February 4, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript
February 4, 2026 - Finance Committee
It is 7-1, and January 4th, 2026, I'd like to call the Wayland Finance Committee to order.
Attending from the committee are Pam, Bill, myself, April, and Iris.
In pursuance of Chapter 2, this meeting is being recorded and will be made available afterwards on Waycam.
Anyone may watch or participate remotely with a meeting link found on the town's website.
Anyone wishing to make public comments may do so.
Please limit public comments to two minutes per person.
Anybody want to make public comments? No, I'm just going to listen. Okay. Just a quick question, if you don't mind. Sure. I'm sorry, what was the question? We are not. We're not. Okay.
Okay, no one's online looking to make public comments. Yes, so the agenda for tonight is similar to our last one. Have we made Rob a panelist? Yeah. We made Rob a panelist. He's also attending. Right. Rob's attending. Yeah. 7-0. And I think I'm making the panelist by just dragging him over.
Let me just... Hang on a sec.
Why don't you talk?
Hey. You're talking, and can you hear us, Rob? I can hear you, and you can hear me? Yeah. I think you can hear me, right? Great. Yes, we can hear you just fine. I don't see your video, but... We could be Alexei's, and let's see if we can make the panelist. Because right now, he's still in as an indie. So if you go back to it, let me... It sounds like someone taking... All right. Sorry, Rob. The joys of Zoom webinar mode.
You've been promoted. You're a panelist now. Oh, okay. So now we should be able to see you if you end up on camera, Rob. Yep, yep. And I will be on camera in a few minutes. Thanks. Okay. Yep, no worries.
So first order of business, the agenda as posted, we'll approve the minutes, and we'll get into any discussion on warrant articles that are prepared. I don't think anything is recirculated, so what we can talk about in general and any reallocations that are appropriate. And then budget discussions. The last topic is any other topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair. And that's it for the agenda. It's just us tonight, right? Yes. Okay. Minutes that came out just this afternoon.
Yes. I have a question. Did anybody happen to record how it was voted on the approval of the 128 minutes? I think it was 7-0. I think it was 7-0. I think it was actually, it was Phil and then Phil. I think it was 6-0-1. Yeah. 5-0-1, because I didn't vote. Oh, you didn't vote. Okay. Okay. And, oh, we were having issues with you. And who was to approve? Phil and Phil. Okay. I had his motion in a second. I just looked at that because I saw you highlighted it. I think for public comment, too, there were Carol Plum and Andrew Carpenter as well. Yes. And I didn't get, I have no idea what they said. Okay. So I'm hoping if you guys have any insight on that. I can, I add like a short text I can send. Oh, awesome. Thank you.
Carol was speaking on the long-term. On the long-term capital planning. I think Andrew mostly. Yeah, I think Andrew mostly reiterated the email he sent with a couple questions about DD. Yeah. And Elizabeth was remote, right? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned to April before the meeting that my only comment was for the motion of the non-financial ones to put the letters in. Oh, great. To include the article. And I, which articles? We just listed them, but I just got Carl's. And so now I have a different list than what Carl had. So I am curious if we have a final list. I think I sent you. If you have a recording, you can always, I guess, get good. I've used Carl's as if it was the final. Because he had like a per finance director one and then one voted. And I have the votes on mine of the ones we voted on. Yeah. That's the important one. It's what's voted on. I mean, at least in terms of what I wanted to see in the minutes. Because that's what happened. I'm not sure your observations. So which are we up to? So C is, so A was agreed upon. Yes. A. A. J. J. J. Yeah. K. K. P. Yes. P. Q. R. Yes. UB. UB. Yes. BB. Yep. CC. EE. Yes. I. I. JJ. Yes. KK. Oh, wait. No. KK was not. Okay. So no on KK. LL. Yes. MM. Yes. N. Sorry. PP. Yes. QQ. Yes. RR. Yes. SS. Yes. UV. Hang on. UU. I don't have UU. He has UU. I don't have UU either. I don't have UU. Because I think they said the five-ton weight. Would that be?
I don't recall the details of the article, but I don't know if that would. And those aren't great because I was sort of wondering if anybody else have clarity on that? No. I don't. We're trying to remember. This is the five-ton weight. The five-ton weight to re-create that that was. No. Didn't need pros and cons. I don't know if it's UU. What about the notes? Hmm. I have in my notes, VBWW. We definitely said no financial. Yes. And YVY is easy. Right. Yeah. Carl has UU. That's why I wanted to just clarify. Good to check. Then I think. And then the other one that I said we, that I had wrong. Well, I can't remember. In April, you're the income person on UU. Do you feel it has financial impact? By a time, I think it's going to depend on the whole aspect of things because it could. I think what we had actually said now that I'm thinking about this was not necessarily that there was financial impact, but the ability to explain the desire and the need in 150 words was going to be hard. So I think the thought was, I think we were going to do a write-up for the one before it and that one in the sense of being able to help lay out and explain the request and the need for the request. The prior one was the walkway. Yes. And that was clearly. And obviously that has some financial impact as well. But I thought that part of this was like, or else we're really restricting the proponent to 150 words. Right. So that's.
I mean, if we have to, can't we check the recording? We don't have to do anything real time. Oh. We probably had the recording. Yeah. I'm sure we were recording. Yeah. I'm sure we recorded it. April, please check that.
Actually, wait a minute. So, yeah, he has it as you know. I have it as he needs a write-up, so. Yeah. Let us know what you're talking about. Totally. We did have some other comments on the minutes.
You ready? Okay. On page two.
The FY27 proposed time budget under the levy limit by 7.50. It's projected to be under the levy.
And then continuing on that line, in the forens, town just voted to reclassify DPW, prior DPW operating debt to excluded debt.
Okay. Sorry.
There we go. Right now, there is town. What did you say, sir? Yeah. So, instead of cross out, adjust, and put reclassify DPW debt to excluded debt.
And then instead of MWRA, there's a, you can pull the wording from the article or just say water infrastructure will be an article to put in front of town, because it's a lot more than just MWRA. And then February 9th meeting, towards the end of that page, will include town manager, Michael McClendon, and finance director, Brian Kevney, as well as superintendent, Dean Fleishman, not Peter. I don't know why. That is a surprise. That's okay. Kirsteen Patterson, or Peterson, which is my fault. I don't know if it's a school finance director, presenting the school budget.
I also had, just at the end of that, I think I would like, for the record, just to say that the committee, or you can put in PROM and express concern about the timing of completing three budgets, or two, both budgets, including the five-year. It is really three of the five, the capital of the five-year. Two operating budgets and the capital budget this later. Well, it's really one operating budget, and then the capital and the five-year capital, as well as all the articles this late, and with a month and a half, really, to do a lot of work. I'm totally prepared with that. I think you could say, I think it's... Yeah, yeah. You're not the only one who has concerns. Yes. Another one. So, Pamela, I'm going to express concern about receiving the budgets this late in the budget season. Thank you. My game is what I want to say, but it's late in the five minutes. Okay. Make a motion to move the minutes as modified. So moved. One second. One second. I... Oh, we've got to go around. Okay. Yes. Bill? Bill, yes. April? Yes. Iris? Yes. Rob? Yes.
So, Rob, the question on the table is, who should reallocate any changes in article ownership to? And bidding begins. So, I think as we discussed, all of mine with one have a financial impact. What I was hoping, if anyone is game, is there's two that come as a pair, and only one will be needed. So, there are two, Article X and Article AA, have to do with the FIRE payroll budget and the FIRE contract. One will get pulled, depending on sort of how the contract negotiations go. Only one will be needed. And I was hoping I could hand those off to someone. I'll take them if you want me to. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. I appreciate that. And then, I think, otherwise, then, I think that makes the rest of mine pretty manageable. And, Pam, I probably will take you up on your offer to help me with Article W. Sure. I can look it up, but who's the Select Board contact? Carol. Carol. Okay. Carol is who I had, and I believe she was for both. I think Carol is who? Yeah, I think she was for both. She is. Yeah. Thank you so much.
The other article I received was mentioned, which one is that? It's X and AA. Oh, the issuance of pension fund bonds? That's W. W. And then, otherwise, revolting fund expenditure should be pretty straightforward. Vehicle should be straightforward. Federal Reserve should be straightforward. The union contracts, we'll see what happens with that. That one, I think, might be a bit meatier. The issuance of pension funds will be meatier, if it goes through. And then, the OPEB funding, I think, is really the meatiest of the articles. I think, last year. OPEB funding or the issuance? Article D, the OPEB funding. Because that one, for sure, is not winning poll. It will be needed. And, to be very frank with you, I will have a number of questions in trying to really understand both the history, and I'm sure I can lean on the article that was written last year as well. I think it was Brian who wrote it last year. I think Brian wrote that up, and Kelly wrote that prior to that. So, I think it should be, it probably, it should be in good shape. But, I understand, like, just wanting to understand it. I just want to understand it. There's, it's, yeah, a few layers there. Quick question on X and A. Would you recommend that I not do anything until they decide which one? Or should I dive in? It's a good question. My sense is that it makes sense to understand what each is proposing. So, that way you understand, as things move, which one's going to get pulled and which one's going to move forward. Okay. So, I think it makes sense to at least understand why they have two of them, right? They have, obviously, one in case one path moves versus the other. Okay, but not write anything up. But, I probably wouldn't really start. I mean, it's up to you, but. Yeah, that makes sense. I think we can talk to Brian Keveney on that. Okay. I would also suggest talking to Carol. Oh, right. I will. That's, that's where I go first. And be prepared on Monday to ask, you know, Michael and Brian about it as well. Both that and the other wage stabilization ones, Iris. Yes. The, those, they're significant money. They're significantly, they're different a little bit, but they're significantly more money than we've done in prior years because we're in the middle of renegotiating contracts. Is that Z, the wage stabilization? Or is that a different one? Z and Z. Has Z gotten pulled? Z, Z's gotten pulled, but. Oh, okay. Oh, Z got pulled? I didn't know that. It got officially pulled. Who pulled this out? Because Carol, when we were there, Carol said in May, but she said, so I still have it on my to-do, but right now. No one has actually, but I'm actually looking at it. I crossed it out on my list, but I don't remember who said that. Z didn't get sent to me, so maybe they did, but I thought it was not happening, but I could be wrong. Okay. I'll confirm with Carol. Let me confirm with Carol. Thank you. And so I don't know which articles, but there's a chunk of money that's going to be put into sort of a balance sheet item, so to speak, so that that A can be pulled on when a union contract gets settled. The prior contract is different because it goes back. It's current year and prior year years. The other chunk of money will be part of going over. And so there's two. But I don't know, and it's not small amounts of money. That's a question that I had, too, and I guess we'll get into that, because some of that typically had been in operating before, so. It will go into operating, and it is allocated in the allocations. It is in the allocated in the reserve right now. All of this is for part of what we need to discuss on one day.
Sounds great. Well, thank you. Thank you, Val. I appreciate that help. It was very helpful to me, and I will follow up on Article Z. And then that should leave me, I think, with certainly a meaningful amount of work, but a manageable amount of work. And there was that help type of Article is the only one that we will need to, like, really just get the brothers in order, and then go and join me on the ball. But I'll probably do a first draft and send it your way, Pam. That's for sure. Yeah.
Anyone else? Any other? So, I'm going April, you're okay? I'm okay.
Pam, you're okay. I'm okay. And honestly, I think Carl had something about Rob's, but I think he's got some meatier articles, too. Rob, I do. I don't want to, you know, if he wanted to do more articles, but. No, I mean, like you say, I think especially DD is going to have a lot of interested stakeholders, so I think that's going to be the meatiest one for me. If anyone feels overwhelmed, I don't feel overwhelmed by what I have right now. But I also don't feel like I desperately need more to do unless someone, I'm happy to take something if someone's looking to get rid of something, but I'm not actively looking for anything, if that makes sense. So, the trading room is closed.
If something comes up, we're all in this together, and so we can figure it out, but I think we've got all the allocations now.
Cool.
No other more business to discuss tonight? So, I have one of my word docs, if I remember correctly, for the ones that we aren't doing comment on, can someone remind me, are we adding in a little thing that says, it's the same verbiage that says, we will not, and so we add that in under finance committee comments? Yes. Okay, so that's what we have to do, and then once we've done that, we can bring it here, and we will all, and we all essentially vote to abstain, and that's what we reported. Yeah, I'm sure, I think it's actually a vote, but. Yes. Right. So, it's not abstaining, it's just agreeing. Agreed. To put it forward. To put it forward. With no pros and cons. And send it in an email. Got it. And, got it. When we document our vote, we document it as a yes, not as an abstain. Okay, thank you for coming. I think, like, looking, the finance committee takes no condition, I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you. So, that was a, I'm just looking at last year's. Perfect. And, yeah, so, looking at last year's, and just the first one that I see is Article 12, if you look at last year's Warren. Yeah. And so, yeah, FinCom comments were, just for the record, following consultation with the finance director of the finance committee, had deemed this article to have, I thought had or has, had deemed this article to have negligible financial impact to the town pursuant to Code 19.3, detailed comments together with the summary of the arguments in favor of, and in opposition to this article are not required. And then we just said recommendation, takes no position, and the vote. Well, we didn't, did we do that first step, too, on all of them, or just the... That's all it was. That's, it's, those are the finance committee comments, just that thing that... Okay. And yes, that was on everyone. On everyone. On every, yes, on everyone, for which we don't take a position. And then how did we vote? And then we vote not to take a position. And that was... Which is a yes. What does it actually say? Is it... It says, the finance committee takes no position on this arc. No, I... Vote 7-0. Vote 7-0. 7-0-0. Okay. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's probably... Interesting. Okay.
Great.
And there's still the proposer's comments, and... Cool. I have to get the proposer's comments? You do. No. Do I have to get the proposer's comments? Yes, because that'll be part of the article write-up. Okay. So we're still writing up the article. It's just pretty much as is, without... Got it. With the proposer's comments, if, if they have comments, which... Yeah. Definitely they do. Yeah. I mean, it depends on... There would be some comments. It's certainly... Under 150 words. Yeah. Okay. If it was a petitioner, certainly would be... I mean, it would be something.
Yeah. All right. I'm doing a chance to do everything.
Can we get any comments? From who they're certainly in the article? Okay.
I don't know if they all necessarily would have...
Like, do you think the green burial is one should... It's obviously allowing for permission for the town to authorize. Last year, when I did the write-up... Should have... Like, would you expect it? Yeah. Yeah, I would. Okay. All right. I just... I remember last year... Last year, we did... Like, I didn't do the write-up, but I did work with the petitioner to do their 150 words. And then this year, nothing got submitted. So that's what I'm just trying to figure out. Okay. And, you know, I don't know if the same person or persons are doing the petition, but we can cut the base from the prior year petition. Okay. And not all of them did have petitioner's comments. Like, the simple ones here reports, I'm just looking at all the no-position ones and just doing a quick search. Like, those, it just says, there's no... It's just proposer's comments, and then... Actually, sorry, that is proposer's comments. I thought there was on most of them. I think there are. Sorry. So I take that comment back. Anyways, there are. There are. Okay. No, that's good to... Choose officers dozen. Okay. Well, that was some of... Yeah. Most do. Yeah. Not all. All right. Thank you. So I'll reach out to everybody else. Hopefully I'll have something for you for Monday. So the next topic on the agenda is the budget. And I want to confirm that Monday, we will have the town manager and finance director, Michael and Brian, present the town budget. And then David and Kirstie will be here for the school budget. And on Wednesday, the town manager will be back to present the capital budget. Okay. As you saw on email trail, I've asked them to keep their presentations done in the order of 20 pages, whatever appendix, after that, and be prepared for a Q&A throughout. So we'll see how the flow of the meetings go. But I don't think we should hold our questions until the end. I think we should engage as we go through. And they're hoping to give us the slides ahead of time. I've asked for that. I mean, we have some from Brian already that I'm sure it will be utilizing. And the school committee budget, I think, is now up on the meeting. I haven't looked at it, but it's okay. Thank you for the definitions, Tim. I didn't know what I was looking at. I had a sense of some of them. But there are a lot. There are a lot. There are a lot. There are a lot. There are a lot of them. Because if you have no kids in school, it's like I had no idea. Yeah. I do have a couple of dollars. But I would like to come out at the end of the week to the degree that we can with our collective view as to whether we're supportive of the budget as it exists, both for the town, school, and the capital. And as few open-ended questions as possible. I think a big challenge is just even understanding it and understanding all the elements of it and being able to convey to the folks. But to the degree that there's questions that we feel that need to be addressed. Is the process generally, are we comfortable supporting the budget or not? Or is there another iteration where we give comments and they go back and do another iteration of the budget? The challenge is March 15th or 16th. And school week, Michael, I know it's a way for school week. So this is really, do we support it in pretty much its current version or not? Yeah, but I wouldn't say, look. So I misunderstood it as. But just to be clear, if we see things that we're not comfortable with, we should ask questions. Sure, of course. And whether we can't address it again, the school vacation week necessarily, maybe we can't, but maybe we can't. The following week, we'll address it. Okay. So it's just, we don't have months. Right. Sorry. Yeah, I always understood, and we believe this is incorrect, but this is a good pedification for me. I always understood the vote around the budget to not be whether you personally bill support the budget. It is a vote for, do you think the budget as it stands is in a ready state to be shared to town for towns who vote on it? That is what I've always understood, that if you have qualms with the appropriations being inappropriate or incorrect or not in the right, sort of, that is where you could take certainly a stronger stand. But we are not voting on our own personal opinion of the budget or the spending. That is my understanding. Yeah, I see all of our role as helping the town make good decisions. And so to the degree that we're ready to have this presented to the town and can inform the town to help make good decisions. Yeah. So I don't really want a swimming pool at town center. You know, that's not. That's a personal opinion. As opposed to, it's, again, it's really just, you know, you can say this is a lot to spend on this. Is that a reasonable spending? But at the end of the day, I guess in my mind, if someone has asked for it, right, it's really up to the public fundamentally to vote on whether or not they want that. Anne, what's your take on that? I guess I, we are, we've been appointed, we're not elected, but we've been appointed to represent the town and the town meeting. So, and as much as we are representatives, if you feel individually that the budget in some way doesn't reflect what it should, whether it's too high or too low in whatever area, it's your, you may vote to, you know, as you see fit. If you think, I mean, yes, it should be, is it ready to go to town meeting? Is it in good shape? Has it been vetted and reviewed and all the questions asked? But I think if you feel strongly one way or another, that it's not the budget that should be shown to town meeting, then, you know, that's how you should vote accordingly. Okay. Okay. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, I guess we framed the question, or is it a budget that can be presented to town meeting, or is it a budget that we hope is approved by town meeting? Well, I think that you support. That's right. A budget that you can support. Okay. Well, which is a higher bar than what you... Right. Yes. Yeah. So I think, I do think it is a higher bar that you support the budget being presented. Yeah. No, it isn't... I mean, you might not love every piece of it, but... Right. And your personal, you know, you want a swimming pool, don't want a swimming pool. That isn't a factor. It's really, is this the right budget for the town?
I appreciate that. I'm so sure. Yeah. Rob, do you have views on this or questions? I guess I was, I'm reading through the 2025 warrant to just kind of see how this is presented. Because I think obviously with the articles, right, it's an endorsement, right? It's the finance committee voting saying, we recommend you pass this. And if that's how the budget is reported, I'd feel the same way, right? If we're voting to say, we endorse this budget, we recommend this budget, that implies our judgment that this is a good budget. As opposed, and I don't know, that was how, I'm obviously new, that was how I understood it, right? Is that we are voting to say, we think this is the right budget for the town. And I might not personally want a swimming pool. And if a swimming pool costs $40 million, I should not vote for it to endorse it. Because I think that's not a prudent use of town resources, right? So I, my understanding was that it does involve a judgment call of personally, whether you agree with this budget. And obviously, you're not going to agree with everything, right? There will be things in the budget that you don't personally agree with, but it's kind of on the balance. Do you think this is a good budget that should pass?
I'm comfortable with that. Okay. I can do it either way, as long as I know. No, I mean, I didn't. Yep, it was a good question. I'm hopeful to get declared. It's good to be all on the same page about how everything, because the thing that makes this year different, I guess, to circle back to really your point, that makes this year different, and Pam's comment as well. Last year, we were able to have a lot of these preliminary conversations in November and December. So we did really work on a number. Element by element. Element by element, because, you know, because there was conversation. And there was. And we had DPW in. We had DPW in. And there was commentary, right? There was feedback to the town of, this isn't acceptable, right? Any sense of why that didn't happen this year? A bunch of reasons. Capital has been really overseen by a new committee. So they've been going through their process, one. And then town budgets haven't come together as quickly as they did in the prior years. But it didn't mean to. But we don't really know why. It's just a bunch of different reasons. Okay. One is the fact that we're in bargaining unit negotiations with all of the. That happens every three years, though. I understand. I'm not saying it's a fair. Right. No, I'm not being critical. I'm just curious why the change. Yeah. I mean, having done this for, I've gone through this process. Seven times through. This is my seventh time through. This is the latest. The first year I came in, a little bit later. But it was, no, it was in December. So I kind of went through most of it. But this is really the latest we've gotten all this information. I mean, there are parts that we typically would have worked on the Capitol in the fall. And then at the very least would have gotten an operating budget by December 15th or January, you know, the first week of January. So we're. With three numbers on them. Right. Right. Those numbers. It's good to know. So maybe we'll go back to the veteran system in the future and not be with us every time. Okay. Yeah. And so typically what the process, there had been, you know, even as we had last year, more of a back and forth conversation and sort of a lot of questions. And then we saw a few numbers, you know. It wasn't, you know, a perfect process. It wasn't ideal, but we had more time to vet things than. Right. It gave us the chance to give feedback. Yeah. And that was your. And then you could iterate. Yeah. Right. Right. That's right. We are under the gun, really, to try to, time-wise, to really try to figure out. And I think that that is potentially what makes this year a bit more unique and potentially might lead to perhaps not as great of an outcome. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. One of the challenges is going to be whether any debt gets excluded in this budget right now, they know it's like we're just expecting no excluded debt. I mean, the water investments will be as an enterprise finance facility. But what about the vote to move? What about the vote? That's done. That's done. Yeah. That doesn't show up in this budget? It does show up. But as far as any of the items that are in. It only shows up in this budget in the levy. Yes. Right. Right. I mean, that's how we got the capacity, right? That's how we got the capacity. But I guess my point is, in this next fiscal year cycle, that's when it goes into the property taxes, right, in terms of impact? Or did it go in immediately? What? The... No new taxes came out because we excluded the debt. Right. But next year, we were able to increase the levy. We're going to use that levy, which... We're not. Right now... We're within the levy for 27, as anticipated. Yeah, so we'll see about 28. Okay. Okay. And to be clear, the levy capacity right now is $755,000 of unused levy capacity. Got it. The debt was $700,000. Got it. Okay. So it was very, very close. Okay. So we haven't actually used up the levy capacity that we opened up. That's great. Thank you. That's what I'm trying to get. Thank you. In today's, you know, budget. Iteration. Yeah. Okay. There's variables still. One is new revenue from new growth. Sure. Um, which could be higher than the numbers that are in beer, but we won't know that until later on December 15th. That's what's the increase in the levy. It actually, it increases the rate of the town. Right. It doesn't, it, but it also increases the, the, your, the room and the levy. It does. Right. That's it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It increases the levy, levy. It increases more breathing room. And then if, you know, uh, West suburban, uh, there's one or two other things like that. That is something where it's positive. Yeah. You'll see. That's all my cross fingers. So. Um, I had one question about, I was going through the feedback that Brian gave to my questions and I was a bit confused if I was just like not looking at the right numbers. So, or if he's answering, not really my question. So I looked at just the line, I was right in that preliminary and, and he had for each department, like a payroll, a services, and, and I'm just looking at the high level numbers and looking at the swings and saying, why was there a swing and all of his responses are like payroll only went up 3%, but like the numbers clearly went up more than right. So is he like, I would love an explanation of that because I get, maybe he's looking at really like no salaries really only went up 3%, but it's like a taxes, Medicare, et cetera, et cetera. It gives you all the way up to 10. If that's what's going on, I would love an explanation, but I felt a little bit unsatisfied, I guess, with some of their responses. I think those are questions that we should address when he's here. Thank you. I was just brought it up. We should, we should be clear on, on the explanations. And Michael will be here as well. So that's right. The, so the buckets are payroll expense and unclassified and unclassified and expense actually has people costs in them. Oh, I see. So I don't remember his responses to the, so in payroll for the town, you know, is projected to go up 0.8%. Right. But the expense goes up 8.5%. And this is part of like putting some of these monies that would have normally gone into COLA into different accounts. So I think that's just, it would be, I get that, you know, Brian's a finance director and I'm sure the answers he gave are absolutely correct, but it would be nice to know in layman's terms and understanding of, okay, maybe truly the salaries are only going up 3% for step increases, but like the numbers are going up much more than that. And I would like to know why. What is unclassified in this context? I can't remember. But unclassified is, I mean, it's, it's that piece of the budget that's, it's the debt, it's healthcare, Medicare tax, unemployment, disability. The biggest ones are, um, healthcare and the debt and reserve for salary to next year's salary reserve. Okay. All right. So they're not considered expense, but they're considered just unclassified. Okay. It's kind of, it's a little bit of a, Mr. Because they could be allocated to the, the town and the skills line. So yeah, there's a, there's a page like halfway through his PDF, um, biggest number in there is a reserve for salary adjustment. And that's $1.8 million. And this is the, which is the connection to the personnel costs. They don't go off. It's a reserve. But it's allocated. So that's, it's, it's a little bit confusing. It's, it's an unclassified until it becomes, it's allocated. So like in his presentation, you can see that one line that shows personnel with a low increase year over year. And then on the allocated, it's higher because that's what it would be if that reserve, now we don't know precisely what that reserve, what the assumptions are and how much it will ultimately be. Yep. So that was the biggest, the second biggest is insurance 32B, which is $1.2 million. Uh, and then retirement benefits, 440, 4,000 is the next biggest debt and interest section went down by $300,000. That's, that's another thing we got, we get a little clearance from that and that's kind of, yeah, we hired some of the debt. Right. Well, we've also, in an ideal world, you might try to kind of level fund that, um, we're kind of, you know, right. The other thing that hasn't been suggested, I'm assuming, maybe I'm wrong, is if the capital budget hasn't been completed, anything that's like outstanding funds or what do we call it? Um, I mean, I mean, yeah, the project's not completed. Or funds that weren't, that didn't need to be used. Used, yes, and that goes into free cap, so it could also increase the capacity as well, because we don't have those numbers, I'm assuming, or do we? Um, I don't know. I haven't seen the detail yet. Okay. I saw it yesterday on Brian's screen, because, you know, on the other side of his desk is we're going through some of the stuff, so I don't have the details. Okay.
But I'm glad that Michael and Brian will be prepared for Wednesday to come and walk through the whole. So, we expect capital to get included. And they're building off of what the CIPC, CA, PC, whatever committee has done, but it will be Michael's budget. So, it's not just a plug-in.
And he's meeting with Tom, and Michael, and the team, or, you know, their sign-up for priorities. And then we'll collectively need to think through whether some of that capital should be in and exclude that or not. So, we might have a revised budget before, almost like we have a revised budget before next week? Um, I don't know what, we don't have a capital budget like that. So, first is to get back. I don't know that, I think that the operating budgets that, um, that the town gave us are good to work with. Okay. I worry about the school budget a little bit. It's in the town budget, but things like the special education costs, I mean, I just don't know how it's all tied together yet. And that's been a part of the conversation. Sped, they won't know until June, right? Well, yeah. There's elements of sped that won't know. But they, I don't even know what's in the current expectations of the budget. There was that, you know, presentation that went around, but it wasn't clear to me the costs. And that should be incorporated into the schools. It is. That they have. I know. But you think the numbers aren't. I don't know if the numbers all tie and if they are tied to what Brian sent us. Okay. So, that's one of the things that I want in my ear. And then, even though West Suburban usually gets their final numbers in mid-February? Yes. So, we should have that final soon. Yes. So, that would be great. Okay. Yeah. And why they have to wait until mid-February is just beyond me. Because everybody needs to set budget. Everybody needs the same number. Why can't they do it mid-January or the first week of your January?
I'm just wondering if we move the town meeting back because I know they're trying to get the extension. Well, then, it'd be. This year? Next year. They come. Right. So, that's like one of the ones that I'm writing up is like trying to move. Having a flexibility. Tell me to be back to like mid-June or have a larger window. So, if they shift it, then that shift, basically, it would allow us to have more time with final numbers as opposed to guessing. It's a pro in your write-up. Right. I'm just sorry. I didn't know if it would just like. Push all our time frames later. No, no. Not that. But right now, I mean, like even for the code FinCom, because we kind of read it that way. That was December 15th. December 15th. All the department budgets are in. And then it says by, I think it said by the end of the fiscal year. December 31st, right? Not fiscal year, but December 31st calendar year that we would have that the town manager budget would be over 2% of two FinCom. So, that's in the code. So, we should have actually more time if we extend the deadline. Yes. Which would be great, right? Because then we can do the synchroids. Yeah. One of the challenges that I felt last year is we were, it seemed like a lot of meetings, it was like, oh, that spreadsheet's obsolete. We've got to hold another spreadsheet. And it was like, oh, my goodness. I sort of understood this one. And now, it felt like a lot wasn't tied down. But it's usually, it's the same spreadsheet. It's just the revised with fresh numbers. Yeah. But it would seem like a lot of things were being revised. Okay. Just to track all the changes. Yeah. Right. But. And then, like today's spreadsheet, you know, folks are pointing out the text doesn't. Right. But I flagged that for Brian. And I haven't gotten a response. It's, but it's, you know, I'm not wild about the spreadsheets behind all of this. Of course. But I do think the flip side is, even when the numbers were being updated continuously, it let us have active dialogue. It did. No, the substance of it. And that. We lost that. And we lost. Yeah. Yeah. No, that I share completely. So come Monday with all your questions. And if you want to send them in before, you know, do.
Well, Jim. And I'll remind presenters to try to get presentations to us that we can review before even.
Do we have. We're not going to have articles on Monday. Will we? Yeah. Oh. Oh, maybe. I was. I mean, we. I was going to try to have a couple. Oh, no. They do continue to work it. I think they were saying with school and town budget. Oh, I see. Yes. We've been at our time. Understood. Understood. Totally. I was going to prioritize. I don't know how much energy we'll have at the end. Fair enough. I was going to prioritize the no financial impact ones. So those could be quick hits. Yes. Right. If time allows. But excellent point. We might not have the time. Yeah. So you get with proposers to make sure that we did and select board member to. Yeah. Point in. But yeah, to the degree that we get them, that's great. We have whatever it is, 27. Right. We have to do in the next, you know, four weeks or thereabouts.
Hopefully we'll get it all done and it will be great. Yeah. You know, that's, I mean, that's 27 of the ones we actually had to write up, but we still have. Oh, yeah. No, we have to, you know, 50 or 48. 40 some. No, 50 right now. It's a 50. Yeah. Right. What's the difference between the write-up and all of them? The financial, no financial. Right. Like what responsibility do we have for the financial impact ones? To write no financial impact. That will. Okay. Yeah. I think we'll just take the vote on each. I guess. So we still vote. We do. Yeah. That was like that. Yeah. Jalen do that. And like, no, we need to write it up. We're still responsible for doing all the articles. Okay. And all the write-ups. Okay. So we'll just put in that little blurb. Sounds good.
I would get with the petitioner or, you know, who's the sponsor of it. Because we already do. And the select board person. Go over it. But it has no financial impact. I've done that. Okay. So. And if they've got language that. Or do we do each one individually to say that we're taking an individual? That's a really good point. Okay. I would bring that up with everyone. So my question is, do we still, we voted Monday. To take no position. To take no position on those. Do we need to vote on each individually again? I will check. I think we did that before. We did. We did. But there weren't as many. So. It won't take long. It shouldn't take long. I think to the degree that we look at, you know, collectively look at each one and say, well, this doesn't really make sense. The proposer's comments or something. I mean, it's their responsibility. But if it's. It's another set of bodies. Yeah. But let's see. Yeah. We have both. And select board is going to vote, I think, whenever, tonight or Monday. On all points a week. Proposed to not take a financial position as well. To accept that or to vote? Their own vote. I'm not sure exactly. Okay. Their votes were also recorded, right? For those. I mean, I just said. They voted to submit them initially. So that's what they're talking about. When we. At the article workshop. Yeah. But then they have to take a vote on. On every article. Okay. And they put that in. We don't put that in, right? Yeah. Well, we. No, we put it in. Carol puts it in. I mean, Pam puts it in. Yeah. Yes. You put it in. When we can. If you. If you. If you. The article writer. Whoever's assigned. Have the information. From your. Select board liaison. On what the vote is. Included in the write-up. If you. If we've done our FinCom. Write-up. Reviewed it. Voted. And you want to turn it in. And you don't yet have the select board vote. You just. Don't include it. And I will. Include it. You know. When it's finally. Voted upon.
Who's legal review of all of them?
I think it's pretty much at the end. Well. The. Legal review. We'll review everything. Yes. At the end. Yeah. After that March 15th deadline. I think. You know. Obviously. They're reviewing. All the article language. Now. Thank you. Thank you.
Anything further? I'm sorry. Any other comments? Questions on budget?
No. I'll say the questions. I had. I mean. You. Everyone saw my questions. Right? Like I had a couple other interesting questions. About. Some of the resources. That are funded through the town. That are for things. Like the children's way. And just trying to understand. Why those aren't. Like already incorporated. As part of either. The school budget. Or just like trying to understand. Sort of how that ended up. Like where it ended up. Because. The children's way. Is. A paid for service. By people who partake. Right? And then. And then it is also. I know it's also. In my schools. There's also a portion. I thought that was run through the schools. If you have like a special needs child. Right? Like you can. You can be a part of that program. So I was just trying to understand. Like. How. How it all fits in. So. Yeah. And I know last year. They hired that nurse. And I know. I think we all. Like understood that. But I. Maybe didn't appreciate. Why that didn't end up coming. Through the schools. As opposed to. And then. If it is coming out of the town's. Budget. I think the nurses are. Nurses are under the. Health department. Okay. The children's way. I mean. It was in the special. And. Doctrine. It should be part of the school. I think it is part of the school. It is part of the school's budget. Okay. But then it's. Yeah. I'm just curious to understand. Maybe like. How all the funding. Comes for that program. Because. Obviously. Like. If you have a small child. And you're sending them. You're paying tuition. Right? So. No. You do. Yeah. You do. So. So presumably. I guess it would be interesting to know. Does that tuition actually cover the cost. Or is it also. Supported. Supported and subsidized. Through. Because. And so I'm just trying to understand that. Yeah. And. They use this building. And I'm not sure. Right. I mean. I care slightly less about that. Because I don't believe that. I mean. Maybe. Who knows. Like. I know we had talked about the playground. Right. And the fact that like. They use the playground. But. The town pays for that playground. Because the playground is also. A public playground. After their hours. Right. Like. So. But it. It was just the resourcing. That like struck me as a little. Interesting. Of like. How did. How is that separate. Versus. The rest of the resourcing. Comes through this. I was just trying to understand that. Where. Do you know. I'm trying to find. Brian's response. To your. Did you send it. In an email. I know. I saw it. And I.
Found the latest. Model. But I. The email. I can.
Do you want me to resend it to everyone. Or just to you. Would you. Yeah. Yeah. Have you sent it to me too. Yes. Send it. Maybe. Yes. I'm also interested. I was also trying to find it in my email. I'm having more trouble than I anticipated. I have to date January 23rd. Okay. To print it out. Great. Your responses. Can I. I see him now. Thank you. Oh, you guys all found it? Okay. Did you find it Pam? Do you want me to resend it? I can pop it. I'm going to talk. If you have it right there. I do. I'm good. Thanks. Okay. Great. Thank you. I do have. This is all on the preliminary budget. Not the current. Right. Yes. It was all on the.
I do have a question in regards to, so. Um, the superintendent shared. The FY27 budget for the school committee. And he is, it's all about K through eight facilities planning. Is what he said. And there's going to be a community forum on March 4th. That, um, was sent in the school newsletters. Basically is where I got it. Um, and I'm just curious. It's from 7 to 830 on March 4th. Because it was a community forum. I'm just wondering, is that something that we should be, that we should plan to attend? Or no? You're welcome. Um, but the, uh, so I think that's the long-term, um, facilities. Right. Um, it's not next year's budget. Okay. And then because I, maybe we'll touch on it. But, um, and this is, I don't know, the third or fourth, uh, community forum is had on this. Okay. Um, where, and then people showed up. Yep. That's the way to talk about long-term, what the schools need. But I don't think it's driven by this year's budget. And out of curiosity, their needs have to go through capital CIPC anyways. So actually, it's not, like, that's the one thing that I'm curious about is, like, I would expect those large improvements are not part of the school budget. Right. They would still have to go through capital. Yeah. Right. That's why they have those people with facilities. What I'm trying to do is really identify kind of the needs, uh, much more so than putting a capital plan together for it and what's the higher priorities and the like. Okay. I just wanted to ask a question. But, I mean, I'm looking forward to the capital committee to, you know, things like this building. It's, you know, been a question for a hundred or a decade of what you should do with it. It'd be good to get some clarity and, you know, have the town weigh in on what the options are and what the costs would be.
All right. Motion to adjourn.
Anything else from you, Rob? Questions? Comments? Good. Second.
In favor? Iris? Yes. April? Yes. Phil? Yes. Phil? Yes. Yes. Rob? Yes. We are adjourned. Thank you.
Anybody want to make public comments? No, I'm just going to listen. Okay. Just a quick question, if you don't mind. Sure. I'm sorry, what was the question? We are not. We're not. Okay.
Okay, no one's online looking to make public comments. Yes, so the agenda for tonight is similar to our last one. Have we made Rob a panelist? Yeah. We made Rob a panelist. He's also attending. Right. Rob's attending. Yeah. 7-0. And I think I'm making the panelist by just dragging him over.
Let me just... Hang on a sec.
Why don't you talk?
Hey. You're talking, and can you hear us, Rob? I can hear you, and you can hear me? Yeah. I think you can hear me, right? Great. Yes, we can hear you just fine. I don't see your video, but... We could be Alexei's, and let's see if we can make the panelist. Because right now, he's still in as an indie. So if you go back to it, let me... It sounds like someone taking... All right. Sorry, Rob. The joys of Zoom webinar mode.
You've been promoted. You're a panelist now. Oh, okay. So now we should be able to see you if you end up on camera, Rob. Yep, yep. And I will be on camera in a few minutes. Thanks. Okay. Yep, no worries.
So first order of business, the agenda as posted, we'll approve the minutes, and we'll get into any discussion on warrant articles that are prepared. I don't think anything is recirculated, so what we can talk about in general and any reallocations that are appropriate. And then budget discussions. The last topic is any other topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair. And that's it for the agenda. It's just us tonight, right? Yes. Okay. Minutes that came out just this afternoon.
Yes. I have a question. Did anybody happen to record how it was voted on the approval of the 128 minutes? I think it was 7-0. I think it was 7-0. I think it was actually, it was Phil and then Phil. I think it was 6-0-1. Yeah. 5-0-1, because I didn't vote. Oh, you didn't vote. Okay. Okay. And, oh, we were having issues with you. And who was to approve? Phil and Phil. Okay. I had his motion in a second. I just looked at that because I saw you highlighted it. I think for public comment, too, there were Carol Plum and Andrew Carpenter as well. Yes. And I didn't get, I have no idea what they said. Okay. So I'm hoping if you guys have any insight on that. I can, I add like a short text I can send. Oh, awesome. Thank you.
Carol was speaking on the long-term. On the long-term capital planning. I think Andrew mostly. Yeah, I think Andrew mostly reiterated the email he sent with a couple questions about DD. Yeah. And Elizabeth was remote, right? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned to April before the meeting that my only comment was for the motion of the non-financial ones to put the letters in. Oh, great. To include the article. And I, which articles? We just listed them, but I just got Carl's. And so now I have a different list than what Carl had. So I am curious if we have a final list. I think I sent you. If you have a recording, you can always, I guess, get good. I've used Carl's as if it was the final. Because he had like a per finance director one and then one voted. And I have the votes on mine of the ones we voted on. Yeah. That's the important one. It's what's voted on. I mean, at least in terms of what I wanted to see in the minutes. Because that's what happened. I'm not sure your observations. So which are we up to? So C is, so A was agreed upon. Yes. A. A. J. J. J. Yeah. K. K. P. Yes. P. Q. R. Yes. UB. UB. Yes. BB. Yep. CC. EE. Yes. I. I. JJ. Yes. KK. Oh, wait. No. KK was not. Okay. So no on KK. LL. Yes. MM. Yes. N. Sorry. PP. Yes. QQ. Yes. RR. Yes. SS. Yes. UV. Hang on. UU. I don't have UU. He has UU. I don't have UU either. I don't have UU. Because I think they said the five-ton weight. Would that be?
I don't recall the details of the article, but I don't know if that would. And those aren't great because I was sort of wondering if anybody else have clarity on that? No. I don't. We're trying to remember. This is the five-ton weight. The five-ton weight to re-create that that was. No. Didn't need pros and cons. I don't know if it's UU. What about the notes? Hmm. I have in my notes, VBWW. We definitely said no financial. Yes. And YVY is easy. Right. Yeah. Carl has UU. That's why I wanted to just clarify. Good to check. Then I think. And then the other one that I said we, that I had wrong. Well, I can't remember. In April, you're the income person on UU. Do you feel it has financial impact? By a time, I think it's going to depend on the whole aspect of things because it could. I think what we had actually said now that I'm thinking about this was not necessarily that there was financial impact, but the ability to explain the desire and the need in 150 words was going to be hard. So I think the thought was, I think we were going to do a write-up for the one before it and that one in the sense of being able to help lay out and explain the request and the need for the request. The prior one was the walkway. Yes. And that was clearly. And obviously that has some financial impact as well. But I thought that part of this was like, or else we're really restricting the proponent to 150 words. Right. So that's.
I mean, if we have to, can't we check the recording? We don't have to do anything real time. Oh. We probably had the recording. Yeah. I'm sure we were recording. Yeah. I'm sure we recorded it. April, please check that.
Actually, wait a minute. So, yeah, he has it as you know. I have it as he needs a write-up, so. Yeah. Let us know what you're talking about. Totally. We did have some other comments on the minutes.
You ready? Okay. On page two.
The FY27 proposed time budget under the levy limit by 7.50. It's projected to be under the levy.
And then continuing on that line, in the forens, town just voted to reclassify DPW, prior DPW operating debt to excluded debt.
Okay. Sorry.
There we go. Right now, there is town. What did you say, sir? Yeah. So, instead of cross out, adjust, and put reclassify DPW debt to excluded debt.
And then instead of MWRA, there's a, you can pull the wording from the article or just say water infrastructure will be an article to put in front of town, because it's a lot more than just MWRA. And then February 9th meeting, towards the end of that page, will include town manager, Michael McClendon, and finance director, Brian Kevney, as well as superintendent, Dean Fleishman, not Peter. I don't know why. That is a surprise. That's okay. Kirsteen Patterson, or Peterson, which is my fault. I don't know if it's a school finance director, presenting the school budget.
I also had, just at the end of that, I think I would like, for the record, just to say that the committee, or you can put in PROM and express concern about the timing of completing three budgets, or two, both budgets, including the five-year. It is really three of the five, the capital of the five-year. Two operating budgets and the capital budget this later. Well, it's really one operating budget, and then the capital and the five-year capital, as well as all the articles this late, and with a month and a half, really, to do a lot of work. I'm totally prepared with that. I think you could say, I think it's... Yeah, yeah. You're not the only one who has concerns. Yes. Another one. So, Pamela, I'm going to express concern about receiving the budgets this late in the budget season. Thank you. My game is what I want to say, but it's late in the five minutes. Okay. Make a motion to move the minutes as modified. So moved. One second. One second. I... Oh, we've got to go around. Okay. Yes. Bill? Bill, yes. April? Yes. Iris? Yes. Rob? Yes.
So, Rob, the question on the table is, who should reallocate any changes in article ownership to? And bidding begins. So, I think as we discussed, all of mine with one have a financial impact. What I was hoping, if anyone is game, is there's two that come as a pair, and only one will be needed. So, there are two, Article X and Article AA, have to do with the FIRE payroll budget and the FIRE contract. One will get pulled, depending on sort of how the contract negotiations go. Only one will be needed. And I was hoping I could hand those off to someone. I'll take them if you want me to. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. I appreciate that. And then, I think, otherwise, then, I think that makes the rest of mine pretty manageable. And, Pam, I probably will take you up on your offer to help me with Article W. Sure. I can look it up, but who's the Select Board contact? Carol. Carol. Okay. Carol is who I had, and I believe she was for both. I think Carol is who? Yeah, I think she was for both. She is. Yeah. Thank you so much.
The other article I received was mentioned, which one is that? It's X and AA. Oh, the issuance of pension fund bonds? That's W. W. And then, otherwise, revolting fund expenditure should be pretty straightforward. Vehicle should be straightforward. Federal Reserve should be straightforward. The union contracts, we'll see what happens with that. That one, I think, might be a bit meatier. The issuance of pension funds will be meatier, if it goes through. And then, the OPEB funding, I think, is really the meatiest of the articles. I think, last year. OPEB funding or the issuance? Article D, the OPEB funding. Because that one, for sure, is not winning poll. It will be needed. And, to be very frank with you, I will have a number of questions in trying to really understand both the history, and I'm sure I can lean on the article that was written last year as well. I think it was Brian who wrote it last year. I think Brian wrote that up, and Kelly wrote that prior to that. So, I think it should be, it probably, it should be in good shape. But, I understand, like, just wanting to understand it. I just want to understand it. There's, it's, yeah, a few layers there. Quick question on X and A. Would you recommend that I not do anything until they decide which one? Or should I dive in? It's a good question. My sense is that it makes sense to understand what each is proposing. So, that way you understand, as things move, which one's going to get pulled and which one's going to move forward. Okay. So, I think it makes sense to at least understand why they have two of them, right? They have, obviously, one in case one path moves versus the other. Okay, but not write anything up. But, I probably wouldn't really start. I mean, it's up to you, but. Yeah, that makes sense. I think we can talk to Brian Keveney on that. Okay. I would also suggest talking to Carol. Oh, right. I will. That's, that's where I go first. And be prepared on Monday to ask, you know, Michael and Brian about it as well. Both that and the other wage stabilization ones, Iris. Yes. The, those, they're significant money. They're significantly, they're different a little bit, but they're significantly more money than we've done in prior years because we're in the middle of renegotiating contracts. Is that Z, the wage stabilization? Or is that a different one? Z and Z. Has Z gotten pulled? Z, Z's gotten pulled, but. Oh, okay. Oh, Z got pulled? I didn't know that. It got officially pulled. Who pulled this out? Because Carol, when we were there, Carol said in May, but she said, so I still have it on my to-do, but right now. No one has actually, but I'm actually looking at it. I crossed it out on my list, but I don't remember who said that. Z didn't get sent to me, so maybe they did, but I thought it was not happening, but I could be wrong. Okay. I'll confirm with Carol. Let me confirm with Carol. Thank you. And so I don't know which articles, but there's a chunk of money that's going to be put into sort of a balance sheet item, so to speak, so that that A can be pulled on when a union contract gets settled. The prior contract is different because it goes back. It's current year and prior year years. The other chunk of money will be part of going over. And so there's two. But I don't know, and it's not small amounts of money. That's a question that I had, too, and I guess we'll get into that, because some of that typically had been in operating before, so. It will go into operating, and it is allocated in the allocations. It is in the allocated in the reserve right now. All of this is for part of what we need to discuss on one day.
Sounds great. Well, thank you. Thank you, Val. I appreciate that help. It was very helpful to me, and I will follow up on Article Z. And then that should leave me, I think, with certainly a meaningful amount of work, but a manageable amount of work. And there was that help type of Article is the only one that we will need to, like, really just get the brothers in order, and then go and join me on the ball. But I'll probably do a first draft and send it your way, Pam. That's for sure. Yeah.
Anyone else? Any other? So, I'm going April, you're okay? I'm okay.
Pam, you're okay. I'm okay. And honestly, I think Carl had something about Rob's, but I think he's got some meatier articles, too. Rob, I do. I don't want to, you know, if he wanted to do more articles, but. No, I mean, like you say, I think especially DD is going to have a lot of interested stakeholders, so I think that's going to be the meatiest one for me. If anyone feels overwhelmed, I don't feel overwhelmed by what I have right now. But I also don't feel like I desperately need more to do unless someone, I'm happy to take something if someone's looking to get rid of something, but I'm not actively looking for anything, if that makes sense. So, the trading room is closed.
If something comes up, we're all in this together, and so we can figure it out, but I think we've got all the allocations now.
Cool.
No other more business to discuss tonight? So, I have one of my word docs, if I remember correctly, for the ones that we aren't doing comment on, can someone remind me, are we adding in a little thing that says, it's the same verbiage that says, we will not, and so we add that in under finance committee comments? Yes. Okay, so that's what we have to do, and then once we've done that, we can bring it here, and we will all, and we all essentially vote to abstain, and that's what we reported. Yeah, I'm sure, I think it's actually a vote, but. Yes. Right. So, it's not abstaining, it's just agreeing. Agreed. To put it forward. To put it forward. With no pros and cons. And send it in an email. Got it. And, got it. When we document our vote, we document it as a yes, not as an abstain. Okay, thank you for coming. I think, like, looking, the finance committee takes no condition, I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you. So, that was a, I'm just looking at last year's. Perfect. And, yeah, so, looking at last year's, and just the first one that I see is Article 12, if you look at last year's Warren. Yeah. And so, yeah, FinCom comments were, just for the record, following consultation with the finance director of the finance committee, had deemed this article to have, I thought had or has, had deemed this article to have negligible financial impact to the town pursuant to Code 19.3, detailed comments together with the summary of the arguments in favor of, and in opposition to this article are not required. And then we just said recommendation, takes no position, and the vote. Well, we didn't, did we do that first step, too, on all of them, or just the... That's all it was. That's, it's, those are the finance committee comments, just that thing that... Okay. And yes, that was on everyone. On everyone. On every, yes, on everyone, for which we don't take a position. And then how did we vote? And then we vote not to take a position. And that was... Which is a yes. What does it actually say? Is it... It says, the finance committee takes no position on this arc. No, I... Vote 7-0. Vote 7-0. 7-0-0. Okay. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's probably... Interesting. Okay.
Great.
And there's still the proposer's comments, and... Cool. I have to get the proposer's comments? You do. No. Do I have to get the proposer's comments? Yes, because that'll be part of the article write-up. Okay. So we're still writing up the article. It's just pretty much as is, without... Got it. With the proposer's comments, if, if they have comments, which... Yeah. Definitely they do. Yeah. I mean, it depends on... There would be some comments. It's certainly... Under 150 words. Yeah. Okay. If it was a petitioner, certainly would be... I mean, it would be something.
Yeah. All right. I'm doing a chance to do everything.
Can we get any comments? From who they're certainly in the article? Okay.
I don't know if they all necessarily would have...
Like, do you think the green burial is one should... It's obviously allowing for permission for the town to authorize. Last year, when I did the write-up... Should have... Like, would you expect it? Yeah. Yeah, I would. Okay. All right. I just... I remember last year... Last year, we did... Like, I didn't do the write-up, but I did work with the petitioner to do their 150 words. And then this year, nothing got submitted. So that's what I'm just trying to figure out. Okay. And, you know, I don't know if the same person or persons are doing the petition, but we can cut the base from the prior year petition. Okay. And not all of them did have petitioner's comments. Like, the simple ones here reports, I'm just looking at all the no-position ones and just doing a quick search. Like, those, it just says, there's no... It's just proposer's comments, and then... Actually, sorry, that is proposer's comments. I thought there was on most of them. I think there are. Sorry. So I take that comment back. Anyways, there are. There are. Okay. No, that's good to... Choose officers dozen. Okay. Well, that was some of... Yeah. Most do. Yeah. Not all. All right. Thank you. So I'll reach out to everybody else. Hopefully I'll have something for you for Monday. So the next topic on the agenda is the budget. And I want to confirm that Monday, we will have the town manager and finance director, Michael and Brian, present the town budget. And then David and Kirstie will be here for the school budget. And on Wednesday, the town manager will be back to present the capital budget. Okay. As you saw on email trail, I've asked them to keep their presentations done in the order of 20 pages, whatever appendix, after that, and be prepared for a Q&A throughout. So we'll see how the flow of the meetings go. But I don't think we should hold our questions until the end. I think we should engage as we go through. And they're hoping to give us the slides ahead of time. I've asked for that. I mean, we have some from Brian already that I'm sure it will be utilizing. And the school committee budget, I think, is now up on the meeting. I haven't looked at it, but it's okay. Thank you for the definitions, Tim. I didn't know what I was looking at. I had a sense of some of them. But there are a lot. There are a lot. There are a lot. There are a lot. There are a lot of them. Because if you have no kids in school, it's like I had no idea. Yeah. I do have a couple of dollars. But I would like to come out at the end of the week to the degree that we can with our collective view as to whether we're supportive of the budget as it exists, both for the town, school, and the capital. And as few open-ended questions as possible. I think a big challenge is just even understanding it and understanding all the elements of it and being able to convey to the folks. But to the degree that there's questions that we feel that need to be addressed. Is the process generally, are we comfortable supporting the budget or not? Or is there another iteration where we give comments and they go back and do another iteration of the budget? The challenge is March 15th or 16th. And school week, Michael, I know it's a way for school week. So this is really, do we support it in pretty much its current version or not? Yeah, but I wouldn't say, look. So I misunderstood it as. But just to be clear, if we see things that we're not comfortable with, we should ask questions. Sure, of course. And whether we can't address it again, the school vacation week necessarily, maybe we can't, but maybe we can't. The following week, we'll address it. Okay. So it's just, we don't have months. Right. Sorry. Yeah, I always understood, and we believe this is incorrect, but this is a good pedification for me. I always understood the vote around the budget to not be whether you personally bill support the budget. It is a vote for, do you think the budget as it stands is in a ready state to be shared to town for towns who vote on it? That is what I've always understood, that if you have qualms with the appropriations being inappropriate or incorrect or not in the right, sort of, that is where you could take certainly a stronger stand. But we are not voting on our own personal opinion of the budget or the spending. That is my understanding. Yeah, I see all of our role as helping the town make good decisions. And so to the degree that we're ready to have this presented to the town and can inform the town to help make good decisions. Yeah. So I don't really want a swimming pool at town center. You know, that's not. That's a personal opinion. As opposed to, it's, again, it's really just, you know, you can say this is a lot to spend on this. Is that a reasonable spending? But at the end of the day, I guess in my mind, if someone has asked for it, right, it's really up to the public fundamentally to vote on whether or not they want that. Anne, what's your take on that? I guess I, we are, we've been appointed, we're not elected, but we've been appointed to represent the town and the town meeting. So, and as much as we are representatives, if you feel individually that the budget in some way doesn't reflect what it should, whether it's too high or too low in whatever area, it's your, you may vote to, you know, as you see fit. If you think, I mean, yes, it should be, is it ready to go to town meeting? Is it in good shape? Has it been vetted and reviewed and all the questions asked? But I think if you feel strongly one way or another, that it's not the budget that should be shown to town meeting, then, you know, that's how you should vote accordingly. Okay. Okay. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, I guess we framed the question, or is it a budget that can be presented to town meeting, or is it a budget that we hope is approved by town meeting? Well, I think that you support. That's right. A budget that you can support. Okay. Well, which is a higher bar than what you... Right. Yes. Yeah. So I think, I do think it is a higher bar that you support the budget being presented. Yeah. No, it isn't... I mean, you might not love every piece of it, but... Right. And your personal, you know, you want a swimming pool, don't want a swimming pool. That isn't a factor. It's really, is this the right budget for the town?
I appreciate that. I'm so sure. Yeah. Rob, do you have views on this or questions? I guess I was, I'm reading through the 2025 warrant to just kind of see how this is presented. Because I think obviously with the articles, right, it's an endorsement, right? It's the finance committee voting saying, we recommend you pass this. And if that's how the budget is reported, I'd feel the same way, right? If we're voting to say, we endorse this budget, we recommend this budget, that implies our judgment that this is a good budget. As opposed, and I don't know, that was how, I'm obviously new, that was how I understood it, right? Is that we are voting to say, we think this is the right budget for the town. And I might not personally want a swimming pool. And if a swimming pool costs $40 million, I should not vote for it to endorse it. Because I think that's not a prudent use of town resources, right? So I, my understanding was that it does involve a judgment call of personally, whether you agree with this budget. And obviously, you're not going to agree with everything, right? There will be things in the budget that you don't personally agree with, but it's kind of on the balance. Do you think this is a good budget that should pass?
I'm comfortable with that. Okay. I can do it either way, as long as I know. No, I mean, I didn't. Yep, it was a good question. I'm hopeful to get declared. It's good to be all on the same page about how everything, because the thing that makes this year different, I guess, to circle back to really your point, that makes this year different, and Pam's comment as well. Last year, we were able to have a lot of these preliminary conversations in November and December. So we did really work on a number. Element by element. Element by element, because, you know, because there was conversation. And there was. And we had DPW in. We had DPW in. And there was commentary, right? There was feedback to the town of, this isn't acceptable, right? Any sense of why that didn't happen this year? A bunch of reasons. Capital has been really overseen by a new committee. So they've been going through their process, one. And then town budgets haven't come together as quickly as they did in the prior years. But it didn't mean to. But we don't really know why. It's just a bunch of different reasons. Okay. One is the fact that we're in bargaining unit negotiations with all of the. That happens every three years, though. I understand. I'm not saying it's a fair. Right. No, I'm not being critical. I'm just curious why the change. Yeah. I mean, having done this for, I've gone through this process. Seven times through. This is my seventh time through. This is the latest. The first year I came in, a little bit later. But it was, no, it was in December. So I kind of went through most of it. But this is really the latest we've gotten all this information. I mean, there are parts that we typically would have worked on the Capitol in the fall. And then at the very least would have gotten an operating budget by December 15th or January, you know, the first week of January. So we're. With three numbers on them. Right. Right. Those numbers. It's good to know. So maybe we'll go back to the veteran system in the future and not be with us every time. Okay. Yeah. And so typically what the process, there had been, you know, even as we had last year, more of a back and forth conversation and sort of a lot of questions. And then we saw a few numbers, you know. It wasn't, you know, a perfect process. It wasn't ideal, but we had more time to vet things than. Right. It gave us the chance to give feedback. Yeah. And that was your. And then you could iterate. Yeah. Right. Right. That's right. We are under the gun, really, to try to, time-wise, to really try to figure out. And I think that that is potentially what makes this year a bit more unique and potentially might lead to perhaps not as great of an outcome. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. One of the challenges is going to be whether any debt gets excluded in this budget right now, they know it's like we're just expecting no excluded debt. I mean, the water investments will be as an enterprise finance facility. But what about the vote to move? What about the vote? That's done. That's done. Yeah. That doesn't show up in this budget? It does show up. But as far as any of the items that are in. It only shows up in this budget in the levy. Yes. Right. Right. I mean, that's how we got the capacity, right? That's how we got the capacity. But I guess my point is, in this next fiscal year cycle, that's when it goes into the property taxes, right, in terms of impact? Or did it go in immediately? What? The... No new taxes came out because we excluded the debt. Right. But next year, we were able to increase the levy. We're going to use that levy, which... We're not. Right now... We're within the levy for 27, as anticipated. Yeah, so we'll see about 28. Okay. Okay. And to be clear, the levy capacity right now is $755,000 of unused levy capacity. Got it. The debt was $700,000. Got it. Okay. So it was very, very close. Okay. So we haven't actually used up the levy capacity that we opened up. That's great. Thank you. That's what I'm trying to get. Thank you. In today's, you know, budget. Iteration. Yeah. Okay. There's variables still. One is new revenue from new growth. Sure. Um, which could be higher than the numbers that are in beer, but we won't know that until later on December 15th. That's what's the increase in the levy. It actually, it increases the rate of the town. Right. It doesn't, it, but it also increases the, the, your, the room and the levy. It does. Right. That's it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It increases the levy, levy. It increases more breathing room. And then if, you know, uh, West suburban, uh, there's one or two other things like that. That is something where it's positive. Yeah. You'll see. That's all my cross fingers. So. Um, I had one question about, I was going through the feedback that Brian gave to my questions and I was a bit confused if I was just like not looking at the right numbers. So, or if he's answering, not really my question. So I looked at just the line, I was right in that preliminary and, and he had for each department, like a payroll, a services, and, and I'm just looking at the high level numbers and looking at the swings and saying, why was there a swing and all of his responses are like payroll only went up 3%, but like the numbers clearly went up more than right. So is he like, I would love an explanation of that because I get, maybe he's looking at really like no salaries really only went up 3%, but it's like a taxes, Medicare, et cetera, et cetera. It gives you all the way up to 10. If that's what's going on, I would love an explanation, but I felt a little bit unsatisfied, I guess, with some of their responses. I think those are questions that we should address when he's here. Thank you. I was just brought it up. We should, we should be clear on, on the explanations. And Michael will be here as well. So that's right. The, so the buckets are payroll expense and unclassified and unclassified and expense actually has people costs in them. Oh, I see. So I don't remember his responses to the, so in payroll for the town, you know, is projected to go up 0.8%. Right. But the expense goes up 8.5%. And this is part of like putting some of these monies that would have normally gone into COLA into different accounts. So I think that's just, it would be, I get that, you know, Brian's a finance director and I'm sure the answers he gave are absolutely correct, but it would be nice to know in layman's terms and understanding of, okay, maybe truly the salaries are only going up 3% for step increases, but like the numbers are going up much more than that. And I would like to know why. What is unclassified in this context? I can't remember. But unclassified is, I mean, it's, it's that piece of the budget that's, it's the debt, it's healthcare, Medicare tax, unemployment, disability. The biggest ones are, um, healthcare and the debt and reserve for salary to next year's salary reserve. Okay. All right. So they're not considered expense, but they're considered just unclassified. Okay. It's kind of, it's a little bit of a, Mr. Because they could be allocated to the, the town and the skills line. So yeah, there's a, there's a page like halfway through his PDF, um, biggest number in there is a reserve for salary adjustment. And that's $1.8 million. And this is the, which is the connection to the personnel costs. They don't go off. It's a reserve. But it's allocated. So that's, it's, it's a little bit confusing. It's, it's an unclassified until it becomes, it's allocated. So like in his presentation, you can see that one line that shows personnel with a low increase year over year. And then on the allocated, it's higher because that's what it would be if that reserve, now we don't know precisely what that reserve, what the assumptions are and how much it will ultimately be. Yep. So that was the biggest, the second biggest is insurance 32B, which is $1.2 million. Uh, and then retirement benefits, 440, 4,000 is the next biggest debt and interest section went down by $300,000. That's, that's another thing we got, we get a little clearance from that and that's kind of, yeah, we hired some of the debt. Right. Well, we've also, in an ideal world, you might try to kind of level fund that, um, we're kind of, you know, right. The other thing that hasn't been suggested, I'm assuming, maybe I'm wrong, is if the capital budget hasn't been completed, anything that's like outstanding funds or what do we call it? Um, I mean, I mean, yeah, the project's not completed. Or funds that weren't, that didn't need to be used. Used, yes, and that goes into free cap, so it could also increase the capacity as well, because we don't have those numbers, I'm assuming, or do we? Um, I don't know. I haven't seen the detail yet. Okay. I saw it yesterday on Brian's screen, because, you know, on the other side of his desk is we're going through some of the stuff, so I don't have the details. Okay.
But I'm glad that Michael and Brian will be prepared for Wednesday to come and walk through the whole. So, we expect capital to get included. And they're building off of what the CIPC, CA, PC, whatever committee has done, but it will be Michael's budget. So, it's not just a plug-in.
And he's meeting with Tom, and Michael, and the team, or, you know, their sign-up for priorities. And then we'll collectively need to think through whether some of that capital should be in and exclude that or not. So, we might have a revised budget before, almost like we have a revised budget before next week? Um, I don't know what, we don't have a capital budget like that. So, first is to get back. I don't know that, I think that the operating budgets that, um, that the town gave us are good to work with. Okay. I worry about the school budget a little bit. It's in the town budget, but things like the special education costs, I mean, I just don't know how it's all tied together yet. And that's been a part of the conversation. Sped, they won't know until June, right? Well, yeah. There's elements of sped that won't know. But they, I don't even know what's in the current expectations of the budget. There was that, you know, presentation that went around, but it wasn't clear to me the costs. And that should be incorporated into the schools. It is. That they have. I know. But you think the numbers aren't. I don't know if the numbers all tie and if they are tied to what Brian sent us. Okay. So, that's one of the things that I want in my ear. And then, even though West Suburban usually gets their final numbers in mid-February? Yes. So, we should have that final soon. Yes. So, that would be great. Okay. Yeah. And why they have to wait until mid-February is just beyond me. Because everybody needs to set budget. Everybody needs the same number. Why can't they do it mid-January or the first week of your January?
I'm just wondering if we move the town meeting back because I know they're trying to get the extension. Well, then, it'd be. This year? Next year. They come. Right. So, that's like one of the ones that I'm writing up is like trying to move. Having a flexibility. Tell me to be back to like mid-June or have a larger window. So, if they shift it, then that shift, basically, it would allow us to have more time with final numbers as opposed to guessing. It's a pro in your write-up. Right. I'm just sorry. I didn't know if it would just like. Push all our time frames later. No, no. Not that. But right now, I mean, like even for the code FinCom, because we kind of read it that way. That was December 15th. December 15th. All the department budgets are in. And then it says by, I think it said by the end of the fiscal year. December 31st, right? Not fiscal year, but December 31st calendar year that we would have that the town manager budget would be over 2% of two FinCom. So, that's in the code. So, we should have actually more time if we extend the deadline. Yes. Which would be great, right? Because then we can do the synchroids. Yeah. One of the challenges that I felt last year is we were, it seemed like a lot of meetings, it was like, oh, that spreadsheet's obsolete. We've got to hold another spreadsheet. And it was like, oh, my goodness. I sort of understood this one. And now, it felt like a lot wasn't tied down. But it's usually, it's the same spreadsheet. It's just the revised with fresh numbers. Yeah. But it would seem like a lot of things were being revised. Okay. Just to track all the changes. Yeah. Right. But. And then, like today's spreadsheet, you know, folks are pointing out the text doesn't. Right. But I flagged that for Brian. And I haven't gotten a response. It's, but it's, you know, I'm not wild about the spreadsheets behind all of this. Of course. But I do think the flip side is, even when the numbers were being updated continuously, it let us have active dialogue. It did. No, the substance of it. And that. We lost that. And we lost. Yeah. Yeah. No, that I share completely. So come Monday with all your questions. And if you want to send them in before, you know, do.
Well, Jim. And I'll remind presenters to try to get presentations to us that we can review before even.
Do we have. We're not going to have articles on Monday. Will we? Yeah. Oh. Oh, maybe. I was. I mean, we. I was going to try to have a couple. Oh, no. They do continue to work it. I think they were saying with school and town budget. Oh, I see. Yes. We've been at our time. Understood. Understood. Totally. I was going to prioritize. I don't know how much energy we'll have at the end. Fair enough. I was going to prioritize the no financial impact ones. So those could be quick hits. Yes. Right. If time allows. But excellent point. We might not have the time. Yeah. So you get with proposers to make sure that we did and select board member to. Yeah. Point in. But yeah, to the degree that we get them, that's great. We have whatever it is, 27. Right. We have to do in the next, you know, four weeks or thereabouts.
Hopefully we'll get it all done and it will be great. Yeah. You know, that's, I mean, that's 27 of the ones we actually had to write up, but we still have. Oh, yeah. No, we have to, you know, 50 or 48. 40 some. No, 50 right now. It's a 50. Yeah. Right. What's the difference between the write-up and all of them? The financial, no financial. Right. Like what responsibility do we have for the financial impact ones? To write no financial impact. That will. Okay. Yeah. I think we'll just take the vote on each. I guess. So we still vote. We do. Yeah. That was like that. Yeah. Jalen do that. And like, no, we need to write it up. We're still responsible for doing all the articles. Okay. And all the write-ups. Okay. So we'll just put in that little blurb. Sounds good.
I would get with the petitioner or, you know, who's the sponsor of it. Because we already do. And the select board person. Go over it. But it has no financial impact. I've done that. Okay. So. And if they've got language that. Or do we do each one individually to say that we're taking an individual? That's a really good point. Okay. I would bring that up with everyone. So my question is, do we still, we voted Monday. To take no position. To take no position on those. Do we need to vote on each individually again? I will check. I think we did that before. We did. We did. But there weren't as many. So. It won't take long. It shouldn't take long. I think to the degree that we look at, you know, collectively look at each one and say, well, this doesn't really make sense. The proposer's comments or something. I mean, it's their responsibility. But if it's. It's another set of bodies. Yeah. But let's see. Yeah. We have both. And select board is going to vote, I think, whenever, tonight or Monday. On all points a week. Proposed to not take a financial position as well. To accept that or to vote? Their own vote. I'm not sure exactly. Okay. Their votes were also recorded, right? For those. I mean, I just said. They voted to submit them initially. So that's what they're talking about. When we. At the article workshop. Yeah. But then they have to take a vote on. On every article. Okay. And they put that in. We don't put that in, right? Yeah. Well, we. No, we put it in. Carol puts it in. I mean, Pam puts it in. Yeah. Yes. You put it in. When we can. If you. If you. If you. The article writer. Whoever's assigned. Have the information. From your. Select board liaison. On what the vote is. Included in the write-up. If you. If we've done our FinCom. Write-up. Reviewed it. Voted. And you want to turn it in. And you don't yet have the select board vote. You just. Don't include it. And I will. Include it. You know. When it's finally. Voted upon.
Who's legal review of all of them?
I think it's pretty much at the end. Well. The. Legal review. We'll review everything. Yes. At the end. Yeah. After that March 15th deadline. I think. You know. Obviously. They're reviewing. All the article language. Now. Thank you. Thank you.
Anything further? I'm sorry. Any other comments? Questions on budget?
No. I'll say the questions. I had. I mean. You. Everyone saw my questions. Right? Like I had a couple other interesting questions. About. Some of the resources. That are funded through the town. That are for things. Like the children's way. And just trying to understand. Why those aren't. Like already incorporated. As part of either. The school budget. Or just like trying to understand. Sort of how that ended up. Like where it ended up. Because. The children's way. Is. A paid for service. By people who partake. Right? And then. And then it is also. I know it's also. In my schools. There's also a portion. I thought that was run through the schools. If you have like a special needs child. Right? Like you can. You can be a part of that program. So I was just trying to understand. Like. How. How it all fits in. So. Yeah. And I know last year. They hired that nurse. And I know. I think we all. Like understood that. But I. Maybe didn't appreciate. Why that didn't end up coming. Through the schools. As opposed to. And then. If it is coming out of the town's. Budget. I think the nurses are. Nurses are under the. Health department. Okay. The children's way. I mean. It was in the special. And. Doctrine. It should be part of the school. I think it is part of the school. It is part of the school's budget. Okay. But then it's. Yeah. I'm just curious to understand. Maybe like. How all the funding. Comes for that program. Because. Obviously. Like. If you have a small child. And you're sending them. You're paying tuition. Right? So. No. You do. Yeah. You do. So. So presumably. I guess it would be interesting to know. Does that tuition actually cover the cost. Or is it also. Supported. Supported and subsidized. Through. Because. And so I'm just trying to understand that. Yeah. And. They use this building. And I'm not sure. Right. I mean. I care slightly less about that. Because I don't believe that. I mean. Maybe. Who knows. Like. I know we had talked about the playground. Right. And the fact that like. They use the playground. But. The town pays for that playground. Because the playground is also. A public playground. After their hours. Right. Like. So. But it. It was just the resourcing. That like struck me as a little. Interesting. Of like. How did. How is that separate. Versus. The rest of the resourcing. Comes through this. I was just trying to understand that. Where. Do you know. I'm trying to find. Brian's response. To your. Did you send it. In an email. I know. I saw it. And I.
Found the latest. Model. But I. The email. I can.
Do you want me to resend it to everyone. Or just to you. Would you. Yeah. Yeah. Have you sent it to me too. Yes. Send it. Maybe. Yes. I'm also interested. I was also trying to find it in my email. I'm having more trouble than I anticipated. I have to date January 23rd. Okay. To print it out. Great. Your responses. Can I. I see him now. Thank you. Oh, you guys all found it? Okay. Did you find it Pam? Do you want me to resend it? I can pop it. I'm going to talk. If you have it right there. I do. I'm good. Thanks. Okay. Great. Thank you. I do have. This is all on the preliminary budget. Not the current. Right. Yes. It was all on the.
I do have a question in regards to, so. Um, the superintendent shared. The FY27 budget for the school committee. And he is, it's all about K through eight facilities planning. Is what he said. And there's going to be a community forum on March 4th. That, um, was sent in the school newsletters. Basically is where I got it. Um, and I'm just curious. It's from 7 to 830 on March 4th. Because it was a community forum. I'm just wondering, is that something that we should be, that we should plan to attend? Or no? You're welcome. Um, but the, uh, so I think that's the long-term, um, facilities. Right. Um, it's not next year's budget. Okay. And then because I, maybe we'll touch on it. But, um, and this is, I don't know, the third or fourth, uh, community forum is had on this. Okay. Um, where, and then people showed up. Yep. That's the way to talk about long-term, what the schools need. But I don't think it's driven by this year's budget. And out of curiosity, their needs have to go through capital CIPC anyways. So actually, it's not, like, that's the one thing that I'm curious about is, like, I would expect those large improvements are not part of the school budget. Right. They would still have to go through capital. Yeah. Right. That's why they have those people with facilities. What I'm trying to do is really identify kind of the needs, uh, much more so than putting a capital plan together for it and what's the higher priorities and the like. Okay. I just wanted to ask a question. But, I mean, I'm looking forward to the capital committee to, you know, things like this building. It's, you know, been a question for a hundred or a decade of what you should do with it. It'd be good to get some clarity and, you know, have the town weigh in on what the options are and what the costs would be.
All right. Motion to adjourn.
Anything else from you, Rob? Questions? Comments? Good. Second.
In favor? Iris? Yes. April? Yes. Phil? Yes. Phil? Yes. Yes. Rob? Yes. We are adjourned. Thank you.