Select Board & School Committee Meeting — April 8, 2026

Love you.

He's ready when you are, buddy.

All right, hold on.

Yeah.

Napkins, please, into the table too.

Was it the key or not?

We're going to get everybody to calm down.

I'm not.

I know, right?

Oh, wow.

Good.

All right, very good.

All right, everybody, can I have everybody's attention?

Can we quiet down, please?

Meeting's going to start.

Thank you.

I would like to, uh, thank everybody for coming tonight to the select board meeting of Wednesday, April 8th, 2026, being held tonight at the Seekonk Senior Center.

The time is 7:21.

Um, per Mass General Law Chapter 30, subsection 20F, requires any person recording— recording must notify the chairperson at the beginning of the meeting.

Anybody recording the meeting?

Thank you.

Uh, all select board meetings are recorded via audio and video and are broadcast live on Seekonk Channel 96.

I'd like to call the regular meeting to order, and also can we please stand for a Pledge of Allegiance and a warm welcome?

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.

Mr. Healy, just for clarification, the school committee is recording.

Did I hear that correct?

Thank you.

Could someone please read the board and committee openings?

Excuse me, should the school committee also open up our meeting?

Not yet, we're not at the joint meeting yet.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Okay, board and committee openings.

Volunteers are needed on the Capital Improvement Committee, 3 select board and 3 moderator appointments.

Commission on Disability, 8 appointments from the select board.

Cultural Council, 2 appointees from the select board.

Economic Development Committee, 5 from the select board.

Energy Committee, 3 from the select board.

Finance Committee is 1 moderator.

Historical Commission is 2 select board.

Human Services Council, 1 select board.

Recycling Committee, 1 select board.

Zoning Board of Appeals, 1 select board alternate.

And appointments to these are through the talent bank forms which are available at the town administrator's office.

Thank you.

Uh, priority matters, we have nothing under priority matters.

Community speaks.

Anybody from the community that wants to speak?

All right, seeing none, moving on to general business.

Item A, reorganization of the board.

At this time, I'll take a motion to appoint a new chairperson.

Mr.

Chair, Vice Chair Michael, I make a motion if you'd want it to be Chairman.

Mr.

Clerk and Mr. Zara, I will decline that.

Motion at this time.

I'd like to make a motion.

Go ahead.

To appoint select board member Sagar as chair.

Do I have a second to that motion?

Second.

Okay, I have a motion, I have a second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, Mr. Sagar, being the new chair, do you want to do the next appointments, or do you want me to finish out?

Okay, I will take a motion for the position of vice chair.

I would move that Michael Healy retain his vice chairman position on the board.

I'd second that.

I have a motion, I have a second for myself to remain as vice chair.

Any other questions?

Seeing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

I'll entertain a motion for the position of clerk.

Chairman, I would move that we keep the current clerk, Mr. Zara, for the next year as board clerk.

I'll decline.

I'll take a year off from being clerk.

Okay.

I will ask as the vice chair, maybe the chair doesn't want to ask just yet.

I'll ask if one of the new members wants to be clerk.

I'll accept.

Okay.

I'll second that.

Okay, we have a motion, we have a second for Mr. Oshimol to be the clerk of the select All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Very good.

And I apologize to the 2 new members.

I was remiss before I did the reorganization to say congratulations.

Welcome both of you.

Good luck.

It's always a treat here on Wednesday nights, as you'll find out.

It's a great experience.

It's always entertaining, I will say that much.

But thank you, both of you.

Thank you for stepping forward.

And also, I believe, I don't know if she's still here, Michelle Hines is still here.

I did see her in the audience earlier.

I want to thank her for her service to the town.

And you'll be missed on the board, at least by myself.

Thank you.

No, I'll stay here.

That's fine.

Okay, next on our agenda is the joint meeting with the school committee, discussion of school department budget and possible vote by the school committee on school department budget.

Mr. Chairman, Dr. Girardi, would you like to Yeah, I'd like to open our meeting with a call to order for the school committee.

Tonight in attendance we have myself, Robert Drury, the chair.

We have Vice Chair Emily Field.

We have Secretary Lisa Rizzo.

We have members— I'm trying to remember alphabetically who comes first.

Her name's Alicia.

Alicia.

Alicia.

And our newest member Andrew.

Andrew.

Sorry, it's first day.

We'll get through this.

Okay, so we have— that's who we have in attendance.

And our administrative team is here and they would like to do a presentation for you, which they already have up on a slide.

So Superintendent Kidwell, would you like to lead that off?

Sure.

Thank you.

Would you like my seat?

Well, Rebecca, take my seat.

I can't, I'm attached to the wall.

Okay.

This is my seat.

Yeah, I'll do the public speak spot.

Oh, okay.

You're good.

You're good.

Do you want the remote?

No, we're okay.

We have a remote and her name is Tricia.

So school committee, please forgive that I'm going to have my back to you because I— it's like theater in the round here.

I don't know which way we're pointing.

So congratulations and welcome, Ms. Almeida and Mr. Archibault.

Thank you, other veteran members of the board.

For allowing us to share these thoughts tonight.

We had prepared this for last week, so please ignore that the handout says April 1st.

I realize that it's April 8th.

This was in response to the question about some of the consequences of past budget reductions to the schools, so I'll take you through this quickly.

Our first slide is about success in spite of challenges, specifically around elementary curriculum, high school college and career-ready programming, and parent engagement, student engagement, and special education support.

Pictured here is the Hurley Middle School Unified basketball team after they had received a banner marking Hurley as a Unified Champion School.

Reductions to the budget at Aiken Elementary School have created the effects that are shown here in the chart.

In fiscal year '23, we had 4, if not 5, sections of each grade level.

By fiscal year '26, we had reduced by a section there.

So at the bottom of the slide, you can see the net change in classroom teacher staff.

The net change in median class size and the additional positions lost, including a part-time band teacher, a part-time adjustment counselor, a part-time custodian, and all curriculum leader stipends were eliminated and that work was reallocated to the administrative team.

Pictured are 2 students anchoring the Aiken School News, which we complete each week as a— every 2 weeks actually, as the 5th grade team does a news broadcast that is shared with all of Aiken as part of their technology special.

Martin Elementary School underwent a similar issue with a net change in staff of -2 and a net change in median class size of also +0.75.

Additional positions lost include a 0.5 adjustment counselor, a 0.5 custodian, all curriculum leader stipends eliminated and work reallocated to the administrative team.

Martin also has a part-time admin assistant as opposed to a full-time admin assistant that they had had previously, and their chart is a little bit easier to read as you can see exactly where the class sizes increased at the upper grades in FY26.

Where we only have 3 sections instead of 4 in those grade levels.

The next slide covers both Hurley Middle School and central office.

We have already reduced 1 world language teacher at Hurley Middle School.

Portuguese is no longer offered to grades 7 and 8, and advanced high school programming is impacted by this.

We've eliminated the middle school librarian.

Students lack support for research work, and HMS is no longer part of the sales network.

This doesn't just mean that they can't get library books from interlibrary loan.

It also means they lack access to research databases, online book opportunities, and the ability to access really any resources outside of what we have contained in the Hurley Middle School library, which is not being updated year over year because there's no one staffing that role.

All curriculum leader stipends have been eliminated at the middle school as well.

This is additional work reallocated to the administrative team.

The administrative team's not upset about this except that— well, we're not upset about the extra work.

We are upset to lose people who were in important teacher leader positions that really helped keep teaching and learning moving forward.

Central office reduced a full-time purchasing position at the end of February 2024 and combined these responsibilities into the transportation director position heading into FY23, which is not part of this slideshow.

There were other positions reduced from central office that subsequent staff had substantial turnover, and we rearranged that administrative support to provide increased services to staff families and the community through human resources, facilities use, and CORI work permit fee payment procedures.

Pictured here is Mr. Wodiker at our recent family engagement event around digital responsibility and safety offered to parents and caregivers in conjunction with a local agency that provides services to families.

Seekonk High School has reduced the following positions: 1.4 history teachers, 1 math teacher, 1 English teacher, 1 science teacher, 1 technology teacher.

1 inclusion special educator and 3 instructional aides, the associate principal who was also the guidance director, the library aide, 1 STA community coach, and the post-secondary transition coordinator.

The duties of the italicized positions were reallocated to SEA staff with stipends or administrators without additional compensation.

Again, that is no complaint from your administrative team, but I want you to understand that the work doesn't disappear when we eliminate some positions.

Pictured are some of our future teachers at Future Teacher Signing Day.

Those are Seekonk High students who graduated, I believe it was last year, and are hoping to go into education.

The following courses were or will be eliminated, reduced, or impacted for enrollment opportunities at Seekonk High: Cybersecurity and Technology, AP Computer Science, Robotics, Sociology, Global Studies, Economics, Psychology, Civics, English Electives, Digital Photography/Intro to Digital Media and Broadcast Journalism, Portuguese 5, and Biology.

Significant reductions to the flexibility of instructional aid support for special ed inclusion course choices and significant reductions to co-taught academic classes, which are designed to support students with both a content area teacher and a special educator.

The classes still exist, but many of them only have one of those 2 roles, so they're either taught by a special educator or a content area teacher.

Again, I'm not putting this slide up here to be scary.

I'm putting this slide up here so that everyone in the room understands the impact of the serious financial cuts that have happened to SPS over the last years.

Are we still doing great?

We're still doing the very best we can.

I would have my high school students go to Seekonk High in a heartbeat.

We don't live in Seekonk, sorry.

I still think it's a wonderful place to be on a daily basis.

I still think Hurley Middle School, Aiken Elementary School, and Martin Elementary School are great places to be.

But anyone who says there is more fat to keep cutting is not looking carefully at how deep cuts have already gone into schools.

The next few slides are about special education funding and delivery because one of the things that we hear often is that the Aiken addition was supposed to solve all the problems and that's not fair to the people who were on the building committee for the Aiken addition and that somehow special education has taken over.

Well, I hope the next few slides will show you the degree to which our special education population has increased in number of students and in depth of needs and the degree to which we are trying to be responsible stewards of the town's money by creating programming that keeps students in district rather than paying a higher cost for them to go out of district.

The students pictured are from our Transitions Academy.

They recently enrolled at Bridgewater— not Bridgewater, Bristol Community College to take some college courses.

So that's them smiling on their first day there.

Transitions Academy is the 18 to 22 students ages 18 to 22 that we are still required to service by law until their 22nd birthday.

Since FY22, SPS has created 4 programs: the Transitions Academy, PACE, HMS Life Skills, and Bridges.

PACE and Bridges are both located at Aiken.

These added 5 teachers and 10 aides for in-district substantially separate programming.

Your reaction there is, oh my gosh, that must have cost so much.

The programs serve 20 students who would likely be in out-of-district placements without these programs.

And the cost of these programs is about $600,000 a year.

The projected out-of-district cost for the same population is $2 million a year.

The number of students in out-of-district placements increased from 33 in FY23 to 38 in FY26, a 15% increase.

This population group also includes the 20 students we are now able to serve by in-district programming listed on the prior slide.

So the population of students needing these highly specialized services has increased over just those few years by 76%.

The cost of out-of-district tuition is paid from 4 sources: the general fund circuit breaker reimbursement from previous years— this is funded through the state— rent payments from the South Coast Collaborative for North Shaw North School, Galushaw, and a classroom at SHS.

Galushaw is also the Pleasant Street School.

And tuition prepayment from unanticipated savings from a previous fiscal year's budget.

The prepayment function predates anyone in the current central office, and we agree that we would like to wean off of using that function, but we are not able to just in one year stop prepaying and increase the subsequent year's budget enough.

FY23 out-of-district spending looked like this: $1.6 million from the general fund, almost $900,000 from Circuit Breaker, almost $400,000 in rent, and $450,000 in prepay from the prior year.

For $3,413,288 in out-of-district spending.

Our anticipated out-of-district spending for FY27, and I want to be clear, this is not— there's not a lot of cushion in this.

This is literally, we know the kids who are here and we know where they're probably going to go because we're already late enough in the year, is $2.7 million out of the general fund, $1.9 million out of Circuit Breaker, $450,000 in rent from the South Coast Collaborative, and $250,000 in prepay from the prior fiscal year for a total of $5,335,470.

In this period, out-of-district spending from the general fund increased from $1.7 million in FY23 to $2.7 million projected for FY27.

Out-of-district spending from all sources increased from $3.4 to $5.3 projected for FY27.

These tuitions are set by the special education schools and allowed to increase at a rate set by the state.

Some people who've been here longer may remember that there was one particular year where they were allowed to increase their tuition by 10 to 14% with no input from the school district.

We are not able to negotiate a better rate for these placements.

We are legally obligated to provide the services to students under our jurisdiction, meaning students who are residing here.

Out-of-district spending from all sources has increased by the numbers that I've already stated.

If we include the in-district programming developed to meet students' needs, the increase in spending is 74%.

But had we not developed that programming, the cost would be at $7.3 million, more than a 100% increase over FY23 in just under 5 years.

So again, I'm sharing this with you just so that you understand some of the challenges around things like fixed costs, not just our utilities, not just transportation saying it costs more to put gas in the buses, but there are factors impacting our budget that are beyond our control and they are substantial.

So when we make reductions to the amount allotted to Seconk schools, and there are areas where we cannot reduce because they are not within our control, those reductions could more severely impact students who are in a general education setting in Seconk.

We strive not to do that because this is not about pitting students against students or families against families, but I hope sharing these slides with you gives you more transparency to the financial problems that we are wrestling with and how we have tried to solve them over the years.

That was a lot, really, really fast, and there's no conclusion slide.

You're off the hook.

Ms. Leary, could you please put us back to the first slide?

Thank you.

In addition, I do have some information I want to share.

I know I shared some spreadsheets at the last meeting, which we did put up on the website, but I've put these together at the last minute because my day job sometimes gets in the way.

So I'm gonna pass these around.

Some of these are the charts that I shared, some of them are slightly revised, but I do want to expand a little bit on what Superintendent Kidwell shared, and that is that traditionally the funding for the schools was somewhere between 51 to 52% of the total budget.

However, in the last 3 years, it dropped significantly to around 47%.

And 3% doesn't seem like a lot, but it is a lot when it's such a big budget.

I also took pie charts directly from the DLS website that showed that all— of all the departments in the CCON district that all the other departments similar to us had kind of a 1 or 2% change every year, which makes sense because some years one department needs a little more, and those are the tough decisions that you guys make.

All departments but one.

The one department that had received a significant decrease, which was almost 4% over the course of those 3 years, was the school department.

So every Just so people know, we're not complaining.

We appreciate that all the other departments were treated as they always have been, but we're not thrilled with the fact that our department wasn't treated that way for the last 3 years.

When you actually do the math, because that compounds the problem, you know, we've been told to have a 2.5% budget for 3 years, every year.

And if we're used to getting a 3 to 4%, which is pretty much standard for most school districts, and we only get 2.5%, then the next year our next 2.5% is only off of a smaller number than it would have been if we got the previous budget at level service.

And these are all level service requests.

So I had the administration look at the level service requests, and over the course of those 3 years, if the level service was approved and funded, the schools would have $6 million more in their budget.

Then I went back on the DLS website and I tried to figure out, well, where did that money go?

And I realized, I remembered somebody had said that the Board of Selectmen created a policy around funding special purpose stabilization funds or stabilization fund balance, which again, being a fiscally prudent person, I get why we do that.

We want to increase our bond rating.

We want to get better rates when we go out to bid.

But we want to do it— a conservative person wants slow and steady growth in everything.

And when I look at the DLS website, the growth of the special purpose stabilization funds and the general stabilization fund balance equals about the $6 million that the schools didn't get.

So that kind of makes sense, like money just doesn't disappear.

A policy decision was made, money was funded elsewhere, it didn't come to the schools.

And so I think you have to really consider that policy and maybe make it a little bit more conservative so that you don't take away operating costs from the biggest department, because even though it appears we're so big that we can absorb these cuts, we're hearing from our constituents who are coming up and saying, this is going to affect my property values, this is going to affect the education my children get.

We're at the point, as I think Superintendent Kidwell said, where we're cutting past the bone.

And so I would urge the select board to really look at that particular policy and how it's implemented.

And then the last thing I put down, which again, this is nothing new because I heard it even before I was on the board, was that the result of these last 3 years was 27 positions eliminated.

And even though Superintendent Kidwell does a great job of trying to reduce positions through attrition so that it's not individual people impacted, Every position that's reduced is one less person who's dedicated to the well-being of children.

And so if over the last 3 years we've reduced 27 positions, I think you saw what's happening to the education program.

And many of us moved here.

I lived in 3 adjacent towns and I moved specifically to Seekonk for the schools, and the schools served my children well.

My youngest now graduated 4 years ago.

I know for a fact that her friends' siblings who are seniors this year do not have the same course offerings that she had.

Just 4— we've already regressed 4 years.

And some of the cuts that we were talking about having to implement if we get another 2.5% suggestion would— could in theory set us back 60 years in educational philosophy.

We were talking about getting rid of middle school philosophy, not having teaming.

I don't want to set our schools back 60 years in educational philosophy, and I don't think anybody wants that.

And I know this is probably all an unintended consequence of trying to do something good, which is creating more robust funding, surplus funds But we now need to kind of correct the course, and the schools need your help.

So we're really asking for help.

We appreciate you having extra meetings like this with us, hearing our constituents come up.

I mean, we had a lot of teachers come up, and they were even more articulate than I about, you know, their real estate values, their, their interest in their children's education.

So we're asking for your help.

Tonight.

That's what we're asking for, and those are just some of my recommendations.

Do we have any other school information?

No, not for this portion.

So we're all set with the budget.

And just to let you know, you were here, most of you, I think you were all here.

So we did review what we felt we could reduce our level service budget, which you had heard our level service budget that was given to us was $3.61 million.

We had pretty good discussion.

We unfortunately went over by 15 minutes, but we have brought that down to a $3.95 million request.

But I also added to that motion that if there are additional Chapter 70 funds which are designated for schools, that those funds come to the school to help us to turn around some of these reductions that have happened over the 3 years.

And while I know that technically you don't have to do it because we are funded above net school spending, I would encourage you to go take a walk in a school that's at net school spending and then walk in our schools and see what our teachers do and what our kids do, because it is different.

So just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it.

If additional Chapter 70 funding comes, I'm urging you to move that to the schools.

Those are my recommendations, and we're open to any other questions or conversations you'd like to have regarding the budget.

Mr. Cadime, as the architect of the budget, do you have any comments to his figures, or— Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just so everybody is aware, the 3.95% increase would mean that we would have to find just under $500,000.

So it would be $490,918 in the operating budget.

So just to clarify a couple of things.

So in terms of the Chapter 70, the, the all— the entire amount of the Chapter 70 goes to the school district, right?

So it's just a matter of how much funding the town puts in.

So I know there were some comments that the town is stealing from the kids because of the Chapter 70.

I can reassure you Chapter 70 as it currently stands is $8.5 million.

That is going to the schools.

And anything else coming in would go to the schools if there's any change between the House and the Senate budget.

So what gets reduced or not put back in is the funding coming from the town side.

As it stands, the town funds 76% of the budget for the schools, just to clarify that.

In terms of the policy for the stabilization accounts, We just had a bond rating review with Standard& Poor's, and that is the first question that they ask, if there's going to be a change in the policy on how we fund our reserve accounts.

I just want to remind everybody the reserve accounts are actually funded through free cash, and 98% of the free cash is generated on the town side.

So that's revenue coming in that was higher than anticipated because we are conservative with our revenue approach, but it's also giveback, turnbacks from salaries, open positions that we had because we either have people leaving or haven't filled positions, and also not spending, uh, to the, to the penny on the expense line just to be conservative with that.

So that rolls in, that's, that's being generated from the town side.

So I know the $6 million is being discussed and it should be on the, on the school side, but this is— these are requests that have been asked, uh, from department heads.

And just to talk about, uh, requests that were coming in, so the departmental budget that was put forward for requests— this is prior to any conversation with at my level, it's having them go through their department looking at reasonable needs for, for their department— was $79.1 million.

The budget that is presented to the board right now is $76.6 million.

We cut $2.54 million just on the town side to get us a balanced budget.

With the direction that we received from Quad Board, which was a 2.5% increase, and that's the direction I had, that's the direction I would— I had to move in.

As I had mentioned in the past, the conversations I've always had with the superintendent is once I have a balanced budget, if there's any additional revenue that's coming in as the budget changed, my recommendation to the selectmen has always been to give it over to the schools.

I don't disagree.

We don't wanna be at 100% net school spending.

That's definitely way below where we need to be.

And I also recognize as part of my presentation to the Board of Selectmen and to the public that we have had significant drop-off in terms of that percentage above net school spending.

So within 10 years we went from 126% above net school spending down to about 116% of net school spending.

In terms of just staffing levels, and I appreciate that there are cuts being made, on the school side.

And I'm gonna qualify the numbers that I have, at least from the school side, that they're based off of presentations that were presented by prior superintendents.

And I just don't know— I don't have the insight from the school side if all those positions were actually filled.

So I'm not saying that they're perfect numbers, but I do want to share the numbers that we have.

So from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year '27, the town has added 26 full-time positions, and that includes for '27, we have 3 additional new positions being added.

We have 4 coming from the fire department, but we also have a reduction in DPW, so that, that brings it down to, to 3.

The numbers I have only go to 2024 for the schools.

So in comparison to the 26 that we've added, the schools have added 58.95 FTEs, so, so just under 59 FTEs.

So that's a significant increase when we start looking at staffing.

And I'm not suggesting that the staffing isn't required by the schools, but when we start talking about cuts and equities with cuts, we're just on a smaller scale.

Our departments have, similar to the schools, minimum staffing.

There are requests that come in from department heads to add additional staffing.

That always gets removed.

Moved, uh, when we go through the budget process.

The only, the only staffing that we've really talked about was public safety, and that's coming from the commitment and the direction that I've received from the Board of Selectmen for the fire department.

Uh, I believe that covers everything I'm going to say.

I might have more to say, but I'll turn it over to you, Mr. Chairman.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Gadeem.

Oh, I'm sorry, can I— I'm sorry, one more.

I I just realized that.

I knew there was one more.

I was having a brain fart for a second.

So I just want to say, in terms of when we start looking at percentages from the departments, so just general government.

So I know I presented this FY26 to FY27, and the general government includes everything except public safety, education, debt and interest, and other fixed costs.

We have a reduction of $95,000, so a 1.2% reduction.

When you take those same departments from '25 to— from fiscal year '25 to fiscal year '27, we have a $51,000 increase over a 2-year period.

So that's a 0.6% increase in all those departments.

And that's part of the conversation that I've had, and it's a conversation I've had with both with Boris Lekman and FinCom, that education is an expensive component, so is public safety, and that's the challenge that we're dealing with now.

And I also just want to articulate, because I think it's important that we're having these discussions now, but the more difficult discussion that we're going to have is next year.

Because from my standpoint, when we start looking at general government and how much it's actually reduced year over year, there's not a lot more that we can cut on our side.

So it's going to have to come from the larger departments if we— assuming we don't want to decimate the smaller departments, that we have to be pulling from Public Safety, DPW, and those are the departments that have significant needs and have significant impact on services that have been provided to the taxpayers.

So it's a challenge, and I appreciate everybody here at the table to try to work this out, but it is a give and take.

This has been one of the more difficult budgets I had to do in terms of closing a budget gap.

It took everybody's effort from all my department heads, the finance director, myself, to really get to a point where we need to be.

And the only reason I'm suggesting not to move forward with additional funds if it comes in is because we have been super aggressive in our forecasting on revenue.

So I'm just a little concerned that we might be too aggressive to be able to make this budget work out, that if the numbers don't come in, we we end up being in a deficit budget.

So that, that's my only concern with that.

With that, I yield.

What is the, uh, Chapter 70— what is that gross amount?

Is that $8.6 million?

Uh, so it was $8.5 million.

It was, um, I think it was like $100 million.

Superintendent, let's see.

I know that.

Do you remember?

No.

Give me a second.

I'll find it.

Is that what you're asking for?

No, no, no.

What the total Total is about 8.5.

8.5.

So to increase up to 70 to make $495, that would be about 6% increase that the Senate and the House would have to come up with.

Correct.

And what's the likelihood of that happening?

Zero.

Zero?

Okay.

That's it.

Yeah.

So can I ask a question?

Sure.

So just to clarify, if they do increase Title 70, Beyond the— sorry, everybody— beyond the projections, that you would then reduce the town's contribution to us by that amount?

Well, that would be— that was my recommendation.

That's not the board.

The board— the board hasn't taken that.

Clarifying your recommendation?

Yes.

Yep.

And just to clarify, it was $174,000 increase from last fiscal year.

From last fiscal year.

Okay, start with you, Chris.

Do you have any questions or comments?

Nope.

Michael?

The only question I have is, are we gonna have any discussion about are we willing to move to get closer to an agreement?

They're looking at 3.9%, right?

Okay, we're at 2.5% or whatever we're at.

Is there any discussion between on behalf of the board that we want to have?

That's the only question I have, because if we do, if there's any type of discussion, I did go through and I, I did the best I could to find where we could, where we could make cuts without getting rid of anybody.

And it pretty much goes through Mr. Cadime's budget presentation.

And with that, it really— we still come up short of that number that they're looking for, that $490,000 that Mr.

I can even just mention it's like $470, I think I came up with.

But, um, I just don't know where the rest of the board stands.

So I'll leave, I'll leave it up to the rest of the board, Mr. Chairman, if we have a discussion.

Yeah, right.

To, uh, Bob.

Yeah, so the school committee, you mentioned previously tonight that you had more dialogue to go about fees for sports.

You need time for that, am I correct?

Am I correct in saying that?

So there could be more movement dropping below the 3.95.

I mean, certainly I'm not in favor of cutting any teachers' positions, taking things away from kids, but I know my wife and I raised 5 children here and we had to make a lot of decisions on fees.

I don't want to see any kids pay fees for anything.

Paid fees for our kids over the years, and it's because they were not, you know, they were an extra, they were an extra thing.

We didn't send our kids on school trips to Washington and different things.

I mean, some people may look at charging fees to kids as exclusionary, stopping some kids that the families can't afford certain things, to let them do the extras.

Like I said, my wife and I did not do all the extras with our kids because we simply couldn't afford it.

We had to make that decision.

We had decent jobs, but it just didn't, just didn't make it.

So when I look at it, I would never personally want to move in the direction of taking classes, labs, staff, away from the core component of education for children.

I would look more toward those fees.

Okay, so I would hope you would have a very good discussion amongst yourselves to try to get closer to this balanced budget.

I want to thank Superintendent Kidwelder offered to Ms. Almeida and myself this morning as we were sworn in an introductory meeting just to break the ice and talk about a few things.

And I thought that was, that was a good start.

But I, I did— some of my questions to the superintendent were, have we taken a real hard look at administration before we start cutting teachers positions, because Ms. Almeida and myself have not been in all the nitty-gritty of this all the way from the beginning.

We're getting into it real deep now, and I really wanted to have that discussion.

How closely have we looked at administration?

Can we cut further?

Okay, and I heard all the debate tonight, all the discussion, and solid input that we're getting, we're cutting down to the bone.

Our administration staff can't do much more.

I mean, I'm not there every day of it.

I'm just hoping everyone is completely sincere that there is no more room where we can't eliminate administration and save teachers and state and languages and classrooms and world history and everything else.

So I just think that needs to be out there because I'll just talk personally as I spoke to residents over the past month.

Mr.

Chair, I have a point of order.

Okay, state your point of order.

My point of order is a conflict of interest.

Mr. Oshembo has direct financial financial impact talking about the school budget or any other budget.

His wife is a teacher, and as happened in the past, that if somebody has a financial conflict of interest in something, they cannot only discuss it, they cannot vote on it.

Well, you're saying he's prohibited from discussing it?

Yes, that's his seat on the board.

He's prohibited from discussing it or voting on it in his position on the board.

Okay, Mr. Rochabolt, have you contacted the Ethics Commission?

I have not, but I have documentation in front of me that I can read to everyone.

Um, respectfully, I disagree with you, and so does counsel, district counsel, and so does Section 3 of the Advisory Board for elected officials voting on budgets, signing payroll warrants including salaries.

If I may, I can provide copies to everyone for this.

Let's start Section 3, Advisory 5.03, the most up-to-date information, 9/20/2017.

Section 3, participating in votes, discussions, budgets, signing warrants that include salaries of family members.

This is from the MGL.

In situations where an elected public employee's family members are employed by the same town or agency, the employee may not participate in discussion or vote on a budget item, line item, that could affect the family member's salary or sign a payroll payroll warrant for their family members' pay.

So the law says I cannot vote on a line item that affects my family financially, but I can vote and speak toward the budget.

Again, summary of the conflict of interest law for municipal employees, General Law 268A.

I can go on and on with this, but the law allows me to do this.

But I cannot do anything that directly impacts my household.

That's the law.

I'll make copies for you, I'll provide them for you.

The board can do what they want with it.

I'll make it written to the Ethics Commission if that satisfies everybody, but I am not speaking towards something that impacts my household in a financial way.

But talking about budgets does impact your household in a financial way, and I would like copies if you have them, but I would rather have a determination by the Ethics Commission because I don't think you're right.

Because we have stopped people on the board before for discussing budgets, not because they had a wife, but they had a family member which was a town employee that would be affected.

Because the school committee is affected by every budget, and every budget— the other budgets and the other budgets affect them, and it personally affects you.

So I know what you said, I don't agree with it, and I'd prefer to get a ruling from the ethics board because from what I read, you are not permitted.

So the board can make a decision on that.

But may I ask What you've read, what you're referring to, what, what Mass General Law you're referring to?

I don't get Mass.

Conflict of interest, financial interest.

A researcher conducting a study— well, this is on drugs— holds stock in the company.

A conflict of interest, a situation where a person, organization's personal, financial, or private interests interfere or appear to interfere with their professional duties.

And your discussion in on budgets affects you personally, financially, because of the employment of your wife, who I've got no objection to.

It's just the fact that she gets paid by the town through the school budget, and every budget affects every— the school budget and vice versa.

I do not believe you have standing to discuss or vote in your position as select board member.

When you go to the town meeting home, you vote as you please, but not here.

And I would ask for a decision by the Ethics Commission.

Thank you.

Okay, did I hear you say, Mr. Archambault, you would refer it to the ethics and get an opinion?

I will indeed.

I have supporting documentation that allows me to speak on this subject tonight.

Okay, well, okay, thank you.

Quick question on that.

I know you said that it, uh, you are— you quoted yourself there as saying that you can't vote on or speak to specific line items.

Um, so I was— I've been spending all day looking at the past budgets, and on the operating budget, the education budget is line D. Now I know there's like sub-separate lines within there, but I don't know, maybe we can refer to our lawyer.

But like, what defines a line item budget and on which budget?

Is that directed to me?

Uh, anybody.

I mean, we've got a lawyer at the end of the table there, and I'm not an attorney.

I, I don't think I take any law classes, but I, I turn it to weigh in on that.

If I just, just quickly— so I don't know, um, so what, what this Board of Selectmen actually appropriates is the bottom line budget funding mechanism.

So we don't have any direct line item authority, right?

So if you can tell us that this is what you're going to spend it on.

The very next day you can make a change and reappropriate the money.

The only thing we do is give you funding.

I think it may be a little bit different on the, on the town side where we're actually doing salary line items and expenses, and I think that we might need to get there.

I don't want to speak to it because again, I'm not an attorney.

I, I don't know how the Ethics Commission would actually rule on this.

Um, so that— I mean, if, if Mr. Archambault is comfortable with it, it's on him at the end of the day.

Ethics is on an individual themselves.

So if there's any type of violation, if there's a fine— and typically fines are up to $10,000, not saying every violation receives a fine— the town cannot pay for that.

As board members and committee members, you're protected by the town in your actual duty.

This is just one case where if you are fined, the town doesn't pick it up.

So, and you can't then go to the State Ethics Commission after the fact.

You can only get that determination, and any, any disclosure that you file is, is moving forward.

It can't go backwards.

So, um, but I, I don't know that there necessarily is a conflict, but I didn't mean to cut you off.

No, no, it's fine.

I, I just wanted to make mention of the case or the— what you mentioned.

It's like apples and oranges.

That's a private industry.

Um, the documentation, I haven't read it, but the way I interpret it would be he has to recuse himself when it comes to discussing salaries and the budget pertaining to salaries.

What I've heard tonight is overall budget, fees for sports.

I'd like to speak to one other thing that aside from this, but I think get an advisory opinion, but based on what I see right here and the example that you gave, 2 entirely separate scenarios.

That, that's just my opinion, and I just wanted to weigh in on that.

Okay.

All right.

Anybody else want to weigh in?

No?

Okay.

Yes.

I'll just make a recommendation just to clear this up.

Should you come up to the podium, please?

And state your name, please.

Kristen LaRocque, town clerk.

I would just make a recommendation: go through the state ethics.

Right.

Um, they have an attorney online.

They have attorney on call every day, but it will come up again and again.

Just in previous history, we've had selectmen do it.

We just keep a letter on file in the, you know, in your file just to say yes, you have it, you've received it.

So just my recommendation.

Okay, Mr.

Chair, I can, I can work with the selectman to, uh, number one, get a legal opinion from town council.

Uh, they'll typically forward that over to the state ethics commission, and then I can work with him to get a determination from them.

So, all right, but can I ask for a typical timeline on something like that?

Uh, they usually turn around pretty quickly, so maybe— but in terms of town council?

Yeah, yeah, probably a day, maybe the same day.

But I think, I think I, I would say personally, I would make the recommendation to recuse yourself if we were talking about the town departmental budgets.

This one's an appropriation.

I'll leave that up to Mr. Archambault in terms of how he wants to handle it.

But I, I think we might be in a different scenario where it's just bottom-line funding going over to the schools that we don't necessarily have any real jurisdiction or control on how you appropriate that money.

So I'll leave that as is.

Okay.

All right, so I'll take that recommendation.

Mr.

Administrator and, uh, town clerk.

And, uh, we'll work with counsel tomorrow in the ethics and see if we can get an opinion on it, something on file.

Okay, thank you.

Does anybody else have any comments, any questions?

If I could just make one.

Um, when I was in the back listening to the proposed cuts You can't cut an ELA lab.

You just can't.

And I'm just saying, look in other areas, but children need help writing.

And I know that firsthand from my own experience with teaching.

So look everywhere else that you can, but lab, like math and ELA, Just try your best not to, please.

So I guess it's fair to say at the end of the day you're looking for half a million dollars, roughly.

It sounded like Mr. Healy had done the math, or Mr. Dean, one or the other.

$490,918.

Okay, Mr. Chairman, would you like Would you like me to go through the town side so everybody understands the potential impact if we make any type of movement?

Okay, thank you.

So this is based on Mr. Kadeem's budget presentation he made to us a month ago, 3 weeks ago, whenever it was.

I went through it and I looked and I tried to find roughly a 3.5% increase.

You're at 3.9, so it was roughly like 470 I was looking at.

So it's a little bit more than that now.

So I went through and I looked at all the departments and anything that was— there was any increase and things like that.

And I really don't want to do this, but I will ask some of the department heads to come forward.

So I just want you to explain the impact of what it's going to be if things are cut.

So just bear with me.

So the first one, obviously Obviously, on the town side, we have to look at the 2 biggest departments we have and the impact that would happen there, because there are some increases there, and I want to know the impact of what's going to happen if these things go forward.

So you look at the police department budget, right?

So they have an increase, a collective bargaining increase.

That's a natural pay increase for everybody.

So then we go down and we look at the presentation, and there's a training increase of $23,000.

That would be removed.

Overtime increase, $25,000, that would be removed.

Armory supplies increased by $50,000 for a new Taser program, that would be removed potentially.

Added $25,000 for bulletproof vests.

And with those, Chief, if you don't mind coming up.

And again, I apologize for putting you guys on the spot, but I want everybody to hear how these cuts could potentially impact your department.

Mr. Healy, if you don't mind, can you explain how you came to these cuts?

These, these cuts, they're right in the budget presentation.

Okay, so you just took Mr. Kadeem's budget?

I just took his budget proposal with any increase on the town side that he's proposing in his 2.5% level-funded budget, and I'm removing them to try to come up with an additional, at the time, $470,000.

That's what I was trying to— I was trying to look at a 3.5% increase.

Because I thought maybe that's where we'd end up, but it's $3.9 million.

So it's a difference.

So I'm trying to— I'm trying to come up with a number to where if the Board of Selectmen decides to make any movement, these are the impacts of the cuts that it's going to come— have to come on the town side instead of letting town meeting decide it.

So, Chief, you just heard those cuts that I recommended.

Yes, one by one.

I can, I can do them again if you, if you, if you don't want them all.

He's got the budget presentation right there, and it's any of the increases other than I need it back.

And Chief, it's only the increases that are in the budget, not the increase for the collective bargaining agreement, because that's a contractual thing.

But it's all the other ones, the training, the overtime, the armory, and the tasers.

So let's just start with the training.

Our department is a very young department.

We have a lot of new officers.

A lot of experienced officers have either retired or moved on to other departments.

So obviously we have to train these people up.

They go to police academy, 26 weeks, they graduate, they're not ready to take on the world, right?

They have the bare minimum to go out there and answer calls.

We have to train them up on different disciplines within law enforcement.

We have to mentor them and get their experiences up through training.

We'll see a big increase in that with so many new officers.

How will that affect— it will stunt their growth.

Also, too, officers look for extra training.

You know, we have worked hard in the last 5 years.

It's been very difficult to recruit.

One of our selling points when I'm trying to get these folks is the ability to learn different parts of the job.

You know, if it's forensics, which is huge right now in law enforcement, there's no more, you know, once in a while you get a case where it's the beat cop going out knocking on doors, but most cases aren't like that, right?

It's cell phones, it's videos, it's computers.

So, that's all extra training.

They don't get that in the academy, right?

They get the basics.

They get the basic training.

So, um, that will have an adverse effect on the training part.

What was— and obviously the overtime, we use that for, uh, directed patrols.

Um, you know, this summer we're going to have, uh, the soccer coming to, uh, Foxborough.

We're not a host city, so we're not getting funds from the feds or the state, but we will see an increase because of our hotels.

There's going to be directed patrols for that.

Right.

So that's what that money's allocated for.

Obviously, we don't have a— some call it a POP team or a high crime team, like any kind of problems that arise in town, the retail theft, the car breaks.

We use directed patrols to solve those problems.

Problems.

We won't have the ability to do that.

And lastly, we have a few part-time officers who supplement when we need.

We have to maintain hours for them now with post.

We'd no longer be able to do that.

So there is a lot of— with the overtime, there'd be a lot of impact as well.

The post is required by law, right?

Post, yes.

So the part-time officers, uh, this town at one point had more part-time officers, believe it or not, than full-time officers.

They now— everyone has to be certified with the state.

The training is no longer less for a part-time guy.

They have to have the same amount of hours.

And the folks that we retained who were part-timers, they had to have so many hours to get a bridge— what they call a bridge academy.

We have 3 officers working towards that now.

So we have to provide those hours.

Taser program?

Excuse me?

Taser program?

So, yeah, our tasers are— they no longer produce that taser.

We can't get parts for them when they fail.

We're way overdue in upgrading our system.

It's expensive, but it's less than lethal.

And we all know when officers don't have those tools, how things can escalate, and we can find ourselves in use of force issues that we don't want to be part of.

And the tasers, like I said, if we have one malfunction or if we need for training, there's training cartridges and stuff, you can't, can't get those items anymore for the ones that we're using.

So We're on a program where, you know, any kind of the Taser cartridges, the training, the equipment, if it fails, they replace it.

It's all inclusive in that price.

Can I just clarify a question, Chief, about the training?

Sure.

What's happening now?

Are you saying when they're coming from the academy, I'm assuming we train them for SECO.

So for 26 weeks they get trained.

Basic training.

It's what it's called, basic training, right?

So they learn a little bit of laws.

They learn, you know, what they can and can't do.

But are you talking about the academy or here?

Academy.

Okay.

Once we get them, you know, there's 2 sides to this coin, right?

So we also have young supervisors.

We send them to management classes, leadership classes, 'Cause these are the folks that are actually overseeing these and mentoring these younger people.

So there's the supervisor end that we send for, and then the officers, when they come out, we send them for like different certifications, trainings, and things like that.

Okay.

So what are we talking about adding right now?

I guess that's what I'm— We're just adding the fact that we have more officers now that, again, don't have that training.

Those officers either retired or gone off to departments.

I mean, thank God we just settled contracts with our officers.

We were well behind other communities.

We were losing officers at an alarming rate.

So, we're, you know, we're not— we're by far not the best-paid department, but at least now we can, you know, hold on to what we have and, you know, and try to recruit more.

But we wouldn't have new police officers and not train them.

How would we cut training is my question?

Well, we cut training.

We had in-service training that's been— Yeah, we have mandatory 40-hour in-service training that's baked in.

Every officer has to have that to be POST certified.

I'm talking about mentoring these officers so we have experienced officers.

That's the training I'm talking about.

Okay, thank you.

They do have— they do go to in-service training 40 hours a week— 40 hours a year, which, you know.

Okay, thank you.

And we've reduced that budget already because we're doing a lot of the in-service training in-house so that they can do it during the day as well.

And that's extra training to get these officers as instructors.

They have to be trained and certified as instructors.

So we need to get that training for them.

Okay.

So to maintain some of this training in, which then I'll have to pay for them to go to the trainings.

So it was almost cost neutral.

So we had a training replacement decrease because we had the in-service training done in-house that was reduced by $20,000.

But then we increased the actual training by $23,000.

So it was— it's only really a $3,000 impact for us on that, the training portion.

Okay, thank you.

And there's a few items like that.

I mean, we have items that did go up, but there are, if you look through the budget, items that went down too.

And, you know, we're, we're feeling this budget year the effects of the money that we had to take off at the beginning of last budget.

It's challenging, and I understand you folks are on the same challenge too.

We're kind of all in the same boat.

Thank you, Chief.

So after I went through that, I moved on to the fire department budget.

And during the presentation that the administrator made, there's a few increases there.

One of them is $100,000 added in overtime, $25,000 increase in fire prevention overtime, 4 new captain positions for a total of $66,912, and 4 mid-year hires, which roughly equals about $200,000.

So if I could have Chief Whalen come up.

Chief, thank you.

Can you just explain the impact of— if your overtime line, your fire prevention overtime line, and the 2 other cuts that I mentioned, how they're going to affect you and your department in the future?

Moving the department forward, please.

Absolutely.

For everybody that doesn't— isn't made aware, I'm Sean Whalen, Fire Chief, Town of Seekonk.

Chairman, select board members, Mr. Gadeem.

In just discussing those few key items, last year the fire department budget was reduced by 1.6% overall, and that did not include 4 full-time employees that we had requested to try and achieve the board's commitment to increase staffing in and the fire department as a whole.

And I'll remind the board and, uh, anybody watching, that commitment was made, I believe, in 2023 to increase fire department staffing to a shift strength of 12.

Over the next 3 budget cycles, the fire department had requested that staffing.

Due to competing interests, each year those 4 positions had to be reduced.

So for the last 3 budget cycles, fire department has not increased growth at all.

In the fire department line, and as far as overtime, I have $200,000 this year for this budget cycle.

That was reduced $200,000, uh, $20,000 over the course of last year.

I've been looking for an increase currently of an additional $100,000 to meet our standards.

We have standards, we have response times, and we have things that we need to meet every year.

That is an increase to put more firefighters in the stations.

If that overtime is again reduced, we will We will have increased response times.

We will have increased wait times on ambulances.

We will have increased wait times on fire trucks.

As far as the new captain's positions, that was a restructure plan that was put in place some years ago.

This was my request to go ahead and try and reallocate command staff 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

That would increase overall firefighter safety at the current time.

We do not have a command-type structure where there is a command presence 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Myself, my deputy, we work 40 hours a week at minimum.

I usually push about 90 hours a week.

We go home.

We're not available.

My 2 administrative captains who are in charge of fire prevention and also the movement of the organization in a future path, they go home.

They're contractual employees.

We're left with with at minimum 1 lieutenant per day to command, we'll put it in class sizes, 1 to 25,000.

If you want to do it that way, and I don't want to pit class sizes against budgets, but if you put it into perspective, Seaconch has about 25,000 residents, commuters, visitors every day, right?

Am I off on that number?

We have 16-8.

Probably a little higher.

16-8, but then with retail, and all that, we're responsible for that.

With a shift strength of 6, that's about 4,200 residents to 1.

You heard the fire trucks go out.

That left us 2 firefighters for the entire community.

We went from a shift strength of 6 to 2.

We are at minimum staffing today, and that is for the entire community.

That class size went from 4,200 to 1 to 12,500 to 1.

With the reduction in the 4 new FTEs, again, that will again take us back from a commitment from the community to increase fire department staffing.

I believe those are the key points.

Chief, can you just speak to the— we also had a $40,000 increase for the service agreements with First Due, Stryker, and Zoll.

Can you just— Correct.

Last year The fire department budget was reduced in service and contract from a requested $64,000 to $45,000, so we had a $20,000 reduction in that.

Cost and fees and services had to be increased this year, just like everybody else.

We have equipment, and that equipment breaks, and that equipment, unfortunately, on the fire department and police side, costs a lot of money.

In order to be proactive, we have increased our service contracts, so what that does is for every cardiac monitor that we own, every cardiopulmonary— an AutoPulse machine, which is hands-off CPR.

All of those require maintenance and service contracts.

All of those service and maintenance contracts went up anywhere from 7 to 15%.

That line right there, if reduced, puts into jeopardy of not having working equipment that is truly life-saving.

Chief.

Quick question, if I might.

Do you know roughly how many, like, calls per day the fire department has to answer?

We, we will respond to about 5,200 calls for service this year.

That's an increase of about 250 calls for service.

Last year responded to 4,662 calls for service.

So if you put that in perspective, excluding service calls that we do for fire prevention activity, We're somewhere in the range of 10 to 15.

Last meeting, we had already pushed 20 calls for service before I was at that meeting last, last week.

Yeah, and again, I'm not trying to pick any fights here, but yeah, you got to be on call for all of those.

But when we're talking like class size and ratio, that's like, there's about 13, maybe it's 2 people per day.

That's 26 to 26 people to however many staff you have.

I mean, that, that's what the teachers have to deal with every day.

Like, they're not just on call for their 26 kids, they are at their beck and call.

And they don't get overtime.

There is no overtime for teachers.

And they're putting in 90-hour weeks just the same as every other public employee.

And they don't get to go home because we go home.

And right now my phone's been dinging with like 3 different emails from students who have like tests tomorrow that they want me to give them the help on.

And again, I'm not trying to compete or anything, but I would hope that we can have these conversations.

How's my engine company going to build a flyer?

Yeah, so exactly.

So I hope that we can have these conversations to better understand where we're all coming from, because honestly, with the last 2 speakers I've heard, it sounds like we're more— that I'm going to say, take your line— we're more in the boat, same boat, than I think we realize.

Yeah, I don't hear extraneous spending in any of these departments.

I don't hear extras anywhere.

I hear like everyone trying to meet the bare minimum, and there's just not enough money to go around.

Well, at this point, I'll just make mention, 85% of my budget is salary.

I have nowhere to cut, right?

You know, if we cut my budget, we're looking at salary, we're looking at positions, increased response time, increased ambulance response time.

And to your point, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

So we're on the nights, we're on the weekends, we're on the holidays, we're on the summers.

Yeah.

I was trying to— I understand your point.

Thank you.

But Chief, again, I want to reiterate, we're all in the same boat.

A significant portion of ours is salary too.

And my intention isn't to take away from other departments.

I've identified that other departments have remained relatively stable.

The schools haven't.

How do we fix that?

My recommendation is not to take it away from other departments.

My recommendation is to look at the revenue coming in and budgeted a little tightly because the school department has had to look at actuals.

We don't— when we project things, it's as close to actual as possible.

And the turnbacks last year were over $1 million.

So I just want you to know we're not asking for you to reduce your budget.

We are in the same boat with you.

We have very— and believe me, we respect everything police and fire does for us and how much— how collaboratively you work with our administrative team.

We do not want to get in a position where we're ever suggesting that you reduce your budget.

I want to look at revenue and have that go to the schools.

That was my recommendation that I shared with the select board, and I want you to make sure everybody hears it loud and clear.

We want to work with our police and fire, and we believe you deserve everything you need.

We just also can't lose 4% over 3 years and not have an impact in a larger way for us.

I understand.

So I just wanted to share that with you and make sure you understand.

I appreciate the context.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, you put that way better than I did.

Thank you.

No, for us too, I was asked last year as the department head, I was asked to produce budget based on tiered systems.

So we usually budget at the highest level employee.

I had to go through and project each person's biweekly salary, and that had to fluctuate through the course of the year.

So when we talk about bare-bones minimum, I didn't have any leftover salary, and that was the same as this year as well.

So I do appreciate that hard work that you guys are truly doing.

Thank you.

Likewise.

Thank you.

Thanks, Chief.

So the next one I moved on to was the Public Works Department, which one full-time— one full-time position was eliminated, 2 positions will be filled mid-year.

Those would be eliminated.

Capital outlay reduced by $40,000.

I don't know the impact of that, but I'm sure Mr. Cabral, if he's here, will explain it to me.

And then street lighting electric increased by $10,000.

So if Mr. Cabral, could you just go through those real quick for me?

Those 2 positions, if we don't fill them mid-year, what's that going to impact on your department currently?

So good evening, and I'm the superintendent of DPW for the members here.

Um, you know, my department, we're always trying to do more with less.

We are a growing town.

We have a lot of development going on.

We are seeing the infrastructure here in need of repair and doing our best with what we have to do it.

Uh, Mr. Kadeem reached out to me talking about tough budget cuts.

We currently are at 15 of my working staff that's out doing the potholes, snow plowing, and all of that.

We are also trying to do some other things like a stormwater utility.

We do not currently have a stormwater utility, but it's coming.

I've been trying to take the lead there, initiative, get my guys a little training and start doing some stormwater.

Hence, the 2 extra employees would probably be dedicated to doing a lot of that.

Well, the 3 extra employees that we had, we reduced 1 right off the bat and we did 2 full-time positions mid-year just to try to keep some momentum going for the strain on the department, if you will.

We're handling everything from snow removal.

This past year we had a pretty interesting season of snow, to say the least.

We're now working on the potholes, the freeze and thaw over the winter has wreaked havoc on a lot of roadways, and we're out doing everything— ball fields, you name it.

We have 7 buildings in town, old infrastructure.

We're doing a lot of things internally with the crew to save the town money, not outsourcing, even with our mechanics.

So of these employees, 2 of them are mechanics.

So we have a shop foreman and a mechanic working on police vehicles, town vehicles, my heavy equipment, and all DPW.

Step that up.

It's just getting more and more difficult for DPW to do more and more with less guys to do.

So that's the sure.

But we are willing this year to try to take, you know, take a hit with one guy we can manage, always manage, right.

And the strain is going to be there.

So as we start seeing that need for stormwater utility in particular, I've been trying to advocate to get some things in place and use them for, you know, other things too.

To date, we haven't had the opportunity yet to go out and do one single stormwater feature of inspection, because we just don't have the manpower for that one task.

We tend to be a very proactive group.

We don't wait for that small pothole to grow into the bigger pothole, and then we have more problems.

We try to be very proactive.

I cannot be proactive in the stormwater aspect.

We have aging infrastructure, headwalls are in need of repair.

We're doing those repairs, but we're not really getting out there doing the inspections of all the infrastructure.

We're finding out that we have heavy rains and things of that nature that we have a location, something failed, we have to go jet it, we find out that there's something else going on.

So we're not doing what we need to do right now.

And I just caution that, you know, I would like to see the department grow.

I know we're all in the same boat.

We're all trying to make it through the best we can.

We'll be okay right now.

But that's what I'm up against.

I'm looking at trying to do a little bit more for the town.

And I don't have the body to do it.

So we're kind of at a— we've kind of reached maximum right now.

Okay.

Thank you.

And so then I went through the rest of it.

One other question you had, because some things are out of our control.

That item you mentioned about the street lighting, street lighting, that's the electricity cost.

I don't have— that's a fixed cost.

Yeah, that's right.

That's why I figured, oh, we'll just drive around the dock.

It's happened before, I believe.

And then obviously I went through the rest of the presentation.

The library budget, there really was no increase there that I noticed.

Fixed cost budget, that is what it is.

Then obviously the school budget and regional school budget, those increases are pretty much fixed.

Other than that, I don't think I missed anything.

So that got me roughly to like $470,000 on the town side.

Anybody particularly losing their job right up front.

So if there was any movement by the board to discuss it any further, I just wanted to go through it.

I know it was a little painful.

I apologize to everybody.

I just wanted to let everybody know the impact on the town side.

Thank you for doing that because I didn't realize the breakdown, you know, to articulate, to hear it from the department head.

So, um, I think that was important.

Especially looking at the police breakdown.

I mean, you can't cut anything there.

There's nothing to cut.

And same with fire.

And yeah, so I would also thank you because I had mentioned at another— at our previous meeting that I think we might want to consider different processes on how we build the budget.

In other districts, the town manager actually has a department meeting where all the department heads describe just what you heard, and that helps the town manager then to have a bunch of data to bring to the select board and start making recommendations at a quad board meeting and so forth.

I think that's an extra step, but it's great for us to hear and for them to hear us say, hey, we, we believe in you, you know, right?

It's important for us all to know that we're all together because we are a town, we are all together.

I, again, I just simply ask that if there was that much turnbacks last year that we've really tighten up the revenue projections so that maybe you can find the money there to increase our budget.

That's, that's the place where I think it could happen, and now we're not affecting other departments.

That's my personal request based on some of the information I shared with you.

May I ask a question?

In the regional school budget, I don't know which page it is, I'm sorry, in your presentation, Mr. Kadeem.

The total assessment under tri-county, so our debt assessment of $645,000— I deeply apologize, I don't remember if it was presentation here to the select board or if it was presentation to the finance committee.

Our debt assessment is actually higher than that, and we had a surplus from Tri-County, and the selection from Tri-County was to reduce our debt assessment as opposed to turning over money to us, correct?

Correct.

I forget the exact dollar amount, but it was, um, north of $700,000.

So with the surplus that they're required to give back to the, uh, the communities, they chose to do the debt assessment, which, um, we've got a debt exclusion, so it doesn't necessarily help us.

So if they did the assessment on the tuition that would have saved us some money.

But that's, that's, that's their decision.

We have no control on how they turn back the surplus.

I was gonna ask that if there was any, like, whose decision-making, like, if it's theirs and then, you know, I doubt that there's a way for us to appeal to them moving forward in the future.

But yeah, I know that there's nothing we can do about it with this budget cycle.

I was just curious.

That was all.

And I guess it all depends on what other communities— because we don't know what other communities are doing, if they have debt exclusion.

So if there's no debt exclusion, then they're seeing the return right on the expenses.

So— Okay.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

So let me clarify.

So there is a savings to the taxpayer, right?

So the taxpayer sees the— because they're paying for the debt exclusion.

So, Chair, can I make a general statement, or— Sure, go right ahead.

No, go right ahead.

Dr. Girardi, I just had a question.

You mentioned possibly, uh, in future budgets doing the extra step.

I'm sorry, I have to step off now.

I just got caught.

Uh, thank you very much for your time, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You mentioned possibly for the quad board maybe an extra step.

You thought it would be helpful to have the input from all directors ahead of time and all together.

So in this other district, we would do a Saturday meeting— not that anybody wants a Saturday meeting— and the department— it was usually the department heads would meet with the town administrator, and they would all have like the PowerPoint that you saw— well, the other school select board members saw at our quad board meeting where we— that's usually our first step where we say, well, this is what we really need.

But by that point, you know, it hasn't been hashed out ahead of time before the select board gets it.

This gives the town administrator more of an opportunity to hear from everybody so that when he's presenting his recommended budget to you Now he's vetted it out a little bit more, and it's an opportunity for everybody to hear each other so that we keep that— this is one town, one pie that we all are going to, you know, try to work on together and understand each other's needs.

And so it's just a nice way to do it.

It's an extra step.

It forces us to start our budgeting process earlier.

So heaven forbid we do have to make significant reductions, now we've started earlier and we know better than when it's the way it's been now.

It's kind of like, well, you know, at the quad board meeting this is what we're saying, but it could increase.

And then that's that ambiguity, you know.

Well, what we're saying, our level of funding, you know, our level of service is something different, and it's, it's not as definitive.

I think it gives the town administrator extra time to get the data prepared for the select board by having one extra Mr. Chairman, just on that point.

So it sounds good.

Love it.

But from an actual standpoint, just practicality, I mean, we're already having those discussions internally.

That's how we reduced $2.4 million from the budget, working with the departments.

The problem is that the sooner— if we do it even earlier, if we're doing it in October, I don't have any revenue numbers.

The governor doesn't doesn't release her numbers until the, you know, last week in January.

So that's where we get the numbers.

So it just becomes a challenge to be able to have those conversations.

I mean, I'd offer up to anybody that wants to partake in— I mean, Dave Cabral's here, the chief, one of— at least one of the chiefs still in the audience.

They can speak to what type of budget meetings we're constantly having.

I mean, we're going line by line, looking at everything.

We're looking at actuals.

Actual, you know, trends— trend analysis.

And this is why we have these reductions, and I appreciate it.

It just, you know, by moving it up, it's not really going to help us because we don't know what the revenue numbers are.

And then when you start looking at just to be able to project for forecasted local receipts, which is going to be a big part of that, we don't even have 50% of the current fiscal year to really kind of project further on that.

So we could do it, but I don't know that it necessarily provides the detail that we think we would all receive at a quad board meeting.

That's the only thing.

So maybe not earlier, but I think having those conversations less internally and more externally is going to help solve a lot of these issues because I think we're hearing a lot of this stuff tonight and it's a shame that we're hearing it on April 8th when we're building those budgets.

I think that's the time where we're supposed to be having those conversations.

I can guarantee you, as a pretend kid, well, doing the exact same thing, and we're doing the exact same thing at her table, looking line by line, what can we cut.

We're all doing the same thing.

I just think we need to start doing it a little bit more together, because the more we do it together, the more educated we all are about each other's situations, and then this will be less about, like, who, my hotel, your hotel, and more about, okay, we all came to this conclusion, and here's how we're going to share the load.

And I think that's, that's the point that our chair keeps making, is that in recent years we've been kind of hitting the cut, getting the cuts.

I heard multiple times here about potential opportunities for the schools to get money back, and it hasn't come back.

I know when you talk about like 116% of the net school spending, I mean, with what information DESE has out right now, that puts us at 220-ish out of 320 districts.

So that's like everybody goes above that.

That's not something to like be proud of.

And I don't know about a 0% chance of Chapter 70 increasing.

In the last few years, there has been a bump after that initial March statement.

And if you're talking about reducing town funds after the Chapter 70 increases, that's just a shell game.

Yeah, you're not taking Chapter 70 money, but you're taking other money.

And I'm not going to go so far as to say stealing from the kids, but like, and I understand, you know, like you got 50 million cups you got to fill.

But let's, let's call it what it is.

That money was coming in to help then support the schools, and they didn't get it.

So can I just jump in one, just for being new, Chair— Member Tessier?

I will give credit to our former chair of the select board.

Last year, when there was additional funding, she did send it our way.

So I want to give her credit, and, and that it's not unusual for the select board to consider it.

We're just asking asking for it again.

So I want to thank you for what you did.

So I just want to let you know that history, that it's not always— it's just the recommendation at this time.

I'm asking to reverse the recommendation.

So I appreciate that.

I mean, if you want to sit in my budget meetings, you're more than happy to sit in on my budget meetings.

But I, I just hope that the, uh, same courtesy can be presented to me, because I'd love to sit in your budget meeting and go line by line and make my recommendations on what I could cut which I have no authority or jurisdiction to do whatsoever, but I can guarantee you, you can talk to my department heads, there is not a discussion, there is not a line item that is not discussed.

There's not what if, what's this, what's going on.

I can tell you that when we're having these cuts, once I get my direction from the Quad Board, whether it's 2.5%, 3%, that's what's built into the budget.

We never look at when we're trying to close a budget gap, The reality of the situation is the school department does not need to have a balanced budget.

You put forward a budget that does not need to be balanced.

On the town side, it is my responsibility to make sure what I present to the Board of Selectmen is balanced, right?

So that's a more challenging, uh, part of trying to make— I mean, you look at our budget, trying to cut $2.4 million from requests from department heads, that legitimately was probably one of the more stressful things that we had because When we have these— we've gone through this, making sure that we've had lean budgets.

And when you have lean budgets and you're having conversations from department heads and there's nowhere to really cut, you get these conversations that this is what the impacts are.

So, I mean, if that makes you feel better listening to those conversations and not believing in what I'm presenting to the community that this is a lean budget, when you start looking at year over year, general government was reduced.

Legitimately reduced.

And you go back to 2025, we're lower than we were— oh, we were $50,000 higher, right?

So we've done our due diligence to make sure that we're, we're looking at this.

There are a number of requests that are coming in that are significantly higher that don't even appear in the budget.

So I, I appreciate what, what's being said, and, you know, I'm willing to, to have these conversations, but everything that you're saying is already taking place the town side.

Um, and if, if you don't believe me, feel free to talk to— Mr. Cadime, at the quad board meeting when, uh, the select board established the 2.5, as we, you know, we've gone over this, it was kind of said as if we'll start at 2.5 but we'll go up.

And then I feel like that was just locked in at that moment, and I think that was a miscommunication where we felt like 2.5 is the lowest, we already told them we need 5, we're gonna end up somewhere in the middle.

Then we end up at the end of March and all of a sudden we are very far apart.

So my question is, in the future, at the Quad Board meeting, should we push harder and make it clear what we really need and not just take kind of a verbal assurance of we know you need more than this, we'll get you more than this to be met with this kind of pushback right at the finish line?

Because this isn't productive for anyone.

And I don't know who— I don't know where the misstep was.

But moving forward, what should we do?

No pressure.

I think we need more participation at the Quad Board meeting, right?

I heard the other night that we should have all these meetings that we have.

The problem is the meetings that we currently have, we don't take full advantage of, right?

So I will say, we get to the quad board meeting, we don't even have a quorum of the finance committee, right?

And then everybody's looking for us.

And I'll tell you, if I'm gonna speak freely, and, you know, the most difficult job and the most criticized positions are myself and the superintendent.

But if we don't have direction from the bodies that we support, it becomes an extreme challenge to be able to push this forward.

And that's unfortunate what we, what we deal with, right?

So we get 2.5%, that's what we're going to move forward.

I've been saying for the last 10 years that the school department budget is unsustainable and we just keep going over that.

And it's like, okay, we're going to get there, we're going to get there.

Well, we're here, right?

And it's not just the school department because now it's not only the school department budget.

I didn't anticipate seeing the significant increase with the expenses for public safety, right?

That is something I did not anticipate, and it's hard to anticipate.

And a lot of that is things that, similar to the schools, that it's just outside our control when we're starting to compete with other communities to retain, you know, the staff, the employees that we need to be able to operate, right?

So those are the things that take place.

But from my standpoint, when we have all our committees at these meetings, it shouldn't just be me giving a presentation or the superintendent giving a presentation, uh, and then we have 2 seconds of questions and then we move on, right?

Because nothing— in my, in my, in my mind, I haven't had a productive quad board meeting since I've been here, and I've been here for 12 years.

And it's no offense to anybody, um, but I mean, if, if folks are going to start looking at me, I mean, internally, we, we are productive internally.

I, I can reassure everybody, I can reassure the residents, there is not a question that we don't we don't ask from a financial standpoint when we look at every single budget.

But we just need individuals who are on the boards to understand that when we say we wanna come together and be a collective body, then we really need to have those conversations.

And we need to make sure that when we have a quad board meeting, everybody is in— Can we set requirements for the quad board meeting?

Can we set what we are looking for?

At this date, we need this information, preferably by an attractive PowerPoint.

Yeah, listen, my PowerPoint's not attractive.

I'm just trying to throw some humor in there.

No, they keep my attention better.

That's what you do.

Just keep putting avatars of yourself in there.

All right.

Listen, this is why I say the takeaways for me, the biggest takeaway from the Quad board meeting for me is knowing what we want to see for a year-over-year increase in the schools.

That's what's driving my budget.

'Cause once I know that at a bare minimum, I'm not even touching education, right?

So I'm assuming that you folks are looking at the 2.5%, you're saying, okay, this is the reality, this is where our bare minimum is gonna be, how do we get there?

Right, so now if we get more money, then that's where we can go.

I think this year was a little bit different, and unfortunately there's not a date on the presentation, but we had those discussions, one, not knowing where our revenues were, right, again, in October, not even having half the year to really forecast or see where our actuals are and not having the governor's numbers.

So that was unavoidable.

That's unavoidable.

But, but, yeah, but then we had a commitment from, you know, the selectmen to fund the fire department, right?

So we've had that commitment in the past and we've reneged on that and we've gone back not filling those positions.

And that's what I've had to do to be able to give the school department more money.

And year over year, you can You can ask the former chair, you can ask the members that are here on the board.

I am the one that is always advocating to give more money once we have a balanced budget to the schools, not looking to backfill things that we have internally cut, right?

So I am an advocate for education, but I'm also an advocate for every town department that we have.

And it, and it's a struggle that, you know, the give and take.

But again, the difference— long-winded— the difference is, is that we had this presentation come in I think March, February, March, from the chief, right?

So while it changes, I think it just got us back on track in terms of what we want to see for minimal manning in terms of firefighters per shift, right?

So we can go back and have a conversation and maybe a quad board discussion of what the fire department looks like if that's what folks want to do.

But what I will say, and I said this to the Finance Committee because they did question what was presented by the chief, What we have in this budget is getting us from 10 firefighters per shift to 11, right?

So that's the goal originally, was to, to at some point get to 12 firefighters per shift.

Chief Whalen had then presented something that is— he feels he needs 13 per shift, right, just to, to man the 2 stations that we currently have.

So that's a shift.

Even though we're doing this, I think it's just getting us back to the bare minimums.

And I've said it before, when you look at the town side, we are at our benchmark.

We're not looking to really add or, um, you know, significantly add other than public safety.

And that's just the reality of the situation.

I just want to take one second to apologize if there's any implication about you not doing your due diligence or like not believing you, because I think I'm taking those for granted.

Like, and I've been talking quite frequently about how the parallels here.

And right, like, you know, he's your superintendent.

He's working harder than anybody.

And I know, like, in the role that I've been doing in my union work, I don't want to ever be an administrator, especially not a superintendent, because I know how much is placed on you all.

Like, that's insane.

I'm just saying that these meetings, if they were happening in tandem, then we're being proactive about all of this stuff.

All of this stuff goes away because we're all in the know along the way.

Because what I'm hearing from you is the exact same conversation I just heard from Superintendent Kidwell.

You're all doing your due diligence.

Everyone here is very competent, like, not, not questioning that whatsoever.

We just have an information issue.

And then, right, and we were all working so hard on this stuff that really matters and is affecting every single citizen.

And we're all getting real defensive about it.

Understandably so.

We should be.

All of these things are incredibly important.

So the more we can coordinate along the way, I think the better.

And I apologize, like, I'm sorry to hear about the participation, but I ain't going anywhere.

I was the first one here today.

I'll probably be the last one to leave tonight.

I showed up here for the Finance Committee meeting.

Get used to seeing me.

I'll be around.

That's okay.

But yeah, again, just coming from like a getting us all on the same page standpoint.

Point, not oversight or not believing.

And I appreciate that.

I don't think anybody at the table is even suggesting— I think we're all passionate, right?

You folks have a hat that you need to wear, and that's to advocate for education.

And, you know, on our side, it's education and all the departments, right?

So there's just a little bit of a competing interest.

But at the end of the day, we want a better SEACONC, so that's what we're trying to do.

So I just think from my standpoint, not to belabor the point, that when we when we have these opportunities, we really need to use the best of it and not try to, you know, because I just feel when we get to the Quad Board, I feel like it's, you know, a presentation from us, a presentation from the schools, and then it's a back and forth on, you know, what are the schools doing in this, and we're not really talking about the overall underlying issues that, you know, our revenues are not maintaining, keeping up with our expenses and how we going to do that, right?

So where are the cuts going to be?

What are we looking at?

What do we see public safety coming in?

And I think at that point we need to be all on the same page on what that looks like.

And is it reasonable to ask that everyone come more prepared to that meeting so that we don't have a 13th year of unproductive quad board meetings?

No, I just think when you look at the timing of the quad board, right, so that the timing is— it used to be in October, then it got moved up to September, and then folks were saying we should do this earlier.

And I mean, the more— the sooner we do it, I mean, we can do it in July, right, the very first day of the new fiscal year, but we're not going to have the insight that we truly need.

Because when we get here, it's— we need to know what the governor's numbers are, right?

We need to know what Chapter 70 looks like.

We need to know what local aid is.

And we need to have a better handle on where we are with local receipts.

So, I mean, if we don't hit our motor vehicle excise, I mean, that's $3 million.

Let's say that's half of half a million dollars off our, you know, people are not purchasing vehicles anymore, right?

So that means we just reduced half a million dollars in the operating revenue coming in.

So we need to be able to manage that.

So what I'm hearing is not necessarily earlier, but maybe more joint meetings when this information is becoming available.

Right.

And for us to have the opportunity to do our presentation before the recommendation goes to the select board for a specific percent, so that way you're hearing our challenges in advance as you're preparing your budget and hearing the other department chairs' challenges as well.

Listen, and I want to be honest, I didn't have a valid balance.

I balanced the budget 2 days before I had to give a presentation, and that's significantly— and then I had to go put together a presentation on what I was presenting.

So that, I mean, we were working to the last minute.

So it's just— I just want to let you know that it's not— I mean, from the outside looking in, it's like you got a budget that's put together, but all the work that's behind the scenes, what's going on, it's not an easy task to say, okay, let's cut— just find $500,000 in a budget that we're dealing with.

If I may, just shed a little light internally.

I think the problems ultimately lie with quad board meeting.

Because I'll tell you, I'm one of the bigger departments in town.

When I tell you we sit down with Mr. Kadeem and the finance director, we go over every single item in my budget line by line, and he questions everything.

And we look at utilities, we try to look at the trends.

So at the end of the— at the end of the day, we're done with our budget and we level fund.

I think we've been level funded, really level funded, the past 3 years.

So when we were done, we had our budget which was directed, I think, with his percentage numbers by the board to try to get it to this number.

All right, we're all done.

He does his presentation.

I don't remember there being very few questions when he does his presentation because he has every department already met with internally.

And I tell you, I— he goes over every single line of them.

We're on the same page with everything.

He'll question things when we have a project coming up where we can justify some things.

At the end of the day to his point, he was told by the board to find another million dollars in our budget.

I happened to be at town hall, he pulled me in the office, we had 2 line items.

And we had the 2 same line items.

Because there's really nothing else you're going to cut unless you start hitting employees.

So just to make it clear internally, and we are internally as department heads, we're also sensitive to the other department heads.

If something something's going on, they need a little bit more money for some aspect in town, we may try to cut back a project that can hold off a year if we have some special things going on.

So I just want to clarify, and I can really commend town ministry because I've been at these budget meetings in the past, and if you're not prepared, a lot of questions end up coming to department heads.

I believe the last 3 meetings I went to, I may have had 1 or 2 questions total, the whole budget.

I just want to lay that out there.

Oh yeah, internally I don't think that's where the problem's at.

No, yeah, that's not exactly what I was trying to say.

Like, I, I— he's got his crap together, that's clear.

But Superintendent Kimball, I think we just need to like meet together so that way we're hearing this earlier and not like this week.

Well, and also, again, my recommendation is that in other districts the school department is one of those, and we do it all together so that way everybody hears the pain together.

And then you see us going through our line items too, or the superintendent justifying our line items as well.

So that it's just being— we want to be included in the dance before we get a number from the select board of 2.5.

To your point, we're the same town.

We understand the school's gonna have meetings.

Yeah, the town has these.

I just want to let you know, internally anyway, we're meeting, we are sensing— we know the school's always looking for more.

You know, we're trying to get by.

We know we can do better.

I just want to put that out there internally.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so how do you want to wrap this up?

Um, do we have any further questions or comments regarding our budget requests?

I mean, I think it is what it is.

We've voted on a budget request where, as I've said repeatedly, we're hoping that you will find some way to increase it from the $2.5 that has been presented with no additional Chapter 70 funding up to— or, you know, right now we've been able to show good faith and winnow it down to $3.95, I think we voted on, with any additional Chapter 70 funding.

I would ask— I certainly would not ask for you to take from any other department.

I would ask you to look at revenue and sharpen your pencil and try to figure out a way to help the school department so that it moves us in the right direction.

Because for the last 3 years, we've been moving in the wrong direction.

27 positions, that's, that's a lot of positions to lose.

So we don't want to continue that trend.

We want to work with you to stabilize and be as efficient.

And any programs that we develop, I mean, we talk a lot about it with you.

We're trying to develop programs that bring in revenue, like vocational programs in our school, right?

So we see— we're trying to help whatever money we get, we're trying to invest it wisely to help offset costs in the long term.

Superintendent Kidwell showed how we, we actually reduced out-of-district placements significantly by creating programs.

Now unfortunately, it created a space problem that people didn't expect, But it did save a lot of money on our request.

So we want to just keep doing that with you.

We want to work with you.

If there's any way you can adjust your revenue projections and see that that comes towards us, we'd be grateful.

We certainly don't want to, you know, impact any other department.

At least I'm speaking for myself as the chair.

And I just want to do like a little quick deep dive into this idea that better schools increase property values, because I feel like that's just something we throw around as educational advocates to— it sounds good.

People who don't value education will kind of pay attention to that.

But I wanted to see if there was any data that actually shows a connection or if it's just something we like to say.

So GreatSchools is a nonprofit.

It's a national nonprofit that provides school ratings on a scale of 1 to 10 and people use it to decide where to move.

I'm a divorce lawyer, I use it to decide which kids should go to which schools.

Using data from the ratings, they've actually been able to compare home prices, and the communities with the highest ratings, 8 to 10, have significantly higher home values, so 10 to 20% higher than neighboring communities with lower scores.

In some cases, it went all the way up to 78% but I'm going to leave that data point out.

Um, so the communities that have these 8 to 10 ratings have 10 to 20% higher, uh, home values.

Currently in Seekonk, Martin is the only one at 8, the high school is at 7, and both Aiken and Hurley are at 6.

So there's discourse over how these schools are rated in general, so I don't, I don't want to get hung up on that.

And that's not really why— what we're talking about.

But the average cost of a home in Seaconch is $550,000.

So a 20% increase or decrease in that property value in either direction is $110,000, which is really significant.

So as we're talking about letting the schools kind of— I don't want to say decrease, but letting the schools letting the schools decline, I will, we're actually not saving money.

We're actually all just kind of like leaking the equity in our property, just doing it quietly because we're focused on the schools.

And I just want that to be kept in mind as we're making these decisions because it's not just the children, it's, it's the entire town.

Yeah, I agree.

That's the probably the biggest investment for anybody is their home and their home value.

So that's really important to a lot of us.

Also, I had mentioned that there's thousands of studies nationally and internationally that the higher education rate in a, in a community, the safer the community is.

So it also impacts not just real estate, which is important for us financially, but especially for a senior citizen like myself.

I want to live in a community that's safe.

That's why I appreciate the police and fire.

You know, I don't want to touch their budget.

That's important to me as a senior citizen, but it's also important to me to have an educated youth so I don't have to worry about safety.

So there's a lot of statistics around funding schools is a good investment for the community.

Just wanted to support you.

Thanks.

Mr. Chairman?

Yes?

If you would like to invite up the union president for a moment.

Yes, in fact, I'm not sure if she mentioned it, but as our union president, would you mind coming up?

You did, I think you shared it at the last select board meeting about real estate values, or one of our teachers did.

I did, but I have different stats, but it is also around real estate values.

Okay.

I was gonna do it in public speaks, but I admit I might, I have terrible hearing.

I didn't hear you announce public speaks.

I would've come up.

But thank you.

Thank you.

Um, Nicole Pellegrino, um, SEA president.

Um, so thank you very much for the clarification about— is there going to be public speaks from anyone who wants to talk during this, or— the community speaks is after.

No, I agree.

I think that, that this is probably more applicable for communities.

No, no, no, it's just the figures.

That's all I'm going to do.

Yes, right.

Community Speaks is a general— what she's doing is speaking on behalf of the school district as a— as the school union president.

So that's where I see it's a little different.

I'll just say why I didn't say in Community Speaks.

Um, so I just— I looked up the rate of, of increases in prices, like percent of change, uh, in home values in all the surrounding towns.

Um, and to see how much they increased over value in the last year.

And I just used Zillow and Redfin, they both did.

But so I did both Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

So Pawtucket increased 0.9% in home values last year.

Somerset, 1.2%.

East Providence, 1.3%.

Dayton, 1.7%.

Swansea, 1.9%.

Adelboro 2.4%, Rehoboth 2.5%, Seekonk 3.5%.

So we had the highest increase in the area of home values, and out of those schools, our scores are the highest.

We're pretty— Dayton and Rehoboth, we're pretty equivalent with a lot of the times, but we're But we're way up there.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right, do you have anything else?

No.

Would anybody else like to speak?

Not you.

I think— no, no, no.

Uh, Chair, thank you.

I think we— oh, I do.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I have a request of my chair.

Um, we have a meeting on Monday the 13th.

Yeah.

Is our budget— is our agenda finalized?

No, no.

Will the budget be an agenda item?

It will have to be because we're going to have to— I'm formally requesting that it be, of course, an agenda item.

There are a number of potential reductions that were in our presentation.

We had an hour tonight.

We did focus a good portion of our time discussing athletic fees, which we did not come to a conclusion on.

Um, it did seem I know I cannot speak for the committee as a whole, but it did seem generally moving positively in the direction of instituting fees, which would lower our percentage ask even further.

There are a number of other reductions that were in that presentation that we collectively did not have a discussion on as a committee where we could potentially see that number go even lower.

So I personally would like to say that perhaps 3.95% $1.5 million is not a final ask.

I think that for us the discussion needs to continue.

I may be alone on that.

Yeah, I think that they needed a final ask because they have to make decisions before they print anything.

So they have to decide what they're going to do with what we've got.

And— but I appreciate you sharing with them that you have other opinions that you'll bring to the next meeting, and then we'll see what we can do to work within the budget that they ultimately We are scheduled to meet next Wednesday also.

Yeah.

If you have a final number on Monday and you want to share it with us.

Do we want to put them on the agenda, Mr. Kadeem?

We're not meeting this Monday.

But it's not— yeah, we're not meeting till after that, right?

Right.

Unfortunately, we're not meeting till after that.

Our next meeting is the 3rd.

That's next week, the 15th.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, then we'll be meeting Monday.

Yeah, do you want to come back next Wednesday and finalize this?

Sure, let's do this again as long as she makes more brownies.

I would just request that the 15th, whatever it is, be— yeah, no, I think it could be as simple as we're gonna have— we'll discuss what our final number is and we can relay it to you for your meeting.

I don't think you need us to hold a meeting that takes that long and You know, okay, but we could send you whatever the final discussion was.

Okay.

All right, very good.

All right, thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Do you want to adjourn your meeting?

I think— are we still going to talk about the— do you wish to talk about the Warren Articles?

Is that part of the discussion?

Okay.

Yeah, I think we're still here for the Warren Articles, then we can adjourn.

And can I just clarify, we're going to be working in good faith to make more decreases.

Will the select board also be working in good faith to try to find more money to get us to where we need to, need to be, or are we just coming back with a lower number?

Well, we haven't taken a vote or anything, but I am not in favor of cutting any of the town budgets.

So you guys will not be moving?

Not on the town side, no.

Not even— not even reconsidering revenue that could be moved towards the schools?

Well, we could have a discussion on revenue.

I'm saying I'm, I'm not gonna— the budgets as presented by the department heads on the town side, my vote is to keep them as they are.

Yeah.

The only thing I would say to you, when I said at the last meeting, is if we get any additional original Chapter 70 money, I would vote to forward it to the schools without any reduction.

So your vote would just be to keep it at the 2.5 as it stands now?

Yes.

Okay.

But again, we did put in a request that you would actually ask the town manager to review revenue so that he could come back to you before you make a final decision and say, well, wait a minute, maybe we can help them out and get it up to X.

Meantime, we're going to try to get to X, and hopefully X is really close.

Okay, that's, that's kind of the goal that we would hope that you would ask the town manager for a revenue, a new revenue projection that might be able to help the schools at your next meeting.

Okay, so you will have information for him following your Monday meeting, and next Wednesday is the drop-dead, right?

About that time when we have to make that determination.

Yeah, so you need to make it by next Wednesday.

I'm just trying to clarify.

Yeah, I thought we were working towards getting closer to each other.

Now I'm beginning to think you're staying where you are waiting for us to just keep slashing, keep slashing.

If I may, going through the budget the way we did, you saw the numbers is not really— as far as DPW, police, fire, what there to cut?

I mean, they're already cut.

So unless there's money or someone proposes to take it somewhere from somewhere else— Yeah, and we're not asking— yeah, we're not asking you to cut from other departments.

We're asking you to review your revenue and maybe make tighter projections that would send some money towards the schools.

And I hope it's clear that we're at that same point too, because every time we bring up something, we hear from you personally, oh, find something else to cut.

We're open to suggestions.

Well, we'd love to hear it.

And you've heard from some of our constituents at the last meeting, at this meeting, getting up saying don't cut teachers, don't cut anything, don't implement fees.

I mean, literally every decision we make, we've heard somebody say don't do it.

So that's the position we're in.

So we're hoping that you'll move towards us.

We'll try to make reasonable, tough decisions like we already did tonight.

We demonstrated for you that we're trying to come closer.

I'm just hoping that you can find revenue somewhere else, not cutting from another department, to move towards us.

That's my hope.

Uh, Dr. Girardi, can you just qualify this statement, come up with another revenue figure?

So revenues are always based on projections.

It's not a definite, and that's the hard part for the town administrator and for the school— that's the superintendent.

We try to budget as close to actuals, but it's, it's never going to be perfect.

But if you look at those charts I share with you, the turnbacks have been very significant in the last 3 years.

So if you're conservatively projecting revenue, then you're going to have large turnbacks.

If you are less conservative based on the trends in the past, then you should have the money to be able to fulfill our needs.

I would agree with the town administrator being on the conservative side rather than get a surprise later that we're in bigger trouble.

I'm a little wary about asking for— I don't want to call it an imaginary number, a different number of revenue, again, rather than a reality number that should be conservative.

I think that's being— he's being responsible with that, staying on the conservative side.

I'm a very fiscally conservative person, but we have— we have been put in the position to go as close to actual as possible.

And when you look at the data I shared with you and the turnbacks that have happened over the last 3 years, they've been enough to fund the level service budgets, budgets that the school needed.

And so can I just real quick, because you, because you keep saying that, so when we start talking about free, free cash, so it's not just all revenue, right?

So there's turnbacks from salaries that were pretty significant, close to over $1 million just in salaries, right?

So we're not going to have that type of turnback this year again, right?

So expenses, some of it same way.

I mean, there's just a lot of moving parts, and I think you're putting too much emphasis on the revenue side.

And we are conservative, but like I said, this go-around we're very aggressive, which is why I was making a recommendation if any new revenue comes in that we do not dole it out, that this is where the budget was.

But I mean, listen, at the end of the day, I'll take whatever direction that I get, but my recommendation is that we've got to be very, very cautious in terms of what we're looking to do in terms of just reducing our stabilization accounts and getting closer to 100% on revenue because then we're— this is what's going to happen.

We're going to run a deficit and then all we're going to do is make it up next year.

So that means we're going to have to increase taxes even more because it's got to be raised on the tax recap.

So at the end of the day, there's going to be significant impact if we run deficits.

Deficits, right?

So, and the impact is to the taxpayers.

And I already get blamed for a lot.

I just don't want to get blamed for running deficits.

That's just not what I'm looking to do.

So, in regards to a question that was asked earlier, is the Board of Selectmen willing to look at making any cuts and making adjustments?

That's why I went through what I did tonight.

All right.

I have 2 new members members on the board that don't have all this information.

I have to give them the opportunity to listen to what I said tonight, look at the budget, see if they're willing to have any type of discussion, and see if there's— and there's going to be tough decisions to be made on our side as well as yours.

That's just the nature of the game.

Okay?

That's why I went through and I looked at everything.

And what those cuts could be, I don't know.

I can't answer that question tonight.

I can make all kinds of suggestions, but I have to have a majority vote on this board.

And I got to be fair to my 2 newest members for them to go through, look at what I put out to them, because a lot of information was thrown out there.

They have the slide presentation now, I believe, correct?

You can look— they both can look at it, and we can go back and have a discussion about some of the things that I mentioned.

There could be some potential cuts there.

What those cuts are going to be, I can't answer that tonight.

Just to give you an answer to your question that you asked, I'm willing to work to get to a solution somehow, some way, so we can all be somewhat in a good territory.

I appreciate that.

Um, the only— what I will say is, and I said the last time, I'll say it again, the one thing I do not want to do is go to town meeting and not be on the same side.

That's the one thing I don't want, because I've been there, done that.

I agree.

But my fear is us spending hours and a lot of hard work making a lot of hard decisions to show back up here and hear that you're still at 2.5.

Well, you saw it because I also don't want to be at town meeting.

You saw what I did, and I appreciate it.

Okay.

Okay.

I think all she was looking for is to hear some more.

That's what I'm looking for.

No, I heard enough.

Okay, never mind.

Why don't we move on with the meeting?

Because we did want to talk about the, um, the warrant Yeah, I believe Superintendent Kidwell has some things to offer on our warrant articles.

Oh, it's your agenda.

Oh, you can call on us when you're ready.

Thank you.

You have no power here.

Sorry.

If you want to do that now, let's do them now.

It's part of your budget.

And then do you want— he just asked if you— no, it's truly, it's your warrant to approve.

We're here when you get to the school ones.

Yeah, we can take them out of order.

That would be lovely.

Yes.

Okay.

Do you want to get up and present?

We don't have a presentation.

Oh, we don't have a presentation.

Oh, just accept questions.

So, Mr.

Chair, the— We're here for your questions.

Sorry, we don't have a presentation beyond the ones we've already given you about the 4 warrant articles that are related to the schools.

But we are happy to answer your questions.

So, Mr.

Chair, for the board members, it's going to start on page 8, article Article 12.

Yep.

So Article 12, the school department is looking to have $725,000 appropriated from the building and infrastructure stabilization account.

I, I chose— they didn't give me a funding source.

That's the funding source that I, I chose, um, for the HVAC at the high school pool, correct?

Regarding this, Dr. McGee and Ms. Mannigan prepared material.

They'd be happy to answer your questions.

Mr.

Chair, can I just make a statement?

Sure.

Well, Mr. Girardi was saying to be conservative on different budgets and stuff.

The physical plan that we have in place is actually— when we get extra revenue coming in or turnbacks, it actually is funding these projects that you're looking to do.

So it's not like it's going out the window to this, back to the town.

It's actually funding your $2 million in requests.

So it's coming back to the school in one way or another.

We give you guys money, we can't tell you what to do line by line.

Now you can get up on town meeting floor and say, what was line 2, where'd that $8.24 go to?

You can do that all day long to us, but we've already proposed— so Mr. Healy has— of what we're looking at.

Yep.

No, and what my point is, I understand the value of reserve funds, very important, but if you increase them very largely every year, then it's really not conservative.

It's actually very unconservative budgeting when you don't project as close as possible.

Well, we didn't know we were going to lose 5 people.

One guy went to our U.S.

Marshals, one guy went here, there.

We didn't know we were going to lose 5 people in one shot.

All right, I'm just saying I understand the value of prior funds.

You know, it's like a tug-of-war match here, and at the end of the day, it's the taxpayers out there who are us You know, looking at us, talking about— I think there's one pot.

I think— and what's going to happen next year when you— if you get even 5%?

If you got 5% right now, we made cuts everywhere.

What's going to happen next?

I think the data I share with you is very clear that all the departments for years were very stable in the percentage of funding that they got.

The last 3 years, the school department has been significantly withdrawn, down at 2.5%.

Which is not an actual revenue.

2.5% is just your tax levy.

You have additional revenue coming in.

And so that is where the problem lies, is that the last few years we've had to cut 27 positions.

And that is a problem for our community that we represent.

So we've got to figure out how to solve that problem and not continue to go down that road of, oh, 2.5% is just enough, just because that's a tax levy number.

It's not the revenue number, that's the tax levy number.

I'm just trying to be clear here.

It is— what the funding that we've received for 3 years is unsustainable.

Not the budget, not the school department requests, because I've had colleagues on this board before me who have said the funding that we receive is unsustainable.

And our funding, even though it's largest department, is the same in every town.

Schools are expensive to run, but they're also really important.

I think we've explained that.

I just want to be very clear that there's a huge disparity over the last 3 years.

Everybody else is treated fairly.

The schools have not been treated fairly at 2.5%.

And that's not the total revenue.

So I'm being very clear to explain that.

So can I just jump in in terms of— because I'm trying to be nice now.

And so to say that the schools are being treated unfair is just highly ludicrous because at the end of the day, we never go back, right?

So when we have to make cuts, I don't come back and say, okay, you know what, the school department is this percentage, can you make cuts in terms of this or whatever the case may be?

We don't do any of that stuff.

So all I am asking is, and I understand the frustration, I understand the passion that's going back and forth, but to say that you're not receiving your fair share is just wholly inaccurate because for years, for years, all of our departments on the town side have not— have been understaffed completely.

So at some point, the time that you're talking about where you're starting to see that shift is just because the Board of Selectmen in the town had taken a priority to try to get the town side back to a baseline where they needed to be, right?

And so that's where we've been.

And every year thereafter, what you haven't seen significant increases.

In fact, we keep going back and we've provided it.

We're seeing reductions in general government.

I, I just— I understand education is expensive, public safety is expensive.

We can go back to property taxes if, if we don't have the staffing or the policing, uh, for this community.

I don't know who wants to move into SEACOMF, right?

So property values go down, and I'm not arguing property values.

I support education.

I was on the school committee.

I am an advocate for education.

I understand how important it is to a community.

I appreciate that.

All I am saying is this going back and forth to suggest that you're not receiving fair funding is just, in my opinion, is just inaccurate statement.

Do you deserve more funding?

Absolutely.

I think you deserve more funding.

I also think that the police department, the fire department, DPW also deserve more funding.

And the fact of the matter is, is we only got so much money.

What— where do I take it from, right?

So there's always going to be that, that discussion.

So I, I think for us to stop being productive, it's not about you're not providing, you know, the school department with enough funding and X, Y, and Z. I mean, I present it, right?

I'm being upfront.

I'm saying we went from 126% of net school spending down to 116%.

I highlighted that that's a significant decrease, right?

I am not comfortable to say we were at 126 and now we're at 116%.

But the reality of the situation is— and I know I'm repeating myself— the expenses are exceeding our revenue.

So that— those are the discussions that we need to have.

And I, and I also put that on my slide.

We need to start talking about economic development.

How do we diversify our tax base?

Where do we go from here, right?

And those are the collective conversations that I think need to take place.

Some of this back and forth I think is just unproductive and just adds noise that we don't need.

And I think it to— from my concern, brings in this— these discussions into town meeting where we're unintentionally, right, are pitting again education versus public safety.

And that's, that's just my ultimate concern.

And, and that's our concern.

I've never suggested that town meeting is where you solve your problems.

You solve them in these meetings.

You have more meetings if you have to.

But the reality is our constituents are coming to your meetings, right?

And they're telling that they're unhappy.

But here's, here's the problem.

You know what your constituents don't see?

They don't see the meetings behind closed doors, right?

So when we have ARPA money and then the school department needs more money, I tell my department, don't worry about it, we're going to give more money to the schools.

We gave $1 million of our own ARPA money to the schools.

We didn't have to.

You had your ARPA money.

You had your ARPA money plus $1 million of our ARPA money.

So that's where I get frustrated, because I have truly, truly been a partner Right, for education.

And if nobody believes that, that's fine.

But behind closed doors, I am consistent with what I say, and my actions speak volumes.

Because without blinking an eye, we turned over $1 million in ARPA when we didn't have to.

Can you clarify what ARPA is?

It was— you're going to put me on the spot in terms of the American Rescue Relief Act for COVID.

Maybe that's COVID.

You say COVID.

The COVID money that came in.

And I apologize for the acronym.

I don't know exactly what it stands for.

Well, I apologize for not knowing.

So just to clarify, and I think we all need to de-escalate a little bit, but what you're— because I do agree, we come back to this 3 years because it is hard to look at seeing the other departments maintaining at-level service and we feel like we're constantly the ones getting hit.

What you're explaining to us is historically we were always getting more and now you've been leveling out.

Is that kind of what you just said?

Well, we've been at the 2.5%, so every— the last couple of years with a 2%, we varied.

I, I mean, I can— I've got it here.

And just to clarify also, the current fiscal year '26 budget, the school departments could afford 1% increase, and public safety got a 1% decrease from fiscal year '25.

So your statement at 3 years you're going backwards is not accurate.

Yeah, so here's school funding from 2015 to 2027.

So 2015, you saw, you saw an increase of $643,000.

2016, $1.2 million.

$852,000 for '17.

$888,000 for '18.

'19 was $1.3 million, and that was the change in Chapter 70 coming in, including, uh, during COVID in 2020 at $2.1 million.

'21 was $537,000.

'22 was $876,000.

'23 was $782,000.

'24 was $925,000.

FY '25 was $1.1 million.

FY '26, $936,000.

And we're proposing $846,000 on average.

That's a 3.74% increase from 2015 to 2017.

Right?

And then when you look at the Chapter 70, I mean, we— But when we're going back to— and I know I don't mean to say this, that we feel as though the schools are being treated unfairly or inequitably.

During that time that you just read those numbers from, were the other departments not getting the same percentage or the same level that we were at?

Like, we were— the school department was receiving more.

You got to, you got to remember, I mean, my, my, some of my departments, uh, you know, a 2% increase is $2,000.

I know, I'm talking about the percentage.

No, no.

So no, it's been consistent with the exception of public safety.

We, we took a— we made a decision to add a couple of new positions on the town side, and then everything else went to, to public safety and DPW.

And for DPW, I mean, you start looking at I don't know how many acres they have absorbed with the same staff that they've got to maintain.

So, you know, those are the conversations that we've had, you know, year over year.

And we're still now reducing DPW's, telling them that they need to continue to maintain.

And, you know, the conversations that we've already had with, you know, the Board of Selectmen was, you know, potentially looking at a user fee for for some of the stormwater.

So, I mean, that's another expense that, because of the ARPA money that we had, we were able to offset some of those costs in our operating budget utilizing that money, right?

So we're not going to have it anymore.

We got DEP, the EPA coming down with new regulations, and we haven't even broached that subject in terms of what that cost is going to look like.

And that's significant.

I— going around and around probably isn't helpful at this point, but let's, let's move on to the $725,000 for the HVAC for the pool.

Yes, thank you, for the, the warrants, just so we can help you.

If you shut the pool down and drained it, would you need the $725,000?

I'll, uh, that question is the reason that Mr. Roy has been here for 3 Thank you, Mr. Roy.

He'll explain the situation.

Yep.

So $725,000 for the Dectron unit.

Put the mic up a little closer.

Thank you.

$725,000 for the Dectron unit.

Um, yeah, I got that.

I got that.

The, um, if you decommission the pool, it will actually cost you more money.

Reason is you would still have to— you still have to put a rooftop unit on.

You still have to put a rooftop unit on and you have to fill in the pool.

So I did some checking today and to fill the pool in, fill the pool in would be like $400,000.

And then the rooftop unit that you would have to put up there to maintain the quality of air and heating in the building.

We reduced that $725,000 Textron unit to about $500,000 for the rooftop unit.

And that's just— that is just the basics to get the pool shut down.

And the reason why you have to fill the pool in is because it's a 12-foot deep pool and you're in about 4 to 5 feet of water table.

And so you have to break up that pool floor, bottom of the pool.

You have to break all that up to relieve the pressure of the water table.

Okay, and then you have to fill it with stone up to the water table.

Then you have to have some processed gravel coming in.

And then you have to put a vapor barrier.

Then you have to put some liquid concrete through there.

And that's just the basics where it comes— it came up to about $900,000 to do that.

And that's just to, just to keep an open space there where you could use it as a gym, whatever you want to use it that way.

If you want to— and then that way you would— and that's just to get that thing closed.

And then you have 2 locker rooms there that will be sitting there.

That has nothing to do with that.

There's to be stay there.

So if you wanted to use that space a little more to divide it up in offices or whatever, you have to do that.

You, you know, you have to do all this planning, and then you have— and then you have to know all this stuff before you, you know, before you close the pool down, because that, that determines what goes on the roof for the, the rooftop unit.

So that— hopefully that answers your question on what it will cost, um, to shut Is that $725,000 a hard number, or is it an estimate?

That $725,000, we came up with the distributor of New England that sells the Dectron unit that will fit right up to that curb, and that's on the quote.

They— this has to go through a bidding process.

This is all the stuff we all have to go through.

It goes through the bidding process, and I talked to the distributor, and everybody that bids on this project has to go through him, the buyer.

He's the one that gave me that number, what the unit's going for.

And this is the bidding process, the cost of going through bidding process and stuff.

So it all depends on how many people will be bidding on this project.

It will determine if it's a lot lower.

Do you know the age of the unit you'd be replacing?

Yeah, the unit's 24 years old.

And you got the full life of the unit, okay?

'Cause you know, you got the pool with all the chlorine in it.

And it just eats up, it eats up the unit.

And that price is an expensive price because you've got to dehumidify the building because of the water in the pool and then, you know, get the humidity out of the air.

So that's why the unit is so much, and it actually heats the pool water and stuff.

That's why that, you know, that unit is that big of a unit price-wise.

So I remember there was discussion with the finance committee, and they— one of the members was a selectman, and they went down to, I think they said, Roger Williams University, and they looked at some electronic unit instead of, I guess, this one.

Well, that was an addition.

That's the— that was different.

That's the filtering thing that was in that earlier.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you're talking about the UV light?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, the UV light, I was involved— I was involved in that UV light years ago too.

And I don't know what everybody came up with, but the UV light was to save money on chemicals.

Okay.

And the purpose of saving money on chemicals, every like 3 months I used to have to put like 25 gallons of chlorine into it, shock the pool for the weekend, shut it down so it burns off the chloramines out of the air.

So this, that was reducing that.

The second benefit was to reduce some of the chloramines in the air.

So that was the whole purpose of that, that UV light.

And then this is the second UV light we have on, or we have in place, because we had a, uh, um, we had a leak and flooded the place out and it all had to be replaced.

So one doesn't replace the other?

You're saying you need both?

The UV light has nothing to do with this.

Okay.

This— no, it has nothing to do with this product, the rooftop unit.

Okay.

Anybody else have any questions?

I'm just, I'm just reading this, and I'm, I'm sorry, I'm seeing it for the first time, but what's the cost of the pool, the expense of running the pool annually?

So if I, if I can, I'd like to walk you just through the handout that I just handed out here.

On the, on the front page, um, where it says community pool revenue and expenses, what we tried to do is it goes back to 2021 and 2022.

The beginning balance is our revolving account, and then you have your revenue, which is what it brings in in that year, and then you have your expenses.

So you can see where it starts in 2021-2022.

Beginning balance was $172,000-ish.

Revenue was somewhere around $50,000.

Expenses were $51,000.

So as you go across, you can see what the revolving account accounts were, and you can see what the revenue has been.

Revenue traditionally has been around $35,000 on average, plus or minus.

You can see the numbers, um, and then the expenses went kind of higher because I think what was happening is the utilities were being used and charged off to the pool revolving account to help offset the budget.

So when I came on board, um, so around '23-'24, you can see that it started reducing.

And then when we realized that that's what was happening, again, we're trying to normalize it for like '24-'25, '25-'26.

And what I want to point out is the projections for '26-'27.

Um, we have been working hard to try to just make sure, um, the expenses to run the pool, um, are becoming more accurate.

So it looks like somewhere around the $35,000 to $40,000 range is what it costs to run the pool over the course of a year.

Obviously, you have plus or minuses depending if you need some maintenance.

But the goal was to try to sustain the pool the best we can with the funds that come in from the rentals.

Again, we have a couple of contracts or we have, we have a contract in place that was increased 5%.

We're also bringing in a couple of other people.

We've been doing some additional work.

So this handout kind of shows some of those things we've been working towards.

So if you scroll down the page, you'll see, you know, approximate revenue, approximate expenses, and why there's a little variance.

And then it shows new growth targets.

So we're trying to bring in people that are going to help us run the pool and make sure we offer it to the community to provide swim lessons.

The goal is just to make it accessible and used around the clock.

That'd be a first.

We're trying.

We're working hard on it.

This shows some of the stuff we're working towards.

But again, the goal is, you know, to share with the community.

It's a great, great resource.

We got good use out of this Dektron unit.

It definitely needs replacing, but the hope is to be able to keep it available to community.

Okay.

Will the school department be presenting this article at town meeting or— Yeah, I think— Yeah, school committee.

Yeah, school committee will present it.

Okay, can you, can you add a little color to, uh, '22-'23, '23-'24?

Those numbers look awfully lumpy.

I'm just— yes, curious what went on there.

I did the best I could to try to explain that under the expense section.

So what happened is I came in around '23, so we were using some of the, um, the revenue.

So the revenue is reported on the fiscal year, so that's why you see in '22-'23 it's like $11,000, and '23-'24 it goes up to $77,000.

If you were to average those 2, that's more accurate.

So it was just revenue being reported.

The other part was the expenses.

We were charging off in the '22-'23 school year $142,000 in utilities.

And when I came on board, I didn't realize that was what was happening right away.

So you can see as soon as we figured it out, like, we had reduced it down to to $115,000.

And then again for '24-'25, we brought down the expenses to rebuild the balance in that account.

So it does, it does waver.

I tried the best I could to kind of capture revenues and expenses, and obviously we can share more details with you.

Hey, can I just jump in on that?

Sorry, because I tend to— you're like detail, I'm kind of simplistic.

Um, there were, as you can see, '21, '22, '23, to— there were large revolving balances.

Maybe they were, as you said, offset other electrical bills, not just what the actuals were.

What we've asked the last 2 years of this new administration is get as close to actual on everything.

Don't have large revolving accounts.

That's a perfect example of how we've gotten to the point where we don't have large revolving accounts.

We do everything everything as close to actual as possible.

So it's because you've been here with us 2 or 3 years— this is my third year.

His third year.

It took a little time to kind of change that philosophy, but we don't have the luxury to have a large revolving balance anymore.

But we're using it for the actual cost, and he's identifying what the actual costs are and not using that revolving account to pay for other electricity.

So you could break that down for us and give us more information?

Yes, absolutely.

All right, anybody else have anything they want to add?

Sorry, I, I just came up here to say that we're working really hard.

Ryan and I just— we've been meeting and talking about getting the pool being used during the day and in the summer, and that's just something that we feel really strongly about— getting swim lessons, getting open swims.

I've heard that that was something that the community really loved in the past, and that's something that we're hoping to get.

We're looking at a company that would potentially rent the pool during the daytime and how we would factor that in with the high school kids, and the flow of that is something we have to work through.

I just wanted to mention, I know it says it under community swim pool goals, that's a really big one.

We really want the pool to be used more.

Thank you.

And I agree with you, Mr. Sagar.

In the past, my family felt the pinch of it not being used by the community.

As much because my kids are all— we're all swimmers.

And so I know that there was a— historically there was a time when the community got blocked out, but we are trying to fix that for you.

Don't fix it for me, fix it for everybody, for the community.

Yeah, but you've pointed out several times, I just want you to know my family felt that pinch too, so I know where you're coming from.

We felt that pinch as well.

All right, so we don't— do we have to take any action on this, Mr. Kadima?

Just No, we'll take action when we talk about all the warrant articles.

Okay.

Very good.

And then Article 14 is— I'm sorry, or 13, $975,000 for the asphalt curb drainage replacement at the Martin School.

That is a ridiculous number.

An absolute ridiculous number.

Half that amount is an excessive number.

And the first thing that you need to do there is inspect the drainage system because you've got a lot of collapsed structures.

And yeah, I can answer that.

That price we came up with, I spent a lot of— I spent a lot of time working with the architect.

I walked all over.

We actually, uh, went through all the prints.

We noticed that we've had some problems with drainage.

Some of the drainage is, uh, it's, uh, some of the drain lines are not big enough, and we have to increase some of the drain lines.

Okay.

So, and this is to replace all the curbing.

So the architect, which came up with the price with the square footage, that's what the going rate was.

Why are you using an architect?

It's usually an engineer.

Just helping me getting this thing going out for bid, for bid process.

Okay.

This is not what it could come— it all depends who bids on the project.

If a lot of people bidding on it.

It might come, but you are going to address the drainage system?

Yeah, that's— that's— oh yeah, when this— if this gets approved, yeah, we gotta— we gotta draw it all up.

We gotta, you know, we gotta— we gotta, you know, prep it for bidding process.

So all that stuff will be in there, what drainage is— it's all going to be all drawn up.

All right.

Yep, that makes more sense.

Mr. Roy, that also does the whole sidewalk going around the Yeah, that from Cole Street, correct?

Yeah, we figured out with the sidewalk, which is on Cole Street and goes all the way from Fieldwood all the way to Anthony Street, has to put that in there.

And what we do is, is you put it as an alternate.

So if the numbers come in low, we can get it done.

If not, we can just— so we can get the project done so we don't lose the project for not having enough money.

So yeah, that's, that's covering everything.

All the drainage, all the curbing.

Some of the curbing in the front where it's next to the school, where there's a lot of activity stuff going on, they usually put granite curbing over there.

We just want to finish the curbing close up.

The rest is all concrete curbing up on Cole Street.

So like I said, I worked with the architect to get that.

That's the number he comes up with.

They've been putting things out for bid.

They know what the square footage was, and that's the number that came up.

With.

Okay, I felt the same way.

I thought it was pretty high, but the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if it's another half.

All right, thank you.

Yep.

All right, and Article 14, you want to talk about that?

That's— is that me too?

That's the, uh, security locks over at the Hurley— is it the Hurley School?

Yeah, Hurley Middle School.

And this is like phase 3.

We already did all the other schools.

This is the last school because we're still up in the air what's going on with the construction, whatever we're going to do with the heating system and whatever we're going to do with the building.

What this is, is these are classroom locks.

It's a deadbolt lock, and what it is, is all you have to do is push one button, it throws a deadbolt across this lock, it gives you a red indicator, so if you're having a lockdown, you lock down, at least you can tell that that classroom classroom is locked up.

What we have now is a classroom function and you have to go out into the corridor with a key and lock it and unlock it.

And you don't know if you turned it the right way or wrong.

This will ease up on a little bit of lockdowns.

So, and then the— there's a couple other— it's a place for assemblies, some of the library areas.

We got some panic positive.

They're coming up with some new product.

It's the same thing, you push the button and have it locked down.

So, and that's, and that's the price we came up with, with the distributor.

And those locks can be removed if there's a new building or a renovation, correct?

Okay, anybody else have any questions?

Do we have enough money to do all this, Mr.

Nothing on account.

So there, um, there may be a little bit more in that account, but I just got to double-check it.

But that's where it is.

If not, we might have to take it out of the same— all right, because we have 3 point— we have, uh, we saved all that money for you.

We have $3.1 million in the municipal building and infrastructure account, we've had the $1.6 million that's got to come out of it for the purchase of the DPW property.

So, okay, that's it for the warrant articles.

Okay.

Article 18, I believe.

18.

What's the establishing of village meetings?

Oh, so Chair, we probably have to stay for public speaks.

No.

Okay.

Just, just so you know what's on.

Oh, okay.

18.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We got one more.

One more.

You get 18 for your building committee.

Do you need something from us on that one?

No.

So I think you might be done.

Okay, so then all I need is a motion to adjourn.

Anybody make a motion to adjourn?

Seconded.

I have a motion and a second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

The ayes have it.

Passes 5-0 unanimously.

Thank you so much, Chair, for your time.

Thank you, guys.

Welcome to the new committee members.

Thank you.

All right, so all these brownies— oh no, I left it.

Yeah, a little bit.

Am I on your— I thought maybe I was immediately encroaching in your space.

Appreciate it.

So behind you, I don't want to drop.

For them?

No, for us.

Welcome to me.

You want to do that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah, I was gonna actually ask.

Okay, moving right along.

Okay, we, uh, for our fiscal year '27 budget hearing.

We're going to continue this discussion with items C and D to our meeting of next Wednesday, which will be the 15th, at Town Hall on 6 o'clock.

So can I have a motion to do that?

So moved, Chris Zorra.

Is there a second?

Second, Mike Healy.

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Okay, next is Community Speaks.

Well, we have to sign more articles.

No, no, uh, warrant articles.

Warrant articles, Gary.

Oh, you want to go through the warrant articles?

We have to.

Yeah, I just need— I need approval from the, uh, the board on the warrant articles.

Okay, so we'll go to the warrant.

I thought we could do it next week, but that's okay, we'll do it now.

Well, it's up to you.

Can we do it next week?

Do it now, it's better.

As part of the, uh, we, we can.

Uh, I don't know that unless— well, we got the superintendent here if there's any questions.

I guess if the board is not in favor of supporting a warrant article, if you need more information, that's the only thing.

All right, so, all right, we'll do the warrant articles then.

All right, Article 1 is just the reports of all the officers.

Who wants to do that one?

Michael?

Okay, Mike.

Article 2, raise and appropriate operating sanitation fund.

Who wants to do that?

All right, Liz.

All right, Article 3 is the compensation of certain town employees.

Who'd like to do that?

Okay, who's doing that?

Bob.

Okay, Article 4, appropriation from the Municipal Capital Stabilization Fund.

Uh, so Mr.

Chair, those, those are the capital items that the board approved, uh, at the last meeting.

Yep.

So, uh, year 3 of the 3-year lease payment for the DPW bucket truck.

Yeah, uh, year 2 of a 3-year lease for the, uh, the dump truck.

Then we've got the trackless tractor for the DPW, the radio console for communications, the 2 administrative vehicles for the fire department, the jaws of life for the fire department, the animal control And then it's service for a number of different departments that would be located at Town Hall.

We've got the LED upgrade for the sign outside here of the Senior Center for $15,000.

We've got the purchase of 51 body-worn cameras for the police department.

And then we've got 50 ballistic helmets and shields Uh, for the police department, and then, uh, the install for the additional camera at animal control.

Okay, who would like to do Article 4?

I'll do it.

Liz.

All right, let me get— I need approvals too.

Okay.

Yeah, Mr. Chairman, before we go any further Yeah, can we go back to one and just— if we make a recommendation on them at the same time?

Yeah, right, so we don't have to go back and do them again.

Yeah, so I don't necessarily need it for— because we'll make a recommendation on town meeting floor for Article 1, which is committee report.

I'm assuming we'll wait until next meeting for Article 2 on the support.

And then typically the Board of Selectmen doesn't give a recommendation on the elected appointed salaries.

All right, um, so I would just need to know Article 4.

Article 4, to, uh, the pleasure of the board, do you want to recommend approval?

So moved.

The second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Okay.

I'm sorry, who was, who was doing that?

Who got assigned?

Uh, Liz.

Liz.

Liz.

Thank you.

No, who got assigned?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, Article 5.

Uh, so Mr.

Chair, this is just, uh, we approved the body-worn cameras, uh, for the capital item, but this is a 5-year contract, so we just need town meeting to approve and authorize, uh, the police department to enter into a 5-year contract.

I can— I'll read it.

Okay, so Chris, motion to approve.

All right, the second.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Article 6.

Article 6 is similar to the body-worn cameras, but it's for the police vehicles, for the lease payments.

Uh, we have 3 vehicles in the police department budget that we do every year.

We just need approval to get— enter into the 3-year lease agreements.

I'll read it.

Okay, Chris.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Article 7.

Uh, Mr. Chairman, Article 7 is the CPC appropriation.

So as the board's aware, we have a, a 1.25% surcharge, uh, with the state providing matching.

And, um, this is allowing us to appropriate into the CPC categories.

So there's 3 categories, uh, historic, uh, resource, community housing and then open space.

So the law requires that we appropriate 10% in each of those categories, and then 70% can be delegated as we see fit.

So we typically have it in as a budget reserve to allow us to reallocate in future needs.

Okay, Article 7, I'll, I'll offer to do it.

Do we have a motion to approve?

Motion to approve.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Who seconded it?

I heard 2 people.

Okay, Article 8.

Mr. Chairman, Article 8 is just the yearly surplus property, which excludes buildings and land.

Okay, Michael said he'll do it.

So do we have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor?

Opposed?

All voted.

Article 9.

Article 9 is just covering the snow and ice deficit for this fiscal year.

We'll be utilizing the stabilization account for that in the amount of $230,000.

I'll read it.

All right, Chris is going to do it.

Do we have a motion to recommend?

You said the stabilization, so we need 2/3.

2/3.

Yes.

All right, is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Article 10.

Article 10 is the coming from ambulance receipts.

It's for the, uh, 3rd lease payment of a 4-year lease for the EMS rescue vehicle for the fire department.

Okay, I'll do that one.

All right, Liz is going to do that.

Do we have a motion to approve?

I'll second that.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Article 11.

OK, Michael was going to do Article 11.

That's the PEG contract in the amount of— for cable, $149,102.

That's Michael.

So entertain a motion to approve.

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor?

Opposed?

So voted.

Article 12 is the $725,000 from the Building and Infrastructure Stabilization Fund for the decon unit at the high school.

Motion to approve.

School's going to read it, right?

We don't want us to read it.

No, school's already— I thought school's going to do that.

We have to read the honor roll, right?

That's what I was saying.

Yeah, they'll present.

Yeah, school, they'll present, so we'll skip over that then.

No, I just— motion.

Yeah, motion to approve.

All right, is there a second?

Second.

All right, moved and seconded.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Aye.

2 opposed.

What is that, 4 to 2?

I mean, 3 to 2.

Yeah.

Article 13 is the $975,000 for the Martin School parking lot curbing and drainage.

So let's hear a motion to approve that.

Make a motion to approve.

All right, Chris, do you want to present it to— is that the school department?

School department.

Is the school going to do it?

Okay, then.

So Chris, you made a motion to approve.

Is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Article 14 is the schools also, $100,000 for locks at the Kevin M. Hurley Middle School.

I'll present that.

Schools.

Yeah, that's true.

All right, so entertain a motion to approve that amount.

So moved.

A second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Article 15, all 5.

Is that unanimous?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Article 15, to see if the— we vote to accept 41, Section 110A.

Mr. Chairman, what this does is it allows any election deadlines to fall on— that fall on Saturday would be treated like a holiday, so the deadline would then move to Friday.

Okay.

Anybody want to present it?

Monday.

Wouldn't that be Monday, not Friday?

It goes back, right?

Yeah.

Oh, okay, Michael.

It is anyways.

Yeah, they're closed anyways.

I'm sorry.

Okay, well, if it falls on Saturday, you said it goes back— it goes back to Friday, so the deadline will be on the Friday.

Okay, because town hall's closed on Friday anyway.

We're still required to be there.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

I just want to double-check.

Yeah.

Okay, so Article 15.

You want me to take it?

No, Mike said he'd do it.

Okay, didn't you?

Did you say that?

Yeah, Mike said he'd do it.

So entertain a motion to approve it.

So moved.

I'll second that.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Article 16, to see if the town will vote to accept 539A for obtaining blank nomination papers Shall be 48 weekday hours prior to the hour which dominant papers are required to be submitted to the registrars.

I'm going to take it.

Okay, that's Liz.

So entertain a motion to approve it.

I'll second that.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

All right, Article 17 is the billboard overlay district.

Pretty extensive.

All right, I'll read the motion, Gary.

Sure.

Yeah, Article 17 will be done by Mike, so I entertain a motion to approve it.

I'll second that.

All in favor?

Opposed?

So voted.

How did you vote, Bob?

Okay, one opposed.

All right, is that it?

18.

18.

Oh, that's the building committee for the Irving Middle School.

Yeah.

Okay, anybody— the schools will be presenting that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, so we don't have to vote.

Motion to approve.

Okay, I'll second that.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

All right, so that should take care of it, the warrant, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay, we'll sign it.

We make the recommendations.

Okay, moving right along.

Community Speaks.

Good evening.

Kyle Juck at Hammond Street.

I'm going to preface with this, with most of what I'm about to say, one is unscripted, but is addressed to the other members that were here.

I did let them know before they left that I was planning on speaking.

Um, they can watch it online afterwards if they want to.

This is not meant to be like kind of backhanded.

I kind of wish they were here so they could hear it.

Um, had a moment tonight of regret that I didn't run because some stuff was said over here that really irritated me.

This cannot become a pissing match over our teachers worth more, our first responders worth more, their impacts on our children.

I got a couple different hats I can put on here.

I can put on a hat as a child when I was in school, there were teachers that I can't quantify the impacts they had on me in my categories of stuff that I liked.

They had a great impact on me.

Now I'm gonna put the parent hat on and also the first responder hat on.

I've gone to calls for service of dead kids, and there's other people in this room that have too.

And those are the ones that carry the hardest for me.

So when I hear increasing calls for service times, that hits home to me because I have 3 kids at home.

There is nothing that this side of the board can give me that brings my kid back to life when something bad happens.

Car crash happens on Route 6, that, that timeline is higher.

We don't get our first is there on time, something bad happens.

I don't like that.

And it might not be my kid, it could be somebody else's kid.

You get one bite at that apple, you get one shot to make that count.

So I, I'm hoping it's poor choice of words when that kind of stuff was happening.

It cannot devolve into a pissing match.

The second comment I'm going to say is about the whole pie thing.

I try to steer everybody away from the pie thing the last time because it's not productive.

It was mentioned about how it was kind of like money's being taken away from the school was over the past year because their budget has gone down 3 or 4% while public service has only gone down 1, 1.5%.

Again, the pie will tell you what you want it to tell you.

The reality is, is that they were 52% of the pie and now they're 48% of the pie.

Their pie dropped 10%.

Public service was 17% of the pie.

They dropped down, I think, 14 and change, or 15 and change.

So they went down 1.5%.

That's 10% of their pie.

Both of them went down financially 10%.

Asking them to go down 3 or 4% would be taking away 25% of their budget.

So it's— again, the pie will tell you what you want it to tell you when you're trying to display those facts.

They need it.

We all need to get away from that because it's not productive.

What I would suggest to you, Mr. TA, I, I know we've had some things that we don't agree on.

I think financially, I've loved following all your financial stuff.

I like how you save money, how you put money away for the rainy day.

What I will say is 'Cause I think what was being mentioned over here was talking about, when he was mentioning revenue, I think what he means is the 2.5% levy plus whatever else comes in.

I think it probably would be a good idea to come up with an idea as to what that increase looks like every year, 'cause we all know that the school department can't be higher than that.

Because if the school department gets higher than how the overall pie grows, then at some point in time there will be no pie, there will just be the school department.

You won't have any other divisions because they're growing at a rate that is gonna shrink everybody else.

So I think that number might be important to have just so that they have an understanding.

I'm going to guess it's going to be somewhere between a 3 and a 4, and it's probably on the lower end towards the 3.

But they need to also understand that, that you can't grow faster than the pie grows, because if you grow faster than the pie, at some point in time the tree is empty of money.

There's no more money to be had.

You mentioned participations at meetings tonight.

I think this one might be added as a 13th meeting that became kind of unproductive.

No, and again, I'm not trying to offend anybody directly here.

Mr. Healy, I appreciate what you brought to the table.

I said last week to try to come together, bring heads together, and try to be problem solvers.

I wasn't specifically looking for what you brought forward, but at least you brought forward something to say, hey, listen, this is what I looked at, this is what we could try to do to try to meet in the middle.

I was hoping that maybe, you know, again, when you're serving on that side, you see stuff from that side only.

You don't get to see everything else.

I was hoping that maybe you guys could bounce off each other's heads and come up with ideas that maybe they didn't think of to help reduce costs.

So again, I do appreciate you bringing some stuff forward.

Again, it can't become this devolved pissing match as to who gets more money.

I do genuinely hope that you guys can come together and figure it out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, Doreen Taylor, 101 Forsyth.

Um, I have a question about the financial policy that we have in place.

Was that created in 2021?

Yes.

And the percentages for divvying up, um, savings for our stabilization accounts, the percentage that is set in that policy, is that mandated by the state or mandated by S&P?

No, no, it's the policy.

Okay.

Yeah, it can be, it can be changed.

Okay, so it was written and approved in 2021, set at a certain percent percentage.

Do you think because, um, expenses have continued to grow— we're— I mean, nothing ever goes down, it always goes up— but I mean, do you think maybe Um, the board, Mr. Chairman, should reconsider looking at that policy and reevaluating those percentages so maybe there's a little bit more free cash to work with.

If I, if I'm not speaking wrong, or if I am speaking wrong, I'm sure Mr. Khadim will tell me, but I mean, um, Is that possible and still remain within the parameters of S&P to maintain our bond rating?

Do they make a suggestion as to the percentage?

S&P won't make any suggestion on that point.

The DOR will have some suggestions on what you want to do.

So stabilization account will be a percentage on your tax levy, which is what we have.

But I think what you're suggesting is it doesn't really change, right?

Because all we're doing is the percentage is based on what we get certified for free cash and how we allocate that.

So I think the larger question is how we spend our free cash or our one-time money.

I think it's more what you're trying to get.

I'm looking at how much money we put into our savings accounts.

Those percentages in that policy have been set by the Board of Selectmen, correct?

Correct, correct.

I guess so.

I mean, we built up quite a savings and everything.

Hopefully, you know, it's not going to get drained.

But what I'm saying is that if you change the percentage, you— if you reevaluate those percentages and even in the slightest amount leave a little bit more money to work with for budgeting purposes, wouldn't that be kind of a good thing to do.

I mean, the policy is 5 years old, and we've had 5 years' worth of savings that are in there that have been excellent.

I mean, it's, it's great, and it maintains our bond rating.

But maybe we need to have a little bit more— and I hate the term free cash because it's not really free— but I mean, maybe it gives us a little bit more money to work with for departments, all our departments.

So I guess what I would say to you is that we still have the ability— so the percentage is just allocating the free cash into those buckets.

We can tap into those buckets.

We just wiped out the building infrastructure account.

That's almost a zero right now.

But I was hoping not to tap into the buckets.

But what I'm saying is it took us 5 years to get to that.

We just wiped it out in one night.

Actually, we're beyond that.

Yeah, right.

Well, that's another thing.

I don't know what's on the warrant for taking the money and where it's coming from.

So I'm just saying— and of course not for this year, but I mean going forward with a 5-year-old financial policy, maybe it is worth looking at it and tweaking it just a little bit.

But I was just going to elaborate a little bit more.

So strategically, it makes more sense for us from a bond rating standpoint, as soon as we get the free cash, to appropriate it.

Because when you start looking at the free cash going into these stabilization accounts, you capture— you take a snapshot of what that account looks like.

Having the free cash just standing there in limbo not being used doesn't help with our bond rating.

So by moving it in there, it helps us improve our bond rating because it brings up our stabilization accounts, even if we're going to Even if the intent is to use all the free cash, I would still make the recommendation, even though the only change is going from a simple majority for free cash to 2/3, that you would allocate all your free cash into these various accounts so that you capture the fact that you've got them in a stabilization account.

So when they're looking at your financials, you've got it there as opposed to just lingering in free cash.

Does S&P require a minimum balance in your accounts to give you a you a good rating?

I mean, there are levels of ratings, I understand that.

Yeah, I don't know.

Do they look at the balances that you have at, say, June 30th of 2026, and then they, they look at what your outstanding debt is and how well you're paying it?

Does that change your rating?

It would.

It would.

Yeah.

So, but they don't have a— there's no rule of thumb for standard and poor's, and they wouldn't make those recommendation in terms of what that percentage is.

They want to see that you have a written policy, number one.

They'll most likely review it with what the DOR recommendations are.

So the DOR has recommendations for a stabilization account, not the special stabilization accounts that we have.

Okay.

Free cash, I think years ago used to be free cash and stabilization.

DOR recommended like 7% of your current budget, right?

So, so of your prior year.

Yeah, right.

So the problem with free cash is if you don't appropriate it and you don't use it, it gets rolled over to the next fiscal year.

So it's not really captured as money that's being used.

So you got to wait for the certification.

So if you appropriate it into the stabilization accounts, you've essentially moved it into your checking accounts and it's now being seen by— for financial purposes and by bond rating companies as being put into the reserve accounts.

Okay, so it would not help in budgeting to loosen up some money to be used in departments when budgeting?

No, I would, I would question— I would caution that it's all one-time money coming in, so whatever you spent it on, it should be used specifically.

We would have to legitimately— that's why we do it at town meeting, that one thing.

Okay, just so we don't create structural deficits.

Okay, the other thing that I wanted to mention is on the warrants, uh, the, oh, the number one warrant article is always to receive reports from building committees or any working committees in the town.

Last summer I mentioned it to, um, Chairman Hines at the end of a meeting that it would be nice to see, um, a list on those— on, on the warrant that has a building committee with X amount of dollars that they originally were provided, and for them to give town meeting a report.

This is where we started, this is how much is encumbered in invoices, and this is what remains.

This way, if a building committee comes before town meeting to ask for additional money, at least the report is on file.

It should be a report, and it should be kept on file with town meeting records with the town clerk.

But the invite from the Board of Selectmen to the various active building committees, I think it would serve them well and it would serve town meeting well to know what the dollar amount is left in the bucket for that project.

And if there are any outstanding bills for that project.

I mean, a simple 3-column: original appropriation, spent— I'm not asking for detail, just the dollar amount— and then, you know, invoices encumbered, a total, so we know what is left on that project that we appropriated sometime in the past.

I think it gives people a better view of where we stand on individual projects.

So when a committee comes back and says we need an additional $250,000, okay, Mr. Kadeem, you get to see exactly where they are in their responsibilities and Will the selectmen— they don't have to labor over, um, supporting it or not supporting it.

It's like, look, okay, this is this, that is that, we need extra for this.

A simple 3-column report from the chairman of active building committees that town meeting has appropriated money for.

I think it's important information, particularly for town meeting audiences.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So anybody else for community speaks?

Hi, Kim Sluder, 8 Galen Court.

I'm not going to go ahead and restate most of what Mr. Juckett said.

That was a fair amount of my comments.

I concur with him, and I'll save my school committee comments for school committee on Monday.

However, I'm just curious, as I was thinking about it and thinking about Mr. Cadime and Ms. Kidwell, as you guys are working on trying to bridge this gap, if there's any items that maybe the renewals aren't until the second half of the fiscal year, right?

Maybe there's some fixed costs that don't come until the second half of the fiscal year.

Is there anything that you could look at that at that point we'd be in November, maybe at the fall town meeting, kind of like what you do with certain contracts on the town side that don't settle until in between the 2 town meetings, and then you come to the 2nd town meeting in November and you're like, hey, all right, we're going to settle this and, and appropriate the money.

Is there any way to come up with some of those items in the 2nd half of the year?

At that point, the projections, to your point, are a little bit more real, and you could at that point maybe allocate monies and work in that way.

I'm wondering if that's some option to collaborate on.

Yeah, I can— Superintendent, I can meet and have conversations about that.

Off the top of my head, there's nothing really sticking out, but we can talk about it.

Just an idea.

Great, thanks.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Seeing none.

All right, other business.

Discuss other topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours for the meeting.

I I don't know of any.

I do, if I could.

Can we put something down for next week?

Oh yeah, well, you'll get it.

You'll get a chance.

Okay, you'll get a chance next week at the end of the meeting.

All right, town administrator's report?

Uh, nothing at this time, Mr. Chairman.

Okay, so select board liaison reports and comments.

Accounts payable warrant.

Uh, do we have this— anything to sign tonight?

I know nothing.

Okay, TV9 liaison report, nothing at this time, Mr.

Chair.

Okay, uh, Bristol County Advisory Board, that was, uh, Mrs. Foley.

Is there anyone that would be willing to take that?

Mr.

Chair, we're actually going to have that at the next meeting.

We've got, we've got a list of appointments that needs to go before the board.

Oh, whoa, whoa.

Okay, okay.

Select board, uh, we'll start with Chris.

Chris, you got anything to say?

I just want to say welcome aboard to the new members.

Uh, you guys picked a perfect night to start.

It's time to roll up our sleeves, work together, and battle our first battle.

That's it for right now.

Okay.

Michael?

Nothing at this time.

Okay.

I have nothing at this time either.

Liz, do you have anything?

Um, Mr. Kadeem just spoke of appointments.

I know this has been, um, a sticking point for me that I have brought up in the past.

Um, the Medeiros Farm committee members were never officially appointed.

I'd like to put that down for next week as well.

I mean, seeing that we're talking about ethical issues and so forth, I think that needs to be done with the exception of Mr. Sullivan, who has remained on the board even though he hasn't been serving on this board.

He's remained on the committee even though he hasn't been serving on this board.

So I think we need to discuss that.

OK, anything else?

No, that's it.

Mr. Archambault, I'm all set.

All set.

All right, we have no executive session business?

No, nothing.

OK, seeing none, the chair would entertain a motion to adjourn, and we are meeting next Wednesday night at 6:00 at Town Hall.

Town Hall, correct?

Motion to adjourn at 10:19.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

So voted.

Thank you.