Finance Committee: April 6, 2026

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 All right.

0:11 Yeah, and we’ve all reviewed those via email. I saw some feedback. Is everybody good with the meeting minutes? Yes. I’d like to make a motion to approve the previous three FinCom meeting minutes. Second. Lindsay is not in person, so we have to go around the room.

0:57 Okay. Lindsay?

1:01 She’s been on that tablet. I don’t know. I’m going to make a plan with Lindsay.

1:09 Okay. Mr. Samuels. Otherwise, we’ll do it separately. Mr. Gutman? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Ms. Heath? Yes. Mr. Goldberg? Yes.

1:19 Mr. O’Neil? Yes. Mr. Jankow? Yes. And Ms. Duley. Yes. Linda, you missed someone. Oh, I’m sorry. Mr. Franklin. Yes. Great. And then the second item on our agenda before the warrant hearing is a reserve fund request, which it appears has come through two separate numbers. So I believe the select board’s already voted for. Yep. So if you want to just present that quickly. Sure. So a few weeks ago, we, through the select board, put in a request for about 53,000 and change towards the renting of audiovisual equipment for town meeting. Subsequent to that, as we spec’d out what we think the requirements

2:07 are of the field house, plus the cafeteria, maybe the auditorium needing to be wired up. Long and short, we were looking to do the field house and the cafeteria. To rent the equipment, it was around $80,000. And so we were pricing out an additional transfer request to total that amount. Since then, we identified, through a vendor, the ability to purchase the audiovisual equipment we need for close to the same price as it would be for us to rent for one year. So that new total

2:51 to purchase the equipment is $90,263.

2:57 So the combination of the first transfer request for the reserve fund plus the additional transfer request that the select board just voted to send forward, plus $10,000 committed from the schools, they’re going to kick in 10 because they’re going to share the equipment with us, totals to 90,263 in order to fund the purchase of audiovisual equipment. And the vendor that we’re working through, one, they’re on the state contract list, so from a procurement, we’re compliant. Secondly, they’re coming in to do the setup for us. At least year one. I’m not sure if that’s each year. I think it’s maybe just year one, but we’ll work with our IT folks

3:44 to learn and figure that out. So based on that, request from the FinCom to approve the transfers from the reserve fund in order for us to purchase the equipment. Quick question. Yep. The request is from the FY26 reserve fund, is that correct? Correct. Thank you. Yes. Current year budget.

4:06 Yeah. And the math of these two up top, I think from the reserve fund, it’s a total of about 80,723, and it sounds like the difference between that and the 90 is what the schools are- Yeah … are putting in. Yeah. So if anybody was… That’s all.

4:26 Any questions? Can you remind us what we have left in the fund?

4:34 I can, but the computer’s loading right now. Yeah. Soon. I would say a lot. A lot. Yeah. Very little has been spent. No, I think we might have done one in the fall, but- We had 414- We had 430 … so more than 90,000. Yeah. I think we- But yeah, I would say it’s a very high amount as compared to prior years because we started with a much- We started with… Yeah. So we’ll get that number later. Any other questions?

5:04 All right. Do I need to make two motions, or can I just do one? You can do one. Okay. I’d like to make a motion to approve the amount requested of $80,723 from the FinCom reserve fund for audio and visual equipment for town meeting. Yep. Second. Second. Mr. Jankow? Yes. Mr. O’Neil? Yes. Mr. Goldberg? Yes. Ms. Heath? Yes. Mr. Ney? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Gutman? Yes. Ms. Duley? Yes.

5:44 Great. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, I’d like to call our warrant hearing officially to order.

5:53 Let’s pull it up. Alicia, do you need a few minutes to get the presentation? Yes, that’s what I’m thinking for. All right. So just quickly-We’re going to run through every article as presented on the town warrant tonight. The finance committee will make no recommendation on articles without financial implications, and we will make a recommendation tonight on all articles with financial implications that are presented before us. There will be a few articles that we will likely have to have a second warrant article hearing in a few weeks here. I believe that will be the Monday before town meeting. Is that what we decided?

6:35 Or maybe two Mondays before. Two Mondays. All right. So April 20th at 7:00 PM, either here or in the Marey Alley building. We’ve often done the second night in the Marey Alley, but TBD.

6:48 18th. Okay. April 27th it is.

6:53 Yeah. 27th. Yeah. So there’s just a couple articles, specifically the override articles, that will not be presented tonight because the various boards have not voted on them themselves yet. So. But as always in this hearing, I say, if the article sponsor is here to present, whether there’s financial implications or not, we’ll give you the floor. We just won’t make a recommendation if there’s no financial implications. And I like to take public comments after each article, too, in case anybody wants to weigh in before we make our vote. That all sound good? Mm-hmm. Great.

7:33 Need a few more minutes? Yeah. It syncs very soon. Maybe I can share my screen, and we can just start, rather, with the presentation. Just start with the articles themselves and get going. Let’s see here. How do we get that?

7:53 Do you have the blank warrant somewhere?

7:58 Here. On the screen. It was presented. It is on the town website somewhere. Yeah. So staff No. Yeah. I’ve got the paperless. Can’t share my screen. Oh, screen. Oh, sure. Is it in the documents? I can send it to you. I’ll send you the printed one. Mm-hmm. Okay.

8:42 It says- 2026 is not- It’s in your section under Writers and- It’s in the finance? I just am sending it to you. It just said delivered. No. It’s there. What version do you- I’m

9:03 getting it. Don’t really know without the town website. I just wanted to- Richie. This one? I don’t know. How are we doing it? It’s there. It went to town. Yeah. And then what? Do you see it right here? You want them all written down. And what’s the problem with them? Documents saying that? Yeah, no.

9:30 It’s all you. I’ve also emailed…

9:40 We could have been here to say that they didn’t give the emails. I know it. See. Look at that piece of paper. Parent share on. Sorry. Oh, I’m sorry. Parent is on? Yeah. Oh. There’s that actually.

10:22 You

10:32 can go to share settings. Can I just send the link? And then I want to- All right. So first few, probably could run without on screen. Is that

10:53 working? Yeah. All right. Yeah.

10:58 Articles in numerical order. No financial implications. Standard article. Any questions?

11:09 Any public comment on article one?

11:15 No recommendation under article one for the Fin Comm. Article two, reports of town officers and committees. Again, no recommendation under this article. Standard article, no financial implications. Any questions?

11:29 Any public comment on article two? No recommendation under article two. Consent articles.

11:39 To see if the town will vote to approve the following consent articles and pursue liability, accept trust property, lease town property, contracts in excess of three years, financial assistance for conservation. The comment here is that there’s no trust property to be accepted at this time. Is that fair, Alicia? That’s correct. Anything else to weigh in on this, Thatcher? I know we typically say there’s financial implications of this. However, there’s no numbers to look. Yeah. No. There’s no action to take on these leased town property. We have the medical facility, but that’s it. That’s in an agreement

12:21 Yeah. So any questions from FinCom? Standard article. We’ve had this every year. Recommendation is that this article be adopted.

12:33 Second. Jessica? Yes. Mr. Hermelin? Yes. Ms. Rooney. Yes. Lookie. Yes. Ms. Jonas. Yes. Ms.

12:45 Hall. Yes. Mr. Buck. Yes. Ms. Scott. Yes. Ms. King. Yes.

12:54 I just emailed you Article 123, presentation. Did you want to present the presentation? We can, but my computer’s- Oh, I can do it. Yeah. Which email? I just sent it right now. Article 123.

13:12 The email we good? To your Brighton…

13:19 People teach dreams. One minute folks. I just got to get the presentation up now that it’s ready. I guess while we’re doing that, we can get going on Article 4, Amend Zoning Bylaw 3A Multifamily Overlay District. So I’ll address that. So that is the MBTA zoning bylaw. If you want to consider financial implications, the fact that we are not currently compliant with the MBTA 3A, we’ve identified over the last year or so upwards of almost $4 million in grants that we’ve not been able to receive that, but for a lack of compliance, we would’ve

14:08 received nearly $4 million in grants. So there’s no direct budget implications. There’s just the lost opportunity for additional monies to do additional projects. Basically, what this new version does, very brief, the previous version of the MBTA zoning had three zones, Tiger Way, Pleasant Street, and Broughton Road. The Broughton Road site is going to stay pretty much as is. That seems to be a no-brainer to everybody because that is going to have a housing development, whether it’s 3A or not 3A. The other two locations have been replaced

14:53 by moving a single large zone, basically the Tedesco property, right on the border to Swampscott. And so, we’ve run it through the state folks looking at it, the legal folks, basically, the language is good. The parameters we’ve set up is good for that site. If this is approved, it would create the overlay district at the Tedesco. I think the big issue, the problems that it solves, is avoiding development up in the heart of Marblehead and avoiding all the traffic ramifications that folks were concerned with, with the previous sites that we had. I think the sense is Tedesco,

15:42 the likelihood of them actually developing it is the opinion of many, unlikely, and even if they were, it is on the edges of town. And so all the concerns with traffic and all those impacts would not have a significant impact on the middle of Marblehead. So that’s the, I guess, brief summary of what changed. Yeah. So I believe we talked about this in depth last year, about the financial implications.

16:13 We certainly talked about the grant monies and legal fees, and people weighed in on if it did pass, how that might have financial implications and how that would be very hard to calculate. I don’t know that any of that discussion has changed. It’s just more so an amendment to change the sub-districts. Is that fair? Yeah. So instead of the three zones we had previously, it’s two zones, Broughton Road, Tedesco. Right. And then did we get sued by the attorney general? Was that- Yes. Is that an update from last year? They’re holding off on taking action because we have it as a warrant article on town meeting. They’re aware of that,

16:59 so they’re going to probably pursue other communities before they… They wait to see how we do at town meeting.

17:08 FinCom, any discussion points on this?

17:13 Would it be possible to break out for town meeting how many, what we didn’t, weren’t able to get in grants from the state? Yeah, we’ve been keeping a running list that’s up on the website under community development planning. So we, yeah, we can make that information available when we put the information together. Yeah. I’m very much in favor of making sure that the townspeople understand the costs and the benefits of each of these articles so that they are fully informed, that when they vote, they know what the fiscal implications are, both positively and negatively, to inform their votes. Absolutely.

17:58 Any other FinCom discussion on this article?

18:03 Any public comments on Article 4? I guess, are you following to see if there’s any online? Yeah.

18:12 All right. So I’d like to make a recommendation that Article 4 be adopted. Second. Ms. Jonas. No. Ms. Hermelin. Yes. Ms. Rooney. Yes. Ms. Yes. Mr. Zink? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Messina? Yes. Mr. Chapman? Yes. Ms. Gibby? Yes.

18:38 Great. Article 5, amend zoning by-law, accessory dwelling units. Before you present, we’ve determined that we do not believe there’s financial implications of this item. Is that something you’d agree with? Yes.

18:56 Maybe just quickly discuss. Yeah. So the ADU, accessory dwelling unit law was passed at the state level. So last year at town meeting, we passed a by-law to be in compliance with that law and to make sure we protected the interests of Marblehead within the confines of what that law allows. There was a subsequent change in the state law, which required us for this year to make basically some technical changes to stay compliant. And it has to do with

19:36 limiting, the ADUs are permitted within or as an accessory to single-family dwellings, limiting the scope of discretionary review by local permitting authorities and aligning parking size and procedural requirements with the current state law. So it was some technical changes that we needed to update our by-law to be compliant. If we don’t do this update, the way it’s described to me is it leaves us open to allowing the much broader state law to dictate what would be allowed inside a single-family zone. And so the language that we’ve changed makes us compliant with the state law, but also allows us to put some

20:23 limitations, dimensions, and such that are conducive to Marblehead. So we’ve found the balance point being compliant, but also protecting Marblehead’s property rights to the extent possible under the new law.

20:39 But… Oh, go ahead. I have a question. Go with Mike first. I think Alex was mentioning there’s no financial implications, but if I’m reading it correctly, if someone decides to build an ADU on their property, to me that would up their assessment, correct?

20:58 So depends on the scenario. Let’s just say if they made significant improvements to take a garage and upgrade it to be livable, that would be new growth revenue. So yes, there would be some. If we assume that it’s a current facility that kind of already meets the requirements, there are no upgrades, then

21:22 it would allow the homeowner to have tenants and additional people. I don’t know what financial implications or any material financial implications that would be. So the one opportunity is if people make significant improvements to implement ADUs, there may be some new growth revenues. Sure to that- So there is. Yeah. Some. Potential. Yeah. And it’s not really measurable. We’ve already adopted the by-law or the article last year to allow ADUs. It’s just a question of a change in the federal, I guess- State … sorry, state regulations around them and

22:09 us kind of adopting those changes, but also keeping control over- Yeah … portions of it. So I don’t know that it’s got a ton of financial implications. I don’t know that we want to make a recommendation. Mr. Chapman. I did have one quick question. Paragraph C, Section 4, we’re striking out that an ADU may not have more than two bedrooms. Given the relatively small square footage of an ADU, it seems that this would allow somebody to put four tiny bedrooms in an ADU, and I don’t understand why this was taken out. It seems a two-bedroom limitation was very reasonable

22:55 limitation. Is that because of the state law? Yeah. So I’m not prepared to argue the intricacies of the zoning components of it, just sort of the general issue, any financial impact. But yeah, the changes that were put in there, so what the state didn’t want is municipalities to be able to put too many restrictions that make the ADUs untenable. Okay. Thank you.

23:26 Any other discussion? Yeah. So we’re complying, that part A of this is complying with what the state has mandated that’s different than what they had in the process for last year. Because when we passed the by-law last year- Yeah … now we’re having to change the by-law consistent with the changes they made. Yeah. So the state passed- Okay. But we’re continuing to maintain limitations in our by-law that are not contained in the state statute? Again,

24:10 our town planner was the one who’s no longer with us, was the technician working this. So, it’s based on briefings and updates I got at the time. So again, there was the initial state law that created the ADUs. We passed our by-law to deal with the state law. They then made some tweaks at state law- Right … which is forcing this. For, yeah. Right. And so as I under-I understand it. Municipalities are allowed to put some restrictions on the

24:48 requirements of how an ADU can be placed in a property. But it doesn’t allow municipalities to go so far that the restrictions become prohibitive for ADUs to be implemented. So, as I understand it, the tweaks here are to comply with the law, but also protect some of the parameters that we’re allowed to have in place, some of the design requirements, setback requirements that keep us compliant. So we’re not at risk to be non-conforming- Yes … if you want to call it that, to the state statute- Correct … at this point? Yeah. Based on the legal reviews- Okay … this makes us compliant. Thank you.

25:33 Any other questions from FinCom? Any public comment on Article 5?

25:43 No. Having it at the Jack Athred 67 Beach Street. You want to go to the mic? Oh, sure. Kyle asked us to ask him.

25:53 Just a couple observations. So Marblehead actually two years ago passed an ADU law, and then the state came in with their ADU law. Then we adjusted to that, and then because of other changes and adjustments, we are changing ours again to be compliant. I can tell you that having gone to the planning board hearing on this, and the last two that they’ve done on this, the planning board has done a great job of doing everything possible to protect what we can in Marblehead so that if there is a decision made, it’s not challenged and default back to state law. Right. Thank you. That’s very helpful. Any other public comments, Article 5?

26:42 All right, so no recommendation from FinCom on Article 5. Article 6, unpaid accounts. I believe these are unpaid accounts in the fiscal year ending 6-30-25. That’s correct. And typically are paid out of ‘26 funds. That’s correct. To the extent there’s any leftover. Yes. You got it. So we’ve got them up on screen. The total is $60,145.29. They’re itemized on screen. These are items that, after the books close and everything closes, are identified months after, which is not uncommon in any accounting for something to get missed, right? You know. Anything else?

27:28 Well, hopefully now we won’t have any more because we have purchase orders in place, and as long as there’s a purchase order in place, we can still pay for them. Okay. We didn’t have a PO system in place before then. Okay. So there’s a new control to minimize these as much as possible. Yes. And I will say that in years past, it’s been higher than 60,000. Oh.

27:50 Any questions from FinCom? Standard article, we have this every year. Any public comments from Article 6 or Article 6?

28:00 I’d like to make a motion that the sum of $60,145.29 be appropriated, as shown on screen, from available funds from fiscal year ‘26. Second. Mr. Janey? Yes. Ms. Bonia? Yes. Ms. Probst? Yes. Ms. Leeds? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Downey? Yes. Ms. Doolittle? Yes.

28:32 Article 7, departmental revolving funds. I show all the revolving funds on screen that we vote on here, and what this does is it sets the maximum amount for fiscal year ‘27 to be spent from each of the revolving funds shown on screen. That’s been something that’s been asked about in years past. It doesn’t mean that that’s the amount that will be spent from these funds, but it’s just the maximum amount allowable under the article vote effectively. We’ve shown, as requested a few years back, the actual 2025, the voted ‘26, and then the request for this year, in case anybody’s wondering what the differences are year over year.

29:19 Any questions from the FinCom or points? I noticed that the request for ‘27, it was round numbers, $2 million less than what was voted in ‘26. Oh. Could you address that very- Yeah … quickly? Yeah. The waste- I’m sorry, 1.2? Yeah. Oh, thank you. Yeah. The waste department went down from over 2 million down to 1,067,000. Thank you. I wanted to ask a couple of questions actually on this. If maybe would be helpful, could you give us sort of an overview of why it’s coming down, balances? Or come up. He can- He can come up to us as well. Yeah. Thank you.

30:04 So we’ve called up Andrew from- Thank you, Andrew … Public Works.

30:10 Good evening. Good evening. So current this year, we have a large construction project. So a million dollars is allocated from the waste revolving account to that project. So when that project comes off, we’re only looking at actual expenses. So yes, you have the concern, will there be enough money to support curbside collection and all the costs associated with that?Obviously we’re looking to the future, and this is always a tough discussion. It’s at 1,000,067. Do we feel that it needs to go up a little bit? So there are a couple little spaces where we have a little bit of flexibility. So right now it says that $1.9 million.

30:58 There’s $300,000 left under contract for the construction project. Then you take out what’s left for employment and stuff like that, so you’re down to

31:10 1.4 to 1.5. So probably the maximum amount you could allocate to that might be about 1.3. And the revenue you would be expecting to generate this year? So our expected revenue was about 1.2 to 1.4. Okay. And again, because of construction, we’re down. Yeah. So there’s an annual kind of- Yeah … increase in the account by 2 to 300,000, did you say last? Yeah, it’s about $200,000. The hardest thing is that the commercial revolving account is based on commercial construction material coming in or other commercial activities. So when you look at costs of gas and things like this and where the

31:56 economy’s headed, there is a concern that we’re not going to see as much trash and stuff coming in in future years. And so, you would maybe carry about a year’s worth of revenue- Yeah … as a cushion. Yep. So my concern was that, because there are some uncertainties if an annual fee is put in place- Yep … it’s difficult to project some of the costs that will come, maybe the percentage of people that would opt out. Yep. And so do we want to maybe increase this a little bit? Because again, this is just the maximum- Maximum … that you can spend, right? Yeah. So does it make sense to maybe increase this so that we have some cushion in case some of our assumptions for the annual fee prove to be- Yeah, I think that’s- … conservative … a prudent idea.

32:42 Yeah. And what would you say if you were… And Alicia, if you want to weigh in, what do you think sort of a reasonable- I take the number directly from Andrew, so I don’t- So yeah. But if you were trying to, because we have the annual fee, if we were trying to just have some extra buffer just in case, just to mitigate risk, what would you suggest? Yeah, this isn’t the same cushion- The annual fee … we’re talking about in a budget. Yeah. This is a maximum amount to be spent. It’s based on revenue. And if everything is correct on our projections for the annual fee, then you wouldn’t use it. It would just- Correct, it would just sit there. This just allows you to use it. I would certainly go up to 1.3.

33:25 So I’m always conservative. I don’t want to set a number where I don’t have the money in the bank. So I get a little nervous going up to the 1.5, but I would easily do the 1.3. So that would leave it back to $250,000- Yep … of a safety net, which that seems reasonable to me. That would make me feel better. And I think that’s the whole idea tonight is to set you-

33:54 I do think that is, because that is an area of risk- Yes … with the annual fee, if we- Yep … end up implementing one. That’s right. Yeah. I concur. That sounds prudent.

34:08 Just doing the math in case we want to make a different recommendation. And the actual 25 column, that 965, is that what was actually spent or was that what was requested? 25 column is what was spent. 25 spent, yeah. So if we go with the 1,000,067,

34:27 do we know what’s already spent in ‘26? Well, he did a lot more capital in ‘26. Yeah. Okay. Do you have your- I, yeah … documents? That’s not fair. Let’s see. Expenses for the year for ‘25 is 965,977. Yeah, for ‘26. ‘26. Yeah. Year to date. FY25, 965,977.33. FY26, 443,165. Say that again? 443,165. Oh, so we were authorized to do 2 million, but we’re not going to get near that. Yep. Okay.

35:05 Thoughts on maybe increasing this a little bit? We can make whatever recommendation we want. Yeah. No, I think that seems reasonable. But yeah. So what will happen, you guys will make the recommendation. I’ll reissue the letter. That will go to the select board. They’ll vote on that. Obviously, my board will be aware of that. And we’ll go on from there. Okay.

35:27 Michael? Thank you, Andrew. And thank you. Lindsay, no thoughts on this? Okay. All right. So I think if I have my math correct, if that goes up to 1.3, it increases it by $232,402. If I add that to the total, 397,289,8, the new total in the vote would be 4,205,300. Yeah. Can I just ask, so people who might be tuning into the warrant hearing that weren’t involved in the earlier discussions on general budgets, the special education and school transportation

36:12 deltas look pretty substantial too, which is a significant portion of the comment you made, Eric. So can I get some clarification for myself and the public on So- Reduction? So I’m going to just, based on what I know of the special education, that revenue comes in from people who pay- Pay in Right, in- Tuition in … the revenue on that is- Way down … pretty small. Very low. So I’m guessing they’re reducing this because I think the fund balance itself is well below- Way below … 200,000. And what they’re bringing in, I think they’re probably just

36:59 reducing it to be- And they’ve been- Consistent … supplying more of their revolving accounts- Yeah … as necessary against- Since we’ve asked them to do that. Oh, yeah. And there’s less money available for the benefits. Yeah. Right. I just thought, it’s a big number. If it gets published, I think it’s worth having that additional explanation. Yeah, I think there’s been questions on this at town meetings, so- Yeah … Thatcher maybe for the larger numbers, have folks available to respond to those, depending upon which department they’re in. Yeah. Yeah. You’ve been up at- No, no. It’s a great question. It’s not reflective of what they’re spending on special education. This is just a very specific revolving fund. Based on- Right, it varies … tuition in from… And I could’ve said that too, but I just thought if there’s no one from the

37:46 schools here to talk it, but- Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions from FinCom? Any public comments on Article 7? Closed. I’d like to make a recommendation that the maximum amounts to be spent from department revolving funds during fiscal year ‘27 be as shown on screen with an adjustments to the commercial waste collection revolving to increase the number on screen by 232,402 for a grand total of $4,205,300.

38:31 Second. Mr. Django? Yes. Ms. Gerlach? Yes. Mr. Fose? Yes. Yes. Mr. Nike? Yes. Yes. Garcia? Yes. Ms. Shatner? Yes. Ms. Dooley? Yes.

38:49 All right.

38:53 Article 8, purchase of equipment of several departments. Typically has financial implications, but my understanding is there’s no capital requests for this article at this time. That’s correct. So this’ll be tabled. No recommendation from FinCom. Any comments from the public?

39:15 Article 9, lease purchase. We’ve got up on screen a total of $524,067. My understanding is that of that amount, 236,077 comes from the waste revolving fund, and the remainder, 287,990, gets appropriated from free cash. Anything to discuss here? No, this is standard what we do every year for our leases. And the lease on there is just the trash comp’s lease. So most of these are previous leases already entered into, and this is just an annual fee for those leases. The annual payment. Annual payment. Yeah.

40:01 Yeah, you’re right. Standard article. Yes. Funded from similar places in the past as well. Any FinCom questions?

40:11 Any public comment?

40:16 I’d like to make a motion that the sum of 524,067 be appropriated, and to meet this appropriation, 236,077 be transferred from waste revolving and 287,990 is to be appropriated from free cash, to include the items listed on screen. Second. Mr. Django? Yes. Ms. Gerlach? Yes. Mr. Fose? Yes. Ms. Dooley? Yes. Mr. Nike? Yes. Mr. Yes. Garcia? Yes. Ms. Shatner? Yes. Ms. Dooley? Yes. All right. Article 10, capital improvements for public buildings.

41:01 Very similar to Article 8. No requests this year. Correct. So we will not make a recommendation under this article since there’s nothing being asked. Any FinCom questions? Any public comment on Article 10?

41:17 Article 11, walls and fences. This is a standard article. The request this year is 25,000 to be raised by taxation, so it’s part of our operating budget annually. It’s down from 50,000 to 25,000. So presumably, as part of our budget crunch, this was an area where we were able to make a cut- Yeah … and save it this way. Yeah, to be able to go and fund the budget, we cut a levy articles, and this is one that we cut in half by 50%. And my understanding is that is not ideal, and in the future will need to be brought back up to at least the level it’s been historically. Which I think it’s been 50,000 since I’ve been- Yes. Is there any idea of how much we annually spend on that?

42:05 I don’t. Probably somewhere in that vicinity?

42:14 Maggie’s going to come up and give the full numbers, but this

42:18 article is where we do have a lot of work for sea walls and fences to go up. We’ve had a lot of fences that have not been repaired. Trying to get the money together to put a contract in. So we currently do have a fence contract in to replace one section of the fence at Tower Lane, but it’s also an annual contract. So- That takes up the minimal amount, but I think the larger projects are- So we had submitted originally back in December a list of capital improvement projects for a number of walls. We’re Marblehead, so many of our walls are coastal, and so that includes the sea walls. And so I had taken and submitted from

43:05 the… There was a Woods Hole Group study done, I believe it was like 2020, 2021-ish, and so there was five walls that we identified through there. It was the Front Street, Fort Beach sea wall. There was repairs to the causeway sea wall on both sides. There was the Ocean Ave sea wall repair at

43:31 View of Boston, I forgot the exact address, but it’s located- The Point … thank you. And I believe that was primarily it. We had recently reached out to a consultant and received a quote, for just an evaluation prior to proceeding with any sort of repairs, just an updated evaluation because it’s been about five years since the original one was done, and just the design and permitting evaluation is about 8,000. Wait, so the 80,000 is only for the causeway, walls on both sides of the causeway, and for one small section of Front Street down by Flat Rock. Yeah. So that’s just for them to be able to tell us what condition they’re in. Yeah. So since it’s kind of raised by the budget, if you

44:17 don’t spend what’s appropriated, by the end of the year, it goes to free cash. So are there other- No, this one actually stays. These are levy articles, so they stay as articles. Okay, so there’s a balance in the account then. Yep. So we will be able to do the one repair that we have scheduled to do, or replacement, and then hopefully we’re going to have enough to do the $85,000 from that. Right. So the 25, you think you’ll be okay for one year, but then it’ll just hurt us in terms of that balance as we move forward with inevitably other projects. Right. We just want people to realize that this has been historically funded at 50, but if you don’t go for a large capital improvement override, this is one that would be fixing the smaller things instead of holding them for six, seven years.

45:05 At least the walls portion that we’re talking about are, again, coastal walls that hold up roads and sidewalks. Yeah. Okay. When you say the 80,000, just looking at what needs to be done, not doing the repairs, right? No. Did we get an estimate the last time? More. Repair estimates? So there’s a whole report. I’m having a hard time pulling it up right now. But the Woods Hole Group evaluated each of these locations, and they range from a couple hundred thousand to a million for some of the repairs here. Yeah, so with those sites, there’s a range.

45:47 So we did have a repair down at Front Street, but that was due to storm damage, but also that the wall needed work prior to that. So we’re trying to make sure that these walls, we know they need work. Both. Before something happens. Yeah. Amy, a quick question. Understanding the fiscal situation we’re in, with the $25,000 you’re requesting, are you comfortable that there are no critical repairs that are going to go lacking this coming fiscal year because of the cut?

46:28 Even if we had gone for the straight 50, we wouldn’t be able to do this. So the repair at 222 Ocean, which is the wall between the two outfalls, we’ve had that designed, or that started to look at, and our first estimates came in around 300,000, I think. But that includes some outfall work, too. Yeah. Once we get these designs and what the costs are, then we can look for other places that we might be able to get funding from. Mm-hmm. We’ll look at Chapter 90, but Chapter 90 only allows us so much, and it takes away something else, too. Thank you. Yeah. Or potentially, like a debt exclusion override down the road. Is that something you’ve considered? Yeah, for sea walls, I think we would have to look at a debt exclusion override.

47:13 We’re working on the planning upfront so that we could do what we need to do. Just pick up from- Sorry, yeah. The things that we have been looking into is the planning so that we can be educated in making those recommendations. Thank you. So the general amount of 50,000 does give us enough to get a designer or a consultant in to actually do the review of different things. And then it does a lot of repairs. So we do have a lot of small fences all over town that don’t even know are ours, until someone comes up with a piece of paper and shows us it’s ours. Any other questions from FinCom? Any public comments on article 11?

47:55 I’d like to make a motion that we recommend that the sum of $25,000 be appropriated to be raised by taxation for article 11. Second. Mr. Jango? Yes. Ms. Zania? Yes. Ms. Felbly? Yes. Ms. Heath? Yes. Ms. Benay? Yes. Mr. Longo? Yes. Ms. Garcia? Yes. Ms. Chadal? Yes. Ms. Heath? Yes.

48:23 Article 12, stormwater construction. Another article we see every year. My understanding is $200,000 is being requested to be raised by taxation, like article 11. That’s only 50% of what was raised last year for the same article last year. Mm-hmm.This article’s the same, too. If you don’t spend it, it stays, and you’re allowed to incorporate more than one of these yearly articles together. Generally has 400,000. As we have looked at history, we generally have a debt exclusion override for stormwater, which is usually in the range of between $2 and $5 million every five years. We’re coming up to that five-year point.

49:12 I now have, in the five-year capital improvement plan, we have $10 million worth of work that we’d love to be able to do. Obviously, we won’t be able to do it all. But when you cut this article in half, we’ll have no funding to add to the previous articles to get some projects done. This will only pay for our regulatory requirements, which are illicit discharging elimination program, our reporting, our catch basin cleaning. I think we have to dip into old articles to get the catch basin cleaning complete. So, this one is a critical article. We understand the budget restraints, and we’ll make it through this year, but we just wanted to make sure everyone realizes that this is every year- Yeah … this should be increased, and it’s-

49:58 Yeah, so the deficit is impacting more than just operating budgets. It’s impacting a wide variety of things, including these articles, right? Construction articles that can probably get by for this year, but it only puts us in the hole as we start the next year. Correct. And it does slow down. It will slow down the paving a little because we have areas we know that we need to do work before we pave the whole street. Got it. Any other questions on Article 12? Any public comment on Article 12?

50:36 I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the sum of 200,000 be appropriated to be raised by taxation for Article 12, stormwater control. Second. Mr. Jamiel? Yes. Mr. O’Brien? Yes. Ms. Hennessy? Yes. Ms. seats? Yes. Mr. Henry? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Chapman? Yes. Ms. Dube? Yes.

51:03 All right. Article 13, another article we see every year. Amy’s up here. Sent articles for water and sewer. We make multiple recommendations on this one, but I’ll let you present it. Sure. So this is a standard article for water department construction, sewer department construction, and the claims article that we share with the select board. Water department construction. This year, we have got an estimated cost of what our retained earnings are, and we took a percentage less than that. So we’re requesting $2.4 million be moved into the water department construction. The five-year outlook for water department construction is,

51:52 sewer first, is over $10,120,000 of work that we have outstanding. One, including the rehabilitation of the Parks water tank, which is a necessity for water quality. Also, we are still upgrading water mains for increased fire flow, and we have cleaning and lining projects listed. We also have meter upgrades that we’re looking at doing a town-wide meter upgrade to give a new system for more accuracy. A customer portal will have alarms for people so they can tell if they are using a lot of water, which would be really nice because getting your bill every three months doesn’t tell you that you have a leaky toilet. So that will happen.

52:38 Hopefully, we’ll have a lot less unaccounted for water. And so that will be less in your rate to have to spread around for water that we don’t know exactly where it went. Most of our meters are between 20 and 15 years, so this would be a town-wide initiative, and we are in a pilot right now testing out four or five different programs for that. Excuse me, Amy, did you say $2.4 million? 2.4 is what our retained earnings. And that just moves our retained earnings over. Retained. Yeah. Thank you.

53:15 And then sewer, we’re looking at 2.1 to move over from our retained earnings into the sewer department construction. Amy, just to clarify, because you had me put two million, two million, I think that’s just confusing them. Oh, I’m sorry. I had you put what? Yeah, that’s what confused me. Two million for sewer, two million for water construction. Oh, no, I emailed you 2.4 and 2.1. Okay. So we’ll just change it. Yeah. So which one’s 2.4 and 2.1? Water’s 2.4. Water’s 2.4, yep. Sewer’s- And sewer’s 2.1. Okay.

53:48 Just the question was interesting. I’m sorry. So that’s 85% less of what we have for an estimated amount of retained earnings. 85% of the estimated amount.

54:03 Yeah. So just following what we like to look at last year’s

54:11 FINCOM report. I believe these numbers were much lower last year. So these numbers are always based on what we get for our retained earning from the finance department. Right. So, we will generally move over all of what we have been awarded, or what the finance department says is our retained earnings. They move over, and they sit. It doesn’t mean we’re going to spend them all that year. Right. They can go for multiple years. And you can see that if you go back three years ago, we had a very low number. That’s because we didn’t have an estimate yet. So we went with what we thought our best guess was. And then it increased again the next year because we added, the retained earnings were a lot higher than we thoughtAnd then last year you will

54:58 see less, but we had a dry year, and we had a lot of people water. So our rate is set in June 30th. We have a rate hearing that does include a piece of construction. So we look at our five-year capital plan, try to figure out how much we need to spend in two years so that we know our retained earnings for that next year. So when this rate was set, we did set it at over a million dollars or a million six, and they both came in a lot higher. Retained earnings came in higher than we had anticipated. Again, that is set on the amount of water you’re going to sell. We use a three-year, or the sewer you’re going to collect. We use a three-year average, but it’s still not a great science because you have

55:45 a dry year, and Marblehead likes green lawns, so they really water. So it’s not surprising to see fluctuations- No … in this year over. No, and we could definitely spend a lot more every year. Yeah, I think you’ve already said that. Yeah. But again, all your rates do go right back into your water, and all your sewer rate goes right back into your sewer. So, it does sit there. We do have long lists. In the five years for sewer, we have 28 pump stations. And we have 10,660,000 laid out for the next five years. That’s also including our administrative order, which requires a million dollars of lining for infiltration and inflow work.

56:32 And then those include purchases for vehicles that are going to roll off our ranks. And so both those numbers, when you get up to the 10 million, are for replacement of vehicles and equipment. Amy, is the 2.1 for the sewer consistent with 85% of estimated retained earnings? Yes. Okay. And by consent article, this is town meeting allowing the water and sewer to use the retained earnings that have already been- So what I understand by the consent is just for some reason they put these together so they’d be one vote instead of three, because they were standard articles. I didn’t have any choice as to make it that, so.

57:18 Just allows us- Don’t know … to defend ourselves against claims, right? The consent article. The claim itself? Yeah. The article- So that- … should say that it allows the Water and Sewer Commission and Select Board to jointly, to compromise any claims for damages. That’s the third part of the consent article. That’s the third, yeah. Yeah. So that doesn’t come with any cost, but it works both ways. If we have a claim against us, but also if we go after a claim. So this year we did attempt to go after a claim with the select board, but… Our meeting asks for appropriation then. Yes. That’s why. It has to appropriate the retained earnings, so to be used. Yeah. Right. And we’ll have a- Sound like consent also too. Consent of town meeting.

58:04 Okay. Thank you. Any other questions on article 13 from BenTom? Very, very quickly. Again, as with the previous articles, this would be a maximum amount you could spend, but not necessarily the amount that you will spend, or do you anticipate spending these amounts?

58:24 This is the maximum we can spend because it’s the maximum we have available to us, and we do. We’ll never hit it right exact, but we definitely are planning on spending. We have contracts already in place for cleaning and lining for both water and sewer. And sewer, we know we’re going to hit a million dollars right there. We have Edgemere Station, which is in design and hopefully will be replaced. That’s another million right there. So that eats up sewer and whatever else we have left. And then water will all be for lining also. So you do anticipate spending these amounts of monies? Mm-hmm. We’re very close, yeah. Very good. Thank you.

59:05 Any public comments on article 13?

59:10 I’d like to make a recommendation that the sum of 2.4 million be appropriated from water retained earnings for water department construction, that the sum of 2.1 million be appropriated from sewer retained earnings for sewer department construction, and that part C of this, Water and Sewer Commission claims, be adopted. Second. Mr. Jango? Yes. Mr. O’Neil? Yes. Mr. Holste? Yes. Ms. Means? Yes. Mr. Nay? Yes. Mr. Franken? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Schauerhorn? Yes. Ms. Dumi? Yes. Okay. Article 14, MWRA.

59:55 Amy, it’s still up there. Okay, so this is the local assistance program that MWRA has available to all the communities who are part of it.

1:00:08 We do have a note from MWRA that Marblehead has, as of May 2026, 3,578,400 that they have not secured yet. That grows every quarter, so it will continue to grow. The very first step of this is to get town meeting to be able to allow the Water and Sewer Commission to enter into the loan if they want to enter into it. It does not mean that we will be using it. This is, I believe, the fourth time that we have asked for this loan. We still have money left from previous ones. This is getting in preparation for the meter projects.

1:00:54 So rather than not be able to do construction for two years, we’re hoping that we’ll be able to extend our loan, which is 0% interest and over 10 years. So-I believe we looked at the last time, just in preparation for this, that this was on the warrant. And I thought there was a number in the article that was voted at town meeting just two years ago. Like actually in the article itself, not in a recommendation from FinCom. So do we envision there being a number in this article between now and town meeting? So we’re looking at the 3.5 million for this meeting? Yeah. So we don’t have to go back each year knowing that we have the- It would be possible that the language where it says to see

1:01:39 if the town will vote to appropriate, it now says a sum of money that might change to a number before town meeting. That would be in the motion. In the motion. Yes, sir. Yeah. I was looking back at the FinCom report, and it had it in. So it sounds like the number’s 3.5 million. That’s the estimate, but it could change between now and town meeting, potentially, or? I don’t think this one will, but- Oh, okay … it could. It will go in front of my board again to confirm that that’s what we want to do. But again, this one does sit. It still has to be voted by the board. The select board still has to do a lot of voting if we’re ever going to use it. Sure. So this just allows us the first step. Got you. And it does only open quarterly, so- Yeah

1:02:25 … it’s kind of hard to get there at the end of quarter with all of the different steps if you leave them all open. Okay.

1:02:33 Any other questions on this article? Any public comments on article 14?

1:02:40 I’d like to make a motion to recommend that this article be adopted. Second. Mr. Jacob? Yes. Mr. Lynam? Yes. Mr. Colby? Yes. Ms. Sees? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Schattner? Yes. Ms. Dooley? Thank you. Okay. Yes.

1:03:04 Wow. See you all at our wreath then in June. I use this effect snowplow.

1:03:13 Go get it.

1:03:18 Look how well it’s going tonight. It’s good. Article 15, proposed reclassification and pay schedule for administrative positions.

1:03:33 That’s a 3%. This builds in a 3%. This is for the non-union positions, administrative positions. Last year,

1:03:45 so the collective bargain agreements have around 3% COLAs. Last year, this group only received 2%, so we wanted to make sure we built in 3% this year for this group. Yeah. So those contracts that were being negotiated around this time last year came in close to 3%. And this article still had 2%, which was below that. Yeah. So arguably, the two-year run rate on those same, just to keep up with the COLAs of- Yeah … the unions, you’re at an average of two and three for the admin positions. Yeah. We do not want to create a lot of disparity in the different pay scales. Right.

1:04:29 And so Alicia, I think I ask this every year, but this 3% has been factored into the various budgets we’ve already voted on. That’s correct. Right, which we would’ve seen already as well.

1:04:42 Any other FinCom questions? It’s just for this one year. Just- Yeah. So they don’t have a collective bargain agreement that covers a three-year term, so it’s an annual review.

1:04:59 Any public comments on article 15?

1:05:06 I’d like to make a motion that we recommend Article 15 be adopted with a 3% cost of living increase, effective July 1st, 2026, for administrative positions. Second. Ms. Jacob? Yes. Mr. Lynam? Yes. Mr. Colby? Yes. Ms. Sees? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Schattner? Yes. Ms. Dooley? Yes.

1:05:35 All right. Article 16, same thing, but for traffic supervisors. Yes. Same rate. Otherwise known as crossing guards. Yes. Yes.

1:05:45 Any questions from FinCom? No. Any public comments on Article 16?

1:05:51 I’d like to make a recommendation that Article 16 be adopted with a 3% cost of living increase, effective July 1st, 2026. Second. Mr. Jacob? Yes. Mr. Lynam? Yes. Mr. Colby? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Schattner? Yes. Ms. Dooley? Yes.

1:06:20 Article 17, proposed reclassification and pay schedule for seasonal and temporary personnel. Again, the same? Same. FinCom, any questions? Public comments on 17?

1:06:37 I’d like to make a motion to recommend that Article 17 be adopted with a 3% cost of living increase, effective July 1st, 2026. Second. Ms. Jacob? Yes. Mr. Lynam? Yes. Mr. Colby? Yes. Ms. Sees? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Schattner? Yes. Ms. Dooley? Yes. Article 18, compensation for town officers. This is a standard annual article for the town clerk’s salaryWe’ve already voted the town clerk budget. I believe the number is $97,460. Anything else to add? No. What’s unique about this is the town clerk is the only

1:07:24 elected and full-time employee, therefore, this is the purpose of the warrant article. All the other elected officials have stipends, not compensation. Gotcha.

1:07:38 Any questions from FinCom? Is there any benefit to that or any logic behind that other than it’s been that way historically? Yeah. You either have elected town clerks or appointed town clerks. And so they’re full-time employees getting a salary compensation. So this warrant article, because it’s an elected, sets the compensation separate from all the other categories of employees.

1:08:09 If the town clerk were to become an appointed employee, then it would most likely be part of the administrative pay scale. Got you.

1:08:23 Any public comments on article 18?

1:08:29 I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the yearly compensation for the town clerk be established at $97,460.

1:08:40 Second. Ms. Crandall? Yes. Mr. Kening? Yes. Ms. Mulvaney? Yes. Ms. Tea? Yes. Mr. Lang? Yes. Mr. Franken? Yes. Ms. Elzia? Yes. Ms. Shelton? Yes. Ms. Levy? Yes.

1:08:57 Article 19.

1:09:01 Collective bargaining fire. Yeah. I think the number on screen’s off, but- It’s not me … no worries. I believe negotiations are still- Yeah. So we’re still in negotiation. There is not an agreement in place, so we’ll defer hopefully for the- Yeah … 20… Number, date, the- In the 20… It’s the second warrant hearing. Yeah. Or there’s been times where we’ve made a recommendation at town meeting- Yep … or I think maybe even that some haven’t been finished by then even. So we will table this for tonight.

1:09:35 Oh, are we one off the rest of the way? Twenty ratification of salary bylaw. Okay. So yeah. Article 20. Article 20. I’ll just throw it up.

1:09:48 Ratification of salary bylaw.

1:09:53 And I believe this captures your entire year. Was it calendar year? Sure. Yeah. We don’t have one for that or no? Yeah, we know. Yeah. I missed 20. Right.

1:10:07 We’re doing 20 even though 21’s on the screen. There you go. Set off the screen. And we want to make that funding that amount. Yeah. So, article 20, it’s an annual warrant article in which the Compensation Committee presents its report. Again, the Compensation Committee, which was created by bylaw, is a delegation of town meetings authority to set the classification and salary schedules of the employees. Compensation Committee exists to allow to make changes to the, compensation schedule or, I’m sorry, to the classification schedule during the course of the year, just out of necessity of

1:10:53 hiring employees or making changes to job descriptions and keeping up to date. The members of the Compensation Committee is the town administrator, the chief financial officer, and they select a third person, which is the current health director, Andrew Petty, who’s the senior member on the committee, been the longest-serving. And so any department heads that are looking to update job descriptions, make changes, that comes to the Compensation Committee. If any new employees are being hired above a step one, because there are eight steps typically in the pay grades, Compensation Committee has to approve hiring above a step one. That’s a necessity given the marketplace.

1:11:40 If you recruited somebody with some level of experience and so forth, you’re not going to bring them in at a step one at the lowest pay grade. You’re going to set the salary to what is comparable to bring them in. So again, that’s all the authority of the Compensation Committee. The report that I shared with the chair that is complete is calendar year ‘25. What I typically do for town meeting is I’ll do a supplemental from January up until town meeting of any actions so that those are covered. In this report, for the calendar year 2025, we made 38 personnel actions. Over the course of the year, there were 10 job description updates that

1:12:28 also had a grade change. So when we change a job description, we evaluate it using the process given to us by the HR consultants that we’ve used that grade all the criteria, the position in order to set the appropriate pay grade. So there were 10 in which there were job description changes that resulted in pay grade changes. And again, any department heads that come and we make those changes, improve it, it’s within the budgets that they have. So even though that position may take a commitment of a higher pay grade, it has to be in the means of their budget in order to do that. There were 12 job description updates with no grade changes.

1:13:13 We just updated job descriptions, but it didn’t result any grade changesThere were three new positions created mostly to replace obsolete positions. So as our workforce needs change, we create a new position, job description as such, and typically,

1:13:33 it’s replacing another job description that is obsolete and no longer needed, in some cases, not all. We had 13 hires above the entry-level step one. That’s been ongoing just because of Marblehead’s compensation schedule compared to the marketplace. We are behind, and so when we recruit new people, we have to pay them at a higher step.

1:14:02 And,

1:14:05 yeah. So those are the summary of the 38 actions that we took in the calendar year.

1:14:13 And so does this article vote… I know you said you update through June 30th. Is the vote for the fiscal year? So, the action taken by town meeting is to ratify the actions of the compensation committee. For the calendar year? Well, the way I’ve been doing it is actually, technically it’s from the last town meeting to the current town meeting. Yeah. I try to call out what they’ve- Technical annual reports. Yeah. And again, the idea is presenting to town meeting, “Here’s the actions we’ve taken,” and town meeting votes to ratify the taking of those actions. So when I present at town meeting, it’ll be for those actions since last town meeting and current of

1:14:59 the town meeting we’re going into. That’s- Is 38 kind of a standard number, or have you been doing anything differently this year? Well, we’ve been doing a lot. In public works, for example, Amy and the crew have been doing a lot of reorganizing the staffing levels that was presented at the budget, where previously, if you looked at the org chart, it was flat and wide responsibility. Now it’s a more vertical organization where employees have upward mobility and levels of supervision. So that has resulted in a lot of job description changes, in some cases, grade changes. As positions have been upgraded to have supervisory responsibilities, that would cause it to go to a higher pay grade.

1:15:46 So we’ve been doing a lot, looking at a lot of positions across the organization and updating and making them current and making the organization more current and more productive.

1:16:01 Any comment, any other questions or comments? These positions that Albert said were non-union are being- So it also includes unions, and what the process is, if it’s a change to a union position, compensation committee will go through the process and review and vote on changes. We then submit it to the union, and they will review and either concur or bargain any changes or sometimes reject the changes that we’re proposing. And then we kind of hash it out with them. So yeah. For union positions, the collective bargaining, it’s typically MMEU that had these positions, because fire and

1:16:46 police, those are pretty standard. Those positions don’t really change, right? The public safety positions. So the unions basically have a say in any changes to union positions.

1:17:03 Public comment. So AMQ, I am probably one of the people, this compensation committee, most last year and the year before. But I just wanted to commend them. They are very thorough. It’s almost a grilling when you go. If you don’t have all your ducks in a row and you can’t really substantiate what the change is about, it does not get voted at all. They send you home. So, they do a great job. They make you think about everything, and we really are seeing a lot of efficiencies that have come out of a compensation committee. And then also, I just wanted to say to the public works committee, we sent you a letter that we worked on all of this, but as chair, we just wanted to say that this also is one that we acknowledge does bring efficiencies

1:17:50 into all of the departments.

1:17:54 Thanks.

1:17:57 Do you think that next year that we might see fewer of these? Do you feel like in terms of the process of in DPW and of resetting the structure, do you think that we’re there yet? Yeah, and again, that’s a pretty sizable department relative to the others. So the fact that there was a holistic look at that whole department, and it has 30, 20, 30- Four … 24 employees. So yeah, there were a lot of changes. So it might be a bump in the level of activity. Library has been looking at a lot of positions, and that has a number of positions, so I don’t know. Kim is at the- Speaking of. Oh, there you are.

1:18:44 Director of that library. And yes, we’ve been reviewing our job descriptions. It’s been a project that went on for five years. And- Kim, I’m sorry. Could you speak up, please? Oh, you can’t hear me? Okay. Thank you. So yes. I

1:18:59 just wanted to say that I’ve been doing a lot of work with the job descriptions at the library and have reviewed lots and lots of them. It’s important to get the language right, and the compensation committee has been very helpful with hearing me out and listening to the fact that even we need to get those card catalogs out of the old job descriptions. But it’s been very helpful. And the restructuring that I’ve had to do. It was wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. I might add, we’re working with an HR consultant doing a compensation study and job classification study.

1:19:41 We’re pretty well along in the process working with a consultant. So that may, when that report gets finalized, that may generate a lot of activity going forward in the next year. Is that GovHR, like the last time? Or last time it was done, it’s- GovHR … similar to? It’s the same company, different name. They bought out GovHR. Okay. I forget the name, but. So, it’s a- Yeah … vetted system. Yes, and our bylaw requires us to do this review every three years. Right. Yeah.

1:20:22 Any other questions from FinCom or the public?

1:20:29 I’d like to make a motion to recommend that the town ratifies certain actions taken by the Compensation Committee. Second. Mr. Chigo? Yes. Mr. Lillian? Yes. Mr. Goldberg? Yes. Ms. Neitz? Yes. Mr. Hine? Yes. Mr. Klein? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Shull? Yes. Ms. Yulich? Yes.

1:20:55 Article 21, Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School District.

1:21:02 My understanding is that the number for this year to be appropriated from taxes is $749,920 to cover the town of Marblehead’s share in the tuition of Essex Tech for Marblehead residents that attend Essex Tech. That’s correct. They changed the way that they were doing it, so now more students are eligible and the cost is rising. And moving forward, that is something that will change starting this year, is it? Yes. That more students, compared to previous years from Marblehead, will be eligible to be accepted? Correct. Right. So they had to move to a lottery system to be compliant with DESE.

1:21:49 And then, each participating community is allotted so many seats

1:21:59 of students, and because it’s a lottery system,

1:22:05 it makes it more likely that all of the allocated seats that basically if you apply, I’m sure there’s some kind of minimum qualification, but you apply, you’re eligible for the seat rather than, I think, in the past where you go through some kind of process to be selected.

1:22:25 And then there was changes made where the larger communities, the cities that had far more seats, had concerns and were able to vote to shift the allocation to distribute it out differently, which means Marblehead has a higher number of seats eligible, than we’d had in the past. Yeah. So for this year’s number, I don’t see a- Up by three … I don’t see a crazy spike compared to prior years in terms of the increase, but I do think that if that’s concerning to us moving forward, then this number could jump significantly, and we’re already in a situation where we have less revenue this year than last year, TBD into the future.

1:23:13 So again, I don’t think I have much issue voting this year’s number, but I’m interested in monitoring this and seeing if there’s ways for Marblehead to maybe protect itself a bit. So a number of the town manager, town administrators have been working collaboratively on this, but ultimately it’s a vote of the tech board. Right. And they actually have a weighted board system, so the larger communities will have a greater share of votes than the smaller communities. So I would just say it’s a challenge. It’s a big challenge for me because I do a very small estimate based off of what it is this year, and I have to wait till they vote in March. I have no idea what their number’s going to be, and they will not release it to us till they vote.

1:23:58 Right. So do we agree that the big change is the future, not what we’re looking at right now? Correct. So they’ve given us this assessment number. Yeah. It’s a preliminary assessment number. So at least that’s what it was on the paperwork that Mark Strout gave to us. Mm-hmm. This is what they voted. Okay. So there’s no risk in this number? Correct. Okay. They have a cutoff date as to what their enrollment’s going to be, and that sets a number that they send to us. And can I ask one question? How is that amount determined? Is it by the number of students in the town that are allotted for Marblehead? Yes. It’s determined by enrollment, and then they look at their needs in the

1:24:45 school, so it includes their capital needs plus their operational needs, and then they divide that up by the enrolled students by community. Their cost, 4.5% this year. Yeah. Which is what’s part of what’s driving it. And the enrollment- It’s a small driver of the increase … and the enrollment … in that enrollment. Right. But the enrollment increase from last year to this year is not nearly what it could be given the changes but outside of what we’re voting on. Right. And this assessment is pro rata. In other words, how many students Marblehead is sending. Yes. There’s a per pupil charge that goes into that number. So they have their total cost of education minus other funding resources, state, and such, and then what’s left is allocated based on

1:25:30 populationTo the different communities. I’m just concerned that we’re paying for Marblehead students and nothing else. Correct. Thank you. Yes. And Alec and I are in the process of setting up a call with administrators there to help us sort of understand and quantify what this looks like for the next couple years. Yeah. Once I get it. You’re able to kind of ballpark it though, if it is the first student number, right? And when you know how many students and what else. We don’t know. That’s the problem. Three? We know what the year before was, but because they changed the way they’re doing it, we had no idea how much the new cap was going to bring with the new way they were doing it. So they didn’t give you numbers what the new cap is then for students? No, until they did their vote. Well- They give us a preliminary number, then they do their-

1:26:17 Yeah, we’re talking about next year. Yeah. The maximum amount of students from Marblehead that’s going up next year compared to this. I thought that was- So the number of seats- But I think you’re right that you could put an estimate based on the max- Right … whatever that number comes in at. So the number of Marblehead seats have increased. Then, I don’t know what date it is, but it’s late in our process. There is a certain date in which I think students have to commit, and then the tech school provides us X number of Marbleheaders have committed. So if we have 39 seats, there may be 35 students had committed, so our cost is 35 students times per pupil cost. But the max for fiscal year ‘27 versus fiscal year ‘28,

1:27:04 is it going up significantly? It’s going to– Yeah. That’s what I was getting at, or what Alec said first. Yes. At least you’d be able to estimate or at least get it- Right … handled right. Yep. As long as we know how many kids it is, then you can- Yeah … count on it. But she doesn’t get the final number until whenever you give us that packet. Three weeks. Right. So usually I email them, and then they don’t usually get back to me with a preliminary till February, and then I don’t have a definitive till March.

1:27:30 So

1:27:33 something to monitor. Public comment? Jack. Mr. Chair, a bit of an unofficial job that I’ve taken over for the past couple of years is to inform Mr. Stroud from Essex Tech and the citizens petitioners, of this hearing tonight. And I’m remiss that I was not in touch with them, so I’m asking if we could move them to the second warranted hearing night. Yeah. It’s a question that I plan on asking Mr. Stroud to explain to town meeting a little bit about the impending change in- Yeah, absolutely. I think we can vote tonight because it’s a number, but I’ll put it as he can come and present again. This year, I think it’s 13%. It’s sort of their

1:28:19 standard- Yeah … increase that they’ve done in the past. Yeah. I share the concern about what’s coming. Absolutely. Yeah. So it would be this article and then 37 through 40. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks. Any other public comments on article 21?

1:28:41 I’d like to make a recommendation that the sum of 749,920 be appropriated to be raised by taxation.

1:28:50 Second. Mr. Janda? Yes. Mr. O’Donnell? Yes. Mr. Golsan? Yes. McHugh? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Ms. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Shuttler? Yes. Ms. Sylvie? Yes.

1:29:12 All right. Article 22, available funds appropriate to reduce tax rates. So, there are a number of quote unquote “available funds” or revenue sources when we present the revenue estimate that get funded by this article and approved. The number this year is 5,360,000, 5 million of which comes from free cash, 360,000 from the electric light surplus. My understanding is that free cash available to be appropriated at the moment is estimated around 6 million. 6 and a half. Of which we’ve got 5 million or so in the budget. 5 million exactly, I should say.

1:30:00 Mm-hmm.

1:30:02 Which is a $2 million decline from the 7 million appropriated last year. So we’ve talked about this probably 10 times as a group, but that’s eating up that reduction in free cash being used to balance the budget of 2 million is eating up a large portion of our property tax revenue that’s increasing annually. So it’s putting a lot of pressure on the budget that we’re declining in that area.

1:30:29 That would leave, call it, somewhere between 300 to 700,000 of free cash.

1:30:38 Sorry, 280,000 is also being used from free cash to fund contractual lease purchase obligations. And if free cash comes in between six and six and a half, that leaves about 712,000 to 1,200,000, which is not appropriated, which is oftentimes used for negotiations that happen after the budget, as well as just unrestricted funds that is probably a lot lower than we probably should have anyways. Mm-hmm. So, we’re cutting it real tight here. Yes. But that’s kind of my interpretation of the free cash situation and why it’s driving a deficit or contributing to it. Is that fair?

1:31:24 Yeah. Yes. Alicia, as of this moment, the DOR has not yet certified our free cash? No, because Alicia’s doing this and free cash. Sorry? And the override. I’m working on this free cash and the override simultaneously right now. So I will hope to have free cash by the end of this week. But DOR has not- No, because I have to submit it to them. Thank you. Add, and just to add, so that means, the past few years, we’ve used free cash to fund capital. We’re using zero of it this year.

1:31:58 And we’ve used it for other things, smaller capital pieces and whatnot. So, we’re using most of it for the operating budget, but we’re keeping a small amount off to the side in case of emergencies. Yes. We are trying. It is just bad practice to use free cash to run the operating budget. And again, when I rolled in three and a half years ago, we were using $10 million to supplement the operating budget. So it’s more of a matter of policy that we’re trying to reduce the reliance on free cash within the operating budget. And then what free cash we do generate goes to our reserves, and it goes to our capital

1:32:46 programs, which is a more appropriate use of free cash. So in the past, the budget, as I understand it, wouldn’t necessarily be set until we knew what the free cash was, because that would determine how much of a budget you would have. The approach I’ve taken is we will do a conservative estimate of what we think free cash will be, make a determination of what amount of free cash will be used for the budget, with the idea that each year we need to decrease it until we’re using zero in the operating budget. So this year, on that trajectory, 5 million, and to reduce going forward.

1:33:37 Great fiscal balance.

1:33:41 Yeah. So, I think we’ve talked about this a lot as a committee. And I think going into the future, I think the reliance on free cash and your assumptions moving forward may be even declining more. Yep. To both get off of it and to protect ourselves in case- Yep … it’s less. Right.

1:33:59 Any other questions from FinCom on Article 22? Any public comments on Article 22?

1:34:08 I’d like to make a recommendation that the sum of 5,360,000 be appropriated from the following sources for the use of the assessors in making the tax rate from free cash 5 million and from electric surplus of 360,000. Second.

1:34:27 Mr. Django. Yes. Ms. Runyan. Yes. Mr. Goldsole. Yes. Ms. Yee. Yes. Mr. Terrelung. Yes. Ms. Frankson. Yes. Ms. Garcia. Yes. Mr. Shaw. Yes. Ms. Newby. Yes.

1:34:44 All right. Expenses of several departments.

1:34:50 So this article makes up about 80 to 90% of what the FinCom does annually, probably closer to that 90%. I usually prepare a pretty long

1:35:02 thing to say for this, but I’m sort of going to wing it this year because I feel like I’ve spent more time this year than any other year, so I kind of can remember what to say, I think. So, similar to the last few years, I’d say our budget season technically started back in August, so just two months after last year’s fiscal year-end close, where we had a planning meeting with Thatcher, Alicia, and we discussed kind of the schedule for the fall. We’ll call it the planning season as we head into the budget season. The first big thing that we did, I should say, when I say we, I consider the FinCom and Alicia one here in these exercises. So it’s usually Alicia drafting everything.

1:35:48 Molly and I have spent a lot of time in her office in each of these steps. We’ve presented various steps I’m going to go through before the select board. We’ve discussed them as a finance committee all the way up until tonight. So the first big kind of milestone of the planning season, I’ll say, is the revenue forecast. And Alicia spent a lot of time preparing that. Was as detailed as I’ve ever seen. Local receipts, looking at every single line you could ever imagine that is a local receipt, showing three- to five-year estimates. We might have gone back 10 years for those, actually. I’ll just pull up a summary of our change in available revenue for the operating budget as kind of a summary of this. We discussed that as a FinCom. We presented it to the

1:36:37 select board. That was step one. In December, step two, we worked towards between the revenue projection and the three-year revenue verse expense forecast. That was also a meeting that we had to discuss amongst FinCom. Molly and I spent a lot of time with Alicia helping support her in that. And then it was presented to the select board. From my perspective, we were doing those things. Not that Alicia doesn’t do them always, but FinCom was supporting those things these last few years, sort of in anticipation of where we landed in January, right? So the deficit that kind of revealed itself in January, if we look back at FinCom reports for the last few years, we’ve sort of been projecting it to come, maybe not to the exact number it came

1:37:25 in at. Some have called this year the perfect storm, and I sort of agree. But at the same time, I don’t want to sit up here and say that it was surprising, I think, to anybody that’s been involved in this process.So what we have here is with respect to available revenues for the balanced budget that we vote, that budget I’m talking about is the town-wide budget without debt service and without revolving accounts. So some like to refer to it as the budget available for the town side operating departments and the schools to share in the general fund budget. Right? The revenue is $600,000 less than last year. And I have up on screen

1:38:12 a summary that kind of breaks that out real quickly. I know we’ve been over it a bunch, but one would think with Prop 2.5 in play that you’d always have increases of revenue. So you can see there, yeah, we do, $2.2 million more. However, our change in local receipts from fiscal years ‘26 budget to ‘27 is offsetting that 2.2 million by one million right off the top. That’s largely driven by decrease in amounts invested as well as a decrease in interest rates, along with estimates for local receipts with respect to excise taxes as well. Those were the three largest drivers. So right away, our 2.2 million of available property tax revenue has come down by about one million from a change in local receipts.

1:39:01 The other big decrease, as we mentioned in the previous article, is the amount of free cash being used to balance the budget is down two million. So if you just take those three alone, we’re down 800,000 in available revenue. Yes, we have some additional other revenue sources, some increases in enterprise funds, indirect costs, which I think, Alicia, you’ve increased. I think that was stance, stagnant for probably eight to 10 years before you were here. So that helps a little bit. State aid helps, however, there’s state aid offsets that kind of reduce that. So long story short, we’ve got about $600,000 less of revenue to fund both municipal and school operations, and we know that both sides grow along with their other general

1:39:48 government’s insurance costs and pension costs. They’re going up while the available revenue to fund those costs are going down. So that is kind of what we’re talking about when folks are referring to the perfect storm. Increase in expenses being offset by a decrease in revenue is not a great answer. So long story short, we get the state of the town and Thatcher, Alicia, us, the select board, have all been talking about this for a number of years, and it’s time to present what the level services budgets are. We’re talking about level services. We’re talking about contractual obligations. There’s no new positions being funded. There’s no wants being funded that aren’t necessary. It’s just straight up,

1:40:35 these are our contractual obligations based on union contracts, based on our admin positions, sort of following a little bit less as we talked about earlier the last two years. I’ve adjusted these numbers a little bit. I have a number of boxes here to walk through to help tell the story here, but I’ve adjusted the top numbers just a little because what was presented at State of the Town didn’t have what I’ll call budget adjustments all finalized because Alicia and Thatcher were still doing departmental meetings. We were still refining estimates on health insurance, and I think pension was set, but things like that. Mm-hmm. So what we had was about $103.8 million of expenses

1:41:21 that were the level services expenses after all budget department meetings, when we’ve refined every estimate in that budget, and I think we’ve looked at that other general government closer than we ever have as well. That’s compared to the last data I just showed you of 96.5 million, which is the available revenue, right? So that’s our actual deficit. After all budget adjustments, after all refinements and estimates, we have a $7.2 million deficit to address.

1:41:56 So this is the first year where we’ve effectively hit our fiscal cliff with no availability of unforeseen free cash to maybe help address it. There was a lot of work that had to go into the next step here, which was what’s driving that deficit. And it’s really easy to see what’s driving it if you look at the historical presentation of town versus schools in the general fund budget. But what we wanted to do was take a closer look at all of those other general government costs that were being carried on the town side that actually are costs of both the town and schools, right? They benefit both town and school employees and retirees. So that deep dive into other general government that I’ve been talking about the last few weeks, where we spent hours and hours

1:42:45 helping Alicia support her in how to approach that section of the budget, but also audit it. I didn’t want to audit it, but I was forced to. So those who have been following along might realize why. So what we identified was of the other general government, about 12 and a half million of those costs are directly related to school, employee, and retirees. So what we decided to do was allocate last year’s. We also looked at last year’s other general government to figure out what percentage of last year’s was attributable to town and school employees. And we said, what percentage of the operating budget is actually the school versus the municipal side? And that came out in various runs of this between 62 to

1:43:32 63% schools and 37 to 38% town. I think we finally landed on 62/38 after getting a call from the guy that does the pension report to help us last week. So what we said wasIf we allocate the actual costs in this year’s budget attributable to school employee and retirees to the school’s standard presentation of their operating budget, their level service, what is their actual level service request in terms of expense side? And we did the same for the town. So we basically reclassed that 12.5 million over, and then we compared it to 62% of the available revenue, which is probably the better economic way to do it, but I think it just took a while to do all the work to get there.

1:44:18 So I just want to give a big shout-out to Alicia, and honestly, the select board, the school committee, the FinCom, a number of us have spent time in her office. It was a collective effort to kind of create this kind of better way to look at the budget and really help us figure out what’s driving the deficit, but also how do we address the deficit. So ultimately what we determined based on this long analysis was that the school’s identified deficit was about 3.2 million, with its share of deficit related to other general government costs, and the town was at 4.1. So large gaps to find in operating budgets.

1:45:05 You can look at the towns. I’ll jump ahead a little bit, but the town’s operating budget without benefits in it is only 36 million, right? And the school’s… I’m sorry, did I get that wrong? It’s only 26 million, and 25 this year. And the school’s is 47 million. So to find cuts to each of their budgets of four and three are very large cuts to the overall budget when you put benefits off to the side. So let’s talk about how the town first is addressing its deficit. So one way to address its deficit, what was included in the 52.9 up front was the costs related

1:45:53 to curbside collection. So the select board and its professional designees have decided to ask the town, I believe, for an override of $2.2 million to cover the cost of the full curbside collection

1:46:12 in the operating budget historically, adjusted for this year’s costs. My understanding is that if that override fails, that there’s also the potential that this fee, I don’t know if it’s been created yet, but- The other order. So the precedence is setting up the fee structure- Correct … to fund it, and then given the option through an override to increase the levy to replace the fee. Right. So it’s fee first, then the override option. Well, the fee has been created, but the override can trump the fee. Correct. That’s kind of where I was thinking. Yeah. So that is listed in the operating budget we will vote tonight, but it’s funded by a revolving fee. Are we calling it a revolving? No. With going into the general fund, so it’s just going to be user fee

1:46:59 or override by loss fit. Yeah. Yeah. So long story short, that 2 million is out of the 96.5 million split we’re talking about. And it’ll be voted either through an override, so it will be back into the operating budget, or it’ll be covered by a fee that’s collected through the operating budget as well. On the town side, that still left $1.8 million to find from their standard level services budget. As we all know, the town and school side, about 80% of our budget, I’d say, is personnel. So in order to find that high amount, you have to make a lot of cuts to personnel. And in order to cut $1.9 million

1:47:47 of costs, most of which are personnel, you’re going to have to increase unemployment costs. You actually have to cut more personnel to be able to even balance, right? So the town had to find 2.5 million of additional cuts effectively to find $1.9 million in cuts, because of the increase in unemployment costs. And we’ve summarized those down below. Select board, reserve fund, finance as shown on screen. The departments that were most impacted are community planning and development, library, public buildings, finance, other general governments, which are things like OPEB and stabilization and

1:48:34 things like that. And you can see the FTE cuts off to the side over here. So on the town side, as we summarized at our meeting last week, there are about 22 FTE cuts from funded positions. I believe 18 to 19 of those are actual folks sitting in seats today. So letting people go. These are not retirements that we’re not filling. These are not mostly vacant positions. There’s a few of those, but mostly seats that unfortunately have had the big cut from the balanced budget this year. So significant deep impact. The 22 cut over, I believe it’s 185 total employees on the town

1:49:19 side funded by the general fund, was about 12% of the town side employees funded from the general fund. So a very high percentage. The only other thing I wanted to point out here, regarding the curbside trash collection override or fee situation, is that if the town were to make cuts to address that in a different way, if it didn’t pull that out of the general fund-That 12% number was probably closer to 25%. Mm-hmm. And as Thatcher portrayed at State of the Town, and then again at a later presentation, that was defunding, I think, four to five of our major departments- Mm-hmm … on the town side. So, I view the trash fee,

1:50:05 personally, I’ve said this to the FinCom already, as a an executive decision, a solution to almost cuts that aren’t even possible if you want to really run the town of Marblehead on the town side. So hopefully that covers the impact of the town side and what it’s been facing and how it’s addressing its deficit. The schools have to cut 3.2. I believe up until recently, they’ve already shown 1.7 million of those cuts, which include 14 FTEs. I do think the majority of those relate to either vacancies, upcoming retirements, or natural

1:50:51 attrition. They have a lot more turnover annually just because they have a lot more employees than the town side. However, the 1.5 million has yet to be presented by the school committee. So, they voted their bottom line budget, but they haven’t indicated how they’re coming up with the remaining 1.5 million at this time.

1:51:13 What else did I want to show? So, the final allocation of available revenue of the 96.5, I just want to be clear that the presentation in this year’s FinCom report is not going to change in this year’s budget. The town is still going to present all of the other general government’s costs on the town side, presentation-wise. But the analysis that went into determining the split of the costs of the 96.5, the deep analysis, was driven by the $36 to $60 million difference, which is towns versus schools in total. And then the last thing I wanted to show, I kind of highlighted it earlier, was

1:52:00 the year over year change of town side operating budgets on their own, school side operating budget on its own, and then the other general government, which obviously benefits both. The town side departments are down $1 million year over year. So we’re talking about last year’s budget. We know costs are going up. All those costs that went up are down plus a million, right? The schools, 49.1. They’re down 1.5 million compared to last year. So all those costs that are going up that we know, contractual obligations, those contracts they signed, other just inflationary type costs, those are all out, plus another 1.5. So both sides are facing town 3.8% cuts to its operating without benefits, and schools

1:52:46 3%. The other general government is up 8%, and like I said, we scrubbed those numbers closer than we ever have. I think Alicia did, and then we have as well. So I think this just highlights the pressure on both sides, town and school this year, and how hard this budget season’s been, and also that the other general government is a large driver of that pressure. And I think that we had the GIC come present to the FinCom. Just five years ago, the GIC’s health insurance rates were up 2%. In the last four years, I think we’ve seen five, six, eight, 12, and then this past year, 10 on average. So the perfect storm comments, revenue’s down,

1:53:33 costs like that, that are just sort of out of our control. It really is probably the toughest budget season, certainly that I haven’t been a part of, but probably one of the toughest that Marblehead has seen as well. At least since some of the older members in the audience have been around as I’ve talked to. So, let’s see here, what did I miss? You got it all. Okay. So, I want to highlight one thing I didn’t mention. The library has taken significant cuts on the town side. And Kim has done a nice job of presenting to us at our last meeting what that will mean. She’ll present again at town meeting. But we’re talking about eight and a half FTEs cut from the library. That’s going to significantly reduce services in terms of

1:54:21 days that the library can be open. I don’t want to take away from the other cuts because the library does have a larger budget than some of the other departments impacted here, but I will say that the library is significantly impacted, and I just wanted to make sure that’s highlighted if I didn’t mention it before.

1:54:41 So that’s kind of the big picture of what we’ve been doing as a FinCom tasked with presenting a balanced budget, working alongside Alicia Thatcher and the Selectboard and School Committee over the last, I don’t know, eight to nine months. We knew it was coming. We didn’t know the numbers. It’s been very challenging. But I’m hopeful that we can come up with a way to present to town meeting how to address this deficit. And I think there’s a number of ways we’re doing so.

1:55:10 Thank you, all. Anything to add? Thank you so much, Alec and Molly, for your time, for you guys’ support. Yeah. Thank you. I can’t thank you enough.

1:55:23 Anything else from the FinCom? Public comment?

1:55:31 Well, that was easy. You covered it all.

1:55:35 All right. There’s a lot to say. Yes. I’d like to make a recommendation that the sum of one… And just before we do this, we already voted all of the individual departments that roll up into this last week. I think it was last week, right? Yes. Super Saturday. Super Saturday, which got great feedback, so we might meet thatI’d like to make a recommendation that the sum of $122,762,030 be appropriated. $109,777,938 is to be raised from taxation and other available funds, and $12,984,092 is to be appropriated from available enterprise funds. Mm-hmm. Waste curb center. That’s not part of the recommendation.

1:56:20 Second. Mr. Junger? Yes. Mr. O’Neil? Yes. Mr. Grossi? Yes. Ms. Stevens? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Shafferin? Yes. Ms. Doody? Yes.

1:56:41 Great.

1:56:45 All right. Article 24,

1:56:49 general stabilization fund. There is no amount being recommended or requested to be transferred to the stabilization account. Correct. Right now we have 1.5 million available as we entered this fiscal year. There’s been nothing requested to be drawn from it from town meeting.

1:57:16 Let’s see here. Molly’s done a lot of research here, so I don’t want to speak for her, but I think Marblehead ranks as the eighth lowest town in all of Massachusetts on its metric of its stabilization versus its operating budget. The Mass Department of Revenue recommends that towns maintain stabilization between 5% and 7% of their operating budgets, and Marblehead’s financial policies recommend 3% to 5%. We’re only at about 1.4% as we stand. So, hopefully as we move into the future, we can at least get up into our kind of recommended financial policy. We have made a lot of progress. It sounds like we haven’t, but we have the past three to five years in getting that, because I think just four years ago it was established, so we didn’t even have a fund.

1:58:03 So it’s nice to have 1.5, but we clearly need to get it at least to that $3 to $5 million range to be kind of in line with our policy. I just think it’s important to note that even though we have 1.5, that’s our restricted reserve. We still keep at least a million in our unrestricted reserve as free cash. Yeah. That’s right. And just as a reminder, to draw from this restricted reserve, it takes a two-third vote of either annual or a special town meeting. Correct. All right. So no recommendation under this article because nothing to be requested. We’re going to start moving quickly here because there’s a lot like that. School buildings capital needs. Just a placeholder article, nothing being requested at this time. If they decide to do something in between now and town meeting, we’d have to

1:58:49 revisit it. But for now, no recommendation. Nothing’s being requested. Article 26, school buildings technology needs. Same exact thing as 25. Nothing being requested, so no recommendation. Article 27, school department capital needs. Nothing’s being requested at this time, so no recommendation under this article. Article 28 and 29, those are the two override articles. One is specifically for the schools, and one is specifically for expenses of several departments, which historically we’ve seen override requests from the schools in their own, and we’ve seen them in the past five years as part of

1:59:37 an equivalent to Article 29. So, I believe there’ll be overrides presented this year that we will have to weigh in on, but not tonight. So on the 27th we will have to revisit Article 28 and 29 as things are finalized over the next few weeks. Does that make sense? Yes. So we’ll table our recommendation for now on 28 and 29. Article 30. Now I’m not scrolling. Yeah. So for Article 30, it says Gary on it, which always confuses me, but it’s for the Brown School. The MSBA recently this year wrapped up the audit on it, and there’s still $1,627,000 available for us to borrow. The schools could have chosen to reprogram that, and we could have gone

2:00:24 out and borrowed it and added it on to the levy, but instead, us talking with them, they’ve decided to rescind that $1.6 million back at town meeting to not be borrowed.

2:00:36 Yeah. So this effectively just releases the- Approval … yeah. And there’s no impact other than they can’t ask for it in a different way at this point. Correct. Okay. So, it does have financial implications, so I guess we’ll make a recommendation on it. But, nothing negative. Nothing negative. This is positive. It’s nice that we underspent on that project. Yes. Any questions from FinCom? Any public comments on Article 30? I’d like to make a motion to recommend that Article 30 be adopted. Second. Mr. Haydon? Yes. Mr. O’Neil? Yes. Mr. Grossi? Yes.

2:01:21 Ms. Stevens? Yes. Mr. Knight? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Mr. Shafferin? Yes. Ms. Doody? Yes.

2:01:32 Article 31, administrative benefit amendments. I was unsure if this is being brought forward or not. Yeah. Some department heads and others proposed this, put it under the banner of the select board.

2:01:56 I don’t recall what the conversation was in the select board on this one, but I think in some conversations that I’ve had,

2:02:06 given the current budget conditions, especially with the increased cost that would be incurred by increase in longevity and so forth, this may not be a good year to do this. The intent was, once again, the non-union, the administrative staff, keeping their, not just their salaries, but the benefit package comparable to what the collective bargaining unions have. So each time we negotiate a new collective bargaining unit with the unions, there’s usually some adjustments to things such as longevity. They’re always proposing making some tweaks to the vacation schedule. So this was an attempt for the

2:02:53 non-union to meet that. My sense, the personal days probably would have nominal, if any, impact, cost impact. But given the entirety of the package and the general cost of this, given the context, I don’t think there’s been any meaning of anybody saying we should table this. But I think- I would recommend that we definitely postpone it to be- There we go … close to the costs that it would put. Yeah. So we haven’t factored this into the budgets. Okay. Right. Yeah. In fact, it hasn’t been, so- Okay … we would have to definitely postpone because we wouldn’t be able to afford those changes at this point. Yeah. Of all people that would make the determination, the chief financial officer will. Okay.

2:03:39 If I may. Yeah. Because I was one of the people that met with Thatcher on this, and I was also, Maggie and- Steve … Connie. We were going to amend the article to take away the longevity piece because there is a financial impact on that, but the unions have enhanced their benefits for, what is it, Thatcher, 27 years or something? There really isn’t a financial impact with the other pieces of the article. There would be with vacation. If someone separated and I gave them another week of vacation, I’d have to pay that out. So that would be- Yeah. We’re only talking about people of more than 10 years.

2:04:24 So we really have to look at how many people that- We’ve already set a budget. It does have a financial impact, and I can’t recommend it. The three personal days wouldn’t have an impact, but those vacation- So it’s something. The administrators really do not get any discussion with any benefit enhancements, and it has been 25, 30 years except for the one longevity thing three years ago. So

2:04:53 I would suggest that we amend it to at least the personal days. Can we defer, and we’ll just have some conversations? Yeah. If you think that you’d like to have further conversations and do it on the 27th, can you change the article? What would have to happen is you can’t change the article that’s in place, is potentially propose the motion- Got it … to amend the article to something different. Got you. And that would happen in a town meeting. Correct. That’s not even something that would be at our next warrant hearing. So if there was anything to brought forth rather than just indefinitely postpone,

2:05:40 my sense would be you would be voting a recommendation on the proposed amendment, I think. Yeah. There could be an amendment. Yeah. Well, we could ask now. We can do that on the 27th. Yeah. Is that not all the department heads were part of this. We didn’t hear about it, and I do understand that as admin, we have not gotten everything that the union’s gotten, even though I’ve understood in the past that that was supposed to happen. But, I and a group of other people, when we were in public works, we were talking about don’t feel that this is the appropriate time to put this forward. When we’re talking about layoffs that actually increased this week. So it’s not a unanimous thing with all admins.

2:06:31 Okay. So I still set my recommendations to be to postpone these articles. Do you foresee that changing in the next few weeks? That’s my recommendation. I’d look to Thatcher and select board on what they would like to do.

2:06:47 So has the select board voted on this article? They’re- Do they do that? I don’t recall the action on this because I think it was a bit tied up. At the time. Yeah. This needs work. Okay. Why don’t we revisit it on the 27th? Yeah. And it’s possible it’ll still be indefinitely postponed. It’s possible it’ll look like this. Possible it’ll look like something else. How about that? Yeah. I agree. We should be doing something. The question is, given the financial constraints- Yeah … it can’t have financial impacts. Okay. All right. We’ll table this until the 27th. Article 32, mooring fees.

2:07:34 Oh, he’s so welcome. Hello. Hello. Hi. Yeah.

2:07:44 Made a chart which kind of explains what we’re doing and why. I appreciate it. I couldn’t read.

2:07:57 So we have one. Thank you. Yeah. Oh.

2:08:05 I’m John Dowd, the chairman of the Harbor and Waterfront Board, and fortunately everyone knows Mark, the harbor master. The purpose of this article is to raise the mooring fees $2 a float. Is that so? Basically, what the chart shows, the red line is their costs, what they’ve been doing. They’ve been going up, primarily driven by the employee benefits and the general government expense. The green line shows the revenues. The dotted line shows what it would be if we didn’t do anything. And the solid line shows what we’re proposing with a $2 a float increase. The reason why we’re doing this is because you can see on the blue line what our surplus is. Without this, the surplus would be declining. What we use the surplus for is basically to maintain our equipment and

2:08:54 do repairs. We’re facing really near term a potential as strand skis of 300,000. Longer term, three to five years, repairing the seawalls at Parker’s and Cliff Street, and that’s in 2023 dollars, $14 million. So the town share of that, which would be the Harbor Enterprise Fund share, could be in the neighborhood of $2 million. So that’s the purpose of what we use the surplus for. We’ve been doing this every four years or so. As costs increase more than revenues, then every four years we propose this. So actually in percentage terms, the increase is declining as we go through each year. Can I ask a question? Sure. Do you look at it every year and then you change it every four years?

2:09:40 Or do you look at it every four years? We monitor this basically every year. Okay. So it could be five years, could be three years, depending on what we need.

2:09:52 Thank you. You’re welcome. Working. And you can also see in the article there’s an increase in our 10A float fees, which is going from $6.50 to $12. That number came up, we did regional research on how that works with other communities. The $12 mark is pretty much right in line with all the other communities. The other driving piece of that is Department of Environmental Protection no longer permits more floats. We no longer need the structure for that, and they’re not requirements for communities to administer those permits, even though the 10A permit was already in place, it wasn’t in force. Now,

2:10:38 the state wants us to enforce that 10A permit, so there’s a little more administration involved in doing that. So it’s our due diligence to recover those costs in doing that. So that’s the increase in that part of it.

2:10:57 Makes sense. Is that just the float or is that the floating docks too? It’s the docks, floating docks. So any dock that’s secured by a buoy. Oh, the ones you see at Devereau in the off-season? Yeah. Those will be moving from different docks out. So not piers. Piers still fall under Department of Environmental Protection. Any permanent docks or floats are still going to be Department of Environmental Protection, so. Yeah. So last time we saw this was 2022 town meeting, and based upon your monitoring, it’s time for another increase, and it’s right within market trends. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

2:11:38 Any other questions from FinCom?

2:11:42 Any public comment on article 32?

2:11:48 Like to make a motion that article 33 be adopted. Second. Mr. Anderson? Yes. Mr. Herman? Yes. Mr. Bulsey? Yes. Ms. Heath? Yes. Mr. Mann? Yes. Mr. Franklin? Yes. Mr. Delson? Yes. Mr. Chapman? Yes. Heath? Yes. Thanks for waiting. Thank you.

2:12:14 All right. Article 33, amend general bylaw prohibition of cryptocurrency ATMs, which I’ve never been to one. Yes. That’s a good thing. Right. Never any time. Right. Correct. So, yeah, this is brought forth by a chief, sponsored by the Select board. And by the way, the reason I couldn’t recall conversation with Select board on that previous matter, they’ve yet taken up the Warren articles. So the Select board hasn’t done the Warren articles, that’s why I couldn’t remember any- Got it … conversation about it. And when they do, this will be on there. So, a number of municipalities are doing the same

2:13:00 thing of putting restrictions on

2:13:05 so-called ATM machines for cryptocurrency. There’s been a lot of scams and challenges, and basically, you have people who might think it’s a regular ATM machine, not understanding the implications of using it. In Marblehead, we are aware that there has been one machine in place in Marblehead. We’re not even sure it’s still in place. So, this is more of a preventive order, to prohibit the use of ATM crypto machines in Marblehead. This is my opinion. I’m going to guess this issue will mature, and somewhere down the line there may be regulations and things put in place that make it

2:13:52 safe in the future, and then the town can address whether to repeal or change this in the future. But as of right now It has been a problem in a number of communities of these machines being put in place, and patrons of the machines basically losing their shirts

2:14:12 through scams or just unaware of how crypto works compared to regular money. I don’t know if there’s any financial implication- Yeah … for the town. Yeah. There’s no- I was with you on that, both of you, on that. But as someone who has a career in law enforcement and has done seminars primarily for seniors, teaching them about the risks of scams and whatnot, one of the things that I talk about are crypto-type scams where people are told that their grandchild has been kidnapped, and they have to- Mm … send a certain amount of crypto or some other type of scam like that. And I’m deeply concerned that if

2:15:01 there were ATMs that vended crypto, that the number of people taken in by scams in Marblehead would increase. So even though it may not be our purview, I’m very much in favor of this article. Yes. Yeah. I agree. I don’t think there’s any financial impact to the town of this other than that maybe you’d collect some fees if they get the law, but I don’t think that’s worth making a recommendation. So I say we make no recommendation on this item.

2:15:36 Any public comments on article 33?

2:15:40 No recommendation. All right. Article 34, dissolve public works committee.

2:15:51 So I had requested the board put this on there.

2:15:57 So Marblehead has a town administrator position not because it’s any bylaw or anything, it’s because the select board in the ’90s determined it needed that position to help manage the affairs of the town on behalf of the select board. And anybody following the charter committee deliberations, there’s a lot of conversations about putting the position into the charter and therefore. One of the challenges in Marblehead, I’ll share my story, when I first came into the position three and a half years ago, first department head meeting, I asked the question, “How many department heads here in the room actually report to me?”

2:16:42 And I think the number was slightly less than half the room reporting to the town administrator. So the challenge of Marblehead is it has 11 independent boards and committees that have some type of authority and oversight of departments of Marblehead. The select board has

2:17:02 the most of them, is the largest. So, in the role of town administrator, it is really challenging to have some oversight, delegated authority over some of the departments, but not all the departments, as we deal with managing this $100 million-plus operation.

2:17:27 The bylaw that’s being addressed was created in 1970 before the town administrator position existed. So it appears it filled a necessary void of department heads meeting, convening in order to collaborate on the development of public works-related activities. The town administrator position was created in, I think, the early ’90s, ‘92, ‘93 timeframe. I don’t know when, but at some point, this committee sort of went dormant and has only recently been reconstituted. So the challenge from my perspective is,

2:18:14 it’s already a challenge as a town administrator that only has the authority over certain parts of this organization to manage and collaborate and coordinate. The reconstitution of this committee now creates another body of subordinates to the town administrator, who then convene, deliberate, and make recommendations on policies and such. And that, from an organizational perspective, just doesn’t work. I think it’s a challenge. And I think the biggest challenge for Marblehead, if that is to continue, is you will have a real difficult time retaining and recruiting town administrators

2:19:02 because folks in this role, it is a no-win situation when you already have multiple authorities above you, and now you have an entity convening and making decisions and policy that are subordinate to. In the next

2:19:25 article, it suggests putting the town administrator on the committee as well as other departments that didn’t exist when this was created. But the question is, why would a town administrator be one of many voting on a committee made up of one’s subordinates? From an organizational sense, it’s just going to create conflict and make it even more challenging. So therefore, I ask the select board to put that on to repeal basically as an outdated entity. All of the activities of that committeeCan and does already

2:20:10 happen as just part of the course of our meetings and our deliberations of managing the town. Does this committee have any authority over the town administrator? No, not that I’m aware of, other than the town administrator may be a minority vote on this committee on certain issues. So what would they be able to vote, though, that you couldn’t just overrule? I guess that’s what I’m trying to understand. Well, it’s- This is 34 we’re talking about still, right? 35- 34 is to dissolve, 35 is to modify. But they’re on- Right. They’re both related. Right. So this is to dissolve.

2:20:57 So again, the challenge of managing an organization in which you have 11 different authorities that have a say, and then now you have a structure, a management structure, in which the town administrator now has to worry about a committee of subordinates that may take positions different than the town administrator or the select board. Right? Is this a financial impact? Yeah, that was my question. No. And the recommendation. Yes. Well, it does build efficiency in things going forward, how departments work, or the other-

2:21:44 But we haven’t seen members reviewing. That’s it? Yeah, no, I hear what Amy’s saying, but I don’t believe this has financial measurable impact. That would be like saying that the FinCon has financial impact on town finance. I don’t think that we do have a measurable financial impact, although we probably impact it, right?

2:22:08 But go ahead. Yeah. Other comment? So I’ll just read the comment that the committee did today, and I’m more than welcome, be welcome to discuss any questions people have too, with specifics. But the committee members wanted to express strong support for preserving and strengthening the Public Works Committee. The value of this committee is that it creates a formal structure of cross-departmental coordination of the town’s complex public projects. Today, infrastructure and public property works rarely fall within a single department. Roads, drainage, utilities, buildings, public safety, engineering, permitting, schools impact, and long-term maintenance of all intersect. The Public Works Committee provides a forum to identify those intersections early, align departments around

2:22:56 shared priorities, and prevent projects from moving forward in silence. There is not about adding another layer to the process. It’s about protecting communication, efficiency, and accountability across departments so that projects better planned before they reach the crisis point. A strong example is the Reynolds Field playground. Work has already demonstrated how essential coordination review is across multiple departments and functions, including drainage and water connections, electrical services and lighting, roadways and parking impacts, engineering, conservation considerations, school use, field operations, and the long-term maintenance plan. Without the structure like the Public Works Committee, those conversations happen in fragments. And with the committee in place, the town has a formal mechanism to bring the right people together early so the issues can be identified, sequenced, and solved

2:23:43 collaboratively. Also, it gives the department heads a voice to be able to recommend to the finance committee and through town meeting, things that could have financial implications, things that you don’t think about having a financial implication. We can go back into the vote for off-street parking or the bathrooms at State Street Landing for the 50 trees, or the $50,000 in trees that were planted to admit a gap. I sat through all of your meetings, and no one actually addressed what the costs really are. And when we did address it, it was like a single person saying, and it wasn’t all departments involved.

2:24:29 This actually gives the recommendation of all departments involved to be able to say, “Those articles are going to end up having a financial impact.”

2:24:42 So we were hoping that that would be indefinitely postponed, and Article 35 is there to address everything that Thatcher was talking about. Yes, we agree, town has changed dramatically since then. But we still find that this really gives a transparency to the whole project. It’s only recommendation. They have no clout other than to write a letter and say, “Hey, we recommend,” or, “We don’t recommend these things.” We’d like to bring it down to quarterly so that it’s not a monthly meeting. It doesn’t take place in department heads. And things that would be reviewed are already put out on the table from whatever person is putting them forward or whatever board will be putting them forward. You won’t take that up anymore. Amy, would you say that this committee, in your opinion, operates in an

2:25:29 advisory capacity to the town administrator? They would be an advisory capacity to the town administrator, the finance committee, any board that would like to come and show a project to us, or Tommy. And would you agree with that, Mr. Keesler? I think what’s being just demonstrated tonight proves my point that we have now different levels of government having different opinions.

2:26:04 Like so that’s…

2:26:09 All right. So yeah, I don’t think this has measurable financial impactSo I think it’s a great debate, and I think it’s a great one for town meeting.

2:26:21 But we’re going to make no recommendation on Article 34. Did you want to present 35, or did you kind of present that as part of that? Well, so 35, some of the highlights are that would be… So this was found during the charter committee review. And yes, it had been held dormant. I did go back and check. It has never been dissolved. So, why that is, I don’t know. But we have been meeting monthly. It has been extremely productive. We have had public comment at all of these. What we have proposed is to put forward department heads that are involved just in public ways or public buildings.

2:27:09 They would just be reviewing projects in the public ways or public buildings, or articles that would affect public ways or public buildings. And, they’d only meet quarterly, which would be before the construction period happens, during design in the fall, and then for budget time and the town meeting, more articles in town meeting. And again, it does give a clear point. It also brings department heads together who do not fall under the select board. And over the years I’ve been here, not all those departments have come to the town department head meetings. So that is really up to the boards and department heads, really, whether they go. So it does actually force all of us to get together.

2:27:56 Thank you. No recommendation under Article 35.

2:28:03 Article 36, Department of Public Works, housekeeping.

2:28:13 This has absolutely no financial implications. It is just cleaning up the language- Okay … to meet past articles. No recommendation under this article.

2:28:28 William Cooper here? William? Yeah. These are the last of the articles, so I was hoping we could vote. Yeah. We’re going to make no recommendation on 37 or 38. Is that what you meant, 37, 38? To allow them- Yeah, he can speak if he wants to come, for either of them. But we’re not going to make a recommendation on them. But he’s welcome to join our next meeting.

2:28:58 39, repeal Article 34. That’s last year’s Article 34, right? Two years ago. Department of Planning and Community Development. Two years. Two years ago, sorry. All right. So this one’s interesting to me, whether it has financial implications, because as I read it, it talks about defunding said departments and all offices. And what’s interesting is that the new positions that were created in this article are not funded in the budget. However, the town planner is in this department, right? Mm-hmm. Town planner. So we can table it to talk. But maybe some homework ahead of time to figure out the implications of

2:29:44 this for us. Because if you’re defunding a department that has budget in it still, which community development does, it has the town planner and maybe some other stuff in it, then that does have financial implications. There’s a clerk and the town planner, yeah. I’ve asked for an opinion on this. Okay. Thank you. So we’ll table this one like Jack suggested, until our next meeting, and William can come and talk about those two articles. All right, Article 40. Same thing. Oh, same thing. Sorry. Yeah, no financial implications. So,

2:30:21 I think we’re done. Long meeting, but a lot less long than I anticipated. Yes. Getting out of here before 11:00. Lot of public comments on 3A. Yeah. On everything. Meeting adjourned. Adjourned. No leaf blower and-

2:30:39 No.