Select Board/Joint Committees On Deficit Reduction - November 6, 2025

to order the Dent of Select Board meeting November 6, 2025. I'll stand for the planning minutes. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Is anyone here for Dedham's citizen open discussion? Anyone online? All right, we can move on to the consent agenda.

Move to approve the consent agenda, including during the player approvals, Sweeney, Escondido, Corp, signs for Dedham, Youth, Cross, gift acceptances, Dedham, Jr., Women's Club, $250 to Endicott Estate for upkeep and unification, and Smith, Mellon, Houghton, Family Foundation, $10,000 to Dedham Youth Commission for use where needed most. Transient vendor license for Dedham Community House for sale of Christmas trees and leaves, 729.25 to 127.25. from 10 to 3, one day liberalizing, St. John Mascot's Church, Bazaar, 11, 725, 2 to 8 p.m., 11, 825, 12 to 9 p.m., and Christmas concert, 12, 6, 25, 6 to 10 p.m. And Mixon's ice cream for Mixon's Single Social, 11, 14, 25, 8 to 10 p.m. Second.

Hearing motion and second, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, no. So the agenda moves forward. Next up, Madam Chair, we have one item not on the agenda.

We need a motion to take that item and then a motion to approve.

Move to take an item not on the agenda. Second.

Hearing motion in a second. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed no. Motion to approve the appointment of Capital Services LLC as drain layer in Dedham. Second. hearing motion and second all those in favor say aye aye opposed no thank you Okay, moving on to Facilities Master Plan Steering Committee interviews. Brandon Westerling? Let's see, where should Brandon go? Would you mind coming up to the podium and sharing with us your interest in the committee and a little bit about yourself and your background?

Sure.

Excuse me.

OK.

I, to be honest, I'm not really sure I know a lot about this, exactly what this is all about. I just got an email that I'm interested in being more involved in the town. I have a lot of experience in real estate development. for what happened with the town hall, and I was pretty upset about that, and just wanted to get more involved and understand what's going on in my town. I've been here for, I don't know, 18 years, and that's about it. I'm not sure exactly. I don't have a lot more details. I don't really see much, but that's about as long or short of it, I guess. I'm not really sure what the qualifications are or anything like that, but I know a lot about the facilities and the state as such.

Okay, great. Thank you. Questions from board members?

So normally I do have, but you kind of answered them because I always like to know if you've been involved in other parts or other committees or things like that. So this would be your first time joining one of the committees and so forth. I always say to people, if selected, not selected, to please always look to see what else is available. Always, always looking for people to help us in different forms and committees and to, you know, hearing from community members. So that's something that I would like to let people know as well too. So, thank you.

Any further questions from board members? No. All right.

Thank you so much, Brendan. Thank you.

and we will be voting on this steering committee as well as our other appointments at the end of our meeting. Next up, Warren Articles for the 2025- Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, Steve. Come on up. Share your name, your interest in the position, and your experience in town.

My name is Stephen Pauper. I've been a resident of Dedham for 12 years. I had previously served in the town of Needham as director of sign and construction. where I was responsible to facilitate two NASA plans that occurred during my period of 18 years as the director. and consensus, and the like, and formatting the criteria for developing a master plan. I have served on a

and that is essentially what I'm offering is that experience.

Thank you. Questions from board members? Same thing. You already answered my question. Where else do you serve? And again, we're always interested, and thank you for your service on the other committees as well, too.

So thank you. Any other questions from board members? All right, thank you so much. Okay, up next, Warren Articles for the 2025 Fall Town Meeting.

You have the Finance and Mark Committee book, as noted on the Chief that I provided all votes unanimous unless otherwise noted the only vote that was not was a 6-3 vote on Article 17 to indefinitely postpone. So if you would like, I'll go through them. And if anybody wants to pass or hold on anything, they can do so as I go through them. Article 1 is the transfer of unused funds. It's $500,000 from a prior capital project, which was the Dedham High School turf, being moved to the Maverick Street culvert. Article 2 is line item transfers totaling $17,443. Article 3 is an appropriation from the Special Purpose Fund for the Debt and Visionary Access Court. totaling $228,839.85.

Article 4 is a capital request for an amount up to $250,000 from free cash to update the ed model for the schools. Article 5 covers one prior year bill of $670.24 for electric utilities through the facilities department. Article 6 is requesting an increase of the pool revolving fund from $550,000 to $650,000. Article 7 to 13 are zoning amendments, which the board does not typically take positions on. Article 14 is an amendment to the Design Review Advisory Board bylaw regarding timelines of when applications are in and when they can be acted on. Article 15 is a non-substantive general amendment to the bylaw by the Decennial Bylaw Review Committee. Article 16 covers the substantive amendments by the Decennial Bylaw Committee. County.

Article 17 requests a fee waiver for job licenses for senior citizens, and Article 18 is for the town to have the municipal decarbonization delegation by 2050. Designation, excuse me, by the year 2050. I'm passing on 17 and 14. 17, and 14.

Madam Chair, I move concurrence on the others that were not passed that Nancy read. Concurrence would be findings and warrants recommendation.

Second. Hearing a motion and a second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed no. Okay, Article 14 is the first to pass article.

I just had a quick question on what the process was for going to 35 days from those 60 days.

Do we know on that?

Was that just to streamline the process more so than any other? That's what I had thought that that was. That was the only question I had on that.

and I'll entertain a motion on article 14 in concurrence with finance award. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed no. The next passed article is Article 17.

So I know that Dr. Teehan also passed on 18. I was asking to pass on 17 and 18. and ask the board if they would consider to take this up on town meeting, the night of town meeting. Reason being is I just really want some more information on 17 and 18 pros and cons and just hearing some more of those two. articles. So I would like to request that we take this up on time.

I'll entertain a motion. to just ask until the meeting, town meeting? Move to second.

Thank you. Discussion?

Discussion?

Just one thing about this article. I think this article is a good idea but I think a good idea at the wrong time can actually be a bad idea. Oh, we're on 17. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. Dog fees.

OK. Fair. So hearing a motion and a second, no discussion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed no.

Move to postpone our vote until town meeting.

I'll second.

OK.

Discussion?

I think this article obviously is a good idea and it's the way the world is headed. A couple months ago, or years ago, a year or two ago, I was asked to vote on the stretch code and I did. Affirmatively, I support that. But I just think this article is a couple years ahead of where we want to be. When we look at the list of communities that are participating in this plan, it's pretty small. and the reality is that we as a community right now have major challenges facing us in many different ways for critical fundamental things like How are we going to make sure in the next few years we don't have to cut any employees? That's a real problem. How are we going to build the schools we need to build? No one talks about the fire station in East Adams. It's way overdue. There's so much on our plate right now.

I just think that to be at the forefront of the state, I think it's a little ahead of its time. I'll keep my mind open I'm sure I'll get a phone call about this in the near future and that's fine I'm open to discussion but I just feel like we're a little ahead of the curve and we've got so much on our plate right now. I don't know if this is the right time to do this. Maybe in a couple of years I think it would be a better time. That's all. Thank you Madam Chair.

So if I could just, I know we will have town council on the floor, because I think it's important that town council explain to town meeting what a resolution is, because it's something that we don't, normally see, and I think it's important that the town meeting members understand the purpose of a resolution, so can we just make sure that that council is ready to explain what a resolution is to the town meeting.

Thank you. Ready for discussion? Hearing none, motion to postpone. Motion to be seconded. Second. Hearing motion to be seconded, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, no. Thank you. Alright, now we have appointments to several committees that we have previously heard from candidates for. and I will start with the Conservation Commission associate members. There are two applicants for two vacancies for a three-year term as far as in 2028. and the applicants were Lee Caffrey, the incumbent, and David Hildeman.

I move appointment of Lee and David.

Second. Hearing a motion and a second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Conservation Commission resource members two applicants for three vacancies two-year terms expiring 2027 applicants are Sophia McKinnon and Matthew Lane

Move appointment of Sophia, Anthony, and Matthew to be proposed as well.

Second. Hearing the motion is second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed no. Human Rights Commission, there are three applicants for one vacancy, a three-year term expiring in 2028. I'll entertain a motion to place all names in nomination.

So moved.

second hearing the motion in a second all those in favor say aye aye opposed no all right I think we will start With Michelle's vote and move up the line. For Human Rights Commission, I vote for Tracy Franklin. Well, Dennis is next in line. Tracy Franklin. Okay. Jim McDonald. Tracy. Tracy. And Tracy Franklin.

Okay. Can I do combo? Can I make a comment that there were three really great candidates there? And it's been a while since we've actually had multiple candidates in the next vote as well, too. I hope that it doesn't deter John Sanders or Andrea Carlsberg from applying again for this position or any other positions that we do have open.

I just want to echo that. I was going to say the same thing. I wish we had more spots. And I hope they both will look for other ways to volunteer.

I was impressed with both of them as well. Yes. Further discussion? Facilities Master Plan Committee, three applicants, one vacancy. Motion to place all names in nomination.

So moved. Second.

Hearing motion and a second. Discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed no. All right, again we'll start with Michelle. My vote is Eli Boston. Dennis?

Boston.

Jim? Boston. Dimitria? Boston. And the chair votes Eli Boston. and once again thank you to all applicants thanks for your interest in engaging in our town there are many positions looking for volunteers on our boards and commissions across town so we encourage you to continue to look for open vacancies that meet your interests. Thank you very much.

Is there any old or new business?

Old or new business. Michelle? I just want to kind of shout out and thank the many, many residents and organizations I've seen stepping up over the last week or two help with the hundreds of residents we have struggling and we have certainty right now around SNAP benefits and also so thank you to all of them I want to publicly say but also want to come out there maybe for another agenda item or something it's reminding me of how the kind of town's role during the COVID task force and wondering if there is their role for coordination or at least communication, getting the word out because there's just a lot happening which is great but it's confusing I think and some things that the towns are doing. the schools doing non-profits, the food pantry, individual residents, the Denver Coalition for Equity and Inclusion also. I know during COVID we had a dedicated phone line.

We had a resource guide that we kind of compiled everything and got it out. So we'd just love to have a discussion about how understanding of what resources are available at this time.

I can provide a brief update on that. So we participated in a number of calls and conversations and just today we put out a message on Our collection efforts, which are in partnership with the food pantry, will be collecting in this building, in the town hall in the lower level, as well as in the libraries. And the library collections are ongoing pretty much year-round. We've also, if it hasn't already been posted on the website, we'll be posting some resources on our town website as far that we've gleaned from both the state and from our conversations with those community organizations. So we're happy to take part in further conversation and try to help that information and make it known to residents where they can go for help or where they can , if they so desire, as well. And again, it's been very heartwarming and overwhelming to see the number of people step up to help in this time.

The benefits are so uncertain from the federal property, so I think that's great and reflects how Dedham comes together to really help out our own, so great.

Thank you. Actually, that was going to be my thing, too, is just the communication and driving that and streamlining it. I know that my company is putting together a drive. and reaching out to the different entities that are out there in our different communities, there is a lot of confusion out there and there's a lot of, you know, where to go and where to give your money to that is actually legitimate and so forth. It's kind of a crazy time right now to help the residents I think it's fantastic to have it here open in this building because I drive around with groceries in the back of my car for days because I miss the small window to drop off here. 24-7 it's open. So thank you for your efforts on that and your attention.

I want to wish all the veterans out there a happy Veterans Day coming up this week. Day to celebrate our veterans. And every one man and woman that has served our country in some way sacrifices something. And I was saying to someone the other day I don't think I've ever loved my kids for more than a day since my first kid was born. And the men and women that serve in the military, they leave their families for months and years. They miss holidays. They miss birthdays. serving our nation, and then of course many of them get injuries, illnesses, diseases. I see all the veterans that are coming back from Southwest Asia. They were exposed to burn pit, particulate matter, how it's affecting their health 10, 20, 30 years later.

you know PTSD and how that affects their health and family it's just a tremendous sacrifice for everyone that serves so this week is a time where we can honor that and celebrate that because it is a tremendous, tremendous debt of service we owe to all of them. And do you mind just updating the public on how we're acknowledging Veteran's Day. I know we do meet people this year.

Sure. I don't have it in front of me, the exam schedule. You have it up.

Do you want me to read it? Yeah. OK. So there are three events. happening in town, 9 a.m. services at Barnes Memorial at the corner of on Eastern Avenue Street, the dedication of the new US Flight Full of Inventions. 1030 is the from the VFW post to the American Legion post, 18, my favorite race of all time, and that meet at 1030 at the VFW post for that. Does the run start at 11 or 12?

12.30.

Okay, so the actual run will start at 12 or 12.30. And at 12, a coalition at the American Legion Post community gathering to celebrate and honor Dedham's veterans and those serving in the armed forces.

That's all, thank you. I'm just going to echo what Dennis just said about our veterans and what Veterans Day is all about is to is to honor all veterans and to still continue to recognize the struggles that our veterans that are going through every single day that have returned home with sometimes scars that are not visible. And we need to continue to support our veterans. And I know Joe, the VSO for for our community does an amazing job to give our veterans a place to come, to talk, to listen, and that's what I think what Joe was really good at, is listening and letting people talk and share and being able to reach out.

Our veterans organizations within our community always are involved, and we know that with the new command and that of the VFW, is doing an outstanding job as well as the American Legion to have a place for our veterans and their families to go and to and to talk and to seek help. So as we pause on November 11th, if you can make one of the events, that's great. If you can't, as you drive around town, you'll see many many memorials of our veterans. And you'll also see on street corners, on corners, you know, Frannie O'Brien and others, put up signs in the neighborhoods of our veterans. So if you can't get to one of the other ceremonies, stop.

Just look at it and remember that individual and just say thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, yes. These are fantastic events, opportunities to talk one-on-one with our veterans, thank them for their service. and provide them with the sense of community that I know is so important to them. So again, at 9 a.m., dedication of the new flagpole, at Barnes Memorial and 1030 at the Dedham VFW with the wreaths across the street starting around noon. Thank you very much. I now call the select board meeting to adjourn.

Madam Chair, my suggestion is that we recess and then we will be convened upon the presentation scheduled at 6.45.

Great, yes at 6.45 we have a joint meeting of the Select Board, School Committee, and Finance Award Committee to discuss the release of the report from the Collins Center regarding deficit reduction. will convene at 645. Good evening everyone, welcome. Tonight we will be having a presentation on the deficit reduction report. Reporting in progress. So I'll begin. We have three of our committees in town here, the Select Board, the School Committee, and the Finance and Work Committee. So I will begin by calling the Select Board out of recess as we begin our meeting at 6 o'clock. I will, all select board members are present.

I will now pass it off to Laurie Toomey who will call for the school committee.

Does Pia DeStefano have a panel? I don't know if it's a certain convention, but she's our only member who is remote. Great, thank you. So on behalf of the school committee and in the absence of our chair, Stephen Acosta, I will go ahead and open the school committee portion of this meeting and start with a roll call attendance. Mrs. Stefano. Mr. Langley. Here. And Vice Chair Toomey is also present.

Pass it over to Finance Board Committee.

Hello, everybody. I will call the finance and marketing portion of this meeting to order. We have one member who is remote tonight. Let's see him on the list, though. Paul, Cindy Barrett, Mike Capriaco, Mike Embry, the Vice Chair is present, Michael Leahy, Ed Dockum, Is that Donald? Thank you. I don't think he's here. Who is planning to attend the MacDonald?

I'll quickly summarize the agenda for all those participating and watching. We will hear brief comments from Liz O'Donnell on behalf of the Deficit Reduction Work Group. and then we will hear from Grady Winston, Director of Finance from the town, to present the deficit reduction strategy report presentation. After that, we'll take Q&A from board members. We'll do that by board. And after that, we will open for public comments.

Thank you, Erin, and thank you, everyone, for being here tonight. For the record, I'm Liz O'Donnell from the Finance and Market Committee, and I'm an appointee to the Budget Deficit Working Group, along with Michelle Gerson-Reilly from the Sweat Board. Langley, the school committee, and our town moderators. And before I begin, I want to thank the town staff, who's worked really hard on this process and acknowledged that work. So thank you. As I think we're all aware, Dedham has a structural deficit, which means our recurring expenses are going faster than . And this is not a unique situation to Dedham. The Mass Municipal Association just issued a report detailing how so many towns and cities across the Commonwealth are facing financial challenges. and one reason for that is inflation is raising the cost of running a town or city faster than proposition two and a half allows us towns and cities to raise taxes.

and some of you may have read an article on the Sunday Globe last week that talked about the rising number of towns in the state that are facing or have recently faced overrides or if those overalls fail are looking at really extensive cuts to services. and these fiscal pressures show no signs of letting up and so Dedham has been proactive in taking a really serious look at its financial future and thanks to a brand. recently engaged with the UMass Collins Center for Public Management to analyze our projected budget gaps and outline our options to strengthen our long-term fiscal stability. The result of that is the deficit reduction strategy which we're here to discuss and which Brady Winston, our Director of Finance, will walk us through in just a few minutes.

the working group was convened towards the end of the column's work to review the report and to provide some local context, ensuring that the report accurately reflect Dedham's current situation, realities, and operations. because the call-in center assignment was how do we lower the deficit, at least some of their answers naturally were raise fees or taxes. Some of the local contacts that our group provided was a sensitivity to the fact that so many residents in Dedham are concerned about their taxes. They're concerned about the affordability of living in Dedham and the impact of these taxes on their family households. The Collins Centre made it clear that this report is not a list of recommendations. It's a menu, if you will, of options, of levers that we could pull, both on the revenue and on the expense side. Some will be implemented quickly, some are long-term. Also, not all of the suggestions in the report are needed in order to close the gap.

Some of the items on the menu will be really difficult to swallow. As I said, some of the revenue enhancement options are fees or taxes. and some of the expenditure reduction options would result in the loss of services that we've all been really accustomed to. Again, these are options. So now the task is to determine what's the right combination for Dedham based on the short and the long-term implications. The report also outlines suggestions for creating consensus, building in the budget process, more consensus as we go through it. And the team at Collins did acknowledge the work that these three boards did last year in the spring when we came together to advocate a budget. So more of that. So what's next? Well, now we need to move from analysis to action. That means we need to work together to align our priorities. and we have another tool that will help us with that. As some of you know, the town also recently surveyed residents

to learn what matters most to them around the services that Dedham offers today. Used together, these two efforts can give us both data and direction to help us make a balanced, albeit difficult decision. So the plan next is to share this report with staff, with town meeting members at many, the warrant review meeting, and with the community through some soon to be scheduled public works. The working group's hope is that this process encourages open dialogue and increased collaboration among town administrators, staff, boards, town meeting members, and residents so that we can do the work as needed. And that none of us shy away from the tough decisions that have to be made. And that we all work together to create a sustainable plan for the town. We've seen how financial stress divides communities, but Dedham has the opportunity to meet this moment with collaboration, with data, with transparency, and with a willingness to do some hard work and preserve what people love about this town.

So now, I'll turn it over to Leon Goodwin. Thank you.

and the school committee, Liz O'Donnell,

We also had on that Michelle Pearson Reilly from the Select Board and Dan Driscoll, our town moderator. Can everyone hear me?

Can we minimize the other two screens so that we can see the entire presentation?

Dave Roberts is in there now too.

Okay, that's good.

Did you get a Dave Roberts?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're getting there, guys.

I hear the giggles.

It was on purpose.

So again, thank you to the Deficit Reduction Working Group for their efforts on this. I also want to thank the town staff who worked on it, Brady Winston, our finance director, our assistant finance director from Dorpher. our Director of Planning, Zoning, and Natural Resources, Jeremy Rosenberger, our Assistant This was very much a team effort. It took a lot of support to the Collins Center to provide them with the data. It was a data-driven process. They did meet with over 25 stakeholders through the process, interviewing

So as Ms. O'Donnell already stole our thunder a little bit, Dedham is not unique in the situation we find ourselves in, looking at this budget gap, budget deficit, whatever you want to call it. and again that really in its simplest term it simply just means that are not keeping up with our expenditures. And we all feel that in our households. We see it throughout the Commonwealth. We see it throughout the country. It's driven by factors. As a community, what we can look at are options that are palatable to us.

So here you can see a few examples from around the Commonwealth, the MMA article, the Boston Globe, and even this week there was a lot more news articles.

So a little bit of quick context. This Collins Center report was based on the town's long-range financial forecast, which we also worked with the Collins Center on in 2023. So in the years after the forecast was created, the town has taken steps to reduce the budget each year. So in fiscal year 2024 we reduced the needs of yard waste collection, we reduced funding for roads and sidewalks. In fiscal of the House of Representatives, including five and a half full time positions from the 2026, the operating budget was reduced by over $2 million from level service. And in all of these years, a note at the bottom, the Dedham Public Schools budget was always adopted at a lower level than level service.

meaning each year they had to reduce professional development, extra and co-curricular activities, and personnel. Alright, so you might recognize this slide. A version of it was presented last May at a town meeting. This slide uses the long-range forecast to project the budget gaps in future fiscal years. The financial forecast is a flexible tool so we change it every time we get new information. That's why the numbers you see up here today are slightly different from the numbers in May. We got new information about rising health insurance costs, so these budget gap numbers have slightly increased, unfortunately. The numbers will continue to change and the gap can become larger or smaller, so fortunately it can't go both ways. When we get new information about union contracts, insurance costs, new debt issuances,

I want to note that these numbers do include some use of free cash for the operating budget. It uses $1.5 million each year, which is consistent with the historical use of free cash. However, it does not use any excess levy capacity.

Thank you, Brady. So I guess we've already hit on this a couple of times, but this was funded through a grant, a community compact grant through the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that we applied for. It was $45,000. We received that grant, and we were able to hire the Collins Center at UMass to conduct this report for the town. And again, it was an extensive report over a number Working Group, and a lot of staff input as well. And I think, at the end of the day, we do have a a very long list of options. It's important to emphasize that there are options and that we don't need to implement all of them in order to close the budget gap. And that's what I think one of the big takeaways for me from this report is that we do have options. and we will be able to talk through those options as a community.

This is one part of many. We recently also did an the National Community Survey, which we will be presenting to the select board on November 20th. So folks who would like to see that presentation as well, because I think that will really measure community sentiment as well toward a lot of these things. and then following that we will be holding community forums as we said we're going to schedule those to try to get even a broader input of community sentiment toward both Deficit Reduction Strategy, the National Community Survey items, as well as overall budget items as we move into the budget season. I think many of you have seen, if you're in this room and you're interested in budgets and the deficit reduction strategy, I hope you've all at least looked through it. You see that it's structured in four parts. One, the expenditure reductions. to the revenue enhancements. Spenders reductions are kind of easy.

Like, where can we cut costs? are a little bit limited here in Massachusetts under Prop 2 1⁄2. We can only raise our taxes by 2 1⁄2 percentage points over the prior year's levy plus new growth. So that does limit us in a highly inflationary environment. and then we have a section on long-term strategic actions and long term is we're talking multiple years into the future those things are going to be a little bit more complicated they're going to involve collective bargaining and and they may just a little take a lot of planning in the community and discussion because let's face it, we don't want to jump into any of these things because some of them will have a big impact on the community. And I think a famous paraphrase from one of our neighboring recently retired town managers, is that everything in municipal government takes 18 months. So even the short-term things we're not talking is going to happen tomorrow.

It's going to take a period of months if not. to accomplish just because of the way we go about it in a very deliberate way, which is what's great about our local democracy here in Massachusetts. So this is an example of the revenue enhancement implement the refuse collection fee. We were in this room about a year ago talking about pay-as-you-throw trash options as one option that we can look at to raise revenues. Again, Collin Center identified that because it's a best practice in Massachusetts. And it's a way of increasing revenues without diminishing services. So again, that's one option you see here. Some of these other things are best practices that we're already doing.

at Sewer. Sewer is a big one that we have. And we look at that every year to see how much administrative managing sewer system in town, and then we charge the sewer enterprise fund for those services. Collins is suggesting that we might be able to charge him a little bit more to the super enterprise, to the 213,000. But again, we're trying to be sensitive and not overburden that as well, because again, our residents pay for that fund through sewer rates. Adjusting building department fees and practices. We have been going through a town-wide exercise to adjust our fees. to match the cost of providing services. This is, again, something that we would have been doing anyway and we will certainly be looking at in the near future. And then last but not least is the use of excess levy capacity.

gained a position below what we call our levy limit, which is the amount of taxes that we can raise. I think the Finance and Warrant Committee, Town Management, Select Board, School Committee have all been very sensitive to eroding that excess levy capacity because what that means is that our residents are paying higher taxes. So, yes, there is levy capacity that we could use to help close this budget gap, but once we use that, it no longer exists, and it will be reflected in higher tax bills for our residents, which is something we have to be very That's about the level of detail. I'm going to go through these and certainly address more questions later. Here is the list of expenditure reductions that Colin simply came up with. And what is most striking to me about this list is, first of all, it's not very long. And it also doesn't add up to a whole lot.

Kennedy knows, there's not a lot of discretionary spending left in our budgets. We have been so careful. We've talked to NIP there. We really have cut back services to the extent so that our residents don't feel it. because we also don't want people to feel like they're paying a good sized tax bill and not getting a service level that they deserve. So we've been very careful over these last few years. and what that's left though is not a whole lot of areas to cut. So here you can see there's a few suggestions from the Collins Center. One of them is level funding, non-school, other expenses. that's things outside of salary and contractual obligations. If we were to level fund those instead of building in 2% to 3% inflation,

in the scheme of things could help, but it's not going to save the day. Similarly, delaying our OPEB investment or other post-employment benefits. This is something that we pay into to be able to take care of our contractual obligations into the future. Well, it's not required accounts to pay into this trust fund. It's a good practice. We could certainly delay some of these investments into that, but we would have to pay it eventually. and everybody. Other things here, aligning the school, we have colas and step increases. Again, that involves contractual and a half dozen or so, at least on the school side. So again, that's a lot of moving pieces to align all of those.

Certainly, it's admirable to try to do that. And it's something we are always working on. We collaborate very closely with the school administration. But that's going to take years, and Collins is suggesting that it might be able to save between $200,000 and $600,000 per year. And then last but not least is Colin suggested that Dedham is very fortunate to have multiple libraries. We have the main library, we have the Endicott Branch Library, they're saying that we could save $200,000 a year by closing that branch. I know how valuable that branch is to many people, probably many people in this room. I don't think that's why this is an option. It's not a recommendation because $200,000, again, in a $140-plus million budget to save $200,000 and close up a fixture in that neighborhood. That's not a decision that I think I would want to make without a lot more community dialogue.

It's on the list. West, but it's an option for discussion and I don't think it's something that anyone would take very lightly. Again, as I mentioned, the short-term strategies are not things we can do tomorrow. They're things that we're going to try to do over Long-term strategies, these are things that are going to take two, three, four, five years to accomplish. Adjusting health insurance contribution rates, that's something across the Commonwealth that communities is losing money, changing benefits levels. It's pretty much the talk of the day outside of overriding municipal government. Those are contractually obligated. We would need to negotiate with our unions, and again,

folks work here. They do really good work for the town, and we want to make sure they're well compensated because we want to keep our good employees. That's all part of their comprehensive benefits package. just these perhaps over the long term is something that we can look at. But in the short term, I don't see that being very realistic. It also, again, would require negotiation. and I think that there are some other things that we can do to be creative in the health insurance market that might be able to save us money in the near term versus benefits around things like parental leave. That was noted. I'm actually a big fan of our paid parental leave program. I think it's the right thing to do. It is costly to pay for 12 weeks of paid leave, but again, It's a benefit that we use as a recruitment tool.

And certainly, well, if we were to adjust that, it might save money. It might also dissuade folks from coming to work for the town. increasing position control. That's something we've already done. Brady, myself, and our finance director. What was that? What did I say? Finance. Oh, great. He's our finance director. Sorry about that. Our HR director, Gail McCracken, meet regularly to review all open positions, determine whether or not we need to fill them. and then move forward from there. And we worked it out with the Finance and War Committee this year that we help all positions that come open for 90 days unless there's extraordinary circumstances. that has resulted in savings to the personnel budgets, as well as it gives us an opportunity to think about So that's something we're already doing.

Exploring regionalization of town services. That's something, again, many communities are working on. We recently opted into the Norfolk County Weights and Measures Program, which is a regionalization program. There are others out there. It is a way of delivering services in a more efficient way. Again, I think it's something that we should be looking at. But again, it's not something that's going to happen today or tomorrow. and I think folks remember at town meeting we approved a consolidated IT department so we have one director now. I view that as almost like an internal regionalization because we had two completely independent departments there's opportunities to re-evaluate our town capital planning process to make it more streamlined and efficient

infrastructure. And I absolutely agree with that. Collins is suggesting that we may be able to review departments and reduce redundancies in services. Again, that's something we're always doing. We're always looking at the best way of the Finance and War Committee and talked about what services they're delivering, how can we best deliver those to the residents at the cost that is most effective. So again, these are things that we're always thinking about. That would be something but it would also impact our residents because they need to be able to access us to access services and other things that we provide. So that would be, to me, a last, sort of, last option to save on the budget again.

So like the last slide was longer-term expenditure reductions. This looks to longer, medium and longer-term revenue advances. So the first item on this list, the select board has already taken action on. This is to implement a payment in lieu of taxes program for tax exempt properties such as schools and nonprofits. This is a pretty well documented framework that's used in some neighboring towns. It provides a revenue source in return for services that we do provide these tax exempt parcels, like and police and fire response, which they do receive. The second item here is transitioning to ambulance response within the fire department. So this would include increased costs. We would have to purchase new equipment and things like that, but could result in a net revenue. at Home Center suggests we do a deeper dive into the numbers in Dedham to see if that would pan out well for us.

The next item is addressing the rental of publicly owned buildings. So this includes places like the Endicott Estate and their potential uses to generate revenue just as part of a thorough survey of the town's assets and how other towns use assets like that to increase revenue. Fourth on this list is a recommendation that the town increases alignment around economic development strategy. So this option would have the town increase coordination between permit-granting bodies to maximize the potential for new growth, especially in commercial and industrial sectors. As we know, Dedham is heavily residential, and that puts somewhat of a disproportionate burden on the residential taxpayers. So the Collins Center suggests that we look to develop commercial and industrial growth. The last item on this list is to establish a recreation enterprise fund.

This would shift 100% of the cost of recreation programs to a fee-based system. So as you all know, the current year budget shifted $130,000 of the Parks and Recreation budget to being supported by fees. So this option would continue to shift those costs

So this is actually, I think, a fun slide. You might not take away the fun in this. And it actually reflects a little bit of the good work that we've done up until this point. So again, as I mentioned earlier, the Paul Center, you can view over 25. the budget process was a little bit rocky in that we would start in the fall, develop the departmental budgets, the town manager would put forward their budget, it would go to the finance warrant committee, and the Finance and Work Committee would really start to dig in. And then we'd have to make this hard decision and tell the school and the town side, OK, come back with cuts equaling $2 million. and we're talking late April at that point. And so that really caused a lot of scrambling. It caused some consternation because we're looking at

Reducing Leaf Collection. and reducing personnel in the schools, reducing personnel in the town. Hard decisions that we had to make because I think they were the right decisions, but they could have been made a little bit easier had we started all that work So one thing that the Collins Center noted was that in FY26, there was earlier collaboration between finance and warrant committee, the school committee, on a budget that everyone could agree to and recommend to town meeting. And what that meant was that when we got to town meeting, there wasn't as much back and forth. There weren't to substitute motions to add or subtract. And town meeting could feel confident that the policy-making boards who have the most knowledge of each of their independent budgets were recommending what was in front of them.

a lot easier for town meeting. Again, our town meeting members do a ton of really good work. There are 273 folks who are elected from their neighborhood. and they really depend on the recommendations of the Finance and War Committee, the Select Board and the School Committee. And having a united front where folks all agree to a consensus really I think made that the Collins Center, taking in all of that feedback and that recent success with the consensus building, is recommending that in other communities, there is a joint financial planning committee or something along those lines with representatives from the finance and warrant committee, the school committee, the select board, as well as the professional staff who support them. And they meet in the fall. after the long-range financial forecast has been updated and when we know where our estimated revenues will be to put together a goal

and a recommended budget that meets our revenue projections without having to adjust late in the process. And if everyone can agree to that consensus, and it'll make the process easier is the suggestion. Again, that's something that's been done in other communities to some success. Collins is suggesting that we give it a try. And certainly I think we're closer to that than we've ever been. and I'll turn it back to Brady.

Okay, so we are bringing this as you can see. Some of the key takeaways we wanted you to leave with tonight, as you've heard multiple times, this is a menu of options in this report. We have options on both the revenue side and the expenditure side. Any options that we choose can be tailored to Dedham and what residents prioritize. An important part of this report outlines strategic options that the town can implement to avoid the need for short-term solutions that don't align with resident priorities, as Leon indicated that we may have had to make in the past. and one of the most important takeaways as we just outlined is that collaboration and consensus around the budget has been one of our most successful strategies and will be much needed in the future budget years. So this, we have another little screenshot slide showing a bigger picture, sort of.

So in the beginning of the presentation, you heard from Leon. This is a statewide and, in fact, a national issue. And Dedham's not alone in dealing we wanted to again note that we're using this three-pronged approach. So the study that we presented tonight, the community survey that will be presented to this Left Board in two weeks, and community forums that will be held late this year and early next year. Up on the screen, we put a few ways that Dedham has been identified for this approach. So on the left, we have an article from the Mass Municipal Association newsletter. On the right we have a letter from the Lieutenant Governor just thanking us for being a part of their community compact grant and for doing this work. And in the middle we have the National Community Survey logo. and that just indicates that we can take the path forward that fits Dedham best. We can tailor this menu of options to fit what

And lastly, we have sort of the upcoming dates, next steps. We are doing this presentation again at the Warren Review Minnetown meeting on Monday. That would be an in-person event. And then in two weeks, The community survey will be presented by our surveying company, Polco, to a select board. And then we just wanted to mention that coming up in the winter, In early 2026, we'll start our capital budget hearings. And after that, will come the operating budget hearings. And in that same time frame, we're going to be scheduling the community forums. We'll talk about this report. the survey results and have some face-to-face time with residents to talk about whatever kind of budget issues they'd like to bring up. So I think that brings it to a close and we can hand it back over to Erin.

Okay, this is working again. Thank you so much Leon and Brady. So now we're going to bring it to the boards for any comments or questions. We'll start with the select board. any comments or questions from the slipper?

So I'm happy to pass this up to Dr. Cullan.

Thank you. So thank you both to Dr. Cullan and Brady for this presentation. I'm curious about the pilot program and the fiscal impact, if we were to implement that, particularly within the number of private schools in our area. and I understand that's long term, so within three to five years. I really liked how you demonstrated Probably for the short term it was easier. The financial impact for revenue that would generate, do you have an idea of what that would generate for the town annually if we were to implement that?

I think that would vary greatly on who agreed to do a pilot of this. So it is a negotiation with these properties. They have no obligation to pay down anything. pilot working group suggested starting with the exempt parcels with the highest value. So it would sort of be going from the highest value down to the lowest value. Our target would be 25% of the tax bill they would pay. But then it's a negotiation what number you end up on and how many years you phase it in. So it really varies.

and I just wanted to point out and give credit to the select board that while that sentence in that three to five year time frame, we did recently have a pilot working group that completed its work last spring and the select board just adopted a pilot policy and now a staff, we are formalizing the letters that will go out soon to the top tier of property holders. So that's something that is in the works and will be implemented well beyond the three to five years.

Awesome.

Thank you.

I do, but I kind of want other people to speak as well, but I guess. I can't take Jim's position on that. I've got a couple, I guess, thoughts. And I'll probably circle back later on. When I look at the revenue enhancement, the first slides there, I understand that one is the trash. I know that went... and that went over. But I look at that and say that's just another way to tax somebody else. We're just shifting the burden. We're not going to see a reduction in our bills. I also think that that drives a lot of inequities to a lot of our It's families that are more fixed income or lower income. It also affects renters because it becomes a utility bill, which the landlords are typically not going to pay. So you're putting more burden on them.

I think the same thing goes on your longer-term planning on the shift of park and rec fees to a fee-based alternative shifting environment. We're not changing anything. You're making a change of structure, but we're not helping anything. You're just shifting, inferring, and that's paying more. So that's, when I see low, that's what I see. That's what I hear. I didn't close the name of the library. I didn't notice. irrational. I don't think that makes any sense at all. I think when you looked at one of the end reports, it was talking about the combination of like collaborative things and one of them was about the VSO office. I think one of the things about the time with Dedham is how proud we are, how we treat our veterans, how we take care of them. I think if we do something else, that'd be a step back. 400 people that gave their lives so we could be sitting here today. It's the wrong decision. You know, your point about driving the right of way is in one of the first slides, and it came down to one of the other slides.

One thing you hear around this town is our commercial base and how do we enhance our commercial base. It's interesting that we're having this conversation now when there's a project for town meeting that would actually go backwards on that to a project that could potentially bring in six to 10 or 12 or whatever the millions of dollars that actually, I think, I think one of you said $6 million. That covers our gap, the $3 or $4 million gap they've had. One parcel is doing that. So that's a move backwards. We should be supporting things like that. I think that's enough for now.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I got off a flight about an hour ago, so my head and thoughts are sort of jumbled. And I haven't had an opportunity to go through this with a fine-tooth comb, so it's very likely some of the questions I'm going to ask or comments may not make sense and may not apply. but I can't help just from hearing some of, and seeing some of the options that, and I agree with a lot of what Mr. Polito just mentioned around, it's more like moving money versus saving money or adding revenue. And all this movement is doing is putting a burden or continuing to put the burden on us.

versus taxing and charging people who don't live in Dedham but are using Dedham. and again, having not gone through all of this, that may not be a fair assessment, but when I think of some of the businesses that are coming in, the businesses aren't locally owned businesses all the time. They're owned by people who don't live in Dedham. And I think there's an opportunity to potentially tax them more. When I think of the schools in In this pilot program, we certainly do have some Dedham children that are in those schools. but I also believe that some of those families are choosing those schools because we're taking so much money away from our schools. that our schools are no longer able to provide services.

And our buildings are not as fancy and as modern as some of those other schools. And so we're almost doing this to are a detriment to ourselves. And the majority of the students at those schools aren't Dedham families and aren't Dedham residents. So I think the theme of what's in my head is, instead of looking at potential budget cuts or reductions that impact the very people who live here, Are there things we could be doing that impact people who are using our land and using our services but aren't feeling those impacts the way we are? If that makes sense.

So we can talk about that a little bit. This was a long report. We didn't include every single recommendation in these slides. There was one recommendation that sort of speaks to what you're talking to. It's the Municipal Empowerment Act. that has been suggested for the past two years, I believe, would allow us to increase our local option taxes. pretty severely regulated on what type of taxes we can collect just based on Massachusetts law. We have a local option room occupancy tax and a local option meals tax. We tax the maximum who are left right now. But this bill would increase that maximum and would bring in additional revenue. So we can lobby for that legislation. We can't take any independent action outside of what's authorized by law. But that is one important thing to note that we could.

Hi. I was one of the working group members, so we, you know, heard all of this and then, you know, reacted and gave some local context and all of that. And your comments and questions make me think of, you know, same initial reaction, not just initial, it's remained, that it's disappointing. This report is great, it's so important to have an outside expert kind of look at and give us some ideas. but it's really disappointing to see that all of the short term, most of the short term revenue side options are basically taxes or fees. And I think it's part of the importance of having the working group provide some local context because the consultants came in and we've heard this before from others, they look at our comparable communities and they say, oh, dentist taxes are right in the middle, you have room to raise taxes, That's what we can put on the revenue side. And I think our reaction was, well, we don't know Dedham.

We don't have room. That's a very debatable recommendation, especially in a context where we have these buildings and capital needs and very likely debt exclusions in our near future for our building needs. So the importance of our town trying to avoid and override what we're seeing in all these other towns is really important. So I think, to me, when I see, wow, our short-term revenue options, some of it is moving money, like you said, but some of it is new money, but it's new money from our taxpayers, like you're saying. is really key and if we can't do those these expense recommendations, which none of us seem to like either, right?

So there's not easy answers here, but it's a really important discussion, and I think where we're at now is hearing from the community

Thank you, Chip. Thank you, everyone. So as a doctor, I'm used to giving people bad news. I'm going to give some bad news tonight, and that is that this report clearly shows that there are no quick fixes or easy answers for the financial challenges that we're facing it's it's emotion to say that there's a spending problem at town hall and the reality is the opposite that people have worked really hard over the last 45 years to cut as much as they can from the budget and Now we're at a place where there's not much more we can cut before we start to affect essential services and people's jobs. And that's the unfortunate position we're in. Our budget is $100 million. and 49, I think, million dollars this year. Is that right, 149 million? So let's do the math. Over the next 10 years, it's gonna cost probably about $2 billion to run this town. And so the question becomes, how do we move the needle? And I think there are some things we could do better.

I want to be clear about that in both the town and the school side. I'm not going to get into that because I've said it all publicly in the past, but to me, the only way to really move the needle on the financial challenges we're facing is Nugra. New Growth is hard because it represents change, but in the presentation, you heard it, we don't have, people think we have a big commercial and industrial base in this town, but we really don't. Our commercial and industrial base is visible literally bisects our town, right? But the reality is that compared to other towns, we don't have a lot in that area. We have to look at that and look at new growth and look at change in a different way. A couple of years ago, someone wanted to put Otada on Easton Avenue. There was opposition to it. I like that view a lot.

It's not bothering anyone, but at the same time, we have to take these opportunities for new growth, because if we don't take them, then we don't generate revenue. There's a project in Precinct 1 right now. I know people have a lot of mixed feelings about that, but it's controversial. I'm not saying we have to do that project. What I'm saying is we need to look at new We have to keep it up or not. We have to realize that there's change.

So on top of everything else, the biggest challenge we have is how do we build the school buildings we need to build in the context of everything else we're talking about. And I think that dovetails into new growth as well. who are going to have high taxes.

So I agree with everything that Dennis said and partly with what Chris said and what other members have said so far. But I know the chart that said, and follow up again on that, enhanced economic development. That is the only way in which we are going to find additional non-residential income. That's the only way. Because right now, for those that don't know, when we set the tax rate based on the assessor's numbers for the entire town, we should here, 175% of our tax rate. So our businesses are paying for services in our town that some of them use, some of them don't, similar to our residents. residents pay taxes.

Some of them use the schools, some of them use the parks, some of them occasionally need police and fire. They use the services, but there's a lot of people that don't. So we're on both sides, but we have shifted away from a tax base by fees. We all know the fees that we're receiving, but that was a way in which to to add money to some programs by those shifts. But you know, there's only so much you can shift to the tax base because it's, let's be frank, it might not be a tax, but it is a tax. And we have many residents in our town that don't have the ability to continue after year.

I mean, we all, if you all look at our tax bills, what they were five years ago, look at what they are today, and for many people, that is an extremely difficult burden, and they're making the decision, do I stay in my house? or do I try to move? And we know what the housing situation is for a lot of our, and it's not just the senior citizens. there are families that are also struggling. So as we're looking at this model, by the way, thank you to the committee, You know, suddenly, like everybody else, you read it and you say, no, we're not doing that, we're not doing that, we're not doing that. but that's, we have to at some point say, okay, let's look into it a little more and not just slam the door shut. If I start looking at it, I can pick out three things that's absolutely never happened.

but the idea of the working group was to challenge us, to prevent us, to present ideas about these are what you can do, But it's going to impact somebody, so you move on to something else. So thanks to the committee that put this together. This is the beginning. This is not the end. There's much more to come. Finance and Water is gonna have a difficult job as they have each year. Leon, as he's putting together the town side, is going to have a difficult job with this year's budget. Nian, as she's putting together the school budget, is going to have a difficult time. and choices will have to be made but this is a beginning and I would thank you for having this joint meeting and I'll pass it on to anybody else on our board or to find it tomorrow.

I tried. He didn't accept, but I'll try again.

It's an age that he doesn't have.

Sorry, dude.

He's accepted.

Welcome.

Heidi, are you there?

Not yet.

He'll show up underneath.

Okay, while we're waiting, I just want to thank the committee as well, and all those involved in putting this report together. I'm pleased to know that the elements in this report, many of them we've discussed over the last several years. There are a few. you know, nuances, things that we have not discussed. But again, I am pleased that we now have a roadmap to follow versus just discussions that we've had over the years, relying on minutes, et cetera, et cetera. We can use this document as a pathway to continue to follow up on some of these options, knowing that some of them probably won't work, but at least we have them.

here.

And one thing that I think is great and that was mentioned by the Collins Center was the fact that we really need to start the process a little bit earlier. We've all been and so forth. And I think that's what we're going to be doing. She's on mute. Where is he?

Is Cameron not on mute?

Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Just want to echo What my colleague Michael Leigh said, meaning the reporter, a couple of times over, I think one of the key factors is collaboration. I think we have to share the information as soon as possible. Finance and Work Committee as I believe Michael mentioned is we will again be taking our role which is the presentation of budgets and then we will conduct our from each department and for each warren isle. One thing I'd like to do is urge folks that are in attendance tonight and also anyone who is watching or will perhaps watch a replay of this,

to take the time to listen, to tune in, to attend the finance and marketing meetings. The budget process and the factors that go into delivering the services that we have. As I said to many people, I thought last year was a real challenge, but I also said to my colleagues, that this coming year will be even more of a challenge. And I'm proud to be part of this group, and we will carry forth with our nationwide abilities. Thank you.

If I may add one more thing that I thought of. I don't know if this is the right forum for it, but I'll ask anyway. We all know that Proposition 2 and 1 half Madden, if so, what might be the impact, aside from the obvious, if it was raised to like 3% or some arbitrary number?

I don't know. Rachel did it. speak to the impact, really. Dedham already taxes under the maximum allowed as you know so if they increased the allowable percentage and we continue to tax a consistent rate our access capacity would increase but it would mitigate the fiscal cliff aspect that was talked about so much, which was the idea that when we run out of excess capacity, we won't have any room to increase taxes, even if we want to continue the same level of service. So in that way it would give more flexibility, but it would still be up to town meeting to pass the budget that they felt was appropriate.

The one thing I would caution all of us is not to react too quickly. This is one tool, and we have another tool coming, which is the community survey. where you get the numbers and sort of the narrative. And I think that makes the most powerful decision making. So where to come?

Thank you. I just want to echo a lot of what's said. First of all, I want to thank the committee for putting the hard work together, and I know these are difficult options, but and anybody can kill any of the options. That's the easy thing to do. The hard thing is going to be figuring out what combination of actions that we can take to make a difference. But I do want to really echo what was said before. The real only significant tool that we have is new development. and to echo what Chris said earlier, the fact that we have one on the table and we're quick to try to kill it is, the opposite direction we need to be going.

We as a town need to figure out how to seek out and welcome new development, especially industrial and where we can get significant tax and we have to figure out how to entice more of that to help with this.

So I'm interested a little bit in any thoughts in the committee about moving forward to flesh out some of these ideas. Like think about, for example, the trash. So there's a philosophy behind that if we're going to start moving from taxes to fees to people paying for services. in these experiences they had, thinking about unintended consequences. So Chris pointed out that that would add something to renters they don't take now, and we just Snapman. So that might be something we have to consider. As we learn what other towns have done with things like that and their experiences, if there's thoughts about it, it may work

What's their next step? Question about process, right?

had an appetite to have those conversations. And as we indicated before, we did lay a lot of the groundwork to talk about Page and Throw as an option, just because we knew this day was coming. And it is one of the most obvious ones that most of us and our neighbors have adopted for a variety of reasons. But there are unintended consequences. There are also some unintended positive consequences in that most communities experience a reduction. Lee, land on any one of these as a potential option or form.

I have a question around how the shortlist was developed. How did the working group decide on the shortlist? This question is kind of in a place that I've had a lot of really excellent conversations with people in town who all have really excellent ideas around how to generate revenue and how to save money. paid parking meters, Airbnb, consolidation schools. And so there are a lot of ideas that I've heard from the community that I don't see reflected in here. and so I was curious about how did you take a long list of ideas and turn it into a short list and if you could speak a little bit about what sort of ideas did not make it in here and why I would find that really helpful.

I can take that for you. as a member of the working group. So the working group did not come up with any of these recommendations, and the working group did not pull back on any of the recommendations from this group. It was really important that we didn't. because the whole point of going outside of them and using a third party was that it wasn't There was no emotion. There was no, this is how it's always done in town. It was a totally impartial third party. And so we just... saw what they did, they came up with it based on their knowledge and experience, and then the working group really just weighed in on how it could be presented, and did they, as Michelle said, did they understand data on the nuances. So these were not our recommendations. We let it be impartial and proposite.

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I want to give a quick comment about my experience in the working group. And the first time I read the report, it was like a good bit of shock, right? and then you read it again and again. And when I got to the end, I realized we have difficult decisions to make, but I also realized the report clearly says that if we make the challenging decisions, in three to five years, our fiscal outcome looks a lot better. So that was my end takeaway, that yes, there are challenges, but if we as a community and find resolutions that we should come out of the other end in a few years and we will not be talking about this. Sorry, the word just slipped my mind. No, I'm not saying that. So then the structural deficit.

And so it took me a little while to get to that. And so I say to the public, read this report a couple times. Listen to the meetings, find meetings to go to, talk to your neighbors and talk to, you know, neighbors in town in person and listen and realize there is a solution, but it is going to come with our work together.

So I'm not going to repeat everything that was really said here, and I agree with most of what was said. Liz, you commented something about the emotion was out of it, and I think that's extremely important. because we do need to make decisions that are for 25,000 people and not just for the people who tend to call us. or who we think are the voice because of social media and Facebook posts and the PTO parents and your social groups. of what the decisions are. So there are difficult decisions. We can say, well, OK, you own a home, and now you're going to pay. We're going to move the tax over for trash. I have kids, but we have a swimming gym that's free. Is that a place that we still can afford to be at? if the schools are your passion because you have kids in the schools and that's your passion and that's where everybody gets emotional. The schools are gonna close. The schools aren't that good. They are really good. and the teachers are being asked to do a lot and so are our employees being asked to do a lot.

It is a motion and we have to take a motion out of making decisions. and that can be very, very difficult when you're talking about the future of this town because how do you move forward? The only way we can pay our bills is by what we charge our residents. So there are some grants. We get some income from the state, which, where do they get it from? Us, right? It's just a big circle in the taxes, so. The emotion needs to be taken out. We do need to listen to our communities, but we also have to lead when we're sitting in these positions as well. And that is something that after I read it over and over again, that we could say make consistent fees go up every three years so that residents know that we're going to be addressing things.

Restaurants know that we're going to be addressing things, health fees, all that. continuing overtime and staffing. Maybe we have to look at that. Gradually aligning health insurance. I don't know what that would cost us to actually move health insurance. I went through it. How many years ago did we move from 90 to 80? That was very difficult, very expensive. I'm not suggesting these things, right? We have the facilities master plan that's going to be starting, and I think that that's a great step. And, you know, financial forecasts. But a lot of us sitting at these tables are going to have to learn how to say no We can't do it. That might sound great, but we cannot do it. That's my opinion on this and moving out the emotion. and what's right on paper and how we're gonna get through it right now. Because there are a lot of parents, you said how many kids are on SNAP in the schools.

I read that. It was amazing, and I think that there's a lot of people in this town who, they lose their job tomorrow, and they're going to be right in line for that as well. So it's a difficult time right now. Thank you.

I just have one quick thought based on Catherine's question. Just like we're saying we don't have to do all of these things, all of these options, There also might be options out there that haven't been thought of. We shouldn't limit ourselves to thinking this is our only roadmap. And I don't know if Brady or Leon are Googling where those ideas should go to, but we're starting the budget process. So whether it's FinCon or the finance department, if there are good ideas out there, I think as we move forward with the survey and then the public engagement that's going to happen next, it's important for all of us not to just be the no people. I won't do that. I won't do that. I won't do that. So if you have another idea, let's hear them. Thanks.

I just want to add one thing. You mentioned about FinCom being very involved. I had done some research, and there are some towns that actually FinCom meets monthly. year-round. I hate to say that. Because it is such an important component in our budget decision and in your perspectives that you bring to the table as well, too. So, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you everybody. Quick thing, at the beginning of this we actually said that the Microsoft wasn't looking at the town school budget and that was going to be a future one. Has that started and when can we see potentially different That's one thing. I've been very hopeful of the page to throw, which is kind of circumventing Proposition 2 1⁄2, because we keep the money in the levy, and then we need a little bit to ease. I'm glad to see that you... acknowledged that that's what's happening. And then finally,

So yeah, the purview of the Collins Report was on the town side. But there were portions that definitely affect the school side, right? and I want to say the steps this year with the technology director position, I think we're actively looking for more opportunities where we can create collaboration and efficiency within government. And that's one way. Is it a huge part of the pot? No, but it's a part of it. And I think there's other areas that we're going to continue looking in that direction. Other areas that I think we have to realize is the other day we recognized that the school departments quarterly budget reporting. We've expanded it. It's more transparent and it's more thorough. The reason for that is that within the department a lot of work has been done the last couple years

to really go through it and align budgeting. And I'm sorry, I'm losing my word again. Actions. No. The budgeting and accounting practices. And through that, like, Dartmouth County has found ways that we can be more efficient and savings. And I would also say that the schools in the last few years have made significant cuts. including cutting a program last year. And part of that is part of this earlier collaboration that how can we identify what is our target goal and how can we build a budget that maintains our services at that goal without last minute going, oh, hold on a second, we have to meet this. And I think that's part of this process.

the more in-depth review you're talking about, we're advocating for a head model review from the town and that would take a more in-depth look at how our educational model, how we implement it, and is there a more efficient and economically beneficial way without compromising the education we're giving. of Providing. And I think that's really a tough situation because we're not only in the education part, we're also stewards of the buildings. and with the rising price with inflation, that's affecting every aspect of the school Morning Schools. It's not just paper and pencils. It's licensing fees for electronic programs that we use. It really goes in all ways. I appreciate the question, and I'd say I think the steps

and the school department to how can we provide the education that we want to provide for the best economic price for the town.

OK. Pending any other comments from board members? OK. Great.

Dan. Thanks. It's been observed that many of the ideas involve switching from tax revenue to fees. I think when you read the introduction of this report, you'll see that the Collins people were not focused on how do we reduce the increase in taxes. They were focused on how do we alleviate the structural deficit. and the structural deficit problem is that we are paying recurring bills with non-recurring revenue. And they define that as a problem. They were here three, four years ago and they defined that as a problem. So from their point of view, These ideas do solve the problem that they identified as our problem. Now, when our committee met, we kind of told them that while that was a necessary but not sufficient way to look at Dedham's problems, it was necessary to look at them.

And so they fulfilled that part of the mission. But the more important issue in my mind is how do we mitigate the increase in the tax rate? So we shouldn't be too critical of Collins suggesting Feeds for Recreation and Trash Pickup, because that actually does solve the problem that they find. OK, so they didn't miss the boat completely. Their ideas would help us get the stability we need to do the next steps, which we want to do. Secondly, on the notion of what's really going on in Dedham with the finances, I think it's important that those of us that have been involved in this are willing to speak the narrative to people. and the narrative is Dedham's not bloated. Each year in the Warren book, and we didn't do it this year, the number of people on the payroll was in the appendices.

And if you saw that, you would see that Dedham and the school department are not crazy adding people. And people think that. It reminds me, what I thought of this, Dennis, when you said people think we have an industrial base because they drive down Providence Highway. So people think that while tax has gone up, they must be just spending like drunken sailors. And that is not the case. If we look at reasonable increases in payroll, This is all in the column report. On the town side, a relatively equal increase on the school side and a 7% increase in health insurance add in the things you have no debate about, interest and pension, that's 85% of the budget. So there's not this vast pots of money out there. The people who go slicing unless they want to lay off staff.

Remember the last town meeting, when four relatively great town meeting members got up with their ideas of what to cut, nobody bought anything. So town meeting is part of the issue here. And town meeting, to echo Kameka's point, is everybody in town meeting has to have a plan, which they will stand on and fight if you try to cut it. Now I want to say one more thing about the school budget. Substantial increases in the school budget over what was recommended were not instituted by the school committee. They were added by town meeting, which is their prerogative. It is their prerogative to do that. And they did it. And they voted it by overwhelming them out. So part of what we're looking at now is conveying the message to town meeting as to what their responsibility is.

And it can't be a reflexive, we have to add any time the people who are trying to make things work, and that's these three groups. come up with an unpopular idea. So that's part of the responsibility of those of us who have been through this process and understand how it works. You have to be able to save the people on the street when they stop you. So, that's my two cents credit. And by the way, I dealt with the four people who tried to do that, but one of them on the finance committee said,

and others.

Great. Are there any other comments from board members? Otherwise, I'll wrap up with a few comments. I'll start by saying I think it's extremely helpful, as has been pointed out, that it is helpful to have an impartial party review our budgets, our programs, our services, our buildings. and provide us with an array of options as part of a strategy. And I do want to call out that this is called a strategy report. for our community to take back, have discussions about, and consider. and I'm so pleased that we're starting this now in a collaborative way and that we're discussing this with several months.

to have these discussions as decision makers and with community members before we need to start making decisions in our FY27 budget. It's no surprise to anyone here that we're in challenging economic times. All of us are aware that we have members in our community that are struggling to feed their families today. I'm sure none of us are immune from feeling strains on our pocketbooks. And yet, These are going to be difficult discussions for us to have. We love our library. We love our educational services. We value our public service, our roads. These are going to be difficult discussions for us to have.

And I want to make sure that it's understood that we are having discussions on both sides. of the budget here, all sides of the budget here. And I think as these, discussions roll out, it's important that we have engagement from our community members. Over the course of the winter and the spring, town will be rolling out a series of community conversations along with the results of the community survey as Liz brought up. and I think that's important to keep an ear out for and participate in. I think what's most important here is that we're having a conversation about who we are as a community what our vision is for our community, how we want to feel and live and experience our community,

and balance that with our budget availability and revenue opportunities. Because yes, we're going to need to make line-item decisions, but we're all really talking about how do we want to live and experience in our community? What are we willing to pay for? What might we be willing to delay or put off for a few years? or what types of changes that will be hard might we need to make, whether that's in services or how we think about economic development. And I think that that's the most important takeaway. we have a tangible list of starting options acting as a menu along with others that we know that we've had conversations about in our community. So let's look at those and think about how does this change my experience in my community? How does that change My experience with my wallet.

What is it that I want in order to feel like this community provides value to me? And I think it's important that we think of these discussions in that context. And so just going back to that strategy conversation, as Dimitri mentioned, this is one of several strategies discussions that we're having as a community and that's a really good place to be today. We have already started those, so we have a a path to a future that fits our budget and fits our needs. None of these options are magic wands. but they are all tools in our toolbox and we're going to need to leverage some of them. So I just encourage engagement. Think about what does this mean for our experience from where you are as a young family, as a senior, as someone who's trying to stay in your house.

are considering if you need to downsize, or whatever it is that you are struggling to put food on the table. These are all our experiences, and all of them are valid. But we need to strike a balance. So I'll end there and transition to public comments. For members of the public here or online, we'll have a two minute time limit. for public comment. We'll allow for up to an hour for that public comment to happen if we have a lot of participation. And again, knowing that this is the start of many conversations that will be open up to and everyone in our community over the next several months. So if anyone here in the room is interested in public comment, we'll start passing the mic around.

You got one right here.

Oh, the mic, yeah.

Make sure the light is red.

The light is now red.

Hi. Matt McGuire.

I'm the vice chair of the library trustees. And I actually don't want to talk about the library right now. I just want to talk about it. One of the things as I was listening to the conversations and also thinking about the work that I do as a product manager leader within a large organization, and there was a lot of conversation about the survey and about the emotionality of this and I think one of the key things as we go forward and one of the words that concerned me a little bit in the report was the idea of a consensus. And that this is not going to be a moment where we're going to arrive at consensus, because these are a lot of hard choices.

So one of the most important things as we go through this process going forward is really around the notion of trust.

And how do you build trust? and as you're having these discussions, I think one of the most important things about building trust is really setting context and clarity so as we're making How do we make sure that the rubric is clear about how we make these decisions as opposed How do we make sure that there is clarity around the process of making these decisions? Thanks.

Hi. Hi, Emma Reilly, 63 Lincoln Street. So I just wanted to make two quick comments, probably surprising no one about schools. So I heard someone ask why there were not some more critical decisions made about the school budget and I just want to say that you know in the same way that a pay as you throw trash program taxes the residents in another way. Those decisions have already been made at the schools because the school budgets have raised so many cuts over the years. My son started kindergarten this year at the ECEC. We love it. It's amazing, but our schools have faced cuts, have not been funded at service level for a number of years, and we were asked to send in

paper towels, hand sanitizer, crayons and you know I'm really lucky to be in a position where I spend a hundred dollars to make sure that My son's teacher had all those things and that other kids in the class who couldn't bring those things in would have extras. And I'll happily send those things in to my son's teacher all throughout the year whenever she needs more. you know the residents are already being taxed maybe just not in ways that everyone's family sees them in that same way that you were critical of pay as usual taxes I think the school budgets have been cut a lot and one thing I'd like to explore, really the only cut to the school budget that I'd like to explore is cut to our school facilities cost through new schools for our town and for our kids.

because right now we're paying an exorbitant amount of money to repair 120-year-old schools, the roof at the Oakdale School, the roof at the Riverdale School, and our kids deserve new schools, and in the long run it's going to save us money when we don't have to pay. for leaky roofs and haunted bathrooms in the basement of Brookdale and more costs. So I think that there really is a long-term cost savings there. I hope that we'll do the math and bear it out.

Hi, I'm Vivian Daly, Ames Street and Pichu Town meeting member. I have a lot of comments. I'm going to keep it brief. I would encourage all board members to read the full report as not all of the recommendations were listed as Brady mentioned. I know that there was a concern mentioned around taxing, increased taxes for residents and section 3.17 actually addresses that. proposing shifting tax burden to higher property homes. So homes worth over a million dollars would have a slightly higher tax rate versus homes worth less than a million dollars. And I don't think that was in the presentation. There are two things in, and I'd also like to echo that this is not a roadmap.

This is a list of suggestions and the board should also consider the community survey coming up for actually developing that roadmap. There were two things in the report, actually one thing I'll focus on that. I didn't see mentioned in the report and it's coming up a lot about town spending and I'm not hearing this addressed so I'm always hearing we either have to increase our or we have to have more of a tax base. I would like us to take a look at how we're assessing our commercial properties. I know that they're assessed differently than residential properties. I'm a little foggy on it still, but I think they're able to abate or reduce their assessment value based on their expenses to operate the property as well.

But for one example, the Russcraft property was sold in 2022 for almost $140 million. and the assessed value was only $40 million. So that is a huge difference of what we are taxing versus what it was sold for not that long ago. I did look to see if the Board of Assessors had meeting minutes online and they're not online and they're also not usually in these conversations so I'd just like us to consider involving the Board of Assessors as well. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm just like to speak on the, I heard there was a cut on the VSO. One percent of the country served in the military. I'm lucky enough to be that one percent. I think I'm the youngest veteran, one of the youngest veterans in Dedham, and Joe He is the best when it comes to getting us our services. There's only 250 of us in Dedham based on percentages. I'd just like to say if we can keep at least one, we keep Joe. Thank you.

You can leave that on.

I just want to thank the committee, especially Josh, Michelle, Dan Driscoll, Liz O'Donnell, you've done a fantastic job with your leadership. Thanks to everyone in this room, everyone who's online. I think we need to encourage our neighbors especially those we don't typically see at meetings or see petitioning our officials appointed and elected to get involved in and make your opinion heard I don't think we can dismiss anything out of hand that's been suggested by the committee or by our consultant. I have one comment and then a couple of questions. maybe they can be answered now, maybe at another time, but one comment I had is the suggestion that we should be using the Robin Reyes Fund for anything but major capital projects.

We depleted Robin Reyes for this beautiful building we're in now in Fretown Hall. It took a hit, of course, during COVID. We couldn't build it up. and I think it's critical that we build Robin Reyes back up for the very large capital projects we're gonna be facing down the line. One quick question, maybe Brady you can answer this. If the town taxed at its full tax capacity, What would the average tax increase be for the average household, the average assessed value along your debt?

Yeah, we're holding, we're providing comments, public comments, but not to a discussion tonight. But there will be plenty of opportunity and we'll record the questions.

Yeah, I would just say that it would be helpful to have an answer to some of these questions. The only other question I had was the $700,000 I believe it was the increased local tax estimate. I'm not really sure what that means, so if at a point someone could explain what it means to increase an estimate and how that adds to the town's bottom line. Thank you.

Anyone else in the room looking to provide public comment? Yes, in the back corner.

Good evening, my name is Carol L. Kurdi. I live at 34 Topheld. I've been in Dedham for about 15 years now. I've had children that have gone through the school system, still going through the school system. I've read the report thoroughly. I also work at the Dedham Public Library, but that's not why I'm here tonight. If you read the report from front to end, and I did read it twice, there's a lot of content in there and I think it was very smart on the town side to have an objective opinion from an outside source to look at how we've got here but there's a couple of comments that I just wanted to make. I think that the narrative was created by the group on how we can shift our focus to fix our problems but I also think that taking away from anything that has to do with education.

Because I do have a background in analytical projections, I think we need to not just look at the past mistakes, we have to look at how we can fix it moving forward. Project 20 years. Don't just project one year. Because right now, even if we're looking at closing down a library, We cannot take away from the educational tools that we have here in Dedham. We have to increase them, right? And I know it's a very difficult position that you are all in, especially the committee members, because you're the front line, right? We just live here. I've seen my taxes go up a lot over the last 15 years. And I understand why. Because we live in a very safe community. We have amazing services for our children. We have amazing services for us. and we live in a safe environment. Those products are kind of like not really thought about when we look at these reports because it impacts us on an emotional level.

So removing the emotion, I think the most important thing that we can do right now for your moving forward Look ahead of time. keep the education system strong for our growing kids in our education system because they're the future. They're the ones who are gonna be sitting in this room 20 years from now. So I highly recommend that, objectively speaking, we have to look at the report and One thing I do want to comment on is The long-term suggestions weren't really like listed for numbers I think we have to give those out to the community as well so that when you do come up with your solutions they're diplomatic not just the residents but you know across the board Thank you.

Any other comments in the room? Okay, I can take comments from online. Hey, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, I'm at Reilly and Lincoln Street.

First, a comment about the library.

We can't shut down the Ithaca library. That library is a critical source of programming for kids, books, toys for kids. It's really enough already with the lack of investment in facilities and programs that benefit our kids most of all. Let's cut services or raise fees in areas that don't disproportionately impact children. to the gentleman who said earlier that he wants to see the school budget make more difficult cuts. Hard pass on that, please. having said that I think it's great that closing the Endicott library was explored as an option and we can see that the data does not support closing it it would only save us 200k so next week we

to see someone on Facebook complaining about, say, we proposed trash feet.

And they say, does this count as being two libraries? Couldn't we close the Endicott Library instead? Any one of us can say, yes, it was explored, and yes, we do need that library that accounts for 50% of children's programming, and it would only save us 200K off the budget. and that data is really hard to argue against. So that's the power of data and that's what we need more of in this town and I hope to see that taken up elsewhere in town by other boards, the facilities master plan, et cetera. Finally, I want to say anyone who's upset about possibly losing the library or having to pay for trash or losing elementary school band or stopping or encouraging certain proposed commercial developments, please take the passion you have for whatever cause matters to you and direct that same passion toward engaging with the reality of this report and working towards a solution for the betterment of our town. It will take all of us working together, and it's really not enough to just say someone smarter than me will figure it out. It's also not enough to say these options all suck.

We know that. The town's financial situation sucks.

any other anyone else online public comments okay excellent thank you so much We can go adjourn each of our boards. Thank you for coming and participating tonight and keep your ears open for future feedback sessions.

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

Hearing motion and second, all those in favor say aye.

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

Thank you.