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One nation under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

[Speaker 3] (18:27 - 20:11)
. Before we get started we're going to open it up to public comment. 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 dialog with the actual select board or in residence. Additionally, before sharing your comment, we ask residents to state their names, address, and if known, their voting precinct. Each speaker will be limited to speaking once for a maximum of three minutes.

Residents may raise new issues, identify community problems, and 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 that time. We request residents speak respectfully and refrain from criticizing or disparaging individual committee members, town staff, or other resident groups or individuals.

We request that residents refrain from making comments that contain political statements or include commentary, criticisms, or other statements about any town staff. Individuals speak at the discretion of the chair. Is there any public comment either in the room or on Zoom?

And if people have public comment they want to share through email, they can send an email to me at nduffy.gov. Seeing none, we'll move on to our first agenda item, which is the reading of the Black History Month proclamation, and we have some friends from SURE who are going to help us with this presentation. I believe I'm handing it over to Ralph first, or?

[Speaker 12] (20:20 - 21:07)
First of all, thank you for this further recognition of Black History Month and for this opportunity to read the proclamation of the select board. Black History Month, whereas February is Black History Month, and we call upon the citizens and public and local officials of the town of Swampscott to honor the history and achievements of Black Americans and to reflect on the centuries of struggle that have brought us to this historic moment of time to live up to the founding principles of our nation and the town of Swampscott, that all people are created equal and have the right to be treated equally throughout their lives.

[Speaker 13] (21:13 - 21:30)
Whereas this observant affords a special opportunity to become more knowledgeable about Black heritage, to honor Black citizens who have contributed to Swampscott's economic, cultural, spiritual, and political development.

[Speaker 2] (21:36 - 22:08)
We have microphones. You guys can keep it. We may circle back around.

So whereas after the Civil War, exodusers migrated from the South and settled in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They brought with them the desire for economic opportunities, freedom from oppression and harassment, and freedom to create their own lives. These settlers played an important role in settling the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the town of Swampscott, as well as the rest of the United States.

[Speaker 3] (22:10 - 22:24)
And whereas in 1915, Dr. Carter Goodwin Woodson, noted Black scholar and son of former slaves, founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which was later renamed the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

[Speaker 9] (22:25 - 22:43)
And whereas Dr. Woodson initiated Black History Week, February 12th, 1926, and for many years the second week of February, chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, was celebrated by Black peoples in the United States.

[Speaker 6] (22:43 - 22:56)
And whereas in 1976, as part of the nation's bicentennial, Black History Week was expanded and became established as Black History Month, and is now celebrated all over North America, Canada, and Europe.

[Speaker 1] (22:57 - 23:19)
And whereas while the observance of Black History Month calls our town's attention to the continued need to battle racism, and to build a society that lives up to its democratic ideals, this year's celebration and recognition of Black History Month are especially significant as we reflect on the historic challenges facing our community and the nation at this time.

[Speaker 12] (23:20 - 23:38)
And, whereas we acknowledge that Black history is American history, stories and facts fully interwoven in the political, economic, cultural, scientific, and democratic fabric that make up our great nation.

[Speaker 13] (23:42 - 24:19)
Whereas the town of Swampscott continues to be anguished by the murder of George Floyd, and since George Floyd's murder by police, 181 Black people in the U.S. have been killed by the police, according to data from the research group Mapping Police Violence. Most recently, to Roy Nichols, it remains a shocking, and it remains a shocking failure that many Black people, especially Black men and women, are unfairly harassed and threatened, and unjustly treated in Swampscott and our nation.

[Speaker 2] (24:20 - 24:56)
And, whereas we are proud to celebrate Black History Month, and pledge our continued commitment to build a welcoming community, one that reflects the fullest talents and diversity of the American people, and that celebrates Swampscott's second Juneteenth celebration, among other efforts by Swampscott and broader community that is committed to building a future that is inclusive and ready to confront deep racial inequities and the systemic racism that continue to plague our community and nation.

[Speaker 3] (24:57 - 25:14)
And, whereas the town of Swampscott commits to doing everything in our power to demand that we all seek a greater understanding and implement changes to ensure that racism, anti-Semitism, and the unjust treatment of any person is not tolerated in any way or form within the town of Swampscott.

[Speaker 9] (25:14 - 25:32)
And, whereas Swampscott Unites, Respects, Embraces Diversity will host a Black History Month celebration on Monday, February 27th at 7 p.m. at First Church to share important conversations about Swampscott's Black history and work to build a more inclusive community.

[Speaker 6] (25:33 - 26:03)
Now, therefore, the town of Swampscott hereby establishes that February 2023 will be Black History Month in the town of Swampscott, Massachusetts and encourage all faith-based and non-profit organizations, residents, businesses, civic and public institutions to acknowledge, honor, value and celebrate Black citizens and celebrate our diverse heritage and culture and continue our efforts to create a world that is more just, peaceful, and prosperous for all.

[Speaker 1] (26:04 - 26:30)
In witness, whereof, we have hereunto set our hands and cause to be affixed the great seal of the town of Swampscott, Massachusetts this first day of February 2023, Neil Duffy, Select Board Chair, David Grishman, Vice Chair, Katie Phelan, Board Member Peter Spellios, Board Member Mary Ellen Fletcher, Board Member and Shawn Fitzgerald, Town Administrator.

[Speaker 2] (26:30 - 26:46)
All right. Ralph, can you share a few comments about the event that you're sure is happening and perhaps a few comments about the importance of...

[Speaker 11] (26:48 - 28:03)
They want to share the load. So, this will be our second Black History Month celebrating Black History is Our History. Last year, it was on Zoom.

This year, it will be in person. So, we have... Again, we have our Evening of Poetry featuring Enzo Thuron, the award-winning Swampscott poet.

We also will have Nancy Schultz, who is going to talk about Swampscott history, Black history. She's on the Historic Commission. Our panelists include Rabbi Michael Rogozian, Pastor Ian Holland, Heidi Weir, who's Director of Aging Services, and also Tristan Smith, who was one of the candidates.

So, they'll be... And Jim Bixby, who is a Marblehead Lutheran Church and on their racial justice team, will be the moderator. And the Swampscott High School Chorus is going to start off the event.

So, we'd like everyone to come. It also will be on Facebook Live. Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (28:04 - 28:51)
Well, thank you. That sounds like a wonderful event and certainly something that I think many Swampscott citizens will benefit from. And really appreciate all the work that Shura is doing, but certainly appreciate the fact that you have come out tonight to kick off Black History Month.

It sounds like a perfect way to kind of round out the month, but certainly lots for us to think about in the weeks intervening. Our library is full of information about Black history and certainly would encourage folks to really go to the library and learn more about some of the extraordinary contributions that Black citizens have made since the inception of this nation. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (28:53 - 28:54)
Anything from board members?

[Speaker 6] (28:55 - 29:03)
And the Rec Department is providing arts and crafts related to Black history for people to pick up at Town Hall weekly.

[Speaker 16] (29:03 - 29:03)
Yep.

[Speaker 1] (29:06 - 31:22)
I just want to thank you all for being here in particular. And if you haven't had the chance to hear Enzo Surin read his poetry, you should hear him read his poetry. I didn't get to do it in person.

We did it online last time Enzo joined us. And his book, My Body as a Clenched Fist, is now an award winning book. He's a Swampscot resident and just a gift.

So if you haven't had a chance to hear him or read him, I really encourage you to. I would also just applaud things that I'm hearing from the Swampscot public schools about Black History Month and things that they're talking about there as well as we face an increased, an inexplicable attack on Black history curriculum and history as if Black history is anything but history. It is so important that we all find opportunities to make sure we're talking about it with our children, with each other and this board.

We started in a pretty tumultuous time. We started a dialogue about race that frankly I feel as though we haven't been as successful continuing and I hope that we do pick it back up because I think we have unfinished business. I know we have unfinished business and I'm just using this occasion to remind myself of that amongst others.

You can't move on until there's acknowledgement of issues and you can't pretend issues don't exist and our community, like all communities, have to face issues and as other places around the country seem to be doing much more draconian and hateful things, it doesn't make our challenges any less important for us to confront and to work on ourselves. But I do want to thank the Swampscott Public Schools for their outreach and their participation in Black History Month and Black history and their recognition that Black history is history.

[Speaker 17] (31:25 - 31:26)
Thanks, Peter.

[Speaker 3] (31:29 - 31:33)
Anything else? Thank you all for coming.

[Speaker 17] (31:33 - 31:34)
Appreciate it.

[Speaker 3] (31:34 - 31:35)
Looking forward to the event.

[Speaker 17] (31:37 - 31:38)
Appreciate it.

[Speaker 3] (31:42 - 31:58)
Joe, I'm louder than I normally am. Is that intentional? Okay.

Okay. It's not pleasing to my own ear. Imagine how we feel.

[Speaker 16] (31:59 - 32:00)
That's the problem.

[Speaker 3] (32:01 - 33:07)
That's all I'm imagining the whole time. I'm so sorry. Yeah.

So moving on to the next item is the signing of the road acceptance document for Supreme Court. We have gone through all the necessary procedures to get to this point, which was we referred the acceptance of Supreme Court as a public way to the planning board. They, in public works, verified that it was fit to be a public way.

We then voted to lay out the road, if you will, and that went to town meeting. Town meeting has accepted the road as a public way. So the final step is for the select board to essentially execute an order of taking, if you will, of the road, which we have before us tonight to authorize and to sign.

So I don't know if anyone has any questions about this.

[Speaker 9] (33:09 - 33:23)
I'll make a motion. I'll move that the select board vote to accept Supreme Court as a public way and execute an order of taking as drafted by town council and further request town council to record the order of taking with the Essex South Registry of Deeds.

[Speaker 6] (33:23 - 33:23)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (33:24 - 34:31)
Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye.

Great. Thank you. Next we have a discussion and potential vote on an extension of Anchor Food Pantries Use in Occupancy Agreement.

I think we have Laura Spathandis with us. She's raising her hand, Diane, if you can bring her up. So Anchor Food Pantry had a one-year occupancy agreement with the town.

It expires in May. As part of that agreement, they were required to notify us four months prior to the expiration of the agreement that their interest in renewing, which they've done. And that's what brings us here tonight.

And with that, I will hand it over to Laura to add anything else that I may have missed. If you have any words that you want to share, I'm happy to give you the microphone. You're on mute, Laura.

[Speaker 7] (34:32 - 36:35)
Thank you. Hi, all. Nice to see you again.

I couldn't come down in person, but we are actually open this evening from 6 to 8. So I'm here working and greeting our visitors and all of that. So, hey, Will, if you don't mind, can you just take a few minutes to kind of let me know what we've done?

Of course, please. What we have here and what's happening at Anchor really drives home the need for this resource and what we offer to the town. Just sort of reflecting as I wrote the letter to you all, but, you know, we reflect once again on board meetings, when going back to 2020, when we first opened in March of 2020 at the very beginning of the pandemic, through this last summer, maybe June, we were seeing maybe between 40 and 50 families a month coming through the doors.

Some come every week. Some come every other week. But, you know, unique families between 40 and 50.

Since the summer, with gas prices on the rise, grocery prices, and recently some benefits are being taken away. We are seeing since July, every month, 80 to 85 families a month. Doubled.

So that is really, I just want to share with you in the town, right now, how important it is to have this facility and to have the support of the community. You know, every night, every day we're open, we have new people who are, you know, really struggling and trying to make, you know, have the means to get by.

[Speaker 3] (36:36 - 36:47)
Do you, Laura, do you have what you need to provide to those families? Like, do you all have enough supplies? Do you have enough volunteers?

You know, is everything in order as far as that goes?

[Speaker 7] (36:47 - 37:23)
Again, we, after July, we really did. Right now, so over the last six months, we really struggled to keep having enough food to get through each week. We did have to remodel our service plan to limit more items here in order to be able to really stretch it through the month.

For example, so this is everywhere. This is across the country. It's across the Commonwealth.

We receive monthly from Greater Boston.

[Speaker 17] (37:27 - 37:27)
We lost you, Laura.

[Speaker 3] (37:27 - 37:35)
We lost you. Hold on. Hold on a sec, Laura.

I don't think it's on your end. I think it's on ours.

[Speaker 1] (37:39 - 37:43)
Hold on, Laura. We still can't hear you. There you go.

Now we can hear you. Okay.

[Speaker 7] (37:44 - 38:06)
Diana O'Brien, one of our board members, is now a champion of monthly food drives within the community. So again, this community is amazing. So schools, different church programs are doing monthly food drives for us to really supplement the items that we need.

[Speaker 3] (38:07 - 38:15)
Are there specific items that you're in need of more than others? Should we get the word out in that way? Are there other items that you don't need?

[Speaker 7] (38:16 - 38:39)
Not that we all need. It really varies. It does vary depending on those staples.

Cereals, granola bars, peanut butter, household cleaning products, personal hygiene products. Those are really the items that are hard to get and hard to keep on the shelf.

[Speaker 9] (38:39 - 38:45)
And Laura, if someone wants to make a cash donation, how can they do that?

[Speaker 7] (38:45 - 40:01)
So we are on Facebook. We have anchorfoodcandy.com. You can mail us a check here at 86 Fargo Street.

Or we have a PayPal account. Either or. Besides being open, we're open twice a week.

Folks can come once a week to visit us. We're open Monday morning and Wednesday evening. But also through the year, we do a huge Thanksgiving meal.

We provide, we do back-to-school backpacks for our students. This is a Chicago fur. We recently, thanks to a donation from the Swamp Squad, the Swamp Squad Yacht Club, we were able to purchase a commercial refrigerator this last year.

So that allowed us to provide bread, eggs, cheese. You can get more fresh fruits and veggies. But again, those are things we have to be able to get in order to get them.

[Speaker 3] (40:04 - 40:22)
Well, thanks so much for everything you've all been doing. And for seeing the need in the first place. I'm sorry that you're so busy because it's a reflection of the need.

But also so thankful that you're there and able to provide.

[Speaker 7] (40:22 - 40:25)
Just saying that, sorry, I don't think you got mine.

[Speaker 3] (40:25 - 40:26)
No problem.

[Speaker 7] (40:26 - 41:29)
Talking about the need, I'm going to be on a panel this month. I'll share it with Diane. Maybe she can share it on the town website.

And it's with some other area leaders of food insecurity organizations, as well as the Center for Ending Crisis. And we're going to have a panel and a discussion on how to advance and be innovative in food security and be able to eliminate this. But the point for us to be here, right now we're really being reactive and providing folks with what they need.

But we really want to come up with a way that they can eat food secure and they don't have a need to get cancer. That's my hopes on that. We don't have to come here and we don't have to do that.

So I will share that with the town. I think it's a great opportunity and we can come together and really come up with some ideas in this area.

[Speaker 3] (41:30 - 41:32)
Yeah, please do. Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (41:36 - 41:38)
Again, thank you guys.

[Speaker 12] (41:38 - 41:38)
You're amazing.

[Speaker 7] (41:39 - 42:00)
All of you are great. The support here, each of you individually and the board in just the town, Matt Casper, I can't. He's amazing.

He's the facility manager. He's always here to help us and support us. He's just amazing.

[Speaker 3] (42:01 - 42:14)
That's great. Well, thank you. Any other questions or comments for Laura?

Is there a motion to authorize and approve the use and occupancy agreement with Anchor Food Pantry?

[Speaker 16] (42:15 - 42:15)
So moved.

[Speaker 9] (42:16 - 42:16)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (42:17 - 42:24)
Any further discussion or questions? All those in favor? Aye.

Aye. Thank you, Laura. Thanks, Laura.

Laura, thank you.

[Speaker 7] (42:25 - 42:27)
Great to see you. Great to see you.

[Speaker 3] (42:27 - 43:01)
Have a great night. Okay. All right.

Next is a, I think this is probably both items four and five in the agenda. We have a discussion of the second quarter of fiscal 23's budget and also a discussion of the fiscal year 24 budget prep. We have special guests, Amy Sorrow and Patrick Ledy here with us to take us through that.

So I'll hand it over to you guys and to Sean. All right.

[Speaker 2] (43:01 - 44:43)
Well, we certainly have been monitoring the FY 24 budget, you know, as I think the board has become accustomed to know that, you know, we do monthly reports. We look at end of year projections on monthly reviews. We have ten years' worth of historical data.

So we basically know the trends. So if we see trends popping up early in the fiscal year, we take action to try to use as much of the months ahead to really address some challenges. This year, you know, frankly, we have both police and fire budgets that are trending high in overtime.

There are reasons for that. Some are, frankly, out of our control and they deal with personnel matters, but some are within our control and both chiefs have taken steps. With that, both Amy Sorrow, our director of finance and administration, and Patrick Ledy, our treasurer, will step through expenditure year-to-date second quarter and revenue year-to-date second quarter and give us a sense of where we are today and where we are projecting to wind up on June 30th.

Lots of conversations are ongoing to help manage month-to-month and certainly appreciate both Patrick and Amy's diligence. They have been meeting with department heads as well as we address many of these challenges. With that, Amy, why don't you take us through the presentation?

[Speaker 4] (45:15 - 45:17)
Our treasurer for revenue.

[Speaker 8] (45:20 - 45:52)
So on the screen, the next few slides are a summary of our major revenue categories that we budget for and monitor throughout the year. And this is through the end of December, so we are expecting to see a lot of our lines at about 50 percent of budget. There are certain lines that may not be there.

For example, motor vehicle excise and local receipts. That's because excise tax bills go out in the third quarter, so that would be something normal we'd expect to see.

[Speaker 15] (45:53 - 46:01)
Can you move the window up to the top so people can see? That's better. Yep.

Real estate taxes.

[Speaker 1] (46:02 - 46:03)
Actually, if you just can get rid of the window.

[Speaker 15] (46:03 - 46:08)
Yeah, maybe just close it. There we go.

[Speaker 1] (46:08 - 46:08)
Perfect.

[Speaker 8] (46:09 - 46:48)
Real estate taxes are about 50 percent of the way there. Meals in rooms tax is exceeding our expectations, which is great to see. Boat excise is also exceeding our expectations.

Cannabis sales tax is exceeding our expectations. We have a second facility that came online, so we'll expect to see that to grow. Rental income is also exceeding our expectations.

We had expected a lease termination from T-Mobile, but they reneged on that, so we have unbudgeted revenue there. Sorry.

[Speaker 1] (46:51 - 46:52)
Go back.

[Speaker 8] (46:52 - 46:53)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (46:53 - 46:55)
Verizon termination lease.

[Speaker 8] (46:55 - 47:03)
T-Mobile lease. Yeah, we got a notice of budget time that the lease was. Lease for what?

The cell tower. Cell tower.

[Speaker 1] (47:03 - 47:04)
Where is the cell tower?

[Speaker 8] (47:04 - 47:05)
On the water tower.

[Speaker 1] (47:05 - 47:06)
There we go.

[Speaker 8] (47:06 - 47:14)
All right. That was going to be terminated, but they then sent us another notice saying that that was in error, so.

[Speaker 11] (47:15 - 47:15)
It terminated.

[Speaker 2] (47:15 - 47:45)
It took that back. That was an oops. With the cellular communication contracts, they've merged with some.

We've had licenses that some companies have thought that they were going to get rid of, but frankly, we're still holding on to a few, so we were surprised with T-Mobile. Sprint was a company that also had a tower. We thought they'd use one, not both, but they're going to use both to help.

[Speaker 9] (47:45 - 47:52)
Is there an opportunity on Archer State where there was antenna infrastructure already in place?

[Speaker 2] (47:53 - 49:13)
You know, that's a really important conversation. I think the bigger concern is kind of figuring out the promulgations of signals throughout the entire town. We've had a few issues with both police department and fire department, but we also have residents that can't dial 911 in certain neighborhoods.

As people cut the cable service, they rely on cell service, and that's a public safety issue. So we have talked about doing a study that just simply helps us appreciate what's the promulgation of all of the cell carriers, major cell carriers, and signals and see if we can find a few locations in town that actually help us get the best signals. The early indications are that we have to look outside of Swamp Street to look at towers that would help address some of those areas in town that really have some of the biggest issues, but we do need a study that can help us see that based on promulgations in and around town.

The geography of the town, the bedrock, the granite is problematic, and that really creates pockets of degradation of signals.

[Speaker 8] (49:15 - 50:00)
Thanks, Sean. I'll just step through a couple more of these lines. Recreation receipts is only at 12% received.

That's beach sticker permits. We won't see most of that revenue until the end of the year. Licenses and permits is trending significantly up.

The already exceeded budget, that's due to an extraordinary permit we received from aggregate. They're installing a new crusher, so that's accounted for in there, that permit fee. The fines and forfeits is trending below target.

That's primarily parking and traffic enforcement tickets. Investment income is trending up, which we've talked about extensively during tax rate setting.

[Speaker 3] (50:03 - 50:08)
So is the investment income, that's just simply the interest rates? Correct, on deposits.

[Speaker 15] (50:14 - 50:17)
Pretty good. Marblehead will be calling you. Makes a difference.

[Speaker 8] (50:18 - 51:08)
It does. And if you go to the next slide, Diane, here we have inter-fund adjustments, which is indirect costs that the enterprise fund reimburses to the general fund, so that's right on target. And for enterprise funds, we have sewer receipts and water receipts trending slightly below target.

And egg receipts is on target. We haven't received the second quarter yet, but since this report we have. And solid waste receipts are also on target, which are the bag fees that are now accounted for in an enterprise fund.

So overall, we're, I would say, on target net, which is great to see. Next slide, Diane. Just a couple other items that I already touched on, but boat excise was significantly up this year.

[Speaker 1] (51:08 - 51:13)
Can I go ask about revenue before we debrief? Okay, yeah. So what line item worries you?

[Speaker 8] (51:14 - 51:15)
What worries me?

[Speaker 1] (51:15 - 51:20)
Yeah, on revenue. You can't not have something that's worrying you. Yeah.

So what is it that's worrying you?

[Speaker 8] (51:21 - 51:26)
I think fines and forfeits, that was questionable for me. I don't feel we're going to hit that target.

[Speaker 1] (51:26 - 51:27)
What goes in fines and forfeits?

[Speaker 8] (51:28 - 51:33)
That's traffic and parking enforcement. So that would be your traffic tickets.

[Speaker 1] (51:33 - 51:44)
So can I just ask, how come we revised our, what was the, we revised budget FY23 to $75,000. That's revised from what? Do you know?

[Speaker 4] (51:45 - 51:48)
That one is $75,000.

[Speaker 1] (51:48 - 52:00)
Okay. But in the three years you provided to us, we haven't even come close. Right.

Are we hoping that there's something done differently in our town that's not happening, or what is it that makes you feel bullish about fines?

[Speaker 4] (52:00 - 52:20)
The police department was not doing a lot of ticketing during COVID because they were allowing people to be in open spaces. So the anticipation was with COVID not being as much of a concern that they would be back out ticketing at a previous level.

[Speaker 1] (52:21 - 52:22)
So that, but that hasn't played out yet.

[Speaker 4] (52:23 - 52:24)
No, it has not. No. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (52:24 - 52:24)
Thanks.

[Speaker 6] (52:25 - 52:28)
$75,000. I mean, yeah. $75,000, was that normal?

[Speaker 8] (52:29 - 52:31)
Prior to 2020. Yes.

[Speaker 6] (52:31 - 52:32)
So we were hitting that.

[Speaker 8] (52:33 - 53:38)
Yes. Okay. Boat excise, I just want to comment.

I did work with the assessor, the prior assessor, Ben Street, and he updated the tax rolls. So we identified about 75 vessels that were not on the tax roll through registration data, updated registration data. So that's been updated.

And so we'll expect to see boat excise probably double going forward. And the public works department, we received one-time funds from National Grid. They did a lot of utility upgrades in the past two years, and they did a lot of street opening.

And so to get more paving accomplished with those dollars, National Grid did a payment in lieu of paving. So we paved under our contract with the money that they would have otherwise used to pay their contractor, and we accomplished much more paving instead of patchwork. It was, you know, Gino could explain it better, but that was a big accomplishment.

And yeah.

[Speaker 5] (53:38 - 53:47)
Wait, Patrick, I have a quick question on the boat excise. When you said that we went back and we recaptured. So when somebody registers a boat, it doesn't automatically go into?

[Speaker 8] (53:48 - 54:00)
No. So Ben Strait, the former assessor, put in a request to DEP and got all the registration, the updated registration data. And it was apparent to me and him that that may have not been done in a while.

[Speaker 1] (54:01 - 54:04)
So is that an annual basis thing going forward? Yes. Yep.

[Speaker 8] (54:07 - 54:39)
And the aggregate permit I already discussed, and notably on this cannabis impact fees, we budgeted $90,000 last year for that revenue. We didn't receive any and legislation has changed. So you can no longer use a percentage of sales to impose an impact fee.

You have to identify specific impacts. So at this time, I'm not expecting to collect a particular amount in that category.

[Speaker 1] (54:39 - 55:16)
I would ask for the town administrator, please to meet with town council yet again to have a conversation about this. We are doing things that other communities are not doing, even in light of the change in legislation. And I'm going to say that I believe town council has given you the most conservative interpretation, even before the cannabis commission has given the interpretation.

And I'm at a loss to understand why we decide that we're going to be more conservative than the regulator when it comes to revenue. And it's, it's ridiculous to me. So I would ask to revisit that and understand why we are making concessions before the state requires us to make concessions on revenue.

[Speaker 4] (55:17 - 55:38)
Peter, the discussion that we were given as accountants is that you can still get impact fees. You have to calculate them and actually get an actual expense amount for an entire year, and then essentially bill the cannabis stores the next year for their previous year.

[Speaker 1] (55:39 - 56:03)
So I'm aware of what KP law is telling you. I'm just asking that we revisit because I know of many communities who have received different advice and are collecting different monies and have taken a different strategy. We have taken one of just roll over quite literally.

And I'm confused as to why we would take that strategy. So I would just ask for a future conversation on that.

[Speaker 2] (56:03 - 56:12)
Absolutely. Peter, I'll work with the finance team in KP and do our best to ensure that we are advocating on behalf of the taxpayers and sponsors.

[Speaker 5] (56:14 - 56:20)
Maybe we should get a list of those other towns and find out who they're getting legal advice from.

[Speaker 8] (56:22 - 56:26)
We will do that. Great. Next slide.

[Speaker 3] (56:26 - 57:07)
So before, so along those lines, I just wanted to, I think I had emailed about this, but when Marzia emailed about the impact fees a while back and there was a communication with Terpene Journey that, and they had mentioned in their email that there's some, there's like a social equity owned business tax potential for us to capture some of their sales tax because they're technically a social equity owned business. So I think along those lines, if we could look into that because it sounded like we could maybe get half of their 1% of sales tax or something like that.

[Speaker 4] (57:07 - 57:11)
We've reached out to state. We're just working with them on getting that resolved.

[Speaker 3] (57:12 - 57:13)
Okay. That's great. Thanks.

[Speaker 8] (57:14 - 57:21)
Okay. If there's no other questions on year to date revenue right now, I will turn it over to Amy and she'll walk you through expenditures.

[Speaker 4] (57:24 - 58:12)
So this slide is just a very high level overview of the expenditure report with notable over 50% on admin and finance, the regional voc tech and a couple other items, notably like employee benefits. We do have a number of items in those lines that are paid up front at the start of the year, such as our property casualty insurance, our pension obligation, things like that. So this is on point for where we are historically in the year.

I did just want to note that those are higher and we are almost exactly where we expect to be 50% through the year, 50.25% through the expenditures on some of those expenditures.

[Speaker 5] (58:13 - 58:22)
What's the process as far as sending it out for it to rebid it for like property insurance, casualty, all the insurances.

[Speaker 4] (58:23 - 58:31)
Yeah. So we can go out at any point, the town administrator and I were speaking earlier about the FY 24 budget.

[Speaker 5] (58:31 - 58:33)
When was the last time it went out to bid?

[Speaker 4] (58:34 - 58:54)
So we go through hub. They shop our policies around regularly, but we can shop for a principal company to shop them around as well. So it's as needed.

When was the last time we did that? Not in my tenure. How long have you been here?

Three years.

[Speaker 6] (58:58 - 59:03)
Wait, to be clear, you're saying that the company we hired has not shopped it around or we have not.

[Speaker 4] (59:04 - 59:56)
We have not shopped for companies. So on the next slide, I just want to highlight some on track expenditures, health insurance, as it's been a concern the last few years, we're actually projected to be on track this year. We are currently 49.6% through the budget halfway through the year, which is a much better position than we've been the last two years. Our unemployment, which we did drastically reduce the unemployment budget this year. We are projected to be on budget for that. We're averaging only about $1,100 a month in claims.

And then below are just a number of departments who are all projected to be on budget, not a concern this year.

[Speaker 5] (59:56 - 1:00:05)
I have a question on the unemployment expenses. Is that a large amount as far as claims? No, this is actually a very low amount.

[Speaker 4] (1:00:06 - 1:01:02)
That's a low amount. And if you'd like, without sharing the actual names, I could give you a count of how many claims we have in any month as well. That'd be great.

On the next slide are the areas of concern that we're monitoring. So right now our legal insurance line, the town council and outside council line is about almost 73% expended. Our property and casualty insurance is already overspent due to the additional insurance for the Hawthorne property that was acquired.

Our end of employment is already at 91%, but we do have that newly established reserve fund. So this is not actually a concern of this line over spending this year. Our payroll taxes are trending slightly higher.

They're already at almost 54% this year.

[Speaker 5] (1:01:02 - 1:01:03)
Why is that?

[Speaker 4] (1:01:05 - 1:01:12)
It's due to wage increases. So it's a percentage of wages is how that's calculated.

[Speaker 5] (1:01:14 - 1:01:31)
Right. It doesn't, it also has to do with census. I mean, how much higher are we on census?

And this is also include teachers. Yep. This is the payroll taxes for the entire entire town.

And then, so do you also look at census? How many more FTE, you know, anybody who's involved in there? Yep.

So can you get us that information too? Yes.

[Speaker 4] (1:01:42 - 1:03:27)
Injury for fire and police you'll notice is 87.46%, but we do front load a lot of those claims at the start of the year. And in the right hand column is police and fire. So police salaries are already at 54.68% with overtime at 83% across all the overtime lines. Their expenses are already at 70%. Education incentives are already at 96%, which is the tuition reimbursement that's in their collective bargaining. Mobile radios is at 94%, but that was a front loaded expense.

Uniforms are already overspent at 116%. Due to new officers, the uniforms that they require to go to academy is significantly more expensive than the uniform for continuing officers. Ammo is another line that is front loaded at the beginning of the year.

That's already slightly over 101%. And their equipment line is at 72%. For fire salaries, they're currently at 49%, which doesn't seem concerning of itself, 50% through the year.

But their captain line is almost 66% spent. Their lieutenant's line is almost 57% spent. And their overtime is 65% spent.

There's a notation here that it's only 49% spent for the entire salary line because there's items that are only paid once a year. So shift and weekend differentials are only paid once a year in January and June. So those lines at the time of this report for December 31st were not expended at all.

[Speaker 9] (1:03:28 - 1:03:30)
Amy, do we have an idea of what those numbers are?

[Speaker 4] (1:03:31 - 1:03:35)
Yes. So each of those lines is about $122,000.

[Speaker 16] (1:03:36 - 1:03:36)
Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:03:37 - 1:03:42)
They're identical. So they're both 5% of their base wage.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:43 - 1:03:44)
But tracking budget?

[Speaker 4] (1:03:46 - 1:03:49)
Yes. So those lines are projected to be 100% spent.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:49 - 1:03:49)
Okay.

[Speaker 16] (1:03:50 - 1:03:51)
Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:03:54 - 1:04:02)
So in the next slide, we're going to go into a more in-depth presentation on the fire and police budget and staffing.

[Speaker 6] (1:04:02 - 1:04:03)
Can I interrupt you one second?

[Speaker 4] (1:04:03 - 1:04:04)
Yes, absolutely.

[Speaker 6] (1:04:04 - 1:04:10)
For our town council and outside council budget, is that because we are hiring more outside council?

[Speaker 4] (1:04:12 - 1:04:18)
It's a combination of outside special council and just increased usage of town council.

[Speaker 6] (1:04:19 - 1:04:24)
And that's because we're doing unique things that require outside council that our council cannot do for us?

[Speaker 2] (1:04:25 - 1:04:36)
Yes. Yes, we have had several needs that are outside of the general purview of KP law.

[Speaker 6] (1:04:37 - 1:04:40)
And when was the last time we negotiated a rate with KP law?

[Speaker 2] (1:04:41 - 1:04:42)
Last year.

[Speaker 6] (1:04:42 - 1:04:44)
Oh, you do it annually? Yes. Great.

[Speaker 4] (1:04:48 - 1:04:55)
Are there any other general non-police and fire questions on expenditures? Okay.

[Speaker 5] (1:04:55 - 1:05:09)
I do have one quick question on police or fire. If somebody's out sick, do we have timelines as far as date when somebody's out? Do they end up going out on short-term disability or long-term disability?

Are there any things there that...

[Speaker 4] (1:05:09 - 1:05:30)
Yes and no. So, yes, we can put someone on FMLA. Yes, there's specific language in each of their collective bargaining agreements for how their respective departments handle it.

But ultimately, no, we are not necessarily allowed to just remove someone from employment for an extended absence.

[Speaker 5] (1:05:31 - 1:05:42)
I don't mean remove them from employment. I just mean if somebody's out on short-term disability, I don't know if that removes them from employment. It just gives them a short-term disability funding.

[Speaker 4] (1:05:43 - 1:05:49)
So as long as they have accruals, they continue on payroll? Mm-hmm.

[Speaker 6] (1:05:52 - 1:06:05)
I'm not going to ask any of the same questions I was asking. So which department? I'll ask again.

Which department then? You said all these departments are on track? Mm-hmm.

So which ones are you worried about other than fire?

[Speaker 1] (1:06:06 - 1:06:07)
There's a slide coming up.

[Speaker 6] (1:06:07 - 1:06:09)
Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I didn't look ahead.

[Speaker 4] (1:06:10 - 1:06:11)
I know where she was going to.

[Speaker 6] (1:06:11 - 1:06:12)
Please hold. I will wait.

[Speaker 4] (1:06:13 - 1:06:17)
Peter set you up on that one. I know. He was like, I didn't ask you on purpose.

[Speaker 6] (1:06:17 - 1:06:17)
Sorry.

[Speaker 4] (1:06:22 - 1:07:42)
So this is just a deeper dive into the lease and budget. So as of right now, both long-term police and fire overtime expenditures are trending higher than average and are projected to be over at year end. Steps have been taken to try to mitigate the overages as best as we can by both departments.

Next slide. As of right now, the end of year projection for the police department salaries alone is expected to be deficit $192,000. And the fire department salaries alone are projected to be $118,000 over.

Next slide. For the fire department, we just want to know, you know, the town, as you know, negotiated the removal of the minimum Manning language in the collective bargaining effective October, 2021. The town was no longer obligated to honor minimum staffing and effective December, 2022 chief Archer.

Ended the minimum staffing for the fire department and reduced winter staffing to seven firefighters per shift, as is allowable in the collective bargaining language. That was just approved at town meeting. On the next slide.

[Speaker 1] (1:07:43 - 1:08:15)
Can I just ask a question? I'm sorry to interrupt. Can I'm just trying to, I, I didn't see this as a detailed discussion on our agenda tonight.

I know we were doing budget stuff. I understood that perhaps we were having a chief or two joining us sometime soon to actually talk about these things, but I don't see a chief or two with us tonight. So I'm just trying to understand what I would rather not.

I don't, I, my intent, I just feel as though this is. It's very hard. I just want to know whether or not we're just listening tonight or what we're doing.

Cause I don't. I understand is the chiefs were going to be here or at some point, I don't know when, but I didn't see this on the agenda.

[Speaker 2] (1:08:15 - 1:08:29)
No, they're not here tonight. And this is just a, a more detailed explanation of some of the drivers for the overtime expenditures, both the police fire department.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:30 - 1:09:10)
So I feel I'm just going to say this. I feel because there seems to be a lot of interest in this topic, that not having the police chief who is the one that we should be ultimately hearing from. I mean, he's a department head.

He owns his budget. It's the single biggest budget, you know, on the town side. Right.

And I'm just using the police chief cause we're talking police, but like fire chief, same thing. Right. It just, I don't know.

I don't really want to ask the finance director about overtime specific things because it has to do with staffing specific things. It's not just a numeric conversation. It's a substantive.

So I'm just, I just want to know what the, and I guess this may be the Neil more so than you, which is what you see us doing.

[Speaker 3] (1:09:10 - 1:09:29)
I thought that this conversation was happening with a chief and not without, I think the idea tonight was for Amy to provide an overview of where we are and what she sees as points of concern. And then if we need to have that deep, you know, dig deeper, then we can do that at a subsequent meeting. Great.

Thanks.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:30 - 1:09:37)
Well, I would like to have, I would like to see them at a meeting relatively soon for the chiefs. I would like to have this conversation.

[Speaker 16] (1:09:40 - 1:09:41)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:44 - 1:10:59)
We can go through stuff. I just don't, I, I, well, I guess the question. Yeah.

I just, well, I get concerned that it's just hanging out there at times without context. Right. And I think that's, that is, can be inappropriate sometimes to do that.

I would rather, again, let me be perfectly clear. Like when it comes to finances, there's multiple people to hear from when it comes to public safety things, the chiefs are who I period hard stop, like the chiefs, right. I want to hear, and I want to be able to ask them questions and, you know, things of that nature.

So I just, it's fine having this, but it feels like we're, you know, playing with something that maybe there's a broader context that we need to at least be able to have an open dialogue about not necessarily agreement on necessarily things, but to be able to explain certain things. And I just feel like putting this out there without a plan right now is not, we understand there's some overtime expense issues. We understand that we've got to deal with them.

We understand there's some staffing vacancies. We understand there's, um, some contract issues. We understand those things.

Right. But, uh, I don't know what us knowing these tonight without being able to ask meaningful questions is my point. Sorry.

[Speaker 2] (1:11:00 - 1:11:57)
I think, you know, look, we've given up snapshot of the big picture budget. This is kind of a, um, dial into some of the specifics of, of staffing that have ultimately, um, created significant overages in both departments. The thought was we'd have those, um, discussions tonight, kind of set the table and then circle back around.

How are we going to manage over the next few months? Um, the financial responsibilities that we have to manage the budget, right? So there are decisions that both chiefs will have to make over the next few months that will ultimately determine if this problems get this, these problems get worse or better.

And, um, the thought was, you know, this gives us a baseline of where we are today, gives us some information about how we got here today. And then we can talk about, you know, what structurally is happening in both of these departments.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:57 - 1:13:35)
Let me, let me just give you an example, right. To say things like the, as, as negotiated in the contract, the winter staffing for the fire department is down this without being able to contextualize the public safety concerns being met. And for us to be able to say, chief, you did this, what's the standard?

Does it meet? And presumably he's going to say, yes, it's met. And this is why it's met, right?

And this is why we have to do it for us to see a slide here that talks about the police chief sending out a notice to staff to say certain things, you know, to, for us to at least hear it and not just us, but the public, right. It's not just talking to us here. It's being able to have the public as opposed to having, see this and then have it sitting out there, sitting out there for weeks without being responded to, to me is what I feel is, is just a mess.

We're going to talk about staffing. We previously had, you know, some unfortunate conversations about staffing, frankly, that, you know, there's different theories about staffing and what staffing is causing for overtime, not overtime, what things like that. Well, the chiefs, you know, need to be here to be the ones to talk to us about this.

It's just, it's not fair to expect you guys to do that. And I frankly don't want you to, so I'm just, I hear that you're doing that, but you're putting out a rationale for overtime. That's your rationale.

It's a financial rationale and, and the numbers don't lie. We are over budget period, right? Why and how and how to solve that is I don't believe the players are here to have that conversation because I, because I think we need the chiefs to do that.

Just like if it was DPW, we would, you know, we wouldn't be just slashing and burning DPW. We would say, you know, make sure we're doing it in the right ways, right? Make sure our streets are still going to be plowed.

That type of thing. It's just, that's again to you, Neal, that's just my suggestion.

[Speaker 3] (1:13:35 - 1:13:46)
So do you all want, do you all want to skip this portion of the conversation and we'll talk about it at a subsequent meeting with the chiefs present rather than go through this? Cause it's just more and more detail.

[Speaker 4] (1:13:47 - 1:13:50)
I'd be happy to come back at a future meeting.

[Speaker 3] (1:13:50 - 1:13:50)
Okay.

[Speaker 9] (1:13:53 - 1:13:54)
I think that makes sense.

[Speaker 6] (1:13:54 - 1:13:56)
Yeah, I think that, I mean, this is a lot of detail.

[Speaker 1] (1:13:57 - 1:14:07)
And I think I just want the chiefs to make sure the chiefs have gone through it with you as well. So when the chiefs are sitting here, they, they know everything that these, this is just data, right? And so just to make sure that these are fully read and know the data.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:09 - 1:14:09)
Right.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:10 - 1:14:19)
Yeah, no, no, I understand that. But then to have them here for us to say, okay, chiefs, like why? Tell us why and to hear about it and to just explain things that we won't necessarily know ourselves.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:19 - 1:14:28)
Right. Cause there's a lot about, I hear you. I think it's important for them to speak to these issues.

We just thought we'd set the table and then circle back around.

[Speaker 9] (1:14:30 - 1:14:34)
So when will this, when will this discussion? Okay. In a week.

[Speaker 3] (1:14:34 - 1:14:38)
No, we're not meeting next week, two weeks. Sorry. Sorry.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:38 - 1:14:39)
We're not meeting next week.

[Speaker 3] (1:14:40 - 1:14:49)
I mean, we're not, we don't have a scheduled meeting next week. No, that's fine. I don't know.

Everyone keeps saying next week, we never, I'd never normally, I know what's there.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:50 - 1:15:00)
In fairness, I've said it several times. I mean, yes, no, no, I don't want to meet.

[Speaker 3] (1:15:03 - 1:15:09)
Yeah, I think, uh, all right, let's move to budget development then. Sorry, Amy.

[Speaker 4] (1:15:09 - 1:15:13)
Not a problem. I'm happy to come back and hang out with you guys.

[Speaker 6] (1:15:15 - 1:15:22)
So are there other departments other than fire and police that we are worried about going over budget?

[Speaker 4] (1:15:23 - 1:16:57)
Um, no, no departments right now that we're not on that area of concern slide. Police and fire are the two biggest deficits and the only ones that currently include salaries that are a concern. Okay.

So I just wanted to give a very quick overview on the FY 24 budget development. Last slide, Diane. Um, so we are still on track with the budget timeline that, um, was circulated at the beginning of the season.

So all of the departments have submitted their scenarios. We asked for two scenarios this year, a level funded and a worst case scenario, 10% reduction. Um, at this point we have done the preliminary health insurance update.

We have preliminary debt numbers and are working on the other, um, projections to add in the town administrator. And I have met to go over where we are at for FY 24 and how much work we have to do to get a level funded budget to present to everyone. Um, right now that is about $1.5 million that we'd have to trim out of the budget to meet the financial policy, um, for FY 24. Um, but, and I'll let Sean talk to it more, but we are on track for the town administrative budget to be presented on March 1st, um, and the budget presentation for that.

[Speaker 2] (1:16:58 - 1:19:35)
So look, I, I shared this same comment every year, over the last few years, every one of these budgets gets harder and harder. Um, when we first implemented a zero-based budget five years ago, you know, we took revenue and expenditures, um, down to really a very tight focus. Um, we weren't going to overestimate revenues.

We weren't going to, uh, over appropriate funds, um, to build up, you know, reserves. And so this budget has consistently got tighter and tighter. And so the challenges are real.

Like when we look at, um, our cost of livings, uh, both for the town and school budget, like we, we pay those taxes on the town ledger. We pay the healthcare on the town. We just got this afternoon, uh, healthcare projection for all the plans that estimates our healthcare budget is going to be up over 5%.

So as we try to look at managing within a fiscal policy that calls for no more than a 2% plus new growth, um, it, it really places, um, pressure on every single line item in this budget. So our financial team is really looking at every one of our budgets. I sat today with Amy and identified, um, a number of budgets that are frankly, just up higher than what we can sustain.

And so the task before us is to really meet with a number of department heads and try to, uh, get these budgets back down to where, you know, we believe that they can be reasonably supported. We're going to go back and look at revenue to make sure that, you know, we're, we're going to adjust revenue in ways that we can, um, reasonably meet. Um, if interest rates are up significantly and they look like they're going to be up significantly over the next few years, perhaps that's a way for us to address some of the budgetary issues, but there are no easy decisions.

We know that we have goals. We know that we have additional needs, both for our seniors, for our health programs that frankly are rising higher than 2% and so we've got to prioritize, um, some of these responsibilities that said, you know, over the next few weeks, we'll be meeting and having some very difficult discussions about prioritizing, um, our financial responsibilities.

[Speaker 5] (1:19:36 - 1:19:43)
Can you tell me how the health insurance, how does that play into practice? Are we in a state health insurance pool?

[Speaker 2] (1:19:43 - 1:20:23)
We have the group insurance commissions, um, healthcare offerings. We have a number of plans, uh, that are offered by the GIC. And so like many other, uh, municipalities in the Commonwealth, we, uh, subject to unique features of the risk pool that we're in and, um, some of the costs, um, implications for each of those plan designs.

And so there's some specific metrics that, um, you know, each of those plans used to, uh, adjust their rates based on experience and risk. Amy, I don't know if there's anything more that you want to add.

[Speaker 4] (1:20:23 - 1:21:52)
Um, so we, as part of the GIC, we specifically have 10, um, employee and non-Medicare plans as well as six Medicare plans. They're a combination of HMO, PPO, indemnity, um, type of plan. So we have a breadth of offering.

Um, the rates do vary by plan as anyone who has health insurance knows. And year over year, the rates increase at different increments. So our projection, because we don't get the true rates until right before open enrollment, you especially know that from the finance committee, but right now, our estimate is based off of the average of the last three year increases that we've seen per plan.

We project that out based off the enrollment in January 1st, the number of people who are on each plan as an individual or family, the employee and employer share all the Medicare reimbursement. And we filter all of this down. And what is the percentage right now?

It's five points of the rate increase or the line budget. The line budget increases 5.3% above last year's. So last year we were 6.8 million. And this year we're projected to be at 7.17%. I mean, 7.17 million. And in case you want the metrics, that's covering 774 employees and their families and retirees.

[Speaker 3] (1:21:53 - 1:21:55)
What percentage of that is the schools?

[Speaker 4] (1:21:56 - 1:22:37)
Um, I can get that breakdown for you. I believe right now we are. Okay.

And does the town negotiate the percentage? It's part of the PAC agreement, which is in place for another year and a half. Yes.

And when do you start renegotiating that? That will start getting renegotiated probably in the next six months because we have to have it before it expires. The school is tentatively about 82% of the employees covered.

[Speaker 5] (1:22:37 - 1:22:40)
You say 82% of that dollar? Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:22:41 - 1:22:49)
82% of the employees. Is it safe to assume that that correlates to dollars? Like, is it 82%?

[Speaker 4] (1:22:49 - 1:23:03)
Roughly, yeah. So on the plan offerings, we have two plans that are heavily weighted. Where the most people are on these two plans, and then it trickles off from there.

[Speaker 9] (1:23:06 - 1:23:10)
And so of that, the town picks up 100% of those?

[Speaker 4] (1:23:10 - 1:23:15)
Yes. The town covers all employees on health insurance. We're the sole payer of it.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:16 - 1:23:24)
So didn't they contribute last year a nominal amount to health care? No.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:25 - 1:23:45)
The issue last year was – There was only one. Just one. We had originally tried to reduce the school's appropriation to absorb a portion of the increase in health insurance and ended up not doing that.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:45 - 1:23:50)
So that didn't happen. Okay. And that's not part of the plan this year, that they would be contributing to that cost to the health?

[Speaker 2] (1:23:52 - 1:24:07)
We have to figure out where we're going to be with the budget. I still need to work with the superintendent. We have a lot of important conversations that we have to have about how to balance this year's budget.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:10 - 1:24:12)
I'm just trying to remember what we did last year.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:13 - 1:24:23)
And then for another – an actual known line item, we do already have our pension number for this year, and it's a 5.9% increase above last year's.

[Speaker 5] (1:24:25 - 1:24:30)
So when will you start conversations with the retirement board about the different opportunities there?

[Speaker 4] (1:24:32 - 1:24:43)
The retirement board is actually planning on speaking with the select board in April about funding schedule and other items. Do you have that in you?

[Speaker 16] (1:24:44 - 1:24:44)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:44 - 1:24:57)
This is a revaluation year for the retirement board, so the revaluation numbers will come out in April, which obviously the board just – I'm an ex-officio, full disclosure, on the retirement board.

[Speaker 5] (1:24:57 - 1:24:57)
Right.

[Speaker 4] (1:25:00 - 1:25:19)
So once we get the revaluation, the board will be coming to the select board to discuss a number of items, but one of them will include the updated funding schedule numbers, so we'll have the true impact. None of the discussion that the retirement board is having has an impact on the FY24 appropriation.

[Speaker 2] (1:25:19 - 1:25:40)
I think it's important to kind of just appreciate that with rising interest rates, the retirement performance has been well above what we had anticipated. So there's some good news in terms of, you know, the interest rates and their ability to generate revenue to help offset the unfunded obligations.

[Speaker 5] (1:25:42 - 1:25:52)
I'm just wondering if the conversation is going to be coming – if the conversation is coming late in April, is that a little too late for you working with members?

[Speaker 2] (1:25:52 - 1:26:20)
Maybe. You know, I've had a few conversations about trying to, you know, extend the schedule and reduce the impact to the operating budget, I feel, as though it is incredibly painful for a town of our size to have to deal with such a large increase, such a large line item in our budget. This generation of taxpayers is unfairly burdened by an obligation that, frankly, should be stretched across a much broader horizon.

[Speaker 5] (1:26:20 - 1:26:26)
That's why I'm thinking, should that conversation begin earlier than April?

[Speaker 2] (1:26:26 - 1:26:35)
I do believe it should, and I agree I'll work with finance teams to see if we can advance that schedule.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:36 - 1:26:50)
To be clear, those conversations can affect fiscal year 24. Performance. Fund performance.

Other conversations can't. I just want to understand what can affect 24 and what can't affect 24.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:51 - 1:26:59)
So the retirement board will be coming to the select board to discuss the local option acceptance of an additional 2% on the COLA.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:01 - 1:27:18)
Okay, so while they're here talking about that, what else can we do that impacts 24 is my question. Is there something else they can come to us on? Is there anything else that we can do with the retirement board to potentially reduce our liability in 24?

[Speaker 4] (1:27:20 - 1:27:36)
Yes, so conversations can be had with the retirement board about extending the funding schedule or any of those other metrics. It's just until they get the valuation numbers in April, there's no true dollar amount that we can put on it because we'd be working off a year old valuation.

[Speaker 5] (1:27:36 - 1:27:40)
That's right. That evaluation doesn't come in until April. That's why it's April.

Yes.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:42 - 1:27:42)
Great.

[Speaker 5] (1:27:43 - 1:28:06)
However, is there a possibility that do you end or you and the entire retirement board, are you able to foresee what those numbers could be? Do you have a gut feeling what they could be? Then could you make a number of scenarios, like four scenarios?

If it comes in here, we're thinking about doing this, if it comes in here, we're thinking about doing that.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:06 - 1:29:05)
So we have requested a number of scenarios from our actuary at Siegel to play out some different models. As of right now, the actuary has basically just given us a general update that the market performance in 21 was amazing and the market performance in 22 was not, and that we may not be super thrilled with the net number. The retirement board did have a contingency that was not included in the funding schedule.

So the prospect could just be that that contingency is reduced and that there isn't much of an impact to the funding schedule. I have personally asked the actuary to try to keep the year-over-year funding as close as they can to 2% to 3% to stay within our financial policy. And we'll see how that comes out.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:15 - 1:29:23)
Okay. Hey, but good news. We got $2,000 extra in boat revenue this year.

Yeah, the boats. Let's go back to that boat excise tax, can we?

[Speaker 17] (1:29:23 - 1:29:31)
We're actually looking at other communities and the fees. Patrick, tell us more. Tell us more about boats.

Investment income.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:31 - 1:29:33)
I was going to say, investment income will actually make you positive.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:34 - 1:29:50)
We're looking at mooring fees and, you know, all sorts of additional recommendations to increase those revenue items. We offer among the most affordable mooring fees out of any community in Massachusetts.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:50 - 1:30:00)
I wasn't really trying to talk about the boats. This is humor. We can move on.

All numbers to me. I agree with you, but I really wasn't. I don't want anybody to think I was trying to.

[Speaker 3] (1:30:00 - 1:31:47)
I forwarded an email to all of you from the chair of the school committee. They're having a public hearing on their budget tomorrow night. So I recommend, you know, they had invited us to watch.

And I think that we should all pay attention to that conversation, whether you can watch it live or watch the recording. And we probably all were planning on it anyways, but I just want to emphasize that, that that's happening tomorrow night. Thank you.

Anything else? So, well, this budget will be on our agenda. Probably most meetings between now and certainly at our next meeting, which is not next week.

Right, Diane? Yeah. Okay.

Anything else on that? Thanks, Amy. Thanks, Patrick.

So let's move on to discussion of select board and town administrator goals. We all have a draft of the goals that we discussed, I think, at our last meeting are our goals as well as the town administrator's goals. I'm not sure if anyone has any further comment on the select board goals or their own individual goals related to the list that we have in our packet.

But we can start there. If not, we can move on to the town administrator's goals.

[Speaker 6] (1:31:48 - 1:31:50)
I have an additional goal.

[Speaker 3] (1:31:50 - 1:31:50)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:31:51 - 1:32:25)
I spoke to the town administrator about the DE&I consultants and fostering a larger conversation about DE&I in town and at town hall and in all town employment, some training and some understanding about diversity, equity, and inclusion. So now that I've had that conversation, I'm going to hand it over to Dave.

[Speaker 2] (1:32:27 - 1:33:38)
Great. Really appreciate that. Katie, I think, you know, over the last few years, it's clear.

You know, we all need continuing education with this. There's always ways for us to be more open to, you know, awareness of where, you know, we can communicate more effectively, where we can be more sensitive to things that, frankly, are just, you know, difficult for others. I have personally found it, you know, to be eye-opening to just recognize a few challenges that I face, but certainly very much want to see that become more of an institutional value.

We've got lots of work to do, and I think as Peter had mentioned earlier, we had some great dialogues a few years ago around this. We need to get back to having a few more of those, and having that as a goal, I think, would be very helpful.

[Speaker 3] (1:33:40 - 1:34:56)
Yeah, I think there was talk, you know, a couple years ago about having, like, a DEI committee or equity committee or something, and, you know, I think we committed to a position, but we haven't filled that position. Now we have a consultant, and we haven't done that. And I think that, you know, I can say in my experience, the agency I work for created an equity working group that I was part of, and I think that, you know, for the first, like, six to eight months, we just talked about, like, what we should do and talked about, like, what our goals were and trying to figure it out.

But eventually, by forming those groups, you get people to start having those conversations, and when you start having those conversations, eventually someone just says, like, let's try something, and you sort of don't, you're not afraid to try something anymore. I think this is more along the lines of community-focused stuff, probably, but could also be, in terms of Town Hall, I do think Town Hall, like, consultants and, you know, sort of an audit feels like it makes more sense, but I totally support that goal and think that we have to get things moving.

[Speaker 6] (1:34:57 - 1:35:47)
Yeah, and when I was speaking to Sean about it, I think just the idea of it starting somewhere and flourishing into other things like boards and committees and ourselves and what it means to really foster these philosophies and really putting our money where our mouth is and doing the work and not just saying that we hope we are these things, but actually doing the work to show we are these things, it's really important that we do that, and that's not just at Town Hall, that's even with our own boards and committees.

We could all be doing better, so let's try to do that. It's a lofty goal, but maybe we can accomplish a small piece of it, and that will be something.

[Speaker 3] (1:35:49 - 1:37:17)
Anything else from anyone else on board goals? All right. Town administrator goals.

We have a long list from Sean. I think we wanted to hopefully maybe focus and give him a sense of where to focus on. Maybe we can think about moving things around or consolidating or even eliminating some of these, not that any of them are unimportant, but also I know at our last meeting we talked about sort of timeline and when we would be revisiting these and evaluating these given the time and where we are in the process.

We had, in terms of timing of a formal evaluation, we completed Sean's evaluation in the fall. That was for up until through the previous fiscal year, so we're essentially like the clock starts technically in July for these goals. So happy to take comments, or we can go through them one by one, or if people have overall comments on anything where they think is less important or more important, we can start there.

[Speaker 9] (1:37:18 - 1:38:24)
For me, I just think the improved communications and community engagement is something that's incredibly important. It's incredibly important to me. It's incredibly important to residents that I talk to, and really just having that calendar of events where everything is being captured and shared on the town website.

The town website could be such an incredible resource. It's much better than it was. One of the first things that Neil and I did in 2020 was get together and improve communications and really work to focus on getting a website that actually worked, but we need to continue that and continue to have that focus and really to capture all of the incredible things that are happening in the community and all the incredible activities and events that our committees and boards are doing.

We're certainly capturing the select board and the planning board and the zoning board, but we're not always capturing those.

[Speaker 2] (1:38:24 - 1:39:35)
I totally hear you. Katie had mentioned this last week when we met. It's like this should be a one-stop place if you want to see activities going on in Swampskate.

You should be able to go to the town website and say, hey, look, here's both the civic and recreation and cultural and nonprofit. There should be a real robust calendar. I've talked to our team about that, and I think we can reach out.

We've done a good job with our newsletter. I think we can continue to expand some of these at the MMA convention. I did attend one of the workshops on improving communications, and it was interesting.

We used the same module, the same company, the website that won the best website award, a few tweaks, and I think not only do we have a very good website, but it can get that much better. I do think that calendar option is really probably the most in need, and we're going to have to work with a couple of different groups to just get that information and get it updated regularly.

[Speaker 9] (1:39:35 - 1:39:40)
So are department heads already sending you updates for your town administrator report?

[Speaker 2] (1:39:40 - 1:40:08)
They do. I usually get every week a few bullets or a few updates generally. I have department head meetings every two weeks, so I get information in those meetings as well.

But they're not regularly updating a calendar of activities. So I think that's where we're losing a little bit of that engagement, and I think we've got to take that to that next level.

[Speaker 9] (1:40:09 - 1:40:16)
And how can we be of assistance too here with the committees that we're liaising?

[Speaker 2] (1:40:16 - 1:40:44)
If you can help synergize and help identify what monthly or weekly programs belong on that website, if you want to send some information along, I think we can all just kind of keep a very robust engagement that helps that calendar really reflect all of the busy things that folks should be aware of.

[Speaker 5] (1:40:45 - 1:41:01)
You know, I want you to know that I get more comments about our website than probably anything else in town, and they're not positive comments. So I'm not sure if the award-winning…

[Speaker 6] (1:41:01 - 1:41:02)
It's potential.

[Speaker 5] (1:41:05 - 1:41:07)
That's great. That's award-winning potential.

[Speaker 3] (1:41:08 - 1:41:19)
The only thing I'll say is I guarantee you the award-winning website at the MMA conference. I can't remember what town it was. I guarantee you writing residents complain about their website.

[Speaker 6] (1:41:19 - 1:41:20)
Really?

[Speaker 3] (1:41:21 - 1:41:32)
I know we can do better. They have more pictures that flash across the screen, and they have more videos. I'm not saying we can't do better.

I'm just saying… I don't want to say that.

[Speaker 6] (1:41:33 - 1:42:00)
Like, for example, this weekend, it is supposed to be very cold. If a family wants to find something to do this weekend inside, there must be things going on, but there's nowhere to go find them. I have to sift through Facebook posts and newsletters and all sorts of things, and quite frankly, I don't have time to do that.

So I will go somewhere else outside of town to do something that I'm going to pay for. So instead, there could be a place where I could go and say, I have four hours. What can I do?

Here it is.

[Speaker 2] (1:42:00 - 1:42:08)
So I went on the website tonight. We have our select board meeting. We don't have events at the library.

We don't have other events that…

[Speaker 1] (1:42:08 - 1:42:41)
So if we just take a look, just I want to circumvent it. If everybody takes a look at the Reading page and if it's the same platform and we get the benefits of doing that, I think you're all going to be pleased over what we have today. I mean, because the Reading page is better.

I'm not going to comment on how much better. It is better. I mean, Sean, it's just not for someone who's not familiar with town government, and that's the lens it has to be viewed in.

I want to go there and I want to find… I heard something about Elm Place. I don't know.

As a resident, I don't know community development. I have to look at the department and say, which one sounds like the department that matters to me?

[Speaker 5] (1:42:41 - 1:42:45)
Can you put in Elm Place and search? You can, but then it picks up every select board meeting.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:45 - 1:43:22)
Yeah, it picks up everything where Elm Place is preferred. So I mean, it's a very generic search that grabs everything. But just things like that.

We are used to the vernacular, and so people that are used to the vernacular should not be the ones modeling the website. Things like that. People just don't know to go to community development for things or we're looking for the bylaws.

You don't necessarily know to go to the clerk's office, unless you know why would the clerk have the bylaws. So I think there's just a lot of that stuff. Again, we've made progress in recent years, to be clear, but we're still…

This has to be a living, breathing thing because it just…

[Speaker 2] (1:43:22 - 1:44:02)
I came back with Redding's website, and I started looking at ours, and I was clear that we can make it better. But I do think that's a goal that we can make some progress on over the next few months. I do have a great team.

I have some folks that are really working hard to help make that newsletter that much better, and I think we can use that as part of the connective tissue to the calendar that says, hey, we have so many groups that are doing so many great things, so many committees that are doing so many great things. Let's just connect it all together. Let's make that calendar really reflect the very busy type of community that we are.

[Speaker 5] (1:44:05 - 1:44:54)
So for me, on these goals, the number one is continuing improvements of town finances, and I would like to see that really blown up long-term, what it's going to look like 10 years, what capital is going to look like over the next 20 years, what the forecast is for taxes coming in, the whole kit and caboodle, so that everybody has a real understanding because as Peter Spellios said a couple meetings ago, this is one thing that keeps them up at night. That's what you said, right, Peter? I did.

And I do think that this is one of your strengths, and I think that we should really, really get into this super deep and see what's going on and make sure people can get educated.

[Speaker 2] (1:44:55 - 1:45:54)
Yeah. I think it's probably, I think we've made it look easy over the last few years, and I think it's going to become incredibly challenging. Yep.

We are all going to have to work closely together to stay the course. I think we've all really gotten a strong sense of what happens when we have that esprit de corps where we can actually strike that balance between our ability to afford core services and really keep town finances in a very prudent fashion. And we can do more by being more careful, but it becomes very, very difficult because we have a lot of special interests and we have a lot of folks that, frankly, we have a lot of responsibility, right?

[Speaker 1] (1:45:54 - 1:46:51)
I mean, I don't want to call it special interests. We have a lot of responsibilities in town. Everybody thinks they're special interests, but we're a town.

We have to spend money to do things and strike that balance, right? And the school thing is a perfect example. Look, the school's not wrong.

The funding system for schools is absolutely broken, period, hard stop. There isn't a community that can balance their budget with what's happening in schools, what's happening with assessments for vocational schools and charter schools and special education. There is not a town that can meet that need, zero.

But yet we're all charged with it, right? So I think I just want to echo what Mary Ellen was saying on that. That is just, and you are, you are the skunk at the party consistently because of that, and I know that's difficult, that you are the one that, and your team, are the ones that get beaten up over it.

But, and I'm grateful for that, and we need to help you. But that is so critical.

[Speaker 5] (1:46:51 - 1:47:47)
I think that would help with a wider range of communication so people really understand. So I've received several phone calls about the school budget, which I haven't even seen. I'm not on the school committee.

But I think many people don't understand, really, what is our entire, what is our town, town? Is it just a town with the school, or do we also have other obligations? We have fire, we have police, we have DPW.

We have, our senior population is growing quicker than other communities. We have more than 30% of our population is over 55, and there's a lot of issues around that. So I just think we've got to, we've got to just get it out there, get the whole story out there, and people need to have a better understanding of what finances mean.

[Speaker 2] (1:47:49 - 1:47:52)
Very much understand. Appreciate all of it.

[Speaker 3] (1:47:54 - 1:48:46)
So is there anything, you know, in that goal? I mean, you had mentioned, like you said, the whole kit and caboodle, you know, having, like, longer forecasts, you know, and we're talking about, you know, the sort of short-term, long-term, right? Like we have a big picture, like, of course, continuing improvement of town finances, like that's always a goal, right?

Like that's a big picture, high-level goal that will always be there. But in terms of, like, from now until next fall, is there something aside from, you know, what we're seeing here, that feels like a reasonable thing to think about? You don't have to answer this now, but just thinking about, like, is there a goal or an action to be taken that you think that maybe we aren't doing, that we could start doing, that could then be revisited six months, 12 months down the line?

[Speaker 5] (1:48:47 - 1:49:13)
You know what? Let me think about it with that. I mean, some of the big issues I have are how are we going to be handling some of our goals of Hadley, Hawthorne, our infrastructure, you know, our water and our sewers.

How does that all play into our financial burden long-term? So as far as what can be done in the next six months, I'll think about that. It pretty much has to do with just articulating what the situation looks like.

[Speaker 2] (1:49:14 - 1:49:37)
I think that capital plan, if I had to kind of just put a specifical, we can develop a stronger capital plan. I think that capital plan can be more illustrative and more tied to, you know, really that long-term financial plan that we're hoping to achieve.

[Speaker 16] (1:49:38 - 1:49:38)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:41 - 1:51:53)
So I think for me, first of all, I think as a year list, you have eight subheadings. I'm just going to read them because people at home aren't seeing them, but TA professional development, improved communications and community engagement, ongoing investments in public facilities and town properties, support and promote affordable housing development, continued improvement in town finances, strength in human resources and staff support, advanced climate resiliency efforts, support public health and mental health programming, and then other projects.

I think that your goals reflect you hearing a lot of things that we've been talking about, and, you know, and so I really appreciate the fact that you, I think there's commonality. I mean, I think you've categorized it, and then you have details under each of more specific things. I think what I would like just to set the expectation is when it comes to the end of the year when we are saying, how did we do on these goals, that you're able to take each one of these topics and your subsets and say, so what did you achieve on those things?

And the truth is with 26 different things that are categories that could have a million things, there's going to be categories that are going to say, I didn't get to it this year, right? I mean, and that's okay. What I don't want you to do is spread yourself so thin that, because you're like, I just need to look complete, as opposed to just, but I want to set the expectation is the self, you know, kind of the self-evaluation is kind of this document blown out to say, great, now what did I do under number one?

I did these four things. On number two, I said I was going to try and attend six MMA meetings. I attended five, right?

And it's not really for us. It's a measure for you also to allow you to keep tracking and to go back month to month to these things and say, how am I doing? And recognize, and I think we have to recognize as well something, hey, we just didn't get to this, either because of extenuating circumstances or just time, right?

Something took more time and squeezed something out. But I think this is a great roadmap to keep coming back to and having sitting on your board and using these, and I really appreciate your effort in creating this, because this is the most robust one I've seen from you, which is, I think, a real reflection of you being tuned in, and I really appreciate that.

[Speaker 2] (1:51:54 - 1:53:34)
Thank you, Peter. I appreciate the sense that, you know, look, 26, 27, if we have the DEI, which I plan to update, you know, that's not a small list for anybody. I sit with my department heads, and I typically give them, you know, no more than five or six.

Many of them have three or four. You know, it's hard, you know, to balance, you know, the specific responsibilities that we have, but, you know, we have so many busy projects that are currently in the queue. Frankly, I look forward to kind of putting all these up and just looking at it every day when I come to work and saying, you know, where are we with all of these key priorities?

You know, there's so many that will not advance if we don't have, you know, a concerted focus. Affordable housing is one of them. If that is not my goal that I think about every single day, it's going to be hard for us to maintain, you know, a strong focus on that.

It just hasn't been one of the town's broader goals, but we're all doing that now, and to me, I just want to continue to see that advance. I want to be as helpful as I can to the Board as you advance your goals as well. To me, you know, it just feels like Swampskate is as busy today as it has been since I've started.

Perhaps, you know, when you look around, you know, this might be a busy time historically.

[Speaker 3] (1:53:41 - 1:54:55)
Any other comments? Would you all like to approve these as goals for, you know, I think that the, you know, in terms of how this works with the evaluation, I think the evaluation should happen in the fall, personally, and I think that because of when we did the evaluation this year, it may make sense. Otherwise, we're talking about May.

You know, I mean, just to be fair, like, to have time to pursue these goals, that's what makes more sense to me, but I'm open to hearing what you all think about the timeline, and then also if you want to, if we want to approve these, as it were, tonight, and, you know, of course, we can revisit things.

[Speaker 6] (1:54:56 - 1:55:09)
I didn't know, and I have both read it, that the timeline of the evaluation is not conducive to new members coming to the board. Right. We evaluated Sean based on six weeks.

[Speaker 5] (1:55:10 - 1:55:22)
Right, and Sean actually, he expressed to me he had a problem with that. You said you felt that we should have evaluated you based on the whole year, but that's not the message that was delivered to us, and that could be fair.

[Speaker 2] (1:55:22 - 1:55:28)
Well, I gave you a memo, and I gave you information, you know, but I certainly understand those concerns.

[Speaker 6] (1:55:29 - 1:55:30)
Yeah, I just feel like.

[Speaker 5] (1:55:30 - 1:55:51)
I want it to be fair to, you know, fair to people achieving their goals. It's just the question is, I don't recall what your contract actually says, so I'm good with administrative goals, and I'm good with changing the dates. I just want to make sure that contractually we're doing what's in there.

[Speaker 15] (1:55:51 - 1:55:55)
I'm checking it now. I think it's October.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:56 - 1:56:32)
Yeah, so there's a disconnect in the contract between bonus payment timing and when we have to encumber funds in fiscal years and when the review is done. So we just got to – we can figure that out. Like, that's something we can reconcile.

We just need to do it. Yeah, so maybe, Sean, if you take a look and maybe make a suggestion, assuming the October review, how we deal with it. It's just one year.

That's going to be more of the awkward thing. But how you want to do – how you suggest dealing with that, and then as long as you're open to that, that will just switch by a couple of months payments. But I just want to make sure we're also not screwing up the fiscal year calendars for financial reasons.

Understood.

[Speaker 2] (1:56:32 - 1:56:33)
I'm happy to take a look at it.

[Speaker 6] (1:56:34 - 1:57:05)
Yeah, I think if the change in timing happens, then we have to make a concession that the amount of – the expectation has to be adjusted based on the timing of the evaluation. So as long as everybody's comfortable with that, then I think the timing is important, and it only allows for a better understanding of whether the goals are met. For people who have lived the goals, instead of some people who are just jumping in.

[Speaker 9] (1:57:05 - 1:57:09)
Yeah. Well, it gives five or six months to – yeah, five or six weeks.

[Speaker 6] (1:57:09 - 1:57:09)
Right.

[Speaker 9] (1:57:10 - 1:57:10)
Yes.

[Speaker 6] (1:57:12 - 1:57:14)
So that's a great idea.

[Speaker 3] (1:57:15 - 1:57:45)
Okay. I also may have a conversation with P. Cain about the actual evaluation form, but I don't know how, given that that's what we've used.

I mean, it's the only one that I've done two of these. It seems robust. And maybe there's a way to do it, to streamline it a little bit and still get what we want out of it.

So I'll talk to P.

[Speaker 5] (1:57:45 - 1:57:46)
Cain. I thought it was pretty good.

[Speaker 3] (1:57:46 - 1:57:56)
Okay. But – Yeah, no, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying perhaps we could streamline it a little bit.

[Speaker 6] (1:58:00 - 1:58:13)
So – Is there now some sort of technology we could be leveraging that Town Hall already – that we could, like, when you do evaluations for your headless department, you do them all paper forms?

[Speaker 2] (1:58:14 - 1:58:23)
I do. You know, they're typically in an Excel spreadsheet, but they update those, and, you know, some will actually write in them.

[Speaker 6] (1:58:24 - 1:58:31)
Is there something like Workday or any other function you can leverage that you're already using in Town Hall that would help you facilitate reviews?

[Speaker 2] (1:58:32 - 1:58:57)
Yeah, I've looked. Munis has an evaluation form, and I think we can look at that. It is not as easily edited and changed.

I think we have a little bit more operability with a simple spreadsheet that is pretty detailed.

[Speaker 16] (1:58:58 - 1:58:58)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:59:00 - 1:59:23)
Always looking, though. Always, you know, we talked about – I met with Assistant Town Administrator, HR Director today, and talked about, you know, some electronic tablets and things that can help us reduce the reliance on paper and can be more efficient. So, you know, there's always opportunities for us looking at technology to be more efficient.

[Speaker 1] (1:59:28 - 1:59:29)
Great. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:59:34 - 1:59:35)
So are we good with the goals?

[Speaker 6] (1:59:36 - 1:59:38)
Do we have to vote on them?

[Speaker 3] (1:59:38 - 1:59:40)
I don't think we have to.

[Speaker 6] (1:59:40 - 1:59:43)
I just sort of feel like here they are memorialized.

[Speaker 3] (1:59:44 - 1:59:52)
That's fine with me. I just, in terms of, like, having this conversation again, I think we're good for now.

[Speaker 16] (1:59:54 - 1:59:57)
Should we vote on it if we're good for now? Yes. Agreed.

[Speaker 3] (1:59:57 - 2:00:20)
All right. Good. Okay.

Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Sean. Thank you.

All right. Next is the consent agenda. On the consent agenda tonight we have previous meeting minutes and entertainment license for Cookie Monster.

Any questions?

[Speaker 1] (2:00:21 - 2:00:33)
No, but has anybody ever read the application? Yes. I read it, but just rest assured you're not going to see exposed people at the Cookie Monster when you get your cookies.

[Speaker 16] (2:00:33 - 2:00:34)
I hope not.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:34 - 2:00:34)
I hope not.

[Speaker 16] (2:00:35 - 2:00:35)
That's what they wrote.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:35 - 2:00:41)
So I don't think I've ever noticed that section before. All right.

[Speaker 3] (2:00:41 - 2:00:43)
A motion to approve the consent agenda.

[Speaker 9] (2:00:43 - 2:00:44)
So moved.

[Speaker 3] (2:00:44 - 2:00:56)
Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor?

Aye. Aye. Okay.

Sean's town administrator report. Thank you, Neil.

[Speaker 2] (2:00:57 - 2:06:43)
We continue to, you know, we've had several meetings over this past week with attorney Sims just to follow up on the discussion regarding aggregate. My hope is that we'll have a meeting next week with members of the select board in Iraq, just the focus group. Let's see.

Our 2023 trash and recycling guide is complete and will be mailed out with the census. The guide can be found on the town website under how do I tab? We are working out some of the hazardous waste schedule.

We've had some disruption in the hazardous waste market. We're seeing significant costs escalating just given the challenge of solid waste. So we're trying to get a more regularly scheduled hazardous waste program.

Certainly, you know, have ongoing discussions with our budgets. As we mentioned earlier, you know, we are trending high in some budgets, but I have worked with our finance team and we do have a path to a ending the fiscal year in the black. The town does have some focus on other line items in the budget that can help us address some of the overages.

But certainly, I just want to highlight that as we get to the midpoint in the year as something that is going to really be a pressing responsibility over the next few months. Really want to thank everybody that came out and supported the idea exchange that we had at the Hawthorne. I thought it was just a community building event.

I know that we have a lot of folks that are very interested and excited to see what the short-term and long-term uses of the Hawthorne property will be, but this is really an exciting time for Swampskate, and I want to encourage folks to contribute to ideas. You can go on to our website and really share some of your thoughts about what those uses should be. I especially want to thank Anthony Athenas and the staff at the Hawthorne.

I think it's really wonderful that we're able to partner. I hope that there may be a few other programs over the next few months over at the Hawthorne that can help us celebrate that location and continue to engage citizens in that development process. I want to thank Rabbi Michael Rogozin of Congregate Shirret Hiram and Rabbi Lipsker for their work in Swampskate at our recent No Place for Hate rally.

I had a wonderful lunch last week with Rabbi Rogozin, and we talked a lot about some of the strategies that we hope to employ that would help our youth and our broader community address some of the division, some of the hate that is out there. It's our young adults that oftentimes are involved in some of the hate crimes, and we want to make sure that we're really reaching out to them and helping them understand just the importance of community. Just remember to return your census as soon as possible along with your dog license application and any visas, if applicable.

We had our first meeting of the Climate Action Committee last week, and we are looking forward to have an update at our annual town meeting in May. We are moving forward with conservation restrictions for the newly purchased Archer Street properties. We are going to look at scheduling a department head meeting and walk through.

I want to encourage board members, if you haven't been up there, to walk through it. It's an absolutely gorgeous piece of property you can see all the way out to Boston, a wonderful place you should get out there before the poison ivy starts to grow. A lot of recreation programs are already out on our website for this summer, so please take a look.

We have, you know, moving forward with both our police and fire rolling exams, and I've had a number of discussions with both Chief Cassata and Chief Archer about our contract with Lynn for dispatching. Our library is in the process of creating a new website. It should be up and running later in the spring, and certainly we're looking at ways to collaborate more closely with the library.

We have been busy with our HR department, hiring vacancies at a very diligent rate. We still are looking for a new part-time assessor. The Board of Assessors is meeting with a number of candidates to go over their screening responsibilities under the charter.

We're still looking for a new assistant director of planning. The job description is up on the town website. There was a forum on Monday at the high school to discuss accessory dwelling units.

This is a small way to help advance additional affordable housing in Swanscape, but there are concerns about how this might affect our neighborhoods, and certainly want to make sure that the board is apprised of that. We have some important information on it, so I'm happy to follow up with the board if you want to hear more about the assisted dwelling units. That's my report.

[Speaker 5] (2:06:44 - 2:06:54)
I have one quick question. Did we talk about the possibility of hiring a planning consultant to come in to help while we're in the process? And where are we with that?

[Speaker 2] (2:06:55 - 2:07:12)
We have a few individuals that have reached out to me that are interested in providing some planning consultant. I've worked with Margie and Peter, but we're also interviewing a few candidates at the same time. So both of those conversations are ongoing.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:12 - 2:07:15)
You're interviewing candidates for the director?

[Speaker 2] (2:07:16 - 2:07:17)
Yeah. The senior planner.

[Speaker 3] (2:07:18 - 2:07:19)
The assistant director of planning.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:19 - 2:07:22)
The assistant director of planning.

[Speaker 2] (2:07:23 - 2:07:26)
You've upgraded the job description? I've upgraded the description. Got it.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:27 - 2:07:39)
Wait, just, there's one position open, right? Correct. Okay.

And you have candidates that are interviewing for that position right now? And do you have an ETA of?

[Speaker 2] (2:07:40 - 2:07:40)
I don't.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:40 - 2:07:43)
You don't know. If you're just interviewing, you're not going to feel like them.

[Speaker 2] (2:07:43 - 2:07:57)
But I understand that it's critical that we fill that, and I'm open to both options. And I'm, you know, we're really eager to get some assistance in that function.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:59 - 2:08:06)
So do you think that within, what kind of time frame do you think that you bring in at least a consultant to help out there?

[Speaker 2] (2:08:07 - 2:08:15)
You know, it's my hope that we'll have somebody in within the next six weeks. But, you know, it could be sooner. But I just want to be.

[Speaker 9] (2:08:21 - 2:08:36)
Sean, do you have an idea of, so, you know, I thought the idea exchange was incredible over the weekend. Do we have an idea and a timeline of next steps at the Hawthorne? And additionally, do we have an idea of next steps for what's going to happen at Hadley?

[Speaker 2] (2:08:36 - 2:09:42)
So, you know, we're going to debrief with the HDR team early next week and talk about those next steps. We have some data that we collected already from individuals who attended and folks that have shared some information online that we hope to disseminate. We're going to talk about timing and go over a schedule of additional community engagement activities.

So I expect sometime next week we'll get that information out. We've had a lot of folks that are really eager to, you know, hear about another event. We haven't talked about the Hadley, but that's something that I can circle back around with town staff and talk about, you know, what our next steps are.

We've talked about issuing potentially an RFI or an RFP, just to talk about, you know, how do we really generate some interest in getting some development for the property, but certainly want to work with the board and sequence that in a way that makes sense for the town.

[Speaker 5] (2:09:42 - 2:09:46)
I thought an RFI went out. Didn't an RFI go out a while ago?

[Speaker 1] (2:09:46 - 2:09:56)
No. On Hadley, all we had was the reuse committee. We met and interviewed different people.

You might be thinking about Bashan. We did an RFI, RFP process.

[Speaker 5] (2:09:56 - 2:09:58)
No, I'm thinking of Hadley.

[Speaker 1] (2:09:58 - 2:10:18)
No, Hadley we never did an RFI. What we did is there were certain subject matter subgroups of the Hadley reuse committee, and they went out, for example, if it was culture, they went out and talked to potential affinity groups or groups that would be interested. The hospitality one talked to potential hotel users to do that, but there was never an RFI.

[Speaker 5] (2:10:18 - 2:10:43)
So I'd really like to see this, you know, I'd like to see this on the agenda fairly soon rather than later, because some of the concerns I have, I'm not comfortable talking about Hawthorne and Hadley like they're in a vacuum. I just think that this has to be some type of a big conversation, like I'm, big conversation.

[Speaker 2] (2:10:43 - 2:10:55)
I appreciate that, Mary Ellen. I think you're right. I think, you know, both of these properties are synergistic, and I think we have to think about one is going to be used to really appreciate how best to find the other.

[Speaker 1] (2:10:55 - 2:14:40)
Right. So let me stay on this topic for a second. So I appreciate David raising it.

Okay. I think on – and we should have it on probably our next meeting just to get in a bit more detailed conversation, and I'm happy to prepare some things to kind of help with the timelines here. Hadley is – we are 16 months from Hadley being empty, right?

And so from my standpoint, that is a paramount – that should be a paramount focus because an empty school is a bad thing. We have to set it on a course because it's going to take a period of time just to get it on its course. Like once you say this is what it's going to be, then it takes a period of time for that to happen, right?

Hawthorne is a really important decision, but to me the one that's giving me a bit more angst at the moment is if Hawthorne leaves October 31st of this year, we now have an empty building at Hawthorne, right? And so I really appreciate that in the idea exchange part was included the temporary reuse of the property. What's the interim use of the property because vacant can't be an interim use, right?

And so I think that we really need to – so I say that because I really think we need to get an update from HDR. They did a nice job on Saturday. I think we have a debriefing coming up sometime. We're trying to schedule something, but that's great, but I really want to make sure that we're prioritizing the temporary because that is a big decision in and of itself, and it's going to require us to go to town meeting to get approvals because if you remember, we specifically limited our ability to use that property for any use through just this year.

So at the end of this year, we basically – there's no use that can be done there without us going back to town meeting, so we have to go back to town meeting to kind of get their blessing on this. And it would be a shame to save that for a November special town meeting because that means that we won't have gone to the market, we won't have done anything, and the building is going to sit empty for a long period of time. So to me, that is a May time period for us to make a decision as a board as to what it is.

So I think we need to very quickly and with some precision – and not maybe, but I think probably asking for some help from the community to establish a working group or something to help us with that because that is something that I didn't partake in that group that was doing the temporary. I walked around and talked to people, but I didn't – so I haven't even seen what some of the ideas were, but I think very quickly we need to sense that that needs to be made a priority for HDR to at least synthesize that information for us so that we then can run with it. We don't need them necessarily to run with that.

But I am concerned about that because that building will sit vacant. That is not a good thing, and that should bother us. On Hadley, I think that we're going to – my opinion is, and we can talk at another meeting, is look, we're going to have to make some high-level decisions of what we want to recommend to town meeting in terms of a kind of course of action here.

I'm just going to put it in three buckets. No revenue, revenue, and effusion. I'm doing that very simply just to be able to articulate.

Then you look at Hadley and say, well, if this is no revenue, can this be no revenue? Can everything be no revenue? No, yes, who knows what the conversation is.

So I'm even just starting with big buckets. I'm not even getting into the idea of what it is as opposed to just trying to figure out where our heads are and where staff's heads are because that will start narrowing down some conversations for us. And we have to because the Hadley is going to take a while, meaning to do an RFP, figure out the final idea, do the RFP, vet it, and then have them execute on an RFP, meaning execute their project in the Hadley.

That building's going to be in construction for potentially a year, two years, three years.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:42 - 2:14:48)
What's the process of sending out an RFI? I don't know why I thought an RFI was supposed to be going out.

[Speaker 1] (2:14:48 - 2:15:51)
We can approve an RFI, the second one's in front of us, right? But an RFI just says, hey, we'll tell us your interests. There's different views about RFIs, and there's some communities that do RFQs instead, which is this is generally our idea, tell us why you're qualified to do our idea, which is a little bit different than an RFI.

There are many that don't respond to RFIs in the public sector versus the private sector because in the public sector, the RFI is public. So there's a lot of schools of thought there, that you educate the world about your idea, which means when the RFP happens, they can take elements of what you're doing and make it their idea, which is, again, it's fair because it's a public process, right? So RFIs don't necessarily give you the broadest swath, if you will, of potentially interested parties because there are people that stay back and say, I'm not going to – this is not binding, it's just giving you guys information town.

I'm not going to give you my proposal yet, so what do I do? So I'm just saying that I don't know.

[Speaker 3] (2:15:51 - 2:15:58)
I think a challenge with RFIs, you issue an RFI and you may not get responses, but that may not be an indication that there are no ideas. Better said, yes.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:59 - 2:16:59)
Lucky, right? And I think we have – I mean, again, I think we have – we should have a meeting where we're pulling back out that reuse committee report and really focusing on it because they did a really good job. Like, they categorized it down into three very distinct categories.

And I think, you know, even for us to express a preference as to where we think it should go then helps focus it. It's very hard when we're still taking that same report and not narrowing it down. I mean, I really think we should always be working to keep taking it and narrowing and narrowing.

At some point, it's our responsibility to take an opinion, bring it to town meeting, and town meeting ultimately gets to make a decision, right? But my concern would be I don't want to keep taking this and not narrowing things down. So maybe we can have a meeting – not next week, but whenever we have a meeting.

We might need one. And maybe before not too much longer happens, only because we are going to get into all the budget stuff, but we've got to talk Hadley and then we've got to talk Hawthorne temporary reuse. Those are just – I'm rambling on a little bit here.

But those are the things. Empty buildings? Uh-huh.

Scare me.

[Speaker 6] (2:16:59 - 2:17:18)
Do you think that it is us having that conversation about Hadley reuse without the committee reflecting on their report now that the Hawthorne has been acquired? You're not thinking about going back to the committee and saying, now that we've acquired Hawthorne, do you still feel these are the three best uses?

[Speaker 1] (2:17:19 - 2:17:35)
Well, they don't know what we're doing for the Hawthorne. I mean, we can certainly do that. But since we don't know what we're doing for the Hawthorne, it would require them to subjectively decide themselves what they think we're going to do with the Hawthorne, because how otherwise can they change their idea?

I'm happy for everybody to chime in.

[Speaker 6] (2:17:36 - 2:17:37)
Something's happening with it.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:37 - 2:17:38)
It is, right?

[Speaker 6] (2:17:38 - 2:18:10)
So I don't know. I guess that's my thought about this whole conversation of having these ideas in a vacuum and not being able to definitively say, like, I would like to see this happen at Hadley because these things are happening at Hawthorne or vice versa, and then to be at a disservice because you chose to work off a committee report which did not contemplate Hawthorne, and now you're in these three ideas and that that might not synergize with you.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:10 - 2:18:22)
Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to do it, but I also don't want to have the committee take six months to do that because – No, I'm just saying it's – No, no, I'm just saying my concern is – and you're raising a really good point. Like, they didn't even know that possibility was there.

[Speaker 6] (2:18:23 - 2:18:23)
Correct.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:25 - 2:18:34)
I'm just trying to work backwards on calendars, to be honest with you, at the moment because I just – We're going to have empty buildings. We're going to have empty buildings.

[Speaker 6] (2:18:35 - 2:18:35)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:35 - 2:20:33)
And I do worry, and it's a lot of brain width and bandwidth, excuse me, brain width and bandwidth that we've got to use to do this, and so I don't know how to even – if I was thinking about it, I wouldn't even know how to say to the reuse committee, besides saying, here, here's all the ideas that came in the idea exchange for the Hawthorne. Does that change your opinions at all here? And I think what they'll say is if this, then that maybe, but – and I agree we shouldn't be thinking totally independent from each other, but I think at some point we have to – that's why I was taking us a little bit higher in macro conversations and saying maybe if we just start revenue, non-revenue in a way.

And I'm not saying that's the best idea. I'm just giving an example so we don't get caught up. Like if this board, for example, says – just a conversation.

Can we afford for the Hawthorne and the Hadley to not be revenue-generating properties? And if the board says, yes, we can, or the board says, no, we can't, that at least we've started to shape a dialogue that then gives us something to go to the Hadley reuse committee on, for example, and say, hey, as you're thinking about this, you can't think of both as non-revenue-generating spaces. We are thinking, one, who knows which one or whatever it is.

And I'm using revenue, and revenue is not the only consideration. There's other altruistic goals that the town may decide to pursue. I'm just picking something that allows us to see where we are, where our heads are today, because we still have a lot of listening to do before we make a final decision on anything and present something to town meeting, but it doesn't mean that we don't already have a sense of some things, and let's see where we are.

Because that would make Hadley reuse at least give them some guardrail to be able to say, if you're assuming this to be open space or to be civic space, then you probably should assume some revenue on Hawthorne, if that's where we want them to think. Does that make sense? I'm spitballing it just because I'm trying to provoke the dialogue.

[Speaker 6] (2:20:33 - 2:20:51)
They did all the legwork, right? They did all the work before we acquired Hawthorne, and I think we owe it to them to go back and say, okay, if this is sort of the three veins that we're looking at, revenue, non-revenue, hybrid, do you feel like your ideas are still valid?

[Speaker 1] (2:20:53 - 2:20:57)
It's a really good point. You and I were liaisons, right?

[Speaker 3] (2:20:58 - 2:20:58)
What?

[Speaker 1] (2:20:58 - 2:20:59)
You and I were the liaisons.

[Speaker 3] (2:20:59 - 2:20:59)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:21:00 - 2:21:16)
Why don't we go back and maybe work on a communication to send to the committee to at least individually at this moment and say, okay, look, maybe set up a meeting sometime in the next couple weeks and just say this is the question we want to talk to you about. Just pose the question now so that they come to the meeting in two weeks having thought about it.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:17 - 2:21:21)
Because we're going to be thinking about it when we're making it. I just don't want to put that out.

[Speaker 1] (2:21:22 - 2:21:23)
It's a really fair, good point.

[Speaker 9] (2:21:24 - 2:21:31)
And every resident that I talked to at the Hawthorne IDA Exchange was asking us what the plan was for Hadley, so I think these are inextricably connected.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:31 - 2:21:46)
Yeah, I mean, one of the main feedback I heard was about parking. And then they're like, well, will there be parking at Hadley? And I was like, I can't answer that.

So, I mean, it was like I heard it, so many folks thought that. Wow, I didn't have one thought.

[Speaker 1] (2:21:47 - 2:22:28)
So spread it out. So to my earlier point where I poured cold water on RFIs a little bit, an RFI and temporary reuse of a Hawthorne is an interesting thing to me because there's a universe that's much broader. We haven't even limited down potential three buckets of ideas.

It could be the world. And I do think it would be interesting, Sean, to think about an RFI for temporary and say, because look, anything that we're going to do there is going to take years of execution, right? We're going to work with our state and federal partners on funding.

So whether that building's there two years, three years, five years, I mean, I'm just putting it out there. It's there for a period of time, and us putting an RFI out to the world and saying, you know, this is what it could be used.

[Speaker 2] (2:22:29 - 2:22:35)
There may be a conversation that we want to have with the advantages.

[Speaker 1] (2:22:35 - 2:23:04)
Or not at $2,000 a month, but maybe. Understood. No, no, but that's the example of it, right?

For us to be able to do these things. But it may be another user. It may be someone, you know, people came up and said, oh, my God, can you imagine every North Shore high school wanting to do their prom here?

I mean, I'm not advocating that, but I'm just saying it's a grand enough space that maybe there's people that can use it as event planning space. Or I'm making stuff up, but things that will keep the lights on, have someone being responsible to make sure the world's not falling apart.

[Speaker 2] (2:23:04 - 2:23:18)
If the town could have a few events there. If we have to raise money to try to help, you know, develop that site or do other things, you know, to me, it would make sense for us to have a partner that we could work with. But certainly.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:19 - 2:23:29)
I'm sorry. I'm back to you. I really appreciate you saying what you said and bringing it up tonight.

I really think that we've got to advance. I think, Neal, if you're okay, we have that one action item for you and I to reach out to the committee on.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:29 - 2:23:30)
Yep, we can reach out to them.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:30 - 2:23:51)
And then have it back here at a meeting for us to really talk about all of it. But I just wanted to prioritize the temporary side of Hawthorne, just because I think we've got to be asking town meeting probably come May, you know, to maybe help us or else we're going to be having a special town meeting before November. Because until November, we're not going to have an empty building.

[Speaker 6] (2:23:51 - 2:23:56)
So what would we have to do to put an RFI out for the temporary use of Hawthorne?

[Speaker 1] (2:23:56 - 2:23:58)
That's us. That's us.

[Speaker 6] (2:23:58 - 2:23:59)
We just vote to do it?

[Speaker 1] (2:23:59 - 2:23:59)
Yeah.

[Speaker 6] (2:23:59 - 2:24:05)
And then we get some responses and decide to do something or nothing?

[Speaker 1] (2:24:05 - 2:24:09)
Yeah. With the RFI, we can't take action on the RFI. It's just information.

[Speaker 6] (2:24:09 - 2:24:09)
Right.

[Speaker 1] (2:24:10 - 2:24:12)
Then you do an RFP.

[Speaker 6] (2:24:12 - 2:24:12)
Oh, I see.

[Speaker 1] (2:24:13 - 2:24:13)
Yeah.

[Speaker 6] (2:24:14 - 2:24:16)
Based on one of those ideas.

[Speaker 1] (2:24:17 - 2:24:29)
So at the risk of being too bold here, for Sean, ask staff to begin preparation of an RFI for temporary use of the Hawthorne so that we're not starting from stop, right?

[Speaker 6] (2:24:29 - 2:24:29)
Not that bold.

[Speaker 1] (2:24:30 - 2:24:38)
Just again, we're not taking a vote or anything here, but just start that just so we, there's a lot of background material and whatnot you got to put together on that, but just.

[Speaker 5] (2:24:38 - 2:24:39)
Absolutely. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:24:40 - 2:24:58)
And make that a priority. And I would even go so far as look, we have money in the Hawthorne budget for the acquisition that if this is someone that we need to consultant, frankly, to work with us on producing that, it's going to be one of the best uses of money that we use. But I just.

[Speaker 3] (2:24:58 - 2:25:02)
What you're going on is. I mean, can HDR help us with that?

[Speaker 1] (2:25:03 - 2:25:14)
It's not in their scope, but I don't know if they do RFIs. Yeah. You know what I mean?

I'm sure they can do artwork and help us with visuals and stuff. I just don't, I'm sure there's groups that are probably better equipped to prepare that actually as a living prepare RFIs.

[Speaker 5] (2:25:14 - 2:25:21)
But before we, are we saying before we prepare an RFI, are you saying talk to your things first?

[Speaker 2] (2:25:22 - 2:26:00)
I think we can do it concurrently. I think it's important for us to advance both these efforts. Peter, you're absolutely right.

The biggest risk that we have is either one of those buildings getting mothballed for any number of months could absolutely destroy them. If you don't have, you know, active maintenance. It could be, it could be devastating.

So we've got to, we've got to figure this out. I did go through, you know, thank you to the Hawthorne with our facilities director and he has a long list of concerns.

[Speaker 3] (2:26:02 - 2:26:09)
All right. Okay. So select more time.

[Speaker 9] (2:26:12 - 2:26:49)
Sure. I've just been working with the, with the rec commission. We're looking to put a number of low cost, no cost events together.

We should have, we should have a calendar of events coming. I've had conversations with that water, I've had conversations with, with east regiment and all are interested in all are looking to, you know, that may be a conversation that we need to have with, with, with the apprentices. So now that we're on the other side of the idea exchange, Sean, I'm happy to go have a conversation.

[Speaker 2] (2:26:49 - 2:26:56)
Yeah. I think, you know, to me, it's any, anything that's going to help build community should be on the, Now do these go out for bid?

[Speaker 5] (2:26:56 - 2:27:04)
I mean, say you're bringing in a local, but you're bringing in a brewery or whatever it is. Does that have to go out to bid?

[Speaker 2] (2:27:06 - 2:27:12)
No, we haven't. We haven't gone to bid for it, but you know, we could, we could do that.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:13 - 2:27:17)
I just want to know legally, are we obligated to do that or?

[Speaker 1] (2:27:20 - 2:27:36)
I believe we had a conversation with town council a few years ago before the first beer thing and vendors, and depending on dollar amounts and whatnot with vendors for food and beverage, you don't have to go to our P.S. But good question. Make sure we're doing it correctly. But we had that before.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:36 - 2:27:43)
I just want to know, maybe there's some diverse breweries out there. I just want to make sure everybody has opportunity.

[Speaker 2] (2:27:44 - 2:27:45)
Absolutely. We'll look into that.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:45 - 2:27:47)
I'd like to give you my list of preferred breweries.

[Speaker 2] (2:27:48 - 2:27:50)
I look, I'm a big fan of diverse breweries.

[Speaker 9] (2:27:53 - 2:28:00)
I'm also a fan of people doing what they say they're going to do. And we've, we've had conversations probably a dozen great partners. We've had great partners.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:00 - 2:28:12)
Yeah. We've had, we've had incredible partners. No, no, it's more to knock their IPAs.

I'm just joking. I'm not at all. I don't drink any IPA.

[Speaker 2] (2:28:12 - 2:28:23)
To me, it's, you know, these events, they're important. You know, the more no cost, low cost events, more community. People need these opportunities.

[Speaker 9] (2:28:23 - 2:28:28)
Yeah. And Bentwater's been an incredible supporter of the town. And they've donated tens of thousands of dollars.

[Speaker 2] (2:28:28 - 2:28:36)
Proud to have worked with them. I think they have a civic purpose. And they've been great.

Yep.

[Speaker 9] (2:28:36 - 2:28:36)
Great.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:38 - 2:28:38)
Anything else?

[Speaker 5] (2:28:41 - 2:28:53)
I'd just like to thank Joe Duet. And who's back there with you, Joe Duet? Andrew and Nathan for another great production of the select board meetings.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:55 - 2:29:30)
Yeah. I mean, I want to thank Joe and Ethan and the students that helped at the idea exchange. I thought it was great to have you guys there as part of that.

And it added a dynamic element to that event. So it was awesome. So thanks so much.

You know, you guys were scrambling around and wrangling wire cables. And it was a tight space and there were windows everywhere. And it was great.

And you guys were all, you know, from students to Joe, were totally professional and awesome. So I want to thank you for that.

[Speaker 5] (2:29:35 - 2:29:41)
Did you have a roving recorder or camera, Gracie, with a camera?

[Speaker 14] (2:29:42 - 2:29:43)
Yeah, Gracie was going around.

[Speaker 1] (2:29:45 - 2:29:48)
Hey, Joe, can you speak into a microphone, please?

[Speaker 16] (2:29:48 - 2:29:52)
Oh, there he is.

[Speaker 1] (2:29:58 - 2:30:00)
It's less funny now that we have to wait.

[Speaker 16] (2:30:00 - 2:30:01)
That's okay.

[Speaker 14] (2:30:01 - 2:30:10)
Now he's punishing us. Now he's keeping us here longer. Now you have to wait.

Absolutely. Yeah, Gracie was just going around kind of trying to get a feel for what it felt like to be there.

[Speaker 5] (2:30:10 - 2:30:12)
Oh, she's working really hard.

[Speaker 14] (2:30:12 - 2:30:12)
Yeah, absolutely.

[Speaker 5] (2:30:12 - 2:30:15)
Yeah, she was really terrific. I was really impressed.

[Speaker 14] (2:30:15 - 2:30:19)
And Nick at the whispering booth was fantastic. People enjoyed talking to him.

[Speaker 5] (2:30:20 - 2:30:26)
It's just great seeing our school kids out there, you know, working, being part of our community.

[Speaker 14] (2:30:27 - 2:30:39)
Yeah, they really get involved in what the conversation is, too. I think, like, there's a student that did school committee yesterday and is really excited to come back tomorrow because she really wants to see how the conversation continues.

[Speaker 5] (2:30:40 - 2:30:41)
Oh, it'll be exciting.

[Speaker 14] (2:30:41 - 2:30:45)
Yeah, great, great reasons for them to be involved. But our pleasure.

[Speaker 3] (2:30:45 - 2:31:56)
Thanks. I also just want to emphasize my gratitude to the staff who put that together. I mean, that event, you know, there were, like, probably 400 people there, and we didn't know that necessarily.

We were hoping there would be great attendance. I think Marzi did the work of, you know, eight to ten people. Diane did an amazing amount of work.

Sean and Pete Kane, DPW workers were there. We had fire department there, which I'm glad you anticipated the crowd. It was just a total team effort.

It was great to see, you know, staff, Amy and Patrick were there just to attend, which is just awesome. It just shows that they're interested in what we're doing as a community. And, you know, I think, you know, of course, we were all there.

There were a group of volunteers, Chief Archer. So it was just great to see everybody, and hopefully we can do more there but also elsewhere, not just around that project but just on all the good stuff that we're trying to do. So I just wanted to make sure I publicly thanked everyone.

I'll share that with staff.

[Speaker 2] (2:31:57 - 2:32:46)
But certainly, you know, to me, it's one of my greats. When we have events like this, you know, it was great. 400 citizens in Swamp Street getting a chance to be part of history, part of community, part of, you know, a sense that we're giving a gift to future generations.

And 50 years from now, they won't remember any of us, but they will remember that place that was created. And to me, that's an awesome legacy. You think of the generation that bought the Fish House, the Park and Rec Commission, over 120 years ago.

What a gift, you know. Where would we be without it? This is going to be along those same lines.

And it's really important that anybody that wants to be involved in this step up and share in that moment.

[Speaker 3] (2:32:47 - 2:32:58)
Very exciting. All right. There's nothing else.

There's a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second.

All right. All those in favor.

[Speaker 16] (2:32:58 - 2:32:59)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (2:32:59 - 2:33:00)
Thanks, everybody.