Finance Committee: April 7, 2025

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 Welcome to the Town of Marblehead 2025. Uh, warrant hearing. This is a public hearing. My name’s Alec Goolsby. I’m the chair of the finance Committee. Uh, we have, let’s see,

0:13 40, 52 Articles tonight, um, for all articles with financial implications. Our finance committee will deliberate tonight and make a vote of recommendation, whether we support the article or not. Um, for all articles, whether they have financial implications or not. We will allow both the, uh, sponsor of the article to speak if they wish, if they’re in attendance. Um, and we’ll also allow for public comment if anybody in the audience wishes to, um, speak as well. But just as a reminder, if, if we’ve determined that there’s no financial implications, that public comment and, uh, the presentation, we will not deliberate on the fin side related to those.

0:59 Um, so we’ve got, like I said, 52 articles to go. So I’d like to get this, uh, meeting started as quickly as we can. So I’ll, I’ll move right to Article one

1:11 articles in numerical order. This is a standard article with, um, no recommendation by the fin com under this article. Does the presenter want to speak on it at all?

1:24 Felicia Articles in numerical order? Yeah. Yeah. Um, every year it’s a sustained article where we ask for all the articles being in numerical order on the warrant. Okay. So standard article, no financial implications. Any public comments on Article one?

1:42 I assume none from the audience online. We Have one.

1:49 No. Uh, David Patton. Oh, hold on. David Patton. So I think Allow to talk, if you put your mouse over his by his name, a button will pop up. Say, allow to talk. Uh oh. Allowed to talk. I got you. You can go. He’s muted. But you, And ask David, did you have a comment? Public comment? Hi, Can you hear me? Yeah, I can’t hear you. I just want you to know that I can hear, I can hear the leader. I did not hear what the article was. I did not hear what the woman said. Your mic On. You need a mic. Thank you. Thanks, David. That’s, I wanted to say. Yeah, thanks. Uh, we’ll put Alicia’s mic on. Um, appreciate it. All right. So if that’s the last public comment on Article one,

2:35 we’ll move on to article two, since we’re not deliberate deliberating, uh, report of town officers and committees. Again, a standard article that has no financial implications, we won’t be deliberating. Alicia, is there anything to add on this? No. Usually I provide an update and some other capital projects and things like that. Provide an update here. Any public comments on article two?

2:58 We will move on to Article three, consent articles. These do have financial implications. I’ll let, Alicia, did you want to present to article three? Sure. So this article assumes liability. So if the town, um, I put in a little typing in the bottom, it’s assumingly liable for all damages to property within the town made by State Department for the purposes of improvement of title and non-Title Rivers and Streams, harbors, tide, waters for shores and shores along a public beach within its jurisdiction. Great. Did you want to share your, um, presentation too, just so the folks online and even folks in the audience can see kind of the, the PowerPoint of the articles that are

3:43 We’re going through. And then when I need to take over the screen later, I will for certain things.

3:52 Is Alicia gonna share her screen? Alicia is yes. Yeah. You need, you need to be a panelist, don’t you? Yeah. I thought we let her in for that. I did, but she denied it. Let her in. I didn’t, I didn’t click anything.

4:09 All right. You’re gonna be rejoining as panelist.

4:15 Bear with us one minute for some technical difficulties.

4:21 Okay. You should be in now. Okay.

4:56 Okay. So Alicia’s sharing the Our Town meeting warrant meeting, uh, presentation. So we’re on article three. So, so there’s multiple bullets to this article, A through E and Alicia’s walking through those one by one you just discussed assumed liability. Yes. You want to go to presentation? So it’s both larger screen, it’s A PDF, right? Yeah. So you gotta go full screen for you in the PDF app. I’m having nothing, but That’s all right. Right now. Um, ah, it’s a pc. I gotta figure out where the buttons are.

5:41 I tried downloading and opening it, and it still opens in the web. Yeah, I think just on the left side there, you might be able to click something to the left of the bookmarks on the left. On the side. Yeah, the bottom one. Um, What does that do? This one? Yeah. What does that do? Nope. Outline. What’s that? The, the Zoom information is, Or what about Yeah, well, let’s just go through. Yeah. All right.

6:12 Do you wanna present the rest? Sure. Sorry. No worries. Yeah, I just don’t mind Me. No, No. Okay. The next one is accept trust property to see if the town will vote to accept certain trust property gifts or grants to be administered by the town and modify the terms, they’re overtaken the action really there too. The standard article, There’s no trust property to accept this year, correct? No. Okay. Article three. Um, lease town property, this to see if the town vote to authorize the appropriate town officers to lease a land or a building or structures. We don’t have anything currently. Okay. D is for the select board

6:58 to sign contracts in excess of three years. Standard Article

7:07 E is financial assistance for conservation. So this is to see if the town will vote to authorize the Conservation Commission and other proper offices of the town to apply for financial assistance from private and public sources, and the benefit of the conservation. So again, these articles do have financial impact, um, but noting that there’s no trust property to accept this year. Um, it’s a standard article. Um, and Alicia has just explained them. Is there any fin com questions or comments on this article?

7:41 Any public comment on article three?

7:48 I’d like to make a motion that FinCon recommends adoption of this article. Second, Um, Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Gilby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. And now I have to, um, Eric, right? Allow him to talk, Eric? Yes. Yes. Okay, Great. Article four. Unpaid accounts as presented on screen. Alicia, do you wanna summarize just what this article means? It’s not a huge amount. Sure. So any bills that we’ve received

8:34 in the current year from the prior year, by law, we can’t pay them unless it’s approved by town meeting by a four fifths vote. Um, the department’s affected are sewer, water, and finance. So these are, um, bills that have come in since the close of fiscal year 24 that need to be paid out of the fiscal year 25 budget. Correct. And we need to authorize that at town meeting. Yes. This is a standard article. It’s $21,368,000 and 72 cents. Does anybody have any questions from the fin comm or comments on this? We’ve seen this every year. Every year.

9:13 Any comments from the public on Article four? Bill Mancuso, um, has his hand up allow to talk. Perfect. Yeah. Uh, I have questions on what these invoices represent for the AL Group and INN zero four. Yep. So these are the Emerald Group and INN zero four are both it invoices that are from the prior year that need to be paid in the current year. So what I’m looking forward to is we’re gonna be implementing a new financial system in July and implementing purchase orders. So right now they don’t have purchase orders, so when invoices come in after the close of the year, they have to go to tell, to be approved. What’s the date on each of these invoices?

9:58 I would have to pull that up. I didn’t bring the invoices with me to the presentation.

10:04 I notice that the INN zero four does not reflect fiscal any fiscal year. Why is that? It just didn’t get dragged down. It’s fiscal 24.

10:17 Will we be able to see these invoices? Yes. How do I do that? Send me an email, I’ll scan them. Happily to you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments on article four?

10:40 I’d like to make a motion to recommend the sum of $21,368 and 72 cents be appropriated as presented on screen. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Tets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Mrs. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes.

11:12 He’s gotta unmute Eric. Unmute. He’s out. Let’s move on. It’s fine. Hold on. Eric. Yes. Can you unmute yourself, Eric? Is he able to do that? Um, can he come in the room and he can control himself? I I asked him in the room a couple of times and he, um, When we take a vote, Eric, please be able to unmute yourself to take the vote so it’s not slowing the night down. I, I don’t, I don’t have that option on my screen. I’m sorry. Okay. He has to, well, now you may, oh, I’m gonna not mute you, so you’re just be aware that we can hear what’s going on.

12:00 Okay. Um, article five, departmental Revolving Funds. Um, we presented on screen, Alicia. Yes. So every year we have this article. So these are departmental revolving funds by Master General Law, chapter 44, section 53 e and a half, which requires each year that you have to vote a spending cap. The monies that come from these funds are the departmental fees. They charge, they are not taxation. And each year they have a cap. And what I usually do now since I’ve been here, is I look at their spending and I look at what they have in their fund balance in order to approve the cap that they’re asking For. So this is the max amount that will be authorized to be spent. It’s been a question at town meeting in the past. This doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily spending that maximum.

12:46 Correct. Um, my question would be on park, it’s going up a fair, fairly significant amount, certainly as compared to the actual from 24. Yes. And then same with commercial waste. Those two same things apply. The rest of ‘em don’t seem to be too significant of increases from years past. Yep. So for the park revolving fund, that’s for their programs. They’re expanding on their programs, so they like to have that money available. Their busy time of year is in the spring and the summer, so they’ll have a lot more programs coming. They’ve been talking about, and for the waste, uh, waste covers the capital and any other, um, operational costs that he has up. And I know recently he’s had a few, um, capital issues up at this transfer station. So both those boards have requested an increase in the cap

13:34 that they can spend annually out of their revolving account for this coming year? Correct. Okay. And they’ve presumably previously already voted these numbers at their own board meetings as well? Correct. Okay. Any other questions or comments from fin com? Are, are those numbers under animal control? Correct.

13:53 Animal control, is that seven 40? Okay. 4 7 4. Yeah. Seven 40 is correct. Okay.

14:06 Okay. Um, any public comments on Article five?

14:15 Anybody not? I’d like to make a recommendation that the maximum amount to be spent from department revolving funds during fiscal year 26 be as presented on screen. Second, um, Mr. Nia? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. He, yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Hoby? Yes. Sandra Ho? Yes. Mr. Jayco? Yes. Eric, Mr. Knight? Yes.

14:50 Great. Article six is one of our first Capital articles. Um, my understanding is this is all funded from Free Cash. Correct? Um, we’ll get to a free cash article later, which will show that the sum of these next few capital articles from free cash is about 2 million this year. Um, so I’ll let you present Article six. Speak on that one. Well, I’ll talk about the bigger picture you do the Vehicles. Okay. So, um, we have a meeting every year with all the departments, and we go around and we have a ranking of needs and based on the ranking of needs, that’s how we come up with the criteria. And based on that, we work together to figure out what’s the proper criteria that they need. The waste needs a Ford F1 Crew cab, uh, for the Waste Director. Rec and Park needs an electric mower.

15:37 Uh, police need more portable radios and radar replacements for their cruisers. Um, the public buildings needs a Ford F-150 Crew Cab to help bring things back and forth, and the DPW needs an F three 50 with a liquidate and plow to add to their fleet. So, again, just so everybody’s clear, um, this is not increasing taxes. This is from free cash. So it’s not part of the operating budget. It’s not part of, um, a, a debt exclusion override or every, anything like that that we may talk about later tonight. This is available free cash certified as, as of the end of fiscal year 24. As of that balance sheet date. And this is the use of free cash. The correct use of free cash as we’ve talked about. Yes. Right. Any questions from the

16:27 fin com on Article six related to the purchase of equipment of several departments?

16:35 Any public comment on Article six? No hands? Yes. Yes. You wanna come up? I’ll be locked. Jack Five Palm Road. I’m just wondering whether you should strike borrowing or otherwise, since you don’t plan to do that.

16:51 Otherwise we’re authorizing you to maybe not borrow. That’s just the standard warrant language. Yeah, I, I know, but the standard boiler plates that you can borrow, but you’re not Gonna, but that won’t be there in the motion. So when it won’t be there in the motion? No, it’s just there in the Standard Warrant article. But when we go to the motion at town meeting, it will be removed. So when the, the language that’s in there now is developed early in the process, that gives the, the maximum latitude to how we’re gonna address, um, gives the authorization. Then when we actually go to town meeting, there’ll be a specific motion that’s actually voted on that. Once we’ve nailed down that we’re not borrowing for any of these, then we can eliminate the borrowing language and it would just be appropriated from free cash. So it’s the motion that matters. Um,

17:39 I, I understand, but this is the piece we’re reviewing. Yep. So it’s like, there’s another piece that’s gonna be different that we’re reviewing. And you’re approving this tonight, which is not what’s there? Well, I, my recommendation is gonna be that it’s appropriated from free cash. So that’s pretty clear to me. Well, Where would that be written down? It’s not written down because it, the warrant hearing. The warrant was listed months ago. Yeah. Okay.

18:08 Any other public comments on Article six?

18:15 All right. Recommendation. Recommend that the sum of $301,741 be appropriated and to meet this appropriation. $301,741 is to be appropriated from free cash to include sh as shown on screen. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Dooby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Tets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Ey? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article seven, lease. Lease purchase. Similarly, the majority of this article will be from free cash. A portion will be from the waste revolving of fund

19:02 Alicia and Thatcher. Yes. So this gets done every single year. And each year, the Waste Revolving Fund picks up a payment for one of its vehicles. So it’s picking up the vehicle for the backhoe lease. 29,917. The waste hoe John Deere wheel loader lease will be under the General fund, uh, fire training vehicle. This was already authorized last year. This is second payment Ford F four 50 dump truck, a rec and park, a wide area mower lease continued from Rec and Park two Ford Interceptor Hybrids. This was already approved prior for the police. One Ford Interceptor and one Cruiser aerial bucket lift truck for the DPW International truck is a continued lease as well from DPWF five 50 platform. State body truck with plows a continuation, a large school bus lease is a continuation.

19:49 The school transportation seven D van is a new request for the schools.

19:56 Any fin com questions on Article seven? Standard article? I think it was about the same last year. Is this the first year of these lease costs or the, the full amount throughout the whole lease term? Um, most of them are, they’re either second or third year. And for that 70 van, that would be the first year. Okay. So the fact that it’s similar to the prior year makes sense. As long as you’re not adding significant new leases and you’re just in year two or three of the same amount. Right. Is that fair? The, the title is purchases, but it’s purchases and lease Payments. Right. And the only other one that, I’m sorry, that’s her first year, is the one cruiser. So the police chief does replace his cruisers on a schedule. So if we have new ones, then presumably some old leases are falling off as correct. Yeah. Yes. Great.

20:41 Any other Fin Comm questions or comments on Article seven?

20:47 Any public comment on Article seven?

20:51 No hands in the audience. Nothing online? No. I’d like to make a motion that the sum of $491,218 be appropriated. And to meet this appropriation, $29,917 is to be transferred from the Waste Revolving Fund. And $461,301 is to be appropriated from free cash to include the numbers shown on screen. Second. Second. So, Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Deeds? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Janko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes.

21:39 Article eight, another cop capital article, capital improvements for public buildings. Alicia, you wanna speak this one? No, you’re on a roll. Okay. So, um, for this article, we are doing the Abbott Library partial roof replacement, uh, 3 73, 6 48, that was requested by the library director, fire headquarters, bathroom remodel was behind the list of the fire chief. 1 68 3 10, the Glover HVAC cafeteria, Glover School playground, uh, paint, uh, for the performing arts center. And Reupholstering for the Performing Arts Center was high for the schools and Mary Alley improvements for 150,000. Uh, lots of things going on at Mary Alley right now, and we need to improve a lot of Mary, including the downstairs

22:25 and police station flooring replacement for 15,000. So, uh, let me add on, ‘cause that, that’s the downstairs conference room. Right? So one of, um, the Mary Alley Project in particular, um, is the lower room area where you’re normally meeting, um, is to turn that into a legitimate public meeting space, uh, for any boards, committees, anybody who needs the public meeting space. So what it’ll include is expanding that meeting room as it is now, uh, take walls out, widen it. So you’ll have the larger meeting space, and then there’s a smaller conference room that’ll abut it. Right now. There’s that room in between. I think that was the former morgue. Hmm.

23:11 Not sure that was, yeah, that was special. Um, so anyways, we’re gonna get rid of the morgue. How’s that? Um, expand that out. But we, we’ll, uh, you know, make the improvements as a meeting space. And then we’re gonna, uh, make the access door in that area full fully a DA, uh, compliant. So any public meetings that are held, you, you’re able to come in at the lower level and it’ll be fully compliant with the door, the opener, the, the, the slope of the ramps and such. And then we’re gonna put, if you come into that short hallway where the veteran agent’s office is, and then you turn right to go on the left, we’re gonna enclosed doorways that allow for them to be locked up after business hours so

23:56 that the meeting room will be accessible, but the rest of the building will be secured off of it. And then the last piece is where there is currently the men’s room and the storage closet will be made into a multi, uh, multi bathroom, a DA compliant, and, you know, meet up, meet all the requirements for bathrooms in that area. So that’s what this is geared towards. Um, this is a result of when I first rolled in here almost three years ago, the so-called Article 44 committee to, to expand the public meeting capabilities and video and all that. And as some of us advocate in those meetings, if we mandated now we don’t have the space to support,

24:42 you know, video every meeting and, and, and accessibility, this is an effort to create those spaces to kind of meet the spirit of Article 44 and the work done back then. So that’s what this is, uh, particularly focused on.

24:58 And it would be for the use of all town departments. Yes. You could Check it out effectively. Yeah. With the, with the key cards or whatever mechanism. We, we won’t need to have staff working overtime to support the public meetings. The, the chair of a committee could, you know, have, have the access to open and lock up and, and, and everything would be self-sufficient. And there’s been security issues over there recently as well, right? Yes. Yeah. Um, I just note that, um, last year this article was a lot less. That being said, the way I look at this is there’s more free cash being appropriated for its one time use then last year in total, right? 2 million versus I think only 1 million last year. Um, the way I think about this is if,

25:44 if there wasn’t more in this article, then we may be asking for debt exclusion overrides to fund some of these things. Is that fair? Yeah. We’re, we’re taking advantage of the opportunity with the, the, you know, free, available free, the available free cash plus. Um, we’ve done building assessments. We’ve done an a DA transition plan, all of which identify all the issues of fa our facility issues, and amongst the, the Townside buildings. You know, as everyone knows, the schools have gone through a cycle of, you know, improving all of their buildings, uh, that the town needs to do a similar cycle. Uh, so what we’re at this stage trying to hit these, uh, cost effective improvements as we build a larger plan

26:29 of, you know, the larger, larger facility, uh, town facility plan.

26:37 Any other fin com questions on this article? Um, One question. Could I ask the schools either Sarah or Mike online, the, um, um, the HVAC in the cafeteria of Glover, can you confirm that’s not something that could be covered by the revolving fund, the school lunch revolving fund? No. Yeah, so it’s, um, it’s the area primarily outside of the kitchen. The school lunch revolving fund, um, only allows for in kitchen upgrades. Um, but I will also confirm that that’s my understanding. Uh, it’s also my understanding that when the building was built, the windows were made not to open, uh, because it was in originally intended to have HVAC or AC on the HV side. Um, and that was, uh, value engineered out of the project. So there is actually very little cooling.

27:24 Uh, it’s just ventilation. So when it’s hot outside, it’s just bringing in more hot air. So it, it becomes quite warm in the area where the students eat their meals. Thank you. And just to clarify it, it’s gonna, just to clarify, it will make it air conditioned. Yeah. I think what we’re looking at is putting in a mini split system, uh, probably four mini split heads, uh, across the cafeteria. So it, it will remove the heavy part of the humidity and make it comfortable. I’m not gonna say we’ll be able to get down to 60 degrees in there, but I think we’ll be able to make it comfortable. Uh, probably in the, in the low seventies, maybe high low, high eighties, uh, high, high sixties range. Thank you. There’s a hand online.

28:09 Any other fin com questions, comments on this one?

28:14 All right. Public comment. I think there’s a hand line. Yes. I’m David Patton. I am looking at this and I see partial roof replacement for Abbott Library. We just spent $10 million renovating that library, of which I think we have a $9 million bond we’re all paying on. And we didn’t replace the roof

28:39 To that.

28:43 Yeah, I can respond. So, um, back in 2022, when we put the, the budget together for the library, oh, sorry, Gary Arick, two 13 Washington Street. Um, when we put the budget together in 2022, we had to make some decisions on what we could fit into our $8.5 million budget. And the shingled roof on the library was in pretty good condition, but we knew that we had to replace the flat rubber roof on the main building. ‘cause we had to do some HVAC equipment, HVAC equipment on top of that. And we didn’t want to have to, um, replace that roof after putting in brand new HVAC equipment. So the shingled roof on the library still had some useful life left at least four to five years. So we deferred that work until now. But at the advice of the, um, select board, we put

29:30 that on our deferred maintenance list so we could cover that in the future. So that’s what this money is.

29:38 David, I still see your hand up. Did, did you have another comment on that?

29:43 No, no. I guess, I guess that explains it. I, i, are, are there any other deferred maintenance items on the library that are gonna come up next year that could have been put in that original project? Uh, hi, it’s Kimberly, grad director of Abbott Public Library. We don’t anticipate anything at, at this time for an additional capital improvement. Nothing additional at this time. Yeah. Thank, thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments on article eight?

30:20 It doesn’t look like it. I’d like to make a recommendation that the sum of $1,236,958 be appropriated and to meet this appropriation. 1,236,958 is to be appropriated from free cash to include the amounts listed on screen. Second. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Ley? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Bes? Yes. Mr. Franken? Yes. Mr. Spe? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. Mr. Nine? Yes. Great. Article nine standard article, walls and fences, Alicia? Yep. So we have the standard every year to appropriate $50,000 from the levee for construction

31:08 and reconstruction of walls and fences for the protection of highways and property, including engineering services in connection there with, ‘cause we have a lot of seawalls here.

31:19 Another DPW director’s thankful for the 50,000, but wish it was higher. That’s what she tells me every year. Yeah. So this is 50,000 last year as well. Again. Um, actually not, again, this is not to be raised from free cash. This is part of the operating budget. So it’s one of the articles that it get included in the total budget we vote on in Article 22. Is that correct? Total Tax levy. Tax levy. Tax levy. Yeah. Yeah. But the overall budget there, the tax levy’s included. Yeah. Yep. Any questions on Article nine?

31:55 Any public comment on Article nine?

32:00 Nobody like to recommend that the sum of $50,000 be appropriated to be raised by taxation. Second, Mr. Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Keith? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Is Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jco? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 10, stormwater Construction? Yep. So for this article, it’s a standard article we have every year. It’s also raised through the levy for 400,000. It’s, uh, for the water construction, reconstruction, permitting, and maintenance of, uh, storm sewers for surface drainage, including engineering services.

32:47 So this helps us meet our MS four requirements,

32:51 Requirements, um, same amount as last year. I note any other questions on Article 10 from the FinCon or comments?

33:04 Any public comments on Article 10?

33:10 Like to make a motion to recommend that the sum of $400,000 be appropriated to be raised by taxation.

33:17 Second. Mr. Romeo? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. D? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jacob? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes.

33:38 Article elevens consent articles for water and sewer. Um, again, a standard article. I didn’t know if you wanted to present this, Alicia or Amy. Amy’s better at it, but I’ll be happy to start it. Uh, this is for her, um, water construction costs and reconstruction, water mains replacement of water meters, apprehensive Engineering consultants. The 1.236 is her retained earnings from water and she’s using this, this, um, time for her capital requests.

34:12 If you have any questions, it is a standard article. It is covered under the rate. We do cover, um, all of our construction during the rate study, um, and as it does incorporated into your rate. So, uh, any of the retained earnings from this year, two years out will be our construction article. And we do try to figure out what our articles are, uh, I mean, what our construction work is for the next five to 10 years. So we have a long list of projects that need to be done.

34:44 Yeah. So I noticed on the, um, the water department construction, it’s down a fair amount from last year’s request. Is that just a product of you need to do less work or? No. So what happened last year was the year before, we did not have our retained earning numbers when we went to town meeting. Okay. So we went with, really, if you look at the year before, that’s very low. Oh. So it comes, So last year hundred catches up Yep. To where we expected to be. And um, we did expect to be at a million for both in our rate study two years ago we had a dry year and ended up selling more water, so Okay. They come to a little more. And then the sewer department construction, I guess we can do all of these after we talk about them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. Um,

35:32 So the sewers for the, uh, same for, um, sewer, uh, construction reconstruction and sewer. Sanitary pipe and sewer disposal. This is 1,599,000 of her sewer retained earnings uses for capital.

35:48 Again, that’s a fairly large drop from last year’s request. Oh, no, actually, yeah, it still is a fairly large drop. And that’s probably the same answer as before, that the year prior was very low. Same. Yeah. And then water and sewer claims is a separate piece of this. Yeah. So this is so that the commission can work with the, uh, select board if there is a claim going in either direction. So, uh, we did have a water main struck a few years ago that we are in litigation with. So we needed this type of article so that we could work hand in hand with the Select board. So it, it allows the water and sewer to work with the select board and the town to defend itself or the defend the town. Yeah. Four. That’s a pretty easy one to approve.

36:36 Um, any other fin com questions or comments on this standard article?

36:44 Any public comments on Article 11 Appeared? Another one, David? Yes. David Patton, 25 Lee Street. I just wondered if our water rates had changed much, uh, for next year versus this year?

37:00 So the water rates do change, uh, each year at the, generally at the, um, at the rate study. And last year you’ll see that your fee went up, which is your, uh, quarterly rate that’s charged. Um, it’s a like a set fee. And then the, uh, water and sewer both went up a small amount on the lower side, a higher amount on our, um, high rate. So we have two rates in Marblehead. It’s really for conservation. Uh, a family of four uses under 3000 cubic feet. Um, so that generally covers most of our accounts. If you have a multi-family, you would use over 3000 cubic feet, but you’re not paying the fee, the quarterly fee, you’re only paying one quarterly fee.

37:46 So that catches makes them more even and, um, more equitable across. Then you also have Marblehead loves Green Lawn. So we have a conservation fee to realize that you are using WA water just to water your lawn. So, and those are the fees that, uh, you did see an increase in that conservation rate? Well, I happen to be in a two family home. So does that mean my rate is higher irrespective of whether I use more than a single family home? No. So a single family home and a multi-family home will have, we don’t have a commercial fee. So you’ll have the same, uh, base rate for water and sewer, but if you use more than 3000 cubic feet, your first 3000 cubic feet is the same as it would be in a, a single family home or a low user.

38:33 If you use more than 3000 cubic feet, your rate will go up for the, any additional 3000 cubic feet.

38:42 Our rate study is in June. Um, we, we, we’d love people to come. So it’s generally right around June 30th. I think it’s gonna be the 27th this year, but I could be off on that.

38:55 It’s actually a great experience. I attended it and Amy runs it really well. It was the first one I’ve ever attended where the DPW director of water sewer superintendent actually does the rate, doesn’t hire somebody to do the rate study for them because it’s a complex calculation. And I thought, uh, she did a fantastic job along with the Water and Sewer commission. So back in 2008, the commission did hire someone to create our rate study. So, um, we follow that, that pattern.

39:24 Any other public comment on Article 11? Quick one on the water? Yep. Why did the raid go up

39:33 On water And soup? Uh, so they went up to, uh, due to the construction article, which is where the projects we have that are going on. So we’re doing a lot of cleaning and lining. Um, and then we also are trying to push the cleaning and lining so that we can get the streets paved to work with Article 11 from 2022. I might have to get wrong. Um, you’re right. So there is a real push to try to get more water done so that we can get more stuff paved and, uh, sewer, we are under an administrative order to get our infiltration inflow out. That is to spend a million dollars on lining. You’ll have, uh, we’re supposed to get it done in 10 years. That’s what the administrative order from the EPA is.

40:19 Um, and you’ll see that, uh, we have lining project out right now. We have it designed. We have a three year contract. Um, so hopefully we’ll be able to meet those numbers. We also have 28 pump stations that range between 800,000 to, uh, 1,000,008 to replace. They are, most of them put in the sixties. They’ve had pumps replaced in the eighties, but we now are seeing structural issues. So those are all in. We’ve had a complete review of all 28 pump stations and we are still formulating a 20 year plan to try to get that all done. But you also have to remember that the biggest part of our budget is the MWRA and SESD. So those are around, uh, between 40 and 60%, depending Which of those costs go up. Gone

41:05 Up. Those costs go up, yes. Generally between three and 4% each year. But they can go up more. Yeah.

41:14 Okay. And these projects you’re speaking about, they’re not one time projects, they’re ongoing to line the pipes every year, or that’s on a scheduled basis? Right. So we have over a hundred miles of, uh, water main and, um, we have around 48% that is cast iron unlined pipe. That’s what you’re gonna see right now is a lot of lining projects. Roland Street, pleasant Street, uh, are the ones that are coming up. We just, um, we’re also replacing our dead ends to go from six inch to eight inch. ‘cause we had fire flow that was, uh, not adequate at the end of those dead ends. So that’s why you saw Mystic Florence, uh, Curtis, um, and Roosevelt going up to eight inch.

42:00 Uh, Maverick also went up to eight. Um, Okay. Thank you. You’re welcome. Thank you. Any other public comment on Article 10?

42:12 Sorry, 11? No. Uh, I’d like to make a recommendation to adopt this article and for the water department construction that the sum of 1,236,000 be appropriated to be appropriated from water retained earnings and for sewer department construction that the sum of 1,599,000 be appropriated to be appropriated from sewer retained earnings. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Doy? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Tees? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Sby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Janko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes.

42:58 Article 12 proposed reclassification and pay schedule for administrative positions? Yes. These are for a 2%, uh, cost of living adjustment for the non-union administrative positions. There were 38 positions with an average increase of 2030 $9 42 cents, or $169 and 95 cents per month. So this estimate is in line with the current contract in place, but contract negotiations are under, you’re under negotiation right Now. Right. So these are, these are non bargaining positions, but we have, uh, uh, three collective bargaining units under negotiations. And what we try to do is keep everybody comparable as far

43:45 as any pay increases. So right now we’re working off of a, for the budget, an assumption of 2%. Yeah. Yeah, I was just about to say, we’ve, we’ve already voted all of the separate departments that roll up into the Arctic 22 balanced budget, and we’ve already reviewed that all the administrative positions have an estimated 2% increase included in that balanced budget right now. Alright. So any collective bargaining agreements that exceed the 2%, we will have to, um, calculate what that additional amount is and, and include it in the respective, um, foreign articles. Right. Okay. Any fin comm questions? This is a standard article and it’s generally around 2% at least since

44:30 I’ve been on the fin com. Um, the estimate’s 2%, but it’s still an estimate. Any fin com questions or comments?

44:39 Any public comment on Article 12?

44:45 Like to make a recommendation that Article 12 be adopted with a 2% cost of living increase effective July 1st, 2025. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Des? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 13, proposed pay schedule and reclassification for traffic supervisors. Everything we just discussed applies only to traffic supervisors in this article rather than administrative. Um, it’s an estimate still. It’s in line with the current contracts, which are the new contracts are still being negotiated. Any fin com questions on Article 13?

45:35 Any public comment on Article 13?

45:40 Like to make a motion to recommend that this article be adopted with a 2% cost of living increase effective July 1st, 2025. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Seat? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goldbe? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jacob? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. We’ll do this one more time. Same exact thing. Seasonal and temporary personnel proposed reclassification and pay schedule 2% cost of living increase effective July 1st, 2025. Yes. Uh, the only thing I’ll add is on the next slide after the hourly, I put the pay schedules and on the temporary we consolidated it to seven.

46:26 So we had multiple with the exact same rate and the exact same amount with the exact same steps and just didn’t make sense. So we just consolidated it down to seven. Okay. Just presentation wise. But the totals increasing by 2%, correct? Yep. Fin comm, any questions or comments on Article 14?

46:44 Any public comments on Article 14?

46:48 Like to make a motion to recommend that this article be adopted with a 2% cost of living increase effective July 1st, 2025. Second. Mr. Romeo? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Wilby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jacob? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Alright. Article 15, compensation Town Officers. This is the elected town clerk’s annual salary. I will note that we already voted, and this is included as part of the operating budget. So we’ve already voted on this number. Um, the number is $93,048. It’s her annual salary. And this is a standard article,

47:36 I guess needs its own article because she’s in elected position. Correct. Is that why it’s Yep. And it’s still in, um, article 22 in the budget. Yep. Okay. Any finance committee questions? I know we’ve already talked about at previous meetings. This, this budget. Effectively any public comments on Article 15?

47:56 Like to make a motion that the yearly recommendation that the yearly compensation for the town clerk be established at $93,048 second. Mr. Romeo? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. He, yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Sby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jayco? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 16 Ratification of salary bylaw. I believe I have something from you on this stature if I can find it. Yeah. Or I can just summarize. Sure. So, um, ratification of the, the compensation plan, which is, uh, authority of the legislative branch

48:42 to authorize basically the list of all the authorized positions and salary scales of the positions. Um, article 43 of the bylaws delegates the Town Meetings Authority on that to the Compensation Committee in order to take actions during the course of the year in between town meetings and then through this article would be ratified by town meeting any of the actions that, that we have performed. The Compensation Committee, uh, consists of the town administrator, the chief financial officer, and a third department head selected by the two, which is currently Andrew Petty, our, our health director, who actually has been on that committee for, for quite some time and is, uh, uh, a strong member

49:31 of the committee, uh, especially with his, his history on it. Um, any any proposed changes to job descriptions? Um, we’ll go to the compensation committee. If we are considering creating a new position, redefining a position, any of those type of actions come before the Compensation Committee to be voted on, um, under the bylaw when we hire new employees. Um, so for each position they are graded. They have a grade. Um, and, and there are different grades for different collective bargaining units as well as the administrative. The grades are determined based on the level of authority, responsibility, education requirements and such. And then each grade has up to eight steps

50:16 that they can progress through. So, um, generally speaking, every year you, you go up to a step until you hit step eight and, and you max out. If we’re hiring a new employee, uh, above step one, that also requires compensation committee to approve. And given the, the current marketplace and the salary structure, uh, in Marblehead, more often than not, in order to bring in a new employee for, for competitive positions, we have to go higher than step one. And, and the committee will evaluate, look at the resume and, and, and make the consideration as to where on the grade. So that’s the general description of what we, uh, exist for. Um, I have produced a report presented to the select board,

51:04 um, last month or so that, um, shows all of 20, 24 calendar, 24 actions. Uh, there were 44 actions taken, which I think is more than the norm that’s been done in the past. Um, and, and I would summarize it by saying what we’ve been doing over the past year, uh, are, is a lot of, um, reorganization, for example, a lot of the positions that had new job descriptions, updated job descriptions in evaluations in public works, Amy McHugh and and her team have been doing an incredible job of, of reorganizing the department in, in a way to make it, uh, much more productive. And, and, uh, and also to be structured in a way that

51:51 as employees come in, there’s actually a path to grow and, and, and, you know, uh, get promoted up into higher positions, uh, as as they develop. Whereas previously the organization was pretty flat across the board. So, so a lot of the, the, the changes that we’ve made have been dealing with, um, uh, job descriptions, um, as well as, as we hire new people above step one. Um, and I’ll also say that anytime we have a, uh, open positions, we go in and we review the job descriptions and make any updates to the job descriptions before we post and go out and hire. Um, so there is a lot of work being done, um, by the Compensation Committee, which is also supported

52:38 by the HR director Tom Howard that we, we brought in, um, a year or so ago, which is, uh, helping a lot. Um, out of the 44, uh, uh, a bunch of ‘em happened prior to last year’s town meeting. So they were already voted and approved at Tom meeting. Uh, as of this calendar year, we have seven new action items. Again, a lot of ‘em are, um, uh, hiring of folks changing the job descriptions and upgraded, for example, the police department. We have a number of part-time positions that have not received step increases in quite some time, and they were well deserving. So as part of cleaning up some of the positions we also made, did a review and made sure that, uh, some of the part-time positions saw,

53:25 uh, step increases that they, they well deserve. So, um, in general, that’s it. The, the, the 2024 report is available should anybody wanna see it. Um, and then for town meeting, I will update the actions as of January through town meeting. It’ll be updated as of the day of Tom meeting to be presented then. Okay. Will, will it be available in time to be in the printed copy of our FI finance committee report to Tom meeting? Yeah, so the 2024 is available ‘cause that’s a published report and this, uh, the 25. Yeah. So I’ll just update and provide, okay. So last year in, in the comments section of our recommendations in our fin com report,

54:11 which is printed and, and handed out at town meeting or online for, for those that are following along online, um, it has a list of every action that’s taken. So, um, it, it’ll be a long list, it sounds like this year, but they’re all previously reviewed and voted by the Compensation Committee and Yep. Presented and voted on by the select board as well. Yeah, well, no, so the select board, um, it, it doesn’t require for select board. So the position, it has to be, it has to be funding and and such for us to, to do that. Let me add one more point. Um, all the work that we do is based on a Gov HR report, which is a, a personnel consulting firm. It was brought in about four years ago or so to, to update and evaluate all of the positions in grade.

54:59 And then they provide, they left for us the Compensation Committee, a guidebook on how we evaluate positions, how we grade them and score them. And I, I’ll emphasize we follow that religiously. Um, in, in our work, I would say probably half of the prop, the, the, the, the, the, um, proposals by department heads that come to us have been rejected and sent back. Um, because we’re very diligent about following the procedure and there and making sure that, you know, uh, we, we wanna retain the respect of town Meeting’s authority to allow us to do this work during the course of the year. Um, so we, we follow it very closely

55:46 and we are, uh, we have a contract that’s being, uh, put together for the new study to update. Um, so that should start in the next couple months to, to update all the positions again.

56:02 Sounds good. Um, any other fin com comments, questions? Small question. Um, three. Sounds like a small number for a compensation committee. Is that I, it just strikes me. And is that a common practice? Is that, you know, if you look at other towns, is it typically just three? I I don’t know. I mean, again, this is a bylaw that was put in place. The last tone I worked at, it was small. Yeah. Okay. It was small. Okay. Yeah, I mean, this was put in play I think in 1950s, the original. Um, but yeah. So you’re Just following the current for the town is Yeah. Identifies three positions. Yep. Okay. Yep.

56:41 And the other fin com questions or comments on this article?

56:48 Any public comments on Article 16? Do you see any? Not on mine. No. No.

57:00 I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the town ratifies certain actions taken by the Compensation Committee throughout the last year. Second, Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Heat? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Great. Article 17 Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School District.

57:34 Do we have a presentation here? He generally comes to the warrant hearing. Maybe he does, Maybe he’s not here tonight. Um, Thatcher, do you want to maybe just cover, you know, the Yeah, there’s a little bit’s. Got the numbers Of an uptick In. I’ve got the number too. An Enrollment. So we’ve been seeing the, The purpose of the articles, oh, Sorry. The purpose of the articles to, uh, approve the gross operating maintenance budget is the Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School District for the fiscal vehicle. So a portion of the students from the town of Marblehead that go to Essex Northshore Tech. Correct. And the town reimburses the, the school for those costs? Correct. Yeah. Okay. And there was both an a per pupil increase and an increase in enrollment?

58:21 Yeah, I, my first reaction to this was in the last three or four years, we’ve actually seen it going down. So it’s, it’s back up. Mm-hmm. And it’s actually a fairly significant increase year over year, but it sounds like we both have more students going there and there’s rate increases As a result. Um, but this is the estimate based on enrollments for the coming fiscal year. Correct. Um, any fin comm questions on this one? We usually get a long presentation and then it’s very interesting and enter and entertaining, um, every year. So, but I don’t have that from, to give myself tonight. Um, any other questions from FinCon? Yes. Uh, public comment? Yes. Oh, Sorry.

59:07 You have think comments First? No, I think we’re good. We’re good? Yeah. Just, just a quick comment is, is there a liaison from the fin com to this particular school district area? No, we’ve typically not had a liaison group with, with the Essex district. Right. And, and I know it’s really hard to over, but having been on the board, if you look the numbers and the administrations and things that Essex, Aggie are just outrageous. And it would be good if somebody just sort of look in there every once in a while and say, Hey, how’s this money being spent? Yeah, I think that’s a, that’s a really good idea. And I know that, um, the director of the whole program is a Marblehead resident, so I’m certain, I’m sure he’d be willing to meet

59:52 with us at least a few times a year. So I’ll, uh, I’ll put that on the agenda for next, next meeting to, to consider that. Thank you. Any other public comment on Article 17?

1:00:08 Like to make a motion to recommend that, that the sum of $627,323 be appropriated to be raised by taxation. Second, uh, Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Dooley? Yes. Mr. Chapman? Yes. Ms. Repeat? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goey? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Janko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Eric. Eric.

1:00:39 Eric, you muted? Yeah. Um, I said yes. I, I, I can see him talking. Can You said yes? Yeah, I said yes. Okay, thanks. Article 18, available funds appropriate to reduce tax rate. So this is our free cash and electric surplus article. These are funds that will be used to help balance the operating budget. That’s correct. Meaning it’s portion of the revenues available to fund the operating expenses. Yes. And we’re estimating, uh, 7 million from free cash and the electric surplus went up from three 30 to 360 this year. So couple comments. Electric surplus. That’s the first increase I’ve seen since I’ve joined the finance committee.

1:01:25 So this is my year eight, so that’s good that we’ve adjusted that a little bit. Um, free cash, my understanding is free cash is not certified officially yet, but it’s close. Exactly, Yes. And the estimate is at least 12 million? Correct. So we’re using 7 million to balance the operating budget. We’re using 2 million for previous capital articles that we list, that we already voted on in six, seven, and eight. Mm-hmm. 2 million, you’ll see later on, will be requested to fund the general stabilization account. So seven plus two plus two is 11. That would leave estimated a million, maybe more if it free cash comes in higher than 12, not be appropriated anywhere.

1:02:10 So it would just be left in the side as a reserve. Is that, do I have my numbers right? You do, Yes. With the intent that it would create the base for next year’s free cash Allocation. Right. And that we can talk about the stabilization later, but when we’re, we’re talking about reserves as we enter town meeting, our stabilization account right now has $500,000 in it. So when that account was created, we were supposed to be funding that at two 50 to 500 every year. And I think we funded it twice at two 50, but it’s been around for four or five years. So the fact that we’re taking, um, a chance to fund that shows that it, it’ll leave 2.5 million in stabilization, which is good for bond ratings and, and quite frankly, good to have funds set aside in case needed. That’s a, uh, two thirds vote at town meeting

1:02:56 that those funds would need to be pulled from 50% to go in, two thirds to come back out, 50% to go in at town meeting two thirds to come out. I meant the two thirds. Um, and Molly, I know when we did the financial forecast in the fall, you had done a lot of research on department of revenue recommendations surrounding reserves and stabilization accounts, which are considered reserves if you just wanna share a little bit of that. Right. And first, our, our own Marblehead policies are set, um, to establish a stabilization fund at, um, three to 5% of our operating budget. And so We’re on our way there. So we’ll be at 2.3%, so, um, much closer than we were last year. And then, so in terms of what the DOR guidance is, they recommend, um, five to 7% in a stabilization fund

1:03:43 and then three to 5% as free cash Yeah. As a percent of the annual budget. Right. So anywhere from eight to 12%. Yeah. I, I don’t wanna like go too crazy into this, but you know, those stats, I, I still have questions about whether that that data point is their recommendation. Is that the free cash not used to balance the budget be three to 5% or is it the free cash that we generate every year? Meaning They don’t want choosing free cash to balance the budget. So they wanna see stabilization and free cash not used in the budget. Correct. Combined at anywhere between five to 10%. Correct. Roughly there. So, yeah. So the bond rating agencies like to see, like you said, between eight and 12% of your reserves set Of, so where that’s not the only thing. Bond agencies look at, we have AAA bond rating.

1:04:30 We’ve had one for, I think, for a long, long time, long before I joined this committee. Um, but I just wanna make that point that, you know, we are doing good on stabilization. We’re doing okay on free cash. I know that we’ve had some contracts this year that we’ve needed to maybe use a little bit more than our original projection, but I just wanted to kind of outline that, that things are still tight in terms of our reserves, if that’s Fair. I think one thing that really goes well with Marblehead is their serious dedication to debt exclusions by showing the, the rating agencies that you’re willing to pay above, right? The levy to fund your capital is a huge way and on how they also do your Bond. So part of our bond rating is based on the fact that our town citizens are willing to fund debt exclusion overrides.

1:05:16 And it’s looked for towns that are denying those at town meeting. They, they may or, or is it the decision of the select select board to do it that way? What do they look favorable at? They Look favorable on ‘cause they know that you’re going to fund it. So in other words, if you did it through the levy, and let’s say you had a bad year, like you said, you want to have a rainy day fund, and people are like, well, we need to cut low on this. Oh, so they, I get it. We don’t have to do that. We have dedicated, it will Be paid. It’s the guaranteed revenue to the debt. Okay. That’s, so our history there has shown that if, if we need something to fund capital wise, we have options in Marblehead to do so that have a, a good history of being approved. Okay. Any other fin com questions or comments on Article 18?

1:06:01 Any public comments on article 18?

1:06:06 I’d like to make a recommendation that the sum of 7,360,000 be appropriated from the following sources for the use of the assessors in making the tax rate from free cash, $7 million and from the electric surplus of $360,000. Dr. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Teeds? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goldsby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Janko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes.

1:06:43 Articles 19, 20 and 21 are all collective bargaining for police. MEU it says IUE here. Is that the MEU? That’s correct. Yeah. Um, and then fire. We will not be making a recommendation tonight because we do not have, um, bargaining completed. However, I will open up the floor to anything you want to say on these as the sponsor and or public comment after that. So, we are currently engaged in collective bargain with all three units. Um, we’re, we’re in negotiating status with police and fire. We’re in mediation status with, uh, MMEU or the, the local 1776 on, on all three cases.

1:07:32 We hope and expect to be able to have it settled before town meeting. Um, and then at that time, based on the settlements, we’ll calculate the total cost and then anything above the 2%, which is already, um, said in the budget, would have to be funded through these articles.

1:07:55 Any public comment on any three of these articles, fin com won’t be deliberating on tonight.

1:08:04 Great. We can move on to Article 22. All right. So article 22, expenses of several departments. As I say, every year, this is about 90% of the work we do as a fin comm. Um, this is your operating budget, um, your general fund operating budget. Um, I’ll just give a brief summary of our work over the past year, and then I have, um, some analytics to share regarding the budget, as I always do. Um, we actually started our, our deep work this year a little bit earlier. Uh, I think we met in August, so soon after last year’s town meeting, um, with the select board and Alicia and Thatcher. Um, it was an idea of our FinCon to help support kind of a three year forecast. As you know, if you’ve been following along the past few

1:08:49 years, we’ve been noticing the costs in the budget, increasing certain very large cost items, increasing at larger percentages than our property taxes are even legally allowed to go at. So we thought, you know, doing this three year forecast and, and kind of, you know, getting together and figuring out a way to, to help support the state of the town presentation even before we get into our kind of standard, um, yearly liaison meetings that we do after state of the town. Um, that forecast presentation we did back in December of, of last year, and the highlights of that, we were seeing salaries. I think at that time we had just had a school contract, uh, settled the week before we finished. Mm-hmm. Um, and then, you know, we know these current contracts are under negotiation,

1:09:34 but when you include both the cola plus the steps in the lanes out three to five years, we can see the total salaries increasing anywhere between four and 5%. And we can talk about salaries and the benefits, um, related to employees of the town of Marblehead. That makes up, call it 75 to 80% of the town wide budget. So right there, you have a very large line item that’s increasing at a higher rate than, um, you know, the, the property tax levy can increase, which is two point half percent, plus a small amount of new growth in Marblehead, which can be anywhere from half a percent to a percent annually. So three to three to three and half percent, um, insurance costs on average, we’ve seen significant spikes the last few years. On average, we’ve seen them over the next three

1:10:20 proposed potentially at five to 6%. So, another major line item that could be putting pressure on our revenues available. Revenues, utilities, again, we’ve seen significant spikes the last few years, but looking at more of a five year average, we put in a factor of 4%. Pensions is a set schedule from, uh, the pension, uh, group. The retirement board gets the actuary to, to come up with it. Our current calendar is increasing that pension cost at eight to 9% per year. Um, that’s eight or $900,000 per year. So, um, it’s, it’s a lot of the available revenue that we increase every year right away, right off the top, um, out of district tuition and transportation costs in the school. We, we got a detailed presentation from, um, Mike,

1:11:06 from the schools on that. It was about 5% per year on average going up. Um, we have a trash contract expiring at the end of fiscal year 26. So you won’t see it in the budget tonight, but it could jump as high as 35% to that first year because Andrew Petty’s been talking about this contract for 10 years, literally, um, saying how great of a contract we’re under, which is good planning. However, when it expires, he can foresee what’s coming. Um, so he did a high level estimate of that for us, and we could see that jumping significantly. So, um, other miscellaneous expenses, we applied a factor of 2%. Um, there was a much longer, longer meeting for me to, uh, present all that in more detail. That’s probably online somewhere if you’re interested. But the point is that, you know,

1:11:52 we do balance this year without an operating budget override on the warrant, which I think that’s, that might be the 18th or 19th year in a row that we’ve, well, we’ve had, we’ve had some on the warrant, but we’ve been able to balance without one. Um, however, there’s still a lot of work ahead. We just talked about our reserves and where at, where they’re at and, you know, we’re making good progress on certain items, but there’s challenges as well. Um, that led into the state of the town presentation. Thatcher did that, that’s probably posted online for those that missed that, where we d where we determined that we were not gonna have an operating budget override on, on the warrant. Um, we have a balanced budget. The state of the town usually opens up our budget review liaison window. So everybody on this committee is assigned

1:12:37 as a chair liaison to meet with various town departments, um, and have CI liaison meetings between the chair and usually at least one vice or, or or subcommittee member of the liaison groups, which with each department, head board commissioner or whatnot, to review their budgets in depth before those budgets come before the last three budget hearing nights we’ve had over the last four weeks. On Monday night swear, our full committee has had a chance to deliberate and discuss each each department’s budget and then vote on each department’s budget that roll up into ultimately article 22 tonight, the balanced budget. Uh, so that’s where we’re at. Um, I just wanna pull up my screen quick and share some information.

1:13:27 You might, I might have sent you a request. Yeah, Yeah. There we go.

1:13:39 Is it working? Just allowed it.

1:13:45 Can you guys see my screen yet or no? Oh, share. I missed the share button. All right. Can we see this summary here? Yes. Sort of small. All right. So I approached it a little bit differently this year. I have a lot of data. I’m try to get through it as quickly as I can. Um, we talk about the available revenues. Um, Thatcher mentions that as his state of the town. So what I like to do, we like to co-mingle a lot, lot of things. So I like to pull debt service out because debt service relate in, in the operating budget is funded by pre, previously authorized, um, debt exclusion overrides at prior town meetings. So really the operating budget that we’re starting at from last year before any increases was 92.5 million without that debt service.

1:14:33 Um, the increase in available revenues was built based on annual tax levy, which is 2.1 million, or 2.2 million if you round up. And that’s just your typical two point half percent plus new growth. So as a percentage of last year’s budget, the annual tax levy increases our budget by 2.3%. On the revenue side, local receipts is one that I wanted to highlight. So, local receipts, we took a part of what allowed us to have such a large free cash balance that was a little bit unanticipated this year. Um, was the interest income on local receipts. So interest rates were up in fiscal year 24 significantly, and the treasurer was hired

1:15:20 and replaced a old treasurer that had been vacant for a while. Um, so the, the interest income in local receipts related to interest income, uh, came in much higher than was budgeted for the year prior. So that’s helping in terms of how we’re funding capital. That’s helping in terms of, um, how we’re balancing this year’s budget a little bit. Um, so that was good. Good sign, right? But we also took a hard look at, well, what about this year’s forecasted interest income? When we’re building this year’s budget, we don’t want to be too aggressive. We know interest rates have come back since fiscal year 24, but we also don’t want to just be generating free cash just to generate free cash. We wanna try to be budgeting as close as we can. So we worked closely with Alicia to come up with a more, still a conservative fee, uh, uh, estimate

1:16:06 to local receipts. But the point is that that’s not gonna be available next year, right? So when we build this budget next year, you’re not gonna see another increase of 1.7. ‘cause it was more of a change in budgeting than it was a, uh, an increase in our local receipts year over year. Um, the other piece of that is the second year of the hotels and meals tax. And that, again, I think we’ve had some pretty good numbers so far that are probably meeting our first year conservative estimates. We expect that to increase as compliance with it becomes full. Uh, I’m not saying that there’s non-compliance, but in everything, there’s probably a little bit. Um, and, and just in, in general, just being able to track it a little bit closer, do you guys have any updates on kind of the local receipts aside from those that, that I observe?

1:16:54 Um, That goes in permits. Those permits have been up. So I talked with, uh, Steve Cummings on The building permits and building permits. He said I could estimate at least a million dollars. So we’ve been generating over a million dollars on building permits, which is pretty fantastic. Now we’d just like to see the turnaround on the new growth number. Yeah, so with free cash, we used, I think it was, lemme see here, 5, 8 30 last year that included the free cash and electric lights surplus. Now we’re using 7 360. So that’s an increase in the use of free cash year over year. So when you think about next year, the question will be, what will we have available in free cash? And then of that, how much will we use?

1:17:39 We probably won’t be able to anticipate a $1.5 million increase on what we’re using this year, which would mean if the expenses are growing at 5 million per year, let’s say, then right away we’ll have 1.5 less. Um, again, these are all just concepts to, to think about as we enter next year, the rest of the increase in the available revenues are, you know, small increases in state aid offset by adjustments to the overlay that aren’t overly material. So, long story short, that’s the revenue, that’s our available revenue take. Last year’s budget, we have 5.7 available, but I’ve just been very clear that the local receipts and the free cash may not be reliable sources to increase at that, at that pace moving forward. Now, let’s move to the operating budget, right?

1:18:25 So we build these budgets. We look at prior year actuals, uh, year to date actuals, prior year budget based on the budgets that we reviewed, reviewed, voted and approved that roll up into this year’s balance budget. They’re increasing by 5.7. And I believe there were some requests from departments where there were cuts made to those requests, correct? Meaning some departments said they needed more than 5.7. Uh, not, not department by itself, but you get the gist. So the fear for me is, and, and as I stated when we did our three year forecast, is that moving forward, that if our, if our budget even grows at four to 5 million, let alone 5.7, will we have the available revenue increases year over year to support that? Um, so I wanna focus more on the positive now on,

1:19:12 on tonight’s where we have a balanced budget. But I, I also want to just always give, uh, a summary that it may balance this year, but it may be very difficult to balance next year. Um, the total operating budget before the warrant articles funded by the tax levy is about 96.9 million. About 51% of that is the schools about 25%. That of that is the townside operating departments. And then 22, uh, 23% of that is the general government, which includes things like health insurance, retirement, uh, pensions, uh, the town insurance itself, things like that, that really benefit all departments. So really, if you think about the way we talked about a couple years back, Thatcher,

1:19:59 we’re still at that kinda 50 50 split of town and schools when it comes to keeping those indirect costs of the schools on the, the townside like health insurance. Mm-hmm. Um, so that’s kind of my analytics on this year’s budget. Again, we’ve spent continuous hours for the last six months reviewing these numbers. Um, we balance, it’s great. It was a great process. We appreciate all the assistance from all, uh, heads of departments, Alicia Thatcher, the select board’s been involved this year a lot in just in, in, in conversations to figure out, um, the financial situation. Um, but that’s kind of the full gist from my perspective. I know others probably have some other, uh, points to make as well.

1:20:41 We covered that pretty well. Oh, fair enough. Does anybody have any questions? I know we’ve already had three hearings to vote on this Budget. So

1:20:51 How about public comment?

1:20:55 Yes. Two seconds. Yep. No rush. Jack Uba Palmer Road. Um, I was wondering, you, you just went through a, a, a great presentation and especially the last part where you were like 50 percent’s the town, 50%, the other one, but I also understand that the, um, insurance and health budgets are paid, you know, out of that 22%. Yes. Yep. But could you in the future, make an effort to roughly allocate that to the town side? I know it’s really hard because it’s based on age of people. No, I, we’ve done that before. We Just haven’t done it in the budget presentation. Yeah. ‘cause it, it really does tend to understate the cost of the schools. And it would just be

1:21:43 A hundred percent. Yeah, thank you. I I would think it would be much closer to 65% schools based on what I’ve seen. Yes, no problem. Additional public comments on Article 22. Sorry, I’m losing my stuff. All right. If there’s no other public comment, I’ll make a recommendation. I’d like to recommend that the sum of 119,479,480 be appropriated 106,206,380 is to be raised from taxation and other available funds. And 13 million 273 100 is to be appropriated from available enterprise funds. Second, Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes.

1:22:32 Mr. Yes. Ms. Tes? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Sby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. And Eric, I’m sorry, Mr. Knight, I’m gonna stop you. Yes.

1:22:48 Alright. Article 23, amends zoning, bylaw three, a multifamily overlaid district. So this article was in the warrant last year. Um, I don’t believe it’s changed the presentation. Is that fair? It’s pretty consistent with last year. Yes. Does somebody wanna just give a quick rundown? Um, I know we’ve covered this in depth at multiple meetings, but just an overall, what the purpose of this article is? Just Yep. I, I, I can’t not sure. Yep. Okay, great. Does it have to be in depth? I know we presented it at town meeting last year.

1:23:32 Right. So, uh, I’ll make it quick. Uh, my name’s Alex ler. I’m the town planner, uh, from Marblehead. Um, and so I’ll just briefly go over it. So this is the same zoning, uh, overlay district that was proposed from last year’s town meeting. Um, we have three, uh, three sub districts, uh, propose, uh, T one in Tioga way, the other in Pleasant Street, and the other one in Broden Road. Um, the general gist of this is as required from the MBTA three A requirements from the state, um, is that these, uh, districts, uh, allow for multifamily buy, right? That’s it. Um, that’s kind of the big kind of takeaway is that these three districts are, um, there to provide, um, really the, the, the criteria put forth by the state

1:24:18 to make sure that, um, we are zoning by their parameters, um, which they set forth. I’m not gonna get into details of kind of how that breaks down. Yeah. Um, it’s roughly 1% of the total acreage of the entire marblehead. It has to be around 10% of the total housing stock within Marblehead. Um, so it’s around 897 units. Um, but for those three, uh, districts, those are selected based on the idea that there’s already existing, uh, multifamily there that’s compatible and similar to what is within the zoning proposal, to make sure it’s congruent with what’s currently existing there. Um, but is nothing more than a zoning district, district at the end of the day.

1:24:58 Sounds good. Any, Uh, additional thoughts on zoning three A from the sponsor of the article? Yep. Date of patent? Just raised A seat. Yeah, we’re gonna have fin come deliberation before public comment. Um, so I’ve been following along. Um, we are focused solely on costs here. Um, I’ve prepared, uh, what I believe is a timeline from my perspective of things that have happened. I’m not an expert on the zoning three A, um, but I just wanted to give a timeline because we made a recommendation last year, and I just wanna update from my perspective so we can deliberate and speak and, and public comment can deliberate as well once they get their chance to speak.

1:25:44 Um, so I’ll just try to quickly run through this. Uh, the state of Massachusetts developed the MBTA Communities Act, or three MT MBTA zoning mandate. Prior to last year’s town meeting, prior to town meeting last year, the town of Milton challenged the mandate in court claiming that the mandate was not legal and therefore not enforceable. The court case was pending during town meeting last year. FinCo supported the adoption of the article last year based on a presentation at last year’s warrant hearing indicating that there would be costs of litigation, significant cost of litigation and costs related to lost grants, if not adopted. Is that what we all remember doing? Yes. Yes. Yes. Town meeting voted against adopting the 3:00 AM BTA zoning mandate at town meeting last year. The proposal was rejected by a 33 vote margin

1:26:32 on January 8th, 2025. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the constitutionality of the MBTA Communities Act. At the conclusion of the case, the Chief Justice for the court wrote, we conclude that the act is constitutional and that the Attorney General has the power to enforce it. So that was the Milton case. So that’s just an update from a fact that was in my list of facts, since it is now legally enforceable mandate, the Attorney General has the illegal authority to sue any towns that do not comply with the zoning mandate, is my understanding. Prior to the court case, two additional things happened to the, on the state side, discretionary grant funding was created to reimburse towns for the cost of design and implementation of the three A mandate and the Executive Office of Housing

1:27:19 and Livable Communities. The E-O-H-L-C submitted a zero impact financial statement regarding the adoption of three A by communities. Once the Supreme Judicial Court, uh, ruled this to be a legal mandate, the state auditor’s office became legally required to provide an audit opinion on whether the mandate is a funded mandate or an unfunded mandate. In late February of this year, state auditor Diana Dgl, provided her office’s opinion that the MBTA Communities Act is an unfunded mandate. The opinion specifically stated the mandate imposes direct service or cost obligations that amounts to more than incidental local administrative expenses, but,

1:28:04 but does not provide a funding mechanism for compliance with its provisions. As an accountant, I was very intrigued by this audit opinion. I was able to actually get in contact with Ms. Dag through our finance director, Alicia, and I spoke with her for about an hour regarding what her opinion meant. Ms. Dag explained to me a few key things related to her office’s opinion. She could confirmed that is not in the state auditor’s office’s purview to challenge the cost or amount of funding defined by the state of Massachusetts regarding the implementation of three A. Rather, her office was simply tasked with determining whether the mandate was funded or not. It is actually the legal requirements of the state to determine the cost,

1:28:50 and it would not be challenged by her office if it was properly funded. This is just what she was explaining to me on the phone. She also explained how her office is audit opinion that three A is an unfunded mandate, uh, was driven primarily by the fact that the state on one hand created a discretionary grant program to reimburse the design and implement implementation cost of three a while. On the other hand, the state appointed agency, the E-O-H-L-C, came out with a zero financial impact statement. She was adamant that those two things cannot both be true. At the same time, again, what she said on the fall, she indicated there was a very easy remedy to change her office’s opinion from unfunded to funded. The state would only need to move the previously created discretionary grant funding

1:29:36 to its fiscal year 26 operating budget, which would effectively make a guaranteed funding. And so long as the E-O-H-L-C then came out with an updated financial impact statement with an amount equal to this budget, uh, line item in the state’s budget, the auditor’s office would then provide, um, a funded mandate opinion. Um, that’s the way she described it to me. Long story short, the audit opinion itself was made on the basis that the direct design and implementation costs to be incurred by towns such as planning studies, consultant fees, et cetera, acknowledged by the state to exist were not included in the state’s budget. And therefore, an unfunded mandate exists. Um, I believe we’ve re received some of those actually received two For $20,000. So a total of $40,000 for that. Yeah.

1:30:22 Um, in infrastructure and staffing needs or indirect costs that may be incurred by towns as a result of any increases in population as a result of adopting this, uh, down the road after adopting three A, were not covered by the unfunded mandate, uh, opinion. That’s not to say that those wouldn’t exist, but that’s the, the timeline of events and what has happened since last year’s town meeting from my perspective. So I’ll open up the floor to FinCon to ask questions

1:30:53 or, or provide comments or positions on this. Um, Alec, I have a question. Sure. Uh, directed, uh, Mr. Town planner, uh, is it not true that the town retains all local zoning powers? That this o these overlaid districts merely create an opportunity for more dense housing, not a mandate to in fact build more dense housing? Uh, yes, that is correct. That, thank you very much. Alec question? Yes. Yep. So the audit’s opinion was that the ancillary costs, so schools, water, sewer, parking, all

1:31:41 that stuff is not part of the unfunded Memory. It’s not part of her opinion. And she confirmed for me that if the state simply defined the costs, it was legally in the state’s purview to define what the cost of this is. And if they had, again, this is just her words, if they had simply put it in their operating budget and then that financial impact statement tied to it, then her opinion would’ve been that it’s a funded mandate. She’s not, she’s saying that she wouldn’t even audit whether or not there are costs beyond that. If those two things were done, that’s the way it was described to me. So Does that include those costs, or that’s outside Of what, it does not include the costs of, you know, the use of schools or the use of utilities or whatnot. And she said actually that

1:32:27 unless they put those into the cost themselves, she would never challenge whatever they define. Um, it’s, it’s under the state’s purview legally to define that. And her office would simply comment on whether it’s funded or not, based on whether it has a funding mechanism. And the state hasn’t done any of that. The state hasn’t, I don’t think the state has even corrected its original thing that she’s saying. So it’s still an unfunded mandate opinion at this point, is my understanding. So Her opinion is very specific to the cost of implementing the zoning requirements as direct costs that would fall under the mandate. Everything else, the impacts of zoning and, and improvements in schools are indirect, not even part of the conversation with the auditor. Yeah. So, so I guess For us as a FinCon, we need

1:33:14 to consider those costs because you just got through saying how tight the budget is, and next year there’s gonna be budget issues. And so if we have additional costs that we don’t even quantify yet, we as FinCon should consider those. Right. And, and, and like I said, I, I acknowledge that, you know, I could hear an argument that there could be costs beyond just the administrative costs. But I think in terms of just my timeline from my perspective and updating on what has happened, like last year at town meeting, a lot of the, um, folks that voted against three that spoke, not all, but some of them were, were very talking about the Milton case. Let’s wait for Milton. So, so that’s settled at this point. It’s a, it’s a legal mandate. Um, and, and like I said, you know, when I saw this audit opinion, I said, whoa,

1:34:01 like, what’s going on here? This is, this is something to consider, um, in the court of law, let’s say, let’s say a town still rejected this and wanted to fight the state for it. What I’m saying is that it, it might not be in an un unfunded, um, position from the state auditor pretty quickly here. That would help in court, I would think if you had an unfunded, it might be pretty easy to say it’s funded. So then you’re weighing, you know, the litigation costs and the, you know, you know, lack of grant funding or pullback of grant funding, um, to something that you might win or not in court. But I think, you know, the fact that it’s legal, it’s a legal mandate and could easily be changed from the auditor’s, uh, words mouth herself, that it would probably be a tough court case. But I’m not a lawyer, so, So could you correct me if I’m wrong then?

1:34:47 So because it is the law and it has been upheld, it will happen, right? So these, whether or not, so if we do not adopt this plan, there’s an a chance that the state could come in and mandate something that isn’t developed locally. Is that true? Um, well, we don’t know, right? So, so I think that’s a big thing related to this. It’s the law, right? So it we’re required to follow the law. It’s the fiduciary duty of employees and staff to follow the law. Um, this is the requirement of the state. Um, whether or not should we, should it come to town meeting and it’s not passed and it’s, it’s turned down. We don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen beyond what they have told us, right? Which is the polling of discretionary grants.

1:35:32 We would be losing out on dozens of different grant programs, particularly that would impact the infrastructure of the town in a lot of different ways. Um, but to say that the state would come in and do this, we don’t necessarily know. It’s not out of the question. Um, it’s been done in other states before, and I’m not gonna make a comparison between other states. Um, however, it has been done before, um, in New York, they did it, um, where they basically allowed for adult shops to be zoned everywhere until they zoned for specific areas. I’m not saying that at all, that that could happen here, but it’s not an uncommon situation where you have the state and local municipalities and the state says, you need to do this. If you do not, which it’s been settled at, at the, the, the highest court within the state.

1:36:19 You know, maybe they could do that. Um, but I’m not a lawyer, so I, I don’t, I don’t want to speak too much regarding the legal implications that that’s something that a lawyer would, would have to speak to. And, um, when the Attorney General has said that she will enforce this, so that means that we will incur legal fo legal costs, even if we don’t, you know, try to challenge ourselves that we will then be sued. So is there, do you have a sense of what our legal costs would grow? 75,000 is what the Town council gave me as an estimated starting litigation Cost? I mean, it would be based on time and hours, presumably. So that’s just an estimate. So that’s just their estimate. I mean, I don’t know how long this case would go on for, but it could be more or less than that, right? Correct. Yeah. So the fact that It’s unfunded has no bearing on

1:37:07 the mandate whatsoever. The mandate still stands, The mandate’s legal un that case was closed in January. Okay. Between Milton and the state. And, and the, the, the unfunded is just, that came, I think, as a surprise to the state. I don’t, don’t think they were too happy about it based on the articles I read. But, um, you know, that, that just came because the auditor’s office was now required, once it became a mandate, it triggered the audit. And what her position is, is that it’s just an unfunded mechanism for these direct implementation and design costs, for lack of a better way of describing them. Um, So, so if we were to, you know, sort of pursue something along those lines, it’s an easy fix from the state for sec I mean,

1:37:54 From the auditor’s perspective, she said if the governor would answer my phone call, we could fi figure this out in three hours, is what she told me. Yeah. Okay. So it, it would be sort of a delay at, at best. So yeah, so I’m just saying, you know, we talk about a potential court case down the road. We’ve got a, you know, a legal mandate now. So that’s an update since last year we talked about this. Um, and I, I believe it’s pretty easy per the state auditor herself to have a funded legal mandate. Um, I don’t know, you know, the, the likelihood of winning a court case against the state of Massachusetts with those two facts on their side, Thank you for speaking with her. It’s really, really helpful. Huge. Mm-hmm. Um, so last year when we discussed this, uh, when we were thinking about the financial impact, yeah.

1:38:40 And the reason we recommended it was both the potential for legal cause and the potential loss of grants. Yes. And so we’ve talked a little bit about, um, you know, potential size and the legal costs. Do we at this time have an idea of what that loss grant potential would look like to Marble had? Yeah. If you guys could maybe just provide kind of a summary. I thought last year that maybe there was actually, um, a definition of, of certain types of grants that could be denied by the state, should, should we not adopt this. And I think that’s expanded since last year to pretty much everything. But again, I’m not as in touch with it as you all are. So

1:39:26 I’m gonna just Put that Well, it’s not expanded to everything. I mean, we have, okay, we have the list. It, it’s as Alex has referred to infrastructure land use. Okay. Those, those type of areas, the state did, the way I describe it, tried to put their toe into public safety and they got their foot cut off doing so, so they backed off of trying to impact public safety or public education. So it’s in the areas that, you know, these folks work on for improvements to the community itself is where, where most of the grants, So we’ve had no grants denied yet. We have Oh, We have, yeah. I mean, we’ve had grants impacted and remember, so we didn’t pass it at town meeting,

1:40:13 so our deadline to have it pass was December 31st. Okay. So after that date, we were a non-compliant, and we received correspondence from the state that we’ve been awarded grants, but you will not receive them because you’re not in compliance. We’ve actually received that. Yes, we have letters. And then based on the Milton case and the issue about how the state went about posting the regulations or the guidance, which should have been regulations, um, they set a new deadline for compliance. So we once again became within compliance and pursued grants and have received grants, uh, or have received the release of grants that we, that were withheld. So it, it comes back to, if we don’t pass it at town meeting in May,

1:41:00 our new deadline is June, what’s the date? June something, right? Mm-hmm. Um, it, there’s a new deadline. We will once again be noncompliant and all of the, the grants would be withheld that, that have not been received. Um, and then, yeah, did you wanna show the Yeah, Yeah. If you, if you don’t mind. So, um, you know, our, our department, um, Brendan and Logan and Donna, um, we, we’ve been working to kind of add up the total grants for different fiscal years, just to give a comparison. Um, and Alicia, if you just want to go to the end, I think it might be easiest just for the last page, just for the sake of, so FY 24 and before is 1.5 million that are those discretionary grants.

1:41:49 So, so we’ve received those, right? Um, FY 25 is ongoing 475,000 and FY 26. So this is looking forward in the future for infrastructure grants. And there’s a breakdown of this, but just for, for numbers, it’s about $8 million. So at the moment, since FY 24, and, and if we include those grants go looking forward, you know, there’s a fair amount of money that we would be putting in potentially losing, should we be non-compliant, um, come to at risk. At risk, exactly. Um, and, and a lot of these infrastructure grants are very competitive, where the difference between Marblehead and Salem

1:42:35 and swamps, good and Peabody, and all of these local municipalities that are, you know, I I, I hate to say is competitors, but in the reality is, is everybody’s competing for the same pool of money. And it’s a difference of one or two points, um, in the sense that every point counts and should we fall into the non-compliance category, we either one would just not even be eligible or for some other grants that later down the road I’ve been, you know, I’ve been told, well, these will also be considered as a factor in the kind of the point system that also will potentially impact us capturing the best amount of point edge, um, for, for these projects. Okay.

1:43:23 Thank You. Yep. Thanks. Um, is it fair to say that the, so the planning board, I remember presenting this, I can’t speak to it as articulately as them, but I, I felt a, uh, a portion of their presentation was, was describing the way they put this plan together was in the best interest of Marblehead as most, as best as they could. Right. So they did the best as they could to, to limit the impact this would have on Marblehead, for lack of a better way of describing it. Is it fair to say that if we became non-compliant, again by not supporting this, that the state could technically come in and then draw their own maps rather than ours? Is that, is that something that is real? We, again, I think what Alex said, we’re not sure

1:44:10 what action they will take, but that’s in the realm of possibilities. So the attorney general has the authority to enforce by what means. Um, it hasn’t been tested yet, as far as I know, and I’m hoping Marblehead not the Guinea pig. Okay. Any other fin com questions? Comments? Yep. Um, I know this is a extremely difficult exercise. So, you know, in thinking you said, you know, high level or, or in total, I guess 897 units would be the increase that you would if every single, you know, unit were filled, right? So that would be over the long term. I had just done some sort of back of the envelope math and, you know, based on looking at sort of our population

1:44:57 and percentage of, of, uh, families in town with kids, and, you know, the nu increased number of students, I sort of calculated that there would still be capacity within our school system to sort of fit that number. Um, which again, it’s back of the envelope, but if I’m doing that exercise, there will be, um, you know, we, when we think about the cost long term that come with this, there will also be revenue that comes with this as well. So there will be, we haven’t had much new growth revenue, but is there any way, or have any towns had any success in trying to sort of project out sort of those long-term benefits, revenue and cost that would come with it? It’s a really hard question. Um, so I, I, I can’t speak necessarily to other towns. I think, I think the question you’re getting at is, is can,

1:45:42 can municipalities accurately predict down the road development from private developers and how that projects potential economic development? Right. In the long run? Um, for this particular scenario, I would not necessarily compare us with any other communities. We’re in a very unique situation. Land value’s extremely high parcel sizes are, um, quite frankly, they’re very small. Um, they’re, they’re, they’re, most of them are, you know, around 0.2 acres for each parcel within the zoning districts roughly. Um, and in addition to that, the ability to, to develop at a scale within Marblehead, the land economics do not work.

1:46:27 Um, it, it just, it’s, this is not a, quite frankly, it’s really not a great deal for developers in Marblehead. Um, so to answer your general question about, you know, can we predict how much economic growth we’re gonna get in revenue from this, um, we, we can’t really predict and pull those numbers out of the air because one, it’s, it’s extremely unrealistic. And where you would see that potential growth would be almost negligible in a lot of ways, unfortunately. And, and, and I’m negligible in the sense that it’s, it’s gonna be small. I mean, the open space requirements combined with parking requirements, you’re seeing almost a net reduction about, roughly about, i i I would say half of the developable land you would be losing

1:47:13 out on per parcel. And that’s assuming you can even build at a profit within those small parcels to begin with. And everybody knows in Marblehead, the parcels are small, you’re not gonna be able to develop multifamily housing on smaller parcels without one tearing the existing buildings down that are currently there, which in almost every scenario for these three districts, those are already built up. Um, they have to incur the cost of demolition, and then after that, they’d actually have to go ask all the private owners, can I buy your land to combine the parcels? Um, so I think in the, in, in a short answer, it’s, we, we, we don’t have a comparison, um, of other communities like Marblehead that can kind of project this future economic growth, um, just

1:48:01 because it’s, it’s up to the market and the, and there’s really no developable land in Marblehead, to be quite honest. Molly, When, what was the number you mentioned 8 87. So is that a, a gross number or a net number? Are we cons? So that’s, are we considering number of units that are already with folks living in them, in these developed zones are, yeah, so, So I think it’s really important to note that. So that number is nothing more than the capacity, right? So, and that’s part of the parameters set forth by the state. So it’s, it’s the, the, the parameters is you need to zone for 10% of your housing stock. That’s where that 897 number comes from. Right. But in the zones that we currently are chosen by the planning board here mm-hmm. How many units are already around

1:48:46 360 existing units? So there’s a net 500 or so difference, correct? Yes. Oh, okay. So, so, and then, and I think again, it’s not, it’s just zoned for, it’s not billed, it’s just, and the 360 is just for the existing units, and that’s to give some people kind of a unrealistic but maximum scenario of what you could see built. And there are, there are these, these districts are all zoned under, is it 40 B that already allows multifamily, um, Mainly just Broden road. So Broden road as well as Tioga way have 40 B developments on there. Um, so, So is the argument that it’s more likely to develop under three A than 40 B? Correct. Um, and the reason for that is because the land economics provide

1:49:32 for the developers a much more higher profit return at the end of the day, which is the rationale, we assume under, under three A. So it gives them an alternative option to build at not really the same density, but a close enough density that’s comparable. Well, I think, I think that’s a key point. The difference Between 40 B and three A 40 B allows for much higher densities, right? A developer in order to, so 40 Bs require 25% affordable units, right? So that decreases the, the profit value of development to compensate developers for that offset. They allow 40 B allows for greater density within your projects. That’s the trade off. And Three A, right, Three A limits the density.

1:50:18 And, and another example is 40 B, there are unlimited height availability in the development under three A. It’s limited to the underlying zoning of three, you know, three stories. So they’re, you know, they’ve done a comparison between the two and three A is slightly is is more profitable, but, um, uh, 40 B has a much greater impact. And the fact is that we are currently under the 40 B mandate, but we’re not seeing, and that’s been since 1960s, we’re seeing very limited projects under 40 B just because of the economics as Alex’s has described, Alex. Yep. So if I’m hearing this right, if

1:51:07 if the financial benefit is not there for the builders or the whoever’s coming in, then it, it’s only gonna be Bill if there’s a financial benefit to them? Yeah, we, we, we, we can assume that, right? I mean, I, I think maybe there’s develop, I mean yes, I generally, unless Mr. Green’s at the party Exactly, so mm-hmm. That, that’s the assumption we have to operate under in a private market. Yeah. Okay. Assume a rational marketplace, right? Yeah. All right. I mean, I think we’ve said a lot on, on this. Um, does fin com have any other questions or comments on, on this article?

1:51:51 Like, to open up? Okay. Just again, the article is just to adhere to the legislation, to, to the, the, to be mandate, to Be compliant under the Mandate gets to be, uh,

1:52:09 um, almost it, it has lots of different perspectives from different people. So we’re the, the law has been the law that the legislature passed is been determined to be, which is just to require that bylaws in the towns be amended to allow the potential for the, for, for the, um, For to allow multifamily buy right within the parameters they’ve set forth With the parameters. Mm-hmm. So we, the, the legisl, the legislation is in place and it’s been validated by the Supreme Judicial Court

1:52:55 to be legal. Um, and what the Article 23 is asking is that for an approval of the z of an amendment to the zoning bylaw to allow the parameters of the legislation to be available within the town, is that it’s So, so, um, it’s to allow for the establishment of three, a new zoning district that is in three different sections that have, um, mo mostly similar, same parameters. The three different sections is what the planning board proposed. It could have been acres, it was based on the size acres pieces could have been different. Mm-hmm. Yep. But the,

1:53:41 but we’re using the expertise of the planning board to, as our, as our rubric for the proposal. I, I just don’t see, you know, I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves. I, I’m not saying that it’s that we shouldn’t be thinking about that longer term, but we’ve got near term issues with the potential for litigation if we don’t pass this. And also for, um, losing potential grant, um, funding. And to me that’s the, that’s the near term issue that needs to be considered. And that from my viewpoint warrants,

1:54:27 um, approval of, of the, uh, article 23 going forward to present to the town at town meeting. So that’s, It feels also like, I respectfully disagree, pat, because this is a slippery slope and once we open the door, then we can’t stop it. And, you know, the reason people move to Marblehead is ‘cause the character of the town, and once this goes out, the character of the town is irreparably and permanently changed. So we have short term repercussions from this. Yeah. But there’s much bigger, longer term stuff that we can’t even foresee. No one can foresee it right now. Sorry, what do you mean? Open the door? Open the door for more growth or just more residents,

1:55:12 Right? Correct. Exactly. And you, you asked the key question, which is, and I think the FinCon should handle, which is, what is the cost and what is the revenue associated with the 500 new residences? We don’t know what that is. That’s, but that to me is worst case. Right? So that would be like, and it sounds like that’s not the most, most likely case by far. Um, and I guess a another question though. It, again, it’s the law. So, and we would be advising the town to not follow the law if we were not to recommend passing, but, you know, zoning laws have been passed in the before, right? And so, I mean, if we were at as a town to say, no, we’re, we’re not gonna do that, we’re gonna break the law. What is precedent for what would happen following? Well,

1:56:00 I think, uh, what’s interesting coming out of the Milton case is the coin has been flipped in that if you wanna keep the state from coming into Marblehead, you need to pass this. ‘cause if you don’t pass this, they have said they will come in and do it for us. So a year ago we were concerned about the state telling us how to do this, right? What it does allow is for the local community to design the plan to fit right. Its community, right? And that’s what the planning board and the planners and the cons consultants have done, is come up with the best plan that meets Marblehead to be compliant, but but maintain the character of Marblehead. If we don’t do this, the state will step in.

1:56:47 That’s what they’ve said. So if we want to keep the state out of Marblehead, we’re better off to pass this than not to pass it. I I just have one more question ‘cause I think it goes to your economic feasibility, just in terms of a developer coming in and it obviously they wanna turn a profit, and how profitable is it to have, you know, to buy a very expensive piece of land and turn it into a multi-family with just, you know, a small amount of units, it’s only net 500 units. Um, I guess maybe to Michael’s point, would there be at that point with three a, um, a developer did come in and say, I’d like to build or file a permit to build so many units. Is there another level of approval at that point? So the town that would,

1:57:35 Yeah, so, so I think the key thing here is it’s buy, right? So, uh, what that means is buy right, is if you build within the building envelope, um, which is, is set out in the parameters, the zoning, um, features for each of the districts within the Wharton article, right? You have frontage set back requirements. If you, those kind of those numbers determine, um, the building envelope, the building envelope, if you’re within that building envelope, you would naturally be building by, right? Which means you don’t have to get discretionary approval for these things. So if somebody wants to build a single family home, if they’re building within that building envelope, they can build by, right? That doesn’t mean they still have to get building permits and plumbing permits and all of those, but particularly from zoning

1:58:20 and planning board, um, they do not necessarily need to get permits for that. Um, so the scenario where if somebody did come in and they likely are gonna build at a profit, they are almost in almost every way going to trigger, you know, site plan and zoning review. And the reason for that is, is because for them to build out a particular scale, to turn a profit, they are going to definitely need to be acquiring large parcels. Um, and given that that’s quite difficult to do and should they be able to do it, you’re basically, you’re going to likely trigger site plan review and you’re likely going to trigger, um, zoning because they’re likely gonna be building in the setbacks. But I think it comes down to how they decide

1:59:05 to build the building. Um, but it’s fair to say that these larger multifamily projects, should they occur, um, they would likely trigger additional kind of permitting requirements. Um, but it’s, it’s one of those things where you don’t know until the developer comes in. So, Yeah, I can see it. I think, just in my one final comment, I think if you were to really just purely analytically think this from a financial impact standpoint, you’d have to sort of it think about the short term cost that would come from not passing this, right? Which would be the legal cost, which be, would be the loss grants. And then you would have to try your best to project out over the long term what the costs would be, net whatever revenue, additional revenue that would come in

1:59:51 and discount that back to compare it to the short term costs. And just from my perspective, from everything I’ve heard, purely from a financial standpoint, I think it would, and as a finance committee, we have to factor that in. The costs outweigh a cost of not adopting this plan or not recommending it outweigh. Um, Yeah, I guess the only other thing I would think of is even if you came up with the perfect estimate of that, what does that mean? Like, are you gonna win that case? Is are you gonna be able to beat the state and, and not adopt this? Like, or are they just gonna come in and still say you have to do it? I, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. Alex, back to first comment before about being at a le I mean, recommending to the town to be outta compliance against the law.

2:00:39 Aren’t we mandated by to present a balanced budget to the town? That’s something that we have to do. How can we, how can we make a recommendation that’s against the law? I Mean, we’re making a recommendation to town meeting. We recommended to not adopt this last year, and they, they voted to recommended to adopt, they voted to not adopt it. So yeah, I mean, everything that you just said should be considered as you think about your vote tonight. It’s just a recommendation from FinCon to town meeting that they went the other way last year. That’s the reality of the Situation. Um, Alec, can I weigh in? Yes. As sym, I’m sympathetic to Michael’s point about the character of the town, um, it’s a valid point, uh, but I wanna underscore the fact that town zoning

2:01:29 still controls. So, you know, you can’t build over three stories and the setbacks and the parking requirements are all still in place. Now on the opposite side of the ledger, we look at the risks. We’re looking at over $10 million worth of grants at risk. We’re looking at the cost of litigation. We’re also, uh, excuse me, um,

2:01:58 sorry, I lost my train of thought. Anyway, the point is to, from my perspective, I believe that the risks of a non-compliance greatly outweigh the risks of compliance. Thank you. Thanks. Any other fin com comments, questions, public comment

2:02:20 If Dave Patton, uh, we have one person online first, and then we’ll take everybody else. David. Hi, David Patton, 25 Lee Street. So first question is, how’d you come up with $75,000 in legal costs to fight the state? I mean, I, I, I don’t, I, it, it sounds extraordinarily low. I didn’t come up with that. I, I agree with the comments though. Town Town Council gave us that initial estimate. Initial estimate. There was several and several months ago. So I don’t know if conditions have changed, but that was just a rough, Rough number. Like, like I said, when she first said that it’s based on, I know how lawyers bill based on hours and hourly rates.

2:03:06 So if it goes for five years, it could be a lot more than that. Right. That’s just, I, and I would, I would, I would, I would suggest that someone go and rethink that number and maybe come back with a number that is more likely to be the costs. If in fact, we go to, you know, hearings and higher outside counsel and go through all kinds of presentations and possibly go to other litigation. And I, I can’t believe it would be that low. I, I would also ask that you reemphasize during this presentation how many, uh, homes there already are in these districts, because people around town have this number in their head.

2:03:54 There’s gonna be 900 new homes built, and it’s gonna be an overrun with all kinds of people. First off, it’s not true. It would only be a maximum of, of additional, right. About 600 or 500 and something. And the other question I, I get, the last question I have is, aren’t these, aren’t all these areas in fact already developed? In other words, there are houses there, there are streets there, there are sewers there, there are buildings there. And if, in fact, a, a developer were to try and combine a set of properties to build something a little bit larger in, in, in point of fact, it’s, it’s not like a greenfields project where you’d have to run brand new sewers

2:04:41 and brand new utilities and brand new everything. It would just be some kind of a, a reconstruction of what’s already there.

2:04:52 Thank you. Got it. Yes. Uh, John Deano Trager Road. Um, so my first comment is, uh, we, we always go, it seems that these, the committees and the boards and, and the town administrator always go to worst case scenario. I did foyer requests last year. The grand total of the grants we lost up until that point in time was zero. It was 475,000. We went from that to 8 million. 8 million might be what the grant amount is for all of the competing towns. Our portion of it could be anywhere from nothing to something. The idea that we have to be locked into litigation forever is a fallacy. We could file a compliance exemption complaint, which I urge the select board to do on March 17th.

2:05:40 Um, they, they elected not to do that. We could start with a litigation. If we decided it wasn’t feasible at some point you could stop. So it doesn’t have to be five years of litigation. The worst case scenario, and the scare tactics, I think work against arguing for, um, voting this in. People don’t like it. They feel like they’re not being told, um, honestly, what the real potential ramifications are, what the worst possible case scenario could be. So that’s just a comment. Okay. But that’s not really what I came here to say. What I came here to say is, I have a hard time squaring the idea that the, we’ve already made a determination of what is a direct and what isn’t a direct cost based on, uh, Ms.

2:06:28 Benjamin’s in your con uh, communication with, um, Diana Ogle OG not lawyer. And I don’t, I don’t doubt the conversation happened. I don’t doubt it was that the, the communication was exactly as reported. I don’t, I have no, I’m not saying that at all. Okay. But what I am saying is that I have a hard time squaring that we’ve already made a determination of what is and what isn’t a direct cost when our law firm, Mead Talman has already filed pleadings in the case is now pending, alleging the following direct costs of compliance for the town of Middleton 750 new units. They’re talking about there 12 new police officers,

2:07:14 $1.4 million, eight new firefighters, $1.2 million associate direct public works housing increase transfer station costs rising by 200,000 annually, 150 to 375 new students. That’s with a population of 9,000 7 7 9. Um, they used, uh, I forget what they used to get to that number, but this is all supported by affidavits from their town administrators and the directors of their various departments who came up with these numbers. That’s, uh, that’s with respect to Middleton, with respect to, um, the affidavit of Michael King town manager for rent them. I can cut to the chase on that one.

2:08:00 The total was over $15 million. And to, to your point about the benefits of increased revenue, that number was $5,383,907 more than double the anticipated due growth in property taxes associated with the mandated multifamily housing developments. So I have a difficult time squaring the conversation that it was just the grant for the, um, what was it for Bulger? It was the engineering firm. We were already received it. And that’s it. That’s all we’re out of pocket with Mead Erman who spoke at the, the, the, the meeting on May seven, March 17th, filing these pleadings. This was docketed April 1st.

2:08:46 It’s dated March 28th, indicating that the di direct costs of f you know, 15 million for one town. And I think then any other number came to a nine or a 10, something of that nature. Don’t hold me to that number because I didn’t do the math. They didn’t do it for me. So yes, we must comply with state law unless we receive a compliance exemption. I think it’s a mistake that we haven’t filed that petition. I think it’s a mistake to advance this in May when the emergency regulations run until July and we could file this complaint for a compliance exemption. We could join, I don’t know. Now if we can join these towns that were already consolidated, we may have be able to seek a preliminary injunction. We may or may not get that. And then we can make an assessment with real numbers that we don’t have.

2:09:33 So the job of all of us in town, not just finance, but the select board and, and everyone is to actually get the numbers because the legislature is the voters, and we don’t have them.

2:09:50 Once we adopt three A, we can never file for a compliance exemption because we have voluntarily accepted it. So under the statute, uh, regulating unfunded mandates, that opportunity is lost forever. And these costs, if they’re correct, are on me

2:10:14 and on every taxpayer in town for the foreseeable future. So I would argue it’s irresponsible to recommend this to go forward in May until we actually have these figures and until we actually know whether they are direct or indirect costs. And the only way to determine that is to incur the $75,000 and file for the compliance exemption. Well, that’s what I came here to say tonight, and give you that food for thought. If you’d like the pleadings, I can print out copies, I can email them. Um, I highlighted mine, but these, these numbers are from the every same law firm that represents marblehead.

2:10:57 Actually, can I ask you a question just as a view of the legal background, is that okay if I ask a question? The, um, are there, and under, was it 40 A, how many exemptions were granted to towns then? So I’m trying to, I’m trying to find precedent for what is the potential, what is the, you know, the number of, or the, if you were had to, I’m trying to, how likely is it that they’re gonna grant any exemptions? Were any exemptions granted under 40 A four 40 B? Yeah. Or 40 B. Sorry. It’s okay. Sorry. I think, I think the question is how many exemptions were granted under the unfunded mandate statute? Is that what you’re trying is Yeah. To ask. So, because it’s too early right? To know. There hasn’t Been yet. So this is the case of first impression three A is a new, is is is a new law. Um, this is, I can’t, I don’t, I don’t know the answer to that question. No, no.

2:11:43 I mean, the one in the one from 1960, the one that was the previous zoning law that was passed in 1960, how many exemptions were granted to town, but I’m, it was a similar, I have a different Zoning law. I’m sure people didn’t wanna a, a adopt that one too. So I’m just trying to understand, is there precedent for granting exemptions under zoning laws? Does that make sense? I’m, I don’t, I don’t know the answer to that question. I, I, I don’t, I think you know the answer to that question. Sorry. How, but I, I think the question is, did 40 B have to be drawn up and accepted by the planning board, Or was there Yeah, I Think the answer’s no. Okay. So there is truly no precedent for 40, 40 B predated the unfunded mandate law. So it was already in place. So whether it had standing or not, who knows, but it, so it did not file.

2:12:30 It is rare. And I, there’s, I, I don’t know if, I don’t know any off the top of my head, but it is very rare that there are some of items being determined as unfunded mandates. Um, so, so that’s the challenge is do we go down the path of being noncompliant with all the concerns about the immediate impact on, on grants and funding, plus the cost. And, and the issue seems to be, are we gonna go down the path of a determination that the cost impacts down the road are unfunded mandates When the auditor already said, we are, you know, we’re not even determined that those are indirect costs

2:13:18 in their mind is just the cost of implementation. So it’s, it’s, you know, how much of a risk do you wanna take of being noncompliant versus what’s the relative risk of being compliant? And as our planner and others have said that economically, you know, it’s not likely to create a, a, a significant impact. And how do we know that is because there’s already 40 B that does even more than this, that has very little impact on the community at this time. I think, as I talked to the auditor, is that we did receive discretionary grant funding. So I know you did do a request, but you asked for direct grant funding.

2:14:04 There is discretionary grant funding, and we received that discretionary grant funding for $40,000, which covered those, what they classified as those affected costs, had they put them in their budget, we would’ve, it wouldn’t have been an unfunded at all because it was in the budget. So to me, it’s like semantics. You gave it to me in a grant. You should have given it to me through an appropriation of the general fund. We still got the money. Right. The reason why the earlier requests about how much grant money did we lose out and, and not in response was when this process first started, the state very narrowly defined the grant programs that they’re withholding, most of which were grant programs that Marble had because of its economics were not eligible for. But then the state successful, you know, in succession expanded and expanded and expanded.

2:14:49 In fact, they expanded probably further than right. Like I said, they dipped into the public safety realm and then will push back. But the state has expanded that leverage to, to the extent that they think they could get away with. So that’s the reason why there was no response on the first request, because it was very narrow question to very specific programs that we’re not even eligible for. But it has since expanded to the programs that Alex has identified and others have identified. I guess my point is that theres risks on both sides. Yes. And that the, it seems that we don’t wanna acknowledge that if the pleadings are correct, the risk to the taxpayers are at least as significant as all of the risk you just described. And I’m not suggesting that you know, that, that,

2:15:36 that it isn’t a risky proposition to vote this down. Um, it, it, but I am suggesting that it’s risky in both directions. And, and, and I don’t, I guess I don’t understand why our law firm hasn’t written a memo for the community on this. I mean, perhaps the select board should release the minutes of their executive session with me tolerant. So we can, we can, we can see what was discussed. Why, why is that in an executive session? We, we, we, I need to know that information so I know how to vote in May. I mean, you all know that I’ve been an outspoken opponent on this, and I’ve been an outspoken opponent on it primarily, um, in, in large part to wait to see what happened with the Milton case. We have that answer. We don’t have this one. So in, in the words of Yogi Berra probably gonna get back up

2:16:24 and file another motion and say, well, it’s deja vu all over again. Okay. Um, so, you know, I think it’s a mistake that we didn’t file for the compliance exemption. Think if you can recommend that, you should. I don’t know that that’s part of what you do. I’m, I’m kind of a, I’m kind of new to this. I try to spend my, most of my adult life staying out of, uh, small town politics, having been in it when I was little. Um, yeah. Doing well at it. I’m not doing very well. I’m failing miserably. Um, and, uh, and, and, you know, but it’s, it’s risky in both directions. And we’re willing to accept and go right down one path, foreclose the other. And I guess I just don’t understand why that is. You know, think about it for a second. Alright. We’re talking about units that have to be profitable for developers.

2:17:10 So when the proponents come out and they say, this is affordable housing, that’s a bunch of nonsense. It’s not gonna be affordable. 7 50, 800. I don’t know how any retired teachers are buying 800,000 condos in downtown Marblehead. So that’s the first fallacy that we’re dealing with. It’s a nice notion. If it were that way, I’d buy one. Alright. Um, but that’s, you know, that’s the first fallacy of all of this and it. But the next one is that we have to also be careful that we’re not shooting ourselves on the foot to get a grant for a million dollars and a tax bill for $5 million. We get on a $750,000 house, what, five, $6,000 in taxes. Not every dollar of that goes to the school. Uh, the schools, 50% goes to the schools. Half of that.

2:17:56 We spend what, $20,000 educating each child. Something of that nature. Yeah. 21 Net loss per student for the entire career of that student in Marblehead. Now it’s a state mandate. We, at some point, maybe we just have to swallow the porcupine, but if we can get a compliance exemption or exempt from compliance for as long as that compliance exemption prevails, why don’t we at least try?

2:18:27 Yep. David Patton here, again, you cannot argue costs without also looking at the revenue opportunity that will come from all those taxes year after year after year, more than covering any additional costs that will be required. That’s not, Yeah. Not according to the data I have in my hand. Yeah, that’s, you can’t make those numbers add up, but I have the floor. Sorry. Yeah. Um, just one quick thing. The other thing that will come with applying for the compliant exemption, as opposed to allowing this in and foregoing that option forever, is you enter into negotiations. Right? And so I know that the case that was solved,

2:19:12 was it Milton Middleborough? Sorry, Middleborough. They challenged it. They went in and then they found out that, well, if you change, they changed their zoning plan a little, and then they were mostly compliant, which made them compliant. And so it gets you another bite at the Apple. It, it’s very unlikely that the state’s gonna come in extremely heavy handed, tell you exactly what to do, build it, et cetera. They don’t really want to do that either. Being totally practical. What’ll happen is you’ll get into some discussion and they’ll say, what don’t you like? How can we make this a little different? And you have another chance. Whereas if you adopt this in, you’re gonna adopt in the small increase in revenue for taxes, a much bigger

2:19:57 indirect cost forever. And, you know, as the finance committee, I’ve been in your shoes, you, you have to consider that the side of the fact, the fact that the state mandated it and it’s a really bad deal for Marblehead is a good reason to stand up and say, this is a really bad deal for Marblehead. Thanks. Thank you. There’s some, we have some people online. Uh, yeah, we’ll take, um, we got Aaron Nunan. Aaron first.

2:20:33 Aaron, are you online? Sorry. Yes. Thank you. Um, I’m sorry about there tonight. I just flew, um, got back into town tonight. But I did wanna respond to some of the, um, comments, uh, regarding, um, Mr. Diano and also Mr. BU’s comments, I believe, um, you know, yes. Last year and this year is different, you know, from specific grants that we utilized last year to assess costs. The game and the goalposts have completely changed. And, you know, uh, like, you know, you, that’s, that you’ve nailed it. Like it’s, we have completely now, now this is actually even more economically impactful than it was last year when we were looking at specific set aside grants.

2:21:19 The Supreme Judicial Court, I mean, as you’re aware, has viewed this as the law. Not only, you know, does the state have all the purse strings with regard to every single discretionary grant grant. We can also be, uh, compelled to comply and which obviously has some, uh, litigation costs. And, you know, I I think looking back at it, some of us would’ve, some people at town meeting last year would’ve had us pursue a legal challenge like Milton did, which by the way, not for nothing, spent nearly $300,000 to lose that case. And just with respect to when I hear people speaking about the chapter 90 and student enrollment booming, like, first of all,

2:22:05 we have been a declining population in this town for some time. Our student population has significantly declined. And all, uh, actuarial data suggests that that is not going to change. But even if it were the Chapter 90 algorithm factors in total enrollment, that is, that is a funded mandate. Part of our Chapter 90 funds comes from student population, period. So that would never be considered an unfunded mandate. And it is funded. We get that money based on student enrollment and not to mention, um, there’s also chapter 70, which, you know, has, is some kind of formulaic about demographics

2:22:50 and populations as well, the details of which I’m less familiar with. Um, but all of our designated areas also in town in this plan are already connected to the water and sewer. So I won’t deny that. And I think, you know, you referenced executive session notes. I think you can read the tea leaves that there are, I’m not gonna deny that there are some towns that can litigate that, that issue that, you know, there are infrastructure costs, but we are not that plaintiff, every single one of our designated areas is connected to water and sewer and, and, and well developed. I just wonder, what are these indirect quote unquote costs that people like to speak of, you know, and are they real costs? Or are we just trying to ignore the fact that there are real known costs to non-compliant,

2:23:38 which comm and every single member of this FinCon committee needs to operate in? Are we trying to overlook those real known costs, which were just presented and laid out and there’s overwhelming data and now supreme judicious judicial law, um, precedent that, you know, we, we cannot overlook that just to, for these hypothetical speculative costs because we don’t, like, I think, I believe it was one of the FinCon members that said, that might change the character of our town. And I would just like to remind everybody on the finance committee, you know, that, uh, you know, control development has a positive net fiscal impact. And I, I say that, but also knowing that this plan, I don’t think will develop, will, will create much development.

2:24:25 But just speaking from a logical financial state standpoint, controlled development has a positive net fiscal impact that is data proven and studied. It leads to growing local economy and a tax base. And most sound, financial municipal policies are actually intended to encourage new development in the appropriate places. And so, you know, and also to that end, Mr. Meyer is correct. You should not make a recommendation that is against the law. This should be in a unanimous endorsement from this committee as an independent fiscal watchdog that relies on falling state law, basic logics related to common sense development and basic municipal, municipal economics. Um, you know, and I just remind you of your duties under the Massachusetts Finance Committee Handbook, which covers the basic roles and responsibilities of finance committee members, which is not necessarily to preserve the character

2:25:12 of the town, but let’s look at the real numbers and known costs of, of, um, of non-compliance of this and our logic and what, you know, um, and set aside kind of our, our own, uh, predilections about what the character of this town is. Thank you.

2:25:34 Thank you, Aaron. Um, Phil Mancuso.

2:25:42 Phil, are you there? You’re muted if you’re trying to talk. All right, Dan. Okay. Oh, sorry. It’ll not be skipped. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead Phil. Okay. You can hear me right? Yes. Yes. Now we can. Thank you. I have a few comments to make. Um, first off, I’ll give you a little bit about my background. I’ve 40 years plus of corporate finance. In my career, I’ve been with private companies, public companies, fortune 100 companies, startups, breakouts, the whole nine yards. I’m hearing a lot of people talking numbers,

2:26:29 but I’m not seeing anything or hearing anybody say definitive numbers. Revenue could be revenue, couldn’t be, you know, expenses could be the number of water and sewer issues. Everything is a guesstimate. And in my career, guesstimates don’t get you anywhere. You need cold hard facts. You need numbers applied to, to make decisions. Is there an issue with this finance committee making no recommendation on this article? That’s a question. Can someone answer that?

2:27:17 Well, generally we make recommendations on articles that have financial impact. There have been some numbers presented to us tonight that would indicate not adopting this or, uh, would, would result in financial impact to the town. Um, negative financial impact. Um, I think we have the ability to do whatever we’d like with Recommendation. Well, you know what, but that’s your opinion. My opinion is not adopting it or adopting it is gonna have more of a negative impact. And I’m not sure who the finance committee member was that mentioned changing the characteristic of the town. It’s an intangible, but it’s a really heavy intangible model. Head has 400 plus years of history.

2:28:04 It is a beautiful town. It is historic town. And if you put buildings like you see on Route one in Chelsea or on one A in Revere down on Pleasant Street, you’re gonna change the characteristic of the town. I’ve lived on the North Shore my entire life. I’ve been in Marblehead for 35 years. I’m not a marble header by certain people’s definitions. I wasn’t born at the Mary Alley. I was born at the SAU August General Hospital. But I was so proud when I was able to move to Marblehead because of its history. And you know what, from where the places where I lived,

2:28:53 it was a real big step up. So do a favor for everybody that has a single family residence that has worked hard to get that single family residence. And do not make a recommendation on this article because I’m hearing certain people’s opinions that are very questionable as to why they have those opinions. And Mr. Planner, who has very little history in Model Head is talking about, um, everybody knows you can’t make money on a development. Well ask Ted Moore that. And why is Ted Moore’s son pushing so hard

2:29:40 to get three A passed? I don’t know. Thank You. I’m just saying what I see and what my experience and what my gut tells me. Don’t make a recommendation on this article. Thank you. Thank You.

2:30:00 Any other public comment? Erin? Or sorry Sarah.

2:30:06 That will be a turly worded memo tomorrow. Um, Sarah Fox Beach Street. Um, my question is not actually yay or nay on the article. My question is the mechanism of passing the article, because it is a zoning bylaw change. Can someone provide some clarification? I believe this would be a two thirds vote, not a 50%. Um, so it would be a 50% vote. And the reason for that, ‘cause it’s affordable housing. Um, so there’s an affordable housing, um, section within this. So it would be at a 10%, no more, no less. So it’s a requirement of 10% affordable housing over Six units. Um, yep. And, and so, and, and within that affordable housing, you have to be over six units for that to kick in. Um, but the actual adoption of that article at town meeting,

2:30:54 it would be a 50%

2:30:58 The statute. Okay. They put That yes. So that they could circumvent the two thirds. Okay. Okay. So no other municipalities in the Commonwealth have done it via two thirds? They’re, they’re all doing it via 50%. Okay. That was my only question. Thank you. 50% vote. Yep. Any other, yeah, Dan, uh, Dan Fox, west Cottage. Just wanted to just keep this quick, but I just wanted to touch on Mr. Bob’s comments about middleboro dropping their injunction for, uh, a possible exemption and how they got their foot in the door for negotiation. They had a really good argument and that they had just adopted a smart growth 40 hour downtown. Um, and that’s why that they allowed them to do that, to go into negotiation. We haven’t done something like that. So, well, you, you say you put your hands up, but it had that, that that was the reasoning for it.

2:31:44 And if you look sir, I’m just, you wouldn’t have thought they had any negotiations. Well, sir, and and if you look, they have not dropped any of that. No, this is my, I’m giving my opinion on why they did it. You gave your opinion on what we should do. We are looking at all these things. We have talked to counsel about these types of things and we are still considering these. As you know, there was a hearing on April 2nd, there has not been a ruling yet. So that is still an option that we are keeping open, um, at this point as we discussed on March 17th. But I think in talking to our counsel, we are not as good of a plaintiff as Middleborough. Thank you. I worry a little bit also that our negotiating leverage is less now that the Supreme Court has already upheld the law. You know, and I worry what leverage do we have? Just one small town point Sounds. We’re basing

2:32:30 it on an unfunded mandate opinion that from the state auditor herself says that it doesn’t mean what we’re being told. That’s, that’s from my perspective where I’m at with it. Yeah. I just, I worry we don’t have a whole lot level. So I hear the argument and I hear that there potentially could be a cost to this if X, Y, and Z happen and, and developers do everything they say could happen. Um, we don’t know what that number is. It sounds like our planning board put together a really solid plan for this, um, to make it the way they presented it that last year, um, that it would be the least impactful as they could for the town of Marblehead. Um, so, you know, that’s kind of where I’m at with it. Phil, do you have another comment

2:33:21 or is this your hand up from before? Nope. No, I have another comment. Okay. Thanks. Um,

2:33:31 This, you know, Mr. Dip Pano mentioned that if we do not file against this, we lose all future potential of, um, getting out of three A. Why is everybody so dead set on, you know, um, just going along if, is it worth the risk to save this town’s characteristic and history to deny this and fight this? In my opinion, it is. And it sounds like somebody on the finance committee shares the opinion. And I know Mr. Deano, she is the opinion, uh, why

2:34:21 so many people on this board. So intent on closing the door, on fighting this. I don’t care what the legal cost is, it could be. ‘cause you know what, at any point in time when you’re finding it, if it’s too expensive, you say, okay, we are done. And that’s it. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Any other public comment on this? Okay, Aaron, one more.

2:34:54 Sorry, I just, ‘cause it’s come up a couple times with, um, regarding the, you know, voluntary acceptance of this with all due respect to Mr. Dip Panos, um, position that, you know, he thinks that the door closes does not mean it is so, uh, we are have not voluntarily accepted this. As, you know, Mr. Dip pano would, could, could, would think that the judge would interpret it that this, this would not be lost to us by definition. This is a mandate and a judge cannot determine that our acceptance was voluntary because this has been determined a mandate, his position that the door closes is because we have voluntarily accepted. This just does not compute

2:35:40 with the determination from the Supreme Judicial Court that we are required to, something can’t be voluntary and a mandate at the same time. So if in the event, in the remote chance that we were ever in a position to argue such, we would, and that’s, um, just what I wanted to clarify because a second commenter had, um, asked that question of the board. Thank you.

2:36:10 Okay. Um, perhaps, um, I wasn’t clear in my comments and I’ll clarify them.

2:36:18 If one reads any of the versions of the state auditor’s division of local mandates, the termination in that correspondence is an explanation that it’s a two-prong test under the local mandate law as to whether or not you could seek a compliance exemption under the local mandate law. One is voluntary acceptance of the subject unfunded mandate. So the reason I’m lobbying unsuccessfully, apparently, um, with respect to the, at least the chair of the select board who seems bound to determined to pass three a, um, even though a number of our constituents and a majority last year voted against it, is because if this fails in May

2:37:04 and we don’t already have a compliance exemption case pending, we’re gonna be caught flatfooted and on a time crunch when those emergency regulations may become permanent, we have until July. So if we don’t already have a case pending, we we’ve lost that lead time to then seek a preliminary injunction. We don’t get it. We can have a special meeting, we can vote it in, no harm, no foul. We’ve lost some money. But we’ve looked at the, the other towns who have actually crunched the actual numbers to the comment that we’re gonna get revenue that was already what I think triple the amount of revenue in costs. These are all backed by affidavits and the town, um, the town department heads and,

2:37:49 and it’s a pleading drafted by our attorney. I understand each town’s different and unique, I understand that. But the reason I’m, I’ve been, been litigating for three decades. If we file the compliance exemption, at least get it going, we can always stop it. But we’re not, if we, if this fails a town meeting and we don’t have that case already pending, we’ll be, we will, we’ll be starting 45 days maybe until our deadline rather than several months before that deadline. So I think it’s shortsighted not to at least file the complaint. So, Um, so is the select board bringing this article forward, is that guaranteed? Am I misunderstanding this

2:38:34 or is it just that they’re still considering filing a compliance exemption on the side? Are they doing both of those things right now? I Think it’s, Is the article being brought forward at town meeting? Has it been voted on by the select board? Yes. Well, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve brought it forward. Yes. I don’t think we need a vote at this point. We could vote not to. We are client exemption. We, we have not ruled it out. You have not ruled out at this point, as of today, we’re bringing it forward. So it’s Possible that the article could be brought forward and a, a protective compliance exemptions should it failed be That is a possibility. We are keeping all options open at this point. It cost money to, to apply for the compliance. It would cost money to, to file for That $75,000 I’m hearing. I don’t think the original would be 75. I think that is, if we go forward, the cost, the injunction for the original filing.

2:39:19 I’m not a lawyer. Apparently many other people here are, but I’m not, I don’t have the exact cost. Um, but at this point we are bringing it forward. Yes. That’s why it’s in front of you. That’s what I thought. We do have the right to remove that, obviously and definitely postpone that. Right. And we are waiting to see what happens with the hearing, um, to see if there’s a ruling from the April 2nd hearing that happens. I just wanted to clarify Based on No, that’s helpful. What I said so that it’s clear. That’s like, again, if, if it’s, if, if Article 23 passes and then we later find out that these, these numbers and these pleadings, the ac the Acura are accurate, we, we can never com we can never go back for a compliance exemption because we voluntarily as a community, it’s, it’s in Diana Delios letter, doctor,

2:40:05 uh, it’s, it’s in the, it’s in the, it’s in the letter. It it, if you voluntarily accept, I know it’s a mandate. And I, and she wants to, I mean, people wanna make a distinction between that if we voted in that it’s, it’s local acceptance. And my understanding is we could never, now, now maybe, um, maybe there, our, our law firm disagrees with me, but since I’ve never seen a memo or, and I’ve never seen the minutes of the executive session, I, I can’t make that determination. So, and I should be able to do that as a voter. So as it stands right now, We should have some, we should have something in writing for B tallman. The voters should. So as it stands right now, the question of what’s unfunded mandate has to do with the cost of complying, which Marblehead has received grants

2:40:50 to cover those costs, Which These, so it is not about future development impacts. Those are indirect costs and are not what’s being debated at the table. So they’re real, they’re and they’re real under 40 B, they’re real under every community Has to face. And they, and wouldn’t they be real even if we didn’t adopt this and lost in court? Yeah. Yes. And wouldn’t it cost a lot to lose in court potentially to take it all the way to the Supreme Judicial Court? Is that where it would go the same as the Milton case? Because I heard a lot of why would we ever adopt this last year? Why wouldn’t we wait for Milton? Now I’m hearing why would we ever adopt this this year be,

2:41:35 and then I talked to the state auditor and I think there’s a valid reason for why I’m just throwing that out there. Argumentative sake. You’re asking me. No, I’m just talking to everybody here, right? I think Yes, sir.

2:42:02 Yeah, I, I think the, the, uh, the arguments for both sides have, have really been explored pretty well. I don’t view either of these choices as mutually exclusive. Okay. I think you can be four three A and I think even Mr. Dip Pano has basically acknowledged that that, you know, is probably the case under the mandate. But I think also by going for a, setting up a potential injunction ahead of time and getting ahead of schedule puts us in a, in a, in probably a better position from an optionality point of view from, you know, from what the town is gonna do. So I think for tonight, these issues are not mutually exclusive. I think one, you have to make a determination tonight for what your recommendation is.

2:42:49 And I think the select board has to, you know, as, uh, as Dan has alluded, that has to, you know, we have to make a decision and get the timing right around if, if we choose, you know, if, if we get a majority of the board to do it, to kind of determine whether we do a, uh, you know, whether we do an injunction or not. Yeah. I gonna say one more thing and I swear on Top. Yeah, for sure. Well, that answered my question before that. There’s two options. I would just like to remind, I think as Mr. Dip Pano said that we are not out of compliance till July 14th. So we have the May 5th when our legislative body, which is the citizens can decide on this. So if it goes that we vote now, then I think that we will have, as Moses was saying, still that option. So our compliance date is July 14th. This we are, we are going, you know, with this,

2:43:34 bringing this forward for the town to decide just like they did last year, Regardless of our recommendation tonight, I think you should be prepared for this to potentially go either way, obviously, because we made a recommendation last year that was not followed By town. You promised this is yours. Last two, One thing I promise I wanna say this. Everybody who’s listening and everybody out there, it’s, yeah, I’m not trying to set myself up to be the captain of the Titanic. Okay. I’m not trying to scuttle the ship. You may disagree with me, Colonel. Uh, um, I’m, I’m, I’m trying to say that this is a very, it’s a very important decision and, and, and we do have an unfunded mandate determination, and we do have the potential to seek a compliance exemption.

2:44:20 I just think we should explore those avenues without foreclosing them. That’s all. I’m trying, that’s all I’m trying to advocate. Okay. I just wanna make that clear. Yep. And I promise it’s my last one.

2:44:32 All right. So I don’t see any additional hands online, I assume. Is fin com done deliberating this? Yes. Okay. Let’s see here.

2:44:43 Let me find my article.

2:44:49 All right. So I think it was very well said. That last comment right there, and I think Dan and both Moses members of the select board have opened up the door to exploring, potentially seeking this exemption because they’re not mutually exclusive as Moses said. So I would suggest that that, you know, not an official recommendation related to this article, but I would love to see that explored. You know, I think everybody probably would, would agree that it should at least be considered. And like I said before, our recommendation last year was not followed by town meeting. Um, so I think we need to be prepared whether this passes or not, because there’s no guarantee either way. From my perspective, based on this debate tonight, there seems to be people on either side that are very, very, um, you know, uh, supportive of, of either direction.

2:45:36 Um, I’ll make a recommendation where I’m at is what I already stated already three times that, um, the, the outline that I, I laid out with the, the history of things that have happened since last year’s town meeting, the Milton case ending, um, the, the discussion I had with the state auditor, I’d like to make a re recommendation that this article be adopted second,

2:46:01 Mr. Romeo. I’d say a lot of good points on both sides here. Um, but to me, where I sit, I think it’s, it’s much more likely and the numbers are more determinable, that in the short term there’s more negative impact by not adopting this AR article. So I would say, I would say yes. Ms. Stuy? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Teets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsbee? Yes. Yes. Ms. A? Yes. Mr. Jenko? No. Mr. Knight? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody who weighed in men’s zoning bylaw Article 24, this one

2:46:47 from what I’ve been presented has no financial impact. So if we could just get a quick summary of this article. Um, yeah, I’ll just make it quick. So, um, we currently have in the town of Marblehead, um, a DU bylaws. The state required and passed February 2nd, that came into effect of this year, um, a new, uh, requirement that ADUs be permitted by right within single family zoned, uh, parcels of districts. Um, as a result of that, we’ve had to kind of rehash our existing laws to make it compliant with the state. Um, and kind of the reason for doing this is that we can just default to the state regulations or we can kind of make sure and mesh it with our existing regulations and make sure that we’re compliant.

2:47:32 Um, some key takeaways from this is that, um, you know, it changes that the, uh, kind of the criteria for what is allowed as an A DU, um, is either 900 square feet or half the gross foer of the principal dwelling unit. Um, whichever is smaller. In addition to that, there’s no longer a parking space requirement for ADUs, um, unless it is outside the half mile raise of a public transit area. So basically, if you’re close to a transit area, you no longer need, um, a parking requirement. And the last one is that, um, you no longer have to be, um, if you’re an owner of an A DU, you don’t have to be, uh, residing within one, either the principal dwelling unit or the accessory dwelling unit, meaning that you could have two different individuals living in either of those.

2:48:19 Um, and that’s required by law. This is not something that we can really negotiate on. Um, but it’s something that we’re trying to kind of allow for the town to still have some control over, um, particularly site plan review, which is allowed. Um, so, and that would go before the planning board. So we effectively adopted this article last year at town meeting, and this is just to get in line with a state update to the law regarding ADUs. That’s right. To make sure we’re Complying There’s no financial impact from your perspective? Not necessarily, no. I think this is something that’s coming from the state. Again, it’s, we just wanna make sure we’re consistent with the state. Um, you could, you could see potential development from this, but this is something that Yeah, just the article itself, the state replies Line with the, with the guidelines. Mm-hmm. All right. So the, so the state passed a law that says

2:49:08 that in accessory dwelling units, neither the, the, the owner of the residence nor

2:49:20 nor the person in the accessory dwelling unit has to be a resident, a a resident or the owner. So I mean, by Virtue, virtue, doesn’t that just make it a two family? It could, yeah. Yeah. So this is a sweeping law. It’s, it’s quite substantial. Um, so this is something that the state has, this is their, their kind of approach to increase housing stock throughout the state. Um, and in this scenario, yes. That’s a big factor that’s, that’s pulled kind of coming into this. Um, it’s not, I I will say this is, again, we can’t negotiate with the state if we don’t, we choose not to pass this, it just defaults to that. But there were automatically, there are Restrictions on the A DU unit itself. Yeah. So

2:50:05 It’s not approved. We adopted that last year two Unit. It, it, it’s a very limited living space. It includes the principal space besides the 900 square foot space. There’s, there’s a, there’s a existing building and it, there’s an additional option for 900 square foot up, right up to 900 square feet. And I, I can’t believe this has been this, that the legislature’s passed this because this goes, it flies in the face of the original intent of what, what, when they passed the original, um, accessory dwelling unit statute.

2:50:52 But you’re saying that there’s no, we have no recourse? No, no. It, it’s, it’s, uh, they’ve, they’ve put this at the same level potentially that the bar to challenge this is extremely high. Um, and is is comparable to other uses such as churches, for example. It is at the same level, based off of the interpretation of our law firm that we use as town council. The, the full text of, of this article is very confusing. But, um, if so, I’ll, I’ll take the, the gist of it, but,

2:51:29 Okay. Any other fin com comments on this article? Any public comments on Article 24?

2:51:38 All right. We’re making no recommendation on Article 24. Article 25, amend general bylaw floodplain district, same thing. No financial impact of Article 25. So we’ll make no recommendation. I believe it’ll allow taxpayers to get certain types of insurance. Is that fair? That’s correct. It’s just updating the FEMA flood plain requirements in our maps to make sure citizens have access to FEMA flood, Uh, insurance. So it’s a benefit to Marblehead taxpayers? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. Any fin com questions or discussion on Article 25?

2:52:17 Any public comments on Article 25?

2:52:21 No recommendation on Article 25.

2:52:32 Thank you. Appreciate Article 26. Prudence Investor. Yes. Not a new article. No. So what we’re doing with this article is we’re accepting the provisions General Lodge, chapter 44, section 50 B, to allow Town trust funds to be invested in accordance with General Law 2 0 3 C. Essentially what this does is it gives the treasurer collector more flexibility to invest trust funds to advance the, uh, interest income on trust funds. So I know we’ve got a lot of questions with people like why are the trust fund so low? It’s because we have a certain list that we have to follow when we’re investing the funds. So back in 2020, fiscal 24 state budget, chapter 28, acts 23, they put some standards in there so that we could allow the treasure to invest in better. So

2:53:17 It gives her more flexibility. Yes. We adopted this last year both at, at town meeting this. We did not, we did not adopt this. Mr. Given the warrant? No, no.

2:53:30 Any fin com questions on this one? Has this rule been in existence though for a while? In, in other, and is it used in other towns? This law just got enacted back in 2023. Okay. But every, But the prudent man has been around for a while, Molly, and what they found is that before you were limited to only taking income, so, you know, dividends or, or income from bonds and prudent man allowed them to use total return. So the appreciation as well as the income from the fund. Okay. And so there’s and PR demand laws in every state now. Okay. So it’s still fairly conservative in terms of what is Well, it gives, it does give you a lot of optionality. So it’s a double-edged sword. You have more flexibility, but you can also make, you know, more mistakes with

2:54:15 That as well. More risk. Right. More risk is there. And so what will the oversight be over this in our town? So the treasurer collector is the division head of Treasury Finance, who then would report to me. So I’d be looking at this with her, and she’s been doing such a fantastic job with our investment income, and I think she do a fantastic job with this. Okay. And so you’ll be looking just to make sure that it’s appropriate the types of investments correct. That she’s making in relative to each fund as well? Yes. And, and when the funds will be Yes. Need to be accessed. Yep. Any other fin com comments on Article 26? Any public comments on Article 26?

2:54:57 Like to make a motion to recommend that this article be adopted to provide the treasurer additional flexibility when investing trust funds to maximize income. Second. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Doy? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Teets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Chenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 27 General Stabilization Fund. We spoke about this one earlier. Um, it’s being funded $2 million from free cash. It has a balance of 500,000. It was established, I wanna say four years ago with the hope of building it at two 50 to 500 per year.

2:55:42 I believe when we first established it, we’ve missed a couple years of funding. So this 2 million would catch that up plus some. And I think it’s good financial planning, um, as we enter the more difficult years ahead. Um, that’s the gist. We already talked about this a little bit. Mm-hmm. Anything to add, Alicia? Um, I think this is, this is really good practice for us to start doing, to follow exactly what our policies have us doing. And I think that in addition with how the market’s turning right now, as we see, it’s really good for us to start putting some money.

2:56:19 Any FinCon questions on this? Any public comment on Article 27?

2:56:28 I’d like to make a motion to recommend that Article 27 be approved to transfer $2 million from free cash to the general stabilization fund. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Shop? Yes. Ms. Ts? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Ko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 28 Home rule petition. Established means tested Senior Citizen property tax exemption. Molly, I will share my screen. Thank you. And Dan, good Evening. I’ll try to speak pretty quickly here. Um, so this is to, as you said, to establish a home rule petition

2:57:13 to establish a mean tested senior citizen property tax exemption. So, high level, this is to help seniors out whose property taxes consume a disproportionate, um, share of their total income. Uh, this municipal exemption will not kick in until we’ve, until they have exhausted all state benefits. So they have to go for this for a bunch of different ones that I can show you later. But the biggest one being the state circuit breaker, which is for, for 2,730, um, the annual application process to affirm eligibility and the board of assessors will approve it. We will help them give them sort of different guidelines on how, how they approve it. The cost of the program will be funded through the tax overlay, and the select board will determine the total tax exemption on an annual basis.

2:58:01 So what does it mean? Test, uh, means tested mean an applicant will have to be 65 years or older if it is jointly owned. The second owner will have to be at least 60 years old. Uh, the person will have to reside in it as our domicile for at least 10 years. The assessed home value, we’re gonna look at the average success home value in Marble Hood. You, you, it will have to be at or below that value. Um, the state right now has a lower value. We’re gonna bring it higher by a little bit. The state’s value is just over 1.1 million to sort of help out these people who need it and may not hit the state circuit breaker exemptions. The select board will have the ability to set the income limits, and we’ll also look at other assets to ensure that the out, that the applicant doesn’t have any outside, um, excuse me,

2:58:47 other assets, um, secondary properties, trust funds, et cetera. And that we are also gonna make sure that the applicants apply, have they have to apply for the circuit breaker income tax credit if they’re eligible, where they wouldn’t be eligible, might be on income limits or if or if their houses at, at a value that doesn’t fall below the state. Just to go through the adoption process, it would have to be approved at town meeting and being a home rule, and then has to go through the state legislator, and then the governor likely gonna not be in, in play until 27 28 determining the exemption. So there, as I mentioned before, there are other exemptions that are available through the state. And we do have this in appendix. If you’re, you’re curious about it, the goal here is basically to give people, um,

2:59:36 to bring up their total sort of, their total ratio of their income versus their total tax bill, plus 50% of their water and sewer to a 10%. So that their income is at a 10, doesn’t it? It, so that they, it basically doesn’t go above 10%. I affects them down to that value. And we will, as a select board, set the maximum exemption each year. So trying to estimate the number of participants in the first year. It’s not simple. Um, we’ve done a lot of research. Molly, thank you, has done a lot of research. We spent a lot of time, we’ve looked at nine other municipalities. And basically what we’ve done is tried to look at the number of, of, of applicants that went in for the circuit breaker for the state, and then for how many went in for the town. And that number across the board came out to about 20%.

3:00:22 So if you look at Marblehead, we had 418 seniors who received the circuit breaker. If you extrapolate with that 20%, that would bring us up to about 80, 85 participants.

3:00:36 This next one just breaks down, um, on the towns that we looked at, looking at how many, if you look over this, how many actually went for the state circuit breaker, and then the percentage that went on the second to last column for the exemptions within the towns or missed, or cities. And we used that number to extrapolate total cost. We will, we can determine that on the select board. I think in the first year. What we would aim to do is, is set that limit at $200,000. And based on the number of applicants, we think through extrapolating, we would set that limit at $2,000 per applicant. And the exemptions, again, as I’m as as mentioned before, coming from the tax overlay. So I can take questions. We do have some information in the appendix here

3:01:24 about the actual estate income tax credit, the circuit breaker, as well as other, um, exemptions that are available to seniors. And again, what what we will do is make sure that they maximize their state contribution before we give it to ‘em. And we’re also gonna make sure that when we do give it to ‘em, it doesn’t make them ineligible next year for these, for these exemptions. Question. Yeah. Um, why did you use average real estate value instead of median? It’s a good question because the median was below the state average. So what we were trying to do is give a little more availability to seniors in our town where the state, where the, the state number is 1.1 million, our median was below that number. So we took the average, which was slightly above to give, to give more seniors the option. So Would our town median be above the state median?

3:02:12 I mean, for real estate values, I would think you would look at, I think our town median is, if you look at our high values and our low values, our medium tends to go up higher. We also tried to really structure this along the lines of the circuit breaker. It’s, it’s a state program that’s, it’s been in existence for a while. And so, and they use average numbers. And so it would be, it, in that sense, it would be our average, our median would be much lower than even what the state circuit breaker is giving. So we’re trying to maintain some consistency there as well. Okay. So And I, they use the average, right? So that’s why we’re using the average, yes. Okay. Um, and the other thing, I just wanted to just briefly outline some of the research that I did for this. So I reviewed the programs, the municipal programs of 20 different, um, municipalities that have programs like this. There are more, but I stopped there because there was a lot.

3:02:58 And then from there I also picked six different communities, interviewed their assessors, which actually was really helpful in finding ways to target our program and structure this in both a way that it’s efficient and the best use of our tax dollars. Um, and I also just took a lot of information from assessor websites, from news articles, from presentations, and there’s no central source of information on this, but I think it was able to, to, um, to get enough information that I feel confident that we have a efficient and targeted plan. I think Molly also spent a lot of time making sure there were no unintended consequences. So for instance, like on the, on your work off that we weren’t sort of, um, making people not wanna do the work off program. And we looked at, Molly looked at that and did some sensitivity analysis to look at how many people might not qualify,

3:03:44 uh, for, for the work off. And it came out to a five or six people

3:03:50 Just wondering as the select board looked at, um, not in this particular one, but including for SSDI people that are covered under that. So I think that they, that Can you expand on that a little bit? Social Security disability. Okay. Thank you. I don’t think we did. Mm-hmm. No. So there’s no, you know, this really was piggybacking on, there’s a precedent for this. There are other towns that have this program. So in my research, I didn’t come across anything specifically town initiated covering that population. So se and, and honestly, seniors were the only ones that really have sort of a municipally funded, um, tax program, property tax program. And it is in all of the towns in including ours, really,

3:04:36 it’s sort of piggybacks off that the state circuit breaker program. So I’ve not seen, and, and I actually did ask other, the assessors I spoke to, you know, after passing a program like this, were there any additional sort of populations that either came forward or that other programs were structured up? And the answer was no. Okay. Yeah. I guess just another question on the average, um, property value, that would be the cutoff point. Yep. What is the tax bill of that average Property right now? So it’s like 1.2. So if you multiply that out times a nine 18, so it’s about $11,000. So it’s about $11,000. Yep. So then that would be less than 10%.

3:05:21 So we’re looking at the income limit being somewhere like anyone below 120. So I think, think what we’ll do is we can, is getting us, I mean, I think that’s a good extrapolation. The state sets different income limits for singles, head of household and for married. And we can set that each year based on, on doing sensitivity tests and looking at that as well. And the circuit breaker this year for, um, married couples is 109,000 is their income limits. So that they most of, as Far as it would be higher. It could be. We could, and and part of this will be, you know, it, it’s, you know, one thing, again, speaking with all the assessors, especially in the first year, it’s very difficult to know, engage what participation will be. And so this could be one of the things where, you know, as we learn and see our applicant pool, that maybe

3:06:08 that if we’re not getting enough applicants, maybe for our town it should be higher. I’d probably recommend starting with the state guidelines just because, um, they are still fairly high and I feel like would cover most of the, most of our, um, residents. So that Range is just, you know, 72,000 for single 91. If I had a household and his Molly said 109 for a married couple, Yeah. That’s the income limit. I see. That’s What the state Circuit breaker said to, so you would have that income limit and then you would reduce the tax burden so that the tax burden plus 50% of water of the utilities was at 10% of that income. Correct. That’s Where it match. But however, you also have to keep in mind that that participant will also have applied for the state circuit breaker.

3:06:54 So the only time they would be getting the municipal benefit is if they, if the state doesn’t achieve that goal for them, Or Right. If they didn’t qualify. Or If they didn’t qualify. Right. Yeah. In which case they wouldn’t qualify for this either. Well, based on what would, well, the, the difference would be our diff our, our difference in average assessed value, very limited or income. So they’ll be very limited and try, and then that’s where we’re gonna look at it after the first year and decide where that gap should be. Mm-hmm. And this is reviewed annually? That’s The plan. The, the, the select board has the ability to set the, the income limits annually and annually as well as, as the maximum benefit. Okay. Yep. As well as the total amount for the overlay. And the, the amount for the overlay you’re suggesting would be 200 K, 200

3:07:40 Is, yeah. And do you think that is gonna be, you gonna try to maintain that or I think, I don’t think we can know that yet. Yeah. I mean, I, and obviously it’s gonna depend on what our, our, what our fiscal situation looks like as well in this town. But it’s, again, it’s hard to give somebody something and then take it back. So is, Is this a new line item? Would this be a new line item in The, this would be an additional, it would be additional money to the overlay. Yeah. So And the overlays in the, or The year after I subtract Over, Correct. From the property taxes. So it’s the revenue. Yeah. Expense revenue. So it would be $20,000 less in revenue available to be program towards the budget. Okay. Available revenue. Okay. Well, it’s still an impact to the, It’s, it’s a net. It’s a net, yep. Okay. Thank you. If you wanted to break that down to cost per, if you think

3:08:25 that we have about 9,000 houses in town, it’s about $22 a house, 200,000, without taking into the assess value. And just to make it simple,

3:08:37 Any other fin com questions on Article 28? Any public comment on article 28?

3:08:49 Did you wanna make a recommendation? Did you want me to? You can. Okay. I’d like to make a recommendation that Article 28 be adopted to provide additional tax relief to income eligible seniors. I thank you for that. Second. Oh, second, Mr. Yes. Yes. You Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Tets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Gruby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Janko? No. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 29 adjusted exemption amount. Clause 22. I I can’t share my screen ‘cause my battery’s dying in case somebody else can share. Sure. Would you to grab your charger?

3:09:43 I think I can get you,

3:09:49 Uh, yeah, I mean, I’ll try to pull it up. Should, should I talk to it While? Well, it’s getting pulled up. Okay. So with the new Heroes Act that was passed, uh, by Governor Healy on August 1st, 2024, there was significant legislation which enhanced several areas of veterans’ benefit offered by the state. And a key revision of the Hero Act expands veterans property tax, abatements and exemption. So with us adopting this, it would, it would be enacted either, uh, beginning on or after July 1st, 2025. And then I came up with an example. It only applies to certain, uh, veteran property tax abatements and exemptions. 22, 22 A, 22 B, C, E, and F. And I put a state example in there. For example, if a Clause 22 recipient

3:10:34 will receive a 400 Thank you so much, Logan Yes. Will receive a $400 exemption. And the community accepts this option, and the CPI increases by 5%. The total exemption amount would increase the 420. So the Department of Revenue, we’d have to let them know if we passed this, and then they would contact me and let us know what that consumer price index change is to apply. It’s just like what we passed last year for the seniors, except this one applies to the veterans. So does this already exist for Seniors? This now exists for veterans. Would now exist for veterans. Okay. And is there any estimated impact of this? Yes. So I have to budget for it. And I talked to the assessor’s office and there were about 30 that would qualify for this.

3:11:21 So it wouldn’t be a huge substantial impact. I think a budget of roughly around 60,000 extra in my overlay.

3:11:28 Is it an automatic, um, increase per Year? There is an automatic one in here that doesn’t even need voting, which was their motor vehicle. They get one of their motor vehicle excise automatically abated under the Heroes Act. And that was an act immediately without needing any kind of acceptance. They’re already getting that. But this is a local option that has to be accepted because the other options that you see here are reimbursed by the state. This local option is not reimbursed by the state.

3:11:59 Okay. Is it automatic or is there like an application process? I believe there will be an application process, I believe, but I will double check that with the assessor’s office. Okay. Any other fin com questions or comments?

3:12:19 That’s already an application. Any public comments on Article 30?

3:12:28 Like to make a motion to recommend that Article 30 be adopted to provide additional tax relief to veterans by increasing the exemption by 100%. Second. That’s on the next one. This one’s the consumer price index. Sorry, 29. Yeah, Sorry about that. That this article be adopted to provide additional tax relief to veterans based on the consumer price index for the previous year as determined by the commissioner of revenue. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Heats? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Chenko? No. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 30.

3:13:17 Uh, so for this one, again, it’s another Heroes Act exemption. And that can combined with the former one that was adopted. So if both clauses were adopted together, if they receive the $400 exemption, as I stated before for 22 I and the CPI went up by 5%, they get the $420. If the community further accepts 22 J at a hundred percent, the amount of that tax exemption granted would now double to eight 40 at a hundred percent.

3:13:51 I am sorry. I’m not sure that I understand what this is. Yeah, can we just, is this just saying we’re gonna double the article 29? No. So what this is saying is since we adopted 29, so this is just giving an example. Okay. So if we adopted 29 I and they got the $400 and then the CPI came in at 5% and they got 420 and we adopted this at a hundred percent because I talked to the assessor’s office, they would recommended a hundred percent, then we would raise that 400 2500%, which means they get $840.

3:14:21 Alicia, if we were, so if you didn’t have this, what would it be? Eight 20 If it’s, if you didn’t have this at all, it would just stay at that 420. And what is this based off of?

3:14:34 There’s different exemptions. This one’s based off of 22. So which is 400. There’s 22 A, that’s 7 50, 22 B is 12 50, 22 C’S 1,522 EA thousand. So we’re adopting this exemption for veterans. And then we’re in 22, I potentially mm-hmm. Uh, if it passed. And then we’re setting the, the amount by additionally potentially adopting Article 30 at a higher amount than the minimum. Correct. Okay. If for some reason 22, I doesn’t, article 29 doesn’t pass, does this become root? No, they’re two different. They’re two Separate. Exactly. So when you say before 60,000, is that the number including the $400 one or the $840 one?

3:15:19 Both. Both. Oh, Okay. Okay. So the max, if both of these are adopted, would be about 60,000 estimate? Yeah, it would be half of that if only Article 29, but not 30 would be adopted. Correct. Fair enough. Any other questions or comments from fin com on article 30?

3:15:38 This Is David. This is similar One to the one, sorry, one second, David. Oh, sorry. Molly has another. Sorry. Just, uh, this would, uh, this is not reimbursed, um, By, by the state. No, we pay for that overly with no reimbursement Public comment on Article 30. David? Y Yes. I I guess so there’s some process by which the veteran would qualify and therefore, uh, demonstrate that they would qualify for one of these particular clauses, correct? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They’d have to apply, they have to do an application. It’s done. Oh, oh, okay. And that’s something they would do at the state or they would do it with us and we have to review that or

3:16:25 Done with the local assessors, The lo local assessors. Okay. So there’s one thing in here that’s interesting to me that the veteran who receives a high level military decoration, what, what, what is that level of high level military decoration? I mean, greatest respect, I, I’m not a veteran and I don’t know what’s considered a high level military decoration, but I know that most military people receive some kind of military decorations when they serve. So, um, do you know what that is? Well, I would let, that should probably be Number. Yeah. I, I’d have to, I’d have to go back and look. But the high level, it would, I would presume it’d be sort of Purple Heart, probably silver star, bronze stars,

3:17:13 you know, combat related. ‘cause again, these are veterans who, who qualify under the, the base level program for some type of, uh, disability or, or war related injury. So, um, Well, not in the case of 22 A, in the case of 22 A, it’s an or, right. Or high level military declaration. Right. So that goes back to my answer. I, I, I presume, I’d have to look it up. So it, it wouldn’t be sort of just you served x number of years award. It would have to be for some type of action. But we can, we can look that up and, and verify. Yeah. I, you know, and, and, and then of course it goes to eligible spouses

3:17:59 and surviving spouses. So I guess technically if that veteran is living in a home and then passes, um, that spouse would continue to be able to get that if long as they own the home, they would continue to be able to get that, um, that exemption as long as they live there, correct? Yeah. And, and again, it’s a defined list of veterans who are, who are currently eligible under these programs that would be additionally eligible under this added exemption. Okay. Okay. Okay. ‘cause I know last year we gave 10% of the households in Marblehead a, uh, facilities pass in perpetuity, which will someday, you know,

3:18:48 over time cost us. There’s 700 veterans in town, and you know, it’s at a hundred dollars, that’s now $70,000 a year. Given the way those things are going, those costs are gonna go up too. So anyway, I, I guess my personal view is that, you know, the fir given giving, giving the first exemption is reasonable. Doubling the exemption, given all the other benefits that, that veterans also get in general, um, is maybe not necessary. Thank you. Any additional public comments on article 30? Bill McCue has got his hand up. Who’s that? Bill McCue. Hello, job Bill McCue, please.

3:19:37 Bill McCue 38 Gingerbread Hill. I’d just like to remind everyone that these are veterans and, um, they serve admirably and we wouldn’t be able to have these type, this type of discourse if it wasn’t for their, uh, willing to serve. Just want to put that into, uh, perspective. Thank you.

3:19:58 Any additional public comment? Article 30.

3:20:06 I’d like to make a motion that Article 30 be adopted to provide additional tax relief to veterans by increasing the exemption by 100%.

3:20:16 Second, Mr. O’Neill? Yes, Ms. Do? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Tets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Janko? No. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 31 Coffin School, Reese Reuse, sponsored by a select board.

3:20:45 So this completes the action of transferring the, um, the, the use of the, uh, the property and the facility from the school. Uh, the school committee has already voted to release it from educational purposes. Um, then it requires town meeting to complete the transactions. It would put the property in the hands of the select board, and then the select board, uh, working through the community development planning department would initiate a process to determine what the next highest best use, um, for that property would be. Which would include, you know, a public input process and, you know, very, very public process to make that determination. But this is the final, um, authorization to,

3:21:33 to put it back in the hands of the select board.

3:21:38 So it’s been voted on by the select board and, and the school committee? Yeah. It’s sponsored by the select board to do it. Um, and the action the school committee has already previous forwarded to release It from. So it provides the select board, um, options on what to do with the Yep. The building and the land. Yep. Which could have financial implications to the positive potentially. Yep. I’d like to thank the school committee for making decision.

3:22:06 Any fin com questions or comments on 31? Any public comments on 31?

3:22:13 Like to make a motion to recommend Article 31 be adopted? Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Diets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Gruby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 32, Gary School Playground, also known as Elm Street Park.

3:22:44 So this, um, what used to be the Gary School playground or was a school, um, as part of the transaction of, of surplus in that property, it preserved this space for public use. Um, it is currently ongoing construction of improvements into a park playground. Um, lots of, um, community involvement, uh, folks involved in this. Um, all this act would do is transfer the care and custody to the Recreation Park Commission, which already does that for many other parks.

3:23:26 I don’t believe this has financial implications. It’s just a transfer of the care and custody. It doesn’t have any direct costs to doing that. So I, I suggest we make no recommendation.

3:23:38 Any public comments on Article 32? All right. No recommendation on 32. Article 33. I meant to mention this at the beginning. Um, we will be reserving a second night, as we always do for any follow ups to this meeting on April 28th, which is the last Monday in April 1st, or Monday directly before town meeting. Um, my understanding is that 33, there’s been some information coming in very late as compared to when you were expecting it, so that we will delay reviewing that one and, and fin comm deliberating on 33 until that night. Is that fair? That’s fair. Okay. So we’re gonna skip over Article 33 for those listening on April 28th, probably actually in the Mary Alley building where we usually have our fin comm hearings.

3:24:25 Um, unless that’s taken by some other board, um, that’ll be the plan to discuss Article 33 and any other articles that we need to follow up on. Should, should we have any, um, article 34. Um, I believe Mike Erling is here via Zoom to present. Um, it’s the Marblehead High School Roof and HVAC system capital request.

3:24:54 Mike, you’re on mute.

3:24:58 Hi. Thank you. I, I’m unmuted now. Uh, thank you Mr. Gilby. Thank you to the FIN com and the town administration and the select board for all your support. And over the last nine months, uh, it’s been a great ride so far. Anyways, um, we are, we did go to, um, we hired a OPM and a schematic designer, uh, back last summer to begin the roof project. Uh, once they get up on the roof, they realize that the HVAC units are beyond their useful life. And it was recommended by them that we consider replacing the HVAC units at the same time as we replace the roof. Um, mostly because they feel that once you put a new roof down, if you were to cut into that roof within the next five, well likelihood is you would need to cut into

3:25:45 that roof within the next five years to do the HVAC anyways. And that would potentially avoid any warranties that came with the roof. So was their recommendation that we explore that option. Uh, we went through the finance committee, I’m sorry, the facilities committee of the school committee and the full committee, and brought forward this warrant to replace the HVAC unit rooftop units at the same time as the roof.

3:26:11 So the school committee’s already voted on this number. School committee has voted in the affirmative to move forward with this $8.6 million number. Okay. Can I share my screen? And yeah. And I believe, um, Alicia has some kind of impact on taxpayers. ‘cause this is a debt exclusion override request, which would mean we’d be issuing some debt, which would have an impact to the tax levy and tax bills effectively. Okay. Um, so, So, yep, I have it up. So the average single family home is 1 million 2 17 6 40, but I rounded it to 1,000,002 18. Um, the tax bill impact of the high school roof roll roll-off is $253 off of the average single family bill.

3:26:57 The tax bill impact of adding previously authorized and on issue is $112. That’s everything that’s authorized and un isssued. Um, tax bill impact of adding the high school roof debt issuance is 107 Mary alley’s to be determined. I’m waiting on the final feasibility study. So that’s a net impact of negative $34 for the year. So, just to take a step back, what, what this little summary is showing, um, if you look at our debt service line in, in the budget on clear gov, for example, you’ll see a significant drop in our annual debt service from last year’s budget to this year. What that means is something rolled off, right? So when you issue debts, maybe you issue it for a 15 year or 20 year. Eventually that debt service, the annual payment will, will roll off when that happens,

3:27:43 the roll off would result in a reduced tax bill. Um, the, the balancing act is when things roll off, do we need other things to roll on because of need? Um, these, this is an item of need. And what I, I helped her ask Alicia to put this together. Thank you for putting it together. Um, whenever I see a new debt exclusion override being requested, you’d like to see, okay, without this new debt exclusion override, what would my tax bill have looked like? Um, and then with it, what, what it would look like. I think that’s what most taxpayers care a lot about. Um, so what we have to do is think about first what was rolling off if no other debts were issued, um, which would be great if marble had never had to issue debt again. But that’s probably not the case. Probably not true.

3:28:30 Um, and then there’s also been previously authorized debt that has yet to been issued part of the, the Rhodes Project and, and some other, um, capital needs from a few years back that haven’t been issued. So Alicia put all of that in which there’s not a guarantee if you look at the assumptions in here, that all of that will be issued right away on, on on July 1st. But for, for sake of example, eventually that will likely be issued, right, Except for a Million. And then when you add in the cost to the annual average single home of 1 0 7 related to this, um, high school roof and HVAC system, only 49 for the median home, it shows that before the item that we’re gonna talk about in a few weeks here,

3:29:16 it would actually be a year over year net, still a net benefit to your tax bill with respect to debt, debt exclusion, impact on your taxes. Um, does that make sense?

3:29:30 And there’s a lot of calculations behind that, but I had her summarize it so it was as clear as possible upfront so I could be wordy in a little complex. Um, and then maybe, maybe Alicia, just on the right side, I don’t know if you wanna make that a Yeah, I think people might be able to see it, but, um, this came up at the, at the state of the town as I was watching, there is a rhyme or reason for this kind of debt scheduling, right? Like there, there’s policies that have been adopted by both the select board and the, the finance department. So maybe just cover that as Well. Sure. Yeah. So you see debt as a percentage of the levy. So we’re about, we are estimating 12.35 if we had everything borrowed for 2026. And then on the other side is our finance policy as a percentage of general fund revenue. So we can’t exceed 15%

3:30:18 of general fund revenue for debt service. And right now we’re about 10.54 more estimating, nine point, yeah, nine 4% percent. So like the left side chart when I looked at this, it shows from 2017, we are at 9.7 to 10 to 9.5 to 9.5 to 10 to 12 to 12.5, 13.1 12. That shows that we’re fairly consistent, certainly in the last six or seven years with our debt as a percentage of the tax levy. Um, and then the policy that I, as I understand it from Alicia, that, um, the select board adopted to, to keep the debt service as a percentage of general fund revenue below 15%, we’re actually below 10%, um, based off this example. So, um, those policies exist.

3:31:03 I know somebody was asking about that at, at, um, the state of the town. So thought that was important to, to highlight

3:31:13 any fin com questions on, oh, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, It’s okay. So I made a little graph, it’s kind of hard to see. I apologize, the way my computer is set up. Um, but it’s showing basically what the debt service currently is in 2025. In purple. In purple, sorry. And then in 2026 and then in blue, if we added everything on, this is not including the eight Mary Valley eight track, but that’s what it would look like in going to dip down. Its not, so purple is simply saying if we just, everything that’s been issued to date, we just let it roll off and didn’t do anything again. And blue is if she adds everything that’s been previously authorized. Plus what’s being asked tonight in this article, the takeaway is that that blue at at all times is

3:31:59 below the purple from last year. Um, now that’s not to say there won’t be more requests in the future, um, but that’s the takeaway, that there is an increase to taxes related to this debt exclusion override, but there’s also debts rolling off and there’s a, a policy in place that is being monitored. Correct. From my perspective.

3:32:23 Can I ask a question to Mike note, or do you have anything else or? No, that’s okay. Um, so Mike, if I could ask on, um, so the total cost of the project is 14 million and that is the, the 8.6 for the debt override, plus the 5.4 that was approved, or that was passed a town meeting in 2022 for the correct, for the roof only. So if this debt exclusion override is not passed, would you move forward and do just the roof or what, what would, what would happen? I think we’d have to have the conversation, um, do we do the full roof and leave the HVAC alone? Do we do a portion of the roof or sections of the roof

3:33:08 and do the HVAC on those sections and then maybe take another, another bite at the apple in the future? Um, you know, there are certainly, there are certainly many areas of the roof that are in disrepair right now or in in severe need. Um, obviously we’d have to look at the most severe, what’s impacting education the most. Um, we would get our best bang for our buck. But, uh, I think the other part of that is if we need to, if we would’ve taken another bite out of the apple in a year or two, um, uh, uh, there would be a large cost in restaging rebidding re um, redesigning, uh, the remaining portion, bringing the construction, uh, crews back on site, uh, to do it a second time, even if it was for a different section.

3:33:53 So, you know, their recommendation, I think it was, um, potentially adding 2 million, I believe it might have been 16 million all in if we did it over two, uh, different periods of time. ‘cause it was talk about do we start with just the 5.34 that we had allocated already and do a portion and then come back next year or two years from now and do the other portion. And I believe the 14 million went to about 16 million in the estimation in the designer’s estimation.

3:34:23 And, you know, this is a very large project. And what is the oversight of the project? Can you walk us through that? Yeah, so, uh, right now we have an OPM on staff. It’s, uh, left field. We did go out to bid for them last summer. Uh, and then they helped us go out to bid for a schematic designer, which is RDA, uh, Raymond Design Associates. Um, the OPM actually works for us. They are our eyes and ears on the site. They will ensure that, uh, all processes and, um, whatnot are followed. RDA will also be on site and making sure that their design is being followed to a t. Um, in addition to that, um, we would also have our, our own facilities people.

3:35:09 But I understand that there may be some people in town who have some, uh, great knowledge around this. And I have spoken with Ms. Fox about potentially, um, re or, uh, asking that individual if he’d be interested in serving on the facility subcommittee for the school committee, uh, as we recently lost a, an important member of that committee. So, um, I think it would be good to have somebody who is in this area. He specifically works on building envelopes, works with the Master School Building Authority, uh, has already been in touch with our OPM and our schematic designer about this project. So he is, he’s becoming familiar with it. And I think it’d be great to have a town resident also on our committee to help us, guide us, uh, make sure that we’re making the right steps

3:35:54 and, um, crossing every t and dotting every I Is The town, but I don’t wanna say names. I haven’t had a conversation with him yet to approach the subject. Is the town at all involved in overseeing this project? Even so the, the original roof project was passed under the Capitol. Mm-hmm. Um, is, so, is is there any oversight from the town side or is it really It’s just the school and it’s, it’s Really schools, but me and my work extremely close together on everything. So I’m very confident. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the town certainly will make sure we’re following all bidding laws. Um, they won’t pay a bill unless everything’s, um, you know, in, in order. Uh, and I can’t agree more with Alicia. I mean, we work well together,

3:36:40 but she’s been my savior this year, so, uh, I appreciate everything she does in her right hand, man. Thatcher,

3:36:51 Did I ask you a question? So, what is the lifespan of, uh, the roof, the high school? What can you expect and how long is the debt period? Just outta curiosity? So yeah, I’ll talk to the lifespan. Uh, the minimum right now is 20 years. We’re actually having some conversations. There’s the potential that we could get a 30 year warranty, but I think right now for design purposes, they’re, they’re expect, uh, they’re, they’re, um, anticipating on the low side of a 20 year warranty. Um, but like I said, you know, there is some conversation right now about potentially going to a 30 year warranty with this, with a specific, uh, type of design. And this would be a 15 year payback, it would be a 15 year payback. The debt. Yep. Have we already taken the 5 million or whatever it was?

3:37:37 It’s already been borrowed prior to me coming here. It’s already been borrowed and it’s just sitting somewhere. Is it earning anything just outta curiosity? It’s earning interest, yes. But it can’t earn more than what we borrowed on Ross. You’re in arbitrage. So we’re already paying that back. It, I think it did match the interest that was being spent when we looked at that. Correct. Um, but I think there, you gotta be careful there with whether it’s earning more. So don’t do that. Yeah, you don’t wanna do that. So, you know, to that point, um, it was, you know, that original article that came out. Could we get a little background on on exactly how that played out on the, we have an an article for the roof. I know that the f the facilities subcommittee was,

3:38:23 were you involved in that original article? So, Um, yes. And I’m gonna speak To This relatively high level. Um, so when that was presented to the facility subcommittee and the full school committee, we were wrapping up the end of the Brown School project. Um, RDA was the architecture on that and left field was the OPM on that. I, um, was very impressed with left field and how they come in. And I attribute us coming in under budget on that project entirely to the OPM who led that project. His numbers were very tight, he was very good at that. At that time, members of our administration, um, had received quotes from left field, which there was a, a,

3:39:12 a high level of trust when it was presented to the school committee. When we were told it was from left field because they were really known to dot their i’s and crossed their t’s. Um, that was brought to town meeting. It was passed through town meeting when Leftfield came on site Under contract for this project. Um, last summer. At that point, it was explained to the current administration and school committee for the first time, to be perfectly honest, that they had not had been boots on the ground on the roof. They had been asked, they’d been given a square footage in an estimate from a previous roof estimate and said, does this seem in the right ballpark?

3:39:57 And there they gave basically a two line reply. They had no idea that was going to down meeting, to be perfectly honest, um, of, of this square footage would roughly cost this. If they had been boots on the ground on the roof, they would’ve seen the condition of the HVAC units, which, because of our proximity to the ocean we’ve been told is why they have more rapidly deteriorated. As many people know that, that it’s a little bit of a higher point up there at the high school. So they, they get a lot of, um, the salt air and they’re not in good shape at all. Um, I, I’m not, I, you know, I can’t speak to why it was never disclosed to the committee previously that the

3:40:45 estimate was not based on an onsite appraisal. Um, I, I don’t know that we would get an answer on that. Um, but I am very, very confident that once left field and RDA got on the roof and have started their, the phases of the project and with Mike on board, um, that, that this is, this HVAC number is very valid. I will say. Um, that was the unknown was the HVAC that it, it wasn’t that the roof project itself was unknown, it was the, we did not, we were, the school committee was never aware, um, that the HVAC units would need to be replaced as well. And from a construction standpoint, it doesn’t make sense

3:41:32 to replace HVAC units in we were, we were told the lifespan would be like two to five years and void the mem uh, the me void the warranty on the membrane. It just, it’s pay now or pay later. It’s poor fiscal sense. And it would be poor construction sense to do that. So this is where we are now. Um, we have the money allocated to fix the roof, which we certainly need to do, but we really need to fix these HVAC units as well. Um, I know when we were looking at the, the debt exclusion that has rolled off, that’s actually the high school that’s rolling off. Um, so it’s been 25 years since this roof and these units were put up there. Um, so that’s where we are now. I hope that answers your question. And,

3:42:18 and it, so the original estimate was never intended to cover, it never encompassed HVAC? No, it was for roof only. It never was for HVAC there, it was unknown at that point to anyone, to my knowledge that HVAC would need to be replaced at the same time. It was for roof covering only Is, I mean, is there a capital plan? I mean, I’m just, Yes, we have a very comprehensive capital plan that we had an audit under Bill Aloff. That was one of the things we used Capital investment money to do a few years ago. And, and they came out and they took several months and they did actually, they produced a 20 year plan, um, because of the financial situations in Marblehead. We looked at a 10 year outlay and we took the first 10 years

3:43:03 and converted it into a 10 year, um, projected capital improvement plan. The issue being this, so we knew the roof was coming up, we’re actually late doing it. It was, um, we had talked about doing it about a year before actually it was able to come to town meeting, but because of the schools trying to work with the town, it was decided that we would try to push it one more year so that this is in, like the roof project is actually, should have been done by that capital outlay a little bit sooner. Um, what I will say is, when you look at it for the nu number of assets, we have five buildings in the square footage each year. The capital, uh, outlay that was recommended by this agency that came in and did an audit is far more than we invest town wide.

3:43:50 So I think as a town we wanna look at how are we investing and what are we investing in our, in our capital assets because I think town wide, we are just not at a fiscal standpoint that we’re able to invest year to year. So, you know, we, we kicked the king, and this is where we end up. Um, we had originally hoped to include the MSBA in this project. The MSBA will not even look, we were rejected because the MSBA will not even look at a project of a roof that is less than 30 years old.

3:44:22 The roof that is put on this high school has since is no longer being used. The, the type of roofing material, it has since been shown to fail shorter than its projected lifespan. We did a second appeal under Michelle Crested to see, because there’s a lot of documentation that this type of roofing system is known to fail sooner than the 30 years. Would they, would they hear that appeal? And the 30 years was a hard and fast rule with MSBA, they just wouldn’t. Um, so that’s, that’s where we are right now. I think I just wanted to say too, just to Linda’s point, so it’s, I recognize it is not ideal to, you know, have it debt funded and not be used. And so I think that, and again, this was under, I I I have complete confidence in the current administration, but, um, we, we need to make sure

3:45:10 that our capital projects as they come forward are used in a timely manner. And I think, you know, in this situation, um, it it, it shouldn’t happen this way. So I think we just as a member of the finance committee to, I don’t disagree. I really don’t. It was purpose

3:45:32 Similar to the, like the roof or vac Yeah. Cvac appointment similar to like Okay.

3:45:43 Any other public comment on article 34? Yes. Yep. Sure. Thanks.

3:45:57 I I, I’ve dealt with a lot of overrides, et cetera, and I’ve dealt with overrides that come in under budget and you just said the previous one using this great OPM and this contractor and I totally hope can, can you say that if you come in under budget, you’ll just give the money back? Because the way as this fin com knows, the way the article’s written, it says fix the roof. So if you fix the roof and it only costs and you have a million dollars left over, anything on the roof can be fixed with that extra million dollars. It happened with the village school and it can happen. And I’d just like to see somebody run the project. We voted for this, we didn’t vote for more stuff. So it would be great if you could tonight say that if you come in under budget, you won’t spend the rest.

3:46:43 I mean we did on the Did you give it back? Y Yes. So on the Brown School project, we came in under budget and we didn’t borrow that money. So there wasn’t, there, there wasn’t giving back. It was never actually borrowed on. Um, and we didn’t, you know, add extra bells and whistles to pay down a grant, if you will. If we, we came in under budget and we stayed under budget and in fact we had valued engineered some items out to, to get within that budget and we didn’t even push to put those items back in. So we, we were very, that that was a team. It started up 26, it ended I think at 21. The number fluctuate at different times. Thanks very Much. Take anyone. Thank you. Doesn’t look like there’s any more hands. Um, so we’ll go move to recommendation.

3:47:31 Like to make a recommendation that the sum of $8,610,602 be appropriated to be raised by issuance of debt subject to a proposition two and a half debt exclusion override. Second Doctor, Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Doy? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Te? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Yes. Mr. Jen? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Eric, did you vote? Yes, I did. Yes. He said yes. I can see him. I don’t know what’s going on. Um, Mr. Chair? Yes. In, in light of the hour and our location in the warrant, yeah. Would you be willing to entertain a motion to adjourn?

3:48:19 I’d like to keep moving Tim, if we can. ‘cause I think we can get through these pretty quickly. Um, appropriation of Article 11, May 2nd, 2022. Yes. Article 35. So This, this is to amend the vote that the draft under article 11 of the see of the May 20, may two meeting to appropriate 8 million 9 77 2 98 for roof reconstruction in made repairs. So I put up the graphs and you could see what it made up at 8 9 7 7 2 98, which is the school room. The school place, D room. What are the, what are the subtotals To the right? I’m sorry. Could Alicia turn on her microphone please? I’m sorry. Can you hear me now? So yes. Thank you. Thank you. So there’s a public building article of 1.2.

3:49:07 Yes. So if you go up and then after the one point, this right here, captain who went for public buildings, there’s a 1.6 of which we issued 1.195 of debt. Scroll down a bit. We have technology improvements of 1,000,007 17 that so was authorized to borrow 1.2 is public buildings. 1.7 was originally technology. Yes. That makes 2.9. Yep. And 8 million 907 7 2 9 8 is roof replacements and repairs. And specifically the Franklin Street Fire station says roof and gutter replacement, which then means the chief cannot sp it on anything else. And he has other improvements that he needs to do that station including, uh, replacing windows that he spoke to me about. So what I’m doing with this article is it’s expanding the language to give him the flexibility

3:49:54 to do the repairs he needs to do As far so of the 8.977, which was alar a part of a larger debt exclusion override of, I wanna say it was 24 million it looks like. Yep. Um, which was the large one from three years back, I believe, um, there was 5.4 related to school roof. There was 600 related to D winging roof. That makes about 6 million in total related to that. That’s still gonna be used for the project, correct? That we just voted? Yes. Um, and then there was 2 85 for police station. Four 80 for Mary Alley, 8 71 for community center, one 30 for Franklin Street and 1 2 50 for Tower Way. And we’re just talking about a small portion of one of the pieces of that to be able to use it in a different way.

3:50:39 Yes. Not, we’re not reusing 8.9 million Different way. No, but they have to set it that way ‘cause that’s how it was borrowed. Okay. That’s helpful. So you’re saying just the line for the Fire Street Franklin Street fire station? Correct. Okay. Which is only 130,000 of that 8.9 million. Correct. Um, and it’s just because it’ll, it’ll be used in a better way if we can amend it. Yes. Okay. Does that make sense? Yep. Any questions?

3:51:07 Any public comment like, to make a motion to adopt Article 35. Second. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Doy? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Seats? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Um, article 36, stormwater Enterprise Fund. My understanding is that this doesn’t have any immediate financial impact, but it would fundamentally change the way we raise money for this purpose from a tax levy budget warrant item to a enterprise fund item.

3:51:54 That’s correct. Um, okay. Can I Say one quick item? Yes, of course. This Is really just to set up the ability to have a fund, right? It’s not to put a fund in. It’s not, that’s way in the future for discussion. More so it Allow, allow you to like charge fees through this fund and use the fund those funds so that it would cover the stormwater budget, art budget of that’s What it would be in the future Right now, now it’s just to set up the fund authorized. That doesn’t give the fund. Yeah, it’s not, Yeah, that’s what I thought. Putting Any money into it, it’s not right. Yeah. So I mean there’s no, there’s no financial impact of this. So I don’t know that we need to re make a recommendation unless somebody feels strongly that we need to.

3:52:36 Any public comment on article 36, no recommendation on 36. Um, article 37 will not make a recommendation on that either. It’s to rescind prior acceptances of age limits for police. So the original act affects police and fire to put an age cap for hiring. This would relieve the age cap for the police only not for fire hiring. Okay. I don’t think there’s any financial impact of doing that. So any public comments on article 37?

3:53:19 Article 38, building permit fees? Um, it kind of goes along with Article 39 from what I understand and it’s, it’s to change the mechanism for how those may be adjusted rather than at town meeting every year. If you wanted to change the fees, there would be public hearings from the select board where they would consider market rates and things like that, is my interpretation. Yeah. And just the, the bigger picture, these two would 38, 39 were asking the transfer the responsibility from town meeting to the select board to setting of fees and the select board would set the fees only after a public hearing and then the next two would be if this doesn’t pass, we’re still asking

3:54:05 for a fee adjustment by, by town, meaning on the next two. Yeah. So there’s not necessarily direct financial implications this year of 38 or 39, 40 and 41 is under the old way of changing fees, which is town meeting. Um, so we definitely have to make a recommendation on those. Um, so again, similar to the last one, unless somebody on FinCo feels strongly that they’d like to make a recommendation under 38 and 39, I don’t see there being direct financial ramifications of, of 38 and 39. Did you want to add anything? No, I’m good. Is this how your other towns that you’ve worked in have done it or? Yeah, Typically. Um, either the, the, um, select board or the, um, city council Yeah. Reviews annually

3:54:50 Yeah. Sets the fees. Yeah. From my perspective, it, I would trust all select board members to look at the market annually and review those in a public hearing and not, and not be egregious with any fees. So, um, no recommendation under Article 38 and 39. Does anybody have public comment on those articles?

3:55:12 Article 40 we’re actually, like I said, adjusting the building permit fees under the current way of doing so, requesting, Yeah, so last year town meeting, uh, well, let me back up. So these building permit fees, there is a comprehensive fee based on a per thousand cost and then there is an itemized fee for individual, um, actions you’re taking on a project. So last year we adjusted the individual fees, we made a $20 adjustment to the individual individual fees. This proposal is to the comprehensive permit, which is based on a, a cost per thousand

3:55:57 to go from $15 per thousand to $17 per thousand. So it’s, it’s part of our efforts, one, looking around at what other municipalities where they’re at on fees as well as making sure we’re generating sufficient fees, um, for our purpose. So we, we balance between trying to find more revenues, but also trying to stay within the, the norm of sort of the municipal marketplace or what others are doing. Any fin comm questions or comments on Article 40? Any public comments on Article 40? Yes, I’m sorry. Yep, Go ahead. We’ve been here a long time. No worries. Keep Us A minute longer. So I, I’m not sure the fin com is aware. I’ve been doing a lot of research into, I’ll hold it.

3:56:45 I’ve been doing a lot of research into fees lately. And when you raise a fee in Massachusetts is quite an extensive thing you have to go through. You can’t just call other towns and see what they charge and then charge that. There’s a bunch of forms you have to fill out to the state. You have to justify it. You have to show that it’s an extra cost over and above the cost, et cetera. And I think it’s incumbent upon the fin income to make sure that we’ve actually followed those procedures when we ask to raise the fees because I’m pretty sure we haven’t. So that’s, I will, I will bring more of this up at town meeting if we have to, but you should be aware that this idea that we raise fees, we ask what other people do. We think they’re reasonable and this idea to move it under the selectmen is just gonna make that so much easier.

3:57:30 We’ll never even know about it. But fees are not supposed to be revenue generating. They’re only supposed to cover the cost of the added service. And I keep hearing our town administrator saying, you know, we’re looking for extra sources of revenues, extra sources of revenues on fees. And it’s against the law. It’s just against the law. So we said before, we weren’t gonna agree to recommend things that are against the law unless they followed the right procedure. This is against the law.

3:57:58 Noted. Thank you. Um, yeah, I I would no idea as a follow up, we can make sure that the, the procedures are taken should this get adopted? Yeah, I mean, I’m aware for like transportation or transportation regulations, there’s a process with masked up, but I’m not aware of a process for this. Just The waste, the, uh, board of Health. Yeah. And I, I guess like when we get to town meeting, I think it would be helpful to understand, you know, where the 17 closer came from. Yeah. I’m presuming it’s based on market rates. Mm-hmm. No, it is, it, it needs a form is an official form that says this is how we calculated it. It’s, you don’t pull it out of the air.

3:58:40 I’d be happy to talk with someone on the committee if you are interested. I’ll show you all the, all the stuff I downloaded from the state forms. Okay. Any other public. I also worked With the Department of Revenue for a while, so Thanks. Um, any co comments on Article 40?

3:59:03 Uh, I’d like to make an, uh, recommendation to adopt Article 42nd.

3:59:10 Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Teets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Janko Go more into detail on the Mr. Knight. Yes. Uh, Article 41 electrical installation. Good. Yeah.

3:59:38 Well to start, um, one of the things we’re we’re adding is, um, electric storage batteries, more and more homeowners. And I’m one of them, uh, putting in the large home battery systems, which requires, uh, a, a higher level of inspection. And right now there is no, there’s no recognition of that activity in our fee structure. So we’re adding that, that to the fee structure. So the fees listed above are what were approved for. All the other items already exist and, uh, are set. Um, there is the reference to the 17 per thousand.

4:00:24 Uh, above that, that’s just the reference to the, to the section we just voted on, just to make that consistent. But at the very bottom is, uh, an inspection for the installation of electrical storage batteries, which again, is based on a value per thousand. Um, Yeah, it’d go hand in hand with the solar permits for the most part.

4:00:52 So five years ago this didn’t, wasn’t an issue. It, it is now. Yeah. I’m, I’m not familiar with electric storage batteries. Is this related to having solar panels on your home or is this something else? Usually, yeah, they go hand in hand related together. Okay. Uh, it, the storage batteries is pretty much, uh, a very newer, um, part to the solar panels on the house. Okay. They’ve just come into play within the last couple of years. It’s most typical that they’re combined together. You, you don’t need solar panels. You can have the batteries in which the grid would charge up the battery, and if you lose power, the battery, it, it acts as like a generator. Okay. Right. Okay. And you burn the battery. But more typically, and what makes ‘em most effective is they’re also tied

4:01:39 into the solar panels. So if you have an extended power loss, uh, the solar panels will run the house and charge the battery during the day and the batteries will run the house at night. So it, um, more and more, um, installations of these are going in to people’s homes. Yes. I did look up What you stated, and it’s talking about the ments for the state. Mm-hmm. Um, I did a d which is state agencies, not municipal agencies. They do have a goals for municipal, But it’s not the same and as rigid As the state. Perfect. It’s still a set of folders you have to fill out, right? It says It, it says for the municipalities that we have to set our own policy On how we want to do it, and that we should Be reassessing and looking at our structures.

4:02:25 Okay. But I do have a print, there’s just different statements. Do You have policy? That’s an, that says you should create a policy. Right? You just make ‘em up. Recommended Not have to.

4:02:38 Any questions on Article 41 Comments? Any public comments on 41?

4:02:48 Pardon me? Alec, could you please put Article 41 up on the screen?

4:02:53 Alicia, can you put it on? Yes. Sorry.

4:03:01 Like to make a recommendation to adopt 41

4:03:06 Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Salman?

4:03:14 She’s, uh, absent. Oh, I’m sorry. Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Janefield? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Article 42, cemetery Perpetual Care Trust Fund Transfer. And Jerry. Okay.

4:03:38 So this is a fund that can be used specifically for capital needs when the cemetery needs it, but it requires a, a request from town meeting. Is that fair? Yes. Yes. So a couple of, uh, the cemetery commissioners, including Jerry, are looking to do capital items, and they came to see me to see what funds they had available in their trust funds to do capital. And so I had suggested 80,000 from their Perpetual Care Trust fund and a hundred thousand from cemetery sale of lots. And I decided that usually we do a transfer each year from the Perpetual Care to offset some of the expenses in the budget for cemetery. They opted not to do that, but to instead let them use it for their capital needs as they’ve identified many, We, we’ve actually identified a number of projects we wanna get started on.

4:04:25 We’re working on getting some prices, so to have it in a capital improvement account would help us be able to spend it as we need it. Perfect. Just curious, um, how does the Cemetery Perpetual Care Trust fund raise money? When Is it investments or? Yeah, it’s invested. It is invested, but they, they, um, sale of lots I get through, obviously. Yeah, I get that one. Yeah. And I believe there’s a fee for the, uh, perpetual Care as well. Right. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. They Only spend the, um, earnings. Yeah. I, I think I’ve seen this article before in the past, maybe not in recent years, but, um, in order to spend it on capital, it needs to be an article. It’s not an every year article though. No. Okay. No. We need approval from town meeting to get it into another account. Okay. And, and you have plenty of work that you need to get done. Oh, yeah. Okay. Fair enough.

4:05:12 All right. Too much work. Any additional questions on Article 42 comments? Any public comments on Article 42?

4:05:22 I’d like to make a recommendation to adopt Article 42, um, to allow the transfer of funds from the Cemetery Perpetual Care Fund to the cemetery department for capital needs. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Doy? Yes. Ms. Des? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Uh, any public comment on 43?

4:05:55 I’d like to make a motion to recommend adoption of Article 43 to transfer funds from the sale of Lots Trust Fund to the cemetery department and the sum of a hundred thousand dollars for the purposes of capital needs. Second, Mr. O? Yes. Ms. Vy? Yes. Ms. Seats? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goldsby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Jenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Uh, article 44, parking tickets, increased fee for snow emergencies, noncompliance with the law or the town mandate. Maybe It’s, So what are the fees at now, I guess, versus

4:06:42 what this is proposing? Uh, fees. Uh, do you know what the fees are? No.

4:07:02 To my knowledge, the select board years ago voted to increase it to 50. Yep. Um, to go even higher, you have to do the home rule petition. Um, and that was voted shortly thereafter. Um, but it was sent to our reps who not unlike all Home rule petitions weren’t able to get it through for a couple years, so we’re refiling it. Okay. That accurate? Yeah. No, I, I think I’ve seen this before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it just never Made it through the legislative process. Okay. So we’ve already voted on this at one point. Yeah, it expires. I don’t remember voting against it. So this is, Put it back in there. Yeah. So it’s something that we’ve seen and I, I believe, voted in favor of in the past, and now it’s just back because it didn’t get through some sort of process for lack

4:07:50 of a better way of describing In, in terms of a little bit of the background. Yeah. People were just, um, paying the original fee as a, as a, as a way to stay on the street and really impeding operations. Okay. So you need to increase it to maybe make them Yeah. Get off. And it’s, and it’s really a big issue because, I mean, I think years ago you couldn’t even park certain times of the year overnight, and then that was expanded except for snow emergencies. And it’s really a, a difficulty for the town when it, when it has cars blocking the removal of set snow and in such a tight community. Yeah. I think I’ve voted in favor of this in the past before. So, um, any public comment on Article 44,

4:08:33 like to make a recommendation to adopt Article 44? Thanks. Second. Mr. Oio? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Tes? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goolsby? Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. All right. Article 45 zoning bylaw by adding Provision for the storage of fishing gear and lobster traps. Um, is Raymond Bates here to present or others? My understanding is this has no, no financial implications. Um, so we won’t be deliberating on it, but if if somebody’s here to present or wants to speak publicly on it,

4:09:19 you’re welcome to at this time.

4:09:24 Take that as a note. So no recommendation on Article 45. Um, article 46, appropriate funds for an independent audit. Is Philip Mancuso here or others to present? He Was here earlier mine now. So this one does have financial implications. Um, it’s asking for a hundred thousand dollars to establish an independent town audit by an independent audit agency or entity, which shall publish a report to the voters at the 2026 annual town meeting of any and all departmental budget recommendations, policy changes that are designed to control town costs. Um, the selection of the auditor shall be the responsibility of the FinCon.

4:10:10 The article shall be subject to reauthorization on an annual basis, or take any other action relative there too. Um, would’ve liked to discuss this a little further with the article presenter. Um, legally the town of Marblehead is audited annually under, uh, it, it’s has to be. Um, so there is an annual audit by a CPA firm already at the cost of $70,000. Um, I do wanna note also, I think it was the past town administrator actually engaged, uh, it was CLA. They don’t do the annual audit, do they? Mm-hmm. So a separate CPA firm to do like an internal controls audit of the finance department just three or four years ago. I think it might have finished up in 23 or four, and there was a list of takeaways from that.

4:10:56 I think 80 or 90% have been addressed with the understanding that the rest of the, um, feedback would be addressed upon implementing Munis. Um, so I guess from my perspective, again, would’ve liked to hear a little bit more from the article sponsor on this, because we already are doing an annual audit, and we’ve gone above and beyond that in the last five years of doing an internal controls type audit. So I’m not sure if he had something else in mind beyond what we’re already doing. Um, I will say that, you know, potentially I think there’s a new audit firm that we’re engaging. Yes. I’m sorry. So, so maybe they, I I don’t know that they need to speak at town meeting, but it might be helpful annually for them to provide a, a 30 minute overview of their audit to the select board. Okay. So that’s great.

4:11:42 And that’s probably something that hasn’t been happening historically. No, I certainly support that. Um, I think an audit report at town meeting could get pretty long. Those, those audits are probably what, 60 to a hundred pages I’ve seen before. So, um, but yeah, I, I understand what he is asking, but it would’ve liked to have a conversation to discuss that we’re already doing things like this under, under law, so I can Yeah. I spoke with, I spoke with Phil. Yeah. So all I’m saying is, I know, know what he was looking for was more of a doge, like, you know, are we doing the right things? Are we, do we have things, you know, are we doing things like everything’s on paper and none of our systems talk to each other as well as sort of where all the money’s going? Yeah. So like, uh, technology, internal controls,

4:12:30 you know, I know that Alicia’s working as hard as she can on that, and the answer is yes. Yeah, she is. And then, um, haven’t You, and you’ve already done a lot of them, you on those, if not most of them, yeah. When I got here. Yep. Um, so we’ll go to recommendation, unless there’s any other public comment or fin comm. Do We want to consider allowing, uh, no. If you don’t want to chance to. No, it’s Fine. Okay. Um, let’s see here. Where, so Would we vote? Um, I can make an opposition. Well, you wanna make a motion, pat?

4:13:12 Um, I am, I, I’m happy to, if you don’t want to, I mean, I, I, I’d like to make, I’d like to make a motion to oppose Article 46.

4:13:25 Oppose, um, Mr. O’Neill. So we’re saying yes, we would like to oppose it Yes. Yeah. Yes. Means yes to to, to oppose. To oppose it. Let to oppose it. Yes. Yes. Ms. Duby. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Tees? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Yes. Ms. Samuels? Yes. To folks? Yes. Mr. Vanko, Mr. Knight? Yes. Sustainability coordinator. Um, understand from legal counsel that this is advisory only. Um, just wanted to put that out there. That’s what I heard, um, that you can’t actually eliminate position in an article within town meeting, but it can be an advisory

4:14:12 to the select board or, or whoever. Um, does somebody want to present Emily DeJoy? Is she here? No. Or others? Did you wanna speak? Sure. Uh, Brenda, Director of committee develop planning. Um, only been in this position for two months. Uh, Logan, the sustainability coordinator, is a longest staff member in our department right now. Um, the sustainable, uh, coordinator position was created after the town, uh, completed the net net zero roadmap in May of 2023. And the first action I had on that plan was to to hire a sustainability coordinator. Uh, he was hired in January, 2024, and since then, he’s applied for and secured over $665,000 of grants for the town.

4:15:00 Um, Logan’s been critical incorporating energy efficiency technologies in multiple different town projects. He’s assisted on the a DA on a DA compliant projects. He’s helped create environmental sustainability guidelines, uh, that are being considered by the old historic District committee. Um, he was critical towards the, the state street restroom, year round access process pro, uh, project, um, which has, which includes a installation of a heat pump system, which will heat and cool a restroom and enable the year round access. Um, he’s working on the town getting approved as a green community. Uh, hopefully we, we get that certification in the fall. Uh, as soon as we achieve, uh, green community, um,

4:15:48 we’ll get a upfront $170,000, and then we’ll be eligible annually for up to $125,000 a year. Um, so he’s, you know, he’s been a huge asset to the department. Uh, he’s the only, he has the most institutional knowledge for the entire department. Um, but he’s been a great employee, a great staff member for the town. I just wanna add, I work closely with Logan too, so I maryelle I don’t have the final feasibility set. He’s been instrumental in being a part of that and the project and the Net zero, and also looking at solar panels in, in my project, which it was also an 80 D eight elevator rails, 80 DA bathrooms

4:16:34 for the Mary, and he told me he could possibly secure $150,000 88 grant to help take down the cost of that. He’s also just, uh, working with, he works with, like I said, he works all across the departments in the town. Uh, just recently with the support of the fire chief, they are seeking funds to hire or to acquire or to purchase an electric fire truck. So, So let me add, since I did the hiring back, um, a year now, so, um, in addition to all the, the things and, and the great achievements already, a sustainability coordinator, when we hired him, he was working for CTPS, which is an acronym. It’s the agency that supports the Municipal Planning organization,

4:17:20 which is the organization that manages all the transportation funding for Metro Boston. So he brings with him all of that knowledge and awareness, which also includes an incredible network at the state level. So when we’re dealing with not just, uh, the narrow scope of responsibilities, but the broader scope that the department takes on of transportation projects and funding and grant, you know, going for grants and, and, and things like that, he comes with that experience already. I mean, it was a steal to get somebody that young and that much talent, uh, um, into a position like this. So, uh, he is absolutely a value add to this community.

4:18:07 And, uh, it’s more than just the net numbers are positive. It’s the, uh, the knowledge, the connections, and the ability to get projects done. Uh, on top of that. So To your point on the working across departments in our, um, budget hearing for Rec and Park, they actually complimented Logan because, um, they said he was instrumental in getting the $90,000 grant to make Devereaux Beach, um, 88 compliant. So, Yeah, and, and I believe, I was trying to find this as I looked at this article. Um, we are a finance committee, so we focus on the finances usually only, but I, I believe there was an article that was passed to become a green community, which was adopted

4:18:53 by town meeting. Is that fair? I, I, um, I recall, I don’t think we’re, we’re still short? No, no, no. Not, no. Like, oh, oh. An advisory article to strive to, to Set the correct Goal. Yes. I think, I think I saw in 2018, they voted to go a hundred percent. Um, yeah. So I remember it, it came up at some point. So, um, that’s kind of non-financial, but it, it, it supports what the, the town has asked for in that regard. Um, from a financial perspective, we’d be weighing, unfortunately, we have to say how much, how much is he making versus, I’ve heard a lot of good financial, um, results so far. And obviously there will be more into the future, so it’s just something to monitor. Yep. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, you know, there’s been some realignment of the, the town side of the, of

4:19:41 how things are, are operating. I don’t think Thatcher’s been, um, shy about what he’s, his ideas have been surrounding that. Um, some of the, um, realignment is, is newer. Um, you know, they, we haven’t funded it with an override. Um, it’s, it’s been funded by available funds to date. Um, and we’re, we’re excited to see the, the progress and, and obviously updates annually as to the financial impact of all these, um, different alignments that, that have taken place. Um, any other fin comm questions or comments? If this is advisory only, does that mean it, it still shows up and on the warrant, it’s still discussed at town meeting, unless The article sponsor decided to withdraw, I would think.

4:20:26 Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. I, I would vote, I would recommend a vote against, Oh, you wanna make a motion? Yeah. Okay. That’s what I can, is there any financial implication? Is this even for FinCon? Right? Is there any financial implications To this? I mean, financial, it’s advisory. We’ve, we’ve made recommendations on advisory articles before. I mean, it, it, it, it wouldn’t actually, um, eliminate the position if passed, but it would be suggesting to leadership to eliminate the position, which would have financial impact, both arguably negatively or positively. But based on the information provided, I’d say again, is it’s a value added to, to the town. So. All

4:21:12 Right. You wanna make an official motion? Yeah, I’ll, I’ll, I moved to Sorry. You wanna Vote not for discussion? Oh, yeah, I did, didn’t I? Well, Oh yeah. Public comment. Yeah. Um, Microphone,

4:21:34 um, town meeting does have the option of controlling the financing mechanism for the position, which you should consider.

4:21:44 They might not be able to get rid of the position, but they could get rid of the funding for The position. Yeah. But not through this article that we’re talking about, correct. Right. We’ve already voted on the budget earlier, so

4:21:58 Yeah. So that actually creates a problem. If you indefinitely postpone this right, then it’s, it won’t be debatable. We’re not indefinitely postponing it. Oh, I’m sorry. Thought that’s What he was ing No, he said an opposition, opposition Only tell meeting I’m vote, I’m recommending a vote in opposition to the article. Oh, So it’ll still be discussed? Yeah. Okay, fine.

4:22:21 So I’d like to make anybody other public comment. So, so, so I move that, um, that we, uh, the finance committee vote to, um, vote in opposition to the article to eliminate the sustainability coordinator position. Second. Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Teets? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Gruberg? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Janko? No. And Mr. Knight? Yes.

4:23:02 Article 48 residency requirements. Um, Phillip Mancuso, he hasn’t joined again, has he? Nope. No. Um, to see whether the town will vote to advise the select board to enact a policy that requires any departmental division head to be employed by town of Marblehead to reside within the town of Marblehead, or take any other action relative there too. Um, again, I’ve heard that this is advisory only, um, but it would be something that would need to be considered by town leaders if town meeting advised them. Um, I don’t know that town meeting has the legal authority to, or no, that’s on the last one. Um, so again, it’s very similar to the last one

4:23:48 where it’s advisory only. I, I would argue that there could be financial implications if it passed because, um, you know, there’s a fair amount of people that don’t live in Marblehead in these positions. So presumably there would be recruiting type fees and or, um, you know, a negotiation for their replacements, which I think would give, from my perspective, a little bit leverage to the employees there that are, or the applicants if there’s less of a pool of individuals available for these positions. Um, so I guess I’ll stop there, and that’s what I see as the potential financial implications of if this were to pass and then actually be brought forward by leadership.

4:24:33 Any other questions or comments? I, Yes, I agree with you that I think there are downstream financial implications, but I don’t think there are direct financial implications. So, uh, I guess I feel like this isn’t something for us to make a recommendation on. Okay. How does everybody else feel? Like If This, I think it does have financial implications because it would, those in those positions would have to negotiate a way out. We might have to buy out contracts. Yeah, there might be, um, yeah, there would be, um, severance type costs. Yeah, severance costs and, and higher, higher costs. There may potentially higher cost to, to

4:25:20 hire somebody from Marblehead. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s in, go ahead. Go ahead. Um, a, uh, I’m really concerned about this residency requirement provision because we’re a small town and modern governance is incredibly complicated. I don’t believe that we could, that we have a large enough talent pool to be able to find within town all of the necessary skill sets that we need. So I, I’m going to, uh, suggest that we oppose Article 48. Okay. So we’re, are we collectively agreeing

4:26:07 to make a recommendation on this? All right. So Eric, it sounds like you’d like to make a motion.

4:26:15 I move that the finance committee oppose articles. Public comment, public comment, sorry, public comment. Can I just say one thing? Absolutely.

4:26:26 I think most, there might be one or two department heads who don’t have a boss that isn’t a commission or a board. And to be on those commissions and boards, you have to be a resident. So everything is really run by residents.

4:26:42 Thanks comment. I really don’t Think this has A financial implication, and I think the finance committee is putting their personal views In front of the town for something that it need not do. If the town wants residents to be in these positions, they should get to vote for it. But yeah, arguably there would be though, if you had to replace those that were in the current positions, if they Quit, you’d have to replace them. You know, there’s, I think the competition for pretty far away talent, though. If you, if you think it’s, it’s already difficult to recruit talent, and then if you are restricting it to only candidates who live in Marblehead who or would consider moving to Marblehead, it greatly would increase the cost. You’re gonna have to pay more. There’s so much less, so many fewer people that would apply

4:27:31 or be, would be interested. And with our higher, uh, home values, they’d have to be able to afford to live here. I just think, I think there would be a cost. And I, I honestly, if we look at our, the leaders of our largest departments, they are not residents.

4:27:52 All right. Well, any other public comment on 48? I’d like to Make a motion that we, uh, vote in the negative for Article 48.

4:28:06 Motion. I’ll second The motion.

4:28:11 Mr. O’Neill? Yes. Ms. Duby? Yes. Mr. Meyer? Yes. Ms. Tees? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Goldsby? Yes. Ms. Samuel? Yes. Mr. Chenko? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. All right. The rest of these have no financial impact from my perspective. So I will quickly, since it’s 1136, ask, um, the sponsor of the article. But we, we have to, you know, let them speak, sponsor the article, um, to speak and then we’ll take public comment after if, if the sponsor wants to speak town meeting Parliamentarian. That’s the only one that came here to speak about. Come on up. No,

4:28:56 I don’t really have, the only thing I want,

4:29:01 I guess I will speak, but it, it doesn’t really have a financial impact. The, the part I wanted to make is in past, we’ve had town moderators who first, when any kind of motion came up, first thing they did was call the lawyer up. And my point is, is the lawyer works for the Selectmen. This lawyer is not the town’s lawyer. And if you’re com, if you’re suggesting something that is in the selectman’s, not in their best interest, the lawyer is duty bound by their, to actually suggest ways that your motion won’t make it because they work for the selectmen. Otherwise they’d be in violation of their contract. And I would make it even further, when you go and you have a citizen amendment and you, prior to our current, um, moderator,

4:29:48 you would go and you would say, I’d like the town lawyer to help me make sure that I wrote this rightly. And they’d say, no, go get your own lawyer. And then it was 50 50 if you even got in. So that’s the, that’s the purpose of this. The current moderator has said they would never use the lawyer for that. And as long as we don’t, that’s great. We get a new moderator, it could be an issue. So I’ll probably still talk about it at town meeting, but it’s somewhat moot. Yeah, no, yeah. No financial implications. Thank you for presenting. Um, any public comment on 49,

4:30:21 uh, 50 placement of prop two and a half on ballot. Um, is John Print Deville and others here?

4:30:32 Uh, I’ll just briefly say this one confused me a little bit. ‘cause it was saying how the Prop two and a halfs that would end up on a ballot would be listed as single items corresponding to the article. I thought that’s how it would work to begin with. I Also have the, this, it’s up to the, I know John, so this, it’s up to this select to decide how to put the articles on the ballot. Yeah. So if you vote for, you know, if there are 10 overrides Yeah. They can make that one question. They’re allowed to. They’re allowed To. Okay. And this said, and that is done for political reasons, not for financial reasons. Yeah. Right. You group ‘em along the ones you think you want to get passed. This just says, we have told the selectmen we don’t want do that. We want, if we look for six articles, we want six items. Yeah. I, quite frankly, I thought that is how it was.

4:31:20 So does it sound like, it sounds like they have the option of doing that as well. What you’re, you’re just trying to make it a, a rule, Essentially a line item, Vito, for the, for the citizens, right. It’s a line item veto for citizens. So each of these items would be voted yes and no as an override instead of lumping them all together where you don’t have a choice. Maybe you like one but you don’t like the other, but you have to vote because, so there are, there are multiple ways you can set up the ballot. There’s guidance from the state. So it is possible to have a single ballot with A, B, C, and D and pick your, your choice. This Is talking about lining up articles though. Yeah. Like meaning like if the schools are going for a capital override and the town’s going for a operating budget override

4:32:06 that those would be separate. Exactly. My understanding was those have always been separate. Yeah, Those would have to Be two different types. That’s why I was, I understand like bifurcating and itemizing within an article, but that’s not what this is asking for. No, this just is for each book. It Should be, yeah. I, I agree with that. But it has no financial implications, so we won’t make a recommendation. So, um, any other public comment on 50

4:32:32 town meeting reconsideration Procedure, no recommendation. John Dano

4:32:41 Reconsideration Town meeting reconsideration procedure. I’m sorry. Um,

4:32:49 so no financial implications. Um, we won’t make a recommendation. Any public comment. Amend bylaws recall provision. Again, no financial implications. Any. Is Louise a Bove Bini here? Any public comments on article 52?

4:33:09 Any last comments you’d like to adjourn at 1140? Thank you for your patience.