[Speaker 4] (0:00 - 0:05)
And when I say immediately, like, how quickly do you think we would be doing that?

[Speaker 1] (0:06 - 0:22)
I mean, by July 1st, Kleinfelder could be under a contract with you guys. I mean, that's, and then I think we said maybe a month to get the documents bid ready, a couple months to bid an award, and so construction could be started in the fall of this year.

[Speaker 4] (0:22 - 0:46)
Okay. And then we have a projection here that we'll come back in 2025 and ask town meeting for another $3.5 million, and then in 2026, another $3.5 million. That would hopefully, that would hopefully be SRF, correct?

And what about Phillips Beach and the other beaches? Where are we at with those beaches and testing?

[Speaker 1] (0:48 - 1:13)
Yeah, so the $132,000 for the MS-4 outfall inspections, like, that'll be the fund mechanism to start looking at those outfalls. So those we have as coming out of the general fund, I believe that's at annual town meetings. So yeah, that can also be, like, an FY25 exercise, you know, getting crews out there and starting to look.

[Speaker 4] (1:15 - 1:16)
Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (1:16 - 1:47)
Dave, quick, quick question for you. Just around, just around the dollars, and, you know, you had mentioned packaging similar to what happened in phase one, where we eliminated phase 1D and combined it with phase 1C. Any sense of what the savings were at the end of phase one and what the potential savings could be by packaging, you know, as was your recommendation or suggestion in the presentation a few minutes ago?

[Speaker 1] (1:49 - 2:18)
I think we were originally thinking about $10 million for phase one, so, I mean, it's pretty significant. That being said, we're not seeing the lining costs have gone up. I think the resins that are used to create these lining socks, those prices have gone up a lot in the last year or so.

So we've been, recent bids, we've been seeing those prices going up. So I mean, we're going to see what we get with bids, but it's, you know, I'm not sure we're going to see the same thing we did in phase one, so we'll have to just be careful with that.

[Speaker 6] (2:19 - 2:25)
Got it. But in phase one, we saw savings of millions of dollars, is what you're saying, by combining these?

[Speaker 1] (2:25 - 2:28)
Yeah, from over our, like, estimate. Yep. Yes.

[Speaker 10] (2:28 - 2:35)
So we really didn't combine 1C and D. We were able to add on C because the cost was so low and we had the money available.

[Speaker 1] (2:36 - 9:24)
Fair enough. Thanks, Gino. Actually, that'll be pretty evident on the next slide, if you're ready to go to that one.

Go ahead, John. Next slide. I'll just, I'll point to what Gino was just referring to.

So this 2021 blue bar kind of represents the phase 1C cost and, you know, it's phase 1A, phase 1B, phase 1C. They just went up and up and up because we were seeing favorable pricing and we just elected to combine it into a bigger phase 1C and that worked out great. So I think originally we were targeting, like, averaging two and a half million dollars for each of those and it worked out, you know, a little bit, a little bit less than two and a half million dollars, I think, if you average those three out.

So what I wanted to kind of show with this slide, this is a lot of the same information on the previous slide, just in a really different visual graphic, you know. Going all the way back to 2015 when the consent decree started, you know, this sort of represents as a bar chart sort of the investments made by the town in the various programs of, you know, design and construction for sewer rehab. The blue bars are monies from the Sewer Enterprise Fund.

The orange bars are bars that came out of the SRF program and, or will come from the SRF program, and then the blue, the green bars are from ARPA. And really, I think what this shows is that we had a steady pace of investment. We'd always planned to go every other year, you know, even though the dollars, even though it looks like nothing's happening in 2018, 2020, these are construction years that are going through that time period.

But we averaged here in this blue line, if you don't consider the benefit of ARPA funds, we averaged a little less than $1 million a year over the first, you know, phase one, basically. And kind of what we're trying to show is that when you take our phase two approach where we're trying to accelerate how we do it, we're making the contracts bigger, and we're going to use SRF funds, the average allocations per year is going to be closer to $3.5 million. So really, I think it's a recognition that, you know, there's a lot of work to do.

There's a lot of interest to get this work done. And so we're trying to build a program that's responsive to that, and we'll get that work done. What's not as obvious in the bar charts is all the additional work that's been going into this beyond just fixing pipes.

So we talked a little bit about complementary measures, and we'll talk with some slides later on it. But just in the last couple of years, I think with the town's leadership, there's been a lot of additional work with putting together like a steering group that goes outside the border of Swanscot. So we're having regular meetings with the state delegation, the City of Lynn, Lynn Water and Sewer Commission, EEA, EPA, DEP, CZM.

We've really... DCR. Who did I miss?

DCR. So we've really been putting our heads together to ask the question, you know, what could we possibly do in addition to fixing these old pipes to try to get the water quality better, keep the beach open longer? And we understand that if Swanscot acts alone, it's not going to work.

So we have to get Lynn and Swanscot sort of on board in concert with one another. And so I know it's been presented at a lot of meetings, but some of the ideas that we looked at was end of pipe treatment. So could we, in theory, bring the Lynn and the Swanscot drainage together and do some sort of like a treatment system, which could take the shape as like a chemical disinfection or a ultraviolet disinfection would be two pretty established technologies.

These are mostly in wastewater, but in stormwater, there are applications for it. It's just not as common. And then we looked at could we potentially pump dry weather flow to the Lynn treatment plant, kind of similar to what the underdrain is doing right now, but do it to all the drainage.

That seemed very counter to what the regulators would like to see. And it would have some issues with capacity at the Lynn plant. So that one didn't make it very far.

But the other idea that has still maintained a lot of traction and the EEA, EPA, DEP have really favored is looking at some sort of a combined outfall extension deeper into the ocean, which would really take advantage of dispersion, you know, with the understanding that we're continuing to try to find and eliminate the sources. You know, one of the main reasons why this is such a public health issue is that the outfall is directly on the beach. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of other outfalls that have contamination issues, but they either go to some sort of like a storm drain tank and then they get pumped somewhere or they don't go on the beach.

They go somewhere where people don't swim. So, you know, that's that's why these issues are so important for the town and public health, you know, that we're we're trying to find ways to to add on to, you know, just simply fixing the pipes. So this working group has been meeting, you know, fairly regularly.

And what we're really trying to do is is get them as excited about these solutions as we are and offer commitments in terms of helping with permitting. So any of these solutions is going to require environmental permitting. All of those require timelines, and can any of those timelines be streamlined?

And so we are we already have a commitment from the state that that's something that they can look at. We've also been talking quite a bit about funding the state, you know, their main funding program is SRF, as we've been talking about, which is which is wonderful. But we still are trying to find and uncover grant opportunities to help out as well.

So, you know, really what this this era was shown as a sort of an ongoing effort, working with with Lynn and all these other partners to really step up and see what we can do. And so I think like this slide, sort of the totality of, you know, the funding that the town is committing to and then also, you know, wrapped up across that these complementary measures that that we're working on. Next slide, John.

[Speaker 4] (9:27 - 10:00)
Wait, I have a question before you get to asset management. Me too. Did you want to go first?

No, please. Okay. So I want to talk about the alternatives that the steering committee is going through.

I just really want to get a serious update of what that is. And I'm looking for my own notes. It looks like we have.

Oops, sorry about that. We have a. I think you did.

Did you do a design on an extension pipe out there?

[Speaker 1] (10:01 - 10:01)
No design.

[Speaker 4] (10:02 - 10:07)
We have no design because I have here 295,000 for an extension design study.

[Speaker 1] (10:07 - 11:50)
Yeah. So that I don't think design is the correct word. So it's it's what we did in our in our feasibility study a couple years ago, which first put the awful idea out there.

We looked at some peer studies like where other outfall designs have been done to try to figure out what's a reasonable dispersion that, you know, the bacteria will what rate of dispersion. So we estimate how far out into the ocean does this outfall pipe need to be. And that number was based on, you know, very much back of the envelope, looking at like peer examples, but no empirical data in the hot in the Bay.

And so the that that budget, the 295 is to basically create do some oceanography, empirical samples to understand wave current dynamics in the Bay and then develop a three dimensional dispersion model. So if you put at the end of a pipe like at the bed of the ocean, you know, X, Y, Z, where are those particulars going to go? How quickly is going to disperse and how many feet from that point is it going to get to the point where it's like low enough that it's not a health hazard.

Right. And, you know, because the low tide goes out so far, it's like that's your that's like your starting point. You have to get at least to there and then you have to get out into the ocean.

So that's that's kind of what that was intended to do. Put more rigor behind how deep, how far out we think that needs to go and then update our construction cost estimate because the construction cost estimate was basically kind of a back of the envelope based on some high level assumptions. But really, to get serious about that, we kind of need a tighter number around that.

[Speaker 4] (11:51 - 12:28)
And then what about the other what about the what I would like to know is where are we with the UV testing, UV pilot? What are what are those costs looking at? The the the acid testing, we had an acid testing that we're doing.

Where are we with that? And then I just recently heard that there's a possibility of paying a private company to test ozone. I'm not going to be able to speak to that, but I just want to have an idea of where are we with finances on the steering committee?

What is it looking like as far as putting an actual pilot together? Where are we with all this?

[Speaker 1] (12:30 - 14:49)
So, John, can we skip over the asset management piece? Yep. Go to the next slide.

We'll just get right to each one of them. OK, so this is the outfall extension alternative, Mary Ellen. So here we go.

So we we had said forty five hundred feet based on information that we had out there just that was pure other kind of studies. But this needs to be confirmed. So that that number, the two ninety five was a proposal to do that.

Since that was submitted, that proposal, the scope went to EPA and MassDEP. They have commented on that scope. So we're working with Woods Hole Group, which is going to be a major player in that study to update update that.

So that has not yet been submitted back. Let's see. So my hope is that we can get that work going this this year if possible.

One of the elements of that is to look at eelgrass in the Bay, because that's going to be a big factor for like construction. We already know that CZM and Army Corps of Engineers are going to prefer us to do like a trenchless construction to the degree that we can to minimize eelgrass impacts. But the eelgrass study needs to be done sort of like late summer.

So I just want to make sure that that's we don't miss this year for that that portion of it. So so next steps is to finalize the scope of the study and then get that going. One of the outcomes is, again, is going to be more confidence as to like what construction methods are we going to recommend?

What's the construction cost going to be? And then we also had in there like a permitting work plan. So there's there's maybe eight, nine permits in that neighborhood that are required for something like this.

And we had that fairly conservatively estimated in our original study. You know, I think it was like three, four or five years of permitting, like a pretty significant permitting effort. But those are the kinds of things that the state is looking at to see if we can circumvent, not circumvent, but like streamline those permits and get them done faster and take that implementation period down.

[Speaker 5] (14:51 - 15:16)
I just have a question about this. Alternative since the tide is such a additional cost mechanism because the low tide goes so far out and so the pipe has to be so much longer to compensate for that. Has there been any discussion in the small group about diverting the water to an outfall that doesn't have the tide issue and then still doing an extension?

[Speaker 1] (15:17 - 15:39)
So that was one thing we looked at really early on was basically like moving the outfall to a different portion of the beach that didn't have like people basically. Right. The just like the back of the old cost and logistics to that was sort of really quickly failed that that one that got pulled up pretty quick.

[Speaker 5] (15:39 - 15:45)
The cost of moving the outfall is so much greater than the extension potentially.

[Speaker 1] (15:45 - 20:53)
Once you're in the ocean and you're doing like a horizontal directional drill in there, like that's going to be your best bet from like a cost perspective. Yeah. So that's the outfall extension.

Next slide, John. Okay. So I did mention UV as something we looked at for for end of pipe.

So Mary Ellen's correct. There is an ongoing study for for UV sampling. It's a fifty thousand dollar study.

Yesterday was our first sample that we took. We were basically waiting for the winter to end and stop using road salt because we were concerned about how road salt might affect things. But basically what we're doing is one of the biggest manufacturers of ultraviolet disinfection equipment is called Trojan Technologies in Toronto.

And so they are partnering with us to do so to do testing at their site in Toronto. And so what our staff did yesterday was collected drainage samples from both the Lynn and the Swampscott side, packaged those up and sent them to Toronto. And so what they're doing is they're they're looking at how much power do you need to put out of a UV bulb into a stormwater sample to kill the bacteria by a certain amount.

And what's really important is the clarity of the water. So if the water is like turbid and has a lot of solids in it, that's going to prevent the light from penetrating into the water and it's going to reduce the effectiveness of the kill. And that's one of the big concerns that EPA and DEP have expressed is that, you know, there's algae in the water, like there's tidal influence.

So during high tide, you might be getting solids in and then low tide going out. And that's something that we've thought about in our in our concept here is that we're not we're looking to not touch the water that would be coming in from from the ocean. It's really just the positive drainage coming out.

So during high tide, this facility wouldn't be receiving any of that ocean water. So part of this is going to make sure that we prevent that high tide from going backwards up the system and influencing the treatment system. There's a lot of complications with something like this.

Like one of the biggest things is where the heck do you put it? Like so in our study, we looked at, I think it's three new oceans at the address, three new ocean, which is where the town has a former water booster station and a former chemical station for the water system, which is no longer really used. And it's a very small site.

It's right on the Linsponska border. But like in terms of citing something close to the ocean that's sort of out of the public eye, it was, you know, one of the best sites that that we found is very limited number of options. And so a site analysis is going to be very challenging, very controversial if we ever get to even looking at siting for UV.

But right now we're not there. Right now we're just trying to prove to ourselves and to EPA and DEP that this will work. This technology will work.

So we have, I think we're planning to go out eight or nine times different during different wet weather and dry weather conditions, different tidal conditions. And each time we're going to send those to Toronto, they're going to run their samples. Logistically, this is pretty difficult because the Toronto lab, they run their own bacteria, but they don't do it over the weekends.

So they basically have to get our samples by Wednesday to run this, to run the bacteria Wednesday into Friday and then give us the results. So we basically can't sample Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So we have two days out of the week and we're looking for specific tide conditions and specific weather conditions.

So we're keeping an eye on the calendar and the tidal charts. We're going to get there as fast as we can. But yeah, this is just getting underway.

I would bet that this year is just going to be dedicated to this and see what the results are. There has been talk about a pilot, which would be like Trojan would basically take a mobile UV treatment plant on a tractor trailer and they would park it probably at the triangle, right at the ocean. And we would set up a temporary pumping system and maybe a generator to operate those pumps.

And you'd pump a sample of drainage through that UV system and kind of run it continuously for a couple of months. So you'll see all sorts of different conditions and see it run. We're pretty convinced that you're going to get a marginal benefit for doing that over and above what we're doing now.

I think the lab sampling that they're going to do is going to tell us a lot. And I'm not sure that we have to go to a pilot. The plan is to send the results over to EPA and DP, have a conversation with them.

And if some of those allay their concerns about the technology in stormwater, then that'll be helpful. It'll help prove that it can work. So that's where we are with UV.

Any questions, Mary Ellen?

[Speaker 4] (20:54 - 21:10)
No, I understand the UV thing. I just want to know about the other two options that are in there. And I do want to have Sean could probably send this out to us.

I do want to have a cost estimate on all of these things for testing and then for pilot, just so we have a clear idea of what it's going to cost.

[Speaker 1] (21:14 - 25:13)
Next slide, John. All right. So if you've read the original study from two years ago, you know, we sort of took chlorine disinfection off the table as an end-of-pipe treatment.

But just in the last six months, I think it was in December, the idea of kind of looking at it again sort of came up. I think the hope was that we could, in theory, put a fairly simplistic, not very complicated chemical disinfection system in linen swamp scots drainage and get effective bacteria kill, you know, at a reasonably low cost and have that available as an infield pilot. And so that concept came up just in December, sort of through separate conversations.

And specifically, what we're looking at is comparing sodium hypochlorite or bleach, basically, which is what is commonly used at wastewater plants for disinfecting, killing bacteria, versus peracetic acid, which is effectively a mix of acetic acid, vinegar, and hydrogen peroxide, so kind of household things that is, you know, a fairly strong oxidizer. And so what we're doing right now is we've subcontracted with a company that specializes in pilots, and they're taking samples from linen and swamp scot, they're taking them back to their lab, and they're basically subjecting it to these two disinfectants. And they're, over time, they're looking at, you know, what is the bacteria kill and how many minutes of contact time does it take to get to a reasonable kill.

So we worked with EPA and DEP to put the scope of this bench-scale testing together. We have talked about could we advance this into a full-scale pilot, which would mean mobilizing, like, probably a container, like a box that would have some pumps and some chemical solution in there and be, like, basically pumping chemical into the drain system, which the town actually used to do that quite a few years ago, so it wouldn't be too dissimilar from what, you know, was happening a while ago. Our hope was that the peracetic acid would prove to be very effective. It's a stronger oxidizer.

It generally doesn't have a residual that would be concerning, and so we felt like that would be a good one to test. So we're testing them both side-by-side right now. We've completed two samples.

We'll be out there tomorrow collecting the third sample, and we're analyzing that. And so, as of right now, we're a little stuck in putting together, like, a budget for what a pilot might look like because we don't know how much chemical we would have to dose. So we don't know the size of the pumps.

We don't know the size of the piping. We don't know the size of the trailer. So we need a little bit more information out of the bench scale before we can get sort of an accurate budget on the pilot.

I think our aspirational hope was that we could do something this summer, and it's, you know, each day goes by. It's getting a little bit less likely. One of the other things is that EPA doesn't have a permitting mechanism to allow us to put peracetic acid in the drain.

They actually have to use existing permitting mechanisms they have and sort of flex them for our purposes. So there's no, like, off-the-shelf PAA permit that they've used in other places because this is not used in stormwater. This is, like, a really kind of a, you know, innovative idea of, like, using a strong oxidant to get the disinfection we want.

And so they're willing to work with us. They're going to flex themselves the best they can to permit it, but they need to see the results from the bench scale first.

[Speaker 5] (25:14 - 25:15)
And that's safe to run out on the beach?

[Speaker 1] (25:16 - 25:54)
So one of the things that we're going to test in the bench scale is called a whole effluent toxicity test, which is really common at, like, wastewater plants. And basically, you put the chemical in a solution, and you see, like, what does it do to organisms, basically. So if we say, if we find that to get the effective bacterial in PAA, we need, like, concentration X, and we need, you know, five minutes of contact time, but then at the end of the pipe, that is going to have, like, a toxicity kill.

Like, we're not going to get approved to use that, right? So that's why we're doing this at a bench scale, so that we have the data to show whether it's safe and effective, right?

[Speaker 5] (25:57 - 26:32)
I know we skipped ahead, but I have a question back to Phase 2, if that's okay. Sort of jumping around, but I wanted to talk about laterals. So back in Phase 1, it says here we, as the town, repaired 470 private sewer laterals, or rehabbed.

I assume that for Phase 2, we will also be repairing private sewer laterals. Is that correct? That's the projection for Phase 2?

[Speaker 17] (26:32 - 26:32)
Yeah.

[Speaker 5] (26:34 - 26:46)
So of the estimated, or approximate, $6.5 million, do we know approximately how much it cost us to repair 470 private sewer laterals?

[Speaker 1] (26:47 - 26:50)
I think it was around 40% of that. Yeah, I believe.

[Speaker 5] (26:50 - 26:51)
40% of what?

[Speaker 1] (26:52 - 26:55)
The total cost. I think it was in that neighborhood. Yeah.

Significant.

[Speaker 5] (26:56 - 27:22)
So we had talked about in the December meeting that other towns have initiatives that require private homeowners, when they trade their houses, that they do some testing, and they get a clean bill of health for their lateral, and they get to sell it. And I know Andrea Moore, I had never heard of that, and she told us all about it. So that was something she educated me on.

Have we looked into that at all?

[Speaker 2] (27:23 - 27:56)
We have. We discussed that when we talked about the INI, and we thought about, you know, making those recommendations. We have a new committee to kind of look at that, and that's something that I think our new committee can evaluate, and they can look at a number of communities where it has been successful.

I've also identified a number of communities. I've talked to David and Gino about this. I think it's something that Swanscot should adopt, and I think it should be part of, you know, our ongoing approach to protect the water quality.

[Speaker 5] (27:57 - 28:03)
So we won't have that in place for at least Phase 2A?

[Speaker 2] (28:03 - 28:17)
We could roll that up pretty quickly. Obviously, it's too late for the annual town meeting, but this could be something for a fall town meeting. If the board is interested in this, I'd be happy to work with the team and the committee.

[Speaker 5] (28:17 - 28:33)
I mean, obviously, it's not going to solve all our problems because not every house in that area is going to be traded in the next year or two years, and this is obviously just going forward when houses sell, but, you know, obviously, it will mitigate some of the costs because that's extraordinary.

[Speaker 2] (28:34 - 28:34)
Everything helps.

[Speaker 5] (28:35 - 28:38)
Anything we can do to prevent that from continuing.

[Speaker 4] (28:38 - 28:45)
Do we have something in place right now? Because I brought this up with Gino, and he said we kind of do have something in place.

[Speaker 10] (28:45 - 29:10)
Yeah, right now when a homeowner goes to sell their home, we have to do a final read to sell it. So as part of the final read, we go in there and inspect to see if there's any sump pumps that are tied into the sewer system. If there are, we just say we're not going to give you enough of a read until you correct that problem.

And we really don't even have that at the moment, but we have a lot of leverage at the time because people want to sell their homes and take care of their cars.

[Speaker 3] (29:11 - 29:23)
Yeah, the trick, though, is that if we want to clean up the beach, we don't want to be sitting around waiting for people to fix their laterals when they sell their house, right? So we want to get these laterals fixed now while we're in the ground.

[Speaker 10] (29:25 - 30:06)
So that's ‑‑ I think I brought this up before. I know it wasn't a real popular decision back in 2015. I might have been one of the only ones around.

And after talking with Noah, they went in and did a similar project, and they just relined the mains, and the results were horrible. And they went back and did laterals. They had pretty good results, right?

You and I met with Mark Ryan over there. So we said, instead of going into a part of town and disrupting it once, twice, let's just do it once. I know it's a lot of money, and I also get beat up a little bit because we only do the laterals that are crossing over the sewer.

So if you're on the other side of the street, you're not really getting the benefit of having a sewer service line to put.

[Speaker 5] (30:07 - 30:24)
Yeah, I would say the initiative like this is really maintenance, right? Like going forward, it's preventative, right? So now in ten years from now, we're not having a whole other set of laterals that we're having to fix because it's clear that we will.

That's the thing about laterals, right? Tree roots and everything.

[Speaker 10] (30:25 - 30:36)
Unless they're PVC. You know, the clay ones, they don't have sealed joints, so the roots get in there. If it's sealed, we don't have any problems.

[Speaker 17] (30:36 - 30:36)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (30:37 - 31:08)
So I just actually had one question. Just about the $3.5 million that's going to go into, you know, that's going to be expended over the course of the next three years. So, Dave, with what degree of certainty will the beach be, you know, will King's Beach be open and, you know, free of contaminants?

Assuming the town moves forward with expending $3.5 million over the next three years. Three and a half, three and a half, three and a half. So $10.5 million.

[Speaker 1] (31:11 - 32:39)
That's an easy question. No, I mean, what I can say is that by the time those three are done, the whole salmon or light pink area will have been, you know, pretty much rehabilitated. So there's contaminants that come from other places, right?

And one of the things that we have to take off the table first is, like, the human source from buildings. Like, you have to just deal with that. Once you're past that, then you start asking those secondary questions about, you know, pet waste and dog waste and stuff that might be in the drain system.

Like, in other communities that we're dealing with this, you know, we're asking, like, the human source isn't really the problem. So we're asking questions like, is there sediment in your pipes that's just kind of like a community for, like, growing bacteria? And is that, you know, hot and humid?

And is it growing bacteria? And then when it rains, it, like, pushes all that out, right? So I think what I can say with some certainty is that your dry weather sources from humans are going to be substantially mitigated after the end of these three for the Kings Beach area.

But that's not the same thing as saying the beach is going to be, like, open all the time. The other part that we have zero control over is what Lynn is doing, right? So if Swamp Scott took care of all of this bacteria and Lynn, you know, three years from now is where it is today, it's still going to be closed quite frequently, right?

So that's why we're working with Lynn very closely to make sure that we're coordinated and we have a plan kind of like together as a region.

[Speaker 6] (32:40 - 32:44)
And that's why we need those supplemental efforts such as the outfall or.

[Speaker 1] (32:44 - 32:45)
Correct. Correct. Yeah.

[Speaker 6] (32:45 - 32:47)
Got it. Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (32:48 - 33:13)
I have just one quick question on that entire phase one area. How, how much of that area will our infrastructure be relined or be up to a status of good, good repair? Whereas, you know, you had said that we have 50% of our infrastructure is over a hundred years old.

So in that area, when you're finished, what will be pretty new?

[Speaker 1] (33:16 - 35:02)
John, you're on, I don't know if you have that in your, in your head from phase one. I mean, there, like I mentioned, there are, there are sections that like if the stormwater quality was great, like we wouldn't necessarily go out of our way to repair that right away. That would just be a, it'd be a lower priority.

But what I, what I will say is that, you know, the town, the town's been looking very, I think, big picture at its assets in general. We do have a section on asset management, you know, what that's going to do is find, you know, what is the second tier or high risk pipes that need to be addressed? Absent of all of this, right.

So, you know, age and condition are that in and of itself are reasons to do work. Right. So, you know, let's say just for talking purposes, we rehab 90% of the, of the sewer system in the phase one area, 10% wasn't done, but that stuff is still, you know, maybe older PVC, I'm sorry, older VC clay pipe.

You know, we may be doing that as part of the asset management work, not necessarily through the sewer rehab program. So that's kind of where, you know, the town has really been stepping up and layering a lot of different approaches to really think hard about its infrastructure and what its needs are. And so the asset management report has, has laid out a CIP for sort of continually looking at its sewer system, you know, throughout the entire town, like just, you know, even well past this, these areas, making sure we understand what material it is, what diameter it is, what condition it's in, and then putting together like rehab contracts after that.

So this is going to be just basically normal business, you know, going forward until the system is where it should be. Similar to the water. Yes.

[Speaker 4] (35:07 - 35:19)
And then what about it? You can't comment on this ozone ozone stuff that I'm hearing about. Sean, can you comment on that?

[Speaker 2] (35:20 - 36:35)
I can. I, you know, I've sent information off to client felder. I've done a little research myself.

You know, this is a type of technology that's usually used in ponds and lakes. I haven't seen it used in ocean environments. David, I don't know if you have any additional insights.

I think everybody's looking at anything that could help protect human health. I think we've spent years just putting together, you know, alternative analysis. We've looked at relocating pipes, moving pipes.

We've looked at everything up and down. And, and frankly, if anybody's got an idea, I'll look at it. I just don't know if the science really deals with the ocean as effectively as some of the items that we're studying right now.

I wish there were a dozen ideas. It just it's hard because I think everybody wants to believe that there's an easy fix here. There, it just doesn't seem to be.

It's, it's constant, you know, just vanilla status of good repair approaches to fixing pipes and, and thinking about, you know, a supplemental that will protect human health from the immediacy of, of the public health risk.

[Speaker 4] (36:36 - 37:06)
So I'm all for testing anything and everything, but my concerns are using taxpayer dollars for proprietary product to come in. My concerns are financing a business, financing their test. I guess it looks to me pretty simple.

If you have a product and it works, show us it works and then put it into the cost of the product. And if we're being asked to spend money to see whether or not your product works, I have concerns about that.

[Speaker 2] (37:06 - 37:20)
I very much appreciate that fiduciary. You know, I want to be a partner and I want to collaborate with folks, but certainly I share some of that skepticism.

[Speaker 4] (37:20 - 37:33)
I mean, if somebody comes in and shows us, Hey, we have a product that works. I want to do whatever we can to say, here we go, pull the trigger and get them on board, but I don't want to have to pay for it upfront.

[Speaker 10] (37:34 - 37:39)
Understood. We have a funding.

[Speaker 4] (37:39 - 37:49)
You do have a funding source through your steering committee. There's you have $400,000 in the steering committee to be using money for different testing.

[Speaker 2] (37:51 - 38:01)
Yeah, that's, that's pretty, that's a really tight scope of work for some things we've already outlined.

[Speaker 4] (38:02 - 38:04)
I think that you know your stuff.

[Speaker 1] (38:05 - 38:10)
My, my understanding is the 400,000 for the IDD of phase two and the design of that.

[Speaker 10] (38:11 - 38:17)
Because when we asked for that $400,000, it wasn't even in the picture, but there's other money.

[Speaker 3] (38:17 - 38:29)
I don't know if it's 400,000, but there's other money for the various other options. And I think, so I'm understanding Mary Ellen, it's like theoretically it could be in that other couple hundred thousand or something for testing complimentary strategy.

[Speaker 4] (38:29 - 38:45)
So, Oh, do you know your, the 400 you're thinking about is in to stay in your design phase asset management.

[Speaker 1] (38:45 - 45:37)
Sure. Yeah. John, can you go to the asset management and I don't know if you feel like you want to unmute and walk us through this or you want me to do it.

I don't have a preference. Oh, thank goodness you unmuted. All right.

We can't hear you, John. So I'll, I'll go to it. Next slide, John.

All right. There it is. Okay.

So, Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thanks.

So, the town got a through actually the SRF program, they got a grant that they had 60% paid with a 40% match, the asset management plan. So what mass DEP through the SR program really values is that communities are thinking ahead with their infrastructure, that they're fiscally responsible, that they have even, you know, cashflow in cashflow out. And so they really, they very freely give money to communities to look at asset management of their water, stormwater and sewer infrastructure.

And so we were able to get onto the SRF loans and we started this, this project says here in 2023 John on the phones, it was a pretty major player and putting this all together. So, but I, I can make my way through this fine. So yeah, we looked at the, the drain, sewer and water and kind of a fundamental element of an asset management plan is to look at your infrastructure from a risk perspective.

So, so risk is basically two things. It's how likely is my infrastructure going to give me problems, right? Like what's how old is it?

Or like, you know, what's the likelihood that something's going to go wrong. And then the second question is if something goes wrong, what's going to happen? Like what's the consequence of that?

So, you know, every pipe in the road is not the same, you know, the different diameters, they have a different number of customers that are using that pipe you know, things like that. So, so what we do is we look at all the infrastructure at a very, like a bird's eye view of, you know, what age is it? What material is it?

Where is it located? How many customers does it have? And things like that.

And so we identify what is the, what's the risk target or what's the risk value such as this asset or this infrastructure. And then based on that, you know, we say, well, the really high risk infrastructure we need to look at, you know, maybe we don't have enough information about it today to do anything about it from like a design and construction standpoint, but that needs to be the very first tier of infrastructure that we get our eyes on. So that's, you know, putting cameras in the pipes or in manholes, maybe doing some pressure testing of your water system, you know, things like that.

And so that's really the core of the program. And then putting together a 20 year capital plan that has maybe five years outlook is fairly accurate. And then, you know, the year six through through 20 is, is not quite as accurate, but at least we're identifying what some of the needs are and putting them out there.

And the hope is that this is something that gets looked at, you know, you know, by town planners, you know, on an annual basis as you're budgeting for the upcoming years is, you know, did we actually do this project? You know, we got to move to the next year. Does this make sense?

Or hang on all this information that we got to go like revisit, revisit this a bit. So it's a bit of a, it's an ongoing process. And it kind of becomes part of sort of the culture of, of the town that's managing the asset.

So this you know, plan, do check act kind of cycle just kind of goes on in forever. That water would help me say that word. So, so that's the idea.

Next slide, John. And so this, this graphic here kind of visually shows this concept of risk. So on the, on this left-hand side, the Y-axis is the failure probability.

So how likely is something going to be problematic for us? And then the consequence of failure from on the X-axis is, you know, what, what happens if something were to fail? And so you get this gradient of, you know, your highest risk infrastructure in the upper right and your lowest risk on the lower left.

So it's to a degree, it's a very academic exercise, but it helps you create a plan for, for implementing, you know, and bringing your infrastructure to, to, you know, better status. So if we, if we just don't have a lot of good information on the infrastructure, one of the very first steps is like, let's get that information right. And then we'll put a plan together.

Next slide. So this zooms a little bit into the sewer system, I think because we've been talking most about the sewer system today, but you know, based on age of the pipe and, you know, maybe we do have some specific information about condition of pipe. You know, we, we've identified high priorities.

So about 11% of the linear footage of the pipe, we put as this high priority. That doesn't mean that we're going to go next year and we're just going to replace 11% of the pipe because we have to, we have to look at it first. And this could be sort of all over town.

Like it could be different neighborhoods and things like that. So we just, we've identified this linear footage. And then in this sort of like medium high priority, you know, about 38% of the system was mean high priority.

So that was still, you know, older assets. But maybe like if something were to happen to those, like it wouldn't be such a high consequence of failures. The risk is relatively lower.

So that's just kind of like how this, this pie chart goes. I mean, just in the last seven years, the, the wedge of pipe that's blue that's low has, has gotten dramatically higher. That's because of the phase one work.

You know, we've worked on over 40,000 feet of pipe. That's half of what is in the blue. So, you know, these are the kinds of investments that are going to make, you know, a higher percentage of this pie chart blue and really dealing with these, these, these risky pipes.

As Gino mentioned, the water system, the town has consistently been working on the water system over decades and it's in really good shape. And so like the pie chart would look very different on the water system.

[Speaker 5] (45:38 - 45:48)
So in theory, when we go through phase two, hopefully some of the red will get smaller. Maybe even some of the green will get smaller and the blue will get larger. Yep.

[Speaker 1] (45:49 - 49:55)
Yep. Exactly. And then some of the drivers for like, why something is a high risk, like for this study, we, we had proximity to the beach or if it was like in a drainage system that could affect the water quality at the beach, like that was a high priority.

It was a huge issue for the town, right? So that, that becomes a high consequence of that pipe would be a problem. So because we're focusing on, on work on the beaches, fishermen's and Kings, you know, a lot of the pipe we're going to rehab is probably in this green, you know, and, and red wedge already.

Next slide, John. Do you guys really want me to go through this? This is a graphic of the CIP from the forthcoming final report.

Just to the sewer system. And so this lays out a lot of the stuff we've been talking about. So phase two sewer design is ongoing.

We've laid out a priority need, which there's, there is no, as far as I know, there's no, there's no dedicated fund for it yet, but it should be in the CIP would be II study. So infiltration and inflow is a, is a major issue in older systems. Every gallon of groundwater that gets into your sewer system or any, every gallon of rainwater goes to Lynn and the town pays for that.

You're basically treating, you know, rained basically. So so that's something that a lot of communities get a lot of benefit out of is, is doing infiltration inflow studies. That is another piece of information to inform sewer rehab.

Phase two sewer rehab. So the, the King's beach rehab we've been talking about. So kind of like year over year spreading those dollars out fishermen's beach rehab.

We talked about that. So this long bar is that goes out kind of like forever. We have $50,000 a year recommended just for sort of ongoing inspection of the system.

And that could be something that just comes out of an operating budget. You don't need an engineer involved. You can just hire a contractor and just get a really good database of condition of the system.

And then based on that information, you know, we might go out there and start doing really targeted inspections to find out like how, how we'll ameliorate these, these bad conditions of the sewer system. And then beyond fish, fishermen's assuming that we find targeted target improvements needed, like in like Phyllis beach area, for example, you know, this line would dedicate to that kind of sewer rehab. So trying to coalesce all of the, all of the, you know, renewal issues that, that we are aware of into a CIP so that we can look at you know, spending these dollars.

One of the biggest piece of sewer infrastructure the town has, which probably no one thinks about on a daily basis, except for Gino is, is the Humphrey street pump station next to the police department. All of the sewer in town goes through that pump station used to be a treatment plant in town and now pumps it over to Lynn water and sewer. The pump station itself I think gets inspected.

You know, you guys, you guys have an operations crew looks at it all the time. I know you've done some work on it in the past few years. But what we haven't looked at is the, is the force main.

So there's a, you know, how many, how many miles long is it? You know, two and a half, two and a half mile long force main that conveys the flow from Swampscott into the Lynn gravity system. That we don't have any reason to believe that it's going to fail imminently or like that.

But we do want to look at it. Right. So that's something that Gino and I've been talking about is, is getting some inspection of that forest main just so Gino can sleep better at night.

This sort of like hatched area represents like if there was a need to do a rehab of the forest main, you know, what it might be, what it might cost and things like that.

[Speaker 2] (49:55 - 51:39)
We just don't know today like what that would entail with, with a lot of certainty when I add anything on that, you know, what's important that just want to add is look putting it in a plan is critically important because it sets a, an expectation that we're going to be not surprised by a pump station that needs improvement because it has a life cycle. I'm not going to be surprised about, you know, some of the status of good repair responsibilities we have with pieces of the infrastructure that we know because corresponding to all these charts and, and pie charts and graphs are our maps and we can see the town through those maps and we can see the neighborhoods and we can see the age of those neighborhoods and we know as we go through and we start paving roads, for instance, we can combine our road paving program with our rehab program for some of these pipes and get ahead of, of the water breaks in the middle of the holiday season or get ahead of the, you know, I and I issues with infrastructure, you know, this asset management focus, you know, was missing from the town for decades and, and bringing, wrapping this in to a capital plan.

Again, it's a plan. It's not a budget people are going to get tied to these numbers. Some, you know, think less about the numbers, more about the plan.

We're going to stay focused on the plan so that we can actually get better and better at, at being responsible fiduciaries and, and really addressing these issues. These are your water system, drainage system and sewer system.

[Speaker 4] (51:39 - 51:50)
So I have two comments. I'd feel a lot better if we were testing that force mean sooner rather than later. And I think, didn't have a problem with their force mean?

[Speaker 10] (51:51 - 52:33)
Yep. Not worried me because they had two catastrophic failures that cost them over a million dollars each time to repair. And then they just completed an $11 million project on the force being going on the Linway.

What alleviated some of my concerns is we had the contract that was working for them, test the end of our main and the pipe thickness was almost brand new. So now we do sleep a little better at night, but still there is a concern when I want to address the early bells on the high points of the system, but there's always could be something because you know, it's a pipe it's underground. And one of the issues I think they had over by the clock tower was electrolysis or some of the current underneath the ground that caused the pot.

I draw it out. That's an unknown.

[Speaker 4] (52:34 - 52:46)
So are you, I just, I look at this. We're not even looking at looking at this until FYI 26 and I'm just shouldn't we be looking at this FYI 25 or are you good with FYI 26?

[Speaker 10] (52:47 - 52:47)
FYI 26.

[Speaker 4] (52:48 - 53:25)
All right. So then I'll forget my car. Then my next question is this is the second time we're getting an asset management update.

And I think the last time was October and that in October I had asked you're giving an up, you're giving us an asset management review, but where is the report? And I was told we would have it shortly. I requested that report November, December, January, February until the point where I filed the FOIA so that I could finally get a draft.

But is this report finished yet where the public can read this report? What, where, what is the final status of this report?

[Speaker 1] (53:26 - 53:42)
Yeah, we're taking a lot of time just trying to get the I guess you want to call the executive summary or the skin of it, like the message of exactly where we want it to be. So we've been working a lot with Sean just to get it in the right spot. I mean the bulk of it is done.

It's just really focusing on that for that first piece. So I don't have anything to add to that.

[Speaker 4] (53:43 - 53:45)
What's the ETA on this?

[Speaker 2] (53:45 - 53:56)
I mean, it should be, I think sometime in the next week, I think we're pretty much done. So this was the update. You know, I think as Dave mentioned, we wanted to just make sure the numbers were solid.

[Speaker 4] (53:56 - 54:10)
We could trust that, you know, we had a good focus on the assets and you know, that's great because we have a committee that we put together in January and this is their responsibility, the asset management.

[Speaker 3] (54:14 - 54:21)
Just one follow up to Mary Ellen's first comment. If I'm not mistaken, we have $500,000 in the capital plan for.

[Speaker 10] (54:23 - 54:28)
Water main. Water main. Is that.

That's on top of the.

[Speaker 3] (54:28 - 54:32)
Will that cover the $27,000 for the force main?

[Speaker 10] (54:35 - 54:41)
$500,000 for the water main, not the force main. Okay. For potable water.

For water. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (54:42 - 54:48)
So do we not have the $27,000 allocated anywhere in capital or anything right now?

[Speaker 2] (54:49 - 54:56)
We haven't baked this into the capital plan. Yeah. But this will be something that we.

[Speaker 3] (55:00 - 55:00)
Yeah, let's do it.

[Speaker 10] (55:01 - 55:10)
I think that's what my request was. A while back was the 27, five. Something like that.

Might have to revisit it. He was up on money.

[Speaker 1] (55:17 - 55:18)
I think we went out of order, but I think that.

[Speaker 4] (55:19 - 55:22)
On here on maintain reliability, pump station improvements.

[Speaker 1] (55:22 - 55:23)
Oh, yeah.

[Speaker 4] (55:23 - 55:30)
Yeah. So pump station improvements start in FY 25. But where is that in the cap?

What is that? What's that line item in the capital plan?

[Speaker 10] (55:30 - 55:34)
We have $200,000 that just came across John's desk last week.

[Speaker 2] (55:34 - 55:55)
Yeah, we we've applied for some funding through ARPA state ARPA. and it looks as though we may be getting some state assistance for that. So, you know, we have been seeking state and federal grants for some of these projects.

So I will hopefully have some good news to report soon.

[Speaker 4] (55:58 - 56:02)
Can you, the condition of the pump station on a scale of one to 10 had?

[Speaker 10] (56:03 - 56:26)
The main, well, we have eight pump stations in town. We have seven remote and then the main one on Humphrey Street. Are you referring to the main one or all of them?

Main one. Main one. We're having issues with two out of the three 250 horsepower pumps.

They're both being rebuilt, two of them are being rebuilt right now as we speak. So there are concerns, but we do have the money to do that.

[Speaker 17] (56:27 - 56:28)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (56:31 - 56:43)
But there's always gonna be maintenance to that building because there's a lot of flow that goes through that building I just want to make sure it's a serious focus of ours and that's where our capital money's going. Some of our capital money's going.

[Speaker 10] (56:44 - 56:48)
I'm down there on a daily basis. I do my inspection daily.

[Speaker 4] (56:48 - 56:48)
Okay.

[Speaker 10] (56:49 - 56:56)
We're mandated to do so. Every lift station, pump station we have that pumps over 100,000 gallons per day has to have a daily inspection.

[Speaker 4] (56:58 - 56:58)
Thanks, Gino.

[Speaker 1] (57:03 - 57:05)
I think we went to every slide, thankfully.

[Speaker 2] (57:06 - 57:10)
We did. I don't know if there are. More questions or.

[Speaker 4] (57:10 - 57:11)
It was very good.

[Speaker 2] (57:11 - 58:17)
I do want to just let folks know this presentation is up on the town website. So if you go to the town's homepage, you can download a copy of this presentation. Certainly there's a lot to digest here, but it has been years of effort.

We actually have been working on the asset management plan for the last two years, two and a half years. We did get a grant for this asset management report. And look, it was something the town just never had.

We didn't have a map. We didn't know the status of repair for any of these systems. Now we do.

Now we can take this information. We can start to build a stronger capital plan for that status of good repair. But this was a lot.

And I'm happy to schedule some additional time to have Dave join us either remotely or in person and just continue to ask questions and really think critically about how we get better at managing these responsibilities.

[Speaker 6] (58:18 - 58:25)
No, and I just think it was a great update. So thank you, John. Thank you, Dave from Kleinfelder and Gino.

Certainly thank you as well.

[Speaker 10] (58:26 - 58:37)
I'd like to acknowledge Chris Buckley from the Water, Sewer Infrastructure Advisory Committee. Great asset to the committee. Just got to know Chris recently.

Buckley, I'm sorry.

[Speaker 6] (58:38 - 58:40)
Thank you, thank you, Chris. Thanks, Chris.

[Speaker 10] (58:41 - 58:42)
He sat through this.

[Speaker 8] (58:44 - 58:46)
I did have one question, if it's okay.

[Speaker 2] (58:47 - 58:47)
Grab the mic.

[Speaker 8] (58:48 - 58:49)
We took the mic.

[Speaker 2] (58:49 - 58:51)
Just grab the mic, Chris. He's good.

[Speaker 8] (58:51 - 59:18)
Oh, it's gone. I guess this is more of a question for Select Board, but David, you brought up the idea of how much money we can save and how much money was previously saved by bundling. Right now, we've got the plan to bid out these contracts for phase two into three phases.

I'm just curious. This obviously reflects my ignorance about municipal finance, but could we just do one big phase and save even more money?

[Speaker 10] (59:20 - 59:40)
I think we can limit it. I think if we put a $1,000,000,000 project we'd be really limiting ourselves to the competition. I see.

Dave, would you agree with that? Probably only one company that might be able to do that. Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (59:41 - 1:00:03)
As it stands right now, it's possible, depending on how much, if we have fishermen going this year, still, we've never done even $3,500,000 in one year. Which is what we're now talking about doing. So, just capacity of contractors, et cetera, to actually do that, is that possible?

[Speaker 10] (1:00:03 - 1:00:16)
Yeah, I guess it's possible. It depends what type of time restraints we put on them. If we drag it out a little longer and we can continue to do it, if we tell them they have to do it in a finite period of time, then I guess the price is gonna go up.

[Speaker 3] (1:00:17 - 1:00:24)
Well, Dave promised that we were doing three and a half a year, so. Oh. No.

So, there's no wiggle room, Jane.

[Speaker 4] (1:00:26 - 1:01:28)
David, I'm gonna have a question, and I don't know what time I should bring it up at, but it's about water testing. And I don't know how, so, Chris's committee has been having conversations with the Board of Health about the possibility of testing our beaches quite often. And the estimates on that cost for the first year would be $22,000, and that also includes a machine that's about $11,000, so that's all in.

It would be approximately between $10,000 and $12,000 on soft goods going further out, and then we would be doing it in-house. We don't have that in the budget right now. I don't know at what point, where do we scrape it into the budget, you know, where do we take that, do we take it out of ARPA under the public health line item, but when do you wanna have that conversation, how do you wanna have that conversation?

You can have it now.

[Speaker 2] (1:01:29 - 1:02:42)
Yeah, I'm happy to, you know, I got an email today from the Chair of the Infrastructure Committee with some information on that. I copied the Director of Health, and certainly happy to evaluate it. I think, you know, it's just important for us to understand that we statutorily have to test the beaches, and we just wanna make sure that, you know, we have some consistency, and, you know, there's just a good standard of care when it comes to the technology.

I haven't seen it, but I'm happy to take a look at it. I do think it would be helpful, you know, to address perhaps some misinformation that has been out there about water quality. Unfortunately, Bookface has a lot of misinformation, and I do think, you know, getting more science and getting more data to people that they can trust, especially when it comes to the quality of their health and the quality of health of their family members using these resource areas, you know, that's gonna be important.

So I'm 100% on board trying to figure out how to do better with that, but I just wanna be as careful with that as we should be.

[Speaker 4] (1:02:42 - 1:03:29)
So last year when the Board of Health tested over in Kings Beach, the area in which we test, and we test once a week, and during the course of the summer in our testing, there was only two days where we actually failed the testing, two days. But we closed down the beaches only, not only because, but we closed down the beaches so there's no confusion for people. So we just try to keep it consistent, but we didn't have to close down our section of the beach except for those two days.

So I think by having, I think many people, I hear their concern that there's enormous amount of bacteria in the water, and you know, I'm not a scientist, maybe there is, but I think if we're having testing, then people will just have the facts.

[Speaker 2] (1:03:29 - 1:03:37)
So there's just some things that, you know, last year we didn't close down Fisherman's Beach, we actually had, I'm sorry, Kings Beach, yes, Kings Beach.

[Speaker 4] (1:03:38 - 1:03:39)
Two days we failed, only two days.

[Speaker 2] (1:03:40 - 1:04:22)
Right, and so, you know, the way the state requires us to actually close down, you know, is really, they need two consecutive days of failures to actually mandate a closure. And so there's a whole standard of public health responsibilities when it comes to testing. And again, you know, it's the Board of Health and the Health Director's responsibility to test the water quality, and I want the Director of Health to really be in the room with this technology.

I just think it's important, I think it's important for our, you know, just our Board of Health to, you know.

[Speaker 3] (1:04:22 - 1:06:00)
Well, I did attend the Board of Health meeting last night where this was demonstrated, and what became very interesting is that the Board of Health feels as though, because they test once a week, they're meeting their obligations. But they have a different threshold, right? They have a different mandate and different threshold than what we might have for public use of the beach or for the infrastructure committee.

And I think what was interesting about this technology is it really kind of gives us control locally about doing this. Now, I don't think the plan was 100% baked as far as I was concerned, because, like, who really is gonna do the testing every single day? Or, and I know there's some ideas about who will do that, and maybe a little bit from here, a little bit from there.

That's gotta get worked out if we were to do this, obviously, so we make sure that it's really standardized and we can be dependable and all that. But if we had it, then we would know five days a week, seven days a week, exactly what's going on on the beach, right, and not guessing or wondering at one day a week type of thing. Department of Health, maybe one day a week is perfectly fine for their means, but we may have other reasons why we need to know more frequently.

And we certainly need to know at different parts of Fisherman's, right, than the one place that's being tested right now. So some expansion, some way. So I do think it's prudent for us to figure out a way, whether it's capital or ARPA or operating or whatever, to find some allocation, because whether or not we do our own testing with this, you know, our own machine, or we're sending it out more frequently, it's gonna cost us more.

So I think we need to kind of have some allocation to do that.

[Speaker 2] (1:06:00 - 1:06:09)
I agree with everything that has been said here. How about give me a couple of weeks, and I'll come back, and I'll have a recommendation.

[Speaker 3] (1:06:10 - 1:06:20)
The only problem with that is that we're gonna do the warrant, and the budget, and I assume tonight at some point. So.

[Speaker 4] (1:06:21 - 1:06:23)
We can make adjustments up until.

[Speaker 3] (1:06:23 - 1:06:27)
Yeah, we can, but. We have a couple of things. It's kind of crazy, the way you're doing it, so.

[Speaker 2] (1:06:27 - 1:06:57)
I mean, the budget, just so, you know, there are a couple of things that, right now we have open enrollment. We have things that are gonna change with, you know, selections for health care plans. And so, you know, we have a few things that still, you know, are in motion.

And so I think we'll have an opportunity here to really address this, and just come back and have a good conversation about giving the town at least a little bit more information about such an important health issue.

[Speaker 8] (1:06:58 - 1:07:39)
Thank you. If I could interject briefly, and just say that if any of the select board, or Sean, if you would like to come over and check out the equipment we have for the next two weeks. We have about 17 more free tests that we can run.

It's been sponsored by the company that sells the equipment. They've given us demo equipment. We've got it over at the DPW yard.

So if anybody would like to come down, we can go and pull out some of Stacy's Brooks Finest, and give it a test, and you could see it for yourself. It's the exact same equipment that's used by the Deer Island lab for all the testing that's done at King's already. So it's literally the same machine, same reagents, sold to the same people, just that we've got one more.

Just local, yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (1:07:39 - 1:08:17)
I just, I did not watch the board of health meeting, nor did I attend. So I have a lot of questions, and I don't mean to sound like a naysayer, but I just, because I don't have all the facts, I just will throw them out there. I think whenever it comes forward, there'll be some sort of presentation, so we can understand more fully.

But I just, whoever is doing the tests, I assume there's some training involved, and to make sure that they're consistent, and to make sure that they're accurate, right? Because the whole point of bringing it in house is to have more data available, but if the data is inaccurate, or is showing something that is.

[Speaker 8] (1:08:17 - 1:08:48)
So three members of Geno's staff have already been trained by the company on how to do this, as well as, I think we had four members of the community that were there for the training. So we'll be doing training for anybody who's involved. I think that right now, the idea is that testing would be done through a combination of folks from DPW, and if we can get volunteers, or certainly if any board of health folks would like to be involved.

Anybody involved would absolutely be trained. We'll have very clear standard operating procedures, and all of that fun stuff.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:48 - 1:08:49)
We have a testing brigade.

[Speaker 8] (1:08:50 - 1:09:04)
Yeah, I think we would need it. And I think, look, it would be wonderful if we did a summer worth of testing, and found out that this was way overkill, and we don't need to do this again next summer. That would be a fantastic outcome.

Cellar machine. I don't, throw it up on eBay.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:04 - 1:09:18)
Well, I think the other thing is just the maintenance of the machine, right? So maintenance of the machine. So understanding how delicate the machine is, and if there is some sort of human error that, again, because I don't understand the process yet, so I've just.

[Speaker 8] (1:09:18 - 1:09:44)
Great question. So actually, the machine comes with a four-year service contract. If there's ever any problem, they'll come and take a look at it and fix it for us.

The company's right up in Maine. They make them in Maine, and so there's no bottleneck in terms of getting a new one. We call them up, and they send them to us.

In fact, for our demo, they messed up and sent us two. So there's plenty of access to both the reagents. There's no sort of restrictions there in terms of the durability.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:44 - 1:09:45)
You just put the.

[Speaker 8] (1:09:46 - 1:09:46)
Sorry?

[Speaker 5] (1:09:46 - 1:09:50)
You just put the water in, and it spits out a reading? Come on over to BBW.

[Speaker 8] (1:09:51 - 1:09:52)
Let's do it. Seriously.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:52 - 1:10:02)
I'm dead serious. From what I understand now, they take a sample, they send it out, they do the testing, the results come back, but I don't know what the testing is.

[Speaker 8] (1:10:02 - 1:11:59)
So if we have a second, I'd be happy to describe it to you very briefly. So imagine you've got an ice cube tray, and you've got a machine that puts a laminated lid on the ice cube tray. So that's one component of the system.

The other component of the system is you've got a jar of water that you've got some bacteria in and you add to that a powdered substrate, and you sort of mix it in, close the lid back and forth, dissolve the powder, you pour the liquid into the ice cube tray, you put the lid on it, you slide it through the machine, which seals the lid onto it. The way that this works is that when the bacteria in the sample eat the powder that you put into the tray, they excrete something that glows. And so you take the tray and then you put it under a UV light, and you see how many of the ice cube wells are glowing.

And you've got a little table that says, you had three of the little wells that glowed and seven of the big wells that glowed, and that means you've got this much in your sample. So it's super user-friendly. So to put that in more concrete terms, for the testing that's currently being done on Kings Beach, I believe it's DPW, no, DCR, hires an intern to come and collect water every day during the summer.

And the head of the Deer Island Lab hires an intern to do the ice cube tray spit. And so it's literally done by summer interns every summer. So I'm quite confident that this is something that essentially anyone could do.

We had very good feedback from the training that was done with DPW workers. So they felt pretty confident about it. And I would encourage all of you to come by and we can do some.

All right, great.

[Speaker 6] (1:11:59 - 1:12:21)
Thank you. Sounds like we'll have a field trip in the coming weeks. Absolutely, sounds good.

Thank you. Yeah, no, very insightful conversation. So we will move on to an update on fiscal year 24, third quarter town financials.

I believe we have the Director of Finance, Amy Sarrow, with us this evening.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:23 - 1:13:04)
David, can I ask you a question? Later in the consent agenda, we have about this grant, right? So Dave from Kleinfelder is intimately involved in that as well.

I don't know if the board is going to want to dig into it deeply. I actually feel pretty well prepared to respond to questions about it. But if people would prefer to hear it from Dave rather than from me, I just wanted to raise that.

Dave, if he needs to stay, he needs to stay. But I was just wondering whether or not people definitely knew that they were gonna have very detailed questions. They were gonna want the expert to answer or not.

[Speaker 6] (1:13:06 - 1:13:12)
No, understood, understood, yeah. I didn't have any questions about the MVP grant, Katie or Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 5] (1:13:13 - 1:13:15)
I have not even read the MVP grant because we just got it today.

[Speaker 3] (1:13:16 - 1:13:37)
Well, just so you know, what I sent last week is the exact same thing. This is just a more detailed version of it. It's the exact same grant, same structure, same tasks, same focus, strategy, everything.

We just now have much more detail, especially around the budget. And I could certainly respond to budget questions later. I don't mean to disrupt the whole flow here.

[Speaker 6] (1:13:37 - 1:13:39)
No, understood, but yeah, while we have Dave here, I agree.

[Speaker 18] (1:13:40 - 1:13:42)
Should we just take the consent agenda now, then?

[Speaker 6] (1:13:42 - 1:13:49)
We can. Take it out of the consent agenda. We can pull it out of that.

We can just address, yeah, we can just address the letter of support for the MVP grant.

[Speaker 5] (1:13:49 - 1:13:52)
You wanna pull it out of the consent agenda or you wanna look at the whole consent?

[Speaker 6] (1:13:52 - 1:14:06)
We can, if there are no questions and we're going to bless this within the consent agenda, I think we can keep it here and move on to the third quarter town financials. If not, if there were detailed questions, we do have Dave Peterson from Kleinfelder.

[Speaker 4] (1:14:06 - 1:14:22)
I just have a couple questions, so why don't we just pull it real quick. So basically, with all of the, so this is the grant, you plan for this, and basically the cost to the town is going to be what?

[Speaker 3] (1:14:22 - 1:14:24)
About 20%. 10%.

[Speaker 4] (1:14:24 - 1:14:27)
It'd be 10%, but your overall dollar amount was?

[Speaker 13] (1:14:33 - 1:14:33)
406.

[Speaker 3] (1:14:33 - 1:15:05)
The town's share is $27,000. Yeah, if you go all the way back to after the narrative, and there's a chart, a budget chart. Well, it says page two on it, but it's not the first page two.

It's like after you get to page 11, then one, two. And so the cash match is our share. There's an in-kind match, too, which is town staff time that's been calculated.

[Speaker 4] (1:15:06 - 1:15:07)
How much is that?

[Speaker 3] (1:15:07 - 1:15:08)
21,000.

[Speaker 4] (1:15:09 - 1:15:29)
The town staff is 21,000? In-kind match. Got it right here.

And this is a grant for, this isn't CZM, MVP?

[Speaker 3] (1:15:29 - 1:16:12)
No, this is MVP. Just I'll do the quick overview, and Dave can step in whenever you want him to. But right, this is MVP.

We're also gonna apply for CZM. Basically the same thing, some little tweaks because of their different criteria. This is all about comprehensively looking at Fisherman's Beach to Eisenman's Beach to Phillips Park.

That whole entire area. And the other difference with MVP is that it's not just coastal. Coastal zone management is just coastal.

Here we're kind of inland flooding as well, right? So there's different models, both kind of the sea level rise and storm surge, but there's also kind of inland flooding models and precipitation that are incorporated in this as well.

[Speaker 2] (1:16:12 - 1:16:23)
It gets blocked with debris and flooding. It's a life safety issue to residents and access. So lots of serious issues that the grant can help us address.

[Speaker 4] (1:16:24 - 1:16:31)
So one question I have is, did this grant just come up in the last couple of weeks? Like we're being asked to approve a grant.

[Speaker 3] (1:16:32 - 1:16:34)
No, this is the one I've been talking about for months. This is exactly the same.

[Speaker 4] (1:16:34 - 1:16:42)
You've been talking about working on a grant. I know, but what I'm saying is it does seem like it's come, it just seems a little rushed.

[Speaker 3] (1:16:43 - 1:17:53)
We've been talking in detail with multiple chairs of the different committees. I've been given updates on this every single meeting, I feel like. So we've been like really kind of evolving this.

And yes, there's always with grants, there's always a deadline, right? So things start to accelerate, right? So there's no doubt about that.

But we had conversations with MVP. We had conversation with CZM. We've been back and forth with Dave's team trying to refine this.

They've engaged Wood's whole group as well for this. You know, there's a lot of different moving pieces to kind of bring this all together. And, you know, I mean, I'm sorry that you all haven't had a chance to read the detail that we got from Kleinfelder today.

But I mean, I just have to say, I just feel like really great about this. Who knows if we'll actually win because it's super competitive, but we've got a framework here now that is incredibly thoughtful and thorough as far as I'm concerned, looking at a lot of different options. And so by the end of this, which will take some time, I really think we're going through a really good process.

There's a lot of community engagement that's built into this. So, you know, we've got a serious problem and I think this is a serious response to it.

[Speaker 4] (1:17:54 - 1:18:01)
And then we're gonna be applying similar to CZM to the Coastal. Is it pretty much the same thing to Coastal?

[Speaker 3] (1:18:01 - 1:18:16)
Yes, this MVP and then Coastal will come back again with that one to approve that separately. That'll be like within the next few weeks. Did I miss anything critical?

Did I mess anything up?

[Speaker 6] (1:18:16 - 1:18:21)
No, no, I did great. All right, any questions, comments?

[Speaker 5] (1:18:21 - 1:19:35)
I have a question, not about this specific grant, but just about grant review in general. I know we like briefly talked about it in a prior meeting and just figuring out like sort of the efficiency of time because obviously we're gonna talk about this and many other grants going forward. And the potential is we don't even get them, but we've spent 10, 20 minutes maybe on each grant or maybe not.

And I just having a process in place about what the expectation is for reviewing these going forward, just because there's a real chance for grant applications. Marcy's not here, but she could probably tell us what the over under is on actually being awarded all the grants that we've applied for. And so just wanna talk about, you know, efficiency of time.

And yes, we absolutely have a fiduciary responsibility to how we're spending the time and what sort of grants are going out there. But at the same time, we're not being asked to spend this money or match this money. It will come back to us, right?

Like there's, because we don't have a grant, there's no earmark for any funds. And if we were to be awarded the grant, they would have to come back and earmark the funds would have to be earmarked.

[Speaker 3] (1:19:35 - 1:19:47)
Not in this case, just be clear, right? Because on ARPA last week, we actually allocated the 200,000 that we, you actually have to have them kind of put for this one, just for this one.

[Speaker 5] (1:19:47 - 1:19:58)
Yeah, but that's because we did it already in another process, but there's a process in place to backstop any funds. It's not like you apply for the grant and then you just get the funding from us.

[Speaker 6] (1:19:59 - 1:20:05)
Yeah, so just, no, no, no, just in the discussion about process, Katie, I think that's a good.

[Speaker 4] (1:20:05 - 1:20:07)
We'll be applying for these things every single year.

[Speaker 3] (1:20:08 - 1:20:14)
CZM and- Generally, this actually we're applying, this one actually runs almost two years, this grant here. But generally, yes.

[Speaker 6] (1:20:15 - 1:20:51)
Sorry. Just regarding process, you know, it was certainly my intention for this to be included on a consent agenda. So we could, so we could review it.

We could, you know, we could pull it out if there were questions or anything else. But, you know, we seemed, you know, certainly the town administrator and town staff know what the priorities of the town are. And it's certainly my intention to have this on consent agendas as these items come up.

And then we can certainly have a discussion or simply approve as part of the consent agenda regarding the grants.

[Speaker 2] (1:20:51 - 1:21:59)
We also have a terrific committee that's focused on this too. And I, again, these are the kind of things that, you know, we've got a committee that's focused on this and we've got committees that are focused on a lot of different grants. I appreciate the board's interest in just being more transparent and making sure that we just publicly talk about some of these activities.

I've heard from staff that it's gonna give other communities a little bit more of a competitive edge because they're gonna learn about all the things that we're doing. And again, I hear you, but I do think it's just important for us to talk about how these ultimately are gonna affect the town. You know, we've talked about, you know, how little we've invested in climate resiliency.

And these are the type of grants that are specifically focused on trying to help communities like Swampskate really think about the future and protect neighborhoods and do the kind of things that are really important in terms of infrastructure and resiliency. And so there's a lot of good work that's happened, but certainly, you know, looking for the board's support for this.

[Speaker 4] (1:21:59 - 1:21:59)
Yeah.

[Speaker 6] (1:22:01 - 1:22:02)
Anything additional?

[Speaker 4] (1:22:03 - 1:22:06)
No, so I'd make a motion to support this grant.

[Speaker 6] (1:22:07 - 1:22:10)
As well as the letter that goes along with it?

[Speaker 4] (1:22:10 - 1:22:11)
Yes, I saw the letter.

[Speaker 6] (1:22:12 - 1:23:28)
I would second that. Okay, all in favor? Aye.

Aye. All right, thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, Dave. All right, Ms. Sara, floor is yours. I don't know if we can't, we can't hear her.

Amy, we can't hear you. Yeah, stand by, stand by, please. Thank you.

Amy, Amy, try speaking now. Can you hear me now? No.

Do we need to turn the volume on the television up? No.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:29 - 1:23:31)
What is what? MVP stands.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:31 - 1:23:32)
Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:34 - 1:23:35)
I'm just trying to cause chaos.

[Speaker 3] (1:23:36 - 1:23:36)
Mayhem.

[Speaker 15] (1:23:36 - 1:23:42)
Mayhem. It did work earlier.

[Speaker 17] (1:23:52 - 1:23:53)
Do you want to go slightly?

[Speaker 2] (1:24:04 - 1:24:09)
Amy, I don't know if you can hear me, but maybe I can hack you into the meeting.

[Speaker 20] (1:24:10 - 1:24:18)
Well, everyone who's on Teams could hear me. All right. So it's just an issue in your room, because I could hear the guy, John, as well.

[Speaker 6] (1:24:22 - 1:24:25)
Yeah, I think, I think we'll, I think this can.

[Speaker 4] (1:24:28 - 1:24:31)
Just do this next time, this update next time.

[Speaker 18] (1:24:37 - 1:24:37)
Yeah.

[Speaker 6] (1:24:38 - 1:24:40)
Yeah, Amy, try to unmute yourself, please.

[Speaker 18] (1:24:41 - 1:24:43)
Or we can do it, like it was working.

[Speaker 5] (1:24:51 - 1:24:52)
Can you unmute?

[Speaker 13] (1:24:53 - 1:24:54)
Amy, can you try talking?

[Speaker 6] (1:24:56 - 1:25:06)
Nope. Nope. Look, I'm also, I'm also happy getting the, you know, having this at our, at our May meeting.

Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, Amy, we'll, yeah, we'll table it.

[Speaker 15] (1:25:07 - 1:25:07)
Hope Amy's good with it.

[Speaker 6] (1:25:08 - 1:25:08)
No, yeah.

[Speaker 15] (1:25:08 - 1:25:22)
We're gonna have the same problem with Pete. It's gonna be the same problem when Pete is reviewing the warrant. Not that I don't want to table Amy.

Okay. No, understood. Maybe Guy will Pete in for it.

[Speaker 4] (1:25:23 - 1:25:25)
Maybe it'll work from Pete's, Pete's.

[Speaker 15] (1:25:28 - 1:25:33)
We should probably turn up the volume on the TV. You can try to see your phone. Is that one working?

[Speaker 4] (1:25:33 - 1:25:34)
No, it wasn't really working.

[Speaker 15] (1:25:34 - 1:25:35)
Was it?

[Speaker 4] (1:25:36 - 1:25:37)
I could, I could hear her.

[Speaker 14] (1:25:37 - 1:25:38)
You could hear it?

[Speaker 4] (1:25:38 - 1:25:39)
Yeah. I couldn't hear it.

[Speaker 12] (1:25:39 - 1:25:41)
Can you put it more in the middle?

[Speaker 2] (1:25:44 - 1:25:46)
Okay, would you like me to try this speakerphone?

[Speaker 3] (1:25:46 - 1:25:51)
Let's ask Pete. Can Pete? Can you hear us, Pete?

Can you come off mute?

[Speaker 5] (1:25:56 - 1:25:58)
He can hear us, but we are.

[Speaker 6] (1:25:58 - 1:26:02)
We can't hear you. We can't hear you, though. Same problem.

[Speaker 17] (1:26:02 - 1:26:02)
All right.

[Speaker 5] (1:26:02 - 1:26:05)
Amy's making fun of us now. They're all laughing at us.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:08 - 1:26:14)
Okay. And people, it can't be them signing off and signing back in, because it's happening to all of them, right?

[Speaker 6] (1:26:14 - 1:26:37)
No, no. So look, I would recommend that we hold off on the Q3 financial report from Amy. We do need to, we do need to attempt to close the warrant this evening.

If for whatever reason we cannot close the warrant, I would want to have a, you know, an all-virtual meeting on Monday, perhaps, but I think we can do it tonight.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:38 - 1:26:42)
How far does Pete live? Salem.

[Speaker 2] (1:26:44 - 1:27:08)
Would you like me to give him a call? Yeah. Yes, please.

Hey, do you mind? I'm gonna put you on speakerphone, so you can, all right, I may have to turn the volume down. Hold on one second.

Hey, Pete. Hi, Pete.

[Speaker 6] (1:27:09 - 1:27:16)
Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Okay, great.

[Speaker 9] (1:27:20 - 1:27:23)
I will share my screen then.

[Speaker 6] (1:27:23 - 1:27:24)
Yes, please.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:33 - 1:27:37)
I just have a quick question. Go ahead. Can people watching hear him?

[Speaker 15] (1:27:38 - 1:27:38)
Yeah.

[Speaker 17] (1:27:38 - 1:27:39)
Yes, they can.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:39 - 1:27:39)
Yes.

[Speaker 11] (1:27:39 - 1:27:43)
It's weird, it's like not in here, but it's like on Teams, you can hear him talk.

[Speaker 2] (1:27:44 - 1:27:48)
Great, okay. I used to be on a cable committee.

[Speaker 17] (1:27:51 - 1:27:52)
Good to know.

[Speaker 2] (1:27:52 - 1:27:52)
That's great.

[Speaker 6] (1:27:53 - 1:27:54)
Continue, Pete.

[Speaker 9] (1:27:55 - 1:28:25)
Okay, all right, so walking through the various articles, I'm gonna get you to article one. Actually, article two. So there are a number of articles that we need the select board to vote on your recommendation or whether you're going to make a report at town meeting.

So the first one is article two, which is the approval of bills for primal fiscal years.

[Speaker 3] (1:28:26 - 1:28:43)
Okay, it looks like finance committee approved it last night. Everything's finalized here. So we're in a position, we've kind of scrutinized this before.

So I would at least start off by making a motion for us to recommend this with favorable action.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:44 - 1:28:56)
So there's a new line item in here. The greater Boston Police Council, that's not a new line item.

[Speaker 6] (1:28:57 - 1:29:01)
That's consistent from the from the warrant that was distributed on the 17th.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:01 - 1:29:04)
Okay, I must be looking at a warrant from before that.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:07 - 1:29:15)
So we have a motion, do we have a second? I mean, I made a motion for favorable action on paying our bills from prior years.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:16 - 1:29:17)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:17 - 1:29:19)
All right, all in favor?

[Speaker 4] (1:29:19 - 1:29:19)
Aye.

[Speaker 6] (1:29:20 - 1:29:27)
Aye, thank you. Article three.

[Speaker 9] (1:29:28 - 1:29:39)
The next article is article three. This is the FY 25 proposed operating budget. St. Conn did review this and plans to report on the article at town meeting.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:42 - 1:29:54)
Typically the board does the same thing. You know, there may be a few changes as I outlined earlier. And, you know, the next couple of weeks, it'll give us a chance to get some additional information.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:54 - 1:29:54)
Make some adjustments.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:55 - 1:29:55)
Healthcare.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:55 - 1:29:57)
Yes. I think that's a good idea.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:57 - 1:30:00)
So we don't need to spend time scrutinizing tonight.

[Speaker 6] (1:30:03 - 1:30:09)
Report at town meeting. Article four.

[Speaker 9] (1:30:10 - 1:30:22)
The next article is article four, which is the utility fund. Hold on one second. Here we go.

Utilities, stabilization, or reserve fund.

[Speaker 2] (1:30:22 - 1:31:29)
So I have reached out to the school business manager and the superintendent and our director of finance have worked out a MOU that's gonna be specific about the utility for the new school. And so, you know, we're gonna have an MOU similar to the MOU we have with the special education stabilization account. And this would allow us to ensure that, you know, we have some, you know, control over how these dollars are gonna be allocated.

But, you know, we're gonna be careful and certainly expect that I'll have language next week. As I've mentioned previously, these are best practice type of stabilization funds. They do help us, you know, make sure that our operating budgets are sound, but for line items that frankly fluctuate with the market or have conditions that, you know, we have a new school and we don't know exactly how that new school is gonna use energy.

This, you know, will help support that peace of mind that we're not short shifting a budget.

[Speaker 5] (1:31:30 - 1:32:01)
So can we just make sure in the MOU that there's some sort of trigger to dissolve the account if it's meant for sort of a temporary leveling of the utilities for the school? I totally support the idea of there being some fluctuation in the first couple of years while solar comes on and all that kind of, but if the utilities sort of level out consistently for two school years or something like that, then maybe we trigger that.

[Speaker 2] (1:32:01 - 1:32:22)
That's a great idea, Katie. I think sunsetting some of these through an MOU that says that, you know, every year, the select board or the school committee or the town administrator or superintendent all have to sign an MOU to say that, you know, these are funds that still serve a fiduciary purpose. I think that makes a lot of sense.

Okay.

[Speaker 12] (1:32:26 - 1:32:38)
I'm sorry, I have Amy. She needs to chime in. Amy?

You're on speaker. Stick her close to me. Yeah, right here, please.

We're gonna put you next to the microphone.

[Speaker 6] (1:32:39 - 1:32:40)
Okay, go ahead, Amy.

[Speaker 11] (1:32:42 - 1:32:48)
If you vote a stabilization or a reserve fund, it has to maintain for at least three years before you can rescind the vote.

[Speaker 5] (1:32:49 - 1:32:52)
30 years? Three. Three.

[Speaker 6] (1:32:52 - 1:33:00)
So we would have a sunset provision that could be no earlier than June 30 of 27. Correct.

[Speaker 5] (1:33:02 - 1:33:04)
Which I think is plausible for this.

[Speaker 4] (1:33:04 - 1:33:04)
Yeah.

[Speaker 5] (1:33:04 - 1:33:06)
I don't think that's.

[Speaker 4] (1:33:06 - 1:33:30)
Yeah, if we wanna even, but the understanding is that the schools are going to be, the schools are forecasting a shortage of $200,000 in their utility bill. And it is, according to the business manager, it is their feeling that once the solar comes online, which should be in the first 12 months, they will not have that shortage. That's right.

[Speaker 11] (1:33:30 - 1:33:32)
That's Max's understanding, yes.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:36 - 1:33:41)
That's Max. That's Max. So FinCom has not taken action on this article, Amy?

[Speaker 11] (1:33:42 - 1:33:55)
FinCom decided not to vote on this because they wanted to see the MOU before they took a position. They were in favor of the fund in concept, they just wanted to see the parameters around it.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:55 - 1:33:59)
And I think that's probably the same consensus of us as well.

[Speaker 17] (1:34:00 - 1:34:00)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:34:00 - 1:34:02)
All right, so we'll report it to our meeting.

[Speaker 9] (1:34:07 - 1:34:31)
Okay, the next two articles are essentially in tandem. This has to do with the opioid settlement. The first article, article five, is to rescind the Opioid Settlement Special Purpose Fund with article six being transferring that money that was then put into free cash now into an Opioid Special Reserve Fund.

[Speaker 3] (1:34:33 - 1:34:39)
So I'd make a motion for the select board to report favorable action on both of these if we need to do them separately, but.

[Speaker 5] (1:34:41 - 1:34:42)
I second that motion.

[Speaker 6] (1:34:43 - 1:34:44)
All right, all in favor?

[Speaker 5] (1:34:44 - 1:34:44)
Aye.

[Speaker 6] (1:34:45 - 1:34:46)
Thank you.

[Speaker 9] (1:34:47 - 1:34:55)
I do have to step back a second. Article four, we do not have a sponsor for that article.

[Speaker 2] (1:34:55 - 1:34:56)
The town administrator.

[Speaker 4] (1:34:57 - 1:34:59)
Why don't we just have the sponsor of the select board?

[Speaker 2] (1:34:59 - 1:35:01)
Okay, have it be the select board.

[Speaker 9] (1:35:02 - 1:35:02)
Select board?

[Speaker 2] (1:35:03 - 1:35:03)
Sure.

[Speaker 9] (1:35:04 - 1:35:07)
Okay, same thing is true for article five.

[Speaker 4] (1:35:08 - 1:35:09)
Select board.

[Speaker 3] (1:35:13 - 1:35:18)
Eventually, we'll have to not pick one of us, right, to kind of go up there and. Yeah, we'll have to go up and.

[Speaker 4] (1:35:19 - 1:35:19)
Yeah, we do that.

[Speaker 3] (1:35:20 - 1:35:23)
I think Mary Ellen's pretty excited about all three of these, so maybe you wanna.

[Speaker 4] (1:35:23 - 1:35:30)
I have a lot of history of going up there. Famous for the marijuana request a few years ago.

[Speaker 3] (1:35:32 - 1:35:38)
That's kind of in line then, the opioid, the marijuana. All right, moving on.

[Speaker 9] (1:35:38 - 1:35:46)
So article seven is the transfer of Waterworks Enterprise Fund retained earnings, sum of $130,000.

[Speaker 6] (1:35:49 - 1:35:49)
Again?

[Speaker 5] (1:35:50 - 1:36:04)
Can I just make a comment, though? If article five is sponsored by the town administrator, then I would think maybe article six should also. I mean, article six is sponsored by the town administrator.

Maybe article five should be as well. Just have it consistent. If you're gonna take them together.

[Speaker 2] (1:36:05 - 1:36:08)
If Mary Ellen would like the board to sponsor any of these articles.

[Speaker 4] (1:36:08 - 1:36:14)
I always prefer that the select board is sponsoring. Okay, then. Should the select board's warrant.

[Speaker 5] (1:36:14 - 1:36:17)
Who should the select board not then sponsor article six?

[Speaker 14] (1:36:17 - 1:36:20)
She wanted four, five, and six. Four, five, six, yeah.

[Speaker 5] (1:36:20 - 1:36:27)
Oh, so you wanna, okay, I'm sorry. I just read that it was already sponsored by the town administrator, so we're making a change to the select board. Apologies.

[Speaker 6] (1:36:29 - 1:36:30)
All right, article seven.

[Speaker 4] (1:36:33 - 1:36:42)
Did the finance committee vote on this? They recommended favorable action. Yes.

So I'd like to make a motion to vote favorable action. Second.

[Speaker 6] (1:36:42 - 1:36:43)
All in favor. Aye.

[Speaker 9] (1:36:46 - 1:36:52)
Article eight is approving the transfer of super enterprise fund retained earnings, sum of 72,000.

[Speaker 4] (1:36:54 - 1:37:01)
Make a motion, I make a motion to approve article eight. Second.

[Speaker 6] (1:37:01 - 1:37:02)
All in favor. Aye.

[Speaker 9] (1:37:05 - 1:37:22)
Article nine. This is the approving transfer of fee cash for special education reserve fund transferring of 200,000. We need a sponsorship as well as the select board's recommendation.

[Speaker 4] (1:37:25 - 1:37:41)
I just have a quick question on this. The finance committee is recommending favorable action on this, but do we happen to know the dollar status on what that stabilization fund is right now and what they're gonna forecast out? It's not gonna change my vote.

I just wanna know if we could have the information.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:41 - 1:37:43)
We can get that. Amy, do you have that?

[Speaker 11] (1:37:44 - 1:37:58)
Mayor Allen, so far they have not expended any money from this fund. Last I spoke with Cheryl at the school, she said at most she's projecting 172,000 of usage from the 350 that was voted last year.

[Speaker 4] (1:37:58 - 1:38:21)
I think she's using the, that asset, what is it? There's a school that needed a new UV system or some type of a system, a capital issue. And she's gonna use that money out of the fund so that she'll get reimbursed later on or a percentage reimbursed later on.

[Speaker 11] (1:38:22 - 1:38:24)
Do you mean the special assessment that they were?

[Speaker 4] (1:38:24 - 1:38:25)
Yeah.

[Speaker 11] (1:38:26 - 1:38:29)
They were able to figure that out within their operating budget.

[Speaker 4] (1:38:30 - 1:38:38)
Okay. All right, so you're saying you don't think they've spent anything out of there or what's the dollar amount you said?

[Speaker 11] (1:38:39 - 1:38:52)
As of this moment, they have not spent anything out of there. For FY 24, Cheryl was saying that they anticipate about 172,000 of usage from there this year out of the 350 that was already voted.

[Speaker 4] (1:38:53 - 1:38:54)
Okay, great, thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:00 - 1:39:05)
So I would recommend favorable, actually I would make a motion, select board report favorable action on this.

[Speaker 17] (1:39:05 - 1:39:06)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:06 - 1:39:07)
All in favor.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:08 - 1:39:08)
Aye.

[Speaker 6] (1:39:09 - 1:39:15)
And will this be, who's gonna be sponsoring this? Is this the finance committee? I think it sounds like the select board.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:15 - 1:39:17)
It's right here, the select board's sponsoring this.

[Speaker 14] (1:39:18 - 1:39:21)
Oh, I wasn't in mind. Where should I fill that?

[Speaker 13] (1:39:21 - 1:39:22)
It's not in this one.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:23 - 1:39:26)
Sponsored by, oh, I see, select board.

[Speaker 6] (1:39:30 - 1:39:30)
Article 10.

[Speaker 9] (1:39:33 - 1:39:43)
This is amending the general bylaws to create the Andrews Chapel revolving fund and giving it a spending limit of 25,000. Second.

[Speaker 5] (1:39:43 - 1:39:47)
So I make a motion that the select board recommends favorable action. Second.

[Speaker 6] (1:39:47 - 1:39:48)
All in favor.

[Speaker 5] (1:39:48 - 1:39:48)
Aye.

[Speaker 6] (1:39:49 - 1:39:52)
Thank you. 11.

[Speaker 9] (1:39:54 - 1:40:07)
This is also amending the general bylaws specifically to the historical commission revolving fund and amending the fiscal year spending limit from 5,000 to 25,000.

[Speaker 5] (1:40:08 - 1:40:12)
So I recommend the select board make favorable action on the article.

[Speaker 4] (1:40:12 - 1:40:13)
Second.

[Speaker 6] (1:40:14 - 1:40:21)
All in favor. Aye. Thank you.

Spoken with gas. Article 12.

[Speaker 9] (1:40:21 - 1:40:25)
Article 12, adoption of CTA.

[Speaker 3] (1:40:28 - 1:41:12)
So I will say, I don't know if I reported on this the last time. I think a couple of us were on the meeting with the finance committee. I'm trying to think about the order of things here.

So the finance committee did take a position, I wasn't on last night, but they did report favorable action on this. We had a detailed discussion with them about the exemptions and the surcharge level and they came around to unanimous support for the 1.5% that we discussed here. If anyone else was on at that point, I gave them a lot of encouragement to make sure that they were very, very comfortable with it and that's where they kind of landed.

[Speaker 5] (1:41:14 - 1:41:30)
I just have a question about the language of the article. So do we need to modify the language? I know in the comment it says 1.5, but not in the article itself. It just says an amount not just 3%. So we have to modify that to say 1.5% of taxes assessed.

[Speaker 9] (1:41:31 - 1:41:40)
So the reason P being is the article language is the standard language and you would set that 1.5 based on the motion.

[Speaker 5] (1:41:42 - 1:41:44)
What? Say that again, Pete?

[Speaker 3] (1:41:44 - 1:42:01)
Yeah, that's, Pete, did you get that from town council? Because I ran the version with 1.5 in there past the guys that run these community preservation things all across the state and they said, they thought the 1.5 should be right in, I think you're right, Doug.

[Speaker 2] (1:42:01 - 1:42:15)
And I think if the board is comfortable, we'll. Thank you for playing Pete. Sorry.

That means that we've got low power, 10%. So I don't know if we're.

[Speaker 4] (1:42:15 - 1:42:21)
So we just wanna, we wanna amend that motion to be 1.5%. Let's hear from Pete.

[Speaker 5] (1:42:21 - 1:42:27)
I guess I want to amend the motion to be whatever is required to have 1.5%. Right.

[Speaker 3] (1:42:27 - 1:42:34)
And let's let Pete, Pete, is there a reason you, did you get town council or where are you getting the.

[Speaker 9] (1:42:35 - 1:43:00)
I was provided the information today that the language in the article is based on standard, which is not to exceed and that it's, that your motion can then specify the explicit, which is why the language of the article says not to exceed 3%, which is the maximum allowed. But we would buy motion, set it at one and a half, but we can certainly verify with council.

[Speaker 3] (1:43:01 - 1:43:06)
Let's do one and a half. Let's do, we don't need people getting more upset. Oh, no, no.

I think it, look.

[Speaker 5] (1:43:07 - 1:43:16)
I would assume that if that, what Pete is saying may not be incorrect, but also if we just set the percentage in the article, that is also not incorrect and that.

[Speaker 2] (1:43:16 - 1:43:30)
Sounds like there's a motion to set it at 1.5. Yes, that's what I would like to do. We'll, we'll report back if town council says that somehow this language statutorily has to stay as it is printed. I don't believe that.

[Speaker 4] (1:43:30 - 1:43:31)
All right, so we're just going to come back to this one?

[Speaker 2] (1:43:31 - 1:43:32)
I think we can vote.

[Speaker 5] (1:43:32 - 1:43:42)
I think we can vote with the 1.5 in, right? Let's vote to say that an amount of 1.5 and take the not to exceed 3% out and then I.

[Speaker 6] (1:43:42 - 1:43:44)
An amount not to exceed one and a half percent.

[Speaker 5] (1:43:45 - 1:43:47)
No, I would just say an amount of one and a half.

[Speaker 6] (1:43:47 - 1:43:48)
Of one and a half percent, okay.

[Speaker 5] (1:43:48 - 1:43:58)
Yeah, and take the not to exceed part out. And then I would, I would motion to recommend the select board's favorable action on the article as amended.

[Speaker 6] (1:43:58 - 1:44:06)
Second. All in favor? Aye.

All right, and I would also just recommend that this is sponsored by the select board, right?

[Speaker 17] (1:44:07 - 1:44:07)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:44:07 - 1:44:10)
We're not going to let the town administrator take any credit for that at all.

[Speaker 2] (1:44:12 - 1:44:15)
Look, you can have it all. Yeah.

[Speaker 6] (1:44:17 - 1:44:19)
Article 13, we do have.

[Speaker 4] (1:44:21 - 1:44:22)
Bob Powell here.

[Speaker 6] (1:44:22 - 1:44:24)
Yeah, we have Bob Powell here from the retirement board.

[Speaker 4] (1:44:24 - 1:44:25)
He's still awake.

[Speaker 2] (1:44:25 - 1:44:27)
Vice chair of the retirement board.

[Speaker 6] (1:44:28 - 1:44:29)
Mr. Powell.

[Speaker 5] (1:44:29 - 1:44:31)
That's you. The floor is yours. You're on.

[Speaker 3] (1:44:33 - 1:44:34)
This is the moment you've been waiting for.

[Speaker 7] (1:44:39 - 1:44:40)
I'm going to stay here this time.

[Speaker 4] (1:44:41 - 1:44:43)
That'd be nice. Yeah.

[Speaker 7] (1:44:44 - 1:45:55)
So first off, I want to acknowledge Peter Speleos's service to the select board and to the town, a decade of service, a laundry list of accomplishments, rail trail, new school, Hawthorne, lover properties, streetlights, beach stickers, on and on and on. There'll be a laundry list, I'm sure, at town meeting where he'll get credit for that and much more. I can't say that I heard him say this directly, but he is presumed to have said, with respect to town issues, that it's hard to say yes, it's easy to say no.

And I think it's a great saying, even if he didn't say it, because he was more often than not saying, yes, how about what if, then no, it can't be done. And rather than ruling things out on the face of it, he always seemed to think about the ways that things could be done. So kudos to Peter, and he will be missed.

I think Andrews Chapel is spelled without the apostrophe, by the way. It's in the warrant, right?

[Speaker 2] (1:45:55 - 1:46:07)
We can fix it, though. It's a scrivener's error. I'm glad you pointed it out.

It's the editor in me. Yes, if you have any other, please send them along. We always need a good proofreader.

[Speaker 7] (1:46:07 - 1:47:42)
Anyway, so just by way of background, Bob Powell, Precinct Four town meeting member, chair of the Council on Aging, board member of the Retirement Board, co-chair of the Swamp Scupper All Ages Committee, and soon to be a member of the Master Plan Committee. With regard to the motion, I think, let me just sort of preface my comments by saying I think today you could obviously vote to not include this in the warrant. You could vote at town meeting to indefinite postponement.

We could go to town meeting and have it presented and have it pass or fail. And ultimately, if you vote to not include it in the warrant, or if it fails at town meeting, I think we'll go back to the drawing board. We could go back and spend 12 or 13 months thinking about ways to help these retirees.

60 of them are below 14,000 at the moment. In your packet, I have, from 2020, the presentation I gave at town meeting where we voted to increase this COLA base from 13 to 14,000. And at that meeting, with cooperation from FinCom, we identified three triggers to increase the COLA base for future increases.

And I think it's in the back of the packet, and it starts out by saying April 24th, 2020. It's all the way in back, the front. The front is just sort of prelude, just for posterity so that you have, for those of you who may not have been at town meeting then or on the select board, that was what was presented in terms of what the triggers would be.

So, Doug, if you go all the way back.

[Speaker 16] (1:47:43 - 1:47:44)
Trigger one? Trigger one.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:44 - 1:47:49)
So, back in 2020, with FinCom, we had agreed.

[Speaker 3] (1:47:49 - 1:47:53)
Does everyone, make sure everyone has that back. Is everyone? Yeah, so it would be trigger one.

It's like three or four pages from the back.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:53 - 1:47:54)
Yeah, it's like all the way in back.

[Speaker 3] (1:47:54 - 1:47:56)
Yep, separate, yeah. There.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:57 - 1:50:59)
So, what we had agreed was that there would be three triggers to request, to come back to town meeting and request a COLA base. One was a COLA base comparison. How do we stack up relative to the other 104 towns and cities and entities within the Massachusetts retirement system in terms of COLA bases?

And what we said was that if Swanscott fell below the average, that would be trigger one. So, at the moment, we're now at 14,000, and we're below the PEREC universe. 53 systems are above 15,000, 51 are below.

It's a small difference, but it's a trigger. The second trigger was how is inflation affecting the retirees? And since 2021, if you are at a base rate of 14,000, inflation would be at the current rate of inflation over those past few years.

$16,000 and $716 would be what would be required to be the equivalent of what you needed in 2021 to spend. Over the past few years, we annually give, typically, our retirees a COLA increase of 3%. So, in 2021, if you were at 14,000, you would get a 3% increase.

And so, from January 2021 to April 2024, what you would be now receiving would be 15,398, which is below what you would need to spend the near equivalent amount in 2021. So, that's trigger two, that's a green light. And then trigger three was how are we with our funded status?

And if you can notice, from 2017 through 2023, our last report, we've moved from 53% funded status all the way up to 70%. So, we're moving in a positive direction. Each and every year, we're moving up about, not quite 10 percentage points, but we're moving in a positive direction.

And we're on track at the moment to be fully funded in 2031. And then the last thing I'll mention is our current funding schedule, which is on the last slide page, was if we don't have an exact amount, in order to get an exact amount, we'd have to go back to our actuary, to Segal, and ask them to do a study at probably a cost of around $15,000. So, the number I have here is an estimate, which is if we were to increase the coal base from 14,000 to 16,000, that would increase the ADC, the amount of money that the town has to contribute to the pension, by approximately $1 million per annum.

And ultimately, what we would need to do to get the exact number is to do a study with Segal to find out what the actual number would be and what the funding schedule would be. So, in essence, that would, if we move from 14 to $16,000, the ADC would increase from, say, in fiscal 25, from 6.6 million to 7.6 million.

[Speaker 3] (1:51:04 - 1:51:21)
Two minutes. Should I ask, wait till you're done? I'm done.

It was short and sweet. That seems like a lot of money. I mean, we've got 200 people that are, 250 people in the system.

You say 60 or something would be affected by this?

[Speaker 7] (1:51:21 - 1:51:35)
Roughly 60 or 14,000 and below. How that amounts to a million dollars? Well, it's roughly, for every 1,000, you raise it.

And Amy's still online, is she not?

[Speaker 13] (1:51:36 - 1:51:40)
She is. I'm still here. I'm still here.

[Speaker 7] (1:51:40 - 1:51:43)
So, Amy, right, 500,000, for every 1,000, we raise it?

[Speaker 11] (1:51:45 - 1:51:56)
Yeah, that's what we were roughly quoted before is, for every 1,000 we raise the COLA base, it will add a half a million dollars to the unfunded liability.

[Speaker 6] (1:51:58 - 1:52:17)
Got it. Bob, has there been any discussion about the extension of the schedule? So, you're looking at, it looks like this is fully funded, pension's fully funded by 2031.

Has there been any study or discussion of extending that out beyond 2031 to help smooth this out on the town side?

[Speaker 7] (1:52:17 - 1:53:21)
So, we've had discussions. We've not asked Siegel to do that study, partly because the previous FinCom, when Jill Sullivan was there the last time we went through this, there was a request that we keep the funding schedule as is. So, 2031 sort of became our North Star.

I think there are various things that we could do to make this kind of COLA base increase palatable. We could increase the funding schedule. We could use free cash to pay down some of the debt.

We could increase our discount rate, which I'd rather not do. And so, there are mechanisms, right? There are levers we can move to maybe make this more palatable.

Right now, PARAC recommends that we increase the amount that you fund by three to 5% per year. It's at 5% right now. Obviously, if we went to $7.6 million, it would be, I didn't do the math, but it would be considerably more than 5%.

[Speaker 2] (1:53:23 - 1:55:51)
So, the good news is, there's a bunch of little levers here. You know, we've got a tight budget. And, you know, to kind of think about, like, how we fit a million dollars worth of additional costs into a line that is growing significantly every year, it's tough.

I've asked the retirement board over the last few years to consider extending out the schedule just because of the burden that this generation pays for all the other generations that just didn't chip in enough. I mean, this means that, you know, our budget is so much tighter because of these obligations. And I appreciate the prior finance committee's fiduciary.

They don't wanna, you know, extend out a cost to fund the schedule, but at what cost do we pay not to have some additional flexibility with our operating budget? I mean, we could have more, you know, a resiliency professional. We could have more, you know, public health, you know, support more senior center staff.

I mean, there's so many things that we could have more of if we didn't have millions of dollars worth of obligations. I, Bob, I appreciate the advocacy. I appreciate the service that our public servants have given the town and given local government.

It's important that we take care of them. I don't want you to hear me as thinking that there's no way that we can increase this. I just think this comes late and it doesn't give us a chance to do what we have done over the last few years, as we've taken Swampskate from a double A minus community to a triple A community and really spend the time to really figure out how to do this in the most careful way.

I would like to see this increased. I would like to see it increased in a way that really helps support some of those broader fiduciary responsibilities that we've demonstrated. I want to get to yes.

I hope the board members also, you know, feel the same way. I just, I worry that, you know, moving forward right now with this, without really doing all the homework would be pretty challenging.

[Speaker 3] (1:55:52 - 1:56:13)
I agree with, I think I agree with everything Sean just said. I want to go back to the million dollars to make sure I'm kind of really thinking about it right. Should we be taking that million dollars and dividing it by whatever the 250, 260 people are, because everyone will get the bump.

Everyone will benefit from this or just the 60 people?

[Speaker 7] (1:56:13 - 1:56:29)
Well, it'll be slightly more than, so the way it works, Doug, is every of those 260 people, each and every year when there's a COLA increase, it's only on the COLA base amount. So let's say your pension was $100,000.

[Speaker 3] (1:56:30 - 1:56:31)
So you just don't benefit on the whole?

[Speaker 7] (1:56:32 - 1:56:50)
You benefit on the 14,000, right? But if you're below 14,000, you benefit greatly, right? Because that 3% matters more than it does to the person who has a pension of 100,000, let's say.

So what we'd be doing ultimately is increasing the number of retirees who benefit from the COLA increases per annum.

[Speaker 3] (1:56:50 - 1:57:10)
So then, to make sure I'm not going astray here, is it right to say if it's gonna increase the ADC by a million bucks, that you really do divide it by the 250, 260 people? And everyone would be getting like a $4,000 bump in?

[Speaker 7] (1:57:11 - 1:57:34)
No. Only, no, everyone would get a bump. So everyone would get a bump on the 16,000, right?

But the people below 16,000 will get a 3% bump on whatever their pension is. So 3% on 10,000, let's say, versus 3% on 100,000. Or 3% on the 16,000 for the person who has a $100,000 pension.

[Speaker 11] (1:57:36 - 1:57:44)
So Bob, if I can jump in, I think the confusion comes in with the million dollars gets added to the end of the funding schedule.

[Speaker 7] (1:57:46 - 1:57:48)
So it's kind of- Yeah, I'm sorry, thank you, Amy. I appreciate that.

[Speaker 11] (1:57:48 - 1:57:58)
Yeah, sorry. It's tacked on at the back. So by the time you get there, it'll be a million dollars, not- Not over it, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 7] (1:57:58 - 1:57:59)
Total difference. Thank you, thank you, Amy.

[Speaker 5] (1:58:00 - 1:58:01)
Six years from now, a million.

[Speaker 7] (1:58:01 - 1:58:06)
That's why we need to do the actual study with Siegel. Okay, yeah, okay, that's much better.

[Speaker 2] (1:58:06 - 1:58:07)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:58:07 - 1:58:10)
I think that somewhat addresses, maybe you realize that, Sean, but- I did.

[Speaker 2] (1:58:10 - 1:59:24)
I'm thinking about the operating budget, but Amy, I always appreciate that clarity. I think there's a path to success here, and I think it has to do with a little bit of flexibility. I think extending the funding schedule by a couple of years dramatically help our, dramatically, I can't stress how much a million dollars would mean if it went the other way.

I can't tell you how difficult it is to squeeze this budget every year to try to meet a 2%, and literally every year just try to figure out what do we have to defer. And so if there is a way for us to sit down as a financial team and find a way to yes, let's do it. Because I think the discount rate, all these different things, I know nobody likes to talk about it, but interest rates are soaring right now comparatively to where we were five years ago.

We're generating, our schedule is getting, is much better today than it has ever been in terms of addressing some of these long-term responsibilities. And so I think we could come back to the board and share a perspective that says, hey, look, there's a path here that is financially in everybody's best interest.

[Speaker 4] (1:59:25 - 1:59:30)
Do you have to have the report from the actuary to really have super detailed?

[Speaker 7] (1:59:30 - 1:59:34)
I have their most recent report that we can share with you. I don't have it in front of me.

[Speaker 4] (1:59:35 - 2:00:01)
Well, I'm just asking because if the timing looks like, if it looks like this timing is not the right timing, what I wanna know is at what point do we start to address this? I mean, and do you have to bring in the actuary? Do you bring in the actuary in December?

Do we start having this? Because in order to implement this right now, I think it would be a budget buster. Wouldn't it?

[Speaker 7] (2:00:01 - 2:00:03)
Are you asking me if it's a budget buster?

[Speaker 4] (2:00:04 - 2:00:09)
I don't like to ask questions I know the answer to. It will be a budget buster, but I'm just trying to find out what the timing is.

[Speaker 7] (2:00:09 - 2:00:21)
I'd say the moment you vote on whether to include this in the article or not is the moment we start to roll up our sleeves and start trying to figure out how to get to a place where we increase the number of people who benefit from the COLA base.

[Speaker 3] (2:00:21 - 2:00:44)
Wait, two things there. I actually don't think, maybe I'm again gonna be wrong, but the million dollars is getting added to the end of the funding schedule. This isn't actually doing this, if I understand correctly, actually doesn't necessarily change anything in terms of the FY25 operating budget.

That number's already set with your five percent schedule.

[Speaker 7] (2:00:45 - 2:00:48)
Right, yeah, that's correct. So Amy, you can confirm that.

[Speaker 2] (2:00:49 - 2:01:00)
Yeah, we haven't compared, yeah. We get this number from the state. Right, so the number.

But then it will be adjusted. They'll run a different schedule based on the increase.

[Speaker 5] (2:01:00 - 2:01:03)
So it won't be this year, but every other year will be different.

[Speaker 2] (2:01:03 - 2:01:03)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 5] (2:01:05 - 2:01:07)
And then maybe more years.

[Speaker 3] (2:01:07 - 2:01:08)
Right.

[Speaker 5] (2:01:08 - 2:01:10)
If that's the track we go down.

[Speaker 3] (2:01:10 - 2:01:10)
That's right.

[Speaker 5] (2:01:15 - 2:02:46)
Yeah, the other, again, I hate being negative here, but I don't want to do what folks did to us to more folks. So that is my heartache over extending the funding schedule. I know you're not talking about a decade of extension or anything like drastic, but I just really wanna understand sort of what that nice balance is between having a little extra room to do some of these things and pushing the burden on.

Sometimes you just have to say we can't do those things because we have an obligation and we're fiduciaries and we have to bite the bullet and the budget has to be tight until we can figure it out. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here because I just don't have necessarily all the data. If we increase the COLA and we had moved it, bumped it two, three years, what would that look like?

To me, I think this is a little cart before the horse and I actually think maybe we should have that information first so that we can make the best educated decision on two things running in parallel. One, whatever the COLA bump may become and two, whatever the unfunded life of the date becomes based on that bump. To me, I think to look at them separately, I don't know it necessarily makes the most sense.

[Speaker 2] (2:02:48 - 2:04:42)
Katie, I think that makes perfect sense. I think historically, I think when we did this previously, we worked together and we developed the presentation for the finance committee and the board and we got comfortable with the numbers and we did talk about what triggers this, let's come up with a metric and we're at a point now where we actually should do that. It just came at a little bit of a surprise to the budget process and I think it came late and so I think it gives us a chance to sit down tomorrow and just start working with the retirement board and say, hey, look, let's go and run, let's model this, let's get some of these numbers and let's get a sense of what is gonna be the annual contribution for the town over the next few years if we increase it by 1,000 or two or if we increase it incrementally over the next few years.

There's any number of variations that we could look at, including the discount, like we can use a couple of different levers and just come back and have this conversation so that everybody can understand how we're balancing these fiduciary responsibilities. I also think one of the most important things that we do and we've done this so well over the last few years is just take a look at the universe. Where are the other communities that we actually benchmark against and get a sense of are any other communities extending their schedule a little bit to help balance their municipal priorities a little bit more fairly?

To me, it's all about balance. Everybody, we have to pay our bills, we have to take care of our responsibilities and we have to be good stewards, but we also deserve to balance some of these priorities and that's what we're moving towards. We're trying to balance it.

We're not trying to knee-jerk our way through one issue to another. We're trying to get to a steady place.

[Speaker 3] (2:04:42 - 2:04:49)
Right, and there's nothing magical about 2031, right? I mean, it's a relatively arbitrary number, right?

[Speaker 16] (2:04:49 - 2:04:58)
Well, it's arbitrary and yeah, I mean, you can call it arbitrary, right? I mean, inherently better about 2031 than 2030 or 2032, right?

[Speaker 7] (2:04:58 - 2:05:32)
I mean, I'll speak as a non, I'll speak as a non, I'll speak as a non-retirement board member for a second, right? Let's just say, for example, you do extend it to 2032 or 2033. So instead of having a $6.6 million check you have to send to us, it goes down to 6 million, but you've now extended that by two years. So you're just paying the bill for a longer period of time and you're delaying, in my mind, again, not as a retirement board member, as a private citizen and as a taxpayer, you're delaying the time that it maybe takes to start paying down OPEB, for instance.

[Speaker 16] (2:05:33 - 2:05:33)
That's fine.

[Speaker 3] (2:05:33 - 2:05:35)
That's going to take till 2050 something, you know?

[Speaker 2] (2:05:36 - 2:05:36)
Right, right.

[Speaker 3] (2:05:36 - 2:05:37)
We're paying as we go though.

[Speaker 2] (2:05:37 - 2:06:01)
So we're paying everything as we go. Of course. Yes.

You know, at some point, you know, we've got all these pipes that we've got to take care of. We've got all these, you know, unmet, you know, service needs and other things. You know, there's so many things that have to compete with this.

And just to see this without seeing all those other things, I think, you know, puts us at a little bit of a disadvantage.

[Speaker 7] (2:06:01 - 2:06:35)
I mean, I would add one thing, you know, people sometimes accuse previous generations for this problem. But it really, for many years, this system, all the systems in Massachusetts were pay as you go. And it wasn't only until somewhat recently that we began to having to pay down the unfunded liability as opposed to being a pay as you go.

So I personally don't blame the previous generations. They were not at fault. The rules changed.

The rules changed. And towns, every town had to catch up. Not, it's not a generational problem from my perspective.

[Speaker 3] (2:06:35 - 2:07:03)
I just want to make sure that you feel, Sean said, like, timing wise, this kind of information came in, maybe not necessarily at the ideal time. Do you feel like that's fair? It's not like we've had this information and we've been sitting on it or anything like that.

Like, it's true that we're, I mean, this is the first time I'm seeing this right now. And I gave it to you. Okay, all right.

Okay, just wanted to make sure that there wasn't any, anyone that's not here wouldn't feel like, hey, wait a minute, we told you about this two months ago.

[Speaker 7] (2:07:03 - 2:07:06)
No, I mean, we're complying with the request to come before the board.

[Speaker 4] (2:07:06 - 2:07:31)
But the retirement board did have, I think there are members of the retirement board that feel that they've been talking about this for a while. This is an issue. They came to us in the fall and said we had an opportunity to increase the COLA because the state said every community could increase the COLA.

So there are members of the retirement board feel like, come on, we've been talking about this year in and year out and we need some help and we need to work together.

[Speaker 7] (2:07:31 - 2:07:42)
I mean, there was some disappointment on the part of the board where we did have the opportunity because of COVID to add an additional 5% on a one time basis, which was voted down by the select board.

[Speaker 3] (2:07:43 - 2:08:15)
And I know I distinctly remember saying that if we're gonna talk about these things, which I wholeheartedly support getting up to the 16,000, we need to pair it with some extension of the timeframe. So, I mean, at least I gave that feedback. I think other people gave that feedback at that time too.

But the only thing that came back was the increase to 16,000. So I do really feel like I think what Sean said that we really do need to have this two different parts. I think Katie said that, I mean, maybe we're all saying the same thing.

We do need to have a little bit of give and take to make this work.

[Speaker 7] (2:08:15 - 2:08:38)
I would ask the town administrator and the select board if there is cost involved in going back to Siegel to get all these manipulations that maybe there's a shared cost. Speaking not on behalf of the retirement board because I don't have the authority at the moment, but I think that's probably what they would say is if there's significant costs, if there's a way to share the burden of doing all these runs.

[Speaker 16] (2:08:40 - 2:08:41)
You don't have the answer now.

[Speaker 2] (2:08:41 - 2:08:44)
Bob, here's what I wanna say.

[Speaker 7] (2:08:44 - 2:08:45)
That's very good.

[Speaker 2] (2:08:45 - 2:10:01)
We didn't get a chance to do our third quarter update. So I do wanna say, Bob, you're one of the best people that we have to work with. You're a brilliant fiduciary.

I appreciate your advocacy for our retirees. I would meet with you or the retirement board at any point and really go over some of the fiduciary responsibilities we share. If we can find a way to partner, certainly I'm open to that.

We have a tight budget. We're getting to the end of the fiscal year. Sometimes we've had hundreds of thousands of dollars in tailings.

Sometimes we're bumping right up to the end of it. We're in a tight position this year. So I don't know exactly what we can do, but I wanna figure out a path to yes.

And I do think that there are a number of models that we can just put on a piece of paper before we get to the actuaries that can help us kind of get a sense of if we were to charge an actuary with modeling a few things, what would we like them to do? And I'm happy to schedule something next week and go over that. I know Amy has some thoughts about this as well and Patrick, our treasurer.

And so we could get a big cup of coffee and work through it.

[Speaker 7] (2:10:01 - 2:10:04)
Yeah, I mean, before we go to the actuary, I mean, they charge divorce lawyer rates.

[Speaker 2] (2:10:04 - 2:10:24)
I understand. That's why I wanna sit down and I wanna model it out first and get consensus and say, what do you think we should actually ask them to do? And then we can come back to the board and get a sense if that makes sense to the board, maybe make sense to the retirement board and see where that analysis takes us.

[Speaker 7] (2:10:24 - 2:10:36)
Yeah, I can tell you one last thing about extending the funding schedule. There's difference of opinion on the board. There's probably no desire to extend it to the maximum allowed, which is 2040 or so, because that then, sorry?

[Speaker 4] (2:10:37 - 2:10:37)
2042.

[Speaker 7] (2:10:38 - 2:10:46)
Right, the maximum allowed, whatever that is, is it gives us no flexibility at that point to do any, it just reduces our levers.

[Speaker 2] (2:10:46 - 2:10:46)
Understood.

[Speaker 7] (2:10:47 - 2:10:47)
Yep.

[Speaker 2] (2:10:47 - 2:10:55)
Yep. Yeah, I'm just looking for a little, a little bit, a little room. Do we, so given that.

[Speaker 5] (2:10:56 - 2:11:00)
I'll make a motion to remove this article from the warrant. Oh, sorry, no.

[Speaker 4] (2:11:03 - 2:11:05)
Okay, you can make a motion, then we can discuss it.

[Speaker 5] (2:11:05 - 2:11:11)
Okay, great. So I make a motion to remove article 13 from the warrant.

[Speaker 3] (2:11:12 - 2:11:15)
I will second it just to get to discussion.

[Speaker 4] (2:11:15 - 2:11:15)
Do it.

[Speaker 3] (2:11:16 - 2:11:16)
So, yeah.

[Speaker 4] (2:11:16 - 2:12:03)
So I'm not comfortable removing, what is the feeling of the retirement board? Do they, I'm guessing they want it in the warrant so that there could be a discussion. I mean, there's two things I'm thinking here.

I'm not comfortable taking an article out, especially before the finance committee reviews this. I would rather hear the finance committee's opinion. I'm not in a position where I would support spending, spending, you know, doing this.

However, my concerns are not having this out there for town meeting to see and any kind of conversations. That's my concern there. And I would like to hear what the opinion of the finance committee.

[Speaker 5] (2:12:04 - 2:13:02)
Do you feel like there's enough detail for the finance committee to have an opinion though? That's what I'm, I just think we're not there yet. And if until some of those pre models, we'll call them, not actuary models, but some of these pre models are run, then there would actually be something for finance committee to have an opinion on.

But right now there's just not a lot of meat to this. It's sort of an idea, albeit maybe a great idea, but we just don't understand the streets going down to the idea, right? We don't know how we're gonna get there.

So to me, that's really what's missing here. And that's why I would vote to just take it out until we could get some of that meat back on the bones so that then finance committee and town meeting would have the details of how we're gonna go about doing this and how it's going to affect the liability going forward and what other levers we're pulling to pay for this. And it's right now it just feels like you've got this idea.

[Speaker 3] (2:13:03 - 2:13:31)
I have a thought to address because I have the same concern that you're expressing. I think I feel hesitant to take it out, but I do feel like, I think we're all kind of on the same page that this isn't ripe for us. And maybe, I don't know when the next retirement board meeting is.

I don't know if you want to take that information back to the retirement board. And we could, we want to close the warrant tonight.

[Speaker 4] (2:13:31 - 2:13:32)
Everyone, yeah. Yeah, nevermind.

[Speaker 7] (2:13:32 - 2:13:36)
We won't be meeting until the end of May after the town meeting, if I'm mistaken.

[Speaker 4] (2:13:36 - 2:13:38)
What was the feeling of retirement board?

[Speaker 7] (2:13:38 - 2:13:53)
We never took a vote on that, Mary Ellen. And I would be, if we did, it would be maybe, I don't know what it would be. We never talked about it.

And Amy, maybe you can just chime in.

[Speaker 11] (2:13:53 - 2:13:59)
I'm confident that we didn't formally vote. We just did a straw poll of everyone's positions.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:00 - 2:14:18)
Amy, what's your, what is your opinion on this? I mean, I'm confident to find if I'm a betting person, I'm going to bet that the finance committee is not going to vote favorable action on this because of the lack of financial information that they're going to have at this time.

[Speaker 11] (2:14:18 - 2:14:37)
Well, yes. The finance committee commented that they did not feel like they had sufficient runway to even opine on this. And that there wasn't sufficient time for them to even get the information to make a thoughtful decision before town meeting.

[Speaker 2] (2:14:38 - 2:15:29)
We were also, my guess is we're at a two-night town meeting already. And I appreciate, Mary Ellen, that you want town meeting to actually see this and have a conversation about it. I think there are a lot of people that would want to have a conversation about helping some of our retirees.

And I worry that presenting that to town meeting without all of the homework is going to make town meeting question whether or not we're prepared when we show up and present these worn articles. And we've tried to be careful about that. And we've had some experiences where I want to be as mindful about that as possible as a board, because when we go, we want to make sure that they will trust that we're going to come with all of our homework.

[Speaker 11] (2:15:29 - 2:15:49)
So I will say there was one retirement board member that shared that exact sentiment was they felt like it might be better to not move forward with the article because they felt like indefinitely postponing it at town meeting might make people have negative feelings about it when it finally came forward.

[Speaker 6] (2:15:51 - 2:16:08)
I think we should work with the retirement board. I think we should work to get to a yes and we should have Siegel update their analysis. So that way we have all of the information.

So this has the best chance of success. That's my based on that.

[Speaker 4] (2:16:08 - 2:16:25)
I think I based on David's comments. I think that gets us to where the retirement board wants to be having open conversations with the goal of getting somewhere just not right now. What do you think?

[Speaker 7] (2:16:26 - 2:16:35)
So I'm speaking for myself, not for the retirement board, because we didn't sort of have a, we only had a straw boat. We have difference of opinions. I personally am fine with that.

[Speaker 3] (2:16:36 - 2:16:49)
If I kind of add things up a little bit with the third person that Amy mentioned and Amy and you, there might be an emerging majority even from the retirement board for that perspective. But regardless.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:50 - 2:17:05)
I think there's a path here and I don't think people need to see this as something negative. I think it just needs to, we gotta get there. We gotta find that way to balance some of these financial responsibilities.

[Speaker 4] (2:17:05 - 2:17:06)
David summarized it perfectly, I think.

[Speaker 7] (2:17:07 - 2:17:10)
Yeah, I mean, you're a liaison, Mary Ellen. So you sit there, you hear.

[Speaker 4] (2:17:11 - 2:17:12)
Yeah, and I show up.

[Speaker 7] (2:17:13 - 2:17:13)
You do show up.

[Speaker 16] (2:17:14 - 2:17:19)
And we thank you for that. I'm just very sensitive to not, you know.

[Speaker 5] (2:17:19 - 2:17:20)
Yeah, I just think that.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:20 - 2:17:24)
Just sending a big fat no back to the retirement board. It's a not yet. So that's all.

[Speaker 5] (2:17:25 - 2:17:32)
I think hopefully between Bob and Mary Ellen, the takeaway is not, no, it is more, we wanna work with you to get to yes.

[Speaker 4] (2:17:32 - 2:17:33)
All right, so there's a motion.

[Speaker 6] (2:17:34 - 2:17:40)
Motion that was seconded. All in favor to remove Article 13 from this year's town meeting warrant.

[Speaker 14] (2:17:40 - 2:17:47)
Aye. Thanks, Bob. Thank you.

I need to borrow.

[Speaker 4] (2:17:49 - 2:17:53)
So make a motion to favorable action on Article 14.

[Speaker 18] (2:17:53 - 2:17:54)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:54 - 2:17:55)
Oh, we already did it, actually.

[Speaker 18] (2:17:55 - 2:17:56)
Oh, we did?

[Speaker 3] (2:17:56 - 2:17:57)
The board already did that.

[Speaker 18] (2:17:57 - 2:17:58)
Yeah, we did that.

[Speaker 6] (2:17:58 - 2:18:00)
Oh, look at us.

[Speaker 18] (2:18:00 - 2:18:01)
Capital.

[Speaker 6] (2:18:02 - 2:18:03)
Article 15.

[Speaker 9] (2:18:05 - 2:18:08)
This is for FY 24 capital projects.

[Speaker 3] (2:18:09 - 2:18:14)
All right, make a motion to report favorable action from the select board on Article 15.

[Speaker 4] (2:18:14 - 2:18:15)
Second.

[Speaker 3] (2:18:16 - 2:18:18)
All in favor. Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 4] (2:18:18 - 2:18:37)
So I am, I am an aye with a, with an asterisk because, in this, what did I, I looked at something, is. No, this is a 15, we've gone too far. This is 15, are we going, oh, I'm sorry, 15, I'm an aye.

[Speaker 6] (2:18:37 - 2:18:39)
Okay, no asterisk.

[Speaker 4] (2:18:39 - 2:18:40)
No asterisk.

[Speaker 6] (2:18:40 - 2:18:40)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (2:18:40 - 2:18:42)
No asterisk, I am an aye.

[Speaker 6] (2:18:42 - 2:18:43)
Okay, Article 16.

[Speaker 9] (2:18:47 - 2:18:49)
Capital projects for FY 25.

[Speaker 3] (2:18:51 - 2:18:58)
And did finance committee wholeheartedly support all of Article 16 last night?

[Speaker 11] (2:18:59 - 2:19:11)
Finance committee did vote favorably on all of 16 with the change to the shade trees. It was incorrectly coded as to free cash and they moved it to borrowing. Otherwise, it was unanimous support on 16 as printed.

[Speaker 14] (2:19:11 - 2:19:24)
Okay, do we have a motion? I would move favorable action on the Article 16.

[Speaker 13] (2:19:26 - 2:19:27)
Second.

[Speaker 14] (2:19:27 - 2:19:28)
All in favor.

[Speaker 3] (2:19:30 - 2:19:32)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 4] (2:19:32 - 2:19:34)
Do I have an asterisk on here?

[Speaker 3] (2:19:34 - 2:19:34)
Okay.

[Speaker 5] (2:19:34 - 2:19:36)
Why don't we just talk about it instead of having an asterisk?

[Speaker 4] (2:19:37 - 2:20:32)
Because we're gonna have this, it's not gonna change the vote. So I just wanna be on record that I am not in support of 75,000 in EV charging. I'm not in support of Pickleball, the bottle filling stations, the green communities grants because I don't have detail on that, the town hall $50,000 study and the community life $100,000 study.

I don't think these are vetted well enough. I don't think we have enough information and I disagree with Capital Improvements and the Finance Committee. Okay.

So I'm a no. You're a yes. So you're a yes, but a no.

I'm a yes, but a no on those ones. So I'm a yes with my asterisk. Got it, okay.

No. No, because I'm in support of other things.

[Speaker 13] (2:20:33 - 2:20:36)
I don't think, I don't think mechanically.

[Speaker 2] (2:20:36 - 2:20:44)
Motion seconded, all opposed? Oh, we're all in favor. We're 4-0 with asterisks.

Great. So, okay. I didn't realize that was a thing.

[Speaker 3] (2:20:44 - 2:20:44)
But anyway.

[Speaker 19] (2:20:45 - 2:20:55)
I don't know. First time I've seen the asterisk. But I, look, it's a matter of, it's a public meeting.

They'll be captured in the minutes and I think it's okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:20:55 - 2:20:56)
No, it's fine.

[Speaker 19] (2:20:56 - 2:20:56)
Yeah, it's fine.

[Speaker 3] (2:20:57 - 2:21:03)
Article 17. I don't want to spend any time learning anything more about those things. You're just like, it's not worth it right now.

[Speaker 4] (2:21:03 - 2:21:04)
I can talk to you later.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:05 - 2:21:10)
Okay, Article 17, we've already taken a vote. Article 18, Peter.

[Speaker 9] (2:21:11 - 2:21:35)
Yeah, Article 18. This is the Zoning By-law Amendment regarding liquor establishments. I believe the board did not take a vote because there was a Scrivener's Error in the edit.

The proposed amendment is correct in this version where only the removals are with regards to liquor establishments and selling, serving liquor.

[Speaker 5] (2:21:35 - 2:21:37)
Okay, and- This makes much more sense.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:37 - 2:21:40)
And this has been fully vetted by town council? Yes. Correct.

[Speaker 5] (2:21:41 - 2:21:50)
Because it actually removes liquor establishments and serving liquor instead of motor vehicles, service stations, and gas buildings.

[Speaker 2] (2:21:50 - 2:22:03)
Perfect. Select Board Member Spellio said after we made these adjustments, there was no need to have a meeting with town council and approve this as well. So, okay, do we have a motion?

[Speaker 13] (2:22:04 - 2:22:07)
I'll motion to recommend favorable action on Article 18.

[Speaker 6] (2:22:09 - 2:22:10)
All in favor?

[Speaker 13] (2:22:10 - 2:22:11)
Aye.

[Speaker 6] (2:22:11 - 2:22:16)
Thank you. 19. Already done.

Already done.

[Speaker 9] (2:22:16 - 2:22:19)
The floor is already active. We already did.

[Speaker 6] (2:22:19 - 2:22:20)
Okay, 20- 20's done.

[Speaker 13] (2:22:20 - 2:22:20)
21.

[Speaker 3] (2:22:21 - 2:22:34)
Yep. No, all good. Oh, we did, I mean, I think these were a couple of the ones that you were abstaining last time.

I don't know if you wanted to- Oh, but we're all done. No, let's just- Just keep going? Keep going.

Okay.

[Speaker 6] (2:22:35 - 2:22:35)
Yep.

[Speaker 4] (2:22:36 - 2:22:36)
21.

[Speaker 6] (2:22:36 - 2:22:37)
21, gas-powered leaf blowers.

[Speaker 9] (2:22:40 - 2:23:02)
So there's two items on this article. First, well, we need the Select Board to make the recommendation, but also there was a note from council. Section one currently only provides restriction and clarification on what happens between Memorial Day and Labor Day, but not outside of that period.

[Speaker 2] (2:23:04 - 2:23:14)
Right. That's what we were looking for. The current language does allow leaf blowers outside that period, and the recommendation from council is simply to keep that sentence in here.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:15 - 2:23:19)
Well, that was what was changed, because last week it was too broad. It was the whole year.

[Speaker 5] (2:23:19 - 2:23:20)
Last year was all- Correct.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:21 - 2:23:21)
Change is good.

[Speaker 5] (2:23:22 - 2:23:24)
Yep. Yep, what we voted on last year.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:24 - 2:23:24)
Right.

[Speaker 5] (2:23:24 - 2:23:25)
Last year.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:25 - 2:23:37)
Okay. And then we get onto the fines, and the question was, who are we fining? We fining the homeowner or the business?

It's the homeowner. You've double-checked that. We have.

[Speaker 5] (2:23:37 - 2:23:38)
But where does it say that here?

[Speaker 17] (2:23:44 - 2:23:46)
Whoa. Uh-oh.

[Speaker 4] (2:23:46 - 2:23:47)
What does that mean?

[Speaker 17] (2:23:47 - 2:23:48)
That means- It's too long.

[Speaker 5] (2:23:48 - 2:23:56)
I hope that's my mic drop, guys. That's on. It's arriving again.

We need some to jump around, I guess.

[Speaker 6] (2:23:57 - 2:23:58)
Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (2:24:00 - 2:24:05)
So can- Chris is really trying to get his testing machine. You see, he's like staying for the whole thing.

[Speaker 5] (2:24:07 - 2:24:11)
So it doesn't say who the violation goes to in the enforcement.

[Speaker 6] (2:24:11 - 2:24:20)
So can we just, can we add, can we add a note in the comment that just says, and collect fines for violations from the homeowner, payable by the homeowner?

[Speaker 5] (2:24:20 - 2:24:26)
It should be in the language, I think, of the bylaw, who the enforcement is against.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:26 - 2:24:30)
I will get that language for homeowner in here. Or at least in the comment, right?

[Speaker 5] (2:24:30 - 2:24:37)
But if you just put it in the comment, then it's open to interpretation, right? And then in the future- It's gotta be in the language. It's gotta be in the language.

Fair enough.

[Speaker 17] (2:24:37 - 2:24:38)
Or it's gotta be in the actual language. Fair.

[Speaker 5] (2:24:38 - 2:24:44)
Homeowner can come in and say, well, you should charge my landscaper. I didn't tell him he was a gas-powered leaf blower. So.

[Speaker 6] (2:24:45 - 2:24:56)
So with the, so with the change, so with the change to specify homeowner within the context of Article 21, can we recommend favorable action this evening?

[Speaker 3] (2:24:57 - 2:25:52)
I'd like to, if I just have a minute to think about this. I mean, to me, I mean, my instinctive reaction is that the offense, the second and subsequent offense fee seems like a lot. But I haven't really thought it through because I was really expecting you to come back and say it was gonna be on the business.

So I haven't really been thinking about the fact that this is a homeowner. And you hire a company, they show up, you're not there. Okay, so then you get a warning.

Warnings on your door when you come home, right? Okay, so now you've got an opportunity to basically get in touch with a landscaper and say, don't do that again. Here's your electric blower.

Well, I'm not gonna pay your bill because I'm gonna get a fee.

[Speaker 17] (2:25:53 - 2:25:53)
Right.

[Speaker 2] (2:25:55 - 2:26:11)
Yeah, it's changed. You know, we want to be helpful. We passed this last year.

We wanted to give everybody kind of a heads up. Hey, you know, we've got to be a little better. These, we get a lot of complaints about noise, especially, you know.

[Speaker 3] (2:26:11 - 2:26:25)
Oh, I mean, I'm very much in favor of it, but I also want to be kind of fair. And, you know, we did pass it last year, but it's only going into effect beginning of next month. Really, it's the first time it's gonna happen.

[Speaker 2] (2:26:25 - 2:26:25)
Yep.

[Speaker 13] (2:26:25 - 2:26:30)
When would these enforcements begin then?

[Speaker 2] (2:26:31 - 2:26:34)
As soon as the attorney general approves the warrant.

[Speaker 3] (2:26:35 - 2:26:40)
Oh, so that's like 90 days, maybe, right? So this year is pretty much over.

[Speaker 14] (2:26:40 - 2:26:42)
Okay, that actually makes me feel better in a way.

[Speaker 5] (2:26:43 - 2:26:45)
So it wouldn't start until- It's really not starting until the following.

[Speaker 17] (2:26:46 - 2:26:49)
Yeah. Yeah, okay. Okay, all right.

[Speaker 13] (2:26:49 - 2:26:53)
And then also, who's writing these tickets? The Swampscope Police Department and the Health Department?

[Speaker 2] (2:26:54 - 2:26:59)
Could be any municipal. Fish could be our building commissioner, code enforcement.

[Speaker 5] (2:26:59 - 2:27:06)
Select board members? Could be health. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Do you have time for that? Can you be out there? But practically speaking, who do we assume is gonna be?

[Speaker 2] (2:27:07 - 2:27:14)
I think it's gonna be the building commissioner and the building inspectors, maybe health director.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:17 - 2:27:27)
Well, okay, so you kind of introduced another question then, Sean, because then why do we say police department and health department and not- Yeah, building commissioner and health director.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:30 - 2:27:32)
The building commissioner's not even on here.

[Speaker 2] (2:27:33 - 2:28:03)
So, yeah. Let's add it. We can add it.

These are generally zoning, you know, and code enforcement. You know, we have a number of employees that can do that. Police, the police department is busy, you know.

It'd be hard for them to do code enforcement and yeah. But, you know, if they can't do it, that's great. You know, I think we weekends, that's when they can step in.

And we wanted to have a number of municipal officials that have code enforcement responsibilities.

[Speaker 4] (2:28:03 - 2:28:05)
So should we just add in here Swanscup building?

[Speaker 2] (2:28:06 - 2:28:06)
Sure.

[Speaker 4] (2:28:06 - 2:28:07)
Department?

[Speaker 2] (2:28:07 - 2:28:09)
Yeah, I'm comfortable with that.

[Speaker 5] (2:28:10 - 2:28:13)
And 300 is what our neighbors charge?

[Speaker 2] (2:28:14 - 2:28:20)
It is, yeah. But you have the prerogative to change that.

[Speaker 15] (2:28:20 - 2:28:21)
I'm good with this.

[Speaker 2] (2:28:22 - 2:28:22)
The same.

[Speaker 13] (2:28:24 - 2:28:29)
So I guess I'll make a motion to recommend favorable action on article 21.

[Speaker 6] (2:28:30 - 2:28:31)
Second. All in favor.

[Speaker 13] (2:28:32 - 2:28:32)
Aye.

[Speaker 6] (2:28:33 - 2:28:35)
Thanks. 22.

[Speaker 5] (2:28:36 - 2:28:40)
I'll make a motion to recommend favorable action on article 22.

[Speaker 6] (2:28:40 - 2:28:43)
Second. All in favor. Aye.

[Speaker 4] (2:28:43 - 2:28:47)
I'll abstain. I didn't do my homework and read that document that Amy sent me.

[Speaker 6] (2:28:52 - 2:28:52)
Article 23.

[Speaker 5] (2:28:53 - 2:28:56)
Select Board will report on this article at town meeting.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:57 - 2:28:58)
Yeah, why does it say that?

[Speaker 4] (2:28:59 - 2:29:02)
Is it the Finance Committee? Are we waiting on the Finance Committee for this?

[Speaker 6] (2:29:02 - 2:29:03)
They recommended favorable action.

[Speaker 4] (2:29:04 - 2:29:07)
So we don't have to wait then?

[Speaker 6] (2:29:10 - 2:29:17)
I think as of our last meeting, they had not yet opined, but since they have a motion.

[Speaker 18] (2:29:17 - 2:29:18)
Should we not?

[Speaker 6] (2:29:18 - 2:29:19)
No, no, no.

[Speaker 18] (2:29:19 - 2:29:20)
Should I make a motion?

[Speaker 6] (2:29:20 - 2:29:21)
Sure.

[Speaker 18] (2:29:21 - 2:29:24)
I'll make a motion to recommend favorable action on article 23.

[Speaker 6] (2:29:26 - 2:29:31)
Second. All in favor. Aye.

Aye. Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 4] (2:29:31 - 2:29:36)
I just wanna, I'm gonna aye, but I just wanna double check. That is the actual number in there? Was there a question of whether or not?

[Speaker 3] (2:29:38 - 2:29:43)
It's 225 and then it's half, so the half's from the comment. That is the correct number, Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 4] (2:29:43 - 2:29:44)
Okay, okay.

[Speaker 5] (2:29:45 - 2:29:45)
I'm gonna aye.

[Speaker 6] (2:29:46 - 2:29:48)
All right. And we do not have to.

[Speaker 5] (2:29:48 - 2:29:52)
Oh, wasn't the question because this was in two places? Yeah. Is that this one?

[Speaker 3] (2:29:53 - 2:29:55)
It was. It got taken out of capital.

[Speaker 5] (2:29:55 - 2:29:56)
It got taken out of the capital.

[Speaker 3] (2:29:56 - 2:29:56)
Yep.

[Speaker 5] (2:29:57 - 2:29:57)
Got it.

[Speaker 3] (2:29:57 - 2:30:08)
Okay. And another just a shout out. In article 22, someone did fill in that number of parking spaces.

It was an X last week and now it says six. Thank you, Pete.

[Speaker 5] (2:30:08 - 2:30:09)
Great job, Pete.

[Speaker 11] (2:30:11 - 2:30:13)
That was me, but thank you.

[Speaker 17] (2:30:13 - 2:30:15)
I don't know that it was me. Yeah, I didn't see.

[Speaker 5] (2:30:15 - 2:30:18)
Great job. Accolades for all.

[Speaker 6] (2:30:21 - 2:30:22)
All right, so that's it.

[Speaker 5] (2:30:22 - 2:30:29)
There were just some references to the appendices. Those all got updated. We talked about that last week.

[Speaker 2] (2:30:31 - 2:31:01)
We will double check that, Katie. I know that we have everybody looking at this. This will go to town council for their final review.

They'll tick and tie all those appendices. These page numbers will relist the warrant articles based on the removal of one. We'll get a draft out to the board before we finalize it.

So if you see any Scribner's errors or things that you think we shouldn't update, we'll do that as well.

[Speaker 5] (2:31:01 - 2:31:07)
So in motion to close the warrant aside from the Scribner's errors. So moved.

[Speaker 6] (2:31:07 - 2:31:23)
All in favor. Aye. Thank you.

Yeah, that was nice. We have a consent agenda item vote to approve the minutes of the regular meetings of April 3rd and April 10th.

[Speaker 4] (2:31:24 - 2:31:30)
Can you pull them out? I just wanna vote on the, I don't wanna vote on these until we have a chance to read them.

[Speaker 3] (2:31:30 - 2:31:33)
Yeah, I didn't see them beforehand. Sorry, yeah.

[Speaker 6] (2:31:33 - 2:31:34)
Okay, no, all good.

[Speaker 4] (2:31:34 - 2:31:36)
I think we just got them as we came in here tonight.

[Speaker 6] (2:31:36 - 2:31:38)
All good. Select board.

[Speaker 5] (2:31:38 - 2:31:40)
Wait, should we vote on the grant though?

[Speaker 6] (2:31:40 - 2:31:41)
We already did.

[Speaker 5] (2:31:41 - 2:31:45)
We did. Oh, yeah. The grant and the letter we voted on.

[Speaker 2] (2:31:46 - 2:31:48)
Yes. Yes. We voted on that.

[Speaker 6] (2:31:49 - 2:31:53)
Okay. All right. Select board time.

[Speaker 4] (2:31:58 - 2:32:09)
I just wanna say thank you to Sammy Dowd and Joe Duette. I think those are the only two that are here.

[Speaker 12] (2:32:09 - 2:32:10)
Oh, Nathan's here.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:10 - 2:32:11)
Oh, Nathan is here?

[Speaker 12] (2:32:11 - 2:32:12)
He's behind in the back.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:12 - 2:32:34)
Okay, thank you, Nathan. I also wanna remind people to get out and vote next week. It's really important.

We gotta try to get our percentages up there. And I'd like Sean to give us an update on what's happening with the issues around the election in precinct three and five. So hopefully you can give us an update on that tonight.

[Speaker 2] (2:32:35 - 2:33:22)
Sure. There was an error in the ballot for precinct three and five and individuals were mailed out corrected ballots. Some people voted early.

They got a note in their ballot that they have a corrected one. If they didn't wanna fill out the new ballot, we'll still count their vote. But these are common issues.

We don't like to see them, but certainly I've met with the town clerk and assistant clerk, and we've come up with a committee that will review the ballots and double check them and make sure that we have staff that don't look at all those names every day for a month and can just tick and tie that, so.

[Speaker 4] (2:33:23 - 2:33:37)
It sounds like it's a real isolated issue and that there's a lot of mechanisms in place to fix it. And just had a number of people call and wanna know about it.

[Speaker 2] (2:33:38 - 2:33:59)
Yeah, it was just an error and we've corrected it and we were in touch with the state. They explained that this is just, this happens too often to get into, but we certainly haven't had something like this happen in some time and I don't think we'll see it again.

[Speaker 4] (2:33:59 - 2:34:12)
I think one of the issues, there were people actually had talked to a family and they received, the husband and the wife, both received two ballots. And so they had called me and said, we received two ballots, what's going on?

[Speaker 2] (2:34:13 - 2:34:27)
One was an error. We actually just listed somebody that was running for one of the precincts was listed twice. And so we can't have people getting elected in two different precincts.

So we have to correct that.

[Speaker 4] (2:34:27 - 2:34:47)
But they didn't understand why they had two ballots. Like there was nothing on the outside of the ballot saying, this is your new ballot warning. So that's what threw them off.

And I said, open up the ballots and see if there's a letter in there and they opened it up and then found it. So that's what threw some people off.

[Speaker 2] (2:34:47 - 2:34:54)
All right, so that's a good suggestion. Maybe there's a sticker that we should put on the outside of the ballot. Or a stamp.

Choose me.

[Speaker 5] (2:34:55 - 2:34:59)
I'm your ballot. I'm your ballot. Don't believe that other ballot.

[Speaker 6] (2:35:00 - 2:35:09)
I just have a few things. I just wanna wish a happy Administrative Professionals Day to one of my favorites, Diane Marchese.

[Speaker 17] (2:35:10 - 2:35:12)
Yay. Woo. Yay.

[Speaker 6] (2:35:12 - 2:35:20)
Diane, you keep us on task and you keep us organized. And thank you from the Select Board.

[Speaker 13] (2:35:20 - 2:35:20)
Thank you, Diane.

[Speaker 6] (2:35:21 - 2:35:46)
And certainly I would be remiss if I didn't have a couple comments for our colleague who's not with us this evening. But tonight is the end of over two decades of service for our colleague, Peter Spellios. Peter has actually been in public service so long he had hair before volunteering with the town.

And after spending a decade on the ZBA.

[Speaker 2] (2:35:47 - 2:35:49)
Protected ADA, you know.

[Speaker 6] (2:35:51 - 2:39:24)
After spending over a decade on the ZBA, Peter put his time where his values are and ran for Select Board in 2015. At the time, the town was not doing much. And the prior year, the 2014 iteration of the new Swampscott Elementary School failed and he felt enough was enough.

He ran against an incumbent and won a seat on the Select Board where he ended up serving for nine years and being the chair for three, including a year plus as the chair during the pandemic. He ran not because Swampscott was his hometown, but because he wanted to make Swampscott a better place and because Swampscott was the hometown of his kids. In the nine years he served on this board, the town has certainly moved forward by leaps and bounds.

The town's in a much better financial position because of his efforts and focus on strong financial stewardship. Peter's institutional knowledge, having served on the board for three terms, is enormous and will be big shoes to fill. I really got to know Peter in 2019.

And by sheer luck, both of us attended a meeting for the Seaside Cooperative Garden in Vinton Square. We got to talking and Peter asked if I was ready to take action to help the town. I asked him what he had in mind and he mentioned beach, beers and live music.

Any interest? I jumped at the chance and created the Swampscott Beer Garden and since have helped post numerous events which have raised money for a wide variety of causes in Swampscott, all while bringing joy to residents and visitors for years and hopefully years to come. And many, many people have similar stories all around Swampscott.

Peter was not simply additive to Swampscott, he was multiplicative in his efforts to make the town a better place than he found it over two decades ago. And I think it's appropriate to point out some of the accomplishments that occurred during his time on the board. A few of these include the rail trail, the harbor and waterfront plan, the community gardens, the green power community, beach entrances, historic lighting, LED street lights, public art, including beach stickers, railroad bridge, entrance sign, porch fest, Greenwood Avenue School Reuse, Michonne School Reuse, Hadley School Reuse Committee, Swampscott for All Ages, Fish House Historic Preservation, COVID response, civil service change, a facilities department, PEG TV expansion, capital projects planning, town hall reorg, financial summit, fiscal guidelines, limited tax increases, increased senior citizen tax abatement, veterans tax abatement program, expanded reserve funds, affordable housing trust fund, enterprise stabilization funds, increased number of liquor licenses, recreational marijuana, plastic bag and straw ban, aggregate accountability, blighted buildings bylaw, Marion Court negotiation, Lincoln House Point negotiation, Elm Place negotiation, new Swampscott Elementary School, Hawthorne acquisition, new police chief, solid waste enterprise fund, select board renamed, Hadley property deed restricted against market rate housing, Archer Street negotiation, veterans housing, St. John's parking agreement, seven hotel responses to the Hadley RFP, gas powered leaf blower ban, Tedesco taxation.

Peter, we're gonna miss you, I'll miss you, and on behalf of myself, I'm sure you're watching intently this evening at 10 o'clock I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service to the town of Swampscott and just know that your work mattered, thanks.

[Speaker 2] (2:39:26 - 2:42:34)
Well said, David, you know, really great. Yeah, all right. David, I'd like to just, or I'd like to share a few comments about Peter.

Public service is harder today than it has been in my memory. I feel as though, as select board members, you get paid zero, you're volunteers, and it's important that people understand that this town is run by volunteers and it takes an awful lot to sacrifice your time away from your family. It takes an awful lot to stand up and face opposition and deal with leadership.

There's a quote by Bobby Kennedy, the first task of leadership, the first task of concerned people is not to condemn, castigate, or deplore. It's to search out the reason for disillusionment, the rationale for protest and dissent, and indeed perhaps to learn from it. I feel as though Peter, at his best, was willing to sit and listen and try to figure issues out.

Yes, he had a strong voice, and yes, he did fight for things passionately, but he did listen and he did try to find a way to see things that I think a lot of us could appreciate. He had a perspective that he worked to achieve and it was good to see at times. We addressed some very complicated issues and he sat and he worked through those, and Swampscott's better for it.

I think the real test is if you look at elected officials or public officials, do they make their community better? And I think in every respect, Peter has helped Swampscott be better. Not, nobody who serves in public life is perfect, and certainly there's plenty of folks that can help us and often remind us that we have work to do, but nine years as a select citizen in this town, absolutely, a wonderful legacy, and something that I think, if it's worthy of his time and effort, man, it's worthy for everybody.

This is one of the most important ways that you can spend your time. This is one of the most important ways that you can spend your life, and it's a great quality that you all share. You're doing your best to try to help this town succeed, and that's a wonderful legacy that Peter leaves us all with, but it's a tall order in the sense that you know, how do we continue to challenge this blue bubble to be better?

Will be interesting to see.

[Speaker 6] (2:42:36 - 2:42:38)
Thanks, Sean. Anything additional?

[Speaker 3] (2:42:41 - 2:42:54)
I mean, I very much appreciate the time that I spent on the board with Peter as well, and I'm still a little bit aghast at the fact that he's figured out a way to dodge this moment, so.

[Speaker 17] (2:42:55 - 2:42:55)
Oh, believe me.

[Speaker 3] (2:42:55 - 2:43:44)
That really, it's like the crowning achievement of this whole nine years, and to figure out a way to not be available in this time. I sure hope he's got a good excuse, but you know, there's, yeah, David said it very well, Sean, you did as well, that there's big shoes to fill, and I think, you know, as I was starting to think about projects coming, and who's on first with them over the coming months, you know, there's gonna, we're all gonna have to step up at another level to I think we're gonna see the hole that he's leaving as the next meetings and months come by, so very appreciative. I have nothing else for select board time tonight, believe it or not. Thanks.

[Speaker 5] (2:43:44 - 2:44:54)
Yeah, I'll just echo what Doug said about this hole that we need filled, because I've worked, you know, not quite nine years with Peter, but on the projects that I am on with him, he's a constant driver to move it forward, to get things done, to find compromise, to find unique ways of, you know, fixing issues, and he's got so much knowledge, and that definitely drives efficiency, so there's just gonna be a total curve ball thrown at, you know, sort of all of us in some instances, because, you know, just the starting off point is a little bit different for some of us on the board, and so it's been a pleasure to work with him, and to get to pick his brain, and get to ask dumb questions outside of the public's eye from time to time. And get a real education, and I appreciate his time and energy, and we're grateful to have had him.

[Speaker 3] (2:44:55 - 2:45:05)
And because I understand he doesn't want a chair, I think we need to give him, like, three of them, you know, just so that, like, really, like, in his way, and he can't, like, get out of the way, and everything else.

[Speaker 5] (2:45:05 - 2:45:06)
Maybe John Piccarello can make him something else.

[Speaker 2] (2:45:08 - 2:47:19)
It might be a big, long proclamation, you know, we're gonna have to, you know, it's interesting, Peter had asked for one thing. He asked for a list of every select board member that had ever been elected in town, and he wanted it to have it displayed at town hall, and I thought, you know, that's emblematic of Peter. He doesn't like clutter, so I can forgive him for the chair thing, even though I think, you know, the chair's not for you, it's for your posterity.

It's for people that, generations that come after you. I do think, you know, the role of select board member, that's important. It's important that people don't forget how important that leadership position is.

You know, people today don't believe that these positions are important, but they are. There's a tremendous amount of power. You can either improve the quality of life for people, or you can be indifferent to it, and I look around to cities and towns, and you can see the folks that care passionately, and I do trust that you will serve Swanscot well.

You're a smart board, and you will continue to do extraordinary things. The things that are in play right now are inconceivable. A new elementary school six years ago was inconceivable.

A hotel at the Hadley's, nobody in a million years would tell you that we would be bringing a boutique hotel to this beautiful little town. Building our financial reserves from two million to 10 million, inconceivable. People did not believe that Swanscot would have an average single family tax bill that would be less than Marblehead's.

Just, it was not conceivable, but all these things are possible because of some really, really difficult and hard but important conversations that this board had. Peter didn't do anything by himself. Most important thing that he did was pull a team around these important issues, and Swanscot's benefited from that greatly.

[Speaker 3] (2:47:21 - 2:47:46)
Thanks, Sean. I actually do have one other thing if we're done with the beginning of the Peter Swan song. I'm sure it will go on to town meeting or whatever, but Earthfest, you know, this Saturday, right?

Town hall, well, we're not at, you know, anyway, town hall, lawn, 10 to one. It's gonna be a zillion different things going on there.

[Speaker 2] (2:47:46 - 2:47:50)
Henry Heron is out there right now, so you can go put some, or feed him.

[Speaker 3] (2:47:50 - 2:48:00)
Henry Heron is out there. You can put some trash in there. You can buy some bikes.

You can learn a lot about a lot of different things. So get out and go green on Saturday. Diane.

[Speaker 12] (2:48:00 - 2:48:11)
Solid Waste is also holding a cleanup all around the town, so at some point, I think it'll probably be on the website, but they are gonna be looking for volunteers on Saturday.

[Speaker 3] (2:48:12 - 2:48:13)
Oh, on Saturday, they're doing cleanup.

[Speaker 12] (2:48:13 - 2:48:18)
I believe it is, yeah. I'll find out probably tomorrow morning to clarify that, yeah.

[Speaker 6] (2:48:19 - 2:48:19)
Thanks, Dave.

[Speaker 5] (2:48:22 - 2:48:24)
Motion to adjourn. So moved.

[Speaker 6] (2:48:25 - 2:48:25)
All in favor?

[Speaker 5] (2:48:26 - 2:48:26)
Aye.

[Speaker 6] (2:48:26 - 2:48:27)
Aye. Thanks, everybody.

[Speaker 5] (2:48:27 - 2:48:28)
Good night. Good night.