Select Board: December 10, 2025

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

4:50 All set. Well, that’s the thing. Yeah.

4:56 Just gonna start this meeting. So I’d like to call the meeting of December 10th to order set and announce this meeting is being recorded.

5:08 You guys all set? You guys ready for us? Uh, we’ll open up a public comment.

5:16 Might might be kidding. Hold on.

5:26 This is,

5:31 yeah, Thatcher’s talking, but we can’t hear it.

5:39 I think Thatcher’s coming in remotely

5:45 the meeting, but it says Thatcher’s talking up there and we can’t hear him.

9:23 Thank you.

9:32 Do you wanna check if that’s working? Sounds like it is.

9:38 All right. My voice once is enough. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Um, I’m not, it is everyone able to see the slide? I just shared it. Um, let me see. Kyle can put it up on this screen, you just Yep, no worries. Okay.

10:03 Kyle, can he share a slide? You should be able to share. You want?

10:14 Yep.

10:19 Yeah, I’m interested.

10:23 Okay. Go back to the whole meeting. Yep. Got it. I’m done. Where says share. Got it.

10:34 Okay. Yeah. All right.

10:42 We’re good. All right. Thank you for having me. Um, my name is Michael Hall. I’m the Energy Programs Manager for the Marblehead Municipal Light Department. And today I’m, uh, going to talk a little bit about fortifying, um, some of our grid. Uh, so before I talk a little bit about the project, I wanna give you just sort of a brief history of, um, MMLD and just some background. Uh, we were established in 1894, so we’re roughly about 131 years old, and we started transmitting power about 1895 to the town of Marblehead. We are a publicly owned utility. Um, we like to say that we’re owned by the people we serve, um, because we are, um, we currently serve over 10,000 customers. Um, in the town of Marblehead, we maintain 4,000 poles.

11:29 Uh, we also maintain 90 miles of distribution lines and four substations. So, a little background about the, before I delve into the project, um, about us. Uh, we’re a transmission dependent utility, which means that we’re reliant on power coming into Marblehead. Uh, most of our power comes from a national grid substation, um, in across the Salem line. And it’s transmitted, uh, via two SubT transmission lines. Um, and this connects to the village, uh, 13 substation at the Y Junction. Um, we have, uh, peak power demand now exceeding roughly 30 megawatts, um, per year during peak events. Um, and a major re a major,

12:15 this is a major reason why we want to reinvest in local electric system and fortify the grid, uh, to make sure that those two lines are functioning. Um, one of the issues that we have come across, um, particularly with our aboveground lines, um, is there’s a lot of vegetative growth, um, that we currently have to maintain, um, along some of these lines. Uh, the lines are also susceptible to weather events and, uh, wildlife. So, uh, to give you sort of a visual of, um, of things, uh, we took some drone footage back in November, and these are the lines that are coming, um, from Salem, uh, from the substation over there. Um, and I’ll just see about the video over there.

13:03 And as you can see as it, the drone curves around, um, there are several poles above that are bent. Uh, we do have tensioners on there, but the tensioners are strained, um, almost to a max. Um, and that gives you sort of an overview of, uh, some of the poles that we maintain over in Salem, uh, for the poles that we have here in Marblehead. Um, the, this is sort of an example, um, that we took again in November of, uh, the polls along the public utility right of way. Um, and you can kind of see the states of some of these polls, even with tensioners, they’re quite bent over, um, making them, uh, very susceptible to, um,

13:50 extreme weather events. So our project overview is to help fortify these polls. Um, and we would, uh, do it in a series of phases. Um, today I’m gonna really focus on phases one and two, because those are the most critical. So phase one, uh, would be, uh, converting the, uh, wooden poles that you saw along the Salem line, uh, in that first clip to galvanize steel. And this would help, um, prevent, uh, weather situations. Um, and, uh, it would maintain those two SubT transmission lines coming into the town of Marblehead. Uh, phase two would be undergrounding 1800 feet of the SubT transmission lines that you saw in clip number two. Um, again, those, uh, poles were quite bent,

14:38 so this would go a long way to, um, helping that. Phase three eventually would be undergrounding the remaining 3,900 feet of lines along the utility right of way, um, so that they connect to, uh, directly to the, um, uh, village, uh, substation for Village 13. Um, and again, but phases one and phases two are at this stage, are the most critical. Um, here is an overview map, um, that you can see. And, uh, phase one is highlighted right here. And as you can see, the phase one, um, over in Salem stretches roughly, um, to Canal Street from the, um, uh, just past the point of the, uh, rail yard.

15:23 Uh, phase two is past the lead mills conservation area, and this is the area that we’d be concentrating on, uh, putting those, uh, lines underground. And phase three, um, would be, uh, doing the remainder all the way connecting to the village 13 substation Underground. Underground. Yep. Uh, so for the project budget for, uh, phases one, uh, we’re looking at an estimated, um, uh, 318,593. About a third of that would be contributed by us. Two thirds of that would be, um, covered with grant money. Um, phase two would, uh, about $1.6 million project. Again, a third of that would be covered by us.

16:09 Um, two thirds covered by grant funding. Uh, in terms of timeline, um, we would be, uh, looking at, um, beginning phase one, um, uh, as soon as, uh, this winter. Um, and that would involve procurement, that would involve community engagements, which is what I’m doing, uh, currently, um, getting the contract finalized, um, going public with it, with updates. Uh, phase two or phase one at the 50% mark, um, would be, uh, roughly completed at the latest by August of 2026. Um, with, uh, final completion, uh, being October of 2026. Um, during that time, we may be able to squeeze in the, uh,

16:58 opening part of, uh, phase two, which is undergrounding those lines. Um, we anticipate that 50% of that project would be completed sometime between November of 2026 to April, 2027, um, with final completion of phase two being done at the latest by June, 2027.

17:19 Uh, so the anticipated outcomes for this would be, uh, um, it would be eliminating a key vulnerability of critical infrastructure. It would be, um, accommodating for future load growth, um, and, uh, it would allow for the removal of obsolete poles, um, along the Marblehead rail trail and the public utility right of way. Um, and, uh, we anticipate working with community stakeholders along the way and maintaining consistent regular communication. So, um, any questions before that? I just want to give some acknowledgement to, um, beacon Climate who helped us, um, obtain, um, the grant funding to cover two thirds of the expenses. Uh, their team has been great. Um,

18:06 and, uh, yeah, if there are any questions about the project, happy to take some. Do You have any questions? I, I do. Go ahead. Uh, the, uh, I, I had always mistakenly assumed apparently that, uh, leaving the substation on Canal Street, those are national grid lines. So we actually own all As as soon as we leave the substation we Own. So there’s a number of lines that go underground. We own seven poles above ground, though, so some go underground immediately leaving the substation. And then, uh, there’s, um, uh, seven poles that rise above ground. We, we do own those. Okay. I, I follow that. Okay. And what the idea is to replace those with metal towers With Yep. With steel. And it’s, uh, not worthwhile to go underground, I guess, with those or that,

18:52 Uh, for those it was determined that steel would be best. Yeah. It, I don’t know who does, but they, there’s no real, a lot of interference with vegetation down there. It’s, it’s clean down there, so. Great. Okay. Mm-hmm. I had a couple questions. So do you guys have those grants already? Yes. Okay. And I assume they’ll be shutting down the rail trail while you do some of this work On phase two? Uh, for phase two, I, I believe that it would be probably done in phases. Um, so we’ll, we’ll be, uh, doing it with, we’ll be trying to minimize the public impact as much as possible during the construction phase. Yeah. I have a question. So the one third, is that based on any increase in rates or any change in rates? No. Or, so basically We don’t anticipate any. Yeah. And is the cost of undergrounding, how does that compare to just pole replacement? I’m just curious.

19:40 Oh, the cost of undergrounding is, uh, is, um, we have to go a little bit further than just replacing the, the seven poles, um, in Salem. Uh, cost of undergrounding is a little bit more, but, uh, that we do sit on a granite ledge here, so, so that was factored in. Okay. Okay. Um, I love the idea of putting everything underground, especially the, on the Marblehead side. I think that’ll be very popular. I appreciate you giving us the courtesy to come here tonight and, and let it be known to the public this is happening. I think that just, I’m pretty sure that the town enjoys the, the easement for use. Is that right? Yeah. So we’re not voting on, this is a courtesy that they’re giving to us. Mm-hmm. And I just, I appreciate you coming and, um, and just so the public understands, because that’s also something that I

20:26 think people get confused about. So we use it as an easement from the utilities and, um, appreciate, or the, sorry. I did, I misstate it, correct me if I’m wrong. So what is it? So It’s a utility Quarter. It’s a utility quarter owned By electric light and water sew. And the, and the easement is for people to Walk. That’s what I said. Yeah, that’s, I’m sorry. That’s what what I meant to that. It’s not, oh, I meant, yes. It’s a, it’s, we are using it as an easement for town purposes, recreationally, It’s top foot, right? Yeah. So, um, you know, I, I’m sure you’ll be in touch with, um, Brendan Callahan, he’s here tonight, if you haven’t met him. Our director of Community planning and development. He’s, um, actively involved in sort of the future planning for the rail trail as is. Um, Amy Q, the DPW does a lot of maintenance around there.

21:14 So, um, but yeah, it’s great. Thank you so much for coming to us tonight. Great. Thank you. Okay. Appreciate taking the time. Look forward to good luck. Thank you. Much appreciate that. You want to do your tone administrative update? Sure. Thank you. Um, and I’ll be very quick. Um, basic, just the good news on some projects they’re working on, uh, the aware of Mary Ellen Booth replacement project, 100% complete, uh, on that, uh, on that project, the only remaining item is the, the doorway to the roof at the top. It’s on order, will come in in January at the, but than that, uh, um, on the roof, then all the leaking, um, additional insulation is put in.

22:04 So this should help us on the utility side. Uh, so we’re now looking at the next, uh, Mary Alley project is we we’re go out to bid for the HVAC systems to replace all of that, as well as, um, uh, the elevator, uh, redoing the downstairs bathrooms to make them fully a BA compliant, and actually building out that lower level conference room, uh, to make it much, uh, utilize much more for public meetings and such. Um, maybe it, uh, you know, we’ll set it up where at night we can add easier access, self-locking doors, um, as well as a larger room and, and technology.

22:49 So to add, add another space that’s utilized not as, not as historic as this room, but, uh, as far as its usefulness, um, on, on par. So, um, uh, that’s one good news. Community center roof, 100% complete, um, that put protective roof coating system and all new snow guards, uh, snow from falling on people’s heads as they come and go. Um, and again, these projects, uh, managed by Steve Cummings, our building commissioners Slack,

23:25 uh, working with our chief procurement officer, policy Jenkins, um, uh, working on the procurement side. So, uh, well done by all in addition, uh, the Hobbs house, which, uh, the town owns. It’s primarily used by the Marblehead Mental Health Clinic, um, or counseling center. And, uh, the back deck was, eh, fallen off, and it, it was also, it is also the secondary egress for the building. So that was a priority project. So we have, uh, complete replace the, the, the real lower deck at the Hobbs house. So that’s a hundred percent complete. And, uh, I think it was today

24:12 or yesterday, the bids coming in for the windows to replace all the windows in that building that, uh, will be much more energy efficient, much more comfortable for people that work there. So that’s the next step on that. And finally on the building, good news, um, between our building commissioner and fire chief, going through all our buildings and looking at the fire alarm systems and, um, upgrading in the, so the, um, the, the assistant at the fire headquarters, the community center, the old townhouse, and the DPW facility, uh, all inspected and, and, and, and brought up the code complete. Um, and so they will continue around the remaining of the municipal bills to make sure that we meet, uh,

25:00 all proper codes and all our municipal buildings. But, uh, for these, they’re fully compliant, tested in a good working order. So again, our fire chief and our building commissioner, they’re like twins out there going from place to place, getting things done. So that concludes my report pending. Any questions? Sounds good. Yes. Uh, quick question on the, on the Hobbs, uh, improvement. Is that, is that coming outta a combination of ARPA money that, that went to department of, to the Health Department? Uh, where did we get, um, I just, uh, we, we were hitting away, I think, arpa and we were concerned because of the, the pricing, whether we were gonna make it, and, and the bids actually came in really good. Yeah. So I think that’s the balance of the arpa

25:47 No, I think came out facilities, right. Came out fin Yeah. Out of fin facilities come, the windows came out, fin Windows out of fin com, The debt. I had money in my, in my budget between, um, The facilities. Okay. So we had done a lot of previous work Okay. With APA funds for that, building boilers and if, and some other things. So you’re right. Okay. That’s great. That’s great. All right. That’s very awesome. I just wanted to, um, acknowledge also, um, on behalf of the board, Steve’s, um, tremendous work in this as well as Allison’s on the procurement side. I, I know you’ve been up on both of these roofs multiple times, um, you know, just overseeing and really, um, supervising these contractors and the projects. And that’s, um, what that’s really important, uh, for,

26:35 you know, the size of these just being fiduciary duties to maintaining like, excellent standards up there and overseeing and supervising the work that’s going on. I know you’ve put a lot of time into that, so I wanna thank you. And also, um, I know that like, you know, you’ve, um, offered, you’re gonna be updating our capital improvement plan, uh, over, you know, as, as you have time. And, um, I think that will be tremendous value as we, um, Get into the spring. Great. Thanks. Can I say those nice things about him? I didn’t know he was sitting over there. Sure. All right, Steve, have a good night. You can take it off now. Mm-hmm. Um, all right, great. Let’s move on to Disabilities Commission. We have two, we have three vacancies,

27:21 and we have two applicants. Um, process areas I’ll call each applicant after. You can tell us a little about, a bit about yourself and why you’re applying. We will start with first one is Julie. Um, help me out.

27:36 All right. I wasn’t gonna get close. Come on out, if you don’t mind. Welcome. Thanks for coming.

27:44 We have your, your CV here. If you wanna tell us a little bit about yourself and why you want to sit on the board. Um, so currently I’m enjoying my second career as, um, the assistant coordinator of Student success at North Shore Community College. So I, um, pursued a master’s in education and part of that project, um, um, included, uh, disability studies, and I did a project on universal design. I can share that with you if you’d like. My first career, um, I was a lawyer for 30 years working as a clerk, assistant clerk, magistrate. Um, I did not specialize in disability law, but I have that background, so I am familiar with, you know,

28:34 legal requirements. Um, I am a two time cancer survivor, um, and, um, unfortunately was diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety as a result of that. So I do have documented disability, um, and I believe that it’s important to recognize more widely mental health as a disability. Um, that would be one of the things I would wanna focus on for sure. Um, and lastly, I am a almost lifetime, uh, citizen of this town, and I wanna make sure that everyone in the town can benefit by all of the services

29:21 and wonderful places that, um, that we have to offer. It is a very historic but very old town, and so there are gonna be a lot of challenges that way. Um, looking through a few of the old agendas from the commission, I see that there’s been some work in, you know, modernizing and, uh, you know, looking at some of the, um, pitfalls that can befall people with disabilities. Um, Yeah. Did anybody have any questions, Greg, we’ve all had a chance to read through. I, I just wanted to say, I see you spent some time in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Amy McCue our DPW director

30:06 as a FA school graduate, right, Amy? Yep. So that’s why she’s good at plowing. She’s used to cold weather. Oh yeah. So, great. Well, I think you’d be a great fit. Absolutely. Okay. And Amy, thank you for stepping up And doing this. Yeah. Appreciate it. Much appreciate. Okay, great. Thank you. Next, if we could follow up, uh,

30:33 go backwards here. Um, Amy Mal. Mm-hmm. Good evening. How are you doing tonight? Alright, good. Again, welcome. Thank you for coming. Thank you. We have your, your, your paperwork here. If you just wanna tell us a little bit about what you’re applying in your back. Uh, my name’s Amy Maloff. I am, I’ve been here for, for quite a while, but I’m a transplant from Ohio. Um, I do a lot of work in the creative space, so a lot of design, marketing. Um, I work with a lot of performers. So my, um,

31:14 so far my contribution to the disability community in town was that I, I designed the sign at the harbor that tells people how to access the Hoyer lift. And that’s something that I, um, happily donated my time to do. Um, I, I’m also someone with some, um, invisible disabilities and, um, it’s just an ongoing interest in advocacy for me. So it’s something that I’ve, um, think about and wanna be as much a part of as I can. Great. Any questions? No, Amy, I’m Not gonna call you Julie, as I did really good.

31:59 I apologize, Julie, but thank you for stepping up. Oh, sure. Yeah. Thank you. So we have, we have three, we have two seats. We can fill one that expires in 2027 and one that expires in 2028. Any suggestions or any, any preference from the two applicants as far as Amy or Julie? Julie or Amy? Any which on, on flip a coin. Okay. Um,

32:27 that’s the recommendation. Okay. I’m just gonna go in, in order of the wait. We called you up. I have no better reason for it. So unless anyone objects, if I could have a motion to appoint Julie Maka. Mat Matus. All right. So, um, to the dis Disabilities commission, with a term to expire in June, 2028. So moved. Second. All in favor? And if I could have motion to appoint Amy Maloff to the bi dis Disabilities Commission with a term to expire in 2027. So moved. Second. All in favor. Welcome. Thank you guys for dedicating your time. Thank you, SWO. And you guys will have to at some time

33:13 before your first meeting, just gets sworn in with the clerk during regular hours. Also, you can reach that to Kyle. All right. Next up we’ve got the three year revenue versus expense forecast. We have Alicia, finance Department, and Alex and the finance committee. Welcome question. And Molly, sorry to exclude you, Molly. Grab chair to grab chair.

33:43 I’m trying to promote you. Sorry. Let me see.

33:50 Yeah, do It one more time. Promoting you go. Sorry, Molly, we made you carry your own chair. So much seating here. Watching.

33:59 Got the chief of fire sitting right in the front row. He probably could have done it.

34:05 You’re so, so strong. Looks like we, looks like we know to go. Molly is much younger and stronger. I was, well, I was just, you know, sitting right there that Jason, Molly’s much younger and stronger. We’re just gonna move a little stronger than me, so Good evening. Good evening. All right. How are you? Good. How you doing? Good, good. All right. So I printed out a collapsed version of what I’m showing on screen. I will share this Excel. It has a little bit more data and some comparables. Um, but I wanted to get something in front of you guys so you could kind of look at the numbers a little closer as well. Um, so just to revisit kind of the phases of, I guess, budget season

34:52 and then longer term planning, which we’ve been working on for the last few years here. Very similar to last year. I, I think about this as phase two. Phase one being the revenue forecast by itself, which we went through, I think last month. Mm-hmm. Maybe late October, early November. Um, so up top in the box, I think on your sheets, there’s a black line in the middle if, if I recall how I printed it. Yeah. Everything above that black line is revenue. Mm-hmm. You looked at fiscal year 27 revenue last month, one year. Um, the number that you’re looking at there, the 1 0 9 0 5 7 6 5 threes very close to that previous exercise. I believe Alicia adjusted the local receipts slightly

35:40 as she finished her, um, tax rate recap. So if I recall the last exercise we walked through, we were at about a $500,000 less revenue than last year, and now we’re about 700. Um, Alicia can provide more color there, but effectively I’m happy to walk through each line of this, but it would, it would be a little repetitive as to What we, so can you just get on the bottom of the fiscal year budget versus 25? Yeah. So we were, I got your total revenue estimates, so if I’m reading right, we had about 3 million more. Oh, no, sorry. Yeah, so, and that’s a good, good, good segue. So I put together, remember I’m on the finance committee,

36:25 so I do not certify free cash. I think we all know that. But I put together, um, the budget to actual, again, it’s not in here, um, sheet in front of you, but it’s on screen here. Um, and just a reminder about how free cash is generated. So off of that town wide budget to actual, um, it looks like our revenue was under budgeted by approximately 3.3 million last year. So assuming that gets certified when it gets audited and whatnot by the state, um, that leads to a portion of free cash that when certified is available to figure out how we use for capital this year’s budget, et Cetera. I like to rephrase that. Yeah. That the revenue came in more than I estimated it

37:11 was not under budgeted. Mm-hmm. Exactly. That’s fine. Um, and then the expense side on the budget, the actual, before We move there, just pretty much, what is the, what are the, it looks like free cash is the primary driver of that estimate decline. What, what’s, what’s, what, what would you, how would you summarize the, the revenue decline and the Yeah, so, and the key driver Behind that? Oh, yeah. So it’s property tax levy is going up by 2.2 Yeah. Million. And that is, you know, a just under 3%. So the two point a half and then new growth is less than half a percent. Right. Right. And then that’s quickly offset by 2 million of decline of free cash. Free cash. Yeah. Um, but, you know, I’ll get back to the free cash in a second because I think that could be even less as we

37:58 move towards free cash being certified. But I also want to highlight the, um, there’s about a million less of local receipts. Um, and, and we talked about that. Yep. Um, a lot of that is driven by earnings on investments that before the last exercise we went through, they came in actual at 1.5 million through 6 30 25. But when Alicia’s estimating for fiscal year 27 budget, we’ve now got year to date data. We’ve got, you know, more information regarding the, the total amount invested, which is less because ARPA funds have been sensed that we’re allowed to be invested. For example, interest rates have come down a few times, it just got cut again. Um, so there’s probably a little cushion there,

38:44 but you never wanna overestimate your res revenues. And that, that’s probably the primary driver of why local receipts budget last year to preliminary forecast is down. So those two items are offsetting the increase in property tax effectively. Um, the rest of it’s all minor. Mm-hmm. Um, so back to the free cash. So on, on the budget to actual ban, um, again, I’ll share it with you kind of last minute, was able to get that added to this. Um, the expenses were only, um, over budgeted, call it by nine or by two 2.1 million. So if you’re thinking about total expenses without debt and state assessments, I think if you’re missing

39:30 by 2 million, that’s a, that’s pretty good. We, we, we, we think about 2 million. It’s a lot of money, right? But when you have a hundred million dollars budget percent, it’s only 2% of the budget. So, um, those two items are kind of your, it’s not a for-profit operation by any means, but it’s your, your budget kind retained earnings. I think about it as an accountant. Mm-hmm. That’s the movement year over year, um, is about 5.5 million. That’s an estimate that’s not certified. Um, and then if we look at, we just revisit where we landed last year as, as we entered the budget last year, free cash was certified around 9.5 million. Um, we used 1 million for capital 7 million to, to balance the budget.

40:16 1 million went to stabilization, and then I believe there was about 500,000 or so left. But some of it had to be used for contracts that were literally signed like right before town meeting. Um, so if you think about the amount of free cash that was not, you know, pegged for anything last year, it’s only about 200,000. Um, and I’m not the expert in free cash. I’ve learned a lot clearly, but I, I think there could be more than those three things, but I’m not sure, you know, it would have to be found through the state certifying it. Yes. And the thing the state looks at is if there’s any grant deficits at the end, and then they hit us with that and reduce us farther. So it could go down, Go down, it could go up, it could go down.

41:01 But that’s a roughly yes. Okay. Rough estimate on that. Yes. Yeah. So again, you know, I don’t love to put estimates of free cash in this time of year because last year we learned a little bit about that. Um, but I wanted to put it in front of us, almost $4 million less of free cash than what we got certified last year. Yeah. In your estimate. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and just as we did this, you know, when we finished this revenue forecast, when Alicia finished it last month, we had less data on that budget. Actual was finalized. Right Now, this, this column H which is the, you know, the, the budget that we’re currently working on, um, we have 5 million of that. If it’s only 5.7, that means not a lot’s go into capital,

41:50 not a lot’s gonna stabilization, not a lot’s not being appropriated, uh, if it lands at five seven. Right? So just keep that in mind. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Yeah. Okay. So very similar to last month, revenue is down. Um, we’ve moved that revenue out, revenue out for two years. So we do believe that per the select board policy, there’s, you’d like to see a declining reliance on free cash. Of course, if free cash comes in higher next year and you can use seven, then I, I wouldn’t say that’s off the table, but the estimate for now is a declining, um, so it’s not declining by two, it’s declining by one per year. So there is some increase because like we said, the property taxes are bringing in,

42:38 you know, 2.2, 2.3 over the next two years. So we do see the revenue increasing, if you look at it as a three year estimate, but you know, still less than 2% per year. Um, and I guess I’ll take a minute here. This is just to kind of, so last year we did this exercise when we showed you this, the numbers have changed for some of the outer years, but when we showed you this at this same week last year, we were estimating a $2 million deficit for fiscal year 26. That was assuming that we used 5 million of free cash, we ended up using seven. So we sort of were sort of on par with that, if that means anything.

43:25 Mm-hmm. Maybe it was lucky. And, and this is, so this is your last year is the one you had set up there, Al that was your last year, and you were also projecting a $5 million. Pretty similar. It’s gone up a little bit. It’s gone up A little bit because of some increased expenses. Yeah. But in, and we, we will talk about those down, I guess. So, um, remember that I’m not calculating all this stuff. I’m collecting some data. Um, so I need, I need Alicia to help me explain this. Yes. I’m, I’m just kind of helping her with the template. Um, so salaries, so I work closely with Alicia, um, and the schools to get estimates. So, so what does this actually represent? What my request of everybody was? If everybody employed in every department,

44:11 all funded positions, I should say, whether, whether they’re filled or not, all funded positions in last year’s budget. If we had to pay those funded positions next year and everybody was at sitting in seats everywhere, um, what would it cost in 27, 28, 29, based on the contracts that are in place? I think we have three unions with contracts through 28. One that’s still open for 27, I believe. Fire, fire. Um, when I say three, there’s, there’s school police fire, and then there’s the MMEU, and then obviously 2029, I don’t think there’s contracts for anybody. So there has to be some sort of estimate. Um, so the reason I bring that up is, you know, this, this forecast is, is the way

44:58 that I’m requesting the data is to say, if we just keep operating exactly how we are, we do not find efficiencies. We do not make any cuts. We do not let anybody go, this is what it would look like, right? Because that’s what I think phase two should look like. You should say, what are our costs as of today before we start trying to balance? Does that make sense? Yeah. Um, so it seems a little high to me to be honest with you, but what we did do, Alicia and I for police, fire and all other town departments, what’s in there for 27 is what’s in Munis right now. So that’s what’s been submitted by all department heads. Obviously we’re still in early stages of budget season, so Alicia needs to review that very closely with everybody.

45:45 But I think that should include contractual changes in wages as well as steps, lanes, et cetera. Um, and the same was provided by Mike as well from the schools.

46:00 So that’s a big jump, right? Six, 6%. Um, and if you look at the actual from 25 is, you know, there, there was room there between actual verse budget, um, which I’ll, which I’m sharing on screen. Um, I talked to the schools, a lot of that was the schools. A lot of that was before Mike was here. When they built last year’s budget, it was represented that almost all of the positions funded in 26 were people in the seats. So I think 25 had some vacancies that had been filled. Um, also they, I will give the schools the benefit of doubt that they’re approaching a $40 million salaries in wages.

46:47 So if they’re off a million in wages, that’s not a bad miss, right? So I know it’s a big number, but, um, they do have people that get hired in the middle of the year and quit every month and just like any other organization with a lot of people. So, um, what does happen is when they underspend their wages, especially in some of the support functions, my understanding is that they’re, they’re paying for consultants to fill in the gap. Um, so you can see on the miscellaneous other, we overspent that some of that is the schools there, and then there’s a lot of other departments too that have budget to actuals going on too. Um, I think also, If I could add too, they have taken that what the under spending there and applied it to prepay special Education District. Yeah. So

47:32 you can see that as well. You can see out of district tuitions on, on that line, um, on screen guys, uh, budget to actual, we actually spent 1.1 million, or sorry, 900,000 more than, than what we actually budgeted for that. So because they’re prepaying for, yeah. We’ve been working with them a lot to try to get their line items, buckets more aligned with actuals. Um, and I will give Mike the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t bill 25 budget, so he’s, he’s working on that. But wages are a huge driver of our costs. My personal reaction to this is that this is a little overstated, but probably not too overstated. And it’s only December. So we can fix that.

48:19 Um, I don’t think it’s gonna be flat, let’s put it that way, unless we’re removing a lot of positions. I think if you think about our kohlers, our kohler’s about 3%. So when they’re stepping, they can step about five or 6%, sometimes even 7%. So even though a let looks overstated, that’s actually the norm. If you got hired at the lower end of skill as you’re moving up, you’re actually moving about five, 6%. You’re not really moving at just that 3%. But those of us who are on step eight at the top, they are consistently only getting that 3%. Right? So, uh, I’m hitting the big ones first, but I think salaries, there’s a lot of work to do with every department to make sure we have the right number. And I mean that in two ways. I mean, the right number with everybody that’s been budgeted

49:05 for in the past, and also the right number and the number of people that are serving, whoever’s receiving the services of the department. Ah, I have a question. When You go one or two years, are you taking into account this, I assume we can project the steps in. I think we put a small factor in, but it’s not perfect sign. I think the schools do have a, a sheet that perfectly does it, but we’ve talked with Alicia and you guys that I think their steps in lanes are like consistent, whereas July 1st Yeah. Like calculator are all based on higher dates. So the steps change for every single person year. Yes. So it’s just a little bit more complicated. Yeah. Um, but I think we need to kick the tires on this line and, and make sure, certainly in the short term and, and longer term that it makes sense. Like I just said. Well, let me add another factor and try to nail down these numbers.

49:52 Especially where on the townside people have step increases throughout the year. ‘cause it’s based on when they’re hired and such. Um, uh, you would think that you’ve got people moving up the steps, so you’re increasing the cost, but you have people say retiring, they’re at the top step and they’re being replaced with people at a much lower step that their savings. However, in the employment marketplace, we’re having to bring people in at the higher steps to get them to take the job. So, so we’re not benefiting from the newer employees coming at a lower step because we’re having to hire them toward the top of the steps based on their experience in order to bring ‘em in. So that’s one of the other challenges.

50:40 And we have the consultants, uh, Tom Tom’s primarily working with ‘EM that are looking at our whole salary schedules and how we compare it to the marketplace. So that’ll, that’ll be more, more information being injected into this process. Yeah, I’d just say it’s really useful to have that, uh, that data set, you know, and I think it’s defensible quite frankly. I mean, I think town of MAR is willing to, you know, pay for talent and that’s kind of required, especially if you’ve got good comps. Yeah. But I guess I would just also, you know, with that, say that there’s kind of, there’s been a perpetual ratchet in some parts of the budget, right? And at some point you gotta ask yourself, is there, you know, are we right size to a, you know, to the delivery of service as Alec, you know, pointed out earlier on?

51:26 So that’s, that’s another thing that I think marble headers are gonna be asking for. Sure. Definitely. Um, insurance and benefits. So this one has been another one that we’ve been focused on for a number of years. Um, on screen here, you can see that our budget to actual had about, I think it was, I guess I do a comparison one point for, for 25, remember a $1.5 million over budget than actual, but we, when we built that, we put, we still had 1.4 million of reserve in there. So that was a pretty good hit. Um, if you remember, when we built last year’s budget, we, we really wanted to break out

52:12 what we thought was the cushion because people were asking, have been asking about it. So let’s apply factors to the non cushion and, and keep the cushion as is if we can. Um, but then Alicia also moved some of that cushion to the FinCon reserve, which I support ‘cause not, not because it’s ours, but because, um, it’s, it’s called reserve. I don’t think we should have reserves in line items that aren’t called reserve. Um, so I just think it’s more transparent. Um, so that reserve left there because you do want to keep something in there. Probably not millions of dollars, but you could have people enrolling in plans in the middle of the year dropping and you wanna keep something. So we’ve, we’ve kept that at 200. Um, and I will take a minute here as we go into 27 to say that is very concerned about this line item.

52:59 And as a finance guy, I am very concerned about overstating stuff. I especially a, an item we just pulled a reserve out of. So I’m, I’m arguably understating the impact from what she’s hearing. But I did apply with her a 10% increase, which is double digits, but she’s hearing it could be over 15%. Right? So it could be 15, 17. So last year, so Maya last year was 20%, we was it with 12% in the GIC. So sub communities are now opting to go back into the GIC I’ve gone to several conferences, seminars with some of the insurance companies who are staying in the private commercial market. They’re seeing anywhere from a 23 to a 26% increase. But they said for us, for municipalities, especially in the GIC, that we can expect two digit increases for the next two to three years,

53:45 it’s not gonna go too far down. And I had use 15 when the actuary came in. He said I was kind of low from what he had heard. And when I went to some of the conferences, they were talking about 17. The GIC doesn’t really tell us until they vote on the rates in the spring. So it’s really hard, but I wanna be concerned. I don’t wanna be too low. And then we, we can’t cover. So I, I thought 17% was a fair amount conservative amount based on what I know for right now. So, so my takeaway on this is like, just like the salaries, we need to, I wanna see like a very detailed summary of how we calculated the increase from actuals to how we’re doing year to date. We could do it as of now. We could do it next month, we could do it the year, month after. And then, I don’t know, can we have somebody from the GIC

54:31 that we pay a lot of money, come like confirm it, you know, like I think that’s a really, the Rates in March, I think. Yes. Okay. So, I mean, not a lot of time, but yeah, it’s, yeah, it would be nice. But I bet no, yeah, I bet the, yeah, And I just wanted sort of triangulate that too at the, um, annual meeting of the Association of Town Finance Committees, there was a presentation on this topic because it is such an area of risk for, for finance departments across the state. They also were saying, you know, double digit increases going forward. So they said 10 to 14%. So it’s, it’s going to be high. I Mean, well, GGIC has traditionally done a really good job, I think taking a lot of the volatility out. And I guess it’d be, I’d be curious to know how

55:19 the current anticipated increases in GIC are affected by the private market and how that kind of, you know, what kind of basically get a Right, get a little bit deeper understanding of the drivers of that. Right. I mean, they’ve done a great job in the past. They’re interesting. So they had a multimillion dollar deficit last year. They covered it. Now they have another multimillion dollar deficit this year that they need covered. Okay. The interesting thing is, if we were to be like the GIC self-insured, we’d have to have some type of reserve every time this happens. But how the state operates, they don’t have a reserve. It just closes right back into their general fund free cash. Gotcha. So they they plug it basically. Yeah. So then they have to go back and ask for money and then adjust our rates. What levers, if any, could we pull on this, it being as it’s such a big cost driver, um, you know, can, are we

56:07 offering, um, you know, compensation for people using spousal health insurance? Are we, I mean I don’t even, I’m, I’m just, I don’t know what levers, if any, could we, could we kind of pull to bring this down. We negotiate our health insurance with the PEC public employee committee. That’s kind of it. So that’s all the unions Yeah. Around the table. Yeah. Um, and then we try to see with them, you know, we’ve showed them, hey, this is a 2 million increase on the town. If, if our levy goes up 2 million and insurance is up 2 million, we have a major problem. Yeah. It’s just the negotiated, um, deal With the rate splits of how much. Yep. So it’s the unions and the retirees mm-hmm. Are represented on the right on that line employee committee. Yeah. And, and I just wanted to make a point,

56:54 and sometimes when I ask these questions, I think some people think that I’m suggesting we do these things and, and I’m really not. I, you know, I’m just curious. So my question is, is there flexibility amongst the various people that are receiving these benefits? Do we have any flexibility? I think given The stakes Yeah. You know, like the retirees, if they retire before retirement age, are we giving them something that we don’t have to, I’m not saying I if we are, if that was true that we shouldn’t, but when you’re in a financial crisis like this, I think we need to know what is we’re suggest What is No, we’re not, the reason why is we don’t have control. The reason why we don’t have control is we’re not self-insured. If we were self-insured and we had a private insurer, we have a lot more control over what we can do and what we can give them.

57:39 We are in the group insurance commission, which is run by the state of Massachusetts. Their laws and their regulations is what mandates us. We have no choice. Yeah. So they set those regulations on The way out. They set those regulations. There’s municipal representation on the board, but it’s just one of several votes on the board. But it, as it was discussed at, at the meeting I was at, it is being in the GIC is one of the only levers we can pull to keep our costs as low as possible. And we’ve already made that move. So it is the, we want to be there. Yeah. So that’s the answer. I just didn’t know if there was more analysis to do there. So I just threw it out there. Um, yeah, so those first two lines, I think certainly for 27

58:26 and then forward, I think we need to take a hard look at for sure. Um, and make sure we get the right numbers in there. ‘cause personally I don’t really want to see a huge budget to actual land and insurance after we’ve tried to fix that, if that makes sense. Um, pension is just based on a schedule, so, but it’s not small dollars. It’s half a million dollars. So when you think about 2 million coming from property taxes and a quarter of that’s going right to pension rental. Right. So, um, I think there is ability to maybe push that out, but we’re, we’ve pushed out pretty close to the end, right? Mm-hmm. Um, utilities, we did a good job of summarizing that for town and schools in 25. We actually spent a little more than was in the budget.

59:13 I think we fixed that in 26. Mm-hmm. Um, we adjusted for the increase and based it off of actuals. And then I think we’ve applied a 3%. Molly had done a long historical over a number of years. I don’t think any of us can predict the utilities markets, but, um, 3% is, is a reasonable estimate. It’s a pretty big line item out of district tuition. Um, I created a very detailed template as Molly knows for Mike, um, and Mike knows from the schools to fill in, um, where we’re trying to encourage the behavior town wide of what is our total expense and then how are we gonna fund that? Not just taking general fund and applying a factor to it. Right? So we’re looking at total expenses for tuition

1:00:02 and transportation and then what are the various ways we can pay for that, which are prepayments, um, circuit breaker, the general fund, um, the IDEA grant I think can help with transportation. Um, that being said, similar to free cash, if the schools are in a tighter budget crunch as we move forward, there’s gonna be less prepayment of tuition. So that’s why you actually see a little bit of better benefit from 26 to 27, but then you see large spikes because we can’t assume we’ll be able to make prepayments if we’re certainly cutting costs. So, um, it’s a large item that’s hard to navigate, but I feel like I have my head around it way more than I ever have from a FinCon perspective.

1:00:51 Uh, trash collection. So we talked about this last year. Is Andrew behind me? Yeah. Um, I dunno if you wanna talk about it for quickly, but it, there’s gonna be a large spike, right, Andrew this year? Yeah. So again, know, we’ve been talking about this for 10 years. Yeah. Uh, we’re at the end of our 10 year contracts. Um, we have our RFP that’s on the street currently. Um, so that’s for curbside collection of both trash and recycling for all residents. Um, it’s for trash disposal. Um, it’s for recycling processing.

1:01:26 So currently we don’t pay anything to recycle that’s picked up on the curb. Um, that’s a estimated about $300,000. Um, so there’ll be a large increase there. Um, and again, so we’re looking at a five year contract, and then we’ll see another large jump around 2030, uh, when the landfills close in Massachusetts. Um, so again, we put in estimates and we’ll have numbers, uh, middle of January. So is it 4% Increase? Yeah, So we’re using 4% increase in this. Okay. So currently for, um, trash disposal, um, it’s a three and a half percent increase on the annual basis. So we’re bumping it up to four. Yeah. And again, we will have actual numbers. Yep.

1:02:12 Um, middle of January. Okay. But it’s going up 51% in year one. Yep. Wait, Say that again? Can’t see. Yeah, you’re seeing a large Increase at the wrong number. 27 for 27 it’s going. Yeah. And then it’s growth of 4% after the contract we have is favorable, right? About 50%. Oh, year one it’s 50%. Yeah. See that number there from 26, 27 and then it goes 4% and then it’s a continuous three to 4% growth. That’s right. Okay. So you think about that, that that million is, is, like you said, he is gonna have the contract probably in, in the middle of January and our revenue’s down and we have that. Mm-hmm. So that’s a challenge Right off bat After talking about everything else, we just talked about Tax levy funded warrant

1:02:57 articles as part of this. Um, I think we put a, a small growth factor. I think one of those is the, uh, Essex a, uh, is it called Essex? Aggie? North Shore. North Shore, yeah. Yep. Um, so that’s, yeah, that is in there. Um, debt service isn’t in, in and out and that this is based on the debt schedules. Um, that’s assuming that we, we don’t issue new debts, which we probably will over the next three years, but it’s an in and out anyways for this purpose. Mm-hmm. State assessments, that’s the portion that comes out. So it was up above and then it comes out. And then the miscellaneous other expenses, some of those probably just stay flat, like the FinCon reserve, some of ‘em probably have spikes at times, but we put a 2% inflationary factor on that.

1:03:42 It’s not massive numbers. Um, so phase two, I don’t think that this is final by any means. It’s cer definitely not. Um, but there’s a large budget gap for 27 and it just continues to escalate, certainly assuming that our free cash continues to go down in terms of usage. Um, on the revenue side. So it’s about a $7 million gap per this very preliminary analysis for 27 and then 11 and it accumulates to 15 by 2020 now. Um, I’ve been working at on the fin com for a very long time, and I’m always wondering what I’m missing, but I feel like I’m not missing that much anymore mm-hmm.

1:04:29 Personally, but I’ve surprised before. Been surprised before. And I mean, that’s consistent with what Alicia is telling me too. So I think when we’ve discussed using free cash each year, it’s, you know, frowned upon by the state because it’s, it’s one time and, and then because it’s one time and it’s declining, we’re in this position whereas many municipalities throughout the state right now are asking for overrides because it’s continuous. So he wouldn’t have to be in this type of financial position. Yeah. And I’ll say probably the same thing I said last year. I, I don’t think this exercise a takeaway is we should be looking at these numbers and thinking we have an override request even on the table yet until we do the next step to really figure out how can we address it

1:05:14 before us for an overhead. I think the real utility of doing three year projections, by the way, you know, congrats. It’s really, it looks really good. It’s just that how do you, how do you, uh, get the escalation under control, right? Yeah. So that’s also a fundamental question because unless you kind of, you know, it’s, it’s awfully tough with, with benefits in particular, you know, really driving so much of that, that increase, it really becomes a, uh, you know, we have to figure out what it’s gonna take to stabilize, you know, the, the growth, uh, a little bit. And if we, you know, and, and if it’s difficult, we ought have a, a really good rationale for why it is increasing. And, and probably, you know, ‘cause what, you know, people will, people will look at these numbers and they’ll go, oh my God,

1:06:00 we’re gonna have overrides as far as the eye can see. Uh, and I think the answer to that is making sure that we’re awfully rigorous in terms of, uh, bringing down our, you know, the, the structure of the enterprise a little bit and to see where we can make a last push there. Yeah. We’ll definitely comb through and definitely work closely with the unions as well. Right.

1:06:24 Is the, um, are the forecast deficits, is that, are we assuming a certain amount of free cash applying to the general operating budget with those deficit numbers? And so what is that? 5, 4, 3 for the Three years We’re cash. So, and then we’re outta cash even applying 5 million in FY 27 of free cash, we’re coming up 7 million short. Yes. And we, the preliminary estimate mine, which is not the person that certifies free cash again, is that there might only be 5.7 million available for everything. And so we might not even be able to use five. Right. Right. Course. But that was what we had last month and mm-hmm. I don’t think it’s certified yet, so I didn’t wanna change Alicia’s revenue number. Mm-hmm.

1:07:10 So, I mean, the challenge is that about 80% of the expenses are salaries and Benefits. Yeah. It’s, it’s all personnel. Yes. Per, whether they’re retired or working, it’s all related to people and their services, No matter what, you know, that’s growing at a Minimum pension as well is Personal 3% just on coal. Correct. And then it’s only that 10 to 17% on healthcare. Right. It is the really, the healthcare that’s really burning cities and towns mm-hmm. Really on right now. Totally. Yeah. What’s the next step, you guys? What’s, what’s the next That’s it for me. Well, No, you’re not. No, no. Not tonight. Not tonight. You’re not going anywhere. I mean after tonight. So next steps is that you and I meeting with all of the departments, so we, we meet with all the departments and we make, I dunno,

1:07:55 fiscally prudent decisions at that point. Um, they’re mandated to have a balanced budget, so there will be a balanced budget, but there will be some pretty big deductions or to, to achieve that is, Aren’t the departments all the, they were asked to present level funding, correct? Right. But in reality, we’re not level funding. They Couldn’t, right. So we said level funded, but with their contractual increases, they had to show, so, uh, we have to pay the 3%, we have to pay the status. Okay. So then, and we’ll get that number. Mm-hmm. And that, well, we know that it’s, well, you have that Number. It, so we’re still at a 7%, I mean, a $7 million deficit next year. And then it just continues, and then it’s another 11

1:08:41 and 14. It’s Just a, it’s a headcount issue that, that’s pretty much all it is. So we will build, I, I mean, what we have to do is build a balanced budget with no override Yep. Being presented at town meeting mm-hmm. With all the ramifications of that. And then whatever an override proposal looks like in order to restore those important items that are not gonna make it in, in order to balance, I would like us to be able to articulate and show and demonstrate when we are asking our departments to, you know, do the, the, the state required budget,

1:09:27 what that looks like from their department on a service delivery, um, perspective. So, I I, when, when we get that budget, I’d like to see, you know, what that actually means for service delivery to residents. Yeah. So what, uh, during this process, previously what we did produce was the delta by department of this is what, um, this is what they had the department heads had asked for. This is all we could give them to balance the budget. So from a dollar value, we itemized that. We always bridge that. And so I think what I’m hearing is translate that into

1:10:13 what’s the impact on services. So not, not just the dollar value, but Right. What does that mean? What we would have to go without? Yeah. Mm-hmm. I mean, you’re just not gonna efficient see your way out of a $7 million. No. Like whole, and that’s, It could be overstated Are, but it’s probably not these, and it’s probably not 7 million. Just knowing where we’ve gone through and how much we’ve asked our departments of the past. This is really, um, alarming and concerning. Although, I will say, we all know at this table, we are not unlike all these other, uh, municipalities. And, you know, just for people’s information, there have been numerous large override,

1:11:00 um, proposals and, um, and processes that have gone on. Melrose just a month ago approved a 13 and a half million dollar override. They were looking at deep, deep cuts. Um, you know, I mean, we’re talking about 11, 14 million in three years. Brookline, $12 million override for FY 25 Acton, 6.6 Arlington, 7 million in 2025. We had Belmont, um, got and received an $8.4 million Hingham, you know, that was, um, more like FY 24, 25 set, almost, uh, $8 million. And, um, Linfield, same thing. I mean, this is going on in communities all around us. And, um, it’s not that our town government is bloated it,

1:11:48 and, you know, we are, you know, overstaffed and we have, you know, declining enrollment in the schools. There is just a natural systemic, um, issue here with the state law of prop two and a half, which, you know, wasn’t meant to prevent overrides forever. It was just a check on raising taxes. And so it seems like we need a large cash infusion to maintain the town that we all know right now. So, um, just people, I hope people, um, take stock of that and, um, really start to have, you know, pay attention. Uh, you all will be back before us. Um, like, I guess, like what’s our, what’s our next steps?

1:12:34 You’re gonna, you’re gonna go through and prepare the, the state required, you know, balance the budget, which we have to, and that’s gonna be very scary. And, um, and, and I think unacceptable to a lot of residents, um, in town. And so I, you know, I think at what point do you, how much leeway do you need to also then prepare, uh, a contingent budget as an option for the voters to consider? Great. We’re gonna work on that as well, so that there is a contingent, I mean, two and a half percent, and you’re talking 17% increases, 9% increases. It’s, there’s just no argument. There’s, there’s no way you can survive. And schools by themselves on average are four to 5% growth. Right. So it just, just prop two and a half just doesn’t work anymore, unfortunately.

1:13:21 And the only way, the only lever we have to pull for revenues like that are property taxes, unfortunately. Um, Well, I’m gonna stand up for two and a half. I think it’s probably one of the most important mechanisms for accountability that the state has. It’s absolutely essential because we are required to go through this process of balancing, telling people what it is, what it would be like to only grow at two point half percent. So I think we’ve been through several years of belt tightening, and I think marble headers are generally very satisfied with that. By the way, marble headers are extreme, are quite generous as long as you explain it to them. That’s why we have a very healthy debt program, a very healthy, uh, you know, debt override program, because if you explain it to marble headers,

1:14:07 they’re perfectly happy to pay for it. So that’s where we’re at. So there’s, there shouldn’t be any, any fear mongering around, oh, you know, we just need to come up with a big honking cash, you know, big number, uh, for a, for an override. I think the important thing to focus on, and I, and I know all of you’re very focused on that, is, and don’t, and, and I think this idea of four on conclusions is something that fin comm’s been really great at not doing. I, and I really respect and admire that. You, you gotta look at the numbers. The numbers are what they are, and you do your best to come up with a budget that meets a two and a half percent override. But then we go to the town of Marblehead and we explain to them why we’re asking for an override. I think at the end of the day, when it’s compelling enough, marble headers will fund it. So I don’t think there’s, we, we should be, you know, we should be strictly analytical best as we can

1:14:54 and come up with the numbers. So I don’t think there’s anything to worry about or to catastrophize about. I, you know, that is a lot of cl uh, bait, you know, a lot of click bait on, on social media around fear mongering. I think our, our role is really to kind of make it all about the number. Yeah, I Agree. I think just looking at inflation being over 3% Sure. Since 2020. Sure. So two and a half. And you, you can even imagine inflation, I think No, that’s a driver. No double Dig insurance, 9% pension. I, I just think that it’s No, that’s right. No, I’m not, I’m not pushing That. And we’re not trying to fear monger. We’re just trying to give the facts though. It’s Just, yeah, I mean, I, I, I hear what you’re saying. I think it’s just about, it’s just the, it’s just the reality of the situation. Um, you know, like we’ve got the escalating healthcare costs at almost 15%, possibly pension, soaring, you know,

1:15:43 like hovering around eight point a 5%, like the inflation, like you said, utilities at 3%. This is, uh, just unsustainable from a factual, like basic, the math, don’t math. Um, if you’re capping it at two point a half percent, I don’t, I think that we need to be honest and, and, and clear. It’s December, we’re all gonna meet back in the new year and be in really big budget season. And so I think also we need to think about, you know, what would we potentially, and not tonight, but what would we potentially be wanting to give as options? Are we just asking, um, or just asking our finance, uh, director in the FinCo to, uh, level service, you know, with an override.

1:16:30 We know we’ve made cuts that, you know, at some point I think that we thought we would restore, frankly. Um, and so would we wanna present two options? Uh, some of the communities have offered, uh, overrides that have two different figures on them. And the num one is, you know, the, you know, I guess it’s like, um, you know, level service and, and then there’s invest in your town. So, um, you know, and, and then they, you know, you’re, you’re, so you’re not coming back in two years and, um, going down the hole. So there’s different options that as a board we should consider in terms of directing the staff, the, um, the professional staff to, to prepare and present for us to consider before we bring it to town meeting.

1:17:16 And, um, you know, there’s a lot of things to think about in terms of what, what, um, what the override is. Are we le do we just gonna level service what it is? Do we wanna take stock And, uh, survey residents around service delivery? We did do in the past a survey of residents. This has been going way back to do, um, get resident, uh, feedback on how they, what their, what they, how they feel, um, their account services are, are, you know, how do they rate them? What do they think we’re doing well? What do they, what do they wanna see in services? Where, where do they think the services fell short? So we could also, um, put that out for resident feedback When, when it comes up at that point. Right. Yeah, I mean, my other concern here is

1:18:02 using so much of the free cash. I mean, if we’re using on those numbers, I know that you’re not certifying it, but only having $600,000 last year. We put a million towards capital towards our rainy day fund. It really depletes that. And we, you know, we need that to continue without having to have deficit in the future for capital improvements as well. Any other questions, comments, Senator? Yeah, I, I just, um, I, I get a lot out of actuals, so I was glad to see the FY 25 actuals. And, and I, as we move forward in 26, I, I would like to see maybe some sort of attempt at estimated FY 26 actuals. Um, I, I know you’ve really worked and tightened down the budget numbers, but still, um, you know, we saw a couple years ago, the salary numbers were a surprise

1:18:48 in, in the right direction. So I, I just, whatever you, you know, by the time we get to town meeting, we’re about 10 months through the 12 months of 26. So I, I think that would be, um, helpful. I, I know, Alicia, you’re always very cautious about that because it’s almost like advertising a free cash number, and that’s not what I would use it for, but just particularly the salary item. Okay. Because there was a discussion earlier about, you know, budgeted seats for us, actual seats, and that can be, um, um, you know, quite a difference during the school year. So, uh, rather than the fiscal year. So that’s, um, just something to think about. And, you know, to me that will, as we go along, you know,

1:19:33 is it, as Alex said, is it 7 million? Is it gonna be a little less, a little bit more? So that would be in my mind kind of helpful. Yeah. Um, I, I, like I said, I’m just an action person. I, I don’t get much out of Friday year budgets because the budgets, so We did review, um, uh, some year to date numbers for a lot of these. Yes. And I think, I’m sure you do, Once unis is in place, I think it will make that much easier to accomplish. So, Which is that that will be great. Yeah. And I’m sure you’re doing that detailed work and it just, uh, it’s one of those things. And sometimes it’s good news, sometimes it’s bad news. Um, I, I get my day job, we do it on a weekly basis, and I get what damn it all the time on it. But Yeah. And pretty much agree with aspects of everything that

1:20:21 the select board has said in the last 10, 15 minutes or so. Um, but you know, Moses, as a former chair of the fin com, I do wanna take the opportunity to say that, you know, the fin com, I don’t believe I’ve researched this a lot, is, is a, um, a preparer of overrides, so Gotcha. When I joked earlier that I’m sort of done, um,

1:20:45 where, where I’ll go with that is I’m happy to support, and I would say that I think you need to consider not just the override that was requested your first year here, which is, this is how we balance and this is what we need for one year. I think with the magnitude of where it could be, it could be higher than two, maybe. We’ll see. Um, we would think about how would we ask for money that would cover us for a number of years, and almost make a copy of that tab once you’ve made cuts so that, okay, now we can’t make any more and then escalate them, like you said. Um, and I’m, I don’t wanna say concerned, but I’m curious as to who is supporting Alicia in that effort if I’m not right.

1:21:31 And I, because do we agree that I’m not supposed to be preparing order? No, I think you’re, you’re advising and approving, right? Yeah. At the end of the day. So I think, yeah, that’s why I try to support this as phase one, phase two, before year end, so that maybe it’s not final, but it’s the best information we have today. And then I do think from here, I think it’s important to understand who’s taking it to the next step, if that makes sense. Well, it is. I mean, it’s a, that’s a great point. And I think some, we haven’t gone through this process in a while, but it is in fact the, the chief executive office of the town and their leadership in directing the financial planning for the town. Um, and so, uh, I think that I, Alicia, would love to hear how, I mean,

1:22:16 how would you see this, you know, making most sense to proceed? Like, would you, uh, could we ask you to bring us like, you know, some options to consider, you know, either like, this is one way we could do it, um, this is one amount that we could ask for and get this restored, or, you know, I mean, I guess I’m trying to think of, um, well, we know what, we know we’re gonna go through the regular cycle, and that process is gonna be, um, what it is. But we’re, I mean, we’re, we’re staring down in three years, uh, almost $15 million deficit, which is a huge, I mean, we talking about like a little bit over a million dollars, a hundred million dollars. It’s a huge part of our budget. Um, I don’t think that’s an acceptable, uh, solution. I don’t think most residents would be, um,

1:23:03 would, would be fine with that. So, like I said, I mean, there’s many different options and ways to proceed. So I’d like to get your thoughts on what, how we could best, um, be helpful in terms of, um, you know, navigating this. Um, I’ll be working closely with the tone administrator. Um, we can come up with different scenarios. Mm-hmm. We have to come up with a balanced budget so it will show impact. There is going to be an impact. Right. It’s not fear, it’s just it is what it is to balance, I think having the select board members support an override because of these double digt increases, the increase in inflation. It is just near impossible. I mean, we, we have been able to make it the past few years, but this is the, this is the fiscal cliff.

1:23:49 We’ve hit it and we’re there, Well, once, once the timing. This is, you said you still got some tweaking to do. Yes. When, when would you expect to feel comfortable? I know you’re relatively comfortable, but comfortable with this budget. We talking another couple weeks. Yeah, another few weeks. Okay. So we gotta meet with the departments. Yep. So in January, yes, you should. And free cash will be certified. Hoping have a I’m not, yep. I know it’s always A hope. Hoping anywhere between January and early March. I’m trying to get it faster. So if I get it February or January is my preference, but we’re still working on it right now. They’re through February 25, so we gotta get all the way through June. Yeah. And, and that’s kind of what I meant by that. I don’t, I hope I didn’t come off from, but I haven’t, I’m not talking about strategy around promoting an over, I don’t even know the strategies

1:24:35 around like if we’re, you know, 10 million short over a three year period, do we go for a certain amount and let it escalate with two and a half, but not in the first few years if we’re only five, do we not, you know, assess to the levy Max? I, I have these questions in my head, but I haven’t done it. So I think there’s a lot of questions once you have the numbers in front of you and you’re like, okay, now we have to figure out. But I, I, I don’t think we should just ignore the optionality of it. No, I think that’s gonna come up as we have the final numbers. Yeah. And then we can think of the different options. Yeah. Once we have the facts in front of us, I think that obviously we’re relatively close here. Yeah. And then we can start talking about the different options on how we do it so we don’t have to go back and ask every year. Well, What I propose, I mean, I think you, and that you’re working together closely on kind of the strategy, but I think it’s a really deductive

1:25:22 e exercise initially. Right. And I think it’s kind of like, okay, what are the numbers? What are reasonable assumptions? What are we plugging in? Um, and then I think we have to try to work it within the two and a half, you know, two and a half prop, two and a half paradigm, if you will. Right. So it’s kind of like you really gotta, it’s a forcing function. I think what that does, it starts to reveal, and this goes to your point, Aaron, about, you know, perhaps having, you know, a couple of scenarios. I think they’re, they’re gonna be some very obvious drivers that are just immutable. And so then the question is, is, you know, what, what gives, right? And I think it does come back. Your, your point about service delivery is very appropriate. Uh, you know, and obviously this is, this is the, the, the implementation of the override is, is made more complex.

1:26:08 It’s compounded by the fact that we have two decision makers. We’ve got school committee select board around two components of the budget. All right? Yeah. And that’s kind of the elephant in the room as well. And it’s very hard, you know, for us to kind of opine on, you know, what should go on at the school level. Right. And so, uh, actually our room for maneuver is, is pretty, pretty restricted I think on the, on the townside at least judging, I think, you know, judging from the last couple of years, uh, and I think we have gotten tremendous benefits from the technology because we’ve been able to extract, you know, kind of some, you know, some cushion if you will, in, in, in the numbers. Yeah. Um, but we don’t have a, you know, we don’t have discretion over 60% of the budget. Right. So,

1:26:53 Well, I think the, the first layer of that effort is pretty straightforward. That’s right. In the sense that doing the calculation of what our, what’s our bottom line revenues, what’s the total of new revenues available? Yeah. And splitting between the town and the That’s Right. That’s, we’ve agreement that it’s a 50 50 split right now. That’s true. Total school costs are more than 50 50. Fair enough. That’s fair enough. Chunk of those school costs sit on the town side. So when you fact that, that out, we’re at about 50 50. That’s true. So that first layer of this is what’s on the table, here’s your half, here’s our half. 50 50. Yeah. That’s pretty straightforward. I think what it gets into is when we’re talking about what do we need to, to build back in, say,

1:27:40 building on an override scenario, that gets much more discretionary as what’s the absolute necessity versus the desirable versus the let’s prepare for the future. Right. And those decisions will be made on both sides to be, to be calculated. Yes. I think that’s where the Well, that’s exactly right. I mean, that’s the basic strategy, right? The basic framework for approaching how we, how we ultimately get to an override. And I think ultimately how we determine, you know, what components we wanna include in the override. There may be a menu where we say, look, there’s some drivers that are not gonna change regardless of headcount, no matter what those need to get baked in. But, you know, we’ll, we’ll see, I I think as you go through the, you know, those, those, uh, you know, salaries

1:28:25 and benefits Yeah. You know, breakdown, we’re gonna get a better feel for, for that. So For this year, it just would be, so if we’re looking at 7.2, so it’d be like 3.6 or something would be our share of cuts basically on the 50 for the first, for FY 27. From that number, from this number assumed like that’s correct. I know that there’s things move. Mm-hmm. Um, and last year we didn’t exercise where we, how much did we shed last year, didn’t we? Or No, we used the extra free cash instead of doing that, which we’re not gonna have these extra 2 million free cash. That’s right. Right. So, and then I guess from a kind of, I don’t wanna say policy perspective, but when you’re making these decisions and you’re going department to department,

1:29:11 I think obviously it seems to me it would seem to me like non-essential services are the first that we look at. So the challenge is to that effect, uh, there are, uh, the cost of services that we desire and, and, and enjoy as a community and this for all communities. Um, and then there are cost factors that are mandatory, right? That are mundane, mandatory, right. Providing health insurance coverage to the employees. There’s no getting around it. And so what happens is it’s not a clear what are the things we like? We’ll keep that. And the things that Yeah, we, you know, we don’t think are, are, are important. We’ll throw those over the side. And that’s not how you have to do it.

1:29:57 Because there are so many mandatory costs built into the system that there are the highly desirable, popular programs that can’t fit on in the numbers. Correct. And that’s when it gets real. That’s when it gets rid of, And that’s why, I mean, and just anecdotally in the several towns that have recently passed overrides, um, you know, the things that are, you know, if they’re not passing and they’re, they’re going for the, you know, the libraries and the, you know, senior and rec and recreational things and, you know, those types of things are on, are on the block. So having been in this situation before, one of the other criteria or, or, or yeah.

1:30:43 Criteria to start thinking about, uh, you know, we’re talking about building a budget and making decisions. If you’re building an override scenarios, start thinking about what’s the criteria to apply to the override scenarios or numbers. What are the general rules we want to apply to force, as Mr. Grade said, to enforce that process of, you know, what to put another, what we don’t wanna do is everybody put on the override wagon everything you, you want and desire, and we’re just gonna, we’re gonna just pile it up and put it out there. You, we need to start thinking about what are the limits to what we will consider as part of any override scenarios.

1:31:31 The example being in Salisbury, now, we’re going way back to early 1990s where the decision was that the total of all, and, and we ended up doing six separate overrides for different services, but the total of all the overrides would not exceed a dollar per thousand on the tax rate. So that put a cap as to what’s the total we’re gonna, we’re gonna build in. Uh, and I’m not suggesting that $1 should be, ‘cause times have changed in 30 years. But, um, it’s that type of, I think the message is there will be or should be restrictions and limitations, how you actually build the override scenario so as not to be a free for all.

1:32:18 Right? Mm-hmm. That makes sense. I think that does, especially when they were talking about level services. Yeah. I think if we’re doing it as level what they have versus that’s The first start. Right. And, and, uh, I lost track, but when will we, sorry, get an idea what the, uh, uh, balance budget looks like in what the service impact would be During the town administrative state of the town address. Okay. January, January 28th. Filing on the, the requirements That Thatcher and, and hopefully that will be, this is what this department X will look like, department Y, is it Okay. Or at least have a really good idea. ‘cause there’s always, there’s always tweaking as you go.

1:33:04 Uh, one, there’s always surprises as you build the budget rate of, you know, some class factor Yep. Changes, right? So there’s always, there’s always that caveat, but to the, to the degree, um, of, of the information, the extent possible to have, you know, a 90%, 95% idea of this is where the numbers are Landed. But, but all the departments, including schools are dialed into that, that, you know, this is what yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, I’m gonna have to lose X jobs and that type of Thing. Them Yes. Maybe I can. And then what, what the, um, service reduction looks like. I think that’s really important. Understand. Do you think it’s that a place where we need to consider, like, you know,

1:33:50 because you know, so much of our, it’s it’s staff and like I said, there’s a sen like Thatcher alluded to, there’s essential, like non-negotiable things that we’re funding, you know, at what point, you know, versus making cuts here versus there. Do we, you know, put out to, for feedback on do, do we prefer to, you know, set up a different trash fee model? I mean, that’s kind of an obvious first thing. I mean, maybe if that’s like, I mean, I know it’s unpopular, but this is the situation we’re living in. Like when do those decisions kind of get made? Like are we, like I think that’s the board’s decision. Yeah. So when we come, so when We come back Yeah. With the options. Okay. So I’d like to maybe weigh in on kind of like

1:34:36 how I perceive a next step and use an example. And it’s not to pick on the schools, but we’ve been having public meetings with them. When I started talking about the, the expense side, I said, you know, I asked the schools to give me based on the budgeted positions, for example, what is that gonna cost next year? Right? So that’s what’s in here, right? Between now and state of the town. I think you can work with the schools and we’ve been largely driven by the school committee. They’ve been asked to do a effectively a, a closer look at the staffing levels be to address the question that’s been asked by many people about declining enrollment. So I’m not trying to laser in on that topic, but I’m lasering in on that as an example.

1:35:23 There’s a number in that 61.2 million for fiscal year 27 that could change before you ask for an override. Mm-hmm. Okay. Right. Good. Okay. So that could, that could chip away at it. Mm-hmm. There’s numbers in here that are estimates that presumably will be finalized in the next month or two on the miscellaneous other. Mm-hmm. Correct. Yep. Is it less than that? If it’s less than that, it could chip away. Is it more than that? It would make it worse. So the next step for me as I think about phase, this is phase two, phase three being state of the bound. And then the last phase being, what are we actually doing, um, is actually chipping away at this and then seeing what your override looks like. Right. Because just taking last year’s budget and, and that’s why, that’s why I

1:36:09 approached this exercise that way. Exactly. What was budgeted last year? What does that cost next year? We didn’t have to press as hard last year ‘cause we balanced right now we have to press harder. Now where are we? Right? We can’t always just increase costs and never say, oh, we’ve created an efficiency. Right. So. Right. That’ll take them longer though on than our side. Right. To do that. I mean, I imagine, But they’re working on it right now, you know, like for the schools in the example I gave, like, we’ve had multiple, right? Molly? Yeah. Talking about this exercise, they’ve acknowledged that, you know, the enrollment has declined. I vary a lot. And again, I’m not picking on the schools, I’m just trying to provide an example. There’s probably ways on the townside, maybe not to the tune of a $40 million line item, but, um, there’s probably areas that you could say, okay,

1:36:57 is there any room for reduction before we finalize this? This could turn into a much lesser number when you do that first step. Or A, even if you were like a weatherman and we’re wrong, 50% of the 50% of the time here. Yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re going from seven to three and a half million and we’re still looking at a deficit making changes. Hundred percent. I know you guys, all of you, and you’re a lot better than, than a weatherman. Mm-hmm. So even you’d have to be way off for us to be looking at. I agree. I agree. Um, It’s just a question of where we have, where we have to cut and what we have to do to get there. After you tweak your numbers, we know that this number’s not coming to zero or possible. But once you balance, I think you should forecast it out in the same format and see how that looks against the revenue. You might be still outta luck in two years, even if you cut all the way down. Right. Right. It still, even On our side, wherever you land, whether it’s here, like balanced and do that,

1:37:44 or somewhere in between and you ask for an override, you wanna keep this like thought process. But Of the 7 million of that 7 million, 2 million health insurers, half a million pension, a million in trash, that’s three and half, that’s 50%. Right. Of that deficit Is benefits. And the rest of it’s is, is in showers. Of course. Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s all, I mean, it’s 80% the whole time, but, but it’s a pure, the only way you can get to it is through Headcounts. And the, the insurance is, if you, if you reduce the salary, then insurance is impacted by that. Right, right. Certainly if you reduce head count, because then less people are getting research, so, okay. It’s, it’s complicated. It’s not easy. Well, thank you guys for all your hardware. This is, despite what we’re seeing is helpful. It’s, it’s great. We, we need to have this information and we need to continue to get, you know, more information. Big

1:38:30 Thank you to Molly and Alec. Yeah. They worked a lot. Thank you. Of time. They’ve been working with me throughout the year on a lot of hours on This. Yeah. We appreciate all your work. This is really outstanding. Thank you. Excellent. Great. Great. Thank you guys.

1:38:46 All right. Moving on. Next we have a, uh, continuation. Oh, I don’t know where they, right here. Molly, take that chair off. Come on Molly. Come on. Don’t let him do that.

1:39:00 50% he’s gonna be on. All right, let’s move on to the continuation.

1:39:07 And they’re gone. We’re not gonna, well, the back and forth Is good. That’s Great. All all let’s, let’s move on. We can talk revocation one Atlantic Ave. Hold on guys. Guys quiet down a little bit. You guys hold down a little please. Thank you. So this is a continuation public hearing. Open November 13th, 2024 on the revocation of the wine malt beverage license number 0 0 0 4 2 dar uh slash rs slash 0 6 5 6 Chen Dynasty one Atlantic Ave. Mr. Lewis, you’re back. I’m back. Thank You. You want to give the board an update on, on progress. I think last time you were here you we’re shooting for the deadline of Yeah, November. We, we Did as best as we could, but with the holiday and even last week

1:39:55 or so, uh, people hadn’t been quite as available as they had been before. Um, we’re still moving us forward as best as we can. Um, we, we have an issue with the furnace, so we’re getting that fixed or replaced this week. Um, my contractor believes that we can get everything closed up and finalized before Christmas. Um, he says it’s tight, but he thinks that can happen. Um,

1:40:22 So you’re saying two weeks, I mean, you just gave Yeah, I want, I mean, are you being realistic or optimistic? I’m Being both. Um, I, I, I’ve been in there, uh, the floors need to get put in. A few of the appliances need to get put in and then, um, everything needs to be working for the health inspector to come by and give us a thumbs up. That’s the only inspection we’re, we’re currently waiting on now. And he can’t do that until we have, uh, the appliances and everything and, and hot water going. So everything else is signed off on electric plumbing, fire suppression. Yes, sir. Everything else is is signed off on Saying a shake up out of the No, from our building.

1:41:07 Oh, was it? Yeah. None of the fine would’ve been done saying it can be. Can we ask, Actually, Steve, if you don’t, Could we ask? Um, yes. Uh, the chief and, um, Steve to speak to the absolutely permits. No, I apologize if that’s wrong. ‘cause my contractor said he met with somebody from the fire department yesterday and he said we’re, we’re good. Yeah. We met with him yesterday. We did a walk through, try to get an idea of when the project we’re gonna be done. He felt conservatively looking at a month. He, he, he thinks it would take us a month to open, but he felt like the remainder of the work would probably be next two weeks.

1:41:44 Yeah. So it seems like we have some in the conversations. We’re not trying to be difficult as I I mean, I’m, I’m, yeah, no, I don’t, no one’s questioning whether or not you’re telling what you’re hearing and you’re I understand, but I’m, I’m trying to, you know, push him as, as best I can. Um, like I said, as as best I as I can, I, I can’t make the people work any faster than I can possibly make them work. Um, so This is just really unusual. I mean, we do people do construction and go through business. You know, I’m, I don’t, I’m, I I have a lot of empathy for your situation, but we’re just, we also have to consider the best interest of the town too. And this is, we’ve had a lot of, a lot of, um, exceptions and, and special kind of, um, extensions have been served.

1:42:33 And I guess is this just not true then from our fire chief? Has the remainder of the fire suppression work and fire inspection, have they not been completed? Not I, under the Understanding. Okay. I was under the understanding. I believe you, I’m not saying that you’re misrepresenting, I believe that you were told that, but the fact of the matter is according to the fire chief, it’s not done. Um, and then with our building commissioner here is, are there outstanding things that, um, that uh, uh, um, Mr. Lewis is missing on Electrical file? I thought we had that To get a final Okay. One Final. When the plumbing’s complete, that means toilet in sink in temperature set. So plumbing, electrical, gas building.

1:43:19 So I’ve been giving wrong information this whole time then. So hold on. Maybe. So this is Very different information than, hold on One sec. Maybe you’re misunderstanding. Does he have the rough signoffs on those rough signoffs Yes. To close the walls? Yes. Think you have the rough signoffs. You can’t get finals until you’re basically done. Correct. Because Mr. Dubin has told me, he’s like, we’ve been signed off in the plumbing. We’ve been signed off the electric, but we’ve been signed. Well, That’s rough. The rough, right. Then you close up walls. Yeah. And then final is basically once all your fixtures are in and you’re ready is the final walls And everything is, Okay. So you’ve been signed, so he’s been si has he been signed off on rough? Yes, As far as I know on the roughs. Okay. So I think maybe you’re confusing the two. He’s saying that can’t get your final till the end. So let me, yeah, because the chief and I did the walkthrough. Yep. And we talked

1:44:04 to the contract who’s actually doing the work, which I think is probably the best, the best source as to what needs to be done. And, and as the chief said, uh, ‘cause we were asked all the questions and, and it’s pushing hard. Uh, it, it’s about a month. And, and I’ll say this, we, we’ve, we’ve been doing this for a long time and you know, my assessment is the,

1:44:29 the progress has been the contractors are gonna be showing up, gonna be showing up. So we’ve been doing that for a long time. I have to say through the walkthrough, there’s been a tremendous amount of work done in the last few months. And, and I know a considerable amount, uh, amount of money has been sunk into that work. So there is an indication of, of a true level of effort, a true expenditure of funds to try to get this done. My sense is if the contractor is pushing the same four weeks and we’re heading into the holiday season, right. Six to eight, we’re six to eight weeks is probably a real world mm-hmm. Timeframe to figure where, where, where this thing sits

1:45:15 Go. Yeah. I was just, I was just gonna make a proposal that basically have a, you know, a deadline on this, you know, for we, I mean, I don’t know if we could We Have deadline. We had a deadline. Well, I mean, yeah, but I mean something, something where I’m saying we’re not gonna send it, or we could make, we could make a point trying to get to where, why this keeps happening. Lemme just, let me just because the incentives aren’t built, we need to build in some hard incentives for you to finish this. Right? I don’t know whether we say, look at the end of January, uh, you know, make it into a current motion that we’re, that we’re revoking the, you know, the license, can we, and make it available. I don’t know if we can do that, but I think in this motion, we, we need to make, to make it very clear that, you know, we just, and, and, and this is in, in full, uh, acknowledgement of your effort and the amount of money. Can we do, Can we put a deadline on a revocation?

1:46:03 I think I continue. I think this is what we just Continue the Hearing. We, because we have to close the hearing. So Yeah. So I think what we do is we, if if we continue, we do a continuation and there’s an agreement here that we’re telling you flat out that it’s at our February meeting, right? Like you’re getting well, you’re getting the vote. Yeah. Either Everything’s done or, you know, we’re, we’re, Here’s my opinion. We don’t think that, I think it’s good for the town as well. If we ever upset the town to have it in, We’re invested in it too at this point. Right. Like, I mean, it’s gonna be great, but I mean, if we revoke and you shut down, someone’s gonna start from scratch. Exactly. Right? Yeah. So we are two months away on something that’s gonna add to the benefit of the townspeople. And we’ve come this far as my opinion. I I’m not a, I’m frustrated as I’m sure you are too. I know that. And I, it’s, it’s hard to hear. I mean, another month, another month.

1:46:49 My contractor’s like, we can, we might be able to get this done by Thanksgiving is what he told me. Have you given some incentives on time based on dollars and stuff? Have you built that in? I mean, that’s up to you. I mean, I see it a lot, but at, you know, something to think about. It’s not my job. Well, I, I, yeah, but I think, I think we’re pretty clear though that right at the end of whatever, uh, so what’s our February? Yeah. What is the meeting? The 11th? Yeah. Okay. So February 11th, we would expect, Can, can I just ask, I was in the impression before we were battling against a, a state imposed deadline because you had mentioned like a November, So I can 30th Light on that. I just wanna say I, so I was sympathetic with the pi. ‘cause I’m actually always looking in the windows down there on the way to getting a, uh, marble house, a pizza.

1:47:37 And, uh, but I, I thought we were, that’s,

1:47:45 and, uh, at least I’m not coming out as rip tie, but No, um, I I thought it was a state deadline that you, So it’s an inspection deadline. Okay. Yeah. Right. And then, uh, to, to, to get the certificate in order to start January 1st. Right. So the current certificate is good till December 31st. Okay. Right. To get through the inspection. So, so as far as from an inspection side, it’s to be completed. There is a deadline to filing with the state such, but it’s to in order to start January 1st, so, okay. That is separate and I think, I think Mr. Fox will go into it. The licensing part of the issue has its

1:48:30 requirements and limitations as to what we can and cannot do. So we Right. So basically a little bit further, we’re probably, if, if we continue this, we would renew his license for next year subject to this hearing going on. Yeah. Because you still have to give six months notice. So we can’t not renew his license, um, based on, on, on talking to legal counsel. Yeah. So because then they, they go hand in hand. So we could still, since we started this two years ago, we could still revoke the license on February 11th. Okay. But, and, and 15 minutes depending when we get there, he is gonna be part of renewal for his multiple licenses, including that. Okay. So it’s, we, I had this discussion

1:49:17 ‘cause it came up with Lisa Meade about whether or not we do not renew your license right now. Yeah. But that doesn’t accomplish anything. Okay. Yeah. ‘cause I was is there more of a barrier to US leader? Yeah, it doesn’t change Because the sense is, we call it renewal license. It is a technically a continuation of the license. Yeah. So the fact that it’s in a hearing about revocation of it, it’s all the same license, whether it’s last year or next year. It’s one license that’s under consideration. Are the commercial appliances ordered and delivered? Do you have delivery dates? They’re, they’re all there. They’re Okay, great. They’ve been tested. They’re, they working. Um, great. Yeah. So I think I’m hearing can, if I can summarize quickly, but

1:50:02 that’s okay with that once you please Through the chair, um, Dr this is just for you or, um, with, for Chief Gillian, uh, when you did the walkthrough, were there any, was there anything that, I mean, obviously this has been a long history of landlord. I mean, so a lot of other variables that have come into play here, but where we are right now, with everything that was recently seen, were there any challenges that jumped out to you that would not seem in line with the normal process of, you know, a business such as this opening at this phase? Like, do you understand what my question is? Yeah, And I’ll, I’ll give you my, my layman’s answer to what I saw. And there were others who do this for a living. What I saw was all the major pieces of equipment are in there

1:50:47 and it’s connecting the various hoses lines and things, which would then be followed by being inspected and, and, and signed off on. There was, uh, the rear door, which has to be handicapped accessible. Um, they have to install the, the, the push button to open and close the door. Um, the door width is undersized, but they actually went through the, the architectural access board and got that waived for that door. So, so it’s just a matter of the waiting for the parts to come into for the door opener. There was the bathroom that looked like that was ready to put the, the, the fixtures in it

1:51:34 that’s been done over, um, the front of the building. The indication is that’s just paint and clean and, and, and such, this, this flooring to be down. So it looked like all of the major kitchen components are there, some are already hooked up, other pieces. And he said they just literally need to connect things. So I, I guess my, my assessment was if we were still sitting here discussing whether the contractors were gonna show up or not, I’d be recommending a different course. The fact that the work is substantial in place and a substantial amount of money has been actually expended in it is probably the only reason I’m recommending that, you know, a further extension.

1:52:22 ‘cause I think all of our goal is to help ‘em succeed, not Yeah, absolutely. We want success. So the fact that we’re, it seemed to me that there, the finish line is in sight. You’re like, yeah, we’re like all 90% invested in it already. So We’re all invested, I think. I think in football they call it the tush push. Yeah. Let’s, that’s where we’re at. All right. Um, any other comments? No, thanks. So I think what I’m hearing is that we continue the February 11th with a done it before, but a drop dead, um, certificate. So all sign-offs building fire. Would you guys then issue, issue a c certificate of occupancy? You on the commercial side or you don’t need that long as everything, but I mean, that’s the final step is c, certificate

1:53:09 of occupancy on health. Okay. Health Depart. Yep. And the health Department. Okay. Does That seem reasonable to you guys? You know, February 13th, 11th, Like Said, I mean, you sold us two weeks and we expanded. Yeah. Okay. So I want to hear exactly what’s going on. That’s not even hearing. No, I, I apologize for that. That’s not the information that I was, So I just gotta get more people in the room. Right. The contractors. Yeah. Could I get a motion to continue the revocation hearing of Sey one, Atlantic A and until the February 11th meeting? So, all in favor, good luck continued. Good luck. Hang in there. Hopefully we’ll be open. Come me with a big smile and your bells and whistles on and everything. All right. Moving on. COA stack work off guidelines. Anyone here from POA? No. Anyone a line?

1:53:57 So it looks like it’s a pretty straightforward memo from Lisa Hooper, the director of COA asking to, So it’s an annual increase as to the, the, uh, um, elig eligible income levels to qualify for the tax workup program. Mm-hmm. So the feds nationwide create the chart of where, uh, where income is relative to poverty. It adjusts, this allows adjustment for eligibility to the program. Seems reasonable to, may we have set. It’s not a huge amount. They can work off anyway. So if I could have a motion to approve the request from Lisa Hoop or councils on agent director

1:54:43 to adopt the income guideline increase for the 2026 senior tax work off program. Same. Moved second in favor. All right. And the next we have letters of support. Uh, Mr. Callahan, do you wanna come up and discuss these and two here? We’ll, good evening. Evening, Brenda call. We have two different letters of support that you’re asking for. If you explain both, Uh, the, the one with the one is for the Massachusetts Housing Partnership Community Assistance, it’s to reach out to the MHP, uh, and just try to get, uh, technical assistance to, with the coffin school project. Um, we probably the task whether the scope is gonna include like more community engagement, um, do developing conceptual site plans for potential, you know,

1:55:29 development scenarios, uh, and assist us with drafting an RFP once we get there. Um, big question. We haven’t talked about it all night. Is that grant subject to three A? No. Good. Okay. And, and what’s the amount, what’s the amount, What’s the expected amount do you Think? There? We don’t, um, I don’t know yet. It’s, it’s the services. They just provide services. Got it. How quickly could that start? They said they could start after the new year. Okay, great. Uh, and then the other one, uh, is there another, there’s a, another, right? There’s, This is The NM PO build street. Uh, so basically, um, you want me to hear it or you wanna Okay. Can I ask a question about the housing one first? Absolutely. Okay. The coffin school property is

1:56:15 still at total open book. Mm-hmm. As what’s gonna be done mass housing. Will they just be supporting housing options or would it be the Whole, uh, this What do you mean? Oh, okay. So, so would they just, there’s been no decision? No, they won’t be just looking at housing. They would Any, so if we will put a cemetery, it’s Not restricting our options by doing This. It’s not restricted, but they Would actually, if, you know, cemetery, we had Had, I had one, one program. They, they were suggesting us to go after, would’ve been the town committing to an affordable housing project. And I was like, well, at this time we’re not, we’re not there. Okay. So we couldn’t, so I, then I went for the general technical assistance. Okay. But, so despite the name of the organization, it’s, it’s, we’re gonna help you figure out what to do with the property no matter what it is. Mm-hmm. So they’ll come with a community engagement

1:57:01 similar to what you asked for at the last meeting to come and have the boards. And they’re better at organizing that as well as Perfect. Well, there’s a likely housing component too, right? So, yes. Uh, and they, they would do a zoning and that we’re gonna try get, have, ask them to do a zoning analysis. Also, I move On to the project, uh, the Village Street Bridge. Uh, we, uh, that, so we try to get, that’s a project that we’re trying to get on the pip, the Mast Transportation Improvement Program. Uh, we did not get on last year, but they suggested to come back the following year. Reapply. Uh, so that’s what we’re doing. Again, we’re just, um, the project, we did complete the 25% design phase. So that’s been sit, they, they have those plans. We haven’t received the comments from them yet.

1:57:47 Um, they, they’re due like today. Um, and then, so now we’re just reapplying for, they try to get on the tip for, for construction Dollars. So this would for, this would be for the full construction? Full construction, yeah. Of the project. This phase of it, it’s paid 80% by the federal money, 20% by the state. So we had to fork the money up for the design work. That’s the municipal piece. Getting on the tip means the federal and the state will pick up the cost for the project. Okay. Is that the MPO grant? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. MPO. And which Tip is not affected By, well, The transportation improvement plan of the state is managed by the MPO,

1:58:32 the Metro Plan Organization, which, which makes decisions on where those state and federal funds go for projects. So it’s discretionary. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s the, the NPO then the, the board meets in Boston and votes on projects. Uh, so this, this is the effort to get this, um, onto their agenda and good and approved. It doesn’t mean that the project starts tomorrow. No. This like, it’s a long conveyor belt. Yeah. This, this year they’ll be, they’re programming for fiscal year 31. Oh. Programming for 31 programming Because it’s, it’s usually five years. Oh, They’re closing in on us. Come on, Let’s,

1:59:19 Let’s go. Anybody else? Um, yeah, so the, some of the pieces to add, um, so the, the MPO, um, does great with it’s it’s points. So I think it’s five points that you get for, for the three A compliance. Mm-hmm. Um, and that does, we were the second to last, I think in the last round. Yes. That was submitted about this time last year. Um, so this three a compliance will help our project. Um, and the only thing I wanted to mention is with the tip process, there’s the design, but there’s also right of way acquisition if required. Um, so we’re still early phases, but um, that’s falls on the town, um, Right of way acquisition of the, It’s fairly, it’s fairly minor, but it’s a MA dot process. So everything they do is a little bit I see what you’re saying. Beefier. Gotcha. So the answer is yes, it is affected,

2:00:06 it’s not an automatic No. But it’s through the scoring system. Correct. Which we don’t get those five points or Correct. Okay. Do we know Why we came in second to last? Um, so the, it wasn’t last there. So there’s kind find the wind, wind down. There’s, so there’s quite a bit of information that goes into this, and I think we’re still kind of, we’ve opened discussions in the last week trying to understand like how to best strategize ourself for this. Um, and so the, a lot of the, the buckets of funding through the MPO, for lack of a better word, are focused on, um, there’s multimodal transportation, more complete street type projects. There’s shared youth pass. So all of those different type of infrastructure improvements are give you strength in your application. This is a trans, um, an infrastructure project.

2:00:53 It’s a bridge. Um, it’s about two and a half feet longer than the small bridge grant. And even it, there’s no way that we can even make it in the approach for design into that small grid bridge grant eligibility just with the utility corridor underneath it. Um, and then, um, there’s potentially an opportunity at a future date if we wanted to look into combining it with future projects. But this was set up before, um, many of us were in the roles that we are in now. And so we’re continuing at that. I think we’re at 25% design. We’ve submitted through MAs dot, um, the comments were due about last week. And so we’re kind of just waiting to see and, and proceed with this. Um, at some point, maybe it is worth scaling it back, but there’s also an opportunity through the tip funding process

2:01:40 where these projects fall through. And if we’re more shovel ready, um, and we are a smaller project. I mean, the total cost for construction is $4.7 million, so closer to five. Um, so that definitely, I’m not sure exactly what they’re, what the, what the list that they have is. But there’s also changes with the MPO process in which they’re changing how they, um, award. Like, so if you get booked on the tip at, at certain years, you have to advance your design so far. And so like to be booked in that five year, um, time, book time schedule, you have to be at that 25%. We are there now. We were not there last year. So that helps us as you continue, you need to continue to advance your design process.

2:02:25 So I’m not sure exactly the year, but maybe it’s year three or four. You have to be at 75%, then you have to go to plan. That’s an estimate. We have continued to make progress. Um, as we understand it, there are other communities in Massachusetts that are not continuing to make progress, so they may no longer be eligible for funding. So we may be able to slide in at those cases. So we’re kind of monitoring all of those situations and continuing to make process the project. They’re changing their guidelines also. That’s just change. Yeah. Be like, so people that been tip but haven’t progressed in design, the, the talk or the chatter is they’re gonna start coming off. Mm-hmm. That’s it. Um, ‘cause people would sit there for years and not do any, not do anything. So I made a living in Amesbury. I pointed myself to the MPO

2:03:11 and made sure all the a v projects were shovel ready. Right, right. Waiting for somebody else’s project to fall down and, and fill those slots because each MPO is allocated their pot of money. And if they can’t spend it all, there are other regions that they’ll shift it to who can’t. So it’s in the interest of the NM PO that if some somebody’s project fails, I remember one. Mm-hmm. The wetland flaggings didn’t get done or expired and all of a sudden that stalled that project and the NPOs like looking for, I need a $2 million project so we don’t lose it. I had a $2 million project ready to go. So same strategy here is move our project along

2:04:00 as keep pushing on that boulder up the hill as far as we can. And when the opportunity comes for a $5 million slot to be filled, we’ll be the ones that say, yeah, we, we can help you on that. And that’s how you get the funding. Great answer. Thank you. And the status of the bridge, I’m assuming that at this point we think it’s gonna survive for Five years. Um, so the MAs, DOT continuously, regularly does inspections with the bridge. The last one was completed in July, 2024. Um, if any critical repairs are needed at that, at the time of their inspection, they bring it to, um, the town engineer. So, um, I know Charlie has done a oversaw a few in the last five or so years. Um, there’s nothing that’s been brought to us yet. Um, and, but there was reasonable repairs done in the last,

2:04:46 I think there was two re two pretty major repairs done in the last, um, maybe three years. So, um, there’s nothing that we’re aware of at this time, but we’re continuously inspect five. I haven’t oversee one, so. Okay. Yeah, it was all under Charlie, but, um, it was, it Was, I was here. Yeah. When those events I recall too. It Was in the last three Years, in the last five years. So, um, yeah. So, um, there has been some repairs, temporary repairs, and um, we’re continuing to monitor it and follow state protocol for their bridge inspection program. A service that MAs dot does for all communities is they do bridge inspections on a regular basis for all communities in Massachusetts. Great. Thank you. Anybody Else? I wanna say there were a lot of conversations deciding whether this would be on the tip and we did end up, you know, committing chapter 90 money to that design.

2:05:32 So we have put, you know, over $340,000 in the design to meet the tip requirements too. So, um, you know, it’s money well spent. It’s, we we’re gonna have a design that we’re gonna be able to build a bridge, whether it be through tip or you know, some other kind of funding. But, And should we assume that each 25% is the similar type cost? The design or it the majority of, no, once we hit 25, that’s our part. So we don’t have to spend right on that design phase. It doesn’t come out of our pockets to get to like design phase here, 25% of the, the money, But it won’t be as expensive to go. It’s the majority of the money up front. I saw a total to get us through a hundred percent was up to 700, like 75,000. Right. So we’re at like 50% of it up 360. Okay.

2:06:19 I have a question. Okay. Um, are we still looking at, or I came to recall a conversation about like bringing the cost down for, um, that did. Okay. So, so when we say bridge we’re 12 million, we made it into like a culvert, not a bridge technically, but we’re calling it a bridge. But we we’re, this design is for basically a culvert. Culvert. Culvert. Okay. Just wanna make sure ‘cause we kept saying bridge, but Yeah, I mean that’s what people will see it ast call it. That’s kind of bridge is been Converted. I just wanted to make sure if we’re still doing that plan, The generic bridge term. Okay. Yeah. But trying to stay on the tip, we had to design both bridges and have them approve the Culvert. So going through the state’s process, um, they do have like a number of submittal requirements. And even when the town first cured the contractor

2:07:07 that did this 25% design, it changed. So, um, the, the, they, you do a bridge selection worksheet and they evaluated it for that culvert option, and that was selected and approved by mast as part of this. So take the top off, put the new culvert and do it lane by lane. So we keep, at this time, the plan is to keep one lane of traffic open. It’s a pretty critical cross connection through town and in coordination with others. And, um, that’s access and would. Yeah. So it’s important. Well, thank you guys for your work and for the up speed. Appreciate it. Thank you. Could I get a motion to send a letter of support for technical assistance with the di with the di disposition of the coffin school property to the Mass Housing Partnership Community Assistance Program to authorize chair to sign on behalf of the board. So moved. Second. All in favor? Unanimous motion.

2:07:56 Could I also have a motion to send a letter of support for funding the Village Street Bridge replacement project number 6 1 2 9 4 7 to the Boston Regional Metropolitan Planning Organization to authorize the chair. So on behalf, So moved. Second. All in favor? All right. So this, the next one, what we are talking about is licensing. We have a bunch of licenses to renew, um, ranging from lodging to automatic amusement devices, wine and malts, movie, et cetera. So we have a list of all of these. Um, when we go through this, Jim, this needs to recuse himself for voting on the Gary five license renewal. So we will do it in two stages, basically, where we,

2:08:42 we’ll approve all of them except for the Gary five, and then we’ll go back and do the Gary five. Yeah, this is pretty standard. So if any questions on these? Cool. So if I could have a motion to renew all 2026 licenses for businesses in the town of Marble. It has posted and attached here in the select board meeting packet, except the Gary number five, veteran Fireman Association, Inc. Subjects to the following, all taxes and fees to the town paid and receipt of the applicable departmental approvals, approval from the Commonwealth Department of Public Safety for Sunday Entertainment file certificate of inspection for 2025 through 26. And the COO is appropriate. And compliance with chapter 3 0 4 of the acts of 2024 I motion. So move Second. Motion should

2:09:28 be poll vote. Ms. Singer In favor, Mr. Grader? In favor, Ms. Noon In favor, Mr. Fox in favor? I could also have a motions for new, uh, the 2026. The following 20, I’m sorry. Yeah. Second in favor. Oh, you can have just kicking the, I’m sorry. Backwards. All right, now you, now you quiet. Sorry. I won’t be allowed in any s Exactly. Mr. Vis, you’re not even to go to a down house pizza. I have motion to renew the following 2026 license for the Gary Five. Number five, veteran Fire Veteran Fireman Association, Inc. Has posted and attached here in the select board meeting packet, subject for following all tax and fees of the town being paid. Receipt of all applicable department approvals, approval from the Commonwealth Department of Public Safety

2:10:13 for Sunday Entertainment Valid certificate of inspection for 2025 to 26. Certificate of is appropriate Compliance with Chapter 3 0 4 of the Acts of 2004. Second, Mr. Greater in favor Ms. Noon. In favor, Ms. Singer? In favor, Mr. Fox? In favor? Um, there you go. Got it. Off. Next we have the extended business hours, um, for New Year’s Eve, if I could have a motion made, uh, to allow restaurants in the town of Marble to remain open for business on Thursday, January 1st, 2026 until 1:00 AM at their discretion. So moved. Second. All in favor? A here.

2:10:59 All right, we have some consent agenda items, uh, if I have a motion to accept the following consent agenda items. Accept those put on hold the minutes of November 19th, 2025. November 25th and December 2nd. Also of 25 Abbott Hall Festival of Arts Puzzle Fundraiser. January 10th, 26th. Subject to the usual rules, regulation fees and receipt of the required certificate of insurance, Abbott Hall, Matthew Arnold, and New England Yankees. Valentine’s State Dance. February 14th, 26. Subject to the regular rules, regulations, fees, and receipt of the required certificate of insurance. So moved. Second. All in favor? All right, moving on to contracts. This first one that we have here, contract twenty six twenty eight, is on-call fencing, repairs, and installation. It’s similar to the one that we did for HVAC last month.

2:11:46 It’s basically when we need somebody, we need to go for procurement. Oh, Gonna fix the fence at, at Ley Road on the back tower way. That section. It’s gonna fix that already. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so everyone, everyone out there hear that that is part of this contract? Yep. Excellent. Everybody on Haley Road, we’ll be excited. And this premier Fence I a motion approved contract 26 s 28 on-call fence installations and report between the town Premier Fence LLC in the amount of $42,485. And authorized the chair to sign the contract on behalf the board. So will second. All favor. This next one is continuation of the fire station down on Franklin Street, I think. Yep. Um, this money is being, this is coming

2:12:34 through Article 11 20 22 town meeting and this is four 35,300. If I get a motion to approve contract 26 s 30 to replace siding on the right side of the fire station between the town and Unicorn Inc. In the amount of $35,300. Authorized chair to sign on contract behalf of the board. Somo second. All in favor? This next one, towing contract, this is, I almost compare to with the ambulance. This is a zero bid so that we have a towing someone on, on call. Yeah. We’ve signed contract with ‘em and they can go for during snow emergencies. This is basically specifically for snow events, correct. Um, if I get a motion to approve contract 26 dash 36 for towing services between the town and Esco services, LLC

2:13:20 and authorized chair to sign the contract on behalf of the board. So moved. Second. All in favor? Another one for Amy here. Phase one storm water utility fees, again from Article 10. This one from 2025. Um, anything you wanna say about it? Come on up quick. Why don’t you just get a seat at the table. We’ll just give you one, we’ll give you name tag and everything.

2:13:46 Uh, so last year we voted to start looking at the storm water, uh, utility. And this is to have the contractor come through phase one to kind of give us a rate structure, do some public education, really understand how it would affect my head or not. Um, and then to give us a bylaw that would, uh, also be incorporated. So, um, it’ll be, so there won’t be how meeting will most likely just be an educational piece and move on. And then we’ll have a lot more public education. The um, consultant says the more you get out, the more people understand, the easier it is pass if you, if you rush it. It just is Very good. And last year we just set up the fondant, but this in Place score, and I just wanna say the stormwater system in Marblehead is becoming more and more critical

2:14:32 because mm-hmm. Of climate change and sea rise and you know, we’ve seen that we have flooding on the streets that everybody either enjoys or you’re trying to get out of town. Those are major places we have to look at. If you look at all our outfalls, you’re gonna see that they all need to be repaired. And I think I just put in like $10 million worth of work, uh, in the capital improvement plan, just so people understand how much work there really is. And then, you know, historically we’ve stayed with a very small amount that doesn’t really do much for maintenance. And then there have been overrides to deal with the major problems and you know, it’s like every three or four years you have a three to 5 million kind of there now. So hopefully the stormwater utility fee can flatten all that out structure. Would you, sorry, would you assess the fee on like your

2:15:19 tax bill or how do we, how do we assess That? So that’s what they’ll look at. Okay. So you can do it by, um, unit numbers. You could do it by flat fee. You can do it by, uh, Impervious soil and Soil, yeah. Oh, like per, yeah. LA landmass. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, and that, this consultant has done quite a few. So good. He’s got a long range of, in a long time experience, which is great. And, and utility fees are pretty, uh, pretty standard across the municipalities and Yeah, I think’s like 36 right now and there’s a whole bunch more. We, This is a fairly new process. Okay. The MS four requirements really. Okay. Push this For stormwater. Yeah. Alright. And is there kinda like a metric

2:16:06 that it’s based on or it’s just in your assessment of the, you know, of the ca a capital expenditure that needed to do it? Uh, so car, if, if you look, we do have a five year capital plan. So it’s looking at that, which is now moved out 10 years. It’s why I have all that too. We did, um, for big projects. No, thats right. Further out. But, um, and then you have MS four, MS four things that you have to do every year, clean and catch patients every year. So, you know, We So does that fill, that basically fills that, That would take all So budget. This Is just for the study to implement though, right? Yeah, its for the, the study to give us what the fee would look like, you know, have people comment on it, there’d be That’s right. Stakeholder groups together and public engagement together.

2:16:52 A lot more people involved. Yeah. Great. And I’m sure we’ll be back asking you for stakeholder, For Stakeholder idea for stakeholder groups. Great. Uh, which we hope to get done in January and February. Okay. So the annual nut you expect to be, what approximately, uh, is that’s kind of a, I mean based on your, To bring In your maintenance, uh, you know, component of your, The one I just did actually made it, uh, it was around, it was like between 800,000 and a million, but I would say a million. ‘cause that’s, I always want as much money to fix things, but right now we do it on, you know, four doesn’t really cover it. So, you know, five, six. But I’m sure they’re gonna give us either like maybe a

2:17:39 graduated thing going up or, Okay. No, that’s great. Just a ballpark of what There’s lot, it doesn’t have any make, so our storm water system doesn’t have any pump stations, doesn’t have any mechanical things. It’s all gravity. So, you know, it won’t be as expensive as running a sewer system won’t be as expensive as running a water system. It don’t, it won’t have, you know, it won’t require the same amount of employees or trucks or any of, so, Got It. It’s not, it’s not to develop a huge department, it’s just to be able to get projects done that we need to get done and be able to maintain. Okay. Thank you Abby. Thank you. I have a motion to approve contract 26 slash 39 for phase one of the stormwater utility fee between the town and the Woodward and Kern and the amount of 135,000 authorized

2:18:26 the chair to sign on behalf of the board. So moved. Second. All in favor? All right, next we are moving on to surplus. Yeah. My agenda. No, we had two page surplus coffin school. So this is to surplus all the contents as well as some, uh, I think it’s three vehicles as well that are in the parking lots, so. Yep. I know, I know. Albert, you, you, you’ve been asking this for a while we’re, we’ve been listening to Albert and we’re doing it. So this is, this is all the Jordan amendment. So so bus for the fire chief side. There you, there you go. So per prior to repurposing or selling it, we need to surplus all this. We need to be cleared from the building and surplus. The contents of school we offer

2:19:12 for sale via the online auction January 26th through gov deals.com by the procurement office. Any questions? No Questions. All right. So motion to declare the contents, the coffin school of surplus, no longer needed municipal purpose so that they may be, be disposed of and a accordance to the town’s policy on surplus equipment. So Moved. I’ll Second. All right. All in favor? Next we just have the announcement of the annual tree burning and pickup. I will read this from Ms. McHugh who’s the star of the show night. Um, the annual tree burning will be a Riverhead on January 6th of next year. Christmas tree pile will be set of light at 6:00 PM Residents are invited to attend this community event. Trees we picked up curbside from December 26th day after Christmas through that day

2:19:58 of the burning on January 26th. And we place a Riverhead beach for the community. Christmas trees will be continued to be picked up after that on January 6th until the 16th. After the 16th. Residents should bring their trees to the town’s transfer station for proper disposal. All trees left curbside for pickup from December 26th until the 16th of January. Must have all lights, ornaments stands removed and not be in plastic bags. Any trees that are not meeting this requirements will not be picked up. In addition, holiday reefs, roping and garland will not be picked up. So trees only, uh, f our last one here. Uh, corporal counsel, we do have a letter of interest. Um, like to set a deadline to apply. Maybe we set a deadline of the end of January

2:20:45 and do interviews or appointments on February 1st or February 11th. There’s so many on that. Like we can Do, we, We can do, it’s earlier ‘cause there’s like 20 spots, so you don’t really have to like, So you want do, uh, give a lot of, what are you recommending Ms. Newton gimme a proposal. Just our next meeting. I mean, we, we just regularly onboard them, which With That, the 11th, right? Oh, January 9th. Sorry, I went to February 11th. I skipped a month. Thank you. Okay. January 9th. We Don’t need that much For this. January 9th. Yeah. January 9th deadline with in our meeting of the 14th. Thank you. Appreciate that. I skipped a month and bringing me back any select board announcements? This was this. Yeah, I, uh, just wanna recognize, I think we all knows Sean Casey from the, uh,

2:21:32 data committee passed away past week. There’s been some, um, nice tributes, uh, to him. But you know, he was certainly the Thomas Jefferson of the charter committee. He really dug and dug and dug and it was, uh, quite a gift to have him because I, I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting it to play a different way, but he did a great job. I I really, I knew of him before that and I became somewhat friendly with him and, uh, actually quite friendly with him. And we’d talk about things, uh, you know, in town and stuff. And one of the things we really actually enjoyed was, uh, Seamus Horror hands on the committee and we’d, we’d get a kick out of his, uh, uh, columns. And in fact, the last column Seamus had I sent to, um, text

2:22:17 to Sean and it was a couple days before he got back and he just, it was just a emoji and I knew he was, wasn’t doing well. And shortly there after, you know, Amy sent me a early morning text, he passed away, but, um, we’re all better for him. And, uh, I sure he is up in heaven and he’ll, you know, have the marblehead current and he’s sitting in an easy chair reading it. And uh, and I think, uh, the only thing, other thing I’d like to say is if we could send a letter of appreciation to his, uh, to his family. And, uh, the other thing I want to add, Mike so moved. So, so whenever my Second you got It, my famous accident, uh, happened in front of his house and I was going to put the night before an election of a sign in his lawn.

2:23:05 It was raining out and I tripped. And you know, that was actually six months ago. And I called my wife. I had four good Samaritans help me, called the fire department. They got me the, an ambulance and I called my wife and as I’m in the ambulance, I’m going, Sean never came out like this Roc and I ca I called and he, he was drafting, He was drafting. He, He, he was. And, and, and I called and he, Anthony, me, he sounded groggy at the time. I said, Sean, you know, did you notice this fire trucks? No. Well, I’m in the ambulance. He goes, oh. And I, I kind of knew he was actually, um, he, he was going under treatment. I’m sure he just had a rough day and you know, we talked about that afterwards. But it was just one of those things that just, um, you know, sticks in your mind.

2:23:51 And, uh, but he will certainly, uh, be missed. And the other part is, uh, I, I don’t wanna go in too long, but he really had in, uh, a lot of, um, um, when he was a park instructor actually with Linda Rice Collins. Uh, and in later years he had a lot of influence on the generation, as Jack Atcher said, not generation kids that were a few years younger. And you just saw a lot of tributes about that. And I, I guess the thing I’ll close on, if you know Linda Rice Collins, when the, it was announced who was gonna be on the board that she says, oh, Sean is a great guy and stuff. And if you know Linda, she does not hands out. Never, never. I thought she was being facetious. I, you know, like it’s like a real jerk or something.

2:24:37 Oh, he’s a great guy. He’s the best guy and she was right. So anyhow, but wonderful, we could send it. So I think we’ve Had a motion and seconded select board to send a letter of condolences and appreciation for his contribution to the charter and to the town in general. Uh, all in favor? All right. Anyone else have announcements? Could I have a motion to adjourn? So Moved. Second. All in favor. Thank you.

2:25:09 Aye, happy getting rid of that bus for you. Yeah.