[Speaker 19] (0:43 - 1:13)
.

[Speaker 6] (2:20 - 3:02)
Welcome to the April 10th, 2024 select board meeting. This meeting is being recorded. We can have our Eagle Scouts join us in the pledge.

Lead us in the pledge, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

Before we get into the town administrator's report, public comments, and new and old business, I do want to start with a presentation of a proclamation to Elliott Pulaski for the attainment of Eagle Scout.

[Speaker 20] (3:04 - 3:05)
Elliott.

[Speaker 2] (3:21 - 3:30)
Do you want to say a few comments about your project and why you want to do this? Yes, please. Tell us all about why this is important.

[Speaker 6] (3:30 - 3:47)
Well, we're going to read the citation and then Elliott would love to hear about your project. So, community achievement is presented to Elliott Pulaski whereas the rank of Eagle Scout is the highest honor that can be attained by a Boy Scout and.

[Speaker 4] (3:49 - 3:57)
Whereas attainment of the rank of Eagle Scout involved completing a service project on behalf of the Swamp Scout Town Tree Committee and.

[Speaker 3] (3:57 - 4:19)
Whereas to complete this project, Elliott, with help from his scout troop and friends, surveyed 174 trees and recorded the information in the town tree database for the Swamp Scout Tree Committee. This will allow the town to have up to date data on its trees as well as exact GPS coordinates and descriptions of any issues with the tree, helping the town to decide if any further action is needed to be done to the tree and.

[Speaker 1] (4:21 - 4:27)
Elliott has nobly and conscientiously undertaken the many duties and responsibilities consistent with the rank of Eagle Scout and.

[Speaker 6] (4:28 - 4:36)
Whereas Elliott has exemplified the finest traditions of the Boy Scouts as a member of Boy Scout Troop 53 and distinguished himself among his peers as a leader and.

[Speaker 4] (4:37 - 4:49)
Whereas, Elliott has preserved and enriched Troop 53 by carrying out his duties as a Boy Scout, especially by serving in the most dedicated and conscientious manner possible and.

[Speaker 3] (4:49 - 4:56)
Whereas, because of Elliott's selfless efforts, he has earned the respect and admiration of his fellow scouts, scout leaders, and community members alike and.

[Speaker 1] (4:58 - 5:12)
Whereas, in earning his high rank, Elliott joins an elite and honorable fraternity of achievers that count among its members an extraordinary number of the nation's great leaders in business, government, education, and other sectors of society and.

[Speaker 6] (5:13 - 5:22)
Whereas, it is fitting that the town of Swampskate should recognize Mr. Pulaski for his volunteerism, his hard work, and his dedication to the highest ideals of public service and.

[Speaker 4] (5:24 - 5:55)
Now therefore, on behalf of the entire select board, we do hereby present the citation of community service to Elliott Pulaski. In Swampscote, Massachusetts, and urge others to join us in extending congratulations to Mr. Pulaski and his family for the exceptional demonstration of civic leadership. The willingness to be helpful to others and all the superior superlatives are recognized by Elliott's attainment of this prestigious rank of Eagle Scout.

[Speaker 3] (5:56 - 6:05)
In witness whereof, we here unto set our hands and cause to be affixed the seal of the town of Swampscote, Massachusetts, the third day of April, 2024, Swampscote Select Board.

[Speaker 20] (6:07 - 6:08)
All right.

[Speaker 2] (6:19 - 6:22)
Yeah, sure, that'd be great. Microphone, please.

[Speaker 4] (6:22 - 6:27)
But before that, Elliott, can you name the other Eagle Scouts at this table?

[Speaker 1] (6:31 - 6:34)
Are we taking back the proclamation? We're going to take back the proclamation.

[Speaker 4] (6:35 - 6:38)
We're going to think about it. I'll give you a hint. There's two of them sitting here.

[Speaker 1] (6:39 - 6:41)
And they are probably the best looking ones here.

[Speaker 4] (6:42 - 6:45)
That's not true, but who do you think it is?

[Speaker 18] (6:46 - 6:47)
Doug Thompson, he just told us.

[Speaker 4] (6:48 - 6:59)
That's great. Amazing, that was good, that was good. So now you belong to the club at Fabler.

All right, so let's hear it.

[Speaker 3] (6:59 - 7:02)
You don't need to comment on that. Yeah, Elliott, I'm sorry. Order.

[Speaker 18] (7:03 - 8:14)
So pretty much the town tree committee reached out to our troop and got in touch with the Port of the Scoutmaster and said they had a free database that they had surveyed professionally a while back. But now they've planted a lot more trees, and they didn't have any information on these trees. And the information helps them decide what decisions they need to make with a tree, whether it's doing well, which trees work best in which locations, the native trees, and just general health of all the street trees in the town.

So they reached out to us to have us come out and survey them. So we did 174 trees, the location, exact latitude, longitude, the DBH, which is the diameter of the tree at breast height. We did a link to a map with all the different trees on it.

And then we also collected a bunch of data on the health of the tree, linking to the species. And we helped identify some patterns in it, showing how non-native trees weren't holding up as well as some of the native trees, and just overall collected data that will help them determine what decisions to make in the future regarding the street trees.

[Speaker 2] (8:15 - 8:19)
Awesome. Elliot, really incredible work.

[Speaker 6] (8:21 - 8:37)
Elliot, I just want to thank you on behalf of the entire board. Thank you. You know, your efforts are certainly appreciated, and our town is better off for you having attained, having worked on this project.

So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

[Speaker 2] (8:38 - 9:20)
Elliot, I want to thank your parents and, frankly, the scout leaders who dedicate countless hours of their life to help you and the other scouts, you know, get involved in civic leadership. You know, your work with the trees is important. You know, Slomskit is in an area of non-attainment in terms of air quality, and we need to do more to plant more trees and to be more focused on the environment.

So this is critically important work. And throughout the rest of your life, you can be always proud to have made such a big contribution at such a young age to this town. So thank you.

[Speaker 18] (9:20 - 9:23)
Thank you. Thanks, Elliot. Great.

[Speaker 6] (9:27 - 9:33)
All right. We're going to move on to the town administrator's report.

[Speaker 2] (9:33 - 29:32)
Sean. Thank you, David. All right.

So it's been a busy week. Last week, the board discussed the need to really review the financial policy. We put the financial policy in place a few years ago, you know, to really focus on metrics that would help us improve the town's financial position.

It has worked out extraordinarily well. The policy does have a limit of $5,000 for grants that staff would have to seek the board's approval for. After a review of the policy and a discussion with staff and department heads, I'm recommending that we increase that limit from $5,000 to $500,000.

It may sound like a lot, but certainly there are many ministerial grants that we apply for to the tunes of $50,000 to $100,000. It really helped the town to have staff report to the board every time we apply for a grant. I think it could create the appearance as though, you know, we have a low rate of approval.

Many of our department heads apply for many, many grants, and I think it would be counterproductive. That said, I certainly appreciate the board's interest in transparency. I do think we could share more information about the grants that we're applying for and get the board's input on some of the important grants.

I really appreciate the boards and committee members' work to apply for grants. Many of our board committee chairs and board committee members are enthusiastic about grants. I don't want to curb that enthusiasm.

I think it only helps us be that much more effective as an organization and as a community. That said, it's the board's prerogative to set the standard. I look forward to discussing that with the board.

Tonight we're going to go over an update on King's Beach and Fisherman's Beach, you know, IDDE, or illicit discharge detection elimination efforts. These are statutory responsibilities for the town. We are an MS4 regulated community under the Clean Waters Act, and we have an ongoing responsibility to support how we address infiltration and exfiltration in our pipes.

You know, we have worked over the last few years with Kleinfelder to look at strategies to be more aggressive and evaluating both ways that we can address IDDE, but also supplemental strategies. As I've shared numerous times, I don't think we can use that beach safely with just IDDE or that sleeving of the pipes. We have many, many miles of pipes.

We're in the process of updating an asset management plan, and there's just lots of work that we have to do. I have asked our finance team to take a look at our rates, our sewer rates in particular. We are the 46th lowest out of the 56 communities that are in MWRA, and that just basically, that data point tells us we just haven't been investing in infrastructure.

We haven't been investing in our sewer pipes. You know, our enterprise rates are specifically focused on revenue that can help us maintain that status of good repair. Marblehead is ranked the second highest in MWRA, and I'm sorry, Nahant is rated the second highest, and Marblehead's the 14th highest respectively.

You know, we've looked at modeling swamps, but if we just hit the median or the medium, we could generate millions of dollars worth of additional funds annually to support some of the status of good repair responsibilities. I'm not saying that that's going to fix the problem at Kings Beach, because it likely won't because this is a regional problem. I think people have to understand that we could spend millions.

You're just not going to be able to feel safe when you go to that beach because it's regional. And so what really I'm hoping that we can do is just come up with a common sense and steady head perspective that we can support over a timeline of decades that says that we're going to get good at the status of good repair, similar to how we've addressed school buildings and some of our other infrastructure challenges. We will get more into this when we talk about the capital plan, but we're moving forward with a phase two sewer improvement under the consent order, and this would help allocate $1.7 million that we received under the state ARPA funding program. I'm requesting an additional $1.8 million as part of our more aggressive plan. I've worked with EPA leaders to come up with a more aggressive strategy that hopefully will help them come up with a more aggressive level of advocacy for these supplemental efforts. We all need to be more aggressive when it comes to protecting our environment.

Our MassDEP state revolving funds are also planned for future years. I know, Doug, you have been very eager to advocate that we apply for those. We're planning on applying for those this August.

Fisherman's Beach has been a project that we've designed, and we've been really eager to advance for funding. I'm recommending that we advance a $1.7 million project, both the $1.8 million in additional work under phase two and the $1.7 million for fishermen. I believe we should fund through the sewer enterprise costs.

We have the capacity there. I've gone over that with our financial team. It will mean a little bit of an increase on our sewer rate, but that's something I think we can discuss as a board and really set a reasonable policy decision, and it allows us, I think, room to kind of think about how we allocate some of those limited offer dollars.

I did attend a—just moving on, we'll get into some of these capital projects a little later in the agenda, but last week I want to thank residents that came out to the community update on Pine Street or the Veterans Housing Project. Appreciate the really thorough questions and dialogue. A lot of residents were very concerned about the size, the scope, the infrastructure, the things that, frankly, we would expect that they would have some concerns about.

I want to thank our Community and Economic Development Director, Marzi Golaska, and staff from B'nai B'rith for working with the neighborhood. We will have numerous follow-up meetings about the project. We are currently working with contractors to look at the demolition of the building, and we'll be scheduling additional meetings over the next week to really update the community but also the neighborhood of progress as we move forward with that project.

I have recommended in the warrant that we discuss the change in how we elect our members of the Board of Assessors. Many communities have moved from an elected board to an appointed board. I certainly appreciate the work of our Board of Assessors.

I attended their meeting on Monday. They have certainly dedicated a lot of time and effort looking at values, but I really want to focus on how we can continue to professionalize our responsibilities as a finance team. We've gone from a double-A minus town to a triple-A town over the last few years, and it really is important that we have our financial team working together.

Certainly, having an elected board does bring some different elements to it. This is a conversation I want to have with the board, certainly with the community, but I'm looking at expertise and qualifications. Most folks don't know who's on the Board of Assessors, and it's not being critical, but it's just not a board that people generally think about when they think about elected office.

We oftentimes don't have competitive elections for the Board of Assessors, and so we don't know who's running and we don't know their qualifications, but it's really important because they set the ad valorem or the market value for every property. Swampskate's a busy town, a complicated town, and when we look at the fiduciary responsibilities we have, we have to make sure that we get that right, and they're working with our other finance team members so that we can actually do our best job just supporting these values and the stability and the continuity for how we address these fiduciary responsibilities. A pointing process really focuses on a merit-based election, reduces in some ways the polarization and the conflicts that we see, gets rid of the politics, and I know that some folks are concerned about that.

Yes, we want to have government close to people, but in some areas this is really something that I think would help us be more efficient and cost-effective when we deal with these key responsibilities. I just wanted to share that with the Board, and I wanted to share that publicly because I know there will be people that think differently, and I'm okay with that. It's okay that we have different ideas.

I just want to present that as an option. I certainly want to recognize Cheryl Moschella, our town assessor and former interim assessor. They're here, and I've discussed with both of them the strategies that I've just outlined, and I hope they will share some of their perspectives.

Community development has been really focused on economic development as well. This past week I worked with Select Board Member Doug Thompson, and we talked about a town-wide economic development plan. We've talked about that for about a year.

At the juncture of really working to bring a boutique hotel to Humphrey Street with Hadley School and thoughts of really making major investments along Humphrey Street with the Hawthorne property and Binning Square and the MBTA neighborhood, I think this is prime time for Swampskate to really reach out and get more conversations going with economic development. We're a small town, but we have some extraordinary economic potential, and I think it would be helpful for the town to move forward with a funding program. That kind of falls into some of these American Recovery Act recommendations.

I've been asked to present a list of additional recommendations for the use of ARPA funds. I'm recommending that we move forward with $400,000 for a mobile town hall. This is a vehicle that could travel around to every neighborhood in town.

Andover has a mobile town hall. If you went to the MMA convention over the last couple of years, they bring it to the convention, and you can see that various departments use them. You can bring the Board of Health or your town health department.

You can bring flu shots and vaccination shots to senior campuses. You can bring your library out. You can bring your recreation out to parks and beaches, and you can really use this to be an asset that can help make government that much more accessible to neighborhoods.

I'm recommending that we use $500,000 for pedestrian safety. There's any number of streets that could quickly gobble up $500,000 for intersection redesign or a number of crosswalks that we could raise and speed tables. We've recently made a few of these investments.

They've worked really well in certain neighborhoods, and we're building a brand-new elementary school. There's going to be traffic patterns that evolve, and certainly we're asking for $300,000 in the capital plan. But surging pedestrian safety, there's no bigger risk we have in town than pedestrian safety.

I think we all know Swampskate's a densely settled town. It's only going to get more densely settled, and I think if we look at how we can allocate a few of these dollars over the next year, we can make the community safer. This has been a priority for the select board, and so I really am echoing a number of concerns that the board has had over the last few years.

Another concern we have is our parks. We have a lot of wonderful parks, but they don't have reoccurring revenue streams. They don't have funding every year, and we have a number of parks that need access improvements.

We have beaches that need access improvements. We have fences and upgrades for these facilities, and I've met with our rec director and our DPW director, and certainly that would go a long way in addressing some of the grading issues that we have on a number of key recreational fields, so a longstanding issue. Historic preservation, I met with the chair of the Historic Commission.

We have a number of active projects, but certainly the Glover has a lot of needs. Right now we don't know the full scope of the needs for the Glover, but I received a proposal two weeks ago for an additional $50,000 to kind of shore up and do some additional preliminary work for a bid for how we could address the Glover. We also have Blythwood.

We have a right of first refusal on a historic property right next to White Court, the town negotiated a better part of 20 years ago, and we need some funding to help us strategize on how we would actually move forward with getting ahead of preserving that property and perhaps even addressing some of the other preservation priorities. I'm recommending $100,000 for a resiliency manager. This would be offsetting revenue, but it's clear we have to do more with sustainability and resiliency.

This gives us a chance to really hire somebody that focuses on resiliency full time, all the time, without fail. Right now we have half a dozen staff that focus on resiliency part time, and certainly many appointed and elected officials that are focused on that, but we need somebody there all the time. I've recommended $200,000 for our Swampskate Housing Authority redevelopment feasibility study.

We, over the last year, worked with our housing authority colleagues, and if anybody hasn't toured the housing authority, you should go down there and take a look at just exactly the condition of many of these units. In fact, I don't think any of these units are ADA compliant, and we need to really think about how do we help create more affordable housing? How do we work with DACD?

I think allocating a few dollars here could surge some conversations, some critical conversations that says that Swampskate will be a partner. We're not just going to be cheerleading. We're going to actually go down there, and we're going to mean business, and we're going to try to actually build houses and properties that we would want to live in if we were getting older in Swampskate and we needed a place to be.

I'm recommending $100,000 for a townwide economic development study. This was discussed earlier. $200,000 for resiliency projects.

We have a number of committees that are focused on resiliency. We have dozens of projects. These dollars won't go far, but they will give us a chance to really look at state grants and perhaps have some match or do some things that really get beyond conversation points.

Lastly, public health. Our health director, Jeff Vaughn, and our town nurse, Mia Illingworth, have a number of programs that they believe are critically important after the pandemic that can help support the care that we need for mental health, for substance abuse, for all the public health programs that folks need. It's $121,000, but it can go a long way in addressing gaps in our health care system and our community.

These are recommendations, but ultimately it's the board's prerogative to decide how to allocate a few of these dollars. I fully expect there's going to be some movement here, but certainly these have been reviewed by town staff. I can come back.

I can put slide decks together. I can take slide decks that we've put together and come back and get into more detail, but that's $2.1 million worth of proper recommendations. I have been working with the MSBA, the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

The town is fortunate to receive some supplemental funds, over $5 million for the second amendment for project funding. MSBA has reached out to meet with me and the school team virtually to go over some of these reimbursements and really excited about how these can be used. Right now we're still not exactly sure, but we're working through some of those parameters, and certainly I'll have more information over the next couple of weeks to share with the board and the community.

Last week I did meet with Heidi Ware and Bob Powell. Heidi is our all-ages director. Bob is on the board, and Danielle Strauss, our director, to talk about a feasibility study for a new community life center or a senior center.

This is important as we think about all the needs that we have as a community. We have Earth Day on April 27th. We're going to try to get out and clean up some areas of town, so if you're interested you can contact Jonathan Nichols at our library.

He's our library director. We are going to be selling some bikes, and we're going to have an event at town hall, and our conservancy is working with town staff to get cleaner and greener energy advocates, so that is my report.

[Speaker 6] (29:32 - 29:34)
Thanks, Sean. Questions, comments from the board?

[Speaker 4] (29:36 - 30:12)
I have a number of comments, but I'm going to reserve them for when we're bringing up certain topics on our line items, such as the board of assessors and the ARPA money. But I have a question on the new school. If people who live near the new school, Orchard, Mason, all that, when are we going to start, and who?

What's the mechanism for that community to start having open conversations and dialogue about how it's going to be implemented down there and what the effects are going to be?

[Speaker 2] (30:12 - 30:17)
Are you asking for a neighborhood meeting just to talk about traffic patterns?

[Speaker 4] (30:18 - 30:26)
Talk about anything and everything that they want to talk about. I just want to know, is that the superintendent? Is that the building?

Who handles that?

[Speaker 2] (30:27 - 31:20)
I'm going to say we, but you probably want more specificity. A number of different groups. I've gone down to the neighborhood a number of times with our facilities director, Max Casper, and we've coordinated project site meetings with neighbors to give them updates on the construction phases.

I certainly can reach out to town staff and the superintendent and talk a little bit about if it's time for us to actually schedule some meetings to go over our start of school transportation plans. It does make sense to actually schedule something now and really get the word out that traffic patterns are going to start to evolve. We're going to be doing some work this summer on pedestrian safety projects in anticipation for the new school.

[Speaker 4] (31:22 - 31:25)
Sir, are you the one that sets that up, or is that the superintendent sets it up?

[Speaker 2] (31:25 - 31:39)
I typically work with our community and economic development director, and they'll set that up. We do that in conjunction with our police department and our fire department and facilities department.

[Speaker 4] (31:39 - 31:50)
All right, so here's my request. I'd like to have something set up for the first week of June for that neighborhood over there because it's real important and they're asking for it, so is that enough time?

[Speaker 2] (31:51 - 31:55)
I will look into that, and I will get back to you.

[Speaker 4] (31:55 - 31:55)
Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (31:56 - 32:04)
I think it makes sense, so I'm happy to work with the team and try to get meetings together before everybody is out of school.

[Speaker 4] (32:05 - 32:12)
Great, and my second question is, now we have a community center. Is a community center different from the library?

[Speaker 2] (32:13 - 32:18)
It is. A community life center or a rec center, very different.

[Speaker 4] (32:18 - 32:27)
We're looking at a feasibility study for a community center, and we're looking at a library. These are two separate things.

[Speaker 2] (32:28 - 32:43)
Two separate things. We can go to a bunch of different newly constructed libraries and newly constructed community life centers, all-age centers, and they're very, very different.

[Speaker 4] (32:45 - 32:45)
Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (32:47 - 32:58)
Thanks. Yeah, I can reserve most of my questions, too. I do have to say that there's a lot of, you know, plenty of things I have questions about, but a lot of exciting things in here.

Great.

[Speaker 2] (32:58 - 33:24)
Yeah, I appreciate that, Doug. I do think Swampskits on the move. There's a lot of busy projects, certainly things that get people energized, both positively and otherwise.

It's okay that people have strong opinions about things. It could be worse. You could be apathetic or indifferent, and that's generally one of the bigger problems we have in society.

We don't have that in Swampskit.

[Speaker 4] (33:26 - 33:38)
On the economic, when do you want to talk about, I just want to get a better understanding of what is economic development study. Like what, do you want to talk about that now or do you want to talk about that later?

[Speaker 3] (33:39 - 33:39)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (33:41 - 33:44)
Okay, I just wanted an understanding on that. What does that mean?

[Speaker 3] (33:45 - 33:46)
Making money.

[Speaker 2] (33:47 - 34:37)
Yeah, I'm happy to. There was a report I sent the board from Marshfield. The town of Marshfield did an economic development study with MAPC, and basically they looked at every commercial property area zone in town, and they thought, what's working, what isn't working?

And I think having some outside of the town perspective could help us kind of think about, are we maximizing the economic potential of some of these key areas, Humphrey Street, Vinning Square, MBTA neighborhood, and are there ways for us to actually better define the businesses? And could we actually work with a firm to actually go out there and try to recruit some restaurants or some other economic development investments similar to what we've done with the hotel?

[Speaker 3] (34:38 - 34:43)
And if I just may add there, like, what is the community's desire for what that should be?

[Speaker 2] (34:43 - 34:43)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 3] (34:43 - 34:51)
It's not just a simple mathematical, like, max the value. It's about what fits culturally for this community in different areas.

[Speaker 2] (34:51 - 35:04)
Thank you, Doug. Absolutely. We're talking about community meetings.

You know, we're talking about bringing people in and saying, what do you want to see? Do you have enough diversity in restaurants? Do you have enough diversity in businesses?

What's the right fit for Swansgate?

[Speaker 6] (35:10 - 35:30)
Thanks. All right, we'll move on to public comment. Public comment is where members of the public can rise, state their name, and they will have three minutes to discuss anything that is not on our agenda.

So, yes, Mr. DiCillo.

[Speaker 10] (35:36 - 38:47)
Thank you. Neil DiCillo, 7 Rockland Street, Precinct 4. I serve as chair of the Swansgate Public Library Board of Trustees.

I'm speaking on behalf of the library board. The other members of the board are Tripp Semby and Debbie Friedlander. Following the April 5th select board meeting, during which there was a presentation of the emerging vision for the Hawthorne property, many questions and concerns were raised with members of the library board on social media concerning the involvement of members of the board in the presentation that was at the select board meeting.

Simply put, the library board of trustees was not involved in discussions or planning of the project or the presentation. The library board understands that the April 5th presentation was an initial idea of a potential project at the Hawthorne property. We look forward to the development of this and other options for the property.

We believe there needs to be an open and transparent process which seriously considers a variety of options and includes input from a broad representation of town residents. We cannot rely on data that were gathered during the early discussions regarding the property. People's ideas evolved and there has now been time for folks to reassess their thinking.

After many discussions with neighbors and friends, I know that my thinking has evolved. In addition, Swanscott residents need a clear understanding of all of the town's other priorities and obligations, their budgets and plans for implementation. While I do not have a comprehensive list, Howard priorities such as the existing water sewage problems, required beach cleanup, needed renovations to the middle school and library, the senior center that was just mentioned, and the Hadley Hotel, fit into a comprehensive plan for the town.

All of this information, including the processes for engaging relevant constituencies for each project, should be readily available on the town's website. Some of you may wonder why I'm so focused on process. I'd like to take the Hadley school as an example, the Hadley Hotel as an example.

We were told there were three options. After the hotel option was selected, a member of the select board stated that there was really only one option. The town administrator stated the same thing to me today, the reason being we needed revenue.

I'm certain most people in this town could understand that and we then could have considered three options that would have brought in revenue. But no, the decision was made by those who thought they knew best. The hotel may have been the best option, but we'll never know, because we never got to consider other options.

Last week, I heard a lot of talk at this meeting about what the townspeople deserve related to the Hawthorne property. What we deserve is respect. That respect would be shown by trusting the citizens of the town to be fully engaged in decisions that impact all of us.

I'd like to have this statement entered into the record of the meeting. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

[Speaker 16] (39:04 - 40:49)
Thank you. James Andrews, 133 Stetson. I think it's precinct one.

So I appreciate the opportunity to speak. As a taxpayer in this town in 2024, it's not an easy year. I live in a pretty much typical medium property value, so I'm pretty much the example of that middle line.

Just to give some context about what my family is dealing with, 9% increase in property tax, that's $1,000 a year, due to the valuation increase, right? 34% increase in auto insurance this year, another $1,700 a year. I'm told 10% to 20% increase in house insurance this year.

That's a function of the coastal issues and the fact that the entire town now is considered coastal. Stetson previously wasn't. That's nearly $3,000 a year.

That's $300 a month. Now, that may not seem like a lot of money for some people, but for some people in precinct one, that's the difference between continuing to live in Swampscott or leaving Swampscott to move to somewhere else. So I think as I sit here and I watch all of these SB meetings, I look at all of the proposals, I listen to the ones that Shaunie just mentioned today, there's a reality filter that I think we have to apply to this.

I understand we want to look for new revenue. I understand we look at opportunities where we may legitimately have the right to tax more, where we may legitimately have the right to increase the water rates. However, I think we really need to consider the context in which people and families are making their decisions right now for this year.

I just wanted to bring that in front of the board. Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (40:50 - 41:22)
Thank you, Mr. Andrews. We have some hands on Teams. I can't get this.

Mr. Chillo, one second. Samilia Markovich. On Teams, Mary.

Teams, Mary. Yeah. One second.

[Speaker 8] (41:25 - 41:30)
I didn't see anybody come up. Sorry. Mary Duccillo, precinct.

[Speaker 6] (41:30 - 41:38)
Mary, Mary, Mary. We're recognizing someone on Teams. One second, please.

Samilia, you're muted.

[Speaker 1] (41:39 - 41:40)
You're on mute yourself.

[Speaker 6] (41:54 - 41:58)
We'll recognize Alex Jafarzadeh.

[Speaker 1] (41:58 - 41:59)
Alex.

[Speaker 14] (42:04 - 44:14)
Hi, Alex Jafarzadeh. 155 Unwood Road, precinct 4. I'm watching this presentation from last week about the Hawthorne property, and even tonight I'm listening to the town administrator's recommendations on ARPA money.

And I guess I'm pretty confused and a bit frustrated by our priorities, because what I'm seeing is that the sewers are so broken that our beaches are polluted to unacceptable, unsafe levels. The seawall gets inundated every time a storm rolls in and our homes are flooded with polluted water. I mean, tonight you've talked about pedestrian safety, but I don't know if the public is aware, but we don't actually have a functioning traffic study committee that has met in the last six to nine months.

There's basic needs that we have to meet as a town. We've got public health, well-being, accessibility. And from what I've seen, the select board on a lot of these issues has dragged its feet and told us it's too expensive, or you've commissioned studies and studies and kicked the problems into the long grass or postponed votes or blamed external parties.

But when it comes to things like the Hawthorne, suddenly the money is there to purchase water on property. And now you've started down another process of a really nice-to-have project like the Hadley Hotel or a waterfront library, which sounds lovely, but it's ultimately, to me, it's a nice-to-have when we haven't dealt with the basic needs. It feels to me like all you do is delay or ignore the basic problems, but you really want to eat your dessert before your greens.

If we've got the money and the resources for a project like the Hadley Hotel or the waterfront library or a mobile town hall, regardless of how well-intentioned this stuff is, we've got to take that money and resources and meet the basic needs of the community. We've got to start eating our greens. So I'm asking you to start reassessing your priorities and do the hard work that we need, because we need a healthy, safe town.

And every time a storm rolls in or we see sewer water being pumped onto the beaches, I just wonder, what's the point of doing all this nice-to-have stuff when we really need to think about what we actually need as a town? Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (44:14 - 44:19)
Thanks, Alex. We're going to go to Mary DiGillo.

[Speaker 8] (44:21 - 46:27)
Sorry for jumping in there. Mary DiGillo, Precinct 4, 7 Rockland Street. I'm here tonight to talk about the Harbor and Waterfront Advisory Committee.

It's a line item in the community, in the CIC budget. It's asking for $54,000 for capital improvements budget. The Harbor and Waterfront Committee has received two matching grants from Seaboard, which is the Commonwealth's public board, which funds and oversees coastal development in Massachusetts.

In the last grant application to Seaboard on May 1, 2003, HAWC stated that they would be using $41,000 left over from the previous grant as well as, quote, in-kind resources to continue its work. It's unclear what this $54,000 would be spent on, given that HAWC has said that already it has a surplus in-kind resources and that at least one of its consultants is working pro bono, quote, unquote. I've heard that there's been an external engineering assessment of the pier at Fisherman's Beach within the last several weeks or month or so.

It would be prudent, in my opinion, that any CIC budgetary action should remain pending until this assessment is released to the public prior to committing any more public funds to the Harbor and Waterfront. Again, as was stated previously in other comments here tonight, having a comprehensive plan, all of those efforts that are being made and much lauded in terms of trying to do something around our waterfront should be a total, not just the Harbor and Waterfront Committee, but a total commitment to all of our commitment. And I'd like these comments to be admitted to the record.

Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (46:27 - 46:35)
Thank you. Ms. Linder?

[Speaker 15] (46:36 - 48:32)
Danielle Linder, 93 Linden Ave, Precinct 6. So I'm here for a couple of things tonight that are on the agenda. I'm encouraged to hear that we're contributing or funding, we're utilizing ARPA funds towards the cleanup of Fisherman's and Kings Beach.

I would just strongly encourage that we allocate as much as possible of that ARPA funding for that purpose. Over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to speak with many residents in town, and it has become really clear that cleaning up the beaches is a high priority for a lot of people, myself included. So I think that while we do have certainly a laundry list of things, of wants that we would love to see, a mobile town hall, you know, things of that nature, I think that it's really prudent that we apply as much of that funding as we can to cleaning up the beaches.

And that's for a couple of reasons. We live in a coastal community for that reason, because it's a beachfront community. And I think it directly translates to property value when you think about beaches and clean beaches, and I think that means a lot to a lot of the residents in town, and it would certainly make a lot of effort.

It would go a long way with a lot of the people that feel kind of disconnected to local government and that their needs and wants aren't being heard. The second piece I wanted to mention is the thought process behind changing the assessor's situation from an elected position to an appointed position. I would just personally suggest that we really look closely at that and try to avoid the perception that would inevitably become that we're taking power away from the people and letting them elect that position.

I think that to make such an abrupt change is a serious decision and would require a lot of thought and not one to be entered into lightly. So that's all that I'd caution on that. That's all I have to say.

Thanks.

[Speaker 6] (48:33 - 48:33)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (48:35 - 48:35)
Ms. Lau?

[Speaker 9] (48:41 - 52:01)
Good evening, folks. Mara Lau, 50 Antelope Road. Town meeting member.

Yes, precinct 3. So I've got a little bit of a laundry list, but I think I'm going to fold my laundry neatly and make it shorter and put the top one that I find most troubling at the top of my list. So I have spoken a number of times in the 11 months that I have been, 10 months actually, 10 months that I've been coming super regularly, speaking mostly about Hadley, but certainly other things as well, which is the tone and the tenor.

It's terrible. And so I'd like to address the tone from last week's meeting because it is the thing that stands out to me the most as the most upsetting. And we have young people like Elliot watching and listening, and I think that we want to draw students and young people into municipal government.

This is where they start their lives. They start their lives in school. They start their lives electing folks to pass out paper plates.

This is how students begin. So as I would say to my children, knock it off, Peter. Please.

It's just wrong. Okay, so back to a few other things. The process I have also been speaking about a number of times.

The process is non-existent to get projects and information out to people. It is inconsistent is really the better word. It's inconsistent so that we can have meetings and things disseminated through your code red.

Sometimes we get things. Sometimes we don't. It's just not enough.

The presentation last week was beautiful. The building is beautiful. But it was a surprise, and it should not have been a surprise.

It wasn't a birthday present that an eight-year-old was unfolding at a party. It just shouldn't have been a surprise. It should have been a process to get to that.

It's just when it doesn't feel right and it doesn't feel right, there's a problem. Because there's a lot of things that feel right. The budget, for example.

It is so much easier to follow that budget as a town meeting member. I appreciate that. I appreciate all the questions.

Because I have the same questions when I'm sitting at home listening. But I can't stand up and ask them in the middle. So I appreciate the questions.

I appreciate the explanations of things.

[Speaker 6] (52:01 - 52:01)
Thank you, Ms. Lau.

[Speaker 9] (52:01 - 52:09)
Please be more considerate to the people who want to do good work and to each other.

[Speaker 6] (52:10 - 52:10)
Thank you, Ms. Lau.

[Speaker 11] (52:21 - 55:32)
Andrea Moore, Precinct 3. I'll follow up on Ms. Lau's comments. As you guys saw, and I'm sure people online will see, and I have no shame about it, I'm extremely upset.

I want to just start by reading off what the government suggests that we use the ARPA funds for. Eligible uses of the funds include revenue replacement for the provision of government services. COVID-19 expenditures or negative economic impacts of COVID-19.

Premium pay for essential workers. And last, investments in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure. Period.

That is all. Those are the four things that are suggested. So that's the federal government once again telling you, this is what we think you should use this money for.

And I don't see a reflection of that in the suggestions put forward tonight. So it feels like we have a pattern of some members in front of me saying, let's just ignore the federal government's suggestions because we think we know better. Which is very frustrating.

Not only are you ignoring the suggestions of the federal government, but we also aren't listening to the town constituents. And I want to be very clear about that. Sean, you are not listening to people.

You are not listening to people because they are trying to speak with you. They're speaking with you here. They're speaking with you through community comment on things like social media.

We're just sending you emails and then Peter mocks us for them in public. We are actively trying to participate and tell you. There has not been a single select board meeting in the last ten months where somebody, including me, and many other constituents have gotten up and told you, this is the priority.

This is the priority. If you look at the comments for why the library was a shock to a lot of people, about a third of them are like, why not the sewers? Why are we doing this?

Why not the sewers? So please, stop lying. Stop telling us you are listening to feedback.

You are not. Just be honest. You are not listening.

And I'm upset because I watched this happen for ten months and it's enough. Stop. Truly, if you, your words and your actions do not match.

So if you want to represent this town of Swampscott and you want this town of Swampscott to be proud of you, please listen to us. This board created an election committee to figure out why people aren't participating. It's because people feel disenfranchised.

It's because when we participate, we lose sleep and it doesn't feel right. Participation shouldn't feel like this. But this is what it feels like.

You think other people want to get up and do this? And feel the emotion of feeling ignored over and over and over and over again? Nobody wants that.

So if you want people to participate, six people in front of me, make it an actual opportunity to give real feedback, not a facade.

[Speaker 6] (55:33 - 55:43)
Thank you, Andrea. We have Anne on Teams.

[Speaker 17] (55:49 - 55:50)
Can you hear me?

[Speaker 6] (55:51 - 55:51)
Yes, we can.

[Speaker 17] (55:53 - 57:17)
Great. Anne Driscoll, Precinct 1, 2 Upland Road. I am, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I am speaking as a member of the Charter Study Committee, along with Gary Perry and Mike Devlin, that worked months on the charter that we now are governed by. And I just, while I appreciate that this is something that we should be looking at regularly, it's also something that is not something to be bandied about. This is the second time in probably two months that I've heard ideas about changing the charter.

And it's talked about with the same level of ease that I don't think we would apply to the USS Constitution. And that is, it is our constitution in essence. So it's not something to be taken lightly.

A lot of thought went into the charter that exists. And so I just want to remind people of that. Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (57:18 - 57:47)
Thanks, Anne. Yeah. Samilia, are you with us?

Once? Twice? All right.

Yep. Move on to Brenda. Brenda, are you with us?

[Speaker 13] (57:55 - 58:05)
Hi. Thank you for letting me speak. I have a couple things, and it all basically boils down to the same thing.

[Speaker 6] (58:05 - 58:08)
Brenda, can you state your name and your address, please?

[Speaker 13] (58:08 - 58:19)
Oh, sure. Sorry. My name is Brenda Sheridan, and I live at 139 Kensington Lane, Precinct 5.

Sorry, I haven't done this before.

[Speaker 15] (58:19 - 58:20)
All good.

[Speaker 13] (58:21 - 1:00:24)
So I have a comment which basically boils down to the fact that what I keep seeing coming out of these town meetings and these select board meetings is these proposals for these beautiful things, like the library that I saw on the front page of the paper the other day. And yet, when we ask for something like more school buses so that we don't have so much traffic coming to the new school next year, oh, no, we don't have the money, or fixing the traffic problem at the intersection of Humphrey Street and Atlantic, which is right where I live, and I hear the squeals of brakes, and I can't imagine letting kids cross that intersection unless we fix it. But, oh, no, we don't have the money for that.

And it's all these things. We don't have the money to fix the pipes. We don't have the money to do all these things that aren't glamorous, but they're necessary.

And it feels like you've got people that like buildings, they like real estate, they like making things like hotels, and it just doesn't make any sense. Either we have the money or we don't have the money. You had said that there was going to be meetings with the neighborhood about the school, and the administrator said he's met.

Well, the last meeting was when the weather was warm, so it was last summer. So, yes, we're overdue for a meeting in Marion. I appreciate that you do that.

The last comment I have, Mr. Skelios, if you don't stop mocking and laughing the people that are making comments, you should leave now and not finish out your term. The disrespect for the members of the people that live in this town is astounding. And I think probably the worst thing that you ever did was allow these things to be seen, because I think you probably had that attitude hiding before.

And I think you need to just stop and start listening to people, because people are about done, and that's what I'm hearing in this meeting tonight. And I appreciate that you're letting all of us talk. Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (1:00:25 - 1:00:33)
Thank you. We're going to go to Mr. Demento.

[Speaker 12] (1:00:40 - 1:01:27)
Good evening. Bill Demento, Summit Estates, Precinct 6. I would like to talk and urge three members of the select board to not approve the article regarding the assessors to even go on the warrant.

It's just a blatant power grab, because the town administrator has not had his way with this board that is doing its duty. It's got to stop. The select board is the policymaking board.

It's your warrant. You make that decision. You shouldn't even let him have put it on in the first place.

Don't put it on the warrant. Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (1:01:28 - 1:01:28)
Thanks, Bill.

[Speaker 6] (1:01:36 - 1:02:17)
Yeah, one more try. Smelia? All right, well, we tried.

We can move on. All right, and we'll move on, and we'll have a discussion and a possible vote on our town financial policy.

[Speaker 20] (1:02:17 - 1:02:17)
Wait a second.

[Speaker 12] (1:02:18 - 1:02:30)
Can I ask, can you speak at the update discussion? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Rather than now, I'm looking.

[Speaker 6] (1:02:32 - 1:03:53)
Sure. That's fine. That's fine.

Yep, perfect. All right, we'll move on, and we'll have a discussion and a vote on town financial policy. At our meeting last week, it was brought to the board's attention that departments are encouraged, basically, municipal applications for grants exceeding $5,000 must receive preapproval by the select board as part of our financial policies that went into effect in, I believe, 2021.

It was adopted June 2nd of 2021. I wanted to bring this to the board to have a discussion about how this should be implemented, and really, you know, I think it's a decent policy. I just don't think in the real world, the real world applications weren't bringing everything in front of the select board based upon applying for grants.

So the town administrator, in his town administrator's report, had made a recommendation to raise that limit from $5,000 to $500,000. So in our packets, we do have the policy, and I want to open it up. I want to have the town administrator make a few comments, and then I want to open it up to the board.

[Speaker 2] (1:03:53 - 1:05:08)
Sure, David. As I mentioned in my report, I just think this gives the town staff much more flexibility and freedom to go out and pursue grants. It helps our boards and committees really work with town staff and be as responsive to some of the grant deadlines and timelines as we can.

We're a small town. We have really dedicated town staff, and they work tirelessly to help the town pursue grants. This board meets many times a month, but, you know, it may be out of sync with some of the schedules or opportunities, and I just think having some greater threshold allows us to support a more effective grant program.

That said, we could certainly roll up a number of recommendations to the board at different times, but it's going to be more cumbersome, and I would envision that it will just be less and less of an incentive to really go after some of these grants.

[Speaker 1] (1:05:09 - 1:05:37)
Can I just get a clarification? Just to make sure we're all thinking the same thing, so page 49 of the policy has a provision that says all municipal applications for grants exceeding $5,000 must receive pre-approval by the select board and all educational applications by the school committee. So you're suggesting relative to the select board, anyways, increasing that amount for filing of grants, not approving.

This has nothing to do with approving. There's a separate provision that deals with approving grants that you're not suggesting changing that. The select board would still need to accept the grant.

[Speaker 14] (1:05:37 - 1:05:37)
That's right.

[Speaker 1] (1:05:38 - 1:05:47)
But you're saying you just want the flexibility to allow staff to pursue grants without coming to this board first. I got you. Thank you.

I just wanted to make sure I knew. Yep.

[Speaker 5] (1:05:50 - 1:07:35)
So I guess I have more questions than answers. So I guess the first of them is just understanding the scope of the amount of grants that we've gone in the last year, two years, three years. How many of them fall under this threshold now?

How many have we applied for above the threshold you're recommending that would take them off the table for pre-approval by the select board? And then, additionally, are all educational applications going to the school committee? Just to understand, not too wrong to make it right, but I just want to understand, since we're having this conversation, if all those grants are going for pre-approval to the school committee.

And then, finally, I mean, I think the pickleball courts are a great example of why the threshold. Coming to us after the fact maybe isn't such a great idea. I don't know that.

I think coming to us prior to understand that, number one, an application is being filed for something. I don't know what the value threshold would be because I don't know what the value of prior grant thresholds are, so I can't even venture and educate yet because I'm not educated enough in that dollar amount. But it would just seem to me like I would hate to go through a whole other scenario like pickleball courts where town staff put in a lot of time and energy and did a lot of good work but didn't go anywhere because it just didn't work out for the community.

So I hate to be that deep into projects and waste so much time and energy which can be focused on other things. So just some off-the-cuff comments about that.

[Speaker 6] (1:07:35 - 1:08:06)
So I can actually answer the question regarding the school committee. So I did reach out to the chair of the school committee, Suzanne Wright, and what she had conveyed to me was the super gives her okay in that any grant applications are in line with the district goals. And basically this had come to the school committee in the past, but they don't currently vote to accept these low-level grants.

So this isn't...

[Speaker 1] (1:08:07 - 1:08:10)
To file for them or to accept them, I'm sorry.

[Speaker 6] (1:08:10 - 1:09:38)
Basically everything goes through the superintendent. The superintendent knows the district's goals, and so just like the town administrator would know what the goals of the select board are because we set our goals and objectives on an annual basis, the school committee is following that process and procedure. So I certainly as a member of the select board would want to encourage town staff, bless you, to apply for as many grants as possible.

I am not... I view this as something involving the day-to-day operations of the town. So I certainly want to empower our town staff members to be looking for grants.

I certainly want to work with our public safety officials to be applying for grants. So I don't think there should be any limit for applying for the grants. I think as long as they're communicating with the town administrator, the town administrator knows what our goals and objectives are and what the needs are of the town, and energy and effort should be put towards seeking out those grants in that form and fashion.

I'm just worried that this policy is overly onerous to the point where we're trying to control the day-to-day operations of the town. That's just my personal opinion.

[Speaker 4] (1:09:46 - 1:09:47)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:09:48 - 1:09:51)
Go ahead, Amy. Director of Finance, Amy Sarrow. Welcome.

[Speaker 7] (1:09:52 - 1:10:18)
Thanks for having me. I had actually asked Margie if she had a list of grants that she's applied for and received recently, and she sent me a list of about 30 grants that range from as low as $1,453 up to half a million dollars. The average of those 30 is about $114,000, if that helps Katie and the rest of the board.

[Speaker 3] (1:10:20 - 1:10:28)
What period of time is that over, did you say? I'm sorry. This is five years.

Yeah, this is the last five years.

[Speaker 2] (1:10:28 - 1:11:01)
But that doesn't include $8.5 million for the rail trail? It doesn't include $2.5 million worth of ARPA funds? These are all things that I haven't gone back to the board to seek the board's approval for, but we've talked about them many times.

I think in general we have a pretty good idea of some of the hot-button issues. Pickleball was kind of an anomaly, but these are things that we are pursuing because we hear from the community.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:01 - 1:16:05)
But is it an anomaly? Let's explore the pickleball thing since we're using it as kind of an example, and I hear you, and it's a fair example, but is it an anomaly? And I think as though I appreciate Ann Driscoll is referring back to 1999 when the charter was rewritten to create a town administrator.

In 1999 the charter was revised to basically say, well, there's someone different in charge of town property. No longer is it just five select citizens in charge of town property. The charter actually was revised to actually say we're going to hire a professional town administrator to make decisions about the use of town property.

And so just playing out pickleball a little bit here, right, now the select board doesn't get to appropriate money, so we don't actually get to decide yea or nay on capital expenses. We can make recommendations, but it goes to town meeting. Town meeting gets to make that decision.

We don't get to decide on annual operating budgets. That's something we can make a recommendation for, but it goes to town meeting. And so in a way the idea of recreation is an operational thing, actually not a policy thing.

The select board's policy, select board's responsibility is policy, and I just don't, and again I guess there could be philosophical differences about that, but whether or not people in this town should have a pickleball court I don't think is a policy. I think it's a recreational. I don't think we've ever had conversations about whether or not we want less tennis courts, more tracks, more this, that we haven't said to the, we haven't micromanaged what type of events the rec commission does or the rec director does, because those aren't policies.

Those are events. Those are activities that I just, I say this because there's 90%, I'm using a number, some very overwhelming percent of what staff does on a daily basis has nothing to do with what we do. And so I think what we're talking about is just giving them the tools to be able to exercise their judgment under the supervision of a town administrator to be able to say let me apply, because I'm going to use the pickleball thing as an example.

Do we really want our community development staff to go through a whole community process? Let's assume we didn't have the money. There was no money to do a pickleball court, but we're going to hold four community meetings, and we're just going to talk about pickleball courts.

We have no way of paying for it. Don't get me wrong. So even if the community meeting says we want it, we have no way of paying for it.

That's a lot of energy just to do that, just to decide that, hey, we should even be talking about pickleball courts. And I just, I appreciate all the comments about the community wanting involvement, and I look forward to this involvement coming from people, but we do have staff that bring forward the ideas, and when they need our blessing, they come to us for blessing, and I think creating a just, I agree with David and Sean, I guess, that this is just applying for grants. This is not accepting grants.

Ultimately, they need to come here and accept the grants. So the accepting of the grant was something, in my view, that the select board would have to say, yep, we wanted to. Now, that being said, a majority of the select board said yes.

Let's be clear, right? Town meeting can vote the way town meeting. That's the rules, right?

We recommended it. The town meeting didn't want to proceed with it. That's okay.

But I'm just concerned that we're going to all of a sudden have staff sitting saying, well, I don't know what I can and cannot do because where is the line between policy and me just helping a town administrator run the town? And I don't know what Margie would, I'm saying Margie, community economic development would do all day because there isn't a laundry list, and nor should there be a laundry list because we're responsible for policy. Policy isn't I want a pickleball court.

Policy is we should have more recreational opportunities in our town. That's what policy is. The pickleball court is just an implementation tool of it.

And so I just want to be careful, again, just using that example because I think it's a really fair example and it certainly, you know. But we also can say, conversely, and I'll finish with this, if last week John said Margie had applied for a grant and we have a $30 million grant for a new library, would we have said, Margie, you shouldn't have even applied for it? We'd rather talk about a $30 million library with no money, no funding sources, zero.

Why would you even apply for it? We did that for the school. We started the MSBA process to get to a point where we told the town, we're not asking you to fund a $97.5 million school. We're asking you to fund a $60 million school because we're going to get almost $40 million from the state. And so I just, again, it's not about making the final decision. There still is a process for that.

And oftentimes it's town meetings, not even us. Like we can approve the grant, but then there still was matching funds. We had to go to town meetings.

So there's plenty of decision makers in the tree. We're just trying to say let staff do what they're professionally qualified to do, which is go out and resource hunt for us because that resource hunting may cause us to be prioritizing things because we can't afford to do two things without money. And we may view them equally or maybe one, one, one, two, but if we find out we can get money for the second one, maybe the second one jumps over because it's actually executable because we don't have money to do it.

So given that this is just the front end, I just want to support letting staff do what staff does under the direction of the town administrator because it's too fuzzy otherwise.

[Speaker 4] (1:16:09 - 1:18:02)
So I have a different opinion. To say that it would curb the enthusiasm of town staff, I don't think anything would curb the enthusiasm of our community development director. I think our community development director has a work ethic second to none.

And I think if you said you have to come in to get approval on something that's over a dollar, I don't think that would change how she works. So I don't see overall how coming in and asking for, just to be asking for approval from the select board on applying for grants would affect anything whatsoever. I think it would affect things in a positive way.

I think it would have more transparency, more communication, more input. It's not like people are going to say, the select board would say, no, don't be going and looking for that, but it would give more direction. There are times when there are grants being filled out, and then all of a sudden they appear and we're like, where did that come from?

And grants actually do affect how things are because there's a match. How is this grant going to affect us financially? How is this grant going to affect us in a certain neighborhood?

But all that's going to do is by following our policy that the select board put in place and the finance committee put in place, by following this policy, I think it's going to give us more transparency. And I think if it looks like it's hindering staff or hindering the town administrator, after 12 months we should revisit it. But I think we should follow this policy and see where it leads us.

And I'm saying that because of transparency. I want to see more things out there. I want to see people to understand more, because I think there's a problem in our community with people feeling like there's not good communication.

And I don't think this will hurt it.

[Speaker 5] (1:18:06 - 1:18:10)
I have a thought, but you haven't had thoughts yet. So if you want to have your thoughts first.

[Speaker 3] (1:18:12 - 1:20:21)
I can see that $5,000 feels pretty small is where I start. I can see that $500,000 feels really big. And so I think there's something between there.

It's much closer to $5,000 in my mind than it is to $500,000. I tend to believe that this could be something that would show up on our consent agenda, basically. And if someone needed to pull it out, they could pull it out.

But this is the type of way I would think about this happening. We do have goals. The town administrator knows that.

Therefore, the staff knows that. I think nine times out of ten, that's going to be just a no-brainer. But maybe once in a while, a little input, a little insight, a little different perspective could be helpful to kind of avoiding something that happens.

And frankly, this is a pretty tough time to have this. Because despite the fact that you know all the detailed rules, Peter, around the pickleball, the sense is that it didn't kind of fly, right? It didn't fly.

So it's hard to have this conversation right now. Maybe one of the worst times to have this conversation, actually. And, you know, I'm aware of some others that we did, you know, that kind of didn't really kind of have the type of input that I would have thought would be useful.

But I do believe, again, I haven't seen all the grants, haven't looked at them, that 90-plus percent of these are going to be a no-brainer and consent agenda. And once in a while, a little bit more alignment, correction, input, before we get too far down the path would be useful. And so I would hope that we could find something in the $25,000 to $50,000 range that would allow kind of a lot of this stuff to keep moving.

But once it gets to be something that whether or not it's technically policy or kind of feels like it might be verging into that or that we know that we're going to start getting a lot of calls, if actually like what the heck's going on, why'd you apply for this grant, and we're like didn't even know we applied for this grant. You know, that's not a great place to be either, right? So I hope that maybe there's something in the middle here that we can find.

[Speaker 5] (1:20:21 - 1:21:36)
My thought is more along those lines, which is if we're interested on grant transparency, then really the dollar amount doesn't matter. Maybe we should just have some sort of grant database where when we've applied for a grant, people could find out the grants that we've applied for. Other boards and committees could look to see what community development has applied for.

So they're not applying against ourselves for grants. If somebody knows of a grant, instead of just emailing it to Sean or us and we're like we don't know if we've applied for that, they can look on the list and see if we've even, if we'd applied for it in years past, we've applied for it in the future because some of these grants are annual grants. Speaking like I know what I'm talking about, I don't, but I assume that's true.

So like maybe we could create some sort of grant database where we could just say and even have some timing in there, right? Like this is when we applied, this is when we expect to hear back. So people can sort of keep track of some of those things so that they feel like the process is more transparent.

That really has nothing to do with whether or not we pre-approve them or not, and I'm more comfortable with, I would like to know, Amy, how many of the 30 grants fall below $50,000, if you have that number if you're still on?

[Speaker 7] (1:21:37 - 1:21:41)
Yep, I'm still here. Just give me one second to pull it back up.

[Speaker 5] (1:21:46 - 1:22:07)
I think that we can get to transparency without having to encumber staff with pre-approvals. We could get to transparency in another way. I'm not trying to give up any power, but I am trying to give power to the community to get educated about this if they are so inclined to do so.

[Speaker 4] (1:22:09 - 1:22:11)
What about just changing that number?

[Speaker 5] (1:22:12 - 1:22:22)
Yeah, I think that's fine. I just don't know what the sweet spot of the number is, and if it turns out that only two of the grants are less than $50,000, then we're not getting really anywhere by doing that, you know?

[Speaker 7] (1:22:23 - 1:22:31)
So, Katie, of the 30, 13 of them are $50,000 or less. Two of them are $50,000 even.

[Speaker 20] (1:22:32 - 1:22:32)
Okay.

[Speaker 5] (1:22:35 - 1:23:15)
So maybe if we did anything above $50,000, as far as if it triggers a policy concern, I don't really – to me, I don't – I think by creating some sort of database or listing of grants that are applied for, you would be able to educate yourself on whether there's a policy implication there, and that way we don't have to add, you know, an extra half an hour to the town administrator's report for all of the things that Margie's applying for and other people in town hall are applying for. We don't have to get into the minutiae of it necessarily, but we'd at least have it available when we need it.

[Speaker 2] (1:23:18 - 1:25:08)
Look, I want to give the Board a sense that, you know, we can provide more information. It's a lot of information, though. It's a lot of grants, and, you know, perhaps, you know, making sure the Board is aware of every grant that we apply for would kind of help satisfy, you know, a concern that we could have conversations about things that would be of interest to Board members.

You know, I do think, you know, we have public safety grants that are routine. We have police and fire. You know, there's safer grants that we chronically apply for.

You know, we've been successful. These grants are in the $300,000, $400,000 range at times, and, you know, they're good to talk about. We typically send out press releases when we get these.

We try to get the word out. We've applied for more grants than ever before, and I think the good news is that we're more and more successful with grants, and so it's kind of bringing up more and more interest, and, you know, to me, that's a good problem to have. I just don't want this to be, you know, too bureaucratic, and I think we have a tendency to think, oh, you know, we want to be more transparent.

We want to have all these, you know, ideals, but, you know, we have a small staff, number of staff. You know, certainly Margie is as good as they get, so I agree with you, Mary Ellen. She's hardworking, and she could make it all work, but, you know, it's a lot.

She has come to me and expressed her serious concerns about this threshold. She has, and other staff have as well. They think this is going to be more challenging.

And help me understand that.

[Speaker 3] (1:25:08 - 1:25:50)
So say it was 25 or 50. I don't know if that's, you know, consensus of the group or not, but say there was a little bit higher threshold, and maybe quarterly, you know, you kind of give us a list of the grants under that, right, and whether that's a database or a piece of paper, one way or the other. But for over 50, we actually get, you know, they're going to apply for this grant.

You know, it's not like we're asking Margie to do anything really except like put a copy of it in our packet basically, right? Say, hey, FYI, I'm going down this path. You better tell me to stop, otherwise I'm going to keep going.

And that's basically all I'm saying.

[Speaker 5] (1:25:50 - 1:26:03)
I mean, I think it could be even technologically simpler. Like if we just put a Smartsheets together, and she links to a Dropbox that has the application in it, you could find, you could read the application yourself if you wanted. It would just be available.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:03 - 1:26:05)
For some of us with a certain age, that might be a little bit more.

[Speaker 5] (1:26:05 - 1:26:28)
I'll walk you through it. But it could just be sort of like tracked a little bit simpler. Like it might even be an efficiency for Margie.

And anybody else who applies for grants, Margie's not the only applier of grants. And I do actually have a question, too, where it says all municipal applications. So does that include when boards and committees apply for grants?

[Speaker 20] (1:26:30 - 1:26:32)
It has to. It has to, right?

[Speaker 5] (1:26:32 - 1:26:34)
So I don't know that boards and committees are doing that.

[Speaker 2] (1:26:34 - 1:26:41)
They typically cannot. The boards and committees can apply, but they typically require the town administrator to sign off on it.

[Speaker 5] (1:26:41 - 1:26:48)
So like it's not just Margie applying. And it's other boards and committees applying, as we heard, Harbor and Water and other boards.

[Speaker 2] (1:26:48 - 1:26:53)
Historic Commission. We have lots of really eager.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:54 - 1:26:56)
So I'd like to make. Oh, excuse me.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:57 - 1:27:00)
Let's wait. No, you can't. I wait for David to make a motion.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:01 - 1:28:00)
Okay. Do you want to talk a little bit? Yeah.

So I would make a, when David comes back, I'm going to make a, I'd like to make a motion to, to change the policy to read all municipal applications for grants, exceeding 50,000 must be must receive preapproval from the selector. I'll try that again. So I'd like to make a motion on municipal.

I'd like to make a motion to change the policy under grant gift account management to read all municipal applications for grants, exceeding 50,000 must receive preapproval by the select board and all educational applications by the school committee to be eligible for preapproval. And then following.

[Speaker 3] (1:28:02 - 1:28:19)
I'll second that motion friendly amendment, because I think we need to change the same thing on the next page. Just to be consistent. Under B.

Because it's prior to filing any grant application or agreeing, except in the, if there's greater than $5,000, it's the same thing.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:20 - 1:28:22)
Oh, I can't.

[Speaker 5] (1:28:24 - 1:28:43)
I second it. But I. Oh, yeah.

Does the finance committee have to weigh in on this? I'm not sure how these policies seem to be.

[Speaker 1] (1:28:43 - 1:28:52)
Yeah. Technically select board. I mean, we.

Get them to me, but there. It's a select.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:52 - 1:28:52)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:28:52 - 1:28:53)
Awesome.

[Speaker 5] (1:28:53 - 1:28:55)
So we won't ruffle any feathers.

[Speaker 6] (1:28:57 - 1:28:58)
Okay. All in favor.

[Speaker 5] (1:29:01 - 1:29:17)
And I would strongly encourage that we, I will be glad to raise my hand to help create some sort of. Efficient way to create a grant. Database or whatever we want to call it.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:17 - 1:29:18)
So that we can do a drop box.

[Speaker 5] (1:29:19 - 1:29:25)
So that the public and. Elected officials can keep track of some of these things.

[Speaker 6] (1:29:26 - 1:29:29)
Great. I think that's a good idea.

[Speaker 20] (1:29:30 - 1:29:31)
Let's do it. Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:29:32 - 1:29:39)
We will move on for discussion and vote on a memo to the legislative delegation. Regarding 61 B.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:39 - 1:29:40)
What is this?

[Speaker 1] (1:29:41 - 1:29:46)
Can you just read the mind? Just someone just reading the memo. So everybody hears what the memo is.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:46 - 1:29:46)
Sure. Happy to.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:47 - 1:29:57)
This is just a cover letter to the legislature for the home rule petition that was approved by town meeting. Yep. Yep.

Yeah. As part of, as part of article four, I believe that's what it is.

[Speaker 6] (1:29:57 - 1:29:58)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:58 - 1:29:59)
That's what it is. Town meeting approved.

[Speaker 14] (1:29:59 - 1:30:00)
Correct.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:00 - 1:30:02)
This is just the formal memo to send this to the legislature.

[Speaker 6] (1:30:02 - 1:30:02)
Yep.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:03 - 1:30:04)
Do you mind?

[Speaker 6] (1:30:04 - 1:30:20)
I will read it. Dear Senator Crichton representative Armini on behalf of the count of Swampskate. We very much appreciate your strong support.

For a number of our legislative priorities that are important to local government. Specifically as the house and Senate finalizing our Commonwealth spending plan for fiscal 25. We're counting on your.

[Speaker 2] (1:30:21 - 1:30:27)
That's the municipal priorities. This 61 B is. Oh, am I reading the wrong thing?

Oh, I'm sorry. Jesus.

[Speaker 6] (1:30:28 - 1:30:30)
I'm sorry. Reading the wrong thing.

[Speaker 3] (1:30:30 - 1:30:31)
There are two different ones.

[Speaker 6] (1:30:31 - 1:32:18)
There are. There are. Sorry.

Please accept this letter as a request pursuant to article two, section eight, paragraph one, clause one of the amendments to the Massachusetts constitution as amended by article 89, that you file legislation with the general court on behalf of the town of Swampskate. The March 11, 2024 town, a special town meeting approved the within request under article four of the warrant for said meeting article four sought to authorize the select board to petition the general court for special legislation, exempting the town and the requirement to accept and grant applications for valuation assessment and taxation of land under the provisions of mass general law chapter 61 B while maintaining the town's first, right first refusal option and ability to collect any and all conveyance and rollback taxes for applications previously granted under the same purpose of the legislation is to eliminate what appears to be a tax loophole where exclusive private golf clubs that provide little to no public benefit are able to obtain a favorable tax treatment for their land. This legislation will allow the town to assess this property at full and fair cash value in the same manner as it assesses property in town.

If approved, the town will be able to increase funding to support important services in the community, including education, public safety, and infrastructure improvements enclosed here with please find certified copies of the warrant for the March 11th, 2024 special town meeting and the vote taken there under as well as a separate copy of the requested special legislation. The board respectfully requests that you file special legislation on behalf of the town and appreciates your consideration of this important matter. Please contact town administrator Sean Fitzgerald with any further questions concerning the proposed legislation.

Your prompt attention to this important matter is greatly appreciated. Respectfully submitted town of Swampskate select board.

[Speaker 1] (1:32:19 - 1:32:21)
I'd make a motion to approve that letter.

[Speaker 5] (1:32:21 - 1:32:22)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (1:32:22 - 1:32:23)
All in favor.

[Speaker 5] (1:32:23 - 1:32:24)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (1:32:24 - 1:32:38)
Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 2] (1:32:38 - 1:33:36)
I have not had further conversation with Ted Esko. I have received some correspondence from Ted Eskos attorney that they have reached out to the general council of the. Massachusetts state Senate and House and they are seeking to oppose.

This effort I have reached out to the town of Belmont. I've spoken with the town. Administrator in Belmont, they are also advancing a vote at our meeting.

I shared a copy of this letter and we have agreed that we will work together and coordinate some legislative efforts with the City of Newton. Newton is also, you know, considering addressing this. They have a different form of government, so the mayor and their City Council will need to formally address it, but there's a City Council that's very eager to join our budding affiliation.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:39 - 1:33:44)
Okay, thank you. Okay, we have a motion. That was seconded.

All in favor?

[Speaker 20] (1:33:44 - 1:33:44)
Aye.

[Speaker 2] (1:33:45 - 1:33:45)
Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:47 - 1:33:48)
Send away Sean.

[Speaker 2] (1:33:49 - 1:33:53)
Thank you. We have permission to attach your electronic signatures to that letter.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:58 - 1:34:09)
We'll move on and we'll now have a review of the annual town meeting warrant of May the 20th, including review discussion and votes.

[Speaker 5] (1:34:09 - 1:34:13)
So what's happening with the second letter? The one that you started with?

[Speaker 3] (1:34:13 - 1:34:16)
It's about the budget. State budget.

[Speaker 2] (1:34:18 - 1:34:42)
This is a letter that Doug had asked to be presented to the board on the MMA's legislative priorities, but generally it's a list of municipal priorities that the MMA is advancing and they've urged cities and towns to contact their respective legislative delegation and advance these priorities.

[Speaker 3] (1:34:43 - 1:35:18)
Yep, straightforward, I think. But some of these things are very applicable to us in terms of school aid, special education circuit breaker, just so people know what we're talking about, charter school impact mitigation payments, student transportation reimbursements, payments to move taxes, surtax funding for local roads and bridge. So these are all kind of, it doesn't seem like there's major issues we don't believe in terms of these things happening, but we want to make sure that in the give-and-take that, you know, at least we've registered our perspective.

[Speaker 5] (1:35:19 - 1:35:22)
Doug, is there a timing? Like this has to be approved tonight?

[Speaker 3] (1:35:24 - 1:35:34)
The House budget is going to be debated two weeks from now. I'm not sure we're meeting again. Are we meeting next week?

[Speaker 4] (1:35:35 - 1:35:36)
Oh, we're probably meeting every day.

[Speaker 3] (1:35:37 - 1:35:43)
So, yeah, I don't think it's a critical item for it to be voted on tonight.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:00 - 1:36:18)
So I think what would be good is just let's make, maybe hold off and let's just make sure that this letter reflects what House Ways and Means released as a budget just because the MMA goals were based on the governor's budget and so House Ways and Means may have addressed some things or made some things, new things worse.

[Speaker 3] (1:36:19 - 1:36:21)
And MMA may take a position in the next few days to say...

[Speaker 1] (1:36:21 - 1:36:29)
So this will allow us to, so staff can take a look at this and tell us whether something should be added or whatnot just based on that. Because the House Ways and Means budget came out.

[Speaker 6] (1:36:29 - 1:36:35)
So if we're meeting a week from tonight, why don't we just take this up at our next meeting?

[Speaker 20] (1:36:36 - 1:36:36)
Great.

[Speaker 4] (1:36:37 - 1:36:38)
Can we have it in advance?

[Speaker 5] (1:36:39 - 1:36:49)
The letter. The amended letter. The amended letter.

Sure. Or any other item. Any item.

Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:36:50 - 1:36:51)
You mean like an hour?

[Speaker 5] (1:36:52 - 1:36:57)
Doug, you know we need more than an hour. Yeah. Unless you're going to read it to me, it's fine.

[Speaker 6] (1:36:57 - 1:37:14)
All right. And so we'll move on and we'll have a review of the annual town meeting warrant, including review discussion and votes on the articles for inclusion in the warrants. We have our Director of Finance, Amy Sarrow, who's going to help us step through the warrant.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:16 - 1:37:22)
And are we opening it? We did open it.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:22 - 1:37:24)
We've already opened it. We opened it. We did?

[Speaker 18] (1:37:25 - 1:37:25)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:25 - 1:37:26)
Just testing you guys. All right.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:32 - 1:37:43)
So I think just let's go to the ones that we can stop anywhere. Maybe, but I think we've talked about it in many of these. I think the first one's Article 4, which is.

[Speaker 4] (1:37:43 - 1:37:47)
Wait, I'm sorry, Peter, but can we just go back to Article 2 for a second?

[Speaker 1] (1:37:47 - 1:37:47)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:37:47 - 1:38:13)
Because I just had a question on the Lynn Water and Sewer. I didn't realize that the date on there, invoice date, 08-04-22. Amy, could you give an update or an understanding on what that.

I know these are on. So Article 2 is for unpaid bills. Can you just explain why we have an unpaid bill from 2022?

[Speaker 7] (1:38:14 - 1:39:03)
Yeah. So Lynn Water Sewer Billing Department had some turnover and they. I don't know if they did not send the bill or what it was.

It was just uncovered this year. And they sent it over. So that was the first we were made aware of it.

We received 13 bills from Lynn Water Sewer each fiscal year. So they do their projected assessment. So we receive one that's paid each month, and then they do a reconciliation at the end of each fiscal year based off the actual consumption and usage.

So this was the FY 22 year end reconciliation. And it seems like just through the staffing at their billing department, it was never sent out.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:04 - 1:39:12)
So you're saying the reconciliation is the 13th bill. So we didn't notice that we didn't get a 13th bill.

[Speaker 7] (1:39:12 - 1:39:48)
There has been years where if our consumption ended up being lesser than the assessment, we receive a credit in the following fiscal year. They don't, in fact, send us a 13th bill as a credit. So there are years where we do not receive a 13th bill if our consumption is down.

So while we keep an eye out for it and we keep an encumbrance for it, we do not keep an encumbrance open for two years. But if there isn't one received, then the assumption is that they assessed us correctly for the year.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:49 - 1:39:55)
And you feel totally comfortable that this is a completely legit bill. You've gone back and looked and it makes sense that.

[Speaker 7] (1:39:56 - 1:40:05)
Yes. Gina and Natalie have reviewed it with all of their independent records of the usage and consumption for that fiscal year.

[Speaker 6] (1:40:06 - 1:40:18)
And Amy, what are the, we have two facilities charges, one to mass electric for $40,000. The other key span for 13 five. Can you, can you walk us through those as well?

[Speaker 7] (1:40:18 - 1:41:26)
I will do my absolute best. So I actually just had a call with Max Casper earlier today. Those numbers may be changing a little.

I will know that person in the morning and I will recirculate that to the board. So what happened was during FY 21 and FY 22, there was a number of payments that national grid misapplied to various accounts. As you can imagine the town and the school have a number of electric and gas accounts.

So there's at least one for every school, one for every municipal building, each for an electric and gas. They had misapplied the number of payments. Max's staff has been going through painstakingly reconciling all of the years of these bills.

They have uncovered about $60,000 that is owed to national grid. And we have about $30,000 in refund checks that we'll be receiving from national grid.

[Speaker 6] (1:41:27 - 1:41:33)
Okay. So this, so this 40,000 is, is, is really a placeholder until, until that is, that is completed.

[Speaker 7] (1:41:33 - 1:41:35)
Yes. Got it.

[Speaker 6] (1:41:36 - 1:41:38)
What about key span?

[Speaker 7] (1:41:39 - 1:41:43)
Those are both national grid ones, electric ones, gas. Got it. Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (1:41:44 - 1:41:51)
So then even though this total could total about $60,000, we're actually going to get refund of $30,000.

[Speaker 7] (1:41:52 - 1:42:07)
We'll receive about $30,000 in checks. Those will go into miscellaneous revenue and the general fund and we'll follow the free cash. So I'll have all of those numbers for all of you, as well as the finance committee, ideally tomorrow morning.

[Speaker 6] (1:42:09 - 1:42:10)
Thanks Amy.

[Speaker 7] (1:42:11 - 1:42:11)
Additional questions?

[Speaker 3] (1:42:13 - 1:42:30)
Not on that one. So I do have a process question. You can tell me whether or not we've talked about it now or talk about it at the end.

What are we thinking in terms of meetings and when we, I think we need to have this fully wrapped by the 29th. Is that the right date?

[Speaker 7] (1:42:30 - 1:42:31)
That's correct.

[Speaker 3] (1:42:32 - 1:42:44)
But I heard you say it at the same time. So do we have kind of like a pathway? Are we going to like actually, you know, if these numbers were all solid, would we start voting on these things tonight?

Is that the idea? Yep. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:46 - 1:42:50)
And tonight's also a night to articulate opinions if you want. Yes.

[Speaker 4] (1:42:52 - 1:42:53)
Not to be in the work.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:54 - 1:43:03)
Yeah. I mean, there's no reason to, I don't think there's any reason to hold that back. Okay.

To go to our floor.

[Speaker 3] (1:43:04 - 1:43:22)
Yeah, sure. Well, I'm three. Sorry.

Since that's the budget. It's a small one. It's kind of set.

Right. When do we want to kind of take that on?

[Speaker 4] (1:43:23 - 1:43:32)
I think we should wait and hear what the finance committee has to say. That's generally what we do. Wait and hear what the finance committee has to say.

And then we have a big conversation.

[Speaker 1] (1:43:32 - 1:43:43)
It will inevitably, there'll be a placeholder budget. It will inevitably change between the 29th of April and town meeting. It just always does.

Yep.

[Speaker 6] (1:43:46 - 1:44:00)
Okay. All right. Article four, establish a retention and recruitment stabilization fund.

Amy, so there's a recommendation from the town administrator and town staff for $150,000?

[Speaker 7] (1:44:01 - 1:45:08)
Yep. And the dollar amount was being discussed at finance committee Monday night to see it seemed like some members felt more comfortable around a hundred thousand. No formal vote was taken on this yet.

I just wanted to make the board aware that that was the discussion. So the purpose of this fund is kind of dual. So it is to retain current employees within the individual employment contracts that a number of our department heads have.

They do have retention bonuses in there to incentivize them to stay. Those would be paid out of this fund as those do fluctuate based off the terms of people's contracts. And then separately in the event of a vacancy where the market rate is different from what we had originally budgeted and or where the candidate is well and above what we were hoping for, this would be a mechanism for the town administrator to be able to extend a fair offer to be able to fill those vacancies.

[Speaker 4] (1:45:13 - 1:46:10)
On this retention bonus. So I do believe, so I'm in favor of having this article and funding it with retention bonuses because for example, we can have the town treasurer who would have a retention bonus. And I think by putting that money in every year of what that retention is in his contract will smooth out the budget and not put pressure on future years.

What I'm not in favor of is putting additional money in that I think really belongs in the salary reserve for in the event you have to spend more money to keep somebody or spend more money to hire somebody. And that was actually discussed at the finance committee also. So salary reserve is a line item in the operating budget specifically for that item.

Retention bonus is something different. And I think that I, so I'm in favor of retention just being made up for retention bonuses, but not for salary reserve.

[Speaker 3] (1:46:11 - 1:46:23)
And Mariana, are you saying just to clarify this would only be for kind of known retention? Like if there's a contract and we know how much it's going to be and therefore that should be in here.

[Speaker 4] (1:46:23 - 1:46:32)
Yeah. That's my thing. So where do we, for, so for the town administrator, where do we actually put that retention bonus?

[Speaker 7] (1:46:33 - 1:46:51)
So the town administrator currently does not have a retention bonus in his contract. His contract has a deferred bonus that's paid out at the end of his contract. And we book an annual liability for that based off the terms of his contract.

And that's held in a liability account. Got it. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:51 - 1:46:54)
Which does, do you agree that that does make sense? Right.

[Speaker 5] (1:46:54 - 1:47:06)
Yeah, totally. Those things. Okay.

Could you explain the distinction between if you, if someone has a contract and they have a retention bonus, I guess. Well, you don't know. Yeah.

What's the difference.

[Speaker 3] (1:47:07 - 1:47:08)
Between. Between.

[Speaker 5] (1:47:08 - 1:47:31)
I don't know. Like the town administrator example. And the example you're saying.

Where. Contractually. There is a retention bonus listed.

In their contract. And they have the ability to receive it. If they stay.

What is the difference between. That situation that we would cause. The need for a stabilization fund versus what we do versus the liability.

Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:47:32 - 1:47:41)
I don't see there's any difference, but I think. It's really, you know, the difference between six of one and half dozen of another.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:41 - 1:48:17)
So a deferred bonus. Could be considered the same as a retention bonus in the fact that. It's something in the contract.

You somehow have to figure out how you're going to budget and pay for it. And it's paid out on June 30th of the year that the contracts. The difference is the wording in the town administrators.

Specific contract. We do have to book that liability annually. So it is part of the operating expense.

So if you look at the town administrator personnel line. That is included in the voted budget. Whereas the retention bonuses.

There's no liability booked. It's just an expense in that final year.

[Speaker 5] (1:48:17 - 1:48:29)
So just as a matter of financial course, we don't book any. Any other contractual retention bonus that may be on contract right now, we don't. Book those funds until they need to be spent.

[Speaker 7] (1:48:29 - 1:48:33)
Correct. Correct. There's no wording in their contracts that they're structured.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:33 - 1:48:37)
And then that puts that, that will put, that'll put pressure. That puts pressure on the budget for that year.

[Speaker 5] (1:48:38 - 1:48:38)
Of course.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:38 - 1:48:39)
Yeah.

[Speaker 5] (1:48:40 - 1:48:42)
But we know. We know coming.

[Speaker 3] (1:48:43 - 1:48:43)
Yeah.

[Speaker 5] (1:48:43 - 1:48:55)
I guess that's the point I'm trying to make. Like to me, it feels like a stabilization is meant to be for something. That's more unknown.

And coming at it or, or less predictable, I guess. But if contractually we're obligated to these.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:57 - 1:49:00)
So are you saying just make a liability line item for it?

[Speaker 5] (1:49:01 - 1:49:03)
Yeah. Same, just reserve the funds.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:03 - 1:49:04)
Well, what happens now?

[Speaker 3] (1:49:04 - 1:49:07)
We have that right now. So what happens right now, Amy?

[Speaker 7] (1:49:09 - 1:49:21)
For the people who have retention in their contracts right now. Yeah. There's no liability books for them.

So people who would have retention bonuses that need to be paid out at the end of FY 25. There hasn't been a ramp up.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:22 - 1:49:26)
At this point, it would be an appropriation in that fiscal year. Right.

[Speaker 3] (1:49:26 - 1:49:35)
So, so for 2020 for fiscal year 25, we know they're going to be certain retention bonuses likely to be paid out. I assume those are, those are factored into the operating budget.

[Speaker 7] (1:49:36 - 1:49:42)
None at this time, because the discussion with the town administrator was that we would work to establish this fund.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:44 - 1:49:45)
Or we'd work to take it out of free cash.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:46 - 1:49:49)
So in all of our history, we've known that. But this is, this is, let's be clear.

[Speaker 14] (1:49:49 - 1:49:49)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:49 - 1:50:08)
I mean, I think this concept is a relatively new concept. I don't believe, I believe the town administrator's contract is actually the first version of it. And that one hasn't been paid out.

Yeah. So I don't. So I don't think there's, there's not a history.

Of this. This is a tool that I think has been recommended given where the marketplace has gone to, to help.

[Speaker 3] (1:50:08 - 1:50:13)
I realize this is different than what we're talking about. It's more separating those from this.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:13 - 1:50:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 7] (1:50:14 - 1:50:30)
Yeah. To Peter's point. Aside from the town administrator's contract, which was obviously the first time this was introduced.

The first time it was introduced in the other individual employment contracts was once it began. At the beginning of FYI 22.

[Speaker 20] (1:50:31 - 1:50:32)
Oh, okay.

[Speaker 7] (1:50:32 - 1:50:38)
So. Anyone who's had one prior to that does not have our attention bonus, but we haven't paid out.

[Speaker 5] (1:50:39 - 1:50:41)
We haven't paid them. If you will.

[Speaker 7] (1:50:41 - 1:50:43)
We're not even accruing it.

[Speaker 5] (1:50:43 - 1:50:43)
Yep.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:44 - 1:51:23)
So, okay. So I, I guess I agree with Mary Ellen's comments about. The recruitment.

And so I guess I would support keeping this article open-minded to dollar amount to see what Fincom is comfortable with, but delete the praise and or recruitment efforts to fulfill future vacancies. Delete that phrase and just let Fincom know that that's assuming you all are comfortable. Let Fincon know that that's direction where we're heading.

But I, Mary Ellen's points are a valid point. And I do think. The.

Salary reserve is. It's an artful, but it's the tool. And I think it, it.

Keeps the controls in place that we need to have in place.

[Speaker 5] (1:51:26 - 1:51:47)
Also a question on the mechanism for replenishing this fund. How that works. So like.

You just say. You picked a hundred thousand dollars, 150,000 dollars. You start spending it is the idea that you would want to keep it at this dollar amount.

And as you spend it, you're going to come back and ask. To replenish it. Or are you going to say like the threshold is once it gets to 50, we're going to come back and try to get it back up.

[Speaker 2] (1:51:47 - 1:52:08)
We're going to, we're going to look at. Costs we have and allocations that we'll need and we'll come back and reconcile it. From time to time.

The idea was that we'd seed it. Hopefully have it. Sufficiently funded that we would not have to.

Come back. For a year or two.

[Speaker 4] (1:52:09 - 1:52:27)
And Amy, what do we do as far as retirement? So if we know we have X amount of retirements. In police and fire.

Coming up in a specific year. Is it, is it the other reserve fund that we have? Is that adequately funded?

To handle those types of retirements.

[Speaker 7] (1:52:28 - 1:53:20)
Well, I'm happy to say that as of this moment, we have not had to touch that fund yet. So. In the fire department.

We have not had to touch that fund yet. Collective bargaining agreements. They have wording that says that they have to notify.

The chief. By a certain date, I believe it's in February. Of their intention to retire in the upcoming fiscal year.

So we budget for those in that end of employment, hyphen town lines that you see in the operating budget. Which is the line rate below the salary reserve. If someone.

Retires and they did not notify or like the police, it's not in their collective bargaining. So if it's not known. And it does not fit within the buffer of that end of employment, we would use that.

Reserve for that. Because it hasn't been touched. I feel that we do still have a sufficient level in that reserve fund.

Okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:53:21 - 1:53:40)
Okay. So I I'm still not. I'm not clear where you were going, Mary Ellen and Peter.

Exactly. So I get to kind of pulling out the recruitment piece. I come back to kind of where you feel like that gets picked up.

Well, let's just take that. Do you think that should just be an adjustment? If at any.

If at all to an operating account.

[Speaker 4] (1:53:41 - 1:53:44)
Yes. Okay. So there's a line item in the budget.

[Speaker 3] (1:53:44 - 1:53:48)
If you think any more for recruitment, then it should just be a change in the operating line.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:48 - 1:54:42)
So there's two. Let's take those two tools, right? I'm sorry.

There's two tools for which the town administrator can respond to six situations. One for personnel. Salary reserve.

Which is a line that is available for the purpose of salary. Oftentimes it's on specified, but on identified needs, for example, if there's uptime upcoming contract negotiations or things of that nature, we put funds there just because it's, it's not yet determined, but likely. So there's that.

The secondary thing, if there wasn't salary reserves to cover that, then there's just a general finance committee reserve as well in the budget, or there are other line items, which the town administrator can say, I want to go back and I want to reallocate and ask for the requisite permission to reallocate. So this, this mechanism would be the easiest. Financial reserve would be second easiest.

And then reallocation of line items is the hardest, if you will, mechanically speaking anyways, in terms of just doing it.

[Speaker 4] (1:54:43 - 1:54:43)
What the shuffle.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:44 - 1:54:49)
Yeah. Well, actually the shuffle was shuffles easier. You can actually do shuffle now as a result of the changes.

Yeah. Sorry.

[Speaker 3] (1:54:50 - 1:54:55)
So what do you need? I should let you go ahead. I have a follow up question.

[Speaker 2] (1:54:55 - 1:56:06)
Look, you know, I think we, when we sat down and we were thinking about all the ways that, you know, we could help protect the operating budget. We thought, you know, the transition of staff is one of the most significant where labor intensive organization. And so if we lose staff and we have to replace a number of staff, it does create some additional costs.

And so we, we thought, you know, how do we create something that would help us with those anomalies? Every once in a while that happens. Not often, but we went through, you know, the great resignation as every other organization in the country went through.

And, and this kind of, you know, highlighted if we had some stabilization for this recruitment and some of the challenges that we might face, that would, that would be helpful. Certainly the retention bonuses stabilized a number of positions and it has worked out fairly well. You know, that negotiation strategy has certainly helped with, with a number of positions, but you know, we're trying to protect the operating budget.

[Speaker 3] (1:56:08 - 1:56:18)
So at the end of the day, do you two agree like what should be left here? What, what do we need this still? For what?

[Speaker 4] (1:56:19 - 1:56:30)
Well, my opinion is we should leave this year and it should be to establish a retention stabilization fund, just retention, not a retention and recruitment.

[Speaker 3] (1:56:31 - 1:56:45)
So a situation comes up middle of the year, someone says they're going to leave because they got a better job and they're going to get paid more. And we say, no, we actually, we have flexibility here for the town administrator and a pool of money dedicated to that type of retention.

[Speaker 4] (1:56:45 - 1:56:55)
So they would, the town administrator would go to his salary reserve account and what do we need this for them? Contractual contractual contractual.

[Speaker 1] (1:56:56 - 1:57:08)
We put in contracts already. So no known amounts is what the distinction she's making. Whereas you're making a not known amount of what she's saying.

That's more in the, it's known.

[Speaker 4] (1:57:08 - 1:57:11)
Why does, yeah, that's my, I guess that was my own reaction.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:12 - 1:57:12)
Why is it not in the budget?

[Speaker 4] (1:57:14 - 1:57:16)
Because the budget is for that. It's a one time payment.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:17 - 1:57:21)
You'll spike the budget and it's going to spike that one time year. And so I think they're just trying to not.

[Speaker 4] (1:57:23 - 1:57:48)
So, so you have a contract that's three or four year contracts, right? And you have year one and two that there's a retention bonus in it. So if that retention bonus is going to be paid out in year three, say year three or year four, whatever the contract is, it's putting more pressure on that contract later on.

Whereas if you're taking the money out now and putting it on the side, it, it just reserves that money and it saves pressure on the operating budget for that year.

[Speaker 3] (1:57:50 - 1:57:58)
But I guess it seems pretty complicated for something that's a relatively minor amount of money that you adjust.

[Speaker 4] (1:57:58 - 1:58:03)
I think I'm just not, I'm not explaining it so well enough. That's what I think.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:03 - 1:58:24)
So can I suggest the following only because I'm going to be cognizant. I have a couple of ideas. One, one being maybe this isn't ready for prime time.

I'm just going to say, it's not a bad idea. It's just that take it out just so we understand the mechanism because I think it's, it's organic right now. We don't in fairness to you, I don't want to put you on the spot and say, tell us what the mechanism is going to be like.

It's organic.

[Speaker 3] (1:58:24 - 1:58:26)
Maybe we could have a very specific example.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:26 - 1:58:35)
Yeah. I'm like, let's do this and I'm not trying to put it off, but it sounds like there's some idea of consensus here. It's just that.

Yeah. I hear you.

[Speaker 2] (1:58:36 - 1:58:56)
Like we can, we can, we can solve this problem another way. But certainly I'd like to be with the finance team. We'll come back and we'll present some information in a memo that will help you hopefully see with a little bit more surgical clarity, the utility of, of how we stabilize some of these costs.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:58 - 2:00:08)
So can I, I have a, not more in specific, can I, an agenda question for you, Mr. Chairman? Sure. Last week when we met, I think the hope was that we had limited our agenda to the warrant because we hadn't spent time on the warrant.

And I'm just cognizant of the fact that we're on article four, it's eight 30 and we should be spending this much time on probably all these warrant articles because it merits it. And tonight we got information or yesterday we got information about how to spend ARPA funds that candidly, I'm not comfortable voting because I haven't thought, and I think there's more information that we would need. So I, we can talk all for ARPA all we want.

I frankly, if someone made a motion, you guys have to vote. You can vote it the way you want. I'm just saying, I don't know how to vote tonight on these because we haven't frankly gotten enough backup on this.

So I'm just wondering if we get, we got to spend, I just don't want people to wait until 10 o'clock. We're going to all be fried because we're going to spend another hour on warrant instead, put ARPA upfront next week. I didn't know we were meeting next week, but that's our third week in a row.

All these meetings are four hours long. Maybe we decide just to push ARPA to first next week. I'm just suggesting it just because it's realistic.

This is going to take another hour plus. And I don't know how much people really want to be taking up the last two issues.

[Speaker 6] (2:00:08 - 2:00:11)
If that's the, if that's the wall of the board, that's fine with me.

[Speaker 4] (2:00:12 - 2:00:13)
So what does it put push ARPA?

[Speaker 1] (2:00:14 - 2:00:44)
I would push ARPA and the King's beach update to the first, first item. And that allows us to be patient tonight and go through the articles tonight without looking at the clock saying, you know, We don't want to be here at 10 30 and we don't want to be at 11. And frankly, everybody here that wants to talk about it also is going to sit for another hour and a half because we have to do the town meeting stuff.

That's a clock. We have no choice, but to do that. The other stuff is important, but I'm not excited about that, but I understand.

[Speaker 3] (2:00:45 - 2:01:04)
So I think it would be good to start the conversation. At least I'm afraid if we start next week, We're going to have to do it again. I mean, I don't want people sitting here waiting for two hours and then not get to it.

I mean, I mean, we have to, we have to conduct the business of the town and. Well, it's all the business. No, I know.

Understood.

[Speaker 6] (2:01:05 - 2:01:08)
I know it was, it was my intention that we would get this.

[Speaker 3] (2:01:08 - 2:01:08)
absolutely.

[Speaker 20] (2:01:09 - 2:01:09)
Yeah.

[Speaker 5] (2:01:09 - 2:01:15)
I think too, Doug, it would probably be worse to start it and not finish it. And it would too.

[Speaker 1] (2:01:16 - 2:01:32)
Because we're going to do it again. We end up relitigating topics, conversations just. And so we don't, there's no efficiency in starting and stopping.

But I think it's important to have it be the first thing of substance. That's fine. Perfect.

[Speaker 4] (2:01:33 - 2:01:43)
All right. So what are we doing with four? We're just going to, we're going to boot for, I think I would recommend it being removed.

Oh, I would second. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:01:43 - 2:01:45)
All in favor. Aye.

[Speaker 3] (2:01:49 - 2:01:57)
Aye. Aye. Aye.

I think that I'm going to leave it in. I thought we just decided to have more information come back.

[Speaker 1] (2:01:58 - 2:02:05)
Well, my suggestion was taking it out for now just because it's not going to, but whatever. You guys want it? That's fine, I just.

[Speaker 5] (2:02:05 - 2:02:08)
I mean, I guess I'm an aye to take it out because there's a mechanism in place.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:09 - 2:02:10)
To solve all these problems.

[Speaker 5] (2:02:10 - 2:02:11)
To solve all these problems right now. Three ayes.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:11 - 2:02:14)
This is about a better, potentially better mechanism.

[Speaker 5] (2:02:14 - 2:02:20)
Yeah, I mean, that's fine. I'm fine with that. So I'm an aye.

[Speaker 6] (2:02:20 - 2:02:24)
All right, take a vote. Yep, yeah. We just did.

It's out. Okay.

[Speaker 5] (2:02:26 - 2:02:30)
Would you want to take the rest of the votes on that? What's that? The no vote.

[Speaker 6] (2:02:31 - 2:02:33)
I'm a no.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:33 - 2:02:35)
That's fine, can we just. Let's call the vote, let's move on.

[Speaker 6] (2:02:36 - 2:02:39)
We did, I'm a no. Because I felt like Sean.

[Speaker 4] (2:02:39 - 2:02:39)
Three to two.

[Speaker 6] (2:02:39 - 2:02:40)
Okay, got it.

[Speaker 4] (2:02:40 - 2:02:41)
Article five.

[Speaker 6] (2:02:41 - 2:02:57)
Article five. This wasn't clear. Establish a utilization, a utility stabilization fund.

If the town will vote to accept and authorize to make payments from said fund, to further the transfer of the sum of $250,000 from free cash to the utility stabilization fund established here under.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:59 - 2:03:49)
Amy. So I'm just gonna tell you. I'm gonna make a motion to take this out as well.

And I'm gonna say it because we just, we keep talking about this, but we've never seen evidence of the lumpiness of utility bills that have caused this problem. Not saying there isn't any, but we've never seen it. And I'm really concerned about free cash.

You're gonna buy a new elementary school? We're not even, I know there's an elementary school issue. That's bringing something online for the first time.

I don't know that that merits bringing on a whole utility revolving account or stabilization account because we're bringing on a new 150,000 square foot building. I'm just, that's a whole process in and of itself. So I'm open to that, but I'm also very cognizant of the fact that we aren't even talking about where our free cash numbers are gonna be.

And then once we see the capital and what you're trying to take from different things, where our free cash is going to be. So we're a bit shooting in the dark on free cash as well at the moment.

[Speaker 4] (2:03:49 - 2:04:13)
I agree with you on the issues with free cash, but we do have an issue with the schools. They are $200,000 off in their budget because they, I'm not sure if it's accurate if I say that they did not adequately budget for the new school. I know there's $200,000 off in utilities because we're not gonna have the solar panels on the roof work.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:13 - 2:04:27)
And I'm totally open to a mechanism to do a one-time payment to help that happen. I'm just stopping short of a revolving, or not a revolving, a stabilization fund because we, which is just another beast of a thing.

[Speaker 4] (2:04:27 - 2:04:31)
All right, so what is your recommendation on how we're gonna deal with that?

[Speaker 1] (2:04:33 - 2:04:58)
I don't know what it is because I wanna stay pure to the not using free cash for recurring revenue or recurring expenses, but this one-time thing we can deem not to be a one-time. Look, if the school has to catch up in its budget, in the operating budget, right? We're gonna help them this year, but next year, are we taking it out of this account again in the next year?

And then which case is just an elementary school utility stabilization fund?

[Speaker 4] (2:04:58 - 2:05:05)
Their business manager is saying that it would not, it should not be an issue next year.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:05 - 2:05:32)
Because the solar will be kicked in, yes. So I would then just say, use, again, if it's free cash, use free cash because this is a one-time thing. And we're just using free cash without setting up a whole nother set of accounts and a whole nother mechanism.

I'm not saying, Sean, you've talked about this for years. I know you have. It just has never demonstrated it's up to me.

And we are two weeks from closing this warrant and so I'm more of kind of, let's solve the problem we need to solve without trying to solve other things.

[Speaker 4] (2:05:32 - 2:05:34)
So you're making a motion to remove Article 5?

[Speaker 1] (2:05:34 - 2:05:44)
I'm making a motion to remove Article 5 but ask the town administrator to come back with a new article that would come to some number to agree on free cash for the utility payment for the elementary school.

[Speaker 4] (2:05:45 - 2:05:46)
So I would second that.

[Speaker 3] (2:05:47 - 2:05:47)
Discussion?

[Speaker 4] (2:05:48 - 2:05:48)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (2:05:50 - 2:06:18)
So I wanna be very careful about agreements that you've come to with the superintendent. And I don't want this in any way, shape or form to feel as though kind of things are being shifted around. I mean, what is the nature of the agreement that you have with her or the school committee with regard to this?

And is it have to be this type of fund or is it just one way or another to get the money? And that's really the most important.

[Speaker 2] (2:06:18 - 2:07:27)
You know, I think it one way or another, we have to get the money and the funding. You know, the thought was that we would share a utility stabilization from both town and school. The schools would receive $200,000, the town would have 50,000.

You know, we have a lot of line items for utilities that fluctuate with markets. And, you know, if we saw that there was an additional demand that was higher than that 2% plus new growth or, you know, where we budgeted, we could rely on this. This is a best practice in municipal finance.

You see this in many communities. And so, you know, they have it in Marblehead, they have it in other communities that just help stabilize the operating budget. I hear the concern that perhaps all these can be complicated, but for me, it's about protecting the integrity of these small line items that we have in our town budget.

You know, if we see a spike in energy, if we see a spike in demand, you know, we don't wanna have to go and make reductions in small line items that support programs. And this is what this type of stabilization account ensures against.

[Speaker 3] (2:07:28 - 2:07:57)
So let's separate out, if we can, the kind of the school versus the town piece, right? Because the school is a particular situation. Right.

You know, it's first year, we don't really know, things are changing. So do you have any great qualms with some other simpler approach to making sure that that happens? Or is it really fundamentally important systemically for you to, you know, kind of establish this utility reserve fund?

[Speaker 2] (2:07:57 - 2:08:48)
I don't have great qualms. I think as long as we keep faith with the, I'll just call it a grand bargain, to try to help the schools live within a, level of financial prudence that really supports the overall town financial goals, I think this was an attempt to try to help, you know, address some of those issues. You know, the next, or the special education stabilization fund was also modeled along those same lines.

And I wanna keep faith. Again, if we have to sit down and be a little bit more creative about how we do that, but what other way is there really? I mean, that's gonna be, once you're just gonna be allocating some free cash.

Allocated free cash. There's not a lot of.

[Speaker 7] (2:08:49 - 2:10:32)
So if I may, sorry. One of the main things that came up with the school was that this was kind of a utility contingency, I guess, because with the new school, it was really an unknown. So that was kind of part of the conversation that Sean and I had about how to handle this budgetarily, because it was really not a continuing concern with the school.

It was more of a first year. We don't know what the utility is gonna be like, you know, best case scenario, they might only need like 20,000 of it. So it was another way to not build that structurally into the budget that, you know, year two solar's on and it's working well.

Similarly for the town piece, the 50,000 was in there based off an estimate for the Hadley becoming a town building, but not yet a hotel. So that's not going to be a structural thing where we'll continue paying these utility costs, but it is a blip in our operating budget that, you know, to echo Marilyn on the last article, it would cause a spike. And it's when you have a spike of potentially $50,000, that's potentially a person.

So that was kind of the behind the scenes thought process on doing it this way. Right, I guess. If we're relying on.

If you wanna use free cash to fund it, I would kind of defer to maybe next town meeting to do it once we know what the actual is versus free funding a contingency. But what is the.

[Speaker 1] (2:10:33 - 2:11:01)
Because we don't know that we need. I think she's trying to protect against the fact that because we funded that somehow that automatically means that we spent it and it eviscerates as opposed to saying, hey, come back in December, your mid year school tell us where you're tracking. I frankly have no problem doing it now as long as, because it doesn't mean it eviscerates.

It means that somebody, you guys have the money and, you know, obviously you need to verify that they need the money. I mean, so.

[Speaker 3] (2:11:02 - 2:11:29)
So the warrant article would be basically more simply that we're asking town meeting to allocate up to $250,000 if needed based on actual increased utilization or increased costs. And it would, you'd actually just disperse what the actual increases instead of guessing right now and having to put it into a fund. That's the distinction.

[Speaker 7] (2:11:30 - 2:11:38)
For free cash, we can't do an up to, it's only a flat amount because I have to book an entry for whatever your vote is. Well, whatever the town meeting vote is.

[Speaker 1] (2:11:39 - 2:11:47)
Yeah, right. But at the end of the year, you can do on expended funds, correct? But if you can recycle on spent unencumbered dollars, correct?

[Speaker 7] (2:11:48 - 2:11:54)
So if the vote is 200,000 into the school appropriation, I can't touch that unless the school.

[Speaker 1] (2:11:54 - 2:12:15)
No, I think that's the point. I don't wanna do that. It wouldn't do it in the school appropriation.

Just like the revolving account or the stabilization accounts, not a school appropriation. It would just be, it wouldn't be in the school. So your office would still control it.

But if we didn't spend it at the end of the year, that authorization goes away because it was for fiscal year 25 only that you can then just recycle any amount that you hadn't incurred or spent.

[Speaker 7] (2:12:16 - 2:12:18)
Yes, Peter, you're correct. It would fall to free cash.

[Speaker 2] (2:12:19 - 2:12:30)
Again, these are strategies to kind of have a little bit more control, but yet get to a place where we could be as supportive as we could for the schools.

[Speaker 6] (2:12:31 - 2:12:39)
I mean, we haven't operated a high efficiency 150,000 square foot new elementary school before.

[Speaker 1] (2:12:40 - 2:12:44)
So I mean, I don't think it's based out in the need or for it to have the money. I think it's just the mechanism.

[Speaker 4] (2:12:44 - 2:12:44)
The mechanism.

[Speaker 1] (2:12:45 - 2:13:05)
I just, I'm reticent. Again, I'm reticent to create stabilization accounts when we know that every dollar in it is probably already being encumbered emotionally, if not physically, right? And so it just, we did that last year with a special education stabilization account and we used all the money or we're planning on using all the money in that account, right?

[Speaker 4] (2:13:05 - 2:13:09)
No, but there's a story behind that, which we'll talk about another time.

[Speaker 1] (2:13:10 - 2:13:32)
There's a, there's a- No, I know there is, I know there is, but we call it a stabilization account. Now it's a, but it was used in the first year that we created it, which just feels not quite in the spirit of a stabilization account, as opposed to it being one-time, it was a one-time thing of cash. That's all, I'm just trying to keep us from, these become vehicles for unintended purposes.

[Speaker 4] (2:13:32 - 2:13:45)
So what we could, so what we could do is just make an account that, we could just make an account that we have to dip into for just that one, just for the first year then, and then it just gets released back into free cash.

[Speaker 3] (2:13:47 - 2:13:55)
I feel like now we're really in the weeds of what Sean and Amy could take care of, and like we're micromanaging. So come back, let's come back to- It's really something I'm ahead of opinion on.

[Speaker 1] (2:13:55 - 2:14:10)
Yeah, but we're just, but I know, but we're creating a permanent solution to something that has shown itself specifically in a temporary problem, right? And that's all I'm saying is that this is forever. So let's redo this, that's all.

I'm just trying to have the cure and the illness match each other.

[Speaker 2] (2:14:11 - 2:15:05)
What hopefully is forever is some, some standard for regulating the increase in the operating budget. And so because we've supported a policy of 2% plus new growth, that does put an enormous amount of pressure after a couple of budget cycles on every one of the line items, and we're growing in some ways. And so we've also seen some dramatic increases in some costs associated with the pandemic or things that we know are gonna age out, but we don't know when.

And so we put these funds in these stabilization accounts, and we monitor them. And we actually, over the next few years, kind of figure out, you know, do we need to access some of these funds to stabilize the budget or not? Can we get through?

And it just avoids showing up hat in hand at town meetings saying, we need more money. Well, that's what we don't want to do.

[Speaker 4] (2:15:06 - 2:15:21)
We have a policy on our free cash too. And we have a policy. I know.

So I think when I'm looking at these numbers, I'm looking at these numbers, and I think we are dipping below our percentages on these numbers. When I just take a quick glance.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:21 - 2:16:14)
We just need to be careful about it. The actions is actually a philosophical agreement on all these things. I think it's just about, I think we're cognizant to the fact that our new growth, first of all, I want to say it's a guideline.

The 2% is a guideline. It's not a policy. And it's important to say that because it doesn't mean that you avoid going above the 2% at all costs, right?

There are gonna be things that require it, right? We can't live on a diet perpetually that 350 other cities and towns aren't living on. There's a reason they're not living on it.

It's not because they're totally all irresponsible. It's because the realities are, the pressures on the expense size in particular are greater. And so we did it because we went through a history, pre-you, where we spent without restraint.

And so here, I think it's just saying, let's find, we can table tonight, but come back with just a simpler solution, perhaps.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:14 - 2:16:20)
Certainly. For this. I will reach out to my colleagues in the school department and we'll figure it out together.

[Speaker 4] (2:16:20 - 2:16:21)
So are you making a motion to remove this?

[Speaker 1] (2:16:22 - 2:16:44)
I'm gonna give him to Doug's point about just being true to his relationships with and his agreements with the school. Let's take this up next week and let's see where the conversation goes with the school. But again, the spirit is whatever the dollar amount is that we need to put aside to take care of that lumpiness of the elementary school, we get.

No one's trying to take that back. It's just saying, do we need to create a permanent structure to do that?

[Speaker 3] (2:16:44 - 2:16:58)
I appreciate that, Peter. One last thing. Is there a difference?

You've said it a couple of times. Would a reserve fund fall somehow outside the 2% plus new growth? Were you trying to make that point that this would be treated differently in that regard?

[Speaker 7] (2:17:00 - 2:17:02)
The 2% plus new growth is only to the task.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:02 - 2:17:04)
Yes, I understand that, but okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:04 - 2:17:06)
Amy, go ahead. Sorry, Amy, say that again. Go ahead.

[Speaker 7] (2:17:07 - 2:17:17)
The 2% plus new growth is only on the tax levy, which only impacts the general fund. So any other funds like a reserve or stabilization fund is on its own.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:17 - 2:17:22)
Yeah. Well, a reserve, if it's in the operating budget, it's not on its own.

[Speaker 7] (2:17:23 - 2:17:28)
Correct. Right, it's only. So finance committee reserve is a general fund.

Yep.

[Speaker 2] (2:17:32 - 2:17:34)
All right.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:34 - 2:17:34)
That was fun.

[Speaker 4] (2:17:35 - 2:17:36)
Article six.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:36 - 2:17:49)
So I think we, I guess I want to suggest that we are going quite far now because I don't think there's anything new. So opioid special fund, we've.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:50 - 2:17:51)
Can we even vote on that one?

[Speaker 1] (2:17:52 - 2:17:54)
I think we, again, we wait for finance committee.

[Speaker 4] (2:17:54 - 2:18:04)
We wait for finance committee. Did the numbers change in the water and sewer? From last week?

We had, you had no numbers last week. Eight and nine last week. Do we have different numbers this week?

[Speaker 7] (2:18:05 - 2:18:17)
You had no numbers last week. I believe the, unless you had articles that were copies of the prior year, the version we had was a dollar sign with X's.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:18 - 2:18:38)
I think this is right from what I remember last week. The special education fund, again, is the two. At some point, you can educate me offline about this.

At some point, I just want to understand. And it's three-dimensional chess here on this one for me. Circuit breaker.

[Speaker 4] (2:18:39 - 2:19:22)
Well, just, because I want everybody to understand. We did have, we have a special education reserve account and they received a, they received a bill, an assessment from one of the schools where they send kids out to. They received an assessment on the building.

So they received an assessment on that building of where kids go to school. So instead of taking it, the best way to pay for that assessment is to pay for it out of the special education fund because it was for one of the special education schools. By spending it out of the special education fund, they will also get reimbursed in the, what fund did they get?

[Speaker 7] (2:19:22 - 2:19:23)
Circuit breaker.

[Speaker 4] (2:19:23 - 2:19:50)
The circuit breaker. So that could have been paid outside of the reserve, but that would not have been beneficial. So by paying for it within the reserve, that's beneficial because we're going to get money back from circuit breaker.

And that was to the tune of, I think, 80,000. Okay. So they're not using, I mean, that's why it was set up.

It was set up for special education reserve. You know, they did have some issues there.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:50 - 2:19:52)
Yeah, no, I believe, I believe in the principle of it.

[Speaker 4] (2:19:52 - 2:19:53)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:53 - 2:20:02)
Absolutely. I'm just, it was more about the making sure that we weren't going to be annually funding it to a known, projectedly confident number.

[Speaker 4] (2:20:02 - 2:20:19)
Right, but you also have to remember, they are operating, they have lowered their circuit breaker average that they keep in. So it's, you know, so if we do have to fund it often, they're also working on a much lower number, so. Okay.

It's a good idea.

[Speaker 1] (2:20:20 - 2:20:27)
Okay, I agree. So can I suggest we go to article 13? The next two are historic and Andrew's capital.

[Speaker 6] (2:20:27 - 2:20:31)
I was, with the indulgence of the board, I would like to skip to article 23.

[Speaker 5] (2:20:31 - 2:20:36)
Can I ask you a question about free cash first? Amy, what do we have for free cash?

[Speaker 7] (2:20:47 - 2:20:55)
After the vote at special account meeting, we have $2,559,478.

[Speaker 4] (2:20:56 - 2:20:57)
And where is that in percentage?

[Speaker 7] (2:20:58 - 2:21:08)
3.65%. That is already inclusive of the 123,909 that's in the opioid article, because that is already reserved free cash.

[Speaker 5] (2:21:11 - 2:21:13)
You said 3.65%?

[Speaker 7] (2:21:13 - 2:21:14)
Correct.

[Speaker 5] (2:21:14 - 2:21:17)
And what is the financial guideline?

[Speaker 7] (2:21:19 - 2:21:26)
Between three and 5%, so three is the floor. Okay, thanks. You're welcome.

All right.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:28 - 2:21:37)
So with the indulgence of the board, I would like to jump ahead to article 23 to talk about the amendment of the town charter, elected and appointed officials.

[Speaker 1] (2:21:38 - 2:22:02)
We do have members of the board of assessors here, and. Can we chime in first? Let me just, again, I wanna just kinda see where the board is on things.

I appreciate people have already chimed in and given their opinion of this outside the board, but we've actually never heard why the town administrator really wants to do this and what's going on. That being said, I'm gonna recommend that we pull it from this warrant.

[Speaker 4] (2:22:03 - 2:22:03)
I'm a second.

[Speaker 1] (2:22:04 - 2:23:55)
This is an important dialogue, and I will articulate the town administrator has made me aware of specific concerns about specific activities that have been happening that are concerning to him and to town council, but those conversations should be happening in a different form at a different time, to whatever end. But I think this is premature to do this. I understand that it was recommended by other people, professionals, et cetera, and it's an important thing, and I don't mean to diminish that, but I think this is not going to be well-received at town meeting, because it hasn't, we haven't conversed enough about this and about the reason why, and I think, frankly, the things that we're dealing with now or that the town administrator's concerned about are things that are not things that I think this is a forum for us to be discussing, nor do I think town meeting is the forum to discuss it.

I think anything going on with the board of assessors should be handled in a different forum. Whether or not we should continue to have an elected one is a totally separate issue and should be independent from anything that you're working out, and so I just suggest that we pull it from this warrant article and ask the town administrator to work with staff, and to staff, I also want the assessor to know that to not hear this as lack of support for you. Town meeting ultimately gets the vote here, and it's a pretty high hurdle for town meeting to do this, and I do not believe it's going to be successful, and so I think taking this on and having it become a public dialogue that I don't think is going to be fruitful is not in anyone's best interest right now, particularly staff's, so I respect the issues you're trying to address, and I more likely than not would agree with ultimately changing this, but not now and not in this way, because we haven't, it hasn't had an airing.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:55 - 2:24:46)
I, yeah, I agree. I'm very interested to kind of hear the pros and cons of, you know, and really from a policy perspective, separate from, you know, kind of other particular situations or potential particular situations, so yeah, I think this deserves to be part of, I think, you know, here and there, we've come up with other things to talk about the charter, and I believe it's been a while since the charter's been thoroughly reviewed. We talked about that earlier in the year, didn't quite kind of come around to getting to it, but it does seem like this is something that would be worthy of discussion if there's still a desire and that's a need that the board feels like is something to take up at that point, but we definitely, I don't think, have the time to fully process this at this time.

[Speaker 1] (2:24:46 - 2:24:55)
So I would make a motion to withdraw this from the warrant. Second. All in favor?

Aye.

[Speaker 4] (2:24:55 - 2:25:17)
Aye. I'd also like to add that I am the liaison to this board, and I would like to be involved in any issues or any questions, and I was very disappointed to see this article in this warrant, really disappointed. I was looking forward to a conversation tonight, but I'm good with putting that off.

Okay.

[Speaker 6] (2:25:21 - 2:25:34)
All right, we'll move back, and we'll talk about the adoption of Community Preservation Act. Is that where we left off?

[Speaker 20] (2:25:34 - 2:25:34)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (2:25:35 - 2:25:51)
Oh, can I, there is one, if we're gonna go backward at all. In Article 12, I think, you can correct me, Amy, if I got this wrong, I think you put in some placeholders. This discussion about what this limit is.

[Speaker 7] (2:25:52 - 2:26:16)
Yeah, so, Doug, I spoke with Nancy earlier today. She was in town hall, and Nancy Schultz was in town hall today, so I was speaking to her about this, and I think there was a miscommunication. She said that she thought that she had asked for 250,000, not 25, so that's what we were going to update that request to.

[Speaker 3] (2:26:16 - 2:26:17)
Okay, yeah.

[Speaker 4] (2:26:19 - 2:26:24)
Was that what you were talking about? It could be even more than that, frankly.

[Speaker 3] (2:26:25 - 2:26:40)
Just to give the context, right, what we're talking about here, this is not like giving them money, right? This is just so that they can actually draw down donations and actually put them in an account, and so, right now, they can't do that, because there's a, I think it's even, what is it, 5,000?

[Speaker 7] (2:26:40 - 2:26:40)
It's 5,000, right.

[Speaker 3] (2:26:41 - 2:27:01)
So, the idea is, why not make it two million? Whatever the number is. I don't know if there's any reason why it should be capped at any particular level, but we want to encourage them, really, to be out there fundraising.

Sounds like the grant conversation. It does, doesn't it? But the board is actually weighing in, and so is town hall.

I agree with you, Doug.

[Speaker 2] (2:27:01 - 2:27:05)
I agree. Let's give them incentive to reach for the moon.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:08 - 2:27:09)
With a clear purpose.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:10 - 2:27:12)
Also, they're not spending municipal funds.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:12 - 2:27:17)
Nope. There's a little bit of it. Don't, with this account, yes.

[Speaker 4] (2:27:17 - 2:27:17)
With this account, correct.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:17 - 2:27:24)
They're spending their own funds. Yeah, right. So, what is the number you want?

$250,000.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:24 - 2:27:27)
So, we're just gonna wait for FinCom to chime in on that? Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:28 - 2:27:34)
But, yeah, if you can go back to her one more time, Amy, or I can, and like, I think $250,000 is actually too low.

[Speaker 7] (2:27:34 - 2:27:53)
What do you want, $5,000? She was open to any higher amount. I think $250,000 was, it seemed like she was kind of hedging her bet.

She wasn't sure if it was, you know, too steep of a request. So, if the board has- I'm struggling a little bit.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:53 - 2:30:26)
My mind is gonna burst a little bit here. This is still an arm of the town of Swampscott, that we're saying, let them raise whatever they want, and they get to spend it however they want. But understand that rarely anything that they're gonna do doesn't require some other municipal action that goes with it, right?

So, we're empowering them to put this board in a situation that, frankly, town staff couldn't put us into, because we need to approve everything with them. I'm just saying, this is, it took us until this year to let the rec commission, for God's sakes, get into six digits on their thing. And all of a sudden, we're going to, I mean, I get it.

I want them to be successful. I checked out where their current fundraising efforts are, and I don't think it's six digits, or anything, maybe a digit or two short of that. But, I'm just, this does seem extraordinary that they are an arm of the town.

Just so, if Harbor and Waterfront came back to us and said they wanted to do donations, would we feel the same? And if OpenSpace came back and said they wanted donations, which they then themselves can appropriate through this revolving account, are we okay with that? And I think we have to be okay, kind of conceptually, with every committee coming to us and saying they want that revolving account.

Because every committee has a mission. And I'm just, I just want to make sure that we're not opening inadvertently Pandora's box. That's all.

And to think through what that means to the choices that are going to be made, because then the historic commission, I'm just going to use them, since that's the one being talked about, decides they want to spend money to do X, Y, Z, but it's inconsistent with something the town wants to do. The policymaking board here doesn't want to do that. How do you reconcile those two things?

Because they, and again, I'm not trying to deny them the right, they could have the friends of historic, the historical society, in many communities, the historical society or an equivalent is the fundraising advocacy arm, as opposed to the official commission in a town. And I'm not pretending to be an expert in all this, but I think that's the, we have the library trustees, and then we have the friends of the library. We have the council on aging, and then we have the friends of the council of aging, that kind of sidecar, if you will, with these things, and their private nonprofit or whatever organization.

I just, I'm just raising it. I'm, I don't know what the answer is, but if this doesn't feel right, because I think you would need to allow every committee to do the same thing, and I don't think that would be the intention. So I just raised that as a topic.

[Speaker 6] (2:30:31 - 2:30:36)
Okay, okay. So we will hold off for Fincom.

[Speaker 1] (2:30:36 - 2:30:37)
We're corrupting these tonight. Great.

[Speaker 6] (2:30:41 - 2:30:45)
We'll move on to Article 13, adoption of the Community Preservation Act.

[Speaker 1] (2:30:50 - 2:31:24)
So I'm gonna advance the conversation. I think this should be included. I think this is worthy of a conversation at town meeting.

I appreciate the effort that's going into dialogue this and talk to committees and boards about this. I appreciate the constrained ask here, right? It's not going for the fences.

It's not saying let's grab everything that you can grab with an ask at town meeting. It's not saying let's take the first step and do this. And as we talk about constraints, and I don't want to get into a, what's a must have and a nice to have, because there are 15,500 different definitions in the town of Swanscot of that.

[Speaker 3] (2:31:24 - 2:31:25)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:31:25 - 2:31:53)
To be clear. Yes. There's probably 16, probably 30,000 different definitions in the town of Swanscot of that.

But we do know that these three categories, open space, historic preservation, and affordable housing are three almost universally strained, starved investments that this tool has. Now we're not in the forefront. We're now going to be the last 10th percentile to do it, but we've seen success.

We've made sure that this program works.

[Speaker 3] (2:31:53 - 2:31:54)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (2:31:54 - 2:31:56)
24 years. Yeah. 24 years we've waited for this moment.

[Speaker 20] (2:31:56 - 2:31:59)
So I think it's a great dialogue. A lot of process.

[Speaker 1] (2:31:59 - 2:32:08)
I think it's a great dialogue in town meeting should have it and hopefully it's successful, but I appreciate David and Doug. You guys really have been pushing this and I appreciate that.

[Speaker 6] (2:32:08 - 2:32:25)
Oh, and I just want to say there was a great community discussion, you know, led by Doug and others last night. I believe it was recorded. Yes.

And we'll be on the town website by tomorrow. Great. Yeah.

And I think we will probably have another one of those between now and town meeting.

[Speaker 3] (2:32:26 - 2:32:26)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:26 - 2:32:27)
We have a couple more.

[Speaker 3] (2:32:28 - 2:32:34)
Yeah. I'm going to do one more and then Mary Ellen's going to watch and then she's going to lead one after that. Okay.

Everyone will have a chance.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:34 - 2:32:35)
And then Katie's going to do one.

[Speaker 3] (2:32:35 - 2:32:35)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:36 - 2:32:37)
No, it was, it was, yeah.

[Speaker 6] (2:32:37 - 2:32:50)
I mean, we probably had two dozen people in the room and maybe another 15 or 20 people online. Yeah. So hopefully we can get that.

We can share that, that video and encourage more people to come to the next live session as well.

[Speaker 3] (2:32:51 - 2:35:25)
Yeah, I super encourage people to watch it. I mean, I actually, I was really fascinated much more so than what we presented, the dialogue that happened in the room and the way people were thinking about it and the provisions that are baked into it. This isn't something we're creating, right?

You know, a whole bunch of communities have done this. There are very clear rules about it. You have to have separate committees that actually get set up to recommend projects, et cetera, et cetera.

So, and there was lots of good feeling about, you know, the community benefit, et cetera, et cetera. There are two things that we need to decide on. Okay.

Okay. Not that we're suggesting that we have to decide it tonight. Right now, that's written as an amount not to exceed 3%.

Well, we need to actually specify what that number is. And a lot of the discussion up until this point has been kind of in the one to 1.5% range. And I'm happy to kind of delve into that a little bit now, but as the very brief thing I'll say as a reminder is that in that range for the median or average single family home, we're talking about somewhere between basically 75 and $120.

Somewhere in that range for each home would be paying. Annually, right. And very importantly, that leads to the next piece, this what's highlighted in our warrant here are that there are four possible exemptions.

And just quickly for, you know, us and anyone else, first is knocking off the first $100,000 of the assessed value, right. Almost every community does that. So if your home's $500,000, basically we're kind of calculating this whole thing on 400.

The next thing is to do the same with commercial or to completely exempt commercial. And I think most communities and the kind of general informal conversations we've had around this is that let's make commercial on par with residential, give them the $100,000 exemption, but not exempt them completely. And then the last one, and the one I love the most, is there's a low income and a low to moderate income senior exemption.

So this is very powerful, particularly for those of us that are extremely concerned about equity. If you live in a, if your income, if you're under 60 and your income, and you live by yourself and your income is below $80,000 a year, completely exempt.

[Speaker 5] (2:35:25 - 2:35:26)
If you're over 60.

[Speaker 3] (2:35:26 - 2:35:27)
No, under.

[Speaker 5] (2:35:27 - 2:35:28)
Oh, under 60.

[Speaker 3] (2:35:28 - 2:35:50)
Even if you're under 60 and your income is $80,000 or less, living by yourself, completely exempt. Two people in your house, I think it goes up to $90,000. Three people, $100,000, keeps going up, okay.

If you're 60 and above, if it's $100,000 and below, you're exempt. And then it keeps going up if you have multiple people in your house.

[Speaker 6] (2:35:50 - 2:35:54)
So just from a procedural perspective, you still would have to apply for that exemption.

[Speaker 3] (2:35:55 - 2:36:05)
Correct. There's an application that you fill out each year, yes. Exactly.

Showing what you're, basically I think it's the top page for your income tax return. Don't quote me on that, but I think that's the basis of.

[Speaker 6] (2:36:05 - 2:36:09)
So it's a fairly straightforward, simple process to apply for an exemption.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:09 - 2:36:10)
Yes. Got it.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:10 - 2:36:13)
Who, judge and Jerry, have set exemptions?

[Speaker 3] (2:36:14 - 2:36:50)
I think that's, there are some administrative costs that are covered by the Community Preservation Trust Fund. And so then it would be up to us to whether or not that's like an existing town staff person that has another like 10th of their job that's doing the Community Preservation Trust Fund, or some people, depending on the scale of the town, they actually hire a whole full-time person because they're running the plan. There's, you know, and that's a dedicated, understood cost of doing this, and it comes out of these resources.

But whatever we just decide to do with that, there would be some dedicated resourcing and funding to pay for that.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:51 - 2:36:53)
But essentially we'd be spending that before we get it back.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:57 - 2:36:58)
In the first year, yes.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:59 - 2:37:05)
Because you need to have somebody to review the exemptions and have a policy in place and show homeowners.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:05 - 2:37:14)
Yeah, but that's one and a half percent. And, you know, I'm open to that discussion about that because, you know, there is sensitivity around that.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:15 - 2:37:17)
But it's a good starting conversation. Yeah, so.

[Speaker 5] (2:37:18 - 2:37:19)
And again, I think I, oops.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:19 - 2:37:20)
No, go ahead, go ahead.

[Speaker 5] (2:37:20 - 2:37:27)
I think I asked this question before, but please refresh me if I'm right. Say we started at one and a half percent and we wanted to increase.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:27 - 2:37:27)
Yep.

[Speaker 5] (2:37:28 - 2:37:29)
We could, but we have to start the whole process over.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:30 - 2:37:33)
Yes, go back through town meeting and through the ballot. Up or down?

[Speaker 1] (2:37:34 - 2:37:35)
You wanna move the number up or down?

[Speaker 5] (2:37:35 - 2:37:36)
Okay, got it.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:37 - 2:37:45)
Okay. Okay, so do we have a motion? I think we're picking this up.

Or we're not acting on it because he's gonna provide some supplemental information.

[Speaker 4] (2:37:45 - 2:37:49)
Got it. We're gonna wait on the finance committee on this one too?

[Speaker 1] (2:37:50 - 2:37:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (2:37:51 - 2:37:52)
I would like that.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:53 - 2:37:54)
So I don't think there's anything.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:55 - 2:37:59)
Can I just ask, is that general consensus about those exemptions?

[Speaker 1] (2:37:59 - 2:38:01)
Are we at that? I'm fine with those exemptions.

[Speaker 3] (2:38:01 - 2:38:02)
Me too.

[Speaker 4] (2:38:02 - 2:38:04)
Why, are there more exemptions? No.

[Speaker 1] (2:38:04 - 2:38:04)
No, but no.

[Speaker 20] (2:38:05 - 2:38:06)
All right. The only one.

[Speaker 1] (2:38:06 - 2:38:09)
He just got rid of the total exemption for commercial and industrial.

[Speaker 3] (2:38:10 - 2:38:37)
I'm just asking not for pressure, but if we actually know that yes, generally it feels that feels right, doesn't have to be a definitive vote, we can send that back to finance committee to say, hey, this is kind of the direction we're floating in is on these exemptions and on the surcharge, just so they have that sense from us. But if we don't wanna. Yes, I'm fine with that.

Yep. The communities are at 2.5. And we have been delivering.

[Speaker 1] (2:38:38 - 2:38:38)
You mean two?

[Speaker 3] (2:38:38 - 2:38:40)
No, how many are, almost everyone else.

[Speaker 1] (2:38:41 - 2:38:46)
Oh, I can tell you that answer now, 350. I really think we are uniform.

[Speaker 3] (2:38:47 - 2:39:05)
Okay, so that is, that gets to the AAA, but it's more of what hits people, right? Is that like every single year we're delivering actually lower taxes for folks. Okay, now they may, people may come to have understood and expect that, but let's not forget it.

They're prudent, it used to be lower.

[Speaker 2] (2:39:05 - 2:39:07)
Right now they're prudent taxes. They're fair.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:07 - 2:39:24)
No, but the 2% is still every single year that's lower than what it could be. That's right. Right, and so we're adding this in, I don't know what that amounts to, maybe we're up to like 2.05%, right?

So once you kind of think about this surcharge funneling, I don't know what the number is, literally.

[Speaker 1] (2:39:24 - 2:39:47)
No, we do, we factor in the new growth calculation to come up with a 2.6 number or whatever it is, Amy, you may remind me, but something 2 point something when we do the new growth, you could put the CPA in as well to kind of factor in that number, but. Right, but the general point just is that like, people may not want their taxes to go up at all.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:48 - 2:40:00)
I get that, they might not want it to go for this, but let's not forget the fact that they've actually been under what they very easily could have been for a long time. So anyway. Six years.

Off my soapbox.

[Speaker 6] (2:40:00 - 2:40:09)
Yeah, Doug, please, once we have a link, and then if you can send that supplemental information to us so we can pick this up next week, that'll be great.

[Speaker 1] (2:40:10 - 2:40:30)
So if, okay, can we go, I think, jump past the zoning stuff. I think the zoning stuff, in my particular opinion, I think it all belongs in the warrant. I'm not making a recommendation, I'm just saying it belongs to the.

Well, I'm skipping anything that's financial just because we're waiting for finance and CIC.

[Speaker 4] (2:40:30 - 2:40:36)
We've never even had a conversation about what's been proposed.

[Speaker 1] (2:40:36 - 2:40:40)
Capital improvements. Yeah, right at the time, the administrator was gonna come back with a conversation on the CIP.

[Speaker 2] (2:40:41 - 2:40:47)
Yep, you've got a 50-slide deck presentation, and happy to step through that.

[Speaker 4] (2:40:50 - 2:40:53)
Or we could. I don't want a 50-slide deck presentation, we can just go line by line here.

[Speaker 3] (2:40:53 - 2:41:03)
Just talk about it. Sure. Background, if you want it, yeah.

Please. Yeah, no, I think, I think it's time. Go ahead, John.

[Speaker 2] (2:41:04 - 2:41:32)
So we're recommending $266,000 for the pier for Fisherman's Beach. We're receiving $212,000 for a grant, $212,800, or it's a $212,000 project, and we're receiving a 50, it's a $53,000 match.

[Speaker 3] (2:41:33 - 2:41:46)
What would be most useful, Mr. Chairman, about how we proceed with this? Like, do you want, should we do commentary as we each one, or get them?

[Speaker 6] (2:41:46 - 2:41:58)
I think as we go through the departments, I think if we're looking at community development or DPW or facilities, I think we can comment, you know, thereafter. So I think that would make, it just might make more sense.

[Speaker 1] (2:41:59 - 2:42:11)
But John, I just want to encourage you, you don't, we can, I think we're looking for color. We can. We can read it.

Yeah, the table itself we're good with. Right, I think it's if there's any color. If there's no color to give us, we don't need color.

It's okay.

[Speaker 2] (2:42:11 - 2:42:29)
All right. So next project is a trail design and construction for Arches Street. We're applied for a grant.

It's $150,000. We have to gross appropriate that. Next line is.

[Speaker 6] (2:42:29 - 2:42:30)
Well, that's community development. That's the end of it.

[Speaker 3] (2:42:31 - 2:42:32)
If that's David's point. Yeah, right.

[Speaker 6] (2:42:32 - 2:42:38)
So now we have, now we pick up our discussion about community development. That's all. Okay.

So if there's questions, comments from the board.

[Speaker 3] (2:42:39 - 2:44:40)
Yeah, I would like to comment about the pier, because I know there's been, we've had some comments about it at public comment today. There's been many comments about it throughout its process winding. Through things.

I support moving along with this, because I also support the fact that we are going to do serious resiliency planning at the exact same time. And it is kind of, in my mind, very contingent that those two things go together. And so we do not have the resiliency planning in the capital budget.

We have it recommended in ARPA. We'll get to something else that is in the capital budget eisemanns, which I think is actually slightly premature, because I think that we, in the conversations we've been having with many chairs about pursuing these grants, is that we don't really have a clear strategy about what we're gonna do. And that will be the point of that $200,000 that Sean recommended in ARPA.

I think it actually, I think it could go in here instead of the eisemanns, because I think what we do at eisemanns is tied into this broader strategy about eisemanns, fishermen's, Phillips Park, all of that. At least that's the gist of these larger conversations that we've had. So I know I'm kind of hopping to a couple other things, but they're very much connected.

And I think in the public's mind, I think rightly they are connected. And I wanna make sure that I'm not just going for the pier, I'm going for, we need to think about this area cohesively and strategically and get it nailed. So by the end of the year, whether we get a grant or not, we've got a very clear designed process with community input, regulatory input, we know where we're going.

We're going, whether it's Living Reef or bigger walls or whatever it is, right? So. All right.

[Speaker 4] (2:44:40 - 2:44:49)
So this is a grant for a pier, right? This is a grant for a pier. And- This is a grant for design of a pier.

[Speaker 1] (2:44:49 - 2:44:51)
The design of a pier, right.

[Speaker 4] (2:44:51 - 2:45:26)
This is a grant for the design of a pier. And what we heard tonight is that there is a study or an analysis of the condition of the existing pier, which brings into question, why are we looking at another pier if we have a pier, whatever the condition of the pier? So I don't have an opinion on either pier.

What I'm saying is, we don't have that information. So until we have that information, I would just like to wait until we have that information.

[Speaker 3] (2:45:27 - 2:45:56)
And I do not have the definitive answer to that, but the way I think about this is that we have information that, as I understand it, I don't even know if it was the town that has it or an independent group did it, but basically the rumor, I don't know exactly, is that the existing pier is okay for a while with, I don't know, $100,000 or so of repairs, right? That's great, okay? That can last a little while.

What's the long-range plan?

[Speaker 4] (2:45:57 - 2:45:59)
Well, that's what I would like to hear.

[Speaker 3] (2:45:59 - 2:46:22)
So that's what I'm talking about. Like, these things need to go together, and that means that we should be thinking long-range, which this represents to me. We should be thinking about, we need a short-range plan for preserving the existing pier, and we need to make sure that we have something so that all these piers just don't get blown down in the next storm.

So that is the comprehensive thinking and strategy that I think we need to employ here.

[Speaker 2] (2:46:22 - 2:46:29)
Yep, a lot of that is outlined in the harbor and waterfront plan, you know, and some of the- In a preliminary, high-level way.

[Speaker 3] (2:46:29 - 2:46:30)
That's right. We need to take it to the next level.

[Speaker 2] (2:46:30 - 2:47:31)
Totally agree, Doug. I think everything you're saying makes sense. I think they all dovetail together, and having somebody that we can hire that literally helps us- Right.

Advance some of these strategic alignments makes a lot of sense. That said, are we ready to move on to DPW? I think there may be some opportunities for us to kind of tighten some of these alignments up.

I'm happy to meet with board members and talk further. Go ahead. This MS-4 permit compliance, that's essentially the stormwater compliance.

We're a regulated EPA MS-4 community, and so we have compliance activities that 181,000 helps us support many of those responsibilities. You know, it's pretty standard.

[Speaker 3] (2:47:32 - 2:47:34)
All right. Sounds good to me.

[Speaker 2] (2:47:35 - 2:47:42)
DPW non-Chapter 90 paving, 100,000. It's a modest amount of money for some of the paving work.

[Speaker 3] (2:47:43 - 2:47:44)
I do that every year, right?

[Speaker 2] (2:47:44 - 2:48:12)
It's pretty routine. Eisen's beach seawall, Doug, you just mentioned that, 320,000. This continues our ongoing efforts for some resiliency work, and frankly, status of good repair work.

$50,000 for shade trees. We received presentations on that. We know that we're down trees.

We need to fund more trees. Brooke, up all gate. This is a title gate, 320,000.

[Speaker 1] (2:48:14 - 2:48:15)
All right, we're just gonna stop there now?

[Speaker 4] (2:48:16 - 2:48:16)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (2:48:16 - 2:49:26)
For a second? All right, so Eisen's beach seawall, I agree 100% with what Doug said minutes ago about, I don't know how all of a sudden we do elevated seawalls just because elevated seawalls seem to be resilient. That may be an answer.

I also believe Johnson Park to continue to be one of the most underutilized and disrespected pieces of public property, and I'm just gonna be blunt about it. It's because there are five or six neighbors that live close to it that have successfully made a lot of noise that has kept the town from doing something with it. It is a burnt out piece of grass, and it's oceanfront property that the town of Swanscot owns, and I hope to God whatever you guys do, when you do resiliency, understand that the design of that park can be part of a resiliency plan, because that's why you do parks, because they become part of the recharge system and protecting things.

The time has gotta come where that park is not deemed to be the front yard of private landowners, and that park instead is deemed to be public space that should be utilized and give public oceanfront access to kids and everything. Sure you have. Johnson Park, as a matter of fact, Margie went through months of proposals with a grant.

[Speaker 4] (2:49:26 - 2:49:39)
Don't we have $100,000 in the capital? Yeah, we do. We have a $100,000 line item for that park.

[Speaker 1] (2:49:39 - 2:50:16)
There's an MAPC sponsored grant that was obtained by Margie. Margie went through the whole process together with Tufts University. I think she had some interns from the landscaping school, presented presentation, and nothing ever happened with it.

The town planted trees. The trees magically disappeared and got sick. I'm just saying that, like, this is just a, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just saying, I'm just saying that we can't just isolate eisemens.

Resiliency needs to be dealt with. And I just asked you, that park is part of resiliency. And it's time we do something, because we are, we are giving away one of the best assets in Swampscot.

I agree.

[Speaker 4] (2:50:16 - 2:50:31)
I would just like to, honestly, I would like to remove, I don't know which seawalls need the most repair. I'm just wondering, wouldn't it be better if we just said, you know, which seawalls really have to be raised? Like, what's the priority system?

[Speaker 1] (2:50:31 - 2:50:42)
I don't, I don't know. But I don't, I don't have, I, I, that is going to have to happen, but raised how and who, I mean, I, that's what we're gonna figure out. I mean, there's been no conversation, there's been zero conversation about that.

[Speaker 4] (2:50:42 - 2:50:56)
Right. No, I'm, I'm, listen, I'm good with the dollar number. I just, I know that, you know, Cresta wasn't even involved in this conversation.

That and the floodgate. And, I mean, all of a sudden, somebody just decides Iseman's Beach should get the seawall.

[Speaker 1] (2:50:56 - 2:51:09)
Yeah, I don't, I don't, well, I assume it's because it needs repairs. And maybe it needs repairs or not, I don't know. But I agree that I don't know where this comes from.

So we just gotta, you know, Capital Improvement's recommended it, so maybe they have information we don't have.

[Speaker 4] (2:51:09 - 2:51:10)
It was presented on the very last day of their meeting.

[Speaker 1] (2:51:10 - 2:51:14)
I'm just saying, like, maybe they have information we don't have. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

[Speaker 2] (2:51:14 - 2:51:17)
I'm happy to come back with some additional information.

[Speaker 4] (2:51:17 - 2:51:33)
You know, and then on the, the shade trees, 50K. How many trees did we take down with the new elementary school? Because I question 50,000 is enough.

How many trees did we take down? Was it 300, 200?

[Speaker 20] (2:51:33 - 2:51:34)
I don't know off the top of my head.

[Speaker 4] (2:51:35 - 2:51:39)
Let's give more money to trees. Huh? Let's give more money to trees.

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

[Speaker 5] (2:51:40 - 2:51:45)
The tree committee could spend it like that. Spots, places. They'd be glad to have more money to spend.

[Speaker 4] (2:51:46 - 2:51:55)
So that's my concern, is that we talk about trees, and we took down so many trees. I think that number has to be increased.

[Speaker 7] (2:51:55 - 2:52:18)
Mary Ellen, Gino has said for this year in capital, as well as the previous year that this was funded, that this is the maximum amount of trees that they, he and his team can plant. So basically if more were to be planted, they would have to outsource this, and it would only increase by a very small number of trees. Yeah.

So that was why the dollar is what it is.

[Speaker 5] (2:52:18 - 2:52:44)
Also, it's difficult to obtain the type of trees that we would like to plant in the volume post this dollar amount around town. For us to have it, for us to order from a larger provider of trees would be much more costly, because there'd be a much greater delivery charge. So we'd actually get less or more money, according to the tree committee.

So.

[Speaker 3] (2:52:45 - 2:52:47)
Because this is their request.

[Speaker 5] (2:52:47 - 2:52:48)
This is their request.

[Speaker 3] (2:52:48 - 2:52:52)
And it's not just a one-time thing, it's every year or something, right?

[Speaker 5] (2:52:52 - 2:53:07)
Yeah, yeah. So yes, exuberantly said, let's spend more on trees, but they have said it is difficult to get the type of species that they're looking for, the native species from the.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:07 - 2:53:18)
Then I'm good. If the tree committee says this is all we can do, then I'm good. I'm just concerned with how many trees we took down and not being able to get more trees out there.

[Speaker 6] (2:53:18 - 2:53:35)
I think consistently investing is what's going to, because we are, we're gonna consistently need trees, and I think just making a commitment this year and in years to come that we'll consistently invest is good.

[Speaker 1] (2:53:35 - 2:53:35)
I'm good.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:36 - 2:53:44)
And then this, the outfall, the pie gate, is it, is it, what?

[Speaker 1] (2:53:45 - 2:53:45)
Well, I, look at.

[Speaker 4] (2:53:46 - 2:53:47)
You know, I wasn't even involved in that conversation.

[Speaker 1] (2:53:47 - 2:53:55)
Well, again, I don't know. I mean, so we know there's no gate on it now. Right.

So I just, can I just, can you give us enough background? Where did this come from and who asked for it?

[Speaker 2] (2:53:56 - 2:54:02)
I believe that this is being presented by the DPW department, but I'll have to get to that.

[Speaker 4] (2:54:02 - 2:54:10)
No, it was, just to, because I was at the Capital Improvement Committee meeting. This was presented by a meeting of the treasurer, Margie Golaska.

[Speaker 1] (2:54:10 - 2:54:13)
Okay, so let's put, so can we ask? Amy, go ahead. Hi.

[Speaker 7] (2:54:13 - 2:54:17)
So this is the 320,000 for the Stacy's Brook floodgate.

[Speaker 1] (2:54:17 - 2:54:17)
Yep.

[Speaker 7] (2:54:19 - 2:54:44)
So after discussions with Gino at the Finance Committee, Margie, Gino, and myself sat down and spoke about the next morning, and then I had a follow-up conversation with the town administrator, and he asked me to extend to the Finance Committee that he was requesting they do not support this in this year, and then it will be pushed out to a future year. So what you have in front of you is what Capital Improvement recommended, but this is not supported by administration in this year.

[Speaker 1] (2:54:44 - 2:54:46)
Right, so we, I'm sorry.

[Speaker 4] (2:54:46 - 2:54:54)
But if we're saying that we wanna be putting resiliency money, you know, why can't, why not, I'm good, leave that down.

[Speaker 1] (2:54:55 - 2:55:37)
But this isn't, but this isn't, so again, two things. I appreciate how diligent you are. I just, we gotta be careful when we say Gino didn't ask for something, because sometimes there's conversations happening that we may all not know about.

So I just, if we can defer staff first to let them tell us the story, because I don't want people to think nefarious or bad things here. Secondly, that storm gate doesn't exist. I could tomorrow climb in there.

I just feel like I need to say that again. Something a lot smaller than me can climb in it tomorrow, and keep climbing into it. There is nothing.

So I'm, so I appreciate administrations maybe making a financial decision here. I don't know how this actually.

[Speaker 2] (2:55:37 - 2:55:52)
So we have a couple of logistics that we have to consider about that. Peter, we've talked about the public safety issues associated with that, but we also, we have to be mindful that if we plug that up, if we block it up with a gate. We're not plugging it up.

[Speaker 1] (2:55:52 - 2:56:30)
I understand that, I understand it's a major infrastructure thing, and there has to be something, but there has to be something that's safer than what it is today. It is, ignore the contamination for the time being. I'm talking about just physically.

Go in there. It's a attractive nuisance. I agree.

Is the legal phrase I guess we'd use here, and I'm just saying something needs to be done because it's just not safe. I don't wanna spend money on it, but I don't wanna spend money on fixing seawalls. I'd rather spend it on something else, but the seawalls aren't safe, then we gotta fix the seawalls, right?

And so I just. So you, just to be clear though, you're actually talking about something different than what this was?

[Speaker 3] (2:56:30 - 2:56:35)
Because this was a much different thing than a safety thing. This was about a tide gate actually.

[Speaker 1] (2:56:35 - 2:56:53)
Okay, well I'm, fair enough. Again, if we had the conversation, it might be good. I'm talking about safety, so I just wanna make sure, if fine, if for title purposes, whatever, I don't have an opinion, I know nothing about it.

On safety, something has to be done. It is not okay that we, going on decades probably.

[Speaker 4] (2:56:54 - 2:56:55)
So what you're saying is at the outfall.

[Speaker 1] (2:56:56 - 2:56:56)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (2:56:57 - 2:56:57)
It's just open.

[Speaker 1] (2:56:57 - 2:57:23)
It's just open. The Linn side is too, but. Yep.

Yeah, I. Yeah. Yes, but we.

Get a picture of it. We. If we had to, I would solve Linn's problems just because it's people are people.

No, I get it. I get it, I get the problem, but that doesn't mean we don't fix it. All right, can we move on to facilities please?

Sure. Are we resolving, we're not resolving anything.

[Speaker 5] (2:57:23 - 2:57:25)
Yeah, I'm not resolving anything.

[Speaker 1] (2:57:26 - 2:58:01)
You mean are we not trying to, well I don't, so I guess I don't know how we resolve, there are committees reviewing this stuff currently. I appreciate that we should have been talking about this four months ago, three months ago, two months ago, I appreciate that. And we've had that public dialogue before.

I don't know how to do it three weeks before closing a warrant when we have other committees that are reviewing it and have the benefit of more than just a PowerPoint presentation for explanation. And so I just, it's a little bit too three dimensional for me, so I feel at this point we can talk about this, but they're gonna come back with recommendations and then we can decide if we're going to recommend something or not recommend something.

[Speaker 3] (2:58:01 - 2:58:25)
Well, CIC has weighed in, right? And finance committee, if I understood the actual, the literal process is supposed to be, and it seems like somewhat their interest is in understanding from the select board what our priorities are. They're actually looking for some direction from us as well.

So if there are things clearly we think are not very good ideas, why are we gonna put them through the process?

[Speaker 1] (2:58:26 - 2:59:19)
So it can be kind of back and forth. There's no reason why we can't provide some direction. I hear you, but you take something out, and so I mean, to kind of use Mary Ellen's statement about, and it's not a bad idea, but okay, I'm fine with the dollar amount, but let's just do this.

I don't feel any more prepared to be able to say that. And so what are we gonna do, chop the capital plan by a third because we're sitting here three weeks before a town meeting and we just don't have enough information? Like the world, everything's keeping on moving here.

And I get that our process might not have been smooth up to date, and we should have three months ago been looking at the capital plan and making sure the priorities for fiscal year 25 were the priorities that we all thought were appropriate. But now, we can't just pull things out and then decide we want to throw something in ourselves and say, yeah, I'm fine with the dollar amount, just do something good to the seawalls. Like, that's not any better than what's in here potentially and I'm just, I don't want to all of a sudden press the brakes and then just pull everything out and say, hey, this year we're gonna do one third the capital because, you know.

[Speaker 4] (2:59:20 - 2:59:27)
Well, I think we're the policymaking board. I think that if the majority of the board doesn't like something, we can take it out.

[Speaker 1] (2:59:27 - 2:59:39)
I'm not saying that mechanically we can't. All I'm saying is that we're leaving a void. Okay, so why don't we just be specific?

And maybe you don't want to be.

[Speaker 3] (2:59:40 - 3:00:08)
I don't know what to be specific about. Well, I'm gonna suggest something, okay? So, as I mentioned before, this Isman's Beach seawall, raise, it's not about repairing the wall, it's about raising it.

Okay, we just had a discussion about that. Do we want to send no direction about that back to the finance committee? Is that more useful?

Or if we actually have an opinion about that, would it be more useful to share that opinion?

[Speaker 4] (3:00:11 - 3:00:25)
I feel that we should. Well, what are people's opinions? Because I'll tell you, my opinion is that if we just at least just say seawall raise or seawall repair, I just want money going into the seawalls.

[Speaker 1] (3:00:27 - 3:01:51)
But I don't understand how that, I agree with you in concept, because the seawalls need repairs, but I don't know how that's any more, I'm gonna use the word responsible, I don't mean the opposite to irresponsible. I don't know how it's any more responsible than what they've put in, because we always can pave more streets, we always can repair more walls, it doesn't mean that it's the right priority. What I'm concerned about is that this is taken out of a capital plan for which there's opportunity costs.

If we're not gonna spend, if this was decided to be an expenditure of $320,000, because this merited being here this year, for whatever reason, again, I can't tell you what this, but let's just say it is, that meant something else didn't get out, didn't get put on here. So us unilaterally, without looking at the stuff that didn't make the plan this year, didn't make the cut this year, and for us to then say, hey, well, I just want to now just make a repair, is because I think more money, the better. I don't disagree with you, there's a concept to that, but there's other things that didn't get put into plan to let this raising happen, this resiliency thing happen, whatever it is, that I just feel as though, again, policymaking board aside, the policymaker would look to see what are the opportunity costs, what are the other choices, what are the things that were pushed back a year to make this happen, and should we be putting that forward, for example, as opposed to organically just creating our own, sitting here, not that you're wrong with what it is, but where do we draw that line? That's completely outside of the capital plan.

[Speaker 3] (3:01:52 - 3:02:02)
Well, I think that's kind of potentially over-magnifying it, right? I mean, let's see, but I mean, would it be the worst thing in the world if we actually spent $320,000 less in the capital plan?

[Speaker 5] (3:02:04 - 3:02:08)
You're not suggesting we cut the money, you're suggesting we change the course of the money.

[Speaker 4] (3:02:08 - 3:02:37)
Well, actually, Ellen is. I am not suggesting cut the money. I am suggesting change the course of the money, or just leave it open for more conversations.

This, Island Beach Seawall came, I'm just saying change the title and add some more, put something, just have more of a conversation, whatever. I'm not recommending changing that dollar number. I'm just wondering.

[Speaker 5] (3:02:38 - 3:03:19)
But I think, I guess what I think is an important nuance of what Peter is saying is not that the change you may be making might be aligned with all of our philosophies, but to say that it's more important than something that was left, how many items do we have here? 32, what was 33, what was 34, what was 35? Because those are the things that if we took this out should be coming forward, right?

And if you're changing the course of the money, essentially you are taking it out because you're reallocating it to a different purpose, potentially.

[Speaker 4] (3:03:19 - 3:03:30)
No, I'm not. My recommendation is to still staying within the same wheelhouse of seawalls, whether it be repair or be rise.

[Speaker 5] (3:03:31 - 3:04:04)
Right, but if the repairs, okay, so if there are repairs necessary for seawall, which I don't know because I don't have the facts in front of me. So if there are repairs necessary for seawall, why aren't they in this recommendation already? And if they were 33, 34, or maybe they were 60 or 70 on the list for capital improvements and all these things jump before them because they're not necessary this year.

I don't know because I don't have the information in front of me again. So I think that's the important distinction is.

[Speaker 3] (3:04:06 - 3:04:48)
So I see it differently. One is that this is seawall raise, okay? It's not about fixing seawalls, okay?

Just to be super clear, that's what it was, okay? With what I just said, you can disagree, but we need to understand doing this in isolation, I agree, is dumb, right? Okay, just to be clear.

We need to understand the totality, okay? So I would say we've got $200,000 over in ARPA and I would say, scratch this, do the $200,000 here. Instead, do your strategy, okay?

And yes, that's $120,000 less.

[Speaker 1] (3:04:49 - 3:05:29)
So what? Yeah, I don't care what the dollar amount. So I'm agreeing with you because look, raising the walls inherently, there's no way we're raising it without fixing the walls, right?

We know, I mean, the non-engineering brains amongst us probably would say, that does make sense. We're not gonna raise something that itself is not in good condition. We're gonna upgrade the condition of it.

So inevitably, there was some repair going on, I'm sure, but we don't know that stuff. But more importantly, to your point, again, I'm good with that conversation, again, but we're making this in a little bit of a vacuum because we don't know what we don't know. That's all I'm saying, is I'm, when you make that statement, it's inherently logical until I learn something else that you and I aren't privy to, so therefore, we just didn't consider.

[Speaker 3] (3:05:29 - 3:05:33)
That's all. So we're not voting, but we're basically providing some.

[Speaker 1] (3:05:33 - 3:05:34)
To me, to me.

[Speaker 5] (3:05:34 - 3:05:43)
So I fail to see the logic because you make a presumption that's not definite. So you assume that the ARPA funds are gonna come.

[Speaker 1] (3:05:44 - 3:05:48)
No, no, no, not. He's actually saying, he's actually saying, take it out of ARPA and put it in capital.

[Speaker 3] (3:05:48 - 3:05:50)
Yeah, instead of funding it through ARPA.

[Speaker 4] (3:05:50 - 3:05:51)
Okay, sorry, my fault.

[Speaker 1] (3:05:51 - 3:05:52)
Fund it here.

[Speaker 4] (3:05:52 - 3:05:53)
Sorry, you're saying it the opposite.

[Speaker 1] (3:05:53 - 3:05:53)
No, it's fair.

[Speaker 4] (3:05:53 - 3:05:55)
So what is being funded through ARPA?

[Speaker 3] (3:05:56 - 3:06:06)
The recommendation was $200,000 for resiliency strategy, basically. All the conversations we've had with the esteemed Liz Smith and other people.

[Speaker 2] (3:06:06 - 3:06:13)
Well, we've got a list of project recommendations. What's that? There are projects and recommendations and climate action.

[Speaker 3] (3:06:13 - 3:06:40)
Right, what we're going after for grant, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So let's understand what the heck we really need to do before we start picking one thing. So that's what I'm suggesting there.

And just pushing along, I think the tide gate is premature and we should take it out. And I'm fine with the fact that we don't get to number 33. We now would just spend a little bit less on capital.

[Speaker 4] (3:06:41 - 3:06:46)
So I would like the MS-4 permit compliance, I would like that to come out of ARPA.

[Speaker 3] (3:06:47 - 3:06:48)
I thought it did come out of ARPA.

[Speaker 6] (3:06:50 - 3:06:54)
I thought we allocated ARPA funds previously for that.

[Speaker 3] (3:06:55 - 3:06:55)
Why is that?

[Speaker 2] (3:06:57 - 3:07:07)
No, we haven't. We didn't. These are ongoing annual responsibilities.

We're never going to be done with these. ARPA is for kind of unique.

[Speaker 1] (3:07:12 - 3:07:12)
One time things.

[Speaker 2] (3:07:13 - 3:07:22)
Yeah, and we need to apply ARPA for reoccurring ministerial responsibilities that we have under federal law. MS-4, like that, we have to do that.

[Speaker 4] (3:07:24 - 3:07:58)
I respect your opinion, but I don't agree with it. I think that ARPA money, you heard Andrew Mori, water and sewer infrastructure, it's a line item from the federal government. And I'm going to be really clear, I want to see all ARPA money into our infrastructure.

That's how I see it. I think it's needed, it's necessary, and it will give relief to every member of this community. So I'm just going to be right up front there.

And if there's something here that I think that has to do with water sewer, I'm saying ARPA.

[Speaker 3] (3:07:59 - 3:08:17)
Okay, well, just to be clear, I think this is perfect here and we can have a much larger conversation about it. It was kind of stunning to me in the public comment, like basically you would propose another $3.5 million for the pipes, and that was like completely unacknowledged. It was just kind of shocking.

[Speaker 2] (3:08:17 - 3:08:26)
Well, wait till you see what I recommend when we actually look at how much more we could do if we actually think strategically about, you know.

[Speaker 4] (3:08:28 - 3:08:40)
You're recommending $3.5 million on this, that's coming out of the sewer, the sewer budget. Sure. Right, right.

And with there's ARPA money that could relieve that sewer budget. Right.

[Speaker 1] (3:08:41 - 3:08:44)
But then push, again, it's an opportunity cost.

[Speaker 14] (3:08:44 - 3:08:45)
Let's get into it.

[Speaker 1] (3:08:45 - 3:08:52)
It just takes the money and puts it somewhere else where the taxpayer pays for it, Mary Ellen, I hear you. I'm not substantially disagreeing with your position.

[Speaker 14] (3:08:52 - 3:08:52)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (3:08:52 - 3:09:44)
That is fine. I don't share that absolute vision like that in terms of where the ARPA should be. But I hear you.

Right. Staff has though come and staff has told us that they've talked to council and they've talked to their advisors to be able to advise us what ARPA can be used for. So again, with no disrespect to people that come at public comment and offer their words to us, I am not taking our legal guidance from public comment.

I'm taking it from when staff says we've talked to our advisors, our consultants, et cetera, about where we can spend it. Now, I'm not saying it's a good idea to spend it or not. I'm just saying in terms of what the law is, we've been advised and we've been to say this.

So now I think it's just we're moving things around a bit. And so all I'm saying is it's not like those things that are being proposed by Sean for ARPA just go away. They still need to happen.

And again, this is where we get into the nice to haves and wants and miss that. And different opinions about that.

[Speaker 14] (3:09:44 - 3:09:45)
And different opinions.

[Speaker 1] (3:09:45 - 3:11:38)
Why are we spending money on water bubblers? Can't parents bring water in for kids? Why do we have to pay for that?

We want to get rid of that luxury. Why are Swampscot kids so spoiled that we actually have to give them water? It's healthy.

Well, and that's the point, but we can't go through a million of these dialogues because they are all different from where you sit and what your life perspective and experience is. And so we have to do and, and. So we're just trying to find a place for all this stuff because it's a red herring when people say up and say all of a sudden, and I find it, frankly, I'm gonna use the word offensive when someone who is learned about something gets up and says, well, I would love money for the library, but we have so many other things.

This is a decade plan. We're planning now for a decade from now, people, because guess what? We started planning for an elementary school a decade plus ago.

We planned for a police station a decade plus before we did it. This is a better decade from now. We have to be talking about a decade from now because these things just don't magically appear.

And so here, all these things Sean's asking for is, is frankly, yes, he's trying to take advantage of the fact that we do have one time opportunity to do things that we've deferred, but to you and I, we may not deem those to be must haves, but there are people in our community, it is must haves. And so I just, I get really, tonight's, I'm gonna get back to capital, I'm sorry. Tonight's thing at Capitalist, I just feel as though here we are at the 11th hour.

Well, I do think it's a mistake just to take things out, Doug, and what's the harm in spending a little less? Well, what I'm saying is, I don't know what then should be brought forward because there is some harm, because there's something that people at Public Comment may not care at all about what's next on the Capitalist, but I do care because inevitably there are things that if we could have funded this year or last year or the year before, we would have done it by now, but we haven't, which is how we get to these deferred maintenance things, because we don't have enough money.

[Speaker 3] (3:11:38 - 3:11:43)
Okay, but you still have to make a decision, then go back to CAIC and say, what was the next thing on the list?

[Speaker 1] (3:11:43 - 3:11:49)
No, no, no, I'll go back to the town administrator. Whatever, yeah, okay. Right, but yes, that's what I'm advocating.

I'm advocating that it's worth taking this out.

[Speaker 3] (3:11:49 - 3:11:51)
That's fine, you wanna fill the hole in?

[Speaker 1] (3:11:51 - 3:12:25)
Well, we have a debt service plan, right? We say, hey, the prudence is to spend this much on debt service per year because that is indicative of a town that's making investments in its presence, its past, and its future, right? Great, what's next?

If we don't think 320 for Eisman's Beach Elevations. I can fill the slot. What's next?

I'll come back. I think that's all I'm advocating for is what's next. Tell us what it is and why.

I'm agreeing with you about the 320. Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it. I just don't want voids, and I think doing this for the 11th hour, I wanna make sure we don't fill voids just to fill voids, too.

I also wanna make sure that we are doing something that we're ready to act on. Okay, right, so.

[Speaker 5] (3:12:25 - 3:12:31)
But, Doug, you're not actually talking about $320,000, because you wanna keep some of that.

[Speaker 3] (3:12:32 - 3:12:44)
No, I think you only used 200. Yes, yes. I don't know the number.

We're actually waiting for a proposal right now, so we'll know the specific number within 24 hours. All right, continue. Sheldon.

[Speaker 1] (3:12:45 - 3:12:46)
I'm more concerned about the start date.

[Speaker 2] (3:12:46 - 3:12:48)
All right, so we're on to facilities.

[Speaker 1] (3:12:49 - 3:12:51)
So, I'm sorry, so to Doug's point.

[Speaker 2] (3:12:51 - 3:12:51)
Tidegate.

[Speaker 1] (3:12:52 - 3:13:03)
Are we agreeing to change Eisman's Seawall and make a recommendation and advise and have Amy and Patrick advise FinCom and CIC that we're recommending to change that to, Doug, what are we?

[Speaker 3] (3:13:04 - 3:13:15)
The exact language that Sean has for out of the, sorry, where's your? His memo.

[Speaker 18] (3:13:15 - 3:13:15)
Oh, memo.

[Speaker 3] (3:13:15 - 3:13:27)
In the CA report. Resiliency projects. That was a big, complicated phrase, yes.

Yes, we will make those changes.

[Speaker 4] (3:13:27 - 3:13:30)
Oh, wait, you're saying take resiliency project out of?

[Speaker 3] (3:13:31 - 3:13:31)
ARPA.

[Speaker 4] (3:13:32 - 3:13:42)
Proposed ARPA. They recommend, proposed ARPA, your ARPA. And put that over into here, but then we're gonna be short 200,000 on our bottom line.

[Speaker 3] (3:13:43 - 3:13:51)
Well, no, we'll be short 120, 120, and Sean will find what the next thing down the list was from CIC, or whatever.

[Speaker 5] (3:13:51 - 3:13:53)
The next thing on the list was 200.

[Speaker 20] (3:13:54 - 3:13:55)
Like that's.

[Speaker 1] (3:13:55 - 3:13:56)
No, we'll see, we'll see.

[Speaker 3] (3:13:57 - 3:14:00)
We've got projects going on 20 years. Yeah, I mean, exactly.

[Speaker 20] (3:14:01 - 3:14:03)
You can put it back on, or you just don't know.

[Speaker 3] (3:14:04 - 3:14:14)
Okay, next one, I'm suggesting in the tide gate, what are we doing there? We push it out a year. Push it out.

And just, you know. Okay, you got another 320 to fill.

[Speaker 2] (3:14:14 - 3:14:15)
Get better information.

[Speaker 3] (3:14:17 - 3:14:24)
And I hear Mary Ellen's concern about MS-4 permit, I feel fine about it coming out of capital. I'm fine with it coming out of capital. Me too.

[Speaker 4] (3:14:24 - 3:14:25)
Me too.

[Speaker 3] (3:14:25 - 3:14:25)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (3:14:27 - 3:14:29)
I am not. I think it should come out of ARPA.

[Speaker 3] (3:14:30 - 3:14:31)
Opinion has been.

[Speaker 1] (3:14:31 - 3:14:35)
All right, next, we're going on. You noted. We're going into facilities now.

[Speaker 2] (3:14:35 - 3:14:39)
60,000 for bottle fill stations. This is, you know.

[Speaker 1] (3:14:40 - 3:14:41)
You don't need to make the pitch work.

[Speaker 16] (3:14:41 - 3:14:43)
Yeah, we have to understand that. Check.

[Speaker 2] (3:14:43 - 3:15:43)
$200,000 for feasibility for DPW yard improvements. And site study. We've talked about this for a long time.

We just need to, you know, really identify the space needs, deficiencies, and think about how we're gonna fix, or replace that facility. Next is $150,000 for electrification of HVAC systems. The field house.

That's a system that has reached its life cycle. Next is EV charge stations. This is a $75,000 investment.

We're gonna continue to support that over the next few years as the world gets cleaner and greener. Where would those be located? We're gonna study where they would best be located.

We have to actually get some data, but these funds will help us identify, you know, the best locations in town. We're not gonna do it based on popular opinion, but based on data.

[Speaker 5] (3:15:44 - 3:15:51)
I have a question about the EV charging stations. Have there been any, have we filled out any grants for municipal EV charging stations?

[Speaker 2] (3:15:51 - 3:15:52)
We have.

[Speaker 5] (3:15:52 - 3:15:53)
We just haven't been able to get them?

[Speaker 2] (3:15:53 - 3:15:57)
Max, Casper. No, we've actually- We've got grants for the ones we have.

[Speaker 4] (3:15:57 - 3:16:00)
For the ones at Town Hall. Why aren't we just asking for grants?

[Speaker 3] (3:16:00 - 3:16:03)
Why don't we just- This is matching. Yeah, we wanna- This is matching money.

[Speaker 4] (3:16:03 - 3:16:06)
That's not what it says. That's not what it says here, though. It says borrowing.

[Speaker 3] (3:16:07 - 3:16:12)
Well, we have to, okay, I don't know the tech. We have to borrow some money to have the match component.

[Speaker 5] (3:16:12 - 3:16:13)
Well, what's the match?

[Speaker 4] (3:16:13 - 3:16:16)
I know, but look, see, on all the other ones we've seen- Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

[Speaker 3] (3:16:16 - 3:16:17)
Oh, yeah. No, it hasn't applied yet.

[Speaker 4] (3:16:18 - 3:16:19)
Oh, so why don't you apply in then?

[Speaker 2] (3:16:21 - 3:16:35)
We haven't asked. We'll be back for permission next week, but we'll change the language to match, because essentially what we want, we want to allocate these funds. If we can get it matched, great.

If not, we're gonna put some stations in.

[Speaker 3] (3:16:36 - 3:16:39)
We're gonna use it- There's a lot of money for this to do the match.

[Speaker 2] (3:16:39 - 3:16:40)
A lot of money right now.

[Speaker 3] (3:16:40 - 3:16:41)
That's right, that's right. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (3:16:42 - 3:17:06)
$200,000 for paving the lower parking lot. This is a maintenance issue, but it relates to the new school. We need overflow parking for teachers and visitors and faculty.

$100,000 for green communities projects. This is generally a match. $225,000 for sprinklers.

[Speaker 4] (3:17:06 - 3:17:19)
Hold on, I just want to tell you that these, and I'm gonna tell you as a member of the finance committee, these things do not go very well when it's just projects, the word projects. They like to hear what are the projects.

[Speaker 3] (3:17:20 - 3:17:24)
Yeah, each year- And have more detail. I mean, there are four very specific projects.

[Speaker 20] (3:17:25 - 3:17:26)
We'll add the projects, yep.

[Speaker 3] (3:17:26 - 3:17:34)
And it's not just borrowing, right? Because this is- Borrowing and match. This is a match.

In fact, that might be completely paid for, so.

[Speaker 2] (3:17:35 - 3:17:38)
We've been very successful with these grants.

[Speaker 5] (3:17:38 - 3:17:51)
Why do you keep saying that? Yeah, so it's we're asking for funds up front, but chasing grants that would hopefully match the funds we are putting forward up front.

[Speaker 3] (3:17:51 - 3:18:18)
Green communities, where we are right now, as I understand, Sean, correct me, is that we're basically in a cycle of every year you basically can apply for about $100,000. So I'm not quite sure really why it says borrowing unless that's kind of like a timing thing, basically, that we need to know that we have the money and then we get reimbursed. I don't know the cashflow components of that, but ultimately, this is 100% grant money, ultimately.

[Speaker 4] (3:18:20 - 3:18:25)
So are you saying there's a possibility you have to spend it first and then it gets reimbursed? Is Amy not, did Amy leave?

[Speaker 7] (3:18:27 - 3:18:27)
I'm still here.

[Speaker 4] (3:18:28 - 3:18:28)
Okay.

[Speaker 7] (3:18:29 - 3:18:31)
It's just very glitchy, so I shut my camera off.

[Speaker 1] (3:18:31 - 3:18:37)
Yeah, James, it's very glitchy. So can we just, Sean, will you just please confirm and come back to us? Yep, sounds good.

[Speaker 7] (3:18:37 - 3:18:38)
Yes, please. Sure.

[Speaker 2] (3:18:40 - 3:18:48)
$25,000 for high school sprinkler. This is just a maintenance or status of good repair. $800,000 for library entrances.

[Speaker 1] (3:18:48 - 3:18:58)
I've never heard anything about this project. I'm sorry, has it ever come to this committee and have we ever had a conversation about this?

[Speaker 5] (3:18:59 - 3:19:00)
About the library entrance?

[Speaker 1] (3:19:00 - 3:19:05)
Yeah. Just, I don't know what it is. Yeah.

It's a million dollars.

[Speaker 4] (3:19:06 - 3:19:07)
$800,000.

[Speaker 1] (3:19:07 - 3:19:09)
The entrance is? The slide says $900,000.

[Speaker 4] (3:19:09 - 3:19:10)
I was gonna say the slide says $900,000.

[Speaker 1] (3:19:10 - 3:19:14)
You're right, it does say $800,000, but anyway, still, I'm just saying, I don't know what it is.

[Speaker 5] (3:19:14 - 3:19:22)
Major improvements to library front entry, exterior, interior, and exterior children's room space. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (3:19:22 - 3:19:32)
So those are projects that they've identified as part of their- Who's they? Library trustees and facilities director and the library director.

[Speaker 1] (3:19:32 - 3:19:35)
Right, I'm sorry, did I miss a meeting when they came to present a million dollars?

[Speaker 2] (3:19:35 - 3:19:41)
No, I'm happy to have more information presented to the board. I'll get more information next week.

[Speaker 1] (3:19:42 - 3:19:52)
I understood there's some repair and maintenance stuff. That I think, that's what I assumed this was gonna be. This dollar amount was gonna be the repair and maintenance stuff, not upgrades and changes of programming, et cetera.

[Speaker 4] (3:19:54 - 3:19:55)
I thought it was repair and maintenance.

[Speaker 1] (3:19:56 - 3:21:32)
Well, I think building a new entrance and outdoor space and stuff like that doesn't feel like repairs and upgrades, but whatever. I'm just saying that, again, I'm gonna use this as an example. Not anybody on this board, it's okay when it's their project.

We don't know what we're talking about. But when it's something that's not their project, it's not okay. So how about we learn what this is about then?

So at least one of the six of us in this room can actually describe the project. Yeah, I don't know if you know more, Sean. I mean, I know that there's been a lot of investigation, a lot of heard.

I'm not doubting that there's been homework. I'm trying to say, this is a change, improve, enlarge, not a repair and maintain line item. It may be both.

This board officially would have no way of knowing that. But are we making a policy discussion and saying, yep, now is the time to repair, but also to improve, expand, and do things when there's, again, all these other things. I mean, a few hours ago, the idea of spending money on a library by a library trustee was frowned upon.

So now, but for this library, for these, I just wanna know what they are. The public said, why are you talking about a library? I want to understand what it's about.

I just think it's a fair conversation. It's a million dollars. We don't spend million dollars like that.

So if you can welcome them to come back and explain. Why and how, that'd be great.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:32 - 3:21:38)
So my understanding of it is it's maintenance. That was my understanding of it, that it's maintenance.

[Speaker 3] (3:21:39 - 3:21:41)
Yeah, it's just, it's heavy duty.

[Speaker 4] (3:21:41 - 3:21:44)
I mean, it is. There's serious problems.

[Speaker 5] (3:21:44 - 3:21:50)
There are serious problems, but the addition would be the exterior children's room space.

[Speaker 1] (3:21:50 - 3:22:08)
Yeah, no, I'm not foreclosed to any. I'm really not. It's just, I'm using it as an example.

Understood. If we were to have put a million dollars of improvements for something, we would have to explain it in detail. I wanna just understand where it is.

I'm hearing it's both. I'm hearing it's everything.

[Speaker 2] (3:22:11 - 3:22:25)
All right, so next is $180,000 for middle school security upgrades. Next is $20,000 for roofing, for the four-staff field complex. We have a number of.

[Speaker 6] (3:22:25 - 3:22:33)
Stop, no, no, because just in the slide, it says 80 here, and it says 20 here. So I'm just, what is the accurate number, Sean?

[Speaker 2] (3:22:36 - 3:22:38)
I'm going with what's in the warrant.

[Speaker 5] (3:22:39 - 3:22:44)
It also, David, it always says two years. So is there, would there be an additional?

[Speaker 6] (3:22:44 - 3:22:48)
I believe that's the first year. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 1] (3:22:51 - 3:23:50)
So can I just, I wanna just take a moment here to be able to say, and again, I love the someday, when you all have free time, maybe you can address this, because I didn't succeed in addressing it during my free time, is there are a lot of non-profits and other organizations that make a very significant amount of money off of some of these buildings and pay very, very, very de minimis fees to the town of Swampscott. But the taxpayers paid for these buildings to be built. The taxpayers are paying to maintain these buildings, and I just ask you to look at what fees are being paid on some of these buildings, because they are virtually low-cost, no-cost to a lot of organizations that do a lot of great stuff.

But there's a lot of organizations that do a lot of great stuff that don't have low-cost, no-cost use of public facilities. So I just ask you to all look at it, because we're putting, I mean, the field itself, the snack shack, just to give you an example, cost, I believe, $700,000, believe it or not, to build, right, and so, or some very significant dollar amount. So let's be clear.

[Speaker 4] (3:23:50 - 3:23:52)
Are you talking about at the baseball field?

[Speaker 1] (3:23:52 - 3:23:54)
I am talking about at the baseball field.

[Speaker 4] (3:23:54 - 3:23:55)
There are also bathrooms in there?

[Speaker 1] (3:23:56 - 3:24:14)
$495,000, let's go with that number, I'll take that number, to my point, still valid. It's a half a million dollars that we spent on bathrooms and a snack shack, but again, I want them to make money, I want them to be able to do it. I just feel as though we have to, we're fiduciaries, and now we're gonna put another $100,000 into some of these things.

I just ask you to look at it, going forward. You should at least get three hot dogs.

[Speaker 5] (3:24:16 - 3:24:17)
Love a hot dog.

[Speaker 1] (3:24:17 - 3:24:18)
Sorry, a lot of hot dogs.

[Speaker 5] (3:24:18 - 3:24:20)
That looks, I want one right now.

[Speaker 2] (3:24:22 - 3:24:46)
Noted, Peter, I will follow up and get a sense of those that are benefiting from that. $70,000 for school network upgrades. $50,000 for town hall basement renovations, this allows us to move forward and really start to land.

[Speaker 1] (3:24:46 - 3:24:50)
Design element. It is. Can we actually make clear that it's design?

[Speaker 4] (3:24:51 - 3:24:58)
So this is just for design, and how much money is booked out for the future? We're gonna have the same conversation we had last year.

[Speaker 5] (3:24:59 - 3:25:03)
The projected cost is $350,000 on the slide, the duration is three years.

[Speaker 3] (3:25:06 - 3:25:09)
That's correct. This didn't make it into capital last year? No.

[Speaker 4] (3:25:09 - 3:25:13)
This hasn't made it for the last three years, I think.

[Speaker 3] (3:25:14 - 3:25:16)
And if it didn't make it for another 100 years, that would be pretty good, right?

[Speaker 2] (3:25:17 - 3:25:24)
Well, you've got folks that are looking for meeting spaces. The biggest space you have in the town hall, you're not replacing the town hall, so.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:26 - 3:25:38)
Okay, we gotta spend money sometimes to understand what our space needs truly are and what the answers are. This is $50,000 to invest in a town hall. I mean, we've sat for four hours sitting in the third floor of town halls in the most uncomfortable.

[Speaker 5] (3:25:38 - 3:25:39)
Chairs.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:39 - 3:25:44)
Virtual, you know, whatever, we all know this. There are no places for collaboration and involvement.

[Speaker 2] (3:25:44 - 3:25:48)
If you're looking at high ceilings, if you haven't been to the basement, this is space that you could utilize.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:49 - 3:26:03)
And can you get daylight into it? Yeah, and this is a, as long as it's designed to be able to say, hey, what are our real programmatic needs and what are the opportunities? That's an insurance policy to make sure we're not just gonna spend $350,000 on stuff we don't need.

Agreed. So I think it's well spent.

[Speaker 4] (3:26:03 - 3:26:07)
I think we're gonna be spending $50,000 and we don't need to be spending $50,000.

[Speaker 2] (3:26:07 - 3:26:18)
But we'll be able to come back and, look, if we can't come back after the $50,000 and really win justification, then that will tell everybody that we're just not ready to move forward.

[Speaker 4] (3:26:18 - 3:26:30)
Right, I just think we have other priorities in town. I don't think we're short on space as much as you're saying. I think we have space.

I think we have the library. I mean, we just play over last year's thing. I think this is a waste.

[Speaker 6] (3:26:32 - 3:26:42)
Sean, do you have, is there a space in Town Hall right now that can, where staff can meet? Everyone in Town Hall, can you? I'm sure.

[Speaker 2] (3:26:42 - 3:26:47)
You know, we had a tornado warning. We all had to go into the basement and it was just, it was, you know.

[Speaker 1] (3:26:47 - 3:26:48)
Well, that's okay.

[Speaker 2] (3:26:48 - 3:26:48)
That's not the question.

[Speaker 1] (3:26:49 - 3:26:58)
That's not the question. But the point is, I mean, look, I'm just saying we, this week, we, I mean, we had a meeting before last week's meeting and we all went to your office.

[Speaker 4] (3:26:58 - 3:26:59)
Who had a meeting before last week's meeting?

[Speaker 1] (3:26:59 - 3:27:11)
Katie and I had a meeting with Sean last week and we all sat with staff and Sean's, but I'm just saying, it's not, there is nothing about that that is, what do committees do when they come in town? I'm just, look, it's money to plan the future.

[Speaker 4] (3:27:11 - 3:27:35)
It's, there's no argument there. I just think there's a lot of space in the capital plan that could be used in a better way. I think we have a lot of needs.

The library itself, I'm gonna guess that they could probably use $2 million to fix up that library. The middle school, we have all these needs. I just don't think this is a priority.

[Speaker 1] (3:27:35 - 3:27:39)
No, I understand, but that, let's acknowledge that's subjective, right?

[Speaker 4] (3:27:39 - 3:27:39)
Yes. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (3:27:39 - 3:27:46)
But that's the same thing a few minutes ago, just saying let's just make the 320,000 into just seawall repairs. That's a priority, you're putting it there. I get that.

[Speaker 4] (3:27:46 - 3:27:47)
Yes, resilient, yep.

[Speaker 1] (3:27:47 - 3:27:51)
But that's not resiliency, that's seawall repairs. That's just fixing what we have.

[Speaker 4] (3:27:51 - 3:27:52)
Coastal resiliency.

[Speaker 1] (3:27:52 - 3:28:04)
So, but all I'm saying is that's the subjective part of this and I hear you, but at some point, you know, anyways, anybody else wanna take it out? I'm fine with it. Doug said he's fine with it.

[Speaker 3] (3:28:05 - 3:28:52)
I think actually maybe slight compromise is that define the need, right? Is the need for collaboration space? If that's what, are we just trying to rehab the basement?

Is that the goal? The goal is to have a certain amount of space for certain types of meetings, right? So in the context of this, then we should be taking into consideration, like is this the best place to do that, right?

And it seems like you have an inclination that it is. But part of this assessment should show that the library doesn't work for some reason and this doesn't work for some reason and this is the best thing because it's here where people, whatever it is, right? So that should be part of this.

We've got, I don't see why it has to be $50,000, but you know, whatever, you know, so.

[Speaker 2] (3:28:52 - 3:29:04)
Allows us to get architects and engineers and go in there. You've already invested some cost into HVAC, into ADA access with an elevator. You've already, you're already halfway there.

[Speaker 3] (3:29:04 - 3:29:09)
Those are some costs, right? That's right. So don't let that suck you down a vacuum just because, so anyway.

[Speaker 2] (3:29:09 - 3:29:21)
Understood. But you know, we do have, there are so many times that we have people standing in the hallways trying to get into meeting space that they just can't get into. And to me, this is about making government that much more effective.

[Speaker 3] (3:29:21 - 3:29:23)
Okay, define that need as far as I'm concerned.

[Speaker 2] (3:29:23 - 3:30:01)
All right, 97,800 for server and network upgrades, device upgrades for IT. We've got 68,000 for high school auditorium upgrades. 27,600 for control room technology upgrades for the police department.

I'm sorry. Yeah, 130,000 for cruiser and laptop replacements for the police department. 31,000 for speed board installation and replacement.

[Speaker 1] (3:30:02 - 3:31:03)
Can we stop here? Okay. So I wanna just talk about cruisers.

Me too. So in the past year, I've seen, first of all, we passed a mandate of sorts to go electric and go hybrid. But what I've seen is the exact opposite.

I believe we now own a very big, biggest I've ever seen SUV, which I don't recall town warrant article asking for an SUV. That's not a cruiser. That's something different.

And so we have a nice big SUV now. We have a pickup truck, which that one actually, I believe it actually did say pickup truck. It did.

And that one did. But I just, I want to make sure the controls are in place. The departments don't buy their vehicles.

The departments can put forth what they want, but the financial team and the town administrator are the ones that are signing off on these warrants to purchase these things. And so I guess my first question is, can you come back to us and let us know how these purchases are happening in the police department? Because the SUV in particular seems materially inconsistent.

[Speaker 2] (3:31:03 - 3:31:23)
These were requisitioned without my authorization. I'm just going to be candid. And frankly, I signed off on it after it was ordered and I've made it clear that that will not happen again.

So I've made it clear to all department heads that we will purchase nothing but electric vehicles. I don't want any exceptions.

[Speaker 1] (3:31:23 - 3:32:43)
Whatever we need to do to be safe and whatnot. But the point being, I just want to make sure the controls are in place. Like policy is a different conversation altogether for me.

I'm going to use, and that one, there's a policy there. I'm going to go back to the grant conversation. We now have a sand buggy, thanks to the state of Massachusetts.

And when that thing needs to be repaired, who's paying for it? Not the state of Massachusetts. When that thing breaks, or when that goes down and they say, oh, well, we've always had one, we need another one.

If the state of Massachusetts isn't there funding it, who's funding it? And so I just, again, I'm using it as examples. There are other departments.

I'm not picking at any one department at all, but if that was done and it was a surprise to you that we got a dune buggy, right? And so I'm just, and I'm not judging you on it. I'm just saying that it has to be centralized and the department heads need to be accountable to that because we literally have a huge SUV that we just purchased.

And I don't even know, no one has once said that we needed a bigger SUV. I have no idea. It's used by the Harbormaster.

No, the pickup truck's used by the Harbormaster. That's exactly why we got the pickup truck. SUV, we've never once heard.

I mean, are we moving bigger things these days that we needed it? I just, it feels wrong. And I just ask that we, I want to understand what cruisers mean here.

[Speaker 4] (3:32:43 - 3:32:46)
But we can't buy something without signing off on it.

[Speaker 1] (3:32:46 - 3:33:02)
No, no, I understand. There seems to have been a problem there, but it also seems as though it's probably a historic issue as well, like with departments. But I'm with you on that.

You've got to fix that problem. I'm just saying, what are cruisers this year? I would like to know that.

This says cruisers, and I don't have the faith. I don't know what it is.

[Speaker 2] (3:33:02 - 3:33:12)
For next Wednesday, I'll have a report on the fleet and we'll talk a little bit about mileage and whether or not we need to.

[Speaker 1] (3:33:13 - 3:33:40)
Yeah, I don't doubt, I don't doubt. Look, we've had some really good presentations from the prior chief about hours, et cetera, et cetera, on vehicles and the need to constantly do that. And for insurance purposes, after a certain number of hours, I get that.

I'm not at all questioning the need to continue the revolving acquisition of these things. I'm saying, what are we actually acquiring and does that meet policy? And if it doesn't, why doesn't it meet policy?

Because. Because that's what the policy says. That's what the policy says.

[Speaker 2] (3:33:40 - 3:34:20)
We're a town of three square miles. We can support electric vehicles. Yeah, that's all I'm asking.

All right, on to recreation. $111,900 for a mobile LED trailer. This is a mobile movie screen.

Schools, $100,000 for interactive whiteboards. Senior center, electric van for medical rides. This is a non-CVL van, so we won't need a CVL driver.

$100,000 for a community life center, rec center feasibility study.

[Speaker 3] (3:34:21 - 3:35:03)
Maybe we should pause there. You kind of hit a couple different areas there, but maybe pause there before we get to the sewer, the fun in the sewer. So, I want to give a major, major shout out, yes, on the electric van.

Especially with that type of, that much in grant versus what we'd be putting up for serving our seniors. The mobile LED trailer, while I love watching movies outside, interested to understand kind of where that need has come from a little bit, and what we think $56,000 isn't nothing.

[Speaker 5] (3:35:05 - 3:35:08)
Last year, multiple movie nights had to be canceled due to wind.

[Speaker 3] (3:35:08 - 3:35:09)
Yep.

[Speaker 5] (3:35:09 - 3:35:58)
Because the inflatable LED, the inflatable balloon, basically, could not be secured to the ground. And so, a lot of the movie nights, last year, the year prior, there were a handful of nights. So, this is a way for them to facilitate that regularly and not have to cancel due to those issues, which is difficult since they're having the Munlin Scout, which is facing the ocean, which often has the breeze.

Also, I believe the trailer has the opportunity to be rented out for events in town, so they could make back some of those funds. We've already discussed what that might look like and how they might be able to facilitate, the rec department would be able to facilitate that. So, they could basically be able to pay it back if that was a condition.

[Speaker 6] (3:36:00 - 3:36:00)
I love it.

[Speaker 4] (3:36:00 - 3:36:12)
They've really thought about it. You know, the other thing is, you know, when we're looking at this whole budget and you're saying where money's going, this is $60,000 that's going into recreation. And I think this is a great investment.

[Speaker 6] (3:36:13 - 3:36:46)
I do too. And this has been something that Danielle and the rec department has been looking at for a while. And you know, it was really awesome when we got together and we did have that one movie night last year.

You know, there were probably 400, 500 residents just enjoying an awesome night out. One of six, as the five were canceled, but it was very well attended. And there are so many, there are so many uses for this.

It builds community.

[Speaker 5] (3:36:47 - 3:37:08)
Also, Doug, this particular screen, the resolution is better so that you can start the movie earlier because a lot of the issue with the old screen was that you had to wait for it to get so dark so that you could actually see the movie. But the resolution on this screen will be such that you could actually start things earlier so you could have younger kids joining in with families and families can see it later.

[Speaker 3] (3:37:08 - 3:37:21)
It'd be great for karaoke contests, all sorts of, I mean. I'm good, I'm good, are you sure? I am, I mean, it's a little bit more expensive than my TV at home, so I just wanted to make sure I was understanding what $100,000 TV costs.

[Speaker 1] (3:37:22 - 3:37:23)
Fair enough.

[Speaker 5] (3:37:23 - 3:37:23)
Now envision.

[Speaker 1] (3:37:24 - 3:37:28)
The cruisers are more expensive than your car too. Sure they are, that's for the record.

[Speaker 5] (3:37:28 - 3:37:35)
Envision the trailer on the Fisherman's Beach parking lot and folks sitting in tubes watching Jaws.

[Speaker 1] (3:37:35 - 3:37:36)
That's awesome.

[Speaker 20] (3:37:36 - 3:37:37)
Oh my God.

[Speaker 1] (3:37:37 - 3:37:42)
It's perfect, all right, let's keep going. All right, so. Yeah, all right.

I think we're so close to being done. All right.

[Speaker 2] (3:37:43 - 3:37:47)
Next is, it's the $2.5 million in state.

[Speaker 4] (3:37:47 - 3:37:54)
Wait a minute, hold on a minute. We, $100,000 community life center, feasibility study.

[Speaker 1] (3:37:54 - 3:38:01)
Oh my God, we have so many other places that have so many space needs. We have the middle school, we have a whole bunch of things. So.

I'm making the argument for you, I'm with you on this one.

[Speaker 5] (3:38:03 - 3:38:04)
What are you talking about?

[Speaker 2] (3:38:04 - 3:38:57)
Yeah, we have a senior center that frankly is outgrowing its space. You know, we have needs for broader community programs and recreational programs. This is really a critical need for the town.

And you know, we have opportunities to really emulate other communities that have very similar community centers. This is similar to, frankly, an LED movie screen. It builds community.

It helps connect people and you build spaces that connect intergenerational, you know, citizens. It will absolutely be medicine for folks that suffer from isolation, depression, and disconnect.

[Speaker 4] (3:38:57 - 3:39:06)
This is, hold on, this is $100,000 for a feasibility study for a community life center, to build a community life center.

[Speaker 2] (3:39:06 - 3:39:08)
Space needs, kind of get a sense of where we are.

[Speaker 4] (3:39:08 - 3:39:10)
Does anybody have any idea where we're gonna build that?

[Speaker 2] (3:39:11 - 3:39:12)
That's what this will tell you.

[Speaker 4] (3:39:12 - 3:39:16)
Yeah, this will, we'll have three. Do we really need to pay someone $100,000 to tell us where did we.

[Speaker 20] (3:39:16 - 3:39:18)
How big is it, where are you putting it?

[Speaker 2] (3:39:18 - 3:39:40)
You'll get a report that explains exactly what the pros and cons are and the cost benefit. And this report will help you be better informed about what you don't know enough about. And if at that point you decide that you just don't need something like this, then you can feel comfortable.

[Speaker 4] (3:39:41 - 3:39:44)
Up to $150 of reports that I don't really feel.

[Speaker 5] (3:39:44 - 3:41:20)
I think two things. One, there are many, there has been multiple reports that I have read about the inadvertent detrimental effects of senior centers because senior centers actually remove seniors from the community, isolate them, put them together, and then have it feel like not as welcoming a place for the rest of the community to join in seniors and activities. So one of the ideas is that since the senior center is bursting at the seams, to be able to integrate it into an all-ages center or a life center, a place where multi-generations are learning from one another, rather than it being this is the spot where seniors stay, this is the spot where other community members go, and they're not interacting as much as they could be or should be.

Secondly, I'd like to say, we roll into town and we say, guess what? Hawthorne, not a library, a community center. Without one stitch of information or knowledge about a need, about a space size, about what it can be, what it should be, how it compares to other communities of our size, we have no luck ever having it.

So to me, it's worth it to save, to spend the $100,000. This is what we will use to convince or not that it's necessary, where it will sit, how big it needs to be, how it's meant to be laid out. The most successful community centers in the Commonwealth, what have they done?

[Speaker 3] (3:41:23 - 3:41:53)
I totally agree that we need to do this. I was a little bit shocked in the beginning to hear that it actually costs $100,000 to do this, but I'm reassured by people. I think, Katie, you've had, I don't wanna quote you, I think you've maybe had interaction, or Heidi, or other people that are involved in Swanscuff for all ages, that this is the going rate, unfortunately, for doing these studies.

So this is not a number really out of the air at all. This is actually what it costs. Am I getting that correct?

[Speaker 2] (3:41:53 - 3:42:07)
You are, and it will be money well spent. It'll help you make informed decisions about a project that, frankly, I believe will save lives and enhance the community immensely.

[Speaker 1] (3:42:08 - 3:43:34)
So if the, I just kinda wanna go back to numbers, and stats matter, right? If we spent $5 million a year for the next 10 years in capital, and we spend the same $150,000 every year on planning, that's 3%, and for us to spend 3% planning and understanding what our needs are, I'm telling you, you will never regret that when it's for a project, because you are either going to save it, because you're not gonna build something you don't need, you're gonna talk yourself out of something you don't need, or you're gonna build something much more efficiently.

If we were to do it over again today, would we build the police station to be the exact same? If we were to do it over again today, would we have built the senior center to be the same size if we had studied that? Now, if we go back and look at what we did in 2007, and we studied it, and the senior center was a wonderful thing to bring together, but it was also a compromise, how many years of study did we do to figure out what that size is, to only be 15 years later, and to be outsized, right?

What if 15 years ago we had done the homework on that, more so, and I'm not being critical of anyone, it is what it is, but 15 years ago, and they said, no, you gotta really look at your trends, and where you're going here, you guys should have built bigger, and we said, okay, we can't build bigger because we don't have money now, but we hear you, but I don't even think that it was, I'm using an example, I hear you, but this is, to me, some of the best money that we're ever gonna spend, it's 3% of our capital budget. You get the largest emerging senior population out of any community in Essex County. Again, it's planning, I don't even care the topic, it's planning.

[Speaker 5] (3:43:34 - 3:43:41)
This is not just a senior center, it's not to replace a senior center, this will be available to every community member, and I mean.

[Speaker 1] (3:43:41 - 3:43:51)
I love it. And I'm glad that you've navigated from the second you've got it on this board, so I'm grateful to you for that. I think someone would like to make a point of information.

[Speaker 3] (3:43:51 - 3:44:07)
It's up to you. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, Mary, please.

This would be public comment, basically, I guess.

[Speaker 4] (3:44:08 - 3:44:10)
Point of information? Okay, just information.

[Speaker 8] (3:44:10 - 3:48:29)
If you can offer some history, it might be helpful. I was on the school committee from 2001 to 2027. 2000, oh, god, 2007.

I was also on the building committee for this high school for seven years, five years, or whatever it was, the whole thing. So I went from pre-planning of getting the school also on the committee to the campaign to get the school, which is why I ran for the school committee, too, all the way to when this building opened. The purpose of the reason why this building is situated the way it is and was built was that we could close off the other side, the classroom end of the building, and make this part of the building the community part.

With the art rooms, the TV center, the gym, we got extra money through an override for a, make the field house, the dance center, the dance, you know, the dance center. The media center was supposed to be a cafe, you know, open cafe. Having the atrium the way it was was supposed to be open and welcome to have events.

Same thing with the cafeteria. And the reason we got the senior center was to do intergenerational stuff, okay? How it's played out is institutional, right?

And part of it is, it's education and seniors. And part of that, there's been some intergenerational programming that's happened, which I've followed and really applauded. There was a tap dancing group between the senior centers.

There's been some intergenerational history stuff. But I don't think that there's been an effort only because this is just how institutions work, of really actively and proactively getting things. I think that the school department, the town has sort of relegated, this is my opinion, has relegated, has, not relegated, that's not the right word, has given sort of control of this building to the school.

When, in fact, there's a lot more things here that could be happening all the time. This building was intended, when we built this building, and the building committee was building the way it did, was to say, this should be open to 10 o'clock, whatever it is at night. With the other piece, the other thing that we also had built in was the gym, the weight room.

The weight room was supposed to be open from early in the morning for the community to have them come in, okay? The track upstairs was supposed to be open from early in the morning so people can, so my worry here, and I fully agree that in terms of projecting out, in terms of how many seniors we would have, I personally think the senior center needs to be bumped out. I think that absolutely needs to be, so two things, I think, have to happen.

One is to get out of this stove piping, get the schools and the town side creating activities that are intergenerational, purposely with the rec department and all of that coordination, and really think about how can you bump it out? How can you make that physical space bigger without having to create a whole other building? We have a building here.

We have a middle school building that's in need of tremendous change. So be careful, you know, just be careful in terms of underutilizing what we already have.

[Speaker 3] (3:48:29 - 3:48:40)
So Mary, would it be fair to say, like, if we're gonna engage in this design process, you know, don't just think about you have to start another building. Correct. Think about, like, the assets we do have and that should be taken under consideration.

[Speaker 8] (3:48:40 - 3:48:41)
A needs assessment.

[Speaker 1] (3:48:41 - 3:48:49)
This isn't a design process, to be clear. This is a feasibility study. Do it, do it.

What are the needs of the community? How can the community already answer those needs and what do you need?

[Speaker 8] (3:48:49 - 3:49:24)
But do it, do it. The very first thing about community development, community organizing, is do a needs assessment. What is it that we need?

And this is, I go back to a larger planning. So that's, I just wanted to give you that background because not to use this building in a way that it can shut down. We don't have to use, this whole side of the building gets shut down at night.

Boom. This whole, the rest of it can be doing all kinds of stuff. So keep that in mind.

[Speaker 3] (3:49:24 - 3:49:25)
Thank you, Mary. Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (3:49:25 - 3:49:45)
I just would like to just make a comment to Mr. Schill's comment, which is that I know off the top of my head, even educationally adjacent organizations have difficulty using school buildings.

[Speaker 2] (3:49:47 - 3:49:47)
Different world today.

[Speaker 5] (3:49:48 - 3:50:19)
It's a PTO and it has to do with staffing janitors and having people in the building and security issues. And it is extremely difficult for even educationally adjacent organizations to use it. And it would be fantastic if we could facilitate a conversation parallel to this conversation, which alleviates some of those hurdles.

Because for sure, I know a lot of those organizations would love to be utilizing school buildings more.

[Speaker 2] (3:50:20 - 3:51:01)
All right. The next project is $202.5 million in eight ARPA funds. The board allocated some of those funds earlier this year.

I am recommending that we supplement some of those dollars by 1.8 million for phase two of the King's Beach work and 1.7 for Fisherman's Beach. Those aren't in here, but I've discussed those earlier tonight in my TA report. Next is $55,000 for election equipment.

And last is $500,000 for water main replacements.

[Speaker 1] (3:51:03 - 3:51:11)
And when we say borrowing here, I just want to make sure that we don't specify we have borrowing G. What does borrowing G mean?

[Speaker 2] (3:51:12 - 3:51:14)
Yeah, it's general fund.

[Speaker 1] (3:51:14 - 3:51:15)
Why is that?

[Speaker 14] (3:51:15 - 3:51:16)
Why would that be general?

[Speaker 1] (3:51:16 - 3:51:28)
That's my question. My question is, can you please just update this to reflect actually who's doing the borrowing? Because I assume these are being paid out of enterprise funds, correct?

Yeah, it should be. Right, the water main.

[Speaker 10] (3:51:28 - 3:51:28)
For water?

[Speaker 1] (3:51:29 - 3:51:40)
I mean, I would assume the water enterprise fund is paying the debt service on this borrowing, but our book doesn't say that. It says general fund. I'll make sure that we double check that.

[Speaker 4] (3:51:40 - 3:51:44)
Why is there 55,000? Didn't we just get new election equipment?

[Speaker 2] (3:51:45 - 3:51:47)
We did. This is just part of ongoing.

[Speaker 4] (3:51:50 - 3:51:52)
Didn't we just, but I think we just spent 60,000.

[Speaker 1] (3:51:53 - 3:51:59)
We did. I can get some. He's replacing voting booths, ballot bags, and poll pads.

[Speaker 5] (3:51:59 - 3:52:00)
So not a machine.

[Speaker 1] (3:52:00 - 3:52:01)
He's not replacing machines.

[Speaker 5] (3:52:02 - 3:52:02)
We bought machines.

[Speaker 1] (3:52:02 - 3:52:04)
We got the machines next, last year.

[Speaker 4] (3:52:10 - 3:52:12)
55,000 for voting booths.

[Speaker 1] (3:52:14 - 3:52:20)
It's democracy. Can we move on to just skip over the zoning stuff tonight?

[Speaker 2] (3:52:20 - 3:52:20)
Sure.

[Speaker 1] (3:52:21 - 3:52:47)
And just go, and my article 21, which is the leaf blower, is still empty. My article 22, which is the fingerprinting, is still empty. I mean, my article 23 we've already talked about.

Article 24 we've talked about and I think was non-controversial. But I'm just, 21 and 22, can we just agree to take these out? Or what are we doing here?

Because last week these were gonna be filled and they're not filled now. And I just assume take, I mean.

[Speaker 2] (3:52:49 - 3:52:53)
If you can give me another week, I'll fill this in. Sorry.

[Speaker 3] (3:52:54 - 3:52:56)
We've got the information I just, yeah.

[Speaker 4] (3:52:57 - 3:52:58)
Wait, which ones did you talk about? 21 and 22.

[Speaker 1] (3:52:58 - 3:52:59)
21 and 22.

[Speaker 3] (3:52:59 - 3:53:01)
We'll have, did this begin with 21?

[Speaker 1] (3:53:01 - 3:53:06)
No, no, no. I didn't suggest it. I think we were just told that we were gonna have the language this week and we don't.

[Speaker 3] (3:53:06 - 3:53:07)
I think it's in my article 21.

[Speaker 1] (3:53:07 - 3:53:11)
No, no, no, no, no, no. There's no my articles in this whole warrant.

[Speaker 4] (3:53:12 - 3:53:20)
So we'll have the 21 next week? Yeah, we'll have it on, we'll have it on the 17th. We'll have that language circulated.

[Speaker 1] (3:53:20 - 3:53:22)
No, 22 next week as well, he's asked for it.

[Speaker 2] (3:53:22 - 3:53:25)
Sean? We'll update this tomorrow. Okay, thanks.

[Speaker 1] (3:53:27 - 3:53:34)
23 we agreed to remove already? Yep. 24 is just that easement for accepting for public parking, which I think we've talked about previously.

[Speaker 4] (3:53:35 - 3:53:37)
And you're saying that this is already in the zoning?

[Speaker 1] (3:53:38 - 3:53:59)
Yes, their site plan includes them dedicating a certain number of parking spaces on, help me out with the name of the street, because I have now Pitman, thank you, on Pitman Road, that once they're done constructing, those on-street parking spaces will be public parking spaces, not private parking spaces. So we have to get an easement from them and accept the easement to allow it to be public parking.

[Speaker 4] (3:54:00 - 3:54:02)
And does that change their assessment?

[Speaker 1] (3:54:03 - 3:54:16)
Oh, I can't, I have no idea about that. We'll ask our elected board of assessors that question. But I don't know the answer, I really don't know the answer to that, but I do know that that's how the site plan reads, and that's how their permit's read, that they have to do this.

[Speaker 2] (3:54:19 - 3:54:22)
We'll see what the market says about their assessments. All right.

[Speaker 4] (3:54:22 - 3:54:27)
I'm totally confident that our elected officials will do a great job.

[Speaker 1] (3:54:27 - 3:54:37)
So, article 25, land and water conservation grant, we talked about this last time. Can you just help me, remind me what's grant and what's not?

[Speaker 2] (3:54:40 - 3:54:40)
Yes.

[Speaker 5] (3:54:42 - 3:54:47)
Project will be partially funded by the grant up to 50%. That requires a grant.

[Speaker 7] (3:54:47 - 3:54:51)
Yeah, so this is in your capital plan as well, but.

[Speaker 1] (3:54:52 - 3:54:54)
So that's the 150 in our capital plan?

[Speaker 7] (3:54:55 - 3:55:03)
Yes. So it's up to 50% reimbursable, up to $112,000 for the grant.

[Speaker 1] (3:55:04 - 3:55:19)
So what our book says is $150,000, $30,000 borrowing $120,000 grant. So I'll, and now this warrant article asks for more, or what's our, sorry, what's this article asking for? Yeah, it says 225.

[Speaker 2] (3:55:19 - 3:55:23)
Yeah, 225 versus 150, right?

[Speaker 1] (3:55:23 - 3:55:44)
I'm just trying to, so article 25 now appropriates, is like different languages if it's a different project. So I guess, Amy, why is it in our capital budget article and a separate article here, if they're the same amounts of money? They're not.

But let's assume they are. So you're saying in addition to the capital article, you wanted to then appropriate outside of the capital?

[Speaker 7] (3:55:45 - 3:55:58)
This is the language that the grant needs to accept it and to appropriate it. And at least on my end, it was in the capital plan. It does not link in your warrant.

It is part of that article.

[Speaker 1] (3:55:58 - 3:56:04)
All right, so if you could just reconcile that capital article and this, and next week just be able to explain us.

[Speaker 5] (3:56:05 - 3:56:08)
That's not number two in our capital?

[Speaker 3] (3:56:08 - 3:56:10)
That's 150 versus the $250,000.

[Speaker 1] (3:56:10 - 3:56:13)
Yeah, but it's, I think I'll just put it in two places, which is strange.

[Speaker 7] (3:56:13 - 3:56:23)
Yes, but Amy's saying it's not in two places. The number. If it's two places on my side, it is not two places on your side.

It is two places on her.

[Speaker 1] (3:56:23 - 3:56:25)
No, the number's not correct in two places.

[Speaker 7] (3:56:26 - 3:56:27)
Just, yeah, let's look at it.

[Speaker 5] (3:56:28 - 3:56:30)
Not at 2.389, and we have one.

[Speaker 2] (3:56:30 - 3:56:34)
All right, we'll reconcile the capital plan with that article. Thanks.

[Speaker 6] (3:56:36 - 3:56:41)
And 26, we don't have to say anything about the citizen petition article?

[Speaker 3] (3:56:41 - 3:56:59)
No. All right. For next week, Sean, for article 20, we should make sure that Pete or someone else is here to make sure, I know we approved the maps before, but I think we should be taking that seriously.

[Speaker 6] (3:57:05 - 3:57:09)
Okay, consent agenda. You also have two for.

[Speaker 4] (3:57:09 - 3:57:10)
There's nothing in here.

[Speaker 3] (3:57:11 - 3:57:45)
Oh, no minutes, okay. All right, all right, well. I'm sorry, but we don't have to do it now, but for article 15, the beginning of article 15, we skipped over that.

These are these two other capital projects that you want to kind of get going immediately. I'm sorry, what are those? I'm sorry, can you just say them out loud?

DPW, pedestrian safety traffic improvements for an additional 300,000, and the water main for sprinkler system, 75,000. You have this separate. I know there's a discussion at FinCom about this, but this was about.

[Speaker 7] (3:57:45 - 3:57:45)
Yeah, so.

[Speaker 3] (3:57:46 - 3:57:46)
Go ahead, Amy.

[Speaker 7] (3:57:46 - 3:58:15)
So pedestrian safety is for pedestrian safety improvements that are needed around the new school. So Max and Gina were hoping to get that kicked off over the summer before the new school opens. Likewise, the water main for the sprinkler system was for the sprinkler system that was already installed and approved at the firehouse.

It does need a dedicated water main, and Max was hoping to do the work over the summer before the grounds got too cold.

[Speaker 3] (3:58:15 - 3:58:28)
Right, and additionally, number one is because the bids came in higher than what we had allocated in the capital to begin with, right, so this is kind of supplemental. That's the. I don't have any question or concern about it.

[Speaker 4] (3:58:28 - 3:58:42)
I have a question on the pedestrian safety. It just seems like there's, why, how come all this pedestrian work wasn't in the school budget, like, wasn't in the school budget? And.

[Speaker 3] (3:58:43 - 3:58:51)
I think part of it was, right? The first 1.1 was in the, I don't know if it was in the school budget or was known about and was in the capital.

[Speaker 2] (3:58:51 - 3:58:59)
It was just a lot of work deferred. There's just a lot of work if we're gonna create a safe route to school and we're gonna really.

[Speaker 1] (3:58:59 - 3:59:05)
Well, I think the pricing also came back ridiculously high. Right, it did. Max went out and bid it, and it's come back extremely.

[Speaker 2] (3:59:05 - 3:59:06)
But Max actually.

[Speaker 1] (3:59:06 - 3:59:11)
So Max is trying to engineer around it and trying to see what we can do in-house, but he's not.

[Speaker 2] (3:59:11 - 3:59:25)
But he feels good about the revised scope, but certainly, we've got lots of work that we could do, and these are limited dollars in terms of all of the pedestrian safety investments.

[Speaker 3] (3:59:25 - 3:59:32)
Right, because we got what's in the capital plan this year, this additive around the school, and then you're proposing more in ARPA, right?

[Speaker 2] (3:59:33 - 3:59:40)
And believe me, there's millions more. So this is a drop in a bucket.

[Speaker 5] (3:59:41 - 4:00:07)
And I think to be fair, yes, the school's the catalyst for the speed for which this has to be accomplished, but it still had to be accomplished. So I agree that they should have budgeted for some of these funds, but I don't think it's all on the school to make some of these. Yes, it's really.

I think it's all on the new school. Okay, well, we differ then.

[Speaker 4] (4:00:07 - 4:00:11)
Just wondering if, is this even enough? I mean, it just seems like we keep getting.

[Speaker 5] (4:00:11 - 4:00:17)
I think the answer is it's never enough, because there's so much that has to be done related to pedestrian safety in our town.

[Speaker 2] (4:00:18 - 4:00:21)
We incrementally address it every year.

[Speaker 6] (4:00:21 - 4:00:26)
Oh, and there was also a recommendation for ARPA to add an additional half a million dollars.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:26 - 4:00:34)
No, I understand, but that, again, we can't say, we can't talk about that. The board hasn't acted on that. No, I understand.

We can't assume that money's being spent there. Understood, yep.

[Speaker 3] (4:00:34 - 4:00:39)
And that is not necessarily for around the new school. All this other stuff is around the new school, that.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:40 - 4:00:43)
Yeah. Is that the last board time? What?

Nothing.

[Speaker 20] (4:00:44 - 4:00:44)
I have something.

[Speaker 5] (4:00:45 - 4:00:47)
I have something, and it's really nice.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:47 - 4:00:47)
Go ahead.

[Speaker 5] (4:00:48 - 4:00:58)
The rec department welcomed a new member to its crew today. I can say it because I saw it on Facebook that Jackie Carmalingo had her baby, a baby boy.

[Speaker 20] (4:00:58 - 4:00:59)
Yay!

[Speaker 5] (4:00:59 - 4:01:01)
Nine pounds and three ounces.

[Speaker 1] (4:01:01 - 4:01:02)
Very healthy young man. Beautiful.

[Speaker 4] (4:01:02 - 4:01:03)
Wow.

[Speaker 5] (4:01:03 - 4:01:06)
Baby boy, so congratulations to Jackie and her family.

[Speaker 4] (4:01:07 - 4:01:07)
That's terrific.

[Speaker 1] (4:01:08 - 4:01:08)
Congratulations, Jackie.

[Speaker 5] (4:01:10 - 4:01:13)
She had it today? She did, yeah. What's today's date?

[Speaker 6] (4:01:13 - 4:01:14)
4-10.

[Speaker 5] (4:01:15 - 4:01:19)
Nice. That's it. How can you top that?

[Speaker 20] (4:01:19 - 4:01:20)
Or another.

[Speaker 5] (4:01:20 - 4:01:21)
You can't top that.

[Speaker 20] (4:01:21 - 4:01:23)
Hour and 25 minutes, it's 4-10.

[Speaker 5] (4:01:23 - 4:01:24)
Motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 6] (4:01:27 - 4:01:27)
Sure, go ahead.

[Speaker 12] (4:01:31 - 4:02:36)
The past couple of months, I've been attending either directly or online about the opera function and about Fisherman's Beach, and it seems to me that this can has been kicked down the road many times, and I think if you're gonna put an agenda up, plan on covering it. It seems like it's always at the end of the meeting, and it never gets covered. You kind of coast along, you mention it's sidelined about the opera funds and the beach, but it never really gets covered.

It's not fair to the town. It's an insult. I'd appreciate it if you're gonna put it on the agenda to cover it.

Because really, I've been here. I'm not wasting my time, not that I enjoy coming here, but it's interesting how things go, but I think really, people, our town, people wanna know what's happening with this. And we're gonna wait another month or two months, is it gonna keep kicking down the road, or are we gonna really deal with this?

Please, let's put it on the agenda, let's cover it.

[Speaker 6] (4:02:36 - 4:02:47)
Well, we did acknowledge that we are allocating $1.7 million today to address Fisherman's Beach, and an additional $1.8 million to address King's.

[Speaker 5] (4:02:48 - 4:02:51)
We're gonna talk about it first agenda item next meeting.

[Speaker 6] (4:02:52 - 4:02:53)
And it's at the top of the agenda.

[Speaker 12] (4:02:53 - 4:03:06)
Put it on the agenda at the start so we can cover it. Wait, and second of all, I have trouble hearing anyways, but it's very hard to hear you're speaking. The microphone's either not working, or they're not close enough to your mouth.

[Speaker 1] (4:03:06 - 4:03:15)
They actually don't amplify, yeah, they don't amplify the room. So we can get, the microphones don't actually amplify the room, they just go for the TV recording?

[Speaker 12] (4:03:15 - 4:03:32)
Well, if it doesn't amplify the room, that means we have to hear you talking, covering like a stage, which is not fair. I can hear the sounds coming from the people online very clearly, so please, let's re-medify that. Fair enough, thank you.

Thank you. Yep, motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 5] (4:03:32 - 4:03:33)
Second.

[Speaker 12] (4:03:33 - 4:03:34)
All in favor.

[Speaker 5] (4:03:34 - 4:03:37)
Aye. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (4:03:37 - 4:03:37)
Thanks, Joe.