Finance Committee: April 1, 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.

0:00 Um, before we get going with the budget reviews tonight, I think we have Linda, some prior meeting minutes to vote, um, few finance committee meetings. And we’ve shared this all with everybody and people have provided feedback. Um, so Linda, can you just remind me the dates? Sure. Uh, February 5th. Yep. March 4th and March 25th. Okay. Like to make a motion, uh, to approve the meeting minutes for February 5th, March 4th and March 25th. Uh, finance committee meetings Second. The motion. Okay. Can we approve them all with one roll call or do we have to, I think because someone’s online,

0:46 if I’m following over the years, we should go around the room Three times. No, just once. Perfect. Okay. Lindsay, Ralph. Mike, approve. Eric Approve. Approve the February 4th. March 5th. February 5th. March. February 5th. March 4th. And abstain. March 25th. ‘cause I did not attend. Yes. Very good. Molly Approved. Sarah approved Michael approve. Tim approve, uh, Sustain or, uh, absent on, uh, March 4th, sustain

1:32 and chair approve. All right. So tonight on our agenda, um, the one posted online, uh, we’ll be reviewing town clerk and elections budgets together, uh, we’ll be reviewing the library budget next, and all of the select board budgets the schools have requested additional time, um, and will be at the moment we’re planning to review and vote on their budget, uh, the hour before next week’s warrant hearing. Um, so in an ideal world, we’ll have voted and approved a balanced budget with all departments, uh, before the warrant hearing starts at seven. Um, so that we then on Article 26, which is most of what we do, as I always say, the balanced budget, um, we’ll have already voted all the details behind

2:19 that full number that we’ll vote on that. Um, so that’s kind of the, the plan for tonight and, and next Monday for those that are, um, keeping track of the calendar. Um, and with that, I’ll call the town clerk and elections representative.

2:37 Share my screen. Robin,

2:41 and then Tim, I believe you have a chair. Yes. And is there someone else on the liaison? Lindsay Woods? You could not make the meeting. Okay. So I’ve got up on screen, Robin. Uh, we’ll start with the town clerk budget and then move to the elections and registration draft First and I’ll updated today. So Yeah, this from Alicia. I Can’t see that far away. So we moved town clerk, we moved town meeting out of elections and into town clerk budget because we were paying the expenses for, for the town meeting out of town clerk and the salary somehow. And it was in the election. So it all, Yeah, it was just a reclass between the two. Yeah, we got that today.

3:27 Other than that it’s just salaries. Yeah. Sorry. We increase postage because postage went up. Right. So it’s just the contractual obligations and it looks like a small increase on postage Yes. Printing forms. Um, Tim, you got anything to add there? Yeah. All, all of the increases that are, are we doing elections or clerk right now? We’re doing okay. Um, all of the increases are very minimal. The budget stays the same year to year basically. And the items, uh, that come before a lot of them are unpredictable, like how many births we’re gonna have in any given year, how many deaths we’ll have in any given year,

4:14 um, that sort of thing. Robin had, has and is being proactive in trying to get, uh, say, a better snapshot of possible income projections coming in. She does have a warrant item on the warrant hearing to increase the cost of dog tag for $5 per dog tag, which would roughly 3,500 dogs. Yeah. So it would be roughly 16,000. That’s, I mean, there’s not much to squeeze at all. Right. So Robin’s done a great job in keeping it tight. Awesome. Yeah. And I’m assuming we’ll talk a little bit more about that on Monday, but it’s sure to get that preview ahead of time as, as we prepare for this.

5:00 It hasn’t gone up since oh one. Okay. We went up $5 just for Intacct because the state said we had to have two different prices than that was in 13, so, Gotcha. Question about that. Yeah, sure. Um, so Robin, how much more revenue do you anticipate bringing in? If the dog tag? It would be roughly, we have, I’m just gonna say 3000. It’s more than that, but just for numbers worth 15,000 extra, if it’s $5 extra, do like, yeah. So it would Certainly cover the increases that you’re anticipating this year, so, correct. Great. Thank you. You’re Welcome. So bring a total of about 45,000 in total, whereas 45, what you’re getting now, plus the 15, It’s 50 45 plus 15.

5:47 It’s only an extra five. So five times 3000. Yeah. No, I ran the numbers, So it could be a little more, it could be a little, I was just doing it for easier, But it’s in the Magnitude. Yeah. Um, we will vote them separate, but, um, if anybody, or if nobody else has any questions, I’m Tom Clark. I’ll move to review elections and registration as Robins very dialed into that as well. We did talk about this briefly. I know we changed emails. We didn’t vote on anything yet. Um, but we did talk about it with Alicia and Thatcher. So, um, I know there’s some movements this year ‘cause of the election year, but I’ll, I guess I’ll turn it over to you to explain, you know, the changes. Yes. With election salaries, it’s Every, every, like, every other year. So on the even years we have elections of the odd years.

6:36 We obviously you have the town election, but you don’t have the state elections. So this happens to be, we’ll have, um, September primary and the November election, but then we don’t have anything in March and we don’t have anything until June the fall year. Yeah. So with that, we also have vote by mail. I have 3000, just to let you guys know, there’s 3000 people right now that have asked for ballots for June, which is gonna be roughly afterward 4,000, um, absentee slash early voting ballots for that. And each, each ballot that gets mailed out, it’s 88 cents for postage. So that’s something in more recent years you’ve seen like a huge uptick with the trend of our country. Actually un like we talked about, they, they’re continue

7:23 to unfunded mandates by, uh, secretary gathering Maybe. Gotcha. So that will affect this year, not next year’s budget, but this year’s budget because that’s not budgeted for the 3000 people because the state sent that out. But that being said, it is a late election year next year. Okay. And the 4,000 came out of there and went to town clerk. So, Well, I can’t remember if there’s anything else we talked about other than the, the fact that there’s more elections. Um, So the postage obviously weren’t the cost of the balance. Okay.

8:01 Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward. I’ve been on the committee a few years, so I’ve seen that go up and down. Um, Yeah, take add one, take one. So, exactly. Um, okay. Does anybody on the committee, I have a question. Last time we talked about elections under the select board budget. Yeah. That might’ve been just me lumping a bunch of stuff under clear gov and Alicia and Thatcher know what’s going on, so, okay. So they, there’s no intention to take the elections away from the mayor’s office? No, no. She can keep them. I did want, it’s like, here you go. Yeah, like I said, we talked about it last Monday, but it technically is under, under robin so it doesn’t fall under the select board budgets. Anybody else? Yeah, I can make a motion. We’re ready for that. Uh, yeah.

8:47 Does anybody else have any questions? You committee?

8:51 All right. Tim, do you know the numbers? Um, I, I think we should, I think, think there, there was a late change, so maybe I should make the motion. Okay. Um, ‘cause there was a reclass today. Um, and before I do your total town clerk, Robin 2 38, 7 32, is that right? Yes, that’s what I Asked. Uh, so I can make the motion to, okay. Yeah. Okay. So I’d like to make a motion to approve the town clerk budget of $238,732. Is that good?

9:22 Lindsay? Approve. Mike approve. Eric approve. Approve. Molly approve. Sarah, Approve. Michael. Yes. Tim. Approve. Approve. Thank you. And with respect to the election and registration, I’d like to make a motion to approve the budget of or recommend the budget of $330,147. Second, uh, I might have got there. Sorry. That’s the total of the 2 90, 91, 90 1,415. Second Lindsay proof. Mike approve. Eric. Approved. Approved.

10:08 Molly Tara approved. Michael Approved. Tim Approved. Approved. Thank you so Much. Thank you very much appreciate your time. Thank you. Yep. Laura is the libraries. Okay. Thanks for making the arrangements to change our schedule. Oh, no worries. So I’ve got budget summary and then I got sent the presentation to just a couple slides. Right? We have two slides or 10 slides. Do you know when we want? I think we’ll start with the two. ‘cause that’s what I’ve gotten. I might have seen the 10. Okay. Interested in clear Go. That’s the slide

10:54 Piece. Okay. I’ll take a Always go and see our org chart and all that. Okay, great. So, um,

11:03 so basically our, our budget is including, you know, the standard increases for staff and the step increases for union stock. And, um, so that’s me all meeting the state aid certification. Got It. It gets complicated as to how that all works, but for simplicity Hmm. It meets that this meets that gave qualifications. Um, so next slide talks a little bit about expenses. So things got, um, things changed more in the expense line than they did in the salary. Um, we included projected cost for utilities. We included a 10% increase in the maintenance line to, um,

11:50 participate all new service contracts. It’s a little bit hard to determine exactly what that will look like, um, but it’s likely to be more than it was before. Um, and then we’re carefully monitoring our materials, but because that’s where we haven’t really made a lot of changes recently, and as the salary salaries increase, the percentages change. So we’re okay right now, but next year we’re probably gonna have to be very careful about how we do that. That doesn’t necessarily mean we get more money from the town budget, but it might mean that we shift things around slightly in our and how we look at our funding. So, so maybe I could take a few minutes to tell you what’s not in this budget.

12:37 Sure. ‘cause I think you need to know that I did put a request for additional staff for part-time custodian, but a part-time reference librarian not having that will be a little, will provide us with a little bit of difficulty in staffing the library, um, and keeping things maintained properly. So the only solution we have to that right now is to charge additional fees for major rental events. Not events, not library events. I wanted to make sure that I understood that. I’m not talking about library events. We’re talking about rentals. So we’re currently looking at our, um, meeting room policy

13:22 and the schedule of fees for, um, generic room rentals. And then further along in the next few months, we’ll start talking about the contract for major events, reception, something. So when we do those types of receptions, we need to hire cleaning service because we only have the one custodian who will not be able to handle all of that. So the second thing that’s not there is our request for additional funding for technology. Um, this, we did ask for about $12,000. And the reason we did that is because over the years we’ve seen an increase in

14:07 bits and pieces like electronic newsletters or a Zoom, um, annual fee. Annual fee, right? So Constant Contact Newsletter, there’s all of these little pieces that were not years ago that didn’t exist. So it’s, it’s kind of creeping up there. But the solution is to use our state aid, the LMEG, which is the lag, municipal equalization print, that is the state aid. And we’ll use that to equalize our budget.

14:39 Helpful. Yep. Eric. Okay. Two quick questions if I may. Um, the first is if you use read the rental fee for the facilities Mm-Hmm. Uh, do you have to come to any other board in the town or the select board or town meeting to have that approved? Or is that something you can do yourself? I think we Would go through the, our board of trustees. Yes. Typically a board of trustees would vote on something like that. However, I will be bringing my policy to town administrator, find instructor to make sure that we’re saying on the things we need to say Right. System of other spaces in town. And my second quick question, can you talk a little bit about the, um, I think you call them, uh, service contracts. Um, what, what are those going to cover?

15:24 Well, it covers things like our HVAC system, security, um, all any kind of maintenance fees for, um, backflow or all, all the kinds of things that have annual Elevator inspection. There’s annual backflow inspection, there’s an annual fire alarm inspection, all those, something like that. But yeah, the HPC maintenance contract is one of, be one of our largest one. That’s all the new stuff we put in the library is well maintained and properly. Perfect. Thank you. Welcome.

15:56 Uh, Michael, I know you’re the chair liaison, so I didn’t know if you had anything to add before I ask a few questions, But, um, no, I mean, Kim laid it out really well. I mean, it’s the same kind of salary stuff we see all the time. Yeah. And then the extra maintenance for the Right. So the salaries are contractual obligations. Um, looking at the increase, it’s 3.24%, which is kind of equivalent to some of the others we’ve approved so far. Maybe even on the lighter side of some of the other budgets we’ve approved. Um, like I said at our last meeting, Alicia’s, one of Alicia’s initiatives, um, was to make sure that the, uh, utilities, electricity, heating, gas, water, sewer, things like that are two actual levels.

16:43 So we’re not just saying we’re definitely gonna use our reserve. It’s truly going to be reserved. So those increases are presumably bringing them up to closer to actuals adjusted for the increase in rates. Is that Fair? We should note that. You know, we’ll have a different system in there, so it’s a little bit hard to predict. Yeah. How close We’ll get to that. Yeah. Hopefully we’ll be better. Even Better. Yeah. We plan to look at everything we did in the last couple years and then compare it to this new year and season and then we can yeah, a huge amount this time, hopefully see a good, uh, decrease in that line and project that going Forward. I should probably know this, I just haven’t been paying attention enough, um, when, when’s the library expected to open, Um, and, and towards the end of June. End of June. So we’re, that’s, that’s the timeframe. So a lot, a lot of the costs related

17:29 to the new buildings are, And the interim space closes on the 29th. Okay. Right. Fair enough. Um, yeah, and, and you know, I’ll take the opportunity to reiterate what I’ve been saying at meetings and that, um, you know, the path towards this longer term plan that’s, that’s come up in a number of these budget hearings. Um, progress has been made by Thatcher team and all the department heads. Um, and I think as we consider, um, you know, townside versus school side and growth rates and whatnot, I think they’ll be important to collaborate with Alicia, our new CFO well newer, Um, to make sure we’re really drilling in the new library, especially needs on an annual basis.

18:14 Because from my perspective, you can talk about, you know, how, how much a talent side grows, but you know, every single department should be like really scrubbed tightly to see, you know, what each department needs to grow at as well to come up with that overall townside growth. So, um, we appreciate you, uh, collaborating with the CFO and, uh, we understand that there’s some things that you asked for this year that, you know, there just aren’t funds there for, but presumably on a go forward basis there, there may be discussions again about, you know, funding some of those requests from my perspective. Yeah, I have just two questions. The, um, what’s up comes in our adult page. What is an adult page? Yeah, Sorry. Listed as a line Item, a staff member that puts books back on the shelves.

19:00 Okay. Thank you. The, uh, and I also had a question about the overtime. I said there’s nothing budgeted for overtime this year. I think we TriMed that pretty tightly. Do we expect that to be a realistic thing, that there’ll be zero overtime? Well, um, has some news today that change that we, we may be able to either provide an adjustment to that or not quite sure how to answer that. I don’t have a, an actual plan for that over time. Okay. And how’s the morale in general, the folks in the library? It’s generally pretty good. And, you know, we’re fielding lot questions right now about the move and when we’re opening and everyone’s sort of holding steady on that Super to look great.

19:46 The other thing too, to think about in terms of staffing is that is a little bit different because we have mandatory, um, statutory guidelines we need to follow in terms of the population of the town translates to so many hours, which then translates to so many people. So it’s a, it’s a pretty tight matrix on if you follow the population of the town to the hours that we need and then the people that we need to fill those hours. So it’s, it’s pretty tight. Gotcha. We’re adding two service hours, that’s all we can do. Okay. And, you know, I was on the liaison committee before you joined Kim years ago, and I remember there was a lot of maintenance issues back then, um, with the, with the, you know, rebuild of the library. Are we expecting less maintenance issues in the, in the short term?

20:33 You hope so? We helps, you know, we’ve certainly been through it in the interim space with our heating system with on, so I really hope that it will be that we can concentrate on building a wonderful library with great service to the town. Amen. Have a quick question. Sure. Um, I understand that before the renovation, uh, there was an issue with flooding. Um, has the renovation taken that in if account and is there remediation? Hopefully? Yes. Gary, do you wanna answer that question? Yeah, it comes up a lot. So we’ve done a bunch of things to, to mitigate, protect the building lot and basic stuff like waterproofing, stuff like that.

21:19 But we’ve also replaced, there, there are a series of some pumps that control water, previous issues of been because some pumps weren’t maintained or they weren’t working properly. So there’s a primary and a, and a backup sump at every sum pump. And those are all been replaced as part of the renovation. We’ve completely redone the drainage in the back, uh, driveway and, and, uh, parking area. So it’s set lower. It’s a much larger catch base and it can handle a lot of those, like heavy rains, early foot, um, heavy water events. And um, uh, those are some of the major things that we’ve done. And then also just replaced, you know, a lot of piping, a lot of, um,

22:00 yeah, I think, I think there’s anything else like, like the, yeah, clean care of the major drainage around the site was what, and actually the last piece and helped us out. We’re adding a catch basin along Maverick Street as well, so there used to be just one catch basin in New York, pleasant Street. We’re adding a second one a little further down, so it’ll help catch some of that rain and direct it out towards the, the main street. Perfect. Thank you.

22:24 One thing we’ve been asking across all departments, um, more about this year is outside revenue sources. And so you’ve mentioned that you are expecting to receive some state aid, um, you’ll be having some, some fees. And could you give us a sense of, you know, the relative size of these other sources and if there are any additional ones? I know that there’s friends of Abbott Library is another source of, of funding. There’s the, you know, the Abbott, the Library Foundation, which is helping us with programs service, you know, that kind of thing. They’re helping us with the end of the renovation. Um, I don’t know how much more you want to know about the meeting room system. Um, we’re increasing our fees for the Marblehead room

23:10 and the event center, which is formerly known as the meeting room that will include the courtyard and the kitchenette and probably some use of the gallery. Um, and that’s why I said there’s gotta be a contract for that and fees for that have not been set yet. I just wanna make sure we get the right amount. Um, we’re kind of working on some numbers for sort of the regular rental, like your sort of typical rental fees. And, and in terms of state aid, how much do you typically bring in a year? Well, I think it’s around 38,000, say, approximately. And Molly Kim had mentioned she has a 10 slide presentation, which she attached Yes.

23:57 To clear gov in the presentation, it details out Oh, perfect. The different aid sources. Um, so I, I recommend looking at that as well, Kim, Second Century Fund, you know, provide, um, use for, you know, technology funding laptops and hotspots, for example, in our overdrive fees. So all of that works together into this formula. So the other, besides staffing, the other thing that’s mandated by this, uh, library commission is materials. And so one of the gaps is materials. We appropriate 142,000, the total expenditure required is 207,000. So 65 6 1 8 comes from, um,

24:43 the equalization grant in private funds as well. So that’s one of the, the gaps that gets filled outside of the town budget, it’s about 65,000.

24:54 Yeah, And as Molly said, I, I haven’t said it tonight, but that’s that for bringing that up. Um, the message, it sounds like these revenue sources outside of the general fund are not that significant to the library as compared to some of the other departments. But, um, as we’ve been saying to all departments to continue in this longer term planning to work with Alicia, the CFO, um, when you have such, uh, pressures on the expense side of the general fund and, and limited revenues, as we’ve talked about a lot the last few years on the, uh, you know, property tax side with limited new growth, um, you know, working to really figure out your full costs for your department before you figure out how to fund those is obviously an important thing, um, both financially and to be able to deliver, deliver the services you need

25:41 with available revenues. So I appreciate you bringing that up again. Um, and it sounds like you guys have already been working with Alicia closely, so it’s much appreciated. Mr. Clement, um, working with Kim, it’s been a pleasure and she really worked hard to work with me this year as well as the trustees on there, new library, so. Great. I’m thankful Reaching out. Yes. Just one more quick question. Yep. Uh, it’d be could just for my old memory, um, when you did the Capital Campaign fundraiser to build the new library, did we hit all of our goals for that?

26:16 I think so. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. We, we promised a town $1 million towards the renovation, so we definitely hit that goal. But when we did our early this in 2020, inflation was just starting to go through the roof. So our first budget estimate was well above our, our original budget. So the Advent Public Library Foundation contributed an additional $500,000 towards renovation. So I think we definitely in that, in that sense, exceeded our original promises to the town. Just very thankful for that.

26:51 Great. Anybody on the committee have any other questions for Kim? And team? Do you have the budget number? I do. Total budget number to be appropriated is $1,384,122. The motion. Lindsay approve. Mike approve. Eric approve path. Approve. Molly, approve Eric. Okay. Michael approve. Tim approve. Now approve. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thanks all. Appreciate Everything.

27:45 All right. So The last Department budget, which makes up many different departments that roll up, is the select board departments. Um, we have various, uh, department leaders here, but Alicia and Thatcher presumably will be the main presenters, um, from the townside. I’m the chair liaison. Uh, we met with Alicia and Thatcher last week, Molly, so graciously took great notes and shared with everybody earlier today. Um, and we will just kind of walk through these, what I have up on screen, um, is the same summary that they actually presented to the select board on Friday for those that were able to watch that, um, behind it. I do have more details. So if, if our committee has any questions, because there’s so many line items and so many different budgets that roll up to it,

28:32 if you have a specific question on salaries expense, um, within this summary, then I have it right behind it and we can, we can find it. So, um, there’s a lot of a lot here to cover. Um, so we’ll get going with the moderator budget. Um, Mr. Mr. Chair, if I could just say that the, uh, select board has convened a simultaneous meeting with you today, so Oh, yeah. We’ll, we’ll let our D needs go ahead. Oh, perfect. Make the presentation. Thank you. You jumped all over my budget.

29:03 I’ll get another shot.

29:07 Um, yeah, so it’s a hundred dollars annually and I did share that Jack is willing to forego that. Um, I Pay to do it. Is there like an, is there like a membership organization for town moderators or something? There is. And does that come under that? It, it, it almost covers it. That, that was my question. It, I mean, could it go up to one 50? No.

29:35 Alec, could I ask you a procedural question? Yes. Are we going to vote the select board Budget as a single vote, or are we going to go through each department underneath that? Uh, I think we’re gonna vote it at the end, but I’m gonna go through and announce the totals of each line before we vote the total. But we’re not gonna vote ‘em along the way. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um, yeah, so any questions on moderator? I assume we’re good there. Um, Yeah, you might wanna just do the summary. The summary Lines. Yeah, we could do that. For instance, gen. Yeah, we could do general government Total general government, total public Safety. That’s how you want it. The selectboard. Okay. So each major category is the, the number that we Yeah. Happy to do that too. Yep. Okay. Um, select board department.

30:22 Um, so we, we see a decrease in, uh, year over year on the salary side. Um, Molly remind me, or board team, I think it’s maybe a reclass, right? No, That’s the, um, hr, HR director moving into the hr. Yeah. Yeah. Reclass down to a different line. So it’s not that it wasn’t budgeted for last year, um, it’s just, uh, presentation of the budget. We’ll see that increase offset in the, uh, in the HR director or the hr, um, department line. Um, so the, yeah, so salaries have gone down. Um, there’s presumably there’s contractual obligations have been adjusted for outside of that reclass. Right. Um, that, you know,

31:07 are less than the amount that’s coming down by. Um, any other questions on the select board departments,

31:19 uh, finance committee? Um, this is things like paper and printing and, and, um, to, for the finance committee handbook, I think there’s a lot of expense that goes into that given the number of copies that have to be present, uh, prepared for town meeting. Um, it’s in line with last year. Um, and Alicia thinks that’s, that’s fine. We should be able to cover it with that. Um, the 144,000 is actually the reserve fund that the FinCon, um, we annually, uh, hear requests from, um, and, and make votes to appropriate when certain departments might need additional funds above what was budgeted for. Um, it’s been the same, uh, 144,000 since I’ve been on the finance committee. Um, one thing I noted in our meeting is

32:05 that it says expended of one 40 or zero from 23. But, um, that’s because the way that the data gets captured is it actually shows the expenses when things are requested on individual department lines, um, when they’re expended. So, um, I don’t recall exactly what we spent in 23. I think it was just shy of the full amount though. I think it was, it might’ve been the full amount. There’s, there’s been certain years where we haven’t had to, uh, appropriate, appropriate the whole amount ‘cause we haven’t gotten the requests. But, um, to date this year, Linda, I think somewhere between 10 and 20 we approved in the fall. And then there’s another one that we might be voting on next week or so from the police department. Is that fair? Correct. So it should be about 36 So far. So we’re still, you know, have a balance this year of well over a hundred thousand if anybody’s following, um,

32:51 for that update as well. Uh, finance department. Um, we’ve got decreases again in salaries and expense. Um, Molly remind me, is that, is that a reclass as well? Some of It is and some of it are, are actual reduced spending That Correct. So two, two positions went to the HR budget that will put payroll out of there, and then I reduced additional funding in my expenses to offset a new instead of a part-time. It, we need a full-time. It, yeah. So there’s some expense savings. And the idea there is that you are working within the bottom line of the seven 50 that the town increased over last year. Um, so you know, if there’s a new additional hours

33:39 for a position or whatnot, Alicia and team have found it in different places in the budget to cover that. Is that fair? Yes. The expenses includes the muni transition too, right? Yep. That’s, that’s budgeted for. Yep. Yep. So that’s amazing about those numbers. There are some line items that are going up. The Muni, the commitment to Muni is an additional expense. It’s an expensive software much more than the software we’ve been using. Um, but far more productive. But despite those items increasing, finding other areas where we say that the results in the net, you know, that that decrease in addition to sort of the trans, you know, movements to other departments. Yeah. So and, and the realignment of many positions Yeah.

34:27 As a result of the Yeah. Looking at better ways to get from point A to point B. Yep. And, and yeah. So it, there’s lots of movement, but the net is still,

34:43 We outsource most of our it, so we really need a full-time person. You bring that in, we had to be in in control costs. Yeah. And you would also anticipate a certain number of hour, uh, staff hours saved by switching to the muni system with its increased functionality. Jobs are gonna change. Yeah. Right. The productivity is definitely gonna improve because it’s, the staff will be doing less shuffling of paper and more of quality control and actual management of what we’re doing. Yeah. We, we talked pretty significantly about, you know, one of the steps in the right direction of the longer term plan is the IT uplift. Um, I’ll take another moment to say how great the, uh,

35:30 implementation of clear gov has gone. Mm-Hmm. Um, especially from our process perspective. I know Alicia’s loving it and the department chairs are getting used to it as well, but the, the ability for me and the rest of this team to download data, put it in the format we want to analyze it, is just night and day compared to the, the first five or six years I’ve been on the committee. Um, and, and this muni upgrade, I think is the next step in that kind of path to a, to a better being, better able to, you know, plan finances for the town. Um, especially when we talked earlier about, um, the, the forecasting of costs all costs for departments and being able to budget detailed budgets, not only, uh, requests from the general fund, but um, from all revenue sources and aligning those with the various revenue

36:15 sources the town has. Um, so I think it’s, it’s a good progress we’ve made. Um, and I think newness from what I hear is gonna be night and day, just like clear gov. Is that Fair as well? Right. As well as we have a consultant updating our charter of accounts. Yeah. So all these long lists of line items will all get cleaned up. So we’ll have the reporting that will come out will be clear and more understandable to all of us because the charter of account will be all cleaned up and, and reorganized. You want me to flip pages to find accounts to anyone? Yeah, I used to do stuff with a calculator my first few years. Um, can I, askia you’ve done a lot in the last year to update and upgrade the, the finance department.

37:02 Where are you in that process? Are you finished or, or what additional work do you see that could be done? Yeah, we have a, we just finished reviewing, uh, with Selectboard, the CLA report and trying to implement all the findings and things they did. Um, we also have the conversion we’re working on right now to do that with the schools in tandem. So that’s gonna take a lot of my time to get ready for the conversion to go large. July 1 25, um, The acronym CLA Larson Allen, their CPA firm. Oh, Thank you. So she glossed over it. Yeah, let me say that was like the hottest item when I walked in the door, a year and a half or so. Right. And they came in prior to all of us, us here to do a review of the finance department.

37:49 They had 31 recommendations of changes that they recommended. And it, in the report that we gave to the select board, just at the last meeting, um, I forget the exact number, uh, the, like 15 of ‘em are closed out as resolved. Uh, the eight or so don’t, don’t do my math for me. Um, but the majority were closed out. There was like eight open, but seven out of the eight, or at least six or seven outta the eight will be closed out with the implementation of Munis. And then one of ‘em were, were not implementing when they recommended a biweekly payroll. We’re gonna kind of stick with the weekly payroll for the time, foreseeable future. Um, but the, you know, that was,

38:34 you know, a significant report. Had a lot of attention here in the community in the fact that once Alicia got on board, got her feet on the ground, got her staffing, you know, settled down, they went in there and they addressed every item in that report. And we pretty much closed it out with the select board, um, this month. Excellent. Yeah, That’s good.

38:59 Any more questions on the finance town council? Um, we came up from 23, um, expended to the approved budget last year a little bit. Um, we might have been a little under expended in 23. Um, we’ve kept it flat. Um, I think the feedback in our liaison meeting was that, um, it’s a good number and, and should be okay for the upcoming year, knock on wood. Yes. Um, so here’s, we talked about, you know, some reductions above, um, which were just shifting of, of presentation. Um, they’re not gonna line up exactly ‘cause remember when something comes out of the select board line, um, there’s other increases in there as well offsetting that decrease.

39:45 But, um, the human resources department, um, is being presented in its own line item this year. Um, and from what I understand, the, our director has started, you know, six months or so ago, maybe a little less than than that. Yeah, less than six, but, okay. So yeah, that wasn’t, that was a position that, you know, under Thatcher’s first year came highly recommended. And we, if you want to provide an update on how that’s going from your perspective quickly, It’s a godsend, uh, having someone with the background knowledge, expertise on HR Affairs. Um, so as we deal, I mean, we’re an organization of give or take 250 town employees plus, you know, five, 600 school employees, though they have an hr, um, person,

40:33 uh, a a number of the services for the schools are done on the townside, such as the payroll and such. So, um, having a person who’s focused on those matters, helping department heads and myself navigate through particular personnel issues, that’s a time saver. Uh, it helps with compliance and then the productivity of having that person that’s managing the advertising and posting and, and interviewing and reference checking, all those things that all of us as department heads and whatever positions we’re having to take time out, take focus away from our primary job to do those things. That’s all consolidated into the HR department. So, uh, one of the shiny new things you’ll see around

41:22 is the HR posters that are required to be posted, you know, primarily in a place that employees can see. I mean, just your basic compliance with HR regulations and laws. He’s able to start going around and making sure we’re, we’re all up to date. So it’s been absolute benefit, uh, having, having that position on board. Has the HR director begun any of the negotiations with the unions? What’s the timeline for that? So, yeah, so I’m, um, I’m, I’m sort of doing the lead. He’s, he’s at the table on the negotiations. So we have, we have MM actually we have tomorrow police negotiation and MM EU negotiation. We also have the public employees, uh, committee,

42:10 which is dealing with all the health insurance negotiations. So we have three simultaneous negotiations going on. And so he’s, he, he’s involved, Alicia’s involved, um, at the table on some a resource and, and some of the others.

42:28 And not for you to put anybody on the spot, but one of the things that you had hoped for in bringing on an HR director would be, um, that he could start, he or she could start consolidating some of the various plans and programs for the different departments because some departments, you know, don’t have their own, you know, they go one place and the other departments go to another place. Have any of those, uh, negotiations begun to try to see if we could, um, through economies of scale, uh, combine some of the benefit packages and and you realize some savings from those? Yeah, I mean, that’s part of the big part of the negotiations with the, I call it the pac Public Employees Committee. Um, so that, that, that’s the form for that.

43:16 I think, uh, in addition being involved in that, but just the consolidating of the management of all the personnel files and all those things. Munis has modules that will provide the information systems for a lot of that. So, so some of that consolidation is waiting for the implementation of Munis. Gotcha. Thank You.

43:43 That I can just say, I think this is a brilliant idea. I mean, having, when I ran our family Stone quarry, I had to do all the HR myself, and that was a bit of a joke, but, um, I would have to think that having a full-time HR director leads us less vulnerable our exposure to an issue with an employee situation because we need to have a right all the time where they, they gotta only have it right once. Right? Yep. Yep. Yeah, no, that’s the compliance and, and all of that. And, and lessening the risk of, you know, having a process that’s run a file and then then having to pay the price for it. Um, you know, it, it’s still a diverse organization in the sense that we still have a lot of different boards

44:29 who have primary responsibility at managing their own staff. So we’re trying to make sure that, you know, in interacting with them to kind of get those functions sort of all on the same, same page in, in regard to compliance and processes and, and reaching out to us whenever they’re dealing with any personnel matters that they have. We’ll catch ‘em as we can.

44:59 Yep. And just a reminder, this, this salaries line, it’s the director plus a few positions, right? That used to just be under finance, but there’s no new positions here. They were all funded for last year.

45:16 We’re good on, Uh, human resources. Um, parking clerk is flat year over year, 4,006 50. Any questions on parking clerk planning board less than $2,000? Assume no questions there. Flat year over year. Uh, public buildings, um,

45:42 if we wanna speak to this one or call somebody up. Yeah. So there’s, and in this department it’s two employees that, uh, doing the maintenance, the services for this building and, uh, Abbott Hall. And then the expenses are, a lot of it is the maintenance needs of these buildings. Um, I would say we, we need far more than what’s represented in the budget. Um, but that’s, that’s what we have to work with. We put 7,500 for the COA and 7,500 for, uh, rec and park for cleaning that building that’s in there as well. And they’re taking the remaining difference out of the revolving Pond. Right. So we talked with Rec and Park last week about, I don’t know that they’ve ever had Right. Anybody cleaning that building, which is A couple years pre Covid for a few years pre covid. Yeah.

46:30 They, it was the building Department. Okay. So that’s been refunded, but there’s been, because of our, our, our challenges, uh, with revenue, we’ve, we’ve come up with a creative way to, to bring that back. Um, and, and Park and Rec was willing to fund some of it out of their revolving. That’s fair. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then the expenses also reflect the commitment of bringing the utilities line, you know, the actuals in line with the expectations rather than relying on reserves, as you’ve already mentioned elsewhere. Yep. Yeah, a lot of these, um, a lot of these expense, especially the ones coming up, um, consistent with what we said to the library and every other department we’ve proved thus far this year, um, again, we’re adjusting for the utilities

47:17 to actual levels, um, much more closely, both with, based on historic spend as well as, you know, increased costs that most of us are seeing at home as well with inflation. Um, that’s it for me on the public buildings department. Anybody have any other questions?

47:36 Alright, so I think we’ll take the opportunity, um, to vote. Keisha is calling the general government. Um, I think in the years past we’ve kind of rolled everything up, but I think this is probably a better way to do it and consistent with both where you both have come from more, more consistent with that. So, um, I’ll take the moment to make a recommendation to, um, recommend the budget for general government at $3,148,000, um, or 148,186. Second, Say, Approve. Approve. Eric Approve. Correct. Approve, approve. Correct. Approve Tim. Approve,

48:22 Approve.

48:27 Um, okay, so now we’re into the human, sorry. Public safety. Public safety, um, which we’ll start with the police department.

48:46 So with the police department that changed is primarily due to not pulling the police officer. Any and all associated benefits that come with it, we removed just because we just don’t have the, the capability of funding it this year. Um, I didn’t fund a vacant position last year. This year was an actually funding position. So once we’re gonna look to a long-term plan in the future, but to get us through this stuff here, that’s what we have To do. Yeah. So what Alicia’s saying here is that, um, the initial request included, um, an officer, um, not filled at the moment, but has, has been, has come out as part of the, you know, challenge

49:31 with our revenues this year. Um, you know, we spoke with the chief, um, last Monday, and as he reminded us that, um, the, the department, um, not to use your words, put your words into a summary that you’re still deliver, delivering great service from your perspective and getting by, although things are extremely tight from a budget standpoint, um, especially with this reduction of one officer. Um, did you have any other notes that you took on, on police, Um, and that you were receiving 16, 17%, I think more calls for service and you’re still able to manage that with the, with current staffing, but that there’s a little bit less flexibility now if someone gets hurt or someone gets sick, there won’t be,

50:17 there’s, it creates a significant challenge for you. Yes. Yeah, We’re riding, we’re riding the edge. Uh, yeah, it makes us right. We have an injury or something and somebody’s out. Need some more. Hi Dar, we’re on the razor. Just outta curiosity, how are we staffed relative to the population of per capita? Are we aligned with our peers above, below?

50:44 So that’s a tough one. Um, okay, because there’s, um, it’s a tough number to come up with because every community is different based on need, based on crime, based on, you know, different quality of life issues. Um, if you were going by a national average of two for every thousand, that would be 40 full-time compliment. We’re gonna be on FY 25 at 29 walking the street, which means that we run between 1.6 and 1.7 rather than the two per thousand, Which Makes us very tight and, um, vulnerable to injury in the life.

51:27 So as we have fewer individuals on the force, how much is overtime going up so that we’re able to, you know, cover the needs at all times? That’s right. We can do that. Sure. Um, so, um, I think that,

51:52 and I tried to explain it at the, at the subcommittee meeting, that, um, there are a lot effects on, um, staffing and under staffing as it relates to overtime. And it depends on the condition. So we have a minimum manning, basically almost every shift has three officers and a supervisor to cover that minimum manning. When you have two less officers, patrol officers on the street to start the year, um, you have a much more difficulty in filling the minimum manning. So people take, um, vacation time, personal days, sick time, it draws a need to have more staffing to cover those minimum mannings. And when you don’t have it, you have

52:37 to fill it with overtime. And so it really does depend on kind of seasonally. Um, but it also depends on, um, whether or not the benefit days are not being covered on regular time. So that is hard to predict, but yes, it does affect because if you have less people covering the shifts, you are gonna need more people on the minimum manning. Um, and as I mentioned in that hearing, when you have a buffer, you cr even with one down, you could create enough of a buffer that it doesn’t create almost any overtime. Mm-Hmm. But when you are running at the, where we are right now, almost every shift could require over time. Mm-Hmm. Um, if people are using their full benefit days, which they do, which we want them to do, right. And so, um, right now, yes, we, there is a, there is a, um,

53:27 we, we are anticipating a greater number of overtime. Um, and that’s why we do things like, so we’re really trying to get somebody to a police academy right now, um, which we know from start to finish takes one year to get them from the requisition of the candidate to them FTO trained or field trained, it takes about a year. And so, um, even to get these two where we need to be, um, we’re looking at probably just about a year, a little bit over a year before we’re, we’re covering those ships. Um, and it has other effects. So if you are working a lot and you are forced to work, um, you know, it kind of creates both a mental and physical issue. Mm-Hmm. Um, your, your physical wellbeing kind of gets,

54:14 is tired and so you might be calling out sick more, it exacerbates it, but morale wise, if you know that you’re coming into a situation where you’re regularly being forced, it’s hard to maintain morale. Okay. So that’s why we try to keep that buffer, not just to have officers that are available for specialty units like detectives and traffics and the like, we have to fill those patrol functions and those patrol positions so that we really are, um, creating some buffer and we we’re retaining officers and we’re doing all the things that we need to do. I’m confident we can do it, but we’re very tight right now because of, um, the whole, you know, personnel changes that I’ve had. We did slightly increases over time to near actual levels because of that. Mm-Hmm. It was, and actually the, the salary cut is about 73,000,

55:01 but then the, this overtime increase is 26 mm-Hmm. So you see there’s a net Mm-Hmm. Savings. Yeah. And as we continue, you know, broken record again, but as we continue with the longer term plans, it’s something that Molly and I talked to in depth with both chiefs here tonight about really, you know, digging into that kind of equation to see obviously first what you all need to operate. Um, but from a financial perspective, kind of thinking about how, how the overtime interacts, both obviously morale but also from a, from a cost savings perspective as well. Yes. I think the chief does an excellent job and he also gets grants, so he also uses those funding. So thank you chief in working with us and I know it’s really tight this year. So we’re, we’re FY 24, we’re tracking over $350,000 in grants, which is good.

55:50 That’s awesome. Ask him who the team is that does all the grants, Not the HR

56:00 Tim, Uh, chief, how keeping the level funded budgets, assuming we have to do that again next year, where do you see the line where we’re not providing the services that we need to for the safety and wellbeing of the town? So I, I think that’s a tough question. And, and we, we are in, we are literally in a time in hiring and in our profession where we’re trying to stay ahead of it. And if I have two candidates, which I already have one that I think will be me within a month and then another one right after that, if we can keep that moving, then we’re gonna be, but then we’ll be fine. But it is the forecasting and staying ahead and getting and, and, um, doing things like the select board has

56:45 done since I’ve gotten here. If I’ve asked them to support some funding to get somebody into an academy three months quicker, it might not seem like a lot, but it’s, it’s really a lot. And so, um, those are the things I don’t feel that we can’t, uh, I don’t think we’re in a situation where we can’t stay ahead of it. Um, we’re just very tight. We’re tight right now. Sometimes circumstances are there, but I do believe patrol core functions we’re there. We haven’t taken our SRO out. We still have a detective. We still have, you know, some special, some two, um, that are doing outside work that, that are really needed. Um, but, um, I, I don’t think we’re gonna reach that unless we have this mass citizen of, of officers that we wouldn’t able to, um, anticipate.

57:31 And then there, then that might be something. But I still think we’re there. But I think going on the question is, we both public safety fire and police have taken some significant cuts over the last couple years. Yeah. Right. That’s ‘cause there are larger depart of lots of employees. There’s vacancies take advantage, but it is public safety. Mm-Hmm. So there is a floor that at some point in the budget, in the overall budget decision making, we just say we are, we are at the minimum we’re gonna cut for public safety. ‘cause that’s serious stuff, which forces us to go to other functions of local government that where they’re gonna take a bigger share of a head because we’re not gonna underfund public safety

58:18 in, in the community. Um, so that’s the concern. So that’s why the, all the work we’re doing to, to address the revenues and all of that is so we don’t get to those having to make those choices.

58:32 Thank you.

58:37 Any other questions? Um, for the chief,

58:44 appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you.

58:55 So fire now.

58:59 So again, Molly and I have met with chief and turn Alicia on Monday. Um, there was a reduction last year in, in the process last year for fire. Um, none this year in terms of positions. Um, three cut last year, three cut last year. So there wasn’t much room for last year’s cuts. Um, did you have another, a couple other notes you wanna share? Um, Little bit more.

59:26 You have your union contract that’s expires next year prior. It’s coming up for negotiating next. So nothing, nothing crazy on, on that case. So pretty much just contractual obligations, adjusting the, uh, energy costs as all the other departments have done in line with the request from the CFO. Um, and again, um, feel like you’re, you’re pretty tight, like, like the police in terms of um, you know, your budget. Well, it’s tight. We’re gonna get to keep it safe. Right. Fair enough. Um, and we did again talk about overtime at length and how it’s a formula and it’s weighing the costs of both but also take keeping into account, making sure you you have enough, um, positions to, you know, cover the, the workforce and, and the workload.

1:00:12 Um, so that, you know, morale is staying high and whatnot to not overburden folks with too much of work. You think you’re in a pretty good spot. Yeah, I mean we discussed, I know Molly discussed overtime versus hiring and we got into that a wash. So in the fighting program, we hire, we hire, they’re not wait until they get outta the academy. They’re working was they that firefighting, they’re not allowed to go into a building until they reach certification. So when we do, you almost looking at year turnaround time to get ‘em on the line. Um, so you’re paying them, you’re paying that salary plus you’re paying overtime salary to cover that position again. You gotta have nine bodies. They’re basically a 10th firefighter. So way the overtime works. How are we doing? It gives us a little more flexibility.

1:01:02 How many firefighters do you have for a shift? Oh, 10 is usual with the should be for firefighters. We run down to nine. We have to maintain nine,

1:01:15 Two. Thank you. What, how did, what did you three on four off or how’s, what’s the shift You a 24 hour shift? 24 on 24 off, 24 on five days off

1:01:27 The average 40, 42 hours a week is the average. Yes. Uh, also keep in mind it’s not just a firefighting Em, they’re all still em, t crosstraining, Whatever, EMTs, engine one, engine two for both licenses. Class five non transporting ambulances. So I mean that could certainly be a factor if we lose personnel next year, if we lose anybody next year, we are shutting down Franklin Street, we have no choice. So that will jeopardize that area of time. We won’t be able to give or receive mutual aid ‘cause we won’t have the bodies to do it. This is what we’re looking at. We’re Looking at critical, critical issues. Yep. It’s, it’s sort of the, the floor that I’m referring to is at some point same, it’s same as police, public safety minimums have to, and then

1:02:15 We also talked about on the expense side, servicing a few of the trucks. Right. As we, we typically see that in the budget as well. So we’ve done well with the generosity economy, replacing our apparatus. Um, the oldest piece we have right now, not counting the reserve piece, that’s just been refurbished, but the oldest piece right now in the line is latter one as 2013. Um, as time goes by, you start to see the wear and tear on the trucks, check out almost every day, whether it be medical or whatever it is. Uh, one up by now having some pretty major stuff going on. These trucks are not designed with the emission system to travel from here to there in a very short distances, like an old road semi truck. So the regen process is causing these

1:03:00 motors to have some issues. So we’re dealing with that. A new engine one, I don’t think we’ll have that problem because that’s a different motor. We usually have the Detroits, we want to come in with the new engine one. We’re not seeing that same problem. Um, when we do look at a new truck, right now, we stay with Pierce. The whole fleet of Pierce makes maintenance much easier. So the build time for a new pierce truck, whether it’ll be a pump or ladders on four years, but when we go inside to replace it, we’re gonna look ahead. Yeah. You, you mentioned the emissions, is that something just sm asleep, but question, but if the firemen were to take the fire truck out to 1 28, go up and down back and forth 10 miles, would that, would that take care of the emissions? That’s Almost what you’d have to do. You can’t get these truck up the heat. Yeah.

1:03:46 Just going from, you know, call to call. So we, we’d take them over the before and, uh, run that river road back and forth a couple times Just to get to you, just to exercise Them out. But you don’t, you also don’t want your apparatus leaving town either, right? Yeah.

1:04:06 Like horses. Yeah. Run ‘em. Yeah. Just a fair warning, we have any s next year, every one of you’re gonna be joining in Call Force.

1:04:17 Yeah, no, it, it feels like, you know, when we last Monday as well, similar to police, you know, still delivering the services. We all appreciate very much, but, um, in a tight spot and, you know, as, as the longer plan continues to be developed, certainly something to work closely with the CFO and to administrator on. Thank you. Thank You so much. One more question. I just have one. I just had one more. Um, the Chief’s always in the past has shown us a period, uh, a sequence of periodic equipment upgrades or changes. And so I just wondered, you you have, you have this all laid out or you have had Yeah. In the past. Are We, you’ve been here long if we did work on a replacement plan, which is there, right. And is that, what’s the next, is there next year, next

1:05:03 Two years? Once Next year? Yeah. And no, not next year. Oh, okay. 2013 usually get 20 years out of a ladder, so Okay. We Wait to go. Um, that, and I, I don’t know if he wants to get it. We talked about another type of replacement plan for the trucks, but that’s, that’s down the road. It’s Just he’s, you know, the chief’s done a great job in Proactively Forward looking planning too. So, and, and two Directly in good shape because when engine three, which is one that was referred one out, we had to have a spare truck and we ended up purchasing a truck from the dealership we buy from for a buck. And that served us well. Now we have two reserve trucks instead of one. Mm. So, pretty good s**t. You have to jump the money you bought for a buck every time we started.

1:05:48 Nope. That truck, oh, good. One engine tree was out. That truck probably actually did more fires on engine three. So in good shape it works Good. Great. That’s good to hear. Thank you. Good. Thanks for your time as always. Appreciate. Thank you. Um, building inspection department. So, and again, uh, categorizing this under public safety is matching sort of the state grouping of functions. So, so, uh, the state does that, so it can do side by side comparisons of municipality. So we’re, we’re, we’re just aligning to that. But the, the building inspection department, um, we, we’ve, we’ve given it, uh, some focus on that. So, um, we, again, our, we,

1:06:37 we launched our building commissioner last year. Uh, we went out on the street looking for a commissioner, and they are as rare as dodo birds. Uh, you can’t find ‘em anywhere. So we ended up making, um, an agreement with the Town of Swamp Scott. So we have a contract, uh, with the Town of Swamp Scott for building commissioner services. So we play, we pay them and their building commissioner, it’s set up right now based on a 16 hour per week average, uh, services for us in the budget. We’re building it up to, to 20 hours just based on the workload, um, that, that we’re seeing in the function. So, so we’re getting, and it’s working really well. Uh, Steve Cummins is the building commissioner.

1:07:23 He is a terrific fit, works great with the, the staff. Uh, everybody, you know, around the whole table is thumbs up on, on how this is working. Uh, and he is done a great job of dealing, even with some thorny issues in town of just how he handled and communicates. It’s just been a win. Um, but it’s also, uh, given us the opportunity from savings because, uh, some of the changes is, rather than a building commissioner as a salary line item, it actually moves down as a contractual item. So there’s some net savings, but, um, you’ll see an increase on the, in the expense side because it’s a contract with, with Swamp Scott, rather than a salary to, to a direct employee. Um, what we’re also trying to do is, um,

1:08:10 we’re really beefing up this function. So, uh, we also have, uh, some part-time employees, one who, who is gonna be fully retired finally. Uh, so, so that’s a savings and salaries, another one going, you know, reducing the number of days. So all that savings, it’s the net savings on that we’re putting towards adding another building inspector to the staff. So we would have, we have two electrical inspectors, one plumbing inspector, though we should have at least another part-time to back up and then have two building inspectors instead of one. Uh, the workload is there. One of the things we did is we looked at the, the, the fees are collected. We’ve made a small adjustment to the fees.

1:08:58 We want to take another look this year at the fees. We just, we collected the information from all the surrounding communities as to their inspections fee, fee schedules, and tried to make sense out of it. Couldn’t make sense out of it. It’s just they use different labels, they use different methodologies. So we increase the fees by, um, the individual items. So if you’re putting a new water heater in your house, right, it’s a $30 permit. We increase it by $20. Um, the typical fees out there are more like 75. So we’re going from 30 to 50, or 45 to 65 when it looks like the goal rate’s 75. Uh, the other main fee in, in buildings is, uh, the,

1:09:44 that has the most business is a, uh, comprehensive permit. So if you’re doing like a whole renovation of your house, it’s not an itemized fee. It’s a single comprehensive permit. It’s $15 per thousand value of the project. So part of the work of the inspectors go out there and assess the value of the project. Is this a $50,000 renovation or a hundred thousand dollars renovation based on the permit and work being done? And then that’s $15 per thousand is, is the fee. So, so we’ve done some fee adjust, but the other really important factor of why we’re beefing up this department is I’ve talked about our efforts to, to increase capturing as much new growth revenue as we can.

1:10:31 Yeah. We think we’ve, we’ve missed out on the, on the boom cycle with the covid slash low interest rate. We may be able to go back and capture that when we’re working on that. But the building inspection department is the beginning of the food chain of capturing that data, that information, that value, and then providing that information to the assessor’s office, which then goes through the process to, to, to determine the, the value increase of the property, which we can capture immediately is new growth revenue and, and, and the importance of that. Anything that’s considered new growth revenue immediately gets added to the tax levy. So our biggest revenue source property taxes,

1:11:17 call it the levy, um, it’s capped at two and a half percent growth marblehead, like a lot of communities increase that two and a half every year to, you know, do the max two and a half increase. Uh, if we’re successful in new growth revenue somewhere in the future, we can start backing off with the 2.5% increases because our new growth revenues are generating sufficient. How do we make that happen? It all starts right here in the building department. And that’s, like I said, the beginning of the food chain to make that happen. So, so it’s a modest increase, but we, we also expect to get a, a really incredible return, uh, on, on that, that investment right there. Especially with the linkage to the assessors. Yeah.

1:12:04 So because, and, and that’s, I mean, the reassessment of properties this year, there’s potentially part of the impact that people are seeing is the fact that suddenly their new renovation or re or addition work that was done in the past that hasn’t been reflected in their property values is now being reflected. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, that’s a whole, that’s a whole nother avenue as far as how well, um, the, the assessment of individual properties are. Uh, you know, uh, is there the, the ability to actually go into the homes, do the measurements, see the improvements in capturing that? So that’s, that’s another area that,

1:12:49 but if there was a building permit pulled Right. That you hoped that Yes. Whether that happens all the time Yep. Another story. But, um, you, you would expect that, uh, that that would be a potential source of new growth. Yeah. So tho this is the, or this is the initial eyes and ears of what’s going on. Yeah. And then that information’s fed to the assessors who then go in and will capture at the conclusion of the projects, capture that value. Just A question. I, is there a team approach that’s kind of looked at across departments when it comes to the, the building, the damage from police and fire, everybody just to kind of have their eyes open

1:13:35 that if they see something going on and there’s no permit in the window To report that object? Yeah. The what? The mappings. Oh, the mapping. Yeah. That’s what, that’s what they use. So we use, we utilize, um, a software, uh, in short money where there, there’s a service that actually they do continuous flyover of communities and photograph everything. And then they have software that gives us the capability. We did a three year look back so that, uh, they, they, they look at the 3-year-old picture, the most current picture, and their software will identify any changes, at least externally, external to the properties, capture the addresses, identify,

1:14:21 put dots on all the changes, and then provide a spreadsheet that captures all that, as well as somehow taps into, uh, the municipal information and identifies whether there was a permit pulled in the property. So we have this massive spreadsheet. And so every line item, when we did it, we captured over 800 changes in properties from three years ago. Um, and, and then out of that we have about 300 transactions that didn’t have a permit associated with it. Now, some of that may be that the permit didn’t get loaded ‘cause there was some updates on software several years ago. Some of it may be that the change they’re identifying is

1:15:07 they put a new walkway in that doesn’t really require a permit, but de and, and so we have our, our building department going through that list and looking at it. And so we’re looking for where, you know, three years ago, no swimming pool today, there’s a swimming pool and then going in to say, has that been captured? Was there a permit? Uh, has that value been captured? But that’s a, again, beefing up, adding some bodies, you know, additional body in there gives the capacity to, to do that, um, to do that scrubbing. So, super. Yeah. Um, this may not be the appropriate report for this question, if not, I apologize. Uh, I’ve heard conversation that, uh, DOR says, best practice is to have the assessing department

1:15:53 underneath the finance director. And I know we’re investigating that. Where are we in the process of bringing the assessors under the finance directors? It’s on the Warren for town meetings. So it’s in the hands of town meetings, uh, to, to, you know, make that vote and bring it in. And so it, it, the benefit of doing, so the reason push to have that on there is there are a lot of, uh, there are a lot of processes that, that go back and forth between the finance department, the assessing department, as well as the building department. Um, we need to make sure we’re, they’re all under one roof or one team, right. So that we can coordinate and make sure that everybody’s doing their part. Um, the, the other, um, I’m trying to think

1:16:41 where I had my other benefit to it. Oh, as far as reporting up to DOR all setting the tax classification and all the reporting Department of revenue, there’s a lot of back and forth with the finance department. A lot of deadlines, it’s, you know, they both play a role role. So having the assessor department as part of the finance department, um, uh, make sure those processes are smoothed out. Right. Uh, and coordinated. And finally, um, our efforts under the, you know, the whole, the, the select board departments, the information system push that we’re doing to upgrade and make sure we are using, you know, really good software. It’s current, it’s reliable.

1:17:28 Um, we don’t reach into the assessors ‘cause they own ‘em. If the assessing department becomes part of under the, the finance department, then we can go in and make sure that all of the software systems and databases are, you know, current in the, the data’s good. Sort of try to clean up to the extent possible, all that information, make sure it’s, it’s good. So there’s a lot of, um, a lot of synergy, um, and, and a lot of more collaboration that will come out of combining, uh, those departments. Like, Um, I just wanted to point out, this is sort of a unique situation where you can, um, directly connect sort of an investment in a person with revenue.

1:18:16 Yes. Future revenue. Yes. Um, and I think that, correct me if I’m wrong, I think this is the only situation in the budget where we are adding a position. Is that correct? Everything else, there’s some movement around in department. Yeah. So this is, this Is the only addition. So it’s right across Every Department. Yep. The classification exists, so we already have one of this type. Right. Um, and, but we’re, we’re covering it through the savings generated from the deal with the commissioner’s office. Some retirees that are, that are, uh, downgrading their time, the amount of time, you know, one’s fully retired, one’s going down to, to one day. So, so, um, if, if we’re not covering all

1:19:04 of the new Sally, we’re covering, uh, uh, most of it plus That fixed fee revenue too. Right. Bring about 26,000. So if you took that off of the 61. So we’re actually saving money plus bringing in money when this Yeah. I mean, it looks like the departments, you know, expenses are increasing 10%. So I think there is a net increase, you know, but clearly for, for all those reasons, there’s a original, oh Yeah, we have the, so there’s utility increase in there, so that’s 61,000, right? That’s the net increase for the building inspection department. So Alicia has the number part of that 64,000 increases utility commitment. Um, but that’s on the expenses. Yeah.

1:19:50 The, the, the net salaries is down. So out of that 61,000 change, I would argue that about 26,000 would be covered by the increase fee revenue, um, and the balance of 40,000. Uh, And I budgeted for those, the part-times in there. So if when the part-time falls, then it’ll be gone. But just in case right now, that’s included in there. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So, Yeah, no, we talked at length about this on Monday. I think we shared notes. Um, I really view this as one of the big steps in the longer term plan as I, as I think about new growth, and we’ve talked about the challenges the last few years. I think about new growth as kind of two things.

1:20:35 It’s, it’s actual new growth, which Marblehead has trouble with because there’s not a lot of area to build out. Um, but then as, as our CFO has come in in the last year, it’s really, are we capturing that new growth correctly? I remember Alicia gave me a call in the fall and, you know, she shared a lot of insight into some trends during that low interest rate environments where our surrounding North Shore communities saw a lot of spikes. Now maybe, maybe their new growth numbers have always been higher than Marblehead, but theirs were going like this while marblehead were kind of staying flat. Um, and, and you know, I think kicking the tires, um, on, on stuff like this, we’re, we’re looking at the local receipts, like you said, we talked about the technology earlier. Um, but really making sure that our building department, our assessors and our finance department are all sunk up together.

1:21:20 Like they already talked about, um, is really an initiative in a longer term plan. Um, you know, can they guarantee that next year we’re gonna see a million dollars of new growth? I don’t think you can guarantee that today, but I think you owe it to the taxpayers to really, really scrub the situation and take a really close look at it with the hopes that maybe that 300,000, even if it turned into five or six per year, um, that’s a way to combat some of the challenges on the expense side. So, um, I’m excited about, about this and, you know, we talked about it during this budget review, so I thought I’d take the unity to say it again. Here’s is a trend you’ll see, right? I’ve seen this other municipalities, you look over long time as far as new growth, you’ll have sort of your organic new growth and that’ll hit a certain level. So Swamp Scott, basically the numbers is like 600,000, right?

1:22:08 We’ve been 300,000 swamp. Scott has 600,000, you know, a little over a million in sort of the other communities that sort of, the organic. Um, but what happens is some significant project does come along and it’s gonna have a huge spike in new growth and you capture it. Um, or the, all of a sudden something happens in the economy, right? Mortgage rates go to 0.05, right? And, or, you know, lots of renovations. So, so for year over year, over year, it’ll be sort of that organic growth and you’re building your budget and it kind of helps you to get by. But where you, you really win is those few years that come along from time to time where you, you hit the jackpot and you capture that

1:22:54 and you, you have it in the levy. And, and those are the wins that you want to be ready for, uh, for when those times come. So that’s, that’s the long, long term, uh, approach to, to building this Up. Yeah. So it seems to me, um, as Molly covered nicely that, you know, there’s been some, or Alicia covered first. There’s been some savings in terms of the full, you know, uh, the director or the, the leader of this department as compared to full-time, employee with benefits. We’re outsourcing the swamp, Scott. Um, the trial’s gone well and we’ve added hours to that, which is great. Um, but then any increase that might be slight when you’re interacting these two, um, you know, presumably will be covered hopefully by some revenue, um, probably tenfold. So, um, you know, again, I think this is one of the, the,

1:23:43 the big progress items for fiscal year as we develop fiscal year 20 fives budget in what’s a multi-year over, or multi, sorry, multi-year plan to address the, the revenue challenges. No, uh, Okay. Any other questions on building department? Um, um, sealer weights and measures $250 per year flat. And then animal inspectors saying $2,400 a year flat. So we’ll have a change in personnel on sealer, weights, measures, ‘cause it’s currently a veteran agent. Okay. Contact me, let me know. He’s, he would be here, but he’s not really had some other commitment, but I said I think we can cover it. Um, but he’s retiring June 30th, so, so that

1:24:29 functional, most likely assigned over into the inspections department. ‘cause it’s an inspection function. The animal Control, there are no salary increase there. Is that something in the future, if there was a salary increase for more hours, we’d get a better picture of the dogs without tag. That’s Just expense, right? Is that a salary? No. Yeah, I’m sorry. Yeah, it’s just a flat salary. Yeah. Been that way for 15 years.

1:25:00 That could be another income producer.

1:25:04 Different type of inspection. He’s not an inspector per se. He’s an inspector. Like inspector captain. Oh, they’re not looking around for tags and what, No. Okay. Right.

1:25:17 Okay. So that wraps up public safety. Um, we’ll take a vote on public safety. Uh, I’d like to say make a motion to recommend the budget. $11,035,820. Second. Second,

1:25:35 Lindsay approve. Approve. Eric approved that. Approved. Approved. Darren approved. Dan approve. Darren proof. Thank you. Um, engineer, I know there’s a slight update here as well, right? Yeah. So, um, so right now we have county engineer, Charlie Quigley Quigley, um, and providing town engineer services, conservation services, supporting the Conservation Commission to those other duties. Um, he is expecting to retire in September. So he is given his, his notice to retire in September.

1:26:22 Um, so the plan, and, and, and Amy will get a little more into it on the, I’ll have her talk a little bit more in the Public Works budget, but the idea is in the fall, um, is that the engineering functions are gonna migrate over to the public works department where they have an engineer and then we’re gonna gonna plus up some, some function there. And then the salary, the engineer salary is going to be used to, if we’re successful at town meeting to get the community development planning department approved, that’s the salary that will go towards the director of that department. In fact, I already told Charlie that if the department goes through, he gets to be the first acting department

1:27:07 head for that department. I think that’s why he got his retirement notice. I’m not sure I’m kidding. Uh, so anyways, the idea is the responsibilities migrate to public works, the salary, if this is how I’m gonna fund the community development director position is through that salary. Yeah. So That’s another example. A lot of people were asking me just offline and whatnot about some of the compensation committee meetings and new positions being created, but, you know, another example of a position maybe being created but being funded with another line item within your bottom line. Yep. Yep. Um, so that was, you know, we talked at length and we probably already shared some notes on that too. Um, any other questions on engineer before we move to public works with which interacts Okay.

1:27:55 Uh, go to public works. Yep, yep. Unless Amy, to jump in because I think the theme that you’re hearing positions is, and I’ll repeat over and over, we’re holding to the bottom line based on the revenue projection, right? But we’re re-engineering to use that theme. A lot of functions that we’re doing so that we’re increasing productivity, effectiveness, those kind of things. So, um, Amy has been doing a lot of work and we’ve been working together as far as taking a hard look at the whole public works department and making sure that it is aligned to provide the services that folks are expecting highway trees

1:28:44 and drains and that, you know, we can be better and better at it within the constraints of the dollars that we have. Let Amy take it from there, Right? So just, uh, a few years ago, uh, drains went back to DBW, so that was kind of a shift. Um, I have been there for a year and a half I think. Um, and really spent the first year looking at everything and how everything worked. I always think Marvel had answered, uh, deep, I mean, falls very well. Um, so I don’t think there was any drastic changes or things that needed to be made, but really what I saw was a lot of tweaks that could be done to make things, um, more efficient and people more, um, accountable or responsible.

1:29:30 ‘cause I have a lot of people who work up there who wanna take responsibility. Um, and they’re ready to do, um, a broader, a broader project, um, and hire out or uh, things like that. So what we did is try to look at the budget, move people within the budget so that I had, uh, for example, like two heavy equipment operators move them to lead heavy engineer, uh, to lead heavy equipment operators. Um, first year I was there I had to move out. So we had a few, uh, I didn’t automatically promote people ‘cause I needed to figure out how all that would work. Sure. So, um, this year you see that, uh, moving to up into heavy equipment, you’ll see lead heavy equipment.

1:30:17 You’ll see the heavy equipment start to change and drop down. You’ll see the labor go down. Um, and you’ll also see the staff engineer is, uh, will be, um, really transitioning to an assistant engineer, uh, and do a lot of the field work that our current engineer is doing now. But our current engineer has now, uh, received her pe she has it in Mass and Rhode Island. Um, she does a great job. She’s gonna be a huge asset to the admin part. So as we start taking more and more responsibility from what the engineer’s doing now under the DPW, ‘cause it really works. They really, uh, they um, definitely, uh, feather well together in the work that we’re doing.

1:31:03 Um, so you’ll see an increase up in the admin part, but we’re actually not increasing the overall amount of people. Um, and then we’re taking different salaries to try to, uh, offset the cost, um, of adding, of moving an engineer up into the admin part with the responsibility that that takes. I can just add on, we did cut one of her positions in fiscal year 24 Last year. Yes. Yeah. Right. So the department has taken on a lot more work and they are, uh, one person left. Um, but, uh, I think by just restructuring and giving, uh, a better hierarchy to all of our, and sending people out as groups, um, that we’re gonna get a lot more work for, uh, the amount

1:31:49 that the salvage report.

1:31:54 Sounds like some good planning certainly is appreciated given the financial challenges that the town faces. Um, and again, you know, working within that bottom line to be able to kind of reconfigure the, the leadership and, and the team on the public works. Um, this is a department too. We talked a lot about, um, the revolving fund and you’ll be shifting $108,000 of, of hot top and some other materials, expenses from the general fund into the revolving fund. Yeah. So there was, you know, you see over to the right here, um, initial budget requests was an area that, you know, budget reductions had to be made between Alicia and Amy. And it sounds like there is some revolving fund balance

1:32:39 to cover that, but maybe that’s not the solution for every year moving forward. Um, maybe more of a shorter term fix. So I did look into it ‘cause Molly asked How much we’re generating annually It’s about 50,000. Okay. So there may be some play there and every dollar counts, but, um, if we’re only generating 50 per year, that would be probably the max that could kind of save on that line item That has historically been higher. We’re not gonna see this a hundred thousand dollars every year. Um, so, um, again, much appreciated to, to figure out a way to make it work this year with the seven 50 and knowing that more planning’s coming in the future. Right. So we did, um, take into account the increases in, uh, heating and oil and gas.

1:33:25 Yes. Uh, we also have had seen a dramatic increase in asphalt too. So that, um, line item and one 13 where the revolving fund, you can use that money for that part. That actually was, I needed more money in those areas. So, um, you would’ve seen an increase in that whole one in a month, a decrease. I just see that. So, um, we are working though on really trying to develop a trench pavement, um, a rehab in-house. So for, for the smaller trenches. So with the fair share of money, we’re looking at a, uh, trench paver, um, last year with the winter recovery money, we looked at a really large truck that we purchased. So we can take a lot more asphalt at one point. And then I’m, I’m hoping that that, uh,

1:34:10 revolving fund will be able to fund that, um, going forward and keep that as a, uh, as a project going forward. So. Great. Anybody have any other, yeah, this one Does your office, do you guys have a heated, uh, trailer Address full? Yes, we have a hot box.

1:34:31 Any other questions on public works?

1:34:36 We have snow removal at one oh 5,000 as well. Um, that might come in under this year.

1:34:46 Salt has gone up dramatically too though. So I was gonna say we don’t need to have snow to spin that ‘cause we have ice, ice conditions, so sanding and salting And those kind of things still, still happen. Yep. Do you do any brining? Not yet. We’re working towards that.

1:35:05 Our, uh, our engineers pushing us towards brine everything, but,

1:35:13 All right. So that Makes up the public works Line item, subline item of the select board department budgets. Nobody else has any more questions. Uh, I’d like to make a motion to recommend the balance of or for fiscal year 25, proposed budget of $2,212,547. Second.

1:35:40 Lindsay approve.

1:35:44 Approve. Approved. Yeah, approve. Molly, approve. Eric approve. Michael Approve. Tim approved Alex approve. Thank You very much, Amy. Thank. Thanks. Thanks. We’re into human services. Uh, council on agent.

1:36:05 We have salary adjustments of 17,000. Molly, correct me if I’m wrong, just con contractual obligations. Anything to add on? Council Oage, there were some kind of budget reductions from version one of the budget. Um, guess Alicia, I’ll turn to you on those

1:36:25 Just scrolling through. Yeah, No worries. There were some shifts evolving. She Had a Couple had something to do with Yeah, She had a couple of positions that she funded with a one time ARPA through the mass DOT that’s, um, total budget is actually 609,000. But she has a lot of grants in private funding that she’s using to supplement her budget from taxation.

1:36:51 And we had one physician that, um, was an MMEU physician that was a band driver and one, um, that person left. We upgraded it to a transportation coordinator because we’ve also automated the department. Um, so it provides more administrative support and this person can schedule the drivers actually communicate like we’re in 2024. Right. There’s some software upgrades. There’s a bunch of CA like on the cutting edge of our information systems. Believe it or not, We, And they love it down there. They dot they, yeah. So Should come for lunch on Tuesday,

1:37:40 Have a cheap holiday. I’ll take a free lunch anywhere

1:37:46 free for the residents, but it’s 406,600.

1:37:56 No, I, the collaboration with Alicia is evident here and, and, and working within the various funds, you have as much appreciated and it sounds like you have a good operation going and, and, uh, the budget was very clear when we met with them on Monday. Appreciate It. Thank you. Thanks for coming. You’re welcome. Um, veterans benefits. So Dave couldn’t be here, but, um, so that just reflects, uh, so he also is retiring June 30th. So some of the savings is just the difference in pay grade for, for a replacement, you know, for this position. And the other vacancies that, that we have known coming retirements, um,

1:38:45 we’ll start advertising have to town meeting votes and we know exactly what the dollars are, but this will be one of those positions is to find, uh, find someone who’s gonna try to fill those boots. Uh, those are big boots that fill, uh, out there. So that’s what the, uh, reduction reflects. Yeah. And again, the benefits, um, that’s what they, the chapter one 15 benefits paid out we’re reimbursed by the 75% reimbursement by the state or whatever is expended. Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s not a huge savings year over year. But again, I, I’d like to repeat that. This is working within a bottom line budget, right? It’s a decision. Um, you have somebody retiring and we’re not let it, we’re not not replacing them, right.

1:39:32 But there’s a decision made to forecast at the likely hiring lesser amount. Um, and, you know, little things like that in budget planning with all these new tools being put into place can annually, you know, you do it five times, that’s 50, $60,000. So it’s, it’s good financial planning and, and you know, it’s, it, these are a lot of these are estimates, so it might not be perfect, but it’s probably where it’ll come to Mind. Right. So he’s a step eight on the pay grid. Yeah. So you find somebody who’d be at a very likely at a, at a lower step. Yep. Okay. That wraps up Human services. That’s there. Small increase in total. Um, any other questions? I’d like to make a motion, uh,

1:40:18 to recommend the budget fiscal year 25 proposed budget amount of $516,500. Does that

1:40:28 Approve? Wait, approve. Approve. Approve. Molly, approve. Sarah, approve. Michael. Approve. Approve. Valid Approve. Thank you. Uh, quick one. Culture and recreation. We’ve got memorial and Veteran Veterans Day under there. Um, so flat from last year. Um, I don’t recall discussing the symptoms. Yes, those was the flags, the wreaths and flowers that he said he was recycling some of those wreaths to keep them longer. Um, flags have gone up a bit, but he tries to take care of that. And bans and marchers. Any questions on culture and recreation or Memorial and trend day?

1:41:13 Like to make a motion to approve the fiscal year 25 pro proposed budget of $7,550 for culture record?

1:41:24 Lindsay approve Mine. Approved. Approved. That approved. Molly approved. I approved Tim. Tim Prude, Ballek proof.

1:41:38 Uh, we’re into other general governments. You Got debt service. Debt service. Oh, that’s a separate line. Okay. I might roll up. Okay. That service. Um, so When we looked at, we had a meeting, think a planning meeting a few months back and I showed the example, um, to kinda diagnose what, what happened with all the questions with the assessor’s department. I remember I showed the building of the tax rate. Um, and this is something that relates to the debt service. So, um, debt exclusion over rise that have been previously approved. And you’ll see a fluctuation in that over the years as, um, new gets new debts get approved at town meetings, but also new or old debts roll off. Right. Um, and, and I think what we see here is pretty flat year over year.

1:42:25 But I guess the question would be there’s probably some coming up that we’ll be rolling off. Yes. So there’s gonna be a new ban that we’re gonna do. So the uh, library, since it’s gonna be finished, there’s 1 million that still needs to be borrowed. We’re gonna do that with the bond anticipation note in May. And when that comes due, there’s a $65,000 interest charge that we’re factoring in. So I have an interest on bond anticipation notes in addition to the declining interest as our debt service is getting ready to fall off in relation to the schools, the, the interest is going down. So that will be falling off our debt schedule. But as you said, we have additional debt that we need to put on. Right. So the debt exclusion, my, so the expense is matched with the revenue source. So as the debt matures

1:43:12 and comes off, the revenue source comes off. So it’s a wash as you well know between the, the revenue side and, and this expenditure side. So yeah, It does impact the numerator of the tax rate though. So if it rolled off and was not replaced, presumably taxes would go down. Yep. Correct. Yep.

1:43:33 Um, okay. Um, so I guess we vote, we usually vote this, I think we do. Um, Yeah, it’s previously approved, but I think we, so it’s part of the budget. Um, any questions on that service?

1:43:52 I’d like to make a motion to recommend, uh, the proposed fiscal year 25 debt service budget of 11,058,075. Second Lindsay approved. Approved Eric approved that. Approved Molly. Darren approved. Michael approved. Tim Pru. Valid Approve. Thank you. Um, other general government. Um, and this is the one where I made the joke, Alicia, that there were kind of multiple other general governments, but those are within, so this is kind of Yeah, we’ll You’ll next year we’ll make it this way ‘cause it’s confusing for me to, when it gets Yeah, that’s just a clear gov feature, right? How it’s mapped. Um, uh, I guess I’ll let you start with,

1:44:41 I wanna cover insurance in depth, um, but maybe we can hit the other items first. Sure.

1:44:51 You wanna start with insurance first? We’ll do that. Yeah. Maybe utility reserve. Yeah. Okay. Start with street linings. Okay. Street linings level service from last year at 1 28 20, um, utility reserve was reduced by 50,000, which was transferred over to the school department. Uh, contributory retirement, uh, that went up by 300. Hold on.

1:45:18 Oh, I think we’re good. Yeah. Okay. So contr to retirement, uh, went up by 386,402 and that’s our required funding. Uh, Medicare, we brought that down to, uh, represent the challenge portion of Medicare. We transferred the school’s portion of Medicare ‘cause I never know what their salaries are and that’s a straight 1.45% that they can just calculate when they do their budget each year. Um, also within the, um,

1:45:52 Medicare it’s,

1:46:07 sorry, would have my excel even though I’m going through the sheet same time. Yeah, I hear you. So, um, last year for Medicare total it was 7 7 9 1 7 30. We brought it down to 2 7 2 for the time the remainder going over to the school department and I had them adjust that down based on what their actual reduced budget was. Sorry. It it shows it going up to it has more, it has more in there. I’m breaking down. Oh, okay. Okay. What’s within, okay, I’m going into the detail. Okay. Yeah, so there’s like a net increase what that Yeah, there’s a Medicare that there’s a help Medicare penalty that’s 7,000 that’s in there. That level service, there is a health reimbursement

1:46:53 Medicare 760,000 that’s in there. That’s part of the HEC agreement. That’s not the, the public employee committee. That’s one of the, the benefits that’s embedded in, into the agreement, which is under negotiations. So

1:47:22 Do you want me, do you want me to go through the details so you’re seeing the summary? I make it easier for No, I I pulled up details. Yeah. The details might be, yeah, might be a little easier. Yeah,

1:47:37 Same order.

1:47:43 Yeah.

1:47:47 8 58 fifties, 8 52 Should go down there. There it goes. Yep. Keep going. Go down. See, this is like, it’s confusing. Yeah. We don’t like seeing it like this. It’s, it’s, yeah. So that’s the right one. So see the 2 72 Medicare in the top in the blue, the 7,000 Medicare penalty and the $760,000 health reimbursed Medicare, that’s what makes that 1,000,039 number that you saw on the summary. Yeah, I guess what I’m confused is on the other one, the compare was to 7 91, whereas looking at the detail the prior year was not 7 91. Yeah. It might be a bucket Type. Right.

1:48:33 So that’s what’s just confusing. I mean, I appreciate you talking through the detail, but on the other one, the compare is just one line item to a, a bucket of multiple line items, Right? Yeah. Which line item? So this is back to the summary level Tara we’re talking about. Yeah. See it’s the 7 91 compared to the one. So the 7 91 is only pulling in Medicare, but I think this health reimburse Medicare Yep. May have, when you summarized it just got mapped to the wrong line. Right. Um, so yeah, I I thought that was a little bit when we were looking at the numbers, but um, Because the other health reimbursement just isn’t in the Yeah, this actually should be coming down because there was about what five 50 shifted to the schools.

1:49:20 Um, and I think that’s missing 700,000 or so just on this prior approved line item. Correct. You got it. Um, and it’s probably buried somewhere else, so we can kind of look at that after. But the details are here, Right? Yep. But it’s the prior year. That’s The prior year. The Prior year number is on, correct. So. Yep. Um, All right, so that kind of covers that. Yep. I’ll, uh, follow up with some details if we have further questions. Um, Workers’ compensation Yeah. Is, uh, 398,000. I rounded it up from 3 9 7 1 69. Um, part of that’s gonna be allocated towards the police. Um, what I’ve seen is it’s the schools, uh, it’s the town,

1:50:07 it’s the fire, and then the police have been just going out there. You a general fund budget. So we’re gonna change that methodology. Okay. Uh, training is primarily for the police department. That’s the 15,000.

1:50:21 And then the health insurance is, uh, 13 million 698 0 18. Makes that up. So you may wanna pull up the detail on that.

1:50:37 So that’s going to be the 11 1 98 0 1 8 2,000,005. Yep, those two. So the reason why it’s two is one is actives and one is retirees. They just split it in two lines in the gl and I just kept that same methodology for history purposes. So it looks like on this one that it’s in,

1:51:04 how is it going down for FY five? The quo was bigger. Ah, okay. Yeah, we’re gonna get to that in a minute. I have a, something I put together.

1:51:17 Should we go into what you had first? So since we’re on Insurance Yeah, we can. So, so I, this has been a hot topic the last few years in a number of meetings I’ve been in. So I spent some time with Alicia. Um, just summarizing data. Again, I’m never doing any calculations other than just summarizing data in a different format. Um, you can see as we’ve talked about the last few years, the prior kind of administration, prior town administrator, um, this was a line item that we’ve talked about and, and disclosed as a driver of free cash. It’s a highly volatile line item that should have cushion in it. I think we can all agree that it’s a very high, um, budgeted line item at over $11 million. Um, and, and it needs something in there. But, um, from my perspective, the more transparent

1:52:02 that the newer team has become. Um, as Alicia, when she did her finance forum, I think you called it, um, with the schools, there was a showing that the decrease in that kinda buffer from three to two to one the last three years. Um, and uh, I talked very closely with Alicia to come up with, um, this budgeted amount for 24 last year was at about 11.4 million. Um, and the true actual cost that is expected to spend, again, estimate as of about February or March, Alicia believes it’ll come in around 9.4. So whether it was perfect science or not, it’ll probably land with this back to free cash of about $2 million. Um, if you look at how 25 was built,

1:52:48 that 9.5 actual has been adjusted by, um, I think about 8.5% if I do the math there to 10.2. Um, and that’s based on, I’ll let you speak, but I think the trends you’re seeing in this health insurance, Oh yeah, they were actually worse than we thought. So nine and a, some of them are 10, so depending on the plan. So when the GIC comes out, it takes the Medicare lower plans and it averages that with the higher, and it gives you this lower blended rate. But in reality, when you actually look at where your enrollment is, it’s a lot higher than the blended rate that the GIC is setting. So for us, depending on where you landed, a lot of plans are up in the 10% range. And that was like, so we to see, um, during open enrollment,

1:53:36 how the shifting goes as well. It was like 400, was it 400,000 over what we originally estimated? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, so yeah. So effectively you can see the budgeted amount for that line item has come down, call it 200,000 and change, um, which creates this gap of a million bucks. Um, to me, as we think about longer term planning, if you’re a budgeted line item over 10 million that’s highly volatile, I would think that 1 million is probably closer to where it should be if we’re talking about a reserve within that line. Um, what I decided to do, again, this is my independence analysis, but I wanted to put together, especially for the newer members of the committee, um, for the last few years you’ve been on, um, a, a role of,

1:54:23 you know, free cash certified versus free cash used to balance the budget. Um, and you can see, you know, back in 21, um, you know, there was 3 million that was not used to balance the budget. 22, there was 2.7 23 we use just about all of it. Um, last year there was about a million dollar gap. Um, and where we’re at this year that that million dollar, um, has gone up to $2 million. So if you’re thinking about kind of free cash drivers, whether that’s an expense line item that’s, you know, has some cushion in it and it’ll drive free cash or, you know, underestimation of revenue, um, which I think the last few years, the local receipts have come a lot higher, close to normal than past practices. Um, and then just that true free cash reserve, as I view it

1:55:10 as the not the amounts of funds not used to balance the budget, that million dollar decrease on the health insurance side year over year has effectively shifted, um, to just unrestricted free cash. Not used to balance the budget, um, to me a little bit more transparent, but really in, in a similar situation because that line item will drive less free cash even though we’ve come up on the, uh, the, the not use to balance the budget side. Um, so just wanted to throw that out there as as, um, I think it’s a little bit because it’s a line item that’s generated free cash. Um, and we’ve talked about free cash even before I became chair, it was a common theme of, of town meeting. Um, you know, I thought it was a good, good chance to kind of interact the two. Um, and it’s another example of, um, a line item that,

1:55:59 you know, may drive less free cash, right? So as fiscal year 25 closes, Alicia, I know we’ve had conversations, um, we’re at 8.7 of certified free cash this year at the moment 5.5 to balance the budget, 1 million to capital 2 million not being used. As we continue to effectively pull from some of these drivers of it, um, it wouldn’t be um, too surprising to see at the end of 25, um, for that number to be lower than the 8.7. Is that fair? Okay. But they’ll let venture speak ‘cause we work, everyone’s like, it’s just, you just say veteran Alicia. ‘cause that’s how close we working on this stuff together. Um, so I’m You that, well, so I think what you’re alluding to as we as the budget constraints get tighter and tighter,

1:56:46 and you heard from the departments right? We’re, we’re riding a thinner and thinner line that generates less new free cash for the following year, right? We’re we’re, we’re we’re burning it off. And so if, uh, as tight as budgets are, if if the health line item hits the numbers we’re projecting, right? We’re only gonna generate about 3 million and free cash for next year, right? Uh, that’s, Yeah. There’s always gonna, there’s gonna be other line items, right? But that might show at it, but This is the main right, but, but Right. Alright, let’s see. The police and fire do a great job and they turn back 50,000 each. That’s not, you know, a million each. Right.

1:57:33 So, so the magnitude is, is shrinking on the, on the free cash. Um, so, so that’s where we’re driving it. We’re also the stated policy, uh, for, you know, the select board adopted is that we should bring our free cash, our unused free cash numbers up to 5% of operating budget. So it should be about 5 million, five five to 5.5 million as a policy. Why is that important? Uh, for those of us in the room, it’s really important in that it maintains up on rating and as interest rates have kicked up from what they were before, that really matters, uh, for, for any kind of borrowings that we do. Um, and as to what you alluded to earlier about kind

1:58:20 of move the free cash generator out of the healthline, but leaving, leaving that buffer sort of the other philosophical approach, the reason for doing that is, um, if we don’t have a very sufficient buffer in a, in a large ticket volatile line item and we miss the mark by a million or so, right? Um, you know, when, when the health costs actual start coming in, if we don’t have that buffer, what we have to do is turn to the department heads who have already laid out their annual plans for all the things they need to do. We need to go and blow them up in order to backfill a mandatory cost item. And so, so part of the philosophy is, is putting,

1:59:07 building a firewall between a highly volatile line item that’s big dollars from all the other budgets that are relatively smaller dollars from having to, to blow up all their plans. You know, how we usually do that is I implement a spending fees, which thankfully we have not had to do since I’ve been here. Um, and also we were looking to transfer over to the schools their portion, but due to turnover, we’re holding onto that with the idea of returning to that was their study. Yeah. Yeah. It’s something that we talked about in the fall. Maybe shifting, um, their portion of that they would, I I would assume you’d still be very involved in Yes. Monitoring it. Yes. Um, but to more align, you know, the school department to be able to bear the cost of new hires.

1:59:55 Um, but also, you know, the savings of if something somebody retires, like we talked about earlier, maybe they save that salary plus some on the health insurance to be able to, to fund some of their initiatives. Um, I’m reluctant to share the other kind of analysis I did on the split, um, because it wasn’t perfectly being able to prove out, but it felt like the schools of this line item are somewhere between 60 to 65%. Um, and that seemed to kind of jive with the data, right? It seems consistent. Um, but I know there’s more data to be, um, done there and, and, you know, as, as the longer term plan continues to be developed town wide, maybe something to shift to them, um, when they’re ready to take it over. Just, um, two questions, um, to that point. So the first is, so the 998,000 sort of buffer that we have this year, what’s the minimum

2:00:43 that you would be comfortable with that? Are we there yet? We’re there million? This is it. So this is the minimum. Okay. Yep. And then when you transfer this to the schools mm-Hmm. Do you transfer a portion of that buffer to them? So they’ll take and they’ll have the ability to control what they do with That, right? So we, yeah, we look at how their fluctuations has, we look at like a three year analysis, see where they’re at because I know sometimes the school teacher turnover as far as hiring, leaving, what does that look like? And then, right. Yeah. I would think both sides would need, whereas As for our side, we’re trying to generate more free cash That to meet 10% is a more transparent reserve than 30%. Right. So because They’ll, they’ll have the same challenge as far

2:01:28 as, but it’s also A sign of a line item that’s no longer going to, generates No longer a source. It might generate nine, you know, it could generate some if, if this reserve is not eaten into, Right. So the philosophy here is the same as what we were doing with the energy reserves and such as of, you know, within the departments, giving them accurate, you know, real estimates to what the cost and telling them you need to manage this, right? And, and not rely on just burning through whatever and then jump into the reserve. So the, the philosophy is, and, and the same on the health insurance. We, we wanna split it. Um, there, there’s more analysis to be done to to, to figure it out, but the schools will have the responsibility for managing their healthcare costs and,

2:02:15 and whatever decisions they’re making, uh, on staffing as well as we on our side will have to do the same thing, that if we’re adding positions, we have to factor in not just the salaries, but the salaries and the healthcare costs and the benefits. And so it’s just a consistent philosophy throughout the whole organization of letting I, I, I look at as letting the managers be managers and, and, and manage their organizations. We’re always there to support ‘em, put that in and, and we will get better results overall through the whole organization.

2:02:52 Yeah. And just so that everybody’s aware and the details, that’s the line item that I rolled. The comparison is the one that’s had kind of that buffer in it, which is this health insurance transfer account. Um, when we looked at the, we were focused on the summary level, it’s a little bit higher because it includes that, um, that other line that you mentioned has the retirees, the medics. Yes. Which, um, has been a lot closer to actual, um, what’s been budgeted over the years. Uh, so that, you know, that was the main one on this other general governments that wanted to kind of talk about as there’s been a kind of a shift in both philosophy and movement in, in numbers as well to explain.

2:03:37 Um, and then what else? Do we have a few more line items? We also Have, um, That’s another piece of that energy reserve shift into the schools, Correct? Yes. There’s kind of two line items that made that up. Yes. In utility plus the energy reserves. Yes. That even be another one somewhere else. Um, and then the ep, correct me if I’m wrong, but is that where if our local receipts Pass? Yes. So if the local auctions don’t pass, we’re gonna cut the EP from, its regular 250 down to 50

2:04:16 And that’s something that’s doable. There’s no, you know, requirement to fund it at two 50. That’s just the schedule that we’ve come up with. Yes. Yeah.

2:04:28 And nothing’s going to stabilization fund under this budget. That’s right. And um, We left in free cash for the stabilization. Yeah. So I don’t have it on this, but um, I remember Thatcher, state of the town when he built that presentation, free cash estimate was 8 million, um, five and a half, two free cash to the budget, but 500 of that going to stabilization. Right. 1 million to capital. Those numbers haven’t changed, which resulted in, um, what was it, uh, $1.3 million of free cash not used to balance the budget, plus the 500 going to stabilization for a net of what I view as 1.8 million in reserves.

2:05:16 Um, since free cash certified came in at 8.7, that would’ve been $700,000 more. But because of the tight budget system to not fund stabilization, it’s only a net of 200 of these net, um, you know, reserves as I’ve known. So, um, that’s the update is there is, although stabilization is not being funded, the reserve type features of his presentation in January, right. We’ve actually benefited 200 in terms of this bond rating, um, number that is important to keep our interest rates lower, which allow all departments town-wide to be able to, um, you know, get seven 50 and seven 50 for example. Um, because if interest rates were higher, then that 1.5 may not be available.

2:06:02 Um, yeah, so that’s, that’s the, uh, other general government. We spent a lot of time talking about that Monday as well, so there’s been some good notes shared. The only other line that I didn’t go over real quick was that 802 18, so that’s our property insurance and our, our, uh, FSA funding that 802 18 other insurance.

2:06:24 This one? Yeah. Yep. So our property insurance have about four and a half percent. Okay. Sorry. Alicia acronym FSA Like spending account. I’m sorry. Thank. Yeah,

2:06:39 too many TLAs stands for three letter acronyms.

2:06:46 All right. So help me here, Alicia. ‘cause this is where clear go’s starting to confuse me. Okay. My voting vote. Other general government or this total general fund accounts? Uh, total other general government. 21 4 4 8 20. Okay. Yep. So I don’t have to vote this next line. That’s just to summarize Sum of all your votes. Okay. So no other questions on other general government to make a motion to recommend and approve the fiscal year 25 proposed budget. 21,448,000 5, 440 $8,507. Second Lindsay, Uh, Lindsay, You’re on mute.

2:07:32 Approve, Approve, approve. Yeah, approve. Molly, approve. Sarah, approve. Michael approve. Sam approve. Doubt approve.

2:07:47 We left him last again, if we did it Monday, mark. So sorry.

2:07:56 He used to it. I’ll say we probably should have started with him. I know, because it was a pretty simple budget to review. I Think he was last in the Select Board meeting on Friday too.

2:08:11 So Harbor is an enterprise fund, but does roll up into the select board budgets as I understand the history. Um, that being said, if we want to do that separately next year, open to that. I know it’s, you know, an, an enterprise fund just like water and sewer, um, that collects its revenues and uses its its fees to, to pay for its own expenses. Um, I believe salaries and wages were contractual obligations. Um, expense side, we had a few notes. Molly, Um,

2:08:47 I think it they were the energy costs in there and Alicia Yes. Moved to near actuals. Yep. And his indirect costs and taxes back that he fees back towards the town. Papers over, yeah. The pilot, Yes. Payment in lieu taxes. Yes. And his, um, capital, he didn’t use his full capital either. He was very prudent about using what he needed and saving the rest of his retainers for what he does. Yeah. The outlays is based on a formula that’s provided to Mark. Um, so from a, from a numbers standpoint, it was a pretty easy budget to get, um, an understanding of what was going on. Um, and we talked about there’s no warrant article this year, um, to increase fees. Um, the last one was a few years back and I think they’ve done it twice in the last 10 years or so. Um, so that’s something that we could see in the future, but not this year.

2:09:36 Pretty straightforward. Any questions for Mark?

2:09:42 Right. I’d like to make a motion to approve the Harbor Budget Enterprise Fund, um, fiscal year 25 of $1,181,119.

2:09:59 Approve. Like approve. Approve. Approve. Molly approve. Sarah. Approve. Likely approve. Tim. Approve. Approve. Great. That Wraps up our budget review tonight. Motion to Adjourn. Second. Oh, we should, we should move the public comment. Sorry about that. Um, Does anybody have any public comment in the audience? Um, online and stop sharing. So I can see this. I don’t, don’t see any hands up. Does anybody have any public comment?

2:10:39 No public comment tonight. So motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor adjourn. Lindsay.

2:10:50 My.