Select Board: March 19, 2026

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

0:00 Meeting to the select board, to order on March seventeenth at one o’ 七 PM. This meeting is being recorded. We will open up with public comment. Anyone to make public comment?

0:17 Anybody online looking with a hand raise or whatever you said? That’s good. Okay. We will close. Last call. Done this last week, and someone came up. Last call on public comment. Move on to our select board budget hearings. Lee or Clark, where would you like to start? Let me, let me just get it rolling here. So what we’re working from, the documents is the first one has the summary by department, which lists salaries and expenses. Um, in the columns, you have, some historical information, the fiscal twenty-five budget, the fiscal twenty-five expended, fiscal twenty-six

1:04 budget, which is the fiscal year that we’re currently in, and then fiscal twenty-seven proposed. That is the column that is to be deliberated and voted on today. And again, the only departments that are listed are those departments that are under the purview of the select board. As far as all the other departments, that will be dealt with at a later, at a later meeting. Um, so we will need the select board to vote a final total budget, which is the budget that gets presented to town meeting. Okay. So we will arrange that at a later time. I’m assuming we’ll wait till after Fancom has their Super Saturday, and- I think they’re gonna want that before. Before? Okay.

1:49 We’ll have to figure that out. Okay. Um, and then behind that summary document is the detailed breakdown line items of those departments. Um, they’re, they’re sort of grouped together. So if you wanna flip back and forth, you’ll just have to scan down and find the appropriate department that you’re looking at. And, and on this one, on the detail level, we, we did include the fiscal twenty-five. As you recall, we transitioned from the old, old software, Software SoftRight- Yeah … to the Munis. And the accounting,

2:35 numbering is changed, so it was- Right. We, we have– In the summary document, you have the totals. But to, to try to match the old accounting lines to the new accounting lines would have been wonderful. Difficult. Right. Difficult. The nice thing is we were able to show you year-to-date actuals, which you never had before. Yes, that’s correct. Yeah. So Munis, we, we, we have a cutoff of how, how the accounting system changed, but Munis has given us more capability and more timely actuals than what we’ve had in the past. But I think, you know, it’s important, I think, to emphasize too, that you’re kinda going back to a zero base budgeting in some ways, and that’s usually a huge effort for most.

3:20 Yes. So I mean, I, I appreciate that transition that you had, that you had to make, and it’s, it’s a big, it’s a big transition. And now that it’s nailed down in the current Munis system, the chart of accounts should be relatively stable going forward, right? Yeah. Yeah. So those actuals, twenty-six are through basically today. Yes. Yeah. So we could, in our mind, take that as seventy-five percent-ish- Correct … of a year. Absolutely. Okay. So that maybe is it. Um, so my sense would be we can walk through the department. I would suggest we first take the fire chief who has an appointment where he needs to be at. Come on up. Absolutely. I’m gonna- Yes, sir. If I could. Yeah. Is, is there a way to kinda give us a context-

4:06 Yes … just quickly- Yep … of what we’re, what we’re, what we’re looking at here in terms of the- Yeah … the context? So as we built this budget, and if you recall, we had scenario A, the, the ugly fifty-six- Fifty-six … positions lay off. Yep. We went to scenario B, which makes two assumptions. Uh, one assumption is that we will be implementing, trash fees to generate a little over two million dollars in new revenues. Wow. And I know there’ll be more, more conversation on that item in particular, but that is built into these numbers, as well as, going back to the schools and asking for

4:53 an additional one point five million in cuts from the level budgeted that they had, cut their budget down to. So these numbers, for our departments are predicated on the implementation of trash fees, the additional one point five million in cuts. And that’s it as far as any changes of the revenue sources or available funds between scenario A and scenario B. So I guess that we were talking about a deficit, in the seven point seven million roughly, that there was some real hard work done by the schools to get down from a service level budget. Sorry about that.

5:39 No, you’re doing fine. Service level, you know, s-service to– I know you get, I know, I know you need to be somewhere. No, you’re fine. It’s just learning a building. You just need, you just need to keep going. If I, if I die here in front of you, it’s your fault. Okay. I’m kidding. Fair enough. Fair enough. So, yeah, but in, in all seriousness, to go from a, the schools did a remarkable job getting from a service level funded budget down to a, dollar level funded budget, and they, they basically cut one point seven, one point six of-You know, of cuts. And then we asked them, for another 1.5. Now, in my mind, that one point five is basically they’re responsible for, for, for doing whatever with it, right?

6:24 Either cutting or going for an override at one point five. So, you know, their– that’s kind of their area of responsibility. We said it’s like, what is it, three point two of deficit that you have to take care of, and that’s fine. I guess I wanna understand when you’re telling me that it’s a one point five that we get to ascribe to our budget, am I still thinking about it the right way? Yes. So met with the assistant superintendent of finance, it’s been fabulous to work with them this year, and they’re working so hard- Yep …to get to a level, and working with me on understanding all the costs on the benefit side. So I wanna thank them for working with us on that. Yep. Um, yes, it’s been a, it’s been a lot of hard, hard decisions that have been made, and we know, different departments have advocated

7:12 for their funding. But I think working with the schools, it’s fair. Working with the state is normal. Things are going to come down to a, a fair, equitable- Right. Split of the deficit, right. How do we pay for that deficit now? So we got– I think on the school side, that’s, that’s great. On the town side, we have our own deficit that we need to take care of. So I guess that, you know, we kinda started out at four point five of our part of the seven point seven, and then we have found some savings as well. By the way, both the schools and the town are really kinda like, every budget has a little bit of buffer in it, and I think what we’re doing is we’re kinda squeezing out those buffers on both sides, and now we have a residual amount that we need to show what we’re gonna cut if we don’t get an override, but we’re asking for an

7:58 override for, right? So on our side, we’re, we’re, uh– And this is getting finally to this question. You know, we’re looking to really cover three point three, as I understand it, right, of deficit that’s, that’s still out there. So, so basically when we’re looking at a balanced budget, it’s last year’s number minus three point three, is what I’m– what I was saying. Right. In a way, it’s being addressed in round numbers- Yes …was a little more than two million raised in new revenues through the implementation of the pass fee- No, that’s correct …and a million and a half of cuts. Right. Right, right, right. Well, I think, yeah, I think we’re– That’s correct. That is correct.

8:43 Okay, good. So that sets that up. So when we’re looking at, at, at fiscal year two thousand and twenty-seven, that’s, taking into account that those cuts- Correct …that, you know, on each side. School side, one point five, and our side, three point three. Okay. And I’ll– I just wanna echo A-Alicia’s comment as far as, the teamwork. Yeah. The only way Marblehead, as a single community, is gonna get through these challenging times is teamwork and everybody working together. And there, there’s a lot of contentious discussions and negotiations. It’s a natural process to get to- Mm-hmm …a consensus. But thus far, all departments, beyond even the ones that are under the purview of this light

9:29 board, it’s been very much a, a team effort to address this, so. A hundred percent. But I think as well, I just wanna, and I know I’m dragging this on, just one more point I’d like to make is that one of the issues that has always been kind of, you know, an issue, let’s say, is kind of how do you divide up that deficit or that surplus that comes in every year between the town and the schools, right? And I think we, we, because we have such a sharp deficit this year, we really had to put a fine point on kind of calculating that, right? And I, and, and I, you know, and I think that going forward, that we ought to set the expectation with the schools that our recommended number to them is gonna be driven off of a cost responsibility

10:16 model. And, you know, and I think, and I think that’ll do a lot to improve two things. One, to improve the actual number that comes out every year, right? And the second thing is, as we change our assumptions throughout the budget year, we can adjust the assumptions, so they feel like, “Hey, that’s also fair.” And I’ve got a couple of examples of that. I won’t go into that now, but we, we can talk about it. Well, I think the plan there is to meet with them on a quarterly basis to go through this- Yeah …and really- Yeah …get through that collaboration that I think has been talked about in the past, and make sure that in, in the event that there is more revenue next year- Right …they also participate in that upside. Well, that’s right. So I think that we need to at some point, not today, discuss, and I think that the school has asked for this as well, basically, that, that we have some kind of general guideline in place, so that we’re all working

11:03 off the same. Well, I think de facto is we are using that guideline this year. Right. And we should probably vote on that at some point- That’s been the practice …in the future. What’s that? I th- That’s been the practice as far as fair apportionment since I’ve been here. Right. Um, that effort was challenged because in the past, it was all positive. Well, that’s correct. That’s correct. And this year, we were in the negative, so it put a, a, a challenge on that. Yeah. And, and it– I think it successfully survived, the deep analysis gone on that our methodology, in general, has been working, and we wanna- Yeah, that’s right. I think we’ll wanna refine it, and hopefully we can– Yeah. Anyway, I think a guideline, you know, we talked about this with the chair. Yeah. You know, a guideline will help- Sure …I think, kind of on a multi-year basis, setting expectations around how we come up with a school number.

11:49 And then, you know, obviously around the margins, you can– but at least there’s a, a baseline that we can nego- you know, that we can start on. Yeah, be– Yeah, exactly. We can keep going. All right. Okay. Thank you. Good stuff. Sorry for the– Yeah. Don’t be sorry. You gotta say what you gotta say. No, it’s f*****g a lot. Everyone should talk. These are- Yeah …forty times, make sure that’s all right. So we- How you wanna do this? Yeah. You guys are doing well. Welcome to- Thank you One summary as far as approach, given the challenge we have and having to make cuts. However, we also have to make, we have to make decisions on prioritization. Public safety, for obvious reasons, right? Protection of life and property is one of the most critical things we do as government. And so in some areas you’re gonna see

12:38 growth in numbers because we, we’ve got to meet ob-obligations and, and sustain. In, in others, we had to make choices where, where we go back. So, you know, you’re gonna see in, in the public safety that there were increases to meet certain obligations. Dave? So I guess I’ll open it up to you guys for questions. ‘Cause I mean, you know the budget, but I’m happy to answer any questions you have, and then I will certainly- So I would, if you’re all right, I would like to start. I know that we have seen some different things thrown around. Are there any cuts to, to positions in what we see here? Yes. There’s one vacancy. Okay. I thought that we had in our last gotten away from that. I mean, my concerns here is that in discussions that we, having a vacancy could cost

13:27 us money and overtime, given the, the, the expensive overtime costs that we have. And I guess I’d like to hear why we’re cutting a vacancy where maybe more man-hours would help with cutting down on the overtime, which costs us over 1.5% on, on it. As well as I know that there’s just a lot of, exhaustion and frustration at the fire department. So at least the last time that I saw, or that I remember seeing, and B, was restoring that position. Right. So currently if they do have a vacancy, they, they can use that money towards their overtime, and so what I told them is to increase their overtime for that vacancy. But that, how does that make financial sense if the overtime costs us more than a, a salary? It doesn’t cost more than the salary, but I told them to increase that for now and

14:16 to take that out based on- Yeah … where we are. I took one police officer, I took the one vacancy. I’d rather do that than take a live body. That was my reasoning behind it. I’d rather not take a live body if there’s a vacancy. For a new case. Unfunded, you know, defund the position. Yeah. If I could pretty… Sorry, I’m just gonna go ahead and do it. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. But if we kept that, has there been an analysis done to say that keeping that we could reduce our overtime instead? I mean, because if, I don’t under- Maybe you can explain to me better, but how, if you have, what is it, how many hours a week does fi- fireman work? 40- 42 hours, but never full. 42 hours is in, I mean, we’re one and a half to 1.8 times if you have to cover that, an empty position. So there would be some initial savings. It’s not gonna be great, but there would be initial savings.

15:01 The key that we have to look at right now is that I’m ordering people into 96-hour shifts. It’s a safety thing, it’s a morale thing. I mean, you look at one person, I know obviously we gotta be team effort to try to help with the budget here, but I mean, I d- definitely gotta go on the record saying, you know, these guys see themselves coming and going. One person does make a difference. Um- So the thing, and just to be, go back to your point, is, is that, so that what we’re really doing is we’re defunding a position that we keep open for, for hiring purposes. Yeah. So it, it, it removes the option to, you know, to bring someone in is one part of the way to think about it, right? So cutting that, and the schools have a similar situation, right? You need to keep a certain amount of positions open so you can get the rotations.

15:49 Uh- How long has that position been vacant? Uh, about a year. And has it not been filled because you can’t, it’s hard to fill? That’s exactly why. You can’t get people. Candidate are hard to find right now. Got it. Got it. So if that’s the case and it’s been a year- So the idea would, if, if the position can be filled, the idea would be to try to get a lateral transfer. So that’d be a firefighter that’s already trained, already academy trained. Sure. So we, we save that money there and get them in the door and working right away if that happened. Okay. Bring somebody on, you know, like when you put somebody through the academy, what’s that, what’s the, what’s the cost to hire somebody for the first year? What is the cost? It’s gonna be their initial salary. Yeah. All right? Fire.

16:34 And then it’s gonna be overtime because when you hire a firefighter, you have to wait either anywhere from six months to sometimes a year to get them in the academy. That person comes on shift, they’re not counted as a firefighter. They’re an extra body, so you still have to fill back for that vacancy. They work as an EMT or they can work outside, but they cannot work a fire, all right? Then when they finally go to the academy, they’re there for 10 weeks, and once they graduate, they’re back on shift. Do you feel like we’re, so given that, do you feel like… Is this the fourth position we’ve defunded in the last few years? The fourth- This will be, this will be four. So we’re, we, if you were to look at us, we are, with injury, illness, manning, we are down a full shift. We are actually filling a full

17:20 shift. That’s how many people we’re down. So- So those aren’t vacancies. No. No, they’re people who have- Conditions. Personnel not available. I mean- Can, can I- If, if you look at the, I’m sorry. No, no. Go ahead. If you look at the,

17:36 injury and military, that’s almost 40% right there. Very close. It’s killing us. Military is just south of $300,000. Those are two bodies that we need that we can’t do anything about. That’s two people? Yeah. There hasn’t- Yeah. All of them. Yeah. And you’re saying that percentage is of your total salary or your total expense? Both salaries. Yeah. Okay. Just, I just didn’t know if it included- Yeah, no. Is there, so if we get rid of this position and you had someone who wanted to laterally transfer, are we, are we just approving bottom line here? Like if, if, if, here’s my thought, and tell me if I’m saying about this wrong. Can we leave that position and then put a dollar forward?Can we leave the position and not– so that if you wanted to bring the money, the money over, like, if we can

18:22 see that that over… I’d, I’d like to see some flexibility in being able to get away from overtime. So we have, we have two options. I mean, one, you trade overtime dollars for quick salary dollars. And again, when you make the commitment on the salary side- Mm-hmm … that’s a hard, hard dollar commitment. On the overtime, it’s a managed– if there’s opportunity to manage that cost where- Yeah … hopefully you don’t have to expend it, right? So it’s one certainty, one potential. Um, the intent here is, for that vacancy, and whatever else we wanna do for the fire department, is geared towards the override scenario to, to, to be able to- So if that override doesn’t pass, which I think we have to-

19:08 Yeah … like, we have to play within these numbers or- Yeah … live within these numbers. If the chief had someone who could come in, and he thought that it could reduce his overtime, can he hire that person if we pass this? Or, like, can’t– I thought– Now, so can we leave that position open with a doll-a dollar or something, so that if the chief sees that it’s best to hire somebody, and he can- I would vote definitely against that, given the challenging financial crisis we’re in right now. But I- But, but it’s, it’s not even– It’s more that I think there’s more analysis that needs to go into the overtime versus people. Agreed. So I think that that– I, I– But I think that what we’re doing here is it commits us to not hiring someone, have the flexibility to f-to fix it throughout the year. But it hasn’t been filled for a year anyway. So if I put it back, then I have to take somebody who’s in a position now.

19:55 So that- But can you put it back and take it out of overtime? And could we– And if we don’t hire someone, we can use that towards overtime? One challenge. Yeah. So then I just take it out of somewhere else, so- Why don’t we just take it out of overtime and leave that? Yeah. Tell me if I’m thinking about it wrong. I’m just– I’ve just heard this issue, and I, I know that- But the- In talking to the chief. But the fully- It’s just more flexible to manage that. Who was that? You know, it, it’s been- We- It creates more flexibility to manage overtime. Reduce involvement. Yeah. Is that- So overtime can be reduced, but you’re always gonna have overtime. I mean, right now it’s the perfect storm, and we– everybody’s been talking about overtime, there’s no question. So just to sum things up, you know, we have two people out on military, nothing we can do about. We’re filling back their shifts every time. We have six people out on injury right now, whether it be cancer or other form of

20:41 injury. That hopefully will correct itself over time. And then, obviously, contract obligations- Right … is a huge one. All right? I mean, the way the contract was structured, you know, the base pay is building their overtime, and it drives it up. So those are things that I can’t control. And, and Jason, I, I have a question- Sure … just related to all this. Can you just describe briefly what your challenge is in staffing to get the shift? In other words, you have to staff X pieces of apparatus with- We, we run, we run two pumps and a ladder. Yeah. They’re staffed with three people. NFPA, National Fire Protection, is supposed to be four, but that– We’re not gonna talk about that. Yeah. They’re staffed with four. They are three, they always have been. All right. So we run a pump and a ladder out of Central. We run engine two out of Franklin Street.

21:29 Engine two is our out-of-town truck. It also is a, licensed class, fire now transporting ambulance. So we protect that end of town. The big thing with manning, if manning is reduced any further, we can’t keep Franklin Street open, which means I can’t give mutual aid to another community, which means according to the mutual agreements that’s been around forever, if we can’t give, we don’t get. That puts us in a very bad situation, seeing we’re at the end of the line here for towns. That’s- So you’re running out of people- Yeah … is what I heard.

22:02 We’re running out. With that, I mean, I’m sixty… So- I’m sorry to hear that it’s not the right way to do it. I just- Yeah … concerned about- So one of the factors is that, right? So the thought is just reduce overtime on that position. But elsewhere, it’s a, it’s a health, health cost, pension cost. Sure. So, so there needs to be- Mm-hmm … an adjustment in that regard too. Sure. Makes sense. That’s, that’s, that’s part of the challenge of this. It’s a carry. Well, with nine personnel staffing is it, it’s almost a wash. Because of the benefits? Because the benefit cost. The twenty percent. Right. But- Yeah. But I’m, I’m- Overtime I’m, I’m concerned the chief is, getting to the end of the line in the overtime, even it’s, you know, he’s ordering people to work,

22:52 more than they would like to. As they say, overtime is nice, but too much is, is too much. They’d rather not work it anymore, to tell you the truth. Yeah. And like I say, it’s to the point where I have to order, which is never a good thing . So the path would be, is what I’m hearing, that position goes back in, the overtime line gets reduced proportionally for what is needed in the salary line. Plus what? Plus. Plus benefits. Plus benefits- Yeah … would have to be adjusted. And could we– And if, if he hired somebody– Or– And then if he didn’t hire someone, there’s no reason we can’t transfer that to use for overtime later in the year, right? Right. It’s a bottom line. The bottom line. Bottom. So, so- So I, I, I just don’t like the concept of what Aaron was talking about of if now we

23:39 have four less. And- Yeah. We’ve, we’ve taken a hit every single year. I mean, the fire department certainly had their pound of flesh. I’d like to see that flexibility if, if morale gets worse, and you have a lateral transfer that we can do it for, and the money is the same. I just don’t like- I mean, also- Overtime … we, we, you know, you– we could, we could have somebody lateral out that maybe is tired of- That could happen any time now. I mean, these guys can go work- Yeah … next door and work less. So I used to be able to stop that. So civil service changed. It used to take two chiefs to agree, and it doesn’t take that anymore. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you can only push them so far. And it’s a, that’s a, that’s a safety concern as well, if they’re overtired and- Oh, it absolutely is

24:25 If I could ask, Mr. Chair. Alic-Alicia, is, is it possible to have that optionality there, you know, in terms of swapping out the, uh… I mean, you’d said that the, that one position would require finding it somewhere else. Or, or if, like, that’s just if we- Or, or, or, or the swap, they’re just reducing overtime. If you took that times one point two from the overtime, right? Right. And brought it over there. It’s adorable. Without having to change the budget. I– And I would still suggest that we include that when we discuss o-when we discuss overrides, that we discuss re-implementing the money towards the overtime. I’m just concerned with making this vote today and an override not passing, and we end up with one less body. Where now, year to date, like on overtime, are you… Pe-people, you hit it? I mean- I don’t have it here in front of me.

25:11 Mm. I think it is- April twenty. Or you budgeted the one. Yeah. Does that sound right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, considering everything that’s been going on. I mean- Yeah … we’ve had injuries and stuff. Where are we with the analysis- Nothing … of, like, hires? With the hires? Hire versus OT. So I’ve started, looking at their hours. So we’re, we’re starting an hourly analysis, and we’ll be working on that with that chart to look at their overtime. Right. So they’re slightly over, Aaron? Do we think… W-we could have that, like, in terms of organizing our thoughts for the override, what goes back in. Because I’d love to have that. It’s on its way. Okay. So when we vote today, we’re just voting on the bottom line. Right, which won’t change.

25:56 Right. But, but we can make those changes underneath there, right? That’s the way, that’s the way. I would, I would personally like to see. If you guys think that that’s, you know, it’s, it’s a fair assignment, so I’m each of the ones I’m interested. I feel a lot better. Does that, does that sound good to you? Yeah. Got it. Okay. Sorry, I took your- No, you- Anything else that you want? Uh, that’s salaries. Is there anything else you have questions on, on salaries or? I mean, I think we covered the two big ones, the open position and the overtime.

26:29 New contracts now? No. Well- No. The con-there is not a contract as yet. Okay. Got it. We have certain- Getting there … kind of estimates. The rest of the year is ours then. We’re just trying to- Um, but as it is made, it’s not a settled contract. So in that regard, what will happen is any additional c-um, calculations and additional costs as a result of a final settlement would be added to the warrant article when the town meeting, approves the agreement. Um, and so those dollars will show up there.

27:09 So this total budget for fire is up, like, between eight and nine percent. Most of that is the contractual, right? Yeah. From the, from the COLA. So we- And what that does along the- So we’ve built in the COLA into the current budget. But any of the– When, when there’s a final agreement, any of the other changes to any of the cost items, that would be calculated and put in the warrant article. Okay. That’s two percent total. Mm.

27:44 Right. That’s right. Chief, anything else you’d like to share with us- No, I mean- … that you’d like us to hear about or? No, I mean, I don’t know if you wanna go expenses. I mean, uniform allowance, again, that was contractual- Yep … agreement made. So that’s, that’s gone up a little bit. Um, obviously, since we have no energy reserve, we’re putting fuel back in, so that’s gone up a little bit there. And then the only other thing is obviously subscription costs for, management software, station alerting, holding on to IMC. So if you look at the fire subscription, that line item went up substantially.

28:20 Do you, do you typically purchase those toward the end of the year? I’m sorry? Do you pur-purchase those towards the end of the year? Because I, I just noticed that there’s, there’s a big discrepancy between the budg-the proposed budget and what’s been purchased. The subscriptions, you mean? Yeah. Here’s a new subscription as well, Chief, if you wanna go in and scroll through them. Those are, yeah, those are ongoing. So I mean, to, to do our management software, which is, um- I think what Aaron’s saying is that for twenty-six- Twenty-six thousand to date, if we– the expenses have only been four thousand five hundred. Yeah, because we’re just getting those all implemented now. When we implemented first due- Okay … the first year was in there. Yes. And purpose is now just being installed. That’s gonna come online. So I mean, when purpose is online, which is our station learning, we’re gonna be

29:06 paying sixteen thousand roughly. When first due is finally there, then we pick up the scripting, you’re looking at twenty-three thousand. We have to hold on to IMC for our admin, which is gonna be reduced, but we’re still paying twenty-five hundred. And then Vector Solutions, which is a training platform, four thousand. Do you make those payments in the next year? Probably just started later in the year. Yeah. Perhaps. Some of them all go up to the first year to help different departments, but then they’re the ones that manage our own software, so then it will go to the others. Okay. And that’s about it. Okay.

29:42 If anybody doesn’t have any more questions. So if we approve the bottom line budget, you guys will still make those changes? Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. So if we go into minutes, we got it already. Thanks. Perfect. We’ll have minutes for that. So if I could have a motion. Do you wanna make- Do you want to do it all at once? Yeah. As opposed to individual? Yeah. I, I suggest going through the- Perfect … all our budgets and then- Because then we make changes or something. Yeah, then maybe- We’d have to go back and- Okay. Well, we’ll call you back if we need you. Do so. Thank you. Thank you very much. Take care. Thank you. Patrick, why don’t you just lead the way that you want to go in- Oh. That you want to go through it if you know people’s schedules, so we don’t have to change. Whatever. This is, that is the only hands when they come up. Okay, great. Schedule Janine I was aware of. Got it. I don’t see the moderator here, and I don’t think we need to spend time

30:29 talking about his budget.Less than one We’ve gotten tasked with getting ready to- Let’s, let’s get cut on that one. Uh, why don’t we go to select coordinates?

30:42 So

30:45 the select board budget, reflects, the positions, my position, the chief economic officer, the, senior clerk, and, what’s your, what’s your title? Assistant to the department. Assistant to the department. So Kyle’s position and- Yeah. Yeah. And the senior clerk position that’s, currently vacant, we’re going to be filled. That position handles a lot of the primarily insurance accounts and such, as well as other general support functions. Um, in the historical

31:33 data, the numbers move around because over the last couple of years, we created the sustainability coordinating position, housed it in the department. We created the, human resources, and then moved those positions out. So the historical numbers are accelerating, what you have in the proposed is sort of the settled staffing levels. And as far as,

32:03 other expenses or, general expenses, we do have what’s called a civic events line. Um, what we get hit with over the course of the year in our office is there are a number of community events that we are hosting participants that generate costs, and we just have to steal, borrow, and grab from other accounts to, to fill it. We, um– So we created a line item to have it placed, a separate line item, one, so we have a single identified line item to fund those events as they come up. And secondly, it gives us the ability

32:49 to better track going forward the historical usage and commitments of our community events and such. And would you be using like… You’re talking about overtime at the police department, like, is that kind of thing there? No. It’s mostly, for example, when we have, is it Juneteenth and, and, the other events out here. Yeah. There are activities associated that happening here that, that do cause overtime for custodian or some type of minor expenses for- School boards and task force events. Yeah. So we have the, various committees or task force that will generate an event, and then they come to us saying-

33:36 Yeah …speaker costs, custodian costs if the buildings are open. That’s a lot of money to be able to charge it to those. How do we land on this number? Um, just kind of looking at, kind of trying to gather historical data. In the past, do we pull it from, like, the things on reserve or? Yeah, we do. I take so many losses based on when we were doing Fourth of July because we were allocating some details that we didn’t have, and I know- So it’s better for next time. Yeah. That was one of those- Yeah …we had in-house, and I know that we’ve had quite a few. So whenever they pop up, they– I get the phone calls. Right. There’s no, “Where can we go and find it?” Yeah. So we really do need funding for different events. And as I said, just by having this line item, we’ll develop that

34:23 historical data that going forward, we can adjust- Yeah …um, and clean data to it anyways.

34:38 And I know that there’s anything else that

34:44 ends up.

34:49 I know we did something with legal. Yeah. So you’ll see they’re not funded in here. What we’re doing is in a separate, town council line item, consolidating all of the legal expenses into those line items. Okay. Historically, the select board and other departments would all have allocations of legal. Yeah. The idea is we just consolidate it. One line item allows us to oversee and manage that- Yeah, absolutely …better. So which one is it? Ours is- Where

35:26 is that? Town council. Yeah. So where does it show up on, on our summary ones? It’s on page one, like, halfway down. It used– It was- No, I’m just saying, where does it show up when we do our voting? At the end? On the second page of your summary sheet at the top. Okay. Um, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. The- We’re keeping the notice, like, the, the notices and stuff. Yeah, those are- That’s fine …because we manage that. So- So sixty-three- Was decreased …just decreased from here, and then we’ve got another hundred that has come out of other departments- Yeah … across the board? Yeah. We consolidated them into- Okay. So we have two lines. One is our people in council, which is basically our, handles our- Yeah, Jane.

36:11 Or for you, it’s Jen. So you kept that number- Yeah … very level. Yeah. It’s just been when we look at that, that it goes up by a hundred and sixty-three there. It’s been sixty- Is that sixty-three or sixty-five out of us, and then the rest is across consolidated and taken out of their budget. Correct. Okay. Yeah. So just transfer where it’s sitting on our– Okay.

36:32 Anybody have any other questions on this whole board side? Okay. Why don’t we move over to finance?Finance committee, I think we can just go right past that one, right? Well, finance committee, so that’s- We’re staying flat. Yes. That’s just our printing and dues and stuff at finance committee level. Yes. Yep. Yeah. That was funded for last year. Yeah. So in reserve funds, that is for- The reserve fund transfers. Yeah. That’s what you’re talking about, number ten here. Yeah. Reserve fund transfers. Yeah. We reduced it by thirty thousand. Yeah. All right. Let’s go to finance department.

37:20 Finance department salaries are all adjusted by steps and grades. Uh, one change that I made this fiscal year is in the accounting, town accountant department, there is no assistant town accountant. It’s the only position I have that doesn’t have redundancy. So you lose accountant, you– I have nobody in there that can book entries, nobody in there that can do analysis. I just had two clerk functions, and there are these needs including the proceeds. I’ve made it so we re-removed one union position. Instead, we put in a assistant town accountant with a redundancy, so the town is not without somebody, and so that we can strengthen our financial controls and our cash and all of our, oversight with the accounting office. Okay. So that’s what’s one change that we’ve done.

38:05 Um, the other big changes you’re going to see in my budget are gonna be the IT-related items, which are, I have to run both our current systems and our new MUNIS system concurrently while we’re implementing until we’re completely off. So hopefully those by next year will fall off, so I’m not running two at the same time. Um, and our subscription costs. So the new system is we do pay more for more robust technical, infrastructure than we had before, and I’ve invested in a lot of things. So for instance, we had ClearGov, which we still have, which has all our historical data so that nobody in town loses history because when we’re raising software, they can

38:51 go into ClearGov. I now have, Open Finance. There’s a link on the finance website. I suggest residents look at that. That gives you a complete– right into MUNIS. You get to look live at our expenses, live drill into our revenues as of today. There’s no wait and upload like you had to do with ClearGov. For us, we have to send it to them, we have to wait for them to upload it. It’s live. Um, so we put new transparency tools out there. I have, um– We now use Debt Book. So instead of tracking and trying to update everything in Excel now, if a resident calls me and says, “Hey, did I go do something? Did I get a brat, blah, blah, blah,” I can, it’s at my fingertips. I can run it, and I can go run with it on the cloud, work on it with the treasurer. It’s based on actual statements.

39:37 It’s all linked in, so I’m bringing a lot of, brand-new robust tools to the town that was never there before that I think will bring the town’s finances to where it needs to be. Procurement module, anything like that? Yes. So- What, what’s included in that, in that subscription agreement? So, and we have ClearGov for our procurement module, which is fantastic. So that’s for- OpenGov. OpenGov, sorry. OpenGov. OpenGov. So we use OpenGov also through the building department for their permits. So what that one does is it tracks our contracts. She can open bids. It can send the lists out. So before, if anyone wanted to know, like, who came and bid on this contract, we could get our list together, shoot it out. Now they can just do it themselves automatically. It timestamps everything. So now we’re, we’re really utilizing technology the way it should be.

40:22 So, so all bids are required to be submitted in a timely manner through the OpenGov system. Right. Okay. And then once it’s in the system, we can manage it, record it, and then the key component too is being able to manage the contracts for… And, and contracts to include insurance policies. All, all vendors and contractors are required to maintain insurances. They all have expiration dates, the contracts and the insurances. So it helps us keep up and manage that so that we don’t have an issue with the vendor, try to deal with the insurance to find out that it expired, those type of things. The other thing we did was we consolidated the telephone is all

41:08 in IT finance now, so it’s not in the other one. So I did notice my actual this morning was seven point two, which I know is not correct. So I’ll have to find out where accounting is holding our telephone bills because we are paying for it, and that’s definitely not reflected in that. That’s all, yeah. In, in a way, could you just briefly, I, I know you mentioned some of the roles in your office, but just- Yes. I’m here in your office, and just go down the list of, you know, what the roles are. Oh. Oh. Okay. So we have a town accountant that signs off and reviews all our warrants, our accounts payable, all our payroll, books all our budget entries, reviews the budget, books all the journal entries, reviews all the journal entries from the school system, helps me, assists me with the audit, the close of the books, the free cash certification, the Schedule A, and I do the tax year

41:56 recap. Then I have two employees that are in payroll. I share them with HR. So they have an HR aspect, and they have a payroll aspect for the finance piece. And that’s the benefits coordinator and the payroll manager. And they do that and work directly with the schools. So they process all the bills that sound schools. Then we- And they, they, they come under your budget entirely, or are you still- No, they’re under the HR, budget. Okay. But they report to both me and- Okay. And, and you also mentioned some working with the schools as well. Right. So they also work with the school. So now we’ve given the schools more– Now that we have MUNIS, they have more ability to do things, whereas before it was more shuffling paper upstairs to us. Now they can actually do and share things and collaborate more, take more control, whereas we were taking the most control before with the two people. So.Um, also I have

42:45 one full-time IT person who helps with all our hardware. We also have the collaborative, which is great because I think it’s, I think it’s regional grants that we get, and they help me oversee and help with help desk support. We have– I also oversee and work with the assessor’s office that has three employees. Um, we work together on all the commitments, whether it’s for boat excise, motor vehicle, real estate, personal property. We all work together, communicate effectively, which is actually the best thing ever. They also now communicate really well with the treasurer collector’s office, who does the billing. So I’ve seen that work really, really well. Um, the treasurer’s collector’s office has an assistant treasurer collector, treasurer collector, and two clerks, one of which is in our, our cut scenario here, one of the

43:32 clerks. Um, they’ve always been about an office of three. They needed four. So in order to do four, what we did was we– I had budget, in my budget for a, financial assistant to help with the budgeting piece, which me and Thatcher do. So that way, we use that funding for the clerk to help the treasury office because we kept having turnover and trying to figure out why is the turnover. Well, three people with a population of twenty thousand, and just to give people scope, I came from Littleton, which had ten thousand, and they had four to five in their treasury office, and we have double that, and we have three people. It’s just not sustainable, and it’s not manageable at the moment. And we’ve seen a huge, increase in properly recording receipts and getting things recorded timely. So one of the issues we’ve had, and I’ve seen it in the yearly report with our cash

44:19 flow and we’re not doing things timely, you need the people. You don’t have the people to get things in and do things and look at them accurately. That’s been an issue. So now we’re better servicing the public. We’re turning things around in a timely manner. So I think that that is how that should be staffed, is at least four people, out of the people. Yeah. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve paid the price to not do that- Yes -in the past. You know, we brought an outside consultant, but by the way, could have, you know, made a different decision in the beginning. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. I, I just think it’s important ‘cause it’s, you know, when we talk about police, fire, DPW, we, we see them- Yeah -out and about in a lot of the, I don’t want to call it back room functions, but

45:05 the, the average citizen does not see that on a daily basis. Right. So it’s important to know what- Right. And then I- -people are doing … I’m also your head of IT, so I’m also doing every single conversion, plus working on your budget with Thatcher, plus training, plus doing according what’s in the audit, plus oversee the state reporting. So it’s, it’s… A lot of people wear several hats in this town I’ve seen, and I thank them all. They’re extremely hard workers. So the only thing I can say about Marion is we have a very dedicated town of people that are willing to go above and beyond and wear multiple hats for this town. But it’s also very difficult, and I don’t think it’s sustainable to keep, to keep the budgets low, to keep going on so much on people that things are sliding or, or not being as properly done as they could be if we invested in our town.

45:51 Yeah. I mean, I, I, I, I, I concur with that. I just wanna, you know, congratulate you for your effort, because I know you’re parallel processing, you’re building in technology redundancies that are very important, and I know we’d like to have more personnel redundancies, but, you know, this year, I think at four, you know, that’s sort of, probably a, a, a good size, right, to, to, to have manageable. Um, what would you hire– W-would el– Who else would you hire at this point if you had one choice? If I had a choice, I would love an IT director besides me. Yeah. Yeah. And we have a wonderful, chief procurement agent with a

46:31 mountain of knowledge- Mm … to help me. She knows AMES, and she knows the software. So she’s assisting me not only on the chief of attorney, but she’s helping me on the finance side, because trying to hold everything together, I don’t have another, you know, IT. I have to pick up the phone and lean on the collaborative, and if it’s really important, sometimes you can’t wait, and you need help and support. We need, we need that, I think, for the town, especially with our robust systems that we’re bringing along, and the town wants to be able to have everything that’s digitized and be able to, foresee things that they want when they want. I think we should really invest in our IT. Is it hard for the tech service provider to kind of fill that- Yes. It’s been- -outside? Yeah. We had one before, and I think the collaborative does a better job, but it is expensive hiring outside.

47:18 Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, the good thing is because we’re in collaborative, we get those grants to help offset some of the impacts, which is nice. Right. But I think if we had like… The schools have multiple people. Wonderful. So do the fire department. I think that’s kind of possible for one person to manage. And that person, very lucky, very dedicated, will even come in on a weekend and work. We’ve been making cuts across the town side to, to save some of the other things we’ve been talking about for a long time. Right? If– So you have one A- one IT support person to a hundred and ninety, thereabout, positions. That’s a lot. Mm-hmm. Collaborative helps with the network support, the network systems and the firewalls, those things. But having one IT person to support an organization the size

48:04 of something, it’s a lot. You’re planning for our CFO to be your, your IT and be, be leading your conversion, the– and learning a new IT with a hundred thousand budgets. I mean, it’s, it’s not right. The implementation effort alone is a big… Happy to do it. It’s just, just I do wanna recognize all, all the people here, the multiple hats that they do wear and all that. Yeah. Any other– have more questions before we move on from IT? Assessor. Do I see anybody out there from assessor? Looks like the assessor is actually quiet, down, so I don’t think that there’s– Just to be clear, there’s no cuts of personnel over there? No. Correct. Got it. I know that, but- And so, so that them fitting in their office and who that is as well.

48:52 You confirm that. Okay. Confirms. Hold on. Um, council, I think we pretty much already discussed this part- Yes … about transferring over the money. Correct. Everyone’s good. So, so once again, it’s consolidating money that was, spread around different places- Yeah. Correct … and better to manage and much more transparent, I would say. Yes. I, I, I like that. That always bothered me. There was, like- Right … pockets of money all over the place. And, having it come out of one bucket is, I, I think a much better idea. Yeah. And the intent is not to restrict access for the various departments that need legal services, but for us to be able to be aware and manage it so that we’re using it wisely. Makes, makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I’ll move on. If I move on too quickly, just interrupt please. I don’t… If it’s parking clerk, I don’t like have anything on

49:40 that. Planning board, that’s nominal, and they’re actually down four thousand- That’s, that’s the legal. That’s the legal. So that point, thank you. Point that out when we get there. So that’s, that’s… They’re down, so they’re flat. Yes. We just transfer their legal over to that. Thank you. The intent is that planning board just gets absorbed into community development and planning department because they support it. We’re just waiting for… It is easier to do those type of consolidations in the muni system once the dust settles on the migration. Sort of move around some of the pieces to, to make sense of. Makes sense. Um, public buildings, Steve, are you… Yeah, we had some here. I don’t know if you-

50:25 Put something- We have- Just, if you just leave this, everybody can- Okay … see next time. We were just taking notes on that where- Hey. Hey, Steve. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. How are you today? I’m well. How are you? Good. You been on our roofs today? Not yet. Maybe after lunch. Okay, perfect. As long as that, as long as that. We including this one before Steve speaks. Please. Um, we had originally taken out one custodian who then went to Belchards. We had to. So, and in addition to that, it also was being said, I think Steve, it was going on with the I think that might have been on the- More on the inspection side. It was inspection. Yeah, we gotta get to that. Custodians are more on this side. Ne- so because of,

51:14 fluctuation somewhere else? Yes. There’s only… There are only two custodians. We only have two custodians, so that’s the question. Custodians. So we’re gonna have no town custodian. If we don’t get another one. I don’t know if, uh- So- How does that affect our meetings? Like I know lots of times Bruce is there to lock the doors, all that. We’re gonna be limited on meetings. Or somebody else is gonna pick it up or it’d be one of us. I mean, that’s- My, my only other thing is we have to dump some money back in for some type of cleaning service, ‘cause I draw the line at the toilets. Literally. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you since you’ve come here draw the line anywhere. I know. So that’s, that’s amazing. I’m coming a little early, but- I was hoping you- I won’t be done every day …

51:59 Um, yeah. So how do we, how do we accommodate for… I mean, it’s easy to do it on a piece of paper, but how do we real life this to make sure that we don’t– that we have clean toilets- Right … and that we have meetings. Paper. Yeah. So we still have the supplies in here for all the supplies. It’s just the custodial. And I’ve actually reached out recently to try to get a number for what a cleaning service would be at, Mary Alley. I just– It was recent, and I don’t have it yet, but there’s- There’s a lot of people in that bed. There’s a lot of people. So here’s a likely scenario of something like this, right? If the worst happens, we, we have to make cuts because we have to have a balanced

52:46 budget, right? And we’re, we’re calculating continuously adjustments for things such as, as we calculate the impact of layoffs, that creates unemployment costs and costs up to that. So, so that’s why the numbers are like always being analyzed and updated. And we had to make some additional cuts of- And just so people know, we self-fund. Yes. Unemployment. Correct. Yes. Yeah. Um, so a likely scenario, we, we would include these type of line items in an override scenario. If that was to totally fail, what we’d probably do is price out a cleaning service and go to the FinCom Reserve, you know, whatever that costs, and

53:34 say, “Yep, we, we, we need to fix it.” So part, part of what drives us is we have to get to a zero balance- Balance, yeah … budget today. Yep. And we, we don’t have the time to, to, to play out against every scenario that may, may happen to us as a result of, you know, all the other options failing. We try to deal with the big ones. And some of these, it, it would be FinCom Reserve that we would probably look at with a, with a- We’d have to plug and play on a- Yep … on a managed basis. Yep. Yep. In, in, in understanding the, the challenges, I, I think we need to do a hard analysis of what the job entails. So we heard cleaning, we heard opening the

54:22 building, but- Well- … that snow isn’t gonna remove itself so an elderly person can get into the town clerk’s office. Yep. Um, you know, the list goes on. And having said that, but what happens when you s- you see a leak? W- w- what, what is that? Who, who chases that? You know, and it’s– I’m, I’m very concerned about this, Pat. I really am. No. But I, I, I get the pressures, but, you know, s- the custodian’s a lot more than just cleaning. That’s- For sure So we have- The real part of- Yeah. Yeah. We have two paths to balance this, balance the budget, right? Yeah. I, I under- And, and one is nibbling on all the edges that we can find, and some of those edges cut a little deep. Or we shut down a whole function in order to fund another one, right?

55:09 And that was what scenario A was. Scenario A was- Yep … close the doors on a whole bunch of functions in order to feed the remaining ones. Scenario B, with the additional revenues, put us more in the mode of, let’s keep the doors open in all our functions, but that means we are chewing away at the edges of all these services just to get to a balanced budget and go forward. Yeah. But- I know this is putting the cart before the horse, but, so I assume when we are talking over, I try to keep there to put a C. No, that’s- That when we ask for positions back, we will trim, we will trim down that five hundred thousand dollar unemployment as well to offset it, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Just wanna make sure. Yes. Okay. So that we’re not… Yeah. Okay.

55:55 Anything? One of the other things we do is let you know, like, access to buildings and everything. Right. You know, um- Yeah. It- Early with the key cards. It, it, it- You know, you’ve, you’ve kind of brought that idea forward. With Eben Hall? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and Marriott is that being part of… I know there’s some renovations planned. Marriott, we have it. Do you have it? Okay, you have it. Yeah, we have it over there. We have it at, at the fire station, but that’s Jason’s building. Oh. But, this is something we’re looking into pricing. It’s gonna be a little more money because of the- it’s a little more elaborate. Um, but obviously it’s something that we’d, we’d be looking at putting into the next year’s budget. But, yeah, it- it’s definitely something we need to move forward with.

56:41 We also have, ‘cause we have the capital funding for it already in place, renovating, in reality, the lower level conference room. Mm-hmm. And part of that design is the handicap accessible bathrooms, the expanded space, as well as, separating that part of the building from the rest of the building in order to make public meetings more self-serving. So that’ll take pressure off of needing staff to support those type of meetings. So there are some other solutions in play. But it’s just bigger. I mean, this is, we’d love to grow this department, right? So that to take care of our buildings, because in the long run, if we’re not taking care of our buildings, they cost the town more, right?

57:28 So we’re decreasing public building department, which in reality means that we have less maintenance, we have less upkeep, and it’s gonna cost us more in the long run. I’m not blaming anyone here. Yeah. But it’s just like a general concept that we really need to grow this to save money. Right. Similar to the fire department, in my opinion. Maybe that’s analysis is wrong with the fire department. But growing this actually helps us in the long run, which is really hard to fund it now. You’re correct, Dan, because that is what we all frequently hear from- But I, you know, again, it’s, it’s also… I’m sorry, Paul. Yeah. Members of the community that we don’t do our part on maintenance. And I’m, I’m also just thinking, you know, the all hands on deck thing. I think when last year, the town meeting to, to move it, and I, I know

58:14 the custodian of this building was instrumental in making that happen. So like I said, it’s once you start thinking about what the function actually does, it’s, it’s quite a bit. You gotta wear a lot more hats. To, to replicate that is not simple. That’s all. Can we- And Evan, anyhow. Have we had any more conversations, like, with, counterparts at the schools, like, with their facility department, and is there a way that we could collaborate with our, our… Like, I mean, they really have a, a full, full up necessary, so, custodial department, we have the two, but would we– are there some, somewhere we can have a conversation about- Yeah, maybe an opportunity for that …

59:00 opportunities for that? Yeah. I mean, we always work with the schools to look for opportunities of how we can consolidate certain functions. Um, sometimes it makes sense. Here’s to make sense when we have similar like functions, but the demands on their staff for their facilities, because they have far more facilities than we have. The question is, if we, if we were to plan to rely on them, where would our facilities be on the pecking order compared to their needs? So they’re, they’re housing students and young people, so they have, they have particular challenges to that- Mm-hmm … compared to what we do. So even though we both have similar functions,

59:47 it, it, it doesn’t always work to blend together because of the differences on who we serve and how, how we serve these functions. Well, I, I think like Dan said, this is, this is a department that really needs to grow. So- You know, and I think that, that just we have to change the ingredients, and it’s a combination of custodial, cleaning service, and maintenance person. So maybe a shared custodian, not cut out altogether, a cleaning company, a shared cleaning company, and a maintenance person. It’s not gonna be– Again, we gotta get through this budget, but that, the, it’s an important- That’s the idea … it’s an important department to grow.

1:00:34 If you were gonna set up, if we, if we could establish a maintenance department, what would you put in it right now? Right now, I would put, I would put a custodian for both buildings. Mm-hmm. I would have a cleaning company for both buildings, or– and I would have a maintenance person for more than both buildings that could go around and-Do, you know, filters, light bulbs, paint an office. Um, again, sh- that maintenance person would be a big, help in the snow removal. Um, that’s a huge thing, especially this year. I mean, I was helping the guys out, which I don’t mind doing, but it, I mean, it was

1:01:21 an extraordinary year. But, with no custodians or one custodian, that’s impossible. Sure. Um, so but that maintenance person would be invaluable. So right now, so without that, for filters and that type of stuff, we’re doing it through an on-call contractor. A lot of it we’re doing, again, we’re doing a lot of it with older employees that we’re not gonna have much longer. Well, the department. So in, in inspection of. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I think, you know, what happens is, I mean, that, you know, everyone’s kind of like the partner has like the custodian of their,

1:02:06 their building in, in a sense of me, you know, annual maintenance. Like HVAC replacement and cleaning and boiler, servicing and, what, sprinklers,

1:02:23 alarm systems. Like the things we go through with the checklist of every year, you should be kind of, you know, attending to or checking on hot water heaters or whatever. I mean, we, we, it almost seems like we would find out about it when it breaks. Yeah. I mean, we, we have gotten to a lot more of it in this past year- Yeah … but there’s buildings I haven’t even got to step foot in yet. Mm-hmm. Um, or so yeah, we’ve caught up on a lot of the stuff that was lacking, and we’re trying to put those systems in place to, to keep up on it. But yeah, again, there’s… I just started doing, an analysis on our buildings, and, I think, like, I didn’t even realize it,

1:03:11 but just public buildings, there’s like thirteen of them. Um, Vine Street, the cemetery, you know, there’s Ocos. I mean, there’s- Yeah … buildings. When you really start digging, you know, you’d think like, oh, public buildings, you know, five, six buildings. No, it’s like thirteen, fourteen buildings. So it’s a lot. I think this is something that we need to really talk about for the override as well- Yeah … and look at consolidation for next year, once we get past this, what would- We- … crisis we’re dealing with … we need investment. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, even start town hall, the old town house. Fact is, as of right now, we

1:03:56 cannot have any public events in the old town house because it is not ADA compliant, and it’s not a simple fix. Mm-hmm. And that’s just the start of some of the other challenges in that building. Everybody in Marlboro loves that building. That’s one of the most dearest buildings in this community. We can’t have public events in it- Mm … because we, it’s, been I, I, you know, hit or miss on fixing things that are broke once in a while. But what we really need is a legitimate, maintenance budget, not relying on capital projects from time to time, but a legitimately funded maintenance budget to

1:04:43 keep up on the buildings so that we don’t have to, every so many years, have, have a big capital project, invest all that money, and then let it degrade from that point on. Right. And I want to echo Thatcher. In multiple committees I’ve been in, the number one thing that’s deferred is maintenance. Yeah. That’s- About two and a half. Long term. Every place I’ve worked, the first thing they do is cut into four meters. And- Yeah … Marlboro is, is actually pretty amazing because they do invest in their buildings- Right … and, and do these wonderful bed exclusions. I think they should be investing in maintenance. Well, you know, we have two articles, right, called the buildings and, and vehicles that basically address that because we realize we had an issue. My, my view is it’s probably been a little bit underfunded, right? So you’ve got what ends up happening, there’s a regular amount every year

1:05:30 that gets, voted on, reins- reinstated, and then there’s a laundry list of stuff that needs to get done, and then for that year, whatever money’s there, that gets handled. And but I, I think, you know, there’s a, a review of that would be super helpful so that we can get that number and make the case for increasing those articles appropriately, you know, I think, I think that’s right. And yeah, I mean, we do have the mechanism that’s kind of- Yeah … you know, se- kind of separate, i- in terms of what the voters see. But- And- I do agree. It’s not one time. It’s just not- It’s re- it’s recurring capital we have every year. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s well recurring, right? So it’s a good place to kind of say, “Hey, this is something for the house.” Are we always using those numbers for a year? Like, do we-

1:06:16 We, we like to do at least a million, but there’s, there’s- But I mean, on some of these other ones, do we- We like to put… So what we, we’ve done is about a million dollars- Right … worth of free cash, right? But we don’t have the free cash this year to do that, so we’ll be using that minimal amount. So as most stated work, we have this list, right? The schools are giving it to me, department’s giving it to us to look at. Yeah. And we have only this small amount of resources, so we’re deferring maintenance out based off of what we can afford. And just to, you know, in the last year, we’ve accomplished a lot- Yeah … with roofs and stuff like that, and in the last two years, hardly any money has been allocated. The only money that got recently allocated is the Marielli renovation that hasn’t started yet.

1:07:01 But this is all, we’ve already, we’ve come up with-Alicia came, found money that was put in to accounts and articles before she was here. Mm. So this is- we’re working on old money. The- all these accomplishments we, mentioned we made this year- Those need, those need to get punished. I think that’s- It’s, it’s old money. That, that we’re- Right … you know, we’re just scraping all these old articles and scrubbing everything clean and that should’ve been done way back when, but so nothing has been allocated recently. To maintenance. Those are the maintenance period. To maintenance. Right. So yeah, we’re accomplishing things with old money. Mm. Are we almost, are we looking at replacing the fire station right now? Which one? Which one . I don’t know. Was there something, the fir- the boiler there was almost or something?

1:07:48 Oh, again, there was $130,000 allocated in an article, I believe over two years ago, to the Franklin Street Fire Station that was just sitting there, that we have now put all new windows in the place. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We’ve resided two sides of it because the, the, the paint wouldn’t even stick to it anymore. Um, we put a new boiler in, ‘cause it was 30 years old, and just Monday and Tuesday, all the heat was going out the attic. Um, and it was very unhealthy, ‘cause they were exercising up there with fiberglass. So we just spray foamed the whole roof, just last Monday and Tuesday. Um- Without adding any additional money? Without adding any additional money. I pro- and we have

1:08:35 enough to set aside to, paint the two sides in the spring, and maybe about, s- 5 to $7,000 of tailings and all of that to put into the interior to make it as, you know, habitable as we can for the guys that spend a lot of time in there. So yeah, we’re gonna spend it all. Um, and then headquarters, we’re looking at the same thing. We have a 30 to 40-year-old boiler. That one’s even a bigger one. Like, it’s hard to find a place to put one fire truck, but can you imagine if that boiler goes out in January? Where do you put four fire trucks? Right. So… Where are we at? Like, are we, is there a plan for this? This is just, yeah, we’re, we’re just this, we’re doing-

1:09:20 Yeah … we’re just doing all these building analysis things- Mm … and coming across this stuff now. And I think that once you’re done with that, as we’ve discussed, it’d be great to go through- Yeah … on the public. Speaking of wearing many hats, think I’ve heard you call them a jack knife. Well, it’s, it’s important stuff. It’s, and it’s important stuff. I mean- So- Yeah, it’s, it’s important. Yeah, well, we appreciate it. Yeah. Do you, does it make sense, since you’re here, to move on to building inspection? So why don’t we go over to building inspections, which is… What was it then?

1:09:56 Last year… Um. It’s under fire. Thank you. Thank, there it is. So it looks like this is coming down a total of about $54,000 from last year, where most of, looks like most of that’s in the expense line. Yes. Any one of you two detail a little bit of that? Yeah. I, I cut his expense line because the inspectors are necessary, so I took down his expense line, that he had put in. And what would most of those expenses used for normally? It’s his other professional technical. I mean, a lot of things pop up, honestly, for him all the time that he needs to find funding for.

1:10:41 Mm. And to the different- I hear … aspects he comes across. Um, and that’s what he would usually build. But unfortunately, this is challenging budget year, that’s why. So, I didn’t realize that till this morning, but that’s my permitting software. So you’re gonna have to come to me and I’ll, I’ll take care of it. And my Copia. And your Copia, is… Yeah. Yeah. Please come to me. So that’ll all come out of a different- Mm-hmm … line? Yeah. Gotcha. So while we’re on that subject, ‘cause we’re gonna be coming up on the renewal, or OpenGov. Okay. Just to keep in mind that, and it’s a great platform and we can keep adding on, but the f- the fee to keep adding on- Yes … is probably gonna go up. I’m sure you guys know that, just to keep in the back

1:11:27 of our minds. I’m sure we can negotiate with them with- Yeah, no, I’m just- The state … yeah, just, I mean, I’m off of one system versus five, but as we add stuff onto it, the fee will go up. So if I’m hearing correctly, he can, he’s gonna keep that? Yes. Those two things- Yeah … so that’s gonna come out of, like, the reserve or something? Uh, the- Would it? After. Okay. I do have, an IT, fund or let me try to have that fully expended, and I have my IT budget, so we’d have to, look at doing that one. Okay. Yeah, that was the only decrease I saw on that side. And, and Steve, I’m just looking at this. We have you, senior clerk, and are your, plumbing and electrical inspectors and structural, are they part-time, full-time, combination?

1:12:15 So yeah, full-time plumbing inspector, full-time electrical inspector, who are a huge help in, doing a lot of the maintenance in smaller projects. Yep. In fact, Brad turned, 75 yesterday. That’s our plumbing inspector. Um, Brad, I’ve only been his helper, has been putting the boiler in at Franklin Street. I’ve been helping him. So you know, we’re all in it together. So that, those are the things we are gonna lose, between… And the electrical inspector, I believe he’s 73. And then we have a part-time electrical inspector- I was gonna- … as well, because our full-time electrical inspector

1:13:01 does a lot of the IT for our department as far as building the network on our OpenGov for the permitting. Okay. I get you. Eventually-Again, there’ll be some changing and, you know, we probably won’t need two electrical inspectors down the road when everything’s- Mm … built up and- Yeah. But they’re very close to retiring, so again, they’re gonna– we’re gonna lose that from the maintenance part of– side of things. And then there’s one that’s listed as the local inspector. Yeah, that’s the, local inspector that, he’s the building inspector that goes and does most of the day-to-day inspections at job sites. Okay, so if I’m putting a deck on the o- Chris Buckle did that one, I think once, once night. Correct. Yeah. So we just see some line item shifts here.

1:13:49 It-it… Yeah. But no, yeah. And, and this is another thing, unless you’re like building something at your house yourself or something like that, you, you generally people don’t have a lot of visibility into it. And what you just said, it’s very important, but the, what they’re actually doing for the day-to-day electrical, plumbing inspector is also putting in a boiler. You know, that’s the- Yeah. People need to know. It’s kinda always been that way here. Yeah. And, you know, are we gonna get that down the road? Probably not. I mean, that’s why we are transitioning and, you know, make- building up another department. Um, but I, I just wanted to say it to give him some recogni- Oh, yeah … recognizing that, you know, we really appreciate it. Yeah, that’s huge. Yeah. I mean, that would cost… You’re saving town a ton of money. Well, it’s just more money we can put into the fire station. That’s what we’re trying, we are all trying to-

1:14:35 I mean, so- … shave a dollar. Right. And you know, yeah, we could just, we could have paid forty grand. Instead, we’re paying twenty grand, and we’re giving them new windows. So- Yeah, thank you. I’ve talked about this challenge since I’ve been here. The fact that our inspectors are also our maintenance team, I, I call that part of the structural deficit because we need our inspectors out inspecting, out in the streets- Mm-hmm … doing that work, and we need a maintenance team to maintain our buildings. And when you blend them together, there’s not enough time for inspections and not enough time for maintenance. We, we need to bifurcate those roles. Um, and you’re not– It’s gonna be hard to find somebody who has that experience coming into that role who will even be able to do it, as you mentioned.

1:15:22 You’re not gonna get- No. In this day and age, it’s hard to get people that actually wanna even work. So, yeah, we’re not gonna get that. That’s not an official statement of your- Yeah. It’s okay … your interpretation. We, we strike that from the record. But you know what I mean. Yeah. As far as wearing, you know, two hats, killing themselves. Yeah. No, well, appreciate you, and please thank everybody. No problem. Yeah. Thank you, Steve. Everyone good? Yeah. Thank you. All right. Let’s, let’s go back to our original, go back to human resources department. Okay. Anyone else? Thanks, Steve.

1:16:06 Hey, Tom. How are you today? How you guys doing? Great. All right. So anything that- Tom hadn’t seen it, but I cut- Okay. With the additional one, I cut your other professional technical. So what that is, is when he’s putting out, you know, advertising the different positions within the town wide, I put that away. Under the assumption that we won’t be able to interview depending on what’s happening, you know, over the next year. So I did cut that eleven thousand of those. Which we would hope to restore as part of a- As, as an override. Again, we, we had to make, it was eight hours last night, final adjustments, and so these are, some of these are the final adjustments to get to a balanced budget.

1:16:53 So if I’m hearing you right, this eleven thousand dollars is good for cutting people, not hiring people. If we end up hiring people, we’ll have the ability to build some of these positions when people leave, but we don’t without an override this money we found. Right. Got it. Tom, anything we need to know? I mean, you’re pretty flat. Thank you for waiting for this long. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it. Let me just say- Yeah … this is a critical role- Yeah … that we didn’t have a few years ago, especially when you’re doing collective bargaining agreements, especially when dealing with just, again, a hundred and ninety personnel thereabouts on the town side. Having the town administrator as the go-to person for every problem means that, that’s a challenge. Having an HR person, somebody trained and knowledgeable in that arena

1:17:39 to, to, to play that role, keeps me informed, is an invaluable, addition over the last couple of years to this, this town. And, and uniform compliance across the- And all the compliance knowledge, yes. So- And, and I, I also think it’s important to know when we see that top line budget in HR, we just usually think of the HR manager, but as Alicia said, you know, there’s also a payroll manager and a benefits manager that you might normally think might be associated in the finance department, but it’s in there. So when people see that top line budget- Yeah … it’s actually three people. Right. Got it. Yeah. Um, all right. Moving on. Community development and planning.

1:18:23 Great job last night- Thank you … for, at the, Gotham School- Yeah … reuse. I thought that was great. That was a perfect example of- Mm-hmm … sort of wearing many hats and bringing in, Connecticut where we couldn’t get funding from the state. So I thought that that was- Thanks. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, we got a lot of positive feed- Good job. We got a lot of positive feedback from the audience right afterwards. So I think people were happy with that meeting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So good job having that. Welcome. Um, who wants to go with this? Let me just start. All right. There are a lot of departments that have had significant cuts, and there are different constituencies out there, that prioritize those. Community development planning was my,

1:19:12 vision for this town, you know, after, after Becky retired after thirty some odd years as a single person doing multiple roles.And as I identified and advocated back then, given the density of this community, given the need to, to develop new growth revenues, all those things, that we needed a department that was focused on, s- good development for the community, that’s the new growth part, quality of life in the community, help to design and, and, and as last night was the example, to navigate the decision-makers, working with the community to, to design things and, and, and projects

1:19:58 that, that are beneficial, but it, it was what the community wants. So, so we have to create, create the department and, and build this up. Uh, given our budget constraints, this, this is, this is painful for me to make the choices that we’re making here for this department. We don’t want to do this as far as the cuts and, and, and we pare it down to the most basic function that has to happen. Um, I, I,

1:20:32 you know, as far as advocating for overriding and such to bring back certain functions, this community needs this department fully staffed, fully functioning. The fact that they brought in, which is probably gonna suggest some of his funding, nearly… There’s over four million dollars in grant money that they, would have gotten but for III-A. But it’s a metric as to the potential of this department and what it can do for this community. So that’s my piece on– This is, this is, this was my vision, and, this is, this is my skin in the game of having to make cuts and such, along with everyone else, in this community.

1:21:20 I mean, this is a parallel to what we were talking about with Steve, right? It’s like, you know, not invest as a short, a short-term fix, a long-term problem, which is gonna cost us more in the long run- Yeah … by losing grants, by not being able to develop, to bring in more income through potential tax revenue, to improve the quality of life throughout, both physically and just from a functionality standpoint throughout this town. So this is, yeah, to have you sitting here, it’s, it’s

1:21:48 uncomfortable. Yeah, I’d just like to say, Thatcher, as well, I mean, we concurred with your resource management plan, and centralizing those. And there’s a return. It’s probably hard to quantify over a single year basis, but over the long term, you get a much better, you know, much better usage across the board. So I think that’s a big part. I’m, you know, a big believer we’ve gone from a, you know, one area where we can really squeeze out efficiencies is when you’ve got the boards that run the town share a common centralized set of resources. And kind of centralizing that allows us, and your, your, your role is a key coordinating element in that, in that process to help, you know, Thatcher do that. So yeah, I mean, I think it is, it is important.

1:22:35 It’s part of a broader plan as well to be functioning. Well, the metrics I would’ve thought, it’s a four hundred and ninety-four thousand dollar department with those, what were requested- Yeah … and brought in over four million dollars. Right. There’s your metrics. You know, and I think beyond, Gloria, your value, I think the sustainability coordinator, I think that that name, sustainability coordinator, is inappropriate for guys. The person who’s out there did so much more, right? Like, I think we need to look at that beyond, just some of the green initiatives, but what else he did for this town, and what possibilities that position has, right? I think people look at sustainability and they, they think of one thing. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think that we might, might need to rename that one, to be honest.

1:23:24 It’s become part of size. It’s become part of size. So I mean, I think that’s, if you look at what it did, it’s not, it’s way beyond that. Yeah. I mean, like, like you said, I mean, this, the investment in this town, this budget does not allow for any forward-thinking,

1:23:42 planning, future looking, forward-looking preparedness, readiness for new challenges that are gonna face us. And it’s, it’s, we, this, we’ve just been constantly and for years now, in just sitting in this reactive, reflective place, as a town. And it costs us too. There’s a cost to that. Um, and, you know, I, I mean, the, the math speaks for itself with this position, and I deeply regret, Brendan, that this is the budget coming forward to us. I understand it. I, and, and it’s across the board, these are difficult cuts, but my commitment to you and this department is that I will make sure

1:24:29 that as many people that I encounter or that have questions about the value and the work that went on in this department, I will speak to. And I think that we can do a lot between now and June to highlight, and really find a way to better articulate what it is that, comes out of, of that department. Um, I mean, people can… I, you, I, you did an amazing twenty-six-page report for our town, for the town, which is up on the website, and I’ve, I’ve taken a look at it. Um, and you know, it’s a catalog of what has, what has come forth. And I do, I, I worry about these projects that are in the pipeline and, you know, the rail trail and, we have two

1:25:18 waterfront projects going on. There’s eleven million dollars potentially coming for these big projects. And, you know-If we have department heads that in the past have tried, you know, to keep everything afloat, put, you know, work together, that’s just– I mean, we’ve just kind of duct-taped it around here for a long time. And, and so, yeah, you know, it’s just, it’s just a shame that, you know, that it’s been hard for– These kind of projects take years and years in planning. I think there’s an– People, you know, think municipalities work a lot faster than they do. It’s a lot, like, “Why isn’t this done?” Or, you know.

1:26:04 Um, and I feel like just-it’s just been a short year since, really since, you know, you’ve come on. And it’s– if I look at all that’s gone on, and it’s very impressive because I know how long it takes to, you know, get these, get these things going. And, you know, even like the way the, the value that you bring to the network thing that you did. I mean, I know you had to, you know, had to reach out on the, on the green, what do you call it? What am I talking about? Um- EPA Brownfields. Yeah, the Brownfields thing. The creative thinking and that relied on, like, a connection that you had from your, from your past, working experience. So it’s hard to lose great talent, and I hope we don’t. And like I said, I mean, I think

1:26:49 I, I’m committed to making sure that, that with a microphone, that the town understands the value that, that this, that this role, has. Did you have some things that- Yeah, I just… I mean, I wrote this, and, you know, instead of me trying to figure it out. As a department head presenting a budget that doesn’t include me in a– is a little disconcerting, but it is what it is. So I’d like to highlight department’s achievements, workload importance for funding a fully staffed department. Rather than, ra-rather than rambling through sep-separate reasons, I’d like to simply read this department summary, which clearly outlines our work and impact. Afterwards, I’ll be happy to answer any questions. Since its creation, Department of Community Development Planning has

1:27:37 become central to Marblehead. In less than two years, our team has taken on a scope of work far beyond what a single planner can handle. Department, the department is currently overseeing thirty-five active projects, including several high-priority projects which include the Marblehead Rail Trail, Five Corners intersection, both Marblehead Resilience– Harbor Resiliency projects, the Municipal Boat Yard, and State Street Landing, and the Tucker Wharf project, as well as the Elm Street project, the Comprehensive Master Plan, the Kaufman School Disposition Plan, and the fountain– finally, cl-climate resilience programs under the Net Zero plan. That combined– the combined, budget of these projects we’re overseeing is one point eight million dollars, with an estimated construction cost exceeding fifty million dollars.

1:28:23 For fiscal year twenty twenty-seven, I requested four sta– a, a budget for four staff members and departmental expenditures. The FY twenty-seven budget being proposed today eliminates two staff line– sta-staff member as– and only includes filling the vacant town planner position and departmental clerk. This budget eliminates my position as well as the coordinator, Sustainability Coordinator. And no one wants, no one wants to hear three excuses, but a major challenge in twenty twenty-five was adopting the Section three A zoning. Despite extensive ef-effort, overturning the town meeting vote through the referendum re-resulted in the loss of or denial of three point eight million in grant funding for town projects. The loss of these grant funds has significant– significantly impacted our

1:29:10 grant-driven department, as well as impacted advancing several critical projects such as the, the Ma-Harbor Resiliency projects. Although we weren’t awarded any, any grants in FY twenty-six, in the two years since the department was created, it should be noted that the department has been awarded one point nine million in grant awards. I’d like to point out that even when combining the department’s FY twenty-five and FY twenty-six budgets associated with department salaries, the town still had a net gain of one point one million dollars. As I mentioned, we’re a grant-driven department, and the department has already submitted over seven hundred thousand in grant requests for FY twenty-seven, which, if awarded, would result in a net gain of three hundred and two thousand dollars for the town on our current grant submittals alone. Looking ahead, the department anticipates applying for

1:29:57 approximately four million in additional grant funding in FY twenty-seven. While not every application may be awarded, we are confident that the grants we do secure will continue the momen-momentum of previous years, generating a net gain for the town of Marble-Marblehead and its residents. These grants are critical for advancing high-priority projects for the town of Marblehead. Without a fully staffed department, the town would, would likely forfeit these opportunities, as there would be insufficient capacity to administer and manage the grant-funded projects effectively. With regards to the net gain, just this morning, I was able to secure a hundred thousand dollars from the Boston MPO for gap funding for the rail trail. So as of FY twenty-seven, the department is already off to a good start.

1:30:43 Supporting a fully staffed department is therefore directly tied to Marblehead’s ability to capture essential outside resources and ensure long-term operational and financial sustainability. Without, without the full sub– departmental support, current projects would face a significant risk. They could be shelved entirely or transferred to another department with limited capacity to manage them, potentially delaying or terminating projects that are considered high priority for the town. This would jeopardize both Marblehead’s ability to advance key infrastructure projects and its opportunities of securing additional funding. The department also leads key sustainability initiatives, which include the EV transitioning plan, school energy assessments, bicycle infrastructure, the town’s first comprehensive bicycle

1:31:28 facilities plan, as well as becoming a green community.These programs are led by our sustainability coordinator, coordinator, and eliminating the sustainability coordinator position could significantly impact the town’s goal of becoming a green community and the town’s ability to meet our net zero goals, as well as unlocking the instant hundred and fifty thousand dollars from the state for becoming a green community. Lack of green community designation will also remove any possibility of receiving additional grant funds for high priority energy efficient- efficiency projects that would reduce the energy costs of the town. In short, this department does far more than a single town planner can take on. The department has strategically positioned Marblehead for growth, resilience, and long-term financial

1:32:14 sustainability. Supporting a fully staffed department, it’s not just a budget decision, it’s an investment in the town’s future. It ensures high quality planning, effective project ex-execution, and strategic funding acquisition that directly benefit the town of Marblehead and everybody. Thanks. Thank you. Great job. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think you were instrumental this year as well, and hopefully you’re working with the state and our consultants, myself and Mark Lehman, on, on three A in coming up with a, with a, a plan that- Yeah … you know, when working with the community, which you walked into that as well. So there’s a lot that you’ve done. We see that. I think, and, you know, just like so many people here, so many processes,

1:33:01 as you guys, pointed out, and I don’t know that people appreciate that. These– our, our staff really puts their heart into their jobs. Brian? It’s just– it’s like, it’s like, I think this is– we’re definitely at, like, an inflection point as a town, and to really, really, you know, have residents of this town really need to start paying attention and, and think about the kind of town, what kind of community we want to be. I’d just say, you’re valued, and you’re excellent at what you do, okay? So in this budget year, my, position would be is that we need to have an opportunity for the town to understand what you just said and to be part of a restoration set of

1:33:49 overrides that give the opportunity for the town meeting to, you know, to make a, make a decision, an informed decision about, you know, cutting this, you know, this particular role. It’s just very, very… You know, we have super ridiculously hard choices to make. We’re gonna go before the town and say, “We need to restore all of these costs.” And that is the bid that we’re making. And I think as we design our, override strategy, I think we have to be cognizant that we need to, like, explain all of these, like, you know, groups, however we think is the best way to do it, but explain all of these cuts, where everybody has an opportunity to kind of articulate, and the, and the town gets to hear,

1:34:38 okay, no kidding, if we don’t restore this cost item, it’s gone. That’s fair enough. And it goes to this kind of initial issue that we had around crying wolf. Remember that? And we kind of… And that was something that could have been, very easily been a headline, and it was, unfortunately, this week. Um, but I think the town needs to appreciate what we have, you know, what we’re trying to do in terms of hiring talent like you to– you can actually make us bring revenues in. I don’t think that’s fully appreciated in an environment where we’re, you know, we’re just tightening all the time. So, that’s my pitch then. I think it’s really around kind of a restoration narrative and how do we approach it so that the town meeting can understand it, and this will affect you, you know,

1:35:25 obviously. Yeah. I, I, I think proposing a two-person department where one of the positions isn’t even filled and- Right … it has– it, it’s not gonna be filled is, is really kind of, I guess, dangerous. I mean, that just, it’s a, it’s a formula for disaster. Um, you know, just we, we could get to July and, and just, have Lisa Lyons in the office. That’s just– I, I don’t see anyone thinking that’s a great idea. And n-not that that’s- Lisa’s great. Nothing, nothing against Lisa. She’s wonderful. Yeah. That would just… I mean, that’s- Yeah. That’s less than what we had before when Becky was here. Mm-hmm. Well, I think it’s our job as well as your job and everyone else

1:36:13 to humanize this. Yeah. To show, which you just did very well, thank you, about it is real people, it’s real jobs, it’s real progress, it’s not just numbers on a piece of paper. I think that we need to make sure that we take that in our override approach, and I think that Erin has, has got, department heads together on April- Ninth. Ninth. Thank you. For people to come and meet in here. Uh. Uh, at the COF. Uh, community center. Community center. Sorry. Sorry. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry. So thank you. I appreciate your work. Yeah. All right. Chief, we’ll move on to Dennis, the police department.

1:37:04 We need to do animal expenses also. Uh, you can do it. Sure. Good afternoon.

1:37:31 If you’d like to just go ahead and-

1:37:36 You want me to go, or Alicia, you wanna start? You’re way chief. I don’t mean to hand it over to you. All right. I can start if you want. Yeah, I’m good either way. Every department has been excellent with this, but it’s very, very challenging there. So thank them all. Um, it was really, really hard to balance this budget at DPC, and,

1:37:57 I balanced one during, you know, the whole crisis with COVID, and this, this is actually tougher. Um, and we are taking one officer from the fleet as well. And in this case, it is not for vacancy.

1:38:18 Uh. That was after our operations. All right. Well, thank you for listening to me. Um, I’m honored to represent the police department. I’ll start with that. Um, every year you ask me, are we, providing quality police service, with the staffing levels that we have? Um, every year I describe to you, that we are. Um, I think that can be attributed to our reaccreditation this past year, one of only a fa- handful of communities in the Commonwealth that is, fully accredited. Um, it, it speaks to, our, quite frankly, decrease in crime in the community by twenty-two percent. Um, to commitment to things like proactive policing,

1:39:06 selective enforcement, community engagement, being accredited and as professional as possible. So we have now done that. Each year that I come before you, I started with thirty-two. The last two years, I’ve had thirty-one officers sworn, and now we’re being proposed to go down to thirty, officers sworn in our budget. And I think it’s important to note, without saying that we’re not gonna be able to qualify, provide quality police service, which we are gonna continue to provide quality police service. But what that looks like, in comparison to communities that have twenty thousand five hundred plus people. Um, I always,

1:39:52 joke with my counterpart in, in Newburyport, Marshall Simons, that, that, that, that Thatcher knows well, that he represents the Marblehead of the North in Newburyport. They actually have less than… They have about ten percent less people than us, if you can believe that. Um, yet they run, and continuously run with thirty-three, sworn officers and have for decades. And so that seems insignificant, but thirty-three is ten percent less, down to thirty, and we’re, and we’re covering, a-an area that I think is, is quite,

1:40:32 comparable. And so, these decisions that the town has made, each year I’ve come before you and said that we have done everything that we can, to be as efficient as possible. I think you’re tired of hearing me say that we are the deer meat of, of, budgets, but the police department is. We are lean. We’re tasty, with the right seasoning, but we’re lean. Um, and, and so we continue to do that. Uh, we continue to be creative in our financing through grant applications. We continue to be creative with the town in our capital improvement projects, which I’m proud to say that we’ve improved the department in the last few years. Uh, we’ve been– continue to be creative,

1:41:17 in just about every aspect of providing quality policing. And so, you know, that is what, what I would say before saying that the going to thirty, for us as a sworn police department, right– gets right at the minimum manning discussion, that many police departments have. I’ve told you before, on almost every shift, you have three officers and a supervisor. Sometimes you have four or five officers and two supervisors, but the average is three officers and a supervisor, to cover four square miles, twenty-plus thousand people and visitors alike. That is a car accident and a domestic. That’s, that– Then the shift is covered.

1:42:04 And so, that means that, if there is anything else that the town asks us to do, like traffic enforcement, which is a very big deal, like community engagement with our youth, it’s a very big deal. We don’t have the ability to generally do that because our cars, our officers are in cruisers responding to calls. Our call volume has not gone down. It’s stayed pretty steady over the last few years. We get about twenty-plus thousand calls a year. That res- that requires, you know, well over, you know, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen thousand types of, police response. And so, our, our numbers are reflective of a consistent pattern of activity. And now that we’re asking to be reduced, it puts another

1:42:49 strain. And so I know that, that Thatcher and the select board has given nothing but support to the police department since I’ve been here, and perhaps even further beyond that. Uh, and I d– and I never doubt that. Um, and I would say that working with Alicia in her capacity has been nothing but creative and supportive, right? And so that’s the truth. We work together. Um, but the thirty puts us at a minimum manning that, we have to put everything to patrol operations, which means every officer outside of my detective, one detective, will have to be in patrol, covering shifts, covering calls, and eliminating scenarios that you identified a little bit with the fire department earlier.

1:43:36 And so, that mayTo you, come to a decision, and I, and I accept your decision, but that means our SRO is gone out of the schools. And so for me, what I’ve been able to do, with our SRO is develop an incredible relationship and, confidence that you really, when you start to understand a job, you do incredible work. His work isn’t often measurable because it’s– he’s the guy that if you don’t see activity, you’re like, “Oh, he’s doing a good job.” And, that’s hard to measure. Um, but I can tell you it’s measurable in that he responds to calls internally within the s-school, he writes reports, he takes out criminal applications, he does mentoring,

1:44:25 and all of these other things that are required of the position. And it is literally one of those situations that people do want to realize, what that would mean to the development of a pretty robust school system and police community relations. I’ll take an opportunity to say legislatively, they took the discipline out of our SROs, probably eight years ago. So that means that my SRO is not a disciplinarian. He doesn’t go in and, and make the kids jump up and, and arr- he– that’s not what he does. He is a behavioral th- if you talk to him, it’s quite a, it’s quite been quite the, the, the training experience and life experience for him. But he really understands behaviors of kids. He’s a Marblehead kid. He relates with them. He understands what they’ve gone through, what they’re going

1:45:12 through, and, his value is, is really, priceless. And so I say that because everybody might say to me, “Well, Dennis, not everybody has an SRO,” and that’s wrong, actually. Uh, everybody does have an SRO, with the exception of Saugus. Um, I think that when I did the poll of roughly twenty-five police departments of like size and a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller, I was curious to what, what I thought to be true. Um, and you know, when we look at our counterparts, you would say, well, Swampscott has fifteen thousand people by its census. They have a s- an SRO. Um, Gloucester has thirty thousand, a little over thirty thousand by its census. They have three SROs. Salem has a little over forty-five thousand in their census.

1:45:59 They have four SROs. Reading has twenty-six thousand in their census. They have two SROs. We have in our census twenty thousand five hundred and seventy-six. So these are about choices that everybody’s getting here. But what does the town want at this point? And I’m giving you that. Every other thing that I’m gonna talk about that you, if you have questions for me, is related to contractual obligations. My, educational incentive, for example, increased the budget by about fifty-three thousand. We have a night differential that’s contractually obligated, increased the budget by about eight thousand. We decided to do some things that we needed to do, like identify how much it actually costs us for outside details, so we put a light on in that so that we can pay other officers when they come to the town and, and work town events.

1:46:47 And as I mentioned town events, it costs about thirty-two thousand dollars in overtime to run the five or six events that I could name from you, Memorial Day, Fourth of July. Fourth of July alone costs twenty thousand dollars to the police department, in overtime. So Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Halloween, tree lightings, Christmas walks, menorah lightings, those are all part of my kind of budget that, is included in it. And so, I’ll take questions. Brevity is not often my friend, and I apologize for that, but I feel people need to hear a little bit- Mm-hmm …um, what we’re talking about. Comment, not about your budget, but about you. Good. Um, this year we got an earmark. I had a really hard time trying to get it. I’ve been working with departments, and the chief was able to get a hold of the

1:47:35 earmark, so you hear the contract is on time and zone. In addition, I’ve worked with many chiefs, and he’s one of the only chiefs I’ve ever seen that manages grants and brings in money to town, so I wanna thank him for that. Yes, that earmark was quite Jenny and, and, Senator Creighton really did a, a good t- does of paper. Well, I mean, I’d just like to emphasize, Chief, what you said, which is the town has got to decide, you know, what, what we, what we wanna look like, right? And I think these stories don’t– it’s amazing. Although we– everything’s a public meeting, it’s very hard to get people’s attention. And, the reason I’m an advocate for kind of laying it out at town meeting, ‘cause that’s where the legislature con- you know, convenes to, to make,

1:48:20 appropriations. And I think having these stories here will help people understand why I think this board really believes that we’re running super lean, you know, as of last year. And that’s been the case for a while, okay? And I think we need to do a better job telling that story. And, you know, I think it, that’ll, I think, improve our chances to kind of restore the, the levels of service that we want and I think down the road as well. I think once we establish a… You know, when, when people learn about how services are driven, you know, through the budget, and it’s like, and have a choice, I think we then have a good opportunity to say, “You know what? We’ve also– You’ve, you’ve heard that story of the, of the restoration. Now we’d like to invest in a couple of other positions.” And we can justify an, an additional override

1:49:08 based on the conviction that we’re really running lean, and we need to probably, and we need to invest more on the municipal side. There’s no question about it in my mind. And I think we’ve reached a crescendo point. I think last year, fiscal year twenty-six, was kind of a place where it’s been years of cutting in the face of headwinds, you know, cost increases, inflation, et cetera. And I think looking forward now, we’ve got to find ways to, you know, choose what we want to be and, and kind of what we wanna kind of grow to so… And that’s on the school side as well. And Dennis, question. You, you made the comment some shifts you have, three patrol and one superior officer. Other shifts you might have four or five and two. I- is- is that… What, what is driving that? Is that a seasonal thing? Is that a, a time of day thing?

1:49:55 So ironically, at some time it’s s- seasonal, because it’s when people wanna take vacation time. And so, to cover the benefit days, and I call benefit days vacation, sick, all of these comp time, all of those d- any time t- somebody takes one of those, bereavement, long-term disability, 111F, it has to be covered in a shift. So we put more than three officers on a shift. We try to put seven on a shift, so that it can cover all of these without creating what? Overtime. So that’s the… So you put six or seven on a shift so that you can have, w- and put seven on a shift would require 21 full-time patrolmen. So you put seven on a shift so that it can absorb every one of these benefit days being taken. It can absorb a 111F, an injury, without having overtime.

1:50:41 And we also have the minimum amount of officers who can be on a shift. And for us, that’s three on every shift except for Friday day and Friday evening. We put on four as a minimum because of the volume. O- okay. So it’s, it’s scheduled for this but minimum. So your minimum is, once again, three patrolmen- Yeah … with the exception of, was it Friday and Saturday? Fri- nope, just Friday day and Friday, Friday evening. Okay, and that’s based on experience, I guess. It’s… No, it’s based on numbers, based on stats. I ran the numbers for five years, and we found that Friday day and evening were the busiest shifts of the year, and, of the- So the- And, and the- That’s what I mean. Yes. But- But you would think Saturday was, ‘cause we used to have it on Saturday, but it was the second slowest day in terms of calls for service. So we eliminated- It’s due to the- … minimum manning on fours on Saturdays.

1:51:28 Saturday, yeah. But we did it because safety said we could, and it stopped me from having to force people work Saturdays on the one time they might get it off in their six-week rotation. Okay. And, and do you have a, a number over the course of the year what the average number of patrolmen that actually are on duty for a given shift? Um, it sounds like it’s a- So if we were to cut them in half, I would say three and a half. Three and a half. That would be the average, I would guess. And, and yet you… It, it would have to be at least one superior officer, right? Doesn’t it- It has to be one. Yep. Okay. And so, you know, I would like to have two available on a shift. Um, but we just don’t have the superior officer staffing, but we can do it. We, we can do it. And, and on a given shift, as a superior officer, are, are they typically

1:52:15 in a, a car? Are they at the- So Marblehead is a very unique situation. Yeah. We don’t require an off- a superior officer to be inside the station, absent an arrest or something that really calls their attention. So they’re often on the street. If there are two, one’s in the station doing administrative, if there’s an ar- or whatever that type of work is, and then one is out on the street generally. So that’s, that covers it. But we do not have a requirement based on our setup to have somebody inside the station. Okay. And will we, um… Were we gonna talk about dispatch here, or is that s- somewhere else? We can talk about it if you’d like. Okay. It, it, right, right. Dispatch is- In the police budget. Yeah. But I, I, I’m sorry, I’d like

1:53:01 to get into the operational details so I can see it, and I think, I think if people can see it, they’ll have a- Okay … better understanding. Dispatch, I, I’ve been in there before. Yep. Uh, for a legitimate reason, not like being arrested. Um, but you- There’s a back door too. Yeah. I’ve been in the jail, so I was stupid, but that was idiot. But, it’s, it’s, it’s always two, correct? Yes. At least two, or? Yep. So I can break it down. So for us, I will tell you that we are the most talented and most professional dispatch group that you’re gonna find in any police department. Well, I meant to- Yeah. And, and I say that because they’re, they’re trained in three technical areas. So they’re police and fire dispatchers, which is two, actually two separate things.

1:53:50 They’re all trained in police and fire, and they all can EMD, which is emergency medical dispatch. So all phases of the dispatch, area, including if you’ve been in, you’ve seen our s- kind of sophisticated, computer systems and all of the monitoring that we have to do, and the, and the, administrative duties. Um, they all do it really well, and they’re interchangeable. So on any shift, there’s one fire dispatch, one police. They work together. Oh, I didn’t realize that. Yes. And so- That’s very good to know. So they, so they work together, and they cover the calls. They cover all of it. They cover the desk, right? Yes. And so they also cover the window. Mm. And so that’s a big deal. That saves money. No other community does that in the Commonwealth.

1:54:35 So that leads to my thing, is when you have a superior officer on the street- Yeah … someone walks in at 3:00 in the morning for whatever reason- Yeah … it’s, it’s a dispatcher that- Yeah, when they took dispatch out of the, police function, that was an agreement that the dispatchers would answer the window. Okay. And they did that in the ’80s. And so that’s fine. It actually works. But you can easily call in a supervisor if you need to call them in. And, and so you have, I think, maybe nine full-time and two part-time dispatch. So we have eight and one. So- Eight. So it requires eight and a half to c- to cover 24/7 and two positions. It requires eight and a half. And I will say this. Unlike my patrol, where we can staff a little heavy, and if somebody takes a day off, you don’t have to backfill, every time one of my dispatchers takes a day, day off,

1:55:24 by nature of the setup, because there’s only two, we have to backfill in overtime. And so that is structurally, and I don’t think you can change that structure because you don’t need three people in there. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Very informed. So when we’re talking about different structures of overri- ideally, is 33 the number? If you were to pick an ideal number, I mean, we’re going from 32 to 31 to 30. So the, so 33 is, is an excellent number. 33 is a number that allows for the 21, seven on each shift to cover- Mm-hmm … a detective and a SRO, right? That would be… So that’s, that’s a

1:56:10 nice, a, a number, and it allows for if somebody did, one person went out on long-term injury, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t crush any shift. I found out that we have not been, above 22 in over two decades. So we’ve run on 32 other than the last two that I’ve… my fisc- my last two fiscals, we’ve run at 20, 25. So I would say that 33, it, it avoids our potential talk of, of how we cut somebody and how we cover shifts and how we… It– That is a, an ideal number. Um, 32 is sustainable, 33 is just that one more officer buffer, and it allows me to do things like, assign somebody for

1:56:55 six months at a time into detectives. It allows me to put… I like the concept of victim service officers. It allows me to develop a victim service officer and maybe put them in part-time. It allows me to do traffic enforcement or traffic, organization. I wouldn’t just say enforcement, that, that’s what departments kinda use those extra officers for. It gives me a little bit of buffer on that, that I can move around. 33 is a good number. But we have operated pretty well with 32. Um,

1:57:28 have you– do you notice any trends in calls, like, over the time since you’ve been here? I mean, I noticed that we’ve had… Like, since in the last five years, there’s, you know, obviously this mental health crisis. Yep. And I don’t know if you want to speak to, you know, any kind of changes in the way policing has gone over the last five years, or the trends that you see in terms of the needs of this town. Yeah. So, for me, the fact that the crime rate, and we don’t have a lot of crime so it doesn’t take a big swing to move it up or down. Mm-hmm. Right? But the fact that it is moving in a downward, both crimes against person and crimes against property is very positive. What didn’t change, it actually doubled, was our mental health follow-ups. So, I think that our clinician was

1:58:13 up to, I wanna say 900, 800. I have it written which, how many follow-ups, and I put it in the annual report. Um, 600 cases. So our mental health clinician that works, all paid for DMH, so we get about 134,000 and change from DMH to pay for our clinician. And, 600 cases she worked this year. Wow. And if you’re asking me culturally what has changed within the department based on the trend of mental health calls, which have increased not just in Marblehead but the Commonwealth and the country, we are light years ahead of where we were before in training, in approach, in compassion, in empathy, in, in connecting services and dots. That has a direct correlation why our

1:59:00 crime rate goes down. So technically, that grant comes from the Department of Mental Health, and it’s called Jail Diversion. It’s the Jail Diversion program. So DMH says, “Keep our people that we’re, that we’re really the most concerned about out of the criminal justice system.” And so that’s a direct result of that. Can I ask just to follow up on, well, the, the- Well,

1:59:23 relative to other communities our size, we have a wonderful detective- Mm-hmm … in the force. Is that w- w-… Is one detective a, an, a normal- We’re the only one. We’re the only one. Yeah. Okay. And I’m fortunate, right? So- We’re just the one. Yeah. We have one. One, one and a detective sergeant. So there’s always a supervisor, and we’re likely the only one that runs with one that I’ve ever heard. Um, it’s usually 20,000 people, a detective sergeant, and probably two. So maybe minimum two, likely three as a detective unit. So I know that, for example, Newburyport I think runs with three. That’s what he gave me for numbers. It might be two, but I think he runs with three, he gave me the numbers. And so I’m fortunate, you’re fortunate our detective happened to be a district attorney before she became a police

2:00:10 officer. She happened to be a victim service advocate for the DA’s office before she became a police officer. So she has skills that are beyond, what people normally come into those positions. So I’m very fortunate. And Sergeant Brady, is, you know, in- incredibly skilled at what he does, and really, really understands how to interdict, prosecute, and, and do the things around crime that, are needed. And I can tell you that even today he was telling me, something directly. Uh, we’ve interdicted a couple cases in the last month where tens of thousands of dollars were returned to people that were, had fell victim to, like, an elderly type crime. And, often goes unnoticed, that one doesn’t necessarily make

2:00:58 the books, but that’s, that’s the type of detective work that’s going on here. Okay. And, so I’m glad that… It’s nice to put things in context, you know, and I’m glad you brought up, where we compare with our peer police with the SRO situation. Um, and I think we take a lot of pride in this town and, you know, and that’s great. It’s great. And, and everybody, you know, who works here puts on a really good face, and does the work, picks up, s- the slack that, you know, gets left behind and, and steps in when they can and puts on a good face. And, so I think, I think some of this information, I know some of this information needs t- needs to be

2:01:46 said at this point, and I think there’s gonna be a lot of people in the community that are, are… find this, you know, very, like, new information and very, um-You know, that they had not, not aware of just quite how, lean the departments are and, and quite how- where we fall right now, because we have such dedicated employees and, and we take a lot of pride in this town. We don’t really, and we don’t like to look at, you know, necessarily the, the, the weaknesses around, you know? And, and so I just think that, the more we can talk about and the honesty of, of where we are at this moment, it’s a real inflection point in this town and this.

2:02:31 And, I think stuff like that for everybody, department heads, like just, just say it. You know? Like, just be forward about where we’re at. And, so I appreciate you doing that. Perfect. Anything else? Well, super. All right. Thank you, chief. Um, we have animal con- inspector here. I don’t think we- Thank you, chief. You’re welcome. Do you- A massive increase to that. Yeah. Zero, 2400. Perfect. Yeah, we give her two- We give her $200 a month. Yeah. Yeah. We’re gonna have quite a few pointed questions about that one. She is a new employee. We worked her in. Worked her in. And, we’re lucky. Good. Yeah, she seems, seems great. So I think- All good … we are still- So one of the- Still weights and measures

2:03:17 … is actually now under Steve Cummings. It used to be under the veteran agent. Right, right. Under Steve Cummings, it’s just a contractual with an individual to do it. It’s a contract. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And it- Just a little one. And then looks like we’ve got engineering here, but that has, that, those since ‘25 have been transferred or shifted into- Absorbed into- … these public work. Yep. Sorry, public works budget. Where’s the public works? DPW is right over there. It’s, it’s, next page. Beth? I could number this. We are on the- Oh, oh, oh, on the- Back to- At the police side. Oh, there it is. I found it. Yeah. Okay. So we are onto DPW, public works. Amy, you are up.

2:04:03 That, that engineer will fall off. That’s just the historical. Just so we could see, because it was trailing along with the 25. Yeah. Makes sense. Thank you. Good afternoon, Amy. Hello. I have to start with an update on potholes. Thank you. So since Friday, with one rainy day, so that’s one day off and the weekend, the DPW has placed 42 tons of hot top on the streets. Three major fixes, which are large rectangular patches on Besom Street, Legs Hill, on Evans Road, and the, hot box has done the rest. So, we just- The new hot box? The new hot box. Yep, it’s put four tons down every day. It goes on. Okay. So, um- And did the other- We’re continuing on. You were gonna fix one, too? And the other one is, almost, almost there.

2:04:49 Okay. It started, and then it stopped, so hopefully we’ll be able to have two out- Got it … coming shortly. But right now, it’s working well because, the, the, truck that we purchased two years ago, that actually holds a lot of hot top. That’s why we’re doing those big patches. So we go and go with, 10 tons, come back, and put it all on one street. So everything’s working right now as it should be, except that one little box that’s gonna come out in the future. So,

2:05:18 do you want me to start with a spiel, or you wanna start with another way? Um, spiel’s allowed. Okay. So, we’ve seen some major changes up at DPW prior to, 2020. DPW was 23 employees. Stormwater had moved up for efficiency in 2020. This year we are dropping one laborer and one part-time clerk. Um, we’ve made drops in the past few years, so today the DPW is 19 and one partially funded position, that being the director. Um, the struggle that we have every year and have, have for many years, but will have going forward, is the, really the labor and the maintenance and the parts for what we need. So I support the groups who

2:06:04 support it. I, I mean, I was very happy to see the groups who came out for the teachers and the union workers. I was happy to see that support. I think our workers do deserve that recognition and that support, but I do hope that they realize by all the contracts that we’ve signed, we have put us into a struggle in this budget part. And, you know, hopefully they’ll support an override, too, because that is a major reason why we end up being here every year. But I was happy to see everybody support it, and I really… We have great workers in Marblehead. Um, I also wanna thank Alicia and Thatcher because over the last, three years, they have been dealing with me restructuring, try, like, “Why don’t we try new things?” Listening to you guys for efficiency, how we can do it, how we can make people

2:06:50 more effective, and I think we’ve done a great job. So that’s how you can get to, 19 and still be a very efficient DPW with those cuts. Um, things that are happening, our new services are gonna start to be looked at. That’s gonna be another struggle for DPW, okay? So rail trail maintenance, bi- bike lane maintenance, the trench program that I have been envisioning doing, those are all in jeopardy. Um, and things we’ll have to just deal with are the energy plan that you have approved and the, vehicle plan. Those are gonna be increased maintenance costs and increased purchase costs. So we need to think about every time we’re working towards those goals of net zero, we’re actually are struggling on our budgets right now. They might be things that give great benefits in the

2:07:36 future, but they’re very taxing to us right now. Um, staying where we are and cutting the people that I’m cutting, you’re gonna see most likely, and people are gonna say these are probably delayed, which I’m sure they are, but it’s really in-house street maintenance, tree trimming and maintenance, signage maintenance, sidewalks improvements. These are all things that we do in-house. And then plowing, you’ll see, people I’m sure noticed, even though we don’t do a lot of sidewalk clearing, we did have a route that we used to clear. We lost that person, so that’s what did not get done in plowing s- this year. SoEvery cut to any department, if it’s in the labor, the general labor or, even up to their, working foreman, those are routes in the plow route. So definitely a delay if you cut, you know, one person from cemetery

2:08:23 who’s in that plow route, that’s six or seven streets or full neighborhoods that don’t get plowed, and we gotta cover it with another, with another person who’s already doing a lot. So those are the type of delays I can see. DPW, on the other hand, has an other source, right? I mean, you see a lot of money spent on the streets, and you see a lot of money spent places. So I just kind of wanted to hit that even though these aren’t these in my budgets right now that we’re discussing. But Article 11, which was an override for streets, that has given us, five years of funding, which we have, are spreading out to eight years to actually be able to design and redo streets. So you’ve seen West Street, Commercial Street, Tedesco and Humphrey have been paved. That was with that Article 11 money, and that continues. And that will be, we’ve been working with Alicia to not borrow it all at once,

2:09:10 so we’re not taking on a lot of debt until we’re ready to pay for it. We have done design and collection of data and development and schedules and bid documents, all with that money so far so that we have a program going out that will go out through years. That money will stop though. And before Article 11, that money all came from Chapter 90. Chapter 90 money is state money, which is about four hundred thousand dollars annually. That’s what used to pave all our roads. That’s why we don’t have a lot of road pavement. We’ve– Our roads really, have gotten into poor condition. So, we’ve been able to shift that Chapter 90 money over to maintenance. So that’s the line painting that you see and the crack sealing that you see. It also is design costs. It’s paid three hundred and forty thousand dollars for the design of the Village

2:09:57 Street Bridge to get us to twenty-five percent. It’s probably the money that’s gonna pay for the rest of the design work for Village Street Bridge so that we can get the grant and on to the tip to get that work done by the state. It will still have to pick up costs once we get into that construction. Even though they give you all that money to do that work, you still have costs, as far as will come during the construction phase. Jane, for context on the Chapter 90, ‘cause they’re giving you four hundred thousand annually, can you tell us how much on average of– to pave a whole street would that would cost? If I had to pave a whole street? Well, it depends on the streets, but we, are looking right now at Bouvier and Gary, and that’s close to nine hundred thousand dollars. I just want to show- So- … that mostly- Yeah … the Chapter 90 does not really-

2:10:42 Does not move the needle too much. The, the needs. It won’t be able to. Ones like Tedesco and Humphrey are in the millions. Like if you want to do the sidewalks and everything, you’re talking three to four million dollars to get it done. So we’re trying to spread it out to go as far as it, it can, but it’s, um- What is the, maintenance, kind of the crack sealing and the, and the skim, skim, what do you call it? Forgetting the name. But anyway, there’s a– they– we, we undertook a big, you know, maintenance, uh- You did, yep … program a little while back. So, um- How are we doing on that? Marblehead has actually sent, three people now through the Road Scholar, uh- Okay … apprentice program, I guess, well, you want to call it that Bay State Roads has. Yeah. Um, Maggie is a Road Scholar. I just got my Road Scholar after Maggie. But so you go, and you listen to everything that happens about roads and

2:11:29 what the best maintenance is and the best practices. And maintenance turns out to be one of the best practices to maintain- Extend … your roads, to extend the life of your roads. So especially in New England, where we have that freeze-thaw and we have water getting in, crack sealing seals that crack. So when it rains and the water seeps down, then it freezes, it pops it, then you get these potholes. Sure. Right? We are behind. We just started crack sealing probably four or five years ago or so. Um, a lot of the streets where crack sealing are right on the edge of whether they should be repaved, but we don’t have the money to repave them. So we’re doing the maintenance of the crack sealing. So it i- it does look crazy, but it’s following the crack that is there. Well, it prevents that falloff, right? That rapid falloff- Right … so it extends out the road. Yep. So a- and anytime you have, you know, a- an imperfection in the road and water gets down through it and gets into your base, first it erodes your base

2:12:17 because it washes it away. And then when it freezes, it lifts your pavement, and then it drops your pavement. And so there’s so much movement in the pavement that you end up with larger cracks, larger holes, and deterioration. Yep. So, the other challenge that we have is– This one’s an interesting one. We have a lot of older vehicles, and we have newer vehicles. Our newer vehicles, the maintenance for the parts is expensive, and then the, you know, just working on them, just the regular maintenance is more expensive than the older vehicles because that mechanic could have fixed everything on that old truck. The new one now is so electronic. You– We had to buy computers to, you know, read the electronics, and we have to figure out whether we can fix it now or have to send it to a shop to actually do it because we don’t have all the parts.

2:13:02 So we’re gonna see an increased cost in parts, whether we keep our old ones because they need more maintenance since they’ve, they’re done a lot of work and they’re older, or these new ones which have new interesting costs that are coming with them that, you know, you don’t really think of when you buy a new car. Um, and then we have storm water, and storm water I feel faces the biggest challenge. Storm water previously to twenty twenty was two employees with five thousand one hundred and fifty dollars in expense. That’s all that budget was. Storm water was completed with the storm water construction article, right? So they went out, and they got an extra contractor to come in. Um, it was still, it always struggled. Was a thought that if storm water went up to DPW and became one of the divisions of DPW, that it would then benefit from all the

2:13:50 employees at DPW. So me sitting at Water and Sewer and having storm water was thinking, “I need to be able to give storm water more depth.” DPW has that depth. We talked about it. We moved them up to DPW, not realizing the void at DPW. So tho- that, all thatTwo employees and the five thousand one hundred and fifty was just absorbed in the void of DPW and how much DPW needed work. So we do do stormwater work, but it is less than they had done before. Um, so, and that two employees is counted in that twenty three and twenty twenty. So that’s part of that drop going from twenty three to nineteen. Uh, the construction article, was, had been raised to four hundred thousand.

2:14:35 That was to get us through our maintenance and our regulatory requirements. This year, it looks like it’s going to be cut by fifty percent. So that’s only going to get our regulatory requirements. Um, if you can imagine how expensive, we just talked about streets, stormwater is just as expensive to fix. So, we have, you know, a large list of projects that need to be done that are going to just sit on the back burner. You know, that’s including flooding in the areas of Lee Mansion, Twenty-Six Harbor, Mohawk, Pequot, West Shore Drive, and then repairs to all the major outfalls, which you see on most of the smaller beaches in Marblehead. That’s just to name a few. Stormwater has been blessed with project overrides. So I’m not going to say Marblehead has never supported stormwater. They do. Marblehead loves to give you a project. And stormwater has, it has been addressed just under four miles, between three and four miles of our infrastructure.

2:15:24 And we have approximately fifty-three miles of that infrastructure in town. A lot of it dating back to the WPA, which was back in, nineteen thirty. So it’s, it’s an old system. Okay. I’m done with my rant, but that’s- That’s good. Thank you. Put some context to it. Anybody want to start on? How can we study, like, just as for the,

2:15:54 assistant engineer, special, that there’s like four line working foreman, one structure. So they were in the FY twenty six original project, and now they’re in those budgets? Right. So, blah, blah, blah. I went up in, FY twenty-three, sat, watched how DPW works, absorbed everything they did. FY twenty-four, had really good conversations with everyone who worked there of how we could be more efficient. Then in FY twenty-five, started to just what you were talking about earlier, staying at that, at your bottom line, but rearranging all of your line items. Yeah. Working endlessly with that and Alicia on how I can do this and does this work. Then with the union, then with compensation committee,

2:16:42 making sure everything works. So now DPW actually has a hierarchy, a structure, and everybody is working up from one position to the next so that you’re leading, you’re creating your future leaders in DPW right now. Uh, when I got there, there were, four in tree, and there were five lead HEOs in, DPW in the highway part and four HEOs. So there were five bosses and four workers. It just, it worked, but we now have created a whole structure where you have, working foremen who are watching highway and stormwater and the mechanic, and then you have, and tree, and then you have, leads who are specific to those four groups.

2:17:30 And then the other groups, the HEOs are spread between all of them. So they can, they’re all cross-trained now, except for the mechanics. So they can go from stormwater to help tree, or tree can go to highway. So, right now everybody’s out on pothole patrol. So you’ll see people who would have originally just been the tree department, they’re working right side by side with the highway department. And stormwater guys are high– are side by side. We’ve also done a lot with the other structure. So, when I came aboard, we took the director salary and split it in half. Well, split it so that we could get another assistant director. So you’d actually have two full directors because you have five divisions up there. So, these two assistant directors, we’ve broken those divisions up for them. And the one who only has two divisions, he

2:18:16 actually is a utility coordinator. So he’s out chasing everybody around who’s digging up in the street and finding out what they’re doing and making sure that they’re putting it back now. So we have that kind of oversight. Um, we were able to stay at the line, at the bottom line because the director, I only took the small portion once we subtracted what an assistant was. And in the future, when I retire, you decide that that is the structure you want, you find the money for a director, or you move one of your assistants up, and you go back to the director, assistant director, because you have someone who is completely full-time. So you can still do that. The engineer, we needed tons of engineering work. So we brought, but prior to me, they took the stormwater foreman. Remember I was telling you they got absorbed? They took the stormwater foreman, and they came up with a staff engineer.

2:19:03 They needed a staff engineer. They really did. They needed someone who could go out and watch the contractors and could help with all the projects that that staff engineer was on, you know, all the projects that DPW was doing. So we brought over, we took that staff engineer, and we also had some money saved when– no, we didn’t. Retirement, we had money saved. Uh, we did the staff engineer, and we split that up, and then we brought the town engineer over, okay? And the staff engineer became an assistant engineer, which was lower in the grade because it didn’t have to be a PE, because now we have a town engineer. Um, we were able to absorb that town engineer, change their job description a little bit, so we don’t do conser– they don’t do conservation, but they do stormwater, which is a huge regulatory issue. So it’s, it’s great to have a PE on for

2:19:51 that. And then now you have somebody who’s doing all the old town engineer things with the roads and the streets and the naming and, you know, layouts and getting people that, but they’re actually helping us run all these projects. So everything that you heard community development doing, that town engineer has been a big part of on the structural part of how to get it out, you know, how to get out on the road, how to help them get to that point, overseeing things when our, you know, layouts and when things are done. So, um-It’s a much better working engineer for Town of Marblehead. It’s a much better use for a PE to be, you know, like boots on the ground and doing these things than being a conservation agent. So I think, and again, that was working with that, you see ‘cause now we were, we were reaching into other departments saying, you know, “We

2:20:36 need more help. How are we gonna get it?” And, you know, is there a way we can restructure the town engineer? So that’s how the town engineer got moved over. I would summarize that. One, that’s efficiencies. Yeah. But two, the, the goal, you know, when I rolled in three years ago, in fact, if you recall, Amy was appointed her position the same night I was appointed this position. The effort is, how do we create more capacity in getting things done with the resources we have? And w- the work that Amy has been doing has achieved, that, that goal. Yeah, everything that is done, we are doing with a look to the future, right? So that you don’t have… Uh, because, you know, when I came to Water and Sewer and I saw it a bit, and you’ll see it all over, there’s a big

2:21:23 retirement happening, and there’s a big gap in knowledge, and trying to get that knowledge from those people who are retiring or a different generation to that new generation who d- you know, we definitely don’t think the same. You know, I never thought of opening Google to go look at a pothole. I, like, drive down the street, and everyone’s like, “Why don’t you just open Google?” And I’m like, “Oh yeah, guess we could do that.” So I mean, there, there’s learning on both ways, but it is a huge challenge to get the old information out. Well, it’s been a real, uh… It’s, it’s better than we could have hoped for, I think, when we decided to, you know, kind of consolidate that, and you’ve been able to effect a restructuring, and you’re also looking at continuity planning, you know- Yeah … which is kind of like an extra, you know, a very important thing to do because, you know, you gotta build up that next, that next generation to, to take over so. Yeah.

2:22:08 Job well done. Amy, I have a question. On the standby pay, that increase is due to the new contract? Mm. Correct. Yeah. So, that was always a really difficult thing. So there are on-call phones- Right … which you have to carry. That means you are basically on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That’s how our phones work. So that means you can’t leave Marblehead. You can’t be more than 20 minutes away. If you are, you gotta call somebody and see if they’re gonna be able to answer your phone. Um, you know, a requirement for snow, ice, sinkholes, flooding, like tree down, those are the kinds of calls we get, you know, and you have to come. And, you know, the tree blocking the road, you gotta come in and first assess it, see if you can just pull it over, or you have to who you call in. So, the town had been doing it a long

2:22:56 time and not increasing it. Was, I think, two hundred dollars a week to carry the phone. So it got increasingly hard to have people carry the phone. Again, like, Jason was saying, you were forcing people to carry it at this point. And then you did get an incremental increase in when you were called out, so it wasn’t a lot, but your hourly rate went up a little bit. It was a nightmare for, payroll. It was a nightmare for everyone to figure out. You know, and I tell you, if you want anyone to know what their math is, right down to the laborer, they can tell you if they have 10 cents off on their job, on their pay that day, and this is a place it always happened. It was really hard to figure out. Um, and there was, you know, looking around at other places that carry the phone, there was a huge gap.

2:23:41 Right. So, it… we, through negotiations, they, they picked a dollar, a dollar amount per day to carry that phone. It’s reasonable. Yeah, and it- I think that’s probably one of the top priority- Right … items in the negotiations. I mean, I think it makes sense. Right. It’s like a jet reason. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that- It really does affect your life. And you have to have knowledge of the town. You have to have a CDL. So I can’t just hand the phone to anyone. I have to hand the phone to an HEO or CDL, knowledge of the town, and how, what the DBW needs to answer, you know, the safety precautions that need to go, and so they have to be able to deal with the public. The only other thing I would just add is in the, power enterprise, their, their administrator also is the on call. Gotcha.

2:24:27 Uh, water and sewer has- So it’s- … four phones, too … that won’t be on ours then. Okay. Any specific questions? Good job. You’ll see that I did bring up parts. That’s the only thing that came up in the expenses. Yeah, but- No, I saw them. Yeah. Yeah, so do you wanna go through snow removal? We’re staying at the same- Right … spot even though we- Because the law states if we increase it, if the law, we can never reduce it. Okay. Oh. I do have my notes. And then we can– And then for those deficits, we pay forward over X, a couple years? Uh, we can raise it on the recap. So if they allow us, so in years where we have a real amount of snow, sometimes the state will say you can amortize it over time.

2:25:12 Okay. But if we don’t, then you either cover it with free cash at year-end or year-end transfers- Sure … or you can raise it. But if I raise it, can’t- You can never come back down. Reduce it. So you keep it at that number. Okay. And hopefully Essex County, everyone puts in for their, their money- Mm-hmm … and we’re reimbursed. That will be run. Uh-huh. Twenty-eighth, I think they have to have it in by, the state has to have it in by. Um, one other thing, though, is they have taken the revolving fund two years in a row to pay for hot top, so you’ll see a zero line item. It only brought it down, like, 18,000, but that’s because last year we took, we funded, we took 40 out. Um, so I tried to put 50 back in this year, and then you took it back out again on more. So just, that revolving fund only takes in, it has had a few

2:25:57 good years where we had, Verizon come in and do a whole bunch of pole work, and so we got a lot of money in that year. But generally, it does not take in a lot. It probably takes in, you know, between five and $18,000 a year. So to fund something $40,000 a year, we’re definitely gonna be bringing that revolving fund down. And the thought on revolving fund, I don’t know what it was before me, but the thought with me was to create a trench program using the revolving fund. So I wanted to be able to purchase, um-Different equipment. So like a paver and a roller and, you know, with the… So there were a whole bunch of things that would slowly come out, and then we would be able to repair bigger sections of the road in-house. So And I’m glad you brought that up because as for years we have been passing those

2:26:44 reduced services and putting that on, and I am aware that the revolving funds are not looking in terms of that. Yeah. Yeah, so. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate all your work. And thank you again for all the extra hours everyone put in for the snow this year. You’re welcome. All right. Uh, moving on to Council on Aging. I think Alicia, I saw you back. Thank you for waiting. Oh, no problem. Hi, Alicia. Hi, how are you? It’s good to be here. How are you doing? I’m good, thanks. So high level, either you or Alicia are, what is our cuts that we’re looking at here? Obviously, there must be because we’re going down. So maybe you can talk about what those are and the effects. Sure. So, the cut is one full-time

2:27:30 person, and it should be noticed that in 2015, 11 years ago, the Council on Aging had 15 and a half employees, which were nine and a half full-time employees. And 10 years later, with restructuring over the years and this cut, we would have, 10 employees or seven full-time employees. So the Council on Aging budget has declined 36% in the last 11 years. Um, so I just wanna make that… And our average age here in town is 49, and we have more than 6,000 folks that are 60 and over. So I know everybody’s aware of all the statistics. Um, but it is important to note that the town, even without this cut,

2:28:17 doesn’t fully fund our budget. It fully funds about 75% of our salaries and only about 30% of our expenses. You know, we have the Shattuck Memorial Fund. We’re very lucky other towns don’t have that. That’s why we have a park, a commercial kitchen, and we have four vehicles. We have two vans and two minivans. Um, we also have the Marblehead Female Humane Society that funds two of our part-time drivers. So these are services we provide without taxpayer money. Um, last year we provided over 6,100 rides, out of town for medical appointments, and our rides aren’t just for people who are poor. Um, I know that’s the concept of a Council on Aging, but, you know, Marblehead has five yacht clubs, and we have a YMCA and a

2:29:05 JCC. It’s an affluent town. We have a lot of folks that may have surgery, may need ch- may need cancer treatments, eye injections, things like that. Family members work. So they may take our transportation, for six weeks, eight weeks, or 10 weeks. So, you know, I, I think the, the look of the Council on Aging isn’t a certain demographic. It is for everybody. Um, the position that we’re talking about cutting is the half nutrition coordinator and the half special labor one. And the spe- and this position is interesting because we need that half of the special labor/custodian that

2:29:50 we talked about with Steve, because we do need somebody day-to-day. We have 30-year-old bathrooms. Um, they break down a lot. We have maintenance of the, park out back. We have things that occur during the day that we need this position for. Also, this position is a back to- backup driver. So if I have any, drivers call out or in our, with our recent storms, I brought this person in over the weekend. They work with park and rec. Everybody moves the vehicles, so park and rec can come and plow. So it’s a joint effort. Um, the other half of this position does cook on Tuesday. Um, the Friends of the COA are also wonderful. They provide any ty- anything you have at the, COA that’s food-related is by the

2:30:38 Friends of the Council on Aging and private donations. So, we do serve over 100 meals a week. We could do more if I had a full-time nutrition coordinator. Um, social services are very difficult to quantitate. It’s, you know, it’s hard to say how people feel. Um, and to measure that, I can give everybody a copy of the, our annual report that goes through everything we did last year in, in your time. It’s a tedious read. Um, our outreach coordinator alone, had 85 cases last year, just cases, and, she works with the fire department, the Department of Public Health. She works with the police department.

2:31:24 Um, she really works with just about anybody who calls. So,

2:31:33 with our expanding, I understand the budget and the cuts and, you know, and, and, and tax money going, you know, from people’s pockets. It affects me, too. My mother lives with me. We’re on a, fixed income. You know, our taxes have gone up over the last eight to 10 years. So it, you know, I, I completely understand,

2:31:58 how the costs affect everybody, especially on fixed incomes. On the other hand, I do understand how you have to look to the future and, you know, find a way to support folks. Um, the Council on Aging, you know, our, our job is to provide outreach services, transportation. You know, in addition to medical appointments, we take people to the supermarket. Um, we take people in town. I mean, think about it. How would you get here if you didn’t have a car?And you can’t really get anywhere without a car, so it connects you to all your services. We have the fitness, recreational. We’re lucky again because we have the Friends, we have the Shattuck Fund, and the Shattuck Fund also funded our fitness center.

2:32:46 So we do, more than any other town, and even cities around us, we provide more services, because we have the private funding available. Mm. So our budget, this would leave our budget with four, full-time employees covered by the town, instead of five. All our part-time employees are currently, covered by grants and private donations, so… And we service at least, there are at least 150 people in the building a day. That doesn’t include the people that Sharon visits, in the homes as well as, people that we take for rides. So we, we average over about 200 people a day we service.

2:33:35 So this position would be a big hit to us. What, what would that do to decrease, if you could estimate from the 200 people, if you lost, you’re losing 20%, do you lose, you’re losing 20 workforce- Mm-hmm … that the town pays for. Mm-hmm. You say that you could see 40 less people for the, or service and- Well, we could be. The problem, it’s more safety. Okay. So when you’re… So we have people in the building, throughout the building, we’re always able to walk around a little bit. Correct. Monitor somebody. We do call 911. Um, we do have people that have issues or need assistance in the bathroom. I mean, things come up you can’t plan on. Mm-hmm. It’s another set of hands that is gone. Makes sense. So somebody’s down in the fitness center and somebody… You know, it’s a safety issue. So you can have 50 people or

2:34:20 150, but you need safety. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that, that, that general labor position, it, it reminds me, again, the discussion we had early on with custodian, building custodians, and you’ve said with the building down there- Mm-hmm … lots going on. More like a school with the amount of people- Mm-hmm … coming through that, like kids, elderly people that might need assistance and it’s, it’s- Right. They have walkers, canes and many are active. I mean, Marblehead has many active folks in their 90s that don’t need any assistance. I mean, it’s an, it’s an incredible town, but you do need assistance. And then setting up for all the activities that was gonna be there. Yeah. So the laborer sets up and breaks down. Also maintains the commercial kitchen, maintains the back

2:35:05 park. Um, so it is a loss. Um, it will be Jana, Sharon, and I doing it . But that’s really what it comes down to. Can I ask a question? Sure. So earlier you were talking about 15 and a half employees, and then over time you’re down to 10. How many of those are full-time that were in the general fund, and then there’s about? So from the general fund there were only four, but we didn’t have as much, grant funding. So we had more part-time people in the general fund. Um- So the town funding has stayed relatively level this long term. You’re saying that, that then your other resources have decreased. Yes. What I’d like to say is I have presented a level funded budget I think almost every year I’ve been here, and when I’ve received, if the COA has received funding, we’ve given something up.

2:35:53 Um, last year I gave up some positions to have the cleaner. So we’re always level funded. The biggest hit to our department really is the fact that, we’re all older, and we’re all at the top of our steps, and that’s it. Mm-hmm. I mean, it’s just salary. Um, and I can’t… You know, people that work at the center are typically older than, I mean, at any center . And I can’t get drivers that are, you know, I get… Our drivers are retired. They’re not paid through a grant, but you still have to have somebody who’s skilled enough to ha- like you would with the kids in a school bus, so. Okay. Yeah. That’s it. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Great, great presentation. Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate it. They’re all older, but they’re all young at heart.

2:36:38 Mm-hmm. I said, they’re all older, but they’re all young at heart. In my- They are young at heart, and they’re very feisty. And, some of them can, in those fitness classes, could outrun… We even have high school kids come down. And the high school kids are barely breathing, and the, and the, you know, members are just working out with their, with their weights and everything, so. Thanks. Yeah. Great. Thank you. So, sure. Appreciate it. Thank you. May I leave? Yeah, you can leave. Thank you. Yeah. You don’t need our permission. Yeah. Thanks. Uh, we’re moving on to Veterans Benefits, Roe. I think I still see you back there. Good afternoon. Good afternoon.

2:37:23 How are you doing? Doing. Great. How are you? Hangin’ in there. Yeah, you’re still back there. Yeah. Pod- pod cast there. Hangin’ in there. All right.

2:37:33 Laura Gerrish, if you wanna- So, um- Talk about… Yes. So I’ve been extremely busy with the uptick in claims. So this year, this past year, 221 veterans averaged getting from VA benefits, federal benefits, so that’s pension for the veterans and the surviving spouses, the surviving spouse claims, and the veterans for service connected disability, all which will keep that veteran off our Chapter 115 rolls. That’s federal money. Um, so an average of 221 veterans or their surviving spouses are getting $397,556 each month in the town of Marblehead. Okay. So, my Chapter 115 budget, last-

2:38:18 So you just said $397,000. A month. Per month. Per month. Across 200 people. Okay. Yes. 221. 221 people. Okay. Thanks. So- A lot of- It’s a huge number. Times 12. Yes. And it’s one and a half million dollars. Yes. So the more I do for veterans, the be- the federal benefits saves the town on state benefitsSo I had a veteran come off of Chapter 115 because he’s now moved over to the Chelsea Soldiers Home. It’s 2115 for those- Oh, I’m sorry. It’s a- I know this is non-inflation. It’s, it’s usually with the- It’s a, it’s a guaranteed benefit to Massachusetts residents. It’s town by town, and it goes back to our Massachusetts Constitution, just like my position is mandated by the Constitution, and it’s to help those low-income veterans or their

2:39:03 surviving spouses or dependent children, so, children with special needs. Um, it’s a stipend. You have to be very low on the poverty line. It’s basically a, a, a welfare. Thank you. An aid. Okay. And the first thing I do when I have a veteran on Chapter 115 or a spouse, is I look for federal benefits, ‘cause that will get them off our rolls, and get them money for life, and I tell them, “You don’t have to give me another bank statement ever again.” So it’s all income-driven. So we get, in Marblehead, we get reimbursed seventy-five percent back, but it’s about a year later. I think it’s coming down to six months. We’re trying. We’ve been pushing the state- Mm … to get reimbursed sooner. So we get back seventy-five percent of that. Okay.

2:39:49 Okay? So in order to get off of 115, you move out of town, either to assisted living or out of town, you get federal benefits, or you go over income. You get a job, and most of my people are not- Sure … able to work, or you die. So- Mm … that’s the only way to get off. So the work that you’re doing to get more people on federal saves the town money. Yes. Thanks. Yes. That was the piece I wanted to make. Well, I Thank you. Yeah. Chapter 115 of the Acts, I think, of 1972. So it was a special act. Mm. Massachusetts act that created the position in any community over 12,000 required to have a full-time- Right … veteran agent, and that’s the programs that the state funds to- Connect … it’s transitional money. It’s short-term, to help

2:40:37 veterans, to buy them time to, to get on programs. And any money we spend, seventy-five percent of it is reimbursed to the town. That’s for both of them. So, I mean- Your role is so much more than that. Thank you. Yeah, no, that was… We’re just, we’re building. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate that. I gave away the end line, but- Thank you. I appreciate that. So an average claim takes anywhere from four to eight hours, and that’s sitting with the veteran. Uh, the dependent claims, the surviving spouse, it takes a little bit longer because they, VA requires so much more paperwork for the spouses. So much more. So, and then I had, I had a hearing yesterday for a dependent of a veteran who’s disabled. So we, we try and take care of that as well. Um, more and more legislation has been passed recently, the PACT

2:41:24 Act, especially, and the Camp Lejeune Water Act, the Marines, and those other personnel who were serving down there. And more and more legislation is coming through to increase these benefits for our veterans or their surviving spouses. We’ve lost a few veterans this year. Quite a few actually. We just had, Mr. Baca just passed away a couple of days ago. George Baca, he was 90. Um, and he was a veteran, a Vietnam veteran. So the more we do for federal benefits alleviates the cost to the town for state benefits, local benefits. Um, I, I keep up with… I’m on the training committee, so I keep up, and the legislative committee, which I keep up on all that. I’m also on the governor’s council for, sexual assault, human trafficking, and domestic violence as it relates to veterans

2:42:12 and family members. So a lot more legislation on that. There’s a new thing, new recommendation we’re coming out with that we put forward with our committee to the lieutenant governor, that when you get pulled over, you get arrested for domestic violence or sexual assault, if you’re, if you have a license to carry, your guns are taken away from you. Veterans are identified. Veterans get a call placed to their command. Reserves and National Guard don’t. Your commander doesn’t know about that. So we’re pushing that police officers ask that question, “Are you still serving in the National Guard or the Reserves?” Because a lot of us, as Reservists and Guardsmen, as a Reservist, I was a federal agent, and I had my guns at home. So easy access. Right.

2:42:57 Um, so a lot in, a lot of officers, a lot of, Reservists or National Guardsmen, if they’re in law enforcement, they’ll have their weapons at home. And if they’re involved in a domestic violence situation, their commander is not called. So we’re pushing for that to come forward. So we’re doing a lot to increase benefits to help the families as well as the veterans. Right now, mental health is at, utmost. We’re going through lots of training on that for prevention, ‘cause our suicide rate is extremely high. It used to be 22 a day, now it’s up to like 42, 44 a day. There’s a, there’s a lot. There’s a lot. Um, so we’re working with that. I’ve, in my career of being a veteran service officer for 14 years, I’ve had to section more people than I can ever

2:43:42 hope, want to do ever again. So it, but it’s necessary. It’s necessary. Um,

2:43:51 I’m working with the V- VFW, so they’re sponsoring the POW chair, which I’m gonna bring before you. And they sponsor a lot of other events for us. And if I have a veteran in need, I do have a donation account, but if I have more of a need, then I reach out to them and they will f- step up. So, and they’re very good in identifying, veterans who are in need in town, and veterans who, especially with the mental health aspect. So, we’ve been dealing a lot with that. Well, thank you. I know, you’ve stepped into this position, very smoothly. Appreciate all our work- Love what I do. Yeah. Well- So I’m a vet, and I, I take care of my brothers and sisters any way I can. And, uh-

2:44:36 Appreciate that … if you take care of the family, we take care of the vet. So we, um- Sure … we all work hand in handSo and I work very well with Council on Aging, with the cemetery department, with Alicia’s department. So with… We all work together to try and make things happen. Well, we’re lucky to have you. Thank you. I, I’m lucky to be there. Any other questions? Thank you. I’m just gonna say, you must have the patience of a saint, because in a, as the red tape and the bureaucracy, these applications, you know, to go through and- I swear at the VA every single day. And, definitely do. I mean, I’ve been… Just how you navigate that is a-amazing. And, and also, you’re having people come to you at, like, their lowest time most often. And so, you know, there’s, there’s a

2:45:23 mental toughness that person in your situation has to, has to, you know, have. And, and people… You know, we, we love the parades, and we love to celebrate Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but the real work is the every day. In my office. Yeah. So we do what we can to, make life better for them. Hopefully- And make life easier. Hopefully we can make life better for you and get you a nicer office soon. I’m, I’m okay. I like my spirits. They’re good. I, That- It’s friendly, you know? It’s, it’s okay. I don’t mind. I work out of my car a lot too, so it doesn’t… I used to be a private investigator, so I’m used to working out of my car. So, and I, I don’t care where I am as long as I’m somewhere where I can have privacy to meet with my veteran and h- give them the privacy that they

2:46:09 need, because I do have people that just break down in my office, so. Sure. So we do have to move her temporarily- Yeah … because the first phase of the Marielli project- Mm-hmm … is that whole area. So we’re, Steve and, and I talked to her to move temporarily, and then w-when that project’s done, and she gets moved back to wherever- New office … she’s gonna land, it’ll be better than what she has. Whether she likes it or not, it’ll be a better office. It’ll keep the spirits for her, though. Yeah. Well, these are gonna be disrupting them, so it’ll be- She’s not gonna be around to be trying. Yeah. She’ll… Has she ever been upstairs? I, I very rarely go upstairs just, you know, see people, check my mail, because I like the privacy of my veterans come in through the d- side door. And I have a lot of em- town employees that come in and see me, and they don’t

2:46:56 wanna be upstairs. And it gives them the privacy that they need to talk to me. Sure. So that’s it. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We also have Memorial and Veterans Day line. Yeah. I just sort of jumped over it. It’s minimal and- Yep … if everyone’s okay with it. Small increase. Pretty standard, small increase. And I’ll save you guys for it to look at. Sorry? Memorial and Veterans Day, three line. Oh. Yeah. You also need to sign. Yes. Yes. So- We see a little increase. Um, for this year, sure. Yeah. I think next year you should be looking for a whole bunch more. The cost of bands has gone up. I can’t get a band for under 7,000. Which they sound like they’re all above that. Okay. Yeah. And it’s rain or shine. And- So if it’s-

2:47:41 Okay … if they see a little bit of raindrops out in the sky, it’s happened to me in Winthrop- Yeah … and in Melrose, they’re like, “Yep, we’re not coming out.” Yeah. So and you still have to pay, and they get their money beforehand. So- Not very patriotic of them. No, they’re not veterans. Um, so I’m so I’m happy using our high school band. She hasn’t reached back out to me yet, but we have, one of our VFW members who has the Jeep w- and plays the music. Um, we’re also trying to revamp the whole Memorial Day thing by going just to one location rather than jumping from location to location to location. The Council on Aging does a phenomenal job the Friday before, providing the breakfast for our vets and families, which is great. Um, I have a lot of volunteers that come out for flagging of the cemetery, and

2:48:28 those flags, by the way, are also 75% reimbursed. So the number that you see on the flag budget is- Hm … reimbursed 75% by the state. Gotcha. Victor, let me get this straight. So, if, if re- if, if it rains- If they see raindrops … they see raindrops, they get paid and still don’t come. Hm. It’s a nice gig. Indeed. Okay. That’s- That’s part of the contract. That’s part- It’s part of the contract because they, that stops them from going somewhere else. And- Out of the rain … and, exactly, they, that’s- Yeah. And they’re more and more expensive, and there’s- Okay … far and few between. There’s not a lot of guys. 27th Lancers have been out for a while and… Um, so there’s just not a lot of them anymore. So.

2:49:15 Then- All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you all. Thank you. And Alicia, you wanna touch base on the maturing bonds and debt? Mm-hmm. And the interest and sort? That too. Alicia, we’re in maturing bonds and interest. Oh. Maybe if you could just explain a little bit of the maturing debt that’s coming up and the increase on the interest. Sure. So, I just plug it in each time for three years due to purposes of the detail. Yep. So we’re going out to borrow in May, as, you saw in the op, I have been banning lines of the roads and several other projects. So we’re gonna do a bond call coming up. Mm-hmm. Um, so I went to our, financial advisors and had them do a debt model for me, and that’s their initial estimate.

2:50:00 So it could go down, could go a little up. Not 100% positive until after we do- Okay … go out and borrow in May. But that’s my basic estimate right now. What is, what is our total, debt now? Um, I, I know, don’t put you on the spot. Yeah. I guess where are we relative to kind of our comfortable debt capacity? Uh, we’re, we’re, we’re low. Okay. So we don’t bat on until stuff is falling off. Yeah. So I, we look at that. I look to when it’s gonna fall off, and then that’s when we- Net gain before it fall off last year? Right. No, that’s right. Not this past year. So this information- Before she gets in … is available to the public- Yeah … through the debt or- No. The amount she spoke with. I can, yeah, I can get you that. Oh, good. Okay, it’s not directly accessible to the public through Alicia, but it’s, I, I have access to it. But you presented that graph at the State of the Town.

2:50:48 Yeah. We have that, so- So we, we have live data to- Great … that sort of thing. Okay. Yeah. Do you wanna go through or other general government at this point? Or actually, you know what? Let’s go to Harbor. Yeah. Since we have to stay here anyway. Sorry about that. You must be out of this- Hey, Mark. Yeah, exactly. That looks nice. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for… Sorry to keep you long. That’s okay. Should’ve moved you up. That’s okay. Um, I don’t have a lot to report as far as it’s a- we’re pretty level funded. Yeah. Um, any of our increases were just based on government increases, being insurance or taxes or whatever that may be. Um, we did make a correction in our salary side of the budget, and that would be on our senior harbor

2:51:36 assistants. And one of the things we discovered, John Daub, my chairman, and I, we’ve kinda gone through it, that we were increasing that each year based on COLA. And what we neglected to realize is if you don’t have returning employees all the time, they’re not jumping up in steps, our seasonal employees. So instead of doing a, an average increase from the COLA, we, we are now doing a more fine-tune looking at if we have a new employee, they’re obviously gonna start at a lower step than that. So that, you know, have to do that, larger number. So that was a fourteen percent decrease in that part of our salary. So that was both something we just kinda discovered. We went through each line item, just to make sure that we weren’t making

2:52:23 any, any errors and trying to be fiscally responsible under this, this situation. And it looks like we’ve shifted on the line items there from expenses to salary. Is that- Yeah, that doesn’t look right. Well, no. Is that just we’ve got- Would… On your Harbor, you’ve got expenses going down over two hundred thousand dollars and salaries going up. Well, that’s- So I sent you a question. So there’s a big deposit that came in September twenty-second, and I wrote you an email asking you what is that, why is a deposit being deposited into your account? That is correct. It should be there. I don’t, I didn’t get that email. I sent it today. No, I sent it through Schedule, and then I sent to you, and I put in there why is this happening. So why is, why are… Let’s just, let’s step back one thing before that. Is there why- I’m not understanding what that is, but, I can look at it. You sure it’s not the-

2:53:09 So why are salaries going up s- oop, two hundred and sixty-five here? There shouldn’t be. Okay. They- I have it in one of the… You have the details. I just have it. Am I looking at the right thing? I’m not real sure. No. Okay, thank you. Some of these don’t say anything. Is that just in the wrong– Do we just have it in the wrong place maybe on these- I don’t recognize it, so that’s… In my summary, in our summary sheet, we have salaries going up two hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars and expenses going down approximately the same amount. Just wondering if that’s classification. It’s be- It’s actually the full definition from my cellular. Yep. Mm. So I just wonder if you plugged in maybe in the way that your class wants. So I have my salary budget. What I submitted was

2:53:55 four hundred and eighty-five thousand two hundred and thirty-three dollars. Yeah. Which was- A decrease … a dec- a percent decrease. Yep. So that number- Category. So it feels like it’s just a category. Yeah. And it’s here. This is what I pulled off Munis. So the reason why– No, no, it’s the health insurance transfer, contributory retirement, your life insurance, Medicare, health reimbursements, all of those. Anything that’s up in the five one seven line is a salary line. Okay. So, so just… So then you just ran it for a- So I think it would be done. I can’t see it, but I’m just gonna go through. Okay. So- ‘Cause that’s what I, I went off of what’s- Yeah, yeah. No, that’s, this is with the Munis. Okay. So his salary is one sixty-nine seventy-eight. Assistant department head, one sixty-three fifty-three.

2:54:41 Senior clerk, seventy-one three seventy-two. Senior summer clerical, ten seven one five. Seasonal senior harbor assistant, ninety thousand. Senior harbor pump out assistant, fifteen thousand four thirty. Overtime, six thousand two ten. Longevity, three thousand one seventy-five. Sick bonus annual, three thousand. Health insurance transfer, one sixty-six five twenty. Contributory to retirement, seventy-seven seven forty-two. Life insurance, six hundred and fifty-three dollars. Medicare, six thousand nine hundred. Health reimbursement care, eight three six three. I don’t think-

2:55:26 Yeah … I don’t think we need that. I guess maybe just a question here, if you do have the sheet. Like, on my sheet, we’ve got- So we- The numbers are right. That’s why I’m- No, no, no, but they have to be in the report. They, it– I just– What we’re looking at here, do you have it in front? Uh, the summary page, is that we have salaries going up to sixty-five and expenses going down to twenty-two. I see. So did you just reclassi- It’s all there. Is it just reclassifying? Yeah, we have that. You’re transferring– Did they, was it classified as expenses before, now they’re in salaries? ‘Cause it, what this looks like is- That’s what they, that’s what, that’s what I did my math, and that’s what my math tells me. Okay, that’s, that’s what I’m seeing. So, so you’re, so you’re ca- you’re capturing a lot of these benefits under expenses- Yeah … and now you’re rolling them up into salaries. Correct. That’s all we need to know. Okay. Okay. On the- ‘Cause I saw that, and I was like, “That’s a lot of water.” Hope you gave yourself a good raise.

2:56:13 Oh, yeah. Yeah. You may know. So I got a cash deposit that came in four forty-six three thirty and fifty cents on September twenty-second. What is that? Four forty s- Four hundred and forty-six thousand three hundred and thirty dollars fifty cents. Is that- Mm-hmm … that would’ve been for, in when? September? September twenty-second. Does that sound like rent? Is that some– That’s what got deposited, and it’s showing it. It’s telling us right on your cash. It’s the boat. It’s the boat. Well, the reimbursement, so- The boat … it’s the boat reimbursement. The boat reimbursement that we got ‘cause it, ‘cause we had to get the, the couple to send us the money back. Okay, the question is, did you pay for the boat- Yeah … in fiscal year twenty-six, or did you pay for the boat in fiscal year twenty-five? Twenty-six And twenty-six ‘cause that’s, that’s about…

2:56:58 ‘Cause I would’ve, then I would’ve thought it would’ve been- So Chris, I– when that money came in, Chris put it in the FEMA boat ramp line item. That’s the- Now it’s in your– it’s– That was rolling this off and you didn’t need it. It’s in your enterprise, in your capital. Okay. That’s why. Okay. So I think the main question is as far as these numbers- They’re correct. I just wanted to clarify. Sorry. They’re correct, and- They just swapped them …the big explanation for the big increase in the salary line, and the big decrease in expenses is some of the expenses were categorized– recategorized as salaries. You just have to transition. Okay. But, I mean, that’s what I thought it was. Yeah. I just- But the- The key takeaway you always figure out It’s fine. It’s-

2:57:43 My four hundred and sixty thousand dollars went- Bottom line, it worked out perfectly. Yeah. That’s all I, you know That’s important for them- Understood …to understand both. Yeah. All right. And I just wanted to say one thing. Um, sometimes you appear on budget, sometimes you don’t. And Mark, and make sure my understanding is correct. Mark is one hundred percent enterprise funding, no direct taxpayer money. However, he is here because he does not report to an elected board. He reports to a board appointed by the select board. Is that correct? Well, the Harbors and Waters board is, is a creature of the select- Yeah. There was a special act that actually created it, but- Yeah …it is under the purview of the- So, so we won’t see MMLD be able to- Correct …widely sort that. Good point. Yeah. Yeah. It just- Okay. Yeah

2:58:29 …these different roll-ups happen. Yeah. We’re gonna get confused. Right. People say the town’s budget is- Right …you know, eleven million dollars. So, so that’s not physical. Yeah. That’s a good point. Many of them. Okay. Right. I don’t have any questions personally. Anybody? Yet. Have you finished Moses’ custom rod holder on the new boat? Yes, I got a C note. I-I just got the embroidery on the C for him. He wants to get rid of the, plastic one he has on. I need all my 1978 neighbor. Nice. Nice. Perfect. Noted by. 1999. I think with the morning fees. I know. But- Yeah. Yeah. These boats. Yeah, and the morning fees, as you can see in our budget, we, we spend almost in our operational side of things. Yeah. We spend almost right to the dollar.

2:59:15 Right. And it’s not– Those expenses that we spend is- Yeah …nine times out of ten repairs, fixing problems or whatever it might be. I think it’s still out. Yeah. And it’s because, as we know, the ocean is not forgiving in any way. We have some pretty big asks to go for- going forward here. Yeah. Yeah, we do. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. Appreciate your sticking around. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Do we– Why don’t we go to other general government? It’s the last item on our… If you just wanna walk in on those for us. Walk through those.

2:59:57 The money for sixty thousand stays the same. Um, contributory retirement, that’s our annual required contribution that the state, calculates that we have to pay in for our pension. That’s for those who were paying for that current and from the past, they get caught up. That’s on an actuarial schedule. Yep. Yep. And an increase because there was a, a- It will increase eight point– eight point six percent year over year until we- For catch up till twenty sixty …right, until we pay off in twenty thirty-six. Right. So there’s talk right now that the cutoff date is twenty-forty. Mm-hmm. The state has extended it before twice, so now I guess there’s some talk because of the financial challenges, towns that we could potentially push it

3:00:43 out. Yeah. Um, Medicare, two seventy-seven sixty-nine is based on the employees that are there. Health insurance, thirteen point three for actives, and that’s based on current March enrollment. So when I first forecasted at my, eleven percent, it was on progress based off of the January GIC bill. Since then, I sat down with the schools, and we looked at enrollment as of March, and it was additional enrollees, and that increases the amount. Um, I put in a cushion of roughly seven hundred thousand, just to give some context for that. You have ten changes, which is what we had in March, and they said they were all on a family plan that can range up to thirty-three thousand. So ten times thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty thousand dollars of a

3:01:30 seven hundred thousand dollar cushion just for ten changes. Um- And that– What percentage assumption is that in there? Uh, right now I have four point five percent as a cushion. As a cushion. Which is low. Which is very low for the volatility of health- And, and sort of put the basic, percentage that you’re increasing from last year in July. Oh. You did have a lot of– eleven point six percent. Yeah. Plus a four percent cushion. Plus a four point five percent cushion. Okay, so you actually had– That has been put in place. They were carrying that cushion before, so. Yeah. Yeah. The cushion’s always- So the cushion might have a percent. Same cushion. Okay. That just seems a little, little high for, for– from what I would expect, but. Yeah, and the reason why is, that additional enrolls. So the enrollment at the time when I do- took it was twelve ninety-eight, now I’m at thirteen oh eight. Um, life insurance,

3:02:18 ninety thousand nine ninety-eight based on those that are enrolled. Medicare penalty kept it seven thousand flat. Health reimbursed Medicare kept at seven thirty-one. We didn’t quite reach it last year, so I, I thought that that was a fair amount to pull for the next year. That’s in the PEC agreement that we reimburse, Medicare Part B. It’s based on a calculation, and that goes out, every December. Uh, the medics insurance transfer, the three million six six eight six hundred is five percent on the Medicare supplement plans of the GIC for those who are retired. That’s that amount.Flex Avenue target eighty-five hundred. That’s what we pay right now for our current flex plan.

3:03:04 I am looking into benefits to see if maybe we change providers, and we can get rid of paying that fee. Um, insurance premiums, that’s our property insurance, liability insurance, nine oh eight, three oh nine. Unemployment, five seventy-six to ten based on the layoffs. Salary reserve, that one forty-five. Usually, I would put fifty thousand in there for any unanticipated retirements. This time, that whole one forty-five is for a settlement payment that is due at the end of the year, in July. Uh, transfer to workers’ comp and Section One Eleven F, as Section One Eleven F recurs to, first workers’ comp for public safety officers. So I reduced that to three hundred

3:03:49 and thirty-eight thousand based on where we are, and I also looked at what was in the fund before I made that deduction. So our total budget is forty-eight seventy-two seventy-three seventy for everything in the total owner chief. And to point out- One twenty-four nine six five oh nine two for just the, general company. And we’re taking out our OPEB- We are … contribution of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in this budget. Yeah. Yeah. We will put that as a part of the override. As the override? Yeah. We, we wanna keep funding that. I do wanna bring forward to your body, a– something to sign up on a policy for us to fund that once the pension falls off at a percentage that the board feels comfortable with. I think it’s important to look into that because if it falls off by twenty thirty-six, and based on our financials now, we should plan ahead for

3:04:38 what level that’s gonna be. So you’re saying when the pension catch-up falls off, is that gonna decrease each year or is it increase in the next- No. So, so once twenty thirty-six happens- Okay … then we just pay our, our re– yeah, our regular cost, which is very nominal compared to the catch-up cost, that, that eight point six percent that we’re paying. It’s gonna be a, a big drop in twenty thirty-six. I’m gonna guess, because the retirement contributory deficit is a mandatory expense to pay down. Mm-hmm. That at that time, when the municipalities have finished that obligation, that the state of Commonwealth is gonna make an obligation- For OPEB … for OPEB. Yeah. And so we want to plan ahead for that. Makes sense. Yeah. Okay. When the eight, nine oh seven.

3:05:24 Right. I agree. Um, the salary reserve vacation increase, is, is that for, is that for layoffs or is that your retirement, so? That’s for settlement payment. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. If you remember that settlement was- Was over two years … went over two years. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Do– Can we, just so that we can look at trying to put apples to apples. Sure. So we’re up in this budget four point eight million from last year. Like, how do we reconcile that in our minds versus… So we’re up, and we, we’ve cut. Can you

3:06:09 explain, so how we get from here to once we take away, like how does, how does this coincide? Well, I think once we look at the whole budget as a picture instead of, instead of looking at it in pieces, it’s better for me to explain it then. Okay. You know, right now, you’re only looking at a portion, you’re not looking at the whole picture. Right. Nothing has changed from that whole budget. The mo– I mean, these numbers are so similar. So when we look at, I guess, I would wanna say- Right … when we look at the whole budget- Right … that’s still gonna roll down into our- It will … to our forty-eight. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I think, you know, this is a, you know, I think we- The numbers … use a lot of formats that we’ve used in the past, and I think we’ve got a good pivot year here to not do things the way we’ve done in the past. Yeah. We try to do it. So one suggestion, perhaps,

3:06:54 is that we could do this presentation with the operating piece up front. Mm-hmm. You know, so you’re, so you’re basically seeing, you know, for example, you’d have the maturing bond interest down at the end, so you’re not inflating that, you know, with the operating budget math. I think you’ve, you– with this new, with new unit- Yeah … which was awesome, okay? Because it really focused us really well on, you know, when we could, we could look at the district budget, then we could look at the town budget, and we had numbers that we could then– And I think that was just an operating number. It did not include, it didn’t include the debt service. It didn’t include, let’s see. The forty-eight, you mean? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you just take away eleven from there, you get down to forty-four.

3:07:40 Right. Right? Type of thing. Well, actually, new is basically set off for fiscal year twenty-six. Yeah. We’re at forty-seven nine for the municipality and forty-nine point one for the district, right? So that’s time to, okay, get that locked in. Yeah. And then the question is- This is because you’re voting it, so honestly, you’re saying I have it that way. Yeah. But because you’re voting it- Yeah … it has to be seen. No, no, I completely get that. I completely get it. But I think for our, for our sense making, I think it’s, it’s– the challenge is the sense making of the numbers. Yeah. Because I would just– It would be really helpful, I think, because of the way, Pinton is also talking about it. They’re looking at this operating component where it’s like, okay, those are really the areas where we can control.

3:08:28 You know, we have the discretionary control of making cuts, you know, where we really dealt with the debt. You know, we dealt with a number of other areas. Mm-hmm. So I think that’s very helpful, and I think that’s, it’s, you know, when we’re thinking about, okay, you know, how are we gonna make cuts? It’s really useful to kind of separate the operating component from the other components that are more- Oh, I agree. You know? This, this is how we have it. Okay. So- But we’re only voting these pieces, which I’m, I’m not used to seeing. It’s usually a total budget. Yeah. You would’ve seen it that way. Okay. Okay. We’re- Yeah. Then let’s do this a little. We need to look at that. Well, whatever you think we should do, because it’s, it’s kind of like, yeah, it’s- Here’s a thought … basically counterintuitive, but we have- Oh, for sure … but we have an increase. And I think that’s- Right. That’s what the- … that’s confusing for folks. The- Just the few line items that are biggest inc- biggest- Yeah … increases- Yeah … the health, the all the benefits is shown in this

3:09:16 presentation. Well, what I’d love to hear, this is, this is my wish list, right? Just kind of in the new format, is to see the operating piece- Yeah … that for fiscal- Broken out … for fiscal ‘26 adds up to what’s in MUNIS at- Yeah … forty-seven point nine. Yeah. Right. And then for the district, forty-nine point one. You know, actually, we don’t, obviously, we don’t need the district piece, so never mind. Yeah. But just, just for that- For that. No, I- But we do have two separate MUNIS budgets, right? You’re probably throwing a lot of different numbers out there. Well, that’s right, and I think if we- So between finance, when Al presents- Yeah … and then we have to adjust our revenues to get from the one oh five down to the ninety-seven. But, but I know you have it, A- Alicia- Yeah … because, you know, obviously you’ve worked with FinCon, and, and- Yeah … we’ve been able to benefit from this. This process, I’m gonna say, is different than anywhere else I’ve seen.

3:10:01 I know. And it, it, I think, to your point- What’s dangerous- … is creating- Let’s do that … unnecessary problems. Mm-hmm. Hedging. And we’ve- Yeah. It’s all- … had some conversations that given the- Yeah … given the situation with the budget deficits and all that, we need to address that soon. Now. Well, I, I just- As a process. I think we do only because p- you know, there are discrete, discretionary components of the budget that we can actually control. Like, and people need to understand that when we have big movements with, you know, there’s a lot less to work with. Uh, and especially on the municipal side, you know, it’s, it’s, it gets pretty tight, right? And I think that’s why we have such a dispor- disproportionate deficit is because we’ve had a very tight…

3:10:48 You know, the reason we have so many cuts, for example, is because we have a very tight discretionary budget. Yeah. So let’s, let’s sort of… Oh, go ahead, Alicia. Just really, just because when you read this devotion, I just want to say we were, I have the whole schedule. So you would see, this is why I said it’s going to be hard. Like, total general government’s really a negative. Well- Right. But you can’t see it because we’re only doing these portions of budget. Well, there’s nothing. We’re not looking at enterprise funds, right? No, I’m just saying- We’re, we’re not looking at the- … you’re not looking at all the pieces. So if I’m subtracting- You’ve got to park and- Right. You’re missing so many pieces that are subtracted. No, that’s fine. I, I guess, but what we’re, I think what we’re talking about is a, you know, the disre- the discretionary operating part of the budget, right? It’s what, it’s what you sent over to us for the MUNIS two thousand, you know, fiscal year ‘26, right? Mm-hmm. And that number is, you know, is forty-seven point nine,

3:11:37 right? Uh, is what was, what we have, and we’ve been, and we’ve seen that, we’ve seen that breakdown. So I guess that’s really useful because it’s a great presentation. Can we… Yeah, let’s do this. And I think Aaron needs to go after this vote, so then we can continue. So let’s do, let’s do one thing. Let’s do this. Okay. Talk about this vote. Yeah. These numbers are good. So these numbers are good here, on here. Yeah. I think that what we are when we’re voting on this today- Yeah … we have some assumptions. We have some assumptions in here, correct? Yeah. We have, we are basing our vote on the school, contributing towards the benefit for one point five million, and we also have an assumption in here of taking out of our operating budget. It’s a little over two million dollars for waste. Now, what I think that, you know, I’d like to have a little conversation about

3:12:23 this, about what we would like to do is, I think we need to vote on the full budget before, so that waste can do, because we’re not voting on that right now, which is part of the problem, Mark. Yeah. But I think the intention here is to ask waste to put in a fee, and that we have, you know, I think that there is a con- We’ll have to talk about it, have, have conversations about also putting into our override a two million dollar, or approximately two million dollar plus override for waste so that the town members can decide whether or not they want that fee, or if they do, would like to do an override and put it back into the operating budget. So I think that that is the assumption on how we’re gonna move forward when we are making this vote, because these numbers have been calculated based on

3:13:08 those. Yeah. Look, I mean, I, I, we, we’ve discussed this, right? Already. And, it is subject, you know, the, the, the capacity for us to, to, to meet this budget is based on a successful, you know, pro, you know, implementation of a, of a, of a service fee. Um- Yeah. Yeah. And I see- So- I see Andrew sitting out here. Thank you guys for working with us. Yeah, but unless we have an alternative that we think we can- Which- … offer up at town meeting- The alternative is an override … should we, right, should we be comfortable with the idea that the people might vote, just vote with us the override by virtue of having something that they don’t agree with that’s unrelated to the budget, right?

3:13:55 It’s, you know- Well, I think we’ll give them two different options. Yeah. And if the, at least in my mind, the mechanics have to be worked out, especially with the Board of Health, because this is their purview. Right. But at least I would see possibly that they, when we do vote on our budget soon, the whole budget beyond just ours, that they could possibly implement, if they decide to do that, a trash fee. If the override goes through, they could rescind it. That way it allows the Board of Health to go forward with their contract in a timely manner, and then, and that’s so that they know they have the funding so that they can get moving on with that. Right. Well, we did talk about offering the town a choice between going forward, you know, with the health pro- trash collection programs on the one

3:14:42 hand, which saves us two million. Having them vote on that, and then having them vote on an override that’s equivalent, relating to the health, you know, relating to trash pickup and health and, and, and that, so that going forward, we have the same budget that relies on the two million, right? Yeah. But I’m raising that because, you know, I think that’s a good hedge for us and a good choice for the town that may facilitate our capacity to, to, to get a restoration on these overrides. That, that’s my-That’s my concern, sort of. You know, I mean, it’s, it’s just a concern. A-and I think we ought to talk about it now, rather than rely kind of exclusively on the health, you know, the trash

3:15:29 pickup, you know, structure. So to be clear, these numbers are based on the assumption- Yes … there are some technical mechanics that we- Yeah … need to work with the Board of Health on- Mm-hmm … to, to- To tweak it … to figure out how– the mechanics of how do we get there- Yeah … where, where we have the revenues to support what we’re doing and the revenues to support the trash. Right. But at the same time, provide options for the public. So it’s– the key thing- Yeah … is it’s a multi-step process. We, we have to take one step in the short term- Yeah, yeah … as far as the technical mechanics of the fee structure. Fair. And then the option to the public is further down the

3:16:15 path- Yeah … in June. And, and so people have to understand that it’s, it’s not taking all these steps at one time. It’s- Yeah, yeah … there’s a sequence of events that need to happen. Well, for the– for, for simplicity, simplicity’s sake, I think we’re assuming that we’re gonna be able to set up a trash collection plan that will be able to replace two million dollars- Yeah … that we would otherwise, you know, that would otherwise be in our budget. So we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re finding another source of funding. That’s fine. Yeah. Uh, and we gotta figure out what that number is, right? But I think that the trash collection program in and of itself is an entirely different… We’re int- we’re introducing a… I’m, I’m not passionate one way or the other.

3:17:01 I just think that it’s, it’s some- it’s where we ought to at least get the town to weigh in on whether, you know, we should move forward with the trash collection. We can, and, and we can, we can offer that at the town meeting. But if the– if, if we don’t get approval on that, and see, this is where I’m… The mechanics are, are tricky because I think what you’re saying, it has to follow a sequence, but we’re asking the town to approve a trash collection program in two months, really, not even a month and a half, without any consideration of a whole new program. So my only concern is how do we hedge against that so we’re not changing the departments? And I think the idea of, you know, of having, you know, another override that fills that gap, and that we ought to at least make a commitment to that so people understand that we’re not railroading just on one two-million-dollar solution. We have another two-million-dollar solution as well.

3:17:48 So why don’t we– I think, I think that sequentially, I think that when we vote on this budget, the full budget- Yep … which is the final answer that these guys need, right? We’re giving them a heads-up, I feel like, right now, and we’re making some assumptions that when we vote on that budget, we can commit to that. Sure. Does that make sense? You know, whatever, whatever, yeah. I mean, I’m just thinking, when does it make sense to do that? It feels to me, and Thatcher, you might have more experience than this, but that that would be the time to do it, to commit to the public, to the Board of Health, that we are gonna give that option of the sec-second override or full override option- Right. An over-an override option … option for the trash. Yep. So as a heads-up to this board, just looking at the calendar of events, and it’s not been a tradition that the select board does that one comprehensive vote.

3:18:35 But I, I– my advice to the board, it needs to be done, and it is the typical process- Mm-hmm … anywhere else I’ve been, that the select– because the select board has the, the ultimate authority of determining what is the budget that’s submitted to the town meeting. That is best done and communicated in a one final vote, entirety of budget, i-i-in, in setting that as what is said. Mm-hmm. Right? And that, that’s typical. But that gives also the opportunity for the mechanics that need to be worked out to make this all work. And given that FinCom is scheduled Super Saturday- Yeah … we may need to look at- Look, I, I, I think the way I look at it is, look, there’s a, there’s a, there’s

3:19:22 decisions around– we have to figure out what the funding mechanism is- Yeah … beforehand because it affects the decisions around- Yeah … the investment, you know, that we need to make in our town. Okay? Yeah. And I think we have the basic idea that we’ve got two million that we’re talking about here, right? And so this budget is predicated on two million dollars missing. So that’s fine. You know, and I see… Look, maybe you– we’ll talk about it and, and… But I think there’s probably two ways to do that. You take a vote on the trash collection, and you take a vote on the override, you know, and then just figure out, okay, how do we get that two million into the, you know, into the number so we can drive the budget forward, all right? Um, and there’s risks associated with both, in terms of what

3:20:07 the town does, but, yeah. And I know you’re pushing for, like, a comprehensive budget vote, right? But many towns have also done menu voting. And- Well, that’s- I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about … that is not what you’re talking about? No, he’s talking about- What I’m talking about is, again, the, it’s the authority of the select board to determine- Yes, of course. Yeah … the operating budget submitted to town meeting. Yeah. Marla hasn’t traditionally done a single final vote to do that. It’s more of a compilation of consensus. Um, and what I’m trying to work through is that we need to f- to, to figure out the exact mechanics that need to play out to make the scenario of operating

3:20:53 budget and trash fees to work, and it has to be timely. Yeah. And that’s why the heads-up is- Yeah, I agree. I agree … I think our benchmark that we wanna try to achieve that is before the FinCom sits down, because the whole idea of the FinCom. Now, we- Right … we haven’t talked to FinCom. This is new information. But the point being is the trash fee component is– needs to be worked out in a short time. And then the override option-Would be worked out following that Um, look, as I said, I mean, that’s, that’s great. I just think that I think a lot of people in town would expect because it’s a new program

3:21:39 and, and, you know, that you would want to at least get the town and the appropriation body to say, “Yeah, we agree with that, and let’s set up a enterprise fund or a revolver to segregate the capital that comes in from the fees.” Right? So they– there is– there’s more complexity to it than I’m afraid we can solve sequentially in two months. That’s my only concern. And that there’s the, you know, like a, like a moral hazard, I guess, you know, because it’s like, you know, do you, do you want to approve this thing without the town saying, you know, “Hey, let’s do it. Yeah, we, we have a consensus around it.” Again, the risk is that if the town is like, “Well, you know, that’s, that’s kind of… I don’t know. We haven’t had a chance to talk about it, so I’m not going to vote for this override,” you know, that’s the risk we take.

3:22:25 And, and I think we, we, we manage that risk by having another option to vote for, right? Yeah. Right. But yeah- We don’t have to vote for it. It just implements automatically, right? There are other options to vote for it other than the trash. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. No, and that’s, that’s fine. That’s fine. I think we’re all saying the same thing. Yeah. No, no, but I– it’s, it’s really important to clarify. But it says- The default would be- Yeah. Well, the default would be an overall- With your, with your version to the, the fees. Yeah. If an override for the trash doesn’t sail- Doesn’t sail …then the town- Well, no. Then we have, then we have an override for two million dollars because that’s what we’re counting on there, I guess subject to your final number. So there’s two million dollars that we’re counting on in this budget based on trash collection. If trash collection doesn’t fly, for whatever reason, we need

3:23:11 a two million dollar override to fund the hole in this budget. Yes. Well, we’re taking it out of this budget. That’s what we’re saying. This is out of it. But, but– Right. But if the town says, “No, don’t take it out of the budget, keep it in the budget,” now we have a hole of two million dollars. If they want to keep it in the budget, they have to pass the override. The town is going to budget. Yeah. So if they want it in the budget, let’s just keep this as simple as possible, is how I see it. If they want it in the budget, they have to vote for the trash override. Let’s call it the trash override. Let’s call it trash override. And if it’s not, if that doesn’t pass, there will be fees. Yeah. A hundred percent. Okay. A hundred percent. Yeah, I think so. All right. Perfect. No, but well, the key thing is not to- Sorry. That’s- Right. Okay. The key thing is to have a consistent- Yeah …you know, when we approve this budget, that we have a mechanism to, to, to- Yes. We just- Okay. Okay, fair.

3:23:56 All right. We have, like, everybody saying the same thing. I guess, I guess we are. I, I, you know, I guess we are. But, but on the other hand, it sounds like we’re voting on a budget that’s contingent on the basis of the f- of the, of the fee, of the fee level, right? Of the, of the trash collection. At this time. Yes. And then the option to change that- Should we wait to vote on this then? Uh- We can. We can. We gotta have, we gotta have a budget vote. Okay. So it, but it’ll get through. Yeah. Or- So- All right …so you’re voting on an operating budget in the short term, and then immediately following, and scheduled for Wednesday, is looking at override options. But- Apparently …the idea is- Okay …that, you know, that’s for June- Mm-hmm …when the override happens. Should we just vote on the whole town budget on Wednesday as well, since we’re

3:24:41 meeting? I wouldn’t– I don’t know. Wednesday, I mean- Okay. What do you want to do? We’re looking at- Like Friday? Something like that. Okay. All right. So let’s just keep where we are, and if things adjust, you’ll let us know. Yeah. All right. If I could have a motion made and seconded to approve the following department budgets for fiscal year twenty twenty-seven. Moderator in the amount of a hundred dollars. Select- Selectboard department, seven hundred and twenty-three thousand one hundred and seventy-six dollars. Finance committee, six thousand three hundred and seventy-five dollars. Reserve fund, four hundred and fourteen thousand. Finance department, one million seven hundred and seventy-eight thousand eight hundred and five dollars. Assessors- assessing department, three hundred and eighty-eight thousand and three dollars. Town council, two hundred and seventy-eight thousand. Parking clerk, eight thousand four hundred.

3:25:27 Planning board in the amount of seven- one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Public building department, one hundred and seventy-eight thousand six seventy-one. Human resources department, two hundred and ninety-three thousand four eighty. Community development and planning department, an amount of two o- three thousand six eighty-two– six hundred and eighty-two dollars. Police department in five million two hundred and sixteen thousand nine hundred and fourteen dollars. Fire, six million sixteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars. Building inspection department, six hundred and thirty-three thousand three thirty. Seal of weight and measures, two thousand one hundred. Animal inspector, twenty-four hundred. Public works, two million three hundred and sixty-nine thousand seven hundred and seventy-one dollars. Snow removal, a hundred and five thousand. Council on aging, three hundred and eighty-seven thousand three hundred and

3:26:15 seventy-seven dollars. Veterans benefits, a hundred and fifty-four thousand eight hundred and seventy-two. Memorial and veterans day, ninety-five hundred. Maturing bonds and interest, an amount of eleven million ninety-eight thousand three hundred and ninety-eight dollars. Other government in the amount of twenty-four million nine sixty-five thousand ninety-two dollars. And harbors and water enterprise, amount of one million three hundred and nineteen thousand five hundred. So moved. Can I have a second, please? Second. All in favor? Looks like we have four in favor. Okay. Um, if I could, um- Yeah, go ahead. I, I’m, I’m assuming… Okay.

3:27:03 I’m counting on the fact that we’re gonna get the four point eight, because we have a four point eight m- million dollar deficit that we’re trying to cover. Um, so we’re speaking, you know, I’m assuming that that reconciliation will also– that we can work, that I can work through that rest of the reconciliation to under two on that. Yes. Because who knows? I might have to explain it, you know, at town meeting or wherever. Yes. With what we just voted, that when it- With what- When it rolls up and- Yeah. What I’d like to do is know– I’d like to stick apples with apples so that we have– are looking exclusively at the operating budget going forward. So if I can, yeah, I just want to be able to- I have that. One second. I, I know you do. It’s just, it’s just that we’re- Maybe if you could- Yeah … if you could distribute it to the bachelor- Yeah … for us to all look at and not deliberate on, so that we can

3:27:50 reconcile that. And then the event- Yeah. Let’s, let’s- Because then we have the right to return this. No. Correct. I mean, I, I mean, w- works for me, guys. Yeah, but I, I mean, clearly would like to see that. Look, we have a couple contracts. Um, we have the poli- police department lease. This was, article seven in twenty twenty-five town warrant. Um, it is an amount for a total of seventy-three thousand seven hundred and twenty-four dollars and forty-three cents in installments annually of twenty-four thousand five hundred and seventy-four and eighty-one cents. This is the lease of a hybrid Ford Interceptor with a vendor. If I get a motion to approve a thirty-six-month lease for a hybrid Ford Interceptor and authorize the chair to sign the lease on behalf of the board. So moved. Can we have a little- Yeah, you can have, absolutely, you can have do whatever you want. Um, on the lease, maybe Dennis knows.

3:28:38 Is, is that a lease to own, or at the end of the three years, does it return or- All commercial leases are leases to own. Okay. You get it at the end. Great. And this is a replacement then. This is a replacement. So we had– we, we lost a vehicle, and we’ll probably get insurance, right? We get insurance coverage. So this is replacing the damaged. Oh, no. No. This is our original purchase. Okay. This is- Okay … a new vehicle? Yes. So this is- Yeah. This is mine … this is more like debt funding, right? Yeah. So it’s kinda like you just- We’re just making three- Yeah. Spreading the payments over the life of the- Over the life of the vehicle. Right. Not, not a lease. It sounds like a lease. It’s a– Yeah. Yep. Okay. All in favor? Looks like we got unanimous. And the next one is contract twenty-six dash

3:29:24 fifty-four. This we provided, a couple weeks ago. We approved the transfer for the money, and this is for the audio and visual, basically for t- town meeting with Boston Light and Sound. Any questions about that we have to be served? Yeah. In, in, in just– I was– This is actually the event itself. This isn’t a pur- this is not a purchase of stuff. Right. We’re not… Maybe in the future, we will. Yeah. But- Got it. Yeah … in this field order- This, this- … in order to improve the audio-visual autonomy- This is- … in the field hub … we, we had a serious problem with that. Yep. We’re, we’re, we’re going to the field house. We need to get it right. Definitely. Uh, you know, this is to get it right. Correct. For one. God help us. Yeah. But I think it’s done by. Yeah. It, it was a, a twenty-four-hour turnaround last year. Yeah. Yeah. So it was still very, very-

3:30:10 Yeah. Considering what we’re dealing with, it was pretty good. Yeah. Yep. If I could have motion to approve contract twenty-six dash fifty-four to provide audio and visual equipment between Town and Boston Light and Sound Inc, and authorize chair to sign agreement on behalf of board. So moved. I have second? Second. All in favor? Ten in favor. All right. Thank you. Good. Um, select board announcements. Excellent. Could I have a mo- Oh, go ahead. The ego package, the ego package. Well, I just, I just wanted to– I just, wanna say as, as Harry Christians- Christensen would say, to keep, all those people who are deployed in harm’s way in the United States Armed Forces, that we keep them in– keep us– keep them in our prayers. Amen. Absolutely. All right. All right. Would you– Could I have a motion to adjourn this meeting?

3:30:56 So moved. All right. Thank you. Second. All right. All in favor? All right. Thank you all. Thanks.