Select Board October 13, 2026

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call to order the select board meeting of October 13th, 2026. The meeting is being held in hybrid format broadcast live on Comcast Channel 8 and Verizon channel 40 and will be available for later viewing on wellesleymedia.org. Select board members in the Giuliani room at Town Hall are Tom Ulfelder, Vice Chair, Colette O'Frank, Secretary, Beth Sullivan Woods and Kenny Largess. And I'm Marjorie Freiman. Also here in the Giuliani room with us are Executive Director Megan Jopp, Executive Director Corey Testa A large contingent from the police department and Officer Winnie, who is a very welcome guest this evening. Our first agenda item is Citizen Speak. Corey do we have no one for Citizen Speak? All right, then I'll turn it over to Megan please for the executive director's update.

Thanks, Marjorie. We just have a few announcements. So we wanted to remind folks that tomorrow evening from 630 to 8 PM at the Honeywell Elementary School which is located at 28 Cameron Street we will have a public meeting to learn about the Wellesley Square Improvement Project, which is our Wellesleys square amenities project. So we'd invite people to come learn about that project and participate. Thursday this week is the COA Health and Wellness Fair from 1030 to 130 at the Tolles Parsons Center. They will have over 40 exhibitors, There's different health screenings, raffles, et cetera. So encourage folks to check that out. We also wanted to remind people about early voting So that's gonna commence this Saturday, October 17th from 9 a.m to 5 p.m here at Town Hall and then that will continue Monday, October 19th through Friday, October 23rd from 8 a. m to 4 p. m at Town hall

Saturday, October 24th from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday, October 26th through Friday, October 30th 8 a. m. to 4 p. m., and on Thursday, October 29th town hall will be open until 8 p. And then lastly, just two reminders. We've announced these previously but we will have the Cultural Council grant applications which are due October 15th So this Thursday, as well as our marathon invitational entry applications in particular for our Wellesley nonprofits who are seeking an invitational bid. Those are also due on October 15th

Megan, do you happen to know how many marathon bib applications we've received to date?

At the end of last week, we were over 20.

Oh, great. Okay. It's been broadcast all over the deadline so hopefully everybody who is interested in having a runner will submit an application?

Best. Megan, could you tell us how many people have registered for the Wellesley Square Amenities Project?

We're not doing registration for that. We are assuming a big turnout, but we're not assuming the same kind of turnout for the North 40 Charette. So I believe the capacity at the cafeteria at Honeywell is a little under 200. So we're assuming that will be under that. If for any reason were not, we'll pivot but we did not do early registration and it's only the first of multiple public engagement sessions for the public in the next couple months on this project

All right, there'll be another one in mid-November. Okay. All right thank you very much Megan. Our next agenda item is our consent agenda. We have one item on the consent agenda tonight which is to discuss and vote the designation of two town positions, the recreation department night monitor and camp counselor as special municipal employees and to approve the employee's disclosure forms. So I'll turn it back over to Megan.

So for this, it's the position and not the individual. We did have one potential disclosure but the individual didn't choose to take that position so we no longer need that. We just need the special municipal employees This designation is for positions that work on multiple departments, and it just alleviates any potential conflict of interest. We likely will actually be returning to the board for some of our firefighter positions that also do our traffic Control Unit, so details after discussing this with town council. So it's just for the night monitor and camp counselor at this time.

Okay, any questions on that? Comments? Move to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Our next agenda item is to discuss and vote the appointment of police officer candidates so we'll ask Chief Whittemore and Deputy Chief Renzella to join us and kick us off. Hi chief, hi deputy chief thanks for being here.

Good evening all pleasure to be here So here we are. At present, first of all good evening everyone at present the Wellesley Police Department has three vacant positions within our ranks They were due to a medical retirement earlier this year, an officer transferring into another department last year and another retirement last year of a 30-year veteran. So every two years, we hold an entrance exam. This year and this cycle and the previous cycle, we've used a company called Get Badged Two years ago, they did an in-person exam. This time they did both an in person exam and a proctored online exam. And that considerably opened up the amount of applications that we got. We had over 160 people actually take the exam and apply for Wellesley. The advantage is they can apply for wellesley and take one test and also apply departments. It's an advantage, but it's also a disadvantage because we're in direct competition with some of our neighbors for some very good candidates.

So this year we had 160, all of this by the way is run by Lieutenant Marie Cleary who's off today but she coordinates both the exam the application process, and everything right up until the academy. And she takes that and takes care of it very efficiently. of the 160 candidates we had. We took all the passing scores and went through their resumes, and this is a formal review done by myself, the deputy chief, and our command staff which is our lieutenants and also the union president, Tim Barros who's here tonight I believe as well with several other members. And we look for who we would think potentially be a good fit or at least start to be a fit We bring those, so we narrowed that down to about 20 candidates. We brought those 20 candidates in for an informal meet and greet so it's not a formal interview, we stress that. We spend 20 minutes to half an hour talking to the person going over their resume and just getting an idea of who they are and how they got to Wellesley

and again that's done with all of our command staff, Officer Barrows, myself and the Deputy Chief. From those 20 we narrowed it down to 13 and then those 13 candidates spent time at least eight hours in two separate ride alongs with some of our field training officers, and some of senior officers. So those are officers that are specially trained and certified to teach When recruits get out of the academy and they teach the job to the new officers, they're in a great position to evaluate candidates. It also gives the candidate a chance to really see the community and the type of police work or law enforcement work they'll be doing, and the community service commitment that we have here in Wellesley. So it's as I've said many times, we want the candidate to be as invested in us and we want to make sure they have full disclosure on what exactly it is they're getting into here in Wellesley. The FTOs are also a very good judge of character, and they report back as to whether or not the person would be a good fit.

And I can tell you that the meeting after those ride-alongs happened consisted of some 17 officers and supervisors, that all came together in one room to decide who we go forward with the background. And prior to this, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Officer Ali Lucenta has really taken up a lot of our recruiting efforts and gone to a lot college fairs both community colleges and other colleges that typically we've gotten good candidates from in the past. And many of the officers here have attended some of those college fairs with her, and this year was particularly good as we really sort of put our test right at the end of graduation. So we got some people coming right out of college, which is what we've been looking for as of late, which we've very successful with. So it was good timing and of course with the proctored online exam, it opened up to multiple different candidates instead of just one set time and date.

So moving forward after that, the meeting with the 17 officers. We went forward with eight backgrounds and we knew we had three positions. The candidates were very upfront with us indicated that in some cases they were going through the process with other places, and we were very transparent with those candidates to tell them look it's a buyer's market. Look at the different communities really take a look and decide where you want to be in 30 years. And I think they did that. At the end of the day, we came down to four candidates for three positions and those three candidates are here having done exceptionally well at all phases of the application process This is just the start. After tonight, it really goes downhill. So I'd like to invite all three of them up and we'll introduce each one separately and go through their background and introduce their families as well All right, so candidates where are you? Come on up all three of you.

John, where are you? Oh, you're downrange. Okay. All right so I will introduce the candidates and then we'll go through each one first but this is John Canal, Georgia Jones and Nicholas Lavangi. So I'll start with John, because he's first on my list here. So John have you just introduced your family here?

Hi everyone, my name is John Canal. I'm here with my two parents Linda and Chris in the back of my younger sister Jenna

All right, so John grew up in the town of Holliston. He went to Holliston High where he played hockey and football and then he subsequently attended Salve Regina in Newport Rhode Island where he got his bachelor's degree in business administration he played college rugby for four years, still here with us. And also he was a member of the investment club and volunteered his time doing both beach and river cleanups preparing care packages for the less fortunate and helping in food shelters. Actually, upon graduation from his undergrad he continued on to get his MBA in business administration as well. John has a connection to Wellesley in that his one of his relatives was Theodore McGlone. We know him as Teddy Mcglone, he retired in 1986. He's a 40 year police officer here in Wellesle serving the community through some so definitely some turbulent times and his grandparents are residents here of the community as well. So he spent a lot of time here in Wellesley, always interested in law enforcement

his mom may have indicated to me earlier tonight that he took MBA because she wanted him to go for criminal justice and he said you can't tell me what to do so here we are but it looks like mom was right Currently, he works at Captain Martin's. He's done a whole bunch of jobs leading up to Captain Martin where he's been employed for a considerable amount of time But John was one of our candidates who came in before the test to really sort of explore that apartment and do some ride alongs, and see what we're all about before opting to apply for our position here. During his background investigation, one of the things that stuck out to me was that he was described as very calm and a welcoming presence if someone was in distress. Which is, of course, what we're absolutely looking here. So I recommend John Canal for appointment Board has any questions?

So to the three candidates tonight, we all take great pride in appointing police officers. We take it very seriously. We all read your background materials and with your permission I think we're all going to have a couple of questions for you. So who would like to start with John? Okay, I'll start. Not quick enough tonight folks. One of the things that really caught my eye was the Shark Tank competition and can you tell us a little bit about it? Was it an individual project or a group project, and how did you decide on the project you wanted to work on?

Sure, so that was during my senior year. It was a business administration project to basically complete your graduation and we were tasked with creating a new device. Previously, the task was to help previous business, this time around they wanted us to create a new product. So I was fortunate enough to have a close friend of mine who has diabetes and we were able to create project that kind of streamlined the whole technology within the device to make it easier to follow your blood glucose levels and various different you know sensors within that and so we were fortunate enough to not quite make it to first place but we'll take second place overall was a great experience and learned a lot through that process

Well, it's wonderful. You may have a future as a developer.

Maybe.

Go ahead, Beth. So one of the things that struck me was your experience with people, both team building working together with rugby and also being in sales and retail because We are a very community-oriented policing department. Can you tell me a little bit about What you think you'll be taking from your retail experience and bringing to your work with the Wellesley Police?

Sure. If you haven't touched upon that, as my time has progressed with Captain Martin's I've been able to see the wholesale side of things along with the retail side. So, been able to see a lot of the community and the people around the community. And have been able interact with a lot locals and kinda got to see how they interact with one another, and it's just a great community to be apart of. So I'm looking forward to it.

Thank you. Kenny?

Hey, John. How did you move from the investment club to being a police officer?

That's a great question. You know, I thought it was good investing but I found that I was a little bit better with people so I figured I might stick with the people side of things.

I don't have a question because my fellow board members have kind of asked the questions but um i'll say something we always see all of us see in some way shape or form at any of these events and it's to the families thank you thank you for supporting your children and coming into the emergency responders. Thank you for giving them to us, to help our community in sometimes the worst days of their lives and very stressful situations I'll save my questions for the other Celts in the room here. But, I just wanted to say thank you and thank you to everyone here for stepping forward and being part of the team. Tom?

I will say in response to your comment about investment club versus law enforcement, in the words of another great law enforcement officer Clint Eastwood said a good man knows his limitations.

Yes sir.

But I do want to say, as I always do with new police officers, this is really a remarkable community in terms of our relationship with the police. and it's unusual. You hear so often, thankfully less now than a few years ago about the tremendous friction between law enforcement and the community, and in some communities understandably so. but here, at least certainly with my interactions with the police department it is uniformly positive, uniformly oriented towards solving problems. the consistent personalities among the police officers is remarkable in Wellesley, in terms of attitude and interaction and respect. And it engenders respect in both directions as a result.

and I think the SROs, we're very proud of the Sro's in the work that they do here to have the relationship that they with young students is really quite remarkable. And I think it has led to intervening Occasionally, hopefully not often but in serious ways and making a real difference in somebody's life. So I think that we really welcome all of you to the force. I was a career prosecutor, I've worked with a lot of police officers over my life and I know there are those who and I will tell you that there are a lot of benefits to being here in Wellesley, in this department with the training and support that you'll receive. And the feeling that you will have in terms of how you help the community and how you

Thank you for being here, for wanting to join this community and welcome.

The other nice thing about your family is that you have a rich family heritage in the business of public safety. And I'm sure you're making your family very proud by making this same choice.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much for those comments. Candidate number two is seated to my left your right Georgia Jones So Georgia came to America when she was in middle school, having immigrated with her family from Ireland. She went to Natick High School where she played field hockey and then subsequently attended the University of Rhode Island where she obtained her bachelor degree in not only criminology and criminal justice but also psychology as well. And while at URI, she was a volunteer and subsequently became the president of a student organization called I Stand this organization worked in partnership and very close proximity with the URI Title IX office, and focused on educating student population on sexual assault domestic violence and stalking prevention as well as bystander intervention. and she did go into some of those stories with us during the interviews, which were very impressive to hear what you did. So Georgia has been a long-term dream for her to become a police officer and we're fortunate that she chose Wellesley.

She was certainly no stranger to us before the application process started, but she sought out she did some ride alongs while she was still in college with us in Wellesley and decided this is where she wanted to be. And of note, she was very intent on what could she do to make herself a better candidate? And someone told her, well in Wellesley we reimburse and we value the EMT, obtaining your EMT. So that night she went out and started the EMG course. Here she is. And she's about to be certified. She's currently in the testing process. She currently hosts us up at Tavern and The Square in Framingham, and has a history of also working at a camp where she was a camp counselor, and also took care of horses.

Is that correct?

Yep. Okay. She is described, and certainly we saw that as having excellent communication skills and eager to learn. And I think that has definitely something that we've seen through our time with her interacting both as a candidate and prior to that so It is without reservation again that I recommend Ms. Jones, and I'd ask her to introduce her family.

Hi, I'm Georgia Jones. Tonight, I am here with my father Henry, my mother Kira and then my sister Robin, brother Redmond, and then grandfather Redmond.

Nice. Hi everybody. Thanks for being here. Colette, you want to start us off?

I sure do. Your background is really very impressive and I'm interested to understand the work that you did with sexual assault domestic violence and the background at your college experience, is that something you want to continue with ideally in your career or are you looking to broaden out and try new things? I'm just curious about where you think you'd like to go.

I would say that I think the knowledge that I earned at the University of Rhode Island is something that I could take to any part of my life. What I learned, the people I met everything that came with the job I had you can use in really any aspect of your life. So, of course, I would want to take that with me continue to learn more as I feel there's never enough that you can know about a subject such as this and i would love to be able to take it into my career especially as a law enforcement officer all of the education that I've learned

Thank you and it's lovely to see your family here today.

Welcome. So I, too, found your background really interesting. I very much enjoyed the chief's write-up where he said that you had learned you had especially strengthened your de-escalation skills in the restaurant world as a hostess, which I could so relate to. The thing that struck me about was not only your early commitment to the field, but the fact We have talked a lot about how to awaken interest early on among our own youth in looking at public service in Wellesley, whether it's the police or the fire department. you may have now but or down the road I'm hoping you can share some of those ideas about how we can start educating in high school and with the area colleges about the opportunities

at what makes policing such an attractive career. I don't know if you have any ideas off the top of your head that kind of triggered the interest for you

I think from a very young age, I always wanted a career that I could help people but also have a connection with the public. I wouldn't say I had to draw to law enforcement when I lived in Ireland. different kind of thing over there. But I'd say when I moved to the United States, I really had a draw to meeting everyone and getting to know people and seeing how many different cultures there are even in the United States and where so many different people come from. And that's something I thought was so amazing and I think the beautiful thing about law enforcement is the connections you can make with the community but also being able to help people through their everyday lives. And there's really no end site There's always ways that you can improve in a career like this, which is something I think is so amazing. You can always work to be a better person, which made this career a great fit for me.

Thank you.

Georgia, how did your studies in psychology enhance or inform your studies of criminology towards your work in this field?

I would say understanding how different people may approach certain situations, but also being able to see an individual that might be acting in a certain way the reasoning behind why they are acting this certain way. But I would say, the biggest and most important part of my psychology degree that I've noticed as time has come especially and working in restaurants, is how to deescalate situations. And you can tell how certain people they might notice something you say and handle it differently from there. And just kind of, I would say nitpicking through a interaction with someone what might be the best de-escalation tactic. But I think just knowing how so many people work in so many different ways is an amazing part of what I got from that. Thank you. Of course, Tom?

I really have to ask Chief if you could explain your comment that she was no stranger to the department before mine.

Georgia was very committed to doing whatever she could to make herself an efficient or a very good candidate for the department. Officer Lucenta introduced me to her during a tour of the station and then I subsequently seemed to see her all the time after that doing ride-alongs and trying to figure out what she wanted to do so that was kind of our are a little joke at the time, but I know she had some other opportunities in some other communities and she chose us hands down. So we're very fortunate.

I'm guessing that's better than you had anticipated.

Thanks for coming Georgia and congratulations. I don't really have any questions but I did notice that you, are you a horse person? My daughter is a horse person and I have a lot of respect for the people that do that. It takes a lot discipline, extremely hard work Caring, so I think those are all things that translate quite well to being a police officer and she actually was at Willowbrook for a little bit.

Really? That's awesome of course thank you

Okay, back to you Chief.

All right and Nicholas LaVangie who's here with us tonight he will smile at some point Possibly now. We had to get him 10 minutes into the interview to give him a smile, but Nicholas or Nico as he's affectionately known within our department right now grew up in Mansfield Massachusetts extraordinarily family oriented assisting his mother, taking care of his two siblings. He graduated he went to Mansfield High School where he played football and upon graduation he enlisted in the Army National Guard as a military police officer and then in addition to those duties also started at Fitchburg State, attaining his bachelor's degree. So Nico, while he served for six years in the Army National Guard, multiple activations including working here in Wellesley on the marathon. As you know we have the National Guard supplement some of our are security enhancements, especially in the last 10 years and 15 years.

Currently Nico works as a phys ed teacher at the I just forgot it the Foxborough Regional Charter School, he had started off as a substitute teacher and then had the opportunity to move into phys ed where he is now. and during the interview he indicated that one of the things that he really liked about it was he felt he could be a role model to some of the students there who came from single parent homes. So, and that was very profound resonated very clearly with our interview staff at the time. He He's extraordinarily compassionate and a very calming presence in stressful situations. And like I said, he does smile from time to time. but he's also wanted to become a police officer since he was very young and clearly, he set himself up through his life to do that while still maintaining multiple jobs and also maintaining his family life. which was just extraordinary.

So we recently, as I noted, He volunteers both at the Special Olympics and fundraising events for both Type 1 diabetes and the Buddy Walk, both of which were held in the last six weeks or so. just an extraordinarily positive candidate, so we're very lucky to have him as well. And of course I recommend him for appointment as well and Nico if you could introduce your family?

Thank you, Chief. Good evening everybody. My name is Nicholas LaVangie. I'm here with my mother Donatella, my girlfriend Brooke, my three siblings Gabriel, Christopher and Vanessa.

Oh thank you all for being here.

Collette. One thing that really shines from your resume and from the chief's summary, from your mother smiling. I mean, really radiating from the back is just what a caring and thoughtful person family oriented wanted to be a role model I'm feeling myself getting a little teared up here. Thank you so much for bringing all of that to the department, I just want to say thank you.

I'd like to thank you for your service in the National Guard and ask you a question about that. Can you share a few elements of your training or experience in the national guard that you think you'll bring to Wellesley as a police officer?

Sure, so I was given the opportunity to join. Took it through my activations and training. I would come into contact with people whether or not working the route at the marathon doing multiple trainings, learning how to talk to different people, walking around taking pictures with people. stuff that you're going to do almost every day in the policing world. And I think if you can do that, you can have a successful career as a police officer.

Thank you. Beth. So welcome, do you prefer Nico or Nicholas?

Nicholas ma'am.

Nicholas, well welcome. to Wellesley, and I think as others have noticed your commitment to service and your commitment compassionately supporting people. is really striking and so welcome. And I think really adds value to a department that cares about those aspects of how they serve the community deeply. Can you... Can you talk about what you're most looking forward to as you join the force?

I know one of the first questions I asked on my first ride along was how can I get involved with the school system, whether or not it's becoming an SRO one day or just going to events. That's something that I take a lot of pride in especially working out of school now and getting to talk to kids just seeing what their lives are like, that's something I take a lot of pride in.

Well you're certainly a stellar role model so I expect to see you around our youth in one capacity or another. Thank you. Tom?

I'm curious because I can't tell from the writer. Are you still serving in the National Guard?

I got out last August, sir.

Thank you.

Congratulations, Nicholas. As everybody has said your background is very impressive and the compassion that comes through when people are talking about you and on paper is really commendable. I want to thank Chief Whittemore and Deputy Chief Renzella for bringing truly exceptional candidates All three of you are really remarkable and thank you for doing that.

Well to add on to the thanks Kenny, we'd like to thank Officer Lucenta for heading the recruiting efforts of the department and attending job fairs with a lot of her fellow officers, and a very successful outcome resulting in a huge number of people taking the tests. I remember there were few years when there weren't so many candidates and to have such a large class interested in Wellesley is a wonderful, wonderful result. also thank Lieutenant Cleary, scheduling the entrance exam handling all follow-up and all interview logistics having 160 people take the test 20 candidates participating in interviews and 13 Ride Alongs is a lot of logistics. And especially thank you to Chief and Deputy Chief, the four lieutenants and Officer Barrows I think left the room for participating in the final formal interview process.

As Kenny said, we have an amazing group of candidates before us and we all are very proud and very grateful that you've decided to join Wellesley. And bring the department to full staffing.

That's fantastic. I do really want to thank the men and women of the Wellesley Police Department. There are a lot of moving parts that occur a year before the test is even given. And it's very smooth when it goes through, it's a very busy time from the moment the test starts until we sit here with you, with a lot of different things. And one of the hardest things is to get all of the candidates as you mentioned 13 candidates in a ride alongs. All of the officers here that are here tonight and support participated in that and then came back to us and gave us their thoughts. And the deputy chief and I are very strong proponents in involving as many people as possible in this hiring process, and it's definitely a unique process when you look at some of the other cities and towns around us. And we're very fortunate to have the amount of participation enthusiastic participation. And it really allows us to bring these candidates forward.

I appreciate you thanking us, but the reality is it's the department, it's men and women of the police department who are there every day working shifts and taking these candidates out time to time again, to evaluate them and get their true opinion. And all the other background investigations, all the officers that had to do all of that work. Eight backgrounds investigations at one time it's a feat, and they still have their patrol duties to do when they're doing this on overtime or other times when they are not on patrol. They're doing home visits, they're talking to people, they are interviewing people, different avenues to make sure that we have the best possible candidates so it really is the men and women of the Wellesley Police Department. Jeffrey and I are just sort of here, so...

It's a very sophisticated recruiting process and clearly results in bringing to the town, the best possible candidates. So thanks to the entire department.

In closing, I was speaking to a competing department who is competing for some of our candidates. And this particular chief mentioned to me she said yeah it's great when we go through the interview and we say where else are you going through? And they say Wellesley which seems like a really great department I don't know what you're doing over there, but it was a great comment to make. But no obviously the department on behalf of the men and women of Wellesley Police Department we recommend these three candidates for appointment as conditional officers employment for the police department

All right, Colette. So move to appoint John Canal, Georgia Jones and Nicholas LaVangi to the position of patrol officer effective October 13th, 2026 contingent upon passage of the police academy Passage of physical abilities, medical and psychological exam, and a one-year probationary period.

Second.

All in favor? Aye.

If you wouldn't mind coming up here, we'd also like to shake your hands and congratulate you. Thank you, John.

For the record, I just want to note we are one minute ahead of time. That's right and you led a good example today Kenny and our next agenda item is to discuss and vote FY28 budget guidelines, and we have CFO Finance Director Rachel DeRoche with us. Thank you, Rachel for joining us. Okay, Megan you wanna kick it off?

I'll give a brief overview and then I'm gonna have Rachel walk through where we're at currently with the guidelines. So just as a reminder, we in preparing the guidelines continue to have a lot of unknowns largely due the number of unsettled contracts, all of the municipal and school contracts. The other thing to consider as we're looking at the numbers is every seven years, we have 52.4 pay periods. So this is the highest pay period that we would have, which when you apply a 2% COLA, that's going to skew your numbers by about .39%. to add the 0.4 weeks, so you're gonna see some of that reflected. Given the other unknowns in addition to the guidelines we are currently recommending

a 6% capital financing range, which is lower than we typically have. We typically have between 6.2 and 6.8 for several years we were trending at the high end of that range at 6.8 as we were doing some catch-up post COVID over the past several years, we've been trending at a lower percentage and last year we were at about 5.9% in efforts to meet and close the budget gap, we had further reductions I won't go into detail at this point the cash capital needs and free cash appropriations, but we've detailed that in a letter in terms of what is currently in our capital budget program. Keep in mind, I have some new information from some evaluations as people are preparing their capital budgets

and so our budget deadline for capital closes on under our current schedule November 20th. So we're a little bit in the, just for free cash appropriations and finalization of that where we're still have a couple weeks. We have about four weeks or so, five weeks or before we have those finalized submittals to evaluate. not in here. We've also included conversations with the department heads, in terms of potential items that may were raised at the all board and Rachel will touch on those as she walks through them not in here. I had a conversation today with the Zoning Board of Appeals who are evaluating their staffing needs given the amount of applications we've received and keep in mind many of the new statutory provisions from the Commonwealth Necessitate Site Plan Review Only, which funnels basically only to the Zoning Board of Appeals. There has also been substantial changes in 40A, which is also created.

In some mind it could be less work but it actually creates more questions that come to them as people are trying to evaluate whether they in fact will need a special permit or not So I'm gonna work with them to evaluate some of the needs on that, but that was new information today. I just wanted to raise to the board as we continue to sort of flesh that out a bit with them. Beth also alerted us that the health department is considering looking positionally. I haven't had a chance to speak with Lenny today, but I will follow up on that, looking at some of the mental health needs as that continues to escalate in the community whether they need to hire a new social worker or add hours to existing social work consultants, other needs. We'll get more detail to the board the Board of Health just happened to have a meeting this morning and Beth relayed that so, and Beth can certainly add color to that as we go into the guidelines but I just wanted to alert the board. That's a bit of new information that we didn't hear at the All-Board.

So we're happy to answer questions, but the meat of it is the guidelines. So I'll turn it over to Rachel and I'll project it on the screen.

Perfect, thank you Megan. So again like the last few years we will be having individual guidelines based on each department So one exercise, particularly when it comes to personal services for those non-union departments. Thank you to Paul our finance and budget analyst. He went through and applied a 2% COLA again as Megan had mentioned the increased from 52.2 to 52.4 budgeted years, budgeted payroll days as well as any folks that are on a step so those non-union folks that are salaried as a result of class and comp. Those folks would be getting a step, so we went through and we were able to really identify department by department what those individual personal service guidelines will be and just for example, we'll walk through each department but I just wanted to flag the 52.4 so if we look at climate action

their personal service is going up exactly 2.4% that would be their budget guideline because their staff is all salaried non-union salaried. So executive director's office recommending a 2.6% increase, they have one staff that is on a step. Also as we're walking through, one thing Megan I wanted to mention In looking at some of the other unknowns, we are recommending separate guidelines for personal service and expense. So we are recommend a 0% increase for expenses. And we will walk through, there are some exceptions there and we'll explain how we came to those recommendations but I did want to flag that so as we look at executive director's office 0% expense increase, again climate action. All salaries folks for those two 2.4% increase. Central administration services again, no personal service under that department.

That really covers copier maintenance and central admin office supplies again a 0% increase. Our finance department, so slightly over that 2.4 we're at 2.7 and then we have an hourly employee 0% expense and now information technology. So as Megan had mentioned at the all board meeting we did flag a potential We also flagged a $25,000 for and Applicant Tracking Software. So again, HR board, our HR director had flagged that but we historically budget centrally for those types of costs which is why we would be including that in the IT budget guideline. And then also we have a placeholder of 8% to

really accommodate any of those licensing fees. So cyber security, increased licensing costs, telephone cost. Market rates around 8% as the IT director starts to work with those vendors. We'll get a better sense, but we wanted to put that 8% placeholder and again their personal services at the 2.4 they're all salaried employees.

Rachel, the software that different departments use would those increases be captured under this 8% or would they be under the department?

they would be, so that's a good question. I think the only exception where we're building in an increase is the library. So the library has the licensing fees that they budget within their department. But this would be, oh gosh, Zoom licenses or CAMA licenses website increases, telephone we just went through a telephone upgrade so any associated increases with that Megan what else am I missing for those centralized

That's generally it. Sometimes we have some specialty, that could be some of the software for Kronos for our hourly but we've centralized that. for AI costs. We're actually working I want to say it's Eops. It's not that, but the Executive Office of Technology is also working and Brian was like the first one in the office. They're trying a test run Centralization of like CHAT GPT so that you have one cost for the whole municipality. So we have that but we have a couple people who may be trying different things, but it all flows out of generally Brian's budget unless it's like a complete One-Off. As an example, Clerk Minutes is independent in our budget as well as Corey and I also have Otter to transcribe many of the meetings we're at.

So, we pay for that within our own budget but the larger network solutions all come out of Brian's budget.

Thank you.

Can I ask on Munis, how much is Munis? I'm trying to figure out how big a jump is Muns planning to hit us with at 100 grand a year.

it's considerable. And again, this is driven by transitioning from a hosted server to a cloud-based but I can look that up real quick to see It's a considerable amount. What would we pay for our munis software?

So right now, we own the license internally and they're switching us to hosted. Is that what's happening?

So we own specific licenses and we actually also have a separate server for Munis so that we have the ability to cut off from our main network. and so we don't actually see the cloud base as serving us because we have the separate network, and we have our own cloud-based storage system. But nonetheless, it's sort of like well if you want to stay with us this is how you have to proceed. We're actually trying to partner with other municipalities and are trying to negotiate this down In addition to that, their pricing is very variable. We've also contemplated with another community going to the Inspector General's office to understand how they're quantifying those items Cost Escalations, because of the communities have independent cybersecurity or separate servers or what have you. So it's an ongoing discussion.

The challenge is if we were going to put out to bid, to get a new financial software it's dramatic in terms of the impact to that. In particular given the fact that we're going to a new billing system with the municipal light plant, that's about an 18-24 month installation so to change at this point and Munis would be a significant endeavor.

Yeah, and along with that would also come with the potential cost and time commitment. So Beth to answer your question so the 27's budget and again, Brian separates this in his line. He does have computer software services. He shows Munis Tyler separately so that's just over $257,000. So generally year-over-year we're seeing about a 5% increase but Tyler Technologies, Munis did reach out to start those conversations about transitioning to the cloud base. So again we've been like Megan mentioned reached out to some other communities looking to kind of have those partnerships, to really understand the cost structure. Because again it is significant but it is our primary financial we use it for payroll accounts payable tax collection, receipts. So it's a pretty substantial cost for the town but again it is used 365 days a year and transitioning would be

and a substantial cost as well. So we'll continue those conversations.

I just want to get a handle on it. It's going from $257,000 to $350,000. Potentially 100,000 increase, correct?

OK. And some of it is absorbed by the enterprise fund. Every year for the next three years? Yeah, so it's a $300,000 increase in three years. But every year, it's another $100,000, which is kind of doubling.

Over to you.

Yeah, so they've presented a phased approach. So instead of increasing 300,000 in year one their I guess proposal would be $100,000 over the next three years but again we will continue to have those conversations and work with them to really understand those costs and what the benefit is.

How much of the IT budget is new products versus licensing fees for software and things like that?

Good question, so there- I think the newest product would be some of the phone costs that because we just moved to a WebEx platform. and then the additional new cost item would be the applicant tracking software that hits this year. It was a capital expense prior to that. I'd say those are the two newest, The Assessor Product. and then Kama, that hasn't even been activated yet.

We're still in the process of that. The assessor's still working with so we've over this summer completed the RFP process there has been a selection of a vendor they're still working through the contract negotiations but again that is one of those I think someone asked earlier about other applications that are budgeted within the department so the CAMA platform, that is budgeted separately within the assessor's office. but again, we're still working through those contract negotiations. But again they currently have a budget within the assessor's office to cover that so as we work through that contract negotiation that actually is a good flag. There could be a potential increase on that so let me just make a note on that.

generally is 8% expense increase for IT what we've been projecting for the past few years? Yes, I believe so.

How much of it is hardwired contractually? You can't say it as a percent. I understand that, but if you were to say okay the cost of the IT department is going to go up by half a million dollars there's a certain percent of that is locked in, just contractually. What I'd be curious to know is how much of that is not necessarily locked in at this point. Whether it's from new products or new software, renegotiating or negotiating a new license

We can check with our IT director on that.

How many competitors to MUNIS are there?

There's mainly two other competitors, but Arguably, Munis is the most well-known and well used in particular for communities of our size and level of appropriation.

Do the other companies, though in terms of their product perform without problems?

I don't know because we've only used Munis since I've been here.

The majority of communities, our comp communities are using Munis, Tyler's technology they've been in the market there are some other platforms.

The only reason I ask is I'm wondering if there isn't an opportunity for one of these other companies and whether that might put pressure on Munis with regard to their proposed increase.

yeah that's a good question and again our IT director has started those conversations with Munis I think from this point forward we want to understand really what are we getting from that $100,000 so our IT Director just last week sent a list of questions. So we've started those conversations but again from my perspective the level of effort to implement a new platform, we close within 30 days by the end of July As you know, we have a free cash certification submitted by mid end of September. If we were to move forward with an implementation of a new software we would have substantial transition. So I think it would be advantageous to work with Munis and to work other communities, understand their pricing model which will benefit you know municipalities as a whole before we go down that path of potentially looking at other vendors but that is an option.

Let me just ask, in what you just said, are you envisioning that our staff would have to implement the new software?

Oh correct, yes.

So why wouldn't the negotiation with another company be that they provide technical assistance to take some of that load off?

They do, but you have to basically redo every single SOP for every department. For every payment, for every financial transaction that we make in town.

One of the things I was curious about with the munis cost is whether there's a way to control it by the number of licenses because maybe... because we are so, it's become so entrenched and we do so much cross training in every department is there a way to limit the number of licenses where obviously in financial services you would all have a license, but in the departments could they each have one instead of multiple? Is there a way to control the cost? Because usually, the number of licenses has a compounding effect on your costs.

And that's a valid question. I think my first reaction would be from an internal control standpoint, we like to have each user have a unique license or unique login. I mean particularly with those more sensitive departments If you're in the treasurer's office, we wouldn't want folks using the same license. In our office, We wouldn't that information shared because we need to track really from an audit perspective who is doing what transactions? So I'm not sure limiting the number of licenses, but I think that's a valid point. We could do an internal evaluation. Here are the licenses. How often are these users in Munis? Maybe there's folks that have a Munis license that aren't in there regularly, and maybe we could delegate workloads. So maybe that we could evaluate but not necessarily using the same license across multiple users.

Does MMA have any input to this? Since so many municipalities are dependent on it, is there not an even power balance here?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if they're going to insert themselves in this. But it certainly is we've been talking to our peer communities about this. It certainly has raised well why would someone with similar let's say where a $250,000 and their significant price disparity. That's the real concern for us from an equalized pricing standpoint.

so more to come on that, but again we're building in 100,000 placeholder. And then moving onto the treasuries for clarity.

proposing 8% plus the 100,000 plus the 25,000. Correct and the eight percent would be for when we look at that existing normal but you're applying the 8% to their resident $300,000 that's already in Munis. So that to me seems to add an extra compounding element onto it

Yep, that's a good question. I was envisioning so if we look at the IT budget the computer software other which includes oh here's my list right here Office 365 GIS Platform, Civic Plus, OpenGov, Kronos, Zoom. I'd expect that line to increase 8%. Brian also flagged telephone which again is a separate line. I would expect that to increase 8%, and then I also flagged cybersecurity, which is also in a separate budgeted line. So those are the three categories that would be impacted by the 8%, and then I would expect the Munis line, which is budgeted separately, the 257. I'd expect that to go up 100,000.

and the other one that he maintains is all of the equipment in Town Hall. So, that is the Town Hall AV equipment. Some of that hasn't completely turned over yet so we're still somewhat guessing on what the annual maintenance on that will be So for 27, he had budgeted 11.43%, but that's all factors into that 8% as well.

I would have thought we might have some longer-term contracts and we'd have more transparency about... that you could work from on how much we're really bound for an increase because it's hard to imagine they're all anticipated to go up 8%. because it seems like each one's going to have a different service contract. So maybe as you refine this, if because it is such a large increase, you could work with Brian to understand what we're expecting on each of the line items.

Yeah, and generally they range each year 5% to 8%.

and we can work with him too when he's preparing his narrative. I think as he's done in prior years, can call out the individual costs but you're right, we're expecting that 8%, some of them could come in lower but at market rate the last few years we've been seeing around that 8% increase. Okay, actually I have to pull it up on my side here. So moving on to Treasure Collector, their personal service recommendations 2.7 again they have staff that is also hourly and would have a step increase, their expense zero percent. Town report again there's no personal service associated with that we're recommending a 0% increase in town report. The budget, it covers the annual report that is published, the hard copies. It's such a small budget, 2250 from last year

We don't know what this year's cost is just yet. Those materials will be prepared over the coming months, so we'll have a sense if the price is consistent there may be a modest increase there but for now projecting 0%. and Audit Committee. So as you all might remember that last year we had an RFP, we were due to reevaluate and our external auditors. Audit committee voted last spring to continue with CBiz, our current auditors so we signed an engagement letter. That's a three-year contract with an option to extend for two, so there is a modest escalation in their fees, 4.25%. And again this covers the annual town audit, the end of year report and our single audit. I did want to note that the enterprise funds water sewer MLP

we do charge their portion of the audit to those departments so they will also have a modest increase but this is just the town portion, the audit increase. Moving on to Council on Aging. They have a number of employees that are on steps, so we're recommending 3.5% personal service against 0% expense. West Suburban Veterans District. So as you all know that is a five member community Wellesley, Newton, Needham, Wayland and Westwood so our portion here is covering our, Wellesley's really share of the West Suburban Veterans District cost. So those conversations are forthcoming as a placeholder, we are recommending 3%. Again this also covers those Chapter 115 benefits. So again the town-wide financial plan had 3%, and given that there are still some unknowns, we do need to cover increases for that staff.

We are recommending a 3% there Moving on to youth. Rachel, could I ask you? Sure. 115, is that an expense or a personal services cost? So that is an expense cost. It is, if you meet the requirements. If you're a veteran and you live in town there's certain eligibility requirements. Oh gosh I don't mean to call it a stipend Oh, go ahead. No, I'm good on what it is.

I just question whether 0%, given that 115 has escalation in it each year, I believe. So I'm wondering if we are... being reasonable budgeting, 0%. And my question about personal services is the West Suburban Veterans Unit covered by our merit pool or no?

It is, so we actually only have essentially expense. So it should just be expense versus personal services in this line item because we just have one contribution to the West Suburban Veterans District although they are our employees, their Wellesley employees So we have factored in within the 3%. We factored a merit increase within that. They currently have not had a deputy, but they're only going to go to a part-time deputy. So the 3% should cover that.

and Beth, I was going to add too with the Chapter 115. So when we appropriate those monies that actually carries year over year so once the West Suburban Veterans District each community is going to evaluate how much do they have available in their Chapter 115 funds. So again, there could be an opportunity if it looks like we need more of an appropriation this year but that's a good flag.

I was more curious if we were covered on the 2% COLA and the merit pool plus the expenses that we incur. The 3% personal services just struck me as low.

It actually should be 3% expense, not personal services because it's an all-inclusive. We just make one payment to West Suburban Veterans District So last year was 4.74, but we haven't expended that because we've had a vacancy. At this point, we think it's appropriate. We haven't done the budget. That won't happen until... Actually, it's... a week or two away for West Suburban. We do that actually fairly early in the budget cycle, so we'll have that for next year. We also have not been accumulating new Chapter 115 individuals. It's actually fairly hard to qualify for Chapter 115, So if anything, we've lost some of our members. At this point I'm not concerned about that. We did have a $10,000 increase last year and the year prior to that but we'll get a report back.

So moving on to youth commission, again they have their one youth director salaried so recommending a 2.4% personal service 0% expense So facilities management, so again they're primarily union staff. So those contract negotiations are ongoing We did want to flag utility costs. So again, for all of our buildings those are budgeted centrally in the facilities management budgets so As for any potential electric increases from MLP or increases for natural gas, those are really unknown at this time. So we wanted to build in a placeholder of 5%. We will hopefully be come aware of what those increases are going to be. Hopefully there'll be some guidance from MLP in the coming weeks. We also wanted to flag, as you all know that FMD land use over at 888 Worcester Street

that lease is coming to the end and at the end of this fiscal year. Joe McDonough, our facilities management director has started Engaging with the RFP process. So we are anticipating that the lease costs could almost double an additional $250,000 increase. So again we'll have a better understanding over the next few months as they go through that RFP process but we did want to put a placeholder here for that

Just on that too, so natural gas. I believe in speaking to Joe sort of after the fact we're looking at a potential 10 percent Higgins. I think there is an increase on that, that includes both transmission and commodity. In prior years we have had longer term contracts for the I think at this point National Grid seems to be the most favorable pricing, and in speaking to Joe it likely would be for both commodity and transmission.

And Rachel, for the $250,000 lease estimate does that include the move build out etc. ?

No. That's in capital and that is estimated at $405,000.

So moving on to some of our select board committees, so Affordable Housing Trust, Historical Commission Memorial Day, Celebrations Committee and Cultural Council. We are proposing a 0% Spence Increase, but did want to open that up to the board if anyone had any questions or any feedback on some of those small committees.

I think over the past couple of years we've moved up celebrations and cultural council, which was a request that we attended to. I'm not aware of any other pressures that we should be attending to? Okay, thank you.

Yeah I would just note that the expenses for the celebrations committee are going up as all other expenses are so we will be losing ground as opposed to maintaining ground

I think if committees know that they're going to have expense increases, it would be helpful for them to let us know. Because if we have to make tradeoffs on what we spend in one area to make up the difference and what we spent in another and we're asking all departments to hold it zero. I think we need to know sooner rather than later if they expect anything unusual.

I think any percent we look at would be negligible.

And costs are going up for everybody, this 0% is applied across the board.

Right. I mean that's the purpose of the all board meeting honestly if people have expectations that they're going to be facing any kind of unusual or significant increases, that's time to let us know. Okay, so ZVA we talked about.

Moving on to ZVA again that personal service increase based off current staffing that's on staff is 4.1%, 0% expense. So town clerk We did want to highlight this. So we're recommending a 0% increase in personal service because the FY27 budget, again, they're budgeting for the number of elections. So there's four elections in FY27 that includes the costs of the election workers pages and so forth for FY28 projecting two elections plus a potential debt exclusion election. So we'd be looking at four elections in this fiscal year, dropping down to three next fiscal year. which is why we'd be recommending a 0% increase because there will be a cost saving, because they'll be less elections.

And we have factored in assumptions with regards to the town clerk's salary and included the 2% COLA so that is included in that 0%.

Moving on to Board of Assessors. Again, they have staff at Steps so 3.5% personal service, 0% expense. Planning Board. So we did want to also flag here, you'd expect to see that 2.4%. Again everyone in the planning department they are all salaried, they don't have anyone on steps but we did wanna remind you, so what's going forward to as you all know special town meeting is a reclassification from their other professional expense to their personal services. A portion of that movement in budget is to cover the overlap of the acting director's salary, so the FY27 budget is slightly higher higher than it actually would have been if there was no overlap in acting director. So that's why we're seeing their increase year over year only at the 2%.

The other thing I'd just add is their admin is on steps, but because she only works 20 hours a week it's basically like every two years that you would get the increase. So she got the step increased this year so there would be no step increase next year? Correct.

And Rachel, I'm assuming that Planning Board is the board that is adjusting salaries at STM? Correct. Yes. So their base is already improved to reflect their new staffing reality right?

It will, assuming it all passes that special timing correct.

And so that makes the 2%, but not 2.4%.

Correct because they're year over year there We're going to be realigning their FY27 budget, because we need to cover during the months of July through September? end of September. They had the acting planning director and the new planning director started mid-July so there was that overlap of both being paid at that director salary so we're going to to fund what's needed for their 27 budget, it's gonna be a little higher than now that the acting director has been reverted back to there. I think it's a planner position So that's why they're year over year isn't showing the 2.4 because it's slightly inflated due to that transition and Advisory Committee. That individual that supports the advisory team is salaried, so 2.4% personal service increase and 0% expense increase

Moving on to Human Resources Board. They have an individual that will be receiving a step, so they're at 2.7% personal service and 0% expense Now moving on to police, again another department that union negotiations are still ongoing so those costs are unknown. We did want a flag same as last year they continue to have they're staffing the department with some younger folks that will be eligible for step increases. So, they will have to factor that in and also as a reminder on the expense side, the police they budget in their operating budget for those cruisers and particularly hybrid cruiser. So we did want to build in a potential increase so we're recommending 4%. increase expense for police, go ahead.

And the other thing just which you'll see in our big vehicle departments is the fuel costs have to be factored in.

Yes and we'll talk about that when we get to DPW a little bit got some insight on fuel costs. and then also moving on to fire department, union negotiations are open as well. They also have multiple staff that will be moving up within steps and again recommending the same 4% expense increase there. moving on to building department. So all of the inspectors, they are all on steps only the building inspector himself is salaried so that equates to about a 4% personal service increase, and then again 0% expense. And then sealer weights and measures so few months back we transitioned to outsource that so there's no longer going to be personal service costs there. So recommending a 0% personnel cost and then Megan and I, we will look at this in more detail over the coming months Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor

take a look at what the new cost of outsourcing that is. We may need to recommend shifting...

It's mostly that we just have to shift it from personal services to expenses, which we can do a cleanup at ATM. So we don't need an increase in funding, we just need to redirect it. Correct. Consent agenda. Yes.

but hence why we're asking for zero, no increase for sealer and weights. And then moving on to DPW again another large department with open union negotiations something that Dave Cohen, director of DPW had flagged at the all board meeting was the trash contract increase. So they're projecting anywhere between 75 to $100,000. Again, Megan had mentioned so she spoke with Dave trying to get a pulse on what we're seeing for diesel and gas increases. So right now the current pricing is reflecting 22% increase in gas, 32% increase diesel which is over what was budgeted in FY27. So I think it's on the next page. There it is, estimating a 20% increase in fuel costs.

OK. And moving on to the library, another department union negotiations are still ongoing. We did want a flag. A state statute requires 13% materials cost based off their personal service costs and here's the other one we spoke briefly about when we're talking about IT. Library, they budget within their department for their increase of their license and subscription fee so here those on trend around 5%. So we're recommending a 5% increase for their expenses. Moving on to recreation, again they have some folks on steps. So 2.8% personal services, 0% expense Smith, Board of Health as well. They have some folks on steps that equates to 2.6%, 0% expenses mental health services.

They don't have a personal service component, only an expense at this time we're recommending the 0%, but Megan had flagged earlier that there could be some potential increases so we'll work with Lenny in Health Department to get a sense of that. Moving on to Natural Resource Commission, we also wanted to flag here you would expect the 2.4% increase however they had some transition in staff this year they actually had a new hire that was brought on for slightly lower than what the individual they were replacing was making. So their year over year we're seeing a slight decrease of 1.5%. and again, 0% expense. Morses Pond no personal service for that there's an expense component recommending 0% there and then schools so again at the all board chair of school committee had flagged the new transportation contract as well as

really unknown but potential implications to Mass Corps and some of those standardized testing changes. So when it comes to the personal service guideline for the school department, again open contract negotiations are still ongoing The Townwide Financial Plan had 3% for their personal services. We wanted to maintain that 3%. and we also want to build in the impact of going from the 52.2 to 52.4 which is why we're recommending a 3.4 Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor New Transportation Contract Cost.

But schools haven't started their budget discussions yet, so they could have been expecting a 3% increase and then the mass core requirements could increase that even further.

Yeah, net present. I mean it's still in legislative discussion so it's unclear when that will Be effective, and then what the ramp-up time period will be. So I think this is certainly a preliminary number that I think we'll evaluate as we continue discussions with the schools but at present MassCorp isn't

Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Jop, Largess, Sullivan Woods, Testa the other thing that the chair mentioned well at least to Tom and me was that there is a limit to the number of special education students you can house and that they may need to open a satellite site which could incur either staffing or expense increases. They didn't know yet.

So I think prior to as new information comes in, there's nothing that would preclude the board from modifying any of the guidelines. And so these are, I would say preliminary estimates are ultimately going to have to vote the guidelines. But again, there's nothing that precludes you from modifying that guideline as more information comes forward.

Well, and I don't think we want to negotiate against ourselves. So I think it's incumbent on them to come to us with a determination that this is not adequate and why.

Can I ask a question on the Zoning Board of Appeals? So you're saying that now there's more things are going to site plan only, so there are less things going to other places.

So in typical permitting, we have project of significant impact and then we would have site plan review. But in MBTA communities for instance to streamline that so it's not a special permit there is no PSI So all of the review was done by the Zoning Board of Appeals. So we currently have at least two projects that are MBTA community, three projects that are currently going forward. We also have any, let's say something ultimately happens at MassBay under that surplus land designation, only site plan would go forward. Under the 40A modification it's specific to special permit implications which impact CBA and the number of cases and questions they receive. I think the other thing in speaking to them, which I know to be true is as you get more built out the cases that are coming before the Zoning Board of Appeals are super complex too in terms

different land challenges or site plan provisions that they may be implementing. There was something too for large house review that I was thinking of, that would no longer go to large health review and potentially go to site plan. So they're just inundated so even with clerk minutes et cetera we've also currently have two appeals that are in Superior Court with regards to the Zoning Board of Appeals in particular to accessory dwelling units. And so it's also working on, not that these are necessarily factors for that but as town council starts to go through when you're in litigation, There may be elements of things we want to enhance in terms of our decisions. And there's basically one full-time staff person there.

So I'm just wondering if there's less work in one department and more work on another, should some of those resources be directed to the other department rather than adding staffing positions? Yeah.

Totally agree. If we had a land use department, I think that would be something we 100% would do.

Rachel, can I ask you on schools or maybe Megan? So for all of our large departments that have open unions We have the pink box that says Union Open. It doesn't have a guideline in it and schools is by far our largest It strikes me that that perhaps should follow the same pattern as the smaller ones. union contract open instead of putting a percent in there while they're in negotiations. And the other thing I was hoping, I should have looked at this what in our town-wide financial plan what did we have for non-school departments?

Three percent.

Right, and we have come in well under three percent on all of ours so it seems to me that in the philosophy of fairness where we have been trying to treat both sides of town equally. laying out a much higher guideline than we're holding the other boards and departments to while they have such a large contract open seems not quite as equitable.

I think it's hard to do that because keep in mind the union contract for both town and schools are for current year 27 and for 28. and so it's tough to say where that will shake out and whether it'll be at 3%, 2.5%, however, So it's up to the board how you want to display that. Last year we had a specific 3%, I forget what the ultimate recommendation was last year, we put a specific target number in given the scale of the department, the school department into the budget.

My thing is we put it a target out there last year three percent for the non-school departments and we're saying 2 to 2.6 or 7 but that doesn't include merit pay so I think that

you know, that's just part of the compensation package. So that's the guideline for this COLA essentially. Merit pay is a separate line item so it's kind of apples and oranges and it does actually say on this sheet that the union contracts are open. And so when I'm looking at the motion language, I think the motion should see the guidelines as presented which incorporates the union contracts are open on the school sites and, as Megan says we may want to come back and modify. We've certainly heard Zoning Board of Appeals potentially one other department maybe modified I just don't know where schools was going, but I think it's important that we indicate what the Timeline Financial Plan goal was.

We'll also have to have a separate line item for contract settlements similar to we had last year, so we'll then have for FY27 settlements. We'll draw down that if we come to terms with people before the FY28 budget is settled. So even if we're at annual town meeting, under Article 5, the FY27 budgets before we go into approving budgets under Article 8 for the FY28. We would draw down from 27 so you're going to have a Settlement Line, and you're going to have a 28 settlement line. Potentially.

Other questions? So I have one final question before we move to a discussion and motion, the 6% cash capital even already assumes that we're going to have to make further cuts to get to 6%.

Correct. Yeah, so we currently had in the capital budget about $9.3 million, so every year we have to do a cut. So we either cut or we fund particular projects with free cash to reduce that number. We also then look at, so keep in mind from a borrowing standpoint that then offsets your sort of if you're inside levy borrowing capacity, then reduces your cash capital capacity. So it's a fine dance.

But neither Marjorie's question nor your answer is anything that we don't do every year anyway.

Every year. Right, it's just that 6% cash capital may not be where it ends up Yeah, it might be lower than that. Exactly. I mean we were 5.9 last year and we have significant free cash demands coming up in the next couple of years as well.

And from a cash capital standpoint, typically we generally don't take all the cash capital as within the operating budget cash capital line. Sometimes if you have a really big number, so last year for instance, the comp plan a $400,000 item. We pull that out and we either fund that with free cash or borrow it typically free cash So this year, we have a couple items that are perking to the top on that. I think I actually will just pull it up. We had some new information just in terms of Oh, here it was. So the middle school roof interim repairs was estimated by FMD currently at a little over 1.1 million Bates parking lot is $850,000. And then the land use lease cost it's the accommodation so it's moving the fit out etc at 405 those were three that Joe flagged as potential

Atm articles, just given the value of the items rather than include them in cash capital.

So should we have also had snow and ice supplemental in FY27? I was just looking at this list and it's not free cash for 27. I see it under 28. I thought we should also have it under 27 because usually... We'll have, that actually should be for this year.

Because it would go, it's always a supplemental in Article 7, yeah.

I just noticed you had the other kind of additional ask that we do in this fiscal year for the current fiscal year. Yeah, you're right. That should be 27.

Smith. So I'm looking at our motion language here. And the motion language sets the capital spending range, a COLA and then establishes individual guidelines as presented I think we just see as presented rather than seeing this for town departments and this for school. So that's how I'm going to do the motion.

One more thing before we do the You've laid out the free cash identified for FY27 and FY28. Now I'm going to change these numbers because I just moved that million dollars. but the FY27 number, if you include the million dollars for snow and ice is 3.268 million and for FY28 is 5.72 million so that's already 9.09 million and then there were the additional ones that you just read off, Middle School, Roof, Bates and FMD which is another 2.4 million on top so in all it totals almost 11 and a half million for FY27 and 28.

I don't think we should back the million dollars out of FY28, I was proposing that there was an incremental that there would be a million dollars snow and ice additional in 27. And then at the end of FY28, there still would be the potential of $1 million.

but the numbers are still the same. You're talking almost 11 and a half million dollars for this year in FY27 and FY28 already, in the first quarter of FY27

or I think maybe 12 and a half actually, given what Beth said.

Well, the snow and ice was already accounted for in FY20... Right, if we add another million dollars

So I think there's likely some movement. It's unclear whether preschool feasibility will move forward, the board continues to evaluate fire station feasibility that could be more or less at a different time period potentially. I will know under the operating budget balance of two million, that's best case which I don't think we're gonna meet.

So what do you think is more reasonable?

2.5 to 3?

It was 2.7 last year, right? And we're basically increasing the capital spending wage which is another $100,000 maybe.

In terms of the motion language, we do know that health may have some changes to this. So can you reflect?

so I think we'll approve them as they're presented and if we have to amend then we'll come back and amend them later, I don't think we're going to see that some may at a future date be amended I don' t think that we typically do that

And we can, I'll try and connect with Lenny and ZBA prior to our next meeting on the 20th.

Because it's not just one department.

Okay. Are there any other questions? Okay, thank you very much Rachel and Megan for all that work. And thank Paul please too.

Thank you. Some move to set the capital spending range as defined in the Capital Financing Policy at 6%. a 2% COLA increase for all exempt and non-exempt union employees, and to establish individual guidelines as presented and discussed at the October 13 select board meeting. That's it.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. OK. Thanks again, Rachel. Okay, we have our next agenda item. We're running a little bit behind now. Tried Kenny sorry is special town meeting preparation so I'll turn to you first for article seven

Can you bring up the revised?

Yeah.

So while Megan's doing that, we had seen and approved the amendments to Articles 2A and 3 a few weeks back presented to advisory. Advisory had a handful of comments that we, the By-law Review Committee... We modified this, the by-law review committee voted to support this version of what is now Article 2. And so why don't I just walk you through it? One of the big comments from advisory was, it would make more sense to pull everything into 2.1 as basically a list so that people who are reading it know the open meeting law and the public records law capture a number of different subtopics

like executive session, minutes, recording of meetings and things like that. And so what we did was we got rid of two point key scroll down a little bit 2.4 and 2.5 so nothing is substantively changed we've just taken out a lot of words and just put put it into 2.1 as an indication of where to go if you're interested in that and we also brought in the public records law from I think it was 2.5 So that's all just a cross-reference to the open meeting laws so people know where to go. Nothing substantively changed. In 2.2, We have the option of posting on the website if we opt into it, and that's why we added a language to essentially notify people that Wellesley has opted in to that. So that's a Wellesleys specific provision 2-2

In 2.3, we kind of went back and forth on this advisory suggestion and we agreed with it was The proviso there that talks about you're not going to do anything that infringes on somebody's rights is sort of self, you can't do that no matter what the words say. So it seemed superfluous. And in order to fully explain it, you would have had a lot more words and we felt it was better just strike it because it's not really adding anything. We also deleted elected and appointed public bodies because that's the universe of public body so it felt redundant to say that. So, that one came out and then this was merely wordsmithing. The key, you know the biggest or the only piece here that changed was adding of public body meetings so that people were clear on what open session we were talking about So all in all, we shuffled the deck a little bit.

Probably made it more streamlined but nothing substantive has changed since we last saw it. Any questions?

The only thing I'd note too is because the two other articles that had town bylaws proposed, we pulled that from the bylaw review committee's report to town meeting because they're not going forward.

They're not.

Motion? Yes, please. So move to approve the 2026 special town meeting article 7 language as proposed by the Town By-law Review Committee. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Thank you very much Kenny Okay, the other material under special town meeting preparation is the latest language from Article 15 of the citizens petition. as well as a detailed memorandum from Joe McDonough on the FMD response to that article, Article 15. and on Sunday I sent Joe some questions asking him for some more detailed information. And we're gonna ask Joe to expand this memo, to incorporate some of the information that would be responsive to those detailed questions because it will help advisory and it's important for all of us to have in that memo as well.

So Megan, I asked Megan to amend the agenda this afternoon in case there were any comments or discussion that we wanted to have on Joe's memo. Any further questions we wanted pose to Joe? on the memo, or anything else on the updated language for Article 15.

So one thing I would like for him to include in the memo, we've talked about significant amount about the additional risk that were taking on by potentially fast forwarding this accelerating the project. but there's nowhere in here that actually quantifies what that risk is numerically and I see the $170,000 to spend on the accelerator design report. And then Joe talks about change orders could drive the cost up. it would be interesting to see if he could try to quantify what that would but I will also say in doing so This is a netting situation. It could cost more by accelerating it, but it could also save a considerable amount of money because we're doing it a year before

and presumably there's a cost escalator which these days could be fairly significant. So if you're talking about $7 million in the 5% cost escalate, just save $350,000 by doing it. When we're talking about risk, I think it would be great to see that type of analysis built in because I think town meeting is going to want to see something like that.

I can ask Joe. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure he can quantify everything because we don't know what kind of change orders could result. He could explain and the kinds of change orders, I'm not sure he could quantify the dollar amount but I'll ask him.

Anything else? that just to add on to Kenny's point, there is a netting here you could save because of avoiding escalation but we are also adding operational costs. We should probably throw that in the mix too. I think it was estimated at 40,000 for all the schools. I don't know what it would be for two schools.

And you're also losing interest if it's sitting in an account. The netting of it is an important piece.

Okay, Beth? So I guess I have two things. One is it sounds like we are, Marjorie you've given some direction to Joe or you're giving directions to Joe. Could you share that information that you're asking to be appended to the memo?

Yes, my questions and his answers will all be appended to the memo.

And then we'll see it before it is released? Okay. The other question I have is more of a philosophy question and it's about the role of having FMD take a firm position to town meeting when he is really supporting multiple boards with potentially overlapping or different agendas and whether that is something I guess how we see that working out because he makes it clear in here that several of the groups he is supporting have not taken positions or have taken much less rigid positions about this particular project. And so it just seems to me we should be clear on

what our agenda is by putting Joe out in front of all the other boards and committees. So that, before you answer that I do have a minor observation where I don't know, when I watched Advisory and read the amendment when Megan circulated. I thought that there was no overlap between 14 and 15, that 14 was design money and 15 was construction only. So I didn't take that away from Joe's memo. Joe seemed to apply that the figures were both design and construction. I do think it's important to clarify whether that's accurate.

Well, I think he's saying that because in the citizens petitioners, the citizen petition motion it says design. So I think they indicated that it was additive, but just the motion language says design.

When I read that, I thought the same thing, there is design like the uppercase, the design phase. And then throughout the entire process, there's going to be something that could fall in the category of lowercase design right? If you're looking at a window and you want to frame it a certain way you could argue that's design. I think that's probably a safety net saying like, let's throw every word out there so that nobody comes back and argues that that actually those dollars couldn't be spent reconfiguring that window because somebody had to design it first.

That would be a change order?

Sure, but from a motion perspective I think you need to capture that

I just think we should ask Joe to clarify whether when he looks at that dollar figure, he believes it is duplicative. with the design motion of the schools, or he believes it reflects construction money only. Or maybe someone should ask the petitioners whether they did their estimate to be just the construction phase, to include modifications in design that happen during construction. I think it's confusing.

But their construction phase overlaps with design because they're asking for pre-procurement and ordering of materials before the design is finished, that's where the overlap is. To answer your first question, Joe wrote this memo to us because he reports to Megan and to this board. and Steve is technically Joe's staff member to PBC, but Joe had a different opinion that was not shared to PPC. or through him to advisory. That's why his memo says what it says, because he reports to this board.

I might be out of date, but I thought Joe dotted line reported to schools also and that's what I'm concerned about. That I think he has He reports to us, but he reports also to schools and then he supports PBC. This is putting him out ahead of the three boards and committees that he supports, perhaps at a divergent opinion, I am not sure that is appropriate to ask Joe to be there. So I'm just putting it out there we can all think about it. I just find it awkward.

but staff, Megan and Corey share their opinions with the board and the board makes the decisions. Most of what Joe's writing about in Article 15 did not come from the school committee

right, but Megan would not send a separate memo out that was not reflective of what our board wanted circulated.

Well she would send it to us.

and so what is the utility, where is this memo going?

Well it was shared with advisory. I mean advisory saw it because it was on our agenda with our meeting materials. I don't know where it's gone beyond that

I mean, presumably we want to hear Joe's opinion and we can't hear his opinion until he tells us his opinion. And you know... the fact that we have a very segregated government system makes it even more complicated and so it's even more important that we hear his opinion clearly because you know, I think that he certainly made presentations to advisory. He's made presentations at the school committee and he's making presentations to us and I want to hear his opinion

In addition to which, Joe makes it very clear that he doesn't report to PBC. He has a staff member under the MOA who assist PBC, and that's Steve Gagosian. Joe defines his role quite differently and quite separate from PBC

But just for clarity, Megan does Joe also dotted line report to the school's superintendent?

Yes because they maintain all of the school building.

Is the intent of this memo simply to go to us or is it going to end up in advisory's report?

because it's a public record and it was on our website, I don't know what advisory intends to do with it but it was intended for us for this meeting.

So I appreciate that he put this together in most of it I think I'm not saying I agree with it but I understand where he's coming from. When he starts weighing in on the equity of a situation and whether or not we should use free cash or something I don't think is actually what he should be doing. I think he's here to tell us this is the project, this is risk, you know, whether it can get done or not some of that stuff, I think is wading into territory. That's not appropriate and my concern is not that it comes to us because that's fine we can filter that out what I'm concerned is it ends up in the advisory report and people are reading it and think that he shouldn't be the one conveying that type of message.

I understand what you're saying, we're going to have to discuss the funding and the decisions on that will come from us So if advisory takes anything on the funding, they'll take that from us.

In in that vein, the idea that Joe evaluates whether it's friendly to the schools or not friendly I think is I don't think that's Joe's role to ask, to state whether it is friendly to the school department or not friendly to That's my personal opinion. I deeply value Joe's professional expertise and how he looks at what can and can't be done from his perspective, an extraordinary job for the town. I just, I don't think that evaluating whether the school department sees something as friendly or not friendly is maybe the place to be. I think the schools should tell us if they see it as friendly or unfriendly.

Well, the language friendly is not an emotional language. It really means whether the amendment is in keeping with the original motion that it's amending. Article 15 is completely different than article 14. I mean, you have to concede that. It's asking for completely different things than Article 14 and saying something is a friendly amendment does not connote that it's a completely different request.

And I do think it's important, and it goes on to say why he's saying that. He doesn't consider it friendly because it replaces the town's established two-step process with a single early appropriation. He's explaining why he, that to me is part of his professional opinion that I value.

The other thing is that PBC typically takes projects that they consider from a proponent and the way this interim and the sequencing proposal came about was not from a proponent. It was generated independently by PBC, which is not what PBC typically does so I think it's I don't think it's an unfair characterization saying it's not a friendly amendment because it doesn't amend, it completely changes.

but let's be clear for somebody watching this meeting, friendly and unfriendly are common terms used at town meeting. There's nothing odd about it, there's no emotionalism to it. It's simply a term that's used in the process of governing at town meetings. I agree with that.

I agree with what Beth's saying. It might be his opinion, but I don't think that's his professional opinion because that has nothing to do with facilities management. It has to do town government and how town government works. I just don't think it's appropriate to be in a memo that could get circulated to a broader audience than its intended recipients.

We could ask him to rephrase that whether he thinks it's an amendment in keeping with the original motion or whether he think it's a different proposal.

I would argue that he doesn't need to state whether it's in keeping or not in keeping. He is commenting on the capacity to deliver the project as requested and I think that's the correct Lane to stay in. What works about the recommendation? What does not work and what represents risk, and how big is that risk? That's where I feel like we need Joe to give us the straight story on it and anything further I think could be seen as undermining what he's trying to lay out.

I don't think that's true at all, and I find it refreshing to have Joe. And I don�t know why we don't support in the interest of transparency the critical information that Joe McDonough has been talking about since last February at advisory when he first began talking about this project and people didn't exactly like what he had to say because it wasn't consistent with individual goals within the community. Now, I respect that divergence of opinion but Iím not going to sit here and agree to further diluting this memo when itís exactly what needs to be said at this juncture.

Not only that, I think the capacity to do the job is what Joe is addressing because it's not just the capacity it's everything that you have to consider in deciding that it can be done the way its proposed because the risk is a big part of it and there are multiple risks from multiple different standpoints, and you can't say My opinion is that PBC said, yes it could be done but didn't fully explore what that might entail. and to Kenny's point, things could go more quickly. They could go over. We don't know but to say it could be done is not the end of the analysis.

And I do see his professional opinion not being limited just to construction, but how our complex construction system works which is what he's talking about in this particular instance. But I think we've beaten that dead horse to death

Well, the design build works because it works it's worked and that's an established effective process. Okay, unless there is anything else we will move on to our next agenda item which is administrative matters and Megan circulated the draft townwide letter and asked for comments. and I believe they have received a couple comments. Does anybody else have other comments that they didn't send back into Megan?

I sent my comments, and I'll send mine tomorrow. Isn't it going to print tomorrow? Is what? When's the print date, Megan? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the print.

We can finalize that next week. We've looked at the schedule we can do it on there. Beth could you please have them in tomorrow? but we'll need to send it like the 21st.

Well exactly, we need to have comments and incorporate them and review it again so receiving the comments is not the only thing that needs to be done okay Thank you for that draft, Megan and Corey. Thank you very much we know it took a lot to incorporate all the elements we discussed last week Let's move on to the minutes of September 29th, 2026.

We only got one member sent three very tiny grammatical edits, nothing substantive, nothing else. So that was it.

So move to approve the minutes of September 29, 2026 as amended?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. So, in terms of the chair's report we did not have meetings this week with other committee chairs advisory is meeting tomorrow and they are going to have discussion on all town meeting articles and vote the ones they believe they're ready to vote. and so that's really all I have for that. And with that, we'll move in- Can I ask one question? Oh sure.

Because it was under the Chair's report, the Capcom minutes. That's the wrong date, right?

Yes. Somebody already pointed it out to me. Sorry! I know my first line, I blew it so yeah like one star all right yes one demerit

I request a motion to enter into executive session with respect to negotiations with the Wellesley Patrol Officers Association Wellesley Superior Officers Association, Dispatch Unit Union, IAFF Local 1795 Firefighters, Wellesle Free Library Staff Association and Welleslee Free Library Supervisors Association.

So move to enter into executive session under Mass General Law Chapter 30A, Subsection 21A3. To conduct strategy with respect to negotiations with the Wellesley Patrol Officers Association, Wellesley Superior Officers' Association, Dispatch Union, IAM. IAFF, Local 1795 Firefighters, Wellesley Free Library Staff Association. and Wellesley Free Library Supervisors Association, and to invite Executive Director Megan Jopp, Assistant Executive Director Corey Testa Human Resources Director Dolores Hamilton, Police Chief Scott Whittemore, Fire Chief Steve Mortarelli, Library Director Jamie Jerkinson and Board of Library Trustees Chair Marla Robinson to join the meeting. Following the close of executive session, the board will return to open session for the sole purpose of adjourning the meeting.

Tom? Aye. Kenny? Aye Colette? Aye Beth? Aye And I vote aye as well thank you