It should be good. Right. Caroline, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Uh, we have Rosie in the room. Bill is on his Bill Wilson’s on his way and Bill Olson is gonna be joining remotely as well, so, uh. Oh, there it is. Oh we got. Didn’t realize that was you, Bill. I’m gonna rename, I don’t know how to change that on my phone, but yeah, that’s me. OK. And well, as it is 7:01, Rosie, you’re gonna hold down the fort there in in real life. OK, I’ll do my best, Caroline. I believe in you. Um, all right. Are we ready to go, Joe? Yeah. Um If it arrives, I might have him take over just because it might be easier, but otherwise I’m happy to keep going remotely. Um, it is 7:01 p.m. and I officially called to order the uh Hamilton select board meeting of Monday, January 6th, um, because you have so many remote folks, I will start with a roll call vote, uh, Tom. Tom Meyer here. Bill William Molson here. Rosie, Rosie Kennedy here. And Caroline Boeu also here. Um, we will get started with our usual uh an uh board openings, uh, we have still many opportunities to join us here running the town of Hamilton, the Council on Aging has two associate openings, uh, the cultural council has one opening, the Hamilton Development Corporation has one opening, that’s a 3-year term, and then for the historic District commission, we have 2 openings for 3-year terms, 2 openings for 2-year terms, uh, one of which must be a resident Of the historic district, and one must be a resident realtor, uh, and lastly, we have one human rights commission at large opening. Caroline, can I just, uh, correct one thing? We, we made a mistake in that list, uh, the Hamilton Development Cor opening was filled about a month ago, so we need, we need to remove that from the list, but everything else is right. Sorry about that. No, just kidding. So strike that we do not have an HDC opening. Um, we are going to move next to uh. Board member and town manager reports, um, and then if folks uh have public comment, we will get to that afterwards, um, Tom, do you have any goodness gracious, do you have any, uh, updates for us. Uh, nothing for me tonight. Thanks. Um. Bill or William Olsen, do you have any I’ll pack tonight. OK, uh, and Rosie, anything from you? Actually, no, it was very quiet during the Christmas season, so I do not. OK doke. Uh, I just would like for the record to show that Bill Wilson has joined us in the room. Uh hello Bill and welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. Of course. Um, I, this is sort of part of Uh, update and maybe we can also bring it up in your business I did uh get a message from Scott Sundquist that they had sent over some updates to the uh Development agreement draft and had requested that we Make haste in reviewing those updates, uh, and working with John Whitten, so Rosie and Joe, you and I can connect later and of course if any other board members would like to, uh, take a look at that. Also happy to uh include others as well. So, shared it with me late this afternoon. I had had a chance to look at it yet, um, and he and I are planning to talk Wednesday morning, so I’ll get that to you and, uh, Rosie, uh, tomorrow, first thing tomorrow morning. Awesome. Uh, Bill, do you have any updates to share? Um, yeah, a couple of quick, uh, quick ones. The school committee did meet on January 2nd, uh, at which time they approved the um superintendents, uh, tentative budget, um, the budget totals around, uh, 46.8 million. I do know that Hamilton portion of that is 25.9, which is about a 4.96% increase. They continue to fine tune that, um, and I believe on February the 2nd. Uh, they would, they will adopt and approve their final budget. Uh, they also accepted a donations, uh, for the athletic fields, um, from the athletic field Improvement Committee, uh, to the tune of 790,000, so that’s uh quite a large amount. Add that to what they already had, that brings the total of donations for the project to 1.5 million of the, I think 15 million total project budget, so about 10%. Uh, also save the day kind of thing for the school district. On January 22nd. They will host a community forum meeting where they’ll educate the public on the elementary, uh, school project. So for those interested in uh more information on that, I would, uh, look to, to go to that meeting and get some updates. uh, CPC will meet this Thursday, um, they’ll review their reserve situation. They’ll go over, uh, a new application actually from the, uh, the Hamilton Wyndham Library, historic, uh, towards a historic preservation. uh, donation, I guess, or funding to digitize Hamilton one of local history records. So, uh, we’ll review that, get a presentation, uh, from Kim Butler, uh, Thursday at 7:30 p.m. also review the open grants, you know, the CPC has done a lot of good work, um, um, some of the open grants they’ll speak to, uh, on Thursday, our town hall renovation, uh, edition, the money they put towards that, uh, the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School District athletic facilities fields, uh, Asri Commings, affordable housing project. Uh, the fire department, Model T building, uh, that is will be in the center of our town, um, and some housing production plan update. So a full agenda for, for them on Thursday evening, so. That’s it. I was saying such nice things about you, Bill, but I was on mute. Um, if there are no, uh, well, Joe separate from the um finance report. Do you have anything? Now the time Manage report is out among the department heads being updated as we speak, um, uh, we’ll have it ready for, uh, email distribution on and posting to the town website on Friday as usual, um. That’s that’s all I got right now on that as Rosie said it was the holiday, so it wasn’t a lot. It wasn’t going on. All right, uh, well, with that, I see that we have uh the illustrious Wendy with us today, and I think Joe and Wendy are going to walk us through the uh updated 2026 budget, um. And have us go through that. So I’ll turn it over to y’all. So I’m gonna bring this up on screen while I do that I’m gonna let you know. Wendy’s gonna walk through the, the numbers on the screen here this was uh a request of this of the um. Incom chair uh back in December to just provide an update before we get to the actual budget, um. Uh Presentation meeting and uh the end of January, uh, so this will just kind of a snapshot of where we stand right now. I will say that this is um. You know, other than the COVID year this is the toughest budget year we’ve had in my tenure here in Hamilton, um. I wish that weren’t the case, but it is um. Uh Got a lot of challenges this year. And uh But we think we’re going to be able to make it work assuming um. The school department makes some changes that they have indicated to us that they’re planning to make the budget that um. Was I really want to apologize for using the word um so I’m having trouble gathering my thoughts tonight. The school committee adopted the. tentative budget last week as Bill Wilson suggested, but according to the finance director of the schools, they’ll be uh. An update to that at the. January 16th meeting and we’re expecting some movement there, which will help us assuming that actually happens. We think we’ll be able to present a balanced budget on the 22nd as we’re supposed to, so Wendy will walk through, uh, that’s right now, but we, where we’re at right now. Thank you. OK. Good evening. Um, so yes, quick snapshot. You can see the total town expenses are 15.9 million and the school expenses are 25.4, excuse me, you will notice that it will not match what was adopted by the school committee, because we have made some assumptions that we are understanding that will take place, as Joe just mentioned. So looking at, you know, what we’re gonna raise based on we’ve gone through all the hearings with the FICO and uh each department has done everything they can to cut in every area that they can, you can see the town itself is coming down 7.5% in the overall budget. Um, so the total budget is decreasing by 2.6%, but the big chunk. As Joe said, it’s, it’s a, it’s a tough year. So the uh school debt also does not match the school committee, um, Uh, certification because we did not have final numbers, but that’s a pass through, if you will. So whatever the debt service increases on the operating side also the debt exclusion will increase to capture that and um it’ll absorb those costs. So we shouldn’t have a problem on the debt side, and as long as the school comes in where we think they are, then we should be fine, but, but we’ve done some strategic. Kind of outside the box thinking here so that we do not use free cash for operating expense. And if you look at the policy, it says that we do have the opportunity to use free cash for trust and obligations and those trust obligations are OPEB and pension. So if, uh, Joe, did you go to the next page already? I don’t know just looking at the Wendy, I, I, I don’t wanna steal your thunder, but I do have a question, um. So I know that the school is a chunk, and we know that we’re going to see, you know, standard or significant increases from the school, but we keep saying it’s, it’s a, it’s a super tough year. Is there like a cliff notes in here of what those sort of themes are that are driving that difficulty. From the school side or from the town side no, from the town side. The town went down 7. Yeah, the town, the town’s budget, uh, decreased. I I just had it in front of me. I’m sorry. Uh, 7.5%. No, I saw that. I just wondered if we were having to make. Are, are we making these dramatic cuts. In order to account for the school budget coming in where it did. Yes, so you, you’ll notice there’s no capital improvement expenses so far. Um, Joe’s, uh, evaluating the capital committee’s request to see if we can add any capital improvements, and if we do, they’ll be supplemented with free cash because that’s the only way we can make this balanced. We got, we got the we got the Capitol committee report last Friday, um, haven’t had a chance to go through it with the department heads that initiated those requests. We want to go through those and understand where we’re exactly at. I do want to wait to, uh, see where the school final number comes in on the 16th. So that we fully. Uh You know, we have all the information in front of us in front of us before we decide where to go with uh free cash expenditures for capital. Yeah, because it looks like, I mean, you’ve assumed a pretty good. From what was approved on the 2nd that I just read to you, you’ve made it, you have a much different number. OK. Yes, we do. And to answer your question, uh Caroline, the personnel expenses, if you look at 393,990. That’s the biggest change in the budget, um. Not talking about capital at this time, but that’s the biggest change. Everything else pretty much went down. So, and this is on par with our goal of Um, like stable services and all of that. Yes, yes, it is not to, not to remove any er any uh public safety. Correct, Joe? Right. The only, the, uh The goals that were given to us by the select board of the FICO in the fall or to continue to provide the same level of service that residents expect without going into an override position, so we are there, we’ve made cuts to ensure that we stay there we. Any additional cuts would actually require a cut in services. Would require elimination of positions, so as long as the school department makes the cuts or makes the changes in their budgets that they’ve suggested to us that they were going to make will. Balance this year That’s will you be able to outline those when we get to it. Yeah, we’ll be able to do that and, and at the meeting on the 22nd. That’s, that’s the purpose of that meeting on the 22nd to go through the full budget and the reduction on this is primarily capital, right? It’s not necessarily operating expense, operating expenses to fund and operate the town, its capital expenditures, correct, Wendy, or? But we have, we have decreased a little bit in the operating, but yes, you are correct. Yeah, it looks like the debt debt expense went down a little bit, uh, but the big, the big overall there is an increase without the capital. Yes, we made some uh some decreases in line items in uh public works and public safety departments. They’re the largest departments to move well to, to, you know. Trim things here to just, they’ll be a little tighter but they’ll still be able to carry out their mission so. OK. was quite concerning, I think. Oh, you want me to continue? Yeah, you can go. I mean, yeah, please. OK, so then, um, looking at free cash, so this is how we’re balancing the budget with free cash, trying to stay true to the free cash policy, so 5% reserve. The certification was 4.5 million. That was on September 18th, 500,000 was in the special town meeting for the town hall project and holding a reserve of 5%, which is a little over 2 million, uh allows us $1.9 million to spend. On non-operating, uh, or one time. Payouts, if you will. So we’re following the same idea as FY 25 with the retirement payout of $37.8,000 and in this we’re going a little bit outside the box here with the fire department lease purchases. Typically we try to, we try to absorb those as part of the operating, but because they are actually capital purchases. We feel as though uh it falls in line with the policy to allow us to use free cash for that. It’s $111,712. OPE transfer of $125,000 and then we are supplementing a portion of the pension transfer,,, $550,000. There’s a general code software at one time, uh, town clerk, uh, necessity to, to update the bylaws because um there seems to be a little bit of uh lag in bylaw language, so $15,000 for that one-time purchase and then to replenish the capital stabilization, 200. $35,000 and anticipated prior year bills that I have in front of me right now are almost $9000. So the remaining um available free cash, we still do have would be $900,000. So that 5%? Over it. That’s above the $50,000 over the 5%, right, and that that would be the $900,000 would be the amount that we would have if we wanted to make capital expenditures in FY 26, so, um, I would say that of the items that Wendy just outlined, the only one that’s a big change from what we’ve done in the past is the pension transfer typically in the past we’ve tried our best to do that through Raisappropriate and have it come out of the tax rate, but if we do that then I said something. else has to go or we have to go to an override, so to be clear that dollar amount isn’t greater than prior years. It’s that where you’re drawing from this one because of the pressure on the operating budget, OK. Yeah, that is the biggest one. OK, so we maintain the, the 2 million. Yeah. And change for the 5% reserve and then we still have this 910. That we could put towards capital to make and still maintain our 5. Right. And you know, another thing to keep in mind there is that uh all of the things that we’re recommending to be uh paid with free cash are allowable under our free cash policies that we’re not going outside of our violating our own policies, so. So, how much that free cash is from? Last year versus accumulation of the previous year. I didn’t get that. Sorry, what, what was that? How much is that cash is from. This is last year’s budget is an accumulation of multiple year budgets for free cash. Every year free cash gets recertified, so it is, it is sort of a incubulation, if you will, yes. Some of it is we’re generating on, on, on average we generate around $2 million a year in free cash and so we carry 2 million um and uh we carry around 2 million as our 5% reserve and we generated another 2 million and. Yet generally we spend that last year we spent the bulk of that on capital projects, um, but that the current sorry not last year, the current year we spent the bulk of that on. Capital projects, so So we got trending knowing that. Would we ever or is there a benefit to carrying a 5% reserve? Is that high or is that that’s what we do carry. No, I know. I mean, what do we ever want to question that if we had pressure and needed more additional funds out of that 2 million we put in a pocket called a reserve. We, we, we do that. We have a stabilization fund that’s also another 5% so we have we have we have stabilization fund that we that we fund and we have the uh we actually have 3 because we have a capital stabilization fund as well that isn’t funded at that level. It’s a different formula, but You know, at that, at that point, you start to question whether you’re overtaxing that if you’re getting into having more than 10% in reserves then you, you know, the, the taxpayers would be very, very justified in questioning whether we’re overtaxing, so I’m going away with it. Are we holding too much? I think we’re holding what our, you know, what GFAO GFOA and and other um The bond rating, the standard is 3 to 5%. Yeah, I’m aware of that when we did the policy and we’re at the top end of the standard, but we also, you also just told me where we currently, we usually run 2 million under on annual budgets. So that’s because the budget is projected, so you’re projecting revenues and you’re projecting expenses. You get into the year you plan to have every single person in the town fully staffed all the time at the money that we we budgeted them for, but people leave and they the position sits empty. We get a deal on some some equipment that we thought we were going to spend more on or we. don’t have to buy as much rock salt, so we wind up accumulating savings and that savings and then if you have issues like excise tax come in higher than we projected, which typically do because we don’t want to overproject, we wanna, we want as closely as possible be accurate with our projection, but if anything we want to be under, so we’ll project. I’m just pulling the net number out of thin air, but say we project a million dollars in excise tax, but we take in 1.5 million because it was a good financial year and a lot of people in town bought new cars, so we actually collected more in excise tax. That half a million dollars just falls to free cash. That’s true, yeah, that’s true. Or if we get a lot of uh building permits in because it’s again and and past few years we’ve beat our projection on building permit fees because more people have been doing projects on their homes and we expected so that’s not an overtaxation that’s just the way the budgeting works. I’m just, you know, thinking about your leadoff statement, toughest year ever, and I think it compounds 27 will be tougher and I just want to make sure as we allocate funds and put them in buckets, we said the range is 3 to 5, we said at 5. Top end there are moving parts. You can go the other way too, right? And we might lose money and then we then we tagged the reserve at the time, but I’m just thinking, you know, if there’s places to pull, sources to use, much like you had to go for the pension transfer that one’s, that surprises me surprised me. I was just going to be my question. Is that usual that we do a pension transfer from the. Yeah. It’s it’s, it’s the one on this list that isn’t normal, but it is allowable lease purchases, does that usually go from We, we, we, we use, we, we do a mix of that with our vehicles and like I said just because this year we’ve done it in the past with well with police department having police department be taken out of free cash instead of assumed inside of the. operating budget, it’s just a way to try to make sure we’re making ends meet again without. I see what you’re doing. It’s creative. I mean, it’s not, I don’t see any issues with it. I just, I see this year, but it gets a little dicey when you so thank so thank thank you, Joe. Joe, in terms of spending free cash. We only do it once a year, or can you do it twice a year? You could do it, you can do it anytime you have a time meeting. Tom has to authorize the expenditure of free cash, um, and generally our our financial policies which we followed since I’ve been here, I think you followed it largely before I got here was that you spend free cash on one time, uh, non-operational expenses and so that’s generally what we try to do, um. I get that what I’m asking is if we find ourselves in a A positive position. Before, you know, in 6 months from now. Is there any benefit to sort of spending free cash at the 6 month mark to reduce this discussion next year, or do you really want to wait till, so it depends it depends on what we do with capital. So if we decide to use any of that 910,000 that we’re currently projecting is remaining on Capitol and we reduced that we’d only be able to spend that amount until the next year’s free cash certification is certified generally sometime between October and December, so we wouldn’t, um, you know, we wouldn’t be able to do it until we got a new free free cash certification. Right. Right Or you and even if you change the policy, it would freeze would that free stuff up? We, we could so in an, in a dire emergency like the sky is falling and we need to put a new roof on the public safety building or something we could go to, we could the town, the select board and town moderator could call a special town meeting we could go and we could violate our policies and use some of the 2.019 or dip into the stabilization fund. We just, we just need to have a plan. We just, we have to have it approved at town meeting and then you just, yeah. We did. a special meeting and I think 24 are kind of benefit was ARPA funds. We, we drew from that. We’re not gonna have that again. And so we had that as kind of our, our pocket of money to go at, that’s gone, right? So, you know, it could, yeah, OK. I’m just lining up. This is our first discussion and you guys are doing a great job and I see exactly what you’re doing here, um. I just, yeah, I echo your challenge and remark. Yeah. So if you start to Press against your policy. So we’re changing from 5 to 3. I’m not even suggesting it. I’m just throwing paint on the wall without change, potentially change our bond rating. Yes. It could come into play we benefit from having a AAA bond rating a better interest rate than a lot of other communities around us and uh. Yeah. A bond speaking in the audience. Yes. So, if he says anything, we need to hear, will you just repeat it? We can’t hear him. He, he suggests that we need to make sure that we protect our bond rating. Yeah, OK. And we do that with the 5%. I mean, I would push it back being said if we were pressed to see if that would do that, but if I, I don’t doubt it, it definitely adds security and a safety blanket that assures a bank or an institution, these guys can pay their bills, they have pockets, yeah, exactly, and certainly there are. There are times when you, it can be explained and the bond rating agencies won’t hold it against you, but. You, you have to be clear that this wasn’t a mistake in projecting it wasn’t a poor budgeting decision or or ignorance of what was coming, so. And Joe, these amounts here that will be um retrieved from free cash. These are one time yearly amount. You don’t anticipate that they’ll be another, OK. So I don’t know if Wendy’s done on that, but is there anything on revenue and any as surety on those numbers? When do you have you want I’m stay local, all that type of stuff, is that all? Assumptions are done or what we, we, we. We typically Look at the last 5 years and estimate what the, you know, not estimate, but we look at the last 5 years of revenue and see what the increase in revenue has been from year to year and try to hit that and as we project for the next year, but you always try to be conservative in that and temperate, particularly if you think you’re going into a uh a tough economic climate. Uh we’ve been in a position where the economy has been strong despite the fact the fact that inflation’s been high and people are filling it in their wallets. We’ve still had the last few years, as I said, people doing a lot of projects in their homes buying new cars, um, we’re starting to see that soften. Mm mm in the real time right now and so that makes you say, OK. You know, we’re not going to project uh the same amount that we got an excise tax last year we’re gonna, we’re gonna project maybe only what we projected. Because just because we beat it last year doesn’t mean we won next year, right. Right. Yeah. So we are holding the same um local receipts. We did evaluate it, and there are some differences in some, some areas, like, for example, the intermunicipal agreements, so we’re not going to collect as much because we don’t have the same agreements coming up, but we decided to hold the same amount, um. And the investment income is actually helping us carry that amount, just so you know. What about local, you know, state local aid, is that an actual number or is that an assumption? No, that’s an actual estimate from the state. Yeah, it’s estimate, but one budget, the governor releases usually right before the MMA convention at the end of the month that’ll be February 23rd or 24th this year. I’m sorry, January 23rd, 24th this year, later this month, um, and we won’t have. A first take at what local aid will be until then. The good news is that that first take at the budget unless the economy crashes is usually pretty close to what the legislature passes, at least as far as local aid, lots of other things changed in the budget process, but local aids usually pretty close to what the governor projects, so. Uh, the schools probably have that same estimate, same time frame, right? OK. They’ll get the same look at chapter 78 the same way. OK, um, so this is probably showing my nascent in this complicated financial, these complicated financial issues, but debt exclusions seems to be much lower. Why, why is that Wendy? So when I reached out to uh Hilltop Securities to get the numbers for um the school department because they were not ready yet. Um, they did not want to give me the principal amounts on the um the band for the fields because they were not certain if the school department was actually going to pay back the principal. So if we were to, if we were to include that in debt exclusion and include it in the operating if we actually did not, were not able to exclude the debt, the operating would fall to free cash, but then would be over overcapacity in a 2.5, 2.5 prop. So that’s why I left it conservative at what I do know, but now since we have the um the January 2nd certification, uh, it feels like we are more certain that they will pay back the principal and that number will go up, but also the operating will, so it will not change um the overall. So So this is where the athletic fields, dead exclusionists reflected for the town of Hamilton. Yes. OK. Right. So what you’re seeing there is principle and interest for all of the other bands and bonds and only interest for the athletic fields right now. So I will add um the principal, and then I’ll put it in the operating as well. Do you have any idea, roughly what that will be? Yes, I just got the uh information. I believe uh the principal is another 900,000. Give or take. Yes OK, so it’s gonna be pretty comparable to what the FY 25 budget. It should be, right, yes. Wow, OK. Um Do you have any, uh, does anybody have any other questions about the preview that we just went through? We’ll say that there is another 5 boards meeting scheduled for John, help me January 15th question Sorry sorry one more question in terms of negotiating any uh with unions. How many unions you negotiate with next year. We, we, we negotiated all 5 contracts, um, at, at the end of last year, so we’re in year 1 of 3 year contracts for all five unions. We have we have known, um. Known employee expense for the next 2 years. OK, that’s great. Um, the, the next 5 boards meeting is gonna be Wednesday, January 15th uh at the schools, um, and. By then, the next night, the, the school committee will get an updated version of their proposal according to the uh superintendent and uh. A few days later I’ll be presented to you the full version of this budget here. I was gonna wait till new new business to bring this up but maybe if it’s all right with the board, I’d suggest now that we could have a quick conversation. The January 22nd joint meeting day with uh the FICO. we have two conflicts. One, obviously the uh. school department is going to have their elementary school thing that night, but also the planning board as has their regular schedule me and they’ll be in this room, so because that meetings on a Tuesday night and on a Monday night, um. We are trying to see if it’s possible to do the meeting at the community house for our meeting at the community house or we could go all Zoom. I’d like to know the board’s preference, uh, but I’m not sure that the community house is available yet. We’ve inquired and have not heard back yet, um and this is just with the Fin the joint meeting with you and the FICO. To do the budget presentation. before the 22nd. Yeah, yeah. So is your joint meeting. budget. No I think we should have a house as an option. I think that’s a great But that’s a holiday that’s the Monday, Monday is a holiday. Uh, Monday the 21st is a holiday, so we can’t have a meeting that night, so the select board had voted to move that meeting date one day to the 22nd, but then that put us in conflict with the planning board because that’s their regular meeting day. One is the. Monday is the 20th, Tuesday the 21st. All right, I, I may be misspeaking the dates, but the Tuesday is the day that you’re meeting that’s the same day that the planning board meets, so they have that room for this for that night. If I misspoke the date, I apologize, um, but we’re, we’ve inquired with. My purpose would be to keep the date and try to find a room. I feel like once we start moving dates around again, people. Have difficulty. Well, the other option is to do the meeting entirely on Zoom. Yeah, OK, yeah, I mean, I guess that’s if we can’t do the community house, that’s fine with me. All right. Other folks feel I don’t, I’m not trying to unilaterally make a decision, but I think we should, I think community house is a great idea. We’ve always talked about that that being a resource for us, so let’s see if we can use it otherwise I agree we should keep the date and put it on Zoom, but let’s start with community house. We’ll try to get the community house, just bear in mind that meeting won’t be able to be hybrid. It will be able to be broadcast, but it won’t be uh in interactive because we won’t have the equipment that we have here so um. I’ll just Yeah, I mean, I think the challenge there is that I find the conversations to be more active and fruitful when we’re all together, but I accepted. The sacrifice is maybe like less of the community can be there, but I think we just have to decide at this stage of things which of those is more important. I don’t know that I have the answer, but. Yeah All right, we’ll, we’ll aim for the 21st. At the community house unless for some reason that room is unavailable that Tuesday night and the backup would be to do it all in Zoom. Thanks. Thank you. Um, are, are we, are we done here? Is this, is this, is this in very pretty? I think we are. It’s up to you. Yes, that’s all we have today. Not that it wasn’t the trailer of my dreams, Wendy. I don’t want you to like it wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve done um. OK, uh, well, with that, um, we there’s a, there’s a question from the audience. OK. Sure. Um, Debs are, uh, just a quick question. So I’m just curious, how do we do a 7.5% decline and maintain services. Is that because actual, because I don’t see actuals it’s just budget to budget as opposed to sort of actual budget to actual and then actual to budget where you can see, so is it that we’re under in the year over year it’ll always be budget to budget because we’re still in the middle of the current fiscal year and we can’t, we don’t have actual, we don’t, we don’t have full axuals for the whole whole year. I can’t compare that right now. I have to, I’m in a position where I have to project based on our current budget, um, but. I think Wendy Wendy outlined a lot of, a lot of the reduction in actual spend was in capital. We’re not, we’re not right now currently not projecting to make any expenditure and capital if we do, it’ll be out of free cash. So is that 7.5% then reflected in the 2 million, that’s in the free cash that’s over. The 2 million free cash. 2 million we carry in free cash year to year that’s extra and then there’s another, then there’s usually somewhere between 2.5 and $2.5 million extra that we can play with. I hate to use that word, but that’s available for us to take care of other uh requirements and We’re using, we’re projecting, we’re proposing, we’re going to be proposing to use some of that for things like the OAB, the stabilization funds and Uh What’s left will be. What we decide if we want to put forward some some capital, but right now we’re showing a reduction there largely based on not doing any capital. Wendy, what else am I missing? Some cuts in departments line items the capital is still steady reduction. It’s all capital. I mean, operating expenses provide services, you know, the, the biggest change we made was that we moved $550,000 that would normally come out of tax raising appropriate amount of taxes out of taxation and a So I guess that’s sort of where my question is, is, um, the schools are kind of doing the same thing where they’re taking their excess and deficiency. and they’re applying it to operating expenses. Basically, they’re, they’re taking that thing to mask what the true cost is so that there isn’t an override because they’re being told by the towns to not have an override because we don’t have a stomach for it because of the school vote. So I think that there’s an interesting kind of interplay that’s going on where towns are kind of turning themselves inside out to make sure that the school vote will look appealing, and I, you know, and, and I questioned sort of that, and I know that it’s this group that kind of sets what the agenda is for what the should do, and I know that Mr. Tracy said that he’s, you know, trying to do that because the schools, the town is asking the school to not do an override because it will put in jeopardy theoretically the vote for the school. So I just wonder about sort of the fiscal responsibility overall of the town and the school, I would say the same thing to the school for Taking things that are operating expenses that are and masking it with overages that we happen to have, I think it’s really risky, and I think the, the risk of having major overrides in the next year, especially in the school where we know that there’s built in teacher raises. And other union races that are built in that are known. And they’re masking it with this free cash, this kind of slush fund for a one time hit. And I think we’re kind of doing that as well because I think it was stated that we wouldn’t have done that 550,000 out of free cash, but we have to not have an override. So I just think that there should be transparency about really what the costs are for running the town and what the school is doing. I think it’s got to be transparent. We cannot I, I just wouldn’t, I don’t think our town should be Playing games with money. And masking the real cost of things. To effectuate a vote. To something, and I know you’re not responsible for the school thing, but I know that they’re responding to doing that or they’re blaming you for doing that by saying, well, the towns are telling us that we can’t do an override, so we’re going to have to do this. And so it’s like there are people are pointing fingers at each other, all because of the school vote and we comment because I got, I got lots of good things to say here. Yeah, once I, I, I, I do want to separate the two things though, because The, the paving the way for the school vote is is conjecture. That’s, that is your opinion on this. Overrides are a big issue. It’s a thing that comes up every year that the towns don’t want. I mean, we had, we’ve had the, we’ve had lots of uh campaigns in the past about not an override. And when we talk about transparency, you know, when we had the 1st 5 board meeting in December, we showed the full scope of the budget and what it would cost. And one of the big things that came out of that was. Whatever we do, and this was not to pave the way for the school vote. It was, we cannot have an override. That I mean that, that was sort of thing and so it was how do we start cutting and getting this? But there was, there was lots of transparency there. There was a very, I mean, we said to everybody, there’s a $5 million gap here that we have to figure out and we’d figure out how to pay for these things without adding additional tax burden to the town. So I, I appreciate and understand much of your commentary, and I think that you’re right that we do need to be transparent, but I don’t appreciate saying that it’s because we have an alternative agenda in order to make this full vote look good because candidly, I mean, Deb, you were at the meeting at the, the Buer school, and you saw that all of these numbers were out there and these budgets, the inflation of these budgets were there. We talked about the increase in in salaries and the increases in uh insurance costs and how all this is happening, so there’s been a lot of transparency and, and the ways in which we have cut our and move money around has been very transparent. I do agree with you on that, and I think that it It has been a very apparent discussion. I’m just saying that for people that are seeing this budget now going forward. We need to have transparency about the consequence for next year. That we’re doing things now and it was, it was said in all these meetings we can’t do an override and have a school debt. Vote at the same time that was stated that we can’t afford a town override when we have the school, um, building going on at the same time that was heard, I heard that multiple times. And so I think that’s why I’m saying that there’s that, it seems like there’s then that motive to make sure that we do everything that we can to not have an override because we know we have the school votes, so I’m just responding to that because I do appreciate it has been transparent. That’s why I can say what I’m saying, because I am seeing it. I’m just worried about the consequence into 27. Uh, when we have known expenses, and you know, Dana did that little chart thing, you know, in that meeting about, you know, the money is, this is, this is where we have to be and then next year we’re going to be here. So if we, if we bury this, you know, by doing the excess and deficiency, then the next year we’re gonna have this huge amount. And I think that’s the concept that, um, I just hope gets visibility so that there’s an understanding that while we’re being, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re begging and borrowing to not have an override this year, the consequences might be a bigger one next year. That’s all. I just real quick make just a quick statement. I, I appreciate everything you said that I understand the concern. I have the same concern, right? I’m, I’m the one proposing this. I have the same concerns. The problem is it’s not just my job has nothing to do with making the school vote look good. I’m not, I, I have no interest in that one way or the other. I’m on the school building committee because I have to be. I’ve given my advice to them. I’ve. I But My, my goal would always be to balance the town’s needs. Again its its resources as best we can and currently we’ve been asked to, I was asked back in the fall again separate from the school vote was asked by the select board in the FICO to try to put together a budget that. Maintains our current level of services, no cuts if we can do it without an override. I wouldn’t normally propose $550,000 in free cash to do retirement, but that is a way that I can meet that request and and and and. Yeah, you’re right. I’ve, I’ve said it. I’ve already said it to the board. FY 27 might be even tougher and it might require us to either make cuts or do an override, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t propose to do either of those things until we had absolutely. Done something like this and made sure that we had done everything else to avoid those, either of those outcomes because I think that’s the responsible way to go forward. If we know that we’re generating X amount of dollars because with sound budgeting policies and we get lucky and we manage our budgets, so we, we don’t spend as much as we project and we take in a little bit more than we planned. The minute we have a bad year and we don’t take in more. Those things disappear so as long as I’m keeping the 5% and the free cash and the 5% stabilization. I feel like everything else is fair game. Because that’s the best way for me to make the best use of your tax dollars. That fair. That’s right that’s, I think that’s I think that, yeah, sure. I also think I just want to comment on the fact that although all these are great concerns, characterizations are got to be careful of characterization, but we talk about overrides for the last 6 years, we talked about avoiding an override. And if we went through our first past budget over last every year we would have had an override. So we start with a budget and we work our way down to it, so it has nothing to do with any school votes. We, we discuss overrides every single year we have the last 6 years I’ve been on the board, so I wanna make sure you understand like it’s something we talked about in Target every YouTube avoid the override and be creative with our budgets. Can I have it, so there’s nothing to do with. With a school boat, so it’s a, it’s just part of the budget process. So it Yeah, another speaker Lisa Terra Nova, Hamilton. Um, I think I can shed some light on what Caroline and Deb were both saying. So with the quintuple board meeting. And the meeting, the school committee subsequent to the quintuple board meeting, Assistant Superintendent Vinny Leoni got up. And he showed the budget, he does an incredible job. And he showed that with the union contracts signed, I think 1.1 million is coming in from the FY 25 budget, but 1.4 million, 1.3 million will be needed in the FY 26 budget. I’m 27 budget, which is actually calendar year 2026, which would be July 1st of this coming year. He stated that That would be 70% of the increase in the school budget. He said historically, when you have a debt override. I’m sorry, a debt exclusion and an override in the same budget historically both fail. Because you’re going to need 8 votes, you’re going to need Hamilton to pass the debt override, the debt exclusion, the override, um, and then at the ballot box and when I’m going to do the same thing. So the um probability of all of those things passing is very slim. So after those two meetings, we didn’t hear anymore. About having a debt exclusion and an override in the same year. There was a FIA meeting in Hamilton held shortly after that, and Wendy, who also does a phenomenal job getting all these numbers together, was talking with the head of the FICO, the chair of the FICO. And she laid out what Vinnie had said. And the chair of the Final was also adding in some other numbers. And Wendy Very honestly, because she does an excellent job, said, yes, but you have to tell the public if we don’t have the override for the cola this year that it’s coming next year. Those contracts are signed. That 1.4 million has to come from somewhere. And the response from the chair of the FICO was, well, how can you be sure of that? Now, Vinnie Leon also said that if the override for the union contracts fails. We are looking at eliminating 20 teacher positions. 20 teacher positions, which uh if my math is correct, is about the equivalent of equivalent of all the teachers at Bucher. I think what Deb is getting at is that there’s got to be more transparency every, every town board that the select board, the FICO, the school board is doing an excellent job. At getting their budgets down, but nobody’s connecting the dots for the taxpayer, and nobody’s saying, look, we can drop it this 1% this year, but we’re, we’re going to have hell to pay. In fiscal year 2027. Where is the money coming from? How are we expecting to pay for all of this. You’re going to have people thinking, OK, we’ll do the debt exclusion. I mean, debt exclusion that that doesn’t even explain what it is. It sounds like you’re excluding debt somehow. You’re not, um, in the same meeting, the chair of the FICO said that the new school would add 10%. To everyone’s tax rate. 10% to our tax bills, and that’s not a one-off. That’s not a one and done. That gets baked into our tax rate. 20 years and then for the term of the debt. Exactly, exactly, right, whatever that would be. But it, I mean, I’m, I’m not young. I’m not gonna see the end of that debt. Maybe you will, but I’m not counting on that, OK? Um, then when you get to an override, which again, we either have the override for the schools, or we lose those 20 teachers and it’s going to be great to have this brand new school minus the 20 teachers. How do you do that? So nobody’s going to want to say no to that. So you’re taking again from the In all honesty, if we’re going to speak plainly, the school budget is gutting these two towns. How, where do we go from here? We’re going off a fiscal we’re not, we’re not on a precipice anymore. We’re, we have, we have fallen off the cliff. I don’t see how you reconcile these things. We’re we keep asking the same people for more and more and more, and if the people had all of the information in front of them, I think they would make different decisions, and I think that’s what was striving at, because people are very, very busy. We get into town meeting and we look at the, the booklet that comes and we see, OK, Fincom says favorable vote on this and select board says favorable vote on that, and that’s usually how people vote. And yeah, you can say, OK, we’re going to strip 7.53% from our operational budget this year, but you can’t. I mean We can’t think that next year we’re going to be able to do the same. People don’t even understand the concept of free cash. I mean, listen to that, free cash. It’s neither. It’s neither. It’s coming out of our pockets. We all have huge bills to pay. Um Yeah I It’s very, very frustrating and I think we have got to be responsible. I, I know it’s not your purview, but one board, some board, all the boards, we have to be responsible. We have to connect the dots for the taxpayers. So when they get out of town meeting this year, they know what’s going to happen to their tax bill. They know that when you get out on April 5th, 2025. By September of 2025, you, you may be facing That override to pay the teacher cola, and if it’s not going to be in September of 2025, it’s going to be in April of 26th. It’s coming, it’s there. We can’t not pay them. Or, or, or you’ve got the system. The only other thing I’m going to add And, and this just goes because it’s, you know, we’re just getting off the the Christmas season. Eric Tracy sent his, his usual email and Before the end of the year and in the email, it talked about a chord and what a great resource a cord is for our community. Thank God we have it. He mentioned that one accords numbers are 1 out of every 10 families in Hamilton. is facing feud in food insecurity, and one in every 12 in Wenham is facing food insecurity. So if there were 3 more people in this room, Or if we include the people on Zoom, that means one of us. Is availing ourselves of of a court. Thank God we have that. But how can we as a community expect people What it means is that there are children going to bed hungry in Hamilton, and children going to bed hungry and wet them. How can we expect their parents? To take on this added burden of the taxes because even if you rent here, you’re gonna, you’re going to be paying that. Right? So are we expecting them to say, OK, do I heat my houses this week, or do I feed my child dinner this week. I mean, this is crazy. How did we get to this point? I, I understand we don’t want to have this, this, this override this year, but really, we have to ask ourselves, what is really Pushing the reluctance for the override. We’ve had overrides before, and if this is such a horrible year. You I’m, I’m not speaking very well at this point, but if, if it’s such a horrible this year this year, we know next year is going to be much worse. We need to put the brakes on for a minute. We need to have the school committee look at what it is they’re asking us to do. And again, you know, everyone, I, I just want to say my hat is off to everyone on these boards. I, I’ve listened to the Wenham Fincom. They’re incredible people. Same with with Hamilton, the select boards, the school board, we have incredible brainpower in these two towns. I just think we can put it to better use. I I mean, I’ve I don’t want to just And I mean, I, I think candidly like everybody on the board. has shared these feelings, has had these feelings, has, has wondered about it, I think. You know, We, we are in constant communication, as you know, you’ve been to the meetings with this, the school committee, and I think one of the things that many of us are challenged by, and this is sort of a philosophical thing is that You know, the capital investment into a new school. Many feel is a way to set us up for more long term financial viability, right? And do you take that cost to, you know, stop the, the little bleeding of other things. There’s disagreement about that. I’m not even saying One Direction is, is better than the other, but I, I agree with you that, you know, at some point to understand like all the things that need to be fixed and all the things that need to be serviced and all the things that we need in this town, you know, do we keep doing them little by little and incrementally, and we, we, we’re the frog in the pan, or do we, you know, Jump in the hot oil. I don’t know the right choice, um, and I, I think we are doing our best. You know, I’m, I’m hearing what you’re saying, but I’m also buoyed by the fact that like y’all have this information because you’ve been at public meetings. And so I think it is being talked about. I think the question of like, how do we better connect those dots? I don’t know the answer to that either, because, you know, as you see, like, we’re all talking until we’re blue in the face, you know, about this, and we’re, and we’re showing it, but, you know, school, school driven. overrides are particularly difficult because They, they don’t show up at school as tax of rights for the school. They show up for overall budget overrides for the town and so it’s a very interesting relationship that the school can be driving the override, but it’s the town that has to ask for it because we vote for the school budget within the overall budget. Um, and so, you know, there’s been a lot of conversations over the years of could we pull the school budget out, um, and, and there’s not really a great way to do it because as you said, like it has to be voted on by multiple towns and if you pull it out, somebody makes a motion to push it back in, um, and so the, the account ability that we have with the school is only as good as the relationship that we have at the school, which fortunately right now we have a really good one, and things have been very good, but it is a, I just want to acknowledge that it’s a struggle for us because the school doesn’t have to ask for an override. The town does. And so what happens is that the bigger the The differential on the school side, the more that the town has to acquiesce to get that money out. Um, and that’s where you see sort of the creative accounting that that Wendy and and folks have done. Um. But it’s, it’s not perfect. And I, I mean, I appreciate the dialogue. And open to ideas if folks have them for how we continue that conversation. Well, I think my, my comment would be that it is time to address these issues head on and how much more can we squeeze taxpayers, and I’ll tell you just a little story. I have a friend who’s looking for, um, a house locally and there was this gorgeous house in West Newbury, um, 3 acres, you know, 5000 square foot house, we looked at the taxes, it is my taxes on my. 15, 1400 square foot house where a mere $2000 less in Hamilton than this luxurious, amazing house in West Newbury, and I agree that we need to start thinking about what we need versus what we want. In what we can afford, and that’s the reality and it goes not only for, for us, I’m quite frankly, Not happy about the fact that we thus far don’t have any items in our capital budget because that’s important. We need to maintain our town. We need to renovate and we need to do things to preserve our town and so I do worry that Maybe we. Sell ourselves short for the sake of the school district, so I’m just going to say it and that that concerns me because I think the school district perhaps sometimes forgets just what a financial burden. These asks are on taxpayers and of course any parent who loves their child is going to want things for their children, but I say children don’t really care about a big fancy. school, children care about having their, their, their local friends around them. They care about having a teacher who’s providing what they need and they need a functional building and we just keep believing that more and more is going to solve our problems. And I for one think it’s not. And I think we need to start looking at realistically what taxpayers can afford. When I think about vis a vis, a beautiful, amazing house and West Newbury, taxes and the taxes that I pay on my little tiny adorable but nonetheless like you could fit 5 of my houses in this house in West Newbury, and you have to scratch your head, anyhow, that’s my comment. Not that I want to belabor the conversation, but I do think part of our challenge is that All the folks that are involved in these conversations. Select board has the job of trying to make sure that the town. The government has what it needs to do its job. You’re hearing from your constituents about the types of services that you want uh you. Several of you come to me every year ask me to make investments in some places, um, no, it’s tight. That’s school committee is doing the same thing they’re hearing from different constituency. And everybody has the right to have their opinion about what they think is a priority, and we all have to come together, but what comes, what comes out of this is that through this kind of Brokered system we get to a point where we propose a budget and we’re trying to meet your request. And be balanced and not be override and still provide the same services. If we have to go to an override, the concern for me as a town manager is that typically when you go to an overrides. Quite frankly, schools get what they want and the town side doesn’t always get what it wants. So I’m gonna do everything I can for as long as I can to avoid having to go to an override because then I know that we’re making decisions, the department heads, the select board, the FICO, myself are working together to make decisions that we think that have the best chance to provide you with the level of services you you’ve come to expect that you want. We have to make compromises in that um but the minute we get to a point where we propose an override. I have to have two budgets. I have to have the override budget assuming everything passes, and then I have have have to have another one that cuts out the money that’s in that overall budget because if it doesn’t pass the next day I have to have that other budget approved and that’s cuts. So I’m always trying to avoid the override. That’s always my perspective, uh, and yeah, it’s it’s a hard. It’s a hard thing to do and it’s compromises are made. Some years are easier. Last year we actually, we were kind of surprised. We rolled up our sleeves and things went pretty, pretty well, um, this year, this year’s not that same story. Uh, we’ll, we’ll keep doing it and I, we’re trying our best to be as transparent as possible. I think it’s, I think it shows that we’re being transparent because folks like you come here your knowledgeable about the situation we’re in. I understand and hear where you’re coming from. But We just have to be cognizant of the fact that there’s another group of constituents out there that have a different set of priorities and different set of goals, and we have to always try to. Trying to balance that, Joe. The amazing thing to me is that there’s no We as the town, there’s no oversight for the district. I mean twice we voted money for the to repair the roof of the high school twice those monies were used for something else. So now the superintendent is talking about the MSBA has tapped us on the shoulder and we can do another debt exclusion to get that roof. Well, we could have gotten the roof before we voted money for it, but right, we don’t even know where it went. and, and I’m not, you, you don’t have to answer this. It’s not a question for you. It’s not. It’s just pointing out make sure job more difficult even because this happens and we have no, there’s no recourse, there’s nothing we can do. The boilers failed over over Christmas break at the high school and they knew this was coming because they’re on their last legs, but, you know, we, their eyes seem to be somewhere else rather than. What’s in front of us, unfortunately because we have a regional school district, our ability to Survival oversight is limited, much more limited under state law than it would be if the district was within the town, but the town’s made the decision starting in 1959 and then it it enhancing and improving it in 1972 and every year since then so it is, it is kind of what it is, even, even in, even in a situation with the municipality and the school district is under the municipal management they they still had get a bottom line budget at the end of the day, but there’s even less. Um You know, connection in a in a regional school district and it’s just the situation we’re in. Um, We actually do have a discussion about the regional agreement coming up, uh, prior to the next 5 cheers meeting next week, so we’ll talk about all those things too. But just, just the reality of the situation is just because we are in a regional school district I mean. The way that things are um developing now occurring now it’s not necessarily what the intent was in 1959 when it was formed. There is absolutely no fiscal accountability to the taxpayers. There’s a handout every year. Oh, we, we need this and, and we need that. Well, Maybe, maybe. We need to think about what the entire towns need and not and not just. A portion of that, it’s, it’s very frustrating. I, I’m, I’m not a finance person. I, I don’t understand a lot of these, these, this nomenclature, but I understand my tax bill and, and I understand the fact that we don’t have any money for capital expenses. Because we’re trying to accommodate for a very big need, um, a very big ask. I’m not going to say a need a very big ask. And I, I, for one, I’m not speaking for the board, but If you don’t start to expect The largest, um, beneficiary of our tax money if you don’t begin to expect some true accountability and transparency and fiscal responsibility. When do you ever do it? If you don’t start now and say we can’t always take the hit to accommodate what the schools would like, and I know that the town does that and Joe, you do a wonderful job of Um Cutting our budget and trimming and cutting corners, um, and I have a problem with the way the town has cut its corners this year. I, I have, I have a very big problem with that, um, specifically, um, No capital budget items that makes me that we’re not there yet. The budget isn’t set yet. I still have 2 weeks. I think we’re forgetting we’re building it, we’re redoing a beautiful town hall. We’re spending a lot of money that would be deemed capital in most budgets. I know, but I’m saying you’re, you’re making it sound like we’re not doing anything. We’re, we’re spending a lot. Yeah, I mean, right, I mean, I talk about the projects we’ve done in that community in the last year or it’s amazing how much work we’ve done, so I, I don’t wanna let the public think we’re not doing anything, so that’s all that’s why I said that too. I’d love to see the Capitol even proposed to your point, I don’t want to go without either because we are, you were trying to You know, balanced budget. I see you’re delivering the same services, right, with all that. You’re, we’re reducing the capital on other projects. Let’s see what they are and let’s have a discussion about them and prioritize them and bring them in if we need to. But we are in a perfect storm right now I think with what the schools are doing, and I’m not saying pro and con, but between, you mentioned the high school roof and that’s coming at us. The field that we just approved for $15 million I mean, before the elementary school building, the teacher’s contract on top of that. Now, all of those things come together, you know, I don’t disagree that this year, everyone’s going to build a budget with free cash, E&D and these type of funds and, and it’ll be OK for the year, but I don’t know what is going to be done next year to fill that gap. If everything comes in, uh, to run with the 295 employees at the schools, the programs, that to me, um, is like, and that’s the Connect the dot comment I like in that. How do we make sure people understand, yes, this is today and this is what we’re good for, but here is What we’ll deal with. We’re not saying it’s a reality yet and people get creative and do things. Maybe there’s some things we don’t know on the school expense side budgets with the consolidations, I don’t know. I do know that if you roll everything over one year and add the coals and everything else. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a, and, and the schools are, it, it, it’s gonna be ugly for 27. People need to understand that. You’re right time because we’re dealing with it in the time period. Right. So it begs the question. Yeah, I heard. Why the reluctance. The override. So everything’s gonna, go ahead. First, I wanna go with this young man says, um, yeah, thanks, thanks. Good, good conversation, a lot of energy, and I don’t disagree with the points you folks are making. I’d just like to make a couple of points. For the last 2 years at town meeting, we have actually brought the schools. And the town’s capital together and painted a picture, uh, Deb, I’m sure you’ve been out and looked at the documents they’re on the FICO website. And, and basically. Where all the pressure. Generally comes from is capital spending, the big ticket items, that’s really where you’re going to get the pressure. So for the last couple of years we have shown the appetite on both the school department and the town and explain to the taxpayers. Here’s what this capital item would likely do to your. Tax bill. What I’d like to do this year. Is to add a second page and brings shine a brighter light on the point you’re making. We do feel that um The probability of an operating budget override coming from the schools will happen next year. It’s, it might come from the town. It could It could also come from the town. So, what I, as Fincon, what what I’d like to do is we’ll reproduce our capital, which gives the full view of the town and the schools and the bill, right, so people have seen that for 2 years in a row. And it’s not just the school, it’s everything. Water is my biggest concern. What are we going to need to spend for water but we’ll add a second, we’ll add a second page and shine a light on the point you’re making, because we’ve talked about it. Um, do we know exactly what it’s going to be? No, but And I’ll say over the last 2 years, the percent Of the Town budget from the schools has gone down. Because we track it. It’s gone up for like 7 years in a row. In the last two years, it is incremented down very small amounts. That’s only because it’s enrollment of students is no, no, it’s, it’s no, there’s more, there’s more to the story than that, OK. The dollar amounts are going up. We may get less of that total is the percent of the Hamilton spend. School versus the town itself. The the school has gone down. It’s the, the curves started to bend back. All right All right All right? Because we’ve we’ve shown we’ve shown a, we’ve shown a big, you know, a bright light on it. We’re, you know, we’re tracking it. So we know, so it has the, the curve did start to bend, but this year I’m Well, I bet it’s going going No, it was, it was the operating, yeah. So, And and the other point is when in in September when we did the override or the um the, the town, the town hall discussion. People asked in the meeting. How it works. So I explained that. cash is what’s left over, but it has to be, it has to come to town meeting like Joe said. So, It’s not a slush fund. Um. So let’s really be careful how we characterize it. The voters that get the the money that we voted, voters got a two cracks at that money in the original budget. We bring it to the town. And ask for their approval, so those dolls get voted on twice at town meeting. All right, so it’s, it’s very transparent and uh we give voters. A lot of opportunity to say yeah or nay, and we did explain it in the meeting because people ask me about it. So, um, I do feel there’s probably been more transparency over the last say 3 to 5 years, then maybe the 5 years prior to that. But can we do more? Yeah. And I think a lot of energy. Should be directed at the School committee Yes. Because there, they’re all, they’re all elected. That’s the way. They’re all elected, OK. They’re like robots and they. No, I, I, no I, no but again, we talked to these we talked to these we talked to these people. That’s why my final comment is we talked to these people. That’s why my final comment is this why my final comment is this This is a political process, like these fine people up here I voted for, you know, it’s political. So that’s part of the mix. So, but we’ll, we’ll add the second page. add another layer and sort of to bring that alive. So that’ll be the dot connect. Oh, clarify. I do appreciate everything you guys have done, and, and it is transparent and all of this energy, I think, is directed towards the school because you guys are doing gymnastics, um, Wendy and you to, to make it work. And so I want to acknowledge that because I didn’t, I’m sorry if the first time I spoke of it came out that way. I, I, my frustration about the transparency is because the, the, the school committee is choosing to do kind of It feels like a shell game because they’re, they’re using operating expenses for excess and deficiency, which is supposed to be for one time uses not ongoing expenses. It’s masking the real cost. And I think that’s the transparency because there is going to be a hit next year. So I am, I am frustrated and concerned that the people are going to go into this election thinking how fiscally responsible they are because they can manage their budget and you know, we’re meeting it, but actually there’s a tsunami that’s coming and, and that’s, and it’s from the really the school because those are fixed expenses. It’s like 60 or 70% of that budget is built in. They know what those increases are. They know what the number is going to be for the majority of it, and that’s got to be understood. And, um, so people understand and sadly, because that’s the budget that’s going in. It’s a, it’s baked in then like there’s no other budget that says no, we’d rather take, you know, a little bit of an increase now so we don’t have a tsunami next year, like smoothing it out a little bit. We can’t even do that because they’ve decided they all voted, even though they know there’s a tsunami coming. So my frustration really is towards the school committee, and if there’s any way that working with them, because you guys are our fearless elected officials, you know, to try and express that concern, because you guys are confronting the townspeople like that’s really that’s The energy behind here is the concern about that masking, not, not you guys, so I’m sorry if it came across the frustration because you, we, we are a um receptive audience here. We do encourage transparency and we want to hear from the public. So, so we understand that and we also understand that a lot of your frustration is directed at the district and hopefully you’ll be able to reiterate your concerns to them. Again, because people don’t always understand, you know, the decisions I vote for today, right? Oh, I see it’s not going to increase this and everyone’s clear about today, but they will impact 27 and maybe that’s the second page that we do this now. We’ve got this covered by 27, this will be our challenge. It sounds like everybody here thinks that an override is inevitable. I, and I agree with the point about free, free cash is a terrible term uh for that, for that it’s the official term is actually the unexpended fund balance, um, which is. a lot more complicated for people to understand. But The fact is if we’re not generating something there in the unexpended fund balance every year then we’re doing a very poor job of budgeting, you would, you would all want to move to fire me and Wendy if we, we didn’t generate something there every year we need to we’re just good budgeting because you, you can only project so much there’s gonna be unknowns and you have to handle that within the the projected budget, so. We, I think we’re doing a pretty good job that that. we’re hitting us right around where we should be, um. But you know, we do things like this this year and and you wonder are we’re gonna hit that or we’re still gonna hit that next year or is it gonna be tighter? No, yeah, all good guys leave it one more thing for the record, but we also did vote. I don’t know if you can hear me, can we, Joe? No, Bill Stocking, sorry, sorry, Bill. Could you just say we also did vote about 30 minutes ago, the school put that motion that any excess cash in there. in their budget at the end of the budget can be used for anything they wanted to use it for, so that is a that that was voted by town unfortunately, we spoke against it, but down vote but that’s so it is good to at least see they’re putting it back into the budget this year and not on on something else, but that is something that we unfortunately did arm them with um at town meeting. So it’s something. Well, that was an hour on what was supposed to be a 10 minute preview about how to manage that’s right, that was your 3 minutes or 10 minutes I think. Bill, I just want to say to you, like, I agree with you on that, and I haven’t gone back to look at it, so I don’t want to say anything out of turn, but like, you know, the first budget item that we looked at that stabilization fund was not Being used and I know there’s You know, it, it was healthy and it was sitting there and it was about the amount that we’re looking at. In our cuts, um, so I agree with you that there’s a further conversation there around the gentle people’s agreement on how that money is used and when it comes into play because it looked like a sacred cow when I looked at it in the first budget. Um, review. Um, all right. Well, I’m glad we had the conversation, um, I will. Uh, to keep us moving, um, we, we do have a public comment section. Um, as a reminder, public comment is 3 minutes on an item not currently on the agenda, a not a comment on something already covered, but you do you, um, but do we have any public comment in the room or On the phone. I think we tired them out. I, you know what? Uh, cool. So, uh, the next is the consent agenda, which is the approval of the minutes for December 2nd, December 16th, uh, so I will entertain emotion to approve the consent agenda as proposed. I move that we approve the consent agenda. But Uh, is there any discussion or amendments to the minutes provided. All right, uh, I will take a roll call vote starting with Tom. Tom Meyer’s I and I. Rosie Kennedy, I, Bill Wilson I. So and I, the eyes have it. Um, and onto our agenda, which it looks so short, but it’s in our power how long this takes. Um, the, the first and only item is uh reviewing the uh opening the warrant for town meetings, so I will entertain a motion to open. The warrant for annual town meeting. I move that we open the To warrant meeting agenda. checking that. Um, should we, we, we can go ahead and open it, right? I can just take a vote on that, Joe. Yeah, you can vote to open it. um We’ll call, yeah. Uh, we will roll call starting with you, Tom. Tom. No. William Olson Rosie Kennedy, I Bill Wilson, I. No I believe why. Uh, so the town warrant is open, um, at this point, we will review. The calendars, Joe? Well, the calendars were just there for your, uh, edification. You don’t, unless you want to look at something or raise questions about it, we can go to the um The articles, the articles, if you like. The only thing is you might shift that finance and advisory. Are you gonna keep the day the just the vehicle will be different, right? On the calendar? Yes, it does have two different dates here you’re saying we’ll get it fixed. Sorry about that. No worries. Yeah, so before it’s it’s sideways still, OK, um, I know that we had had some very um Deli meaty conversations we’ll call them, uh, about the, the annual town meeting and what was going to be on there, and I think it was my understanding at the close of last year that we have officially decided not to bring. 38 or any form-based code forward for the April time meeting. Is that correct? That’s why it’s not on the list right now. I just wanted to say that out loud because I felt like we sort of left it a little bit loose. Um, OK, cool. Um, so, yeah, most of the first few articles or standard articles election of officers, consent agenda bills of prior year budgets compensation classification table, community preservation operating budget and grant more requests, um, capital plan. which we will have something there stabilization to find capitalism stabilization OPEB, all those will be uh free cash expenditures as as typical, um, Hamilton Development Corporation, uh, we have a new policy being reviewed I believe by the FICO at this point that we’re gonna. Look at for, but when the, if she, Wendy left is Wendy still here? She did a, I’m here. OK, great, great. So I just wanted to point out Wendy had done a great job going back and looking historically at what we’ve been providing to the HDC annually and uh. Kind of assessed that against the new policy that we’re being asked to use to determine how much we want to dedicate to the HDC in the upcoming budget and over the course of the entire time that the HDC has been around, uh, we were off by about $5000. Nice. So we’re pretty close, um, over time, uh, but it was really good to get that number down, and, and understand it. There’s been some belief that we were giving them too much or not enough, we’re really pretty close to what has come out as our new kind of process for determining the right amount to give to HTC every year. So we’re, we’re not, uh, we’re not, it’s not going to be markedly off of where we’ve been in the past. So Um, the hero Act adoption, the Hero Act was passed by the legislature last year, I think in July. Um, this is the, it’s because it wasn’t um. completed until August. This is gonna be FY 26 of the first year that we could act on it, so, uh, we have it here. There’s a simple language from the state already in an IGR um that basically tells us how to put this forward before time, but it will provide a tax benefit to veterans, veteran homeowners in the town. Um, we know that there’s going to be a consolidated elementary school proposal. Um, where else there are. 6, these are actually really 5, but there are several potential zoning articles we’re not sure which of these will definitely come through. I expect that the accessory dwelling units, um, by law will be there and probably something about the GPOD, um, there are some, there’s a potential for some changes to the inclusionary housing by law and uh site plan review by law and Potentially a request by those uh planning board to uh address some errors, um, but this gets a little bit to what Wendy was talking about earlier we’re at, we’re going to go along and propose that we do a uh general code update for the town’s bylaw on the website so that it gets done and then can be updated more easily going forward, uh, the last time that the bylaw was updated, I think it was in 2018 before I got here and that version that is on the website. doesn’t exactly reflect what was voted at town meeting, so that’s the part of the reason we need to make this adjustment, but Mark Connors is working on that now, so we, we should be able to. Uh, pull that all together in time for, for the end of tunneling. And currently that is all we’re showing now that you’ve opened the warrant there may be uh. Citizen petition questions to come forward uh articles that might may wind up being considered and of course there may be other things that that could come up is you as Caroline noted, the Gordon Conwell has gotten finally gotten back to us with uh. You know, their ideas about our proposed development agreement, so that may or may not result in zoning either for this town meeting or Potentially for the special. When we have it. I think the feeling in general of the planning board is that their plate is very full with their requirements as described here I just don’t wanna, I don’t wanna speak for them, just say leave it at that, that’s out there, maybe, maybe something else that comes up, may not be. So, uh, at this point, I guess the question is, is there anything that is not here that folks expected to be here. Don’t everybody talk at once. Yeah, not, not, um, but what, what are the actual votes the school impacts will be made. I mean, this, this list has the consolidated elementary school proposal. And budgets in general. So is there a specific votes? What will the schools be asking everybody to vote on. I think we should, yeah, there’ll be proposing a design for an elementary school that will then have to be, it will have to pass both town meetings and both ballot boxes, so, uh, they will be required to form a Provide us with the with the form of the article, it will. Adhere to what MSBA and the state required to adhere to and it will match what the language on the ballot question is. I believe if I’m looking at the calendar here, I think you’re going to have to approve the ballot language question. And the article by Late February. It’s early. I think it’s by late February, um. And Joe is the um A town meeting 2/3 the town meeting vote is 2/3 on the ballot box is majority, is that correct. 2/3 on the on the uh I believe because it’s going to require borrowing so it would be 2/3 vote at town meeting and then a simple majority at the ballot box. So that’s the elementary school piece and then is there an up and down on the budget or the contracts or what else will be the budget will be one article as it usually is when both us and the schools and the FICO will get up and speak to the budget and what you, what’s, what’s in it and. What isn’t in it and so somebody would have to pull that out to talk about it, or Erile proactively do uh uh. Report, you know, we, so the last few years, um, we’ve had the opportunity we’ve given the school district an opportunity to speak about their budget myself and the finance director speak about the town’s request. Fan Fincom gets up, get delivers its recommendations on those budgets, um. And we take questions and then we voted so. Yep No, I’m familiar with that. I’m just this is the connect the dots. Yeah, yeah. So that, that would be the opportunity for John or Eric or both to connect that dot and let people know what’s what’s coming. OK. Hm Seems like. Um, I mean, there’s nothing else to do here unless we, right? Nope. Yeah. Unless there’s something missing. So, yeah, if, as we get, if any, citizens petitions now that opens and then we’ll go through the process I believe, I believe we’re scheduled to have closed the warrant at the first meeting in February, I think February 3rd maybe, um, and then that would uh that would be the deadline for citizens petition questions, so we should have all the articles, uh, by February, by that date. Mm. Right. Uh, any new business? April 5th, right? That’s our, all for the April 5th minus. Anybody have a new business? So the Gordon Conwell was mentioned. I walked in a few minutes later, so will that come as to review any anything on that or so at this point it’ll probably come back to an executive session of the select board at some point at this point, the select board had voted back, I think in October for Rosie and Caroline to work with me to represent the town of interest in those discussions, and that’s where we’re at. Uh, we had provided the seminary with a proposed development agreement, I think in November, and we finally got their red line comments back. To that, um, John Witton had had conversation on our behalf as directed by Rosie and Carolina and myself and uh We’ll be reviewing those red line comments and trying to get them to you folks for a full discussion at some point. There’s still more discussions to be had from what I understand, right? Yeah and haven’t had a chance to really, I, I. Particularly with anything legal because I’m not an attorney. I like to read it, think about it, and then go back and read it again before I really opine so I’m gonna just gonna wait to say anything publicly? Yeah, no, of course, of course. Yeah, I would, I would also just, you know, Shout out that, you know, Rosie and Joe in particular, have just been incredible advocates and tireless in this process, and it’s It’s been, it’s been long, but I, I, I have been very encouraged by the conversation and, and the amount of Um You know, back and forth that we’ve had, and I don’t know where it’s gonna end up, but I, I think that I feel everybody’s been very well represented and uh Rosie has done a great job, uh, in coordinating a lot of those conversations, so. The process has been good. So, you know, tough. Caroline, thank you. I think you’ve done an excellent job as well, and Joe, so thank you. Yeah, the fact that it’s some, it’s tough sometimes just shows that there’s like a lot of tough things discussed, but being willing to have those conversations is what matters. So we’re, we’re working on trying to get the. I appreciate tough discussions, you know, constructive and not just kind of rolling through a process, so that’s exactly right. Because we don’t get anywhere unless we address the issues head on. Exactly. Good job. Thank you. All right, time for everyone’s favorite motion. I make a motion that we adjourn for the evening. Wait a second. Right. Uh, roll call vote, we’ll start with you, Tom. Tom Meyers. William Olsen I. Rosie Kennedy, I, Bill Wilson, I. Caroline I, thanks to everybody. Appreciate it. See you soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.