I you know I one back. Hamilton uh. I do, uh do not have a quorum Not yet. Do you anticipate having a quorum? so Yes definitely yeah yeah. yeah, I’m doing great. Um, do you want me to wait, Joe like a so let’s see who that is and then picking up from basketball too Um

I think we’ll get started Hi, good evening. Can everybody hear me? Yeah. OK, um, we’ll start off, um, I’m gonna call us to hoarder and then we can go around, um, I, I called to order the meeting of the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School Committee at 6:35 p.m. Wednesday, November 19, 2025, um,

way to Wenham. I’ll call theinham select board to order in President Peter Clay Deidra Perotti, and Gerry Cheesman for Yes. Uh, I call the Wham uh finance and advisory Committee here open. All right, um it’s like not yet. Not yet. No, no, OK All right. um, we’ll get

started and we may get back to you at some point. Um. All right, uh, thanks everybody. This is a great opportunity for us. I feel like I’m really, it’s very loud, um, Zip seems super loud to you guys. No, I just, I don’t know. Can you get, is it?

OK, good. All right, that’s fine. Um, good opportunity for um us all to get together, all the quintuple boards and have a really good initial budget conversation. Um, so first on the agenda is uh the town of Wenham. Yes. Uh, thank you. So FY 27 budget, we’re just talking general

issues and challenges going forward. Obviously we’re in the early stages of the budget process. Uh, information presented here is preliminary and could very well, you could say likely change materially over the next 6 to 8 weeks. Uh, the Wenham select board’s goal is to develop a fiscally responsible budget that supports level or

near level service delivery delivery while staying in the confines of Proposition 2.15. Um, and anticipated new growth We estimate, uh, it’s estimated to allow for approximately 3% year over year growth in total available revenue for FY 27. It should, we should note that this presentation only covers

operating budgets for FY 27, as is the case in most years in Wenham. any capital requests will be covered with certified free cash. Contractual obligations, trash collection, health insurance and pension costs are the key drivers for the FY 27 budget, as we’ll talk about the top 3 sort of drivers or trash collection, health insurance and pension, however.

uh, we have one union contract we will be negotiating. That is the library. Um, it’s too early to project any possible impact thus far. We start negotiations in January, so that’s another thing I wanted to mention. OK, great. Thanks, Joe. Um, so Joe kind of covered things at a

high level. Uh, we’ll dive a little deeper into some of the details. Uh, obviously the biggest driver for us, uh, half of our budget is uh the Hamilton 1M school district, uh, which we project to go up, uh, overall with loss of END, extra maintenance and things like that, uh,

11.52% for the year, which is roughly 1.5 million, um, one of the big issues for us is is apportionment. Uh, we are shifting a little bit uh on apportionment from, from Hamilton to Wenham, uh, and while it’s a small number, it’s less than 0.5% when you apply a small number to a big budget,

uh, it equates to a somewhat large number. So in this case, uh, we think about $150,000 would shift to Wen n ha m strictly according to to to uh apportionment if the budget didn’t change at all, uh, from there, uh, as most of you are aware, this really the three big drivers of the budget

that I’ll let you know, Vinny get into in more detail, but you know it’s just the operating budget increase for the for the district, the reduction of the available END to offset that assessment and then, you know, some deferred maintenance and safety at some of the school buildings, uh, so

that’s kind of the biggest driver for us, uh, another smaller number, but um sort of variable for us is the Essex tech assessment, um, last year we had 18 students at Essex Tech, um, at roughly 19,000 a student, uh, we’re assuming that it will have a similar growth rate or COA on,

on the per student cost, which is about 4.32%, um, which could drive the budget up $15,000 if we have the same number of students, with that being said, the overall budget, uh, could fluctuate up or down maybe $40,000 based on losing or gaining one or two students, um, probably

similar to Hamilton, one of the bigger drivers in our budget, uh, is the proposed, uh, change with the trash collection, um, we are working on the, there’s two parts to that. There’s the collection side, uh, which we think right now based on the negotiations we’ve had, could go up 17% or maybe $75,000

there’s also the disposal side of the trash management, uh, and we entered into a contract with Wind Waste Solutions, uh, just a few months ago, uh, and that is, uh, kicking in about a 19% increase, uh, or $19,000 for us, um, and while those numbers might seem large, uh, just a

couple of years ago, uh, Hamilton, Wenham, and many other communities were hearing that their trash collection costs could go up, you know, 60 to 80%, um, so, so, you know, we’re, we’re actually fairly happy with these higher numbers that you’re seeing. Um, a new development, uh, that we just learned thanks to, uh, my friend Wendy over in

Hamilton is that the Maya Healthcare premiums could be going up 16 to 22%, uh, on top of what was a 19+% increase last year, um, so that would be a big driver for us, uh, maybe $200,000 but that, you know, is something we’re going to have to look at because, you know, those year over year increases

not only for the town but for the employees is is going to be a little bit tough to swallow, uh, so we’re hoping, uh, to, to meet with Maya and, and, and get some better news and, and maybe look at some different solutions there. Uh, the final big ticket item for us, uh, is the pension

costs. Uh, we are members of the Essex Regional Retirement System. We typically start off budget season assuming a 10% increase in our pension assessment, which would work out to about 118,000, um, we’ll get firmer numbers on that in mid um mid December when, um, we get our apportionment letter, uh, where

they take, uh, our pro rata share of all eligible payroll divided by the the eligible payroll for the entire, uh, Essex Regional retirement System to tell us what our actual increase will be. Uh, a couple of other items um, you know, we sort of projecting some healthy conservative estimates for increases for our joint

programs with Hamilton, the per the permitting services and the recreation, that’s a $33,000 increase at this time, but you know, I’ll work with Wendy over the next couple of months to, to tighten that up. Uh, the remainder of the budget drivers, it’s really, you know, contractual obligations in KOA.

Uh, we settled with three of our 4 unions, uh, last year, uh, DP W call fire and police, and I would say on average the coal is there are averaging about 3%, uh, but you also have step increases, uh, and we’ve had some promotions uh within the police department that will

sort of shift, uh, a little bit higher, uh, based on folks having higher degrees and things like that. Uh, we’re planning on 3% uh non-union COA, um, to sort of match the union members, uh, at town hall, uh, and all other non-union positions, and as Joe mentioned, the, the library is

ne go ti ating uh, we’ll probably be starting in January, uh, so it’s a little too early, um, to, to tell, uh, what, what the story will be there, um, final piece for us, it’s a small number but, uh, several years ago the town adopted a plan for OPEB where they contributed $10,000

in year one and increase that every year by $10,000 with a a plan to be fully funded, um, which will be, um, after we fully fund the pension system, we will sort of increase, we’ll take those resources and apply them to our OPEB to uh OPEB Trust to expedite the funding of that, um, that, that

obligation. Everything else at this point pretty much level funded um, so if you uh want to go to the last page of my slide there, then, um, it just sort of lays out what the um what we project our budget to look like, um for FY 26, ultimately we’re about $220,000 under the levy

limit, uh, based on all the preliminary numbers we have so far, uh, we are looking at, you know, operating expenses, increasing at just over $2.2 million across the town operating budgets, the Hamilton Wyndham School District in Essex Tech, um, you know, that works out to overall about an 8.8% increase, um, we are assuming, um, you know, we’ll,

we’ll keep our overlay the same at 200,000 state aid we’re assuming will stay level. and then we’re building in a 5% increase for our local receipts with all that being said, we would need to raise $24.3 million from taxation, um, and we are at a levy limit of about

23.2, uh, so right at as we stand right now, uh, the town of Wenham would be about $1.15 million over the levy limit. Um, this is probably the first round of, you know, somewhat sour news you’ll hear tonight, um, but I will say, you know, it’s it we always do start high or high

and, and sort of come down over over budget season so, uh, I am quite sure this number will be whittled down over time as we, you know, continue discussions. That’s all we have Great thank you People have questions OK Thank you for your work Thanks um so does Hamilton want to go? we’ll jump into it.

OK. I, I can’t promise I’ll be as quick as Joe and Jeff were, but I’ll, I’ll try. I’ve only got a few sides, and I’ll let you know when to switch. Um, thank you and good evening everybody. Obviously we are still at the very beginning of our budget process, but there

are a number of concerning signs already. Next slide. This is a quick look at our revenue outlook for FY 27. This does not include free cash or potential potential new revenue related to the proposed zoning change of Gordon Conwell. Uh, you can see from the top line what we are projecting a modest,

uh, 2.53% revenue growth for FY 27 over current fiscal year to a little bit more than $42.1 million. as has been noted, we recently, um, you know, had some discussions and we’re, we’re carrying a number in our budget for the dispar the school department based on some

information that they’ve shared with us and uh if we just take the potential school assessment for Hamilton and apply it against our projected revenues. We’re gonna start with a $1.4 million deficit on its own. This would create a reduction in town spending of nearly 9.5%, that is before considering townside expenses.

Next slide um, here we can see some of the known increases for FY 27. I say known, but the only thing that is known is that these items will all be increasing. except for the contractual increases for employees, the other increases are presented as a range. um taken together they represent

about $850,000 of new spending for Hamilton, not because we’re increasing anything but because costs that are either contractual or beyond our control are going up. Um, in anticipation of these factors, the town has already been working to find new revenues and reduce costs. Slide 4, please. Here are some of the things the town has done or is

doing to try and reduce the pressure on our taxpayers. July, um, you know, next slide. regionalized emergency operations center uh, potential savings of up to $350,000 in the first year, potential special revenue from Gordon Conwell that money wouldn’t go into the general operating fund budget it would probably be directed to a special revenue fund as it’s

one time money in our financial policies wouldn’t allow us to spend it in the budget. and potential increase in tax revenues from Gordon Conwell. The number on the screen is just a guess. Uh, we’ve heard, we’ve had a range of 150 to $750,000 until we know until the until the zoning passes until the apartment sell to a

private developer until we know what kind of rents they’re gonna charge we can’t really make a an accurate estimate on what that property could yield for revenue. I will say that the 18 units of brand new construction are Willow Street only gets a town about $63,000 a year.

We could assume that per unit you wouldn’t get that much from the 50 year old apartments out at Gordon Conwell. So we took 350 in here and we’re hoping that we could get there but we’ll have to wait and see what what the property sells for. Uh, two of these items obviously have a potential

impact the budget positively, um, I’m gonna cover that stuff. If we can realize $350,000 in revenue from Gordon Colwell Apartments and save $350,000 from regionalizing 911. The town would be within $100,000 of managing our potential $800,000 in increases. but that still leaves the potential $1.4 million dollar increase on the school side.

So after we’ve already done all these other things, we’re still gonna be looking at a hole if the budget you’re looking at goes through um, last, last one please, last slide in summary, the key takeaways at this early phase is shown here. The initial projection for school department spending is not supported by local revenues

without an override. Hamilton has already taken steps to create new revenue and cut expenses. based on those efforts, we believe Hamilton could find a way to absorb the town side increase in expenses, but there’s no scenario in which the current projected school expenses could be absorbed without an operational override. Like Jeff said, more cheery news.

people have questions for Hamilton. I units in Gordon’s 209. Oh. I, I guess I just had a question about the trash. Both of you mentioned the trash um, is that a what, how many years is the contract? Do we know like how many years was 10 years, but it seems like they’re only looking

to get 5 years now. um. the previous contract was signed, uh, a little under duress if people this predates me and Jeff, but people remember Hilton went under and left the towns holding the bag so the town’s Hamilton and Wenham went out and were able to get Casella to come in on a 10 year contract, but

that landscape has changed like Jeff said 3 or 4 years ago they were talking about 40 and 150, 60% increases. um because it’s so volatile they don’t want to do 10-year contracts anymore because it puts them in a bad place for their operating. So, um, they’re asking for a 5 year contract and as Jeff said

they’re looking somewhere in the 16 to 20% increase range at least. Thank you I have a question. Um, it’s just more like word, the word semantics. Um, in the key takeaways, it says the initial projection cannot be supported by the local budgets without a school department override. Does that mean a town override? Cause we can’t override.

override to support the schools because but the town, the voters, just I want to be very clear, we are not able to override anything. OK. Thank you. Anybody else? Other questions OK. Looks like you’re up Mm. I’m gonna about the Hamilton Hamilton Wyndham Regional School Committee department, uh, budget.

While Vinnie’s setting up, I’ll take a second here to say, um, all these slides will be presented to no kidding, um, he’s got a smaller deck that he’ll present, but we wanted to make sure that every everybody had every single thing available to us now. Um, so this this this is a lot of information.

not all of it will be shown in Vinny’s presentation, but we still wanted to make sure that everybody had everything that is currently available related to the school budgets and as with the towns, we are still in the process of still modeling out our budget, waiting for things like insurance and retirement deadlines and Medicare payments

and things like that. So we’ll also be shifting the numbers as we go as we all understand, but uh just wanted to be clear that the presentation will not be all these slides you have before you. like an actual bug in here. Uh, thank you guys for joining us tonight. Uh, thanks to the

two select boards and the two, thinkcoms from both communities. Obviously the town administrators, uh, and town managers, their finance team, both directors, uh, obviously my school committee and a special thanks to Eric Tracy, our superintendent. Uh, obviously here to present to you the superintendent’s preliminary FY 27 budget recommendation, uh, just to go

back to that, uh, main word there, preliminary, uh, we know there are a lot of uh hard conversations that are going to happen over the next 2 to 2 to 3 months and a lot of difficult decisions, uh, before our final budget is approved in February. So again, this is just our preliminary budget and it will

change between now and that final approval in February Uh, but what do we look at when we go to build our budget? It’s mostly the same as what both communities go to look at. Uh, our main driver is our collective bargaining agreements. These are agreements with our five unions and the school committee, uh,

that’s where we go to look for our Kohler adjustments, any of our step increases in our column and lane changes. Again, these three items, it was, is what drives most of our increases in expenditures year over year. We also go and look at our individual administrative agreements. Uh, these are agreements with our non-union personnel. Um, so all

of our administrators are central office team and all of our principals, uh, we also look at any retirements. Uh, we are not notified of retirements until December 1st, uh, so those numbers are not incorporated into these figures, but that is one thing we go to look at when we build our budget.

We also look at staff turnover, uh, what we budgeted for in FY 26 to what actually is occurring today. Uh, usually there’s savings year over year and we roll those savings forward into the next budget cycle FY 27. Just like both communities said, we look at our health insurance,

our current enrollment, and any changes to our premium rate increases. Uh, we recently underwent a 10-year contract for transportation, uh, FY 27 will be the second year of that contract. Uh, so those increases are already laid out. We would then look at any of our out of district tuition

costs, uh, changes certified by the state in any changes in our enrollment and what students we have coming in and who do we have graduating? Uh, next, we would look at any requests from our building to principals. Uh, I’m sorry, our building principles or department heads, and then lastly, uh, the conditions of our buildings and our grounds.

Uh, for this year, we have a few unique difficulties, some of them the same things we see all, uh, the time, every budget cycle, however, there are two unique items this year that are bringing us uh more difficulties, uh, but just some things that we’re seeing, we do have an increase in our

resident enrollment again it’s up slightly at around 2.3%. We’re continuing to see the enrollment shift towards Wenham and away from Hamilton, uh, the biggest difficulty this year is FY 26’s decision to use END uh to to avoid an operational override at the 2025 annual town meeting, uh, and then how

do we adequately fund a base for our maintenance, uh, and repairs and projects considering the results of our recent school building vote. And then last, just like everyone here is seeing at home in both communities, the rising cost of everyday items between, uh, increased inflation, uh, tariffs, and just cost of regular salaries, increasing is

driving the cost of everything up. So just to briefly hit on enrollment, uh, you’re seeing here in front of you the change for Hamilton year of a year. Uh, they had 1,068 students during the 2024, 2025 school year and they are up to 1,087 for FY uh for the current school year,

which is an addition of 19 students or roughly 1.8% increase for Hamilton’s enrollment. Uh, in terms of Wenham, they went from 564 students in the 2024, 2025 school year to 582 in increase of 18 or 3.2% for them. Um, so combined for the district’s resident enrollment we went from 1,632 to, I’m sorry, wow, 1,632 to 1,669, an

increase of 37 students or roughly the 2.3%. But that’s not all the students we educate, we educate 72 more students, 54 of them being school choice in, at 17 pre-K tuition in and one special ed tuition in student, uh, between those two populations, we’re seeing a decrease of 4 students

year to year, or roughly a drop of 5.6% in that category. So when you layer in the new enrollment on October 1st, 2025 and apply that to the prior two-year average, uh, we’re coming up with a new, uh, 3-year rolling average of 65.51%. Hamilton and 34.49% Wenham. That’s a shift of

$152,000. Uh, what that means if we just rolled forward our FY 26 operating assessment at a level funded approach meaning we didn’t change anything in terms of our expenditures we would still see an increase to Wenham right out of the gate of 1.2% and a drop in Hamilton

of 0.62%. Uh just to give you a point of reference, last year we saw $130,000 swing. going towards Hamilton, I’m sorry, going towards Wenham, the year before that we saw a $24,000 swing going towards Hamilton. So it is larger than the prior 3 years and is something we’ve had to deal with during this budget process.

Um, just to jump into some of our expenditures for our operating, uh, budget expenditure summary. You see here broken down by DESI category. Uh, we are recommending an increase year over year of approximately $3.1 million or 6.84%. Uh, you can see our main drivers are our main, uh, operations and maintenance and our benefits and fixed charges.

Uh, so this $3.1 million does incorporate an additional maintenance requests of approximately $550,000. I’m gonna briefly go through, uh, each of the individual schools. Some of it’s repetitive, so I’ll try not to repeat it during all of them, but just to give you a brief idea of where these additional requests are coming from, uh, at the Bucher

Elementary School, we have a special project scenario of approximately $37,000 in total. At this time, we’re estimating 2 000 $0 for a security vestibule. Now you will see this at all 5 of the schools in a moment. Um, we are hoping to secure funding to upgrade our um security

infrastructure at all of the 5, all of the 5 schools, uh, in install security vestibules. At each school has a different layout in their front entrance. So each school has a different price tag on what we anticipate that’s gonna cost. Out of the five schools, 4 of them, this fun ding would go to install the

security vestibule at one of the schools, the middle school, it is funding for a study to to find out how we can install a proper security vestibule because of the way that front entrance is laid out, uh, it will not fall into our current plan, and we really need an expert to come in and design

how we can lay that out, um, to beef up our security at the middle school. In addition to the security vestibules, uh, at the Buker School, we have a new kitchen floor, uh, behind this door over here. It is very wavy, uh, and has, uh has had some upheavals in the past few years. Uh, it really

needs to be ripped out and reinstalled. Uh, we also have a request to install ventilation in the nurse’s office, uh, down the hall over here. We have an increase in our maintenance repairs of approximately 27,000 and an increase to our custodial and maintenance supplies of just under 10,000. Now depending on

whether we do these, uh, maintenance projects in-house or whether we contract them out would fall into one of those two buckets. If our own maintenance department does it, it would fall under the bottom if we outsource it, it would obviously fall into the maintenance and repairs. This type of scenario is, uh, how all five elementary schools

follow So again, I will try not to be too repetitive, uh, at Cutler, we have the security vestibules again. Uh, we also have sprinkler repairs. So at every building except the Buker, we have a sprinkler system. There is not a sprinkler system in this building, uh, so there’s no repairs obviously needed here.

However, all of our schools are past their five-year inspection period, uh, which we will undergo in FY 27, which is very costly and we anticipate needing uh repairs all across the district in order to maintain, uh, the sprinkler system. We also have a request at Cutler to replace uh one of the door systems over there.

The reason for the price tag is a set of 4 doors that needs magnetic locks installed and needs the elect ron ic um, key cards put in, uh, and that comes becomes costly when you start adding in the, the security that our doors now need at, um, the school level. Again, we have

our maintenance and repairs in our custodian supplies. At the Winterb Elementary School, uh, it’s the same with the security vestibules. Uh, here we are, we also have the need to install a burglar alarm. All of our schools currently have a burglar system except the Winthrop element

le ment ary School, uh, with the way the world is today, we would really like to install a burglar alarm system at the Winthrop School. Uh, we also have the same thing, the sprinkler repairs at Winthrop. Uh, moving on to Myers River, um, it’s really only the

security vestibules there and as I said, this is a study, not the actual install. Uh, moving on to the high school, uh, the price moves up a little bit. We have our security vestibules, but the big ticket is our sprinkler head replacement and repair. So a few decades back, the all of these sprinkler heads that

were installed at the high school were recalled. We did not replace them, and now that we are up for our five-year inspection, we are predicting that most of them will fail, uh, once you have one of them fail during your testing, uh, you’re forced to test all of them and go through a replacement

project. So right now I believe there are over 70, I I think it was 70 sprinkler heads that are past, um, that were recalled that we are hoping uh to replace during the next budget cycle. We also have the massive gym divider curtain that broke last month. Uh, it divides the middle school portion of the

gym to the high school portion and also separates the gym courts, uh, that is no longer operable and needs to be replaced. Again, we have our maintenance repairs and our custodial supplies, um, like the other buildings. So again that 550,000 we are requesting in maintenance is included in that $3.1 million number on the previous lot.

Hey Vinnie, yes, you can stop me so I can breathe. Eric what do you get for the security vestibule like what is it, just another sort of set of glass doors in addition to the door that’s already there and that then becomes a vestibule, is on the school, uh,

you know, the, the Winthrop would probably be an L-shaped glass vestibule. with locked doors that would have to be buzzed in so there’s some electrical that has to be done and um they generally don’t go floor to ceiling because if you walk in the windthrop, the ceiling is Jim Height. It’s, it’s really high

so they’re high enough to keep somebody contained here at the Buker, if you walk in the front door, it would really be one panel across uh, with a door that has a buzz in buzz out feature as well. while the whole price tag is seems exhibit 50,000 or 30,000 doesn’t really seem to me.

like you’re gonna get much for it. Like, is it really gonna add a layer of security It, it will absolutely add a layer because you can’t just walk right in. Right now somebody can walk into any of our elementary schools and you’re in the building. You can

bypass the office at the Cutler because the office can see you out the window, but may not know which direction you go. Um, Winthrop, the same thing, you can walk right in and just keep walking. Uh, same with, same with the Buker. So we’ll add uh some containment which is what’s an important piece of

slowing things down, uh if you look at it from our perspective of gunfire and no. it’s it’s not something that would be designed for that that would be humility be much more expensive. The part of the inspection that we would need to have advanced security. protocols Like when we have our

inspections, is that something they’re going to look at, the security? Uh no, not, not generally, but if they it depending on what direction you decide to go with the building if you’re doing a renovation you would get a much greater depth of design because you really want to be able to

speak to someone face to face, uh, keeping that person in the office safe as well while you’re interacting with someone who’s coming in. You don’t know who generally. A lot of times we know that’s so and so’s mom or dad or grandparent, but there are people that come to the buildings and and our

people don’t know so this way they have one that layer of face to face security. They can still identify them, get their credentials, and then still contain them in the building. They can’t, they can’t go any further than those vestibules. Yeah, so, so my question is, should we be spending more on

the security, not less. Yeah, I think the, the, the reality is trying to figure out what what to do with our buildings once we figure out what to do with the buildings that would be incorporated in in some type of a design whether it’s a renovation and renovation addition whether it’s rebuild,

it’s, it’s really gonna come down to what we decide as communities to to do with our buildings. because essentially what you’re gonna put in, you’re going to take out. over time. You you put in a vestibule, that vestibule may not be part of a renovation, for example, it may be

something more substantial, uh, they may, you know, a renovation could relocate the front door in some cases, so you’re really putting in for $1500 you’re covering 4 out of your 5 schools, um for now having the containment ability because when you look down the road say you start with one school, pick any school, start there,

do some renovations. The other schools are still waiting, so they’ll, we, we can, this is the fastest way to get something in place for what’s a reasonable price. Thanks. Hey Vinny Yes, um, why is the, uh, maintenance and repairs for Miles River so so much higher than all the other schools.

Um, there is more um, I can certainly look into that. I would probably have to ask our maintenance director what, what he listed in there, that is higher than the other schools. OK. Thanks. Get I, I have a question. um talking about the Bucher Elementary, the $10,000 for the new kitchen floor. Is that

something that’s done in-house by the maintenance crew here or is that something that would need to be um contracted something at that level would probably have to be contracted. It’s not just tile replacement. If it was just replacing the tile, our in-house staff could do it. Um, we’re probably gonna have to jack hammer up the

floor, which we will not get into ourselves. OK But you do try to do as much in-house as possible. Yes, we currently only have 2 maintenance staff members um. they’re not licensed in any specific trades, so we are limited on what they can perform, but as much as they can, we can do in-house, we try to do.

OK, thank you. Keep going Um, so just to hit on some other major expenses other than our additional maintenance requests. Uh, obviously, it’s our staffing. Um, year over year we are seeing an increase of approximately $2.1 million. Uh, if you compare this to our 26 budget, our, our total, uh, payroll budget for FY 26 was

approximately $27.5 million. Uh, if you factor in those that staff turnover that I mentioned before and some other staffing changes that occurred in FY 26. We’re actually seeing a reduction of $360,000. So this year, uh, we saw a large uh turnover in staff. that ultimately turned into salary savings, uh, that we are

saving in FY 26 and rolling that forward into FY 27’s budget. Uh, we have a minor swap out for FTEs. Uh, this is simply swapping out, um, a half an FTE of a uh special ed teacher, uh, to have an FTE psychologist. Usually psychologists come with higher degrees, higher, um, experience

and a little more costly on the teacher’s salary schedule. Uh, we also have some additional changes to our stipends for approximately 29,000. Uh, the only new staffing request is for a 0.4 uh special ed administrator for a portion of the year, uh, which is coming in at an estimate of 57,000.

Uh, we have a an I call it an extreme uptick in long-term substitutes, uh, our long term substitute, uh, expenditure line last year was overexpended by over $120,000. Uh, we are utilizing long term subs for maternity leaves at a higher rate than we have seen in the past, and therefore need to uh

substantially increase that line. Uh, the next two items are around our collective bargaining agreements our column in step advancements are coming in at just under $300,000 again for this line item though, the deadline for column advancement is not till December 1st, so I do anticipate that number will grow by the tentative budget in

January. Uh, but without a doubt the biggest item on here is our colas coming in at just under a million dollars. This is, um, extremely large if you compare it to other budget cycles. Uh, this represents a loan almost a 3% assessment, uh, to the towns from our Cola alone. So our new

FY 27, uh, budgeted payroll comes in at 2 28.7 million, up around 4.2%. Uh, we are not alone, just like the towns are seeing, but not to the extent the town saw our health insurance is growing at a rapid rate. Personally, I do not understand how health insurance can continue to rise at this rate without something

else giving not only in a small school district’s budget, but for everyone at home, I really don’t understand how everyone can continue to take portion, larger portions of their paycheck towards their health insurance, uh, but nonetheless this isn’t a, you know, Hamilton-Wentham problem. It’s probably more of a society problem, but

nonetheless, uh, I don’t know how it’s gonna continue to do this, but to build our health insurance budget, we just simply look at how many people are enrolled in our plan as of a certain date for our preliminary budget. Uh, that was who did we have enrolled on October 1st, 2025. We just

multiply that out by exactly what our cost of each plan is currently that total gross amount comes out to 4. $1 million. If you from there simply add in our premium rate increase, which we have a 9.9% rate increase for our Medicare plans and a 12% increase for our regular premium rate adds

$477,000 into our health insurance alone just from our premium rate increase, which is um substantial nonetheless. In addition to that though, the district is moving from a 63% contribution to a 65% contribution that then adds an additional $123,000 to our health insurance line, just those two moves alone comes up with your approximately $600,000 increase to health insurance.

That makes our FY 27 preliminary health insurance budget of $4.7 million which is up 15.5%, which again is probably the largest increase in any one category within our budget and I’ll say it again, it is not sustainable Um, just to the, did the, yep, 63 to 65. Was that part of the negotiations, the contract, yeah.

Um, and how does that compare to other we are low schools. Most people are between 70 and 80. Most school districts contribute between 70 and 80%. so we were 60, uh, 2 years ago. and we’ve been 60 for as long as I’ve known. So that speaks to your ability to attract

good, it hurts us. Yeah, it’s hurt us over and over through the years and the, the, the reality is there, there are two pain points the cost. you know, if I have a new teacher coming in at $62,000 who needs a family plan? They just lost their 1st $15,000 to

their health insurance. If they, if they take the, the HMO, uh, excuse me, PPO plan. Some people have to do that, um, and try to figure it out, but there are, um, a number of people in the districts who work for their healthcare. They, they, we, we’ve had instances

where people have paid us at the end of the week. uh, to keep their healthcare. So you think we’re probably low by 5%. approximately yeah yeah. The average is generally in this area about 70, um, some of the bigger cities go a little bit higher. I is, but I don’t know what

problem is. Oh, I think I know what a step advancement is. I don’t know what a column advances. um, so I could certainly pull up the salary schedule, but just to make it easy, if you’re looking horizontally on our salary schedule, it would be like a bachelor’s degree, a

master’s degree, or if you have additional credits you move over columns. So as a teacher, uh, goes through their career and takes more college credit courses. They can move columns and earn a higher salary. Second question, where are the pension costs for the school staff, where, where do those show up in the budget? so there

within the detail, I’m sorry, within the detail in your packet, uh, you can find that number. Uh, we have two pension systems for our employees, the maths teachers retirement System, which the district does not contribute to that is a state funded pension system, so you’re everyone’s income tax

money helps fund that pension system. Uh, the other one is the Essex County, just like, uh, both towns are members in, uh, that we do contribute to and I believe the number off the top of my head is about 1.4 million, but I can give, give you an

exact number in a second Is, is that 1.4? I think it is. But is there a line that rolls up to? I’m just in the detailed packet if there is a line that it rolls up to, uh, I’d only told you the difference year over year, which is about 143.

Let me just find it so I’m not giving you the wrong numbers. Uh, so it’s on page 24 of, uh, one of your handouts, which is the account detail it lists out all 600 of our accounts that we use. It’s the benefits and fixed charges. I can bring it up on

the screen if you need me to, um, over the last. Again, it’s page 24. It’s 24 of the last packet. So not the packet you have in your hand right now. The one that looks like an Excel spreadsheet. you probably Oh, OK. Uh, so for FY 27, we have budgeted 1,478,000. That’s up

about 11%, which is the exact percent increase from the prior year. Thank you. So did I finish this one? I did. So we are up 14.5% on health insurance. OK. Uh, moving on to our revenue sources. So this chart here is excluding excess and deficiency, which I’ll talk about in the

next chart, but if you completely remove our excess and deficiency amounts, uh, year over year we are seeing strong revenue growth at a bigger percent than I believe we’ve ever seen in the past at around 7.5%. Uh, the two main drivers you can clearly see here is the funding we get from

the state, uh, both through circuit breaker and through our chapter 78, uh, we’re combined, we’re seeing almost an increase of $600,000 when you add the two of them together. So again, outside of excess and deficiency, we are seeing a lot of revenue growth, um, year over year, which is obviously a good thing to help lower assessments.

However the biggest difficulty we are facing this year is our reduction in END, uh, as many of you were here last year. Uh, it was decided to fund our FYA to offset our FY 26 operating budget with one time revenue funds through our excess and deficiency account in FY 26. we offset a total of $288,000.

Right now, an uncertified END amount I am estimating at 830,000, which is a reduction of approximately $1.2 million which really is the exact reason you don’t want to use END to offset your operating budget. You should always use END, uh, just like the communities use free cash to purchase capital items one-time expenditures, not things that

reoccur every year, like salaries, which is what we did last year in order to avoid an operational override at the April 2025 town meeting. Um, so now we are faced with how do we deal with that $1.2 million dollar deficit, uh, just to go back, I do believe this number

will increase slightly. Again, this is an uncertified amount from the state. I do anticipate it’ll probably move up to about $900,000 but uh you know, just to mention that, but nonetheless we are still short, about $1.2 million which completely flips our revenue year over year. You saw in the

prior chart, revenue growth of 7.5% when you factor in END, it’s a reduction of 7.5%. If we don’t do anything else, that funding, there’s no other place the school district generates funds. That funding would fall upon taxpayers if nothing else is to budge within the budget process, um, so again that is without a doubt

the biggest difficulty we are facing for our 27 budget. So just to roll up all our operating, uh, information here. We had our FY 26 starting point of about $46.5 million. Uh, you add in our increases, which includes that additional request for maintenance of 3.1 million.

get you to our new um FY 27 total operating budget of 49.7 million, um, reduce our revenues if you held END flat, gives you our operating budget after offsets of 39.7%, but then again we have to factor in that shortfall in END, which adds back that 1.2 million, which brings our net assessment

to just under $41 million when you apply that, uh, the new enrollment shift It’s an increase to Hamilton of 2.4 million or roughly 9.81% and increased to Wenham of just under 1.5 million or roughly 11.83%. So that was the operating side. Very briefly, I’m gonna hit on the debt service side, uh, for

FY 27, we have 3 less projects in FY 26, the current year we’re in. It was the last payment for this Winthrop sprinkler system, the FY 2021 capital projects. and the first authorization of $250,000 for the Cutler feasibility study. Those all ended in FY 26, leaving only our four remaining projects that you see here, um, which

again you apply the same split as our operating budget. Add these two numbers together, the end result for our preliminary FY 27 budget recommendation, um, combined for Hamilton is an increase of 2.4 million or in the 9.63%. excuse me, and for one I’m 1.5 million or 11.6 and the

district as a total, um, just over $4 million or 10.32%. Thank you I said, any other questions? Thank you, Benny. That’s soak for a minute. That’s OK the we all have and put in the I Anybody have any questions I want to talk about the high school roof if you have the ability to do that when you’re

ready. So I think everybody here knows we’ve been working, we were accepted into the uh MSBA program ARP side this time to repair the roof for the high school. We’ve been trying to do that for a number of years. We’ve been doing repairs and repairs and repairs. Now this is for a full replacement, um, actually was

in a meeting yesterday afternoon where they finalized some of the numbers, uh, full replacement of the high school roof portion only is $10.2 million and the um all in possibility for a grant from MSBA is about $4.4 million. I don’t have the exact round numbers, but that’s roughly where we are now. So the MSBA would contribute $4.4

million of that 10.2 million to replace the high school roof only. so 5.8 I was on the town clock. 5.6 approximately, yeah. so that would come to town meeting as a override right? Once we get, we, we, we haven’t been fully approved by the state yet. In December, they have their board meeting for the MSBA board meeting.

They will take the numbers that we finalized yesterday, bring it to the board. The board will approve it, then we would process it as a request uh for debt exclusion at the town meeting. in April, so we would make the April meeting. We, we, we are on schedule to make the April meeting so that we can start

the project in July, the the the the project’s so large it will not be finished in summer. It’s, it’s, it’ll overlap into the school year so our target would be to start it as soon as we could in July. So the only thing that’s certain tonight is that we’re gonna have a $5.6 billion bill.

to float some bonds to fix the roof to be split between two towns, so that’s pretty by 0.8, right? 5.8 5.8, yeah. So that’s a definite coming to town meeting. Uh, no, it’s not. It, it has to be approved by the MSBA still, so in their December board meaning if they approve it, then, then it would

come to the committee to determine whether to bring it. The committee would still have to make that determination and vote the the authorization. So if they do all the positive votes will intention is to have it on the warrant for town meeting. So that’s a pretty solid number right now. Right, yesterday I had one of the

last meetings to to finalize the numbers with them. OK, thanks Can I ask everyone a question? So my school committee has not seen this budget presentation. They don’t see it till tomorrow. Usually the way our budget calendar falls, a few years ago we agreed that this meeting would be the meeting before

Thanksgiving, um, but the way the calendar falls, they haven’t even seen it yet, and I’m presenting to you guys before I present it to them. Do you guys have a standing meeting the first Wednesday in December. If not, I would like to change this meeting from the meeting before the

week before Thanksgiving to just the first Wednesday in December, so at least they get a chance to have it presented to them, ask questions before they have to come in here Yeah, I mean, if I was on the school committee, I would. be giving you some grief exactly why I’m asking the

capital finance committee. The capital finance has seen it, yes, but not the, not no, it, it it logistically it’s a little bit challenging because we we’re seeing it at the same time, so you know obviously we’ll, we will probably have more in-depth conversation about it tomorrow, but that’s after this meeting, which is

So it seems like nobody has like a standing meeting the first Wednesday of the month, so if it’s OK next year. probably just gonna recommend it’s the first Wednesday in December. Well, that, that works so long as it’s before the first Saturday in December. because the first Saturday is the budget

on budget uh Saturday morning meeting. So looking at the calendar Wednesday before Saturday works fine. And even that’s tight because we’re, um, you want that budget packet in hand on Wednesday, but, um, but the flip side of that is our budget is much more fully formed.

by that first win this year, but it so that works. I mean that works for 2026, but it’s a that’s a really important that’s like 6 years away for the next 2 years it’ll work. Next two years it’ll work. Right. But if we were, I mean, in other words, it sounds like

you’re saying like if we were to think about rewarding how we do it. It’s the first you’re, you’re saying, Gary, if I’m getting you right, you’re saying what would work would be the first it needs to be the first Wednesday before the first, the first Saturday. So if there is

no such thing, then it would need to be in November. Yes, to keep an eye on that. Yeah, it mainly answers my question. If you’re comfortable with moving it. Yeah, for next year, yeah. OK Thank you Thanks question over here so any update on uh solar work at the high school or middle school?

so we have come out of this just where people, this is, I think 3 years running now, 3 years, uh, been going on. We signed an agreement 3 years ago, a school committee with our, our solar company to install a solar canopy on the middle school parking lot side so to the left side where the middle

school is part of that parking lot, not the whole entire thing. Um, the solar canopy went through several years of study through the state house. um, our, our HWCAT group has been pushing hard to get it out of study. It looks like it’s out of study now and moving

forward possibly in January to be able to start to say we’re getting closer, we have authorizations, but we don’t have a an actual target line when we could say it’s going to happen, um, if it does come into play, it’s, it saves a lot of money because we end up signing a 25 year contract

with a locked rate for electricity off of that off of that solar canopy, um, the other piece of the high school roof project is the state now requires all roof projects of school buildings to be to have some level of solar readiness, um, so built into the cost that’s fully covered by the

MSBA is the the uh actual wiring and uh tubing runs for so lar readiness so that if we decided to add solar panels to portions on the roof that could hold solar panels. Uh, we would move forward with that and it would already be kind of plug and play. They would put them

up on the roof and plug them back in, so I don’t have a definite timeline, but we are out of study, which is the hardest part of the process, trying to get out of a study through with National Grid, so does that help or thank you for the update.

It is possible we could see something in January just, we’re just, we, we’re really after the whim of national grid. Do you have something else you wanted to? I’d like to add, if there aren’t any other questions about the school budget. uh, I had a question about, um, you

know, we’ve, uh, there’s been a lot of listening sessions that the, the school district has been doing related to the, the new building or, uh, kind of dealing with the, the school buildings and their, their state and what the uh process might be going forward. Does the school committee have, uh,

any plan to kind of formalize what that is. I know that the towns of funded studies to the tunes of millions of dollars in the past, um, and, uh, to, to kind of analyze these buildings are are we anticipating the, uh, something like that again, um, for this or, or when might that be, uh,

addressed by the school committee. So last committee meeting I was tasked with uh by the committee to come up with a plan to to put those things together. We’ll see that on the December 4th meeting of kind of our plan of moving it forward, um, really trying to lay the groundwork for what to do next

is a study is one of a number of options on the table. I don’t know um if you could, if you go back, I can actually send it to everybody if you go back to the last school committee meeting there was a memo on their multi, you know,

4 page memo about some of the thoughts about the process and some of the things that we need to to look at and just trying to keep that ball moving forward. So after that presentation, the committee tasked me with putting together a process to bring back to them to start um

moving in some direction. We’d we’d ultimately like to have something ready for uh the April town meeting for some level of discussion or some level of vote. We’re just not sure what that is yet. Thank you question, uh, do we have statistics on the uh total school age population in the

two towns, uh, so we can determine the number of kids that go to private schools. So the answer to that is yes, uh, we do that in January though we finalize the numbers with the state. The process for the state is called the October 1 report for Public schools,

which we get our, our numbers, um, our enrollment this year is up a little over 2. I think 2.1%. I might be off by 1%, but 2.1% is where we’re at. We’re up to 1,706 students. Now when you factor in all of the children that live in the community. Our job between that Octo

ber 1 and January is reaching out to any school that we can find a connection with to see where kids are going to school so we know where the majority of them go. Uh, it’s called the school reporting report. We, we have to submit it by law, so we

will do that in January and I can give you pretty pretty solid numbers. You have, you know, between 300 and 375 kids that are in the community who don’t go to public schools. and that doesn’t mean they go to private schools either. They could go to the tech, they could, they could go out of

state to schools. There are kids that school choice in into other places as well. Thank you, can you give a sense of what those trends look like over time? Has it been pretty stable? Are people coming back towards the schools? So I, I have right up on the front

screen now. I can just look at this enrollment chart. This covers 2013 to 2024, um, to the left of the chart in blue is our pre-K to 5 in 2013, we had 808 students pre-K to 5, 201,920, so that COVID year we had 867. It dropped immediately down to 773 and is now up in 853 right

now as of October 1st of this year, uh, you’re seeing smaller uh bumps at the middle and high school level, so the middle school is in red and the high school is in gold, but you’ll see that, you’ll see just a little bit smaller jump. But what’s your sense of how much of that is just general

demographics versus people actually coming back to the public schools so that it’s, it’s hard to say. I can say from home schools we’ve we’ve brought in about a dozen kids off of the home school rolls is usually approximately 40 kids that are homeschooled in our two communities, and this year

we brought in a dozen kids. We brought about 6 kids back from private schools this year as well. so it’s, it’s so I wouldn’t call it a trend, uh, only because it’s, it’s, we’re in a community that has lots of options and people who who can afford some of those options.

So oftentimes it’s just a choice of I want my child to go to a private school or or you know or or a uh a school outside of Hamilton one. Yep gonna show. Yeah, yeah, sorry. I just want to ask, uh, for the assistance of all five boards. Uh, we are in the middle of a, uh, study

being done by the Department of Education requested by uh members of the state house to examine the chapter 70 funding for way that’s the way schools are funded, um, for for state funding and the the if you looked at the last school committee, uh, meeting, I, you may have seen this chart that’s up front.

This is the chart of Hamilton Wenham Regional School Districts, uh, school chapter 78 versus what’s actual spending, actual spending is the top blue line way up here. You can see where my cursor is and the chapter 70, state funding is this low, low red line that doesn’t change very much.

Uh, districts under 2500 that are small like ours and regional are um really being penalized in the way that they develop and process the chapter 70 funding as you can see, it has not really changed for our school district where some of the bigger school districts will get multimillion dollar

increases every single year, year over year, uh, we just don’t have the the the demographics that you need to drive the formula in your in a positive direction for the district. They include, um, a whole number of statistical factors like how many L students do you have? How many

students are low income? What is your, uh, what is your equalized housing value in your communities? So when you start to look at some of the ways they calculate the numbers communities that are perceived to be wealthy, get penalized over and over again. You could have a community of families

who bought their houses 30 years ago, um, and had been on a fairly steady income. The house may have gone up, you know, $5,500,000 in, in 30 years, but their salary did not go up that much yet their taxes continued to grow and grow and grow, so our community is one of many around this area,

especially on the North Shore where the actual net school spending for our communities is far outpacing and it’s getting even more dramatic as you can see by this chart. If you just focus on that top line versus the the bottom red graphs. I would ask you if you have the opportunity to submit a letter

to the state and I can send out the email that really outlines and you can use some of the, the information that’s in my letter that outlines some of the problems that we run into as a small school district, two small communities that are pursu perceived to be wealthy enough to just pay their own

way. um, as you can see here, the reality is not what what it’s perceived to be, so just asking if I, I’ll send out the information to everybody directly. You can take it and but I would just ask if you can take 45 minutes to submit something to the state. They’re asking for stop

for another few weeks. I went to the listening session at MASCO, kind of gathered some info and then wrote the um my own position paper from the the position of superintendent schools, but it certainly fits each of you in your position, so feel free to use any of that information. Um, so I’m just

requesting that people take time even if it’s one from each board, it’s a good opportunity for for us to get this on the table so they can make some substantial changes to Chapter 70 funding on behalf of districts like ours that are penalized year after year after year after year.

Thank you, sorry, Eric, is it multiple factors that drive it? or is it one that stands out? No, it’s multiple. It’s multiple factors and it and it really uh. we haven’t been able to figure out how they calculate it. We literally have sat down, come close. They’re, I think they’re

30, 30 something factors that this formula is derived from, but it, it is really complex, which is a whole separate problem because you should be able to calculate what you’re, what you’re gonna receive in chapter 8, chapter 78, fairly easily. Um, they do publish the numbers, but it’s hard to follow. It’s really hard. It’s extremely complex formula.

I can send you out the whole. This is how they calculate chapter 70. It’s a booklet. So yeah, send it over. I will. I’ll send it out to everybody. have a question about um the reimbursement rate. Um, I believe the number I heard for chapter 90, um, money that

comes back to the towns in general it’s about 26% of our tax revenue, is there a percentage of what comes back in the form of chapter 70. So it’s approximately right now 10%. of Net school. It’s, yeah, it’s, it, it’s the highest it’s been that I tracked back was about 15%, but that’s when your

budgets were much, much smaller, much more manageable. You, you know, 15% of, of, you know. 8 million is a different number than 50 10% of 50 million, so it’s right now just slightly above 10%. Yep So just to commercial to ask for help. Is there an active um committee working on that?

There is. They have a committee that’s been going around the state doing listening sessions, but you can also submit online that they, they did one online yesterday, uh, but you can use their email and send them your thoughts via email. I will send everybody three things tomorrow my paper, the email address,

and how they calculate chapter 70. It’s fairly extensive and fascinating too, but um I think it’s just as many people as we can get to submit and make the point because we’re really these small districts around here are suffering. Do you know if they’ve gotten to the point of

drafting legislation? Is there an HR number yet or not? No, nope, they just asked this committee to start doing the, the kind of the sessions around town to to around the state. I mean, uh, DLR I just found out is also uh looking at transportation, which is new.

That’s a, that’s something new as well, uh, to see about the fairness of transportation and transportation contracts up until this past year we didn’t have any comp uh competitive bidders. We had one bidder and they got the bid. Uh, that happened in many, many, many school districts being controlled from a larger scale conglomerate that is a national

that bought up the local school district, uh, school bussing companies and said, OK, we’re going to put this company on these two schools, this company on these 4, so they were basically just divvying it up so there is um so I’ll look into that as well because transportation

costs are also not reimbursed at the rate that’s required by state law. It’s underfunded every single year. Thank you. Anybody have anything else? All right. Looks like we’re done. OK. Um so you guys are not, so we’re meeting over here so I guess we’ll need to um adjourn one at a time.

Can I get a motion from the FICOM to, uh, close here at, uh, what time is it? 5. 7:45. 7:45. So, so who’s looking for a second vote. 2 I. on our side. Thank you. board to adjourn at 7:45. Vote. I move with the Hamilton Wyndham School Committee adjourned at 7:45 p.m.

Do you have a second? Second by Julia, all those in favor. that is unanimous of the six members present, and we are adjourned. Thank you all.