 We have with us, um, well, let you introduce yourself regarding Art 55, um, the, uh, props. Thank you so much. Yes. I'm Anna Litton, Director of Libraries, and I'm joined today by Adam Belvolino, who is a long time. Libraries. Well, I'm going to, um, you look forward to you. You tell us, um, you have a presentation for us and so just take it here and when you're finished and we'll get it up. Okay, fantastic. I'll just give you a phone. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you so much members of the finance committee. As I said, I'm Anna Litton, Director of Libraries. We are excited to come before you today to share an update on the Fox branch library and provide contacts for warrant article 55, an article of appropriation as required by the Massachusetts public library construction program to remain eligible for significant grant funds. So I'm Adam Belvolino, uh, 170 and Fort Street Precinct 10. Um, and thank you so much for having us here tonight. You know, Arlington has a really long history and a proud history of providing excellent library services. Library services first came to East Arlington in 1917, when the East branch library opened in the Crosby School, now they has led the Ellis school. Since then, library services have been an important part of the community fabric of East Arlington. However, this popular branch library has never truly met the needs of everyone in the community. From the credit days of service in the basement of the Crosby school to today, the library has remained inaccessible community members using bill chairs or other mobility devices. Today, library patients face a stair before they can enter the building. We know how much that inhibits the ability of people to be able to use our library. And the libraries, you know, popular programs, if you haven't noticed as well, they're hosted in a lower level community that's accessible only by way of a staircase. Today, the Fox branch library really is a thriving community location in East Arlington and it is busier than it has ever been before. Circulation has been steadily growing at the branch over the years. Today, 19% of our print materials circulate out of the Fox branch library. Not only does our visitor count continue to rise, but we're seeing a much more diverse group of visitors enter the box to access library services. The Fox has a reputation as being a library for children and families, and that is true. It's an important location for children and families in East Arlington, but today we also see adults who are looking for work spaces. We see tutors meeting with children. We see people who are looking for a place to hold a remote meeting or do some work during the day as so many people have turned to remote work. We also see an increasing number of residents choose to pick up their holds at the Fox branch library. Library programs like our popular Thursday morning sing along remain important to kids and families throughout our town. And many community members choose to use the Fox branch library community room for their meetings for opportunities like that for people to get together in the community. The community room was booked 347 times in FY 23, but every single one of those meetings was inaccessible, not accept open to anyone using a wheelchair or other mobile device. I think many of you know, and we've invited many of you to attend tours that we're hosting right now at the Fox branch library to help people understand the context of those fours. Last week on Wednesday, I was giving one of those tours in the evening and a woman on the tour said, oh yeah, we hold our precinct meeting here. And then she said, is that illegal? And I had to be honest and say, yes, it is this meeting is not actually open to everyone because it is hosted in this inaccessible basement. I mentioned that the we've seen a lot of growth at the Fox branch library but I really want to focus on this piece for a moment. We have seen over 200% growth in circulation at the Fox branch library in the last 10 years. In FY 13 we circulated about 41,000 items. And in FY 23 we circulated 121,687 items. I have been visiting a number of branch libraries recently and both of the branch libraries who have been recently renovated in our area the valentine branch in Cambridge and the East Boston branch library in Boston. Both of those of course are in big bustling communities. We circulate more items out of the Fox branch library than they do either of those small point of price for us. It really isn't important location. So our request for all of you is obviously we're here before you tonight to request your support for warrant article 55 at the 2024 Arlington town meeting. We're seeking a general fund appropriation by this warrant article for $150,000 to secure the matched funds up to $100,000 from the state for the planning and design for a new building. The appropriation is a required element of the Master's of Public Library Construction Grant program. And in 2023, we've already started the process to begin to gain access to this funding and Anthony leading that charge. In particular, the library has when the library trustees use state aid funds to contract with library planning associates to complete a needs assessment study for the Fox branch library. The work include an extensive community engagement phase. We had a survey that I had more than 1000 respondents. And the end result of that process is the library building program, which is the document that is working on right now that will really kind of push us and catapult us into the future with regards to the planning for this branch library and construction for this grant library. If this is funded, this document then gets handed over to an architectural team during the planning and design phase of the work. The building program is these are the instructions for the architect specifying the spaces and the space needs that are identified through the needs assessment process that we've been undergoing right now. And it's going to guide the architecture team in designing a building that best responds to the needs that we identify through this planning process and this library building program. In 2015, acknowledging that the box branch libraries facility didn't meet legal or functional needs for the community. We went back and if you don't remember this all pre pandemic really, but the library contracted with a company called on beta architects to conduct a space study and make recommendations for a new lever and actually looked at both libraries, not just the box, but also the robins. In 2017 we worked in the library trustees with and they had in our former library director to read, we released what's called the reimagining our libraries program, offering the community a really bold vision for how we can have and look at both library spaces in And during that 2015 to 2018 reimagining our libraries project and process again, three pandemic along with the architectural team. They looked at the building and determined that rebuilding a new building would be a better path forward than renovating preserving this outdated inaccessible building. You know, there are obvious deficits like the lack of accessible accessible entry ways that we talked about. There's no elevator in the building. And that's only part of the problem at 175 massive. The building opened in 1959, the support town office space, as well as a library and significant interior work would be required to make the building fully functional as really as a modern library, the lower level. If you've been in the lower level. It's not level. There's a raised floor area in parts of the lower level level that make the building area really non functional. Additionally, the building envelope is not adequate for net zero building. So all the work that we did on the reimagining our library project back and going on almost five years ago now that work was obviously disrupted by Kobe, but the seats for this project now that we're working on before you today that were planted way back then. Additionally, I think we should know, and it's really important that state Senator Cindy Friedman representative Sean garbly David Rogers wanted to thank them because they've done a little bit of work already. They put forth the state bond authorization that was in a piece of legislation that was signed by Governor Baker that provided for up to a million dollars for infrastructure and sex accessibility upgrades to the box library. That's on the books right now and can obviously have to work through the state's capital plan to get the administration to authorize the funding for construction. And we're grateful to have that support from our state delegation for this project as well. I just want to discuss for a few moments what the LCP grant funds are and what becomes available to our community if we do secure these funds. Today really is the right time to pick up this project and continue the work of the 2015 through 2018 reimagine our libraries work, mainly because the LCP funds are now the grant round is open. In 2022, the Massachusetts Board of Library commissioners announced that this grant round would be open in 2023 offering communities the opportunity to apply for state funds to support library construction programs. This grant opportunity was last to open in 2016 so these funds have not been available to communities since 2016. This grant offers us a wonderful opportunity for the community for many communities, hopefully to receive significant state funds for library construction projects. Grants from the state this and this grant round are at a maximum of $17 million so significant amount. The LCP grant process includes one application for two phases. The design and planning phase, which we are discussing today, and then a separate construction phase, but there's only one grant application for both of these phases. Communities awarded this grant will receive 50% of eligible costs for the planning and design phase with a limit of $100,000. For the construction phase communities are awarded incremental state shares with increments tied to the estimated cost of each project. Additional funding is built into this grant process to support green infrastructure. And I truly believe that supporting this grant process will have a long and real term benefit for the for the community of Arlington. So what's next for us in this project the grant package is due in May of 2024 and as we said to remain eligible for this grant and official certified copy of the vote for appropriation for $150,000. As discussed in article 55 must be received by the MVLC. 4pm on June 16th 2024. I'm convinced that this community of course would be far ahead of that deadline. Grant decisions will be awarded in October 2024 beginning the planning and design phase of work. The MVLC suggests that grantees will begin construction sometime after August of 2027, which gives a gap between the planning and design phase and construction. And this is the period in which we would have the opportunity to get cost estimates cost estimates are expected for these projects in late 2025. So, we're really fortunate to have the support from all of our library trustees. The Arlington Libraries Foundation, friends of Robbins library and the Fox and Robin shop as we look to the future here. The trustees of Robbins library will be able to provide some trust fund financial support for this project as well. The library administration and Anna and her team and the trustees have been working with the volunteers from the Arlington Libraries Foundation to build support for a capital campaign. And we'll be looking to all of our supporting organizations in the month and years ahead and really appreciate the support. Thank you. Thank you. Many. So, I have a couple of questions. So, there had been talk at one point about putting housing on top of the Fox. Can we do that and still be eligible for this grant? Yes, thank you for asking this question. We are applying for this grant under the shared facility category. And we will remain, we are eligible for that and at this stage what we are the grant funds that we would receive would be for the library space. But yes, we are still still in the process of investigating the fit and feasibility of adding additional floors for housing above. Okay, and then I have a follow up question to that which is, when you think about this project in terms of sort of a rough pro forma. You're assuming some money from this grant round and you're assuming you're going to raise some money in a capital campaign. And are you also assuming some funds from the state's capital planning. And I don't know whether CPA money is eligible for libraries. Um, I don't know the answer to that either at this stage. Um, great. And if we don't, if you can't get this $150,000 from us, then are you able to put that 150,000 together out of private funds or is this, or does the MPL see whatever those initials are really want to see town support. The latter, this grant does look for it's not just about the funding, but there is an appropriation and there does need to be the vote on that appropriation. Okay, thank you. So. Thank you. So, I'm clear. So, the. We allocate 150 K. The state would match 100 K. And what would we spend that 250,000 on? Thanks for asking. So this is for the planning design phase. This is the stage at which we contract with an architect. The work that we have done so far, the work that we have funded via state aid for libraries is to really design to do the community engagement piece of work. And then when we go to in our contract conversation in our conversations with an architect, we'll be able to come already with stated community needs to move that conversation along faster. So this work is for work essentially with the architect. Okay, and how much of the 2015 to 2018 work can be reused. See what I see. Okay. We know all of us in here in this room today know of course that many things have changed the world since 2015 2018. One of the things that's changed a lot in Arlington is where libraries are being used. So although we learned quite a bit during that reimagining our libraries work. As we've said, we've seen huge growth in our libraries since then and the way that our libraries are being used is a bit different as well. So although we've been able to refer back at that work. We did engage in some community engagement again, because things have changed how people are using libraries what people are looking to from a public space. The needs that people have there are quite different. Okay, so our goal really sounds like they're kind of starting, maybe not completely over, but some of them going back a bit. Yeah, some of the structural work that we had in the investigation that was done by on behalf of back then was really helpful and helping to win this process in terms of the things we need to also be the building itself. Yeah, that was really helpful. That was that was a really helpful part of that process. Yeah, and I would say, Adam's words are so correct. Everything has been informed by what came before, but we are in a new place. This is Charlie. So, have you presented this to the. We presented to the select board on January 22nd. And we have been working with the planning department and a number of different pieces. Both the fit and feasibility for housing and planning has been involved in some of our discussions around this building as well. How come, how come this isn't a capital plan. There, the reason that this problem, this program is not in the capital plan at this stage is we don't actually have any construction numbers at this stage. We, again, since we have not had any conversations with an architect under the guidelines for this grant round, we begin with a needs assessment and don't actually talk to an architect until we really have completed that needs assessment. We have not had conversations with an architect and do not have construction estimated construction costs at this time. My recollection is that the capital planning committee has finance studies for projects. Have you had any, any conversations with video? Yes, specifically with Eda Cody. So, we have been in touch about this project. We have not presented to capital planning at this stage, but certainly we have had quite a few conversations. With Eda as well as with Alex and Jim around thinking about when this is going to how to fit this most effectively into longer term discussions at capital planning. Thank you. You said that the, you have to have a certified vote by June 16. Correct. My understanding is that the attorney general. You have this in a regular town meeting. The attorney general doesn't. Accept these articles. I don't know you the right word, but he has to certify that the votes in town meeting that doesn't happen until after July 1st. I understand that those are for bylaws. This is not a bylaw. This is actually an appropriation. I'm not sure. Thank you. You've had that conversation. So, you will have that conversation. We will. Anything else? No, that's all. Thank you. Hi. Thank you. Thank you for the question. One, it sounds like at least since 2015, you've been aware or 2018, you've been aware of ADA compliance for the building. What has happened since then? I mean, has there been any money spent on ADA compliance or efforts to bring to fix these problems? Just for the conversation about that today. We're actually having an automatic door installed on our mass as entry. The massive door is even the installation of an automatic door opener there will help the door is not it's not actually a wide enough at the moment. Making adjustments as we can the building itself. Require there's just so much that's not accessible about it. That's a recent conversation today, but in the previous 10 years. Have you brought to the town or the finance committee the need for spending? I cannot answer that question as I've only been the director for a year and a half. This has been an ongoing issue for the Library Board of Trustees for a long time preceding my time here and I joined the Library Board of Trustees in 2008, 2009. So it's been an issue. It wasn't ever really addressed. I don't think there was political will and appetite really frankly to address issues surrounding capital needs for that building and it was much more appetite to supporting the growth of services and hours and supporting staff at that location to be able to grow it and I think, you know, from the circulation numbers that you see here, doubling of our circulation over that time period has been helpful. I agree and I think it's really important that we haven't done what we could. I'm also a parent of a child with disabilities and knowing and understanding how the town should be supporting these types of initiatives. You know, it's something that's always on our radar and has been on the radar since we started. I started on the board and my other colleagues as well. Shifting I understand. So this would be an appropriation. We brought up recently there was a sale of some artwork and it goes into the town funds. I understand a couple of those pieces did really well. Do you know what the total ones going to the town out of those that isn't sale. I do not have those final. I don't have with me numbers from any of those options. That those funds are still tied to that. That truck fund and those that money until we work continue the project to work with the attorney general to break that trust are not available to us. I'm curious, you know, taking from one. Yeah, exactly. Additional money. Exactly. Because I understand a couple of pieces. Yeah, they did. Thank you. I think the problem is with the referendum provisions that on, you know, town meeting has to end at a certain point. And then the citizens have the ability to go out for a referendum. If they get enough signatures, and that has a certain period of time, not likely to happen. But I think the town accountant or the controller couldn't certify the vote until town meeting closes and there's a certain 10 days or whatever it is, all business days after that for the people to get signatures to put the put the question on a valid. Like I said, I'm not sure whatever happened, but you might want to figure that into the calculations. And if there is a special town meeting going within the annual, it might be worth looking at putting it in a special so it can get going quicker. My second question is $150,000 could probably take that door, expand it, and have a fully accessible and kept accessible door off of Mass Ave. I don't know how much an elevator for one for costs. But we've been going to the people for a lot of their money over the last 10 years might be good to look at a less expensive option. Yeah. Yeah, can you talk about the known and dollars that. When did that get put in a bond. So, it was 2022. So, yeah, so it was put in the bond bill in 2022. And is there any specific conditions for that or uses. The specific language is for infrastructure and accessibility upgrades and that's essentially the entire language. And because the level processes, at least 2 steps, getting in the bond bill is great, but that the easy or steps getting the administration to actually. Authorize funding from and if you've got any indication that they're going to do that. So, I think this is all part of the process, right? Like, we have to go through this process. First, that's required by the board of library commission before we get down the road to sit there and say, when it's in there, it's authorized. It's in the bond bill. It's on the books until they take it off the books. It's incumbent upon us to work with our state legislators to work with the administration. You need to authorize and fund this is authorized. Now you need to fund that appropriation and talk to the executive office administration and finance and the governor. To be able to sit there and say that this should be included and we would like it to be funded and we know that they have a cap just like everybody else is they have a cap that they have to work under and provisions they have to live under. But it's our job as library trustees and work with Anna and work with other town members, town, town officials to be able to prevail on them to do that. It's hard work. And you, and you're competing with so many other communities and so many other projects. Yeah. Then my other question is in terms of the, when you get to the point, even though you don't have construction costs, yes. I think we can assume those construction costs will far exceed the capacity of Parlington's capital. Capability. You thought of all about how you would go about doing that, whether that exclusion or. I think that there's a lot at this stage, there is a lot of unknown pieces. For example, any refer to the fitness feasibility study that we're working on right now for housing. There are many different developed models that we might go through that might also provide some funds for the complete structure. And at the moment, as we know, as this building is taking shape, we do not have yet a formal plan for what, how we really would put this package together. Are we looking at that exclusion? What are we looking? I'm looking forward to coming back as we do know more information. Right. I mean, to say the obvious, that's quite a planning effort to get to that point. Correct. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And thank you for the presentation. So my question has to do with the potential housing and how the architect, like you described this 150,000 has been specifically for the library. An involvement in the architect. And I'm curious how that architect could possibly work without some guidelines within from the whole housing question and I'm curious what you have to say about the timing of those types of issues. I hate to see the library delayed because of this housing issue. And it just seems complicated and risky. Correct. And I'd like to address. First of all, I want to be absolutely clear that we are responsibility. The responsibility for the work that I do. The responsibility of the board of library trustees is to lead with the library. Project my responsibility to the community is to provide wonderful library services to our community. That is what I'm going to be doing. At the same time, we are working with Claire Rooker on this fit and feasibility study. We Claire secured a $77,000 grant for the 1 stop through growth program. We have a state program as well as the $15,000 grant from MAPC last year. And the work the fit and feasibility study work is beginning right now on that project that project is expected the fit and feasibility study, including in community engagement is expected to take 6 months. So by by the middle of fall, we will have an understanding of whether or not we will be able to proceed with a building that incorporates housing or not. And when we do work with the architect, we are going to be working with the understanding that we're going forward just with this library, or with the library and an additional piece. Currently, the West End branch library in Boston, it's right on Cambridge Street past the hospitals is being redeveloped in a very similar manner to this library. The way that they are working on that project and the way that we would if we continue down this path is essentially they call it to condos there's a library condo, and there's a condo condo and the condo condo includes multiple units. And these two separate entities do function together we've communicated to the architects together but we really are talking about two separate pieces in one envelope. Thank you. I guess I just want to have a technical point of that now understand so bear with me. Did you have the control or approve review your article. How counsel reviewed our article. Just my here's my suggestion that you should talk. Because you should have a common understanding or explain what I think the question is. Okay. There's 2 things 1st one doesn't really matter if I was pointed out. You don't need the approval of town meeting to apply for spend grant funds. As an example, I would use the school department applies for expense grants all the time and never gets approved. It's just, it's not it's not an appropriation right to put that aside just the technical point right. Second thing is so municipal governments, all governments run under this bundle of fun to come and they're like, I called I called bucket. It makes a bunch of simpler. And what we each bucket has its own powers and abilities and stuff like that. That's why when you look at the warrant for the finance articles. There are many of them not just one giant article because somebody like in the capital budget that goes into a fund that can roll over here to here. The general fund. Does not have to buy a bill. That's if you really spend time to understand why each one of their has a pretty rational point. When I read your article, it doesn't say where the money would go from the town. And so the question it begs to me is if it gets appropriated on July 1, 2024, and it's not spent by June 30 2025. What does it evaporate? Because it doesn't say that it's going into a fund that can turn. And I don't want you to wake up on a technical point on July 1 and be like, wait, my money's not gone. And you can tell you really quickly she could be like, okay, this is where I think it's going to go. Now, let's assume it passes here because the whole discussion we're having right now is without it right. She said, let me say it's the finance committee votes to recommend it. And it comes back and it's like, no, but the general fund is gone. We can we can figure something out. They still configure things out that could be the work with town council to put it somewhere else things like that. But I just want to make sure that you don't end up finding yourself in this tiny little mass that has no purpose to appreciate that. Thank you. I'm an odd question. Is there any chance this building would end up wood or something burnable or is it more likely to end up. Frank or I've looked at other municipal and school buildings and they all none of them seem to be would is that I imagine that that there are building regulations for a public building like that that makes it. Wooden structure. Unlikely. Yeah. Good. But that speculation. I don't know what the regulations. Michael. So do we know what adding an elevated requests just by itself. Easily 800,000. That's why I think it's 5 million dollars is was the number that was chosen. Partial second story with a with a broad, broad modern meeting room to accommodate the needs that you mentioned at the beginning of your talk. It's actually the basement has a has accomplished. I'm suggesting something something which would be a much, much more partial renovation than what we're talking about here say an elevator to a new space. Partial second story to get people out of the basement. Has that been specced out. In the reimagine our libraries work. They did not actually spec out any rebuild or a, they did discuss a rebuild. They had really decided at that time that are with the recommendations of the architect. Large renovation, even as large as or even as small in some ways as moving to a partial second floor. At that time, it was the decision was made that that was not actually a cost effective path forward for this building. Last question. If we endorse. Raising $150,000 matching states, $100,000 engage in your didn't start brand process towards. Do we have any idea what the total tens of millions of dollars will be at the end? Not today. Jones and then Jennifer linear. I apologize. I was just reading it though. We're just looking going through the grant website and 1 of the conditions was we must provide at least 2 site options for the application. Yes, yes. In a built out community like Arlington, we have to show that there really are. It's pretty easy for us to show that there really aren't other locations available. So it's okay. Correct. We have a, we just give real estate costs. I'm just confused about Dean's 1st point. So when school can apply for grant, we've already approved their budget and we can't microwave the budget. So they, they do what they want with that. But don't we have to approve doesn't have me have to approve. This amount of money. No, but the CDBG grant, we don't approve it. We endorse it. But this is an appropriation. No, it says, it says, no, if you read the article, the article talks about 2 sources of money. The 1st point it's, it's asking for permission to spend a grant. No, but we're asking for money to match the grant, right? We're asking for 150,000 from the town, 100,000 from the grant. The matching, it says to see if the town will vote to apply for accept and expend Massachusetts public library construction program grant funds. So, and vote to raise and appropriate appropriate or take from available funds, some of 150,000. Correct. And so what I said was the 1st half I said, okay, I need to be in that. Again. So, when you did the work between 2015 and 2018, and you worked with an architect and consultant or whatever. Did anybody do a study of the structural integrity of the building itself and the ability to have anything upward on top of it, et cetera, without actually knocking it down and building something. Correct. We do have a structural report from that was part of the work that happened that and the architecture from, I believe it's called. It's yours. And at that time, they determined that building above on the site is the building is not actually. Okay. And so, if we give you this $150,000, we're living $100,000 in the state, but we're also leveraging the money that's in this grant round. And according to your slides that could cover up to 60% of the cost and up to $17 million. Correct. So, if we don't appropriate this $150,000, we don't have a bite at the apple on the potential 60% up to $17 million to support the project. Correct. And when you talk about the 2 condo idea, that means you would have to have a development partner on the housing side, presumably. I was in corporate of Arlington or someone else like that that you would be in conversation. You started a conversation with them. At this, we will talk to them a while ago. Before we even talk to anyone like housing corporation of Arlington, it is, we need to have a sense of how many units we're even talking about housing. Yeah. Particularly a nonprofit developer needs a number of units. And so, when we talk about what funds would be expended on the library, we are talking about the state money, the capital campaign, and potentially some capital funds from the town for the library part only, if any housing is built on top, the development partner will be paying those costs. Correct. And the development partner, if it is a nonprofit development partner will also have access to other state monies for those pieces. And federal money. Correct. Take other questions. Charlie. For development partner, why not look for somebody who's not a nonprofit and charge them for the airspace. That's certainly not off the table at this stage. Any other questions. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you so much. We appreciate the time. Yeah, just good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Drake. And then it looks like we have Griffin Jones and Jillian Harvey online here. I'll sit here so you have a better view. And if you like, I can pull up the budget that you sent over. Sure. That's a really good idea. Okay. All right. So we have the human rights commission with us. To talk about your request. Or an additional $25. But is that right? That's right. On top of your budget that you have. And then we have the $25. That's right. So introduce yourself and then tell us why you want. Sure. My name is Drake Pusey. I'm from precinct 13. I'm one of the co-chairs this year for the human rights commission. My fellow co-chair. Griffin is on zoom. I believe. Jillian and Colleen may also be on zoom. So we have a couple of questions here. We have a couple of questions here. I received a request to submit. Our budgetary details. So we did that. And we took it as an opportunity to address. In long standing constraint. That we've been facing with our budget. I can give you the background story on that. Or you may have specific questions. How about a short, I know. I've been on the commission in 2019. In November. And prior to that, we have been getting an annual budget of 7,500. Within a few months of me starting the pandemic. Happened in March, the school shutdown. We have from a budgetary standpoint. We have benefited from. In person events. We have been doing the shutdown of in person events. I'm going virtual and all of that. And we've. We've survived fine for the last few years. As we are coming out of. Those restrictions. We really want to bring back a lot more of our in person events. Because they are so beneficial. And so, And so, We, we plan to. Do a more events. And be prepared with a. Essentially a kit and protocol for. Very sort of. What's what I'm looking for. Short notice events like vigils. Or anticipated. Not to be pessimistic, but, but tragic events and addressing them. Things like that. The constraint that we wanted to address when we had this opportunity to. Come in front of you is. We have never had. Well, in recent memory, we have not had. Dedicated official email addresses. For the commissioners and we've been using, you know, for the sake of compartmentalizing our communications, we've created, you know, separate Gmail and Yahoo accounts of our own. And that has some negative. Effects both optically because, you know, when you see a commissioner talking to you as, you know, mine is drake P dot AHRC at Gmail. Dot com. A that seems fairly unofficial. It doesn't reinforce that we are a town entity that. That exists. I think our awareness. Could benefit would benefit a lot from. From. More improvement there, but it also has. Real. Technical detriments. We had. We had to reclaim our MailChimp account, which is what we used to send our newsletters and MailChimp refused to recognize any of us as official owners of. The human rights commission because. You know, my, my account, my, my Gmail address looks like. A scammer, right? And so we've never gotten that account back in any way. To go to a different vendor and start over again. So. This is not. You know, if we wanted a. Sort of inflation adjustment, I'm sure you could do that. Formulatively. So this is not. A request for that. This is a request to. Address. The budgetary constraints on. On our ability to do events. We could not with our current budget. We could not. Do this. Sort of email infrastructure improvement because that cost will be carrying year to year. So. I can give you a rundown of what we expect to be spending our money on. If you would like. To go through that. So. I can talk through. Two aspects of this. The anticipated expenditures for the rest of the current fiscal year. And the anticipated budget for. 2025, which was how the. The conversation started, I guess, but. We have. A variety of events. Coming up. We have. Farmers market when that opens up, we'll be tabling there. And there's at least one more resource fair coming up. Where we're glad that. You know, town days are back, but that's. That for this fiscal year, that's done. Juneteenth. Is coming up. So we have a bunch of events like this. The rate for. For town facilities has gone up. So that's increased our costs. And we. We, like I said, we are currently planning. What a sort of. Quickly, Producible vigil would entail. And so we're working out. You know, the. Handles or buttons or the various kit items we would need to have on hand and ready for that. So that's sort of inventory. We have. Program and event materials. Some of it looks like office supplies. Some of it's more customized. That's another. Inventory item. We want to do a small program for. The. Asian Pacific Islander heritage month. We are planning. Largely coming out of. The, the situation in Israel and Gaza. A series of programming around anti-hate, which will also address anti-semitism. We're also planning to do a small program. We're planning to do a small program. We're planning to do a. A series of programming around anti-hate, which will also address anti-semitism, which is one of. It is right now the leading cause of. Human rights complaints in Arlington. Juneteenth will involve. Food music. Celebration. And we are. Willfully behind. In my opinion on training. For the commissioners. We have a lot of training. We have a lot of training. We have a lot of training. Both in terms of active bystander training. Mediation training. Recognizing hate crimes. A lot of that training. We as volunteers. Especially because we've had. A bunch of new commissioners come on in the last year or two. We're behind on some of that. So those are the costs we expect for the rest of. Fiscal 2024. And then what we submitted to you is. Our budget for fiscal 2025. Our budget is usually bucketed. In parallel to our working groups, we have sort of fixed costs for the communications group. We have expected costs for the events. And outreach groups. And then. Other groups are more about coordinating. The school system. And housing and things like that. But the net new part. Is mainly to. Get this additional it component. Of. Seats. On our. Google. A contract right now we have one. Gmail. Address. Which allows us to have a shared file server for the commission. And if we add more seats, then we can all have email addresses. I think. You know, we thought through. Well, is this. Cheaper than. Yeah. Convincing the town it to give us. Outlook accounts. And I think. I don't know exactly how much a seat on outlook costs. I know Google is among the cheapest. But I think what really tips the balance is. We as well. We can volunteer our own time to admin. This. Gmail. System. Whereas if we needed anything fixed. On the town system, it would cost. Town it. And vendor. Time. So the fact that we can do our admin for free. I think tips the cost balance. All right. Questions. First, I have a couple of questions. Yes. So have you talked to the town about. Town email addresses. Have you just chosen not to go to that. That. It has never been presented to us as a possibility. In terms of actually getting seats. The commission has never had a town email address. In the 30 years. It looks like. Yeah. Just to. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I do. Before you were chair the first time, Drake. It was something I did try to do. And we at that point weren't using Microsoft. And so with the old system, the answer was no. And then as we transitioned to Microsoft, which also took longer than expected. The answer was still not right now. There are so many boards and commissions like. Really the managing of it would not be. Feasible at this time. But it's on. My. To do to continue to push and re-bring that up. As a conversation. So. I personally don't think it should be a flat. No, but we have been told no in the past. So you are working on it. That's all right. And what type of support does the D. D. I department provide the human rights commission. And I'm particularly interested in training. Is that something that you do reference that you would need? Is that something. That the department can provide. The human rights commission. I can answer that as well. At this time, we, my division has not. I don't. Provide. Specific training. Typically we work with consultants, whether it's for. Staff. Primarily for staff. Because I don't have the capacity. As one person in the division doing that to provide that training. But I have partnered with other groups in the past to provide. Bystander, active bystander training. Finding them locally. Partnering with them, but then the commission also. Has footed that bill for whatever the time is. It's usually two to three hours. But I don't have the capacity to provide that training. But I have partnered with other groups in the past to provide that training. But I certainly work with them to find. Different partners that can provide the training. Thank you. And my last question before running up to everyone else's. And FY 23, did you have a surplus? Jillian, do you have the answer to that? Yes, there was. A slight surplus surplus surplus. There was also a bit of confusion on our end because. We didn't realize that. A purchase order had been opened. So. FY 23 was a little messy for us, but. Funds that got carried over. We'll be used up this year. Questions. Anyone have questions Peggy and then Al Jones and then. Thank you. So what was your budget in FY 24? 75. Thank you. I guess I was just wondering where the $2,500 for the. Email addresses and shared server came from that sounds way too high. I do these sites. It is. Either Google or Microsoft. Yeah, I think now it's 1275. A person for workspace business standard. Which. For 13 people plus the extra sort of admin seat. Is. I think that's how we derive the number. That's probably more than. I'm. Yeah, I'm just saying that that number is too high. Okay. We can talk about it later. Yeah, I think that. The number I'm seeing right now. Is. Let me compare it to the number in here. You don't need a separate admin sheet. You don't need to spend extra for a shared server. So. We can talk about it later. Yeah, I mean. I use it for my own business. I'm at least 1 of the seats will have to be. The 1275 to enable the team drives because the cheap. Here they. But maybe the rest of them can be. I wouldn't say just going to Microsoft anyway, because the town users don't. Set up better. That's something. Yeah. Yep. Any. So. I'm just speculating here, but. You know, this question of using town email. Given the work that you're doing, it would seem to me that having your own domain name would be kind of important. Because people who don't trust the town may feel like they can't send information to a town email address. Whereas they could feel like they could send it to you. And there is also this. This issue of what is. Foya. A bold. I'm just speculating here, but. You know, this question of using it town email. Foya a bold and what is not. And certainly every town address is not only foyable, but it's not really private. You know, it's, it's owned by the town. Yeah. Our website domain. Sorry. Yeah. Our website domain is. Arlington human rights. And the email addresses are intended to be. That's what I'm saying is that segregating your emails from the town servers is actually an advantage. Yeah. I agree. You know, but money and I was standing. So. Okay. That was my only question is, you know, were you thinking about that when you debated this question of your own. Emails versus piggybacking on the town. Yeah, I. I think maybe. Human rights work has put us in a mindset of. In perfect situations and constraints. And so we're, we're always trying to do the best with what we can. So. You don't. Yeah. Yeah. So on this. I mean the town would be still paying for this. So I believe. That. You're at the emails even for here would be. Right. The same rules now. I realized there may be sensitive issues. As well as the council about what the boundaries are. I think it's. You're not completely shielded. Yeah. We treat them as loyal. Yeah. One other question is just how many groups. Thanks to be. I wish I had our annual report easily accessible, but in the annual report we counted out every year. So during, you know, when I first started, well, I started right after some of the arson event happened, right? And then for a year or so, Black Lives Matter related incidents sort of took over the top spot. But unfortunately, recently, anti-semitism has occurred, yeah. I'll call the ballpark. Okay. Do you have a ballpark? Like a dozen a year, two dozen a year. Would you get a hand, that's a little bit. Okay. Jillian? Do you have an answer to that? There were incidents for the last year, there were 26, and that was shared between human rights and the police department. Thank you. Other questions? So the increase in 25, that isn't just for the emails, that also includes the training and increased budget for events or no. Yes. And whatever we can save on, I mean, we would love to spend more on events and less on IIT. If we can make that happen, we would do that. But yeah, it's, we will, we plan to use it for events if we have extra. And from my perspective, the training is important. Yes. If you have new members who haven't gone through any training, that's problematic. We have, you know, we have the baseline required trainings like non, you know, the ethics training and things like that. Anything else? Any other questions? Jill, really tiny one. So what are the cluster events? Are they rental space? So they pay speakers or? It includes space. I hear the term gray villa. It includes foods, refreshments and speaker on areas towards the total request. It will be 10,000. 10,000. Any other questions? Sharon, where was your annual human rights commission report? Where is it? On the website. I don't know. All of the annual reports sit in the end. Jillian. You can go. This, it'll be ready by Tom meeting, but I think it's still getting put together and printed. Last year. Last year's annual report. It's available in the whole, like with all of the other departments. What's that document? It's the annual report. It's a document. I don't know. It lives on the website. All of them live there. The commissions are within. Health and human services. That's where all of the annual reports are. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Well, thank you. And we will get in touch. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Quickly to the minutes. Anyone have any revisions? Corrections. The minutes for back up. There's a transcription error. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I'm just trying to pull my copy. The one referring to recreation for. A playing field. Yep. It's 69 comma 950. 950. And then I suppose you could change that was received. I don't use your fees, but that's just. Okay. That's just a suggestion. The nine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Do I have a motion to approve the minutes as corrected? Second. Second. All in favor. Say aye. Aye. I can be opposed. I understand. All in favor. Raise your hand. 15. Affirmative. Any. Opposed. No. Opposed. One. I would say true because deans out of the room. Yeah. Yeah. To a second. That. 15. 15. Yes. And two. Okay. Budget. Solid waste. Okay. So big picture on solid waste is the priority where I'm hoping for. Has alluded us so far. So basically. You know, we're in the second year of a three year contract. Years follow our fiscal year. So we're halfway through our central fiscal year. So we're halfway through something. We've had your public school last year and a half. We've had a proposal to us to. That would meant that we wouldn't apply after data. And Michael charlotte decided. Did not make sense to accept the proposal fabricated. To me and the running, but just. We needed a good process. So. That's what they're doing now. So we don't know the numbers. We might. Hope that the. Base will come back in a couple of months. And we will have clarity on both what it looks like in the money. By the summer. That gives us some time to do. For them to do outreach to the public. Because we will be seeing changes. So it's pretty. Much guaranteed that there will be toters. That's whatever. That is going to be. The cost effective way to handle. Ways. You know. It's, it's, it's, it's hard to hire people. For things that don't involve toters. Because just hiring somebody to lift heavy things. All the time. It's just hard. Can you say that word? We're public is having hard time. Hiring people. Toters. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Toters are those. You see them often other times. They are standard garbage things with a metal. Bar. They can make technically lift. Mechanically listed. So just much easier. The hardest way to drive a truck. Working this mechanical arm. Then you have. People with things. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. So because we can cap. There is currently 750,000 in the capital planning budget. Another remaining question is that we have not decided yet. Whether to go. To the state to ask for some. A grant. So. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So go to the state to ask for some. Grant. So to buy these toners. In order to get that in particular grant. We have to. To having. Recepticals no larger than 35. Pounds. Gowns. Gowns. They're called. So if you've seen these. Along the street, they're the smaller ones. also be going out for a grant, but there's no restriction there on the recycling containers. So there's a bunch of money out there for helping us to buy the recycling containers. But whether we get additional health besides our own money to buy the main item, it depends on whether we restrict 35 gallons. Okay, so general stuff, solid waste, responsible garbage recycling, yard waste, construction material, wood scraps, hazardous waste. They also operate this swap set, which is very popular, and we've been based in over the last two years. I have some numbers in the proposal. I gave you a solid waste recycling yard waste interestingly, and I don't know if this is a trend. Solid waste has gone down since last year. There may not be a trend. Basically, we had many years where it hovered around 12,000, so it might just be one off, or for being something interesting. We pay two costs for garbage. We currently pay to pick up the garbage, and we pay to dump garbage, but not recycle it. That's going to change. We are going to have to pay to dump recycling in the future. Under the old contract that we negotiated many years ago, it was just companies were getting money from their recycling. They had value that they don't have anymore, and so we could have this situation where they'd pick it up, still not be a cost, but we didn't have to pay to dump it. That just won't feature anymore. We know the next mattress will put that. Okay, so just to go over through the numbers. The first number, the recycling 52.24 is a cost for our recycling center. 52.42 is the solid waste collection that's just by contract. That's a set number that we know each year as we purchase the contract. Yard waste is various in terms of what we pick up. Solid waste disposal also varies depending on how many these tipping fees, how much we use, residual disposal. This is again one of those things where when we're fully staffed, we pay more for residual disposal because we fix more sidewalks. We do more waste, the catch ban and things. So when the numbers have gone down the last couple of years, it's just that we have to have to staff. Feed scrap division, we would scape, I think it's what it should be. So that's the pay for the program high soil, which is enormous. So we went from three big bins to one when we instituted the program. To pay for the bins at EPW and paper two neighborhood bins now. When we talked last time, I mentioned that they were starting extending the neighborhood program. Charlie feels that since that was so long ago pre-cundemic that she really needs to go back to Park and Rec to get the reauthorized locations. She's still interested in doing that. She doesn't have a lot of capacity because she doesn't have this assistance right now. And there's a feeling that there's less pressure on this because there's a feeling at one point that the state needs to institute something that would require us to do it. And the feeling now is, it is in the future probably, but it's not imminent. And so the feeling that we have to do this. Last year, I remember we talked about whether these programs were being advertised well enough. And her, Charlie's feeling is she doesn't really want to advertise it because she doesn't have the capacity. Like there's just not big enough. So if we advertise and everyone dropped their stuff out, it just isn't enough space there yet. So she still really sees it as a pilot program to see what works and what doesn't work. As I said, we have a new contractor so that things are changing. But long-term plan, she would like to expand it. No plans in the near future. I think I mentioned to you last year that public addresses that they're losing a million dollars a year in our contract. Mike wasn't sure if that was real or not. But basically what seemed like they wanted and never agreed to make sense is to not tip in North Anniver, but to tip in Roxbury instead. And what that did is that trucks it in idling for hours, waiting because the contractor is so long, no longer have to do that. They can just go in, quickly drop it off and that they're done. We doubted that is that we don't have as much visibility into whether they're getting the right numbers right. We have to trust them. But the upside for everybody is that there's less idling tracks. They are not paying as much overtime because when the trucks were hanging out for three hours, they pay overtime and everyone's just a little bit less grumpy about the whole thing. So, let's see what else I have. Oh, new mattress disposal. You know that this is a new thing law that people can't just throw mattresses out anymore. Like four houses up the street for a week. So you have, you can do it two ways. So you can go to town and buy and pay to have it bigger. Yeah, they didn't do that. I don't think you can be picked up without that. I mean, it's a lot like it's really, really, yeah, but it's possible that they don't have to have a sticker that they want online. I don't know how to have this. So, so there's two ways to do it. Once you can, you can go online and pay for it to be picked up. And the second way is that you can drop off yourself. And when people drop it off themselves, it's the mat we charge them. There's a little bit more than it charges. And when they pick it up, the amount we charge them is a little less than it costs us. But Charlotte feels it all equals out and it's basically net right now. Big, big question. The waste division positions still make it. Now we need this waste division division for a bunch of different reasons. Charlotte didn't go to the need of this much last year, but it is more this year. They just offered it to somebody who eventually turned it down. There's a lot of negotiation back and forth. One is that just to do the operation, especially something like the shop swap said, I just mentioned going recently to the town, you know, dump me off things and how officially it was run. Well, that is Charlotte there or something like she doesn't feel well, right? So having somebody else to help would be great. Second is that we actually have a cheaper contract if our garbage is cleaner. People aren't growing up things that they shouldn't throw out. And then third, long term, and this is not this is sort of in the background of everyone's mind, Charlotte's not doing this forever. So potentially that person might move up something if it's right for some. So that is why we need somebody. And I think that is it for things I wanted to cover. Well, first of all, do you have recommendation? Oh, yeah, sorry. Yes, a recommendation for four million six hundred and forty four thousand nine hundred and seventy three, which is a lot of it. Yes. Is there a second? Second. All right. So questions. I'll pass the Rebecca. Okay, I know I missed this. So the solid waste collection of three million that contract is up. So we are in the second year of a three-year contract. Okay. So it follows our fiscal year. So actually, yeah, so it follows our fiscal year. So right. Yeah. Okay. And and the solid waste disposal, do we have a contract for that? Or is that just page to throw? I don't think yeah, there's doesn't I don't think there's a contract page for it. Yeah. That's a good question, whether the rates are set yearly. That is a good question. I don't know. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Rebecca. Thank you. I had a question about the prospect of moving from the North Andover Facility to the Rocksbury Facility. Is the Rocksbury Facility also a fulfillment incinerator? No, it's a weighing station. So it's actually, they just hold it and then they tip it in the state that they are very effective. So just a facility to weigh. It's just a process. It's a process. Right. So ultimately it goes. So we're not actually dumping extra garbage in our throat, which would look bad. We're just processing it. Oh, it's a transfer station. Yeah. My question was sort of at the end of the day, we're then paying about this. We should expect us to pay the same amount of action process, the trash, which is the same. It should be the same. Okay. Yeah. And so then, and that's a term in the contract that when we negotiate the contract, we specify, we've been specifying that they need to take it to our handover and we wouldn't leave it open. We had to negotiate with them last year. So I assume it potentially is in the original contract because it was a back and forth negotiation. And if we were to, if the town in the negotiation were to allow the flexibility about where to take it. That's what they did. The idea would be that, that we would save money, but that they would lose less money on it. So, so the historic thing about our contract is that they knew walking in that they were going to lose money. And they, so we had gotten this very, very, very good contract that two years ago, our biggest caller, Republic was interested in buying them. And to make their offer sort of work, they had to buy a lot of people. So there was an incentive for them to potentially take over our intent, even while they knew they were going to this moment. So, but then they felt that there was more money than they thought. And then that's what they came to negotiate with us. Our potentially being flexible does not save us money. It just doesn't save us any contract to go forward. It means that your car is going to have to accept no answer. I'm cranky about it. Thank you. Yeah. Annie, then Michael, then Grant, then Charlie. Oh, so when you say that we don't know whether or not the reduction in solid waste is the trend, you mean, we, as in Mike doesn't know? Yeah. Okay. Because. Because it just happened this year. Just happened. Yeah. This is the first year that we started side dip. Yeah. I mean, the trend over the last 20 years has been that it's been going down. Right. When I looked at like a big seeker, it hasn't been. So that's, yeah. Because the first, I think that's right. Was when you take metal and glass, yes, you pay by the pound, yes, you reduce the weight. This second drop, when we moved to single stream, there was a drop. Yes. Yes. For sure. For sure. Second drop is likely food scraps for diversion because many, many more people are using compost or. Yeah. I bring a compost service to pick up. And that's the second heaviest thing in your crash. Yeah. They don't know enough information about that. As you may have seen, there's a question on that in our annual time survey. Yeah. But of course, only a portion of people answer the annual time survey. So. Well, it's interesting that solid waste is going down and yard waste is going up. Yes. Actually, so there was a discussion that they thought yard waste in general was going down as a trend. So I don't, I don't also don't know exactly what's going on with the point here. In terms of weight? Yes. It turns to weight. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else? Um, yeah. No, except that, you know, when you say that we don't know anything about the future numbers, then you might have some products. Yeah. They haven't negotiated it yet. We do know this year's numbers. So yeah, we know this year's numbers, right? Yeah. Scared me there for a minute. Sorry, sorry. No, no, no, we're good. I'm passing the budget. But I mean, I think many people in this room have been anxious to hear what the new numbers will be and the answer is they don't know. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Thank you. Michael. Thank you. Had a hard time hearing you while explaining what residual disposal is. Oh, you're talking about the construction waste. Oh, yeah. That is disposal when they do projects, small projects. So they replace a little bit of the sidewalk for a catch basin. They have to throw that out. They can't just throw it in the woodwork trash. And there's this interesting thing there that happens with all DPW stuff that when the, when they can't fully staff things, they don't do as much projects and they can't, and this, these, these budgets go down. So that number rises and falls on the volume of projects the time. Exactly. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm looking for a simple answer on this. I think solid waste disposal, non-contracted, trend is going down. Can you please simply tell me why it means simplified? Why the budget goes up 11.62% percent? So we have a negotiating increase when, so the, the vast majority of the solid waste budget is the, the solid waste collection, 52.42. No, solid waste disposal, that's 52.76. Last year's budget was 1075973. This year's budget is 1 million, 1.2 million. That's an increase of 11.60%. Yes. I don't, I don't know if that's in the contract. I don't. So, so what's in the contract? Well, so what, what is, does vary is we only pay for what we take, right? So we take less, we take less, we take more, we take more. So it's possible, I think probably likely that I have to get confirmation that, that the number for, for every ton this how much we pay is set by the contract and I will get confirmation on that. Yeah, but there, the contract was designed to go up. I'm sorry, I didn't think it was contract. I think it is. We had three year contracts. Yeah, three year contract. So the kind of, even though the rates gone down, I mean the spending is, the trend has gone down, the contract, I thought it went down. So in the contract, it's going up 11.62% we have no control of it. It's contract. Is that inaccurate or is it? We have control over the tipping. If we all throw out less garbage, we don't pay as much. Right. Is he expecting us to pay more? We don't have control over potentially is how much we get, we get charged per ton. We reduce our tonnage, we pay less. So Mike is expecting more tonnage. That's why it's increasing. I'm not trying to beat it that course. I just don't understand why. I think this, this, this, the dip in 2023. No, no, I'm talking about the budget increase. Why is it an increase? I think it's based on an historical trend because the dip in 2023 is a one year dip. There's no assumption that we're going to see that dip again necessarily. I thought there was a trend. No, it sort of looks like a one year dip and so we don't know. We don't know what it looks like. So we don't know what the suspect is going up at 11.5% of this. I think based on the historical trend. Yeah. Okay, based on historical. Is that 250 not part of the opening? So you know that is part, like that's part of your ride. It's supposed to be for the new contract, right? This extra 250. Of course, we don't know what the new contract is and we're going to have to spend a lot more than that 250. So Mike was like, Oh, that's nice. That's a nice 250 you have there. But it's not going to do any for us. We're trying to build up the help and to be prepared for that. Yeah. That's what it sounds like. That's what it sounds like. And you know, the manager gets like 3.5%, 3.4% increase across the entire budget. He should, he needs to put in what it's going to be. Well, when we know, I mean, we'll know next, next summer exactly like what the hundred will apply. We'll basically know the numbers over the years. 30 plus. So, Charlie and then John. So Mike, my question. Thank you. Thank you, manager. My question is related. I just noticed that both the solid waste collection and solid waste disposal are increasing at about a rate of 8% a year. Now, you know, these if what's the name of the collection again? The Republic. Yeah. They're complaining about a contract that increases at 8% a year. So if you remember, they, we had this amazingly good contract with a previous holler. They are right. That was like, they were also losing money, but they had given us such a low budget deal. And then when Republic bought it out, some of that sort of really good deal was sort of kept with the new contract. So these all these, what I understand is all of these companies have been losing money on us for the last years, but we don't think that's going to continue. Certainly. Well, once the contract is, what may ask contract, they're not going to lose money on us, right? They're going to, yeah. Yeah. There were real, there were reasons that they were okay losing money or that they made a bad deal with us that caused them to lose money that just will not be in play anymore. So do we know how in the current year, it says 2.8 million, 2.8 and 84,000. So we're halfway through the year. What we should know what that number is going to be. Oh, what he's been so far? Yeah. So I have, I do have actual sales. Last year's actually, let's see. I actually find out. 2.9 million. That's where the, that might not be the right thing. Sorry, I wasn't prepared for this. I do have them all here. Soledays, okay. So our actual year today is a little over 4 million. 4 million, 46,000. For collection and it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And there is, I mean, when I looked at the actuals, they were a little scary. There's some tiny issue that when POs come in and, you know, I mean, we have a contract, this is what the contract looks like. So when the numbers are a little different, it's an I mean, so I guess what the unit date was. Yeah. And you said it's a little over 4 million. Yeah. But the budget's only 4 million for those categories for the full year. So that leaves, okay, this is what we're told, some of these are conferences. Do you, so I have to go back and look at, so, so the curbside collection looks pretty close. That's 2.780 for the numbers that are in there. So it's, now, now some of these, sometimes when they do the actual date and cumbersome money. So I don't know, I don't feel like we have a real big clear picture until after the year is closed. Because that's what, when I've seen some of these numbers, those certain term facilities, they encumbered a bunch of them. I knew they were going to say, and they're in here. But I tell you, you know, last year it looked like, and they're speaking for myself. And this is not speaking to you, Jennifer, but I think when we're talking about a 3 million, 4 million dollar budget, we should be able to understand what the actual cost is. And if they can't tell us the actual cost, we shouldn't support the budget. So, but we mean the actuals when I feel the most valuable thing is usually the prior year actuals. Just don't know if, as we know, I always mask the budget book. When you look at SNAP and SNAP time actuals, I always found that it's left already there. But they're paying money out, right? Well, because some of that is encumbered, that's why I kind of left already there. That's what I go, I've seen that again and again. I mean, I don't know if it's, are you saying this is not for another budget? That's what I've seen. But the actuals in the budget book are in line with the budget request to 25. But it's not that they're going to double this because they've only been six months because they've encumbered some amount. So, that's why it's just, it's not, you can't just take the crap and double it and say, oh, we're going to say, it's not how it works. Again, I'm not, that's how this budget usually works. I'm not sure if other budgets work that way or not. Anything else, Charlie? No, thank you. But no one's happy about spending this much money. I get it. It's not a question of spending this much money. It's a question of knowing what we're spending. And if they can't tell us, we shouldn't support the budget. Well, they can. They can tell. We have a contract, right? So, the $3 million is a contract you'll amount, right? That's, and again, the budget request is in line with the last three reactions, right? John. Yeah, I'm also trying. Thank you. Thank you. I don't care. And Jennifer, I'm still struggling with this whole thing where you talked about how Republic was losing money on us. But the contract is going up 8%. Right. That's what I was just talking about there. So, are they still losing money? I think they are still losing money on us. Yeah. So, what I understand, I mean, people who've been in this room for a lot longer can probably speak to them more, but J.R. Recycling was, whatever, J.R. was, had given us, was a new company at the time, when first went up, had given us this really long contract and turned out they were losing money. And then they tried to renegotiate with us and we said, wait, this is a contract. This is what you agreed to. So, so we didn't negotiate that. So, we got a really great deal for years and years. Then Republic came and they had an incentive, they needed to buy us, basically, to make the deal that they were trying to buy all the clients and that they want them all is a better deal. So, they were willing to lose money. So, yes. So, but there's, we had, we had to negotiate a contract where it goes up to try to capture some of that, right? So that we're not, so each year they don't lose more and more money, right? They're trying to, they're trying to catch up, right? But they are still losing money on us. Yeah. I think next year, when we look back at this discussion, we'll be saying, don't we wish that was only an 8%? Yeah, I mean, we are going to see the real true cost, even though it's going to be cheaper than if we had a contract doing the same kind of garbage question we do right now, right? I mean, the toters will help save some money, but we're going to see the true cost. Okay. Thank you. Josh, and then Tom. Thank you. I just have a question about sort of the comment when they're negotiating a contract, like at this scale, was that Mike is negotiating it or are there other players besides the public? So, I understand, so Mike doesn't do any salary negotiations, but I think he's very much involved in these kinds of negotiations. I've seen the commentator. I mean, it seems like that that might be a different skill. Yeah, he and Charlotte agreed to, they, they actually made the decision to go out to bid, but evaluating the bids, I don't know. I can ask. Well, I think, I think the fact that we have such a great contract so long is a testament to his ability to negotiate with that, to those rounds. We'll see for next year. Autocity may now jump. Okay. Just our contract with Republic is for solid waste collection. Is that correct? Our contract is solid waste collection. So, I assume that, that, that, that for the tipping fees as well, you're saying no. I don't know. The tipping fees. Great. The Republic collects the stuff. But it goes up to North Handover and that's a separate deal. We don't pay Republic to dispose of it. We don't pay Republic to dispose it. Yes. So, I don't, I don't know if that's like contract or not. Okay. So, the Republic contract is going up at 4.33 percent. Right. 8 percent. Right. Right. So, the, so the fees. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the clarity. So, the fees for tipping you're saying are whatever the facility can charge us. Is that, that makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't, but I don't know if that's a contractual. I don't know about that. I can find that out. Or it's pay or it's, it changes these months or like a yearly thing. I don't know. So, Republic is just a 4.3. The disposal was less than that. Actually, like I said, my guess is he's putting as much money in here as possible because the next year. Since Annie had to leave, I'll channel her and ask if there are any discussions of pay as you throw in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a good, good question. So, as we receive the bids back, there will be possibilities for an add-us. Like, for example, do we continue to collect unlimited number of coaches? Right. And large objects or will there be some sort of restriction for household with the extra money attached? And as they start seeing those proposals, that will be a decision-making. So they don't make, they haven't made today, but, but it turns out that, you know, having a restriction on a number of coaches you can throw out really saves us a lot of money. So, the good thing is using the toters what some towns are doing are actually way, you can weigh them as you don't go. So you can, you can get to the pounds. We just heard, I wasn't sure if it was the next one or another. Mike said that wasn't true, but you can't weigh them. Well, it is true, but. Okay. No, I was just like, in general, where those little pay-as-you-throw discussions. Okay. Yeah. That's one discussion. The other discussion is potentially raising the cost for the extra bags that are now being used by some businesses. And they've been $2 in something cents for a long time. And then we'll raise it to three, actually. That would be relevant for people, because we have the smaller toters than individuals, not just businesses, might have to buy these bags. Anything else? All right. Toefer, Grant, and Charlie. Okay. So just, you mentioned just a little bit of a response. So the toters, if they're smaller, they're still maybe more competitive. That is, it's about three barrels in these days per week, per household. And so it would be one, one-third of a gallon per house. Which is actually still above the household average. And they've got to be at a generalised household average. It would be a change. Yeah, there's a question of whether they're, so the benefit would be they get this big grant, but the disadvantages is that the middle of the week. So the first one is the weighing that. And then this is an observation. I mean, this is one of a few of not the only servers that absolutely have that kind of gas. Yeah, yeah. Grant. Thank you, man. Back to the 35. What happens if there's more than, you know, I didn't say the average, but, you know, the average is the mean. Yeah. What happens when people have, you know, like, double the garbage or something like that? They have a big bar to you, I think. Yeah. So individuals would then have to buy bags and they would sell them and like, want to make their hardware or something, would sell these bags that you'd then be able to buy. And so currently they're less, they're $2 and something, and there's been talk about raising them to three. So that's around the amount of money you've spent. How does that work with the total of stuff? So you would have, you know, wouldn't be up entirely mechanical, right? You'd have to have somebody come over and lift that, that bag. But that would just be one of the ways that services would be done. There would be less, less people, there would be less. You wouldn't have to have, people wouldn't have to list as much, right? You wouldn't be the same thing. You're like a one guy. Right, right. Thank you. Cheryl. I just like to comment that in 2022, our republic services, Inc. had an annual revenue of $13.5 billion and a profit of about 1.1, almost 1.5 billion. Are they going to be graded? Yes. There are several companies out there, so we don't know if we'll go with republic or not. No, I'm just going back to knowing what the costs are. They're not losing money, they're giving us a story. $1 million, they said that life was skeptical about that. People believe that there were just as many good things got to go back. Any other questions on the solid waste budget? All right, we have a motion that's been seconded. I need further discussion. All right, all in favor of $4,604,973, say aye. All in favor, raise your hand. Should there be, oh, 15 because Annie likes that. Opposed, one, and no abstentions. Do you want to do zero waste? I'd like to request. Thank you, Jennifer. I know we still have resources to do. I have some information that I haven't formatted properly yet and I'll get that. Yeah, okay. So, first, before we do reclass, we're going to do, although you can tone up, we're going to do the HR budget, which is on page 32 and 33. I wanted you to complain if you want, but there aren't any changes in this budget. We go down to the salaries. Yes, there are significant increases there. However, there are lots of steps and lots of longevity and we don't have a whole lot of influence on that except in the director of human resources because those changes are done by the town manager, not by a set amount. And she had a reclass last year and it was approved by external sources as well as internal sources. And so there's been an increase in the max and turn to pay is still well below the max. So that's the salary detail. And if we go up to the budget detail, you'll see it is zero percent across the board. And if you're wondering what on earth 50,000 gets you in trainings, a certain amount of that is assessment for police because of the way the civil service exam works and what they have to be assessed on before they're hired and or before they increase their rent. David, if anyone has any questions, David might be better to answer that than I hope maybe he isn't. And the other thing that is is for training for mostly HR. There's a few other things in there, but most training occurs within department budget. So if you have recommendation. So my recommendation is that we approve the budget at we approve the budget below offsets or above below. Okay. 393533. Is there a second? Second. Questions for Carolyn. I see none. All right. All in favor of 393533. Say aye. Any opposed? Right now. For the a little more tricky one, and Tara is going to put something on the board on the screen. Do you want to start with this or do you want to? No lead cell sheet. We're not going to use that at all. Just get rid of the formulas and the other stuff so it fills up more of the box. I'm sorry. That's not a share point. No, it probably isn't yet. I emailed it out right before. It's in it's in SharePoint now that went out like as a meeting was started. Okay. So the way reclassification works is people either approach their manager or their manager approaches HR and says, you know, this person, their title doesn't match what they actually do. And there's two different ways they can come in. One is, hey, I noticed that these males are doing the same work and they're making more than me as a female. So that's an equity issue. The other issue is, hey, these males and females in other departments or even in my department are doing this work and they have a higher title than me. And so can we increase my title? And then HR and the manager and potentially others take a look at that and make a decision. This past year, there were eight requests or eight requests for this coming budget. Two of them were denied by HR. Those two both went for an appeal. One of them went for internal appeal. And oh, sorry, let me I'm sorry. Both of them went for appeals. And let's see how did this and they were both denied. And they were both denied. Sorry. Two of the people who applied, one of them was a subordinate of the HR director. She worked in her department and the HR director didn't feel comfortable doing that process herself. And so she requested an external third party analysis. And that person said yes. The request was valid. And so that was approved. The other person went externally because HR and the manager decided it was the best option. And so they chose an external process for that person. And that person was also approved. And so there were four that were approved by Karen and two that were approved by external parties and two were denied. Does that part make sense? We haven't even looked at the table yet. Okay. Now we get to look at the crazy table. And what I tend to do with the table is at the top and in this case at the bottom, it has to do with how I sort it. There are positions where we reclassified someone by adding a position and deleting a position. And so if you look at the top two in green and blue, you can see how the title changes. And in this case, they go from an OA for to an ATP for. So it's a reclassification of the level of the job. And this is a union job. And that's the name of the unit. The second one is the IT administrative assistant. We're now calling them an office manager because that's closer to what they're doing. And they're going from an OA seven to an ATP. Again, that's an increase in class. The first person, there's no change in salary. And usually if there's no change in salary, it's because the salary difference was absorbed within the budget. It was already spaced in the budget or the person isn't filling a new job. And so they were able to put that in when they put the new job description in. If you look at the very bottom, you'll see another case, the left bottom two, where it's the exact same thing. They're called after school. Their new title is kid care. They're moving from an MTP two to an MTP five. And the reasons for that are because after school, kid care is expanding. They have more work and more responsibility. And to some degree, it's also bringing them up to comparable salaries to comparable towns. Comparable towns are not necessarily Lexington, Waltham and Cambridge, where they have lots of commercial and industrial tax space, but they are comparable towns who are in similar situation to us. If you look right above that in the middle, we've also added a new position kid care assistant preschool director. And that person is only an MTP two. And the reason that person is staying is the other two are running operations and curriculum, not simply the daycare itself. Any questions so far? Go ahead. Does that line H program supervisor then track over to the right to that kid care assistant preschool, even though that one's in pink, right? Yeah. Or terrace. No, no, H is not related to H. H in column one is not related to H in column two, which is why there's a bold line. So the I'm just thinking about what happened in the wreck department. Sorry, I'm a little bit thinking out loud, but in the wreck department, they used to have a director and an assistant director. Now they're going to two co-director. So I see those in the middle column as kid care director operations and a kid care director curriculum. Correct. Is that correct? Yep. And then the person above that kid care assistant preschool director, where did that used to be on the left side? It didn't. So this is one of the things that happens. Sometimes it goes all the way across. Yeah. Sometimes it's only in one column and in the case of the kid care assistant preschool, it's only in one column and they only added, that's a new added position. Perfect. That makes sense. Thank you very much. Okay. If you go to the next two, and in this case, we're going to be looking at the pink budget coordinator and the purple project manager. And if you look across the adding, the budget coordinator is by replacing the budget director. And the reason for that in this case was we weren't able to fill the position at a budget director level because the salary was too low. And we also realized that that particular role was better from a more entry level person who wanted to work under our current town manager and the assistant town manager who runs all the numbers to be able to see that kind of work and eventually move up to a director level. And so although it's MTP 10, the salary they're coming in on is on the lower end of the MTP 10 versus the highest end where we weren't able to get a director. So that's why we made that change. On the project manager, it has mostly to do with and they're staying at the same rate. It has mostly to do with recognizing the type of work they're doing. They're doing project management. So that's what their title should say. And so there's no change in that particular salary or step level or anything. Now, any questions on those? One of the things I wanted to focus on is back in column one, you'll see in green the Arlington Youth Counseling Center. So there's three positions in there and there's significant increases in salary. And the reason for that is these jobs used to be contract, except we're not supposed to keep a contractor year over year over year. So you're kind of not following federal and state rules. And so what we did was we brought them in internally. They're full time staff. The AYCC is a nonprofit. The current setup and they do build insurance is that their salaries cover, I mean, their intake covers their salaries. It doesn't yet and may never cover health insurance. And so the town does cover their health insurance costs, but they're able to. So it's not a true enterprise setup. And that's something that town manager and AYCC and others can discuss over time. But right now, that's how they're setting it up. And then the others are mostly one-offs. And if you have any question about any of those, let me know. I'm going to take a selfie. So the these two positions hanging out like from row and row 14 working for them. Yeah. And the coordinator. Yeah. What happened with them? So those are reclassifying. And they went from there. So there's a step change. They went from an AC7 to an MC8 and an OA5 to an OA6. And it probably has to do with they came forth and said, hey, you know, my, my role should really be at this level because this level includes these type of tasks. So that's why it's not connected to anything. The same position that was not classified correctly based on what they're now doing. Yes. Yeah. I can add those for the two that were done by the third party. Which one? One C and one B. So I think I was looking at the same thing that, so for example, the director of diversity equity and inclusion, I feel like that was on last year's reclassification as well or fairly recently. Are we tracking for the same employee how often they get reclassified? I mean, do some of them come up every single year and do we have a problem with, I don't know. Yeah. I was at last year's. Okay. I was first looking at the tab from last year. Oh, okay. First. Sorry. Yeah. When you look at it first, the tab was last year. Okay. So that's why I was like, why are we doing this again? Okay. I was like, wait, where is that? Okay. I get it. Thank you. But and do we track though how often? Yeah, every once in a while, because I kind of look back and I'll be like, wait, what are we doing here? And she'll often mention that sort of thing. Like we did this, like in the IT department a number of years ago, there were some really big changes of how people work. And part of it was the change in director coming up and then the change in director happening. And so luckily I was doing a few budget at the same time. So I was hearing it in the IT meetings and the HR. And I guess I explained it well enough. Any other questions? Read the last. Oh, shoot. That's right. We add them together. One, three, adding. Anyone else is faster at it than me? Go for it. Okay. The moment I'm getting 11, 8, 8, 6. That's what you got. Okay. Great. So let's call it 11, 8, 8, 6. All right. Any other questions? Project manager, SCIU 11 to superintendent of building maintenance, SCIU 11. So it's the other way around. So we're deleting superintendent and we're now adding project manager. And again, that's because that's the type of work that person is actually doing. And so it makes sense to call them a project manager. Does that make sense? Yeah. Anything else? Thank you. Good luck. Grant. Carolyn, I mean, I'm reading this well off my phone and with the tabs and stuff like that. You know, I'm going to stick with water and sewer because I would want to do repos. But with water and sewer, there's a, see a new position, senior engineering that wasn't there last year. In your job, within your budget, you're seeing it and you're not seeing it here. I don't think I'm seeing it. Well, I'm not seeing it. Correct. Right. I don't even know if I should be seeing it. Right. Water and sewer. Tell me the title again. Senior engineering. Senior. S-E-I-U. Ten. All right. I will ask HR and I'll send an email to both of them. It's Mike who I should be sending it to from your budget. No, let's submit it. Yeah, Mike. Mike. Okay. Mike and Karen, how did this position get here? I think I know. I don't want to be classed. I don't think it should be in the club. I don't know because it's a new, go ahead, Charlie. Right. It's in the work. It's probably in the, in a list of job descriptions already. It just wasn't filmed. They could, it wasn't, I mean, it's new. It wasn't vacant last year. It could be in the table of job descriptions. And then even though he hadn't hired it, he puts it in the department. He hires it. That's why it's not in reclass. But doesn't he usually listed as vacant if it starts? No, that doesn't happen. Not necessarily. Well, okay. But I'll still email them both and ask them. I'll come back with an answer. Usually, they like to put it in there because that's the budget, right. Maybe we should do mutual it. And the one thing, that's the show. The one thing I've asked before and I'll ask again is make sure you checked your, particularly your director levels, your manager director level people to make sure that their max salary is not higher than what is allowed is the max salary, but their new salary is a higher than the max. I know I asked before about just checking. So Al will catch later and then he'll come back. If you don't, I don't. And not going with Jeff, right? With Jeff, he's separate. Charlie. So what was the position you were worried about? A senior engineer in water, within water and sewer. Yeah, there's a senior civil engineer position. S. C. I. U. 10. In the classification plan. Okay. Right. I didn't know. I didn't know whether it was in. Should show up on the past. No, it's in plan. That's your other mechanism. Okay. Anything else? Carol and these are all as is beginning to rationals from reclassification. One is an equity issue where so none of these are equity issues. They could have been. They could have been so we can't tell my C. Not necessarily. Okay. There's also one other that is a new position. Right. Right. So, Carolyn met at the request plan where they go up. We are 11. Is there a second? Any other questions? All in favor of say aye. To be opposed. And then thank you. I'll pass the two things that one dimension. I think two things would be very pleasing. One for the first time and forever forever. The assessments going down. Going down about 5%. So that's what happens when you put the right man in charge of this project. And so any questions you have, please ship them to me and I'll send them along to the, to the superintendent. Are you referring to Kevin? You're referring to Mr. Kehoney. Yes. You're going to let it go. Charlie. Actually, I wish no. I have to take pills. Okay. So, if you have any questions on that man, you know, please ship them to me. They'll be in next Monday. Oh, and the, you'll notice that the athletic fields are now being paid out of the enterprise fund at mid van. So we're no longer paying that. And also because there was a big increase in state aid, there was one of the reasons for the drop in the assessment. Part of that's going against the capital, the debt service. So we won't really see it through the budget, but it'll help our taxpayers. The second thing is Association of Non-Finance Committees. They're having their spring meeting. It will be on April 6th. I think it's like nine to 12 out of Pine something country club in Oxford. I think they had it there about two years ago. They'll have breakfast, which is basically coffee and donuts and a lunch, which will probably be sandwiches. They're going to go into the, the governor's legislative legislation, proposed legislation to give cities and towns more flexibility in how they run their budgets. Also, that's one part of it in how they run their operations. There's another part which actually gives local option taxing ability to cities and towns to do. I don't know if considering that they, we just passed a 4% increase in millionaires tax. I don't think the legislature is going to go for that, but it'll be there. So there'll be a speaker from department of revenue talking about all these changes. And there'll be somebody from the mass municipal association talking about the economy and what's happening with the budget and local aid and things like that. So I urge you to come with the car pull out. Good way to spend a boring Saturday, Saturday morning. I thought it was an election day, of course. So if you're interested, let Tara know. Charlie, I want to see if we can bring another budget to today. Thank you, Madam Chair. Very quickly, you think the fact that we have this, this field lighting being paid out of the enterprise fund is actually due to the late Charlie Lyons who brought this subject up with Mr. Honi, who's the acting, now the acting superintendent was the finance director. Good job. So let's do zero waste. Okay. So we actually voted on this, but we got information, more detailed information from them, which I think you all have. And they were asking for $3,000 and that's what they got last year. Yep. So does anyone want to reconsider our February 12 vote that approved their $3,000 request? So that's done. Human Rights Mission, what are people's thoughts for their budget request of $10,000? I still don't understand, which is not easy. It's easy for me to do. Is what any separate email addresses? There is an email address for the Human Rights Commission. It's Arlington Human Rights, it's about two letters and then the regular number. And I'm assuming that the IT department can attach to say five members of the Human Rights Commission to their personal emails. And so it goes in one and then goes right out to the others. I don't see why they need each need their own email addresses. Even if they did, I don't understand why the town won't give it to them on the town. Well, you can ask why we each need our own, but we do. But in any case, even if they do, that's way, as I said, the budget's way too high. It's about 80 bucks per person, they can get more power than they need, which is about $1,000 for that budget. I also, the one question I think I did think is, it's always FOIA requests. Is there, you know, in the Human Rights Commission, I would think there may be issues where they want to have a legal archive of their official correspondence. So, which would be a reason to put it through the town, the archives, everything. I don't know if that's an issue for them or not, but at least I have a $2,500, $1,500 too much for what they need. How much would you give them? How much would you give them? Which would include both the server and the, you know, 13 email addresses. So, for an account. Yes, yes, I need it. Your point about archiving and stuff, they do talk about the records. Right. So, that goes, right. I mean, that basically cuts free. Shared server email addresses in the retention and just build into the cloud system. 80 marks on the clock. So, the $2,500 isn't just for IT, which is what I think I keep hearing you say out. Well, that's the item on the spreadsheet. Oh, okay. And then they were only going to put $200 towards training and extra events. Events, I think it was just sort of, I think to round up the number, honestly. So, as long as they spend less of it on that and more of it on training and other things. Is that a question? From my perspective, if we can get them to spend less on IT and we can tell them how to do it, then I think they should be able to spend the addition on training and events. That's my take. I don't think we'll be able to do that. Here's your money. Sophie and then Dean. I think I had the same concern also that, I mean, the website, I'm seeing in a lot of these commissions, there are a lot of money being spent for a separate website and I'm not sure why it can't be integrated into the Arlington. Why do they have to pay for a separate website? Why can't it just be a page on our town website? I know from the disability commission, the disability commission, the one address that on our website that goes to human rights or disability, what I've seen is it goes to somebody in the DEI office through the world where it's that email to whoever the chairs are. So it's not automatically done, but I think we could. I wish across all the commissions that they would stop spending money on IT issues and it would just be integrated website and IT issues. So I understand why they want email addresses. I mean, because they, with the interface, I think we're going to interact with the community in different groups and whatnot. I think, like he said, I think it weird to send an email from, you know, a Gmail account, like it doesn't, it doesn't work, right? But I think the answer is probably very simple in that, you know, it's probably like the, of all of the town manager, the IT director's concerns. It's probably the bottom one, but we don't want to spend $2,500, even though it's not a big number, and start creating these little fight thumbs with separate IT. We should probably just call the top manager and say, hey, we'd rather not spend $2,500, give them email addresses. That seems like the easier ways, because I get what their concern is. It makes sense. Yeah, pretty easy way, right? I mean, I don't think the manager is being malicious. I just think of the IT director. I think they have a giant list and it's at the very bottom of the list. And so one group's at the top, the other one's at the bottom. We just say, come on. I have to say, I was surprised that the capital planning committee members don't have their own email address. That's a five-point. There's a complaint about that. Yeah. And that's the point that I have. Jennifer, did you have a hand up? Oh, well, to respond to the website issue, we start talking about this last time. If you've looked at the town website, you know why these organizations do not want to use the town website. I mean, they just have no patrol. There's a visual presentation. There's events. There's a lot of issues. The website is not actually that much. I agree with everyone that the email's amount seems very high. I would support a lower amount this year and if they can come to us next year, to sort of justify it. If they decide, oh, a realtor can't do it for this money and they spend extra money in the events this year and come to us next year, okay. But it seems like they weren't clear about, you know, the realtor's you know, but it seems like they weren't clear about exactly how most years have passed. Charlie? Yeah, I, you know, you just made a comment on the chair. Thank you, by the way, for recognizing me about not micromanaging. I mean, I don't, this is $2,500. This is a 33% increase in their budget. It was $7,500 last year. I think that's, we should just reject that on first principles and let them figure out how to spend the money. That would be my recommendation. Josh? Unfortunately, I feel like they will have more business to address this year. So I think I would be supportive of the kind of the IT costs, but they're spending it in front of the waves. Doesn't seem like they're going to be wasteful. Grant, and then Carolyn? Thank you for coming here. He said, plainly, he said he'd like to spend the money on events instead of IT. That's what I heard. So, and again, we don't do that. We don't micromanage anybody else on $43 million budgets. So it would be nice if he could tell some of the events, but it's still, he said, he admitted I'd rather spend the money somewhere else. So I'm fine with giving him the money. Carolyn? Can we tell him to come back? He's got to come up with an accurate number there. He's got to go out and figure out what it's really going to cost him. Come up with something that makes sense to the rest of us and then show us where he's going to put the other money. How much is the training going to cost? What would we then use on events? We could. And then are we going to hold him to that, the committee to that, that you will only spend X amount on that event, you know, that X amount on training, that X amount here or there? Well, we do, we do, we do do that. Every year we look back at, I would hope, we're looking back at what people have done. Did they do what we said, what they said they were going to do? And if they didn't, then, then, then we go from there. But from my take, human, human, I'm sorry, human rights commission has, for the most part, done what we've asked them to do, done what they've said they were going to do. And now they're saying we'd like to do these extra things. We'd like to add training and we'd like to beef up our email and website and IT infrastructure. And so I would move that we tell them we have to come back with more details about his budget. We did this with ARC for a while, the ARCs commission for a while. I mean, this is not new to us and it's not necessarily micromanaging. It's simply telling them to show us really what they're doing because right now what we're saying is they're not showing us what they're really going to do or they're going to waste a heck of a lot of money. Rebecca? I just wanted to respond, thank you. I just wanted to respond to what Caroline was saying. I think, I think he intends this to be a very detailed budget. It's just that maybe we find that last item a little bit implausible about how expensive those email addresses are and I have no point of reference for how much, but those, I mean, that looks like a pretty detailed budget to me. Much more detailed than the ARC. The ARC people, Caroline, they don't pay. It's just the issue, if the $2,500, if you don't really believe it's going to pay come $2,500 to do these email and you say, well, what are you going to do with the leftover money? Okay, but I mean, we got the 2246.40 from somewhere. I can, that's for training. I didn't look at it. Oh no, that's for the email address. Oh, that's what it says, $317.20 for incidentals. That looks detailed, but it's precise, but maybe not after it, right? I don't know, but so I guess I wouldn't say that what we need is more detail. If you're telling us that this number for 2246 is too high, that's a separate issue, but this looks detailed. That's all right. Dean, then El Tosti, then El Jo. I move the $2,500 increase as recommended for a total of $10,000 a second. El Tosti. I was going to make a motion for $9,000, but one at a time. So, Dean's made a motion for $10,000 and it's been seconded. El Jones. Well, to me, it's, I mean, first of all, since I work with small businesses, I hate to see anybody get ripped off. But it's almost more, it's unclear to me what the policy issues are. I want to hear more about FOIA. I want to hear more about what the, I want to hear that they understand their IT thing to make sure that they're doing something effective. And it's just because I'm an IT, a thousand marks who cares, but I worry more about they don't really understand what they need. It just has to be like they get sold something if they don't really need and that works. So, if they come back and like to hear a more detailed, yeah, bring her homework. Tell me what you really need. So, Charlie. I move that we table this budget. Well, we have one motion on the floor now. We have another. Okay. Do we have a second for table any second? All right. Any, so we have a motion to table and a motion to approve the $10,000 request. Al Tassia, you can make a motion to approve $9,000. Oh, it's wrong. Oh, we have two votes now. All right. So we'll take Charlie's vote first. If it's tabled and it's tabled, if Charlie's vote fails, then we'll move to Dean's motion to approve the $10,000. And Charlie, what do you, what, you are tabling it for what reason? I'm tabling until they come back with an explanation of your budget. Well, they gave us an explanation, but another one. And, and how much, what, what else would, what are you going to explicitly request for? What, what do, what are we going to ask them for? I have a specific idea. Yeah, I think, I think that the, I want an explanation of why it's going to go up to $2,500 by $2,500. And I don't think that even this is a good explanation. All right. Topher then, Caroline, and they'll take the vote. Yeah. I was going to say that if we table this, we probably should. Right. Get written questions that people have to them, not just to bring their homework. We can say like, these are the specific questions that need to be answered. So they can go work on those and then could that work this far by the table with the answer. Caroline? I would, I would ask yes for, for both IT and training, what, what they're actually spending their money on and, and why. So we have a question if they, if, if it were tabled and they came back and said they were, the discussion is correct. They overstated it by 1,000, but now they'd like to move that extra 1,000 to training, which he didn't say is where he'd like to spend money. Aren't we at the same, I mean, I'm expecting that would be the response. Right. I'm expecting that we're going to do their homework, they're going to talk to out, they're going to think, oh yes, we overbred to do 1,000. Now we want to enforce training, which we already said, aren't we at the same spot than if we approved it tonight for 10,000. And we can approve it for 10,000, still have that discussion and lowers. Is that what would happen? My understanding is they get the email services from the town and they put their website on the town's website. They don't need the 2,500 at all. They need it for training, for events. That's because we're making the assumption that they need $10,000. If they don't need the IT money, then the rest of it is being requested at 7,500. So they came here tonight with a $10,000 budget request. They justified 2,000 with the idea of getting email addresses. They also said they would use more, they would like to have more money for events and more money for training. So I think Sophie's point is a valid one. If they will come back with answers to some questions and then we're still going to get a $10,000 budget request. And then we're going to be in a spot of what they're asking for, or justify, just like zero waste asked for 3,000, is it justified? So other questions, Hansa, before we take a vote? I guess it just seems like if we table it, I think it's likely we might approve it for $10,000 at the end anyway, to give us a little leverage just for them to talk to that. Peggy. So I actually, I like Al Pasty's idea of just saying $9,000. Well, right now we have a motion to table. If that loses, then we have Dean's motion and I'll entertain a third motion. But right now, do we just table it and revisit this at another date or not? So all those in favor of tabling this, raise your hand. Seven, eight, nine, four. All those opposed, raise your hand. One, two, seven. In any sense. So the motion to table wins. Al Jones and Caroline, I'm tasking the two of you to contact them with specific questions and give them a deadline. And hopefully we can revisit the sign up. But if I can help them save money so they have more money to spend on something else, great, that doesn't work. I'll put an explanation of why the budget is going up. Okay, I got it. All right. I think that is all that we need to do tonight. So Sophie, just a quick update on disability admission. I did finally today get confirmation that they will not ask for more. I have followed up now asking for the budget, but I've given them a week, but I don't have a response. If you will, let's see what we can get if anything this week. And then we'll take that budget up and we have next week. So on Wednesday, capital planning is on the agenda. And typically we spend most of the night finding capital planning. But if we have time left over, then we will maybe take up the library. And anything other, anything else that we might have. Anybody have any questions on the capital plan before Wednesday? Does anyone have anything else for us tonight? All right. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And we move adjourned. Thank you.