[Speaker 4] (0:29 - 1:57)
Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the November 17th, 2021. Last slide, please.

All right, thanks for joining us. We are live here at the high school in room B129. You can join us if you're online by Zoom or on Facebook live.

And we're also broadcasting on government access TV. And it will be recorded and available on the town website later. So if anyone has questions that they wanted to ask or comments they wanna make, you are welcome to, obviously, we'll have public comment here.

And I'll be sure to try to check my email. I will. We usually have public comment first.

So you can either make your comments during public comment, or I will try to also check my email. My email is my first letter of my first name and my last name, ptitcom at swamscottma.gov. And again, we'll try to check that for questions or comments as well during the meeting. So we are going to start the meeting as we always do with the Pledge of Allegiance, if you'll join us.

Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:59 - 2:12)
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Speaker 4] (2:17 - 3:58)
So on this evening's agenda, we're going to have public comment. And we're going to try something new to have the town administrators report up front and give a little more space as needed for that discussion, any questions that might arise from that. And it might relate to new and old business as well.

So we're going to try doing it up front, see how that goes. Then we have new and old business. We are going to have some updates from the town administrator, a review of the Verizon agreement and a potential vote, a recommendation and update on the I&I regulations, which we had seen initially several months ago, a vote to approve the precinct map, a discussion and possible vote regarding the fall town meeting warrant articles, and a vote possibly to close, well, we have to close the warrant tonight, and then a vote on the virtual town meeting relative to the warrant. And then the consent agenda and select board time. So we are going to start with public comment.

As I mentioned, I do ask that public comment is non-political in nature and also does not address any personnel matters. If there are any personnel matters that are a concern to anyone who'd like to make public comment, you are welcome to reach out to the town administrator or one of the select board members and we can hear your concerns offline, privately. So with that, is there anyone here that would like to make public comment?

Is there?

[Speaker 9] (3:59 - 4:23)
I have- You can just state your name. Yes, this is Mary Elizabeth Reddish of Marblehead, and I have a learning disability and I brought some visual aids. So I wanna thank Polly and Sean for inviting us here tonight to talk about the protests in Swanscot.

[Speaker 4] (4:24 - 4:33)
I just want to invite you, we do have a camera that can, that will cover you at the first- Well, I need to look at them because they're a point of reference.

[Speaker 9] (4:34 - 4:37)
They're a point of reference for me.

[Speaker 4] (4:39 - 4:43)
But I'm not able to actually see them either. You can turn around, honey.

[Speaker 9] (4:45 - 9:50)
I've had COVID twice. I had pulps on my lungs. I have stage four kidney disease and I'm a domestic violence survivor.

I am an American citizen. My rights are protected under free speech. And I wanted to thank you guys all so much.

It's not on. Is it on? Can you guys hear me?

Thanks, honey. So we've had a problem here in Swanscot for quite some time. And that is the problem right there.

The basis of free speech and the Trump bloody head, right? And the language that's being used in the square by the parents of this community and by the children of this community. And we can go at it for another 18 months, right?

We can with what's going on, the harassment, the bullying, the vulgarity of Black Lives Matter. They have attacked us repeatedly. There have been death threats made to us.

I had to go all the way down to Taunton after being satanically threatened. And they named the Taunton police as part of their coven. I have the documents with me.

The following week, the Swanscot police and Chief Cabal, or Cabal, right? Cabal, that's what we're talking about, the Cabal. They had my car towed.

And the citation was 9B. 9B is not displaying your plates. They took my plates.

And we have all of this on video. We have half the town of Swanscot coming out, calling us the C word, using the F word, the N word. We are not racist.

We are American citizens. We are Christians and we are patriots. We can go at this another 18 months with the hurt and the hate and the lies of Black Lives Matter, the racism, the language, the vulgarity, or we can come together as a community, one nation under God, one nation under God.

That's what's missing here, right? God, love thy neighbor. We don't have to like each other.

We don't have to agree with one another. We don't have to like someone's hydrangeas. We don't.

But we can all find some common ground to love and accept each other, one nation under God and stop the hate, the hurt, the vulgarity that is coming out of this community to us, Christian patriots. That's it. And I'm gonna invite everyone here to think about that long and hard and how we got here.

And if we all want change, we have to be the change. It doesn't happen behind closed doors. It doesn't happen with random phone calls and threats and bomb threats and cutting the brakes on my car.

I have spent thousands of dollars this summer protecting myself from Rita, Heidi, Michael, the Swampscot police, the gaslighting, Sandy Marcus in Marblehead, my dog's been attacked. All these things have been witnessed and documented. Legal bills, Swampscot District Court, I'm a frequent flyer there now, trying to protect myself from the racism and the hate and the lies of Black Lives Matter.

If you have one of those signs in your yard, you are racist and you are part of the problem. This is not okay. Those words are fighting words and that's how we got here.

I put that sign up there of Kathy Griffith holding Trump's bloody head. How do you think that Barron Trump at 10 years old felt about seeing his father all over social media with his dad's dripping bloody head? How do you think he felt?

Ask yourself that. And I would really like you guys to call a special town meeting where there can be a vote and a discussion, all weekend if it happens, to peacefully, lovingly, humanely, with God present, to hammer this out so that people are allowed to have their First Amendment rights and free speech and love one another. What does it say?

Love thy neighbor, right? Doesn't that say that in the Bible, love thy neighbor? I don't hate any of you.

I've never even met any of you. I don't hate anyone because the color of the skin, what religion they practice. That's the problem.

That's the crust of the problem. We've all been lied to and people are paying double money to perpetuate this hate in this community. And it needs to stop collectively from taxpayers, from moms, from dads, from seniors.

Senior citizens have been attacked. We have all of this on video. We are not the problem.

We all are the problem. God bless and I'm looking forward to coming back.

[Speaker 4] (9:50 - 10:21)
Thank you. Is there anyone else that'd like to make public comment? I will check my email quickly.

Is there anyone online, Allie, that you can see that has their hand raised? Okay. Any further comment then?

All set? All right, we're moving on in the agenda to the town administrator's report.

[Speaker 1] (10:24 - 11:52)
Thank you, Polly. So we continue to monitor cases in Swampskate of COVID-19. We have the holiday season coming up.

So I wanna really encourage everybody to continue to be careful and take steps to really protect yourself and your family from the transmission of the Delta virus. We are seeing some pass-through cases and certainly wanna keep everybody healthy and safe through the holiday season. So tonight we have a number of agenda items that we will be going over.

The infiltration and inflow presentation has been developed by Gino Kresser, our Assistant Town Administrator and DPW Director, and Dave Peterson, an engineer from Kleinfelder. This really follows a presentation that we gave a few months ago on really establishing a best practice from an environmental standpoint. We will be discussing an update on our library director search.

Our police chief search, Chief Kurz, is patiently waiting on Zoom to share that conversation. And we will get into a tax classification valuation update. We have a member of the Board of Assessors here, Mr. Sheehan, and also our new assessor, Ben Strait, and Town Treasurer Patrick Luddy will join us for that discussion. I'm pleased to report that we have finalized the negotiation for our solid waste contract. Sir, can I pause for a second?

[Speaker 4] (11:52 - 12:00)
Could we all just mute our phones so that we're not distracted by constant notifications? That applies to everybody, including us. Thanks.

[Speaker 1] (12:02 - 13:46)
So we've spent a number of months negotiating an extension for the JRM contract, and I'm really thankful for the work of the Solid Waste Committee. We made a number of changes, and at this point, I'd like to schedule a meeting with JRM and members of the Solid Waste and Recycling Committee to meet with the board over the next few weeks to discuss some of the goals that the committee has outlined and really the partnership that we can bring with JRM. There are a lot of good ideas, and I think it's a great opportunity for us right now to kind of set some expectations.

I want to take this time to thank all of the Swampscot citizens and our veterans that came out on Veterans Day last week. It was a wonderful day, and certainly seeing Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and members of the community take time on that day to celebrate and thank our veterans is a real wonderful part of citizenship in Swampscot. We have a lot of really great work happening in and around our veterans programs and really am excited about opportunities for the town to really continue to be partners as we seek to enhance services for our veterans.

A lot of upcoming recreational events happening. We have a number of programs going on at our senior center. You can check our website and really reach out and really get involved with a number of fun opportunities.

So I want to wish everybody a happy and safe Thanksgiving. I know it's going to be a busy travel. That's my report.

[Speaker 4] (13:46 - 14:02)
Thank you. Questions on Sean's report? I have one.

With respect to the solid waste contract, and I apologize, Peter, I think you were gonna follow up. I just want to make sure that's set in the additional language.

[Speaker 1] (14:03 - 14:04)
Has been.

[Speaker 4] (14:04 - 14:05)
Is included in that.

[Speaker 2] (14:05 - 14:10)
Well, I know it was sent to me, but I haven't actually looked at it. So yes, John, follow it up. It's on my desk.

[Speaker 1] (14:11 - 14:18)
Yeah, town council included it in a draft of the amendment. And so it's included.

[Speaker 4] (14:24 - 14:42)
Okay, so the, I was, sorry, I'm thinking the next thing also involves your town administrator report. So you were going to provide us an update on the police chief search, which you just touched upon. And so we want to welcome Chief Kurz, who I understand is available on Zoom.

[Speaker 7] (14:44 - 14:45)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (14:45 - 14:47)
Hi, Chief, how are you?

[Speaker 7] (14:47 - 14:49)
I'm well, how are you folks?

[Speaker 4] (14:49 - 14:51)
Good, thank you. Thanks for joining us.

[Speaker 7] (14:52 - 14:53)
Sure, my pleasure.

[Speaker 1] (14:54 - 15:35)
Good evening, Chief. So we have engaged MRI management resources to help support some of the recruitment and coordination for the police chief search. And so Chief Kurz is ably supported some of those responsibilities over the years, but he's already begun to reach out and get some community input and feedback.

So I've asked the chief to just share a little bit of the schedule and scope of activity that we can expect over the next few weeks to months. So Chief.

[Speaker 7] (15:35 - 19:03)
Thanks, Sean. So MRI has been really specialized in helping communities identify the police chief that they want. And what the process that we're engaged in is that while I've been here, I've been developing some of the skillsets, some of the traits that the community appears to be looking for.

And I did that through three community meetings, which allowed me to gain some insight. But I will say that that's really one of the positive things about my being here, I suppose, is that we could do this, because it's not common in an MRI process to be able to give that much detail and that much engagement with the community and setting up some of these desirable qualities of the next candidate. So we've put together a challenge statement, a profile statement, put together a profile of the community, the department, the budget, that kind of demographic information that the candidate would look at.

It will go live on Friday, which will be nationwide. And then we'll start leaning through some of the resumes. We're creating a number of essay questions that can narrow the group down from the people that we choose that appear to have the qualifications.

And many of those essay questions will really be based on some of the community engagement that we had. Past that, we'll do some telephone interviews, narrow it down even further, and then determine a group of people that should come in for an assessment center, which will also involve the community. Sean and I will talk about some of the exercises.

I certainly don't want to do that here and give anyone a leg up on some of the assessment center exercises that will happen, but I can assure the Swanshaw community that they will be engaged and be asked to be involved with that process. And then hopefully we'll give you a couple of candidates as to, that are qualified to be your next police chief. And then you somewhat take it from there and do what you want to do with the next process and determine who it is that you want to make an offer to.

Then MRI will assist you in doing that negotiations, that the background on the final candidate. So it's a solid process. It's proven itself well in many communities, not only, well, throughout New England.

But I'm really pleased to say that with my being here and having those three community meetings, it's been that more insightful and that more allowed us to be a little bit more fine tuning with who should be here. So, plus I'm gonna do some of the stuff on my, money always matters. And I know that because I'm here, we were able to, because I'll be working somewhat on your dime already, we were able to make this a more attractive price for this process.

So we're pleased about that too. I'll entertain any questions.

[Speaker 1] (19:09 - 19:14)
Questions? All right.

[Speaker 2] (19:14 - 19:31)
Do you mind just actually maybe updating us a little bit about the non-chief with the new system outside of civil service? I would just be interested. And I know that there were some vacancies, not only in the police department, but also in the fire department.

I'd be interested in kind of just hearing the initial steps in that and how everyone feels that's going.

[Speaker 7] (19:33 - 21:41)
Well, I'm assuming that you want me to do that, Sean? Sure, Chief, that would be great. We being the union and the administration myself and Captain Cable worked on developing a selection process that is based on best practices and will also engage the community in identifying the candidate.

So that's all put together. It's been sent to legal counsel and has been also approved or stamped with approval, I guess, that it's a good practice. I was glad to hear that.

It's been used pretty much nationwide, but it was a great exercise with the union membership so that they understand what's going on. One of the things we hate about change is change. And what we hate about change is no change.

And this is something new. So we want to engage the department. In the process of that, I can also assure you that part of the selection process will include citizens to be on the oral board process.

And so it's designed to be not only transparent, but make sure that the community has some foot, some input, some significant input on identifying those people who they want to serve them. So we're all set to go. There's an add-out that we developed that's ready to move.

We're working with a company to identify several processes that do a written test. And then we'll go from there with a physical agility test that is required to get into the Massachusetts Post Academy. And then there'll be an oral board and hopefully we'll be able to make some recommendations to the town administrator for a conditional offer of employment.

[Speaker 1] (21:43 - 22:54)
Thank you. So a similar process is underway with the Swanscourt Fire Department. Chief Archer had worked with the union to really go over a recruitment and a testing tool that would help with identifying individuals looking to serve in the fire department.

I think it's important to share that both Chief Kurz and Chief Archer have taken steps to reach out to different groups and populations that have not been represented in some of the application pools. And so we've been looking at different universities and different programs and different communities that really would have individuals that would likely be a great area for recruitment. So I think this is exciting for the town, but also for the departments.

We have individuals that are really ready to go off and serve as liaisons and ambassadors, really seeking individuals to wear these uniforms.

[Speaker 4] (22:56 - 23:10)
Great. Anything else with respect to the police chief recruitment? Great, thank you, Chief Kurz.

We appreciate you being here and giving us the update.

[Speaker 1] (23:10 - 23:11)
My pleasure.

[Speaker 4] (23:12 - 23:12)
Have a great night.

[Speaker 1] (23:12 - 23:13)
Thanks, Chief.

[Speaker 4] (23:13 - 23:25)
Thanks, bye-bye. And Sean, up next is the update on the library director search, which I understand is something you're just gonna be updating on your own.

[Speaker 1] (23:25 - 24:18)
Sure. I did speak with Ellen Winkler today, the chair of the Swanscot Board of Trustees. They will be coordinating the search process.

They have engaged a consultant. They're working out the final details of that, but they do expect that that search to begin sometime after Thanksgiving. Essentially, that'll be about a 30-day period to post a position.

We expect resumes in sometime right around the beginning of the new year. Interviews likely will be through January and February, and it's our hope that sometime in March or April we'll have a new library director, but certainly that will involve a process where, similar to the police chief search, there'll be an assessment center and an opportunity to have some community input.

[Speaker 4] (24:21 - 24:22)
At what point?

[Speaker 1] (24:23 - 24:43)
Likely, as we post a position and look at the assessment center, there will be opportunities to have some community input through both of those processes.

[Speaker 4] (24:47 - 24:56)
So, I'm just curious, procedurally, how does your role fit in with the board's role in terms of putting out the search?

[Speaker 1] (24:56 - 26:03)
So, the town administrator makes a recommendation to the select board for the appointment of a library director, but the board of trustees act as the search committee. So, there's really three different roles, and so the board of trustees will make a recommendation to the town administrator, and they, under the charter, are required to recommend three individuals. I've discussed this with the chair of the board of trustees, and I think it's important to have community engagement in that process and really have a good representation of citizens in Swanscot, but perhaps even some elected officials, some continuity through the process, I think would be helpful.

So, we're gonna work out a few of those details and certainly really seek to get some input so that, just like the police chief search, we have a good sense of really what the community would be looking for in a new director for the library.

[Speaker 4] (26:05 - 26:20)
Questions about this update? All right, thank you, Sean. So, we did not, I think we're skipping.

I'm just skipping in this box, just under three.

[Speaker 15] (26:20 - 26:21)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (26:22 - 26:38)
All right. I think we're skipping the review because we did not receive the agreement, so we'll take that up at a future meeting. And that leads us to an update and possible recommendation on the I&I regulation.

[Speaker 1] (26:38 - 26:41)
At this point, I wanna...

[Speaker 4] (26:41 - 26:42)
Gino is here.

[Speaker 1] (26:42 - 26:56)
We've got Dave Peterson and Gino Cresta. I think we have their presentation that we can bring up on the screen. Dave, do you wanna?

I think Dave's gonna wanna work.

[Speaker 3] (26:59 - 27:26)
Yeah, that'll work. Thanks. Is it on the computer up there, Ellie, or?

Yeah. All right, good, thanks. We'll see.

So, this is your presentation. I can do the next one after you. Sure.

[Speaker 4] (27:42 - 27:55)
Just wanna take a moment and remind everybody of sort of the code of conduct of meetings and not insulting directly or passively any of the town staff or volunteers in the room. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (28:35 - 37:42)
All right, thank you. So, yeah, my name is David Peterson. I'm a civil engineer with Kleinfelder, and Gino and I and Sean have actually been talking a little bit about, I guess, a continuation of an I&I offset program, which I know the town has been working on for quite some time.

And I was invited to come in just, I think, to give a little bit of, I guess, maybe engineering perspective on the program and some additional recommendations. I've been working with I&I for basically 25 years, so it's something that I'm, I've seen a lot of these types of programs. I'll walk through the slides, and Gino, anytime you wanna step in and things like that, but this is information and ultimately, I think, wants to be a recommendation on the policy.

So, just before we move on, just a couple of these images on the front cover. You know, we've been working with Gino for a while on some of the sewer issues that are in Swampscot. Swampscot has, and we'll see it later on a slide, a lot of very, very, very old clay sewer pipes, which are brittle and subject to deterioration over time.

And that photograph in the lower right is just one example of one we've seen over the years. When you invest in your sewer system and you renew it, and the town's been doing this on the water side for a long time, you can get, you know, effectively a brand new pipe within a pipe using a cured-in-place pipe lining, and that's what that white circle is basically, what kind of a new renewed pipe looks like. The last image, the third image, is what flow actually looks like in the town when it rains.

So this is a two-inch rainstorm just this summer where the flow can actually go four to five times what it normally is, and it can actually take 10 plus days for it to come back to normal. And that's really not what's supposed to happen in a sewer system. You really not want to see any response to a wet weather event in an ideal world.

You can advance the slide, please. So I did want to give a little bit of, like, an introduction as to what infiltration inflow is. I understand not everybody thinks about these things as often as I do.

How big of an issue is II in Swampscot? That's something that, really, through this process, I think, has been looked at more so than maybe in prior years. And why do we care?

Why do we want to remove it? And the idea of an offset policy, what are the goals of an offset policy? What are you trying to accomplish by introducing a policy into this discussion?

And the revenue that might be generated through such a policy, how do you calculate that revenue? What are the methodologies that are looked at? And what's the current recommendation, I guess, right now?

So if we just move on to the next slide. So in really simplistic terms, II is clean water, not wastewater or sewer, that gets into your sewer system that you don't want it there. It creates all sorts of problems.

So there's two terms, infiltration and inflow. Infiltration is essentially water that's in the ground, groundwater that gets into your sewer system. And inflow is water that gets into your sewer system only when it's raining, as a result of rain.

And there's a multitude of pathways for II to get from outside your sewer into your sewer. And this diagram on the right is a very convenient diagram to show all the various pathways, but it can really be connections between your rainwater, stormwater system to your sewer system that should have never been there in the first place. It just got basically installed incorrectly.

Or it can be through defects in the system, through pipes and cracks and offset joints and things like that. A notorious issue with clay pipe is tree roots. Tree roots actually will grow into the pipe and kind of seek the wastewater that's in the sewer.

And that can actually exacerbate existing tracks and make it worse. Next slide. So what is the scale of the II issue here in Swampscot?

And we try to do it over the course of the next few slides, trying to discuss it and put the information out there. But ultimately, II has a lot of problems. It creates a lot of issues.

First off, it robs your sewer system of capacity. So by removing capacity, it means that you can't have as many sanitary hookups. And some towns in Swampscot, thankfully is not in this case.

Some towns have a moratorium where they can't allow a new sewer permit or they can't bring a new business into town because the II situation is so bad. You know, thankfully Swampscot has never been in that situation. And I don't anticipate they will be anytime soon, especially with a program like this.

Secondary is cost for treatment. So this may be the number one or number two issue that we'll talk about is the cost. So a lot of the flow that ends up in the sewer system gets pumped to the Linn Water and Sewer Commission's wastewater treatment plant.

And that's not free. That gets paid for by Swampscot, by the tax base. And that's a cost that we're really sensitive to that we wanna try to reduce and eliminate through a policy like this.

Finally, water quality at the beaches. I have some involvement with the King's Beach Project. I'm very aware of the water quality issues that are going on.

It's a huge issue. And by taking capacity up in the sewer system, you actually can push sewer out of your sewers and into the same types of pathways that we're trying to get rid of to send sewer to the drain. I don't wanna get on a huge tangent on that here, but it's definitely related.

And we've done inspections over the years where you can actually see what happens when you have a surcharged sewer system and it can back up into the drain system. So the next few slides will go through the sewer age and material of the system. What quantity of II do we think exists?

What happens when it's raining? And what's the water quality impacts? Do you have a question?

Yeah. Oh, the algae. Go ahead, Jeff.

Okay. Yep. Go ahead, Ali.

You can change the slide. So I think this is information I presented before in prior meetings, but the age of the pipes in Swampstead are very old. So 51% are older than 90 years.

And collectively, 75% is older than 60 years. Now, sewer pipes these days, they say can last 100 years. But a lot of that has to do with what's going on to the sewer pipe after it's installed.

So if you have a sewer pipe that gets disturbed over time, so it could be nearby construction could sort of disturb the soil that it's sitting on. The pipe might be shallow. So like large trucks that drive down the roads over it create vibrations.

Those sewer pipes are subject to conditions they're not necessarily designed for over a long period of time. And they'll fail sooner than expected. So you have those sort of conditions where we have old pipe.

It's a very, very densely developed community with a lot of utilities. And you dig, you know, National Grid comes and they dig a gas pipe somewhere and all of a sudden they're disturbing a sewer pipe nearby. So we've seen that very clearly in some of the work that we've done over the years.

And you combine that, the fact that it's old, with the fact that two thirds of the pipe is made out of clay. And if you think of clay like a, you know, a clay pot that you might just drop on the floor, you know, that's probably gonna break pretty easily. Of course, this pipe's not that brittle, right?

This pipe is meant to be sturdier. It's vitrified, which means it's denser. However, it is still pretty subject to cracking over time as, you know, the photograph that we showed indicates.

Another thing about clay pipe is that, of the vintage that's in town, is that there's a lot of joints. Basically, that means when they installed the sewer, they were like pretty short sections of sewer and they installed them. And so you have a lot of joints over a small length.

And that invites a lot of opportunity for tree roots to get in, for joints to become offset, for cracking and breaking and basically for pathways for AI to come into the system.

[Speaker 4] (37:43 - 38:04)
Can I just ask a question? Okay, so asbestos cement, I guess, only 2%, but slightly concerning. And then I guess, where was that identified?

And also, how do we not know 18%? What is, like, it's a combination of different, what do you mean unknown? Like, how is that possible, I guess?

[Speaker 3] (38:05 - 38:21)
Well, so, I mean, there's a history to, you know, Gino's department put together their GIS system, which basically identifies materials and a lot of that was done based on, I would say, paper records, Gino? Yep, yep.

[Speaker 4] (38:21 - 38:29)
Just gotta guess and then just say unknown. Unknown, yeah. But the older they are, the more likely, obviously, that it's gonna, yeah.

Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (38:32 - 40:12)
Next slide, Ali. Okay, so the quantity of AI. So this is, this information here is based on 2018, 2019 and 2020 water use records and pump station records.

So the town's wastewater, all of it gets pumped to Lynn Water and Sewer Commission through the Humphrey Street pump station. It's right by the, you know, police station. And so there's two data sets out there.

There's the water consumption and then there's the wastewater that's pumped out of town. And it's not necessarily a one for one. People will use water and, you know, they'll, you know, wash their cars or they'll irrigate with it and things like that.

However, in Swampscott, a lot of homeowners have an irrigation meter that is metered separately from water. So just kind of a, this is sort of a back of the envelope exercise, I'd call it, where you're looking at your water consumed and how much water is leaving town. The difference between what's leaving town and what's consumed is effectively AI.

It's water that's getting into your sewer system that shouldn't be there. And when you look at the last three complete calendar years of data, it's quite a lot, it's a lot. I mean, we averaged 58% of it is AI, which is a lot.

We, you know, in New England, we do AI studies all the time and, you know, 35, 40, 45%, not all that uncommon. 58% was a little bit higher than what I've seen. A little bit higher?

Quite a bit higher, yeah, quite a bit higher. Difference to the underdrain. Yeah, so.

[Speaker 4] (40:12 - 40:13)
So what, Gino, sorry?

[Speaker 3] (40:14 - 55:39)
Yeah, so what Gino is talking about is the second bullet here is the, there's an underdrain system in Swabscott. The small, I apologize for the small graphic, but basically the sewers were installed so such a long time ago that the technique for installing in the groundwater was to install an underdrain system first. So it's basically a pipe that's lower than your sewer pipe and it's, these days it can be perforated, they install those in your house as like a foundation drain.

But back then, they might have just laid it with like, not even like sealing the joints and things like that. So the water would actually enter that underdrain and flow out of the trench and kind of partially dewater the area they're trying to install the new sewer pipe in. So this isn't the entirety of Swabscott, I actually don't know how many miles of underdrain you have.

It's probably less than 10% is my guess. But the, you basically have an underdrain system right next to a sewer system. And over the years that Swabscott's been, you know, working with the water quality issue at the beach and things like that, that underdrain system is basically as contaminated as the sewer, more or less.

So what is happening is this underdrain is being diverted to the Humphrey Street pump station and it's getting pumped to Lynn Water and Sewer Commission. So that entire system, or maybe not the entire system, but a big chunk of that system is being treated by Lynn Water and Sewer, but it's intended to be just like a drainage system. So that partially might explain why we're at 58%.

The other thing I wanted to note was that the, in the graph on the right, the red line is the percent of II as a proportion to base flow. And you can see from 2018 to 19 to 20, it's going down, which is a great sign. And I think if I had to guess, I'd attribute it to the work that Gino was doing with, you know, sewer restoration work that's been ongoing for quite a few years.

And that's something that we, was not really the driver, it was really more water quality, but we sort of always knew that could be a byproduct. And it's good to see it in this analysis. Yeah, yeah.

No, no, no impact to drinking water. So I think that's all the points on this slide. Do you want to advance, Allie, to the next slide, please?

So wet weather inflow. So inflow, again, is, as a reminder, is the rainwater response that you get when it's actively raining. And the reason why it can take 10 days or more for the water to return has a lot to do with basement sump pumps.

So if you have a house in high groundwater, you probably have a sump pump. And, you know, after a storm, that could be activating for quite a while until, you know, groundwater returns to normal and your basement stays dry. So those are the kinds of reasons why you get this delayed response.

So the major issues with wet weather inflow, thankfully, is not really a concern here, is sanitary sewer overflows. So the SwampScot does not have a lot of SSOs, which is basically when wastewater comes out of a manhole into the street level, and the public could potentially be exposed directly to it. You know, thankfully, that's actually not happening.

So even though you have a four or five-fold increase in flow, we're not really, you know, seeing that impact the system so badly that you're getting flooding. That's the kind of thing that would really maybe put you under some sort of moratorium and get some sort of more enforcement action. So that's not an issue here, but this is a symptom that we're very concerned about, you know, seeing, and we kind of track it and make sure that we're able to get rid of inflow if we're concerned about it.

Next slide. And then water quality impacts. So, you know, I don't have a great photograph, unfortunately, for this, but, you know, when you have your sewer system is impacted by II, so all this extraneous flow that's not supposed to be here, it actually backs up.

So the water level inside your sewer system can back up, and what it can actually do is exfiltrate outside of the sewer system through cracks in the system and things like that, and then they can find their way to nearby drains. And once it's in the drain, it can find its way to, you know, Fisherman's Beach, King's Beach, what have you, depending on how it's all connected. I remember we did a very specific investigation to look for this type of phenomenon happening, which basically meant we intentionally plugged the sewer temporarily, we let it back up, and we injected dye into the sewer system, and then we put a camera in the nearby drain, and you could just see it coming right in when you surcharge that sewer system.

So that's a phenomenon that exists and is happening, and it's, you know, it's fixed through sewer rehab, and so that's kind of been ongoing now for several years. Next slide, please. So I hope I've described the problems enough and the reasons why you might want to remove it, should be pretty self-evident.

You know, capacity issues, addressing the age of the system, so again, over 75% is 60 years or older. The charges that Linn Water and Sewer charge the town for assessment fees are directly related to the amount of I.I. that's being sent there. The fourth thing I have not brought up yet, and in 2014, Massachusetts DEP regulation came out, which basically requires that any community that is part of a CSO community that has a NIPTES permit is required to have some sort of an I.I. mitigation policy or program that mitigates on a four-to-one basis, and what does that mean? Basically, it means that for every, you know, new gallon of wastewater that gets added, you're supposed to try to remove four gallons. You know, the town, this program doesn't exist in the town now, and this is one of the reasons why we're looking at it, is to kind of shore up that, you know, regulatory obligation. Swampscot itself is not a CSO community, but because it's a co-permitee to the city of Lynn's permit, which is a CSO community, Swampscot kind of gets dragged into the mix.

Next slide. So I.I. offset policy, what does it look like? What are the objectives?

And so, basically, you know, we're looking to support I.I. removal, and that's, it's a huge problem in town. There's so many funding strains, you know, on all the departments, and so creating some sort of a, you know, revenue stream that can fund I.I. projects is gonna be really important. And what's key about this is that the fund is reserved just for I.I. projects. It doesn't go into an enterprise fund on the sewer side, it doesn't go into the general fund. It's a dedicated fund. This policy would adhere some of the best practices that are out there for communities to manage I.I. and to create some sort of a sustainable, you know, fiscal source to do that. And finally, the town's, you know, awareness of environmental issues has been stronger than ever, it really has. And this is just another example of the town trying to take a good step forward to create a policy to combat an issue that's been ongoing for a long time. Listed a few communities that have similar policies.

What's really notable is that the vast majority of communities that have a policy like this, they were forced to do it because they were under some sort of sewer moratorium, or they had SSOs, and I.I. was just a massive issue that hamstrung them. SWAPSCOT is really thinking forward in putting a policy like this together, and there's only a couple of communities on that list that have done the same thing, where they put this together very proactively. Next slide, please.

So the policy itself, you know, when put together, would cover some of these topics. So what's the applicability of the program? So what that means is, who's applicable?

You know, it's gonna be anybody who's asking for a new sewer permit, whether it's, you know, you're adding onto your home, or you're ripping down, you know, a large commercial area, you're putting in, you know, a larger commercial area, that kind of a thing. So it's really broad-based, and there's gonna be some calculations in the next few slides, so the policy will establish, you know, how do we calculate flow, and how do we calculate what the associated impact or offset fee might be for that flow? How do you perform an offset?

How do you get rid of the I.I.? What's really important for this policy is that there needs to be options given to the proponent of the project asking for the sewer. So it's, you can't just necessarily apply an impact fee, and that's, they're only out. There needs to be an opportunity for them to have a second option, and that's that self-perform option.

Second to last bullet is the actual methodology for calculating it, and the last one is validating. So what's really important is that if the town allows, you know, some project proponent to go in and actually try to remove the I.I. themselves through their own means, hiring a private contractor, the town needs to have oversight of that work and be able to validate that the work that was performed actually removed the I.I. that was identified. Next slide.

So kind of before I personally got involved, the town already was looking at some of these different methodologies on how an I.I. offset impact fee might be estimated or calculated, and I know that they looked at a lot of different communities and different methodologies that are out there, and so I just wanted to go through these, and we'll identify which one we're recommending. So the first, you can change the slide. The first method, basically, you identify how much money are we paying to Linn Water and Sewer Commission to send the wastewater there?

So it's kind of calculated by saying, what's the sewer budget, divide that by how many million gallons a day of sewer is generated, and so that establishes what is called the transport and treatment cost. Now, DEP indicates that or recommends that an I.I. mitigation or offset project should have a life cycle of about 20 years. So you apply a 20-year factor to that number, and you come up with this 28.06 gallons per day of offset. So that's one methodology that's been floated out there, and other communities have looked at that, so we wanted to make sure we took a look at that. The second method is calculated essentially the same exact way, but there's a nuance in that not every gallon of wastewater that gets sent to Linn Water and Sewer actually makes up the fee. There's a lot of fixed costs that go into running Linn Water and Sewer's wastewater plant.

There's salaries, there's chemicals, there's electricity, things like that. It's not just sensitive to flow. So in this method, too, there's some form of a flow factor that's utilized to acknowledge that.

So 50% is used just as an example, and what that would do is take your method one fee and basically cut it in half by applying that 50% factor. And if we can just advance to the third method, which I think would be new, I don't think you've seen it yet. So this is a different kind of approach to calculate it.

Basically, it asks the question, if the town wants to actually do an I.I. removal project, what does it cost to remove I.I. on the basis of dollars per gallon per day? And that's sort of a difficult number to establish because every project has different methodologies and things like that, but there's a lot of data out there where you can kind of come up with a reasonable estimate. So you start with that.

What's the cost to remove I.I.? And then you would actually multiply that by a ratio, and that four to one ratio comes directly out of the CMR regulation that we cited before. So the town is really obliged to have a policy that eliminates on a four to one basis, and so that's why we're applying that factor here. So the five times the four is about a $20 per gallon per day effective fee.

The $5 per gallon per day, because I know that number, it comes from a couple sources. So the NRA has a ton of data, basically, of removing I.I. over decades. They have a funding program if you're a sewer community for NRA.

You can utilize those funds to eliminate I.I. They did that expressly because when you have dozens of communities and all of their I.I. problems, well, all that goes to Deer Island, and they have to deal with it. So they invested in I.I. removal in their whole system. So there's a lot of data, over 20 years worth of data that can be utilized.

The second source of data is just looking at those other towns that have these policies in place. What are they charging? What seems like a fair number?

And so that $5 per gallon per day is sort of a composite of those two sources of data. So you got the NRA data, and you got the peer communities that are doing something similar. Next slide.

So what does $20 per gallon per day in this method three look like compared to the other communities? This chart, I'll be completely honest, is 2007 data. So some of these communities may have changed over the years.

I know some communities, for a fact, have actually reduced their I.I. fee over the years once they've kind of gotten a handle of their I.I. issue. But some communities have said it, and they haven't changed it. So I just wanted to map this so you can kind of see how it rates with other communities.

[Speaker 4] (55:41 - 55:42)
Can I, sorry.

[Speaker 3] (55:43 - 55:43)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (55:48 - 55:51)
Do you want me to wait until the end to ask questions?

[Speaker 3] (55:51 - 55:53)
I only have one more slide, so I mean. Okay. Yeah, you can.

[Speaker 4] (55:54 - 55:56)
Oh, go ahead. All right, thank you.

[Speaker 3] (55:57 - 57:32)
Yeah, so next steps for recommendations is, you know, there's clearly a huge driver or a huge need to tackle the I.I. issue in town. And so this policy would provide one way, you know, one sort of revenue stream that can help to fund dedicated I.I. projects. You know, we're recommending methodology three, even though there's methods that are used, employed by towns that vary from town to town.

And this methodology is most directly rooted in that CMR regulation. So, you know, in our opinion, it's the most defensible approach, you know, that is of the three methods that we looked at. This also, you know, dovetails directly into some of the sewer renewal work that's been going on.

So this methodology would provide a revenue stream to really complement, you know, the department's focus on its assets and trying to renew them and bring them up to, you know, current condition. So hopefully this was a lot of information, educational. I know that it's not easy to implement something like this and it could take some thought.

If it's possible, you know, this could be implemented as early as the next meeting, but what I understand is a lot of questions and things like that. So I'm happy to probably take your questions now and anyone else who has any, and Gino and John, anybody who's been involved can help answer, but. Go ahead.

[Speaker 4] (57:32 - 57:33)
Do you have questions?

[Speaker 3] (57:33 - 57:34)
Go ahead. You can start.

[Speaker 4] (57:35 - 57:35)
It's okay.

[Speaker 8] (57:41 - 58:26)
Okay. Can you just elaborate on the, like, that the method three is the most defensible because it just, I'm just trying to understand the other two methods, like the math is just right there for me to understand. So like the $5, I understand you're pulling that from different sort of data sets, but just like, how do you come to five, right?

Like that feels more somewhat arbitrary than just a calculation. And so I just want to understand that a little bit more. Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (58:27 - 59:28)
I mean, I guess I personally on the first two methods have a hard time, I guess, understanding the philosophy of getting to that number because in method three, it's, you know, my goal is to remove II. This is what it costs to remove II and we're going to remove it on a four to one basis. So to me, it's a very simple, like, you know, methodology.

The first two, and you guys can educate me on this. It feels a little bit more abstract in that this is what we're paying to dispose of wastewater. This is what we're going to pay for the next 20 years to dispose of the same wastewater, you know, associated with a flow rate that's being proposed by a project.

It feels a little disconnected to me and I've always struggled with that. But I know you guys have looked at that method quite a bit. And so I'm, you know, I'm definitely open to hearing about it.

And, you know, it's just the way my brain works, I guess.

[Speaker 8] (59:28 - 59:43)
No, that's what I'm trying to understand. I'm not, yeah, I'm not proposing that the other methods are better. I'm actually trying to understand sort of how method three works.

[Speaker 15] (59:43 - 59:43)
Yeah.

[Speaker 8] (59:43 - 1:00:37)
Because I understand why it's being recommended, but I, so I guess when you're basing it on this is what is hard to understand about this problem. But when you're basing it on the cost to remove II, it's some of it's based on what other communities are doing. But so if other communities are using method two and one, you know, so I'm trying to understand how you separate the cost from the fee that other communities are charging.

I'm wondering like, how do you actually get to that cost number? And then I guess just on your last slide, but maybe it's just because it's old data, but it doesn't seem like it's aligning with other communities. It seems like it's more.

So I just wanted to know a little bit more about that, I guess.

[Speaker 3] (1:00:38 - 1:02:17)
Yeah, I mean, I think, so that $5 is, again, there's two sources. There's the end of array sort of project database. And then there's the peer communities.

And if you actually look at the end of array numbers, and again, I'm sourcing all of this from the same handbook, that deposit handbook. And the data from that handbook is from 2007. So it's quite old.

If you actually scaled that up to current day, just, you know, straight line regression, you'd be well over $10 per gallon per day to do this type of work. And so when we looked at that, and then we looked at other communities, it just seemed like it was gonna put Swampscott like way in the stratosphere, like completely, you know, a huge burden. And so it's sort of like look at the end of array data and then kind of temper it with what these other communities are doing was sort of that number.

Now, what would be the best methodology would be as the town is actually doing II projects, you could educate yourself and change that number over time by, you know, your own experience doing work in Swampscott at removing II. So like that, this policy would be subject to like annual renewal and annual revision as it matures and as you get more data. And then you don't have to rely so much on other communities data or array data, you can really adapt it over time.

So that's an idea in the policy is that, you know, annually, there'd be some sort of opportunity to revisit the fee structure.

[Speaker 8] (1:02:18 - 1:02:18)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:02:19 - 1:02:35)
Yeah, I would say if David did update the rates, I think you'd see something very different. So communities that have done it in 19 and 20 that I'm aware of are between 18 and $24 a gallon. Let me just give you a sense of like.

[Speaker 8] (1:02:36 - 1:02:53)
Right, so is there a recommendation here on the applicability? So like where we would be assessing such a charge and where we wouldn't be on this, like the size of development, that sort of thing?

[Speaker 3] (1:02:54 - 1:03:17)
Yeah, so the policy is just a draft form at this point, but it's the idea is that it does reach to basically anybody who's asking for a sewer extension or a sewer permit, even if it's just adding a bathroom or a bedroom to a home. You know, all the way to, you know, some of the other developments that are larger than that.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:17 - 1:04:33)
And so we discussed that because there have been some challenges in terms of applicability. And some folks have sought to be exempted. And this issue affects the entire town.

And it really does. It is part of our shared environmental stewardship and environmental responsibility. And we thought, let's come up with a method that actually ensures that everybody that, you know, is going to add to the burden and add to the, you know, complexity of the II issue, you know, shares a responsibility to help us address it.

And as Dave had mentioned, you know, as we get better and better at addressing that II, we can come back and we can really look at how to retool that structure. But right now we have a huge issue. We have, you know, 55, 56% of our treatment as II.

And that's a very significant financial burden for Swamson. So we've got to really start somewhere. And I think what we've tried to do is start at a place that gives us a really meaningful, you know, ability to address this issue.

And one that is defensible in court.

[Speaker 4] (1:04:34 - 1:04:49)
So to that point though, do we have any discretion? I know that the minimum, it has to exceed 15,000 gallons per day, but can you set it higher? We want to set it lower.

[Speaker 8] (1:04:49 - 1:04:49)
Lower.

[Speaker 3] (1:04:50 - 1:04:56)
So we're actually- Yeah, you couldn't go higher. To be consistent with the regulation, you have to be 15,000 or lower.

[Speaker 1] (1:04:56 - 1:05:00)
So a single family house is, the average flow is what?

[Speaker 7] (1:05:00 - 1:05:02)
10 gallons per day per household.

[Speaker 1] (1:05:03 - 1:05:13)
So we're, you know, this is significantly higher than- No, but the regulation is drafted, covers gallon one, right? It's just a fixed fee.

[Speaker 2] (1:05:13 - 1:05:21)
15,000. It's 15, it's a fixed fee up to 1,000 gallons per day. And then it's prorated based on this calculation after 1,000.

Oh, okay.

[Speaker 15] (1:05:21 - 1:05:21)
Wait, what?

[Speaker 2] (1:05:22 - 1:05:52)
The way in which the draft reg that's in here is drafted. If you're under 1,000 gallons a day, there's a fixed fee. It's not based on the calculation.

If you're one gallon to, I can tell you exactly the numbers. It's in here. If you're one gallon to, zero gallons to 200, you pay a $500 I&I offset fee.

If you're 201 to 650, you pay 1,000. If you're 651 to 999, you pay 5,000. If you're above 999, then your fee is determined based on the calculation.

[Speaker 1] (1:05:53 - 1:06:19)
So we wanted to come up with a number that was reasonable if a homeowner was adding a bathroom or doing something. We didn't want it to be so burdensome that it was gonna be difficult. But for the big developments that do put a tremendous burden on our infrastructure and on flow that really add to the complexity of I&I, there's a higher threshold.

[Speaker 15] (1:06:25 - 1:06:34)
Dave talked about it being defensible. If we just set the bottom number at 15,000, they're gonna say that we just set that to pick on a lot of the developments.

[Speaker 4] (1:06:34 - 1:07:02)
Right, but that's what I, so I'm sorry, like, I feel like, I'm like embarrassed to ask this question, but I'm just reading the statute, and that's why I'm not, like, I didn't actually, we've never seen before this draft language. I think this is new for us to be seeing, but which is fine. It's just, I was going by, for any new extensions or connections that exceed 15,000, which is why I was saying it has to be above 15,000.

Am I, like?

[Speaker 2] (1:07:03 - 1:07:33)
The project has to be, so I think what they're telling you is that we couldn't increase that 15,000 and let everybody up to 16,000 not be charged, because DEP's saying any 15's the, but we can go below that number. We can change the threshold down. We can't put the threshold up.

I think that's all they're saying. So we could decide that if you did 14,999 gallons, we wouldn't charge you a dime. We could decide that if we wanted to.

[Speaker 4] (1:07:33 - 1:07:34)
Yes, that's right.

[Speaker 2] (1:07:34 - 1:07:55)
But we couldn't decide, if we were at 16,000, we wouldn't charge you a dime. That we can't do, because DEP has put the threshold at 15,000. That's all they're saying.

But we can charge for people under 15,000, which is what this draft here is opposing, which would be consistent with how most communities do it. For small projects, they typically just go flat.

[Speaker 4] (1:07:55 - 1:08:01)
But, I mean, right, so, okay, so I'm breaking down my earlier point being we have to for anything that exceeds 15,000.

[Speaker 2] (1:08:02 - 1:08:02)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:03 - 1:08:05)
Although we haven't, so.

[Speaker 2] (1:08:06 - 1:08:06)
Correct.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:08 - 1:08:09)
I'm sorry?

[Speaker 2] (1:08:09 - 1:08:11)
Yes, the answer is yes to your question.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:12 - 1:08:13)
So are we violating something by not?

[Speaker 2] (1:08:14 - 1:08:15)
Arguably, yes.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:15 - 1:08:32)
Okay. And then, I just had not read it the other way, but this just keeps going down. This is a decline, trickle down.

Now, my next question with that is, this is only to new connections still, though, right? And again, I haven't looked at this language, because I haven't seen it.

[Speaker 3] (1:08:35 - 1:08:55)
So the, just a clarification on that. So if it's a existing building, you know, and you're adding to it, or you're doing a tear down and putting something new up, that existing flow that exists today would be sort of like credited to that calculation. So it's really just the difference in the new flow that's being generated would be applicable to the foreign law.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:55 - 1:09:08)
And it's not challenged that new connections are being essentially, what are we saying? Issued a fee, you have to pay a fee, but what, what, what?

[Speaker 1] (1:09:08 - 1:09:16)
The statute allows us. They're in tax. And so there have been cases, but they've been able to be sustained.

Yeah, so just, this is the way to.

[Speaker 4] (1:09:16 - 1:09:41)
I haven't finished my question, so. I just, I appreciate if that's the answer, but I'm, so people have challenged being new and getting charged and saying that's not fair because everybody else who already had a house or whatever has an equal size house to the one I'm adding, you know, that's gonna be the same size as the one I'm adding to, doesn't have to pay this fee.

[Speaker 7] (1:09:42 - 1:09:44)
But you're adding to the system.

[Speaker 4] (1:09:46 - 1:09:57)
Right, but we're not contributing. After that, they're paying the same as we are, right? So they're paying an initial fee that we never paid.

[Speaker 2] (1:09:57 - 1:10:00)
Yes, that's because we're grandfathered. And so it's just.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:00 - 1:10:10)
Right, I'm just, so that's my question. So that's not, I'm just surprised that that's not challenged. So it's never been applied differently to like all residents.

[Speaker 2] (1:10:11 - 1:12:20)
So let me, yeah, so the answer is it's never been retroactive, right? You can't go back and capture all your sewer connections that you have today, right? No, I.

But so I think this focus on challenge, and it's not your focus, this keeps coming up in conversations, is the wrong focus. What's the methodology? Methodology three, by and large, is the one that's almost universally accepted in Massachusetts and is used for the reasons that David explained, right?

Relying on established numbers and stuff. So I think for us, it's more about making sure that to me, it's a no-brainer, we need the policy. It's actually making sure, is it enough, right?

So to me, it's actually the $20 I don't have a problem with and as long as we do annual reviews and make sure that we're doing it, which we don't do, right? I mean, again, in my seven years, I don't recall looking at these maybe once, but that's something we should be looking at every year. But number two is I actually would question the four gallons versus five gallons reduction, right?

Four is the minimum, right? Four to one is what DEP regs say. We can actually require greater mitigation up to five to one, so I'm actually interested because that actually, I believe, is less susceptible to challenge because that's a policy decision as to what as a community we want to be taking out and if we're at 58% inflow, to me, that tells us that we're grossly above average and that means we have a severe problem and that means as though we want to be mitigating as much as possible. So $20 is only one part of the multiplication, right? Times what, right?

And I guess I would be interested in getting some more data and having you guys give us some data about going there because that, to me, is, you know, that's the thing we're not talking about yet, which is four gallons enough for us given the incredible inflow that we have here. If we were to put that in real dollars for the rate payer, right, they would be disgusted, right, about, they would see the opportunity, frankly, because right now the rate payer is paying for that inflow, right, because it's grossly overstating what's going on in the sewer system for us.

[Speaker 4] (1:12:20 - 1:13:23)
I just, before we get there, I mean, the reason why I was focusing on the challenges is because it's a reality that would cost money, number one, and number two, with our percentage being 58 or whatever it is hovering around there, it seems like that's more extreme. I just wanna make sure that we're, if we're burdened, I mean, I support the I&I, like, the charge, like, that's not my concern right now, but my point is is just that if we're, if we have a problem that's clearly long-term and has been going on for a really long time, to try to solve it with new connections as opposed to, I'm not suggesting we, you know, up other rates or whatever, but I just don't know in an extreme situation like this, because we are above an average, that that couldn't be a legitimate challenge to saying we're mitigating it this way as opposed to more equitably.

[Speaker 1] (1:13:23 - 1:14:57)
So one way that might help you kind of think about everybody else that is grandfathered is that the town actually has been paying millions of dollars every couple of years to address some of the I&I. And so every taxpayer, every homeowner in Swampstrip is actually supporting that off the local real estate tax base and up the rate payers as we continue to maintain and address the operation and maintenance of the system. So there's a couple of ways that everybody actually shoulders the burden, but getting back to the really important data point here is that 55, 58, 60% of that I&I, when it rains, it literally dumps all of that water into a treatment plant that we pay for.

And that is the financial incentive for the town to say, hey, we've gotta figure this out because that's lost revenue and that's lost finances that we could be better spending on any other thing. So nevermind the fact that Kings Beach, frankly, bears the burden of a lot of this. So the next steps are having it come back for December 1st and we'd like to get this adopted on December 1st and- Can I suggest here, that's probably not gonna happen just because candidly, this didn't show up until our packets tonight.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:57 - 1:15:10)
So this is really not a first reading because none of us have actually read it. So we couldn't even ask really thoughtful questions tonight. I mean, like detailed about the policy, right?

I mean, I don't know if others feel differently. I feel like this is not actually a first reading.

[Speaker 4] (1:15:11 - 1:15:12)
You had some other questions. Did you wanna ask them?

[Speaker 1] (1:15:13 - 1:15:16)
No, if this is not really a first reading, I'm fine for tonight.

[Speaker 4] (1:15:17 - 1:15:20)
Well, they sounded helpful about the ratio.

[Speaker 2] (1:15:20 - 1:15:32)
Well, why don't we have the first reading on December 1st and we'll- I'm gonna defer to the chair to set that, but I just wanted to make sure that tonight's not- I don't- Do others feel uncomfortable about this being the first reading?

[Speaker 4] (1:15:36 - 1:15:46)
Is there a reason this needs to happen?

[Speaker 1] (1:15:49 - 1:15:54)
I think the sooner this happens, the better, just for the reasons we've outlined.

[Speaker 4] (1:15:54 - 1:15:58)
We're talking about a couple of weeks, that's what I'm asking. No?

[Speaker 1] (1:15:59 - 1:16:06)
I think we could certainly work with the board to give you as much time as you need to get comfortable with the policy.

[Speaker 8] (1:16:14 - 1:16:32)
Well, just for the sake of present company, I mean, I think it would make sense to ask questions. Like, I mean, I'm interested now that you posed the question about the five to one, you know, VAD ratio. So I'd like to know the answer to that.

[Speaker 3] (1:16:34 - 1:17:32)
I mean, these communities all have picked different numbers. I mean, four to one is sort of the, that DEP entree number, similar to the 15,000. You couldn't go lower than four to one.

I think I've seen as high as 11 to one. Burlington was at 11 to one 15 years ago, but they're down to, I think they're down to four or five to one now. So it's sort of one of those things where like, once they got their handle on the situation, they were able to pull the policy back and make it more favorable.

That's the one community I'm, I work with that community back in that timeframe. So I'm more familiar with that community than others, but I think some of these are eight to one, six to one, I've seen some of those. So, I mean, it's really, you know, a individual community decision, but yeah, you couldn't go below four.

That would be the floor that policy would be set at. I haven't seen higher than 11, that's the highest I've seen.

[Speaker 5] (1:17:32 - 1:17:37)
Maybe by the next week, we can have some data from local communities to see what they're charging.

[Speaker 4] (1:17:40 - 1:17:55)
Okay. Yeah. I would be interested in that higher ratio.

I mean, it's not a hard math to do, but. Okay. Other questions?

[Speaker 14] (1:17:56 - 1:18:27)
Yeah, Dave, it's weird not being able to look at you. But no, so just a quick question. So just with this, just with the existing work that's going on through phase 1C, you know, what would we see our, you know, what's the estimated INI?

How much would we decline, you know, from 20 to 21, 22? What do you see there? What is Kleinfeld's estimating?

Just by doing what we're doing.

[Speaker 3] (1:18:27 - 1:19:29)
Yeah, that's a really hard question. And the reason why is the purpose for the phase 1C is really the water quality benefit. It's not, it wasn't originally driven by II.

So when a consulting engineering firm does an II program, it starts with a study. And it, basically you can just the entire time you identify this sewershed is, you know, contributing 10% of the II, this sewersheds contributing 2% of the II. So I'm gonna focus on the 10% contributing one.

And through that process, you actually document how much II is on a sub area by sub area basis. And then when you actually mitigate or remove or do rehab to get rid of that, then you can actually have a number. We didn't do that for the water quality.

We kind of backed into it. And, you know, the data we showed is really, you know, just sort of evidence, secondary evidence of it, but we don't have a number for 1C, yes, unfortunately.

[Speaker 2] (1:19:29 - 1:19:46)
Right, but is there another explanation? I can think of one, but is there another explanation besides what we're spending on Stacey Brook to attribute to the declining inflow in the last three complete years? And rain, right?

It could have rained less.

[Speaker 3] (1:19:46 - 1:19:47)
Could have rained less.

[Speaker 2] (1:19:47 - 1:20:03)
But we can equalize that out, right? Cause we can take average rainfall and equalize it out. I'm just wondering what else we could factor it and maybe ask you actually to do that.

Cause I think that's interesting to understand. What else is contributing to that? Because I think that's important for us to know how much are we really subsidizing something that.

[Speaker 3] (1:20:03 - 1:20:46)
Yeah, I mean, Gino's got a program to identify these sump pumps and at the time of transfer of the home, right? You do a final inspection. If you have one of those like illegally connected sump pumps you gotta get rid of it right before the final transfer.

So that's, you've identified a bunch that way. And so there's other programs that are going on that's simultaneously combating II, which is great. It's just being, it's kind of being done through a kind of a happenstance through sewer renewal for other drivers and a policy like this could help potentially put funding together to do an II study.

And then when you have a quantification of it and you know exactly where it's coming from.

[Speaker 2] (1:20:46 - 1:21:06)
Well, the flow has been cut literally in three years by more than a half. So it's a lot of sump pumps coming offline. So, I mean, so it just seems like there's something and it may be rain.

It actually just may simply be rain. This which summer obviously would be an anomaly because it went the other way, right? But it could just be rainfall.

I mean, truthfully, that's where it's all coming from. Right, when it comes down to it.

[Speaker 3] (1:21:07 - 1:21:33)
Yeah, I mean, when you actually look at rain versus like groundwater infiltration, generally over the course of 365 days in a year infiltration is way higher on a gallonage basis. But during that rain event, the inflow component is a much bigger driver, but it's temporary, right? It's just when it's raining.

But over the course of a year infiltration would actually put more in the system than inflow does. Yes, quite a bit more.

[Speaker 2] (1:21:33 - 1:21:39)
This could be exciting. We can get totally wonky on the correlation of rainfall and groundwater next and doing all the math on that as well.

[Speaker 8] (1:21:43 - 1:21:53)
Let's do this again soon. Does the self-perform option get, do people ever self-perform?

[Speaker 3] (1:21:55 - 1:21:56)
I would imagine not.

[Speaker 2] (1:21:56 - 1:21:57)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:21:57 - 1:21:59)
Yeah, it's an option, right?

[Speaker 2] (1:21:59 - 1:22:12)
It's almost impossible to access your reduction. That's what I don't understand. No way.

Okay. They would rather do their own sewer treatment facility before they did that.

[Speaker 8] (1:22:12 - 1:22:15)
So you're just obligated to offer that?

[Speaker 3] (1:22:17 - 1:22:32)
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine, I mean, if a new casino comes in and there's like immense keeply pockets and stuff like that, and they have a contractor they work with all the time, like that's the type of situation that maybe they would self-perform, but not like a routine development.

[Speaker 1] (1:22:33 - 1:22:59)
Right, okay. Thanks. Typically we'd have a list of projects and we would just be, you know, ready to kind of queue up a number of those I.I. mitigation projects. And if we had a couple of developments that came in, you know, we would say, all right, here's what we're gonna advance. And that gets back to just getting better at identifying where the I.I. is coming from.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:05 - 1:23:13)
When, if and when we collect the fee, is it going into the enterprise funds? Like what, how is it being distinguished from?

[Speaker 1] (1:23:13 - 1:23:18)
Special fund that specifically will go to I.I. mitigation.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:19 - 1:23:21)
Outside of what?

[Speaker 1] (1:23:23 - 1:23:40)
It just would be a special fund. It would be a dedicated fund just for I.I. Non-general fund. Not an enterprise fund, it's just an I.I. Not part of either enterprise fund.

[Speaker 14] (1:23:41 - 1:23:50)
Would we be able to bond those dollars? How would we be able to utilize and get those funds out to do these projects? How would we spend the money?

[Speaker 1] (1:23:53 - 1:24:01)
What's that? We can look into that. I'll get you a legal opinion on it.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:04 - 1:24:06)
It doesn't go into the op, it's not just part of the operating fund.

[Speaker 1] (1:24:06 - 1:24:09)
No, it cannot be co-mingled in the operating fund.

[Speaker 2] (1:24:14 - 1:24:20)
Hanover Project would have paid us $600,000 as an I.I. fee. They put 30,000 gallons a day into our sewer system.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:22 - 1:24:23)
At least there's affordable housing there, so.

[Speaker 2] (1:24:24 - 1:24:24)
There's just not.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:24 - 1:24:26)
I know. Oh, that was tongue-in-cheek.

[Speaker 2] (1:24:26 - 1:24:34)
They paid zero dollars in mitigation to the town of Swampscott, nor did a single bit of mitigation offsite, zero.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:37 - 1:24:42)
So this would be good. Okay, this has been great. Thank you both.

[Speaker 2] (1:24:42 - 1:24:43)
Yeah, no, thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:43 - 1:24:45)
Other questions for anybody? For Nath?

[Speaker 8] (1:24:45 - 1:24:47)
I'm fine, thanks. For our half-slash.

[Speaker 14] (1:24:47 - 1:24:48)
Thank you very much.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:50 - 1:24:50)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:24:50 - 1:24:51)
Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:59 - 1:25:20)
All right. From one exciting topic to another, we are looking at the presentation of the FY22 tax rate recap, and this will be what, Sean, you'll present with Ben Strait.

[Speaker 1] (1:25:21 - 1:25:22)
And Patrick Luddy.

[Speaker 4] (1:25:23 - 1:25:25)
Town Assessor and Patrick Luddy. Yep, great.

[Speaker 1] (1:25:26 - 1:25:31)
So I just want to recognize Neil Sheehan from the Board of Assessors.

[Speaker 11] (1:25:32 - 1:25:36)
So I just got a procedure that we can call out meaningful one after.

[Speaker 4] (1:25:37 - 1:25:51)
Yep, absolutely. So we have Laura and Tasia. Oh, you're moving them to panelists.

And it's the three of you, right? That's it.

[Speaker 11] (1:25:51 - 1:25:54)
Go ahead. Yes. No, you're up.

That's all, that's all.

[Speaker 5] (1:25:55 - 1:26:03)
Yeah. Hi, Tasia.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:13 - 1:26:19)
Hi, can you guys hear me now? Yes. How are you guys doing?

Good, thanks. Good evening.

[Speaker 5] (1:26:25 - 1:26:26)
Hi, it's Laura.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:27 - 1:26:28)
Hi, Laura.

[Speaker 5] (1:26:47 - 1:26:57)
So this will be the preliminary review of the tax classification and the options. Go ahead and go to the next slide. Ben, if you could just speak up a little bit.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:57 - 1:26:57)
Oh, I'm sorry, okay.

[Speaker 12] (1:26:57 - 1:26:58)
A lot.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:58 - 1:27:29)
Why don't I introduce you? Ben Strait is our relatively new assessor, but certainly Ben has been here long enough to take a look at every single value in town. And frankly, we've met a number of times to review the updated values and work with the board of assessors to really present this annual classification.

This presentation kind of models what we've presented in previous years, but there are some interesting trends that I think the board will recognize. With that, Ben.

[Speaker 5] (1:27:30 - 1:34:24)
Thank you very much. Yeah, I tried to keep the presentation similar to what you'd seen last year. Updated information.

It has been a short 10 months since I've been here. It seems just like yesterday when I saw you all last. So we're gonna start with the presentation and talk about values and the changes, the yearly trends, and then Sean will go through some comparisons, and then Patrick will do a budget review, and I'll go over the tax setting options, including shifting the tax levy, option of transferring free cash and the residential and small commercial exemptions, and then just a review of the next steps going forward.

Next slide. So I'll apologize for this slide right off, but this is a lot of good information, even though it's not presented very well here. We've got some visuals on the next couple of slides, but this is basically a report card for the year, and this is the LA-4 in comparison with last year's LA-4.

It shows the percent differences on the values. It shows the dollar amounts in the second to right column, and then the percent differences on the values. So to note here, the single families are up by 9%, and then at the bottom, we've got some totals down there.

So total residential is up almost $320 million at 10%, commercial is up 16.7%, industrial properties are up 15.6%, and personal property is up 24.4%. Next slide, please. For an overall increase of 10.7%. So we'll break that down a little bit. These are the commercial, industrial, and personal properties.

This is going back to 2017 to 2022. Over that timeframe, the total of those three classes has increased 70%, and so in the column all the way to the right, that's the current 2022 assessed value. That has gone up 18% as a total class from last year, and you can see that each of those classes, the blue being personal property, well, the dark blue being personal property, lighter blue industrial, and green commercial, each of those have expanded and increased in value from the prior year as well.

Next slide, please. This is the same information on the residential side. So this is the total residential class over the same time period.

Sorry, you've lost the dates at the bottom there, or at least on the presentation screen. But so over the same time period there, the increase on the residential total class has been 42%. So we'll break that down a little bit into the different categories in a slide or two.

And last year to this year has been that 10% increase. First slide. And again, each component is increasing.

So at the bottom you have the single families, and then condos, two families, and then apartment buildings, and then three families in the top one. That's all right, next slide. So this is the percentage of total value.

And so the pie chart in the top right-hand corner is the static picture of 2022. And what each of these values represents of the total overall value. So residential values are 92%.

These are rounded numbers in the pie chart. The commercial 6%, 1% on the industrial side rounded up, and 2% for the personal property. And then on the right, or on the left rather, what you have is a chart showing that trend over the last five years, and the increasing percentage of the commercial, industrial, and personal properties as a percentage of the overall total.

And that is increased from last year to this year, half a percent, and that doesn't sound like a lot, but it does make a significant difference when we're shifting the tax rate, which we'll talk about later on. Next slide, please. So these are our new growth values over the last five years.

And new growth fluctuates with what is being built, essentially, or expanded on in Swampscot. So those numbers have fluctuated over the past years. But overall, pretty strong growth.

Last year, we had a large number of condos come on. Next year, we'll have also a large number of condos come on on the higher value end. So those new growth numbers fluctuate.

The reason they're important is that that top dollar amount gets applied to the levy limit. So you increase the previous levy limit by the 2.5% plus that new growth number. Next slide, please.

So these are the average values in Swampscot, 2017 to 2022. Again, so on the left, you've got the commercial and industrial properties. You've got that 70% increase over that timeframe with an average value on the commercial side going from 1.064 million up to 1.805 million this year. And that's up from 1.528 million from last year on average. We'll talk about medians in just a second. The next section is the condominiums.

Same time period, 46% increase. On the multifamilies, which are two to eight unit buildings, those are up 57% and single family homes up 42% on average. Next slide, please.

What's that? Oh, is everybody okay if I take my mask off? Yes, okay.

Thank you. All right, so these are the median values. So again, commercial industrial median value on the left side.

And the median is kind of a more useful center of measure when you're talking about real estate because it represents more what the average folks are paying. So on the commercial side, that median value is one third of the average value. That has increased 67% since 2017 to a now median value of 594, which is up from 490 last year.

The condominium median value is up 52%. Multifamilies, 61%. The median value on single family homes during that timeframe is up 38%.

So now I'm going to toss it over to Sean so he can go over some comparisons. Sure, so just the next slide.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:24 - 1:43:25)
Allie? Thanks. So this is a little bit of a spaghetti slide, but it reflects the trend line for the 34 cities and towns in Essex County absent Andover.

But if you draw your attention to the far left, you'll see a blue line and two lines above it. That's Swanscot back in 2012. We were the top three or the third highest average single family tax bill in Essex County.

And so over the last 10 years, in fact, essentially, we've changed that. If you draw your eye over to the right hand side, you'll see there are eight communities that are higher than Swanscot. And it reflects a trend that Swanscot actually is moving more towards the middle of the pack.

We're not quite there yet, but there's a trend line. And you'll see, as we move through the next few slides, how that has been affected over the last five years in particular. And so, Ali, if you move to the next slide, please.

So here's Swanscot's place with average single family tax bills from 2012 to 2021. We've looked at this slide over the last five years. And every year we've monitored the ratio between Swanscot's average single family tax bill and the average single family tax bill for Essex County.

And you'll see, in 2015, we were 29% higher than the average single family tax bill. 2016, we were 24%. In 2017, we were 20%.

2018, we were 22%. 19, 21%. 20, 14%, and 21, 14%.

So we've been able to kind of bring that average down. We're still not quite at that average, but it reflects efforts to really make Swanscot more affordable. So next slide.

You can see just a table that just reflects the variance in the average single family tax bill for Essex County single family tax bills versus Swanscot's. And so you'll see, over the last 10 years, some variances between Swanscot and Essex County communities, with FY21, Swanscot being $1,184 higher than the average Essex County property. And that's down from a high of $2,600 back in 2013.

But certainly in 2017, we were $2,375 higher. And last year, we were $1,184 higher. And so we've also looked at peer groups because we know, next slide, Allie.

A few years ago, we looked at a peer group based on percentage of population. We looked at communities that had the same ratio of commercial and residential property. We looked at communities that had similar demographics.

They didn't necessarily need to be in Essex County, but they had a similar background as Swanscot. Next slide. So with our peer group, we trended actually a little bit more favorably, but you can see over the years, over the last 10 years, Swanscot has basically trended, you know, favorably, but we're still a bit higher than a number of the peer groups.

We've been as high as 21% back in 2015, but in 2020 and 2021, we were about 10% higher than that peer group. Next slide. And so we look at the average single family tax bill by peer group.

This tells, I think, an interesting story because you'll see, you know, over the last 10 years, we went from a high of 47% back in 2012, 30% higher in 2030, and last year, we were 12% higher, consistently from 2017 to 2021, there's been a significant drop in the variance between our peer group and the average of our peer group and Swanscot's average single family tax bill. So the next slide just shows the variance. And so with that peer group, you know, we've gone from a high of variance back in 2012 of $2,661 more than the average down to just $948 higher than the average for 2021.

And so we're really bringing Swanscot back to an average within that peer group, and I think that really reflects a lot of the hard work to really control costs and really build financial discipline across the town budget and through contract reviews. The next slide. So here's something that's, you know, been a real challenge.

This goes in the opposite direction. So this is the average commercial and industrial values in Swanscot versus Essex County. And so we have been historically about 17, 18% higher since 2014, this has gone up dramatically.

And I think this reflects a real strong focus on economic development. It really reflects a real focus on making sure that we get ad valorem value for all of our properties. We look at our commercial properties very carefully because we only have a few, and we wanna make sure that we get those values correct.

And we've spent the last few years not only just advancing economic development strategies, but also really thinking carefully about, you know, making sure that we get the value. Next slide. And so this is the average commercial value industrial properties versus Essex County properties.

And you can see, you know, we're quite a bit higher. And historically, this has ranged from, you know, high 70s and 80s down to the 60s. But over the last few years, we've jumped back up to about 98% higher than the average in Essex County.

Now, we're a small town. And so the properties that we have are, we don't have as many commercial properties, and they become that much more valuable. And so the market's reflecting the scarcity of properties and the value.

And so just, next slide, please. With just with residential, this is the variance between the average commercial in Essex County. And so you can see, you know, this ranges from $14,000 up to FY21 of 19,000.

I think that reflects a positive trend. We want our commercial properties to really be valuable. This does shift a portion of the tax burden to that commercial, that small commercial slice of the pie.

And we've been focused on really trying to grow that commercial. Peace. So next slide.

So at this point, I'm gonna turn it over to Patrick Luddy, our town treasurer. We're gonna essentially go over, you know, the town budget, but the components of how we manage the tax policy.

[Speaker 6] (1:43:26 - 1:43:33)
With that, Patrick. Thanks, Sean. Can you guys hear me okay?

[Speaker 1] (1:43:34 - 1:43:35)
Louder.

[Speaker 6] (1:43:37 - 1:48:11)
Okay. All right, so I'm gonna go over the costs that are being considered in the tax rate recap process this year. Next slide, Allie.

Okay. All right, so this table summarizes all the appropriations that have been made by town meetings since last time we set the tax rate. Column B is our operating appropriations for the general fund.

Column C includes various items that were appropriated from free cash, including transfers from reserves and several items to fund capital. Column D of other available funds, that's our annual chapter 90 appropriation for street paving projects. And then in column F, we have our enterprise fund operating appropriations.

So total appropriations on the bottom left there is $71 million. So that's being factored into the process here. Next slide.

Okay, and then on top of appropriations, we have to consider state assessments, which we're obligated to fund. There's various items on here. A large component is $1 million for tuition related to students who attend school at charter schools or through other avenues out of district.

And then another component is the costs associated with the MBTA infrastructure. That's $350,000 this year. And there's several other items itemized on the top, smaller items totaling about $52,000.

So in total, our state assessments is about $1.5 million this year, and that's up $160,000 from fiscal 21. So these are costs we're gonna have to consider in this process as well. Next slide.

Okay, so this slide summarizes all the revenue that has to be raised. So these are all the costs that are factored. We have the $31,000 on there.

That's part of the cherry sheet offset for public libraries so that we have to fund. We have the $1.5 million in state charges that I mentioned before on the bottom. We have the $71 million appropriated by town meeting at the top.

And the last thing that gets added in here is the overlay contribution this year. That's added on top, and that covers abatements and exemptions that we estimate we might need to cover this year as well as any appeals granted by the Appellate Tax Board. So in total, we have to raise $72.7 million from all of our available revenue sources this year. Go to the next slide. So how do we pay for that? We have state aid.

This comes directly from the Commonwealth. We have $6.25 million approximately in state aid this year. That's up $63,000 from fiscal 21.

The largest component of this is education-related aid. There's $4.7 million from that. And then there is $1.4 million in unrestricted government aid. That's the other major component. And then there's a few other items itemized here, totaling about $100,000. So that's $6.2 million off the top. Next slide. Okay, and then we have our local receipts. So there's various items on here that are addressed at the local level.

We have $2.5 million for motor vehicle excise. That shows up on the schedule. Meals tax, rooms tax.

New this year, we have excise and impact fees from cannabis operations in town. So those are showing up now, $120,000 total. Solid waste fees, interest on delinquent bills, rentals from town-owned property, building permits, liquor licenses.

All of this is factored in. I've sat down with Sean and Amy, and we've gone over all these estimates. They're in line with what we've collected in the past, so our past practice, and also the new items we've coined here.

So this is up about 5% from last year, which we were comfortable with.

[Speaker 2] (1:48:12 - 1:48:22)
Can we get a actual variance report to show us what you've shown here compared to what was the approved budget? Sure. Yep, I can get that.

What the budget was based on, I should say. Yeah.

[Speaker 6] (1:48:22 - 1:48:27)
Great, thanks. Definitely. Next slide.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:27 - 1:48:47)
We typically do make those adjustments based on, we put a budget together, but the revenue does change, and the picture does change, and the forecast changes. So that's typically, you will see a variance. Sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down.

This time, I think we are pretty tight.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:48 - 1:48:50)
Was it based on a five-year actual average?

[Speaker 1] (1:48:51 - 1:49:12)
We do have 10 years' worth of actuals, and we do kind of take a look at that performance. But basically, the trend line is, it's been a really difficult, last year was a very difficult year, and we're just seeing some changes in the market. But that historical perspective is helpful.

[Speaker 2] (1:49:12 - 1:49:23)
So if we could get back to having quarterly updates on revenue and expenses, that would just help. We haven't had one for several quarters at this point, so it just, we don't know how we're tracking. We just wanna know what the assumptions are.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:24 - 1:49:29)
Sorry, where is the... Where are beach stickers?

[Speaker 6] (1:49:30 - 1:49:34)
That is line 15, recreation, that shows up in that total.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:34 - 1:49:38)
That's all? Yes. Beach stickers, okay.

Thanks.

[Speaker 6] (1:49:39 - 1:51:59)
Okay, all right, so this is a summary of all the revenue sources. So at the top, you have the estimated state aid, $6.2 million that we talked about, the local receipts that we just spoke of on the prior slide, the estimated enterprise fund receipts show up here, free cash, appropriations that were made from free cash, so this is just reflecting the amount of free cash that was used. Other available funds is Chapter 90.

So that's all factored in for a total of $20 million. So that gets docked out at the bottom from the total appropriations and assessments to leave you with your gross tax levy of $52,660,000 on line C on the bottom. But how do we reduce that even further?

Go to the next slide, Allie. One of the tools that the board has at its disposal that we've leveraged for several prior fiscal years is the use of free cash to offset the tax levy. I've summarized here on the top how free cash was used last year.

Certification came in at $4.7 million. The board recommended 1.55 million be used to offset the tax rate. And then there were about a million dollars worth of other uses, leaving our balance at 2.2 million out of the prior certification. Amy's filed all of the necessary documents of DOR to get our new free cash certification for this fiscal year. It's not certified, but we're expecting it any day. So the estimated amount is right there for you, 4.15 for purposes of discussion. And I just put a couple benchmarks on the bottom. If you use 1.55 million or $2 million of free cash for this purpose this year, if you elect to do that, that's within our guidelines and our financial policies. So this is a tool that continues to be at your disposal if you choose to make a recommendation that includes use of free cash this year.

And I'm gonna turn it back over to Ben and he's gonna walk through some of the other options that are available to you.

[Speaker 2] (1:52:04 - 1:52:15)
Yes. So can I also just say the percentages here are misleading because this remaining free cash balance needs to take us all the way through a whole nother budget season.

[Speaker 4] (1:52:15 - 1:52:16)
Well, that's what I was asking.

[Speaker 2] (1:52:16 - 1:52:43)
Right, so when you're looking at the 4%, 3%, yes, maybe as a fact at that point in time, yes, but that same free cash balance is the same free cash balance we've gotta deal with all the way through next budget cycle. Right, and so at town meeting, if we're using free cash to pay for capital projects or we're doing contract negotiations or we're doing a number of things, that has to be considered when we're looking at what the resulting net number is to really then assess it based on the guidelines. Thanks.

[Speaker 5] (1:52:48 - 1:55:24)
Okay, next slide, please. All right, so the calculation of a single tax rate, if you were to, in this case, allocate no free cash and have no shift of the tax rate towards the commercial, industrial, and personal property, properties, you would just take the tax levy divided by the total value and that would get you a single tax rate of $13.96 per thousand. That would significantly increase the, no one's suggesting that, but it would significantly increase the single family tax bill to over 10% of what it is right now.

But this is the computation of the single tax rate, taking the 52, 665.60 and dividing by the total value of the 3.773 billion. Next slide, please. So shifting the tax rates, this is that same pie chart from earlier showing the natural percentages of each class as a percentage of total value, which if you didn't shift the tax rate would then become the percentage of total levy.

And then in the middle, you've got shifting with 165% over the commercial, industrial, and personal. And then on the right, you have a percent shift of 170%. And that is the maximum shift this year.

I'll cover that in just a second. But the slide on the left, you can see from the commercial percentage of the 5.51. If you go all the way to the right for the 170% shift, then you are at 9.37 as an example. So Swan Scout has adopted that you are able to shift 175% of the commercial industrial tax rate to the commercial industrial side.

That has limits by the Department of Revenue. So one of those limits, two things have happened. So the commercial, industrial, and personal property percentage has increased.

And the other thing, so when you then calculate the shift for 175%, that takes you, that takes the residential percentage share below the historical bottom, and you're not allowed to go below that floor. So you can't shift up to 175%, but that burden of the tax levy has already been shifted essentially in the values. So that floor on the residential side is 87%, and that equals 170% shift over the commercial side.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:24 - 1:56:21)
I wanna highlight just a few years ago, we were at the risk of having to reduce the split because we didn't have enough of growth in commercial, and we were seeing a shift to the commercial sector. And so we had a challenge from DOR that we really had to be very careful with the split. So this cuts both ways.

I guess the point I'm trying to make, we've seen a significant amount of growth over the last few years with commercial, and that's limiting our ability to go up to that 1.75. But a few years ago, we were in a position where we were not gonna be able to even move that split.

[Speaker 14] (1:56:22 - 1:56:32)
So Sean, with the multiplier, historically, have we been at one set? How long have we been at 170%? Or is this a relatively new?

[Speaker 2] (1:56:32 - 1:57:33)
This would be our third fiscal year at 1.7. We switched it three years ago, and frankly, we switched it because of this problem. And knowing that we were getting close to this problem, and that the 1.75 was gonna be forced down into 1.7, or 1.65, or wherever it took us, and wanting to do that at a period of time where it wouldn't be thrust upon us in a time that might have been actually more hurtful to the residential taxpayer. And so we did it in a year where we could shift it, and at the same time, still moderate the increase to a residential taxpayer.

And knowing that this was coming, the only way for us to fix this problem is to increase our commercial tax base, right? It's really the only solution here, candidly. If anybody has an idea about that, they should call me any time of day.

Because I don't know of anybody that has that answer, but that's the only way to really fix this. But this is gonna be an increasing problem for us, which is, you know.

[Speaker 14] (1:57:33 - 1:57:37)
So where should our commercial base be, from a budgeting standpoint?

[Speaker 5] (1:57:38 - 1:58:44)
Bigger. In a perfect world. It should be at 10%, it should be at 15%.

Well, I mean, you would basically want it to be as, I mean, percentage-wise, you just want your commercial values to be as high as possible. I mean, if you want to take the burden away from the residential side, which this does, ultimately. So when you shift, if you decide to shift at a 170% level this year, the residential taxpayers will be paying a percentage of the levy that's equal to the historical low that they've ever paid since the beginning of classification.

So percentage-wise of the levy, that's good news for the residential properties. With regard to values, the values are gonna be determined by the market. So the opportunity is, obviously, to the economic development side, I think, to bring in new businesses and have new growth, and that will help everything.

If you have new growth on everything, that's great. From an overall lowering of the taxes on individual residences and individual businesses.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:44 - 1:59:43)
So David, another way to answer the question would be, you know, you'd take a look at your commercially-zoned or industrial-zoned properties, and you'd come up with your highest and best on a use, you know, under your master plan, and you kind of figure out where are you in terms of your ability to kind of attract that highest and best use. For instance, Humphrey Street, you're zoned for two and a half stories. Do you have two and a half stories on every property?

No, and so, you know, there may be lost economic growth in some of those properties, and you wanna kind of look at your economic development function and say, could we come up with strategies that would help, you know, create the highest and best use? Could we look at Vennon Square and really think about where are the blighted properties? Where are the, you know, properties that are really dragging down the commercial growth, and let's come up with strategies like the Blighted Building Bylaw or the other tools that we can use to incentivize, you know, economic development.

[Speaker 4] (1:59:47 - 1:59:56)
I just, Peter, to your point, I don't understand why it's becoming an increasing problem, the current shift.

[Speaker 11] (1:59:57 - 2:00:08)
Because the deal line, and you have to get, and you're kind of right on the line.

[Speaker 2] (2:00:08 - 2:00:18)
It'll just keep pushing us. It's not binary. We won't just drop to one, but it will just keep dropping.

That one, seven, then will become one, six, eight, and one, six, five, one, six, and that's the max that we can do the split at.

[Speaker 4] (2:00:19 - 2:00:21)
Because of the ratio, the five.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:21 - 2:00:32)
Yes. But the fact that we're growing the commercial over the last few years as we have been growing it, I think is good news in the sense that we're at less of a risk that we're gonna see that.

[Speaker 4] (2:00:32 - 2:00:33)
Well, that's why I'm wondering why.

[Speaker 2] (2:00:34 - 2:00:38)
Yeah, I don't think we can assess our way out of this problem.

[Speaker 11] (2:00:39 - 2:00:40)
We're still close, so.

[Speaker 2] (2:00:40 - 2:00:46)
Yeah, we're not gonna be able to assess ourselves. We have to increase the tax base. That's the reality of it.

I think the math doesn't work otherwise.

[Speaker 5] (2:00:50 - 2:00:56)
I would agree with not assessing your way out, because it's the, you know, the value would determine the assessment. That's right.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:57 - 2:00:58)
It's just ad valorem values.

[Speaker 5] (2:00:59 - 2:03:44)
That's all we're looking for. Next slide, please. So this is a recap of last year's recap.

And last year, there was 170% shift, as was mentioned, and a transfer of $1.55 million, which made the average, leveled out the average family tax bill from the prior year at 8,999. And the median bill was 74.73. Next slide, please. Which brings us to the suggestion for this year.

So if the same amounts were used this year for the 170% shift and the transfer of 1.55 million, that would bring our total raise down to the $51,110,560. And next slide, please. Oh, I'm sorry, the last one.

I apologize. That would bring the average single family tax bill, $9,078, and the median tax bill to 75.26. So it's slightly in the future. So on here, the recommendation is highlighted in green, but in the top section there, you have the allocated no free cash and no shift.

The middle section is the 1.65 shift, and you only get $1.55 million. And then in the next section, the 1.75 shift. So if you allocated no free cash and no shift, that would raise single family tax bills, on average, to $933 for over 10%.

Also, that would be over 10% on the median values of homes as well. So at the 1.55 mark with the 1.7 shift, you would be increasing the actual tax levy 2.77% over last year, increasing the average single family bill by under $80, or less than 1%, and the median tax bill by $53, or less than 3 quarters of a percent. If you allocate no free cash at that shift level, you have a tax rate of 3.15 for average single family bill of $9,356, an increase of $357, or about 4%, and 283 on the median for 3.75% increase. If you allocated $2 million, that would level out the tax bill from last year with a variance of $1, or 0.01%, and the median taxes would actually go down by $12.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:46 - 2:04:18)
Can I ask you to just go back for a second? Can you go back to the last slide? Sorry.

So if you just look at the average, this is fiscal year 22 proposed, the way you're doing it, and you have average condo tax bill. I just want to focus on that one, 5495, right? And if you go back now to fiscal year 21, one more slide earlier.

Yes. So my question is, why is condo shrinking when condos went up assessed value higher than single family assessed value?

[Speaker 5] (2:04:19 - 2:04:49)
Good question. Well, so the median values went up. So the values you were looking at earlier were class values.

So on average, the median, and the average and median condo bills went up 6.6% and 6.1%. So, and then the tax rate is going down. So that has the effect of lowering the average, or lowering the, to lower both the average and the median.

[Speaker 11] (2:04:51 - 2:04:54)
We're still on 2020 values.

[Speaker 5] (2:04:56 - 2:04:58)
So this is 2021.

[Speaker 2] (2:05:04 - 2:05:07)
Now, what the assessment's based on is what you're saying. Yeah, right.

[Speaker 11] (2:05:07 - 2:05:14)
It's a 2020. But go back to, when I go look at your, I'm sorry. 22 fiscal year.

[Speaker 2] (2:05:14 - 2:05:28)
Right, but it's, when you're comparing fiscal year 21 to 22, you're showing a 10 point, you're in property type 102, going back to your table, you're showing a property, an assessed value increase of 10.4. Right.

[Speaker 5] (2:05:28 - 2:05:49)
So that's the whole class, the whole world of condo properties is up by 10%. Right. On average, within that class, they're up by 6.6%. And the median values increased, the median value increased 6.1%. Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:05:49 - 2:06:00)
So basically the answer is, we have some really expensive condominiums that affected our base, right? And it's, got it. That makes sense.

Thanks. Good answer.

[Speaker 5] (2:06:01 - 2:06:04)
Thanks. Next slide. Or.

I wasn't testing.

[Speaker 2] (2:06:04 - 2:06:06)
I genuinely didn't know that.

[Speaker 5] (2:06:06 - 2:09:09)
And it's a, it's a, it's a, yeah, no, I'm glad it was, it's not an easy one to explain, really. I went back, I mentioned it to Patrick, and I was like, this is, I had to go back and check all those numbers to make sure everything was right. Yeah.

Next step for that, please. All right, so this is excess living capacity. This is assuming the 1.55 transfers to, again, it's down to the 51, one, 10, five, 60 as the overall raise, which leaves the excess capacity at $6,091,154. And that is, it's helpful to have that excess capacity if you need it. It is also, typically considered beneficial to not tax at the maximum of the capacity, both for backup purposes, but also so that you're not spending all of the money that could possibly be spent. So that's the, this is currently the excess levy capacity, and you can see that that amount has been increasing over the past five years there.

Next slide, please. So this is the single family average tax bill history. This is using, the last number is using that 1.55 million allocation from free cash suggestion. So you can see kind of the trend from over the last 10 years, going through, kind of going in an upward direction, and then being decreasing or leveling out or ticking up ever so slightly this year. Average, or average increase of $80 and 53 median increase. Next slide, please.

Skipped that one to this one. So this is, this is one that's got single family values on the bottom line there. There are two different scales, the single family values scale is on the left in billions, and on the right in thousands is the tax bill, which just gives you a little indication of how through budgeting you can, or in tax rate shifting that you can lower and maintain a steady tax level, even as values are going up.

And that's, again, that last number system in that 1.55 transfer. Next slide, please. So the, pardon me, the residential exemption option.

This is something that you need to vote on each year for the, to adopt a residential exemption or not. I know you discussed this last year as well. I'll try to be quick, but the residential exemption can be granted up to 35% to exemption on all owner-occupied properties.

That's done by shifting, as I said, the same amount of taxes that is raised from that class, but you're shifting the burden on the not owner-occupied properties, as well as the higher value residential properties. Next slide, please.

[Speaker 4] (2:09:11 - 2:09:12)
Wait.

[Speaker 5] (2:09:12 - 2:09:12)
Yep.

[Speaker 4] (2:09:17 - 2:09:19)
Why either of those? Or both of those?

[Speaker 5] (2:09:20 - 2:09:55)
Both of those. So, actually, let's move to the next slide, because I think that'll kind of illustrate it. So you're exempting 35% of all owner-occupied properties, but only the owner-occupied properties on the lower end of value get the benefit, and the higher end get the burden.

Also, in that, the large apartment buildings, anything that's paying the residential tax rate, they also, being on the higher end of value, would be paying more, and not owner-occupied, so you're not getting the exemption.

[Speaker 4] (2:09:55 - 2:09:58)
And does the exemption have to apply to both?

[Speaker 5] (2:09:59 - 2:10:10)
So the exemption is only for the owner-occupied properties, and then that amount of burden that's exempted is shifted onto the rest of the properties.

[Speaker 15] (2:10:10 - 2:10:11)
Oh, right.

[Speaker 5] (2:10:11 - 2:10:23)
So you increase the tax rate on everybody on the residential side, and the people who end up paying for it are the people in the higher value homes, and then the larger residential properties, like big apartment buildings.

[Speaker 14] (2:10:26 - 2:10:27)
Or non-owner-occupied.

[Speaker 5] (2:10:27 - 2:11:11)
Or non-owner-occupied. Anything that's non-owner-occupied on the residential side would not get the exemption and be paying that higher tax rate. And so, as an example, this is all 2021 numbers.

If you had adopted the residential exemption last year, the tax rate, instead of being 1,380, would have been 1,979. And the D.R. doesn't say don't do this if you have lots of owner-occupied properties, but what they say is the communities that choose to adopt this exemption typically have large numbers of big apartment buildings, non-owner-occupied properties, and or resort communities where you have a lot of people coming in and not actually residing there as a resident.

[Speaker 4] (2:11:11 - 2:11:16)
And this only applies to residential and non-occupied, so not businesses that are renting.

[Speaker 5] (2:11:16 - 2:11:30)
This has nothing to do with the business side. Yeah, it's confined on the residential side. So the exemption is paid for itself by raising the rate on all the residential properties.

[Speaker 9] (2:11:30 - 2:11:31)
I think I understand this.

[Speaker 5] (2:11:32 - 2:11:40)
So next slide, please. So this is a small business or small commercial exemption.

[Speaker 4] (2:11:40 - 2:12:12)
Wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, that's okay.

I'm like just not getting this for some reason. Why? So basically, is this a statute?

Is this an option that requires that people to be removed in a certain wealth bracket? I don't, I'm just not getting why. Can we impose a tax burden on non-owner-occupied buildings and not have it affect any owner-occupied residential properties?

[Speaker 5] (2:12:14 - 2:12:14)
No.

[Speaker 4] (2:12:15 - 2:12:16)
Right, it has to be both?

[Speaker 5] (2:12:17 - 2:12:43)
It does have to be both, yes. So it does have to be both non-owner-occupied and then everybody on the residential side pays the higher rate. On the lower end of the scale, that higher rate on the lower assessed value then is, or exempted value, is beneficial to the homeowner.

On the higher end, it becomes an increase in the burden.

[Speaker 4] (2:12:43 - 2:12:47)
Can we have an idea in our town how many properties that would be?

[Speaker 2] (2:12:47 - 2:12:56)
So in past years, the slide actually showed you the number of parcels. This year, it's not here. But so the answer is we do have that information.

We show it to you because.

[Speaker 4] (2:12:57 - 2:12:58)
It's enough that it's not a good idea.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:00 - 2:13:04)
Yeah, it's interesting until you start seeing the parcel numbers and then you're like, huh.

[Speaker 1] (2:13:06 - 2:13:18)
The median is like once you get past that, it's just interesting. The person that, the house that's right on the button that gets the discount and the one that doesn't.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:18 - 2:13:27)
So if you can just, with that, when we come back for the formal recap vote, include parcel numbers. Because I think that's, Molly's asking a question that in previous years we've had that data in front of us. Sure.

[Speaker 4] (2:13:28 - 2:13:39)
Thank you. I mean, there's no, so is there an, I'm assuming no, that there's no option for.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:39 - 2:13:50)
No, it's because, just think about it this way. It's just, so all this is doing is taking a certain percentage of the tax burden and putting it now in this new class of non. Yeah, no, I get it.

[Speaker 15] (2:13:50 - 2:13:51)
People who have more money.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:51 - 2:13:52)
But the, but.

[Speaker 15] (2:13:53 - 2:13:54)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:54 - 2:13:55)
No, no, no, no, no, no.

[Speaker 5] (2:13:55 - 2:13:58)
But it's based on your house value, so.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:58 - 2:14:35)
So it's just, it takes a certain percentage of the taxes and disproportionately taxes non-owner occupied. Just hard stop. The remaining balance that's still going to home occupied are distributed, that if you were at the average value, right, you're gonna be at zero.

If you're below average value, I mean, so I mean, it just, the normal distribution of taxes go into play then, right, of the remaining amount. And the reason it's so draconian is because the tax rate now has shifted to the multiplier effect. And so it's just, I get where the confusion comes from.

We totally have stumbled over this, not you. I had a.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:35 - 2:14:36)
I'm sure I haven't.

[Speaker 2] (2:14:36 - 2:14:38)
I had a stumble over it. It's just a normal distribution.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:39 - 2:14:40)
Yeah, and so, you know.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:40 - 2:14:41)
So they're always.

[Speaker 2] (2:14:42 - 2:14:43)
Always.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:43 - 2:14:43)
More burdened.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:44 - 2:14:45)
Who's more, who's they?

[Speaker 4] (2:14:46 - 2:14:47)
The higher value residential.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:49 - 2:14:53)
Right. Which is true anyway, but.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:53 - 2:14:53)
That's what I mean.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:53 - 2:14:53)
Right.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:54 - 2:14:55)
It just makes it worse.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:55 - 2:14:56)
Yes. Right, yes.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:58 - 2:15:00)
By taxing non-owner occupied more.

[Speaker 5] (2:15:01 - 2:15:08)
Well, but you're, so within the residential levy, that number doesn't change. So you have to raise the same amount.

[Speaker 4] (2:15:09 - 2:15:09)
Yeah.

[Speaker 5] (2:15:09 - 2:15:39)
No matter what. No matter if you adopt the exemption or not. So the people who are below this dollar amount in assessed value, they get a benefit because the exemption outweighs the increased tax rate.

The people above that, it does not outweigh that. And so they get the higher tax rate and the higher burden because of the shift. And then also the non-owner occupied would not get the exemption and they would get the higher tax rate.

[Speaker 4] (2:15:41 - 2:15:47)
Right. So I'm just gonna ask the same question for like the fifth time and I'm sorry. It's not that you're not giving me an answer.

There's no way we can just.

[Speaker 5] (2:15:48 - 2:15:51)
There is no way we can split that up. No, this is.

[Speaker 4] (2:15:51 - 2:15:51)
That's all, all right.

[Speaker 5] (2:15:51 - 2:15:54)
That's the available exemption.

[Speaker 4] (2:15:54 - 2:16:01)
I assume that because you would move down to the small business. But I just, it could be potentially unfortunate.

[Speaker 5] (2:16:02 - 2:16:06)
So I'll look through the slide with the parcel count for the next meeting.

[Speaker 4] (2:16:07 - 2:16:13)
I think I do. I don't remember the parcels, but I. Thank you.

That would be helpful.

[Speaker 5] (2:16:14 - 2:17:36)
All right, next slide please. So the small business or small commercial exemption is similar. So you would exempt up to 10% of the value of commercial properties that house businesses that have less than 10 employees on average annually and where the commercial portion of the parcel is less than $1 million in assessed value.

And that's paid for by increasing the tax rate on the commercial industrial properties. Next slide please. Which, so these are the 27 eligible parcels this year in Swamp Scots.

So these would be the parcels that would qualify for the exemption based on the list that's sent out by the unemployment, frequently blanking on the agency name, the folks who track number of employees. And so these are the 27 parcels that are in qualifying properties that are in Swamp Scot out of that list. This would be a total exemption amount, all inclusive of all these parcels of $22,579.

That is shifted by way of increasing the tax rate on the commercial industrial side. And that brings the total savings to the parcels in question of $21,604.

[Speaker 2] (2:17:37 - 2:17:41)
So my understanding is that it's not an automatic exemption. They've got to make a filing.

[Speaker 5] (2:17:42 - 2:18:46)
It is an automatic exemption, but you can, I mean, you could make a rule, I suppose. It has been an automatic exemption in the past based on this list. Then you can also, if you are a partnership or another entity that doesn't fall under the counts from the unemployment folks, then you can apply separately.

So somebody could apply later and be added onto this list after the third quarter tax bills are issued. Next slide, please. So this is the impact to parcels.

You've got your parcel counts here. So there are six parcels between the zero and 100 mark, and the average impact to those parcels would be $4. And then on the opposite end, you've got 11 parcels that are over the $4 million mark.

The average impact on those parcels would be $1,020. And then obviously the rest of the chart there for other impacts.

[Speaker 2] (2:18:47 - 2:20:21)
So in past years, we've asked to do follow-up research to understand the implications of the choices. We've done it for two years now, but I don't think we haven't ever gotten feedback from the assessor or staff to say, you know, what's the benefit? Like, does this really, the cost-benefit analysis of the exemption, does it make sense to do it?

And who's benefiting and how is it benefiting the town? Meaning, are we seeing a reinvestment of savings? Are we seeing different type of tenancies?

Do we have, we analyze the uses of these buildings to know whether or not there are things that we want to tax incentivize and things of that nature. And so, you know, I think last year, this is probably the third year now I've actually said this, that if we don't have that analysis, I wouldn't support it. And because my suspicion is it's a close call at best.

I think we were doing it to see what would happen and what the feedback would be. And I don't think any of us can identify anything tangible off the top of our heads, right? It's gonna be subtle at best.

And so I think we need staffs help understand that benefit and whether or not it's worth continuing the small commercial exemption. You know, I can recognize some of the addresses, but most of them, I don't even know what the business is. Right, and so I think it's just, so I'd ask that when you guys come back, you guys have an affirmative recommendation and the basis for your recommendation.

Why yes, why no, to help us get comfortable.

[Speaker 1] (2:20:21 - 2:20:33)
We continue to have those conversations. We've had them over the last few weeks. And, you know, we'll do our best to collect some data.

It seems to be elusive to us as well.

[Speaker 5] (2:20:39 - 2:21:30)
Got it. Next slide, please. All right, so that wraps it up for this meeting.

So the final classification hearing vote will take place on December the 1st. And so we'll need a motion on the residential factor, which decides the CIP shift. And then get your information on the small commercial exemption and the residential exemption and vote on those.

And then at the special town meeting would be the opportunity to allocate free cash to help offset the tax impact on residents. And then after that, after next meeting, the DOR will review the tax rate recap and rate certification. Actually, I guess that'll happen after the 13th.

And then we'll mail out the third quarter tax bills on December 31st.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:33 - 2:23:23)
So if I could ask for a couple more things for when we next visit. One, I think we need further analysis on free cash. I think we really need to study what our anticipated needs going to be through fiscal year 23 budget approval.

Because that's gonna matter just in terms of guideline, you know, anticipation. In that should be assumed the prior assumptions as to the use of, I don't think we're using free cash. I think we're using stabilization for the school.

But anything that we've said we're gonna use free cash for or what happens to it, anything that you anticipate in the fiscal year 23 town meeting process budget slash thing on that. So that's number one. Number two is we're now after doing significant amounts of free cash, I appreciate, again, we budget not using free cash, right?

And so that makes us do the discipline. And then if things turn out slightly better or whatever come this time of year when we do the recap, we can talk about using free cash. But Sean, you have done a good job identifying and keep us focused on the fact there's a cumulative effect of using free cash in the way we've been doing year after year that we're creating a structural gap that's cumulative.

It's not just a million five, it's a million five plus a million, you know, in terms of that. And I think we need some analysis from the financial team and you, Sean, to be able to say, hey, look at, this is where, you know, the gap might be getting too big for us. And not just the analytical data, but the financial recommendation that goes with it, which is when are we getting too much of a free cash subsidy if you will, a structural deficiency, because at some point, the free cash spigot may not be there and that's gonna be a really painful time.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:24 - 2:23:36)
We will do that analysis. The answer to that question will be when we get to zero on the variance between Swampskate and the peer group. My thought was, let's get to- But that's not really the answer.

[Speaker 2] (2:23:37 - 2:23:40)
I get your idyllic goal, but that's not really the answer.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:40 - 2:23:42)
So I agree, Peter.

[Speaker 2] (2:23:42 - 2:23:44)
That is a answer. That is correct. That is a answer.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:44 - 2:24:09)
That is an answer. But I do think, you know, again, this is your policy decision. We have tools in our toolbox to kind of think about, you know, how do we keep Swampskate balanced?

And I think we've said this previously. Our goal isn't simply to, you know, reduce taxes or level taxes. It's to help support a community.

And we have community that has needs. We talked earlier today about pipes that are broken.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:09 - 2:25:37)
But let me, so I hear you on that. So two thoughts on this. Number one, we have a really short time before December 13th, and FinCom needs to be fully engaged in this conversation.

So this isn't gonna wait until December 1st, just so you know. We're gonna need to like really get going on this conversation. Number two is, I hear you about that and I couldn't agree more about the importance of being financially responsible with taxes.

But that being said, we are seeing the problem with stabilizing or leveling taxes or rates for a prolonged period of time, we're seeing that problem on water and sewer, right? We for a long time took pride in how we had historically low rates, but that actually ultimately was signifying that we are under investing where we need to. So now we're now fighting how to not have double digit rate increases each year to reflect that.

And the same thing will happen with taxes. At some point, we're gonna get starved enough because our tax base isn't gonna be able to grow quick enough. And so I just, that's, I hear you and I'm all for it.

And I'm glad you brought that discipline to this town and it's really great. But I think at some point there is a moderation where we have to have, you know, we have to get back to, you know, death and taxes being the two inevitabilities, because it is. It's just a question of when you're going to pay it.

And it's only so long that we can put it off. And this generation needs to, you know, also do it so that we're not kicking it to the next generation, right? So I just, it's that balance.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know the debate needs to ramp up on that.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:37 - 2:26:08)
It's a balance. I think, you know, again, you are elected to kind of make that decision. You've got the strongest, healthiest financial reserves the town has had in memory.

And you're in a good position with free cash. You're not in the same position and you have a tax, average single family tax bill that's just a bit higher than peer groups and some of your Essex County community. So you got to kind of figure out where is that balance.

So we'll get some more data points.

[Speaker 4] (2:26:08 - 2:26:14)
What was our free cash at this point last year when we used the 1.5? Do we know what the number was?

[Speaker 2] (2:26:14 - 2:26:15)
We were at four and changed.

[Speaker 4] (2:26:16 - 2:26:17)
So right where we are now.

[Speaker 2] (2:26:18 - 2:26:20)
It's almost, yes, it's almost.

[Speaker 4] (2:26:20 - 2:26:34)
4.7, we're at 4.5. My inclination is to use the same amount, apply the same and not go all the way to the level funding. Just putting that out there.

[Speaker 8] (2:26:34 - 2:27:27)
Yeah, no, I mean, thanks Peter for articulating that question and point better than I could have, but that's been something that I've been, ever since I started thinking about this more over the last week. I mean, that's the question I have is, when does this strategy sort of, when do we sort of wean off the strategy or do we have to and how does that work? And we need more information and analysis.

I mean, I know it is our decision, but we need to understand it to make it. And we don't know what that is right now. So I, you know, just second the need for that information and I agree that it needs to come sooner rather than later.

[Speaker 11] (2:27:40 - 2:27:41)
Yes, definitely.

[Speaker 2] (2:27:42 - 2:27:46)
This is not the public hearing. This is not the actual meeting.

[Speaker 15] (2:27:46 - 2:27:47)
No, no, it's just a joint meeting.

[Speaker 2] (2:27:48 - 2:27:49)
Oh, I got you.

[Speaker 4] (2:27:51 - 2:27:53)
Yes, absolutely. Go for it with your.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:54 - 2:27:55)
No, I don't know who will play.

[Speaker 4] (2:27:56 - 2:27:58)
Lara and Tasia, right?

[Speaker 2] (2:28:06 - 2:28:27)
Yeah, I'm actually interested, I guess, in hearing from the assessors and what their thought process is on the valuations and what are they liking, not liking, concerned about, focused on? Because that's really, that's your side. That's your side of the collective ledger.

So it'd be interesting to hear from all of you as to your thoughts about the valuation process.

[Speaker 11] (2:28:27 - 2:29:22)
I think if you look at it, we're still looking at 2020 values. I think I talked about the hospital. I think I talked about it a little bit.

And you're seeing, you know, at the present moment, you know, say six months ago, people are buying houses in Swampscott and spending 50 to $70,000 over asking price, not asking for an inspection, just going all in. And that's going to affect, if not next year, the year after, you know, to really look at values that a house that we think is valued at 500,000 just sold for 700,000. Like we're, you know, that's a big gap that eventually is going to, chickens are coming home to roost that we have to look at, that it's going to be a big impact, if not next year, but the year after.

[Speaker 1] (2:29:25 - 2:29:31)
So to me, I don't hear that as a negative though. No, no, I'm not saying either.

[Speaker 11] (2:29:31 - 2:29:50)
Someone that gets a tax bill that saying, wait, I thought my house was worth 500,000. Now it's worth 600,000, 100,000 plus a tax, you know, a tax rate. That's a big increase.

And you know, that's going to hurt some, you know, some people.

[Speaker 2] (2:29:50 - 2:30:00)
Only if it outpaces the other categories. That's the important. So let's just be careful about how we're talking about that because if it's not, well, you mean single families outpacing it?

[Speaker 11] (2:30:00 - 2:30:00)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:30:00 - 2:30:26)
Yeah, if single families outpacing, it's outpacing, but that's the thing that, again, just to, I just want to be careful. We're articulating for those that are listening that are being educated as well. It's the fact that your property goes up doesn't mean that you're going to pay more.

It means that only if your property is going up faster than your subset and your subset going faster than every other subset, right?

[Speaker 5] (2:30:29 - 2:30:29)
Right.

[Speaker 2] (2:30:31 - 2:31:04)
And that's the important, and that's, that's the importance of that, which is in the budget. And so, so I think that just Neil's point's valid. If you have a, a, a 1950s ranch that we have assessed at $400,000 selling for $1.125 million, right?

I mean, it's crazy on a per square foot basis. You're going to run into that problem, right? And then, then we have the counter problem, which is a correction, right?

When the market makes a correction, then we are going the other way with that problem, right? And so it's, it's.

[Speaker 10] (2:31:07 - 2:31:38)
Right, but also Neil, we are seeing the market soften a bit. So even though we did have outrageous home prices this year, we're starting to, we're seeing that soften, that mark, those market conditions soften right now. So they may balance out to a degree.

But it is, if it goes up and then the market comes down, it's all about the piece of the pie that everybody's paying. If everybody is growing equally and then declining equally, you won't see that impact on their bill.

[Speaker 5] (2:31:38 - 2:31:56)
I think, and so we were seeing it kind of soften a little bit. Are we, my interpretation of that is that we're going to see kind of slower increases. So the prices might not go up as quickly as they have been, but still going up.

Is that what you're seeing as well?

[Speaker 10] (2:31:57 - 2:32:58)
Yeah, there's, there, well, they're not doing what they were doing in the spring and the summer. You're actually seeing properties sit on the market and they're not going for 50 or 60,000 over anymore, but it will level out. But I'd like to talk about the commercial values a bit, because I know we did have some increases with Tedesco and that ratio that we have to maintain to have that split tax bill is incredibly important.

So with the values increasing the way they are, that is definitely a concern to keep that ratio in check. Because like you said earlier, we're not going to be able to assess our way out of that. That is, that's been a big concern of mine for several years.

[Speaker 5] (2:32:59 - 2:33:10)
I think, you know, on the policy side, which is not my side, but I think on the economic development side, I'm encouraging new growth in every sector, but especially on the political side.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:12 - 2:34:09)
To see, I hear you. You know, part of our responsibility is to just assess the ad valorem market value for every property. And, you know, we've just got an ethical responsibility to just do that.

We are driving economic development and we're mindful of, you know, trying to stay within certain DOR guidelines and ensuring that we protect Swampskate taxpayers. I think we've tried to balance a lot of those responsibilities. But, you know, for generations, Swampskate, you know, turned commercial property over to residential through ZBA actions or other, you know, property transactions, and we lost a significant amount of commercial property.

And so, those are the trends that, frankly, you know, decades ago have hurt us that we're trying to, you know, really address.

[Speaker 10] (2:34:09 - 2:34:21)
Yeah, I mean, I think we're still seeing that with that, what is it, 180 units on Essex Street? That's a commercial property that is gonna be converted over to residential. Isn't that right?

[Speaker 11] (2:34:22 - 2:34:24)
The ML Place.

[Speaker 10] (2:34:24 - 2:34:44)
Yeah, so that's gonna have a big impact. What we really, I think, we need to do is focus on growing affordable housing because once we get to that limit, I believe it's 10%, then Chapter 40Bs won't be an option anymore. Is that correct?

[Speaker 2] (2:34:45 - 2:34:59)
Yeah, that is the goal, but just candidly, given our percentage and where we are, Tasia, it's, we shouldn't be striving for it, but it's generations away, just because.

[Speaker 10] (2:34:59 - 2:35:12)
I actually have a question about that because, like, is it an option for builders to make a donation rather than actually build affordable units?

[Speaker 2] (2:35:13 - 2:35:25)
Yes, the Affordable Housing Trust has the ability to, actually, I think, I think we changed it to the Affordable Housing Trust now makes that determination. It originally was with the Zoning Board. It's either a payment in lieu or creation of units.

[Speaker 10] (2:35:26 - 2:35:31)
And is that payment in lieu equal to the value of what those units would have been?

[Speaker 2] (2:35:31 - 2:35:36)
Well, intellectually, it's intended to be. Actually, it's not.

[Speaker 10] (2:35:37 - 2:35:40)
Right, so how do we fix that?

[Speaker 2] (2:35:40 - 2:36:53)
Because if the Affordable Housing Trust is the one to fix it, but the reality is that there's a policy reason why it's not as aggressive. Do I think it should be more aggressive? I don't know the answer.

I think so, but it doesn't get to be true because the reality is that you want to incentivize certain projects to actually pay in lieu. And so, therefore, you want to make the number a place where it would incentivize them because, for example, White Court, I'm gonna use that as an example, which is 20 units averaging over $3 million a unit. You really don't want to put 10% of those units as affordable there because that's just, you're not getting banged for your buck there.

You'd rather take a significant payment and you're able to create a lot more units that are actually more reasonable units as opposed to a 3,000 square foot affordable unit that someone, the guy upstairs paying 3.5 million, but the person in this unit is paying $250,000, right? And so it's just, from a policy perspective, you want to incentivize that payment.

[Speaker 10] (2:36:53 - 2:36:59)
Is the payment equal to the amount that it would cost us to buy the same number of units?

[Speaker 2] (2:36:59 - 2:39:13)
It is a calculation, so the answer's no, but yes. I mean, so there's a calculation, there's a formula that the Affordable Housing Trust approved as a result of a town meeting amendment that gave them the ability to do that. So you're asking a question which takes me to something that Ben just said, and I guess I don't agree with you.

Policy is part of your business. You guys know the numbers and you guys see it and you know the implications, so you have to be part of the policy chain, right? You have to be.

You've got to be ringing alarms when you see things going the wrong way. You need to be saying, hey, we need to bring to the attention of the zoning board. Every time they give zoning relief to a project that takes something from residential and from commercial and makes it residential, that's a problem for us.

They need to understand that macroeconomic considerations for us, and so, which means we need your help too because we can help ring those bells, but we need the knowledge to do those things too. So I would just encourage the assessor and the board of assessors to recognize that that voice is important. Advocate for we should be changing zoning so that it's harder.

For example, when we did the rezoning of the parking lot next to Stop and Shop in that area a few years ago to allow multifamily there, there was a provision that says you can do the multifamily, but you can't take down existing commercial without building back that existing commercial square foot by square foot in order to not decrease the tax base, right? And that was an attempt to do exactly what we're talking about here, which is to protect that split and to make sure we don't decrease our commercial base at the expense of multifamily. In a town like Swampscott, that's always going to be the urge because our commercial is just not vibrant enough, right?

And so, but hearing from you guys, from the board and from you Ben, like give us that information, advocate that, say we should be looking at zoning changes. We should be looking at more zoning changes. We should be thinking about that.

The zoning board, you know, I don't even know if they're even thinking about that. I don't know if staff when they're reviewing zoning or zoning petitions are saying, hey, this is something that we're focused on, right? And so you guys, I just want to advocate for your voice to be heard and you don't have to do all the work, just ring the bell so the rest of us see it as well and know something specific and we can work on them.

[Speaker 4] (2:39:13 - 2:39:15)
Well, that's actually, I think, go ahead Sean.

[Speaker 1] (2:39:15 - 2:40:17)
It's just not one project that has, housing project that has come down that I haven't said mixed use. You know, try to find some, you know, balance. You know, we need, we do need that commercial, you know, focus because it helps us, you know, shift some of the burden.

And we need, we need those jobs. We need those opportunities. Like to me, you know, Swampscott, you know, we can strike a balance.

It doesn't just have to be, you know, residential. We can find ways that really make neighborhoods work with a mixed use type of strategy. That said, all of these points need to be, you know, amplified and I do think, you know, our Board of Assessors can play that leadership role as well.

You know, you know it best, you study these values and you've seen the trend over the last 40 years and, you know, it doesn't just have to go one way. It actually, you can go back and get, you know, more commercial property. You can look at ways to try to find commercial property, but the town's gonna have to take a more active role in acquiring some of those opportunities.

[Speaker 4] (2:40:18 - 2:41:00)
So I think a couple things. I am just cognizant of the time and the warrant that we have to go over and also how we absolutely, in my opinion, need to meet with you guys more often. I think this is really helpful discussion generally.

I know that we have done financial summits in the past and at the one that we first did in Salem, we had thought, oh, next time we should invite the Planning Board because all of these conversations kind of implicate these other major committees and I think the Board of Assessors, obviously, and the Planning Board should be part of that.

[Speaker 11] (2:41:00 - 2:41:00)
And the Zoning Board too.

[Speaker 4] (2:41:01 - 2:41:02)
And the Zoning Board, yeah.

[Speaker 11] (2:41:02 - 2:41:10)
Eventually it affects what happens, their decision comes to our table now and at that point, I mean, it's a tie.

[Speaker 1] (2:41:11 - 2:41:12)
There's not much you can do.

[Speaker 4] (2:41:12 - 2:41:15)
Yeah, because it doesn't make sense on a policy level to be operating in a silo.

[Speaker 1] (2:41:15 - 2:41:22)
Years ago, we did talk about a Land Use Board Summit. All the boards that have anything to do with land, just get together.

[Speaker 10] (2:41:22 - 2:41:32)
That's a fantastic idea because we are all working in silos and there definitely needs to be some cohesion and common goals.

[Speaker 4] (2:41:32 - 2:41:33)
Great.

[Speaker 10] (2:41:33 - 2:42:03)
Yeah, I think if others are on board with that, I think it would be really helpful because this is certainly- I would even include the Affordable Housing Trust in there because it is, I mean, I know we are way off on that but for us to be taking a payment in lieu that isn't enough money for us to buy the equal number of units that we're losing by taking that payment, that's a huge, that hurts.

[Speaker 4] (2:42:05 - 2:42:38)
Yeah, and learning more about each other's policies and why they've arrived where they have and how we can coordinate better. So I don't wanna cut the conversation short and I have to cut the conversation short but I do wanna provide you guys with any last comments or anything because we kind of, I didn't mean to inadvertently cut the board meeting. Okay, is there any other comments relative to Ben's presentation in the certification process that you guys wanted to say?

[Speaker 10] (2:42:40 - 2:42:43)
No, I just wanna let, Ben did a great job.

[Speaker 4] (2:42:43 - 2:42:43)
Yeah.

[Speaker 13] (2:42:44 - 2:42:45)
Thank you.

[Speaker 10] (2:42:46 - 2:42:48)
Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Ben.

[Speaker 5] (2:42:48 - 2:42:55)
Absolutely. So we just need to adjourn? Yep.

I was about to say that but so moved on my end.

[Speaker 10] (2:42:55 - 2:42:56)
I second.

[Speaker 11] (2:42:58 - 2:42:59)
All in favor, aye.

[Speaker 13] (2:43:00 - 2:43:01)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 4] (2:43:05 - 2:43:06)
All right, thank you all.

[Speaker 3] (2:43:06 - 2:43:07)
Okay, thank you very much.

[Speaker 8] (2:43:08 - 2:43:09)
Thank you, Ben. Thank you, everyone.

[Speaker 4] (2:43:09 - 2:43:23)
Thank you, that was great, really helpful. Oh, we're jealous. Okay, so.

[Speaker 8] (2:43:26 - 2:43:27)
Do you think, Matt?

[Speaker 4] (2:43:28 - 2:43:41)
Yes, okay. Molly's like, for the love of God. So, okay, we're done with that for now but we have to, what?

[Speaker 2] (2:43:41 - 2:43:44)
Nothing, I was gonna say something to you. You're running the meeting.

[Speaker 4] (2:43:44 - 2:43:56)
That wasn't subtle, okay. All right, so we're moving on now to the precinct map. And voting to approve it.

Are you making fun of how long this meeting is?

[Speaker 2] (2:43:56 - 2:44:08)
Not at all. I think the length of the agenda is gonna become your hallmark, I think. I'm very excited about that.

I've always said we should.

[Speaker 4] (2:44:08 - 2:44:12)
Not tonight, Peter, just to save it. Awesome.

[Speaker 2] (2:44:19 - 2:44:21)
So, you're just asking if there's someone's a motion?

[Speaker 4] (2:44:22 - 2:44:23)
No, I thought Molly was on.

[Speaker 15] (2:44:23 - 2:44:24)
You're going to, we're done.

[Speaker 4] (2:44:24 - 2:44:25)
With that, it's needed.

[Speaker 13] (2:44:28 - 2:44:29)
Hi, everyone, can you hear me?

[Speaker 14] (2:44:29 - 2:44:30)
Yep, yes.

[Speaker 13] (2:44:30 - 2:46:09)
Yep. All right, and this is gonna be really brief based on the session you were just having but you all saw the original precinct map that I came to you in October. Just a reminder, we do this every 10 years after the census, after we get our updated data counts.

There have been some changes that were sent out to you all since our last discussion and those changes are the following. Minor adjustments made in all precincts to even out population distribution. So, all precincts are now within plus or minus 1% of that target population that we have to have.

Each precinct has a certain target population of 5% of a total. We have looked at past voting data over the past decade to ensure that each precinct has a high voting area. There are low and high voting areas across the community and by doing that, we also ensure that we're gonna have good town meeting representation in each precinct out of those high voting areas to make sure that we've got good, equal representation at town meeting.

So, this is the closeup of the updated precinct map that is the final that you all can vote on tonight. Along with that, you were sent an updated block report that reflects those edited numbers and then a legal boundary description. Vote to accept all of that goes, we send in a package to the state and they are basically packaging all communities new precincts by the end of the year and those precincts will go into effect January 1st of next year.

Is there any questions?

[Speaker 4] (2:46:11 - 2:46:11)
Questions?

[Speaker 2] (2:46:13 - 2:46:16)
I'd move to approve the modified map.

[Speaker 14] (2:46:16 - 2:46:17)
Second.

[Speaker 4] (2:46:17 - 2:46:22)
Any further discussion? Nope. All in favor?

[Speaker 2] (2:46:22 - 2:46:23)
Aye.

[Speaker 4] (2:46:23 - 2:47:00)
Thank you, Molly. Thanks for all your work on this. You did great and all the detail you provided, I really appreciate.

So, thank you. Okay, then. Our last and not short item on the agenda is the special town meeting, special, all special town meeting warrant articles.

We need to, how do you wanna do this, Sean? Do you wanna review them?

[Speaker 15] (2:47:00 - 2:47:01)
Sure.

[Speaker 4] (2:47:01 - 2:47:06)
Do you wanna just vote on them? Does anyone wanna go through them one by one and see if anyone has a conversation?

[Speaker 2] (2:47:11 - 2:47:24)
So, I don't see a warrant article that's complete and final. A warrant that's complete and final. I see comments not done.

I see some things here. So, I don't know exactly how to close a warrant when it's not ready to be closed.

[Speaker 1] (2:47:25 - 2:47:26)
I guess this is my question.

[Speaker 4] (2:47:27 - 2:47:28)
Sean?

[Speaker 1] (2:47:28 - 2:47:59)
So, we do need to make some changes to the warrant. We have a number of articles that, frankly, we likely aren't gonna be able to complete by the time we close the warrant, but we wanted to have some placeholders. We do have some transfers or amendments for the FY22 budget.

There's a list that we've compiled, but we likely need to make some adjustments to that.

[Speaker 2] (2:48:00 - 2:48:43)
So, I think that what I'm sadly gonna have to suggest is that we go through it to identify what still needs to be done. I don't see a warrant that we can close. I think there's a number of questions, and the budget one's not even in here yet, right?

So, that needs to be added. And then, I think there's some questions about some other warrant articles I have, and then there's a comment on one missing, and then there's some section numbers or article numbers on others missing. And so, I think that that probably means we have to have a, hopefully, quick discussion.

I think that has to happen early next week now, unfortunately, because I think that's the outside date for doing this.

[Speaker 1] (2:48:43 - 2:48:56)
But, again, Madam Chair, that is up to you. I just, I don't know that you're gonna- I do think if we could have a Zoom meeting on Monday to close the warrant, make some updates, that would be helpful.

[Speaker 4] (2:49:01 - 2:49:04)
Monday? All of this will be settled?

[Speaker 1] (2:49:05 - 2:49:14)
I think we can get a substantial update done for a number of the articles. So, let's maybe go through them, just to understand what that is before you answer the question.

[Speaker 2] (2:49:15 - 2:49:29)
Substantial update, I don't think, is the standard. I think a warrant article that, a warrant that you are, like, we're done, signed, sealed, delivered, unless you guys have questions, is what we need. So, let's just maybe go through them, see what work needs to be done.

[Speaker 4] (2:49:30 - 2:49:32)
So, article one, Sean?

[Speaker 1] (2:49:32 - 2:50:37)
So, article one includes some, generally, housekeeping. There's some interdepartmental transfers, so we're not looking for any additional funds. We just wanna transfer some money within certain lines.

And so, there were some additional changes that we were hoping to make, you know, as a result of some of the vacancies that we've had, we wanted to kind of clean up some tailings in some lines, transfer some funds to other lines. And so, there's just a interdepartmental transfer list that totals roughly about $300,000. And so, there's a list that we're just reviewing.

Questions on that? Tightening up. Some of these are addressing shortfalls in some lines that we've already identified, some are related to personnel, and we're just looking to do a transfer.

[Speaker 2] (2:50:39 - 2:51:09)
So, can I ask about article two, because it's gonna relate to article one, right? So, I understand that you have some pedestrian safety things, but I'm confused by the use of free cash as opposed to bonding them. It just, I don't understand for the life of me why we'd use free cash.

So therefore, I'm wondering if you think about that further and think we should be bonding it, and that may affect your debt service. I don't think it will for fiscal year 22, because that debt service won't hit at all in fiscal year 22, so I don't think it's gonna implicate, but I'm just saying it so that we come full circle on this.

[Speaker 4] (2:51:09 - 2:51:19)
So, I'm gonna go one step further and say that I don't, we don't have any detail on this. We've never had detail on this.

[Speaker 1] (2:51:20 - 2:51:21)
Let's see what he's.

[Speaker 4] (2:51:21 - 2:51:23)
I don't think.

[Speaker 1] (2:51:23 - 2:51:46)
So, we have some detail, and we've got a scope of work that has been put together with some pedestrian or traffic consultants, and certainly wanna come back and just present that. I would fully expect that we would have a presentation to town meeting to go over some of the critical public safety challenges that we have.

[Speaker 2] (2:51:48 - 2:52:03)
If you don't mind, I would appreciate if we just keep this an open dialogue and let Sean come back with more information. There's a reason he's exploring it and timing-wise why he's doing it now and not waiting for the annual town meeting to do it. So, if you don't mind, and we can, if we wanna take it out.

[Speaker 1] (2:52:03 - 2:52:05)
I think the bonding makes sense.

[Speaker 2] (2:52:05 - 2:52:09)
If we wanna take it out Monday, we can take it out Monday, but I would appreciate we just keep that dialogue open.

[Speaker 1] (2:52:13 - 2:52:23)
But it would need to be bonding, Sean. Agreed, agreed. I think that's, typically, we put language in there that provides for a number of opportunities, but.

[Speaker 4] (2:52:27 - 2:52:32)
Do you wanna say anything more about this article? Because I haven't heard anything about it. It's new, and it doesn't say anything.

[Speaker 1] (2:52:32 - 2:53:03)
The only thing I would say is that we've had a few discussions as a board over the last few months about the critical needs that we have for pedestrian safety. We recently received a $250,000 grant to do some pedestrian safety improvements around one area of town. We need to look at the entire town, and I do think that these types of investments are critical, and we have a lot of busy intersections.

Just this week, we put out a couple of.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:05 - 2:53:06)
Wait, I just, because it's so late.

[Speaker 1] (2:53:06 - 2:53:07)
Yep.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:07 - 2:53:25)
No one's, I mean, we all agree pedestrian safety is a priority. We need to invest in it. This is a sum of money with no specific descriptions, and you're just describing a $250,000 grant that we got.

I don't even know what we're doing with that. So, I don't.

[Speaker 1] (2:53:27 - 2:53:30)
Why don't I come back, and I will present more detail.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:30 - 2:53:40)
I don't wanna look at it once before we vote. I don't. Okay.

I'll keep it open at Peter's recommendation. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:53:40 - 2:53:48)
Article three? I'm just saying, in article one, we're putting that on, but we don't have the detail there. We don't have a free cash number.

No, I'm just saying.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:48 - 2:53:49)
That's a standard article.

[Speaker 2] (2:53:50 - 2:53:55)
Article three is free cash for collective bargain agreements. We don't have numbers there. I mean, I'm just.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:55 - 2:53:57)
We went over this, though. We just had a.

[Speaker 2] (2:53:57 - 2:53:59)
No, we didn't, but.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:59 - 2:53:59)
I'm not.

[Speaker 2] (2:53:59 - 2:54:01)
No, I'm just saying that.

[Speaker 4] (2:54:01 - 2:54:01)
I'm gonna do this.

[Speaker 2] (2:54:02 - 2:54:15)
I'm saying the motion on the floor oftentimes flushes out detail that's not in the Warren article. So, I think we just have to be open to that. That is an inevitability.

[Speaker 4] (2:54:17 - 2:54:23)
Other comments on article two? Article three?

[Speaker 1] (2:54:28 - 2:54:45)
That is a placeholder for three collective bargaining contracts that we have been negotiating. I hope that we can support an agreement for these units.

[Speaker 4] (2:54:48 - 2:54:48)
Questions?

[Speaker 1] (2:54:49 - 2:54:56)
We will have more information, probably, for town meeting.

[Speaker 4] (2:54:59 - 2:55:04)
Article four, transfer of free cash for the adjustment of tax rates. I think we've.

[Speaker 15] (2:55:07 - 2:55:08)
Just have to. Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (2:55:09 - 2:55:16)
Article five, appropriation from Transportation Infrastructure Enhancement Fund. This is just from. Oh, go ahead, Sean.

[Speaker 1] (2:55:17 - 2:55:30)
This is a small amount of money, $3,946 that we get from the state. These are from the ride share programs, and the state allocates a disbursement annually for this.

[Speaker 4] (2:55:30 - 2:55:34)
Should we vote to approve the ones we can right now? Do you wanna do that?

[Speaker 2] (2:55:36 - 2:55:47)
No. Well, because I don't. Again, the amount of funding.

I'm sorry, for five. Yes, we could do five, but any other ones without the dollar amounts, we can't vote.

[Speaker 4] (2:55:47 - 2:55:53)
Yeah. Is there a motion to approve article five? So moved.

Is there a second?

[Speaker 2] (2:55:54 - 2:55:54)
Second.

[Speaker 8] (2:55:55 - 2:55:56)
All in favor? Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 4] (2:55:57 - 2:56:00)
Can I have clarification on that? Is the motion to approve it?

[Speaker 2] (2:56:00 - 2:56:01)
No, it's recommended.

[Speaker 4] (2:56:01 - 2:56:22)
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I meant like just automatically. Okay, I'm sorry.

Allie, thank you. Okay, article six, approved transfer of water enterprise fund retained earnings. Questions on that?

And similarly, article seven, approved transfer of sewer enterprise fund retained earnings.

[Speaker 1] (2:56:25 - 2:56:41)
Both of these amounts were reviewed when we discussed the water and sewer rates. We looked at utilizing these retained earnings to help us mitigate the increase with the rate setting.

[Speaker 4] (2:56:45 - 2:57:17)
So can you remind me, have we looked, again, I can look, I'm sorry. I just have a bad memory, but have we looked at these numbers and what the ratios are in the enterprise funds relative to the financial guidelines that we want? Okay.

I thought that was, but I didn't know if it was related to this or not. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:57:18 - 2:57:28)
Can I ask you to please, 90K and 190K aren't proper jargon. We gotta spell out numbers here. Like, not spell it out, but it can't be 190K.

[Speaker 6] (2:57:29 - 2:57:30)
We actually need to comma zero, zero, zero.

[Speaker 2] (2:57:30 - 2:57:51)
All right. So let's just make that fix. The only reason I would say not make a recommendation is typically on finance committee articles of any substance, we typically give them the opportunity to chime in first and in case they flush out something that we didn't.

[Speaker 4] (2:57:51 - 2:57:57)
Sure. Establishing a solid waste enterprise fund.

[Speaker 1] (2:58:04 - 2:58:25)
Question. This is a best practice and it will allow us to continue to evolve programs to improve our solid waste practices, reduce contamination in our recycling stream and meet evolving environmental responsibilities.

[Speaker 4] (2:58:26 - 3:00:02)
Well, I hope it does those things, but I think with the enterprise fund, I think the idea is we're going to create the structure, not fund it till the next fiscal year. And we wanna provide some detail at town meeting as to what revenue goes into it and what expenses are paid out of it. My thoughts to you are just basically what we've discussed, I think, that everything, all the bag sales, the revenue from the pink bags, if that's still coming in, the metal recycling income, those are some of the revenues, the mattress recycling, all of the programs that we rolled out relative to the waste reduction efforts and then the expenses also related to those, including composting and such, are paid out of that.

And I think some detail's gonna need to be fleshed out about how much we want to have in there to initiate new efforts, how much we wanna retain in there, and then also how much we want, what percentage we want to reduce the solid waste line item and if it's directly going to reduce that. I think those are some details. I don't know what others' thoughts are on including that now or doing that just after this is established.

How much detail we wanna include.

[Speaker 14] (3:00:05 - 3:00:18)
I mean, I think it's a process, right? So I think we just need to establish this account and work out those details over time, right, as part of our regular town meeting next May.

[Speaker 4] (3:00:19 - 3:00:27)
I don't wanna, I wouldn't wanna bring it back again to town meeting. It would be funded, but not to go over the details of what.

[Speaker 2] (3:00:27 - 3:01:04)
Well, I don't think you need additional town meeting approval, but I do think we've gotta be, staff needs to be prepared to answer every one of those questions at town meeting because those are good questions that people will ask at town meeting and I don't know whether or not we have a clear enough answer to answer it. And if we're not funding it until fiscal year 23 anyways, then it may make sense to just put this on the May town meeting warrant when everything's fully baked. By then, we have everything, but I mean.

[Speaker 1] (3:01:04 - 3:01:17)
This is also something that the Solid Waste Committee might be helpful in terms of driving some discussion about how we can be better in terms of.

[Speaker 4] (3:01:17 - 3:01:49)
No, this is an enterprise fund, I disagree. And I don't think, honestly, to be honest, I don't think waiting longer, I think we're gonna do this in the spring. It's like, have you ever been prepared for a meeting and then it gets pushed off and you're like, oh, thank God, now I'm gonna be really prepared next time and then it's like two hours before the next meeting, you're like, oh wait, I didn't take the time I thought I would to get more prepared and I just don't want that to happen with this.

I think let's, there's no information that's outlying that we can't just make a decision and do it.

[Speaker 1] (3:01:49 - 3:02:16)
My concern is how much of the revenue that we now take into the general fund are we gonna then direct to this fund and then what level of priority are we gonna give to the town general fund impact for solid waste and how do we balance those new initiatives with the ever increasing general fund burden of our solid waste costs? And so, you know.

[Speaker 4] (3:02:16 - 3:02:18)
How is waiting to the spring gonna answer that question?

[Speaker 1] (3:02:18 - 3:02:36)
So I think it can help us kind of come up with a right ratio of really looking at some of the revenue because getting revenue from the bag sales and we're gonna see probably diminished revenue from that as people kind of get accustomed to, you know, dealing with.

[Speaker 4] (3:02:36 - 3:02:39)
But that wouldn't affect the percentage. Establishing a percentage.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:40 - 3:03:17)
No, it wouldn't. But I think it will give us a little bit more analysis on how we can really think about, you know, dedicating some of this special revenue to this enterprise fund and then come up with a policy of how we spend or allocate money out of this fund and when it makes sense for us to use some of these dollars to seed initiatives that ultimately will help us, you know, meet some of the broader financial and environmental goals.

[Speaker 4] (3:03:18 - 3:04:01)
I think we can create a fund. I think we can say what's going to go into it and what's going to come out of it. And that we have to determine a percentage that will be going toward initiatives and determine a percentage that will be going toward reducing the solid waste line item.

And I think that's a lot of detail. I don't think we have to have a percentage in order to have sufficient information at town meeting. We can say that we need this next winter to add to that analysis and so the percentage is yet to be determined but that the structure is there and the concept is there.

I don't know. I don't favor pushing this off myself.

[Speaker 2] (3:04:01 - 3:04:58)
So my only point's not what the ultimate answer is. It's the ability to give town meeting an answer when they ask the question because I don't want them to, I don't want us to be opaque in our answer and say, well, we're gonna work on that. Trust us because I don't think that typically goes well with town meeting.

And I don't want them to see this as what it's not. And what it's not is an attempt to take this revenue and use it for things exclusive of dealing with cost overruns or increases in solid waste generally, general solid waste above a certain threshold. I think it's reasonable to anticipate town meeting would want to know that we're using those funds first to take care of increases in the solid waste line item above X percent.

And then after, and only then for new initiatives or things of that nature. And if we can't answer that with complete clarity at town meeting on December 13th, I think that then.

[Speaker 4] (3:04:58 - 3:05:00)
But that's just what we could do right now.

[Speaker 2] (3:05:00 - 3:05:12)
But I don't know if it just respectfully a minute ago, we talked about doing something for the first time and making a decision. I don't know how at 10 o'clock at night for the first time, we're going to write a policy about how we're gonna use the solid waste enterprise fund.

[Speaker 4] (3:05:12 - 3:05:14)
We talked about the enterprise fund. This is the third time.

[Speaker 2] (3:05:15 - 3:06:10)
Great. I'm just respectfully gonna say to you, just like we don't have a list of pedestrian projects here. I don't know how we're going to write a policy on the solid waste enterprise fund at 10 o'clock tonight to do it.

If we can do it, fine. But all I'm saying is, I don't care what the answer is of the policy. I completely support it.

I just want to make sure when we go to town meeting, we can answer questions in a way that does no harm to the initiative. Because if we say, ah, we're gonna work on it, but we don't need to come back to town meeting, just trust us. I think historically that doesn't go well.

I think they like to say, this is what it's going to be and this is how it's going to be implemented. And then they credit us for that. And so I'm just saying, since we haven't fleshed that out and we haven't heard a specific recommendation from staff yet, which is what I would want to hear anyways.

I don't know what that percentage should be, because I don't know what our 10 year historic increases have been. I haven't, we haven't looked at any trends. I mean, I know some people have, but this board hasn't.

[Speaker 1] (3:06:11 - 3:06:37)
I think some of that experience with bag sales, you know, it is evolving. And I think, you know, we're still not exactly sure what the five year trend will be. And so we're still modeling and getting a sense of how the waste reduction has affected household behaviors.

And so we're just not certain. I think that the more we get experience, we'll have a better standard of where we can.

[Speaker 4] (3:06:38 - 3:06:39)
I think this is pushing this off.

[Speaker 1] (3:06:40 - 3:06:45)
I actually, well, I think you and I can have a few conversations. I do think we have to get more.

[Speaker 4] (3:06:45 - 3:06:56)
We've had time to do that. If we wanted to do it, we would have done it is my point. I just, if we don't want to do this, the town needs to say they don't want to do this.

If we want to do it, there's no reason why we haven't done this. That's why I'm frustrated.

[Speaker 2] (3:06:58 - 3:07:43)
Well, I think you're mishearing. I think as a matter of fact, I think we had a lengthy conversation last time where I think everybody on this board actually said that we are good doing it. I'm just suggesting in terms of preparation for town meeting that I don't know who's going to get up and give this answer.

I wouldn't want Sean to give the answer he just gave because it's just too opaque. It could be this, or it could be that is not helpful at town meeting. And that is not where we've had our success and it's our warrant article.

So therefore I believe we need to set it up for success. If you believe it's ready and stuff like that, then I frankly will demur to do it. But frankly, that policy could have been written months ago if we're that ready.

I don't know why this policy hasn't been before us before tonight because we've known we've needed this policy.

[Speaker 4] (3:07:44 - 3:07:44)
That's why I'm frustrated.

[Speaker 2] (3:07:46 - 3:07:47)
I understand that, but.

[Speaker 4] (3:07:48 - 3:07:50)
You're saying I should have done more?

[Speaker 2] (3:07:50 - 3:08:27)
No, I'm just saying we are where we are right now. So that doesn't solve the problem. I'm just trying to express it just because I want to do no harm to something that I think needs to pass.

And I would rather set it up for success. And if we aren't funding it till 23 anyways, you're gonna be in a position to make sure that we do that. And that budget is actually going to reflect implementation of the policy.

So people will actually see a tangible example of how we're allocating the funds because the fiscal year 23 budget is going to reflect the first implementation of this.

[Speaker 4] (3:08:27 - 3:08:31)
Aren't we planning the next budget in the next six months?

[Speaker 2] (3:08:32 - 3:08:37)
Yes. And so it's gonna take that next six months to flush that all out such that it will be ready for town meeting.

[Speaker 4] (3:08:38 - 3:08:53)
Doesn't the fund and what goes into it and come out of it inform the budget process? To me, coming up with that answer now would help inform how you're weighing those revenues and expenses for next fiscal year.

[Speaker 2] (3:08:53 - 3:09:10)
We're not at 10 o'clock on the night that we're doing it. I'm saying, I don't think we can do that because I don't know how to set the standard. But yes, that conversation can happen.

And that will be part of what Sean and the financial team will then have to take in consideration as they prepare the budget and prepare a budget that assumes passage of this enterprise fund.

[Speaker 1] (3:09:10 - 3:09:35)
Let me take the next couple of days and come back and prescribe a allocation of some of these special revenues to this fund. And we'll talk about some guidelines that would help town meeting and the board use these funds strategically for some of these broader purposes.

[Speaker 4] (3:09:37 - 3:09:38)
Other questions?

[Speaker 8] (3:09:40 - 3:10:22)
No, I mean, I think let's keep it there until Monday. Polly, you had asked a series of questions about details needed for it when we started talking about it. So I think it's just like, what's the level of detail that we need to feel comfortable at town meeting.

So, I mean, I think that I don't think the concern is it not passing at town meeting, not supporting it. And so, but I don't think anyone, I don't wanna remove it right now. Can we just see where we are on Monday?

[Speaker 4] (3:10:26 - 3:10:30)
Anything anyone wants, Sean, do you wanna say anything on article 910?

[Speaker 1] (3:10:31 - 3:10:34)
No, I don't think those are, those are just plugs.

[Speaker 4] (3:10:34 - 3:10:37)
Any, there's no, okay.

[Speaker 1] (3:10:37 - 3:10:45)
So they're coming out. So they're out. At this point, I don't have any information on, no.

Okay, so they're out. Right.

[Speaker 2] (3:10:47 - 3:10:52)
I'm sorry, I've now taken the question mark out of my sentence and replaced it with a period. Exclamation point.

[Speaker 4] (3:10:53 - 3:10:58)
Article 11, town charter name change. Questions or comments?

[Speaker 14] (3:10:59 - 3:11:06)
Is it possible to consolidate 11, 12, and 13 into- I think the moderator will do that with the motion because he can consolidate.

[Speaker 4] (3:11:06 - 3:11:16)
I don't think so with respect to the zoning bylaw because I think the planning board needs to. And it's also- I think they're all, well, they're all two thirds.

[Speaker 2] (3:11:16 - 3:11:34)
Yeah, so I think the moderator will present. I'm guessing he'll consolidate them for a vote. And so we're doing them all like that.

And then planning board will make its recommendation and I'm guessing so. So I don't think we can, we can't consolidate into one article, but I think he can, for a motion on the floor, consolidate it.

[Speaker 4] (3:11:34 - 3:11:38)
Do we wanna approve this now or no? I mean, vote to recommend it, I'm sorry.

[Speaker 2] (3:11:40 - 3:11:45)
I guess I would wait until Monday because this has polls in it and it says article blank.

[Speaker 12] (3:11:45 - 3:11:53)
And so I think that- I think it's because the article numbers keep flipping around. And so that's literally gonna be plugged in as soon as this is all settled.

[Speaker 2] (3:11:53 - 3:11:55)
Gotcha. And the town council has blessed these?

[Speaker 12] (3:11:55 - 3:11:57)
They are from the town council, yes.

[Speaker 2] (3:11:58 - 3:12:07)
Okay. I recommend favorable passage of the three articles having to do with the board change, the change of the name of the select board.

[Speaker 4] (3:12:09 - 3:12:12)
Second. All in favor? Aye.

[Speaker 2] (3:12:14 - 3:12:20)
You're making, someone's communicating with planning board to make sure that they hold their public hearing on that. Thanks.

[Speaker 4] (3:12:21 - 3:12:23)
The national grid easement.

[Speaker 2] (3:12:23 - 3:13:06)
I can explain that one. So that is, as I've mentioned to my colleagues previously, that is an article which allows the town to effectively substitute the easement which the town acquired almost three years ago with national grid and replace it instead with a 99 year ground lease in place of the easement. That has been negotiated with national grid.

It's not ready to be signed, but that's national grid has requested that we do a 99 year ground lease instead of an easement. And so this language is necessary per town council to authorize us to actually convey back the easement and then execute the 99 year ground lease. The ground lease itself will come back to this board post town meeting.

[Speaker 4] (3:13:09 - 3:13:09)
Questions?

[Speaker 2] (3:13:12 - 3:13:20)
So Sean, we need to write a comment. If you want to take a first stab, but send it to me and I'm happy to look at it, but we've got to do it, you know, in the next 24 hours.

[Speaker 4] (3:13:21 - 3:13:24)
Do we want to vote on this or wait for that?

[Speaker 2] (3:13:24 - 3:13:28)
Let's wait for the comment. Just so you guys have a complete picture.

[Speaker 12] (3:13:29 - 3:13:41)
And that's it. So, right. Anything else Sean that I'm missing?

So just confirming article nine and article 10, striking from the warrant entirely, right?

[Speaker 1] (3:13:42 - 3:13:43)
Article 17 as well.

[Speaker 2] (3:13:46 - 3:13:48)
Well, that was already struck.

[Speaker 4] (3:13:54 - 3:14:11)
Yeah. All right. Anything else that anyone wants to say on the warrant draft?

No? So it sounds like we need, oh, go ahead, Neil.

[Speaker 8] (3:14:11 - 3:14:31)
I was just going to say, I mean, just, we're meeting on Monday, so the information needs to be given to us before Monday. Yeah, like noon on Friday. Seriously.

It's just, so that's all. Just putting emphasis on it.

[Speaker 4] (3:14:32 - 3:14:56)
Also, I'm not available Monday. I can make myself available, but the assumption that everyone's available Monday is just not okay. So is there a time that works for everybody then?

Six, seven. This will be the only item, right?

[Speaker 1] (3:14:57 - 3:14:58)
Yes. Yeah, so.

[Speaker 4] (3:15:00 - 3:15:01)
Maybe an hour?

[Speaker 2] (3:15:01 - 3:15:19)
So actually, I'm out as of 6.30, so I can't change that. So. If we're doing it by Zoom, it's like 5 p.m. too early.

[Speaker 4] (3:15:19 - 3:15:21)
Wait, the warrant needs to go out on the 22nd.

[Speaker 12] (3:15:23 - 3:15:26)
I have to go out on the 24th, I believe we meet the 24th.

[Speaker 4] (3:15:27 - 3:15:30)
Yeah, but the 24th is Wednesday and no one's going to be here, right?

[Speaker 12] (3:15:30 - 3:15:32)
We are here, yeah, it's a half day, so.

[Speaker 4] (3:15:33 - 3:15:44)
But it leaves no padding for any issue that might come up. I know Amy wanted it closed by the 22nd, and I understand why.

[Speaker 12] (3:15:44 - 3:15:45)
And we can close it on the 25th.

[Speaker 4] (3:15:45 - 3:15:47)
I'm sorry, out to print. Oh.

[Speaker 13] (3:15:48 - 3:15:52)
No, we're printing, sorry, hi. We're printing internally. Hi!

[Speaker 9] (3:15:53 - 3:16:20)
We're printing internally because it's a special town meeting and it's a smaller warrant. So it allows for it to be closed Monday night so that we can print it on Tuesday so that it's mailed out when it's due. It's due on Wednesday.

But if you guys need to, I'm not going to presume your schedules, but if Monday night doesn't work and you guys can do a Tuesday day, we can print the warrant that as well, but we just can't do Tuesday night.

[Speaker 4] (3:16:30 - 3:16:30)
Okay.

[Speaker 8] (3:16:30 - 3:16:33)
I can do five on Monday, that'll work for you.

[Speaker 4] (3:16:34 - 3:16:36)
I can make it work.

[Speaker 8] (3:16:36 - 3:16:36)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (3:16:37 - 3:16:45)
So Monday, 5 p.m. Allie, will you post that? Yeah. Joe, are you good for that too?

[Speaker 8] (3:16:48 - 3:16:54)
That'll be, we're doing that. It's on Zoom. Zoom, right?

Yes. Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (3:16:58 - 3:17:17)
Thank you, Joe. I will post it. Okay.

So Monday, 11.22, 5 p.m. to vote, close the warrant, right? And Sean, you'll have everything totally complete and to us by Friday at noon?

[Speaker 1] (3:17:18 - 3:17:18)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (3:17:21 - 3:17:26)
Well, is that what everyone wants and expects? Or no? Does he have more time?

[Speaker 2] (3:17:27 - 3:17:29)
No, I think that's what he's saying, yep.

[Speaker 4] (3:17:29 - 3:17:56)
Okay. Okay. So then the last bit, which I think we can do anyway, is to discuss and vote on the town moderator's request to have the special town meeting be held through remote participation.

So let me just, sorry, the warrant has the letter in there on the first page, I think? From Michael?

[Speaker 1] (3:17:57 - 3:17:57)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (3:17:59 - 3:18:26)
Not the first page, but BII. Five, seven, seven? Yeah, I guess, I guess.

Okay. Does anyone have any questions? Is, Michael's not on, right?

No. No. Does anybody have any questions about this or are we good to, we do have to vote on approving it being a virtual town meeting.

So that's all we have to do. And that's what Mike's letter recommends.

[Speaker 2] (3:18:27 - 3:18:27)
So moved.

[Speaker 4] (3:18:28 - 3:18:29)
Second. All in favor?

[Speaker 2] (3:18:30 - 3:18:30)
Aye.

[Speaker 4] (3:18:31 - 3:18:37)
Okay. So that is done. And what's that?

[Speaker 8] (3:18:38 - 3:18:39)
It's an agenda.

[Speaker 4] (3:18:39 - 3:18:45)
Who's the new and old business? Business? Yes.

One day someone will trust me.

[Speaker 12] (3:18:45 - 3:18:46)
Before you vote.

[Speaker 15] (3:18:46 - 3:18:47)
Sorry.

[Speaker 12] (3:18:47 - 3:19:01)
No, no, I'm joking. It's for good reason. What?

Before you vote the consent agenda, I know that there's an item on there that I didn't have anything in the packet about for the Athletic Field Advisory Committee. And Neil, I was wondering if you'd be able to fill in the gap there.

[Speaker 8] (3:19:02 - 3:19:27)
Yeah, I can try. So the Athletic Field Advisory Committee, one of the members, she only had a six month term when they were appointed. And so she stepped down because it was the end of her term.

So she needs to be reappointed and she wants to be. That's Alexandra Byrne.

[Speaker 12] (3:19:27 - 3:19:42)
Yeah, so she was not renewed. She had declined reappointment. And I think shortly after declining reappointment, she discussed with the Athletic Field Committee that she did want to continue.

And so this is essentially, she is essentially reappointing her or appointing her.

[Speaker 8] (3:19:42 - 3:19:49)
Yeah, and they've met on it and are in favor of her continuing or being reappointed.

[Speaker 12] (3:19:50 - 3:19:58)
And there's a vacancy even with her reappointment, right? There's a vacancy on ex officio as far as I know.

[Speaker 2] (3:19:58 - 3:19:59)
Yeah, I think it's ex officio.

[Speaker 12] (3:19:59 - 3:20:00)
Oh, yeah, okay.

[Speaker 2] (3:20:00 - 3:20:01)
So what's the term, Allie?

[Speaker 12] (3:20:02 - 3:20:03)
The term?

[Speaker 2] (3:20:03 - 3:20:04)
Yep.

[Speaker 12] (3:20:05 - 3:20:16)
That's a great question. This would be a three year term to expire in 2024.

[Speaker 2] (3:20:16 - 3:20:21)
I love the confidence in which you gave that answer. Just tell me the confidence reflects the accuracy.

[Speaker 12] (3:20:22 - 3:20:24)
No, I believe.

[Speaker 2] (3:20:24 - 3:20:26)
The what? The confidence reflects the accuracy.

[Speaker 12] (3:20:27 - 3:20:36)
No, I mean, she technically would have been, if she'd been part of the reappointment process a couple of weeks ago, it would have been a three year term expiring in 2024.

[Speaker 2] (3:20:37 - 3:20:38)
So it should be the same then?

[Speaker 12] (3:20:38 - 3:21:08)
Would be the same. Yes. She knows.

All right. Okay. Okay, so, and then Allie did, and then I just needed to make the stick to the board meeting minutes, which is just an error in, Polly was not listed as chair when she should have been.

And that is reflected correctly in the meeting minutes you have in front of you. So it's not even as amended.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:08 - 3:21:10)
It's just how they are, they are.

[Speaker 14] (3:21:10 - 3:21:12)
Okay, motion to approve the consent agenda.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:13 - 3:21:13)
Second.

[Speaker 2] (3:21:17 - 3:21:20)
Okay, I'll second. You can't second.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:20 - 3:21:21)
I didn't second.

[Speaker 2] (3:21:21 - 3:21:23)
Oh, you said second. That was second with a question mark.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:23 - 3:21:24)
Of course it was.

[Speaker 2] (3:21:24 - 3:21:28)
Got it, understood. Okay, then I'm seconding. I'm seconding that.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:29 - 3:21:30)
All in favor.

[Speaker 2] (3:21:30 - 3:21:31)
Aye.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:31 - 3:21:34)
Okay. Select board time.

[Speaker 15] (3:21:37 - 3:21:37)
Who dares?

[Speaker 2] (3:21:38 - 3:21:39)
No way. I dare say a word. No way.

[Speaker 12] (3:21:39 - 3:21:42)
10-10. Polly, did everyone sign the? Yes.

[Speaker 2] (3:21:43 - 3:21:46)
Okay, thank you. What do you got, David? Go ahead.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:47 - 3:21:49)
Oh, you're packing.

[Speaker 15] (3:21:49 - 3:21:51)
Oh, I thought you were getting something to share.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:52 - 3:21:59)
At least we're not snapping and unsnapping the binder this time. Wilder. There's usually a lot of clicking.

[Speaker 2] (3:21:59 - 3:22:53)
Actually, I'm gonna be really quick. Bill Vespucis, who was a custodian for the town and retired in September, passed unexpectedly this week. And he had just moved and I think was excited for the next chapter.

His son's on the fire department here in town and Bill was a great character. He could tell great stories and he had lots of thoughts. And he really enjoyed being over at the library the last few years, being over there.

And he's lived in the corner of Burrell and Middlesex and decided to sell and move further into the North Shore, into the country a bit and was excited about that. And so that was literally just months ago. So it's sad for his family, but he was a sweet, sweet soul.

[Speaker 1] (3:22:54 - 3:23:23)
Peter, I agree. It was great to see Bill. Anybody that came into town hall, if Bill was walking back and forth, he'd stop and share a word and a story.

And I have fond memories of driving by his pink house at the corner of Burrell and seeing him paint it and scrape it and care for it. He really was a wonderful, wonderful colleague. He'll be sorely missed.

[Speaker 4] (3:23:25 - 3:24:08)
I appreciate you guys sharing that. I'm sorry to his family for their loss. So I also then will just take two seconds to say that we did have a, oh, thanks.

Beautiful day for a Veterans Day ceremony. And it was well attended. And it's always good to see the Brownies and Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts present and the public officials and public safety, individuals there.

So I thank Mike Sweeney for leading that and organizing a great event.

[Speaker 8] (3:24:11 - 3:24:19)
I'll just say good luck to the Big Blue football team, Swamp Scott field hockey, and the cheer team for the weekend. Sorry, David, maybe that's clear thunder.

[Speaker 14] (3:24:20 - 3:24:29)
No, no, no, no, and I just wanna cheer on the Swamp Scott cheer. They're at States, at Worcester State this Sunday. So good luck, ladies.

[Speaker 2] (3:24:29 - 3:24:31)
Can we do a cheer? All right, field hockey played tonight. Do we know how they did?

[Speaker 14] (3:24:32 - 3:24:34)
I texted, I didn't get a score.

[Speaker 2] (3:24:34 - 3:24:39)
So they lost, but they had a great season. Girls varsity field hockey had a great season.

[Speaker 4] (3:24:42 - 3:24:43)
Okay, motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 8] (3:24:44 - 3:24:44)
Second.

[Speaker 4] (3:24:45 - 3:24:49)
No, no, I did not make a motion. Is there a motion? No, motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 2] (3:24:49 - 3:24:50)
Oh, okay. Motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 8] (3:24:51 - 3:24:51)
Second.

[Speaker 4] (3:24:51 - 3:24:53)
I just wanna be clear.

[Speaker 2] (3:24:53 - 3:25:05)
You just, seriously, you gotta help her. Like, you just gotta go right to the second thing, because she's saying second like it's a statement, not a question. Second, second, we're gonna, it's, you know what, it took me three years to learn that affect on that.

Second.

[Speaker 4] (3:25:06 - 3:25:09)
I don't ever remember being confused when you did it, but.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:10 - 3:25:11)
Hey, help me with my.

[Speaker 2] (3:25:11 - 3:25:13)
Do I have a second? I know, I'm just. Is there a motion?

[Speaker 1] (3:25:13 - 3:25:19)
Do I have a second? Do I have a motion? All those in favor?

Do I have one? Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 15] (3:25:21 - 3:25:22)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:22 - 3:25:24)
Aye. You can also do motion by.