October 19, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript
October 19, 2026 - Finance Committee
We do have a quorum, so I'm calling this meeting the Finance Committee to order. This meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. One may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the...
Board slash Committee Zoom Links tab on the Town's Homepage. When required by law or allowed by the Chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the meeting location, here in person or via remote access. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. Robbie, is there anybody online at all? No, there's nobody online. I'm here. This is Rob. Hey, sorry.
Nope, nope. I'm glad you're here. So online participating for Zoom is member Rob Quimby. In the room with me, and I'm Carl Barnes. In the room with me is Iris Hoxha, Ryan O'Herlihy, and William Huss. There being nobody else online, we'll dispense with public comments. The only announcement I would offer is that
On November 2nd, which is a regular meeting night for us, the select board is going to be meeting with Michael McCall and Brian Keveny. Among other things, they'll be signing and issuing the bonds for this year's debt, correct, last year's debt or whichever ones they're signing because they haven't been approved this year, I guess.
They've invited us to join them for a joint meeting if we'd like to. I will still be traveling, so I will leave that up to you to decide perhaps at the next meeting, but that's at least on offer. I guess the one thing I didn't do, which I should, is review the agenda. We will take a look at and then I hope approve the meetings minutes of October 5.
We'll continue to review the Finance Director's Multi-Year Budget Model, focusing first on this year, fiscal 28, and then taking a look at fiscals 29 through 31.
Following that, we'll take our first look as a committee at the report of the Capital Planning Committee that was issued on October 14th and continue our discussion of the Fiscal 28 Capital Budget and Five-Year Capital Plan process. We'll take a look at the annual town meeting schedule, which was...
Just sent out in draft form. Dates may change, but it's a good start. And then depending on how we're doing on time, we'll talk about specific agenda items that might appear on future agendas. We will then decide on the dates of those meetings and with the goal of adjourning at or before nine o'clock. Okay, so back to the agenda.
Have we had a chance to look at the minutes that Brian drafted? Yes. I think you did. Good. I had one little nit, or two technically, since it... Brian, on the second page, in the paragraph beginning, C. Barnes noted that there was not much support. At the end of that line, you referred to Prop 2.5.
Two paragraphs later, you actually define that at the end of the sentence, at the end of the first line of the two paragraphs later. Got it. So I would just reverse those. Yeah. I figured you'd put something like that in to make sure, you know, I was really reading it. No. But otherwise, otherwise had no comments or requests. Iris, we've heard from Bill. You had anything for...
Oh, you weren't here. I'm sorry, I was not here. No, no, I knew that. I knew that. Okay. So that, Rob, any questions or comments? Not here. Okay. I move to accept the minutes with the adjustment that Carl added. Okay. Do we have a second? I'll second it. I second that motion.
We need a roll call vote. And so I'll start in the room to my left. Iris? Same. Same. Brian? Yes. Bill? Yes. Carl's a yes. Rob, how about you? Yes. All right. Thank you. Are you anticipating Krishna tonight or you're not sure? I have not heard from him. Satish is away. He's traveling. Hey, Rob, if you happen to see and we don't, Krishna joining via Zoom, can you just call it out, please? Sure.
Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Next, Brian had updated the multi-year budget model with the newest information from the town finance director, and I circulated that last week. I think we should take a look at that. When I sent it out, I mentioned what the major changes were.
And to the best of my knowledge, there has been no further updates. One minor correction, Carl. I gave you a bad reference if you intern just passed along in your email to folks. So the adjustments that changes Brian and Keveny made to the transfer station offset transfers.
were for Fiscal 29 and Fiscal 30, as opposed to 28 and 29. Thank you. So 28 already had 82,000 or so in there, and then he had not included anything in Fiscal 29 forward, now he has 50,000 in 29 and 30, and then that grows at CPI. I just wanted to correct that record, my error.
So the spreadsheets are accurate, just the description of what changes occurred. Got it. Understood. Thank you. Go ahead. First. I think I was up here, and my apologies, because I need to lock out my outlook, which is why you all received an email from me for my personal email today.
I think I had seen, or I think I saw when I returned that at this time, the productive deficit was anticipated to be found within the school budget for fiscal year 28, right? So that is still the case. It hasn't changed.
I don't think I've seen precisely that, but I think it's now expected and has been for maybe a few weeks now that whatever that deficit might be will be found within the budgets. Okay, great. You know, town and schools. Okay. Or additional revenue. Okay. If there is, yes. Great. Fair enough. Then with that in mind, I'm assuming that as this item continues throughout the year, our focus will really be on the ask that's still going to come for fiscal year 29.
And have we possibly started to discuss if that's, like, essentially, are we taking the strategy that the finance director and the town manager have previously proposed for this year, which was that three-year bundling, and essentially shifting that out to fiscal year 29 to 31? Is that it? Well, that is a no. Okay. Okay. Okay. We're set in 35. So it's a great question. Oh, okay. Sorry. Sorry. It's okay.
As you're locked out, you probably can't find the agenda. No, no, I did find the agenda. My apologies. I didn't read it as thoroughly, so my apologies. You're still jet-lagged. I'm still not. You did one or two freebies. Yeah, that is, she's not committed. One, I mean, one item that's not reflected in what is version 9, although Brian Keveny had made a modest adjustment to new growth, he brought it up from...
600,000 to 650, and I think I reported at a prior meeting that the assessor had been circling somewhere between 575 and 600 for residential new growth and 90,000 or so on personal property new growth. At their now last assessment, assessor's meeting, he said that their final residential
is ending up somewhere around $640 or $650 and another $90 for personal property. So we're expecting new growth on the recap to come in around $750. So that's $100,000 more of new growth that takes the potential deficit in the right direction. So just proving that Bill's modeling was accurate.
Bill's not surprised. Well, the advantage of a probability is they can't pin me down to any one number, so I can take credit for whatever the number is. Yeah, and just for the benefit of folks having talked to the assessor, you know, after the fiscal year closed, June 30, they set out to scrub the numbers and look for, you know, building permits.
And now, but they're really not interested in going too far out on the limb as to how much new growth they might uncover because they don't want to be held responsible if they miss it. And so I think that this happened last year, too. That's why you're seeing kind of these incremental bumps. And last year, there was a particular position that they took, which ultimately the DOR sustained that allowed them to
Advance in some new growth on some condos up on the north side of town that they weren't sure they were going to be able to include until they got the final new growth certified. So, and even this 750 number, I mean, it's always possible when the state reviews it that they could push back, you know, on it and say, you know, you can't count that, but whatever. Just to like double click there for a second.
The state says we can't use it. It can't be used necessarily for funds to help reduce the gap in the levy capacity, but it's still money we would actually get that would essentially then just go to free cash and then we could choose.
This year to use that money to fund something like a special reserve fund through that use of free cash, which we know we're getting, right? Like it's not as if that we don't get that money. Yeah, assuming it doesn't count the new growth, it will the next year, but if somehow the town's able to actually send out tax bills based on...
What do you assess your thought was new growth? Yeah, I think you could just end up with an extra free cash. Yeah, but of course, new growth is not cash per se, right? It's not like we get $750,000 of cash or $650,000 or anything else. It's capacity to raise taxes. It's the tax equivalent of the increase in assessed value.
Or new properties, additions. Yes, but that returns into some money and we tax on it, right? Yes. But over the course of a year or maybe even longer. So I'm not quite sure I understand this and maybe it's obvious to everybody else, but if you replace, if you're in the BTO summary sheet of version nine and replace the new growth number that's there, 650 and replace it with 750.
The projected deficit drops by about $200,000, even though we're only increasing $100,000. I don't understand that math. That shouldn't be the case. Okay. Wouldn't have thought so. But again, new growth isn't actually cash, right? So maybe that's... I'll have to double check that. Even if it doesn't, it's going in the right direction.
I think you saw that the town received the AAA rating from Moody's again. That will certainly help in the issuance of debt. But at the same time, the last I heard, Brian Keveny was expecting of, or at least putting into his model 4.5% for the interest rate on that. Given that, you know, the... You know, long-term rates have been increased by the Fed. And that may happen again. I don't know. I think it will happen before these bonds are issued. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know where that interest rate will be at times. At our last SIPCY meeting, I'm pretty sure he said, and we'll know. November 5th. Well, it's not sooner, but I'm pretty sure he said that it's looking like the town might get a four and a quarter as opposed to the four and a half that he increased it to. But that difference is $30,000 to $40,000 of net change to the deficit. Anything we get less than four and a half is a good thing, but it's not going to move the needle significantly. No, but I'd rather have to be $30,000 or $40,000 in that direction. And we will know soon enough. I assume everybody saw the list of, otherwise saw the list of changes, including his change to the energy point item. Yeah, his number there is now a 15% increase over the last year. And I think, you know, for our purposes, while we can continue to maintain this, I think the... And then, Karl, based on what you've said, it sounds like the focus is now turned away from levy capacity and has turned more toward what's the year-over-year increase in tax revenue that people can stomach. So, you know, as you noted, this slightly increased the year-over-year percentage tax increase, but... You know, again, time will tell as to any further, to your point, any further budget heading that can be done and or other revenue state aid. Where are we currently sitting for fiscal year 28? It's six and a quarter. Six and a quarter. But as I went through at the last meeting, 115 basis points of that relate solely to the deferral of the long-term financing last year. And if you remove that item, at least on version 8, we're just under 5%, which seems to be the level at which people would prefer to see the year-over-year increase come down. But also, it's a numerator denominator. I think the denominator also went down because of the significant increase in local receipts in fiscal 27, what was supposed to be a 4.8%. The year-over-year increase based on what was in last year's warrant is looking like it's going to be a 3.5% or less. And so that's also giving the sense that there's a bigger increase in tax revenue than there really is. I mean, there's an increase in tax revenue. It just depends on whether people want to explain it away or actually want to drive it down. Well, maybe a little bit of both. So, first of all, I mean, that's six and a quarter. Assumes a deficit of $532,000. Oh, I see. Okay. So if that's dealt with, it will be dealt with, whether it's through increased revenue or through efficiencies, that's got to be dropped to zero. And so that... Well, I think as we showed last week, it will take about a million dollars of... Budget Cuts and or other revenues drive the fallout 6 and a quarter to drive that to 5%. Right, but half of it. Half of it will go away. We'll get there. We'll get half of it. Yeah. Anyway. So we'll be right under SACS. No, about 5 and a half. Plus. We'll get to the headline with a 5.9. If all else is equal, it'll be much less than that. Aiming for 4.99 rather than 5.99. It's a great goal, but let's not look at a gift horse in the mouth, right? If we get in the fives, that's still better than where we started by a lot, by a long shot. So the way to get there, I don't know how this... Committee can increase revenue. No. So what we can do is keep pushing and up the ante on these efficiencies. And we could say, for example, we don't want this year-over-year tax rate to be more than 5% or 5.25 or some number. And then direct the town manager and the finance director to find those. Now, those are big numbers, as Brian says. Drop it by a percent, it would be about a million dollars. Well, at least one should go through the exercise of what it would mean to do that. In other words, I don't necessarily like the idea of requiring somebody, but hey, what would you have to do to meet this number? And we can see if that's reasonable. But when we met last week, and this is really for your, not two weeks here, but for your benefit, Iris, our conclusion at that point was that picking an arbitrary number, 5%, was, you know, and saying, you've got to get there. We weren't prepared to do that, but we still want to push to do what we can to get it down. I agree. I think a number with no context is meaningless, right? It's just a number effect. You know, I think. What I recollect from some of our conversations and what Michael McCall has presented to the town previously is that isn't it that like the last decade we've somehow averaged that around 5% year-to-year increases? 4.6. 4.6. So one could argue, you know, using historical averages that that might be where we think the town is most comfortable because that's what's continuously been approved by the town and passed. That, to me, feels slightly more reasonable in terms of context for how we get to a number, right, as opposed to just picking an arbitrary number. But I think it's also, yeah, I think it's tough. Certainly, again, like I said, looking from where we start to where we're getting. I mean, maybe I hate to say that. I think we're moving in the right direction, you know, and I think everyone's coming together to really Do as much as they can. But I agree that I think it would behoove us, even in the case of acknowledging that we might not get there, to come to an alignment on what we would like to see. And I think so. I think kind of what we discussed last time, because I think I was a little maybe more in the arbitrary numbers or arbitrary camp. Is it makes sense to ask the hypothetical of what it would take to get down there? That doesn't mean that it has to happen. That doesn't mean that. But it would be informative to us and also preparatory even for, you know, next year's conversation to say, what would it take? You know, outside my expertise a little bit, but my guess is that people's baseline is the rate of inflation. So if inflation is poor, they might say, well, I can understand that, you know, a little bit more than that. But that's where they're going to start. They say, okay, you know, you don't want it to be a lot more than the rate of inflation. I agree. But the truth is, as we look at the numbers, and so I don't disagree. I don't disagree. But the truth is, looking at the averages for the last decade, half of that decade, inflation was way under that 4.6, 4.7 number. I'm just thinking Joe Public, not the educated environment group. I'm usually the person that in the past would be pressing hard on budget cutting, and I don't disagree with where I thought we ended up at the last meeting, which is... People need to be able to evidence that some thought and effort will get into that. But I think it's disingenuous for us to be looking at 6.25%, knowing that 115 basis points of that is solely attributable to deferring the long-term financing, as I evidenced in the analysis last week. And if you remove that, and we're really at 4.9-ish. That's not very far off the 4.6 long-term average. And we have a number of line items in the unclassified budget that are significantly above energy that's now 15% in the forecast. In retirement, fortunately, we got a slight breather. But medical is going to be likely in the double digits. And so... Yeah, we could ask, but I would just suggest that we'd be thoughtful in asking because, you know, maybe there's an extra couple hundred grand estate aid that's out there that people likely think is going to come our way. But beyond that, it's got to come out of the budgets and there really isn't anything else. I'm not saying anything else, but there's nothing else they can cut without getting into program or by services. And if this committee desires to know, we're not saying we're telling you to cut those things, but we'd like to know what those cuts would be, well, that's typically what you would see done in an override year. Where you need evidence to the voters. If you don't vote yay, here's what the town's going to lose. And I guess the question I would ask is, is that a drill that we want to let people practice on this year? Because, you know, they're going to have to find 800,000 of additional cuts. I mean, the school's already, this already reflects. $400,000 or so less in the school payroll and other expenses kind of balance. But if I'm understanding, sorry, I just want to make sure I'm understanding like this six and a quarter, we still anticipate just like this last year, the local receipts were higher. Next year, the local receipts are higher. Yet again, the six and a quarter could naturally come down. There's... 115 basis points that is effectively financially engineered, right? So six and a quarter minus the 115 basis points, call it five, right? Just for an easy map. This last year, we were projected to be, wasn't it 4 and a? 4.8. 4.8, right? And actually it ended up being, we anticipated it ended up being under four, right? Yeah, largely due to local or state. Largely due to local or state. I think we've talked about. I'd say the odds of local receipts replicating what occurred last year are not terribly high. They largely reflected a change in the town's fee structure, as well as significant extra investment they've done, which, given where short-term rates are, I suppose could at least remain somewhat elevated. I happen to think there's more of a risk over the near term of local receipts going down versus up. But your point is accurate. But they won't set a budget. They won't set a budget based on that. So I think what I'm hearing is... If everything stays the same based on the levers we've pulled to date, right, the several hundred thousand that will be found between town and school budgets, the estimated revenue plus everything else going on, we stand at six and a quarter. And that is what effectively we would be going to the town with. In May. Sixth and a quarter. That was from version eight or version nine? That's from version nine. Okay, that is nine. Okay. And that includes 40,000 questions. Okay. So it's possible to go down a little, right? But like, but so, so, so I think what I'm trying to get my head around is it is possible we go to the town with 5.99 and say, here's what we did for you guys. You've got to take 100 basis points off because that 100 is really just the rollover from the previous year. So you're really sitting at 499 and we've avoided an override and we got this for you. I think that's pretty good. That's kind of where my head is at. But I don't want that to sound as if I'm not and collectively we're not encouraging. As tight a budget as they do. I think we still need to be, but I also agree with your point, Brian, which I think is where I'm leaning is the ask should be in ASCO. We know this is coming. We want to see you apply. Maybe I misunderstood, but we want to see the theoretical come to fruition of like, you need to start making some assessments here, right? Not that we're asking you to make necessarily those cuts this year, but we know it's coming and we need to start getting ahead of that. I mean, for me, in any budget situation, I want to see hypotheticals of what would you do if you had less money, whether what facilitates that is the percent increase in rates or in tax or not. I mean, that's one way to get it. But even if you put the tax rate percentage increase aside, I still would like to ask the question and have an answer. Like, what if we ask for another million dollars out of the schools or out of the town? You know, tax bodies at an average pay rate of Y dollars. That's about all you can get at this point. And obviously, people are going to be loathe to... And they probably, you know, their argument would be they've already done it, but, you know, I don't want to be here in a vacuum. I'd like to understand it. Right. But I think since this agenda item was on fiscal year 28, I think just preparing for, I think a lot of the conversations we've had in my body since I was gone for the last two meetings, but were around trying to aid. See what we could do to avoid an override, which I think we effectively are moving in the right direction on that and be trying to make sure that the numbers are, I don't want to use the word manageable, but something that we could take to the public and say, Like, we've done what we can to bring you a visual number. And I think that's what I'm saying is it seems like 6.25, I'll be honest, sounds high, but I think once you take away the 115 basis points and we can, you know, still, it sounds to me like based on the probability factors, it is probable that that even comes down a little far as we possibly are able to go to the town in May and say this is effectively a 4.99. And I think that's pretty good. Like, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I'm going to... Well, you went out with a 4.8 last year. Right. The majority of the board, if not all of the board or committee, seemed comfortable with them. Yes. And costs are up. Yes. Certainly unclassified section. Yep. Again, the school payroll was a bit of a surprise, but they apparently... The explanation was apparently a number of seasoned teachers did not return, and they were able to replace them with lower-priced incoming teachers because the cost of living increase in the contract was 3.5%. For fiscal 28, and their year-over-year payroll increase was 2.8%. So the only way to explain that is that they were in that and they have steps and lanes for existing, which are driving you up as well. So they must have had a reasonable good number of people. And they may have not filled a couple of positions, I think. They said Children's Way may have been a couple of positions. So I'm sure their view will be You know, we've kind of done, to your point, we've kind of done some of that efficiency worth already. But as I said at the last meeting, at least I think I understood it correctly, at the last school committee meeting, maybe two times, two meetings ago, the chair kind of acknowledged what Karl has told us at the last meeting, unlikely that an overrides going to be put in front of voters this year, but that she was preparing her members for, and she noted that Came up with, you know, a reduction based on their three-year projection of their salaries and their payroll and other expenses. But it sounded like she said they were understanding they might need to go further, which is likely the message that was coming out of the working group and the planning group. And if I also recollect correctly, the original number. When we had like a V1, V2 of this model and we were looking at a potential three or over, I asked, the original number was in the sevenths, wasn't it? Probably. The original year of the year was in the sevenths, right? Very initial versions. Okay. All right. No, I'm just trying to contextualize, right? Like we're moving in the right direction. See, though, I think even though that even that 6.25 is inflated because that assumes that we, I mean, That we have an override for $531,000. Oh, I see. So if we don't, either because we have additional revenue or because we have more efficiencies, i.e. cuts, automatically we're going to lose about a half a percent off of that. So there's 5.75. Take 115 basis points out for the financial engineering, excuse me, and you're at like 4.6. Somewhere. The other thing that I really hadn't been focusing on this, but we've got, what is this, $450,000 in the budget for stow removal and supplies. I know he spent a lot last year. He spent a lot last year. He added an extra hundred to what otherwise had been the yearly budget for probably the last three or four years. And I don't think I distributed. I went back and did a summary of the last 15 years. So nice budget and what the actual came in. And I think half the years we were over what was budgeted. And so they had to get the money from other accounts. And this past year was a total aberration compared to anything in the last 15 years. We've had some bad years. Yeah, that's one question of, you know, could we get comfortable, could Brian Keveny get comfortable, or could we get comfortable if we simply use the same snow and ice budget number we have been using the last four or five years, knowing that half the years it came in under and half the years it came in over, and we can always find the money, and worst case, There isn't excess money in other accounts to take it from at the end of the year. It just gets put on the tax rate. It's statutorily one of the items that it's not like you can't get paid. And so... That might be a lever to return on. I don't know. Because if you raise the money and it turns out that two or three not-so-snowy years, it goes to free cash, then the taxpayers say, why... Why are you raising extra money if it's simply reverting into pre-cash? Which happened eight to ten years ago, there was a pretty large accumulation going on in pre-cash. People asked for the money back, went to that meeting and got the boat to get the money back. It was the super El Nino supposed to help. Supposed to help? Supposed to have a lot of freezing rain, maybe, but not as much snow. Some of the other items I went through last week, but there's still a couple others which I haven't heard any discussion of. The wage and classification plan study that was completed six to nine months ago. My understanding was that a number of town positions suggested that those positions were not being paid at whatever the level was that they were targeting in the study. And I've been waiting to hear what's the town manager's plan for bringing those increases in. I didn't see anything in the forecast that suggests that there's a bump. And then in Karls attending the fire study working group, but I think part of that study was intended to rationalize the... Staffing levels in the fire department. And obviously, if coming out of that and working with unions, that was the result in additional bodies in the fire department, I don't think that's reflected in these budget numbers. So there's still, you know, I know we're talking about things that are likely to take away from the budget, but I think there's still some unanswered. Questions that cut the other way as well. And we almost have to wait. Unless, you know, unless you get a majority of people here that want to set the target now from the FinCon rather than waiting, get a budget, and then have a majority of the FinCon say, geez, we're not comfortable with that. You need to cut, you know, which we did in the FinCon three years ago. We said you got to find $600,000, you know, maybe two-thirds school, one-third town, and said, You figure out where you take it from. It's just a question of where you want to be. Again, if there's a majority that thinks something could arrive that you're not going to be happy with, you head it off. You can have a percentage started. Maybe we'll move more toward a dollar target, which, and that would lead to a percentage. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, part of it for me is that, I mean, discussion is useful, but at some point, rather than waiting to the end and seeing the budget and reacting to it, you know, I think I've said, I'd like to talk to the people who are making the budgets as we go so that we can know, so they can be part of the same discussion that we're having now. Give me more insight than just us. So that's the invite. That's the invite. The sooner we do that. Have exactly the same discussion. We'll see how they weigh in. Well, they've asked me for about a week's notice. To the best of my knowledge, the Select Board is not meeting next week. They're on a two-week schedule. Do we want to ask if they're available then? Iris, you'll be running the meeting. On 26th. Yeah. You can ask. If you were running the meeting, Karl, would you have the town and the school of St. Ethan? Together? All together? Or just do that money being in too much? If it were up to me, I would probably just do one of, do them separately. Yeah. So I'd be inclined to do the schools first. It's the biggest part of the budget. Yeah. Makes sense. And it's also the one I have the least insight into. We haven't seen much more than a line item right now. Okay. If you'd like, I'll... I'll invite them. And then, of course, a week after that, on November 2nd, we have an opportunity to sit down with the select board and the town manager and the finance director that night to hear what they have to say. Yeah, I mean, I think it should be our meeting alone. Yeah, I don't find the... That's fine. 50, 20 minutes from here. Right, right, right. Never terribly productive. Yeah, I mean, my vision is... They don't have to present or defend. They just have to be part of the discussion. I agree. Maybe that would be the three weeks out, Karl. It would be the next Monday night that the select board's not meeting. That sounds right. And that's not to say that VINCOM or someone from the VINCOM couldn't go to the select board meeting, but I think having these other groups in has certainly been invited. Chair of the psych board to sit on both sessions. She's a liaison anyway. So schools, see if they're available on the 26th. Bill's point, just don't come armed and prepared with anything in particular. Just come and have a discussion. And then the same for the town manager and the finance director on November 9th. Okay. Unfortunately, you'll miss both of those. But I will watch the Wayland videos. All right. So, Ron, is that? Keep forgetting you're there. It's so quiet. Sneaky that way. I don't like Zoom because I just, I feel like those that are on Zoom aren't, don't get a full opportunity unless they are aggressive and speak up. I make my voice heard when I feel I need to. So October 26th and November 9th. Right, but at least for us to check our own calendars for. Okay, so to wrap up this, we can move on to the outer years. You know, the other things we haven't really talked about here are that these numbers still assume a $200,000 cushion, right? You know, the more I look at that snow budget, which between personnel and services and supplies, salt, that comes out to, pardon me, $628,000. I have to believe that's conservative. There ought to be lower, but that's sort of part of what I do in this situation. It's $200,000 to $600,000. If you would like, Karl, I'll send you the email. whatever 15-year summary that I did of budgets and actual and snow and ice and then copy Iris and one of the two of you can distribute that if you'd like. Okay, I'm pretty much out of pocket starting tomorrow. Okay, well distribute it, I'll send it to Iris. Yeah, I mean, to some extent, my point of view is once we're at the point that we're avoiding a prop two and a half, then the rest of it almost gets into the detail. I mean, whether it's a five and a half or a five percent or five and three quarter, you know, it's like, okay, I mean, we need to work on it and refine it. But, you know, to me, you know, it's not a big deal if we get past the prop two and a half. So it's your view that at this point, given that it sounds like the override is pretty much done as a topic, you probably don't need to be revisiting that. And the model is, the model, I don't know how Brian's, you know, he probably is going to deliver ultimately and hopefully by the end of the year is the preliminary budget. And that'll typically come in a budget model, Excel workbook, which likely is going to look a lot like a forecast. And I think I had said at the last meeting I'd be happy because that surfaces to do a side-by-side with, and I'm happy to keep this forecasted. If he takes any other adjustments, I'm happy to put him in. But I think other than deciding if we want to set a target, it really is, okay, we're now at least somewhat educated on what to expect come the end of the year. And then do a side-by-side to see kind of what significant things changed from forecast to actual budget. But I think my sense, Bill, is you think there's probably not much more to say about the forecast as fiscal 28. Right. Yeah, that's my sense. I mean, there's a few unknowns and there'll be some adjustments, but we're in the right ballpark, so we don't have to, you know, push it too hard. Well, that's my sense, too. So unless anybody feels differently, why don't you move on to the next three years where things look dramatically different? Yeah, and I'd kind of like, I mean, Brian did such a great job of the FY28 modeling with the, you know, the various, you know, parameters that you could adjust and play with. I guess I'd always be like to see something like that at least for 29 or 30 so that we can start doing some sensitivity analysis and to figure out which variables are the critical ones that we all need to focus on. You know, I'm not prepared at this point really to have that discussion, but... You know, having something, a model in hand, a version one of 29 or 30. You're great. I'm happy to, I can just add another tab into this workbook. And I think as we talk about it, I mean, we talk about, I'm assuming again, like I said, they're probably going to take the strategy that they had had. previously and push it forward essentially to say for fiscal year 29 to 31, they're going to make a three-year ask. And so when we look at it, we should be looking at certain the variables for each of those years, but really to ask the problem would be what are you to ask and what does that look like? I suspect that is true. And frankly, I think it ought to be true. I mean, I think that it's better to ask once every three years than every year. That's a personal opinion. But when you talk about strategy, that's a pretty narrowly thought out strategy, right? Sure. It's the right one, I think. But we asked, we took a vote to say, look, we want you to really start thinking. Critically and strategically about those next three years, whether they be 28 through 30 or 29 through 31. I think that the select board is on board with that, but at this point, I haven't seen anything happen. So I did have a chat today on a number of topics with Carol Martin, the chair of the select board, and I think she is prepared to up the I'll call it pressure because that's what it is to do this. But the select board is not at this point appointed a committee or even approved one to actually do the work that we outlined. So, you know, and for me, at least personally, there's an interesting psychology because on the one hand, I think it makes a lot of sense to be conservative. I understand why Brian does that and you don't want to be there and, you know, rather it's coming with scrutiny rather than bad news. But the flip side of that is having now done this for two years. And at the beginning of the year, it looks like top two and a half. And at the end, hey, we've gotten out of it. There's a part of me that's, you know, is a little bit suspect with any initial model that I see. So, you know, all the more reason for what I asked Brian to model it out and let's see. And we might do the same thing next year. Oh, yeah, I guess we can make it another year. I mean, it would be great. Look, no one's going to say that that wouldn't be lovely. I just want to be, have a reasonable expectation that given the constraints that we see, at some point, this is likely. At some point, this is likely. At some point, this is likely. Between now and 2037, right? Until we get a break on the pressures on the budget, this is likely. I can't say when, right? The modeling can suggest when it might be the time. I would say I'm open either way. I'm not judging either way because I think it's too early. So then the other than going back to Carol Martin and say again, writing, this is what we recommend. This is our recommendation for what the select board should do. You preparing a little bit, you know, preparing the same kind of column that you had for your summary of 28. I think, is that the discussion for Tony on this topic? Yeah, I think if you're more comfortable at this stage, you know, passing along the sense of we've got to get going on the work now, we want to be in a position come next June, so that in turn, They could be in a position to start educating and be in a position to possibly figure out when the best time to go to the electorate is. But knowing what's happened the last four years that I've been working on this stuff, this gets definitely shoved to the side. People have been focused on everything else they have to do. And so the question is, do you feel from your conversation so far with Carol that she is going to elevate it up to the board in a public meeting? The alternative is, well, we took a vote and you communicated that to the working group, financial planning group, whatever. We could certainly draft a memo to the select board and send it to the select board as a public document that elevates it with that one. At this point, you may be more comfortable letting Carol, I know she gets it, but it just... I just know the way things work. This really should have started weeks ago. People, once they thought that we weren't going to need the override, they should have kept saying, okay, what do we need to do between now and next June? Not be sitting there next June going, okay, what do we have to do now to get something done? So I think the approach that I would prefer... Is the middle ground, which is actually putting writing, not in a public document to the board, but in an email to the chair to say, you know, we talked about this board and this is what we'd like you to do. I'd like you to take this to the board, you know, take the question to the board. And if they do, then there's a further discussion. If they don't, there's a further discussion. But, you know, I don't think, I'm looking, thinking about back to the conversations. I don't know that I ever said I would, you know. made a formal request to bring it up at the board. It's basically one discussion. And the June deadline is not just any date. You literally, based on what we just saw this group go through, right, scrambling to try to see if they can get on the ballot for the state elections. You know, you need to have plenty of nice education, you need plenty of time for some process, but you also need plenty of time for the strategic part of it. And, you know, and I just want to, I'll keep bringing it up, but the approach, and I think I've heard Harold mention it at least. We approached Marblehead in terms of an MOU agreement with the Select Board, the Finance Committee, and the School Committee that if you do go for a multi-year override, getting a general buy-in that unless there's something you totally didn't anticipate, you're not going back to the taxpayers for three years. And we have an example that we could look at. And that itself would require some time and effort to negotiate amongst the parties, if you will. And it takes time for forecasting. And part of the other issue, which I know Brian Keveny has been pressing on, and I mentioned to the chair of the school committee probably a month and a half ago, They really need, if they need to hire a third party consultant to help them, they really need to develop their own multi-year pretty detailed forecasting, budget forecasting model so that they're not just dealing with this kind of one number and they're not really sure what they would have to do. We typically put a dent in the size numbers we're looking at. And that's something, you know, the Bill's point, that's something we would raise when they're hopefully sitting here with us and we'll say, what is your plan for doing that? And for relatively short money, they could hire a consultant like the Board of Public Works does on their water read model and put together a pretty complex model that's very helpful. So, anyway, those are just some higher level. I appreciate it. And lastly, Karl, I am okay to attend the October 28th, 8.30 a.m. Thank you. Okay. Financial planning meeting, but now that Iris is back, I don't want to deny her the pleasure of doing so if you want to keep yourself immersed if you can do 8.30 meetings on Wednesday. Yeah, it is October 20, if you're right. And they generally just last an hour. Yeah. I'm not saying an afternoon. No, no, I appreciate the opportunity. I think you clearly have some good ideas and thoughts. I'm sure they would all be happy if I show up. They're expecting it at this point. Okay, shall we move on to the capital budget? Rob, any questions on that stuff? Nope, not here. I spent a good chunk of this afternoon, so it would be fresh, reading the report, Brian, and thank you for that. The other four people, the client sharing the work, helped out. Well, I didn't mean to exclude them. I was talking to you. The good news is you made the deadline. Hopefully the report has helpful information. I am not interested in summarizing the report. I'm not interested in going page by page. I hope all of you have either read it or will read it by the next meeting and really interested in what kinds of questions the rest of you have and how you're all going to, assuming this, just hypothetically assuming this was what comes forth in You know, probably mid to late November from the town manager. And my instinct is it's not going to be too far off this time. How are the rest of you going to be analyzing the capital budget and the five-year capital plans? So obviously I'm in a position to answer questions specifically that come out of the CPSI report. But other than that, I know what's in it, so I don't have any questions. I mean, it'll be interesting to see how close the two are. I mean, that's sort of my initial thought is I wait for the town and then I compare them and then tell me what the differences are and why. That's sort of at least the first cut before I actually get to. If the town and you and your committee agree on something, I'm probably, I might have some questions, but I'm probably not going to be too, like, no, you can't do that. I would tend to agree with that. But today, one of the things I did is I took a detailed look at the recommend, sorry, at the fiscal 28 column. of the five-year capital plan there last year. Yeah, okay. And then compared it to the CIPSE's recommendation. Yeah, good idea. And remembering that that plan was the town's plan, right? So things change, but as of a year ago, eight months ago, that was there. Proposal for the budget. There are definitely some differences, but quite a lot of those lines are identical. I think it's fair to say that SIPSE did recommend them. Now, there are some changes. There are a few that... Actually, fairly good-sized numbers that are timing differences. Either we pulled something into fiscal 26 or maybe pushing it out, or 27, I guess, or pushing it out. And then there are a few, quite a few, that look like inflation-type changes. You know, $10,000 more on something than was in that plan. Now, that's more than inflation, but it's not. You know, materially different, I think. So, Brian, first of all, do you think that's a fair high-level summary of where we are? Yes. I think, as I explained it, I think the last meeting, we were delivered the message by the finance director after last year to stick to the plan. And our interpretation of stick to the plan was still going to ask for input from the department managers, which we did. And in terms of what capital is available, particularly in terms of borrowing and free cash, we were going to do our best to not exceed the total amounts that were in last year's plan, which, by the way, is your recommended plan from last year that went to town meeting. And I think we achieved that pretty well. The exception of a couple items which we included in fiscal 28 with different funding sources that were used or reflected in last year's plan on the theory that if they meet with resistance from the town manager and he can't find other resources other than increasing borrowing or increasing use of free cash above what was in the plan. Then our view was we would have deferred them in terms of what we felt their priority to be. And the specific two items related to the second request for funding for the Route 20 design and engineering related work that needs to be openly spent before the town to get on the state's transportation list. It's the ultimate hope that the state would fund the 10 plus million dollars of actual construction. And we proposed using the real estate reserve to fund a half a million dollars. And the initial request two years ago, $250,000 was funded from that account. So we felt there was some consistency anyway. And the other nuance with it, unfortunately, is that the balance in that account at the moment is only A little under $250,000. So there isn't enough to fund that half million dollars at the moment. But as we note in our report, Atlanta, Peterstown, meaning $1.4 million was allocated from that account to fund the State Brook Dam construction. And subsequent to that vote, the town received both a state and a federal grant that, as far as I know, covers almost the entire cost. of the actual construction. The town had to spend the money and ask for it. They proclaimed? Yeah, the $1.4 million. Yeah. So that $1.4 million should be coming back and to get it back into the reserve, Brian Keveny tells me that that will require a town meeting article and a vote. And so we anticipated that some portion of that, maybe not all of it, but some significant portion of that, if the town manager Doesn't decide he's not interested in using that as a source will be brought back and that the town manager select for it. Somebody will put in an article. So one of the questions for the FinCon will be, well, how do you feel about using that real estate reserve fund for that particular item? There was one other item, some improvements, library grounds outside the library. I think it was. $250,000, $275,000 item, which again, we had put as a pretty low priority last year, but it was in the plan, and we said, well, we can just not include it in our recommendation this year. But we put in using a capital stabilization fund as a source just because that has a balance of $2 million plus. And again, we met with the PEM manager and the finance director at our last meeting. And I understand why the finance directors want to be a little cautious on the use of that fund since that fund gets added in with free cash and other. Reserve funds that Moody's looks to to achieve certain metrics. And he didn't say he was going to oppose that recommendation, but he basically was alerting the SIPC not to become used to using the cap stabilization fund as a go-to funding source. Having said that, town managers likely to, as we recommended, use it for the $100,000. Field Maintenance Request. And we still need to talk about it, but I've alluded to it before, debt service on the septic, $2 million septic loan, which will be going out in a couple weeks here. The first year principal interest was like $225,000. Brian's got that plugged in as coming from the CAP Stabilization Fund. Not only Fiscal 28, but throughout this forecast period. So again, I think the FinCom is a sort of higher level question is, you know, how do you, the rest of you see using the cap stabilization fund, what do you view its purpose as? So, but back to your question, Karl, I think our view was as long as we could not exceed the borrowing and the free cash, except for those two items, We weren't so much thinking we had to actually include every single item that we've been trying to plan. In fact, the department managers themselves, there's very few items that we moved and deferred. There were some toward the end of the process, but most of the things that got either pulled forward or deferred. And obviously, all the price adjustment, or cost estimate adjustments, both up and down, that all was input from the department managers. And so, again, you all have to make your own decision. Is it important in a plan that when somebody tells you they're going to do an item, other than adjusting its cost to the inflation or whatever, they must do that item, or if something more important comes up. You call an audible where you have to readjust your plan, right? I would say that. I mean, that's generally my expectation. Look, the money is set, right? The appropriations are set based on, and in my mind, when people are voting, people are voting on a number of appropriations that they can stomach and they can fund, and also looking at... and relying on the idea that all these different layers and checks have agreed on the priority. But I think it is also reasonable to say... Something could happen that could cause us to reevaluate priority, not necessarily cost, because I think the appropriations are done. And so in my mind... Let me just correct you. So the only thing that's appropriated to me is the following fiscal year's capital budget. Correct. Five-year plan simply appears in the finance committee's report. There's no vote on that. Right. And so... The town residents see it. There might be an anticipation that you're not going to come back the following year and ask for twice as much. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I'm of the opinion that there might be some variability, but the variability is primarily in the priority of the projects that are picked up in those years, and that might have a somewhat impact on cost, but it shouldn't be huge. We shouldn't see these huge swings. But you saw that last year with the high school septic, which is why SIPC recommended last year to be done with excluded that, why you all recommended budget. That was $2 million more than what had been in the plan in 2017, to your point. So the town would have seen $4 million of levy debt and now it's $6 million. But they came up with this backhanded way of not having it to have to go into the amount of annual tax revenue. So, anyway, if that's the general sense here. That's just my sense. I don't know, though, Karl, if you have other thoughts here. I mean, I don't know if Town might be different than other organizations, but they're all living documents. They're all subject to adjustments, conditions, and the environment changes. They're a point estimate based on where we are now. But your estimate's off by 100%. Then you're not... Exactly. Then it wasn't really valuable to be done by the next year. Are they actual estimates? Are they wish lists? Or what are they? There's somewhere between those. So... Yeah, you know, you... This year there are, which I mentioned the last thing, there are... A couple of extremely high-priority items that were not on the radar screen for Fiscal 28. And the IT request, substantive IT request, and the fire sensors at the middle school. And can I ask that those projects, and maybe this is, I think honestly, for the amount of requests coming from IT, we probably need a meeting with Nick, because I'd be curious to understand the funds that were appropriated last year, which we were told were quite urgent. Are those projects done? Like, is there actual capacity to take on? The answer is there is capacity. Not all the projects that are previously appropriated have been completed. Yeah, I mean, the capital plan is as close to a strategic plan as I've seen in the town environment. You know, in strategic plans, and typically five years or so, and generally, you know, people are willing to document. Right. But appropriating funds when we're not prepared to pick up work is not, I don't think historically has been the goal. Yeah, no, I agree. SIPC asked that question of each and every department manager, and I believe the new revised form also tries to get at that question. And looking at open capital tries to get at that question. But you also have... Fiscal 28, we're talking, you know, July 1, 2027. And there's still, you know, lead order time and other things. And that's what we hear. I just want to make sure because it's not a small amount, right? We've seen it increase drastically, I'm sure for reasonable means, but it's not small. I understood, perhaps I was wrong, but I understood last year that those requests were quite urgent in hardware and software licensing combined, and to see that number seems like almost triple. I'd be curious to get a better understanding. Yeah, again, I can share with you what we heard that I mentioned. I think the last meeting... We decided to draw the line as to not wanting to go to an executive session to explore in much more detail what exactly needed to be focused on. We decided the town manager was in the loop and he assured us that he was comfortable. But I think I reported that the IT director's initial submission was pretty much in line with the five-year plan. And based on what we heard at last year's town meeting, a combination of people said, well, this seems not necessarily reflective of what I heard at town meeting. And he says, well, it isn't. And we said, well, why don't you go back and think about what you really need and go talk to the town manager and then come back to us with potentially revised. Plan. That's what he did. Got it. That makes more sense. Thank you. And so I think he was trying to do what he thought he was supposed to do in sticking with what Plan had. But we asked him, is even what he asked for enough? And he said no. And again, without getting into the specifics as to why he said no, it's a combination of a bunch of different factors. And that's a discussion I remember from Town Meeting of all of the issues that people brought up. It's like, how much money do you need? This is important. We'll increase your budget if we need it. So it was interesting to say. That was at least my impression. Yes. At Town Meeting, he said something north of a million dollars. People were willing to open a wallet. Okay. Okay. Well, that's what he's asking for. That's what I wanted. See, I didn't remember him asking for a million. I remember him asking for like... Without knowing the specific things that need the immediate attention, we're to understand from him that the costs related to those things have grown exponentially given the demand for chips and other things that he needs to secure. And just as an aside, he mentioned at our last meeting that he attended with us that I believe he made use of some state-offered grants and or free consulting where the state sent in folks to look at the town's IT infrastructure and he came paired with, you know, piled reports and they said, we'll see him. Just because. And so I think he's got a specific plan of attack. He just didn't have the money to get going on it. But that said, if between now and getting to a point of having to vote on a capital budget, particularly for Fiscal 28, if there are... Department heads at Pinkham thinks they need to hear from directly. And, Karl, it's up to you to invite them. I'm just suggesting that we may be limited unless we want to go to an executive session to talk to them about it. And I basically told our committee, the CIPSE, if they wanted to do that, which they were totally able to do, I was going to not attend the meeting. I didn't want to burden myself with what I feel to be pretty sensitive, potentially sensitive technical information if I didn't need to really know it. But that's just one person's opinion. Others happen to feel that way in our committee. So, Karl, any other initial thoughts? I had a couple of questions. About specific recommendations. Yeah. If you could share. Stormwater, the stormwater system, there was a, in the plan from last year, there was a quarter of a million dollars in there. Yeah. And there's nothing in the CIPSE's recommendation. And I thought it might have been just deferred, but I see that in the plan, there was already a quarter of a million dollars every couple of years, something like that. So. Do you know why, do you have a recollection of why that you didn't make a recommendation this year? Whatever you see in the plan is what was recommended by Tom Holder. And to the extent that there was something in the, in last year's five-year plan in fiscal 28 and you're not seeing it. So there was, there was last in fiscal 28 in last year's. Okay, and the list of, yeah, I don't have last year's fiscal 28 list in front of me, but if you're looking at it and you're seeing it and it's obviously not there in the 28 plan this year, that's because Tom Holder spaced them out, partly because they needed bandwidth to get the work done, it's my recollection. Okay, great. Okay. But there's still a needed commitment to get that work done. And a new item that was not in the plan is Public Safety Administration Furniture Refresh to the tune of $50,000. It's only $50,000, but what is a furniture refresh? Why do we think this is necessary? That was a request last year, but it didn't make it into the town manager's plan. I think SIPC may have included it in its recommendation last year. The acting chief described it as a limited amount of furniture being used by the front office staff that apparently is in that great repair. And I guess our view was A, it was short dollars and B, it seemed like a good thing to do for those that work. Billigently for public safety. They could have lived without it. And as last year, it may be that might be an item that gets cut out by the town manager. Don't know. Okay. Thank you. There's a line item in the plan. This is the last year's plan. It says PSB, which is public safety building, right? BMS tie-in. He was in the plan last year for $150,000 and is not in, actually $500,000 was requested this year and there's nothing in the CIPSE recommendation at all. So if they're looking for $500,000. Where are you seeing the $500,000? Are you looking at $14,000? It must be. Because otherwise, that's it. Must have come from it. I think D.C. 14 references a tie-in, but that's for this town building, wastewater. Oh, so about the same, okay. The building, it's building management system tie-in. It's a technology-related tie-in. Oh, got it. Okay, thank you. The town's overall building management system, and we were told by Michael Faia that it was no longer needed or, not that it was no longer needed, I think he found funding from Something else that he felt he was able to utilize to do what he needed to do. Except we're not seeing that in fiscal 28. Nice. Okay. Thank you. And you had already mentioned with respect to the middle school fire sensor replacement, some new urgency there. Is that also true? The next slide, Adam, which is high school water heater. Did something bad happen there? Yeah. The high school water heater had been in the five-year plan at $450,000 out in fiscal 30 or 31. And apparently it just, it's not going to make it that long. But at the same time, they also somehow managed to decide they could do the work for $100,000 as opposed to the $450,000 that was in the plan.
Things like that, to the extent we're told it ain't going to make it, be it a truck or whatever, we yielded to that request to move it up. Okay. That's really hopeful. As I said, most of the other variations are either incremental or timing. I can't remember if we talked about it. You'll see a fair amount of verbiage about this building. And potential costs ranging from five and a half to 20 plus million dollars. And I can't remember if I mentioned that there is a working group, we were told at our meeting, last session meeting by the time management, that they haven't met yet. A little discouraging since we were told a couple months ago it was going to be set up. That being headed up by Michael Faia, the Silver News Director. And I think Phil Whitton might be on it. I'm not sure who else is. But the objective of that committee is to evaluate the town's needs for office space and look at other alternatives and ultimately produce some sort of recommendation to the select board sometime hopefully in relatively early fiscal 27. We were told by the town manager that It's not going to happen that that turns into an article for this upcoming town meeting, which means that a group probably will end up issuing something maybe next March, April timeframe. And our view was spend as little money as we really thought we needed to spend on the building until that committee and ultimately a slack board sets a direction strategically for this building. That makes sense. That makes sense to me too.
Although he had asked for another $700,000 to keep going on the building's roof over that side of the building for some structural issues under the roof. And he had asked for that in fiscal 28. And we ultimately had to bump it. We had it in there, but we had to bump it to fiscal 29 to make room for the IT request. But we pretty well put all those other roof-related requests on hold with wastewater time. And there's a septic system that works. But at some point, if the town stays in this building, they want to hook up to the sewer line. Okay. That all sounds good to me. Stepping back for a second, did I understand you say that the debt service on the fields project... Brian Keveny is thinking that that will come out of the capital stabilization fund over years? Yeah, so if you look in the forecast model, there's a tab, other transfers, I think. And then there's a line item in that tab called cap stabilization fund. And if you look out, probably fiscal 29 is the first debt service, which is just floating the bonds. You'll see the debt service matches up with the debt service on the debt schedule for the $2 million. And that's a discussion that occurred at the select board last March when they were evaluating whether or not they wanted to put a debt exclusion question as you recommended. And they ultimately took no action on your recommendation. They never formally voted on this approach, although it was discussed. They looked at a bunch of options. They looked at paying for the whole $2 million out of the cap stabilization fund one time. And the finance director said he wouldn't recommend that. They talked about one time funding it out of free cash. He recommended the guests doing that. And then he proposed this concept where over a period of years, The cap station fund hopefully is going to continue to be growing for no other reason than investment earnings. And it just so happens that the investment earnings kind of match up right now with the debt service on the $2 million septic loan. And so the notion was you just pull it out of the air so you don't have to raise it through a higher levy debt service in the budget. And it's already been raised through taxation and funded through free cash. Mechanically, however, to be able to use that, Any fund, withdraw any money out of that account, requires a two-thirds vote of town meeting. So again, there's either going to have to be a warrant article that precedes the omnibus budget, operating budget, approving this withdrawal. The $100,000 for the field maintenance will be done through the capital motion. And if the library grounds survives, that's come out of the capital motion. I guess it's possible there could be another motion separately done in the Omnibus article, but we need to stay on top of that. And I'm sure the finance director has it on his list of one article that might be needed, but it's always possible that Town Meeting might not vote. A, if it's a separate warrant article, if Finance Committee is going to have to take a position that we get that good idea. You might recall at a prior meeting I suggested if we're going out for debt exclusion questions, and it's not a foregone conclusion we are, but on the $2 million for the MSBA feasibility study, maybe it'd be a good opportunity to just try again for putting the $2 million high school septic as excluded debt and just be done with it. But that's a discussion for another night. But at some point, Finance Committee is going to have to weigh in one way or the other on whether we think that's a good idea as a way to fund that debt. Well, I'm just having a little bit of trouble figuring out. So my thinking about what a stabilization fund is all about is to Fill in gaps and to kind of keep a level playing field from year to year as much as possible. Funding something over a course of years out of that fund, any one thing out of that fund, seems like a misuse of the fund. You know, I can't assure you, I can go back and look at the article that has told me the wording. I seem to recall it may have. Included in the types of things that it might be used for, that it might include debt service. Still, with the intention of smoothing out the request of town meeting. But I'll go back and find the original wording in the article. Now, if using it for that purpose isn't in there, it's certainly a legitimate question to pose to the finance director at the appropriate time. And I don't know if he's going to, somebody's going to have to sponsor that article, something that's not done through the omnibus budget. You can't, you can't, you don't want to have the operating budget subject to the two-thirds vote. No. So, but you have to know whether it's packed or not, because otherwise you're going to have to plug the hole with some other source. Yep. Like with tax revenue, I suppose it would be pre-capped. So I will go find that wording. Well, if it doesn't, if the wording doesn't include debt service, I think that's one answer right there. Even if it does, debt service, known debt service over a period of years doesn't seem in the spirit of what that fund, what a stabilization fund should be used for. But I'm happy to be talked out of that. So thank you for taking a look. Anything else on the capital budget for tonight? I guess one question I have that isn't is sort of for tonight. I think this is an interesting conversation. I think the capital budget obviously needs a lot more analysis and review on our part. Do we have specific do we want to set some specific goals? Like, do we think we want to? Have our perspective on a budget before we see the capital budget from the town? Do we want to kind of put this on the back burner until we do get the capital budget from the town and then reconcile the differences? I think if we have any questions to get them answered before we get the budget from the town is like my two cents. Generally, like my approach, which I think is what everyone saw last year is CIPSE has done an incredible amount of work, so my questions are more around making sure I understand or appreciate everything, but I did not have any tremendous concerns with the recommendations last year. Where my concerns came from last year was in the disparity and the magnitude of the disparity between the town proposed versus CIPSE. And I suspect we won't. See that this year. I suspect there will still probably be some disparity. And when we get that budget from the town, that will be my focus at that point as well as in understanding the disparity. Yeah, I think it would be who all of you that got crunched last year to read the report. Number one. Perhaps approach it as if this is likely to be pretty close to what you're going to see in late November and have each member write down questions they have and send them to somebody on the committee and accumulate questions, figure out where there's overlap and basically take this opportunity in the next few weeks to be our review of the capital budget and then all we have to do is look at the disparity. And delivery at some appropriate point that we could then vote on a capital budget. But if people aren't going to spend the time now, we're just going to get crunched. Yes, I agree. Later on. So again, I'm at an advantage because I don't have to review anything and I don't have any questions. But I really don't want to come to meetings and people haven't read the material. And raise the question. And I view the operating budget almost the same way. You have way more information that you've already seen this year than you had last year. And you could probably start formulating your questions as Karl did tonight with the ice and snow and ice budget as to what questions you're going to need answered before you get comfortable. Approving an operating budget, even though you don't have one of the specific operating budget in front of you. It's not to say there won't be other questions that arise when you finally get an operating budget in front of you. But again, if we lay off all that work until the end of the year, you know, in the early January. Sure, yeah, yeah. No, I get it right. And I guess maybe to put a finer point on it, I think there is... With the discussions we've had on the operating budget and the discussions we're starting to have on the capital budget, there's some trade-off between the discussions that we had. There are discussions that we had in our earliest meetings that in retrospect we probably didn't necessarily need to have or need to have in the format we had them because they were based on initial estimates that kind of proved to be perhaps incorrect over time. So I guess there's sort of some... Ratio, right, of how much and how thoroughly we discuss some of these topics with partial information, which is good because we have conversations that are valuable and it shifts some of the planning earlier in the year and then potentially negative because we spend some amount of time talking about topics that are later... We wouldn't have needed that are sort of, you know, later made irrelevant by further developments or events. So I'm just kind of trying to like, as open for discussion as a group, like, do we expect to significantly revisit the capital topic between now and when? I guess as a group, it sounds like what we're saying is we had an initial discussion. We have the SIPC report. We've had an initial discussion of it. People are free to study that as much as they have capacity for between now and when the town capital budget comes out. And then probably the next time it is a substantial item on a Finance Committee agenda is once the town capital budget comes out and we sort of compare the two. Is that what people are thinking? Not quite. In my mind, like I need to read it. I need to read it. And like my goal in reading it is what questions do I have? What do I think about it as it stands? If I have feedback, this is the moment to provide that feedback because the town is effectively doing this exercise to put together their budget. So just like you're not wrong that from an operating budget standpoint, things change, but things change because of conversations, not things change nebulously in the absence of our conversations, thus negating our need for those conversations. The existence of those conversations. caused the operating budget to change. And I think the same thing applies here. If you have an opinion, either... In favor, this all looks great. Or, hey, I'm not sure why this is necessary or actually this is too high. We could say the same thing. We could do the same exercise we did on the operating budget and you could, you know, to your point, study it and come out with the opinion of in a year where percentage points looks like 6.25 on the operating side, this is too high, right? Like you have a world of opinions you could come to the conclusion of, but whatever that conclusion is, I think it behooves us to discuss that. Here, now, before the Town presents the final budget. I guess that's my plan. My plan is to do that, to share my opinions and thoughts, and then hopefully when the Town presents it, it's less of a surprise and we're able to sort of provide more clear support or feedback. Is that what you're thinking, Karl? Well, I mean, I think we all have our own styles. I mean, I think, you know, for me, I have a lot of confidence in people who work on Sipsi and the amount of time and effort. So I come in with the precondition that's probably fine. It doesn't mean I won't sort of go through the line items and if anything stands out. But to me, the red flags, as I said, would be differences between the town and Sipsi. But I don't want to repeat all the work that Brian and Sipsi have done. I agree. I don't think that's necessary. The one thing I'd urge you to take a look at, because I think the expenditures speak for themselves. You can decide whether you think you ought to spend X on Y or not. But it's the sources of findings that I think are actually more interesting. And should that debt service come out of the capitalization, keep saying that capital stabilization fund or not, you might all think it's fine and I might get there myself. That's just an example. Excluded debt may be on the table. It may not, but if it's not, should it be? I think that's where we know. Turnbacks is another example. Do you feel like, right, like is another example of a funding source? It is. Well, it is a funding source. I'm not sure where I read this, but I don't think there's going to be probably somewhere in this report that there aren't expected to be huge turnbacks. That's what it says. Yeah. There's some process hiccups that we did initially get feedback. People didn't suggest that there's going to be the levels that you saw last year. And the reason we saw levels that you saw last year's finance director basically told the school superintendent, school committee, if you want your $600,000 school curriculum item, you've got to turn back $600,000. And they took it from three line items that were... District-wide TAPA for roofs, district-wide for something else. And the purpose of those district-wide appropriation, they will get spent and they don't pin it to any specific school. And so pulling it back in simply means you've got to go ask for it again. So we kind of say, well, we just didn't agree to that concept. But I think one of the things I mentioned, I think, again, at a prior meeting is two years ago on the warrant, if you look at it, there's a set of parameters in terms of trying to stick within for levy debt, use of free cash, et cetera. I think FinCom should at least discuss whether we want to have such parameters, which at least... Could be a benchmark to apply so that you're not just year-to-year deciding what levels. The other place to look which the documents are in the report and the appendices are the recently approved by the stock board, capital planning and debt policies. And there are a number of metrics in there as well in terms of What percentage of total revenue should the capital, annual capital spending be no more than, right? And what should excluded debt be used for, which is the difference in opinion currently on the language and on the policies. And one of the, we didn't have enough information to actually do the calculations this year. We did them last year based on some, you know. Actual and rough estimates. But the reason we ended up where we ended up last year is we applied parameters set forth in those policies, which tamped down how much we felt we had available in levy debt and free cash usage. And as a result, we pushed, that's pushing things out to the end of the fifth year and a bunch of that got pushed in the year's expense. But we were able to say we recommended something that was within the policy guidelines or pretty close to it. I did it back in the envelope on, and we stuck to the funding sources in the five-year plan, for example, fiscal 28. I did it back in the envelope based on the forecasting for the operating budget, et cetera, debt service. And we're over the policy metrics in the policies. But so was the plan. And the finance director, We got there largely because the stock board didn't accept your recommendation on the $2 million septic facility because that automatically added $2 million of levy debt, which immediately put us over. It also put us over what the FinCom thresholds have been. So that would be a productive discussion to talk about does the FinCom want its own review its prior thresholds and reevaluate them? Do they think it's important to have them? You could refer to them. Doesn't mean exceptions can't be made. Do we want to look at the capital policy metrics and say to the town manager, you know, we understand that SIPC didn't have the information. When you have the information, can you tell us, did we meet those parameters at all? I know what the answer is going to be. And if the answer is no, we don't meet them, and we didn't meet them, by the way, by your plan, well, what's the point of having You know, parameters, right? Like thresholds like that. So I need to step away for a minute, but I'll be back. Thank you. And excluded debt, we, in the fiber plan that we recommended, just because the numbers got fairly large in the back years, we recommended use of excluded debt for, you know, a number of items, which, again, ultimately, we'll see what happens. Brian, in the SIPC report. Those capital planning and debt policies are ascribed to the select board. In the 20, in the warrant for the 2025 annual meeting, that would have been the first one Iris and I were around for. Bill wasn't here at all for that year. Those, and I looked at them to see what they were when you referred to them in this report. Are those policies that had been previously adopted by, or guidelines, whatever you want to call them, by the FinCon in some iteration? Yeah. Back when Louise Miller was the town administrator, she slash the FinCon in the finance record thought in order to bring a little bit more structure to the annual review with the creation of five-year plan, which hadn't been done much. That it was helpful to lay out those kinds of parameters. Again, not that the town didn't exceed them, but the FinCon obviously had to recommend what the budgets were. And they're not too far off from probably where you end up applying some of the numerical metrics in what the select board put together. But they were a separate. And we use them. When we did fiscal 32, we used them just because we did not, you know, 32 wasn't in the five-year plan, which we were using a five-year plan fiscal 28 to 31 as sort of our governor on how much we could allocate in funding. And there's also, it's buried in a footnote, but we also were hopeful of getting input from the finance director before we got going. Didn't come until we were into our process. And when we finally got his input, in the back years, he had actually less capital requests funded than were in the last year's plan, which is contrary to everything he's always told us. You know, stick with it for prior years. So we asked him, if you do that intentionally because you were concerned about growing deficits and you never got a response. So we can certainly ask that question depending on what we see in the town manager's budget. My guess is he did a pretty quick cut because he hadn't had the benefit of all the discussions we have with department heads. And I'm not sure that's where his final resting place is going to be. But it could be where the Finance Committee ends up. You know, people talk about the impact. Now, the capital of Fiscal 28, it's really the levy debt that has the impact on the operating budget. That won't be solved until Fiscal 29. So it still matters because we're looking at planning for growing deficits. But you also look at the requests and they're, you know, it's the proverbial grade if we don't approve it. It goes one more year, it goes two more years, another thing fails, and now you're building a new building, or you're, you know, you can't salvage whatever it was. And that's, largely that's what's happened to the schools. They have repair money in their budgets every year, and they end up raiding the repair money to fund overages and special ed and other things. And as a result, the amount needed to do the ultimate capital work just gets bigger. Kind of a balancing act between policy and reality. But I think that should be something that's thought about, discussed in advance of the town managers and budget. You've done on this topic. I wanted to, for 30 seconds, just return to our very first topic on the fiscal 28. I think we are. 29 budget. Sure. I forgot to mention it. So tonight the select board is entertaining a memorandum they received from the board of public works who have been evaluating the transfer station's operation, including a curbside, town right curbside pickup. And the memorandum's punchline was they're asking the select board to consider allowing an article at this upcoming town meeting that would revert. Transfer station from an enterprise fund back into either the revolving fund, which is whence it came three or four years ago, or just into the general fund, because they concluded it can't sustain itself without a subsidy of some form in the general fund. So that's going on a separate path. If the site board don't object, and the board of course could still put in an article, assume they're hopeful of getting... Support. But that sounds like the direction they're pushing. I just want to point that out to this committee because I still question, given what we're looking at, deficits, whether we simply want to bury a deficit producer into the general fund budget rather than keeping it highlighted or just doing away with it. And I still struggle with The exact same operation existing in the Sudbury landfill with what we're doing. It's just one of those two shouldn't exist. And whoever's wanting to pay the fee should go to the other one, right? Rather than, you know, I look at Sudbury's most recent budget for theirs. They're running a slight deficit. So they're probably not. Terribly different shape as we are. But there's, you know, there's a large capital request in what we ultimately recommended for fiscal 28 for, you know, a piece of equipment, 300 grand or something. You know, they want to build a, rebuild their little building they have up there that's not in the plan because they didn't come forward again this year in Asperger. But that's another area where if the FinCon wants to weigh in on a strategic kind of issue, we can wait until the article shows up. 50 articles that put in town meeting and then just vote a position. Or we could discuss, you know, we can get that, I have a copy of the memo, but you can get a call from the packet, such word passion, the writers can then circulate it and just stay on top of that issue. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. I'll sign it to you as well. Yes. So, I mean, those are the, me as a FinCon member, those are the, that's why I look at agendas at other board meetings and look at packets and look at, watch snippets of meetings because we really need to stay ahead of that. Yes, that's fair. To educate ourselves, but also if there's an opportunity to say, hey, since there's a majority of this committee that really doesn't buy into the concept of bearing the deficit in the general fund budget, They don't use those words, but that's effectively what would happen. And so now you've got the town-wide paying for a service that a relatively small percentage of the town is using. It's personally very disappointing to me that so few residents use the landfill, website landfill, sorry, the transfer station, but it is what it is. Well, the problem, they say, is that in order to balance their budget, they have to raise the sticker fees, and when they've done that the last couple of years, they get the last people signing up, which is a vicious circle. And so... Well, I think that points in a single direction, but... I do, too. Burying it in the larger budget does not seem like the right answer to me. The impetus for it ending up as an enterprise fund, I think, when I look back at the article and the discussion, my recollection was that it got pulled out into an enterprise fund for that very reason. All you saw was the expense and the DPW and the revenues got put in a revolving fund, but it was never put into a P&L format so you could figure out, you know, was it a moneymaker or not? And again, I just cannot understand how we can have two money losing operations sitting next door to one another when you could make one of them probably positive, like you're shipping all the customers next door. We have to drive like- Share the loss. Yeah. No, it would become positive, I would think. Yeah, there might be more, there's more hauling fees and things. But anyway, I wanted to bring that up. I'll send that to you as well. Great, thank you. In the few minutes we have left, I'd like to bring your attention to the draft schedule for the annual pound meeting, which is, it's... There are fewer words than last year, but all the topics are there, with one exception. But most important, there is a new item on this list, which is on January 28th and 29th, Town Council is going to meet with petitioners and apparently rule on the spot whether a petitioner article is in fact an article or a resolution. Is this going to be slow, Cloud? And the reason that's important to us is the town code does not require us to weigh in at all on resolutions. And as you may recall from very late in the game, after an awful lot of difficulty that several of you had, My fault for signing interview, but nevertheless, you had the problems. They turned into resolutions in some case, although it's drawn entirely because they couldn't. So that problem should be fixed this year. That's definitely on this schedule. That's very exciting. And thanks, Karl, for... Being willing to push that out into the ether, and it's very exciting, I think, to see that turn into action, and I think that should hopefully save tremendous amount of effort on the part of this committee, so that's great. Hopefully last year is an aberration of that, but typically there aren't any dissolutions, but... So, like, I assume that part of this is they'll also be able to hopefully very quickly give feedback as to whether or not the intent is legal, like legally responsible. Like, that's a huge win. Like, there's a lot here where it is heartening to see a process come to fruition that I think will stir our efforts. Agreed. And the one thing that you will not see here on this draft is anything about excluded debt. And you may recall that the Salt Board's policies are that if there's going to be an excluded debt question, we are supposed to make a written report, which Phil did last year, and then a recommendation directed to the Salt Board. Still a bit of an open question whether there will be excluded debt on the ballot, but I've asked, there's a meeting on Wednesday. to talk about this. Mostly it's, you know, a member of the select board, me, Michael McCall and Brian and the staff in the town offices to talk about these and sort of pin them down. But, you know, basically the timing is very, very similar to last year. So not too much new in that respect, which is just fine. And just on your island with the information, I think I mentioned this before, the CIPSE was told by the finance director that if the $2 million borrowing for the MSBA feasibility study was done through levy debt, or excluded debt, for that matter, it's a five-year amortization period, so you'd have $400,000 in principal plus probably half that in interest, which would be hitting into the... Deficits we already have. And so the Finance Director was of the view that it shouldn't be done as excluded debt, but that doesn't mean the Select Board will accept that recommendation. It still requires the schools to put in a request, or at least what people know they're planning to put in a request. They haven't put that in yet. They have plenty of time to put it in, but I'm sure if their intention is to follow what the finance director recommended it be done, which is what SIFSI ultimately, why SIFSI ultimately reflected it and excluded that, just due to that short amortization period, then unless the finance director got some newer information that somehow Suggests that because it relates to possibly a building at some point, you could stretch it out over 20 years, but I think given it's a study, it's stuck at five years. That's just a huge impact on the deficit. It is. There's some question floating around about whether fiscal 28 is the right year to make this ask at all. They may not need the money until... Sometime in 29. And so my guess... Is that they may want to do it now because if you're going into asking for a $3 million override, you may not want to be doing that at the same time. Well, I wanted to be able to say the MSBA. They've been in the MSBA, I think, twice already. And they're left so far. I think they wanted to, I think they thought they wanted to be in a position to be able to say the town is behind us. We have this vote, which some communities will do, even though they don't need to draw on the money until they know they're into the MSBA process. They wanted to be able to check the box when they put their application in in the spring, which presumably they're still going to do. I think that's their issue. If they're talked into putting it off, which the last time they applied, they didn't have the votes, right? They didn't ask for the votes. But I also know... So you're armed with this, that if the town building working group gets through its work, there very likely could be a fiscal 28 debt exclusion question required for the building of some substance and having two competing debt exclusion questions versus having one that's solely focused on the schools or you're stuck bundling this building with the schools just to be, quote, fair. Could put their question at risk. Those are all strategic decisions that somebody has to make. And schools can make whatever request they want. They have to. That strategic analysis, hopefully they're involved with. But yeah, if they don't ask for it, then we won't be going to the dead next week. Well, even if they do. I mean, I think we could say no, right? Not going to put it on the ballot. Well, I think it is. We could recommend not putting it on the back. We could recommend. Good. We should recommend that, but we could. Yeah. Okay, well, we will see. I propose that we dispense with the discussion of topics for future meetings because, frankly, we've covered a lot of that during this discussion. That should be good. When we talk about the next meeting date, maybe I'll just quickly hit what I've got. Well, let's talk about that. So, 1026 next Monday. And what I've got is, I think, based on what we discussed today, I'm going to add an item for a revisit on SIPC based on any questions, comments, or feedback that the committee members might have. That assumes everyone's had an opportunity between now and then to read through the report and gather your questions and comments. I have some article drafts that I had sent out earlier today. I'll have more hopefully before the end of the week. I'll send those out. By all means, please read them. Please give me feedback, any kind of feedback. The idea here with these is that anything you see in red essentially is the part that's going to be variable from year to year. And the idea with this short list of almost 10 is that the town can make those updates and effectively send us. A done article that then we are quickly voting on because the substantiveness of it has not changed, just the amounts and potentially funding sources. But that also means that I think there's a real opportunity here to, as I sat today looking through some of them. Make sure there's minimal jargon. Make sure we're really explaining, you know, make sure it's really understandable, making sure we have the right amount of historically where we might have had a longer article because every year we might be adding, here's what we did last year and here's what we did the year before that. I took some of that out and just said, here's the start. Here's where we are currently done, right? And so, you know, by all means, feel free to be... Reflective and critical of those. So hopefully they're in a good state. But I think I'm going to add that for next week. And then when will we know if we're able to be with the school board? I think that was what we talked for next week. Well, we talked about it for next week. I will ask them tomorrow or tonight and we'll find out. Okay. All right. That's the school superintendent and the school finance director. That's right. Yeah. And maybe, I was going to say, maybe we should invite Karen as well, chair of the school committee. And the intention of that is really to have them share with us their thinking on the current breakdown of the budget, or how are you anticipating? I would describe it as just an open discussion on an upcoming budget. And talking about 29 or 30, what's their vision of that? Whether it is, you know, how aggressive they've been in looking for the cuts, you know, just anything, you know, any funding issue, you know, funding resource issue. Great. And subject to Karl, I'd probably put that on. And then I guess the other question is for next week, For fiscal year 28, the multi-year budget model and the fiscal year 29-31, one of those items to me feels a bit duplicative. I was going to pull fiscal year 29-31 until we get a chance to hear more from the select board and just have as a standing item a continuation review of fiscal year 28 if someone has something else to add. Does that seem reasonable for next week? Yeah, I would keep it short. I mean, next week is the schools. Okay, then I'll just do that. Then honestly, I'll just do that. If everyone's comfortable with that, then I'm happy to not include those on the meeting for next week. It does feel like we've had significant conversations, and I think at this point... The budget that we've seen for 28 is probably what we're going to have with minor variation until December. And then 29 to 31, I think I'll also hold on adding that to the agenda until we actually hopefully have an update. Okay. Does that work? I think it's fine, but I think this might have been Brian's suggestion, but we have within a very small margin of error. Or margin of change, if you will. We have the operating budget. You know, it's not set out the way we, it ultimately will be, but we've got all the information with, and so I think, you know, rather than, the discussion so far has been pushing, you know, to get to avoid and override. But if... This is, I think, the time to be looking at the line items if we want to have some influence on them. If we don't, if we feel like we can wait until December 31, that's fine. But, you know, you might want to start thinking about, you know, if this were the budget presented, what would we be asking them to change? So I'll add a fiscal year 28 line items review, right? For 11-2, because I'm concerned the conversation with schools might take a while. And then on 11-2, we're also meeting with the select board, is that right? 11-2 is the town manager and probably Brian. Well, again, that's the ask. So hopefully they can get back to us quickly. No, I'm sorry. That's not right. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11 Whatever time you want to go to the budget. Yeah, I agree, actually. Okay, so 11-2 will go through fiscal year, 28 line items, make sure if we have any feedback to share that, and then 11-9 we can meet with. Are we really planning weekly meetings at this point? I mean, I thought we were last time talking about, you know, doing every other week. I think the question was whether we needed them. I would say if we start our next meeting and if the school folks cannot. Available. It looks like a pretty thin agenda that could be pushed to agree. Anytime the town manager and the schools can come, I think it's a good meeting. So if no schools on 11-26 will cancel? And mean on 11-26. Unless we're going to reverse the work. Yeah, if the schools can't come, I would ask the town manager. For 10-26. Right. Okay. So then, effectively, we'll keep 1026. 11-2, I think what I'm hearing all of us say is, without knowing what the select four months start, we're not going to meet on 11-2. We'll meet 11-9, and on 11-9, we'll plan to go through fiscal year 28 line items. Well, that would be the other, that's the town manager. And meet and talk to the town manager and finance director. Yeah, again, I think that's, just like the school, that's going to be the focus of the meeting. I mean, obviously, we can squeeze stuff in at the end. Hey, Karl, you're reaching out to both those sex people, right? Yes. I'll think about tonight, but we're going to do sequentially, right? Because otherwise... Yeah. We'll say we can't do that. Yeah. We need to flip it. You're asking all right while you're available on the right. Right. Exactly. All right. Sounds good. All right. Thank you all. Anything else for anybody? Rob? No. I should be adjourned. So moved. I guess this is my role in the committee. I think you just... You made the motion. Made the motion. Uh-oh. I've been preempted. Roll call vote. Iris. Yes. Brian. Yeah. Bill. Yes. Karl's a yes. Rob, how about you? Yes. All right. Meeting adjourned. Thank you all.
I think you saw that the town received the AAA rating from Moody's again. That will certainly help in the issuance of debt. But at the same time, the last I heard, Brian Keveny was expecting of, or at least putting into his model 4.5% for the interest rate on that. Given that, you know, the... You know, long-term rates have been increased by the Fed. And that may happen again. I don't know. I think it will happen before these bonds are issued. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know where that interest rate will be at times. At our last SIPCY meeting, I'm pretty sure he said, and we'll know. November 5th. Well, it's not sooner, but I'm pretty sure he said that it's looking like the town might get a four and a quarter as opposed to the four and a half that he increased it to. But that difference is $30,000 to $40,000 of net change to the deficit. Anything we get less than four and a half is a good thing, but it's not going to move the needle significantly. No, but I'd rather have to be $30,000 or $40,000 in that direction. And we will know soon enough. I assume everybody saw the list of, otherwise saw the list of changes, including his change to the energy point item. Yeah, his number there is now a 15% increase over the last year. And I think, you know, for our purposes, while we can continue to maintain this, I think the... And then, Karl, based on what you've said, it sounds like the focus is now turned away from levy capacity and has turned more toward what's the year-over-year increase in tax revenue that people can stomach. So, you know, as you noted, this slightly increased the year-over-year percentage tax increase, but... You know, again, time will tell as to any further, to your point, any further budget heading that can be done and or other revenue state aid. Where are we currently sitting for fiscal year 28? It's six and a quarter. Six and a quarter. But as I went through at the last meeting, 115 basis points of that relate solely to the deferral of the long-term financing last year. And if you remove that item, at least on version 8, we're just under 5%, which seems to be the level at which people would prefer to see the year-over-year increase come down. But also, it's a numerator denominator. I think the denominator also went down because of the significant increase in local receipts in fiscal 27, what was supposed to be a 4.8%. The year-over-year increase based on what was in last year's warrant is looking like it's going to be a 3.5% or less. And so that's also giving the sense that there's a bigger increase in tax revenue than there really is. I mean, there's an increase in tax revenue. It just depends on whether people want to explain it away or actually want to drive it down. Well, maybe a little bit of both. So, first of all, I mean, that's six and a quarter. Assumes a deficit of $532,000. Oh, I see. Okay. So if that's dealt with, it will be dealt with, whether it's through increased revenue or through efficiencies, that's got to be dropped to zero. And so that... Well, I think as we showed last week, it will take about a million dollars of... Budget Cuts and or other revenues drive the fallout 6 and a quarter to drive that to 5%. Right, but half of it. Half of it will go away. We'll get there. We'll get half of it. Yeah. Anyway. So we'll be right under SACS. No, about 5 and a half. Plus. We'll get to the headline with a 5.9. If all else is equal, it'll be much less than that. Aiming for 4.99 rather than 5.99. It's a great goal, but let's not look at a gift horse in the mouth, right? If we get in the fives, that's still better than where we started by a lot, by a long shot. So the way to get there, I don't know how this... Committee can increase revenue. No. So what we can do is keep pushing and up the ante on these efficiencies. And we could say, for example, we don't want this year-over-year tax rate to be more than 5% or 5.25 or some number. And then direct the town manager and the finance director to find those. Now, those are big numbers, as Brian says. Drop it by a percent, it would be about a million dollars. Well, at least one should go through the exercise of what it would mean to do that. In other words, I don't necessarily like the idea of requiring somebody, but hey, what would you have to do to meet this number? And we can see if that's reasonable. But when we met last week, and this is really for your, not two weeks here, but for your benefit, Iris, our conclusion at that point was that picking an arbitrary number, 5%, was, you know, and saying, you've got to get there. We weren't prepared to do that, but we still want to push to do what we can to get it down. I agree. I think a number with no context is meaningless, right? It's just a number effect. You know, I think. What I recollect from some of our conversations and what Michael McCall has presented to the town previously is that isn't it that like the last decade we've somehow averaged that around 5% year-to-year increases? 4.6. 4.6. So one could argue, you know, using historical averages that that might be where we think the town is most comfortable because that's what's continuously been approved by the town and passed. That, to me, feels slightly more reasonable in terms of context for how we get to a number, right, as opposed to just picking an arbitrary number. But I think it's also, yeah, I think it's tough. Certainly, again, like I said, looking from where we start to where we're getting. I mean, maybe I hate to say that. I think we're moving in the right direction, you know, and I think everyone's coming together to really Do as much as they can. But I agree that I think it would behoove us, even in the case of acknowledging that we might not get there, to come to an alignment on what we would like to see. And I think so. I think kind of what we discussed last time, because I think I was a little maybe more in the arbitrary numbers or arbitrary camp. Is it makes sense to ask the hypothetical of what it would take to get down there? That doesn't mean that it has to happen. That doesn't mean that. But it would be informative to us and also preparatory even for, you know, next year's conversation to say, what would it take? You know, outside my expertise a little bit, but my guess is that people's baseline is the rate of inflation. So if inflation is poor, they might say, well, I can understand that, you know, a little bit more than that. But that's where they're going to start. They say, okay, you know, you don't want it to be a lot more than the rate of inflation. I agree. But the truth is, as we look at the numbers, and so I don't disagree. I don't disagree. But the truth is, looking at the averages for the last decade, half of that decade, inflation was way under that 4.6, 4.7 number. I'm just thinking Joe Public, not the educated environment group. I'm usually the person that in the past would be pressing hard on budget cutting, and I don't disagree with where I thought we ended up at the last meeting, which is... People need to be able to evidence that some thought and effort will get into that. But I think it's disingenuous for us to be looking at 6.25%, knowing that 115 basis points of that is solely attributable to deferring the long-term financing, as I evidenced in the analysis last week. And if you remove that, and we're really at 4.9-ish. That's not very far off the 4.6 long-term average. And we have a number of line items in the unclassified budget that are significantly above energy that's now 15% in the forecast. In retirement, fortunately, we got a slight breather. But medical is going to be likely in the double digits. And so... Yeah, we could ask, but I would just suggest that we'd be thoughtful in asking because, you know, maybe there's an extra couple hundred grand estate aid that's out there that people likely think is going to come our way. But beyond that, it's got to come out of the budgets and there really isn't anything else. I'm not saying anything else, but there's nothing else they can cut without getting into program or by services. And if this committee desires to know, we're not saying we're telling you to cut those things, but we'd like to know what those cuts would be, well, that's typically what you would see done in an override year. Where you need evidence to the voters. If you don't vote yay, here's what the town's going to lose. And I guess the question I would ask is, is that a drill that we want to let people practice on this year? Because, you know, they're going to have to find 800,000 of additional cuts. I mean, the school's already, this already reflects. $400,000 or so less in the school payroll and other expenses kind of balance. But if I'm understanding, sorry, I just want to make sure I'm understanding like this six and a quarter, we still anticipate just like this last year, the local receipts were higher. Next year, the local receipts are higher. Yet again, the six and a quarter could naturally come down. There's... 115 basis points that is effectively financially engineered, right? So six and a quarter minus the 115 basis points, call it five, right? Just for an easy map. This last year, we were projected to be, wasn't it 4 and a? 4.8. 4.8, right? And actually it ended up being, we anticipated it ended up being under four, right? Yeah, largely due to local or state. Largely due to local or state. I think we've talked about. I'd say the odds of local receipts replicating what occurred last year are not terribly high. They largely reflected a change in the town's fee structure, as well as significant extra investment they've done, which, given where short-term rates are, I suppose could at least remain somewhat elevated. I happen to think there's more of a risk over the near term of local receipts going down versus up. But your point is accurate. But they won't set a budget. They won't set a budget based on that. So I think what I'm hearing is... If everything stays the same based on the levers we've pulled to date, right, the several hundred thousand that will be found between town and school budgets, the estimated revenue plus everything else going on, we stand at six and a quarter. And that is what effectively we would be going to the town with. In May. Sixth and a quarter. That was from version eight or version nine? That's from version nine. Okay, that is nine. Okay. And that includes 40,000 questions. Okay. So it's possible to go down a little, right? But like, but so, so, so I think what I'm trying to get my head around is it is possible we go to the town with 5.99 and say, here's what we did for you guys. You've got to take 100 basis points off because that 100 is really just the rollover from the previous year. So you're really sitting at 499 and we've avoided an override and we got this for you. I think that's pretty good. That's kind of where my head is at. But I don't want that to sound as if I'm not and collectively we're not encouraging. As tight a budget as they do. I think we still need to be, but I also agree with your point, Brian, which I think is where I'm leaning is the ask should be in ASCO. We know this is coming. We want to see you apply. Maybe I misunderstood, but we want to see the theoretical come to fruition of like, you need to start making some assessments here, right? Not that we're asking you to make necessarily those cuts this year, but we know it's coming and we need to start getting ahead of that. I mean, for me, in any budget situation, I want to see hypotheticals of what would you do if you had less money, whether what facilitates that is the percent increase in rates or in tax or not. I mean, that's one way to get it. But even if you put the tax rate percentage increase aside, I still would like to ask the question and have an answer. Like, what if we ask for another million dollars out of the schools or out of the town? You know, tax bodies at an average pay rate of Y dollars. That's about all you can get at this point. And obviously, people are going to be loathe to... And they probably, you know, their argument would be they've already done it, but, you know, I don't want to be here in a vacuum. I'd like to understand it. Right. But I think since this agenda item was on fiscal year 28, I think just preparing for, I think a lot of the conversations we've had in my body since I was gone for the last two meetings, but were around trying to aid. See what we could do to avoid an override, which I think we effectively are moving in the right direction on that and be trying to make sure that the numbers are, I don't want to use the word manageable, but something that we could take to the public and say, Like, we've done what we can to bring you a visual number. And I think that's what I'm saying is it seems like 6.25, I'll be honest, sounds high, but I think once you take away the 115 basis points and we can, you know, still, it sounds to me like based on the probability factors, it is probable that that even comes down a little far as we possibly are able to go to the town in May and say this is effectively a 4.99. And I think that's pretty good. Like, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I'm going to... Well, you went out with a 4.8 last year. Right. The majority of the board, if not all of the board or committee, seemed comfortable with them. Yes. And costs are up. Yes. Certainly unclassified section. Yep. Again, the school payroll was a bit of a surprise, but they apparently... The explanation was apparently a number of seasoned teachers did not return, and they were able to replace them with lower-priced incoming teachers because the cost of living increase in the contract was 3.5%. For fiscal 28, and their year-over-year payroll increase was 2.8%. So the only way to explain that is that they were in that and they have steps and lanes for existing, which are driving you up as well. So they must have had a reasonable good number of people. And they may have not filled a couple of positions, I think. They said Children's Way may have been a couple of positions. So I'm sure their view will be You know, we've kind of done, to your point, we've kind of done some of that efficiency worth already. But as I said at the last meeting, at least I think I understood it correctly, at the last school committee meeting, maybe two times, two meetings ago, the chair kind of acknowledged what Karl has told us at the last meeting, unlikely that an overrides going to be put in front of voters this year, but that she was preparing her members for, and she noted that Came up with, you know, a reduction based on their three-year projection of their salaries and their payroll and other expenses. But it sounded like she said they were understanding they might need to go further, which is likely the message that was coming out of the working group and the planning group. And if I also recollect correctly, the original number. When we had like a V1, V2 of this model and we were looking at a potential three or over, I asked, the original number was in the sevenths, wasn't it? Probably. The original year of the year was in the sevenths, right? Very initial versions. Okay. All right. No, I'm just trying to contextualize, right? Like we're moving in the right direction. See, though, I think even though that even that 6.25 is inflated because that assumes that we, I mean, That we have an override for $531,000. Oh, I see. So if we don't, either because we have additional revenue or because we have more efficiencies, i.e. cuts, automatically we're going to lose about a half a percent off of that. So there's 5.75. Take 115 basis points out for the financial engineering, excuse me, and you're at like 4.6. Somewhere. The other thing that I really hadn't been focusing on this, but we've got, what is this, $450,000 in the budget for stow removal and supplies. I know he spent a lot last year. He spent a lot last year. He added an extra hundred to what otherwise had been the yearly budget for probably the last three or four years. And I don't think I distributed. I went back and did a summary of the last 15 years. So nice budget and what the actual came in. And I think half the years we were over what was budgeted. And so they had to get the money from other accounts. And this past year was a total aberration compared to anything in the last 15 years. We've had some bad years. Yeah, that's one question of, you know, could we get comfortable, could Brian Keveny get comfortable, or could we get comfortable if we simply use the same snow and ice budget number we have been using the last four or five years, knowing that half the years it came in under and half the years it came in over, and we can always find the money, and worst case, There isn't excess money in other accounts to take it from at the end of the year. It just gets put on the tax rate. It's statutorily one of the items that it's not like you can't get paid. And so... That might be a lever to return on. I don't know. Because if you raise the money and it turns out that two or three not-so-snowy years, it goes to free cash, then the taxpayers say, why... Why are you raising extra money if it's simply reverting into pre-cash? Which happened eight to ten years ago, there was a pretty large accumulation going on in pre-cash. People asked for the money back, went to that meeting and got the boat to get the money back. It was the super El Nino supposed to help. Supposed to help? Supposed to have a lot of freezing rain, maybe, but not as much snow. Some of the other items I went through last week, but there's still a couple others which I haven't heard any discussion of. The wage and classification plan study that was completed six to nine months ago. My understanding was that a number of town positions suggested that those positions were not being paid at whatever the level was that they were targeting in the study. And I've been waiting to hear what's the town manager's plan for bringing those increases in. I didn't see anything in the forecast that suggests that there's a bump. And then in Karls attending the fire study working group, but I think part of that study was intended to rationalize the... Staffing levels in the fire department. And obviously, if coming out of that and working with unions, that was the result in additional bodies in the fire department, I don't think that's reflected in these budget numbers. So there's still, you know, I know we're talking about things that are likely to take away from the budget, but I think there's still some unanswered. Questions that cut the other way as well. And we almost have to wait. Unless, you know, unless you get a majority of people here that want to set the target now from the FinCon rather than waiting, get a budget, and then have a majority of the FinCon say, geez, we're not comfortable with that. You need to cut, you know, which we did in the FinCon three years ago. We said you got to find $600,000, you know, maybe two-thirds school, one-third town, and said, You figure out where you take it from. It's just a question of where you want to be. Again, if there's a majority that thinks something could arrive that you're not going to be happy with, you head it off. You can have a percentage started. Maybe we'll move more toward a dollar target, which, and that would lead to a percentage. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, part of it for me is that, I mean, discussion is useful, but at some point, rather than waiting to the end and seeing the budget and reacting to it, you know, I think I've said, I'd like to talk to the people who are making the budgets as we go so that we can know, so they can be part of the same discussion that we're having now. Give me more insight than just us. So that's the invite. That's the invite. The sooner we do that. Have exactly the same discussion. We'll see how they weigh in. Well, they've asked me for about a week's notice. To the best of my knowledge, the Select Board is not meeting next week. They're on a two-week schedule. Do we want to ask if they're available then? Iris, you'll be running the meeting. On 26th. Yeah. You can ask. If you were running the meeting, Karl, would you have the town and the school of St. Ethan? Together? All together? Or just do that money being in too much? If it were up to me, I would probably just do one of, do them separately. Yeah. So I'd be inclined to do the schools first. It's the biggest part of the budget. Yeah. Makes sense. And it's also the one I have the least insight into. We haven't seen much more than a line item right now. Okay. If you'd like, I'll... I'll invite them. And then, of course, a week after that, on November 2nd, we have an opportunity to sit down with the select board and the town manager and the finance director that night to hear what they have to say. Yeah, I mean, I think it should be our meeting alone. Yeah, I don't find the... That's fine. 50, 20 minutes from here. Right, right, right. Never terribly productive. Yeah, I mean, my vision is... They don't have to present or defend. They just have to be part of the discussion. I agree. Maybe that would be the three weeks out, Karl. It would be the next Monday night that the select board's not meeting. That sounds right. And that's not to say that VINCOM or someone from the VINCOM couldn't go to the select board meeting, but I think having these other groups in has certainly been invited. Chair of the psych board to sit on both sessions. She's a liaison anyway. So schools, see if they're available on the 26th. Bill's point, just don't come armed and prepared with anything in particular. Just come and have a discussion. And then the same for the town manager and the finance director on November 9th. Okay. Unfortunately, you'll miss both of those. But I will watch the Wayland videos. All right. So, Ron, is that? Keep forgetting you're there. It's so quiet. Sneaky that way. I don't like Zoom because I just, I feel like those that are on Zoom aren't, don't get a full opportunity unless they are aggressive and speak up. I make my voice heard when I feel I need to. So October 26th and November 9th. Right, but at least for us to check our own calendars for. Okay, so to wrap up this, we can move on to the outer years. You know, the other things we haven't really talked about here are that these numbers still assume a $200,000 cushion, right? You know, the more I look at that snow budget, which between personnel and services and supplies, salt, that comes out to, pardon me, $628,000. I have to believe that's conservative. There ought to be lower, but that's sort of part of what I do in this situation. It's $200,000 to $600,000. If you would like, Karl, I'll send you the email. whatever 15-year summary that I did of budgets and actual and snow and ice and then copy Iris and one of the two of you can distribute that if you'd like. Okay, I'm pretty much out of pocket starting tomorrow. Okay, well distribute it, I'll send it to Iris. Yeah, I mean, to some extent, my point of view is once we're at the point that we're avoiding a prop two and a half, then the rest of it almost gets into the detail. I mean, whether it's a five and a half or a five percent or five and three quarter, you know, it's like, okay, I mean, we need to work on it and refine it. But, you know, to me, you know, it's not a big deal if we get past the prop two and a half. So it's your view that at this point, given that it sounds like the override is pretty much done as a topic, you probably don't need to be revisiting that. And the model is, the model, I don't know how Brian's, you know, he probably is going to deliver ultimately and hopefully by the end of the year is the preliminary budget. And that'll typically come in a budget model, Excel workbook, which likely is going to look a lot like a forecast. And I think I had said at the last meeting I'd be happy because that surfaces to do a side-by-side with, and I'm happy to keep this forecasted. If he takes any other adjustments, I'm happy to put him in. But I think other than deciding if we want to set a target, it really is, okay, we're now at least somewhat educated on what to expect come the end of the year. And then do a side-by-side to see kind of what significant things changed from forecast to actual budget. But I think my sense, Bill, is you think there's probably not much more to say about the forecast as fiscal 28. Right. Yeah, that's my sense. I mean, there's a few unknowns and there'll be some adjustments, but we're in the right ballpark, so we don't have to, you know, push it too hard. Well, that's my sense, too. So unless anybody feels differently, why don't you move on to the next three years where things look dramatically different? Yeah, and I'd kind of like, I mean, Brian did such a great job of the FY28 modeling with the, you know, the various, you know, parameters that you could adjust and play with. I guess I'd always be like to see something like that at least for 29 or 30 so that we can start doing some sensitivity analysis and to figure out which variables are the critical ones that we all need to focus on. You know, I'm not prepared at this point really to have that discussion, but... You know, having something, a model in hand, a version one of 29 or 30. You're great. I'm happy to, I can just add another tab into this workbook. And I think as we talk about it, I mean, we talk about, I'm assuming again, like I said, they're probably going to take the strategy that they had had. previously and push it forward essentially to say for fiscal year 29 to 31, they're going to make a three-year ask. And so when we look at it, we should be looking at certain the variables for each of those years, but really to ask the problem would be what are you to ask and what does that look like? I suspect that is true. And frankly, I think it ought to be true. I mean, I think that it's better to ask once every three years than every year. That's a personal opinion. But when you talk about strategy, that's a pretty narrowly thought out strategy, right? Sure. It's the right one, I think. But we asked, we took a vote to say, look, we want you to really start thinking. Critically and strategically about those next three years, whether they be 28 through 30 or 29 through 31. I think that the select board is on board with that, but at this point, I haven't seen anything happen. So I did have a chat today on a number of topics with Carol Martin, the chair of the select board, and I think she is prepared to up the I'll call it pressure because that's what it is to do this. But the select board is not at this point appointed a committee or even approved one to actually do the work that we outlined. So, you know, and for me, at least personally, there's an interesting psychology because on the one hand, I think it makes a lot of sense to be conservative. I understand why Brian does that and you don't want to be there and, you know, rather it's coming with scrutiny rather than bad news. But the flip side of that is having now done this for two years. And at the beginning of the year, it looks like top two and a half. And at the end, hey, we've gotten out of it. There's a part of me that's, you know, is a little bit suspect with any initial model that I see. So, you know, all the more reason for what I asked Brian to model it out and let's see. And we might do the same thing next year. Oh, yeah, I guess we can make it another year. I mean, it would be great. Look, no one's going to say that that wouldn't be lovely. I just want to be, have a reasonable expectation that given the constraints that we see, at some point, this is likely. At some point, this is likely. At some point, this is likely. Between now and 2037, right? Until we get a break on the pressures on the budget, this is likely. I can't say when, right? The modeling can suggest when it might be the time. I would say I'm open either way. I'm not judging either way because I think it's too early. So then the other than going back to Carol Martin and say again, writing, this is what we recommend. This is our recommendation for what the select board should do. You preparing a little bit, you know, preparing the same kind of column that you had for your summary of 28. I think, is that the discussion for Tony on this topic? Yeah, I think if you're more comfortable at this stage, you know, passing along the sense of we've got to get going on the work now, we want to be in a position come next June, so that in turn, They could be in a position to start educating and be in a position to possibly figure out when the best time to go to the electorate is. But knowing what's happened the last four years that I've been working on this stuff, this gets definitely shoved to the side. People have been focused on everything else they have to do. And so the question is, do you feel from your conversation so far with Carol that she is going to elevate it up to the board in a public meeting? The alternative is, well, we took a vote and you communicated that to the working group, financial planning group, whatever. We could certainly draft a memo to the select board and send it to the select board as a public document that elevates it with that one. At this point, you may be more comfortable letting Carol, I know she gets it, but it just... I just know the way things work. This really should have started weeks ago. People, once they thought that we weren't going to need the override, they should have kept saying, okay, what do we need to do between now and next June? Not be sitting there next June going, okay, what do we have to do now to get something done? So I think the approach that I would prefer... Is the middle ground, which is actually putting writing, not in a public document to the board, but in an email to the chair to say, you know, we talked about this board and this is what we'd like you to do. I'd like you to take this to the board, you know, take the question to the board. And if they do, then there's a further discussion. If they don't, there's a further discussion. But, you know, I don't think, I'm looking, thinking about back to the conversations. I don't know that I ever said I would, you know. made a formal request to bring it up at the board. It's basically one discussion. And the June deadline is not just any date. You literally, based on what we just saw this group go through, right, scrambling to try to see if they can get on the ballot for the state elections. You know, you need to have plenty of nice education, you need plenty of time for some process, but you also need plenty of time for the strategic part of it. And, you know, and I just want to, I'll keep bringing it up, but the approach, and I think I've heard Harold mention it at least. We approached Marblehead in terms of an MOU agreement with the Select Board, the Finance Committee, and the School Committee that if you do go for a multi-year override, getting a general buy-in that unless there's something you totally didn't anticipate, you're not going back to the taxpayers for three years. And we have an example that we could look at. And that itself would require some time and effort to negotiate amongst the parties, if you will. And it takes time for forecasting. And part of the other issue, which I know Brian Keveny has been pressing on, and I mentioned to the chair of the school committee probably a month and a half ago, They really need, if they need to hire a third party consultant to help them, they really need to develop their own multi-year pretty detailed forecasting, budget forecasting model so that they're not just dealing with this kind of one number and they're not really sure what they would have to do. We typically put a dent in the size numbers we're looking at. And that's something, you know, the Bill's point, that's something we would raise when they're hopefully sitting here with us and we'll say, what is your plan for doing that? And for relatively short money, they could hire a consultant like the Board of Public Works does on their water read model and put together a pretty complex model that's very helpful. So, anyway, those are just some higher level. I appreciate it. And lastly, Karl, I am okay to attend the October 28th, 8.30 a.m. Thank you. Okay. Financial planning meeting, but now that Iris is back, I don't want to deny her the pleasure of doing so if you want to keep yourself immersed if you can do 8.30 meetings on Wednesday. Yeah, it is October 20, if you're right. And they generally just last an hour. Yeah. I'm not saying an afternoon. No, no, I appreciate the opportunity. I think you clearly have some good ideas and thoughts. I'm sure they would all be happy if I show up. They're expecting it at this point. Okay, shall we move on to the capital budget? Rob, any questions on that stuff? Nope, not here. I spent a good chunk of this afternoon, so it would be fresh, reading the report, Brian, and thank you for that. The other four people, the client sharing the work, helped out. Well, I didn't mean to exclude them. I was talking to you. The good news is you made the deadline. Hopefully the report has helpful information. I am not interested in summarizing the report. I'm not interested in going page by page. I hope all of you have either read it or will read it by the next meeting and really interested in what kinds of questions the rest of you have and how you're all going to, assuming this, just hypothetically assuming this was what comes forth in You know, probably mid to late November from the town manager. And my instinct is it's not going to be too far off this time. How are the rest of you going to be analyzing the capital budget and the five-year capital plans? So obviously I'm in a position to answer questions specifically that come out of the CPSI report. But other than that, I know what's in it, so I don't have any questions. I mean, it'll be interesting to see how close the two are. I mean, that's sort of my initial thought is I wait for the town and then I compare them and then tell me what the differences are and why. That's sort of at least the first cut before I actually get to. If the town and you and your committee agree on something, I'm probably, I might have some questions, but I'm probably not going to be too, like, no, you can't do that. I would tend to agree with that. But today, one of the things I did is I took a detailed look at the recommend, sorry, at the fiscal 28 column. of the five-year capital plan there last year. Yeah, okay. And then compared it to the CIPSE's recommendation. Yeah, good idea. And remembering that that plan was the town's plan, right? So things change, but as of a year ago, eight months ago, that was there. Proposal for the budget. There are definitely some differences, but quite a lot of those lines are identical. I think it's fair to say that SIPSE did recommend them. Now, there are some changes. There are a few that... Actually, fairly good-sized numbers that are timing differences. Either we pulled something into fiscal 26 or maybe pushing it out, or 27, I guess, or pushing it out. And then there are a few, quite a few, that look like inflation-type changes. You know, $10,000 more on something than was in that plan. Now, that's more than inflation, but it's not. You know, materially different, I think. So, Brian, first of all, do you think that's a fair high-level summary of where we are? Yes. I think, as I explained it, I think the last meeting, we were delivered the message by the finance director after last year to stick to the plan. And our interpretation of stick to the plan was still going to ask for input from the department managers, which we did. And in terms of what capital is available, particularly in terms of borrowing and free cash, we were going to do our best to not exceed the total amounts that were in last year's plan, which, by the way, is your recommended plan from last year that went to town meeting. And I think we achieved that pretty well. The exception of a couple items which we included in fiscal 28 with different funding sources that were used or reflected in last year's plan on the theory that if they meet with resistance from the town manager and he can't find other resources other than increasing borrowing or increasing use of free cash above what was in the plan. Then our view was we would have deferred them in terms of what we felt their priority to be. And the specific two items related to the second request for funding for the Route 20 design and engineering related work that needs to be openly spent before the town to get on the state's transportation list. It's the ultimate hope that the state would fund the 10 plus million dollars of actual construction. And we proposed using the real estate reserve to fund a half a million dollars. And the initial request two years ago, $250,000 was funded from that account. So we felt there was some consistency anyway. And the other nuance with it, unfortunately, is that the balance in that account at the moment is only A little under $250,000. So there isn't enough to fund that half million dollars at the moment. But as we note in our report, Atlanta, Peterstown, meaning $1.4 million was allocated from that account to fund the State Brook Dam construction. And subsequent to that vote, the town received both a state and a federal grant that, as far as I know, covers almost the entire cost. of the actual construction. The town had to spend the money and ask for it. They proclaimed? Yeah, the $1.4 million. Yeah. So that $1.4 million should be coming back and to get it back into the reserve, Brian Keveny tells me that that will require a town meeting article and a vote. And so we anticipated that some portion of that, maybe not all of it, but some significant portion of that, if the town manager Doesn't decide he's not interested in using that as a source will be brought back and that the town manager select for it. Somebody will put in an article. So one of the questions for the FinCon will be, well, how do you feel about using that real estate reserve fund for that particular item? There was one other item, some improvements, library grounds outside the library. I think it was. $250,000, $275,000 item, which again, we had put as a pretty low priority last year, but it was in the plan, and we said, well, we can just not include it in our recommendation this year. But we put in using a capital stabilization fund as a source just because that has a balance of $2 million plus. And again, we met with the PEM manager and the finance director at our last meeting. And I understand why the finance directors want to be a little cautious on the use of that fund since that fund gets added in with free cash and other. Reserve funds that Moody's looks to to achieve certain metrics. And he didn't say he was going to oppose that recommendation, but he basically was alerting the SIPC not to become used to using the cap stabilization fund as a go-to funding source. Having said that, town managers likely to, as we recommended, use it for the $100,000. Field Maintenance Request. And we still need to talk about it, but I've alluded to it before, debt service on the septic, $2 million septic loan, which will be going out in a couple weeks here. The first year principal interest was like $225,000. Brian's got that plugged in as coming from the CAP Stabilization Fund. Not only Fiscal 28, but throughout this forecast period. So again, I think the FinCom is a sort of higher level question is, you know, how do you, the rest of you see using the cap stabilization fund, what do you view its purpose as? So, but back to your question, Karl, I think our view was as long as we could not exceed the borrowing and the free cash, except for those two items, We weren't so much thinking we had to actually include every single item that we've been trying to plan. In fact, the department managers themselves, there's very few items that we moved and deferred. There were some toward the end of the process, but most of the things that got either pulled forward or deferred. And obviously, all the price adjustment, or cost estimate adjustments, both up and down, that all was input from the department managers. And so, again, you all have to make your own decision. Is it important in a plan that when somebody tells you they're going to do an item, other than adjusting its cost to the inflation or whatever, they must do that item, or if something more important comes up. You call an audible where you have to readjust your plan, right? I would say that. I mean, that's generally my expectation. Look, the money is set, right? The appropriations are set based on, and in my mind, when people are voting, people are voting on a number of appropriations that they can stomach and they can fund, and also looking at... and relying on the idea that all these different layers and checks have agreed on the priority. But I think it is also reasonable to say... Something could happen that could cause us to reevaluate priority, not necessarily cost, because I think the appropriations are done. And so in my mind... Let me just correct you. So the only thing that's appropriated to me is the following fiscal year's capital budget. Correct. Five-year plan simply appears in the finance committee's report. There's no vote on that. Right. And so... The town residents see it. There might be an anticipation that you're not going to come back the following year and ask for twice as much. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I'm of the opinion that there might be some variability, but the variability is primarily in the priority of the projects that are picked up in those years, and that might have a somewhat impact on cost, but it shouldn't be huge. We shouldn't see these huge swings. But you saw that last year with the high school septic, which is why SIPC recommended last year to be done with excluded that, why you all recommended budget. That was $2 million more than what had been in the plan in 2017, to your point. So the town would have seen $4 million of levy debt and now it's $6 million. But they came up with this backhanded way of not having it to have to go into the amount of annual tax revenue. So, anyway, if that's the general sense here. That's just my sense. I don't know, though, Karl, if you have other thoughts here. I mean, I don't know if Town might be different than other organizations, but they're all living documents. They're all subject to adjustments, conditions, and the environment changes. They're a point estimate based on where we are now. But your estimate's off by 100%. Then you're not... Exactly. Then it wasn't really valuable to be done by the next year. Are they actual estimates? Are they wish lists? Or what are they? There's somewhere between those. So... Yeah, you know, you... This year there are, which I mentioned the last thing, there are... A couple of extremely high-priority items that were not on the radar screen for Fiscal 28. And the IT request, substantive IT request, and the fire sensors at the middle school. And can I ask that those projects, and maybe this is, I think honestly, for the amount of requests coming from IT, we probably need a meeting with Nick, because I'd be curious to understand the funds that were appropriated last year, which we were told were quite urgent. Are those projects done? Like, is there actual capacity to take on? The answer is there is capacity. Not all the projects that are previously appropriated have been completed. Yeah, I mean, the capital plan is as close to a strategic plan as I've seen in the town environment. You know, in strategic plans, and typically five years or so, and generally, you know, people are willing to document. Right. But appropriating funds when we're not prepared to pick up work is not, I don't think historically has been the goal. Yeah, no, I agree. SIPC asked that question of each and every department manager, and I believe the new revised form also tries to get at that question. And looking at open capital tries to get at that question. But you also have... Fiscal 28, we're talking, you know, July 1, 2027. And there's still, you know, lead order time and other things. And that's what we hear. I just want to make sure because it's not a small amount, right? We've seen it increase drastically, I'm sure for reasonable means, but it's not small. I understood, perhaps I was wrong, but I understood last year that those requests were quite urgent in hardware and software licensing combined, and to see that number seems like almost triple. I'd be curious to get a better understanding. Yeah, again, I can share with you what we heard that I mentioned. I think the last meeting... We decided to draw the line as to not wanting to go to an executive session to explore in much more detail what exactly needed to be focused on. We decided the town manager was in the loop and he assured us that he was comfortable. But I think I reported that the IT director's initial submission was pretty much in line with the five-year plan. And based on what we heard at last year's town meeting, a combination of people said, well, this seems not necessarily reflective of what I heard at town meeting. And he says, well, it isn't. And we said, well, why don't you go back and think about what you really need and go talk to the town manager and then come back to us with potentially revised. Plan. That's what he did. Got it. That makes more sense. Thank you. And so I think he was trying to do what he thought he was supposed to do in sticking with what Plan had. But we asked him, is even what he asked for enough? And he said no. And again, without getting into the specifics as to why he said no, it's a combination of a bunch of different factors. And that's a discussion I remember from Town Meeting of all of the issues that people brought up. It's like, how much money do you need? This is important. We'll increase your budget if we need it. So it was interesting to say. That was at least my impression. Yes. At Town Meeting, he said something north of a million dollars. People were willing to open a wallet. Okay. Okay. Well, that's what he's asking for. That's what I wanted. See, I didn't remember him asking for a million. I remember him asking for like... Without knowing the specific things that need the immediate attention, we're to understand from him that the costs related to those things have grown exponentially given the demand for chips and other things that he needs to secure. And just as an aside, he mentioned at our last meeting that he attended with us that I believe he made use of some state-offered grants and or free consulting where the state sent in folks to look at the town's IT infrastructure and he came paired with, you know, piled reports and they said, we'll see him. Just because. And so I think he's got a specific plan of attack. He just didn't have the money to get going on it. But that said, if between now and getting to a point of having to vote on a capital budget, particularly for Fiscal 28, if there are... Department heads at Pinkham thinks they need to hear from directly. And, Karl, it's up to you to invite them. I'm just suggesting that we may be limited unless we want to go to an executive session to talk to them about it. And I basically told our committee, the CIPSE, if they wanted to do that, which they were totally able to do, I was going to not attend the meeting. I didn't want to burden myself with what I feel to be pretty sensitive, potentially sensitive technical information if I didn't need to really know it. But that's just one person's opinion. Others happen to feel that way in our committee. So, Karl, any other initial thoughts? I had a couple of questions. About specific recommendations. Yeah. If you could share. Stormwater, the stormwater system, there was a, in the plan from last year, there was a quarter of a million dollars in there. Yeah. And there's nothing in the CIPSE's recommendation. And I thought it might have been just deferred, but I see that in the plan, there was already a quarter of a million dollars every couple of years, something like that. So. Do you know why, do you have a recollection of why that you didn't make a recommendation this year? Whatever you see in the plan is what was recommended by Tom Holder. And to the extent that there was something in the, in last year's five-year plan in fiscal 28 and you're not seeing it. So there was, there was last in fiscal 28 in last year's. Okay, and the list of, yeah, I don't have last year's fiscal 28 list in front of me, but if you're looking at it and you're seeing it and it's obviously not there in the 28 plan this year, that's because Tom Holder spaced them out, partly because they needed bandwidth to get the work done, it's my recollection. Okay, great. Okay. But there's still a needed commitment to get that work done. And a new item that was not in the plan is Public Safety Administration Furniture Refresh to the tune of $50,000. It's only $50,000, but what is a furniture refresh? Why do we think this is necessary? That was a request last year, but it didn't make it into the town manager's plan. I think SIPC may have included it in its recommendation last year. The acting chief described it as a limited amount of furniture being used by the front office staff that apparently is in that great repair. And I guess our view was A, it was short dollars and B, it seemed like a good thing to do for those that work. Billigently for public safety. They could have lived without it. And as last year, it may be that might be an item that gets cut out by the town manager. Don't know. Okay. Thank you. There's a line item in the plan. This is the last year's plan. It says PSB, which is public safety building, right? BMS tie-in. He was in the plan last year for $150,000 and is not in, actually $500,000 was requested this year and there's nothing in the CIPSE recommendation at all. So if they're looking for $500,000. Where are you seeing the $500,000? Are you looking at $14,000? It must be. Because otherwise, that's it. Must have come from it. I think D.C. 14 references a tie-in, but that's for this town building, wastewater. Oh, so about the same, okay. The building, it's building management system tie-in. It's a technology-related tie-in. Oh, got it. Okay, thank you. The town's overall building management system, and we were told by Michael Faia that it was no longer needed or, not that it was no longer needed, I think he found funding from Something else that he felt he was able to utilize to do what he needed to do. Except we're not seeing that in fiscal 28. Nice. Okay. Thank you. And you had already mentioned with respect to the middle school fire sensor replacement, some new urgency there. Is that also true? The next slide, Adam, which is high school water heater. Did something bad happen there? Yeah. The high school water heater had been in the five-year plan at $450,000 out in fiscal 30 or 31. And apparently it just, it's not going to make it that long. But at the same time, they also somehow managed to decide they could do the work for $100,000 as opposed to the $450,000 that was in the plan.
Things like that, to the extent we're told it ain't going to make it, be it a truck or whatever, we yielded to that request to move it up. Okay. That's really hopeful. As I said, most of the other variations are either incremental or timing. I can't remember if we talked about it. You'll see a fair amount of verbiage about this building. And potential costs ranging from five and a half to 20 plus million dollars. And I can't remember if I mentioned that there is a working group, we were told at our meeting, last session meeting by the time management, that they haven't met yet. A little discouraging since we were told a couple months ago it was going to be set up. That being headed up by Michael Faia, the Silver News Director. And I think Phil Whitton might be on it. I'm not sure who else is. But the objective of that committee is to evaluate the town's needs for office space and look at other alternatives and ultimately produce some sort of recommendation to the select board sometime hopefully in relatively early fiscal 27. We were told by the town manager that It's not going to happen that that turns into an article for this upcoming town meeting, which means that a group probably will end up issuing something maybe next March, April timeframe. And our view was spend as little money as we really thought we needed to spend on the building until that committee and ultimately a slack board sets a direction strategically for this building. That makes sense. That makes sense to me too.
Although he had asked for another $700,000 to keep going on the building's roof over that side of the building for some structural issues under the roof. And he had asked for that in fiscal 28. And we ultimately had to bump it. We had it in there, but we had to bump it to fiscal 29 to make room for the IT request. But we pretty well put all those other roof-related requests on hold with wastewater time. And there's a septic system that works. But at some point, if the town stays in this building, they want to hook up to the sewer line. Okay. That all sounds good to me. Stepping back for a second, did I understand you say that the debt service on the fields project... Brian Keveny is thinking that that will come out of the capital stabilization fund over years? Yeah, so if you look in the forecast model, there's a tab, other transfers, I think. And then there's a line item in that tab called cap stabilization fund. And if you look out, probably fiscal 29 is the first debt service, which is just floating the bonds. You'll see the debt service matches up with the debt service on the debt schedule for the $2 million. And that's a discussion that occurred at the select board last March when they were evaluating whether or not they wanted to put a debt exclusion question as you recommended. And they ultimately took no action on your recommendation. They never formally voted on this approach, although it was discussed. They looked at a bunch of options. They looked at paying for the whole $2 million out of the cap stabilization fund one time. And the finance director said he wouldn't recommend that. They talked about one time funding it out of free cash. He recommended the guests doing that. And then he proposed this concept where over a period of years, The cap station fund hopefully is going to continue to be growing for no other reason than investment earnings. And it just so happens that the investment earnings kind of match up right now with the debt service on the $2 million septic loan. And so the notion was you just pull it out of the air so you don't have to raise it through a higher levy debt service in the budget. And it's already been raised through taxation and funded through free cash. Mechanically, however, to be able to use that, Any fund, withdraw any money out of that account, requires a two-thirds vote of town meeting. So again, there's either going to have to be a warrant article that precedes the omnibus budget, operating budget, approving this withdrawal. The $100,000 for the field maintenance will be done through the capital motion. And if the library grounds survives, that's come out of the capital motion. I guess it's possible there could be another motion separately done in the Omnibus article, but we need to stay on top of that. And I'm sure the finance director has it on his list of one article that might be needed, but it's always possible that Town Meeting might not vote. A, if it's a separate warrant article, if Finance Committee is going to have to take a position that we get that good idea. You might recall at a prior meeting I suggested if we're going out for debt exclusion questions, and it's not a foregone conclusion we are, but on the $2 million for the MSBA feasibility study, maybe it'd be a good opportunity to just try again for putting the $2 million high school septic as excluded debt and just be done with it. But that's a discussion for another night. But at some point, Finance Committee is going to have to weigh in one way or the other on whether we think that's a good idea as a way to fund that debt. Well, I'm just having a little bit of trouble figuring out. So my thinking about what a stabilization fund is all about is to Fill in gaps and to kind of keep a level playing field from year to year as much as possible. Funding something over a course of years out of that fund, any one thing out of that fund, seems like a misuse of the fund. You know, I can't assure you, I can go back and look at the article that has told me the wording. I seem to recall it may have. Included in the types of things that it might be used for, that it might include debt service. Still, with the intention of smoothing out the request of town meeting. But I'll go back and find the original wording in the article. Now, if using it for that purpose isn't in there, it's certainly a legitimate question to pose to the finance director at the appropriate time. And I don't know if he's going to, somebody's going to have to sponsor that article, something that's not done through the omnibus budget. You can't, you can't, you don't want to have the operating budget subject to the two-thirds vote. No. So, but you have to know whether it's packed or not, because otherwise you're going to have to plug the hole with some other source. Yep. Like with tax revenue, I suppose it would be pre-capped. So I will go find that wording. Well, if it doesn't, if the wording doesn't include debt service, I think that's one answer right there. Even if it does, debt service, known debt service over a period of years doesn't seem in the spirit of what that fund, what a stabilization fund should be used for. But I'm happy to be talked out of that. So thank you for taking a look. Anything else on the capital budget for tonight? I guess one question I have that isn't is sort of for tonight. I think this is an interesting conversation. I think the capital budget obviously needs a lot more analysis and review on our part. Do we have specific do we want to set some specific goals? Like, do we think we want to? Have our perspective on a budget before we see the capital budget from the town? Do we want to kind of put this on the back burner until we do get the capital budget from the town and then reconcile the differences? I think if we have any questions to get them answered before we get the budget from the town is like my two cents. Generally, like my approach, which I think is what everyone saw last year is CIPSE has done an incredible amount of work, so my questions are more around making sure I understand or appreciate everything, but I did not have any tremendous concerns with the recommendations last year. Where my concerns came from last year was in the disparity and the magnitude of the disparity between the town proposed versus CIPSE. And I suspect we won't. See that this year. I suspect there will still probably be some disparity. And when we get that budget from the town, that will be my focus at that point as well as in understanding the disparity. Yeah, I think it would be who all of you that got crunched last year to read the report. Number one. Perhaps approach it as if this is likely to be pretty close to what you're going to see in late November and have each member write down questions they have and send them to somebody on the committee and accumulate questions, figure out where there's overlap and basically take this opportunity in the next few weeks to be our review of the capital budget and then all we have to do is look at the disparity. And delivery at some appropriate point that we could then vote on a capital budget. But if people aren't going to spend the time now, we're just going to get crunched. Yes, I agree. Later on. So again, I'm at an advantage because I don't have to review anything and I don't have any questions. But I really don't want to come to meetings and people haven't read the material. And raise the question. And I view the operating budget almost the same way. You have way more information that you've already seen this year than you had last year. And you could probably start formulating your questions as Karl did tonight with the ice and snow and ice budget as to what questions you're going to need answered before you get comfortable. Approving an operating budget, even though you don't have one of the specific operating budget in front of you. It's not to say there won't be other questions that arise when you finally get an operating budget in front of you. But again, if we lay off all that work until the end of the year, you know, in the early January. Sure, yeah, yeah. No, I get it right. And I guess maybe to put a finer point on it, I think there is... With the discussions we've had on the operating budget and the discussions we're starting to have on the capital budget, there's some trade-off between the discussions that we had. There are discussions that we had in our earliest meetings that in retrospect we probably didn't necessarily need to have or need to have in the format we had them because they were based on initial estimates that kind of proved to be perhaps incorrect over time. So I guess there's sort of some... Ratio, right, of how much and how thoroughly we discuss some of these topics with partial information, which is good because we have conversations that are valuable and it shifts some of the planning earlier in the year and then potentially negative because we spend some amount of time talking about topics that are later... We wouldn't have needed that are sort of, you know, later made irrelevant by further developments or events. So I'm just kind of trying to like, as open for discussion as a group, like, do we expect to significantly revisit the capital topic between now and when? I guess as a group, it sounds like what we're saying is we had an initial discussion. We have the SIPC report. We've had an initial discussion of it. People are free to study that as much as they have capacity for between now and when the town capital budget comes out. And then probably the next time it is a substantial item on a Finance Committee agenda is once the town capital budget comes out and we sort of compare the two. Is that what people are thinking? Not quite. In my mind, like I need to read it. I need to read it. And like my goal in reading it is what questions do I have? What do I think about it as it stands? If I have feedback, this is the moment to provide that feedback because the town is effectively doing this exercise to put together their budget. So just like you're not wrong that from an operating budget standpoint, things change, but things change because of conversations, not things change nebulously in the absence of our conversations, thus negating our need for those conversations. The existence of those conversations. caused the operating budget to change. And I think the same thing applies here. If you have an opinion, either... In favor, this all looks great. Or, hey, I'm not sure why this is necessary or actually this is too high. We could say the same thing. We could do the same exercise we did on the operating budget and you could, you know, to your point, study it and come out with the opinion of in a year where percentage points looks like 6.25 on the operating side, this is too high, right? Like you have a world of opinions you could come to the conclusion of, but whatever that conclusion is, I think it behooves us to discuss that. Here, now, before the Town presents the final budget. I guess that's my plan. My plan is to do that, to share my opinions and thoughts, and then hopefully when the Town presents it, it's less of a surprise and we're able to sort of provide more clear support or feedback. Is that what you're thinking, Karl? Well, I mean, I think we all have our own styles. I mean, I think, you know, for me, I have a lot of confidence in people who work on Sipsi and the amount of time and effort. So I come in with the precondition that's probably fine. It doesn't mean I won't sort of go through the line items and if anything stands out. But to me, the red flags, as I said, would be differences between the town and Sipsi. But I don't want to repeat all the work that Brian and Sipsi have done. I agree. I don't think that's necessary. The one thing I'd urge you to take a look at, because I think the expenditures speak for themselves. You can decide whether you think you ought to spend X on Y or not. But it's the sources of findings that I think are actually more interesting. And should that debt service come out of the capitalization, keep saying that capital stabilization fund or not, you might all think it's fine and I might get there myself. That's just an example. Excluded debt may be on the table. It may not, but if it's not, should it be? I think that's where we know. Turnbacks is another example. Do you feel like, right, like is another example of a funding source? It is. Well, it is a funding source. I'm not sure where I read this, but I don't think there's going to be probably somewhere in this report that there aren't expected to be huge turnbacks. That's what it says. Yeah. There's some process hiccups that we did initially get feedback. People didn't suggest that there's going to be the levels that you saw last year. And the reason we saw levels that you saw last year's finance director basically told the school superintendent, school committee, if you want your $600,000 school curriculum item, you've got to turn back $600,000. And they took it from three line items that were... District-wide TAPA for roofs, district-wide for something else. And the purpose of those district-wide appropriation, they will get spent and they don't pin it to any specific school. And so pulling it back in simply means you've got to go ask for it again. So we kind of say, well, we just didn't agree to that concept. But I think one of the things I mentioned, I think, again, at a prior meeting is two years ago on the warrant, if you look at it, there's a set of parameters in terms of trying to stick within for levy debt, use of free cash, et cetera. I think FinCom should at least discuss whether we want to have such parameters, which at least... Could be a benchmark to apply so that you're not just year-to-year deciding what levels. The other place to look which the documents are in the report and the appendices are the recently approved by the stock board, capital planning and debt policies. And there are a number of metrics in there as well in terms of What percentage of total revenue should the capital, annual capital spending be no more than, right? And what should excluded debt be used for, which is the difference in opinion currently on the language and on the policies. And one of the, we didn't have enough information to actually do the calculations this year. We did them last year based on some, you know. Actual and rough estimates. But the reason we ended up where we ended up last year is we applied parameters set forth in those policies, which tamped down how much we felt we had available in levy debt and free cash usage. And as a result, we pushed, that's pushing things out to the end of the fifth year and a bunch of that got pushed in the year's expense. But we were able to say we recommended something that was within the policy guidelines or pretty close to it. I did it back in the envelope on, and we stuck to the funding sources in the five-year plan, for example, fiscal 28. I did it back in the envelope based on the forecasting for the operating budget, et cetera, debt service. And we're over the policy metrics in the policies. But so was the plan. And the finance director, We got there largely because the stock board didn't accept your recommendation on the $2 million septic facility because that automatically added $2 million of levy debt, which immediately put us over. It also put us over what the FinCom thresholds have been. So that would be a productive discussion to talk about does the FinCom want its own review its prior thresholds and reevaluate them? Do they think it's important to have them? You could refer to them. Doesn't mean exceptions can't be made. Do we want to look at the capital policy metrics and say to the town manager, you know, we understand that SIPC didn't have the information. When you have the information, can you tell us, did we meet those parameters at all? I know what the answer is going to be. And if the answer is no, we don't meet them, and we didn't meet them, by the way, by your plan, well, what's the point of having You know, parameters, right? Like thresholds like that. So I need to step away for a minute, but I'll be back. Thank you. And excluded debt, we, in the fiber plan that we recommended, just because the numbers got fairly large in the back years, we recommended use of excluded debt for, you know, a number of items, which, again, ultimately, we'll see what happens. Brian, in the SIPC report. Those capital planning and debt policies are ascribed to the select board. In the 20, in the warrant for the 2025 annual meeting, that would have been the first one Iris and I were around for. Bill wasn't here at all for that year. Those, and I looked at them to see what they were when you referred to them in this report. Are those policies that had been previously adopted by, or guidelines, whatever you want to call them, by the FinCon in some iteration? Yeah. Back when Louise Miller was the town administrator, she slash the FinCon in the finance record thought in order to bring a little bit more structure to the annual review with the creation of five-year plan, which hadn't been done much. That it was helpful to lay out those kinds of parameters. Again, not that the town didn't exceed them, but the FinCon obviously had to recommend what the budgets were. And they're not too far off from probably where you end up applying some of the numerical metrics in what the select board put together. But they were a separate. And we use them. When we did fiscal 32, we used them just because we did not, you know, 32 wasn't in the five-year plan, which we were using a five-year plan fiscal 28 to 31 as sort of our governor on how much we could allocate in funding. And there's also, it's buried in a footnote, but we also were hopeful of getting input from the finance director before we got going. Didn't come until we were into our process. And when we finally got his input, in the back years, he had actually less capital requests funded than were in the last year's plan, which is contrary to everything he's always told us. You know, stick with it for prior years. So we asked him, if you do that intentionally because you were concerned about growing deficits and you never got a response. So we can certainly ask that question depending on what we see in the town manager's budget. My guess is he did a pretty quick cut because he hadn't had the benefit of all the discussions we have with department heads. And I'm not sure that's where his final resting place is going to be. But it could be where the Finance Committee ends up. You know, people talk about the impact. Now, the capital of Fiscal 28, it's really the levy debt that has the impact on the operating budget. That won't be solved until Fiscal 29. So it still matters because we're looking at planning for growing deficits. But you also look at the requests and they're, you know, it's the proverbial grade if we don't approve it. It goes one more year, it goes two more years, another thing fails, and now you're building a new building, or you're, you know, you can't salvage whatever it was. And that's, largely that's what's happened to the schools. They have repair money in their budgets every year, and they end up raiding the repair money to fund overages and special ed and other things. And as a result, the amount needed to do the ultimate capital work just gets bigger. Kind of a balancing act between policy and reality. But I think that should be something that's thought about, discussed in advance of the town managers and budget. You've done on this topic. I wanted to, for 30 seconds, just return to our very first topic on the fiscal 28. I think we are. 29 budget. Sure. I forgot to mention it. So tonight the select board is entertaining a memorandum they received from the board of public works who have been evaluating the transfer station's operation, including a curbside, town right curbside pickup. And the memorandum's punchline was they're asking the select board to consider allowing an article at this upcoming town meeting that would revert. Transfer station from an enterprise fund back into either the revolving fund, which is whence it came three or four years ago, or just into the general fund, because they concluded it can't sustain itself without a subsidy of some form in the general fund. So that's going on a separate path. If the site board don't object, and the board of course could still put in an article, assume they're hopeful of getting... Support. But that sounds like the direction they're pushing. I just want to point that out to this committee because I still question, given what we're looking at, deficits, whether we simply want to bury a deficit producer into the general fund budget rather than keeping it highlighted or just doing away with it. And I still struggle with The exact same operation existing in the Sudbury landfill with what we're doing. It's just one of those two shouldn't exist. And whoever's wanting to pay the fee should go to the other one, right? Rather than, you know, I look at Sudbury's most recent budget for theirs. They're running a slight deficit. So they're probably not. Terribly different shape as we are. But there's, you know, there's a large capital request in what we ultimately recommended for fiscal 28 for, you know, a piece of equipment, 300 grand or something. You know, they want to build a, rebuild their little building they have up there that's not in the plan because they didn't come forward again this year in Asperger. But that's another area where if the FinCon wants to weigh in on a strategic kind of issue, we can wait until the article shows up. 50 articles that put in town meeting and then just vote a position. Or we could discuss, you know, we can get that, I have a copy of the memo, but you can get a call from the packet, such word passion, the writers can then circulate it and just stay on top of that issue. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. I'll sign it to you as well. Yes. So, I mean, those are the, me as a FinCon member, those are the, that's why I look at agendas at other board meetings and look at packets and look at, watch snippets of meetings because we really need to stay ahead of that. Yes, that's fair. To educate ourselves, but also if there's an opportunity to say, hey, since there's a majority of this committee that really doesn't buy into the concept of bearing the deficit in the general fund budget, They don't use those words, but that's effectively what would happen. And so now you've got the town-wide paying for a service that a relatively small percentage of the town is using. It's personally very disappointing to me that so few residents use the landfill, website landfill, sorry, the transfer station, but it is what it is. Well, the problem, they say, is that in order to balance their budget, they have to raise the sticker fees, and when they've done that the last couple of years, they get the last people signing up, which is a vicious circle. And so... Well, I think that points in a single direction, but... I do, too. Burying it in the larger budget does not seem like the right answer to me. The impetus for it ending up as an enterprise fund, I think, when I look back at the article and the discussion, my recollection was that it got pulled out into an enterprise fund for that very reason. All you saw was the expense and the DPW and the revenues got put in a revolving fund, but it was never put into a P&L format so you could figure out, you know, was it a moneymaker or not? And again, I just cannot understand how we can have two money losing operations sitting next door to one another when you could make one of them probably positive, like you're shipping all the customers next door. We have to drive like- Share the loss. Yeah. No, it would become positive, I would think. Yeah, there might be more, there's more hauling fees and things. But anyway, I wanted to bring that up. I'll send that to you as well. Great, thank you. In the few minutes we have left, I'd like to bring your attention to the draft schedule for the annual pound meeting, which is, it's... There are fewer words than last year, but all the topics are there, with one exception. But most important, there is a new item on this list, which is on January 28th and 29th, Town Council is going to meet with petitioners and apparently rule on the spot whether a petitioner article is in fact an article or a resolution. Is this going to be slow, Cloud? And the reason that's important to us is the town code does not require us to weigh in at all on resolutions. And as you may recall from very late in the game, after an awful lot of difficulty that several of you had, My fault for signing interview, but nevertheless, you had the problems. They turned into resolutions in some case, although it's drawn entirely because they couldn't. So that problem should be fixed this year. That's definitely on this schedule. That's very exciting. And thanks, Karl, for... Being willing to push that out into the ether, and it's very exciting, I think, to see that turn into action, and I think that should hopefully save tremendous amount of effort on the part of this committee, so that's great. Hopefully last year is an aberration of that, but typically there aren't any dissolutions, but... So, like, I assume that part of this is they'll also be able to hopefully very quickly give feedback as to whether or not the intent is legal, like legally responsible. Like, that's a huge win. Like, there's a lot here where it is heartening to see a process come to fruition that I think will stir our efforts. Agreed. And the one thing that you will not see here on this draft is anything about excluded debt. And you may recall that the Salt Board's policies are that if there's going to be an excluded debt question, we are supposed to make a written report, which Phil did last year, and then a recommendation directed to the Salt Board. Still a bit of an open question whether there will be excluded debt on the ballot, but I've asked, there's a meeting on Wednesday. to talk about this. Mostly it's, you know, a member of the select board, me, Michael McCall and Brian and the staff in the town offices to talk about these and sort of pin them down. But, you know, basically the timing is very, very similar to last year. So not too much new in that respect, which is just fine. And just on your island with the information, I think I mentioned this before, the CIPSE was told by the finance director that if the $2 million borrowing for the MSBA feasibility study was done through levy debt, or excluded debt, for that matter, it's a five-year amortization period, so you'd have $400,000 in principal plus probably half that in interest, which would be hitting into the... Deficits we already have. And so the Finance Director was of the view that it shouldn't be done as excluded debt, but that doesn't mean the Select Board will accept that recommendation. It still requires the schools to put in a request, or at least what people know they're planning to put in a request. They haven't put that in yet. They have plenty of time to put it in, but I'm sure if their intention is to follow what the finance director recommended it be done, which is what SIFSI ultimately, why SIFSI ultimately reflected it and excluded that, just due to that short amortization period, then unless the finance director got some newer information that somehow Suggests that because it relates to possibly a building at some point, you could stretch it out over 20 years, but I think given it's a study, it's stuck at five years. That's just a huge impact on the deficit. It is. There's some question floating around about whether fiscal 28 is the right year to make this ask at all. They may not need the money until... Sometime in 29. And so my guess... Is that they may want to do it now because if you're going into asking for a $3 million override, you may not want to be doing that at the same time. Well, I wanted to be able to say the MSBA. They've been in the MSBA, I think, twice already. And they're left so far. I think they wanted to, I think they thought they wanted to be in a position to be able to say the town is behind us. We have this vote, which some communities will do, even though they don't need to draw on the money until they know they're into the MSBA process. They wanted to be able to check the box when they put their application in in the spring, which presumably they're still going to do. I think that's their issue. If they're talked into putting it off, which the last time they applied, they didn't have the votes, right? They didn't ask for the votes. But I also know... So you're armed with this, that if the town building working group gets through its work, there very likely could be a fiscal 28 debt exclusion question required for the building of some substance and having two competing debt exclusion questions versus having one that's solely focused on the schools or you're stuck bundling this building with the schools just to be, quote, fair. Could put their question at risk. Those are all strategic decisions that somebody has to make. And schools can make whatever request they want. They have to. That strategic analysis, hopefully they're involved with. But yeah, if they don't ask for it, then we won't be going to the dead next week. Well, even if they do. I mean, I think we could say no, right? Not going to put it on the ballot. Well, I think it is. We could recommend not putting it on the back. We could recommend. Good. We should recommend that, but we could. Yeah. Okay, well, we will see. I propose that we dispense with the discussion of topics for future meetings because, frankly, we've covered a lot of that during this discussion. That should be good. When we talk about the next meeting date, maybe I'll just quickly hit what I've got. Well, let's talk about that. So, 1026 next Monday. And what I've got is, I think, based on what we discussed today, I'm going to add an item for a revisit on SIPC based on any questions, comments, or feedback that the committee members might have. That assumes everyone's had an opportunity between now and then to read through the report and gather your questions and comments. I have some article drafts that I had sent out earlier today. I'll have more hopefully before the end of the week. I'll send those out. By all means, please read them. Please give me feedback, any kind of feedback. The idea here with these is that anything you see in red essentially is the part that's going to be variable from year to year. And the idea with this short list of almost 10 is that the town can make those updates and effectively send us. A done article that then we are quickly voting on because the substantiveness of it has not changed, just the amounts and potentially funding sources. But that also means that I think there's a real opportunity here to, as I sat today looking through some of them. Make sure there's minimal jargon. Make sure we're really explaining, you know, make sure it's really understandable, making sure we have the right amount of historically where we might have had a longer article because every year we might be adding, here's what we did last year and here's what we did the year before that. I took some of that out and just said, here's the start. Here's where we are currently done, right? And so, you know, by all means, feel free to be... Reflective and critical of those. So hopefully they're in a good state. But I think I'm going to add that for next week. And then when will we know if we're able to be with the school board? I think that was what we talked for next week. Well, we talked about it for next week. I will ask them tomorrow or tonight and we'll find out. Okay. All right. That's the school superintendent and the school finance director. That's right. Yeah. And maybe, I was going to say, maybe we should invite Karen as well, chair of the school committee. And the intention of that is really to have them share with us their thinking on the current breakdown of the budget, or how are you anticipating? I would describe it as just an open discussion on an upcoming budget. And talking about 29 or 30, what's their vision of that? Whether it is, you know, how aggressive they've been in looking for the cuts, you know, just anything, you know, any funding issue, you know, funding resource issue. Great. And subject to Karl, I'd probably put that on. And then I guess the other question is for next week, For fiscal year 28, the multi-year budget model and the fiscal year 29-31, one of those items to me feels a bit duplicative. I was going to pull fiscal year 29-31 until we get a chance to hear more from the select board and just have as a standing item a continuation review of fiscal year 28 if someone has something else to add. Does that seem reasonable for next week? Yeah, I would keep it short. I mean, next week is the schools. Okay, then I'll just do that. Then honestly, I'll just do that. If everyone's comfortable with that, then I'm happy to not include those on the meeting for next week. It does feel like we've had significant conversations, and I think at this point... The budget that we've seen for 28 is probably what we're going to have with minor variation until December. And then 29 to 31, I think I'll also hold on adding that to the agenda until we actually hopefully have an update. Okay. Does that work? I think it's fine, but I think this might have been Brian's suggestion, but we have within a very small margin of error. Or margin of change, if you will. We have the operating budget. You know, it's not set out the way we, it ultimately will be, but we've got all the information with, and so I think, you know, rather than, the discussion so far has been pushing, you know, to get to avoid and override. But if... This is, I think, the time to be looking at the line items if we want to have some influence on them. If we don't, if we feel like we can wait until December 31, that's fine. But, you know, you might want to start thinking about, you know, if this were the budget presented, what would we be asking them to change? So I'll add a fiscal year 28 line items review, right? For 11-2, because I'm concerned the conversation with schools might take a while. And then on 11-2, we're also meeting with the select board, is that right? 11-2 is the town manager and probably Brian. Well, again, that's the ask. So hopefully they can get back to us quickly. No, I'm sorry. That's not right. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11-9. 11 Whatever time you want to go to the budget. Yeah, I agree, actually. Okay, so 11-2 will go through fiscal year, 28 line items, make sure if we have any feedback to share that, and then 11-9 we can meet with. Are we really planning weekly meetings at this point? I mean, I thought we were last time talking about, you know, doing every other week. I think the question was whether we needed them. I would say if we start our next meeting and if the school folks cannot. Available. It looks like a pretty thin agenda that could be pushed to agree. Anytime the town manager and the schools can come, I think it's a good meeting. So if no schools on 11-26 will cancel? And mean on 11-26. Unless we're going to reverse the work. Yeah, if the schools can't come, I would ask the town manager. For 10-26. Right. Okay. So then, effectively, we'll keep 1026. 11-2, I think what I'm hearing all of us say is, without knowing what the select four months start, we're not going to meet on 11-2. We'll meet 11-9, and on 11-9, we'll plan to go through fiscal year 28 line items. Well, that would be the other, that's the town manager. And meet and talk to the town manager and finance director. Yeah, again, I think that's, just like the school, that's going to be the focus of the meeting. I mean, obviously, we can squeeze stuff in at the end. Hey, Karl, you're reaching out to both those sex people, right? Yes. I'll think about tonight, but we're going to do sequentially, right? Because otherwise... Yeah. We'll say we can't do that. Yeah. We need to flip it. You're asking all right while you're available on the right. Right. Exactly. All right. Sounds good. All right. Thank you all. Anything else for anybody? Rob? No. I should be adjourned. So moved. I guess this is my role in the committee. I think you just... You made the motion. Made the motion. Uh-oh. I've been preempted. Roll call vote. Iris. Yes. Brian. Yeah. Bill. Yes. Karl's a yes. Rob, how about you? Yes. All right. Meeting adjourned. Thank you all.