February 9, 2026 – Wastewater Management – Video & Transcript
February 9, 2026 - Wastewater Management
Okay, I'm going to call the February 9th, 2026 meeting of the Wastewater Management District
Commission to order as published in the agenda. We're doing this remotely and the instructions for
joining us remotely were published with the agenda last week. So with that, Mike Gitten
here participating remotely. Darren Bach participating remotely. And it looks like we have
Ed getting on remotely. He gave a thumbs up while he gets his audio going. Okay, so we got three of us
here. We'll go right in. Do we have any public comment? I don't see any extra people. Is there
anyone from the public? No, there are no public attendees. Thank you. Then we'll move on to
Jared in the monthly operating report. Yep. So not a bad month for us. We received a thousand gallons
of pack. Daigle Electric and Wilson Controls replaced two transformers in our MCP room.
And they fixed some communication and electrical wiring. So that, so far has been all fixed. And
we haven't had any issues regarding that again. We did a sodium hypochlorite soak of train two's
membranes. And we helped 289 Boston Post Road find their sewer tie-in. And that's kind of all that we
had going on for the month of January. What's the colloquial name of that address? Is that,
who, who is that, that you helped?
What is it?
Duncan's. Great. The, um, the, the, the electrical work, is that, is that outside our current budget? Or are we, where, where, where does that fall in? Do you know the, uh, um, not, sir? Do you want me to say something on that? I mean, we're not, it's an, it's already accounted for in the budget you just got, I believe I should. Okay. It's only been about nine days since that budget was closed. And I'm pretty sure we've paid all the invoices for that work so far. Um, short of, I believe a, about a $5,000 one for LCS. So that might be the only thing on screen. And that, you know, that's more data, I guess, specific, right, Jared, not necessarily electrical, right? So, so we, so when we get to that, the equipment repairs and maintenance could be like 30 grand over budget for the year. It looks like when we get there, we, we get, we get, we get back to that. We had some room in the small capital too, just, but we'll talk about it. Yeah. Okay. I hope you can hear me. Um, I hear you clearly. Yes, we hear you now, Ed. Oh, okay. Great. Um, looking at the notes, um, just some follow-up questions from last time. You were, you were talking about the screening barrel, getting water in it and maybe needing to get more parts. Is it, is it behaving better? Do we need to get more parts or? Um, so we're still working with the manufacturer, um, but we do have the lag screen in hand, um, with the water reduced a little bit, just so we're not using too much, uh, or not adding too much water usage to our bill. Um, but it is, it is at least allowed us to stop having that overflow while we get everything more honed in. Okay. And I didn't, I don't think you said, what was Alta's flow or are they still at that 10,000, 11,000? We think, um, monthly flow still 30, 31, 32. Yeah. Monthly flow is still, um, that, uh, 30, 32. Alta is normally around the 11, 12,000. Um, they did hit, um, 20,000 last night. They draining the pool? Yeah. 20,000. I'm not sure. I think everyone was just hosting maybe. Oh, they had a party. There you go. Yeah. Um, and, and while you're talking about it, has the letter gone out to them? Are we still cleaning the fog and billing them? Um, yeah, we're still billing them. I don't think the letter has gone out yet. I believe that might be still be with KP law. Um, it doesn't look like Abby's on the call anymore. Okay. Yeah. I would defer to Abby. She's taken the lead on that. I've seen a couple of iterations of it, but, um, I know we're close, but we'll give, we'll give her a second to get back on. I think she was having a difficulty here. She's operating from home today. Okay. Have there been, um, recent odor complaints, uh, from the neighbors or anyone or with the operation at the, at the facility? I haven't, I haven't received any. Okay. We usually get, we get an email, you know, we've had them from time to time. Um, but I'm not aware of anything recently. Uh, Ed, Darren, any questions for Jared related to the system operation? I got, I got none. Just glad it was a calm month. Yeah, me too. And it looks like the library and the, uh, council on aging building is not a big contributor, contributor, not, not, not significant to, to move the needle significantly. Yeah. Um, which I guess is good for the town, right? Less, less expenses. Um, but we are getting the base more, more, more of the base charges from, from them and terrain and others, which is the segue to Sarah then. Ed, any questions on operations before we move on? Yeah. Someone's got some background conversation. Sorry, that's probably me. I'm going to try to stop that. Hold on. All right. I'm here. Thank you. Sorry. Hi. Hi. All right. I'm going to share that, um, right now. Okay. Financial report. So, you know, end of the month, January, about 59% of the year complete. Um, not a ton of additional expenses from the last time. Um, like I said, that 5,000 for LCS will be coming through and I believe that's going to go through small equipment. Um, you know, there are some, you know, overages we already had ourselves at about 20. I predict we're going to be a little bit over in the equipment repairs based on what I know we're going to have to pay for. Um, we already know we're going to be over in sludge disposal for, you know, the fog pumping and some of the emergency pumping. And we also know that we are going to be over in water significantly, obviously, because this is very, very new this year. It is built into the budget for next year, but we've also dialed it down as Derek mentioned. So, um, it's in a different place now. Um, the small equipment is, you know, still has, you know, money left in it, but it has, there are markers for spending all of that. And there's nothing too, you know, exciting and expensive, I guess. When the final bill for the electrical work in the parts, would that all go to maintenance or would it be split? Would some of it be equipment or it doesn't, or in the end, does it not really matter? Um, it's tough because it's not like there's a specific project line for that, you know, in a way that's going to the expense, the regular funding, but some of some things have definitely come out of the, sorry, the equipment repairs and maintenance. I know some pride has come through here. I think we generally usually put regular type of equipment repairs and maintenance through here and try to keep the emergency unexpected stuff and contingency. And if need be small equipment, cause it's a place that we have money. So generally the equipment repairs is more than the general work that we have people doing for equipment repairs, which it is obviously is over. We've had pride in here doing more stuff than we ever have. We didn't have them last year the whole time either. Uh, and normal, normally like a South, South shore generator work will come out, uh, any whitewater emergency work. So things above and beyond their normal monthly contract, and then haze pump, any type of pump work. And then we have Kaser in here. We've used them before, but we've been taking most of the electrical out of contingency, I think. And then if we move on to revenue, I was trying to quickly like, like, where, where are we making up? Cause you still forecast that we're at a hundred point 4%, right? So kind of just like that. So is it electricity? Um, we're probably, yeah, I'll probably be able to fix that number a little bit. I should have fixed it for this one. So we're at a hundred percent. Um, realistically the, I would say that we're probably going to come in hopefully a little bit less, you know, a few hundred in each of these, I think it'll make us hit our target. I haven't really adjusted these numbers yet. Just because we're in the middle of like the cold months, I'm afraid to. Um, but I think that we will probably come in under in some of those energy lines less than what we see here. And then there's the option to obviously make sure we don't exhaust small capital. If we need to save a few grand from here to make sure we don't go over, we obviously are already, you know, done with contingency. Um, you know, we're done with certain items, but yeah, I'll try to balance that better for the next one. I apologize. I should have made that. I could, you know, I could have lowered a couple of those and put us in a better spot. Well, it's not, I don't want them lowered if they're not going to be lowered. Right. I mean, like just, just let's get a forecast for next time and let's just see where we're coming in at. I mean, I mean, overall, even with the sludge extra contingency being fully used up the extra on the water, I mean, you still have it at a hundred percent. So it's great. Yeah. It's updated with increase idea with things I think will increase, but I didn't, um, offset that extra 0.4 and places I thought maybe we'll come in lower than predicted. So that's what I can make sure happens next time too. Okay. So, so in summary, so we're not significantly, we're not concerned that we're at 73% spent with 59% of the year done that it will, it will work out closer to. Yes. And no, I guess we definitely, obviously any extra little bits that we had here, we've kind of used it early in the year. We are aware of that. So it's, there's no room for any extra, you know, doing anything ahead of schedule or, you know, emergencies would be obviously a complication. I don't know if Tom can speak to how we would manage that if we did need to find a place to, you know, pay for emergencies, you know, if we didn't have the room in the budget. I'm sure there's a financial, um, procedure for that, but cause we know we have it at retained earnings. It's just not loaded into our budget right now. Yeah. I mean, we, we, we have, you know, scheduled retained earnings to be used, uh, this year, and we, we do have the ability, uh, and I do keep Brian Kevenie informed of, you know, the status of this budget, uh, just letting him know that, uh, you know, if we needed to, to put, to draw additional money from retained earnings, that might be a possibility, but I think we'll, we'll know a little bit further into the fiscal year, whether or not that's going to be necessary or not. Right. Um, what happens, what happens when the user charges bring in more money than expected? Are you able to balance it with that? Right. Yes. That's what I was going to say too, is that we shouldn't have to take as much from retained earnings, you know, because we've made so much in, in revenue, which would mean that if we did have to, um, up our expenses, let's say, um, it wouldn't mean we would go over the retained earnings, you know, expectations that we put in the article last year. I would assume, I don't know if that's accurate, Tom. Um, but if we're not, we, we, we're saying that we're going to need this 82, 549 down here. And we're also going to need this 101 086. So that is the retained earnings draw planned for the year, but we will not need that, um, for sure. So I'm thinking, you know, that, that revenue, you know, anything in user charges, that's higher than we predicted goes into that revenue account. It was much like the, um, privilege fees that we obtained, you know, that goes into a revenue account. Generally speaking, you know, uh, you're not to use that until the following fiscal year when you identify a need for it, but there is a mechanism. Should we be in dire straits that, uh, you know, expenses, um, are larger than revenue. We have the ability to, to access that, but it, you know, it would wind up going through, you know, the finance committee and all of that, but not impossible. Yeah. But right now we're showing, we're not using any of it or we haven't used it yet. Yep. Okay. Yep. All right. Revenue. Revenue. So numbers look good on user charges, 80% collected. And, you know, we want to be at at least 75% by now because the third quarter has come due at this point. We have one more to collect on. So I still, I'm going to keep it at, I feel like a 570 is a reasonable number to keep it at. That'd be like making another 140 in revenue. Um, so feel pretty good about that. It could be, usually we have a pretty reasonable last quarter. It's closer to the, obviously it goes into spring and summer and a little bit more consumption. It's usually one of our better quarters. Um, so I'm trying to think actually, although let me, sorry, I'll correct myself. I think we actually bill that out in March. So it wouldn't have summer in it, but we're, we're on target. We've been making, you know, at least 25% each time. So we have new people coming on. We have more base charges, like you mentioned before. Um, and when we get to obviously sewer use applications, we'll talk about additional use. Um, so I think that looks good. You know, nothing big on interest. I'm still not sure why that number is kind of stalled out, but it's being looked into by the folks that actually manage that, which is finance and, um, staying on top of that, you know, you can see, obviously we have the almost 200 in here. Um, it jumps ahead a little bit, but we are going to be, we do have a signed permit from the 21 constituent folks. So, um, we haven't signed off officially on our end until we have a check in hand, but that's another 135,000. So that number should go up by that. I mean, that we get to that point. That's the Cronin's, um, that's the cafe distro type spot. Yeah. Okay. I thought it was going to be more like 75 grand. So that's great. No. Yeah. Uh, and leans are pretty much all in, I think at this point, we're at 34 58. That's about the most, I think we're going to get for this year. Yeah. We're way up and rubbing or you can see the numbers down here and the percentages. Yeah. Oh, due to privilege. Right. But to balance, to balance this year, can we, it's just funny math. It'll just, right. Can we, can we use the privilege fees to balance this year? Yeah. It's not, it's not intended to be that way, but like I said, if we're in dire straits, right. Um, we would, we would, uh, gain access to those retained earnings. Right. Right. Yep. So for example, if this number at the bottom net operating income was zero, that assumes we would take, we would have taken all the retained earnings we budgeted and betterment that we budgeted for the year. Am I following that math correctly? Is that how that works? Yes. Um, you know, we, we obviously try to, we're trying to balance where we have exactly a hundred percent on both sides, which would put us at that spot. Um, it's always a little bit higher. Usually we have a little bit more revenue than expected, which is always good. Um, but yeah, so we should be okay. At least if we did have an emergency, if we didn't have all this, you know, privilege fee money coming in, it might be a different picture. It would be. But if we, if we, I guess my question is if we have no emergencies and we, we end up, the final budget is maybe 5%, the costs are maybe 5% higher than we thought, would we balance it by drawing down the betterment a little bit, or would we draw it down by reducing the, um, miscellaneous, you know, the privilege fees? Yeah, I guess I would, I would be asking guidance from, from Ryan Kebany on what he felt was the best way to, to bridge that gap.
And, and where does the, the, the Oxbow fog penalty show up? Is that? That comes in under service orders. We did get, that did go up from last time. That other one finally dropped into the right bucket. So it shows two. That is the wastewater service order. Okay. Got it. So it was a little over eight in there. Okay. Gerard, are you, are you driving a new vehicle? Me? Yeah. Gerard, right. What do we end up getting? A hybrid F-150. Okay. So we should see our gas charge go down. Awesome. Has this low pressure sewer been awarded or is that, where do we stand on that design? That's almost like a preliminary conditions, um, and preliminary, like existing conditions and preliminary design. We've started that. We're looking at some of the rules and regulations. Um, and then that will transition us into the peer design and bid next year. But you've engaged a consultant to help with that. Is that correct? Yes. We started that. Yes. Sarah and I will be meeting with them. I think that was next this week. Yes. Well, Sarah and I are meeting with them. Ed, Darren, any other questions on what we're looking at here? No, I'm good. Everything's tracking well. Yeah. I, I do have one other question to, from, to understand a little better. I was looking at the notes from, from last meeting. And I know we have a placeholder in, on return, retained earnings for up to, increasing it from 150 to 320. And when I was rereading that, I really couldn't understand how we got from 150 to 320. I know we'll revisit that when, when we get further along, but it seemed like the reason was, well, we have the money, let's make it higher. Not, I didn't see the math adding up, but did I miss something? Um, but you talked about obviously next year's budget that we talked about last time. Yeah. I believe it was because we were accounting for more. Um, so there's, you know, we have to offset our expense budget. We can either obviously increase the rates, take more, retain earnings. It's going to be one or the other. So we had all this extra money here and we knew we were going to bump up the expenses and the contracted services for the study that needs to happen. Right. But number one, we, we had to increase this by quite a bit for the study and for data, I believe. Um, so we had to find some more money than we initially thought we were going to need to balance that budget. We could either, and we wanted to keep the rate, obviously we have lovely to keep it under 10 or somewhere, you know, less than what we've predicted because in the, if you look at the five-year rate plan, it was 14%, I believe for the next few years. And by taking more out of retained earnings because we received so much more in retained earnings, we're able to really, I think we were able to keep that in under 10 in the nine, nine and a half. No, that's good. That's what I just, yeah, it is. Cause we have, we have a, a mini windfall and we're using it this way. Rate relief. Got it. And, and when we, when we meet with Abrams, we'll look at what was driving us to the bigger increases was to keep the, um, um, the return, retained earnings at a certain level, right? Above that 20%, which we, we, but because we got it. Okay. Right. That's what I, I, thank you. Um, then we can move on. Uh, next item is, uh, any, any new requests date. So we, you're waiting for the ink to dry on Cronin's and there was discussion that the new owners of town center were going to come in and grab whatever else was available. Did that happen or anything else happened? We haven't heard. We'll see about that. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't heard further from town center. Um, Sarah and I were going to go over the new numbers now that we have 121 contituate all finalized and see what the final number was. And let them know, but we kind of left it that they would reach out to us and they have not.
So is there a real estate boom over? We're not, we're not the hot commodity. No one, no other surprises came out.
Well, I'm not today. Okay. Well, we'll stick. I did. I did see on the warrant that there's a zoning or something by law change to allow, to support the type of development we heard on the Wayland Sudbury line a couple of months ago. So next year. And, and there's also a, did it already happen? There's a meeting to talk about the, the old, old landfill reuse. Yeah, there's a, um, there's a forum. There's a visionary committee that I provide technical support to. And we have a forum scheduled, I think on the 17th, which I believe is maybe a week from Wednesday. Um, yeah, where we're going to outline what the committee has been doing over the last 15, 18 months and, and make a, you know, a recommendation there. Their next task is to make a recommendation of the select board of, you know, feasible options for us. Okay. Well, our, our next, uh, route 20 corridor real estate boom, hopefully will occur after the study of the lines done and, and the plant. And then we could talk more intelligently to these potential customers. Okay. Um, the minutes from our January 12th meeting were circulated. Um, Ed, Darren, any, I read what mine there and they're good.
Same here. Ed, any thoughts on the minutes? Uh, let's see. Yeah. We had a full house last time.
Okay. Um, I make a motion to approve the January 12th, 2026, um, minutes as circulated. Do you hear a second? Darren Bach seconds. Mike getting yes. Approves. Darren Bach. Yes. Ed. Yes. Great. Okay. Um, anything else that wasn't covered today? You had asked, um, when Abby had left the meeting for a short time, the status of the letter over to, uh, all the Oxbow. And she had, when I was on the phone with her, she was saying that, uh, uh, KP law has issued that letter. We have a copy of it and, uh, we can, we can forward that to the membership here. He didn't send me a copy yet. I asked for that today. He said that he said he'd send it. So I'll let you guys know. Okay. One thing, uh, I, I try to ask him, the chairman, can I resign from the board? Because I keep half a computer is the problem. Uh, another thing is uh, another thing. Nothing involved, so far involved any technique. Myself, services, as, as far as a budget, finance goes, I'm not that good. That's not my line. So, if in the future ever need a wastewater engineer to, to do some techniques, call me anytime, be free. Okay. Do you know when your term expires? Or does anyone know? Um, I do not. We'd have to, we'd have to look that up. I think it's on our, our, our landing page for our committee. I'm just looking, but the, the, where I'm going on that is if, um, I don't know, we have people banging down the door to join us, but, uh,
yeah, Ed's term expires in June. Um, I think the process would be, you would need to send a note to select board or something like that. Um, or then we can, but in the meantime, we appreciate you helping us with the quorum and being there. And Darren, you, you got anyone, we got to bring in more people and make it a little easier to do a quorum. Not as connected in town as it used to be, but we can start circulating. I could say that with the professional staff we have, it's, uh, I'm on two committees. This is, we, we do, we accomplish more work with, with less effort from the volunteers than others. So that's my sales pitch. There you go. Um, okay. Um, so Ed, I thank you for the heads up. Um, I believe you would need to to, you, you, you write a letter or an email to, is it to, is it to, is it to, to Mike, the town manager or? Yeah, I, I would send a letter to the town manager, to Michael McCall. You could copy Trudy Reed, uh, who's the town clerk just to alert her to a vacancy. And then, uh, I'm not, I'm not certain when the deadline for people to submit papers for, you know, to, to get on the ballot for the, for a vacant seat. I think it's this month. Well, no, this is no ballot. Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. This is a point. I'm not sure who would vote for. Yeah. No, I'm not out campaigning answers. This is Abby in the town manager's office. Um, all that you have to do, if it's a reappointment, if you're still interested in participating, Ed, um, we will reach out to anybody that has their term expiring this year and find out if you're still interested or not. And then we'll get you on a select board agenda just for them to say, yep, you're good. Um, and then we'll send you your reappointment letter. You'll have to get sworn in again. Um, and just do your social media training and, um, but it's, you don't really have to do anything. We'll reach out to you when it's time and you just tell us yes or no. But it's, it sounds like, uh, thank you for that, Abby. It sounds like in this particular situation, Ed Chang is looking to resign his seat. Okay. You know, so we're, so he would send something, I guess to you, um, notifying you of that. And then, yeah, then I guess then you would, you know, forward that on to the select board and then they would take actions to solicit, uh, a replacement. Right. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So if you want to, Ed, if you wanted to send in an email to Abigail Warren, just notifying her of your plans to resign in June, she'll take it from there to the end of July. I would do that. I will send the email just after my turn done. So save for any other issues. Okay. I will try the best I can. Yeah. We, we would appreciate that just in case. Cause I know Darren travels a fair amount. Um, and, but we'll start, uh, getting the word out if, if, if anyone is, um, uh, interested in, uh, joining us, if anyone reads our minutes, they'll see it. I know. Yep. I felt very important. Very, everyone was interested in us for a couple of months there. Yeah, we were the hot commodity, man. So, okay. Thank you, Ed. Uh, anything else? Can you top that? Uh, yeah, top that one. Okay. What did we schedule meetings into March and April? The next one. Yeah. And we're currently on for March 9th. 9th. Oh, do you want to look at April 6th? That's Easter Monday. I don't know if that's holiday. Uh, or, um, 13th. 13th works for me. When, when, so then, uh,
April 13th, Mike. Yep. If it, if it works for others, I don't know when school is breaks. Yeah, I think it would work for staff. I think Abby, Jared, Sarah. Okay. Let's, uh, let's do 13th at noon. All right. When is town meeting this year? It's a little, a little earlier, right? May 4th.
I think it's only going to last like an hour and a half this year. Are you serious? No. No. That's my, that's my stab at being funny. You caught my attention. My wishful thinking. Yeah. I saw something around so far. There's at least 50 odd articles of substance. I guess maybe whittle them down agenda. Yeah. And, and I think you, you, Tom, and all your got kudos for meeting the accelerated deadline for, uh, getting, you know, realistic budgets in a little earlier than past years. Yeah. I mean, it's, uh, it's the, the, the whole team here, both the public works, the wastewater side of things. Yeah. We're in, we're in a good place relative to timeline and, and right now, you know, uh, the capital requests that we have, uh, relative to the wastewater commission. We're in, we're in a good place with that. Yeah. Okay. And so I think, uh, anything else, Ed, uh, call store or Mike. Okay. I make a motion that we adjourn at 12, uh, 45 here. I second that motion. Okay. Mike. Yes. Yes. Hey, Ed, you ready to, if you could join us for the next one, that'd be good, but, uh, we appreciate your efforts. Okay. Everyone stay warm.
What is it?
Duncan's. Great. The, um, the, the, the electrical work, is that, is that outside our current budget? Or are we, where, where, where does that fall in? Do you know the, uh, um, not, sir? Do you want me to say something on that? I mean, we're not, it's an, it's already accounted for in the budget you just got, I believe I should. Okay. It's only been about nine days since that budget was closed. And I'm pretty sure we've paid all the invoices for that work so far. Um, short of, I believe a, about a $5,000 one for LCS. So that might be the only thing on screen. And that, you know, that's more data, I guess, specific, right, Jared, not necessarily electrical, right? So, so we, so when we get to that, the equipment repairs and maintenance could be like 30 grand over budget for the year. It looks like when we get there, we, we get, we get, we get back to that. We had some room in the small capital too, just, but we'll talk about it. Yeah. Okay. I hope you can hear me. Um, I hear you clearly. Yes, we hear you now, Ed. Oh, okay. Great. Um, looking at the notes, um, just some follow-up questions from last time. You were, you were talking about the screening barrel, getting water in it and maybe needing to get more parts. Is it, is it behaving better? Do we need to get more parts or? Um, so we're still working with the manufacturer, um, but we do have the lag screen in hand, um, with the water reduced a little bit, just so we're not using too much, uh, or not adding too much water usage to our bill. Um, but it is, it is at least allowed us to stop having that overflow while we get everything more honed in. Okay. And I didn't, I don't think you said, what was Alta's flow or are they still at that 10,000, 11,000? We think, um, monthly flow still 30, 31, 32. Yeah. Monthly flow is still, um, that, uh, 30, 32. Alta is normally around the 11, 12,000. Um, they did hit, um, 20,000 last night. They draining the pool? Yeah. 20,000. I'm not sure. I think everyone was just hosting maybe. Oh, they had a party. There you go. Yeah. Um, and, and while you're talking about it, has the letter gone out to them? Are we still cleaning the fog and billing them? Um, yeah, we're still billing them. I don't think the letter has gone out yet. I believe that might be still be with KP law. Um, it doesn't look like Abby's on the call anymore. Okay. Yeah. I would defer to Abby. She's taken the lead on that. I've seen a couple of iterations of it, but, um, I know we're close, but we'll give, we'll give her a second to get back on. I think she was having a difficulty here. She's operating from home today. Okay. Have there been, um, recent odor complaints, uh, from the neighbors or anyone or with the operation at the, at the facility? I haven't, I haven't received any. Okay. We usually get, we get an email, you know, we've had them from time to time. Um, but I'm not aware of anything recently. Uh, Ed, Darren, any questions for Jared related to the system operation? I got, I got none. Just glad it was a calm month. Yeah, me too. And it looks like the library and the, uh, council on aging building is not a big contributor, contributor, not, not, not significant to, to move the needle significantly. Yeah. Um, which I guess is good for the town, right? Less, less expenses. Um, but we are getting the base more, more, more of the base charges from, from them and terrain and others, which is the segue to Sarah then. Ed, any questions on operations before we move on? Yeah. Someone's got some background conversation. Sorry, that's probably me. I'm going to try to stop that. Hold on. All right. I'm here. Thank you. Sorry. Hi. Hi. All right. I'm going to share that, um, right now. Okay. Financial report. So, you know, end of the month, January, about 59% of the year complete. Um, not a ton of additional expenses from the last time. Um, like I said, that 5,000 for LCS will be coming through and I believe that's going to go through small equipment. Um, you know, there are some, you know, overages we already had ourselves at about 20. I predict we're going to be a little bit over in the equipment repairs based on what I know we're going to have to pay for. Um, we already know we're going to be over in sludge disposal for, you know, the fog pumping and some of the emergency pumping. And we also know that we are going to be over in water significantly, obviously, because this is very, very new this year. It is built into the budget for next year, but we've also dialed it down as Derek mentioned. So, um, it's in a different place now. Um, the small equipment is, you know, still has, you know, money left in it, but it has, there are markers for spending all of that. And there's nothing too, you know, exciting and expensive, I guess. When the final bill for the electrical work in the parts, would that all go to maintenance or would it be split? Would some of it be equipment or it doesn't, or in the end, does it not really matter? Um, it's tough because it's not like there's a specific project line for that, you know, in a way that's going to the expense, the regular funding, but some of some things have definitely come out of the, sorry, the equipment repairs and maintenance. I know some pride has come through here. I think we generally usually put regular type of equipment repairs and maintenance through here and try to keep the emergency unexpected stuff and contingency. And if need be small equipment, cause it's a place that we have money. So generally the equipment repairs is more than the general work that we have people doing for equipment repairs, which it is obviously is over. We've had pride in here doing more stuff than we ever have. We didn't have them last year the whole time either. Uh, and normal, normally like a South, South shore generator work will come out, uh, any whitewater emergency work. So things above and beyond their normal monthly contract, and then haze pump, any type of pump work. And then we have Kaser in here. We've used them before, but we've been taking most of the electrical out of contingency, I think. And then if we move on to revenue, I was trying to quickly like, like, where, where are we making up? Cause you still forecast that we're at a hundred point 4%, right? So kind of just like that. So is it electricity? Um, we're probably, yeah, I'll probably be able to fix that number a little bit. I should have fixed it for this one. So we're at a hundred percent. Um, realistically the, I would say that we're probably going to come in hopefully a little bit less, you know, a few hundred in each of these, I think it'll make us hit our target. I haven't really adjusted these numbers yet. Just because we're in the middle of like the cold months, I'm afraid to. Um, but I think that we will probably come in under in some of those energy lines less than what we see here. And then there's the option to obviously make sure we don't exhaust small capital. If we need to save a few grand from here to make sure we don't go over, we obviously are already, you know, done with contingency. Um, you know, we're done with certain items, but yeah, I'll try to balance that better for the next one. I apologize. I should have made that. I could, you know, I could have lowered a couple of those and put us in a better spot. Well, it's not, I don't want them lowered if they're not going to be lowered. Right. I mean, like just, just let's get a forecast for next time and let's just see where we're coming in at. I mean, I mean, overall, even with the sludge extra contingency being fully used up the extra on the water, I mean, you still have it at a hundred percent. So it's great. Yeah. It's updated with increase idea with things I think will increase, but I didn't, um, offset that extra 0.4 and places I thought maybe we'll come in lower than predicted. So that's what I can make sure happens next time too. Okay. So, so in summary, so we're not significantly, we're not concerned that we're at 73% spent with 59% of the year done that it will, it will work out closer to. Yes. And no, I guess we definitely, obviously any extra little bits that we had here, we've kind of used it early in the year. We are aware of that. So it's, there's no room for any extra, you know, doing anything ahead of schedule or, you know, emergencies would be obviously a complication. I don't know if Tom can speak to how we would manage that if we did need to find a place to, you know, pay for emergencies, you know, if we didn't have the room in the budget. I'm sure there's a financial, um, procedure for that, but cause we know we have it at retained earnings. It's just not loaded into our budget right now. Yeah. I mean, we, we, we have, you know, scheduled retained earnings to be used, uh, this year, and we, we do have the ability, uh, and I do keep Brian Kevenie informed of, you know, the status of this budget, uh, just letting him know that, uh, you know, if we needed to, to put, to draw additional money from retained earnings, that might be a possibility, but I think we'll, we'll know a little bit further into the fiscal year, whether or not that's going to be necessary or not. Right. Um, what happens, what happens when the user charges bring in more money than expected? Are you able to balance it with that? Right. Yes. That's what I was going to say too, is that we shouldn't have to take as much from retained earnings, you know, because we've made so much in, in revenue, which would mean that if we did have to, um, up our expenses, let's say, um, it wouldn't mean we would go over the retained earnings, you know, expectations that we put in the article last year. I would assume, I don't know if that's accurate, Tom. Um, but if we're not, we, we, we're saying that we're going to need this 82, 549 down here. And we're also going to need this 101 086. So that is the retained earnings draw planned for the year, but we will not need that, um, for sure. So I'm thinking, you know, that, that revenue, you know, anything in user charges, that's higher than we predicted goes into that revenue account. It was much like the, um, privilege fees that we obtained, you know, that goes into a revenue account. Generally speaking, you know, uh, you're not to use that until the following fiscal year when you identify a need for it, but there is a mechanism. Should we be in dire straits that, uh, you know, expenses, um, are larger than revenue. We have the ability to, to access that, but it, you know, it would wind up going through, you know, the finance committee and all of that, but not impossible. Yeah. But right now we're showing, we're not using any of it or we haven't used it yet. Yep. Okay. Yep. All right. Revenue. Revenue. So numbers look good on user charges, 80% collected. And, you know, we want to be at at least 75% by now because the third quarter has come due at this point. We have one more to collect on. So I still, I'm going to keep it at, I feel like a 570 is a reasonable number to keep it at. That'd be like making another 140 in revenue. Um, so feel pretty good about that. It could be, usually we have a pretty reasonable last quarter. It's closer to the, obviously it goes into spring and summer and a little bit more consumption. It's usually one of our better quarters. Um, so I'm trying to think actually, although let me, sorry, I'll correct myself. I think we actually bill that out in March. So it wouldn't have summer in it, but we're, we're on target. We've been making, you know, at least 25% each time. So we have new people coming on. We have more base charges, like you mentioned before. Um, and when we get to obviously sewer use applications, we'll talk about additional use. Um, so I think that looks good. You know, nothing big on interest. I'm still not sure why that number is kind of stalled out, but it's being looked into by the folks that actually manage that, which is finance and, um, staying on top of that, you know, you can see, obviously we have the almost 200 in here. Um, it jumps ahead a little bit, but we are going to be, we do have a signed permit from the 21 constituent folks. So, um, we haven't signed off officially on our end until we have a check in hand, but that's another 135,000. So that number should go up by that. I mean, that we get to that point. That's the Cronin's, um, that's the cafe distro type spot. Yeah. Okay. I thought it was going to be more like 75 grand. So that's great. No. Yeah. Uh, and leans are pretty much all in, I think at this point, we're at 34 58. That's about the most, I think we're going to get for this year. Yeah. We're way up and rubbing or you can see the numbers down here and the percentages. Yeah. Oh, due to privilege. Right. But to balance, to balance this year, can we, it's just funny math. It'll just, right. Can we, can we use the privilege fees to balance this year? Yeah. It's not, it's not intended to be that way, but like I said, if we're in dire straits, right. Um, we would, we would, uh, gain access to those retained earnings. Right. Right. Yep. So for example, if this number at the bottom net operating income was zero, that assumes we would take, we would have taken all the retained earnings we budgeted and betterment that we budgeted for the year. Am I following that math correctly? Is that how that works? Yes. Um, you know, we, we obviously try to, we're trying to balance where we have exactly a hundred percent on both sides, which would put us at that spot. Um, it's always a little bit higher. Usually we have a little bit more revenue than expected, which is always good. Um, but yeah, so we should be okay. At least if we did have an emergency, if we didn't have all this, you know, privilege fee money coming in, it might be a different picture. It would be. But if we, if we, I guess my question is if we have no emergencies and we, we end up, the final budget is maybe 5%, the costs are maybe 5% higher than we thought, would we balance it by drawing down the betterment a little bit, or would we draw it down by reducing the, um, miscellaneous, you know, the privilege fees? Yeah, I guess I would, I would be asking guidance from, from Ryan Kebany on what he felt was the best way to, to bridge that gap.
And, and where does the, the, the Oxbow fog penalty show up? Is that? That comes in under service orders. We did get, that did go up from last time. That other one finally dropped into the right bucket. So it shows two. That is the wastewater service order. Okay. Got it. So it was a little over eight in there. Okay. Gerard, are you, are you driving a new vehicle? Me? Yeah. Gerard, right. What do we end up getting? A hybrid F-150. Okay. So we should see our gas charge go down. Awesome. Has this low pressure sewer been awarded or is that, where do we stand on that design? That's almost like a preliminary conditions, um, and preliminary, like existing conditions and preliminary design. We've started that. We're looking at some of the rules and regulations. Um, and then that will transition us into the peer design and bid next year. But you've engaged a consultant to help with that. Is that correct? Yes. We started that. Yes. Sarah and I will be meeting with them. I think that was next this week. Yes. Well, Sarah and I are meeting with them. Ed, Darren, any other questions on what we're looking at here? No, I'm good. Everything's tracking well. Yeah. I, I do have one other question to, from, to understand a little better. I was looking at the notes from, from last meeting. And I know we have a placeholder in, on return, retained earnings for up to, increasing it from 150 to 320. And when I was rereading that, I really couldn't understand how we got from 150 to 320. I know we'll revisit that when, when we get further along, but it seemed like the reason was, well, we have the money, let's make it higher. Not, I didn't see the math adding up, but did I miss something? Um, but you talked about obviously next year's budget that we talked about last time. Yeah. I believe it was because we were accounting for more. Um, so there's, you know, we have to offset our expense budget. We can either obviously increase the rates, take more, retain earnings. It's going to be one or the other. So we had all this extra money here and we knew we were going to bump up the expenses and the contracted services for the study that needs to happen. Right. But number one, we, we had to increase this by quite a bit for the study and for data, I believe. Um, so we had to find some more money than we initially thought we were going to need to balance that budget. We could either, and we wanted to keep the rate, obviously we have lovely to keep it under 10 or somewhere, you know, less than what we've predicted because in the, if you look at the five-year rate plan, it was 14%, I believe for the next few years. And by taking more out of retained earnings because we received so much more in retained earnings, we're able to really, I think we were able to keep that in under 10 in the nine, nine and a half. No, that's good. That's what I just, yeah, it is. Cause we have, we have a, a mini windfall and we're using it this way. Rate relief. Got it. And, and when we, when we meet with Abrams, we'll look at what was driving us to the bigger increases was to keep the, um, um, the return, retained earnings at a certain level, right? Above that 20%, which we, we, but because we got it. Okay. Right. That's what I, I, thank you. Um, then we can move on. Uh, next item is, uh, any, any new requests date. So we, you're waiting for the ink to dry on Cronin's and there was discussion that the new owners of town center were going to come in and grab whatever else was available. Did that happen or anything else happened? We haven't heard. We'll see about that. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't heard further from town center. Um, Sarah and I were going to go over the new numbers now that we have 121 contituate all finalized and see what the final number was. And let them know, but we kind of left it that they would reach out to us and they have not.
So is there a real estate boom over? We're not, we're not the hot commodity. No one, no other surprises came out.
Well, I'm not today. Okay. Well, we'll stick. I did. I did see on the warrant that there's a zoning or something by law change to allow, to support the type of development we heard on the Wayland Sudbury line a couple of months ago. So next year. And, and there's also a, did it already happen? There's a meeting to talk about the, the old, old landfill reuse. Yeah, there's a, um, there's a forum. There's a visionary committee that I provide technical support to. And we have a forum scheduled, I think on the 17th, which I believe is maybe a week from Wednesday. Um, yeah, where we're going to outline what the committee has been doing over the last 15, 18 months and, and make a, you know, a recommendation there. Their next task is to make a recommendation of the select board of, you know, feasible options for us. Okay. Well, our, our next, uh, route 20 corridor real estate boom, hopefully will occur after the study of the lines done and, and the plant. And then we could talk more intelligently to these potential customers. Okay. Um, the minutes from our January 12th meeting were circulated. Um, Ed, Darren, any, I read what mine there and they're good.
Same here. Ed, any thoughts on the minutes? Uh, let's see. Yeah. We had a full house last time.
Okay. Um, I make a motion to approve the January 12th, 2026, um, minutes as circulated. Do you hear a second? Darren Bach seconds. Mike getting yes. Approves. Darren Bach. Yes. Ed. Yes. Great. Okay. Um, anything else that wasn't covered today? You had asked, um, when Abby had left the meeting for a short time, the status of the letter over to, uh, all the Oxbow. And she had, when I was on the phone with her, she was saying that, uh, uh, KP law has issued that letter. We have a copy of it and, uh, we can, we can forward that to the membership here. He didn't send me a copy yet. I asked for that today. He said that he said he'd send it. So I'll let you guys know. Okay. One thing, uh, I, I try to ask him, the chairman, can I resign from the board? Because I keep half a computer is the problem. Uh, another thing is uh, another thing. Nothing involved, so far involved any technique. Myself, services, as, as far as a budget, finance goes, I'm not that good. That's not my line. So, if in the future ever need a wastewater engineer to, to do some techniques, call me anytime, be free. Okay. Do you know when your term expires? Or does anyone know? Um, I do not. We'd have to, we'd have to look that up. I think it's on our, our, our landing page for our committee. I'm just looking, but the, the, where I'm going on that is if, um, I don't know, we have people banging down the door to join us, but, uh,
yeah, Ed's term expires in June. Um, I think the process would be, you would need to send a note to select board or something like that. Um, or then we can, but in the meantime, we appreciate you helping us with the quorum and being there. And Darren, you, you got anyone, we got to bring in more people and make it a little easier to do a quorum. Not as connected in town as it used to be, but we can start circulating. I could say that with the professional staff we have, it's, uh, I'm on two committees. This is, we, we do, we accomplish more work with, with less effort from the volunteers than others. So that's my sales pitch. There you go. Um, okay. Um, so Ed, I thank you for the heads up. Um, I believe you would need to to, you, you, you write a letter or an email to, is it to, is it to, is it to, to Mike, the town manager or? Yeah, I, I would send a letter to the town manager, to Michael McCall. You could copy Trudy Reed, uh, who's the town clerk just to alert her to a vacancy. And then, uh, I'm not, I'm not certain when the deadline for people to submit papers for, you know, to, to get on the ballot for the, for a vacant seat. I think it's this month. Well, no, this is no ballot. Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. This is a point. I'm not sure who would vote for. Yeah. No, I'm not out campaigning answers. This is Abby in the town manager's office. Um, all that you have to do, if it's a reappointment, if you're still interested in participating, Ed, um, we will reach out to anybody that has their term expiring this year and find out if you're still interested or not. And then we'll get you on a select board agenda just for them to say, yep, you're good. Um, and then we'll send you your reappointment letter. You'll have to get sworn in again. Um, and just do your social media training and, um, but it's, you don't really have to do anything. We'll reach out to you when it's time and you just tell us yes or no. But it's, it sounds like, uh, thank you for that, Abby. It sounds like in this particular situation, Ed Chang is looking to resign his seat. Okay. You know, so we're, so he would send something, I guess to you, um, notifying you of that. And then, yeah, then I guess then you would, you know, forward that on to the select board and then they would take actions to solicit, uh, a replacement. Right. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So if you want to, Ed, if you wanted to send in an email to Abigail Warren, just notifying her of your plans to resign in June, she'll take it from there to the end of July. I would do that. I will send the email just after my turn done. So save for any other issues. Okay. I will try the best I can. Yeah. We, we would appreciate that just in case. Cause I know Darren travels a fair amount. Um, and, but we'll start, uh, getting the word out if, if, if anyone is, um, uh, interested in, uh, joining us, if anyone reads our minutes, they'll see it. I know. Yep. I felt very important. Very, everyone was interested in us for a couple of months there. Yeah, we were the hot commodity, man. So, okay. Thank you, Ed. Uh, anything else? Can you top that? Uh, yeah, top that one. Okay. What did we schedule meetings into March and April? The next one. Yeah. And we're currently on for March 9th. 9th. Oh, do you want to look at April 6th? That's Easter Monday. I don't know if that's holiday. Uh, or, um, 13th. 13th works for me. When, when, so then, uh,
April 13th, Mike. Yep. If it, if it works for others, I don't know when school is breaks. Yeah, I think it would work for staff. I think Abby, Jared, Sarah. Okay. Let's, uh, let's do 13th at noon. All right. When is town meeting this year? It's a little, a little earlier, right? May 4th.
I think it's only going to last like an hour and a half this year. Are you serious? No. No. That's my, that's my stab at being funny. You caught my attention. My wishful thinking. Yeah. I saw something around so far. There's at least 50 odd articles of substance. I guess maybe whittle them down agenda. Yeah. And, and I think you, you, Tom, and all your got kudos for meeting the accelerated deadline for, uh, getting, you know, realistic budgets in a little earlier than past years. Yeah. I mean, it's, uh, it's the, the, the whole team here, both the public works, the wastewater side of things. Yeah. We're in, we're in a good place relative to timeline and, and right now, you know, uh, the capital requests that we have, uh, relative to the wastewater commission. We're in, we're in a good place with that. Yeah. Okay. And so I think, uh, anything else, Ed, uh, call store or Mike. Okay. I make a motion that we adjourn at 12, uh, 45 here. I second that motion. Okay. Mike. Yes. Yes. Hey, Ed, you ready to, if you could join us for the next one, that'd be good, but, uh, we appreciate your efforts. Okay. Everyone stay warm.