Town Council - Regular Meeting

Time being 7 p.m., I call the Franklin Town Council meeting of June 10th to order. I'd like a moment of silence, please. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Note to residents, all citizens are welcome to attend the public meeting in person. To view the live meeting remotely, citizens are encouraged to watch the live stream on Franklin Town Hall TV YouTube channel or live broadcast on Comcast Channel 9 or Verizon Channel 29. To listen to the meeting remotely, citizens may call in using the number 1-929-205-6099. To participate in the meeting remotely, citizens may join the Zoom webinar I'll give you the information below. Meetings are recorded and archived in Franklin TV and on Franklin Town Hall TV YouTube channel and shown on repeat on Comcast Channel 9 and Verizon Channel 29. The Zoom webinar detail ID number is 860-1320-5721. Any participants who wish to speak must enter their full name and address when joining the webinar. All citizens 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. Announcements from the chair. Upcoming town sponsor events. We got a few tonight. The 2026 farmer market season has begun. And we'll go through June through October from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Franklin Town Common. The Strawberry Stroll is this Friday, June 1st. 12th, 4 to 8. Rain date will be June 13th. The Franklin Downtown Partnership annual Strawberry Stroll is taking place in downtown on Franklin on Friday, June 12th. New this year is the Kids Strawberry Parade. That ought to be fun. All kids are welcome. Dress in strawberry theme and meet at 445 at Dean College. on Main Street. The parade will begin at five and will go around the Dean College. Unfortunately, I'll be in Maine, but I bet you it'll be a great time. The FIFA World Cup Watch Party will be Wednesday, June 24th and Thursday, June 25th. Rain or shine, Franklin will host and watch the World Cup. Parties at the town comment in neighboring Haywood Manor Games will be aired on the jumbo screen and there will be various families friends activities vendors food trucks in a 21 plus beer garden Event hours in features matches are as follow there will be Wednesday June 24th, between 2 and 9 p.m., the games will be Switzerland versus Canada at 3 p.m., and Scotland versus Brazil at 6 p.m. Thursday, 25th events are 3 to 9. Games shown will be Ecuador versus Germany, and 4 p.m., Tuzia versus Netherlands at 7 p.m. The Pride Month celebration Saturday, June 27th, 12 to 4, rain date is Sunday, June 28th. The Franklin LGBTQ Alliance President celebrates with pride a festival with live music, arts, and crafts vendors, and food trucks. That's at the Common, right? It'll be at the Common. And Franklin July 4th Festival on the Common is July 1st through July 5th. And the fireworks will be July 2nd at 10 p.m. Any other information will be at, you can go on the website at www.franklin4th.com. And the last one is the next town council office hours will be Thursday, June 18th, 830 at the Senior Center. Those are the events. Announcements from the chair. I just found out that we got a letter from Police Chief Thomas Lynch, and I will read this to you. I am writing to formally notify you of my intentions to retire from the Franklin Police Department effective November 6th, 2026. Serving the residents of Franklin has been a privilege and an honor. I am grateful for the opportunity I've had to work alongside dedicated colleagues, elected officials, and community members in support of the town's mission and goals. The experience and relationships developed during my tenure have been among the most rewarding of my professional career. Between now and my retirement, I remain committed to ensuring a smooth and orderly transition of my responsibilities. I will work closely with you and the other members of the town to assist with successions, plannings, knowledge transfer, and any other activities necessary to support and continue the operation. Thank you for the opportunity to be part of the Town of Franklin team. I look forward to assisting in the transition process over the coming months. Respectfully, yours, Thomas J. Lynch, Chief of Police. Thank you, Chief. Thank you for all you've done, and thank you for the friendship I've had growing with you over the last 20 or so years. Citizens' comments. Citizens are welcome to express their views for up to three 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 herein shall prevent the town administrator from correcting a misstatement of fact. Is there anybody in the audience that has a citizens' comment?

Paul Griffith, 11 Suncombe Meadow Road. Here is the school committee chair. Just kind of give you all an update. We had our meeting last night. Really exciting, you know, end of the year. Graduation was last Friday for the high school. Thanks. I know a bunch of y'all were able to attend. It was really a fantastic affair. It wasn't too warm. Weather hung in there just right. So at our meeting last night, I went through a couple of big things. One, kind of the first big item was actually our facilities and operational update. Heard a lot about the coordination between the town. Kevin was there, able to talk to us about a lot of the work that he does in the schools, helping to maintain, helping us with some of our big projects, and coordinating with Collin, especially regarding the move over the last summer. So a lot of thanks from our end for that work that the two groups do together. It was really fantastic to hear and also talking about what we have in the upcoming year. Also went into discussing AI in the schools, working on developing kind of our long-term plan and strategy surrounding that. So there's a lot of great engagement there, a lot of good information we've already been reaching out to parents and educators about kind of their opinions on things as well as students and really trying to incorporate that as much as possible. And then the final two things, we had a couple of policy things that we went through, including emotional support dogs, and then had an evaluation for the superintendent. Outside of that, it was a pretty uneventful meeting. We weren't here too late, so surprising you guys, I know. Thank you. Thanks, Paul.

Anybody else, please?

Kim Yu Chao, Chair, Board of Pharmacy, Pharmacy, sorry, Board of Health, for Briarwood Road. So just so that you know that on May 20th, our band of all forms of Kraton, whether it's synthetic or natural, went into effect in Franklin. That's number one. Number two, on that same day, we had the Women's Health Expo. And we even had some males come to pick up information for their favorite females. It was very, very well attended, and we were also able to provide mammograms for 17 women on the mammogram van. And then via Facebook, someone asked, well, how do you do that? I'd rather do it in the van versus going to a hospital. We were able to communicate back to them, and so at least one other person in Franklin actually is scheduled for a mammogram on the mammogram van in another town. So we're really, really pleased, and it was well attended. Thank you.

Good evening, Sarah Amaral, Senior Center Director. I just wanted to share a quick community announcement from the Senior Center. If your spring cleaning has uncovered a drawer full of old bank statements, expired paperwork, and things you're pretty sure you should have shredded years ago, we've got you covered. On Tuesday, June 16th, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the Franklin Senior Center will host a free community shred event at the center, so 10 Daniel McKay Hill Street. Thanks to the partnership with the Franklin Department of Public Works, specifically Derek, thank you for working with us. We'll host a free community shred event. And so it's usually for the senior population, but we were able to work with our vendor and expand and beyond that to the entire community free of charge. So you can bring paper documents, credit cards, licenses, passports, hard drives, and laptops for secure destruction. There's no need to remove staples, paper clips, or elastics, and no appointment is necessary. We hope residents will take advantage of this opportunity and protect themselves from identity theft while cleaning out a little clutter. Thanks.

Hi, Celia Courtright, 213 Peck Street. I have a little pamphlet to hand out. Thank you.

Thank you.

So I'm here on behalf of the Franklin Music Boosters and the Franklin Theater Boosters for our capital campaign. Our auditoriums are in need of repair. The middle school auditorium stage lights do not work. There are broken seats throughout the room that are cordoned off with tape. Many of the floor tiles are broken and removed. The high school has A few needs, much smaller, but it also has a few broken seats and the audio system needs a little repair as well. We have more choir students than we have space on the choral risers for them to perform. I knew that there were some issues with the auditoriums, but one reason why I handed out the pamphlet which has the images of the state of the middle school auditorium was I personally was surprised during our middle school concerts last week, and I looked around and I saw the state of the auditorium. This is a very urgent need to get this facility back into good repair to make it usable for our community, for other people who would want to use this space as well. To this end, the music boosters and the theater boosters have been running a capital campaign. We are trying to raise $100,000 towards this. So far, we have raised about $33,000. We've had some generous donors put up a match program. So at this point, the next $21,000 that are raised, because we've already raised $4,000, will be matched dollar for dollar. So every donation that we get to our capital campaign is now effectively doubled. I do know we have an earmark potentially coming from the state. Even if we manage to reach our 100,000 and we have all the money from the state, to repair everything is going to take significantly more money. So we need everyone who supports music and theater to help us, and we hope that the town council will support a capital request that will probably need to come at some point to support the rest of this work. Repairing this auditorium is not a want. If you look at those pictures, this auditorium, it's a need to fix this and return this auditorium to a state of good use for the hundreds of students who are using this daily. The link to the campaign so you can donate can be found on the Franklin Music Boosters social media on Facebook, X, Blue Sky, Instagram, and the Franklin Theater Boosters on their Facebook and Instagram pages. Lastly, with late breaking news, we are planning a fundraiser with C&C Ice Cream. As soon as we're able to figure out where and when, we'd like to communicate that out to the community as a chance to also, another way to contribute to this campaign. Thank you.

Callie Keating, 26 Schofield Drive. Really quick PSA, it's summer reading time at the library. So the summer reading theme this year, this comes from the state, this is Plant a Seed Read, and we have summer reading programs for kids, teens, and adults. We've been doing our summer reading hype tour in all the schools. I was in the middle school auditorium today. She's not joking. So the kids summer reading program is time-based, so there's little circles they fill in for reading for time, and they earn prizes as they go. The adults and teens, we give you an ice cream coupon just for signing up. So if that isn't enough of an incentive, I don't know what to tell you. But we have... a choose your own adventure style for the adult summer reading. So there are fun reading prompts and library quests and community quests just to kind of get folks out into the community and engaging with the library and engaging with books and earning raffle prizes and free books. And you can sign up on the library website. And you don't have to have a card to do it. And it's free for everyone. And even if your kids aren't reading it, the prize packs are really good this year. There's some really cool BOGO coupons. Davis Farmland and Urban Air and a couple other really fun things. So look forward to seeing you at the library to pick up your summer reading folders. Thanks, everyone.

Hi, Josh Cohen, 14 Elm Street. I'm here on behalf of Franklin Fathers, of which I'm a founding member. Just want to announce and remind that we've got our Eddie Grant First Annual Memorial Kickball Tournament this coming Sunday from 9 to 3 AM at Beaver Pond. 9 AM to 3 PM. Thanks, Jenna. A bunch of different food vendors, hot dogs, ice cream, got some pizza, multiple rounds of kickball. It's an all-day family-friendly event. We'll have Gaga, Pitt, various raffles, 50-50 raffle, of which we're donating the proceeds to the local VFW. And just wanted to share really quick as well. So the tournament is at Eddie Grant. Memorial Kickball Tournament. Eddie Grant was a Franklin native, veteran, passed away in 1918 while serving in World War I and his His persona, his values embody much of what we in the Franklin Fathers group seek to embody within our own mission. So hope to see all of you there. Bring the family. Come hang out. Hopefully the weather will cooperate with us. And in addition, we'll have a booth at the Strawberry Stroll on Friday. So please stop by if you want to learn more about the group. Oh, most important thing. We will also have a dunk tank. of which many people will be participating. I've heard maybe a certain town administrator may be in the gun tank. But I can't confirm or deny that. I'm confirming it. Bring your checkbooks. Bring your checkbooks.

Bring your square. And Josh, the proceeds are going to the Franklin Food Pantry, so you're not just taking out your venom and anger on me, you're also bringing your money to a really good cause, and I appreciate it very much. I think there are other people that are going into Dunk Tank, too. Absolutely. We'll just wait until Sunday to leave the surprise.

Yeah, yeah. We're not going to list all of them, certainly. And I will leave you with a dad joke. I'm a little bummed I won't be at the strawberry stroll, so what do you call a sad strawberry? A blueberry, of course. Thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Doug Martin, Town of Franklin Water and Sewer Superintendent. Just to follow up on the kickball tournament, We will have... Beaver Street will be closed at the MBTA track starting midnight on Saturday, planned to go until about 4 p.m. on Monday. So those going to the kickball tournament, please, your only access will be through Grove Street. Okay. So that would be for anything for... Anything on Mastro Drive, the Beaver Rec area, as well as the Recycle Center, all has to access through Grove Street. Franklin Glass, the Rec Gym, and the old Panera Bread facility will be accessed from 140. Okay. So that's my first announcement. Second announcement is, unfortunately, even though it has kind of rained every weekend, we are officially in a level two drought, according to the state. I know it doesn't feel like it. So with that said, we did update our restrictions. We got a notice out today. With all that said, again, we do have plenty of water. But contrary to popular belief, I've said this before, we don't supply water for everyone's irrigation systems. So just keep in mind, and everyone, please do your part to conserve. Our primary duty is to provide domestic supply as well as fire protection. So thank you.

Is there anybody else out there? Anybody in Zoom land?

I don't know.

I don't see anybody. Okay. Moving on, we do have a public hearing tonight. Transfer of license, pledge of license, pledge of inventory, and approval of manager on DeVita's Market, Incorporated, DBA DeVita's Market, located at 198 East Central Street, Franklin, Mass. I declare that meeting open.

Hello. Good evening. I'm Sydney Prokos, an attorney from Vieira and Dijon-Filippo. I work with attorney Matt Porter, whose name might be in the application. We represent Om DeVitas Market Inc., doing business as DeVitas Market, which is purchasing the beer and wine package store from DeVitas Market LLC for the store located at 198 East Central Street, and we're requesting your approvals tonight related to that transfer. In the world of liquor licensing, this one is fairly straightforward. I'll have some background. And of course, if you have any questions, let me know. Here with me tonight is Mr. Alash Shah, one of the principals of the company, and Mr. Richard Dunham, the proposed license manager. Richard has been working onsite at this location for just shy of 10 years with no violations at the state or local level while he's been there. Prior to working on site, he was in the Marines and that might have something to do with running a smooth operation. He has been alcohol tips certified, which is the industry standard that the ABCC likes to see four times with each certification having an effective date of three or effective timeline of three years. So he's been certified for quite some time and he has that ideal mix of experience and education that the ABCC likes to see. in those running stores and he will be remaining on site and working at the store under the new ownership. So there's consistency in ownership there and operations. The seller is financing part of this transaction. So in section 11 of the application, you may already know this, but there's a pledge and we're requesting your approvals for the pledge of license and inventory to the seller. And just a background on pledges, they work similar to a mortgage where God forbid if the buyer doesn't pay back the seller, then the seller has some security. and could take back its license, but any subsequent purchaser would need to come before you for approvals. So it's not like a mystery person would be operating the store ever. In terms of operation, again, there are no changes in hours of operation, location, alterations of the premises, mainly internal movement related to this purchase. I believe there's at least one outstanding item in the application, so tonight we're requesting approval subject to any outstanding items, Franklin specific, that you may be looking for. Any questions? I know that's a lot of info.

I will go to the council. Do we have any questions? Seeing that this is a public hearing, I'll have to go to the public. Is there any questions out there in the public? Zoom land? No. That being said, I will declare the public meeting closed. Public hearing, I'm sorry. All right, license transactions next. Transfer of license, pledge of license, pledge of inventory and approval of manager on DeVita's Market Incorporated, DBA DeVita's Market, located at 198 East Central Street, Franklin, Mass. The clerk will read the license transaction.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a license transaction transfer of license, pledge of license, and pledge of inventory. OM DeVitas Market Inc, doing business as DeVitas Market, located at 198 East Central Street in Franklin. OM DeVitas Market Inc. DBA DeVitas Market is seeking the approval for a transfer to it of a section 15 wine and malt beverage package store license from DeVitas Market LLC, DBA DeVitas Market, located at 198 East Central Street, Franklin, Mass. 02038, to be executed by it at the same location OM DeVitas Market, Inc., DBA DeVitas Market is also seeking the approval of a pledge of license and pledge of inventory and to have Richard Dunham approved as its manager. All departments have signed off on this application. The motion to approve the request by OM DeVitas Market, Inc., DBA DeVitas Market for a transfer of license, pledge of license, and pledge of inventory of the license currently held by DeVita's Market, LLC, DBA DeVita's Market, located at 198 East Central Street, Franklin, Mass., and to have Richard Dunham approved as manager.

You heard the license transaction. Is that a motion? Do I have a second? Second. Second. Discussion? Any discussion? Councilors? No. Okay. All right, then I will take the vote. All in favor of the license transaction? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. All set.

And with all the cool stuff going on, I might be moving to Franklin. Come on in. Thank you.

All right. On license transactions, we had another one. License modification, change of offices, the Chateau Restaurant of Franklin Incorporated, DBA, the Chateau Restaurant located at 466 King Street, Franklin, Mass. Are they here?

Yeah. Mr. Clemens, through you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Clemens, Julie's getting him on Zoom. Yeah. They are here.

You should be able to hear him now.

Yep. Brian? Yeah.

Good evening, counselors. Can you hear me all right? Yes. Excellent. All right. For the record, my name is Ryan Clemens. I'm an attorney with RIW at the business address of 255 State Street in Boston, and I'm here on behalf of the Chateau Restaurant in Franklin, Inc., DBA, the Chateau Restaurant. Starting with the general overview of the business and the application, the Chateau is currently the holder of the section 12 on premises, all alcohol license number 05288RS0430 operating at 466 King Street in Franklin. And we are here this evening seeking approval of a change of officer's application regarding two changes. First, the Chateau has appointed Paula Litcher as secretary and second, John Nocero is no longer a director, but he retained his ownership percentage and remained a shareholder, so there's no change to ownership. And to place these changes in context in relation to other locations, this change of officers is consistent across the Chateau's corporate structure and applies to each location. which is why we sent the inverse application to and received approval from the ABCC before appearing here in front of other LLAs, as you saw in the ABCC's letter dated March 23, 2026, and submitted along with the application. But most importantly, the Chateau and its application do not propose any changes to operations or customer experience. With that, thank you for your consideration. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

Clerk will read the license transaction first, and then we'll go to discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a license transaction for a license modification change of officers, the Chateau Restaurant of Franklin, Inc., doing business as the Chateau Restaurant. Located at 466 King Street in Franklin, Massachusetts, the Chateau Restaurant of Franklin, Inc., DBA, the Chateau Restaurant, located at 466 King Street, Franklin, Mass., is seeking the approval for a change of officers to include the addition of Paula Litscher as Secretary of the Board of Directors and the removal of John Nocera as a member. All departments have signed off on this application. The motion tonight is to approve the request by the Chateau Restaurant of Franklin, Inc., DBA, the Chateau Restaurant, located at 466 King Street, Franklin, Mass., for a change of officers as described above.

You've heard the motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion to second discussion. Any questions from the council? Pretty standard. Pretty standard. All in favor of the motion? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passed. We have one more. Okay. Farmer Brewery Farmers Market License, Rushford & Sons Brewhouse, LLC.

Through you, Mr. Chairman. This is so that they can participate in the farmer's market, kind of similar to Bob Vazella. Yeah, what Bob does. So the farmer's market's obviously recruited them to come up, so it requires an approval from the council to allow them to serve samples at the farmer's market so people can purchase.

Clerk will read the license transaction.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a licensed transaction for Farmer Brewery Farmers Market License, Rushford and Sons Brewhouse LLC, DBA Rushford and Sons Brewhouse, from 8 Grove Street in Upton, Massachusetts. This is a request for a Farmer Brewery Farmers Market License to allow samples and the sale of malt beverages in sealed containers at the Franklin Farmers Market pursuant to Mass General Law Chapter 138, Subsection 15F. The motion to approve the issuance of a farmer brewery farmer's market license to Rushford and Sons Brewhouse LLC, DBA, Rushford and Sons Brewhouse. Do you appear in a motion? Do I have a second?

Second. Are they here, Janie, by any chance?

Yes, on Zoom, Crystal.

Hi, good evening. Hey, Crystal.

Anything you want to add, Crystal? Anything you want to add? I just want to make sure you're here. It's kind of good to make sure you're here.

Yeah, no, we're here. If you have any questions, obviously, we're just looking to be able to, you know, sell samples and sell four packs.

Okay. Discussion? All right. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? License transaction approved, good luck. Okay, moving on. Here we go, legislation for action.

That hit home, huh?

Resolution 26-25, adoption of the FY2027 budget appropriations. Clerk will read the resolution. 26-25.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is the Town of Franklin Resolution 26-25, the adoption of the fiscal year 2027 budget. Whereas the Town Council conducted two public hearings on the FY2027 budget on May 20th, 2026 and May 21st, 2026 after due notice was given in the Milford Daily News and whereas the Finance Committee issued printed recommendations with copies made available at each public hearing and Whereas the town council considered the FY2027 budget on a departmental basis and by vote so determined the size of the appropriations for each department. Now therefore, be it moved and voted to adopt said general fund budget, water enterprise fund budget, sewer enterprise fund budget, solid waste enterprise fund budget, and storm water enterprise fund budget. as voted as set out in the FY2027 voting document with a total appropriation of $169,687,307 excluding $597,258 Council on Aging voted in a separate resolution $150,241,014, which is to be raised and appropriated. $1,104,132 shall be transferred from the FY26 free cash account. $117,133 shall be transferred from the MEC stabilization fund and the balance shall be transferred from enterprise fund revenues to be appropriated as follows. Water fees in the Enterprise Fund, totaling $6,609,979. Sewer fees, Enterprise Fund, $7,067,795. Solid waste fees, Enterprise Fund, $2,955,247. Solid Waste Retained Earnings Enterprise Fund, $405,000. Stormwater Fees Enterprise Fund, $1,126,007. Stormwater Retained Earnings Enterprise Fund, $61,000. Total Enterprise Fund, $18,225,000. Finance Committee took action at their meeting on June 3rd, 2026 with a nine zero vote passing. This resolution shall become effective according to provisions of the Town of Franklin Home Rule Charter.

Motion to approve resolution 2625, adoption of the FY 2027 budget appropriations.

Second. A motion and a second. Discussion?

Anyone? Go. Go. I mean, we're getting there. I still think that... You all know how I've thought about using free cash for this year and next year, so I like the direction we're heading in. Based upon my comments at the last meeting around the additional funding that came through for the schools. I talked about $300,000. The number came in closer to $400,000. So what I'd like to propose, just talk about it now, let others discuss before I formally put forth an amendment, but I'd like to... One add back, as part of the finance committee, the finance committee asked to have the school budget reduced by $60,000. I'd like to restore that $60,000. And I would like to... add back $400,000 to the school department. Now, during the course of the night tonight, if someone can propose cuts in other areas that I think are reasonable to cover that, that's fine. Otherwise, Then you go, where's that $460,000 coming from? What I would propose is that we increase the, whether it's new growth or, we increase revenue assumption by $60,000 beyond what has been proposed by the town administrator. And the other $400,000 would come from free cash. So that would mean our free cash pool would be about $1.5 million for the year. So other than that, as I said before, all the other expenses, yes, others may consider them. one time we may, are people going to want to take these positions? I think Councilor Cormier-Ledger said it the other night, and he said it perfectly. We have to try something different. We can't cut anymore. We can't do, it's not time to propose an override. We have to try something different. We have the free cash, and Yes, that means some capital may be put in delay, but we need to invest in people so that we can generate revenue in other ways. We are a business, and we have to generate revenue. And many of the people that we're adding to this budget are generating revenue. There may be some that are not, but the rest of those, you say, well, police provides public safety, and that provides revenue. It does through default. So Councilor Cormier, I couldn't have said it any better. This is, to me, trying something different for the next two years, and that gives this council, the school committee, the finance committee, the runway to figure out what that plan is. That's more encompassing. That involves capital. short-term, long-term, buildings, everything else. I can't stress it enough, and I think it's sound fiscal responsibility, in my opinion. So those would be the bigger changes that I will eventually put forth as amendments and hope I would get support for those going forward.

Thank you, Mike. Max?

I'll yield until someone else. I'll hold off until other people speak.

Okay.

I agree, we should try something different. Stop spending. Yes, we have free cash. Yes, it should be used to stabilize the budget. But when you bring in, we've already hired two new people supposedly for Jamie's office, which we agreed on because his office was very sad upstairs. But we're looking at five more people, not because of you, Jamie, because there was nobody in it. But I'm happy.

I just want to clarify. We're happy people. You may have been sad coming in, but we're happy.

We're looking at five new people. And do I want SROs back? Yes. Would I like to help out the assessors? Yes. Would I like to be able to say, yes, we're going to put a deputy town administrator? 100%. We don't have the money. We're looking right now at taking roughly 1.1 million from free cash to stabilize the budget. If we didn't hire these people, our deficit would actually only be about $600,000. Two years ago, we were at 6.8 million. That gap has closed. People have lost jobs. Departments have cut. To bring people back in now, we are using free cash to do that. We can't promise their job is guaranteed. Now if we hire these people and in FY28 after the November ballot pass and the income tax goes down to 4%, because if we really truly believe that that's not going to pass, we are wearing blinders because people want more money in their pocket and they're not happy with the way the state is spending it as it is. Therefore, they're not going to vote to give them more. They're going to vote to take some back. There's going to be cuts to us on this town level, whether it's just this state funding, however it's dispersed, we're going to lose some money there. These salaries, you look at their benefits, the salaries, and then a coal increase. The salaries in this budget is about $150,000 shy of what their actual salaries will be because we prorated it as a start date of October 4th. which means now, going into FY28, we need at least $150,000 more to sustain those five salaries, plus whatever their benefits are going to cost, plus their COLA raise, plus take into account the fact that we're probably going to lose some state funding due to the income tax going from 5% to 4%, and we're talking about using all of our free cash. That is fiscally irresponsible and that's not okay with me. if you want to use it all so it doesn't have to go back out and be recertified let's put it in a budget stabilization fund and let it sit there and earn some interest guess what we've technically zeroed that account out state doesn't have to re-certify anything and we have something there as a buffer in case of we could take the fy 26 budget add in the COLA increases that everyone's gonna get, whatever the mandates that we have that we can't control. Leave the departments alone and don't make them cut anything else. Give them the year to breathe and give us the time to figure out how to generate revenue. Anything short of that is fiscally irresponsible. I will not vote to cut from any department. I will also not vote to hire anyone in this state because when you're in a deficit, you do not increase it by hiring more people. It's unfair to those departments. It is unfair to the people we hire. So yes, we should try something different and how about we just say no. I yield.

Okay. Great, Jane, but you know we're under contract to hire a TA, right? And I do understand that. So if we go to court, we're going to lose money.

And I understand that. But the other four positions are not under contract.

All right, no, I just wanted you to know that.

But it's not fiscally responsible to be spending any more money than we already have. And if we really truly have a $600,000 deficit, why would we try to increase it going into FY28? Because that is exactly what we're doing by hiring these people. And we are putting ourselves right back to where we've been for the last few years, where we needed a $6.8 million override that failed, and then a $3 million override that failed. And we are now looking at $600,000 of legit deficit, which is pennies on the dollar compared to our overall budget. I bet you if we needed an override of 600,000, I bet you people wouldn't have a problem with that because it's 600,000. It's pennies on the dollar. Or we could actually not need an override at all, and with some of the fee increases that we're going to be doing, that would generate some revenue. Every department deserves what they need. but we aren't in a position to give it to them. And to give it to them when we're not in a position, we're only setting ourselves up to say we're taking it away, and I'm tired of taking it away. Wait until we can keep it there. And that's just where I feel. So I won't vote to cut or to hire, I'm sorry.

Council Malloy. I'm confused. just listening to Jane's comments and Mike's comments. Just going back to my own kind of thought process on this. I have no problem using free cash to stabilize our operating budget for this year. I think it was a smart way to go. We had the opportunity to do it to stabilize the departments, give ourselves a chance to figure out where and how we're gonna grow out of this. As Jamie proposed a budget in February, there was talk of using $2 million in free cash. And over time, I guess over just the last couple of weeks, that number has dropped to about $1 million in free cash because of all the pluses and minuses that we've seen in the revised budgets from additional state funding, additional costs, et cetera. I was working towards reducing that initial $2 million in free cash to $1 million in free cash. I thought between the OPEB accounts and some other cuts, we could come up with the other million dollars. We got there through happenstance and The cuts in insurance costs for people kind of offset by retiree health care costs. And all the pluses and minus, we kind of got to that $1 million. So I do have some concerns about how we count free cash and what that amount is. And, Jamie, maybe at some point you can kind of give us the scorecard on what we have because I think I have a different amount in mind. The revised budget that the town administrator puts forth shows about a million and a half dollars in free cash, a million dollars of it allocated to pay our liabilities for the existing health insurance policies that town employees have had for the last four years. I was kind of blown away when I saw that number two weeks ago. I had no idea it was going to be anywhere close to that. Quite honestly, I don't think we had a lot of discussion about whether or not there'd be a cost to exit. Maybe I missed it, but when I saw a million dollars plus an additional $250,000 that's proposed tonight to move from another stabilization fund to help pay for that, I just feel like the rug was pulled out from under me. I thought we had, in my mind, a way forward without spending all that money. But now it looks like it's $1.2 million that needs to be committed to potential medical insurance liabilities that we won't really know until the fall when that's all washed out. So I was sort of crestfallen when I saw that because I thought maybe there was an opening to maybe start to salvage and save some of the free cash that I didn't think we needed to spend. And then we'd talk about capital improvements and maybe through some borrowing or through some other means we could accomplish some of those objectives. So I see that money kind of shaken out now, and it's gone. Additionally, there's another $450,000 in premium holiday pay that, I mean, who knew? I mean, maybe it's me, but we saved employees money on their health insurance, and we have to give them more money now. It's a law. I guess that's how it works, but again, It was another kind of shock to me, thus my confusion in terms of where we all stand. Based on what we read for tonight, the Tier 2 capital improvements on top of the $1 million and maybe $1.25 million set aside for health care premiums, I'd like to debate some of that when we get to that point again, to Jane's point, I'd like to retain as much of that as we can, but now we need a dump truck and now we need $200,000 worth of laptops for teachers. And it's, you know, I feel like the ground has shifted a lot in the last 10 days or so. Um, so I'm sure we'll have time to discuss and kind of think through this. Um, I was hoping for more in terms of being able to save free cash. It looks like we're going to have to commit a lot of money to stuff that I didn't realize was coming down the path. So that disappoints me. Um, I'm okay using free cash, the million dollars worth I'm in favor of replacing the police officers replacing or yes, replacing the state deputy town administrator, the munis administrator. Um, The assessor's office position, I think those are growth-oriented positions, and I think there'll be a return on that, and I feel like we need to do that as part of our overall growth. I realize there's some risk in terms of how we're going to be able to pay for that down the road, but given our free cash history and the predictability that there'll be more free cash, where and how and when we use that, I feel like that's a responsible and reasonable thing to do. Again, willing to discuss and go back and forth on various things, but that's kind of my initial position.

Or comments. Thank you, Councilman Malloy.

Yeah, I'll start with kind of overall financial operating principles. I disagree a little bit with what Councillor LeBlanc said earlier. I don't think that we are a business and we can't operate fully like a business. We're a town. That said, I completely agree with some of his comments. A couple of things that I think about as principals. First off, I agree with the idea that we heard a lot with the finance committee, and I know we've heard from the town council here that we need to minimize our utilization of free cash. Part of the reason we're in this boat is that we've been mixing up what's a capital expense and an operating expense, and a goal of ours should be to break those out and actually allocate them where they need to be. That said, you can't go cold turkey on that without some major negative repercussions. So that should be a goal, a mission statement, part of the plan. But we can't go cold turkey this year. We just need to be very thoughtful, which it seems to me, it sounds like we are trying to be. But I just want to make sure, laying it out, that that's incredibly important for us as a town. to get to our financial health, we have to better understand where we're spending and where we're not. Taking that back. So that's one. Two, as Councilor LeBlanc mentioned, I think it's critically important that we do something different. And what we have done, everyone remembers this going back over the past five, 10, maybe 20 years, When we're constrained, we cut. We've gotten to a place where there's nothing really left to cut. We're in the bone, we're sawing more. And not spending for a year will cause problems with that. So thinking more creatively as, sorry, I keep calling you out, is one option where if we're thinking about how can we actually begin to optimize revenue. We need to, instead of stopping all spending, we need to figure out how can we be, how can we start to grow our top line to create some, A little bit more flexibility than we have right now. Let's be honest. If all we needed was a $600,000 override last year or two years ago, that probably would have happened. But it's not what we need. And I think most people recognize that it's not a $600,000 shortfall we're trying to fill. It's a bigger gap. And I don't know anyone who wants to push a huge override to fill that gap. We need to do it via revenue. And one of the better ways to start that is as we look at our budget, we target revenue growth opportunities. So identifying the people who will help us with that is a great way to start. But as I said before, because we're not just a business, we need to be thoughtful about where else we can ease the pain, make things work, and whether that's school resource officers and whatnot or something along those lines, I think that's healthy for the community if we're thinking big picture, though that is not specifically a revenue generator. I'm not committing on anything, but I'm just thinking about the broader principles. I want to also agree with Councilor Caldwell-Tripp in our need to minimize, to the extent possible, the impact to people. I detest, I hate the idea of using free cash, money that will not be there in a year, that's not guaranteed, to hire new people. I'm opposed to that on principle. However, I do think we are in a situation where if that's the best way for us to start to drive revenue, start to drive our growth, that that's going to take precedence, because that's how we do something different than what we've done in the past. It's possible that we can sit on our hands and do nothing and hope that hope that we're in a better position next year, hope that interest rates are such that the money that we don't spend grows a little bit and that can help us. I don't think of hope as a reasonable plan, however. So in my mind, I agree completely with the principle, but in terms of how we get there, I think we need to be more thoughtful about our approach. Yeah, I think... So taking a step back, those are the principles that I would suggest we think about as we look to vote. I'm more than happy to engage in discussion there.

Thanks. Great point about Rome wasn't built in a day and we can't do everything in one day. I totally agree with you there, Council. Caroline?

Okay, I have a couple thoughts, and I wrote something down, so I'm going to end up reading it. But one of the things I wanted to clarify, so as Councilor Molloy mentioned, there were lots of pluses and minuses. I think some of the – to clarify some of the pluses and minuses, I think there was $600-some thousand that was added that was – not in the governor's initial budget, but looks like it will be, something close to that will be added based off of the House and Senate proposed budget. Of course, that hasn't been finalized yet, but both the House and Senate agreed to increase the Chapter 70 funding, which is funding that is specifically meant for schools. Franklin should be based again off of the number that was agreed by the state Senate and House. Franklin is looking to get a $402,000 increase in Chapter 70 funding over what we had anticipated in our initial town administrator budget. So just to clarify for everyone, that is not money that should be considered extra money in the town free cash. That is money that is meant for the schools. The state has heard towns complain that schools are not being funded for all the things that are required of them. And so they have decided to increase the amount of money that is going to the schools. So we are a pass through for that money that $402,000 belongs to the school. So to Councilor Blanc's point, you wanted to increase the school budget, undo the $60,000 cut and provide the extra $400,000. I agree with that. That is their money. We need to pass that over. So that is $400,000 that is not actually in our free cash. And I want to make sure that that does get noted in the budget that we vote on tonight. Another thing, and I've said this before, I know you all have heard me say this, is that we have heard for years that we are on the edge of a structural budget deficit. We're on a fiscal cliff. We need a strategic plan. that can't possibly include promising permanent positions with money that isn't guaranteed to us. So our free cash comes from departments that don't spend all of their budget. And in a year right now where things are incredibly expensive, There's no guarantee that the departments aren't going to have to spend every dollar that they've been allocated. So we don't know that there is going to be that much free cash coming back from budgets next year. It also comes from revenue that we hadn't anticipated. And once again, in a year where everything is very expensive, we don't know that people are going to be adding onto their homes and getting the permits and increased home assessment value from that. So we don't know that we're going to have $4.5 million of free cash next year. So hiring people and promising them that we are giving them a salary this year, next year, into the future with as Councillor Calloway-Tripp said, with COLA raises, with benefits every year, it doesn't make sense. So now I'm going to read this thing. Sorry that I had to write down my thoughts instead of just flying off the cuff. But what I'm proposing is that we fund FY27 at the same service and staffing levels that we are already funding this year, FY26, and so that we are able to rely less on one-time free cash in order to do that. I don't think we should cut anything that we currently have, but I also don't think that we should be restoring anything that was previously cut when we had failed overrides and we had to make those tough decisions. I want to keep things steady and sustainable so that we can look to the future and figure out how to do that with money that we know we have and we will have year after year. I know many of you feel strongly that the town should be run more like a business. And I did write that before this conversation. I don't personally see municipal government and private business as the same thing. We have different responsibilities and obligations and goals. But I understand why that framework resonates. But even within that framework, proposing to keep things steady makes sense. Because in a business, you don't hire permanent staff with one-time money. You don't take a windfall or surplus and use it to create a recurring expense that you'll be responsible for every single year going forward. That's not a good investment. That's just setting yourself up for layoffs later. It might not be the people that we are hiring within this budget, the five or six positions. It might be other members of our town departments. I don't want to put any of our current staff or anyone in that position. If any of these positions are truly essential for our town's long-term success, then they deserve stable recurring funding. And if we don't have that funding yet, then we're not ready to hire for it. And that doesn't mean anything about the value of the position. I actually think these positions are incredibly not, they are necessary, but we don't have the position for it. They are important positions. I would love to see them, but we just don't have the ability to do that within our current revenue picture. And I also want to say, as we're talking about bringing in roles that can generate revenue, not every important service in a community is supposed to generate revenue, right? Some of our most valuable things that we provide, our library, our senior center, recreation programs, public works, public safety, schools, they are things that make people want to live here. without necessarily bringing in revenue for the town. These are the things that make families look at Franklin when they're deciding where to buy a home. These are the things that our long-term residents rely on and appreciate. They don't always bring in dollars directly, but they do contribute to the health of our tax base because people stay in communities that meet their needs. I want to make sure that we're not saying we are focusing completely on these revenue-generating roles because that's what's important when we have so many things that are important. And we need to make sure that we are growing revenue by being a place that people want to be. And that means that we need to make sure to maintain the services we already have and not stretch ourselves thin with new commitments that we can't sustain. My concern is if we start building recurring expenses on top of one-time money, we're going to end up right back where we were before, trying to close the gaps, making deeper cuts, and laying people off again. I don't want to do that. so i would propose an amendment that again brings everything back to the same level that we have right now no cuts i know that the current budget proposal in front of us cuts to schools cuts to facilities i would undo those cuts and the positions that are being added or restored i would undo this as well so we are maintaining just the current staffing and service levels that will hopefully avoid that structural deficit that we would be adding to that we'd have to fight in another year or two. So I'm actually going to make an amendment now.

Why don't we wait and we'll do all the amendments at the same time, Caroline. Okay. Max, do you want to speak now?

I'll speak. No, I support. I think Councilor Griffith is going to make this motion to sort of get us to level service as a baseline. I don't necessarily support having level service, but I do support us debating you know, each of these additions. And so I think that, you know, I actually support adding a bunch of, many of these things back, but I do think as a part of the process we should debate each one. So, you know, I, in general, I think that, you know, yes, we are not a business. I agree a lot with Ken. It shouldn't be the primary, focus of government to just focus on what gets the bottom line, but at the same time, we have an operating deficit and we need to make ends meet. So I think it's sort of a short-term thing where we do have to add some of these positions that will generate our revenue, like the Reassessor's Office, as a long-term strategy to boost growth, not because it's the end-all, be-all of what government does, but because literally, we need to make ends meet. I think that I think that I've been concerned that, and I've said this on Franklin Matters, I have great respect for our police department and the work they put in every single day. And when I was on the last override, I was knocking on doors trying to get those officers to stay on. And unfortunately, we didn't have our way. But I will keep on fighting for those officers. When it comes time to push for more revenue, I want to see a full complement of 63. But I don't think now is the time. And I think that you know the last time we said we would make these cuts we said we should follow through and make the cuts not because we're threatening anyone or saying that you know you should do this or else but because we have it's math we only have so much money we only have so much that we could spend and i think when we make a when we say what we're going to do to the voters we have to follow through on that and or else when we go before the voters next time they're not going to believe us So I think that that was the most visible cut, and I don't feel comfortable bringing that back. But I do believe the voters should be able to choose whether they want to bring that back. And like I said, this isn't about gamesmanship or, you know, you said that's that. It's literally, you know, this is democracy. We can make the town that we want to believe in. And I think if the voters didn't allow for the revenue for it to be there the first time, they should have another opportunity to say, this is what we want a second time. In terms of a lot of the other positions, the TA is contractually obligated. Like I said, that's going to hurt us in the long run if we get rid of that. The assessor's office is going to bring in more revenue. The inspector's office, more revenue. I am open to bringing back the cuts for the school committee. They went under 2.5% like they were told to do, and then they got banged for it. And I don't quite think that's right. I do have great respect for the finance committee and making the recommendation to the council, and I don't want to... They did a lot of work, and I don't want to make them think that they didn't, that work was for nothing. I think they put a lot of good stuff into that, the recommendation to the town council. But I do think that, you know, the school committee should, or the school department should probably, you know, it's... very small amount, so it really is trivial. But I think it's symbolic that, you know, they did two and a half percent and yet other departments are doing more. Like, what happened? So to sum up, I support having debate on each thing. We're going to come to consensus as a group. That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to deliberate. We're a deliberative body. So I support Council Griffith's amendment and hope that we all will sort of have a vibrant debate, a civil debate, because the debate isn't just, you know, button heads. It's coming to, you know, it's coming to an agreement as a community that this is what we support. And so I support a civil debate as to what we want and what's best for the town. So with that, I'll yield.

Thank you, Max.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of really good points made tonight by my fellow counselors. First of all, I think it's important to clarify. Carrie, can you come up to the mic and just remind everybody we're not actually depleting our stabilization fund with anything proposed tonight, correct?

Sorry, I didn't hear the whole question.

We're not actually depleting our stabilization fund by using any of the funds proposed tonight that I'm aware of, correct? No. It was suggested and I want to clarify that everybody understand that our stabilization funds remain intact.

That's correct.

Okay, thank you. And how much is in there right now?

Which one?

The budget stabilization account. Do we have a?

There's over three million.

Yeah, three and a half million.

Three and a half million, yes. I'm sorry, I didn't know right off the top of my head.

No, that's okay. That's okay, because you provided that data at the last meeting. And I just want to make sure people understand that the free cash number is annual. Yes. And the stabilization funds and the various funds that we have, we contribute to when we can. They grow. Mm-hmm. We use them as debated and as needs come up, but those are not being depleted.

They are not at all. Yeah, great question. Thank you. Can I make one other clarification if you're going to bring that up? Councilman Molloy, you mentioned the group insurance and mentioned that as a stabilization fund. That is not a stabilization fund. So that's a trust fund. That's all I just wanted to make. If we were going to talk about it, I just wanted to clarify. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Carrie. I make that point because as I said at the last meeting, I do think it's time that we pivot and try something new because unfortunately for years the philosophy has just been, well, we just cut and cut and cut. And I know it was already said that we're down to the bone. Bring in a few people back to various departments, maybe even adding some personnel to departments with the intent of, to Caroline's point, to better serve the community and better serve the people of Franklin. I think that's why we're here. And I think, as Councilor Blank and I have said many times, many of these positions are in here with revenue expectations but we have to also give it time we have to give these positions time to get acclimated hit the ground running figure out ways that they can grow and help bring some of that bottom line revenue that we so desperately need in and if in two years which we've outlined if it didn't work If we're still, I don't know if I'll be sitting here in two years, but if I am and if we are, then we're going to have to say, okay, we tried something different and it didn't work. And it disappoints me that there would be any cuts made to our schools, so I would certainly be in favor of putting that back. And I know that we're going to be debating in a little while using some other free cash money for some other things. In a perfect world, we wouldn't be touching free cash. In a perfect world, free cash would be there. We'd be using it for one-time capital projects. We wouldn't be using it for operating. But folks, we've been using it for operational expenses for years. I just need everybody to understand that. The police department and the school department and the fire department have come to us year after year after year needing that free cash money to fill operational needs. And we've had to give it to them. So this is just sort of shifting the mindset as far as I'm concerned and putting some, yes, free cash is one time money, but if we look at history, we've had three and a half to four million dollars in free cash every year for many, many years. I know the economy's a little rocky. I know things are expensive. I'm gonna hedge my bets that we'll have that money come next year as well. So I'm in favor, certainly with the budget as proposed, with the, you know, trying to restore some of the money that was cut from our school department and have that conversation. But I just think we need to, and let me back up for a second. We have to make the commitment to a deputy town administrator, to Chairman DeLarco's point, because we're contractually obligated to do so, and we've been putting it off for a year now. So even the notion of pausing that puts us in legal jeopardy, which I'm not willing to, to say is okay, and I don't think it's fair to Jamie, and I don't think it's fair to the town that we don't have that support. I do think that even though the two SROs are not revenue generating, we have heard from the community loud and clear that they were very, very dearly missed. We already have heard from the chief many times that our police department is not at where it should be. And if we have the ability to put those two people back in our schools, I think we should. So I yield, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Jean? Okay, since we're talking philosophy here, I have Ben Franklin behind me. He's looking down on me. He's saying industry need not wish. And what does that mean? Well, that means that we shouldn't, hard work means you don't have to necessarily hope, or as Franklin said, action and effort will naturally replace the need for daydreaming. He who lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without pains. So what's the point? The point is that we can't hope that money's going to appear. And if we have these higher people with money that we don't have or recurring salaries, we're kind of just hoping that it's going to fix itself. Well, I'm telling you, it's not going to fix itself. And I know we want to get additional revenue. But the other thing you have to look at is 4.2%, that's the current inflation rate. Things are going up this year. People are going to want potentially salary increases that are over 2.5%. In other words, I don't think the fiscal situation is getting better. So I think we need to be, I guess, we'll get another Franklin word, frugality. Be careful about how we spend our money. because we don't want to see ourselves in a place where we have to cut. So I don't want to cut anything. I want to stay, you know, level on funding. If we can restore some money to the schools, you know, absolutely 2.5%, I want to, you know, see that. But as far as adding new positions with money we don't have, I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Rather go out to the public and say, hey, if you want these jobs, you know, we need to raise additional funds, okay, and we'll work for it. THAT'S BASICALLY, YOU KNOW, FOLLOWING KIND OF WHAT BEN FRANKLIN WAS SAYING THERE, IS THAT WE NEED TO DO THE WORK AND NOT HOPE THAT WE'RE GOING TO GET OUT OF THE SITUATION.

THANK YOU. WELL, I KIND OF AGREE WITH COUNCIL. I DEFINITELY WOULD AGREE TO GIVE THE SCHOOL BACK THEIR MONEY BY ALL MEANS. I don't know if anybody ever knows if they take a job. I mean, who works for 44 years in the same place? I mean, I was a public servant for 30 years, but I mean, who does that anymore? Nobody. They come to work, they're lucky they stay six months, eight months. Who knows? Nobody knows it's a job. Nobody stays in their jobs anymore. You know anybody stays in their jobs? Nobody does. I do agree with Councilor Blank that we have to try something new. I mean, obviously we have to hire the TA. The assistant TA, I'm sorry. I'm not going to get into legal trouble with that. That will cost us more money. Definitely more money. I mean, luckily Jamie's been good. He hasn't said anything. But we need to. And I don't know. I mean, I'd like to put the police officers back. I don't know how much overtime Chief Lynch's Because they're forced to work if he doesn't have enough coverage. So that comes out of the bank, too. And same with the fire department. They're forced to work. They can't just say, no, I don't want to work. They've got to work. So if that takes off a little bit of the buffer by bringing those two officers back, I definitely agree with bringing them back. Because it's costing us money anyway. Jamie, do you want to talk about this?

Why not? No, I mean, I think it's all, you know, as I said before and I said last week, I mean, it's all fantastic discussion. You know, I don't know. There's a lot of different opinions. I don't think any one of the nine or any two of the nine were exactly the same. So I think the council is going to think through how to – I KNOW COUNCILOR GRIFFITH HAS AN AMENDMENT, AND MAYBE YOU SHOULD ALLOW THE AMENDMENT TO GO FORWARD, BUT I THINK I DO SEE SOME CONSENSUS. I THINK IF THERE'S ONE THING THAT I HEAR OF IS GENERALLY, AND I KNOW A COUPLE MEMBERS DIDN'T SAY IT SPECIFICALLY, BUT THE $60,000 THE FINANCE COMMITTEE CUT FROM THE SCHOOL BUDGET is a very easy thing to do. There was $40,000 that was requested by the finance committee for the police budget that the chief didn't ask for for capital. You could easily take that $40,000 and probably also slice the unscheduled overtime for the facilities department $20,000, and there's your $60,000 right there. So if everybody agrees on something like that, that's an easy transition. I think the other comment I'd make is on the new positions, obviously there's a variety of different opinions on those. I do agree and generally side with Councillor Morangelo. I think maybe the easiest way to deal with that is to take a roll call vote maybe on each position and just find out exactly where the body is on each one because I do think that there are a variety of opinions. If you reduce the deputy town administrator, the administrative assistant for the assessor's office, and the two SROs, that is 348,653. The thing you also have to consider is then you also have to bring down the new growth assumption, $65,010, because I increased that number in new growth from the assumption that there was going to be a full-time administrative assistant in there on October 4th, With a three month lead time, the appraisers could get back out on the street January 1st to June 30th and hopefully capture some level of new growth. And the principal assessor said I think either here or at the BINCOM that the position will easily pay for itself. And I think the finance committee had a discussion about the part time inspector for the building commissioner and how the admin will at least start getting more permits approved, which means more occupancy gets approved, which means the assessors can go in and appraise those properties on those renovations or whatever they pay. So I think the other thing I'd mention is really quickly, the $73,462 that's for the Munis administrator, which is a three-month amount that's in here. You're also going to have to add back in the $46,000 in cuts mainly to the finance department to do the work for the munis admin. So it's not as clear cut as just if you take out those positions, that's fine. To everybody's point, those are savings. That's free cash you won't have to use because your budget deficit won't be as large. But you're also going to have to fiddle with the revenues on new growth, because it's going to be pretty hard for them, I think as we heard from the assessors, to continue to raise new growth while our appraisers are in the office doing that. So there is a cause and effect from some of these decisions. Happy to answer any more questions. But I think the new positions seem to be gathering the most amount of commentary. And I think it's like, I'm sure there's more discussion on the capital items in round two and a variety of other things on free cash relative to Consulate Blank's request of using 400,000 for the schools. But I think, you know, at least the new positions, maybe you can organize it in a way to make it clear about where the full body stands on each one. Because I'm just simply, as I'm listening to all nine of you, I can see that there's different positions on each one, right? So just food for thought. Other than that, I don't have really much else unless folks have questions.

I'll take a straw poll. Do you think we should do a straw poll about every position coming back? What do you guys think? I think we should do a formal amendment. I think... Well, because we'll have to do every position, right?

Right. I think that probably makes sense. We should probably start with just are we all on the same page that we want to start with... with status quo, with level funding and then adding things back and just go piece by piece. Okay.

That's my amendment. Okay. We can start there.

Yeah, then let's do it.

I just would like to clarify, is level funding basically just stripping out those new positions in reality?

Or is it... That's what I had. I had the... Without the 60 and with the 400. Yes, without the extra positions and without the cuts that were made by the FinCom.

Okay. So... Okay.

So that's what I considered to be exactly the same. I also, one thing I didn't mention was that I also included, like the other cut that was last year was the summer help from the DPW. I had also taken that out because that was, again, something that was cut. So that would not be level service.

So through you, Chair, to Officer Griffiths. With the model that you're looking at, what is your current free cash number going to be at before we discuss these five or six positions?

So I'll be honest. I don't know what the free cash number is because I went back to the original budget that Jamie had given us before everything changed because I know there were To be honest, the positions, the numbers that you took back for a quarter, I couldn't make those work. For example, like you said, we'll save $54,000 to the W-10 administrator, and that wasn't a quarter of 190, so I couldn't make those numbers work. So I was operating off of the previous one, so the free cash number looks... different.

Yeah, so I think the only problem I have with the direction we're going is to propose an amendment, you have to have a number to go with, and we don't have a number to go with. I understand the concept that I'm following, which is For all intents and purposes, let's say it's a half a million dollars of additional staff here. We roll the number back to $600,000 of free cash and we vote on each of the positions, bring it back. But the amendment has to have a number in it. We just can't vote on the...

Give me a minute. I've got all the numbers made. I can tell you exactly what I am proposing to put back in, but I don't have a total from what we already were not including. But I can tell you exactly what I'm trying to put back in it if you give me two minutes.

And as Jamie pointed out, you do have to take into consideration what the impact would be from a revenue standpoint or like the munis position it was add 70 but we got 46 000 of consulting so you gotta if you get rid of the position you gotta add back to 46 so there's some there's some dynamics in there i understand the direction i just don't know if we're going to be able to figure that out on on the fly unless we take a 30 minute recess to figure this out

which we could do at some point, but I think we need direction from the council on the policy of maybe each position or whatever the cause and effect of those are. So I think we can take a recess and recalibrate it all. And we're planning for that at some point tonight. It's just a question of having that direction from everybody so that when we come back after a recess, we're not going back in and back forth, back and forth, right? So it's like, if should.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I'm. What's up, Max?

Yeah, so just to be clear, We can, you know, the current number we have for the budget, we're using all of our free cash with this and the capital budget, correct, and all the capital things?

So through you, Mr. Chairman, to Max, so just to rehash, I understand to some degree there may be a little, I put a summary table in here in free cash, right on the memo, first page, because this came up at FinCom. We had 4.5 million in free cash that we started off with. You all spent 1.88 million on Tier 1 capital. Yeah. If you include both the proposed capital tonight, round two, and the money that's in the operating budget, you're at about 2.6 million left in free cash, 2.632. 2.632 and change is what you have left. The 1.1 was to patch the budget gap, and the 1.5 million was for the tier two capital resolution a few items down. And that's the basic summary of free cash.

So just to be clear, we have the budget, we're using free cash for that, but then we have these tier capital expenses that we're also voting on. So tonight, at the end of the night, are we zeroing out our account?

If you voted for everything that's proposed tonight, you're zeroing out free cash. And to be clear, and I wrote it in the memo, we always zero out free cash. But we don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. But just again, to be clear, just because I understand it can take a few times to get. June 30th, there's no more free cash. So it's zeroing out on July 1st, no matter what, because now you have to go recertify it. So you're not going to have available revenue until October, November.

But for the practice of this budget, if we underspend, it's not a big deal. But if we overspend, we're going to have to cut from somewhere else in the capital. Well, how would you overspend? If we add 400, Council LeBlanc has proposed adding $400,000 to the schools. If we were to add that, we would have to cut from somewhere else.

Correct. If you added 400, either via the thought of the Chapter 70 number, or to Constable Blank's point about adding $400,000 into the school budget for X, Y, and Z purposes, doesn't matter, you're going to have to make up that revenue somewhere. In other words, you're going to have to take $400,000 out of the free cash pile to add into the budget, or you're going to have to make $400,000 in cuts. And I re-emphasize this again, and I'm just going to say it. Chapter 70 is not just Chapter 70. It's also the assessments that come with it. And I would also note that the reason why the Senate numbers were exponentially higher than the House was because of their commitment to unrestricted general government aid. So it's not that Chapter 70 didn't go up. It did. But I've explained this about Chapter 70 every single budget year numerous times. It's also the assessments that come with it. So regardless of all that, If we want to give $400,000 to account 300 for whatever purposes and based on whatever theory, that's okay. But the revenue has to get made up somewhere, either through cuts in the operating budget or using probably more free cash. also added the note that you could theoretically project more revenue in local receipts or new growth. That's a little bit of a dangerous place to go. But I will say and remind everybody, we're not even in the fiscal year yet. We haven't collected anything. We haven't spent anything. So everything that's being done tonight is just a blueprint for the future. I would also suggest that everybody, we can all have our individual perceptions, but the ballot questions haven't happened yet. And so predicting what Beacon Hill will do, whether the ballot question passes or doesn't pass, you just gotta be careful not to over-prescribe a theory that really may not come true. Because I can tell you from my experience, Beacon Hill, the income tax, if that... That's what my question is going to be.

How long is it going to take?

They're also already committed in their budget to all of this local aid. And my guess is they'll use rainy day money at the state level for this year. to make sure that the bills get paid at the local level. The idea that they'll pull the rug out from underneath of us in December is highly unlikely, completely, right, even if that passes. So I just want to make sure everybody's a little careful that we don't project too far in advance on not just the income tax, that's fair, but also what Beacon Hill may do or not do depending on what happens then. Every single lawmaker up there, all 200 of them, and the governor, lieutenant governor, all know that at some point if the income tax gets cut down at 4%, local aid will likely be cut. But the state also has $8 or $9 billion in their rainy day fund. So the likelihood of them using a portion of that to make sure they're whole for FY27 is probably better than none.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I guess... The free cash that is in, if we have a $400 million allocation, we use free cash, that's free hundred cash we have to go to capital, and we can't use for capital, correct? Correct, correct. Okay, so everything has to balance, but we can go under, and so if we're under as a budget, we don't have to worry about it, correct? If we're under as a budget. If we take stuff out, then we don't have to make it completely balanced, we could go to, Sorry. We can spend under the current recommendation without problem, correct?

Correct. If you did not fund the deputy town administrator or the administrative assistant to SROs, just for example, and you had to decrease new growth, you're looking at about a $400,000 delta.

Okay.

So we don't have to get it to zero. You would then not have to use $400,000 in free cash in the budget because now your deficit is going to be about $700,000 and change.

But we don't have to get free cash to zero tonight.

Well, by June 30th you do, and if you don't, it goes to zero anyways, because you're going to have to recertify through DOR.

But then it comes back.

I just want to make sure, the reason why I keep saying it is, it does come back in your recertification in November. They'll document the money that you don't spend will get recertified. But I just want to make sure clear, if someone walks in here and says the lights are out in the auditorium, why can't we spend the $400,000 in August? You can't spend the money for something you don't have access to. That's just the germane point I want to make sure. So tonight or next week at your meeting on the 17th, you do have to decide what you're doing with free cash. Whether it's saving the money, recertifying it, all those decisions are there, but we need to have that direction.

My last question to you is I sent an email to you asking, you know, God forbid, unless there's some unforeseen circumstances, will we have enough free cash to balance the budget next year?

Yeah. I think there will be, I think you look at the history of free cash and we've gotten about four to four and a half million since the pandemic. I do understand the comments that everybody's making about the budgets are getting leaner. People, departments are turning back fewer dollars. So yes, I do think that at some point you may have next year, but it's constantly the local and council of Cormier ledger. No, I was worried. I'm worried about this every year. And they've heard me on the football field to every meeting that I'm always nervous free cash is not going to come back. And I've also been nervous the last three years when interest and inflation have been 12%. And I thought the economy was going to come to a standstill. We've had people predicting recessions. Oh, it's going to be next year. It's next year. It's next year. So it's hard to really project out, but I'm pretty confident you are going to get a sizable amount of free cash. Is it 3 million? Possibly. 3.3? 3.5? Possibly. You'll know a little bit more next week. when we have the end of year transfers for FY26. I can tell you that the amount of money that you're going to need to transfer in between departments is very small. As Bobby and Ted both know, usually it's around 50 to 100, 150,000. We're probably going to be around that. But we're still going to be turning back a significant amount of money, and you still are going to have unanticipated revenues. And just to really quickly, if you look at the revenues to date as of April 30th, local receipts, We were 93% collected. So whatever we get in May and June to cover that and hopefully get over the 100%, which is all I need to hear in the aggregate to feel like I can go out and celebrate with an espresso martini. When we hit that 100%, we all talk about it in the office and you feel like you won the marathon. And then any money over that. If you're at 102% revenue, 105% revenue, that unanticipated revenue is going to come back to free cash. So as people know, and the state announces this all the time, the two biggest tax collection months in Massachusetts are April and June. capital gains on one hand, but also because June is just the biggest tax month. So where we'll end up, I don't know. We'll obviously know mid-July. But you're going to have a certifiable amount of free cash. I do not believe that you're going to be in a position where there's nothing.

But we will have the, in your best judgment, we will be able to balance the budget and everything else that needs to be balanced from capital.

As I said in my email to you, barring an economic collapse, World War III, And I'm dead serious. I said this in the pandemic year. I said it in my March budget memo. I said, barring any unforeseen circumstance, in three weeks, we were in a lockdown. So yeah, I'm clausing that on record to make sure y'all and everyone in the community knows that if there is World War III and there is tariffs, And there are more economic disruptions. Obviously, I'm not going to listen to any criticism of me trying to do things that I can't prove. But I just also told you, or I have no control over it. But also, I just told you, we're going to end up turning back probably over a million dollars at least. And then beyond that, we're going to have unanticipated revenues. And that also includes building permits. So if a building comes online or a new project that's currently in construction, that new growth will be considered, like Maple Gate Solar Farm, right? So there are other revenues out there, and I do think, I know you're going to have some level of certifiable free cash.

Thank you.

Yeah, Washington Street's coming on, too. They just started up there, too, so that's interesting.

Couple quick questions. Well, actually, first a statement. When I made the comment about the income tax, I'm not worried that they're going to pull the rug out from us in FY27. I'm talking about FY28. So I'm going another year ahead. And I feel we need to be prepared for those situations, plus your inflation, plus insurance costs and all the things we have no control over. And if the electric company and gas company decide to really raise the rates and we're all in trouble, we need to be prepared. But I have a question, two questions. One, if we didn't use the free cash, right, but chose to move it to the budget stabilization fund, technically we zeroed out free cash, correct? Correct. So it doesn't have to be recertified? Correct. Okay. Second question is, and this is what, you made a statement and I'm now completely confused. Okay. If we got $402,000 more in Chapter 70 money than what we were anticipating, Okay? And if we did what Councilor Blank was suggesting was to give that to the schools, okay, why do we have to cut from anywhere else? Because it was $402,000 that we weren't accounting for in the budget.

But it is now.

Yeah.

We're accounting for it in the revised model. It's already in there. So the 1.5. It's in the aggregate, and to be honest, If you break, I mean, I understand somewhat where this comes from, and I've explained it every budget year. These guys know. We don't, you get a cherry sheet with a whole bunch of different stuff, and it comes through. And I say this respectfully. I understand when the press release comes out, the Chapter 70 went up X amount of dollars. That's the thing folks, you know, focus on. But there's all these other aspects of the cherry sheets. There's a state aid analysis on the budget website between the house, the governor of the house and the senate. But we plugged the numbers in the aggregate. If we didn't get that additional revenue or we weren't using free cash, we'd be cutting probably every department, including the schools. There would be a proposal to cut from the 2.5%. But I was proposing to use one-time money to try to avoid any reductions in service. And so we're already accounting for all of that money in this budget proposal. If we didn't account for the Senate budget numbers, you'd be using one point, I'm estimating, so don't hold me to that, but you'd be using 1.6 or 1.7 or 1.8 million in free cash. So the state aid, Senator Rauch and Rep Roy heard your letter, heard all of us, the MMA, they delivered. I think they did a great job, given what the budget pressures are on them. But we've already accounted for that state aid in the budget, and we're just reducing the amount of free cash that's being proposed to be used. Okay.

I just wanted to... So it's in there. Yeah.

It's in there. It's in there, is what he's trying to say. All right. I got that. Okay.

Jamie, just one clarifying point because I haven't heard you said it but I remember it from several years. We always come back in the fall and address the budget when we know the real numbers from the state over the summer, correct?

Correct. So we come back in November. That's a great point. So we come back in November and, you know, we, as everybody I hope has watched before, whatever the final state aid numbers, if there's other assessments that come in that are updated, we do a whole what's called a recap. And we've done budget cuts, actually, in November before, too. We've made reductions in service on the town side. And so we come back in November, and you're required to do that by law before you set the tax rate in December. So you're... you're going to get quarterly reports throughout the fiscal year and you can actually adjust the budget you know all the way up until november 18th so you could adjust the budget once a month that's one of the benefits of our form of government small towns can't do that with town meeting right so as we move through the summer and in the fall if things change or we do get a 243 or you know some other unforeseen circumstance we can come back as we always have and try to manage that but we are required to come back and do a full recap of the entire budget and y'all vote on that in November and then the tax rate comes in December. So that's an excellent point that Ted's bringing up.

And also my second point is because I got clarification from Rep Roy, earmarks will most likely be protected is what he's telling me because To your point, they're promised to cities and towns for various projects. They're promised to nonprofits. They'll use rainy day money if they had to, God forbid, but it's obviously future years, then those earmarks might be in jeopardy, but the earmarks for this coming fiscal year will be okay.

I WOULD TRUST HIS ADVICE ON THAT, AND I ALSO BELIEVE PART OF THE REASON FOR THAT IS BECAUSE SOME OF THOSE EARMARKS ARE COMING FROM THE MILLIONAIRES TAX MONEY, WHICH IS TECHNICALLY SOME OF IT'S OFF BUDGET FOR THE STATE, SO IT'S ONE-TIME MONEY ESSENTIALLY. SO I THINK A LOT OF THOSE EARMARKS PROBABLY ARE. If Rep Roy says that, I don't know why we wouldn't trust him.

I mean, I'm not trying to put Jeff on the spot. Just I was concerned that some of those earmarks, like the $60,000 to the middle school auditorium project, I'm like, oh, geez, maybe we shouldn't count on that because who knows what will happen with the referendum. But I'm being told, you know, that that'll be okay.

I think those are from the millionaire's tax money, which was set aside for education. So that may be the reason why he's suggesting that those are solid. Okay.

All right, thank you. Mike, you had a question, right?

No, it wasn't a question. I mean, the direction we're heading in, I think, is fine, which is, as Councilor Griffith proposed, and then those new positions, we'll vote on them up or down. We may end up at the same exact point. They may all get a vote. We may end up at 1.1, and the $400,000 for the school, we'll take that up separately, and I'm fine in the direction we're going in. Yeah, so we just need to come up with that baseline number.

Baseline number, yes, I agree. Go ahead.

So I just, I wanted to kind of clarify, I think, what Councillor Calaway-Tripp was asking about why we need to make cuts to pass through that $470 money was, again, because, so at least for me, I'm not proposing we don't use free cash at all. I think we have to use free cash. We're going to have to balance this budget using free cash. My suggestion was that we don't add on recurring permanent costs. Like people, you still have to use free cash in order to budget balance what we already have. The original proposed budget from our town administrator didn't include the extra $402,000 in Chapter 70 and the extra $200 something. That isn't actually quite determined yet because the number for unrestricted funds is, I think, different between the state, between the Senate and the House. So that number isn't not necessarily official yet. The other one still has to need the signature from the governor. But I did speak to Senator Rauch, and she said that coming out of committee, if the House and the Senate If the numbers agree like they do for Chapter 70 monies, that will be the number that comes out of committee. So we can anticipate that unless the governor vetoes it, we will be getting $402,000 in Chapter 70. That does not require any cuts for any departments because it requires, it would mean that we are using some more for the free cash money than what was necessarily expected. in the revised budget. But the point is we don't have to cut things. It doesn't require cuts to any other departments because this was an unanticipated $402,000 that was meant for the schools. It would just be passing it over to them. It doesn't require affecting anyone else's budget. I think that is what the clarification that was needed because saying, oh, well, it's incorporated into the new budget. YES, BUT JUST IN A WAY THAT BRINGS DOWN THE FREE CASH MONEY, BUT IT DOESN'T AFFECT ANYONE ELSE. SO I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT.

SO THANK YOU, MR. CHAIRMAN. SO JUST IN TERMS OF A BASELINE NUMBER AND KNOWING WHERE THIS IS GOING, INSTEAD OF ME PROJECTING A NUMBER TO YOU AND THEN GOING THROUGH THE POSITIONS AND SOME OF THE OTHER TRIAGE, I THINK TO COUNCILOR BLANK'S POINT, I THINK YOU JUST straw poll or vote on each of the new restored positions so our staff have guidance. That will give us clear clarity. And then if folks are in agreement on, or not in agreement, it's okay, but on the 60,000 restoration to just account 300, if you want the 40,000 from the police and 20,000 from facilities, that's an easy one to do too, but I need you guys to straw poll and vote on that just to give me the guidance. And then after that, I mean, that will shuffle the deck for us to a point where we can take a brief recess. And I can get you a better number on exactly how much free cash is then left. Because I understand Consular Griffith's point about the $54,000 was reduced in the Deputy Town Administrator. We don't just do a quarter. It's based on 26.1 work weeks, 26.2.

So the salaries came in lower this year.

Yeah, some of the salaries came in a little lower. So it's not just a... Take 190 and divide by four. It's not as easy as that, and that's why the number looks like it's not one-fourth. But if I can have direction on those five or six things, that will give me enough to go figure out and give you a better number of what you have for free capital.

Okay, so why don't we do a straw poll? Clark, why don't you read the positions, and we can just...

I do think we should do a roll call. Just because it's a matter of public importance for the town.

So I think even though it's a straw poll, I think we should read the roll. That doesn't matter. That doesn't matter to me. Yeah, we can do a straw poll. He wants a roll call.

He's suggesting a roll call.

He's suggesting a roll call.

On each position.

I don't think that's a problem. Does anyone else feel that's a problem with roll call? Or do you just want to do a straw poll?

Roll call. Roll call. Just for clarification, can you throw out a position? We'll roll call it.

Let's start with the munis administrator. The TA. The assistant TA. You could do the deputy town administrator. Deputy town administrator. All right.

Deputy TA position. So Mr. Chairman, this is a roll call vote specifically on restoring the Deputy TA position to the FY27 budget, correct, Jamie?

Correct.

Okay, Councilor Ajuku?

Yes.

Councilor Morangelo? Yes. Councilor Maloy? Yes. Councilor LeBlanc? Yes. Councilor Griffith?

No.

Councilor Calloway-Tripp?

No.

Myself is a yes. Vice Chair? Yes. Chairman? Yes. So that passes by a vote of seven to two.

Administrative Assistant for the Board of Assessors? Yes. Again, just for everybody's edification and clarity, will also result in a $65,010 loss in new growth revenue.

Can you tell me the name of the position again? If we don't add it.

If you don't add it, correct.

This is an administrative assistant?

Administrative assistant for the Board of Assessors. Okay.

How is that determined? I'm sorry. How is that amount of new growth determined?

Pays for the benefits and the salary for that year. And it was based off the recommendation from the principal assessor that the position would pay for itself and year one and probably would pay beyond that year two, three, four. We basically just said we're going to call it even because there will be more new growth for six months when the appraisers can get out of the office.

SO IT'S A HYPOTHESIS, RIGHT? WE'RE EXPECTING THAT IT WOULD PAY FOR ITSELF, ESSENTIALLY, THAT THERE IS...

I TRUST OUR BOARD OF ASSESSORS AND OUR PRINCIPAL ASSESSOR WITH THEIR JUDGMENT, AND THE BOARD OF ASSESSORS WHO WERE ELECTED HAVE ASKED FOR THIS FOR TWO YEARS.

So Mr. Chairman, this is a roll call vote on adding the administrative assistant to the board of assessors while also taking into consideration some expense, Jamie?

Revenue decline.

A revenue decline would be there if it was denied.

If it was denied, there would be a revenue decline of $65,010. Okay.

Councillor Ajuku? Yes. Councillor Morangelo? Yes. Councillor Malloy? Yes. Councillor LeBlanc? Yes. Councillor Griffith?

No.

Councillor Calloway-Tripp?

No.

Myself, yes. Vice Chair? No. And Chairman? Yes. So that position would pass by a vote of six to three. Sorry, Julie, you're gonna have a lot of paperwork. Thank you, Ted. Thank you, Ted. All taking notes. Should have never said yes on vacation. All right. Jamie, next position.

The two SROs, which is going to equal, I mean, you don't have to write this down, Ted, but just for the council, you're looking at $169,000 savings on those two positions, and then $169,000 One's at $64,706, one's at $104,260. Well, this is going to be the hardest vote for y'all on the wall.

Because the meme online is going to be Frankie and Ben saying they can't support me.

So you're looking at $169,000, roughly, a few dollars short, of a salary decrease. And then you would also be able to reduce the benefits line item by about $50,000 for two fewer health insurance accounts.

Oh, OK.

So you're seeing about $220,000, roughly, in savings. But over there?

Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, this is not a resolution, but this is going to be a roll call vote on restoring two school resource officers to our Franklin Police Department. And I'll do the roll call out of order because I think sometimes it's not fair to always call on the same people first. So, Councilor LeBlanc. Yes. Councilor Morangelo. No. Councilor Molloy? Yes. Councilor Ajuku? Yes. Councilor Griffith?

No.

Councilor Callaway-Tripp?

No.

Vice Chair? No. Chairman? Yes. And myself, yes. So that the two community school resource officers would be restored by a vote of 5-4. Jamie, next one.

The Munis Administrator.

Can you spell Munis for me?

M, M as in Mary, U, N as in Nancy, I-S. Oh. Yeah, sorry.

I thought it was something more complicated. Munis. Munis.

Sorry. So this is a savings in the salary line item of $73,462. but you would need to add back in $23,000 to both finance as well as HR, a piece. So your net savings for that, hold on. The net savings out of all that is whatever, $27,000 and change, because you've got to add back in the services from the efficiencies from the reduction position.

Carrie, did you want to say something?

No, it's a great number. It's just not.

I'm not lining it up perfect, but we will outside. The $46,000 in restored number, it's probably $28,000 and $14,000, whatever. Yeah, whatever. We'll look up the numbers out there and we'll fix it in the revised version.

Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, again, not a resolution, but this is a roll call vote on adding the Munis administrator to the FY27 budget, and I will do a roll call. Councilor Ajuku?

Yes.

Councilor Morangelo?

Yes.

Councilor Malloy? Yes. Councilor LeBlanc? Yes. Councilor Griffith? No. Councilor Calloway-Tripp?

No.

Vice Chair? No. Chairman? Yes. And myself, yes. One, two, three, six, three, sir. Our friends in Washington could learn a lot from watching us tonight, I think.

And then we have one last one, I think, not of a new position, but I sense that there's a majority of people that want to give a minimum of the $60,000 back to the school budget. So you can take that one and do it if you want to reduce the police budget $40,000, which was money the finance committee recommended to... put into the police budget, but the chief didn't necessarily ask for that. And then we have talked about unscheduled overtime and a bunch of other things, and if you want to reduce that in facilities, that's an easy $60,000 transition that can easily get the schools back whole from what the request was that the superintendent had asked for.

Wasn't there also a new person to the inspection department?

Yeah, you could. Oh, I'm sorry, in the summer help. I totally forgot about the summer help. Maybe you want to do the... I'm sorry, Ted. You're right. No, that's okay. I just think we're talking about everything, right? So we should just talk about everything. The part-time inspector was recommended by the Finance Committee to create more of a revenue generation flow with the administrative assistant. and giving Gus more individuals to go out and be able to close out permits, which allows then for closing and occupancy and a variety of other things. So that was $50,000. So you're right. We should do a roll call.

So that's a part-time building inspector for?

Part-time building inspector for the building inspector. Yep.

Okay.

And, Jeremy, just to be clear, there is no benefits with this one, right? There is no benefits. Okay. Just to be clear.

Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, again, not a resolution, but this is to take a roll call vote to approve a part-time building inspector being added to the FY27 budget. Councillor Callaway-Tripp? No. Councillor Griffith?

No.

Councillor LeBlanc? Yes. Councillor Malloy? Yes.

Councillor Ajuku?

Yes. Councillor Morangelo? Yes. Vice Chair?

No.

Myself, yes. Chairman? Yes. So that would be a vote of 63, sir, in favor.

Can I ask a point of clarification about the summer help? The DPW was increased in addition to just the summer help. Is this vote just going to be on the summer help itself, or is it going to be the whole DPW increase?

I believe the summer help, but I would also defer to Councilor Griffith to what I think her amendment might have been. I think you were just highlighting the summer help. The rest of the money, Max, went to the snow and ice.

I was just looking at the $41,000 in summer help. That was restoring what was cut last.

There's no additional new positions, Jamie?

No new positions in DPW other than summer help.

All right. Do we have to put the number of people that this represents? No, just 41,000. Just summer part-time help for DPW? Is that good enough?

Yeah, that's perfect.

So, Mr. Chairman, again, not a resolution, but this would be the approval of adding summer part-time help for DPW back into the budget for FY27. Councillor Ajuku? Yes. Councillor Morangelo? No. Councillor Malloy?

Yes.

Councillor Leleblanc? Yes. Councillor Griffith?

No.

Councillor Calloway-Tripp?

No. No.

Myself, yes. Vice Chair?

Yes.

And Chairman? Yes. That would pass by a vote of 6-3, sir.

And Jamie, we have more, right? Just one more. You want to do the...

This is my concept. I don't know if other folks have ideas, but I'm getting the sense, except for a couple people that mentioned it, there seems to be consensus that the $60,000 should be added back into the school. So I'm proposing to you a pretty easy way to do it. $40,020.

We don't necessarily have to take the money from those other departments to make that happen.

You could come up with another game plan.

It could just come from pre-cash.

No, because then we have to get it from capital.

I realize that, but we don't have to whack the two departments to give back to schools.

I don't think you're necessarily whacking them, but I think you have. Seriously.

I believe they gave us the $40,000 as, like, a beginning to try to reduce our reliance on free cash for recurring expenses. But $40,000 isn't exactly... I'd have to cobble a couple things together and still have to come back and say, I need $12,000 for the bulletproof vest. Oh, you're getting $12,000, $25,000 vests for $12,000? No, it's some of the $40,000 they gave us. It wasn't equal to anything. So it's not going to... I mean, we're going to be coming back looking for capital anyway. It's just... If that 40 grand can get the schools back what they need and make your job easier, by all means, it's all yours.

Basically, Chief, you're saying it's like throwing a deck chair off the Queen Mary. There you go.

It didn't float. However, I will say I think it's a step in the right direction to try to put some money, take it out of capital to help fund operational things, but we can tackle one thing at a time. Exactly. So, Jamie, this vote would be for... restoring $60,000 to the school budget, but we don't have to put a means in this, do we?

I think it's easy to just say reduce the police by 40,000 and facilities by 20,000 expenses. Both are expenses.

Reduce 40K to police and 20K to facilities?

Yep.

Okay. Mr. Chairman, again, not a resolution, but this is getting a roll call from the council on restoring $60,000 to Department 300, which is our Franklin Public Schools, while at the same time reducing $40,000 from the police department and $20,000 from facilities. Councillor Ajuku?

Yes.

Councillor Morangelo? Yes. Councillor Malloy? Yes. Councillor Blank? Yes. Councillor Griffith?

Yes.

Councilor Calloway, chair?

Yes.

Myself, yes. Vice chair? Yes. Chairman? Yes. That passes 9-0, sir.

So just as a review, just to make sure I'm clear, there's no recess needed? because after those votes and those decisions, the amount of free cash you will still need to balance the budget is $1,104,132. So the bottom line free cash number doesn't change at this point, right, at this point. Okay. Go ahead.

I did have one other, there was one other cut, the $75,000 to facilities that I had suggested be undone as well. Is that still in here? That is in, it is in the recommended budget, was that the antique and out the $75,000.

They took the $75,000 out. They took $75,000 from facilities.

In addition to the $20,000, well, we just took $20,000. SHOULD WE JUST TAKE THIS ONE?

YEP, WE DID, BUT... THAT'S EXPENSES.

PARK THAT CAR FOR A MINUTE. WE'RE ALREADY AT THIS POINT. WE'RE HALFWAY THROUGH THE MERIT, RIGHT? WE'RE TRACKING ALL THIS LIVE ON A SHEET. EVAN, THANK YOU. BUT TO COUNCILOR GRIFFIT'S POINT, JUST FOR DEBATE PURPOSES, SHE'S CORRECT. THE 75,000, FORGET ABOUT THE 20, THE AMENDMENT YOU JUST MADE. OKAY. JUST DISCUSS, I THINK, THE CONCEPT THAT COUNCILOR GRIFFIT HAS, AND I THINK DISCUSS THE 75,000 THAT SHE'S BRINGING UP, AND THEN WE'LL

And then we'll go from there.

Well, we'll see what you guys think of this.

We're going to roll call the restoring of the $75,000.

which means we're going to have to find a place to raise that money to put in there. And I'm sure she, I'm guessing that Councilor Griffith has some ideas of what to do. There's no free cash.

We're using it for the capital.

Well, we could reduce the capital. We have to reduce capital. Okay, that'll come later. But this would not be a resolution, but for the purposes of a roll call, it would be the restoration What was the dollar amount, Jamie? $75,000. $75,000. Restoration of $75,000 to facilities department. Correct? Correct.

Anything else I need to add there? Two expenses. Great.

So, Mr. Chairman, again, not a resolution, but this is a roll call for the restoration of $75,000 to the facilities department department. And I will bounce around again so people aren't feeling unfair here. Councilor Blank?

Yes.

Mr. Chairman? Yes. Councilor Ajuku?

Yes.

Councilor Morangelo? No. Councilor Malloy?

No.

Councilor Griffith?

Yes.

Councilor Calaway-Tripp? Want me to come back to you?

Yes, please.

Vice Chair? No. Myself, yes. Councilor Calloway, true.

Yes.

So that passes.

Can I just say something?

So that passes by 6-3. Of course the pen decided to Times are tough. Can't even get a working pen.

All right. Thank you. That was my favorite pen.

I'm sorry. You'd think maybe they'd give the clerk a pen. Yeah, Jane.

The reason I hesitated. I understand why FinCom did a lot of what they did, because they were trying to reduce the amount of free cash. that was going to be getting allocated. Theoretically, we just increased it. This is why the positions shouldn't be filled and the departments shouldn't have to make cuts because by doing that, we are reducing the amount of the free cash that we are using by allowing them to maintain where they are with no cuts involved. I will give you the Deputy Town Administrator even though I'm against it financially because I know it's contractually obligated and I get that.

But you voted no.

I know because it's to me fiscally financially it's not okay. Morally it should be done because it's in a contract that was agreed upon and I don't like not, holding up to the bargains. But on a financial status, no. By bringing in these positions, we're now just increasing the amount of free cash that we're using. And I get what everybody is saying, I do. But there are unknowns that could potentially hit in FY28 And keeping some of this or the majority of it as much as we can into a budget stabilization fund so it's zeroed out, we don't have to deal with recertification from the state, is more fiscally responsible and gives us a bigger cushion in case anything hits us coming into FY28. that we will definitely be okay and we aren't laying people off. Because if we do get hit or we do have massive expenses that come up and now all of a sudden we need that free cash for those major expenses because something unforeseen happened, We won't have it. And what we're going to be doing is.

We have it. We have it in all those other funds that Kerry mentioned.

But we can't touch the one that's 7 million because that's our AAA bond rating.

There's certainly domino effects, but it's not that we don't have them.

Right. So my point is we're not touching that because it affects our AAA bond rating. So in my mind, it doesn't exist. Do you see what I'm saying? If it's not smart to use it because it hurts us financially when we go out for loans, then the money no longer is sitting there. It's gone. It's locked away. We don't have it. It's gone. It's just not there to use because it's going to hurt us even more if we do.

Okay. Let's figure out what's going on here because we're discussing this. We already voted on all these positions. So let's figure out what the – he's giving us a final budget number. So Max, what do you got?

So if you look at the capital budget and you add it to the operating budget and how much we're using out of free cash, I think we're out of balance because we're taking more free cash than we have.

Right.

So I think I'm going to actually propose that maybe we should table the rest of the budget discussion and take the capital discussion up now just so we make sure we have enough free cash out of when we discuss the capital because we could temporarily table discussion on the budget and bring up the capital discussion now just to make sure we have enough capital, enough free cash for both things.

So the good news is the restoration of the 75,000 facilities is increasing the amount of free cash that you need to balance the budget. However, you have, you know, outside of the healthcare deficit, which I'm sure will be a discussion later, you do have all, you have 460, you have 528,000 in free, aside from the healthcare deficit, you have 528,000 in additional free cash. So you don't have to spend it all. Right, but maybe we should discuss that now. I'm just articulating for right now, Mike, I will just, you can table the budget, but I think you're getting, you're going to start getting into very complicated Robert's Rules here at 915 already. And you got 10 other resolutions. I would just say that if you voted on the 75,000 in free cash, I think there needs to be some sort of discussion when you get to, you can do it now by the way. Is there 75,000 in free cash on the capital round two that you all can agree on to not spend so you can restore the facilities budget? The only thing is the teacher's laptops. And that's the only thing that is not mandatory. I mean, I know that's a rabbit hole by going and talking about all this. But I mean, you're going to talk about it again in another hour. So I think you've got to deal with it if you're going to increase facilities 75,000. and just for clarity if we need direction from the council on what the 75 000 is for we could use that because the finance committee cut that because of water irrigation so i did hear at the last budget hearing that people wanted to restore the lights at the auditorium with that 75 000 is that what the council is desiring with that money or is it not or are we just putting the water on that we can't run anyways because we're in drought so i mean i'm just i'm seriously asking that question so so if i had to choose between

Irrigation and teachers' laptops, I'm going to choose the teachers' laptops. I mean, it's a zero-sum game.

Hold on.

So there's not enough money in here for teachers' laptops and for irrigation. So I would prefer there be teachers' laptops. We've already voted on that. So we're going to have to reconsider.

We voted on that, right?

But I don't think people realize the ramifications of that vote.

Yes, I believe we did, Max. To the chair. I believe we all did. And I think we should take care of the budget first. And then move on. We'll deal with the capital completely separate. Because I think there is one more vote, one more amendment I would like to propose for the budget. That's the elephant in the room that I started this conversation with. is there's $400,000 more given in the state budget for Chapter 70. We have not given the schools that $400,000. Correct me if I'm wrong, Councilor Griffith.

No, we have not.

We have not. So I'm going to propose an amendment to use $400,000 of additional free cash to give that to the schools. And we can vote it exactly like we just voted this other thing.

Can you clarify for us, though? Because you said it was baked in. So where did you put it?

It's in the budget. I mean, it's hard, and I understand it. I noted it in the voting document. We assume the Senate budget numbers. That is a major way that you got the deficit from 2.1 million down to 1.1. Aside from that, Councilor LeBlanc and maybe others are just simply also saying, regardless of where the money comes from, and regardless of whether it's Chapter 70, state aid, In all that, there's an amendment that should be voted on by, at least a couple members have brought up, on $400,000, increasing account 300 by $400,000, and then I think the Council of Blank, or maybe others, you can debate it now, where you get that money, you're going to figure that out later. Is that... Is that what you're saying? Correct. But at least from a value standpoint.

Yes, and my proposal is to take the only opportunity is you either cut, and we've already determined we ain't cutting anything. We're not cutting anything. Stay where we were. The only place you're going to get it out of is out of free cash. When we get to the button, we get to the capital, I know where that $475,000 is coming from to get us balance. I know where that $475,000 is coming from. to get us balance. So that's what I propose. That's what I would like to vote on. I'd like to put, because this is a straw vote or whatever.

I need a second if you're going to make an amendment.

Well, could I just make a, ask for a clarification? Yeah. Councillor LeBlanc? Yes. If I'm looking at this correctly, we have $1.5 million in free cash According to Jamie's, are you suggesting that we take the additional Chapter 70 money, $475,000, whatever it is, and will that reduce our $1,525,000 by $475,000? Correct. Yes. So we don't have a million in change. Yes. A million of which will have to go to the health care Or you have another amendment.

No, I don't want to answer that. It doesn't have to necessarily all go to the health care issue. When we get to that piece, I want to have a robust discussion about that. Sure. So it doesn't necessarily, it could be, yes, if Jamie can, slippery slope, if Jamie can convince me that we need that million dollars, then yes, it may be other issues. Other items, hard core, the laptops, the fixing, that's where the 475 comes from. We didn't, we gave the schools $4,000 and it meant that we just didn't spend $475,000 of fixing a cooler and doing the other stuff. Or 475 comes out of the... the need for the health insurance because I got some questions about that. But that's my point. I want to restore the schools. So whatever the mechanism, someone tell me what the mechanism is, I'll do it. But I would like to ask the nine counselors to vote that up or down just like we did with the other.

Council, can I ask you a clarifying question? You certainly can. Before we get to a vote, and I have to somehow write this up like a madman. At one point in the discussion, you were proposing earmarking the money, which I realize requires a school committee vote on whether they decide to accept the earmark or our recommendation for the funds. But I believe that's what you said, so I just want to clarify that so that... people understand. Yes. You're not proposing giving the school department all of that money from free cash with no limitations.

Yes. I mean, if we get, I'll talk about that from a discussion standpoint now. Yes, if we were to give that $400,000, I still would have the same intention of before, of I would like it, I'd like $300,000, because the number I was using before was $300,000. I'd like to have that $300,000 I know we don't control it. It's up to the school committee and the administration how they do it. But I would love to have that $300,000 go to reducing fees so that money ends up directly in residents' pockets this year. It's not... They will feel it. They will have $100 less. We talk about making it better for people. They'll have $100 less. I'm throwing out numbers. $100 less in transportation, $100 less in athletics, whatever it is. That still leaves them $100,000. They can use that as they see fit. However, I would love for that to be in Student facing adding a teacher adding something back. I don't know what that is But I would also like to when I would when they do their budget vote I would love to be made aware of how that four hundred thousand dollars was spent, but there is a caveat We we don't control it. They could go up and do whatever they do whatever they want, but I would like that That's my that's my wish. It's just it's it's a verbal wish but We can't necessarily put that stipulation on them in the vote.

Can I ask another clarifying question? Yes. Jamie, what would stop us not putting that in operating but just allocating that through capital?

You could. You could do either or.

Isn't it less messy because?

Well, it's a little bit of just shuffling chairs for the sake of shuffling chairs, but I think a couple quick things. One, if you put it in the operating budget, it would go into a P300 and then the school committee would have discretion on how to spend that within the operating budget. If you just gave them $400,000 in a capital account, They could essentially use that for almost any purpose, and then I have to sign the warrants on that. So you could do it either way. I think we did this a couple years ago where they did get a flux of a million bucks in budget stabilization money, and I think that was one-time funds, and it went into the operating budget. And I think, you know, you'd have to talk to the school committee and the superintendent on how they would spend that extra $400,000. I don't know if the schools have a preference of where the $400,000 would go, whether it would be in capital or operating. But either even the capital account, they could still spend that money out of that capital account on operating expenses. There's nothing that restricts them from doing that. So the easiest thing is to put it into the budget. Because then I think they have a budget that's in a document that's voted that's part of their operating budget. I think it's probably just more clear and transparent to do it that way. But to be clear, you could just approve the budget as is, right, right now, and you could spend that $400,000 on the schools in a myriad of operating or capital.

Because the reason why I asked before Lucas talks, I worry about it being in the operating fund from an annual perspective, right? Because if we, you know, we're using one-time money. It's going to come out. I love the idea of it helping people out with fees. I really do. Yeah, it's a great idea. But I'm more in favor of using. Either way, it's coming from free cash. So in my mind, it's better to just allocate it in the free cash discussion. If the council's.

And this gets a little murky with the school committee authority, but if you want to spend $400,000 to reduce fees, then the easiest way to do that is to probably just keep it aside, put it in a capital account, student fees or something. I just want to note that the fees are then going to go back up the year after. So you can do it for one time, and I'm not arguing you shouldn't do that. I just want to make sure that in FY28, to Councilor Calloway-Tripp's point of looking out in the future, whatever the fee is today, you give people a $50 break, I know it's a lot. That's your priority, but then they're going to go right back up the next year anyway, or they're going to be back to where they are today. But it would be easier if the purpose was for fee reduction. I think it would give the superintendent more flexibility to have it in a capital account, but I defer to his expertise on that for sure.

Lucas, what do you got for me? Let's hear from Lucas. Let's hear from the superintendent.

So thank you. I know it's been said, thank you. It's really the purview of the school committee is what would happen with any money committed.

Right.

I did show up to the hearing the second night to answer a question from Council LeBlanc around that type of money. A chunk of money like 300K probably reduces fees over 100. But then that's athletics. And then for the bus fee, it's probably about $27 to $30 for the year. So the application of $300,000 for that purpose, although I agree with the idea of fees being reduced as a fee payer, and both of the two override budgets. I planned four budgets the first year. The second year, I did two more that had all these options in them. And the fee reduction was part of those votes. So if you voted yes, we would reduce the fees back down. That didn't happen, so we didn't reduce the fees. But I think, in my opinion, humble opinion, and my expert opinion in running the schools, I would say that the $300,000, I don't think there'd be a department member here who would refuse money that they knew wasn't going to come from somebody else. But I'm hearing that this is tied in and baked into this budget. So my honest opinion is around the idea is if that money was to come, I know that we're actually tied up with about 380K in tier two capital requests right now. So that's like facilities for schools. That's technology for teacher laptops and the infrastructure, all the moves that we made across all the schools. We're still repairing walls. We're still doing some work. That's chipping away at the project. We had asked for a larger number last year. We had received a portion of that so we're just phasing it in. We can't do it all. You heard tonight about the theater project. That is not on you. It's not on school committee. I didn't put that forth as a capital request at that time because you saw what you approved for tier one and tier two and we just had to prioritize. It's not to say that it wouldn't come up in the future or something like this could help with that type of project. But ultimately, I just wanted to be clear about I can't commit to you on how that money would be spent, but I'm also trying to still figure out how it seems to me that it seems like it's tied up right now in this particular budget. Maybe a larger discussion around Chapter 70 and the application. I know, Jamie, you've talked about this from your perspective. I'm hearing others, obviously. But from my perspective, there are... things that could be accomplished with that funding but I'm still a little bit worried that it's tied up in the free cash and I think as a unit we're all here, all the directors, we put forth our budgets requesting what we thought we needed and that's been the major focus. I did not plan for additional funding and I came into this thinking I was you know 60k was on the table to be reduced so this is the the opposite it's a good problem to have but not on the backs of other departments either so I don't know where that's coming from but I think that's a comment I would make so I hope that helps add a little light I don't want to look like I'm being passing on an opportunity. I'm just not sure on the details on that. So I'm interested to see what you come up with when you caucus, sir, plan as well.

Yep. Councilor Blank, we were just talking here. The money that these people have raised and the money that Becca gave us for the auditorium, can we take some of that money? IN PUT IT IN CAPITAL AND GET THE AUDITORIUM FIXED?

SO THE AUDITORIUM TO BE FIT, FIRST OF ALL, JUST FOR THE RECORD, AND LUCAS AND I HAVE TALKED ABOUT THIS MANY TIMES, THIS ENTIRE SITUATION WITH THE AUDITORIUM, I'VE BEEN TO THE AUDITORIUM MANY TIMES. YEAH. AND I'VE BEEN THERE FOR FLOODS. I'VE BEEN THERE FOR A LOT OF THE WORK THAT WAS DONE. I HAVE.

SO I'M OUT AND LEFT HERE.

I HAVE. And not that I'm over there every week or every month or whatever, but it's not that I don't notice that there's a broken chair or this, that, or the other thing. But there's a system we go through, and until the fundraiser had started, never was brought to my attention, not saying it's not important. And we talked about it, and I think Lucas just explained very well the same conversation he had with me. He just said in the pantheon of priorities, it didn't raise up. But I do respect the Council's jurisdiction on the fact that many have risen up in the community who want to fix this. I would note, I don't want to speak for Colin, and I don't know if he's here, but I believe you quoted me that a full restoration of that auditorium is like a half a million bucks, right? Everything in that area is happening.

The official lighting quote should be back probably next week, the next week or two. That will give us the actual number for lighting. We broke it up into two phases to simplify it. But ultimately, the first phase was the lighting, a rigging inspection of all the rigging that's happening, stage curtain. and targeted seating repair, meaning ones that are really broken. If we just fix those, have those welded, and have them fixed, what could we do? What you saw and what Ms. Courtright showed was really frayed and worn seats that are not right. So that was like phase two. So in phase one... 60K is committed from earmarks from Senator Rausch. The Franklin boosters for music and theater have raised a considerable amount of money. And ultimately, once we know the lighting number, we'll know how far away we are with those two numbers to know. And if it was, hey, we're 12 grand short, if I had that hard number today, I'd tell you how far away we are. The second phase of it is, do you pull up all the old seats

Yeah, I don't know.

Fix the floor, fix the ceiling, and then put the old seats back. That's estimated at about $100,000 to $120,000. Or you just rip out the old seats and put new ones in, and that's $250,000. Because that would be the new floor. Either way, you have to pull the seats up to fix the floor and do all the ceiling work. So that's the difference. So it jumps pretty quick from tier one get the priorities that were identified, the lighting and whatnot, and then there's a whole separate phase. So you're looking at basically the total amount for the project could be over $350,000 to do. So that's just a, I don't mean to belabor it, and I have a plan that I'm happy to share with anybody. We were trying to get hard numbers before we share.

You're going to have to budget $350,000 probably out of the free cash allotment that's proposed tonight to set aside those funds to be able to fully do this piece. That also might include the Senator's earmark and also the fundraise money. If you had all of that together, you're looking at about $450,000.

So $350,000 is the project, so this $60,000 minus $460,000 for the earmark minus a contribution from the fund.

So you need to set aside probably $250,000 in this free cash to do that project if you want to prioritize the auditorium renovation completely. And then still, you know, we're kind of waiting for some quotes.

Yep.

But, you know, 75 restoration of facilities may be able to help out with that. But I think that question is still out there. And I don't know if Councilor LeBlanc or Councilor Griffith had ideas on how to spend the $400,000 or the $75,000 restoration for facilities. Because I think a couple of you brought up the 75 restoration was people wanted that to go to the lights. So... Mm-hmm. You got a bunch of options here. It's just a question if you want the stuff that they're asking for or you want to do these other things.

I'm good. Lucas, I know we got you on the hot seat, so thank you. We're all trying to help as best we can here with a whole lot of competing things, right? But you just heard... that we sent 60 grand over yeah thank you by the way we restored that back into your budget right thank you so and i know we're going to talk capital in a little bit but would it be possible to fund the the teacher laptops with that 60 grand because that only leaves us having to find 15 in capital for laptops to

So the laptops was an idea that Councilor Morangelo brought up. But that's like one of so many capital requests. So it was a great example. And that's one that you feel strongly about as the one. But the laptops, I don't know that that's universally from all of you. You would vote on capital projects and what you feel like you would want to fund and what not to. I think that's chapter two of the night. I would say we put in, that's a reduced amount for the laptops from what Mr. Raposa had requested.

I was just trying to think of, like, we gave you a $60,000 extra that had been cut. Maybe that could go toward that, which would free up some capital money for some of these other things we're talking about.

Just trying to play it out in my head. I understand. Okay, thank you.

I'd freak out. Yeah. Jamie, what are we voting on?

Well, I think back to Councilor Blank and Councilor Griffith's like theory amendment idea. I think first you have to ask, are you going to take a vote on the 400,000 that a couple people brought up to put into account 300? Yeah. Right? But Councilor Blank's math is spot on. If you vote in favor of putting 400,000 into account 300, You now have to infuse $475,000 in other revenue into the budget.

Or take it from capital.

Or take it from capital or cut other areas of the budget.

Well, I can't vote on it unless I know where that money is coming from.

It's not coming from anywhere. It's made up. It's not made up. It's not made up.

It's definitely not made up. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Monopoly money.

Correct. It is not made up. It is coming out of free cash. That is, I would like to, I'm going to make this very simple. I'm going to make an amendment. I would like to vote to add $400,000 to account 300, and the money will come out of free cash. That is what the vote is on.

I need a second.

Second. I have a motion and a second.

Can you just clap Councilman Blank for the purposes of the record? Can you just say it again?

I would like to add $400,000 to the Department 300 budget for FY27. The funding for that will come from free cash.

And are you putting any restrictions on the funding?

Verbally, there's nothing binding that we can do from a resolution standpoint. I can just verbalize what I'm asking for, and it's truly up to the school committee. They can do what they want. They have the right to do what they want, but that's... We also have other actions tonight, but there's no... Max, real quick, because we've got a... Well, I just don't understand.

The only place we could get that money from is capital. Right. And so if you tally up all the school capital, we're just shifting money from capital that's going towards the schools already in the form of capital and just shifting it to the operating budget, and we're still $20,000 plus $70,000 short. So this, we're just, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, this budget is not balanced.

All right, well, clerk is going to rule Zulu roll call on the amendment. There was an amendment made and it was seconded.

So the amendment as it stands right now, because we're still in operating budget discussion, is to add $400,000 to account 300, which is the Franklin Public Schools, for FY27, and the funding source would be free cash. Right.

Correct.

Okay. Councilor Rajuku. Yes. Councillor Morangelo? No. Councillor Malloy? No. Councillor LeBlanc? Yes. Councillor Griffith?

Yes.

Councillor Calaway-Tripp?

Come back to me, please.

Vice Chair? No. Chairman? No. And because of the funding source, my vote will be no. And Councillor Calaway-Tripp?

I have to vote no, because if we're going to take it for free cash, then we can't do that and their capital expenses.

Once we can figure something out, we can come back and put it back in. We can talk about it.

I feel like talk about it during the capital conversation, but for the operating budget, it fails.

So moving on. We should vote on Resolution 26-25.

Jamie, do you have to propose a different number, though? Yes.

Yes, he does. The only thing you have to make up is $75,000, to which I would... Just give me one second. You're going to have to add, I mean, obviously, well, obviously you have to add $75,000 in and likely free cash as... to make up for the restorative facilities department. Right. Or you can propose $75,000 in cuts in the operating budget somewhere. So I think the path of least resistance is likely to add free cash in. You know, the classroom infrastructure improvements, the classroom repairs, I mean, you could deduct $92,500 from that. That's and leave that at $17,500, they can still get some work done, and then you can balance the budget. Because I think the laptops are going to likely be a priority. You can take it away from the other facility stuff. The dump truck is going to get tough to do. Obviously, as Consulate LeBlanc said, maybe you just deduct $75,000 from the health insurance deficit payments. But whatever it is, you finalize. You're going to have to make it clear what you're cutting in round two of capital to fund the $75,000 restoration. So you're $75,000 in the budget.

But for the purposes of the resolution that we're about to vote on, the numbers have changed.

It's not balanced.

We can't do it, so we have to make an amendment.

Where you're getting the money from to pay for that. And that's a simple thing. You guys have to vote and say $75,000 for free cash.

But is it just 75? Because what about the 60 that we put back in? That's all set. That's all set.

It was budget neutral. We took you. It's totally good.

Just asking. It seemed like that was two days ago.

So the amendment would be 75,000.

So do we just have to make the amendment to change the 169,987 to up it by 50 and then change the free cash number from 11 to add 75? Those are the only two numbers we have to change. Correct. In reality, we just have to change the appropriation amount And we have to just change the free cash number. We have to amend the change 169-987-307. Understood.

Where are you getting the funds? Where is it coming from? From free cash.

So we're going to increase the free cash number from 1.104132 to 1.179132.

Okay. And you're going to reduce your capital request to get the... Well, that capital...

This is just the operating budget. If anyone mentions capital again, that is... We're doing capital later. Correct. Correct. So the amendment is just on the appropriation and on the amount we're taking from free cash.

So is the amended appropriation 169,687,307 plus 75? You add that number plus 75,000. So that number is 169,762,307. Correct.

So you're raising and appropriating. So you add 169,762,307. That will balance the budget.

Does that also mean, to Counsel LeBlanc's point, we have to put something different in the free cash line?

So you change the 169 number, and then right below it is $1,104,132. You see that on the third line down from that? You're going to add $75,000 to that, which is $1,179,132. $1,179,132. Correct. And then you have a balanced budget that you can vote on unless there's other amendments or other issues.

So, Mr. Chairman, as amended, the two changes to Resolution 2625 would be total appropriation would now be $169,762,307 and the raised and appropriated amount would change to 1,179,132. Correct. Correct. Okay, then we can vote.

Do a roll call. You want a roll call on this? I want a roll call.

God bless you.

Wait, do we need to make a motion? It's been motioned and seconded. As amended. As amended.

It's been motioned. Yeah, I'm going to do a roll call vote as amended. As amended. Is that okay?

What Ted just said was correct. You're taking a roll call vote on 26-25 as amended. Yeah, the motion is seconded.

We had a motion in the second. We had a motion in the second.

So we're voting to approve the budget as amended.

Yeah, and I'm going to do a roll call. I just told my colleagues no that when capital comes up, it's going to be cut from the schools.

I mean, that's the only place. Bobby? What? Ted, you got the roll call, 26-25.

26-25 as amended, and I read the numbers already. I was just writing, sorry. Councilor Ajuku? Yes. Councilor Morangelo? No. Councilor Malloy?

Yes.

Councilor LeBlanc? Yes. Councilor Griffith? You want me to come back to you?

Come back to me.

Vice Chair? Yes. Chairman? Yes. Myself, yes. Councillor Calloway-Tripp? No. And Councillor Griffith?

This is the whole budget.

As amended, yes.

No.

It passes by a vote of 63. 63.

Mr. Chairman, can we take five? Yeah. Maybe ten.

Yeah, well, you might as well just stay up.

Well, we don't have to do it right now, but it's four hours. Call the meeting back to order.

Come on in.

He's waiting for Jamie.

My son always wants to know what mine is.

So we gotta vote. We only really got one damn thing. We only got A. Which one?

Oh, we got B. We got the seniors. We didn't do that. No, I gotta retune. Okay. Where the fuck is A? All right, I'm calling the meeting back to order. The next resolution is 26-26, and I'll be recusing myself due to a family member. So Gene, Vice Chair Gene Grello will take over.

All right. This is Resolution 2626, Amendment to FY2027 Budget, Council on Aging. Secretary will read the resolution.

Secretary? Okay. I feel like I got a promotion. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. This is the Town of Franklin Resolution 26-26, an amendment to FY27 budget for the Council on Aging. Whereas the Town Council conducted two public hearings on the FY27 budget on May 20th of 26 and May 21st, 26 after due notice was given in the Millford Daily News and now therefore be it moved and voted. to amend said FY27 budget from $169,687,307 to $170,284,565. Do we have to change these numbers as well, Jamie, before I continue? Do we have to change these numbers now? Yes. Yes, we do. That's what Linda was jumping up to tell me. Considering we've already voted to approve and amend, I don't need to amend again. Can you just give me the new number?

Yeah, the original is 169769307. Right? Yep. 762. 762. 762. 307.

And the second number will be what? We're going to start that one over again. Mr. Vice Chairman, this is the Town of Franklin resolution 26-26 amendment to fiscal year 27 budget for the Council on Aging, whereas the Town Council conducted two public hearings on FY27 budget on May 20th and May 21st of 26 after due notice was given in the Milford Daily News and now therefore be it moved and voted to amend said FY27 budget from 169,762,307 to 170,359,565 as outlined below. Appropriate the Council on Aging general fund budget in the amount of 597,258. The resolution shall become effective according to provisions of the Town of Franklin Home Road Charter.

I need a motion to approve Resolution 2625, Adoption of the FY2027 Budget Appropriations.

So moved. Second. Jamie, can you just for the purpose of the public tell us what the change is for?

Yeah, so this is pulled out, obviously, because there was a recusal. And so we've done this many times before when councilors have had conflicts of interest. There's been a bunch of budgets through the years. I don't remember, Councilor Cormier-Ledger, if you were here for any of those. And so practice is you just pull it out and vote on it separately so that the members that are in conflict can go ahead and talk about, you know, the rest of the budget the way that that is. Really quickly, this is $597,258 for just the Council on Aging. This is the budget number that's in the operating budget for the Council on Aging. I would also note they raise over probably $400,000. So about 40% of their budget is based off revenues that come in and the revolving funds. but without staff you can't raise the money so there is a correlation between revenues and staffing obviously but that's really what you're voting on is just the budget for the senior center and this money was already in the budget it's just been pulled out for the purposes of the conversation for the discussion of the vote correct all right we'll move to discussion

Just real quick. So that, the $597, that's not an increase from what was originally put in the budget?

Nope. Okay. Nope. It's just, no. Okay.

Is there anyone else? All set. Okay. Everyone all set? All right. We'll move to a vote. All in favor? Aye.

Opposed?

Motion passes.

And I was impressed that the roll call vote was valid.

I mean, the voice vote. It actually went a little smoother with you.

He said that when I did it to Tommy, too.

And Ted got a promotion.

I was the secretary for a second.

All right, moving on. Resolution 26-27, Mecca Stabilization Transfer to FY27 Operating Budget. Clerk will read the resolution.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is resolution 26-27, appropriation for the MEC stabilization account transfer to FY27 operating budget. Total requested $117,133 for the purpose transfer from the MEC stabilization fund to the general fund for FY27. The motion being moved and voted by the Town Council that the sum of $117,133 be transferred from the MEC Stabilization Fund to the General Fund budget for FY27 and be appropriated to the FY27 operating budget. This resolution shall become effective according to the provisions of the Town of Franklin Home Rule Charter.

Motion to approve Resolution 2627.

second i have a motion a second jamie simple um this balances out the budget it was already assumed in the other resolutions but legally you have to vote this separately because it's in a stabilization discussion uh consular blank what's left in this account at this point I think we're using $117,000, so probably $360,000. So we're going to propose to use $117,000, $133,000 each of the next four years until it's gone. Okay. It'll collect a little interest too, but something around there.

Okay. And just for clarity, because it's disabled, does it need, does this require? Two-thirds. Two-thirds, okay. Thank you. Anybody else?

All right, then I'll move to vote on resolution 26-27. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passed. Resolution 26-28, salary scheduled full-time elected officials. Town Clerk, motion we'll read, clerk will read the resolution.

I'll make a motion to waive the reading. Second.

I have a motion and a second to waive the reading. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passed.

Thank you.

Motion to waive the reading. You just don't get to hear me say it. Thank you.

You can't say no.

Motion to approve Resolution 2628. Second. I have a motion to second. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Thank you.

Motion passed. Resolution 26-29.

Whoa, my glasses.

Whoa. I need new glasses. Expenditures limited for the FY2027 on the Department of Revolving Funds. Clerk will read the motion.

Motion to waive the reading. Second.

All in favor? Aye. The reading. Opposed? Motion passed.

Motion to approve resolution 2629.

Second. Resolution 26-29, discussion.

Go ahead. Jamie, at some point, can you just send out to us what sits in these revolving accounts with the current balances? Sure. That would be great. Thank you. and any other revolving accounts that may not be. This is it.

Annual statute makes you have to do these every year.

But I ask that because through chair to you to Kerry, as a follow-up to our conversation last meeting for like beta, is that a revolving account?

That is not. No, it is not.

What kind of account is that?

The beta is paid out of either the planning.

Sorry.

either the operating budget for the planning department or conservation. It could be played out of the Wetland Protection Fund.

Are you talking about, like, the engineering studies?

Yeah, like, we spend, because that was a question that I asked her, like, every time I listen to the planning board, and we spend a ton with beta, I'm going, where's that in the budget? I don't see that expense in the budget.

Because we don't pay for it, because the applicants pay for it.

I understand that, but it's got to go into a fund or an account, so what account, what's the technical name of that account that the money goes into? So it's not in the operating budget.

It's a special revenue account.

It's not a revolving fund.

So it's not a revolving fund, but the money that goes in goes out. It's just like bonds that are charity bonds that go through the playing board. I mean, there's tons of these things that sometimes don't get spent for decades, but it's all related to money comes in for the study. Those are not revolving funds. The umbrella term for a lot of miscellaneous accounts are going to be special revenue accounts. Just so you know.

Yeah. I'll take that separately. Okay. But any revolving accounts, I'd like to just know the balance for those. Thank you. Go ahead, Max.

Just a quick question. Why does the limit have to be set? Like, can it just be a million dollars? Would it make any difference if it was a billion dollars? So we could just, is there a reason we have a limit?

The reason why we have the limit is because that's what we generally think is a nice cushion of revenues that we would bring in. I'm guessing in a year or two or three we usually up these limits at the recommendation of what we see from the department heads. But you could do a million dollars. You know, you could do a larger number, but why would you do that when you don't bring anywhere near that revenue in? So we try to track it over time. I would say in my 11 years here, we've tweaked these maybe twice. And mainly it's been around the senior center because these revenues were not coming in six years ago. So now as we've moved forward and they've become really popular, we've had to tweak these a couple times. The rest of them stay pretty flat. Okay.

We have a motion.

Motion and a second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor of resolution 26-29? Aye. Opposed? All opposed. It all passes 9-0 resolution. Resolution 26-33, capital round two. Clerk will read the resolution.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can I make a motion to waive the reading? Second.

I have a motion and a second. ALL IN FAVOR OF WAVING THE READING? NO. GO AHEAD. YES. AYE.

AYE. AYE. HOW MANY? I THINK WE NEED TO... RAISE YOUR HAND.

IF YOU WANT TO WAVE THE READING. IF YOU WANT TO WAVE THE READING. ALL RIGHT. WE CAN READ.

ALL RIGHT. READ. ALL RIGHT. SO IT'S 6-3. SO READ THE READING.

Oh, it's important. It's important. This is Town of Franklin Resolution 26-33, the appropriation of capital FY26 Round 2, total requested from free cash $1,466,419, purpose to appropriate funds for the 2026 Capital Improvement Plan. Do we want to vote on each one or just do the whole thing?

Recording in progress. You should do, yeah, you should read out the amounts that are here.

But we're not voting necessarily on each item or what we are? No, just read the resolution. Okay. The first department is employee benefits for health insurance deficit payments. Category is under services and that is for $1 million. Department DPW, description six-wheel dump truck sander plow, comes under vehicles. That is $86,419. Facilities Department has the Washington Street chiller compressor replacement, which comes under equipment. That's $40,000. The Franklin High School chiller coil replacement comes under equipment. That is $60,000. It's been stricken, the parliamentary code review study. Technology teacher laptop replacements comes under technology for 187,500. Under schools, classroom infrastructure improvements, this is classroom repairs, comes under the category of infrastructure for 92,500. Total free cash appropriation of $1,466,419. The motion be it moved and voted by the town council that the sum of $1,466,419 be appropriated from free cash. to be expended at the discretion of the Town Administrator for the FY26 Capital Improvement Plan as outlined above, including any residual funds remaining in these line items. This resolution shall become effective according to provisions of the Town of Franklin Home Rule Charter, and I will note at the June 3rd Finance Committee meeting, they unanimously voted 9-0 to recommend this full amount, sir.

Motion to approve resolution 2633.

Second. I have a motion and a second. Discussion? Council LeBlanc.

I'll start. Keep it simple. Let's just take the $75,000 out of the health insurance deficit payment, the million dollars. I'll be honest, that million dollars, just to Councilor Molloy, came out of the blue. I don't know where it came from. It was never brought up until we got these documents. If we weren't spending, if we didn't miraculously go from 2.1 of free cash to 1.1 million of free cash, I don't know where this million dollars came from. And to what was brought up in the finance committee, that Tom brought up in the finance committee, from an accounting standpoint, this should be booked as an expense in FY26, and it shouldn't be part of free cash. From an accounting standpoint, I don't understand what's going on. But with that being said... i don't want to even get into that tonight i just make it clean and simple take 75 000 out of that million dollars and even jamie said that night that number hopefully is over inflated and we won't be spending the million dollars so that to keep it simple just take the 75 out of that and we've solved our problem yeah mr chair can i ask that maybe lucas come up and and priorities prioritize the 380 000 in school expenses

So he's going to have to make an amendment.

Sure. So through the chair, you heard Councilor Cormier-Ledger read them out. So basically the priority, we have three categories, three areas that impact schools. One was the facilities request. So you see two there. One was for the compressor replacement at Washington, and one was for FHS for their coil chiller. Yes, last night at school committee, we had the facilities department present with operations, and they talked through these particular items. The cost to... Repair these is just it's an ongoing thing with the boilers. So you just once you fix one problem. There's a new leak Kevin articulated this pretty well but ultimately I would I would prioritize to get those two projects done because Replacing them in the long run is cheaper than continuing to try to repair them. Okay Teacher laptops, Tim spoke about this earlier. That's about half of what he needed. We reduced it already through the gauntlet, if you will. And he will be back next year asking for additional monies to complete the laptop repair and placement. The infrastructure one is not just classroom improvements for like we want to just fix a wall. We also have new regs on timeout spaces. So these are spaces in schools where students go if they are dysregulated and whatnot. We have spaces identified, but there are additional regs that are coming that we're going to need to outfit them. So part of this is also the floor repair, wall repair where needed. We had a huge reorg where we picked up all the things, put it all back down, and then we have been slowly trying. We had a larger request. last year, which was reduced, and then it was reduced this year for the purposes and the reasons that we discussed already. So there's 92,000 of that. It was originally a $150,000 request. We made that reduction. So I see these as all being really important projects in order to keep us moving.

So, Lucas, what I'm hearing you say is number one on your list is the two chiller replacements, number two is the laptop replacements, and then number three is the classroom infrastructure improvements.

That's the order in which we have them. I think I would, that's how I would prioritize them.

So then I would make a motion to take the 75 out of the 92.

Jamie, can you explain to us the impact of not funding the health insurance deficit fully?

You know, obviously there's tough decisions to follow. So the current deficit at the end of May, April is 1.022 million. And to Counselor Blank's point, I'm somewhere in the middle, right? We did reference this throughout memos, throughout all of the healthcare transition over the last year. You're right, we didn't have a number. And the reason why we don't have a number is because we don't have a number, right? We didn't have a number because you didn't have healthcare go through the system for eight months. And now that we're into the fiscal year, we're leaving. I think now, hopefully, it's very clear why we moved to the GIC. The GIC saved $750,000 in our operating budget. But ultimately, when you're in a self-insured system, and I know several of you know what self-insured systems are, when your costs for health care as an organization exceed what you're paying in premiums, you have a deficit. And the GIC trust fund, the $252,000 that's coming up in the next resolution, that is actually like a 27-year-old account because in the 90s, the town was self-insured and the loss runs were 90%. So they had a surplus back in the 90s back then. Obviously, 30, 35 years ago, health care in America was a different thing. NOBODY'S HAPPY ABOUT THIS. NO ONE'S THRILLED, NO ONE'S EXCITED, AND NO ONE, I DIDN'T THINK AT SOME POINT THAT WE'D BE LOOKING AT OVER A MILLION DOLLARS. BUT AS THE TRENDS CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, AND IT'S UNFORTUNATE, MOST COMMUNITIES ARE IN A DEFICIT THAT ARE PART OF THAT STRATEGIC GROUP, BECAUSE THE LOSS RUNS IN HEALTH CARE AND THE IMPACTS FROM THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL ARE JUST COMING DOWN. AND SO, UNFORTUNATELY, WE HAVE THAT DEFICIT. IN TERMS OF THE IMPACT, HERE'S WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN, COUNSELOR CORMIER-LEGIS. On June 30th, all of our employees will then make no more claims through the insurance system. But if somebody goes to a doctor on June 23rd, that bill isn't going to get processed until July, August, or September. And it's going to continue to go on, right? So we're going to already have a deficit likely going into July 1st. So hopefully, to Counselor LeBlanc's point, hopefully the trends of the next couple months make it better. But we're going to get an invoice in July that we're going to have to pay. And that's why we're asking for the free cash as well as the GIC trust to have money ready to be able to pay those bills in July, August, and hopefully September. By the time we get to the fall, we're going to have a much clearer picture of what claims went in in May and June. We're going to try to at least be able to project out exactly what those deficits, if any, may be. We also get prescription rebates. And last year, we saw a deficit a year ago. And when we were looking at all the numbers, we realized that it was an overinflated number. and that with the prescription rebates, that number actually ended up coming down and we ended up paying less. Councilor Cormier-Ledger and Councilor DiLocco may remember a resolution a couple years ago we did from the surplus GIC trust fund that we had to do. Well, the good news is we didn't have to use all that at the time and we spread that out over the course of a couple fiscal years to be able to pay the bills. to give the cash flow that was needed because our premiums were not matching what the costs were that were going up. As we said at the Finance Committee, we also had a tremendous amount of high claims. I think Karen said the other night, there was like 3.1 million in claims over like 20 cases. These are very expensive, half a million dollars, cancer, diabetes cases that we end up having to pay for. So when you save 75,000 in that impact, Is it going to cripple our ability to not do any of this? No. We're still going to have $925,000 and $250,000. But just know at some point we may have to come back for more money after free cash is certified in the fall. and just be able to see where it is. But we can't project out these numbers. We can't stick it on the FY25 accounting because then we're going to go report to DOR a huge loss, and we can't do that because then they're going to automatically deduct it off your free cash next year and get into a whole other legal mess with the state. So we're doing this the right way. To give everybody a slight bit of optimism, I understand the number's large. It feels like it came out of nowhere. came out of nowhere for most of us too. We knew the number was going to be plump. Did we think it was going to be this high? No. But I would add a couple points really quickly. One, we're moving to the GIC where our active employees were certainly way down. And while I don't want to see any of our retirees pass away, usually every year you're going to have a couple retirees pass away year after year. And so the higher cost plans are going to fall off, but the lower cost plans for our active and younger employees are going to come off. That's going to end up being structurally, hopefully, a good savings. The other thing that's pointed out, that Councilman Molloy did earlier, is in the operating budget next year, 435,000 of the benefits budget is coming off the books because of the one-time premium holiday that we're required to do by state law in Chapter 32B, I think it is, 3032B, somewhere in there. And we live in Massachusetts. These are the rules. These are the laws. And when you create savings from active employees, you have to give a portion of that back. And while some people certainly have passionate opinions about whether these things should happen or not, the reality obviously, and I know you guys all respect this as the manager, I got to deal with these rules and these laws. And maybe these are issues you have to take up to Rep Roy and Senator Rauch in September. But as I look through structurally at the operating budget in the future, the really good news is once we're out of these deficits, we are out of a self-insured program, which is terrible. We are out of the consortium we were in, which was terrible. And somewhere along the line, as all of you heard of me at the FinCon meeting, I'm stuck in the middle of health care in America, just like all of you. We're just stuck in the middle trying to referee all this. But if we're really being honest, our country just cannot seem to figure this out. And every city and town and every school district in the Commonwealth is having significant problems one way or the other, with either 20%, 25% increases. They're not getting bids. Our loss runs and our claims were so bad four years ago, no health care carrier in Massachusetts would even take us on. Harvard Pilgrim would not even take us on at a 22% increase, 22% increase. So consumption of health care has gone up. I don't think if you take the $75,000 out of that account, I don't think you're handicapping us. But I just want to obviously recognize down the line, we don't know what the numbers are going to be like. But I certainly understand the balance of the budget. To Counsel LeBlanc's point, it is definitely the easiest way to do it. It is the simplest way to do it. especially with all the other needs that are in here for our teachers and our schools and certainly the DPW. So I appreciate the five minutes, everybody.

Just a final point. I'll leave with this and these are all your final decisions. It's just as a point of advocacy, the 75 grand out of that particular budget, it goes from 92 to 75. It basically dismantles that request. I think when I heard it mentioned in the health care, that seemed to me as a way to balance this. It comes out of a... an area where we're buffering for the entire system. So just from that point of view, I just would offer that. And the third thing I'd say is, when I go back to my desk and take this coat off and lose this tie, I'm going to go, wait a minute, I went in, I thought I was losing 60, and then I lost 75 at the end. How did that happen? So I just point out a couple of points there for you just to think about, but just as a point of advocacy for the work and what we're doing. OK? Thank you.

Go ahead, Max.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I just want to clarify, you know, do you feel that there's a chance that this could be sort of kicking the can down the road if it comes back to us in the future?

It's just really, I wish I could give you a bill. I wish I could give you the hard number. I wish I could give you all the data that everybody wants. But you've got two more months of claims. And, you know... Twenty-one more days. Twenty more days until this whole thing is over with the strategic health group. No one's more excited about this than the two of us. I don't know what else to say about it. I think at some point you're going to have to pick up the tab. And this is a very, very strong down payment on picking up that tab. This rate, even at $925,000. is a very strong investment into that with the 252 and the other vote that's coming up next. So you've got 1.2 million-ish roughly. That's going to get us through the summer for sure and into the fall, and we'll see where the numbers show up.

This number's changing, I mean, daily. If our May premiums come in, if our May costs come in lower than what we put in, that deficit's already getting knocked down. So it's really just such an unpredictable number. I think this is a very good start. And we may have to come back after the budget's finalized next year with next year's free cash, but, you know, at least the budget's balanced tonight. It's just, it's changing every single day.

I don't think we're going to go down this route, but hypothetically with resolution 2626, we amended a budget that was already passed. Is that correct? So could we, if we wanted to, we could feasibly do that again with the facilities budget if we wanted to get rid of that or reduce that number.

you'd have to bring back the budget 26-25 and then have a vote to deduct the 75 000 out of the facilities budget but you probably could bring that back okay thanks

And July 1st, everybody goes on JIT, right? Because that's...

So we won't have any additional costs coming in, technically, but all those June claims usually take a while to get processed. So we do have to pay those claims weekly. And then at the end, when they balance it all out, we'll see exactly what our final deficit is. But that's going to take probably four to six months.

for all the claims to come through.

Mr. Chairman? I'm sorry, Ken. Go ahead. I just had a very quick question of clarification to Superintendent Jagir. Were you saying that we should take it out of the classroom infrastructure? No, no.

I was saying the opposite.

Okay, okay.