Select Board Budget Workshop December 11, 2025

Wellesley Media, are you there? Let's make sure. Hold on. What's your last name? 841. 4078.

3235.

And then I got to do the code. What's the code?

549357.

Okay, hold on, this is gonna... Hold on, I just got a text from Beth.

I think she's going to be about five minutes late. I just want to make sure Wellesley Media is on. Oh, you are? Oh, OK. Perfect. Oh, it is. Yep.

Thank you.

Yes.

Good morning and welcome to the Select Board Budget Summit Thursday, December 11th, 2025.

Thanks, Rod.

We are on air. We just confirmed. Thank you. We are in the Giuliani room. And here with me from the select board are Tom Ulfelder, Collette O'Frank, and Kenny Largess. Beth Sullivan Woods is on her way. Also with us are Executive Director Megan Jopp, Assistant Executive Director Corey Testa, Finance Director Rachel DeRoach, Tiana Moreau, and Paul Manginaro. Thank you all for being here. Is there anyone here for Citizen Speak? We don't see anyone. So we will move directly to the select board department budget submittals and we're going to start with facilities management. and Joe McDonough is here, although Joe doesn't have a voice. So I think we may ask Danielle to do some presenting. Good morning, Danielle.

You're just going to need to bring it a little closer, Danielle, just for camera. Perfect.

I'm your surprise presenter today. So Joe's just gonna pull up the slides here and then we'll get started.

All right, starting off with the FY17 budget highlights. Okay, great. All right. So it is our FY27 budget highlights here. So our overall requests for FY27 are, is $10,544,680. That's broken down into $5,845,659 personal services and $4,699,000

21 in expenses, which is a 2.82 overall percent increase, which brings us under the guideline. Our personal service increase is 1.17%, which is under the 3% guideline. And we are almost right at the 5% for expenses at 2.94%. The breakdown of the categories is, 5,845,659 is personal services, so 55% of the budget request. 1.5 million is expenses, 14.3%, and 3.1 million utilities, and that is 30% of the budget. . Currently we are within guideline for personal service and expenses.

On the utility side, we're taking an increase for the and the National Grid side of our natural gas expense. As I think you may all remember, we have two components. One is the supply and one is the actual delivery. So we are not taking an increase with our supplier. It's just an increase to use National Grid's pipes. There are significant water sewer increases this year. which we have accounted for. And as of when we created this budget, we were not carrying an increase for electricity because the MLP had told us they were not increasing rates. We have worked for the last year or so on rebalancing some accounts because we would have

We would go over budget in our maintenance and custodial lines frequently because we weren't able to increase those lines for many years. So we're trying to kind of readjust that. However, last year was our lowest turn back ever, which was just 1%, so $106,000. Personal services this year, we followed guideline, which is no... Assumption was made for our AFSCME and library contracts which will be under negotiation this year. We took a 2% COLA for the 40, 50, and 60 series staff. In addition, they would also receive merit pay through HR. So the total increase related to COLAs is $38,516. And then the net salary change, which is longevity and step increases, is $29,120.

So the total personal service increase currently is 67,636, which is 1.17%, which is below the 3% guideline. On the expense side, we, like I said, have taken no increase for electric. Our natural gas, we increased just 5% to account for national grid. Water was a 20% increase and sewer was a 6%, which is $11,000. And then we took a 2.4% increase for trash and recycling, which which amounts to about $5,000. And other expenses which are largely custodial maintenance and then office related expenses are a 5.66% increase which is 125,325.

So our total expense increase is 221,339, which is 4.94% under the 5% guideline. All right, questions?

Yes. Good morning. And thank you for the wonderful presentation. So on the water increase, I've heard conflicting information about the water rate. is the current status from the water department a 20% increase? Because I heard they were possibly going to be flat and then they were going up and then they were flat.

The last communication we received from them was 20% so we haven't have gotten anything since then regarding an increase. Thank you.

When with regard to the 0% on commodity on natural gas, that's a negotiated multiyear contract, correct? And when is this current one? It's May.

May of 26.

May of 26. And do you have any sense of what that negotiation is going to look like, what that

No, it really kind of at that point I think depends on the market at that time. So we were really fortunate this last negotiation that we had, I think, two of the three years we were flat. and we had no increase. So we will re-engage with our broker, Tradition Energy, who does that for us and they might have a better

and with regard to the consideration of air conditioning in the schools, has any work been done in terms of projecting what the cost impact would be on the utility budget with the various levels of air conditioning?

Yeah, well, yes, but I don't think the public is.

I don't think it would impact for two years, right?

I don't mean to have you go into the whole thing but I think it's important that people generally are aware that there will be an impact

If I recall, Joe, it was $60,000, $70,000 a year around there? Yeah. It depends which model they choose.

Other questions? Colette? I had some questions but I sent them in and I've already had them answered and I don't think that they're the kind of questions I think it's added value to re-litigate over TV. but I just wanted to say I mean one of the reasons I don't have a lot of additional questions here is because of the detail and the preparation of the packet so There's a lot of information that's presented to us in a really well-structured way including well-defined goals and what the department is trying to achieve. we've made a lot of progress over the past couple of years in terms of what you were talking about with your expenses Danielle and realigning those to be more in line with what you were actually experiencing when you were for years trying to meet the 2% 2.5% guideline and you know It's not magic. Sometimes you can't do it. So one of the things that we did talk about is, is there anything else on the horizon like that? And there's a few small things, but nothing really I think we need to bring up here. But I just wanted to say thanks.

It was an excellent packet. and explain why I'm not asking a lot of questions. It's a big budget but it's a well-defined budget.

I agree with all that. It was very easy to follow and the detail was great. One thing and I had asked Megan this but I think as Tom alluded to I think the public should understand when we're talking about the increase in personal services at 1.17 and the same for fire and police. That does not account for union negotiations. So that number, while currently is 1.17, it is going to go up.

If I could just put a final point on that. What it does account for is the anticipated step increases, longevity payments, and those are factored in to overtime. What it doesn't, to Kenny's point, is the COLA, which then also it won't impact necessarily longevity unless that's bargained. So there is a component, but the COLA is not put in.

because every union is going to be in negotiation for new contracts this year. So you won't see those increases yet in the budgets.

And what's challenging on the select board budget here is it's not the complete sources and uses. Rachel and Tiana and Paul are working on the sources and uses. The other departmental budgets were due on the 9th, and so they're preparing that. and then we will have a line for collective bargaining settlements for the town unions where we can see that differential.

not for now but could you send us the key for which building is which code?

Oh sure.

Any other questions? I keep thinking back to 2012 and the beginning of FMD when it was facilities maintenance and how hard you were working, Joe. to catch up with all the deferred delayed maintenance and how far ahead we are and how much you've accomplished in the past 13 years. It's quite astonishing. and we have a lot to be proud of. We've done a lot of work. We've built new buildings. We've brought so many others up to current standards and codes and I just want to thank you and your entire team for all your hard work. Tom.

Following up on Marjorie's point, we in the past week or so had an email from a resident who had a series of comments about the way we spend money in terms of capital projects and maintenance. I think as we go forward, particularly with the level of capital construction costs that we're looking at, that we're projecting, Thank you very much. the deferred maintenance led to the need for an entire new structure that was not a cost effective way to rehabilitate or the exterior of town hall and what we found based on shortcomings in prior maintenance in terms of the mortar and the stone work.

So I think it's an important message to the public generally that we're not spending money, as the email said, like drunken sailors. there's really a purpose and there's really a return on that investment in terms of what you're not spending in the future. I've said before that sometimes the conservative play is to spend money today because it's just going to be significantly more two or three or four years from now or the work is going to have to be extensively greater.

Other comments or questions? All right. Yeah.

I know you can barely hear me. I just want to acknowledge and thank Danielle. She's done a tremendous job.

Thank you. Thank you, Danielle. Maybe we should be clear that Jo was acknowledging Danielle for her great work. I'm not sure that Wellesley Media is going to have picked that up. I hope you feel better soon, Jo.

Thank you for coming in when you're obviously not feeling great. Tom, your point also makes me think about the $400 million we have on the capital plan coming up and how important it is that Joe keeps the preventive maintenance list. of that work, and we keep in mind the work that's going to be added when we do additional capital work. We don't know the extent of everything we're going to need in the next 15, 20 years yet, but it will be more than we know now. So thank you for that. and how do you like that? We are running ahead of schedule.

Yes, anybody have anything in the meantime before I call, ask Dr. Martello? Mary Beth Martello from Sustainability Climate Action. You see it pays to be early, Mary Beth.

Good morning. Thank you for the time to speak with you about our budget. I don't have slides today because our budget is so simple and straightforward. but just a little bit of background as as all of you I think know the climate action committee is focused on advancing progress to toward our town-wide greenhouse gas emissions goals and implementing the townwide climate action plan through work and engagement with our municipal departments and through residents, businesses and institutions in the community. and that work takes many forms. Of course, local policy and bylaw development, advocacy at the state level for advantageous legislation. and a lot of programs and initiatives around

Education, both in the municipality to make sure that we're implementing sustainable practices and then, of course, through the community. and our budget is request for fiscal year 27 is not showing a lot of changes from the previous year. Of course, no staffing changes. and our expenses are level except for a $300 increase in annual dues that we pay to an organization called Ickley, local governments for sustainability. that organization provides software that we use to calculate our greenhouse gas emissions annually. And they are increasing their dues because

the software that they're providing for greenhouse gas inventory calculations that is upgraded has been upgraded to a more powerful tool that will include that will allow us to better visualize the data, better manage and enter the data. And also we're looking forward to some capabilities that will allow us actually to do some potential modeling of certain courses of action in town so that we can look, we can look at the effects of a certain policy, for example, like the zero emission vehicle policy and how that could affect progress toward our greenhouse gas emissions goals. we were just starting to learn about those capabilities. And they wanted to, ICLEI wanted to increase the dues by $600. But given the guideline, I asked them if they could spread that out over two years.

So $300 next year and then $300 the following year. And they were amenable to that.

Thank you Mary Beth and I think I sent in one question which was answered about the capital request and I was happy with that answer. but one thing I wanted to just touch on a little bit is the department, although it's small, the return on investment for climate action is huge because of the grant money that comes in and so I really want to point out that while we're we have an established department it really does pay for itself over and over and over again you've been very successful with grant applications I want to acknowledge that and I'm thinking back to the all board meeting the chair of the committee talked about potentially pursuing job reclassification and that may impact the budget. What happened to that? Where are we with that?

We're doing research to support our request on that and we have had a good conversation with Megan about it and are looking to her for for guidance on next steps. But we have been looking. So it's really in conversation right now. We haven't. formally approached the HR department and definitely not the board at this point. We want to make sure that we have the case.

I understand and appreciate the work that you did to bring those expenses in over two years although it's not in the grand scheme of things a large amount I think people are always asking for us to negotiate those types of things and bring them down as much as we can every little bit helps especially this year's tight budget year you know we're really trying to keep everything to level services and so we really appreciate what you've done and everywhere

Thank you so much. Just to add to that a little bit, we are always looking for using in-house resources to save money versus going out for help. and a lot, the sustainability measures that we're advocating for in town are lowering our energy use and in most cases saving us money in the long run. and so that's also I think in addition to the grant thank you for mentioning the grants revenue we're also trying to cut costs in that way. And also along those lines, the greenhouse gas inventory, yes, we're reporting out on greenhouse gas emissions every year. but is an opportunity to work with FMD. We're collecting energy data from all our municipal departments and looking at that. And so we're looking for...

We're looking for anomalies in the data that could sometimes lead to us identifying an inefficient equipment or equipment that needs replacing that's kind of using energy it doesn't need to. there's a couple of uses for our greenhouse gas inventory.

Go ahead Beth.

So thank you for all the work you do. I had two questions. One is related to Collette's. And I think you do so much work on grants and you're very effective on grants. It would be helpful to include kind of the the production of grants and the impact they've had. And my second question is, I don't know if it's true but I felt like you had more big programs this year. More impactful programs like the pizza party and things like that. And I was surprised to see the program budget not increase a little bit because I felt like that was a direction you were using to get more traction in the community. Can you speak a little bit about, I'm assuming this is not the full program budget. I'm assuming there's partnerships that are offsetting your program budget. So can you tell us, is the program budget growing? and you're just managing to find more partnerships or how's that working?

I appreciate that, Beth. Thank you for those questions and comments. We came in under budget on our programs last year. Part of the reason is that we are partnering with Sustainable Wellesley. We did have a lot of programs and thank you for recognizing that. Last year we had a number of We partnered on, we spearheaded the pizza party, climate action, a whole climate action night. in February. And then we partnered on a movie that was super successful, Plastic People with Needham and with Sustainable Wellesley. we also partnered on a guest speaker a doctor to speak on health and climate and children and then we had the climate cafe and this is just in the spring the climate cafe as well in the spring that we spearheaded.

And we are able to, we've been able to kind of decrease the cost that was originally projected for those initiatives through partnering both with groups like Sustainable Wellesley and Green Needham but also through partnering with local businesses. So we're finding that food really attracts attendees at our events and other towns find that too. and we don't know when we're planning the budget if we're going to find a food establishment that will donate fully. which Le Petit Four with their incredible pastries they donated quiche and pastries for which We don't know that this far in advance if we're going to get a donation or not. That would have been hundreds of dollars to pay for that. So some of our food establishments, we're paying them at a discounted price.

Sometimes they're donating. So that explains some of it. And it's just that this far in advance, we need to plan out for the full amount that we expect to pay for these events. And then we find ways to cut those costs as we get closer.

Oh, right. And just to clarify, I wasn't expecting your program budget would go down. I was surprised it wasn't going up because... it seems to me the programs are more robust and that they have more food, more signage, overall presence to them. And so that was more my question.

I'm happy to seek an impact. I'm happy to hear about partnerships. I understand your question. What I think I'm trying to explain is because we've been successful at keeping the cost down. I was hesitant to, because we were already a guideline at pushing it over, but I really appreciate that, your comments.

Good morning, Mary Beth. You know, I mentioned with FMD an issue of messaging, and I want to say something similar in terms of the Climate Action Committee and the work that you're doing. I think that we lose sight, I think as a community we lose sight of the fact that town meetings has policies that direct a lot of decisions and actions that we're taking in town government. and it's easy to forget that there are climate action goals and carbon emissions reductions goals that were set by town meeting that have an impact on the decisions. and I think it's important to keep those at the forefront because sometimes those cost more money than an alternative decision that we might make but we're acting consistent with what our legislative body required and it requires a change in the decision that legislative body town meeting makes in order for us to change direction at your level.

And I think a good example of that is the solar arrays on Hardy and Honeywell, where there are parallel logical discussions taking place. So on the one hand, we have some people at the MLP who are suggesting that they can purchase less expensive green energy per kilowatt from the grid versus the generation of solar on top of those buildings. But that's not the entire debate. and I think that you know what we need to be moving on to is a discussion about determining a policy about solar geothermal other methods of efficiency and clean generation as it relates to resiliency and the overall town policy.

that will help guide those decisions and explain to the community generally why we're making certain decisions even though they may not be in the strictest sense the most efficient return on the investment from a pure cost perspective. I know that when I was on the school building committee, one of the things I requested is that the floor space in the electrical rooms in the two new schools have the capacity to house battery storage. because we're seeing through the Bessemer project at the MLP the success that battery storage will have in terms of town electrical supply and consumption and cost. So I do my one request continues to be that the messaging out of your department and out of the Climate Action Committee be consistent with what we've determined as a town are the goals that we're working towards.

I really appreciate those comments, Tom, and I couldn't agree with you more on the importance of the messaging and also what you're pointing to in terms of the need for policy. the need for policy for understanding under what conditions does the town explore geothermal and solar. and under what triggers a feasibility study? Who's in charge of that feasibility study? How do we interpret the results of that feasibility study in determining do we move forward or not? And what are the triggers that determine that. And so I'm really excited about the townwide capital planning committee and the fact that the proposal shows the sustainability director as a non-voting member. because I think that is a really helpful forum that might be a helpful forum.

for establishing a policy on these sorts of renewable energy considerations.

And at least at the beginning, if there isn't a policy, sustainability is one of the weighted criteria. So it will be part of the discussion through which you'll ascertain how do you prioritize and how do you discern between this option or that with respect to feasibility. Anything else? Thank you very much, Mary Beth. Thank you for all your hard work. My pleasure.

Thank you.

Well, the police department is caucusing out in the lobby and we are going to invite them in. 99. Morning Chief, we are ready for you.

I know it's a shock, we're ahead of schedule.

That's why you come early. Good morning everybody.

Good morning everyone. So good morning. We'll go over our overall budget, including both personal services and expenses, and then talk about our capital, and then go to any particular questions you may have. We met guidelines which was our most important thing. I say that with the caveat that on the expense side of the house we obviously had a 4% increase and we met that appropriately and had no problems with that. On our personal services side it is somewhat skewed at this point because we have three unions in the police department all of which have contracts expiring as of June 30th next year so we really don't have any idea of what where that will go. At this point, we modeled our overtime and other things related to personal services based on the town-wide financial plan guidelines that we have.

So that's, and obviously like any other department, most of our budget is related to personal services. Some of our $8.7 million, most of that goes to personal services and three unions. and 900,000 essentially goes to our expenses and of that 900,000 almost one third of that or a good solid one third is merely for cruiser purchases. Oh, I'm sorry, yep, red is hot, right? Oh, green is hot, okay. Never remember that, sorry about that. So running through our budget, Obviously, the 4.0, 4.0% increase for expenses we met. In terms of personal services, we did have some employees that we know where personal services are going to be. That's including my contract, which was negotiated by the board. for ethics purposes. which was a 2% increase. The deputy chief had a 2.5 increase coming up per his contract.

And we did not make any assumptions for a merit increase, which our previous merit increases we obviously absorbed through our budget. Lieutenants, Sergeants, and Patrol, obviously, are all Union, so we have no idea what that's gonna go, and the same with our dispatchers. In terms of our patrol officers, as you're all aware, we've hired several over the last year, and they are coming in at much lower steps than the officers that they are replacing. So the officers that they were placing were either promoted, in one case retired, and they were obviously at much higher steps because they were more experienced and not brand new. but just to run through the steps because I know that was an issue earlier. So we'll have 12 officers on steps. The five new officers obviously were paid at a lower rate than the officers that were placed and several officers within our department indicating that they will be obtaining their EMT or emergency medical technician certificates. That's something that the department pays for. We pay for the certification and the training. and then subsequently they get a pay increase when they get that EMT license.

They have to maintain that license throughout the longevity of their career with Wellesley PD and it's obviously a great thing to have an officer be a fully certified EMT on the street. Our animal control officer, who's not represented by the union, is a 2% increase, again, on personal services based on the guidelines and a step increase. Overtime line items. I'll get to our other stuff in a second. Our overtime line items were across the board increased by 3%, as I mentioned, based on the town-wide financial plan. Night Shift Differential, we'll see a little bit of increase based on some employees getting some benefits, increased benefits because they're increased on steps. Longevity decreased due to one of our 30-year veterans are retiring. and the holiday pay is actually based on who actually works on that particular holiday. So going to our professional staff which is our civilian non-sworn staff of which we have a few. This year was a major re-classification in two areas for us.

One was our IT specialist position. That was a specialist position that essentially was an assistant to Detective McLaughlin, who's a sworn, obviously post-certified detective. He is our IT manager. as I've said to the board several times, he has built our entire public safety infrastructure at the police department from the ground up. And now in the last two years, he's really been working more with the fire department bringing up some of their public safety IT to a better level and improving their gear. And the common denominator in the police and fire aside from our great relationship with the fire department is the fact that we have combined dispatch. So every 9-11 call comes into our station. and the dispatchers enter that into our computer-aided dispatch system and then it subsequently alerts the fire department. They pull all their information off of that system and we pull all of our information off that system and we have to make those systems work. Fire Department just went to, and I'm sure I don't want to steal Chief Mortorelli's thunder,

they're going to an automated dispatch center or an automated dispatch system that's a little more consistent and there's been a number of problems as we have two different software companies so Peter has basically spent a lot of his time with the fire department in the last few weeks trying to rectify those problems. But moving forward, Peter is close to a 30-year veteran himself, has visions of enjoying his life in retirement. and as part of that we reclassified that IT specialist into a public safety IT manager that we would share with the fire department. It would be based out of the police department. The police department would bear the burden of that. on the budget, but we reclassified that position with HR this year. Starting just after July, we worked with HR to come up with a job description, and then HR obviously classified that job position. and that in theory, well not in theory, that will replace Peter when we hire that person and we're in the process of hiring that person right now, we're going through the resumes, that Peter will have a chance to

really download all of his information to that person. And it's a civilian professional position. And that person will go forward and represent both the police and the fire with our very unique IT needs. So that was a major... a major win for us. It was one of my goals this year to get that done, and we did. We're funding that. We're absorbing those costs because it is a much higher level of classification. We're absorbing those costs through the fact that the IT specialist position has not been filled since July. It's been vacant. and we're obviously halfway through the year so we have the funds available to make that work. And I honestly don't know when we're going to be able to hire that person as it's a lengthy, we have to find the right person and then subsequently do a background check due to the level of certifications. and security clearances that the person will need to work in the police station and have access to all the computer systems that we have access to. So that's number one. And number two is As you're aware, Ginger Evans retired after 25 years of service to the town.

Ironically, she also worked extensively, as we all know, at the fire department assisting them in their time of need. and so essentially for the last two years our one sort of admin assistant as it was classified was doing most if not all of the work at the police station on the professional side and that job really had evolved from just answering the phone, and passing messages along to managing most of our payroll, managing our detailed billing, doing all of our accounts billing, our accounts receivable, and now manages a lot of our record keeping in terms of our training certifications and it really goes to our whole philosophy of we believe professional staff should be doing those jobs and sworn post certified police officers should be out on the street or doing more post certified police work in the community. So that was, I worked with HR, we worked with HR, the department worked with HR to reclassify that position and really

adequately reflect what that position is. And we're very fortunate that HR has obviously been fantastic to work with. And we were able to do that. And that actually, that employee is here today, Brittany Sullivan. who was promoted to police manager and she essentially runs a good part of our administrative side of the house very very effectively and like anything we all know retention is the name of the game here in town government at least on our side and we really wanted someone who has the institutional knowledge who continues to forward her job description every day, really. And we want to retain that person. So that was a major reclassification, too. We still retain a second admin assistant position, which will essentially report to Brittany. and we're in the process of filling that with HR too. And that's something again that Brittany is handling. So Brittany's reviewing all the resumes and she's taking care of it with HR and then subsequently when the interviews come it'll be something that

the Deputy Chief and I can then really get involved in but that's was our second one of our second major goals and we managed to accomplish that in terms of this year but it's being funded fully through the next year's budget request. on the expense side of the house. As you've heard many times, the cost, one third of our expenses are all cruiser related. And just to give you a quick rundown on that. So essentially a hybrid cruiser of which we purchase extensively now, it's all we buy. The base cost is around $49,000, so it's up from about $4,000 or $5,000 from last year. And then it takes another $18,000 to $22,000, depending on the model year and what fits in the car and what doesn't fit in the car, to upfit it. with markings with the cage, the prisoner retention, our consoles for the radios, and all the emergency lighting gear.

So it's base price with everything is around $72,000 for each cruiser. This year, we opted to buy three Hybrid Cruisers, and our staff is always on the alert for lower priced vehicles. So we got another electric Chevy Blazer, fully electric, which will be our third. That should be here any week, any day now. and that cruiser, the base cost of that is $61,000 plus the 18 to 22, 23, depending, to outfit it. That's a unique situation there because we don't have any gear from previous cruisers that we can throw in there, and we usually do. We try to recycle everything that we can. So but the story behind that was that Officer Gover was out and had an opportunity to buy a last year's model of the Chevy Blazer. We have one of those in service right now. It's done very, very well for us. Officer Gover found one that was they would sell to us for the same price as a Ford hybrid. They wanted to get rid of it. It was the previous model year.

And he went for it. And then subsequently, our main cruiser vendor, we buy off the state bid with decided to meet that price for the new model year. So we got a brand new car for significantly discount, which was very nice. And then Officer Grover worked with the DPW to make sure that we get the last of those grants for the incentive grants for buying the electric car. the culture is there throughout the department on trying to make things work and trying to recycle things and I'm going to talk about that on some of our capital items as well. So we'll be getting four cars, three will be hybrids, one will be a fully electric, and we're getting, I think we have one gas vehicle left in terms of our marked cruisers. in the past three or four years we've replaced all of them with hybrids and the question I always get is how much money are you saving with gas and it's very difficult to determine that because of the gas fluctuation gas prices but I can tell you unequivocally we are having less than 50%.

We've had a 50% reduction in gas usage. And it was equated to me by a longtime patrol officer that said, went from a gas cruiser to a hybrid cruiser this year, and said, at the end of the shift, I usually put in six gallons of gas. Now I'm putting in two. So real world. In terms of other line items on expenses, over the past several years, we've really tried to accurately reflect where we are spending the money. and that's kind of a deviation from how it was done prior to us, but we really wanted to make sure we know exactly how much money we have in each line item and how much we're spending. this year we realigned a lot of that we continue to realign and you'll notice that if you look at our budget it seems like some are much higher with the percentages but in reality we're just taking money from another line item that we're not using and putting it in there so One of the bigger ones is our equipment and maintenance contracts as opposed to equipment maintenance. So our equipment and maintenance contracts are some of our contracts for our software.

And that's everything from our in-house software to our Power DMS, excuse me, which runs our accreditation software. And that's the software that we use to upload everything to our accreditation commission and track everything that we need to track. Very, very helpful. In other areas, we removed things that we weren't using. For instance, there was a program that we had exorbitant cost increase year over year in the last few years. and we hadn't really used it in four to five years. It was basically like a restorative justice type program but the Dedham District Court and their juvenile division which is what we were using it for with all of the reforms in juvenile justice really it was kind of a moot point because Dedham District Court was already doing all that. So we removed that program. And so we're really able to take the money from one area that we weren't using and then reapply it to where we were using it in the more appropriate use.

Our other big ticket item there is our licensed clinician, which we put a 5% increase on that line item merely because For a police department in Massachusetts trying to get licensed clinicians now, it's very difficult. They're in high demand. Many of my colleagues throughout the state are finding that they're hiring licensed clinicians that are fresh out of school with zero experience and throwing them sort of into the mix whereas our clinician has been with us for several years has institutional knowledge of the town who to talk to who to call and more importantly who the players are within the town and also has a lot of knowledge on various families that she's worked with already and most of the time she resolves those issues but there's always some lingering ones and I think she's very happy here and we're very happy to retain her so that's why we did increase that.

The rest of the items are sort of smaller. Uniforms is a bigger one just because the cost of coats and shirts and everything have gone up. Ammunition is also a little bit of an increase. And that's partly due to the state and the post commission increasing the number of times that require us to go to the range every year and shoot and qualify on our firearms. Typically, we used to go twice a year. Now we're up to three or four times a year. So obviously, we have some costs associated with that. The other big one is the cruiser, and that's the 13,000, almost a 7% increase, which reflects the increased cost of not only the crews themselves, but outfitting them. on the crossing guard, special police side. I know there's some concerns about that. And that we increased the rate by 3%. And for the town guidelines.

And then we also wanted to increase the stipend that the crossing guards received from $750 to $8. That's what they get per crossing for showing up. So that was last increased in fiscal year 18. So we want to go forward with that. and in terms of do you want me to stop there or continue on to capital? What does the board desire?

Let's pause there. Are there questions? Kenny?

Just following up on the crossing guards. So for two years, it looks like we've been at seven-ish when we're budgeted for 18. Have you reconsidered, do we need 18?

I would like to have 18. I think that reflects the town's desire to have more people walk to school. trying to hire crossing guards in this community has always been a significant problem and throughout the year Kathy Poirier who's our SRO who's really in charge of the crossing guards has many many She's always trying to get people to sign up for crossing guard duty. It's a tough, tough thing to do because you have to be there for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon and you really can't plan anything else. All the locations. I think the Wellesley schools really want crossing guards. It puts us in a quandary because there are some conflicts there. One is like for the elementary schools, you can't be dismissed unless you're in fourth or fifth grade by yourself. So you need a parent to be there too. So the theory being that the parent would walk, obviously, dismiss the child, and then walk home.

So in reality, in theory, you should only have fourth and fifth graders walking to school. I don't know if that's the reality. I mean, I know it was when I was at Hardy, or my son was at Hardy. We staff right now the ones that are very critical, Route 9, at Kingsbury. We will staff it if we can't get a crossing guard and some of the other more critical ones we tend to staff. The rest of them are sort of over the years we've never been able to staff them and I can tell you five years ago that was a major issue with the town. They were very concerned about that. The schools were very concerned about that. So it would be an in-depth discussion with the schools on what we could actually do because we obviously haven't been able to meet those goals and it's frustrating because in other communities you see crossing guards everywhere. But it's a much larger discussion on what does the town really want. And if we really want crossing guards, do we increase the funding? Do we find some other incentive to do it?

it's a holistic conversation so right now the seven we have they're at key posts and again police officers cover those posts if they're not covered so We've really whittled them down to what we need, but I know from previous years there's a lot of consternation about removing potential crossing guard positions. So certainly something I'd be willing to discuss with the board and the school department at some point.

Good morning. I was very interested in your discussion about what's going to happen with Peter McLaughlin's position and support the direction you're going in. But my question is, with his retirement, and with the civilian nature of a lot of his function in IT, how were you training officers to deal with the cybercrime and electronic economic crime that is on the increase if he's no longer here because I read an article the other day about between the federal government and banks beginning to phase out checks. I mean, we're across the age spectrum. I think now you find and a younger demographic that has embraced electronic banking. So at least older senior members of the community like myself and I

having to deal with that changeover and mistakes happen, people are subject to scams that we're seeing all the time. I'm wondering what the department is doing to try to backfill the job that Peters actually had as a sworn officer.

So when Peter's detective position, we'll go back to detectives. So in theory, when this first started, Peter was a detective. He was assigned to BCI. And then he sort of did the IT stuff on the side. As the years went on, IT became more and more of his forte, and he was assigned to the Metrolec Computer Crime Lab in Norwood. It's a regional task force that does exactly what you're talking about, especially with Seizures of, or forensic analysis of computers, phones, for just those type of identity theft cases. Unfortunately, with Peter's workload here in IT, he's unable to do the most of that. And so when we move the bulk of Peter's work over to a civilian position that his detective position will go back to full time being in detectives.

So, A, it's a way of, again, using post-certified police officers to do actual post-certified police work, and it will allow someone to focus solely on computer crimes. Peter is self-taught in a lot and he's gotten to a lot of courses. Given the range of detectives that we have now and their abilities, I have no doubt that we'll be able to focus someone on that particular need. and we have some very intelligent young detectives that are in there now that are already doing some of this work. They share the workload across, so I don't have one particular specialist. They all have different skills. And even Sergeant D'Acenzo, just came from BCI. He was promoted by this board earlier this year. He's still working and doing some of that check fraud and things like that on overtime and when he's got some downtime on a shift. We fully would have someone else trained up, and that's something that we can do.

It's a special position. It's certainly specialized training, but that's sort of... One of our great things about working at Wellesley PD, if you're interested in something like that, we can get you the training and get you certified and get you doing what you want to do. And it's definitely a niche job, but it's an important job. Long story short, we would have someone else trained up.

Chief, is it common for public safety to have combined dispatch as you're working towards now?

Yeah, so we've always had combined dispatch. Their fire is doing a more automated system. So instead of our dispatcher's voice coming over, it's like a Siri voice that announces the call. and there's a whole bunch of factors that Chief Mortorelli can talk to you about better than I can. It just basically is a text-to-speech program that takes what the dispatcher does. It allows the dispatcher more time on the phone. So now, especially if they're busy, there's only two of them there. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. with the dispatchers on the phone trying to type the address in, get the nature of the call. Now all they have to do is hit send and it dispatches the appropriate fire apparatus by computer and the address and announces it over both fire stations. So that's one less thing for a dispatcher to have to do. And it puts it out over the radio as well. And then the fire apparatus sign on or the ambulance signs on and they give them the further supplemental information.

integrating our CAD system that we've had forever and works exceptionally well with another vendor. Never easy. We're working through it even today. Peter spent the last week really and so on, fine tuning some things. And when it works, it works really well. But of course, there's always some sort of access issue or some sort of right issue. And this morning's update was we think that's been fixed. that is very common and that is sort of the industry standard going forward it's hard not to get excited sometimes or I don't want to say panic, but have that note of concern in your voice when you know the difference between a routine fire alarm and when someone's actually on the phone telling you that a house is on fire. that sometimes translates over the radio and over when the dispatchers used to announce it and we want a clean even keeled dispatch no matter what and if the dispatchers rushed or trying to get through it's the same every single time so that is that is the ideal

Dispatch Protocol.

Thank you for the presentation and all the work you're doing. because things seem to be going very smoothly. I know we've had a lot of traffic areas that you've had to manage and it's gone well. I have a few questions. One is about how we're handling merit and it's not I don't think it's necessarily for the police department I think it's more for Megan because we've handled the merit for our senior department heads differently in different budgets. Sometimes it's in HR, sometimes it's in the department. And I think as a board we should talk about consistently handling Merritt because I think Megan, the executive director's Merritt is in HR. the chief's merit is in the police department budget right yes and so it seems to me we should be more consistent across the budget areas.

So it's not so much a question as a comment that as we finalize our budgets, I'd like to see more consistency. in how we manage those merits because they are all contractual merit increases.

actually had that discussion with HR in particular. So unlike police and fire where they have overtime lines that may be able to be adjusted, obviously the other departments don't in some instances it is actually absorbed if you have a vacancy within the department and so you'll see an offset actually in the executive directors budget this year that aggregated some of my merit pay. So based on that exact question, right, so the smaller departments, we can absorb it. Rachel and I did have a discussion with the HR director about making sure that the merit pay number is inclusive of the contractual increases. And so I think the HR director is just of the opinion we just need to make sure that you either

are lowering the anticipated percentage that would be for, you know, sort of universally, or you need to add more funds to the merit pay plan to account for the contractual obligations which tend to be because they're higher salaries a greater percentage of the the merit pay pool but we have begun those conversations.

Okay I just think it would be more transparent as opposed to count on some budgets absorbing and some not because if it's not absorbed it would be turned back. So my second question I think Kenny started to touch on it, the crossing guards. So I believe the community wants the crossing guards and we have struggled over the years with the proper class compensation and how to recruit them. are there other ideas you've had about partnership with the schools with some of their personnel on training them to also be crossing guards or on more creative compensation to incent someone to to come for the shifts and whether that's a bonus for hitting a certain number of shifts or how it works. Are there other creative mechanisms that you've seen used in other towns that we should be thinking about?

So the use of school personnel was something that we had looked at. And then we had specifically looked at asking the schools to maybe consider some of their teaching assistants. but the teaching assistants went union some years ago and it would be a change of working conditions apparently and also so that was a no-go. The incentivizing it is something that I didn't address last year and Lieutenant Cleary and I looked at it this year and that's why we asked for the 50 cent increase. I think that is probably the way of the future in terms of just what you said. If you meet so many crossings, we will give you a bonus. And really, The other side of that is, do we really need all of these crossings? We haven't had them for many years. And I don't mean like a drastic cut, but can we whittle those down a little bit more

and realistically, especially with, I mean, Upham didn't have a lot of crossings anyway, just by the nature of their, and the same with Bates, Hardy does pose some challenges in terms of the Fells block. And now that that's been redistricted and all those families to the north of Route 9, that's a tough area to transit in the morning. and that's also a gateway to the middle school from those families who are riding their bikes like my son who's trying to follow the town and be good. No, those are things that we're going to have to address. And, you know, quite frankly, in looking at it this year, when Lieutenant Clear and I were going over it, it did come up and that was the first step was to try and get more money into that and that is something we'll have to continue to look at to see if we can incentivize it and I think we'll try and recruit a little bit stronger as we go forward especially towards the spring and see if we can't get some people to step up. The problem is that it's like a revolving door.

Kathy will go out and get a few people, and then we'll have a few people leave. So just when we think we're up to 10 or 11, and then we're back down to seven, it's difficult sometimes.

One of the things I wonder about is maybe you don't need all 18 but maybe you do need the budget to creatively look at different recruitment and compensation strategies for those areas that it is far more expensive to have a patrolman cover than it is to pay I would request that you look at maybe recalibration of the number and how you spend the money. to give you better coverage.

It seems like a great add-on goal for this year and the beginning of next year, actually.

Chief, when you have officers covering the crosswalks, do they gather any statistics or metrics? on the number of children who ride or cross at those corners?

So the only ones that we've really looked at for metrics was Route 9 at Kingsbury Street, and that goes back to the Kingsbury Street Route 9 revitalization project. and at the time there was some discussion about maybe eliminating that because the safety improvements and we're going to have a guardrail by Sprague Road and obviously none of that was able to go through with MassDOT due to some conditions on the road. and I was actually a part of all that at the time and this goes back to my lieutenant days but I'm sorry I lost my train of thought there. The busier crossings are obviously the ones in front of the schools. The sort of the ancillary crossings We don't see that many people, quite frankly. And if we do, they're usually accompanied by a parent. So the areas that would be of concern or anything having to do with Route 9. Route 9 at Cedar Street is one because some children go to Fisk, some go to Schofield.

Like having someone in front of Schofield School, absolutely critical both for parents and children. But some of the neighborhood ones, the Grove Street one in particular, nice to have. We don't see a lot of traffic coming from that area, quite frankly. So they don't take actual numbers. when they're there. Typically, if an officer's covering it, he's going from a radio call assignment to cover that crossing for the next half hour, gets there, crosses a few kids, and then when the time's up, off he goes to, or she goes to the next call.

It seems to me it would be a great project for groups of parents to get together and share that time. But just to your point about whether you actually need all 18, just curious about what the traffic was.

and you know the other thing is with Hardy School and the actual that was the traffic problem was addressed with that redesign so In reality, it makes it easier for parents to drop their children off. And given the restrictions of kindergarten and three, you need a parent to dismiss you. and I don't know when that rule is in place either. I think that, I don't know if that was after we looked at all the crossings or before, but that certainly puts a significant difference on as opposed to Scott Whittemore walking to the parent school in first grade by himself. and walking home. That doesn't happen anymore.

Just a quick follow-up. In your view, is this model not working now?

We're not able to staff it now based on a lack of interest.

I'm sorry, meaning the combination between crossing guards and officers filling in.

When the officer is assigned to a crossing, that officer cannot leave. So that officer is, and those are the priority ones that we've identified over the years that we absolutely need. Usually we have our SROs help fill in. So the SRO will, like Kathy Poirier, will cover the Hardy School Crossing. That's a critical one for us. Just even though it's a light controlled intersection, obviously it's Weston Road at 830 in the morning. Sorry, what? Yeah, we even use our animal control officer from time to time if we have to. And then we have Matt Wall who will cover a lot of the Route 9 crossings due to the proximity of the middle school and the high school to his primary area. it's especially in the afternoon it can be a strain but Monday through Friday we do have more people and we're not opposed to covering a crossing if we have to like I you know so it's not the greatest of situations the ideal would be to look at the entire situation as a holistic process with the school department and really determine.

We need a lot of input from the parents, I think, as well. I wouldn't want to make blanket decisions.

Go ahead, Tom.

Not to continue this too long, but I think you're being very realistic. The fact of the matter is, it's a half hour in the morning, a half hour in the afternoon. there is no level of compensation that will pay somebody who doesn't want to get up when it's 10 degrees and blowing 30 miles an hour in January, February it just is easy to say it just isn't worth it and I just don't think it's realistic to think that we're going to pay $40 an hour for somebody to be a school crossing guard. So I fully support the efforts that you're making to look at trying to reduce the actual problem. by looking more practically at eliminating crossings and looking at reducing the need for these guards so I think it's tempting to talk about creativity for a problem that isn't An issue in that way.

I just think it's a nuts and bolts practical issue about human behavior not wanting to be out there. And so how do we reduce or eliminate the actual problem and need?

So since we've spent a lot of time on school crossing guards, would you like to move on to capital? I'd love to.

Go ahead, Beth. my last question is given kind of the operations that you see coming in the future changes in call volume changes in any mental health needs is there anything that You cut that was painful or is there anything that's kind of like on your wish list if something additional came up? Just to give us some visibility into future budget needs.

The future budget needs are going to be more police officers down the road, and that is a difficult conversation to have with any adding FTEs to a department. And that is not something that we did this year. This year is more of, as I said, we're really trying to realign internally what post-certified police officers are doing. And I don't want post-certified police officers doing regular administrative duties that really aren't related to police work. Now, there's always going to be evidence management and things of that nature that a police officer has to do or a detective has to do. but running the budget day to day and things like that is really something, and IT in particular, is something that a professional staff member can do and an officer can be out there.

before I go down the road of needing more FTEs I want to make sure we're realigning and fully staffing our current FTEs and that's what as the board knows we're in the process of doing at present we have two openings one was a retirement and of this year, and the other one was an officer who transferred to a neighboring department because it was closer to his home. So we already have the plan to, we're going to hire in the spring. We're actually coinciding our test with our recruiting efforts at community colleges throughout the area so we can go to the job fairs this spring, hand out a flyer and say we're actually hiring in a few weeks, take our test. so that would fill our two open positions and then realigning as I said like Detective McLaughlin that puts another detective on the street and going forward though, seeing the expansion through apartment complexes and the population increase, it's not necessarily the amount of calls that we're doing which averages approximately 27,000 and is quite a quite a bit more than we did the previous year.

It's the time we spend on those calls. So a call to a single family house for an alarm or a medical is typically 10 to 15 minutes. The officer goes, handles the call, and then leaves. When we go to apartment complexes, typically they're not alarm calls. They are some medicals. We're handling calls that, you know, in the spirit of de-escalation and the spirit of professional policing, we're taking the extra time. to figure out what the problem is and then get the subsequent help or assistance that they need. And that's hour and a half, two hours on occasion. Sometimes it's mental health, sometimes it's domestic, sometimes it's custody. or a combination of all three. And then that's just the on-scene time that we have and that's time that the officer's not available to take any other calls. There's no real turnaround time there. and then the subsequent paperwork that's involved after that to document that entire incident and follow up. So given the... I mean, in 40 William Street, we are there a lot. We're there a lot for a lot of different types of calls and it's just...

We're starting to see that increase. And even this past weekend, it's a busy weekend. A lot of things going on, both in town with the tree lighting and the dreidel dash and a lot of community events. But It's not quiet on a Saturday or Sunday. I mean, the officers are bouncing from call to call all day long, not simple calls either, trying to rectify. And we're calling people in off duty to do some investigations that popped up over the weekend. and when we look at in the scheme of things other departments that are of comparable size to us we are one of the smaller ones now I say that and that sounds bad because but it's not our officers obviously extremely well trained they're extremely well motivated we use technology wherever we can to make up any gaps that we have and typically we do more or less but we're we're proud of that and it's it's something that an officer is not just handling calls they're handling a call they're handling investigations they're doing a bunch of things that keep them interested so but going forward the things that I think the department will need in the future are really personnel related.

So and we're taking those steps to build that foundation now and address those issues to see what we can do now with what we have and then go from there with the board.

Thank you.

Capital? Okay. So Capital this year is fairly straightforward. In the in-car video system replacement, that's our ongoing system of replacing the dash cameras, and it's not just a dash cam. It's a dash cam. It's a panoramic cam. it's a prisoner monitoring camera and now we have new cameras that are showing the rear of the car as well and Those are cameras that run whenever the car runs, whenever the officer's on duty, the officer's mic'd up so they wear a small microphone, wireless microphone, records everything they say. they automatically turn on when the lights go on or when the officer hits it. We use that dash cameras for just about everything from criminal prosecutions on traffic stops to citizen complaints when we get them and they are few and far between but They often vindicate immediately an officer in the spirit of post and the increased police accountability. They are a lifeline for us.

and but they are also in the car in the car all the time they freeze in the winter they get hot in the summer and we found that by proactively replacing them ahead of time before they fail is obviously the way to go. So we've been asking for three each year to replace the 17 that we have in service. We also upgraded our server and the cameras from a 1080 and so on. number of days if it's not needed or forever if it is needed. But all of those things are going, like I said, 24 hours a day, seven days a week with the cruiser. That being said, with the three that we replace, we take the ones that we're replacing and we mothball those and we use those for spare parts. So when we do have a critical failure at 10 a.m. in the morning, Detective McLaughlin.

can usually get a spare part and get that camera back up and running so we don't lose the car for an amount of time. So that's our first item. Our second item is the radio repeaters, and these are actually the transmitters, the main transmitters that we use for our day-to-day operations. We have a site at Moggis Hill and a site at Wellesley College. so typically we like to replace those between five and seven years as the minute we plug that in that radio goes into service it is on again 24 hours a day seven days a week and is absolutely critical for our infrastructure our radio infrastructure But when we take those out of service, when we replace those, we don't get rid of them. We use them to augment other things. So in this case, over the past several years, we've taken spare parts and we've cobbled together a second radio channel for the police department to use. and then subsequently did the same for the fire department. So we used spare and surplus gear that we actually got from other departments including our own and we put together a second radio channel

that second radio channel is fantastic for days like the turkey trot when you have 15 officers spread out all over trying to communicate. Lieutenant Cleary was in charge, one of the officers in charge this year, where the runners are, where the bulk of the runners are, and you're not impacting sort of channel one operations, the regular, you know, street calls that are going on. We've used that channel two to as a command channel during major events. The marathon comes to mind. We're able to talk. I'm able to talk directly with Chief Mortarelli and relay EMS calls back and forth without the clutter of Channel 1. and the fire department I know we've helped them set up a second channel as well using surplus gear and gear that we've taken out of service and they are now expanding on that network as well and it allows them if they have a fire they can work one channel on the fire and then have the out of town mutual aid apparatus use the main channel so

very very effective and then again radio is a critical item and it always fails at three in the morning or something goes wrong at three in the morning by having the old system still there we can pull apart and put it right back into service and quite frankly, that's what Officer Tim Gover and Peter McLaughlin do on a regular, not on a regular basis, I don't want to say that, but when we have had issues, and it doesn't matter whether it's our radio or the fire radio, we don't distinguish, it's all the same, we're all on the same team, so we try to fix that immediately. So that's our cash capital requests for this year.

Any questions? well I applaud your resourcefulness on using all the parts and constructing I'm sure having a backup channel especially when you've got people all over town is helpful keep in touch with everybody no questions Thank you very much, Chief, Lieutenant, Deputy Chief.

I just want to thank Lieutenant Marie Cleary for doing a bulk of this preparation work and briefing me and the deputy on many an occasion and getting us up to speed with last minute questions and whatever it takes, Lieutenant Cleary is taking care of it. Thank you all very much.

Good morning.

Good morning, Lieutenant Lead Manager. We're here for traffic and parking.

So after fully immersing myself into municipal budget this past year, I think I have a handle on the direction that traffic and parking has been trying to go. over the years. So I'm happy to report that the traffic and parking budget is going to be projected to be self-funding this year. We won't need any funds transferred from the general fund. and that goes to the efforts that started in last fiscal year where we removed the personal services from shared personnel services from various departments back into those departments and then various different and so on, and so forth. Traffic and Parking took on expenses and projects throughout town because it was a good revenue base and it was able to support those projects without having to tap into the TAC base and the general fund.

I think I'll be on deaf ears to say that we haven't ever fully recovered from the pre-COVID days, but we're seeing increased usage in our revenue generating parking lots and on street meters. the the parking lots you know most people are doing the hybrid work so we see a lot of activity even probably in your commutes you see traffic heavy on Tuesday Wednesday Thursdays and then Monday and Fridays or flex days or some variation but we're pretty much coming up around the 750,000 mark each year with generated revenue. and that's enough to support most of the operations now that they've been transitioned out. So this year we're continuing that. The only personnel services we have in the budget are for the parking meter attendants

and a DPW employee who does the physical maintenance and inspections of the on street parking meters. As far as the expenses, on the budget go. We're pretty much staying within the same day-to-day operations and much like the police department's budget, we just did a little bit of housekeeping cleaning where we, funds that were used maybe in other categories and now just put directly so you'll see some increases in such things as line painting we were using the snow budget money to compensate to keep up with line painting we've seen increased costs over the years for line painting some of it comes from the roadway bike Cheryl marks are actually quite expensive to maintain and we're looking at the effectiveness of maintaining them to the rate we are maybe some less maybe some more to balance out the line painting The priorities there still remain.

Crosswalks and the major routeways to keep those visible. The snow and ice budget. was transferred over to the DPW. They manage it now. So there was funding there that was allocated for Snow and Ice Removal in the parking lots. And now that no longer is needed, we just help the DPW when it comes to actual large scale removal. So if we had a harsh winter and we had the Mounds coming up. We would compensate the DBW to remove some of that snow out to make the parking spaces available for people to use instead of being occupied by non-paying snowmen. the other thing that we saw over the year is because our increase in the lots are going up since COVID. Obviously, the app usage fees is going up. So you'll see that area is increasing, but it's offsetting. So we get more use. We're going to get a higher fee base, but we're still going to be generating revenue

from that at the same rate that we would if we had lesser use. The electric charging vehicle stations are the other area you'll see some increases in. and that is also because of use. We've added several of those stations when Honeywell came on and Hardy came on and here at Town Hall. And we've seen the growth over the years. They are getting use and when they're getting used, our electric bill goes up. but the program is offsetting each other and is creating a marginal revenue. and we're working at trying to bridge the gap a little bit so that we encourage electric use vehicles and sustainability but also make sure that the program itself is sustainable so we're not having to take losses because over time we'll have to upgrade equipment. So we want to be able to make sure that the program is successful there.

Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Williams, Testa, Williams, Testa, Williams, Testa, Williams, Testa, Williams, Testa, Williams, with any of those items. I think the electricity is stabilized, so the traffic signal electric bills have stabilized out. and we're also seeing some marginal increase in electricity because a very popular thing is the RRFBs, the push button flashing crosswalks. We get numerous requests for those every year. that come through the Traffic Safety Committee, and we've been onboarding on average two or more a year. We opt with the solar units, but in some locations that's just not possible, so we have to install meters and electricity there as well.

What are the criteria to install that kind of flashing light, the beacon?

So right now, we're actually working with the Traffic Safety Committee and the Mobility and Transportation Director, Sheila Page. We're working on a policy to come up so that we're looking at what's the volume of the roadway, you know what's the demand what's the pedestrian demand so that we're putting them in locations that are worthy and use sometimes it's a small demand neighborhood wants one because they go to a particular crossing several times a day, but the demand is a couple people in the neighborhood and those units are $20,000 and come with maintenance and costs there. and we also mobilize state grants. So currently we have two that are here in stock out to be deployed and those were given to us through a state grant. so we try to mobilize that as much as we can to fund them too and then there's other aspects of some of the schools in town have requested them for private schools for their

High Cross areas, and they've offset the cost by buying those units themselves.

Philosophically, do you find that there's driver fatigue with having too many of those slashing beacons? Are people still stopping when they're supposed to?

That's a great question, and that's something we're exploring. We're not... are deaf to sign pollution and the signal pollution there, as we call it. So that's why the big stand is they don't like to see them set up back to back like within a 400 feet radius or within 400 feet of a signalized intersection because the theory behind that is they can just walk to that signalized intersection, push the button and wait for the walk signal. So they're really designed for mid-block crossings. So a large stretch of Western Road. We're going to see some new ones there with the northern section. Reconstruction Project there. And the ones that are going in are along 16, one by the Hills Congregational Church in the Hills Library. and then one by St. Andrews, Denton Road. So long stretches of high volume areas that have mid block crossings that need some visibility, especially in the evening darker hours.

I'm glad to hear about the Denton Road, St. Andrews. I just got an email this week from a concerned resident who heard of an incident there. And actually, I suggested he contact you and ask you about that. So I'm glad to hear about that. I was just wondering whether there's warrants for how much distance you need between traffic signals. So as you were saying, you don't want drivers to have to stop at a light. and then 400 feet later stop at a flashing beacon because they're likely to say, I'm just going to keep going here. You also don't know when it's dark. It's hard to tell whether someone's completed a crossing when the flashing is still active. and that is a little tough for drivers because you want to make sure someone's cleared the intersection before you continue. But I'm glad to hear about St. Andrews.

Thanks Mike, that was really helpful and I had a couple of questions that were very well answered so I don't want to go back to those questions but I just want to make sure that the there's some sort of write-up or memo that goes in the budget book as I have to say I go back to the budget books frequently in previous years to try and say oh there's something I remember from last year I want to refresh my memory or trying to look at trajectories for something so I see these as a critical part of our institutional knowledge so if we can have some sort of write-up that goes in the budget book I think it'd be really helpful so these answers There's a lot of changes in the past two years. I think memorialising that's really helpful for reference.

Yes, and moving forward, I know at the 11th hour I drafted the memo to do that, and when I put the budget forward, I will continue to update that year to year so that you see past goals, current goals, and what we project to do with the department.

Lieutenant, you also referred to the realignment of expenses that we kind of rebalance, and do you feel that that's been accomplished, or is there still more rebalancing that you need in that budget?

I think currently for this fiscal year, we're producing a self-funding balanced budget. We did move the sign expenses to the DPW, the majority of it, and keeping a small... in the traffic and parking for either parking lot signage or special event signage for traffic related events and things that occur in town. I think that is the huge part and I think the line painting it's an expensive item you know we're talking a hundred thousand dollar line item to continue and maintain line painting in the town we are and traffic and parking currently can support that and keep it away from general funding or having to done by the DPW. So I think if we see the positive trend we're going, we can maintain that if somehow we plateau and we see

Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, to move that to the DPW fund to keep that going.

Great. Tom?

I'm actually very interested to hear the exchange between you and Marjorie about sign fatigue on the crossing lights. I do see certain, for example, the one in front of St. Paul is one where people are in particular unlikely to stop. And I know it's been raised, I think, by Father McLaughlin about the four o'clock mass on Saturdays. and the fact that that tends to skew older in terms of the average age of the attendee. And that's a tough one. Challenge with enforcement at some of these is a location like that has a lot of infrequent travelers. It's not as if you can influence somebody who goes through there all the time by stopping and ticketing.

there are frequently people who are just passing through one time it's a fall afternoon they're going somewhere out here to enjoy some activity and they're not going to be going through there again or infrequently but to the extent that there are ways to enforce people stopping at those flashing lights. I think there are some locations in particular where it's really critical because of who's using those particular lights and those particular crosswalks. the question I have is I happen to be somebody who carries an ashtray full of quarters so in Wellesley in particular where you can still buy some parking for a quarter that's what I use. I use apps everywhere else. And when I think about the use of apps here in town,

what I think about is the ability for somebody from the driver's seat to absolutely see easily the zone that you have to enter into the app in the parking space. and so I'm sorry to say I'm not as aware here. Is that information clearly available from the various parking spaces? It really makes a difference in terms of somebody's willingness to use the app.

So that is actually posted on every single metered location. So it gives you like zone 2330 or maybe in paid by phone it's 23,300. They're very similar. that's posted on each metered location so if you're not physically getting out and looking at the meter because you're not paying by coin I could see the confusion there in the commuter lots it's posted on larger signs So I think part of the evaluation of on street parking is to look at the full picture to see How can we, you know, is the media programs, is the signage adequate to get people to use the app? We do see from usage that the app is by far exceeding any coin usage. It's actually, the coin usage is actually outdating itself. in usage. Most people are preferring to use one of the provided apps that we...

I still use quarters too. Go ahead, Beth.

So that makes three of us that have nickels, dimes, and quarters in our car. I have two questions for you. One is an education related question. We've had tremendous turnover in the merchant and business community. and one thing I've noticed is they don't know about our parking pass program so if you could think about a way to get the message out that there is a pass program to help those employees find their way to Tailby or one of our lots. I think that would be really helpful for the town and helpful for the community. those that are using the quarters, dimes, and nickels. And my second question, do we have an education program now, I guess?

It's actually on the... A sticky note on my computer screen to create the parking and traffic flyer for advertising purposes. We do, this year we're proud to say that we've gone to the GovDelivery so people can now go online and apply for their permit like a dog license or other building permit. So I think that's going to bring more traffic so people don't have to physically use the U.S. mail or stop in at Town Hall to pay by cash or check. they'll be able to just go on get their permit it'll be digital they won't have to print anything they won't have to put it on the dashboard but that is something we considered and it kind of came to light when the Central Plaza parking lot started a program. There were many merchants who were asking, well, where are my employees? I'm going to park. Where am I going to park? and then we started to get that information out and that's when we realized we really do need like a flyer to say this is the program and put a QR code and

provide that service because the employer can pay for 10 passes and give us the vehicle information for their employees if they choose to do so or they could direct them and they get the same discounted rate as a resident would so if you're and employee in town and applying for annual parking permit at the same rate as a resident or a student.

That's great. I think there is a lack of information. So that's a great program to be launching. And my second question is, The larger boards, the sign boards that you roll around when neighborhoods call, are they in this budget? And I just didn't see them. I don't know whose budget they're in.

The A-frame?

No, they're electronic side.

Oh.

And it goes and says you're driving this fast, but you move it neighborhood to neighborhood.

Yes, so some of that is under the traffic calming budget in traffic and parking, but the majority of the trailers, I think the chief could talk to more, we get from grants. you know, so different grants to fund those. There is some sort of technology because not only do they provide messages, they actually record a lot of So those are generally grant-funded? The units themselves are generally grant funded.

Because those seem to be a way to address the sign fatigue and also meeting the needs of a neighborhood very quickly. And so I just wanted to make sure we had appropriate resources to address those things. Thank you.

just a quick question Mike do we ever look at the signs and lines grant program through Safe Routes to Schools as an option or is that I mean it might not be traffic and parking but it might be you know elsewhere in public safety but I'm just curious if you ever look at that

We did briefly, before it closed this year, we had a conversation about coordinating. We'd have to give ourselves a little bit more time because it requires buy-in from both the schools and the DPW would be a collaborative project. but we did take a look at that to see if we could offset some of that funding to improve it. And part of the goals for this coming year is actually to do an inventory of a lot of our traffic and parking assets. and one of that is for school zones, which is going to look at the signing. Are we consistent? Are we across the board in all schools? And what's the latest recommendations for that?

Okay, great. Thank you.

Other comments and questions? All right. Thank you very much, Lieutenant. We're slipping on our being ahead of time, but the fire department is here, so we'll ask Chief Mortorelli to join us, please. Don't be shy. We're friendly. Good morning, Chief. Most of the time.

Good morning. Thank you for having us. For those of you that do not know, this is Barbara Frang. Barbara is our administrative assistant, and she's been with us for a little bit over a year. has been instrumental in helping us rebuild our budget.

Busy year.

Oh, yeah. Thank you. So yeah, good morning. Again, thank you for having us. So this is the third budget presentation I had the opportunity to help prepare. this is definitely a special one because as you know we've had the last few years it's been quite an adventure you know we essentially had to Rebuild Our Budget. There was a structural deficit. There was a slew of issues, right?

Different challenges, and it took a team of, you know, many of us, Assistant Chief Brady got the ball rolling, Chief Soar, Ginger Evans, who was I can't even put into words how much she helped, and now with Barbara. So we were able to do different things. to work on the budget. I know this was something for years, for the last couple of years anyway, there was a lot of trial and error type things. And you would hear me say, we're throwing a dart. And you probably got to the point where you said, does this guy ever bring anything concrete to us? because a lot of it was. The way that the budget was previously built, there was only X amount of buckets to draw money out of. So it was very difficult to project what we needed. It was very difficult to track spending. So we knew that it was going to take a few years because we needed to use the previous year's data to project where we were going to be. Which brings us to today, which is why I think this is

I can confidently say that we are at a spot now where we have a baseline or a foundation where we can project what we need moving forward. Now, there's always going to be reallocations and things of that nature. It is a lot of moving parts. but you'll see in I can pretty much guarantee you out of today's I know you're gonna hear a lot of presentations this probably will be the most boring We're within guideline. We're not like previous years where we would ask for positions, heavy equipment, apparatus. We've come a long way. We've used a lot of that to build to where we are today. So with that, I'll go through. You'll hear me say the common theme will be reallocation because essentially that's what we did. We were reallocating money just to better track and efficiently track our spending. but I pulled out a few different slides that Bob and I thought were worthwhile to talk about and of course if you have any questions on any of the accounts just feel free to to jump in and ask

So the first slide basically just covered. So the next three, senior administrator, clerical, and support staff. Again, I'll have a common theme. There are different increases. One's almost 9%. I think the other two are closer to 6%. that's essentially to account for contractual agreements between myself, the assistant chief, and then for clerical is reclassification for Barbara's position as well as the mechanics position. By doing the reclassification, it was able to add additional steps so that we could not only attract the talent that we have, but also maintain the talent that we have. I will say I know Chief Soar told me day one the most important position in the fire department is the administrative assistant. and at the time I didn't quite understand what he was talking about but now I understand. It absolutely is and I know Bob will get mad at me later on.

I'll hear about it in the ride home, but Barb is the best admin you could ever, ever hope for because it's, you know, not only do you have to be detail oriented, you have to be organized, you have to be very good with numbers, you have to think on your feet, but let's face it, it's a firehouse, right? You have to, you need thick skin you'll be able to mix it up a little bit and Barbara can mix it up with anybody and she's she's been a great addition for us everyone loves her and she's been like I said she's been instrumental in helping us get to where we are today for the mechanic. And I always say, we use the term mechanic for Steve Ardett, and it doesn't do Steve justice. Steve does so much more. and after speaking to my colleagues throughout Metro Fire, I mean, we are so, so lucky that we have someone like that because We don't have to deal with the backups at some of the dealerships, the manufacturers. When an engine needs routine maintenance or if there's an issue with it, we don't have to send it out. Steve can do everything right in the mechanics bay. And the amount of time and money it saves the town, you can't even put into words.

I actually heard, I was in a meeting the other day with a couple of chiefs and they were talking about how one of the mechanics goes around from town to town and city to city and they were kind of in line for him. I said, what are you talking about? They said, well, we found one mechanic who's willing to come to us, but he's so backed up because he's going throughout Massachusetts, you know, we can't see him for about a month. You know, we're in a position if something happens, you know Steve's right there to pull the apparatus so again you can't put that into words so anyway I digress those those two those um three line items are due to contractual obligations as well as reclassifications Injury, in this one, it's the opposite. You'll actually see a reduction of over 20%. And this was mostly because we had a long-term... an employee that was out on long-term injury. She has since retired so we were able to reallocate some of that money to other accounts.

shift differential is kind of just the opposite of that. This was almost a 15% increase. And this is because we have a slew of new firefighters. So we need to add to the shift differential.

Steve, do you maybe want to just discuss what the shift differential means? Sure.

Yeah, that's a good point. So shift differential is essentially what a firefighter is because we work 24 hours, right? so if you have an admin position something like fire prevention where you're only working days right you just you get paid for the day but shift differential is built into the contract whereas you get a percentage of for working a night shift Holiday Pay. So again, a bit of a reallocation here. So this is to account for the contractual 13 holidays. but it also, and this is the first time we were able to do this, is that we were able to build in for Marathon Day the firefighters that will come and Work Details because obviously Marathon is a big lift. It's the biggest day of the year for us. So it's kind of an almost an all hands on deck type of event. So we were able to reallocate some funding so that we can pay for the details through this line item.

Longevity again built into the contract in this year there are I believe there are six firefighters there are three that are going to be for the first time they'll qualify for longevity and and then there are three that are going to be receiving step increases for longevity. So we had a bit just shy of a 10% increase in that light item. So for personal services, that's, again, the common theme is reallocation for the expense budget. We're within guideline of 3%. I think, and Bob can probably attest to this, last year I feel like we were in a pretty good spot of how we allocated some of the funding. This year I think we're going to have it pretty dialed and I mean there'll always be changes based on the department needs and things of that nature but for the most part we have these accounts now built with what the projections are for the next fiscal year.

So does anyone have any questions on any of the personal services or expense?

Chief, how are, in terms of personal injury, how have injuries been tracking over the past few years in the department?

Some minor things, which we're always going to have, but we haven't had anything major. are significant, really, I'd say, in over the last year or two, which obviously helps because that's one of the issues we had before, right? There was... it's always an unforeseen circumstance, illnesses, injuries, and you can never really account for it. but we are trying to be obviously more proactive with things through trainings. And it's not, you know, when I say training, you always think of, all right, just maybe like, you know, Live Burns, and things of that nature. But training comes with things as simple as showing somebody how to lift. If you're lifting a patient in a stair chair, if you're lifting somebody in the stretcher. I know years ago, I hurt my back because the stretcher malfunctioned, right? And some stuff like that you can't prepare for, but we can show, especially the newer members, how to lift properly because there are techniques and it does help.

So we try to be a little bit more proactive in hopes that we can maintain a full workforce.

I have one other question before your time there were some issues with allocating or setting aside too much vacation time towards the end of the fiscal year how are you working on that

So that part's tricky, right? Because the timing obviously all ends in the fiscal year. So where that gets tricky is you want to run as close to full as you can. and obviously it's not cost feasible. So we do have minimums that we'll run down to. And we try to fluctuate that a little bit throughout the year based on how busy a time of year is going to be. Obviously, the winter is going to be more busy than, say, the summer. So we try to correlate that with the time of the year. but as far as vacation time, I mean, it is contractual. There are some limitations in place as far as, you know, like you can't take a vacation in June, right? Different things like that. Comp time is now limited to May, right? So you can't do anything after that. So there are some guidelines we can put into play.

But for the most part, we have to be very careful in watching the budget, especially if we do run into an injury or an illness, then we have to just It's a weekly thing Bob and I sit down and look at.

Okay, thank you. Well, Barbara, sounds like you found your home here. Thank you for all your hard work. That's high praise from the chief. I appreciate that. So it's also nice to hear. Go ahead, Kenny.

Thanks for the presentation. And Barbara, it sounds like you should be asking for a raise. So I understand these reallocations. The one I'm trying to get my arms around is the injuries. So the injury, the way I'm understanding is the injury spiked because of a one-off instance with one specific firefighter who was out. and now it's sort of you're expecting it to normalize so with these reallocations like I said it makes sense but since that was a one-off and hopefully I'm not mischaracterizing that why not just wipe out that $25,000 from the entire budget.

Within the injury account? Yeah. Because we want to plan accordingly, right? I mean, you can... There's been years where we've had whatever the number was and we've exceeded that tenfold. And that's... that's one of the reasons what caused the structural deficit was because we were robbing Peter to pay Paul and again so so we were able to a couple years ago we were able to add additional buckets so to speak and that was one of them because what we were doing was we were pulling from say personal time or vacation time so not only would you run into the negative but then it was very difficult to track if somebody was hurt and again it's easy to say now because luckily we don't have anybody injured at the time right now but there are some times where and I know historically there have been four or five people out and then when you exceed that, now it forces you to pull from a different line item and then it becomes difficult to track. So that's why we try to keep some type of a buffer in there.

The other thing I would add, so a slight distinction in police and fire versus everyone else is that there's the 111 provision. And so what 111 indicates is the statutory provision by law. that if a police or firefighter is injured on duty and for fire, that actually also extends to a cancer provision. So if they've been on the job for longer than five years, and are undergoing any type of cancer treatment. We pay them 100%. We're not taking anything out of sick time. or Personal Time. And so it's then the overtime, what that line item is actually paying for is the overtime to fill that position to maintain minimum staffing. So it's a slightly unique provision that you'll only really see in Police and Fire.

that's a good explanation because that it varies from you know you would think illness and injury are the same thing but they are slightly different based on what Megan just said illness not only are you are you now paying right for the person but you're also paying for the coverage. With the injury, you're paying strictly for the coverage of that position.

Let me ask another aspect of this, and I'm assuming that this is something that would have to be negotiated in the union contracts, and that is the... Health and Conditioning Standards that can be expected of the employees of the fire department. It seems to me that, you know, I think about this every summer with the NFL when the training camps start. And it used to be a real issue with the Patriots where you'd read in the paper about injuries that were taking place about key players. and you're wondering how could that happen given the off-season expectations. That's an injury that shouldn't be happening with proper conditioning. for strengthening, stretching, et cetera. So it seems to me that in a job like the fire department, there should be standards that can be imposed about Waite, overall health, conditioning.

What is the reality of that for the Wellesley Fire Department?

It's a great point. I certainly do not disagree. I don't think many people would. However, I think you hit the nail on the head at the very beginning. That would have to be negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement.

so thank you for the presentation and I had a couple of questions which were very well answered so I'm not going to go back into them I do think the theme of the reallocation that you're talking about here you're not the only department that's done that I think FMD was a little ahead of the curve and taking that on last year and I think it's a little bit of a We were a victim of, you know, we had such tight budget guidelines that we sort of built ourselves in these budget problems and now we're digging out of them. And for fire, it's been such a journey these past three years. and you know there's been such a vast improvement it's much it's really it's great to see the budget this way now it was very challenging before one question I had is in the right up which was excellent I thought that the Everything in here was great. It starts off by saying that the National Fire Protection Standard Association requires a staffing standard of 15 on duty for a community like us.

our standard staffing is 14 personnel a shift but we maintain a minimum staffing of 12 and I know we've worked up to this so we thought we were at the right number are we at the right number? and Beth asked this question for fire. What are we looking to in the future? Do you need to be thinking about that?

So this is a challenge that we've always faced and we probably always will face, right? Because that part of it comes down to money. at 14 by adding those last four positions that brought us to a very very good place because it brought us back to where we were in the early 2000s and our call volume is you know about roughly 1,500 to 2,000. It has increased by that much since that time. So by having that 14th person is great. Now I know the NFPA standards say 15, and it would actually be, it's 15 slash 16, but That's a common theme throughout the country. It is a standard. It's very difficult to live up to some of these standards because of the money aspect of it. I would say for us, I think I'm very comfortable with $14,000. Where it gets tricky, Collette, is where you have to drop down to the minimum staffing, which we have 12.

Now, again, I'm comfortable with 12. but it's not 14. I know in years past we had a drop down to 11. 11 I'm absolutely not comfortable with. This was a conversation I had with Megan prior to day one about we really need to be, because there's a big difference going from Staffan at 11 to 12 because now you're talking about taking Apparatus is out of service and things of that nature. Kind of like Chief Whittemore alluded to before, we are trained to do more with less, but I would say to answer your question, that's the biggest challenge is dropping down to the minimum staffing of 12. Now, there are certain times of the year where it's not as bad. I mean, let's face it, in, say, June, A lot of Wellesley clears out. The colleges are on summer break. A lot of people are on vacation. Construction increases, of course, but the call volume typically decreases. So there are times of the year where you can get by with that.

One of the things we've been trying to do, and we started this last year and we're going to continue it through this year, is, and again, it's kind of an experimental type thing, but we know there's a storm coming in or if there's going to be an event or even if just cold weather. We'll try to, instead of dropping down immediately to the minimum, we'll try to maybe go to 13 and then we just carefully watch the budget. So I'd say that's our biggest challenge is we want to stay as close to 14 as we can.

Thank you for that. I do want to say I was a little bit remiss. I wanted to say thanks also to Interim Chief Soar and to Megan for all the work that's been done these past years to get us where we are. and it's lovely to meet you and welcome to the team and I'm sure that we'll stay on this trajectory now that we've established such a strong foundation.

Thank you.

Beth. So first, thank you for all the work in recalibrating or adding transparency into the budget so there's more predictability about really where the expenses and the costs are being incurred because for so many years that's been a struggle and we've always had overages. My question is given the trends that you're seeing, was there anything that you felt in striving to come in at budget was putting you a little bit at risk? because we've come so far. You're now at guideline. We're staffed to where we were headed for. We heard from police that their call volume has gone up quite a bit because of our larger housing units. Are there things that you looked at that gave you a little bit of a pit that we should be aware of kind of moving to the future?

Sure. So I'd say to that, we've done a lot. in a small amount of time. So from an operational standpoint, we've purchased a lot of equipment. to bring us to where we are today. We're at a spot now where if an apparatus has to go out even for routine maintenance, we will have a fully equipped engine that we can move in its place, which is huge because every time you need to transfer an engine and you think about the amount of equipment that's on an engine, and then things can get misplaced and they can break, right? So it's not to mention the time, right? I mean, we're doing this all in service and live time. So in order to have an engine equipped, I think is, It's huge. But to answer your question, so from an operational standpoint, I feel comfortable where we are. I guess that would kind of piggyback to Colette's question. It would go back to staffing.

when we tried to do, I tried to take five year snapshots of where we are from not only operationally, but also from a staffing standpoint. This pocket right now is a bit unique because, as you know, we are pending the results of our master plan. So I would say to both your questions, it's a TBD as to pending the results of the master plan. and then we can have that conversation but to answer your question staffing would be that piece that we continually talk about.

And my last question is, can you remind me when the next new fire apparatus arrives?

Yes, it's going to be any day. Yes, so I had the opportunity to inspect it a couple weeks ago down in Attleboro, and she's a beauty.

Will you let us know when she arrives?

I will.

Any other questions? Well, Chief, I have to say, based on many past years of budgets, a boring budget is a good budget. A question, can I say?

Yeah, go ahead. The capital's not complicated this year, but I was delighted to see that you're moving to the safer turnout gear. I know that that's been something we were waiting for to roll out in the US. Can you talk about that just a little bit?

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So that's and again, the kind of you've noticed in our capital budget, we're constantly moving things around based on availability and need. the PFAS free gear was one of those things we didn't want to be the first to try it but there are some departments now that they're just beginning to deliver this type of equipment Thank you very much. where we can equip everybody with this PFAS-free gear and then put it on a five-year schedule. So every five-year gear is good for 10 years. But everybody needs to have two sets, obviously, because if one set becomes contaminated, they need to be able to while that's being cleaned they need to obviously be able to work.

So every five years we're going to build a schedule so that every member can be equipped with new gear. And I do think, Collette, I will suggest a follow-up. I think we are far enough along that as we introduce new members, we probably will be purchasing that PFAS-free gear as one-offs until we can equip the entire department.

That's great to hear, given the concerns that we have over firefighter health and the impact it has on so many things.

Right. We'd love to see less drawn 111F because we'd like to have healthier firefighters.

Sure. We're hoping by being proactive and doing these types of things, we are going to notice a difference with the injury in the illness line items.

Scott. Scott. Steve do you want to discuss what Scott Smith had done with regards to also sort of the health and the screenings and stuff

For the cancer screens? Sure, yeah. So we talked a little bit about this yesterday. So one of the initiatives that we're trying to do is we have a goal of having a, we want to begin a program where we can have all of our members screened for pre-cancerous types of obviously illnesses, right? So there were many different ways to do it. We're in the process now. I was hoping, I wanted to do, it's a big task, right? So we were, at first I had the idea of maybe we could do something within the town but other departments, they do, they're in different schedules than we are, right? I mean, this is something that we need to do more often than not. and then it was something that I wanted to do just within the department but of course anytime you you bring in a company for this there are certain types of minimums and they used to do and you know they in Detroit and Chicago, right? So Wellesley fell a little bit out of their wheelhouse.

So what we're doing now is I'm working with the director of Metro Fire to get all of Metro Fire involved in this because that would allow us to meet our minimums. We were actually supposed to, last month, we had a meeting scheduled, but the CEO of the company, unfortunately, his father had to have emergency surgery, so he had to fly out. across the country for him so we rescheduled him for I think it's its first quarter next year so once we meet with him we'll know a lot more a lot more about how we're going to go about this but that's certainly a program that we can expect some time next year that I hope to have every member screened and then build a schedule where whatever it is, whether it's three years, five years, and have a continuous screening for them.

Can you speak to the funding for that program? So as of right now I think the program sounds amazing just to be clear.

So we plan to use donations I know last year I brought to you a donation from an anonymous Donor, as well as there will be another one coming up soon. So we plan on using that money from the donations to pay for this program.

I think it's great that you're using donations, but that seems like something if you don't have the money that we should find a way to fund.

When we get to that point, that's certainly a conversation that we will have is when we build future budgets.

Okay, thank you very much. Barbara, thanks for coming.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you. All right, and Brian DuPont, Director of IT, is here with us. Good morning, Brian.

Good morning. Good morning. usually I'm here to try to catch you guys back up on the schedule but we're actually five minutes ahead that's uh not normal for us I know we've fallen behind since the beginning but we're trying all right let me hop on the zoom meeting here so I can share my screen

Okay. All right. Good morning. How's everybody doing? Okay. So let's start with a few of the things that you already know. So the IT department. like our colleagues in FMD and in finance. We're a critical shared service. We support every single town department. Our mission in IT is to maintain a secure, reliable, and modern technology environment that enables all of our departments to deliver high quality services to Wellesley's residents. and any disruption to these systems, specifically those in finance, public safety, tax billing, permitting, communications could have some serious consequences for both town operations and for public trust. So here's a quick look at our overall budget. We are requesting one, just short of $1.9 million, $1,800,000. . . . . . . .

. 7.98%. So this request does meet the board's guidelines while funding those critical essential service levels, cybersecurity protections, and some improved telecommunications, which we're going to talk about in just a moment. Year to year, most of our change within our budget happens within a few very specific accounts for equipment maintenance and computer software services and cybersecurity. this year we're also requesting an increase in our telephone budget, which again we're going to talk about a little bit more in just a bit. The set of accounts here that you see here before you is basically the same that you see every year with one exception that I've highlighted there in red.

and so we're now calling what used to be called information technology services innovation and emerging technology. So over the last few years we've used funds out of that specific line item to pay for AI licenses to explore how that might be used to improve efficiencies across government, to test different cybersecurity systems, and to dig into some new Tyler Munis modules. So I think it's just about time to kind of call that what it is. and build in a sustainable source for exploration and innovation for technology and how it can be applied across town government. The key drivers for us this year for our budget are three. First is our staffing vacancies. So here's an org chart of the IT department and what it looks like, what it will look like very soon, hopefully. So just this morning, we posted an advertisement for a project manager position. This is a

a new position that's an upgraded version of an applications administrator position that was approved by the HR board earlier this week, in fact. and we'll soon kick off a recruitment for new systems administrator in early January. So we are dealing with two vacancies. This is a recurring theme. You've heard from me just about every single year that I've been before you. and we're going to deal with this one just as we've dealt with previous years. Filling that project manager role that you see on the right hand side of The org chart is our top priority. We need to find an experienced candidate for that job. We are expecting our current applications and project manager, Suzanne Newberg, to retire at some point in 2027. So the clock is ticking. We don't have a whole lot of time to transition that institutional knowledge and get somebody up to speed in what they might need to be able to do in order to inherit that role and those functions.

All of these roles are critical to managing new technology implementations, for maintaining our servers, our network infrastructure, and our cybersecurity systems, and for supporting continuous process improvement throughout town government. Next major budget driver for us is this fancy equipment you see here before you. So on the left-hand side, these are card access systems and security cameras that you will find scattered throughout this building. and on the right hand side is a very large UPS that thinks about as tall as I am in our computer room that provides continuous power to the equipment that lives in our computer room, both computer rooms actually. So you might remember a few years ago we had put in a placeholder for a budget request for $10,000 additionally in this account to fund for the AV equipment that we're using here today. So that's still a part of this.

This is other equipment that was installed as a part of the town hall renovation project that the maintenance window is up on now. throughout the first year after the building's been delivered to the town. The project contractor is responsible for maintaining and supporting the systems. And now it's our turn to kind of pick up where they left off. So I'm working with FMD right now to select responsible vendor on a mass state contract to help support both of these systems moving forward. And then the third thing I want to talk to you about is the phone system modernization. So this is basically the execution of a $200,000 cash capital project that was in our budget last year. So we've been working with quite a large stakeholder group from representatives from a bunch of different town departments to replace a phone system that's now over 10 years old. and one of our goals has always been to make sure that we can provide better support for our remote and mobile workers.

So we've always wanted to have soft phone capabilities so that a staff member who might be working from home remotely could be on their laptop and answering and making phone calls as if they were sitting at home in their office. But there are some new concerns about security and reliability. and availability of our telecommunication systems. And so as we've gone through planning for this project, we really feel that a cloud hosted system is the better approach for the town. I've gone through a whole number of cybersecurity tabletop exercises in the last couple of years, and I think just about every single one of them starts with a failure in communication systems. So when you have commingled voice and data networks you're adding to your vulnerabilities.

So by moving those resources off to the cloud, we're hoping to ensure that those cloud, your telecommunication systems, that you're able to make phone calls even in the event that there might be a cybersecurity incident on the town network. or another incident. It might not have to be a cybersecurity incident. It could be a power failure or whatever. It could be a pandemic where you have to send workers home and all you need in order for your phone system to work is for those phones or your laptops to be connected to the internet for them to work. So definitely something that we are working towards. Unfortunately, moving to a cloud-hosted system shifts the funding model for the telephone services. So whereas before, we'd buy a whole bunch of infrastructure up front and we'd have to live with it, and we'd pay annual fees for phone service from Comcast, Verizon or whoever. Now we're paying a per user fee for each of the users on this new cloud hosted telephone service. So it does shift that model.

So we worked with Megan to build a plan to take the $200,000 cash capital Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor by moving to a subscription service and that will slowly ramp up the funding in that telephone account in order to account for those additional services. I do want to point out that by centralizing the phone system we are actually saving and some departments, specifically the MLP and the DPW, at least $5,000 for each of them in annual fees that they pay for telephone service. Right now our telephone service is and aggregation of four separate telephone systems that will all be centralized under one budget in the IT department moving forward.

So in closing, I feel like our FY27 request is a responsible budget, provides the minimum amount of resources that we need to maintain the reliable system to mitigate cybersecurity threats. and to support town operations and also to now explore how we might be able to improve the efficiency of town services with new technologies. So I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

Wonderful, Brian. Thank you very much. Go ahead, Beth.

Thank you, Brian. So I have a couple questions about how we're handling the expenses. So you're one of our large shared services. and yet there are other budgets that hold software licenses and the one that particularly struck me going through was the support for minute taking so the I don't know what it's called Megan Gogov there are two of them that seem to be popping up in the budget book. Is there a reason that we don't have one town licensed to help produce minutes?

only because we haven't elevated it to that point so our approach has always been to budget centrally for what we would consider to be enterprise applications and in my definition that's a specific application that's used by more than two or three departments, right? So there are a variety of software solutions that are used by one department. I always point to AutoCAD as a prime example for that. It's really just used by the engineering division. so they budget and they pay for those licenses to use that software. we're in a different world now where these new tools are popping up very quickly. So some of the tools that you referenced are probably Otter AI and clerk minutes is another one that some folks have used are really just new. So I'm happy to entertain a conversation if there's a group of department heads that says, hey, let's get together and let's budget for this centrally. But we've just not had that conversation yet. That's not been brought to me.

I just wonder if it might not be more cost effective because. you know for each one to be buying a separate standalone license versus buying 10 licenses that the different departments share might be productive. So I'll let you look into that. The AV system. So that cost seemed expensive. And it wasn't clear to me that the AV has been completely turned over to We're holding a budget for a full year of AV support, and I wasn't aware that it was fully functional to be turned over yet.

it's not so we have those funds in this year's capital budget and we will be using applying those funds that we have in this year's capital budget to pay for year one of the support and maintenance for the other fancy equipment that I showed you on the slide so we're applying it towards the same you know conceptually we're applying it towards equipment that was installed in town hall we're just applying it to a different set of equipment within the current fiscal year moving forward in FY27 we will still need to support the AV systems in addition to this other equipment that I'm now asking for in FY27. And I still don't know how much support contract is going to cost for the AV system. because that system has not been turned over to the town. We don't have access yet to all of the codes and programming that we would need in order to even go out and talk to another responsible vendor to say, hey, what would a maintenance contract, a reasonable maintenance and support contract for this system look like?

So I don't have those numbers yet.

and the card reader was not in the renovation and technology for the building when we conceived the project.

It was probably not something I thought about when we put together the budget last year, but it's certainly been in the building plans for a while.

Okay, super. My last question is on the telephone system. Have we done a payback analysis on... the five-year kind of cost of the phone system as is versus centralizing and making the phone system cloud-based.

definitely done a five-year look ahead at what our original plan that I brought before you last year was to effectively upgrade the in-place phone system with another in-place phone system. with more bells and whistles and some fancier systems, but a lot of upfront expenses on equipment. We've definitely evaluated that. over a five year period. It's a bit more expensive to move to the subscription service and that's kind of the norm in our business unfortunately these days, moving to a subscription service. but in our mind there's certainly a ton of other value added and moving to that subscription service that just isn't there with the on-premise solution. Never mind the additional risk of having, like I discussed, that commingled sort of Boyce and Data Environment, which is becoming increasingly a no-no in our world.

I guess one of the things I wasn't clear on is the status of our current phone system because I think at least the perception is fewer people, I'm a phone person, but fewer people in general are calling in. And so I was just curious about the timing of this expense given the evolving technology and the

kind of the usage patterns so the phone certainly rings in our office there's a lot of folks calling us for tech support and I'll just say that our current phone system is kind of hanging on by a thread so that equipment that supports it is really on its last legs. It's past the end of its useful life. It's no longer supported. And we're getting to a point where there could be vulnerabilities in that system by letting it linger on even longer than it probably already should have. it's time to replace it. I hear what you're saying in terms of the voice usage. I think Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor picking up the phone, being able to call somebody. And certainly in the world of public safety, it's really important that we have those services and that they're maintained.

And I'm a phone person, so I appreciate good phone service. My last question is, at what point do we plan to do an analysis of all of our technology software programs that are a very layered and interconnected approach to cybersecurity and supporting town systems because you know the world of technology evolves so quickly and you can get to a place where you have so many and maybe there's a way to streamline them so we certainly evaluate all of our

different systems on an annual basis. When we get to the point where we're reviewing our Tyler Munis services as an example, we'll be working closely with Rachel to make sure that we're taking full advantage of what we've got. and that we're not paying for more than what we need. On the cybersecurity front, I did put in a request this year for a cash capital project for $25,000. for a second look at a lighter, not a lighter, a second cybersecurity assessment. So a few years ago we had an independent cybersecurity assessment performed. and this was out of a request that came from the audit committee I believe when Collette was on there. and since that time since that report was delivered we have implemented a whole host of different cyber security measures meant to protect all those other systems so

certainly as we execute that project, that'll be a really good opportunity for us to kind of take a look holistically at all the services our department provides. to make sure that there aren't redundancies there that we can eliminate or certainly vulnerabilities there that we want to eliminate.

I'm personally glad to see that because I think the subscription costs, as we all know, are rising at such a rapid clip and our number of subscriptions is multiplying. I think it would be good to have that reassessment of which ones are the right ones to be using and how can we manage that.

There aren't a whole lot of places where we're using different subscription services to do the same thing. So for the most part, we are sort of centralized on one particular system. there's always a bit of a back and forth. You don't necessarily want to be all in on one particular system, right? So you've got to kind of spread your resources out and make sure that you're not overinvested in any one platform.

So just following up on that, Brian, I did ask this question, you answered it very well, but I'd love if you can talk about it now so people can hear the answer. The subscriptions, the negotiation process, can you just touch on that?

Sure. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of negotiations going on in our world. It seems like every software manufacturer is moving from, you know, you buy the software, you install it on your laptop, and you use it indefinitely. to a pay-as-you-go model. So Microsoft is doing that with Office 365 and Word products, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, all those Office software. GIS is now moving to a subscription service. We're going to be paying per user to use that. Adobe for Acrobat is moving to a subscription service. We're now going to be paying licenses on an annual basis for that. some of that is so that the software manufacturers themselves can provide better support to their customers, or at least that's what they'd tell you, so that they can support a single platform instead of multiple different versions of the same software that might be out in the wild.

and some of that frankly is to you know stay in the market and make additional money so unless we're willing to move away from one particular software system it's hard to not Swallow that and just kind of pay those costs. There's very limited negotiation that happens. I will from time to time sort of grumble and moan at the software resellers when they suggest that our prices are going to go up 8%. I've had some success in negotiating new services added on to what we're already doing. So just a recent example of that one, we use... Gov OS or Seamless Docs to support secure delivery of online forms. So this might, it's technology that supports, just as an example, a new resident who moves into town and wants to sign up for direct debit on their utility bills for the MLP.

We have a secure form that's built specifically for that purpose. And we were looking to implement some new controls on that system to improve its security. I made an argument when I suggested that we wanted to do this. They said, well, that'll cost you I had a back and forth with them. I said, you know, this really should be best practice. This is a part of, you know, cited NIST and CIS and all those fancy security controls and ultimately got them to give that product to us. at no additional cost to what we were really paying for. So unless we're looking to add to our existing services, there's not a whole lot of opportunity to negotiate. and then the other thing I'll mention is that when we're looking for new services, we do try to buy from state contract whenever we're able to do so. Those prices in most cases are pre-negotiated by OSD at the state level. So there is some efficiencies to be gained there by at least buying the same thing that someone else has vetted out and a lot of other organizations are using as well.

Thank you and just one quick question with the cloud phone service. What happens when there's an interruption to internet service?

So when there's an interruption in internet service to this building, thankfully, we have a redundant internet service. So our plan would be to provide secondary source of internet in this building. Technically, you could take your desktop phone home and plug it into your home internet and continue to work. So we plan for internet outages in this building and in other buildings. We're ready to handle that. Some of the phone systems that we're looking at, we're actually looking at one that's offered by Verizon, even offers LTE capability, cell phone capability. So if your primary internet connection is a hardwired connection and that goes down, and then your Wi-Fi is your secondary internet connection and that goes down, then those phones could even leverage cellular capability to get online.

Thank you. Any other questions? All right, thank you very much Brian.

We're just waiting for the...

Okay, we are back. This is the Wellesley Select Board Budget Summit, December 11th, 2025. We're in the Giuliani room, and with us is Building Department Head Michael Grant. Thank you, Michael.

So the building department is moving forward. We've had a lot of additional work added to us over the year given the changes to the addition of MBTA zoning, ADU and other requirements that have been put out by the state. Those have become very challenging because our zoning by-law is slightly behind and we're in the process of trying to formulate an update to that, which is adding workload to the department. . . .

we're not having an influx of ADUs in the town but it is challenging talking with residents about the regulations because when we're talking to them it doesn't exactly line up with the language in the bylaw which can be challenging. But planning is working on that, and we're hoping to have something come before a town meeting in November. in the spring at the annual. So hopefully we'll get the bylaw lined up with the state regs and where residents will have the ability to open up the bylaw and realize what the regs are, which will help the department. The building department has decided we're level funding our expenses, so no increase on expenses. The only expense that we have that is increasing is personal services. which are going up by a little less than 4%. So overall, we have an increase of 3.76%.

Hoping next year, hopefully pulling a line item off the budget, which will be the digitization of plans. I'm happy to report that looks like it's been completed. Now that we've been working on transferring as much information over to the online permitting system so people can see the records that we have. which has been a huge savings for us from a public records request because we just email them back a link, put in the address, and they can see all the permits that have been pulled for their properties. So we're hoping to pull that line item off. I just wanted one more year to just make sure that we don't find anything along the way. We haven't, but figured one more year wasn't going to hurt. So we're hoping to pull that line item next year. where I'm in the process of evaluating. Personal services may go down next year. I'm not sure yet.

I'm evaluating on whether I need two admins. Given with so many changes that have been coming in with regulation between the energy code, the building code, MBTA, ADUs, it's a lot of work on the inspectors to keep up with that. I may not eliminate that additional admin. I just haven't gotten to that point yet to make that final decision. I was informed Last week, week before, that one of my local inspectors are going to be retiring early next calendar year. So we're going to have a vacancy coming up in the near future. they're going to retire my staff is older at least two of the people are older than I am and one of the locals so and I don't know how long the other local in town.

But the department, I think, is marginally properly staffed right now. If there's more advent of regulations coming, and the state seems to be on quite a tear right now, I would not put a pass in the future five, ten years. Maybe we may need to add additional inspectors just because of regulation. as you can appreciate from all the stuff you guys have been dealing with the decam prop and everything it's like a blizzard out there with regulations it's quite challenging so our budget is increases driven by the pay scales. So if you have any questions, more than happy to answer them.

Go ahead, Beth. Mike, could you speak to the change in the number of permits? Because it's a pretty meaningful drop off.

Yeah, I don't control what comes through the door. So I think there's a few factors in play there, and this is my opinion. I don't know this for a fact, but I think... you know there's some fear out there you know the market is doing okay but there is some fear out there based off of what's going on at the federal level There's some nervousness out there. We're seeing increased costs on day-to-day needs that people have. I was having a conversation the other day, and there's a lot of factors that go into it. Food's more expensive. Interest rates are up. and that can stop someone from spending the money. Wellesley certainly the residents are probably more well off than other communities might consider but

you know, there's still, you know, there's money to be watched and their costs are going up and they may put off doing that project or building a new house. You know, it's almost like a forced inflation. So...

So we're about halfway through the year. Do you feel like it's trending to be off in total? Or is there a composition change in the permits?

There's a good chance that that can happen. It really, it's hard to predict the future. But based off of what we're seeing at the federal level, Yeah, I think it may drop off. I mean, there's a lot of fear out there right now and not a lot of good answers. So I think we could see a drop in it. Do I think it's going to be like a 2008 drop? No, but definitely a drop.

And I had one other question about inspectors. Sure. And I think it comes up every year because we have the tree bylaw, which are we... properly positioned to inspect and enforce the regulations that we have on the books?

No. The answer to that question is no. If someone wants me to enforce the tree bylaw as written, you're looking at at least three to four full-time staff members coming on board to enforce that to the letter of the law because it's a full-time job just to do that.

Are there strategies that we could implement to increase the awareness of our regulations so that we can have community support in enforcement?

I'm not sure how you would do that. It's in the zoning bylaw. And if someone wants to do development, they should realize they have to do their due diligence on the requirements. We enforce the tree bylaw. It's not that everyone's getting a blank. Go by on the tree bylaw. We are enforcing it to the resources we have. But back when that was adopted, I came before this board way back in the day and said, we don't have the resources to enforce this. And that's how it's been for the last 15 years.

it's a regular complaint that we hear from the community that we have these bylaws and we can't enforce them. And I hear you that it's a major manpower issue. I guess it's more a cautionary tale as we look at more rules and regulations, how we could enforce them and what implementing it and not enforcing it, how we're going to handle that.

I agree with you and I've said this numerous times to people who have asked me questions. It's easy to write a reg. Simple. Anyone can do it. Enforcing it is a whole different matter and that's what I end up with. you know a huge time suck on for the multiple departments Lodge House Review Understood. Town loves Lodge House Review, but it's a huge time draw for the building department, for the planning department, for DPW. And I realize Town Meeting loves Lodge House Review, but it needs to be updated. It's been on the books for 17 years. and it's had minor updates it needs a major overhaul on how to make it better than what it is today but until planning or someone takes that task on or involves me in that task

it's going to be a time draw on those departments.

Just to add to that though, when we do get a complaint with regards to tree bylaw or anything the building department does enforce, the issue is we do not have the amount of staffing to just be driving around the town to evaluate any construction site on any particular day so I did just want to clarify that point that should a neighbor file a written complaint or call the building department, they will go out and inspect and verify whether a particular project is in compliance.

That is correct. We don't have the ability to do a day-to-day enforcement throughout the town regularly. Construction projects are very fluid and they change from every day and so we don't have the resources to do that.

I would just observe that people do know that if they call in there's enforcement but as we bring forward other regulations we have to be really clear with town meeting how enforcement will occur because I think there's a disconnect between expectations and what we're actually capable of doing with our current staffing.

Kenny?

So this is related to that. I think with any of the bylaws, we should analyze how we're going to enforce it. And there should be cost benefit analysis to doing it. I don't know if the tree bylaw is worth it or not. I'm just saying somebody should analyze what's the benefit and what's the cost of doing that. You brought up another point about the cost. there's a lot of permits do you have any sense of what it there's a lot of talk in this country and the state and the town about affordability and it sounds like people are racking up serious fees when it comes to building a house and that obviously the builder is not eating. They're just going to pass it along. Do you have any sense of what the average set of permitting fees that a builder on a single family house is incurring?

So it really depends on the house. I think a better way for me to answer that question would be we just did a permit fee analysis and we are right in the middle of the road. We're not the most expensive and we're not the cheapest. I think that our permit fees are affordable. I don't think we're overcharging the public for the services that we provide. I couldn't tell you. I've got houses that come in anywhere from $900,000 construction up to $1.8 million. So it varies all over the place. But our fee schedule, I think, is middle of the road. I don't think we're overcharging the public. For example, Newton is $20 a thousand for every single permit that you pull there. We're at 15. and there's other towns that are less than us at $10,000. So I think we're right in the middle. I think where we should be given the time that between the two analysis we did

And the fee schedule was due to be updated, probably overdue to be updated, and we took care of that. And we're going to reevaluate that every five years. That's what I committed to this board when it got approved.

and I think that makes sense but every time we increase fees we're literally increasing the cost of the house right for the ultimate consumer correct but I

I would say there's a lot of other things increasing the cost of the house beyond the building permit but to your point to your point

Mike, with the advent of online permitting, what kind of percentage of walk-ins or calls are you getting compared to the online?

So the building department I can tell you that our walk-in, and Megan was around at that time, we probably went from what's called before online permitting, 100%, people coming in. I'd probably say we're down to 95, 98% of people don't come. And so if I see 10 people in a week, that's crazy. All the permit requests, at least for building permits, the electrical inspector, you call the electrical inspector, the plumbing inspector gets an email. I prefer email, so we have a written record of what they're asking for. It kind of protects the town in the sense of everyone knows what they're going to be doing and what time and where.

you know we are an electronic building department and so that has our efficiency has gone through the roof internally and so you know and when we first went to electronic My staff was kind of a little hem and horn. None of them want paper anymore. They're done with paper. They've embraced it and came along for the ride, and they're enjoying it. . . . . We can communicate through email, phone calls. We get more phone calls than we do people. I mean, but that goes without saying. That's typically how it works. But I mean, if we see 10 people a week, that's kind of unique. These days, we don't see anybody.

you know before online permitting the parking lot here used to be full of trucks and you don't well obviously you're not in this building but you haven't seen trucks

No, we are not a burden on the parking at the facility we're located now. Not at all.

Well, it's nice to see the efficiency has increased and that people are taking to it. It's kind of the way of the world.

Yeah, we have a lot of positive feedback about our online permitting. I really do. The contract is like, you've got one of the best online permitting around. you guys run it really good. So the contractors, I won't say all of them, but a fair majority of them do prefer the online permitting.

Well, and the efficiency goes both ways. They don't have to make the physical trip here either, so it's good for them as well. Kenny?

On the efficiency point, does online permitting include using technology to review plans to say that's in compliance with the rules?

So there's really no technology where you can hit a button like ChatGTP or something like that and say, does that comply with code? Never really tried to do that.

It was a business for you. You should set that up.

Yeah. Million dollar idea. Never really tried to do that. I'm not sure you could do it. And, you know... I just don't know if the technology is there. I much prefer having people lay eyes on stuff because there's so many rules and ChatGTP won't know I was owning. So, you know, it may understand the building code to some degree, but there's Massachusetts amendments to the code. So really you need a human being to look at it. There's no way really to have technology do that job for you.

I don't have additional questions. I sent my questions in. You answered them and you're going to add them to narrative. I'm all set and very much appreciative of what you sent in. Thank you.

No problem.

Tom?

Mike, a couple of points you've made. I think sometimes we don't do the job we could at determining what the problem is we're trying to solve when we develop a regulation. you know you raised large house review and I don't understand how community after community controls the size of a dwelling by height to the ridge line and percent impervious surface. and not thousands of dollars to lawyers and arguments between neighbors and the problems that we see constantly with large house review here. but the treat bylaws, the same situation. I was never supportive of the changes that were made, the most recent change to go to a one to one ratio in terms of what needs to be replaced to make the homeowner responsible for dead trees. It just doesn't make sense. And I think that's a good example of where I think we need to go back

and think about what's the problem we were trying to solve and is this the best way to solve it? How are other communities doing it? I understand and support the need for for maintaining trees and for canopy coverage in town for any number of reasons, but I'm not sure that the tree bylaw has been effective. I agree with you on that in addition to its being a burden for the building department. So my hope would be, I mean, it's one thing, the stretch building code, you understand what you're doing when you agreed to that when you apply it, when you implement it. But as to some of these others, I think we need to do a better job defining what the actual problem is we're trying to solve and make sure we're solving that problem and not creating incidental issues.

I agree. One of the things that has gone through my head numerous times is When you're building a $5 million house, you're not leaving a vacant lot. There's an extensive landscaping package that's usually associated with that. so I'm not really under you know for me as being the enforcer yes they're cutting down trees but they're replacing it for in kind Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor on how the laws are done. And I think a little more input from me as the enforcer could help that. Sometimes the communication isn't... I will tell you over the... years, the communication is quite well with the planning department, don't get me wrong.

Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Sussman accepts it that's a different Sussman accepts it that's a different story and I don't control that because story and I don't control that because that's a board but I do have a great that's a board but I do have a great rapport with the planning department rapport with the planning department the planning staff the planning director more of a team effort than it has been in the past with other directors.

Accepting

except you but you know we're working through it you know I'm We have a weekly phone call with town council. At times, I'm in that meeting with planning and Town Council to talk about zoning issues or if I've got stuff coming up. So the communication definitely has improved and we're working on fixing things. But the bylaw is large and there's a lot of things broken in it. Thank you very much. I would say that the bylaw needs to be recodified. It's been too long. But it's a huge expense. It's a huge workload. And it's going to require a lot of people to do it.

so you know but that's that's the planning board that's that's up to them they're the ones that write it they're the ones that present it and so you know but that that's where we are right now. And you've heard two examples, just two examples of things that need to be improved. The sign bylaw is another one that needs to be fixed. there's not enough I don't have enough time in this forum to tell you all the problems but there's things that need MBTA that was a band-aid to fix to get bring out bring us into compliance be in compliance with the state I was involved in writing that to make it so it would work so we could come into compliance and not get fined or whatever grants taken away from the town. So, yeah, there's a lot of things that need to be fixed in the bylaw, but, you know... If we've got to do it one thing at a time, so be it. But I'd prefer to recodify, but that may not be in the cards.

Well, and as Megan says, not for nothing, we had to go to town meeting three times to get fully in compliance because the MBTA regs came out.

and they kept changing.

Yeah, exactly.

Just like the ADU bylaw. They put the law out before they put the regs out.

So a respectful call to the state, promulgate your regulations before you pass new statutes. Exactly. Would help us a lot. What is the market for inspectors? How challenging do you feel it will be to find a new inspector?

Good question. I've been hearing dribs and drabs. that it can be difficult. I think the pay scale, the pay analysis we just recently went through is going to help that cause because we were, obviously this board is aware, we were below market. and so we're now in the market so I think we're a little bit better. We now have defined pay scales instead of ranges for local inspectors. I happen to be in a pay range, more or less. it'll be interesting to see it's not an easy job in the old days you know oh that's a guy he's retiring and you know he probably didn't make it in business so he became a building inspector I will tell you I Sometimes I feel like a lawyer because of the amount of laws and regulations that I have to deal with.

And it's not for the faint of heart. You're going to get yelled at. I am an expert at saying the word no. I have many, many ways to say the word no. And it's challenging. You're messing with people's Price Possession, their property, and sometimes no, they don't want to hear the word no. And so that can be challenging at times. So I think we'll see. I don't know. hopefully Wellesley is a very desirable town for anyone interested in becoming a building official we'll apply when that position opens or any position opens and we'll just do the best pick the best candidate and the best fit for the town

So ideally, what would be a time for overlap between a departing inspector and a new inspector?

Typically we don't do overlap, but because I may have the ability to overlap a little bit, I have to talk to the departing inspector to see if he's interested in staying on and help train the new person coming in. that Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor have a transition time there where one inspector, even if he came in part-time, could help bring someone up to speed because there's a lot to learn. There is a lot to learn.

So last question about the inspector. Are a lot of new inspectors being trained? Is it a stable field?

It's a stable field. It's an old field. meaning that a lot of inspectors are coming of age for retirement. There's not a lot of young and 30s, 40s coming into the field where you're going to get the long-term employee. Some are usually coming in, you know, they're done working in the field, they're coming out of the field, so you're seeing your, you know, late 40s, early 50s, mid 50s coming in then becoming a building official. One of my inspectors is 70. So, you know, it's kind of funny. When I first started here, I'd show up to do an inspection and a lot of people would say, oh, I thought you'd be older. that's 22 years ago it's an older field it's usually guys that have experience out in the field and so well good luck thank you other questions comments

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you for your time.

All right, time for finance and treasure, hello.

Yes.

I'm sorry, Mara. I should have introduced you by name.

Great.

Oh, yeah. You need to. And have it near you, please.

Well, I was actually planning to go first.

Oh, sorry. No, that's okay. No, I'm sorry.

That's okay. So again, so finance, department's budget... as well as the treasurer collector's budget. So again, I'm Rachel Droach, finance director CFO for the town. I'm joined by members of the finance department. Again, our budget's primarily personal services. We're joined by Paul Manganero, he's our finance and budget analyst. And just want to say thank you to Paul for preparing these budget binders and these budget materials, which are really facilitating the discussion today. We're also joined by Tiana Moreau. She is our Assistant Finance Director, Town Accountant. And we'll talk a little bit more about that transition in a bit. We're also joined by Mara O'Connor as we just introduced. So she's our treasurer collector. So if you look at the org chart for the finance department, the finance director oversees both the finance department, which includes all of the accounting functions, accounts payable, payroll, budgeting, as well as oversees the treasure collectors department.

We like to present the finance budget along with the treasure collectors budget side by side. So I'll spend a few minutes providing an overview of finance and then Mara can handle the treasure collectors budget. So again our budget is primarily personal services. So as you all know we did experience some transition earlier this year. we had an acting finance director town accountant Tiana and she stepped into that role and she did a remarkable job really maintaining those statutory requirements of Town Accountant. So again, the finance department, we process all disbursements, as you know, for the town. So that includes paying our vendors through accounts payable. and all of our employees through payroll. So we're required to have that town accountant review all of those transactions. Again,

all of those activities at the department level whether it's the municipal departments or the school department they send their AP their payroll to our department we QC it it goes to the town accountant to review for accuracy within budget guidelines, spending as appropriate. So I think the transition that the finance department experienced earlier this year really highlighted the need to have that really standalone segregated town accountant position. So again, I started in October and one of the first tasks that I took on was going to the HR board early November. and requesting that reclassification of the Assistant Finance Director role to now be our Assistant Finance Director Town Accountant. So that was official early October. So you can see that right up in our narrative.

And again, the town accountant is really handling those day-to-day accounting operations while the finance director, CFO rule, can be more aligned with handling budgeting, long-term Finance and Planning, particularly as we go into working with the Townwide Capital Planning Committee. So they'll be relying on the Finance Director to really lean in and support some of those decision makings on how are we going to be financing a lot of these capital project years, our needs and out years. So we're really excited that we were able to make that transition in this budget. I did want to just highlight, so again, our personal service budget, we are in guideline. but I wanted to highlight there is a note on page 23.

So I think it was this budget summit last year that the board highlighted a concern regarding support for the West Suburban Veterans District. So that conversation started. My understanding was late spring, early summer, the decision was made to transition that support, that admin support, to the human resources department. so our budget is presented as that assessment has been moved over to HR and So we did want to flag that for you. It will be forthcoming. We will need to present in Article 7 a supplemental action to shift that offset to HR. So we're still working through those numbers. We received the HR budget earlier this week, but I did want to make the board aware of that. Megan, was there anything else you wanted to add in regards to that?

No, that was really it. Because we did that post-town meeting, we made that determination as HR, sort of a series of events where they had assistance from part-time retirement employee that went full time and so it presented an opportunity to really unify those which has worked out tremendously well given the skill set that an HR team member has in terms of dealing with the public, and the veterans. It's been a very good transition, but we hadn't anticipated until Rachel flagged this just actually like two days ago or yesterday even we had the conversation. that we would just need to formally for 26 make that transition. So that will be identified as an Article 7 transfer. and on our December 16th meeting, we'll be talking about the warrants.

We're going to try and provide you more information on that for our meeting on Tuesday.

and that's a nice overview of our personal service and then from our expense standpoint we're within guideline under that 3% just a modest increase in our training and development again there's a lot of resources made available, a lot of accounting associations throughout the state. So again, we encourage the staff within the finance department to maintain accounting certifications, attend continuing education. So we have a modest increase of that line of $350. again we continue to cross train because again the functions that we perform are required on a weekly basis so we need to make sure that we have staff that can perform those duties if there's an absence or a vacation or so forth so

Well, the cross training proved immensely helpful for Tiana to carry on both jobs for seven, eight months, nine months. We owe you a debt of gratitude, Tiana, for that work. We never felt like we were kind of betwixt in between because you kept us on an even keel. So thank you for all that.

So I just want to make note, I had some questions that you answered really well. So again, I don't want to go into them here. I don't think it adds anything, but you are going to put into the narrative. So again, we have the history going back. So appreciate that. And thank you for detailed responses. Thank you.

Other questions or comments? Thank you. We know you're in the midst of it with the budgets now. Paul, thank you for all this material. It's so helpful for us to be able to see it all and have it all together. in one place, and I know it's a huge amount of work, so thank you. Okay, on to treasurer.

So treasurer's department, we too are heavy personnel services. As you know, we process all real estate, excise, personal property, and the collection of the taxes. We also oversee when we go into borrowings, coordinate all the details for going out for a borrowing, whether it's short or long term. and we also oversee and manage the trust funds and the investments as well as I also do the tax titles when the collections go beyond when they're not collected actually. So in this year, that's a little different. I'll get into that a little bit when we hit the expense part of it. But as far as personnel services, we too made a little bit of a realignment with Catherine Rumsey's position. She was the senior accounting slash parking clerk.

We have now promoted her to the assistant collector. She's been with the town 20 years this January and she's she is valuable employee to the town and to me so I was very happy that that was approved and so part of that alignment also we also had I had a part-time employee that went from . . . . . . not all of them will still do the collection and take the payments in mostly for the appeals which absorbed an awful lot of Catherine's time so we're hoping to put that out to bid and shortly after the first of the year, I think we decided.

And hopefully we get somebody that's interested, ideally part-time, maybe even a retired police officer. and we're looking at maybe 10 to 15 hours so it's not a big it's not a big lift it's just we're hoping we get you know some good candidates that apply. I think that's pretty much it with the personnel services. Go right into the expense part. Is that okay? and I mean I don't know if you have any questions it's been a little chaotic with the postage and the mailing of and the printing and mailing because last year when we started to outsource the bills there was a big transition as you could see from postage which was a lot higher and a lot of that expense was just kind of like it went from this bucket to this bucket.

So I think you're going to see this year that that's leveled out. The percentages aren't going to be as high. Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor The reason I increased the postage is because the postage is, I mean, I think we had five increases this year. And then the cost of the envelopes keep going up, so I'm assuming that, you know, although we outsource it, I'm assuming that's going to go up. I may have overestimated, but I'd rather be conservative than conservative. Be Short, and we're still within our guideline. I don't think anything else really changed a whole bunch. Our lease equipment for the postage machine did go up, so that's why that, I mean, it wasn't a huge increase, but

We just signed a new five-year contract in fiscal year 25. So it went up like $162 a quarter. So that's why that increased for the equipment lease. Let me see. The supplies, again, I just increased it because, again, everything else is just going up. So we increased that. We do the supplies, by the way. It's not just for the treasurer's department. It's for a lot of the departments. So we order the supplies like the toners, the envelopes, the paper. anything to do with office supplies they kind of comes through our office so that's that's not just the treasurer's supplies expense. Other professional services that came down So when we switched online payment providers, we went from Invoice Cloud to City Hall Systems.

A lot of the fees have been reduced substantially. So there's a savings there as well. and we also last year too we were absorbing utilities fees for a while and then we stopped doing that so that kind of affected last year's but that came down and I'm assuming that we should be fine with that, what we presented. The conference the meetings and those go up a little bit. So I increased that. I haven't been going myself. I've been sending Catherine and Greg the assistance so that they, I mean, I've gone enough years on the conference that is the annual conference. they will both go to school again for Greg just got his certification as treasurer but he's going to be going for the certification on the collector side

When Katherine goes for certification next year, she'll continue to go for probably the Treasurer's side. So again, as Rachel mentioned, good to have, you know, it's part of like our succession planning and then cross training. So I think that we're really in a good position in Treasury Department for that. with our staff. And then the dues went up just a little bit and I think that might be it unless you have any questions.

I had a lot of questions, you answered them, but I think it's important to get into the write-up so we have the histories, so I thought the answers were very clear and really helpful, so nothing in addition, but I think it needs to go into the write-up.

Okay.

Tom?

Do you foresee that we may ever have online tax bills and move away from hard copy and mailings?

I mean we do have e-billing options. People can opt in through City Hall systems. I do foresee that but I don't foresee it in the near future.

Do we do enough in terms of making it known that people can go online? We have a whole base of ratepayers with the MLP. I wonder if if there isn't some way to get the word out to try to, obviously what I'm after is reducing postage.

Yeah, I mean, we do our best, you know, trying to post notices. With Stephanie, we have that new W... Newsletter, that we try to get all the notices out, anything to do with the taxes. We actually try to get a little bit ahead of it this year because right after the first of the year we're going to start getting phone calls with what did I pay for taxes in 2025 so we put a notice out in that you know try to keep your tax bills So, again, it's just to keep down on the phone calls and people coming in and to let them know that the information is there online as well for them to get. But, yeah, I don't see that in the near future, Tom, but we'd love that.

Go ahead, Beth.

So you mentioned parking disputes. How many people on average are disputing parking tickets?

Oh, quite a bit. More than you would think.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Kenny is disputing his parking ticket. As am I. Oh, okay. I was just curious how... How active that area is.

It's pretty active. And it does absorb an awful lot of Catherine's time. And if there's one thing that she's behind on, it's the appeals. So this part-time person, the lion's share of that position would be addressing the appeals.

And has it been effective outsourcing to, I think it's Plymouth? Smith, Plymouth County, right? Has that been an effective move for us from a cost perspective?

I think that was kind of a decision I think on the on the police departments. And so I don't know if effective is the right word, but they seem to be easier to communicate with when we do have an issue. Thank you.

Mara, what forms the basis for a lot of those parking appeals? Are they non-functioning meters? What causes those?

Yeah, no, it's not, it sometimes is the meter, but oftentimes it's, you know, I just got this ticket, I was only over by a minute. or they, with the meters, they choose the wrong button. You know, the arrow. Right or left. I hear Catherine an awful lot telling them, you know, no, I didn't, I chose the wrong, no, I chose the wrong one. So, yeah, but a lot of times it's the timing. Okay.

Well, Wellesley still has less expensive parking than a lot of our neighbors.

I will say I've done the wrong side. And she was quite clear when I called her. And she was like, yeah, that was your error. So it was my error. So she was very polite. And so the system works.

Nice for you to pay for your neighbor. Any other questions? All right.

Well, thank you very much.

All right, Megan, you're up.

OK, so the executive director's budget includes the Office of the Select Board. We had a 3% guideline for both personal services and expenses and have complied with guideline. What we have done with regards to personal services is there's a modest reduction in terms of our performance slash clerical OT. that absorbs a portion of the merit increase that I received in FY26 this current year or for FY25 in this current year. and so that's what actually precipitated the conversation that we had earlier with regards to merit pay thinking about how Rachel in the finance department would be budgeting the contractual increases for Her contract, et cetera. And so we have, as I mentioned previously, discussed that with the HR director about including those in merit pay moving forward.

based on the new pay schedules and the establishment of our communication specialist which is on that position is on steps under the new schedule. We have accounted for that and will maintain that modest amount in case of overtime or any, if we bring in an intern on a short-term basis or something along those lines. otherwise our expense budget is pretty tight this year in terms of very few modifications based upon our recent experience with the first publication of the town-wide newsletter which I think we got very positive feedback on both the quality and the ability to have color which we thought was important to highlight. and many of the links that if you looked online would be digital links. So I've adjusted that budget slightly based on real time experience in terms of the cost of that.

In addition to that, we've made some slight modifications in particular to the other item we discussed earlier with regards to clerk minutes and Autor AI. So those are two tools that Corey and I use and the department uses with regards to minutes and or meeting notes so other than that we've basically maintained essentially everything you know status quo, a slight uptick in conference and meeting for administrators because sometimes that also includes the board. So it's not only just our staff, but board members that we pay for those. and just looking at what our real life experience has been somewhat fluctuating and sometimes that's also driven by the type of conference that's offered we always account for MMA but as we were gearing up for the affordable housing trust there were different you know conferences that we may attend last year.

So it presents an opportunity for some, we have some great conferences in the state and MMA and a lot of the nonprofit organizations like CHAPA. Kay and I just recently went to the CHAPA one, which was very good. So we're pretty lean in terms of the budget proposal this year, and I'm happy to answer any questions on that.

So thank you. I actually don't have any substantive questions about the budget. It's just I really do think we should be consistent about how we approach merit in the budget or not in the budget. I believe we always put merit for contracts in the individual department budget but it may make a lot of sense to move it all to HR just across the board, I think, just for transparency and clarity and comparability across all of the budgets as you compare them. And my second question, I think I know the answer, but why do we have two-minute software? I'm assuming we're still in like a pilot mode where they do different things.

So they do slightly different things, but clerk minutes, based on the subscription we have, does about five meetings a month. So although that largely handles the select board, we administer other types of minutes, either through policy subcommittee. Affordable Housing Trust, or other general meetings we may have, or attending with MBTA or others. So we're somewhat limited, actually, in terms of the clerk minutes. And so we also use Autorea because it's a very inexpensive tool. just to assist with that. And some of it's actually more for transcription than the minutes, to be honest.

So I've been thinking about this merit issue. If it all goes into HR, you don't necessarily have Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor take it all and put it in HR. Are you accurately reflecting the personal services costs of each department?

Well, year over year, you're going to see the increases cumulatively with regards to the salaries. And under the contracts, you are limited to minimum and not even minimum. You could have no minimums. Merit Increase, right? You're sort of maximized in terms of a percentage. You could certainly within the merit pay Not in the sources and uses, but certainly in a write-up you could detail the associated costs anticipated for contractual increases versus the salary increases. and actually this year I think it might even be somewhat level given the fact that we had a diminishment of individuals who are now eligible for merit pay because they went into steps I think it was 17 or 18 people and so there is a buffer in merit pay presumably this year. Rachel and I can certainly do a calculation with HR to evaluate that.

I think the other thing with merit pay that's important as we look strategically in future years if you're looking at compression in terms of the year over year overall budget that I will continue to say that you should always do a COLA because that's how we got behind because it was not a COLA. It was a merit. We were basing year-over-year staff increases on merit, and so certain positions, if an individual is deemed not to received a full 2% or based on their scale in the matrix. So a high performer like Joe McDonough, who tends to be at the top end of the scale under our previous analysis three years, well, four years ago, let's say, He would get, if the maximum was 2%, Jill may get 1%.

And so we were compressing the salary for that particular individual and position, largely. So merit pay as we look to areas where we might have to compress the budgets in the future is something that we could diminish. Right now it's actively built into the budget. and certainly the amount that's dedicated to that on an annual basis I think is through the board and the HR department and HR board, not department, excuse me, annual discussions with regards to cost of living. and so it also presents an opportunity like this year where initial cost of living projections would anticipate maybe a 2.75 increase and we have the ability to say well we could do a smaller Kola, because we have a little bit of a buffer to make that up. And I had provided the board some information just about the many positions that are on steps, the number of steps, and what those increases are.

and so forth, sort of generally from both the union and the non-union. So the individuals receiving merit pay is very diminished. It's probably 30 people, 40 people, Paul. so I mean it's a small number of individuals at this point.

My thought, Marjorie, was that we should just be clear about how we handle merit for contract employees, and I do think the transparency is there. You may want two merit pools at HR. Merit for contracts and merit for other is a way to do it. But we have some departments where we're counting on finding the merit money by not hiring an employee or having a gap. And we have the merit pool, which is a guaranteed pot. And I just think it's more transparent and it's more consistent to always handle merit the same way. and I'm kind of of two minds how to do it but I think it should be broken out because

If we put it in the merit pool, it will be administered differently than the rest of the merit pool where you send in the grid and it's kind of authorized by HR. where on contracts I think it is more subjective so I might argue for I could see putting it in the individual department budgets as a line item like potential or something but right now it's kind of mixed, mixed administration but they're all contract employees so I just consistency is what I would be looking for and transparency in where it is as opposed to at the end of the year. We had to hope that there was a gap in filling a position or having enough room in the budget.

Maybe this is something where, I mean, for the past couple of years, we've had a few structural things that we've addressed that Traffic and Parking or West Suburban Veterans. I mean, maybe there's something staff can look at and make a proposal to have some thought. I'm not ready to make a decision today. I need to understand it more. So maybe, you know, there's something we take up as a goal for next year that we address. I do think that sometimes for contractual positions that are awarded a merit increase by a board there needs to be more training for the board so that we do it on a consistent basis. I think it's a little bit all over the place where the boards come out and how they approach it and you know for fairness to each contractual position, I think there needs to be a little bit more training for the independent boards. I'll leave it at that.

Rachel and I are happy to take that offline, and as we prepare the sources and uses, come forward with a solution for that.

Okay, great.

All right, shared services. So under our shared services, we have a number of a number of budgets, so let me just, I'll go maybe in order, if that works. If we start on page 90, well, page 90 has the audit committee. I know there was a question about that that we addressed. So this is a RFP year. The RFP is actually out on the street as we speak. We anticipate having an actual amount that would be adjusted. If the bids come in higher than 20%, I do think we're going to have to absorb it, just given the... and very few number of firms that actually comport and comply with the requirements that the audit committee has created.

and as you'll hear on December 16th from our auditors, they do a very thorough job and that's the expectation that we would want to continue. With regards to the law department, I have upped this slightly by about $10,000. We expanded just about all funds last year based on a number of different things. but I wasn't looking at a dramatic increase because I think there were a few personnel matters that had increased our anticipated costs. in general this amount over the years outside of major litigation has I think sufficed and it is on an hourly basis if there is a new that is something generally brought to the board. And so we actually haven't had a rate structure change in some time.

The other thing, I do anticipate a supplemental for not necessarily for 27 at this point, but for 26 to handle any anticipated litigation that the board may be considering. More as a safeguard. And we'll have more information as we get closer to town meeting on what that number potentially may be. Do you want me to stop and we'll answer questions on audit and law, Marguerite, first before going to...

Yeah, are there any questions on either of those? Go ahead.

I just have a clarification question. Can you remind me with law if we cover the law expenses for the entire town or if we charge back any portion of law?

So we do cover not everything. So we cover town council services for all departments, inclusive of schools. if schools is using special we do not cover special education council that is covered independently by the schools if the school's higher counsel which they generally do with regards to bargaining that is also paid separately by the school department not part of these numbers our labor council is administered out of this fund and that applies to all departments the chargeback largely occurred MLP has separate council so they do not employ town council We have overall our chargebacks with regards to payments from water, sewer, stormwater, etc., We don't factor in individual law components to that, but as part of the general chargeback, that's a component that's evaluated in total.

and about how many hours of law do we have a year?

I could get back to you on that number, but it varies significantly depending upon land use cases, the complexity of some of the zoning matters, which can Vary, School Matters, Public Records. The thing with municipal law is it is very encompassing in terms of the things that we may engage upon.

But I'm happy to get back to you. Yeah, I was just curious because it's relatively steady state year over year. So I was just curious.

Yeah.

So other shared services, we have street lighting. I have consulted with MLP on this particular amount. We had about $22,000 turned back last year. We continue to I think we have done just about every light in terms of our street lights to LED which has also saved us financially we had some new lights installed recently under the Weston Road overpass and so that will fall into our payment this year but it's de minimis so they were comfortable with us maintaining this number. We will evaluate for 28 as they evaluate for their fee structure changes. Streetlights likely would be impacted as part of that. With regards to risk management, so risk management, just as a reminder, is essentially all our insurance. So it's our property insurance as well as our professional liability insurance. We had a great call.

Sandra Wong in Rachel's office and I. Sandra helped administer Maya with us. We had a great call. This also covers all of our vehicles, fleet, et cetera, and equipment. So Maya this year sort of universally is trying to maintain lower rates largely because they understand the impact every municipality is having with regard to health insurance this year. And so in our initial call with our Maya representative, he had indicated 5%. So the challenge with Wellesley, given we are one of the first town meetings, is we don't even get billed by Maya until April 1st. which is our budget's generally actually done by the time we get the bill. So in past years, we had gotten like two years ago, we had gotten a 10% cost and then it came in at about 6%.

So when I evaluated this budget, while you're seeing it not at 5% increase sort of year over year, it's a slightly lower amount at 2.97%. we had a little bit of a buffer built in because of the projection we received and the actual and so we've accounted for a 5% increase looked at the buffer which is still about $100,000 which would anticipate any unforeseen deductibles. Our deductibles tend to be about between $10,000 and $25,000 depending upon what the occurrence is, whether it be water, sewer, buildings, obviously much smaller deductibles for vehicles. and so we were able to have a little bit of a savings in that this year but the real savings is anticipated because Maya is looking

sort of across the board at the impact of health insurance where they also have many communities that are part of their group for that. and so we've actually and as the board might recall typically our losses are a three-year average and so we had some big losses that we were carrying for a couple years the MLP building at the fire station, the fire at Honeywell School. So those have all also dropped off. So it tends to be more of your standard sewer backup, water backup, those types of... claims.

I know. Marjorie, can I ask? So we've brought three new buildings on in the last few years, or town halls, a lot new. Does that automatically reset the appraisal levels? Because I know there's a lot of talk about the appraisals as we do renovations and not... the impact of getting to 30% of the value. So I'm assuming all of the re... Appraisals for the three buildings are in here.

Is that correct? That's correct. And so each year they do do a reappraisal. I have the number. It's generally actually, and we'll put it into the town-wide financial plan. So as a for instance, the other thing that occurs with risk management is if you're doing construction, so think Warren HVAC. Warren actually comes off our liability Plan, and it goes under construction insurance and then is brought back on to the plan, generally at a higher rate. it's been a little dubious over the past couple of years because it may be a fractional year for some of the buildings. And so then you see that hit as Beth's talking about sort of in the subsequent year. but they've evaluated that in that 5% initial number looking at what our new valuation would be. As a matter of fact, I think they're actually going to Warren next week to do an appraisal. insurance appraisal, not necessarily a value appraisal in the same regard.

And keep in mind, the challenge with our, is you're looking at just the building. Our land is what actually holds the preponderance of value for any of our sites. and so when you go up how is that only worth eight million dollars or whatever the number is it's because you're not factoring land doesn't burn you know you're not you're not factoring in the land and so and the other high component is always professional liability so when you think about any potential claim that can be brought forward a board is sued you know zoning board of appeals get sued So that type of liability over a land use case or what have you or personnel disputes or an MCAD is filed with the Commission Against Disability. So that's also a factor into this.

How often are existing buildings reappraised? So are the schools where we're going to have the AC discussion, are they scheduled for reevaluation? Soon, because I think that would be important as we look at the cost of the investment in putting AC in, understanding the new appraisal of those buildings.

So what occurs annually is our assessors do an assessment of what the value of those buildings will be. That's our baseline at any given time. and so then we went through this exercise in particular with Maya on the Warren HVAC building to see if we were going to trigger the 30% threshold for the Mass Architectural Access Board. which is your ADA compliance, which in fact we did. Because again, when you think about value, you're generally including the land. And so you're looking strictly at the replacement value of the structure. It really did not raise at all. And we had an independent appraiser as part of that from what the assessors had documented the building to be. So Maya always starts with our assessors, and then we would do an evaluation, but it does not generally raise the value. To be honest, our assessors are very good. it does not raise the value generally by any significant factor.

So I would request that we tell our assessors that we need them to look at the four buildings that are in question just to get that in the queue.

That is the first thing Joe McDonough does on any, I believe he's actually already done it as part of his evaluation of the presentation to the school committee.

Yep, he has the 30% and he shows where it's close to reaching ADA compliance requirements from his presentation on Tuesday.

It was actually I was involved with the Warren Building assessment and I think we were surprised by the outcome and certainly press certainly argued the way in which they were assessing that building. but I also think that what was interesting is the difference between what FMD from a cost to replace the physical structure versus the assessment. That was really what triggered our taking a look at that and arguing the case that the assessed value should be higher. But we really weren't successful and there were two or three different sources of Assessment on that building. With regard to the insurance reappraisal, in a residential setting, if you've extensively renovated your home, you have a drop. in the insurance premium because you have new systems in place.

And I'm wondering if there's something similar to that in municipal buildings like Warren.

It may be. I mean, there's always a different factor in analysis in terms of that. But they look at it as system replacement isn't necessarily, my recollection is system replacement isn't necessarily the full value of the commercial building like a residential structure. and keep in mind in a residential structure you have a water tank go it's a it's a more significant than generally a commercial structure with because it's a 24-hour use rather than like where you can shut things off or program etc so My recollection is it doesn't have as much impact as you think it would. Obviously, our new buildings... One, the value and the construction materials are known. The other thing is we also have better fire rating and fire suppression, which does decrease some of your anticipated costs because

everything's alarmed at that point or directly going to the fire station for notification. So those new systems, that helps us on sort of the back end from a safety standpoint as well. but it's a science. It's an art and a science on insurance for sure. Before I get into health insurance, which is the big one, we have a couple others just in terms of workers' compensation. So workers' comp is one that is, a minor reduction largely from our actuarial study and it's just further decreased from the Enterprise Funds, their component. And so that's why the number, when you look at what you need versus what we're projecting, is slightly off because we're looking at the chargeback to the... Enterprise Funds. We're level funded for unemployment compensation this year.

And so then our big doozy is health insurance. and so I have done the analysis working with HR in terms of our actuals and then put forward a proposal that was evaluated by both Paul and Rachel. So just as a reminder, so we had about a million dollars turned back last year, largely because we had a differential of about... Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Thank you. active plans, so non-Medicare eligible plans. About 900 of those are active employees. About 100 of those are retirees who are not eligible for Medicare. And I should note, we have

a handful of employees that are never going to be eligible for Medicare because they were hired Jack Pilecki is one of them they were hired before the law was in place and so he's literally never put into Medicare so he's exempt so anyone hired before 1980-something, if they were an active employee when they retired, will never pay Medicare and will remain on an active plan for the duration of their life. because he came here to sign up and that's how I learned about that because I was unaware of it. He's like, not eligible. So we are currently anticipating based on very preliminary analysis about a 14% increase, largely driven by the national impact of GLP-1s. and so again because Wellesley is the earliest we are actually meeting next week with less suburban health group so I may have that

We don't expect that until end of January to have more real numbers, and then West Suburban Health Group typically votes the second Thursday in February. So I anticipate this will certainly be refined, but it'll be right up to town meeting and really right up to the formalization of the town-wide financial plan before we actually get this data. and the other thing we'll do is we'll work with HR and rerun the numbers. So as part of our calculation when we looked at Fy 27, it is inclusive of adding about 10 family plans, which tends to be our highest plan. So if you added other plans, you know, it's always going to be cost be more cost effective than the family plan.

and I know that number sounds low but the the number sounds low in terms of a buffer because we're also factoring in that the school department is eliminating 18.5 positions and so we always look at sort of what the vacancy rate of any department is, who could potentially be being brought on, are there any new positions being generated and sort of what the mix is in terms of those that have opted out. or because we have some people who just opt out and then we pay them for that. So we had been trending at about 100 people opting out. We're down to 80 in terms of opt outs, but have not seen the parallel in terms of then New Active Plans. So some of that could be folks starting because to have an opt-out plan you actually have to take health insurance for a period of time and then leave. If you just start and don't take insurance, you don't get anything because we're always waiting for that.

But you could have a life event. you could turn 26 and get off your parents insurance or you could you know your spouse loses their job and Or you get married, have to go to a family plan, whatever it may be. So we have factored that in. And so there's other buffers within here when we look at opt-outs, our HSA payments, our FSA payments. but in general, when we factor all of that in, also in communications with HR on potential increases in our opt-out payments for dental as that plan rises, vision, so factoring all of those in, We are up about 10.57% on our largest budget. So it brings us to approximately $2.7 million increase year over year.

If we came in, and this is largely what's driving the deficit, which when we see the sources and uses and we tally that up, we'll have a much greater sense on where we're at. We even dropped two percentage points. It's dramatic. It's about $400,000 to $500,000 savings. So if we came in at even 10% year over year, it's a much smaller delta for us to close. So the more information we have, the better. The good news is, so far from West Suburban, because yes, GLPs are really driving that, and so there's a couple things that are occurring. A lot of coverage is falling off on that. So we also think that there's been a rush to employ that over this duration of time. because the coverage is ceasing and largely would cease July 1. There's certainly a question on the table at West Suburban

whether we would do a separate rider for that to try and offset those. But I have not seen the, no one has seen the economics on that yet. but recently being at the Norfolk managers discussion that is the broad discussion that we do think you know FY 27 could be offset slightly because the claims are just going to diminish because the carriers are no longer going to cover it for... non-crisis health related implications. The good news otherwise is, in general, the claims have been very good. We had a couple for West Suburban Health Group. High claims that the reinsurance has kicked in, so they're over $400,000, so that... that first 400 is sort of painful on your claims data but when the reinsurance kicks in and that payment comes in it sort of level sets you.

And so the reinsurance has kicked in on those claims at this point and so that helps us sort of universally. but we only will have because keep in mind the fiscal year starts July you basically have like five months worth of data that you're basing your rates off so we're always fairly conservative as part of the health insurance budget, too, I should note, we had actual Medicare supplement plan in here. So we had actual rates because it runs on a calendar year. What we did project is we've had a 10% increase over the past two years. This is projecting a 6% increase. So we had a, so you sort of split that in half. So it's a 3% increase for Medicare. We had luckily factored into our budgeting a 10% increase in both years.

We do have trust funds available as part of West Suburban, and we have implemented a new PBIRX, which is our prescription drug program. Manager, and so we used to get rebates sort of year end, but we're doing it on a monthly basis, which is helping us, hurt us initially in terms of our cash flow, but now has caught up that it's on a regular cycle. just because it was the new change effective July 1. And so that's the other thing that we'll evaluate is how much trust, how much reserves we would use to offset that. I think we're all a little hesitant to employ many of the reserves right now and similar to the select board strategy in terms of keeping our reserves high. just given sort of the national implications on health insurance right now. So much more to come on that.

This is definitively an estimate at 14%. What we don't want and what would be very challenging is if it came in at 16%. . Rachel and I have talked about Rachel and I have talked about Rachel and I have talked about strategies, whether the board strategies, whether the board strategies, whether the board used free cash as a one-time used free cash as a one-time used free cash as a one-time appropriation to offset that. It's not something we want to do, but it's something that we'll continue to evaluate based upon where these numbers come in. so happy to answer any questions on that and before the last thing just in terms of sort of our other shared services is obviously OPEB and that's just on the OPEB and pension are both on the actuarial funding and have either remained flat or OPEB is diminished by $100,000. which under our town-wide financial plan we would diminish our free cash by $100,000.

So we'll have to evaluate that when we see the roll-up.

Sobering news about health insurance. Good news about everything else. Any comments or questions?

Just a comment. Thanks for the extensive update on that, Megan. It's so complicated, and it's good to hear these updates constantly so that it kind of keeps it fresh in our mind, especially at this time of year, so I really appreciate that. and you know I guess we'll just have to keep an eye on it and you know see how we can manage it if we have to use free cash as a strategy we can evaluate that but I think this is a very different type of expense. then you know we have a strategy to basically minimize essentially free cash but you know I think you're dead right given where we are on the national picture with the health insurance this is a category all on its own so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it but I think that's something that we really need to see and think of as a separate as an island you know essentially I don't have any questions on the rest of it but I'm wondering if we have a few minutes after everyone's asked their questions I'd love if you could just talk a little bit about youth services and particularly their capital because there's some great news there.

question about the insurance. How does the national discussion about health insurance impact us?

So the national discussion impacts us because it really goes to the carriers. So, you know, Blue Cross Blue Shield, for instance, and Harvard Pilgrim are who the town, not the town, West Suburban Health Group currently employees as carriers. Yes, there's Blue Cross, excuse me, Massachusetts. but as a firm, they're impacted nationally. And so all of that claims data and all of the rush, we're seeing prescriptions driven up almost 40 prescriptions a month just in West Suburban Health Group. with regards to GLP-1s is just impacting everyone. And it's also been... significant national tragedies that have also caused higher use of medical rates. So we've had the wildfires. We've had significant

Hurricanes and Storms, which has also generated sort of unforeseen medical need. Those tend to be, and then you have the one-off cases, right, where you may have an employee that requires an organ transplant or has a child that requires lifelong services. And that then isn't on top of sort of the national arena on the individual claims.

So we're not talking about the tit for tat in Congress right now. We're talking more about what has happened in the past that's driving rates up. What I understand is what's going on in Congress is who's going to reimburse. It has nothing to do with...

No, what Congress did impact us last year was with the Medicare rates because it had a tax differential where it dropped your maximum down to $2,000. So we did absorb that in Medicare. Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Federal legislation that will impact rates. That's not necessarily the driving factor here now. The other thing that is driving up rates is the direct negotiations between the carriers and the hospitals. So a good example of that is Blue Cross Blue Shield and UMass Medical. as you're negotiating sort of what's the cost of X surgery or this patient or that patient. that's also not unique to just this particular area that's also sort of on the national scale is that debate in terms of

what you're going to charge sort of universally at that particular hospital from that particular carrier.

Yeah, the impact of what's being discussed right now at the federal level in Congress, if it goes to pass, will be felt at the Statehouse on Beacon Hill. And that the impact... would be on the MassHealth budget and Medicaid program by which we subsidize Affordable Care Act, Health Insurance Plans for Poor Individuals, Children, and Families. That cost or that lack of funding from the feds could then trickle down to municipalities, but that wouldn't impact our health insurance bottom line for our budgeting purposes here right now.

Go ahead, Tom. But it might impact other things. Yeah, exactly.

I do want to say, though, on a positive note, particularly with your position with West Suburban, one of my children is a teacher, as you know, and went from a West Suburban community to a non-west suburban community and I can tell you she can't she keeps looking for jobs back in a west suburban town the health insurance that we provide is more comprehensive and at a reasonable cost in terms of what the patient owes than she's certainly experiencing now in the non-West suburban community.

Well, and the other thing... to add a layer to that, which I totally would agree with at this point in time, because that can change, right? But certainly at that point in time, I totally agree with that, is when we do make plan modifications, it then has to be bargained with the unions. and I will say we had Corey assisted me in the last round of bargaining which was excellent and we bargained actually with the schools on with regards to health insurance as well. it really went incredibly well and we only did a two-year plan so we are up again as we look at that'll bring us through 27 but we'll be up again for 28 for health insurance bargaining because at one point we didn't know if we were going to remain in West Suburban so we wanted to give a two-year feel.

on that and so that's just the other complexity we layer on is then how collective bargaining is also then impacted because clearly insurance is a major factor in terms of the benefits we provide.

Okay. All right.

All right, just opened it. So the Youth Commission is, we had given the Youth Commission a 2% budget because of the director. They essentially have one staff person, full-time staff person. More did add a slight uptake of 3% to the student interns. does a great job working with our interns. And so within here, we would argue it's de minimis in terms of her being over the budget guideline. It's $280, and that brings her to 2.08%. just because of the very small nature of her budget and she did not increase as a result of that she also did not increase any of her expenses so if we look at the compounded rate between in the guidelines, what her personal services and expenses would be, she's actually under that. But she is slightly over guideline on that.

The only other small department just mentioning in terms of over guideline would be the Zoning Board of Appeals. They are slightly over in expenses because of subscription services to land use law. providers where that went up I think the two it went up I think $300 each so I think it's a $600 differential which brings her over the 3% just again because of the very small nature of of the overall budget. So I did just want to call your attention to that.

I just wanted to point out that the earmark we had on the youth services capital was really good news.

So on the youth Services Capital. We had a van. I'm actually going to turn it over to Corey. No, you do it because Corey has really worked hard with Sheila on this and we have terrific news.

Yes, so thanks to Senator Cindy Cream and her staff, we were able to secure in the transportation funding bill that the legislature passed and the governor signed. Last summer, $150,000 earmark of actual money, not monopoly money, real money, to purchase a 14-passenger van for the youth and recreation departments. and this it was earmarked specifically for all transportation related costs for after school and summer programming for both departments and this is really to fill a fill kind of a gap in the services that they were providing to area youth that might not have been able to access certain programming because of transportation issues and you know Catch Connect is wonderful but this now provides Youth and Rec, the flexibility to offer a lot more flexible scheduling.

The 14 passenger limit means a CDL is not required. So volunteers, when they fill out a quarry with a town, can then sign up to be van drivers instead of having to go through a commercial driver license test and all that. And we are getting insured through Sandra. She's helping us get insured. It's going to be housed at the Warren Building and it should be delivered to Wellesley next week. So it's getting affixed with Wellesley seal and the town logo and all that. We're hoping to do a little bit of a ribbon cutting ceremony with Senator Cream. So we will let the board know about that soon. But we're really excited and we're really grateful to Senator Cream. and there might be some questions as to we will have additional funds from that $150,000 that we can use towards things like additional programming, gas, other things. There'll be a good $25,000

I left the language of the earmark broad enough that it's any kind of programming or transportation related activity related to youth or rec.

And Corey, just to add on to that, because it's such fabulous news, that as we plan future years, we'll have to think about the operational expenses. I talked to Moore about that yesterday. I just wanted to give the board a heads up because next year that expense area could, it's zero this year and it could bump a little.

Okay, I'm just watching our time. If anybody has additional questions for Megan or Corey or Rachel, I'm going to ask that we hold them for the moment and inviting counsel on aging. Yeah. So we'd like to welcome Judy Gertler, Chair of the Council on Aging, and Kathy Savage, the Acting Director. Thank you for coming. And Tim Fulham, thank you for being here. Nice to see you all.

Okay, thank you all for the opportunity to discuss the COA tax impact budget with you. Before I go over the budget, I'd like to give a brief summary of some of the highlights of the past year. and what we envision for the coming year? So the past year at the COA has been one of change and growth. We increased the number of programs and as a result saw an increase in the number of individuals attending our programs and utilizing our services. There was a 33% increase in attendance at our events in fiscal 25. We also increased the number of bus drivers so that we're able to meet the growing need for transportation services during the hours that the Tolles Parson Center is open. We now provide over 250 rides per month to over 50 patrons.

In fiscal 25, over 1,800 individuals attended the COA. Now roughly three quarters of Wellesley residents are Wellesley residents and the remainder are from other towns. and this is pretty typical across the state that roughly 75% of the attendances is residents of the town and 25% come from other towns. Well, we engaged the UMass Boston School of Gerontology to conduct a needs assessment of our older adult population. This work, which was undertaken with a grant from the New Era Fund, was recently completed. In fact, yesterday we had a briefing from them on the results of the study. Their results will be key to the development of a long-range strategic plan. In the coming year, we have four priorities.

We will hire a new director and we anticipate that this will happen early in the new year. We'll initiate a strategic strategic planning process once the new director has his or her feet on the ground and has some understanding of the needs of the town and this will likely take us 12 to 18 months to complete but because we have the UMass needs assessment, we have a basis for doing this planning. Third, we are going to be initiating programs to utilize the new kitchen, which we hope will be finished by the end of this month. and then finally we want to investigate the requirements for becoming an age-friendly community which coincides with the long-range planning process. Okay, now I want to turn to the proposed budget.

which I think you all have. The budget goals provided to us were a 3.1% increase in personal services and a 3.0% increase for expenses. Now as you all know, the COA receives state funding through a formula grant from the Office of Aging and Independence. The grant is based on the number of residents age 60 and over as reported in the 2020 census, which is, I think, 6480. I don't remember the exact number, but it's over 6,000. the funds may be used for anything that benefits the senior population and there is no turn back of any unused funds at the end of the year. They can be carried forward. And I checked recently and it turns out that we have until 2032 to use the funds

that were appropriated to us in the prior 10-year period. And at that point, the state will be reevaluating the program and deciding how they want to go forward. Okay, in the past years, $42,600 of this grant was used to offset the salaries of our bus drivers. This year, for the first time, finance... informed Kathy that we must cover all of the bus driver salaries from this grant. By doing this, our personal services expenses will see an increase of 2.1%, which is under the guideline of 3.1% that we were given. Now, as you all know from Colette's report, the COA Board held a special meeting about two weeks ago to approve this budget.

there was considerable discussion regarding using the formula grant funds to cover all of the bus driver salaries. I should also add that we had a significant increase in the bus driver salaries because there was approximately a 25% increase in their hourly rate of pay. It went from, Kathy, what was it, 20, 21, 10?

I believe it went from $21.10 to now the current salary is $26.15. Thanks.

Now while the board voted to approve this budget. All of those present agreed that there needs to be a discussion with your board about the bus driver salaries and, in general, the use of the formula grant funds. So we're currently assembling the data on how our grant money, as well as other non-tax impact funds, have been used in in fiscal 25 and we will look at how we've been spending the money so far in fiscal 26. In fact, Tim is here because he was involved with doing the budget and he is helping us do that analysis. Okay, everyone at the special board meeting agreed that we want to review this information with the select board, and we want to work with you on a funding strategy for future budget years so that we don't run into this kind of a problem again.

so do you want to say anything about that or should I continue with the expenses?

Yeah, continue please. I would like to say something about it. We've had this discussion over I would say two or three years and I think part of the issue was at one point we had the eastern development grant for ten thousand dollars and a two fiscal years ago, it expired. And we as a board agreed to offset $10,000. to help mitigate the impact of the bus drivers on the COA budget. I was of the understanding in that meeting that there was an agreement with the finance director at the time to migrate over several years because it was too big a hit to take it once but over several years there was going to be a migration

of Bus Services into the COA budget with the understanding that bus service to the seniors is a core service in town. It's not something that should be vulnerable to grant funding. And so I'm not really comfortable or pleased with 100% use of grant funding for a core service. And I think after seeing the presentation yesterday, where half of our households have a senior in them. I think they said a senior over 65, so it wasn't even at age 60. And a quarter of our households have seniors that live alone. I feel that we should acknowledge that there is a core responsibility to provide bus services at some level within the town budget and maybe some of it is an augment.

Beth, that issue is really not ripe for the board's discussion right now. The board has not discussed it at all. I respect and appreciate Judy's raising it with us. but we have a new finance director. We have not had the opportunity to discuss it with her. It's a big policy and philosophical discussion that requires the input and participation of the entire board. and we hear you. Unfortunately this is not the time to have that conversation.

I'm just putting it out there because as a board it is policy discussion and this is a budget so we have to at some point put it on an agenda to decide.

Yes we do but not now. Go ahead.

Sorry, I forgot. All right. Well, you heard me. Not everybody on television heard me. So since those items will be purchased in the current fiscal year, we felt that this line item could be reduced for next year. So that's the highlight of the expense part of it. So I'm going to let Kathy review the capital budget with you.

Okay, so the capital budget. We are requesting for fiscal 27... $10,000 to purchase a storage unit or shed. And the reason for this is because we have a We don't have a lot of storage at the COA, and we have a lot of moving pieces, and it would be great if we had a little storage unit for excess tables and chairs in the multipurpose room. Also, we were hoping to upgrade our audio visual system up in the American Legion conference room. because we're growing so much and we have so many participants that participate and come in every day.

We were hoping that we would be able to upgrade the system on the second floor in the American Legion room. because the current system we have right now is a portable projector and it's just really not sufficient for the amount of lectures and music performance that we have. also because we're growing we need this because we do have a lot of performance in the multi-purpose room in events but because that fills up so much. This is a secondary place for us to expand our amount of people that can come to some of the events. And then for fiscal 28, We were looking for $20,000 to reconfigure the office space.

Right now we're growing and we don't have any place to put additional staff. Also for fiscal 29, we were looking for $15,000 to replace the fitness equipment in the fitness room. That has been there since the building was built and it's wearing. We still have a few years left on it, but we definitely will need to replace that fitness equipment. and Fiscal 30, we are hoping that we would be able to replace all the outdoor patio furniture and the cushions in the storage that is the storage bin for the cushions for the the patio furniture. The patio furniture we have now is okay but eventually we're going to need to replace it because it has been there since the building was built.

and then for fiscal year 31, we are hoping that we would be able to replace all the furniture in the common areas. That furniture has been there since the building was built. And it is wearing. We've been upkeeping it with cleaning and everything, but it does get a lot of usage. So that's what we were hoping to do. and that would bring over these five years to a total capital request for $90,000. Okay, Tom.

Just a few questions if I can on that. With regard to the storage shed, knowing that it's for the indoor tables, I'd like someone to assess what the impact would be on indoor furniture and then outdoor furniture. there's a significant difference in terms of the integrity of the structure you might buy mice, etc. and I'd want to know that it's not going to and others. I do recognize there is an issue about where it is stored. I just want to be sure that we are preserving Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, The original plan on that building, that room was wired, well at least the conduits were all in place for Wellesley Media. to come in at such time as a need was demonstrated.

I think it is worth going back with the numbers that you have in terms of utilization. and talking to them about, Wellesley Media has expressed a willingness to equip rooms if we can demonstrate use of existing space. and that's a little tricky with the COA because you're looking for internal needs and not necessarily across all the rooms that Wellesley Media has wired. but I think we should at least have a conversation with them because there's an ease that was built into the original construction for wiring that particular room. and lastly, I could be wrong, I'm sure you'll correct me, but I thought the original fitness equipment came from a grant from the Friends.

I think it came from the New Era Fund. Yes.

It came from the Elmira Simons Fund. So there was a small amount of fitness equipment, but the fitness equipment was purchased by Elmira Simons Fund.

So I'm wondering if there isn't, I absolutely feel it is very necessary to have of Fitness Equipment that is working. It's a significant resource and we want to do everything to encourage seniors to be active. So I have no problem with up-to-date I'm just wondering if there aren't some additional sources of funding for that equipment.

If I could just go back to the audio-visual equipment. I've been in contact with James Joyce at Wellesley Media. Thank you so much for joining us. and we had an audio visual company come over that he had recommended and he took a look at everything. So I can share that information with you when I have the full complete packet.

Well, and I'm happy to talk to Peter Marks, too, and bring it to his attention about the general inquiry about that wrong.

Well, and it was originally considered very important to have that as a meeting resource room, especially when we didn't go forward with the town hall annex because there was a demonstrated need for additional meeting space. where Wellesley Media could participate.

So Wellesley Media can film certain things in there, but not everything, because we were going to have a board meeting in there, but they are not able to do that. So that's understandable. I will work with James and Mr. Marks on that. Thank you. That's great.

Absolutely no disagreement with the project, just trying to figure out further assistance, financial assistance to get it done.

and then I just wanted to make a comment about the outdoor shed. I would definitely work with FMD on this. We might not even be able to build something Put something out there. But I will definitely work with FMD, Joe McDonough on this. We know each other from another project that we're working on together.

I could get his advice. Do you have a completion date, a projected completion date for the kitchen?

Yes. At the end of the year. December.

December.

Thank you. Quick question on the shed. How did you come up with $10,000?

I went out to a company that's outsourced in New Hampshire, Reed's, and I just kind of did an estimate of measurements and everything, and that's what I came up with, but I just wanted to have an estimate in case you asked me that question but we would need to have facilities involved to see if there needs to be a poured foundation or any of that

Thank you so much. I had sent in some questions and I got some answers on them. And so I appreciate that. But I wanted to follow up on a couple of them. so the you know in the goals section and I've had this conversation with some of the other departments today I think our goal sections need to be formulated to have stretch goals and there were some great goals in here but I do think it would be good to add because I think it's something that the council and agent has discussed to enter your goals you know what's our strategic planning for the use of other funds those are significant funds they're the New Era, Campana and other sources so I think that is something appropriate to add to the goals as I was saying in some of our other discussions today I go back to these budget books all the time and so it's an institutional reference point and so I think it's worthwhile adding that. And the same thing, it's some sort of narrative. There is a good narrative in here about the bus drivers.

but I think there is, it'll be helpful to say, you know, this year, you know, you increased the hours, to match the service hours because of budget limitations. There was no new strategic initiatives and therefore you're funding it from the age grant because of that reason. It's been really helpful for me to go back to prior year budget books, particularly on the busing to see what happened in this year, what happened in that year. So just a little more color in that would be helpful. And then I do think it's critical that we have the non-tax impact sheet as part of the budget book. I understand it's in process Kathy and you're still refining those numbers but I think that's an important part again of the record. and I think we need to have a little bit more clarity on, it sort of has the age funds, what the opening balance was, what's used, what's the closing balance, but there's not, I think, clear reporting on, well, what was it used for?

and you know yes that is not an impact but this is a select board department we need to understand an overview level what it's being spent on it really spikes some years it's quite small some years it's quite big in various sources So I think we really have to understand that on a clearer basis. And if you're doing some forensic accounting on that, great. but I think that needs to be finished, that analysis, or at least some level and added to the budget book this year. And why I've been pushing on this the past couple of years is... Grant funding is great. It's an important part of the Council on Aging's operations but we cannot rely on grant funding forever and we need to be prepared an understanding what the expenses are and how the services are met from various different sources in case grant funding disappears.

And that's become a reality in a much more crystallized form this past year. So again, I think that if you can finish off your work on the non-tax impact sheet, that needs to be part of the budget book.

In service of knowing the full cost of operations.

and then so that's the operating side. Then on the capital side, I think we've already touched on some of the questions I raised. I think it's appropriate if you go back and talk to Joe on the couple of things I mentioned and he has some feedback to say. that will work or it won't work or I can do it this year or that year it may result in some changes to the capital schedule that's submitted so if you can have those conversations and we can finalize that that'd be great and that's something we did last year as well there was a few items in the Capital, Plan for the Council on Aging. When we discussed them further, actually, it didn't make sense the way they were, and we revised that. So if we can do that, that would be great. And so I think that's it from my perspective. Thank you.

Go ahead. So I agree with the proposal from Colette to look at the non-tax impact dollars. And I think that's true of all of our departments, like Climate Action, that is taking in funds from Sustainable Wellesley. as well as those that are applying for grant funding. So I think in general, and I guess Megan, if the departments that come to us could report on their grant funding and the allocation of those, I think it would give us more visibility into the true cost of operating and those value added things that through the generosity of others we're able to afford versus the cost of operations. and the second question I have I guess it's for you Tim when you do your forensic evaluation of things like the expense of the state grant and the bus cost.

Will you also look at, will you true it up so that we know how much was over budgeted? Because where you're allowed to retain those grant funding we wouldn't want that to come we wouldn't want you to lose the capacity to spend your grant funds in future years so it may be something more like snow and ice where we under budget and then toward the end of the year, Trua.

I think honestly on that item, and I mentioned this to Rachel, there's maybe four or five public holidays that you could adjust the budget by, but there's generally speaking not a lot of

if you don't hire there might be but generally speaking not a lot of turn back on that yeah I was just it seemed to me that it's about four thousand dollars a year that's Overbudgeted that then rolls back right now to the general fund. So if we could have a, regardless of how this turns out, if we could have a better accounting mechanism because four or five thousand dollars is several programs that they could run.

Okay, sorry about that. Anything else? Thank you very much for this work. Nice to have you on the team, Tim. Thank you. And any further questions, we'll let you know. But thank you for all this information. We appreciate it.

Thank you all very much. Thank you.

All right. And under the word. Sure, Tom. We did citizen speak at 9 o'clock, but go ahead. You have to wait till you sit down, Tom.

So Tom Keeley, Lehigh Road, Wellesley. I just wanted to say, I'll pick up a bit on what Beth was talking about. and you know I have a long history on the budget process. And when I was working on the budgets back at the COA, 100% of the bus driver costs were funded by the town. now we did have an offset and some of you are familiar with it and that's when we had two I'll call them transportation schedulers. And they cost $42,600. That's why you keep seeing that number show up on the five-year budget process. and the Council on the Aging Board were able to modify the structure of the transportation area and we actually eliminated those folks and eliminated that cost.

really on the assumption that we would also eliminate the offset because no reason to offset something that isn't there anymore. So we have a history of paying 100% for the bus drivers, and now it's zero. And I think actually from a priority standpoint, think about the people who use the bus. They're handicapped. They're frail. they can't drive, and on and on. Nothing like what you need to worry about, but that's what they worry about. They're stuck at home. if they don't have transportation and so forth. So fortunately we've been able to handle those kinds of things, but we have our priorities upside down. They should be on top. We're treating the bus situation as like the thing, oh, we can get rid of that. We'll do an offset and so forth. But everything else is fine. No, these are the people that we really need to be taken care of. And we have our priorities upside down. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much, Tom. As I indicated, this is a conversation that the board is obviously going to have. We have not had it yet. and thanks to Colette's update. Some of us have watched that meeting and others of us I would encourage to do so and we will take it up and let you know when it's on an agenda. And with that, thank you to the finance department. Thank you, everybody, for all your work. I know the budget work continues, but for us to have this under our belts today is a huge help, huge step forward. With that, I think we're adjourned. Seven minutes early.

Marjorie, congratulations.