Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order this joint meeting of the finance committee select board and school committee on Thursday January 23rd 20125 our first item up is open Forum if anyone has anything NOP okay oh and just a reminder that uh this is being recorded next up police chief Chambers um to go over FY 26 budget for the police department thank you some new faces tonight good evening everyone deputy chief Pelin if anyone has not met him yet good evening right um so not a lot of changes within the police department budget uh overall it's an actual reduction including um or actually on top of what was reduced last year uh the overall budget this year is expected to be 1.46 um below what we paid up last year with a reduction of 1.40 on our Personnel side uh mostly on the Personnel side it's we have a lot of younger officers we've had uh 16 positions turn over in the past four years some of which were our Command Staff um so we have younger officers progressing through the steps as well as some of our Superior officers that will be moving up through the uh CBA steps as well and then one of the other differences on the Personnel side is a reduction of $8,000 in our court appearances and that's mainly due to the way uh both the DA's office and uh juvenile offices are Prosecuting crimes uh we they did take over some um online and zoom meetings that we also do so uh board appearances have dropped uh we did try to do a three-year average uh I will caution though that it only takes one search warrant or one major case to really kind of balloon that so uh we did

reduce it by I think inappropriate amount expenses are expected to be reduced by um 2.03% again it's mainly driven by that change to the hybrid Cruisers that we've made the commitment to over the past four years uh the questions that were uh asked I think it was Christina you had actually asked about the difference in fuel gallons so since we incorporated our first uh set of hybrid Cruisers we've dropped between 8 and 9,000 gallons so between 2021 and 2024 uh we went from roughly 34,000 to just over 25,000 gallons used a year so we are seeing a significant cost difference uh cost savings both in gallons used and then uh on top of that with the town committing to uh the central fueling station up the West Highway the bulk rate we have seen a a decrease in the costs that are coming out of our budget uh and then on top of that our electric electricity usage has has dropped I'm not sure if the kilowatts dropped or if it was just the the expected increase never materialized so uh the savings that we realized on our electricity whether it's through credits or door wats used Waters used it's um helped to offset the increase in our natural gas cost so uh we've seen reduction on both sides of our budget I would not anticipate that that's going to continue as the the younger officers uh continue to move up the steps as well as our Superior officers um colle AR agreements so uh that that's a basic summary of it okay great um committee have any questions denn go ahead um the uh the chief and I uh and along with uh the chair and uh select board uh member John Cunningham uh we met on I think it was the 10th of uh of this month yeah January 10th we had a very good discussion with the chief and uh today I I I gave out the activity sheets to everybody and I just want to start off

on a positive note so uh is coming no this is a very this is a very I want to start on a positive want to start this is a very safe Community I I'm looking at the numbers for three years and this is a very safe place to live and um and it's dueing I think in two parts I think it's due I obviously we we have peaceful people here but uh you can't also you have to give kudos to the police department there's two things that I think you do well I think that deter it um I think your uh your motor vehicle stops are high which is shows activity to people coming in and out of town and I think you do your house checks on a regular basis and I think those are the I mean the break and entering rate here is very low so um you know I think the police police are doing a very good job uh I mean our job is to try to see if we can get that deterrence as efficiently as we possibly can but um but the impact of the deterrence is is uh has been good I mean you look around us we have uh some serious troubles all around from L belrea tuxbury all around this issues but uh you know knock on wood and do their work we're doing doing well uh now we're going into business okay so uh the first question I have here is um you uh you did explain it to some extent the um the $58,000 stien for the uh accreditation so the question I have is um can you explain the accreditation process a bit and tell us who does it and what does it actually look at and and rate yeah sure so um right now we're contracted with the only game in town through the state is the U nass Municipal Police accreditation commission um we are an accredit uh we are an accredited Department we have been since 2005 uh we were one of the first 15 uh departments in the state to sign on uh and I'd like to say that you when we received our re accreditation

two years ago we were within the first five in the state to be able to adhere to the new standards and that was mainly due to the work of Deputy Jim pelman as far as how many standards there are and everything the deputy has been involved with accreditation for the past 10 years so I I'll defer to him on that question so yeah basically the accreditation that figure you're talking about is a stien that all sworn officers receive from top to bottom through the collective bargaining agreement um it's 347 standards if you print that actual document it's 530 plus pages of checklist for compliance and documentation every officer basically contributes participates and in a leadership role because it covers all functions of the police department so at a patrol level it could be traffic field training um you know supervisory whether it's um you know the holding cells detaining detainees all that investigations uh you know all the way up to budget and everything admin does really every function is under that and um some of it's functional um you know our DT instructors or use of force instructors could be sergeant and and you know leaders in that where patrolmen or field training officers and other roles so it really covers all functions of the department and what those policies do for us is to make sure that we're maintaining best standards and uh best practice really uh it Benchmark it benchmarks us across across the rest of the country it's very similar to the Kalia um accreditation the national accreditation uh there are a few more standards under Kalia but um for our department to be one of the first to complete the sixth edition uh under assessment um was actually it was a lot of work so but what that accreditation gives us is accountability transparency and

assurance that we're following best practices amongst different communities so in every single person in the department it's not just officers that have to follow accreditation it's our dispatchers our Public Safety communicators and it's actually our civilian personnel as well because they fall under the same a lot of the same standards under our rules and regulations conduct on becoming an officer is not just for an officer neglected duty is not just for an officer so um by having those best practice standards set forth by an outside agency that is reviewed we do weekly uh policy reviews that go towards our accreditation standards um back in 2020 when we sat with um the Community Committee uh that the First Parish church was able to set up we leaned on our accreditation standards we were able to provide best practice policies for use of force for racial profiling uh we do you know through accreditation we're required to run all of our citation numbers to make sure that we don't have any discrepancies or disparities so that's what we get through accreditation um and that additional demand Demand on officers and our civilians they bargained in a a stien for it okay so now um as as you're aware since the creation of the Massachusetts police officer standers and training uh commission they will be promulgating um standards across the state worthwh that everybody's going to have to reach how do you see that affecting this uh this stipend as far as what what you know you've got you have brought it to a level higher than every else but now the state is going to require every everybody to come to a certain standard as a matter of standard operating procedure so how does that affect the accreditation the the stien you think I don't think it's going to affect it at all I think impact is gold standard what post is from my understanding as a chief of police what post is proposing is there's a set of minimum standards that

they expect each department to reach mostly around U bpace policing use of force um you know over time Scandal type stuff like those are the big ones right so it's it's officer accountability type type standards that they're going to be bringing forward that will standardize across the state ours isn't just for those six or eight standards that that post has been um tasked with creating it goes far far beyond that it covers every aspect within the police department from civilian all the way through the chief and impac adopted the police reform standard so there was an additional 25 standards that got created in the latest version once the police reform law came into law so it's it's actually additional documentation and compliance now the the other thing you and you you may mention of it was the reduction in the court time I think it's important to uh get an idea from the conversation that we had what the what what precipitated that reduction um and particularly the results of uh the the District Attorney's involvement and all that can you explain that a little bit more for uh for the so I think you know with the police reform in 2015 2018 and then the the new police reform that came out in I think it was finalized the end of 2020 2021 when post was formed um a lot of the lower level crimes that used to be prosecuted uh take operating after suspension first or second offense officers were called to court even if it was being um if it's going to be continued without a finding or they pay co uh court costs and and registry costs and then the officer would get paid four hours just to show up to have a DA ple it out um what we're seeing now is a lot of those types of cases are being

handled pre-trial uh which is I think the way it should be um so we what we you know we're seeing a dramatic reduction in in the kind of lower level things that we're we are forced to enforce in certain aspects um but I I think we're seeing a better result but on top of on top of that with the juvenile law um particularly from 2018 when uh some of the SRO laws were were changed there was the m and and um standard operating procedures that came out of the DA's office really affected how juvenile crimes were looked at prosecuted and dealt with throughout the juvenile justice system so I I that's that's where I would attributed to so we' we've seen the time that our officers are involved with court cases drop the concern I had was that you me you mentioned um shoplifting right and uh sharp does has the shoplifting just evolved involve juveniles or does it involve everybody across the board the reduction in the prosecutions with regard to shoplifting what we see here in town it's usually not juvenile shoplifting it's usually career criminals that do it professionally or um you know they they steal certain things and trade it at different places in L Lawrence tal for for either drugs or you know in some cases just money um so over the past several years the DA has chose not to prosecute those types of crimes but what we've seen is repeat offenders that are being arrested by multiple agencies throughout multiple areas and because those charges generally get dropped uh before they even go to trial um we have had multiple discussions as the middle sex Chiefs and uh nlock Chiefs with die Mary and Ryan about those re repeat offenders and we've and asking her to take a look at how those types of cases are prosecuted particularly when you have an individual that has been arrested five six seven times for I mean we're not talking candy bars we're

talking thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from Homegoods from um from Marshals here in Westford or the Verizon store or you know basically any place that carries High desire well highly desirable Goods so um that's one thing that I think will be changing over the next year or two I think that you're seeing those repeat offenders particularly I talked with Chief Columbus over in tubry about it and he's one of the ones that's actually spearheading it because they arrested the same offender four times in a month you know the time frame may be a little bit more than a month but it it was kind of the driving force for us to as Chiefs to come together and bring it towards the the da um that something needs to change because you that type of retail theft it's not it's not food um generally you know occasionally we'll get somebody pushing a full shopping cart out or Market Basket with full of lobsters and staks or something like that but uh that's that's very rare what we're getting called for here in in the community is generally hoods and Marshalls down at uh Cornerstone Square uh you know shopping carts full of clothing and and HomeGoods you know kitchen utensils so the reason I bring I BR I thought it was critical was we have a we we've been we already known about the situation involving the shrinkage of our commercial retail establishments and I thought this was relevant to the fact that you know if if our retailers are having that kind of problem in in their in their establishments it it's just another obstacle in drawing more commercial uh people to to our town to help us take off the burden so I'm glad you brought that out right um I to just on that for one second Dennis so how do we compare to other communities in that respect I I don't I don't have the data Christina but but I would say yeah I would say we're we're good kind of anticipating I mean I think I mean from what you said it's it's going on in all

of the surrounding communities probably worse in other places I would imagine places with more retail obviously have more shoplifting problems uh we don't have a lot of walk-in retail stores like that um we have several calls a month down to Marshall's HomeGoods uh and that's what's reported I know that they they choose not to report you know if somebody walk you know it's been our experience that they don't report every every crime that occurs down there so it's it's generally when they have higher value items okay go ahead D yeah just uh two more two more questions um the first one is uh under your um uh we discussed the detectives and you indicated there were eight and I understand counting in that eight are two SRO and this two supervisors so is it fair to say there's like four actually working detectives that are that that are out out there all that are out there working doing the job right yeah well currently we have one spot that that we're working or will be working to fill um when our our Academy graduates come out we'll be able to get some senior another senior officer back in there um I think we have we have some um not unaddressed needs but we'd like to be able to spread some of the work out and maybe get it a little more special attention in some some areas that I I'm not going to discuss in an open form like this yeah it's but we our detective uh Bureau is man 16 hours a day so we we like to have a supervisor on between both shifts yeah that was the question I was going to ask you why the why the two supervisors in the unit yeah the two the two different shifts as well as the type of specialty crimes that that the detectives are dealing with we're finding are being are much more complex the amount of documentation that's needed the amount of oversight that's needed uh working with the Das uh it is changed dramatically I was in detectives for 5 years back in the early

2000s and if you have a good contact you used to be able to just make a phone call and tell them I need a phone record I need a subpoena I need you know this email Frozen and you would be able to get all the data without subpoenas or search warrants um the amount of work that goes into a case even just a I don't want to call it a simple fraud case but you know a general fraud case of a thou couple thousand dollars that happens over the Internet um that's that's double- digit numbers and hours just to be able to get a search warrant for um the IP returns and that's several times going back and forth with the da uh you have to type it all and then submit to the DA and then they usually obliterate the thing and send it back but um the amount of work that goes into it and then just the specialty laws that have been designed over the past 10 15 years around cyber crimes juvenile law uh you name it it's probably been looked at and and and changed so the types of reporting and how we do it has changed dramatically over the past 20 years so um you really need supervisors and and officers or detectives in there that uh have received the additional training uh have the time to be able to perform their duties uh thoroughly and that requires overview of of those supervisors as well by the way just as a comment we discussed the uh reporting of the U of the activity in the town uh reports and um I I just want to say I I did uh uh 21 22 23 21 you included a lot of enforcement and agent response information which I would recommend that you reincluded in previous years because I think it's very useful to uh to be able to evaluate what goes on the last the last question and we've had this conversation about cap the second captain um and uh I did I did take your uh your U advice and I did check in with with tuxbury and at least examine

tuxbury and Bill bill rer um and you you correct on Bill rer they do have two Lieutenant commanders which I'll Grant you uh the equivalent of uh captains uh which uh the only difference was that bill rer is a much larger population 41,000 people the police department's a bit bigger as well and then the last thing is that uh they have an overdose issue uh about 31 a year and we're I I was able to find that information too we're at six so just a couple times over 31 overd doses a year is a is a lot and I did look at tokes spry as well I was not able to confirm whether or not they actually had two captains however they've moved significant amount of their patrol offices not significant amount but a large amount into detectives they have a a overdose issue of 25 cases a year which is really a lot so we're keeping it we're keeping it down but it's it's very important to uh to uh keep an eye on that and I just uh still not quite convinced about the second captain but I'll Grant you I'll grant you that I'm well aware of your opinion Dennis thank you but I would like to point out for the other the new members of the finance committee this the rank structure and Staffing within the police department has has not particularly the rank structure has not changed since 2008 um when we added a few officers in I want to say just after 2010 I think we added a couple and then uh we had the the task force that or the Review Committee that we had back in 201617 with the anticipated growth we did add a few more officers and with that we did add the the detective Sergeant position within the criminal Bureau so that is the only change to our our rank structure that has occurred since 2008 when the second Captain's position and Deputy Chief's position where were originally uh well the deputy I think was in first but so we have not had any change since 2008 and if anything policing has gotten has gotten

much more complex over the past 15 18 years where we need that level of oversight that level of transparency accountability and professionalism as these standards continue to come out with the you know peace officer standards and training committee it's it's a lot to keep up with and you have to have a superior officer on top of that because they're the ones that are are touching base with every officer of rank below them to certify those and bring them to the chief to sign off on uh we have limited um well I won't get into all their job descriptions sorry but there's a reason why why we are we are structured the way we are it's been successful for the past 17 years now um it's been shown to work whether it lines up with every other department in in our area I know it doesn't it lines up with some it works here and we've been one of the leading agencies in our area since since I've been on board in 2000 so uh I think you get a lot of bang for your buck for what our Police Department delivers to this community thanks and um just to just to add on to that you know Dennis I know you have a you have a background so I like to listen to both of you guys just to hear but as we had talked about we may be seeing a lot more people moving to Westford if MBTA comes in so you know we I I don't think we want to be reducing anything more at this time just to see what's what's coming I would hope not particularly with the Bell Westford apartments and the other apartments that went in there I know that there's another subdivision of 500 plus apartments that are going to be going into that same exact area we are really going to have to take a look at our staffing along the Route 110 area um currently well again I I won't get into a no but we are going to have to to look at our Patrol areas and and uh possibly even address our minimum Manning Staffing yeah because I I don't think we can continue to do it with our currently approved minimum Manning yeah but but

it's good to keep an eye on because that that Staffing study or the was done 2015 16 177 I think we started we never got to the number we've lost ground with the fill of right so we're down from that number we got we got them in the budget we just couldn't get there takes about a year just for anybody knew the board it takes about a year for us to get anybody on board if they're not Academy trained or lateral transfer laterally from another civil service department uh by the time the interviews the backgrounds and everything else are done it's usually about two and a half to three months then they have to fast physicals everything else and then the police academy itself is between five and six months uh and then they have a three-month period where they're on field training so they they're riding with experienced veteran officers learning how Westford does things learning the town and everything else so it takes about a year to backfill any position okay thanks any anybody else Nate yeah thanks I have a few questions I'm Nate McKennon hi Nate one of the new members nice to meet you nice to meet you um just first of all uh Quinn Bill uh the police career incentive pay program uh that is the only spot in your in the budget where educational incentives come into play is that is that accurate I'm just wondering if that if they're elsewhere or if it's all on that line uh no that's mine that's yours specifically yes everybody else is rolled into their base pay into their base pay y okay why is yours out of curiosity itemized SE separately uh I don't receive hourly pay so it doesn't kick on to anything else um and mine is paid out a little bit differently I get two um lump sums throughout the year uh all the other officers there Quinn bill or educational incentive is built to their hourly pay so that does affect their holiday pay their overtime rate um and town some town detail rates okay I see so if I'm a officer with a a master's degree for example um you know next to an officer who got the same uh

started the same time as me who only has a bachelor's degree it's built into my base compensation my educational incentive so therefore when I'm doing overtime it's built that way as opposed to that person it would be about 5% % more yeah okay associates degree uh officers receive a 10% bump in their base pay 20% for their bachelors and 25 for Masters so we I will say we have a very highly educated Police Department um and if they're not if they don't have a degree most of them are those that don't have degrees are are military or currently working towards their degree great Community College is free now in Massachusetts yes yes it is and we're encouraging those that do not have human Associates agree to it I love that thank you um the uh the second question so then the the other members of the leadership uh they're also not in that Quinn bill it's built into their base pay as well correct okay um and then uh my other question is on the overtime line uh so it looks like the FY 25 budget is just a slight increase over fy2 24 does it seem like you're going to come in around that in this current fiscal year are you trending to so we're trending under this year um so I don't I obviously it's all subject to change if we have injuries or officers that leave um that does dramatically impact our our overtime uh there was a slight increase between 24 and 25 we did ask for a level funding for 26 I know in in your budget books there might be a slight increase for uh fiscal 27 that was hopefully to account for any um settled CBA if there if there's a cola involved in that so um right now we're we're trending I think we're about 46 maybe a little bit less than that on our overtime so um more than halfway through the year we we should

have some money left in our overtime budget that's great news uh do you at any point uh on a regular basis do any type of analysis on that account and the utilization and whether or not it would be fiscally sound to consider adding an additional FTE uh to try and reduce that you know if there's regular sort of enough utilization of overtime yeah I understand that um we haven't approached it that way only because this as Dennis can probably attest this job is pretty fickle um our officers can leave at any any different time and all it takes is is one one injury or one person leaving and all of a sudden we're we start to Hemorrhage over time because we're we're addressing our minimum staffing needs so uh it's it's hard to re say reduce the overtime budget to then put it back into a full-time position uh if you if you compare us to other communities of our size and uh Staffing levels our overtime budget's actually quite low uh I know we discussed that last year during our during the uh efficiencies committee um so I think again we we try to we try to address things um very fiscally responsibly um we do allow our officers to generate some comp time so officers will take a an oldtime shift and not take overtime and use comp time um compensatory time and we don't allow compensatory time to then create overtime on their shifts so I think last year we had just under 7,000 hours of compensatory time that officers decide to take instead of overtime so um at any time that can change okay great anyone else um you mentioned that part of the reason for the reduction um is due to some collective bargaining agreements expiring um I'm just curious kind of like what the

timeline is for the like new agreements to come and how that's um put into the kind of budget for future years so I can answer kind of at the base level you may have to ask Kristen or Dan on the on the the more intense stuff but so the contracts this year will expire June 30th uh and they'll be looking at uh negotiate a contract hopefully for three years from starting July 1st I know that they do comp reserve for um that's set aside each year for to account for all the different unions that will be up I think they have most of the unions on the same schedule this year uh so you might see a higher number in the comp Reserve than what is normally shown just because there are several different unions whose contracts expire at the end of June actually all the unions are expired at the end of June so there there's a specific schedule for when those get settled it's you know when we come to an agreement at some point in time uh but right now we're only active with the the fired Fires at this point so we haven't started with the five other unions yet which has already expired which has already expired the fire one has yes and we do we do encourage our Union presidents and their negotiating team to touch base with Dan uh was actually very successful this past um round the negotiations for the superior officers Union they were able to sit and and talk with Dan and uh come to an agreement that I think everybody was satisfied with a quick comment goe just uh this is more for the information of the uh the select board and the finance committee um you know the uh review of the activity is important and um they they can be used as standards to determine performance so for example um one of the things that uh we have very low in this town is uh is b& right so the breaking entering is is low a lot of that I think is attributable to the active U house house checks that go on on a regular basis um another indicator is motor

vehicle accidents how many motor vehicle accidents this gives you an idea of how how the enforcement is being uh is is being done if it's effective and then the last one that I always uh point to with regards to um the drug trade is the overdose level and we you know thank goodness we still have a fairly low one um it's you know it's hovers around five or six uh compared compared to when we were checking Bill Ricker in in tkb I was it was really uh significant so when you're looking at performance and you're also looking at Staffing these are indicators to look at I I know this is big idea about looking at calls but uh that's that's not considered a um it's it's an indicator but it's not a vital indicator as as these other ones would be so I just wanted to throw that out for your own re uh review and your own consideration I would just like to point out though that we do still have a significant amount of drug calls that may not always be classified as drug calls uh we are we do experience quite a number of medical calls um for overdoses that may not be classified as overdoses because the individual either does not receive Nan or does not turn into a fate fatality um we recently had a drug call uh with where we found fentel and a firearm so um it's I don't want to bury the head our heads in the sand and think that it does not happen here it does so it's it's not a major problem but it's also not it's still existent you have to watch it and by the way we had the conversation with Ray dick we should be monitoring those that that type of contact where we're having incidents with with drug overdoses and drug related issues those need to be monitored by somebody so we can get an idea of how how that flows going so we will include that in our next year's um set of information we're working with the uh community outreach initiative Network that our program with our uh

part-time clinician she is riding along she was here until 7 p.m. tonight um we do referrals to them all the time for either drug use mental health issues uh homelessness and and other um pretty much anything else that we can think of to refer to them the amount of resources that they have at their at their disposal Through The Advocates is is a I found the I found the website Department of Public Health it is updated it's much better than it used to be so that's good much so thanks to the lead anyone else have any questions anything online I just I had just had one followup um and this may be more for Dan when we first when the budget was first presented the the gap between the FY 26 budget that was presented versus the one that we had projected from last year mhm one of the lines was um about $190,000 difference in the police budget and I just wanted to get a breakdown of of that I remember you going over it at one point but I couldn't find what the differences were like I think some of it was forecasting with some of the newer officers people had retired but then there were a couple other things in there that that caused that difference in sure you know what I'm talking about yeah they touched on most of them so this was from a specific budget at a certain point in time where we comp um so there was a lot of turnover we do have a lot of new officers come in so that was uh a bul of it uh we also had four Cruisers and a projection for FY 25 so that was um okay was it like 48,000 or so per probably like 7 72 68 to 72 somewhere in there 7 bud 73535 so it was a big piece of that as well uh they mentioned the court appearances which was about $8,000 the gasoline is down and the electricity is

down as well so all those combined really um decreased the was the result of the decrease from that projection back in and that was April okay like worthly 73k for the cruiser yeah I can get you a detail if yeah that would be great okay sure write that down okay have go ahead John CH uh on your special details I know you have a revolving fund that covers details yes sir and but in your budget you have special details for about 32,000 which specific details is this for so that covers town meeting polls Apple Blossom basically town like established town events or um government related details so uh a lot of times if we have protests up on the common like a couple years ago uh we had to draw out additionally draw out of that but it essentially covers elections polls Town meetings special town meeting Apple Blossom um Memorial Day maybe one or two others do you have any idea on the order of magnitude of the revolving fund as you go through a year how much goes through that Fund in one year I'll have to defer to Dan because I don't even I don't even see that we don't see it in the budget or anything like that and I it is a revolving fund I would imagine that it was well over a million dollars last year Moment of Truth um I'm in FY 25 right now so just to get a a ballpark yeah uh We've brought in 556 th000 so far just in details about halfway through the year so you're right about a million dollars y so and there is a 10% fee that the town receives as well on top of what's getting paid up to to the officers we get a 10% fee where is that it goes to local Revenue oh okay so

that's my presentation the only wait for it yeah that's that's a that's a lot of hours it's a lot of hours how does that impact your scheduling uh that's probably why officers generate so much comp time too to be honest take a night off if they work to detail um they're not allowed so an officer is not allowed to work detail if they're scheduled you know so if a detail comes in from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and they're working the 7 to 3 shift that they can't touch it unless they they they take some of their paid time off or their comp time to even be eligible to take it and if you're if it's an 8 to4 detail and somebody's working 3 to 11 they need to actually have somebody either stay over for them or if we're not at our minimum standards our minimum maning they can take an hour of compensatory time to cover they have to cover their time off to cover a detail there's absolutely no no chance to double dip do you run up against that minimum maning issue often right now we're we're I wouldn't say we're hitting it unless everybody's on vacation so certain times of the year we certainly are running at minimum Manning um when we're short staffed we're at minimum Manning quite often uh and you'll see the overtime drivers uh it'll just the overtime will just skyro rocket but we try to manage as much as possible we have our officers submit their vacation time in April for the upcoming year um so some of our officers if they have 28 days they have to submit 21 of those days um almost you know sometimes over a year in advance so uh we do try to mitigate it as much as possible okay thanks I can I ask a

followup forgive my ignorance but problem what can you give me a scenario just know the week of an officer what what would cause them to generate compensatory time so if they take an overtime shift and they could take it instead of being compensated at time and a half they get compensatory time of 12 hours so if they work an 8 hour shift they get a chance to take 12 hours off but once they generate that comp time that comp time cannot turn around and generate overtime I see right so they can only take that time off if where if we've exceeded our minimum Manning so if we have five Cruisers scheduled and they want to take a shift off they can use 8 hours of a compensatory time to take a shift off so um and forgive me Dan if you don't know the answer to this it's okay but last week we talked to the fire department and talked with their overtime do they have the same compensatory time as part of their options for their members or is it just overtime it's just overtime for them how that they have Cal time okay so you know I looked at your overtime amount um but if I really want to understand how much it costs taxpayers I need to also look at your total compensatory time in a cash value correct like this is just half the picture because if I take compos Story Time although I'm not getting cash I can take a shift off if I take a shift off you have to cover that with somebody else no no no no no only okay dips yeah only if it dips only if it dips to below which we wouldn't allow them to take compensatory minimum Manning then they they have to do you understand what minimum Manning means no I don't I think that's so we we have a minimum Staffing level which I I can talk to you about privately I'm not going to sure put that

over there a sounds fine so say say I'll throw it out there but say we have five officers scheduled and we have two supervisors and our minimum Manning says that we can go down to four so somebody can take comp time and we'll have four cars on the road instead of five but if somebody calls in to try to take additional comp time they're not allowed to because we're at our minimum Manning I see okay however it doesn't prevent them from taking a personal day or sick day so you know if we have but if we have somebody out on compensatory time and we're at our minimum ining and somebody else from that shift calls out sick you know they have the flu that does bring below minimum meing now we do have to back fill that one spot to bring us back to our minimum Staffing requirement so it's not the comp it's not the comp time that's creating the old time it's the sick time and do you track from a fiscal perspective the value of the comp time yeah that would be relatively simple y it's the amount of hours that they generate versus what their hourly pay is was what we would pay out do you have a sense of what that current balance is uh we closed last year just under 7,000 hours worth of comp time I I would have to run exactly what off which officers took what time and what their rate was okay thanks appreciate it it could be done it's I may follow up with you for a uh just a one-onone lesson onum absolutely absolutely thanks I got that lesson about three years ago it's worth it's worth instruction time thank you I will say police police scheduling and fire scheduling are two completely different animals you know they a 24hour shift two days off 24 hours and then they're off 72 or6 yeah so you know our offices work you know four and most of our Patrol offices work four days on two days off so they're they're still working five days a week Mo in most cases

occasionally it'll it works out in their favor but um so it it's it's very difficult to kind of compare apples to apples with police and fire understood thanks anyone else I think so thank you very much thank you than thank you thank you next nice and warm got this see one next up westf public schools welcome hello everybody hello um for the for the new members if you haven't met um our director of school Finance this is Jenny Lynn and um she's done a phenomenal job over the last few years as we've had very uh you know challenging situations so I'm very grateful uh to all the work that she's done uh should I just jump in or sure watch I was just thinking about if we could just use the like slide 11 and slide 12 absolutely then I could just share an overview an overview yeah for context and then we can kind of just dive into questions sure um so uh so this year we met if you uh I think yeah slide 11 would be a good place to start so um when we had developed when we started developing the FY 26 budget and um Jenny did a phenomenal job rolling things over to look and see what our our needs were we had determined that um in order to keep everything um level service our needs would be approximately 7,510 n49 and um we met with Kristen and Dan

earlier in the fall and talked about um where the town was at and um they had said that they would be able to provide an allocation of 69 m388 572 which put us in a situation where I needed to look to see where we could reduce uce 1,122 377 so that's kind of the way we went into this if you just go to the next slide you'll see this is what I presented these are just two slides from the presentation that I shared with the school committee so I I led with our budget strategy was to identify reductions efficiencies and increase the offsets um in order to eliminate this $1.1 million deficit in order to bring a balanced West West Public Schools budget to annual Town meetings so we identified reductions um efficiencies and there were a couple of additions that we have included in our budget which came to a total of a reduction of $36,988 6,179 that the increased offsets um $400,000 of that was we had a surprising increase to our um circuit breaker uh that was very beneficial to us for for this year and then we had identified $ 46,7 worth of increased offsets to the revolving funds that we have based on the conversations that we had last year um we had already been talking about this as a school department with the school committee in terms of developing more specific guidelines to um the different revolving accounts that we have access to and then during the process that we had with the fincom last

year we talked about that specifically and so one of the things that we're very proud of this year although the budget itself is still looking at some reductions and I'm I'm still not convinced that it's a strong foundational Budget moving forward over time um we one of the things that we did working with the school committee is that we developed our non-general fund um guide book and it established very specific guidelines for the appropriate end ofe balances for the different funds that we had and Jenny did a phenomenal job looking at what those Target balances would be and able to say okay over the next three years we thought that we could increase the offsets that we typically have um which this year brought us to $46,000 uh that we would be able to do that for a couple of years in order to support our general fund now the concern is that when we get to FY 28 and FY 29 somewhere in between there all of those offsets will then hit hit the targets that we've identified would be the appropriate balances to keeping those funds so that means that we will need to identify different ways to support that at some point whatever that funding source is whether there's new growth whether we need to consider an override in the future or anything like that the idea being that we'll have to identify something in FY 28 f29 but what we're looking at right now and what we've presented to the school committee and what we share with you tonight is with using those funds um we think that we'll be able to um support that for the next few years and so that's sort of the context in the big picture um I'm happy to talk about the different efficiencies and additions if you have questions about that we've you know provided you with answers to the questions that you asked us in advance and we also I don't think we've done in the past this year we decided to actually share with you

all of the questions that the school committee had asked us as well too which I thought that would be helpful because often you ask the same questions yeah and so to see that um I thought it would be helpful okay thanks questions Dennis yeah uh just uh Nate Nate M Kinnon and myself met with h both uh Dr Chu and Jenny last Friday we had a very interesting conversation and um I just wanted to take a moment to U acknowledge the work that was done on those on that uh on that guide book I thought that that was a significant amount of work and um I mean the essence or the the concern that was expressed uh during our last meetings last finance committee was that uh you know we had we had money that that we wanted to try to Club You Know cover gaps with and there was some money there and we needed to see how if there was a way that it could be accessed and um they did a significant job in trying to find that out and I think um I think the word I I get thrown off of the word offset it's more like a chargeback pro program right yeah so so I just want to make sure I understand it so I got it down um like you were talking about the school the school choice offset was 78 890 789,6 uh food service was 153 yeah so what what you're doing is you're charging those services money back that comes back into the school general fund is that what is that what happens good I mean because that that's that's a that you basically uh fulfill the the in intent of what we were were concerned about last year so that was that was an outstanding job I mean that was well well done listen to you we do listen to you no shocking but it's true well we're the first ones in a flabbergast it so that's good uh so um the only thing I would say is

the only thing I would just refer to is that we also discussed about the contract negotiations yep and I did have an opportunity to look at the the numbers and I saw them I saw how they went and U and I would just just simply say that um you know we also talked about Market Basket which is also interesting and the I've always suggested and others have suggested that you've got to cons consider that per capita income per per Community because what happens is if you override that which is what I think happened in that last it wasn't just it wasn't just in my opinion it wasn't just the uh the uh Reserve funds that that stalled I think a lot of it was the the the amount of contract was a 99.8% for four four groups I think it was just a little bit too much for everybody to handle so just I think you just want to bear that in mind all right because you eventually you have to go and sell this to the public right so that's something that you may want to just take but other than that to that point Den so let me interrupt because I think and based on the conversation we had the other day too I I do think that one of the important things to consider with the Market Basket that we've been using and we've used it consistently with all of our groups is and I understand how the I understand the per capita point that you made I I think that's a very important uh point which is one of the reasons why we also included all of the um the adjacent communities to um to Westford as well too because you're right desie will give us the dark districts um which can change every year that's based on the clientele if you will right so that's actually comparing students to students so it's sort of comparing the job in a different way that I think is an appropriate way to look at the Market Basket at well I think your point is how can we bring all of those things into view to make sure that it's not skewed

in some way yeah yeah yeah that's you get the point so that's it I'm happy and to extend on that point I think you know take this opportunity to say that we need to do this that across the town like not just not just for the school department for any any any of the unions with I mean you you you have a certain impact that's going to have one of the things that came out during our conversation with the Council of Aging was that they're getting more seniors to try to apply for the rebate program then and the uh the work service program and there's not there's not there's some jobs they can't cover it you know so some of these folks can't take advantage of those abatement programs so that's a project that's a problem that you have to keep in mind that's that's all we're asking for anyone else so goad John yeah um I have a question so so you know to comment about using the offsets I mean I think it's great that you've been able to get the budget to where it needed to be this year but if I look what's in the document the proposed budget for next year it's a significant increase over this year right I mean much larger in a sense than it was from last year to this year so are are the offsets that are left going to be able to cover the difference or are we going to sort of run into issues where there's a large increase required for the schools irrespective of the offsets next year I can I I can you're when you say that you're comparing fy2 to fy6 no no no FY 26 to FY 27 I'm only looking forward I mean what's done in the past is done right right but we haven't we haven't presented f27 well it's I mean there's a projection there yeah but but we haven't I'm just saying but right now we're

talking about f26 and so I think as we're looking at the realities of FY 26 I think that what we tried to do previously was actually something that in my experience I've been in the district now for over 10 years and I don't believe that multiple year projections have ever been something that was ever considered so last year we were as a as a group we were looking at trying to figure out what a three-year projection might look like um and and so I think as we see the realities of those then you have to make those adjustments to it right so what what we've looked at right now is that with with what we're looking at with FY 26 and the offsets that we've made kind of to answer your question we are not looking at all of a sudden a fiscal cliff in FY 27 okay that's basically you know my concern would be that we don't frankly end up with issues that we have last I don't I don't know what FY 27 is going to look like exactly right um because that that is the point like we we also still have we have we don't have all of our contra conts to negotiate but we have some contracts to negotiate for us circuit breaker and state aid is always something that is somewhat there's a we we don't necessarily know what's going to happen and special education costs in general are always um variable so that's where I hesitate to say I don't know ex I can't I can't say that we're not going to have a problem in FY 27 clearly it's an estimate right but what we think is that these offsets we know that the offsets that we that we're pro that we are um proposing or chargebacks um that we're proposing for f26 we'll be able to also continue in FY 27 I don't know if there'll be other costs to FY 27 that's a that's a concern okay so so maybe also just for

frankly my ignorance what's the circuit breaker in this context okay so um what a circuit breaker in general okay so circuit breaker is the the funding that comes back to school districts from the state of Massachusetts that is supporting special education costs okay and so what happens is it is based on I I'll talk about this year specifically right so in fy2 in the fall of fy2 we receive circuit breaker based on the expenses of FY 24 so we submit that to the state and the state looks at all of our special education costs and they say we'll reimburse x amount and it can change every single year it's based on different things so a community gets that the year later and then what best practices have been is to use that to spend that amount in fy20 in the in the next year okay now technically we have access to it right now so there are some communities that will use that money to pay a bill right now within FY 25 but you get it you get it in the current year based on the previous year but the best practice is to budge it to use it for the following year and so that's what we've been doing okay so we've taken so for example we received in this fall we got this great news that we were going to be rece because our special education costs were pretty high in FY 24 based on the 14% increase and all the different things that kind of we had talked about the projections being um we received $400,000 more than we anticipated okay for FY that but it's that's for fy20 that's for f fy2 24 we're receiving an fy2 and so what we've done is we've now

we're attributing that6 to FY 26 okay okay does that help yeah no absolutely understood can I ask a follow-up question since we're talking about circuit breaker um it's wonderful news that we got this extra 400 but given the variableness of circuit breaker that at least some of us who've been around here for a while no that's additional money that we can't anticipate or expect for getting again so I just think it's something we all have to and I know you will you know just kind of Bear in mind it is and at the same time one of the things that we've been doing um for a number of years is that we've been building up the special education stabilization fund that we have so we've been able to in um what what is that at right now is that at 7 at $728,000 that's why we trying to build up our special education stabilization fund just in case if we see like a sharp increase for the special education tuition we have some Reserve you know instead of just you know waiting uh you know for the stay reimbursement for the circuit breaker if the circuit breaker amount decrease we wouldn't have no capacity to you know support our general fund special education Tu right no and that certainly makes excellent you know fiscal planning you have to do that because as I said we you know next year we could lose that $400,000 in honestly we and honestly we we are we're already anticipating that right so we we're already thinking because the other piece of this is that in fy2 we also know that some of our special education costs have gone down um based on just changes in enrollment and so that extra $400,000 we don't think we're going to see in the future um we'll probably go back to the more typical circuit breaker reimbursements so that's something that

we're already thinking about and planning for thank you go to Nate first you did you solve the question yes I do um I think it would be helpful uh thank you Dr I also want to commend you and the school committee uh and you Valerie's chair for the work on the dashboards on those uh revolving funds I think it's absolutely incredible model very transparent easy to read understand what's happening and also um the targets that you've set to try and bring those into a reasonable amount you know that was certainly an issue uh that voters talked about last year and residents of the town so the fact that you took that seriously and went at it um is great um I also want to just not lose side of the fact though uh in case anyone watching tonight or members of the finance committee or school committee didn't you know spend the time watching your entire budget hearing you have the slide in there about what the impacts were on the district um for from the due to the failed override last year could I ask you just to yeah cover that I know there's a slide that you had in your presentation it's in the pack tonight because the whole presentation yeah and also what the um what the what the ground operational impact have that is obviously I would imagine there's a morale impact first and foremost but uh just in terms of trying to do your job and for those uh folks on the ground what what that's been been like so in total if you if you look at could you go to slide six sure thanks to um so slide six will talk about if you remember last year to not that many people want to think again about last year but let's just talk about last year again um we had two different budgets right so we had the the the um the if if an override was pass budget and then if override was not passed budget and even if an override was

passed um wait let me go back uh actually if you could because I was just saying that could you go to the next slide first right and we'll go backwards right um thank you so if the override had pass we had already in order to because one of the things we've been very committed to is trying to be fiscally responsible right so every single year that I've been superintendent we've looked specifically at our enrollment and we've said are there efficiencies that we can identify in order to be fiscally responsible with our budget in the first place and so we went into last year's budget season knowing that we were going to recommend reducing 8.2 staff members across the district based on enrollment we had um looked at our um special education van Fleet that we had and we identified that we thought that that could be a cost saving so there were 18 individuals who we were um we were reducing and letting go uh uh in order to be a cost savings to us we um we had addition We There was an an additional administrative position that we had reduced and then in conversations with the school committee when we were trying to reduce the override ask um we ident identified three additional administrative positions so we um we reduced we had a director of equity curriculum instruction that we reduced and there were two curriculum coordinator positions that that we had reduced so that was something that was already going into the budget whether an override passed or not and that in itself was as you can imagine was was you know create impacting the morale as as you were talking about Nate there um and then if you go to the slide before that you'll see that when the override failed we actually needed to reduce an

additional 21.4 instructional staff positions right so there were three Elementary literacy Specialists two Middle School reading teachers 9.4 um positions at Westward Academy four Middle School interventionists two additional Elementary classroom teachers and then one of our um there's two there there were two library media specialists at Westford Academy and we reduced one of them and that impact um was massive and so we're feeling that this year and one of the things that the school committee has been hearing has been um sort of stories as to now what what have those impacts been now that we're months in right because we make those decisions in the spring and then of course then the school year begins and then all of a sudden we have either whether it's increased class SI or whether it's combining class sections and levels at the Academy and what is that what's that impact actually like and it's it's not ideal um it's it's it's not a situation that we think is best serving um our population and so that's why I led this conversation with this isn't ideal I don't think that this is strong funding um we are looking at additional reductions that we're making I think we can I think that we can continue to um provide I think solid educational experiences for our students with the reductions that we're talking about but it's not necessarily at the same level that it has been so I think it's something that we need to continue to assess and look at the reductions that we're talking about um uh for this year specifically is we're we're reducing some of our interventionists and there's a lot of concern about that now we know

that if in the future we find that we've made more reductions than we should in terms of the support that we're providing for our students we will figure out a way to provide those supports right um but I think that's just something that it is important to understand yeah thank you so and I think we should get this on the record what's what's the uh School population this year compared to last is it increased decreased um it's it's I it changed only it didn't change as significally from last year to this year um as it had previously over the last 10 years the the numbers have been decreasing which is why we've made these adjustments in enrollment so the difference between um this year and what we're anticipating next year is a is approximately about 40 students which is why you see that one of our um suggestions is to reduce two Elementary sections again this is more or less 40 more less for we are anticipating that there might be 40 approximately 40 less students in the district next year than to this year and from last year I think it's it's about the same it might be a difference of like 30 students is there high right now we're around four 4,500 students is that decrease a little bit higher in the Elementary grades yes okay and the last question the last question I have for you is um with regards to the um to the U uh Reserve accounts you make reference to the fact that there's a about a threee foure period where you feel comfortable and then you talk about approaching a fiscal clip with regard to funding where the funding is coming from I think I'd like to know get a better understanding what funds those Reserve accounts I was under the impression that a lot of the funding was as a result of fees and things like that which I would think would probably continue um but uh do you see a tail off in that is that

what's the concern with the lack of funding well so the the point being is that when one of the things that was a concern that I think we heard from the voters that we heard from people asking questions was that we did have access to these Reserve funds and how are they being utilized even though we have historically used them to offset um the general fund in different ways there weren't specific targets there wasn't um there wasn't a specific end of year balance that should be in that account in order to truly provide the support that you need for example what Jenny was talking about with our special education um stabilization fund to say that you know as we're building that up right like that that can be used then to support special education costs in a in a one-off type scenario so we have a number of accounts that when we worked with the school committee to identify no one had ever said how much should be in that account okay right so there school choice is a perfect example right so school choice is something that we receive as a district not every District in Massachusetts receives that but we have we we bring in previously it was about $450,000 a year now we're looking at approximately $500,000 a year um that we're going to bring into the district from school choice students from students who live in different towns who then are coming to Westford to to um to be educated their towns send it's about $55,000 per student if they receive special education services and that number might be adjusted desie does all of that behind the scenes we don't set that amount but they it's it's about $5,000 per student so we know that we're going to be receiving that we weren't historically we weren't offsetting our

general fund budget by that same amount so it was building up so it was building up over time so we had this Reserve account and in the past I had compared that to the town's free cash right that and some people had questions about that but I'm like it was something that we use that when we're purchasing curriculum right so we spent over two years we spent $600,000 on new curriculum that we desperately needed for our elementary schools that we didn't ask the town for that we then it wasn't in our general we didn't have it in our general operating budget we were able to use school choice funds for that purpose so that's something that we would use it for um when we created our plan a number of years ago to bring tuition free full day kindergarten into the district part of that plan included using school choice funds and arpa funds over a period of years to kind of bridge that fiscal cliff and then what what happened was our plan we thought we would be spending more school choice money than we actually needed to because it was it ended up not being as expensive as we thought it would be so we needed to use the arpa funds but we didn't need to use as many as much school choice funds so that amount didn't decrease as much as we thought it would so that's that's an example of then as a school committee the with the with the they they they established a a fin a finance committee sub commmittee of the school committee a couple of years ago and so and and so right I mean there so many things to figure out that right and so we worked on what is an appropriate balance and so what we determined was an appropriate balance for school choice really should be 1% of what our general our general fund is so if our

general fund is around 69 to70 million we should have about 600,00 th000 to $700,000 in school choice funds so that's how we establish that Target because that would allow us to then purchase things like curriculum purchase things like we used school choice funds in in a in a in a roundabout way we're able to use it to support other things as well too there are very specific rules one of the things that you'll see in the general in the non-general fund guide book the nfg um we we attached all of the laws and the regulations that go with every single account because there's very specific things that go with them so we have to play by those rules um but that means that maybe we can spend money in our operating fund and then support it in another way goes back to your point of the chargebacks right so so that's that's a explanation I think what I'm trying to get at is um so you're using money more efficiently which is excellent that's what you should doing right so the question is what's the threat to that fund it it should be replenished every year so what would be the problem where where does the the that fiscal cliff what causes that getting money coming in all the time thank you so let's go back to school choice right so we've established is that what should stay in school choice for the Emergency is the 1% okay we are currently over the 1% okay so that's the numbers that Jenny looked at was what's above the Target and how can we increase the off offset so we're we're what's the what's a is it almost $900,000 of school choice that we're anticipating for f26 for FY 26 we are anticipating more than like a half million dollars but we are using seven $89,000 because you know in general like

a revolving account we are only supposed to use the revenue we bring in but actually we are increasing that threshold for $260,000 because we are trying to spend out the school choice account right so Jenny looked at the school choice account and said okay well if our Target is the $700,000 we're above that right now so we can we can increase the offset above the $500,000 over but we can only do that for so many years and so what we did is we looked at and most of them are all living at the three to four years some of them it's a small amount school choice is a large amount right um and so ultimately then we'll still have $700,000 in that account but that's going to there that's going to be there for that special purchase that we need like the curriculum because again we already know that just like we did that we it cost us about $600,000 to purchase the universal Ela curriculum that we've H never had in Westford for all of our elementary schools we really need to do the same thing with science and we need to do the same thing with math um so we're going to be looking look at that over the next couple of years I just say for the future I think it's going to be important for for you to report what your what Your targets are on on all those accounts and there that's part of the book right so in that guide book The that's the appropriate that that's part of it is that the school committee has established what what we think that the the appropriate end ofe balance is and then the idea is that if we are above that balance then it's my job and and our our job as the administration to then explain to the school committee how we plan to utilize those funds so that we stay so that we we live within that Target got it thank you and so let me just go to John first and then come Shelby oh sure just just on the same subject um for something like

school choice um in order to be to have a voucher or a credit for that I would have I would presume that somebody would have to um enroll uh ahead of time and go through some sort of process to do that so when when would when do you actually know what that number is going to be so we actually have to do a lottery every single year it's by law so we hold that lottery in we we determine how how many openings that we think we can support and then so like for example if you are in if once you are once you are um I I just lost the word it's like accepted thank you that's that word once you accept it into school choice in a distance District then that slot is yours until you graduate so if you come in in kindergarten if you come in in fourth grade wherever it is you are then you have that spot in that District so we know how many students are already in our district in those school choice slots and then each year we determine how many new spots might exist we start with the graduating class and so we say how many seniors are graduating and then I present to the school Comm comme this is my recommendation for the number of openings that we have based on what our class sizes are and all that different stuff and then we have to conduct a lottery this is all mandated by state law and we do that typically we do the lottery um we've been doing it like mid July um so we have an idea we I present to the school committee in the spring as to what I think the openings should be but then who actually gets those slots is determined in July okay so relative to something like a circuit breaker this is a this is a pretty defined number that you're pretty certain to get and one of yeah one of the things that I've said is we're anticipating so far we have historically like for example we were you we were getting about

$450,000 it's increased we increased those numbers to $500,000 and one of those things that I say I want us to stay around that number so I do think that it's important we don't with the when the seniors leave we don't automatically bring them in at the first grade level we look at the grades throughout the district because there might have been people who've left and moved out and not moved in and so those openings could show up anywhere okay so this offset then is effectively a one-time adjustment to that kind of account to to use up that capital and then to and then you keep rolling at the 500,000 is Mark okay thank youby um yeah I just was based off of the um kind of offset conversation behind so there's still things that can happen with all of these revolving accounts that could kind of like inch them up slowly over time but we'll be addressing those kind of like in the yearly budget process and just for this next couple years we have the larger offsets there's always probably going to be like some amount of small offsets to get us back to the Target numbers um but just we don't expect them to be as large as these like next couple of years where we're trying to get them back down to Target well yes I would say when you look at all of the accounts some of them are really small accounts and so some of them it's it's it's an offset of $1,000 right um and that I think will continue as well too because it depends on which some of them might hit their target sooner I I think for the most part the majority of them um we did balance it out to see how could we increase that offset so that it lasts for three to four years some of them were already at Target so we're not even touching them but the offsets that we do have um yeah I I think I think I think that's yes yeah I kind of just went around so I'm not even sure I think I answered you in the affirmative but then I think I confused myself while I was talking so I

apologize other questions from the committee good job I just um just a comment I I want to Echo what Nate and Dennis said um I I know that the committee worked really hard to put your non-general fund gu I have to look your non-general fund guide book together and um um I really think that um it going forward it's going to be an incredibly useful tool not only for the school committee but also for the finance committee and the town and the select board um you know it clearly addresses uh questions and issues that not only we all had last year but I also think we all heard from the town and the community itself so um I think um it's you know hopefully the hardest part of the work is done just by having put it together but I think it's very important that each year you know you update it you keep it up to date you you track what the funds the the excess funds are being used for and spent for because um I think that's something that um as I said I think the town really wanted to see and really wanted to know and and um you know was in the dark about and I think that um that uh that we heard that loud and clear last year so um kudos to you for taking the time the effort and I'm sure it was a lot of people working on it so well and and to that end I mean I could because you're all you know you're you're appointed and you're elected and but you're all volunteers right and Valerie young did a tremendous amount of work on this um in terms of researching and looking to see what if there were any examples that existed anywhere and they were very far very difficult to find but the other members of the the fincom that met multiple multiple times um to meet with us to

talk about it uh I I do think it was it was a group effort and so and it's also very readable I just thought I would like to it's very readable for good I'm glad I'm glad we thought it was too but then it's also like I don't know right from somebody who's not on the school okay it's readable and understandable and I think that's also important to your point that we've committed to a cycle of it so that each fall the finance subcommittee be reviewing that seeing what the previous year's actuals were and checking in on those to set up the next year's budget discussions so great and one and a piece of it that was I think great was that we talked we talked a great deal about how can it be something that we can sustain right and so one of the things we talked about is like honestly Jenny shouldn't have to do her work three times right so it's like how can this document talk to that document so that she's able ble to just kind of do the work once and then it and then it's it's we're seeing it in multiple places and then we talked about the school committee developing policy and should the should the policy actually include these numbers or should the policy just talk about pointing to the book and then the book itself is updated with the in the budget process and so we we really thought through it in such a I think intentional way that it should help generations of you know folks who whoever at whoever sits at these tables you know progress um so I'm going to say ditto on the book because it is a huge huge help um and I've been looking at these numbers for for quite a while and I have my own spreadsheet going to track things the way I like to look at them so it was it was a lot easier to sort of fill in my little spreadsheet and then I can kind of look at things um and I know that during the subcommittee work work um you know you had talked about this kind of being a

pilot and you know you may sort of edit pieces of the document if if as we go through this we decide or you decide we should put this information or that information so some of my comments are to that end like this is you know this is me looking at it in a different way than maybe you are um well the the first actually the first thing is um some of the fy2 ending balances in the spreadsheet that we had asked in our questions for Jenny to to give to us didn't match the ending balances in the in the guide book and so I just wasn't sure you know why that that's correct okay so we have to bear in mind because you know the ending balance provided from the nfg that's actually the projection from last year because that was kind think same time the same time frame at January 24th because we didn't have the data for fiscal year 25s quarter one and Quarter Two so at this point we already received the actual spending data so you got you're dealing with half actuals in the spreadsheet when we provide the projection for fiscal year 26 we are using the actual data for this year making a new projection for the end of fiscal year 26 so that's all about the timing difference for this whole document so when the finance subcommittee prepared this MFG at that point we didn't have fiscal year 25's data we have to use last year's projection and enter the number here however for fiscal year 27 so we we will use fiscal year 25 projection for fiscal year 26 unfortunately there's always like a year uh behind for this whole number for the projection uh uh that's based just how

does how does n time sure that makes that makes a little more sense um I would imagine going forward though because in the past I I feel like your your estimates and then your actuals generally come in pretty close I think this the one that sort of stuck out to me was the food service that was off by you know like $800,000 or something and I'm guessing something changed obviously between last year and and this year because the estimates from last year versus the we sat on a food service contract because we seen the you know salary increase for food service department and we also see uh the state reimbursement amount actually decreasing from last year uh we are not sure the total participation from the student they are reducing or because for fiscal year 23 we see like a $3.5 million for the total reimbursement for the food service that's because we uh that was the first year of universal uh free launch we had a lots of participation from the student but from the second from the first quarter of fiscal year 25 and second quarter we don't see a reimbursement amount the same pattern as fiscal year 24 so that's why we have to adjust our projection that's like a two different factors one is just negotiation result the the other one is just participation number okay and during the co year we reive the funding from the federal reimbursement and state reimbursement however in current two fiscal year we don't have the reimbursement from the federal we only have the stay so that's another reason you see the projection

reduce okay okay um on on the topic of food service again um it it sounds like the kitchen equipment update and maintenance is is going to be is sort of being worked on and we got you know some some answers there to that question um do you have any idea when we'll have dollar amounts and a timeline something a little more specific as to what they're going to need to be doing over the next few years um yeah I mean we're working with the the director Food Services some of it's a little bit like a as it is sort of happening it depends on what those costs might be you know depending on when when when when things break down or as they're trying to be proactive in in looking at things as well too so we can provide we can look at at that that she she's been looking at it to try to have her own sort of capital needs yep in play but we haven't it hasn't filtered into our official Capital request okay and do you think it will at some point yeah and will that come to the capital committee yeah I it should should yeah and when when it for the things that hit that threshold right um similar cuz like what if you look on the list like she's talked about a couple of walk-in freezers right so we did just see a walk-in freezer on Capital um for Miller right so when we I think it was Miller was it Miller two years uh two years a few years ago yeah so when we but and now we're going to see some of those bigger ticket items that will kind of look but we just haven't seen that yet gotcha yeah okay and then kind of what I'm getting at is so right now the ending FY 25 balance for food service is probably going to be in the $1.6 million range and didn't write it here but um I think the three

months worth of operating expenses is 250,000 per mon to 300,000 per mon okay it's about ,000 so minim there's 700ish th000 above that threshold that you can to do um and so this sort of goes to the offsets which are at 153 15 something or another now 156 156 okay um and I know that covers you know kind of the head custodian and Jenny gave us a kind of a breakdown of some of the things that you're you're tracking to have that cover but there's definitely other things that I believe support Food Services that are still being funded through either your operating budget or the towns like I'm considering benefits well well benefits is some benefits is is something that we talked about last year that I think we could explore and look at because I think that that would be the piece because one of the things is that the food service is one of those that is so strict as to how that is expended and it has to be to support the Food Service program the school lunch program and that's it so the other thing that we and I think we we had talked about this Dennis when we met last week too talking about the difference between direct and indirect costs right and the notion that um we right now in order to maximize these chargebacks and these offsets we need to be utilizing direct costs MH so I think the benefits is something that I think we should explore that's something I think think we should kind of talk about because we don't we we don't see the benefit side right so I think that that's something that would be an interesting thing to look at

because um it it could it could support the benefits for any of the Food Service staff that are receiving benefits can we I should have asked for this but Dan can you can you get us what a you know if we were to do that direct indirect like we do for the Enterprise funds could we get that the number for the benefits for the Food Service sure I'd rather work with them on it yeah then yeah but yeah I figured you need to but that would just it would be interesting to to see um and then I also assume that you know any of these any of these Capital requests coming in for freezers whatever would also be coming out of this food service and that's that's our that's our intention and that's one of the things that our director Food Service as well aware of and knows that okay wait a second these are the things that are happening so on one level that's why I don't think she's panicked about any concerns within our kitchens right knowing that okay wait a second we've the this account has grown because of the reimbursements from the universal lunches right um and so then it's a question of okay well how can we best utilize that and sometimes the money's coming in and and and then there's so many restrictions as to how you can spend it you can't spend it sure quickly but I think these two things that we're talking about are like you know no-brainer right like we can we can do that and so I'd like to see what the what the benefits number is and then you know as she builds out her her Capital plan um to sort of balance that because the benefits could be significant and the town has been you know paying for that cost forever and with this with with this growing balance here maybe we need to balance things out yeah a little bit

um and I would just like to see that see that whole picture right you've got the capital request for the kitchen equipment and the benefits and sort of put together a plan okay great um the only other um account that I was looking at was the school building usage and that seems to be you know growing a little bit yeah um and so okay so you're yeah that was something and again we just created that right so that was something that only started a number of years ago and so the initial the initial goal was can we generate enough funds to pay for the person who is helping us to negot to to to to you know administrate all that and and we've been able to um increase that which I think is great and so that's one of the things that we're looking at and we've already looked at how we can increase that offset um and trying to figure is can are we at a point where we can really project what we think the income might be yeah yeah as you we we do see about like 10,000 growth every single year through the past like three four four years especially we have never fully funded our facility preventive care so we are hoping we can grow this account a little bit so we can use that to offset and the general f facility great sure yeah and and again I I'm like with a lot of these I'm sort of looking at and I know this wasn't I'm looking at you know if if you're providing some kind of a service and the and the fee or whatever it is is going into one of those revolving F accounts are you collecting enough to cover that especially in like a building usage or you know there's some of these that fit that better than others but um like just to keep that in mind like if you have to bring in a custodian

specific well you know I hope you're covering that are that's actually that's that's a big that's a big part of that so as you see that as you that those are the expenses that you're seeing in that one right so the fact is is that if somebody's coming in and using the school and and custodial costs are incurred then we're billing them for that yeah as opposed to it coming out of our fund absolutely um then just a couple other quick little comments on you know some of some of the document pieces um I you know I don't think offset is is explained anywhere in that document well and then Dennis is talking about chargeback and like there it is one of those things where it's like it makes sense to us exact exactly we've tried to explain all the acronyms and tried to explain everything else that might be a good I can see Valerie's already taking honestly i' been looking off i' been looking at this document for months and and it only hit me when you know the offense aren't the full expenses and then I went oh and I was like oh my God wait a minute it doesn't even say like there was nowhere because it's so ingrained to talk about offsets that it took took me a while too and when you said we referred to it as a pilot it's because we knew that like we didn't we haven't taken like a this will be tied to like a written policy as Dr Shu mentioned and we hav as a committee taking a vote on either of those documents because we said let's go through the budget process sort of in these request let make sure it does what we want it to do yeah no smart subcommittee will meet we've taken those brief Hiatus because of our busy fall um and we'll meet again to kind of review some of this feedback and how it worked great sure and then just two other things again with the um just back to the what the total expenses would be I know you were you were focused on offsets in this book

but um there are other expenses coming out of some of some of those accounts that just come directly out and so I think you know that somehow that needs to be incorporated or included when you're looking at ending balances right and I'm sure it is behind the scenes but I depending on how you're you're um putting it in the book it like it was a little confusing to me at first until I realized oh right these expenses come directly out out it they're not offsets it you know but you're looking at the balance going wait a minute they only taking $1,000 how is this balance going early arrival would be a good example to the operating fund but there's also wages being pull right right unless you know that you're going okay how are they doing this math like this is this doesn't make any sense um so either an explanation or or including it or you know just something um and then we always a lot of us well I definitely look for um you know the proposed um Revenue like revenue and expenses and I think for like the the FY 26 year the book only gives the offset like I think it doesn't give the revenue is that but but we do prepare another document to n finance committee for the whole projection for the estimated revenue and expenditure as well it that's the spreadsheet you're talking about yeah that's a long spreadsheet you can see like the last four or five years exactly his historical data and also projection for the second half of fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26 and I I always buy two that's the spreadsheet that I look forward to but I would anticipate the entire finance committee as when we're looking for that um but I feel like in the last

few years like we always have to ask for it it's not automatic itic as part of the whole budget and now that you've got this book it's just something to think about could you add it could you add those pieces as an appendix or something do you know what I if someone wants to dive in deeper can they easily yeah yeah because again it's always public because we present it to you yeah you're right to the point like Andre made was we we wrestled with like how much information is too much information weed based on the last year we wanted somebody to just click on a link and kind of get their level of information yep that they are looking for that point and in appendix might make sense because Andrew is looking at it going this is great this is all I need to see but I'm like okay this is great but I want to I want to see the math you know so yeah that's also related we will meet both of your needs right and we have to decide what's the best timing to prepare that document because we have that's true that that makes it that makes second quarter all those account reconcile without those data we cannot make an accurate projection for that's true too because then you're going to see this difference so when we have a budget ready the second quarter reconation is not ready yet so they cannot be prepared at the same time so there's always a g you know just a comment on sure you know one of the things you may would be advisable is when you're putting what the offset is you should just indicate what the source of it is for example State reimbursement fees that type of so so we can follow and and see when it it doesn't come in short we understand what you're talking about you know what I mean that that would be important so is the revenue I feel like the revenue source is listed somewhere in the top of that yeah I think it is Dennis yeah I think it is for each of them yeah it it's it's one of it's one of the column the rows on it yeah yeah I think yeah for me I think um

I kind of kind of echoed the same the same sentiment a bit in um I come from um sort of Private Industry in finance so I'm I'm this is kind of a comingling of both like a p&l and a balance sheet together so there's like there's there's accounts that are kind of moving in different sorts of ways but there's not a there's not a cash flow statement that ties it all together so it's there's just a bunch of stuff kind of moving around and it sometimes it just kind of looks like numbers on a page to me but uh um uh what I might have what I might have asked for if I were sitting on a board of a private company is something that um something that's called like a um like a bridge worksheet or like a bridge chart that just kind of shows like like for something like this you might start with the opening balance and then you have revenues kind of adding on to it and you have like the expenses coming out and you have offsets that are non-cash they kind of apply and then you have these other things that kind of go around and you end with what the kind of projected ending balance is so we can see what's kind of going in what's coming out what's cash what's non-cash and how that affects sort of the balance so it kind of so it kind of um adds that Dimension that I'm that I'm sort of missing where I can see things moving but I don't know exactly where they're coming from or where they're where they're going to so it kind of ties it that way that did you let me did you see see the spreadsheet let me Point them to the spread because that sounds like maybe because right now we already have two version of spry one for last year number another one for this year's projection yeah if we are trying to make another one there will be three version right this wouldn't this wouldn't necessarily need to be a different version this would just be linking up what's already in the same thing I presume it ties so so like you would just it would just be a presentation of what what's actually already in there but in a way that you can kind of see like what's what's coming in and what's going out um and I can I can I can give you an example of what I'm sort of used to looking at if that's helpful but uh um it wouldn't be any more work other than linking up some of the cells together to show like a summary of what's coming in what's going out and like beginning ending and then

what happens in the middle sort of piece of it that makes any sense you're looking for a report well it would be handy to see um you know for each of these kind of sections like you know like to to Christine's comment where things are coming from and where they're going to and what's cash what's non-cash and then how you end with a balance and then even for things like well if you don't know what the ending balance is for 25 yet um but you have an estimate for it then you can you can have a plug or something that sits in there too that says like you know differences in actual versus down can I make a suggest is maybe you guys get together with Valerie in their subcommittee and you know talk this through and make and your suggestions um just I think it probably would be more productive sure all right any other questions for the school committee iess if you still think the 30th oh I don't know are we GNA have any other follow-ups I mean I had a couple of questions but I don't know that it's going to need a followup all right that's the reward for the year next week thank you I think you can I move to Second you second all in favor Tom hi Andrea hi John hi every I thank you good night everybody thank you thanks right right oh do you want to so good do you want to you good good positive me okay so we'll give them a second to walk out

of the room and then we can continue yeah we're a noisy Bunch you are a noisy Bunch very social okay um I don't think we have any old business to discuss so let's go on to the reserve fund transfer request um Dan can you give us background on that or somebody on yeah I I can do that um so you know last week we had veterans in and we're reviewing the budgets um and sorry um we're still going we're still meeting up here sorry so looking at uh the way we're spending um at veteran services we're already over the ex a lot of amount for this year's budget and so um I work with Jesse Byer to go through and kind of project out um the next couple of months to get us a town meeting and it looks like we need about $7,000 so we can continue paying those benefits and then at town meeting we're looking for a supplemental appropriation of $9,000 gu through the end of the year so it's been fairly consistent we think that'll be enough and uh just reminder that on these benefits we do get reimbursed 75% from the state in the following year um so you know most of that money does come back but we are helping those veterans in the meantime we need to front front it kind of yes okay what does somebody actually go for what does what does it spend on um so one of our largest claims right now is about $2,000 a m a month a person a veteran is out of work um and so they're receiving the full benefit and could because they were injured um so that that is a major claim right now that was not uh anticipated last year that we're we're having the fun this year so um yeah that's we we have reduced that account over the years as claims have steadily gone down it was at

about $140,000 in the past uh probably four or five years ago and then the claims have just just decreased over time so um we're at a very low level right now I think it's about $188,000 that we have I think $14,000 actually that we have already um exceeded so okay it's it's just class based any else have any questions on the reserve fund transfer Reserve fund transer um just one we we haven't approved any the full 100,000 is still sitting there so the the 100,000 okay anyone else have questions or get a motion to move move to approve approve the transfer somebody second second second okay all in favor I'm going to do a roll call since we're online Nate I John I hi Dennis hi Shelby hi I'm an i Hari hi and Beth I okay so that passes unanimously thank you thank you and um the minutes the January 16th minutes is anyone um got okay second second is there a second second just a comment uh on the place it just says virtual meeting it should be h on the uh when oh on the 16th thank you so as amended yix that all right so we've got a motion to approve as amended yeah in a second um Nate I Jonathan I John I Denis hi Shelby hi I'm in I Hari hi and Beth I okay so those are approved um I don't know that we need any board and committee updates right now sounds like you guys went through them last

week or anybody have anything you have something don't you yeah okay go ahead um I think it's important to just update the finance committee on our most recent health insurance trust meeting shortened ons I don't remember what day that was that was Tuesday Tuesday it was Tuesday yeah it's week yes um so uh just for the edification of the committee uh our uh broker brought forward uh renewals for the Stop gap insurance um which is what covers the high cost claims currently above $125 correct, okay um and uh the uh premium just as a straight renewal uh would have been an increase of around 50% a little less but yeah 50 is a Max is around 48% % um uh so as you can imagine that's uh problematic um and uh the uh the broker also put this out to bid sort of he he told he told the the health insurance trust they put out to Market uh and the only there was only one additional company willing to bid on it um but they put put on what's called lasering Provisions uh which uh are problematic in the sense that uh uh they cap off high individual claims uh and basically say those people are your your problem after a certain point um you know because we can see in your claims data that they're uh and so the net cost of that if those claimants continue is substantially more to the town uh and to the trust um so uh so what that leaves is that there was several options there from Blue Cross Blue Shield which is the current provider of the stop Gap

Insurance the best case scenario on that increase uh is one that would bring it down by increasing the amount the trust would pay for before that stop cap kicks in to around $200,000 uh of claims so that you'd only pay it would only cover claims above that would reduce the increase the net increase to the town uh is estimated by the consultant by the broker to uh be at 28% um as you can imagine that's still a substantial increase uh the good news is as I said last week our claims have been trending in a positive direction um and that stop gap insurance accounts for D can you remind me the percentage of the total so it's it's currently this year it's about 2.4 million out of the 18 million in total spending so it's a a small percentage of the budget so although the percentage increases sound scary they're there's still substantial increases but they're not the entire health insurance budget right yeah is a still is still a good chunk almost a million dollars or uh yeah I I think less um I think it was seven yeah so Mark Chris telli our our uh broker he provided with the most cost effective option uh that he put on the table was for the the stop loss to increase to 200% and he was showing an overall 28% increase and part of that is um estimating the number of 200,000 plus claims and I think the number was at 11 yes and we're currently at six so it's a very conservative estimate with that 28% so but we've been in the 20s previously right and we're trending the other way which is great so um we we I I I would just add um my own commentary on this based on my experience is that this has been part of my concern as a member of the health

insurance trust and even prior to my joining the health insurance trust um is that self-insured in self-insured pools that are small are potentially exposed to volatility uh and we're experiencing that at the high cost claim levels there's also some good news and that there's been some movement to incentivize employees using higher cost services that have high claim values to uh find lower cost Alternatives we explored some options on that as well this week you know so there's there's attempts to uh influence behavior uh that can hopefully drive that down but what you can't necessarily predict with a very small pool is that next year three people won't get terminal illnesses that require really serious surgeries interventions Etc or an injury uh you know that could dramatically cause millions of a million dollars in claims Etc and and that that volatility is what is one of our biggest challenges um and that we've kind of been at a high watermark on that for a couple years um and and so you know I I will continue to raise at the health insurance trust um the the notion of exploring Alternatives with much larger pools uh including but not limited to the group insurance commission for municipalities which has a pool of 600,000 people and so you know this would not be a conversation that would occur if we were in in the group insurance commission for example the only thing that would occur is the annual increase uh that that spread across all of the the the members and and the cost for that are there still plan design changes being considered for next year is that in the works yeah we we haven't uh got gone back to that we I'd say it's on the table uh for the trust we have a little bit we're always exploring everything yes um so stop Gap means that a certain level of of claims they will not pay Beyond is that what I'm say no it's actually it's a version of reinsurance which is basically you

taking out insurance against your most high cost claimants um and the insurance companies take a gamble uh and coming up with an actual analysis to figure out how they can potentially make money off of it based on your experience with a higher cost claimants uh so so in in our case right now our stop cap Insurance kicks in for any claims above $125,000 for any for any individual individual person y uh and and so uh you know one of the the strategies we're looking at and by the way the problem with our timing on this is the renewal for this is in March the renewal for our policy our our health insurance policy is in October nov November it's completely misaligned so when you actually neither of which is on a fiscal year when you cross that stop Gap what what's the financial impact do we have to if somebody goes above that do we have to kick in with a higher premium no so Dennis so we we get to stop paying after 125,000 and our insurance kicks in but the next year they're going to come back at you right and they're going to want their money back this is the premium um and I think you can look at this renewal and the lack of bidding on it as it being upside down and it's and it's gone down every single year we seem to get less people bidding I think we've switched insurance companies almost every every year for the for the Stop um loss we started um we had one company the first year and then sunlife the first year then we've been with Blue Cross since so it was Blue Cross for two years two years okay so I just think it's important to uh you know that happened in a public meeting this week but those aren't uh as well attended and as you designate on that commission uh just wanted to bring you up to speed on that thanks anyone else have any to drop the only thing on uh Robinson school committee um uh they presented to the capital committee I don't know if that anybody from the

capital committee wants to comment on on on that on that uh piece of it or not um well so it's a l the money yeah the capital committee did vote to recommend um going forward with the feasibility study at 1.6 million um yeah so we'll we'll wait until we we'll we'll have a there'll be an article at town meeting and in the sometime in February yeah so sometime in February that'll come before us to make a recommendation as well um and that was in line with what other town have been do feasibility seem to be in L we're going to get four different or possibly five different options out of that feasibility study you know repairs Renovations new building um I'm kind of waiting to hear a little a little more about it because it was it was fairly quick at at the capital meeting um but we'll have a there'll be time for longer presentations and get a little more details anyone else I think we're good um we're back next week on the 30th um we don't have the schools coming back unless something comes up let me know but I don't think we need to have them back and then we've got General government revenue Capital debt I forget what else management yeah a big list okay um nothing else I'll take I ask is our meeting next week here in this location yes yes yes yes motion J second second all right bye-bye I'm

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