All Board Meeting October 6, 2025

Hi everybody. We're going to get started. Thank you very much for coming. Either I hold it or I bend down, so you have to tell me which works best. So I'm calling the October 6th. 2025 meeting to order oh my goodness and also this meeting of the select board if there is another board here that has a quorum we'd appreciate please if you would call your board to order Nikki Yep, Ronnie? Oh, anybody else have a quorum? Okay, so this meeting is being held at the Great Hall at Town Hall 525 Washington Street with the following select board members in attendance, Tom Ulfelder, Colette O'Frank,

Beth Sullivan Woods, and myself, Marjorie Freiman. Kenny Largess is in New York today. The meeting is being live-streamed at wellesleymedia.org. and broadcast live on Verizon Channel 40 and Comcast Channel 8 and will also be available for later viewing on Wellesley Media. We welcome the chance to hear from all boards tonight and as we know it's important that we all hear from one another what our greatest budget drivers are for this coming year. We know that we heard from Colette in May at our May 14th all-board meeting that it's going to be a tight budget year and that we're not expecting strategic initiatives or new FTEs this year. We've had several, a few budget discussions already. Our first one was in August when Tiana Moreau came and presented the FY25 year end.

To us, tonight is our second conversation. We'll have another meeting tomorrow and we will vote the budget on the guidelines on October 16th. As Colette also started to intone last year, we are one town, and we're all going to work together to provide the best services and services and everything we can to the town within our financial limitations. So to keep the meeting moving smoothly, we ask that you take a seat near the front and be ready when you would like to present to the board. and we're going to start with a discussion on anticipated cost drivers with Megan and then Delores Hamilton from HR and David Cornwitz from the Retirement Board and then we'll open it up to all the other boards. So, Megan.

Thanks, Marjorie. Last year we were in good shape because we borrowed the podium from the library. Ours is still on order, so we failed to get that tonight, so apologize for folks. who like me will fidget because you don't have anything to put your hands on. So we have some major FY27 budget drivers this year. We have sent, I will send this deck to everybody immediately following the meeting. and we do have hard copies up here of the updated FY27 budget submission timeline and this is inclusive of some new dates from with regards to the advisory public hearing as well as the finalized dates for the school budget proposals. And both this calendar and the school budget meeting calendar have been put up on the start of our 2026 budget book. webpage online.

So the major drivers this year, number one is union negotiations. It's all an unknown. So the town has nine unions and the schools have five unions and all will be bargaining. It's our goal. We're going to strive to get to collective bargaining agreements. prior to the start of annual town meeting but inevitably we get some done we get some that carried over and some may end up at either the fall special town meeting so all town Collective bargaining appropriations have to go to town meeting for the appropriation. The schools do not because of their budgetary system. That's just within the confines of their budget. So that approval doesn't go to town meeting. unless they needed a further appropriation. So that's the major cost driver because it's largely an unknown.

Under the townwide financial plan, there was a projection for the out years of a 3% growth in both town and schools. and that's largely what I think you're going to see in terms of the guidelines. We will have likely some individual guidelines based upon the modification to the class and comp study. So under that modification, we had a number of exempt employees become non-exempt employees. So what does that mean? It means they're on steps now. So we can't just give everyone a blanket 3% because we have all of our non-exempt employees on steps. We had a six-step panel become a 12-step panel with a smaller differential between each step. Each step is at 2.75. So as a for instance the building department is a perfect example of this. So where we used to have all but an admin be exempt employees and have one basically non-exempt employee, which would be the admin,

all of our inspectors under the FLSA rules as part of the new class and comp have become non-exempt employees and so they're all on steps so automatically you're going to be over three percent for our very small departments Our larger departments can obviously accommodate that, but our small ones are going to need individualized guidelines on personal services. The major driver that is a significant unknown and we really won't have the finalized numbers until February is health insurance. Health Insurance, I'm sure with your own corporations or in your own life you've experienced significant increase and we're anticipating upwards of a 14%. It could be more, it could be slightly less, but that is the current projection. Wellesley within the West Suburban Health Group is the first community to go to town meeting.

and so when I've said what's a conservative estimate, they agree at 14%. Medicare rates are slightly different because they run on a calendar year rather than a fiscal year. So we actually set the rates at West Suburban on Thursday of this week for our Medicare retirees, Medicare eligible retirees. And that is looking at 12%. So it's 11 to 12% for Medicare. And there's a chance we may use some of the reserves at West Suburban to bring that down to maybe 9.9%. But again, it's a significant driver. That 14% anticipated cost of health insurance is $3 million.

and that's what's largely driving if everyone came in right at 3%, including all the union negotiations, it's currently a $1.9 million deficit. the select board that was part of an agenda item maybe two weeks ago. We're continuing to refine that. We looked at also as part of the budget drivers our cash capital. Costs, and under our capital financing plan, the board's talked about this at recent meetings, we have a range of 6.2 to 6.8% of revenue. and so we're aiming at the low end of the range to give as much flexibility to operational budgets. Last year we came in at about 6% because of the push and pull of projects, pulling some projects out and appropriating free cash to those. but we also last year had a lower inside the levy payment. So we've done some recent borrowing.

We will be borrowing the Warren HVAC project. Weston Road, even though we applied free cash last year, we have to borrow about $3.6 million for that. and whatever occurs at the special town meeting regarding the RDF admin building. So that's gonna push up our inside the levy payment. We're gonna, as is, have to cut cash capital. by just under a million dollars, a little over $900,000 to meet that 6.2% guideline. The other real unknown is the economic uncertainty. So as we reported in May, the legislative delegation was very clear. FY26, no problem. We have the funds appropriated. We have been in negotiation obviously with the federal government in terms of all the grants that have been frozen, et cetera, largely have come back. The problem is the reappropriation. So as we look at FY27, the unknown is going to be what the federal cuts will be.

And that's obviously the school department has the most federal implications in that. The state government is, we're getting an update from our legislative delegation tomorrow night. Senator Crean and Representative Peish will be joining the select board for that discussion. So we're continuing to look at the potential loss of state government funding just unilaterally impacting likely all departments because there's a trickle-down effect to that. We've also been fortunate over the past really three years to have significant interest earnings. We had a significant windfall essentially when we borrowed. We borrowed a lot of money for the new elementary schools at a time when rates were really low. and so as soon as we got that cash, the rates spiked to about 5% and so we've made tens of millions of dollars off that. and that's winding down.

So our interest rates even from looking at the past three months have already dropped by two basis points and the feds continue to lower interest rates. So on the borrowing end of things, good news for us because we have some big projects coming up. On the interest earning side of things, we're going to slow down in terms of what we're making, and we've also expended most of the cash we've had on hand. So as Marjorie had indicated, we're expecting a very tight budget year. Our goal is to maintain all of our personnel positions. We are looking at cost of living adjustments now. The select board will be voting a recommendation for non-union employees to the HR board who will be making their vote on Thursday. initial reports. I'll have Dolores go through that in terms of what cost of living projections are showing. For non-union employees, we also have two things. So for our

Non-exempt employees, we have steps, which are about 2.75%. And for our exempt employees, we have the merit pay plan. In past years, that has funded between 2.5 and 3%. additional pay to COLA based upon how an individual's performed and been evaluated as part of the matrix. We are hopeful to have both cost of living and merit pay this year again. This would be the third or fourth year that we've done that to try and keep our personnel up so not falling back like we have in in past years to try and keep folks towards the median. And so it's going to be my recommendation, which has already been given in the Friday night mail to the board for a 2% COLA, because I think if we go higher than that, it's unaffordable. and maintain the merit pay plan where it's at. So we continue to wait for the October state outlook.

Tomorrow will be informative from our delegation on what they're seeing. We're also very fortunate for the fact that our delegation are leaders in both the House and Senate. Senate, and so I think really have a good read on the pulse of what's happening. We have also been alerted. Some of the funding we've received has been delayed. I don't want to say on hold. Not the HR policies. We're still pushing forward with that. We did receive an earmark for... $50,000 for this year to conduct a series of, to hire a consultant, to bring up a number of our HR policies. We have six that are going to special town meeting, but we have about 20 more that the HR staff and HR board has been working on.

But we have some digitization and some other earmarks that have been delayed given the unknown pressures coming down from the federal government. So with that good news, I'm going to turn over to Dolores to just give you an update on what she's been seeing with regards to COLA and other economic pressures.

Good evening. I am frantically collecting data. I'm pestering all my colleagues in other communities to get what they're looking at for their union COLA as well as for their non-union COLA. Right now we are seeing a very broad range from 1.5 in Brookline, 2 in Natick, 3 in Dedham. So we're kind of waiting to fill in all these gaps. Gaps, and come up with something when we vote on Thursday night. So that will be our big vote on Thursday night. then we're also looking at the pay policies that have been in existence with the pay system now moving to our MGT system. So we will be rewriting some of those policies. So there is a lot going on that we'll be doing between now and even Thursday night. Thank you.

Good evening. David Cornwich, Chair of the Retirement Board. I've been in that role since 1992, so I have a little experience on these matters. I'm going to provide you with an update today on pension and OPEB funding and appropriations. It's all good news. It's all, in fact, exceptional news. So starting from our prior valuation, we do valuations every two years. The preceding valuation was done as of 1-1-23, and that was used for FY25 and FY26 appropriation amounts, for both pension and OPEB. On pension, 1-1-23, we had $50 million of unfunded liabilities. and we had a funded status of 84%, meaning 84 cents in the dollar to cover all of the liabilities. An unfunded liability is essentially liabilities that you expect to pay in the future, not covered

on a present value basis by current assets. So 50 million in the hole, much like a mortgage. Updated results as of 1-1-25, the unfunded liability shrank to 22 million and we were 93% funded at that date. Now that 93% funding and the unfunded liability are actually fairly conservative numbers because our board uses relatively conservative assumptions, and I'll explain why in a few moments, relative to most of the other municipalities in the state. If we were to use the same assumptions that the state uses in most municipalities Paladins use, would actually be funded at 105% on pension. So I believe we have the best funded retirement system in the Commonwealth. As a result of that improvement in funded status, the board decided to keep our appropriation level from FY26 amounts.

rather than increasing it 3%, which is what our prior schedules anticipated, meaning that expected savings, it's a level dollar, but we were expecting it to grow, keeping it level. We've got a $350,000 savings in FY27, about a $700,000 savings in FY28, so on and so forth by keeping it level until we reach full funding. we believe will be fully funded on our conservative basis in FY 30 or hopefully even earlier. and then we're anticipating further reductions in pension appropriations starting out at about half a million dollars a year. That's over and above keeping things level. Perhaps a million in year two once we reach full funding. million five in year three, and then analyzing it. Our goal is to reach 110% funded on our conservative basis.

to be able to withstand fluctuations in market values. We learned the hard way in 2007 with the market crash that once you take money out of the system and out of the budget, it's extremely difficult to get it back in. So that's why we're conservative on our assumptions. That's why we want to build up a little bit of a cushion. But another reason that we're conservative on our assumptions is because the plan is relatively mature. By that I mean more than half of the liability is attributable to retirees and pay status. So 50%. So I'd like to say we don't mind paying for benefits once, but we don't want to have to pay for them twice or even three times. So we think we need to take some investment risk off the table. So what we decided to do back in April is move $30 million, or about 10% of the portfolio, into the fixed income sleeves of the funds that we invest in.

we currently have all the money invested with the state's PRIT fund which is over a hundred billion dollar fund and they're using some you know pretty I won't call them aggressive, but a portfolio that's run much like an endowment because for most of the communities, they've got to dig out of a hole. We don't need to, so we want to take some investment risk off the table. Two and a half million a month for 30 months. that comes at a cost on an expected basis of about 20 to 30 basis points of expected return with giving up But at the same time, we're reducing the risk and volatility of the plan and protecting ourselves from a downside perspective. The board also approved to increase the cola base for our retirees. Our retirees do not get a full cola on their entire benefit. It's only based on an amount up to what we call the COLA base. Presently it's at $21,000.

And they don't get the full amount of cost of living adjustments. It's limited by statute to 3%. So they only get 3% up to $21,000. Whether or not their benefit is $30,000 or $40,000 a year and whether or not inflation is 6%, 8%, or 10%, it's capped at 3%. So we've been taking steps over the past 10 or 15 years to gradually move up that COLA base, understanding the limitations of the inflation adjustments we can make. And right now we're able to fully fund that without any increase in our appropriations. Keeping it level allows us to fully fund that because we're using a conservative interest rate to discount the liability, 6%. We expect that 75% of the time we'll be able to outperform the 6% that we assume

and a one or one and a half percent outperformance is sufficient to fully fund that cost of living adjustment base that we're requesting for the lifetime of all active and current retirees. So it's pretty significant. Switching gears to OPEB. It's also a very positive story today. 1-1-23, our prior valuation, we had 39 million of unfunded liability representing about a 73% funded position. Fast forward to our most recent valuation, which is used for FY27 and 8. 27 million of unfunding, about 83% funded. If we use the same assumptions once again that the state uses for its plans and most other municipalities, OPEB would be funded at 93%. Most other communities, in fact I would say 90% or more of other communities are not funded at greater than 20 to 40%.

We are far and away better funded than any other municipality. for the same reason that we're in such a good position on pension, because we had the foresight, and my predecessors did, to start funding pension in the 70s before anybody else did, and we started funding OPEB in 2007 before anyone else did. We even were the town that got the special legislation that allowed us to pre-fund OPEB. As you may recall, the funding appropriation for OPEB started out at about 3.3 million for the town. At our last valuation, because we were making such progress. And this is the town's responsibility, not the pension board's responsibility. The town decided to reduce that by $100,000 a year. so from 3.3 to 3.2 to 3.1 and capped it at 3 million in terms of a reduction until we could see the results of the most recent valuation. We now have those results.

they're more favorable than expected. Starting in FY28, we're anticipating reducing funding by an additional 250,000 a year until we reach a floor of $2 million. And we'll revisit that $2 million in a couple years to see whether or not we can make further reductions in that. My hope is that We should be able to reduce that $2 million, hopefully significantly. But that's not the end of the story for OPEB. It actually gets even better. Once we get to full funding and we can start drawing assets out of the trust, and this is, I don't want to get too technical from an actuarial perspective, but the, the governmental accounting standards boards require the actuaries when they're doing their OPEB evaluations to consider the real claims costs for early retirees. Because the early retirees and the actives, they pay the same premiums for their health care.

Same plans, same premiums. but we know that retirees have higher claims. They get sicker, they need to go to the doctor more often. They have true cost that's higher. the actuarial liabilities anticipate those larger costs for those pre-65 retirees. So once we start drawing down trust assets since we anticipated having enough assets to cover those higher claim costs, if we drew that down, it's more than sufficient to pay the premiums for that group. by about a million dollars. So once full funding is achieved, we're anticipating an incremental million dollars of saving Over and above elimination of the two to three million dollars that's currently earmarked for OPEB. So at least four million dollars a year of annual savings. Now, there's also another opportunity for even much more significant savings.

There's a bill in front of the House now. It's in the House Healthcare Finance Committee. that I helped draft, Alice Pysh has sponsored. It's been reintroduced for a couple few years now. I am hoping that it'll finally get traction this year. and it has to do with how healthcare is delivered for our Medicare eligible retirees. It's just a changing landscape without getting into all of the nuances, it involves using the individual Medicare marketplace rather than the group insurance marketplace and a different funding mechanism by using health reimbursement accounts, rather than a premium reimbursement model. The law needs to be changed to allow for that. Long story short is that the individual Medicare marketplace can provide equal or better benefits

at significantly reduced costs. No one gets harmed. Everyone is made whole now and into the future. That is built into the changes in the law. the result for Wellesley if this gets passed is that number one immediately you'd see about five million dollars in OPEB savings because the supplemental appropriation would go away the plan would be 120% funded. We'd be drawing down benefits, reaping those additional million dollars of savings. So probably a 30 plus million dollar decrease in liability. but equally importantly, if not more importantly, each retiree could save on average $4,000 a year. because of the efficiencies of the individual marketplace, which are larger risk pools, more competitive transparent pricing, more choice so that people aren't being overinsured. select the insurance that's right for their personal circumstance.

The individual marketplace has been in effect for 20 years. The group insurance model under the present statute was designed 50 years ago before the advent of the individual marketplace. and my goal and my passion has been for the past four or five years to try to get Beacon Hill to realize the benefits of it, nobody gets hurt, everybody wins, retirees win, the town wins, taxpayers win by the significant savings out there. and I think there's growing support for it, especially since what you heard tonight, healthcare costs are escalating astronomically. The individual marketplace provides much more stable growth. and even if it grows at the same rate, which it has a history of not doing, a 12% or 14% increase on half the cost is still a lot of savings. So that's my update.

I'm happy to take any questions if there are any, but probably.

So our plan tonight is similar to last year. the on-deck circle and we'd love for folks to come up and tell us what you believe the cost drivers are in your department and I should have started with this. I also want to introduce to those who have not seen her for a while or maybe not met her, our new chief financial officer, Rachel DeRoach, who's also here tonight. And Rachel was with the town for 12 years. moved away to Arizona and is back as CFO and we couldn't be more excited to have her. So we'd love to hear from folks. Oh, Rachel, stand up so that they can see you. Now you know who to look for. And Rachel's been making the rounds basically since she got here, so she's already got a good handle on the budget and the pressures. So whoever wants to come up, feel free.

And like last year, please let us know what you anticipate for both your personal services and expense drivers. and for those folks who didn't participate last year the select board then aggregated those and as they looked at the individual guidelines tried to accommodate everyone as much as possible. now arguably I think we got just about everybody last year in some shape or form and you know I can't say that is going to be true again this year but nonetheless having a list to evaluate makes that easier.

Hi, Mike O'Neill, chair of the Wellesley Housing Development Corp., soon to be the AHT, the Affordable Housing Trust. I believe the select board is... are scheduled to hopefully vote approval tomorrow night. So we're very excited about that, looking forward to kind of moving to our next chapter. Some of the things we'll be working on is a work plan development for the AHT. basically through the fall and the winter. We do have some funds available. We have about a million dollars available of funds. Once we become the HT and some of the CPC funds are transferred over, we're sitting there just shy of a million. So we'll have some funds to help develop that work plan. one of the key drivers for us, at least in the short term, is to partner with the housing authority

and you know one of the things we'd like to be doing maybe partnering with some of the other committees in town is to do some form of a study down by Barton Road we're sort of looking to to work closely with them on Barton Road and Morton Circle. So we might be looking for some additional funds or some additional support. to look at that as a more comprehensive development, not just necessarily Barton Road, but that whole area down there. We've had a lot of interest in 156 Weston Road. We did back away from that when we were going through the approval of the A.H.T. because it was very politically charged, but we'd like to kind of bring that back in. I don't know if the political environment has changed a whole lot, with the North 40, but we'd really like to see that property renovated and at least someone in the property. We had discussed doing some subdivision We sort of backed away from that.

So we'd like that to be something that over the next year is sort of brought to the forefront. We're also considering a small grant program, Needham Town of Needham has a small grant program where they loan out or give out actually small funds for disabled and you know, elderly for fixing their homes. It might be a ramp to get into their house or a roof that needs to be fixed that they just can't afford. There are certain requirements We are finding from them that it is fairly labor-intensive with regard to staff, so I don't know where that fits in, given some of the things that Megan had shared earlier, but that's another program that we're looking at trying to fund and move forward. and I think that's about it. Thank you.

This is something new in this venue. So good to see you all. Good evening. I'm Dave Cohen, your DPW director. I'm joined tonight by Michael McManus, our newest Board of Public Works member. And in the back, I see Jeff Wexler as well. They're not sitting together. so no deliberation going on there. Got a quorum, yep. So a couple highlights from our budget. First on the tax impact side, personal services, as Megan mentioned, we have going into the last year of our collective bargaining, so we don't have any assumptions for next year yet. Although one thing that we are looking at is we do have some plans. We have no plans to increase staff this year, but we are going through a process of reviewing all of our job descriptions, and there may be some reclassifications that we'll have to deal with. That may happen this year. but it might continue into next year as well. On the expense side, something that many of you might have heard in the past is a fairly routine thing.

We're in the last year of a five year contract for trash and our cost increase for the per ton cost increases about 6%. So that is about $60,000 that we'll be seeing in FY27. We also, across all of our budgets, we're seeing for materials and services increases that might be as much as $50,000. We're looking to balance those things out and sort of absorb them where we can. but that's something that we'll be taking a closer look at in the next couple months. One other thing that might be considered a strategic initiative, I'm not sure exactly how we'll look at this, is the Baylor Replacement Fund. And this year we're looking to replace the Baylor and therefore we'll be looking to replenish the fund going forward. So we'll have a decision to make about at what level do we want to do that. Right now we're carrying a placeholder of an increase of about $50,000 for that and that's something that we'll take a closer look as we go through the budget process.

For cash capital, one of the initiatives that we're looking at right now is with sidewalk improvements. And so we are looking at an increase of about $200,000 for mobility and access improvements throughout the sidewalk network. And then on the borrowing side of things, a couple of large road reconstruction projects. The lower half of Great Plain Ave is on tap for FY27. And we also have the Wellesley Square improvements that we've got on tap. And one other project, believe it or not, that's coming up is the high school turf replacement. And so we're 10 years in on that project. And so it's time to take a look at that and potentially replace the turf next year. On the water enterprise fund, some more significant increases coming our way. First of all, just some operating budget increases for both water and sewer through the MWRA, 3% increase on both. So on the water side, that's about $200,000.

And on the sewer side, that's about $110,000 that we're seeing as estimates so far. More dramatically is our cost that we're seeing to address PFAS. And so we have design and construction needed to comply with DEP and EPA regulations. And in FY27, this includes $10 million for permanent treatment at the Morse's Pond Treatment Plant. It also includes $1.7 million each for Wellesley Ave and for Rosemary Longfellow for interim design and pilot testing. It also includes $800,000 for permanent treatment design at Wellesley Ave. And then $8 million in FY28 and 29 for permanent treatment at Wellesley Ave and Longfellow. So PFAS is going to be with us for a while. There's going to be some significant impacts in FY27 particularly. And as a result, we're expecting some significant increases in water rates. starting next year.

We're estimating about 20% to pay for these increases so far. On the good side of the ledger, we've started to receive some of the dollars through the PFAS settlements. and right now we've got about a million dollars coming our way to the town. I think we've already received about $300,000 and then there's another $600,000 or $700,000 coming very shortly and so that'll go to offset some of those future costs that we have. We've got it today. So some money coming in. It's not going to cover all the costs, but it'll help offset it a little bit. And that's all the big ticket items to talk about for now.

I feel like I'm a bad spelling bee. Hi, I'm Jay McHale. I'm chair of the Natural Resources Committee. made sense I go right after Dave. Most of our projects are capital related. We try to use CPC funding whenever we can. We've got a number of things coming up. The biggest coming up, of course, is Morris's Pond. Rebuild down there. We're also looking at working with Select Board on the Clock Tower and War Memorial to the extent that we can use CPC funds versus going after cash capital would be of course preferred. We also do maintenance on, I shouldn't say maintenance, but improvements to our parks, and we're currently looking at Schofield and Ouellette for improvements, but those shouldn't be too significant. And then finally, White's Pond, we're doing the analysis, we should be able to Be able to give a report on that before the end of the year and see what the next steps are there.

But as of this point, it doesn't look like it would be a capital draw as much as just the town willingness to accept the property. So that's where we're at.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Arthur Garrity, Chair of the Board of Assessors. For fiscal 2027, we expect our department to be, again, very busy. The assessor's department is actually pretty small. We have one full-time employee who serves as our director of assessing, Ellen Moeller, who is here this evening. We have a full-time principal assessor, and we have two full-time office staff. and that's our department. There's not been an increase in the number of personnel in the assessing department for at least 30 years as far as we can tell. Actually, That's as far back as we remember. It might be older than that. During the time, the workload for the department has increased appreciably, maybe even significantly.

That's due to the increase in the number of residential properties that need to be assessed each year. increase in the number of commercial properties that need to be assessed, increase in the number of motor vehicle excise transactions which we track and process, and an increase in the number of building permits all of which results in additional workload for the department. Just to give you a little context, in in the town, we assess that the single-family residential properties themselves are worth a little over $14 billion. and consisting of slightly over 7,300 different properties which need to be assessed every year.

our workload includes inspecting these properties on a periodic basis so that about every 10 years Each one of those 7,300 properties will have been visited by someone from the department and inspected in order to assure that our information upon which we formulate the values for those properties is substantiated and accurate. So for 2027, we expect again to be busy, but with some new projects as well. We are hoping to upgrade and update our computer assisted mass appraisal system.

which is a database and reporting product that allows us to wrestle with all of this data that we collect and produce meaningful and again fair and accurate evaluations. The current database that we use has been serving the town for approximately 30 years. and it does have some limitations as you might expect for a software product which is when it was first written was using now antiquated software and hardware. So we are going to be coming to the special town meeting in November

to request a capital budget item for replacement and upgrading of the software that we use. Incidentally, that's also the recommendation of the Department of Revenue, whose regulations we adhere to and are bound by. So once we have the software in place, we will be using the We will be generating new kinds of data and information to plug into it. As an example, there are approximately 300 commercial properties in town.

And we are charged by the Department of Revenue with coming up with a fair valuation methodology for all of those properties. and historically what we've done in order to base our valuations, we look at comparable sales of commercial properties and we look at The stream of income that's generated from those properties. We get income and expense information. We look at it all very closely, and we come up with valuations based upon assumptions about the... The stream of income. But there's another methodology that the Department of Revenue wants us to bring into the mix. Namely, what would it cost to replace all of these properties?

somewhat like what happens when you take out insurance on your house you can get replacement cost coverage and so we're going to be looking to get replacement cost information for the commercial properties. And in addition to that work, we have approximately 650 condominium units in town. and none of those properties, I don't mean the complex, I mean the number of units, none of those units has had inspection information entered into our database. So on both of those, the commercial inspections and the condominium inspections, we need to do more. And the Department of Revenue has told us as much.

So the budget driver for us during 2027 will be to hire a temporary part-time inspector to go out into the field and collect this information so that we can plug it into our, we hope, new and updated computer assisted mass appraisal operation and all in furtherance of more accurate and Fairer or ongoing fair appraisal methodology. So that's the first one. We don't have... a number to associate with that new hire just yet, but we expect to have it as the budget process rolls out.

and the other budget driver for us reflects the fact that valuations of commercial properties mostly in the last several years has been fluctuating. when we all can understand that during the years of COVID and then coming out of COVID and that commercial vacancies have risen and fallen and with them the evaluations of properties. Sometimes when we make an opinion, the taxpayer doesn't agree. I don't get it. But sometimes they disagree with us. And that triggers... on our part, the need to hire third party expert appraisers in order to defend the valuations that we have come forward with.

And so the other budget driver is that we anticipate seeking to increase our budget line item for fee appraisals. And that's it.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Anne Howley. I'm the vice chair of the library trustees. My first would be a quick board announcement for anyone here who hasn't already heard. We have two new trustees that we welcomed at our last meeting, Maria Ashbrook and Inouye Banerjee. We said goodbye to Ann Rapoport and to Lin-Chi Lee, both of whom moved out of town. So Anoy and Maria will fill the positions until the spring election. And we're very pleased to have them, though very sorry to lose Lynchy and Ann. All right, on to the budget. Okay, the operating and personal services. I will follow Megan and everyone else in the room to say that negotiations are what we're waiting for as far as one of the major drivers of what will happen on our personal services.

The other is that the library will be consolidating two part-time library assistant positions into a single position. This will involve no change in hours and it will involve no change in salary. But we've been advised that this is a good way to proceed on this particular one. As far as expenses, we're looking at a potential 3% to 5% increase in our technological services. This, I'm sure, is something that is familiar to most people in the room as well. the cost of licensing, the cost of contracts, service providers, sort of down the line, continues to go up. and for cybersecurity including and we simply have to keep up in order to remain technologically in good shape. So that's really all I have to say, but thank you again for having this this year.

I think it was well received last year, and I think it's really nice to have everybody in the same room for even a night. Thank you.

Hello. Hello. I'm in this room and I tell everyone to speak into it, so I follow my own advice. My name is Eric Arbini. I'm the planning director here in the town. and thanks for having all of us here tonight we have one planning board member here the rest are at a planning board meeting just one we don't have any staff increases or anything like that it was just we're embarking on a master plan next year in the capital budget. And we had about $300,000 set aside. We'll be looking for an increase. I've been talking to some consultants, and I think 400,000 would be the better number. for that, and that's a capital cost. Master Plan would look at town-wide, looks at housing, transportation, infrastructure. and Open Space, that sort of thing. So it would be an 18th to 24 month process, wouldn't kick off until we had the money.

the last master plan was approved in 2019 so it's a 10-year plan so ideally by the time your 10 years is up with your plan you'd have another plan ready to go so that is that is all I had thank you

Good evening, everyone. I'm the chair of the school committee. The school year is off to a good start. I'm happy to report. Every year, Dr. Lucier has a theme for the year, and this year it's community of learning. I think that's really appropriate for tonight as we as a community are gathering and appreciating all the support we receive across our community. I know. all the funding from our residents that go to pay all our bills and then also the community in this room because I don't think that there's a board in this room that doesn't somehow support the schools. and so we're really grateful for all that support and to be here as one community. The first thing I wanted to start with is a budget related initiative that the school committee and the school administration is undergoing currently. I think there's been much discussion, obviously, about the complexity of the school budget, and there's always lots of questions which we appreciate. and one of the things we're working on is developing a longitudinal analysis.

So really looking over the last 10 years at the major budget drivers of the schools and kind of showing, getting into more detail, showing the trends there So we're starting to roll those out. At our last school committee meeting, we tackled transportation, which is a big budget driver. Tomorrow night, our next meeting, we're going to be looking at enrollment and personnel, so obviously topics that really complicate the school budget. And the third section, we will be looking at mandated services and general fund expenditures. And also part of that will be highlighting all the strategic initiatives and critical needs that have been added to the school budget by year for the last 10 years. So it's a lot of information and kudos to Cindy Marr because she spent a lot of time pulling this together and doing this analysis over the last several months. I have personally found the reports really interesting.

Obviously, I've delved into the school budget probably more than a lot of people in this room, and I still learn things going through these reports, so I really, really recommend taking a look at them. I think they really help further illustrate why school costs increase when enrollment's been decreasing and I do want to note that this is not unique to Wellesley. This is a trend that's seen across the state, across the nation. basically every school district is grappling with this and it really kind of these trend analysis really show why this is happening. So again, I hope anyone interested in the school budget will tune into the presentations, take a look at the data, and review the reports and ask questions when you have them. for the budget. I'm going to start with the capital projects. We have two active capital projects right now. The funding request for the construction of the team rooms at the Honeywell track and field will be brought forward to this special town meeting in the fall in November. This is a project that's been planned since 2018.

We've been going through the steps, and this is the final request for the funding. And as a reminder, this is... A project that's really rectifying space constraints that were part of the MSBA project when the new, in quotes, high school was built. And so we're just trying to kind of regain some of that lost space. Additionally, I'm sure you remember at the last annual town meeting, an air conditioning feasibility study was funded. So that is underway. Pilots at Bates, Fisk, Schofield and WMS are wrapping up. and the studies moving into the cost estimation phase. So we're targeting late fall and early winter for a progress report to the full school committee. At that time we'll be looking at what path we may want to consider for each school. and looking at those paths individually for each school.

And we anticipate bringing forward funding, a request for design funding at the fall 2026 special town meeting, so a year from now. and then finally we have outgrown the current six-room preschool pause and we are currently we operate out of the pause building but we also operate three satellite classrooms this year at are there at FIS. They tend to bounce around to wherever we have. Sorry, they're at Sprague. Thank you. They were at FIS last year. They're saying they bounce around to where we have the space. and so the need for pause, the need for additional space in one building is something that we're continuing to look at and the school committee will take up those conversations later this year. and then moving into our operating budget.

So in terms of the fiscal 27 operating budget, as it's been said already tonight, it's important to know that all our collective bargaining units will be negotiating, so that's all five units of the WEA will be negotiating this year. That process will commence next month, but the outcome will not be known. for quite some time, we imagine, and not before the fiscal year 27 budget needs to be finalized. So that obviously complicates our budget development process, but we do have information on the expense portion of our budget to share tonight, for which we're anticipating a 6.2% increase due to a number of factors. One is that a one-time circuit breaker payment, and circuit breaker is the state's partial reimbursement program for special education expenses. We received a one-time extra circuit breaker payment in fiscal year 26 that was just over $250,000 that will not be received again.

The out of district annual inflation rate increase that's set by the state is just over 3%. And that's an estimated cost impact of about $214,000. The Eastern Bus, so that's the big yellow bus, that contract has an annual increase and for fiscal year 27, that's about $121,000. The van transport contract will go out to bid, so we're expecting increases there as well. Historically, the first year of each five-year contract sees a spike of about 10%, which would equate to about $200,000. and then there's smaller increases in years two through five of those contracts. And finally the LAUNCH program which serves special education students who are 18 to 22 is now based at Regis College, which is extremely exciting for this program. It's new this year, and we just couldn't be happier about it. But it will be a modest increase in that annual lease as well.

So those are my updates on expenses. And given that we're just at the beginning of our budget process, there'll be much more information coming, a lot of discussions happening. The school committee will begin discussing budget guidelines and guidance tomorrow night at our meeting. and we really hope that anyone interested in the budget process tunes in, sees the presentations, listens to the discussions and also definitely provides any feedback to us. So thank you so much.

So I have a few slides just to keep myself from going on. and then how do I advance? Just hit that. Okay, great. So hi everyone. I'm Lisa Olney. I'm the chair of the Climate Action Committee. and as most of you know the primary mission of the Climate Action Committee and the sustainability staff is to collaborate across town government with all of you and the community to reach our town goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And you can see a reminder on the screen here of what those goals are. I'm breaking a little news here and reporting that the sustainability staff, that's our director and our sustainability analyst, just completed this year's emissions inventory and concluded that we've achieved an impressive 42% reduction in town-wide greenhouse gas emissions since 2007, so something to be really proud of.

So to achieve that progress, the work of the sustainability staff has expanded in recent years to identifying and leading efforts to secure grants. and to pursue projects that lead to lower operating costs for the town. In short, sustainability staff are having a positive net impact on the town's budget while also moving the needle on our goals for emissions reductions. and in light of this expanded role, we're working with the executive director and HR to explore potential job reclassifications for the sustainability staff. which may affect our operating budget request for FY27. This is the only potential operating budget increase in our request that we anticipate. So I'd just like to take a few minutes here to outline the staff's recent work and the positive impact they're having that you may not be familiar with.

So since achieving eligibility for the town in the State Green Communities Program in 2018, the Sustainability The sustainability staff succeeded in obtaining more than $800,000 from state grants for money-saving initiatives such as the Warren Building electrification, LED lighting retrofits, and hybrid police cruisers. The staff have also spearheaded the development of key policies that have had a really favorable impact on operating costs. Some examples of this include the Municipal Sustainable Building Guidelines which promote operating cost savings through energy efficiency, electrification, and solar installations. The Zero Emissions Vehicle First Fleet Policy which guides municipal fleet electrification and we now have 16 municipal EVs which are helping to reduce gas and vehicle maintenance expenses.

And last spring, sustainability staff helped pass the Skip the Stuff bylaw at Annual Town Meeting, which we're hoping will help reduce waste and potentially reduce at least some RDF costs. and in April, the sustainability staff achieved even greater grant eligibility for the town by winning certification as a climate leader community. This is a new program from the state's Department of Energy Resources, and the certification makes Wellesley one of the first communities in line for up to $1.15 million. in grant funding over the next two years, and future offerings are anticipated. Right now, the staff is managing a grant application seeking up to $1 million in funding for Hardy and Honeywell solar voltaic projects, while also working to obtain federal elective pay funds for up to 30% of the project cost.

I'll also note our staff have unusual expertise that makes it possible for them to perform many functions that other towns must hire consultants to accomplish. Some good examples of this are the in-depth analysis required to track emissions for the annual inventory required to report to town meeting. and the completion of the municipal decarbonization roadmap that was required for the climate leader community eligibility. The staffs teamed up with FMD and DPW to produce the roadmap, which is also proving to be a really useful tool for the town's capital planning process. So we're making some progress. And in addition to having a really positive impact on the town's budget, and we're working with many partners across town to create a culture of sustainability.

and to educate the community about how to reduce energy use and benefit from financial incentives. Actions which reduce emissions but also really save folks money. and you know here's a great illustration of all the progress that we're making together with all of you. Aside from those Staff considerations, the Climate Action Committee is not planning any programming changes that would have an impact on our budget request, and we're really grateful for the opportunity to share this update.

Okay, I have no slides. I'm Casey Cato, I'm the town clerk, and my section will be quick. So my budget is not very large. The primary driver is elections, and it's specifically the number of elections that we have. So this fiscal year we have one election, the annual town election. Next year we'll have three. So we'll have the annual town election, but also a state primary and a state election in November. and so those costs, on election day we staff over 100 people to support the election across eight precincts. We pay most of them. A few of them will volunteer, but many of them are paying. So that'll be a cost as well as vote by mail. So that has been a significant cost driver in the last few years. On the good side, on the upside, is the state often provides reimbursement afterwards.

and so every time we have an election I do apply for those grants but it is after the fact so I have to budget for it up front and then get reimbursement on the back side. So we go from one to three, so that'll drive those costs. Also, the other cost driver that we've seen in the last few years is electronic voting devices. So we've been able to add it in slowly over the past few years as we've come from being in remote to being in person. And we've pretty much settled on a vendor that has done a very good job for us. but there's cost involved because they have to be on site. And that is it. So thank you very much.

Good evening, everyone. Paul Kramer, Chair of the Rec Department. I'll try to be quick, too. I talked with Matt Chin today. Unlike past years, we don't have any anticipated new hires. We don't have any reclassifications, either. I would assume that our budget will be whatever sort of guideline winds up being and nothing more complicated than that, to be honest with you. That's it.

Okay, if you think of anything else, feel free to send it to us. I know police and fire are here. I'll just speak for them briefly that we're going to be in negotiations. We continue to watch the prices of cruisers. That's something that's gone up. And then year over year, we've had significant hiring in the fire department. I think we have... 15 to 18 of our firefighters on steps. So we know that's just because of the junior nature of the personnel that that's going to have a cost impact. You said that one, hold on. So budget submission timeline, I think we sent this out to everybody. I do have hard copies if anyone wants to take one after the meeting. This is also online. We've tried to accommodate people's meeting schedules. We know some of the folks meet for the budget submittals outside of those schools.

that first week in December. And so we have December 9th for all non-Select Board departments to have those budgets submitted. Select Board departments have it slightly earlier because we anticipate the budget summit with the board to review operating budgets also on December 9th. actually December 9th is a busy day that's also the school budget presentation to school committee so if you want to follow everything you certainly could We also wanted to give a few updates on select board initiatives. So the select board has determined a separate motion for school budget, and I believe I'm turning this over to Marjorie.

and you just hit the arrow to change sure Hold on, I forgot about our department updates real quick. In terms of our budget drivers, obviously IT funds many of the subscriptions that impact multiple departments, in particular Munis. that year over year goes up between five and 10%, similar to what library was saying with regards to cost of technology. Over the past several years, we've had an 8% expense guideline for IT. We expect that likely to be in the same range. The other thing we continue to monitor is the cost of our Archival support for the website and social media in terms of we do split that with the school department because we all have to archive.

any posts that you or your department puts up through either Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, X, what have you. So that's covered under the, generally under the select board budget. In addition to that, we are working to meet our compliance requirements with the Department of Justice to bring all of our websites up to Adia compliance which becomes effective April of 2027 and so as part of that we are working with IT to look at some new technologies that will scan are all of our web pages. So the tens of thousands of web pages that we have to identify where we need to make corrections, some minor corrections can be changed in that. We have some additional updates that will come up. Corey will give some updates and communications slightly after, but those all have a cost and we're just determining what those costs will be.

I think that's logically what we're looking at for budget drivers. O facilities. Just as David indicated, utility costs on an annual basis, that's always what we're going to be looking at typically in addition to the water and sewer costs. it's always going to be our national grid. We have some gas supply building still. We've been in the process of converting. but certainly the facilities department continues to evaluate the impacts of those trying to negotiate contracts on the delivery of gas outside of just the purchase of the commodity. So Joe will give an update to that shortly. That's something we continue to monitor. The other thing with facilities is very similar to what Dave Cohen was saying. It's just the cost of materials, so cost of cleaning supplies. is just something and equipment we continue to monitor as well.

A quick double dip. I should have mentioned, and I'm sorry I didn't. We have two really impactful and important retirements happening this year. So Mike Quinn, our Park and Highway Superintendent, and Cricket Vlass, our park and tree superintendent, will both be retiring this year. So some major changes coming there. And so stay tuned for more.

Well, I did not know about cricket till right now. I knew about Mike. Well, Mike's been retired and we keep bringing him back. Here you go, Marjorie.

So as most of you know, a motion was made at this year's annual town meeting to separate the school and the town budgets. The motion didn't pass, but there was some support. and many people felt that the motion was brought too late to adequately evaluate all of the factors that went into it. The finances are easier to separate in some departments than others, but there seems to be an interest, as Nikki said before, in why costs are going up when enrollment is going down. and in some of the policies and rationales that lead to the numbers. And it's not that the school doesn't publish the numbers. Their budget book is over 400 pages. but at a $94 million budget that appears in Article 8 and other expenses that don't, it's hard for people to understand the all-in cost of schools.

and it's certainly not that anybody doesn't support the schools, but the select board has decided to present the budgets for the town and the school separately to allow a little more deep dive for people into the different components. and that means on the town side as well as the school side. So everybody welcomes your questions. As Nikki said, the schools are doing extensive longitudinal analysis that will be available for folks as well. I'm not going to read this, but you can see part of the rationale for the select board in dividing the budgets. I think that's it and I'll turn it back to Megan for any mechanics on how we're going to be doing that separation. Fun for Rachel since she just got back.

So just in terms of the mechanics, What I think the board has determined in their discussions they would like to see is in addition to the school budgets, within the town budgets, there'd be an accounting for those costs that are attributable to the school. So we're working on... How we would present that, but in talking to finance on the initial cover sheet, having an accumulation of costs. in some departments it's easier than others obviously facilities breaks that out on a per person per building cost within their budget so it would be how they aggregate those totals and dedicate a percentage to schools and to town Health Insurance is much more straightforward as well where we can certainly divide just by the number of individuals and projection of individuals from each Town and School who would be taking that.

We'll have to make estimates on some of our other shared services with regards to legal or risk management, et cetera. and DPW within their broader budget generally has a cost attributable to school facilities as well. So I think it would be easier I don't want to say easier, but certainly mechanically Dave already separates out the locations within his budget. So we'll be giving instructions on that, which we're still fine tuning based upon the board's decision to move forward with this. And I do think this would be a year, it's gonna be a work in progress with our and budget analysts to get to those numbers. Ones we don't think of often may be IT, for instance. Schools have a separate IT, but we certainly provide licensure, et cetera, to the schools. and so I think as we go down this process we'll be evaluating that.

The other thing I actually forgot to mention but I thought about, sorry library, when I was thinking about the merger of two part-time positions to a full-time position. We have been evaluating the cost, the HR director and I, about the cost of, the growing cost. of Employee Benefits. So in past years, it has been approximately $20,000 for a benefits eligible position. And based on a recent calculation, we're at approximately $28,000 for a new position. So in the budget book this year, it would be $28,000 for any benefits-eligible change in position. We do have a separate provision, which I'm forgetting the number Dolores might be able to call. for TAs, a very specific amount for insurance. It was previously at $7,500. I think it's upwards of $12,000 now that we'd need to account for.

I just looking at Dolores and thinking about health insurance how we would divide it that came to mind. So there'll be more to come on this because this would be the first time we've done this it would be our intention I think mechanically within the budget itself to separate as the motion had anticipated last year which would be just to account for the general fund provision. So last year it was 94 million, this year it would be whatever that number is separated out. So rather than under Article 8, we currently have, on a past year, we've had three motions, one to accept the pilot payment from the MLP, one to do the omnibus budget, and motion three typically is to appropriate free cash to balance the budget. We are expecting that there would be four motions. Article two would continue to be all

Town Departments and that Article 8.3 would be for school and then Not article. Motion three would be for school. Motion four would be for free cash to balance the budget. if in any of the instances, as we all know, there's an amendment on the floor to any of the motions, it would impact potentially subsequent motions just as if we had line item changes in past years, you then still have to make modifications to balance the budget. obviously moving forward we still need to present balanced budget so those motions are all just like we have three motions now that will balance We're going to have four motions that will balance and it would only be modification through amendment that would tip the scales in one way or another.

I'll go back. I don't know if there's questions on that or not. So I'm going to turn it over to Colette to give an update on the Townwide Capital Planning Committee, which is the policy subcommittee that the board is contemplating and the board reviewed. if anyone wants to look at their materials at last week's select board meeting.

Thank you Megan and good evening everyone. I would like to give an overview of a proposal the Select Board is considering with respect to our capital planning process. So first I will highlight key elements of our current process, explain why we're reviewing the process, and share some elements of the draft proposal of a town-wide capital planning committee and the next steps. If you watch the Selects Board's most recent meeting, as Megan mentioned, some of this will be familiar. So what is the current process and why are we reviewing it? So the town has an existing capital process which brings forward the five-year capital plan which is included in the town-wide financial plan. Capital intensive departments like FMD and DPW have longer range capital plans that they monitor. The capital process currently involves internal meetings and negotiations between departments that is facilitated by the CFO.

It's important to note that the town bylaws tasks the select board with coordinating the preparation and maintenance of the town's long-range capital budget program. presenting the five-year capital plan, recommending a method of financing, and reporting to town meeting on the substance of the plan, including recommendations and comments as appropriate. The select board needs the tools to be able to execute that responsibility fairly. Presently, any board can add an article to the warrant pursuant to Town By-law 8.12. and when that article seeks approval for a capital project that is not part of the five-year capital plan, the town's capital planning process is undermined. to the detriment of those boards who have engaged in the capital planning process and have been waiting in line for their funds for their projects.

The Select Board has discussed that capital projects slated for the coming 10-year period are estimated to cost or exceed $400 million. Construction costs are rising, debt affordability is tightening, and multiple departments are advancing projects at the same time. Without a structured, transparent process, the risk is that capital projects will be considered in isolation, which can drive up costs and place unsustainable pressure on taxpayers. In the Townwide Financial Plan, presented at Annual Town Meeting in 2025, the Select Board raised concerns over the emerging challenge created by the many significant capital projects proposed by town boards and departments. The Government Financial Officers Association or the GFOA notes that the capital infrastructure built and maintained by local governments is essential for a thriving community.

specifically the GFOA states a big part of the challenge in deciding how to allocate a limited budget between competing projects and interests. and that we face. Usually these competing interests seek to gain as much as possible from the budget for themselves. when everyone does this the budget becomes overburdened and the financial foundation of local government becomes compromised a prudent multi-year capital plan identifies and prioritizes expected needs based on a strategic plan Establishing a town-wide capital planning committee allows a more holistic approach to capital prioritization. Wellesley does not have a town-wide planning committee conducting this work in public, which is a common practice in municipalities and a recommended best practice from the Division of Local Services. The select board included in the development of a townwide capital planning process and its work plan for FY26.

and this is identified as a goal for the executive director and the facilities director and the work to bring a draft to the select board for discussion has been taken up by the select board's policy subcommittee. under its authorization to report and make recommendations on matters that in its judgment affects the interests of the town, the advisory committee's leadership supports the work of the select board and the executive director in this regard. and highlighted the select board's work plan item focusing on analysing, prioritising and presenting the town's major capital projects to town meeting members and the town as a whole. The Policy Subcommittee has prepared a draft process which the Select Board has taken up for a first reading comment with more discussions and iterations to come. So what is the proposed Townwide Capital Planning Committee? and I'd like to outline how the proposed process and planning committee outline was derived.

I'd like to thank Facilities Director Joe McDonough for his incredible work in creating the first draft of the committee process. and I think it's important to understand that the process proposed was largely drafted by professional staff with decades of experience in capital work and capital planning. I've spent time researching other municipalities and their processes and have found approximately 100 other municipalities in Massachusetts with some form of a capital planning committee producing a town-wide capital investment program. Each community has a unique process, but there are many similarities in terms of process and outcomes. Differences are found in how committees are established, whether by bylaw or charter, the specific charge, meeting cadence, committee members and terms and output. Often it is a capital improvement plan in a fairly standard table

with narrative of the process and rationale which is quite commonly then goes to the town manager or the town administrator as a recommendation sometimes to the select board and in one case the output was a worn article in the form of a capital consent agenda. for town meeting. Together with Facilities Director, Joe McDonagh, the Select Board Policy Subcommittee worked to have a draft which fits within the unique structure and operation of Wellesley's town government. The draft was reviewed with Town Council Tom Harrington and Executive Director Megan Jopp to consider legal implications and operationalization. i.e. when would the committee meet, what would their cadence be, and how would that work with our existing bylaws, our budget process, and our policies?

At a very high level, the proposed committee, which would be a public body with agendas, minutes, and would be recorded for viewing, would review and evaluate proposed capital projects in excess of a million dollars. It would develop and update a 10-year town-wide capital plan, present to advisory, and provide a recommendation to the select board. Projects would be evaluated based on a set of criteria which would include the benefit to the community, alignment with the town's strategic goals, Financial and Logistic Viability, Environmental Sustainability, Compliance with Regulations, Long-term Operational Costs, and Board and Staff Capacity. I'm almost done, I promise. The committee membership as proposed includes representatives from the Select Board, the School Committee, the Board of Public Works, the Executive Director and a citizen representative with a background in construction or finance.

The committee membership reflects the nature of the capital work the town undertakes. Approximately 90% of major capital expenditure is building projects or civil site projects, i.e. the work that the DPW does on road projects and things like that. The proposed committee membership reflects the boards who have the majority of projects under construction and consideration. As proposed, town bodies who have a capital project coming forward will be considered temporary town bodies who have a capital project coming forward who are not represented on the board. will be considered temporary non-voting members and can discuss and advocate for their projects in a similar fashion to the process that's adopted by the Permanent Building Committee. The proposed committee provides a structure to have boards engaged in a public discussion before changes are made to the capital plan as is currently the case. The proposed committee intends to be more inclusive and transparent.

Given the significant volume of capital projects identified The overlap in project timing and the limited capacity to fund capital needs in a town-wide capital planning committee, this will be a valuable tool for the town as we enter the next 10 years of capital planning. granular detail of these proposals is available in the memo from the policy subcommittee to the select board and is included in the materials posted with the select board agenda and also on the policy subcommittee website under draft policies Next steps include revising the proposal based on select board feedback, circulating a revised version to department heads and boards for comment, working with town council to identify bylaw amendments, reviewing existing financial policies and budgetary guidance for any required revisions. Thank you for your time tonight.

Thanks, Glenn. All right, we wanted to provide just some upcoming development project updates. We got a number of projects coming down the line. So the first is MassBay Community College. If you have not heard about this, you gotta start digging in because it's gonna impact everybody. So MassBay is in the process of disposing of 45 acres of land that's been declared surplus by MassBay Community College. DECAM will issue an RFP. We do not have a date as to when that will occur, but in communications we anticipate that to be end of December, January timeframe. That land is being disposed under the Affordable Homes Act, which necessitates as of right development for housing at a density of no less than four units per acre.

so 45 acres four units per acre minimum of 180 units are to be constructed it is not a matter of Will they be constructed? It will be how they will be constructed and when they will be constructed. They will be constructed. There is an opportunity within this process for the select board to negotiate with to influence the request for proposals in addition to potentially entering into a development agreement with whoever the winning bidder is. So this will be a bid process. similar to how we would do it. They're gonna put a request for proposals together and they're going to select a winner. That will be based on not necessarily who's providing the most money, but there will be a series of criteria that you will need to evaluate that they will evaluate with regards to what is the most highly advantageous.

Our goal is to have a plan that will be attached to that, which will hopefully, they will say if you meet the development of this vision you will be deemed to be highly advantageous so the select board is currently working to they'll be discussing this tomorrow night looking at a funding mechanism to do a visioning study likely at the start of December. We do not have a date yet. That is going to be contingent upon actually MassBay first evaluating a parking study. That parking study, because the land they're disposing of has a five acre parking lot. So how are they going to park the students, faculty, staff on their developed side of the road. That's sort of number one. And they have told us that they should have the study back on that by November 1st, or the first week in November, excuse me.

So really any subsequent analysis on that from the town's end in terms of envisioning, et cetera, is contingent upon those plans because if they come back and say, we have to put a parking structure on this side of the land that changes the development potential of that site. We will be working closely with the planning staff on this, Eric Arbini, the planning director and I have been working very closely trying to look at this divisioning. So much, much more to come. We wish we actually had more information for you. We don't yet. MassBay has been holding a series of public community meetings. The next one is on Wednesday evening at 6. at 6 p.m. It was tight the last meeting. I know many of our school officials as well as select board members and other members of... government advisory committee members, et cetera, were present. It was a packed house at about 120 or so people, standing room only.

So if you're going to go, I'm just going to tell you to get there early for a seat. So much more to come on that. We have a website that is up, and as soon as we receive any additional information, it is posted. 49 Walnut Street. This is currently under PSI review with the planning board, and that is a 28-unit residential development with six affordable units so all the information is up on the planning board's plans under review 888 Worcester Street is binned where half of town hall is located is being sold. to Jumbo Capital. So the town will be able to fulfill their lease, which is up in two years. We'll be looking to relocate both building and facilities management after that. And so they gave a preliminary review presentation to

the planning board at their last meeting and they are looking to make that assisted independent memory care housing at that site that will necessitate zoning relief and they are anticipating their Right now, striving to meet annual town meeting, but if it extends further than that to the special, I think they would proceed with that. So Jumbo Capital, it has also closed on the Taylor Block, so Wellesley Bakery, etc. So now they own 40 Grove Street and the Taylor Block. We have been in close communication with Jumbo Capital as they also purchased seven other buildings about two years ago. They are Wellesley individuals and so they are taking the long-term look. They have notified Tenants, that they anticipate the Taylor Block development really to be out about five years.

So they're taking a long look at that. And so, you know, we're not going to see immediate construction at Forty Grove and Taylor Block. So it will be a long planning process. And we look forward to working on that with them. In Wellesley Square, there's a couple other big projects coming. So 592, typo, 592 Washington Street is the old Waterman Funeral Home. and then there was a Century 21 there. And so it's the very next site heading towards Wellesley College next to the Belclair. So they can do between 15 and 19 units, 19 if they get a special permit, and they will be developing under the MBTA communities. and we expect that to all be housing and we at present believe they are maintaining that front building and adding off to the back of that to try and maintain the existing streetscape.

We have other significant land for sale, which will have dramatic impact. One is Lower Falls. Hayden's Management is selling 11 acres. So that is essentially the entire side of the street where the office building is. And it also wraps around some residential property. that has been under a bid process as well an internal bid process Eric and I have been informed that it is down to two people and so We should know very shortly who has acquired that property. We would expect a significant housing development there. We would hope for mixed use. but we've been informed of some straight up residential but I think the planning staff and myself have expressed the desire to maintain mixed use down there.

So we wanted to just make sure people are aware that there's significant changes coming. Rotunda building, so Anderson Jewelers. Also a cornerstone building in the square. has recently been put up on the market, so we have no further knowledge of what's going to be happening there, but we expect... I'm surprised actually Eric's phone hasn't lit up once they announced that that was... on the market, but we expect significant interest in that building as well. Just a couple reminders in terms of town meeting dates. So special town meeting, November 3rd and 4th. We had three days planned. We are confident we can do it in two. Mark is confident. He thinks we could maybe do it in one. And so fingers crossed on that. Annual town meeting. Our dates, March 30, 31, 6, 7, 13, 14, maybe 27 and 28. Let's hope we don't need those.

We never want to come back from April vacation and continue to talk. So wrap up... Oh, where's my communication slide? I skipped you, Corey. No, no, no. Hold on. Corey's got a... I'm not even going to say brief. You've got a good update on communications.

You thought you were all lucky and not going to have to hear from me. Good evening, everyone. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Corey Testa, Assistant Executive Director, filling in for Public Information Officer Stephanie Hawkinson, who couldn't be here tonight. So I'm just going to talk briefly about two things. Number one, this has been mentioned at a few select board meetings and in the email you got from Megan about tonight, but At the direction of the Select Board, we are pulling together a town-wide letter. We've budgeted for two town-wide mailings each fiscal year. and the one that's coming up in the coming weeks will include a communication survey. Why? We want to know how residents and business owners are getting their information, what times of day they're getting their information, how they are, what mode Is it on their phones? Is it on their computers? Are they reading the newspaper? Is there a newspaper? And then what they think, give us feedback as to what we can improve upon.

because we keep hearing well I heard about this at the last minute I wish I had more time to organize and show up I wish I had known about this and we say it's posted we publicize it it's out there but let's figure out a better way to do that So I had Stephanie and Andrea Arango, our communication specialist, pull some metrics for our social media accounts just to give you a sense of our engagement. We're primarily posting on Facebook and Instagram with limited X or Twitter posting. We tend to just repost the MLP and police tweets because they're urgent. and then we do LinkedIn posting through HR. So on Facebook over the last month, and these are kind of interesting, from September 8th to October 5th,

We had 23,000 views, which is a 78% increase from the previous month and a reach of about 8,000, which was a 63% increase, probably because people came home from the summer. the takeaways are that it's showing a clear increase in visibility driven by non-followers so it's you know that's way more than obviously people that follow the town of Wellesley page so people are clicking on content and reading more when they see it on their feed. The content is resonating better, especially with people that are not following us again. and we're converting those viewers into followers as our follower numbers slowly tick up. Demographically, the majority are women between the ages of 45 and 54 years old and they're primarily made up of local residents.

On Instagram in the same time period, we had about 20,000 views, which was an 80% increase, and we reached about 2,000 individual Instagram users, which was a 20% increase. So the takeaways there are that the majority of the views are coming from followers, which is pretty consistent with Instagram. The feed is a little bit more tailored to people that follow certain accounts and what your algorithm puts on your feed. but were visible with that audience. Both followers and non-followers grew steadily over the last month, whether it's because we came back from summer or because the MassBay news broke. So I just think we're seeing more engagement over the last month than we have over the previous three. And then the W. So I want to thank Stephanie Hawkinson for her

tireless and very quick work on pulling together what I think has become a great resource for the community. If you have not subscribed to receive the W, it's our new select board office. monthly newsletter that has links, graphics, pictures, and information about everything going on through the select board office and departments that fall under the select board. We're at about 4,000 subscribers. We had a 73% open rate on the last one that went out. So three quarters of people that receive it actually read it, which is huge. and we're growing at about 2% a month which is really good, especially in a small town. The feedback on the W has been overwhelmingly positive. it's challenging to develop content so board chairs and board members please encourage your department heads and their staffs to send content to Stephanie in a timely manner

It's another great tool to get information about your boards and this great work that you're doing out to residents. are community members. A great example that Stephanie wanted me to highlight was last week, or the past few weeks, with the Weston Road reconstruction. some new stuff came up very last minute. It involved the school department, police, DPW, select board office, and all four of those departments coordinated on messaging using all the tools at their disposal and I think in a very timely and efficient manner got the information to the whole town but especially to that neighborhood as to what the impacts would be and we've gotten some really good feedback from that neighborhood and from residents that they felt like they were informed, they were given a heads up and they could plan accordingly. So we plan on doing a lot more of that coordination moving forward and really communicating as one town. So thank you.

Well now that I skipped that, I can turn it back over to Marjorie.

Thank you. Before we wrap up, does anyone have any comments or any questions while everybody is in the same room? Didn't think so, but I thought I'd throw that out there. Okay, so this is our wrap-up, our financing considerations. We will be continuing our budget conversation tomorrow, and the Select Board will vote on the guidelines a week from Thursday on the 16th. We are waiting to hear from our legislators tomorrow night some updates from the state. and they will have a budget update later in October. Construction costs, volatile markets, state uncertainty, you've heard it before. and all the unions will be beginning negotiating sometime soon in the fall. So our capital is at the low end.

We are still working with the 3% guideline from the Townwide Financial Plan from Annual Town Meeting, and that is the assumption under which we will continue our budget discussions. Thank you all for coming. We hope it's been helpful for you to hear from one another. And if you have additional information that you'd like us to circulate, please send it along and we will share it with everybody else. We're all done. Thank you so much for coming.