December 1, 2025 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript

December 1, 2025 - Finance Committee

Autoscroll:

So, December 1st, 7 p.m., starting the Finance Committee meeting in 10 minutes. In Roman, Bill Huss, Carl Barnes, April Mathot, and Iris was here a moment ago, but she stepped over to take a call, so I expect she'll be back in a minute. I haven't heard from Rob.
One may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the 10th website, pursuant to ERUP, we are all together, and pursuant to Chapter 2, the meeting will be conducted in person in accordance with the law, and the meeting may have authority and will be available to the public on waiting soon after the meeting is practically required by law or allowed by the air, persons wishing to provide public comment are welcome to do so. We ask that they keep their comments to two minutes per person. Don't think anyone's online and anyone is here, so we are commenced. No public comments. Do you see anything? No, I was just trying to see where I see it. It's hard to see it, honestly. Yeah. But I guess not. First order of business is approving the minutes, which people sent around last night. They're pretty brief, so I think folks had a chance to take away with them. The only place was where under the second paragraph, under the law and bolded heading, the joint joint meeting with Economic Development Committee, the second paragraph, the presentation, we reviewed the key drivers, blah, blah, blah. I'd also reviewed the most recent projects, River's Edge Alta, that added 1.1 million revenue to the town as well as increase, duh. Just need a D. Or affordable housing. That's all I saw. Got it, got it, got it. Okay. Thank you. Keep the tenses. Cool. April was quite a bit intentional. I just don't recall that well, but there were seven of us at the meeting and only six of us voted to adjourn. Who was a stickler who wanted to know? I got out earlier. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes as modified. So moved. Or second. Or second. Yeah. In favor. All right. Okay. So our next order of business is reviewing the EDC materials, but I wanted to, I noticed someone who has an attendance. Good evening, sir. Would you like to make a comment at the meeting or are you just attending? I'm here for AT&T. It's public hearings. Oh, okay. Great. Thank you. I mean, you may not be right now. AT&T. Actually. What? This is finance. This is finance committee. You're welcome to stay. I need you for the committee. I think a whole bunch. Good luck. Thank you. I don't know where. I think, yeah, they noted all the meetings and the room assignments in the hall. Like, I know in that hallway they had a new monitor, but. Thank you. Probably in the front as well. Good luck. Thank you. Yeah. So, EDC presentation, reactions, comments, next steps. That was a very well put together presentation with some really interesting ideas. Um, as maybe it's just me as the new person, uh, the sort of next steps and action ability was kind of the part that I was a little hung up on in terms of like, some of these ideas are great. Like, what's keeping us from doing them? Um, and how can we do anything about that?
Right. That's where I would kind of focus our conversation.
What was the question of what, uh, what is their ask of finance committee? Um, it was, you know, very, um, it was, it was, let's do stuff together. Let's, you know, pull the town together. Some of the priorities. Um, I mean, for me, a lot of the focus was on like, kind of public sentiment, right? And sort of how do we build public desire for these things? But I guess one question I have is if that's even the limiting factor, right? Is there a lot of demand by commercial entities to do these things that did not happening because the town is shutting it down or are we, you know, you have a lot of town home projects instead of getting voted now, my friend, they'd still don't have any. I don't think particularly. Yeah. So I do think that it's hard for all kinds of reasons to do development. Yeah. Or a town. Um, so I had a couple of thoughts based on what she had presented. She had asked us if we could help set growth goals. Yeah. And I think that's, uh, I guess I thought about a little bit more and I think what would be helpful is to have three or four levels and then what are the implications? So 2% growth, what are the implications? 5% of what are the implications? 10%. And then it gives us a sense of, okay, what are we biting off for each level of growth? And then I think we could have a more intelligent, you know, discussion. And right now it's like, well, I have no idea. Picking the number out. So that was one is that we could work with them to develop some goals. Um, and then I had, I sent her an email afterwards about, um, if I were in her position, um, you know, thinking about doing some focus groups rather than just a survey. Where you can actually present, you know, pictures, possibilities, brainstorming, uh, you know, it's not scientifically significant, but it allows you to sort of develop ideas that and get some sense of what would be, uh, acceptable to the public. So, you know, those are my two sort of random boxes that came out of them. I think I, uh, I agree with that. I think the discussion of new growth, FinCom, I think has always said, new growth is, is helpful. Look at the levy calculation. And, and it's certainly something that helps. On the other hand, you know, does that jive with, with the needs and the desires of the town? Um, so, you know, those have to be counterbalanced. Um, and then I guess the other consideration is, it's just from a very practical perspective is, and I think I'd asked at the end, are, are you planning on making any, um, doing any articles this year? Just having that dialogue and the heads up and working together and having some time to understand, um, if there is an article or something new to be introduced since we're the ones, you know, crafting this article, it's, it's just helpful to have that, um, you know, as much dialogue and sort of headway or, um, lead time as, as possible. So a couple of my reactions, I don't, I agree with my sentiment, but also there is no magic spreadsheet that can tell what, you know, good growth is or bad growth is. And we are very low in growth compared to other communities as best we've seen multiple times now, um, but that doesn't mean it changes, um, or it's easy to change one way or another. So I'm not sure there's going to be a helpful exercise. They have done folks groups though on the second one, particularly around route 20 redesign stuff. Um, I'm not sure it was actually all that productive necessarily. Um, and so I, I, as I look at it and think about it, it's really one, it was helpful to sort of get regrounded that it's not about getting, you know, retailer shopping centers built or anything that's just not economically viable. Um, so with town homes, really is kind of clear, you know, condos or town homes. And raising the quality level, I got to, in other words, you don't have to build stuff, just raise the quality of what we have. Yeah, so, um, but I do think that it gets to be sort of project by project or opportunity by opportunity that there's potentially ways that we could work together, um, and things like the wraithing on property to the degree that, you know, one can help to encourage, you know, all of the town and legislatures or whatever's needed to move on that. Um, I had breakfast and Carl joined, uh, with Becky a few days after, and, uh, no big, you know, in new insights from that either. Personally, uh, you know, the idea of having so much parking as a requirement is just like, really, I wasn't even aware that that was a town requirement and that's what we've been doing, but, you know, that's not a FinCon thing. It's just like, aesthetically or environmentally, all kinds of reasons. I just have, soon have less, um, and then also signage, that, that was an issue. Like, we can't get sort of clear about what our guidance is on signages. It's like, but thought, like, why not? Let's, you know, get it out there soon. I wonder if, I don't know if having just a few committees, you know, just keeping the conversation going and whoever's, you know, oversees that area, just to know that other committees have been talking about it. Sometimes just having that in front of the mind. Yeah, and I will put it on my agenda to next time I'm with Michael to just let him know that, you know, to be interesting to kind of not let that stuff drop off the list. So I think there's, there's a lot going on here. There really is. Um, but in terms of, you know, the, the science that you mentioned, though, um, you know, my understanding is that there's a contingent, maybe it's the planning board, it may not be, I don't want to throw anybody under a bus, like, here, but that don't want to do anything until their master plan is done. And I, you know, that's been going on for a long time and will go on for a long time. Right. And I think that one of the things I think I learned, tell me if I'm misinterpreting it, is that right now there is no signage by law. And that somebody, you know, somebody can put up a 40 foot billboard on Route 20 if they want to. And once that's there, it's going to be very difficult to get it out and, and it sets a precedent. So I'm not sure if this, I mean, there's a tenuous connection to economic development. One of the things that we're talking about is that is maybe trying to control that before it gets out of control may not be exactly within our, our charter, but if it helps the town put together a more pleasant package for both for owners and for residents, that seems like a good use of our time to support that. So I do think there is some control you can put up before you put a billboard. Good. But, but I do think that, uh, there isn't like a master sort of guidance as to, you know, how to make it all fit together, which I think conceivably can be done in broad. There may be some jurisdictional, there's a state, I mean, it's a federal road. So there's a federal state or local. It is. I think the town actually has a lot of control, but I'm saying it should go on. Um, but I mean, there are certain state signage requirements, but that's not a constraint here. So, but it's not like going to drive economic results. I mean, it's the aesthetic. I mean, it's the long game, right? Like, I'm surprised at the encouragement of, you know, Airbnb fees and meals fees. Um, but I'm not like opposed to them. It just seems like small, I mean, potentially challenging, you know, for putting them in place. Well, Robin, the problem is that, that the town plays a long game and developers play a very short game, right? They can't get something done in two years or three years. They're not going to do it. Yeah. No. And I'm, I'm done like the signage stuff, like those passing signage law revolutionize the town finances in a year. No, probably not. Does it kind of like slowly, accretively 20 years from now, where we have more effective place for retail? Cause we chipped away at it, you know, by a year.
I'm curious why you think that the, um, like those Airbnb taxes would be problematic. Yeah. I don't know. I just don't even know what amount of knowledge the town has or, uh, for the folks that are doing Airbnbs, um, do they even report it to the town? Is that like a requirement? I suspect that it, it probably goes through the platforms, right? So we would probably, probably some capacity for us to go to Airbnb and say, Hey, if anybody books in Wayland, you need to pay us taxes on that. I think that's how it works for the thing. That works for like Amazon coins, your local taxes. Gotcha. That's why it's just sort of, where's the key points for that? Well, it just seems like the likely incremental tax dollars are pretty small. It feels small, but it also feels like something that you can be proactive in front. Right. I mean, it seems like something that we shouldn't, you know, if it's there's low. It increases. It would be a, right. Yeah. And getting it in place now on the off chance it grows, probably. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah. Yeah. I'll see when it continues to go up, people might start Airbnb-ing their house. Yeah. Because, uh, it's a school district. All the ADUs. Exactly.
I do think, uh, my sense, even from the discussion, that, that there's not a lot of knowledge in our town about lots of things financially, um, you know, like, you know, how occupied is the town center. Right. Um, and, you know, where is our commercial revenue coming from, our money that come from, our future? And that kind of continues to spark my interest to think about, you know, our website and how do we communicate from the thanks committee standpoint to, to what's going on and trying to help bring the town more up to speed. Um, I think that for me kind of tracks back to that, like how much of the, when it comes to the growth, how much of the, how much of the sort of supply versus the demand problem. Right. Or there's a bunch of growth that wants to happen in Wayland that isn't able to, because of a lack of popular support or, or sort of town regulations. And how much of it is a, that people just don't want to grow here. Right. Because I think there, again, there was a, probably there was a lot of conversation about, oh, how are we going to build popular support for some of these things? But nobody wants to invest in development. It doesn't matter if the town supports it or not. It's no demand to meet. Yeah, it gets back to sort of looking at these kind of one-off a little bit. Um, and, and I, the, uh, more glaring, most recent was the self-storage, um, which a developer really wanted to build and, uh, it got kind of mangled in the process and didn't get supported. And I think kind of thinking about it that way though, like that one-off, like there's a ton of things we could try to educate a lot of people about, but that's not necessarily problem. Right. Yeah. Here's an opportunity. What do we need to people educate people about to get that one? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it occurs to me. I don't know how many people would go to our website to find, I mean, they might, if they're, if, but they have to be more proactive. I want to, I mean, you get your tax bill twice, just have an insert in the tax bill that has a short summary of what our finances are. Yeah. I mean, cause that has, it's, it's on their mind. They're reading their tax thing and it's like, okay, okay. I see there's an explanation here along with it. Yeah. Do some of those things online, right? Like for, for federal taxes, you'll see those breakdowns, right? You paid X dollars in taxes this year. That means Y dollars for defense, C dollars for social programs. I think that we see that. I mean, I think the budget breaks down. The warrant. Yeah. The warrant. Yeah. The warrant. Maybe less clear on how it's spent, but very clear where it all goes. Do I need to be recognized? Do I apologize? What are the rules? You did recognize her at the beginning. Yeah. I'm not that you stepped up. I'm sorry. But the, my takeaway from that call, which I thought was interesting. I asked the question of what, um, they had listed everything in terms of impact. I would be interested in seeing things listed in what we might determine as feasibility. Like what is easy to get across the line to make an immediate impact versus more challenging. Charge some things on the agenda. Right. Like, you know, if there are easy things we can do, um, as a committee or working with other committees, let's get after those things to demonstrate that, um, the public might see the options on the table as cut services or pay for services. But we now know that those are not the only options, right? There are other options available to us. And I think to be able to start to demonstrate that we're getting after those options, that might make it easier to have conversations with the public to say, either at town meeting or in advance of town meeting to say, the options at the table aren't just vote for this or vote against this, but really thinking about if you're voting for this, you can vote for this with the idea that there's a requisite, like an expectation that you hold of the committees in town to be working their way through this problem. To me, that would be like... But there isn't. There isn't now. Yeah. Right. There isn't now. But I think that there's an opportunity. That's what I really took away from that conversation is part of, it depends on how we want to go forward as a committee. But I think we could help, like, share that message, maybe put a little bit of pressure, maybe say, we don't have a release balance here. So either the public stands up and says we are willing to pay, or the public stands up and says we don't want to. But if we would like maybe to try to mince some level of services and appease, hopefully, the public, or I think what is probably a decent number of people who see their tax bill going up and wonder why, like, there's this middle of the ground option where we could leverage growth, right? Yeah. I'm not sure how realistic growth is as that equation goes. I think it's such a small, I mean, I think it's absolutely something we should support. And I think we do. And I think we would have a conversation with whatever new endeavor is being considered. Weigh in accordingly. And right now, if we're looking at an annual kind of $400,000 expectation for new growth, you know, if we could double that in a year, that's awesome. Right. But in the whole scheme of things. Right, right. You know what I mean? It's just, we should work on all the low hanging fruit we can, even if they're little pieces, but it kind of comes back to, so that will help us. But the biggest, the bigger things are the, you know, the expenses and how do we pay for them and do we want to pay for them? So you feel like, so just so I'm understanding, even in light of sort of the math around like the townhouses and the potential to increase the real estate base, we still believe that the math actually maps out that the bigger sort of pendulum or leverage opportunity is just the expenses versus revenue from the existing residential base. My sense is over the next decade, there's not a lot of growth that's going to move the needle so that we'll be able to not have to sort of figure out what level of funding we want for the town. I didn't really map this out explicitly, but I'm just kind of looking at the chart now, right? Like, I think all of their recommendations, all of the kind of opportunities buying over the next, you know, five or 10 years would eventually add up to probably less than 10 million in revenue and tax revenues. As far as there's like, which is objectively a lot of, but it's like, yeah, right. It's, you know, in terms of annualized growth, it's not going to revolutionize the budget, I guess. Yeah. But if you're looking at 10 years of structural deficits of $2 million, if you can get 10 million over that time, you've just cut those budget deficits in half. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Right. And it's, well, one, that was the caveat. That's assuming that all of the opportunities there. Absolutely. Right. But in your point, like, there's no idea not to do it. Right. And even just from a narrative perspective, like, look, the narrative, we're not just coming from you saying, oh, they interject books. We're doing everything we can to depray it, is a strong one. And don't want to pull yourself is the credibility. Yeah. I guess my point is that fundamentally what I understood from that conversation is all these things at the end of the day said that the public, and it is up to the public. And I think just presenting the option to say to the public that if you want this, right, as an opportunity to defray costs, it is not up to us. Oh, right. It's not up to Bitcoin. Right. It is up to you, the public, to then vote in support of these policies that that will help defray costs. Fund the schools. Right. Right. So. Sorry. I'm sorry. No, it's okay. I'm very interested in this. I think that the kind of part of where I was coming from is like, I don't, outside of specific projects right now. Right. Like, it's not clear what the public would vote for. Right. Like in the context of like the townhome concept, which I think is a great idea to make a lot of money, you know, step one is actually get, get developers with proposals on the table to build townhomes or come up with ideas to like encourage developers to do that. Who's, who's encouraging of development in town? Well, yeah. Right. And I guess what are the things we can do to encourage? Like, I don't. Right. I think the more tactical, like, hey, you know, if we can pass this proposal or this, this regulation change, but when it comes to like the townhome, it seems like the gap is, we just don't have people who want to build them. Not that people are sort of stymied by town regulations building them. I honestly don't know. I don't know. Yeah. So, I mean, every one is different. Yeah. Like Mahoney's, Mahoney's. Right. Kind of all tied up in certain senses. Yeah. Town center, I think is actually in my mind, just from conversations, I mean, is the most ready to add 150 townhomes to. I mean, that's kind of my takeaway. But we've got to figure out a way to get Raytheon to say, okay. Yeah. And that to me is something that maybe we could work at. I mean, didn't they mention the spot up at the top of the hill though? And like, that was, they felt really, um, across from. Everything. Yeah. Off the Oxbow, isn't that where they said that they thought there was like good possibility there. And that was just a matter of getting, I thought it was like some political body to sort of sign off. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Route 20 across from it. There's a route 20 or across from it, kind of the old town. Right. Yeah. Was that, was that? That's the one I was thinking of that. I was like, hi, I didn't even know that, frankly, how much land there was back there. Um, and that has come up a couple of times for other reasons too, but I can't remember why. It's been out there as I think an option for several other potential uses. And I don't know if it was, is, does it also need cleanup? I would assume. I would assume that. Yeah. Yeah. I was impressed actually with how the town did the cleanup or, you know, had the private developer do the cleanup, but, you know, sort of guaranteed it as a purchase price. I thought it was creative. Boy, you're going about it. Um, so I, I feel like, yes, if there is on the south side of Route 20, something, if we breathe down, um, I, it gets to my second, and I agree, nobody necessarily looks at our website. But our website's really bad right now. Yeah. I think it needs to be refreshed. Yes. It's kind of 2019 was the last refresh. I think, um, that's not bad, but it's just not current. Um, and I do think that there's a whole lot of sort of like frequently asked questions, you know, stuff that we already do publish in the annual, uh, report in the town meeting, or articles that would be helpful to sort of a new, a new, you know, citizen's guide to, you know, what the finances and what the challenges are like. Anybody want to take a lean on that? I'm cleaning up the whole website. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and sort of thinking through the communication to the town about our finances. I think benchmarking is a part of that. Um, you know, for folks that want to, we, we got a question today, uh, just before this meeting, somebody saying, did we vote on. Yes. Thank you for, I was going to bring that up later. Yeah. Reclassification of debt. And they went to the website and they couldn't find it anywhere. It should have been in the minutes. Cause we did, uh, two meetings ago, right? Didn't we formally vote to support it? No, I think we did because. I think it's not in the minutes, but I could see where someone will not find it in the minutes. I believe it. I thought we did vote on it. I looked in the minutes. I didn't see it. Um, would that be, would it have been at the joint meeting that we would have done that? Select board. Select boards. Select boards. That would have been 10. Don't rely on my brain to recall. I don't recall. I don't know. I bet it was at the first November 1st. But while you're looking for that, I will say my other takeaways, right? Like they had a couple of key elements that I thought also were clever. So even as let's say the building, the future build to help with the. Um, and to be clear. No, I know. I know. But I also hear you on the feasibility, right? With feasibility. So the other piece that I took away that I thought was. Simple. Particularly creative in terms of their approach that also like stood out to me. Right. Was the, um, what they call their five versus bill of reverse. Refurbish versus bill zone versus bill. Right. I think I myself last year had many questions. I'm trying to understand. How can we spend $7 million on this building? Trying to conceptualize that against what's the building worth? What does that really get us? Right. Like really trying to understand. Cause we are pouring money into trying to maintain our buildings. And I thought that that was very creative. What they did with all docs. Well, right. Acknowledging that the site needed to be cleaned up and finding ways to really work around some of the existing constraints to reduce costs. Right. Because I think we can all appreciate, unfortunately, it costs less to have someone on the private side do something than the government. Right. Which usually less. Usually. And I think that to me, that is something that I would probably is going to stick in the back of my mind as we continue to move forward and look at these costs to ask, are we trying to find opportunities to bake it in, you know, instead of spending, and maybe I know that this is a poor example, but instead of spending $250,000 painting the firehouse, right. Is there an opportunity to have someone else own that maintenance? And it costs less. Yeah. Okay. Stuff to look at. The, and it's relevant, not just this building, which stands out, but all the schools as the future school requirements, bring strong recessions that are going on now. So. Oh, but Phil, Pam got it right. Um, we did vote as a committee on this on October 6th. Okay. So if you'd like, I can respond to it. Please do. Having taken those minutes. Yeah. So if anyone happens to be listening, who's asking the question, we did vote 5-0 to support debt. The reclassification. The reclassification. To explain the debt. Yeah. Ask an eventually silly question. When we talk about the website, we're talking about the finance department subsection of- Finance committee. Finance. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Page. Or three pages or something. But, and I raised it in the context of Pam's conversation in terms of getting information out about, you know, finance committee with the town finances. Yeah. Makes sense. Right now there's the banner about the special election at the top of all of the pages. Right. Right. And if you click it, it does, I guess, if you click it and then you go to the FAQs, it says there's a favorable recommendation from the finance committee. It says there's a favorable recommendation from the finance committee. Oh, it does. It's on there. Okay. But it's a couple of clicks in, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. It's, you know, goals, financial strategy, responsibilities, and debt policy are the four items. We, I think for a while we, you have to go through the town to do the website. So I know that they're, for a while we didn't have the resources, like we're short people. So. I checked in with Jalen, who now is. So now it seems like. And she's on board. That's terrific. So I don't know that that's. Updated. Yeah. But she, and I asked her for her ideas as well as to what she thought could be helpful. I don't, but I really don't think it's just the website. I mean, I really want to think about going into, you know, our next years of, you know, it's like the FAQ for the debt reclassification. Right. It talks about structural financial hardship or something, you know, that we're signing up for over the next several years. And so I think we need to put all of this into context. It's more than we've been signed up for. Yeah. Yeah. If not, they're not a choice about it. I mean, this is a much more, you know, longer discussion than we have time for here. But I just, you know, pull up the first thing that comes up is with our committee is our mission statement and our names. And it's like, that's probably not what the first thing that people want to see is our mission statement and our names. I don't have a problem with it, but yeah, if I'm going to take trouble to go to the finance committee, I want to, I want like a head. What's happening. Yeah. What's happening. What's on schedule. What's happening. Like, you know. But I think that is the format for all the. Right. Right. So that's why I think it's difficult to accomplish the marketing objective with the. I'm open to other proposals. And I think I circulated around to everyone. Dave Watkins, the William post editors, publishers, whatever title, article about finance and about the debt reclassification. And there was good history in there. I thought it's a good context. I'm not sure I aligned with everything that was, was said there. But it, it struck me as another, you know, another important thing to sort of. Another marketing avenue, which might be more effective is the William post. Oh yeah. We have a regular column in there or a regular article, you know, that discusses the issues that we're working on. Yeah. It's more than just the notes from the meeting, but something that would be more interesting. I don't know if we want to be creating more content. I mean, I think our meetings are public. They're recorded. We have minutes. We'll have a website. I don't think we need to. My neighbors won't look at any of that. So, I mean, I just know for a minute, they're well-educated, wealthy neighbors. They wouldn't. I'm just saying if we want to do marketing, I'm not necessarily saying that we do want to do marketing, but if the idea is that we want to get the word out and educate people, I think we have to be more expansive. I think before we even get there, I'll just point out. I know I brought this up on the ABC. I would love it for us to do a survey. That's fine. You know, I think it would be interesting to get a survey on public sentiment. Of the current spending. Are you interested in spending the budget? Like how people perceive an override at this time? Like we know, we know this is not a secret. We know we're going into an override situation next year. I would find it very interesting to get an understanding of baseline now in this moment in time. I'm not sure that you would ever get anything other than item well. Right, right. Yeah. First of all, if that's the case, then how is that changing from a year from now when we go into a vote? That's why we have to do an education to get people up to speed. We can't, it's not like you can ask a person you want to spend more or less, expect anything other than you want to spend less. Well, I don't think I would frame it that way. I think there are, first of all, I would venture to say that there are many different populations in town who have different interests and understand maybe how the money is being spent, who might say otherwise. I guess that's so interesting to hear you say that, Phil. I don't know that that's a foregone conclusion. So I would want to educate at the same time serving. Well, I think you can do that with a servant, right? I know. Because you don't say, do you want to spend more? Right. You say, do you want to spend more on taxes or do you want to lose services? What's the point of doing that? It's helpful to understand. Here's the thing. So education is very nice and education is important, but I think a lot about education and like the intention and purpose behind education. Because here's like the use case I always bring up. I know how to eat well. Last night I had chicken fingers and french fries for dinner. It is not a lack of education. Okay. Yeah. It's my, my go-to. It's not a lack of education that drove me to eat chicken fingers and french fries. Right. It's the circumstances. I was running behind. It was the easiest thing. It was what was in my freezer. Right. All the circumstances. Right. That drove me to make that choice as opposed to the lack of education. And I, I think that there's something to be said for education is important, but education alone, I don't think is going to drive decisions and drive action. I think it does also have a lot to do with the, how the education is delivered. Right. If there are all those, you know, cigarettes, right? People know cigarettes are bad for you, but if you put that in a giant, probably a warning label on the front of the package, if people who already knew cigarettes were bad for them, smoke less of them. Right. Which I think is a little bit, as we talk about education and we talk about marketing, we talk about communication. I think your point about how we get the message out. I think there's definitely too much, right? I think choosing our battles, figuring out what education we think is important and pushing it when we think it's important is likely to be more successful than talking a whole lot. And then people just kind of choose well, or we're over it by the time they need to actually make the decision. I think the more we need to figure out the actionable decision points and really focus on communicating around those, the more successful. And I think the survey idea, I'll answer first is that survey. And I thought, well, is that going to move us towards our goals? But I think if that helps us kind of shape, you know, shape that messaging to focus on what don't people like about this? And how do we focus on, not just do they like it? What do they care about? Right. What do they care about? And how do we focus on messaging on that? I mean, we can spend a lot of time on survey design. You know, one response rates would be an issue because I would guess it's more informed, you know, the people that will be involved. And then what do you do anytime you do a survey question? Are you informed people? Yeah. I mean, people like us will fill out the survey. I don't know. I think that there's a whole cadre of folks that are just really... Do you think we can get a 50 or 60%? Oh, no. I think that the most respond are people who just want to say no. Right. Right. But not informed. Right. Either way. They're the most motivated. Right. My point is that the response rate's an issue. Because you're not necessarily getting a random sample. Right. And then the second thing is that, you know, what are you going to do with each answer? So let's say 63% of the people say that they don't want to see it overrun. What do we do with that? Does that mean that we are going to vote against it or no? Well... Essentially, what do we do with the data once you have it? I don't think they can ask people if they want to know. Well, whatever. My point is that when you do a survey, make sure for every question say, what are we going to do with the result? Otherwise, it's not helpful. I think we're getting a survey next week, right? Right. Don't we have the vote for the excluded debt? Fair enough. Fair enough. Next Thursday? I wonder how many people know about it. Right. And I feel like... I know there's stuff on the website. I don't know if people are aware or still understand. And I read through the bullets and the FAQ today, and... Yeah, that's a lot. It's a lot, and I don't think all of it's as clear as it could be. So I'm a little concerned about that. Can I actually raise a third hand on Zoom? Oh, if at least... Oh, I guess we... We had public comment, but... I guess you could... We can... Nope. Nobody was on during the public comment portion. Okay. I hear you on the... What's going to happen on December 11th. Yeah. It's not clear. Yeah. Honestly, that could be something that we surveyed afterwards. Right. Yeah. You wanted to say, hey, you know, how did you feel about that? Why did you... I don't know. I guess one of my takeaways is the town isn't very well comprised of where we are from a financial situation. Right. Right. And it would be good for us to figure out ways to get them better. Right. Yes. I'm not sure how to do that. I'm not sure even what our message is at this stage. And I definitely think we need to think about that between now and when we're probably going to go in for open rides. Right. I think every year, I know for the past three years, maybe four years in the war, it's been flagged. It's been flagged. I mean, it's been discussed as near the front of the letter and several times throughout. So that's, it's not enough because obviously I think there are people who are still, many people are still unaware. And we haven't had one since whatever it was, 2013 and 27. Right. I think that's part of the issue is it's been so long and people, and we've had a couple of years where we've been able to fend it off. And so I'm just pushing every year, another year, which is sort of an expectation, which I mean, it's nice that we've been able to do that, but I think truly we, we are, we're pushing against it next year. Yeah. We're squeezed out as much as we can of the excess levy. And you volunteers to work between now and our January meeting on sort of thinking about how to better get the town more educated, be it surveys, be it publications. I mean, yes. I'm happy to think about it. And also that proposal. Well, all of the above. I mean, I guess at this time, what do you think are the largest, is it, so there are a couple of different ways you could go through that, right? You could go through it about trying to get people who know nothing to some education, right? That would be one population. You could also think about a population of people who might know that an override is coming, but might not know the particulars of how we got here and the work that's being done to try to make that manageable. Right? That's a different population. Then you might have a population of people who are very well in tune with what's going on and feel some kind of luck with it. And that would be another population when we were trying to change an opinion. Is there a particular population that we feel like is the most priority? Yeah. I don't have that. It's a great opportunity for a survey. I mean, yeah. We joke, but like, I guess that's my point of like, but I will also do some thinking on this and I will share in January. Um, hopefully the holidays should be a little bit more calm. I mean, it's interesting. The challenge that rolls through my head is how do I get my neighbors informed? Because I don't think they've ever been to a town meeting. I don't think they've ever gone to our website. I mean, I think the schools are a good connection. So, but most of them are in private schools. So they're not even necessarily involved in William school. But the, I mean, from the town, uh, two and a half overrides in the past that I recall maybe completely, I mean, it was sort of the school, uh, parents that moved the needle. And they have the communication mechanism and, you know, all that is pretty well influenced. And again, I'm not like looking to get an outcome, like two and a half overrides or not, or how big, or, um, I really want to, at this stage, understand how to help all the town's folks that want to engage, uh, understand better what our financial realities are. I feel like this is working with the town manager, like working closely. And some of it's for the, you know, what's up front for the next vote. And then what's on our website and what can we provide that would be helpful. Like I always think, and I, probably a lot of us here are the numbers people, but just seeing how that probably two and a half calculation works and what excluded debt is. I mean, excluded debt is debt. We're paying for the debt regardless of what you call it. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I don't know. There's a lot of language. The language. There's so much in there that if you're reading it for the first time. Or the 12th time. Yeah. Even the fifth time you're kind of like, yeah, it's a lot to think. And sometimes I think you see the calculation. I don't know if we can provide something a little bit more concrete that to a certain group who might verify something a little bit more than some of the verbiage does. That would be helpful. But I, it's sort of a, you know. I don't have any problem with this. You know, Michael has whatever monthly, I think a newsletter that goes out. That would be good. And, you know, no doubt that he would be open to including in that, you know, his perspectives on all of this. Yeah. I'm curious. I mean, this is just brainstorming. But, you know, what communication mechanism does it do the schools have with their parents and kids? Because there may be an already existing mechanism that I have no clue that can help get the word out to at least that subset. Yeah. I think the, so that would be PTO and they'll stay away from, in my opinion. To town politics. They'll stay away from town politics. Yeah. They will be specifically school related and then they have all the school newsletters but that will be specifically school related. They won't get into. Well, I guess I wasn't thinking of it as politics. I think it was just. It's on budget they don't get into. They stick strictly at the school level. Okay. For their communications and stuff. I guess the question. I mean. It's two thirds of it's spend. Right. Right. That's what I mean. But they do that in their first third. Okay. They post the budget and they put it on newsletters and everything, but they don't, they don't talk about town as much. Right. Right. If I'm wrong, but I feel like PTO is like barely where there's communication to parents. Okay. It will be specifically on PTO. Okay. Besides the school newsletters. And then that's where PTO will focus specifically on supporting schools. Even just asking them for advice on how best to communicate. I mean, it doesn't have to be through them, but they do it. So they have more expertise than I do. Yes. I guess I don't know how, where, what, what's, what's the goal? What's the, yeah. Well, the goal is to learn what are the best mechanisms for communicating with the whaling general public. And I don't know. I mean, we have websites, we have whaling posts, we have, you know, a bunch of possibilities, but frankly, I don't know what's the most productive one. Well, I think we got to get a message together. Right. Right. Right. I'm talking about the mechanism rather than the message. Yeah. But, and if the message is like, let's do a one-on-one and how town finances work, which might be a useful, not, you know, not for a large population, but some people might find that and kind of walk through the basics of the, that, that would be one whole thing. Right. Okay. I think the message also has a lot, the message is probably different, different mediums. Right. Go to, go on community, community forum on Facebook. You've got a different set of people with different levels of prior information on this than if you go to. The sad thing or the unfortunate thing with the community forum, it's, it's not anyone from the town, it's residents, and it's not necessarily fact-based, put it that way. What is the thing I just, I, and I don't really know, like, could we choose a poster? Yeah, we could. You could. Right. But it's, um. It, I'm not saying we should. Right. But hypothetically, right, if we want to post there, what we would post there and how we would format it would probably be very different from other places. Or is it should be that the town has more active Facebook forum to be able to educate, right? And I, I. Is that the better way than getting into a site that has a lot of. I pulled that totally out of a hat. Sorry, I shouldn't. Right, no. I mean, like, have me think about the various places that we could try to communicate, right? That is, would be on the list, right? It might be a terrible idea, but should probably be on the list of things we consider. But I guess my main point was that the message we want to crack and how we want to present it is probably different in the different mediums we could communicate. Right. I'm just laughing because I'm thinking, do we get Michael McCall a Twitter account so that he can post whatever he wants all the text? Absolutely. Yes. Do you want to put them on TikTok? Um, so I think the answer. This is all your own. Can we educate, right, or get this done? Well, so I think really the conversation we're having is we need to find a consensus around the population that we're targeting, the goal for any communication that's coming from us, the medium within which we want to do that communication and the message we want to send. So the only one that I care about on those is the message. Right. And then from that, I would get to the rest of those as, because, and I don't know what our message is. Well, I think there's some message that's probably kind of unpropercial. It is just the purely education focus. Like people should understand. Wayland by the numbers. Right. Yeah. Right. We agree with that. They talked about, you know, infographics. I actually wrote that. Yeah. Yeah. I looked at them, the EDCs, and it'd be great to partner with them on them. But they're pretty dense. I'm looking at this. They're either dense or superficial. It's tough. Even just the fact like 70% of our budget is schools. I mean, I had no idea. That's published every year. But I had no idea until I joined the committee. Yeah. Excellent. I think that fact, I think the fact about the weather on the world. Not that fact. Well, and you're right. And it's like, if you notice, okay. That doctor, right? So I'm waiting for you to notice. The report in the United States is like 15 pages, and it's, I don't know how to do it. I get it. I get it. But I got to start with it. That's something that they can be immediate. That's right. Yeah. Because when you talk about things like too dense, not enough, some of that is because of population. Yeah. Right? Like medium. So that's where. I'm speaking. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where we just need to think about that a little bit. But yeah, I think an infographic is a good place to start. I think that the new Whalen publication is probably helping educate a lot more people about things going on instead of the town Facebook pages that people get so much information true or false from. I think that that's one of the better mediums that we. I agree. And I think Michael Cole's newsletter is actually really good. I agree. And even we, you know, learned about the previous overrides that you sent around the article that was in the Whalen Post. Yes. I agree. I actually wonder if they should start publishing these newsletters in those, in that publication, because I will be honest, like I get a lot of like links for like updates for a town. I never look at them. Open them up. Because it's just like delete. It's easier to delete. Yeah. The information is out there. We can package it better. But you know, there's an, oh, there's a public forum right now going on down the hall. On the overrides. On the overrides. On the overrides. On the overrides. On the, uh, every slice location. Sorry. Um, and I've got, I've got my, my laptop. There's nobody there. I'm wondering that. Yeah. I can't tell you how many people, cause it's, cause I'm, I'm not participating. Right. I'm just, so there could be people online, but there's nobody in attendance. But I think, and I think I get it. Physically. Yeah. Right. Being honest, it's not necessarily either or. Right. A lot of it is that we need to, we can't count on people who come to us for this stuff. We need to figure out where people are and go to them. And the people who read the Wayland post, I suspect have some, but maybe not a ton of overlap, with the people in the Wayland community forum. Um, so I think there is a degree to which like the, it's not probably not just some of these channels. It's probably one of many of these channels. And it's probably a different message because the amount of time someone's going to spend reading the town warrant versus a Facebook post versus an article on the way on posts are probably different. It's probably the 30 second version and the two minute version and the 30 minute version of the state of the town numbers. Right. Like that's kind of, I think Iris put it well in terms of the, the breakdown. And I don't think it's pick one, one message in one place. It's multiple places with multiple versions of the message is, is the most effective. We can actually do that or not. We'll keep noodling on this and I think hopefully we can maybe have something that's more factual and information with the intention of just starting to provide the number. Um, and I hear you on that. Don't create more content, but maybe we just, I think we, we do need to clarify. Like, I think at this point, we don't know if it's going to happen next week either. I mean, if I honestly don't get a sense that a lot of people are, I didn't get my way. Engaged. Engaged or aware of this. So I honestly didn't get the way on post. It didn't arrive. It didn't arrive for me either. Like for the past two weeks, I haven't gotten it. Yeah. Um, but, um, I'm a little concerned that people aren't aware on the December 11th vote. And I'm concerned about how that was going to go. Yeah. Yeah. Because if it doesn't pass, um, we'll need to know. Right. So there's things that might be able to be done that. Okay. That's yeah. Kind of, where are we? That's, I feel like I don't know. And I feel like. Yeah. We'll see is the short answer, but free cash can be used on a one off basis to plug a hole as long as it's not seen as a continuing fund of operating shortfalls. So that's one thing that could be done, not a decision to do that. Okay. That's a consideration. Yeah. But I agree. Then the next step is, I mean, as we. Drop closer and it seems pretty clear that. If 27, 28 is an override. We need to figure out how do we. Educate the public and there's, there's a lot to be done. And I feel like it's fincom and we need to be working closely with. The town. The town and the select board and just kind of have everyone. Yeah. I. On the same page. Well, maybe even not on the same page, but at least. It's just the same fact basis. Right. And you know, like how least is town center? I mean, not that that's a driver for the override question, but it's like, you know, the room. A lot of information. Yeah. People are going to start asking more questions. Yeah. And so to try and get people up to a certain level. Yeah. Things might also change in a year, right? They just closed on the new property. Okay. So we'll see. Yeah. I'm asking some of the business. What they're thinking. Like they, they've heard from the new owners. Like, it's very exciting stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin Donuts. That's going to be a big tax revenue for us. Right. So I, I think things could change in a year. That's what they're talking about. I saw some of their notes and I was like, so where's this new Dunkin Donuts opening? Bank of America. Bank of America. No. Bank of America. Oh, thank you. Yeah. And Terrain is a new big store. It's going to be the Whole Foods. The Whole Foods. I think much of the whole plaza there is going to be that. So, and both of those open next year. Yeah. And townhouse, I guess a restaurant. I'm not sure what townhouse is. Someone wanted to put something in, sort of like cafe sort of thing in. Mirror. Somewhere down here. Yeah. But I think that is called townhouse. That might be what it was. Yeah. Sort of crossing the historical society. Yeah. And there was question whether there was parking or not. So. But yet, some things will change. Yeah. So. I wonder though, Rob, you're the newest on the committee and sort of freshest. And I've been here now for just over a year. I wonder if you might both team up with, sort of come back to January with. Sure. Sort of how to think about educating the town. Yeah. What the message might be. And so forth. In the context of that, what changes might be considered for the website. Yeah. Absolutely. It's, it's not a big website. I mean, it's like three pages, I think. It's a bit big, for me, fundamentally. I don't know if it comes down, but like, does anyone go there? Could I suspect the answer is no? So kind of, whatever. Yeah. I'm not saying it's the answer. Yeah. Yep. It's on the list. Right. It's also. Just like the community forum, it's on the list. The park stuff that you can then, you know, let people know where to go. Yeah. For sure. But. Okay. Yep. That's good. Bill, why don't you give more about the benchmarks. Okay. In terms of how to present them. Oh, okay. Not redo, but just sort of. Yeah. I think that one of the big questions is, are we, you know, taxing ourselves higher than others? And, you know, how do we stack up to peer communities? Okay. Okay. All of those things. Yeah. Because it's hard to have, you know, an interesting discussion when we're in the middle. Yeah. Because people are always looking at where are we high and where are we low. Yeah. And that's where we are in the middle, but it's sort of like at least browns is like we're not an outlier. We're not like weirdly. The tax rate, we're high. We're high. I know. I know. But we're lower on the tax bill than some of them here. The middle is the middle of the tax bill. Yeah. I think that most people probably don't know that. True. That's probably not necessarily what people expect. So I think showing that is the point. Yep. And that, you know, providing some. Yep. You know, that 90, whatever it is, 7% of our revenue is residential. Yep. I mean, that's just the reality. It's probably a key bullet point fact page and things like that. That's the, yeah. Yeah. You may not know this, but here's the picture. Exactly. 7%? On the order of that. Yeah. That's the kind of, when I talk about a Layland Post article, I mean, that's the kind, you may not know this. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. What, what form it gets out to people in. I don't know. 95%. Is that it? 95%. If we trust the economic development. Yeah. Which I think. Yeah. Bill edited some of the benchmarking spreadsheet that you had before. Cool. Anything else on that topic? That's the calendar. Plan FinCon meetings. Earl, do you have that in front of you? I'm pulling it up right now, but I think the more general question is going to be, um, our next meeting is scheduled for early January. And then it was one at the end of January, which is the, uh, the workshop for the, and, you know, my, my general feeling is that we were meeting frequently last year, maybe not getting a lot done, but meeting a lot. And I just want to make sure that we count a lot, a lot the time we need. That's really about all I have to say about it. If we feel like that's enough before the, before we start giving up articles and need free for frequently, that's fine with me. So I think that from my standpoint, I mean, things will develop and we'll see, and maybe we'll need a special meeting after the vote as to what that might imply. Um, but I kind of like to not use over, over use meeting times. Right. So we've got, we've got no meetings into some, no more meetings in December. That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. When do we actually get a copy of the budget? Last year we started seeing that about this time. What's the plan? When do we have something to look at? Like you had a capital budget? Are we still? I will get with Brian to get clear about it, but we don't have that at this time. Um, and I think January is not, it's going to be when we'll get that. For the capital as well. I think so. Because we've gotten capital budgets in November, October, November. Oh, all of them. But is it different now? I don't think that's. With the new capital committee. Yeah. Right. Because I saw Kelly last week. Okay. Saying that they're working on. One year. Five year. Yes. Okay. So that's. So they're doing good. They're good. I think they're going to do a lot. Then we have everything that we used to do. Exactly. Yeah. Their charter is the 10 year, but they wanted to spend time on the more immediate. It was for context of that. Okay. But we'll still need opportunity to consume. Oh yeah. Yeah. And like. We don't have to. The back and forth questions. The back and forth questions in the meeting. Town meeting last year. This calendar year was. It was very early. Something. It was May 4th. So it's a couple of. Several weeks later. So that felt okay about December. Not push more meetings. Because we don't have. Answers. And the big. On the operating budget side. We won't know things like healthcare costs until January. Right. But we usually. Usually see. See everything else. So we can start looking at departments. Yeah. And everything else. And those. Those. Healthcare is always. You know. The street. February. But. Like. Even without. We still had ample conversation last year. I feel like about the rest of the numbers. Right. You know. What. We. There were reactions. Right. So I. I agree. And so we should. December 15th. Is when it's all due to the town manager. The town manager. No. Oh. It might be as well. Um. But when. All budgets. Are due to the town. Department budgets. Are due to the town manager. And the town manager. I thought. I thought that was. There's a December 15th. Deb. I'm trying to recall. Specifically where it is. But I thought. We usually get a budget. By the first. You know. Within the first few days. Of January. That was what my expectation was. Is that we would get the. Their full. Okay. Budget. Whatever holes. Yeah. In there. I think last year. We had something. We were working with. And then we had. We had a preliminary. But. In our January meeting. Is what day. January 5th. First Monday. Yeah. And that's the. Warrant workshop as well. No. That's the. Select board. Oh. The petitioner. Okay. With select board. Yeah. Hours is on 28. Okay. Okay. Just for the petitioners. Okay. So just make sure. I understand that. The petitioners. Warrant workshop. With the select board. Would be people. Who want the. Want a warrant article. Reviewing. With select board. And clearly. For our informational. purposes. The 28th. Would be an internal. Workshop. Of us. Reviewing. With. It's a public. Workshop. As I recall. Yes. On the 28th. We review. We should have a draft. Of all the articles. And we'll review them. And assign. And we will assign that to. Yeah. That's our internal. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's. And select board. Okay. Um. Typically here for that. Okay. And sometimes petitioners as well. Yeah. The petitioners often come to that. Okay. Does any. Recall. Okay. Um. So. Assuming we don't have material. At four. January 5th. I'll confirm with Brian. Kevin tomorrow. That. That's our. That will be our next meeting. January 5th. Brian can get us material before. What day would work for folks to get together in December. 15th work. December. December. If Ryan could get us. You know. 80% of materials before. Where we want to meet. And. Go through it. I think it'd be. Probably worthwhile to have a. First crack. Even if it's a. Brief discussion of. That's fine. You know. Perception. Or. General questions. Probably out of town. 15th. But. Yes. The other thing we have on the 15th. For what it's worth. Is. We know how the 11th plan. Right. Yep. No it's not. April's not. possible. 15th. Carl. I can do it. Yeah. Brock. Can you be. So. Yeah. That should be fun. Yeah. Let's. I did feel like last year. We did meet. Times where. It wasn't necessarily. Really productive. Fair enough. Because. Fair enough. I would say hold it. If we can get. A version of the book. Yeah. If we can't get any numbers. We probably cancel. Yeah. Oh great. Yeah. If the vote. Doesn't get passed. Yeah. And just for everybody. Where. I'm gone. January 10th. Uh. 24th. Not 11th. Not calling it. Hopefully. You're welcome. To meet with us.
Um. So between those times. We're. Expecting to get. We. The preliminary numbers. So. The 15th. Right. In January. I don't. You don't. Okay. It's. I'm just trying to. Last year. I thought they have to give. Something by the end of the year. They couldn't have like. Polls and stuff. And I thought they tried to generally. Have it pretty much now. That's what I remember. Last year. By mid January. Granted. I know that. The numbers for healthcare. Will always lag. Is. All. Bargaining unit. Uh. Is. New. So. There's going to be. Placeholders. All. Employee costs. Because. We won't have contracts. Yes. And we'll get those. Whenever. Yeah. Okay. We'll see. That's the short answer. Um. And then the articles. Will get cut. Get to us. The 28th. Or just before that. January. January. So we'll definitely need. A meeting around then. To like. Yeah. To get it. So we'll. January maybe. Is that opportunity to. January 28th. We're meeting. Okay. And that's. We'll be there first. Thank you. Of that. And then. Starting February. I think we have like. Is it. Every other week. Or is it every week. We need. Placeholders. Placeholders. Twice a week. Starting February. Yeah. Okay. I had to look this up. And I have. The warrant article. Because I worked on this. The code. Last year. With Carol. So. All of the. Department budgets. Including the school budget. Are due to the town manager. To the town. Um. No later than the 15th of December. Yes sir. And then. Prior to the end of each calendar year. Unless an alternate. Date has been mutually accepted. By the finance committee. The town manager. By the finance committee. The town manager. Should submit. To the finance committee. A preliminary. Operating budget. With budget requests. Including capital. And blah blah blah. So. By the end of the year. It said. By the end of the calendar. So. We should have something. We should have an operating. A draft budget. Operating. Operating and capital. Yep. For the January 5th meeting. Yes. I'll remind my. I'm sorry. I just needed to. No no. That's good. A little. I know. When Brian. And I talked a little bit. About the December 15th. He wasn't sure. How much things. Would be able to. Would be usefully. Pulled together. Okay. Departments. By that. But. The budget seems. Very very soon. So will we meet. I know you just said. You're out in January. I think we should probably. I think we should probably. Meet. After the 5th. In January. Between the 5th. And the 28th. I suspect that's a good idea. Yeah. Okay. Time to start. Allocating articles. To folks. We won't be able to do that. Until the 20th. They won't do the 28th. But start. I don't need to take up time. With the meeting. But I'm curious. How that works. And you say. Allocate articles. Just choice. Just a signing. No. You allocate an article to me. What am I supposed to do with it? Work with the petitioners. Okay. To draft it. There will be sort of. They'll come to. Hopefully. A thoughtful draft. Initially. Okay. One of the first cuts. Is going to be. Does this really have financial implications? Okay. Then. Have to think through that. And put together pros and cons. Okay. Um. If it doesn't. There's sort of. Fuller to play. To put in there. Working with the petitioner. Working with the petitioner. And some of them are. Standard articles. So it's. Kind of. Take last year's. Right up. And you can. Like the survey. Right. The sales of cars. Yeah. All right. So. I come back with. I found that actually interesting. To be. To. To do. I think it was. There. You can really dig into some of this stuff. Yeah. Okay. It's. It was one of my favorite parts of last year. Okay. That's good. They felt substantive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So mostly. It's. It's a craft. Yeah. And then. We'll have. Responsibility to actually. Create the final. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. So you. So the process in general. I guess. For new people. For articles. Is. Is there a sign. That. We got them in draft. Form. We get. However many. 25. 30 articles. Whatever it might be. In a given year. We. They're assigned. So. Whatever. Five or six. There. Because the chair. Writes the letter. And. You work. With petitioner. To. To write up. The article. And. And there'll be. Select board member. Assigned each. As well. Right. And sometimes the petitioner. Is the select board. It's more of the recommendation. Like you're not changing. And you write the article. Yeah. Well you write their. There's the initial. Articles. Submitted. And then there's. The finance committee. Kind of write up. So we're assessing. What it is. And what this means. And what the implications are. But the article itself. Is not. Right. The article itself. Is what it is. As submitted. Yep. There's the finance committee comments. We write sort of pros and cons. And then. Whoever was assigned. Will present. That article. To the FinCom. And we vote on it. And then. You. Include the. Oh. Send your write up. And then once. The write up is. Been reviewed. By the petitioner. By the select board member. Everyone. Says this is the final article. Those are submitted. To go. To the chair. Whoever it is. At the time. Who's collecting them. To go into the. Warrant. Yes. So that's kind of a. Very quick. And I think. Starting last year. We agreed that like. If there's no. Finance impact. We are not going to be writing. Like adding a write up. As a finance committee. Whereas I think. Historically. They have. Last year. I think. There was a dozen. There were a number. So that was. That was really helpful. And also last year. Maybe not for the first time. But there was a number. That are kind of. Put together. As a consent agenda. Of this individual article. So that they. Don't have to be voted on. In town meeting. It's article by article. And so. Yes. And Carol. Is all about brevity. Yeah. So. Which. But you can't do. Any bullet points. Yeah. Which. Yeah. There's. You're not allowed. To do bullet points. They think. There's more. White space. If you have bullet points. But it actually means. You can read it. Easier. Yeah. We'll do a survey. On that. We want polls. No. So that concludes topics that I had for tonight. Anybody have anything else? Motion to return. Second. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All in favor. Thank you all. Thank you.