Finance Committee: March 25, 2024

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:01 The order. This is our second of three budget hearing nights that we have scheduled this year. Um, what that means is there’s been liaison meetings, uh, at least one for every department that we’ll speak to tonight, in some cases more than one. Um, our fin comm has a chair liaison assigned as well as a full liaison team. Sometimes two members or three members make up that team, and they collaborate, uh, throughout the budget, uh, review process over the last couple months, um, some dating back into the fall, we’ve had meetings, um, and this is the night where we, but the, the departments that we review tonight will come up and their chairs, or their board members, or their department heads, whoever’s gonna present to the budget, presents it

0:47 to the full Fin com alongside the liaison team, um, who helps facilitate the conversation as they’ve been much deeper dives into the numbers than we’ll cover tonight. Um, but our full fin comm will review and then we will officially vote what ends up being the fin comm’s recommendation of each of these budgets that roll up into the full balanced budget that will be presented this year. I think it’s Article 26, balanced budget. Um, so just so everybody understands, these budgets are prepared by the town, all the town department heads and boards and commissions collaborate together, income advises throughout the process, and then we review and vote our recommendation. Um, that’s our role in this process.

1:33 Um, so tonight I’d like to, first we’re gonna cover health and Waste Park and rec, and then water and sewer, um, and Health and Waste is on the agenda first time. Uh, so Andrew Petty’s coming up, and Elaine, I believe you already introduced yourself, is line representing the, the Board of Health. Is that fair? Correct. Great. Turn it over to Tara and Andrew and Elaine. Good evening. I have the budget up on screen, so Great. Yeah. Um, so obviously, uh, public health, you know, health waste, but, uh, health department. Um, so we have a total budget this year. Um, yes, we’re level funded again, uh, $324,190, uh, in 2022

2:19 and 2023, uh, the Mass Department of Public Health did a capacity assessment, uh, and completed a summary report. Um, and this was a recommendation to locals about what they should be spending on public health. Um, their recommendation came out that budgets should at least cover $36 and 98 cents per capita to establish even the basic public health capacities that would come out to $739,600. Obviously, our budget is 3 24, so that’s not even 44% of the recommended budget for the state of Massachusetts. So I just wanna begin by stating that, um, Terry and I did discuss this a little bit. Um, this is kind of a overview of all the different topics,

3:06 public health covers,

3:15 They’re all the same thing. Yeah. Okay. Oh, I’m sure. So you can take one pass on. Obviously we understand that the town is in financial difficulties, um, but this is something that we will need to continue to evaluate on an ongoing basis. Um, we’re always very short staffed. Um, obviously through Covid we saw a lot of issues with short staffed, um, but we have to receive a lot of grants to kind of cover, um, some of this shortsighted. Um, so we received four different grants currently. Um, a public health excellence grant, a tobacco control grant, uh, and the CDC Emergency Preparedness grant. Um, we also have a, another, um, with covid like grant that we, that Peabody is actually the host committee for that grant.

4:00 Um, it provides epidemiologist and other, um, necessities that we need for public health. That’s just kind of an overview of that. So those grants you received, do you generally spend those within like 12 to 18 months? Um, some of the grants, yes. We do spend between 12 and 18 months. Um, the Public Health Excellence grant is long term grant. Um, the tobacco control is on a yearly basis. Um, the CDC is on a yearly basis as well. Um, and obviously those are all dependent on federal funds and, and stuff like that and state funding. Yeah. Um, but obviously, so just going forward, um, public health salaries are based on, um, MEU contracts and upgrades and stuff like that.

4:46 Um, and then basic costs in service training, office equipment. There’s not a lot in the health department budget really. Yeah, it’s, it’s really snap. Okay. Did you have anything to add on that budget? That, Uh, no, I just, oh, really, to reiterate what Andrew said, um, you look at the health budget, it’s very lean 324,000 $190, uh, in FY 25. And, uh, the major expense change, it’s gone up 3.5% from last year. And it’s primarily due to contractual obligations and step expenses. But we did have a discussion around our funding

5:32 relative to the state public health assessment. Um, and I think, you know, Andrew brought it up today, not as something to consider for the FY 25 budget, but as we’re thinking longer term about, you know, strategic planning for our budget, this is really relevant data point for us to consider how we wanna invest in public health longer term. Um, so with that, uh, if there are any questions, Andrew, that’s, Um, you mentioned, uh, four grants that you used as supplemental funding sources. Yep. Can you give us an approximation of how much of money is going to be spent in FY 25 from those four grants?

6:19 Yeah. So a lot of the grants that we receive are what we call regional grants. Um, so the CDC Emergency Preparedness grant is for 15 communities on the North Shore. Um, so we have a public health emergency preparedness coalition. I happen to be the chair. Uh, we receive about $140,000 from CDC, um, that essentially covers multiple employees, um, cell phones and stuff like that. Hello. Will allow us to do our job. Happy birthday to you. I’m sorry, I didn’t sing this morning. Hold on. One.

6:52 Oh, I’m just watching a finance committee meeting here, and I did anyway. So how was your birthday? Call you back. No, no, no, no. Put Your zoom please. No, I’m watching it on. No worries. Go ahead and I’ll call. Can you an hour? No, I I it’s gonna go on for hours, so just You need to mute yourself. Sorry.

7:32 Uh,

8:03 Alec, are you muted?

8:07 We’re not on. Can I get, I can’t hear. I know. Can they get us back on

8:13 Crossed the Sure. Oh, okay. Yes. Excuse me. Could you step back? I, we lost you when Ann was on. Uh, we were up to the $140,000 for emergency preparedness. Yeah. So we were just talking about what we bring in for grants. You know, we receive $140,000 for our public health emergency, uh, grants that’s spread between 15 communities. So the, Oh, go ahead. Thank you. Just a follow up question. Could you estimate for us how much money from those funding sources will be added to the amount that, uh, the town is going to approve for your budget? Just so we have an idea of what the total funding will be

9:01 for the public health. So, $0, because you know that that CDC is a federal grant. It doesn’t even come into my, like, I’m not allowed to spend that. That goes to MAPC. There are holding, uh, group for us, and then they spend that out. How the, the region dictates. Okay. So the, these are more contingency funds Yep. As opposed to funds that you will go into operational? That’s Correct. Uh, the Operational budget and the, um, the larger, uh, millions you were talking about. Yeah. That’s a newer program. Uh, so yeah, that came out of covid. It’s called, uh, you know, the excellent Public Health excellence grants. Um, Salem is the housing, you know, the, the housing community for that. Yeah. Um, so, you know, it all goes to, to Salem

9:49 and then they it out, uh, based on expenses and stuff like that. And you’ll be able to hire new people, you said. So I’m not able to hire, we’re able to hire or Salem’s able to hire individual that can support Marblehead. Okay. So that’s inspectors And stuff. That’s, that’s not something that can like, interact with the longer term plan, and That’s correct. And figure out if you have in like increasing CR costs in the operational budget. You can’t, it’s just off the table, it’s not Enough. Yep. That’s correct. Yep. It’s just a theme we’ve been talking about with multiple departments. Um, we’ll talk about it again, probably when we talk about waste in a minute. Yep. Um, we talked about it last year. Yep. So we’re just asking. I understand. Um, Can I ask one question too? Does, do those funds go into the, toward count toward the 37 cents per resident?

10:34 They do not. They do not. Nope. Um, and then just to close out health, I agree with Tara’s perspective that it, and yours Ander, it’s a very lean budget as we look at total department budgets, um, compared to some other departments in town, it’s only $300,000. Um, but as I look at how 23 closed out, um, it came in a little bit under. Yep. Um, and I, I guess my question is, on a year to date basis for 24, um, there was only a slight increase from 23 to 24. Um, do you expect to kind of be around where we budgeted last year? Um, so it really, it’s like most of my expenses are based on obviously salaries. Yeah. Um, in-service training. Um, and then obviously we spend the full amount

11:21 for the mental health, um, contract services. Um, you know, obviously, you know, for miscellaneous office supplies and miscellaneous medical supplies are kind of the other two large ones. Um, I am able to use some of them, the grant money to offset. So we do hold regional flu clinics, and I can use some of that to offset supplies and stuff like that. Um, we buy our flu supply through, um, through a revolving account. Um, so there is no cost per se, to the community on that. So we’re not expecting to go in with, come in way over and on health. Um, that’s correct. So we’re not expecting to have any reserve fund requests from No, we Are not. Yeah. And then as I look at, like you both reported, um,

12:07 the increase is only three and a half percent, and most of that’s the, the, uh, salaries and wages, contractual obligation, that’s corrects. Okay. Um, I think I’m good on health, not by anybody else. So just when you mentioned 700,000 Is what the state, Can you just Give a 30,000 foot? Oh, yeah. So, um, again, yeah. So they completed a capacity assessment for the state of Massachusetts. It was done by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. And in this, it calls out a a dollar figure what you should be spending per capita. So we have 20,000 people in Marblehead, as you know, estimated. Um, and they say that you should be spending $36 and 98 cents per budget per capita for,

12:54 you know, for the annual year. If you were funded to that state recommended level, where would you see the biggest need or where would you address? So really stats and is the biggest need, just answering phones conducted inspections. I mean, so every day is a different day for us. If you look at the items that I listed, we get pulled in a hundred different directions every day. So what we’re working on, we, you know, we might have to put down and go do an inspection or go deal with the complaint. Um, public health is a lot of complaint based, um, or inspection based, um, risk based, um, scenarios.

13:34 Okay. And I’d like to just add, uh, we’ve got a, a big request now for, uh, addressing, uh, substance use in the community. And I, we’ve, uh, been, uh, giving our, um, opera money to, we, we voted to give opera money to, uh, the counseling center. And we’d like to address more of that because it’s a very serious issue, uh, nationwide, as you know. So there are issues that we really would like to, uh, address and just don’t have the funds. I mean, $300,000 for a community of 20,000 is, doesn’t give, um, hi. Doesn’t give our community Yeah, sure. A lot of, uh, a lot of money. We’re, we’re way, uh, woefully underfunded and understaffed.

14:23 Yeah. I mean that $60,000 through the Marblehead Counseling Center is a direct benefit of Marblehead residents. Um, there are very few communities out there that have a counseling center in town that health departments work with. Um, a lot. Most health departments have some of these individuals on staff and are able to serve the community. Um, you know, obviously yes, through covid, we’ve, you know, seen a huge increase in mental health. Um, there’s always been issues with substance abuse. I lost The earphone Community. Um, and we’d love to start to really increase some of those, you know, benefits. Yeah, I’d love a gin and tonic. Okay. What you see it in? It’s not in my, it’s Not Catherine Redmond. Can you mute please? Oh, Sorry. Two gin and tonics. Paul, Would you like to bring,

15:12 I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how this happened.

15:18 Are you able to mute or, yes, I can do. I’m sorry. I figured it out. All right. Um, uh, that’s right. Um, let’s, let’s re revisit, uh, and start with waste. Uh, do You guys wanna vote on the health? Yeah. Should we vote on health first? It’s a separate budget. Um, we can vote on after or now, whatever you prefer. Okay. Why don’t we just close that one. Okay, that’s fine. Um, so I move, uh, that we approve the health budget for FY 25 of 324,000 and $190 Seconds. And then, Linda, do you mind doing a poll, including our members online? Uh, no. No problem. Um, so Lindsay Duby

16:06 Agree. Tim Meyer. Yay. Michael Jenko proof. Tara? Yes. Molly? Yes. Michael, proof. Eric? Yes. And Alex, I don’t think there’s anybody else online. No, Sir. All right. We, the department, um, again, you know, we try to be as level service as possible. Um, we have contract obligations for salary increases. Um, as far as waste expenses, um, we have two large contracts, um, that’s the waste collection contract we, we speak about every year. Um, this is a very good contract. Um, this runs until September of 26, so essentially FY 27. Um, now we’re always trying to pay attention to the cost

16:54 of recycling and the cost of collection. Um, under this contract, I just always wanna mind everybody that we do not pay for the material that we pick up curbside for the recycling. It’s an estimated savings of $300,000 annually. So when we have this change in contract, we’re gonna see a sharp, sharp increase. Yeah. The other piece with that is that there’s only so many companies that are doing collection services for municipalities. They’ve all started to go to national standards and automated pickups. Um, I met with Republic recently and again with that, and the reason is, is that it’s very dangerous to have guys on the back of the trucks. It’s very dangerous for the drivers to get out

17:39 of the trucks to pick up trash. The ideal situation is there’s one guy and one truck automatically picking up trash curbside. Now that, what that means is that you’re gonna have to have multiple trucks that service the community just for trash and then just for recycling. And again, you’re gonna see a large increase because of that. The contract essentially calls for one trash truck, one recycling truck, and then one smaller truck to do some of the smaller streets. So we will see a very sharp increase in that as well. And again, you know, we, we are gonna, we are paying attention to other contracts across the state. Um, we worked with Mass DEP to recognize that, and again, we are looking at long-term planning, so it doesn’t hit us so hard in FY 27.

18:27 Um, so it’s very possible that you’ll start to see these numbers really start to go up Yeah. Next year. Yeah. And, and I’ve said at a number of these meetings, including liaison meetings, that overall, my recommendation, I think a lot of our finance committee recommendation is that the town and school, everybody starts continuing to develop the longer term plan. I’ve talked about research we’ve done to see what other towns have done in assigning growth rates. Yep. Townside school side, but I would say even more within the townside department level. Okay. Growth rates. Yep. And these are the type of things, obviously we’re in the structural deficit, free cash is coming down. We’ve been talking about this town wide at the town meetings.

19:13 Um, but I think we need to continue to move forward with that plan. Um, and there is a commitment from, you know, Alicia and Thatcher, I’m sure they probably talked to you about it as a department head, um, to continue to do that. There’s some things that I believe will address some of the challenges this year on the, on the, uh, warrant. However, um, as he, as Thatcher announced at state of the town, they’re not requesting an override this year. Um, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s, um, one in the future. Yep. I wouldn’t be surprised at all. Yep. I’ll say that again. Um, but at the end of the day, not only are we, should we be addressing just the structural deficit, your costs that are in there, but, you know, factors like this obviously need to be considered. And, and I’ve been on this committee for a long time, I think you’ve been talking about the

19:58 trash contract every year. So crazy. Yeah. Um, I think everybody here has probably heard it at least once, so, yeah. Um, I, I guess that’s kinda an overall statement from me on, on some of the comments you made. Um, I look at fiscal year 23. You finished up right about where you were budgeted. Yep. Um, there was a small interface of a hundred thousand dollars last year. Are you kind of trending towards, you know, landing where that was budgeted as well? Yeah, So, so the only couple little areas that, um, are gonna be probably over again, so other disposal. Um, so other disposal is all your recycling, all your composts, anything that doesn’t fall under the solid waste category. Um, so that has been trending a little higher.

20:44 Um, last fiscal year we spent 177,000, um, and we had only budgeted, um, I wanna say a hundred. So this year I’ve, I’ve pushed that up to 180, um, to try to reflect the true costs. Obviously the trash collection contract goes up, um, annually, so it’s, you know, this year we have budgeted 9 88, it’s going up to over a million dollars next year. Um, so yard waste material, um, we’ve seen a huge cost increase with trucking. Um, and so that’s kind of reflecting that, um, this year, um, we have estimated that we’re gonna spend about 120,000. We’re estimating that we’re gonna spend about 180,000 next, you know, in FY 25. Um, some minor little things, um, a little bit up. But, you know, cial supplies, obviously we’re now

21:32 with the energy reserve fund transferring over, um, we need to cover the true cost of unleaded gas and diesel fuel. So you’ll see some adjustments in our budget based on that. Yeah. We’re seeing that consistently across. And that’s, again, for the people that haven’t joined all our meetings, that’s pretty consistent. Um, Alicia is asking all department heads town wide to estimate their fuel and energy costs in line with what they think they’re going to spend, rather than assuming we’re gonna rely on, uh, res uh, reserve funds. Yeah. And so tho those costs are purely reflective of what I spent last year on diesel fuel and on fuel. Yeah. Obviously fuels, you know, we have an unknown cost of fuel at this time, but yeah, that’s what, what we’re projecting.

22:18 Um, besides that, essentially really, you know, all, all those are pretty known costs. Um, obviously disposal costs are always going up. Um, we estimate that we’ll be disposing of 13,000 tons of material this year, um, which will be a total of $1,587,000. Uh, you’ll see that in my budget. I have level funded the trash disposal. So that’s the 7 25. Um, that number really needs to start to increase to really cover the town side. Um, we use the, um, waste revolving account to cover the rest of that. Um, so 7 25 out of the, the municipal budget and then $862,000 will be coming out of the revolving account. Yeah. And, and that’s an area, and I don’t wanna overstep Tara,

23:03 but I did have some questions. So, um, we talked about it last year. We’ve been talking about it with all departments that have these other revenue sources. Yep. Like grants and revolving funds outside of the general fund. And, and from what I understand, you know, clear gov, again, shout out to clear gov. It’s been amazing for us to use. It sounds like department heads are enjoying it as well, but the next step in the uplift of the technology in town is, is the muni system. And it sounds like moving forward there will be the ability to better be able to forecast and budget all expenses. Not only, not only the amount, the expenses that we review here from the revolving fund, but that level of detail and figuring out what your total expenses are to present

23:49 to FinCo and with the finance director. And then considering all sources of revenue, certainly when we’re in a situation where the, the general fund budget is in a structural deficit. Um, so my question would be, I see here trash disposal and, and there was an original budget request and it sounds like Alicia and you worked together Yep. To draw back some of that. Um, ideally, probably since you’re requesting it from the general fund, you’re thinking it should be coming from there, but this year it’s come down a little bit. Yeah. So, You know, so tra so municipal waste versus commercial waste tends to be about 60 40%. Yeah. Um, so I was using that 60% coming from the town rather than the 60% coming from the commercial side. Um, so we will bring it.

24:35 So, and the hard thing about trash is that it’s always an estimate about what you’re gonna be throwing away from the year. Um, if we have a large storm event, so if you have flooding a hurricane, the amount of trash that you’re gonna be disposing of will be way up. Um, because we will be covering the cost of everything coming out of people’s homes. And that’s a pretty large number. It’s always in the past left a pretty good margin. We always try to leave a little bit of a margin that margin’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller every year. So we really need to start to really think about that. Um, the other piece, so we’re estimating that we’ll bring in about, um, 4,500 tons of commercial waste. Um, that’s gonna generate 1.2, almost $1.3 million. So we can offset that. The issue about always relying on what’s potentially coming in a, we’re about, you know, potentially going into construction.

25:21 And so we could, we’re not gonna be always gonna be open. And so we’re, our amount of commercial waste that we’ll be able to process is gonna be down a little bit. So it’s one of those things where when we’re going through construction or we have these other concerns, the numbers get a little bit hard to estimate. Yeah. So we see, um, I don’t know how accurate this is. It looks like it was run on three 15, so not long ago. Um, but it was, it’s the commercial waste collection revolving balance. Yep. And, um, presumably there’s a methodology as to, you know, what you try to carry in that and then maybe what you use that for. Um, there, there is not, so obviously the only, not the money that goes into there is what comes in commercially. Yeah. Um, the idea when it was originally started was

26:08 that it was to cover obviously the cost of commercial waste going out. So there’s a zero cost for that, but also to give us a, a flexibility to deal with the unforeseens of the, on the, the residential side, the municipal side. Um, but because of our level funded this over the last 10 years, we’ve been covering equipment, we’ll be covering employee costs this next couple of years we’ve been covering construction costs. And yes, I think it’s an appropriate use of funding. Um, so I, you know, I think you and I can discuss a little bit more, trying to come up with a better formula for it and making sure that there’s always a cushion, um, to support if there was a major hurricane in town and stuff like that. It, it’s like relying on free cash. Yeah. It’s not restricted in its use. Um, or is it, is

26:56 It is. So I have to make an request every year of how much I’m gonna spend and that’s my limit and what I’m gonna spend it on. Oh, yeah, Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s a article. But I, I guess what I mean is there’s recurring costs in the general fund, very itemized on screen up here. Can that be spent? Technically, I’m not asking you to do that. I’m asking can it be spent on anything in there? Yeah. So You could, you could change the, the verbiage of the Yeah. You could change the methodology j say we’re gonna cover building costs, we’re gonna cover employee costs, whatever you want, as long as it’s, you know, within the realm of what you’re waste Disposal. But it sounds like annually you’re spending a good deal of that on things that sit outside the operating budget. Correct. To run the, the, the waste. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah.

27:43 Last year we bought a roll off truck that supports all the waste removal. Yeah. And there’s clearly, you know, I just turned to Molly ‘cause we talked about this in depth for the Last three hours earlier today. Um, but the day before, two hours a day before. Yeah. So, you know the items Well, no, there’s clear like, evidence of you and your budgeting with Alicia. Kind of, you know, relying on both of these things as this year has been finalized. And again, I’m not preaching, we are not preaching to towns two depletes, their reserves two zero. But I do think just from a high level financial standpoint Yep. When one side of the revenue is in a structural deficit with the funds it’s paying for, there’s other revenue sources, there should be a reasonable,

28:28 um, estimate as to, you know, do we, can we rely on this revenue and if we can, you know, can we use some of it annually to combat, do our parts to combat definitely the other side. Yep. And it sounds like you’re committed to that. Yeah. And, and you know, I know there’s been some stuff that’s come out of that based on the, you know, fun stuff that’s happened at town meeting Yep. Over the last few years. And I think that’s another reason to have certain balances in there to be able to cover some of those costs. Correct. That are unforeseen. Yep. Um, okay. So that’s, uh, do you have any questions on Yep. Yep. Two questions. Uh, I understand that there’s going to be some capital improvement Yep. Um, taking place up at the transfer station, um, where the, uh, budget is that found

29:16 and roughly how much do you plan to spend this year on that? Okay, so a couple different things as far as that. So, um, we’re relying on warrant articles, past warrant articles to cover majority of the cost. Um, plus the waste revolving account. Um, we had structured in, I believe it was 400 thou, uh, it was $600,000, um, to be used in this fiscal year outta the waste revolving account. Now we’ve had a little setback, um, with the Bidding Pro process for our projects. Um, we did not receive any general contractor bids for the projects. So we’re gonna need to go back to town council and try to figure out how we move forward with some of this stuff. Now what that means is that I’ve bought some equipment, so I’ve bought a replacement compactor that is gonna be,

30:02 you know, that’s sitting on site currently. Um, that was approximately $300,000. There’s gonna be some of the funds that I thought I was gonna spend this year are gonna have to be rolled over until next year. And my second question, talking about the automated pickup that’s coming in 27. Yeah. Now That that’s something that the contractor wants to start to implement or under a new contract, obviously we have concerns about where that would be implemented. Not in all locations. Do I think that could be implemented? So, uh, in the communities I’ve seen that have that, uh, they have the truck with the Yep. Crane and arms are picking up, all of the waste bins have to be standardized. Correct. And all of the recycling bins will have to be standardized. Um, how do we envision that the citizens

30:49 of the town are going to acquire these standardized bins? Is that something that we’re forecasting that the town will provide? Or will each homeowner have to purchase those? So That is something that you can negotiate through the contract. So, um, I really like these long-term, um, waste disposal waste collection contracts. They allow us to plan for long-term spreading out costs over multiple years. 10 years seems to be a very good number. Um, doing waste collection contracts, a, you could work the barrels or the bins into that contract. You can make a regulation to say you must have these barrels or bins. Um, so it can all be negotiated in. So you can have a collection contract

31:34 that says they will provide the barrels. It’s gonna be a 10 year contract at the end of the year, at the end of the 10 years, the company gets the barrels back. Generally after 10 years, those barrels are no good. Um, but obviously that’s an added cost that would be part of the contract. And obviously that’s something that’s gonna have to be part of the conversation. Thank you. Uh, that, ‘cause that addresses my, my last concern, which was do we need to start planning for a capital expenditure to provide the citizens of the town? But it seems that you’re very keen on having that folded into that. Yeah, there’s multiple different ways you could do that. Yeah. That could be part of the contracts. You could buy them separately, um, you know, through, through state contracts or you could mandate what people would have.

32:21 Thank you. Um, and, uh, similar questions on the trash pickup. So it’s running a million dollars this year when the contract is renegotiated, it’s gonna go up at least 300 to cover, so likely it’s even more than that. So we’re looking at a cost increase that’s very significant this year. The entire revenue for the townside only grew 750,000. So it, um, it looks like a scenario where this could, you know, notwithstanding some other long-term planning that we all hope, you know, we can achieve, could overwhelm the town’s resources. That’s correct. In that situation, and I’m not advocating for this, but I know one other towns in Massachusetts don’t cover the cost of trash pickup, right? That’s correct. What is the, I mean,

33:07 and I’m not saying we should do that, but we may have to. I’m, I’m wondering if that were the case, what’s the mechanism? Is that a, is that just a decision, a unilateral decision by your department? Or does that go through, you know, what’s the process of improving The change? So the board of health could mandate a home tax on trash. Um, you know, there’s, there’s several different ways to do it. So you could bring it to town meeting and say, you know, this is a projected cost, we’re gonna need to implement a $25 per home. Um, you know, there’s, there’s several different ways to do it. Um, but yes, I believe that the Board of Health could do it through a regulation to help offset some of the costs. They wouldn’t necessarily have to go through town meeting, but the, these are the things that I wanna bring up now

33:54 as we’re planning for the future that we all need to be thinking about for sure. And yes, they, they are large costs. I got Tim online, he had his hand up first. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Tim Andrew, uh, Tim Meyer. I’ve what along the similar conversation about the garbage ha have you thought about maybe, uh, going into the disposal business and just paying the tipping fees? So we, so for the, for the trash itself, we paid the tipping fees. So all the trash picked up, curbside comes back to our transfer station, and we pay the tipping free fee for that. So we don’t have to pay, uh, we’re not paying Republic to get rid of the waste. It’s coming to us. So we get the benefit

34:39 to pay the lower fee that we have negotiated for with waste management. Um, and, and again, to talk about that a little bit too. So the state of Massachusetts is projecting that all our landfills in Massachusetts will be full or closed by 2030. At that point, trash will have to be either trained or trucked out to a nearby state, or, you know, as far away as Ohio, Detroit, some of that material’s already going there now. And so trash recycling, all these costs are gonna become a very big issue for all communities in Massachusetts.

35:17 But the, the answer is no. You’re not thinking about getting a garbage truck. Uh, no. So I, I’m not thinking about getting a garbage truck. Um, the har the hardest thing, or one of the hardest things with, you know, with us doing the curbside collection ourselves, is the number of employees that we truly take to get it done. And when you start to think about those costs and the injuries that occur, all those additional expenditures I just don’t think are worth it. I mean, I would be glad to sit down with, you know, with this board and try to go over some of that stuff, but I don’t believe it is worth it at all. Now, as part, as our long-term management plan, as well as sustainability, when we look at this next contract, that is another time we’ll be taking a look at the cost difference between going electric

36:03 or staying diesel for these trucks. And obviously there’s a cost difference between the electric and the diesel truck. Gotcha. But these trucks are dedicated to Marblehead, they stay in Marblehead for the most part. They really don’t go anywhere else. So even though they’re JRM trucks, they, they stay in town. Yeah. For the most part. You know, it takes so many trucks to complete the route. I mean, we’re servicing 8,000 homes in five days every week.

36:34 Thank you. Just had a quick question then. The commercial, you said it Yep. In about 1.2 in revenue. Yep. What’s the cost? So what’s the delta between, Uh, the cost? So we, we charge a hundred, uh, $280 a ton. Uh, we, we have to pay out, this is gonna be, so it’s 1 17 43 a ton. So it’s about, um, little, little less than half. But I would just add that’s not the fully loaded cost, Michael. Right. You’re not looking, It’s out of the revolving fund. We’re also paying another employee who only manages the commercial. So, I mean, if you wanna know the fully loaded cost, that’s just the, yeah, you’d have to really cash cost, You’d have to really take a look at and how you cut everything out and what’s spent, you know, for a commercial truck to go through, um, you’d have to do a big formula to really figure out the direct cost of commercial

37:21 Versus you could kind of look at what’s coming into the revolving fund versus going out annual on, like recurring on that, you’re, you’re probably generating some sort of net margin or gross margin on that and then Yes. Yeah. And then it’s being used for other things. Um, this year, part of it’s being used to supplement a request from the operating budget. As we can see, I think capital has been used for in the past. You know, I would say in Molly, in our review of these, this is one of the higher revolving fund balances. Yep. Um, so I don’t know if there’s been any consideration to funding any more out of the operating Budget. So yeah, I think in the future we’ll definitely be funding more. I think I wanted to stabilize and get through construction. Yeah. Um, and then we can really take a look about, you know, what we wanna leave for margins versus

38:08 what we wanna be spending and what we think is like the projections of coming in annually. Yeah. Okay. Quick final question. Uh, approximately by percentage or dollars, what do you leave in the enterprise revolving account for contingencies? In other words, roughly how much of that, those Funds we’ve been leaving appro Funds you utilize annually? We’ve been leaving approximately, let’s see, I think about 25% in there. Seems like a pretty fair margin. Thank you.

38:45 Okay. And then not to step back, but we didn’t really talk about the details, presumably the weights, collection salaries or all the contract, uh, contractual obligations which include both union employees and steps and lanes and cola for non-union. That’s correct. That’s fair. And those have been reviewed with Alicia? Yep. I ask everybody. Sounds like, um, and then we already talked about the expense side, but the overall increase is about 9% on the, the waste side, which is, um, a higher increase than the health side. That’s correct. Yeah. Um, yeah, So I, and I would add to that, Alec, there’s, there’s two items that increase by a large percentage, but I actually think it’s, it’s a better budgeting.

39:33 So if you look at overtime, it increased substantially from what was budgeted for FFY 24. But the budget for FY 24 was much lower than the actual of FY 23. So if you look at FY 25, it is now much closer to FY 23 actual. Yeah. So I think that is improved budgeting. So while it looks like a big increase from FY 24, I think it’s more realistic number, and you see the same situation as it relates to other disposal, uh, which is the recycling and non trash. It’s a big increase over what was budgeted FY 24. It is very close to the FY 23 actual, so the

40:21 increases, you know, some of this is cost, but some of it is, I think in FY 24, it, it wasn’t reflective of act where our actuals came out for FY 23. So we’re, we’re getting ourselves to, I think, a more realistic numbers, uh, in, in those two areas. And, you know, as Andrew, um, described in some great detail, this is an area of increasing costs and most of the increasing costs are, are really outside of the town’s control. Uh, and, and it seems like it’s gonna continue to increase at an increasing rate potentially. Yeah. So one of the areas that we’ll continue to talk about is recycling. Um, so recycling is a commodity. Somebody has to wanna buy the commodity to make it valuable. Um, and what people put curbside has a, a value to it.

41:11 So when we go into our collection contracts, the companies will look at what our contamination rates are, so what shouldn’t be into those recycling bins. So every year we, we send out our Recycle Smart flyer, these are all the items we want in your bin. If you buy a recycling bin from us, it stents right on the top, which should be going in there. If people continue to put items in there that don’t belong, that is contamination. And that lowers the value of our commodity. So if we can really all work together to make sure when we’re looking at the items going into the recycling bin, make sure the rinse they’re clean, that only can help all of us by lowering our cost or potential cost of what we’re gonna be charged for that material. Um, the other thing I wanted to make sure everybody understands is yes, this is a, you know, a budget that covers both curbside collection

41:58 and all the costs of the transfer station. On a busy day, we’ll see 1100 cars coming through the transfer station on a, on a weekday and on a Saturday we can see 1400 cars. It’s probably the busiest place in Marblehead. This may be a stupid question, so I apologize in advance. Marblehead has a bottle bill. Yeah. And a lot of people don’t take the time or trouble to return their bottles to get their nickel back. That’s correct. Does the recycling company collect that money from the Commonwealth Board? They do. Not just the town. They do not, no. So aluminum, so if the material goes back into the recycling recovery facility, it’s gonna get divided out between aluminum and the plastic bottle.

42:43 They’re gonna get paid for that brick of aluminum, which is high value value compared to that plastic bottle that’s gonna be sold to a PET company and made into something else, probably clothing that they’re never gonna get that 5 cents back now in the future. We have talked about having a building at the transfer station where people could bring the redeemable and we could do more redeem redeemable and make a little bit more money On that. Which was going to be the really stupid part of my question, which is, is there any way that the town could try to get that money back to help offset some of the costs of handling the solid waste? Yeah. So you could have, at the transfer station, you could have more of a redeemable collection area where you are dividing those items out, um,

43:29 and helps with some of those costs. It, it seems like it might contribute to some of these, uh, costs that we’re going to be encountering. Actually, just a thought. Yeah, I mean, obviously there’s a lot of different things that go into the commodities market too. Obviously we see a huge amount of mixed metal up there. Um, the commodities market for mixed metal is really down compared to what it has been in the past. So we’re not bringing as much money in as that. Um, there’s a couple of little areas. We used to bring in money for paper and cardboard. Um, with Amazon bringing cardboard to everyone’s home every week that commodity has dropped and there’s no longer a value. Um, there’s a cost now to dispose of that material. Um, we used to work with Reef or, uh, north Shore recycled fibers and Salem.

44:16 Um, they’re, they’re a paper processing company. Um, we would get paid for our paper and cardboard when we brought it over there. Um, they’re no longer in business in Salem, and so we’re no longer able to make money by bringing it there. Thank you. Yep. That’s it for me on the case. There’s no further questions. I move to approve the waste budget of $2,840,038 for fiscal year 25. Second. Linda, Uh, Lindsey, approve. Tim,

44:55 Tim, you’re on mute.

44:59 Approve Michael sh go approve. De Molly. Approve. Mike approve. Eric approve. And Alec approve. Thanks. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. You have All on you too. Very informative. Thank you.

45:19 Yeah, I’ll leave it up. Maybe park and rec next. Peter, how are you?

45:32 See you again.

45:46 Okay. Um, so I have the budget on screen. You probably can’t see it that good, but from left to right, we have a comparison of 23 budgeted versus actual, and then 24 budgeted, and then the 25 budgets is the middle section is comparing last year’s budget versus this year’s budget that you’re presenting to us. Okay. Um, so I’ll turn it over to Molly and team to present. Um, just starting with fiscal 23. So the department ended, uh, with, um, under budget by about $19,000. So, um, were you able to stay within budget there? How is fiscal 24 looking? We’re we’re doing good. Expect to to

46:31 We’ll be, we’ll be under budget. We’ll be more. Okay. I, I had an employee leave, um, early December. Uh, I had trouble trying to find somebody, so that’s gonna be some savings there. Um, I did just fill that position this week, but we’ll still be savings because we’ll be flat off there below a pig. Um, and talking about what’s in there, budget for fiscal 25. So most of the increases are coming from the energy line items that were now being budgeted accurately compared to last year when we were using the reserve. We’ve seen that pretty consistently. Um, and that’s really about it. Other than contractual obligations on the salary side.

47:18 Correct. And so then, um, like we have seen with other departments, your department’s been asked to assume some costs in your revolving fund. So maybe you could talk a little bit about, about that. Um, well we, we’ve asked for, uh, custodial support, uh, for the Build Community Center since it was built. It’s never had a, we’ve never had custodial staff in that building. Um, we had had asked for 15,000 come out of our budget or in our budget. The Council on Aging was gonna add the same to theirs since we share the building. Yep. Um, I had got, uh, cost of about $30,000,

48:05 have a nighttime, uh, cleaning company come in five days a week, properly clean the building. Um, after meeting with Alicia and Thatcher budget wise this year, couldn’t make it happen the way we wanted it to. Um, but Alicia was able to put 15,000 in building departments budget and the recreation pack will pay $7,500 revolving fund, and the council on agent will pay 7,500. So make it happen this year. And we had a long discussion about this and, and I think came to that, don’t lemme speak for everyone, but came to the conclusion that, you know, cleaning service is for a community building, especially one that serves so many different populations within town,

48:50 feels like it should come from the general fund. But like so many other departments that we’ve seen this year where the funds are just not available. And so this is a one time ask to step in, um, to, so that we can provide that service to the community for this year with the hopes that we can work together with everyone for a longer term plan. Uh, and down the road have this funded out of the general fund. So the, and then the other thing that the department had asked for was a, the return, or I guess two new part-time special clerk positions that really would be replacing a senior clerk position that was cut during covid, um, and, and promised a return.

49:36 So this is, it’s not technically a level services mask. Right. So this was not in the budget last year, but because there was historically in the budget, um, we did think it’s relevant to include it as, as a, um, it’s part of this discussion as well. But that’s come back out of the request or Yeah. That So that’s not being, that, that’s not it. Yeah. It was a request. It was so it was a, it is listed as a cut. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, but we, we’ve been asking for this for a couple years now. You know, we, we tried to help the town back in was FY 19. No, I remember. Yeah. And then we, we we’re just gonna keep asking the Glen, you know, that Yeah. It’s another one of those things like I discussed with Andrew that, you know, as growth factors are assigned hopefully is our

50:24 recommendation, this long-term analysis continues towards, um, you know, improving the structural deficit as well as, you know, addressing some of these things that are, are set. Especially if it’s already been in there at some point and it’s been taken out in the past. Um, ‘cause cuts are not the solution long term and marblehead for any department over and over and Over. We did, uh, just recently look at all the fees that we charge, uh, the beach, uh, yeah. Fees and stuff. And we’ve adjusted those. Uh, there is some increases gonna be over the beach this, this coming summer that be winter. Yeah. Summer. Um, and we’re gonna start taking credit cards, which we haven’t done over there. So I think that’s gonna help us.

51:10 There’s a lot of people that come through now that’s, if we take credit cards, say sorry, the closest ATM is down the street or whatever, it might not come back. And we also talked Parked down the road That’s working consistent also with the tones new financial policies as well to move away from the cash based payment Systems. Can we, can we take a step back and kind of explain how the park and rec budget works? Um, in terms of, you know, what’s being funded out of a general fund is more park is my remembering. Yep. When I was Involved with it. Yep. It is. The PAC budget is for PAC and Jamie Salary. Yeah. Recreation is all funded by revolving fund.

51:55 So Molly, when I look at the park revolving fund, is that mostly recreation? No, that’s the park revolving funder. The fees right on the beach? Well, there’s, there’s one revolving fund. Okay. In, in, it’s Called Park, but it has records. It, it’s rec, it’s the recreation fact revolving fund. Okay. But we have, It’s just got labeled done. So You again, pretty much the oh R 0 9 4, there’s only one line where all the beach and gen like stuff that gets allocated kind of park related. Yeah. There’s one revolving cut fund code. Yeah. And the rest of the codes, which parking list. Yeah. Our intake activities, We’re talking about the interaction of revenue sources. Yeah. There’s really just one line item being paid related to rec at all.

52:41 And what we approve, which is, which is My job, which which is our stuff. Yeah. And that’s historically been how it’s, um, and when we look at the balance in a park, revolving fund is more of it related to rec than park Almost all other than one line in it, which has, which is a significant line which Yeah, that’s where all the, all of that kind Of, yeah. So this does not seem like a fund that can really fund anything on this side of the budget because there’s not No. And presumably the rec collection of revenues cannot be funding part expenses. Is that fair? And also a lot of that is just you pay a, you know, a fee for your kid to go to camp. Right. And then that money is funding the direct Well, yeah, it’s funding the salaries Right. Of the, that’s all coming out of this fund. Right. Yeah. So it’s a very direct relation.

53:26 It’s being used and there’s no costs on the other side of the budget being funded by that type of revenue that’s coming In. Right. So that on the park side though, there is some revenue that would come in through this revolving fund from the beach, from the beach, from kayak rentals. Right. Would that come in? Uh, That sits in the, just in the revolving fund. The regular revolving fund that it has its own line item. Okay. So it would be, and I think it’s in here too, if you scroll up, there’s like a million of them. Yeah. Those are all the No, yeah. I’m just trying to, you know, treat every department the same and their discussions. And it feels to me like effectively the, the recreation is funded out of this revolving fund aside from the leader of it. And, and that’s the practice in Marblehead for many, many years.

54:12 And there’s not much room to ask the park to be funding costs from the general fund out of this fund. And we fund all the staff, like even the office. Yeah. The record, the revolving fund right now is funding and you, everybody who’s, who works in our office and in our building on the recreation and park side. Yeah. Um, And you’re Able to use covered clerical, you know, like all the duties that were, once You’re able to use it for one time cost to at occasionally Mm-Hmm. For, you know, capital. Yeah. As long as we’re looking at it. Because like if you’re looking at right now, Monday and February 5th, we opened summer. Now we taken, if we looked at the, the revolving fund right now, yeah. I, we have a significant amount of summer in there that’s not an accurate record. ‘cause that’s gonna be all paid out. I hear You. People have signed up, but you haven’t delivered the services yet. And that’s pretty much the constant with recreation is

55:00 that services are paid out. Yeah. It doesn’t seem like an egregious balance to me. It’s just, again, we’re trying to be very consistent in these discussions. ‘cause that’s the most fair thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Um, two more question to the one I post to Andrew. Uh, from your revolving account, uh, roughly how much do you keep as a cushion or buffer for unforeseen expense? So that, that’s actually harder because we’re constantly moving and it’s not, um, the same year to year. Because if we have I to use this, if we have a speed trip and we take in $20,000, we’re almost paying that out. So there’s no re almost, it’s always kind of moving. Um, there’s not a ton of, There’s not as much reserve. So It’s not, and it’s, and it’s there, it doesn’t have,

55:47 other than our parking fees, which has a start to a season and an end to a season, they’re not going into seasonal balances. So it’s harder to tell. We can kind of tell what we have to pay out. Um, but we have to look at that pretty much day to day, week to week. The, um, the recreation, and correct me if I’m wrong, the programs are not meant to generate a profit. So they really are priced to cover costs as and sometimes below cost in order to have the service provided to the community. So, so there isn’t, uh, a reserve left in that account to cover contingencies or Right. Because it should be able to cover the cost of whatever is going to happen within that program or what we’re serving at the time.

56:33 Okay. Um, it does, you know, there are programs where we have independent contractors and we retain 25% of that, but a lot of that is to use to offset costs to make programs accessible and affordable to our community. Good. Thank you. So it’s hard to keep a real balance, but we’re not saving for any major. Yeah. It’s a little bit of a different usage than let’s say the, the waste.

56:57 Yeah. But the beach revolving fund does have that, so that’s where those revenues are taken. Yeah, No, it’s true. True. Revolves money and money goes. Yeah.

57:09 All. Um, did we want to cover any other details? The, the only other thing is, um, there was a reduction in landscaping materials and of $10,000 and repair and maintenance of landscaping equipment that was reduced by 4,000. So those were cuts that believe you were, we were told again, that could be covered by Yeah, that’s, that’s something that I told Alicia I was comfortable with for a year. ‘cause she said it was, she’s hoping it was only gonna be a one year thing. Um, so, you know, as long as we don’t have any major breakdowns on any of our lawnmowers, just know I’m wearing, you know, wearing tear and stuff like that. We should be all right with that. Um, the, um, or the, what was the other one?

57:55 Was the, um, It was the, the, Uh, the landscaping materials Yeah. Um, you know, we may do one, one less fertilization to kind of cover the cost for that for this year. Yeah. And I, I used to be a liaison and I know that the department’s done that a number of years since dating back to before Covid. I remember these discussions. So it’s just another budget that we’ve reviewed where, um, you know, the, the budget year over year is very tight and there consistently seems to be areas where the departments have to step up and, and find savings. Um, and I hope, my hope is that this long-term plan, um,

58:40 for the park and rec considers the, the true growth of what the park and rec department needs moving forward as Well. We hope, we hope to bring, you know, a lot more money to the town. Yeah. Raise our fees. Yeah. That, that should, we’re looking, we’re gonna be looking at them nailing here to see where we can make any adjustments. Yeah. Um, and in terms of anticipated capital requests, um, you’re thinking about, or you were meeting with the sustainability coordinator, I believe, right after we met with you. How did Yeah, I did about the boilers. He, he thought, um, right now the, the best way to move forward with our gas boilers. ‘cause we got appropriated last year, uh, I think it was like 48,000 put out the bid that came back close to $90,000.

59:28 Geez. Um, so I’ve got, um, another 42,000 appropriated this year, capital improvements to cover the cost for that. Um, he just, he didn’t think he had the time to really, he needs to get the ball rolling, he said, and looking to getting grants and, and stuff like that further down the road. But he said that, you know, this time it, it would be best to, would it be, uh, of the boilers would be best just to move forward with the gas boilers on this project.

1:00:06 Um, and then you are also be requesting a dump truck. Yep. And, um, an electric mower. Yeah. We didn’t, not gonna get the electric mower, but Okay.

1:00:22 That lost electric. ‘cause the electric mower that we did purchase last year worked out well. Work.

1:00:33 Okay. Did anybody else have any questions for the park and rec?

1:00:38 Tim? Oh, Tim. Oh yeah. Tim, you’re on mute.

1:00:45 I, I try to be Google my protocol and then I forget. Um, the donation that was given a number of years ago for the ice rink, uh, I think it was like $3 million or something like that. What, um, the interest that’s being spun off from that each year, is that going back into it? Or is that going into Park and Rec? Because if it, I mean, that could be another a hundred thousand just in the interest. A Great question. Yeah. Wish. I know. So that would, that would be a question for Alicia. I think that must sit within the cash balance assets of the town. It’s, it’s in that line item where that money sits. Um, and that’s, that’s something that’s a decision’s gonna be made on that between the Board

1:01:31 of Selectmen and the recreation pack commission on how, how that money will be spent. And then once that’s decided, then the recreation pack commission and I found, we see how that Ate to figure out what to do with, So. Right, right now it seems like that’s just rolling back into it. Yes. Yeah. Without confirming with anybody else. It’s, that’s, that’s what it seems like. Yep. I’m pretty sure.

1:02:02 Okay. Um, did you wanna make a recommendation? Yes. Um, so can I make a mo a recommendation that we approve the budget and we’ll make a motion to approve the rec and park budget for $978,337. Is that we have on Your Yes. Second. Linda Lindsay approve. Tim Approve. Michael approve. Approve. Molly approve. Michael O’Neil approve. Eric approve. Approve. Thank you very much. Appreciate. Thank You. Thank you for your time presentation. Thank you.

1:02:45 So, Alec? Yes. When I first came on the board, we had a full-time clerk and approximately code. Now we have no clerks except for those two time clerks that played out of all clerk time. So we had one and a half completely revolving whatever. No, he is actually, that’s,

1:03:15 thank you. No, I haven’t. All right. Here, there, she’s, I’ve been in meetings all day. I’m losing my sight.

1:03:29 That’s time long. Yeah. Amy joined us for a three hour meeting earlier too. And you’ve stayed the whole time too. Yeah. Did always something to learn. Yes. Or help, help teach us, right? Yeah. We, we can learn a lot more from you.

1:03:52 Make sure I have the right

1:03:57 Ference thing before we start. Yeah. Okay. I’ll have you start once we, once he gets all set up, I’ll have you give a direction. Okay. Um, so Pat, who is the chair liaison, I believe is unable to join us tonight, but he did share his detailed notes. And I believe Lindsey and Tim who are both online, both participated in the water and sewer budget review. Um, I know Amy knows her numbers like the back of her hand and you guys probably know them as well. Um, so I’ll turn it over to Amy, um, you, Tim and Lindsay. And, um, the rest of the committee will weigh in and ask, we have questions.

1:04:44 Okay. I’ll let the, uh, chairman of the water and sewer commission start. I, uh, I just wanna, every year when we come in, people don’t realize we have schedules over time in our budget. They always say, why do you have scheduled overtime? We’re a 24 7 operation and we have people on call working on the weekends. So that’s why that item is in there. Understood. Thank you.

1:05:19 Um, so, you know, this is an enterprise budget where it’s not funded by property tax revenues. It’s funded by collections of the water and sewer fees and it spends all of its expenses with those fees. Um, it also spends, I believe, a payments in lieu of taxes to the town. Um, just so everybody understands, this is not a budget that kind of rolls up into the property tax revenues and all of these inter interchanging revenues that we’ve been talking about with other departments. It’s really self-funded. Is that a good way to put it? Yes, Absolutely. So I guess we can dive right into kind of the, the, the water budget. Um, I’ll start with the totals of the water salaries

1:06:05 and, um, kind of what that increase represents annually year over year. Sure. So, um, the water budget, uh, field staff or it has remained consistent for the, uh, I hate to even say how many years I’ve been for the fifth, 14 years I’ve been here. So there’s been no increase in that. But we have seen a dramatic increase in, um, EPA and DEP requirements. And we also are really trying to get ahold, have been really trying to get ahold of our asset management. So you’re gonna see that the, over the years there have been added positions into the admin part of the, um, projects that we have. So, um, our GIS field tech is, is a, a, um, an item like that.

1:06:51 So GIS, which we talked about earlier, is that map where you lay all of your assets on top of, and we actually have work order systems that lay on top of that. And then, um, we’ll be able to do, um, to like meet the lead and copper rules, uh, which are your water service lines coming into your house. Uh, by October we should have something now you’re gonna be able to go to the computer, click on it and see when your service was installed and what it was made out of at that point. So those are all requirements by the government, but there are big lifts for water and sewer. We didn’t have, we didn’t have a really in depth GIS um, uh, function going on. So, uh, you saw last year that we invested in the servers, uh, for the town, which the town we’ll be able to use also.

1:07:36 Um, and now we’re investing in the professional, uh, technical, um, staff to have in and to have the consultant on. So those are where you’re gonna see some bigger changes. Um, we also have gone to temporary, uh, to part-time clerks. And those are basically, um, what we hoped they would always be retirees that come back to do our dig safe. So we do over 3000 marks a year. So every time you’re gonna dig in the street, you’re gonna call your guard. You’re gonna call 8 1 1 dig safe to make sure that you don’t hit a utility. And to protect the utility, we come out and market where our utilities are. So hopefully that you don’t hit strike your water service when you’re putting a bush in. ‘cause that can happen. So, um, but it became really overwhelming

1:08:22 because it took one person away from two person teams. So then, uh, the commission was, um, was grateful or was ha I was happy enough that the commission agreed that if we brought somebody in part-time. So that’s why you see those smaller ones that have been added along the way and they’re really kind, they’re basically like a seasonal help. So, um, and they’ve been there for a few years, so it’s not like there’s a new position that you see coming in, but you will see that they are, um, they’re funded, but we might not use it all and that’s whether we can fill a position or not. Um, the other thing that you’re gonna see here is, um, you might see some small changes in either water and sewer. And those are, uh, we like to hire trained

1:09:07 and move up as we can. Uh, we’re required to have certain licenses by the state, uh, to operate a water system. So as people get their licenses and get their training, we like to move ‘em up. Um, we also have a stipend because through the whole gov hr, um, review, there was no way to break out the fact that water and sewer were emergency departments and carried phones and have to be here within 20 minutes. And no more than four people can be out of one department at a time. ‘cause we have to have a crew that’s always ready to go. So, um, we, uh, the commission came up with the idea of a stipend, at least to pay people for extra license that you have to have to have that position. So you’ll see that that will increase as, as we get a more skilled, uh, labor force.

1:09:56 Um, the other thing, through many conversations with Alicia, uh, trying to figure out best practices, again, water and sewer is completely, um, self-funded. So it’s all driven by rates. So our concern was that we don’t have a reserve fund. We’re not allowed to have a reserve fund as an enterprise, uh, department either. So how do we deal with something that we don’t know is gonna happen? Now we have a couple of different options right now that we don’t know. Um, the, uh, union labor force doesn’t have to tell you that they’re gonna retire. So as our labor force gets a little older and no one tells us we would have to pay that out, that could mean that you’re not gonna be able to fill back. And it’s really important that we have to eight is how

1:10:42 and make all of the things, all the college work. Um, so after talking to legal counsel and to Lisa, that’s what that retirement center incentive, we usually carry zero. But now we’re gonna be funding that. We’ll be funding that pretty normally at that amount as we go through, uh, forward through the dues. But again, different than another department. If this is not used, it drops down into our retained earnings was ask and we be moved over to our capital improvement. Any, any Surplus if you want to call it that in any given year budget versus actual just goes back into retainer. Right? Yeah. And then that can be used for capital and things like That. Right. So even though you do see a higher increase and it almost looks like we’re putting another person in, we’re not putting a person in.

1:11:28 We’re carrying on that just in case. We also, uh, are in a year of negotiations, uh, for union, for the union contract. So, um, we followed the town to carry 2%, but if they get more than 2% water and sewer is gonna find that money somewhere. We can’t go into the salary reserve fund or the general fund. So that’s another place we, um, might have to use that. What, What’s your profile look like? Is there a lot of people that are set to retire or how’s that? No, actually we’re, we’re, we are on the younger side. Uh, I have more of my office staff is, they’re not there yet, but they’re getting close, you know, and I, I don’t know, Linda might be i’ll to this plane. I don’t know the number of years of service and how long and all that crazy stuff.

1:12:13 But, um, they, they’re closer. My field staff actually, we’ve gone through the big retirement piece and uh, so I um, although I have, uh, people who have been with us, you know, 15 to 18 years, 19 years, they’re still all younger than me. So everybody’s staying, I think. So all that is going well.

1:12:38 Okay. Um, so on the expense side for water, um, you see a pretty significant increase. Um, I can add the column here for the numbers too. Yep. So here’s one thing that clear up does not do. When you don’t carry money the year before, it doesn’t give you a percentage of change ‘cause it would be divided by zero. So right. Again, after these long conversations with Alicia and how we, so step back a little bit. Um, the finance director we had before, we had a lot of difficulty getting our audited numbers by the time we needed them. So we had a very small, uh, request for retained earnings,

1:13:27 which is our construction article two years ago. And last year we still didn’t have remember. So we had a short request last year too. So, you know, our concerns with not knowing and having to take smaller construction articles was what do we do if we have a major problem and how do I do that? We looked into, um, and again with water, it, it’s a major water problem that has to be fixed right then. So I, I can’t go and look for funding ‘cause it has to be there. Um, so we talked about a good number for that and I believe we’re at like one point half percent, but, so we are looking, this is the first year you’re gonna see an emergency allocation piece put in here. So under water improvements you’re gonna see $60,000 just,

1:14:12 uh, like five lines up. That yellow one. Yep, yep. Um, yeah, I just put some in Yellow that we’re, okay. So that’s what we carry that we carried that as an emergency allocation. Again, that’s something that’s gonna drop out. We don’t plan on using it. It’s gonna drop out into our construction article. Um, and it’s gonna allow us, uh, kind of that breathing room if we do have a major water break, which water breaks are something you don’t plan for. And we had a major one two years ago and see a big hit that time. I was lucky enough, uh, we were still had extra money left in the borrowing from MWRA so I was able to fund it with that. I didn’t have to reach in and find, um, yeah it was, but a lot, a lot more than 60,000. And then the next thing that happened was, uh,

1:14:58 our retained earnings are really large this year because as I said last year I didn’t get an audited number in time. So, um, I was told to be very conservative and I was very conservative. So this year, now that we have an audited number, uh, that number is large and so you’re gonna see a big construction article come forward this year. Um, we took a small amount of that and put it up here into, uh, up into our operating budget. And that’s where you’re gonna see other equipment. So we are also having a lot of trouble with equipment Right now. It’s, it’s just getting older and the more we go into the computer world, the, the less time I see that, um, our, our pump stations, they, they just don’t seem to last like wipes wanna be the

1:15:43 failures all the way around the way. So we’re kind of feeling out those technology problems. Uh, so we took some of that money and put it into this other equipment that again is another emergency application. So there’s, you know, $92,000 that you didn’t see last year that you’re not, it’s gonna come in one is not gonna affect the rate at all ‘cause it’s coming out of our retained earnings 32 and the 60 is just 1%, um, or two of the whole, which is, but um, so, uh, and speaking with Alicia, those are low numbers to carry for that type of, uh, reserve fund. So the fact that retained earnings came to came in higher, um, is that a good thing given your needs right now with, with respect to capital?

1:16:28 So our retainers actually did not, okay. If you come in June and sit to our rate study where you get this whole other thing, um, that’s when we looked at our five year capital plan and we try to figure out what projects we wanna do two years from now and how much that’s gonna be. Um, and we try to make it as even as you can. Obviously you’re gonna have increases. Um, and so we do try to take that into account, but what we do is take the average of three years sales for water and we use that as, let’s use that as our usage. That’s what we’re gonna guess for our usage. And then we work backwards from covering this budget and covering our construction article for two years out. We had those two things together. Okay. And then we use that estimate of usage. So, uh, last year we had a wet year.

1:17:15 Those aren’t good for the water department wet years ‘cause nobody wanted their lawn. So therefore our construction article will be a little smaller two years from now. Um, this year it’s so high only because we did not get the real, we didn’t know the retained earning number. So that’ll impact, we’re really carrying an extra $800,000 that we could have used the last two years. But, you know, because of the auditing process just didn’t get, but When the process goes through and you’re able to use it in a few years, it will be a good thing. Well so it’s a good thing that went through and now I, we have the money and we have a big, we have big projects coming that we’re not gonna be taking loans for. Yeah. Um, and then it will kind of even out. Okay. You know, I, I don’t, it, it’s gonna be interesting a how we need to come with such a big number ‘cause we never come with numbers as big.

1:18:01 But you have to look back at the last two years and see how much smaller they were before you realize. Yep. Mm-Hmm. That’s what it’s, Yeah, it makes sense. I’m sure you’ll be able to explain it as best you can to town, but um Okay. And then as I look at Pat’s notes, So I did figure, I don’t know what in here but Yep. It’s a hundred thousand dollars different. So, um, did you want me to vote the number that Pat gave me, which is a hundred thousand less than this? No. So that’s actually, um, if you can vote that number, it’s just that the a hundred thousand for that long-term loan should have been up in the MWA usage, uh, fee that three 13. Right. One step above it. Ah, gotcha. So you add those two together,

1:18:47 you would add, um, up to get to the full MWRA cost. So our loan is um, it’s a 0% interest loan. We took it for two major projects that we knew we had to do ESCO Street and Humphrey Street. Um, had we done the original pay as you go, uh, it probably would’ve taken us about four or five years to do those streets and people do not like to see you on their street for four years in a row, which is so, um, we borrowed 2.2 million to do ESCO and three, um, 3 0 5, 3 0 5 9 40 to do Humphrey Street. Uh, so our payback is 5 25 9 40 that will, um, work for 10 years.

1:19:33 We have to pay that all back in 10 years. Um, the other is the usage of MWA charges us for the water and that we don’t have that final number yet. So, um, it looks like it will be around 304,000, which is actually less than my commission saw. ‘cause we did get our first feeling that it was gonna be a little smaller. They say they were saying 4%. So I know Pat’s on around was talking about that. And it’s oftentimes finalized after we approve your budget. Do you expect that we’ll have to re-vote to your budget if we voted tonight again? Or? I can’t remember how we usually do this. Um, so usually we’re pretty close. Okay. If not, we might be a little over. Okay. Um, so we’ll go tonight and then back. I Think if we need to change it, just let us know. Yeah. So I did bring these numbers down.

1:20:20 Um, when the commission saw these numbers, which was before we saw the first view of RA’s budget, uh, we were looking at 4,000,020. So, okay. Um, IMW does have their first one out. It’s only about three, I think it’s 3.9 for water and free overall. Okay. So I think that’s gonna be a pretty close number. Okay. Does anybody have any other questions on the water before we move to Seward? Um, sitting on my so gonna vote them separately. Yeah. So like Tara did I, I guess we’ll, we’ll close out, uh, water now and it sounds like I should be voting the six to oh seven. Yeah. Okay. Um, Tim, I’ll let you, uh, take Okay. Here, or Lindsay, whoever wants to, since you’re, I make,

1:21:06 I make a motion that we approve the, uh, budget for the water department at $6,207,433. Second the motion. I Second. Thank you. Um, Linda, can we go around the room? Yes. Uh, Lindsay Press. Tim. Yes. Michael Jko approve. Sarah approved. Molly Approved. Michael O’Neal approved. Eric approved Alec? Yes. Okay. Moving on to sewer. Um, we’ll go to the sewer salaries. A consistent type story as water. Yeah. So the one thing that’s different with sewer is, uh,

1:21:54 ‘cause I know you’ve asked a lot about the FY 23 budgets. Um, yeah, we have not been able to fill our mechanic, um, pipe fitter two, which is our, he’s like our diesel mechanic. He does our trucks and he does the 28 pump stations. Um, we have not been able to fill that position. It’s, it’s not funded high enough to, to uh, compete with the outside world. Um, so if you looked at last year, you’d see that that was not filled. Uh, we’ve been running seven with seven instead of eight. And it, it is starting to really, uh, wear on, you can see it on the employees. So our thought process now is that we are gonna hire a heavy equipment operator and we are gonna take from within the ranks and actually send them out to uh, get diesel MEChA

1:22:39 to be a diesels mechanic certificate and uh, to be able to work, send it down to back on to work on our back trucks and um, get ‘em some more skills. We have two people who have the ability, they just haven’t been sent to school or, you know, didn’t take that track. So, um, you’re gonna see that it’s lower right now. Uh, ‘cause this year I planned on not filling it for six months ‘cause they’re gonna have to send them to school and you’ll see that there’s a higher part in our education. And then hopefully we’ll move one of the, one of the, uh, candidates up. So that’s why you see it carried last year probably wasn’t, wasn’t used. And then, uh, next year with the, uh, the six months, somebody will come in.

1:23:20 Okay. That’s for vehicles, Right? So water and sewer works on their own vehicles. And then we also have all the mechanical pieces for the pump station. So every pump station has pump Pumps and the vehicle? Yes. Okay. Yeah, it’s both. Gotcha. So they have to be kind of a jack of all trades. It’s not really, Yeah, I was just thinking more of if it was vehicles, if there was some way to outsource it. But if it’s the vehicles in right on onsite Stuff, you can’t And unfortunately we’re still, we now are finding we have to outsource some of the vehicles anyways because it comes down to the computer. You know, we can diagnose it with our computer pieces, but we can’t fix a lot of it. So you’ll see that slowly shift too. But the pump stations are still, some of ‘em date back

1:24:06 to the, uh, sixties and, you know, are still people. You can still work on everything, but as we go forward, those are gonna become more difficult too.

1:24:16 Tim, did you have your hand up? Yes, I, uh, I did. And just, uh, being on the committee for that, I just wanna stress the importance of having a, uh, a heavy equipment, uh, maintenance repairman be, I mean, having run my own quarry at one time, I mean, without, without being able to do stuff in house, you, you’re really in a bind. But a question for you, Amy, and this was discussed earlier today with one of the other departments, if you’re gonna send them out for diesel, uh, repair training, um, and you talked about this with the training for the CDL for different people. Have you contemplated making them, uh, sign off on that if they leave the department within a certain period

1:25:02 of time that they have to refund the money? Yeah, so we, we’ve talked about that and aren’t sure what all the legal ramifications and everything are now with an HR person, we’ll have that discussion with them. Um, but basically if we’re set, I don’t generally send anybody this, this is gonna be, um, something different getting to be a mechanic. So we kind of are looking at two employees. We are pretty sure are gonna stay for a long time. So, so I’m hoping, you know, we’re the heads and our bests, but I, we’ve brought people in who have the training and they actually have left for um, the larger entities. We can’t also fight with the districts either. They make so much more money to water districts

1:25:48 and sewer districts that are treating water in sewer. So we’ve lost quite a few people to them. Um, but they did come in with something so I think we’re probably better off right now to be using people that have worked for us for uh, a multitude of years and you know, have said they’re gonna stay. So we’ll see. CDLs are a little more difficult though because we need everybody to get CDL training and we’re gonna try to do it in-house, but it’s still a big cost now, uh, since they’ve changed the worlds on how to get it. So Thank you.

1:26:23 Now the expense side

1:26:27 got about 145,000 increases. So on the expense side you’re also gonna see the emergency allocation piece come in. Um, oh yeah, there’s one other thing I wanna talk about too. Um, where is it on this side? They’re usually pretty similar building, right? Other equipment. Okay. Other equipment. 25,000. You can get your notes, huh? Hold on. I might see my notes. My notes show it. Uh,

1:27:04 Contract increase. Yeah it is under that 5 8 8 8 9 other equipment. Yeah. So, um, that is uh, the emergency allocation that we end up put in here for the expense side. Um, and then the other piece here is equipment. Uh, we, well there’s a few. One is, um, you won’t see a big increase in fuel for water and sewer because water and sewer has always had to cover their own fuel. So we don’t have to bring that back into our budget like the other budgets are gonna have to do. Um, but we are seeing a big increase in our electrical power. Um, but that was on the water side side we don’t have as much ‘cause they carry quite a bit. Um, well still 10%. It’s one of the bigger items.

1:27:52 Uh, and all I did was look at last, uh, the 50% where we are this year to try to figure it out. There is a, a small, uh, there was an increase in rate, but it really is the fact as we move up into these new stations, they are heat and electric. Our heat is now electric and a lot of our pumps are running BFD. So they tend to run, use a lot more electricity for some reason. So, um, we did see the increase in that where you didn’t in the uh, diesel and the gas. ‘cause those actually this year are a little less than last year. So, um, percentage wise, one up a little less. Uh, our other thing is the, so as you said, you, you called it a pilot, but we actually um, call it the general fund. Um, it’s that transfer general fund is uh,

1:28:40 general government business. This one. Yeah. So that’s what water and sewer will pay. We get that number from the finance department. It’s a really long involved math process to get to that, but that’s what we pay for the services Yeah. Of the town. Yeah, We talked about that earlier today Molly, right? Yeah, with Harvard too. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Consistent. So we can hand it down. Yeah, we just pay that one. It’s a number. Um, the other thing you guys talked a lot about earlier was the health insurance and actually water and sewer carries the health insurance and the workman’s comp and those pieces in their funds. So they’re off. So it is, they are able to do it. Um, water and sewer has always done it, so it’s a lot easier than I’m sure it is to split up because again, the um, yeah those,

1:29:27 the retirement piece is a little tricky. You know, you can remember who worked for you or names, but their wives or what I get lost or you know.

1:29:37 Yeah, no, we’re seeing anywhere from like eight to 9% increase on town side in their projections for health insurance. Yeah. And that’s what, um, we’re seeing at SESD and MWRA too. Between nine and 10. Yeah. Um, okay. The other thing is there’s a GIS lift in this one too. So, uh, you’re gonna see, oh, there’s one more thing. So there’s a GIS lift, which is our server and our asset management. But we also, now that the town is looking at, uh, an it, uh, group that they joined, water and sewer has, uh, an amount of money that we’ll be funding so that we can use that group. So that’s carried in here too. That wasn’t here before. It’s under other professional technical services.

1:30:26 There isn’t broken out for some reason. Yeah. Um, so that other professional technical services is always all services that we use with the town. Okay. Um, I think GS is a little further down. Yeah. That you’ll see an increase too. And then the South Essex Sewer district. Yeah, so South Essex is, that’s a tough one. So, um, we pay what South Essex, uh, puts, uh, puts forward as our bill cost per collection. We also have, this should be broken out, but we also have an SRF loan, which is a 2.5% and it’s from repairing the pipeline on one end of the harbor. Uh, that has two more years on it,

1:31:11 but that’s over a million dollar payment. So that’s in that, um, the SCSD has now projected out for the next four years and even though we went down a little bit this year, they are gonna be, um, I think they’re down next year and then the year after that they’re gonna see a 6% increase. So, you know, we’re working to try to find out with SCSD what they can do to try it off 6% before we go and everybody will pay a lot of its debt service off. Um, SCSD falls sees a lot of debt service that, um, that was excluded. Debt service that’s starting to fall off and the debt service that’s coming on is not excluded. So it’s five to two and a half percent. So it’s gonna be an interesting budget time.

1:31:57 But, um, you know, so this year, yes, we can all be happy that they charged us less this year, but it’s gonna get, it’s gonna hit us really hard for two years. So, and I can’t, we can’t save money for that fact, you know, it’s just not allowed. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens. Alright. Maybe as you recall, oh, I’m sorry Tim, I didn’t see you there. I I, I just wanted with the south, the Southwest sewer district, they put on a, the commissioners put on a little dog and pony show for people to go to over at the commission and they went through everything and it was basically a rollout that they’re going to be doing some big budget outlays coming up soon.

1:32:43 Would you like to talk to that, Amy and how those numbers might affect in the future? Yep. So South Essex has been around for, um, sewage district’s, been around for a very long time. The treatment plan is in Salem Marble had joined in 1978 and in 1978 is when they went from primary treatment to secondary treatment. And that is probably the last big push they had there in, uh, investing in equipment and upgrades. So we now are looking at a plan that, uh, is older and has got meet higher EPA standards. So they are, um, they’ve been really good. They’ve gone to call and center try to figure out, um, how they can do this budget. They’re putting a 20 year plan together, but we are looking at large costs, um,

1:33:30 over there coming down the road. So, I mean, the good thing is that they’re, they’re strategically planning it and they’ve, you know, set up stabilization funds. So they, they have a, uh, double a bond rating and I believe, and, you know, they wanna make sure they keep that bond rating and that they can, uh, move forward. There’s only, um, five towns in this district, so there’s not a lot of places to spread the money around either, but it will be some. So As you recall last year I was on the water and serial liaison committee, and I remember during your presentation to at me, uh, one of the things you highlighted was a rather startling increase in chemical costs Mm-Hmm. That had hit you. And, uh,

1:34:17 so it’s sort of a two part question. You kind of touched on it a little bit. Um, is there any contingency that you can build in for unexpected, uh, chargebacks from the south uh, sewer district? Um, I don’t believe there is. I haven’t, I’m not sure. I’m not an accountant, so I haven’t asked all the right questions on how you would do that. But every time I come up with something, uh, I’m told that you can’t have a reserve fine. You can’t have the sure. Be working.

1:34:58 So I, yeah. And I, I kind of wish, you know, they wouldn’t give us a negative. They could charge us, so at least it would stay even, but they’re not allowed to do that either. Okay. So if you are getting with another breathtaking cost of chemicals, you’re just gonna have to figure out what to do with at that point. Right. And South Gasex does the same thing also. You know, they try to, uh, like they did with the chemicals, they actually, um, sold the truck off one of their, they started to look at the extra equipment they had. They sold the truck off that went all to chemicals. They, um, they found other funds that they didn’t spend as much and they made transfers at the end of the year, they are moving, uh, they call ‘em RDAs, but they’re holding money over to try to help, you know, this year with the chemicals that will be coming next year.

1:35:45 Um, and, and it has stable, it has, uh, stabilized a little bit, but it still stabilized high. It didn’t stabilize well. So the other thing is waste, uh, getting rid of their solids is gonna increase dramatically as the years come forward too. So I don’t know where all that’s gonna go, but, uh, you know, south Tex is under two and a half, but it’s under two and a half for their whole budget. So individual towns can go up way more than two and a half until they hit the, the full majority hits two and a half. But I’m not sure what happens when they have to go over two and a half too. So we’ll be looking at that. Uh, ‘cause I don’t know if that has come back to all the towns and all town meetings or not. So that’s a possibility in that three years out, that two,

1:36:33 three years when I said they had 6% increase. Thank you. So

1:36:42 I kind of like more of a bigger picture, uh, question. Um, I think remember talking to you before about when you plan like larger projects or like for example, the Humphrey Street project, strategic planning and all that, if, you know, coordination is done with, uh, utility IES and National Grid, um, it was great for like a year and now they just ripped it up right away. National Grid did. Mm-Hmm. They did. And I was wondering like obviously that has been practice, you mentioned it before, coordinating with them some, it’s not perfect all the time come up when they have to do it, but it doesn’t seem like a small project that they’re doing. Um, and I, something tells me it’s probably on them not really caring about, um, you know, what had just been done. Nope. But, well, I figured, I don’t know if

1:37:30 that’s a highway question or, I know it used to be contained here, so I think you’d probably be the best person to speak to that. Yep. So, um, two years ago, uh, thankfully for me, because it’s made my life a little easier, in some ways way more difficult than others, but the commission allowed, um, to enter into an agreement that I could do the administrative part of the, the highway. Um, which has been extremely helpful because now I can talk to what, uh, national Grid directly, where before it was the DPW director who always just dealt with them. So, um, we went down Humphrey Street to Desco Street to help the DPW to pave those roads. And then when I stepped in and said, now we’re paving Humphrey Street

1:38:16 ‘cause we’re done, they, you know, you don’t have any cast iron. So the big deal is, um, gas and water and sewer go back to like the 1930s in this town and they’re cast iron. So if everybody remembers Atlantic Gav, uh, it was cast iron pipe down in Atlantic DA gas pipe. They paved over it and then they had gas leaks like every 50 feet or every 200 feet. Just seemed like we had a million patches on at new. Um, so, uh, you know, learning from past practice, we weren’t gonna do that anymore. We weren’t gonna pave over cast iron, so water went down, ESCO and Humphrey and Water cannot go next to an old gas Maine. So I figured good they’ve fixed all their gas, we’re all set. I told ‘em we’re gonna pay last year. And we found out that they have four gas mains on, um,

1:39:03 today on Humphrey Street. One being the old gas tire. That’s what they had to get rid of this time. So they are still coordinating with us, uh, because it said it wasn’t on their plans to do, but because we wanna try to pave that street, then they had to go back to do it. So you’re gonna see, um, we have three, three crews in for gas all the time now. They’re trying to catch up to, uh, what water and sewer has planned and where the paving needs to be done. So It’s gonna be a little, They’ve been outside my house for about a month right now, and every time they put the backhoe in it shakes my whole house.

1:39:40 Yeah. Construction does that. Unfortunately. The yellow pipe you see in town. That’s right. It’s not us, it’s gas pipe. Okay. Right. All coming through my yard. I’ll remember that. Yeah, we gotta put your thing out front now. It’s like, I guess, Oh, the meters, when they put up the new gas mains, you have to put your gas meters outside, so. Yep. I learned a lot about them too, but they have been, uh, you know, they’ve been very helpful. Uh, a lot different. I’m not, I don’t feel like I’m hitting my head against the wall every time I run into gas anywhere, so That does, that is working better.

1:40:20 Tim, Turn It over to you. I don’t think we have any other questions for the water budget. Um, this is the number, if you can see it, That that’s a sewer actually. Yeah. Oh, I’m sorry. I called it water. I caught says Water. Oh. As, as Carl taught us, it’s always water than sewer. That’s right. That’s right. Bring it in. Take it out.

1:40:46 I would like to make a motion that we, uh, accept the budget for the sewer department of $5,394,543. Objection. Demotion up. Lindsey. Approve. Tim Approve. Michael Janko. Approve. Approve. Molly, approve. Michael approve. Eric approve. Valid, Approved. Thank you very much for your time, as always. Thank you Amy. Thank you Carl. Thank you for the hard work that you all do.

1:41:25 Before we sign off, I’ll just allow for quick public comments if anybody has any, it

1:41:36 doesn’t look like we have any hands up. I’ll adjourn us at 8 42. Thank you everybody. Thank you.