 Good evening everyone this open meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's order of March 12 2020 to the outbreak of the virus in order to trans mitigate the transmission of the virus. We've been advised by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such the governor's order suspends the requirements of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. This order you can find posted with the agenda materials for the meeting on the town website. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to tbradley at town.arlington.ma.us. This meeting is convened by video conference on the zoom app as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join in comment. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference according accordingly please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All supporting materials have been provided members that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public's encouraged to follow along using the post of the agenda, unless the chair notes otherwise chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks the chair. Invites members to provide any comments questions or motions please hold until you are recognized in your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or your computer when you're not speaking and please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquial other members please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. Due to the size of my left the top screen, I may not be able to see all the members at once if someone raises raise their hand and I haven't noticed. I hereby request the terror Bradley or any record, please bring this to my attention. So now we'll confirm that all the meters members are. So if you will. Answer in the affirmative when I call your name grant give me in. Michael here. John Ellis. Hi, I hear Lee. Yes. Brian back here. area. Sophie Migliaz or he said he wasn't going to be here Sophie and so did grant. Sophie. Here. Jonathan Wallach. Shaylene Crawford. Darrell Harmer here. Here. Alan Jones. Here. George closer here. Bill Keller. Here. Altoxie here. Wanda Nascimento. Here. Christine Deschler here. Dean Carmen. You hear you're here right. Yeah, did you not hear me I'm here. Dean Carmen it looks like it's trying to speak. He's here. David McKenna. Here. Thank you David and Tara you're here. Okay. So we have a quorum. Let me, I want to make some comments here. This is the time that I should normally ask to pass the salt. Having to eat my words. So last week. The last meeting rather. Al Tosti asked about our future schedule. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I literally responded that we could invite March 30th, but I'm concerned that that's not the case. So Grant. Gibby is not going to be here tonight. And so that means that we have to do the water and sewer on Monday or later. But remember, we have the school budget on Monday night. And tonight we will address article 25. And the insurance budget. And if Brian Beck is here and ready. We'll also do the parking district commission fund. And then we'll do the water and sewer budget. And then we'll do the water and sewer budget. Which I think we, we didn't do when we did the parking budget. Then we also have to do the water, water bodies, the historic district commission. We've got a response on that. I think we're getting a response on the committee and disability with. As. And sending a flurry of emails back and forth on this. There are some select board issues that we have to deal with. The town managed. Any issues that wrap up with the town manager. And then we have to do the water and sewer budget. And then we have to do the water and sewer budget. And then we have to do the water and sewer budget. And then we have to do the water and sewer budget. And then in addition. I'd like to see us. Receive some reports from our special working groups, including. Out of these operation research, which is. Going to be covering the DPW. Trash. Trash collection and recycling. Budget. Excuse me. Our operation. Christine. Hopefully has a policy. Her policy group has a. A manual that has been worked on for quite some time. And it's. I mean, I've seen it. It's very impressive. And then an update perhaps on the IT. Working group. And, and. If it sounds like I have things under control here, that's not really true because. All of this was derived from an excellent summary that. Tara prepared. While I was struggling to figure out what was going on. This email arrived. So. We also have to do the warrant article on domestic partnerships. The warrant article on rodenticides. And then, as I mentioned earlier, the select boards trying to change the budgeting schedule. And they're not going to be able to come until after March 30th. So. Probably, I think we should be thinking about using at least. In the meeting at least on the four, four, four and four, six. Tara pointed out that. In 2021, we met for 19 regular meetings. Right up through 414. And. This year, if we meet. Even through. A couple of meetings in April. We'll, we'll, we'll still have fewer meetings than last year. I mean, that's just a piece of information for whatever it's worth. So, so in any event, please reserve. April 4th and April 6th. And we will also, as Al pointed out, need to review the budgets after we see the houseways and means committee report. Hopefully on the 14th of April. So. Is that. Anybody have any questions on that? Thoughts. None. Okay. Good. So then I think. I see that we have Julie Brazil and Greg Dennis here. Welcome. Thank you very much for. For coming. So let's address the minutes. Tara, do you have the. You have two sets of minutes. Yes. I am too working off a laptop today unexpectedly. So bear with me just a minute here. Let's see. Okay. Here are the minutes. For three 14. Whoops, wrong one. Here they are. I have not received comments. From anyone except for you, Charlie, saying that they looked fine. Oh, I don't know if anyone else has had a chance to read these. They've been up on the SharePoint site for a day or two. But I found them. Accurate. So. Are there any questions on the minutes? Okay. So we'll move to a motion to accept the minutes as an order. Move. Second. Okay. So this is what's the, this is the minutes of three 14, right? Yes. Okay. So we'll move to a vote. It's not here. Shane. Yes. Does John Ellis here yet? No. Makaya Healy. Makaya. Thank you. Brian. Yeah. Here. A reef is not here. Sophie. Yeah. John and walk is not here. Kayleen Crawford. Is not here. Darrell Harmer. Yeah. Annie McCourt. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. George Kosher. Yes. So Keller. Yes. Val Tosti. Yes. Wanda Nascimento. Yes. Christine Deschler. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. David McKenna. Thank you very much. The minutes. Yeah. Three 14 are approved. Then we have the minutes for three 20. Is that right? Three 16. I'm sorry. Three 16. Yes. Today's three 23. What am I saying? I don't know why they're not resizing. This is. This is a new laptop and a new experience. So. Here we go. I don't know why they're just taking up half the screen, but this is unfortunately as big as I can get them. Okay. Any comments on the minutes for three 16. I reviewed them. I didn't find any. Any difficulties with them. So. Motion is in order if there are no comments or questions on the minutes of three 16. So we'll go to a vote. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Shane. Yes. Micaela. Micaela. Yes. Okay. We got Micaela. Sophie. Yes. Jonathan. Well, it's not here. Shailene. Procurs isn't here. Darrell. Yes. Annie. The court. Yes. Ellen Jones. Yes. George. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And David McKenna. I'm counting you, David. Thank you. So those minutes are now behind us. I think the only minutes that the next ones that we'll see will be the minutes from last Monday. So the next item on the agenda is a warrant article number 25 early voting and we have with us tonight town clerk Julie Brazil. In the chair of the election moderate modernization committee. Greg. Dennis. So let me. Somebody have a comment. Okay. So let me turn the floor over to. Who should Greg or who wants to speak. Oh, Julie is it okay if I just lead often. Sure. Okay. Thank you to the chair and to this committee. For providing us this opportunity to present this warrant article to you. Again, this is warrant article number 25. It's a home rule article. That would provide Arlington voters with early voting options for town elections. Arlington voters currently have the ability to vote early state and federal general elections only, not for town elections. And the election modernization committee has been interested in some time and making available early voting options for town elections as well. When we first took a look at this. Three years ago. Oh, nearly three years ago. I think some communities had attempted this. But their efforts ultimately failed in the legislature. The legislature wasn't as interested in providing expanded early voting at that time. But things seem to have shifted in the state houses a lot more interest in early voting. There's bills that have passed would afford some communities with the ability to offer early voting. And I think. The whole pandemic era. It's been a long time. Expanded options for more flux, more flexible voting options that were available during this time. People seem to have really appreciated that and want to make some of those kinds of things permanent. So we think the ground is shifted in our favor such that if we were to forward this, we would have. For this to the legislature, we would have a good chance of passage. And even if it does not, it's still a statement that the town would have the ability to vote. The parameters of the law in terms of the deadlines and things like that are very similar to what's already in effect for state elections. And the hours. For early voting are largely within the existing hours of the town clerk's office. And the volume of early voters isn't going to be tremendously high. So, and Julie can speak to this, but we believe that the court existing court staff will largely be able to accommodate the early voting request to have a minimal financial impact. And that about summarizes it. Julie, did you want to add anything? No, I think, I think that's an excellent summary. And yes, I mean, I think we, we haven't seen a huge numbers in the communities that have done it a few communities, you know, similar to Arlington did it during the pandemic. Because their elections were later and that ability was restored. It wasn't really a practical option for Arlington last, last year in 2021. But yeah, turnouts very low. And so my, certainly my plan would be to ease into it gently, make it available as an option to take the pressure off of voters who have tricky schedules. And, you know, if it seems to be catching on ramp up very slowly, having election workers come in in order to, so like a team of two just to assist. So if it, if it starts to catch on, we'll see it coming sort of as a team and we can, we can build it into the budgets better. But at this point, I couldn't begin to guess. Because we don't know what the rules will change. And, you know, this is a minimal package. And we don't know. That's really all we know is this, this minimum seems like a good idea. If we can get it. Thank you, Julie. So are there any questions for. Our guests tonight. On this subject. Okay. Shane Blundell. All right. So right now, though, we have, we can do mail-in ballot voting for, I mean, we have like those round drop boxes around town. So this is just so I understand. People who actually like vote at a polling place could go to say town hall. Right. Versus, I mean, I guess. The mail-in balloting that was, you know, the mail-in ballot, the mail-in ballot, the mail-in ballot for town hall. Right. Versus. I mean, I guess. The mail-in balloting that we've had before is technically early voting, but it's, you're doing it from home, right? Is that correct? So it's, it's a confusing situation. Last year we could. Voters could absentee vote and early vote by mail. And could absentee and could early vote. state elections people we weren't doing absentee voting in person just because town hall was closed right now people can absentee vote in person at the town clerk's office but and you can absentee vote by mail and it's a weird distinction but it it's it's two understate lots two separate processes and it's so it is it is confusing but early voting has no restrictions and I think that's the important thing technically absentee voting does require that you meet the eligibility requirements and you have a look I have a reason why you can't go in person to the polls and no excuse early voting does not require you to sign a statement stating that you that you have a reason and need to vote absentee. Thank you. Al Tosti. Worry about cost. How much does it cost to set up one polling booth to cover in the town hall for eight hours so you get two people as you go in two people as you leave and maybe a supervisor so you got five people for eight hours for the whole town. How much would that cost approximately that isn't the current plan because I believe that the voting turnout will the early voting turnout will be fairly low will will certainly try it with just my staff voting at the counter the way you absentee vote it would be exactly the same process as absentee voting at the counter if it becomes popular I would start by hiring two election workers and then since it would be there you know we would just sort of set up the check-in right outside my office but there's not a there's not a voting booth specifically there just needs to be a place for someone to complete their ballot seal it in an envelope and turn it back in so that would be two people at $15 an hour for however many hours of the three days of early voting that I think we couldn't cover with my staff if it became popular. Okay. Thank you. Yep. I don't see any oh I'm sorry. Mikaia you're on mute Mikaia. Oh okay sorry I'm using my phone. Two questions how do you register the demand to ask for this early voting right now and my second question is if we do the early voting process now will you be decreasing the number of polling places on election day? That would be a decision that I would need to make that's technically the select board's decision it would be a conversation but early voting and absentee voting only shuffle when we get the ballots it doesn't reduce the total number of ballots and so it would just sort of depend on the patterns whether it was I think it would be several years before it made sense to to revisit the number of polling locations because that would that would be that would be that would feel very hard for a lot of voters so I think we would want to go slow with that. I think there's not a ton of confidence right now in vote by mail everybody loves the concept but mail is still pretty slow. I mailed ballots out on the 15th the morning of the 15th that didn't arrive until for a lot of voters until Saturday and that's that's a pretty good lag time and so I think it'll take time to to build all of the systems that we need as a as a state to get it right. I'm sorry Mikaia had an earlier question about registering demand I want to be sure I answered that and that I understood the question was it in terms of what will I see it coming. Yeah what why ask for it now. Oh why ask for it now because it's a it's it's honestly confusing for voters that the rules are different for different elections. You know the the voters who so I it's better in general that we offer similar services for all elections even though the state has not traditionally seen it that way is sort of the simple answer. Thank you very Julie if this is correct would be to say that year one of this would look like some number of voters coming to the clerk's office casting an early vote very similar to how they cast naps devote except they don't have to sign the statement and no change in polling locations. Now that turns out to be wildly popular as we go things may change but that's what year one. Yep. So any court you have a question. Yes. So in spring of 21 I believe we or maybe it was spring of 20 somewhere in here Julie we were allowed to both do early voting and vote by mail no excuse required for the town on election I think it was yeah it was it was June we had delayed the election we delayed town meeting etc. And we had that year I believe a very large turnout compared to our normal turnout our normal turnout is in the five to if it's a hotly contested race maybe 8000 range and we had 11000 voters turn out. Yep. So my question is do you have either with you or have ultimately access to statistics that tell us how many of the people who voted in that election voted early versus availing themselves of mail in or the drop off boxes. Am I making some sort of bad at what was the percentage who who said okay I'll just go in and vote early because that was available to them. So I am not sure and I wasn't clerk for the June election in 2020. I'm not sure you got elected that year. Right. I'm not sure that early voting had actually been enabled at that point. There was sort of a there was a sort of a Janice in the team through a Hail Mary pass because mail was so slow to allow people they sort of set up in the parking lot to do absentee voting and just sort of cross their fingers that the state didn't really find out about it. It was it was just it was a kind of a chaotic situation. So there was no there was no way to track that because it wasn't recorded in the state system as early voting early voting didn't show up the modules in the voter registration and tracking database didn't actually show up for early voting until the summer. So it was all being invented on the fly both at the state and local level. There was some election some why there was a town election where we had an extraordinarily high turnout. That was that election was that 11,000 total voters 8,000 approximately ballots by mail but but it was a mix of early it's again it was a mix of early and by mail. Yeah it was so 8,000 by mail and it's no way to track you know the in-person iteration of that. Yeah what I'm trying to kind of get at is you know we saw that big increase and do we have a reason to attribute most of it to the ability to mail in a ballot the fact that we notified them all in advance that they should vote. Yeah we mailed the application that was the biggest that was the biggest thing that made a difference yeah because so so I guess where I'm headed is that I feel like anything we can do to invest in increasing voter turnout is well worth the money and so I'm hopeful that this effort would do that because people have more options other than just remembering to go to the polls on Saturday but obviously the thing that helped the most was everybody getting a postcard saying do you want you know drop this postcard back in the mail if you want to ballot so okay thank you. Yes hi Julie so when Dave and I reviewed the budget with you a while ago we learned how there is some reimbursement mechanism for some early voting I believe when there's state elections or federal elections would that apply for town elections or not at all? No that's that is reimbursement because it's a mandate it's sort of it was a new expense added to the cost of running elections and every time you every time the legislature does that the auditor's office starts sets out to calculate the additional incremental cost we actually get a small amount of money for operating the polling locations at state on state elections for three hours in the morning because it used to be you didn't have to open it until 10 a.m. and when the state said you have to open at 7 a.m. the auditor's office ruled that that was an unfunded mandate and so we now receive $9,000 for operating our polling locations for three hours so it's a it's a very weird system but it wouldn't apply to local elections because it's optional. Other questions so I just have one question Julie I think as I read this the the request in the warrant article indicates that we're looking for one location right in other words this one if we wouldn't have five locations around town we just have one location assuming it would be a town hall yes thank you so any other comments so does anyone want to make a motion on this accepting this warrant article or not I move that we support the article second so it's been moved on a question Altosie I if this doesn't have a financial impact and I think the town court has said that then the finance committee should not be involved with recommending to town meeting on policy under the which is under the purview of the board of select we got involved in this a year ago we shouldn't have if it's strictly a policy issue with no financial impact we should stay out of it I think I think you misheard the the town clerk I think she did say that it has a financial impact and that that financial impact is going to be measured over time and it may or may I mean I heard her talk about two additional people if the number of of voters going in for early voting increases so this is an article that while it doesn't have an appropriation as a financial impact that will grow over time then we're voting on you know we don't know what the financial impact is I think we should just leave it to the select one or if we fear the financial impact you know we should oppose it well let me make a suggestion now you can make a motion that we not vote on this so moved is there a second back in though it's moved in second did not to vote on not to make a recommendation for or against um one article is it 25 is that right 25 yes now you have your hand up oh sorry Annie yes so perhaps I should clarify my reason for indicating that we got to vote to support this article and perhaps we could straighten that out in the comment if we choose to do so and my reason for suggesting that we support the article is that I believe that it will have a financial impact in the future I think this is very similar to the article that we voted to support last year which was the support of Juneteenth as a town holiday which we all knew would have a financial impact but which we supported because we believed it was important in principle I think this is very similar that I think that anything that we can do to make voting easier is worth the investment and that therefore we should signal our support for this article on the basis of it being a good investment in the future of the town of Arlington you any um Al Jones you're on mute I think no Al your hand Al and Jones your hand is up we can't hear you can't hear you I think it's your sound now Al Tassie is my sorry it's my mute button sorry uh Mr. Chair if it's an order um I I guess I'd like to ask the opinion of the clerk and Mr. Dennis if they think that the finance committee's uh endorsement or no endorsement would be relevant to the article this year certainly in order so um with the clerk or chair wish to speak to that question um I mean you know if if cost is raised as a concern during the debate having uh you know having the finance committee you know support the uh cost even if we're projecting a very modest increase over the first few years um is I think beneficial Greg did you want to make thank you um I guess I concur that um I mean it's obviously your committee you could don't want to tell the committee what to do but uh you know I guess if you want to attest to the fact that the cost is um either you know no to very modest cost at least initially in that any future cost could be anticipated as popularity grows or doesn't as we as we will see that is a um and the finance committee wants to sort of use their endorsement to attest to that uh fact or or or prediction um I think that would be of some use so so I from what the clerk said I think maybe we can anticipate someone at town meeting asking what the cost might be and we should at least be prepared to answer that thank you David McKenna um if I can Mr Chairman on early voting there's a certain number of days if the state polls for the early voting we've had five days one time we had seven days if it's a federal election we had 14 days how many days do they just the clerk think that we're going to have early voting for town election so the language here sets establishes a minimum of three days of early voting um and mirrors similar language um in the uh this state for the for the state elections that sort of constrains how early it can start um and and and captures a sort of an end date so I could actually finalize things and print the voter lists um it's written so that if the select board and I feel that it would be better to have four days just because of some reason um you know that we could add a day um you know but we thought a minimum of three days um sort of planned thoughtfully and including some evening hours and some weekend hours would be would be easy enough to to manage okay my my next question is um where it's the article is at the next town meeting when do you do expect to put this if it all passes when would this go into effect well if the legislature approves it then it would be for the town election uh 2023 so you have them now if I could just interject one question uh there David to um amplify your question what about a special town meeting in the fall during fiscal year 23 um a special town meeting we've had special town meetings in the past in the fall oh i'm sorry all right yeah never mind okay a little mental crap that's all David anything else well just this is just my thought process I think this issue should be um should be debated at at town meeting as as an article one article rather than us discussing how much it's gonna cost the mic cost whether it's be three days or four days I think we're doing we're putting money on something that we don't know exactly what it's going to cost we're guessing so why don't we have just let town meeting vote vote the article up or down and then the clerk and the proponents of this can go back to us for for another for money for expenditure should they need it well um to not to not to take sides here this is that's exactly the position that's the move okay however if there's a there's a missing step here if the warrant article passes then um I think the town is obliged to fund whatever is necessary in the future so I'm not sure I'm not sure that if we said well that's too much money in the next fiscal year uh that we I don't know what the we would be in a quandary okay I'm not recommending one way or the other on this article I'm just saying that the that if it passes um then we're sort of locked into paying for whatever it costs and and you know from from Al's position we should just uh vote no position and then bite that bullet when we get there and from Annie's position if I'm can paraphrase what she has said that we should support the cost now and say it's a modest cost that it'll benefit the the voters so um I think it's up to the committee to decide which one of those paths you want to go down Sophie um I for clarification after Dave's question regarding the costs um my original understanding in the presentation was that this would be handled during regular business hours and then Julie's response just now was maybe weekend and evening hours does that mean overtime for staff or how does that additional cost there to them uh I don't think it's going to have a significant um cost because um we are already we already have um evening and weekend over time hours just as part of our election preparation um and so uh unless the voter turnout is just so high that we need to bring in two more election workers um which I think is you know not likely um right away um it we already have to we are we're already there on weekends so and the town election the annual town election is on a weekend so right so there wouldn't be weekend hours for there would yeah we would not probably provide any additional weekend hours right and the in the in the legislation would not require us to provide any additional weekend hours because the election is on a weekend yep so um let's uh Annie a second um um no Al a second time you have any your hand is up Al yep uh I I think we really need to consider what our position is and what committee everybody joined this is the finance committee the warrant is divided up into three parts the select ones articles the zoning articles and the finance articles we sometimes hear articles in the board of selectmen because they might have a financial impact I think what we've discovered here is that there there could be a financial impact especially at the beginning but it's fairly minor uh and then if this thing grows we'll have to deal with it at that point but at this point there is no significant financial impact at which point we should withdraw now if we start like we did last year recommending policy issues strictly policy issues uh we're you know we're getting outside of our area of expertise in our area of authority this is for the selectmen to recommend in the town meeting to decide and so I really uh hope we just take no position on this article any so I guess that's my question if we take no position on this article and the issue of whether or not this is going to cost money comes up on town meeting floor and they ask you as the chair charlie to render an opinion if we've taken no vote what are you going to say I'm going to say it's a selectmen's issue as as decided by the finance committee okay I mean the committee has to make that decision christine uh I was going to say thank you one second did I miss you dean I saw your hand up before no go ahead christine go ahead christine I charlie I was going to say exactly what you said if the question comes up on the floor of town meeting we should defer to the selectmen and to the clerk but I'm hearing is that the clerk is saying that this is something that she anticipates being able to absorb in her her her ongoing operation and if that's the case I don't think there's any question before us I think we should pass on this I I support what al toasty has been saying dean thank you christine so just to go back to any question um if the question if if a town meeting member asks about the financial impact I mean just think about what we've done in the cusp wouldn't we answer that the finance that we've answered the facts right the finance committee held the hearing on the matter we do not feel that the financial impact was significant enough to warrant us rendering and so we voted to render no opinion I think I think that's a little bit of a of a of an intellectual sophistry if you have a motion here that says we don't render an opinion we don't render an opinion no what I'm saying is if somebody asked on the floor of town meeting I would say the finance committee's opinion is we wouldn't tell them that we had a hearing no because if we say that if we say that we had a hearing and we decided that there's no financial impact and therefore we're not expressing an opinion that's expressing an opinion but we have a public we have a public record in meeting minutes that will say that we have this you I didn't say they couldn't go look at the public record you asked me what I would say I mean I think we're we're we're uh you know counting angels on the head of a pin here let's let's uh let's just get be practical John Ellis I make it an alternative motion sure can I move that we take no action because the impact on the town finances are not material well I think that's exactly what that's al-tasi's motion okay that wasn't what I heard him say but if that if that's al's motion and we substitute that we're taking no action because it's a non-material impact the recorded here is that well al said that there's no financial impact here so we shouldn't get we shouldn't make an opinion okay that's that's my paraphrasing that incorrectly out no that sounds fine yeah there's no back there for there's no position we should be taking okay so that's that's the motion there is no financial impact and so we're not taking position no the motion is the motion is not to give an opinion on this article and his argument for that is that there's no financial impact so if we don't if we're not going to give an opinion on the article we're not going to say whether we think there's a financial impact or not we're not giving an opinion now that's why I was trying to make an alternate motion right but you're you're that's my alternate our motion out of order right I can't no it's not out of order but it's I think it's if we if we move no action because there's no financial impact if that's what you want to hear at town meeting that's saying that we reviewed this and decided there's no financial impact that's what Annie wants us to do oh no that's not what I want us to do I want us to say that we are unconcerned about the financial impact because of the nature of the article which is that it's going to increase voter turnout I'm not sure that we are not worried about it let's just make this simple uh John you want to make a motion give me the motion we'll vote on my my motion is that uh this has no material impact on town finances and we because of that we vote no action no we take no position sorry no position sorry sorry thank you should I repeat it this time this this has no impact on town finances and because of that we're taking no position um okay that's my motion just comment to you that that that you're if that's the vote and we record it this way and publicize it that way we're bouncing to the town that it has no financial impact no material financial impact no material financial impact and that's making an opinion on this so so anyway uh we'll we'll take a motion on so uh John Ellis has moved that the that we take the position that there's no material impact and therefore the finance committee is not going to take a position on this is there a second second okay so it's moved in second okay so um any further discussion I'm sure you can we can stretch this out and keep Greg and Julie here another 30 minutes but Mr. Chair point of order is is Al's without if we vote this down will Al's come up next if we vote this down yes Al Toss now Al's motion is separate from John's motion it's separate from John's motion thank you Mr. Chairman could I just withdraw my motion um I'm sure that's absolutely right I would I'd like to withdraw my motion and support John's okay so we have a motion let's let's um John you want to repeat your motion again please I move that this article has no material financial impact on town finances and so we uh vote no opinion or voice no opinion okay all right is there a second did we already second that I think we did okay so this is uh so Charlie it's change sorry as the first motor I want to make is the first person tonight I want to make sure I know what's on the table so I just heard John's maybe Annie can just remind me too of what her motion was just so I well my motion is that we support the article and my reason for saying that we should support the article is because I believe that will have a financial impact and that we should express the opinion that we support the article regardless of that financial impact which is as a moment on thank you okay so the first the first in the in the order here we'll we'll if we pass and agree to John Ellis's motion which is to what Alan Tosti said before then we will not take an opinion and we're done if if we vote against John Ellis's motion then Annie's motion to support the articles before us and we can either support it or not support it okay all right um so let me with this is this is for John Ellis's motion okay uh Charlie Christine has her hand up oh I'm sorry Christine okay so I want to be I'm trying to be clear about what Annie's motion is Annie are you saying that even though we don't know what the financial impact will be we should still support this yes because of the nature of the article okay any any other questions on this subject all right um Shane Blundell this is on John Ellis's motion no um Makaya Healy I need to hear your voice yes thank you sorry yes yes on John Ellis's motion Brian Beck can't believe I agree with Annie no I think Annie's a wonderful person there's no reason why you shouldn't agree with that just the political spectrum thing Charlie it's okay Sophie Migliazzo yes um Darrell Harmer yes any record no Alan Jones no George Cozer no Bill Keller yes Al Tassie yes one of the Nascimento no Christine Deschler yes Dean Carmen yes and David McKenna yes okay so in favor of John Ellis's motion we have one two three four five six seven eight against do I get to vote on my motion oh I didn't call you I'm sorry you get to vote on your motion yes I vote yes oh you're I'm sorry you vote yes John I apologize um okay I have to count over again so in favor we have one two three four five six seven eight nine in an opposition we have one two three four five so John Ellis's motion passes nine to six and it's Annie's motion is now moved so we don't need to go forward with that well um thank you Greg and thank you Julie I'm sure it was entertaining it was thank you very much all right um the next subject is the insurance budget and um no oh Keller are you ready I'm ready are you ready I hope so let me just uh pull this up Bill sure let's see I'm gonna blame it on my laptop like Charlie and just yeah sorry just give me a minute here so Carol while you're doing that I'm gonna give you a shout out to thank you so much for all your help always but especially in helping me get this um up on the screen and uh doing the slideshow for us sure all right can everyone see this hopefully if you can uh can you delete that little uh guide section on the left hand side of micah bigger yeah a second you know let me just try downloading it and opening it that way I think that's gonna work better okay okay let's see okay now bear with me just another second here a little arrow next to fill in sign I don't get rid of that sidebar when I was like to request the signature there we go perfect perfect hold on just a second here okay how is this that's good great ready action action so uh on Monday um Al Tosti Brian and I met with insurance Karen Malloy and President was uh Sandy Puehler to um discuss and review the health insurance budget and uh I gotta say it was really nice because it's the first time in three years that we were able to meet together in town all share coffee and donuts and uh I hope that continues next year oh no well pastries whatever so uh what I thought I'd do was I'd like to go down all the lines that have a positive increase um but I'd like to start if I could with uh with group health because that's the most significant uh 7.07 percent increase versus previous and uh why don't we start by going terribly go to page six so I just want to touch a little bit on one of the main drivers to the increase of 7.07 percent um looking back over several of the older budgets I see one at 5.8 percent I see one at 8.8 percent uh four years ago it was 7.3 percent so um there is an increase in uh rates over time there seems to be an increase every year but more importantly I wanted to see how we came up with the uh with the 7.07 so if you could just bring that chart up a little bit more Tara sorry this chart is this page six yeah this is page six yes do you want me to go to the next page okay no we're good thank you so if you look at the bottom uh the first line underneath the chart uh there's an average increase of 6.2 percent and uh what that is is they're looking at four types of insurance policies that are offered by the town to its employees and they really run the gambit um summer as low as maybe an increase of three percent some go as high as 10 percent um on average it's 6.2 so you can get a sense right here that by using the um the gig rates the government insurance uh group insurance contract rates uh large part of this is just the amount of the increase uh in the cost of the insurance policies most of the employees many employees tend to gravitate towards the more expensive policies which cost more because they um they they offer greater benefits and among those are Tufts and Pilgrim these are in the Boston area and a number of families like these because they get their choices of primary care doctors and and other extending uh benefits so you can go to page seven I've gone a little further okay so I wanted to point out that the town picks up um a percentage of this and the percentage is 77 so 70 percent of the premium is paid for by the town of Warlington and the employee picks up the balance of 23 percent and uh that's a pretty nice um deal for the town but you got to think of in terms I think that uh it's a competitive market we want to hire the best people we can in the town of Warlington so when compared to other communities around us of similar size most of the employer portion of the insurance premium runs between 75 and 80 percent so we're right in the ballpark of uh you know what we what we pay for our share of the of the insurance load the town gained 23 new enrollees due to new hires in the period of December 21st to March 21st and um with the aging increase with the uh the aging uh of the popularity of the workforce we're hiring new and new more younger employees and uh many of these new people are coming off of their parents plans and coming on to town's plans they're having families so they tend to pick up more expensive plans as well um okay so why don't we go back to page one again spreadsheet and uh we'll go up to workers comp so workers compensation this year projection is an increase of 7.41 percent uh I just want to say right out front that Karen uh estimates that there's going to be a deficit of between $26,000 and $40,000 in workman's comp budget uh for fiscal 22 but that will be covered by surpluses and other lines in the insurance budget so right away we're really kind of up hitting the uh our our budget line for 22 and the request is for an additional 40,000 so with that maybe we can go right to page uh 13 Karen so every year the town council comes out with a with a report with a letter uh explaining in detail of what the factors are in the request for that year's uh budget and um this year they're asking for an increase of $40,000 for 7.4 percent and if you can go to page 14 please so the chart here basically shows the town employees who receive work workman's compensation benefits that there was uh an 11 percent increase in the weekly average between fy 21 and fy 22 as of March this year it's an 11 percent increase so um what's happening is that there is uh the rates set by the by the commonwealth are really keeping step with the increases in the cost of the benefit i.e. the compensation benefit that's being administered to the person the employee that's getting workman's compensation so just go over to the last page i guess 15 and uh so this is a little bit of scribbling going on here however i think the points to look at are that the indemnity medical costs that are going up each year rates are set like i said by the state but they haven't kept pace with the actual costs for one thing and then another thing that uh because of covid there are a number of employee uh employees that are getting workman's comp that uh because of covid they were not able to get elective surgery done in hospitals and now they're going in to get this type of work done and um so this is going to add to the uh to the expense line in 2023 okay so go back to the budget page so the third budget that had a significant increase or an at as i say an increase is the medicare payroll tax of 11.32 and um basically the medicare payroll tax it's a mandatory payroll tax it's uh based on um brought to the answer rates you know there's fight go which is social security in this medicare the medicare costs are tagged to the health insurance budget so the town's portion on each employee's paycheck went up and it went up significantly but again there's really no control uh on our end as to what that number is it's uh it's set and the cost of medicare is going up so the cost of paying for medicare is going up okay any questions so far on these and then we'll go and hit the other lines okay so um just really briefly i'm going to go through the ones that either didn't have an increase or uh were um were level so a couple of people have their hands up oh sorry so sophie was first and and then um you have to add ellen jones sophie yes so thank you bill um on the workers comp i i'm surprised that the new number is only an increase of 40 000 because based on that scribbling on that chart um the projected number originally was more than 40 000 it was 594 000 almost 595 000 so i would have expected right yeah i can see why you might expect that however um the town council in their letter thought all things being equal that they were seeking an increase of 40 000 so i guess i'm going to hang my hat on that number i think these scribblings here are interesting but um they're looking for an increase of 40 000 so okay because this this chart this was the chart that town council gave dav and i when we did our town when we did the legal department budget so this 594 originally came from them so i gathered there was maybe discussions after the fact that had them reduce their projection i'm just concerned that this is maybe the real projection i don't i mean i don't know how to evaluate that um well i i can i can call town council and find out you know if you're the number you're talking about is a bigger number this looks to me like it's uh kind of a work in progress these uh these notes however the um the number that he put out was the number that you see on the budget page bill can i add something here please i think a couple factors to keep in mind is that uh as the hospitals reopened to alternative surgeries uh this year there was a lot of surgeries that took place that had been postponed from before so there could be a lot of catch up going on uh this year and extending a bit into next year but after a while you know that calms down and gets to a more normal level so i think that's one factor the second factor is that we vote this is a bottom line budget so surpluses in one part of the budget can can take care of deficits in another uh and if there's a problem there's the town reserve fund um we don't want each department to be building up surpluses or uh overstating every line uh to to prevent a deficit because that has a lot of adds a lot of reserve funds all over the town uh if if they need to they can take it from another account if that's not enough they can come to the fincon okay so if you're sad can you hang on a second bill any records okay any please so i just in i hope it doesn't feel too out of context but i just want to mention because i just looked it up that the rate of medical inflation in 2021 was seven percent and that medical inflation affects changes in premiums so it feels to me like our total increase in health insurance is not too bad considering the rate of medical inflation although it isn't a one-for-one they're not that directly related related as numbers right right thank you and yeah alan jones uh it's about the medicare payroll tax and to the best of my knowledge it's still you know 1.45 percent so i'm just curious about this i don't understand the increase unless the total payroll's gone up that much bill can i help with that uh yes please uh i question that myself alan and the issue is apparently not everybody in town is subject to medicare uh payroll tax uh because i went through and i said this increase uh that they had i said equates to basically five million dollars in wages and um excuse me there was another chart that she showed us that that was uh there at any rate um she did assure us that's not the rate going up it's the it is the salaries for the people that are covered so there's more people that are coming in that are covered versus people that may be retiring or that may have in the past have not been covered okay is is pa is medicare withholding optional for municipal employees or is it mandatory it's mandatory everybody after 86 okay thank you yeah uh yeah so um thank you brian go ahead bill are there any other hands up no okay so um there's some new folks in the um finance committee and i don't want to spend maybe too much time want to move things along but the third uh budget line is called opt out program and uh for those that aren't familiar with it basically it means that any employee can opt out of the town's provided health insurance provided that they're already in the insurance and they decide to give it up and the town in return gives that employee $4,000 a year and that $4,000 a year given to the employee who opts out of the insurance is far less than the 12 to 13 $14,000 a year uh the town pays for is portion of of an insurance policy and uh last year the town saved $750,000 in opt out money okay so moving along how about go go down to group health wife so um every retiree in the town gets a um a $10,000 face value life insurance policy paid for by the town and uh it's a nice benefit the reason this went up is because again this workforce is aging people were retiring they retire they pass away so uh historically the town has been paying 100 of the premium itself that's why you see five percent increase there uh the flexible benefit plan basically is level funded um it's the cost to administer this whole program uh it's farmed out to a third party a contractor and uh the contractor's name is Navia and a BIA and I welcome to Karen every couple of years they go out in the marketplace and make sure that the contractor that they choose is competitive and offers the best service possible so last year to administer the program uh was the cost was $62 per employee the final item there going down one is uh employee mitigation and uh that's a new item and uh Al and Brian if you want to chime in my understanding of what the employee mitigation is is basically in situations where an employee has uh extra high out-of-pocket expenses say it's a hospitalization and their out-of-pocket is goes beyond your ability or the ability of the of the policy to pay then in the past we've been going into the um the health the health reimbursement account to uh to assist uh a particular uh employee but because the uh the financial level of that account has been going down steadily and we're I think at the last point we looked at it it was $206,000 at one point had been well over a million so the $50,000 is the mitigation uh to kind of keep at or above the $200,000 in the HRA but the base the basic point of this plan is to help out higher how about employees with higher than expected uh medical expenses so any questions yes Al and Jones thank you I'm trying to figure out how to uh um express this on a footnote but is this is this redundant to the HRA or does it replace the HRA or what um it doesn't why do we need the both I guess is the question I guess uh uh Al and um Brian my understanding is is that they do not want to see the HRA get down below $200,000 and so by putting in $50,000 in the budget they can hopefully ensure that uh they can keep the HRA at a level of $200,000 at the same time meet the needs of the employee that might need some extra help with out-of-pocket expenses how was the HRA normally funded Alan yeah this was set up as part of the deal with the union when everybody went over to the GIC and they had agreed um that the town would maintain a minimum of $200,000 in this account and it's been drawn down year after year and this is the first year that there's been the deficit is going to hit and so they want to fund it to keep it up above $200,000 so going forward does the HRA get spent down to zero and then this line item will replace it it's my understanding that this line item has to maintain a $200,000 balance I can think I can add something to that okay okay the the HRA you know when we used to be self-insured we had a huge account we put maybe a million and a half two million dollars in it every every year and maybe even more sometimes when when we went to the GIC we had a substantial balance in that account so part of the negotiation was to use that account to perform this employee mitigation for people who had difficult medical cases the the issue with hanging on to the this HRA is that there still may be town liabilities to people who had medical issues before the GIC was implemented and I think that's why we're keeping the $200,000 there okay so I'm just trying to figure out does this top off the HRA or is the HRA going to the HRA the HRA is there and in a residual amount suppose I forget what was it 2012 we went to the GIC something like that yeah something like that suppose you were an employee or a retiree in 2011 and you had a an operation that has recurring costs you yeah the GIC is not going to pay for that because it's a pre-existing condition right so I understand that they just seem redundant to me I'm trying to figure out why why we need both of them as opposed to just topping up the HRA or phasing out the HRA and replacing it with a line item it seems like they both have the same purpose I don't know maybe it's just collective bargaining um if I may I think it's just a bit felt they wanted to keep the HRA and maybe that would be the existence of the HRA is something for a future discussion okay um so Bill will work out like a one-line footnote to try to explain this to town meeting members thank you okay great okay so uh that wraps up the health group health we'll move on to the liability but before we do so can I have a motion to accept the health budget of you can make the motion may I I'll make the motion that we accept the health budget of 21 million 216,785 as printed second second oh it's moved and seconded there any that says six sorry I think that says six okay let me repeat that so uh the printed number is 21 million 216,786 dollars thank you and do I have a motion for that you you moved it and it was seconded yeah it's fine okay so um any further discussion on the health insurance budget now all these budgets I just want to make a comment here all these budgets show up in one line in the in the budget as I recall it's called insurance and um correct um when I looked at the sum of this budget the insurance budget as um presented by Bill when we got the um give me one second um so that's um the total at the bottom line of the if you take the various three categories here it's um 21,776,061 and um correct the last long range plan that we saw was 21,510,568 as as the forecast insurance budget so the actual that they've come back with I'm just noting this to you before we take the vote on this the actual that they've come back with 266,493 higher which is going to affect how much we take out of the override stabilization fund are you suggesting that maybe uh we combine the group health and liability and come up with one number to no we can take we can take the separate numbers I'm just this is a big portion of that number and I'm pointing out that the if you take those aggregate numbers and compare to what was in the most recent forecast from the town it's 266,000 higher okay so uh any further questions for for bill on the group health insurance budget after offsets after all sets okay so let's let's take a vote on the health insurance budget shane blundell yes john ellis yes kaya healy yes brian beck yes silphie magliazzo yes darryl harmer yes healy laquart yes ellen jones yes george poser yes bill keller yes al-tosti yes guandana cemento yes christine deshler yeah dean karmann yes yes and david mackenna I will abstain mr jannis okay thank you so we have uh four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen uh in favor and one abstention so that budget is passed approved thank you bill go right ahead okay so moving on to the liability insurance um first two appear to be level funded but uh I'll just say that um last year the hundred and fifty thousand dollar budget actual claims paid there was eight eighty two hundred and sixty three dollars left this year of eighty nine there's eighty nine thousand seven hundred and thirty two dollars left year to date so it appears that um these numbers are are good projections in the estimation of our sub subcommittee insurance officials liability this is basically uh liability insurance that's uh purchased for protection for the town manager deputy town manager and any other officers or higher ups people within people within the town that go out and make speeches or get involved in some capacity that they're officially in official official capacity that they are covered property insurance did go up and two reasons for that one is the uh the premiums insurance premiums went up this is insurance that basically covers all of the town's vehicles property realty property buildings and a good part of the increase for the property insurance budget this year is for the arlington high school part of it is uh a large part of it is covered under town's property insurance policy so there are any questions on liability okay so i make a motion that we we accept the liability insurance budget as printed at five hundred and sixty thousand two hundred and seventy five dollars second so the liability insurance budget has been moved and seconded um there any further questions on the liability insurance does it matter okay hearing none we'll vote um shane blendell yes john ellis yes mcaya healy yes brian beck yes sophie migliazzo yes darryl harmer yes annie lecourt yes alan jones yes george coser yes teller yes al-tosti yes yes wandana cemento yes christine deshler yes dean carman yes and david mackenna yes thank you that budget is voted unanimously so um bill beck are you um brian beck are you prepared to discuss the parking i've spoken with the treasurer uh more than a couple of times and they haven't actually passed their budget she promised me that she would get it to me by friday this friday coming up oh can you just explain what that means by passing their budget well apparently they have a committee that um a parking district committee that has to get together and pass the budget apparently she had numbers but they haven't actually passed it within that committee they haven't finished and finalized it i see okay all right so we'll have to slip that in um another time your grant is not here so we can't do the water and sewer enterprise fund tonight are there any other um budgets or items that anyone wishes to bring up tonight al-tosti i'm not sure but i've got the work that the operations research did on the waste disposal projections and i'd be happy to do that now since we have time i can't remember though if i've sent it to terra it's a this excel spreadsheet one page not yet if you if you could send it now i could bring it up if you can if you're able to do that i'm new now i didn't put a subject on it i got it um i will share it now okay so uh over the last bunch of months uh we decided our group consists of uh peter howard uh brian beck dean uh carmen and uh dav mckenna and so we chose trash and uh so we put together a spreadsheet basically showing uh all the disposal costs of the town which you see up top so we've got new tip fees from a new contract up top we've got projected trash tonnage uh then total uh disposal costs and hauling costs those are two uh big groups um so if you could go down terra uh so then we've got um recycling costs the next section uh and these are all pretty much straight out of the budget the last several are projected uh got the yard waste costs solid fill uh hazardous waste compost uh i put in the uh a recycling coordinator and her benefits uh other recycling costs minus the revolving fund and so you got total recycling cost in the range of four to five hundred thousand over the last several years so that's what it costs so if you could go down to the next section now these are tons of waste recycled or i think the uh department likes to use the word diverted diversion um so you got the uh uh curbside and then you got yard waste pick up now the solid fill is like asphalt and just all kinds of things they simply didn't have a number for and then hazardous waste that's the the stuff you take up to uh Lexington and they didn't have a number for that uh food scrap to compost uh and at one point the the first year was high because that came out of the schools and i think then the schools were using another service so uh it waged down there's two ways that you could compost through the town or you could send your compost uh there's uh dumpsters well they used to be at the town yard i think they're still there uh and then there's one right by the ice rink and you could go have a little uh your own compost and then dump it there if you don't want it uh other recycling so these are the total tons recycled over a period of time um okay could you go to the last section Tara okay so the total disposal savings recycling basically takes the total tons above times the tip fee which is way up on top and that gives the uh the savings and then the recycling cost again from above for each year and so these are the total recycling either savings or costs simply subtracting one from the other so as you could see um the recycling is saving about to arrange about 200,000 i think it's higher than this because of the uh uh because some things we didn't have tonnage for uh but i think it puts the uh the efforts for recycling into a certain amount of uh context that we are saving in addition to recycling which is sort of good in in and of itself then uh we're also saving the town money uh you know 200,225 is it's not going to be the savior but we're recycling and saving money which sounds like a pretty good way to do this um so it sort of brings it all together in one spreadsheet uh i was hoping uh that we could put this in the in the fincom report so people could see it uh i want to thank my members especially peter howard uh who got a lot of these numbers from the recycling person who uh he works a lot with and uh if there's any ask if there's any questions any yeah so do you know whether or not our um total waste like our total tonnage is still trending downwards total tons of trash on top so it and these numbers were reviewed by the uh a little bit further up tariff it's the top line there's the trash tonnage uh the numbers were reviewed by mike rottemacher and and his people uh and that's what they thought the projections would be um so that they're they're about level um you know of course one of the problems now is uh we get so much delivered from amazon that we have all these boxes uh so so that's a lot of uh don't get recycled that we've got a dispose of if we can get them recycled obviously that's a that's a better but you know people are gonna break them down and do that you don't you can just put them out and they get picked up before recycling yeah they don't have to be broken down i mean if you put them in your trash barrel they'll get thrown out but if you just put them out as boxes no breaking down required they will be recycled so anyway that's that's the projection so it doesn't seem to be it seems about level yeah that's interesting because um in the last two or three years we uh many people have added a compost pickup service privately and that should should be reducing our tonnage considerably because it's the heaviest waste that we throw out well it goes down a bit from 12 750 to 12 500 yeah no but i would have thought that it would have gone down over the last three years well i think it's something we should keep track of so now um these numbers for the total hauling and disposal costs are after the savings due to recycling right well these are total these total disposal costs and the total hauling costs are right out of the contract um and and therefore they're in the budget for 23 24 25 um so the question i'm asking is um down below you have um the the total tonnage times the tip fee right for the for the stuff that for the for the recycled material the rated material so if if the uh if there was no recycling the total tonnage times the tip fee would be added to the to the uh cost lines up above right that's correct okay just want to make sure i understood which way yeah it was going there so those numbers at top are already net of the savings from recycling um yes well that's great good work we'll have to find a spot for this like appendix g or something or whatever wherever we are in the appendices i don't recall off the top of my head but that's that's good any other questions on the recycling on the recycling savings no okay well thank you al and thank you to um the other team members on the operations research working group it's great okay terror could you send this to alan johns yes i can okay i will distribute it to the whole committee good thank you thank you so um going back uh to my earlier question are there any other items that anybody wants to bring up this evening so then um the motion to adjourn is in order so moved second and second and i see no objection so we will adjourn thank you very much let's see you good night thank you