[Speaker 11] (2:48 - 5:24)
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[Speaker 3] (5:44 - 15:25)
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. you you all set okay welcome everyone to the select board meeting of February 15th before we get started please join me in a pledge of allegiance thank you everyone before we move on to public comment in our agenda I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the tragic events that occurred at Michigan State University this week we certainly send our love and thoughts to that community and that community extends to our community for sure our former colleague on the board has a daughter who attends there I know lots of people who actually attended there than that school themselves there's a actually quite a strong Michigan State connection to Swanscott so if you'd all would humor me in a moment of silence just to acknowledge the deaths of the three students this week thanks everyone all right moving on to public comment public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to express their opinions on items on and not on our agenda it's not intended to be a discussion or debate or dialogue between or among the select board and residents additionally we ask that residents share their names and addresses and if known their voting precinct we will limit speaking to three minutes you can raise new issues identify community problems and comment on past present or future board agendas and absent extraordinary circumstances the board will not respond or react to the issues raised they should not be discussed or debated at that time and we request that you speak respectfully and refrain from criticizing or disparaging individual committee members town staff or other resident groups or individuals or making comments that contain political statements or include commentary criticisms or other statements about any town staff if people have public comment either in the room I'll also mention that this is our first meeting that we've switched to a team's format virtually so those who are joining us online please bear with us if there are some technical glitches as well as the people in the in the audience if folks in the room have public comment please raise your hand if there are folks online please raise your hand on teams you can also send public comment to my email at and Duffy at swamp Scott ma gov it looks to me like Deb Newman is raising your hand virtually and then we'll go there's a public comment here too but we'll go to Deb Newman first Deb can you unmute yourself okay while we're trying to figure out that why don't we do we have an in-person hand raise

[Speaker 9] (15:43 - 17:16)
I have to talk about so I don't mean to sound passionless by repeating it but I want to use my three minutes wisely so the past few months I've been very involved in trying to prevent the hunt from killing its resident coyotes and I've had the honor of collaborating with people from Coyote Watch Canada, Project Coyote, In Defense of Animals, PETA, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the MSPCA.

I know some of you on the board and Sean have said you never want to vote to kill coyotes in Swamp Spot. However, if that time has not prepared itself, and it's already late in the game, to prevent broken hunting of coyotes, all of you may come to believe that killing is your only option. We've already had at least one bite that's on record of human and there have been bites on companion animals and there's no need for any of this to be happening.

You can't expect an average suburbanite to become an expert at navigating coyote behavior. While education is necessary, most of us don't want to be inconvenienced by changing our own behavior to accommodate the needs of a wild animal. We will have to do that, but many people are even afraid of relatively benign animals, the turkeys or a raccoon or a skunk, so expecting residents to respond kindly and appropriately to a coyote encounter is expecting too much.

[Speaker 10] (17:16 - 17:24)
Even if you think you can equip people with information and tools, such as whistles or horns, it's not enough.

[Speaker 9] (17:25 - 19:47)
Preventing the problem is the key to preventing people's fear and resulting anger. With Nahaata invested in a coyote response plan, the town could have avoided the fear and hysteria and anger that led to people who invaded to exaggerate their stories of encounters with coyotes to get some help. The hysteria led to the town administrator desperately seeking advice from Masked Wildlife.

I just want to say, we shouldn't be seeking our advice from Masked Wildlife. Every member of their board of directors is a hunter. Several of them believe that Massachusetts should bring back leg hold traps and other inhumane devices for killing mammals.

Most of them want the hunting season extended. And I know this as a result of a public records request I made for documents and emails sent between people at Masked Wildlife and the Haunstown Ministry. So I'm not making it up.

What this wants us to do is allow an in-the-field expert to present us with methods that work, undo certain coyote activity, and prevent any activity that humans find inappropriate. One ACO, the Indian Care Apologist, can't be mentioned. There's too much involved.

There's a lot to juggle. There's mapping the movements of the coyotes, discovering why they go where they go, removing their trappings, regulating situations that cause problems, educating the public and specific individuals who may need to modify their own behavior in a big way, and enforcing the correct protocols to prevent an incident. And there's a lot more.

This takes a task force composed of people who really know how to consistently implement the right methods. Because there's so much to understand, I would like you to be receptive to a 10-minute presentation at a future meeting. Chief Cassata and Sean have already expressed interest in learning about a response team.

I'd love to show all of you how it could make a huge difference. And I've even compiled a bylaw related to feeding wildlife. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (19:48 - 19:54)
Thank you, Deb. Okay. Yeah, please go to the mic.

[Speaker 12] (19:54 - 21:53)
Hi, my name is Heather Gould and I live on Forest Ave. Extension near the construction of the new elementary school. And I've talked to some of our neighbors and just wanted to share a couple of things with you. It's really important, if you would, to give us a schedule as much in advance as you can and stick to it.

It is very hard to work from home and it's very, very difficult on the dogs, but I'm sure the other companion animals also. Ours, for instance, will shake uncontrollably, cry uncontrollably when he hears a blast, long after he hears a blast, and it's constant. So the more I know, the more we can try not to have meetings on those days or I try and take them with me to work.

My neighbors are trying to take their dogs out or make sure they're not at appointments, that they're home with their dogs. So really getting as much advance notice, not just for the week. And the people have been very nice that we've been communicating with so far.

I think they're trying very hard. But we're always going to give you Tuesdays and Thursdays no blasting or whatever the dates are would be very, very helpful to know all the way through the blasting. And the second thing, just for you guys to kind of keep in mind, there's not construction being done on Sundays, but there is on Saturdays.

And I think if you're going to do it on anybody's day of worship, then you do it on everybody's, or better yet, don't do it on anybody's day of worship. I think it's a little bit tone deaf, and I really don't think this community is inured to anti-Semitism, as we know. And I'm sure it wasn't intended that way, but I really think if you're going to give Sundays off, you've got to give Saturdays off.

And maybe somebody should look at the schedule and see if there's any holidays of anybody's religion that are coming up that it would be inappropriate or, you know, lacking in consideration to have blasting on those days. I only know my own religion. You probably should be consulting with other people.

But thank you for hearing us out.

[Speaker 14] (21:54 - 21:55)
Thank you for your comments.

[Speaker 3] (21:57 - 22:56)
Any other public comment? I'll just check email. Not seeing any.

We will move on to our first agenda item, which is Fiscal 23 Budget Report. With Amy Saro, we also have with us Chief Ruben Quesada and Chief Graham Archer. At our last meeting, we started discussing some information about some of the projected costs or overages in the Fiscal 23 expenses related to overtime in both the Fire and Police Department.

And I was pulling that conversation so we could have the Chiefs here and other members of the Police Department and Fire Department to have a better understanding of the issues. And what the plan is moving forward. So I think I'm handing over to Amy on this.

[Speaker 4] (23:43 - 26:16)
Technology growing pains. So this is the deeper dive into the Police and Fire Budget and Staffing Update. That is just a continuation of the 2-2-FY23 presentation that was given at the last Select Board meeting.

Next slide please. So as we address the financial issues are that both the Small State Police and Fire Department overtime expenditures are trending higher than average. They are both personnel salary lines for both of these departments are projected to end the year over their appropriation.

And the Chiefs have taken steps to mitigate these overages within their own departments. Next slide. So as I said last week, not two weeks ago, sorry.

The Police Budget Personnel Org as a whole is projected to be deficit $192,000. And the Fire Department Personnel Org as a whole is projected to be $118,000 as a whole. This is based off of where they were at through Q2 as well as projecting that same trend out through the end of the year.

I'm going to go a little bit fast through this slide. As you know, the town negotiated the removal of minimum meaning language through collective bargaining in 2022 and effective October of 21. The town was no longer obligated to honor the minimum staffing language in the Police CBA.

The Police Chief had sent out an email on July 13th, indicated that he was going to reduce the staffing for the patrol shift from five persons to four. Within the first couple weeks of that change, we were saving about $5,000 per week in overtime, which equated to $20,000 per month. Next slide.

So I updated these numbers through last week's payroll, and we are seeing an average of $4,159.98 in weekly savings in all of the wages, of which $2,042.71, or 43 hours, of which are overtime savings.

[Speaker 3] (26:17 - 26:19)
That's weekly, did you say?

[Speaker 4] (26:19 - 26:21)
Yes, that's an average weekly savings.

[Speaker 3] (26:22 - 26:24)
And the $2,000 is part of the $4,000?

[Speaker 4] (26:24 - 26:27)
Yes. Yeah, so it is not a collective fix.

[Speaker 3] (26:27 - 26:28)
It's not $6,000, right.

[Speaker 4] (26:31 - 27:43)
Next slide. The Fire Department, the Town, had negotiated the changes to minimum manning with them through collective bargaining as well, and effective October of 2021, the Fire Chief was provided discretion to deviate from minimum staffing language in the CBA, but we are still required to staff for minimum manning per apparatus. So Chief Archer had sent a memo out to staff on December 31st that they were going to be, sorry, an email out on December 16th that as of December 31st, they were going to be switching staffing from eight persons per shift to seven.

In the first three weeks of that, we had savings of roughly $5,000 per week in overtime as well. On the next slide, I updated that through last week's payroll, so we're seeing an average savings with the staffing change and the overtime correlated from it of $10,500 per week on average, $4,561 of which is overtime.

[Speaker 3] (27:44 - 27:51)
Can I just ask, are the end-of-year projections are incorporating these trends for the rest of the year?

[Speaker 4] (27:51 - 28:42)
The current trends, yes. Okay. So the big thing that I looked into was what's driving the overtime expenses.

Was it vacancies from retirements? Was it scheduled overtime, training, short-term or long-term sick, vacation, comp, personal, or just regular vacancies? On the next slide, we have pie charts for each.

So on the left, you have the police department. So overtime from accrued time off, the bulk of the overtime that's triggered by backfilling positions for people who are out is caused by vacation. And conversely, in the fire department, the bulk of it is due to long-term sicks.

[Speaker 13] (28:43 - 28:48)
Amy, can you kind of get into some detail as to what backfilling entails?

[Speaker 4] (28:48 - 29:22)
Yes. So in order to stick with that four patrol shift or the seven in the fire department, they have to staff at that level to be able to safely operate as per the chiefs. So in the fire department, if one of those seven people on a shift is out due to sick, vacation, personal day, they do have to call someone else in on an overtime shift to fill it.

Likewise, if one of the four patrol people are out on a shift, they call someone else in on overtime to fill that.

[Speaker 13] (29:23 - 29:33)
Okay. So in the fire department, if there's a lieutenant that's out, you could have a firefighter EMT come in and replace the lieutenant.

[Speaker 4] (29:35 - 29:40)
How does that? I'm going to defer to the chief on how he staffs it.

[Speaker 6] (29:44 - 29:58)
Lieutenant to backfill that shift, if they're unable to hire a lieutenant, they would then go to firefighter stuff. The senior on-duty firefighter would fill it, and then they would hire a firefighter to backfill that person. Okay.

[Speaker 13] (29:59 - 30:14)
And then in this hypothetical example, the lieutenant is you would try to get the lieutenant, you would try to get another lieutenant. If the other lieutenant is not available, you get a firefighter, and that firefighter EMT would be at a lieutenant's rate of pay?

[Speaker 6] (30:14 - 31:02)
Sure. Just to highlight the differences, there's a slight difference in the rank structure. So the senior person running a shift is a captain.

Unlike the police, we only have one captain who's a big boss. Our captains are medium bosses, so we have four of them running each shift. So when you're talking about a lieutenant, you're talking about the second person in charge of a shift.

If a lieutenant's out, we don't work down. Our ranks do not work at a lower rank, but they can work up. So to answer your question, if a lieutenant's out, they will reach out to the remaining three lieutenants to backfill that shift, and if none of them are available, the senior firefighter on the shift would fill that role, and they'd hire a firefighter to backfill that person.

Thank you. Sure.

[Speaker 2] (31:02 - 31:08)
So can Chief Quesada, can you just give us an example on the police side so we make sure everybody understands how it works on the police side?

[Speaker 7] (31:08 - 31:41)
Sure. We're very similar in that if a lieutenant, per RCBA, if a lieutenant is off on day shift, I say he because we only have male lieutenants right now, he would be replaced by the administrative captain. We don't incur any overtime.

The administrative captain does not do his job. He then becomes the OIC for the shift. So we will only replace on second and third shift, evenings and midnights, for that lieutenant position per the contract, the union contract.

[Speaker 5] (31:45 - 31:46)
Amy, what is this timeline?

[Speaker 4] (31:48 - 31:49)
Which timeline?

[Speaker 5] (31:49 - 32:04)
On this report. I know it just came here. We didn't get a chance to see this.

I'm just wondering, is this for the full year, 23? What's the timeline on this report?

[Speaker 4] (32:05 - 32:12)
The staffing trend one, like the orange and blue ones that you see, that's just the actuals up through last week's payroll.

[Speaker 5] (32:13 - 32:14)
Starting at the beginning of July 1?

[Speaker 4] (32:15 - 32:34)
Mm-hmm. The police one I started in fiscal 22, just because the staffing change happened so early in the fiscal year. I wanted to give a couple more weeks of comparison.

So when you look at the police one, you'll see that it started on June 3.

[Speaker 5] (32:37 - 32:40)
So police is June 3, and what is fire?

[Speaker 4] (32:40 - 32:46)
It starts on the July 8 payroll, which is the first payroll of the fiscal year.

[Speaker 5] (32:55 - 33:04)
It's pretty interesting to see the fire department. You have a lot of OT that goes towards SIP, a lot of SIP people.

[Speaker 1] (33:05 - 34:41)
It's one of the most unique years that we've had. So we've seen a significant impact. It's an anomaly, and it doesn't follow a typical trend.

So we have a number of long-term sick individuals that are impacting the overtime numbers. We're looking at some of these big numbers, but one person out long-term sick could have an impact on overtime to the order of $40,000 to $60,000 a year. And so it's not a small impact.

Generally, one individual out long-term would have a significant impact, but having several I think has created a significant financial impact, and the chief has kind of recognized that. We have employed some efforts to try to address some of those challenges, but these are issues that are governed by MLA and federal laws, and we have to be very mindful of these positions. Both police and fire are occupations that are very difficult, and we do see a higher per capita level of illness and challenges, whether it's mental health or physical health, that ultimately impacts overtime.

And I think we all know over the last few years during this pandemic, there's been an immense amount of challenges, and certainly Slomskic's not immune from any of those.

[Speaker 3] (34:43 - 34:52)
Is there – I have a – maybe it's a stupid question. Is there overtime not due to accrued time off?

[Speaker 12] (34:52 - 34:53)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (34:53 - 34:59)
And how much of that is part of the overall overtime picture?

[Speaker 14] (34:59 - 35:00)
I don't know if you know.

[Speaker 4] (35:00 - 35:17)
It's not a material portion of it, but, yes, there is – if there is a big fire or there's an investigation that they need a detective for, they would do overtime as needed to actually staff their department. Right.

[Speaker 3] (35:18 - 35:23)
If they need extra staff on any particular shift above and beyond what's required. Correct.

[Speaker 5] (35:23 - 35:23)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (35:24 - 35:24)
Okay.

[Speaker 5] (35:24 - 35:32)
Well, does that include, like, a beer party or – like, what other things is that? Beer party, did you say?

[Speaker 10] (35:32 - 35:39)
Well, you know, our – Like our events. Our events. Community events that we have.

Community events. Yeah, community events.

[Speaker 4] (35:39 - 35:43)
I'm, like, I'm guessing if the police were called to a beer party. It was in my house.

[Speaker 1] (35:44 - 35:46)
Egg party. Beer parties.

[Speaker 4] (35:48 - 35:51)
I would defer to the chiefs on how they staff those events.

[Speaker 1] (35:51 - 36:19)
I think, you know, again, I don't want to take over from the chief. If we have details for some of these parties, the town pays for those. We pay for the details, and so you probably won't see these.

You know, we had a detail for the Hoffman. We had a fire detail that was paid for out of a different budget. So, you know, I'm not sure that that would roll up into the overtime.

[Speaker 4] (36:19 - 36:21)
How does that get paid for through a different budget?

[Speaker 1] (36:23 - 36:24)
We charge it.

[Speaker 4] (36:24 - 36:38)
Yeah, so if someone else calls for a detail, so, say, a recreation event calls for a detail, it's paid through the recreation revolving. Same as if water and sewer call for a detail, there's a line in their budgets for police details.

[Speaker 5] (36:39 - 36:50)
Okay, so at the Hawthorne thing, when you said, oh, we're going to need a fire detail here, that doesn't get charged to the fire line item. It gets charged to what line item?

[Speaker 4] (36:51 - 36:53)
I don't know that we've seen that one come through yet.

[Speaker 1] (36:54 - 37:18)
Yeah, probably community events. The town administrator has a line item, or the town administrator's budget has community events, and that's likely where that charge will hit. But it's just important.

We're talking about the police and fire overtime departmental budgets, and so your question about the beer parties or the events.

[Speaker 5] (37:18 - 37:19)
Community events.

[Speaker 1] (37:19 - 37:28)
Yeah, community events is an important one because those are actually out in other line items in the town budget. This is not all encompassing.

[Speaker 5] (37:30 - 37:51)
Right, okay, so just so we're really clear, what you're saying is when we're having these community events and we're calling in additional police or fire or whatever, for example, I think it was Gay Pride, right, we wanted to have the fire department there. Is that it? Fire department there.

So the fire department is there at Gay Pride. That doesn't come in under overtime. That goes into another budget line item?

[Speaker 6] (37:52 - 38:02)
Yeah, they were there. No, if they were there on duty, it would just be they're on duty. They're still available to respond to emergencies who are on duty.

[Speaker 5] (38:04 - 38:05)
So that's not a detail then?

[Speaker 6] (38:06 - 38:09)
No, that's not a detail. Not everything's overtime.

[Speaker 5] (38:09 - 38:10)
Got it.

[Speaker 2] (38:11 - 38:30)
Do you want to go back to the presentation? Yes, please. I'm sorry, I just asked that we took the screens when we're talking.

It's people at home just see the screen, the presentation don't see us. Maybe there's a way with Teams that we can actually keep the presentation up but there's a subscreen that shows who's talking.

[Speaker 4] (38:30 - 38:33)
There is. There's a presenter view where you can subset.

[Speaker 2] (38:34 - 38:40)
I think that's great because I think that allows people at home both to see the material and to just understand the dynamic in the room here.

[Speaker 4] (38:42 - 39:41)
Next slide. So this is just an overview of the overtime hours. The blue is the police and red is fire.

This is for 2018-19 up through year to date 2023. So while it looks like it's a banner year, it's halfway through the year on these. So as you can tell, the police overtime has been relatively steady at about 12,000 but the fire overtime has been increasing, especially last year.

Next slide. And this is just the overtime costs per year. Outside of this slide, I'm focusing more on the hours just for a more even comparison.

So that it's not taking into account the compensation of the individuals. Next slide.

[Speaker 7] (39:42 - 39:43)
I do have a question on the overtime.

[Speaker 4] (39:43 - 39:44)
Yes.

[Speaker 7] (39:44 - 40:03)
Amy, all our overtime when you talk about police, that is inclusive of CARES Act money that was as part of the result of the protests that were involved, our grants, everything else. Is that correct? I just want to make sure that I had different numbers.

[Speaker 4] (40:03 - 40:21)
That is just what's coming out of the general fund. But we, depending on what we're doing, we do sometimes use the all-in overtime number. These ones are just the general fund portion.

So it doesn't take into account any grants or CARES money.

[Speaker 7] (40:22 - 40:40)
I'm just trying to figure out the discrepancy between the town warrant numbers that I have for overtime. I just want to make sure I'm counting my overtime hours correctly. And so I have much less numbers.

And so that's why I want to, I just want to make sure that we're doing it correctly.

[Speaker 4] (40:41 - 40:51)
Yeah, so I can work with you to see how your numbers are different. But no, it should just be the things going to your 0121001 org.

[Speaker 10] (40:51 - 41:05)
We added our overtime budget lines from the month-let team budget that we pulled today, and they were significantly less. So I think that's where his confusion is.

[Speaker 4] (41:05 - 41:07)
Yeah, I can check with you tomorrow and see why.

[Speaker 10] (41:08 - 41:10)
Yeah, we printed it out so I can show it.

[Speaker 3] (41:12 - 41:31)
So, sorry, are you saying, Chief and Angelica, that your expenses for year-to-date 2023 don't necessarily match up with what we're seeing here? No, I was referring to prior years 2021, 2020, 2019.

[Speaker 7] (41:32 - 41:33)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (41:37 - 41:46)
So if we do have, you know, again, we'll go back and maybe, you know, there's some opera dollars in here or maybe there are some things, but we can reconcile.

[Speaker 2] (41:46 - 41:59)
Yeah, can I just say, just to be honest with you, that reconciliation should happen before we're talking publicly about numbers. So at the end of the day, we, the town accountant and the finance team is who reports to us numbers, right? And so we can't be arbiters.

[Speaker 1] (42:00 - 42:01)
We've met probably eight times.

[Speaker 2] (42:02 - 42:34)
No, I understand. But it seems like there might not be the reconciliation happening. So that just is bothersome because then we talk about, instead of the underlying issues, we talk about are the numbers correct, which should never be what we're talking about.

It's just accounting, right? So that should never be the debate if the numbers are correct. The numbers are correct when we're talking about them because they have to be correct.

They're audited. We, you know, have municipal finance standards and whatnot. So I just ask that to the town administrator, that when we're having these conversations, we can't be having open debate about the accuracy of numbers because Agreed.

It discounts the underlying conversation.

[Speaker 1] (42:34 - 42:35)
I absolutely expect that.

[Speaker 2] (42:36 - 42:39)
I just felt like I needed to say that because we shouldn't be debating numbers.

[Speaker 4] (42:39 - 43:14)
I appreciate that, Peter. Thanks. Next slide.

So this is just an overview of the sick time used. So the left-hand side is police, right-hand side is fire, with the darkest column being 2018 and the lightest column being year-to-date 2013. So as you can see for fire department, the year-to-date sick has already superseded the previous five years, which is indicative of the issue in that department that's driving overtime.

[Speaker 5] (43:15 - 43:17)
Can somebody just, what does that mean, sick time used?

[Speaker 4] (43:18 - 43:24)
It's just the hours of sick used. So if you call out sick, it goes in under sick time.

[Speaker 10] (43:26 - 43:31)
Has the force always been the same size? Are we comparing apples to apples each year?

[Speaker 2] (43:33 - 43:41)
So in this, from 2018 to 2023, has the size of the force increased or decreased, or it's comparable, the same number of heads?

[Speaker 6] (43:42 - 43:44)
We have fewer vacancies.

[Speaker 2] (43:45 - 43:53)
Just positions, not vacancies. FTEs. Your FTEs are the same since fiscal year 2018.

You may have vacancies, but the number of firefighters and staff.

[Speaker 6] (43:53 - 43:54)
The number is the same, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (43:58 - 43:59)
We haven't added any FTEs.

[Speaker 6] (44:00 - 44:01)
No, we have not added any.

[Speaker 1] (44:01 - 44:02)
They're static.

[Speaker 6] (44:03 - 44:04)
For both departments.

[Speaker 5] (44:04 - 44:14)
We haven't added FTEs, but if you don't have as many FTEs in one year compared to the other year, you're going to have less sick time used, less individuals.

[Speaker 6] (44:14 - 44:28)
There are fewer vacancies, but I would say there are, I mean, in the early FY23, we filled five positions. Yeah, but they're not driving sick time. They're not using.

They're brand new. They're having no sick time.

[Speaker 5] (44:30 - 44:32)
And for the police department?

[Speaker 7] (44:33 - 44:43)
Yeah, we have the same number. We have three vacancies right now. Allocated 32.

Right now we have three vacancies.

[Speaker 5] (44:44 - 44:54)
Right. So if you have vacancies compared to what you would have had in 2018, you would have lower sick time.

[Speaker 3] (44:54 - 44:58)
Yes. I mean, maybe.

[Speaker 4] (44:59 - 45:34)
I would say that's a better comparison for vacation and personal. But sick, because our sick time doesn't expire each year, it carries. Sick time use is only based off use.

People aren't using sick time if they don't need it. So I don't think the number of people staffed on at any year have a direct correlation with the number of sick hours used, whereas, yes, the number of people you have staffed in any year is a direct correlation to the number of vacation hours they're going to use.

[Speaker 8] (45:35 - 45:36)
I'm sorry.

[Speaker 5] (45:36 - 45:48)
I think that if you have three additional people working in your department, you have a potential for three additional people to have sick time, whereas if those people aren't there, the potential of them having sick time is there.

[Speaker 6] (45:49 - 46:00)
Just to be clear, when I speak of vacancies, just to be clear, I'm not talking about people we have that are out sick. Vacancies are jobs that are unfilled.

[Speaker 10] (46:01 - 46:01)
That's understood.

[Speaker 2] (46:01 - 46:20)
But the inverse here, so just taking, and again, it is what it is. It's not no judgment whatsoever, but fire fiscal year 23, we're at 4,900 hours halfway through. It doesn't, for this purposes, it's actually more relevant that, do you have any vacancies currently?

[Speaker 6] (46:21 - 46:21)
One.

[Speaker 2] (46:21 - 46:57)
You have one vacancy, but there are a handful plus of people who are out on long-term leave. Correct. In that situation, but if he had five vacancies, that 4,900 would still be the same number because he still has the six people out on long-term leave.

In terms of just, you're right, but the inverse, to your point is right, but I think we're, I'm sorry. The way I was looking at it was I'm more concerned about the high number of hours sick time, and it is what it is. Sick time happens.

That's just the price of paying what we do. So there's no judgment in that.

[Speaker 4] (47:00 - 47:27)
So next slide is just the trend of vacation time used. You can see that the police department has leveled off around like 6,700. They are on target for that same amount, so we would expect these to level out, and vacation for fire is on trend to hit their rough average of the last three years as well.

I'm sorry, go back.

[Speaker 7] (47:27 - 47:31)
What did you just say about police in fiscal year 23?

[Speaker 4] (47:31 - 47:41)
So the police department has on average for the last three years ended up about 6,700 hours, and they're relatively on target to hit that.

[Speaker 2] (47:41 - 47:43)
So is that a six-month report we're looking at here?

[Speaker 4] (47:43 - 47:43)
Mm-hmm.

[Speaker 2] (47:44 - 47:47)
Okay, so that's 7,400 is double that, right?

[Speaker 4] (47:48 - 47:52)
Yeah, but there's less vacation usage in the early part of the year with the winter.

[Speaker 2] (47:52 - 47:53)
Gotcha.

[Speaker 4] (47:53 - 47:55)
So based off prior trends.

[Speaker 2] (47:55 - 47:56)
Good stuff. Thanks.

[Speaker 4] (48:00 - 49:08)
And then personal time used, you can see a little bit of a trickle down from 2020 forward. That was because some of the personal days were negotiated away in collective bargaining, but we don't see an issue with personal time being a driver for this in either department. Next slide.

This is just an overview of the compensated days off in the collective bargaining for the police department. It's vacation, longevity days, personal days, float comp, sick bereavement. This is the maximum potential that any person can take off that they earn in one year.

This is not indicative of what they have actually taken off. So on average, the average person has 55 days that they can potentially take off as compensated days off in the year. Not all of these would trigger overtime because if the captain is out on vacation, there is not a captain backfill in the police department, I don't believe.

[Speaker 2] (49:09 - 49:14)
So what happens, what's carried over year to year and what's not carried over year to year?

[Speaker 4] (49:14 - 49:26)
Sick time is carried over year to year, and there is a portion of the vacation that can be carried over from year to year. Personal days carried over year to year? Personal days are use it or lose it within the year.

Okay.

[Speaker 5] (49:31 - 49:34)
On the sick carryover, is that 100% carryover?

[Speaker 4] (49:34 - 49:45)
Yep, you're allowed to carry. Sick time is carried as long as you're an active employee and it is either dissolved if you resign or it is payable upon retirement or death.

[Speaker 10] (49:46 - 49:47)
Is it capped?

[Speaker 4] (49:48 - 49:50)
The payout at the end is.

[Speaker 5] (49:50 - 49:52)
What is the cap?

[Speaker 4] (49:53 - 50:07)
It is paid out at 20% of their average daily pay, and I want to say it's capped at 250 days, but I may be slightly off on that. It's different in every contract.

[Speaker 5] (50:08 - 50:10)
So it's 20% of average daily?

[Speaker 4] (50:10 - 50:11)
Mm-hmm.

[Speaker 2] (50:15 - 50:25)
So I'm sorry, I appreciate that not all the days are used, but did you, I just want to make sure I have the fact correct. The average paid time off in the police department according to this chart is 55 days?

[Speaker 4] (50:25 - 50:29)
No, that's the average that they can take off, not the actual usage.

[Speaker 2] (50:29 - 50:41)
No, no, no, I understand that. Oh, I understand it may not be used, but under the contract, if they wanted to, they could take an average 55 days off a year. Yes.

Correct? Okay. That's all, that's all, I just wanted to make sure I understood that.

[Speaker 8] (50:47 - 51:09)
Yeah, just to clarify on a couple of things up there, I mean, it says potentially 55, the bereavement days are very rarely used. In my 25-year career, I've been in bereavement twice. So the four across the board is very unlikely to get used.

If I'm understanding the 17 admin days, I think that's the compensation payment for people that work the five days?

[Speaker 4] (51:09 - 51:11)
Yeah, we took that out of, for the average on that.

[Speaker 8] (51:11 - 51:15)
Okay, because, yeah, that's, those aren't 17 days off that we get.

[Speaker 2] (51:15 - 51:21)
Right, so can you, so I'm sorry, so say what you said, because I don't, you guys are speaking, I'm asking.

[Speaker 8] (51:21 - 51:24)
The four at the top of everybody's bereavement, that's. No, no, I understand.

[Speaker 4] (51:24 - 51:37)
The light blue, where it's 17 for four people, are admin days. Yep. That is something that is paid out and is not actually days off that they use, so that is not calculated in the average of 55.

[Speaker 2] (51:37 - 51:41)
So the 55, the average of 55 did not include the 17 for those five people.

[Speaker 8] (51:42 - 51:43)
Yeah, those aren't days off.

[Speaker 3] (51:43 - 51:48)
No, no, I'm sorry, to you, I'm sorry. Okay, thanks. Did not.

Did not.

[Speaker 4] (51:48 - 51:49)
It's not included in the average.

[Speaker 3] (51:50 - 51:54)
What are admin days? No, that has been, I'm confused about that.

[Speaker 13] (51:54 - 51:55)
Me too.

[Speaker 8] (51:56 - 52:08)
This contract provides for a four and two schedule. Anybody that doesn't work a four and two schedule, like a five and two or something like that, they get compensated, basically paid for the work they work in addition to the hours that you would work on a five and two.

[Speaker 2] (52:08 - 52:13)
Do you mind, I'm sorry, can you, do you mind just going back and explaining what a four and two, a five and two is?

[Speaker 8] (52:13 - 52:13)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (52:13 - 52:16)
Because there's people listening that maybe haven't gone through this before.

[Speaker 8] (52:17 - 52:39)
Yeah, absolutely. So our contract provides, most of our offices work a schedule that's four days on, two days off, four days on, two days off. Yep.

That adds up to a certain amount of days over the course of the year. If you work a five and two or some sort of other alternative schedule, you work on average 17 more days than the contract provides for, and there's a compensation payment that goes out every three months to cover that.

[Speaker 14] (52:39 - 52:40)
Okay.

[Speaker 8] (52:42 - 52:49)
So it's not time off. The admin person technically works 17 more days than the contract patrol provides for.

[Speaker 2] (52:50 - 52:58)
But the, my clarification point was it's not, that 17 days wasn't even included in the 55 average number is what Amy's saying.

[Speaker 14] (52:59 - 52:59)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (52:59 - 54:12)
So I just, I'm just going to say this out loud because I think it's worth saying out loud. 55 days of paid time out on average is amazing, and there isn't anybody that wouldn't want that. That's 11 weeks, and if we took bereavement out, it's 10 weeks.

They're average. I know no one that wouldn't want that, and I'm just saying that that is, and I think we just, as we just talk about overtime and the contract, I think David started asking a question about how we backfill. Backfill isn't one-to-one, right?

Our costs are not one-to-one, right? We're paying the person to be out. We're paying someone to be in.

We're paying them overtime many times, and we're paying them potentially a stepped-up salary because they're filling a sergeant role when they're a patrolman or something of that nature. And so sometimes, and, you know, I just, to flush that out just to, this is not natural to us, so we have to relearn it every time we talk about it. But that, I think, starts going to why the overtime can snowball.

And I think, but I'm just going to take the position it starts from 55 PTO on average is an amazing number. And so I just, it doesn't matter the rest. That alone is an amazing number, and that's going to cost us.

[Speaker 1] (54:12 - 56:15)
Peter, I think it's important to say, look, these are among the most difficult jobs, and, you know, having some time off really is important. But when we did a study of 12 different collective bargaining contracts a few years ago, we did recognize that time in Swampstoot was a little higher than number of peer communities. And so I think the important thing that we have to just recognize is that we have a collective bargaining contract that has been negotiated over decades that include, I think, a fair amount of time.

Some of that time does accrue pretty quickly in terms of vacation. Those 35 days off after 20 years, you know, that's a lot of time. That's seven days per week as opposed to five.

You know, that's not really unusual when you look at police contracts, but it is, you know, two additional days per week. And then when you start to add on some of the additional compensated days, including comp time, it does start to create some additional overtime. And I think the other issue that we have to kind of just recognize is how does that time get taken, and how do we actually control how that time affects overtime?

And so really understanding that, right after a number of contracts that were negotiated that addressed this minimum manning standard that really had a contract say, this contract is going to govern the standard for how we staff. And what we've done over the last two contract cycles is say, hey, we're going to go back to thinking about the contract in terms of public safety, working with our chief and working with the police administration to think more carefully about how does the budget really get impacted by the use of this time and the management of this time.

[Speaker 2] (56:15 - 56:21)
So can you just give an example? You just mentioned something about how the time is taken. Can you give an example?

[Speaker 1] (56:22 - 56:35)
I'll ask the chief to explain. So, chief, if you have an officer that has court time, goes to court, and instead of taking overtime, what happens?

[Speaker 7] (56:36 - 56:38)
They can put in for training comp time.

[Speaker 1] (56:38 - 56:42)
Right. And so when can they use that time?

[Speaker 7] (56:46 - 56:47)
You're saying when they can pay off?

[Speaker 1] (56:47 - 56:52)
When would they be able to use that comp time once they accrue it?

[Speaker 7] (56:53 - 57:04)
Well, typically, and Captain Cable might be able to answer this better, but typically when they accrue enough time and the schedule allows for them to take the day off, they can use the comp time.

[Speaker 2] (57:05 - 57:05)
Can you just go?

[Speaker 1] (57:06 - 57:44)
You might just answer the question. It's my understanding they can take that time whenever they choose. There's very little restriction in terms of what the contract says when they can use that.

If they want to take a day off, they can take a day off. If they want to take a day off that creates overtime, they can take a shift. And that ultimately creates more of a financial cost.

For instance, in other communities in the North Shore, you cannot take compensatory time if it creates overtime. In Swampskip, we can take, officers can take that compensatory time.

[Speaker 7] (57:44 - 57:47)
Captain Cable can talk about it more in depth than I can.

[Speaker 8] (57:51 - 58:45)
So it would be difficult to dive into everything. We have a really complex system that prioritizes how we grant our time off and who can take what off at any given time. We do have some restrictions in the comp time.

There was an agreement a few years ago between the union and the town about most of these things that govern how it's handled. But generally, training comp time, we can restrict it if it's going to create overtime, unless that would prevent the officer from being able to take the time off. By our current standard of four, with most of our shifts staffed at four, we would be telling people that they can't use their time off.

So by that standard, yes, most people, we don't restrict it in any special way. If we're fully staffed and we have six people and we have a minimum of four and somebody wants to take comp, that's when we would start to implement restrictions. But right now, if we were to restrict people to not creating overtime, it would allow them to not use it.

[Speaker 1] (58:46 - 59:33)
And again, my intent here is not to really get into negotiation about how we use this time. It's just to highlight, hey, these are past practices. We have these systems.

We've got a budget problem, and we've got to start thinking about ways that we can help solve some of these fiduciary responsibilities. I do think, frankly, we have a long historical practice. We've got to work with some of these systems.

We have to look at ways that we can find some efficiencies. But it's just important to recognize all of the time that ultimately impacts overtime.

[Speaker 2] (59:33 - 1:01:34)
So I appreciate you saying that. Sorry, Neil. I appreciate you saying that because it's really important for people to understand we're having this conversation so we understand it.

There may be things we like or don't like, but this is not normal. Unless you do, like Captain Cable said, this is unique. It's complicated.

Unless you do it, you don't do it. And this is not things that in the private sector you have comparable experience with. And so we're trying to understand it, and it takes me to 2018.

In 2018, we had a financial summit, and the finance committee chair at that point did a cost-to-contract analysis, which was really the first time I experienced something very detailed. I think Mary Ellen was there, but I don't know about anybody else. Sean, you were there.

And kind of went with it to try and break it down, just to tell us what were the things that are more expensive or not more. It is what it is. It's just trying to help us do it.

And I would encourage us to get back to that and bring that presentation forward just to understand because some things have changed, and some things are better, and that's a tribute and credit to you and the union and the chiefs now and formerly and the captain in doing it there. But I think bringing that whole analysis forward for us, and the police particularly, just because that one's a bit more complicated than even the fire. The fire is complicated more so than DPW.

But I think it's really important, and I want people to hear that these questions are about understanding it. We'll have opinions, and I'll share an opinion. I don't like overtime.

I don't like budgets being busted because in municipal government, it just takes away from another service. It's not like we can just make more revenue. It just takes away from something else.

So when we hear the school department this time of year regularly talk about how the select board and the town administrator are starving the school department, we're not. We just have to feed other mouths, too. The finance committee, the town administrator, Amy, Patrick have to feed all these mouths.

And so every time we bust a budget, we're just taking something away from somewhere else, and that's all. It's not ñ it really isn't personal. It's about trying to minimize that damage because it is damage.

Thanks, Neal.

[Speaker 14] (1:01:34 - 1:01:34)
Sorry.

[Speaker 5] (1:01:35 - 1:03:00)
Neal, just a couple things. I just want to remind everyone, these are contracts that were negotiated between the town and the unions. These were not the unions negotiating contract on their own, the town.

These were mutual agreements, and that's something we always have to really keep in mind. The other thing is making sure that we write a good budget, a good, clear budget is really important. And the third thing is I think that we should be doing cost of contracts yearly on every union so that we really understand both the select board, finance committee, school committee.

You really understand what the expenses are, and the unions understand what they're getting. Just to make it very clear because there's just a little bit too much confusion out there at times, and putting a little light on everything and getting people educated is a good thing. And there's been a lot of work done on buying out contracts and making negotiations and changing things to adjust what had been done in the past.

Being on the finance committee, I thought that you did a really good job working those out. I think the unions did a really good job working it out. The unions came to an agreement just recently.

The fire union came to an agreement just recently on how to deal with overtime, and those are positive things.

[Speaker 3] (1:03:04 - 1:03:12)
Thanks, Peter and Mary Ellen. I think it's safe to say we all agree with those positions and thoughts, so it's important to say.

[Speaker 14] (1:03:14 - 1:03:15)
Amy.

[Speaker 4] (1:03:15 - 1:03:55)
One slide left. One slide left. And it's the summary next step slide.

So we are going to continue to work with the police and fire department and the chiefs to address the overtime challenges. If needed, the town administrator will work with the unions to explore ways to control costs, and then we'll continue to evaluate the CBAs for opportunities to find ways for greater financial stability.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:59 - 1:04:51)
Thanks, Amy. I do want to just underscore the importance of working with the unions. Mary Ellen, I appreciate your point about these are contracts that the town has negotiated with the unions.

They have had a seat at the table. Oftentimes, you know, they have some of the best ideas about how we can be more efficient. They deal with the day-to-day responsibilities of providing public safety, and if there are data-driven ways for us to really look at staffing or other things, calls for service, things that really help us not only meet public safety responsibilities but also staff in ways that really support a more efficient and more responsive public safety function.

We ought to take advantage of those opportunities.

[Speaker 7] (1:04:52 - 1:06:03)
I'd like to say something to Amy's point. You know, she's talking about looking at the CBAs and coming to the table, and I just want to take this moment to talk about something that's been weighing on me for the past 11 months. I'm deeply concerned about the relationship between town hall members of the police department and the members of the union.

I think that there's a strained relationship that needs to be repaired. I think that by doing this and bringing everybody together that we will be able to lower our overtime costs. We will be able to mitigate some of these effects of our rising costs.

I say that as part of town hall leadership, that I want to be part of this change. I want to be part of the solution here, and this is not to point fingers at Sean, because I work closely with Sean or the union. I just want us to come together and meet at the table and see how we can lower our costs.

I think in the end we all want the same for our community, and I think that that's important for all of us.

[Speaker 3] (1:06:08 - 1:06:09)
Thanks, Chief.

[Speaker 5] (1:06:09 - 1:07:11)
We talked about this on January 11th. We were here, and a couple of us made comments about just having more communication and talking. I am going to speak out here as a select board member.

I don't have a problem sitting, and I would prefer an executive session talking with you, Sean, the union. I don't care who it is, but I don't like seeing division or misunderstandings or negativity out there without having an opportunity just to have a conversation. If the union wants to be upset, put something on Facebook about me, then go for it.

But having a conversation, I think, is the best thing that we can do. So I do support it. I don't know if anybody else here supports it.

I know you mentioned you supported it that night on the 11th, but I would like to see some of this stuff go away, to be honest with you.

[Speaker 7] (1:07:12 - 1:07:51)
And I do hope you understand that. We've made some amazing strides. I am absolutely proud to be here.

I'm proud to be the chief. I think that we can continue to, and maybe that's my pie-in-the-sky thinking, but I really do think that we can make some more amazing changes. We've gone so far from even when I came here as the chief on March 28th.

I've seen so many good things that have been happening for our community as a whole, and I think that we need to continue. We need to stay on that path. And I don't mean to at all sound Debbie Downer-ish.

I really do believe in what I'm saying.

[Speaker 1] (1:07:53 - 1:10:57)
I just want to say, look, look to me. I've been an agent of change, and I have made it important to understand that we can't do everything without making a few really important changes. For me, it's all about balance.

The issues that we have worked on over the last few years are the most difficult that any community will deal with in any city or town in our country. Trying to build a more inclusive, trying to be a more 21st century public safety function is complicated. It is about real change.

It's not about rhetoric. It's not about speeches. It's about making changes, and we're making them.

We're one of the first communities in the Commonwealth to put body cameras on our public safety officers. Something everybody can celebrate. Was it easy?

No. Absolutely almost impossible. Frustrating and angry conversations, folks that feel like somehow we're doing something awful or, you know, unnecessary, but, you know, frankly, we're doing it.

And, yeah, it's hard. And, yes, changing civil service has been very, very upsetting for many, many people, including myself, but we got through it. We got through it because it was absolutely necessary for us to do something that was incredibly important.

Conflict and challenges and change, they all go hand in hand. You can't do any of this without bearing the burden of some of the frustrations. What I want most of all is for folks to get away from the us and them, get away from pointing to Sean, you know, or pointing to the union.

Like, it's not Sean or the union or the chief. It's us. Start talking about us as a group of dedicated, elected, and appointed officials that have a responsibility to build a better future.

We have a wonderful police department. We have a wonderful fire department. We have a wonderful town, but it's complicated.

We have budgets that are strained. We have staff that work every day to try to make these numbers line up. And we have local officials that have a responsibility, fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers that they need every single day.

And we've got to just continue to come together and deal with the facts. I am more focused than ever to try to make sure that we do all these things correctly and forthrightly. I am available at any point, though, to sit down and listen.

I've been trying to listen for months, trying to get into a room with folks to listen, but even that seems to be elusive. I would like to suggest that folks really kind of make a redoubled effort to do that, besides, you know, suggesting, you know, who might be at fault.

[Speaker 10] (1:10:59 - 1:12:27)
I just think that the rhetoric across a lot of these departments and town hall has been and will continue to be us and them, unless we have an open discussion about why it's not us and them. And it's difficult to have that conversation in, like, thinly veiled analogies and not be, like, truly open about it. And it's especially difficult for someone who's new to the board to have a conversation about it, because you don't know if you're going to step on a landmine accidentally when you bring something up or a suggestion or a, why is it like this?

Because you literally are walking into something that has been happening for years, decades even. And so it becomes a difficult position for us to be in to ask those questions openly and not feel like, am I going to say something that somebody's going to judge me for, or should I know the answer to this? And a very simple observation, like, more communication in a way that people are receptive to it, seems like the only answer right now, because we've gone down all these other paths and we haven't gotten to a place of people understanding each other as we think we're communicating it to them.

So my suggestion would be to somehow have the lines of communication open in a real way with not just the same five people at the table, because it doesn't seem like that's coming to a good space. And I don't know, I'm open to other suggestions.

[Speaker 2] (1:12:27 - 1:17:54)
I appreciate what you're saying. But I'm going to come at it a little differently. There is an inherent and natural tension when it comes to employer-employee, especially when it comes to contracts and negotiations.

And I will tell you something's drastically changed in the last year than before the last year. I'm a firm believer that there is a chain of command. And there's a chain of command for a reason.

If everyone feels as though they can go around anyone, then no one is in the chain of command. And so that does put some handcuffs on conversations. And so at times, look it.

Chief, your officers are your responsibility. And when they go around and they talk to select board members about personnel issues, if I was chief, I wouldn't be happy about it, because that's just saying that you're not relevant in the conversation, in my view. Here, if we go around Sean's back to you, Sean shouldn't be happy about it, because it's saying that he's not relevant in the conversation.

We all have roles, and so at times it presents awkwardness. I probably more than anybody else lost more friends that are town employees that don't talk to me, that actually have said incredibly ridiculous things to me. Okay, maybe I could have handled things better at times, maybe I could have communicated better, but I wasn't going to be the source of the solution.

And if I was the source of the solution, it would only be temporary, because I would be underwriting the system. I would be solving it in that moment and not investing in the system to solve it. The system is the one that needs to solve it, because that's actually what outlasts our three-year terms, our whimsical little periods of time here.

The system needs to work, and in the last year, the system hasn't been working. And I'll be honest, and to my colleagues here, I've said it before. Employees feel like they can talk to one or more select board members here, and it's not okay.

And we contribute to it when we say, oh, well, I'm going to talk to whoever wants to talk to me. That's fine and well, but that conversation has to include, but you need to go through the chief. You need to go through the town administrator.

You need to go through the fire chief, the rec director, the DPW director. That has to be part of the conversation. Sean is charged with negotiating the contract.

Chief, you are charged with advocating for your force and what you need and being accountable. This chief, too. Both chiefs, sorry.

You just happen to be in my line of sight. And Sean's responsible for negotiating contracts and being accountable to us, right? I mean, we all have these things, and so I just ask us to remind ourselves of that role.

That's not happening right now. The union feels very empowered to talk to select board members, and I'm saying it plural because I don't want to call out anyone, but that can't happen because that undermines the chief, and if you think it helps the situation, it does not help the situation. The reason, and Sean has said it as well.

Sean doesn't want it. We were all supposed to sign a handbook committing to those guides. I don't know if we all signed the handbook committing to those rules, but we all signed a handbook or were supposed to sign a handbook committing to that.

I would ask the select board. This is what we really can do. Redouble that effort.

Let you all figure it out. We are going to have opinions, and we have to express our voices because that's our role. Our role is different than your all's role, and we are doing a disservice to you.

We're doing a disservice to all of you when we, out of the chain of command, are having conversations, but we also need you all to enforce the chain of command, and I hope you don't take any disrespect by me saying that when people go outside the chain of command, it is disrespectful to you and you and you, and that includes stuff that we do sometimes, and we can't be party to that. The other thing I would say is that I appreciate that we want to have harmonious conversations, and some of these conversations are very difficult, but that conversation can't prevent us from having a dialogue about tough and complicated things. We talk about race, and what's the first thing that's said back?

Why are you calling me racist? We talk about money, and then we say, Why are you calling us greedy? And same thing conversely, right?

They say things, or you say things, or anybody says things, and we instinctively are defensive about it. We have to, and to Katie's point exactly, we don't as a result of our concern about it. We don't spend more time in these meetings just rolling up our sleeves, sitting around a table saying, Help us really understand these numbers.

Help everybody that's listening at home understand these numbers. I'm understanding them better, but I'm eight years in, and I still don't understand them, right? And so how can we do that?

But we've got to be able to have these dialogues, and without the defensiveness, without it being that we're attacking each other, and we've all been responsible for that, amongst the many. So I don't say that and exclude myself in any way, but I do want to make sure that we can have those conversations. They're not happening right now because of the awkwardness, because of the political volatility.

It's because, frankly, there's too many conversations going on behind the scenes, and people are feeling empowered that that is okay, and that's on all sides. And so that just, frankly, needs to stop and let you all do what you guys are good at doing, and then we'll do what we're good at doing and play our roles.

[Speaker 3] (1:17:58 - 1:18:07)
Can we ask questions about stats and overtime and stuff? Sure, if there's nothing else on that. We sure can.

[Speaker 2] (1:18:10 - 1:19:12)
So I guess I just wanted to give the chiefs a chance to talk about, I guess, I mean, a couple of things. To Chief Archer, I guess, to really understand, like, look, people being out on long-term sick time is what it is, right? I mean, are there tools that we're going into the fiscal year 24 budget, right?

I mean, are there tools, are there things that we need to, reasons that we should be talking to the unions about things, because we can't wait three years for change. There are things that we need to do. I do appreciate what the town administrator said, that we paid a very significant amount of money to make a contract concession.

I also understand that that contract concession may not be wholeheartedly being accepted yet, and so we have work to do there. But are there other things that we should be thinking about and knowing about, again, not to negotiate publicly, but just to sensitize us to things that you think are going to make it easier for you, both financially and substantively in terms of public safety, to do what you need to do?

[Speaker 6] (1:19:13 - 1:22:45)
Sure. The most recent contract did provide some flexibility on ways to address the overtime and sort of dial it back, especially in the winter period, primarily in the winter period. To answer your question, yes, I think there should be, without getting into complex contract negotiations, I think we might need to look at some adjustments when we go back to the table for our next CBA on some, because right now there are very limited tools that we have to address long-term sick leave.

On the other hand, this year really is an anomaly. I think even the union leadership would agree with me. The number of long-term sick leave we've dealt with this year is, I don't remember having dealt with this number in the past.

I think sometimes in some ways our hiring can be cyclical. Sometimes we'll have, not always, we'll hire ones and twos here and there, but every once in a while we'll have like a bumper crop, and there will be a cluster of people that are hired around the same age at the same time, and they'll track the same career arc, and they'll get to the end of their career around the same time. I think some of the driver of this anomalous year is a cluster of that age of people that are sort of getting towards the end, more prone to using sick time.

So that's one of the reasons why this year is unusual. I'd be surprised if we had another year where I had a half dozen people on long-term sick. I can't say, I can't promise you it wouldn't happen, but even if we don't have a half dozen, even if it's half that number, I think this year has highlighted that there probably should be some further mechanisms to reevaluate how we're going to deal with people that are out for really extended periods of time.

That's not saying, you know, if we have a person that's, you know, all of these people that have been out sick have dedicated a lot of years to the town, you know, I think we owe them support and coverage, you know, if they are, you know, whether injured on the job or off, but certainly if injured on the job, we owe them, you know, dedication and coverage to whatever it takes to get them back. But if it is a situation where they're not likely to come back or they've indicated they're not coming back, we might need to have a conversation about what the exit strategy is going to be, and it might not be, you know, just continuing month on month on month on month until they run out of time and then retire. So, yeah, so the short answer to your question is yes, I think.

You know, at some point we're going to sit across the table from the union when we're negotiating amongst benefits and lots of other things. We're going to talk about how do we address these really, you know, unusual, rare, but super expensive long-term vacancies.

[Speaker 1] (1:22:46 - 1:23:30)
I do just want to add, you know, we've been fortunate. If we kind of look at the changes that we've made over the last few years with the help of the unions, it's probably been the most significant changes that you've seen in any collective bargaining contract across the commonwealth. These are huge changes.

Minimum manning, civil service, and nothing would have been possible without the help of the union. And so I think it's important for us to just recognize it is a two-way street. We've got to try to figure out how to continue to be at that table.

These financial realities that we have to face are complicated, and we need some help trying to address these.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:31 - 1:23:52)
Can I just ask something about this? Maybe you can put the presentation back up. On the overtime costs and overtime hours, and this may be more of a question for Sean and Amy.

You know, I don't know what number it is, Diane, but if you just...

[Speaker 10] (1:23:52 - 1:23:54)
13 is overtime costs.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:55 - 1:24:02)
Yeah, both of them illustrate, I think, what I'm... So it seems to me... Yeah, that one's...

[Speaker 10] (1:24:03 - 1:24:04)
And the next one.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:04 - 1:24:07)
That one's okay.

[Speaker 10] (1:24:08 - 1:24:08)
Nope.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:08 - 1:24:09)
Nope.

[Speaker 10] (1:24:11 - 1:24:13)
Nope. Wrong way.

[Speaker 13] (1:24:15 - 1:24:17)
Backwards one way. Nope, you're going the wrong way.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:17 - 1:24:19)
You're going the wrong way, sorry.

[Speaker 10] (1:24:19 - 1:24:20)
There it is.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:20 - 1:25:36)
Stop. That's good. Yeah, that one's good, too.

They're both showing similar things, which is overtime costs and overtime hours. So I'm just... Like, I appreciate the anomalous year that we're experiencing, especially with the sick-outs, and I also appreciate that it sounds like both departments are being proactive and doing what you can within the framework of what you have, the tools you have available, and your responsibilities to public safety and everything else.

I'm just... What I'm trying to understand is the cost that we're seeing, is this over $100,000 for each department, is that a function of us budgeting for less overtime this year, even though the trends show us that? Like, what are we not doing that we thought we were anticipating we would be doing to control these costs?

Because when we budgeted for it, were we too aggressive? Like, are we looking at that and saying, you know what, it actually... We can't budget that much less because it feels like we're over because we budgeted for less, but we're on trend for the last few years.

[Speaker 10] (1:25:36 - 1:26:09)
This was my exact question, which is, how can we say that the budget is not the issue instead of the overtime being the issue? Because it's consistently over by similar amounts. So the question I was thinking is, how is it able to be mitigated within the budget?

Is some of this actually paid for out of the budget? And we're not seeing that here. Peter, stop shaking your head every time I ask a question, please.

Every time I ask a question.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:15 - 1:26:41)
So both very good questions. I actually asked the finance team a few weeks ago to run some analysis to see if we can fully fund overtime and just all of the compensated overtime for each department. So, Amy, you ran those numbers.

Can you just kind of report out what we were able to discern with that?

[Speaker 4] (1:26:42 - 1:27:16)
Yeah, so we were able to determine that for the police department, had we budgeted for all of the compensated time off and all of the mandatory training, then our overtime budget was a little shy on that by about $50,000. For the fire department, had we not had the long-term sick outs, which is not something we anticipate at budget time, then the fire department budget was sufficient for all of the compensated time off.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:17 - 1:28:19)
So we tried to prove that out in the sense that we knew that this year we budgeted the police department a little shy because we knew that we were going to be implementing some staffing changes with the approval of the language to leave civil service and ultimately remove that minimum manning standard that we could predicate some financial savings. But we didn't really see enough about how that time would be used and how that time would ultimately impact overtime. And so we're learning as well.

We're seeing patterns. We're seeing things that really can help us be more efficient. And we're asking, I think, more complicated questions about, you know, how we can mitigate the overall financial impact of the operating budget.

[Speaker 2] (1:28:20 - 1:30:16)
But isn't it an and, not an or, though? Because, again, I just want to go back, and I'll forward it to those that don't have it, the cost of contract presentation from 2018 just identified areas where our systems are generous. And so, again, it is what it is.

And to Mary Ellen's point, there's generations before professional town government, even once we had professional town government, that negotiated contracts that were agreed to, right? But that doesn't mean that they're sustainable, especially if we're trying to stabilize tax growth and limit tax growth, that we have to address some of those things because we can't keep on growing even year over year at what the contracts say without having some contracts cost exponentially more than other contracts. And therefore, again, it's just the dollar is taken from somewhere else.

And so I think it's an or. You need to budget properly, right, to make sure we do that. But at the same time, you need to keep doing what you've been doing, which is saying, what are the mechanisms that are just not sustainable?

And how do we keep doing it? Well, making sure we maintain public safety where public safety should be maintained. And the truth is there are just departments that, and the school department's one of those departments.

So we're talking public safety, and I think the school department's one, that just the inherent expense is both unpredictable and the mandates pushed down on the town are significant. So it always outpaces revenue, right? It will always outpace revenue.

And so we keep asking the school department, what more can you do? What more can you do? And they've really been working hard on that.

But the reality is that's always going to outpace. And same thing with public safety contracts. Our town's not unique.

It's just where are we an outlier? Let's examine that. And where can we do things better, I think.

So I think it's just an and on that. But I do appreciate the question. We do need to make sure we're budgeting to not create problems, right?

Not that we did, but we've got to just make sure that we're.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:17 - 1:31:56)
Yeah, I agree. I think, frankly, we have a budget that's been predicated on a financial policy that was approved by the select board finance committee and school committee a few years ago, endorsed and supported by town staff as well, because we were trying to build up financial reserves. We were trying to help the town get into a financial position to get our bond rating sustained, to do a lot of macro financing.

Now, many of the department heads don't really, they don't worry about all of these macro fiduciary responsibilities. They worry about their budget. And I don't expect them to kind of always appreciate all these complexities.

But Swampskate has done an absolute fantastic job dealing with these macro financial responsibilities. If you look at other communities, you know, with Proposition 2.5 overrides and other challenges, just for operating budgets, you know, they're all facing financial challenges. We're trying to stabilize the impact.

Yeah, I've presented budgets. Every budget I've presented over the last six years has had less in it than any of the department heads would really have wanted. And it's a frustrating part of our financial discipline that we're trying to be more efficient.

And that's going to continue to be part of our reality. But it's driving some really important changes. And it's certainly creating a lot of interesting conversations with the Finance Committee.

[Speaker 5] (1:31:57 - 1:32:07)
Can I ask, Amy, can you just tell me, these are your year-to-dates on the 2018, 2019? These are all year-to-dates that I'm looking at in front of me?

[Speaker 4] (1:32:08 - 1:32:08)
Full years.

[Speaker 5] (1:32:08 - 1:32:18)
Full years. And what's the budget going to be for both lease and fire? What did you say the end number was for overtime?

[Speaker 4] (1:32:19 - 1:32:33)
So what they're projected to end at is for the entirety of their personnel budget. Because we only go based off the legal line. Because if there's savings and vacancies or overages and other staffing lines.

[Speaker 5] (1:32:34 - 1:32:39)
So did you budget $452,000 for their overtime on lease?

[Speaker 4] (1:32:40 - 1:32:57)
I can pull up what's budgeted. We have $365,000, $17,000, $6,000, $18,000, $82,000. So, yeah, we budgeted more than $465,000.

[Speaker 5] (1:32:57 - 1:32:59)
Do you know what the number is?

[Speaker 4] (1:33:00 - 1:33:19)
Let me. The total overtime.

[Speaker 8] (1:33:20 - 1:33:21)
$365,000 for this year.

[Speaker 4] (1:33:22 - 1:33:25)
No, that's just one line of the overtime. There's five overtime lines.

[Speaker 1] (1:33:25 - 1:33:30)
We put the overtime out into court time and all sorts of other categories.

[Speaker 8] (1:33:31 - 1:33:43)
Most of those training and court times are non-discretionary to us. So they're stuff that we are unable to impact. If we're summonsed to court, we go to court.

If we have mandated training, we go to training. So people would probably assume that there's some flexibility in there.

[Speaker 4] (1:33:43 - 1:33:50)
Yeah, so there's $490,000 amongst all five of the overtime lines in place.

[Speaker 5] (1:33:51 - 1:34:27)
So the 2023 budget, they have $490,000. $490,000 is their budget. And the year before, they spent almost $910,000.

And the year before that, they spent almost $906,000. And the year before that, it was $652,000. So that's a significant lower number.

And on the fire, I don't even want to address fire. But I think better budgeting is needed to really look at what's actually going on and what the needs are.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:27 - 1:34:28)
Better or more?

[Speaker 5] (1:34:28 - 1:34:28)
More.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:29 - 1:34:51)
Yeah. Again, I'm just going to go back. We're not going to be able to make the financial policy work if we simply say more.

I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation with department heads where they absolutely want more staff. They want more.

[Speaker 5] (1:34:52 - 1:34:55)
We're talking safety here. We're just talking safety.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:55 - 1:34:56)
I'm talking safety all the time.

[Speaker 5] (1:34:56 - 1:35:04)
I don't want to see two police officers driving around protecting Swanscott. And I want to make sure.

[Speaker 1] (1:35:04 - 1:35:06)
I don't think anybody suggested we'd have police officers.

[Speaker 5] (1:35:06 - 1:35:54)
I know that there's specific mandates for the fire department, that the fire department has to have a certain amount of individuals on each apparatus. So you don't have really any flexibility in there, except for in the winter. And that only has to do with in the event your overtime budget is being blown up.

Then you present an analysis. And then you go from there. And then there's also the issue of training.

And now that we have post involved, I'm just wondering how does the training overtime affect this budget? And was that considered last year when you were doing the numbers? So those are things that I want to know.

It just seems like...

[Speaker 8] (1:35:54 - 1:36:06)
I can answer the second one. In the transition from last year to this year, the budget this year was based off of last year's number. And that was still at the end of the pandemic.

Most of our training was conducted online. They hadn't gone back to in person.

[Speaker 5] (1:36:06 - 1:36:06)
Okay.

[Speaker 8] (1:36:06 - 1:36:44)
So for instance, our in service was a two day online, which is mandated by the state. Has become a four day in person plus medical, which makes it a fifth day. So we're already, our training line in our budget was at 88,000.

And we project out our mandatory training that we have no discretion in is closer to about 130. So just the training line alone came into the year. I think based off projections, it was worked off of last year's numbers, which was reasonable.

But the world changed. And so we started off the year about 30%, I think, under what we would need just to meet our legal obligations.

[Speaker 5] (1:36:45 - 1:36:49)
Were you involved in the budget last year?

[Speaker 14] (1:36:50 - 1:36:50)
No.

[Speaker 5] (1:36:50 - 1:36:57)
No. Chief... So we had...

You weren't involved in the budget. Who did the budget last year then from the police department? Mostly you and Chief Curtis.

[Speaker 4] (1:36:58 - 1:36:59)
Yep. And a little bit with Angelica.

[Speaker 5] (1:37:00 - 1:37:00)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:00 - 1:37:27)
I was in a meeting or two. Can I... Sons, can I just say something?

I just want to ask some questions. Did I miss some point tonight that you said that you have to reduce your staffing to two members per shift, Chief Quesada? I know.

So you didn't. Has that actually been a dialogue that you've had with the town administrator that you need to reduce staffing? I don't know about that.

All right. And I think even in hypotheticals, we haven't once talked about staffing levels. The town administrator has not once tonight talked about staffing levels.

So for any board member to say, well, I don't want to see it going down to two, we all agree.

[Speaker 5] (1:37:27 - 1:37:27)
Good.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:28 - 1:37:31)
We all don't want to. But... And again, for your...

[Speaker 5] (1:37:31 - 1:37:35)
If we run out of money... If we run out of money in a budget, that's going to be a concern.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:36 - 1:40:07)
Your years in the finance committee tell you that you know that we cannot, under state law, we'll never run out of money because we can't not fund our liabilities. It just means that we have to go to town meeting and do one of two things. Reallocate from other line items and take away from other programs or ask town meeting for more taxes.

So to just profess a question, which implies that we are even contemplating reducing public safety is a misnomer and I think just unfortunate because that is not the conversation. I have not sat in a single meeting with the town administrator, police chief or the fire chief, and you've talked to more of them so maybe you've heard it, where I've heard a single person tell me that we don't have sufficient public safety, that our residents are at risk. I think what we're talking about here is budget.

And if Sean hadn't budgeted and Amy hadn't budgeted the way, we wouldn't be here tonight talking about it. Before our fiscal year 24 budget comes about how, if we just keep increasing year over year, it's not sustainable. And so the fact is this budgeting technique is what creates this conversation tonight, which is awesome.

We're actually having a conversation before the fiscal year 24 budget comes out about public safety. We've never had it. We've never had it.

And so this is not actually about what actual dollars are going there. Your men and women are being paid. Your shifts are being filled.

Your men and women are being paid. Your shifts are being filled. The town administrator is paying the bills.

The town finance director is paying the bills. It's all about saying we have an unsustainable arc. And that's all this is about.

This isn't about staffing. We've never once had the conversation about it. And so I just want to be really careful that we're not even just flippantly saying, well, I don't want to redo staff.

No one's talking about it. We're just saying how do we do what we do well, more financially sustainable, because we're beginning to see how tough it is once we finally have reined in the budget for decades before all of us of problems. We finally have reined it in, and we're now seeing how much tension there's going to be.

Every line item there's going to be this tension. Tonight it's public safety because you're all here, right? And actually Mary Ellen is the one that wanted you all here to have the conversation.

So it's good. We're having the conversation to do it. And so I don't want it to feel like we're picking on you.

A select board member asked to have you here for this conversation tonight, and so it's great that you're here. But we could be talking about DPW. We could be talking about school departments.

As a matter of fact, the school department wants to talk to Sean and all of us as well. So we have the same conversation. But this is not a staffing issue.

Not yet, because we're trying to address the overall macro concern before it becomes a choice between significant tax increases or staffing issues.

[Speaker 8] (1:40:08 - 1:40:41)
May I just answer? When you say two people, I think what you're referring to is generally we are down to two people assigned to the street. We can deploy the third person off the desk, but if we have a prisoner, if we have a number of other things going on, even licensing, fingerprinting or something, we have cut our staffing by 20% this year.

And we are down to two people on the street at most times. Generally a four-person full staff answering the phones, handling business. So I think that's where the disconnect is not communication.

I think this is important.

[Speaker 5] (1:40:41 - 1:41:20)
No one has ever said to me two people. I just, off the top of my head, I said two people. I have had conversations with the town administrator about the possibility of closing, locking the front door and having people out.

So those are things that I do think, thinking outside the box and having conversations. But staying within budgets and living within budgets and keeping us safe, I am going to bring it up. And as far as how much time I speak to police officers or school teachers or DPW, I don't keep track of how many people I talk to during the day.

But, Peter, if you'd like me to keep a stopwatch, I can do that too.

[Speaker 3] (1:41:21 - 1:42:05)
So I just think it's important, I mean, back to the conversation we just had about roles and, you know, I don't, I mean, you just said that there are two people on the street sometimes, and you said you sort of pulled it out as an example. But I don't know that I have an opinion about that because I'm not a public safety expert. So the idea is that we need the chief of the department to be making those recommendations and being secure with what your opinion is and your recommendation.

We can debate all day long about the number of police officers we want driving around in town. And, you know, it's irrelevant. It needs to come from you, and it needs to be worked out, I believe, with the town administrator.

[Speaker 7] (1:42:05 - 1:42:10)
I understand that this is a budget discussion, and so I didn't want to get into, not trying to get into staff.

[Speaker 3] (1:42:10 - 1:42:10)
Sure.

[Speaker 7] (1:42:10 - 1:43:09)
We have run those numbers, and we have done an extensive analysis of when we need officers, at what times, what times are we busiest. We are busiest during the day shift. We start to get busy towards 5 to 10 p.m. And then our officers are also pretty busy in the morning hours from 1 to 2 o'clock in the morning. Now, that could be self-initiated. They're doing building checks. They're doing safety checks in the town.

So that may inflate the, hey, it looks like they're busy, which they are, but not as a response of responding to someone's 911 call. So I have all those numbers I would love to share. In fact, I have a lot of them here.

We try to overachieve and do our own PowerPoint as well, but I don't want to also inundate you with so much information. I knew this is overtime and staff.

[Speaker 3] (1:43:12 - 1:43:20)
Thanks, and I appreciate that you're looking into all those things. My point is that I think you should be the one who's making those decisions and those recommendations.

[Speaker 1] (1:43:20 - 1:46:45)
So I just want to share, look, I actually do like to talk about data-driven analytics. I've probably shared a few e-mails with the chief about, you know, calls for service and the, you know, important responsibility just to study where those needs are. Public safety is important to me.

I'm not just somebody that looks at a budget. I actually want to ensure everybody in this town is safe. I want to make sure that we're constantly thinking about ways to be more innovative when it comes to safety in terms of how we respond to, you know, emerging health or public safety concerns.

We do have a wonderful police department. Patrol does have four, you know, officers that patrol the town every shift, 24-7. They do have to sometimes book people.

They're still working when they're doing that. They're still on the payroll. They're still working.

And, you know, if, you know, there are exits, if they have to prioritize their time, they do. And, you know, it's a good department, and, you know, we're going to meet the needs of the public. I've said to both chiefs at any point if they have to call in staff to meet the public safety demands of the day, just do it.

Call me and let me know later. But public safety is our highest responsibility and priority, and we are going to keep this town safe. It doesn't mean that we don't sit back down and talk about how do we manage the budget.

How do we do that in a way that actually helps us make sure that the school department is going to be successful and the park and recs programs are going to be successful and we're going to be able to keep a steady hand on the average single-family tax bill? All of it is part of a complicated responsibility. There's no easy way to do this, no easy way to have these conversations, but we have them.

We're making progress. I want to get back to the sense of conflict. It may appear to some people that are just watching this that we're having a conflict about budgets.

We're actually working through it, and we're talking about ways to be creative and innovative and thinking more carefully about staffing. I do think we can get better at how we have these conversations. I want to get back to the teamwork.

We have worked really well as a town in solving complicated Gordian Knot problems. How do we meet broader responsibilities in a financially sustainable way? I think we're on the path.

I think we have more complicated conversations to have, but we're fortunate. Both chiefs have taken action over the last six months that have never been taken before in an effort to manage their fiduciary responsibilities. These are big changes and big challenges.

They've had to work with their unions. They've heard some pretty frustrating conversations from members of the union because financially these are significant impacts. We've got to be mindful that change isn't easy.

Change is never, ever easy when it matters most.

[Speaker 3] (1:46:48 - 1:46:54)
Any other questions on this presentation? If not, we can move on to the fiscal 24.

[Speaker 5] (1:46:55 - 1:47:16)
I do want to know when these departments will have full staffing. I question if you're short people. When a firefighter is hired, they can automatically go and start working at the fire department, correct?

[Speaker 6] (1:47:17 - 1:47:17)
Yes.

[Speaker 5] (1:47:17 - 1:47:51)
When a police officer is hired, they have to go to the academy first, unless they're a lateral. If you're short people and you can't use lower entry-level people into your budget, I would think that affects your budget and that affects your overtime. In order to alleviate having to deal with overtime, what is it looking like that you'll be able to have full staffing?

[Speaker 7] (1:47:52 - 1:48:54)
We just started. On October 19th, we opened our new police officer recruit testing. That is closing February 21st.

Right now, we have 30 candidates in the queue. We have approximately 60 individuals who took the test to be Swamp Scout police officers, but only 30 have passed. Once the closing date hits, we will start our review of our candidates.

I think it took about two or three months before the process started of the background checks and everything that's involved with the hiring process. Then, as soon as we can get them into the academy. The academy will take approximately four months.

Take Officer Reeder started the academy on August 1st, 2022. She graduated on January 17th, this month.

[Speaker 5] (1:48:55 - 1:49:01)
She was interviewed in January? Yes. It took from January until when did she start?

[Speaker 7] (1:49:01 - 1:49:08)
January. Oh, a year. She was given her conditional offer in June of 2022.

[Speaker 8] (1:49:13 - 1:50:53)
We know right now with the place that we're at that we won't be able to get anybody done within the next couple months. Which means the current open academies will be closed out. We'll be looking at early summer academies.

Generally, there's a batch that goes in in June, July, and August. If we're able to move quickly, we'll be able to try and get to those academies. That would put us on the same time frame as it was with Officer Reeder.

We'd be looking at January of 2024 as a graduation. Then we have a three-month field training program before they're fully qualified to be on the street. You would take that out and bring that out to about the end of April.

We'd be looking at, if we were successful in hiring off this list, we're looking at about April of 2024 before they would be an impactful person. As the slide showed, our time off is trending down. Sick time is trending down.

I think that the time administrator correctly pointed out that if a person is out in the long-term sick, that's a $40,000 to $60,000 impact. Between long-term sick and vacancies that we haven't been able to fill, we've been short anywhere from three to six positions over the last couple of years. Right now, we say we're down three people, but we're counting Officer Reeder as a person who is not impacting over time.

We're counting somebody that's in the academy that we would be projecting seven, eight months before they can possibly impact us. When you talked about the budget, I think that that budget assumed full staffing. I think that that's where we run into trouble.

We haven't gone through all the numbers with the Chief. That's a problem that's going to persist. It's going to persist until mid-January, I mean mid-2024.

[Speaker 5] (1:50:55 - 1:50:58)
Unless it's a lateral. A lateral can.

[Speaker 8] (1:50:59 - 1:51:15)
A lateral can. Since we're out of civil service, we're no longer available to the civil service lateral system, so basically nobody, frankly, transfers out of civil service. So we're in the limited pool of departments that are outside of civil service and people that basically want to apply to us and go through a process.

[Speaker 7] (1:51:16 - 1:51:24)
I can tell you, though, we do have some laterals in the queue of those 30 individuals. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:25 - 1:53:47)
I just want to make a point that, you know, there are very few years we're not going to have a vacancy, and oftentimes we have several. It just happens. And so we oftentimes kind of think, well, you know, we have a couple of vacancies.

That must be a huge anomaly. But from my perspective, it's not. What really is important for us to understand is that we have had over the last two years nationally an incredible decline in the number of individuals that actually want to apply to be a police officer.

It's not like the fire department. And we've had early retirements. We just had an officer that retired ten years earlier than they were required to, roughly.

And for me, this was the second officer in the last two years that retired significantly earlier than they were required to. And so we're seeing officers across the country retire earlier. And so we're dealing with a few challenges with law enforcement nationally that are affecting us locally in terms of the frustrations that are affecting policing and community policing.

We've talked a little bit about ways to address that. But I do think being out of civil service, we're out of it at the right time, because if you look at civil service and you look at all the challenges in the civil service backlog and the systems frustrations, we can be that much more nimble in terms of how we go out and recruit and try to be more efficient at hiring. I had mentioned a number of times we're going to learn through the process.

We're going to get better at this. We're going to get smarter at it. We're going to find ways to be more efficient and effective.

And I do trust that we have a good team, and we'll be able to figure this out. It's frustrating with the academy, so I really am hopeful that perhaps the state will continue to find ways to expedite the training of these important positions.

[Speaker 13] (1:53:48 - 1:54:05)
So, Chief, of the 60 who took the test who signed up, how does that rank or compare to last year? And, I mean, what were your internal expectations for the numbers of folks that were going to be applying?

[Speaker 7] (1:54:05 - 1:54:12)
I was hoping to meet our at least meet our numbers from last year. How many we had?

[Speaker 8] (1:54:12 - 1:54:15)
Twenty-five? Twenty-seven last year and 30 so far this year.

[Speaker 13] (1:54:16 - 1:54:16)
Okay, 30.

[Speaker 8] (1:54:16 - 1:54:30)
Nationwide, there's been a 60% reduction in applications. So, working with the town administrator, we pointed out some reach-out efforts. We've managed to increase this year over last year.

Nationwide, the trend is dramatically down.

[Speaker 13] (1:54:30 - 1:54:36)
Got it. Got it. And do we expect anyone else to apply in the next five or six days?

[Speaker 7] (1:54:36 - 1:55:13)
I think Ms. Hartman, who is running the testing process for us, said that typically there's about five to ten individuals who could test for our department. Got it. So, we're hopeful that there will be at least five who pass, but I'm never satisfied with 30, but I'm happy that we met and we exceeded last year's numbers.

And, you know, when you look at diversity rates as well, we've exceeded last year's numbers of the candidates.

[Speaker 13] (1:55:13 - 1:55:35)
And then you had talked about laterals and, you know, really the availability, you know. You had mentioned laterals. So, how quickly could we get those laterals, if the laterals are selected to become police officers, how quickly can those officers hit the streets in Swampscot?

Is there a probationary period? How does that work?

[Speaker 7] (1:55:36 - 1:55:59)
We would ensure that they are fully certified with the state to ensure that there's no other requirements that they may need to come into and become a police officer in Swampscot. They would start the field training process immediately. So, they would be on the streets within fully functional after three months.

Got it. Thank you. Sure.

[Speaker 2] (1:56:00 - 1:56:10)
I would like to just, if I can, try and understand. You mentioned that we're kind of out of cycle with the academies. How come we don't do the tests, how come we didn't do the tests sooner, again, in cycle with the academies?

[Speaker 8] (1:56:11 - 1:56:39)
Well, in discussion with the town administrator, it was decided that there was a, out of our cycle last year, one of the pieces of feedback we got was that they wanted to see more sustained in-person reach out to underrepresented groups and such. So, we started the process, as the Chief said, in October. But instead of pulling the list almost immediately, we waited.

And we set a date in February that would give us time to do the reach out that we would directly.

[Speaker 2] (1:56:39 - 1:57:10)
Right. So, just to understand, the town administrator asking you to do greater outreach is the reason you didn't? So, my understanding was that it was maybe your position or somebody that the contract with the unions actually prevent the testing happening more than once a year.

So, I'm actually surprised by your answer because I think we've actually had that conversation publicly here about the fact that there's a contract that, again, so I'm just thrown off by your answer.

[Speaker 8] (1:57:10 - 1:57:28)
So, the policy says as long as there's a viable list, it can remain for a year so that people don't take the exam and we don't say, yeah, two months from now, you've got to retake the exam. So, it is able to be held for a year. We have no viable candidates left on the list.

So, there was nothing restricting us from moving forward. It was absolutely simply just a discussion.

[Speaker 2] (1:57:28 - 1:57:40)
I appreciate that, but if that's the case, then why didn't we, if we had no one left viable on the list instead of continuing to wait and then be out of cycle with the academies, why wouldn't we have done the test earlier?

[Speaker 8] (1:57:41 - 1:57:51)
Well, we couldn't do the test earlier because we had to wait until the list was exhausted and we could get into it and we tried to receive the feedback to understand why the last cycle of hiring didn't quite meet the expectations that we were hoping for.

[Speaker 2] (1:57:51 - 1:57:57)
I read the hiring policy. I'm sorry, Chief, Captain, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I read the hiring policy.

There's nothing that actually requires the list to be exhausted.

[Speaker 8] (1:57:58 - 1:57:59)
What's that?

[Speaker 2] (1:57:59 - 1:58:00)
I read the hiring policy.

[Speaker 8] (1:58:00 - 1:58:07)
We haven't held it because the list needed to be exhausted. We delayed until this point because we were directed to delay.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:07 - 1:59:22)
I actually, I don't think I ever directed you to delay. What I have said was I wanted to see a more robust outreach. I have mentioned many times to Chief Cassata and to Chief Kurz that, frankly, I wanted to advance another test.

And I heard that, you know, there's a concern that there may be some viable candidates. But, frankly, when I heard that we had just a handful of candidates, I mean these are complicated positions, and to have 30 doesn't give us a very robust pool. My expectation was that we would have perhaps hundreds.

That's what my expectations were. And, I mean, these are incredible jobs and amazing careers. And, frankly, I look on MMA website almost every week, and I see communities advertising for police officers, and I don't know why we can't be that nimble.

If we're looking for positions, let's post it up this week. And let's go, you know, post positions when we need them. Let's fill them when we need them.

I don't understand why we have to wait so long and create more structure around this. It almost mirrors the civil service kind of system.

[Speaker 2] (1:59:22 - 2:03:03)
So I wasn't – I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get into that because I'm more concerned about does the hiring policy prevent us from being nimble enough to make sure that we don't end up missing cycles of academies and having prolonged variances. So we've been talking to you, but I can talk to Chief Archer as well.

To that one, that hiring policy explicitly in black letter says, and that was agreed to with the union, I guess, not approved by this board or anything, but the test can only happen once a year. And so I guess let me start there since that hiring policy is, like, crystal clear on that one. It actually says, at no time shall the fire chief call more than one exam per year, period.

Like, no ambiguity on that one. So I guess my question is why was that needed? Because it seems like it's an impediment because we are not hiring – and tell me if I'm saying this as a question.

There are certain positions when we hire that are not specialized, that they are more general, and so therefore a pool of 20 applicants when you're looking for just generalists is sufficient. There's other things where you're hiring for jobs that either have heightened skill sets or require much more dynamic candidates. One would think a firefighter or a police officer, especially a police officer that's, you know, within four months of being in the academy is given a badge, a gun, and frankly, they're incredible powers, that we're looking for those more specialized people, right?

Just they're intangibles, right? Their ability to really be successful police officers in the true sense of 21st century policing, and more and more police officers that maybe have backgrounds in social work. Maybe police officers that have – or candidates or cadets that have backgrounds in mental health and substance abuse, things of that nature, because outside of civil service, we have that flexibility now.

And we know – and I've seen the call logs – we know we have substance abuse problems in our town, just like other towns. And we know that we have domestic violence issues like other towns, so getting officers that perhaps came from a different background, right, that have a complementary skill set. So therefore, when we only have a pool of 20, the chances of us finding that person, that specialized person, is much less than if it was a generalized pool of applicants for a generalized position.

And so the reticence to not pull from a list just because we have a vacancy, to me I understand, because if we pull someone that we don't think really fits that specialized need, we've just made a 25, 30-year commitment. It's a marriage. This is not just filling the vacancy today because I need to fill vacancies.

It's a marriage for the next potentially 30 years. And so we want to make sure it's right. So when we get candidates and only 20 applicants, 27 applicants in the list, it's not unreasonable to me that we're not finding our people because outside of civil service, we have the opportunity to go find the best.

And so I'm confused by this idea that we're somehow limiting how often we can take the test. And I'll go to the police contract. I think the language that, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, Sean, you've got to correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that there has been pushback about having the test before the one year was up.

And I don't know what the language is, but the language that people are relying on, but there is a language here that says any candidates not given a conditional offer of probationary employment but have been determined to be eligible for hire by the police chief shall remain on the hiring list for a period of no less than 12 months and until the next hiring process is initiated. That doesn't say you have to exhaust the list. That's civil service.

Civil service is different. It doesn't say you have to exhaust the list. It just says that they remain on the list.

So we can go ahead, my reading of it is you can go ahead and take the test again and just add more names to the list.

[Speaker 8] (2:03:04 - 2:03:12)
Yeah, I want to be clear in answering what you said was I thought you were saying that you understood that there was pushback from the union on the policy.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:12 - 2:03:19)
I am, but I want, I am of the understanding that that's the case. I'm saying it to the town minister because that's where I got my understanding. So tell me if I'm wrong.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:19 - 2:04:00)
I've asked, I have asked a number of times to advance that test. And I've heard from the chief and I've heard from others that there has been an unwillingness to go and have another test or have a test. I've expressed concerns about having a test around the holidays.

I find it's absolutely a barrier to have a test either a month before the holiday or a month after the major holiday. I think it's hard for people to come up with $140 to take a test. And I have said many times, you just be more mindful about when we have these tests.

And let's let's do it more often if we're not satisfied with the pool. I want to be more flexible, more adaptable. And I've had resistance from that.

[Speaker 2] (2:04:01 - 2:04:05)
So I haven't had any. I just said to Chief Kasada, you're nodding your head yes. So I'm assuming you were part of some of these.

[Speaker 7] (2:04:06 - 2:04:34)
Yeah, we were. We were part of this conversation and and the pushback and it goes back to my earlier comment. What I what I said earlier about all coming to the table is there was resistance from the union.

I know my town and town administrator wanted to move on with a new test while we still had a couple of candidates on the list. The issue became that they were not notified whether they were going to be eligible for hire or not. And so that's where the stalemate occurred.

Right.

[Speaker 8] (2:04:34 - 2:05:21)
So it is a two separate issues. That was back in April and May when we still had four people that hadn't been interviewed or vetted off of the previous list. And we were instructed to move forward without ever bringing those people in who we had charged $100 to take the exam and had every expectation that they were going to be a part of the process.

That was then once we decided to start the new. That's what I was talking about. Start the new process.

We were ready to go in October and you didn't want to have one around the holidays. So we had to push it past the holidays. We wanted plenty of time to reach out.

That's how we settled on February. And I'll go so far as to say that when I stood in the union meeting in November and I explained to him that we were going to delay it until February, the entire union membership was extremely upset with me and wondering why we were waiting months to hire. And it was because we were being responsive to the direction that we thought we would be.

[Speaker 2] (2:05:21 - 2:05:32)
I appreciate that defense from the union perspective, but that wasn't my only point is, I guess, to the chief. Do you believe your hiring policy prohibits you from doing the test more than once a year?

[Speaker 7] (2:05:32 - 2:05:54)
I think that the hiring policy is pretty explicit in that the candidate will remain on the list. So I think it's up to us as a town to tell the candidate we are moving on from you. We are either not.

We are moving. We're selecting you or we're moving on from you. I'm sorry.

Once we exhaust that list, then we should be able to start a new list.

[Speaker 2] (2:05:54 - 2:06:01)
So you don't think there's a prohibition in the hiring policy that would prevent you from calling another test once you exhaust that list?

[Speaker 7] (2:06:02 - 2:06:27)
As long as the candidates know where they stand on our list. Okay. If we've exhausted the list based on our own, what we deem as we've exhausted it, then we should be able to start a new list.

I don't know if the union will agree with me or if there will be a grievance because of the policy that was created, but that's where the stalemate occurred.

[Speaker 2] (2:06:27 - 2:06:40)
I'm trying to break through it because I'm just going to be honest. I'm hearing different things, and that's okay. I guess we're having the conversation here.

Is there a reason in your judgment that we should only have the test once a year?

[Speaker 13] (2:06:41 - 2:06:44)
No, I've agreed with the town administrator that there should be.

[Speaker 2] (2:06:44 - 2:06:50)
Do you agree then that there is benefits to having it more than once, potentially benefits to having it more than once a year?

[Speaker 7] (2:06:50 - 2:06:55)
Yes, I come from a department that has an open testing process.

[Speaker 2] (2:06:55 - 2:07:27)
So on the police side, can we agree as to between the town administrator, the police chief, and I guess us here that to the extent there's any ambiguity, you will go seek to clarify that there is no ambiguity because I'm trying to understand why anybody would have wanted to limit it, and we'll talk fire in a second, but why anybody would want to limit it because it just creates vacancies. That's literally what it does. It forces you to take who's on the list even if you don't want to because, again, specialized positions, and if people don't think they're specialized, then I just disagree.

I think they're specialized. These are 30-year annuities and responsibilities.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:28 - 2:07:31)
So is the assumption that the union doesn't want to have multiple tests?

[Speaker 2] (2:07:31 - 2:07:32)
No, I want to.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:32 - 2:07:34)
Because they're not here. Nobody on the union's here.

[Speaker 2] (2:07:35 - 2:07:40)
No, Captain Cable's here, and he's actually a member of the union. But I'm not asking to negotiate.

[Speaker 1] (2:07:40 - 2:07:41)
I'm just trying.

[Speaker 2] (2:07:41 - 2:08:15)
But my point's not that. My point is just to understand from an administrative standpoint, is there a rationale that you can support that would limit your ability to take the test more than once a year because it feels like there is some undercurrent that on the police side in the gray language, who knows what the real conversation is. I don't care, to be honest with you.

I want to know about going forward. But in the fire contract, it's explicit. Like it says the fire chief shall not.

And so I'm just trying to get to a point where I'm hearing from the chief, yes or no, I want that flexibility. And I think you just said yes, but I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.

[Speaker 12] (2:08:15 - 2:08:15)
I do.

[Speaker 2] (2:08:15 - 2:09:00)
And Sean wants that flexibility. So I guess I would just ask you personally to go, as a select board member, to go negotiate that so that we're not in a position. I understand there's other things that you've got to deal with, and I don't know why we didn't exhaust the list or what's going on there.

But to just get on the same page, because I think that is part of the problem here, is that, candidly, for months I've been hearing it's because of multiple tests. So let me just finish that. And that's the police.

And I guess the fire department, I ask the chief just the same question from your standpoint. I understand this all needs to be negotiated, I guess. I don't understand why the hiring test dates have to be negotiated.

But from just the administration standpoint, I just want to understand, from your standpoint, is that important to keep it in there, or is that something that, frankly, you would like greater flexibility?

[Speaker 6] (2:09:03 - 2:10:53)
In the first draft when I sat with the union leadership to discuss and design our hiring policy, and I explained the last meeting I was here why we did, why they sat at the table and we discussed it, we decided we were going to do it collaboratively. At one point with the union leadership, we were actually kind of excited about an open process without set recruitment periods and without set test dates. I think the president will agree.

We had an initial draft of doing an open process. We were kind of really excited about that. The union, you know, the membership was uncomfortable with that.

Honestly, I think that was mostly, they were unfamiliar with that as a concept. You know, as much as we openly, explicitly said we're not trying to recreate civil service, the shadow of civil service was always there in one way, and it was hard to really break away from it. So I think most of the membership was just comfortable with this is the date of the exam, you have a test exam.

So they pushed back, and we felt that having an annual test, first of all, was better than civil service because they have a biannual test. And secondly, similar to what Captain Cable said, the rationale was the people have stepped forward. They've paid their money.

They've taken the exam. The fear was that I'm sure not me, but some future chief might not like the lay of the list and decide that three months later, okay, we're just going to trash that exam and have another one until I get the exam that I want. I mean, to be candid, that's the fear of working the system that they were afraid could happen.

But isn't that the prerogative that we've negotiated for?

[Speaker 2] (2:10:53 - 2:11:10)
But isn't that the prerogative that we negotiated for, which was the flexibility for the chiefs to make a decision about the list and whether or not they wanted to be hiring from a list. Now, there's a whole bunch of other considerations in law and employment and a set of things that you guys all have to adhere to.

[Speaker 6] (2:11:10 - 2:13:45)
I understand that. But I'm just saying it strikes me. For myself, it is technically a limitation.

Would I, in a perfect world, would I eliminate it? Sure, I would eliminate it. You know, having only done one entrance recruitment and examination, I don't have a lot of experience in doing it to draw from, but based on what we've had before, we're not seeing the same, you know, I take Captain Cable as, well, there's a 60 percent reduction in people interested in pursuing that career.

That's not the case with the fire department. We typically have more participation. I have 140 people that have signed up for the exam.

Again, drawing on the only other experience that I had, some of them won't pay the fee and show up. And then there will be, obviously, some will fail the written examination. But regardless, we have a robust pool of candidates.

A lot of people step forward and express interest in becoming firefighters. If we recruit zealously and if we outreach extensively and if we end up with a pool of candidates that is, you know, outstanding and diverse and, you know, motivated candidates, I wouldn't exhaust it in a year. So the pool of candidates that we got last time was actually pretty good.

We could have kept going with that list, except there was more of an interest of fairness because there was some dispute with the qualifications for taking the exam. And it was my decision that once that was settled, that there were people who took that exam in good faith who became ineligible and I didn't want to go through that list and cull people based on criteria that didn't eliminate them before. So I thought my decision was in the interest of fairness, we needed to have a new exam.

Absent that, I could have kept hiring off of the exam that we did have. And a year was not going to be a real hindrance for me. Might be a different situation with the police.

It sounds like the police could blend their lists, kind of like what civil service is doing right now. So the year thing might not be an issue. I'm speaking out of turn because I'm not forcing you a contract, but it sounds like you could keep the people that passed, have another exam and blend them together.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:46 - 2:13:50)
The point about the academy versus the timing of the academy and things like that is also really good.

[Speaker 6] (2:13:50 - 2:13:57)
For us, there's no academy track. The Mass Fire Academy runs academies consistently.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:57 - 2:14:35)
So I guess at the end of the day, all I'm asking for is getting, I appreciate that, and I appreciate that they're not completely analogous. There's different situations. I encourage you to get the freedom that you need to test when you believe that you are not going to find your candidates on the list that you have because it feels like 23 was lost.

It could be for any number of reasons. But to Mary Ellen Fletcher's point, these vacancies are unfortunate and they cost money, and there is a set time for the academies here, but let's create that freedom. And, again, I can't speak to why we have to negotiate that in the first instance.

[Speaker 7] (2:14:35 - 2:15:00)
Fine, if we have to negotiate it, impact bargain it, whatever. I think I can tell you what happened. I think the reticence that you see from the union from having rolling tests was that then Chief Kurz had proposed a couple candidates to the town administrator, and the town administrator didn't feel that they were qualified candidates.

And so I think that's where the union said, hey, wait a minute, then.

[Speaker 2] (2:15:00 - 2:15:03)
But do you disagree that it's not the town administrator's role?

[Speaker 7] (2:15:03 - 2:15:04)
That's correct.

[Speaker 2] (2:15:04 - 2:15:57)
So he, as the hiring authority under our town charter, gets to make that decision. So I'm just saying I appreciate the union may not like that, or anybody may not like that. I'm just saying.

But all I'm saying is our charter makes clear that he gets to make that decision. So if there's something in this hiring policy that prevents you guys from having tools to make sure we don't have vacancies, which not only costs the town more, but as I understand it from hearing from people, officers feel overstressed and overworked, and they've said that, then let's get rid of that ambiguity so that you guys, whenever you need to, can call the test and you can go through the list and you can find those people that you want to be sitting next to you for 30 years with guns and badges. And I think that's all I'm asking, just let's get rid of that impediment, because it seems like we lost an ear because of some tussle about it here, and I just suggest that we just get rid of it. And I might be naive.

Maybe it's not that easy.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:57 - 2:17:21)
You know, Peter, I appreciate the points. I also appreciate the complexity here. You know, we are working with a number of different stakeholders.

I think it's important for us to recognize that, you know, when the applicants pay money for these tests, that they expect that they're going to be treated objectively and fairly, and we give them some due consideration. I hear those concerns. But I also understand just, frankly, the burden that having vacancies are having on everybody.

And we've got to, at times, I think, flex. In an ideal situation, maybe once a year does work. But when we have all these agencies and it really is becoming complicated, let's sit down and figure out if we can adjust some things to meet the need of public safety.

I'd like to think everybody sees that as a priority, and I do trust that the union would work with us if we really reached out and said, hey, we really want to address this need. And there are a few opportunities for us to do this very efficiently and effectively. There are strategies, and we can follow up over the next couple of weeks and hopefully come back to the board and give you some good news on the strategy.

[Speaker 5] (2:17:21 - 2:17:24)
What is the overtime cost to run a test?

[Speaker 7] (2:17:26 - 2:17:31)
What's the process? Last time it cost us about $6,600 total.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:32 - 2:18:05)
Overtime. Yeah, and I've shared with the chief I absolutely do not expect that this process will cost us anywhere close to that number. And I've asked the chief to kind of sit with me and go over exactly the staffing and the protocols for how we're going to deal with this.

We're going to do this in a manner that meets the financial responsibilities that we share and the responsibilities to support the selection process responsibly. It is not going to all be overtime.

[Speaker 5] (2:18:06 - 2:18:21)
I would just like to see candidates. I'd like to see it shorter than one year. So Officer Rudin interviewed in January and started out in the streets in January.

It just seems long.

[Speaker 2] (2:18:21 - 2:19:19)
I agree. I'm sorry. I'm done with just one more thing, and then I'm going to shut up the rest of the night.

I'm just saying because you're here and we're talking about things. Town meeting approved the payment of one-time monies in return for impact bargaining, a deputy chief position, and the town has paid that money. And you don't need to give an update tonight, but I think that was something that the decision was made that it was important for the town to actually spend money on to be able to impact bargain that, and it's been a year, and we don't have a deputy chief yet.

And I say that because I can only imagine a lot of responsibility falls on your shoulders, and the decision was to create that deputy chief position, and I want you to have all the support, if only to thumb wrestle with the town administrator, but it's really critical. And so I hope that we see soon progress on that front.

[Speaker 3] (2:19:19 - 2:23:00)
So thanks. All right. I think I'd like to move on to fiscal 24, if that's all right with everybody.

Thank you, Chief, for, I don't know, and Captain Cable. Thank you, Angelica, for coming. Nothing gets done without her.

So we talked a little bit about this at our last meeting. Amy, I just wanted to talk fiscal 24 budget preparation, what our timeline is. I guess I'll speak first to the other.

On that agenda item is also in longer-term budgeting approaches, so I'll just touch on that for a minute. And that's a brief update, but just an update in terms of what has been discussed in tri-chair meetings since the fall. As you all, I think, are aware, I think last year when there was discussion about the budget, a lot of conversations between finance committee, select board, and the school committee about trying to find a different way, led by our finance staff and the school's staff, to find a different way to figure out a different approach on budgeting, which may make it clearer, like where the costs are and who's paying for what.

And so Amy worked on that with Martha Seibert, I think in the summer probably, and then throughout the fall. As you know, Ms. Seibert left. They were coming to a model, but there was not consensus on that.

And so I can't remember the timing, but it was probably in October, maybe, when we first started talking about it and discussed that it certainly wasn't ready as something that we would try to do for fiscal 24. Then with Martha Seibert leaving and Cheryl coming on board as the new finance person in the schools, it was also thought it made sense for her to come in and provide her input and her thoughts on it, which is happening now. I would say that without diving too deeply into the specifics of what's been discussed, and Amy, feel free to correct me or elaborate, but some of the ideas or the models that they've been basing it on is something that happens in other communities, which is that costs that tend to be – the original one was costs that tend to be sort of volatile on both sides, go into a bucket of, I think they were being called like accommodated costs. So those essentially would be removed from the pie, and then the rest of the pie is split proportionally. That is not a model that we're necessarily considering right now, and I think Cheryl provided some good input on different ways that she thinks it should be done, so I just wanted to let folks know that those conversations are happening, and I think the idea is – I think you mentioned this at the FinCom meeting, that with the budget process, with the fiscal 24 budget process, there may be some modeling done to show what a potential model might – how it may be looked at differently when we're looking at fiscal 24, such that fiscal 25, there may be something in place.

[Speaker 4] (2:23:00 - 2:24:47)
Yeah, so the hope is that we are going to put this model live for FY25. Throughout the FY24 budget process, we're going to be plugging those numbers into various models to basically work all the kinks out, get everyone's questions as to how it works, what is equitable and what's not, and do that, so that way we're not doing it live for the actual budget. We have this entire year to work through it.

The original model that we were doing, like Neal said, was an accommodated cost that had not only the shared costs on the town side that we pay for both the town and school, but it also included a couple volatile cost items for the schools, such as their out-of-district tuition and mandated transportation. When Cheryl Stella started, she and I went through the model to see how she felt about it, what her experience was with other towns, and she actually reverted back to my original model, which was just the truly shared costs, things that both sides of the town are impacting, such as property casualty insurance, the debt, payroll taxes, workers' comp, health insurance, pension, and the cherry sheet state assessments.

So one model has all of those items coming off the top, and then a percentage split that's to be predetermined for how the remaining pot is divided.

[Speaker 1] (2:24:48 - 2:24:57)
Those details are complicated. Yeah, so I think it's important to say that none of this is like in terms of getting into those details.

[Speaker 3] (2:24:57 - 2:25:07)
We're not ready for that, but I thought it was important to provide an update on where these conversations have been, why they are where they are, and let people know that this has been happening.

[Speaker 4] (2:25:07 - 2:25:28)
More recently, Cheryl had brought up the model that they used in Ipswich, which was the community that she was in most recently. So I did have the opportunity to talk to the finance director in Ipswich. She shared with me the spreadsheet for the model that they use.

She actually does consulting work as well, so she's implementing this model in Winthrop as well with their new town manager.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:29 - 2:25:30)
The former town manager from Ipswich?

[Speaker 4] (2:25:31 - 2:25:31)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:32 - 2:25:32)
Wonderful.

[Speaker 4] (2:25:32 - 2:27:36)
So the Ipswich model is similar in the way that the shared costs get split, but it is a one-year split. So if we were to do this for FY25, we would genuinely take the dollars that the school health insurance is and put it in their budget, and they have to pay their portion of the health insurance bill. We take the actual dollars from the town general fund for payroll taxes for their portion and put it in their budget.

It's a one-year adjustment. After that, any swings, so if health insurance rates go way up, they're paying for all their own bills. So it's not an every-year dollar-for-dollar transfer.

It's a one-year, and then you both figure it out from there. So that was kind of the model that tri-chairs seemed more in favor of. We're going to model out both of them and see how they work, and I'm going to continue to work with the finance directors in other towns who have these models as we run into questions or kinks that I'm anticipating that we will run into.

And how does this help the Swanscott taxpayer? It helps in terms of it protects the general fund from the swings. So basically, instead of what has now become an annual conversation of, you know, the school impacts the health insurance so much, so if they hire three new people, those three new people have family plans, and that's an impact to the general fund that we have to figure out and cut other services or other staffing to pay for.

It protects the taxpayer from that. The school has to figure it out within their own department. And it basically just gives us a better way to stick to our financial policies and have everyone be accountable for the decisions that they're making.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:37 - 2:28:48)
So that's given, you know, the reality that, you know, we were able to determine that split that financially, you know, puts those cost centers in the school department's function. And for me, it's going to take a few years to ease into that. There are many Massachusetts municipalities that, you know, have school departments paying for their health care costs as a function of their budget.

We're not one of them. And to try to push all of those costs into the school department budget is going to create a lot of challenges for the town because, you know, that, you know, we'll lose a lot of control over that. And so sometimes, you know, again, it's putting a lot of budget function into a department that is not controlled by the town.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:49 - 2:29:56)
Yeah, so and I think important to say, you know, what I've said at these meetings and I'm saying now is that I've always maintained that there's nothing in terms of a specific model. Like, I don't plan on bringing anything to this board that the town administrator and the superintendent haven't agreed on. You know, like, I don't think we should be debating different models that they don't have consensus on.

And I certainly I think there are continuous productive conversations, both at Tri-Chair and between the superintendent and Sean. But I think that's just important to point out. So that's I think that's really all there is to update there.

I think in terms of helping the taxpayer, I don't know about financially if it does. But I do think a different model would provide maybe provide clarity as to where costs are coming from. And like, you know, I think that it's a little hard for people to follow as it is set up now.

[Speaker 5] (2:29:56 - 2:30:27)
Well, I think Amy's point in saying that if it's your budget, you might think twice as far as adding X amount of people, adding additional people. Because if I'm adding additional people and I don't have to worry about, I can only, I'm only talking about my own company. If I'm going to add people and I don't have to worry about paying for their health insurance or their benefits, I'm going to be like, yeah, add it.

So if I have to think about it, which I do have to think about, I do think I do think twice about it.

[Speaker 1] (2:30:27 - 2:31:42)
Maybe baby steps to get to this. I mean, we've talked about we do have a number of very successful intermunicipal agreements with the superintendent for facilities, for some of our, you know, shared services. We have, you know, the DPW does do some work to help clear out their parking lots.

We do a lot of work for the school department and we should. Where we cost that out, where we charge it out, you know, if we really did a true cost allocation, you know, we spend a lot more on the Sloan School Public Schools than most people realize. When you just look at the line item in the school budget, that's not the only amount of money that the town actually spends on the schools.

And so the benefit for the taxpayers would be you'd get a better, you know, allocation of how much we're investing in the schools. I will tell you, I don't imagine that they're going to ask for less money once they get that. In fact, it will just continue to be more of a complicated conversation.

[Speaker 5] (2:31:43 - 2:31:54)
Amy, when you're doing the numbers at the end of the year, don't you report to the state how much? Okay, so that those numbers are extra costs that we're using that are coming out of our town side of the budget. Those are getting reported.

[Speaker 4] (2:31:55 - 2:32:05)
Yes. So everything is reported to the state as required. It's just budgetary wise, it's in the town general fund.

Not in the school department.

[Speaker 1] (2:32:06 - 2:32:45)
Annually, we have to produce a form called the Schedule 19. And there are numbers on that report that we list, you know, the town financial software system is part of that cost. The insurance, all of the solid waste services that we provide to the district that we pay are part of those costs.

If the school department was a self-contained entity, they would have all of these additional costs. And we subsidize that as we should. But it's hard for a lot of folks to really understand just how much that is.

[Speaker 13] (2:32:46 - 2:32:58)
Can we quantify that? What is that, Sean? I mean, what is that number?

I mean, I'm looking at the approved budget for the schools for fiscal year 23. It was $31,950,000.

[Speaker 1] (2:32:58 - 2:33:02)
I can pull up the form. I don't know, Amy, if you have it available. I'm pulling it up right now.

[Speaker 5] (2:33:04 - 2:33:09)
You're asking what's the additional money that's being used? Oh, it's a big chunk.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:10 - 2:33:57)
It's huge. Another $10 million. I've actually put that pie chart in the budget just, you know, as a pie chart just so that folks can understand.

You know, if you're just looking at the bottom line number, you're missing the amazing support that we provide to the Swanford School District. I know it's hard for people to sometimes understand functionally. But, you know, the time and effort we spend as an administration on the new school or the time that we spend just going over health care, it's all part of the school responsibilities as well.

You got it?

[Speaker 4] (2:33:57 - 2:35:03)
Yes. So on the Schedule 19 end of year report for FY22, it was a total of $9,450,532. That was inclusive of the staff time for the accounting and treasury office, their portion of the annual audit expense, IT, financial software, rubbish and trash pickups, snow and ice removal, DPW field lining, the retirement assessment, their portion, active employee health insurance, retiree property liability insurance, car insurance premiums, other insurance premiums, school resource officer from the police department, workers comp, employee separation agreements, unemployment, admin annual fee, Medicare taxes, school bond principal, new high school debt principal, and then the interest for the corresponding debt and the Essex Regional Vocational Technical School.

[Speaker 5] (2:35:04 - 2:35:08)
What about debt service on, say, the new roof, things like that? Yep.

[Speaker 4] (2:35:08 - 2:35:16)
So that's lumped into the general school bond principal. We just broke out the new high school debt separately. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:35:22 - 2:35:33)
Okay. So, Amy, if you can just update us on fiscal 24 budget prep and, like, what our time, minus of our timeline on that.

[Speaker 4] (2:35:33 - 2:35:56)
So we are still on track with our timeline. The town administrator and I are still diligently working down that $1.5 million deficit. We've gotten it down to about $576,000, but we still have to shave off.

How much? $576,000. In whose budget?

Yours? In the entirety of the general fund. The entire general fund?

[Speaker 1] (2:35:56 - 2:36:02)
Yeah. That's the town general fund, you know.

[Speaker 4] (2:36:02 - 2:36:05)
Right. My budget is not that much money.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:06 - 2:36:16)
This is all based on the assumption that the school is hitting the number that you gave them, not the number that they're likely approving tomorrow night.

[Speaker 4] (2:36:16 - 2:36:22)
Yeah, the number that's in here is the 2.6% that we had given to the school as guidance.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:23 - 2:36:31)
Right. But based on their last meeting, it sounds like the budget that they will be approving is over that number.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:31 - 2:36:45)
Well, they're looking for a budget that's going, they're looking for, I think, I think they asked the superintendent to go back and to write a budget that would, which she would need to do the job properly.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:45 - 2:37:09)
No, I know it was on their direction. I'm just saying, I just want to make clear that the $1.5 million that you're trying to shave off of, I'll just say on the town side, is assuming that the school budget is hitting the number that we had given them to budget to, and that the school budget that will be approved tomorrow night, unless something happens tomorrow night that we're not anticipating, is going to be over that.

[Speaker 4] (2:37:09 - 2:37:54)
The budget is not required to put in the school committee's vote. And since it wasn't voted in time by the charter by the second Wednesday of the month, we actually wouldn't have time to incorporate and rebalance if they did vote a different number, because we have to begin finalizing the budget book on Tuesday and begin printing it. So this is the $785,000 increase to the school budget, not the additional, I believe their last presentation was an additional like $582,000.

So that would have been an additional $1.2 million increase over last year. Right.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:54 - 2:38:04)
Okay. So that present, sorry, so that presentation, we will be doing that initial presentation on the budget on March 1st.

[Speaker 4] (2:38:04 - 2:38:16)
Yes, so that will be the town administrator's recommended budget. I believe the discussion was to do it as a joint FinCom meeting, so that it's presented to everyone at once.

[Speaker 3] (2:38:18 - 2:38:31)
I'm wondering if we maybe we, Diane, maybe we think about doing that in the senior center. Maybe better set up if we're doing a joint meeting with FinCom. So it's not like.

[Speaker 4] (2:38:39 - 2:38:41)
We'll figure out what's needed and let you know.

[Speaker 3] (2:38:43 - 2:39:04)
Joe, can we do teams in the senior center if we do a meeting in the senior center? All right. Thanks.

Maybe not. But hopefully we can. We will find a location.

Yeah, I mean, we can do it here. It's just always, you know, we're trying to have a joint meeting, and it's fine. It's just a strange setup.

[Speaker 14] (2:39:07 - 2:39:07)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:09 - 2:39:14)
We did it last year, right? We had some meetings there last year, but I don't know.

[Speaker 4] (2:39:14 - 2:39:15)
We were on Zoom last year.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:16 - 2:39:20)
Anything else on fiscal 24 budget prep or?

[Speaker 4] (2:39:21 - 2:39:51)
Not yet, no. As you know, we won't get the actual health insurance rates until shortly before open enrollment. So we'll have it in time for town meeting, but for discussion purposes, especially for the one that you will get in two weeks, it is purely a projection based off the average of the last three year increases per plan and the number of participants on those plans as of the January bill.

[Speaker 14] (2:39:53 - 2:39:53)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:57 - 2:39:58)
Thanks, Amy.

[Speaker 4] (2:39:58 - 2:39:59)
You're welcome.

[Speaker 3] (2:40:00 - 2:40:10)
Does anyone else have anything else? Any of that? Okay.

Sorry, Neil, just one quick thing. Oh, sure.

[Speaker 2] (2:40:10 - 2:40:17)
At the last finance committee meeting, I talked with them, and I think they agreed that they were going to join us.

[Speaker 3] (2:40:17 - 2:40:18)
Just talked about it.

[Speaker 2] (2:40:18 - 2:40:21)
Did you? Sorry. Yeah, we're going to do a joint meeting.

[Speaker 4] (2:40:21 - 2:40:23)
Awesome. I covered it for you. Nice job.

[Speaker 3] (2:40:23 - 2:40:25)
Yeah. Thanks for bringing it.

[Speaker 2] (2:40:25 - 2:40:38)
Amy, and if you were listening to that meeting, Amy, you were masterful in the way in which you just gave good, I mean, just factual answers to questions, and you do such a nice job with that. So thank you.

[Speaker 10] (2:40:38 - 2:40:43)
Thank you. Peter, so you're the only one who doesn't show up to the senior center and might be at the senior center?

[Speaker 3] (2:40:43 - 2:40:48)
Yeah, we may be doing it at the senior center. It's not really at the senior center, is it? Maybe.

[Speaker 10] (2:40:49 - 2:40:49)
Just joking.

[Speaker 3] (2:40:50 - 2:40:51)
And it will be on a Wednesday. Wednesday.

[Speaker 13] (2:40:52 - 2:40:53)
You just figure out which one.

[Speaker 10] (2:40:54 - 2:40:55)
And nine in the morning.

[Speaker 3] (2:40:57 - 2:41:52)
All right. Moving on. Thanks, Amy.

Moving on, and Sean, thank you, to Hadley Elementary School reuse and Hawthorne interim use discussion. When at our last meeting we talked, I think it was during select board time, but we started talking a lot about Hadley Reuse and the urgency to start moving on that, and there was mention of incorporating the Hadley Reuse Committee and just starting that process and making sure that we're doing everything we can, because we're already moving on a timeline where the threat of an empty building is very real once the new elementary school is open.

So I think that Peter, do you want to add flavor to some of what's happened since that meeting? Sure.

[Speaker 2] (2:41:52 - 2:44:59)
I think that it was started by Katie asking a question that was a really good question, which was now that we have added Hawthorne to the conversation, does that change the view, or how does that influence the view of the Hadley Reuse Committee? So Neil and I sent out an e-mail to each member of the committee to ask them three questions. And I apologize.

I told you that I was going to print. I sent you guys the e-mail today. We will send that out and make it available for everyone, the responses.

But we asked three questions, which is, what do you believe the Hawthorne property should be used for? What do you believe the Hadley property should be used for? And then three, does, or ends did, the town's acquisition of the Hawthorne and or your suggested potential uses for the Hawthorne change what you believe to be the best use of Hadley once it's no longer used as a school?

And so those are the three questions. Like, overwhelming great replies. Like, people were really, the committee was, you can tell that they're primed to get reengaged and do it.

So they have given us their, we've e-mailed it to the board, but we'll make it available. And sorry, I didn't print it out. I forgot.

But we got feedback. And, you know, I think it's interesting. I think the, I will say the Hawthorne, they had three working groups that they worked in.

And I think it's probably safe to say that the people that were in the respective working groups still advocate for those things that their working group was interested in, right? Whether it be civic and community space, whether it be mixed use and hospitality, or whether it be affordable housing. So I think those answers were pretty, I think.

The answers on the Hawthorne, since we hadn't really talked to them previously individually on the Hawthorne, were, I think, pretty strongly unified with open space, dot, dot, dot. Right? But open space being a primary interest with something, sometimes without something, but all of them open space.

I mean, I think there's a couple of undecided, maybe open space, or undecided, maybe some event space in addition to open space. So I don't want to overstate the strength of opinions or anything, but open space was the commonality in every response except for one. One response was a boutique hotel with parking for the Hawthorne.

So I think this feedback's really good because I think it just helps us, and frankly, Katie reminding us of that committee was great because it just got their brains gelling again. And you can, there were some really, when you see it, there were some really, and we'll actually put together the actual email responses so that you're not just seeing a five word summary. You're going to see their actual responses.

There's actually some people have pointed us in the direction of representative places or things or ideas that they like. And I thought that was really interesting to do. Jay Sullivan, for example, pointed us to Little Island in New York.

And if you go to littleisland.org to see it, it's a neat outdoor, pretty dynamic outdoor civic space. So it was good. It was really the beginning of that.

I think what Neil and I have talked about in between last meeting and this meeting is.

[Speaker 3] (2:44:59 - 2:45:37)
Can I just say one other thing, though? One other sort of overall interesting piece of feedback that we didn't get was like now that the Hawthorne, there wasn't a different idea. I mean, everybody was saying the ideas that they had already come to, the conclusions that they had come to.

Nobody said now that the Hawthorne is there, we think Hadley should be an ice skating rink or something like completely different or out of what they had already decided. So and they all seemed, as Peter said, these are very thoughtful responses, like they had been thinking about this and thought about it. So I thought that was helpful to understand.

[Speaker 2] (2:45:38 - 2:47:48)
Yeah, that was that actually is a good takeaway. I'm sorry. No, it's OK.

Sorry. And again, like I said, on the open space for Hawthorne, there was everything from mixed use with commercial recreation, retail, hospitality and open space to open space being the leader. Right.

But but open space was the one common theme in all the responses. So it really just had to do with whether or not it was paired with mixed use buildings. It was paired with cultural space or retail space or food trucks or food plaza or those type of ideas.

So what Neil and I talked about was and I think you're correct me wrong on May the March 1st meeting, having a more robust. Am I making this I think I'm we talked earlier. Yeah, but I think I'm on our March 1st meeting, having a more robust conversation about next steps.

And Neil and I are going to follow up with some of these members just to get further information, ideas from them. But to come to the table with some more specific ideas for next steps, just as we played out and as we talked about it pretty impromptu at our last meeting. June of 24 is going to be really, really fast.

And the building's going to have downtime no matter what, because we're going to have to reposition the building no matter what the use is. It's going to have downtime. So it's really now we're already at the point that downtime is assured.

So every month that we take longer, we're just adding another month at least of downtime. So it's just really to our benefit to responsibly but accelerate our decision. And I think that probably leads a bit with with us more openly discussing what we think and what we our ideas are as well.

And with the idea of seeing if there's some formulation or something that we feel comfortable taking to town meeting in whatever form. I have no idea if it's zoning. I don't know if it's an RFP.

I don't know anything. It depends on where our conversation goes. But is it something that we should be working towards the Maytown meeting, going back to town meeting and certainly giving an update, if not asking them to approve something or give us some feedback on something.

So I think the March 1st meeting we'll set the table with a more robust thing and then just give us an opportunity to share ideas, including the interaction between Hadley and Hawthorne.

[Speaker 5] (2:47:48 - 2:47:50)
Where is the planning board in all this?

[Speaker 2] (2:47:52 - 2:48:50)
Well, the planning board's passed. I can't answer that question. I will tell you the planning board passed an overlay district years ago that includes the Hadley site.

So I think the planning board in terms of planning initiatives in the town of Swampscott, this is actually one of the most current planning initiatives that they've done. So, again, there's a representative from the planning board on the Hadley reuse committee. I'm just noticing now she is actually one of only two that didn't respond.

But we can certainly ask them. But, again, they've rezoned it a few years ago with an overlay district that I assume expressed that planning board's ideas about what they think the future should be. But we certainly can engage anybody and everyone in the conversation.

But Neil and I thought it was just prudent for us to have a more robust conversation where we can start openly deliberating amongst ourselves just to see if there is something we want to advance in May.

[Speaker 5] (2:48:51 - 2:48:53)
We said we were doing an RFI. What did we say at the last meeting?

[Speaker 2] (2:48:54 - 2:48:55)
Well, we didn't. I don't.

[Speaker 5] (2:48:55 - 2:48:56)
We said we could do it.

[Speaker 2] (2:48:56 - 2:48:57)
You can do it.

[Speaker 3] (2:48:57 - 2:49:01)
We talked about a possible RFI for the Hawthorne interim use, I think.

[Speaker 2] (2:49:01 - 2:49:54)
Yeah. Oh, that's what it was. The Hawthorne interim use.

So Margie is continuing to work on that. Okay. She is an avid watcher of select board meetings, and so that night she said she had already started.

So, like, she's working on that interim use thing. For the Hadley, we certainly that's something we should talk about when we meet on the first, which is, is it an RFI, is it an RFP? What kind of backup do we want to support any ideas to test its viability to see, you know, what's possible and whatnot?

And we should put all that on the table. Neil and I will do some homework, so we're going to feed the dialogue with some prompts, if you will, just to say this is what we think if we're, you know, doing this or this, just to lubricate the conversation here and make sure that, like, we're shooting all cylinders. But it was good.

The conversation we had last meeting during select board time was really helpful because it actually got us.

[Speaker 3] (2:49:55 - 2:49:56)
Kicked us into gear.

[Speaker 2] (2:49:56 - 2:50:03)
Yeah, it kind of kicked our butts. Let's be honest about it. But it was good.

And so that's just foreshadowing what our next meeting will include.

[Speaker 14] (2:50:04 - 2:50:04)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:50:06 - 2:50:12)
And, again, I will, we will consolidate all those comments and give you the actual e-mails from people so that you have them.

[Speaker 3] (2:50:13 - 2:50:52)
Right. Okay. So that's, that's that.

Moving on to the consent agenda. Our consent agenda tonight has one day liquor license for the historical commission for their event on Friday, March 3rd. Also one day liquor license for an event at the library.

Common vix and entertainment license for Renzo's Pizzeria. And also minutes from our meetings of 3-3-22 and 2-1-23. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

[Speaker 5] (2:50:52 - 2:50:53)
So moved. Second.

[Speaker 3] (2:50:54 - 2:51:01)
All right. Any further discussion on the consent agenda? All those in favor?

Aye. All right.

[Speaker 1] (2:51:01 - 3:01:07)
Great. Town administrators report. Okay.

Well, it's been a busy few weeks as Amy Sauer has let us all know we're in budget season. And so lots of discussions about priorities. I really want to thank our department heads for going through a number of different scenarios.

We did ask them to forecast a very conservative budget, a best case budget, and a reasonable budget. And so we've been going through trying to get to a number that really works. Over the last few weeks I've had a staff meeting over at Recharts and really impressed with some of the improvements in the basement of Recharts.

At some point we probably should have a meeting over there just to see the new kitchen and the resource area that they've been able to create in a town building. They're doing a lot of important work. And I really want to thank the staff over at Recharts for the opportunity to have a meeting over there.

Last week I met with Danielle Strauss and talked about a number of new recreation events. Today I met with Anthony Athanas to talk about an event perhaps in March that we can coordinate for the Athanas property. He's very eager to continue to work with the town and do some things that really help us celebrate the Hawthorne property, but create some community programs and events that help raise revenue for recreation.

Danielle's busy getting our summer rec up and running. We have a stand-up paddleboard program that is going to be nine weeks of lessons morning and afternoon. It's really going to be a robust program and really excited to see that move forward.

Another middle school recreation club is up and running, and we're going to just continue to drive some of those program updates. DPW department has been busy. They had a major water break this week on Paradise Road, but the cold snap really did affect a lot of water and pipes, so they've been out dealing with that deep freeze.

The Stacey Brook alternative analysis report is complete. It's over 200 pages. At some point, I'd like to circle back around with the board and talk a little bit about some of those next steps for Kings Beach and the cleanup.

Over the last week, I've been meeting both with Chief Archer and Chief Cassata on a number of departmental issues and capital budget requests the fire department did receive. Their new van, this van will be used to help with decontamination, bringing firefighters back outside of their equipment. A lot of their firefighter equipment does get carcinogenic smoke on it, and we want to find a way to get them back safely.

We can also use that for training. They are having an open house this Saturday, so anybody interested in being a firefighter can stop by the firehouse and meet with the chief and talk with departmental members about the entrance exam. It really is a great opportunity to see firsthand what it's like to work in a firehouse.

I'm really pleased to report that Officer John Loyte has been made an acting sergeant, and Candace Loyle is our second acting sergeant. We'll have an internal exercise in a few weeks to finalize a list for the formal promotion process for those positions. I met with Heidi Weir today to talk about a dementia-friendly training program at the library on March 6.

We also talked about our social day program. This has been a program that we've talked about over the last few years, and I really want to thank Heidi and the staff at the Senior Center for really pulling this together. This will provide some much-needed critical support for caregivers that have loved ones with dementia.

It's the start of an important investment. It's a difficult program to really pull together, but she's working with a number of providers and really putting the pieces together to provide those services. Jared Liberty is working on our annual census and doing a lot of work on our annual report.

He has been working with Pete Kane to create a database so that our bylaws are easily accessible on our website. I want to thank Pete as well for some of the work on the website. After the last Select Board meeting, Pete Kane did work with Diane, and they went through and made some much-needed updates.

More to come, but I want to thank Pete for really jumping right on that. The Planning Board or Community Development Department did have a public presentation on an update for our housing production plan. This is some fascinating information.

It really does kind of highlight the gaps between affordability, and we really need to focus some of our attention to make Swampskate that much more of an affordable but inclusive community. The Planning Board will review that presentation and report in March, and then we'll see that sometime later before we send it off with comments to the state. Last week I did meet with Max Casper to talk about some of the issues that we're addressing with the work for the new school.

I really want to thank Max for his outreach. He's been working with the neighbors. We have a neighborhood meeting tomorrow to talk a little bit about some concerns that have come up with neighbors.

These are meetings that we've already scheduled and that we'll continue to schedule, so just meet with neighbors and help them just have an opportunity to speak with us about concerns that they're having. Thank you, Diane, and thank you, Joe and Pete and our department heads for helping us transition over from Zoom to Teams. Amy forced that change because of financial responsibilities that we have, and again, change is never easy, but this was one of the easier ones, and I really want to thank everybody for pulling that together.

I'm sorry that I have to report that after 50 years of service to the town of Swampskate, Peter McCarriston has tendered his resignation. I can't say enough wonderful things about Peter. He has been absolutely there when we have needed him most.

He has helped us get boilers in elementary schools back in operation. He has helped us address all sorts of operational needs to the town in no small way over the last few months with Jim Sams and Pete McCarriston finding time to hang up their service to the town. We are going to be certainly in debt.

We are going to work on a way to try to celebrate those careers and those individuals in a way that really helps others just see that this is an honorable profession, an honorable way to spend your life and your time serving others. These two exemplify public service better than anybody I have worked with, and I really do think it's important for us to find some time to recognize them properly. Let's see.

I did get a recommendation from the Board of Assessors. They met yesterday to interview a number of candidates. I'll be working with our HR director and our assessor to review that.

Jeff Vaughn is working on our recycling grant. Part of this grant requires the town administrator or the municipal CEO to encourage everybody to recycle and buy recycling products, so I would hope that you would all buy recycling products. I mean everybody in Swampskate.

It's important for us to create a market and to use our budgets to really help support a renewable economy. As I mentioned earlier last week, I met with Anthony. Yes, today I met with Anthony Athenas.

Very pleased to hear so many positive comments about the 400 people that went through the Hawthorne, and he's eager to be a partner. I'm pleased that he is working with us. He still does not have a clear idea of what the overall timeline is going to be, but we're working with him, and I expect that we'll do our best to be good partners as we continue to move forward with the acquisition of that property.

[Speaker 5] (3:01:07 - 3:01:08)
What timeline do you mean?

[Speaker 1] (3:01:09 - 3:01:24)
There's a timeline in the lease that Anthony Athenas signed that allows the town to really take- October 24? Assumption of that property. October 23.

[Speaker 5] (3:01:25 - 3:01:26)
October 23, right.

[Speaker 1] (3:01:27 - 3:01:29)
Is it October or is it- Yes, it's October.

[Speaker 13] (3:01:29 - 3:01:32)
From when it was- I believe it's October. Okay.

[Speaker 5] (3:01:33 - 3:01:35)
So he may want to stay longer?

[Speaker 1] (3:01:37 - 3:01:56)
Perhaps, and I've certainly heard from a number of employees that they would like to see that, but ultimately he has a lot of business decisions to make as a business owner, Mariel, and maybe you can empathize.

[Speaker 5] (3:01:57 - 3:02:05)
I just tell you that so many people are expressing how upset they are that they're going to lose their favorite restaurant.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:05 - 3:02:05)
I know.

[Speaker 5] (3:02:07 - 3:02:08)
I love it as a restaurant, too.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:08 - 3:02:13)
Go over there and get your popovers. I'm not sure where else you can find those.

[Speaker 10] (3:02:14 - 3:02:15)
Ledger.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:15 - 3:02:16)
Ledger. And Salem.

[Speaker 10] (3:02:16 - 3:02:22)
That's it. Sorry. Katie, I'm trying to help a small business here.

I'm sorry. Well, Ledger's a small business also.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:23 - 3:02:24)
That's my report.

[Speaker 3] (3:02:25 - 3:02:27)
Thanks, Sean. Any questions for Sean?

[Speaker 13] (3:02:28 - 3:02:42)
Yeah, Sean, I did have a question about the recycling. You had mentioned recycling policy with the town. Does that also include the school, and is the school also doing composting?

[Speaker 1] (3:02:43 - 3:03:01)
You know, I don't know. I can look into that. I have had conversations with the superintendent about recycling, but I'd have to get an update on exactly what they're doing.

I know that a few years ago we had a conversation where they had a third-party recycler that they were working with.

[Speaker 13] (3:03:02 - 3:03:10)
I just think this is an incredible opportunity to really bring composting to all of the elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school.

[Speaker 4] (3:03:10 - 3:03:19)
David, I'm not sure which schools they're at, but the schools are doing composting with Black Earth Compost, the same company that the town uses.

[Speaker 6] (3:03:19 - 3:03:19)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (3:03:19 - 3:03:31)
Yeah, I know at the high school, and then I think they're trying to do the middle school right now, and Max is very involved.

[Speaker 13] (3:03:31 - 3:03:31)
Perfect.

[Speaker 3] (3:03:32 - 3:03:33)
And recycling as well?

[Speaker 4] (3:03:34 - 3:03:36)
Yeah, I just know the composting because I see the invoices.

[Speaker 13] (3:03:37 - 3:03:38)
Okay. Thank you, Amy.

[Speaker 1] (3:03:39 - 3:03:55)
My observation doesn't lead me to believe that we have enough recycling barrels on school properties, but I certainly can follow up with the superintendent about a more enthusiastic program.

[Speaker 13] (3:03:56 - 3:03:56)
Thanks.

[Speaker 3] (3:03:59 - 3:04:04)
Anything else for Sean? Select Board time.

[Speaker 5] (3:04:08 - 3:04:21)
I just have one request. We get information the same day we're walking in here, get information on Mondays. I really need information.

Can we get information before the weekend?

[Speaker 1] (3:04:21 - 3:04:21)
Sure.

[Speaker 5] (3:04:21 - 3:04:34)
Can we just plan ahead and get it out? I don't know about anybody else on this committee, but I can't stop in the middle of the day and read things and be prepared the way I'd like to be prepared on the same day.

[Speaker 1] (3:04:34 - 3:04:53)
We will make efforts to be better about that. Sometimes, you know, there are just some busy days, and I apologize that we don't get this out all the time in a consistent way.

[Speaker 3] (3:04:54 - 3:06:17)
I think there's a lot of work that happens up until the end of the day on Thursday to try to get everything to everybody before the weekend, and I'm the same way. I want to look at it, too. But there's a lot of time between the end of the day Thursday and Monday and Wednesday when we have our meeting where there are going to be updates and there will be new information.

So, you know, I can just say I do think everyone's making a pretty concerted effort, and I do think that pretty consistently there have been packets that have been almost complete, you know, sent out before the weekend. But, I mean, I don't like to see things. For instance, the information on Hadley that Peter and I sent out today, I think the last response that we got from one of the members of the committee was this morning.

So we actually didn't have that information until today, but I don't want to delay the conversation, right? So I think there's a choice to make. So I totally agree with you that we need to have information as soon as we can, but I also think there are challenges to that that are out of our control, and I don't think we can put off some of these conversations.

[Speaker 10] (3:06:19 - 3:07:12)
I would just like to say that in regards to this topic, Peter, I want to apologize for my frustration earlier with you. Part of that is having not had the information in enough time, I did not feel comfortable asking all the questions that I would have asked prior. And, you know, you come into this space, you want to be as educated as possible in asking smart, intelligent questions, and you do sort of, you know, that is not possible when you don't have the presentation before the day you're having the discussion.

So for me, I am asking this question because I want to come to the table with all the information. I don't have all the background that everybody that sits at this table does. I'm trying to build that repertoire, but I can't ask the question if I don't have the information in front of me.

And so I apologize, Peter, for that frustration.

[Speaker 2] (3:07:12 - 3:07:25)
No, this is a good, you have nothing to apologize for. Earlier, you might not have seen on camera, I, while Katie was speaking, I shook my head in the negative, and that was totally disrespectful, and I shouldn't do it, and I'm very sorry that I did that to you.

[Speaker 1] (3:07:31 - 3:08:13)
I hear you all. I oftentimes have these similar concerns when I sit in meetings and I get things at the last minute, when I need hours to study it and read it, and it's important, I respect the fact that you take all of your responsibilities as seriously as anybody would ever hope, and we'll try to be better. I appreciate my team.

I know I do ask a lot of them, and oftentimes I know, Amy, you were working on this presentation right up until you got here, and it's a lot of work. It's a lot of responsibility. I don't want you to hear this as an excuse.

We'll do better.

[Speaker 5] (3:08:15 - 3:09:14)
I have one more comment. I'm sorry. Over the weekend, I received several phone calls from people that live near the new school project, and there was an issue with construction people starting before 7 o'clock on a Saturday morning.

So I just want to reiterate what the neighbor had said earlier, and I don't know if you're going to be at that meeting tomorrow, but if there's ever a decision that there's going to be additional work done on the weekend, if you could identify a robocall or have a conversation, or even don't do the work. And, I mean, I think those neighbors, I looked at the blasting reports, and they're having a minimum of, like, four blasts, and it's really wearing them down. So I just want to please take that into consideration.

And that is it. I won't say anything else.

[Speaker 3] (3:09:15 - 3:09:33)
Any other comments before time? Motion to adjourn. All right.

All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

Thanks, everyone. Thank you, everybody.

[Speaker 1] (3:09:33 - 3:09:33)
Thanks, Joe.

[Speaker 3] (3:09:34 - 3:09:53)
Thanks, Joe. Thank you, Amy. Thank you.