 All right, everyone will start the meeting for February 26. Let's start with the minutes of our last meeting. All right, has everyone read the minutes of the 12th and has anyone had any changes? I have a motion to approve. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. All right. Any opposed? All right. That's been approved. All right, I am going to turn this over to Jennifer and Jordan. And it's a big night with a huge budget. So I'm turning it over to you and take us through it all. Yeah. I can now share this. Yeah, we brought the budget book numbers. I don't know if you can read it. Next slide, please. So just the main points of this, the facilities department. So they oversee a total of 35 buildings. 46 and a half staff. Most of the staff will appear under the school budget. From where they're paid, but you'll see that in the actual employees. That are covered under this budget. So it's only, it's only a minimum, but the majority of them are under the supervision of Rob's schools. So 46 and a half staff. 2000 pieces of equipment. Most of this, if you remember, they were doing the logging of the equipment in their computer management system, asset essentials. They have the vast majority of all the major equipment currently in this, in this system. Rob did tell us there were various minor odds and ends that they will be adding in as need be, but the majority of the major equipment is in there and accounted for. So they also oversee the repairs, the maintenance cleaning of school and town buildings. They do the removal of the snow for the school lots and they perform some salt and landscaping work at the buildings, at the town buildings and at the school buildings. So for the buildings whose budgets that facilities doesn't control that school DPW fire and police for the repairs that they'll do at these buildings, they will often send the invoices over, but generally speaking, any building that's not school DPW fire and police, you'll see that the repairs will fall under their budget. So large picture items, staffing, they haven't lost really any personnel. Anyone that has left has been replaced, but several positions that will appear, that appear underneath the school budget, the technicians mostly, they remain unfilled. They did recently make an offer to an electrician that they are hoping to hire. A couple of things that we'll get into once we go over the budget. The electricity rates, they did increase from the last three year contract. We had very favorable rates that were about. It's missing zero. You're missing a zero. Yeah, yes I am. All right, so add zeros in 0.0862 cents per kilowatt hour in the previous three year contract. And they were they rose to 0.01 to a five cents per kilowatt hour for 2024 and notably delivery charges have risen about 7%. They're currently negotiating a new contract with rates that are going to be expected to be less than what 2024 are, but they're not going to be nearly as favorable as 2023 or 2020 to 2023. Unfortunately, the delivery charges. There's really not much that you can do when it comes to these charges. It really is set by the utility. There's a, at the state level, there is some oversight, but for all intents and purposes, if you go out for our contracts, you don't have a lot of control over it. And notably, there were three properties that were added to the facilities budgets that used to be under control of the, of the ARB. That's the Robbins library. Actually, sorry, that was my. Oh, I didn't make it tight. Yeah, it's a central school, the maple and the jersey. Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah. So getting into the budget, not much has really changed. You'll notice that the collective bargaining agreements for the. I'm sorry, can we switch. So the collective bargaining agreements, they haven't been settled. It's not likely something that's going to be happening for that cover. That cover of this union. So that's. So anyways, moving. So over time, not much has changed us. A question came in about the overtime rates and what that number is at and why it's so high. We did ask Rob if he felt that additional personnel would be needed. I think he's comfortable with the amount of employees that are covered by overtime, but this is simply just for the routine scheduled maintenance or routine scheduled service that are currently scheduled. So it's nothing really above and beyond. It's just really what's scheduled for right now. So just to note that the overtime is mostly for things like fold and solving. So it needs the overtime because it's like a nine or something. No, it's not. Yeah, or if there is, there's additional service like landscaping, like if you need to clean up a property before a major event, they'll do landscaping and that usually comes out over time. A question came in about auto allowance. So it's the day and night supervisor, the maintenance supervisor, project manager, craftsman. They're all paid a stipend for their own vehicle use. They don't have a town vehicle. They use their own and they're paid a flat stipend every year for it. Professional maintenance was increased $36,000. So this is for, and this is mostly for additional security, additional control and access. Basically it's the building cards that people can, they can control who's coming in and out of the facilities. That was something that they've added in. Yeah, so it's the ARB buildings and the new security monitoring system. The electricity rates we went over, so that's the, that's probably the biggest increase you'll see the 55,000. And something to note about the materials. This is line item 5, 52, 24. You'll see that the spend has been hot, was higher in fiscal year 23. It was budgeted for 27, a little over $27,000. And they're finding that they need to purchase a lot more materials out of the budget. So something that we've, that we had told Rob, something that we would like to see is just, do you need to? Yeah, if you need to increase that number in the years, I think we would like to see what the actual spend is, reflect more accurately what it's budgeted for. He did explain that most of this is, you know, it's the large tools, the special equipment. It's filters, repair parts, any rentals that they'll need to do in order to make the repairs that they need. So I think moving forward as, you know, keeping in mind that they recently redid the facilities and add a lot of buildings into this and there's going to be further changes next year as more of the DPW buildings come on and are ready to use. And the dust has settled from that. I think we would just like to see these numb, that number start to even itself out. It's a question about professional services. So professional services. This will be like minor architectural work that might come up. An example would be if, you know, the library would need to do like an ADA bathroom. They would have like minor plans done, not like a full, like a large scale renovation, but just minor plans that would need to be drawn up. They would be done by a third party consultant. And the question came in about green repairs. So as a reminder, I think we talked last year that Rob wanted to keep this line item funded at the level that it was, even though there was only a little $7,632 spent last year. He does like to keep this amount in case there are grant opportunities that are available and many of them will have matching funds and that's where this will pay out of. He does anticipate on using this line item this year. He did tell us about some initiatives that he's doing. He's looking to do more LED light conversion on the buildings. And very interestingly, he was using some of this money to do energy efficiency upgrades to the Zamboni. He talked about doing this, basically doing like this air rating system to help it be more efficient. This is the water that goes into the Zamboni. So it's pretty neat. I was a hockey guy. I've never been growing up, never heard of anything like this. And I was around ranks a lot of my life. So I thought it was a great initiative and it sounds like it might help us be more energy efficient, cleaner, and hopefully save some money. Just to know that the screen building's money doesn't get spent and went for matching something. So we don't use it without there being a grant somewhere. So if there's a grant and we can pass the matching money, that's our culture. We don't have a grant. That's why it goes up and down each year. So one question. So something that came up that we would like everyone to know. Rob did bring it to our attention that the electricity costs, we've added more money into this budget, but with the facilities budget has paid for all of the electricity out of the new DPW building. And that's including all of the new, that's including everything with IT. So all of the IT infrastructure, all the associated cooling systems with it. He did, when we originally talked with Rob, Rob put out a pretty high number after talking with Alex and Rob about it afterwards. I think Alex had a much more conservative estimate on what he thinks we might end up having to transfer and to make the facilities budget balance out. Rob initially had given us a number and it was quite high. It was almost... High number of over, like we're spending more than the budget amount. So that was very scary because we said, okay, wait, we need to transfer money into this budget. And it turns out not entirely. We may need to, but not only when we're in this numbers. Yeah, nowhere. Alex doesn't believe it's going to be anywhere near the $200,000 mark. He gave a pretty detailed explanation for how the utility costs were being accounted for in the different buildings, including the, some of the rental properties, like 23 Maple, the community center at 27 Maple, and the Jefferson Cutter House. So I think... It's basically being converted now, but we don't, but we aren't necessarily going to step on all that because in certain cases, there's going to be people who are renting those buildings. So 23 in April is being rented by the Mystic River Association and the Mystic... A watershed association. Yeah. And so if they're starting in April, so even though we've recovered that amount, we know we're not going to spend it all because they are renting for those bills. So there's a couple of things like that. DPW actually hasn't paid their half yet. So the number that we saw that was very scary represented the number of mu-ness that things hadn't been settled out. Right? They hadn't... DPW hadn't paid their part. You know, there was extra conferences and so forth. And I think generally the story around electricity is that we have a lot of moving parts. Right? We have these buildings that we have, like 23 Maple, that we took over for town use, but they're not eventually going to be counted, right? Or we have... We're covering electricity costs for some construction projects right now because somebody has to cover it, but it may not be facilities in the end. So there's just a lot of sort of moving pieces right now as one department goes into here and then this moves over here and this moves over there. And this year is just going to be really weird, but we'll know more what things look like next year. And to finish out this year, I think we may have said this, but Alex feels confident that it's most likely can be handled by transfer, department transfers. He said he may end up having to come to us to do a reserve fund transfer, but I think he's pretty confident at this point that it can be handled by departmental transfers. And he believes strongly that by next year around budget season, they'll be able to more accurately account for what the new energy costs are going to be at the building so that there won't be any more surprises in that the budget and facilities will be able to better reflect what the costs are going to be all the more while anticipating once the dust is settled and they put more of the energy efficiency measures in like they want to, that they'll all be able to save in the long run. And lastly, the offsets. There was a question about the offsets that came in and the offsets were from Fire Police and the library. Any questions? First, Annie, then Alan, and then Joan. Okay, so the electricity and the natural gas lines here, those are for all the buildings they're supervising. They're not just for their departments. Oh yeah, yeah. It's everybody they're covering. Well, not the schools. And you're saying they're trying to do more energy efficiency. Are they doing any kind of talk about transition away from using any natural gas at all? So just to be clear, the DPW building is all electric. No, I know that. Yeah, yeah. So we have, you know, at the schools, there's a $2 million grant that's being used for money to look into adding school at the elementary schools. That may involve like a ground, you know, a lot of things. But there's heat pump that also controls heating, but there's, the study is going to be to try to figure out if that makes sense. What are the incentives from the federal government and state? What will it cost us long term? What will it cost us immediately? That kind of stuff is still sort of unknown. We know electricity prices have gone up. I mean, you might have seen there was an article in the New York Times recently about how, as these are coastal cities have electrified, the electricity costs have gone up. You know, I don't know, right? We know that we had a really good electricity contract a few years ago. And then we had a really bad year. And it's going to get a little better, but not no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, What do we want to know what do we want to feel like where we want to get to in a few years versus the upfront costs, which are heavily subsidized right now, but not pretty versus what, you know, what that's costing us. You know, or included what's what's that cost has that electricity is more expensive right now than used to be. Right, but when we do a solar contract, you know, if we're contracting for those panels, we're getting a fixed price on that electricity. That was the conversation we had about net metering credits. Yeah, I think I don't know if those change each year or if there's like a 300. I actually don't know that the net meter. Yeah, generally you have a contract for a personal solar contract. Yeah, the solar company, you have fixed kilowatt hour price for the electricity the solar panels generate. Right, the company gets the assets. Right, right. Purchase them or you lease them, you get the asset credits and you get that. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I know we're getting something. I don't know. I don't know the details. Yeah, mostly I'm a school. Yeah, just budget. Um, right, so, so, I think, I think we are at a pivot point right now, right, because we're going to look into adding our fishing at the elementary schools, right. And that's a real question about what that's going to look like. Um, you know, we made the high school all electric, the WPW is all electric. There are few buildings and they're still on oil. So those are potentially opportunity costs, you know, or extra opportunities to make changes there. Although the two buildings that are still oil, which are current mentor and 20 people are not entirely going to get there by us. Right. And we have a lot of incentive grants from the state from the federal government, but it is extra money. So capital fund is going to have to look into it in a sense. And I think also something to add. When we were talking about Rob and whether or not he felt like he had enough staffing on to be able to take care of what he's doing. I think he's comfortable with what he has for technicians for custodians. It would be great if you could fill some of the technical positions, but I think the one thing that he would really like to see in the future would be somebody that could be more on top of these types of energy. Energy efficiency measures and how we can save money using them, somebody that can be that can look for ways to be more energy efficient to ultimately save on electricity. I think that that's something that you would like to see in the future. Somebody. There's somebody at the schools, but he doesn't have access to that person. Energy manager on staff on the town side. We have telly Fox is that dream. Who doesn't actually necessarily deal with everything. Energy manager. There's energy manager who worked for the schools to working on school school remix. That person not yet. It doesn't mean that that person is not accessible or something, but just not yet. So there are three costs of electricity right there's the, um, the delivery costs, the negotiated price that we get, which is the point zero eight or so point one, two, nine or whatever. And then there is how much energy at least. Right. So we, we negotiated the Congress for the supply. We don't make control of that. They have no control of the transmission costs because that's they can change that. And I think the state is sort of looking at that, but we don't have to help, but we do have some people that comes to energy. So we're more efficient. If you know, we turn off things in the weekend, you know, stuff like that we can, we can make a difference there and it's not quite being done yet. In the way that it started to be done at the schools and so again, there's person at school who raw fields. Anything else in. No, sorry. Um, was related to that. I think we do have an environmental plan or sustainability. So, you know, maybe they could have to it, but the question I had at the very end, you mentioned offsets, you mentioned flocks and stuff, but it's all from the school. I want to clarify that. Um, Let's go offset for one of the positions. Well, it gets the same number. You're right. So if it's more than that, they're not just like to know to put it to work. Yeah, that's a good point. Last year, I've gotten information of offsets and I'd ask the numbers are similar with this year. I would be clarify that. That's a good. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Christine. So. Well, the main is people that are working in the schools that are not in this budget. Correct. But do they report to them? Yeah. Okay. So. And actually it's, it's the number that was given the 46.5. That's actually in the school. That's in addition to people are. Yeah. So there are any costs in here that are reflected, for example, of the new high school. Increase maintenance. Yep. And maintenance costs and maintenance issues. So the maintenance numbers are done by square footage. So if you think this is where footage and the building system following. The main thing possible. And those are things for like replacing a light switch or something you say, well, how many is perfect. What do we have? What kind of numbers are you going to get? Increase the numbers. Are they. Are they as a school? If he's got higher cost per square foot for the schools on the schools paint that or is the budget. Yeah, I think so the professional maintenance at 36,000. Is the extra landscaping and the extra security. You mentioned the fact that there's a higher price, but you're right on it. It must be. Yeah. And the counts number. 52 69. And. Plus the number. Yeah. So the huge jump between the actual 2023. And then what's forecast for 24. 25, I don't know whether they're actually making those numbers or not. That was the increase from last year. So they. They jump a lot more. From into fiscal year 24. So I think that was what I was referring to actually. So there is a. Business standard number that you know, if you have this may square feet. This is the cost per square foot. And we're basically it was for the smaller pairs. A door. A light switch. And so they're like that. And they're just in the budget of here's my square feet, the cover. And here's what we've seen last year is that. and building building, but just in fact the plan, right? What have we increased by factor three and a half? We have, I think, pretty, so. Other than the area. Yeah, yeah, so we've added D2W, which was not, we've added the school buildings, this, we've added the area buildings this year. Last year, I had to go back to my house. We've added a bunch of buildings last year. I just know that those conditions are in gross conditions there. The school had a space before the new high school and even though we've had space before the new BW building. Things were not necessarily in the facility budget. Things are being moved into the city, but that were not there before. But I can tell you what the exact thing that was actuals, that's to our own surprise. Facilities or facilities? I was looking at facilities. I think Mike just gave us the D2W actuals, because the actuals, but we don't know the actuals are for 2024, given this budget, right? Doug and Jared, I don't know. Thank you. Elton, I'll see you in a minute. OK, two things. Professional maintenance, the biggest ticket there. You mentioned security, but that can't be all of it. No, no, actually, remember it. So one of the memos, because at the very beginning, was that we had added an extra 30,000 for landscape. I'll tell you, this is something that Rob is not that excited about because he was thinking he had to do landscape. He was thinking he does buildings, but when we added the CPW building, they were like, oh, you have to do landscape as well. And so those are contractual, you know, we're spending. OK, so anything else besides security and landscape? That was it. That's the current of the budget number we got at the very beginning of the year. And security includes alarms, cameras, and that access controls. So there's different fees associated that the regular annual fees as well as whatever you need to to maintain the systems of the company. And then the other thing is I'm assuming the Fox and the Mount Kilbola costs have been integrated into the other categories. Yeah, yeah. Fox gets actually paid for a lot of things are put there for tracking purposes, but definitely don't actually stay in the budget. So Fox gets paid for out of the library budget. They're out of the rent-to-box. Well, they get merged with Robin, but they pay for those expenses. Mount Kilbola, the understanding is actually that there aren't a lot of expenses right now. There aren't a lot of expenses right now. There are expenses previously. First of all, it would be rented and then there were expenses to maintain it. Last year, there were some expenses for security for the restoring stuff there. And we are no longer storing stuff there anymore. So we're not doing that extra security. Was there any discussion about finally doing something with that building by burning it down? Yes, there is, but neither facilities nor EPW is at all involved in that. It's a planning department and it's a community average. Not involved in planning at all. No, they're not involved in it. Whatever happens to it. Whatever happens to it is gonna happen with the planning department talk to the committee. Which means they're not involved in planning. They declare to school, give it to them how long it will be gone. And we're happy to know. Yeah, there've been a number of meetings about that and all the options are on the table from restoring it to rental migrant housing, arts center, whatever, to everything. And everything in the middle because there are some nice architectural features and one of the plans that's looking good is to basically take it down the platform. Like a view here on the floor with the beautiful stairs and things like that and take that. But it's still, it's all on the tables. I'll just sign it. But facilities is like, they lost their heads. They don't have to deal with it any further. Thank you. Thank you. So I just noticed in last year's budget, 2023, the budget forecast was 105,000. But then it came in, the actuals for 2023 was only 41,000. They're repairing it. Yes. So it just seems like a pretty big drop. And I wonder if that's why there's such a big jump in the 2024 and 2025 budgets. I think we are, we are down that. We're going to have to hurry for it. The 2023 professional maintenance line actually budgeted it. What was that left in 2030? It was 105. And you're looking at repairs and maintenance. Repair, yeah, repair and maintenance. I wouldn't be surprised if it was shifted instead of putting it on a forecasting, repair and maintenance to be a higher number and professional maintenance lower. And then it just, that's my guess. I feel like, I believe that their repair and maintenance was the one that they said they just say the correct phrase when they multiply by number, that's interesting standard. But that doesn't mean, especially if there's a new building or something, that doesn't mean it's necessarily low cost. But we will find. No, you're on right. That is the professional, it's the formula driven. Formulant by the strength of it, correct. Yeah, but we, yeah, I think we need to hurry up. What ways to remind ourselves what building for ed last year? Because there were a bunch of building for ed last year. We had a big one this year, plus maybe the building, plus a standard high school brick, bitch. So that's what's going to be. And then the school budget, they're adding a custodian to the school budget. And, but is that captured here? How does that work? No, that's in the school budget. Yeah, we're missing a couple of buildings at the high school, but, you know, looking to our part of the way. Yeah, it's actually bigger than you had to set. Oh, Joe, how do they decide, how do they decide which custodians go under the facilities and which goes under the school? Sort of signed under the facilities. So they, there's one, I guess. Yeah, they have a them again, yeah. Oh, there's a couple of more. No school custodians go under this. Oh, thank you. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what facility, you know, what the facilities does and doesn't do and then having landscaping come here because in the original facilities is a facility stopped at the front steps and everything after that went natural resources. I'm wondering if, if it doesn't exist already, if it could be a mission statement or charter or something from facilities department, what, what, I think we need to better define what it's responsible for. Now we answer a lot of these questions. It might be like 30,000 for landscaping. That should be a natural resource on facilities, I think. Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think that sort of feedback. I think we need clarification. I know it's evolving. I think the thing for us is that we're just rubs to act here. We had a lot of trouble before this, right? Jim ran it for a long time. Yeah. I assumed the 30,000 landscaping was from Jim, but you know, that he's, he's wanting to put it in there, but I'm not sure. So I'm just asking for a job description for the department. So we have better clarification about what should be in there and what should. Yeah. A lot for this year. I don't have anything else. I guess I don't know if anyone went to the presentation of the. MMA meeting. We went from the fall about Lexington. And their utilities. I just, I've raised that would school department. What they did is. Some of the, some buildings, electricity is bill bill based on peak demand. And so if your peak demand goes up for 10 minutes, 15 minutes for the day. That's the high mark and that's the rate. Yes. And so that they have found that it's been very cost effective for the batteries online. In addition to solar. So the batteries can offset that peak. And it actually is very cost effective. Very good payback. Yep. Probably a box mentioned that exactly at that point. She didn't mention batteries. She mentioned. Well, batteries are critical. Without the batteries, then it doesn't work. She mentioned. Raising temperatures in the building during the peak. You know, that if we had better management to shave off some of the peaks. Just from managing that we could do maybe some of that. So, so this is like another concept that they might want to throw into. Yep. Sure. So, Josh, I was with you at that presentation. But that was achieved in a renovation of a building, right? And it doesn't mean that you can just sort of put that in all the buildings. There's a capital cost. I don't have any idea of the capital costs, but it was part. Was it the police station or something? I think every building that they touched, they're taking that approach. We have 35. That's my impression. Yeah. But it has to be a project. It's not a, it's not standalone. Yeah, I think that's the way they're approaching it. And I felt that there actually could be some low hanging fruit to do exactly that with just better management. You know, I guess what I'm saying is again, just to the point is clear. If your peak load is determined at two o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah. Because it's whatever. And turning it down at night doesn't affect that. Yeah. The only thing that would affect that is it. A little bit in the middle of the day. But, but you have certain, yes, you could, but I'm just saying the batteries you can just turn dial and generate your bigger electricity in the battery for that 15 minutes. There by cutting your rate for the entire day. It's just depending on how the contract is arranged. Okay. If it's a peak load. I think we'll have to have somebody would need to look into doing a demand reduction with a vendor who could assist with that. Right. It's not just demand reduction. It's not just demand reduction. Yeah. And this is where a manager. Yeah. I think, I think that's sort of the next thing to sort of push for and sort of end it. Bob wants it, but it's just not. Oh, sorry. Battalion box. I think last year had offered to come in and do a presentation finance. Electrification. Did you want me to. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Other questions on facilities. You have a recommendation. So we recommend the taxation total. $1,209,151. Second. Any further questions. All right. All in favor say aye. Any opposed. Yes. I'm going to give a big picture of them public works. And then we'll go to natural resources. Okay. Public works. It is staff around feeding people. Their people strength continues to be big disease. We continue to pay less than our. And as we know, we're not. Encouraging. With. Prices nearby nearby. To have addresses. One thing Mike had just done recently is to register. We're going to be full training facility. Is to allow us to hire people who are not yet commercial license. And the user to train them on site. Not fully operational facilities to. Work on the training materials, but it should be up and going by the summer. We're registered already. And you do, but W building is almost finished. Um, there have been a lot of delays, prices have risen as you know, we are structure manager on risk. So we are sort of protected, but there are some stresses because of the project being lengthened and they have sure, um, costs for consulting, especially. Already, Mike has put in about 200,000 of sort of money into this project to sort of relieve the pressure. What's happening right now is structure money is eating into their profits, which is making the variant. And so there's this, so even though we're structure manager work at risk, you don't want to be deeply unhappy. So there's a lot of like back and forth, give and take on that. Um, so, uh, in the previous years, people have asked about a vehicle management system. This is in interest of Mike, but there are costs to the system, but the purchase system and the cost of that time. Um, basically, it's not excuse, but he said, you know, we've had the building project, we have a lot of making things, especially in our office, central office. And so it's just been sort of part of the mind to look into this. He's interested in it. He knows it's a big project. He knows he can't screw up on it. Like, you have to come up with a program that is both easy. We want it's effective, but also is something that that would use. But also notably, he is doing a trial of a GPS system, which does, I think a lot of sort of the notifications that you would be looking for, like, you can and it could eventually integrate with the system. So right now they're doing, it was very minimal effort to get set up in the vehicles. It's GPS that will be able to report on vehicle health. It'll be able to notify you when, when you know, you check engine when you need to check. You're engine when you need to do any sort of other maintenance. So they're sort of playing with that right now. And with the intention further down the line when they do do the vehicle management to integrate that. He knows it's something that people that kind of have been interested in. He's also interested in it. It's not, there's just been a lot going on right now in terms of why it has. Yeah. So other big picture we found that's out last year, the numbers in the budget book that are actuals are not necessarily actuals are in units. So I've done a lot of back and forth and their explanations for all of them, but they all have to be like looked at and explained. So, one of the things that he does has the ability to do is they can move things around at will. Right. So, so you don't spend a lot of natural resources, natural resources, for example, has salary budgeted at over a million, but we can study under 900,000 each year. Why do you want to do that? We have other positions, the extra money that's used off for special charges. And so actually have a list we've asked for this year for a list of some projects that haven't last year. So we've done a lot of islands. I'm not sure what I mentioned the WS. We're doing a thing. I'm very excited about which is sidewalks, I mean, like, I'm in Cambridge, you know, you look and see that there's sidewalk rather than replacing it or sort of, they shave it. So we're starting to do the project. So we spent, I don't know where we since you got us last year on it. Um, track a single painting from friends repair. So, so basically, as there's extra money and usually right now the experiment is because we think it's, which is not what he wants. And he doesn't want things to say, but we have the money until he spends it on projects that are needed or not. Okay, natural resources division maintain 30 parks, 206 playgrounds, 19 athletic fields and 21 traffic islands. Budget book list for vacancies. We've just filled 1 of the motor vehicle. So there's only 3 now. As I said, we spend about. For vanilla and less than we have in the budget book because we just can't fill all of the spaces. Let's see. Okay, so over time, so we had some questions for our people. One of the things that we. Other cert frustrations is that the numbers that Mike is using are 5 year actuals that he determined 3 years or 3 or 4 years ago. So he did the work 3 years ago, and then he didn't have data. What that means is that some of the over time numbers are a little bit off and I'm going to make a recommendation, which I played with Mike about the resources position. The 5 year actual over time is 66,751. The budget book listed as 86,9903. So it's an over $20,000 difference. My recommendation again with my black thing is to move $10,000 of that to the field and maintenance and also recommend I'm going to recommend moving something out there as well. Uh, rather than the reason for not taking the entire 20,000 is that in theory where we fully staffed might think that we'd spend more and over time. So the overtime doesn't actually reflect the fact that we're understaffed. We don't do extra overtime because we're understaffed. We don't do as much overtime because we're understaffed. Because we don't have the personnel to do kind of work that would need to do it normally do an overnight. Um, okay, uh, double time, then hover on 20,000 to last few years, um, out of grade pay, the amount was doubled in 2023 because there's a vacancy in the supervised position in parks. And because of that, several people were out of class for a while. Every time somebody works at a class, they'll extra. So we had 1 person out and then everyone sort of shipped it around and move and, and, and need to get that last money back. Uh, gluting allowance, um, is in any year, but it's pretty close each year. Um, that's not $50202, the extra $20,000 in maintenance is I was told in the wrong place and it actually should be in the maintenance of town fields. And I'll tell you the story about that when we get there. So what I will be recommending today that we move 30,000 from natural resources to the maintenance of town fields to bring that number up to 90,000. Um, let's see, uh, there's several, you know, we've seen this before, several places where we've. Act expenses and we're tracking rider, you know, we used to went out rider to your private company. There's been a question that what was going to happen with it, likely we're keeping it. They're just too much need for it. It's being used for their cycling stuff. And. Yes, that's and so we're probably going to keep it. So, so, but that's why we're we're tracking it because the idea was maybe we rent it out again after. The PPW building was done. Um, let's see materials, 52.4 used to purchase materials containing playgrounds and fields like marks again, the field for sporting event to repair the grass surfaces, irrigation repairs, some safety equipment for staff. So it's sort of lots of little things. Fowl weather here. We had a bump in 2023 because we spent a bunch of money for the big belly solar contractors. Other purchase services, 52.36 is for holiday nights. I estimate this the cost for like the years have been over 18,000, but it keeps getting budget at 15,000. He's comfortable that what happened is the Chamber of Commerce used to share the cost with us, but once COVID hit and we had some staff change over, it just wasn't easy to ask for that money at the time. So, Mike was covering the money, but he thinks we can go back once again to get into Chamber of Commerce to cover some of that amount. That and he said, that doesn't happen. There's also the parking benefit sister. So he was comfortable keeping that in between that of them. Tree planting. So one of the stresses, I don't know if you know in town is that there are a bunch of people who love to see more trees planted. The department can do tree planting a lot more effectively, cheaply, than we can if we hire an asset contractor. Currently, we have the capacity to do about 300 trees. He's been ramping that up. So like last year before last is 374, you know, just generally try to get more. We cut down about 250 trees a year. So we're getting a net increase. There is money, however, in this tree to be fun that is tapped into occasionally. There's a potential more money to hire a contractor to do more tree planting, but at a much, much higher cost than we can do it now. So it's figuring out what makes sense is sort of a long standing debate. And also trying to save more mature trees, because you know, it's easier to save trees than it is to wait for them to grow up from small. So they do want to do more of that. Yeah, that's a 50 to 90 to treat as an event, which is budget at 30,000. It actually costs us 60,000, but 30,000 is coming from that tree. The trees please fund is the amount that a contractor and I don't know if you couldn't look at the meeting. We added sort of extra rules if a contractor tears down a tree in front of the building. They have to either. Build a new tree and put a new tree in or to a fund that then goes to trees and that's that fund is called the trees please find it has a bunch of money in it. Some of that money now is being used for the emerald for for to start to save those trees. Restore a sculpture maintenance. There used to restore things like Uncle Sam statue the town of five days and then I'll be Hunter and there's a box around town. Some of them are work that needs to be done every once in a while, but they're wrong, but there's also apparently we every year have to go and like, you know, shine them up and wax them and stuff. So that's sort of a basic maintenance cost every year, but it goes, but then there's occasionally things that have to be repaired. Small equipment is used to purchase and tools. Okay, questions. Just a comment. Yeah, watch the town tree people carefully and watch private contractors carefully and clearly the town tree people are the professionals. They know what they're doing. Right. Yeah, we're getting good. Good job for money. Yeah. So. Jennifer, thanks for excellent presentation. I have. To sort of go back to your, your high level. Yeah. Yes. You said that the department is using operating funds to subsidize the building project is that more or less what I heard you say. I did say that. Yeah. So. Oh, they did. They did. We had the building project was raised at least twice in town meeting after the initial project, but I think it's $44 million now. I'm 28. Who's managing that. So. I don't want to this and I'm sure for they're not terribly happy with the company. But there's also been some additional surprises. related to. contamination. Everyone knew is contaminated. It's more than they thought. Which is then. You know, push it out of the project. And the longer a project takes. I think we all knew it pretty well. It's contaminated as could possibly be. I mean, Mike said that it was more time than we knew it was. We use hypervalent chromium. Yeah. So, personally, I'm. I don't know that Daryl's not here, but no, I think that's a. Daryl is Daryl. Can you hear us? Somebody ought to be understanding why we take an operating funds to subsidize in the. What I understand is it's again, so right now they've blown through all the. They're leading to their profits. We don't want them to walk away from the dog. You know, we need to get finished. And so there's been there. There's some given to me because of that. They're not happy about it. But there are there has to be some sort of discussion back and forth. To make sure that they're not so miserable. They're leading to all their profits that they do a proper job. So, the second comment is on, you made. I think it was on the natural resources. It could be. Is that you wanted to move $10,000 one budget $20,000 to somewhere else. Yeah. Is that our job? I mean, this is really the responsibility of the town manager and. And the deputy town manager, not the finance committee. To move numbers from one category to the other. I mean, honestly, it doesn't matter. It's a big deal to move things on their own, right? Like this budget is all. It's all the same budget. The 20,000 was mistaken. It shouldn't have been there. It should have been in, in the other place. So I was going to recommend it just to clarify that mistake. And then Mike and I talked about moving the other map. We don't want to. It's fine. But when we get to make some kind of bill, we'll see that 60,000 just to love. So we, so it's sort of, I'm not, I don't love when we have budget numbers that just don't quite reflect over the spend for transparency. Wait, we know this. And that's actually why he initially intended to put the extra 20,000 in. We know that that's too low. So, you know, but if you are uncomfortable moving it, then. Well, I'm not trying to stop it. I'm just. Yeah. Question. I mean, and whether or not this is a finance committee issue. I mean, if it's a mistake, anyone's the correct. But we're moving it from one category to another. I mean, it just strikes me like it's almost micromanagement of the. Well, just as chair said, this is about reporting the most accurate numbers to town meeting. We're not actually changing anything, but we should be as transparent and accurate as we can in our presentation. So we know it was a mistake. Yeah, that was. The extra 10,000 is a recommendation of mine to be in Iraq, but we're actually paying for it. And you're from them. I might disagree. Yeah. So that was already a. Yeah. Yeah. I would start to start every time I can press something that was not. Doesn't reflect the historical actuals. Like it's our raises things for me and I like, wait. And so I kept asking questions in some case it was there's an explanation. Oh, we're going to return to the start. We haven't sent that we're going to go back. And so I think one of the reasons is well, we're not fully staffed and that's why that's an obvious explanation. But for the town field, and I'm going to get to it soon. There are some real reasons why that number. 60,000 is just never going to be. We're never going to cheat that well. Jennifer, why don't you. Talk. Why don't you go on to field. Okay. These two budgets are related. Sure. Sure. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So the. I should tell you one more thing about the extra money that we've been spending. Oh, the extra money that was spending 5202. I realized I didn't tell you this. Um, you know, I said that when we have stuff, they can see if you can extra money. Yeah. The last few years we've updated buckfields, five times in field and scan mail fields. And this year we're going to spend money on to our science. And soccer fields. If we have extra. And we usually get a lot of spending right in June, as the year closes. Okay. So maybe this time field. So a bunch of years ago, we had this agreement with, um, parking rack where you pay 50,000 and parking right for the rest. Few things happen. The most important is that parking right is now covering the quarter parties. And so the money that they would have had extra to pay for the field maintenance are now being spent for the quarter parties. Um, there was also some temporary, like money shut up all because of, um, COVID and things we canceled and stuff like that. Um, but just long term, last few years partner has paid nothing. It's entirely. And the assumption is, as long as they're coming for the parties. And they're not, they're not raising their fees that that's going to continue for a while. So the actuals, um, for maintenance on fields last few years. Um, FY 24 looks like it's about 111,000. I was under 12. Um, FY 23 is 101,000. FY 22 is 83,000. Um, so, so much higher numbers than the six look as color budgeted amount. When did crack and direct stop? And. Uh, start paying. So FY 19, they're paying amount. FY 22. Was who is I think there was last money spent a bit. FY 21 and something. I don't know. Okay. Now it's four numbers were lower that right? Questions. I'll honestly Annie. Now, how does the. Money from the weeks. For field bank and school approved it? Sorry, how does. How does the money fill me? So the field maintenance, um, the money we spend filming is it's all contract to work out. So contract it out. We're supposed to get money from the field. We're not getting that anymore. Yep. We're not getting that anymore. We don't. That's right. Not last years because what I was told is because they now have to pay for the porta bodies, which is a significant amount of money. They don't have extra money to. Okay. So the money from the weeks, K goes to parks and rec. Yeah. And instead of using that money for field maintenance, they're now using it for porta bodies. I'm sure there's other things, there's equipment, there's various other things that we spend on stuff that they're not spending any money. Okay, because they were the one complaining about field maintenance. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to talk. Are you done now? I'm done. Yeah. So here's the thing. Okay. Park and rec has like 1.7 million dollars in the bank. How much were they contributing that they're not meeting anymore to field maintenance. It was like 40,000. I mean, I don't know that that's what they're not doing anymore because they're not doing about that amount of work. And the fees that the clubs are paying are going to cover that 40,000. They're coming with the porta bodies now, but they're not. There's no discussion here. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Is that, is that an I agree with you layer or is that a. Yeah. Okay. Just checking. I don't feel like this is a fight that Mike particularly wants to take on. I think he was happy. He's okay with this. But, but that's how I get that. Okay. But I have one more thing to say about this and this is your tip of this. Every time you talk about how. I would like to see a budget from DPW. It doesn't assume they're going to have money for those things because they have vacancies. And then says, realistically, this is what we need to spend on all this other stuff. Like I'd like a real budget. Right. If we have no vacancies, they wouldn't be able to cover this product. I understand that. I'd really like to understand what those things are. And what do we need to neglect them? Because it feels to me like what we're not getting is a realistic budget from DPW. For this. I've gone to all the departments. You have to start with the natural resource. Yeah. It sounds like it's just not real. Yeah. So all the field, all these extra projects when they read back a field, that's not in a budget anymore. That's only paid for. Do I have. To get a real budget. Is that Jim? I imagine. Okay. We have similar things happening in highways where the extra money is paid for a sidewalk. It was like. Right. So, and that was an important product. Right. I don't get it. Yeah. Okay. But it feels like. You're not. Being realistic. Yep. About what things actually cost. Yep. So nobody can go and read the budget. Or even read the actuals for EPW. Know what it's actually costing us to do what work the DPW is doing for the crown. And what their priorities are, et cetera, et cetera. They're not getting out of this budget. What do you want to get out of a budget? Yeah. Realistic picture. Of what the thing you're trying to accomplish. Actually costs. Yeah. No, I get it. I mean. Here's the explanation of why they don't put in the actual. Right. And it makes sense. Right. Because. If they put the actuals in the budget. We would ask questions. Like. Is this a standing. But. But something because they're special projects. It's not a standing. Right. So they don't want to put it in the budget book. Because then it looks like it's like a. Every year. Continue. When these are one-off projects. Isn't about the actual. Yes. The question. About those projects. There's no line in the budget. There's no line. Special projects. Yes. Yeah. There's no line. That says. Here's the 10 little things that we would do. That we wouldn't take to the capital planning committee. Right. Okay. Or whatever. It's like it's not a real budget. It's not about whether or not the actuals are real. The budget itself is. Yeah. Anybody. We would know. That there was a need that wasn't being fulfilled. Because it's never reflected in the budget. Yeah. So. It's a different problem. The budget at some point, the budget has to be. Here's what I need. Even if you don't get it all funded. Because until you say, here's what I need. We don't have any way to say. And these are the top 10 priorities. And this is the stuff that's extra. Right. And so. That's just every budget I deal with. This is the question. But don't start the budget season by telling me. But you've already cut the stuff. You think I'm not willing. Like tell me what the whole request is. And I'll tell you whether or not I can. Yeah. So I just like to see a whole meal request for Mike. For what he needs. And if it's not coming from Mike, because it's going through the town manager, then I would like to tell manager to talk about what it is. He did. Funded. In the real budget that they asked for it assumes all their people are. All their positions are filled. It doesn't assume. Oh, we're going to have a $500,000. So we could play with because. We have these vacancies. Because then the question I have is then why are we filling the vacancies? We're doing good stuff with 500,000. So. We need the people out. Yeah. Why do we need people in the budget? One way or the other. The point is. I mean, certain things don't get done. Right. Like, for example, for net resources, we have the tree climbers are really hard to fill. And we've had situations recently where we were just not going to end up. Right. And in fact, I remember submitting a request for a tree branch that was. In people's days when you stepped off a bus and they were like, yeah, we're not going to get to that. That was the response to me because we don't have the people. So it's not so. So there's things that aren't getting done that we need to get that. So we do need to fill the vacancies. I get that. But even if we do that. Then there's other stuff. Yeah. It is that higher priority than the things that people are going to do. We don't have a full picture. We don't have a full picture. We don't have a full picture. We don't have a full picture. We don't have a full picture. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody should have a full picture. Maybe in my head, but it should be somewhere where the public can see it. That's what the budget is supposed to do. And Charlie and I probably agree about this. But it should reflect what we're going to spend money on. And it should be prioritized. You can have everything. OK? And it should be real. After that, we can disagree about what the priorities are, right? I say, to do that, you have to change the practice that the DPW manager has a bill to shift things around ever. I don't, I don't necessarily want to change that practice. I want to know what the real request would be if all those releases were filled. Right. And then I want priority decisions made and then if he has extra money and he wants to go back to the low priority stuff, I don't have a problem with that. But first I want a real picture. Right. That's what I don't feel like I've seen. Yeah. So a year ago this budget came up and I said I was going to vote against it because our fields were in a combination and they were rotting and we were stuck in the middle of an inter-government departmental pissing contest between DPW and WRAP. And then we all went to town meeting and you all got to see pictures of fields that are in horrific conditions. Okay. All of that is still true. Okay. And it seems to me that the problem is neither the DPW director nor the WRAP director just care. They don't care. They point at each other. Right. I laugh. Right. I'll tell you, this will be, they usually try to keep different parts, you know, like we all do different parts of our volunteers lives separate, but that would be a good time not to. Okay. So I'm a treasurer of your own consumption. So that last year, we paid the town $40,000 a year in user fees. Cut them a check. So apparently quarter parties cost 40 grand here. No, they don't. So we got an email from Joe Connelly this year. Well, so the funny thing is, so this article up base $40,000, all the users combined pay like six or 65. And so what happens is we'll have these meetings at the WRAP department and we're like, Hey, these fields are terrible. We're going to work on the user. They're like, Yeah, but we don't really want to charge out of Catholic, do we? Well, yeah, they get used to the field. They should be charged. Well, yeah, but you know, some of the other groups don't want to pay and they don't want to pay more. And you're like, okay, we'll suck it up and pay more. Right. So then they're like fees like $10 per player, I think what they do, which doesn't make any sense because it's not based on utilization of the field. So even though you could have one sport, you know, sinualization and other, the payments are totally off, right? Then the WRAP department's like, no, we don't want to deal with that. Okay, fine. I don't want to deal with that. So right, so in the fall, we all learned from Joe Connelly, which is like, they put the Port of Connelly, they thought the cost was going to go up. So they were like, Hey, we're going to increase the fee from $10 to $15, right? And apparently it just, and then I'll go back to the same. But so then they were like, Oh, no, the bids came in where we are. So we're not going to increase the fee. Okay. So this is like the fourth consecutive year that they told us they were going to increase the fee from $10 to $15. The start book, we budget the increase every year, and then it never comes through. Right. And this is how we do it. We just, the town just nipples down in the fields get worse. It's kind of a funny anecdotal thing. When they referenced the $10 fee in discussions, they mentioned that Charlie helped implement it in like 2001 or something. Like this fee is like, really, really $10 for a long time. And they've never increased it. And then they just play games back and forth. And while it may be a small number, if you guys walk through public fields in town, we're all in the mess. Because no one cares. Nobody gives a crap. It's just ridiculous. I know in years past field maintenance was a big, big issue. And it finally got to the point where probably talking back in the 90s, the capital budget was set up to repair fields on a right-to-right basis, really repair them, dig them up and redo them like they did or heard. And then we're in charge, 10 bucks a person, and all the field, all that we're going to kick in, 40 or 50 or 60,000 a year for field maintenance. Now all of a sudden, this whole thing just unraveled. I don't know where that 40,000 is. I honestly don't. What I understand is that there was a free, previous years, they were paying money and then they're running once. So the deal was the Capital Planning Committee took on, as Al said, called the field replacement or whatever, the larger project. But the direct department or the Parks and Recreation and DPW were supposed to split the costs evenly of maintenance. It wasn't that they had to do 40,000 or 30,000 or whatever. They were going to split the cost of maintaining the fields. Whatever that was. Yep, yep. They're not doing anything. So the cost of field maintenance is actually what? So it is. FY 24, it looks like it's going to be 1,012,000 about. FY 23, it was 101,000. And it has been closed for the last few years. It has not been paid. It has not been split. And that's all DPW. It's all DPW. And Parks and Rec, what use of fees of what? Do we know? The total use of fees each year? 65, 7,000. I mean, on their fields, I don't know, but all of their money is use of fees. No, they have mines in here for field. Yeah, no, what I'm saying is that all the money that supports their total program are use of fees. So it won't be weird for them to raise a use of fees. They've raised other use of fees. I don't understand the struggle over this, but do we have a lining? I don't, I'm not seeing it. Yeah, there's three lines for field permit. Now, take 180 years. Yeah, no, no, no. I'm looking at the expense side, guys. Madam Chair, just that spending that Jennifer just mentioned, if you listen to what Pete said, it's money they're spending, but it's not actually what should be spent because the field aren't being paid. Right, right, right. But there's some other number out there that they need. Yeah, right. But actually, but having said that, we, they have put money into rehabilitating the fields last year, not the soccer fields. Apparently, they've been concentrating on baseball fields in the land because whatever, I don't know the priority. I don't know how that's been determined, but there have been some increases in the Viva that were included today. No, EPW in with that extra money that is from vacancies. Yeah. So we, so we do puzzle, you know, something like that, right? So we do not know, since like we have a bunch of unknowns, we do not know exactly how much we should be paying every year. Right, right. We don't know why parks and records came contributing nothing to it. The only thing I've been told consistently is that they're paying to the parties about the month. And do we know what the port of credit price costs at just $40,000 or not? So someone added to our list of things we need to pursue and maybe just because is what we pursued before we might want to reopen some budgets, but what we need is we need Joe Connolly to tell us how much the port of bodies cost. We need a real dollar amount for what the payments that would be an appropriate number for the beginning of fields is. And then we need to put that all in one pot and split it between EPW and REC. Just because they're paying for party parties doesn't mean they should get out of their share of all that part of field maintenance if you want to. Yeah, shouldn't get them out of their share that field maintenance and especially because they have the money they have the capacity. I don't care what Joe says. He has money in the bank. Yep. He plans on putting more money in the bank every year and he has the ability to raise a fee that hasn't been raised in 20 years. Well, I get to ask them how much happens this budget cycle versus something we push on for each year. So I am willing to pursue conversations with the town manager and with Joe Connolly. That's what I thought was the best. Annie, if you and DECA can pursue the Pockton Rackside of this equation and Jennifer and Jordan, if you can pursue with Mike what the realistic number would be, not that I'm suggesting that we will be able to afford. Right. I mean, I think, I don't think anyone has done that analysis. So that's, you know, if, like, how much would it really, to revitalize the Pockton Rackside, right? So I'm not sure that Mike can get that so quickly. That's my guess, but we can start talking about it. What is standard maintenance cycle? I mean, well, the standard maintenance is what he thinks he's paying for, right? He got 1,111,000. But is it enough to feel so deteriorating? Well, I think we would say no. Exactly. So I think we've got to get to something that is real, like if we're really doing everything we need to condition the field without the season and dot, dot, dot. And at the end of the season, all that. And I, I could throw some words around, but I'd just be repeating Jordan. I don't know anything about fear. I just want to make out, I like that big picture, sort of comment is that when I push Mike at things like this, he gets a little bit protected about this. He doesn't feel like he's screwing off on things, even though he's not, right? He's been around aren't enough to know that we have champagne case on a lemonade budget, right? Come and think, right? Like so, so that money is tight and that we don't, we never budget for what we really want for lots of things, right? No, I get that. And I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like a realistic picture of what's left of it. Yeah. You know, what are the things that we would like it for, if it could. Like, I get that from the library, because I asked that. So, I guess the question I would have is if you had double the amount that you have, what would you do? And why can't we get double the amount that we have that Parks and Rec is sitting on money? And we'd be sitting on more if they were to pursue these good things. And I'm going to show my whole relationship to everyone. Yeah, everyone should. Okay. And that was the deal. Yeah. And it sort of it fizzles. I mean, the sort of tell apart around COVID times, but then for advice happened around same time. So it's to get a bunch of things out of it, right? When I was doing this budget, Parks and Rec and money started falling off. And then at some point it just stopped. Right. So, I guess the other just confusing thing is I'm looking at the field permit fees lines in the Park and Rec budget. It gets $21,000, which doesn't have to be charged. So I guess I just have a question. Yeah. Why aren't the total amount of field permit revenue being shown in the budget? Well, he may not be classifying it all as field revenue. There may be there may be fees he's collecting for I want to sign the field up for two hours on Monday that I think is different than the fee that we talked about. I don't know where that's going to be. I just don't see it in the Park and Rec budget. But that's right. If we, if any, yeah, we'll go back. And if you, if someone how to get these budgets, you know, approve whatever board or reconsider it in terms of if you can maybe report to us on Wednesday as much as you can get. Okay. So we're different votes on this. Yeah. But let me ask, does anyone, since Jennifer Jordan will be talking hopefully to Mike tomorrow, are there any other questions about Park? I mean, natural resources and fields, John. Yeah, just trying to keep up with everything. So I think you mentioned that the maintenance costs 110k or 111k is out there. That's, so that's FY24. Yeah. It's a projection sale, but that's a, I was told it's a projection. Now, is that big into the 355k that that maintenance line? So we're talking about the maintenance count fields. It's actually the largest line admin that's going to impact the EPW budget. So we're talking about natural resources expenses? Yeah. Yeah. That's a separate budget. That is, so remember, we have, you know, 35 parks, 30 parks, 26 playgrounds, natural lighting deals, right? So, so a lot of that is for public parks or whatever, it's by my field. Yeah. They finally caught me up. Yeah. So the three, are you explaining the 355k right now? Yeah. 355k is our, the amount of the cent for our contract services, 35202 is always on contract services to do basic maintenance of our playgrounds, our parks, you know, you're like, I have a little park park, they come and know whatever flow, that kind of thing. We do end up spending actual more than that for the special projects when we expect extra money, but, but that number reflects our contract costs. So that's their party vendors. They low, they whatever. Gotcha. And then as I mentioned, he kind of just caught me up. Now that 355 wouldn't, is it having relevance to this whole conversation about, you know, making the, the fields a little better? It doesn't. Because I understand that is not sports fields. Those are park, parkless parks, you know, all the other places. Yeah. Actually, I'm just like trying to picture like every, every park I go to is 90% baseball field soccer field. Yeah. And I know, right? There's certain places that are both, right? But like, I have a park that sounds like me that has no sports. And that's 355k. Yeah. Yeah. Things like, yeah. And again, get some of that as well. Yeah. All right. Any other questions for, for Jennifer or Jordan before we move to engineering? All right. Thank you, Annie or Becca and Jennifer and Jordan for trying to get more information before next meeting on this issue. And this is an important issue. All right. Engineering. Engineering. Yes. Okay. So big picture. The engineering provides some court services, the PPW, found departments, mission plan for public facilities, and the general cover. So basically anytime someone needs to do something, if it's like, and start doing something or are kind of doing something, or even a private place that affects the public utility area, they get involved in sort of surveying it or engineering it. They do field infection, they do some environmental reviews, and maintenance contact or traffic signals, bunch of things like that. Question about free salaries and wages. So we had an opportunity to get something that we thought was really good. And so we actually had to increase the junior civil engineer salary by $11,000, if you're going to ask about that. There's a baking position. Mike thinks we're a peaking and selling number at an amount, but if we find something really good, we have the flexibility to increase the pay. So basically it was like, you know, it's not necessarily like the higher number is not necessarily what we've always had to pay, but we just got something really good that we couldn't afford to miss. Let's see. Oh, I had a question again. I think I have like three judges I'm looking at. The 2023 actuals in the budget book is 312, but in meaning it was 360,000. And I said, why is that? That was to pay out some of the retired and got overtime, vacation time, sick pay, a whole bunch of big payout. But again, we don't want to put this in the actuals because it's not a standing hawk. So it's sort of a one-time thing. So it gets put in me in us because it's a real expense, but it doesn't have any actuals in the budget book. It's not something that we pay out every year. So like this guy retired, we're not going to have that every year. Over time, this is again a place where the budget amount reflects in earlier five-year actuals. I'm going to push Mike and the next time we see this to get a more accurate up-to-date five-year actuals. Though the amount is higher than we tradition then is the actuals in the last two years, that he sees that as covering double-time out-of-grid pay that aren't budgeted. It's a small amount that sort of hasn't needed when they come up. Floating reflects the putting budget amount reflects the 23 actuals. 22 was a little less, but it depends on who comes in and out. Maintenance. Remember, 52 is always contracted work. This is the one that often the actuals are higher than what's in the book. The only budget at $25,000. That reflects our standing costs. Those are things like environment and surveys is one thing that we have to do every year in some places and that's just something we always have to pay for. So those are things that we always keep in this maintenance. However, in the last two years, we've done extra things. We've done sidewalks on Nature Road Street. We've been to the sidewalks next to the Wittmark Park. We've done a little bit of work on Russell's common lot and improvements on Chestnut Street there. So we spent about a quarter of a million in this category in the last few years. Mobility improvements. This is a mistake I made last year. This is not the money from the override that was promised. This 60,000, the money from the override is actually in the capital plan. And I remember Charlie raised this issue. That money does get increased each year sort of like an adjustment. This is money that the town manager put in a few years ago to sort of cover things that there was a great amount of demand for. This is one of the areas that Mike doesn't actually control. The town manager controls it. Last few years, we've done fixed brick sidewalks. We had pedestrian weekends. There's crosswalk work. But it's basically, there's a lot of concern about a particular area from the community. And the town manager says we have 60,000 to sort of fix this problem in which there's a lot of attention being given to it. And the mobility improvements is to the actual construction. Yeah. So this is one of the few things, and yeah, that's a good point. In engineering, most of these things are for things like surveying and, you know, consulting work. This one item is also for the construction work. So it does cover whatever engineering has to be done for that project. But it also covers a link of the property at the same price, et cetera. The one item in that budget that does. Okay, Rebecca. Did you just repeat when you said that they were putting a new sidewalk, what line item that was for it? Yeah. So once again, when I look at the 5202, which is whenever we contact that work, we have a budget in and out. We have the actuals, and then we have the actuals and the actuals and we are always higher because they include all these extra special projects. So in the last few years, the extra pleasure projects we've done have included a bunch of sidewalk work, you know, near Whitmore Park and Russell South and the rest of Parliament lot. But you're saying that doesn't show up in the footage at all? Yeah. So one of my big frustrations I learned last year is that when you look at these actuals, they're not the real actuals. They're not the actuals. They're not the money that you see in the news. And I'm surprised why engineering would be thank if I was in it. I think they're just throwing them in. Again, Mike has a tremendous amount of discretion over these budget items, unlike every other budget that we have in town. So when he's like, oh, let's do some sidewalk work, he throws it into one of the maintenance items. It could be in my way because it's right. It could be in my way. I don't know. It may actually not be his decision. It may be a decision made by either somebody else who's doing the entry. I actually don't know if he makes it. It also looks like most of this budget is covered with off-center from water sewer, which then makes it sort of a special strange to them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, not if I was budgeted sort of like again. Yeah. Right. Junes. You have our time, June, seeing a lot of projects. That is because we had budget in the end of the year. And then also in June. They all get covered in June. Yeah. And a lot of the DPW work, whether it depends on it as well. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that can't be done in February. Right. And so June is a big, it's not just we have extra money. It's the same. I'm not going to do that. Right. So yeah, I just wonder if the work that he is doing to normalize all these different categories at all with the sort of, you know, Rebecca said sort of the random crossing and something. Right. We just had- It won't help with the best way of, you know, oh, I have salary money. So I kind of don't use anything to help with these big normalizing the budgets. I suspect they're going to push back against it because if we just add to the budget without taking anything out, then we just raise these budgets. Right. No, I'm saying it's been termed having a more rational picture across budgets. Yep. I mean, finally, but I still want there to be actuals that are accurate. If it's, if it's charged to this line item, I want it to show up in the actuals. So yeah, yeah. So I've gone back and forth and this is what I'm trying to report on it. The reason that we don't put it in the actuals I've been told is that, well, people would think looking at it is that this is a standing cost. This is a new contract that we have to maintain every year. And that's not really right. So that's why it's not in the actuals. But I think it's my responsibility to tell you when the union numbers differ from the actuals in the budget though, until tell you what's happening. And I've done lots of cross, you know, analysis to figure that out. Should be reflected in something we can see. Yeah. So I've asked her, I asked her to report this year, for example. You know, that's, but yeah, if it doesn't actually accurately reflect something I've been told, so I'm not sure what to do with the report. I think what we need is transparency. Yeah. Where are we spending our money? I'm not even, it's not, that's the question I have. I'm not saying that we're spending it appropriately. Yep. Yep. Or anything like that. But that's what I hope to get when I ask the list of the items that we actually fix. But they don't reflect all the things I've been told. So that's why I'm not sure. This is a case where we should request the time manager and the head of public works to come and see us. So we can ask a lot of questions. Let me do that. Now, man, this is kind of being on the 13th of the March. And maybe the far directly. Do you want me to ask them to come and update? I can't do anything. Well, I think we can ask these questions when the manager comes in. But in the meantime, we need to still do what we just talked about getting some more information so that we can be able to make decisions about these budgets or whatever else we might be doing. But we can tell the manager that this will be enough on the list of things for him to talk about with us on the 13th. And he can bring the project he got here if he wants. All right. Other questions about engineering? Do we want to have a budget member? Yes, please. Yes. You have a move. I would recommend, five, one, five, six, five, six, seven. Yeah. So 40, 470,000, $175. No, no, no, no. The calculation total, Jen. Sorry. One, eight, and five, okay. Yep, seven. One, eight, and five, oh, seven. This is a good example. Sorry, okay. But the offset is really screened. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. It's written back down at this time, so. All right. So there's some more questions. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. All right. Any other questions on the engineering project? All in favor of 1805.057. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Juniors. So next is Public Works Administration. So main points, this is who manages the finances, pays invoices, manages the grants they receive, water sewer, reading and billing, all personnel and payroll management, customer service, contract administration, priority projects they have going on. And this is also where the oversight of solid waste, recycling hazardous waste resides. So big picture items. If you recall last year, the director of GIS was moved from high T and reclassified in fiscal year 23. They're adding $10,000 to the new 52-24 materials line. This used to upgrade the aerial photography as part of a revamp of the GIS system. Staffing, there are two vacancies that they've been looking to fill. One is the principal account clerk slash bookkeeper. They're actively looking to fill right now. And the principal clerk and stenographer, we talked to them about this position. It's got the stenographer position, whether or not this is really useful for them. And I think that they want to look more into this position for how they can revamp it to be more relevant to what they need it to be. Because clearly nobody's using a typewriter over there. So it's sort of an obsolete title to have right now. So they do want to do more with that position. And there was also a question about the waste diversion and curbside engineer. And this was something that Charlotte was in the process of reviewing as well. But again, I think they want to do something with this position. They want to make sure that it aligns with what the goals are. Do you have something more? Yeah, I mean, I'll cover this one with your waste. But with this next time, they may not hurt somebody actually. I think that's right. So going down. So if you want to read this over time, it was the actuals came in at almost double for fiscal year 23. This was because they lost the assistant DPW director. So they were so they had fewer people then. So that's why ultimately it ended up being so much as they had to move people around in order to cover the work of what the last assistant DPW director had done. This is before Nelson got brought forward. Yeah, I think that's really it. There weren't really any major changes in this budget. Were there any questions? Charlie. So I'm a land and they are they really part-time positions or are they full-time positions with charges going to a different department? We won't say that, Charlie. I think she is not a full-time position. But there is an extra charge 35,000 both to the different with charge. The salary starts to, you know, the, let me take an ATV and put it in charge of the second time. Yeah, yeah. That's correct. It's not the full amount of hours is what I as one FT. Yeah, she's not full time. So they are full-time position people, right? In other words, her salary and the other salary are being charged to different departments to part. No, that's no. She's not just not worth for them. There are $35,000 of her salary is charged to each recycling plant, but she is not. Okay. And the other person is not would not be for it. Thank you. By the way, this is a point of observation. I recently had the opportunity to down the writer street, the recycling center on a Saturday and I was impressed with the efficiency there. Well, it's pretty much an excellent volunteer work. A lot of our peers. Yeah, but also other questions on public work and grant. Thank you. Very good. I'd like to just make a point on a question, but on these offsets, the way to perhaps look at this, especially the last one of engineering is that it only affects the salary. So in this case, one could say that about 60 to 65% of their salary work or their personal work is spent on more than sewer. And that's the same with engineering because it's only deducted from salaries. So it just kind of makes the pieces together. It means essentially the 60% of their time or 65% of the time is spent on more than sewer. Thanks. That's all. Thank you. Charlie. May I ask you a question about that? Do you grant, you know, what the total off the top of your head? Memorized, right? Do you know what the total water and sewer expenses are compared to the rest of D.V. Doe? Not so bad. I could look at it. And then I don't have a picture. Just curious. Thank you. That's a good point. Other questions, if you have a recommendation. So recommended, recommends the total taxation amount of 312,637 dollars. Second. Need for the questions. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. unanimous. Yeah. So highway. Another place where there's expertise. Thanks for my. Highway division between the hundreds and hundreds of miles of roads, hundreds of miles of sidewalk and perforating, beef parking lot, and the School of Gargill, stairs, walls, stent, this time, rain, and different types of exits. The budget and good salaries and money for small projects. Large-scale sidewalk and street work is done by outside contractors and in fact, it's the end of the year. We currently have five agencies. The budget was six. The biggest effect is our ability to staff file trucks, as well as performing needed sidewalk pervading and road repairs. Staff vacancies that have other budget items. For example, if we don't have the staff, we'll collect head waste under the wider, minor, sidewalk cares. We don't need to pay for those of that type of degrees. So there's just, there's our new dependencies. The salary and wages. Someone asked us about the increase to the average in management pay. Mike, they're explicitly does not deal with the salary negotiations, but he thinks that they might have added a staff budget life during the last time of the negotiation. I asked about salaries and wages temporary. That is for summer health, high school and college students. So we get to have a landscape and other like duties. You might have seen the call for, if we have a teenager or something to call to get people to do it for that. The overtime position has nothing to do with back to the vacancies. It's just that lots of highway work needs to be done at night around the weekend. It just sort of, that we did during low travel time. Maintenance is time to do work for small projects for, for example, a sideways patched. Last year we charged 124,000 to that, that fly to fly out. So energy. So one of the stories I told is the shifting energy, the tracking of places that we don't need to track and figure if we've been doing it for a while. Here's where the wider expenses live. And there's no actual supply chain too, because facilities took over that money. So we've had places historically where we've tracked things or one department handled it, but then the other department. Auto, gas, and oil, this is exciting. Starting October, 2023, we started using our own tanks again. During the DPW construction project, vehicles were filling up the local gas stations. They had a special car, they had a special rate, the state set, but it was a lot more expensive than if we have our own car tanks. And we now do the gas. Similarly, auto, gas, and oil, similar issues for tracking purposes and it moved eating fuel to 14 is equalized to financial gas. Last year, it was zero because of building block line. Now the new DPW building is all electric, so we may not need this budget in the future here, but again, the energy issues are all crazy right now. We were asked about jump in training in 2024. The 2024 amount is actually similar to what 2022 was, and to historic factories. And like I said, 2023 was just a light year for the reason. 52, 24 other supplies, they covered curbs and catch basins. And this is a place where when we are fully staffed, we spend money. When we don't have so much staff, we don't spend so much money on it. A heating heel. This is for 23 maple. So I told you that in April, I uploaded it first, and this is for her water systems. They said that there was building, but DPW had it, and IT was there. So we were paying for those expenses then. Marking highways. So the track lines are contradicted. So I'm going to ask why the actuals from last year were pretty low. And the answer is that we had some work that we couldn't get finished in the last years in FY24. And they were done early in, sorry, FY23. They were done early in FY24. So the work wasn't done in June, but it was done in July or August or something. So it's just, it's a question of timing. That wasn't that we didn't do that work that summer. Just didn't do it that way. Small equipment. This purchase hand tools, small power tools, things that just need to be replaced where they aren't there. All right. Questions? Like, no questions. All right. Okay. We're in recommendation. Yeah. My recommendation is the budget item of $1,897,070. There's seconds. Okay. All right. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? unanimous. Adam, did you have a person? Yes, I did. If I could just make a comment. Go on through the public works different sections. It appears that the town is having a problem with vacancies. Yeah. So there's a couple of different issues, right? Right. So the time is doing really well, right? We are low if you compare the time range of 12 communities, but we are not firing from the time range of 12. We can see that, right? So, so native isn't the time range of 12, but we're not competing with native, right? We're competing with lexicon, just not in the time range of 12, and maybe they're paying fire. So we have lost some really good people because there are other towns just with more. In public works, public safety, they're all the hardest jobs to write down and try to fill. I just don't think that there's the workers out there. And I think there's also the sentiment that the private sector usually pays more for these types of positions, and they have more flexibility in how they work as opposed to the structure, nine to five type of work that a municipality brings. Well, when they kind of get those new jobs with attention or early traffic, and they kind of do really well, I would put the answer there. Yeah. Just to come. Yeah, no, that's it. But the one thing that Mike is doing is he now is registering us as a vehicle. What's the vehicle? Oh, what's the vehicle? Training. Training was something. Yeah. And he thinks that will make a difference with some jobs, with the driving jobs, because we can't hire, well, we can hire people who don't have their, their license. But they didn't have to go elsewhere to get the license, because they're mad time. If we can promise that we'll train them at that time, we might be more. All right. So we have done highway. We already did snow and ice. Solid waste. We used to work on solid waste. Yeah, solid waste. I have a bunch of questions out. How about motor equipment? Yeah, we can do motor vehicles. So we went over the asset management system already, but this budget, there aren't many large changes. I think the biggest past that we've had, the biggest concerns that we've had in the past were regarding the cost of parts and just what we were spending. And we had the conversation with Mike, and I think he was pretty confident about the management of the parts. Now a lot of the cost had gotten out of control. A lot of the dealers that sell, the dealers in the manufacturers that sell these parts, they tend to gouge their prices over the last few years because they were able to get away with it. Mike thinks that they've got back control and that we'll see then the spending has, I think, is largely even itself out. There were no real dramatic, I think, shifts in any of the budgeted, any of the salary items over time was about 6,000 under, which that's just the necessary amount that needed to be paid to make the repairs double time. That wasn't a whole lot spent in fiscal year 23. He thinks that 2,900 number is good to get him for the year. Out of great pay, they were just with some of the, they were, I think it was a long time absence which required somebody that to fill in the position of the supervisor, but he doesn't see that being an issue, but he wants to keep that number at 3,200. Clothing is all contractual and longevity. Maintenance, he did want to do more trainings to make sure that everybody's got the appropriate training to be able to service the vehicles. And again, other supplies, 52, 24, that's all of the vehicle parts, tires, anything that would need to be replaced on any of the DPW vehicles. DPW vehicles, they have about 105 roughly vehicles of different sizes ranging from the larger trucks, heavy duty trucks, medium duty to light vehicles. So they've got quite an extensive fleet that they maintain. Parts, they do ebb and flow, but again, I think that this is starting to settle itself up. Questions, Charlie? So did you discuss at all the changing nature of vehicle repair? In other words, I don't know how this applies to heavy trucks, but for most vehicles today, even those that are not electric, they are largely electric. And you can't go in there and replace the carburetor filter anymore because there isn't anyone, it's all electronic fuel injection. And in my mind, it's like you're a CD player, you can't fix it, you have to throw it away. What's one of these people, they've been, some of these people have been here, it looks like six or seven years, but are they able to maintain these new vehicles, as well as the old ones? So I asked them this question last year and I asked them again this year. So most of the large fleet that they maintain for DPW, they're not electrified, they're not hybrid, just simply because the technology hasn't caught up to what those vehicles are yet, but certainly it's something to keep an eye on moving forward as the town starts to move more. Right now it's mostly the light duty vehicles that are either the hybrids or the all electrical. Mike is very confident in his workers right now to be able to service appropriately all the vehicles that they have, but certainly moving forward for the light vehicles for your medium to heavy equipment whenever the technology catches up and it makes sense to convert over those, certainly we will want to look at what trains are out there, what supplies, what equipment will be needed, because you're right, I mean a traditional mechanic is looking more of like a computer tech, but most of the new equipment goes to our computers, but for right now I think Mike is very confident in his staff to be able to, his staff and the equipment that they have, we got to see the new facility, they have a great big, where they can work on all the heavy machinery, all the medium and light appropriately, so I think that he's confident that they can service all their vehicles right now. Yeah, we did push really heavy last year and you felt that what we were doing was very soft out there, other towns weren't radically transparent yet. Thank you. Other questions? Thank you for your recommendation. So I recommend the Motor Vehicle Equipment Repair Taxation, total $478,178. Second. Second. All right, I want to say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? So next I have the cemetery. So cemetery, they're mostly responsible caring maintenance Mount Pleasant Cemetery and the old burying grounds Mount Pleasant Cemetery is the only one that's currently accepting new burials. They do do some maintenance over at the old burying ground. The Cemetery Commission makes recommendations so they can have managers on the rules, regulations, the fees. The questions that we got in, the balances of lots and graves and the perpetual care, lots and graves is currently $1,045,347. It's $2,000 per lot sold, plus any interest that occurs on the account and perpetual care $8,673,792. $500 per grave sold, again, plus interest on the accounts. There was a question about the column barium and when the work's going to be complete, they're going to be bidding, that was about $30,000. That work is going to be bid out and completed this spring. So some other items, there was an increase in $5,202, that's the maintenance and that was due to a three-year contract. They didn't renew. They now have a different vendor and that's basically mowing and taking care of the cemeteries. The energy is the electricity, $5,201. Training is any sort of training that they would need. Other supplies, $5,224. It's dirt, it shovels, it's really anything that they would need in order to do the job that they do. Something interesting to note about the expenses. You'll note fiscal year 23 was a little over $9,000. They budgeted for $25,000. It's a number that Mike's keeping an eye on. As more people are choosing to be cremated, there's less of a need for supplies. So I think he's going to keep an eye on that number, see whether or not it's really necessary to keep that high of a number, if more people are being cremated as opposed to burying them. Burying just costs more. I assume it's an area, not quite, excuse me, not pleasant for ashes. Back to Colin Berry, that they're at it trying to be alive. Yeah, so Colin Berry and that they sold the prep but they can't do that. It's not very nice looking at that. At some point soon, they're not going to be able to bury. Yep. So whether people want to be cremated or not, but that's no choice. About globally or in our own. I think they started a new natural burial section where you just, you know, going to grab on a cloth and draw it away down by this one. This one. Cinnamon. Really? Are you serious? Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, okay. I believe they set aside a section, down by what's it called, both the white one down there. Okay. The white one. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. They're in by wetlands, I think they do, but I don't know. I don't know. That's amazing to me. So wetland filters all the epochs at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Don't think it's perfect. I don't know. I don't know. All right. Other questions on that cemetery question? Dave. Just another point. I know there's a vacancy, and the vacancy is the motor equipment operator. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the person who speaks the greatest. Who's taken that place and sits vacant? The discrepancy here. Yeah. So we did ask about that position. It's advertised right now. Mike has said that it's been very hard for them to fill. So that's probably why we have, that's probably why we have been paying and carrying such a high overtime for a relatively small department to be able to make just to do what they need to do. But he's still there. You're performing. Yeah. He's not, he's not. But yeah, but it's, well, he's working two jobs. Well, there's double time, and I'm going to pay it by a very low day at home. Other questions? Do you have a recommendation? Oh, wait. Topher. Yeah, I didn't ask that. Let's look at the commentary from the offsets. So what were those? I'm sorry. The offsets. So the offsets are, that's perpetual care. Okay. Any other questions? Any other recommendations? I recommend the cemetery taxation total $273,479. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. So we're going to invest. Streetlight is another fund budget. Counties for contractors from hanging with our streetlights, traffic signals, walk signs, the pool of the life of our community by human and outside contractor. And it campaigns for the electricity or to install electrically. Let's see, maintenance, 5202, this is getting contracted for maintenance. The meaning has this line higher than it is in the budget book, similar to other things. The extra was used for improving pedestrian lines in the center of town. And the extra $5,000 budget is based on the new contract that we have. So again, the numbers in the budget close for actuals and for new ones are based on this contract that we know is going to happen every year. There is increase in the budget for streetlight electricity. We didn't increase traffic signals because of fewer traffic signals. This is based on what we can talk about in the past, right? So that we have electricity costs going up. We have this high rate that is set by contract. Our 2024 amount was higher than it was in 2023. And obviously it was raised higher. So just to be very clear about the contract that we have, the contract we have is a calendar contract. So when 2024 rates went up, that affects both the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. And our next contract is going to be, you know, affect this budget. And we think it's going to be a little forward. The maintenance of traffic signals, similar, some idea this year, 2002 for traffic signals. The amount that we spent is more, 114,000, 146,000, 102,000 plus three years. And the additional amount we used to fund some debtor beings and to fund the Lake Street flight. All right, questions? I'll be on it. But I recently had a talk by the town manager and he said one of the things he mentioned was that the actual LED heads are out of warranty now. So when they burn out, we have to buy them. Is that what you're talking about? I heard that. I don't know if he was listening after that, but I heard that. I think in our conversation, Mike mentioned that he was anticipating that. Maybe that's five dollars more. Yeah. Yeah. Charlie. My question is actually related to Allen's. In the last 20 years, we went through, I believe, two changes in lighting, from incandescent to sodium-based lighting and then to LEDs. And I'm just wondering if there's any plans, if there's any, I don't want to say why, I'll say any wattage savings to go to a new generation of LEDs and have less consumption and better maintenance costs. Or did anything we can ask? But I know the change in LEDs was huge. And I think that's what I did. I think you've talked about that in the past years. It was huge. But I don't know if we will see increases if we, for example, replace these lights. I know it's that, but I don't know. Mike, a question for the capital planning committee. Any other questions on street lights or traffic lights? You have a recommendation? Yes. I would like to recommend that the 150,000, 100, sorry. So this should be budgeted separately. You can make a joint from one motion to cover both. Okay. I'd like a joint motion for 265,000 or 30,000. 265,000. She's saying 150 for street lighting and 115 for traffic signal. Seven. Any questions? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? All right, unanimous. Thank you. That was fabulous work. And maybe we can finish these for maybe then on Wednesday. But we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Well, sounds like we might take us a lot more to the field. Right. Thank you. Yeah. I'm bringing it up. Maybe we can just sell it waste. What? We'll definitely sell it. If you can bring back some information on Wednesday. Mostly. That would be good. All right. Go for it. All right. So I'm a treasurer and a blocker. So first there was a new budget sheet just with much solidness. So I did get distributed. So would you pick up? Yeah. So that was distributed. All right. But let me go through the various questions and items. So first is Tudan. Sophie's not here because she was the one asking about the parking program. But it turns out that that was driven through treasurer, collector, um, essentially what it is, is that they have hired, I guess you would say, put in an application of Helen Ryan, that's a deputy collector. And while they're still a collector in the office, the idea of this is, there's a number of improvements. You can pay online. Better hand-held devices for the parking enforcement fee. And a big one is that this allows them, this will automatically notify the registry. Someone doesn't pay their parking tickets. And then their license and their registry will get flagged. And they won't be able to renew until that's paid. And well, it will probably take some time to see all the benefits of this they think it may be like six figures and uncollected tickets that they will be able to get. And there's no statute of limitation in the parking tickets. So that's, that's the new parking program. And, um, yeah, going through, um, things, you know, fairly straightforward, I would say, um, you know, overtime, um, they are fully staffed. Um, so they don't, you know, they'll always be some overtime because of things like collecting from the box at town hall on the weekends. They have to envy it. Me, let's see. On 70 stipends, our clothing and the union contract happens. Um, the advertising is for takings. And also for opening for positions. And they, I asked how many, and they said about 50 were advertised in August of 2023. They do it once a year. They do try to very much avoid actually foreclosing. The expenses, the processing expenses are for American alarm. And the machine that holds the Jackson reports and the mailings and things like that. Me, let's see. The travel is for the international city, county management association. And the training is for that membership. And membership does come with educational webinars, according to Julie, they're very good. The other supplies are the shredded water for the office and they actually painted the office. And they are trying to coordinate the shredding visits between departments. Save some money. The legal expenses here, tax takings are another item. The distance, I guess they had to bond a treasure collector and the deputy. Um, there's the manual reports. So there was one, one, um, I guess it was a foreclosure that almost happened, but I don't think it did. I think they managed to. And then the water bonds are MWRE borrowing. They can get zero interest loans. So that's good. And that, I think, and that's the third question. Pretty much. Oh, 52, 87. The IT consultant, they will remove that. The lease is most of the items on this. Okay. So. Questions. Then I will move the treasure collector calculation of 727, 720. So that was the new, uh, new number again, 727, 720, 7272. And can you just run through real quick, what would that, why was that, what was that change as a salary position? Um, there was a, uh, it was a higher that that came in. I mean, it was basically like many of the salary points, uh, if they hired somebody who wasn't. I have, I have your email. Yeah. The, uh, system collector excised was hired recently. You should have, uh, expected lower. Um, could you come to the updated table? So, so. Yeah, it was restricted. Was it? Yeah, there's only two. So I think there's been a motion. I'm going to second it. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? So. All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. And the animals. Uh, Jim Penner. I was a picture. All right. Go for it. No. The postage, I think, was even more straightforward. So, um, you know, one, one and 40, I see, um, stipends are the same in the contract. The data processing expenses for the, uh, 50 Bose machine. Um, they are looking at, um, you know, the button was obviously the actual way to roll budget and Julia's keeping an eye on that. She's new to the position session of the form in 2000. Um, and the office supplies, there will, there's, I guess, 1176 this year so far, fiscal year. Um, the, you know, the postage to the schools, there's been one shift all already and I asked, well, you know, what's that move at all? It's all right in schools, but they're reassessing that. So we're keeping an eye on that. I guess I could say. Um, and then, um, the jump in the postage, I'm posted in 2023. She said what some of the schools and census mailing and they mark rather than billing the town clerk, they're just handling it. Um, and the, the offsets are, I guess, 17% of the budget, which is what power and solid and talk to it was appropriate for mailing of water also. So it's a lot of sorority. Yeah. And I get it. And any, any questions? Not posted. General foundation. Yep. Uh, I would move, uh, the taxation total of 169, 292. That's a second. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? You sent around, um, you know, about recognizing the records. Do you have anything else to say? Oh, that's right. Thank you for mentioning that. It was, I thought it was, I think, and even when that was asking about it, you know, read, read Jim's email. It does sound like vital records might be next. Um, you know, it seems to me like they're aware of it on top of it. Um, I don't know if we need to push on anything there. I think if the town clerk is, you know, wants to do it and Jim knows about it, I think we'll try to do it for a while. Right. And those are records that we can never get rid of. So that's definitely. All right. So what we have left for departmental budgets are human resources, parking, the two DW departments plus solid waste, insurance and water and soar. And I think that's it. And Topher Emel said that he's going to be working on parking, right? It was you that. No, no. That's Michael. Michael, yes. Okay. So, okay, great. All right. It's going to take that over for, all right. And, and reclass. Um, Carol, Carol said that she wanted to try to do that after schools if possible. That's going to take, so I'll. All right. Make sure you keep your reading about reclass. We have scheduled that for March 4. Right. Yeah. I have human. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yep. Because we're meeting. So what I have for scheduling is we'll take up. DPW, that's the DPW as far as we can on Wednesday, maybe we'll have some informational fields. We'll talk about the permissions and committees on Wednesday. On the 4th of March, I have the library rebuilds and reclass on our agenda. March 6th is the capital planning committee. March 11th is a minute, man. March 13, the time manager will be coming in and we'll be doing. Well, we may be doing the CPA and scenic by way then, or we'll be doing that on 8th. We can do it on the 8th. They said, okay, so we'll move that to the 18th and it was water bodies on the 18th. Hopefully we'll be able to do insurance and water and sewer. On the 20th. And then wrap up with schools on the 25th and any, any leftover remaining business. And that's that's the plan. And what are you doing? This one say we're going to do. What we can do with. We're definitely based, but we may not be able to do. And then we'll. And Michael thinks we can do parking on Wednesday parking. And then all the meetings and commissions that we. That we want to say. So all the budget. The people sent a lot of budget. Yeah. The, the. The commission. Yeah, all the budgets. Yeah. Although two are asking for an increase. Yeah. And whoever is asking for an increase. They might want to. Yeah. Scenic by way. So they're already coming in. So water bodies and conservation commission are coming in on the 18th. And then. Also CPA. Arlington to 50, but they're calling themselves now. And then Arlington for is an economic development. They're not asking for an increase, but someone had asked for them to come in to talk about how they're coordinating and stuff. And so we'll try to work out. Those commissions that you can deal with on Wednesday. We don't want our culture, right? That was what I felt like. They're not coming in. They said it had a budget. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So we can talk about that. This one will be in the meeting. So we can talk about what I'm going to say. What about the commission? Yeah, I think we should see if they can come in on Wednesday. This Wednesday. Yeah. Oh, okay. I'll ask them. Yeah. If they can. Great. Yeah. Okay. All is we will, we will finalize. We can come report the first week in April. That's why we need to finish up on Wednesday. That's something we need to say. No, just so it's good. Yeah. Finish up on the front. It's like I travel in April like that. All right. All right. So if no one has anything else for tonight, I will let you know what's your turn. So Lou. Yeah. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Where's Lou? Thank you.