 ACMI Productions are only made possible with your support. Visit patreon.com slash ACMI to learn how you can help. We will start. Once again, we have the town manager with us. Thank you for coming. This is the plan for tonight. We're going to go through the warrant. Pretty much, but not. Lately. In order. I'm going to save. Some. That's like even more. Require more discussion towards the end. When we get through the warrant. Then I'll open it up to any additional questions like that. So. So if you could just focus on the warrant article we're doing. And know that at the end. You can open it up for additional. We're going to finish the whole thing. Yeah. All right. So let's start. And these. We may remember a few weeks ago, we went through the warrant and we identified. We wanted to have the town manager and discuss with us. So based on that. This is the list. So we're going to start with article seven and 54 because they are related. And that is the private way. So. Sure. So starting with article seven. Those were revisions to the betterment bylaw that. The town manager's office proposed. As a result of discussions with the office of the select board, as well as. Some of others on private ways who are contemplating. Seeking changes to the betterment bylaw on their own through a citizen petition, but they were things that we agreed as staff needed to be addressed. The major change was how. Petitions for a group of private ways. Within a larger association would be handled. So we had had a situation and we've had other situations in the past with it. Perhaps two or three streets. We'll seek a petition for a betterment that the way our bylaw is currently. Constructed. Would require those two or three streets. To actually seek a vote and signature from every single of butter. In the entire association should that could be. Three hundred plus households, if you're in some of our larger associations, when in fact those folks wouldn't even be. Impacted by the betterment. And that was just a matter of how our bylaw was written and how we had to enforce the policy that became. Basically far too much legwork for those of butters. On those streets to undertake and it served as a deterrent. From them undertaking their betterment. So we propose to. Revise that language. Allowing groups of private ways to pursue betterments. Having the petition only be voted upon. By the actual butters who are going to pay for. Those better mix. The other main. Change I saw and maybe what was of interest to the finance committee. Was changing the required. Deposit before a project could proceed. As currently written our bylaw requires. A town to receive a one third. Deposit. Based on the projects that we have undertaken since. 2020. I observed that our upfront collection rate. Had. In every single instance exceeded. Two thirds. And based on that information I proposed a bylaw change that would. Then. Required that two third. Deposit. That appearing with the select board they were not willing. To move forward with a two third deposit. And instead voted on. A 50% deposit requirement. And. Essentially why. That is important is it. Helps generate cash flow for the program. So the way we've been operating since. The last year. The last year. The last year. Was last seeded in 2022. Was we bring a project in. It gets approved. As one as soon as we have the one third deposit. We're good to go. Project proceeds it gets paid. Inspected closed out. As you can imagine some of those projects. The whole process can take six months. Nine months. And then we ultimately end up collecting. The next project. The next project. That's over the course of five years. While paying interest. Unless of course they know they're not going to be living in the home. For five years. Or they simply don't have the money up front. But we're seeing that was. Fewer and fewer households. But since we weren't seeing the cash flow. Until the end of the project. The next project in the pipeline. Was unable to proceed. So until we knew that we had enough. For the next. Petition that was approved. We were not allowing that project to proceed. Unless they were willing. To pay more than the one third deposit. So we required. One street. To pay a hundred percent down. Because we were out of money. And they did. And the next project that came forward. We said well. Let you proceed but I'm you're going to need to collect. 72% up front. So we were a little over the top of the. Second floor. And then we had our experience with how we have been operating. They proposed a change to try to. Guarantee and put us in a position to better plan projects. So multiple projects. Could. Proceed simultaneously, you know, perhaps upwards the four in a season. Versus two. Because when we were not allowed to green light. A project at the beginning of the season that had to wait. They will often get deferred to the next year. Which. So, with that proposed change in the deposit, I also proposed acknowledging that the hardship that a project was going to be borrowed for, there's going to be some sort of instrument of debt issued, that in fact the deposit wouldn't be required. Because we have a way to separately account for any assessments that come in over time to go straight towards paying down the debt or the debt service associated with that borrowing. But under our current protocol, we're not able to establish an enterprise fund for this mechanism. So, those assessed collections over the course of five years, right, they get assessed, they get collected, they're not budgeted as revenue, they're just close to free cash annually. So we do get the money back, but our collection mechanism just caused us to defer a lot of projects. So, that was the changes for Article 7. Related as Article 54 is the need to resee the private way revolving fund, which we had proposed at $100,000, which was the amount of funding that had been appropriated by town meeting in fiscal year 22. We're now down to approximately $22,000 balance in our account. So, as of July 1, we would, with this money, bring the balance back up to $122,000. Unfortunately, that would have been ample money or just enough money to proceed with all four projects we believe we had the better we had on the docket for betterments in 2024, but at the 50% guaranteed funding rate, we know that we could at least proceed with three of the projects slated in fiscal year 24. So, that was the genesis of the $100,000 ask. Before that, we hadn't ceded the private way account, town meeting had voted to authorize $300,000 in 2006. We borrowed $100,000 in 2006 and did not finish spending that until 2016. So, what we're seeing, what we've seen over the past four years is more private way projects because now they're either, they've reached enough years where they've just totally failed because they were built in the 80s, the 70s, early 80s. There's been an upturn over on those streets of people wanting to support the betterment and frankly, paving projects have just gotten significantly more expensive over the past handful of years. So, when we only used to see one a year or one every other year, there was never much of an issue with cash flow, but now we'll see, it took us only less than two years to burn through the $100,000 that we appropriated in 2022. And that's why it's back before this body again this year. And I think, based on our experience, it's likely something that will appear at least from what I'm seeing each year until a number of streets are paved over. And you provided us with a list of what the potential projects will be for the private ways, right? Yep, that either have petitioned or we expect will be petitioning because they've picked up packets and we've started the process of providing estimates. And Tara just sent that out. Yeah, we all have that. All right, any questions on Article 7 or 54? Okay. Yeah, an example of an association as opposed to just a single street. Kelwyn Mann Tower Heights, which is massive. But those two actually encompass most of our private ways. Yeah, I just want clarification. So on Article 7, you said that the standard practice has been to find about two thirds, but we're running out of money because we don't have that. So I'm wondering if they separately voted for two thirds, which is what you said you wanted, it sounds like that was just clarifying the standard practice. So we'd be left no better off or worse. We would be putting our residents in a better position to proceed on the timeline they want to proceed. We wouldn't be getting more dollars. Right, that's the question. We're guaranteed to get more dollars. So before something can proceed. Okay, okay. And now we only make them pay us one third to proceed. And we collect most of the money, but it could be nine months or a year later. But you can't book the project because you don't know. We don't have it on our books yet. Okay, I get that. And then the 100,000 that we put in last year and this year, is that to offset some of the costs because it's just more expensive than the residents are paying? That money is what the town puts forward for the folks who don't pay. So if say they come up with 70 or 80% down, we're funding the rest and then it gets assessed on the aerial savings. So basically, we're having the float. Okay, so that's a perfect phone. Okay, so in theory, we get that back eventually, but just not very quickly. Okay. Over the course of five years. Great. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Charlie. I think I just got my question answered. We get all the money back eventually. Yeah, thank you. That's just a cash flow thing. Any other questions, Sophie? Are there private ways that are in such shape that you force them to do the betterment? I can't think of an example where we force the betterment now. Both of them, Alan and Sophie. When they pay the money through their betterment assessments, is that go back into that fund or is it go to the general fund? Has to go to the general fund. Okay, so in effect, that's what we're getting all the money back like Charlie said. It's just over five years. Yeah. Just closes to free cash each year. Okay. Yeah, national grid say tears up the street remains as private way. Who repays that? Is that something they're on the hook to do? They wouldn't be on elephant. National grid has trained maintenance responsibilities no matter what they dig up. Okay, so they have passion. They don't have to go curve to curve. No, it's a. Um, my phone is Jim is a large purchaser of feeding services. Does the town get a preferential rate? Oh, we are not actually contracting authority on a private way. So the residents seek their own quotes from private contractors. So, you know, we are not sure this is involved in frankly, because you're a private purchasers, you're not paying for bailing wage. And a number of things that we would pay is a government entity. So actually wouldn't want us doing the purchasing on the back. But the town does come back and make sure the work is done the standard. If we help write the spec through our engineering division, and we inspect afterwards before the invoice gets paid. So he did your hand up. George. So these two articles, these are changes to the revolving funds. And just what the requirements are, but. I know that towns will up town from cities will often make minor repairs. I think it's up to fifteen hundred dollars. That doesn't these bylaws, the changes to the bylaws and how we use the revolving fund, that doesn't affect those minor changes, does it? No, we don't have a minor repair threshold value qualified in our bylaw. OK, I think somewhere. And of course, I can't remember where it is right now, but I think somewhere in mass general law, there's some provision somewhere where you can make essentially minor repairs. So I was just curious if the revolving fund had ever been used in that way for small repairs, but this is really more of this is more regarding what the betterment are. This is a betterment debate. You're correct that we do if it gets approved recommended by the Department of Public Works, the town manager, we could work forth before the select board the ability to go patch some potholes or something. And then we would have to determine whether or not we want to assess those repair costs on the household. Thank you. Any other questions on seven or fifty four? All right, moving on. The next one is article thirty five. Access and you sent us numbers today. So print over to Alex, but that that is a budget that is provided for by ACMI directly. And I know we we received that today, though a little bit late. So apologies that folks may not have had a chance to see it yet, but I think it's getting circulated now. So, yeah, so how the payback that the paying is for the public educational government, the ACMI, you know, our great public access TV station in town. They receive five percent of all subscribers within the town. They pay a fee that goes used to go directly to ACMI. Now we act as a password. And so the total revenue anticipated in FY 25 broken down into four categories. The vast majority of that comes from it was described as some are north of seven hundred thousand dollars. So the total is it's going to be seven hundred and fifty six thousand dollars. A certain portion of that must be sent on capital. So that's lined out in their proposed budget. They are they propose the budget that has a bit of a shortfall in it. About sixty thousand dollars. And without a way to make up that deficit, they anticipate potentially needing to reduce staff or sort of curtail services. So like we said, this is sort of a pass through to us. But that's just the crux of the declining revenue on the cable side is fully attributed to court cutting. So when folks no longer have sort of a hard line cable and they switch to streaming, those revenues are no longer collected for local cable access. So that's what is resulted in a declining stream over the past few years. And I guess in the outlook, probably isn't getting any better. But there are some there's some legislation and fixes being sought. The state doesn't even be on that to try to perhaps recapture some of that revenue. From streamers or other subscription services. Questions. So I'm sorry, how are they going to make up for the deficit for next year? So in in there, no. And again, we just got this a little while before the meeting says, unless this deficit is made up, ACMI will need to reduce staff and curtail services to the town. So, you know, I'm not sure if there's precedent before for there having, you know, presented a budget that was not balanced. But, you know, as I read the language of the warrant article, I think really what what we're doing is all we can do is appropriate the monies that we anticipate to receive from our CN Comcast in Verizon. And that's it's appropriated via pass through each quarter. But I'm not sure we can go beyond that we didn't program any additional funds into the budget for fiscal year 25. For their question, John, you don't be at the capital revenue is and I don't set this operating revenue 632 dollars on the big capital. It's just it's a percentage of their overall revenue. And it must be spent dollar for dollar of capital items within their operation. So it's all come subscribers, but it's the same part of money. And it just it's dedicated to capital. So our CN cuts to checks every quarter, Verizon cuts to checks because those are formulaically calculated. So that certain amount goes to operating a certain amount goes to capital. So so by how many by voting on this is is appropriating or transferring 756 correct. Where's the question? Oh, it actually wasn't that it's thirty three thousand a month in that. Right. Is that the bottom the bottom two lines in their proposed budget are not town funds? Like the total there's. Right. There should be a line for their fidelity bank account, which they're drawing upon other donations. But the the crux of our appropriation is the money we receive as a pastor, which is the operating and capital. It's like seven hundred and seventeen thousand zero to nine. I just have a question. Do you know where their fidelity account came from? Was it private fundraising? Was it that some years they took in more revenue than they needed? And they stay in there. You know the history of it? I don't know for sure. I do know they do some fundraising, but I'm guessing there could be other sources. Yeah, OK, that's great. Michael, the total of accumulated savings from about six years to 20 years ago, it's invested in a number of. Fidelity mutual funds that are professionally managed. It's been an end of account for the seven years that I've been in charge for and it's throwing off revenue, of course, and which until recently we were reinvesting every year, but we can't do that and keep the lights on. But OK. Charlie, am I correct? And so there's no other funds going into the AC of my operation. There is no town revenues other than that, which is being received from cable companies, I think. All right, moving on to one of the 36. The Cartoon Benefit Districts. We I I think we've got the numbers, but I think it is time to talk or have asked questions about the Brighton Benefit Districts or the appropriation or the balance or whatever it's something. So who has who has the questions on our content? Somebody had questions that's why we didn't vote on it before. I think I can summarize them. So so the part of the district is sort of gathering money, sort of more money than to be spent this year. And we were just wondering if there was a plan for that. Is there sort of a larger project that the money's been going to in the next couple of years or, you know, what's going on? Yeah, if I could, you know, this year's budget projects to spend about one hundred and ten thousand more than we expect to bring in. And that is because we finally are hoping to do some work inside the Russell Commonlot and in a few other areas. To be frank, we've been attempting to do that work over the past few years and have only been able to get bits and pieces done. So the large balance is, frankly, you know, sort of a capacity issue with trying to engineer and get some of these projects up to date in the context of all of the other engineered work that's going on. I know I've heard the Russell Commonlot when you talked to that in many different ways, the DPWD department, and for a various money hand to it. Yeah. Is it sort of repeaving any trees? What sort of the. So the bulk of the work is to rebuild all the medians and islands. So reconfiguring where it'll make operations better, but also to reconstruct them with an eye towards removing the trees that either are ailing or failing to thrive and, you know, using structural soils and other methods to actually get shade trees planted and try to establish the canopy there. We consider maybe increasing the lighting in some areas and filling the median islands with a more decorative but forest saving so we can actually infiltrate water and try to create an environment where the trees will grow, but also that will keep some of the weeds and other sort of maintenance headaches at bay and then potentially to do some work on the landscaping surrounding. Any other questions on the parking list? Sure. So any of the budget sheet here, it says that the Episcopal 24 projected expenses for four hundred and sixteen thousand in the revenues quarters. That's right. So there's no change in the circle and there's no change in the balance. Right. And if we actually going to spend all that money in the Episcopal 24. We're in the next column on the actuals through February, we're at three hundred and eighty five K expended, so it's so we're likely to. Yeah, thank you. Anything else? Sorry if I missed this earlier meeting, but on these parking meters, there was this change where fires, the new ones in the 15, three, 15 minutes. Right in the town. And I'm noticing they're still not fixed on everything. Is that true? And so we're getting more revenue or are we? The 15 minute free function is working just like. It's just there are many different steps. What I have a problem being is that when you want more than 15 minutes, so let's say you get 30, but for every 15 minutes and then pay for 15 minutes. Right, this is a 15 minute. And this is frankly the way it was supposed to be when we first got in years, they would have never program correctly. It is an apparent function. It is for 15 minutes or less. So you'll get free 15 minutes. So let's say you're going to the toy store by toys and it's going to take. There's a line, so it takes one 15 minutes. There's you're going to have to pay for 30. Yes. And you don't get the first one to. Yeah, so that's the program. It's an errand function for 15 minutes or less. I mean, it's not how it was programmed. No, because the other meters weren't, frankly, smart enough to. To, I guess, accomplish that it was. It would give you 15 minutes and then, you know, do what you will with it. But it was like, you know, that could be 15 minutes or more. Now it is strictly 15 minutes or less for running into, you know, grab takeout or go to the post office, whatever it may be. But if you plan on more than 15 minutes, yes, you need to actually pay the meter. All right. I'm going to move on. Let's skip article 38. Amendments to FY 24 budgets right now. That's the end. Transportation infrastructure. Sure. So article 42, transportation infrastructure. We sort of colloquially on the town hall, called us called that our Uber money so that we receive. Each winter from the Department of Public Utilities, based on the number of rides that either originate or terminate via Uber and Lyft and other ride sharing services within the geographic limits of Arlington. So that is based on a calendar year basis. So for calendar year 22, which is the money we just received this winter, that amount is twenty three thousand six hundred and fifteen dollars in 20 cents. What was the time period that was received for? Sorry. So that is based on rides in calendar year 22. Thank you. And that is so we're. Probably twenty three, six, one, five, two, two, what? The language of last year's vote. Is such that. From a common location, it was structured fine to address the impact of transportation network services on municipal roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure or any other public purpose substantially related to the operation of transportation network services in town, including but not limited to the Complete Streets program accepted by town meeting on a four point fifteen established in Massachusetts General Laws chapter nine oh one ninety I excuse me section one in other programs that support alternative modes of transportation. The comment monies from this fund together with monies from the Park and District Fund will be used for rehabilitation and a replacement of sidewalks and other safety improvements with respect to the comment for these funds that were received where I would consider purpose in those monies is towards the operation of the town's blue bike network, given that we do not otherwise have a source within the general fund to support the ongoing operation in the hands of the systems that have been deployed questions. Now, how much are we spending on the blue one blue bike? I don't have an exact figure off the top of my head. But I can follow up a major part of the twenty three thousand. You know, the last time I looked at these numbers, I'll admit it was a bit confusing because there's. A bunch of money that was spent on sort of like the capital purchase of those items and I haven't seen that that was lumped together with costs associated with removing and storing them for the winter as well as simply operating the network. So I'd want to get back to you with what the exact cost is for operations in Maine, that's where actively working towards moving the blue bike docking stations off of the public right away so that we don't each year have to spend significant amounts of money to have them moved in store to elsewhere. We're going to reduce the cost burden on the docking stations and identify sources of funds that are not within our general funds for that. I don't. So can you comment on the blue bike program in general? Is it still funding it or subsidizing it or is it paying for itself? I think I could comment generally and say I don't think it's fully paying for itself yet. But I'm not sure to the extent we're subsidizing it because we have been able. We have been successful in receiving grant funds to date to support it. And I believe we're pursuing some additional grant funds. So sorry for the answer. Right now, we have the our transportation planner taking a close look at blue bikes. And I do believe we have a memo that may have been shared with was a capital that we could probably circulate this opinion. I apologize. I don't know all the details off the top of my head. That would be helpful if you could. Other questions on way to so we don't have the data yet to say thank you for riding blue bike. Kind of our limited contributed this many dollars and cents to your latest ride. But for maybe we do. But I don't know what that contribution is, as we sit here today. Other questions. All right. Onward. Events and identification. Yes, so the legal defense and identification article. We're not seeking any appropriation and legal defense fund. And we are seeking in the in appropriation of fifteen thousand one hundred and sixty one dollars and thirty four cents. This money is to provide for the medical expenses for public safety employees who are on medical retirement. So they apply in the year ahead. We plan a budget and then we match it with an exact appropriation. So this is the cover things associated with medical costs like co-pays, durable medical equipment and those sort of similar costs. And this budget flexes moderately up and down every year. Customs on that. Sixteen thousand. It's fifteen thousand one hundred and sixty one dollars and thirty four cents. The articles. Or like a date. All right. Moving on. I think the next one is. Stratton schools. Sure. So a bit of a late breaking update on this particular article, which I can certainly speak to tonight, but after reviewing with Town Council, it turns out there actually isn't an appropriation needed or associated with this warrant article. So really what will proceed before town meeting is just the authorization for the takings associated with the installation of the sidewalk. It's going to be funded by the one point six million dollar nasty O.T. grant that leads up to the Straton School. So it is expected based on Town Council's recommendation that this warrant article would actually be moved to the docket for the select board to make the main motion and report on it. It wouldn't have an appropriation that they serve as the board of survey and would be the ones performing the takings and pursuing temporary easements for some way between 30 and 35 properties. Most of them temporary easements, one of them being a permanent. So we're currently underway with an RFP. We're actually in the in the midst of that project now and doing an RFP for the appraiser to help us through that process. So. I mean, public ways, the butters to public ways that you're doing an easement on their properties for the sidewalks. Right. Yeah. So they're mostly construction easements, which say you pay for the temporary use or access to a portion of their property while you're constructing a new sidewalk within the public right of way. So largely what gets built is on our property, but you get a construction easement that extends on to their property during construction. And we understand there may be one permanent. So we I don't know the crux of why that is. We haven't seen like the final design plan, but that could be you need to go around a utility pole or there's something you bump into some of the property. So excuse me for a little bit of time. Yeah, I was the issue came up near Bishop, but it turned out it's a private way where they got rid of the sidewalks. So it wouldn't be able. I was told it wouldn't be able then in those school safe program like this, is that you're understanding, too, because they're not private ways. So there's no place to put the sidewalk. They because there's a street. Maybe when you buy it once, I think we need to still crop. It's not destiny. Yeah. So it's not safe. I mean, it doesn't mean it's safe. Yeah. Yeah, I I can't say one way or the other, if the safe routes to school grant program prohibits, you know, crossing over private ways. But I suspect that that's probably not a project. Master, you know, I said what wants to get into because we don't have the authority, you know, to fully grant. I should have access, but I'm sure Michael knows more about this than I did. Master fund safe routes to schools on land of the town controls. So if the town opted to take and to take the width of the sidewalk on a private way, that would be something else. To have safe routes is actually a very dangerous stretch. That's what you're going to perform now. It actually walks in the street. Rebecca, I found the answer to my question. So are you seeking an appropriation here? Yeah. Do you want us to vote no action on this? Or do you want us to do a zero appropriation? Guess what I would say is. You know, I can confirm with counsel that I'm not sure this body would even need to take a vote. Given that they're going to put the warrant article hearing in front of the select board because there is no appropriation. If it says appropriation, the moderator will be looking to this committee. You may have a recommendation on if we did a zero appropriation like we do. We could then you run into something next year. You we could transfer we could transfer money from the reserve fund into it. If that might be helpful. Okay. Yeah. If that is a practice that makes sense. I might have missed this, Jim. But how is the town going to pay eventually for the appraisals and the awards of damages? So through existing fiscal year 24 chapter 90 monies that came in through the fair share portion meant the additional. His works already largely underway. You're necessarily waiting for July 1. Other questions. All right. Let's get over 55 and come back with that. Article 56, the prudent investment rule. All right. So. If I may take the prudent investor rule. So. The prudent investor act was signed in August of 2023. And what this allows for. Is trust funds specifically be invested. Beyond the, what's called the legal list. And the legal list in Massachusetts and things currently set every July 1st. 22 stocks that are very sort of. Vanilla blue chip stocks. And 35 mutual funds and ETS, which are just sort of, you know, blended stock groups of stocks. And so what this law does, it allows the trustees to either on their own or through a, you know, financial advisor, which is who the town would use. To invest these stocks. Which could allow for anticipated higher returns. And so there are sort of rules that must be followed. We accept this portion of state law. And they surround sort of how the money would be managed. And. That's the gist of it. And this is something the select board will be reporting on. Yeah, the select board has already voted on this. It was also voted previously by the board of commissioners. Trust funds. Dean. So you could. Walk me back to walk us back to that. So. Expanded investment options. And then who has the authority to make those decisions. Expanded investment options. Well. I say lots of trustees and so with the town would be the treasurer. And so ultimately in the town, we have the board of trust fund commissioners here who's set sort of. That they need. Maybe able to explain a little more detail than I said. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, Again, yes. I made a little more detailed and I create them to discuss trust firms. It's what it's trust funds, how those funds are performing where they're invested, et cetera. So. Is so this authority. Does this one anyway expand. authority of where to invest general fund. We have a history here with general funding that was in 2008. Yeah, okay. I'm good. Thank you. So. This is actually predates 2008. But I think. His memory is to be there. Both in Arlington and throughout the state. There has been a somewhat questionable record. Of the territory retirement boards. Investing under their own power, so to speak. And that the problems they're in led to the creation of. I don't know, 20 years ago, something like that, maybe 15 years ago. And. I would say overall, at least in the case of Arlington and probably statewide. Under the management of Eric. These retirement boards have. Their performance, the funds have improved. Quite dramatic. And I'm questioning. This seems to me to be a regression because we're not going to. I mean, I don't have anything against the people on before the trust fund commissioners. I think they actually appoint people on finance. So I have to be careful what I say. No, they're not necessarily professional. Managers. And even when the contributory part of board hired professional managers. Dean is referring to. In. The results didn't always work out very well. Whereas with Parac, you know, that's a larger organization. They have more professionals. And they get economies of scale. And things work pretty well. So. Where are we headed? The only thing I guess I would add Charlie is that the, you know, we delegate the. Investment management functions. To Rockland. So with this law would do would allow specifically it only pertains to trust funds would allow. Rockland on our behalf. To see alternative. Likely higher yielded investments, but they still would have to fall. Under the prudent investor rule, which is that, you know, the mass general law that's quoted. That requires. You know, for particular things be taken into account. In terms of, you know, risk level, liquidity and a few other things. So. I just want to note that we know it's not. The board of trust fund commissioners themselves performing the investment function that it's delegated. To a friend institution. To the board through the trigger. So. Have we reported. I don't recall seeing any reports on the forms of the trust funds. As a performance and sub far or acceptable. What do we know about that? Yeah, the. Well, the board of trust fund commissioners is who would be. No, looking at these reports and I believe that they have been acceptable. I don't know exactly what that means, but they. You know, because they have been bound to the legal list, they have lagged behind over the last few years significantly over what the market's the largest. If that makes sense. By design, the legal list is very conservative. And so that's. Yeah. I'm not sure we could probably figure out or get from them. With a rate of return. Yeah, so how do we, how are we going to know in the future that this was a good decision? I mean, I'm just concerned. That, you know, we've had problems in the past. And I'm concerned that. We can go down. Is this a new state law that enables the towns to adopt this. Right. Yes. How, how recent is this. August 2023, it went into effect. And then it was, it's been recommended by mass collectors and treasurers association. So through the treasurer that was brought for the board of trust fund commissioners. And it's been interested in doing so. It's also something that the. Board of trustees for the Robbins library was interested in trying to sort of get higher yields on many of the town's trust funds. So none of these people making these decisions are involved in that you just mentioned. Right. People that are most excited about at least involvement and investment. Right. That's what you just said. It's exactly where we delegate the investment management to the professionals. Topher, then Rebecca and Sophie. How much total money. It's a significant sum. Yeah, it's about $28 million and spread across 88 trust funds, which are spread into eight categories. And I was a little one there who makes what the city and the president said, there's the trust fund commissioners and they do some things they do something through the treasurer. But then everything is delegated to this rock. So it's a treasurer just think that's a sort of a formal, formal. She's saying that, you know, the signs on the dog why or whatever. Yeah, I see the treasurer is sitting between Rockland and the board of trust fund commissioners. They're not interacting directly with Rockland, you know, the information. And it is just saying to Rockland essentially, you know, broader, you know, the broader portfolio that you can. Yeah, it doesn't necessitate any action. But it says, and so when you mentioned the library trustees. Now they separate from the, or trust fund commissioners. Yeah, they're a separate board of their separate. Yeah, we're a trustee so they would go through the treasurer as well. Yes, yeah, the treasurer is the custodian of all of us. Thank you. Um, this is related to question first off about this is so recently the correct that no other cities in town would have done this yet. Because it's so recent, would you know that? Presumably some folks, if they have fall town meeting, could have adopted it. I don't know that off. Um, and so I just want to understand what the change would do. So you're saying currently under the current system, there is a list of a certain number of stocks and certain. Would this mean that there's a much longer list or no list at all and they get. You know, really open description. Yeah, it would remove the list requirements. So, so the 22, maybe, can I read what these are just to give you a prospect that the legal list this year is Abbott laboratories. HGF Altria Group, which is formerly Philip Morris American international group V of a Bristol Myers with Coca Cola. Consolidated Edison Eli Lilly. So they're very large public, you know, like generally American companies. Right. They're very low risk that essentially is what the state is. And then there's 35 mutual funds and ETFs, which are of the same nature, they're all sort of low risk mutual funds. And so what, what this does is this would allow for the power so Rockland Trust to manages our investments for us to look beyond those 22 stocks and 35 mutual funds and build a portfolio that makes sense to them. What would then your restriction be on how crazy they go, you know, like if they decided to put all our money in Bitcoin and all of, like all of any changes that they don't trade without authorization. But the laws would no longer give them a constraint. It would just be the judgment of trustee what's called the prudent investor, right. So there's no legal, there's no legal reason they couldn't put it in Bitcoin. It's just that we would hopefully have the judgment today. There are other. Yeah. Thank you. So, how often is this legal list or 22 updated ever. It's updated annually on July, every July one. Do they actually make changes or it's just the same last. Well, they do make some changes because there are some relatively new mutual funds on it. But I don't think that they make full cell changes every year. If that makes sense. If there is a change that's made. They notify these companies who typically reflect experts who perform this kind of investment. And the people who manage these investments are they required to move investments out of things that if they fall off the list. So, say we moved to 21 stocks next year, if we happen to have something invested in that lucky one, we'd have to redistribute that to have to sell them and invest somewhere else. Currently. Anything else. Oh, Jones. Similar question. Rockland have any sort of historical record on performance. You know, in the constraints of the proposed as opposed to the constraints that are now good markets and bands is there any, you know, past performance or you compare saying how much better would it be. No, I asked that same question. I don't have an answer right now. Yeah. But just because we don't have the information back. Oh, but you're going to get better. Okay. I'm wondering how we've, you know, if we have performed versus how we think we could have performed. Rockland was managing some other funds under the proposed rules. I don't think they're managing any of our funds under a separate set of anybody because it's some other investment they have and what they're right. And they're going to get a good net back before 2008 or something. See how we would have done historically. Charlie and Jeff. So do we have to lose the term of protocol or practice on how we are going to monitor the performance under this new regime. Again, you know, this is not a hominem subject but statement. But you know, we have a new financial director and manager in the town. We're very pleased to see you here. We have a new treasurer. We, our control has been here a couple of years, but we sort of revamped our whole financial structure. And now we're talking about making a fairly substantial change in a significant portfolio. And it seems to me, I, you know, in principle, it might be the best thing to do, but somehow we should have a process or protocol in place to evaluate what we're doing with metrics that can be presented to the Board of Committee in town. Do we have that? No, but we're working on it. Believe it or not, the town doesn't even have a written investment policy to date. And that's something we've actually requested of Rockland. And they've provided us some examples that exist from other municipalities to the week that are adopting and codifying something that you're right. Looking back, we have not been able to identify something that we identify that as something that we should have to work towards. So we had developed a policy in the famous 2008 incident noted by Dean. We did, but it said we would stick in the legal list. Basically, stay in the world. But I think that policy don't work with my general for money just to make it very clear that we are going to put it into crazy. I just want to clarify what their prudent investor rule is, and I know that varies by state. This is something where a financial professional would think would be right. That's sort of the. Anyone who's acting as the sort of trustee or the. So not, not what a person street would think is prudent, but what somebody who's deep in the weeds who really knows financial stuff. That what that person would think. It still weighs out criteria. Right. Versify, they still have to consider X, Y, that's laid out in the stack would probably not be in there given, you know, sort of. Yeah. I'll pass. Okay, two questions. You said that the select board and the trust fund commissioners have supported this. Okay. One of our members might be able to do this answer this, but. If the does the board of trust fund commissioners also control the investment of library trust funds. I don't believe so, but if someone has a different answer to that. Okay. And then the second question is, does the is the treasurer simply administrative official ministerial official, or can he tell the board trust fund commissioners. That's crazy. I'm not going to do it. I would, I would think the latter is true. The latter is a treasure. Treasure can override. Okay, so the treasure is a bit of a control factor here. Thank you. Other questions down. We'll just impact the, the open trust fund was that different. It's okay it lives on its own managed separately. Yeah. I believe that the town meeting. Move to move the Oakland management from the third department board last year. Right. Right. Thank you. Folks said that it was nice to give you some samples of what we did for other times. Does that mean those are other times that they've managed money for presumably us. Do we know what the track record looks like. Most likely, you know, you don't even know what I don't know. Thank you. Other questions. Yes, you said that Rockham can't make trades about authorization. Authorization from. From the treasure. Yes. I guess there's a clarification on that point, but it sounds like a trader is the. There's a lot of power. There's a lot of power. I'm kind of veto some crazy suggestions from commissioners, but also the prep is some crazy thing on the wrong as well. Theoretically, yeah. There's put Rockland would still be bound by acting. So they ultimately could open. You know, deter either the treasurer or. A board of trust fund commissioners from doing something. They're pretty curious. Would they have a role like the financial advisor for me would be like. You want to get a slightly more risky portfolio or a very conservative portfolio. They might ask that question. And the question that they ask and so the treasure might say, yeah, that's what I would do. That is a possibility that your risk for us. It's a possibility, but I'm like. Right. And again, state law has some. Right, but I'm assuming that the whole idea is to read for doing this is. I'll ask people to do something more riskier. Not maybe not improving or riskier. Exactly. You say risk, we say yield. Yeah. Any. So. I remember from 2008 is that the select board. To be in control of. Advising the treasurer to. Allows the board members to be involved in the choice of investment advisors. And suggesting that the treasure should have an advisory. All of which failed because of the time the treasurer was elected. Right. Remind me what the treasurer's channel for the end is now. Like who was the treasurer work for directly. So the treasurer works for Alex. Right. And because he's in that. They are in that. I know. Very badly from us. We could. Create some advisement for oversight structures along those lines now and. Definitely provide the kind of oversight. In other words, more heads wrapped around the problems. So. Yeah. I just want to say that this isn't something that I would. Want our credit to do alone or in a vacuum or in a silo. That I'm involved with. When we're considering decisions, they'll be brought to the town manager for approval as well. Right. And I'm not going to say, you know what? It coins on the rise. I mean, we take our, you know, the. It's just going to be fun to take very seriously. It's something that we're aware of our sort of responsibilities. And that we don't mess around with. Right. And it would be because of that same chain. And I think even before that point, is we work to develop an actual investment policy that would lay out some level of guidelines that we would want both. The treasurer and or our fiduciary. To live by in the development of that you have the opportunity for public process to, to get folks to weigh in. And, you know, if we wanted to, you know, if ever came to the time that we thought it was proper to consider a change in who you were going to have managed those coins. But again, that can also be a process where. You know, we evaluate different firms with expertise with more heads and with additional folks. So I think there's probably a few different opportunities that haven't existed previously that could exist in the future. Right. So because you need to develop any investment policy. Policy. Which is this like work with. Necessarily. Figure out how to do that. And correct. Yeah. Charlie. Make sense to actually present this proposal at the town meeting and future year after you've developed. This process. What, what any described or some similar. Set of. Procedures and processes to. Oversee the management of the outside investment buyers and have a level of transparency that. Is available to. As well as the course. You know, that's a possibility. You know, where it also says. This article. Doesn't actually change anything. Right. It doesn't give a directive to our. Investor to make. Changes. It provides authorization for a local option. But we could sit here and say, well, we don't want to make any changes and then lessen until. You know, a policy has been approved and publicly vetted. Any other questions. Right. Let's. Get mask. Right now in the local watching. Are you thinking of any. Proposing any. Not this year. I could prime for a second on the fact that there is a municipal empowerment act. That folks may have heard about that will be. You know, it's a bill that has a number of provisions that impact municipalities. One of which is some. Additional possibilities with respect to local options. It will raise the ceiling on. Local meals tax from 0.75% to 1%. And it also raises the. Hotel tax from 6% to 7%. And it also introduces the possibility of a motor vehicle. Exis like. Essentially. A surcharge of up to 5%. So there is. An act with provisions. Related to local option taxes that. Was recently proposed by the governor. Obviously there's nowhere. Near past or. You know, Providing the ability for municipalities to consider it yet. But I say that as something that. Could be brought before town. Annual section next year. Should things proceed as proposed. Of course, we know that is. All. It's going to be subject. And what. Did they look at the course of the session potentially next. So on the subject of local taxes. We recently. I guess I can't remember what it was, but we did. Authorize sales of marijuana. In the town. Are we getting any revenues from that? Are we getting any revenues from that or the businesses. The closing up. What's the. The whole status of that. We are receiving. Marijuana. Exis tax revenues. There was a recent change. The other cannabis control commission. For. I think they were called local. Impact fees where you used to be able to charge a flat. Percentage. Of revenues that is sent. That is essentially been. Knits. And. You host community agreements will need to be executed with all. Marijuana vendors. That replaces that sort of. Flat arbitrary fee of sales and that will go into effect. So that will end. Sometime in April. We'd still collect the. Exis tax revenue. But the new host community agreements are going to. Diminish the sort of. Return with respect to marijuana revenue and it has to be tethered. Directly to expenses incurred by the municipality. As a result. Of having those establishments. So it puts the onus on us to say, well, we've had this many calls or, you know, any number of things to justify. A charge back to those. Numbers. And other questions. On the floor. How do we tax alcohol. Shops. That sell up. All. We don't tax them. It's a state tax. It's not a local. Okay. Alright. Let's go back. Who are. All right. The master plan. Okay. I'm not yet. Go. Well, and that's because they're very closely related. And the plan. Yeah. Okay. Got you. So, did anyone read this cover to cover and realize there was no budget at the amount for. Uh, the Fox library warrant article appropriation. So we have been carrying. Uh, a placeholder in our draft shared warrant for the warrant article. We, at the time it was submitted where the time this budget was submitted again, where we're unaware of what the actual financial ask was. Associated with the public library construction warrant article. So that $150,000 that is being sought. Does not presently live in the managers apply 25 budget. So I just wanted to call that out. Once that came to our attention after this budget was printed, we've been sort of trying to identify ways to. Essentially create capacity to support that request. And 1 of the ways that was identified is via articles 57 for the master plan. Pursuing instead a no action vote of this committee with no appropriation. There was $50,000 proposed. But due to a recent change in the guidance from the treasury, it allows our for money. To be spent on title 1 product projects, i.e. CDBG eligible projects. For which CDBG was already funding the other half of the master plan. So we're proposing to sort of supplant and hold harmless the master plan. But not necessarily seek a general fund appropriation. So. That would essentially free up $50,000 of the $150,000 asked. And though not a warrant article is being considered tonight. I don't know if you've already considered it to date with the town. The town celebrations warrant article. We had originally proposed a budget for the 250th celebration through the general fund of $50,000. But at the same time, you know, in the past few weeks, we have sought. In earmark from our full legislative delegation of the meeting that met with them all individually in town hall and put for. Earmark request for the 250th celebration to cover a contribution to the foot of the rocks projects to make a significant contribution to. Parade reenactment other activities and festivities associated with 250 celebration and seeking funds to offset what are expected to be pretty significant public safety costs with that week of events in April, 2025. So, we're also thinking that should we hear something soon in our in our legislators so they can make no promises and may not be able to meet. Our full request for upwards of $300,000, it's likely they're going to be able to support this to some extent. And if so, we could consider recommending the downward departure of that 250th celebration budget from 50,000 down to 25,000. But still maintaining 25,000 so that we can meet our intermissible agreement obligation with Lexington, Concord and Lincoln, but still having all the funds we need to support the celebration and activities. And that gives you 7575 and the Fox library needs 150. So, the only other avenue of funding was going back to the libraries themselves and saying, if you can identify. All of the funds within the town's budget to support this to what extent. Could the library provide additional sources of funds and they're able to commit. $25,000 so we find ourselves in a position of being essentially. $50,000 short as compared to what was in the proposed budget for warrant our. And that's sort of where that stands as of today. So, the appropriation being sought in our five is 150 or is are we. Yes, yes. The appropriate 75. With rest being made up through the library, so the language being to vote to raise and appropriate for take from available funds the sum of 150,000, I believe, for the purposes of that library construction grant. it needs to read for the for the full $150,000. That's what was explained to me, you know, whether or not that is all raised and appropriated or with some portion taken from existing funds under the control of the library would probably be detailed in the vote comment. So, are we sure that the Massachusetts public library on the people who are offering us when they say we need $150,000 from the town that all the things we just talked about qualify like in other words, if the library holds those funds from saying their own resources via the trust fund or the friends that are whatever. That still qualifies us for the grant. I mean, I got the impression this with a town showing good faith move, not just. So, something the library director has said she's going to confirm, but she believed it's demonstration of local match and commitment that wasn't specific to saying it had to be a town's like a general operating funds. You got the impression from the capital planning committee that it couldn't come to the capital plan meeting had to appropriate. Right, it needed to have its own separate warrant. And it had to be all local funds, but she's going to confirm that it doesn't have to be just generally. Generally, it has to be $150,000 on the look out. Yeah, I just wouldn't want to endanger the potential downstream funding. Right. Michael. Happy to hear that you've had our legislative delegation in and urge them for receiving this. Once in 50 years chance chance of doing things to celebrate local history. I hope it works because the $50,000 that was the appropriated spent under the direction of the town's 250th anniversary committee. Half of that's already spent the first $25,000 has already been committed to the joint inter municipal agreement that will bring publicity, public safety coordination, a whole bunch of things that to the public. Don't look like a celebration. So the committee was hoping to have money to do stuff. Right. I hope that's still going to happen. Okay. So, thank you. I'm, I'm someone that plus over this issue of having to have a separate warrant article. And the idea that this cancer funded capital plan, the capital plan for decades has funded through a borrowing. And I believe that that's permitted by state law. I don't know if we're planning a special town meeting. This year or not. But the capital plan has also historically. The capital plan has also historically. I can think of the police department, a number of different buildings know if we, we've had money voted by town meeting as part of the capital plan but voted in the separate warrant article and special town meeting. Because we needed to get the funding there in order to build something when the weather turned, you know, we couldn't wait till August or something like that. So, there's no reason why they can't be a separate article and special town meeting that addresses this need, but it's still part of capital budget. And if that, you know, that whatever it turns out to be is, you know, $150,000 or less, depending on how you parse this. It's not going to materially change capital budget because we'll be funded, you know, and it's just spread over five years. So I don't know why we're not thinking about that as a path to, you know, sharing that grant. But as of right now there hasn't been a vote to hold the special town meeting. But I'm also not aware of the exact requirement that makes this live alone as its own warrant article. I know that to be a case but I don't know. And I wasn't involved with the discussion of capital to understand why it, why it could or couldn't be absorbed into the capital budget as it were. You know, it seems to me, if it doesn't require a separate warrant article, which is so weird requirement, it might be when it should be included in the capital budget because it is, this is a capital expenditure. Is this time sensitive. Yeah. So we're sort of back up against the wall to mix that right now. But we wanted to have the town wants to pursue this. On the library project. Put the trustees here, use their money for the 150. Board of library trustees. That I don't have an answer to. Thank you. Other question. And the 250th celebration is asking for it. Well, we'll ask for $25,000. Have they presented a budget yet? So you will tell them. Confirm again, Michael's point, I think that when we programmed 50,000 in there originally. It's because we knew that's what we needed for the celebration. We're saying is we're, we're expecting to receive offsetting funds that would make that extent of appropriation, not entirely necessary. So it's going to be a bit of a, a set of timing exercise. So we have to report back on exactly where with the statuses and where that stands in a few weeks. So we did the library. The other question. I think the only thing that is amendments to FY 24. Don't think we're prepared to go that far today. Okay. You know when you'll know whether you'll be a transfer. Would say we would know by this time next week, but I'm not sure it's as pressing as initially thought. So I think we have covered all of the warrant articles, but anyone who's correct me. I'm sure it was that discretion on the article 38. The train changers. Yeah, we're budget. Yeah. I think that covers everything. So do we have other questions. The word the manager. Charles. Thank you, madam chair. This came up at one of our meetings. And it's also something that I have observed. In the course of discussions in town. And that is, I'm not sure if it's the recreation department or public works department, but we have apparently closed at least three playgrounds. One of which is the number nine parks, you know, and the other, there are two playgrounds, I think, closed at the time. And I'm trying to understand why that is because some of the local. I'm not our experience. Friends of number part. Really. Got a professional engineer to examine the playground. When this was being discussed. And the, the engineering consultant basically said. Some minor maintenance with the maintain the likeness playground for some forward years. And suddenly it was gone. And I'm not sure, but I think the same thing is happening at school. And it seems to me that the town should be undertaking. You know, reasonably diligent efforts to maintain these playgrounds. And not not to take them out and take them out suddenly there's the huge demand on capital. I mean, in the meantime, the citizens and the private opportunity, the children are probably the opportunity to use these facilities. And I'm, I'm wondering, is this been Mr. manager at your direction, or the recreation department or what, how does this process take place. It wouldn't necessarily be at my direction. No, the recreation department overseeing the playgrounds has in obligation to do those safety audits by a consumer product safety commission license. Inspector and I think what has happened is when those inspections have been conducted. You know, whatever, you know, I don't know how they categorize the violations with criticality and whether they could cause harm to life or limb and once you get that report in your on notice, I think it has been the standard operating procedure to close the playgrounds down until you can make the necessary repairs. I understand that there's been some sites where those repairs are easy to address it's, you know, add more of the wood fiber mulch or, you know, trim back some branches that are presenting a hazard, or it could be a that slide is cracked and broken in the slide needs to be removed and you put just like an observation bubble over it and it sort of renders that component useless. So, that's my understanding of the process is we're required to conduct the inspections. I think now that we're conducting inspections, we're probably identifying some combination of deferred maintenance but also some assets that have reached their future past their life expectancy. It's responsible for doing the maintenance on these programs. It would be the public works department. Generally at the direction of the recreation department who undertakes the audits. If we can conduct the maintenance in house through public works right we can replace swing seats chains. You know, the series of activities for which we have the expertise to perform in house sort of like low risk type of activities and then the replacement of slides and other pieces of equipment when it gets into the compatibility and making sure it's the right manufacturer and you have all the fasteners and the right torque and all that that is subcontracted out to a specialty vendor. So, do we have a record of doing that. Maintaining these players. I think, you know, we've seen to come up to a final words out this, they've got to go. Yeah, that seems to me. The earmark of. I don't know neglect over a period of time until you know, you can be maintained or not. I'm just concerned. We don't have a hundred play that have taken three offline. That's pretty substantial. Right. And I think when, you know, when I first became aware of this sort of my concern was, don't conduct all your inspections in one day or in one week. You jeopardize the assets that we have to make available to the public so that it should be, you know, staggered in a manner where we should be able to avoid a situation like that. With respect to maintenance, right? Once the issues identified, right? We're, we're tracking what gets fixed because you need to sort of hit every item on that report. But other than that, it would be looking to see if there were web QAs or, you know, other work orders. Parks and recreation completely autonomous. Not entirely now. So how does the town manage their activities? Through the recreation director who reports to the town manager. Thank you. And Michael. Speaking of maintenance. Do we have an overall. Estimate of how much material. Maintenance has been deferred. And will eventually come due on town on buildings. On town on buildings, we do not have an exact figure now. But it's not, not something that's been studied in a number of years. It's not something a lot of large institutions have done. At least to carry that number. On the side of the books, not in books. So I don't think there's such a big threshold here. So you don't know when the next leaky roof is going to cause the ceiling to collapse beneath it. Nope. You presently don't have any money set aside to perform. You know, that full portfolio analysis of our buildings. How are we going to replace the Google and top of town. Hopefully through CPA funding. You identify a big reason why the facility department was created in first place. And it's only a little bit more than that. It's still. But we don't have something where you can say, okay, over the next 20 years here. Here's what we need to spend. Yeah. And that, that costs money. Say. Can I go back to the Thompson school playground. I imagine every line between the towns. Playground in the school playground. Yes. Who's responsible for the school to talk a lot. Take the school. The school department through the facilities department. It goes back to the town. To say this back. As part of the building. Yeah, it just basically wouldn't be. The public works department. But it's not going to be another town. Facility. Yeah. Because the issue down. You know, who's on first, who's on second. It's there's a major conflict going on between. People say, well, it's not my responsibility. It's the irresponsible. That I'm aware of at least four or five months. And I'm not aware of any of the specifics. So it's something I can look at. It just strikes me that we have a brand new facility around here. That put in a brand new father. I call top of the playground. And it's all fenced in. I mean, you can't go with the other place. Because it's been. I guess for lack of a better term, it's been pulled off line. That's the top of 2009 bills. So you mentioned. How long. Are you going to be buying for CPA? I mean, this year. Not this year now. So this year, the CPA money that was already received is being used to remove the couple of. Roof over, render the building, whether tight. Okay. Make repairs inside the lion's hearing room. This year we broached the topic of bonding against CPA. To potentially support this project. In the long run, not in the context of an application, but as an idea and a principle and. You know, sort of said, you know, this is coming down to pipeline. The next step will be to. Appropriate money for. You know, design and engineering specification. And then pursue. Yeah. Build the new cupola. As well as. Manage the remainder of the envelope. Like that. That's one small envelope. One small issue. Yeah. Yeah, we just fallen out. It was already been designed. Right. Yeah. Okay. And then. That's a question. It didn't tell how itself. I mean, what is the. What is it? I estimate that the. Envelope in and of itself. We'll be anywhere of magnitude. No. Yeah, that's your, your roof being both your flat roof. Your slate roof. Masonry parapets. Clock tower windows. Some door work. That's the roof. That's the roof. That's the roof. That's the roof. Repairs to some of the line stone. That's good. Stabilizing. The building structure. So that includes the cupola. That would include the reconstruction. That in the windows of the two would be the two most significant. Tirely different subject. A number of committees and commissions of the town. They're putting numbers in their budgets for things like the run websites and their own email systems and things like that. Small money. So it's not a big financial thing. We do some questions about sort of policy issues. You know, legal archiving for. Anybody might have any commissions, but it's acceptable for your requests. Or sort of freelancing on a website. That in some ways represents the town that might not have. The right controls. I know we did this ourselves a few years ago. So I'm just. Are there any guidelines or policies that we might refer to? When are we doing these budgets? So we do have a communications policy. And one thing I would say is something that I'm finding going really through my first budget process here is that there are some boards, committees and commissions that are presenting budgets to this committee. But frankly, I have never seen. I've never seen anything like this before. I mean, they're seeking increased budgets that aren't carried in these lines. And I'm like, well, that, that is a process that doesn't have, doesn't seem to have had the vetting. They would expect to see it have. And it's something that we identified as an issue. We want to address for next year. If you asked me which committee was it was proposing the wrong website. I don't know. Yeah. Right. You know, I was, I was meeting with a number of commissions the other day and like, you know, here's the, here's the budget and the increase we proposed with the finance community. Just, you know, that would have been good to know because you have a different printed number in the book. And it's like, okay, this, this is potentially problematic and not knowing exactly how folks intend to spend their money. Because they're not, you know, if it's not a departmental budget being prepared and presented to the town manager, you know, you need to have, you know, you know the solutions to this sort of living a bit outside the So we have a policy to cover these things. We do have a communications policy, generally it has been to not necessarily allow a lot of different things. But we would expect it to work. To advise like that. There's a few things that are right. Right. I think we're, yeah, it's the same issue that you're trying to get information. So thank goodness. Right. Right. Like the request of that, I would want, you know, our communications folks to learn to do that. And I'm not sure that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So, a couple of questions. The first one might be easy, because I've asked it, like, three years in a run out. So we've gone through. Multiple years now. Really high inflation, right? Yeah, that was like seven years. There was 6.4. I think last trial and trial months this summer and did it. Three of them was like, I was going to get out of this year. Right. And I think a pie here. I like retweeted it or something like that. Right. So that's obviously in a prop to an app world you're outpacing. Caps. Right. And, you know, to me, gas. I'm assuming that was caused some of these teacher strikes and really acrimonious things. Right. If we were lucky on the school side, because if you override, you probably avoid that like hostile thing. Right. Now we have the town side. I mean, is there already like brewing, like, you know, we're going to turn on the news and find people outside of town and all or pick it in your house or anything like that. Where are we? It is no secret that we have fallen pretty far behind with respect to our comparable communities. But within the, but within the spending caps that we live on there, we made, we made an effort this year to set aside as much money as we possibly could to the salary reserve to me. The strongest and most competitive offers to a bargain. We thought we could frankly, I'm not sure it's going to be a. Okay. So, yeah. Question. Question. There's a big macro for what I might have to explain a little more. So, if I think about the things that are problematic to us is after inflation, right. I'm concerned that we're along the way going to become collateral damage at the state level for an imploding, imploding commercial office. Right. It's only giving my thought here and I want to understand you've heard it thought about it, whatever. Right. So, COVID has everybody's home nobody can. Right. We have a real odd situation, because we have no occupancy. We have income people have reasons, right. You know, commercial buildings are valued on the income method, right. So it doesn't matter if there's no one there if there's revenue coming in. You're fine. Right. Well, there's no, there's no help on the way. Right. Like the chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell. It's very clear to last week and saying some regional banks are going to fail and they are actively stress test monitoring the big banks and think they're okay. They don't have this large portfolio or they're going to be belly up. Okay. So let's translate that to a municipal standpoint. Okay. At the highest level of prop to an effort. No big deal. Right. It is going to be good. You just raised 11 up to an effort and said, fine. Commercial real estate offices come in for abatements, which they're going to win because they have and buildings or where they're going to click you. I don't think they've done what New York City like 30 Empire State buildings. Right. Same thing is in Boston. I don't have a catchy tagline that everyone understands. So they're going to get a baby. And then the cities. They're going to have to put that tax, that tax on to the residents on to the residential. That's a proctor. You're going to have to work. You work your way down. Right. I'm going to guess the mayor of Austin, the administration, the Cambridge, you go, they're not going to want to do that. Right. They're going to be like, you know, we're not putting this large residential real estate increase. Our residents, we get to go to peak and hail and get a fix. The fix are pretty limited. Right. You come up with some of these flimsy. Local option tax. They think you're going to cry it hard to help the bailout from Boston this year. She didn't get it. You change the local aid formula. Right. Which they did in 2000 to three, four, you can't gov it already. He's like, Hey, let's just screw over our link. That would be fun. Right. Or you try some kind of broad-based income tax increase that just gets funneled into the places that lose all this fun. Right. We have an issue. We have the haves and the have nots. And it's kind of an interesting setting. Right. Because I'm sure like Lexington is probably pretty nervous. Right. With all that commercial off strails get along the access road. I don't have any commercial offices to worry about. Right. Um, but everyone's kind of putting on a great face at the moment, knowing that this is going to blow. What do you think you're crystal ball predictions. How's this going to play out and are we going to get. I don't have a crystal ball. And I don't know what the timeline is for this playing out. But I think we all know. You know, it's unlikely that preemptive action is going to be taken. Right. Things will have to fail before a fix actually, or a fix comes in as how I see it. So things generally need to get pretty bad with respect to. Beacon Hill making some sweeping, sweeping change before they will, but we don't know until we're not going to know what they're going to hurt until they hurt us. Yeah, last question. One of the few times it's been. As you pointed out, like an Arlington or a Belmont to look around and go. Well, for once it's really good to have a really, really small. It's never been. Last question. Father's. For your family and all that work. Work wise, you've already hit on the two things right like health insurance went up 9%, our utility rate just went up 40%. Right. And with, we're restricted three and a quarter percent growth. And we have to fund all our contracts. In terms of with third party vendors and all these things that keep going up. And, you know, what are we left with for our employees. Right. Like, how can we fill vacancies and retain staff. That's what keeps you up with within the confines that we have to live in. And as we continue to fall further behind with respect to our comparable communities. Right. There's no fix for that. We have to meet our obligations and fund all our contracts. And that just leaves folks behind and right like for someone who's worked here since 2009 and has worked with a number of great people like I know what makes the town of Arlington great. What is its employees right that's how we spend between 75 and 80% of our money on people like our human resources are our most, you know, valuable capital. And I find us like sort of, right, we're seeing that with the number of vacancies we have with a number of people that turned down our job offers or resigned to go work in other places that you're no longer like that. It's a highly competitive and sought after community to work for. That is what I see as things that you need to collectively work together for the next couple of years. Thank you for asking that. What's the likelihood of any agreements? Before telling me. I wouldn't bet on any of them. I wouldn't bet on it. We're at the table with four of our new trip. And it's just really tough. We made without getting too far into the weeds we've made better offers than any of the colors they've had over the past six years or more. And it was kind of just, there's no way it was going to work. We're in a tough spot. Charlie, thank you. Thank you. I like the following teams macro view of the world. Get back to the one name maintenance issue. So on the whole building maintenance. Discussion before. I understand your concerns about that. You know, the capital committee in the finance community was able to get even facilities and part of putting place. I don't know five, six years ago, something like that. And. You know, I think it's important that we somehow fund what's going on. And there, there has been in the past a lot of discussion about the town having a. The facilities maintenance software package and I don't know whether we actually got it or whether we have it or use it or whatever, but we're going to keep track of major infrastructure and it's aging and repair departments, et cetera. So person is do we have that and do we use it. I think it's a good point. This facilities department, taking advantage. I came in his company, but I always think of it as ACVC, but there was a company had some name like that. Insight on site. Thank you. On site. On site. Thank you. Who, who, you know, do periodic audits. We're doing either of those two things. We're doing both. I would say it is facilities department. We're a bit behind on the town buildings. As we focused on the school buildings, we do have that work order with what was what was once a work order system is now considered more of an asset management system. And it allows us every time we do. It's an organization project to take the information materials from our architectural and engineering consultants and populate them directly into you. You manage the assets you track the work against a piece of equipment. So we did a whole slew with, you know, the money we had a plan to build out, you know, those systems for school buildings and we're using it. We're now at least using that system for work orders on the town side. We have rolled that out. But if it's not, yes, necessarily we haven't gone through the process of again hiring a third party. So to get all that name tag information, figure out exactly what needs to be done and when and program those preventative and recurring work orders into the asset management software. And we are using on site inside. We do not use them. In a few years, I think the last time we had them always to do a capital need assessment with a more Robin House. But again, one thing we find when you do those assessments they're good at telling you what they, you know, what the items are that need to be done. And the, the dollar figures or costs that they assign to some of those line items are often don't hold much water. Thank you. And then john and I'm getting back to Dean's 30,000 foot you and also this time it says we're doing two things tonight so I have to balance that out. So if we're facing this, this what sounds like more and more of a physical space on the town side, and if there are a lot of schools and all of the life. Are we looking at some method for increasing our resources to make those applications in the future. It seems to me like most times when we have no problem talking about school and we're selling on the basis of school. We have these other departments that do these critical things that I'm not sure the whole is always where how critical are that we need to market. So, is something we have discussed to the management team and thinking that, you know, it is, it would move us to advance the town's interest was strongly the next time the opportunity presents, especially with respect to our employees. And I think the intent of the tax inclusion. Right. I don't know is where we're going to be able to keep up with that. I think, I think thinking about how to educate the public, I don't want those serious ones are in a more, you know, if you talk to the average person on the street, right, you're going to get a lot of questions about how there's four guys standing around the whole, what they're doing, or you're going to get, you know, I'm just going to come to the top. I don't think they really understand. Or that they understand problems. I think there's indeed a lot that gets taken for granted with what goes into making sure you have water in your home every day and flush your toilet it goes somewhere. There's a great tree canopy and lots of sidewalks and lots of really good things that take for granted. But really, I just hear from people about why their yard waste didn't get picked up on time. I don't hear anything else. Yeah. So following up a lot of the challenges that he just brought up. I am looking at school budget this year and it is about 8% with flat enrollment. So I'm just wondering is that overly generous and can we afford that. Isn't that the override. A chunk of it is the override. Well, I mean, the first of all the override was, you know, an operating override I know we've gone back and forth I know the select we did approve these extra programs prior to the override. But just because those extra programs were approved by the select men. I mean, the rest of the school budget off the table and because there's been some, you know, really generous increases for the last three or four years to school as well. So in general, obviously that's the largest budget. And the town is facing some hard times. Is anyone looking at school. But with respect to enrollment, there's argument agreed upon figure. That is used for an adjustment on a year to year basis. And that is the 50% increase or decrease per pupil based on the desing rate per student. So that that is already controlled far and agreed upon fashion with the leadership in the town. But with, you know, with respect to override ads. Like, I wouldn't think to sit here and say, you know, that is. Something that I would be in a position to to clock back or remove now. Because, I mean, without doing the math, it does to me, you know, even if you take up that 3.1 million is 3.1 million. That's part of the override. So even if you take that out. It still seems like it's well about 5%, 5% increase. You have to add. On top of that, the 3.5% for Jen head. And 5.5. So what I'm hearing. Just like on, you know, automation, in other words, like, you know, there's numbers that have been set the stone and we just have to all sit back and watch. The budget get bigger and bigger and we just say, you know, the numbers are set stone. Okay, but you know, that would be great if we could afford and the money was there. But if the money's not there, I would think that someone should maybe take a look at those percentages and say, are they all generous generous. That's. I'll just say one thing on that point. So, as a town would go out for an override, they're very specific minutes. And the town is never flawed. Right. So, so there were commitments about how much was general how much, you know, for these conditions. So, so, and they were very explicit, right. Yeah, anyone paying a little bit of attention to what I said, oh, here's the list. I see it, right. But I've just seen the times never taken back those minutes. That's 3.1 million. Okay. No, no, no, no, the whole, no, all those percentages are locked into the rate of growth of each budget is locked into the override. That was explicitly in the override. Can you just explain that a little bit? The most recent. Yeah, right. 3.1 million will be added to the school budget. Plus the town side can increase their budget by 3.25%. The school side can increase their budget up to 3.5. A general budget and up to 6.5%. You've seen that was all. You know, you guys know, but I will just have, I would bet your number on average voter who voted with your right. There's no idea. I'm saying the town has never taken back explicitly in an override. It's on page 2 where all those are outlined. Those essentially serve as the marching orders when building the budget. That's how I would proceed that. And no more. And no more. But it must be because the override wouldn't, wouldn't support more. So two other things. One is since we've had a long sit down with Rob about the facilities director. And by the asset management program that he's really happy with and fills it. You know, he's gotten most of the things in there. But what it seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong. Is it's mostly things like boilers and some pumps and various things, but it's not necessarily building envelopes, not in the asset. Right. So any problem with any sort of building an envelope. Is it being sort of overseen by that system by itself? We need a separate system to do. Is that some, right? Yeah, because those, those things function less like assets. Right, right. It doesn't. They don't do a work quick work order for a routine lubrication. Right. Right. Right. Right. I mean, there are, there is sort of a sense of the expected life. And the same way there is a boiler. Yeah. But it sounded like they weren't. Being monitored by the same way. I think, you know, as part of that larger discussion, the thing that we sort of have been, I want to say battling with, but grappling with this, right? Like, you know, routine, ceiling maintenance, floor maintenance or painting. Right. Carpets, painting, ACT tile, as we call it really. Those things we used to sort of carry amounts within the. Capital plan at certain levels. And then you can go. Spend it in different places, but those things. Are now being construed as maintenance activities and they're being. So they're being forced out of the capital plan now, but we haven't yet had the opportunity. To go ahead and sort of build them into the operating budget. So the facilities department on the town side. For the past two fiscal years has received the largest increases. So it's not going to cover more square footage. Right. It has largely been consumed by utility. Increases, right? Give the department more money, but then it gets consumed by things. We never get to see the benefit of. So we're really trying to sit down last week to really undertake. What are some of the things we can do to start further curtailing. Utility costs. Like we, we still don't have buildings that have even been retrofitted to the operating budget. Because we were only doing those projects. With green communities funds. Like we weren't. Building in money into the capital plan to just make those energy efficiency. Upgrades. And now we're sold behind the ball with some of the things that incentives don't even exist sometimes for some of the planning projects, but that will produce operational savings. So we're trying to identify some of those projects that will go with the moving goals. And I assume if we have to do a transfer, it will be because of these facilities, the utility costs. Right. Yes. Yeah, that's a concept. Then I have another sort of a bigger picture, but not as big as that question. There's been a lot of rumbling. And tell me if there's any, if there's any chance of it being reified about. We looking at the time, right. Communities and sort of forming the committee again and sort of going out and rethinking it. Is that something on your radar screen? No, it's not necessarily. Okay. Run. Other questions. I would just. Response this John's comments. My understanding is. That the. You know, the selectments commitments. When we go for an override or made into a fake. But if these. Carmen get in comes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know if state age drops by 30% you know those commitments can be adjusted to make townside or school side operate more efficiently or operate at all but they're not they're not casting stone for five years. I agree right if the money isn't there to support them then they don't hold true. And I know the chair is aware of that John. Just one more question switching to the capital budgets when they were here the other night I asked this question so you know everyone knows that we put aside five percent for capital spending every year that's kind of you know policy it makes perfect sense of course I raised is does it always make sense to spend five percent on capital programs every year in other words you know you want to service the debt but maybe the money that's left over from servicing the debt you know right now the policy is just to budget every penny of that and I would just think that maybe you know we put some of that aside you know we actually have started to save some of that up. Is that ever been considered or and I know Garrell has thought on this well he's probably rumbling and I'm asking that question please go throw anything out Alex. Alex there is way more need for money and I ran into this one I managed the anti-cattle program in the state not only are there projects that you could do but can't afford there's projects that we have to do that we can't afford so if you think there's sort of a pot of money that we're saying agencies here it is going to spend that's not yet time to work there the projects that we fund the cash that you saw on that list are projects that the agencies came to us that asked to have funded so that's a list there's all lists after that yeah so there's no pressure from us so like the fund pressures from them so like we need the 4.9 million that gets spent as a current it's basically spent in this current year out of the capital planning budget that's the that's the number I was asking about that 4.9 million so it's it's budgeted to be spent this year right checks this year and I just thought and again just raising the question can some of that 4.9 million get put aside to grow on a year-to-year basis and Darrell says no way but yeah there's one more question again yeah there happily but yeah and there'll be projects that are needed that wouldn't get on because I feel like then you know when the you get more expensive I think the technical term is kicking in the candle yeah you lose your opportunity costs you know and everything becomes more expensive and more cumbersome and a bigger problem if you avoid the kinds of things that we address on our capital plan so the $100,000 items and $50,000 or items in the $75,000 yeah I mean you may be able to pick and choose an individual item but like yeah maybe you can wait a year on that but as a macro level use the things that are needed that we do need that we're typically behind on purchasing in an ideal scenario so when out of the 4.9 you're saying that there's actually like eight or nine that we would like to spend yeah that's 4.9 well that's exactly it's we prioritize so like how our capital planning works if we we make everyone give us 30 quests every year and it was so high this year in fy 25 that we made everyone go back and sharpen a pencil before the capital money because it was almost 20 million dollars we're in quest for fy 25 it was like a shocking number and so um it was it just became um a problematic the need is there you know we need this in an ideal world to fund all this work in one you know we just get the liberty and you know sort of the constraints of the five percent goal to alex's point this is the first time like where things have come in where we took a first pass and that is oh my god the universe has grown so exponentially this is so much that it would be too vast for a capital even process like there'll be too many things to even prioritize that we had to go back and say no no no no no no sharpen your pencil you can wait for that for a few years now resubmit and now we'll populate the plan with the requests so thank you and then the amount of money that doesn't get spent out of that pretty much and gets turned back the next year or a small percentage of them that's all so i know you were looking at how much has been spent for this year yeah um government spending can't be more enough to get in that linear fashion that you can say well you know we're three quarters of the way through the year you should have spent three quarters of this money really didn't work like that yeah and it's it's especially with you know building and so vertical and horizontal construction items and vehicle purchases right you could you can pull whatever a fire truck now yeah and not see it for a year but that money still sits on deposit usually the MMDT is getting you know five percent or whatever it is so it still sits in our general fund and grows until such time as you know services are rendered where goods are received and then we can actually pay a bill so with capital there there is oftentimes is now pointed out a lag with actually spending it so we we are collecting some interest and it is growing on a day-to-day basis but it's just committed and appropriated but there could be a year until it's spent or potentially two years until it's fully spent based on the nature of the work all right last couple of questions I'm going to do this one lawyer would like to ask you Jim would it be correct to say that when we said limiters like the six and a half percent or a special education three and a quarter for the town about five percent for capital value we're not setting those limiters because we believe that's the amount of money that's needed what is that amount of money will create a generous pool of money for us to make all of the units that we need to possibly define we're setting those limiters so that we know that we have our income fairly distributed across those needs and if you are forcing priorities everything because we know what our income and efficiency are yeah setting those rules generous right and they are by no means generous but there are rules that we are to live by because our long-range financial plan hinges upon them so that we don't react to individual conditions with specific needs on a year-to-year basis so right now we set them and we have them as rules to live by because it provides stability and prevents sort of explosions and expense growth if we were trying to hold the needs you're right it just causes a rebalancing within that limit each year and because we've talked about my fear is that every time you do that what loses out is the many years I'll have a conversation with them about how they have their capital budget and then really clear because they hadn't committed to five percent a year and we're under spending on capital and we have health inspectors running around with cars to speed the road through the forward so the danger here isn't that we spend a lot of danger is that we don't choose that number correctly so that it forces us to prioritize we don't want to overspend we don't set that limit in such a way that at least funds are used to a certain extent or more likely to go in the opposite direction and when we go in the opposite direction we don't have a deferred maintenance problem an opportunity cost problem but we can have a health and safety problem it wasn't a health and safety problem it aggravates our personnel people will give off a certain amount of salary and benefits or work someplace where they feel safe and they feel respected and they feel like their efforts are appreciated and so on so there's nothing like feeling like you're rather safe people or you're using safe equipment that you feel like if you work for you care about it done with cell boxes. Didn't you hear what John was talking about? Of course, I went to check. Yes, actually you should probably have been out. I just want to agree with you on the capital needs and if anybody's going up to the town hall second floor on a client's room where you'll see how much capital needs is none and that's why I'm really upset with this library article in here because you could say it's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to to match what they're going to do but it's couldn't this thing if they do what they're planning to do and they've already decided not to renovate they decided they want a whole new building it's going to cost ten twenty million dollars and that's going to have a huge impact on what we're able to do capital with. I think that library project should have gone through the capital budget. Thank you. I appreciate it and you'll get back to me next week about the last article and we'll follow up with more information once we do finally receive it from our investment firm for the past one. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So let's take some votes on at least. I'm going to hand you over the articles. Article seven I think you should just let the select board do that. Does anyone disagree? Let's go. All right. So let's go to article 54 which is Private Way Revolving Fund. So the ask is a hundred thousand was their motion. Go move. Second. Any discussion on that? All right. All day to say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Access. I move seven hundred fifty six thousand three hundred eighteen dollars. Second. I'm sorry. Which article? Article 85. But what is the amount? Okay. I'll accept it. I wrote down seven hundred fifty six dollars. Seven hundred fifty six thousand three hundred and eighteen dollars. It's in the uh I think that's what's in there. So it's a question. Do we need the appropriate miscellaneous income and fatality? I mean miscellaneous income. I know. I thought the amount was seven seventeen and two nine. Yeah that's what I have. Yeah. That's the total of two dollars. So is there a motion for seven seventeen oh two nine? Second. Any questions? Discussion? All right. All in favor of article 35 at seven one seven oh two nine. Say yes. Yes. Can you opposed? Abstain. All right. And uh all those in favor raise your hand. Ten. One, twelve, fifteen, fourteen, fifteen. Four. Any against? And abstentions. You know. Did you vote John? Oh no I voted yes. That's you know sixty and more. Sixteen zero one. Yeah. Okay. Um the article 36 the parking benefits districts. Does anyone have the numbers? And I have the budget pulled up behind you know well there it is. Is this one of the ones where it's revenues offset by expenses is the way the vote is? Yeah. So we have um revenue of four two two oh three five point two zero. Then we have offset a thousand. A thousand eight. So would be have administrative costs of ten thousand eight hundred. Parking enforcement is one fourteen one forty eight. Parking meter operation is one three eight five hundred. And improvements are two sixty eight seven sixty. For total expense of five three two two oh eight. And then a transfer of one one zero one seven three point eight oh one one zero one one zero one seven three point eight oh is there a motion? All right. Any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Transportation infrastructure. Article 42. The amount I have is twenty three six one five point two zero. Is that what everyone else has? Six twenty five six one five two three six one five point two zero. So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Um article 48. Legal defense is zero and a death publication is fifteen thousand one hundred sixty one dollars including four cents. So moved. Second. Good. Any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thanks. Raise your hand if you're an affirmative. One two three four five seven eight. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, fifteen, fifteen, sixteen in the affirmative. Any opposed? And one abstention. Can you read the number again? One five one five one point four four. One five one six one point three four. Say that again. One five one six one point three four. Okay. All right. Article 53. Sparatton. Is there a motion for zero dollars? So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Local auction taxes. Article 58. Okay. Moved no action on articles. I'm sorry. You skipped the article. Yeah, I'm on local auction taxes. We'll go back to it. Alan? I think that's going to be the end result but the legislature is working not only on the tax stuff but on a whole series of other things that the governor submitted in the act and I didn't know I'd hear when these things are coming out. It could be that if we just let it stand as no report at this time and then if by the time the article it's near the end of the warrant by the time the article comes up if there's nothing to do the chairman could sorry chairperson could get up and simply move no action but it gives a little more flexibility. You were clear about that. Is that a motion Alan? Yes. Second. Second. All right. Any discussion questions? All right. All in favor of Alan's motion of no report at this time? I'll say aye. All right. Any opposed? All rights. Article 57 of the master plan is looking for no money there. This is no actual vote. So I move no action on article 50. Is that it? Is that it? So this is a thousand dollars here. Right. But he explained that he's not going to ask for the 55 cents. Okay. Sorry. Does that assume that we're passing the article 55? Is it going that way though? Because if he's relying on another source of money for the master plan. And if I feel like if there were if we don't if we don't approve the money for the Fox Library that frees up that whatever money for the 250th celebration. So there's a no action motion for 57. It's been seconded. Any other questions on article 57? So we have no action. No action on the master plan update. All in favor say aye. All right. Any opposed? We have nine minutes left. Is there another article we can discuss in nine minutes? Let me ask a question about when we have an action. The article 20, which is about the town clerk going to the appointment position, when do we discuss the application? Is that if that passes then it then goes on a ballot or asked or do we need to prepare something now? It doesn't require appropriation because of that. We weren't going to weigh in on that. We're not going to weigh in on it. I'm here. Yes, Charlie. I'm moving the election on article 46. I agree with Charlie for recommendation, but can I I like to offer a rationale. I'm not. I think it's a I think we're in a cart before the horse involvement, right? Even if you think that they should have an experimented list of options, you could never no rational person could say that would be okay without an investment policy, right? And I guess I understand investment policies can be like annoying because when you have to make it public, people are going to come and come to me and they're going to be like we shouldn't invest in oil companies and we shouldn't invest in this and the citizens are annoying except they pay the bill and they vote, right? But that's tough crap, right? They need a policy before they expand their options. Otherwise, because that is perfectly, could you invest in that one? Yes, but we wouldn't. Please don't lie. So what policy? So that would be my thought. I don't think we should have opposition to expanding the list. I think we should have opposition to expanding the list without a policy that would then have updated guardrails. And I don't think we should approve the policy for your process. Rebecca, thank you. So I do not feel sufficiently informed to take a position on this yet, but one thing that I was going to be both because we only want to be when it's left is that I looked up what the actual Section 3 of Chapter 203, Section 3. And there's a lot more information that I was not previously aware of before this meeting. So I'm planning to read through that more carefully before executing because it does give some guidelines that would seem to suggest that Bitcoin is not acceptable. And I do not currently understand it. So just putting that out there, there is more information. I don't want to go into that. I think my incarnation is with Charlie, but I was sort of feeling the same way. He had a legal list up there, but we didn't have the legal list. I don't think he distributed it to us. So I'd like to see what the legal list is. I'd like to read the statue and a couple other things. You know, we just had a few years ago, the Treasury lost $500,000 of stabilization fund money. And so I believe the table. So second, support the motion. Table or no action? There are two motions? There are two motions. Okay, two motions for no action and the motions for table. We'll take the motion for table first. If anyone wants to add anything before we take the roll. What's the two table and no action? Table 8, we'll bring it. We'll come back to this. Oh, no action. We're done with it. Yeah. So this will see, think, but look at the statute, see what other information you may be able to provide us. Can you use some of the links that you found that you're reading up to Tara so she can send it to us? Sure. I literally just Google. Right. And I got the Commonwealth of Massachusetts General Court. That place, the laws, there may be a better source. So I would just say that even if the law has all sorts of guardrails, it's a little bit quaint whatsoever. We still have the same problem of not having a policy. So I would argue the favor of no action instead of tabling because I think we're going to end up with no action. Because we don't have a terrible policy place. We mistake that in the comments for motion. Right. Yeah. But we can just finish it with no action. Annie. So I have another question, which is, okay, is this our article or is it the select with our co-collectors, our vote advisory? The select then will report, but we can rate in on anything. Okay. So we're referencing no action, but there may be another. Which I understand is that board has a favorable action now. I think, I think our note on this is going to be really important. And I think that therefore you should be familiar with the statute. So I would be in favor of tabling simply so we can get some more information. So that when we get to beginning to sound like an inevitable no action vote, we're at least able to say, here's the steps we want to see. And I think saying there's steps we want to see is different from saying, well, then we have a statute. So thank you, Madam Chair. I think that the Dean said, expressed very clearly one of my biggest concerns that we don't have an investment policy. We also don't know what other tabs have done and what their experience is with this statute. And I don't know, I don't see any reason why for a $28 million pot that we need to be at the front, taking whatever risks that are associated. And then the time management and different time management came to us with no historical information on how the current funds perform, whether it is a problem or not a problem. It's all long waiters. So I think there's nothing wrong with saying, let's not do it this year, let them spend a year working on doing some good analysis and come back with a knowledgeable recommendation that we did not get a knowledgeable recommendation. But just point out that there are no other town proper goals. The statute is just taxed. So we don't know, no one can point for another town to say, see, we can do this, this is what for this price. Well, they do have five towns, there was a number of towns that brought one man and they don't even know the name of those. Well, yes, we can, we can, we can, we or somebody can, can do an analysis of how we have performed with Rothland under the existing situation. But that, because of this, you know, saying, they're going to be you know, and I would favorite tables because I think the other crucial piece of information is the historical comparison that Jim said, the manager said he would get, because even, even though other towns do it, Rockland may have other funds managed with the same public, the same policy they would use, that we can have some historical performance that if I think it's another piece of information is if we're going to increase the risk, how much better can they expect it to be? And we got no data, no examples under the Rockland, we should provide that. All right, so we have Al-Khasti's motion to table. If it fails, then we will go to Charlie's motion. So all in favor of tabling this article, until we have more information, raise your hand. Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve to table. All those opposed, raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five opposed. Any abstentions? All right, it is tabled. I will see what comes to invite us. And I think that is it for tonight. We have water body, the CPA, CME Fine Ways, Forensics, not only to do the day off, but the committee coming on Monday, which I'd like to finish human rights commission and disability commission on Monday as well, if we have time, and then we'll put up with these articles. And on Wednesday, insurance and water and sewer, and hopefully finish up all our business that school. And I just said, we should have a school if I didn't get distributed. We think we're going to be in the 27th, right? What? We think we're going to be in the 27th. No, we're being on the 25th. Open up the 25th. Probably not. I was just asked if I could help with candidates. I wouldn't want to commit. I am holding the 25th. It will be our last meeting. Okay, until sometime in April, if we need it to finalize any or we vote. I'm not saying I hope that after the 25th, then we start heavy report writing. Okay. All right. All right. ACMI productions are only made possible with your support. Visit patreon.com slash ACMI to learn how you can help.