February 2, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript
February 2, 2026 - Finance Committee
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I think she is muted. I don't know how to mute her. Oh, there we go. All right, so I get to comment? I'm not at this time. Oh, was she? Yeah, potentially. Okay, yeah, I finally emailed someone. I was here at the beginning, but nobody was paying attention. I appreciate the technology. Did you want to make some comment? I did. Okay, okay, please do. Sorry for the juggle. Thank you. Okay, so I wanted to, I've been looking a little bit at some of the budget, and I really feel the Wayland Department's need to stop using taxpayer money for theoretical projects or for expensive testing of land that may be developed by commercials or individuals interested in purchasing it, and instead run the ideas past the voters of the existing real situation. For example, the Sherman's Bridge Road. For example, the Sherman's Bridge Road thing should have asked, you know, Sherman's Bridge, do you want us to upgrade it? And if so, you know, yes or no. And if we vote yes, then can we have such and such money to pay for the consulting firm and all this kind of stuff, which didn't happen. And, and the other one that I noticed that's new is the Holiday Road, 25 Holiday Road. You know, people want to, somebody wants money from taxpayers for preliminary design and engineering studies and appraisals. Well, this land lies at, between two cul-de-sacs and a couple of, you know, single family neighborhoods and a couple of cemeteries. Well, first, maybe you don't even own it. I mean, it has to be transferred. So maybe the first step is ask town, the town residents to vote. Can we transfer it to the town and tell us what that expense would be, if any, on us? And then if it is transferred, then you can ask, okay, can we transfer it to the town, you know, for development? And again, you'd have to get our approval. Oh, well, what kind of development? Are you talking about a development that's going to be conducive to that neighborhood? Is it going to dramatically change it? And then in terms of testing, if somebody wants to buy the land and it's approved to be developed, just like we have to do our inspections at a house or take our chances, the developers should pay for that, not the town and not the taxpayers. So that is basically what I wanted to say. And I think all of the departments need to look at what they're asking town payers to pay for and whether it is too soon. And they need to go a little bit back and get approval from the town payers, considering the town payers and taxpayers more than outsiders, prioritize us and then get approval beginning at the beginning. Thank you. Did you hear it? Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. Oh, we even have the, uh, the, the words, uh, what do you call it? The transcription appearing now. Thank you. Elizabeth Carter Sherman Bridge Road. But if you're saying anything, I don't hear you. Nope. Still don't hear anything, but I appreciate being able to say something. I will raise a hand when I start hearing you. That's interesting. That's interesting. One, two, three. You heard that April? We'll just start that. Can you hear us now? Yes. All right. Yep. Yep. I can hear you guys now. It went out again, Robbie. And I'm trying to fix the picture. Okay. There we go. Now I can hear you. Can you hear anything? Yeah. You can hear us. I can't hear you. I can hear April. While we're getting the truck. Yep. I just heard you. Items. Can be labeled as non-financial. The article is. I'm okay. That's what Brian said. You can go article by article. Yeah. I think we should go article by article. Hey, Brian had really most of. Brian had really most of the artist's fans. Let's say. Yeah. I. Article A. Recognizing citizens and employees for public service to the town. On financial. It's not. Yeah. April, you agree? Yep. Okay. Article B. Pay previous fiscal year on paid bills if needed. I feel like the source of income has written about this. Yes. Great. And. Thank you, Rob. And while I understand like I'm interpreting this point being that like. Negligible. Yes. You know? Negligible. And also like. This is really housekeeping. Yeah. This is really. Frankly maybe not even something that warrants voting on. Right? Like these are bills. They're bills can do. They're bills that are expected to be paid. Yep. However. I worry. I do worry. Yeah. That if this is your first time and you show up. And there's no commentary. I don't know if the article is actually very clear to like help someone actually understand that. And that's where like I personally do think the FinCom committee comments and favor and opposed is helpful. I agree. I mean. It's a short write up. It's been done before. I think it also. In terms of. People would look at this. There's. The estimated cost is whatever. For the unpaid bills. People would say there's a cost to it. And yes. It's from. You know. Transfers for funds already appropriated. Yeah. Or from. We have incurred the bill. We've already incurred them. And we are planning to pay them out of whatever budget. However. I think it warrants an explanation. Okay. Yeah. Exactly. It was the person who was assigned this article. I think should the copy paste that will be the last year with new numbers. With new numbers. Right. To change that. What's the criteria we use? Because obviously whether that's a financial impact is one. What I'm hearing is. We also have an obligation to explain the article. Exactly. Which is. Different from the. What I thought. No, no. It's. They're both there. They're both there. It's just a judgment call. That's. Possible in terms of explanation. You can do them all. Well. It's. It's just unnecessary. And this is one that. A couple of folks have identified. Necessary. That's the why. Historically. Way back. FinCom. Did an explanation. They did the present. You know. The FinCon comments. And then the. Arguments in favor. And arguments against. For every article. Okay. Yes. And then someone said. If there are. You know. Articles. With non-financial impacts. That seem. Self-explanatory. Does FinCom need to spend the time. Writing it up. Do people. Care. Are they interested. Do they need. That much more. Information. So. In those. Cases. There. To. Write. The full. Explanation. I think. There can only be. A hundred. Fifty words. Or less. In the. Change. In the article wording itself. Or the. In the. Opponent comments. Thank you. So. The proponents comments. Are limited. And then FinCom. Doesn't have to. Write it. But I do think. Anything additional. There. My understanding. As someone. Who knew this. Is that. There are no. Pros and cons. If FinCom. Takes the sense. That. Right. There's no. There's no. There's no. There's no. Comments. Discussions. Pros and cons. It's either. There are. Pros and cons. Like. Yeah. Right. Like. We're making. Two. Decisions at once. Right. If we decide. It has no. Financial. Implications. But. In fact. It's a. Fleshed out. Explanation. But. No. There would be. No. There would be. Those all go together. It's. FinCom comments. And pros and cons. That's what FinCom. And that. So if we say. There are no. Financial implications. They're. Also saying. There will not be. An explanation. There will not be. A breakdown. Of pros and cons. Which is a little. Weird. But. I guess. I misunderstood. I thought. We were saying. No. I'll figure it out eventually. I'm just confused. I'm saying. If there. If there are no. Financial implications though. It puts it in our lap. To say. Okay. Do we want to. Do a. Full write up on this. Right. And if there's. If we believe. There's a reason. That. And I'm comfortable. With the reason. That I would. I just think. It's one of those things. If you are new. I would. I would look at this.
But let's just make sure. Did Carl. You on board. Yeah. I am. I think you'll find examples. Last year. Where there was openings on that. But there was a thing. Okay. Pam. Yes. Iris. Bill. Rob. April. Yes. Okay. Current year transfers. If needed. Same. Um. I think it's just. When you get to the end of the year. And if you. Just. Transferring from one account. Just literally. Just literally. It's already appropriated. Not even like. Moving it to free. Moving it. Moving it. Well moving. Not. But moving it from one department to another. Okay. Okay. So. Write it up. Or not print it up. I think we should. Do an explanation of what that is. Okay. Is that I guess. For a lot of these. My go-to stance would be. If there was an article about it last year. And there was a write up. I guess. An every year article. It doesn't. I wouldn't use that as a criteria. To the degree that. We think it doesn't need a write up. I would encourage us not to write it up. Or keep it. I mean. This is going to be. The largest warrant. Ever. I think. With 52. Articles. Now down to 50. So. And I'm not sure the. Prior ones were actually read. For word. Very often. But nonetheless. We're weighing in. So. We're all on board. April. You okay with that as well? Okay. Next one on the list is choosing town officers. I propose that's not of financial implications. I agree. I agree. Okay. In hearing reports. Similarly. No financial implications. Can someone remind me if there's any reports out? Yeah. I skipped a few. Or. No. He just skipped all the way down to the list. Only the ones that have been checked. But at any rate. The here reports. I can't remember. I think it's just. I think it's just. Reports. Listed. Um. In a back of. I'm looking here to say 24. Okay. Okay. You can go back from the same. Reports. I don't think so. Yeah. Last year we said nothing. Let's see. Oh. These were just updates to the actual code. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm aligned to that. Okay. Um. Sell or trade vehicles. Did we write that aside? You wrote that up. I wrote this last year. Yeah. Excellent. Thing. What. And I don't think I'm signed up to do it this year. But my. Or no. I am signed up to do it this year again. And. And my commentary on this is. It's one of those things again that's kind of interesting. At home. I'll be. At home. We sort of debated whether or not this should even be an article. Because on the one hand you wouldn't make the assumption that. The departments are. Doing all of the analysis. And. Correct. Sort of like. Hey. It is time to get rid of this car. It no longer merits. Oh. It's also in their budget. So we actually have reviews of their budget. Right. Um. But I. Would also say that. You know. As a. Individual who's interested in understanding. Sort of how these decisions are made. And understanding. Because. Obviously. We're. The town is getting rid of an asset. Right. And. And that asset thing comes with. Cost. To replace. Right. Like I. I could go either way. But I certainly. The thing to note. Is if we don't do a write up. Some of the details. That I put in my write up. Would not be made available to the public. The detail. That I thought was helpful. As. In my own opinion. Last year. That I included. Was. Why we were getting rid of the vehicles. And I think that. Again. Just like. My own personal opinion. Good to know. Good to be shared. Good to know. All will be listed. With the same reason. They're getting. End of life. The maintenance cost has gone up. Higher than the. It makes sense to keep. So. I'm not sure. It's not included in the article. It's not included in the article. It was only included in my write up. Yeah. So it's one of those things. Of like. But I'm not sure. It's going to be new information ever. I see. So. It might be something. Right. I suspect that. 95% of the time. Right. The end will be. It's. And that's why. I mean. In some ways. It's part of the budget process. But. I'm. I'm not like strong on this. It's all of you. Because. Again. Like. I. Write it up. If. Everyone's going to make that assumption. It. It's. You know. Especially folks who are newer. Like. What's your opinion? Well. I mean. To some extent. I vowed to the will of the person who's going to be writing it up. Oh. If you want to write it up. No harm to it. But I don't think that. No. I mean. We do this on behalf of. The town. On behalf of the town. Right. It's for people to read. Make good decisions. Yeah. This goes to a vote. They have to vote on this. And I don't think it should be. Before I joined FinFam. And I read this article. I can pull you a copy of my work. Where I wrote with my little notes. Why are we doing this? Yeah. Yeah. Where's the data? Right? And. For someone who wants to make an informed decision. To me. That is part of the informed decision making. Or else. It shouldn't be an article at all. And we should just give the. How we directly. Exactly. Exactly. So that's my point of like. Why do we have this article? Clearly we have this article. Because there's. Something in our procedural. Code that requires it. Which means that. Should we not be giving people. The information. I don't know. I think. Just looking. Go ahead. Looking at. The article. Exxon. Write up. That was done. Okay. Just like. A few sentences. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like the. Net benefit. Right. I. I definitely. Understand that there. To keep the warning short. But. The article becomes. Far more understandable. At like. 0.05 percent. Increase. So. I'd bias. On something like this. Because. Again. It's much more understandable. At. A very small. You're taking a boat. Carl. Before you go. I just want to. Add another. Dimension to this. It's a 120 million dollar budget. In fiscal 26. Hmm. Um. What. Is. Negative. Yeah. Um. One percent. And I'm not suggesting. There's a. That's. The dividing line. That's over a million dollars. One point. Three million dollars. How much. Were we proposing. To sell the vehicle for. Last year. A couple hundred. A hundred. And. The. Those are. People. At some. Point. I guess. I am with Bill. You want to write it up. You know. I have no objection. But. I. Did think. We oughta take that. Negligible. Right. Term. Which is in the. Town. Code. to the county standpoint now vote okay carl is this gonna write up uh let's get it let's write it up okay pan you want to vote with that i would say write it up okay i was here on board okay all right april your view yep okay okay so it's unanimous it's unanimous yes thank you uh reaffirm remote participation at town meetings i'm going to say the bill you're the point yes no i've talked with tom faye and dave bernstein and everything one of the confusing things is that this is not the actual doing it yeah this is trying to get permission the letter's already written it's the same letter as they wrote last year uh and so the idea is that none of the group of people i talked to thought it was necessary to write anything about yep got it i'm fine with that anybody want to discuss their abuse okay um mgl chapter 60 section two somebody have it in front of them to know what this is does update up to 25 on past due tax bills and so brian's comment was minimal yeah yeah discussion of this one i have notes of no financial impact that's where i lean as well anybody have different views i think we're all on board with that one and next next is uh chapter 53 section 18b carl i think you flagged these as potentially not that one okay i forget what it was but i didn't think it did have an impact publishing information regarding that yeah thank you no financial impact okay uh that was our and now we're on eps okay and this is um one third chapter 138 section 12 d and i think just having an explanation i think it should be write it up for now a little bit more i would agree because i think if all we have is a we're going to share our comments it's going to be major and that one was conversion as i recall and the next one is additional liquor licenses right that one would also i think the sense of the room is again yes i think that should be written up okay uh print free digital legal notices i think we spend very very little dollars on printing so i think doing a print free is pretty minimal financial it's actually savings yeah it is it's not a big deal and probably
yeah first and it's not for the law
so we okay with no write-up on this one i am okay next one general bylaw prohibiting cryptocurrency machines which just strikes me is how is this a town issue
why isn't the state figuring this one out but at any rate views on calling a no financial impact
i don't think there is financial impact right i think it's it's going to be more than ethical issue right yeah and u.s dollar yeah issues of pension this is uh seeking authorization to issue pension fund boat uh article w uh bonds or notes this one's pat for i think this is the first of those essential articles where asking permission we're asking permission to consider it which absolutely has no financial impact because it's just permission asking and is essentially getting degrees of freedom right and sort of in reaction to some of the commentary we heard tonight um this is that first step of asking the townsfolk their opinion on the matter before actually continuing to pursue the option um but to be clear if we ever issued a note i think it needs to be flushed out yeah sorry that's where i was going is yeah but if we actually did the ramification is intensely financial and i do think it needs to be flushed down which does the asking for permission yes yes it does there will be no financial
if we were ever right now do it there's no financial impact in the immediacy but there's no way to determine what right now there's no financial impacts but i do think this is a tricky strategy there is no way to determine what we're asking for though what the potential implications it could be lots of free money or it could be very expensive but i think helping people understand the strategy well just what it all means yeah that's fincom comments yeah you know gives that explanation yeah i'm not sure it's going to be doable and you know i don't know 100 words yeah for 150 words and ultimately i don't know this but i'm not i mean if someone and iris shared the point on this one yeah this is him i might need your i might need your expertise here and explaining i mean i think i understood the mechanics of what they're posing and i would personally say it's kind of risky right like it's it's a you have to feel confident forecasting no it's risky both ways if you don't go forward with this you're exposing yourself to market risk that could be catastrophic right so they're not doing this so i all that needs to get fleshed out i think it needs to get right now but it's like i i think it certainly would get written up before we would issue a bond but i mean but i think they there are infinite scenarios to try and help people get you know up to speed on this i do think maybe to that point the fact that you're talking about all this is potentially an argument okay absolutely i think even the fact that okay this is just to ask permission to study and it'll be a further vote before there's any actual issuance or things like that right like this would be very unfair to people if we don't actually i i don't i look forward to seeing the write-up i don't think it's possible to write it up in a way it's a bit of a slippery slope because i think there are all these articles that could lead to future articles i mean even like prop two and a half do we go into pros and cons of prop two and a half even though we're not specifically they're asking for permission for a financial tool is that not how you see it like they're they're asking specifically for like to to have the opportunity to employ a financial strategy so we should explain what that financial strategy is to people so they actually understand what they're agreeing to i think i agree with that and i think maybe one thing that i i haven't gone through this in depth is the understanding of whether this is they're asking permission to use that financial tool in the future at their discretion or whether it sounds kind of like what i'm hearing is that they're asking to start down the road to maybe eventually using this financial tool but they're asking for the state legislature to give us the ability to do this and so that's where the next step on this is it's i mean we don't we pass this we have no new power right all we have the power that they would send a letter bring another article to actually do something the legislature but i'm okay with writing it up okay all right i'm not pushing back and i look forward to reading it again i appreciate it um next one that was on the acquisition of permanent easement in advance of temporary easement at town center this is this is mine and bill whitney yeah okay is there an economic impact well when we interviewed bill whitney and then i followed up with an email he said you know nominal price of this town part of its town land and the agreement with town center is we were getting even for nominal costs and so he said he didn't think there was a financial impact okay but isn't there is this so that i mean you can expand the mass central rail trail i think so yeah i think that's the rail trail right yeah i think so just make the argument that that should bring more people through like the rail trail in the summer gets a lot of activity and being able to connect it and i know in concrete it gets a lot of activity like that to me there's actually a pro here of connecting it allows for and they built it out at the other end um the eight miles over in weston into wall family they built that like little train section across like to me i would make the argument that connecting it actually allows for more traffic to come into wayland and through wayland um and right through town center i mean i was fairly neutral on that yeah there is some cost and i think it raises you know other issues uh i have a they switched that from bill whitney to tom fay and tom fay and i have a conference call in third and talk about more but i i'm okay either way i won't push back too hard on that i don't have a strong feeling either way i i guess my sense is again i think the financial impact is probably quite negligible but i think people might be interested in learning a little bit more than what they would like out of a 150th board i don't i don't like to come back with the article you use the word purchase and it's sort of open-ended yeah i know what the intent is yeah i know how it's expressed but that could open up a big yep i'm okay with what they were full of money okay okay with where you know i would say uh tom fay
the next item is uh green burial i guess i think you had a point on that yeah absolutely okay no no i appreciate that and then mending town code chapter 36 1 i think no economic impact anybody have another of you no hearing none planning board appeals
again in the meeting and subsequently you didn't see yeah he said it actually may save because it moves things off and they pass on so good uh within the long term was that we're going to be a write-up or not no write-up on that right thank you yep long-term water supply construction funding
yeah i was surprised at this one
tagged but i definitely will keep it on the financial impact
i don't know
it's water rate so it's not down budget is i think that no i did but yes and carl you're on that one right yes uh peddling hawkers and solicitation which is just
surprised i just go to town i spoke with tom fay and trudi
i'm fine with that so no no write-up no write-up okay sorry thank you accepting gifts of land if needed financial impact and to my knowledge there's nothing pending housekeeping zoning no financial impacts amending flood claims in the federal blood protection district yeah question fine no it's okay um sorry i i my view is a little small so i just is it bigger on your laptop sorry i'm just just curious
that one i spoke with bill whitney and with uh for the whole
and accessory dwelling units which we did write up that was one that we did write up last year we did last year and the fact that people seem to be asking for larger units which generate taxes and fees to the dollar okay the the i think this is just moving from the uh buy right versus having to get permission because if it's a larger unit you don't have it by right but we'll await the right up i'm fine sorry can you back up to mm was that a write up or no no right up on mm thank you yes yes right up on nn right yep thank you okay continuing multi-family housing west sub-district amend maximum dimensions this is the one where specific uh elevation limitations could be
and it was identified as no right up needed by brian kevenny comments suggestions i don't understand that i know if you're adding i know potential for development that would take place on the system by law there's a financial impact there's a potential financial impact i think i think this should be yeah april you're i think the point person on that one i think that's one of the ones i gave up you gave it up who who took it uh
i'm not i think that was one of the ones i don't know if we were giving that one to rob or not
my chart shows april i know it was when we talked on friday i understand i gave carl a couple so i didn't change the chart so i didn't change it either so let's talk again okay thanks uh the next round mounted solar photovoltaic installations uh you know two two comments one one in talking to bill whitney and rava hummel they don't see an impact the the caveat is that it may get a re-write because they had not coordinated with energy and environmental committee or energy and climate committee and so they're now coordinating and we might have it rewritten or might even be withdrawn but as of now they they don't see a financial impact yeah is it likely to get a financial impact after i don't think so okay it's they were they were worried that some of the language might be uh more prohibitive than makes sense and so we're having the practical solar people look at so not sure what the status will that end up understand but not as of now continuing to identify if that changes we can always change our lives very soon um and the next two are on dogs qq and rr i'd say i did not talk to the attorney's work on these but i feel like this is a negligible financial impact and i think it's probably self-explanatory yeah yeah invisible house numbers negligible financial impact i would propose and then the next several um sherman's bridge second pedestrian walkway so it's not a financial the proponent suggested it should cost us 100 grand now you can ask what's negligible and what's not but that's not there's no engineering study that says that there's no you know practice so i think like that yeah yeah i think 100 grand is a number that's i actually i actually have a question in general and just in general in the sherman's bridge is it because that's part of the capital plan that all of this is coming up that all of a sudden they want to have a say in what's happening with sherman's bridge because there's no nothing i guess that i'm seeing that saying sherman's bridge is going to be repaired at this point in time i'm assuming it might be in the capital
so i've been attending all the um board of public works meetings and so there is a lot going on there and there's a lot of objection to it from our residents and so you know i don't know what will happen but but yes there's a lot going on there is not a sherman's bridge reconstruction article though is it no these are all petitionable yeah that i've wondered about this well and i'm wondering if what spurred it was like it's part of the capital plan so i think that there was some determination that there was a safety issue on the bridge as it exists and then the initial work by dpw was oh the simple way to deal with this is to make a steel bridge or whatever i i haven't gone into the details and there was some momentum down that path without ever talking to neighbors or others about what do we really want for sherman bridge and it's a really unique and kind of beautiful wooden bridge um but it may not be fully safe and then there's issues of you know vehicles that are too big for it that are using it and cut throughs and lots and lots of issues um so but at the end of the day it would still need a capital project right to start before like all of this is almost requests of something that we have no plans of doing unless there's a capital plan budget associated with fixing the bridge oh i don't think that's right i think they are
what they're doing is if they only say it's a repair job they don't have to get voter approval if it's a substantial renovation or reconstruction they do which is why they won't put on the it was never but they're significantly changing how people will use it yeah i think it's controversial enough we should probably do a write-up even if we know well there's the end the
have to take a strong position one way or the other but i think we should identify what the impacts are as well as let's just think about the following the handful of articles all put them under financial impact and write them up or yeah i think if we don't write them up there's only 150 words that the petitioner can include and i think it's not enough to explain yeah maybe i should probably see i'm sorry i'm sorry say again i did a revision of one of my two articles you can email it to us that'd be great well it doesn't have to go through the town i'm not sure um i do think some of these didn't sound like they had financial impact the neighborhood agreement ones are the two that i was wondering because that's more of like get them to discuss right hold a meeting and yeah
well i think the five percent of eight minutes there too and that's a matter of three a couple's times yeah i thought yy and eb are both kind of minimal financial impacts as well they're a little less clear exactly what they're asking for but then why why are you here i'm looking for people who are confident i agree rob i have handouts from the last meeting for you that um i can give you next time i see you okay but so let's let me make sure i'm following the walkway yes financial impact the rest of them no financial impact but they might need some write-ups so here's the thing remember 150 words 150 words if you know if we don't go about that i understand i just not sure folks like that's a consideration as well yeah i'm not sure that there's the right write-up for sherman's bridge is on any of these articles right is and i'm not sure where the forum is to make that happen and i haven't seen the actual write-ups of the articles yet from town manager so i've only seen the small submissions that were on the pdf so it wasn't enough to really understand the meat of it to so can we kind of come back to those a little bit once we figure out right up we'll be back on wednesday but this so we have a we've gone through it all uh long-term facilities planning uh that was uh xx x okay are we okay with that what were we doing sorry write up xx we will do a write-up okay bobby what's happening i think it's working now yeah so don't mess it up mess up
was there any other ones were yy and zz both write-ups or no no write-ups on those two on those too at this time yeah unless there's other input that we've received yeah we'll have to get signs for yy understood but that's not it's substantial less than one percent of the pound budget yeah so can i ask a question now once we look at all of these with the um no write-ups are we going to be looking at potentially redistributing articles
loads i'm turning to carl as master of the article allocation someone win still have all of my articles
we should actually because two articles have already dropped out understand as well and at the moment you you know cam as uh responsible for niya some of my drops um no write-ups that's for sure
and so we're together again wednesday we don't think about that and come up with a plan for wednesday
so april i didn't get the detail of what you were proposed to give up so if you and i can talk tomorrow we can if you're going to redistribute anyways to you now then i don't have to do anything because i haven't gotten any of my articles so i haven't started anything on my side but i've given you the option of choosing correct yes no i um i appreciate that i think i lost one in mine maybe two so i'm down to seven that's what i don't know which one goes long yeah recognize citizens a and p sorry not p um anyway i think we should give carl some time to kind of get back to us do you want us to send you an email if we have like maybe a suggestion would that help or would that not only request those suggestions don't don't start allocating things for everybody else if you guys have a specific point that's all what you can tell me okay but um okay i may not be able to get to fill those i know i may not be able to leave too far on wednesday night okay but if i get um i will have a little time tomorrow to think about this and i can circulate for like consideration and then go there right yeah but i think you lost a few the uh i know iris you've got a lot of word documents uh this is anyone else gotten word documents i don't know that too i mean i don't know i just got it for brian i know i know i saw that i got something yeah curious i don't know yes yeah in past years you've gotten the whole thing and it's all your word documents for each article so i will put it on my list to check with trudy who i think is the well i think it would be um um brian oh jalen or uh is it abby jalen probably is still the point
you got the yours from brian though as i think i was copying those anything else on article moving at this time i think that's it so carl we do want to put a agenda item to reaffirm the assignments and the ones that we're not going to take action on or not going to vote we're not going to beat the pros and cons on for for wednesday we could go on back right now oh okay not not the reassignments but i think we just spent some time on yeah i went through them all i don't have them my notes doesn't happen but i'm comfortable with where we got to just to vote on on which ones are not doing write-ups yeah or i've checked off the ones that i think they should agree or not you want to go over that list sure and then we'll go does anyone else have it so just make sure that i have it listed too so i'm like i was tracking it trying to track it when we went through do you want me to read them yeah yeah actually your eyes are probably better than mine no worries because i'm sitting in front of a computer it's the only reason um article a i have no write-ups i'm just going to put i put seven zero zero for no write-ups on all of these so article a article b article j hang on hang on b we're doing b and c b is a write-up oh b is a write-up okay sorry the next one it has not is j yes correct so choose town officers no j um k here's here reports no write-up p reaffirm remote participation q the chapter 60 r chapter 53 um you allow print free digital legal notices v mn general bylaw for crypto bb green burial cc chapter code town chapter code 361 ee planning board appeals ii peddling town code jj accept gifts of land ll housekeeping zoning mm mn flood plan pp ground mounted solar qq chapter 91 rr penalties ss visible house numbers yy uh safety signs for sherman's bridge and zz um protect residents and all vru of sherman's ridge road and uh uh vv and ww the neighborhood agreements um you want to do those two i wasn't sure on those yep looking around yeah yeah i'm sorry you want to do them as a write them up no not write them up
just affirming it
so the only sherman bridge write-up is the python weight limit tt2 the second pedestrian walkway yeah oh and the second pedestrian right yes so as recited all in favor of not running those up or we need them who's who's making the motion do it i move that we uh accept that the list that was just presented okay and second okay pam and carl okay i'm in favor pam yes all right yes i'm in favor and april you're yep okay seven zero zero yeah that concludes that order of business one quick question you mentioned 150 word limit is that for the write-up and those pros and times that's just for the way that's that's just for if we don't do it right then the proponent of their all only is limited to 100 000 yards so that is part of what we're taking into account or something cannot really be explained and under the doors we want to make sure i didn't get understood but that's right we have a word limit i guess no okay you can do as many pages as you can
there are restrictions i don't think you'll have a problem with word limit on me and you're not allowed to use bullets i mean there's other sort of restrictions you never know if the way i write that remedy is your breath um so we have one article that uh iris sent around for potentially acting on and it's a good example article yeah i sent it um i don't think it's done i had some questions and thoughts for folks um so i sent this and there were a number of things that i included and i want confirmation i sent a copy to brian kevin but i haven't heard that from him um a couple things that i want to call out here so um from last year to this year the write-up is slightly more relaxed in tone it's less formal in tone um in addition to that in last year's write-up i discussed and went more into the background of just general sped spending year over year and what those amounts were i took that out like first i i wasn't sure how much it was really important to the reserve spending at this point if people feel like that is helpful information to understand what the total spending looks like every year i can move that back in but that is something i did take out the other thing that i'll note is while the current balance is 500 000 in the memo that brian kevin sent he did say that he is that the amount is expected to be fully expended by the end of the spending so they will use that again um so that really at the arguments in favor and arguments against i did not really touch the arguments favor arguments against i feel like stand the arguments in favor all made sense the arguments opposed i remember last year had been feel quite right and it feels even more reinforced now that this is just an annual funding bucket um which is what the arguments opposed right i remember our conversation on this right this is really an operational expense and and if they continue to use it in this way um and i'll be honest like my own personal opinion is they this is really an operational fund they it's not really reserved but it's not being used in that way the challenge is sped and i think it will be for fiscal year 27 is that it is lumpy of course and we don't know what it is until you know september this year but so the idea of a reserve fund beautiful it's a beautiful island i don't think anyone like i personally have no problem with the idea that we would set aside funds in the event that we end up in a year where it's more than expected however however if every year it's more than expected then are we are we actually baselining enough it sounds like that's exactly what i take away is we just aren't baselining enough and i think when we think of our movie rating when we think of the requirements that we are held to as a town where to maintain our ratings part of that is that we are not using free cash for operational expenses continuously and this kind of looks like that to me well it our free cash is you know rather substantial um at this moment i mean you know i wondered why it isn't a bigger number that would be able to absorb more of the lumps so but that's just why i remember because you've got estimated at 300 and then actually in the verbiage that's what i thought it was that i didn't have to that that was so so i know like initially it said 152 tbd so maybe it was always expected it might be higher that it's going to be 300 but well i think that we said i know that's not hard but i can't yeah you know i can't touch that part so i just copied that is directly from the words off um which is why the numbers don't match most few places especially 300 is what was in his method so we don't need to vote on this tonight no i'm just looking for feedback um do people think that the the part that i took out of like the yearly spending total sped is that necessary do people feel like that was helpful information do people feel like hey it's nice but it's not really that impactful to us having at this point this um reserve fund has been around now for a number of years people maybe have a better sense of what it is and really we need to focus on the way it's being used and less so on the lumpiness of spent funding it's up to you all but that's that was really what i was looking for feedback well and as well as just for new committee members and all committee members just to see what a write-up looks like and sort of get a sense of what this is all about so open to feedback comments well you just had a sense in that last year about like what the it was it was misogynist but it was a it was both a meaty sentence i i tried to work it in and just like it's jarring it's a bit jarring right because the whole thing is about the results and then there's like a whole line that's just about general sped spending i i was okay with it out um just as far as this goes i think sped continues to be uh unknown amazingly unknown from a budgeting standpoint right which i think i expect right like it is unknown it is challenging to budget for it um
as an outsider you know not having read these before i mean the impression i get not just the sample point of one is that it's very technical and that uh you know if you're writing for a sixth straight level when you're writing an article in the washington post or wall street journal to get sort of lost yeah and reading this yeah oh yeah uh sample point of one so there are you know thousands of people in this town so it's not easy to follow what the real impact is all right i i thought it was okay i think the middle paragraph i just would change the order a little bit okay um we have the the 2023 annual time meeting authorized the creation of this fund starting 150 so that was actually for fiscal year 24. so then i think i could go to the next so this bring this sentence up about for fiscal 24 and 25 the town approved so just move that up so so it's chronological yes yeah okay and probably in the 25 in what i'm using and so we're using through we're using both annual town meeting which is a different year than the fifth year which is right so i can also just clean that up because this year yeah the other thing that comes before i turn my question at uh which may sound overly simple why should i care and so in other words to start with a sentence it says here's why you should care because i'm not sure that that comes across me got it okay i think some i mean each article is kind of the right of this relative to the to the article itself yeah i mean i'm a sample point of one it just it reads like it's written by an accountant's finance person i if i handed this to my students i don't think they would understand it they're college students but again sample point of one and so take it with a grain of salt but that would apply to every article you're saying no no no oh really oh no no no because this reads pretty straightforward to me but i've been through this yeah and you may be more finance than maybe i don't know but i mean like most people may not know what free cash is but what reserve is so if you don't have that language free cash is unique to own finances so it's that's a bizarre one to me still but i understand it anyway i mean i guess inside that point is there room to define some of that stuff in the warrants because i think it's an excellent point that there will be terms like free cash that we use that people might not know and everyone explaining what free cash in every single word and article references free cash seems well it's about no but this is something obviously we could put up on the website yeah um sort of basically at the glossary page at the front that says like firms you're going to run into articles that you might not otherwise yeah i don't think the warrant is the place for that necessarily i don't know if they have any added to this something like that i think it's actually not a bad suggestion i don't think we know it's been done before um just because it has it doesn't mean it shouldn't be well it actually is pretty elementary and i don't think it would take that much space and i think if there are people who are new to reviewing this give a quick explanation that kind of shoves a lot of light and i might be able to fold it into the finance committee report uh as far as a you know a page in the back of that i'm i'm supportive and especially free cash because it's like what's free about free cash right that's actually our money you know it's not free and it's true like once you think you've been talking about yeah yeah but not everyone is familiar with those terms and there's going to be you know other items as we'll see in the budget uh reserves being you know substantial reserves being set aside for bargaining unit contracts if you like that are not part of the current personnel budget so i'll try to start putting that together that'd be great other terms yeah i really like that idea and this part of me looking at last is warren the term is used 34 times and never defined right is that right which one which term free cash okay yeah and and we first do it on the capital budget when we lay things out and you know spending sort of limits that have the past but we believe i'm not defined it so yeah i'm not sure i actually you know i'm literally suggesting this but you know give it right up to your neighbor or your husband or wife or whatever because we're all sort of insular and we see these terms all the time so nice um and a small point emails from meeting proper now all three words are capitalized atm i think so we have the last order of business for tonight is initial reactions to the budget that we received um and next uh monday uh i'm expecting that we will have uh dr fleischmann uh and kirstein from school uh brian and michael from the town um and uh maybe kelly from capitol plain um all in one meeting all in one it's complicated to schedule i'm sorry what day is that monday monday um brian right now has i think he said 50 slides to walk through he said that's great brian let's put 40 of them in the appendix and then let's have 10 to go through so this will be the time to really dig into the budget just giving a heads up i'm sorry that is just like throwing the fire hose in our face it's just i think turning it full left hey how even if we get his presentation and we started looking at the budget i don't know if we're gonna have time for q a and have even another schools and to even consider capital on top of that for one meeting i mean unless we're gonna be here till two in the morning no we're not gonna be here until three in the morning let me drop capital let me drop capital and just go with schools in town it's and i i think the capital plan right now as uh considered by the cipc is not does not have alignment with the town management so there's work for them to do together to come to what they want to propose but the town plan budget and school budgets are pretty well coming together there's still some unknowns like i think we just i just i guess keep giving feedback general feedback is i am just overwhelmed like having done this this is my seventh time through this and this is the latest i know we've gotten this information typically we've gone through the the capital budget in the fall i appreciate that we have the capital planning committee and that was new and they've been working on things to try to prioritize but we're not getting any really much of the information i mean we have the preliminary budget and i appreciate that there was you know a lot of work in it done in advance um but seeing but but we're just seeing finally seeing all this detail at this juncture we're at the beginning of february and we've gone until march 15th mid-march so to do all of our articles we do all these budgets you know that the operating the capital five-year we haven't even and then we've got to add 38 million in yeah i think it makes a discussion on that there's just there's a lot and i think it's the timing is it's frustrating to be on this committee and just be getting that information now so and i'll say for myself i that makes it tough to feel like i'll have enough time to synthesize get all my questions answered and be able to actually 100 support that puts us in an awkward position of either supporting something that we don't fully understand or having to come out and say i cannot support this
any suggestions it's tough right because the suggestion is to get the information sooner obviously we have the time scheduled we will go through it i think um you know if we need more time to be sure hopefully we can get that um i'll think on that i i mean yeah that i and there was a suggestion that we wouldn't look at capital on the february 25th and i said no need to bring it to us at that stage just let it go to town meeting we'll have the open conversation there okay so i i said that just so you know but is the is the capital budgeted into this into this budget say that in april sorry isn't capital included into this so if we don't have is it because they don't have a five-year plan or so we the fiscal year 27 capital uh items that cipc has recommended has not got alignment with town management okay the year 27 and there is no fiscal year 28 to 31
capital would be needed to be added into this budget so is it added as what they proposed so that hasn't been determined yet but to be clear we do have an operating budget now for both the town and the schools the payroll expenses and unclassified there are some numbers that are still floating in particular the health care costs is not locked in yet uh but there's a plug number in there at 12 percent increase from last year and so it is to my understanding 100 of the operating budget is is here in front of us now and that's what will be the topic uh next monday and so go in that with all the questions that we have and with what they proposed right now just want to make sure i'm reading this right are we saying that we need three million dollars more than the levy no not than the levy we're under the levy by seven hundred thousand dollars okay thank you but the spend is up by three point oh wait a minute because i'm looking at the tax work paper and it shows negative three oh seven two so i'm like unused levy capacity does that mean that we're over by three million no i'm not sure what you're looking at the tax work paper spreadsheet on brian's the the first page or the third page actually in brian's pdf has the overall budget and in fiscal year 26 our budget was 107.9 million and the fiscal year 27 recommended is 113.3 which is 5.3 million dollars higher yeah i guess so on his spreadsheet he has a tax work paper and on that one is the one that i'm looking at that it's at the bottom that says levy capacity forecast it says unused levy capacity it's like negative three million that's where i'm like is that it means that we're over or not that's what i was trying to figure out i don't have that in front of me it's oh it's on the tax work paper tab as people said the very bottom of the page yep i'm very sure or we have unused levy capacity in this fiscal year 27 budget okay that's the spreadsheet that's the part that i want to make sure that i was understanding because i was hearing that we were not going to need to go into an override but when i saw that i'm like does that mean that we need an override by three million so about four pages back from the end of his pdf the pages aren't numbered he has fiscal year 27 rev revenues expenses and levy limit and that chart shows a surplus of 755 000 you should ask about his model that he sent us
come monday prepared sorry which table did you say that was um that's from the pdf it's from the pdf and it's about four or five pages from the end and it's labeled fy 27 revenues expenses and levy limit okay thank you and that's where i pulled out the surplus of 755 304 and i appreciate this is very late and uh and you know still only the operating budget that figure the three million dollar figure that people have asked about the sum of everything under the heading levy capacity forecast and there are two figures missing on the spreadsheet on the spreadsheet one of them is the current year levy um and so i i mean it's not obvious there's something missing there but i i think there is that is yeah as far as the spreadsheet goes yeah but it may be all tied for the pdf but still to check the prior two columns too are for the actual approved fiscal plane five and fiscal plane six of this and we're not only letting them know right now i i think there's some i think the spreadsheet i think he needs to check the spreadsheet i think there's something quirky going on yeah what that is that again it has been work i'm sorry uh what what that's worth the paper
this is my fourth meeting today for the time appreciate it we we appreciate it too i think you know cam said what had to be said right i know i've been feeling it no other topics that we want to raise at this point from a budget standpoint one thing i would note was there something yeah i guess my other question is on this 38 million is that going to go as excluded debt is there going to be a vote something that i mean it's the process i mean we haven't heard anything on a timeline i feel like we're just kind of helping up fields on the latest development so the select board has decided and i think this sticks uh to have it a hundred percent be funded by water rates so that it doesn't come to through the top okay since it's a water rate matter it does it will be in front of a select board in town yes but that's how i interpret where we're at they have drafted the article of course and i want to see the final version that comes out of the town you know and actually react to that but that's what the draft says well there will be an article as well as there is an article because we typically have to make a recommendation on excluded so it's it's enterprise fund debt i think so i'm not sure if right now there's zero responsible so right now there's zero excluded debt um in this budget but this gets into part of the questions about the capital plan and there's issues like uh wastewater treatment at the high school that we all know about it that's what's a seven million dollar number and we're spending ten thousand dollars a month to truck it yeah now it's a two million dollar no i know
but the question was you know shouldn't that go into excluded right thank you sure and so i've suggested the design manager that that be looked at to put it into excluded there was some consideration no put it into the operating 11 which doesn't sense to me i understand we just had a vote to take the dbw expenses for the old building you know town right and repeatedly when you look at i know you know moody's reports that is something that they they flagged appreciate it having things out of the operating budget it reflects voter support and it helps with that loving but yeah okay for folks that are watching the pdf i did want to bring their attention to a page i think it's my count is five which lists the 10 items that are the largest budget increases from the fiscal year 26 to 27 um and there's a column that says percentage increase and that's not a correct labeling of that column that column is actually percent of the 10 of the increase is of those 10 items okay so for instance it shows insurance 32b which is health insurance and that number is 23 which is not the cost health insurance is going up right in the budget it's going up 12 but that's so that's 23.25 is is that's the percentage of the sum of everything yes it's one point it's the one point two five over the total of that column yes okay so when i went through it i said why is health care being shown is going up 23 here and then 12 other places got it so how much did health care actually go up so we don't know yet the number we're holding is 12 percent but we should know we should know soon right i don't know why west suburban taken is a number earlier that's the other thing that i wanted flag what was that that was just the other thing i wanted to flag because it bothered me when i was
i'll just look at it let's make sure i'm clear with the reserve salary that you can set aside for salary adjustments through the year no so we have all barney units are being uh renegotiated right now and so instead of putting a new number in personnel costs it's being put into this reserve fund for salary adjustment that's one and two this fire department we don't have a contract with uh we've uh been in negotiations i think we're now in arbitration and i think it goes back to certainly fiscal year 26 maybe we go back for fiscal year 25 so there's a sum of money that's set aside for potential settlement there but it's not part of the personnel fund it's in a reserve account you had another question so those both are part of the reserve salary adjustment or that reserve salary adjustment just to set aside for about five uh it's for all of the bargaining units essentially that's why it's a payroll number seems so flat is because it's payroll number is flat because assuming that no one's getting raised but there's a separate separate line item for all the money yeah yeah if you look at page six on that um the next page yeah fiscal 2726 allocated budgets you'll see the salary adjusts like salad if you go down the adjustment comes out and it's allocated back up to the town payroll and to the school payroll so that's that's right if you took the that's to say if you when the contracts are negotiated and it actually goes to the to the town payroll and to the school payroll budget lines that's what it would look like that's how it would be allocated between those two so it's town and schools yep that's the allocation yep exactly um i don't know if you're talking about it but i mean since i mean there's 50 slides but are there any slides that have to do with projection over the next 10 years or given the current trends that we see impact to tax rate i would be interested in seeing that you remember we did in the financial summit slides i don't know that that's been updated but yeah but that was there the first time i saw that noted yeah i'd be interested in seeing that
just understanding the longer term impact i mean obviously i think when we looked at that we weren't sure what was happening with pw like board of public works we weren't sure what's happening with water right like there's a number of things that were sort of up in the air the water is not going to be included in the taxation rate so i'm just curious yeah the big the big swing is the pension fund unfunded life once we get over that right drops down seven million dollars and it yeah but it would be still be helpful to sort of see how all that goes and and i think i'm sure he has percentages it would kind of also be helpful in my mind to see it as if your tax bill today is the million 17 grand here's what it looks like in 10 years and here's what it looks like when that open it would be helpful to see that i mean i think that makes it more real for people and understanding like what the projections actually show yeah the last couple of pages of the pdf does go through the last 10 years of average tax bill over great and tax rate awesome yeah yeah but that it wasn't the forecast it was just the past
i guess my point is we're going to need that anyway yeah i mean this is part of it goes back to the the part of the educating the town and all of us um you know the communication challenges of if we get as we get through this budget process what comes next sit on my agenda for tonight i think anything else from anybody no no no we moved to adjourn thank you bill he's always counting me for that is there a second second i'm all in favor april you on board we're all on board we are adjourned thank you
I think she is muted. I don't know how to mute her. Oh, there we go. All right, so I get to comment? I'm not at this time. Oh, was she? Yeah, potentially. Okay, yeah, I finally emailed someone. I was here at the beginning, but nobody was paying attention. I appreciate the technology. Did you want to make some comment? I did. Okay, okay, please do. Sorry for the juggle. Thank you. Okay, so I wanted to, I've been looking a little bit at some of the budget, and I really feel the Wayland Department's need to stop using taxpayer money for theoretical projects or for expensive testing of land that may be developed by commercials or individuals interested in purchasing it, and instead run the ideas past the voters of the existing real situation. For example, the Sherman's Bridge Road. For example, the Sherman's Bridge Road thing should have asked, you know, Sherman's Bridge, do you want us to upgrade it? And if so, you know, yes or no. And if we vote yes, then can we have such and such money to pay for the consulting firm and all this kind of stuff, which didn't happen. And, and the other one that I noticed that's new is the Holiday Road, 25 Holiday Road. You know, people want to, somebody wants money from taxpayers for preliminary design and engineering studies and appraisals. Well, this land lies at, between two cul-de-sacs and a couple of, you know, single family neighborhoods and a couple of cemeteries. Well, first, maybe you don't even own it. I mean, it has to be transferred. So maybe the first step is ask town, the town residents to vote. Can we transfer it to the town and tell us what that expense would be, if any, on us? And then if it is transferred, then you can ask, okay, can we transfer it to the town, you know, for development? And again, you'd have to get our approval. Oh, well, what kind of development? Are you talking about a development that's going to be conducive to that neighborhood? Is it going to dramatically change it? And then in terms of testing, if somebody wants to buy the land and it's approved to be developed, just like we have to do our inspections at a house or take our chances, the developers should pay for that, not the town and not the taxpayers. So that is basically what I wanted to say. And I think all of the departments need to look at what they're asking town payers to pay for and whether it is too soon. And they need to go a little bit back and get approval from the town payers, considering the town payers and taxpayers more than outsiders, prioritize us and then get approval beginning at the beginning. Thank you. Did you hear it? Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. Oh, we even have the, uh, the, the words, uh, what do you call it? The transcription appearing now. Thank you. Elizabeth Carter Sherman Bridge Road. But if you're saying anything, I don't hear you. Nope. Still don't hear anything, but I appreciate being able to say something. I will raise a hand when I start hearing you. That's interesting. That's interesting. One, two, three. You heard that April? We'll just start that. Can you hear us now? Yes. All right. Yep. Yep. I can hear you guys now. It went out again, Robbie. And I'm trying to fix the picture. Okay. There we go. Now I can hear you. Can you hear anything? Yeah. You can hear us. I can't hear you. I can hear April. While we're getting the truck. Yep. I just heard you. Items. Can be labeled as non-financial. The article is. I'm okay. That's what Brian said. You can go article by article. Yeah. I think we should go article by article. Hey, Brian had really most of. Brian had really most of the artist's fans. Let's say. Yeah. I. Article A. Recognizing citizens and employees for public service to the town. On financial. It's not. Yeah. April, you agree? Yep. Okay. Article B. Pay previous fiscal year on paid bills if needed. I feel like the source of income has written about this. Yes. Great. And. Thank you, Rob. And while I understand like I'm interpreting this point being that like. Negligible. Yes. You know? Negligible. And also like. This is really housekeeping. Yeah. This is really. Frankly maybe not even something that warrants voting on. Right? Like these are bills. They're bills can do. They're bills that are expected to be paid. Yep. However. I worry. I do worry. Yeah. That if this is your first time and you show up. And there's no commentary. I don't know if the article is actually very clear to like help someone actually understand that. And that's where like I personally do think the FinCom committee comments and favor and opposed is helpful. I agree. I mean. It's a short write up. It's been done before. I think it also. In terms of. People would look at this. There's. The estimated cost is whatever. For the unpaid bills. People would say there's a cost to it. And yes. It's from. You know. Transfers for funds already appropriated. Yeah. Or from. We have incurred the bill. We've already incurred them. And we are planning to pay them out of whatever budget. However. I think it warrants an explanation. Okay. Yeah. Exactly. It was the person who was assigned this article. I think should the copy paste that will be the last year with new numbers. With new numbers. Right. To change that. What's the criteria we use? Because obviously whether that's a financial impact is one. What I'm hearing is. We also have an obligation to explain the article. Exactly. Which is. Different from the. What I thought. No, no. It's. They're both there. They're both there. It's just a judgment call. That's. Possible in terms of explanation. You can do them all. Well. It's. It's just unnecessary. And this is one that. A couple of folks have identified. Necessary. That's the why. Historically. Way back. FinCom. Did an explanation. They did the present. You know. The FinCon comments. And then the. Arguments in favor. And arguments against. For every article. Okay. Yes. And then someone said. If there are. You know. Articles. With non-financial impacts. That seem. Self-explanatory. Does FinCom need to spend the time. Writing it up. Do people. Care. Are they interested. Do they need. That much more. Information. So. In those. Cases. There. To. Write. The full. Explanation. I think. There can only be. A hundred. Fifty words. Or less. In the. Change. In the article wording itself. Or the. In the. Opponent comments. Thank you. So. The proponents comments. Are limited. And then FinCom. Doesn't have to. Write it. But I do think. Anything additional. There. My understanding. As someone. Who knew this. Is that. There are no. Pros and cons. If FinCom. Takes the sense. That. Right. There's no. There's no. There's no. There's no. Comments. Discussions. Pros and cons. It's either. There are. Pros and cons. Like. Yeah. Right. Like. We're making. Two. Decisions at once. Right. If we decide. It has no. Financial. Implications. But. In fact. It's a. Fleshed out. Explanation. But. No. There would be. No. There would be. Those all go together. It's. FinCom comments. And pros and cons. That's what FinCom. And that. So if we say. There are no. Financial implications. They're. Also saying. There will not be. An explanation. There will not be. A breakdown. Of pros and cons. Which is a little. Weird. But. I guess. I misunderstood. I thought. We were saying. No. I'll figure it out eventually. I'm just confused. I'm saying. If there. If there are no. Financial implications though. It puts it in our lap. To say. Okay. Do we want to. Do a. Full write up on this. Right. And if there's. If we believe. There's a reason. That. And I'm comfortable. With the reason. That I would. I just think. It's one of those things. If you are new. I would. I would look at this.
But let's just make sure. Did Carl. You on board. Yeah. I am. I think you'll find examples. Last year. Where there was openings on that. But there was a thing. Okay. Pam. Yes. Iris. Bill. Rob. April. Yes. Okay. Current year transfers. If needed. Same. Um. I think it's just. When you get to the end of the year. And if you. Just. Transferring from one account. Just literally. Just literally. It's already appropriated. Not even like. Moving it to free. Moving it. Moving it. Well moving. Not. But moving it from one department to another. Okay. Okay. So. Write it up. Or not print it up. I think we should. Do an explanation of what that is. Okay. Is that I guess. For a lot of these. My go-to stance would be. If there was an article about it last year. And there was a write up. I guess. An every year article. It doesn't. I wouldn't use that as a criteria. To the degree that. We think it doesn't need a write up. I would encourage us not to write it up. Or keep it. I mean. This is going to be. The largest warrant. Ever. I think. With 52. Articles. Now down to 50. So. And I'm not sure the. Prior ones were actually read. For word. Very often. But nonetheless. We're weighing in. So. We're all on board. April. You okay with that as well? Okay. Next one on the list is choosing town officers. I propose that's not of financial implications. I agree. I agree. Okay. In hearing reports. Similarly. No financial implications. Can someone remind me if there's any reports out? Yeah. I skipped a few. Or. No. He just skipped all the way down to the list. Only the ones that have been checked. But at any rate. The here reports. I can't remember. I think it's just. I think it's just. Reports. Listed. Um. In a back of. I'm looking here to say 24. Okay. Okay. You can go back from the same. Reports. I don't think so. Yeah. Last year we said nothing. Let's see. Oh. These were just updates to the actual code. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm aligned to that. Okay. Um. Sell or trade vehicles. Did we write that aside? You wrote that up. I wrote this last year. Yeah. Excellent. Thing. What. And I don't think I'm signed up to do it this year. But my. Or no. I am signed up to do it this year again. And. And my commentary on this is. It's one of those things again that's kind of interesting. At home. I'll be. At home. We sort of debated whether or not this should even be an article. Because on the one hand you wouldn't make the assumption that. The departments are. Doing all of the analysis. And. Correct. Sort of like. Hey. It is time to get rid of this car. It no longer merits. Oh. It's also in their budget. So we actually have reviews of their budget. Right. Um. But I. Would also say that. You know. As a. Individual who's interested in understanding. Sort of how these decisions are made. And understanding. Because. Obviously. We're. The town is getting rid of an asset. Right. And. And that asset thing comes with. Cost. To replace. Right. Like I. I could go either way. But I certainly. The thing to note. Is if we don't do a write up. Some of the details. That I put in my write up. Would not be made available to the public. The detail. That I thought was helpful. As. In my own opinion. Last year. That I included. Was. Why we were getting rid of the vehicles. And I think that. Again. Just like. My own personal opinion. Good to know. Good to be shared. Good to know. All will be listed. With the same reason. They're getting. End of life. The maintenance cost has gone up. Higher than the. It makes sense to keep. So. I'm not sure. It's not included in the article. It's not included in the article. It was only included in my write up. Yeah. So it's one of those things. Of like. But I'm not sure. It's going to be new information ever. I see. So. It might be something. Right. I suspect that. 95% of the time. Right. The end will be. It's. And that's why. I mean. In some ways. It's part of the budget process. But. I'm. I'm not like strong on this. It's all of you. Because. Again. Like. I. Write it up. If. Everyone's going to make that assumption. It. It's. You know. Especially folks who are newer. Like. What's your opinion? Well. I mean. To some extent. I vowed to the will of the person who's going to be writing it up. Oh. If you want to write it up. No harm to it. But I don't think that. No. I mean. We do this on behalf of. The town. On behalf of the town. Right. It's for people to read. Make good decisions. Yeah. This goes to a vote. They have to vote on this. And I don't think it should be. Before I joined FinFam. And I read this article. I can pull you a copy of my work. Where I wrote with my little notes. Why are we doing this? Yeah. Yeah. Where's the data? Right? And. For someone who wants to make an informed decision. To me. That is part of the informed decision making. Or else. It shouldn't be an article at all. And we should just give the. How we directly. Exactly. Exactly. So that's my point of like. Why do we have this article? Clearly we have this article. Because there's. Something in our procedural. Code that requires it. Which means that. Should we not be giving people. The information. I don't know. I think. Just looking. Go ahead. Looking at. The article. Exxon. Write up. That was done. Okay. Just like. A few sentences. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like the. Net benefit. Right. I. I definitely. Understand that there. To keep the warning short. But. The article becomes. Far more understandable. At like. 0.05 percent. Increase. So. I'd bias. On something like this. Because. Again. It's much more understandable. At. A very small. You're taking a boat. Carl. Before you go. I just want to. Add another. Dimension to this. It's a 120 million dollar budget. In fiscal 26. Hmm. Um. What. Is. Negative. Yeah. Um. One percent. And I'm not suggesting. There's a. That's. The dividing line. That's over a million dollars. One point. Three million dollars. How much. Were we proposing. To sell the vehicle for. Last year. A couple hundred. A hundred. And. The. Those are. People. At some. Point. I guess. I am with Bill. You want to write it up. You know. I have no objection. But. I. Did think. We oughta take that. Negligible. Right. Term. Which is in the. Town. Code. to the county standpoint now vote okay carl is this gonna write up uh let's get it let's write it up okay pan you want to vote with that i would say write it up okay i was here on board okay all right april your view yep okay okay so it's unanimous it's unanimous yes thank you uh reaffirm remote participation at town meetings i'm going to say the bill you're the point yes no i've talked with tom faye and dave bernstein and everything one of the confusing things is that this is not the actual doing it yeah this is trying to get permission the letter's already written it's the same letter as they wrote last year uh and so the idea is that none of the group of people i talked to thought it was necessary to write anything about yep got it i'm fine with that anybody want to discuss their abuse okay um mgl chapter 60 section two somebody have it in front of them to know what this is does update up to 25 on past due tax bills and so brian's comment was minimal yeah yeah discussion of this one i have notes of no financial impact that's where i lean as well anybody have different views i think we're all on board with that one and next next is uh chapter 53 section 18b carl i think you flagged these as potentially not that one okay i forget what it was but i didn't think it did have an impact publishing information regarding that yeah thank you no financial impact okay uh that was our and now we're on eps okay and this is um one third chapter 138 section 12 d and i think just having an explanation i think it should be write it up for now a little bit more i would agree because i think if all we have is a we're going to share our comments it's going to be major and that one was conversion as i recall and the next one is additional liquor licenses right that one would also i think the sense of the room is again yes i think that should be written up okay uh print free digital legal notices i think we spend very very little dollars on printing so i think doing a print free is pretty minimal financial it's actually savings yeah it is it's not a big deal and probably
yeah first and it's not for the law
so we okay with no write-up on this one i am okay next one general bylaw prohibiting cryptocurrency machines which just strikes me is how is this a town issue
why isn't the state figuring this one out but at any rate views on calling a no financial impact
i don't think there is financial impact right i think it's it's going to be more than ethical issue right yeah and u.s dollar yeah issues of pension this is uh seeking authorization to issue pension fund boat uh article w uh bonds or notes this one's pat for i think this is the first of those essential articles where asking permission we're asking permission to consider it which absolutely has no financial impact because it's just permission asking and is essentially getting degrees of freedom right and sort of in reaction to some of the commentary we heard tonight um this is that first step of asking the townsfolk their opinion on the matter before actually continuing to pursue the option um but to be clear if we ever issued a note i think it needs to be flushed out yeah sorry that's where i was going is yeah but if we actually did the ramification is intensely financial and i do think it needs to be flushed down which does the asking for permission yes yes it does there will be no financial
if we were ever right now do it there's no financial impact in the immediacy but there's no way to determine what right now there's no financial impacts but i do think this is a tricky strategy there is no way to determine what we're asking for though what the potential implications it could be lots of free money or it could be very expensive but i think helping people understand the strategy well just what it all means yeah that's fincom comments yeah you know gives that explanation yeah i'm not sure it's going to be doable and you know i don't know 100 words yeah for 150 words and ultimately i don't know this but i'm not i mean if someone and iris shared the point on this one yeah this is him i might need your i might need your expertise here and explaining i mean i think i understood the mechanics of what they're posing and i would personally say it's kind of risky right like it's it's a you have to feel confident forecasting no it's risky both ways if you don't go forward with this you're exposing yourself to market risk that could be catastrophic right so they're not doing this so i all that needs to get fleshed out i think it needs to get right now but it's like i i think it certainly would get written up before we would issue a bond but i mean but i think they there are infinite scenarios to try and help people get you know up to speed on this i do think maybe to that point the fact that you're talking about all this is potentially an argument okay absolutely i think even the fact that okay this is just to ask permission to study and it'll be a further vote before there's any actual issuance or things like that right like this would be very unfair to people if we don't actually i i don't i look forward to seeing the write-up i don't think it's possible to write it up in a way it's a bit of a slippery slope because i think there are all these articles that could lead to future articles i mean even like prop two and a half do we go into pros and cons of prop two and a half even though we're not specifically they're asking for permission for a financial tool is that not how you see it like they're they're asking specifically for like to to have the opportunity to employ a financial strategy so we should explain what that financial strategy is to people so they actually understand what they're agreeing to i think i agree with that and i think maybe one thing that i i haven't gone through this in depth is the understanding of whether this is they're asking permission to use that financial tool in the future at their discretion or whether it sounds kind of like what i'm hearing is that they're asking to start down the road to maybe eventually using this financial tool but they're asking for the state legislature to give us the ability to do this and so that's where the next step on this is it's i mean we don't we pass this we have no new power right all we have the power that they would send a letter bring another article to actually do something the legislature but i'm okay with writing it up okay all right i'm not pushing back and i look forward to reading it again i appreciate it um next one that was on the acquisition of permanent easement in advance of temporary easement at town center this is this is mine and bill whitney yeah okay is there an economic impact well when we interviewed bill whitney and then i followed up with an email he said you know nominal price of this town part of its town land and the agreement with town center is we were getting even for nominal costs and so he said he didn't think there was a financial impact okay but isn't there is this so that i mean you can expand the mass central rail trail i think so yeah i think that's the rail trail right yeah i think so just make the argument that that should bring more people through like the rail trail in the summer gets a lot of activity and being able to connect it and i know in concrete it gets a lot of activity like that to me there's actually a pro here of connecting it allows for and they built it out at the other end um the eight miles over in weston into wall family they built that like little train section across like to me i would make the argument that connecting it actually allows for more traffic to come into wayland and through wayland um and right through town center i mean i was fairly neutral on that yeah there is some cost and i think it raises you know other issues uh i have a they switched that from bill whitney to tom fay and tom fay and i have a conference call in third and talk about more but i i'm okay either way i won't push back too hard on that i don't have a strong feeling either way i i guess my sense is again i think the financial impact is probably quite negligible but i think people might be interested in learning a little bit more than what they would like out of a 150th board i don't i don't like to come back with the article you use the word purchase and it's sort of open-ended yeah i know what the intent is yeah i know how it's expressed but that could open up a big yep i'm okay with what they were full of money okay okay with where you know i would say uh tom fay
the next item is uh green burial i guess i think you had a point on that yeah absolutely okay no no i appreciate that and then mending town code chapter 36 1 i think no economic impact anybody have another of you no hearing none planning board appeals
again in the meeting and subsequently you didn't see yeah he said it actually may save because it moves things off and they pass on so good uh within the long term was that we're going to be a write-up or not no write-up on that right thank you yep long-term water supply construction funding
yeah i was surprised at this one
tagged but i definitely will keep it on the financial impact
i don't know
it's water rate so it's not down budget is i think that no i did but yes and carl you're on that one right yes uh peddling hawkers and solicitation which is just
surprised i just go to town i spoke with tom fay and trudi
i'm fine with that so no no write-up no write-up okay sorry thank you accepting gifts of land if needed financial impact and to my knowledge there's nothing pending housekeeping zoning no financial impacts amending flood claims in the federal blood protection district yeah question fine no it's okay um sorry i i my view is a little small so i just is it bigger on your laptop sorry i'm just just curious
that one i spoke with bill whitney and with uh for the whole
and accessory dwelling units which we did write up that was one that we did write up last year we did last year and the fact that people seem to be asking for larger units which generate taxes and fees to the dollar okay the the i think this is just moving from the uh buy right versus having to get permission because if it's a larger unit you don't have it by right but we'll await the right up i'm fine sorry can you back up to mm was that a write up or no no right up on mm thank you yes yes right up on nn right yep thank you okay continuing multi-family housing west sub-district amend maximum dimensions this is the one where specific uh elevation limitations could be
and it was identified as no right up needed by brian kevenny comments suggestions i don't understand that i know if you're adding i know potential for development that would take place on the system by law there's a financial impact there's a potential financial impact i think i think this should be yeah april you're i think the point person on that one i think that's one of the ones i gave up you gave it up who who took it uh
i'm not i think that was one of the ones i don't know if we were giving that one to rob or not
my chart shows april i know it was when we talked on friday i understand i gave carl a couple so i didn't change the chart so i didn't change it either so let's talk again okay thanks uh the next round mounted solar photovoltaic installations uh you know two two comments one one in talking to bill whitney and rava hummel they don't see an impact the the caveat is that it may get a re-write because they had not coordinated with energy and environmental committee or energy and climate committee and so they're now coordinating and we might have it rewritten or might even be withdrawn but as of now they they don't see a financial impact yeah is it likely to get a financial impact after i don't think so okay it's they were they were worried that some of the language might be uh more prohibitive than makes sense and so we're having the practical solar people look at so not sure what the status will that end up understand but not as of now continuing to identify if that changes we can always change our lives very soon um and the next two are on dogs qq and rr i'd say i did not talk to the attorney's work on these but i feel like this is a negligible financial impact and i think it's probably self-explanatory yeah yeah invisible house numbers negligible financial impact i would propose and then the next several um sherman's bridge second pedestrian walkway so it's not a financial the proponent suggested it should cost us 100 grand now you can ask what's negligible and what's not but that's not there's no engineering study that says that there's no you know practice so i think like that yeah yeah i think 100 grand is a number that's i actually i actually have a question in general and just in general in the sherman's bridge is it because that's part of the capital plan that all of this is coming up that all of a sudden they want to have a say in what's happening with sherman's bridge because there's no nothing i guess that i'm seeing that saying sherman's bridge is going to be repaired at this point in time i'm assuming it might be in the capital
so i've been attending all the um board of public works meetings and so there is a lot going on there and there's a lot of objection to it from our residents and so you know i don't know what will happen but but yes there's a lot going on there is not a sherman's bridge reconstruction article though is it no these are all petitionable yeah that i've wondered about this well and i'm wondering if what spurred it was like it's part of the capital plan so i think that there was some determination that there was a safety issue on the bridge as it exists and then the initial work by dpw was oh the simple way to deal with this is to make a steel bridge or whatever i i haven't gone into the details and there was some momentum down that path without ever talking to neighbors or others about what do we really want for sherman bridge and it's a really unique and kind of beautiful wooden bridge um but it may not be fully safe and then there's issues of you know vehicles that are too big for it that are using it and cut throughs and lots and lots of issues um so but at the end of the day it would still need a capital project right to start before like all of this is almost requests of something that we have no plans of doing unless there's a capital plan budget associated with fixing the bridge oh i don't think that's right i think they are
what they're doing is if they only say it's a repair job they don't have to get voter approval if it's a substantial renovation or reconstruction they do which is why they won't put on the it was never but they're significantly changing how people will use it yeah i think it's controversial enough we should probably do a write-up even if we know well there's the end the
have to take a strong position one way or the other but i think we should identify what the impacts are as well as let's just think about the following the handful of articles all put them under financial impact and write them up or yeah i think if we don't write them up there's only 150 words that the petitioner can include and i think it's not enough to explain yeah maybe i should probably see i'm sorry i'm sorry say again i did a revision of one of my two articles you can email it to us that'd be great well it doesn't have to go through the town i'm not sure um i do think some of these didn't sound like they had financial impact the neighborhood agreement ones are the two that i was wondering because that's more of like get them to discuss right hold a meeting and yeah
well i think the five percent of eight minutes there too and that's a matter of three a couple's times yeah i thought yy and eb are both kind of minimal financial impacts as well they're a little less clear exactly what they're asking for but then why why are you here i'm looking for people who are confident i agree rob i have handouts from the last meeting for you that um i can give you next time i see you okay but so let's let me make sure i'm following the walkway yes financial impact the rest of them no financial impact but they might need some write-ups so here's the thing remember 150 words 150 words if you know if we don't go about that i understand i just not sure folks like that's a consideration as well yeah i'm not sure that there's the right write-up for sherman's bridge is on any of these articles right is and i'm not sure where the forum is to make that happen and i haven't seen the actual write-ups of the articles yet from town manager so i've only seen the small submissions that were on the pdf so it wasn't enough to really understand the meat of it to so can we kind of come back to those a little bit once we figure out right up we'll be back on wednesday but this so we have a we've gone through it all uh long-term facilities planning uh that was uh xx x okay are we okay with that what were we doing sorry write up xx we will do a write-up okay bobby what's happening i think it's working now yeah so don't mess it up mess up
was there any other ones were yy and zz both write-ups or no no write-ups on those two on those too at this time yeah unless there's other input that we've received yeah we'll have to get signs for yy understood but that's not it's substantial less than one percent of the pound budget yeah so can i ask a question now once we look at all of these with the um no write-ups are we going to be looking at potentially redistributing articles
loads i'm turning to carl as master of the article allocation someone win still have all of my articles
we should actually because two articles have already dropped out understand as well and at the moment you you know cam as uh responsible for niya some of my drops um no write-ups that's for sure
and so we're together again wednesday we don't think about that and come up with a plan for wednesday
so april i didn't get the detail of what you were proposed to give up so if you and i can talk tomorrow we can if you're going to redistribute anyways to you now then i don't have to do anything because i haven't gotten any of my articles so i haven't started anything on my side but i've given you the option of choosing correct yes no i um i appreciate that i think i lost one in mine maybe two so i'm down to seven that's what i don't know which one goes long yeah recognize citizens a and p sorry not p um anyway i think we should give carl some time to kind of get back to us do you want us to send you an email if we have like maybe a suggestion would that help or would that not only request those suggestions don't don't start allocating things for everybody else if you guys have a specific point that's all what you can tell me okay but um okay i may not be able to get to fill those i know i may not be able to leave too far on wednesday night okay but if i get um i will have a little time tomorrow to think about this and i can circulate for like consideration and then go there right yeah but i think you lost a few the uh i know iris you've got a lot of word documents uh this is anyone else gotten word documents i don't know that too i mean i don't know i just got it for brian i know i know i saw that i got something yeah curious i don't know yes yeah in past years you've gotten the whole thing and it's all your word documents for each article so i will put it on my list to check with trudy who i think is the well i think it would be um um brian oh jalen or uh is it abby jalen probably is still the point
you got the yours from brian though as i think i was copying those anything else on article moving at this time i think that's it so carl we do want to put a agenda item to reaffirm the assignments and the ones that we're not going to take action on or not going to vote we're not going to beat the pros and cons on for for wednesday we could go on back right now oh okay not not the reassignments but i think we just spent some time on yeah i went through them all i don't have them my notes doesn't happen but i'm comfortable with where we got to just to vote on on which ones are not doing write-ups yeah or i've checked off the ones that i think they should agree or not you want to go over that list sure and then we'll go does anyone else have it so just make sure that i have it listed too so i'm like i was tracking it trying to track it when we went through do you want me to read them yeah yeah actually your eyes are probably better than mine no worries because i'm sitting in front of a computer it's the only reason um article a i have no write-ups i'm just going to put i put seven zero zero for no write-ups on all of these so article a article b article j hang on hang on b we're doing b and c b is a write-up oh b is a write-up okay sorry the next one it has not is j yes correct so choose town officers no j um k here's here reports no write-up p reaffirm remote participation q the chapter 60 r chapter 53 um you allow print free digital legal notices v mn general bylaw for crypto bb green burial cc chapter code town chapter code 361 ee planning board appeals ii peddling town code jj accept gifts of land ll housekeeping zoning mm mn flood plan pp ground mounted solar qq chapter 91 rr penalties ss visible house numbers yy uh safety signs for sherman's bridge and zz um protect residents and all vru of sherman's ridge road and uh uh vv and ww the neighborhood agreements um you want to do those two i wasn't sure on those yep looking around yeah yeah i'm sorry you want to do them as a write them up no not write them up
just affirming it
so the only sherman bridge write-up is the python weight limit tt2 the second pedestrian walkway yeah oh and the second pedestrian right yes so as recited all in favor of not running those up or we need them who's who's making the motion do it i move that we uh accept that the list that was just presented okay and second okay pam and carl okay i'm in favor pam yes all right yes i'm in favor and april you're yep okay seven zero zero yeah that concludes that order of business one quick question you mentioned 150 word limit is that for the write-up and those pros and times that's just for the way that's that's just for if we don't do it right then the proponent of their all only is limited to 100 000 yards so that is part of what we're taking into account or something cannot really be explained and under the doors we want to make sure i didn't get understood but that's right we have a word limit i guess no okay you can do as many pages as you can
there are restrictions i don't think you'll have a problem with word limit on me and you're not allowed to use bullets i mean there's other sort of restrictions you never know if the way i write that remedy is your breath um so we have one article that uh iris sent around for potentially acting on and it's a good example article yeah i sent it um i don't think it's done i had some questions and thoughts for folks um so i sent this and there were a number of things that i included and i want confirmation i sent a copy to brian kevin but i haven't heard that from him um a couple things that i want to call out here so um from last year to this year the write-up is slightly more relaxed in tone it's less formal in tone um in addition to that in last year's write-up i discussed and went more into the background of just general sped spending year over year and what those amounts were i took that out like first i i wasn't sure how much it was really important to the reserve spending at this point if people feel like that is helpful information to understand what the total spending looks like every year i can move that back in but that is something i did take out the other thing that i'll note is while the current balance is 500 000 in the memo that brian kevin sent he did say that he is that the amount is expected to be fully expended by the end of the spending so they will use that again um so that really at the arguments in favor and arguments against i did not really touch the arguments favor arguments against i feel like stand the arguments in favor all made sense the arguments opposed i remember last year had been feel quite right and it feels even more reinforced now that this is just an annual funding bucket um which is what the arguments opposed right i remember our conversation on this right this is really an operational expense and and if they continue to use it in this way um and i'll be honest like my own personal opinion is they this is really an operational fund they it's not really reserved but it's not being used in that way the challenge is sped and i think it will be for fiscal year 27 is that it is lumpy of course and we don't know what it is until you know september this year but so the idea of a reserve fund beautiful it's a beautiful island i don't think anyone like i personally have no problem with the idea that we would set aside funds in the event that we end up in a year where it's more than expected however however if every year it's more than expected then are we are we actually baselining enough it sounds like that's exactly what i take away is we just aren't baselining enough and i think when we think of our movie rating when we think of the requirements that we are held to as a town where to maintain our ratings part of that is that we are not using free cash for operational expenses continuously and this kind of looks like that to me well it our free cash is you know rather substantial um at this moment i mean you know i wondered why it isn't a bigger number that would be able to absorb more of the lumps so but that's just why i remember because you've got estimated at 300 and then actually in the verbiage that's what i thought it was that i didn't have to that that was so so i know like initially it said 152 tbd so maybe it was always expected it might be higher that it's going to be 300 but well i think that we said i know that's not hard but i can't yeah you know i can't touch that part so i just copied that is directly from the words off um which is why the numbers don't match most few places especially 300 is what was in his method so we don't need to vote on this tonight no i'm just looking for feedback um do people think that the the part that i took out of like the yearly spending total sped is that necessary do people feel like that was helpful information do people feel like hey it's nice but it's not really that impactful to us having at this point this um reserve fund has been around now for a number of years people maybe have a better sense of what it is and really we need to focus on the way it's being used and less so on the lumpiness of spent funding it's up to you all but that's that was really what i was looking for feedback well and as well as just for new committee members and all committee members just to see what a write-up looks like and sort of get a sense of what this is all about so open to feedback comments well you just had a sense in that last year about like what the it was it was misogynist but it was a it was both a meaty sentence i i tried to work it in and just like it's jarring it's a bit jarring right because the whole thing is about the results and then there's like a whole line that's just about general sped spending i i was okay with it out um just as far as this goes i think sped continues to be uh unknown amazingly unknown from a budgeting standpoint right which i think i expect right like it is unknown it is challenging to budget for it um
as an outsider you know not having read these before i mean the impression i get not just the sample point of one is that it's very technical and that uh you know if you're writing for a sixth straight level when you're writing an article in the washington post or wall street journal to get sort of lost yeah and reading this yeah oh yeah uh sample point of one so there are you know thousands of people in this town so it's not easy to follow what the real impact is all right i i thought it was okay i think the middle paragraph i just would change the order a little bit okay um we have the the 2023 annual time meeting authorized the creation of this fund starting 150 so that was actually for fiscal year 24. so then i think i could go to the next so this bring this sentence up about for fiscal 24 and 25 the town approved so just move that up so so it's chronological yes yeah okay and probably in the 25 in what i'm using and so we're using through we're using both annual town meeting which is a different year than the fifth year which is right so i can also just clean that up because this year yeah the other thing that comes before i turn my question at uh which may sound overly simple why should i care and so in other words to start with a sentence it says here's why you should care because i'm not sure that that comes across me got it okay i think some i mean each article is kind of the right of this relative to the to the article itself yeah i mean i'm a sample point of one it just it reads like it's written by an accountant's finance person i if i handed this to my students i don't think they would understand it they're college students but again sample point of one and so take it with a grain of salt but that would apply to every article you're saying no no no oh really oh no no no because this reads pretty straightforward to me but i've been through this yeah and you may be more finance than maybe i don't know but i mean like most people may not know what free cash is but what reserve is so if you don't have that language free cash is unique to own finances so it's that's a bizarre one to me still but i understand it anyway i mean i guess inside that point is there room to define some of that stuff in the warrants because i think it's an excellent point that there will be terms like free cash that we use that people might not know and everyone explaining what free cash in every single word and article references free cash seems well it's about no but this is something obviously we could put up on the website yeah um sort of basically at the glossary page at the front that says like firms you're going to run into articles that you might not otherwise yeah i don't think the warrant is the place for that necessarily i don't know if they have any added to this something like that i think it's actually not a bad suggestion i don't think we know it's been done before um just because it has it doesn't mean it shouldn't be well it actually is pretty elementary and i don't think it would take that much space and i think if there are people who are new to reviewing this give a quick explanation that kind of shoves a lot of light and i might be able to fold it into the finance committee report uh as far as a you know a page in the back of that i'm i'm supportive and especially free cash because it's like what's free about free cash right that's actually our money you know it's not free and it's true like once you think you've been talking about yeah yeah but not everyone is familiar with those terms and there's going to be you know other items as we'll see in the budget uh reserves being you know substantial reserves being set aside for bargaining unit contracts if you like that are not part of the current personnel budget so i'll try to start putting that together that'd be great other terms yeah i really like that idea and this part of me looking at last is warren the term is used 34 times and never defined right is that right which one which term free cash okay yeah and and we first do it on the capital budget when we lay things out and you know spending sort of limits that have the past but we believe i'm not defined it so yeah i'm not sure i actually you know i'm literally suggesting this but you know give it right up to your neighbor or your husband or wife or whatever because we're all sort of insular and we see these terms all the time so nice um and a small point emails from meeting proper now all three words are capitalized atm i think so we have the last order of business for tonight is initial reactions to the budget that we received um and next uh monday uh i'm expecting that we will have uh dr fleischmann uh and kirstein from school uh brian and michael from the town um and uh maybe kelly from capitol plain um all in one meeting all in one it's complicated to schedule i'm sorry what day is that monday monday um brian right now has i think he said 50 slides to walk through he said that's great brian let's put 40 of them in the appendix and then let's have 10 to go through so this will be the time to really dig into the budget just giving a heads up i'm sorry that is just like throwing the fire hose in our face it's just i think turning it full left hey how even if we get his presentation and we started looking at the budget i don't know if we're gonna have time for q a and have even another schools and to even consider capital on top of that for one meeting i mean unless we're gonna be here till two in the morning no we're not gonna be here until three in the morning let me drop capital let me drop capital and just go with schools in town it's and i i think the capital plan right now as uh considered by the cipc is not does not have alignment with the town management so there's work for them to do together to come to what they want to propose but the town plan budget and school budgets are pretty well coming together there's still some unknowns like i think we just i just i guess keep giving feedback general feedback is i am just overwhelmed like having done this this is my seventh time through this and this is the latest i know we've gotten this information typically we've gone through the the capital budget in the fall i appreciate that we have the capital planning committee and that was new and they've been working on things to try to prioritize but we're not getting any really much of the information i mean we have the preliminary budget and i appreciate that there was you know a lot of work in it done in advance um but seeing but but we're just seeing finally seeing all this detail at this juncture we're at the beginning of february and we've gone until march 15th mid-march so to do all of our articles we do all these budgets you know that the operating the capital five-year we haven't even and then we've got to add 38 million in yeah i think it makes a discussion on that there's just there's a lot and i think it's the timing is it's frustrating to be on this committee and just be getting that information now so and i'll say for myself i that makes it tough to feel like i'll have enough time to synthesize get all my questions answered and be able to actually 100 support that puts us in an awkward position of either supporting something that we don't fully understand or having to come out and say i cannot support this
any suggestions it's tough right because the suggestion is to get the information sooner obviously we have the time scheduled we will go through it i think um you know if we need more time to be sure hopefully we can get that um i'll think on that i i mean yeah that i and there was a suggestion that we wouldn't look at capital on the february 25th and i said no need to bring it to us at that stage just let it go to town meeting we'll have the open conversation there okay so i i said that just so you know but is the is the capital budgeted into this into this budget say that in april sorry isn't capital included into this so if we don't have is it because they don't have a five-year plan or so we the fiscal year 27 capital uh items that cipc has recommended has not got alignment with town management okay the year 27 and there is no fiscal year 28 to 31
capital would be needed to be added into this budget so is it added as what they proposed so that hasn't been determined yet but to be clear we do have an operating budget now for both the town and the schools the payroll expenses and unclassified there are some numbers that are still floating in particular the health care costs is not locked in yet uh but there's a plug number in there at 12 percent increase from last year and so it is to my understanding 100 of the operating budget is is here in front of us now and that's what will be the topic uh next monday and so go in that with all the questions that we have and with what they proposed right now just want to make sure i'm reading this right are we saying that we need three million dollars more than the levy no not than the levy we're under the levy by seven hundred thousand dollars okay thank you but the spend is up by three point oh wait a minute because i'm looking at the tax work paper and it shows negative three oh seven two so i'm like unused levy capacity does that mean that we're over by three million no i'm not sure what you're looking at the tax work paper spreadsheet on brian's the the first page or the third page actually in brian's pdf has the overall budget and in fiscal year 26 our budget was 107.9 million and the fiscal year 27 recommended is 113.3 which is 5.3 million dollars higher yeah i guess so on his spreadsheet he has a tax work paper and on that one is the one that i'm looking at that it's at the bottom that says levy capacity forecast it says unused levy capacity it's like negative three million that's where i'm like is that it means that we're over or not that's what i was trying to figure out i don't have that in front of me it's oh it's on the tax work paper tab as people said the very bottom of the page yep i'm very sure or we have unused levy capacity in this fiscal year 27 budget okay that's the spreadsheet that's the part that i want to make sure that i was understanding because i was hearing that we were not going to need to go into an override but when i saw that i'm like does that mean that we need an override by three million so about four pages back from the end of his pdf the pages aren't numbered he has fiscal year 27 rev revenues expenses and levy limit and that chart shows a surplus of 755 000 you should ask about his model that he sent us
come monday prepared sorry which table did you say that was um that's from the pdf it's from the pdf and it's about four or five pages from the end and it's labeled fy 27 revenues expenses and levy limit okay thank you and that's where i pulled out the surplus of 755 304 and i appreciate this is very late and uh and you know still only the operating budget that figure the three million dollar figure that people have asked about the sum of everything under the heading levy capacity forecast and there are two figures missing on the spreadsheet on the spreadsheet one of them is the current year levy um and so i i mean it's not obvious there's something missing there but i i think there is that is yeah as far as the spreadsheet goes yeah but it may be all tied for the pdf but still to check the prior two columns too are for the actual approved fiscal plane five and fiscal plane six of this and we're not only letting them know right now i i think there's some i think the spreadsheet i think he needs to check the spreadsheet i think there's something quirky going on yeah what that is that again it has been work i'm sorry uh what what that's worth the paper
this is my fourth meeting today for the time appreciate it we we appreciate it too i think you know cam said what had to be said right i know i've been feeling it no other topics that we want to raise at this point from a budget standpoint one thing i would note was there something yeah i guess my other question is on this 38 million is that going to go as excluded debt is there going to be a vote something that i mean it's the process i mean we haven't heard anything on a timeline i feel like we're just kind of helping up fields on the latest development so the select board has decided and i think this sticks uh to have it a hundred percent be funded by water rates so that it doesn't come to through the top okay since it's a water rate matter it does it will be in front of a select board in town yes but that's how i interpret where we're at they have drafted the article of course and i want to see the final version that comes out of the town you know and actually react to that but that's what the draft says well there will be an article as well as there is an article because we typically have to make a recommendation on excluded so it's it's enterprise fund debt i think so i'm not sure if right now there's zero responsible so right now there's zero excluded debt um in this budget but this gets into part of the questions about the capital plan and there's issues like uh wastewater treatment at the high school that we all know about it that's what's a seven million dollar number and we're spending ten thousand dollars a month to truck it yeah now it's a two million dollar no i know
but the question was you know shouldn't that go into excluded right thank you sure and so i've suggested the design manager that that be looked at to put it into excluded there was some consideration no put it into the operating 11 which doesn't sense to me i understand we just had a vote to take the dbw expenses for the old building you know town right and repeatedly when you look at i know you know moody's reports that is something that they they flagged appreciate it having things out of the operating budget it reflects voter support and it helps with that loving but yeah okay for folks that are watching the pdf i did want to bring their attention to a page i think it's my count is five which lists the 10 items that are the largest budget increases from the fiscal year 26 to 27 um and there's a column that says percentage increase and that's not a correct labeling of that column that column is actually percent of the 10 of the increase is of those 10 items okay so for instance it shows insurance 32b which is health insurance and that number is 23 which is not the cost health insurance is going up right in the budget it's going up 12 but that's so that's 23.25 is is that's the percentage of the sum of everything yes it's one point it's the one point two five over the total of that column yes okay so when i went through it i said why is health care being shown is going up 23 here and then 12 other places got it so how much did health care actually go up so we don't know yet the number we're holding is 12 percent but we should know we should know soon right i don't know why west suburban taken is a number earlier that's the other thing that i wanted flag what was that that was just the other thing i wanted to flag because it bothered me when i was
i'll just look at it let's make sure i'm clear with the reserve salary that you can set aside for salary adjustments through the year no so we have all barney units are being uh renegotiated right now and so instead of putting a new number in personnel costs it's being put into this reserve fund for salary adjustment that's one and two this fire department we don't have a contract with uh we've uh been in negotiations i think we're now in arbitration and i think it goes back to certainly fiscal year 26 maybe we go back for fiscal year 25 so there's a sum of money that's set aside for potential settlement there but it's not part of the personnel fund it's in a reserve account you had another question so those both are part of the reserve salary adjustment or that reserve salary adjustment just to set aside for about five uh it's for all of the bargaining units essentially that's why it's a payroll number seems so flat is because it's payroll number is flat because assuming that no one's getting raised but there's a separate separate line item for all the money yeah yeah if you look at page six on that um the next page yeah fiscal 2726 allocated budgets you'll see the salary adjusts like salad if you go down the adjustment comes out and it's allocated back up to the town payroll and to the school payroll so that's that's right if you took the that's to say if you when the contracts are negotiated and it actually goes to the to the town payroll and to the school payroll budget lines that's what it would look like that's how it would be allocated between those two so it's town and schools yep that's the allocation yep exactly um i don't know if you're talking about it but i mean since i mean there's 50 slides but are there any slides that have to do with projection over the next 10 years or given the current trends that we see impact to tax rate i would be interested in seeing that you remember we did in the financial summit slides i don't know that that's been updated but yeah but that was there the first time i saw that noted yeah i'd be interested in seeing that
just understanding the longer term impact i mean obviously i think when we looked at that we weren't sure what was happening with pw like board of public works we weren't sure what's happening with water right like there's a number of things that were sort of up in the air the water is not going to be included in the taxation rate so i'm just curious yeah the big the big swing is the pension fund unfunded life once we get over that right drops down seven million dollars and it yeah but it would be still be helpful to sort of see how all that goes and and i think i'm sure he has percentages it would kind of also be helpful in my mind to see it as if your tax bill today is the million 17 grand here's what it looks like in 10 years and here's what it looks like when that open it would be helpful to see that i mean i think that makes it more real for people and understanding like what the projections actually show yeah the last couple of pages of the pdf does go through the last 10 years of average tax bill over great and tax rate awesome yeah yeah but that it wasn't the forecast it was just the past
i guess my point is we're going to need that anyway yeah i mean this is part of it goes back to the the part of the educating the town and all of us um you know the communication challenges of if we get as we get through this budget process what comes next sit on my agenda for tonight i think anything else from anybody no no no we moved to adjourn thank you bill he's always counting me for that is there a second second i'm all in favor april you on board we're all on board we are adjourned thank you