Select Board Meeting — April 1, 2026

Is she ready?

Okay, you're ready when she's ready.

Are you ready?

Yep.

Yes, thank you.

Welcome everybody to the select board meeting, Wednesday, April 1st, 2026, 6:00 PM at the community meeting room.

Senior Center, Arcade Avenue and Seekonk.

Mass General Law Chapter 30A, subsection 20F requires any person recording must notify the chair at the beginning of the meeting.

Is there anyone?

Seeing no one, all select board meetings are recorded via audio and video and are broadcast live on Seekonk Channel 96.

I call the regular meeting to order at 6 PM.

Can we have a Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silence, please?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Could somebody read the board and committee openings, please?

All right, Madam Chair.

Board and committee openings.

We have volunteers needed on the Capital Improvement Committee, 4 select board appointments and 3 moderator appointments.

Commission on Disability, 8 select board appointments.

Cultural Council, 2 select board appointments.

Economic Development Committee, 5 select board appointments.

Energy Committee, 3 select board appointments.

Finance Committee, 1 moderator appointment.

Historical Commission, 2 select board appointments.

Human Services Council, 1 select board appointment.

Parks and Recreation, 1 appointment.

Recycling Committee, 1 select board appointment.

Zoning Board of Appeals, 1 select board alternate.

And, uh, as I like to say, the talent bank forms can be found on the town's website.

Thank you for everybody who has been submitting talent bank forms.

We actually have a couple appointments tonight to a couple committees, so It's very good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Priority matters.

Recognition of Katie Eklund and Melanie Quinn on achieving the rank of Eagle Scout.

Girls, can you come on up?

If your leaders or parents want to come and stand with you, they're absolutely welcome.

If you want to take any pictures, you can come and stand on this side of the podium if you'd like.

Thanks.

So you can do both.

Commendation and recognition of Catherine Eklund, Town of Seekonk, Massachusetts.

Whereas Catherine Eklund first joined Boy Scouts of America in 2019 as the founding member of Troop 9 Seaconch in the first year that girls were invited to join the BSA.

And whereas, in addition to being a webmaster, assistant senior patrol leader, and senior patrol leader for her troop, Catherine earned 32 merit badges, 1 Bronze Palm, and 1 Gold Eagle Palm.

And whereas, her Eagle Scout project, Catherine built 3 little libraries to share her love of books with the citizens of Seaconch.

Totaling 104 service hours to complete this project for Catherine and her team of volunteers.

And whereas Catherine Eklund is to be congratulated for having attended— attained the rank of Eagle Scout and for her service to the town of Secomp.

The Eagle Scout Award is the highest achievement of the Boy Scouts of America since its inception in 1911.

Only 4% of Scouts have earned this rank.

It takes years of dedication, having the ability to lead and the desire to serve.

And therefore, on April 1st, 2026, be it proclaimed by the select board that we hereby express our sincere appreciation for your commitment to duty and unselfish service.

Thank you for your dedication to the town of Seekonk.

Congratulations.

Commendation and recognition of Melanie Quinn, Town of Seekonk, Massachusetts.

Whereas Melanie Quinn first joined Boy Scouts of America in 2019 as a founding member of Troop 9 Seekonk in the first year that girls were invited to join the BSA, and whereas in addition to being a troop guide, scribe, patrol leader, and assistant senior patrol leader for her troop Melanie earned 26 merit badges and Bronze Eagle Palms.

And whereas her Eagle Scout project— Melanie built a rainbow bridge for those in the community to be able to memorialize their pets that have passed away, totaling 97 service hours to complete this project for Melanie and her team of volunteers.

And whereas Melanie Quinn is to be congratulated for having attained the rank of Eagle Scout, and for her service to the town of Seekonk.

The Eagle Scout Award is the highest achievement of the Boy Scouts of America.

Since its inception in 1911, only 4% of Scouts have earned this rank.

It takes years of dedication, having the ability to lead, and the desire to serve.

And therefore, on April 1st, 2026, be it proclaimed by the select board that we hereby express our sincere appreciation for your commitment to duty and unselfish service.

Thank you for your dedication to the town of Seekonk.

Congratulations.

Girls, I'll only embarrass you a little.

Do you want to say anything?

Okay.

That's good.

They're quiet.

Yes, that's good.

Thank you.

Okay, consider the appointment of Soleil So as the Parks and Recs Committee for a term to expire June 2027.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just a quick correction, so the, the term would be expiring in 2028.

So myself, Brittany, and Erica had the opportunity to do an interview with, uh, Soleil, and we think she'd be a a phenomenal addition to the Parks and Rec.

She has served in some type of capacity over in Providence with working with youth, so I think she'd add some additional— be an asset to the committee with regards to that.

So my recommendation is that she be appointed for a term to expire June 2028.

Okay, do I get a motion?

So moved.

Second.

Any questions from anyone?

Seeing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimous.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Consider the appointment of Jessica Murphy to the Commission on Disabilities for a term to expire June 2027.

Is that right?

That's correct.

Okay.

Hi.

So, Madam Chair, uh, item number 3 and 4, you'll see that Jessica Murphy is actually applying for 2 different, uh, committees.

So the first committee of her choice was the Capital Improvement Committee, so there's currently no other talent banks and nobody willing to sit on the Capital Improvement Committee right now.

So I had told Jessica that we would put her on there, but it may be some time before we can get a quorum.

So she was okay with that, but then her second choice was the Commission on Disabilities, so she'd like to serve on that as well.

So my recommendation would be that she be appointed to both with the expirations of June 2027.

Okay, can we get a motion?

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

Any questions?

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimous.

Thank you very much.

Accept the resignation of Ashley Lawrence from the position of Assistant Animal Control Officer.

Can I get a motion?

I got a motion and a second.

Any questions?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimous.

Consider the appointment of Isabel Bellabala to the position of full-time assistant control— animal control officer.

Yes, Madam Chair, members of the board, Mr. Kadeem.

Um, so Isabella has been working for us since March of '25 as a part-time kennel worker.

Then she transitioned into the full-time kennel worker in June of '25.

She's proven herself to be reliable, caring, and a very dedicated employee here at the shelter.

She expressed interest in the assistant animal control officer position, and I would love to extend that opportunity to her.

She demonstrates a very strong work ethic and is a very valuable member to our team.

Sure.

Thank you.

I want a motion.

Hold on, let me read this.

Yeah, sure, go ahead.

Move that the select board appoint Isabella Barlett to the position of full-time assistant animal control officer effective April 1st, 2026.

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Oh, he's seconding.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Well, you made the motion.

He seconded.

Gary seconded.

Okay.

Got a motion and a second.

Any questions?

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimous.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Community speaks.

Oh, it's too close.

Good evening everyone, I'm Michael Novenson, 100 Brown Avenue here in Seekonk.

I was reviewing the town— or the recommended budget for March 18th.

2 number— 2 numbers jumped out at me.

The first being at 7.98%, the second being at 2.78%.

Those being the budget increases allotted to the town's 2 largest departments.

Public safety seeing a 7.98% increase, uh, education seeing just a 2.78% increase.

And as a citizen, as a taxpayer, as parent to 2 kids, my question is, why are the 2 departments being treated so unequally?

Why is there an abundance of cash to do 4 mid-year hires into the Department of Public Safety, while when it comes to education, we've seen 27 positions eliminated over the past 3 years, and they're being told that simply a level service budget at 4.61% would be unacceptable and that they need to get down to 2.5%, which would result in not only— which would result in positions eliminated not only through attrition but through additional job cuts.

I just don't understand why the treatment is so different, and certainly I don't like having to pit departments against each other, But the reality is that the pie is only so big unless we're doing an override, and the 2 largest departments in the town by far are education and public safety.

And certainly we value our firefighters and our police officers and our law enforcement.

They keep us safe, they maintain quality of life.

But we also value our teachers.

We value our teachers' aides.

We value our coaches.

They matter to the 2,000 students who attend Seekonk Public Schools each and every day.

And they matter to the 15,000 people who live in this town because they keep property values up.

And I've seen in my own life the impact when towns don't invest in education.

I grew up in Michigan.

We failed a bunch of— my town growing up failed a bunch of millages throughout the 2000s.

My community went from a place where people came for the schools to a community of last resort where people came if they couldn't afford to move anywhere else.

Property values froze.

My parents' house was worth as much in 2020 as it was in 2000.

Because people sought out other towns for the schools.

I came here 8 years ago for the schools to raise my family in a quality school district, and I want to make sure it stays that way for the next 16 years until my youngest graduates.

I know there's been talk online in terms of what, what the town can do, funding of administrators, and I took a bit of a dive into that.

So I know the school district has had, prior to this most recent year, has had 14 administrators, 5 district-level administrators and then 9 building administrators.

That was reduced in the most recent year to 8 building administrators.

When the vice principal of guidance left the high school, that position was not filled, which was an appropriate move given that there's less than 500 students there.

Certainly do not need 3 administrators for that small of a student population.

So I took a look in, I looked at some dark data to see, and dark data really just compares Seacombe to districts with similar size and similar student demographics.

To see what does their administrative staff look like.

So I mean, 3 positions are required under the Commonwealth, that being superintendent, budget director, and special education director.

Here in Seekonk, we have 2 additional positions, one being assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, the second being director of technology and digital learning.

And what I found is on the teaching and learning side, Seekonk was very consistent with the other dark districts, which by the way are Belcher County, East Bridgewater, Franklin, Ipswich, Phillip, Mansfield, Newburyport, Stoneham, Swarthmore, and Tewksbury.

9 of those districts also have an assistant superintendent, either of teaching and learning or of curriculum and instruction.

The 2 that do not have that at a director-level position.

Technology was certainly more of a varied stance.

There were several districts that did have directors of technology, but there are several that didn't.

There are some who had things like technology coordinator or database administrator or or technology specialist.

So I would ask, and I hope we don't have to get to that point, but seeing some of the further reductions that were being considered if this school district does have to get down to 2.5, things like unteaming middle school, which is a well-established best practice.

I mean, we were doing it at the turn of the millennium when I was growing up in Michigan and my husband grew up in upstate New York.

If the financial straits are so dire that we're having to look at unteaming middle school to get to 2.5, then I wouldn't think— I would want to see if there is a way to deliver the technology services more efficiently, uh, more cost-effectively.

But again, hoping we don't have to get there.

I would just ask that— I'm not asking for special treatment of the school district, I'm asking for equal treatment.

After 3 consecutive years of their budget being held at 3% or lower tax levy increase, uh, I do think that 4.61% level service budget is fair.

I have seen— I've been involved in Aitkin just the impact of previous year's budget cuts.

So this year, for instance, in music, they went down from 1.25 to 1 music teacher.

What that meant is when the 1 music teacher went on parental leave, that 5th grade band has stopped because they could not find a qualified person to teach that.

If there still was that quarter music teacher position, that could have continued.

Similarly, adjustment counselors at Aiken went from 1.5 last year to 1% this year.

With that 0.5 reduction, What that's meant is when there were 2 adjustment counselors at Aiken in previous years, one of the adjustment counselors would do social-emotional curriculum for the students across all the classrooms.

That had to stop this most recent year because the caseload is so heavy at Aiken that with just one adjustment counselor, there was no time to do that, which I think is particularly important given that all of these kids either had early childhood, including toddler, during COVID are delayed in some milestones.

And to be clear, that level service budget, that 4.61%, would restore none of that.

It would simply stem the bleeding from the school district.

Bleeding, by the way, that, as people were talking about online today, resulted in the removal of Portuguese 1 at the middle school, meaning that now students who wish to get to Portuguese 5 by senior year of high school are having to do summer school in order to get there and take advantage of the benefits there.

So if we continue on this path, there's going to be several more cuts.

More hardship for our students, for our staff.

So I would simply ask that the education budget be treated the same way as other department budgets.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have anybody else for Community Speaks?

Come on up.

Just your name and your street, please.

My name is Debbie Riley, and I'm a reading specialist at Martin School and vice president of the SEA representing the elementary schools.

Schools.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Um, in this post-pandemic and technologically advanced era that we live in, our students' needs and expectations have changed vastly even within the last 10 years.

Our students are held to greater expectations even in their youngest years.

Coloring, cutting, and social skills are no longer skills that are honed in on in kindergarten.

Students who enter kindergarten now without any or little letter sound knowledge have already been identified as needing intervention.

Due to better screening tools and the recognition of mental health issues, schools in Seekonk and across the country have been able to identify students who require specialized services and/or supports at a much greater number than ever before.

The challenges that teachers face every day have been compounded by a decrease in student stamina.

In a world when you can access, access information in a blink of an eye, it is often difficult to persevere persevere as an adult, never mind as a young child.

Learning to read, write, and understand math concepts requires sustained focus and repetition.

Teachers must differentiate their instruction to reach all students, as well as modify assignments, tests, work in small group, provide frequent check-ins, provide extended time or scribe for your student, et cetera, on top of teaching the curriculum.

But we are being asked to do all of this and more with less support.

Special education teachers who provide specialized instruction are no longer able to co-teach in a classroom to provide support.

That support is usually provided by teacher aides, yet this is also potentially being cut.

Seaconch has always been a desired location due to its value on education.

Even with all the previous cuts to student-facing positions at the elementary level within the last few years, such as a reduction of classroom teachers, elimination of a school adjustment counselor and differentiated instructors, to name a few, along with a decrease in federal funding and an increase to fixed costs which are beyond anyone's control, our teachers have continued to provide a quality education to our students.

However, this trend cannot continue if we keep taking away position How will the needs of our diverse students be met?

Additionally, we have yet to solve the issue of spacing at the elementary level.

In 2006, North School was closed because the town did not approve the override, and we have been trying to band-aid the issue of spacing ever since.

The addition at Aiken School has provided classrooms for additional programs to be provided within town rather than being out-districted, which saves the town money, but essentially it did not add enough additional classrooms to fix the overcrowding problem at the elementary level.

Teachers are being asked to provide services in a room that they share with other teachers.

This is not only unreasonable, but it is unsustainable.

As Superintendent Kidwell shared in a previous meeting, Seekonk has had the lowest percentage change at 20.8% in her— in per pupil expenditures between 2018 to 2024 than neighboring towns.

If you value the education that the children of this community receive, which impacts the value of your homes, then the town needs to show their support.

The effects of continually taking away services to the future of this community will be detrimental.

It is time to invest in this town's future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have anybody else?

I see a hand.

I can't see the person on my left.

Oh, okay, that's good, that works.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Jackie Glum.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

I'm the high school ceramics teacher at Seekonk High School.

I'm here tonight because my position, as well as the culinary program alongside it, are at risk of being cut.

I want to be clear, this is not about 2 teaching jobs.

This is about what kind of education we believe our students deserve and what kind of community we are choosing to be.

Every year we hear that cuts are temporary, that positions will return when the budget improves, but history tells us a different story.

These programs never come back, and each time we make a cut like this, we quietly narrow what's possible for our students.

For many of my students, the art room is not just extra.

It's the reason why they come to school.

It's where they find confidence, where they learn to take risks, where they discover their voice.

In ceramics, they learn patience, problem solving, and resilience— what to do when something collapses, cracks, or fails, and how to rebuild.

These are not just art skills.

These are life skills.

And the same is true for the culinary education program.

These programs reach children who may not always feel successful in traditional academic settings.

They create real tangible futures.

When you cut these programs, you are not trimming the edges, you are removing access.

You are telling certain students that what engages them, what motivates them, what helps them to succeed doesn't matter enough.

Our most vulnerable students in the special education programs thrive in culinary and arts classes where we create opportunities where they succeed and feel confident, where so often in academic classes they feel less than.

To the town council, I urge you to fully fund our schools so that we can meet the needs of all students, not just the easiest ones to measure.

The difference between 2.5% and 3.5%, 4.6%, it's not 1% or 2%.

The difference are people's livelihoods and children's access to meaningful content that supports their emotional, social, and creative learning.

And to the school committee, I ask that you be problem— creative problem solvers, what I ask my students to be every day.

In my classroom, when something doesn't work, we don't throw it away.

We rethink it, we adapt, and we find another way forward.

Our students deserve the same level of care and creativity from you, because once these opportunities are gone, they are gone for good.

And it is our students who will carry that loss.

Please do not be the legacy of this decision.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Clark.

I saw another hand.

Yes, I see you.

I kind of see you.

Hi, Nicole Pellegrino, 41 Lynnea Lapp, Cranston.

I'm coming today to talk to you as the president of the Seekonk Education Association— Educators Association, sorry.

So I've been fortunate enough to be employed in this district for the last 25 years.

Well, this is my 25th year and my second year as the president of the Seekonk Educators Association.

And I wanted to thank the board first and foremost for your civic service.

I know that a huge number of of you were public employees at one point in your careers, and thank you for that.

So you understand the difficulty of splitting a small pot amongst a large group of stakeholders.

But I wanted to kind of point out a few things with the problems with this budget.

Seaconch is a great place to be an educator.

It really is.

By all metrics, Seaconch schools are killing it because our high school graduation rates are great, our college acceptance rates are great, our test scores are great.

We're at the top of our game regionally.

If you look at the other schools in the area and the South Coast, we're doing great.

So well, as a matter of fact, that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education actually groups us with towns like Ipswich, where the, where the average cost of a home is well over $800,000.

And obviously in Seekonk, it's like $567,000 or something like that according to Zillow.

But the home values in Seekonk continue to rise and Seekonk Public Schools are a huge part of that.

And your educators are a huge part of that.

And parents consistently tell us that it's the schools, that's why they moved into this town.

But this represents— this budget represents a clear and present danger to both the success of your students and the property values.

Seekonk shares the same difficulties as many Massachusetts municipalities— rising costs, heating, busing, special education.

We all know the math doesn't math, but what does that look like on a granular level, level in the classroom?

How does that impact your elementary school students, your middle school students, your high school students' futures?

So at the elementary level and the middle school level, the cuts to our paraprofessionals, our aides, represents meaning that teachers have to decide between choosing— between challenging their gifted students, of which Seekonk is lucky to have a lot, and balancing the legally mandated requirements of 504s and individualized education plans.

Our class sizes are pretty big too.

Well, they, they will increase with this budget.

And I'm just a little bit confused really, because you have, um, from my understanding, you have Whole Foods coming in, you have Market Basket coming in, and the property tax assessment rate is over $22 per $1,000 of assessed value.

I assume that those businesses are only coming to town because they expect to make a good deal of money.

Additionally, there is a mechanism that the state has with the Chapter 70 funding, and I think the part where we're most confused about is why the state has decided that Chapter 70 is the money that is appropriated for schools, and this budget represents stealing from the children of Seekonk.

I don't know how that is possible given that— and I'm not trying to take away from the other departments, we all need to, to, to share the burden.

I, I get that.

But to talk to your— to take it out on the back of your students, which are the very things which make this town's property values the way that they are, seems to be pennywise and pound foolish to me.

And if part of this board's decision-making is financial stability, Wouldn't investing in the students be the first cause of that?

Don't you want your kids to come back and stay in Seekonk and improve this town and serve on boards like you do and have that civic desire?

You learned that civic desire in schools.

Fund that here, please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have anybody else?

Go ahead, sir.

Hi, Andrew Jesse here, 26 Cobalav.

I am currently running for school committee unopposed, and so all things go the right way, I'll be joining you all next week.

So if you haven't met me, hi, nice to meet you.

I'll hang out after if you want to What's up, Jack?

Love to meet y'all.

I teach high school up in Sharon, Massachusetts, and in the past few years I've taken a leadership role in their union.

And if you want to see dysfunction, go take a ride up 95 because it's bad up there.

And the reason why I wanted to get involved here is because it didn't seem that way.

I mean, I think that's the first time I've ever seen or heard from the SEA president.

Where our co-presidents in Sharon are very well-known figures because they are constantly clashing.

This is a school department that has their stuff together and are on the same page, and we are very fortunate to have a superintendent who provides unprecedented levels of thoroughness and clarity around her budget.

I wish, I wish we had that because This is not a unique problem to SEACOC.

This is, this is everywhere, and we are all fighting the same problems.

I had the pleasure of joining Mr. Gadeem and the Finance Committee last night hearing about the same things.

We're all experiencing the same problems.

We all know that Prop 2.5 doesn't keep up with all of these rising costs in any of our departments.

So it's more important now more than ever for us to be on the same page, which is why I was very excited to see on the agenda tonight a joint meeting between the current school committee and you all to hopefully not get into some kind of pissing match about who gets what percentage.

Hopefully so we can actually look at what kind of cuts have been made historically and make sure that we are spreading the load as equitably as we can.

Because in the very short time that I've been reviewing the budget information, it's very clear that the students of Seacock have been taking the brunt of that.

Now I know the percentages are different and I can see like public works has— public safety has absolutely been fluctuating.

The biggest increases seem to be in public works and debt.

There's no way around that.

But that means that, like I said, it's more important now than ever for us to work collaboratively.

I was really disappointed when Chairwoman Hynes and Mr. Zorra showed up to the school committee meeting.

I was actually excited at first because I was like, hey, this is the kind of coordination like that should be happening.

That doesn't happen where I'm working.

I don't see that.

But then Chairwoman Hynes got up, and the way she spoke to and scolded the school committee and spoke about their budget, just— I don't know, like, I'm guessing that's why there's all these educators here, because I got a sense that there is not an understanding of what has happened over the last 3 years.

And what kind of cuts and what kind of impacts made.

That's why this room is packed with educators tonight.

They need you to understand, and this isn't— I'm not trying to be combative or adversarial.

This is a plea.

Please, when these folks come up here, try to work this out.

Try to be— I keep beating a dead horse here with collaborative, but that's the only thing.

Like, we need to get some real transparency.

I know those are buzzwords, but there's no better word for it.

We need to take a look at every single department.

What have those increases been?

What have those cuts been?

I know the school committee's put it out there.

I've seen it myself.

We need to see that from all the departments so we can make sure that we are doing our due diligence by these people.

Like, that's why we all got into this, right?

We all got elected so we can make a difference and help out our town and make sure that we are serving this community the best we can.

And that's only going to happen if we're on the same page.

So I hope this isn't the last one.

I hope I get to take part in of these in a few weeks or something, but please take this opportunity to not fight or argue with each other.

Please, please try to be solution-oriented.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have anybody else?

Seeing no one, moving on to general business license hearing.

Consider the request from Osamequan Farm, 80 Walnut Street, for a 1-day liquor license license on the following dates: April 18th, May 2nd, June 20th, September 12th, October 10th, and an event on a date to be determined.

Hi, how are you?

I'm okay, how are you?

Good.

Your name, please?

Uh, Sarah Newkirk.

Say that again, I'm sorry.

That's okay.

Sarah Newkirk, 50 Walnut Street.

Sarah Newkirk.

Okay, okay.

This is something that's happened on a regular basis.

Yep, we do it yearly.

I believe this is the 3rd year that we are— is that all?

3rd year?

Yeah.

Okay, the date to be determined, you'll notify the town administrator's office ahead of time.

So, so we'll be able to add that to our— to the list.

Yeah.

And just for the sake of clarity, and you know, in past years, we've always done We bring you our, our sort of like wish list, and then as things proceed, you know, we always have to get quotes from the liquor liability people about, um, what it'll cost.

And sometimes we determine it's just not worth it to have alcohol at all the events.

So we, we have actually never actually executed all of the alcoholic events, um, that we've proposed.

So I'll keep you posted if, if any of these, um, shift in focus.

We'll just let you know.

Yeah, just so we'll have them for our records.

In case, you know, anything comes up afterwards that we need to answer.

Sure.

Do we have any questions here from anyone?

Anyone?

No, no, no.

Give me a motion.

So moved on granting the dates as requested.

Second.

Okay, got a motion and a second.

Any questions?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimous.

Thank you very much.

Good luck with your events.

License hearing.

Consider the request for a common victualleria license for a Whole Foods to be located at 944 River Avenue.

Rich Tompey, manager.

Are you Rich?

Yes, I am.

Welcome.

Good evening.

Good evening.

From what I understand, this is for an eating area inside the store, correct?

Right.

Does anybody have any questions?

Yes.

What's the drop-dead date that you need this?

The store will open at the end of June.

That's what I wanted to know, so thank you.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

The end of June.

Anyone else have questions?

No.

Is there anything you need to say, sir?

No.

We're excited to be part of the community.

We're excited to have you here.

Okay, can I get a motion to— Move to approve.

Second.

Questions had?

Any— All in favor?

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimous.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Good night.

Good night.

Vote to award, sign the bond anticipation note of $8,315,800— yes, let's start over.

$8,315,833, which includes the Department of Public Works, $320,000.

Fall River Avenue and South End Fire Station.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So we received the bids on March 25th, uh, for the $8,315,833, um, ban, uh, which would be issued on April 16th and then would be due, uh, to be fully paid by, uh, April 15th of 2027.

So we'll be rolling, uh, the notes for the South End Fire Station in the amount of $283,333.

That's going to be the second year of the 3-year paydown.

So that final payment would be made in fiscal year '28.

Then we're also rolling the note for another year for the DPW facility in the amount of $1,062,000.

That's going to be the first year paydown with the final paydown in FY '29.

Then we'll also be rolling the note for another year for 320 Florida Ave. in the amount of $6,970,000.

In terms of the bids, the winning bid was Jeffrey's LLC with a net interest cost of 2.504847%.

So overall, the bids that came in were very competitive when taking in the premiums.

An important note would be that the— this time last year, the lowest bid was 2.898596, and out of all the bids that we received, there was no bid that was higher than that 2.89.

So we've seen significantly lower interest rates for this.

So my recommendation is that we approve this.

Mr. Zahra has lengthy.

If the board remembers, the motion is over 2 pages, so just bear with Mr. Zahra as he reads it.

If there are questions, I'll answer the questions.

You want to take the questions before the motion?

Yeah, it might be easier.

Are there any questions from this board on this?

Go ahead, Chris.

I, the clerk of the select board of the town of Seekonk, Massachusetts, certify that a meeting of the board held April 1st, 2026, of which meeting all members of the board were duly notified and at which a quorum was present, the following votes were unanimously passed, all of which appear upon the official record of the board in my custody.

Voted to approve the sale of $8,315,833 at 4% general obligation bond anticipation notes, the notes of the town dated April 16, 2026, and payable April 15, 2027, to Jeffries LLC at par and accrued interest, if any, plus a premium of $123,989.07.

Further voted that in connection with the marketing and the sale of the notes, the preparation and distribu— distribution of the notice of sale and preliminary official statement dated March 18th, 2026, and a final official statement dated March 25th, 2026, each in such form as may be approved by the town treasurer, being hereby ratified, confirmed, approved, and adopted.

Further voted that the town treasurer and the select board be and hereby are authorized to exec— execute and deliver a significant events disclosure undertaken in compliance with SEC Rule 15c-2-12 in such form as may be approved by the bond counsel to the town, which undertaking shall be incorporated by references in the notes for the benefit of the holders of the notes from time to time.

Further voted that we authorize and direct the town treasurer to establish post-insurance federal tax compliance procedures and continuing disclosure procedures in such forms as the town treasurer and bond counsel deem sufficient, or if such procedures are currently in place, to review and update such said procedures in order to monitor and maintain the tax-exempt status of the notes and to comply with relevant securities laws.

Further voted that any certificates or documents related to the notes, collectively the documents, may be executed in several counterparts, each of which shall be regarded as an original and all of which shall constitute one and the same document.

Delivery of the executed counterpart of the signature page to the document by electronic mail in a PDF file or by other electronic transmission shall be effective as delivery of the manually executed counterpart signature page to such document.

And electronic signatures on any of the documents shall be deemed original signatures for the purpose of the documents and all matters related thereto, having the same legal effect as original signatures.

Further voted that each member of the select board, the town clerk, and the town treasurer be and hereby are authorized to take any and such actions and execute and deliver such certificates, receipts, or other documents as may be determined by them, or by any of them, to be necessary or convenient to carrying into effect the provisions of the foregoing votes.

I further certify that the votes were taken at a meeting open to the public, that no vote was taken by secret ballot, that a notice stating the place, date, time, and agenda for the meeting, which agenda included the adoption of the above votes, was filed with the town clerk and a copy therefore posted in a manner visible to the public at all hours in or on the municipal building that the office of the town clerk is located, or if practicable, in accordance with an alternative method of notice prescribed or approved by the Attorney General.

As set forth in 940 CMR 29.03, Section 2B, at least 48 hours, not including Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays prior to the time of the meeting, and remained so posted at the time of the meeting, that no deliberations or decisions in connection with the sale of the notes were taken in executive session, all in accordance with General Law Chapter 30A, subsection 18 through 25, as amended.

Dated April 1st, 2026.

Thank you.

Can I get a second on that motion?

Second.

Thank you.

I got a motion and a second.

Any questions?

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none.

Do you need a roll call?

No.

Unanimous.

Thank you.

Joint meeting with the school committee.

Come on down.

Oh, they need mics.

They need what?

Mics.

Microphones.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

I just want— oh, thank you, thank you.

You want that one?

Do you have a piece of paper I could have?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Who's picking on me?

Get the That's perfect.

Thank you.

In.

He tried to get in.

The problem is it was pouring rain.

I was trying to get him to stop complaining.

I was trying to get towels.

I just asked the school committee that when you speak, please make sure you have the mic.

And then I go online, I was like, what do I do to clear them?

And then I had to get it.

This is just a hand.

I had no idea you could watch that on Amazon, so I had to wait.

I had to find a place to go get it.

So in the meantime, I'm like, where do I put them?

We can share.

We're used to it.

I've had the walls.

That's right.

Yeah, it was crazy trying to get to the beach.

It was.

I was up in Vermont yesterday.

I was driving down from New Hampshire.

I was complaining because I had to come from East Greenwich.

Caroline?

But it was bad, especially down here.

And up there it wasn't bad.

It wasn't even raining.

Yeah.

Oh, thank you.

Maybe she'll pass those out.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hold on, these are all my Disney pages.

Let's just like not right now.

It's not really the time for Disney.

Okay.

I don't know.

I ain't got no weapon.

All right.

No way for me.

Oh.

Yep, I think we need to call the meeting order before I do it.

Go right ahead.

Oh geez, yes.

Excuse me.

Good evening, uh, welcome to the Seekonk Public Schools joint meeting with the, with the, uh, select board on April 1st, 2026.

The time is— don't look at that, please.

Okay, 6:47 PM.

6:47 PM, thank you.

Good.

And, um, present today are myself, School Committee Chair Robert Girardi, Vice Chair Emily Field, Secretary Lisa Rizzo, select— select board, I elevated— School Committee Member Kyle Duckett, and School Committee Member Alicia McManus.

And we have our administrative team here too.

Superintendent Kidwell will be leading off our discussions for us.

So with that said, the meeting will be called to order.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So we're here this evening for a joint meeting because at the most recent School Committee meeting and the most recent Select Board meeting, there was a discrepancy in the 2 budgets that we were talking about.

And so we had been to talk with the Select Board previously, some time ago.

We had been to talk with FinCom.

We are attempting to figure out how we can work together to fulfill the needs of all constituents in this town.

So what I have for you in a slideshow first is context about where we are in the kinds of reductions and revenue increases that we would have to consider to move below the 4.61%, which I believe was the request from the select board and certainly a request from the school committee of what are the options.

The committee at this point, I just want to correct the record publicly, has not voted a budget yet.

So they may do that this evening during the joint meeting.

That is entirely their purview.

The next meeting of the school committee is on April 13th, right?

So we are trying to work with the select board to expedite the process in whatever way is necessary, get things done in time for town meeting, communicate transparently with the public.

So I'm here with examples of reductions, kind of a menu, and the priorities that the team has talked through, if this is what we need to go towards.

I want to be clear that these are not reductions that the administrative team is recommending.

The administrative team is not recommending that we institute fees.

We are working in a difficult situation right now and we are trying to make sure that we are all on the same team working forward.

So I'm presenting you with options, that's where we are.

So the predicted gap right now, Once the faculty, the staff, the leadership team, and the committee worked together for a level service budget and necessary updates, that put us at a 4.61% increase, which is just over $1.5 million.

The select board presentation from the town administrator indicated an increase more like $850,000, which means we must reduce $740,000 $714,000 more to get to 2.5%, or if we were able to compromise somewhere around 3%, that's still a reduction of over half a million dollars from where we are right now.

One of the other concerns was that the town administrator's proposed budget made no promise of additional Chapter 70 going, going to the schools, even if it were approved by the state.

While certainly we understand that the town is currently funding schools above required net school spending, we would certainly make the argument that funding schools at the minimum is not going to be the product that you're hoping for as a town.

So in listing our priorities and sharing with the committee some options, we started with fees.

This was at the direction of the committee, and I want to be clear that prior committees had directed us not to do this, so we are delving into kind of new territory here.

We did institute a transportation fee a few years ago.

It's at $150 per rider.

If we increased it to $180, which markets readily as $1 a day in a 180-day school year, that would likely be $14,500 more in revenue.

Additionally, because when we institute fees, fewer kids ride the bus, which means more families driving or walking, hopefully carpooling in this gas economy, We can remove one bus route.

This would affect Martin, the middle school, and the high school.

There are enough open seats for us to condense the students onto fewer buses.

That would, that would reduce approximately $100,000 off the current budgetary ask if we were to do that.

If we were to institute fees for athletics and activities, we've got a low-high range here.

The last school committee meeting included included research from neighboring towns.

I had some follow-up discussion with Ms. Field who did some extensive research on other towns' fees.

High school sports, if we did $150 flat fee for the year, play all the sports you want, or $300 flat fee per year.

There are a lot of challenges with doing a per-season fee including the administrative and collections challenges of following up on that.

Our athletics department has no administrative assistant support right now.

So we would be figuring out where to put these jobs with someone else's already full workload.

That could offset $37,500 or $75,000.

We are estimating here a significant number of paying athletes.

Please keep in mind that 18.9% of our students would be eligible for a waiver because they are classified as low-income, receive assistance with with state assistance with food or healthcare.

Those are not people who are going to pay a fee.

So we need to be really careful about how we're setting up a fee structure here and what we actually realize for a return versus what we are hoping to realize in our first year of doing this.

Middle school sports, we've got the same levels there, but you can see that the middle school sports participation with only 2 sports per season is a lower participation rate than the high school activities.

We have a number of activities that our faculty and staff advise for free.

We also have some that are advised by people who earn stipends through the SEA contract.

We're proposing if you were to institute a fee related to activities, and if you were going to institute one for athletics, it would be fair and comparable that you instituted one for our non-athletic activities as well.

It would be for the activities that we pay out a stipend only on, not for the clubs that people are doing out of the good of their own heart.

This might be $50 or $75 a year, and based upon participation elementary through high school, that's the revenue that we think we could see in return— $15,000 or $22,500 depending on the range.

We also could institute student parking fees.

Remember, we only have about 130 kids in the senior class, so there are a limited number of kids here who are going to be drivers.

We could charge them $25 a year, we could charge them $100 a year.

In our research, there was one community that was charging $188 a year.

I would like to think we're not going to go quite that high.

We're certainly not going to balance the budget on the back of our student drivers, but there is revenue at the bottom that we could receive there.

The reduction needed to achieve the 2.5% proposed by the town administrator select board budget is still another almost half a million, even after we pass these fees.

The next list of priorities that you can consider to examine vacant positions, to the point of one of the people in public comment that when a position is removed, it never comes back.

We were trying to restore the middle school librarian because the exclusion of a middle school librarian means the middle school can no longer be part of the sales library network.

This impacts our students' ability to access resources.

We've removed the high school library aide and reassigned those duties to either an administrator or the high school librarian.

We were hoping to bring that back to better utilize the high school library.

And there's $5,000 of high school library materials that we could take out of a lost book revolving fund instead of putting it in the general fund budget.

That's not sustainable in the long term, but it's sustainable temporarily.

This would reserve about $100,000— reduce about $100,000 again from the budget.

We have at least 5 instructional aid positions across the district that are anticipated to be vacant at the end of this school year.

These are due to retirements or resignations and and would not involve negatively impacting any current staff, the positions would not be filled and the leadership team would have to work together to reallocate the existing instructional aid staff to best deliver special education services.

The challenges would be we have some aides who are not delivering special education services necessarily, such as the kindergarten aides.

5 aides down would be a significant burden to student services.

We are already aware of 2 teaching positions that are anticipated vacant at the end of this year.

The positions could be not filled, uh, on the 2 one-year leaves that we're already aware of.

The existing teacher roles would need to be reallocated to fill needs, meaning we would take someone who is already working for us and try to have them fill in the other spot.

Now remember, there's a lot of different roles in the school department, so if the spot that we need filled in is a high school English teacher, we can't take one of the other high school English teachers.

We're going to have to try try to pull from somewhere else.

So this is a delicate balancing act and convincing people they want to change jobs.

If we could do that, it would likely result in increased class size for one elementary grade and some decreased elective content at either the middle school or the high school.

We still have not achieved the 2.5% that was requested.

I'm not saying these are the two best things to reduce, but these are the two that don't affect any people currently on the payroll.

These are all people who are leaving by natural attrition, which is an area we always try to look at out of respect to existing staff.

So this is the slide nobody wants to see.

Now we're getting into the remaining areas that we could possibly reduce.

We've talked about the things that are not required by law, and those include middle school electives like world language, health, technology, art, music, unteaming the middle school, which one of the people in Community Speaks indicated was highly undesirable.

To be honest, we could do it.

We're a small middle school, we can figure out how, but it would be a huge change that we could have used a little more time planning towards if that's what we were going to do.

The class sizes for students would be around 24, and some teachers would need to teach more than one grade level.

Right now we have 2 teachers for each subject at each grade level at the middle school.

We could reduce nursing support, aquatics and athletics support, secondary guidance support.

The middle school has a math lab and an English lab for assisting students who are struggling to achieve grade-level standards.

These were initially funded through Title I funding, but Title I funding no longer applies to the middle school.

We were able to absorb it through local funding as Title I funding shifted elsewhere, but this could be an area that we chose to reduce.

High school electives, art, culinary, or academic electives.

I got a few questions about what an academic elective is.

Academic electives are classes like psychology or drama or environmental science that aren't necessarily a graduation requirement.

So when you talk about reducing academic electives, we talk about having English 9, English 10, English 11, and English 12.

Math, you know, you still have to have a few there, but far fewer.

Like maybe we don't offer statistics anymore.

Again, I want to reiterate this is not something that the administrative team considers to be a good place to look or a discussion that we want to have.

This is what we're down to at this point and we want to be transparent with the community.

Elementary class sizes, the grade 3 to 5 class size is, median class size is now 24.

The grade K to 2 median class size is now 19.5.

We could continue to reduce elementary classroom teacher positions and the grade K-2 class size could be more like 24.

Anyone who's actually been in a room with that many 6-year-olds knows that that is tremendously challenging and that we strategically, as budget reductions occurred in prior years, focused on the upper grades trying to preserve a smaller class size in the lower grades.

But that is another area that could be examined.

And finally, One of the things on the table was reducing athletics and activities entirely.

Honestly, our athletics and activities budget is about $695,000.

There are some districts that are self-funded in this area.

I cannot imagine the fees we would have to charge to students to self-fund the level of what we do here, and I cannot imagine Seekonk High without athletics and activities, let alone the middle school and the elementary school.

So we can look at these areas, but the reason the committee was at 4.61 in our discussions, the reason the administrative team in communication with the staff was at 4.61, is we have already reduced everything that is extra.

This is where we are now, and we would be— we've already made significant cuts beyond what is extra.

Well, now we're really getting to the heart of it.

So this— let's talk about the sustainability of the reductions, and I just wanna make this statement and then I'll turn it over to the committee to determine how they would like to proceed.

If the annual expected budgetary increase for education is 2.5% because that's the levy limit, yet other departments and fixed costs increase at higher rates, then no annual school budget can ever be sustainable for future years.

In this system, each year will require a reduction to services and staff because the school budget also includes fixed costs.

If salaries are around 70% of the school budget, which they are, with an overall increase kept at or under 2.5% by retirements, budgeted hiring, substitute cost management, yet goods— cost for goods, services like transportation, utilities, and tuitions increase by 5 to 7% annually, The overall budget will increase at a rate around 3.5% for level services.

Under the budgetary expectation of limiting to 2.5%, improvements in course offerings, programs, and class sizes cannot occur.

To maintain a 2.5% annual increase with a recognition of fixed cost increases without continuous fee increases or substantial changes to state and federal contributions, the staffing side will have to decrease by at least 3 to 4 positions each year.

This speaks to Mr. Juckett's request at the last meeting about like what will this look like for FY28.

That was a really smart question because when we looked at it we thought, oh, there's kind of nothing we can do this year that will make FY28 work out right.

That was a sad moment for us.

That level of reductions will prevent SPS from sustaining the quality of education that supports community property values, revenue, and general return on investment for the town as a whole.

I realize I'm not a citizen of Seekonk, and I appreciate you letting me make that impassioned statement in that moment.

I will turn it over to the committee for their consideration.

Okay, um, actually I did put together some thoughts that I'd like to share with the select board from the school committee chair's perspective.

So I believe my team has handouts for the school committee and the board of select for the select board.

Do we have handouts to give out?

Okay.

And, um, you know, forgive me for not having a PowerPoint.

Uh, I was working on the road for the last couple of days, but this is the way I could put my thoughts down.

I really wanted to share them with everybody.

Um, and before we get to this data, I do want to thank the select board for changing the process that we've done this in the past.

I want to thank you for allowing us to have this extra meeting to discuss the impact.

Like in the past, we always discussed what Ms. Kidwell just said, which was, this is how we can do it.

But I don't think that gave you the information you needed to understand the impact.

And so I want to thank you for giving us this opportunity to speak.

I also want to thank the school board members and the board of select members who have been coming to each meetings, because the more we hear each other, the more we understand each other.

And I know that we've had school select board members come to our meetings, and they've already heard about the fact that there are mandated things and there are not mandated things.

But the not mandated things to cut would really be painful.

I know I threw out one that was so painful when we looked at it, we would be one— we would be 16 out of 352 districts.

We would be in the wrong category.

We don't want to be in a category where only 16 towns couldn't afford that.

So that's already not— that's not already not on the table.

We've discussed some of this at our meetings, but the really important thing is I want to thank everybody for allowing us to discuss the impacts.

I want to thank the parents and educators who spoke.

They were so articulate, and they're living the impact.

So it's much more than if I say it, although I have some knowledge having been an educator for 36 years.

I feel the pain that an administrator feels.

I was a teacher for 8 years.

I feel the pain when the class sizes get too large.

So I feel their pain, but I, I don't have it now.

They're living it right now.

So I really appreciate the educators and the parents who brought up some really salient points and were so articulate.

And I want you, you folks to know that we accept constructive criticism.

I love the statement that, you know, we need to be problem solvers as your representative board.

We need to think of solutions and work collaboratively to get solutions.

So I appreciate those comments as well.

I also want to thank Kyle Because unfortunately we're going to miss you.

But, you know, you have been a real problem solver.

You know, sometimes the board hasn't— the school committee hasn't agreed on certain things, but you tirelessly work in that collaborative effort to figure out how to make it palatable for everyone right to the end.

The last meeting you said, hey Bob, I've got a way to fix a problem, and it was a good way.

So I want to thank you and let you know you're going to be missed.

Especially at these meetings, because you have a good financial mind, as Superintendent Kidwell said.

So anyway, why are we here?

We're here to share the data on the recent budget trends, to clarify how the school is functioning in practice— that's that impact— to identify gaps between intent and outcomes, and explore more collaborative paths forward.

So if you move on to the next slide.

I believe we all agree that the town faces real financial constraints.

I think we all believe and agree on the, the Proposition 2.5 limits for revenue growth.

I, I, you know, I believe we all agree that the fixed costs are rising for all departments.

It's, you know, look at gas just in the last couple of weeks.

It's hitting all of us, gasoline.

Uh, and we all want to maintain high-quality services, um, because that's the kind of town we are.

We're lucky to be the kind of town we are.

So I think we agree on a lot, but there seems to be a gap in how the school funding was discussed in the past on just how we can do things, not on the outcomes that it's producing.

So then I have a chart that my predecessor shared at my very first meeting that I attended as a candidate.

You know, she shared the fact that traditionally the— we were all talking about there's one pie, and traditionally the schools were— their percent of the pie was between 51.6% and 24.2%.

So that's about an average of about 51.92%.

In the last 3 years though, it went from down to 50.9%, then 48.8%.

So now the average is 48.85% of the budget.

And I know people are like, oh Bob, like that's, you know, what, what's 3 or 4% when you're talking about an over $30 million budget?

That's like a million, over a million dollars less that we have now.

And then what that does is, as you all know when you, when you don't have that money and then you add another percentage on it, you've now lost the opportunity on the money that you could have had in the past.

That percent goes away.

So it really does compound the problem for us.

So it's just data, and, you know, I wanted to share the next slide also is the impact of that shift.

You see my little pie charts, and on that data what it shows is that, you know, most of the— and I've had these conversations in leadership with the chair of the board and with the town administrator and with Superintendent Kidwell, you know, there are some years when one department needs more and the other departments don't.

And that should be fluid.

And you can see on those pie charts that it is fluid, that sometimes, you know, one department might have a little more one year, they might have a little less.

But in those pie charts, you see the school department keeps getting less.

And I did get this data from the DLS trend dashboard, so it's very, very accurate.

And I put the links on there, so if people want to look it up, it is very accurate.

And I'm happy because I never believe that we should pit departments against each other.

We're all doing very important work.

Every single department in the town is doing important work and hard work.

So I don't want us to ever be in the position of pitting each other against each other.

And that, that's what those slides show, is, you know, that it really hasn't happened.

People haven't been pitted against each other, but for some reason the school department's budget hasn't kept up.

And the pattern of reductions over time on the next slide— I mean, special education 8 to 12%, transportation 10%, health insurance insurance, 6 to 10%, salaries 2 to 3%.

I mean, the budget constraints have resulted in system-wide reductions that we talked a little bit about already.

I might get to a few more.

And so despite conservative fiscal responsibility budgeting, Prop 2.5 can't keep up.

And we have to figure out how to solve these structural pressures.

On the next slide, I wrote the reductions in learning materials and tools.

And what's important about this— I don't know if you want me to read everything.

I mean, I could read that we eliminated all the assessment tools for tracking student programs and reduced the— you don't want me to read all that.

But what's important is in the corner it says the impact.

The impact of those reductions was less data to guide instruction, fewer tools for teachers, outdated learning resources.

On the next slide, it's about reductions in student services, and again, you know, reducing special education contracted services, reducing professional development opportunities— I don't want to go through all that.

But the impact has been increased risk of service gaps for our most needy students, fewer external supports for students and staff, and greater strain on internal capacity.

So, you know, we have, as Rebecca shared to some degree, personnel reductions across the district have occurred.

We heard loud and clear administration— administrative positions should be reduced.

Last year we reduced an administrative position.

Librarians reduced in the past, and Superintendent Kidwell showed us that we were trying to bring some of those back.

Instructional aides, counseling support roles, custodial and operational roles all have been reduced staffing.

So in every level of the system, you know, I talked to the school committee like death by a thousand cuts.

We're not going to cut one thing and try to get everybody upset.

Like, you know, Superintendent Kidwell said, you know, a coy thing that some districts will do, get rid of all sports because we know sports have boosters, they're going to come out and they're gonna scream.

We're not trying to make that happen.

We're trying to be even and fair in how we reduce the budget.

We have examples of that here, that it's been across the board— administration, support services, counseling, custodial.

So again, I hope that's the philosophy you would prefer, not us to be outrageous and try to create people, you know, getting upset and to try and reduce across the board.

But the impact on students in classroom is that we have— again, Superintendent Kidwell, we have increased class sizes to the limits where it's detrimental if we go higher.

We have reduced elective offerings, and I'll tell you, my youngest graduated 4 years ago and And the seniors this year had less course offerings than 4 years ago.

So I feel like these budgets have set us back 4 years, and I have an in-home example of that.

And I'm very proud of the education my students receive, my children.

Uh, we've lost inclusional support for students, we've increased caseloads for special ed staff, we've reduced access to counseling and SEL supports.

And that directly impacts the student experience.

As far as program and structural changes, middle school language offerings were reduced, which is again something I am not a proponent of, especially in our— in any community.

High school electives reduced, high school librarian access significant— library access significantly limited, and potential elimination of key structures like the middle school teaming.

If we choose to eliminate middle school teaming, we will set back the education system 60 years.

Middle schools teaming has been around since the early '60s.

So again, I don't want to be one of, you know, 16— one of 16 towns that isn't doing something in 350 50 cities and towns.

I don't want to eliminate middle school and set the school district back 60 years of educational philosophy.

That would be outrageous.

But what this shows is that these reductions have occurred during years when the budget has increased.

So to your credit, select board, you have increased our budget.

It's not like you're taking away from us, right?

Um, but it hasn't been enough to keep up with the increased costs, the increased program needs.

Um, and so we really have to focus on this data, and we appreciate you hearing the impact.

Um, and I also want to thank a couple of the select board members because You know, we have had a different process this year.

I really appreciate, uh, when we had the quad board meeting and we were discussing the budget, 2 members said something that really rung and made me feel good, right?

And one of them, Mr. Healy, you said with the under— you know, we're going to talk about 2.5% increase with the understanding that it's just a preliminary vote and a discussion for discussion.

But in the past, we have worked work well together to make adjustments.

And Mr. Sagar, you said working well together as we always should, that number should increase.

So I want to thank you for your, you know, starting it off with a very, you know, open-minded conversation and helping us change by giving us this opportunity to talk to you.

I can't thank you 2 gentlemen enough, and I can't thank the whole committee for having this extra meeting for us.

So thank you.

But where do we go from here?

I believe that as elected officials, the school, the select board and the school committee operate with the best of intentions, but sometimes good intentions don't always guarantee positive outcomes.

Sometimes we make mistakes.

We do not believe that our current circumstances are intentional.

I don't think anybody on the select board, I mean, I know some of you as friends, It's not intentional.

You're not trying to harm anybody.

But it's just a result of the current process.

We can really achieve the best outcomes when we try to understand each other's positions and we work together with open minds on the impacts of our collaborative decisions.

So, you know, my next slide has handshakes.

I want us to work together.

We should do, you know, we might want to consider a slightly different budget process even next year.

So I can tell you, because, you know, I was a superintendent for 17 years, I've been to a lot of different meetings where we discuss budgets.

You know, one town, they would have the town administrator meet with all the departments on a Saturday, and all the departments would put their, you know, present their case as to as to what they were asking for.

And that made it easier on the town administrator because then we all heard each other and the 9 departments could say, oh well, geez, the poor fire department, you know, we need to make sure we take care of them this year, or we need to take care of the schools this year because, you know.

So maybe a slightly different process to help the town administrator get all that information before he comes to the select board with his recommendations.

That's just a recommendation, might be just one idea I had off the top of my head from my experience in the past.

But it's something we could, you know, whatever you guys, if you have any other good ideas, let's talk about how we can be more collaborative and also maintain that, you know, really nice town spirit that we have, that we're all together.

And so, another slide with handshakes on it.

Let's just all work together.

That's all I really have to say.

I will say that I know Superintendent Kidwell said that in theory we, I, I, you know, we could vote on what we think our percentage increase should be, but I don't think we should at this point.

I think you saw how difficult that would be because, you know, some people might not like the idea of fees, some people Some people might say we should do something minimally with fees, and some people might say we should be even more aggressive with fees.

So until the full school committee has the opportunity to discuss those details, I don't think we should actually vote tonight on what the budget should be.

I think that's my personal opinion, and if the rest of the board wants to make a motion to vote tonight, we can.

But I think that, I think we've said enough.

I appreciate you listening to us, and I want to move forward collaboratively with you.

I really do.

And I, and I think we're moving in that direction.

Let's get there.

So that's, that's my little speech.

Does the school committee choose to adjourn at this point, or do you choose to discuss the details?

I don't— I wouldn't adjourn If you're gonna have deliberation, right?

Oh, what?

I'm sorry, what's that?

We're gonna have deliberation between the— oh geez, I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was gonna ask, I wouldn't want to adjourn yet.

I actually have some stuff to say too.

Oh good.

So, um, obviously given that this might be my last hurrah, I'm gonna try to speak very plainly.

Um, I know some of the stuff I'm probably gonna say may not be well received.

Understand that none of this is personal toward towards anybody.

Some of it's going to reflect on myself as well.

We've heard some people come up here talking about pie charts, talking about what percent is going to who.

Pie charts can tell you what they want— what you want them to tell you, right?

There are some factual data there, but you can kind of manipulate that data to make a point, right?

So when someone says 7.5% is going towards public safety but only 2.5% might be going towards the schools, well, public safety is only 14% of the budget and And the schools are 47.84 based on the 2025 Town of Seekonk pie chart.

Right?

So when you do those maths, the numbers come out to be about the same in terms of dollar values, right?

I think there are some good points about how there's a shrinkage over the years, over years.

And I actually think you should go a little further back to one of the first slides I had seen where the schools had 52% and public safety had— which, because public safety is the second largest grouping had almost 16%.

Now when you come to 2025, Public Safety has only 14.5%, so they've gone down too.

So as soon as I saw this, I— it begged the question to me, where's the money going?

And it's very clear where you can see it.

It just so happens that debt has gone up to 7.37% when it was 2.5% back 5 years ago.

So that's a huge piece of the pie right there.

That's— the money is shifting, and that's kind of something that's under uncontrollable by everybody.

So we can— anyone can come up here and talk about pie charts.

We could talk about pie charts about how there's another $8 million worth of funding that's not in the school department's budget that is towards the school department.

So then that changes the pie chart too, right?

What I would suggest is that we don't do any of that because I don't think that there's a fruitful discussion to be had there about saying who has the larger piece of the pie and someone's getting too much and someone's getting too little.

I don't think that that's productive.

What I will say is somebody came up at this podium tonight and said something, and it was probably the most resonating thing I heard: be good problem solvers.

This is where the personal hit's going to be, all right?

I think— and just like I said earlier, this is a personal opinion, this is coming from me, nobody has endorsed what I'm about to say— I think both of these boards have failed, myself included, all right?

I've come here now 3 times.

I've talked about prior issues with the budget, where the money is, how there's a difficulty there, right?

And again, myself included, have we truly met to try to collaborate and find a solution to this problem?

I don't think we have.

And being somebody who has spoken so big about that, I actually hold a lot of responsibility on myself for that because I've made these comments several times and maybe I should have pushed harder to have these types of meetings.

Something I'm going to say is, again, it seems to be the direction of the town to decrease the school's budget to a controlled methodology of, say, 2.5%, 3%.

I understand that.

And I think something that I do appreciate with the town is I've watched the budgetary hearings over the years.

I like the fact that we save money and we put money into saving accounts and we're trying to save for that rainy day.

I think that's an important thing that this town does.

This town does a good job of trying to manage the financials.

The problem is, is that to think about operating this budget on 2.5% unreasonable.

And instead of me going through all the numbers I've gone through in the past, I'm just gonna use basic numbers.

If 70 to 75% of your payroll is salary, right, and you give it a 2.5% bump every year, and the other 25% of your salary is uncontrollable costs, right, like electricity, operational costs, logistics, whatever it may be, if that goes up 8%, I'm gonna roughly guess here, you're gonna be somewhere around maybe 3.25 to 4— sorry, 3— maybe 3.75 to 4.25, somewhere in that 50.5% window of where that level of services would be.

It's got to be around that range because again, you have— if the larger piece is 2.5% and the smaller piece is like 8%, you got to find that balance in the middle.

You're probably somewhere around a 4%.

So that being said, I've said in the past that state contributions shouldn't count towards the overall school budget.

I've always said that we should look at the town side separate, state separate.

Hopefully it comes together, and I think that we have to try to find a way to make that work in a positive way.

Something I didn't like hearing, you know, not too long ago is, again, when we're talking about Chapter 70 funding and the per pupil expenditures coming towards the school department, and that there may be an increase from, I think it was 75 to 150.

That's a per pupil increase, and that's state taxpayer money that, again, me as a taxpayer, taxpayer, my tax money is going to the state and that's being brought back to the town of Seekonk to be per pupil.

My expectation as a taxpayer is that that money goes towards our kids.

That would be my expectation.

Now that doesn't solve our problem, but it is a piece of that component.

We need to try to find that solution without— and something I do want to touch on is because I've heard it several times tonight, 2.5% levy limit has been mentioned several times tonight, and I get very concerned that that starts a conversation about doing an override.

And we've talked in the past at the school committee about being fiscally responsible, and that we have the— you know, the elder population has been brought up several times about how they want to make sure that their finances are controlled.

Massachusetts is like the 6th state in the nation for per capita tax rate on property taxes.

So I want to be very cautious, especially when we're talking about trying to build a new school maybe that's going to be a debt exclusion that's going to come directly onto people's property to pay for.

If we're starting to talk about an override, I mean, this gets dangerous because now we're not going to get— like, if you get an override, you're not getting a school.

Like, this is a very dangerous conversation to have about an override.

I'm only saying that because I heard 2.5 get brought up multiple times, both in public comment and at this table.

I don't have a solution.

If I had a solution, I think I would have probably said it 2 years ago.

Again, I do And I don't mean this— it wasn't meant to be a personal attack on anybody here.

I actually— I hold a lot of that responsibility on myself, because I've addressed this numerous times.

And I can say that I maybe have mentioned it in passing to either yourself or other prior, you know, chairs, but— of wanting to have further discussion.

But I really didn't push it.

And that's being honest.

I wasn't driving that.

And maybe if I did a better job at trying to drive that, maybe there could have been more collaboration.

But this is a problem that we do all have to solve together.

It's not about figuring out whose pie chart, whose piece of the pie is larger or smaller.

None of that's gonna make a difference and none of that's gonna really have an effect on trying to find the solution of being good problem solvers.

So I don't know how we go forward from here, but one thing that you can take away from that is I don't think 2.5 to 3%, unless there's state funding coming in to make up that other at least 3/4 of a percent, it's not sustainable.

Because if you just look at the basics of if 75% of your payroll gets a 2.5% pay bump, which I think is within that window, I think it's a plus or minus, you can be in that window, and your other uncontrolled increases go up 8 or 10%, and I think that that's kind of low, that's conservative.

I think we've seen transportation go up like 10, 15% over the years.

You're talking easily about around a 4% budgetary increase.

So we have to try to collaborate and figure out how do we solve that problem.

And again, if I had a perfect answer or an easy solution, I would give it.

But I think if we all put our heads together and try to think of some solutions, maybe it is a combination of adding increased fees.

I was a big proponent of transportation fees back when we, when we instated them.

I think that nothing in this world is free.

Everything we do costs money.

When somebody tells you something is free, you're paying for it some other way.

So when, when I heard about the idea of maybe adding transportation fees.

I was the first person to say yeah, because I mean, if I drove my kid to school every day, it's gonna cost me money, not just in gas but in my time to take them.

That it's all a cost.

Everything's a cost.

The same with, you know, my kids do extracurricular activities after school.

We pay for that.

There's a cost there.

So I think there's a balance.

I think there's a delicate balance of finding the right numbers with that, and then also maybe collaborating with the select board and trying to figure out how we can kind of come together and come to a solution.

That's my piece.

Uh, thank, thank you so much.

And always, uh, I really do appreciate your analysis and understanding of, of the budget and sustainability because I've heard you talk about that since my first meeting, you know.

So thank you so much.

Do we have any other school committee comments before we turn this over to the select board and the town, uh, town administrator?

I have a few comments.

Okay.

And here I was ready to close the meeting.

No, so just kind of piggybacking on this idea that this process isn't working and hasn't really been effective, um, I've seen people on social media talking about it.

There seems to be a lack of communication between these 2 boards, and I think it's important at this point to step back, go through the budget process this year and the interactions, because I think that context will explain why we're so far apart, besides the fact that we don't have any money, and how we've ended up here.

Um, so there was the October quad board meeting.

It has already been referenced today.

Superintendent Kidwell made a presentation where she estimated that the maintaining level service would require about a 5% increase, give or take.

Um, at that point was when Mr. Healy made the motion, um, for the 2.5 with the understanding that this is just a preliminary vote, and that was when the nice comments were made that we all work together and that we're all going to— this number is going to go up because we worked so well together.

And so we proceeded forward with that.

On the February 4th meeting, that was our joint meeting with you guys where the 4.6 number was presented.

I don't know if that was the first time it was presented here.

I think it was.

It had been presented to us previously, but that was the first time that was brought to the table.

March 16th, we held our budget hearing.

At that hearing, we were unable to identify anything else that we were willing to eliminate, and discussions regarding fees were brought up.

Knowing the financial constraints, we asked for more information about what the 2.5 would look like.

And then, like I said, that was when the fees— the fees discussion came into play.

And the central office, to their credit, immediately got to work on what those cuts would look like if we were at— had to stay at the 2.5.

However, on March 18th, there was a select board meeting where Mr. Cadime inadvertently reported that we had voted and approved the 4.6.

I'm assuming it was just a miscommunication.

However, upon hearing this, the school department was called dangerous.

It was inferred that if we were not put in our place, we'd be taking money from other departments.

It was also thrown in that any additional Chapter 70 funding wouldn't be directed to the schools.

And then one member even noted that funding level services for the schools would mean other departments would lose personnel, as if this would be such a horrific result.

I found that particularly striking given that our schools have already been losing staff at an alarming rate.

Something that has been treated as acceptable every budget season when we explain what's going to happen.

And to be clear, I don't think any department should lose personnel, but it just seems inequitable that the idea of any other department in town losing personnel is unacceptable, but for us, we just got to do it.

We just got to keep going.

Which brings us to last week at our own meeting when— and this has already been brought up— when Chairwoman Hynes came to our meeting And I agree with Mr. Tessier that she scolded us for not doing our job the way she would like us to, um, and then characterized our proposed budget, a number that her colleagues had worked on for months, as 4-point outrageous, which just really reflects just how far this process has deteriorated.

If we're being mocked for the number that will keep us where we need to be, we're not asking anything more.

We're asking to stay where we are.

Um, this rhetoric is not productive, and it's actually really dangerous to suggest that the town departments somehow need to be working against each other.

I don't know if any of this was intentional, um, but it's having an impact on the town, and it's not productive.

So I don't— as I said, I don't think anything here that happened with intentional, but something needs to change because there was a massive miscommunication.

And it's not— and it's not serving anyone well.

The students, the community, your fellow board members.

None of this is getting us where we need to be.

The select board, school committee, any of the boards in town.

And now I know I was just very harsh, But I do agree with everyone that the goal here is to collaborate, and that is why we're here.

That's always been our intention.

And I also agree with Mr. Juckett that we must have made missteps if we weren't making it clear enough that we were willing to collaborate.

We thought we were negotiating.

But I appreciate you guys for having us.

I hope we can all move forward.

Thank you, and thank you for summarizing our budget process, 'cause yeah, you know, I brought again earlier, I mentioned all the non-mandated things.

I felt like I was the first guy to say some pretty awful cuts just from my experience to our school community.

And, you know, during these meetings, we did have a lot of discussion.

We just didn't, You know, we wanted to talk about impact as well as just the numbers.

So I appreciate you outlining all of that for us.

Are there any other school committee members who would like to speak at this time, or would we like to start the dialogue with the select board?

I think it's time to turn it over to the select board.

Chairman Heist.

Anyway, does anybody on the board have anything they would like to say or add or even maybe questions?

I would.

When I said it should go up, my vote only, if the state comes up with more money for Chapter 70, I will vote that it goes to the schools.

That's only me, okay?

I think we did that last year too.

You did, yep.

Yes, okay.

But a couple of, I think this some misstatements that have been made here.

In the current budget, fiscal year 2026, the education budget went up 4%.

Gary, can you bring the mic closer to you?

Okay, I'm sorry.

The education budget in the current fiscal year 2026 went up 4%.

Public safety got a 1% reduction, so their 2026 2026 budget was less than their 2025 budget, which is still unacceptable.

When Mr. Gadeem put the budget together and he gave us the pie chart and he showed 48.5% for education— when I look at expenses, we as the Board of Selectmen are responsible for all the expenses in town.

There's a lot of expenses that the town side carries that are school-related.

So when you had, uh, Dr. Girardi, when you showed in here on your, uh, let me see.

Oh yeah, when you said a pattern of reductions over time, you showed health and insurance goes up 6 to 10% a year.

School Department don't pay a penny for health insurance.

The town side covers it.

So when you put it all together, the actual number that the people of this town appropriate to pay for school or education-related expenses is really nearly 60%.

So 60 cents of every, every dollar goes, goes to education in one, in one form or the other.

And that includes what, what's on our budget is the health insurance, the Medicare and the FICA, the pensions, the library liability insurance, the Munis software, school resource officers, the financial audit of $20K, treasurer payroll of $35K, total estimated cost of $7.9 million.

I'll give you this.

Thank you.

So at the end of the day, I mean, we did— I will say we, we started a conversation, uh, relative to— and I know it was an executive session— but special education, and then that just ended.

Yes, concerning facilities.

Well, you were there and you were there.

Keep going.

Oh, all right.

Then I thought maybe that could have been a saving— savings there, but that didn't— that didn't continue.

So at the end of the day, You get 60%, 60 cents out of every dollar, and we still have the whole rest of the town to run.

And in order, in order to give you more, if my understanding is correct, we're going to take it from somewhere else.

And I don't see where we have that somewhere else to take it from.

So if the state comes through with more money, my vote would be to forward it to the schools.

But that's, I think, about where we are.

So I appreciate that, but if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to share some of my experience because I've worked in 2 states.

Okay.

So in Massachusetts, the towns cover the healthcare.

You're absolutely right.

Yeah, yeah, we— when we— I guess we were identifying that, we're identifying that as a bigger problem for everybody because the town carries that.

Yep.

I agree 100% with you that you carry a lot of different things that are outlined here, and that's awesome.

What I would tell you is in Rhode Island, the law is different and the schools carry their own healthcare, but their percent of the pie is usually 75 to 80% of the town budget.

So just so you're, you know, it shows up differently and it's, but it's not unusual for the schools to be such a large part.

And I did hear a parent, it's just, you know, kind of an interesting point what they said was, you know, each department is— at one of our meetings, the parents at each department's important, but the schools meet with more residents every day than some of the other departments.

So that's why we're so expensive, because we need a bunch of people to meet with more residents.

So, so what I would like to say is that I agree with you 100% on this data and that the town has taken care of all those bills, and we appreciate that.

But it's not unusual when you look at the way this state works, the way other states work, because of the number of people the schools serve on a daily basis, they need a lot of bodies.

So it's just an explanation of it, but I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Really quickly, if I may, just backing off of what Mr. Sager just said, I agree with you 100%.

I think that's something— that's why I said let's get away from the pie thing, because I don't think it's a fruitful discussion.

Because it just— when you, when you really look at it, there are a lot of components to the pie chart and how that money kind of flows.

Again, I actually think that— I think the town has been very reasonable over the years as to how you've tried to approach the schools.

I understand where you're coming from, and I, and I do agree.

I don't disagree with you, because the reality is, is that there is a 2.5% levy.

Yes, we do have other income sources that come in to grow that overall pie, right?

But that pie is going to grow at a set rate within a, you know, a little bit of a wiggle room.

It'll be more than 2.5%, but it'll probably be less than, say, 3.5%.

So you don't want something to grow exponentially because at some point in time we're going to be in big trouble.

So, and that's a financial burden that you guys carry, and I understand that and I respect that.

So that's why I don't think having those other conversations about, you know, again, our money shrink— shrank.

Everybody's money apparently shrank, because when you look at these pie charts, most of these other groups have shrank.

Again, just going back to that, I think— and again, I won't be here, and so it's tough for me to push this opinion— but I think there needs to be more separate meetings about how do we solve this problem.

And maybe there are some ideas that you guys have that we haven't thought of.

And maybe there's some issues that we, we've tackled, or maybe we're working on, that you guys aren't aware of that actually saves us money.

You know, a big component of that— one of the biggest things I pushed when I came into this district, and I think this district has done a phenomenal job with it, has been out-of-district placement.

It was one section that was growing tremendously, and the cost to send a child out of district for education is a lot.

We've done a great job of bringing and keeping a lot of that back here.

And if you were to look at what that would look like if we didn't do that, the numbers would be really bad.

So I do commend what our district has done in that because I think that's something they have done a phenomenal job with.

But again, I personally think that getting away from the whose piece of the pie is larger, I think there just has to be further collaboration as to how do we go and find a balance Because that's what you guys want at the end of the day too, is an operational budget that can continue to flow every year and not be a financial burden on the entire town to a point where something happens and you don't have the money to give it to anybody.

So yeah, thank you.

Would it be fair, Madam Chair, would it be fair if I asked the school committee, what is your expectations of us for this budget cycle?

Are you asking for a number, Mr. Sagar?

Is that, is that, is that what you're— No, overall, what's your expectations?

I mean, I'm happy to answer personally.

Um, I think what's challenging, and to Mr. Duckett's point, when we talk about pie charts, right, and increasing expenses related related to Education Department.

I would just like to point out, right, that those regional placements that we're required to be part of, when you start talking about Bristol Aggie, tri-county, right, those are costs that are out of the control of all of us that are sitting here before you.

So that is one challenge that, yes, does impact all of us.

I do appreciate and understand where the board is coming from with your challenges from an operational budget standpoint.

As much as it pains me to say, I do think that we should look at some reductions.

I don't think that it is fair of me to ask 4.61 at this moment in time.

Part of what I had wanted personally as a committee member when we came came to you in February with what our level services looked like was we also didn't have a decent grasp of what the rest of the town was going to face until Mr. Kadeem presented the town budget at March 18th.

So it's challenging when we go to Quad Board, right?

We know what the levy limit is.

We came very prepared, I would like to say, in terms of a presentation.

Idea of where level services would be, we able to come in under that.

Um, but it, it's tough when we don't always see what is happening from the department, the rest of the departments in town, right?

Um, so in terms of talking about working collaboratively and doing things earlier, um, seeing some of those numbers and how it impacts everybody in our community would be helpful earlier.

I would like to say I don't think that I also have a perfect solution for this current budget cycle, but I would like to ask of us and the Finance Committee, would— I know we meet in October.

Is this a conversation that we should be starting earlier, say in the summer, and start looking at more long-term strategic planning?

What do you look like for departments over the next 2 to 3 years on everybody that we have to represent, right?

I know that we come from from just the school department, but what do we look like for everybody, right?

Fire, police, public works.

Like, what's the long-term plan and what's the long-term fiscal impact of that so that we can start to work together sooner would be my ask potentially going forward.

That's just me personally.

I would say what I would ask of you tonight in terms of our budget.

I do think that the committee on our side have a very frank discussion of some of these reductions and putting some in place.

But I don't think that I'm also comfortable with giving you a number in terms of the overall budget at this point in time.

And I know that doesn't really answer your question, and I apologize for that.

No, that's fine.

Thank you.

I'm going to piggyback what Lisa said a little bit.

But I think that the next step would be I'd love it for you guys to come to our next meeting.

I'd love for you guys to give input when we're having these discussions.

Maybe we can put a budget— another budget work session on the table.

I would love to just have those conversations.

And I understand now is not the time for us to get into that because we would be here for hours tonight.

And there's a lot of people who weren't expecting that.

But that's what I would love from the 2 committees, for us to get together for the 13th or whatever our next meeting was to sit down and have these conversations together.

We want to get to the same place.

We don't want to be against each other.

And I think that's a way to get to it.

I know you asked for a number.

I can't give you one.

Oh, no.

Like, what we're like— I don't mean it that way, but I'm trying to gauge where we see things.

Again, I think In the past, I've always said don't combine the state fund.

I think a big component that's an issue for us, especially as a school district over the past couple years, has been state funding.

State funding has decreased.

That's not any, any fault of this board.

However, it does create a difficulty again to find a level services budget, which is what we're talking about.

We're talking about level services, we're not talking about growth, and that's a whole other conversation to have at a later date because we at least need to be sustainably level first.

Again, what I would say is just going off those basic numbers earlier, if 75% of your salary is, you know, somewhere in that 2.5% and the other 25 to 30% is looking at a conservative 8% increase, you're somewhere between an overall increase of 3.25%— I keep saying 3.25%— 3.75% to maybe 4.25%, somewhere in that level.

And again, that doesn't mean that that's what I'm suggesting that the town gives.

We're talking about including state funding.

We're talking about us looking at what we have on our side in terms of— the first thing I would move towards, I know people are not going to like me saying this, but adding fees.

I mean, again, coming from a parent who has 3 kids in this school system, if somebody told me tomorrow my transportation fees are going to be going up, I get it.

I mean, again, oil prices just skyrocketed.

Look at gasoline.

I get it.

You know, we're all strapped.

To a degree.

I guess, I guess that's all I have.

Thank you.

I'd like to once again piggyback what Kyle said.

I have done extensive research on fees, and as much as I don't want them— I was an athlete in Seaconch.

It's horrible, you know what I mean?

It's just something we do not want, but it is something that is becoming the norm.

Most districts around us have huge athletic fees, and we're not even talking remotely even close to them.

There's— I've done public records requests and I haven't gotten them all ticked back yet, but I plan to put them together for all of us to look at.

But there's some school departments that are charging $600 per sport, so I think that we are definitely losing some money there.

I think that's definitely something we need to look at and implement, and some of the other things that we've talked about here, um, you know what I mean?

And then work on the cuts from there.

I would just add, 20 years ago ago, when my children were in school, we— I had to pay for them to all the sports they played.

Yeah, right.

And, and like you said, I can remember when I was in school— I'm not going to say how many years ago— but at one point I can remember my parents rallying because they were going to cut sports.

And I can remember that actually happened.

It was something that was talked about.

And, and we're not trying to do that.

I would never in my life vote to cut sports.

That's what got me through school.

It's what got me into college.

It's what kept me going every single day.

And I feel that's very important along with the teacher speaking earlier about the electives.

Other kids have their outlet in the arts or the music and things like that.

But I do think that unfortunately we are at the point with the current climate that that's something that all of those that we need to start to charge for.

I am gonna say something.

First off, Superintendent, to you and your staff, thank you.

Chairman, you and your committee, thank you.

Okay, very difficult presentation to present reduction in personnel and programs and things like that.

At our last meeting, we went through our budget.

Mr. Cadime made a presentation.

There was a discussion about a potential 4.6% increase on the school side.

There was a comment made that we're gonna have a meeting, this meeting tonight.

I said, what, for them to come and tell us that they want 4.6%?

So we discussed it, we've talked about pie charts, and we've done all kinds of things here and everything like that.

What I would like— what I would like to see is have some type of a vote by the school committee tonight on what they're looking for, a or percentage because we're a little over a month away from town meeting.

To try to figure out and come to a conclusion and come to a settlement on a number that we all can agree on, but we all can make work in a little over a month before town meeting is going to be very difficult.

And the last thing I want to see is for us to go to town meeting and not be on the same page.

That usually does not work well for one side or the other.

I've been there, I've seen it.

It's an unfortunate circumstance.

Could it happen?

Absolutely.

If we can't make an agreement, we can't come.

And it's not— there's nothing personal here.

It's everybody has their beliefs and what they support and what they can argue and what they can present.

And I just don't like the fact that it could play out on town meeting floor and it could go one way or another.

And there are losses no matter what, no matter how you look at it.

Town meeting is the final vote on these issues.

I would like personally, and yes, I made the statement at our quad board meeting, that number will be flexible.

And it has been over the last couple of years.

Whatever that number, we hopefully we can work it out before the town meeting.

Maybe it goes up, maybe it doesn't, maybe it doesn't change at all.

I don't know.

There's no guarantee of anything.

But what I will say is, as elected officials, we have to make very hard decisions.

All right?

Some are popular, some are unpopular.

But we— I make them all the time, trust me.

So I would, I would like to at least, if it's not possible tonight, as soon as possible get a vote from the school committee on what you want to have for a budget increase.

So then if there is any availability or consensus or discussion from the board, if we want to decide to make any settlements or cuts to balance something So we go to town meeting with a balanced budget, fine.

If it doesn't work out that way, then, you know, town meeting is ultimately the sound voice, the final decision.

So that's where I stand personally.

I would like to see a vote taken by the school committee personally tonight.

If that's not feasible, then, you know, but at some point you're going to have to take a vote at some point.

And I just hope it's sooner than later.

Thank you.

May I for a moment?

I would like to thank you, Mr. Healy.

I personally agree with you that I would not like to see this play out on town meeting floor.

I don't think that is productive for either side.

I don't think it's productive for our community in any way.

Um, and I would also— I agree with you that that's not how it should work.

And I mean, I what you're talking about, right?

If there's times that there's, there's a huge disagreement.

Um, but I would, I would hope that that would not happen, um, and that we would be able to find a way to come together.

But I do thank you for saying that.

I want you to, I want you to know that it's April 1st today.

We have to have all this done by April 20th because April 20th gives the town administrator's office enough time to put everything together to get it printed because it has to be posted on the 27th.

So the last date is the 20th.

So when is your next meeting though?

The next meeting for us is scheduled for the 15th.

15th.

Okay, Chair, could I suggest that we call a special meeting next week?

Let's keep this discussion going, continue this.

I strongly agree.

Yeah, continue this joint meeting, the town hall on the budget, and that would give your side— if you wanted to call a special meeting on Monday, maybe if that— if you have to do that, and would give the town administrator and us an opportunity maybe to come up with something too.

Does that make sense?

I would just need some, some direction in terms of what you want me to come up with though.

Money, sir?

Just a little levity.

Please forgive me.

That's fine.

It's okay.

I thought it was funny.

Yeah, let's not wait till the last minute.

So next, um, we can schedule a meeting for next week.

I would not have it at the town hall.

We would have it here.

Hopefully it's available.

Usually it is.

Can I get a shake— shake head in the back?

Okay, she's gonna just go double-check.

Um, I would— a joint meeting between us, and you can still have your 13th meeting.

I mean, if you want.

I agree, and I would suggest that we put it on the agenda that we are able to vote on a budget if we can get to one at that point, because we would I know I personally— I can't speak for the rest of the committee— I want to get this done too.

Yeah, I would say I would prefer that we have a special meeting before we have a joint meeting, so that way we get the chance to discuss the levels of fees and what we're going to do, and then why not give them— well, that's— I think, I think it's fine to have it all together, you know what I mean?

If we want to work together, let's have input from the town, because you're not going to have a meeting on Monday because that's Election Day.

So, so you got Wednesday for our meeting, the following Monday Monday for your meeting, and then there's possibly, uh, another meeting for the Wednesday after that.

But I mean, would you want to consider— and, um, this is just a suggestion— perhaps convening the joint meeting at 7 PM to allow the school committee to convene at either 5:30 or 6 so that they could digest with each other some of what was in the PowerPoint about options?

That might help the joint meeting go more quickly than doing the whole thing together.

Sure.

Just a suggestion.

You all can choose.

And you— makes sense.

And you're suggesting that for the 8th, next week?

I am, because of Monday being election night and that being the traditional school committee meeting night.

Right, right.

So you want the school committee to meet at 5:30?

I want the school committee to do whatever they want to do.

Well, I know, but the suggestion is To have the school committee meet at 5:30 and then have us rescheduled to 7:00.

5:30 or 6:00?

5:30 is tough.

Yeah.

Well, what time do you usually meet?

6:00.

Oh, well, there you go.

So do we.

Wednesday, April 8th at 5:30 for the school committee and a joint meeting with the select board at 7:00 would work fine for me.

Works for me.

You're gonna be a new school committee member.

Okay, that's 3.

I think that means we'd have to reorg real fast that night, but I'm sure that would be doable.

I can do it.

Are you gonna have your meeting here at 5:30?

Right, sure.

Yeah, no transportation time.

Shaking your head yes?

No, no, I'm good.

Oh, you need a motion?

No, I don't need anything yet.

I'm just trying to check with everybody that, uh, that it's copacetic with everyone.

What's that?

Yeah, I know.

Well, are they Well, there will be a new seat, at least one new seat filled, so we can still make the decision.

I mean, I'm sure if they're, uh, right.

Yeah, right.

Okay.

So as far as I know, everybody's still good.

Okay, right.

Okay, so we'll put our next meeting as April 8th.

Thank you.

We'll do that at the, at the end like we usually do when we adjourn.

Okay.

But you can do it at the end of this meaning for you.

Okay, do we have anything else about the budget between us for now?

You want to do the warrant articles with them next week too?

They'll want their warrant articles.

Can you hold on?

Sure, I got it.

All right, because our next— next is to— hold on, I got it right here— consider authorizing authorizing the submission of a statement of interest with the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

So please, if I may, the context for this is that when the schools and the town jointly submitted a statement of interest regarding the project at Hurley Middle School last fiscal year, and we were invited into the MSBA pipeline with the consideration for our overcrowding and overall facility needs, The MSBA is willing to allow us to consider grades 5, 6, 7, 8, and then 9 through 12 as well.

So we could look at the potential for a co-located campus of our secondary schools.

We could look at the potential for an expanded middle school.

But in order to do so under the MSBA's guidelines, they have asked us to formally submit a statement of interest for Seekonk High School.

So we are not coming up with some wild new project here.

We are just fulfilling the bureaucratic box that the MSBA has already allowed us towards.

The committee has already voted to approve submitting that statement of interest, and the MSBA has been checking with me periodically to ensure that we intend to proceed.

We are looking for approval from the Select Board to proceed with that as requested.

I'm glad you clarified, because when I read this, a lot of people are going to be throwing stuff at their TVs.

You saw, and I knew we had already done one, so it was kind of— thank you.

Truly just checking a box for what we already explained we would like to explore as a town, right?

Um, does anybody have any questions about this, the statement of interest?

And I'll take a motion to authorize the submission of statement of interest with the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

I'm going to read it, Madam Chair.

Oh.

Resolved, having convened in an open meeting on April 1st, 2026, prior to the SOI submission closing date, the select board of the town of Seekonk, in accordance with its charter, bylaw, and ordinance, has voted to authorize the town administrator to submit the Massachusetts School Building Authority the statement of interest form dated April 2026 for the Seekonk High School located at 261 Arcade Ave, Seekonk, Mass.

02771.

Which describes and explains the following deficiencies in the priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in the future.

Priority 4, prevention of severe overcrowding expected to result from increased enrollments, which must be substantiated, which is anticipated given completed and permitted residential construction projects.

Priority 5, Replacement, renovations, or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs, windows, boilers, heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy-related costs in a school facility, which would address significant needs for all areas listed in this priority.

And priority 7, replacement of or addition to obsolete buildings in order to provide a full range of programs programs consistent with the state and approved local requirements, which would align to Seekonk's commitment to both high academic expectations and college and career readiness through advanced coursework, innovation pathway, and career technical education programs.

And hereby further specify— acknowledges that by submitting this statement of interest form, the Massachusetts School Building Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application, the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, or commits the town of Seekonk to filing an application for funding with the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

I got the motion.

Can I get a second?

Second.

Did she say it was okay?

Okay, I got a motion and a second.

Any other questions?

Seeing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimous.

Thank you.

Um, before you go anywhere, I do have— I received this today about, um, an article that you would like to put on the warrant.

I was going to leave that for when we discussed the warrants.

Are you going to have somebody to stay here and discuss this, or— we're not leaving.

Okay, okay then.

You're gonna stay in session and just— well, let me move on.

Yeah, yeah, all right.

Okay, I don't want to move on.

You can stay in session and not talk.

I mean, that's, you know, wait till later.

A lot of us like to talk.

No, I know.

Is it possible to take it out of order so that way at least we can get done?

Would you want to take all warrant articles related to the schools out of order, or would you rather— oh no, no, exactly, no, just this one I got at the last— I got today.

So because this kind of falls under the 48-hour rule, anything the chairman gets within less than 48 hours, but I will put it in with the rest of the articles.

We're all good.

Okay, so we'll move on, and you can either stay there or— you're comfortable.

We did all the chair rearranging.

I know, I know.

Okay, we're going to move on to fiscal year '27 budget hearing continued from March 18th, 2026.

Mr. Kadeem, you have— I know, I know.

I don't— no, I don't.

It's the same presentation that was done, so there's no new presentation.

I guess the only thing I would ask the Chair, I don't know if you want to close the public hearing or extend it to the April 8th meeting, which would give an opportunity for people in the public to actually comment on, I guess, a final decision.

This is not a public hearing.

The budget hearing is.

The budget hearing.

Oh, we continued it.

We did.

So if that's the case, we would just need to continue it to April 8th.

At the senior center for 7 p.m.

Okay, so you just want to continue the whole thing and not do anything new, right?

Yeah, I would only because based upon the discussion we just had, it needs to be moved to April 8th.

I'm just voicing.

Okay, so I'll take a motion to continue.

So moved.

Second.

I got a motion and a second to move the fiscal year 27 budget hearing to April.

Waitlist April eight.

Is it here?

April eight.

Yeah.

Some of you take care.

Not the seniors.

Gary made the motion.

Gary and then.

I did.

We got a motion and a second.

Second for April eight.

I'm sorry.

Just just point of order.

So did the motion include the place and the time?

So in order to— okay, I just want to make sure it includes the place and time.

That's in order to extend it.

A motion to continue the fiscal year '27 budget hearing to April 8th here at the senior center at 7 PM.

Gary, you move?

I did.

Okay, Mike.

Second.

Okay, I got a motion and a second.

Any other questions?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Any opposed?

Passes unanimous.

Okay, discussion of capital items.

Ready?

Yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So the board has the capital improvement plan before them and then also the capital improvement recommendations that was sent out with the agenda.

So the target appropriation that we were looking at was $1 million from the municipal capital improvement stabilization account.

That would still allow the appropriate balance at or above 3% of the prior year's tax levy, which was in compliance with the town's financial policies.

So when all said, the capital improvement recommendations on the town side was $901,907.

So the first item is for public works, a bucket truck in the amount of $67,947.

Uh, that's for a final lease payment.

Thank you.

Public Works, uh, heavy dump truck, second lease year payment at $110,575.

Uh, Public Works, a, uh, new capital item is the trackless, uh, tractor.

That's, uh, a trackless tractor which will be equipped with a number of, uh, attachments, uh, most notably the V-plow and, uh, snowblower, uh, for winter operations.

This is going going to replace the 1998 trackless unit that we have, which is in poor condition.

That's in the amount of $250,000.

For communications, we're looking for a radio console.

This will ensure that the 3rd 911 PSAP console is fully operational.

That's $63,000.

For the fire department, 2 administrative vehicles.

To replace a 2007 Ford Explorer and a 2008 Ford Taurus in the amount of $144,000.

Those 2 vehicles will be SUV types, whether that's a Ford Explorer or some type of SUV.

Fire Department, Joys of Life, so hydraulic rescue tool used to free individuals trapped in vehicles, $65,000.

I will note for this capital item, we have put in a couple of requests.

We put in a request with the state legislature to get an earmark for $65,000 for Jaws of Life.

And then we also requested through Bristol County Savings Bank— they do donations to municipalities— we've also requested $65,000 for Jaws of Life as well.

So if we do get one or two Um, of those in, we'll have, uh, we'll be able to either turn this back, or I think the ultimate goal from the fire department is to have 2 operational, uh, jaws of life.

So that will assist with that.

For finance and the MIS, uh, looking to replace the town hall server, uh, in the amount of $41,660.

Uh, the server, uh, utilizes a couple of different, um, systems.

The biggest system that we have right now is the assessor's camera system, so that needs to be upgraded.

For Human Services, looking for $15,000 to upgrade the LED sign outside.

For the Police Department, body-worn cameras— looking to purchase 51 body-worn cameras, which would be year 1 of a 5-year agreement if that is approved.

Approved.

We would also have to get approval at town meeting to enter into that 5-year agreement.

Any agreement over 3 years does require town meeting approval.

That's in the amount of $64,727.

So this agreement will include everything— body cameras, storage, training of the body cameras as well.

For the police department, also looking for $65,000 for a ballistic helmets and face shields.

And then animal control looking for $15,000 for video cameras for the installation of additional cameras throughout the building, which would include the dog kennel and prep room.

And then that's all we have.

I'll grab the mic.

Do you want to say something?

Yeah, I got a question regarding the fire administrative vehicles.

Do you know if it's going to be just Ford Explorers, or are we looking to duplicate what EMS 1 is, as a whole command staff on-scene vehicle?

I thought it was the Ford Explorers, right, Chief?

Is it going to be built up like EMS 1 that you know of?

Or is it just for— No, we do have that extremely old fleet of past administrative vehicles.

I fear the next fiscal cycle they're not going to pass DOT inspections, and therefore we won't have administrative vehicles available for staff for fire academy training classes or just general response inside the community.

So as we get new administrative vehicles, we tend to cycle down.

So that would give the availability for those vehicles to be replaced with older style vehicles.

So take for instance Fire Prevention Vehicle 4, that would be put into that queue for Fire Academy training response or any other details that we may need a secondary vehicle for.

All right, the, the reason why I ask, because if it's going to be a command staff vehicle like EMS 1 that responds to just about everything, the opioid funds I believe we can use for it, as other communities have, as a front, fully front AEDs, the Lucas machine, and a vehicle that not necessarily, you know, like captains that if they're not going to be on scene all the time, but like an EMS one that always shows up.

People have utilized those funds for that type of vehicle.

It was allowed.

That's why I asked.

Yeah, no, that wasn't the intent of this.

This was just solely administrative vehicles for myself and the Deputy Chief, and then that plays into the, the overall availability across the community.

Okay, um, just for the pure fact that we don't need that, uh, availability for another EMS response unit.

All right, but I mean, that I'm open to any suggestion by the board.

All right, if you want to just check with— I believe, um, I don't know if you want to go that route, but I'm just saying it would— they, they could fund it as soon as the vehicle meets a certain criteria, which EMS 1 does.

That's why I bring it up.

Okay.

Can I ask the chief a question?

Do you have quotes on these vehicles as of yet?

We do have the state bid list available.

$72,000 for a Ford Explorer is a lot of money.

It is, but that's the upfit as well.

So typically now when the upfit for the radio system is a lighting package, you know, we're running in excess of $10,000 to $12,000.

So that's complete?

Yep, that would be a full complete vehicle.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

The other question I have is I'd like more information on the $250,000 tractor.

Uh, and so in terms of what exactly?

Just— I don't know, I want to see what it is.

So it's the, the trackless tractor, which is— what does that mean?

So what is a trackless tractor?

Has tires.

Has tires rather than tracks?

Yep.

Okay.

So it, it's an MT7 municipal tractor.

Um, so that the, the base price is $185,000, and then you've got the, uh, the outfit for the V-plow, the, the snow blower, uh, angle booms and pumps.

And this is necessary?

Yep.

Yeah, they, they use that for, uh, cutting the landfill.

They do the brush cutting.

They have the, uh, attachments for, um, the stump grinding.

So there's, there's a number attachments that use it.

So it's not just at the landfill, it's throughout, throughout town.

All right, thank you.

Anybody else?

Everybody good?

I'm trying to look up trackless tractor, but can't type that fast, especially when you spell it wrong.

Okay, so So you can either make a motion to approve it now, but it's also captured in the Warren article.

So if you want to make adjustments, you can make it then.

Okay, so we can make a motion to approve these to be added to this, right?

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay, I'll take a motion to accept the capital improvement recommendations that will be on the May 11th, 2026 spring town meeting.

So moved.

Second.

Any questions?

We got a motion and a second.

Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimous.

Discussion of the proposed section— sorry, 6.12 Billboard Overlay District Zoning Bylaw Amendment.

Madam Chair, members of the board, um, as you recall, we were here on March 18th.

Subsequent to that, I did submit to the town clerk and post in town hall, as well as enter a public advertisement in the Sun Chronicle for the public hearing for the bylaw.

Um, we made a couple of changes.

Mr. Davis submitted a revised bylaw based on the comments and discussion that we had on the 18th.

I changed the proposed district bounds as requested by the board to include only the highway business and industrial districts, and other than that, it's been advertised and posted and ready for public hearing.

Okay, does anybody have any questions?

There's discussion about this.

Nice job, Mr. Aubin.

Nice job, Mr. Aubin.

I just herded the paperwork.

It's the shepherd that I am.

It's been a long time coming.

We have a few things here.

Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Aubin?

Any further questions?

Anything?

So would a proper motion be to recommend approval?

Well, this is also going on?

Probably when you get to the warrant article stuff, I would think.

It's going to be— yeah, the planning board will conduct our public hearing on it.

They'll make a report to town meeting, um, and I don't believe that there's any other formal action that the board would need to take.

Do you know when the planning board is going to have their public— on the 14th.

April 14th.

Yep.

Everybody hear that?

April 14th, planning board, 7 o'clock.

7 o'clock, select board chambers at The town hall?

Yes.

Okay, we have no discussion here.

Okay, thank you.

We'll see you then.

Next, discussion and board recommendation— discussion and board recommendation regarding the request for a waiver of an earth import/export permit for a comprehensive permit to be located off Sagamore Road.

Is anybody here for the Sagamore Road?

Oh, come up here.

Madam Chair, may I just— before we get started, okay, um, just for Mr. Sagar's, uh, point of view, I— he just needs to make a decision.

I know you're on the chair of the ZBA.

Town Council just requested that you'd have to make a decision if you want to serve on the ZBA for— as the chair, you'd have to recuse yourself from, from this vote, just not to have conflict of interest.

If you're not going to sit on the 40B application, then you can vote on it.

I'm going to sit on it, but the Vice Chair is going to chair the meeting.

But you're still going to vote?

If I'm needed, yes.

Okay, so I would just abstain from this.

It's only a recommendation.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

What I'd like to suggest is that we table this, because I think that this request is very premature.

Application's just been filed.

The first public hearing hasn't been held, and there's a whole list of waivers and everything that they want.

So I really do think that this is premature, but I'll abstain from this.

That's fine.

It may be premature, as you say, but they have the right to do this.

I just wanted to let you know.

So, okay.

Yeah, because I did question it myself.

So yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

No, no, I think what Mr. Segar is saying is, is that It's part of the application process.

There's a list of waivers that are before us.

So once they get the application process within 7 days, they need to send it to all the various boards that have waivers.

And then those boards will have a determination that's based on whether or not they would recommend or not recommend.

Ultimately, it's the Zoning Board of Appeals' decision to either grant the waivers or not.

But I think here it's just taking another step as to whether or not we want to recommend and the waiver of import.

So it would potentially happen twice.

Right.

Before we discuss this, I saw some hands.

Do you want to speak on this, or— I don't know if I should speak now or wait to speak— Well, you can speak now, and then you can speak at the ZBA.

Yeah.

You could do— It's on the 14th, correct?

13th.

Is it the 13th?

ZBA 13th.

I mean, either way, I mean, it's— we're just concerned.

Go ahead, come up, come up here.

That's fine, that's okay.

We're just concerned about it being in our neighborhood.

Um, you know, a day like this, yes, it really shows, uh, the water and bringing fill into this particular area that has already been pretty decimated without approvals at all.

The, the brush is extremely high this winter.

I have never seen it look so lousy.

They took so many— they just stripped the land completely in back.

If they're going to bring fill in, it's going to cause a lot of homes that already have flood insurance, and the pond is just going to swell.

It's going to be just a holy mess.

It's the same person that has constructed the problem area over on Hammond, and, and the water is everywhere.

I— is it funny?

No, it's not funny.

That's not— he just recognizes your— oh, my statement.

Yes.

And so even going by that area today, the so-called swales that they've created.

And my house is 250 years old.

I've taken care of it for 25 years.

They're going to put ponds in right directly in back of my house.

It's— I don't know what you guys have today to just come to not— okay.

So today Um, we're going to discuss— we're discussing this, but the ZBA will meet on the 13th, right?

We, we hear you, we understand you, so you need to go to the ZBA on the 13th.

Oh, we will.

I mean, everyone— yes, can we just get your name and address for the record, please, ma'am?

Thank you.

Hi, Chris Musial, um, 106 Miller Street.

I live right next to where they're proposing the road go between my home and the pond.

Um, honestly, I can't even fathom the fact that there would be enough of space between my driveway and the wetlands on the pond to put a 2-way street in there and have it be safe.

I— we've spoken at a couple of other previous meetings, Kim and Jeff and myself, and even who had to leave.

Um, there have been numerous accidents on that curve, um, pretty substantial ones.

And only to add more traffic in an area that's not well lit, and now we're talking about densely populating that area, is dangerous to all of our neighbors.

Not to add salt to the wound, right, for the— for those— for those school committee members here, but picture a world that they just talked about.

Now add 40 units to the Martin School, right?

We, we— I know we're looking at this as individual wetland waivers or building permits, but like taking the whole picture into account and how it's going to impact our school system, how it's going to add to our school system, overcrowd our school system, and only to add salt to the wound that the 2 committees already need to discuss.

So we will certainly be at that zoning board meeting, but it's bigger than just zoning boards.

It's bigger than wetlands.

It's how this is going to impact our community, our school systems, our housing prices, and just the degradation in that whole area over near the Martin School.

Thank you.

Correct.

And then we'll— I'll second.

Can I just quickly— Yeah.

So that motion is just a recommendation.

Obviously, that still has to be determined by the ZBA.

It's just a letter of recommendation for them.

Yep.

Okay, any further questions?

I got a motion and a second.

I think there's somebody— oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, sorry.

That's okay.

Come on up here.

Tricia Sweeney, 77 Stratford Road.

I just now want a clarification about Sagamore because this is all around the Miller and Colonial area and Edgewood.

What has Sagamore got to do with this waiver?

That's the actual property address.

Yeah, the property address is off of Sagamore because there's no— there's no egress or anything off of Miller or anything else.

It's Sagamore.

That's what it's considered.

So through the church parking lot, because there is an egress, correct?

You know, from Sagamore to this area if they go through the church, right?

So they're using— they want to use that egress to take product in?

No, no.

So they— they— I don't know which way they're going to bring the product in or out, but the, the plans have the egress going to— is it Miller Street?

Is that where?

Miller Street.

Miller Street.

So there's like, like the wooded area that's in between this.

There's a paper road there, so they would have to expand that, and that's where the proposed road would be for that.

Okay.

Even though the property's on Sagamore.

Thank you.

I don't think we have that, do we?

Okay, I have a motion and a second.

Do we have any questions?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Seeing none, unanimously.

One abstained.

Who?

Oh, I'm sorry, yes, 4 in favor and Mr. Sagar abstains.

And as you heard before, he abstains because he's the chair of the CBA.

Okay, next, approval of the warrant for spring town meeting.

No special notes.

Madam Chair, can I make a recommendation?

Hold on a second, will you?

I haven't said anything yet.

What's your— for what?

For this?

For— no, no, no, yet.

For the approval of assignment of the warrant articles and signing the town meeting warrant.

Um, we're meeting next week.

There's an election on Monday.

One, maybe 2 seats will be with new faces.

That's 40% of the board.

So I would like to see this just be tabled because whoever is on the board is going to be responsible to, uh, speak at the town meeting, and I just think it'd be a better process if we held off.

Ma'am Chair, can I just suggest, if that— if that's going to be entertained, can we just have conversation with the school committee?

And then also, um, if the board could just entertain whether or not to open up the warrant for their new warrant article, right?

Just so we can incorporate it.

I understand.

Yes, yes, yes.

Is tabled the right word though?

It was just You could post— yeah, you could postpone it, but I can also do that under other business.

Okay, so before we postpone that, I want to talk about this.

Okay, seeing as the, the next is the warrant for the Springtown meeting and the school committee's still here with us, I was submitted— I was submitted a, a request to have an article put on the warrant that would read, to see if the town will vote to establish a school building committee of no more than 20 voting members and 35 total members to be appointed by the school committee, or in the case of employees and representatives of town departments other than the schools, the select board, oversee the potential school building projects based around Hurley Middle School, with consideration for grades 5 through 12.

Voting members shall be defined as town residents over the age of 18 only.

May I speak to that?

Speak.

Um, when I first met with the superintendent a year ago, I gave you a copy of the permanent building committee that that we had enacted in 2014 that Mr. Cadime had written, and it got reversed.

But when you— I saw this, I think a 20-person building committee is absolutely ridiculous.

This has great language in it that includes all departments and everything.

Mr. Cadime did a great job on it.

We even went around to all the boards and commissions and got buy-in on it, including the school committee.

So I'd like you to consider this in lieu of that.

If I could just respectfully explain that this is an MSBA requirement that requires specific seats for a school building committee as defined by the MSBA, so it's not to the negation of a permanent building committee within the town.

Uh, the building and facilities subcommittee met earlier this week.

One of our members was not able to attend due to a family emergency.

The 2 administrative team members who were there, 1 school committee member and 2 members of the public, reviewed examples from other school districts and found that no more than 20 was a reasonable size— the reason— voting members.

The reason for saying no more than 35, including the non-voting members, is that these are schools and we intend to include students, we intend to include faculty members, and you are required required by the MSBA to include people like your superintendent, your school business administrator, and the administrators of the schools.

We do not live in Seekonk, so we would be non-voting members.

So please understand, Mr. Sagar, we are not trying to establish some weird bureaucratic extra layer.

We are trying to fulfill the requirements of the MSBA to move forward with potentially taking advantage of tax money that you have already paid to this state fund to improve schools.

And I believe Mr. Gadeem did include language in here that covers the NASA State Building.

So I'd like you to consider this.

Well, we have this on the— we have this right now, and my thought is if the MSBA requires this, there's no reason we shouldn't put this on the warrant.

And then this, which was just put out today, we're not going to look at that today, right now.

So can I get a motion to add this to— oh no, motion open.

Yeah, I got it, I got it.

I need a motion at 8:29 PM to open the warrant for the May 11th town meeting.

So moved.

Thank you.

Can I get a second?

Just to add this to it.

Can I get a second?

I'll second the motion.

So we got a motion and a second.

Do we have any questions?

Seeing none, you ready to vote?

Roll call, please.

Just to add this.

Oh, to open it.

Oh, to open.

Yes, sorry, open the Springtown meeting, uh, warrant.

We have— yes, I did.

I just said that to open the warrant to add this to it.

We gotta open the warrant first.

Motion was made by Miss DeZara.

I second the motion.

I want a roll call vote.

Please.

I will vote yes just to open the warrant, but I'll be voting against the article.

Pam?

Aye.

Crisor?

Aye.

Shell Hines?

Aye.

So the warrant is open.

Now I'll take a motion to add the language from the the school— from the schools for the school building committee to add this article to the warrant.

I'll make a motion to add this to our— to add it to the warrant— to the meeting.

Okay, to add article.

Okay, can I get a second on the motion to add this article to the warrant?

Thank you.

Do we have any questions?

May I provide one piece of clarifying information that the committee should know before you vote?

Go.

Or the select board, excuse me.

That's all right.

We are required to have this Building Committee seated within 60 days of being invited to the pipeline, which commences on July 1st.

There is no other town meeting scheduled before the end of August.

If we do not put this on the May town meeting, we would have to call a special town meeting if we were to proceed with the MSBA pipeline, which would incur the town an additional cost.

I understand that you did not receive the warrant article in a timely fashion, and I respect that you are considering it for tonight.

Obviously it goes to the town meeting floor, so just approving to put it on the, on the warrant isn't saying that you're going to fund a new school.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, any questions from the board?

I'll take a roll call vote on this too.

Gary?

Gary Segal, present.

Chris Zorai?

Michelle Hangzai.

So the article will be added.

Now I'll take a motion at 8:32 to close the warrant.

So moved, Cresswell.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Cresswell.

Michelle Hines, aye.

Unanimous.

Thank you.

Okay, so that will go with this to the next meeting.

There we go.

Okay, so now we, we had a suggestion.

Mr. Sagar, you want to make a motion?

So, uh, do you want it to postpone the next?

Oh yes.

You know, Madam Chair, could we just— I guess the 2 warrant articles— is it?

No, 3 warrant articles for the schools while the— I guess while the school committee is here and the superintendent.

So they won't be here for— they're coming back next week.

Oh, that's right.

What day is it?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

12/24.

I'm sorry.

I would make a motion we table item I till this— the 8th, is it?

Yes.

Yes.

Table it.

Okay, I got a motion and a second.

Any questions?

Anybody?

All set to vote.

Roll call, please.

Gary Sieg, aye.

Chris, aye.

Chris, aye.

Michael Hynes, aye.

4 in favor, 1 opposed.

Moving on.

Community Speaks.

Do we have an— what, did I miss something?

They want to adjourn.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Please.

So at this time, do I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn the meeting.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Any further discussion?

Thank you guys.

It's been an honor working with you guys.

Thank you for your service.

Thank you for your service.

And, and that's, and that's at 8:34 PM.

So we have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Oh, they all lied.

You have it.

It passes unanimously.

School.

We'll still see you at town meeting, right, Kyle?

Told you.

Thank you, Kyle.

We'll still see you at town meeting.

He's gonna ask what the track was.

Okay.

Oh, we gotta— is this one in there too?

What's that, hon?

The department head's good.

Uh, Thank you.

Why don't you stick around to the fatal end?

Department heads, thank you very much.

What?

Oh, I was teasing you.

No, I said thank you very much.

You can.

Okay, we have community speaks if anybody would like to come forward.

Oh, hold on.

That was awesome.

That was really encouraging.

I am really looking forward to meeting with y'all next week.

Thank you so much.

Okay, good luck.

Test of your school committee.

Mr. Alves.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

John Alves, 25 River Street.

And sure don't mean to prolong this.

However, I do believe this is Mrs. Posey's last, last meeting, and I want to thank her for dedication for the last 3 years.

I know that the slings and arrows that come this way are often and many, so I want to thank her for her dedication to it.

And the other thing, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I certainly hope we can welcome Madam Chair back to the next meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Downs.

Do we have anybody else from, from the community?

Okay, moving on.

Any other business?

Discuss other topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours before the meeting.

We kind of done that.

I have nothing else for that.

Good.

Town Administrator's report.

Uh, nothing at this time other than I, I do want to also, uh, thank Select woman Posey for her service over the last 3 years on this board.

She will be missed, but thank you again for everything that you did.

Thank you.

Board of Selectmen liaison reports and comments.

Accounts payable warrant has been signed.

TV9, nothing at this time.

Nothing.

Bristol County Advisory Board.

Nothing new.

Okay, you'll have to get somebody new for the Bristol County Advisory Board.

I know I'm back up, but we'll face that when we got it.

Okay, comments?

Mr. Sagar?

Yes, I'd also like to, uh, wish Paulie a select board memo.

Select person.

He's struggling with that one.

Yeah, I know, he worked with it for a year.

I'll help him.

But I did suggest that if she'd like to come back on Wednesday night and read the board— oh yeah, yeah, she usually does them all.

Best wishes.

Thank you.

That's all.

We're gonna meet next week.

I'll bring anything I have next week, so I'm good.

Thank you.

Okay, Pam.

Yep, um, as obviously it's been pointed out already, this is my last meeting.

Um, once the, uh Polls close on Monday.

That will officially end my 3-year term.

I'd like to say that, um, say very— say thank you to everyone who have supported me along the way, from the campaign process to the voting and just the last 3 years in general.

So really do appreciate everybody who has supported me.

Couldn't have done it without you, so thank you very much.

Um, and I'd like to say that I'm very happy that I did it, and it was a pleasure to serve the town that I lived my entire life in, um, and raised my family in.

So this was a great opportunity for me, a great learning experience.

Um, I do need to move on.

Things have gotten very busy with my life right now.

So, um, not to say I won't be back, uh, we'll see how things go.

I do potentially see me back in a year or two from now.

We'll see how life treats me between now and then.

But I would like to say that, you know, we've done some great things.

And then to Gary's point about the boards and committees, that's one of the things I've really been trying to drive over the last 3 years, to get those positions filled.

And even though they didn't go down to zero, I think we did fill quite a few in the 3 years.

I mean, we've, we've seen a lot lot.

I mean, I know there was one that had like 8 for 21 or whatever it was, and now it's only down to 8.

So I think we've done a great job with that, and I say thank you to everyone who has filled those positions.

Um, it's, it's, it is greatly appreciated.

We can't run the, can't run the town government without you, so, uh, thank you again.

And, um, I think that's pretty much it.

Chris?

Yeah, well, that may be an opportunity there, so we'll Chris, yeah, Chris, I just want to say, Pam, it's been a pleasure for the last 3 years.

I know some stuff's been eye-opening, and it takes guts to pull papers first of all, to get out from behind the keyboard, come up here and see what it's really like.

You know, I want to say it's been a pleasure.

That's it.

You good, Michael?

Pam, thank you.

It's not easy sitting up here, as you know.

That's It's been a learning experience.

You know, I— besides you being on the board, I also know you personally, and I wish you, your family, and everything going forward nothing but the best.

Enjoy your Wednesday nights.

Yeah, of course I'd like to thank you too.

It was nice to have you here for 3 years.

It was great coming on with you.

Um, I also want to remind everybody the election is ongoing right now because as long as the town hall is open— somebody say something?

No, I just said, oh yeah, I forgot that the vote was already going on.

But yeah, no, that's okay.

No, no, that's fine.

As long as the town hall is open— well, tomorrow because they are closed on Friday though— you can do early voting.

Otherwise, Monday at the high school.

And remember, for those that need the Key Club to watch your children while you vote they are also available.

Um, that was town meeting, wasn't it?

Oh yeah, that was town meeting.

You're right, forget that.

Anyway, there is voting tomorrow and Monday.

Please, please everybody vote.

Everybody that's running is interested in having your vote, and everybody wants it.

I'll take a motion to adjourn open session at 8:42 PM to enter into executive session to conduct strategy sessions with respect to negotiations pertaining to opioid litigation per Mass General Law Chapter 38, subsection 21A3.

As having the discussion in open session would be detrimental to the litigation bargaining position of the town, not to enter back into open session.

So moved, Gary Segar.

Second, Pampozzi.

Gary Segar, aye.

Pampozzi, aye.

Crisore, aye.

Michael Healy, aye.

Michelle Hynes, aye.

Thank you very much.