[Speaker 3] (35:44 - 35:44)
All set?

[Speaker 12] (35:48 - 35:49)
Recording in progress.

[Speaker 3] (35:58 - 38:44)
Are we in screen share? We're all set? Okay, welcome to the November 16th Swampscott Select Board meeting.

Before we get started, if you will all join us in a pledge of allegiance. Thanks everyone. Before we dive into our agenda, we are going to do public comment.

Just a reminder to people that public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to express their opinions on items both on and not on the official agenda. Public comment is not intended to be a discussion, debate, or dialogue between or among the Select Board and residents. And their additional guidelines are, before sharing your comments, residents should state their names, addresses, and if known, voting precinct.

Each speaker will be limited to speaking for a maximum of three minutes. Residents may raise new issues, identify community problems, comment on past, present, or future board agendas. Absent extraordinary circumstances, the board will not respond or react to the issues raised and they should not be discussed or debated at the time.

We request that residents speak respectfully and refrain from criticizing or disparaging individual committee members, town staff, or other resident groups or individuals. And we request that residents refrain from making comments that contain political statements or include commentary, criticisms, or other statements about any town staff. Individuals may speak at the discretion of the chair.

Is there any public comment in the room? Or anyone on Zoom who has a public comment? I see Cindy Cavallaro.

Just a minute, Cindy. Cindy?

[Speaker 5] (38:46 - 38:47)
She has herself muted.

[Speaker 3] (38:51 - 40:09)
Cindy, can you unmute? While we're fixing this glitch, if people have public comment and they wanna email it to me, they can do so at nduffy, at swampscottma.gov. Hi, you're able to hear me now?

[Speaker 12] (40:09 - 41:19)
We can hear you, yep. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairperson. I'd like to just first off acknowledge Marian Fletcher, Mary Ellen Fletcher, for her taking the time, this is regarding Pine Street.

It's one thing to hear the residents' concerns and complaints, and it's another thing to actually take time, park your car for two or three hours, and witness it firsthand. And not on just one occasion, but a few occasions, Mary Ellen spent her Saturdays or middays and got a really good idea of what was going on on the streets, even after the initial meeting with the police department. So I just wanna personally thank the board and especially Mary Ellen for taking time to really see what a nightmare it's been since the buses and the traffic.

And for something new, people thought it was mostly coming from the New Ocean Street up towards Pine, but a lot of it is coming around the corner from Railroad Ave, where there's no stop sign or anything else, which Mary Ellen got a good dose of what it's like. So I just wanted to personally take the time and thank everyone.

[Speaker 3] (41:22 - 41:52)
Thank you, thank you, Cindy. Good to hear from you. Is there any more, any other public comment?

Seeing none, we will move on to our first agenda item. Very exciting to have a special guest here tonight. I don't, I think that Jenny Armini, who's our next representative for the Essex Eight.

[Speaker 1] (41:57 - 42:08)
Jenny, if you want, you can take a seat. If you wanna sit down, I can get a microphone for you. Yeah.

[Speaker 10] (42:20 - 46:17)
Thank you, Chairman Duffy. Sure. And to the entire select board for welcoming me here this evening.

The board and Sean Fitzgerald have been incredibly, incredibly kind and welcoming. I have two left, Katie and Peter, to have coffee with, and I'm looking forward to that. But it's really been a wonderful experience to get to know all of you, just like it's been, honestly, a wonderful experience to get to know Swampscot the last, what, nine months of my life more deeply than I did before.

I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to represent Swampscot in the House. Perhaps all representatives believe that their district is the most beautiful, but I don't think that there's any question that I won the lottery, not the $2 billion lottery, but something more precious. And you know, at a few of the forums, actually, throughout the campaign, the candidates were asked how the needs of Lynn, Swampscot, and Marblehead differ.

And my response was always the same. All people in all three communities want to raise their families on a sustainable, healthy planet in communities with safe, affordable neighborhoods, excellent schools, and access to healthcare. In my view, after this experience, the distinctions are more in the personalities and in the spirit of the community.

In Swampscot, I found a very special mix of forward-thinking, open-hearted, civically engaged individuals who respect what's gone before, but see the past as a foundation for the future. And nothing underscored that more for me than on Friday at the veterans event when we had Swampscot schoolchildren offering gifts to our older veterans. Another example is the work you put into bringing to light the stories of indigenous people who made Swampscot their home.

I've been doing some reading. I am a lover of history, and I'm a complete nerd. So I found out that on May 1st, 1952, then-Congressman William Bates inserted a brief history of the town of Swampscot into the congressional record in Washington in celebration of the town's 100th birthday.

Farmers and fishermen and well-heeled resort-goers all made an appearance in his telling. But it won't surprise you that the stories of those who came before John Humphrey are untold. Apparently, life here began only when King Charles gave his land grant in 1628.

And that's not the case today. Because Swampscot took on its own history boldly and courageously and honestly so that future generations would know the truth. But a successful state representative isn't the product of one town or one spirit.

My job is to apply the best of each community in legislating and decision-making and to represent the interests of each community with equal energy and enthusiasm and commitment. Swampscot's interests are my interests, and I can't wait to get to work.

[Speaker 3] (46:25 - 46:47)
Thank you, Jenny. It's been great getting to know you over the summer and working with you already. And I know you've been busy, and we're all looking forward to a great relationship and many coffees and many check-ins.

I welcome the board for their comments. I thought this was a grant announcement.

[Speaker 10] (46:49 - 46:51)
You're getting ahead of yourself. Oh, all right.

[Speaker 11] (46:51 - 46:52)
Not yet.

[Speaker 10] (46:52 - 46:56)
Not on Monday. Fair enough. But if you have any ideas, let me know.

[Speaker 6] (46:58 - 47:59)
Clyde, I want to say thank you. You know, I've seen you out there. Farmer's Market, the Veterans Day, the Memorial Day that we had for Jennifer Harris.

It's just really appreciated. The one thing that I really would like to see is your presence several times at the select board meetings. So if you and the chairman could make arrangements so that we would see you maybe three, four times a year, including at town meetings, so that people really see you.

I think that's something that I think is a big opportunity because in the past, we really didn't see the rep. And that's not a negative on the rep or a negative on the select board, but I just think it's an opportunity for the future for us to have a bigger public communication and so people can really see what's going on in the town. I really appreciate your hard work and good luck to you.

[Speaker 10] (48:00 - 48:04)
Thank you. I look forward to coming back as often as you want.

[Speaker 9] (48:07 - 48:27)
Jenny, it's been awesome getting to know you. Thank you. And I, you know, I, you just, you take this, I mean, you haven't even, you haven't even been, you hadn't even been, you'd won the primary, you hadn't even been sworn in and you're, you know, you've really attacked the role with vigor.

[Speaker 10] (48:27 - 48:28)
Thank you.

[Speaker 9] (48:28 - 48:49)
And you have so many ideas and I have so many ideas and this board has so many ideas and I look forward to working with you for a long time and really bringing some of these big audacious goals here and actually executing on them within the town of Swampscott.

[Speaker 3] (48:49 - 48:51)
And that's what makes me excited.

[Speaker 10] (48:51 - 48:54)
And that's what I love about Swampscott because you have big audacious goals.

[Speaker 3] (48:56 - 49:05)
So I'm getting an email that people can't hear us. Are they working on it? Okay.

Sorry. Can I say that grant thing again?

[Speaker 13] (49:05 - 49:05)
Oh.

[Speaker 3] (49:07 - 49:07)
That's why.

[Speaker 11] (49:07 - 49:09)
Your microphone can be heard, ours cannot.

[Speaker 3] (49:09 - 49:13)
Okay. Jesus. Sorry.

How predictable is that?

[Speaker 10] (49:13 - 49:14)
I arranged that. Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (49:17 - 49:18)
Coincidence?

[Speaker 10] (49:18 - 49:19)
Not at all.

[Speaker 3] (49:20 - 49:31)
Yeah. Are there any more comments from the board? Well, thank you.

Thank you for being here. We look forward to working with you. It's been great getting to know you and.

[Speaker 10] (49:32 - 49:34)
Thank you for having me. Thanks, Jenny. I'll be back.

[Speaker 1] (49:34 - 49:37)
Thanks, Jenny. Thank you. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (49:41 - 49:44)
Everyone just hold on a minute. I just wanna, do you think we're okay now? We are okay.

[Speaker 2] (49:45 - 49:45)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (49:45 - 49:47)
Thanks. All right, good. So.

[Speaker 2] (49:47 - 49:49)
I thought you were here for a grant announcement.

[Speaker 3] (49:52 - 49:56)
Laugh track. We can edit it later. We can really.

[Speaker 13] (49:57 - 49:59)
Ethan, make sure you take that for a deadline, please.

[Speaker 3] (50:00 - 50:35)
So, if it's okay with the board, we're gonna take something out of order. We have a discussion and possible vote on a sculpture acceptance. I believe we have a roger vote with us here this evening.

So, I'd like to bring that to the top of the agenda so we can be respectful of Roger's time and talk about this incredible gift that he's bestowing on the town. Sean, I think you may have a brief presentation. Sure.

[Speaker 1] (50:35 - 52:36)
Daniel, would you be able to bring up the presentation? Gino is gonna help me with this, but really, it has been wonderful to get to know Roger. Roger is somebody that cares deeply about Swampskid.

He is a big blue, you know, to the core fan. He has spent years announcing our big blue football games and really, you know, he's been the voice of a generation. He's had an opportunity to see a generation of Swampskid youth really, you know, excel on those fields, but he's been something for their families and certainly for the community.

He loves Swampskid and it's really wonderful to hear him talk about this town. It really, it's wonderful to hear him talk about how he now lives in the former high school that he attended, those walls and that property has a memory to him. You know, he's, I think, very generously offered to donate two statues.

These statues have been prepared and created by a renowned artist. They're sculptures that really reflect a joy of life that I think many of our residents have felt about growing up in Swampskid. I'm gonna give Gino a chance to just say a few words right now about Roger and get the presentation pulled up, but Gino, you've been on the gridiron for a few years holding some signs.

What have you come to know about Roger and his voice? I'm in trouble. Yeah, that's what I just said.

I heard he was a half-decent golfer, right?

[Speaker 4] (52:37 - 52:38)
I can attest to that.

[Speaker 8] (52:39 - 52:46)
I think we won a number three guess. I took him with me to a golf tournament and we won.

[Speaker 1] (52:46 - 52:48)
You did? No kidding. No thanks to me, right?

[Speaker 8] (52:48 - 52:54)
Well, yes, there was. At least one shot, remember, in one hole. One shot, 18 holes, so I was doing good.

[Speaker 4] (52:55 - 53:02)
But enough about Roger sometimes, too. We gotta talk about his lovely wife, Elaine. And me and Elaine go way back.

[Speaker 13] (53:02 - 53:03)
Yeah, way back to Utah.

[Speaker 4] (53:03 - 53:08)
New talkie days, so we're talking 40, but we're not even gonna talk about how many years he is.

[Speaker 1] (53:09 - 53:24)
But we've met on several occasions to discuss the acceptance of these sculptures. We've looked at several locations, but we're gonna leave that up to the board on where they wanna put the final destination for these statues. Great, all right, now that we've got the presentation up, why don't we get the floor?

[Speaker 8] (53:24 - 58:34)
Can I just give you a little bit of? Sure. Okay, first of all, thank you very much for allowing us to be here to talk to you people.

It's an honor to be here. Chairman Duffy, and Sean, and David, and Mary Ellen, and Katie, and Steve. Peter.

I almost got there, I almost made it. And Gino, and everybody else. And thank you for allowing me to be here.

Let me tell you why this is happening. Okay, very simply, I have been living in Swampscott and have loved Swampscott for just under 80 years. Anybody that age here?

Yeah, not even close. Not even close, but I have been here all my life. I went to Stanley School in Swampscott.

I went to Hadley Junior High School. I went to Swampscott High School. And I've always been involved in Swampscott.

And I go to every football game that's home. And I announced for 20 years the football games. Loved every bit of it, even though it took every Saturday away from golf in September and October.

But I love Swampscott, I really do. I feel for it. This is my town.

There aren't many that can say that they lived here and went to school here and just did everything here. And that's where we are. Elaine also and her family, we all were Swampscott athletes, Swampscott everything.

So again, I'm very happy for that. And I also wanted to thank Jenny before she left that we gotta thank King Charles for donating Swampscott to us, huh? Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

So good for you. King Charles, I learned something today. King Charles.

Okay, so the statues are something similar. We were in Florida, Elaine and I, and we were walking down Palm Beach Worth Avenue, which is a kind of expensive place. Okay, if you've been there, you know how gorgeous it is.

And we saw an opening of a studio and we walked in and we looked at the different things. And there were all statues of this prince from Romania. And his name was Prince Manio.

Old guy, rough. We met him, very cold and, you know, a sculpture all his life. And we saw one of the statues there that was five children holding hands and called Happy Days.

Now we have five children, three boys and two girls. Got that wrong a few minutes ago. I get killed for that one.

Three boys and two girls. And these were five statues of five children holding hands with only one of the statues leg on the ground. Everything else was suspended.

And it was very expensive. And I said, that's like 10 times more than I ever thought I would wanna spend. And we said, thank you very much and we left.

And about nine months later, I got a phone call from his agent. And the agent said that Prince Manio was dying, unfortunately, and he's not doing any more statues and he'll take any offer that you wanna give him for your statue. Which was not a good call because it cost me a lot of money for the amount.

I offered him some money and he said accepted. And we brought the statues to my house in Swampscott, which we lived for 34 years on Littlest Point. And right in front of our house, I'm sure many of you have gone by and seen those five statues in front of our house.

If you've ever been in Littlest Point, in the point, you've seen the statues. You didn't know who the heck lived there, but that was it. And now here we go to a condo at Swampscott High School, Fisherman's Watch.

And if we put the statues in the house, we wouldn't have the master bedroom. So we thought that might be more important. So what are we gonna do with the statues?

We have two choices. We can sell them or we can donate them. And I gotta tell you, it was exciting to me to be able to say, I wanna donate these to the place I love, Swampscott.

And here's five happy children. What could be better than have five happy children as you walk into Phillips Park, to the football game, to Bondilevich Field, or I think that's it. And, huh?

Bloxidge Field. I said it only about 4,000 times in the two years, in the 20 years. Right as you walk in, five happy children holding hands, welcoming the people that walk into Swampscott.

To me, that's more than anything I would ever want. And I also had another statue that we bought, and that was five fishermen. And there were five fishermen on a log.

I think you'll see a picture in a minute, but I just wanted to give you a back history of it. And the five fishermen are there, and that's also something I'm donating to the town of Swampscott. And that can go right at Fisherman's Beach, right where that cannon is, right next to what would be beautiful.

Five fishermen returning from the sea. I think that's it. That's what I wanted to tell you people.

That's why I'm excited about this. I have to tell you, I flew home yesterday afternoon from Florida so that I could make sure that I was here for this meeting. So I'm glad you allowed me to be here, and I think I've said my three minutes.

And thanks. Thanks, Roger.

[Speaker 1] (58:34 - 1:00:29)
Diana, if you could flip forward to the pictures of the statue. I think we got the, so that's, these are the five children that you described, Roger. That's it.

I had an opportunity to actually visit you a few years ago when you lived there, and I was struck by just how wonderful and happy those children looked. And Diana, if you could advance to the next, this is the statue of the fishermen. Again, five children just balancing on a log, just having a wonderful time.

We did look at, next slide, a few locations in Swampstead. I think, in some ways, we just need to spend a little bit more time thinking about what would be the most appropriate location. We have schools.

We have certainly parks and properties, but we have a number of boards and committees, and I think we should work with a number of stakeholders to really find that best location. But certainly, a wonderful token of artists, but also, more importantly, a child that grew up in Swampstead and cares deeply about Swampstead. Your love for this town is evident, and certainly, I want to thank you and your wife and your family for thinking about the town and for your years of service.

Volunteering your voice to Swampstead, it's a real gift. I've heard some people suggest that, perhaps, you actually record your voice on all our town hall voicemail messages, so it may be an additional service that you can give to the citizens of Swampstead, but I'll turn it over to the board for their thoughts. Thank you.

[Speaker 8] (1:00:29 - 1:00:31)
Thank you, Sean, for your kind words. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:00:31 - 1:01:04)
And thanks, Roger and Elaine, for being here. I really appreciate it. It's great to have you here in person, and I appreciate all the effort to get here and all the background.

It's been great getting to know you over the phone and hearing the story, and I appreciate your patience with this. I know this is something you've been wanting to do for a while, and I just echo Sean's words on your generosity to the town of Swampscott and also everything that you've given back to the town that you've loved for your whole life, so thank you very much.

[Speaker 8] (1:01:04 - 1:01:05)
My pleasure.

[Speaker 3] (1:01:06 - 1:01:08)
Yeah, I just want to say thank you.

[Speaker 9] (1:01:09 - 1:01:13)
These statues are, they signify joy.

[Speaker 8] (1:01:13 - 1:01:17)
Have you seen them? Have you, any of you, the picture, but have you actually seen?

[Speaker 9] (1:01:17 - 1:01:18)
No, I have not.

[Speaker 8] (1:01:18 - 1:01:26)
The actual seeing of the statues is 10 times better than the picture. Honest. But you'll see them soon.

[Speaker 9] (1:01:26 - 1:01:54)
I certainly believe that, and I loved hearing the story because we had heard the story from Sean, but having you, Roger, and your wife Elaine tell the story to us, it just means so much coming from you, and seeing these statues of joy that will be permanently displayed within our town is something that we need, and it's an emotion that we need more of. It's joy.

[Speaker 8] (1:01:55 - 1:02:05)
So, thank you. You're welcome. We brought us great pleasure, and I hope it brings the same to the many, many people in Swampscott that'll be able to smile when they see them.

That's right, they just need a smile.

[Speaker 6] (1:02:08 - 1:02:16)
So, thank you again, Roger, and I have seen these, and I have to be honest, I always thought that you had a sculpture made of your children.

[Speaker 8] (1:02:17 - 1:02:23)
We're not gonna say we didn't. We don't tell them.

[Speaker 6] (1:02:23 - 1:02:27)
I won't, I won't, but that's what I always thought, but, you know, thank you very much. We'll keep it a secret, you know.

[Speaker 8] (1:02:29 - 1:02:33)
It's funny, they're three boys and two girls, and that's our children.

[Speaker 10] (1:02:33 - 1:02:34)
That's what attracted us to it.

[Speaker 8] (1:02:34 - 1:02:36)
Yeah, yeah. I don't know if, yeah.

[Speaker 10] (1:02:36 - 1:02:36)
Oh, okay.

[Speaker 11] (1:02:37 - 1:03:03)
Those are great. Thank you. Your story resonates with me.

My husband was born and raised here, and now we're raising our children here, so there's sort of a fast-forward view of perhaps what our children are going through, and we hope to leave a legacy on top of that as well, so I really appreciate that you thought how could we bring joy to the community further than what you have, and that is a wonderful attitude.

[Speaker 8] (1:03:03 - 1:03:10)
So, thank you so much. You're very welcome. I think you were about 100 years before me, or after me, after me.

Maybe not 100, yeah. Close.

[Speaker 2] (1:03:13 - 1:03:18)
Roger, Elaine, thank you. You're generous and kind-hearted. We're grateful for you both.

[Speaker 8] (1:03:19 - 1:03:21)
Thanks. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:03:22 - 1:03:34)
Great, so with that, I would entertain a motion to accept these two statues or sculptures as gifts to the town of Swampspot. So moved. All right, any further discussion?

All those in favor?

[Speaker 13] (1:03:35 - 1:03:36)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 3] (1:03:37 - 1:03:38)
Thank you very much.

[Speaker 8] (1:03:43 - 1:03:47)
We'll enjoy these for a long time together. That's my wish.

[Speaker 11] (1:03:53 - 1:03:54)
Thank you.

[Speaker 13] (1:03:54 - 1:03:59)
Thank you. I should get out. Let me know if you need anybody to carry lunch down to Florida.

[Speaker 8] (1:04:07 - 1:04:11)
Is it on you? No, it's on me. Big shot.

Big shot.

[Speaker 13] (1:04:13 - 1:04:13)
Thanks.

[Speaker 8] (1:04:14 - 1:04:14)
It's our pleasure.

[Speaker 7] (1:04:15 - 1:04:15)
Thank you.

[Speaker 8] (1:04:15 - 1:04:16)
Thank you, guys.

[Speaker 1] (1:04:18 - 1:04:20)
Roger, when are you heading back?

[Speaker 8] (1:04:21 - 1:04:23)
You wanna know how many hours?

[Speaker 1] (1:04:23 - 1:04:25)
Yeah, you're going right back?

[Speaker 8] (1:04:25 - 1:04:30)
Well, we were gonna come back for Thanksgiving, so instead, we're gonna stay here until after Thanksgiving.

[Speaker 1] (1:04:30 - 1:04:32)
Okay, great, great. Excellent.

[Speaker 8] (1:04:32 - 1:04:34)
Enjoy. Healthy, healthy. Happy, happy.

[Speaker 13] (1:04:34 - 1:04:36)
You too. Thank you. Good job.

[Speaker 8] (1:04:38 - 1:04:43)
All right. You're in touch with him, you're in touch with him as well.

[Speaker 3] (1:04:44 - 1:05:38)
Okay, so next on the agenda, we have a discussion and possible vote on the BYOB policy. We had a first read of this at our last meeting and provided some feedback to Angelica. She's here tonight with us again.

And I appreciate the work you did in between meetings to incorporate our feedback and notes into a revised policy, and that's what we have here in our packet tonight. It was emailed to you all, I believe, at the end of the week last week. So are there any questions about this?

We did do a first read, so I don't know if people have questions or comments with the new language that's here.

[Speaker 9] (1:05:41 - 1:06:41)
I just had a comment just about the annual fee for the BYOB permit, which is number 20. Just my, I'm just one person, but I'm of the opinion that the annual fee for the BYOB permit to start should be zero. I think we should help our local businesses, and I think by doing that is waiving the BYOB permit fee.

I think it's certainly the intent, or my intent would be to have them invest in their business, and there will be some increased costs for just from liability requirements and training purposes, those types of things. I think it's a small token and something that we can do to ensure that the select board is doing what we can to be as business friendly as possible. So that's just my sense.

[Speaker 3] (1:06:44 - 1:07:29)
Okay, thanks, David. I think what we discussed at the meeting last time, part of the idea of the fee, and this isn't in disagreement, but just as a reminder was just we definitely also want to encourage businesses to apply for full liquor licenses, so to try not to make this too easy to do, but I don't necessarily disagree with that idea, and I don't think the $400 fee is crucial for the town. So I'd be happy with that amendment if others went along with it.

[Speaker 6] (1:07:29 - 1:07:52)
You know, I don't disagree with David. However, there are a couple things. Number one is this is an expense to the town, and I think that possibly considering lowering it, but are you saying just to eliminate it as a one-time first year, or you're just saying no?

[Speaker 9] (1:07:52 - 1:08:02)
Yeah, well, I mean, this is, we review fees annually, so I would say this should be zero until we review it again.

[Speaker 6] (1:08:05 - 1:08:09)
When do we review fees, what month? Because this will go into effect like in January.

[Speaker 9] (1:08:11 - 1:08:15)
Yeah, I mean, we have, it's in the handbook.

[Speaker 3] (1:08:15 - 1:08:38)
Yeah, I don't think we have, at least since I've been on the board, reviewed fees. Peter, I don't know if you have any insight on that, but I think it's been something that we've wanted to do, but I don't think that we've done it on a regular annual basis. Well, I thought this was a grant announcement.

I'm gonna fight with that.

[Speaker 2] (1:08:39 - 1:08:45)
No, we haven't done it, but I know staff has actually done it and reported to us, but we have not as a board.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:46 - 1:08:53)
We discussed doing it before the reapproval of the budget, or presenting it. Typically, January.

[Speaker 3] (1:08:56 - 1:08:56)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:08:57 - 1:09:17)
So, basically, I'm good with not putting any extra pressures on a business, but I do have to ask, I do have to think about, is this a cost to the taxpayer? So, does the taxpayer have to pay for the police department to go in and check? Does the taxpayer have to pay for, if it's no cost to the taxpayer, then?

[Speaker 1] (1:09:18 - 1:10:28)
I mean, you could argue many things are a cost to the taxpayer, but I think the cost of not having successful small businesses is even greater. And so, I think David's idea of trying to help some small businesses have option of policy that says customers can bring a modest amount of alcohol in, help them be successful. Perhaps they will come back and apply for another license that would be more advantageous to them, that would have a tiered cost.

And so, I think this is a good way for us to say, come to Swampster, open up a business, and avoid another expense. They're gonna have a lot of expenses as a small business, and this, to me, sounds like a mindful adjustment, and I certainly see it as not a cost avoidant or a lack of revenue, it's an investment. And so, at times, I think it's important for us to make these types of investments.

[Speaker 11] (1:10:33 - 1:11:13)
I do think that the policy imparts a responsibility on a small business that, for them to stop and think about a fee and participating is sometimes what is necessary for them to understand the full responsibility of what they're taking on as part of a BYOB. And that is one of the hesitations I have with making it not be a fee. Maybe having it be a fee which is reimbursed at the end of the year if there are no policy violations or something like that.

I just don't want them to take the privilege lightly.

[Speaker 3] (1:11:21 - 1:11:25)
Any other comments about this? Or any other questions about the policy in general?

[Speaker 6] (1:11:27 - 1:11:42)
I think, to that point, Katie, I think that proof of liquor liability insurance, that would put an increase. I don't know the dollar amount though. I mean, I really, that would just be a question.

[Speaker 2] (1:11:44 - 1:12:17)
A few years back, the Zoning Board made a change to their fee structure that said if you were an existing Swampscot business and you were relocating somewhere else in Swampscot and you, because of our Zoning Bylaw, needed to file again with the Zoning Board, that they would waive the fee for doing that to try and help. And I thought the Zoning Board was right on point with that. And so I would make a motion to approve the draft policy with the provision that the fee is, as stated here, except in the first year, it's $0 in the first year.

[Speaker 9] (1:12:19 - 1:12:21)
Is there a second? Second.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:22 - 1:12:28)
Any further discussion on that motion? Okay, all those in favor?

[Speaker 11] (1:12:28 - 1:12:29)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:30 - 1:12:32)
Angelica, you got that?

[Speaker 11] (1:12:32 - 1:12:37)
So it will be $0 for the first year and then we'll reassess next year.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:37 - 1:12:47)
$0 for the first year, $400 going forward. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Great.

[Speaker 2] (1:12:49 - 1:13:03)
Mr. Chairman, I have to excuse myself in a few minutes for a little bit. Do you mind if we quickly just do the school? I know that our assessor's waiting, so I apologize, but before we get to the reclassification, can we just do the school budget item just so that you don't get to it while I'm gone?

[Speaker 3] (1:13:03 - 1:13:27)
Sure. Is that okay with everybody else? Yeah.

All right, so we will move to the new elementary school contractor bids. And I think I will turn it over to you, Peter. And this is also on our warrant.

[Speaker 2] (1:13:29 - 1:23:47)
Yeah, thank you. So I think for those that have been following the school building committee, and I appreciate some of my colleagues who have been following the school building committee, just in the past week, a contract has been signed for the construction to start the construction of the school, the site work, and the demolition has been, the demolition, excuse me, has been completed, and they've demobilized, and a new contractor is imminently going to mobilize on it.

When the bids came back, the construction budget, and there's a tab in your packet regarding this, but the construction budget, excuse me, that was in the MSBA approval for the hard cost was 77.9 million dollars. That was a budget that was arrived at after going through four different pricing exercises, which the MSBA makes every school process go through. You're required to price your school using two estimators.

One estimator works for the MSBA, I think, and the other one is the design team. And they have two estimators. We have to reconcile the estimates, and the goal there is to make sure that every step of the way, you are on budget, and that you don't get to the end of the process and be materially out of budget, and therefore not being able to proceed with the program.

So that process happened at the end of schematic design, design development, and then 60% construction drawings, and then 90% construction drawings. And along the way, the school building committee made many amendments to the plans to keep in budget. It goes without saying, I think everybody here recognizes that we're in what seems to us to be unprecedented inflationary times.

I don't know that it's unprecedented, but it certainly is painful regardless. So throughout the process, there was over 12 million dollars of reworking of the budget to make sure that the budget was within the approved budget. There were two general contract bids submitted for the school project.

The lowest bid was 77.9 million dollars, which exceeds, sorry, 79.7, excuse me, thank you. 79.7 million dollars, which exceeds the hard cost number in place, and it requires, it's within the overall school budget, it just exceeds the hard cost of one of them, and it requires the school building committee to allocate a material portion of their contingency budget to the contract day one, leaving very little contingency in their budget. While it's disappointing that the low bid came in above our hard cost number, albeit within our budget numbers, I will say, and I want to give credit to the school building committee, and I want to give credit to the OPM, our owner project manager, and our design team.

The MSBA, at its last board meeting, decided to suspend the accelerated repair program, and they did that because they realized that they needed significant increased funds to fund new school construction. Currently, the MSBA reimburses at a rate of $360 a foot as a cap. Every single project for a new school is well above $360 a foot.

The MSBA recognizes it's time for them to increase that cap, and therefore, in the short run, have decided to suspend the accelerated repair program to provide more money. Unfortunately, those monies are going to be for schools that will be announced this year, not going retroactively, so Swampscot will not benefit from that increase. It's really important to put context to this.

As of October, five of the 16 MSBA schools that were approved have already reported bid contracts. We are number six, and of the five, the average estimate came in 8.57% over budget. That's the average.

There are communities that are literally $25 million above budget that have to go back and rework the whole program, that can't simply say, we just need to help with the contingency, that actually have to stop the process and go back to the drawing board and start from scratch because there isn't a financially feasible way for them to do it. Swampscot's project came back at half of that, at 4.14% overage. So when I factored that in, it'll take that 8.57%, which is the average for the first five, and lower it, thanks to Swampscot, but we're still 4.14% above our hard-cost line item. The SBC explored multiple ways in which to handle this, and really discussed at great length the prudence of signing a contract that required them to use a majority of their hard-cost contingency before the construction even commenced. And so therefore, they reviewed several things. First and foremost, they looked at their existing budget and they determined which line items had excess monies that they know, as of this date, they will not need, and therefore, they would reallocate that excess money to contingency.

I appreciate them doing it. Many projects don't do that. They keep those line items for future use, even knowing that there's excess money there.

Here, they identified approximately $350,000 in the swing space line item. The swing space line item is a line item that was approximately $1 million, and that line item is used to pay for the temporary space, the transfer to the temporary space, and the accommodation for students while construction is ongoing. Thanks to the very favorable deal that the town was able to structure with the Lynch-Van Adeloo YMCA, who is leasing space from St. John, and who in turn subleased the space to us for a two-year period, we were able to save substantially. Modular classrooms, trailers, are very, very expensive. You have to buy them if you don't have another temporary space. In Swanscot, we're fortunate enough that we have a temporary space, which was and is a school, and we were able to upgrade ventilation and make other improvements in that space to make it a safe and wonderful place for the entire Stanley community, except for the kindergarten class, which is at Hadley.

As a result of that, there was a $350,000 savings, which is exciting and really important here. The SBC ultimately decided that it was the prudent thing to come back and ask for additional funds to increase the contingency line item back to the full 5%, which was the original contingency line item. The additional funds that are being asked for are the 5%, if you will, I'll tell you the number.

The number is going to be $3.25 million total, but only $2.9 million in new funding because $350,000 is gonna come from that reallocation of the swing space line item. That additional $2.9 million will be contingency and contingency only. It's not money that's available to buy or build new or different things than the base school that has been approved.

As a matter of fact, when the school building committee issued the RFP and they issued the bid set, they made the decision that there were going to be zero add alternates in the projects. So said differently, the school building committee didn't rely on the bids coming in lower so that they could add more things to the project. They said, this is the base project that we promised the citizens and residents of Swampscott and they bid just that project.

Now this contingency line item will be available to deal with unforeseen circumstances that require contingency. For example, just in the last 24 hours, one of the subcontractors has filed notice that they are withdrawing their sub-bid and we have to now go to the second sub-bid. As strange as mass procurement law is and how I think backwards it is, they're allowed to do that.

The contractor is not responsible for that. We are responsible for that. So that's going to be a change order.

We will have to pay for that. That's the exact type of thing that's unforeseen that will fall to contingency and the contingency line item will pay for this. In talking with the finance committee and thanks to Cindy McInerney for focusing us on it and thanks Patrick for our treasurer for doing some more research on it.

By a simple vote of town meeting, we were able to actually to increase our exemption. Say it correctly for me. The debt exclusion, thank you.

We were able to simply increase the debt exclusion to add the $2.9 million without a new referendum. And so we can do it within that exemption which is an important thing for us to do. Couple of reasons.

One, it burns off. It's the way to do it. It burns off as we pay it back.

And then number two, it doesn't count against our cap amount otherwise. So the SBC has put forth a recommendation, a preferred recommendation of asking town meeting for an increase to the contingency line item, not any other line item, but the contingency line item of $2.909983 million. And that money would be, again, for contingency of hard costs to ensure that there's not any cost difficulty.

The expectation of the design team while funding a full 5% contingency is that historically between two and three and a half percent is what is used typically in projects. It does not mean that four and five doesn't get used. It just means that typically you're able to manage the project to use less than that.

The decision was made, however, that going to town meeting and requesting less than what would be a market contingency would not be prudent because it would present the difficult situation in the event in this hyperinflation market that something unforeseen that was very expensive happened that it would delay the school and delay and the cost of delay would be substantially more than the cost of the change order that we'd be faced with.

So they've made that recommendation. There's a draft warrant article for this board to consider putting forth in the warrant that would ask town meeting for an increased of $2.909983 million.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:51 - 1:24:06)
Thanks, Peter, for that explanation and all the work that you and the SBC and everyone else have been doing over the last few weeks since the bids were opened. Any questions on this from the board?

[Speaker 11] (1:24:08 - 1:25:11)
I just wanna commend the parties for these conversations which have been exhaustive and ongoing for the last couple of weeks, the SBC, the finance case. It wasn't let's come up with an idea and execute it. It was an exhaustive conversation which involved all the options and the scenarios playing out and how that would affect our kids coming to school in two falls.

So I just wanna commend everybody that participated. It was, in my opinion, a very thoughtful inclusion to come to option 1A, which would be reallocating the swing space money. As Peter said, they could have kept that money and said, no, we're keeping that in case something else happens, and they didn't.

So they are putting their money where their hope is, which is to have a new school very soon. So I commend them for doing that as well, and I appreciate that recommendation.

[Speaker 6] (1:25:14 - 1:25:32)
I just have a quick question. Patrick, so how does that work as far as with bonding? Do we just bond that later on?

Because there was still a small amount that needed to be bonded. We just wait until later and then. It'll be later in the process.

So hopefully, maybe rates will get a little bit better.

[Speaker 2] (1:25:32 - 1:25:35)
Or hopefully not ever have to bond it, right?

[Speaker 6] (1:25:35 - 1:25:36)
Yes. That's a contingency.

[Speaker 3] (1:25:41 - 1:26:08)
Any other questions, comments? Okay, is there a motion to approve option A1 as recommended by the School Building Committee for the amount of, well, I guess it's $2,909. Two million.

Two million. Two million, excuse me, $2,909,983, jeez.

[Speaker 2] (1:26:10 - 1:26:10)
Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:10 - 1:26:16)
Katie moved. Is there a second? Second.

Any more discussion? All right, all those in favor?

[Speaker 5] (1:26:17 - 1:26:17)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:17 - 1:26:19)
Aye. Aye. Thanks.

[Speaker 5] (1:26:20 - 1:26:20)
Thank you, guys.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:20 - 1:26:40)
Thanks, Peter. All right, so now we are moving on to the fiscal 2023 tax rate classification presentation, which I think is Mr. Simmons and Patrick Luddy. I'm not sure who we're going to first.

Maybe you, Sean.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:40 - 1:30:18)
Yep, I'm happy to kick it off. This is our annual tax classification presentation This is really where we hear from our assessor and the work of the Board of Assessors to annually update our values and really bring them up to the ad valorem value or the market value. Every year it changes.

Each of the categories change. It shifts the ratios between different property classes. So it's important for the board to really understand that.

It's important for the town to understand that. We're a small town. We have commercial properties.

We have industrial properties. We have residential properties. We have condos.

We have two families, single families, three families, miscellaneous properties. They all change. And hearing about that helps us understand how we really contemplate how the tax levy impacts all of those categories.

One year to another, certain proportional shifts may put more or less burden on different categories of properties. And what we've tried to do over the last five years has been to balance that impact by strategically using the town's free cash and financial position to level our tax rate. It's really challenging.

Many communities don't get into this level of detail, but it's important that we spend some time and really understand the numbers, understand the changes. I wanna thank Richard Simmons. Richard is a true public servant.

He is our interim assessor, part-time working a full-time job. Richard has spent a lifetime working as an assessor in a number of communities. He has expert knowledge when it comes to assessing, and he has been generous in spending some time helping swamps get up.

I'm gonna turn it over to Richard, and we're gonna step through some of the analysis that he has pulled together and the updates that he has added to this presentation. Halfway through, Patrick will pick up and talk a little bit about the budget and set a primer for tax rate classification. We don't have all of the data to actually make a decision tonight.

We still are looking for new growth revenue from one particular property, and we're looking for a free cash certification from the Department of Revenue. This typically has been a two- or three-part conversation with the select board and the community, so tonight is a chance for us to update the community on values and get a primer on how we work with the Department of Revenue to set a tax rate. That said, Richard, it's your...

You can use the microphone. I can bring a microphone to you, and you just need to say next slide to Diane, and she will advance the slide.

[Speaker 4] (1:30:18 - 1:32:43)
Is this active? First off, I wanna thank the board of selectmen, or the select board, sorry. Knew I was gonna screw that up, and I apologize for doing that.

The select board for inviting me here tonight, and I'm happy to talk about the values that have been generated, happy to represent the board of assessors for the town, and go through the process with you. Just the, if we move on to the next slide, Diane. Things we're gonna be discussing tonight are value changes, yearly trends, comparisons, a budget review Patrick will be doing, and review of the next steps in the process.

Next slide, okay. The board of assessors determines the assessed values for a town. The assessing department is responsible for determining new growth also.

The values are really derived by reading the market. We're looking at the market. The market dictates what values are going to be.

And new growth, or new taxes created by new construction and new development in town. New growth and the budget all play in determining the levy. Assessed values allocate, assessed values, I've said a million times, allocate the levy across, the levy across the community.

In other words, we're dealing with a fixed budget. The budget can only go up two and a half percent per year with the exception of new growth and overrides. The assessed values allocate that budget to each individual taxpayer, each individual parcel in town.

If the values quadrupled or tripled in the course of the year, and the levy didn't change, the taxes wouldn't change. It's a pure allocation of a fixed levy. So that's something you need to understand.

You need to remember when we're talking about values, it isn't, as a friend of mine, ex-selectman for the town of Winfield once said, Dave Grizzoline, people don't care about the increase in value, it's the increase in taxes. It really gets them. And I understand that having been in this business for 30 years.

[Speaker 1] (1:32:44 - 1:33:18)
I'd say, you know, people talk about a tax rate, and when people start talking to me, oh look, we have a low tax rate, I'm like, talk to me about your tax bill. Your tax rate literally has nothing to do with your bill. Your bill is your budget, it's your revenue.

And when you look at your bill, that helps you understand what direction your town is going through. You know, if you just look at a tax rate, you know, you really, you don't know, because your tax rate can fly all over the place based on changes in value. Sure.

[Speaker 4] (1:33:20 - 1:33:21)
And changes in the budget.

[Speaker 1] (1:33:21 - 1:33:23)
That's right. Very importantly.

[Speaker 4] (1:33:23 - 1:39:30)
And actually, the budget is more determinant than the value is, in many respects. The select board, at their discretion, has the right to shift a portion of the levy off of residential properties onto commercial properties. That's called tax classification.

And also, within the levies, the valuation of commercial, industrial, and personal property, and residential property, the board of selectmen, or the select board, God, I keep doing that. I've gotta get past that. The select board has the right to grant exemptions for residential properties and for small commercial properties.

And that, again, is at the discretion of the select board. So, if you go on to the next slide, every year we look at what's happened from year to year. And this, really, this first slide gets into that in some degree of detail.

Assessed values have increased, particularly in residential properties. When we're looking at this year's values, we're looking at values that existed as of one month ago. One month of 22.

And so, when you get your tax bill in December, that value's a year old. And it's determined by the sales that occurred between one month of 21 and 12-31 of 21. And if you look back in time, what had just happened in 2020, the pandemic?

Values, properties were off the market for a long period of time. 2021 was the first time the value, the properties came on the market and they went through the roof. We experienced, during 2021, approximately 15.9% increase in value. That's a rate of about 1.3% per month. That's astounding. And so, that is the basis.

What we're looking at in residential properties. Commercial properties don't go up as quickly. The demand on commercial properties isn't as high and the supply isn't as great.

And so, there isn't the real pressure on commercial properties that we have on residential properties. On condos, if you look at the condos on this list, they increased at 20.9%. That's well above the 15.9 single families increased. But that has occurred primarily because we had a condo project come online in town called White Court.

Those units sold between two to three-plus million dollars per unit, 19 units. That ended up adding 40 to $50 million in value. In that class of properties.

That's why that class went up so drastically. The other property that stands out, in looking at these, is miscellaneous residential, 109s. They're properties that are multi-unit buildings on one lot of land.

Usually two buildings on one lot of land. And what happened with that, that was a 26.6% increase in value from one year to the next. And that was the result of an addition of one property.

One property moved from a two-family, 104, to 109. That was a $600,000 increase in that classification. And that's what kicked the values up so much in that class.

The other thing that added value to that class of properties were, for some reason, it's a very small class of properties. There are only 11 to 12 units in that class. 11 and 21 and 22 was, 22 and 23 was 12 units.

And that, those had, a lot of those properties had building permits. And so they went up precipitously because of that also. Everything else seemed to be more or less in line.

And, you know, you're gonna get some changes. The other thing is the commercial property, of course, did not go up very much, 9.7% one year to the next. And so when that happens, when you have a precipitous increase in value in residential properties, and you don't have as much of an increase in commercial properties, the levy gets shifted off of commercial properties and onto residential properties.

It's a pure function of the market and the market values. So what I want to look at in the next slides is to look at what happened in the market. And we're looking at several different levels.

We're looking at Swampskin individually and what's happened. We're looking at Swampskin in comparison to Essex County. And we're looking at Swampskin in comparison to a group of peer towns that are in Massachusetts, eastern part of Massachusetts, that we think are comparable to Swampskin.

On this slide, you'll notice the commercial industrial personal properties has from, and this shows the trend from 2018 to 2023. And you don't see a lot of change. Actually, in the last year, 2022 to 2023, commercial properties increased about 1.6%, barely.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:31 - 1:39:38)
One thing I do want to point out on this slide is if you look at the orange, we have one industrial property in town.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:38 - 1:39:39)
Right, that's it, the aggregate.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:40 - 1:40:00)
And that trend line there, I think, reflects a sense that we've looked at the market, we've looked at comps, and reflects the market for a very unique type of industry. Extraordinarily unique.

[Speaker 6] (1:40:00 - 1:40:06)
Can I ask you a quick question? So you said, so on commercial properties, that would be Vinden Square, Whole Foods, places like that?

[Speaker 4] (1:40:06 - 1:40:07)
Yeah, Humphrey Street.

[Speaker 6] (1:40:07 - 1:40:10)
So those properties didn't increase?

[Speaker 1] (1:40:10 - 1:40:20)
They did, they increased, on average, 9.7%. Right, and then, yeah. 9.2, no, I'm sorry, 9 point.

[Speaker 4] (1:40:21 - 1:40:23)
Overall, in the overall class.

[Speaker 1] (1:40:24 - 1:41:27)
So what happens, and again, what happens is, you know, the slice of the pie shrinks for commercial, and it expands for residential. And so you have less of a commercial base to pay the levy, and that's something that we've talked about over the last few years, about Swampskip really needing to focus on economic development, because it'll shift more and more of those costs to a residential base. We don't wanna see, generally, you know, the loss of commercial properties.

When zoning board decisions convert commercial property over to residential, especially on Humphrey Street, it, you know, we lose the ability to tax at that additional split rate, we lose additional revenue, and that has a negative impact on the town's overall financial position.

[Speaker 4] (1:41:30 - 1:42:50)
On the next slide, Dan, if you could, we should look at the breakdown of residential and commercial properties in town, and this pie chart that's been created at the top. And this is typical of most residential communities in Massachusetts, most suburban residential communities. We have an incredibly large residential base, 93%, and a commensurately small commercial base, commercial, industrial, and personal property base of about 7%, and so when you have an increase in residential properties, that even exacerbates the problem even more.

The break, this chart shows the breakdown of residential values from 2018 to 2023, the values have increased about 15% in the last year, 15.9% as I stated earlier, and that again is the function of the market, there's nothing that we can do about the market, and over the last, and since 2018, the residential values have increased by 53%, it's a lot.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:52 - 1:42:55)
But if a lot of houses come up, then you made a good investment.

[Speaker 4] (1:42:56 - 1:43:45)
Yep, and we all have done that, I think to a great extent, so good for us, but at the same time, we have to pay the taxes on it too, unfortunately. If you look at the next slide, this just addresses the change in value on a median basis and on an average basis, and again, this is all just a function of the market. The median, or the average on the next page for condos increased 71% from one year, from over the course of 2018 to 2023, and again, that primarily increase was in the last year, and that increase was again, White Court.

[Speaker 6] (1:43:48 - 1:43:53)
We go on to the next slide. Wait a second, I just want to double check, so the median assessment is 609?

[Speaker 4] (1:44:00 - 1:44:20)
The median assessment this year is 609, yeah, 609.7, 609,700. That's residential, that's residential.

[Speaker 6] (1:44:20 - 1:44:22)
And then your average?

[Speaker 4] (1:44:22 - 1:44:28)
The average is 1,891,938 in a single family. That's residential.

[Speaker 3] (1:44:31 - 1:44:35)
So that, wait, but it says commercial industrial, that's not correct.

[Speaker 4] (1:44:37 - 1:44:55)
Oh, I'm sorry, average commercial industrial, I'm sorry, that's 1,800,000. That's, you're looking at single families, it's 824,268, and if you look at on the previous page, median is 685,850.

[Speaker 3] (1:44:56 - 1:44:57)
Right.

[Speaker 4] (1:45:00 - 1:45:48)
That's a lot of data. You go on to the next page. This shows what is unique about Swampskate, and what I think is interesting.

This shows the trend line for taxation, the average tax bill in all 34 municipalities in Essex County, including Swampskate. Now, I've highlighted Swampskate in red to make it stand out a little bit more, and if you notice, all the towns in Essex County with the exception of one have gone up over that period, from 2013 to 2022. The only one that's gone down is us.

[Speaker 1] (1:45:51 - 1:47:36)
We call this the spaghetti chart, and so if you look to the left-hand side, you'll see that just a few years ago, we had the third highest average single family tax bill out of the 34 cities and towns in Essex County, and as you train your eye moving to the right, you'll see each of these years, we've made decisions starting in 2017 to start dropping the average single family tax bill, and so it's been really a march towards the middle. How do we continue to bring financial discipline to Swampskate where we can really strike a balance? This is not about a radical change to the middle.

It's about striking a balance, and you can count as you move your eye to the right-hand side. There are now a half a dozen or more communities that now have a higher average single family tax bill, and over the next few years, as we stay the course, we will continue to really strike that balance, and I think this graph really helps people understand this is why we negotiate some pretty difficult contracts. Or why we have to make decisions about solid waste that are generally unpopular, or structure budgets in ways that are more sustainable.

It's efforts to really strike that balance.

[Speaker 6] (1:47:37 - 1:47:39)
When we add the new school, where's that line gonna go?

[Speaker 1] (1:47:39 - 1:48:19)
It's gonna go up a little bit. Every other one of these 34 cities and towns are adding schools. Every other one of these cities and towns are adding structural debt, renewing contracts at different times, but if we stay the course in terms of our overall approach to managing the fiduciary responsibilities we have, we'll continue on a very straight line, and we'll use our financial position to help ensure that Swampskips taxpayers can have a predictable outcome when we set the levy.

[Speaker 9] (1:48:20 - 1:48:28)
Sean, in which communities, I'm kind of lost in the colors, which communities are now in excess of Swampskips?

[Speaker 1] (1:48:28 - 1:48:47)
Well, if you look at the colors, so Rowley is in the pink. Let's see, Marblehead, I think two years ago became more affordable than Marblehead, more affordable than Rowley. Let's see.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:48 - 1:48:49)
Boxford's part of that?

[Speaker 1] (1:48:49 - 1:49:01)
Just a few years ago, Essex was less than Swampskip. We became more affordable than Essex. Let's see, I believe.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:01 - 1:49:02)
Hamilton's above us.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:02 - 1:49:04)
Like Boxford, is that Boxford?

[Speaker 4] (1:49:05 - 1:49:08)
Marblehead, yeah. Hopfield. Linfield's above us.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:08 - 1:49:46)
We go back to 17, we became, so you can see, each of these years, a few of these communities, we became more affordable than in a few of these communities. Previously, we were much more expensive. So the colors kind of, Groveland in gray is Manchester, by the sea.

So they're all trend lines, this is all data that we get from the Department of Revenue. It's all on the state's website. We take that and we just track it every year and we, oddly enough, more and more communities are above the red line and we're staying the course.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:49 - 1:50:40)
And the next two slides are kind of a reinforcement of what we've just seen. Again, these are addressing the average single-family tax bill in Essex County as opposed to the average single-family tax bill in Swampskip. And again, you can see the trend line.

In 2013, we were, previous slide, sorry. Previous, there we go, thank you. In 2013, we were 41.34% above the average. And in 2022, we're at 8.18% above the average. So that's a considerable drop over the last 10 years. And so we're, again, this is just to reflect that we're moving more towards the average for the county.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:40 - 1:50:54)
So all over, you know, the 34 cities and towns, on average, 40% increase over the period of time from 2013 to 2022. Swampskip, it's 7%.

[Speaker 4] (1:50:54 - 1:51:45)
Yeah, 7%. So that's noteworthy. And again, we're looking at value.

This is, the next slide just shows that the trend in values have gone up. There's nothing we can do about that. It's just a function of the market.

But I think the next page is very telling. In 2013, we were $2,605 above the average tax bill for Essex County. In 2022, we're now $690 above.

Again, every year, it gets lower and lower and lower. And hopefully, we'll get to that average.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:46 - 1:52:47)
Right, but think about, you know, $2,600 a year more than the average. You know, that's a significant amount of money, you know, compounding year after year after year more. As we look at today, you know, we're $690 above the average.

And again, we've talked over the last few years, what is our goal? Is our goal to kind of get it down to zero? No, we're not looking for austerity.

We still have among one of the highest average single-family tax bills in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It's not as high as it was five years ago, but it's certainly something that we have to be mindful of. And when we get down to an average, we get to a place where we can actually feel as though we're striking a balance with just how much we're levying in taxes on our residents.

[Speaker 4] (1:52:52 - 1:54:13)
Next in this process, we're looking at ourselves within the context of the peer group. The peer group is Rockport, Winthrop, Ipswich, Georgetown, Middleton, Hamilton, Hull, Newburyport, Marblehead, which I added this year because I think it's relevant, and Manchester-by-the-Sea, which I added, and Scituate, and then my old hometown of Winfield. So these are all towns that more or less compare well to Swampskate.

Not all of them are oceanfront, but some of them are a lot closer to the highway and don't have the 20 to 45 minute commute we have to get to Route 128. So there is some reason to compare them. So if we look again at the peer groups, the story is the same, values increase every year.

This is the next slide. And that's a country market, yeah. But if you look at the next slide, you see the peer group has increased by 39% over the course of the period, and Swampskate, again, has increased 7%.

So we're getting closer and closer to the average of the peer group, which is, I think, a nice goal to have.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:14 - 1:55:01)
So it's just interesting just to point out with this slide, if you go to the far left, you can see we were 24% higher than the peer group in fiscal 13. In fiscal 22, we were 1% higher than the peer group. So we've actually hit a balance with the peer group.

We're within a few points of where many similar communities are in terms of their average single family tax bill. And I think that really does speak to the strategic direction that we set out to find a few years ago. And it helps us just understand that we're on the mark.

[Speaker 9] (1:55:03 - 1:55:38)
So also, from an affordability perspective, so Mr. Simmons is a... You can call me Dick David, I prefer that. I wouldn't keep looking for my father's eye.

So how did, so just from our value perspective, as we're property owners and so are 5,300 other residents in town or more, how does this consolidation of Swampscott to the peer group impact property values as a whole? Is there an affordability perspective where we're...

[Speaker 4] (1:55:38 - 1:56:24)
We're becoming more affordable as far as taxes go, for sure. And I think that's the main focus of the town is to make the town more affordable. And does that increase the appeal of Swampscott?

I would hope. I don't know whether it's gonna make it more popular than Marblehead. We definitely would like it to, but I'm not sure.

And that leads nicely into the next slide, which is a direct comparison to the peer group and to, what's that town next to us? Lynn? No, no, no, that's the city.

Marblehead, which isn't a rival, is it?

[Speaker 3] (1:56:26 - 1:56:26)
No.

[Speaker 4] (1:56:26 - 1:56:27)
No, no, not at all.

[Speaker 1] (1:56:29 - 1:56:30)
North and South Korea.

[Speaker 4] (1:56:30 - 1:58:23)
And so if you look at the blue line, that's the peer group. If you look at the orange line, that's Marblehead. I was trying to make it red, and I should have made the gray line blue.

That's Swampscott. And again, Marblehead's taxes since 2013 have increased 40%. And so that story has been told.

That's the residential end of it. The next slide gets into the commercial end. And how does this affect the commercial properties?

And what are we doing to the commercial properties? And to some extent, are we hurting them by shifting the levy onto them? And that's a question that needs to be addressed to some extent, and I think it's being addressed in these slides.

If you look at the values on commercial properties over the last 10 years, they've increased somewhat in Swampscott, and also in Essex County. More in Swampscott, but it doesn't seem to be adversely affecting the values of commercial properties in town. And if you look at the next slide, you'll notice that the increase in taxes in Essex County has been 28% over the last 10 years, and in Swampscott, it's been 15.

So it's not a panacea, it's not perfect, but it is, to some extent, being held in some degree of perspective in that we're not compromising the commercial viability of the town in favor of the residents, as we're trying to keep a balance, make a balance between the two.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:26 - 1:58:52)
So the efforts of Swampscott to try to keep the residential tax base more affordable also has a positive impact on the commercial properties, even though they pay a significantly amount more than their peer group in Essex County. The increase has been significantly less.

[Speaker 4] (1:58:53 - 1:59:35)
And the final slide, Diane, and I know Patrick's chomping at the bit to get going, so I wanna give him as much time as I possibly can. If you look at the average commercial tax bill for Swampscott from 2013 to 2022, it has changed from $17,498 to $17,609, which really isn't an extremely sharp increase in taxes. Again, that's an average, but at least it's an indice.

So I thank you for your time. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them.

[Speaker 3] (1:59:38 - 1:59:47)
Any questions, I think, before we move on to Patrick? Thank you. Thank you, yeah, really, it's always really interesting.

[Speaker 1] (1:59:48 - 2:01:45)
Sean was kicking me the whole time, so I'm just gonna get going in there. Really, it's so fortunate that we were able to have such a wealth of knowledge, somebody that has so much experience in what folks call the dismal arts. Art of economics.

I don't think it must be dismal, I kinda like it. I remember my economics professor, they were like, this is the dismal science, economics. It's hard for us to understand what the market forces are gonna be from one year to another, but it's important for us to really keep our eye on the ball and study the changes in value and get back to the master plan.

When we see more commercial properties seed or disappear because of zoning boards that make decisions that really are disconnected to the overall financial welfare of the town, the master plan gets subordinated to those conversations, and we've gotta use this data to get back to how do we strike a balance? How do we continue to keep our focus on affordability? There's only so many ways you can cut a budget before you have to start really getting into the bone, and you really have to start making Vinning Square more valuable commercially, making the MBTA neighborhood more valuable commercially, making Humphrey Street more valuable commercially.

Like, we've gotta think about ways to take residential properties and bring commercial investments back. You won't be able to cut your way out of additional efforts to make Swampskip more affordable without really dialing into the market forces that are subordinating your master plan.

[Speaker 6] (2:01:45 - 2:01:51)
So how do you get the zoning board to stop giving away land use board summits?

[Speaker 1] (2:01:52 - 2:02:26)
And you need to have that annually, and you need to help show this information to them and say, hey, look, we've squeezed the budget as tight as we can in areas, and now it's up to everybody to really see where these numbers are taking us. If we want to continue efforts to kind of find the middle, and there's still work to do, it's gonna focus on economic development and strategic land use planning. Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (2:02:27 - 2:02:36)
I wanna thank the select board for your indulgence, and I'll pass it off to Patrick. Thank you. I'll turn this mic off.

I assume you're still in there.

[Speaker 5] (2:02:36 - 2:04:57)
Yeah, thank you. So I'm gonna step through the financial components of the tax rate setting process. Diana, I don't know if you can pull up the same slide deck.

Okay, all right. So I'd like to recap something that we go over each year, which is how the town, how town meeting, how the select board and the finance committee can influence tax policy, and ultimately the tax levy itself. And there's five major components that we can think about.

So setting the town budget, setting all the appropriations that town meeting makes, those feed into the tax levy. What do we spend money on, and how much are we spending each year? Estimating local receipts, that's something that I'm kind of tasked with to work with the finance team and estimate local receipts when we develop the budget each year.

And those are things like our excise tax, our fees, our departmental revenues. Those items all generate revenue that doesn't come from property taxes, and that offsets the amount of taxes we'll have to raise each year. We also have things like the small business exemption and the residential exemption, which is something that the assessor will go into more detail at another meeting.

But those are options that the select board has to consider for the classification hearing. We also think about the use of free cash and reserves to further reduce our tax liability each year. And splitting the tax rate, we have shift options available to us from the state to have a split tax rate between residential and commercial, which is something that the town has done in the past consistently.

So those are five kind of things just to think about as we step through. I'm gonna step through the forms and the reports that we fill out and all the information that we pull together to determine tax levy and tax rate. So if you just go towards the end.

Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:57 - 2:05:02)
I think it's, what slide is it? It's 20.

[Speaker 5] (2:05:02 - 2:07:58)
20, yeah. Perfect, I'll just hang on. So this is a very rudimentary form that we fill out from the state, but this is our appropriations for the year.

These are all the things that town meeting has agreed that they would like to spend the funds on. On the fourth line down, you see that large $66 million number. And then off to the right on the same line, there's a $7.5 million number. Those are our operating budgets. That's what that is. So that feeds in here.

We also have uses of free cash in column C. We have our chapter 90 and our transportation infrastructure funding in column D. So there's all these different pieces and all these votes get reflected on this page and they sum up into the total appropriations that we have to account for and describe which revenues we're gonna use to cover each appropriation.

Next slide. In addition to appropriations, we have state assessments, which are not appropriated by town meeting. We're obligated to pay state assessments as recipients of state aid.

So this is just given to us each year from the state once the budget is set at the state level. So this year, our total state assessments is about $1.8 million. That's up over $300,000 from the prior year.

And it's broken into two major categories, I would say, are MBTA and then also education-related, especially the charter school assessments, those polling here. Next slide. So once you've determined all of your appropriations and your state assessments, you add in the overlay, which is the amount that the Board of Assessors requires each year to cover what they anticipate for tax abatements and exemptions, any disputes that get resolved.

We need to reserve an amount to cover those liabilities as well. So that gets plugged in through a calculation and you get your total estimated revenue that you have to generate for the fiscal year. Next slide.

And then you start describing the revenues that you need to cover all the appropriations and charges. So state aid is 6.6 million this year. That's net state aid is up $93,000 from last year.

So when we say net, we say revenue less the assessments. So it's not a huge jump for us, but it did go up, which is in the right direction. And this is also broken into two major categories.

So you have education-related aid, which is primarily Chapter 70, and general government aid, which is primarily unrestricted government aid. Next slide.

[Speaker 6] (2:07:58 - 2:08:01)
So the increase is only 93,000?

[Speaker 1] (2:08:01 - 2:08:02)
On a net basis, yeah.

[Speaker 6] (2:08:02 - 2:08:03)
On a net basis.

[Speaker 1] (2:08:04 - 2:08:09)
Probably a conversation to have with our new state representative.

[Speaker 6] (2:08:09 - 2:08:12)
We should have made Jenny stay here for this.

[Speaker 1] (2:08:12 - 2:08:13)
Yeah, that's right.

[Speaker 5] (2:08:15 - 2:11:40)
And beyond state aid, we have to account for all our local receipts. So these are the different categories that the DOR requires us to report out. So we report out last year's actuals, and then the estimates based on where we are this year.

And there's things like excise tax, meals tax, your interest in fees, solid waste fees, rentals, building permits, et cetera. So this all gets fed into here with a calculation, and we have to justify each line to the DOR with a written description. So it's very, there's a lot of analysis that goes into this.

And then once you've determined your state aid and your local receipts, you also are gonna look at other funds. This is where we get into the application of free cash or other reserve funds if the town elects to do so to reduce the tax levy for this fiscal year. So highlighted in yellow is where we would plug that in once we have more information.

But that feeds in, and then you can see on the bottom of this page, the total is docked out of your total appropriations and charges, and that gives you the levy. So talked a little bit about free cash. These are just our free cash balances, FY16.

So you can see in FY16, we had a very large free cash balance, which would indicate that budgeting may be loose. We have overestimated our expenses or grossly underestimated our revenues, and that creates free cash. At that level, that would be excessive.

So you can see we've tightened up the budget over the years with Sean and the finance director, and we've really crunched things down so we have a much more balanced operating result. We're more in the three to four million dollar range for free cash, which is appropriate given our financial guidelines. Last year, it was certified at 3.6. We're still waiting on this year's certification, but we're anticipating it very soon. Based on this year's budget, we're gonna be looking to maintain a minimum of about two million dollars in free cash, and the high end of the guideline is 3.4 million at 5% of budget. In addition to free cash, we have significant financial reserves built up over the past seven, eight years. Town has diligently contributed to these funds.

We've grown them to levels we've never seen before. Financial policies require that we maintain nine to 10% of the operating budget in general stabilization, which is the green, and two to 4% of capital stabilization, which is the blue. So between the two combined, we have 12.9% of our operating budget reserved. So that's a significant, that's a significant reserve to have. Not a lot of towns have that, and that sticks out in Swampscot. Our standard and poor's, which gives us our credit rating, has continuously pointed that out as a credit positive, so we're very happy to have that.

So these are things at our disposal at the select board and town meeting's disposal to further reduce the tax rate as needed, and as they see fit.

[Speaker 3] (2:11:41 - 2:11:53)
Patrick, do you, I know it's out of your control, but do you all anticipate that we may have that free cash number before our November 30th meeting?

[Speaker 5] (2:11:54 - 2:11:56)
Oh yeah, I anticipate that we will.

[Speaker 3] (2:11:56 - 2:11:57)
Okay.

[Speaker 5] (2:12:01 - 2:13:11)
So beyond revenue and expense, and the current year, we develop a 10-year forecast each year. I've worked with Sean and Amy and the finance team to develop this. We're gonna have this ready to share with you soon on an updated basis.

But this model was developed several years ago, and it rolls up 10 years of historical data so that we have trend lines that we can use to inform the future, and also our capital plan feeds into this with debt service and our reserves. So this is a really helpful tool internally. We play with it a lot, and it helps us make decisions.

But that's something that we're gonna update and share with you shortly. Yeah, these are some of the assumptions and strategies I already talked about, 10 years of historical data. Revenue estimates are generally conservative.

We don't wanna run into an issue where our local receipts don't collect at the level we estimated, so we're very careful with that, and that helps balance the budget in the future years. Next slide. These are our next steps.

I don't know if, Sean, you wanna?

[Speaker 1] (2:13:11 - 2:13:29)
Yeah, happy to just go with it. So tonight was really kind of an overview of the valuations and our tax rate setting methodologies. We hope to have our new growth finalized in the next week, a couple of days.

[Speaker 4] (2:13:30 - 2:13:34)
Yeah, I'm gonna be working with Mark Carroll on some future properties online to get that in order.

[Speaker 1] (2:13:34 - 2:16:04)
Essentially, it's just White Court or... Well, White Court has a few other properties, but free cash could be as soon as next week as well. And so as soon as we get those two pieces of information, we can start modeling what use of free cash or stabilization we can use to help balance the tax levy.

Back in the late spring of last year, we actually modeled the use of some of the town reserves as we started thinking about how to offset the debt service for the elementary school. We had a number of public meetings with the Finance Committee, and it's gonna be important to really just look at some of those public presentations and get a sense of what were we really trying to achieve. We also have seen some changes in the town's property classifications.

We talked a little bit about the increase in residential values up 15%, commercial up 9.7%. And so we're gonna see a shift to residentials. And so part of our effort to try to stabilize the impact to residentials is using some of the town's financial reserves to adjust that impact. So it's gonna be important for us to model that.

We will be meeting at the end of the month, and it's our hope that over the next week, we can start to really share with the board some of these models as soon as we get that data. But on our meeting on 1130, we can review that in greater detail. We have our special town meeting on December 5th, where we are seeking to appropriate some funds to help offset the levy.

We'll have a classification hearing right after that, December 5th, special town meeting, perhaps the next day or the two days after, and we'll set the tax rate. And middle to the end of December, we'll be issuing the first actual tax bills. That is the overview of classification and tax rate setting.

Happy to answer any questions the board may have.

[Speaker 6] (2:16:05 - 2:16:21)
So with the tax bill, we're gonna have our regular tax bill, and then there's also gonna be an addition on there for the school. No? Could that be excluded debt?

Right, all one bill, but we're gonna also have that chunk from the school's gonna be.

[Speaker 1] (2:16:21 - 2:16:24)
Yeah, the school's excluded, but it's not. Right.

[Speaker 6] (2:16:26 - 2:16:35)
So the question is, what was the dollar amount that the average tax bill was gonna see for the school? Was that 360? Does anybody remember?

[Speaker 9] (2:16:36 - 2:16:37)
We'll have to.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:37 - 2:16:40)
With the proposed use of reserves, it was 300.

[Speaker 3] (2:16:44 - 2:16:45)
On the median.

[Speaker 6] (2:16:45 - 2:16:47)
On the median. Yep. 300 on the median?

Yep.

[Speaker 3] (2:16:53 - 2:17:03)
Any other questions or comments? Patrick, thank you for that presentation. Anyone have any comments or questions about any of this or the process going forward?

[Speaker 13] (2:17:07 - 2:17:07)
All right.

[Speaker 6] (2:17:08 - 2:17:09)
Good job, Patrick.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:09 - 2:17:10)
Thanks very much, Patrick.

[Speaker 12] (2:17:10 - 2:17:11)
Thanks, Patrick.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:11 - 2:17:29)
All right, moving on. Thank you again. Appreciate it.

Moving on to the warrant. Special town meeting warrant. I believe we need to close it tonight, right?

[Speaker 1] (2:17:30 - 2:17:32)
You, we're gonna be printing it tonight.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:33 - 2:18:18)
Print and send out tomorrow. So why don't we go through this one by one? I don't think there's an awful lot that we're gonna be able to be playing in on as far as favorable, but let's just take it one at a time.

So, Article One. Do we wanna go, is, so Amy's not here, right? So it's you and Patrick, right, Sean?

Yep. So, Article One's the appropriation for fiscal year 2023 operating budget. This is essentially the, a shuffle of funds.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:19 - 2:18:43)
That's right. We are making adjustments to a few line items, mostly. You know, the enterprise funds, this was approved at, by the Finance Committee, and it's a, essentially a reconciliation of the enterprise.

[Speaker 6] (2:18:43 - 2:18:45)
I think we talked about this.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:46 - 2:18:48)
Okay. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:18:49 - 2:19:08)
And so, yeah, so the Finance Committee recommended favorable action at their meeting on this article last night, right? Yes. Okay.

Amy, do you wanna step through these numbers? Briefly.

[Speaker 7] (2:19:08 - 2:19:38)
Yep, so as a whole, if you remember from Article Four at annual town meeting, our slide had $93,810 that was in salary reserve for the four unions that we were discussing. So this is the shifting of that, as well as additional monies for non-union personnel, cost of living, and the additional wages that were needed for the vacant positions that we were in the process of hiring at that time.

[Speaker 3] (2:19:41 - 2:19:42)
Okay, so.

[Speaker 7] (2:19:43 - 2:19:48)
And this would also leave $52,700 left in salary reserve.

[Speaker 3] (2:19:57 - 2:20:22)
So the, so we're taking $130,000 out of salary reserve, and then all these line items, for roughly, where it says CBA, that's roughly adding up to the 93,000, and then the other ones are adding up to that 52, roughly. Right? Yes.

[Speaker 7] (2:20:23 - 2:20:56)
Yep, so the CBA ones add up exactly to $93,810. Okay. And so the only, everything next to zero with the exception of the regional voc tech school, and that was the, we didn't have the full assessment at the time of annual town meeting, so we just did an estimate.

And the $31,603 is the additional needed for the actual assessment.

[Speaker 3] (2:21:03 - 2:21:11)
And is there a, is there an updated warrant that has the finance committee favorable action?

[Speaker 7] (2:21:13 - 2:21:17)
Yes, that's on the draft that I have in front of me, but.

[Speaker 3] (2:21:18 - 2:21:20)
Yeah, no, it's just, that's fine.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:21 - 2:21:25)
Can you just tell me what the, where the line item is for the assessment on the vocational school?

[Speaker 7] (2:21:26 - 2:21:29)
On page eight, about 2 3rds of the way down.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:29 - 2:21:30)
It's actually page, it's actually page.

[Speaker 7] (2:21:30 - 2:21:31)
Reference is line item 16.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:32 - 2:21:33)
Use page two of the warrant.

[Speaker 7] (2:21:33 - 2:21:34)
Yep.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:34 - 2:21:35)
It's right here.

[Speaker 11] (2:21:35 - 2:21:36)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:43 - 2:21:44)
It's adding to the 1,603.

[Speaker 3] (2:21:54 - 2:22:08)
And then we have the enterprise funds, which we talked about when we did the water and sewer rate setting. That's just a shift because of the assessments were lower than expected, right?

[Speaker 7] (2:22:09 - 2:22:12)
Yes, and those are the exact numbers from Patrick's presentation.

[Speaker 3] (2:22:14 - 2:22:14)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:22:17 - 2:22:22)
I would make a motion to recommend favorable action on article one. Second.

[Speaker 3] (2:22:24 - 2:22:26)
All those in favor?

[Speaker 8] (2:22:26 - 2:22:27)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (2:22:27 - 2:22:37)
Oh, sorry. Yeah, aye. Okay.

Okay, sorry, I'm just looking at the language here. All right, article two.

[Speaker 2] (2:22:38 - 2:22:42)
So these are going to be updated to reflect that finance committee said yes. Select boards.

[Speaker 7] (2:22:43 - 2:22:45)
Yeah, I'm updating in real time.

[Speaker 3] (2:22:47 - 2:22:51)
Are you actually printing tonight?

[Speaker 7] (2:22:52 - 2:23:04)
Yes, we're printing about 200 of them tonight and then we'll print the remaining 150 in the morning. That way the clerk's office has a headstart on stuffing envelopes.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:05 - 2:23:48)
Okay. Okay. Article two is a transfer of free cash and or stabilization for adjustment of tax rates so that we just talked about this.

There is no sum of money. We don't have an amount. So I think we'll be reporting on this at town meeting.

Anyone have any questions about this article generally? Okay. So, and again, Amy, I'll just keep asking just because this is our chance and I don't, you know, I want to make sure we don't need to put any stickers in the warrant.

This finance committee's reporting at town meeting as well, right?

[Speaker 13] (2:23:49 - 2:23:49)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:49 - 2:23:53)
Okay. And that you have that updated in your copy?

[Speaker 7] (2:23:54 - 2:23:58)
Yep, so I have both the select board and finance committee will report on this article at town meeting.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:59 - 2:24:18)
Okay. Article three is approval of proof transfer free cash collective bargaining agreement. We don't have anything on that tonight.

So that to be determined. And so that is also going to be a report at town meeting.

[Speaker 13] (2:24:19 - 2:24:19)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (2:24:20 - 2:24:29)
Any comments, questions on that one from anyone? Article four is established a compensated absences reserve fund.

[Speaker 7] (2:24:30 - 2:24:42)
The finance committee did not vote on this last night. They deferred to report at town meeting. They're waiting to see the free cash certification so that they can weigh all the free cash articles together.

[Speaker 3] (2:24:43 - 2:24:44)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:44 - 2:24:45)
I suggest we do the same.

[Speaker 13] (2:24:46 - 2:24:47)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (2:24:54 - 2:24:56)
Article five is capital.

[Speaker 7] (2:24:57 - 2:25:02)
Finance committee did recommend this as printed in your warrant.

[Speaker 3] (2:25:04 - 2:25:08)
Okay. Questions, comments on this article?

[Speaker 2] (2:25:09 - 2:25:14)
I'd recommend favorable action on the four projects and the funding, as well as funding sources set forth in article five.

[Speaker 9] (2:25:15 - 2:25:15)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (2:25:16 - 2:25:17)
Further discussion?

[Speaker 6] (2:25:17 - 2:26:54)
So I have some comments on article five. Under the rehabilitation of Avid Park, I don't wanna lose money, $100,000 grant. However, it is troubling when I'm 90% sure in our financial policy, we're supposed to be presenting grants prior to even looking for funding just so that everybody's on the same page.

But I'll double check that because I just remember that was in the draft. Repairs to the town garage, number two. This is $100,000 that taxpayers have to pay for and I really, I still don't understand what needs to be done at the garage.

I don't think it was very clear. The problem that happened at the garage also happened with the town and a private club. And I had asked last time if the private clubs insurance could kick in to try to abate this cost to the town.

So I do have a problem with that. Lead service investigation, I don't have a problem with that. The recreation sailboats and SUP, the boards, I think that this should be investigated to be able to come out of the recreation revolving account or even half of it to come out of the recreation revolving account and not to have to be bonded and be a general tax on people again.

Because this is a recreational program and I think the actual recreational program should take care of the equipment.

[Speaker 7] (2:26:56 - 2:27:20)
Mary Ellen, if I can just give you more info on the town hall garage. The $100,000 is for the right side of the garage that was not impacted by the Bobcat collapse. So it's not covered by any insurance and this is a preventative repair.

Okay. So it's to keep the right side from collapsing like the left side did. But because it did not collapse, it's not eligible for any insurance.

[Speaker 6] (2:27:20 - 2:27:27)
And so the $100,000, is it gonna be filled in or what's the actual work that's gonna be done?

[Speaker 7] (2:27:27 - 2:27:32)
It's to put the structural beams and to keep the floor from collapsing. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:27:36 - 2:27:49)
And to Mary Ellen's point, the left side is being paid for from the town insurance in the town. If there's a claim to be made against someone else, they will pursue that and subrogate that claim, correct?

[Speaker 1] (2:27:49 - 2:27:57)
That's correct. Yes. Thank you.

The town is not gonna go after the yacht club.

[Speaker 2] (2:27:58 - 2:28:00)
No, the insurers do, that's the way it works.

[Speaker 6] (2:28:02 - 2:28:17)
Right, in the recreational sailboats, there's, my understanding is $140,000 sitting in the recreation revolving account and- We have so many programs and so many needs with recreation.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:17 - 2:29:18)
And for me to go and tap into those funds without really thinking about how that might impact all of the other things that we should or could be doing for recreation, I think is penny wise and pound foolish. I do think it is helpful for a town at large to invest in recreation. And this is, I think, a modest investment in a sailboat program that has been part of the DNA for Swampskate before everybody's memory.

And I think it would be well and good for all of the citizens of Swampskate to celebrate these programs and make investments in these programs. And let the rec revolving be a fund that really, truly does programmatically support all of the needs that we have as a busy community.

[Speaker 6] (2:29:19 - 2:29:28)
The purpose of setting up the recreation revolving account, which I was involved in, was so that the recreation programs would subsidize recreation.

[Speaker 12] (2:29:28 - 2:29:28)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 6] (2:29:28 - 2:30:02)
That the town residents weren't subsidizing unless it was something that the entire town benefited from. That was the purpose of it. So that's why I'm still sticking with the purpose of it.

And it was supposed to fund recreational events. That's why we made a recreational revolving account. I think there is enough money in the budget to pick up some of this bill.

And I also think that this should be something that should be looked at constantly so that this part of the recreation program is self-funding.

[Speaker 7] (2:30:03 - 2:30:57)
Mary Ellen, you're correct that this can and potentially should be coming out the revolving fund. The sender brought up the same point at the finance committee meeting on Monday. The issue that we have is the spending limit that was just increased for the rec revolving, the annual spending limit, was increased due to budgeted projected expenses.

So if we put this 40,000 in that rec revolving, they would not be able to do the programming that they already have planned out for the year because they'd reached their spending limit. And Ms. McNerney brought up that we could increase the spending limit, which is also a possibility, but that would have to be a separate warrant article. To allow that.

[Speaker 9] (2:31:01 - 2:31:58)
Personally, I don't think the town invests enough in recreation. So I think the $40,641 request should be approved. This should be bonded.

We should be investing more than $40,000 for these programs, especially as we're coming out of a pandemic, especially as we want to do more. And I think the recreation department and the recreation director have been asked to do more with less for so long. I think to tap into the rec revolving account for a sailboat program, as well as stand-up paddle boarding, is just, I can't, I just wouldn't support, I wouldn't support tapping into that account.

So I think we need to do more. Sean and the rest of our board members. And I think we want to evaluate other opportunities for.

[Speaker 1] (2:31:58 - 2:32:18)
There's a list of rec programs that we still want to see. And I agree with you. Like this, you know, we desperately need those rec revolving funds to fund programs.

And we are thinking more creatively about how to generate more funds for recreation.

[Speaker 9] (2:32:18 - 2:32:23)
Yeah, and also keep them affordable for all the residents of Swampscott utilizing these programs.

[Speaker 1] (2:32:23 - 2:32:24)
No cost, no cost.

[Speaker 3] (2:32:25 - 2:33:04)
So, I mean, I think it's, you know, I saw the finance committee conversation about this same topic. I think it's worth discussing for future town meetings. But, you know, I think certainly for tonight, we don't want to be jeopardizing either this program or any other recreational programs.

And it's a nominal amount of money and a much needed investment into the sailing program and stand-up paddleboard. So I think that, you know, for tonight, for this town meeting, we should recommend favorable action as the finance committee did. So I think.

So can I come at it a different way?

[Speaker 2] (2:33:04 - 2:33:52)
I think Mary Ellen makes some good points. And so last night, a long time FinCom member who was not supportive of raising the revolving account historically said that she was in favor of it. And Mary Ellen, you've actually voted against recommending increasing the revolving account when you were on FinCom.

But if you're now okay with that, let's actually, I want to propose putting a warrant article in tonight that can go to the special town meeting in December that will lift the, I believe Cinder said $500,000. Let's increase the revolving account warrant article to $500,000, which means if they raise $500,000, they can spend $500,000. That will actually give you the room for the $40,000 of the boats.

But I know previously you weren't in favor of raising that cap. But if you are now, which is awesome, and I really am glad that I think I'm hearing you are, let's do it, because we can actually add the warrant article tonight.

[Speaker 6] (2:33:53 - 2:34:25)
Yes, you have an amazing memory to remember all of my votes on finance committee. I applaud you for that. Yes, in the past I have not voted to support it because there was no information brought forward whatsoever on what type of programs there were gonna be, what the spending was gonna be.

However, now that you have a full-time recreation director in there and there is a part-time recreation person in there, I don't have any problems with increasing the bottom line up to 500,000, which means then you can take this 40,000 out of that 140.

[Speaker 2] (2:34:26 - 2:35:27)
Yeah, I'll be honest with you. I'll make that trade in a second, just so you know. If we now can have a revolving account of $500,000, I think that's fantastic.

I think for some reason for a long time here, there was a strong reticence. I think we did know how the money was being spent because every year you can look and see what the, there's nobody more visible than what the rec department does. I mean, there's nothing more visible in our town, right?

I mean, conversely, how much money do we spend maintaining docks and piers? Anybody know that answer? But yet, if you actually look who uses dock and piers, it's 90%, I'm sure, if not more, people who have private memberships to clubs or pay for mooring, right?

And that is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very small percent of our town, but yet we pick up 100% of the expense, right? And so I think the rec department actually should be applauded because they are the most visible. Like, you probably could account to the penny for it because it's so visible.

So can we put a warrant?

[Speaker 1] (2:35:27 - 2:35:44)
I mean, we don't have it written here. We have to. In the annual town meeting, we have a warrant article that establishes the amount of funds.

We can just cut and paste that into this warrant and prove it at $500,000. Amy, are you able to just grab that from the annual town meeting warrant?

[Speaker 7] (2:35:45 - 2:35:48)
I can do that right now if the board votes to do so.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:48 - 2:35:49)
Yeah, can you just do me a favor?

[Speaker 2] (2:35:49 - 2:35:52)
Can you pull it up maybe so that we can see it since we have to close the warrant?

[Speaker 7] (2:35:53 - 2:35:55)
Yep, I'm pulling it up right now.

[Speaker 2] (2:35:56 - 2:36:09)
Are others open to this? I mean, I've said it. No one, you guys open to doing this warrant article?

I mean, we can do it now. If you don't want to because it's too quick, Neil, I get that. I'm just, it is actually something, it does require a different warrant article, but we, the warrant's open.

[Speaker 9] (2:36:09 - 2:36:11)
It's our warrant. We can add it.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:12 - 2:36:13)
Thoughts from anyone else?

[Speaker 9] (2:36:14 - 2:36:27)
I'm open to increasing the limit to $500,000, but I'm not open to utilizing the 40,641 from Rackle-Walden. Well, then let's, that's fine.

[Speaker 2] (2:36:27 - 2:36:47)
We can make a recommendation on both, and then both articles can be there until a meeting at least then has a choice, and the arguments can be made to say take it out of this because we're doing the other. You know, I think I'm a little bit more agnostic than you are on that last part, but I think there's a lot of good points being made. Katie?

[Speaker 11] (2:36:48 - 2:36:53)
I mean, I think there's an opportunity we have for the REC department here, and we should utilize it if we're able to, so.

[Speaker 2] (2:36:54 - 2:37:08)
I'm confident if the REC director was here right now, she would be saying do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, because it's an arbitrary cap for them to say we can't do any more programming than $250,000 of revenue. I mean, that's just, it's arbitrary.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:09 - 2:37:10)
It's about mental health, it's about.

[Speaker 7] (2:37:11 - 2:37:13)
They're currently at $300,000 for the spending limit, by the way.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:14 - 2:37:27)
Or hypothetically, I can say $300,000. So, Amy, are you able to find that now? Do you want me to come back to that, and we can move on, and we'll come back to this article in a minute once you find that language?

[Speaker 7] (2:37:28 - 2:37:32)
Yeah, I'm just opening it right now, but if you'd want to continue.

[Speaker 2] (2:37:32 - 2:37:36)
So, on Article V, I made a motion for favorable action, and I think it was seconded.

[Speaker 9] (2:37:42 - 2:37:42)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:44 - 2:37:48)
So, all those in favor of favorable action on Article V?

[Speaker 9] (2:37:48 - 2:37:49)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:49 - 2:37:49)
Aye.

[Speaker 6] (2:37:50 - 2:37:53)
But I do want to see this $40,000 taken out.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:55 - 2:38:06)
Okay. Article VI, appropriation for a new elementary school. We just went over all the details on that.

[Speaker 2] (2:38:06 - 2:38:22)
Yeah, but I would like the language to be changed. Amy, can we change it to include, and Patrick, do you have the language to specify the 2.9 whatever million, and make it clear that it would be increasing our exempt authorization? Did you guys?

[Speaker 7] (2:38:23 - 2:38:31)
I have the language that bond counsel gave us, and I did plug in a sum of $2,900,983.

[Speaker 2] (2:38:31 - 2:38:35)
So, can you read it? Because our version doesn't have that.

[Speaker 7] (2:38:36 - 2:40:36)
Yep. So, I have... Sorry, it says Patrick's on it too.

It's bogging. Thank you. Sorry, Patrick, you were slowing down my warrant.

To see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate, borrow, and or transfer from available funds a sum of $2,900,983 to be expended under the direction of the School Building Committee for the design, construction, and equipping of a new elementary school and costs incidental or related thereto commonly referred to as the new elementary school located at 10 Whitman Road, Smallscott, Massachusetts, including the acquisition of easements, therefore the project, which school facilities shall have anticipated useful life as an education facility for the instruction of school children of at least 50 years and for which the town may be eligible for a school construction grant from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, MSBA. The MSBA's grant program is a non-entitlement discretionary program based on need as determined by the MSBA. In any project costs the town incurs in excess of any grant approved by and received from the MSBA shall be the sole responsibility of the town.

Any grant that the town may receive from the MSBA for the project shall not exceed the lesser of one, 48 and nine-tenths percent of eligible approved project costs and that's determined by the MSBA or two, the total maximum grant amount determined by the MSBA and to meet said appropriation to authorize the treasurer with the approval of the select board to borrow all or a portion of said sum under the provisions of GL chapter 44, section seven and or any other enabling authority to issue bonds or notes of the town therefore or take any action relative thereto.

I don't think I breathed that whole thing so I hope you guys heard it.

[Speaker 2] (2:40:36 - 2:40:59)
So to see if the town will, Amy, does that give, but that language came from bond counsel and maybe Patrick was the way you wanna chime in but that language allows us to follow the, to file the request with DOR that would then allow this to, with town meeting approval and select board approval increase.

[Speaker 5] (2:41:00 - 2:41:47)
Yes, so there's nothing specific in this language to a debt exclusion and that's because we already have one approved for the original project appropriation. The process that the select board can choose to pursue is an application to DOR stating that these are costs, based on an OPM report we'd have to get, that these are just costs related to escalation in the project or the construction contract came in higher than anticipated and there's no changes to the project scope which I think that's exactly our situation. So that's an application process and I think our situation fits right into that.

However, it's not guaranteed. It's an application and the director of accounts would have to approve that this would be counted towards our debt exclusion.

[Speaker 2] (2:41:48 - 2:41:55)
Does that application only go after we approved it by town meeting or can we file that application right now in anticipation of town meeting approval?

[Speaker 5] (2:41:55 - 2:42:10)
It can be filed ahead of time if you have the specific amount specified, which we do and there are certain, there's a report we'd need to get from the OPM and the select board would have to take a vote in a public session before we can file it.

[Speaker 2] (2:42:10 - 2:42:25)
All right, so can we go ahead and prepare that, it's okay with you all, prepare that application, the OPM, you can reach out to the school building committee and they're prepared to have the OPM give you whatever you need, the document and certify the costs.

[Speaker 1] (2:42:25 - 2:42:29)
Max Casper can facilitate that for you, Pat.

[Speaker 6] (2:42:29 - 2:42:34)
So if we're not using any language saying excluded debt, that's not gonna hurt us to file that application.

[Speaker 5] (2:42:35 - 2:42:50)
Right. Is that correct? Yeah, the only, if you wanted it to make this vote contingent on another, like a referendum vote, we'd have a special election and everything again, that would be the only language we could add in here, but we don't need it for the other process.

[Speaker 2] (2:42:52 - 2:42:56)
So Amy, can you just say the amount one more time? I just wanna make sure that.

[Speaker 7] (2:42:57 - 2:43:06)
I have $2,900,983. So 2,900,983.

[Speaker 2] (2:43:06 - 2:43:12)
I thought that it's actually 2,909,983.

[Speaker 7] (2:43:12 - 2:43:14)
Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 2] (2:43:14 - 2:43:16)
So say it back to me one more time.

[Speaker 7] (2:43:17 - 2:43:25)
I have, I now have 2,909,983.

[Speaker 2] (2:43:25 - 2:43:26)
Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (2:43:27 - 2:43:33)
Okay. We tried to catch it so many times, I was like texting with Patrick and Diane, I'm like, did you catch them all?

[Speaker 2] (2:43:35 - 2:43:44)
So I would make a motion to approve article six as narrated with the correct number by the town finance director.

[Speaker 3] (2:43:46 - 2:43:54)
Is there a second? Second. Further discussion?

All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 7] (2:43:55 - 2:44:01)
I do have the language up for the revolving fund if you want to reach back to that one.

[Speaker 3] (2:44:02 - 2:44:06)
And do we think we're inserting this at the end?

[Speaker 7] (2:44:07 - 2:44:11)
It would be inserted with the financial article.

[Speaker 13] (2:44:11 - 2:44:12)
Okay, right. So.

[Speaker 7] (2:44:12 - 2:44:25)
It's up to you where you would like it to be. So if you can see your screen, this is directly from the annual. So the only difference would be where it says 300,000, it would say 500,000.

[Speaker 3] (2:44:25 - 2:44:28)
And then it would say was 300,000.

[Speaker 7] (2:44:28 - 2:44:28)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (2:44:30 - 2:44:38)
So I think it may make sense to make this article five. Then article five would become article six. I agree.

[Speaker 2] (2:44:42 - 2:45:04)
I would move a new article five as printed on the screen, but changing where it says fiscal year spending limit changed 300,000 to 500,000 and then the parenthetical afterwards, asterisk was 275 and I'll say was 300. And then I would just have it sponsored by the select board.

[Speaker 3] (2:45:05 - 2:45:26)
Yep. Second. Okay.

Any other further discussion on this? All those in favor? Aye.

Aye. All right. So Amy, you're changing all these article numbers now, right?

[Speaker 7] (2:45:27 - 2:45:27)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (2:45:32 - 2:45:46)
So article seven, acceptance of public way, Supreme court. I don't know, Sean, do we know, didn't the planning board meet on this? I don't know what they.

[Speaker 1] (2:45:50 - 2:45:59)
They have, I don't have an update. I know that, you know, they've scheduled to approve it. Yeah, I think we can't do anything until we know that.

[Speaker 3] (2:46:01 - 2:46:16)
Okay. Amy, it may make sense to just reach out to Marzi to find out if they've made any sort of recommendation. If not, I don't, do you have language in there now that says the planning board will report?

[Speaker 7] (2:46:17 - 2:46:21)
Right now I just have the planning board dot, dot, dot.

[Speaker 3] (2:46:21 - 2:47:06)
Okay. So I think you should change it to the planning board will report on this article. Okay.

And then I think the select board will report on this as well, but I think it's worth checking in with Marzi. Maybe if she's watching, cause if the planning board did recommend favorable action, then we should put that in the warrant. Okay.

All right. So acceptance of donated land, Park Square. Again, I don't know what the planning board is.

So I just want to make sure we, of course, change these dot, dot, dots to will report.

[Speaker 13] (2:47:06 - 2:47:07)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (2:47:10 - 2:47:16)
All right. Does everyone feel similarly that we just shouldn't recommend favorable action until the planning board does?

[Speaker 11] (2:47:17 - 2:47:19)
The court, I just got a text from Marzi.

[Speaker 6] (2:47:20 - 2:47:24)
They made a favorable vote on Supreme Court. Okay. I'd move.

[Speaker 11] (2:47:24 - 2:47:25)
Thank you Dan.

[Speaker 2] (2:47:25 - 2:47:31)
I would move to recommend favorable action on article currently printed article number seven, acceptance of public way.

[Speaker 11] (2:47:32 - 2:47:32)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (2:47:33 - 2:47:49)
All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor.

Aye. Do you want to ask Marzi about the other ones too while we're here? So acceptance of donated land, Park Square.

Any questions about this from anyone generally?

[Speaker 2] (2:47:49 - 2:48:03)
Why does the planning board need to report on the acceptance of a gift? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know of any requirement that they need to.

I think that's probably a unnecessary line. It's just, it's just, it's a gift. It just happens to be land.

It's the gift.

[Speaker 3] (2:48:03 - 2:48:07)
So should we remove the planning board altogether and just have it say the select board?

[Speaker 1] (2:48:07 - 2:48:14)
Well, I don't know. Do you want me to ask her? I can call her.

No, it's the select board. The select board is the governing body of the city.

[Speaker 9] (2:48:14 - 2:48:26)
So it should say sponsored by the select board. And just for clarity's sake, this is the land adjacent to the Haas parcel that we just closed on. That we just closed on at our last meeting.

[Speaker 13] (2:48:26 - 2:48:27)
Correct.

[Speaker 3] (2:48:29 - 2:48:35)
Yeah, and this map, Amy, I know the one that we have, the article references are incorrect.

[Speaker 7] (2:48:36 - 2:48:42)
Yep, so I had Pete update that and I'm gonna have him update it again with the new article numbers.

[Speaker 3] (2:48:42 - 2:48:45)
Right. Okay.

[Speaker 7] (2:48:45 - 2:48:47)
But if you're looking at your map.

[Speaker 3] (2:48:49 - 2:48:51)
It's the red one, right?

[Speaker 7] (2:48:51 - 2:48:53)
Is bar square. It goes red and then blue.

[Speaker 3] (2:48:54 - 2:48:59)
Right. This is the one.

[Speaker 11] (2:48:59 - 2:49:04)
So, I've gotta move this. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (2:49:05 - 2:49:24)
So Peter, sorry, you think it should say the select board sponsor? This is? Yes, I do.

And recommends favorable action or just? I do. Okay.

Sorry, I'm losing track. Did we have a motion? Yes, and she just seconded it.

[Speaker 11] (2:49:25 - 2:49:28)
I took that I do to mean a motion for which I seconded.

[Speaker 3] (2:49:28 - 2:49:40)
Yeah, the current article eight, acceptance of donated land park square with a change to select board sponsors this article and recommends favorable action.

[Speaker 2] (2:49:41 - 2:49:42)
All those in favor?

[Speaker 3] (2:49:43 - 2:49:44)
All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 11] (2:49:44 - 2:49:48)
Thanks. We're getting there.

[Speaker 3] (2:49:48 - 2:49:59)
Almost there. All right, so current article nine, acquisition of land off Cushing Avenue. So, I just, there's just.

[Speaker 1] (2:49:59 - 2:50:00)
Is that article 10 now?

[Speaker 3] (2:50:00 - 2:50:08)
It would be article 10 now, but it just, it starts the language of the article and the title.

[Speaker 7] (2:50:08 - 2:50:09)
Yeah, I fixed that.

[Speaker 3] (2:50:09 - 2:50:53)
You fixed that, okay. So, this is for correcting the acquisition article from our town meeting when we acquired the giant green space or were authorized to acquire the giant green space and the very thin blue sliver was left out in terms of the lots. So, this is to correct that authorization.

So, again, I think maybe it's the select board sponsors this article and recommends favorable action. Correct. So, moved.

Second.

[Speaker 11] (2:50:53 - 2:50:58)
Wait, I have a question. Okay. Do we know, is the planning board opining on this?

[Speaker 2] (2:50:58 - 2:51:02)
No, that's, again, I think someone just kept on cutting and pasting.

[Speaker 11] (2:51:02 - 2:51:03)
Just want to make sure.

[Speaker 7] (2:51:04 - 2:51:09)
So, we just put placeholders for zoning articles and don't have the language barriers.

[Speaker 2] (2:51:09 - 2:51:14)
I can't remember, FinCom didn't want to report on this, right, because there's no new appropriation.

[Speaker 3] (2:51:14 - 2:51:15)
The appropriation already happened.

[Speaker 13] (2:51:16 - 2:51:16)
Correct.

[Speaker 2] (2:51:17 - 2:51:18)
Okay, all right, just want to make sure.

[Speaker 3] (2:51:22 - 2:51:25)
And, town council's reviewed this?

[Speaker 13] (2:51:26 - 2:51:26)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (2:51:27 - 2:51:29)
Everyone has double checked?

[Speaker 2] (2:51:29 - 2:52:33)
Yeah, so can I just ask that these, we're not really focusing on the comments. And I get it, we're kind of moving fast here, but the comments matter, especially this one here, because I think it needs context, right? And so, I think the comment, frankly, should be a little bit more than 16 minutes.

Authorize a, you know, I think it should say what we just talked about, right? At the annual town meeting, town meeting, you know, warrant article, whatever it was, authorized, you know, the board, the town to acquire, take, et cetera, these 40 whatever lots. And lot seven dash whatever, lot seven two was inadvertently omitted from that list.

And then C, appendix A, right? Right. Because there's really no reference to appendix A here.

And same with, in article eight, the donated land, I think you gotta say C, red parcel in appendix A. I just think we have to help town meeting navigate the warrant.

[Speaker 3] (2:52:34 - 2:52:44)
Yeah, I think that's a good idea. And also, on the Park Square one, in the comment mentioning that it's donated land, because that's not there.

[Speaker 2] (2:52:44 - 2:52:46)
Yeah, so acquire property.

[Speaker 3] (2:52:46 - 2:52:48)
So Amy, are you with us?

[Speaker 13] (2:52:49 - 2:52:49)
Yep.

[Speaker 2] (2:52:49 - 2:53:02)
So in the comment for number eight, the current number eight, where it says the article seeks authorization to acquire property, located, maybe just add a sentence saying this property will be acquired by donation.

[Speaker 3] (2:53:04 - 2:53:04)
At the end.

[Speaker 2] (2:53:06 - 2:53:14)
Period, right? And then C, appendix A. Yeah, C, blue, C, appendix A, or whatever you need to do.

[Speaker 7] (2:53:16 - 2:53:22)
Do you want to eliminate that entire this article seeks and just put this property will be acquired through donation?

[Speaker 2] (2:53:23 - 2:53:25)
Yeah, you can keep what's there now.

[Speaker 7] (2:53:25 - 2:53:26)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:53:26 - 2:53:32)
The second sentence, this property will be acquired by donation. C, appendix, appendix.

[Speaker 7] (2:53:32 - 2:53:34)
C, red parcel in appendix A.

[Speaker 2] (2:53:34 - 2:53:40)
Yeah. Make sure you update appendix A, because the warrant article numbers are gonna change.

[Speaker 13] (2:53:41 - 2:53:41)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (2:53:42 - 2:53:57)
On that as well. All right. And then the Cushing Ave one, the current article nine, which is now article 10, is a little bit trickier for the comment.

[Speaker 1] (2:54:02 - 2:54:07)
At the Springtown meeting.

[Speaker 2] (2:54:07 - 2:54:36)
At the Springtown meeting, town meeting voted pursuant to article blank to acquire certain parcels of land to allow the town to acquire certain parcels of land. Period, right? Lot seven two was inadvertently omitted from that list.

This warrant article corrects that error. And then we can speak to it, but at least it lets them know.

[Speaker 6] (2:54:36 - 2:54:38)
Was that a scribe error?

[Speaker 2] (2:54:39 - 2:54:42)
We can call it. Scribner error, we can call it a Scribner error.

[Speaker 3] (2:54:48 - 2:54:50)
Do you want to read that back, Amy, if you've got that?

[Speaker 1] (2:54:51 - 2:54:55)
This article corrects a Scribner's error that omitted.

[Speaker 2] (2:54:56 - 2:55:05)
You don't sound like Amy at all. It's not even a believable attempt, impersonation. Yes, Amy, go ahead.

[Speaker 7] (2:55:08 - 2:55:37)
So now I can't do a Shawn voice. Yeah. I have at the annual town meeting, town meeting voted in article X to acquire lot two and lots 213 to 248 and 250 to 255 were omitted by error.

This does not change the appropriation that was done in vote X. The select board will please see the blue parcel in appendix A.

[Speaker 2] (2:55:38 - 2:55:54)
No, so we need to go back. The only parcel that we're acquiring on this is map seven lot two. The other ones that are referenced in the article are actually, that's just quoting a plan.

So don't use that. So don't recite those other lots.

[Speaker 7] (2:55:57 - 2:56:02)
All right, so to acquire lot two, map seven lot two.

[Speaker 2] (2:56:02 - 2:56:19)
Yeah, assessors of tax map seven comma lot two, which due to a Scribner's error was omitted from the spring town meeting warrant. See appendix A, blue parcel.

[Speaker 3] (2:56:37 - 2:56:40)
Can you read that one more time for us, Amy, before?

[Speaker 7] (2:56:41 - 2:56:52)
Yep, at the annual town meeting, town meeting voted in article X to acquire assessors tax map seven comma lot two, which due to a Scribner's error was omitted from the town meeting warrant.

[Speaker 2] (2:56:52 - 2:56:52)
Now.

[Speaker 7] (2:56:53 - 2:56:54)
Please see the blue parcel in appendix A.

[Speaker 2] (2:56:54 - 2:57:09)
Sorry, we gotta go back to your first sentence. At the spring, at the 2022 annual town meeting, pursuant, whatever, article blank, town meeting voted to acquire several tax parcels.

[Speaker 13] (2:57:09 - 2:57:10)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:57:10 - 2:57:10)
Don't, don't.

[Speaker 11] (2:57:10 - 2:57:13)
Why don't you say as depicted as open space?

[Speaker 2] (2:57:13 - 2:57:15)
Because unfortunately. Oh, because that's the whole thing. It's actually open space.

[Speaker 11] (2:57:15 - 2:57:15)
All right, yep.

[Speaker 2] (2:57:18 - 2:57:31)
Tax lot seven parcel two, due to a Scribner's error, parcel seven, whatever, map seven lot two was inadvertently omitted. This warrant article corrects that or whatever we said.

[Speaker 3] (2:57:35 - 2:57:37)
Let's try it one more time, Amy, when you're ready.

[Speaker 2] (2:57:39 - 2:57:40)
In Sean's voice.

[Speaker 7] (2:57:44 - 2:58:01)
All right, at the 2022 annual town meeting, town meeting voted in article X to acquire assessors tax map seven lot two, which due to a Scribner's error was inadvertently.

[Speaker 2] (2:58:01 - 2:58:25)
Nope. It voted to acquire, voted to acquire several. Several parcels.

Several, several, not seven, several parcels, period. Due to a Scribner's error, assessors map seven parcel six, or lot six was omitted. Lot two.

Lot two, I don't know why I'm saying six. Why are you doing this with me, Ashley?

[Speaker 12] (2:58:25 - 2:58:27)
I'm like six, what's lot six?

[Speaker 2] (2:58:28 - 2:58:41)
All right, motion to adjourn. Sorry, Amy. All right.

We're doing this as painfully as possible to teach you all a lesson.

[Speaker 12] (2:58:41 - 2:58:43)
We are never doing this again.

[Speaker 2] (2:58:45 - 2:58:45)
We say that.

[Speaker 11] (2:58:46 - 2:58:49)
I feel like the conversation is happening too fast.

[Speaker 3] (2:58:53 - 2:58:54)
I think it does help, though.

[Speaker 1] (2:58:54 - 2:59:03)
It does. I actually, having these notes, I will draft the comments going forward. You ready, Amy?

[Speaker 13] (2:59:03 - 2:59:03)
I'm ready.

[Speaker 2] (2:59:04 - 2:59:06)
All right, Amy, you have more time.

[Speaker 7] (2:59:07 - 2:59:38)
No, I'm still cutting and pasting, but Peter moved the sentences around. It was that six. Patrick is correcting me that it is at the special town meeting, not the annual town meeting.

Thank you, Patrick.

[Speaker 1] (2:59:40 - 2:59:42)
Yes, you're right, it was at special town meetings.

[Speaker 9] (2:59:44 - 2:59:48)
I think you can do that after that.

[Speaker 3] (2:59:48 - 2:59:50)
We actually had multiple special town meetings.

[Speaker 1] (2:59:51 - 3:00:01)
At the first. Yeah, special town meetings. The first?

We had a, it was almost like a, a fabricated town meeting. Yeah.

[Speaker 7] (3:00:06 - 3:00:27)
Okay, let's try this again. At the 2022 special town meeting, article one, town meeting voted to acquire several parcels, period. Due to a scrivener's error, assessor's task map seven, lot two, was inadvertently omitted.

This article corrects the error. Please see the blue parcel in appendix A.

[Speaker 2] (3:00:28 - 3:00:32)
It's perfect, except in your first sentence, it's not special town meeting, it's annual town meeting.

[Speaker 3] (3:00:33 - 3:00:33)
Oh, this is special.

[Speaker 2] (3:00:33 - 3:00:33)
Wasn't it?

[Speaker 13] (3:00:33 - 3:00:34)
No, I figured it was special.

[Speaker 2] (3:00:34 - 3:00:40)
No, it was special, you're right, it was special. Nevermind. Hey, Patrick is right, don't listen to me.

I keep.

[Speaker 7] (3:00:40 - 3:00:42)
I usually go with Patrick being right.

[Speaker 2] (3:00:44 - 3:00:45)
Whoa. That's kind of interesting.

[Speaker 7] (3:00:47 - 3:00:49)
Especially if it's against Peter.

[Speaker 3] (3:00:51 - 3:00:52)
Wow. That's more interesting.

[Speaker 7] (3:00:52 - 3:00:54)
So is that, does that language work?

[Speaker 3] (3:00:55 - 3:01:01)
That, that works. Yep. And we did recommend favorable action?

We did.

[Speaker 11] (3:01:01 - 3:01:02)
Yes. Okay.

[Speaker 13] (3:01:02 - 3:01:03)
Did we vote?

[Speaker 3] (3:01:03 - 3:01:05)
Oh, I know we moved it and seconded it.

[Speaker 11] (3:01:05 - 3:01:05)
Oh, we moved it and seconded it.

[Speaker 3] (3:01:05 - 3:01:08)
Okay. We voted it. All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 2] (3:01:10 - 3:01:13)
Wow. Can I move that we now close the town meeting warrant?

[Speaker 3] (3:01:14 - 3:01:22)
There's a second from Katie. Yes, please. Any further discussion on that?

All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 7] (3:01:23 - 3:01:28)
I also need a vote from the board to affix your electronic signatures.

[Speaker 3] (3:01:29 - 3:01:29)
So moved.

[Speaker 11] (3:01:29 - 3:01:30)
Second.

[Speaker 13] (3:01:31 - 3:01:32)
All those in favor?

[Speaker 3] (3:01:32 - 3:01:33)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 11] (3:01:34 - 3:01:35)
Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (3:01:36 - 3:02:16)
Great. That's town meeting warrant. Good job, thanks Amy and Patrick and everyone and Sean.

More to come on that. Next is the consent agenda. We have on our consent agenda meeting minutes from November 2nd and also a request from Veterans Crossing for an extension of their hours on Thanksgiving.

They want to open early, I believe. So moved. Second.

Any further discussion on the consent agenda? All those in favor?

[Speaker 1] (3:02:16 - 3:02:16)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (3:02:16 - 3:02:20)
Aye. All right. Town administrator's report.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:20 - 3:08:03)
All right. We are continuing our efforts to work with aggregate industries. We will be back in January to have another discussion about the permit.

There's a significant amount of work that is underway with efforts to address some of the standards in the permit. I will keep the board apprised of some of those activities. This past week, I had a staff meeting at the senior center.

I want to thank the staff at the senior center for all the work that they do, but we had a wonderful meal. Certainly, I want to encourage Swampska seniors to head down to the senior center. We know that we have less than 20% of Swampska seniors that have ever been in that building.

And if you're a senior, head down and have lunch and meet some folks and really take advantage of some of the programs that we have. A lot of activities and a lot of resources. We have snow angels set to help our seniors with snow so you can really get on a list.

And we have hardship applications at town hall and at the DPW and our website. If you are unable to shovel your sidewalk. We have mandatory snow removal on our sidewalks in Swampska.

So please prepare for a busy winter. If you have an oral history that you'd like to share for the future, please head down and see our library director, Jonathan Nichols. We want our veterans and our families in Swampska to share their history.

It will be good for posterity. So take advantage of this fun activity and record your history. We've had a number of new hires.

I want to welcome our new library employee, Bernadette Berman, as a reference librarian. And we have three new DPW employees, Brian Martin, Kevin McDonald, and Ryan Squires. Really appreciate the work that our town clerk and staff and our town clerk selection office pulled off for our November elections.

We had 2,600 people vote by mail. We had 781 visited town hall and 3,511 voted in person out of 11,926 registered voters. 58% of the Swampska residents voted.

Obviously still too low, but not a bad turnout given the election. Recreation has been busy. We have our indoor farmer's market this weekend, November 20th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the high school. Turkey Hunt is also on November 20th and leaves Linscott Park at 10 a.m. We're collecting gently used costumes through November 23rd, and donors will receive a coupon if you donate your costumes. We're also having a holiday wreath raffle on November 29th through December 1st. One of a kind wreaths will be raffled off on December 10th.

We will also have Santa at the outdoor holiday fair and parade and tree lighting. Let's see, just as a reminder, mattresses and box springs can no longer be thrown out in the state of Massachusetts. They have to be recycled, so you just can't leave them on the curb.

Solid Waste Committee has a Take Out the Trash survey that's up on our website. Lastly, I want to thank all those that participated in Captain Jennifer Harris's Memorial Commemoration of Life for Birthday celebration. It was on Sunday, November 6th, and it really is a heartwarming connection for somebody that really was so loved by this town, really thought it was wonderful to hear the story of how she learned to sail in Swampskate, as many of our young children do, and she learned courage by being sent off as a 10 or 11-year-old child off the coast of Nahant, and I kind of think about how many kids in Swampskate really learned that type of wonderful sense of independence and courage by participating in those programs. Wonderful Memorial Day.

I think Mike Sweeney, our veterans agent, and his wife, Sarah, really go way out of their way. They're planning a number of events over the next few weeks, along with a program for Gold Star U.S. Army Specialist, Jared Raymond. We have a dedication on Sunday, December 4th, at the corner of Essex Street for anybody that is interested in commemorating a Swampskate resident who paid the ultimate price for our freedoms.

[Speaker 6] (3:08:03 - 3:08:06)
You wouldn't have to know what time that's gonna be, would you?

[Speaker 1] (3:08:06 - 3:08:15)
I will get that to you. I believe it's gonna be sometime in the morning, 10 or 11, but I'll make sure we get an update out.

[Speaker 9] (3:08:17 - 3:08:26)
Sean, do we have an update on the standard operating procedure for reporting complaints? We had talked last week.

[Speaker 1] (3:08:27 - 3:09:33)
We did. I've asked staff to look into the C-Click Fix module, see if we can update that, and also look at a number of other products. I have had a conversation with staff about the C-Click Fix interface, and staff generally feel as though that's a good one-stop shopping for these complaints.

I do know that there are residents that have complained when they've gone and made a complaint at the fire department that they have been referred to the Salem Fire Department. If the blast doesn't occur in Swampskate, that, to me, is not good enough, and we need to do better. When people come in and complain, we need to help them document that in Swampskate, and I will come back with the board over the next two weeks with an update that will help improve the type of complaint system that we currently have.

[Speaker 9] (3:09:34 - 3:10:27)
That's fine, and just for clarity's sake, I just wanna make sure that we have a standard operating procedure so we know what happens if there's a blast in Swampskate, the call comes in to the fire department that that information is being recorded, whether it's the resident, or whether it's the person at the desk answering the phone, that that complaint's being registered, recorded, so we have this data. There's been years of complaints, and we don't really have any of that information, and that's something that residents have been coming to me about for a number of years, so I just wanna make sure that everybody's on the same page, rowing in the same direction, and that the fire department and town staff, and we can certainly get the word out.

[Speaker 1] (3:10:27 - 3:10:53)
That'll be one system where everybody goes to when they have a complaint about blasting. Yes, and we can't have four or five different, can't be Facebook, can't be the fire department in Swampskate, or in Salem, it's gotta be one place, and we gotta reinforce that. I do think that we've gotta do a better job just getting that out, that this is where you file a complaint.

[Speaker 6] (3:10:53 - 3:11:25)
So right now we're saying, so right now it appears that there's a lack of clarity on exactly what a person is supposed to do. So within the next two weeks, we'll have something that's really clear. Can we also have some type of a plan on how that's gonna get communicated, possibly a mailer to everyone who lives in that area, or just a plan, how it's gonna be communicated, whether Facebook, on the web, at these meetings.

Robocall. Yeah, mm-hmm, that'd be great.

[Speaker 3] (3:11:25 - 3:11:35)
Any other questions for Sean on his report? All right, select board time. Anyone?

[Speaker 6] (3:11:37 - 3:12:43)
I have just a little update. The Disability Commission had their first meeting this week, and it's the first meeting in years, and they're gonna start working on a number of issues and put together an agenda as far as what they wanna accomplish during the year. Actually, at their first meeting, one of the members brought in some information to find out whether or not the police department and the fire department have visuals that can help if they have someone who's hearing impaired, and I did stop at the police department just to show this to them, and they didn't have anything.

So it was interesting on some of the topics that they brought up just at their first meeting. The Swanscot for All Ages and the Council on Aging, which kinda overlap, they're working on the websites and they're working on educational videos to discuss what affordable housing really is. So they're gonna put that together, and they're also working on grants.

That is my update on committees.

[Speaker 3] (3:12:47 - 3:13:20)
Anyone else? I just quickly wanna congratulate the seventh grade Big Blue football team for winning their Super Bowl against Marblehead this past weekend and completing an undefeated season. So congratulations to them and the coaches and the cheer squad and everybody involved.

So very exciting for them. And with that, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved.

Second?

[Speaker 6] (3:13:22 - 3:13:22)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (3:13:23 - 3:13:24)
All those in favor? Aye.

[Speaker 13] (3:13:24 - 3:13:24)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (3:13:25 - 3:13:29)
All right. Good night, everybody.

[Speaker 13] (3:13:30 - 3:13:30)
Good night.