Town Council - Regular Meeting

Uh-huh. Recording in progress. Time being 7:05. I call the Franklin Town Council's meeting to order on April 15, 2026 at 7 p.m. Can I have a moment of silence, please?

Please stand for the pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Note to residents, all citizens are welcome to attend public meetings in person. To view the live meeting remotely, citizens are encouraged to watch the live stream on Franklin Town Hall TV YouTube channel, our live broadcast on Comcast channel 9, Verizon channel 29. To listen to the meeting remotely, citizens may call in using the number 1 19292056099. To participate in the meeting remotely, citizens may join the Zoom webinar using the information I will let you know below. Meetings are recorded and archived by Franklin TV and Franklin Town Hall TV YouTube channel and shown on repeat on Comcast channel 9 and Verizon channel 29. Any participant who wishes to speak must enter their full name and address when joining the webinar. All participants will automatically be muted upon joining the webinar. In order to speak, participants will need to select the raise hand function to request to be unmuted. All speakers will be required to state their full name and street address before commenting. chair is going to identify. We have a couple notifications. Town council office hours will are being held at 8:30 tomorrow morning at the senior center. Franklin's 25th annual Earth Day cleanup is taking place on Saturday, April 18th. this Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Join the recreation department at 9:00 a.m. to pick up gloves, trash bags,

and site maps before heading out to your assigned area. Thanks to all who participate. Make sure you use bug spray. Ticks are out. Um I don't think so. Citizens comments out, Mr. Chair. Huh? Yeah. You need to identify Council Growler as participating remotely.

Oh yeah. Council Council Growler is in Florida enjoying himself. So he will be uh participating remotely. Citizens comment. Citizens are welcome to express their view for up to 3 minutes on a matter that is not on the agenda. In compliance with chapter 38 section 20, the open meeting law, the council cannot engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during citizens comments. The council may ask the town administrator to review the matter. Nothing here and shall prevent the town administrator from correcting a misstatement of fact. Do we have anybody in the audience that uh would like to say a citizen's comment? Just please come up and state your name and your address, please.

Kim Much for Barwood Road, chair of the board of health. Um, the Franklin Board of Health will be holding a public hearing on implementing new regulations prohibiting the manufacturing, sale, and distribution and synthetically derived canabonoids, synthetically derived, and unregulated novel intoxicating products. It is the duty of the board of health to promote and protect the public health of the residents of Franklin. The board derives its legal authority to enact regulations for the Massachusetts legislature except for title 5 regulation. It is not legally required for the board of health to actually hold a public hearing. However, the board feels it is important to provide a public forum to collect information and opinions. The readings and final votes on the adoption of the regulations will take place during the board of health meeting beginning at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. There will be an opportunity for public input during the process. The location is at the Minnesota building on the third floor training room 355 East Central Street, Franklin and will also be available for um via Google Meet. The board of health will add to the code of town of Franklin chapter 248 sales. The regulations are to add new language to the regulations prohibiting the manufacturing, sale, and distribution of synthetically derived canabonoids. synthetically derived and unregulated novel intoxicating products. Residents can visit the town website franklinmma ma.gov town calendar review the agenda including the full text of the proposed amendments and for up-to-date meeting information on um April 8th. The regs are already posted and our agenda is already posted. If you have any other questions, please call the health department at 508-5204905 if you require further information. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else in council chambers? Go ahead, Steve.

Steve Sherlock, 13 Magnolia Drive, volunteer community information director of Franklin Matters, Franklin Public Radio. Thank you, chair. A couple of other uh public service announcements in addition to the recreation piece on the 18th. Uh, PAC 92 is also doing a cleanup effort of their own and the ad commission is coordinating with Fairmont Fruit Farm also on Saturday. The details are on Franklin D.news. Uh, Rise Up has an event at the sculpture park at 10:00. Also on Saturday and Roses are red, violets are blue. If you have a favorite poem, we'd love to hear from you. Saturday afternoon the 18th at 1:30 favorite poem reading at the library hosted by yours truly. The quick reminder as well in terms of the what's going on. There is so much on a regular basis. I have trouble keeping up with it all but the daily newsletter starts off with the agend with the calendar of all the events and town school meetings. on the bottom of this the page is the TV and radio schedules and all the other goodness falls in between and we do this because Franklin matters. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Steve. Is there anybody else in council chambers? Anybody? Anybody out there in Zoom land? Okay, moving on. Council comments. Council Malloy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of quick things. Uh just wanted to thank the members of the finance committee, Jamie, you and your department heads, um for a tough week last week. Very informative, uh finance committee meetings. Uh watched all of them, 16, 18 hours, whatever it was. It's easier to watch on tape than it is to do it live.

So, um highly recommend everybody at home, if you haven't seen all or some of those meetings, they're definitely worth the worth your time. you learn a lot about the budget process, how it works, and hats off to the finance committee. I think they did a great job um answering questions or asking questions and getting some good information together. I'd also put in a plug for Memorial Day. I think it's five weeks from Monday

and the veteran services team is hard at work putting together a program as they always do for Memorial Day celebrations. My respectful ask of the community is if you have not attended the memorial day ceremony after the parade on the commons where's a great commemoration of the veterans from Franklin who perished in our battles over the many many years. It's very powerful, very moving. Uh it's one of my favorite days in Franklin for that event. It's really really special. So I highly recommend it. And if I can be so bold as to say, great opportunity for children to learn a little firsthand information about our country and the heroes that made us. So other than that, that's it. Sir,

thank you. Thank you, Council Council.

Um, I just, you know, C, I I wanted to just double down on the on thanking the finance committee for, uh, their their efforts last week. I I you know I was impressed with both the the fact it was such a rigorous and detailed review of budget items from all of the town uh town departments. As uh as as as uh as was mentioned they the finance committee asked a lot of very good questions and got very good answers. 16 hours is a lot. 18 hours is a lot. If you I if you haven't seen all of it I understand. at least take a look at the last day to get the summary for, you know, how detailed they were and the approach that they've t that they've taken to helping determine what next year's budget's going to to look like in terms of at least uh developing the recommendation. Um, I want to point out the fact that there was a very focused and generally respectful discussion on critical elements of our current town budget. Um, so it was very much appreciated, uh, you know, for what it was for what we were able to get out of it. Um, no, that's I I think the one to watch is the last one. It is four hours, you know. So, watching it on on uh YouTube at 1.5 is not is is not a is not a bad is is only bad if you can't watch it on YouTube at at two at 2x. So, um yeah. So I I I I think we're heading into a situ into an environment where we need to figure out what our finance finances are going to look like over the next year, but we also need to be making a plan for what it's going to look like over the long term. Um so I will also put in a plug for the joint budget subcommittee meetings which kick off kick off tomorrow where we're going to be starting to discuss how we make the

plan uh for our long term. That's all. All right. Well, I don't like to go third because all of the things I was going to say just got said, but

last but just to reiterate, I want to thank um our volunteers on the finance committee. Just as a reminder, you know, these are people who are volunteering their time um to meet once a month and then for so many hours last week as well. And um and also I want to thank our town departments and our school department and the department heads for having um their budgets so buttoned up and they knew exactly, you know, the answers to all these questions. They knew their stuff inside and out. And um I loved being able to see the conversations that came out of those meetings. Um and then I was also going to remind everyone about the JBSC meeting tomorrow. Um I think it's going to be a really good opportunity to see, you know, what where we're going. um hopefully what our plan will be as we talk about every time we talk about we need to have a strate strategic plan moving forward. I think this is going to be an opportunity to see what comes out of the finance committee, the school committee and the town council from the members on the JBSC. So I'm looking forward to tuning into that as well. That's all I have.

Council, uh I I mean I took a lot of time last time, so I'm not going to take a lot of time this time other than just as to reiterate um appreciate the time and effort that was put in last week by um by the committee, but also by the town staff. I mean, they they work long days and they were here very late, so always appreciate their time that they put in. So, you got it right. Yeah.

First, uh I'd like to thank the board of health for being proactive and protecting our community. I think that's good stuff that you're doing on the board of health. Uh second, I'd like to acknowledge uh town administrator Helen who went out went to bat for Franklin Municipalities across the Commonwealth on WBUR's morning edition uh highlighting the very real fiscal pressures facing our cities and towns. Uh I'd like to uh uh uh I also like to mention the Franklin Conservation Commission is hosting Earth Day. They're doing a celebration this Saturday, April 18th, at I think it's at the Fairmont Fruit Farm. Um and I hope residents will come out and show their support for that. Uh on Saturday, April 25th, the Franklin Downtown Partnership is hosting the 4th annual Ladybug Trail spring walk running all day starting from 9:00 a.m. uh with a rain date of April 26th. It's self-guided. Uh and you search for all the the giant fiberglass ladybug sculptures around the town. Um there's trail maps available at the Franklin Historical Museum, the public library, and for ours Market. I also want to highlight the MBTA is soliciting public comment and hosting listening sessions for its focus 50 2050 strategic plan. You know if you have an issue regarding the MTA service is a good way to make your voice heard. I'm working with town administrator relevant stakeholders to see if we could bring a listening listen listening session here to Franklin and to develop our own ask as a town. Uh in the meantime residents can submit comment directly. Just Google focus 2050. Uh, also the MDT is also soliciting public comment for their capital plan which is a shorter term and the deadline for public comment for the capital plan is this Friday. So if you need if you want infrastructure improvements to the tea now's, you know, put your comment in. Uh, and then finally on a positive note from Beacon Hill, the House Ways and Means Committee has proposed proposed raising the minimum per pupil chapter 78 aid to $160, which is a dramatic increase from the governor's recommended floor of just 30. This will directly benefit Franklin schools and I want to recognize the

advocacy of town administrator Helen, Representative Roy, the school committee and my fellow counselors in pushing for this. Thank you. Thanks, Max.

Okay. Um, not too much. Um, first, I have not gotten to watch all of the finance meetings. I have gotten to watch one. Um, I've been down medically for the last month, so we're playing a lot of catchup. Um, I just want to say if there's anybody that has sent out emails to me, I pretty much tried to keep up on all the emails that were sent, but if you did not get a response, please just send me another email because I honestly think I got to everybody, but in case I forgot anyone, I didn't want anyone to think they're being ignored. I was literally down and out for the last month. So, this week is all about playing catchup. Other than that, that's all I got. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh certainly want to echo everybody's comments about the finance committee meetings. Thank you. That was uh quite a bit for them to undertake last week and uh was great to hear all of the the feedback that they got. Um, we certainly have some challenging um, budget discussions ahead, but I'm encouraged that they're going to be thoughtful and uh, civil, which is always the goal. Um, thank you, councelor Malloy, for bringing up uh, Memorial Day. It's always a beautiful tribute when we are able to gather on the common after the parade and take a few moments for those uh, fallen veterans. I would definitely um encourage everyone to attend and uh to learn a little bit more about that. Um I'll share a a very quick funny story uh for those of you who don't um follow me on Facebook. This is a kudos to our friends at the Franklin Fire Department who are going to be talking tonight. It just uh so happens that last night I got that panic call at around 8:00 from my 15-year-old who's fishing over at Choke Pond in Medway. Dad, I've got a hook through my thumb. What do I do? And I I I don't think my response was maybe as kind as it should have been. Um but I said, "Okay, don't panic. I'm I'm on my way." Um, got there, assessed the situation. Urgent care is closed. It's in pretty deep. Had absolutely no idea what to do. Like, do I drive the kid to the hospital? Do I try to do this myself? I said, "Nope. I'm just I'm going to call the experts." Called 911. And they said, "Stay put. We're on our way." and they couldn't have been kinder and

more professional being able to handle uh uh what I was as a parent sort of in a crisis mode and it wasn't like this huge deal but I'm like my kid's in pain right and I not not knowing what to do and how to help him and they just the paramedics showed up the truck showed up and they just took over and they knew uh Jaden has some special needs so they knew that kind of how to handle that with some humor and were able to tell jokes with him and deescalate things. And before he even knew it, they had worked that sucker out of that thumb without him screaming at all. Um, and just sort of bandaged it up and on his way. And he lived to tell a fun story about being in the ambulance and being in the truck. And did everybody see the pictures of the fish that he got over it and showed that he had that he had to send back? Um, and I think one of the paramedics even made a comment of like, well, you're 15. You should be catching uh, you know, young ladies phone numbers instead of fish, you know, something something like that, which I just sort of like smiled and said, well, you know him better than anybody. Um, but thank you, thank you, thank you to that whole team. We are so incredibly lucky. uh Chuck and your whole staff um from not just as a counselor but as a parent. Um and I'm sure that stuff happens every day and it never gets talked about and it never gets put on Facebook and your guys never get thanked. So I just wanted to be sure to let you know that that that meant a lot to me. So um thank you Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Uh like I said it's tough to go last but we got councelor Grella too. Oh yeah. forgetting about Mr. Butler. Go ahead. Council comments.

Greetings. Greetings from the sunny state of Florida where it's been the weather's been beautiful. So, and I really needed that um with all the cold weather and I guess it's going to be cold next week when I come back. though. Um, so I want to just echo the comments of the other counselors who um thank the finance committee, town departments for doing the the work on the budgets. Um um excellent work. Um looking forward to the joint budget subcommittee and um that starts tomorrow night. I'll do that also remotely. And then um I just wanted to again as Steve had said um councelor Malloy had said that uh you know folks should attend Memorial Day. This will actually be my first Franklin Memorial Day. Um, but around the time that I I moved to Franklin, just the same time, I joined a reenactment group and and I've been attending the Memorial Day services um in Brainery and Randolph for the last 25 26 years. Um, so, but this year I will uh I won't go to Randolph. I will go to Franklin and I'll attend our own. Um but um I think that uh wherever you go it's it's it's a definitely an honor to go to these uh events and um just recognize the those we've lost in the service of um protecting our country and that's it for me and uh you can go ahead.

Thanks. Yeah. So just echo the finance committee. I I I went to one meeting and we have long meetings but we don't have four in a row long meetings. you know, that's a long time. So, and the department heads are there. So, you know, they don't, you know, I don't think they get paid any extra for that. So, we thank you for that and for all your hard work and, you know, they, you know, they had a lot of different opinions, which I liked. You know, some people on this side were one way, these people on the they it wasn't just a okay, we'll do that and throw it away, which is I think at this time I think that's what we need. So that's uh that's all I have. Um so we're going to go to subcommittees uh joint uh budget subcommittees meeting tomorrow night. EDC met uh the other night, right?

Yeah, we met uh about two weeks ago. Um uh the four of us um kind of went around. We reviewed obviously what was in the um in the master plan, but we also added some other uh ideas to it. Um certainly we'll set up for uh a number of meetings uh going forward um to bring folks from the outside. I think one of the things that we we did discuss um and we're moving forward with is I had uh I had reached out to uh the University of uh Massachusetts in Boston. They have an urban planning uh department there and I'd reach out reached out to the department chair um to see if they would be interested in um uh working on developing a vision for Franklin's downtown. Uh so uh connected uh the uh professor that is teaching that class in the fall with Jamie. He'll be coming in uh couple in a couple meetings or so May 14th. May 14th coming in May 14th to present what the class will do but for uh for nothing.

Yeah, I just think it will cost us nothing. Uh a it's a graduate level class. So these are graduate level students. Uh they will um basically um for free propose a plan for a vision for downtown. Okay. Not to say that we haven't had visions, but it will um I think uh it'll be an updated vision. So, I think it's a it was a a cool way to save some money and actually get something out of it. So, we'll see how that conversation goes. Um, and there are number of other conversations in the I I believe before the end of summer we'll get rocking and rolling. So, Oh, that's great. And plus it gives students a good chance to do things. Y that's great.

Very engaged. Uh, communications. Yeah. We had originally um planned a meeting for last week, but we had some technical difficulties in getting the agenda posted on time. So um we scrapped that and we are um rescheduling for I think the week of April 27th. So hopefully that will um that agenda will go up um as soon as we have that booked. And so we're looking forward to having that first meeting shortly. Okay. Uh town child ad hoc, we haven't done anything yet. We going to get rolling on that. And the police station, they they have nothing, right? Just got to coordinate a lot of folks to come in. It'll just take a little while to try to take care. So, all right. Town administrators report.

Yeah. Uh through you, Mr. Chairman, to the council and the folks watching at home. Couple notes. Just want to follow up. Um I think um on Monday next week, the letter for um to the Bellingham Zoning Board of Appeals will go out. Um everyone's come in and signing it. I think there's one left. And then um they did continue the last hearing. So the hearing hasn't closed in Bellingham yet. Um but just for folks out there who have commented um and sent emails to the counselors or the staff, we've compiled all of those thoughts. Um we got a little bit of assist from councelor Griffith on writing the letter and just adding in a little bit more substance into what the the comments were. We're going to package that all up and send it over to Bellingham to the ZBA um just so that everybody's voices in Franklin can get heard um at one of their meetings uh over there. Um, second, um, I double down on what everybody says. Uh, 17 and a half hours last week. Uh, the finance committee did an amazing job. Um, and I just want to compliment them, um, on, um, their consensus building at the end. Um, I think, you know, I think they showed the community an incredible example of there was like 50 or six, whatever it was, 40 or 50 areas that individual members of the committee had identified to question or to talk about. Um, but as they whittleled it down through Ryan's process, they were able to come to a group consensus. Um, and not everybody got their way. Not everybody got everything they wanted. Um, but I think they showed the community an excellent example of what it's like to try to come to some sort of consensus. And um, their recommendation was unanimous, which speaks volumes because several members had either wanted things one way or another way. Um, but I agree with councelor Juku. if they watch that fourth meeting. Um it kind of wraps it up and I think it shows um what can happen when people um have

an opportunity to speak and bring out their comments and then also collaborate among the committee members themselves. Um I thought it was a a really great job that they did to come to a consensus. We are working on uh the finance staff is working on a formal letter just to kind of encapsulate all the recommendations because there were some things that were off budget um regarding a few fees um as well as some of the free cash recommendations. So um Carrie and Evan are working with them and that won't be ready for tomorrow night's joint budget meeting um but it'll certainly be ready in public when it's ready in the next couple weeks. Um and then that'll be ready for the u the council meetings. to my next point. Um, just uh a cheap plug. May 13th is a town council meeting where our annual audit will be presented, our annual OPED actuarial will be presented, and we anticipate at least a preliminary discussion with the council on the budget that's been filed just to see if there's any questions or comments that people want um on the process because the legal two public hearings will be on May 20th and 21st. Um we're in the middle of open enrollment right now so we're halfway. Um we're not through it yet. Um and uh so we got a couple more weeks and we do anticipate it will be a close call for the council meetings. I think it's going to be a very close call to see we hopefully will have healthcare numbers. I don't know if we'll have all the documents ready to go. Um, which is why we recommended this year to to make the final vote on the budget on June 10th at a council meeting to give everybody some time and space to catch up to what the adjustments are in the budget just so that we're very clear, very transparent, and that people can have time to uh ask questions. Um, so uh also the finance committee meeting will be meeting on May 27th and June 3rd and they will review the revised budget at that time based on the healthcare numbers um into what we see. So, um, to I think many counselor comments before, if anybody out there watching or listening is interested in the town

budget, um, and you weren't checked in yet, um, now's the time to get engaged. Now is the time to pay attention. Come to the joint budget meeting tomorrow night and then over the next two months, it'll pretty much be all budget all the time, um, until the middle of June. So, um, and then one other quick update I just wanted to provide to the community. Um, you know, I just wanted to make sure that the accurate information got out there and I know, um, you know, there's been a few inquiries, uh, in my office. I just want to make it very clear, the Best Western Hotel is open. Um, and it has been open for a long time. Um, the town is collecting hotel tax and just for people that don't know, hotel tax is actually collected by the state and then they redistribute it to the cities and towns. So, the hotel tax is being collected Um, I also just want to be clear, there are no outstanding permits. There is no outstanding inspections. The hotel is in full compliance um with all inspections. The hotel is in full compliance. They've passed their inspections with fire and building uh and the building commissioner. Um and um they are actually um I just called them yesterday. Um I did call them a few months ago too and I might have me mentioned it at another meeting but um I do recognize that online if you go to hotels.com it says that they're closed so it can be confusing um but I just clicked on the number that was on the goo on Google and um and somebody extraordinarily polite just picked up the phone and said you know best western extended says how can I help you and um so we got into a conversation about it and I just know that there's been a little misinformation um in the Franklin Observer article yesterday. Um, and I also want to mention, and I did contact Allan, just so everybody's, uh, clear. Um, you know, um, the town has been incredibly responsive to his inquiries. Um, I know that there may have been a gap here or there. Um, and I know the building commissioner had called him a

couple times and maybe they just weren't able to get in touch. U, but we've been responsive. I've been responsive. The staff has been responsive. and none of the information that was in that article um relative to the town denying records is true. Um we have provided everything to him. I did uh inquire with him yesterday to find out if there was for some reason somebody not being forthright because any building permit application is public record. Any building permit or license inspection is all public record. So he should have received those. Um and I just wanted to make sure because I did get a bunch of emails. You did get a few phone calls. They are planning to be open for the World Cup. Um, they did go through a management transition last year. So, the new manager is on site. Um, and I just wanted to make sure I cleared up any confusion uh, while I had a few minutes here during TA report. Um, the Best Western is open. It's not the same hotel that it's going to be as it was um, before because they're transitioning to a new model of month-long uh, stays. So they're doing month-long, two month, three month or even uh longer stays. So they're transitioning their business model a little bit. And I think that's the reason why it's not available right online on Expedia or any of the other sites that people go to. Um but uh the person who answered the phone um after I identified myself, she's like, "Are you looking for an extended stay?" Um so I was declining that offer. But um I just wanted to make sure everybody in the council, everybody in the community that we're just putting another kind of anchor in the sand and saying, you know, the hotel is open. We are getting hotel tax. There are no outstanding permits. Um there are no outstanding permits. There are no outstanding inspections. Um and we have been very forthright with anybody who's asked for any of that. And by the way, no one has asked for that. Um and according to the staff, nobody's asked for a public records request on any of those files over there. So, um I just wanted to make sure the record was corrected and I have reached out to Allen to try to do that as well. So, I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And you're all set. Yep.

Thank you, uh Jamie. Next uh item is a proclamation recognitions proclamation sons and daughters of Italian in America quattro arrow lodge 1414 considering I'm a member I think I should read this one I was uh telling everyone that Um, I went down to my brother's house because that's where all my father's stuff is. And it was it was in either the late 20s or the early 30s that my uh father won a relay race, I believe, for the Sons of Italy in Franklin. And he had a medal and it was on a ribbon, Italian ribbon with a medal. And I was going to bring it tonight, but unfortunately I can't find it. So, but he was proud of that. So I just so uh this is a pro proclamation and recognition of Quattro Arero Lodge 1414 on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. Whereas the order of sons and daughters of Italian Americans is the largest and oldest national organization for men and women of Italian heritage in the United States. And whereas the Quattro Aerero Lodge 1414 is the Franklin base chapter of the order of sons and daughters of Italian in America. And whereas Quattro Aero Lodge was founded in 1926 as a mutual aid society assisting Italian immigrants adjusting to life in America. And whereas the lodge was named after four Italians from Franklin who fought and died in World War I for the United

States uh military. You know who they are, Gino? Just I know one's a Macheroni and one's a Rest uh Alfred Macheroni. Yeah. Uh Aleandro Pati. Patrick Restino. Yeah. And um Dario. What?

Alio Dario. Thank you. Whereas the lodge continues a mission of honoring and preserving Italian-American heritage and tradition. And whereas the lodge continues to support annual scholarships in several charities. And whereas Quattro Aero Lodge is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2026. Now therefore be it known, the town council of the town of Franklin hereby offers its sincere congratulations to Puo Aero Lodge for serving the community for 100 years by providing support to immigrants and continue to promote Italian-American culture and traditions. And it's signed by myself, chairman of the Franklin Town Council and one of your one of your members. So congratulations on on behalf of the lodge, I'd like to uh express our sincere appreciation for town council for uh providing this proclamation. And I just want to note that uh we had three events celebrating this uh this anniversary. Um uh Sunday we had uh author and historian Steven Pulio speak at the historical museum. We also have an ongoing exhibit still going on uh with items and artifacts from our 100 years of history. It's at the museum now and will be for another few weeks. It's open Thursday nights from 5 to 8, Saturdays from 10 to 1, and Sundays from 1 to 4. Um, also we're concluding our celebration with a dinner at a pasta dinner at the VFW Hall on May 16th. Um, which is a great deal for a dinner even

if you're not interested in the the celebrations. But um also with me here tonight representing the lodge are Pandora Carluchi, Alpezy, Dora Brett, Michael Narduchi, and um um Mr. Vodka, Rob Vaka, of course. So, thank you very much. Thanks, Gino. Next item on uh on the agenda is approval of minutes. I will intend attend a motion uh for the minutes of March 18, 2026.

So moved. Second. Questions? I have some cor just brief corrections. Uh there's a on page four there's it says 7.6 6 million with regards to I think aid. It should read billion rather than million. And on the bottom of page eight, uh there's this guy counselor Mario should read counselor Marangello. So just you could correct that. Thank you. That was awesome. Good pronunciation. So we can uh we can use those corrections. You can do we have to Yeah, make they'll be made. Yeah, they'll be made. Of course, they'll be made. So, I tend to Well, we have to do a roll call.

Roll call vote. Roll call. Just make move to approve as as amended. Someone's I'll second it just so mo I can make the motion motion to approve minutes as amended. As amended just give me one second. Mhm.

Okay, Mr. Chairman, this will be a roll call for the March 18th, 2026 minutes as amended. Councelor Ajuku, yes. Councelor Morangello, yes. Councelor Malloy, yes. Councelor Leelank, abstain. Councelor Griffith, yes. Councelor Callaway, Trip, yes. Myself, yes. Vice Chair, yes. Chairman, yes. Motion pass. Okay. I'll attain a motion to approve minutes of April 1st, 2026. So moved. So moved. Second.

All right. I have a motion and a second. Questions, answers, deletions, anything. Clerk will take roll call. That's the April 1st minutes, right? Okay, Mr. Chairman, this is a roll call to approve the minutes from April 1st, 2026. Councelor Rejuko, yes. Councelor Morangello, yes. Councelor Malloy, yes. Councelor Blank, yes. Councel Griffith, yes. Councelor Callaway, Trip,

abstain. Myself, yes. Vice Chair, yes. Chairman. Yes. Motion passed.

We have no appointments, no public hearings, no license transactions. We do have presentations tonight. So the first one is National Grid. So you guys are up in the up and about. So could you please just identify identify yourself?

Good evening, Mr. chair and members of the council. My name is Robert Moran. I'm a principal community engagement manager with National Grid. Been in the role about nine years and I've been lucky to serve Franklin for the last four to have a good relationship with the town hall and the fire and police. And uh with me is Ted Lombardi. He is our distribution planning engineer, principal planning engineer for the area. Uh, we've been asked to address reliability and in the interest of moving quickly and maybe leaving time for questions, we'll just have Ted get right into it. But I do invite you if there are follow-up questions to follow up with me. Jamie has my contact info and I can certainly leave cards. So again, my name is Ted Lombardi. I'm the area distribution planning engineer for National Grid. I cover the town of Franklin. Uh we serve about 14,000 customers in the town. Uh which has three substations. Uh 16 feeders serving all those customers. Uh about 309 distribution feeder miles of which 187 are overhead miles, 123 are underground miles and uh almost 9,000 poles and structures in the town that we have to uh uh maintain. So that that just highlights the scale of the assets that we are responsible for in just this town alone. So what is an outage? So mass DPU uh identifies an outage is a loss of electric service for over one minute. So anything under one minute is just considered a blip and is not held against us. So what are the most common causes of uh outages in Franklin? Uh most of them are animals uh and tree related. The two biggest squares in the in the pie chart there uh with the followed by failed equipment. Um company

activities we have planned work, maintenance work, emergency repairs. Sometimes it's unsafe for the crews to uh make per repairs uh with the uh lines energized. So we might need to take an outage to uh complete the work. What do we do to improve reliability? Vegetation management is one of the biggest things. Um we national good uses multiple vegetation strategies to reduce outages. uh maintenance pruning. It's typically done in a five-year cycle. Uh it has delivered measurable reductions in tree related events, customer interruptions, and overall outage durations. In Franklin alone, we've pruned 93 miles of lines over the last two years, and we have another 78 uh miles planned for over the next two years. We also have enhanced uh hazard tree mitigation program, EHTM. So, we're proactively removing uh diseased or high-risisk trees. Um, think about e emerald dash bora uh damaged trees. Uh we're taking a proactive approach to go out and remove these trees before they fall on lines, cause damage, uh outages, things like that. So, um we've removed uh 563 hazard trees in Franklin over the last three years as part of that program. The last uh program we have is called the enhanced vegetation management program. Uh basically that's a storm resiliency program. Uh offering the largest reliability gains. It's not been deployed in in Franklin uh yet, but we're looking at potential uh places where we could um roll that out.

So what do we do to improve reliability continued? So network improvement. So Fizzer is a newer term. Uh Flizzer stands for fault location isolation and service restoration. So what Fizzer is is basically a self-healing network. Um, we have sensors and equipment on the lines that can analyze uh when a fault occurs and make uh switching steps to uh isolate the uh the isolate the fault to the smallest location and then restore um sections of the feeder back from adjacent feeders that were unaffected. So, uh, we're typically working in 500 customer pockets, uh, is our our number for that. So, typically in a in an outage where a feeder may have, uh, between 2 and 3,000 customers on it, we are able to typically isolate that down to only 500 customers uh, affected. Um that is uh so Fizzer is a relatively new uh program uh for National Grid. We've had uh two Flizzer um schemes working in Franklin uh for the past few years and we have about 30% of the customers in town covered under these schemes. The remaining customers uh served on overhead feeders will be done completed uh and under FLEER in the next uh two years. We also have uh what's called the cutout monitor recloser program. Um so this cutout monitor reclosers are used in place of line fuses. A line fuse would typically give you uh just like the breaker in your home. It would it would trip on a fault. uh cutout mounted

recloser gives the fault an opportunity to clear it to clear itself uh which means uh it will open the circuit uh let the fault clear and then close back in. If the fault is cleared it will stay in. The fault is not cleared it will kick out again and we'll have a uh you know a sustained outage. uh 90 some odd percent of all uh outages are temporary in nature being bird or tree uh bird squirrel trees things like that uh and they typically clear themselves in the first operation. So um we have about 22 of these CMRs uh in service in Franklin. We've got another six planned uh within the next year. So this is something that's uh uh we're working on and then we've recently kicked on off a larger program that are going to be installing hundreds more of these uh over the next few years. Um we have what's called our underground replacement program. So we uh we we look at uh underground cables in both uh commercial uh settings um um and in uh underground developments. We're getting to the point now where uh cables that we installed in the late 80s are starting to fail um more often and we're keeping track of those and um have these programs going non now to either inject these cables with um fluid to seal them up from the inside or we'll just straight out replace them depending on the age and the condition of the cable. So that is a program that uh we we are uh we're con continuously doing and um we've had two URD of these URD projects in Franklin over the last couple of years that have been

completed. Uh we have defin uh various resiliency program programs, cross arm replacements, cable replacement programs and then uh a number of other capital uh um projects and programs going on to uh improve reliability. So for pre preventative programs we have what's called uh engineering engineering reliability reviews. So we identify opportunities to improve reliability focusing on decreasing the duration in frequency of outages. We typically look at the bottom 5% worst performing feeders um every year and we focus on what we can do to uh to improve the reliability on those feeders. So last year 2025, we had uh one of our feeders, the 344 W2 in Franklin. Uh we we replaced two switch gears and hundreds of feet of cable in Forge Park. Um and uh that had a complete turnaround in reliability for um 2025. 2026. We had a few more uh that came onto the list um that we're working on currently and those are going to see um some tech technology um installations flizzer as I spoke about earlier uh and some cable replacements to improve th the reliability on those feeders as well. Additionally, we have what we call semi which is customers experience multiple interruptions. So we focus on customers uh experienced the most interruptions in the last 5 years and we do targeted uh improvements ranging from technology and then you know spot tree trimming to uh to help um mitigate any outages or

further outages. So that's another program we have going on. We do infrared scans uh both from the ground and aerial um subtransmission circuits of flown uh helicopter inspections. We have uh substation u visual and operational inspections and we have an INM program where we go out and look at uh pole every pole um that we own on a 10-year cycle. So uh every pole is walked, inspected from top to bottom. Any safety issues, reliability issues are noted, uh taken back, work requests are uh written up, and the work is completed to um to replace anything that's damaged or uh anything that's um that looks a little uh like it could cause a potential future problem. Leaving That was it. I had what I had. Uh I'll be happy to answer any questions if anyone has any.

Go ahead, Mike.

Um with regards to reliability, do is there an ability or do you guys do you have a reliability map specifically of the neighborhoods in Franklin? For example, if you live in this section of town, last year you we were we had lost power two hours during the year. This section of town didn't lose any power. And the reason why I say that selfishly, when I lived on the north side of town, I felt like if the wind blew in the wrong direction, I lost power. So when I built my new house on the south side of town, I put a generator in. That thing hasn't I haven't lost power ever. I wasted $15,000 on a generator. That's all. It could be because I bought the generator. So if you all have if you do have a reliability like I can go online, look at Oh, look at that neighborhood. They lose power 10 hours a year and that one doesn't lose power. So I can do some future planning.

Not yet. If there's something specific you want me to look at, I can definitely do that for you. Get back to. Yeah, it was just more for for the for the public out there to know, am I moving into a neighborhood that I really should be planning generators and stuff like that more than anything? So, I' I'd like to think our reliability has gotten a lot better over the last few years with all the improvements we've made between tree trimming and as a uh u the reclosers and the flizzer uh installations. Uh I'm hoping and it's just going to continue to get better. Perfect. Thank you. Just put that down.

Okay. Um, thank you so much for coming out to Franklin. It means a lot. Um, I want to know how much money has National Grid invested statewide in vegetation management and other distribution improvements compared to past fiscal years. And I don't need the exact number. I just want to know in inflation adjusted terms, has it increased, decreased, or remain the same? It's definitely increased. Okay, good. Um, and in terms of the improving reliability in Franklin specifically, uh, in inflation adjusted terms, has it increased, decreased, or remain the same? It's definitely increased. Okay. Um, what has national grid done to prevent cyber attacks? I know that's a big critical infrastructure thing. Um, and has funding for cyber attacks increased, decreased, remain the same.

That's that is I don't want to say it's relatively new, but it is something that, um, we are very aware of and have a whole uh, group that just focuses on that. Um, we have, you know, we we cover I don't know how many towns in the in the state, lots of transmission assets. It's a it's a big big big deal. So, um, I know they take it very very seriously. Do you feel like we're ready for any I I believe so. Um, that's not my forte, but u I'd like to hope so. Yes, sir. Um, and uh, you talked a little bit about what we're doing to maintain capacity, but a lot of people are pushing EVs. Are we actually looking to increase capacity too or is just looking at you know keeping what we have?

No, we are abs we are um looking at potential new uh either expanding one of our substations in town here or building a new substation. So

we're already uh we're not maxing it out but you know it's on the horizon. And and finally, my last question is um in terms of the regulatory structure, I know you're um you sort of the state has oversight as to how much you could profit over a certain amount of time. Uh do you feel like the regulatory structure in Massachusetts is set up to reward longterm reliability and investment or do you think that it trends to be more short-term? Um that's a question that might be outside of our uh ability to answer that but

um in general I I think it's fair to say that we are moving into a regulatory environment where we are interested in and customers are also interested in investing in the capacity because we know the load is coming. We know EVs, we know heat pumps. Um you know the general move to decarbonization and electrification means there will be a lot higher demands on the electric system. So we are making every attempt to be proactive with that including uh attempts at regulatory interaction on that topic. Yeah. Do you feel like that the longterm, you know, if you uh incentives are there to look at the, you know, is is National is is National Grid still going to be ST good steward 60 years from now or uh is it uh looking at the next year?

I think so. Yeah, I do. Okay, good. Thank you.

Thanks. Um, I'm going to piggy back off of councelor LeBlanc cuz I live on the other side of town and beautiful sunny day, power goes out, national grid. Why are we having Oh, a squirrel must have ran across the line. Okay. Um, this is a problem. So, I guess what I want to know is some of this stuff that you've done in the substations that you said have been updated. Are those substations the ones that factor in that side of town on the Bellingham and Medway line or because we were getting to the point snowstorms, hurricanes, I have no problem if the power goes out, I expect it. Car hits a tree, tree goes on the line, I expect it. A squirrel running across the line, I don't expect that to be able to take out an entire grid unless they actually shoot it

and then it will be dead. So it wouldn't be an issue. Um so I guess I want to know if where these infrastructures are being fixed and uplifted or however you want to put it um is that focusing on that end of town because that's the end of town that has the biggest problem.

We look at we look at all the feeders um in the entirety of the town for ways to improve reliability regardless. Um, so it doesn't matter if one side of town is better than the other. If your side of town is is having a problem, we'll focus on on uh upgrading the lines or tree trimming or whatever we need to do to um to fix the issues. But I I don't feel that I I don't um everything we're doing is is across the board. So it's not just focused on No. And I understand that. What I'm saying is the ones that have already been done that you said,

Yeah. were those the ones that are supposed to be giving the electricity to that side of town or I'm just trying to see where we are in the spectrum of being corrected. Yeah, I it's it's a it's definitely a work in progress and something we've continuously uh continuous improvement that we're looking to do. So, I don't know I don't know specifically your area or town that you're speaking of. Um, so I I'm not entirely sure if I can answer that. The last time National Grid was here, I believe they said that the it was over I want to say up on Gro Street or something over there is the one that affects that area town. Is that right?

Um, one of the issues, you're right, it was in 2019, I think they were last year. Um, and there was a big and there was a big delivery issue on Grove Street and I know that they did do a sizable amount of improvements. Um, in fact, I think on that line too, you did put in some of those squirrel pretor like there are act and I'm I'm not kidding. I know it sounds funny. There are like there are capping mechanisms they put over areas because wildlife guards we call them. Yeah. What are they called? Wildlife guards. There you go.

Um, squirrels are legit. They may die, but squirrels do knock out power a lot. And I know that sounds crazy. I know there'll be memes about this tomorrow on Facebook or something, but um but it's legit. And I just wanted them to make a plug for those what do you call them again? Wild lifeguards. Wild lifeguards. But but the equipment that she lives on, by the way, she lives on Maple Street. So I don't know if that helps you, you know. Well, everybody knows when Jane was commenting at citizen comments, we all know it's 607 Maple Street, but they weren't here for that. So, you might want to add your address in just

But Maple Street's a very woody scenic road, right? So, um I don't know if there's anything you can on Maple Street. There is a there is a reality in some corners of a community when it borders another utility on the other side. And the reality is we don't have a circuit coming from the other direction that we can connect and isolate to. So uh you know it may be that you're in in a triangle that's difficult to establish a redundant loop like we would in the center of a town for example. So that's that's just a reality of

you know some locations and and I know excuse me you border Eversource on the on the Medway side. Yeah, cuz we're that area of town where you border the Medway and the Bellingham. So you got Beach, all the offsets up B Street, part of Pawn Street, Partford Street, they are for ever losing power street. I know there was an outage that affected the school. Um Yes. And there there is no way to back feed around that. So everybody beyond I think it was was it a carpole accident that happened right there? Yes.

Yeah. So everybody beyond that was out for the was out for the duration. Um and there's because of the position or because of that location, there's just no way to back feet around it like we would typically do in the in the center of town or Okay. But the equipment that I spoke about that we're installing and planning to we've installed and planning to install um will help shorten those outages and maybe prevent them. Okay. Thank you. Council Malloy.

Um, I think my questions were kind of focused on what's already been discussed, but as Councelor LeBlanc had mentioned, I know you don't have a map of outages across Franklin, but do you have a map of areas that are most prone or historically most prone? Not every area, but I mean, do you know what the hot spots are? I I could definitely put something together. It's not something I have that I can access right this moment. It might be worth looking at just for further conversations in terms of where to focus with real data instead of anecdotes in terms of what's out most and so forth, but if we had that information, I think that'd be helpful. And I'm guessing we're not allowed to talk about cost, right? Rates. Okay.

Also, not my for Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for being here. That was my question. I actually don't have anything to add. I think uh the heat map that they've discussed is really it'll be helpful. That's about it.

Um I have a question that's more I think I already know the answer but just for kind of the edification of anyone listening. Um so I am not a native Massachusetts and um I uh where I've lived before there's always been underground power lines. So, it sounds like a lot of the things that we've been talking about that affect our um power reliability is due to them being above ground, right? Um trees, um accidents, animals. Um, so I realized that there are not a lot of underground power lines in the state and I was just wondering if you could maybe um talk a little bit about like why that is and why that's not something that we are doing here in

simple answer. It's cost. Yep. I had a feeling that was the answer that I I knew the answer. I feel like I wanted, you know, I mean, I moved here and I was like, why are there power lines, especially someplace where you have terrible snowstorms and um anyway, so I wanted to um kind of just bring that is a challenge with underground that that doesn't exist with overhead um in an outage. It takes a lot longer to repair.

So, I mean, you may have a manhole that you have to pump out, then you have to inspect it for OSHA. It's a confined space. There's gases that we're testing for to get in it and determine, okay, the fault's not in this manhole. Now, we have to go to the next one. So, what you can see with an overhead line, you can see an open cutout or a broken line or tree branch. In underground, you can't see that. It takes a lot more exploration, a lot more time, and you know, the equipment, the original installation is probably three to 10 times more expensive to begin with. So, it's longer outages, less frequent perhaps, but longer outages and significantly more cost upfront.

All right. Thank you. Um, and I also just wanted to say, so first of all, thank you for being here and sharing this information with us, but I also wanted to mention I also live on the same side of town, not far from Street. Um, but I will say when, um, about six years ago, we had I don't even know, probably a dozen power outages in one summer on our side. And um then a couple years ago, I brought home a medically vulnerable newborn from the NICU. We put in a generator. And so you all can thank me for not having as many power outages now as we did back then. But I um I I will say I have noticed a difference in um you know, in the last 6 years, the number of um outages that we've had and the the length of those um outages as well. So um I wanted to say you're doing you guys are doing something right. Um hopefully we continue to move in that direction. We appreciate the support of the council when we come before the council for petitions as well. You know, when we come to ask for new equipment,

there's always a customer behind it or a reliability improvement behind it. Thank you. Am I? Yeah. And then we're going to go to J. All right. Thank you for being here tonight, guys. Um, so you know why you're out here on a Wednesday night. It's because of me, right? because I voiced this and was pretty angry at being a semi, you know, a customer experiencing multiple interruptions, right? And I am the the common denominator is that side of town. I live not far from her and not far from her

in that area of town. Please, please, please use every acronym and thing you have up there. I mean, it was like listening to a Department of Ed presentation. like you've got you've got more acronyms than they do, but whatever you can do to help the Franklin residents that are living in the north side of town, whether they border Bellingham or border Medway, we're all paying the same rates, right? So, and and rates are they're skyrocketing and they're outrageous and you guys know that. You hear that all the time, right? So, we get we get the complaints, right? We get the folks that are like, "I'm paying these outrageous rates and my power's out again, or it's out for 10 hours, it's out for 12 hours." And it might be out for something silly like the squirrel she's mentioning, but it could have been out. We had a relatively low snowstorm at one point that affected Franklin, Rentham, Foxboro. Like, it was this whole thing. And we were all looking outside and we're like, "This isn't even a giant nor easter. This is pretty low." So whatever you can do to just invest, work with us, let us know what you need, right? But to be a for us to be able to go back to folks, you have to understand too that side of Franklin tends to be a little bit older, right? They're older, clustered, more established neighborhoods. They're not a lot of the newer developments that have gone in in town. Some of those houses are 50, 60 plus years old, right? So, I would imagine the infrastructure tends to be established when those homes were built, which makes them older, too.

Right. So, whatever you can do, squirrels aside, and all kidding aside, to just be able to let us go back to the constituents and say that we heard you and that we're working with you guys, uh, would be very much appreciated. So, thank you, Mr. Chair. Jean, yeah, I had a question. was something along the same lines that um um that Caroline had uh had said about the underground. Um so I'll just extend this. So when we're looking at like new development, is it the is it the preference to do the new development underground? It's required. I think it's required in town

residential sub. Yes. Okay. So, so future developments and and things we're building now that they have to go into grow. How long has that been in place? Years. Decades. Decades. Decades. Okay. All right. We did it 10 years ago. Longer than that. Probably maybe 20, 15 or 20. I don't know about that. I mean, I know that y'all asked at one point there was a during the recession in '09. Yeah.

Um, it was probably before council got on. There was a question about adding a small uh like 40 cent fee onto everybody's cell phone bill that would have paid for the underground wiring up downtown, but that was rejected. Um and I think somewhere around that time you started the planning board started putting in I got on 10. So yeah, probably around 2010. Yeah. So 15 16 years ago. Yeah. Are you all set, Jean? Yep. No further questions.

Um, yeah. Um, I really don't have any complaints because I live on the same side as Mike does and I I've been there 32 years. I think I lost it once for like an hour. So, well, how many hours? Yeah. Well, to be honest with you, I got a separate refrigerator cuz my brother my brother lives on Brook Street and I know he's going to lose. So, he we take his food and put it in my house just to show you. So that side is in trouble, you know. You know, uh I just have another question because I know we all get uh this question when you do have an outage and it's very windy out there. I I know the answer is I have a lot of friends that work on the lines

35 miles an hour. Thank you. So if you were going where I think you were, which is No, I am point saying they're parked up and stopping and why aren't they out fixing it? And I tell them the wind is just too high. They can't get out there. Yeah. So I just wanted It's unsafe to fly a bucket, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. 35 or more miles per hour. Absolutely. Uh

uh I infer from what you said that they're not in place right now, but from a redundancy standpoint, is there a potential to have some kind of effect essentially mutual aid agreement with Eversource in those areas so that you could draw in from there have some kind of an interconnect or something? Um, I will look more in depth to that particular area. I know I don't I'm not entirely I'm not entirely sure of Maple Street. I know I've driven up it once or twice, but um I need to look at the wires there to see what's what's available. Uh what we can do. Uh, I might be able to reconductor it and put some additional equipment up there to to We have what's called tree wire which um helps with uh bird I'm sorry with animal and tree contact. Uh so we don't get out it typically don't get out just from that unless the tree comes down and takes everything down. So there's things I can do to improve reliability and I'll look to do something like that for that particular area

in in terms of being able to share with another company that you don't have that mechanism in place. No sir, it's would you know the we would have to have um you know meters I you know meters coming the other you know going both ways for to be able to fill each other. I just think it would be messy. Yeah. In in general, one franchise operator can't operate in the franchise of another even with even with some kind of an agreement in place. Well, in storms we do we do have mutual aid things that happen in storms. So, I mean that that may be a possibility, but it's nothing I could answer. This

the irony is and I I don't know whose facility it is, but there's just a huge, as you probably know, it's a merchant power plant. Yeah. In Medway. Yeah. with all kinds of support for it and more support that's actually being put in around it. Uh and so it's kind of ironic that you can't tap into that in an emergency if you're not part of that system. It's a fair comment. We'll look at it. So anybody out there have any questions from the audience?

I don't have a question. Okay, Steve, give you a name.

Steven Arnold, 520 Maple Street. Um, I had a statement, I guess. Uh, I got a letter, a notice from National Grid about changing my electric meter, and I think the meter's been on the house since 1952, but uh, I passed on it for now. And um I I guess is well some some people have said that it is is is efficient as far as regulating electric electrical demands for your house. Say if you install a Snider switch or something to regulate your washer and dryer and things like that. I I'm not up to speed on um uh regulating my washer dryer or refrigerator and things, but um I did have Rodenheiser come and say that I should be upgraded from like um it's at three watts now and should be four watts.

So, um thank you, Mr. Arnold. I I think what you're talking about is what we call AMI, automated metering infrastructure. And National Grid is in the process of changing about 1.3 million meters. So, we're changing them all from the standard older style meter to a meter that communicates and allows customers to log into a, you know, into a their account and see um how how they're using energy real time. Um, it also can begin to identify devices. Oh, looks like you turn your dryer on. Do you want to name this your dryer? Now, you can go and begin to manage your own energy. And there are also programs where we pay incentives for you to use devices off peak such as EV charging or um, you know, large loads. Um, so I I think that's probably what Mr. Arnold's referring to and it it is happening. Um, we are sending these messages to customers now. We are beginning to change meters. Yeah.

32 years, man. Yeah. You have to be home to do it. Unfortunately, we both you if you most people both work, you know what I mean? So, it's tough, you know. So, anybody else? I think you're off the hook. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Okay, one down. So, the next item on is the uh fire chief chuck. Good evening, Chuck Allen, Fire Chief. I'm joined by Deputy Chief of Operations, Jim Klutch, Deputy Chief of Administration, uh, Deputy Bobi. Um, thank you for the opportunity tonight to be able to give you a little bit of a brief overview of our department, uh, how we operate, a little bit of what we do. Um, start off a little bit of a of a mission statement. So, uh, the Franklin Fire Department is committed to providing the highest level of public safety services for our community. Uh, we we safely protect lives and property through fire suppression, training, emergency medical transportation services, disaster and crisis management, fire prevention, and public education. Um, but really what we do is we're a lot more than than just fire and EMS. Um, we're an allhazards department. Uh, what that means is that we respond to really everything. Um, and we're responsible for a lot in our community. Um, obviously what we see on the roads are, uh, our trucks and, you know, our ambulances uh, going to, you know, uh, calls, fire calls, and medicals. Um, but we also do, you know, fire investigation. Uh we respond to structure fires, vehicle fires, brush fires, fire alarms, uh rescue operations, hazardous conditions. But a

really big part of our business that people don't really see that we do is uh community risk reduction, code enforcement, and our public education. Uh that is a huge part of what we do and that actually reduces a lot of the other calls that we go on. Um the more we can educate the public, uh the more we can uh enforce uh code enforcement, uh the better off we are as a community. and it actually reduces uh a lot of what we do in emergency services. So, uh it's very very important part of our business. Um org chart here. Uh so obviously uh chief of department um and we have two uh two deputy chiefs. Uh one that's in charge of fire prevention and administration um and the one that's in charge of operations. Uh we have an EMS battalion chief and an EMS captain. Um and then from there we go down to we operate four groups from two fire stations. So uh each group uh what's composed of a of a shift authorized staffing is 14 uh personnel per shift. Uh each shift uh it has is commanded by a battalion chief a shift commander. Uh one captain, one lieutenant and 11 firefighter paramedics. That gives us what we call the ICS principle which is um incident command structure. So we we really have um manageable supervision uh with that that kind of uh management structure with the battalion chief, the captain and the lieutenant. Um this really gives you a little bit of what our staffing is uh by personnel level. We really operate here on the left side of this slide. Uh on a regular basis uh for the most part um we run uh down to 11 at 11 firefighters uh on a shift. Uh we run two engines, two ambulances. We cross staff our ladder truck and we do have limited capability. Um we do run with 12 personnel at times. Uh and that gives us the ability to staff our our A3 um by using some administrative personnel to get that staffed when we can. Um only when the EMS captain is available or at the right

shift staffing. So we do have partial EMS coverage at that level. The key to note with that is is that there's a key limitation when we're staffed there. uh when A1 and A3 are unavailable um we have no tower truck available to respond because we do cross staff our apparatus. So that means that our ambulance crew is also the crew that's on the tower truck. Um so if they're at the hospital which is frequent that tower truck is not staffed and we rely on either another community or we have to uh call people in from home to staff that that truck. uh what does meet our required service level uh for our community and our our call volume uh is 13 personnel a shift which is our target. We there are there sometimes but with vacation shifts and you know uh holiday sick time we frequently will go down into the uh below required service level. Uh at 14 personnel uh we're at full staff. We have uh the tower truck uh staffed with A3 with cross staff um and uh we have three ambulances available. what we really um protect in our community. Obviously, we know community. Franklin's a a community of 33,000 plus residents. Uh our families, our seniors, schools, our daily population movement. That's a big piece of Franklin that I think people don't really think about is what Franklin is during the day. Um you know, when our businesses are open and when people are traveling on our roads and 140 here and 495, we have two industrial parks. Uh we have a lot of critical infrastructure. We have two commuter rail stations. a lot of people come through our community. We're also responsible for the care and wellness of those folks as well. Um, and our community profile is evolving over time. I've been here with the department for 26 years and I've seen the great change I think as we all have uh in what uh the town, you know, as as any community does evolve. So, um, we can talk a little bit earlier about our our fire prevention uh division. This is a big big piece of our

business. Um we are responsible for um various amount of inspections and code enforcement that happens every day. We work hand in hand with the building department uh doing a lot of our inspections in commercial structures and residential structures. Uh as some of you know every time you sell a home you have to have a uh smoke detector inspection. So we're out in a lot of occupancies uh ensuring the safety of uh residents and people that are moving into our community as well. Um, a lot of the fire alarms and sprinkler systems are responsible for making sure those are maintained in our community. There's a lot of mandatory reporting uh that we're responsible for making sure uh is documented. So, a lot of that stuff moves through our department. Um, plan review uh and building construction, all of that goes through us as well. Uh, that's that's a big a big piece of what we do. So, uh, anytime anybody, you know, does some work in their home, they're adding something on or they're building a house or they're building a commercial structure, those plans run through us. uh if you're if you're adding solar uh panels to your house or you want to put a you know battery energy storage in your house, those plans run through us. So uh we get the opportunity to take a look and make sure that people are going to be safe. Uh and again, we work hand in hand with our building department uh for that as well. This slide gives you a little bit of what our uh increasing call for emergency services has been. This is just the past 5 years leading up to here. Um we've had a 25.5% increase in our emergency service demand and that's been sustained over the course of my career certainly. So we see an average call volume increase of about on average a little bit better than 4 4.5% a year on average is our our increase. Um last year we had another another high of 5,651 calls for service. Uh 3,999 of those were emergency medical service calls. Um and then the rest uh comprised of you know motor vehicle accidents,

fire alarms, you know, building fires and that kind of stuff. Um the breakdown of those calls from last year, uh you can see on the left side of the screen here, 3,999 EMS calls, hazardous conditions, uh service calls, good intent calls. Again, we're at all hazards department, so we're going to respond to anytime anybody has a need. Uh we're going to respond to that. Um community risk reduction. Uh we last year we had 1,488 total inspections and that's that's going to be inspections in businesses and homes uh commercial structures, residential. We also put on 119 uh community events. So that's that's really important for our risk reduction in our community. A lot of those are done through our safe program as well as our EMS division through uh CPR, stop the bleed uh programs and such. This slide gives you a little bit of what our uh our response area has been. Um our new RMS, our record manage records management software allows us to track where our calls are really happening. Uh it's a little bit tough to see in the map here, but what's composed in this red area is 495 and 140. And that's where our two fire stations are located. We have a fire station on King Street and fire station uh downtown. Um those areas comprise of a lot of our high-risisk occupancies. So, the 140 corridor, 495, uh, King Street corridor, uh, a lot of our elder elderly housing is there, our urgent care centers are in those locations, nursing homes, a lot of all of our commercial space is really there. Um, two industrial parks in that Gro Street corridor, all served by mostly the King Street Fire Station. Um, and then it's a lot denser population, but if you notice up in the in the the top part of the the slide in the in the map going towards Midway, that's a lot of call volume there. we're not really represented in that part of the community with the fire station. Um so that that's probably going to be a future need uh for the community at some point. Um our call volume projection where we really see ourselves being over

the next 5 years and this is based on our historical data from the last 5 years and beyond. We're going to be approaching 7,000 calls by 2030. Um this year we're 5,651. um based on what we've seen uh over these uh uh past volume, we'll be over 6,800 by you know in the next 5 years. So um that is an extraordinary amount and we will need to make some investment in the department uh for that. Our EMS division, our EMS division is comprised of a battalion chief and an EMS captain. They're responsible for training competency and ongoing education uh EMS operations, how we deploy and our coordination uh and our quality insurance. That's a big part of uh what our EMS division does. Uh that allows us to uh make sure we're providing quality patient care and it also allows us to make sure that we are trying to recoup every dollar we can on EMS calls as well um to make sure everything is documented properly. Uh as especially since co that has become uh an increasingly busy part of our operation um making sure that everything is documented correctly um and we have a lot of patient care needs. So, um, they also, uh, all of our, uh, EMS like CPR, you know, public CPR courses, uh, things through the safe coalition that we've had, uh, stop the bleed program, those things are all run through our our EMS, too. And those two those two personnel, uh, handle all that coordination and getting that done. Uh, in 2025, this this slide actually speaks a lot of volumes to me. Um, we're all paramedics in in the department. Um, last year we had 2,876 uh uh ambulance transports to the hospital. We started 925 IVs. We uh interpreted 801 12 lead EKGs. Uh we administered uh medication to 285 patients. We had 19 cardiac arrests and we had 14 advanced airway uh is inserted. The big the big one to me is the bottom number. It's a small number,

but ROSK stands for return or return to spontaneous circulation. Those are people that were in cardiac arrest that we saved uh their life by the uh by the skills and our quality of our paramedics. That that's doesn't seem like a big number, but it's a pretty big number, especially being at EMS for a long time. That's really really well. So, um I I think we have we have a great department here.

Um our EMS revenue, this shows you where we've been over the past 5 years. Uh again, the more calls we have, the more revenue uh that we're able to bill uh comes in. And it really covers about a third of our budget, roughly about 35%. Last year we uh we including CPE, which is a a certified public expenditure, a way we can go back and get some Medicare money. Um we're about 2.7 million roughly in uh in revenue. So that's that's really quite a bit of money uh coming back that uh that covers the ambulance service. And this next slide shows a little bit of our mutual aid. Uh mutual aid unfortunately and it's been this way for a long time uh certainly since co is not it's not mutual. Um we are about we take in about 65% more mutual aid than we're able to actually give out. Last year we had 325 uh mutual aid responses into our community and we gave out about 158 if my memory serves me correct. So uh most of those are ambulance calls and most of it is because our uh our call um our call volume and our our frequency of sane simultaneous emergency calls. Um this slide here shows that our of our 5,651 total calls last year in county 25 3,743 of those 66% of them occurred while at least one other incident was already in progress. So, we only have two fire stations when we are staffed with with two ambulances and two engines when we're at that that uh below required service level that we were just talking about. Um that's all we can handle. So, of those 3,743 calls, we we we handle those. Um the real breakdown gets down when we get into the other incidents when we get into two or more emergency calls. And last year we had 575 of those. Uh and then of of two or more and then four or more 225 and so on and so on. So um some of those are from extraordinary events but some of that is

our daily operation. We do we do run uh in a critical need uh often. Um our FY27 budget that that you'll see um that's been out that's a level service budget. We're about $8.4 million. Um again 95% of that roughly is personnel costs. We have a very small amount that's uh administrative um operating expenses and uh they've remained pretty stable over the last you know several years because we've been very very proactive in uh grant funding. Um we've received over 3.2 million and we just received another small grant um for from uh from FEMA and from the state um and from from MIMO we've had a few and through DFS uh that really funds a lot of our other needs. So, in that those grants, they they uh they give us money for training. Uh in a lot of those training programs when we write them, they'll typically be to uh go along with equipment that we need and uh things like that to uh to to offset some of our costs. So, in the past, you know, since 2019, 3.2 million, it's almost $500,000 a year uh that is not coming out of our operating budget that's really being uh funded by grants and things that were written. And I think what's really important about that number is is that we don't use a grant writer for that that money. We use firefighters. Um we use people come in on their own time and they sit down and they research what's important to them, what they feel is important to the community. Um and they spend a lot of time writing those grants. A lot of communities will hire a grant writer um and try their best to do that. We don't do that. We have our firefighters uh write those grants and we've been extremely successful uh getting uh getting funding that way. Hopefully they continue. I don't know if they will be if they'll have a lot of money uh going forward. It's been a little slow uh not going to lie recently, but um we'll we'll still uh keep uh doing our best. This is a big part of um how we got here. Um in the last uh five, six, seven years, uh we've made a lot of changes in

the department. Um as as Jamie will tell you, we we made some real big strides. I know you've heard it before. Um we we transitioned out of civil service in 2020. That was very controversial. A lot of departments don't want to leave civil service. Um but we did that and when we did that we reorganized the department and we improved our operational efficiency quite a bit. Um we eliminate eliminated a dedicated fire prevention date position but we moved those into reccl classified roles into battalion chiefs. Um so each battalion chief uh is also responsible for a portion of fire prevention. The other ones that go out and they do our residential uh smoke detector inspections during the day. um we try and schedule those throughout um throughout the morning typically. Um but they're also in charge of the shift. So they all have dual roles. In fact, when you look at our our organization chart, most of our employees have multiple roles in the organization. They don't just do one job. They're doing a lot. Um especially in our administration, our EMS captain is is doing multiple roles or EMS battalion chief is in multiple roles. And the same the same with the rest of administrative staff. So we've been doing very well with that with uh consolidation of efforts. We uh at the time we rolled a lot of stipen positions into uh into that. We reduced quite a bit of cost and we're able to grow the department a bit um and increase our bandwidth and increase our safety. Um the role of a battalion chief as we said is an incident commander. We didn't have that dedicated role at that time. Um and as as firefighters that have all come through the system, it's pretty scary to be in a building and not have somebody outside that's checking for your safety. So that that's a that's a a big thing that we're able to get in this department and we're very proud of it. Not a lot of communities um are able to have that dedicated uh role and and we do here. Um this is uh a little bit of our regional comparison. We try and make sure um where we're at uh in you know finances to be uh to be competitive in what we pay our employees. Um and you

can see from this in our our regional comparative stats we're right about in the middle. We don't we don't pay extraordinarily well and we don't pay extraordinarily awful. We're right right in the middle of the road. Uh it says a lot about our employees because as time has gone by, a lot of people will will shop and want to be someplace where they're going to make the most amount of money. Um they don't do it here, but they have the most amount of involvement and they have the most amount of opportunity in our community. Um and people still want to come here and I think that's really a testament to our organization. And if you look at what we cost the community um in our in our region um per capita, we're the second cheapest fire department per capita uh in our region. Only uh only best by Northfor who only runs three firefighters a shift. So we're getting a lot of bang for our buck with this with this uh organization. Uh we do a lot with a little and that's that's that's really what we've been about. Um, our future needs are really going to be uh staffing. I think that you'll see that as time goes by, we will have a need to add staffing. We do need to add, in my opinion, at least four firefighters um soon. So, we do need to get get that up and that will give us the ability to run uh at 13 minimum, which would keep us on that right side of that chart, which would get us in a in a more appropriate uh staff level all the time. It would get our tower truck staffed more often. Um, and it would get A3 staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which which is needed. Um, we do need to have a good equipment replacement plan. I think we do we've had that in the last, you know, we have a good a good outlook, but I think we probably increase that out a little farther as we go. Uh, we just did acquire that new fire truck. Um, that's been been really well for us. We're about to put that in service. Um, but as things age, we do need to make sure we keep up on that and make sure we're we're prepared for those things uh in the future. those vehicles are not getting cheaper. Um they're only getting more expensive. So, we need to make sure

that we're we're ready for that. Um and facilities needs our fire stations, as much as they're they're new or fairly new. Station 2 on King Street is 26 years old now. Um that will have have needs as it goes. Uh as the fire service has been evolving, um there will be needs to make sure the building is safer for our employees. Um and make sure that we you know, we reduce carcinogens in the firehouse and stuff like that. Modern facilities do that. Um, so we'll need to make sure we make improvements as they become available um to make sure that our employees are safe. And I think we'll probably uh we're going to need a fire station in the north part of Frank. I know it's on the master plan. Um it was it was talked about when I started here 26 years ago and I I know it's going to be talked about again as time goes on in the future, but that's something that uh that should be planned for our community. Um we're an ISO1 department. We're very proud of that. We're only one of uh 17 in New England. Um that's it's pretty tough to become an ISO1 department. It's pretty rigorous. It's also pretty tough to maintain it. So we have to make sure that we to maintain that. Um a lot of it is training. A lot of it is through public works and the and the and the water uh system that we have here, but a lot of it is through our equipment and our response times. We need to make sure that we don't fall behind in that so we can maintain that uh when they come around again to audit us. So that's uh that that's a big portion of of what we need to do. Um how we support Franklin's priorities. Uh we protect lives and property through emergency response. Uh we support economic development. I think a safe community brings people that want to live here. Just like great schools bring people that want to educate their kids here. A safe environment, you know, safe uh community with good fire and EMS um brings businesses that want to come here, people that want to operate here. Um I think that that's really important. We we enable safe housing growth and development. We provide critical public health services to our community. We reduce risk risk through fire prevention, inspection, and education. Uh we strengthen our community prepar preparedness and resilience. Um and we protect our community through our

essential services. So, and really what we need from you uh as a council, we need policy support. We need uh budget priorities and we need uh long-term planning alignment. We need to make sure that we're all on the same page of where we have to go. Um I think that's it. I think any questions? Do the same thing. Council on the line. Um, thanks Chief and thanks for putting all this together. This was great. And we had a talk a couple of weeks ago and kind of had a preview of some of this. So, this is great. Um, couple of questions in no particular order. 678 false alarms

you listed in the chart. I mean, what constitutes a false alarm? I have this image as a kid going out into pull pull box and then running away. No, I think I think you can find it's any alarm that's really we go there. It's not for any particular reason. So, it could be that they thought they smelled something there carbon monoxide. Our meter shows there's no carbon monoxide. Those are all considered false alarms, but you still obviously have to go when that comes in because you don't know that till after the fact. Correct. Okay, got it. I just wasn't sure how that worked. And on staffing, like I guess ideal today is 14 people on duty. I I ideal today is is a is a minimum of 13.

Minimum of 13. Minimum of 13 allows us to staff a third ambulance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It gives us the two extra people that we need to do that. And that gives us the cross staffing ability for the tower truck. Right. And how often do you reach that 13? It's it's it's occasional. I I think uh in the last since January 1st it was probably about 40 hours a week, you know, 50 hours a week depends. It's up, you know, it's tonight we're at that, you know, at midnight. So, it it's sporadic. It's just not consistent. Um so, that's really where we need to get the consistency. And the reason for that is because we have we have

people out on sick time or on holiday or vacation or we have three firefighters injured right now that are out. So, that that takes someone off the roster and they're not available. So, I think the buffer with having a shift staff from 14 to 15 gives us the safe buffer to be able to have a minimum of 13. I think that's something we should keep track of. It sounds like you do. I know you have good data and there's good ways of tracking all that because it'd be interesting to know how infrequently we're there, which obviously leads to limited coverage, maybe more mutual aid or less ambulance calls if we could do it. It does.

But I'm sure at some point and maybe it's below 11, then you've got to pull somebody in on overtime. We never go in below 11. So if if we drop below 11, we order someone to stay from they don't go home. That's what I'm saying. Once you hit 11 and you then Yeah. or below that, you got to bring people in. And I'm sure there's a cost associated with that unscheduled overtime. Yeah. Where, you know, kind of fits into the overall cost of not having those.

Yes. And when when we're down at that that level, another piece of this to look at is that um when you run it in a service level where you're always in uh a constant state of emergency, let's say, um where these calls are coming in frequently, we will frequently call people in from home to try and cover the apparatus, which is very inefficient. Um so that that's something that happens more often than it probably should. So, right. Yeah. And I'm sure you keep track of it and as we kind of progress and move on and and look at things that might be good just good data to look at to kind of analyze what the overall opportunity cost is of losing those positions, but the real dollar cost in terms of what it takes to staff them when we need to. Yes.

So, I I think that's that's important. Um, no, otherwise I thought it was great. Very impressive. Obviously, really busy. You take those numbers, number of calls per year, divide it by, you know, 52 weeks or, you know, seven days a week. I mean, it's you guys are hopping. There's no question about it. We are busy for sure. So, thank you and all you guys for what you do. It's impressive. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you. um three three questions for you and again appreciate appreciate the materials that you shared and and certainly the the presentation. Um you spoke about you know some of the stability supported by 3.2 million in grant funding since 20 2019 and and uh you know and and your firefighters go in and and do the grants and things they care about which is fantastic. Would there be a benefit to having a more dedicated approach to to seeking out grants? What

I I think we take every opportunity that we can. Um I think I don't think there's a grant we haven't applied for. They're kind of limited. It's this the main ones we do are the assistance to fire grants which are FEMA grants. So they're they're limited. Um so even as we scale up as we talked about increasing call volume of by roughly 1,200 uh additional calls over the next 5 years but the grant that grant number is not going up. No pro probably not. I mean it it's it's through the federal government. So I mean it's it's so it might go down.

It could go down. That's a possibility. I mean they're very very competitive also. Um we've been extraordinarily lucky that we've received some of the grant funding that we have. Um we've even some of that some of our funding has been through other communities who have helped with mut with uh with regional grants. So that that that comes from that too as well. So um I I don't know that it will go it'll go up. Um I mean it could go down. Um but probably won't go away. Might go down almost definitely not going up. Okay. Thank you. Um and then my uh my my third question around training and compliance requirements talked about ISO or ISO1. Can you just give a little color um for us on what that is, why that's helpful, useful to, you know, a worthwhile target.

So, it's it's really it's really a metric to measure your department. Um it's comprised of a lot of different areas. Um it's comprised of how you are uh you're staffed. It's comprised of of your response time. Um the investment your community has made in infrastructure. So, it's it it has a lot to do with our uh the maintenance maintenance of our water system um and the ability to um to gauge uh how efficient the uh the waterways are in our community uh for fire suppression. Um that really is what makes it up. A lot of it is training um how often we're able to train and and what we have for apparatus and what we have for backup apparatus all plays into that metric. Um typically an ISO rating an ISO1 department. um a community that has an ISO1 department can see lower rates in insurance costs and home owners insurance. Um but it really is it really is is a measure of the investment that the community's made in the department and the investment that the firefighters that work there have made in in themselves. So

I appreciate that. Um it's interesting that that actually may impact uh your home insurance prices. It's a possibility. I don't know how it's all measured out, but that is there that is there potential component. That's interesting. Um, right and helping with grants. So, a good reason to to maintain uh that rating. Okay. Uh, that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, I also have a handful of questions. So, first of all, thank you for being here and thank you to your department for um all the great things. Six lives saved from, you know, cardiac arrest. That's not a small number. That's a incredible number and so we are all grateful for that. Um all right. So you had described the reorganization um and the addition of the battalion chiefs. Um you mentioned that they are responsible now for um kind of the residential fire prevention programs as well, right? But you also said that in an emergency they're the ones who are kind of outside the building. What happens if they're deploy they're already deployed in a prevention?

They have to leave it. That's that's that's the that's the danger of having too many jobs at once. Um but they'll leave it and and and we have our administrative uh assistant in the office, Tracy, who I like to say and she wouldn't want to hear. She really runs the fight about Obama because everything um truly that she'll she actually has a radio next to her desk and she'll hear what's going on and say, "Oh, I can't they have she'll make a phone call and say, "Hey, we're going to be late." Um, and I know a lot of realtors have probably gotten phone calls from over the years and um, and but we we eventually get uh get to the get to the do the inspection. So, um, we do our best to make sure we can we can accommodate that, but emergency services takes priority. So, it is what it is.

Um, with an additional four firefighters as you said, would that would some of those duties shift that people weren't doing duplicative or not duplicative but like um additional roles kind of maintaining or noility. Only thing that that will affect is that our we currently use uh when available our EMS captain's position um which is extraordinarily difficult to um to get things done when emergency calls come in um and we send that person to the hospital which is not really the best use of a company officer sending them out of town. So um that it's very difficult to have them they have they're responsible for a lot of programs our internal training and external training in the department. Um so that that would be the only if we had four more firefighters that job would be able to be done consistently and that would be a great improvement to the community. Yeah.

Okay. That's wonderful. And and yes I I realize that emergency always takes precedent. I was just wondering kind of how that how that works when you have them already doing other things. Um thank you. So we had this drastic increase in calls in the last 5 years 25%. Um and and also I know I noticed you had mentioned like since co I is that just like a time frame that you're giving here or related.

Yeah it's just a time frame. I I will say that that co has affected probably all emergency services out there. Our turnaround time at the hospital is much slower. Um we've all seen hospitals close. We lost no hospital. um that that a lot of times will have an ambulance go to and they they'll hold the wall. So they'll have the patient on the stretcher and they can't turn over care and they can't leave them. Um so they have to stay with them for an extended period of time. That has has affected some of our call concurrency and that's not going to go away. It's just it's just the the nature of the business now. Um so that's that's really what's what's affected a lot of that. Okay. any ideas on why what other reasons or why we are having such an increase in calls or have you is there something that

it's just it's I think that we're the we're the um we're the go-to, you know, um and as our community grows um as as I I can tell you my my mom would never call 911, but I would do it, you know. So, I mean, we're all we're all taught that we, you know, if you need help, call the fire department, call the police department. You know, that's that's what our society has evolved into. Um, and that is, I think, probably a little bit of why we see some increase and and we have a lot of other responsibility as well with uh with development. So, any development, a lot of commercial space um those those tax services, we've seen a lot of commercial development uh which is good for the community, but we does have an effect on us and we do have to respond to calls in those locations. So, Well, and I think it says something to how the community views you all as um an you know, really important part of um you know, someone who that you can they can trust to call. And with that in mind, um I think you said there are like you've done 119 something like that um community uh I've lost the number now, but um

public safety programs. Yeah. Yes. In a year. And so when when kind of the wallet gets tight, are those the things that get cut first when you Yeah. Yeah. This this year we actually had to it was a very very tough decision. We had to reduce the amount of the uh seniors we have. We have a senior project um and they come and they they uh work with two firefighters, our our safe officer and and one of his aids. Um and they they get a feel for the fire department and they spend a lot of time uh with us. we had to reduce that down to four just because we don't have the bandwidth to do it. Um but we still provide the service. So it's just we would we would be happy to do more.

Right. And um was it your department or police and I've forgotten now who um used to or does when they can the like um car seat checks and things like that? Was that the police department? Okay. I remember hearing about it the other day and I couldn't remember which department was. So sorry about that. Um okay. And then my last question is you had talked about um the facilities needing improvements or eventually needing more improvements to maintain safety. Um when those improvements are being done, what are those facilities still usable? Do they go offline for a while? Is it

No, they're still they're still they're still I'll give you an example. Um right now we're in the process of upgrading through a grant um our vehicle exhaust system. So when a when an apparatus is parked in the station um running that vehicle in the building uh it's is is a hazard. So it's a diesel engine, it gives off exhaust fumes. So there's a way that those exhaust fumes are captured and that's really kind of come of age in the fire service in the last 30 years or so. Um and you'll see the the yellow hoses that hang if you drive by the fire station. Those hook to the exhaust. We're in the process of upgrading all that equipment to the latest technology and we're funding that through a grant. Um as time goes by that may be something the community may have to invest in. Uh modern fire stations have uh negative pressure environments for the gear. Uh we don't have that. Um most fire stations don't have that. But if you're building a facility or upgrading a facility as as cancer is the number one uh killer of firefighters, um that's going to be something down the road that that might have to be looked at. Um that you you're going to want to have your gear stored in in a room that is a negative pressure environment that pushes any of those carcinogens out of the building. There's going to be infrastructure uh things like that. uh uh things that have to get like and other stuff like any other public building, sprinkler systems and you know maintenance and fire alarms stuff like that will have to be uh you know continue to be invested in. We do have great fire stations. In fact, when people come and do training, they often marvel at how great our facilities are. But as time goes by, we'll have to make some improvements. So,

thanks. On the way over here, I I came in with my three little ones and my three-year-old. We stopped the light in front of the fire station and he went, "Is that the fire?" He was so excited and my daughter was like, "What?" Yeah, my daughter was like, "We'll go by sometime. It's almost spring break." And I was like, "You should just walk in." But maybe we will. Because he was very excited. Um the last Sorry, I know it's the last question, but then I just I wanted to just confirm. So, um I think I saw that the budget is 8.44 million, but you bring in about 2.7 in revenue and you get about 3.2 in grants, right? So, we're looking at kind of a remainder of about 2.5, if I've got that.

No, Sharon. The 3.2 2 million in grants as an aggregate over six years. Yeah. So I think you're looking at roughly about a half a million a year on average. Some of those grants were larger, but you're looking at an average of 500 if if we were to try and do those programs through our regular budget or through a capital improvement. It we would probably be adding a half a million to to the budget. But we don't we don't have to do that. So we have to rely on that. So okay. Um that's all I had. Thank you so much. How do you cons? Um I think a department that does 2% of their responses as fire and 70% of their responses as EMS. You need to change your name of your department. That would be controversial.

Well, I mean you're more of a emergency management or emergency medical department than you are a fire department. So um I think that's I mean that's jumps out of me. Um as it relates to the shift, define what a shift is. Is it 24 hours on? How is the staffing? It's 24 hours on. So, our shifts are 7A to 7A. So, uh they do 24 on, 24 off, 24 on, five off, and they come back and starts over again. Okay. And you need how many kind of groups to do that? Is that four groups to to meet that cycle? Yeah, they they work on on a rotating schedule. So, our week is an 8 day week. Yeah. Uh we go on an eightw week stretch and then the system starts over again.

Okay. All right. Beautiful. Um you had a a category called critical infrastructure which was 495 and the MBTA station. Um is is that is that a benefit to have those in town to have 495? Obviously you you send a lot of a lot of car accidents. A lot of time is spent to that. I'm sure we don't get reimbured for your time being out there to do that. I'm sure the state don't write us a check for that.

So Bellingham is right next door. They don't have like is there a benefit to having an MBTA? I mean, how much of the town's budget is kind of I I wouldn't say it's an extraordinary amount. I think any community has that has any kind of major roadways that run through it have the same kind of response data that we would, you know, um I don't think we're any different than anybody else as far as, you know, benefit or not. I think probably the tax base for those is probably beneficial of of having, you know, the industrial parks and all that. Correct. Um I but we have a responsibility to make sure those those buildings are safe as well. So um but any community that would have that would have that kind of have that kind of volume. I know we we had you had mentioned that we do respond to a lot of EMS, but I I will say that as a fire department, um a low frequency uh event that that's like a structure fire, those emergencies, those are critical. Um and I think most fire departments operate the way that we do, especially ones that run EMS. Um so that I think that we have I think we had 76 incidents of fire last year. Um I know it's a small percentage, but um those are very high-risisk events. Um and we've been very we've been very very fortunate, especially over the last five or six years. We've had no fatal house fires um and we've had no uh significant injuries to firefighters, which is a testament to how well our people train and do their job. So

awesome. That's great. Um you had the mutual aid slide where it looked like one/3 2/3. Yeah. Um, I'm sure this would never happen, but at some point in time, doesn't some doesn't Medway or Bellingham say, "Stop ringing the stop calling us and how about you start sending it the other way?" They they we can't I mean, but they like it cuz they get the money. So, most of them So, actually, that was going to be my next question. How does that work when it comes to mutual aid?

So, last year we had 325 mutual aid in and 158 out. when the mutual aid uh 90% of those 99% of those are usually EMS. Um so if another C town comes in here um and does an EMS call, they're going to collect the revenue from that. Um

I'm I'm sure that that the community enjoys the revenue that that they're collecting from us. Um but that being said, we do tax our neighbors more than we probably should and they are also growing at the same rate that that we are. I know there's an apartment building in Medway on 126 they want to put in that's going to tax them. Bellingham spoke to the chief the other day in Bellingham and they they want to put a large development in over there. As those communities grow, they're going to have the same needs that we do. Um so they're going to need to grow as well. So they won't have the ability to as often be over here. So

yeah, I mean that that's a brings up a point that council Mallaloy was saying kind of those numbers would be interesting to see if there were 200 more calls that we could have done from an EMS what the revenue would have been. Yes, it's not you'd be spending more, but in theory it provides more protection. There's there's a numbers game in there that could make it benefit from just a pure selling point in that regard. It is. I I think um um you you might have mentioned it before in in another conversation, but uh you when we we bring in uh revenue over time y um

eventually that revenue will catch up to you know the cost of of the expense. I think that that I'm not going to say it's going to be today. I can't tell you exactly what every single ambulance call is going to generate because it depends on if it's paid by Medicare or if it's a self-paid or if it's a a Blue Cross Blue Shield or whatever whatever they're going to pay for a rate. Um but eventually over time um that would get added to our to our roles. And if you look at the volume over the next 5 years would probably be able to capture a lot more.

And the last comment I'll say you you highlighted it where you said there were six uh residents or people within the town of Franklin. you got resuscitated from probably near death. Whether that number was one or six, you should be doesn't make a difference what that number is. It's long you that's what you're there for. So I again thank you all for your service in that regard in all regard but especially that. Thank you. Thank you to you.

Thank you uh all three of you for all of you for coming out today the council meeting. Um had a couple questions. Um uh you talked a little bit about the grants that you have. I just wanted to know if there are any major grants that are risk of coming offline and if if they do come offline, will they have to be backfilled by town revenue?

I think um a lot of our grants revolve around training. So that that's that's the real some infrastructure grants as well. It really kind of depends on what goes on with FEMA. Governments been open and closed and open and closed and open and closed. So I don't really know. Uh but we do we're running a we're running a a a training program right now on uh on rescues on on like rope rescue and uh and extrication. So um that's something that's fully paid for by a grant. It pays for all the backfill for the employees at some point. Yes, if grants run go away. Um we're going to have to we're going to have to add to our training budget. Um we've been fortunate we haven't had to do that and we'll continue to be diligent to make sure that we get every dollar that's available to us. But but your the answer to that question is eventually it could possibly be.

So it's a risk. It's a risk factor. Um, you mention now I know we have like sort of the substation and the main department. How you you showed the leadership chart with the captain, lieutenant, and the the firefighters and paramedics. How is the staffing split between the main department and the substation?

So, headquarters has a battalion chief, a lieutenant, and the rest is comprised of firefighters. Station two, the King Street station has what we call a house captain. Um, so they're they're the captain of that station for that shift, and then four firefighters. So, uh, they'll have a captain and two firefighters on the engine and then two firefighters on the ambulance at that station. And headquarters will have a battalion chief uh in the command vehicle. Um, and then, uh, the engine likewise, a lieutenant, two firefighters, and then two firefighters on the, uh, on the ambulance. If we're staffed higher at headquarters, um, where we don't have as many people out, um, we'll have we'll move that personnel to the third ambulance, the the tower truck. again that ambulance at headquarters cross staffs the ladder trucks. So

do do the the um firefighters uh rotate between the the King Street station and the main station or they are they just one we we open up shift bidding so they can bid to the station. They rotate their position in the apparatus. Um so not everybody's on the ambulance every shift. Some shifts they're on it some are off. Okay. Um you mentioned uh the um the what is the average annual percent increase in uh calls that are non EMS related. Is it you said in general it's 4%. It's about a 4% increase year over year. And I think probably 76% of our calls are EMS somewhere around there. So I think you're probably in the math even. It's it's the AMS and the non are going up about the same rate about they do. Yeah.

Okay. Um, and how much of the increase in am if we were to increase ambulance service, how much could be covered through billing versus funding from the general fund? I I think I think we talked about that with I it it'd be almost impossible to say what it would bring in. I think eventually that ambulance would probably pay for itself at some point. Um, you can see from the budget it pays about 35%, you know, a third of the department. I think you could probably expect that right off the bat. Um but you know I eventually I think it'll probably pay for itself over the course of the next four or five years. Okay. Then eventually as the town grows will there be a fourth ambulance or Yeah. I mean it it's happens to every every community you know.

Okay. Um how much of a Okay. Um you mentioned your ISO class one status. This is really great. I commend the department for that. Um, but as the town continues to struggle with revenue to fund the department and considering the current staffing and response time trends, how close are we to a point where reertification might be at risk? We're very close. So, we we make ISO1 by a point, quarter point.

I mean, it's not it's not by much. It's not by much. Um, I think that the the dangerous spot we are is probably response time. Um, and then if we don't continue to invest in, you know, infrastructure and water manes and stuff, uh, that could probably hurt us, uh, down the road. Training is a huge piece of that as well, and maintaining our training, um, you know, courses and stuff we put on really help keep that number, um, where it should be. So,

do you see, you know, the town's revenue picture going, you know, forward to the next 5 years as making a difference in that certification? Yeah, I I I think if if the town doesn't have enough revenue to fund public safety, we will lose our ISO rating. That's not that's not a fast stretch. Okay. Um and finally, you know, we talk about the budget situation for the fire department. Um you know, I think we had a private conversation. You said, you know, there's only so much you could do to be more and more efficient until something gives. You know, how much more can we sustain until something gives? And if something gives, what will that look like?

You can't provide the service. I mean, it's we we would always do the best we can to provide the emergency services that that calls that come into our community. Um, but we we everybody has multiple jobs like we would just like we were just discussing about the EMS positions where they have we would have to give up public safety programs at some point. Um, that's not good for our community. problem with that is is that one side of our organization is geared towards reducing emergencies as much as we possibly can, educating the public, doing inspections, making sure our businesses and our residences are safe and the people that travel through our community. If we give up on that, then the other side increases. There's no there's there's no way to get around it. So, well,

thank you so much for your time tonight. I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Hi. um few questions, but first thank you for everything that you guys do. Um you've been to my house a few times, so um first question is, and I want to just make sure I understand the numbers. So the 8.44 for FY27 is what you were you're asking, right? Okay. Does that include anybody any positions coming back to get you up to the 134?

That's level service. So that that keeps us where we're at right now operating the same. Okay. Um now the grant funding is not part of that number. No. Okay. So that grant funding is above this for those specific things that

Yeah. So, when we go when we go and ask for capital improvements, like 2 years ago, we didn't ask for a vehicle exhaust system replacement, which would have been a couple hundred,000 because we were able to fund that in a grant. Um, training programs that we've been able to offer uh within the department, within the organization, um those are things that we probably wouldn't do. So, we would not have, you know, uh we would not be able to train our staff, you know, properly or continually. um we would see an effect in it overall in the organization over the over time, but those grants do not um provide money that's directly used in our operating budget uh to you know offset costs of of personnel. It's really to offset costs of expenses outside of that. So,

okay, I just wanted to clarify that cuz I wasn't sure. So, I don't want other anyone thinking that that's part of that. Um, all right. So then I did some math. Um, so I want to understand if you have if you get an 8.44 budget and I did 35% for ambulance is roughly 2.9 million. Yep. So if you subtract that from I just can't find where I did it. Um, if you subtract that from your budget, you're actually looking for 5.4 million theoretically in your budget cuz the 2.9 is coming in from the ambulance.

I think it's tough to to look at it exactly that way because the ambulance revenue goes into the general fund. So I think it's in the in the offset cost of the community uh is probably a little bit different but I guess in cause and effect yes I look at it that way because the real the reality is if you didn't have that the 8.4 would be coming out of our tax levies and everything like that. So realistically what taxpayer money is contributing is the 5.4 4. Yes. Because the other 2.9 comes from the ambulance. Yes.

And I saw that on the FINCOM meeting that the ambulance is running part-time about 40 hours. Yes. The third the third one. The third. The third ambulance. So when does that get paid off as far as paid off by? Do we still owe money on that ambulance or we is that already paid for? So when we when we buy ambulances, we usually will take there's a small portion that's partioned away. from that money that comes in. And just like the fire truck replacement where we put away 125,000 every year, we do the same thing with the ambulance and that's put away in a fund and then we we pay for it, right? Okay. Perfect. Even better.

So if if it's running approximately part-time, it would be reasonable to assess that if it was a full-time ambulance, we could pull in about 30 at least 50%. And yeah, it I know you can't. You don't know exact science. It's tough to say. We we would have to put it in service and run it for a period of a few years to actually go back and look like we have with this data and say, "Yeah, this is what it's what it's generating." Um I think eventually it would probably it would probably offset the cost of the employees. Um but I think there there would be a cost to it right off the bat.

Yeah. So most of the calls that other towns come and take for us, is it because the 30 ambulance is not in service? Yes. Okay. And the response time is because either a with their third ambulance is not in service or they're stuck at the hospital because the hospital can't get to the patient and they can't leave them. Y neither one we can well the hospital one we can't do anything about. So, in my the way I'm looking at it, if there was a way to get it in full-time, we would increase it because we wouldn't be having to call the other towns in.

So, if we look at how many times we've called them in because that ambulance is sitting in the garage or wherever it's parked, that's the revenue we would have generated. Yes. I think I think what is important to understand about mutual aid um is that would we capture all 325 calls? No. Yeah.

Because because if you look at our call concurrency um that that is this there are times when there are four or five calls. So I think it would be unrealistic to say that we would capture every one of those. I think it would be more realistic to say that if we've given out 158 emergency responses um we would probably take in 158 emergency responses. I think that would be more prudent way to answer that that we would probably be a little bit more equal in our mutual aid. Uh a little bit more more mutual. So we could respond more for them.

We would and truth we sometimes respond more for them because they're here. So I mean there are times our ambulance is leaving the hospital and we're going to Northfor because Nor is doing a call for us. That is how mutual aid works though. That is the design of the system. Um, but I I I don't I don't want you to be under the impression that we would we would respond to and do 325 more calls. That may not be the case.

No. And I get that and I understand the the concept of mutual aids just to make sure that every town has somebody to respond when people need you and you work as a team even though you're from different towns. The idea is if we didn't have to call them in just because it was sitting parked because we didn't have residents. That's where I'm coming from. I get there. Still going to happen. Because if they're already out and somebody else decides they need an ambulance, we're going to have to call in another town. I don't want to see that we're calling in another town because we don't have that one up and running, right?

That's where I'm looking at. So that's and basically that's why I'm looking at the number and I know realistically it all comes from the budget cuz the money goes back to the town. So I get that. But if you wanted to be realistic without without that money coming in from the ambulance, the whole 8.4 would have to come from the taxpayers without the ambulance revenue. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's that's where I was coming from. So part of your actual budget is from your receipts. Yes. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you guys. Uh, you already gave

I mean I already gave you a huge kudos at the beginning of the meeting, right? But as a as a dad who walked the kids on the strollers into the station multiple times just for something to do and you were always greeting us with open arms and a smile on her face and helping helping those kids. And I know I'm not the only one. Um, I was really glad to hear the explanation a little bit more in detail about battalion chiefs. Um, because they're not they're not administration, right? just to like get that misnomer out there. Like those men and women are truly frontline folks. They're responding to the emergency. They're managing everything if need be. They're going in. They're participating. Um they should Yes, they may have some administrative duties, right? Because they're part of your leadership team. Um but they're not like sitting at a desk. Correct.

They're truly out there doing um response work. Um, I happen to deal a lot with your battalion chiefs with smoke detector inspections, but I wonder if you could just talk to the public a little bit about if you're not selling your house, right? Cuz I I see this a lot where people are often very surprised at, oh, I have to bring my home up to code with the new types of smoke detectors that talk to each other and have the, you know, carbon monoxide and everything. And it it gets super confusing and people are like, "Well, I've had those for a long time and they've worked fine." Like what? So, could you just briefly cuz I know we're running long, but maybe just for the public's um education, what is it that they need in their homes?

So, every year we have in fire prevention week, we ask people to check their smoke detectors and make sure they operate. Um you shouldn't have a smoke detector or a carbon monoxide detector that's over 10 years old. So, if it's been in your house that long, it's time to change it. Um the code varies and I think uh Deputy Berry might be able to say speak a little bit to how complicated it is in Massachusetts. Um but the code does vary as far as the age of your home. Um what you have to have if it's a newer home there are more requirements. An older home requirements are a little bit less stringent. Um but you should have modern modern devices in the house. What I've always appreciated about you guys, unlike many other communities, you you respond you come out on those appointments to do these smoke inspections and if something's not quite right, you're not slamming the homeowner and saying,

you know, fail and you got to pay all over again, right? I've I've always really appreciated that about you guys where you're coming in and you're talking through what's needed and saying, you know what, we'll come back and you paid your fee cuz I deal with a lot of other communities where that's not the case, right? Where you we try and do the best we can to we don't want to don't want to be a burden and we we want to make sure that people are safe and when they when the new homeowners come in that they're that they have a good start in our community. So,

yeah. No, absolutely. So, thank you for that. Um, and lastly, you All the slides were fantastic, but you talked about being kind of at the bottom of the scale regionally for pay. We talked about not having enough people, hours being long, uh some equipment issues, some facility issues, um times not having optimal staff ratios. Yet, we're still an ISO1. yet we're still doing all this fantastic stuff. So, how's morale?

Great. I mean, we we have a great fire department. We have great employees. Um, we hire the best and we retain the best. Um, morale is good. I think morale would go the other way if we weren't supported by our community, but we have been, and I think we've seen that in the last uh the last five or six years. And part of that is those changes that we made, they were really positive for our organization. Um those required an investment uh by previous uh councils. Um they provided they required an investment uh from the public. Um and we've we've done well with that. I think that I think my intent with this is to show where we are where we need to be. We still need to put more investment in. We can't go backwards. Um and but we have a great fire department. Morale is really great. Um we have uh we have a lot of opportunity here. We've created a lot a lot of opportunity. Um, and like I said, no, we're not the highest paid fire department. Uh, I'm sure I I wish we were. Um, we're not, but people still want to come here because we are we are a progressive organization. Um, and and you have supported us. So, I think that that

support, if it's continued, um, will will continue to be great. So, and how's your retention, Chief? Pretty good. We're good. We're really good. I'm seeing everybody and behind you nodding their heads, you know, so your team here tonight are agreeing with you and not uh uh which which is great. You'll always always have my support. So, thank thank you, Jean.

Yeah, just three questions from me. Um first of all, I want to thank you um for coming in tonight and thank you for your service to the town. Um as you know, the council said, we really appreciate it. Um, first question is just it was it seemed like counterintuitive to me, but in looking at one of your graphs, is it the case where we had fewer mutual aid calls in 2025 and handled more of our own EMS calls in 2025? Yeah. Even with the um fewer ambulances?

Yeah, it's it's gone up and down. I I think in in in 2025, we're actually were running the third ambulance. I think part of that caught part of the year where we we didn't staff it. Um, and that probably caused a little bit of a spike. uh in last last year I remember that was it July I think we stopped staffing it for six months of that. Yeah. So there was a period of time where we had we had a bit of a spike. Yeah. That's probably attributed to that. Okay. Um second question is how is the price set for EMS services?

It's set by it's set by you guys. Um so we we have a billing agency. We use ComstStar. What what ComStar does for us is they handle all of our um all of our billing. So when we generate an ambulance run report, we gather the insurance information and and various uh information we need to build a call, it's sent to them. Um and then they provide us back with a report of our our revenue coming back from that. And every year they give us a uh dollar amount um of what departments and ambulance services in our region are charging. Um and we try and stay in the top 50. And we've been doing that for the past five or six years, I think. So, uh, we come in front of you probably in a couple of months to adjust the rate by a few bucks. Um, and then that that's really where it's at.

Oh, interesting. Okay, good to know. All right. Um, and the last question is I I heard you mention u when you were talking about Medway that they're doing a large development. Can you let us know how you view the impact of additional cuz Franklin has some new large developments, high density housing developments. How do how does the fire department view that the incoming um new developments and and how you're going to handle that and what you might see as a result of that?

Well, really for us, we see a lot of increase if if the development is residential, it's not more really impactful than if it was a a neighborhood with the same kind of density. Um we would see the same kind of call volume. We really see a large increase in volume is in over 55. Um I think of of of those 4,000 ambulance runs just about of our 2,800 transports probably better than 14500 of those were um from our over 55 uh occupancies you know 485 you know uh uh east central or you know a 4 hill the assisted living facilities they do tax us a lot more. Um, but as far as like a a an apartment complex, I think like Woodview Way was probably 80 calls, but if you if you divided Woodview Way up by a neighborhood, it would probably be roughly the same. It it really and and there are some we where we don't go. You know, we don't go to Dean AB as often as we do Woodview Way. So, it it's impossible to really say exactly what any one development will bring in for calls, but but for sure if it's an over 55, we'll see an increased call volume in there.

Okay. All right. No further questions for me. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Chief. Um, I mean, thank you guys for all coming. I mean, you you guys do a great job. There's no there's I mean, you guys there's a lot of you guys that train up at the academy. You guys are teachers. That that goes to show, you know, how both these both these guys are up there.

Yeah. Tommy teaches up there, too. So, I mean, it goes to show you um I I I'd advise everybody in here. I I did it when you I went into uh a burning building up in Milford with them and threw on the gear and went in just to you can't believe how heavy that is and to go in just to see what these guys do when they go in. They took me into a a fire. It's a lot of fun. I know Jamie did it. Jamie did it with me. I was shocked. Exhilarating. I want to get to the third floor. It is really awesome and it it does show you how heavy the gear is and how knowledgeable people have to be, right? Because

how quick you lose your ear. I mean, if you don't know what you're doing and stuff like that. So, I advise anybody to do that if you if you do it again. I mean, I when you were battalion chief, you responded to my broken neck. You're the one that made me go to you're the one that made me go to the hospital. I wasn't going to go. I'm glad you went. I'm glad you went. It's you we have to thank. And my wife told me not to go, but I don't know what happened. Anyway, no, you guys do a great job. Love you guys. Always do. Thank you.

Okay, boy. Shouldn't go. 4 hours 4 hours, right? 4 hours. So, we're good. Right. It was 4 hours. We changed the chang because I knew this would because I remember that. Right. Now, now he's bringing it back. That's why I change it. It doesn't have to start at 6. So, before we stop, let me get this straight. I'm not up against a 35minut 9:00 at 10:00. You are.

No. Yes, you are. your money. No, but yes. I'm well aware of the time. You all set to go? He just went about it. Be okay. He can catch him. Yeah. All right. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the council. Uh for everybody at home, if they don't know my my name is TJ Lynch. I'm uh your police chief. I'm accompanied by Deputy Chief Jim West and uh similar to what you just heard from the fire department, we're just going to kind of give you a rundown of where we've been, where we are, where would we like to see us go uh for the police department in the future.

All right, I'll kick it off with some of the history. Uh in doing some research for this uh presentation, we came across this document which I thought was interesting. It was written in 1977 by then Chief Arthur Pelgri. Uh and just just to highlight some of the things in the in the document, the first the expenses in 1875 was $31 was the total budget for the police department. In 1886 when officer served 11 months in which he was paid $550 and the total year yearly expense in 1886 was $8329. Uh in 1889 there was 15 special police officers and several constables and that's when the term COP became popular which stood for constables on patrol for those who didn't know that.

I didn't but thank you.

1904 the budget has skyrocketed to a whopping $2,50. Um in 1907 we had three full-time officers and 20 special officers. And in 1914 we increased to 40 special officers. Uh the last paragraph here, well 1977 when he wrote this, there was 28 sworn officers with 10 admin or support staff, one chief, one lieutenant, seven sergeants, 19 officers, one admin assistant, one meter man, four matrons, and four dispatchers. In the last paragraph, I'll just read. It says, "In view of the gradual growth of our local department, it is not difficult to predict the constant and necessary increase in personnel, equipment, and training essential to the protection and assistance of the residents of the town of Franklin. Future historians will no doubt one day refer to the quote old days of the 70s in the Franklin Police Department's history." So, here we are. We're 50 years later talking about talking about the 70s. I just thought that was an interesting uh interesting tid tidbit. Another thing I found was in Officer Frankie's here in the back, but I didn't know this, but this is not the first officer Frankie that the town of Franklin has. The first Officer Frankly was a VW bug in 1986. We found these old these old pictures. So,

Officer Bucky wearing that one. Yeah, I think he did.

So, just some fun stuff to start things off. our current department. Um, it's a photograph taken a few years ago. Our mission statement, our vision statement, I won't read it, but it's included in your packet. It is on our website. Current staffing today, we have 56 sworn officers, two administrative assistants, one for records and one for finance, and three mental health clinicians. This is our current organizational chart. I know it's hard to read. I'm going to blow it up here in a second so you can see each division. Uh we'll start at the top with the office of the chief of police. Obviously everybody knows Chief Lynch who provides the overall leadership and direction for the department. Um develops policies and procedures, manages personnel, hiring, training and discipline, develops and oversees the budget and resource allocation and serves as the primary leazison between the police department officials and the community. My job as deputy chief is to assist a chief in the old daily operations of the department. I also act as the chief um in his absence or when delegated. I'm the accredititation manager, so I'm responsible for all the policies and procedures and everything that goes along with being accredited. Uh I handle internal affairs, so any complaints that come into the department, I make sure they're investigated thoroughly. And public information officer and I have a great team that works all the social media and all that stuff behind the scenes. This section here is the special services division. Each division, we're broken up into three divisions, by the way. Um, special services, operations, and administration. Each division is led by a lieutenant. The special services division is led by Lieutenant Eric Zimmerman. Um, some of the things that this division is responsible for, the first thing is all special events within the town. So any special event from the fireworks, the harvest festival, anything that we do, there's an operations plan that's

developed. Um lieutenant will reach out to the state's fusion center to identify any threats that may be out there or any issues, develop a traffic plan, a response plan, contingency plans. Everything is prepared for so if something should happen, we'll have a plan in place to handle it. The left side is a comm uh criminal investigations unit or the detective unit. That unit's led by one detective sergeant. There's three general detectives, one narcotics detective, one court prosecutor, and one task force officer assigned to that unit. They handle everything from narcotics investigations, property and evidence, the court prosecution, crime analysis, and victim witness liaison. The other unit assigned to this division is the community service unit. Uh currently we have one community service sergeant and one officer. There was four. It was reduced last year to two. So they handle all school resource officer responsibilities for all the schools within the town, emergency management, homeland security, juveniles and special populations, and crime prevention. The middle division here is the operations division. This is the uh most forward facing division of the department. This is the officers that are out on patrol you see in uniform and marked cars. It's led by uh Lieutenant Michael Klei and assigned to that division are seven patrol sergeants, 34 patrol officers, one clinician supervisor, and two clinicians. Those 34 patrol officers are split into two groups, a group and a B-group. 17 each for the four on, four off. So 17 are on, 17 are off, and they rotate every 4 days. Um, responsibilities for this unit are obviously patrol, traffic

enforcement, uh, bicycle, K-9, warrant unit, armory, awards, fleet management, uh, accident reconstruction. They have domestic violence follow-ups, uh, problem oriented policing or the POP unit. What that is is, uh, we don't have anybody assigned to that right now, but they'll handle anything that might be an issue that needs a little bit more investigation, but hasn't really rised to the level of detective um, you know, community nuisance type things. They'll be able to dedicate the time uh, to go out there and handle it. uh special officers, traffic control officers, um clinicians, drone unit, motorcycle unit, and I skipped Metrole. I just want to hit on that briefly. What Metrolec is. Um it's a regional team that is responsible. They have a bunch of different units within Metrolec, including uh SWAT, motorcycle unit, mountain bike unit, detective unit. They have a cyber crime or computer lab, uh command post, drone unit, and peer support unit. So, we pay $5,000 a year to be a member of Metrolec, and we have to dedicate 10% of our staffing to be part of different units. Um, and for that, we get all of these different resources should we need them. Uh, one example of one we just used was the funeral for the Oxbridge officer that we had in town. Um, we had the support of command post. We had two actually. We had the motorcycle units who were able to escort the buses of officers from the industrial park down to the funeral. Um, we had um drone units that were right outside of our command post that we could see operationally. You can see where how the traffic was flowing, how everything was working from the air. And we had a SWAT QRF on standby just in case we needed it because with that many officers in town, it's it's a target. Uh

so the cost to the town for that was uh zero. All those assets came in. The only thing we had to pay is any overtime for officers assigned if they were assigned to one of those units for those individual officers. But everybody else didn't cost didn't cost us anything. Uh operations division. Uh these charts here on the chart on the left just talks about how many officers are scheduled per hour. Um you'll see it starts at midnight at the top. We have nine officers scheduled and it goes all the way down you'll see to to 11:00 at night. And the third column is the minimum that we will drop to before we have to hire overtime. So it's a minimum staffing. So if there's nine scheduled, you know, four could take it off before we get down to minimum. The last column, anything in green means we have at least two officers over the minimum uh is where we want to be. Uh and anything in yellow means we're below that. Um we only have one officer before we have to create overtime. The bar graph on the right just shows uh anything in red is the number of officers scheduled per hour and the blue is how many sergeants scheduled per hour. Uh you will see there they're a little heavier in the evening for patrol officers. That's when more calls typically will happen or more serious type calls, people coming home from work. Uh and also during the day shift the shift is augmented a little bit with uh like command staff is around, detectives are around, community service officers around so we can assist uh during the daytime as well if needed. Here's some graph of just some crime trends. Um you can see through through the years 2025 I'll just use the last year we had 25,377

calls for service which represent an increase of 3.62% and then just we broke down some of the different types of calls accidents assaults lares domestics and mental health related calls and a percentage increase there. We talk about traffic enforcement. Uh in 2022 we were able to increase our traffic enforcement and the number of car stops by 30%. 2023 it increased 93%. 2024 we did drop we had a reduction in the patrol uh division. Uh we had four officers retired or resigned uh due to other employment. So staffing went down in 2024. Uh and then in 2025 we got those officers back and we increased traffic enforcement by 27.5%. And those are the numbers of all the car stops there in the chart. Thank you. The uh average stop if you look at the number uh in 2025 was 12 car stops per day. the mental health uh program, clinician program. Um some of the numbers that the clinicians are responding to. Um 2025 they responded to a total of 9 and uh they had 948 interventions. 44 of those were arrest diversions, which means they they could have been arrested, but the clinicians determined that um you know, other services were better for that particular person instead of an arrest, which is really what we want. And then the last one, 142 of those were uh emergency room diversions where we may have sectioned 12 them or sent them to the emergency room and the clinicians worked with them and with the families to get them services and diversion programs.

use of force data in 2025. Um those are all the use of forces we had. We had 12 uh out of the 12, three of them were hands-on physical restraints. Uh four firearms displays um four taser uh either uses or displays and one restraint chair. Uh for those who don't know what the restraint chair is. It's a chair in our cell block. If someone's um you know possibility of creating self harm to themselves, we don't have the luxury of a a padded cell. We have to put them in this restraint chair which is uh soft restraints. Put them in a chair and they're secured without um their softer restraints and they can't hurt themselves. 2026 so far we've had three uses of force. um one physical hands-on, one firearm display, and one taser deployment. All this data, by the way, is on our website, and we keep it updated. And finally, the administrative uh division is led by Lieutenant Jason Riley. Um within that division, there's one administrative officer who assists with firearm licensing and accreditation uh and solicitor permits. We also have uh assistant for finance and assistant for records and all public records request requests that we get through the department. Uh some of the things that this division responsible for is facilities management, budget and payroll, details and traffic officers, communications, purchasing, firearms licensing, scheduling, grant management, records, information technology, training and recruitment. This is impossible.

Okay, my turn. I get the fun stuff. Budget. I'll leave that to him.

Uh, department staffing, uh, history, number of sworn officers. Um, this goes, it's 5-year incurrence starting in 1990, um, where we were at 31. happens to be the same year that we moved or 1991 we moved into the current police station on 911 Panther Way. Um 1995 one year before I started we were at 32. I've talked about it a lot that in the year 2000 we were at our top 50 and budgeted for 54 but never got there. And then you see the slow decline that occurred. Five years later in 2005, we're at 47. 2010, 46. When I took over as a chief of police on July 1st of 2016, we were still at 46. We ended up increasing in 2020 to 54, which actually means it took 20 years to actually get to where we were budgeted for 20 years previously. In 2025, we had 58. And obviously today we lost two, so we're at 56.

These are comparisons. So here's the thing. How do you know your police department is doing a good job? Well, we're in the top 10 safest communities in the United States of America almost every year for a community or city over 25,000 residents. So that that's one metric. So you can go with that. um we're accredited

so you know that you know that that there's something there. People you can talk to people you can look at the community national community survey public safety both fire and police did very well. Um but you know h how are we you know as we compare to other uh communities. So on the left hand side you'll see the name of the the name of the community. We didn't just pick these out of a hat. These communities are one of the 18 that the gov HR study that the town uh did for when it came to pay for non-union employees. They used eight different ma matrix to basically come up with the most similar communities to the town of Franklin. These are also the same communities that are used by our human resources department when they do collective bargaining uh comparisons. Uh so you basically see what the different departments have. This is all 2025 data as well. Fiscal year 25 what the data is. So the the average for these agencies in police ser for police is 61.5 with the median being 59. This is their budgets. So these are the same communities fiscal year 25 again the same communities on the left what their populations are the community's total budget which includes everything that they have for a budget and then the police budget to make sure it's an applesto apples comparison if the community such as Brainree has a uh harbor master I pulled that out cuz we don't have a harbor master if animal control was in that police budget. I pulled that out because animal control is in its own budget. If they paid for their cruises out of their expenses, I pulled it out because our cruises come and are paid through the capital program. If they had dispatchers because ours are with we have the mech. I pulled it out. There's the numbers. So the the average of those communities,

their budget in fiscal year 25 is 8.9 million. We're 1.6 million below the average. If you want to take the median, it was 8.5. We're one and a quarter below the median. So, I think it's been said the market basket more for your dollar. More for your dollar.

We're doing we're being named as one of the top safest communities in the country on a regular basis and meeting a whole bunch of other metrics. And we're doing it for less money and with less people. So I I tell you right now that every single person that works for for our department is second to none. Some of the best professionals that there are. Back in the mid90s and 2000s, we were basically uh probably in the middle to the upper third for pay. Um when compared to similar communities, these are the same communities. This is a patrol officer top step salary. And you'll see that Franklin is second from the bottom. And there is your average. There's your median. And there is the percentage of the difference to get us to the average of the median. And these are our sergeants, our supervisors, our first line that are out there making sure that everything gets done the way it needs to be. Um indispensable and they're dead last. This is just an example of five years of our budget over the last five years. Fiscal years 23 through 27. There's been some increases here and there like in fiscal year 24 when we ended up uh going from uh 54 to 58. Uh you look at fiscal year 27, we're looking at a $7.9 million total budget. Um it is a salary increase of 7.89% or a total increase of 7.5 but that budget is level service plus two. Um we put in to look we want the restoration of the two officers that we lost which caused us to eliminate the two positions in the community service unit. The far right

column is what the budget would be if the two officers were not restored and we were just to be uh level service. I'm not going to go through all these in the interest of time. Um this is just uh any accomplishments or achievements that the department has uh been able to um to do in in basically the last nine years from fiscal year 17 uh today. Um all of these you will find in the fiscal year 17 through 206 uh either budget narratives or annual reports. Um just some of the some of the highlights um you know there was a lot of things when we ended up uh in in in fiscal year 17 that we had like the evidence room project and how we ended up having to go through 3,000 pieces of evidence and got rid of a majority of them uh to get us down to 300. Uh it just had never been there never been a real audit of of what it needed to be and um we redid the entire evidence room at that time. uh same issues with the law and uh law enforcement trust fund project where we were co-mingling uh basically cash that was taken in as evidence as well as the money that we were uh granted by the DA's office and a judge uh that we could use towards um you know anything that the department would need. Uh we increased you know improved customer service. Um we began the process of diversifying the sworn office of compliment. When I became the chief in 2016, we had zero 46 male officers, zero females. Um, happy to say that we now have six female officers on the on the department. Um, in fiscal year 18 is when we originally ended up uh establishing the jail diversion program. We were in a regional with Medway. Um, it just got to the point that we just needed more services. we needed uh more

of them to be able to do what we needed to do. And like I I've mentioned it plenty of times, Jamie had the great idea uh to use some of the uh American Recovery Plan Act money uh because as long as it went towards something that benefited the entire community. Um, and although we did a lot of infrastructure projects, uh, we also ended up getting the county commission is to give us almost, you know, $950,000 to do a three-year pilot with three, uh, co-response clinicians, uh, which is what we've been able to do. Um, in 2019, we had the new schedule for the patrol division. Um, essentially we were given, you know, when I became the chief, we came in on the 10 yard line as we were moving into go to the mech and there was a lot of unknowns and there was a lot of things just a lot of information that hadn't really gotten to uh town administrator at the time, Jeff Nunning, and everything else about what dispatchers actually do beyond using a phone and um, you know, using the radio and answering the phone. Um, there was there was a contemplation of us going dark. So when you came to the police station anytime day or night, when you got to the front door, you could walk in and you'd be in a vestibule, but the second door would be locked. You wouldn't actually be able to access the station.

Um, we did a study and there was 65 people on a Tuesday that would walk into the police station. Um, we're just too big for that. It was just and I don't think the people in Franklin, the residents and the taxpayers would have liked to have a locked building um when they came to their police station. You know, for all those different reasons, we worked with the unions. Uh it wasn't easy. Uh but we finally went across the finish line. Uh there was a lot of people I don't think that were they were nervous about going to a new schedule, you know, four on four off 10 hour schedule. I think if I told them that we were going to get rid of it and go back to the four and 28, um I wouldn't make it out of the parking lot. Just wouldn't have. But it did. It worked for us. And with the savings in overtime for training and some other things, we were able to add five additional, you know, police officers that time, increasing our numbers, which is something we hadn't done in a number of years.

And like I said, I'm not going to you can read it. Uh there's plenty of different things that um you know, we've we have done over the years. current challenges. The police station we all everybody in town should know that we've been advocating for a new facility. Um it was built in 91. It was built for 31 you know police officers maybe for a little you know for a few more this and that. We are well above what that number is. Uh we have you know space restricted workspaces, overburdened evidence and storage areas, insufficient training and meeting spaces, uh locker rooms and fitness facilities that are completely undersized for how big we are and parking and security challenges. Um anybody that's been on a tour through the station and it was pretty much you know wasn't as many as we would have liked. Um and you can go on to the police uh station website and you can see all you know we've done a video of everything with a um voice over by me Steve. Thank you very much. Um so it's there and available for you to be able to to to to go through it without physically going there but feel free to come by. Um they all say the same thing. Yes, you are lacking the space that you need. You're crammed in there. And then the question becomes how are we going to pay for it? So get it. You know we we understand that. But it's a problem that's not going to go away and it's a problem that eventually is going to have to be solved because it's going to affect uh things, you know, it's going to affect many things down the road. Hiring, we're dealing with a lack of interest in a career in law enforcement profession. Um, younger people are just not as interested in becoming police officers as they once were. Um, like when I when I took the civil service exam, there were, you know, tens of thousands of people that would end up taking that type of exam uh to try to

get in. Um, everybody, you know, there were there was a vast number of people that want to be police. There's been a lot of things that have changed. Um, we can't work from home right now. We'll probably never be able to work from home. Um, and that's what a lot of people aspire to do. you know, there's all different kinds of things, but there's a lack of uh general uh interest, quality of the candidates, those that are interested in, and a lot of them are not qualified to do it. They're just people that don't work. And we are not going to I'm not going to lower the standards for the department. Um and I don't think any of the people that work for the department like to see that happen either. And I don't think I don't think you or the public or anyone else.

Um so it's hard. Um and then a lack of interest in the FPD by transfer candidates. I just showed you what they're being paid.

That's why. So why would somebody want, you know, literally why would they want to come here um if they can make $8 $10,000 working somewhere else? And then of course the current police station not being what it is. So our schedule's great and it's been it's been a windfall for us, I think, to be able to get people to come. But as as the pay discrepancy continues to uh advance and we are in an antiquated facility, it makes it hard which all comes to retention. How do you keep them? I'm not I'm not seeing a a ground swell of people leaving, but as that divide continues to grow, um you know, it's not lost that we we had an officer transfer to another community. He did not transfer because of the pay. He was trans he transferred because he was given an opportunity that was too good to to give up. And I told him he was crazy not to take it. But the community he went to, he's making $10,000 more for putting his pants on, showing up to work. It's just a reality. budget constraints, uh the reduction in sworn officer personnel, as we talked about it. We lost two people last year, uh the beginning of this fiscal year, um the reduction or elimination of the co-response program. That grant's going to run out in December of 2026, the end of December. The previous council already voted to utilize opiate opioid settlement money to carry it through the entirety of fiscal 27. But I don't believe the opioid settlement money will be to the level that it would need to be to be able to fund all three for a full year.

And I would, you know, and I would advocate tremendously that we do everything we can to keep the three clinicians that we, you know, currently budgeted for with the use of the uh ARPA money. Uh inadequate technology funding. I get this question all the time. Um body cameras. People ask body cameras, do you want body cameras? you know, why don't we have body cameras? It's not mandated by the state. State has grants for it which will pay for the hardware and that's it. So, they'll, you know, it's like you'll get the body cameras. What people don't realize is how much the storage costs. You're talking 30 days of storage for 58 employees that every time they go out in the public, make a car stop, have any interaction, have to record it. If that particular incident is something with criminal action that might occur or whatever, you now have to keep it indefinitely until the case is completely is completely done. Storage is extremely expensive. So, it's like your printer at home. I've mentioned it before. They'll give you the printer for almost nothing

and the ink will last a month. And then when you go to buy more ink, it's more than what you paid for the printer. Buy a new print. That's what this all is about the storage. And then you need someone to manage it all. Anything to do with the domestic violence case, you have to blur out the face and you have to take out any audio that basically would identify who the person is. And with our very liberal public records law in the state of Massachusetts, anyone can ask for it and we have to give it to them unless it's involved in an active case or something like that. between the DA's office, the defense attorneys, and people who just want to watch Franklin cops and not cops on, you know, local TV. Um, that is a huge, it's just a it's a challenge that, you know, we're just not going to um, you know, that we you can't afford it. We can't afford it. And I want personnel before you

over body cameras. You saw our use of force numbers. So when you do a costbenefits anal an analysis I you know it becomes more it would be a night it would be great to have them but not at the detriment of me having to lose long you know sworn officers to be able to pay for it. Um but there will be a time even though we don't have a lot a lot of use of force in that that one of these you know one of these there'll be an incident where our officer is in a dark alley all alone with a suspect something happens you know and the next thing you know there's an accusation related to that and we don't have camera footage to basically back it up and it's great for complaints as well. Not that we get a lot of complaints cuz we don't. But when someone ends up coming in saying hey I want to complain about the you know the officer he you know he or she was rude they did this. They did that. you you know you were you know they were wearing a body camera out the door they go. So it would be great to have them. It's just not for the expense that we may end up losing you know officers. All right. It was asked by the finance committee what the perfect like perfect department. So where where would we want to be? So we we basically back of envelopes spitballed it because it's never going to happen anytime soon. So with the sense of going into massive detail to it, but 68 total employees would be 62 sworn. We would add one lieutenant, one sergeant. Why? And two tra uh two officers that would do traffic and what we talked about the pop problem oriented policing. Um why the the rank? Because when we were at 46 and we went to 58, that's 12 officers that we were able to hire. We haven't added a single rank. Our span of control is getting out of whack. Um and we'd like to fix that. I've also included the three civilian uh we would we would go up to three civilian employees instead of just having uh someone in finance and someone in records. Um it would be the addition

of somebody that would split their time between IT and crime analysis. Uh Tim and his folks do a great job, but he changes people faster than we do. I've hired 44 police officers in the last 9 and 1/2 years. He's gone through a number of different people as well and they're doing the whole town, the schools, the municipal side, you name it. Uh, with the technology that we're using, I bet you the fire department would be in the same boat as well. You know, it's it is it's always you need somebody to be able to do it. Um, and of course the three mental health clinicians that we would be able to fund all three of them and keep it at that. So, the next question is what would it cost? be about $950,000 in salaries. And if you want us to get all the stuff that we got in capital right now back into the operations budget, we need 500 grand. So that's 1.5 million. It's interesting too that if we did all that, we'd be at the average and imagine what we could do with the added personnel and everything else. Just throw it out there. As deputy said, there's our website. It's chalk full of information. I would, if you ever want to know something or or uh you're interested in something about the police department, check out the website first. Uh it's a good chance you're going to find the information you might be looking for. If you can't, then by all means, call my office and I'll be more than happy to uh and this goes for everybody, public included. And lastly, I just wanted I said it before, but I I do have a number of the officers here today. If you're with the department and you're sitting down, please stand up. This is just a sampling of the men and women that work for for the department. They work for you. As I said before, they're the best of the best. Um, just

as Chuck said, I' I'd love to be able to pay them what they deserve. They don't deserve to be in the bottom where they're at. and um don't know what the answer to it is. That's your kind of you know issue. Um I guess uh but just wanted to make sure that they're recognized. Um like I said, I wouldn't I wouldn't trade a single one of them and I and I think that you know we're we're as good if not better than any other department in the Commonwealth because of their work.

Fire away. No pun intended. Yeah, right. Please don't. Thanks, Chief, and thanks everybody. You're very welcome. You guys are the best. Um, couple of questions. The funding for the clinicians. Can you go over that again? All right. So, the American Recovery Plan Act, uh, part of like the stimulus due to, uh, CO Yeah. So the um so we had the car's act money which was right at co and then I'm sorry just to save you time I get that I know I'm sorry when does it ex when does it expire and halfway through fiscal 27 or December 31st of 2026

this coming fiscal year. So this year, so halfway into fiscal 27 months, is there funding? Yeah. The the previous council, that's what I thought I heard you. Yes. They ended up taking So there's opioid settlement money. Okay. And it's only certain things you can use the opioid settlement money towards. And one of the first ones is clinicians, co-response programs, JDPs, u which is a perfect use for it. Okay. Um the money that's in there now that at the time that they voted to do it, there was enough to fund all three of them through the end of fiscal 27. So we're good for fiscal 27. That's what I want to clarify. Yeah. And the and the and a portion if not all the opioid money from that point would still go to fund the co-response program.

Yeah. So about in FY28 about onethird maybe to about 50% of those three clinicians will be able to be funded through the opioid settlement money. because even though right now we've got about a third of it allocated, um I know there are other lawsuits that are going to come in that are going to continue to give some additional small revenue. So I would guess in a best case scenario, you're looking at about 50% of the cost of that division will be paid for through opio opioid settlement money in FY28 and then for probably 15 years until that money runs out. I think it goes to about another decade and a half. Oh wow, that long. It goes for a long time. Yeah.

Thank you. I thought that's what I heard you say. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I was clear on that cuz I didn't see it in the fiscal 27 budget called out specifically. I saw the offsets for the employees and so forth, but I wasn't sure what happened afterwards. I think it had to 28 and I wasn't sure how far that went into 27 in the crime trends chart that you have. Can you talk about the 2025 mental health related category at 948 versus 369 just a couple of years ago? Kind of what constitutes mental health related calls and do you see I mean that's a big jump over the last couple of years. It's the number. It's basically the number of calls that the clinicians are actually either responding to directly or they've done a followup with. So like if they're even with three of them, they're not on 24/7,

right? So when they're not on and the officers end up encountering somebody that's having a mental health issue, um they will then end up, you know, giving the report to the clinicians so that they can end up doing a followup to try to end up getting the person outpatient services if it's needed or, you know, something like that. I mean, that's basically what they're touching and talking and dealing with somebody for every one of those numbers. And prior to the having the those clinicians, what would happen in those cases? Did did nobody speak to those people? religious kind of

No, we would go we would go on the calls, but for instance, the reason the emergency room diversions are have gone down is because we're not trained to make a determination if somebody is seriously, you know, serious about or would have the mean or the, you know, the in their minds that they're actually going to harm themselves. Yeah. So, I'm not going to lie, what do we do? We take them to the hospital, right?

You know, and usually they're back out and they're back running around in the community before the officer is even done doing any of the paperwork. And maybe what you just said clarifies that a little bit, but because I've noticed the same with the ambulance calls. I mean, the 4,000 ambulance calls, I don't know how many of those the calls that we're talking about here require an ambulance transport. So, I just wondered if they were somehow kind of related if they're going to go to the hospital, but if they if they end up doing an assessment with the individual on scene and they make a determination that the person is not a harm of themselves and they don't need to go to the hospital, then there's no need to call diffuse it. Okay. Got it. Okay.

And the SP it's gone up because CO the the whole COVID pandemic was awful when it came to individuals that might have any kind of anxiety, you know, things related to that. The isolation, I mean, it really it really caused a lot of people a lot of difficulties. I mean, even people that don't have, I guess, like just, you know, treatable mental health. I mean, it was all a burden on everyone, but for some people, it was a lot worse. and we just, you know, tremendous spike, you know, a after that and we're still going through it today. I'm guessing you don't see that ending anytime soon. No. Okay.

Okay. Uh, couple of other minor questions, but in the for the sake of time, I'll I'll I'll just drop it there. So, thank you. Okay.

Um, just one question. Um, one question. It might be straightforward because I think you actually addressed a lot of it. I just want to uh in your comments I I just I just want to give you a little chance to uh to speak to it more directly. Um point out the fact that uh Franklin gets very strong ratings for uh for safety um and and for all the good work that you all do. Um and that we generally are getting more for our money um and and have been doing that historically you know and then you do you also point out the requests and needs what what an ideal department would look like but I think the question has to be asked sorry I don't know if it has to be asked I think some people might ask the question you know why shouldn't we just keep doing what we're doing you know if we're getting all this bang for our buck um and and and it's working out, why can't we just stay where we are?

And I would answer then then talk to your peers who are complaining all the time about the fact that traffic is is terrible in their neighborhood. Um or you know, any number or the mental health related calls for service that are going up. Um you know, things like that. It's just we're able to do what we're able to do, but we're we're at the we're at that point where we're not going to be able to do, you know, anymore. We've already seen what happened um with the decrease that we had with just the two officers. I I I will never advocate for going below 34 patrol officers in the patrol division. It it's a necessity for the call for service volume. Uh you you saw the minimums, you know, where they're at. I mean, on the overnight, there's there's four police officers and a supervisor for the entire 27 1/2 square miles. That's what we have right now. um even going down, but it's it's not a and again those metrics, it's great to be it's great to be acknowledged that we're one of the safest communities. But what the insurance companies that end up putting that together, they're looking at six neighbors, you know, matrix. One's murder, one's rape, one's aggravated assault. Uh there are two property I'm can't think of the other ones, and there's two property crimes, you know, which is usually where we end up coming in there. Um, but that's not capturing all the other stuff that the department has to that that we're dealing with, whether it be in the schools with the limited SRO that we have, whether it be, you know, all the mental health related issues, um, any other, you know, crimes that they're investigating or coming across, the motor vehicle accidents, um, you know, things like that. It's just it's not capturing any of that. It's great that yeah, violent wise, violent crime wise, we're doing real well, but it's not capturing everything.

And I think I would probably add to add to that that that that's all based on where we are today. And as we, you know, and if we're not able to keep up, um, even with the level of funding that we've had, if we're not able to continue to grow it, at least on a commensurate level, we, you know, there's a real possibility that we'd see that that that there would be an impact to your ability to keep us safe. Oh, absolutely. And and and part of the thing isn't that like, you know, people were asking for the pie in the sky like where we'd like to be.

Yeah. It's not going to happen. Um, but it's also part of this whole exercise was we need to stay where we are, where we are. We need to get the the two officers back. We need to be a 58 and somehow stay where we're at. People also ask about the police station. You know, there's no Do we need it? Absolutely. Do we need a Do we need to solve the structural budget deficit affecting the operations budget for the town? Absolutely. Is the town of Franklin going to give both a Prop 2 and a half override if it's what we come up with because it's a simple thing. We need more revenue or we're going to cut services. So all the other stuff is noise. Revenue, right?

We're cutting services. It is what it is. Rest is noise. So if we And how are we going to get revenue? Well, whether it be a Prop 2 and a half or not. Um, if they were to vote for it, are we getting a $47 million debt exclusion anytime after that soon to get a new police station? No. So, I'd rather stay in the cramp building that we're in with 58 for our total sworn and unsworn right where we were at the end of fiscal 25 and basically stay where we're at. then go to a new shiny police station wherever it might be with 50 sworn officers and one civilian because it's been that it's 5 years later and all we did was cut have to cut more and have to cut more. But this exercise was give us back what we need, what we had, and then if we could stay at that, I think we'd be fine.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's an excellent exercise. I I I appreciate it. No, I'm just it's helpful to have that context. Um, and it's really helpful to hear you, you know, speak to why um, you know, the focus is on the on the personnel as opposed to the stuff. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome.

Um, thank you. Thank all of you very much um, for all the work you do and and um, at the level we have been able to afford to pay you for it. So, um, also I wanted to I was going to make the same comment that counceloru made about how there is, you know, the the the narrative is you're getting so much bang for your buck, right? We're we're doing so many great things with so little money. Um I I feel like that is 100% true and also um I don't want to hear it as much because um I think it then spins the story that we don't have to change anything. Um to councelor Juka's point, you know, that's and what you just said is that's not the case. We do have to change this. Um, I appreciate the comments that you made a minute ago about kind of boiling it down to what actually will solve things. And um, the the the bottom line is we need more money for all of you, for the fire department, for the schools, for every department in town. Um, but I also really appreciate that you kind of clarified where you see the um the importance whether it's that structural deficit that has to be addressed through probably um an override vote down the line or the police station because I know that that is a big um sticking point with the community is that you know in the last last couple of years when we've had this conversation about overrides the conversation about the needed police station has also come up at the same time and I think that that has um led to a lot of um you know just uh complications in people's thinking about where where they want to to invest the money. So I appreciate that you kind of

specifying hey we need to do this first. Um and I had a question and I have forgotten it. So, um I I if I think of it, I will come back. But, um bottom line, I wanted to say thank you and um we we do appreciate everything you do and we would love to figure out how to how to fix things moving forward. Oh, I do remember actually. Thank you. Um I just had to talk long enough to get back to it. Um the two police officers and and you we've you've mentioned this many times. I want to come back to it just because again if people are listening I want it to be said again. The two police officers that we cut last year I know that they were not um terminations because right they were open positions that weren't filled and then people were reassigned. Correct.

That is correct. Um and those were the two um community service members that were moved. So that was um there were a lot of things that came up in the last year that um the town felt we lost because of the reassignments of um those two officers. And if you don't mind just um could you could you speak on that a little bit just so that anyone again who is listening could um hear again why some of those things were lost and um what some of those things were. So I know you know uh well you I'll let you speak to it but like Halloween party SRO's things like that.

All right. So when the um so in 2024 Jamie and I had a long talk and he basically offered me uh two officers. And I said nope I need four. And he said why? And I said because I need to augment the patrol division to get it to where it needs to be at 37 off you know 34 officers 34 patrol officers. So, we got them and definitely needed to stop the onslaught of ordering. So, when we go below that minimum and no one wants to volunteer to work, you have to order. We can't close a section of town off like a restaurant and say, "Nope, that's closed. We're just not going to police that area tonight, you know, blah blah blah." Doesn't work like that. So, we have to order. So, we when it when it came down to you, you're going to be cut $250,000 if that's what the town council has to do. Um, I made it perfectly clear during every listening session and everything else exactly what was going to happen if we were cut $250,000. We would be cutting 210 and the benefits budget in the town would be cut $40,000. And I said that would mean that we would need to transfer two officers from the community service unit into patrol to augment that. Yes, we were lucky that we kind of saw the writing on the wall might happen. We had an open position. I didn't fill it. the previous individual I talked about who went to another community on a too good to you know not take it thing. Uh he left middle of June otherwise Jaylen Samuels would have came out of the academy on June 20th worked for us for 10 days and got laid off. So we avoided that which was great but we removed the we transferred the two. David go is here Amanda was here. They were also the handlers for Ben Franklin and Frankie and they were school resource officers as they are when they were in the community service unit. They weren't, you know, they they good soldiers. They did what they had to do and all that, but you know, it was very

unfortunate. You can't have a unit with four people in it, cut it by 50% and expect them to still do the job that the four of them were doing. That's idiocy. Just can't happen. So, what ended up happening? Yes, there were things that were removed, they were basically cancelled, eliminated or reduced. And one of the things that was eliminated and everybody talked about it, which is a complete fallacy that was out there. I'm not a social media person, so I'm not going to go on social media and and debate it and this and that. There was a thought that we were doing it. Some thought we were doing it just to, I don't know, get back at the public because they didn't do the override. That's ridiculous. Um, others thought we were doing it because we didn't have the money. That wasn't true either. We had the money and I'm sure a majority of the people that are in this room if they could have because they weren't working would have volunteered to do it as they always have. There's no question in my mind. The problem was is I had four people normally would do all the work to plan for 2500 kids and their parents to come down to the police station on the day we do it. And now I'm going to ask two of them to do that. While a historic redistricting of our public schools occurred a month and a half previous, we had kids getting on the wrong bus. We had all kinds of crazy stuff going on and two people that were responsible primarily for that. Yes, the patrol division augments when the SRO's can't do it. That is the only reason it was not fair to have those two do the work that the four of them had done to plan that kind of meeting and all everything uh to plan that kind of event with all that that goes into it. They just couldn't do it. We canled we canceled the majority of our internships with you know Dean College Tri County. They did do the senior project because they came to me and said we're going to put in the effort and I you know we we'll be able to do it. I said okay. Um there were you know car seat installation uh installation probably

suffered but we did have a number of patrol officers that were trained to do it so they kind of picked up the slack. Um there was no more leadership camp down at you know again those four were scheduled to be there because the schools were closed for that entire week. Um those are the reasons and those are the things that occurred.

Thank you. I think I this is probably the third or fourth or maybe fifth time I've heard you you know enumerate those things. Um, but again, I wanted it to be heard because while you have to shift things around for um to keep to keep Franklin as safe as it is, those are the things that necessarily have to be cut and those are things that are being felt and I feel like that is, you know, the the residents need to kind of hear and understand why that is um being done. So, thank you for um listening out again. Appreciate that. You're welcome.

Thanks, Mike. Okay. Um, first of all, as it relates to the two potentially two additional officers, you know, my stance on that, which is I want to add them. And I think uh hopefully the rest of the council heard when they were when the finance committee was talking, it's going to take free cash to do that, to add those back. So, I think they're important. So, I hope everyone else supports that. Um, you made you made a mention tonight that we're in the top 10 in safe. We're better than that. We're in the top two. And I act my question to you is we lo we were top one and we lost it. How the heck do we get back to top one? What do we got to do to get to one again? Again, I want to kick Le Colorado. I was looking. We're already here. I'm looking it up.

Take a trip to Colorado and do something at Upstand. How do we kick them out of number one and get back there? We were there for two years and they took it over for the last two. Seriously, how do we get back to number one? I don't know. What is What is What is it? All you need is one incident, you know, like something big, a homicide, you know, we don't have a homicide, you know, very often in Franklin. It's very few and when we do, it's usually family related. This and that doesn't mean the community is any safer than it was, you know, like the last one that we had. It wasn't a stranger type thing or anything like that. But it it it, you know, it es and flows. It's just how often

how often are you there? It kind of shows the type of community you have and and um and and like I said, we we've historically been ranked somewhere in there. Yeah. No, we're doing better than top 10. We we are and I Well, I didn't want to gloat, but I know you should. You should. You got all you should. All of you out there should um you said that the it's I think four on four off for for staffing. From a from a day shift standpoint, what like a similar question, what are the shifts? Is it 8 8 12 and 12? Like during the day when they're rotating through, how does how does you mean the shifts? The Yeah, the actual shifts during that day. So I'm coming out, I'm working from 8 to 4. 6 A to 4 P. Okay.

4 P to 2 A. 11 A to 9P and a 9P to 7A is correct. Okay. So a whole bunch of different combinations in there. I'm working a five and two. So, um, yeah, there was a there was a 1 to 11 1:00 a.m. to 11:00 in the morning. Who the heck gets that

Usually it's the people that come on, uh, new to the department. Always wanted to get rid of it. Just never had the numbers to. And then finally, you know, cuz that yellow section was a lot less when we had the one to 11 because of the overlaps. Um, it's more now, but it it was it was a complete wellness thing. I mean, it was basically torturing them, especially have children. it's almost impossible. Um, and on top of it, when we were cut two bodies, two officers, there wasn't new people coming on. So, the people that were on that shift had been on there for a very long time, and they were actively looking for other employment.

Okay. Um, little bit of high-tech. Um, I agree with you. When it comes to body cameras, it's about storage. You're absolutely right. I mean, your printer analogy couldn't be more accurate. Um, do the do the cars themselves have cameras in the car? No.

No. So, no cameras. Um, do you see a time where drones and stuff like that? Policing is is a very personal physical like fire is, but is there is there technology that's out there that in the future drones and other things can replace some of that policing in and of itself? I I mean, we utilize drones. I don't know if it'll ever get to the point, you know, there are there are some uh communities, not so much in Massachusetts, I think, but you know, the West Coast, I think, that are actually using drones as like first response, and they're flying them. I don't know how I mean, part of the thing was I think they're giving dispensations now where they usually you had to be able to see.

You had to be in sight, line of sight with the drone. If you're going to fly it off the top of the station and the desk officer is basically taken off to the mall, you really don't have that line of sight. Um, at some point I think that might happen. Um, but the best drones we can't even buy anymore because the federal government, you know, because I don't know if there's like listening devices from the Chinese government or whatever else, but um, so they're going to have to get a little bit better, you know, with the current, you know, the the stuff that's available. Uh but at some point I think no there there was a huge thing for technology but come down to the station and look at our technology room it's it's a it's a closet and it's already jam-packed and again we're looking at all these different things and and no it you know limited it

you know so it's like you want to do some of this stuff but you got to have the infrastructure you know beforehand to be able to do it

and I guess the only other thing and that some people could look at as controversial are like flock cameras and cameras throughout the community doing license plate reading is um that a the ACLU thing is a complete it's it's completely inaccurate. It is 100% inaccurate. Maybe not for certain communities that decide to open up uh the ability for uh the federal government agencies or other agencies to look at that that we've already locked ours down to just the agencies that we choose to be able to access it. It is not being used for immigration enforcement. It does not end up using any kind of uh AI. It takes a picture of the back of the vehicle. So, we don't get a it can't be used for, you know, racial bias because you're not going to be able to see the driver. This there's no listening devices.

Um that's all it does. And the only way that the officers can access the footage is if if they're basically looking and are investigating a criminal activity, you know. So, like all the car breaks that are going on, you know, I had an email back and forth with somebody uh from one of our, you know, neighborhoods in town today before I came here. Um, we've had instances where we're able to actually pinpoint who the who the person is. And God forbid if we ever had like an Amber Alert, it will hit on the fact that that car with that license plate that we're looking for just went by the camera, which would give us an opportunity to potentially apprehend that person and get that child back.

Um, no. And and again, you're talking about us. You're talking about the Franklin Police Department, an accredited professional PD that I would hope has gained your trust through our trust building campaign, one of our accomplishments that I didn't go over with or anything like that, that we would never allow something or do something, you know, that would jeopardize people's civil, you know, civil rights. Cuz here's the deal. If you're a criminal, then be concerned about flot cameras. If you're not a criminal, we don't give a blank on what you're doing. we have enough to do. We don't care. We're not going to be looking at the footage for any, you know, for any other reason than a criminal activity and trying to uh work a case. I appreciate that answer. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Well done.

Thank you, Max. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank everyone here and thank you so much for coming and talking to us. Um I'm kind of scared to ask this first question, but is Ben the therapy dog still with the department? Yes. Okay. Cuz I know you mentioned his handler earlier and he goes to bed at 7:00. Okay. So, I'm a little worried, but I mean I I'm concerned cuz you know our budget crunch has our budget crunch has gotten more and more severe. If we were to lose the other two SRO, what would happen to those those those dogs?

Well, the I mean Ben actually lives with Jamie Macheron who was a retired officer in the department. Uh still a special with us. Uh and a man because he was the his first trainer as pup and everything like that. Uh, and Amanda Rea, uh, you know, goes to the house, picks up the dog, you know, daily. This Ben's getting up there, getting a little older. Um, you know, he's a good sized dog as well. Uh, and Frankie, same thing. I mean, it end up with Dave. He's never, you know, we always supported our canines basically living with their handlers, you know, once their service was over. Um, but Ben's still he's still serving. And Frankie Frankie's here. Frankie's here. But so I just I just want to point out, you know, our decisions as a council has consequences and, you know, I just want to make sure that people realize that it's not just humans that are affected, but are canines as well.

Unfortunately, they're not in the schools as much as they used to be. And and that's where I think we got our our biggest bang for our buck is having the dogs available to the schools. Um, they go if needed. It's just they're on patrol now. So they get a they get one of the four sectors in town and they're responsible for that. um they're just they don't have that ability to basically, you know, be at the schools, you know, and do those types of things like they used to. Okay. Um I did want to follow up on staffing and we talked a little bit about how, you know, uh staffing uh salaries are a lot lower than other departments. Um how much are we spending annually on uh recruitment and training due to turnover from below market wages and how does that affect public safety?

I wouldn't say that we're actually we've lost anybody. I'm not I don't believe and I always have an exit interview with them and I tell them when I hire them that if you're ever going to leave just, you know, give me a no BS exit interview. I can't fix what I don't know is broken. Um and they're pretty good. So unless they're lying to me, they're not leaving because I guess the pay and all that, but if it continues, they're, you know, I've talked to some of the members of the department and this and that. they're concerned about it and it could end up being one of those things that does end up affecting a decision to potentially go to a neighboring department that might be paying more and then you'd have to actually train pay to train new people

well would either get a transfer but it's tough to get transfers when your people are leaving because the pay is not good and you have an antiquated facility so now you got to put people in the academy and I've already talked about this before um the issues related you know I'd love to put people in the academy when you're at full staff if you have one opening you can afford to do it because when you do decide to put that person in the academy. That slot on that schedule is open for an entire year between the time we end up posting it, bringing them in for interviews, choosing someone, background check, pre-employment screens, 3 to four months, six-month academy, 14week FTO, field training program. It's a year. When I take a transfer, they got four or five years on the job, maybe maybe a little less. The whole thing is like a three-month process and then they're doing a four to five week FTO and then they're in that slot open slot in the schedule is no longer open.

So I guess my point is is that if you if you start cutting even further, you you won't even be able to save money because you'd have to just retrain people over and over again. I have some of the best field training officers anywhere because they're the busiest field training officers anywhere. 44 hires in nine and a half years. Okay. So, yes, but it is it's an expense and every time you have to grab, you know, it it's $4,000 just for initial issue. These uniforms aren't cheap. So, I did those were softballs. I do have a few things to build up what Michael said. Bring them on.

Oh, you're on it. Okay. Um, well, this is sort of tangentially related. Do you have any Stingray devices that use like cell cell sight simulator technology in the department? No.

Okay. Um, and then just to build off Michael's comments, I know some of the concerns weren't necessarily about the Franklin police. I we trust the police here. You do great work, but I guess the concern is with data sharing. you know, there's um I know you have like a radius around New England that can share with for auto approve, but for like a state, you know, police officer in Alabama, you know, we might not trust them as much as we tr trust the friend of police. So I think that's where some of the concern comes from and I think that um the uh there was an issue with the flock contract and specifically the concern is is whether the flock contract overrides some of the provide policies that you have and could you affirm or confirm that the contract does not override any policy protections that you have at the policy level? No, there are no conflicts with it and uh a trooper in Alabama can't get our data without specifically asking us for it. Okay. And they'd have to probably end up making they probably have to email first, maybe a phone call one of the criminal investigators. Um and then we make a determination, you know, for that. Um but they're not getting it. It's mainly just in this area. um because we do work with like you know Waka and some you know I can't say not out of state because and there are Massachusetts but there are some you know Rhode Island communities and others that we do end up having the sharing with uh because it makes the investigations more timely and efficient that you can access their data and they can access yours. And I guess the final thought is and I was looking through your policy manual and um like I think it was like a lawful a law enforcement reason and you did have certain exemptions for it which I think is good but there was no um what's the term like not reasonable cause but reasonable suspicion standard and I just was wondering if if you could consider a stronger standard around reasonable suspicion that would allow for searches that are not on the hot list so that you can um there's just a little bit more protection for people who, you know, against abuse,

but they're only it's protection of what? You don't have a right. There's no right of privacy for your license plate. It's issued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You don't have a plenty of case law related to it. It's only taking a photo of the back of the car because there might be a a distinctive uh bumper sticker or something like that. We don't know who, you know, it it's we don't know who you are or who is actually even driving. We're trying to identify the vehicle uh involved in the case and we don't need reasonable suspicion because you have no right of privacy in that plate. Uh and every officer that does an investigation has to put down when they do it that you know why they're doing it. And it's audited every 3 months by Lieutenant Zimmerman as to why they did it, how many that there were and so forth. So I mean we have checks and balances galore. We've never had an issue with it. And just because the ACLU says that there's a problem doesn't mean that there's a problem. So even though it's not a constitutional right at the state or federal level, that doesn't mean something that something the town could choose to implement as a safeguard. Correct.

And if if the town council for the first time ever is going to basically try to implement policy at the police department, uh we could talk offline. All right. And with that, I'll I'll uh appreciate your time and I'll uh you the floor. I'm going to be quick because I don't have really a lot to ask. I met with you and I've seen the station and it was eye opening. Um thank you all for being here late at night with us. It's a party. Um just really want to ask a question on clarifying something when you and I don't remember the slide. So um but when you were talking about the median

Mhm. and you were talking about you had the those towns. Yes. That budget for those towns, just to clarify what I think you said, does not include their budgets does not include the same money that you have you get from capital. In other words, they they're getting money from their capital budget for the like the cruisers and stuff. That is literally just their operating budget as your budget is here.

Correct. It's just their their salaries and expenses if it included like cruisers in their budget so that it was much higher than what it would have if it had cruisers in it. If it had animal control, if it had dispatchers, if it had a harbor mass, if it had anything that was separate and not including our budget, apples to apples, and I found it, I ripped it out. Okay. So when you look at their budget, it would if they had any of those, their police budget would actually be higher than what it is right there because I already eliminated the things that we don't have in our budget. So it's a better apples to apples comparison.

Okay. No, the reason I asked is cuz I had done some math and I was trying to do stuff and I'm like, but if we add in the capital to yours, you're closer to that median. But you're not because the capital that same amount isn't in those numbers for those towns. But adding the capital does nothing other than it's a shell game and you're moving it from one another. You want the capital so that the council can do some other things that are more capital improvement wise, but it still means I'm getting the same money.

No, I know I I was wasn't doing it as I wasn't doing the math that way to say that you're getting what you need. Um I get your budget. I get what you need. I get what the SRO's and all of that. I was just trying to do comparing, but my comparison wasn't correct. If those towns budgets that you have up there wasn't including that money either. No, if it if it had it in there, I I pulled it out. Okay. So, that's all I was just trying to clarify. Okay. Um and I yield.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chief. Thank you to everybody here, men and women. and you're you're all fantastic and we're lucky to have you. You make us proud every day. My only question, and I know it's an antiquated term, Chief, uh, you know, meter maid, um, because I don't really know what we would call somebody that did that today, but is there any benefit to adding that position to the budget to try to bring in not just bring revenue in from things that, you know, the public aren't taking consideration for like, but also would it help you guys like with actually enforcing the laws, you know, cuz you've said to us a couple of times over the years, like like my guys don't have time to go write tickets to people that are not following signage downtown. So, it and I think the public has heard that and I think some of the frustrations that we sometimes hear are like, well, why do I bother abiding by the sign? Nobody's coming to give me a ticket anyway. So, I just wonder, it's the one thing that hasn't been covered, and I just wonder if there's any value to that. So, parking control officer is what we uh had for, you know, for numbers of years. Um, the PCO as we called it. Uh, and that's what they did. They basically like they collected the coins out of the meters.

We don't have any meters anymore. Um, and then they would do some parking enforcement. Um, I took the PCO, added it to the savings that we had going from one firing range that required frangible ammo to another firing range we're currently at that do not require frangible ammo. Put them together and we're able to hire a police officer. That's why it's no longer with the department because I'd rather have the sworn police officer y who can write tickets for parking enforcement and other things but can do everything that a police officer can do and a parking officer can't do any of that except for just parking.

Yeah. And I I want you to have the sworn officers too. I'm just wondering if there'd be any benefit to I I I would say that yes, putting somebody in that position to enforce some of these signs and bylaws that we have and bring in some revenue. Yeah, I would say probably yes, it would help, but I don't need a guarantee that if you're going to give me the path and control officer, I'm not going to lose any of the the sworn officers. You want to throw more money at us? Please do. You know, but that's all I'm saying is that's why we did what we did. They do enforce the the parking and there's only one place in town that has there is not there really isn't any place in in my opinion that has a significant parking issue.

Uh I know that there's this whole thing with West Street. It's been the bane of my existence from the time I've been the police chief. There is 92 spots in that whole neighborhood and I bet you 10 of them at the most are taken at any time. and it happens to be some of the kids that are just whatever lazy didn't want to pay the fee, a dean, whatever it might be. Um, but are they really causing a ton of problems? I don't think so. Okay. And it is violating and we try to do it. I'm guaranteeing you. And they do do parking enforcement. It's just sometimes there are more important things that come up and it's only between those times that they can basically do it. They have to find the car there. They have to come back and make sure it's still there two hours later.

Yeah. Um, I asked the uh fire department this, but how's moral?

Thumbs down.

Um, like I said, I I think it it's not it's not terrible. It's not bad, but I don't think anybody was excited about the fact that we we had to cut two police offices to see, you know, those are the community service office positions are what we call like specialty positions. So people aspire to specialty positions, rank, etc. So when it when it when it gets reduced, it's really tough for the two for the individuals that had to be transferred out, but it also reduces the prospects for the rest of the officers. Um, and we have a lot of talented people and they know it and it's and it's very competitive. Um, so they're not there. And then when you add in the fact that it doesn't look like we're getting a new police station anytime soon because of the realization of we need the structural budget deficit fixed first. And then you add to the fact that they're quite aware of where they are when it comes to pay scales. Um and they realize the town's in a tough situation, you know, financially. Um it weighs on you after a while. I haven't had anybody come to talk. People only come to talk to me for two reasons. They're either coming to tell me they've done something wrong and they need help or they're coming to tell me I'm leaving. So when they say, "Hey, you got a minute, chief?" I know exactly what it is

because my people aren't doing anything wrong and they're not getting themselves into trouble. And it's uh I got to talk to you about something. There are two officers that potentially may end up if they're given the opportunity go to the Massachusetts State Police class in June. There you go. if they get the opportunity, they go. I mean, it's a it's a 25 person 2500 person department versus what we are.

Um I I don't know if the M MSP is basically paying better um than what we're paying, but you know, again, they'll give me that exit interview when they go and I'll I don't have an idea. But still, they're you know, we we're losing two good people potentially. At some point, Chief, the difficult conversation's going to have to come where we're going to need some of the union leadership of the police department to sit down and get behind an override. Didn't happen last time. So, we're going to we're going to need that if we're going to have these critical conversations. We've been able to have it with schools. who've been able to have it with fire. We're just going to need that to happen. If if that's the goal, if the goal is we're okay with the operational uh problems, Ted, we we'd rather have a police station. Okay. You know, then we have to put all our eggs in that basket and try to convince the community that the police station is the way to go. You know, as well as anybody, we're not going to get both. But but right now we seem to have a little bit of conflict and we need to try to get everybody on the same page. So, thank you.

Welcome, Jean. Yeah. Can you guys hear me? Okay. Yes.

All right. Hey, Chief. Thanks very much for coming out tonight and doing the presentation. I don't have um question. I just have comment. Um I've lived here for 27 years. Um, I've had interactions with the police over that. Try to keep my interactions down. Most of them are um, you know, traffic related. Um, and same with my my kids. And I would just say that um in my experience here of 27 years that this is one of the most professional um well-run um just nicest people um that I've ever you know encountered uh in the police. So I just want to you know give our police department a lot of credit for that. Um, and same for my kids and some of you guys have u have coached over the years. So, we've had that experience as well. Um, and just just a credit to the community. And I would just say in my opinion that um, you know, if we have such a a great police force and um, the kind of people that we that we have that we you know, we should look to to not pay. it was the, you know, one of the lowest police force forces in the, you know, in the Commonwealth. So, I would, uh, definitely like to see that change and I think the people of Franklin should want to see that change. And that's all I have tonight. So, um, back to you guys.

Thanks, Jean. Um, thank

So, yeah, I'm I'm definitely in uh support with uh just like council with bringing the two officers back. I obviously um you know stand behind that but and and like Jean my sons my kids were all coached by Franklin BD back I actually coached with Jason I actually coached with Jack. So I mean it it was a great community but as far as now I'm going to be a union guy but I mean as far as uh you know being paid low you can sit here and say morale is good but but they're going to go. They're young kids. Well, Eric, you you're here. You're not going anywhere. Joe, you're not going. Jason, you're not going nowhere. But if you guys were young, I I I really don't blame you for leaving. I mean, you know, you got to better your life for your family and your kids, you know. So, you can't you you say the same thing. There's nothing you can do about it. I know my kids age. I know a couple kids that are in Alabo, couple kids in Medway, couple kids in Northwalk. They're all Franklin kids, but then they can't afford to come back in. So that I will would love to see that change too myself. Uh but you guys do a great job obviously. I love you all. So uh you know um just keep doing your good work with what you can do.

Thanks, Chief. Very welcome. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Mr. Sharon, if I if I may, uh, real real quick, I know the chief gave accolades to all the department members a minute ago, and that's true, and he's going to kill me for saying it, but uh, for those who don't know, uh, Jamie nominated Chief Lynch for the 985 Hometown Hero Award, and he's going to be receiving that award tomorrow at noon. So, I just want to CONGRATULATE need anything else for Jamie.

Thank you. Thank you. Legislation tomorrow. All right. We got to go. Just one. See you guys. Let's go. 14 minutes.

All right. Moving on. Legislation for action. Resolution 26-20. Acceptance of gifts senior center $321. Veteran service department $6378. Clerk will read the resolution.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is resolution 26-20. acceptance of gifts to the Franklin Senior Center and Franklin Veteran Service Department. Whereas the Franklin Senior Center and Veteran Service Department have received generous donations in the total amount of $958.78 to be used at the discretion of each department as follows. Donation summary. Franklin Senior Center, $321 donations to be used at the discretion of the Senior Center through the Council on Aging Gift Fund to provide services and programs to senior citizens in the Franklin community. Franklin Veteran Services Department $637.78 donations to be used at the discretion of the Veteran Services Department through the Franklin Municipal Veterans Assistance Fund in support of local veterans and their families. List of all donors is included in tonight's council agenda packet. Now therefore, be it resolved that the town council of the town of Franklin on behalf of the Franklin Senior Center and Franklin Veteran Services Department gratefully accepts these generous donations to be used the discretion of each department for the purposes noted above. This resolution shall become effective according to the provisions of the town of Franklin home world charter.

Guys, a motion to approve resolution 2620. Second. I have a motion and a second. discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Thank you to all the donors. Roll call vote. Okay, Mr. Chairman, this is a roll call for resolution 26-20, acceptance of gifts. Councelor Ajuku, yes. Councelor Morangello, yes. Councelor Malloy, yes. Councelor Leblanc, yes. Councelor Griffith, yes. Councelor Callaway Trip, yes. Myself is a yes. Vice Chair, yes. Chairman. Yes. Thank you.

Moving on. Future agenda agenda items. Council Mallaloy right down. None for tonight, sir. All set. Council. None. Nothing for me. Nothing. Just the ones that I have previously uh mentions in previous meetings. Thank you, council. Nothing. Nothing at this time, sir. Jean, nothing. Meaning nothing. We have uh no no executive session. So, I'll miss uh motion to adjourn.

Russian roll call vote. Oh, everything everything has to be a roll call to a to a Okay. Councelor. Yes. Council Marello, yes. Councelor Malloy, yes. Council Leank, yes. Council Griffith, yes. Councelor Callaway Church, yes. Myself, yes. Jean, yes. Can we go home, please? Thank you. Council, thank you.

Recording stopped. Jamie's not going to be around.