final arbiter and the final analysis. I thought that I think you did a great job working through the process. And that’s what we are looking at from the financial standpoint, what the numbers are, or what you guys have determined are the right numbers. So to provide educational experience that you’re proposing. Thanks. Anybody else? Just a comment on this tax impact for years. First of all, thank you for putting this out. I think it’s really helpful to see what does that look like for a taxpayer in terms of their home. And I just wanted to comment because I think you’ve taken the most conservative view, which is the highest possible number you could be putting forward. Because what I’ve heard tonight, when John was speaking was that when we look at the debt exclusions, we’re authorizing this maximum amount of debt, but we’re not going to incur all of that debt at the same time. So as I understand

3:27:35 it, I’m just making sure I’ve got this right. The school department, general permanent override, those numbers for the median home and the average home will be part of everybody’s tax basis if this is agreed at town meeting. But for the debt exclusion, that isn’t the full amount of the debt exclusion, but it is incredibly unlikely that we would see all of that in one year starting. Is that right, John? No, but this particular chapter is up there. I put it together. Oh, so that’s not the full set. I’m not looking for credit. What I presented in this thing was the first line on there is for the schools, which is why they put it up. But the pieces that are there, that was the projected one scenario for the first year cost only associated with the poor debt exclusion overrides. So you see where it says, in fact, in the second column, total dollars that first year. So this was a scenario that I put together for the potential first year. And it assumed, for instance, 20% of the highway money, the tower way routes only in the first year. And so that was that. I have tax, which I can share with the committee and I have and the chair has them.

3:29:05 It shows the full year cost when you find out everything. Okay. We didn’t get to them when I was doing the presentation, but they exist. Okay, thank you, John. So this is what we should expect year one. If everybody were to pass. This is a scenario video when it’s not, you know, I’m in for the debt exclusion for the schools.

3:29:38 Good through the chair. So it’s a good question. I mean, certainly the monies will be allocated to the schools, but it is worth noting as a sitting member for seven years, the last two years, we have turned money back to the town. And I have not seen that since I’ve been on the school committee and I’d be hard pressed when I was on it. We have a lot of credit that has gone to Michelle and Dr. Bucky and Bill McCaldiff to getting us in line with budgeting to what our budget is and not having to freeze our budget in the middle of the year, understanding what the expenses are and managing to that. So we’ve recognized that and do a much better job at managing to our budget and when money can be turned back to the town, we do that with full transparency. And we also took the opportunity when allowed, we were able to prepay some out of district tuition that you’ve heard talked about tonight. It’s one of the few things you can do. And we’ve done that when we can. In addition, when we talked about the Reserve Fund for Special Ed, as variable as it is, we’ve also tried to manage to that and live within that number. And in the last two years, the $250,000 has not been used. So over a half a million dollars and that goes back to free cash that we’ve talked a lot about here. So true that that money is being voted to the budget. Could every dollar of it be spent? Yes.

3:31:14 But I just wanted to add some perspective that I think the current administration has done a really good job to be, you know, they’ve done a really good job managing the budget and managing to the money that’s allocated within the town. Any other comments from my fellow committee members? Yeah, so as chair of the finance committee, the member of the school liaison group that went through this process, I just prepared a couple statements tonight as well. Forgive me that I will repeat some kind of basic concepts that have been stated, but I just want to make sure that everybody’s understanding exactly what they’re voting on before, even before I share my perspective on this. So before I discuss my support of this request and process, I’d just like to say a few things. First, please note that the budget line item request being voted upon in Article 46 represents supplemental items and amounts on top of the overall school budget. We already approved at the School of Vincahum Budget here in March 20. As noted in the presentation, I don’t know that we talked, but it was on the slides. The school department budget, including Article 30 earlier tonight, represents an approximate 5% increase from the fiscal year 22 budget and included increases for all contractual obligations and an increase of approximately $850,000 of special education expenses due to an increasing forecast of special education needs.

3:32:45 Second, this supplemental budget request represents a combination of new and or increased budgetary line item requests for various expenses, which were presented to us as the needs of the school department. Third, please note this override request does not address the overall townwide structural budget challenges I summarized earlier tonight. Based on current projections, as noted earlier, all departments, including the school department, will likely need an override next year to balance their budget whether this article is adopted or not. Lastly, with the assistance of town finance, I’m able to confirm that the school department and the willingness of the schools in their request has included the appropriate and direct costs of the town, for example, the annual health insurance costs associated with new staffing, in this override request. This was very important for me to confirm, given the structural budget challenges summarized earlier tonight. This override, if adopted, will not negatively impact the balancing of the fiscal year 23 budget itself. So now I’d like to discuss my support of this process and request. Over the past six months since November, we have met with the school liaison group a number of times to discuss their fiscal year 23 budget requests. Since the beginning of this process, the school’s overall budget, inclusive of the amounts included in article 30 and supplemental amounts included in this article 46, has been presented to us as one, a budget developed from the ground up, two, as a budget that meets the needs of Marvel head students, and three, as a budget that is connected to the school department’s five-year roadmap of success.

3:34:19 I like Emily and others for the voice for support. Support and appreciate the process the school department drove this year and believe it is up to town citizens to vote on whether they will support this honor. I do want to point out a few last things though. First, should this override pass, it is my expectation that school leadership and the school committee do everything they can to work within this budget adjusted yearly for contractual obligations for the next four to five years. As summarized earlier tonight, the structural budget challenges exist for all departments, and will continue to exist in years moving forward. Second, as presented to us tonight, there are approximately $1 million of one time costs included in this year’s request. If this article passes, we as a finance committee will need to review in detail the yearly plan for the what these one time costs in future fiscal years. Again, I will vote to support this article tonight. I appreciate the collaboration of the school leadership and the school committee liaison group over the past six months. I think that probably covers the finance committee discussion, since everybody pretty much has a chance to speak. Are there any hands up to public comments to see.

3:35:50 No, we don’t. Well, I’m looking at these. One of the shockers. So, yeah. I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the school additional operating budget request of $3,051,093. The appropriate subject to a proposition two and a half operating budget override. All in favor. Thank you. Yeah. Couple last articles here are really quickly five or 47 supplemental expenses of several departments. Steve I believe this is a definitely close point on the downside. So, keep things moving. I’d like to make a motion to adapt to recommend that definite definite postponement. And then article 48 school capital needs to be that I believe this is definitely close to the school. So, I’d like to make a motion to recommend that was called the circle. Thank everybody so much for joining tonight.