of the committee so we can get going. So I'm gonna call the meeting to order at 7:02 p.m. for the uh Was it February 26th, uh, when I'm Finance and advisory Committee meeting? And let's see, I'm just trying to grab the agenda here.

00:00:22,670	All right, so looking at the agenda, uh, the first thing we have on the, uh, list, well this is a really long agenda here guys, um, is a public comment. Um, I'm not sure, uh, Lizzy being the only uh member of the public on the call, Lizzie, I'm happy to um hear any comments

you might have right now or, um, you know, if you, uh, raise your hand during the meeting, we can uh catch up with you on a particular topic later in the meeting.

00:00:56,369	Not seeing any comment from her, then we'll move on to the next topic which is the uh Cutler School building project. Um, Let's see, uh, Jeff, can you, you know, I, I did watch the, uh, both the Uh, town select board meeting and the Fincom meeting from last week while I was away.

uh, so I feel like I have some, uh, uh, things on there, uh, you know, some idea of, of what we did while I was gone, but, uh, the only thing that comes to mind for me is on this Cutler school building project is whether or not we're ready to issue the uh slide deck that we've been.

Kind of batting around for the last month or two. Is there something else related to the school building project that we need to address, Jeff, that I'm, I missed out on? The only thing I would say is they, they, um Sent out a revised uh amortization schedule of the debt on uh Friday afternoon.

Um, and so I had updated uh the, the tax rate page to reflect that, but it was a, a very immaterial change, uh, overall, so it doesn't really impact, you know, anything. Uh, I think some of the payments changed a few dollars a year, but that was it.

But I just want to make sure we were updated to have the most, you know, up to-date information we had from the, uh, the district. So that, that's all I have the, the whole, the group saw the updated um layout of that page last week. Um, you know, Jared had made some suggestions and we um made

an made an update for that. uh, and, uh, I think the group thought it looked, you know, looked all right, um, so I don't know, there's a lot to discuss there other than the, the, like you say, finalizing the whole deck.

00:02:43,400	I can throw the, the latest deck up on the screen here. Um, Jeff sent me uh the version he has, and the only thing I note on it is that it doesn't have Um, uh, is that the, you know, the sensitivity analysis, um, Need to be adjusted in a

few places, these three slides, 1618, and uh and 19. Um, but besides that, I think it was um You know, seemed to me to be ready to go. I spent some, spent, uh, 30 minutes looking at it and then starting to update these uh sensitivity boxes, but, you

know, there are a few here that have, that I've yet to go over. You know, I was wondering if the members of the committee could uh maybe talk about their comfort level with this deck, um, and, uh, what they would need to, you know, to do to be

ready to, uh, Kind of call it good by the committee. Uh, this is Jared. I'm good to go with it.

00:03:47,530	Yeah, but I'm, I'm good to go once the sensitivity analysis is uh updated. But otherwise, I'm happy with it.

00:03:55,469	Cheers Danno Bob. OK. OK. I think it's a great piece of work. All right, great. OK, so then what I'll do, Jeff, is, uh, I will, um, update these sensitivity boxes and um And get it out to you by, um, hopefully, uh, either late tonight or, or tomorrow morning.

Um, I can, uh, perhaps you could distribute it to the, um, To the group, um, either we could distribute to the group and have you guys, uh, You know, kind of send a note via email that you sought and approved, or I'd be happy we could take a motion now and say that you know contingent on the

updated sensitivity boxes. You know, we could call this done. You guys have a preference? Do we have to take a motion or can we just carry on? We already voted about our recommendation. We just, this is just a Kind of an administrative to do, right? To get it published?

Yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know, if, if, I mean, it sounds like we just did a roll call, everybody's OK with it I I than the sensitivity analysis. So, um, if Finn wants to make those final changes, I can um distribute um the final copy to the group and also Finn

probably makes sense to um distribute to Steve and he can send to the select board as well for their, you know, input. OK. Sounds like a plan to me. Not to believe the point, but do we care about the slight board port? Like, are we just gonna publish it as is, or?

Yeah, I guess more of a courtesy to send it, you know, they, they've been following and they're aware of, of it or whatever. So it's, yeah, I mean, it's your document, um, so I, I guess I shouldn't have said it in a way that they were gonna,

you know, give you feedback to make changes, uh, more so to just pass it to Steve who could get it out to them. So as residents start to see it, you know, they've seen it ahead of time as well, so they're, they're aware of it. Yeah, that makes sense.

And yeah, still, I know Steve just launched a new website, but obviously if we can get that published somewhere or You know, I'll go into the muck of Facebook and post if somebody wants me to or something, um, just to get it as widely disseminated as possible because this is a nice piece of work Finn did.

Uh so yeah, we might take you up on that. We'd get it on the new website where I, you know, we have a section for uh financial budget documents that I, I think I'd create a new uh a new, you know, sort of bucket on there that is uh Cutler school.

Uh, analysis and put that there, but then I might ask Steve, uh, what his preferences on how we get it out on sort of normal social media channels. Uh, and, uh, I'm not a social media user, so if, if you, uh, if you're able to send it out, David, that might be a good

option for us as well, but I, I might be in contact with you depending on how Steve wants to approach that.

00:06:48,769	Yeah, so that sounds good. Oh, I was gonna say since we're on this agenda item, can I just say something real quick on this topic, the, uh, And I feel like I want to say this because we've worked together for 69 months and there's some level of professional respect and trust and whatnot among the folks

here on the team. And so I wanted to just clear the air that the article that got published in the Hamilton Windham News was Uh, 100% independent of my initiative. They actually reached out to me and said, hey, do you want to say something about your comments during the finance committee meeting?

And I said, no, I don't really want to say anything beyond whatever I've shared with the committee. And maybe that was me being in a neophyte, I guess that was them asking for me to help craft the story. Instead I said no and so they crafted the story however they

wanted to craft the story, and that's they published. I just, I just wanted you guys to know I wasn't trying to I thought it was a great article. It wasn't a bad article, yeah. Um, I mean, I, I may say something at the town, town meeting as an independent citizen, independent of the

finance committee on stuff I have opinions about or whatever, but I wasn't trying to get in the newspaper. Yeah, they, I've uh I've, I've opened up that newspaper every every Friday and hope to God that my name isn't in there. So I know the feeling. Yeah, I got all kinds of text messages, which is surprisingly

from super conservative and super liberal liberal folks, all of whom were appreciative, so I guess that's positive.

00:08:23,629	Dialogue is good. What it's worth, I'll share, I had a conversation with Superintendent Tracy, and he said he never got a call to make no comment. So that The line there that said he had no comment, apparently is not correct.

00:08:42,100	I heard the same thing from him as well. Um, I, uh, I sent him a note about the, uh, about the cost per student information that we saw on the DESE website and, uh, he happened to mention that same comment as well, or lack of comment.

00:09:01,830	Right, um, what was I, I'm gonna say, um, Jeff, uh, the other thing that I could think of related to this, uh, this deck, um, is that if the, if the select board members individually are interested in, in, um, in having a conversation to make sure they understand it.

Um, I'm happy to hop on a call with them. It's a matter of to me of, of like, do I have to do it individually with each one or so that it doesn't turn out to be an impromptu select board meeting, um, uh, you know, whatever, whatever the right method is, so.

Um, and so we will be, um, having a meeting with them next week. It's the, the final, um, you know, meeting before we essentially are, you know, starting to wrap things up here. So, you know, it, I'm sure they'd appreciate the offer to talk one on one, but it, it may be that we're able to give a

high level, um, overview of the, of the whole report, uh, to them at that point in time. OK, understood.

00:10:00,899	All right, uh, any other discussion of this agenda item, school board, school building? I'm not hearing any. We can move on to the next one, the operating budget.

00:10:16,169	Jeff, what do you have for us? All right, so I'm gonna, uh, steal the screen back from you and uh All right, so I think I did um send out. A new version of um the, the spreadsheet uh last week, uh, they had a few tweaks and uh a little more information for you

folks, um, and we have updated it to, uh, Finn. You said you watched the meeting, so you heard uh that the Fincom did vote, the four members that were here voted. Uh, for this idea to use, uh, you know, $350,000 or so of free cash to pay off our outstanding short-term debt,

uh, when those short-term bands come due in May, uh, which does a couple of things. It will eliminate future debt payments, um, from the, the budget, so it will knock $150,000 out of the FY26 budget. Uh, and we'll save the town roughly $35,000 or so in future interest payments.

Uh, so that's when we're looking at the screen here, uh, you know, we were just barely under the levy limit previously. Now, you know, we're closer to $100,000 under the levy limit, uh, due to that, uh, the debt, the debt rolling off, um, for, for FY 26. Uh, so that sort of served two purposes.

Uh, the other thing I'd say before we start here is, uh, you know, as you know, we had a meeting, um, an executive session meeting with the select board, uh, several months ago now, uh, sort of at the start of budget season, uh, to talk about the challenges ahead, uh, mainly to do with, um, union

contract negotiations that were coming up and that, you know. Given what we were seeing, you know, with schools in the area and other police departments and on those type of things, you know, we felt there was a need to, um, sort of stretch the, the Fincom's original request to have the, you know,

the, the budget come in at a, you know, 1, 1.25% or 1.27% increase, uh, to account for the fact that we would likely have to stretch to do something in the neighborhood of, say, 12%. Um, increases for the unions over 3 years. Um, and we did just tentatively agree with all three unions,

uh, within the last week, we wrapped up the last 2. Um, you know, they're, they're not completely signed off on yet, and we, you know, so we can't really release all the details, but I mean I guess the good news would be that, uh, generally speaking, we came in under the 12% across the board.

Uh, one of them might have been right, right at 12% over three years. Uh, but, you know, relatively speaking, compared to a lot of our, uh, you know, surrounding towns and, and, and school districts and things like that, um. You know, we were pretty happy with that we were able to, you

know, not have any kind of labor stoppage or anything like that and, and sort of continue on. Uh, so that was sort of good news. Um, and based on my rough calculations, I think the, the reserve I'm, I've been carrying is going to be enough to account for the FY26 increases, um, some of which were sort of

front end loaded, so maybe a higher cola in year one. Uh, that, you know, in a lower cola in year two, that type of thing. Um, but, um, you know, I, I, the last few weeks, I've been worried that, you know, jeez, do we, you know, do we have

enough, you know, reserve and that type of thing, and, um, so feeling just a little more comfortable today knowing, you know, that we have some final um perspective on these union contracts moving forward for the next few years.

00:13:53,029	Can you remind me please, Jeff, um, the way that you had been handling this negotiation was that you kind of put a plug in one line item, if I recall correctly. Are you, are you expecting to have to reshuffle this budget before it's finalized that now allocates the, the more accurate number into each department?

I don't think we will because until we have, you know, the, the final exact signed contracts and everything, uh, you know, there's probably not enough time before we go to print to make all of those changes. So what typically would happen. Is that um the one thing that's unique to the union contracts

is typically the, the general thought under mass general law is uh communities approve the contracts at town meeting, uh, and especially are approving the funding of the first year of the, the new union contracts. So these, this will go in as still the lump sum number and then Prior to me actually populating the, the actual

general ledger budget in FY 26 in July, I will, you know, be able to shuffle out the real numbers, um, and move them out of that reserve and into the, the, the line items, but it won't, it won't happen um prior to the booklet going out, it will, we will, we'll have the numbers before town meeting,

but, but, um, we'll leave it, I, I think we'll leave it until after town meeting to um You know, make the changes because I think it gets confusing if people have two different versions of the budget kicking around. Um, and that, this is pretty typical. I think, you know, I've gone through it a couple of times in

Essex, and it sounds like previously in Wenham, it's been this sort of same approach that they tend to come down to the wire, uh, as you lead into town meeting. Do you have a related question, uh, uh, you, you had mentioned in one of the conversations you and I had about the possibility

of moving some of our uh uh pension and, uh, healthcare and other items back so they're recorded in the departments, uh. Is that something you're thinking about doing or? Um, we, I would, that would be more of an offline thing, so the, the, the, the way we report to the DOR, they like to

see those, the employee benefits, uh, reported as a, as a whole number, so that, the, the, you know, that data that you and I have been working with Bob, where we compare and contrast things through what's called the Schedule A. Um, that's how we would still report it at a high level, but

I think there's some value, uh, especially you and I as we move forward to look at departments, uh, you know, fully loaded, uh, so that you understand. Uh, the police department costs this, you know, including pensions, benefits, things like that, um, because it does sort of get lost in the wash that, um, you know, you might say

your, your, your police department budget is whatever, 105, but the reality is when you add all of the extra, you know, the, the sort of employee benefit costs into that, it's certainly, you know, much more than that. Um, but that would be a bit of a manual exercise, not incredibly hard.

I mean, we know who's paying health insurance and we can calculate roughly what the pension share is, um, But the, the, the state will still require us to keep them as a lump sum.

00:17:03,529	OK, and so they, um, the final question I had here is, um, you know, the, the favorability versus your estimate that you are kind of uh sensing is likely to occur, you know, as these, as these, uh, Last contracts get get signed, that is not reflected in this $96,000 favorability. Is that correct? No, so there's um

You know, I think that we could have, uh, because remember, there is the 3 union contracts, uh, but there's also at this point, the, the, uh, the non-union employees have not, uh, there's no cola built in for them as well. So that's part of the same sort of reserve as having some cola in there.

So now that the union contracts are largely settled, um, Steve will have to work with the select board to figure out, you know, what, what they want to do for the, the, the, the non-union employees. Uh, and I will have to say to Steve, you know, I think I have probably 10 remaining.

Um, after the contracts, but I also want to have, you know, something in the neighborhood of 20 to 30, maybe $40,000 left for other, you know, we always have some amount of salary reserved because things, things happen. People leave and take other jobs and you have to hire a

new, you know, person in an apartment and Uh, you, you might have to shell out some extra money to, to bring the next person in. So we'll, we'll want to keep some of that. But, you know, my hope is there's, there's maybe, um, you know, 20 to $40,000 of play in there that maybe that $96,000

number is, you know, closer to $110,000 or $115,000 under the levee limit once, once we really settle all that stuff. OK, understood. And there is I will point out the one big contract that is out there is that Steve, um, uh, the, the town administrator, his three-year contract is up.

Uh, he'll be due for a new contract starting on July 1. Uh, Steve is probably the second lowest paid town administrator uh in the area. Uh, and we've seen a very significant that the Topsfield town manager just went from essentially 145 to like 210. Um, I don't know that we'll do that, but that will be a, a

significant increase that's probably in the pipeline as well. Um, And um, so that, you know, this is again, here's your tax rate recap. This is the high-level look, um, you know, I'll, I'll again put out my, um, You know, request to see if anybody has any, you know, as

they've had a chance to look at the numbers a little bit to see if there's anywhere, um, they'd like to see some, some extra information or see some cuts or, or that kind of thing, um. But we're down to, you know, much smaller fine tuning, I think at this point in time.

Well, I, I remain a no on the historic preservation grant.

00:19:59,369	OK, um, that's, uh, that'll be in the next, uh, the, that's the capital budget, um, item, but sorry, OK. I'll withhold comment then. Yeah, uh, but if you have any comments on operating, uh, you know, uh, finance departments, police departments, DPW departments, those type of things, um. Certainly interested to hear any of those you might have.

00:20:27,369	I asked this last time, Jeff, when we were on the call. About us being down to the wire, really we have this meeting and the next meeting with the select board, right, and we need to have made our recommendations by the time of the meeting with select board.

So pretty much we have to make them tonight, so we can't, it's not really time to ask for more info.

00:20:52,930	Yeah, well, I mean, I might be able to do some stuff from real time tonight and then certainly I can turn any, any request you have around, you know, tomorrow, um, you know, as quickly as we can to, to get you whatever you might want to see.

But then wouldn't we have to, then we'd have to vote by email now and you could, you could make, I mean, I could certainly, you know, be making some adjustments and be ready to make a final recommendation when we meet with the select board. You wouldn't have to necessarily be have a, have a

vote before you met with them. I see.

OK. 00:21:29,900	Well, I don't, I don't think I've got any um inquiries or All right.

00:21:35,369	requests for the operating budget.

00:21:39,930	I guess one other thing I would point out, I know there were some questions, uh, and I did send out some follow-up information from our insurance broker on the health insurance, and I know Steve has been talking to several town administrators across the region here, for all of us to deal with this, uh, this Maya organization.

You know, the quasi-state agency that handles our health insurance. Uh, you know, everybody got pretty much the same message, uh, and they're all sort of talking to Maya to see, you know, what we can do to, you know, to, to reduce, reduce that increase. Um, so I think there's some still some hope that between

now and, you know, when we actually get to, to July 1, uh, maybe we can exert some pressure because, you know, again, Maya represents. Uh, uh, you know, hundreds of communities and, and, um, organizations, and, you know, agencies and mass, um, they certainly have a pretty, pretty strong, uh, economy of scale on their, on their side.

So we're hopeful that they can continue to find us some savings there, uh, and, and certainly we're not the only town that's giving them. Uh, some, some feedback that we, we need to see that number move down a little. Uh, and, you know, I think everybody is aware, um, you

know, this is a pretty unusual increase for us over the last, you know, 1012 years, whatever it might be, um, you know, that's still, I think we still need to consider, you know, moving forward, if, if these are the kind of increases we're gonna see, then we're gonna have to look at other Other

ways to handle health insurance, um, you know, in, in, in the town and, and we wouldn't be the only one. I mean, certainly other, um, other municipalities would be, would be pulling out of my uh. Uh, and, and trying to find different ways to, uh, to, to handle their health insurance.

Uh, up until now, uh, they've provided a really nice product at a, at a pretty reasonable, uh, annual increase for us, um, and maybe this was just a change that had to come after years and years of, you know, trying to keep keep the annual increase low, uh, but I think, uh, certainly it's on the

finance committee's mind, and I think the select board and, you know, Steve's office, everybody, uh, you know, finds this concerning and wants to figure out a way to Uh, either have Maya make this, uh, a little more palatable or start looking at ways to, um, you know, take matters in our, our

own hands to, um, To, to find other ways to reduce this moving forward. Um, first of all, Jeff, thank you for sending that information. I'm, I'm glad they at least did provide us with an explanation. Um, before we, and I agree, we, we need to look at options. Obviously, it's too late this year.

Um, but, uh, I, in terms of looking at the options, I, I would like to put on the table, you know, to collect the facts first, specifically, is Maya, as they say in insurance speak, our broker of record? I don't, I think they would serve that, that function for

us, uh, for both our health, you know, our health insurance and our workers' comp, our general liability insurance. They, they are our insurance broker of choice for all across the spectrum. OK. So, who, who, when they go out to bid the business. Are, do they go, is it in the union contracts as to who the

carriers have to be? Or do they go and bid, and again, this is something that we should take up as part of the process next year, but I just want to throw this out on the table. Do they go out and look at all the carriers of record and say,

You know, here's, here are our needs, you know, like any other insurance broker would, or are they just going, Hi, Blue Cross, how are you? Here's what the unions want this year. And, and I'm, I'm being cynical, uh, on purpose. I, I, I don't, I think part of this is we need to understand

exactly what what the collective bargaining process on these quote unquote contracts is because it sounds like to me, That there's some black box at Blue Cross, and they cook up the number, you know, and hand it off to May and say, you know, send me a check.

And I'd love to be and and I'd love to have somebody explain to me why my understanding is incorrect. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it's 100% incorrect. I mean, you know, Maya is, is exclusively works as our broker with Blue Cross Blue Shield as they do for the lion's share of communities in the state.

Um, you know, historically, communities have used, used Blue Cross, and Maya has been the one sort of broker on the municipal side that handles that. Um, you know, and I think that goes back to, you know, in, in maybe times in the past where compensation and things weren't

as high at the municipal level and the, the idea was you would get a job with the town, um, because it had the benefits, right? But the, maybe the, you know, the, the pay wasn't as good. Um, I think we're now at a time where maybe pays have increased

and so the, the benefits that are provided on top of the, the pay, it needs to be reevaluated and part of that is looking at, well, OK, we can't just have Blue Cross, we need to look at Harvard Pilgrim, Tufts, uh, you know, is that part of the union contract? Did the union say?

We want Blue Cross and you know, we don't care what it is it isn't, um, so I mean the, the, the, the health insurance is in the contracts, um, but we also have, um, the GIC which is, uh, you know, you, you've talked about like PEAC for, um, for the, the pension management.

Well, the GIC is, is the state's. Uh, insurance manager. Uh, they also, I think, manage like the, the mass connector type plans and, and things like that too. Um, so we have the, the ability under mass state law going back probably now 7 or 10 years to invoke using the GIC, switching

to the GIC, uh, and that we are now allowed to do that, um, outside sort of the contracts can't prevent us. from doing that. And typically what you see happen is when you go to the unions and you say, well, we're thinking of leaving Maya, we're thinking of leaving Blue Cross Blue Shield because the, you

know, the costs have become sort of untenable and moving to the GIC, um, that can offer you some leverage where suddenly they say, whoa, wait a minute, we, we'd like, we like the Blue Cross plans, we'd like to, you know, stay with the Blue Cross plans. What, what do we need to do to continue that?

Um, and then you, then that's when you start to have discussions around Well, I mean, if you were willing to go from 75, 25 to 70/30. Um, on the split, you know, we might be more, you know, inclined to, to, to not go to the GIC, um, or, you know,

perhaps you talk with them and they say, you know, whatever, change the plan, you know, higher deductibles, whatever. But we have that conversation now like when is the renewal? The renewal happens late in the year, right? But it doesn't follow our budget cycle, the renewal for

the renewal is for July 1, so we're right in the renewal now. Um, and I think for this year, because we were in sort of difficult negotiations as it was, and frankly, we didn't know about the high increase until, like, very, very late in the game. I think it sort of would have complicated trying to get the

rest of it done. Um, but it doesn't prohibit us from in year two, you know, having this, this discussion about using the GIC, uh, as a way. To, to address that, I'm hearing there's two options, GIC or Blue Cross. I'm not hearing, I mean, the, the standard commercial thing

is you, you have a broker who goes out and looks at a variety of providers for your needs, and I'm, I'm not hearing that that's what's available. Well, the GIC does because the GIC has, I don't know how many, I mean, they have several Blue Cross, or not Blue Cross, several Tufts, several Harvard Pilgrim, several neighborhood

healthcare with different levels, different deductibles. There's, you know, the, the, I mean, Maya is Blue Cross, you know, that's all Maya is. There are different plans within Maya and, you know, and you can customize the plan a little bit to what you need, but no, switching to the GIC is where you open up the world, um.

Of, of possibilities between who you know who your who your providers are going to be and how those plans are going to be structured. Uh, you certainly could go out and do what, like you say, a company would do, uh, and, and get a broker and, and really go out and get a super customized plan.

But I think the GIC, uh, is they have far more options available that allow you to do that in a model where you're still, you're still benefiting from the, the economies of scale of the GI like a traditional broker in terms of providing a range of options.

Yeah, but I think, but Jared, I think the problem is like you said last week, if I remember correctly, you used the word cabal. And I think Massachusetts' health care insurance structure is corrupt and collus colluded. Whatever they collude and it's a cabal, and I don't. Well, that sounds great.

Like we should shop around, but I'm, I'm cynical and don't think it'll help us a whole lot. But I do think the threat of switching from Blue Cross is a great idea. So when you say, I mean, as I said last week, it's totally unacceptable. They know what our budget cycle is.

They know what the town's budget cycles are, and it's totally unacceptable to flip a rate increase over the transom. You can tell the guy at MA that I told him that he's, he's working himself out of a job. It's totally unacceptable to flip that kind of rate increase over the transom at this time in the budget cycle.

It's outrageous. So, uh, you know, Dano, you may be right, but I think we as a committee owe it to the town to basically, you know, once this year is over, you know, fool me once, OK, is to reach out to, to the GIC and see what our options are.

00:31:36,230	Yeah, yeah, totally agree. Um, yeah, I think that, I mean, so sorry, but like just to ask the question if people are kind of feeling that way, like why not just like essentially hold off on voting on that one item of the budget for now. Like, put some pressure for this year.

Like, yes, there's a lot of stuff going to the school, but there's always a lot of things happening across the town. Like there's always, always a reason to like next year. I think it's a great idea, Dave, but I don't think as a practical matter, we have the time to, you know, re-retain a

broker and, and find an insurance contract that meets the union contract's needs. I mean, I, I could be wrong. Yeah, I, I have no idea. It's just kind of an idea to force the select board also to think more seriously about this. Yeah, and I think, Dave, the only other thing I would say is

we're already sort of, we've not increased that budget uh as much as we, you know, we probably need to in terms of um the, the increase that we're looking at. So we're already underfunding that budget by probably like $100,000 over where it could have been, um, just as a way to

slow down the free cash growth and things like that. So, whether we have a contract with the GIC or MA, um, I probably wouldn't reduce that health insurance budget to too much more, um, just because I'd be worried about not having enough money in the budget for people, you know, coming on to

the plan or, or that type of thing.

00:33:01,730	OK.

00:33:06,269	I mean, is it worth reaching out to? I mean, I'm with you, Dave, and I'm with you, Jared too, but I, I know, you know, brokers are hungry and all it takes is to get the census over to the new broker and they'll throw together a plan pretty quickly in the commercial world at

least, but maybe not in the GIC world. I, well, you know, let me, um, I mean, like you say, we don't, you don't have to have a final recommendation right this second, you know, maybe I talked to Steve tomorrow and sort of say, what do you think about, you know, throwing something in front of the GIC?

I mean, I do know we, I mean, we do have flexibility, um, but I don't, I also don't know, you know, there are rules about us, us invoking the GIC and I don't know that we can, uh, I, you know, I just need to make sure that we, we follow whatever

time frame I have to follow on that. Uh, in terms of notification or, or whatever it might be, so I would want to just clear with him, but I wouldn't, you know, be opposed to, um, you know, and maybe it's even just the threat of that doing that to our Maya broker, you know,

could you help me understand here because right now what we're doing is approving a number, right? Like we, if, if the town decided between now and July to find a different, uh, a different insurance solution. Right, and go for it as long as it's lower than what we're

approving now, then that would still be acceptable to the town and, and the process, right? Yeah, you just sort of explained better than I did what I was trying to say to David, which is I wouldn't want to bring the budget much lower, but it doesn't preclude us from

finding a different solution before July 1st if that was something we decided to pursue. Um, so yeah, you're not, you, you as a finance committee, if you were to approve the, the health insurance line item, you're not necessarily signing up for, you know, the GIC or the, or Maya or whatever it is.

You're just saying we're going to have $10 in the health and Insurance budget for FY 26. And if we implemented something that saved us some money, um, that might, in fact, you know, uh, mean that, you know, that we're returning $100,000 of extra, you know, expense revenue because, um, we, you know, we, we, we went to a

lower plan or something like that. Yeah, I'm purely thinking about it from a perspective of like some mechanism to force like a real look into this. And like, you know, I believe that like you, Steve, kind of the rest of the team is trying as hard as they can on this, but just, you know.

It's a forcing mechanism is kind of my thought process on this versus anything else. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think that that makes sense.

00:35:35,130	Well, that sounds like a good solution. I did, uh, I, I, I, I, the way Finn explained it.

00:35:43,730	Yeah, yeah, it was perfect. Alright, so then I guess the, the, the question is, you know, um, I'm kind of hesitant to hold up, uh, you know, any sort of, um, overall motion to approve a budget, um, for this. I, I, I hear what you're saying, Dave, about trying to force it.

um, and but I, I feel like we've got, we'd have 7 days of forcing, uh, of attempting to force, and then in 7 days we'd have to vote for it anyways and I, I'm not sure that we would actually see anything happen in 7 days. On this.

00:36:21,670	So I, I'm, I, I think it would be a good idea for us to, you know, to basically make a some sort of request of, of Steve and Jeff to, to, uh, you know, seriously explore this before the beginning of fiscal 26 and, and see what kind of options

they can provide the select board, um, you know, for, for alternatives, um.

00:36:45,630	And you, you could take a vote um tonight if you wanted, um, to, um, and I don't even know if you had to take, to take a vote, but certainly when you meet, um, I guess the vote would help if you, if you meet with the selectman next week

and you say, you know, we voted last week that we want you to, you know, pursue. the GIC and other options and whatever and, and then present that when you meet with them that, you know, that to, you know, David's point of, you know, exerting some pressure um

to say that in a public joint meeting with the select board that, you know, this is something we're serious about and we would like to see some action taken even if it's just to, you know, as Dano said, send over the uh the census and that type of stuff and, and, and get a quote from the GIC

or, or, or, um. You know, to sort of see where we're at and either use that as pressure on, on, on Maya for this year, or, you know, look at what we need to do to implement that, you know, either in year one or year two, you know, as, as it relates to the unions.

You came up with language, you know, um, you know, on the screen here or something like that, to that effect, Jeff, I would be happy to vote for a motion like that. All right. Yeah, let me, uh, kind of noodle it out.

00:38:02,469	request so request.

00:38:07,300	It's like bored.

00:38:14,230	But, but in the meantime, we approved the, the budget because we know, we know what the figures are, uh, but that doesn't preclude us from in seeking other options between now and June. Mhm. Am I, am I, do I have that correct? Yes. OK. And, and I'm comfortable with that framing and framework personally.

00:38:42,630	So I'm just

00:38:52,000	Mm

00:38:57,170	O

00:39:00,130	Mm So here's what I came up with real quick. Uh, a motion to request the select board. To request the town approach other insurance brokers such as the GIC to obtain obtain other quotes for FY26 health insurance.

00:39:22,000	Does that sound Reasonable, consistent with the requirements under existing union contracts or something like that? So they don't think we're going off the reservation, so to speak. That's yeah, that's a good ad, um.

00:39:40,829	Consistent

00:39:57,199	existing Plans OK, so, to request a select board. To approach other insurance brokers such as GIC to obtain other quotes for FI26 health insurance consistent with the parameters of existing plans.

00:40:20,130	Well, existing contractual requirements, I would say.

00:40:27,530	Yeah, that, yeah, that's good. OK, so parameters of existing contractual obligations.

00:40:39,300	So, Request to select board. To approach other insurance brokers such as the GIC to obtain other quotes for FY 26 health insurance consistent. With the parameters of. Plans under uh current contractual obligations.

00:41:05,730	I think we can I think we can go forward with that vote, if anybody wants to officially make that motion. I'll make the motion.

00:41:16,300	Sounds like Jared's giving the second, so any discussion. Not hearing any will go to a vote. Uh Finn Bragg will vote I. Bye bye.

00:41:30,230	You know I, I, so I think I heard 5 eyes, so that means no, none against and no abstentions. Great, perfect.

00:41:40,929	And then should we now vote on the budget as it stands? PS2. 0 I see. Hey, it's Kate.

00:41:52,099	We need to talk about what we're doing with the other, any other money besides the 350 that we're using to pay down debt, um. Are we doing anything else on those other Is in the book. Jeff that we need to talk about before we approve the budget as is.

No, none of those other things have implications for the budget, right? Those are separate. Yeah, I mean, are we doing operating right now? What's that?

00:42:26,800	Well, I'm I'm talking about like if we have to address Wouldn't that be? those, it's on the budget, I guess. Yeah, but I think it's kind of intertwined, you know, so, um, you know, we're already making a $110,000 contribution to OPE as part of the, the annual budget itself.

Um, you know, if you look at what's up on the screen right now with the big contribution to pay down the debt. As it stands right now, we, we still have about 455,000 remaining of, of free cash, um. So this, we, we could certainly do some other things. That number uh that includes all of the capital right now.

So if we, you know, I, I, I heard one vote against using uh 50,000 for the, the, the historic uh study. Um, so that 50,000 right now is in that 1.2 million. So perhaps maybe it makes sense to circle back to this after, after the capital.

Um, but you know, the, a couple of options you have, um, the only option you have that would sort of impact the budget itself in terms of free cash, I mean, you could always make, um, A vote to essentially um reduce the tax rate using free cash. So you, you know, one of them has certainly done this

historically at times. You vote $100,000 to reduce the tax rate from a projected $16.16 down to, you know, 1599 cents or something like that. Um, the one. Yes, that's not, that hasn't really been on the table for our discussions to date, so I don't think we should put that on the table.

So I maybe I just, sorry, maybe I just sent us stay on a rabbit trail, Dave, and I think what you just said, Jeff, to me. Says beyond what, beyond that example you just gave, um, We're not gonna, we're not gonna change the operating budget based on whatever we decide about free cash, so,

unless, unless we plan on it, you know, Paying down, like you said, which I don't think we've ever talked about doing that. So, I'd be open to voting on the operating budget and getting it off the table, and getting it off off our list if we wanted to.

OK. All right, so we, you know, we can, if you want, if everybody's at a place where they're, you know, comfortable, we could do that, then we could move on to Capitol. Um, I know Bob uh reached out to me. He had some thoughts on free cash, uh, moving forward, uh,

on some things we could do with that, uh, relative to maybe starting to, to hold money aside, uh, in the event the Cutler project passes, um, to essentially supplement some of the higher. Payments in earlier years, uh, when we're doing, if we do in fact do a level, a level principal uh structure, um, we

could, we could set aside some money to, to help, you know, mute those high costs in the early years. Um, so that's just something to be on the radar. But yeah, if you'd like to vote on the, the budget itself, move to capital, and then I think we could move to a discussion on

Um, you know, free cash uses because depending on how you vote on the HVAC and the HDC we, we may in fact have quite a bit more money to, to, to be discussing.

00:45:34,869	Jeff, is there official language on this motion that we have to take care? Um, Yeah, I think uh if we just wanted to uh to take a motion uh to approve the budget, as presented on screen, uh, which results in a projected tax rate of $16.16.

00:45:58,000	And is not, yeah, I don't even know if we have to get into the override because we're not doing an override, but I think something like that is sufficient, uh, if, if folks are comfortable with that.

00:46:08,469	I am so moved.

00:46:13,530	And so we've got Dano is making the motion. David second any discussion before we move to a vote? Not hearing any, then we can move to a vote.

00:46:25,199	Jared Bob I, I, I. Right. So again, I heard 5 eyes, no nays or abstentions. All right. Um, So I guess that moves us to that, yeah, that was just do that and then um. And so Capital, uh, Finn, again, you watched, so you saw, but essentially we got through everything except this, this,

um, study for $50,000 for the historic District, and then the $500,000 that is contingent upon the the grant that we've applied for, uh, from the Green Community uh agency for the HVAC system here in town hall. Um, so, you know, if you were to approve the HVAC, the $500,000 for the HVAC.

You know, if, if we get the grant, which, uh, you know, we're still hoping we called again today, we're still waiting to get a definitive answer there. Um, but if any time between now and town meeting, we get the $500,000 grant, uh, you know, we just, when we read the

Capitol at town meeting, we would, um, just pull that right out of the mix. Um, you know, and I suppose, um, if you were to vote to approve it, we could also, and we wouldn't necessarily have to do it tonight, but at some point, we could take a vote

ahead of town meeting to say, Um, you know, it, you know, if we do in fact get the $500,000 we would like to do, you know, something different with that $500,000. We'd like to put it towards stabilization or OPE or pay on the tax rate, whatever it might be, but, um, we should have

plenty of lead time between town meeting and when we do get that answer, um. But, um, so you, could you change your screen over to the, to the list because I, I recall that that list of uh of capital items or capital budgeting right and uh there was, as you

said, the two, the big one, half a million dollars, and then also the um Or is the historic preservation one is 500, right? So that's on row 16. So those are the two kind of more controversial ones that we still have to resolve. The way you describe the HVAC one, right, um, where would, so

if we, if we get that grant and we do, do nothing, right? Uh, we don't try to make, uh, propose something new to use that 500,000 between now and April. It would just run through free cash. It would, it would, we would have an additional $500 million

of free cash to deal with in, in the subsequent budget year. Would that take us out of the free cash, uh, percentage kind of policy guidance that That we, we've dealt with it would for sure it would take us out, um. Uh, you know, I think that there's still, because I know

you and I have talked about this a little bit about this, you know, kind of concern around these tolerance levels because if you're outside, what do you do? Um, I do think there's some, in addition to this idea, Bob's come up with, um, there is also one of the reasons I don't, I

wouldn't mind carrying a little, a little bit of extra free cash is that we are going to settle this trash contract for July 1, 2026. Um, and we, you know, we are expecting, uh, uh, a pretty significant increase in, in that cost for trash pickup and also trash disposal. Um, so it might be helpful.

I, I think I floated the idea last week of, you know, we've, we've heard that it could be anywhere from, you know, say 20% to, to 60%, uh, increase that we see because we've been on, uh, a 10-year contract. So, uh, all of the, you know, there's been a significant change in the, in the refuse

business, uh, in the last 10 years. So as people come off these 10-year contracts, they're getting sort of beat up, uh, when they roll into the new ones. Uh, that being said, when we like healthcare. It's monopoly. Well, yeah, and I tell you what, Dana, we're, we've been

in a few of these meetings, uh, you know, talking to folks and, and, and that's very, very clear, um, you know, there's really only a few people to deal with, uh, on this, um, but I, I can say that when we, we just went through this in Essex

just before I left to come here and, and, um, while it wasn't, um, You know, great. It, the, the, the increase was not nearly as bad as we had been, you know, planning for. Um, but there could be a case made to hold a little bit of

extra money in free cash so that, you know, if we do in fact get a, you know, 30% increase, and, and, and here in Wenham, just so everyone sort of understands, you know, you have full curbside trash pickup within your tax rate. You're not a town like many communities in, in, in the

Commonwealth that have trash as a fee, a fee-based service, or at least partially a fee-based service. Um, so the desire, you know, out of the gate here is to continue to deliver the same exact service, uh, that one residents receive for trash now and continue to, to, um, Supply that under the tax rate.

So it, it doesn't become, you know, taxes are high and now, you know, you need to uh hand over, you know, $75 a quarter towards, you know, trash collection or something like that. So if, if we were to, um, have, uh, you know, whatever, let's just say it's gonna go up about, you know, $100,000 a

year over the next couple of years, we could have some free cash, you know, held on the sidelines that we could use it to sort of mute that increase each year, you know, we could throw $70,000 at free cash at it in year 1 $50,000 in year two, you know, $30,000 in year three, to help absorb

continuing to have the trash under the tax rate with no additional fee. Be charged, but also have a way to help us, you know, by, by using some free cash to sort of ease us into that extra charge that we're getting for, uh, for the, for the trash collection,

00:52:26,730	uh, because it just, yeah, so I think that that that possibility and, and what you've been discussing with Bob about some sort of cushion for the, for the first years of Of, uh, this proposed new school are, are viable options. I'm, I was just trying to figure out whether or not we

are gonna get ourselves in trouble by not having a plan between now and uh and the um You know, if we just, if, if no one can agree or decide what to do that half a million dollars, I, if we're not, if we can hand wave it away by, you know, just

saying we recognize we're outside of our target, but we've got, you know, things coming up in fiscal 2027, we, we think it makes sense to go high on the cash, uh, free cash balance for uh the end of the year, then I think that might be sufficient and we can You just let it go.

Yeah, I, I think it is. I mean, one, you haven't actually formally adopted the policy yet, so, um, so there's that side of it. Uh, and then to, um, yeah, there has to be some wiggle room in there for, you know, you're still planning. Um, the only thing you could do is say, well, you could, you

could create a trash stabilization fund instead of just leaving it in free cash, um. So, and then just take it out of the stabilization fund each year over the next, you know, 3 or 4 years to, um, to, to kind of mute that extra cost. Um, the only reason it might be preferable to leave it in free

cash would be that if for some reason the negotiations went, you know, really, really well and the increase wasn't nearly as bad as we thought, um, now you'd have money locked up in a trash stabilization fund that you'd have to go to town meeting and get a 2/3 vote to, to get it out of there.

Um. So that that would be my, my reasoning for not, um, you know, not doing it there, um, can't put it in generic stabilization fund and then use out of that for trash that has the same 2/3 issue though, right? But we like we like that because it doesn't allow us to go do stupid stuff with it.

But, but if it's flexible enough to use on whatever, whatever we could use it for, then that, that would work. Yeah, I prefer the Essex developed, I, I mean, we had like 14 special stabilization funds for all kinds of different things. And it drove me nuts because I had $100,000 tied up in

something that I, I was never gonna need. So I would prefer to just put it in stabilization as long as upfront, you know, we were, we said to the people, we're making this contribution, extra contribution to stabilization this year, but, but please note, you know, we anticipate needing to take.

You know, 100 out next year for trash, and then 75 the year after, and 50 the year after that, just to sort of set people's expectation that, you know, we put this in here to lock it up, but at the same time, we told you what our plan was for it. It wasn't just rainy day money

for the sake of rainy day money. It was, we did have an earmarked for something in, in particular. So remember that when we come back and ask for it. Could we also just have earmarks in our policies saying the policy applies to amounts that aren't earmarked for specific purposes.

And uh that way we, we have them set aside, but we're not locked into having to spend them without it doing anything special. I suppose you could. I mean, my only concern there was if we suddenly had a, uh, you know, 4 different things that were, you know,

carve-outs, but they weren't in a like a stabilization fund or something, it may, they, you know, I could see someone saying, well, you have this policy, why, you know, but yet you're, you're sidestepping it and saying, oh well, we, we're over the threshold, but we, we kind of think this is for this

and this is for that, and this is for something else. They might say, well, why don't you put that into some kind of stabilization then? Um, I, I mean, if it was a longer term thing, I think you sort of lock it up in something more. If you thought it was a, you know, something you were

holding on to for a year because you knew you had one big expense next year, I think that might be different. Um. But I think you know I like the idea of not having the free cash available because we just throw it at Capex whatever Capex happens to come along, we just spend the free cash on it

as if it's free. So in general I like sticking it in stabilization fund. OK. Personally. Um, well, how about can we run through the two sort of outstanding items? I guess actually there's a couple more too because there's these, we talked a little bit about them last week.

I think the, the, the revolving funds for um ambulance and the permitting fees, those are also free cash hits. Um, that would reduce the total free cash, uh, and they're in the number right now, um, but we haven't really formally voted on those. I thought we were last week, weren't we?

Oh yeah, you know what, I think you're right. I, my, my mistake. That's my recollection. Yeah. No, you, you're right. As soon as you said it, I, it sort of jogged my memory. OK, so yeah, I mean, if we can just talk through these last two, then, then we can have a, a bigger discussion about that

free cash. And, you know, Danno, if, if, if we want, you know, we are still over the, you know, the, the 1% threshold, we could lock some of this up into, into stabilization. Um, you know, I think I had mentioned last week, even putting $50,000 in there just as a, you know, sometimes it's

nice to just throw a little bit of money in the stabilization every year just as a show of good faith. Um, but we've had one person discuss the, the, the historic, um, you know, what did, what did other folks think of that?

00:57:46,369	So Jared, the feedback that um Jeff got didn't obviously didn't change your mind at all. Did, did you guys all see the email that uh I think it was Kelly sent? Um, I, I will just very briefly tick off why this, uh, her, her email did not dissuade me from my position.

And please correct me if I'm wrong in my assumptions. Number one, she says, if the town approves the MBA program, the HGC District will be impacted. Uh, uh, respectfully, I think that's incorrect. Um, if the, if the 3A district is created, this new state agency has total say over what goes on within the disc within

the, uh, the zone, and whatever the historic district thinks or doesn't think is moot. So, I, I think she's incorrect in that statement. And, you know, that she's not, you know, so I don't think we're, we need a study because of that, #1. Number 2, guidelines not in sync with net zero.

OK. That, that doesn't Um, does it really take $50,000 to, to figure out about roof roof rooftop solar and make a qualitative decision? I mean, it's my, it's my understanding that the historic commission is simply a look and feel kind of thing. And, you know, if they don't like solar, they don't like solar.

So I, I mean, I, I don't think that's actually how it's played out though, Jared. I think they've let some people have been given the ability to put in solar and other folks haven't. Um, and that, and I think that's the underlying issue that they, they're wanting to do this, this, you know, this

consulting project on is that they want to create rules that are sort of ironclad and aren't. Um, subject to the whims of, you know, the board this board on a particular day or boards over 2 or 3 years, um, the frustration seems to be from residents and, and maybe contractors, uh, is that, you know, something's been allowed

to happen up by the Beverly border, uh, and then not down by the, the Hamilton border, um, and so they, and, and my view, I understand that, and my view is that will continue as long as we have a commission. And whose, whose sole goal is quote-unquote, look and feel,

which is really at the end of the day. It's not, it's my understanding that they have no ability to override as of right zoning. Am I, am I incorrect? So I, I, you know, and then, OK, number 4, the current guidelines are ambiguous and open to interpretation. I submit that the future guidelines will be ambiguous

and open to interpretation after we have paid $50,000. Um, number 5.

01:00:38,000	OK, we need to spend 50,000 to be able to tell somebody where, you know, the what office to go to in town hall, please. Um, OK. Number 6, I will be happy to write the guidelines if, if, since I, I am retired, and, uh, if, and I realize that they

don't, people don't have the time, and I get it, OK? But that's not an excuse to hire your buddy to do a study for 50,000, which is 80% of which is going to get copied from the last study that they did for Wellesley. So, I mean, come on.

Um, 01:01:17,300	You know, I was not I was not dissuaded. All right. In case you, you wondered what my position was, it was a little ambiguous, but I'm glad you, yeah.

01:01:36,900	Does anyone think that having these guidelines, uh, might enable us to attract more uh commercial uh business into the historic zone and therefore increase the tax base.

01:01:52,000	I mean, I'm biased from a homeowners standpoint, I think, but I don't from a like benefit, profit, net net benefit to the town. It'll make, you know, Jared's concerns. Understood, acceptable, etc. but let's assume the best that the guidelines are actually helpful, um, then it'll make homeowners' lives easier. Which will increase home values in theory, but

I don't know. I don't, I don't think it'll do a, you know, won't move the needle hugely, but I guess maybe, I mean, is that good enough that if it could increase home values because people are able to get their remodels done more efficiently and effectively. That helps with taxes.

01:02:39,099	Well, it wasn't one of her six commented things, right, that it would actually give a You know, a $50,000 investment would give us a return financially. Specific to your question about You know, commercial, I mean, I don't think she was thinking about that way, but

01:03:02,300	I don't think it would do any commercial. I mean, commercial is a function of zoning.

01:03:11,130	I mean, I would vote in favor of the study if the goal was to put the commission out of business, meaning that uh substitute arbitrary and capricious capricious for guidelines, OK? ergo, the committee no longer needs to exist. But as long as we have this commission, it's all about look and feel, and it's all about,

you know, who's on the committee. So, But I mean, I mean, I'm with you. I get it, but I gotta believe if we write

01:03:46,469	down

01:03:58,800	You know, we're losing you. some guidelines. Yeah, I can't hear you, Dan guidelines say it's my house pink. But somebody on the commission really likes blue. We're gonna be able to Oh, sorry. How about now? Can you hear me? Perfect.

Yeah. 01:04:16,400	Sorry I was just saying, if somebody comes in and the guidelines say pink and you got a pink, you want to paint your house pink, but the commission person says they prefer blue. I gotta think the battle would go toward the guidelines. So I'd get, I'd get to paint it pink even though somebody on

the commission likes blue.

01:04:33,099	So I do think they'll put, I do think, I mean, the whole point is to put the commission not out of business, but they won't be able to contradict the guidelines. So it will be a matter of how effective, how clear and how clean the guidelines are and if it's

01:04:48,469	Yeah, I don't know. And then $50,000 is. Just to get out the door with a consulting project and write a 10-page report is Unfortunately, what it costs. Jeff, can you remind me how this went last year because I recall that we uh did not support the finance committee

did not support some particular um Uh, capital items and the select board decided they wanted to keep them in.

01:05:17,099	Yeah, there was pushback, uh, particularly where the budget software in the um Website. Uh, and so, you know, I think they reached out to Jeff and, you know, kind of asks, you know, sort of led their case and why it was important to them and um And, and, and Jeff kind of reconsidered it and we did

ultimately end up passing, um, passing those things, I believe. Um, a couple we didn't still, I think we didn't pass, uh, some new firearms and, and something like that, but the two big ones were the budget software and the, um, and the, the website, and the select board was pretty passionate that they were

getting quite a bit of negative feedback from residents about a lack of transparency on the budget side and then not a good website. And so I think they, they sort of felt like, well, you know, You don't want to spend the money, but we feel like this is

a top end priority for, for, um, residents, and they were able to persuade, uh, you know, you folks to vote. Um, propose something here, Jeff, could I propose that we basically approve it without this historic $50,000 money, and then, you know, the, the select board has an opportunity

between now and a week from now to To present their point of view and their arguments and since we're all going to meet again in a week, you know, if they can convince us on the additional 500, we can amend. The list. Yeah, yeah. And and then as a point, I, I agree with that, but just with

respect to number one, if somebody could, I, I believe I am correct, and, and Kelly is not, uh, they're not gonna have any input. So, they need to understand that that's, I mean, if they, if they don't like 3A, they don't like 3A. But doing a study because you want to make sure that the

multi-story apartment buildings look good. It, it ain't gonna happen, OK? So I, I, I, I just hope whosever on the committee, they understand that part of it. And if I'm wrong, somebody can tell me this, but I don't think I am. Jared, you're reacting to her thing, not what uh Steve sent out, right?

I'm reacting to the that's it I'm sorry.

01:07:31,130	Joe's memorandum that went out. There's only 5 bullets. Oh, this one has 6.

01:07:40,900	Oh, all right, you're actually you're looking at the other one, sorry, uh, yeah, I know, I looked at all of them.

01:07:52,400	Right, I'm seeing what you've got on the screen here, right, that says, which is bullet point number 1, right? what Jared's saying, hey, you know, they, they're gonna have less authority than they think over this 3A district. Like no authority. That's what they have to understand. That's the way the legislation is written.

01:08:15,630	OK. Well, I'm ready to, to You know, propose a motion to to approve the capital uh budget list, you know, as, as shown on that earlier file, Jeff, with, with the exception of the 50 grand historic study.

01:08:36,100	I'll second them. I'll get Dave is a second. Um, any discussion before we move to a vote?

01:08:45,170	All right, not hearing any, we can move to a vote. I'll say aye, Finn. Bye bye. Garret, I, I, Dan I. So I think we've got 5 for that and no abstentions or. Nay votes

01:09:12,300	Yeah, so that gives us just a small amount more uh additional free cash, um. It moves us, you know, it moves us almost right up to the 2% level right there.

01:09:30,630	OK. Uh, any more discussion on this, the capital budget item on the agenda we move on?

01:09:39,529	And I'm not hearing any, um, let me just double check the participants' list. You know, we still have uh just one member of the public have not heard from them that they're interested in speaking on anything, so we'll keep moving forward here.

01:09:55,470	Uh, so the next item on the agenda is discuss impacts of All right.

01:09:58,729	Cutler project operating budgets and capital budgets on future tax bills.

01:10:09,100	So this is, uh, you should be seeing the updated 10 year. Um, you know, and this is really sort of a pro forma, um, because it's taking, you know, what we've essentially approved as the FY 26 budget here and then adding in the first year of debt as proposed on the Cutler project, which won't

really occur in, in year one, but we're just trying to build a baseline of, um, you know, what, what you can see here is that, you know, we think the tax rate is gonna be $16.16. The impact of approving Cutler. If it were to start, you know, making debt payments right now,

would drive your tax rate from 1616 up to 1834, which is that $2.18 impact for the year one debt service. And then this carries it out, uh, you know, I mean, we've gone 10 years. I've gotten some requests from folks to go 20 years.

Um, I, I do think it starts to get a little, um, you know, to try to project out the town budget for 20 years and, and account for, you know, some major things that could occur in a 20-year time frame, gets a little dicey, but I think, um, getting back to sort of what

Dana was talking about early on. I, I think this gives people a reasonable snapshot of trying to understand, uh, you know, what, what you're voting for here, just so, uh, I think it's important to show the folks this kind of information, and I think it, you know, it, and,

you know, and maybe Dano can weigh in, but I, I, I think it does help you understand the ramifications of sort of what you were. Voting for in terms of this debt and if we assume that, you know, the town operating budget's gonna go up, you know,

2.75% and the schools are gonna go up 3.5%, uh, and some other sort of, you know, inflationary numbers there for state aid and estimated local receipts, um, you know, I think I caveat it, um, you know, footnoted down below with a whole lot of, you know, this is our best guess, um, or whatever, but it, it

certainly gives people some reasonable picture of what could happen and I think What I've generally heard is, is, is the committee would like to um have this sort of information out there in one form or another.

01:12:16,529	So one thing that you said at the beginning, which uh uh I'm hoping to clarify, right? So if, if the town votes for the, the new school and they move forward, basically at that point, um, you know, the, the school district having gotten approval from both towns would start to move forward with the project.

And that would mean, I think you said a short term debt, um, revolving debt kind of uh A line of credit, what you might call a construction loan, would, would open, they would open and so they would start spending money of which, you know, that would not be coming out of operating budgets or due

in year one, right? But then, uh, you know, interest payments would become due in year one on that line of credit and then in, you know, when they open the doors, let's just pretend that that is when they finish the project. I think they actually opened the doors, but then still have to tear down the old building.

They're supposed to open the doors September 2028. There's still some more work to be done. So we're looking at, you know, into 2029, probably when they finished the project in the full, you know, $92 million loan is now You know, full, you know, you know, fully bonded out, right?

And, and so when you say that in year one, hey, I'm, I'm showing that the full, call it $2 million 2.5 million dollar, whatever it happens to be, you know, um, Loan payment is due. Right? It's gonna be an 1834 tax rate. In my mind, that's kind of overstating it a little bit, right?

That a full loan payment won't actually be due. In 2027.

01:14:01,229	Well, yeah, that's correct. I mean, I think, and, and, you know, certainly I'm open to putting this together in another way. Um, I mean, it's always, you know, they could, uh, they do have the ability, I don't think they would in this particular interest rate environment, uh, but I know when the, the

Manchester Project, we did lock in debt along the way because debt terms were favorable. And we thought debt, you know, rates were rising. Uh, so we locked in, you know, the 1st $30 million or so. Um, so, you know, in, in that example, we really did pay, you

know, start paying in like year two on a, on a good chunk of the debt just because we elected to, to go to bond it earlier. I, I, it's less likely here, but that they could do that. Um, but yeah, this is not a perfect um, Sort of representation of how it will really.

Go, but it, it, I mean, I, I guess we could try to build something out that shows the payments starting in year 4,

01:15:00,199	And I guess my thing is I don't want to carry, I, I would prefer not to carry this out 1415, 20 years if possible. And maybe, you know, you're, you're all right with showing, you know, year 4, we start, you know, that instead of this payment here, you know, we really have, you know, that

payment starting, you know, these, we would make these zeros and then, you know, start this where it's supposed to in, in, you know, 2028 or 2029. And so then you would just see, you know, kind of 1616, it would, this would stay low until about here and then here's where you'd see the spike.

Um, that's probably a little bit more accurate and uh I'm, I'm happy to change it that way if you want to do it. Um, in fact, we could I'm just trying to think out loud, the more likely is that it won't be a $23 million cutler debt payment right in year one, but there will still

be interest of a smaller amount that would would be due that that year, right? I, I'll say 10% of that value, right? And then it would be 40% in year two. 70% in year 3 and then 100% in year 4, something like that is more likely of kind of what would would actually be due to

from the residents. It would kind of ramp up between year one and year 4, and you could still stop at year 10, and I think I would, I would be, that would be fine by me. You don't have to go and try to make this a 20 year forecast, right?

But I'm, I'm just a little bit concerned that I'm, you know, we're overstating what people are likely to have to pay. Didn't the cutler line in here match whatever's in our cutler? Presentation?

01:16:47,369	Um Jeff, could, uh, you also changed from year one to put actual fiscal use? I mean, I think that's a bit confusing too. And also, I guess, uh, tying into my comment about accumulating free cash, uh. And then using it possibly to paying for the interim

financing cost, or just to to reduce the the early uh hit of the early years bond cost.

01:17:20,470	OK, yeah.

01:17:26,829	And Yeah, and actually let me just think about this for a second, um.

01:17:39,930	Yeah, and to Dana's point, if we do it this way, it would, it would, um.

01:17:47,770	Can you still see that 10 year on the on the screen?

01:17:53,000	No, only seeing the Excel file right now. But I think I, I see what you're saying. I think in your, uh, the, the amortization schedule you had on the screen that was in the deck, you said in FY 28, um, a particular amount of interest would be due. Yeah, so we would technically move copy.

01:18:21,630	Right.

01:18:27,270	65. OK, so that, so this now, what you're seeing now, this matches the deck, um, the tax rate page in the deck. OK. So the only question I would have here is that it seems unlikely to me that there would be no interest payments or what have you do in FY 26 or 27.

A lot of times that's built into the construction, the overall construction, um.

01:18:55,729	So the interest just gets tacked on into the principal and you go forward from there. Yeah, you just kind of roll and there's a, you know, you just short term finance it as you go and um. You know, it, it may be this is gonna move pretty quick, right?

I mean, if you, um, if you approve it, you know, I assume they almost start working. Over the summer, um, on things. And, um, yeah, by 28, they're in there. So, um, so yeah, there might be a year where there's, there's some short-term debt, but like I say, typically like in Essex

we, Manchester, Essex weed, that was rolled into the total construction costs that there was, you know, band short-term interest as part of the overall cost of getting, getting finished and getting to bond.

01:19:38,000	Just to understand, did that require like a second override, or is that just like normal and kind of what we're voting for here? Would do what would be a second override, like rolling in that debt, so like the rolling the debt into kind of the new bonding or not. Yeah, so it's you're, you're basically authorizing essentially, um,

Well, and, and it's, I don't know if any of you actually, when you look at the warrant, it's actually scary because the MSBA forces you to write in a way that you're authorizing $142 million of debt and then you write, you know, that you'll get, you know, $50 million of of grant money from

the MSBA um and, and that will be $92. Once you, once you, um, Once you authorize the debt under Prop 2.5, um, you, the rollovers is, is, that just happens as a, as a normal course of business. You haven't, as long as you don't go over, I mean, you

can't all of a sudden say, oh God, we need $97 million but as long as you're never having principle of over, over the, the $92 million and change, whatever it is, you've authorized the debt and the, the short-term bands rolling over, it's just, you know, that's all part of what's already been approved.

He just opened up a can of worms there, Jeff, with what you just said, right? I recall this committee saying early in the process that, you know, we would support, you know, if we came up with a motion to support the cutler, we would want it to have

caveats that said, you know, we approve this project as long as the grant will happen and the other town, you know, uh, also, you know, uh, approves it so that we don't end up holding the entire $142 million. Liability um on Wenham's books alone.

01:21:22,470	Right, and actually let me. Pull that up.

01:21:28,130	I mean, I guess the fact that we're building the school in the other town, I think protects us at least on that side, um, you know, they're gonna have to approve it, but they can, the select board's gonna chain themselves to trees so it doesn't, doesn't start. I mean, if Wenham approves it and and Hamilton doesn't, um,

I, I feel like the project shouldn't move forward. Yeah, and it can it can. Yeah, you, it's just like sort of like the Fields project a couple of years ago. Um, if one town voted for it and the other town didn't, uh, you know, it's contingent on both towns approving, uh, at

both the town, annual town meeting and the, and the town ballot, um, so it has to essentially get through 4 votes, um, to, to be enacted. And so when we go through bond council. Uh, you know, the bond council process and all this. Nothing moves forward until Bond council says Hamilton

approved it, Wenham approved it, at the ballot box at the, at the town meeting, um, it can move forward if there's any question, um, and people can contest it. People can contest, uh, you know, it could be a close vote at Hamilton town meeting, um. Uh, you know, and, and they asked for a recount or something.

I mean, there are bond counsel is very leery of anything that has any, you know, potential, um, ability to be turned over, because, you know, of course, once, once things are moving and the bonds are out there in the marketplace, um, you know, you can't, you can't put it back in the barn, um, or

whatever, but I was trying to pull the warrant up then, um, Zoning articles for. Now this, the other thing you mentioned was that MSBA was requiring a particularly Open language in the Well, I just like my preference would be that it says, you know, you're approving, you know, $92 million just straight out, um,

and they just have a very, very particular way of wording it, that they make you lay out that the you know, the full project cost and then the net. The net, but this is, this is standard for MSBA funding like as uncomfortable as it sounds, this is. Are you familiar with this a little bit?

No, no, no, I'm asking you. Oh yeah, no, I mean, I think they send you the language and sort of, yeah, this is what you know what you, if you're applying for a project that's got MSBA funding, this is what this is what they're looking for, um.

01:24:03,930	So I'll see if I can share this now.

01:24:08,170	So we're seeing the Word document on your screen right now. Oh, you can see it now, OK. Oh, now you've taken it down. Oh, sorry.

01:24:22,369	Back now? Yeah.

01:24:31,100	Yeah, because you, what you're doing is you're actually authorizing the borrowing at the district level. It's not Hamilton and when I'm borrowing their share. It's the district is borrowing the money, and then we, through apportionment, pay our share. But, you know, the, the school pays the debt, not the towns,

and we, you know, they take the debt out, they pay it and we reimburse them or, you know, pay them ahead of time for, for the cost.

01:25:03,369	So, so the district borrows the money, the, the, the towns don't guarantee it? you know, strangely enough, the, the, when, when we do, you know, the S&P and all that stuff on the front end, um, the, the school is the primary, is sort of the primary applicant, and I always found that sort of interesting

because the school itself does not, you know, we're sort of the, the revenue stream. Um, you know, we raise the taxes that, um, That, that drive this, but they're the primary. I mean, granted our, you know, our individual S&P ratings and all that go into it, but um But yeah, they're the primary driver of it.

They're the one who gets rated, um, ultimately.

01:25:49,729	Alright, so the way I'm reading this is it basically says the town's going to approve $142 million bond, uh, of which, uh, you know, might be offset by a grant. Right, some amount will be offset by a grant. Probably. Um, and that's the uncomfortable part is this is

the, the MSBA language, um, that they, you know, they send to you like this is the language for your vote, um.

01:26:19,369	But you know, the, I mean like in Manchester, Essex had to, you know, do something very similar, uh, and I assume, you know, every community that does this has to, has to follow this guideline. But yeah, when I saw it come across, it was like, oh, I forgot about this. It's a little uncomfortable.

01:26:36,569	OK. I suppose I might have to defer to the lawyers on this one. Um, I, it is uncomfortable. Yeah, and we could, and you know we certainly could um. Ask the select board to uh Lauren Goldberg, who's our main attorney at, at um KP Law, uh, you know, just ask her to, uh,

if she can't be at the meeting to, you know, maybe send us just a letter that gives us some, a little bit more certainty around, you know, this is how it works and, and, um, it gets, it, you know, you are still guaranteed the money for these reasons, um.

Yeah, I'm trying to think about the off-ramp for the town is Let's say that it all goes through, it all gets approved, it goes through, and there's some sort of rug pulled by the MSBA, right? You know, like, what point are they allowed to pull the rug on us?

Like is there a deadline that they have committed to this grant and they can't pull it back? Yeah, and I would say that we've gone through the process and we're approved, um, and that they, they really can't, but at the same time, it's a reimbursable grant program.

And so what you do is, as you incur inspection expenses that are for the things that they deem reimbursable, uh, and we've talked about a little bit that certain things aren't, and certain things are, but the things that are like 52% reimbursable or whatever, um, you're submitting that along

And so to some degree, before you even get to bonding, um, the way.

01:28:02,199	You've already, you know, used cash on hand to, to, you know, to incur some of your your expenses, uh, and then you're able to turn around and, and submit those to MSBA for reimbursement before you even get to sort of the bonding, uh, part of it. Nothing makes me feel better, but I just looked at Hopkinton,

Wakefield, and uh some other time I'm actually forgetting and like the language is identical for their town meeting warrants. Yeah, yeah, I mean, like I said, I think it's pretty standard language, um, and I sort of like I said, I sort of remember it, um. From when we built the school, uh, in my hometown and, um, you

know, it just, it kind of, it hits you a little hard when you see it. Um, but yeah, let's work, we can, we can get Lauren to weigh in a little and maybe, I mean, I remember Eric saying at some point, he had some sort of letter, you know, guaranteeing,

um, and I think it was more in reference to sort of like maybe 3A, that, you know, 3A is it wasn't going to somehow impact this project. Uh, one way or the other, uh, so maybe he can provide that as well. But yeah, to David's point, I think, you know, you're seeing

it across the, the board, and, uh, I'm not aware of any time that MSBA hasn't come through, uh, and they have the funds come in, I believe, um, the funds are raised through whatever that, that, I think it's a $4 per 1000, um. Tax charge when you sell a home.

Uh, I think those funds, some portion of those funds go into the MSBA, um, sort of kitty, uh, to be, um, to be handed out. So that, you know, they have, it's not, it's not that they're out there looking for, oh, we have to go find the funds, they

already have the funds and through this process of making us go through the, you know, the elig eligibility um process we've gone through over the last couple of years to get here, um, you know, you're largely locked in. OK, so can we, I'm looking at the clock, guys, and I'm seeing

it's about 8:30, so, um, I think that it, it would make sense for us to request, Jeff, that, that we We uh have Lauren on hand for, uh, you know, this sort of explanation or some sort of explanation ready to go either at the select board next week or uh.

Um, you know, and ready also at the, uh. At the uh the open meeting um in April because we we will have people say, I thought you said it was a $92 million bond. Right. Yeah, so I just made a note to ask either for Lauren to have a

memo or to be there in person, and I will also reach out to Eric to see what he has, uh, you know, as some sort of backup to, you know, solidify this a little bit more too. OK. Right, so, um, can you throw the Excel file that you have

back up on the screen and we can Perhaps, um Finish up this agenda item kind of looking at this. All right, is that back up or, OK, um, so yeah, so this has changed it so it, you know, FY28 is when we showed the 2.994 hitting S as cutler debt

and that should move in lockstep with the, with the deck now. Um, so, you know, this probably is a better reflection. I don't know if folks are a little more comfortable with this.

01:31:18,670	Uh, it does tell, tell people that, you know, when they vote for it, they still have, you know, 24 months before they'll start feeling it in their pocketbook.

01:31:29,500	And also lets them know that, you know, in 2035, you know, the person that was paying $16,300 is now paying 23, 150, um.

01:31:43,229	Jeff, you know, there's, I think the tax rate number may be uh misleading to some people. Because as you, you're forecasting out quite a while now. Uh, You well you can talk about the average single family home in the median, you know. That probably isn't gonna change.

The value of those places is gonna go up, but you know, this is what the tax bill is gonna be. But the, the tax rate is, uh, uh, gonna, there's an adjusted tax rate which uh would reflect the uh percentage increase in the valuation of properties. I mean, there's probably a historical trend, so there may

be a need for another line because you're not really at 2022.96% when you get out to uh columnel. Uh, you're, you're quite a bit below that because, you know, you got 10 years of. Of something like 2-3% inflation in the uh uh base. Uh, so, you know, you may be scaring people away that

wouldn't necessarily be scared away. The dollar amounts are OK, but I think you really should adjust. What the tax rate would look like with some number of uh percentage increase in the uh Uh, a tax base. Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying, but I, I worry that that gets a little subjective.

I mean, yeah, we could, we could footnote it with, you know, you and I could pull together statistics and trends and, and things like that. Um, uh, maybe the thing is to, you know, is to take the tax rate out and just show the, the dollar amount to give people a sense.

Um, 01:33:21,270	but I, I, I would go along with that. I think that's. I think the rate jumping, uh, you know, you know, 50% is, uh, you know. Yeah, because I think it's more important to say that the tax rates going up 2.5% a year. It's, it's just a very quick calculation I'm seeing, like

kind of the annualized, which then you say, OK, how maybe does that 2.5 a year, but.

01:33:45,869	Uh, from 50 or 28 or whatever onward. Right, so the absolute dollar increase, right? Going from 167 to 194 there. And row 32, right? That makes sense, that we can be confident about. Right, that that's the tax rate, or that's the. The tax bill, the rate is really Yeah, I mean, the, I mean, it's imputed.

I mean, if someone wanted to somehow try to back into it, they could, but yeah, I mean, I think it does, it's probably more helpful this way, um. Yeah, at this point, the only thing you could say that you maybe should correct for, and I'm not recommending it is that

you've got a small amount of increase in the uh the housing base. You know, I mean we're you're on, you know, we're taking new growth of 150 a year that you are growing that every year, so, um. I mean, row 36 is gonna be the same problem as as the row we just hid, right?

Because it's it's again assuming assessed value. Yeah, and we do try to Yeah, I mean, we try to stay here, uh, you know, because and like when we do when we do this on a year over year. So when we look at FYI 26 compared to the FY 25 is known,

we know what the tax rates are, we know what the, the assessed values are, we know what the medians and averages are. Whenever we do those tax rate recaps and, and estimate the Tax rate, we're always just saying this assumes everything stays level, you know, the assessed values stay level, the, um, you know, the, the

averages stay the same, all that. This will change in December, we'll reassess, and that's why almost any year in any place, you know, any tax book I've ever done, uh, you know, you say the tax rate's gonna be 1616, uh, but by the time you get to December and set the tax

rate, it's really You know, 1589, because you, you know, the, the, the valuations go up, um, or whatever. But, you know, typically, everybody shows it and that just static, hey, if everything stayed the same, here's what you're looking at year over year. Um, and I think that works fine on a two-year.

Kind of look, but I agree it's a, it's more problematic here, um. Uh, on one hand, that I, that, yeah, like you say, the 100,000 is the same exact problem because it, it is essentially the tax rate. Um, but at the same time, the 100,000 is helpful because, you

know, for the folks who aren't median or the folks who aren't average, you know, they can look and say, well, I'm at about 700,000, so, you know, I'm, I'm 7 times 1616 is my tax. Um, So I'm just trying to think of other ways we could. Yeah, like,

I don't think that, I don't think there's a perfect way to frame it, but like I think this is as good as we can get in my mind. Um, just the ability to kind of like triangulate to your own personal situation is helpful. I mean, I mean, like, I know the school has talked about

that I guess the, you know, the owner's project manager is gonna do something like have a calculator available somewhere that all they're gonna do is take the, somehow take the, the, the assess assessor roles from both towns and you can type in, I live at 7 Maple Street, and it would pull out

your value and tell you the implication. Um, and that's the other side of this is we don't right now know. What that's gonna look like. So if we, you know, if we roll this out and suddenly the school rolls something out that's got a calculator that's kicking out something different, I mean, I'm hoping

they're gonna keep it to the Cutler project is $2.18 on the tax rate in Wenham in year one, so here's your impact, and they're not gonna get into 10-year projections and those type of things. Because they have no business trying to assume what our, you know, what our um actual town

budget is gonna be in, in 10 years.

01:37:45,500	Would it be appropriate now to bring up the suggestion I had about setting aside free cash in the years before we have to start paying it out to help reduce the uh Uh, the early year cost because we're gonna front end load with a level of principle.

Yeah, and I don't know if this would, um, actually, I could probably bring up your email, Bob, um.

01:38:12,399	But I guess just as a final point, I mean, I, I mean, David just said, you know, this is maybe the best we're gonna do. I mean, does anyone else have any thoughts on how to, you know, tweak this a little bit further or, or what, what they

sort of want to do with this, I guess, in general.

01:38:30,930	Yeah, the only thing I can think of is that Road 36 is, is, is just uh another version of the, of the tax rate problem we had above because it assumes that an assessed value. Um. And like, I, I just, I'm looking at these.

I, I just took 16, like I took that $16,000 of, of in row C of, um, you know, average single family home and $23,000 there in column L. I think it's 123456789, 10, that's, you know, 10 years of forecasting. And if you said, all right, you, you went from um You know,

that's a 44% increase, right, in what people are paying. The average single payer is paying, right? And if you, if you, if you try to figure out what, um, you know, what the uh compound interest rate is to get 42 42% over 10 years, it's about 4.4% or is it 3.7%, right?

So it's basically assuming a 3.7% increase in The average tax bill for a person over these next Um, 10 years if you got rid of Um, you know, $2000 from that 23, which is about how much is kind of associated with the, the Cutler project, you'd be at $21,000 right, which is a 31%, and that's a 3,

sorry, what is that? That's um not 3.1, that's um. 2.75 2.8. So, the compounding, you know, the, the, the compound interest rate, it goes from 3.7% down to 2.7%, right? So it's like a 1% difference in the compound interest rate, um, with and without. Right, that, that to me is the thing that Yeah, so there you go.

There's your 30.82. Mhm. Versus your 42 And so yes, and then you're seeing if you um. So it's sort of like independent of however, however the assessed value of property goes, you know, everyone's gonna be seeing a, you know, an average increase of 3.7% every year between now and fiscal 35%.

01:40:51,529	OK. My comments in terms of what I was suggesting was to avoid the spike you have between FY 27 and 28. To try to smooth that out a little bit for taxpayers. That was the intent of my my suggestion.

01:41:10,930	Are you seeing Bob's thing now with the pay down?

01:41:16,399	So that's the level principle, and then

01:41:21,000	What is column E and F? Ah, OK, so this is, uh, the difference between level principal and level payment and And then that's a cumulative. I was just trying to see if we collected money at $50 million for 3 years, uh, you know, we, what could we do? Mhm. So yeah, so you would essentially you would reduce

instead of having 218, it would only be $1.76 on the tax rate every year for the 1st 3 years instead of, you know, cascading from 2.18 down to 2.07.

01:42:01,000	So another way of thinking about this is that if we collected an additional half a million dollars from the residents, right, in 25 to 27, in anticipation of a large jump, we could ease the, the spike of fiscal 26. But they would basically start paying for it now instead of in the future.

Well, in a way we're sort of doing that already because we keep collecting free cash. Yeah, you, you're doing it like just, you know, naturally through free having free cash and setting aside 5, you know, almost like this year we decided to do um debt repayment, you know, in future years, we'd set aside, we, you

know, we might have enough to do, you know, maybe not the full 500 this year, but certainly if we um If the, if the Green Community grant comes through, we could very easily make a, a move to put 50, you know, $500,000 away towards this, you know, in stabilization or just holding

it aside or whatever it might be. So it's just as much as of us saying, well, we just had that, that grant come through. We don't need this $500,000 we're gonna return it to the, to the, to the town, right, and say, you know, here's your $500,000 back, right?

And so by not doing that, we're essentially saying, hey, you gave us your money, we're not gonna give it back to you. We're gonna set it aside in a non-interest bearing account between now and, and 2028. And um and you're gonna, you know, we'll, we'll You know, we'll reduce that first year spike.

And even better than that, because we think we know better what to do with your money today to help you 3 years from now than you do.

01:43:46,729	I mean, I, I, I like the idea of, of, of, you know, reducing that first year hit to people because it's gonna be such a large number, um, but I'm, I'm hesitant to To do it in this particular way.

01:44:04,569	Well, two things, you're already collecting, uh, you know, excess free cash by the way we do our budgeting and everything. And the other thing is it doesn't have to be non-interest bearing. You put the money to work.

01:44:19,199	Yeah, I'm speaking on both sides of my mouth. Bob, I don't disagree. Like we already have the money, we should set it aside in the stabilization fund for whatever we want to use it for that's good for the town. It seems to me like a stabilization fund for the school project seems to be the

most like useful use of this cash. Even like putting a vintage stabilization vintage 2028 or something to pay. And that also assumes that we're gonna get that it's gonna pass, right, if it doesn't pass and we create a stabilization fund. Well, I mean, I, I would hope that this gets done after the

school we vote on the school, hopefully we vote on the school first because there's a lot of stuff that probably doesn't apply once the schools, uh, you know, if it gets voted down, so.

01:45:05,000	Yeah, well, and that would be the argument for um. You know, if you put it in the more general stabilization fund, um, you, you know, you have more flexibility with it. It's still locked up, but you have more flexibility. So let's just say, you know, one of the things this presumes

here is that, you know, these, these principal payments, I assume that the, the, the apportionment stays at when I'm at 34.08%. But if for some reason, and I don't necessarily know that it's likely, but if for some reason when I'm dropped to 32%. Um, you know, this, our share of all this would be less, and

we, we might need, we might need less, uh, or maybe we don't even go to, you know, I still think there's a case to be made for not, for not doing level principle, um, because it front and loads all these payments and whoever, whether it's us or it's Hamilton, whoever happens to be on the

wrong end of apportionment in the first, you know, 5 years of this debt repayment. Um, if we're on the high end, we're, you know, we're essentially overpaying. Our share of the debt over 30 years. If you know, so if, if, if we really average 30, 33.5% apportionment over the entire life of the loan, but we just

happen to be in the mid 34s in the 1st 5 years, we're gonna pay a tremendous amount more principal. Um, then we, you know, we probably would have over time, um, if we had just paid, you know, straight amortization. We gotta, we gotta mitigate that. That's totally, uh, like a fiduciary flaw in our process.

We can't do that. Yeah, so there's, there's, you know, the, the, the way the regional agreement is written is the, the, the school committee with the approval of the two towns has the ability to Change the apportionment factor on, on special debt like this. Um, so they, they could get together and say, you know,

this is a, you know, it's a $92 million bond, this is a big deal, and everybody would like to have some certainty around what their share of this is. So you could, on one hand, agree to, uh, they could agree to a different apportionment factor for this, uh, you know,

I mean, the hard part is, is that, you know, obviously if apportionment is favoring Hamilton. Right now, or if it was favoring us, you're less inclined to, you know, to sign up for it because, you know, why would I sign if I'm at. If I, if I'm at 34%, why would I sign up, you know, for 36%

or, or, or something like that, uh, but I think that that's a discussion worth having, but I think the level principle, you know, just not going with level principle, um, would be a more reasonable argument because it just, it unfairly penalizes who's in the worst position in the first few years.

Um, you know, in Manchester, Essex, we, the, the debt under the agreement, the debt is set. Based on apportionment at the time, at the time the debt is taken out. So you know what your share of that debt is gonna be right from the get-go. And I think that makes it easier.

To make a decision about level payment versus level principal because you, because you know the rules of the road. Um, but if you really don't know where you're gonna be in terms of apportionment, uh, it would be kind of silly to agree to do level payment or level principle because you, you

know, you, you could be signing up to pay way too much, uh, based on the averages. Um, and, you know, the, the history would tell you that, you know, there's an ebb and flow to this and um It could be that we're well under 34% by the on average by the end of this.

Um, so that, that would be a, you know, definitely is going to be, you know, this level principle thing is not set in stone. I mean this is how they're running these numbers and typically folks like to do it because it does save a considerable amount of of interest over time.

Um, but when it's time to actually go to market, uh, you know, this is not 100% a done deal that this is how you're going to do it. So it would be, uh, you know, incumbent upon either the finance committee. But the select board are both, uh, you know, to make sure our

voice is being heard within the district, um, based on how, you know, fairly we think we're being treated, uh, in the way that this, you know, these debt payments are being apportioned.

01:49:16,399	Tangential comment, uh, uh, if you make that change, it's gonna affect the slide uh on the uh school building project. So just remember that. Yeah, I, I, I agree, but I think, you know, the only thing we can do in the slides is, you know, uh, tie them to whatever, whatever we, you have as, it's

the only known information we have. Um, you know, at the same time, I mean, the slides say 4.5% and who knows if that'll be the interest rate when we get there either. Can I just clarify one point? Um, does free cash actually earn 0% interest and stabilization fund is also zero, or is it? No, no.

So, our funds earn, um, you know, the, the way that things work. Um, most of our, uh, sort of our operating cash and stabilization funds as well. Um, you know, those are, think of those as like money market type yields, stabilization funds can't be invested like,

uh, say the OPE or the pension funds are, um, because the, the mass general law. For those types of funds, you know, it, it stresses safety, liquidity, and yield. Um, we can argue about what, what that really means. They, they mean to them, they mean preserving principle in real, you know, real actual dollars right now.

They don't mean protecting principal against inflation. Um, so, but yeah, I think about it as, as, you know, whatever, you know, 2 to 4% interest in a, in a, in a money market fund kind of thing. You know, some, we've got some of those funds locked up in,

you know, some treasuries and, and things like that to try to squeeze out some yields. Um, but it's, you, you don't have a whole world of investments at your fingertips. It's really just, you know, kind of fixed income, uh, money market type stuff. The, the OEM and other stuff is much more, I mean, that touches

alternatives and, and those type of things. OK. No, that sounds good. Yeah, I really hope we don't have anything at 2% right now. But, OK, that makes sense. Yeah, I know, but more historically, that's where it's been. I mean, obviously things are much higher these days.

01:51:21,630	Well, um, I think. My, my sense on this is that I, I don't see that we, we have like we're now at basically the 2% uh free cash kind of limit in that policy document that we haven't yet ratified. Um, and you know, we still have a half a million dollars, um,

kind of floating up in the air, um. You know, right now, there's just so much uncertainty here. I'm, I'm, I'm thinking that we just let the Let the, uh, the plan go through as it is and, you know, when that triggering event of, do we get the grant or not get the grant, we can

possibly make our life more complicated by adding more to this, to the, to the warrant book or to the, to the presentation, you know, in April. It's not, wouldn't be in the warrant book. Yeah, what I've instructed Steve to do is to leave um placeholder articles for stabilization funding and OE

funding in the warrant booklet because in the event that the $500,000 grant comes through between now and town meeting, um, that would give us the flexibility to contribute to either of those if need be. And so while it wouldn't be a dedicated stabilization fund just for the education.

Um, it, it would give us, you know, it would give us the flexibility to put it away, lock it away in some form, and then I think you could just sort of say, you know, when we, if we did in fact fund stabilization. Um, you know, if the, if the FinCom was in agreement at that

point in time that this plan here sort of made some sense, we could say to folks, we're putting this into the general stabilization funds, but we, we have an idea that we might like to use, you know, these funds in, in this way, you know, in the near term, um, now that we know the Cutler project has

passed, which you'll also. also know that I mean it could be that the Cutler project doesn't even pass town meeting vote, um, you know, and then, um, this wouldn't, you know, this idea wouldn't, um, really, you know, have a whole lot of validity at this point anyway, but, um, but can I make sure I understand it?

You're saying that the we can issue a warrant book right now that has some tacked on kind of general language in the back saying, you know, here's a we have a placeholder, um. You know, without a vote from anybody or any committee at this point that says, you know, we would like to consider, you

know, uh, you know, additional stabilization fund contributions and uh that is to be determined at the actual. Um, April meeting. Yeah, so you can have articles that are exactly that they're placeholders. It's just a placeholder article. It wouldn't even have a dollar amount attached to stabilization.

It would just say something, you know, to add uh a sum of money to the stabilization plan, you know, stabilization fund using free cash, um, and that's all I would say. And then in our narrative part of the book where we talk about, you know, there's a section that talks about using free cash.

As I wrote it, currently, it, it says, you know, we're at target for stabilization, so we're not recommending anything at this time. Um, we could have a paragraph in there that says, you know, please note, uh, you know, there's one large capital item in here for $50 million. We hope to get a grant fund.

If we do, we may revisit stabilization or OPE or, or whatever at, at town meeting. But if you don't have the placeholder article there, Um, you, you can't add an article on town meeting floors, so you leave a warren article that just gives you the ability to put money into a stabilization fund.

And that's pretty common across a lot of towns.

01:55:04,930	Is anybody Uh, would anybody prefer to vote on the pro, you know, some sort of proposal like you see on the screen now, um, as opposed to this kind of catch all, um, Uh, plan, you know, that Jeff is, is kind of described where we don't have to commit to it now and we instead You know,

revisit after the warrant book is issued, after the grant. You know, is issued or not. And then Revisit between now and the April meeting. Well, I think the value of doing something now, including, you know, this question of level principle versus uh level payment is going to affect how people feel about voting.

So if, you know, if we're really planning to go level payment, you know, that ought to be known before the fact. If we're going level principle, then I think Uh, we probably should tell voters that there's a plan, uh, if there is a plan, uh, to, uh, Ease into the higher payment that would be required, you

know, when the school comes online, particularly because of having uh loading the front end principal in order to save overall interest cost.

01:56:26,000	So doing it after the fact, you know, it would be nice to, to deal with the problem, but I think if the purpose is to provide people information, uh, to make an informed decision about the school project, and, you know, it needs to be upfront rather than something done later. That's just my, you know, my view.

01:56:49,199	Other thoughts from other committee members?

01:56:55,569	I think one of the things that we discovered as we were uh looking at the new Cutler project is that if you assume folks have a 6% discount rate, And the interest rate On the, on the loan is gonna be less than 6%, then it's, it makes more sense from a resident's

point of view to do the level principal, right? Um, The town seems to, um, has never, hasn't apparently that that's not a typical municipal thought, thought process cause everyone kind of was apparently assumed it was gonna be level principal payment instead of a level payment.

01:57:41,630	Yeah, I mean, I think communities tend to try to do level principle if they can, um, but you know, I know, certainly there was spent some debt in Wenham that was more level payment, uh, in Essex, we definitely did some, uh, over time that was level payment just because where we were

financially at that time, we, you know, it would have been nice to save interest, but we just couldn't handle the higher payment structure. Um, but most folks, I think try to come out of it, you know, looking at level principle, um, In terms of the tax rate impact, um, it's the worst case scenario upfront, um, and I

think you lead with it because then the worry is if you, if you, if you move forward, you know, and you do everything to the residents in a level payment. Um, you know, that first year looks better. And then if all of a sudden at the last minute, you say, hey,

we decided to go level principal because it was going to save us a lot of interest over time. Someone says, Well, wait a minute, you told me it was gonna cost, you know, $2 you know, per, you know, $2 on my tax rate, but now it's really costing me, you know, $275.

Um, that's not, that's not how you laid it out to me. So I think a lot of times you lead with the level principle because you'd aspire to do it if you could, and it starts off, you know, the higher impact for people and it's, it's really that year one hit that people get most.

You know, uh, worked up about cause that's the year you have the huge, you know, the huge shift, um. So I think the way we're doing it is probably fairly common, um, something of this size. I mean, if if we were, you know, borrowing $100,000 it's a little different, but um, For close to $100 million.

Jeff, was this refresh my memory, please. That was the slide saying how much it's gonna cost, was that level principal or level? It's principal. It's that that's that's all that's been presented to us is the principal amortization schedule. So that's the most conservative. I, I mean, it's the most conservative in the sense that

it costs you the less, the least amount of money over time because you save a considerable amount on interest. Um, but it's, it's conservative, I think, in the sense of presenting it to residents, um, in, you know, you're giving them the worst level principal year one is gonna be, you know, if that's gonna be a high payment.

And if you present that out of the gate, you've shown them, you know, you've been conservative because you've shown them the worst case scenario if for some reason you, you switched. All right. I just, which I think is what we should do, recognizing, if I'm not mistaken, that Um, you know, none of the people on this call,

as a governance matter, make the call on what the ultimate funding option is. It's the, it's the finance director of the school committee, is it not? Um, you know, you, I mean, I can't because I haven't gone through it here yet, but I know in Manchester, Essex, it was a very inclusive process.

Um, I, when I was on the finance committee, I was involved in the discussion when I was treasurer, uh, in Essex, I was involved in the, in the discussion on determining what to do moving forward. Um, so, uh, you know, it, it could very well be, uh, a more,

uh, collaborative process, um, but I think, as I mentioned earlier, I think what the one difference is. We were playing under different rules. We didn't have a varying apportionment factor, uh, each year on the debt. And so, if you agreed that, hey, let's make bigger principal payments to reduce, you know, total debt payment

over time, there was no different impact to anybody. Here, the variable that makes it different is, hey, wait a minute, if I'm the guy with the higher apportionment early on, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of getting, I'm helping you save interest later. Um, so that's the only difference, but it, it, it

should be, I mean, and the select board obviously has the ability more than say the finance committee does to exert some pressure on the school committee. To say, you know, you don't, you know, this doesn't just all fall on one guy in the finance office in, in Hamilton, one of

them, it, it, it falls on all of us to, to decide what makes the most sense, but you know, I think what we should present is the quote unquote worst case in our documents. And then if this plays out in the collaborative and favorable way that you've forecast, so be it.

Agree. OK, so I'm looking at the clock here, guys. We're just past 9 o'clock. Um, I'm, I'm, the way I'm interpreting this, what's on the screen here is a proposal to reserve half a million dollars of free cash from our um capital and from free cash and kind of recommend that um this, that we estab we put it

into some sort of stabilization fund um to do the first tranche here. On row 5, I think that's how I'm interpreting this. Is that right?

02:02:33,229	Sounds good to me. Yeah, I think that's the intent of it. So we would do this if we your vote to do this is regardless of how the grant funding shows up, we would take half a million dollars and that would reduce our free cash from the

2% it is now down to some lower number I'm guessing in the 11.5% to 1.8 range. Yeah, but should we be more prescriptive and just say amount of money to get free cash to 1.5%, pick some number in the middle? I don't, I don't know. I mean, you can essentially move about 2, you could move

250 and that would reduce you um and I'm hoping you're seeing the free cash slide now. Um, if you did 250, it would bring you down to essentially the 1% level. And I, and I would advocate, I wouldn't advocate using all $500,000. We wouldn't want to wipe out every last penny of free cash

we have, um, but maybe, you know, sort of what David's suggesting here, you know, to shoot for the 1% target or something like that, you know, making some level of commitment, even if we don't, you know, even if the grant doesn't go through, we've committed, you know, whatever, $250.

Uh, and then you could revisit it, you know, if the, if the 500 freed up, then you could say, well, jeez, now we wanna, you know, we want to move, you know, 600 and not 250, or But if, if you wanted to commit tonight to at least get half of something like that.

02:04:04,170	that, that number. Um, You know, you might have, you might have the ability to catch up a little bit more next year, um, because, you know, don't forget, we just used $350,000 on the, on the, on the debt, you know, the debt down pay the debt payoff, um, so you

could, you might have the ability to do a little bit of catch up next year. Jeff, you know, you could rephrase that uh to transfer enough uh to get uh that that that maintains 1%, and then it would cover whether we did or did not get the uh HVAC grant.

02:04:40,399	Yeah, you could do that. So right now, yeah, so essentially right now you'd be committing 250 and then if, if um If, if you get the grant, then you'd be committing, you know, basically another probably you know 500. And and and it doesn't necessarily mean all of that money is earmarked for this particular strategy.

It would just be getting money into general stabilization. Helps for the garbage, helps for the other things. Um, is there any money in a stabilization fund right now? Yeah, there is, um. Let me just go back to this.

02:05:12,470	So we currently have $1.6 million in stabilization. So we are at roughly 6.26% um now. This is the number they want to be between 5 and 7, right? Yeah, somewhere in that 5 and 7 range. So we're sort of right there, which is why like I said, when I wrote the document, I just originally said, you know,

we're kind of in the target zone, you know, no need to, you know, as a starting point, no need to do anything. You know, because of where we're at on the, on the percentage, uh, not to say you couldn't, but yeah, that would bump us, you know, certainly way up.

Um, but to your point, you know, there's many places we We could, you know, use it for free cash. could use it. I mean, use it for, for, for trash. We could use it for, for cutler debt, we could use it for, um, you know, any number of things that come up and

Yeah, yeah, I mean, this, this seems like the point of building a stabilization, you know, fund, frankly.

02:06:12,000	So, so my understanding on this, like if, if we do nothing, it stays in free cash and the the the members of the town do not have to vote on how the select board in the town elects to use the free cash. So anytime, anytime we use free cash, the town votes. No, they do.

So if you think about like the capital schedule, we put forth that we're gonna use free cash on the Capitol. That's the, yeah, but it's a 50% majority. Yeah, but to Dano's point, you know, it's a lot easier to throw things on the capital list when you look and say, oh,

hey, we got $2 million of free cash if you only have, uh, you know, a million dollars of free cash and you have to go to the stabilization fund to get You know, the new Tahoe, uh, you know, and you have to get 2/3 of the people to vote yes to

get the capital, um, you know, it does maybe make you think a little harder about your wants and needs when it comes to capital if the money is just not, is, isn't it a little bit more free-flowing when it's only a 50% vote. OK. Understood. I'd like to move us along to a vote on this.

02:07:23,729	I would file a motion to get the free cash down to 1%, put the rest into a stabilization fund. Um, Yeah, I'm not sure what else is needed. Any, any, any language or do we have to figure language now, Jeff, on like informing the town we're doing it or that

we're hoping to, I mean, you're really making that you make the case when you take it out. I, I might just say when you speak a town meeting you might. You know, if you think you're gonna need it in a year or two, like for, say, for the trash, you might say, you know, we're

putting this in here now, but we do have some thoughts about what we're gonna need this for in the next couple of years. Um, because I think sometimes people feel like it's, it's the rainy day money. And if suddenly you come back a year later because the trash

bills are going up, you know, they say, didn't you tell me last year we were socking this away for a rainy day, and now you're back in a year? But right now, I don't have to include any of that. OK, so the, the language from Dave is to basically uh a motion from the finance.

Committee to recommend That we, uh, you know, transfer cash from the free cash balance down to 1% into the stabilization fund.

02:08:38,000	And I get a 2nd second. Second from Bob, any discussion for a move to a vote? Not hearing any. We can move to a vote.

02:08:50,569	David I. Fin I Then And so that's all 5.

02:09:00,829	All right, guys, I'm looking at the, um, thank you very much I votes.

02:09:03,470	for that work, guys. Um long discussion on that one. Alright, I have um 3 other items on the agenda that discuss the finance committee report, approve uh past meeting minutes, and then open matters not anticipated. Um. You know, the, uh, the finance committee report file that you sent, Jeff was almost overwhelming in its length.

Um, so I'm, I'm kind of not sure that we're gonna have the time to kind of go over that in depth right now. Um, maybe I could just recommend that all finance committee members really familiarize themselves with that over the next couple of days and we can, um, We can

move uh move forward with it next time we meet. Yeah, for, for what it's worth, I read it. I thought it was very well done. I, I would ask that. I think we discussed this at the last meeting, didn't we? No, cause we just, we just did the first draft of it. You and I discussed it, Bob.

And so actually, one thing I will say, Finn, is, um, Bob had already sent me a few comments, so I did make a few, you know, typo fixes and things like that. So I will resend a, a semi-dated copy tonight, um, with just a few, a few fixes.

Um, mainly, I just want to make sure folks, um, Uh, you know, I, I'm not trying to speak for you. I want to lay a, a framework to try to get some ideas out there, but, uh, you know, it's, it's your report and, and I wanna make sure it's, it's, um, Portraying your feelings on things.

I was, I was trying to, uh, you know, lay out things that, you know, can lay out the, you know, the, all that's ahead of us and, and things like that, uh, but open to any comments or, or whatever if you think it is, you know, it goes too far

in one direction or another or not enough in a direction, uh, I'm open to anything, but, you know, mainly it was to just to get, um, Uh, you know, the tables in there, the charts in there, start getting sort of the framework of how we talked about certain things, um, and, uh, and things.

So yeah, I'll get a new version out tonight, uh, before I go, and, and you can take a look at it. Let me know your thoughts, uh, on that. Yeah, I thought it was pretty true to the conversations we've had over the last 6 months, what have you.

You know, maybe the one thing I'd want to add is some of these kind of debate around the stabilization fund that we literally just had, so there's no way you'd have known. But yeah, so that actually, you know what, that's a good point, David. Maybe I will, um, that's one I'll do a quick update tonight

on that to say we just, you know, we're voting to move 1%, uh, to, to get us down to 1% of operating budget and free cash, um. To, to add to that cause that is a very different than how it's written right now.

02:11:45,300	OK. So, the action for the committee is to kind of take a look at the changes you make and you know, have some comments, final, any final comments from the uh committee members over the weekend, say, um, so that we can uh have something ready to go for our next meeting in the next, you

were saying uh our next meeting, Jeff is, is with the select board? Yes, so it'll be uh Tuesday with the select board. Uh, which is, uh, I think the 4th, let me just check.

02:12:19,630	Um, Yeah, it would be the 4th. Um, and then I don't know that we, you know, it could be, we could take a breather and you don't have to have another, you know, just strictly Fincom meeting next week if you, if you want, um, or maybe, uh, coming out of the select board

meeting, you want to have a little bit more dialogue before we sort of finalize things. Is that in person or electronic? It can be both. It will be an in-person meeting at town hall, but it will be Zoom, so, um, you know, if you can, if you can only attend by Zoom, that, that's fine too.

I'm afraid I'm traveling that night, so I'll be on a flight and won't be able to make it. All right. All right, I'll do my best to be there in person, perhaps they may want us to go over the deck, um. OK, and then we'll, if we don't have a quorum, we won't be able

to approve the finance committee report. Um, so we may have to meet that week, um, in order to kind of approve that for using the warrant book, right? Yeah, and I guess that that might be a reason to post a placeholder meeting for Wednesday just, you know, just in case, um.

To, you know, and that it could even just be a quick Zoom meeting if need be, but um. But yeah, it probably doesn't have that approve something like that by email if that's the only reason to meet is to approve that report. Can we do it by email? Um It,

it's that's really kind of frowned on, um, you know, sort of polling over email to do it that way. But, um, depending on, I mean, if we don't have a quorum, um, I mean, what I would say is I'm happy to, um, essentially get the, the The, um, the spirit, you know, what the group is

thinking and, you know, if, if we have to, um, if we can't make it work on Wednesday, if, if we do a, you know, I don't know, a quick meeting later in the week to just take a vote or something, um, that might be fine, but yeah, maybe we'll have a quorum.

I mean essentially we only need 3 people if I nothing really overly dramatic about that, so we can just find time and vote on it. We have enough people at the uh joint meeting to just meet for a few minutes afterwards and do it. Yeah, I plan to be there, so I think we should have a quorum

if Finn's gonna be there. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so we'll try to, we'll aim for a quorum and not have to have a meeting on this, and we'll look for for feedback via email directly to Jeff. I guess we can't communicate to each other, but we can send it to Jeff over the weekend.

And then the last item, I reviewed the minutes, I'm happy just to prove them. I don't know if we need to go through them in tons of depth, but I'll second the motion. How many minutes are we talking about the one from October? So there's, um, what, what I sent out was October 16th,

November 20th, December 20th, and January 15th. There's 4 meeting minutes um that I sent out last week or Monday or something, or Sunday. Yeah. I, so like my motion would be I reviewed all four, I think they're true to the spirit and the conversation we had.

02:15:23,630	OK, I'm just scanning it, so. Everybody was attending.

02:15:34,300	We've got a 2nd

02:15:37,729	Any discussion of the minutes before we move to a vote?

02:15:42,670	Not hearing any We'll move to a vote.

02:15:49,569	Those voting I, Jared I, David, I, I heard. I, I, Bob I. You know. Alright, so that's 5.

02:16:01,170	OK. Um, The only thing left is, is open items, Fin, and the only thing that maybe would give rise to that is I don't know how many folks, uh, some of you might have gotten it more than once, some of you might have seen it once, but there was an email

sent from a resident, um, with a, uh, an email about 3A, um, uh, and, um, basically 3 communities in Massachusetts, uh, filed with the auditor to take their, the, the sort of the tactic is to say 3A is an unfunded mandate. Um, and, uh, you know, essentially with my quick read,

the auditor agreed that it's an unfunded, uh, mandate. Uh, but, uh, you know, largely, I'm not totally sure what that means one way or another because most of our budget is unfunded mandates, you know, whether it's stormwater or water or, um, you know, just certain reporting we do, uh, we, we get unfunded mandates all the time.

Um, I think over the long term, uh, maybe what this is trying to do is Middleborough has actually tried to quantify that, um, that the 3A will cost large sums of money, uh, you know, half a billion dollars in year one and then $22 million a year ongoing.

Um, I don't believe that what the auditor has opined on is that they, you know, have validated those expenses or anything like that. They have just sort of agreed that it's a, it's an unfunded mandate. Um, but I think it's something that will be, you know, monitored just like the, the Milton Court case was.

Um, uh, you know, it, we'll monitor that and see if, you know, if that has any impacts on us. Um, but, you know, the Fincom itself is not really, um, you know, the, the select board and the planning board are sort of the spokespeople on 3A at, at this point, uh, in, in, in, in,

um, at some point, I know there's been some requests to maybe run. Analysis or, or things like that to determine what our cost would be and at some point it, it may be that the select board, uh, you know, takes that approach, um, but, you know, largely we, you know, there was, uh, we just wanted to make

sure that folks actually did receive it and had a chance to look over the information that get emailed from a, from a resident. Yeah, I would say it's noted. I don't think we have enough information, but it's duly noted and we'll keep an eye on it. So the way that uh I had a discussion with John Graff,

who's McGraph who's running the Hamilton board, he, he asked me whether or not our board had taken up 3A calculations in one form or another because he has, right, you may recall that he made a presentation or he made a statement and has a deck, uh, about, you know, suggesting that, you know, the, the

financial impact of, of 3A on Hamilton. You know, my, my comment to him was that, um, my understanding is that the 3A is not. An item up for vote or discussion really, uh, as part of the open meeting in April. And so that it was not something that we had to

address in immediately as a group and try to come up with a a motion or or do an analysis or God help us another deck um that we had to do on the, the school. Um, but that once we had finished the warrant book, right? Um, the, uh, you know, we might pivot to that because my

understanding is that the town of Wenham, like the town of Hamilton, is planning on having a special meeting sometime I believe before the, I think mid-July deadline that the, uh, the state is required to come into full compliance, right? So, I think what that means for us is that we get through.

The warrant book and we basically have almost 30 days where we're not doing a whole lot as a committee ahead of the um the April meeting. And so uh we could start to figure out and, and coordinate with the select board, you know, what they might want us

to do, um, on this particular topic and, um, and then say in May or early June, there might be an open meeting um that the, the town calls and then we might be asked to opine or make a presentation. Does that sound right to you, Jeff?

Yeah, I believe, I want to say at the top of my head, I think our meeting is special town meeting is going to be June 26th, um, and would be the 3A zoning article, um, and maybe a small handful of other, um, you know, kind of administrative articles if, you know, since we're having a meeting, we may

as well get a few things, other things done. But yeah, I think that's a pretty good summary. Um. You know, and it could be interesting. I mean maybe uh John uh could pass, you know, whatever work he's done along to you like he did with the cutler.

Uh, it would certainly would be interesting to see some of the assumptions they're taking and um And things like that in terms of, um, you know, I think there is some question about what's the You know, what is the real impact? And it's, it's it's sort of tough to know.

I mean, I've heard things that, you know, seem wildly outlandish on one end or the other, you know, that it will have very little impact or it'll have just some catastrophic impact, uh, and the, and the truth is probably somewhere in between. Um, but yeah, much like you did with the Cutler deck, I think

you just want to make sure everything that we put in it, we felt like we had a strong foundation in each assumption or, you know, whatever. I mean, if, if you mimicked what you did in Cutler, I think it would be perfect.

02:21:29,899	But hopefully not 40 pages or whatever. Um, we'll, we'll see. Yours isn't 40, is it? You can't use yours is much trimmer than John's. So that's, that's what does do for a living? Yeah, the amount of work Finn put into it versus, uh, you know, him not being, uh, you know, concise.

Can somebody tell me what does for a living? I don't know off the top of my head. I know he works downtown.

02:22:00,629	OK, guys, um, so I think, I appreciate the bringing up the 3A, um, you know, something else that I, that I think is close to Dano's heart is, uh, something that, you know, we, the finance committee has never really been charged with uh making uh material changes to the, the cost bases of the town.

Uh, we've, we talked about it last year about uh something that we might ask the select board, um, to, uh, to do, but it might be something Dano that We look at after the uh these town meetings, um. And figure out, you know, your, the comment that the um that

the newspaper went was the idea of, of, uh, when I'm seceding from the Hamilton Wenham uh school district. In my mind, you know, that's not, that would never be financially viable, whereas, you know, moving the entire district in to something else is more viable and that just

got me thinking that, you know, Uh, the, the thing that would reduce the costs of this town is Probably more like merging more more functions with Hamilton, um, whether it's the police, fire, you know, we're already we're already merged the school district, the library, the recreation, you know, you know, what other things are there that we would

do that would, um, move us closer to Hamilton, which I think we are more spiritually um aligned with than say some of the other, other towns. Um, so that, that is a project that I could see us. Pushing the summer if we could get the authority to do that.

02:23:41,370	And, and in that spirit, I would say, you know, the, the request you're gonna make to the select board relative to health insurance is maybe a, a, a step in the direction of maybe the, the finance committee starting to assert themselves a little more on sort of the direction of things moving forward.

And then, you know, setting the tone for over the next 345 months starting to, um, you know, delve into more things, look at, you know, these Hamilton mergers, that kind of thing, um. Which I think seems to be the spirit, you know, across the committee, and, um, you know, everybody's now pretty much got

a close to a full year in and I feel like, you know, you, you, you know, like Bob and I have been working on some of the comparable data, um, you know, I think we're poised to maybe, you know, I know Jared's mentioned a couple of times, he's has some ideas.

Uh, you know, relative to pension and, and OPE and things I, I feel like, you know, getting through the first town like that. meeting together is a relatively new board. Uh, you know, it, you know, that it's somewhat of a struggle, but now I feel that you guys are poised to, you

know, sort of turn the corner and, and, and maybe, you know, start doing some impactful stuff moving forward, uh, for the town.

02:24:50,170	Yeah, I still plan to meet with the uh Jeff, the guy who, who runs the, the pension fund, who, whose name you gave me. I just figured this stuff was more important before we delved into that. Yeah, no, I agree.

02:25:04,500	I OK. So I'm looking at the clock and I'm looking at the end of the agenda here. Do you have any other topics folks want to discuss before we close the meeting? Like we lost our only member of the public. Wow. All right, I, you know, That's my spreadsheet.

02:25:31,469	All right guys, well then I'm gonna uh propose a motion that we close the uh Wenham Finance Committee here at 9:27 p.m. Second, I, I.

02:25:46,399	Yeah. All right guys, that's it then. Thank you. Thank you very much guys appreciate all your time on this stuff, right, bye bye. Bye bye.