Select Board: February 11, 2026

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

0:01 No snap. We’re gonna call this meeting to order on February 11th. The meeting of the select board meeting is being recorded. Um, we are gonna start with public comment as we usually do. If anybody wants to make public comment, you can come stand up to the fake microphone, no public comment. Is anyone online? Make public comment?

0:26 Okay, we’re gonna close public comment. We’re gonna go a little outta order here. The stature has to stay anyway, so we’re gonna push him down a little bit. Let’s move to number three on our agenda. Police department, chief King, and appointment of Jonathan L to Captain. Come on up. Good evening. Alright, good evening. Good evening. Thank you for coming.

0:55 Okay. Um, thank you board for, um, hearing me tonight. Uh, it’s always exciting. I say this every time that there’s a promotion, um, that’s in the air at the police department. It doesn’t happen very often, so, um, one of this magnitude, um, it, it’s just, it’s really good to present to you. So to break it down, um, we had a captain leave almost a year ago, and, um, John, uh, became the acting captain within short order within three weeks. Um, and has filled that position since. And so for the board, just to let you know, um, a selection process then started, and that selection process included an exam that all the candidates had to take. Uh, it’s a test. It’s a, it’s a statewide civil service exam on captain.

1:42 It’s pretty hard. It’s, um, every knowledge level is tested. And so it’s, um, pretty intense. John will tell you that it was quite the exam to prepare for. Um, and so, um, you go through the exam process, uh, the results come out, and then I conduct interviews, oral interviews on very, uh, specific facts about, um, the individual, their goals, their objectives, their leadership, their morale, uh, building skills and the like. And as a result of those, um, things, um, I recommend, um, uh, the best candidate to put forward based on the position of the final scoring. And so, um, in this particular case, um, John, um, talked the list. So there comes, um, my recommendation.

2:28 So, um, that’s the process, right? So test, interview, my recommendation, um, and then I can tell you a little bit more. So, um, almost 11 months, has it been 11, just about 11 months, um, ago. Um, in a very short order, like I said, captain Lund was put into an acting position, and I know that I’m confident to give to cus recommendation ‘cause I’ve now seen him, Jo, do the job for 11 months. Um, and whenever you are put into a senior leadership and administrative type position, um, it takes a lot of skills. It takes a lot of a high learning curve, all of these things. And I’m confident based on what I’ve seen in the last 11 months, um, that John has been able to fulfill the duties of the position and what I believe will, um, even, you know,

3:17 better himself as we move forward into this permanent position. Um, he’s been with the department, uh, since 1998, um, and as a patrolman, but he’s been a superior officer for 20 years, 22 years. 22 years. Um, so, um, with the rank of lieutenant, um, almost 20 years now. So, um, a lot of leadership, um, you know, uh, experience. But, uh, when you ask me what else, you know, why I make this recommendation, um, you have a senior officer that has done all levels of the police department from patrol operations, um, to stepping outside of the box and volunteering for a position within Nemec with is, which is the North needs Massachusetts Law Enforcement

4:03 Council as a SWAT team member, which is a significant commitment, a significant, uh, role within the police profession. Um, John did that well for many years. Um, he also has filled other things in terms of operationally, um, our evidence room, which is vital to operations. Um, John has been part of that for a long time. Uh, he’s an internal affairs investigator, also helps on that front in terms of bringing in the experience on the discipline side and the investigation side. Um, and just has seen everything that you would want to have seen, uh, and along his storied career. So, um, you know, without any hesitation, any reservation, um, not only did John come up at top on the list, um, you know, I want to be able to recommend him. And I will say that the department is strong,

4:48 the other candidates were strong, the other candidates put their best forward foot forward as well. Um, we’re lucky to have, uh, high level leadership in the sergeants, in the lieutenant position. And so in this particular case that the lieutenants that participated, I appreciate that they stepped up to even, you know, to, to try to, to reach this status, which is a good sign for the department overall. But that’s what I have. That’s excellent. I’d love, uh, appreciate that. Congratulations and, uh, love hearing you move up the ranks. It’s great to have someone like that. It’s like, I wish you still had that in pro sports, where you come up through the minor league and are with that. So, congratulations, appreciate your service, Kevin. Mark, thank you for your long service to the town. It’s really much appreciated, and we’re really blessed to have, uh, someone of your caliber step into this role. Thank you, sir. And it’s outstanding. So, congratulations.

5:34 I, again, Thank you. If we could have a motion to appoint Jonathan Lunk, county of the Marlo Police Department. So, so moved. Second. There you go. All in favor. Congratulations. Thank you. Yep. Congratulations. So we are, we Can can, yeah, we can do a quick picture. We are gonna come back in about a month for a pre-meeting ceremony for, um, captain With You wanna do a picture? Sure. Jennifer, Oh, by the way, he owes it all to Jennifer. All right, perfect. He didn’t say that. I’ll say that. I No, you’re in it.

6:19 You guys get out there. Sure, absolutely.

6:36 Okay, great. I’m sorry.

6:45 Wanna do one with the Board? Thank you. Yeah, we’ll do one with the board. No, you stay to part of the board. We, you absolutely.

7:13 Very nice. Ever as a police officer.

7:20 Thank, thank

7:32 The of the meeting. We will move on. We’re gonna move on to the joint meeting with commission. If you guys wanna come up to interview and a point of vacancy for the cemetery commission. Do you guys wanna call your meeting to order? Have you already done it? Yes, we already do. Okay, great. So we do have two applications. Um, one of, we have one from Rose McCarthy, 1 4 20. Cannot make it tonight, so we will not be interviewing her, we’ll just be performing a single interview. Um, so Sally s you wanna come on up? Thank you for coming. Good evening. Good evening. Appreciate you putting your name into name in for this. Um, you just want to spend a couple minutes telling us

8:18 a little bit, I know a lot about you, but tell us a little bit about yourself and why you’re applying. Sure. Well, I’m applying, I enjoy serving the town. Mm-hmm. And I’ve spent 10 plus years on the Oldham Historic District Commission. Um, loved every minute of it. It just got to a point when COVID hit and we were doing Zoom calls that it was going to 11 o’clock, 1130 at night. And then I had to get up and face a, a school, you know, school classroom for eight hours full of five year olds. And, um, that just the two things were not mutually, um, a good idea. So I did step down from that, but I have got, had a, a experience with fundraising and budget management, um, and have relatives in most of the cemeteries in town. So I do, you know, visit them occasionally.

9:04 I know what they look like, I know the shape they’re in. Um, I think the cemetery staff does a great job and keeping our sec our cemeteries honorable and looking, looking well. And I’d be pleased to help with that, that effort. And I also know that, um, if space is always a consideration and, um, I found that out recently with my own family plot, if there’s not enough room for everybody. And, um, I want, I would hope that we could work together towards finding room for everybody, especially our Marblehead residents, um, if they wish to be interred in one of our cemeteries. Um, I have a lot of experience working with people at times of bereavement, which is

9:51 when you don’t wanna get confusing information from staff or, um, not be able to reach the people that you need to at that time. Um, and I, I would, uh, would like to work on, on working with the, the staff members in, in whatever capacity to, um, really present as warm and as caring and environment as we can when people have to come to the office to, um, to work with their dead. Now, if I can be sort of a funny off color for a minute here, the real reason I’m running is because my husband Larry, wants to be buried at Fort Sewell more than anything as time comes and he thinks if I’m on the commission, I can make that happen.

10:41 Motivating force. Yeah. Right. Actually, and Also it would be, I think, an honor to work with these two really nice guys, you know? Um, so I, you know, I have sort of a rounded, um, app, uh, resume that touches on a lot of the things that I think would be important to being commissioner. Um, and I Wednesdays off. Well, that worked out perfect. Great. We usually go around questions. I think we’re gonna go around, ask few questions. Mm-hmm. Sure. Um, and we usually start with the, with the commission. Um, if you guys have questions, if you don’t, don’t feel obliged to ask any questions.

11:19 David, first, I don’t have any. I know Sally. Yep. Actually her. Yeah. And my brother. Were in the same fighter squad World two, which is a trivial, And our sons were born within a few minutes of each other. That’s right. At sale hospital Only Marley Norris was in my brother blame. Yeah. And we’d spoken about your interest in, um, in the cemeteries and in serving the town through the cemetery commission. And I ended up running for the position. And you were glad at the moment, at the time. Uh, but I think that you bring everything to what has become, I believe it’s fair to say, a more active and engaged cemetery commission. We’re moving on some projects that I think you would be very, very, uh, uh, helpful

12:07 to be part of that movement. And, and I would look forward to, uh, uh, to working with you in that capacity. Kurt, do you, any question you have Specifically any thoughts on the roads and waterside, cemetery?

12:22 Things that I can say publicly? Yes. Well, they definitely could use some work. Um, and that I, you know, I’m sure is something that has, has not escaped Dave and Dave’s David’s attention. Um, and I, you know, I haven’t seen the budget yet, so I don’t exactly know what they’ve committed in funding and things, but it’s certainly something just like the, the sidewalks and marblehead, you know, and the historic district. It’s something that would be helpful if we could address,

12:53 We are gonna pave that hill. Sorry, on that. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Great. Yeah, the large hill with some mm-hmm. Goes down to the water that is gonna be done this year. That’s great. Along with, uh, an expansion of the cemetery. Mm. I did see that area Along. Uh, That’s great Developing that and couple other things. We got ions of the fire.

13:24 I, no, I think, I mean, you touched on the fact, obviously you looked at the minutes, you’ve talked to the commission, you know, on everything that we, you typically ask just to see if there’s any other information. And if they also, if you have any questions of us or any questions of the commission or anything that you’d like clarity for, you know, at this time, obviously you have an opportunity to ask. But as far as Yeah, I think it’s been a great explanation. Yeah. I don’t have any questions. I, I, you’re very well respected in the community and, um, appreciate for your past service and other volunteer roles that you’ve served. I, I know that you understand the town, um, well in terms of organizational and structure and government, uh, and, you know, challenges in municipality. So, um, I don’t really any, I don’t really have any questions.

14:10 And Okay. Sally, just really pleased that you’re, uh, putting up your hand to volunteer for this. You’re really, you’re joining rounding out a really board and I think it’s know that kind of, uh, you know, that kind of explanation we need around taser. So thank you. We’re very excited for it. Yeah, Thank you. No, I feel the same way. Um, I feel like I, I can’t tell a story about my, uh, father fighting with you. You have my daughter, you had my daughter at school. Does that count? But probably happens how you say that. So, um, I don’t have any questions. Um, yeah, I’d like to say something about, uh, Mrs. Mcc Sure. Appreciate that. Yep. You know what we’re gonna do, hold off one sec while we finish this. I think what I would like to do is put both motion to put both, um, names on the table. Um, so moved. And so, so if we get a motion

14:55 to put both names table You did it. We have a second. And then all in favor putting both names on the table for nomination. Okay. Now you’re welcome. If anybody, his comments about anybody. Well, I thought it’d be fitting to, uh, talk about, uh, Roseanne. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wheeler McCarthy. She’s a true marble header. Grew up on Commercial Street. Uh, I’ve known her since I was a little boy, actually. Hmm. And we all know, well, we don’t all know, but, uh, she served many years on the park and Rec commission logo was a rose every park. And she, uh, she loved the town so much. She does love the town so much. And, uh, she served on the cemetery commission before.

15:42 A very important thing she did over the years. And I know, uh, is walked the public, public ways. Hmm. Maybe even more so today. It’s, it’s necessary. But, uh, you know, a true header. True header, uh,

15:59 I love, thank you. Great. Thank you. Appreciate that. So the process here will be do more than one name as we’ll. Go around and say who you’d like to, to, uh, to vote for. If we get a majority of that person wins. If not, we will have to discuss. And Should I leave? Um, no, but you should probably leave the Table. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for pointing that out. Thank you. So Pastor, if you wanna, Alright, I’ll call Rose a Rabbi Mine. So you just say the name of either sounds Or mcc. Um, with, with appreciation of both candidates, uh, I, uh, nominate sans, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Sen, I, I think, uh, both candidates are very good. Uh,

16:48 Rose Was an girl friend of my mother, so I’m gonna throw Rose a, a, a vote. But I think Sally Sands could do very well as well. Ms. Singer Sally Sands, Mr. Gray, uh, Sally Sands, Ms. Nun, um, Ms. Sands, Mr. Fox, Salary, sand. Congratulations. Fine. Thank you.

17:11 You want me to go get Flow in as you’ve done before? Um, so just lemme know when, when they’re there. So thank you for coming out. And guys, good luck on your journey to your husband Barry.

17:23 Bye. So, Yeah, make sure she’s sworn in first. Thank you. All right. Hey, Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. After coming tonight. Thank You. Thank you, Dave. All right. Thank you, David. Do my best my Time. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. Let’s go, uh, backwards and go to kind. Administrative update, Sir. Thank you, chairman. Just two items. One, um, as I talked about our, our technology advancements, um, our Open finance transparency center using the news platform is now available on our website. So to do a deep dive into the finances of Marblehead, you go into, you hit our website, you go to departments

18:10 finance department, and then I have it in a memo. I probably don’t see it, but there’s a big blue rectangle that’s labeled Transparency Center. And, um, you view it, you click the, the green button and a deep dives in. So we have been doing this for the last several years using clear gov as our transparency sentence. Um, we started in July this past year of, of migrating our financial software, our software over to Muni. So UNI has the similar capabilities. Um, we are gonna keep clear gov in place as part of that transparency because as part of the migration, as

18:56 of now, muni only has current fiscal year in going forward on the details. So in, in order with soft rights going offline. So in order to maintain the history of the recent past, at least until we migrate all the back data, we’ll keep clear gov in place, the, the historic data.

19:21 So, um, and again, this effort is, uh, it is a lot of work. Alicia Benjamin, as usual, the finance staff, um, it, uh, Jen Smith and others to make this possible, uh, takes a lot of work. Yes, sir. Go for it. Uh, this is great. This is obviously three years leasing the fulfillment of a lot of, what’s the interoperability between units and, uh, open gov. So, You know, in terms of, Or, and They represent separate windows or, So would we go One way or The other? So one of the reasons why we, you know, migrated to the Muni and the difference between, uh, clear gov Yep.

20:09 Is that clear gov? Um, in order to update clear gov, it would be like on a weekly basis of doing an upload to clear gov, you know, download the file from our sub finance system, uploading clear gov on a Yeah. Some period basis. Um, the Muni system, it’s a live link. So it is basically, I think it updates overnight or wherever I, uh, so it’s on basis, but it’s a much more so the information be a lot more current and a lot easier for the staff as far as the process of keeping it off to date. Okay. Is there anything that isn’t in there? Like for instance, there’s payroll in there, you can see updated. So if somebody went in, they could see through

20:57 this last week of all expenses, including payroll. So it, it, it should see it. Expenditure line items. I won’t have any details. No, no, no. I’m not asking for that. But the, the totals, ‘cause I know that we had just brought that in. Yeah. So that is, that has been, Yeah. So you should see in the exponential line items and in, you know, in the revenue line items, And it matches up against budgets. So people could look at where we are actual year to date versus where we had projected. That’s, that’s where it should do. Yeah. And I, I just wanna follow up, uh, Dan and I met with, um, Alicia and Kim, and there is a lot of interest on actuals amongst the board and people in town. And because we’re going from clear gov to Munis, um, they’re doing some more. Basically the ask is to, for 24 and 25 actuals,

21:43 and then 26, ‘cause we’re seven months through it, um, estimated for the year, year and date. And that way people can look at budgets, traditional budgets have been shown this year’s budget, last year’s budget. And it gets very confused and very quick. And, you know, the ask is, uh, so, uh, we’ll dig in and, uh, one way or the other, they’re gonna get it. But we’re, we happen to be in that transition between systems. So, um, yes, but Alicia and Cammy said they, they needed a little bit of time, but they’ll get that. And so next time we have high level budget reviews, yeah. Um, we’ll, we’ll need that. ‘cause that’s, I think very important, Right? So we’re closing out the books and the ity of in software while we’re loading up the systems in uni. So the workload is pretty high on staff and you can do that.

22:30 So, and all of the training that went in front. Um, next, um, item, uh, as an update is, as everyone seems to be aware, we had some challenges with our code Red mass notification system. Um, and I, as we previously reported, uh, code Red, which is, uh, now known as Crisis 24, their system that hit was a cyber effect and created having, not just for model head, but basically, I don’t know all, but a lot of their clients, at least one we know of in the area. Um, so we, we rely on mass notification system in addition to

23:18 our Facebook pages, our website, and, and other means to update the community, for example, storm alerts, parking bans, all, all those things. And so for the last several storms, it’s been, uh, uh, complicated. Uh, there were, there were a number of problems, but one, um, the database of 8,000 numbers and people in it, when that got hit, um, it had to be rebuilt. So there was a period of time we only had a few thousand out of the total, then 6,000. So it, it never recovered the full database of all the people in the system. Secondly, when the calls were going out, there were garbled messages or it was just different things happening.

24:03 So given how critical that system is, um, myself, uh, chief Gilland, chief King, uh, Amy, Ew, you know, we all rely on that system. Uh, started looking at other systems and, uh, notification system. We have basically as of today, um, settled on a company called Regroup Mass Notification. Um, and they will bring all of the similar capabilities for emergency calling and outreach. And the systems have the capability where we can mass call everyone in the, in the, in the town. We can isolate to a certain part of the town. We, there’s a lot of flexibility of how we build the call list.

24:49 And that’s phone calls, text messages, emails going out in the system. So Code Red would do that. Um, so this will do the similar situation, but they also have some, seems to have some more capabilities that would allow us to use the notification system above and beyond the emergency. And it’ll be all users, meaning residents signing up can pick and choose the type of messages they want to receive. So if you’re only interested in, just tell me when the emergencies, you just, you know that that will be built in, where, where folks will, will get those messages. But if you want other community event notifications through the system, you can selectively choose those.

25:35 And so we can build, uh, some more messaging capability. Does each user need to sign up for an account basis? Yeah, so, so Regroup will migrate all the data that’s available from the vendor, and then they use other sources, own company records inside. But ultimately, I, and one of the challenges over the last 10, 20 years of using these systems, nearly everybody had landlines managed by the phone companies. So these type of companies would just draw from the telephone companies to get the number. Everybody’s gone to cell phones and various carriers. So it’s really dependent upon the residents sign up to sign up. And so when we do the migration over

26:22 and they’re in place, we will do a lot of public announcements to people to say, you, you may already be in the system, but to go in, you know, update your information, um, as well as, you know, we’ll learn the system as we get it, as well as signing up for whatever different categories of messaging that, that we build into the system. So yeah, there will be, uh, a request of residents to be active to make sure that we have the right information and they’re in the system.

26:56 Are we just on, uh, like a annual subscription info or, okay, so there’s no actual, Like, well, no, there is, there, there was an agreement in place over the year. We have, um, We’ve given the date of breach and we also breach Service. Yeah. So we get notice that of, of leaving the contract as of March 1st. Okay. And so, we’ll, we’ll work that out. We hope to get some reimbursement for the period of time that we paid in that where, um, I, I, I, I mean typically it’ll be, uh, I’m gonna guess in this, like we do a lot. It’s a one year contract with renewals. So we’re somewhere in, in one of those years. Yeah. And we’ll want the balance of the year down. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

27:41 So this, this agreement, $6,500 and, and contract is for the year. Um, we’ll probably go back to them once we’ve used the system and say, yeah, we like it. Do a multi-year, which will actually bring the price down and this price includes an additional cost that they’re gonna manage the migration of all the data. So our staff don’t Have to. How does that, how does that cost compare to where we were with, Um, is It comparable? I I figured that, uh, TPLN is gonna better make it here at sunset. About one third, about one third bill Red was $12,000 in the, that’s paid by the two enterprise groups like department. So this is about a half that Great. Even Better. Should be better. Great. Um, yeah.

28:28 And, and then I’m putting it in my update, even though it was an agenda item. We put the agenda, we put the item on your agenda ‘cause we weren’t sure which vendor, what the dollar point was gonna be, whether we’re having a contract because it’s under the $10,000 flash such no, there’s no further action by the board. Mm-hmm. Uh, as far as who And are we on track next year? The, the blue light system? We are Finish it. We wanna ahead hope to have it implemented before this winter is over. Okay. So we have the items on order. We’re working to, uh, have the electricians, we’ve identified the locations. Um, so it’s, we’re at the technical level

29:15 to get these things up on the poles. It, they’re really effective. I mean, I’m in, I’m in Salem and when every day, I mean, you, you just, I I’m almost, if Jason was here, I would tell him to strap some battery operated ones on the, uh, traffic signals next storm. But anyhow, maybe Technically no, that’s it. It is actively in the works. And, uh, I’m gonna say, you know, we’re weeks pending any other unknown delays, but, but we’re that close to getting deployed

29:46 and update. Great. Thank you Patrick. Let’s move on to the next agenda item, which is a licensing public hearing Shin dynasty. Uh, Alexander Lewis, Mr. Lewis, Mike, up to the table.

30:02 We will reopen the public hearing

30:09 Director Doug Dubin. Okay. Hey Doug. Hi guys. How are better time? Doug Dubin. I’m a little out of it. I’ve been up since two o’clock following. Um, well you plow marble. Thank you. Uh, Just a couple of my houses there. No, I wasn’t. I just wanted to give you a little update on the construction pot. What I have there to tell you. Everything’s pretty much there. The plumber’s finishing up, hooking all the faucets, all the hand sinks, all the tables. Heat’s been rebuilt, hot water’s been rebuilt, hood has been rebuilt. We had a problem getting a blower for the old, um, exhaust system. That’s all there. My CO2 guy was there. It’s completely rewired. Brand new CO2 system that shuts off the stoves. You gotta press the button. That’s done.

30:55 The new ansle system’s in place. The flooring’s all done. The paint’s all done.

31:04 Keith Shelley’s husband will be putting the handicap button in the back door as soon as I tell him to come and put it in. I just haven’t done it. ‘cause I didn’t want it there yet. Um, I can have all my permits pretty much signed off by the next two weeks. Everyone’s ready. Jason’s been there. Steve Cummings been there, Brad’s been there. Electrical inspector’s been there. They’re ready to just say, okay, Doug ready to go. They’ve all looked through the place, they’ve all looked through the place. They’ve all looked through the place. I don’t have anything on the liquor license for him as my building part of it. I’m ready in the next, I’m gonna say next week. I might even be able to have it by next Friday. Everything signed off if I can. No more snow would be great.

31:49 Mm-hmm. But as far as the space and everything, it’s ready to turn on

31:57 Better. Have you been in the space recently? I, we went a couple months ago, but not in the last few weeks. Alex, is there anything beyond the, the contracting that’s still outstanding that Anticipate? Um, I’m getting the, the awning put in in the next two weeks. Uh, uh But that shouldn’t prevent you from getting that. That wouldn’t be, but that’s not the, it wouldn’t prevent me from opening. Yeah. We’re more talking about from opening The contract in place with toast to do our point of sales. I’ve already ordered like all our plateware sware, so I just need to make the initial orders for our food, um, our menus ready to be printed. Um, okay. Do you have the financial capability to continue to get this done? Yes. My bills are all being Paid. Thank you. Appreciate that. Awesome. Okay. I mean, it’s

32:46 Been a long poll. It’s been a long poll. It’s, we, you know, we’ve had this similar meeting with, with similar things. It’s, I think it was very helpful bring a contractor here because we have our, but we’re pretty close multiple times. Um, anybody else have thoughts or comments on this?

33:05 Alexa? Um, just, this is actually, I don’t know if you can speak to it, but just kind of what Dan was saying. It felt like this project took significantly longer and we’ve been extending and trying to, you know, I be accommodating, but I just am trying to wrap my head around what exactly happened. Alex hired somebody else, kind of fell apart. I got called in about six months ago, maybe a little less. And, um, basically we replaced everything. Nothing went smooth, but it, it, I put it together now. So everything went together and it’s there. Um, we, I did just went away for 10 days, whether

33:53 we weren’t pushing as hard as I could have been, just he wasn’t sure we were there. And then I finally, we pushed on it, got everything paid, got the plumbers, got everyone there. Ansel system, hood system. There was just a lot to it. So yes, the last six months went a little bit slow, but it went together. Right. So there’ll be zero issues. The building has no problems right now for any other business ever to come into it. So that side of the building has basically been completely rebuilt. FRP board all in the kitchen, hand sinks all new, every a hundred percent new plumbing on that side of the building. And, and you’ve got the time to get through all the punch lists. Last, Last punch. It’s really not even that big right now. Okay. Plumber’s gonna put his stuff all in,

34:39 all the details kind of are done. It’s the plumber putting his product in right now, which he’ll, which city says he is gonna be there tomorrow and Friday. And I don’t think I’ll get an inspection with Brad, but definitely Monday, he’ll come and do it Monday, Tuesday. I as double D will promise you all my inspectors will be there next week and I’ll run right through all of them. And I’ll have a smoke for the fire department for the hood too that’s ready to go to. ‘cause they have a little canisters there that are $79 for this little canister that they go poof. And it sets off this thing.

35:20 I mean, I, um, to be honest, I was prepared to, you know, vote to my vote tonight. Um, it’s been 18 months and you know, I we are absolutely, I know you and I think you appreciate that you pathetic about the situation. We are actually invested in this business doing well. You know, it’s what’s good for the town. Uh, uh, but on the other hand, you know, this has been a series of this is gonna be done in two weeks and two weeks, you know, or the, you know, it’s just been, it’s been a lot. We’ve had this conversation multiple times. So truly, I’m, I’m not sure how I’m, I’m really not sure how I feel right now. I appreciate that you did bring the contractor here tonight.

36:07 That does, I do feel like, you know, that’s giving me pause from my initial inclination. I feel that we as a board, you know, have a duty to kind of oversee the liberal licenses that we as a town are given from the state. Um, uh, there’s other people and other businesses that might be interested in the license. It’s very tough because, you know, like we’re, we’re just as invested as, as it’s you doing doing well. It’s just a matter of, at this point,

36:45 I don’t wanna say, I don’t wanna say credibility because I’m not, that’s not the right word. It’s just about, you know, re reality and, and, and just kind of experience with this process. Um, I’m, I’m, I’m truly, I don’t, I don’t know. I’m gonna defer to the board. I I, what are I say? Just what, yeah, I’m very sympathetic to an entrepreneurial effort and the obstacles that can come before you. So it’s really been just down to, you know, to execution. I think. And, you know, I think it was helpful to, to bring your, you know, contractor tonight to kind of explain, to kind of underscore that you’ve got the, you know, the execution, right. And that you’ve got, you know, you’re down to your last push hopefully.

37:32 And I think, uh, you know, uh, we’ve extended, you know, I, I think what, what my colleagues would say, yeah, we’ve extended a, a long period of time. So I think that was based on your commitment to your entrepreneurial you to your effort here. So, you know, I respect that. You know, I, I’m, I feel confident that, that things are gonna get done. So, you know, I’m, I’m a believer. Thank you. I mean, I’m, I’m similar to, to Ms. Nunan, I honestly said last time that I came to the table last time, ready to vote. And I, I’ve felt the same way today. Um, again, it’s not a question of trust or not, it’s just, uh, it’s history of, of, of what you’ve said. And I know that in some ways been beyond your control. However, I’ve also done construction projects

38:17 and been able to get ‘em done. Um, I’m gonna tell you that I’m gonna put my faith in Doug, please. Uh, if Doug wasn’t here, I would be definitely voting to revoke, to be honest with you. I’m just putting it out there. So I, I would, I mean, reluctantly to be, I mean, I wanna see you open, there’s no question that’s not very clear. I just, but it’s just doing Everything On my side just at some point. You’ve gotta stop doing it. So I don’t know how you guys feel. Yeah. Do you foresee any Obstacles? Not on my, not on my, not on my construction part of it. Okay. I’m ready for the restaurant operations wives for

38:57 the, the facility to work properly. But that’s all we need is the CO to be able to go in and approve it. So that’s really the only, I, I, I’ll be ready for my health inspector and he is really my last guy. ‘cause I’m not worried about my departments. The health department’s kind of up to him, but I’ll walk him through and show him everything. Okay.

39:20 Well, later on we’re gonna talk about an empty building The town has had on its books for a while. So, you know, I supervise takes a while to get these things done. So if I’m hearing correctly, I don’t always hear it properly from this board. Always interpret, but that we, people are leaning towards giving two more weeks. Yeah. And I’m gonna go into two weeks based on, on this. Yeah. So we give a two week, uh, we, we would continue the public hearing to our February 25th meeting. And we are really looking forward to you coming in here and you, and you holding up and doing with pompoms and bringing cheerleaders and putting up that sign of that CO for us is, is what I would say. So if I could have a motion, continue the public hearing

40:06 to February 25th at 7:00 PM So second. All in favor. All right. See you in two weeks. Thank you. Thanks. Coming. Thanks for coming. Get some sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Take care, Doug. All right. Next up. Good. We have an update on BA community doc model from Mr. Callahan, our CDP director. Good evening, Brenda. How’s It going? Going, everybody? Good. How are you? Good. Nice. Um, just wanted to give a brief update on, uh, three, a compliance journey, I guess. Um, we got good news from the, uh, E-O-H-L-C, um, in their words, adoption of the proposed district. We’ll put Marblehead in a good position for compliance. Um, I just, uh, in the, the memo I gave you, I was able

40:54 to kind of outline sort of, um, the next steps, uh, some milestones, uh, that we need to go through. Uh, eventually we do have to finalize the texts. Um, it’s basically finalize, I think we only had one additional comment in the last, uh, version of it. And, uh, our agent, our, our consultant Barrett Planning group, has already made that edit. And, uh, I sent that over to legal counsel today. Uh, so they’re just reviewing. Um, and then the next step would be to schedule the planning board for the public or public hearing with the planning board. Uh, that will be on March 10th, Tuesday, March 10th. That will be on their agenda, um, shortly after. Uh, then, well, we also, oh, sorry. We also have to put it on the town warrant. Mm-hmm.

41:41 Um, and then the planning board will have the public meeting or the public hearing, and then they will, uh, ideally make a recommendation to at town meeting. Um, next step would be, uh, town meeting boat. If it’s adopted, then we are in compliance. Uh, and then the final next step is to just submit everything, all the final documentation to the E-O-H-L-C. And that would be, those are the next steps. I think we also point a public session or public meeting, like an information session as well. Yeah, we haven’t, yeah, I definitely wanted to kind of, um, figure out what we wanted to do with the, what the town’s approach wanted to be for, uh, community engagement and just kind of public public sessions. Um, you know, is it a PowerPoint president? Is it q and a?

42:27 Um, how often do we want to have ‘em? I know, like, you know, last year Alex and I went out once a week for nine weeks straight. So Yeah. My Feeling on this is just one Yeah. That we could do. I think that we’ve, we’ve, uh, as you said, ad nauseum gone through, uh, three A would be my position and just update. I don’t think we need to discuss the, just, just discuss the merits of the plan itself. Mm-hmm. And not, and, and, and just keep it very simple to the facts mm-hmm. Of, of locations and, and the details mm-hmm. Is my personal opinion. Yep. Think, uh, you know, one, I was thinking about the, you know, one piece of information, the district is, uh, you have to come up with 897 units for the district. The only thing we could, the closest we could get it to that number was, uh, 900 without going under.

43:13 So, um, we couldn’t get it to exactly 8 97, but the total will be 900 units. And that’s because they don’t take fractional. Right. So you have to go to a whole number and acing the total number of acre we had. It was just a math game. Right. Um, and again, as, as you know, it’s, it’s made up of two districts, the Broon Road District and the ESCO District. Um, part of the feedback we got in the original submittal was, uh, we included the Glover property, but that needed to be removed. So the Glover property was removed from the district, um, Due to lack of frontage mar blood. Right? Correct. Did not have frontage mar blood. That was the issue. The sidewalk is Salem for the property. Um, but I just wanted to kind of give you an update, kind

43:58 of like what the next steps are. Um, and then we can talk, you know, we’ll, I’ll let you know when we schedule the public presentation. Appreciate that. Thank you. And, um, it’s in the past, they, they’ve done the public presentation, you know, on the same night as a planning board meetings that are already there. And, you know, they just put it into the meeting regular before they’re gonna Okay. So, Although I think we plan was to do just sort of a, um, informational session, like maybe during the day on, on another time as well. Oh, in addition to that, just so that people have a chance to hear it before mm-hmm. As well. At least that’s what Mark, Brenda and I discussed. Yeah. Whenever. Yep. Great. Why don’t we move on, um, to coffin school next, which is you as well. Yep. Uh, just wanted to give you an update, um, you know, um,

44:46 what we, yeah. Um, just wanted to, uh, give you an update on, uh, what the work’s been completed to date, um, partnering with the Yukon TAB program, um, consideration for an, an advisory committee, uh, as well as just an updated schedule. Um, back in December, we did a hazardous building material investigation, which was to sort of, um, do a deeper dive into the asbestos and lead-based materials that are in the building. The purpose was to sort of, you know, get a sense of like what the cost, the magnitude of cost would be associated with, uh, demolition of the buildings, um, for both buildings. Um, and the, you can see we,

45:32 I broke it down into two different, um, one is just the 1963 annex building, and the other is for both buildings. Um, just because there is asbestos and lead-based paint does not mean you have to completely demo the entire building. You can if as long as you don’t disturb it, and if it’s in tax, you can leave it as is. But any sort of renovations or any sign, or you do disturb those materials, then you do have to abate. Uh, and those costs would be significantly lower. So do we have an abate I say that we have an abatement and demolition of the annex building mm-hmm. And that’s leaving the main structure, the main structure. Do we have a number, if you’ve left the main structure to abate just that building To, to leave To, so if somebody wanted to work within

46:18 that main building Yeah. Do we know what the cost of abatement would be in there? I, um, hold on. Or do we have that with that part of the fold Point depends on what the developer’s going do in the building as whether it needs to disturb the Material. But clearly anyone who develops in there is gonna have to do substantial. I mean, I think that’s a, They did, they did give a, a, a removal, um, so to do renovations within the building mm-hmm. Uh, and do the abatement. That was $10,000. And then, uh, removal of existing built windows was another 25 to $35,000. So Only $10,000 to abate the main building. And if you did the windows, the top is 35. That’s what The, that’s what the report said. Okay. So that’s great. Okay. That’s, that’s, so you definitely know what I thought. Yep.

47:05 Um, mm-hmm. Okay. Great. Thank You. Um, so that’s sort of the hazard building material. Okay. Uh, the other thing was, uh, I know we’ve been trying to, you know, do additional community engagement, you know, and, um, we were hoping to work with consultants that could help us with that. Um, but we ultimately, we did find a consultant there, there, it’s the Yukon University of Connecticut Yukon Tab program. Um, so they will, they basically, they have a team. They have a a, they’re funded through the EPA Brownfields program. And so that team provides a municipal assistance program for municipalities to address brownfield sites. The, the site is technically considered a brownfield due to the, um, the ab, the asbestos,

47:51 and the lead paint in the building. So all of our led to Brownfield, uh, well, I guess, yeah. Um, and so, um, so that was how we were able to partner with Yukon. Um, and they, so they have a team that will help us with the community engagement. We, they can do two sessions. We definitely have one where they’re gonna help, uh, plan and facilitate that session. It’s most likely a visioning session, but I think it’s gonna be a little bit more in depth than what they had done several years ago. Um, I think it’s gonna be heavily focused on housing, but we are, uh, also gonna, we can talk about and discuss municipal reuses. Um, but I know there’s also some, some folks that wanna know, is there anything else

48:37 besides housing and municipal? So, um, we’ll, we’ll try to have some part that part of that session also. Um, and then, so you think that’s one meeting or That’s one session. Okay. Uh, and then based on the feedback, we, they do partner with a graduate student, and they will be doing the site reuse assessment. Um, and they’ll be digging into the building, the, the zoning in the area, um, environmental conditions, and they’ll do a site assessment report as well as develop renderings, uh, for us of these, of the potential reuses. Um, the other visioning se, um, session from, with the MAPC, they didn’t develop any renderings of any sort of, uh, potential development. So we’ll be able to kind of take a look at what,

49:23 what we might want to consider and why. Um, so that’ll be beneficial for everybody to kind of get a, a sense or a vision of what could be developed there with, you know, with the renderings, um, they are, they are willing to do a second community engagement session if necessary. And that would be to present the site reuse assessment report and present the renderings on sort of whatever most, like the preferred scenarios would be. So, um, schedule-wise with them, um, uh, we’ve already kicked, had our first kickoff meeting with them, uh, two weeks ago. We met the team, uh, and they’re planning to have the first community engagement session in March. I don’t have a date, but they just said March. But I think after this meeting, I can follow up with them

50:10 and, you know, let them know you guys have been notified that we’re going down this process, through this process, uh, and start working on a date. Um, and then the whole entire process with that, well, the, the first session and then the site reuse assessment should all be complete by May, early May. And then if we do the second session, it would be in late May to maybe, uh, early June, June, June. Um, Uh, Brenda, I have to say that, uh, I was really happy to have heard that, that this is going forward. You know, especially I think you, you, it’s really great to kind of have a capturing, you know, to have a capture session that takes a look at a broad range of mm-hmm. Uh, of, of, of interest and kind of work down. My only question is, you know, kind of,

50:56 I think there’s gonna be some outcomes that will be obvious perhaps to us. Mm-hmm. But I think at the same time, we need to kind of, you know, capture what has been envisioned by, by people. Mm-hmm. Or what people express, and they kind of narrow that down systematically. Mm-hmm. Uh, so that at least it’s kind of there for people to understand. Mm-hmm. And that’s, that’s, but I’m, I, I think their professionals, they, they’ve been through these, this process, you know? Yep. The processes for war. Yep. Uh, but I’m very happy that you’re undertaking this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was, I was, I, I was excited that we were able to work with them and make it, make it happen. Yeah. Good. Good job thinking outside the box to find somebody outside that could do it, given our constraints on receiving budget, um, And grants. That’s exactly right. Right, right. Yeah.

51:43 And, and I’m sorry, Brendan, how did u contact get in? I, Uh, you know, I’ve had a lot of experience working with the EPA program. Yeah. And I’ve heard of these, this group for a while. Uh, I’ve always been interested in partnering with ‘em, but I never have. Um, and when I was sort of trying to figure out, uh, where to go, um, they just kind of, they, I recalled them and gave ‘em a call and it worked out, but I’ve never worked with this particular program before. Um, it’s free when it’s, it’s, it’s free too. Um, which worked out really well. Um, but they, they come highly recommended. They, you know, I’ve worked with, uh, my, the other sort of, uh, and like licensed site professional firms I’ve worked with, they really, like, they highly recommend this program.

52:29 Uh, that’s great. I think we’ve talked about it before that, you know, that past experience, like with the Brownfield and, and, um, tapping into your network there. Mm-hmm. What, uh, if any support do they give in terms of marketing the opportunity out? I mean, we, I always find that, uh, you know, sometimes we, we have like, you know, we can have an engagement session, but it’s only so valuable in terms of as many people that participate. So are they offering any type of, um, advice or support in terms of getting a crowd to come to this? Or is that on us? And that’s fine. And I think that we should maybe consider, uh, consider that and how we’re going to get people to this session. If not, I mean, it, it will be on us,

53:15 but they’re gonna be providing us some materials, um, that we can post on the, the, the website, the Kaman school website, and I can, you know, get it out, like on, posted it on, uh, put it on our, our own webpage. Um, I can do whatever we can to get the word out. We can talk to the newspapers, let them know that it’s happening. Um, so I, I’m not really aware of too many social media, uh, platforms for the town. So I, I wouldn’t, We can we do use ‘em and we could use, we could, we could, we can engage that we could hire that have like our, the company that did our website, something that we could use that consultant to get it out. Okay. I was just gonna say, what about the, our new code red and people opted in for those information Yep. At that point. Yep. Get deployed first. Let’s get not red.

54:02 We Can’t call it code. No, it’s a new, yeah, the new. But I think too, we could also consider just, this isn’t just about this, but we do this type of stuff, you know, when we spend out like a utility bill mm-hmm. We put little slip in. I know. You know, that’s one way that we’re tapping. Not everybody’s on Facebook. Right. You know, but mm-hmm. If we can just make sure we’re kind of like, uh, hitting different areas of demographics of people. If we can slide a little something into a tax bill or, you know, depending on the cycle is, so maybe consider that, uh, you know, whatever’s going out as in a mailer. Um, okay. I don’t if a quarterly taxable going out, we could slip in a little note about it. Um, not that, Something else that I know they’re gonna work on, and I think it’s gonna be important is, you know,

54:49 I know the, the term brownfield is a scary term. Uh, so they will be developing some informational materials of what that is, what, what defines a brownfield, but it is also gonna be very psych specific to the coffin school. So, you know, the community be able to kind of understand why it’s a brown, why it’s considered a brownfield, and what it means. So just so I don’t want people to get Yeah. Scared, right. Yeah. You know, or scared or that they’re sitting on, you know, they’re living next to a, like a heavily contaminated site. They’re all Inside. Right. It’s all inside. It’s all within the, just like every other school building in marble hood. So Just a technical term that opened up an opportunity for us to partner ucon, so. Exactly. And Brendan, as far as notification,

55:34 I think you now have a neighbors list. Um, yep. This Is effective now. I, yep. I did post the select board. I did get a notice this morning, uh, because we, we weren’t on the agenda till this morning, so that was, as soon as Kyle sent it to me, we posted it right away. Great. Um, so, Great. Well, thank you. Okay. Look forward to, uh, the next meeting. Thank you. Moving on, we are going to have a, uh, discussion about budget, timeline, expectations and deliverables. Thatcher, I know you presented us with a memo with, uh, an overview of what’s been done and the schedule moving forward. I dunno, if you wanna Yeah, I’ll just highlight, you know, the multiple phases and,

56:20 and like, I think most budget seasons, this one’s been a very expanded season. So phase one from June to September, 2025 really was focused on the transition of the platforms, you know, the financial systems, all the training of all employees. Uh, phase two, which October to November is the revenue forecast and, and, and budget guidance, meaning what’s the message that’s sent out to the departments as to what’s our targets for building budgets? Um, uh, the efforts of of building a budget and, and numbers are always a moving target. Uh, costs are, are changing updating, but you have to give department heads some directive of

57:08 set your bottom line to this and build your budget based on a certain level. And, and for, for this, it was, um, a level budget, but then calculate the contractual increased costs above that. So, um, there are, When you say level budget, you’re saying level for, for last year, yeah. Is is what you gave them far right. Plus The plus calculate mm-hmm. Contractual increases, uh, a above that. And then as far as we were viewing the budgets, it is looking at the budget, well, let me continue on the, the, the phases. So phase three, tax setting and, uh, financial outlook. So December, 2025, that’s the tax classification hearing.

57:56 Um, there was a presentation here, three year revenue and, uh, of revenue and expense forecast. Um, and that’s when, uh, the CFO is grabbing all the information. And then she and I are start looking at sort of the big picture of, of the numbers. Then we move into phase four, January through February. Um, um, we’ve listed annual compensation committee report. What, why, that’s why that’s just the report. As far as any changes in positions and grades and such, that has an impact on the budget ultimately. Um, the big event, the, the, the major event is the state of the town presentation.

58:42 And since I’ve been doing it last two years, the, the main objective is to determine and calculate and lock in what our revenues are gonna be. Um, you have to set know what your revenues are in order to set your overall expenditure targets to something. So that’s, that’s been the, the formal kickoff of the, of the real process of, of building a balanced budget. Um, the finance committee, they’ll, they’ll start assigning their budget liaison. So they have, uh, members of the finance committee who are assigned to all of the different departments and components of, um, of the town budget to start working, uh, you know, one-on-one

59:29 with the departments to, to gather their knowledge of the needs, uh, of the town. Um, and then the, the phase we’re in right now is, uh, myself and, and the chief financial officer sitting down and meeting with each department individual. So we started that process. Um, what I was gonna say, so we’re looking at the numbers, department by department as far as sort of calling through their proposals, um, looking at, you know, the sort of start culling out the low hanging fruit decisions, uh, of, of requests that, that we know are not gonna be that necessary or that, um, um,

1:00:18 needed in a particular year. Um, but then once we’ve gone to the departments, then we have a picture of the, the, the sort of the overall bottom line. And as usual, there’ll still be some delta between the revenues we set through the state of the town and, uh, what needs to be cut, uh, in order to get to a balanced budget. And then that starts looking not just within an individual department, but, uh, as far as prioritization of the individual departments, but knowing that we have to make some tough choices. It’s prioritizing interdepartmentally. Um, and the reality of my experience has been

1:01:03 done way too many in these budgets. You gotta figure out what are the departments that are in the most dire need of investment. Uh, some funding to do certain things, staffing levels or, or, or, um, building and maintenance budgets, doing some things like that as compared to other departments. And picking and choosing this year, we’re gonna have to take care of this department and the rest of the departments to just kind of have to wait for another fiscal year to, to meet their needs. That’s where those kind of prior prioritizing decisions get made in order to bring the, uh, the overall bottom line down to a balanced budget. So these next few weeks, uh, where most of that comes

1:01:51 with, uh, will happen, um, then we go on to the, uh, phase five. Um, that’s the public review time meeting. That’s the fin comm and their meetings, um, and their, their, their public meetings and, and reviews and get to a balanced budget. And again, um, the requirement under mass general law is to have a, a balanced budget relative to the revenues that we have. So the budget that would be put together and presented to town meeting will be a, a balanced budget based on our revenue, which kins those was presented a few weeks ago.

1:02:38 Um, we have some challenges, um, and that’s what we would need to get approved at town meeting. And then there would be a discussion about, for all those things that are cut eliminated, we desire, uh, in the budget, um, discussing whether, uh, override is really the only real mechanism municipalities have to, um, figure out what a, what, um, an override scenario would look like. What is it we’re gonna try to achieve in those scenarios. And then it’s up to the, up to the, the vote as the marblehead to, to choose what, what level

1:03:25 of budget do they want, what level of services do they want.

1:03:30 So on the 25th, we will see that level funded budget. And so it’s a couple That, Thank You. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And that looks right, yeah, there’ll be adjustments that we’ll have to have, but we, we will get an update on state would be some dollars. So, so there’ll be some tweaking, but the idea to get to sort of the, um, the balanced budget based on all the information we know. And then up until there’s sort of the final vote, there’ll be some tweaking here. Mm-hmm.

1:04:08 Okay. Anybody have any questions about that process or anything that we would like to see in addition to that? And in do, yes, You the chair. Um, so just a couple things that I wanted to know. Obviously we have our select board departments, but overall we have to look at things when we’re talking about an overhead. So all the departments. So when we’re pulling all of these things together and you’re working with the department heads, I think some of the things that I would like to see would be, obviously we have to get to the balance budget, like what that looks like for the reduced budget. But I think also while we are doing that, have some indication and separately of what, you know,

1:04:53 since over the last six years since, you know, COVID hit, we’ve been, you know, reducing things and cutting and cutting and cutting. So it would be interesting to know, you know, per department, have that list. Like for, I mean, I’m looking at Amy right now, so like, I know, you know, we lost heavy equipment, operat, like those types of things within the department. I would like to have that data as part of this, you know, thought process and exercise. And I think the other thing is a two year outlook. Like if we’re looking at where we are for this fiscal year, but then what are the next two years for the departments? Like what are some things that might be upcoming? What are the things that we should be talking about? And I think having that information specifically, one is staffing, one is employees, one is, um,

1:05:39 capital requests, capital needs. And then we can have the ability to then outlay, okay. Because with every employee, as we’ve talked about, now we have to add in the thought of the pension of the insurance, of all of the other associated costs. So this is then going to turn into what, you know, what do we do with that information? So for, those are the things that, as I’ve looked at all the departments, and I think some of the other things that we need to be considering is also having the data in regards to even just something, you know, for all of the departments when we’re talking about making these decisions, like for the library for example, you know, some of that is stated, what is that? You know, what is the difference between

1:06:25 what we’re getting in aid and then what is the cost of that budget? And then I think thinking at it from, are there any other things that we as a board should be taking into consideration? And what I mean by that is if there is a department that has anything that’s being significantly cut, is there other long-term consequences to those cuts? And I don’t know, but I would like to know it on the front end as opposed to the back end. Meaning, you know, for example, if there’s a department that says that we qualify for this aid based on, uh, you know, from a lot of the regulations you have to fund, you know, this level or, you know, within 5% or 10%. So if we have dropped below that, is there some unintended consequences, meaning

1:07:11 in the next fiscal year or the fiscal year, then if certain people aren’t certified or different qualifications, like just to know, then are we losing aid that following year that we would’ve qualified for if we hadn’t made a particular decision with a reduction? So, uh, those are some of the things that I just wanna put it on the front end. So then we’re not trying to scramble as you’re meeting with the departments and things like that, that have come up on my list that we should be thinking about. And then really isolating the costs of individual just items. If it looks that it would be worth our while to know if there’s specifics of services, if we’re looking at what would, what would the cost

1:07:57 of outsourcing things be, what’s the cost in house, what’s the impact on the capital in regards to equipment and all those sorts of things. So if you can add that in, like, I don’t wanna have to have us, the timeframe is so short is to go back to our departments and have to regather that information. But I, you none the rest of the board can speak. But those are, as I’ve been, you know, cloning through everything and looking through everything in order to make an educated movement forward, that’s where I stand. Well, the, um, the objective in two weeks is to build the balanced budget, um, pulling together all the additional analysis.

1:08:43 Would that, not all of that would be achievable in the next two weeks, but would be part of the process, um, in the course of a, as we look at this, what are the alternatives? What are our options? So we are, we’re already working on trying to build the history of what’s the FTEs by department, right? How many full-time employees Right. Equivalent, you know, have we had over a period of time? So, so we are working through that. But the objective in two weeks is, uh, to get to that balance plug. Uh, Yes. I think my point is, a lot of times when you’re already in there, yeah, the department’s gathering data, a lot of times that information is already there

1:09:29 and part of what you’re pulling out. So part of that is getting in, sitting down and doing the work. So I’m bringing it up at this point. So It, so we’re building like the library budget and they, they, they have a minimum funding level for certain categories of their expenditures in order to maintain eligibility for the state library grant program. And I think the 43, 40 $5,000, so 40, it’s not big dollars in the scheme of things. The impact would be not just losing the dollars, but they lose their access to the noble system book sharing with other, in other words, uh, the library becomes an island by itself and no longer part of the larger library sharing system if funding.

1:10:15 Now they, they, they have probation periods, you know, they, they, And I think that’s my question, but Those are things that we do talk about and the directors talk about. Yeah. That that’s stuff. And yeah. ‘cause it’s like it’s 40, whatever, you know, less than $50,000 of like a $1.5 million budget. But then if those resources are pulled, okay, so what, what’s the short term consequences? Long term consequences, what, you know, so I, I just think those are the types of things Yeah. Uh, that, Yeah, I mean, yeah, I would just add, ‘cause that’s really a matter of course, right? I mean, this is really a grassroots effort and it involves, you know, the departments that know what they’re talking about to make recommendations that they’ve been kind of iterative process

1:11:03 for the town administrator and the CFO right? Is kind of worked out across the entire budget. So I think there’s gonna be a rich knowledge of what the consequences are for particular pet decision. So I think I, you know, I would just say don’t worry about that too much. Yeah. I mean it part of the organic Process, obviously the, when you’re looking at the process of talking about, you know, the potential of an override, what that looks like, um, what a multi-year approach is. So that’s not something that we’re, you know, delving into at the same depth that that’s not linear in regards to when we’re talking about that. So this year it’s obviously significantly more timely. So just wanna make sure that the departments had skills that they, you know, have

1:11:48 That, so this year That just that time to ramp up The share, building the budget, it’s not gonna be nibbling around the edges. This is gonna be some wholesale hits. And what’s interesting too, I think people, we kind of tend to forget about this, but when there’s, you know, when there are readjustments and especially if they’re big ones to, to reach a balanced budget, that kind of effect, that has knock on effects for the future, you know, for the next year and the year after that. So it’s highly ship, you know, in other words, there’s a lot of optionality around what ends up happening, which makes it difficult to do. You know, you could do it for, you can do multi-year projections, but it really depends on whether there are rods or not in that given year, how much, you know,

1:12:33 readjustment there’s been to the baseline and to the baseline being on, so to speak. So, yeah. And I think one of the other things just, I don’t know if you have any updates. I know I, there we, we presented the state of the town and we talked about one of the insurance drivers. And uh, I know that that vote has not my understanding that vote doesn’t take place. The g Yeah, the GIC vote doesn’t take February 26th. Yes. Um, but that we, right now, I think we’re, as far as our, um, you know, our tracking right now is running in in 14 15%. And I think that, I don’t know if you wanna speak to kind of the difference or explaining, ‘cause I think the GC had the GIC had put out some

1:13:20 information that was more, um, generalized in talking about the difference between active plans and Medicare plans. That our town, each town has a different blend that that impacts what that rate ends up being. You know, because they have put out some generalized numbers. But Marblehead or any other municipality has their own individual blend of how many, how many of our participants are on these different types of plans, which then influence, you know, what that percentage weigh is on the community. I don’t know if you can Explain. Yeah. So we offer a number of different insurance plans that employees can sign up for. So the HMOs, um, pss the different categories that have different price structures. Then you have family plans and individual plans.

1:14:07 So they have each have their price structure. Um, so part of the challenge when the group insurance commission, GIC talks about, you know, increases of 15 to 18%, that is a very blended number of all the different plans and options. And then, so what happens, they, within Marblehead demographically, meaning of all our employees, we have to count up how many employees are in each of the different plans with their price structure, the family plan versus single plan. Um, in order to calculate out. And, and as I mentioned before, we may have a lot of employees

1:14:52 in a particular plan that’s increasing at 20%, a small number of being in a plan that’s only increasing 8%. The blended value zones, you know, I don’t know if the number would be 12% increase. Wow, that sounds reasonable. But because, um, a large number of employees are in the, uh, plan that’s, that’s growing our numbers could be quite different than the blended separately. So we’re waiting on the GIC boats as far as coming out with the pricing. And again, what happens in April is the, uh, uh, new enrollment where people can migrate from plan to plan. So it scrambles the numbers, but what’s happening at the GIC of their meeting is a proposal to look at your copays and deductibles. That’s

1:15:40 The plan redesigned first. Right? So what happens is if they vote to do that, it increases the cost on the participants, but it lowers the premium rates. Correct. And so, I mean, our major plans, we’re paying 83% there, there are different plans in different ratio, but you know, uh, uh, I guess the majority would be like, the town pays 83% and the employees pay the balance 17, um, percent. So should the GIC vote that change? It’ll be a cost increase on the employees out of pocket cost for using the system. And it’ll help mitigate a little lower our costs, but it’ll maybe bend the curve.

1:16:27 Uh, the challenge with the GIC is the, the members voting, there are municipal representatives, there are union employee representatives on that. So the question is, how’s that vote gonna go based on the representation of the, the members of the GIC and whether they’re gonna support one or the other? And that’s the big question mark for all of us, all the municipalities, uh, waiting for the results of that meeting at the, of federation. Yeah, I just wanted, ‘cause I think that’s one of our things that seems to, you know, we’re still, you know, one, they have to decide on the plan redesign, what does that look like? That’s one set of cost structures. And the second cost structure is then what and how this actually gets voted. Yep. Uh, and then compare that to what our actual,

1:17:14 you know, our, our rates were actualized and then what they actually vote on. So I think that just to add some clarity, you know, to the community as well. ‘cause I think that’s one of the things that, um, it’s a big driver, but you know, the fact that each municipality has a different combination of Yeah. To reiterate the challenge in Marblehead, our total new tax revenue from about two and a half is 2.2 million million. Our current projections for healthcare cost increases is 1.9. So our healthcare costs alone are nearly wiping out the total new revenues that we have

1:18:00 to work with for the next year. That’s right. That’s before we talk about the new trash contract and we talk about other normal inflationary costs. That’s hopefully in a, that’s a huge challenge, a little clarity, but Yep. Okay. Yeah, just wanted to speak to that a little bit. Sure. Um, yeah, I have, I have several, uh, or a few comments. Um, most importantly, I just wanted to bring us back to where we are at this moment. And I think that what I know, I’m sure I’m confident that each one of us here has an idea of what we wanna see, um, in terms of what, uh, types of options that we are gonna present the voters as we sponsor this, as the, you know,

1:18:45 elected leaders in town. And I think that it’s our responsibility to give direction. Um, you know, we’re so at our next meeting, our, uh, town administrator is bring back a balanced budget. But I do think, and I know that we, I wanna hear from, I want us as a board to provide some direction around what that looks like. Because, you know, just at this moment in time, we need to provide, uh, we need to have this conversation. And I think that otherwise we risk, you know, maybe not, it not being what, what we are having our minds. I think that we need to talk about what it is we are asking our staff to do. Are we asking for a bandaid option? Are we asking for a multi-year solution?

1:19:31 What are the considerations that we are asking, um, of our town administrator, uh, in terms of, uh, putting together a package or a couple packages? So, um, I mean, those are the strategic decisions that the board makes. And respectfully, um, you know, is, is is rightfully on the board. And that then, um, we give direction and, and then they have our staff a comp, our competent staff has some, uh, ability to understand it and expectations around what it is we’re looking for. Uh, and for me personally, I, I feel that there, that we will, I mean, I, I don’t see it in a situation where we’re not presenting some type of an option for the voters.

1:20:17 I do believe that we would be, um, I don’t think that this is the year where there, there’s an option to not have offer that for the voters to, to consider. Potentially, I would like to see back on, um, at our next meeting what a strategic multi-year, uh, you know, free look, a free year outlook, um, looks like to restore, uh, what the balanced budget is losing in a, you know, I’m not saying that, you know, in a responsible way, you know, maybe not every single cut is restored, but we’re making smart decisions, but we are trying to maintain a level of status quo on service delivery and what our town looks like.

1:21:03 So I would like to see, I don’t know if you wanna call it level funded or a restorative type of option. And I also would like to just acknowledge too that in the last several, these five years that I’ve been on the board, we’ve seen, um, our department heads go to great lengths to meet a level funded budget request. And I think it’s confusing to many people and residents. You know, I think, I just wanna take the moment to clarify that a level funded budget meets cuts when you have rising expenses. And so, um, are we, you know, maybe we wanna provide the opportunity to restore some service level delivery from where it was, say five years ago.

1:21:50 Uh, you know, in the last five years we’ve level funded to defunding one full-time police officer. We’ve defunded, um, several firefighter positions. We’ve lost a, um, da uh, our department of public works has lost three full-time. Uh, we’ve had a heavy equipment load operator. We’ve lost, uh, uh, working foreman and a general laborer. There’s been other such tasks that is, um, I think in, I think that we need to see what that looks like to restore our service delivery to where we were, uh, five years ago. ‘cause we have asked our departments to go without for bearing for such a long time. And, and maybe voters would like to see that us go back to, you know, some type of a, uh, a better service model and,

1:22:38 and, you know, versus just restoring some type of a subpar service delivery, frankly, um, option. So, you know, I’m, I’m, I would like to see a couple proposals and maybe, maybe one, maybe just even the, like what the level funded look outlook looks like for three years, um, at our next meeting. And, you know, even just to the extent that we can speak about the other option, that would be great. Um, you know, of course it’s not gonna be fully baked, of course it’s not gonna have, you know, a definitive number and, um, you know, it, it, you know, it’s, it’s still gonna be a work in progress. But I do think that’s something that I would like to see, like next to the balance budget, what would it look like to

1:23:25 preserve our status quo, essentially, of what we’re, we’ve accustomed to this past year for a three year term? And then what kind of considerations do we wanna make around offering even maybe something of more of a investing in areas that have, we’ve depleted and that are smart decisions for the town in terms of, um, you know, delivering the type of services that marble headers, um, are expecting. Any others? I just wanna, I’m just very curious about like what our board, um, members are thinking around what we’re looking for. I Think some of the things you were saying, the second level is what you were asking in some ways too, like looking back to see where we were. Um, so that combines sort of the two,

1:24:11 And I think it’s also, and adding to what Aaron was saying in regards to, you know, what’s strategic, and that’s the whole point of doing the work with the departments as well. Perhaps things have shifted, things haven’t, but I think you have to start with, um, what were the things that were reduced and we’ve asked our departments to do without, um, what are the things that they, maybe there’s efficiency that they have realized within their departments, and they might pivot and say, yes, we’ve realized X, Y, Z, this is where based on, you know, changes technology, what, whatever that strategically this would where this would be better served. But then they have the opportunity to, you know, they know those departments in and out, but really say, okay, what would we need in order to

1:24:56 run this more effectively, more efficiently? Maybe it’s, maybe it’s capital or, you know, maybe it’s a project. Maybe it’s, um, you know, those types may, maybe it’s not an individual resource, but I think that we as a board when we’re looking at this holistically, need to have those numbers and understand what it is and know what we’re putting forth. And as we said before, looking at more, maybe there’s other creative solutions that, um, even the department heads or, you know, youth actor when you guys are working together might say, okay, well maybe it makes more sense at this point to pivot and look at this option or that option, as opposed to, you know, how do we, how do we maximize our workforce? And what are some things that we might consider

1:25:43 different alternatives? And I do think, and that’s really my point here tonight, we have to start that conversation right now. No, Kim, the same you wanna add? Yeah, I, I just wanted to add, um, there’s been a lot of work discussion on budgets, which is important. One thing that is, I’m sure discussion’s going on, but I, I’d like to hear more about operations, improving operations at the same time. And, uh, I know everyone’s focused on the budgets, but think about the, um, getting work done. I know my day job, we have something called, uh, gemba, it’s Japanese, or, or again, but either way it’s Japanese for going to where the work’s being done should find out. So the solutions don’t come from the boardroom

1:26:28 then pushing chairs. It’s the person in my world, it’s the, it’s the machinist. It’s the, it’s the pilot, it’s the customer or whatever that has, uh, the answers that it, it can, and I just want to make sure I’m, I’m sure some of the department heads have already done it and stuff, but just make sure we engage our employees for ideas. And it is, it’s very, um, I shouldn’t say surprising that you get a, they know the operations and, uh, that’s just one idea. Um, the other idea I’ve received, I’m sure others have unsolicited ideas on, um, revenues and expenses from citizens. And I’d like to just cast the net out, uh, for them. Some of them are small, but as Mike Ping said when he was sitting right here, uh,

1:27:16 a lot of crumbs make the cake. Um, so that’s another thought. And then the other thing is, I, I, we finally have a, uh, purchasing director, procurement director now, and one of the things that’s always, um, kind of bothered me is you don’t have to put purchase services out to bid, but it’s a good practice to put them out to bid. And one of the things I just noticed from signing off to Lawrence every week and paying attention across the town, we have all sorts of legal services. It would make sense, um, to start looking at putting out an RFP for purchase of, I fully understand people are flat out right now. And that may be a big ask, but the other thing we have to show the citizens is that we’re looking under every couch cushion

1:28:01 and everything to do it. Because there’s a thought, and it, it’s a perception, real or not that, you know, uh, you know, the money’s being squandered and this, that and the other thing. And we just have to demonstrate we’re looking at everywhere. And again, I just wanna bring up, uh, Mike Ping, that’s a good example on the, um, copy contract, it saved $20,000, which to me is a lot of money in the, uh, $120 million budget. Maybe not, but that’s, I don’t know, half a job. But, you know, by a 0.5 of. So those are just some ideas. I, I’d, I’d really like to, again, I know everyone’s flat out on the budget stuff, but we’ve gotta look at operations and there’s some easy ways I, in my experience, to at least get some ideas started.

1:28:46 And, um, you know, it’s, it’s a really tough thing because on the cuts, they’re real people. They’re people. I bring my daughter to the y everyone at 5:00 AM I can’t get through the door without being asked. And, you know, we stop for coffee or something. I can’t get through the door, up the transfer station. And on the other end, if there is talk of an override, um, as of one smart person said, you know, Marblehead is a very affluent town with a lot of people that aren’t. And it’s a, it’s a, it’s either side is tough and I, I just, uh, I just feel we have to do some looks at the operations and uh, you know, I think the department heads and stuff are busy and, and maybe, um, people on the board can, you know,

1:29:35 send your ideas to me, send them to the board, and uh, you know, we can help out. I think we might have to get, roll up our sleeves a a little bit of the ourselves, the board. So any, those are my thoughts. Yeah, Jim, I think those are, those are really good comments. I, I would just like to kind of reiterate that, you know, I’m a big proponent of proposition two and a half, right? Because what it does is it imposes fiscal discipline at the get go. Okay. And it forces a process where you gotta talk at the grassroots with the machinists, with the department heads to figure out what are the priorities kind of on a micro level across a relatively complex service delivery platform of the town, right? And I think

1:30:21 that Thatcher has been focusing on resource management, organizational stuff and trying to figure out how that can be deployed more efficiently. And I think we’ve received the benefits of some of that efficiency, quite frankly, especially on the technology side. And usually what happens is when you get better visibility, you get some savings, you know, uh, uh, that can be, that can be squeezed out, let’s just say, with better transparency, right? So that’s on the positive side, but I don’t think we get away from this budgeting process under prop two and a half. Oh, no, no. Without, without just really digging deep. And I think addressing a lot of the concerns, ‘cause what’s gonna emerge from each of the departments is their best articulation of how to handle the shortfall toward a balanced budget, right?

1:31:08 I mean, that’s gonna, that’s gonna percolate out. It’s gonna be difficult. It’s gonna be wealth considered, it’s gonna be challenging. And I think, you know, Thatcher, you know, has led the charge on this. This is, this is a more difficult year for sure, but he’s had experience running these budgets in, uh, you know, in severe deficit situations in the past. So I think, you know, I have a high degree of confidence that I think a lot of the questions, legitimate questions that you’re raising will be realized. But I think, you know, the first step before all other steps is to identify the shortfall that exists under existing constraints, practical constraints. And I think, you know, we can, uh, you know, we can,

1:31:54 we can rely on that. And I think the town can rely on that, that we’re not gonna be, you know, spending money just because we feel like it, uh, or that we’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna have to present that balanced budget. And I think then we’ve gotta make a case for what’s included in the override. And that’s another exercise. We’re still in the early phases of this process for right now’s all about balance budget. I think what comes outta that process is a list of override. You know, I think by its very nature, when you see the gaps, those are the natural areas of where an override asks might be made to the legislative appropriate, you know, appropriation body, which is our data meeting. So yeah, look, I mean,

1:32:40 I’m comfortable with the process. You know, there’s gonna be, it’s like, it’s like watching sausage getting made. It’s never too pretty, you know? But I think the end result will be something that we can get our heads around and we’ll reflect kind of the, the priorities across our complex town organization. And then plus with the review of the, you know, at the end of the day, you know, there’s, there’s a march of meetings with the FinCon and they’re gonna be kind of stress testing a lot of that as well and elevating that into the conversation with the town. And, and I think we should encourage everybody to really attend, you know, the finance committee meetings. ‘cause they’re actually, and they’re going to be very interesting this year. Okay. Um, go ahead.

1:33:26 So just, I guess I just, maybe I just make some clarity on what we’re asking of our staff in terms of bringing, like forward for us to consider. Is there anybody on the board that thinks that we would present some type of a one year solution type of override? Personally, I feel that it, you know, we’re looking for a, uh, I’m looking for a multi-year plan, you know, some type of a three year structured override scenario. Um, I just wanna, I just want clarity so I can, our staff have clarity around what it is. The board is tasking and, um, and,

1:34:12 and instructing, the finance committee will help with the balanced budget and everything, but it’s not their job to prepare and have a strategy for an override. That’s our job. So, you know, it is the time now because Thatcher is indicating that, you know, we’d like to bring back us a couple options. So I just would like some consensus. I’d like to leave here tonight with some consensus, you know, how do we feel that, um, we’re at, we’re looking for a, you know, three year, some type of a multi-year solution. Um, Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think we, we can’t plug the gap for one year because we’re back depending on where this whole process, as Moses says, gets through. We don’t wanna be having the same conversation. I think we’re gonna have to make a commitment to three years.

1:34:58 We’re gonna have to make commitment to the town. We won’t come back. And we have to give good detail of what we’re gonna use each year and what it’s gonna go to. Like we owe that to ‘em as well as finding efficiencies as, as we dig through this plus year. Um, I, I, I would support, I’m on the same page with you. I’d like to see similar type things, but that first three year looking at, you know, what our contractual obligations are and, and keeping that for each year, it doesn’t mean that we have to hit that levy on year one and we can make a commitment from the select board not to do that as, as well. And then, and I think that those two levels make sense as long as we have the detail of, of, of what they support. I would just say, and I’d like to make a distinction, not disagreeing. You’re saying the distinction is that

1:35:44 I don’t think marble headers are going to vote on a multi-year that based where we promise they got the heavy ask. However, it’s not a heavy ask knowing that in future years we’re going to be operationally making adjustments under the guidelines of knowing what kind of the future projections are knowing, right. That we have a, a growing, compounding growing number. If all the departments know that we can come back every year and work towards lowering that number, that’s different than saying, Hey,

1:36:29 we know three years we’re gonna have a $20 million deficit. We want you to vote on $20 million. Now that is gonna be a difficult sell, I think. Do you understand? I’m trying to make a distinction. I don’t understand. Well, okay, so, so the three year projections that were made mm-hmm. Okay. By, uh, by Alicia. Okay. Ballooned to what? 15 million in year three 15. Okay. Do you really want to go to the town and ask the town for 15 minutes for 50 million? We think, okay, over the next two weeks we need to work on on what that number, that, That’s what I mean, that’s what I need. But the problem, that’s Exactly the point. Like that I think that we know that that’s not gonna be power care, right? So we, and so I think though that we should decide

1:37:15 what, um, what our strategy is, you know, um, it’s, you know, like it’s not gonna be right. We’re, yeah, I mean, I, I guess I’m trying to get to that. Um, you know, are we, we’re looking for a three year outlook so the voters know that there’s a plan and this is what there is to expect. And, um, you know, personally I’d like to see two different options for us to consider, like I said, a restored situation of status quo. We can look at what that looks like, and then some type of a smart invest in marblehead type of option for us to also fix it. Or when you bring, when you know, we see these, um, in our next meeting, it’s obviously they can morph and we can discuss it.

1:38:01 We can decide, you know, that we wanna go in this way, you wanna go in this direction, but I’d like to just be able to have that information for us to weigh and before us and know what that looks like. And I also want our staff to be very clear on what it is we are looking for. Yeah, that’s, Yeah. So I think that’s a little bit of what I was leading with or asking for in that respect of, I think it’s premature to be talking any number other than obviously we have gross estimates, but the work is still in progress. We don’t know what the data is, but regardless of what the data comes back with, then we look at those numbers and we say, this is what this represents. What does this mean? And then we talk about what

1:38:47 that is at that point. But without that information, it’s all speculation right now because, you know, we can, until we see exactly what the department’s come back with to say what is the restorative, what, what is, you know, what, what is restorative? What is the efficiencies that, you know, each department has realized and would put forward, and what would be the things that they’re looking for? And, you know, in a two year and a three year in regards to capital projects, maintaining our buildings, you know, us as a board being in line with our own financial policies and procedures that we’ve worked really hard to try to implement best practices. What are all of those things pulled together and then brought forward to say, and this is what this looks like.

1:39:33 And then we have the ability to present it to the, you know, to the legislative branch and say, this is all, this is all that we’ve brought and this is why, and this is, you know, what we as a board have done the work to bring to the town. And there’s a rationale clearly behind what we’re putting forward. So I do agree. And that’s was my concern in asking that when the department heads are doing that work, that they have the opportunity to start, you know, start thinking about it, brainstorming it, going while they’re going through their records in regards to reductions or, you know, coming to that balanced budget. Um, which, you know, very likely could be a reduced budget, that they’re also, while they’re pulling that data,

1:40:19 having the opportunity to say, okay, I’m also gonna be looking at this, or this is coming online, or that’s coming online, or this is the equipment that I might need. You know, I think those are the types of things. Uh, and to what Jim was saying, we are also looking to differentiate between which items represent, you know, someone’s individual, um, you know, position, which, what are operational changes, you know, those are, those are part of this conversation too. But I do think that that information has to, if we’re in this place where we are, I don’t know how we do that without that information. Yeah. Yeah. I’m, I’m kind of on the same page as Alexa. I’m not ready to make that. I don’t have enough information.

1:41:04 And what I actually need is, first I need to see what the balance budget, what the landscape looks like, and, um, we got last week what the landscape looks like from the school committee with their side. Um, and, and they said at the end of their meeting based on that one that they weren’t even sure if they needed an override. That’s what Al William said. So my whole point is find out what the balance budget looks. I think there’s gonna be iteration number two with both the town and the school budgets. And then at that point, I, I think I’d be able to think about that. But I, I am, um, I heard what Moses said. I, I don’t, I don’t know what the appetite would be in the town for. Um, we multi-year thing, we, I I, I have to see some numbers first and then here.

1:41:51 I don’t think we all need to, well, we’ll, well, making projections is very, yes. It’s very useful. Very useful. Yeah. But there, that’s different than saying, Hey, fund this three year budget. Correct. Yeah. So it’s, it’s something I’m not even ready to say yes or no, but I think those are all good points. I like Alexa. I don’t have the, um, I don’t have the information. I, I’ve been kind of focused just on, I just keep thinking of the, um, the balance budget right now, to be honest. Okay. Just Then, are there any, um, sort of, uh, like for me, you know, I’d like for, you know, as Thatcher as you go forward with like the balanced budget tasks and assignment, like, just be, obviously, I know you’re already doing this, but thinking, you know, strategically and, and, and maybe not, like nothing, I don’t know that we can, like,

1:42:40 I think something like assumptions that, you know, we can, maybe this, depending on what this deficit truly lies at, that there’s some assumptions that maybe we, we kind of put everything on the table and, and, um, in particular, you know, just one example being, you know, this trash expense, what are some ways, what we’ve been sure without just assuming that that needs to be, that we can afford that at the risk and expense of another department. What can we do to, um, you know, to balance the budget in a way that is as equitable, uh, around, uh, as, as profitable, um, without kind of just making, um, like the assumption that the, that, you know,

1:43:28 the, the, the trash has been there and that’s the way we’re going and, you know, every other department needs to take that. And so I think there’s ways we can think creatively we’ve talked about that, like offline. Um, I also think I, you know, part of this, a whole part of this is gonna be our working relationship with the school department. And I know that there, um, have, you know, was meeting held. I think that I’d like to continue that cont cont that continue, you know, that type of a, I think I would call it a working group, um, you know, and have good communications with the schools and, and commit to being together, uh, to, you know, address this as we look at this balanced budget.

1:44:14 And just, I just would like to add, I think that, just wanna reiterate, I think it’s premature to say what the talents people of Marvel head will or won’t. Um, you know, I, I don’t think that that’s, that’s on our mission right now. Like our mission is to gather the data, get the information, and see, you know, all different layers and what it look when per, and then start to have that presentation of w what is, what is the cost to present those, you know, uh, reduced versus this is what the services are. And, you know, I, I think that that part of the conversation is very premature for what our mission is right now.

1:45:00 Can I just have one thing I’d love to see on the, on the timeline like that? I think, um, I, we’ve done this in the past, it’s been several years, but I think that we could add a layer of community engagement onto this timeline. And I think one of the ideas that I was thinking is some type of a public forum, like in the past we’ve called it the Municipal Bootcamp. Um, and basically, uh, it’s just a listing session slash uh, open forum where residents can hear from our department heads about around what their operations are, how many people they have in their staff, what their challenges are, what their priorities are. And I think that that level of education for the residents, like are really hungry for that right now. And I think it ties in well with

1:45:46 where we’re at financially in our planning process. So, um, for me, I’d like us to be able to, you know, put on a couple of those in March, maybe one in early March and one in later March. And this is not, this is not a budget hearing for our departments to speak to line item budgets. This is truly a opportunity for engagement with our, I mean, I’m, you know, Molly and I were talking about this on the phone earlier today, but just how really proud we are all are of our department heads and should be, and the residents should feel very proud of our department heads and the work that they have done over the last five years in, um, extraordinary, you know, difficult decisions around, uh, level funding our budget. So, you know, we can, you know, they’ve been putting off this this day.

1:46:31 So I would like an opportunity for our residents to meet them and ask questions of them about, you know, whatever’s on their mind. I, I, I think in the past it’s been a really, um, helpful and, and interesting to folks and, um, you know, just a kind of a opportunity for engagement and, and for people to understand and hear from different department heads about the, their operations. Like you said, I think there’s a lack of understanding around staffing levels and, um, priorities and just, you know, even PE questions come up and even, I know a finance director, actually, I’ve talked to her about this a couple times. She’s eager to participate in something like this. She’s participates in it quarter in the halls of WinDor Road

1:47:17 and, and has told me that, you know, oftentimes she’ll have, uh, residents really appreciate it. They just want to know why. Mm-hmm. If something is, and there’s all these things that, you know, we know go into things, but if you’re just, you know, there’s a lot of that of things that we don’t kind of are able to communicate on a regular basis. You know, why can’t we just dump snow anywhere? You know, like people want the answers to those questions and, um, and I think we need to give him that opportunity and I think it’s a good time. So yeah, I would like to propose that we offer that up, um, as engagement sessions in March. Sure. I would definitely say like when I, um, I’ve actually participated in those municipal bootcamps years ago when, um, Jason Silva had put them on

1:48:04 and, you know, I remember listening, um, just to the different departments and, you know, that I was, uh, fascinated and it was, it was a great resource because you really got to understand the town from the perspective of what are the operations, what does this department do? Like what, and I think that that’s really, I think it was fascinating. ‘cause a lot of times it’s, uh, just not something in regard to government that if you’re not involved then that you’re, you know, you’re just kind of not thinking about on a regular basis. But I think it gives the opportunity for the departments too to just shine and say, these are all the different things that we do. These are all the different projects. And, and I think too to, you know, projects

1:48:51 take a long time, you know, and so I think it’s helpful too, to say, you know, to kind of, I remember that, uh, at the time, you know, GPW was just kind of explaining like, why this comes first, then this, and then not. And you know, I really, I think walked away with a lot of empathy and understanding for mm-hmm. Uh, what the rationale was and why, you know, why things no on Education went The way to, I think it’s great. No, no, that’s, um, good. And I think, um, after we had the executive session on Wednesday, I wanna say I sat in on the traffic safety and Amy talked a little bit about her favorite subject, snow removal, and I learned all sorts of stuff. So snow removal around school, but how do you pick,

1:49:36 or why do you pick the streets to snow removal? And a lot of it is based on tractor trailer traffic. Tractor trailers go this route and you have to get it off because they’ll, they’ll get trapped in, in, I never knew that. I just, you know, no idea why it was done. But there, there’s a rhyme and a reason when people Yeah. Don’t know that. And if they do, um, they’ll, um, you know, the, the, there’ll be more understanding, I think. So that’s just 1, 1 1 of many examples. So since we’re talking about information Oh, where adding, we’re adding more to this? We Are, yeah, we are, we’re actually not adding, I wanna make another SHAS plot for the gf, uh, for the, the GFOA. No stop. That’s starting Coordin now. Budgeting. No, no Budgeting Document. Okay. So we’re moving on to more Hold on, hold on. Please,

1:50:23 Please. And I’m very, actually very serious about this because it is one place where you can see, where you can see the mission, you can see the strategy, you can see the metrics, and you can see the financials rolled into one document. Now the document is 120 pages long, and I know a lot of department heads, especially when we went through it with Jason Silva, it was challenging. But since we have the technology now to do this very efficiently, we would almost, it’s almost plug and play. You don’t have to bo bother the department heads every year, except perhaps to un update the strategic component description in the GFOA document. The advantage of it is, is that you have a document that’s produced every year,

1:51:08 and we got a gold rating last time we mm-hmm. Last time we did it. Uh, and it basically encapsulates all of these different elements that we’re concerned about because it, it unifies basically strategy with budget. It’s a live document. It’s not a strategic plan that gets put on a shelf. It’s something that’s used every year to explain the priorities of each of the departments. The knock on it is that it’s 101 veggies, but the benefit is you turn to the, you know, whatever department and you basically get a phage and a half of ENT summary. And I hear all the time, we’re all complaining about not enough information. People need to know more. There’s nothing better than to have a live document that gets replicated is relevant every year.

1:51:56 That describes the strategies, the metrics, and the mission of each of the departments. It’s incredibly enlightening. And I know I joke a little bit because I’m like a pit bull with a, with a bone in his mouth. But I just think that it would address a lot of the concerns that you’re raising today. You, You’re saying you’re suggesting people read the PFOA We’re No, we’re suggesting that if people need to know, okay, so how many people are employed in the, you know, in the, uh, you know, in the DPW, how many engineers are there? What’s the strategy? What’s, you know, what, what’s happened that year, you know, in each of the components. And so, and does it involve, it involves some work, but it doesn’t, it’s really mainly in the capture of what the department heads are thinking.

1:52:42 And I know it’s been a, it was a torturous process once, but right now it’s plug and play, give little technology. Okay. So I think that’s something that some of the department heads may not like, but I think the select board should love it. So that’s my, that’s my plug for, huh? In finance and the finance committee. Thank you. So I make a new passion plea, and I know we’ve been, we’ve had a lot of other stuff to worry about, but, So we’re gonna move on to the 2026 town meeting warrant articles. Thatcher, you wanna walk us through and explain Yep. What is here and what is excluded that we might think would fall under us? Yeah, so what this list consists of those articles sponsored by the select board. So there are other articles that are sponsored by the Right.

1:53:29 Okay. The financial officers. Yeah. Um, so the list, they’re just bulleted because they’re not in numerically order of the warrants. It’s just, uh, the relation of the item. The first set of bullets, um, I’m not gonna count how many there are, are the standard articles every year for, tell me for example, articles in numerical order. That’s, that’s gonna be article number one and that’s tal meeting votes. Yep. We agree with the order of all the articles. It’s basically, do you agree with the order of the agenda for Thal meeting? Um, so these are Shannon. I could try to answer any questions.

1:54:14 Um, means we’ve all, we’ve all been to more tal meeting than my, than I have, so you should be well aware. The one, um, uh, sort of notable on that list, um, the only collective bargaining item for this year would be the fire department. We’re in negotiations for contract, will put a new three year contract. Um, as you know, we settled police and municipal union employees in last year’s town weeding. So we have three collective bargaining units. So we’ve, we’ve done two last year, so fires only here. So, uh, sometimes you’ll have all three on there too. Who’s ever up for consideration?

1:55:02 Um, below the gap are the five,

1:55:09 um, potentially sponsored by the select board, um, warrant articles. But this year starting with, um, the three a, um, zoning bylaw, now typically it’s sponsored zoning. Zoning chain is sponsored by the planning building. I think they had so much fun doing it last year. They wanna share the fund and let the select boards, Actually we sponsor it last year. Oh, these funds election. We did it the year before. They, so They had the fun in the First. Yeah. We’re they, they got all the fun the first we get two years They’re passing the fund on. Yeah. So, mm-hmm. So again, that’s though it’s a zoning and they’re doing their, their part, uh, is requiring the loan. Um, we have, uh,

1:55:55 a housekeeping amending bylaws related to Department of public works. So it’s, it’s updating nomenclature names. We’re, we’re trying to eliminate the word drains. There’s no drains department. I keep forgetting if we’re going wastewater or waste sewage or it’s storm water, storm, storm water, storm sewage. So it’s, um, cleaning up and, and then there’s some, some terminology as far as it, it’s identifying old position titles, superintendent of public works, knowledge, director of public. So the housekeeping, um, the next one is mid general bylaws, chapter 39, prohibition

1:56:40 of cryptocurrency, automatic tele machines. So this is a new problem that’s hitting municipalities in which automatic transaction machines, ATMs, but they’re tied to cryptocurrency. And there have been issues where, um, people have been taping, uh, and again, currency in its own right is new, not fully understandable. And then to have, um, machines and, and such. So, so the proposals, um, requested by the police chief is to prohibit the, um, ATM machines and where heads they, that there’s one in mm-hmm. Entirely of the town. I think There used to be three. It’s down

1:57:26 to one. Yeah. And there’s been scams particularly on the elderly Across the state in other communities that are doing the same thing. Okay. Here’s my, my guess, if this is the past, be it sometime in the future, they may be repealing it as there’s some type of controls and regulations in other, you know, state or federal government step in and start regulating. Now it’s a totally unregulated industry. Um, the, the next item is, uh, repealed, uh, uh, or dissolved from the general violence, the Public Works committee. So that’s a committee that was created before there was a town administrative and before there was a Department of public works. Right. Um,

1:58:11 and so it was a structure where department heads to meet, um, to do some decision making and recommendations. Um, so given that this town administrator and, um, there’s a Public works fund, which was created by a special act. Um, and then one of the, one, one of the major complications of having the committee is if the department heads are meeting in an as part of a committee, that is a requirement under the open meeting law. And those same departments tend to staff meeting and talk about the same subjects, they would be in violation of the open meeting law. So we need to clean up, um, It’s really a legacy committee. Yeah.

1:58:57 So we’ve talked to legal counsel about that. Yes. About that. Yeah. So that, that is a conflict of Yep. Over meeting law would be a problem, uh, of having a, um, a, a committee of staff subject to open meeting law. We would have to be concerned about courtrooms and subject matter anytime we were together. So, So when department heads have been meeting, is this this committee or is that just an ad hoc? It’s new. I mean, it’s newly revised. It’s been on the books for Well, yeah, that’s what I thought. Yeah. So it’s been really revised, but, uh, we we’re gonna, we have, huh. So we’re Gonna eliminate the newly revised that thought. I, That’s my recommendation to the select board is to dissolve it off the, off the books.

1:59:44 So it, it’s a lic of the past, but it also creates a complication, uh, currently. Okay. I, the legalities aside, I like the idea, the property that’s meeting seems to make sense. So we do, Yeah. I thinks just a mechanism of how they, actually, this was a previous predated, uh, the town administrator who before now run. I’ll have to look At the, yeah. So whatever we need, But wouldn’t for include them for meeting, it would pre include them for meeting under this group and open and having to post Leave the bringing up. So we already be, we have meetings that they’re ad hocs that there, there are scheduled meetings that are ongoing through this mechanism, because it would be a requirement of the open meeting law that any department head meeting would have to be posted

2:00:30 and be open to the public, be a public session meeting the complaint. So Program. Yeah. Does it actually meet now? It has Matt. Yeah. Once or twice. Yeah. Recently it came, came to light through resurfaced. My understanding is through the charter process resurfaced, it was found that this was a preexisting one that had been for whatever reason, not meeting and not really knowing about for a long time. And so it has the previous administration, It has convened. Okay. Yes. And I have report this year. Gotcha. And has it been convening for a while? I mean, I excuse my email. Okay. So that’s it. ‘cause it requires the, the bylaw

2:01:17 actually said you had to be monthly. Got it. So when we found that we reconvene. I understand. Okay. Thank, and we have been doing it monthly as the bylaw. Thank You. Okay. Got it. But this forum is very high because the group is locked much higher than traffic advisory committee. That’s how, So we should look into that. Let’s, let’s, yeah, let’s talk more about it. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Just going that and talk more about it Yep. In detail. I, And then, um, the last one, administrative benefit amendment in which some of the department heads, uh, requested is to update, um, uh, some of the benefits for the administrative, the non-union, uh, positions.

2:02:04 So, so benefits, if you’re in a collective bargaining unit, your benefits are negotiated as part of the agreement. And so there’ll be changes to your longevity. Longevity payments are days off and those things. Um, there’s no bargaining. It’s, it’s through the, uh, personnel bylaw, uh, chapter 43 of the mar hedge bylaws, uh, which, uh, dictates the overall, um, personnel policies of, or, or benefits to the non-union employee union and non-union. But the, the, the contracts, the union contracts can add additional benefits through the s if that makes sense. So, uh, the proposal is, um, uh,

2:02:52 to update some of the benefits. Like, for example, the non-union right now don’t have personal days. Right. They’ve sick so many sick days, but they don’t have any personal days. And then adjustments to, um, longevity and when they’re eligible for setting longevity filters, so. Got It. Okay. Any questions on these? Okay. Let’s move on to discussing snow emergency for snow removal. Thatcher has a memo to the board, which is basically, uh, asking us to delegation of authority similar to how we do

2:03:37 when we declare a, um, argument. Um, and to delegate the authority. And in the same same way that we do currently, which would be, um, town administrative coordination with, uh, DPW and the two chiefs to declare this emergency to do it. They don’t have to come back to us, they call us special meeting like we had to last time co still to go through the same steps. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, anything else you wanna add to that? Yeah, we, we just wanna be more nimble more time. Yep. I mean, the storms are coming one after the other. And so rather than having a, you know, whole special meeting, we do this process. So there are parking bands, which you’ve delegated the authority. Mm-hmm. Right? A parallel, but separate is declaring the state

2:04:22 of emergency, which we need to do to justify, uh, snow clearing operations. And for example, we would like to do snow clearing operations for the next three nights. Um, and I think the public wants us to do snow clearing operations. Mm-hmm. Um, but we have to have the declaration, we have to meet requirements and we’re gonna dispose of snow. Uh, in a lot of ways there are procedures, notifications that we have to do, but to give us the flexibility, especially where these storms are coming days apart. So does the DEP still require a vote of the select board to be able to, you know, to dispose all stone in the harbor? All what they want is just a record of

2:05:09 how much is being put in the line of You need to notify them, correct? Yes. When you do It well, it’s not an automatic, right. Well, they need, we notified. You said, tell us how much, just keep recording. We do need a sign off from the conservation commission here. So there’s, uh, there is that involving with that. Okay. So this does this, does this include that? Yeah. So we would follow it, it makes reference to following those processes. So specifically for disposing of, yeah. In, in the harbor. Okay. Now the process. La it doesn’t say snow. Oh, the snow. It just says, okay, fine. Um, that’s fine. Uh, remove in the snow. But what we put in here is the clients that we do all of the processes of required

2:05:56 to meet them for the crop. I That makes sense. Yeah. It just the season. So that Yep. It’ll just be for this year through the, through the 25, 26. Yeah. Sorry. Basically through, uh, the conclusion of this winter. Yep. Okay. So if I could have a motion, uh, that the Marble Board delegates a town administrator in coordination with the director of public works, the police chief, and the fire chief, the authority to declare a snow emergency on an as needed basis when significant snow accumulation from forecasted or actual weather conditions. Pos, i i immediate threat to the health or safety of persons or property in the town. The town administrator, director of public works, police chief, and fire chief shall establish a starting end times may declared storm emergency as necessary to maintain

2:06:44 and protect public waste, emergency access, and pedestrian safety. Any declaration may pursuant to this motion shall include notifications. The Conservation Commission will applicable required reporting to mass DEP and notice of select board at the earliest practicable time. This allegation shall automatically terminate at the conclusion of the 25 26 winter season, unless earlier amend or rescinded by vote of the slot board. So moved. Second. All in favor? Unanimous. Uh, 11 and 12. 11. We don’t have to because of this record. Yes, ma’am. Could we get a vote tonight for the emergency, though? ‘cause we do not have the police chief here and I need it. Sure. Yeah. Can we, uh, Oh, you’ve given delegation. You’ve

2:07:30 Given the delegation to him.

2:07:33 No, it’s in conjunct. It’s in, it’s a collaboration, not a vote. Yep. So I’ll just leave. So I give you obligation.

2:07:43 Yeah. West You Gotcha. Will you give it to her? Yes. Yeah. I, I do want create a written correspondence. Would it be easier for you to declare one right now so we can just move forward for tonight? Yes. Yes. So, so you still want one? Yes. So, okay. Could I have a motion to declare, uh, what, what, starting tonight at 11 and going until February. You want the Saturday nights? So three nights. So until, so you, when do you want to end? So that’ll be the 13th, the 14th at 7:00 AM Sure. Is that what you want? Or you tell me? Yep. Seven’s Good. Okay. So I’ll move seven. Okay. So motion to approve of Snow emergency

2:08:28 starting tonight at 11:00 PM uh, going through Saturday, February 14th at 7:00 AM So Moved. Move. Second. Second. All in favor. Thanks. Thank You. All right.

2:08:45 Uh, I think that we, I think we are gonna notify people through our, um, can we still use Code Red through March 1st? Yeah. We, And I think that you’ve already declared a snow emergent, the, I think it’s already been sent out starting at 11 o’clock tonight. So For Yeah. Parking. Parking. The parking. That’s fine. I just wanna make sure the parking manager Already been sent out. Yeah, they’re giving people enough. I’ve just seen they sent that before the Mass notification system, the co co-writer or Crisis 24. They filed, we went to just use the email and the text. Okay. And not the, the voice has been Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard That voice. But we have Facebook. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And, and my guess is that our amazing, uh, reporters will also put that out there. It was that our already I already did it. Perfect.

2:09:32 There you go. So we do not need to, we have a lease that we are ready for. Um, number 13, we have revolving fund accounts for fiscal year 27. Um, we need to authorize funds for fiscal 27 in accordance with Mass General Law. Uh, anything you want to add to this? So this is new this year. There was a law change where previously town meeting would be that you would vote to put it on the wall. Right. Under the law. Change is now under the authority of the Slack board to establish the, uh, levels of, um, the press funds to be allocated for appropriation. Okay. So we are, and we have letters from each

2:10:18 of these revolving fund, uh, directors You has put together, Put together a whole packet for us with the amounts from each one. And this limits the amount that they can Yeah. Spend outta that result. Correct. Right. So this is the amount that they’re authorized to spend in the next based on, Based on fees. Yeah. It’s based on the balances funds that are available for appropriation From fees. Yeah. Right. Yep. All right. So if I get a motion to reauthorize the following, involving fund accounts fiscal year 27 in accordance with Mass General Law, chapter 44, section 53 e and a half, and the amounts below. Animal Control Department 5 million. Uh, sorry, That’s, yeah. It’s an extra zero on there. Five $5,500. Correct.

2:11:06 All Counsel on Aging 350,000 Board of Health Commercial Waste Disposal, $1,067,598 Board of Health Vaccines, 10,000 Highway Street opening fees, 200,000 sum pump improvement, 10,300 conservation fines, 75,000 Historical Commission gift shop, 25,000 recreation parks, 2 million Ops Memorial Fund, 15,000 special education, 200,000 in school transportation. Amount of 15,000 for motion, please. Second. All in favor? All right.

2:11:48 Consent to agenda items. Could I have a motion to approve the following consent agenda items? Subject to usual rules, regulation fee, fees, and receipt of required certificate of insurance. If we could approve the minutes of January 14th, 2026 and January 26th, 26. Abot Hall, pride Day, Sunday, June 14th, 26th. Aha. Festival of Arts Speed Puzzle fundraisers. March 7th, August 8th, September 26th, and November 7th. All of this year declare the following item to surplus are no longer needed for municipal purpose. So it may be disposed of in accordance with the town’s policy on surplus equipment with 25 chairs at Avid Hall, Marblehead Youth Baseball Opening Day Parade on May 2nd. Abbot Hall Ator presents CPAC Charity Concert November 14th

2:12:35 and Abbot Hall Community Charter Public School, March 13th and March 16th for mock public hearing. So moved. Second. All in favor? We have some contracts to approve. Um, the most of these are oncall, so that we are approving a, a total amount. And this is And the funding. Go ahead. Let me explain. So, sure. So it is a listing here that each of these services, so an on-call painter, on-call plumber, um, um, preventing maintenance generators. So it’s electrical, but it’s specific for the water, steel generators, and then on call, electrical, other facilities, gen General Electric. Mm-hmm. Items that, all of those, um, in order

2:13:24 to have a fair bidding process, we have to have them bid on a set level of services. That’s the dollar amounts you see in which they, they, they, they compete for. That’s not necessarily what we’re gonna spend. And based on what account it is, it’s gonna come from the appropriate building accounts, depending on the building or the service. So it’ll be based on whatever the appropriations we build in the budget to do these services. This sad? Yes. Ma Generator, maintenance generator is here only because it is a five year contract, not a three year contract. So those have to be approved by you. That will, the contract itself will be approved

2:14:09 by the solution. ‘cause it’s in bottom, But it should, the, the term of it makes sense. Thank you. Any questions on these? All right. So first we get a motion to approve contract 26 slash 40 for on-call payment service review, the Town and Capital Contracting, Inc. Based on hourly relates rates and percentage markups on materials to bid and authorize chair to execute the contract on behalf of the board. Second, All in favor, get a motion to approve contract 26 dash 41 for Onal Farm Between the Town and Bought Mechanical In, based on the hourly rates and percentage markup on Materials Bid to authorize chair to execute the contract on behalf of the board.

2:14:52 Second, all in favor, motion to approve contract 26 dash 44 for on-call generated transfer switch repairs inspections during the town and Sherborne consolidated and Case on hourly rates and percentage markup on Material Bid authorized chair to execute contract on behalf of the board. So moved. All in favor and motion to approve 26 dash 46 for on-Call electrical services between the Town and Patriot, lead Light and Power LLC based on hourly rates, percentage markup upon material bids, authorized the chairs on behalf of the board. So moved. And this final one, oh, sorry. All in favor. Forgot about that part. Yep. I, I heard, yeah, I just forgot to vote. It’s, yeah, it’s, the last one is Five Corners Improvements Design Project for the amount of one 50.

2:15:37 This is being paid through a grant. So it’s, um, 135,000. It’s from a Mass Works grant. The balance would be from 11, I mean two, which is the, all the funding. Yeah. So again, this is, um, design work for the Five Corners interception. Right. So it’s Right, basically load problem. But with Mass Works, um, during This, the final step in that design. What’s that? Is this the final No, it’s the no conceptual Ary ary step. It, it goes up to 50% Of this. Guess it’s the 50, which then opens up more. Okay.

2:16:19 I hate to ask, but this was money already awarded, is that correct? Since it’s Mass Works? Yeah, we, um, Yeah, it was already signed. Was It already? Yes. Oh, It was already, we were able, We were able to execute the contract before we were not on the buy. Okay. Yeah, it’s always, it’s always a relevant question, unfortunately. All right. I get a motion to award contract. 26 slash 50 redesign of five corners from the town and APAC companies LC for $150,000. Authorized the chair to sign the change order on behalf of the board. So second. All in favor? All right. Um, we also have a vacancy on the housing committee. We appointed someone recently Ramon to finance, um,

2:17:04 and it can sit on both, so Yeah. Because of that. Um, so he has, he submitted his letter of resignation before he was sworn in into finance? Yeah. For the marble housing. Gotcha. Can finance Finance? You can, yeah. He can’t completely. You’re good. I you’re good. Um, I problem. So, um, if we could announce that vacancy, we could publicize that. Um, why don’t we see how the, how it comes in and then we can set a time for Right. For final at this point. Yeah.

2:17:41 Okay. Do you, yeah, I mean, if you want set, probably not gonna do the 25th, so why don’t we set, um, what’s that second, the second meeting, which would be March, whatever the second Tuesday of March is. Why don’t we set a deadline of six? Why don’t we set deadline on March 6th and if we have applications, we can do interviews on the 11th. Mm-hmm. That looks good. Sound good? That makes sense. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Um, with that, are there any select board announcements? I have one quick announcement. Our senior housing, sorry, our senior tax exemption has in its third here. Uh, the third stage is having his third hearing, or sorry, third meeting and the in the house.

2:18:27 And that, that’s, let’s move along quickly. Okay. And if it passes that sentence and go from there. Okay. So got that update this week. That’s good news. Thanks. Yep. Anything else? Um, just, uh, appreciation for the hard, um, uh, plow riders out there right now. They’re exhausted and um, you know, they’re across town departments. We rec park and this five routes and we got the cemetery to three routes and then’s got all of their DPW folks out there tirelessly trying to keep up. We appreciate that. If I could have a motion, Tojo moved. Second. All favor.