Town Council - Special Meeting

Councilor Costigan.

Here.

Councilor Tassinari.

Here. Councilor Malau. Here.

Councilor Dimes. Present. Councilor Romano. Present. Councilor Reardon.

Here.

Councilor Fenn.

Here.

Vice President Spoke. Here. President Letary.

Here. Seeing a quorum, please rise for the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag,

and recommendations, we do not have anything right now. Public comment is open.

Karen. Karen Chavez, Pre-C2. As we know, finance season is over, and as a member of the Finance Commission, I just want to make a couple comments. We did end up seeing eight departments. Every department was invited in, but eight came. I made a couple of observations reading the book that we bought, which you can see was quite thick. And I'd just like to share a couple of things. Just bear with me for a minute. I noticed that the library has finished up with making three study rooms. They will be painted and carpeted. Two of the rooms will accommodate one to two people, and number three is a handicapped access, which will hold up to six people. They also finished the walkway out back here with help from the Commission on Disability. The Council on Aging, they were able to purchase a minivan. And the reason for the minivan is they have that big bus. The minivan now is allowing them to take more of the senior centers, the seniors, to different medical appointments that otherwise would tie up the big bus. And a lot of that money came from Grand Student Mass Elder Affairs Veteran services, they just continue to amaze me what he does. He just makes sure that every veteran in this town gets what they're entitled to, their families get what they're entitled to, and the widows of the veterans, of the widowers of the veterans get what they're entitled to. Then I looked at enterprise funds. The goal at Down the Rink now is to improve the locker rooms and the lobby and the concession stand. and to make everything ADA compliance, which, as we know, is not. In those bathrooms, some of them are older than some of the people sitting at the table, and they really need to be updated. Parks and Rec. Of all the issues that they had over the years, Sean has really shown me that he's done a great job. They were able to get the second set of pickleball courts in. They assisted the Winter Blue League with new dugouts. He's expanded his full-time day summer camp, and he expanded his February and April vacation programs, and they also relocated their office again in their programs to the PSA, and they've done it in a timely and, I think, efficient way. And, by the way, it's the third move in about 15 years, which is a big deal. The Harbour Master, they were able to incorporate with the Winter Police Department, so now that is... It's still an enterprise fund, but it comes under the auspices of the Habermaster. I'm not trying to leave anybody out. I have Director Kellis sitting next to me, and I can't say enough about what he and his people do. And it's the same with everybody else. And I just wish that more people would come to the finance meetings, because we don't only talk about money. We talk about what they've done, what they want to do, and what they think they can do within their budget guidelines. It's really too bad. Like I said, this book is a wealth of information. And if you don't read it, shame on you.

Thank you. OK.

business fiscal 27 budget These motions are all brought to the table at the last meeting. We'll let the chair of Finance Council person how to go through these if anyone has amendments are forward Thank You council president first Motion

motion reads in accordance with the charter of the town of winthrop i moved to the town council vote to adopt the town manager's proposed annual general fund budget for fiscal 2027 i set forth in the town manager's part of the submission inclusive of personnel salaries and operating expenses set forth therein in that to meet said appropriations the town shall raise the inappropriate as well as appropriate from the following other available funds the sum of sixty eight million three hundred sixty one thousand thirty seven dollars or take any other action relevant thereto. The additional funds below read as such, 39,522, the cemetery lots fund 584, 5,000 from cemetery professional care, fund 910, 75,000 from maintenance stabilization fund, fund 965, 48,000 from the regional 911, fund 903, $608,584 from intrafund transfers. That is the first motion.

Okay. Do I have a second for that motion? Second by Councilor Romano. Motion is around the table. Again, this is the operating budget, a little bit different than the total budget, which we'll go over enterprise funds later. We added the enterprise funds. It's approximately $83, $84 million. So this is the day-to-day operations right now. Any discussion? Councilor Tessina?

Hey, Mr. President, I'm going to do this just once. I want to thank the Finance Commission once again. Every member contributed. Every member showed up and every member went through that giant book that Ms. Chavez just mentioned. It's a lot of work. And again, thank you, Karen, for all your years of going through that book and keeping everybody on task. And a big thank you to the directors. Thank you to the town manager. Thank you, Sarah Johnson, Robin Powers. And we really appreciate all the hard work that went into this. So I just want to say of all these other motions. Vice President Sorrell.

I don't know if this is an appropriate time to bring this up, but under the summary of the town manager's FY27 budget recommendations, the issues here, is this appropriate to bring up? Sure. Okay. Fixed costs versus discretionary costs. But that's what I don't quite understand in the general fund budget of the $68.4 million representing an increase of $1.9 million. So I would like to have a breakdown of the fixed cost versus discretionary cost.

Are you reading this from? I can send it to you. I mean, fixed costs are mostly, you know, health insurance, things we don't have any discretion in, you know, property insurance, you know, we don't have any discretion in that. salaries, we don't have any discretion in that. Well, is that true? Well, for unions mostly, yeah. You know, we have employees that are not unionized, so they're employed by the discretion of the town manager. You know, so at his discretion, I guess, would you call it discretionary for them?

I mean... For the non-union personnel, the unions are involved by the collective bargaining agreement.

that's legally mandated. We don't have any discretion in that.

So what portion of our budget do we have any control over?

You've got control over the whole budget. You can vote whatever amount you want.

No, I'm trying to figure out. I know we have to appropriate money every year for our budget. But is there... what is the difference between what we already have committed to and then what we have any discretionary funds over if there there may not be any i don't know i just don't know the answer to that i mean we you know certain programs i mean certainly you know initiatives the department has want to bring forward that we decide to fund like you know we didn't need to replace the grant money for the health department but we chose to do that you know we could have chose to make

that you cut i mean we're legally obligated to like sarah said the um the pensions the cva contracts and the collective bargaining agreements with the unions a few things like that i mean utilities we have to pay if we want to keep the lights on you know those kind of things we have to pay but yeah we have some leeway in there with the programming i mean we could you know tell stevie you know we're not going to fill those other positions and cut those out you know those kind of things i mean yeah we could choose to do that i wouldn't advise it but certainly we could yeah we have some discretionary on that yeah i'm just asking i know that we because

year but frankly do we have any opportunity to make decisions or are we locked in to fixed costs and that's what I'm asking

Oh, we could cut them. If the council came over and said you need to cut $200,000 or $300,000 from the budget tomorrow, we'd have to go through and do that. And we have funds where we could do that. And it would cut some services that we could provide, but certainly we could do that.

But percentage-wise, if we didn't cut, if you consider X, Y, and Z fixed, what do we have?

Well, yeah, we don't have it. I mean, we could calculate that. I don't have that number off the top of my head. I don't, I mean, that's kind of a random number. I mean, you know, what's, that's the will of the council. That's why we do the financial review. That's why, you know, when the finance committee makes recommendations, we'll adjust the budget during the finance committee meetings and things like that. I mean, I'm trying to get to the source of the question, like if you wanted to just.

Yeah, no, I'm just asking because I know that once we already negotiate union contracts, once we already negotiate, we have utilities, we have X, Y, and Z. So I know that sometimes we consider those fixed costs. Correct. And what I'm asking is that do we really, in this budget, have any discretionary monies that we could...

I think if you're looking at it, and I think what the Vice President is saying, which, you know, what can we choose to... Where's the amount of the budget? What's the amount of the budget that we could say, you know what, we'd rather do this with or we'd rather do that with? And I think when, you know, when you're thinking discretionary versus non-discretionary, you're saying discretionary is what we choose to do and non-discretionary is what we have to do. And in a way, you know, probably 90% of the budget we have to do. However, you know, salaries are However, if the council said we need to move $1 million to XYZ, then that discretion, non-discretion money for salaries, people would have to be let go or you're losing quality of services. So I guess it gets to the point where you have discretion. at the, you know, at the peril of the services that get provided to the town. So if we chose to say we're going to have, you know, less firefighters, less police officers, less DPW workers, which I'm sure the director will love. I mean, those are things that we've had to do in years past because we just didn't have the money. So it's discretionary in a point. I mean, I guess if there wasn't any discretionary income, you would never have free cash at the end of the year because that money would all be accounted for. So in terms of benefits, we are. But if somebody left as to their own discretion, if an employee left, then we would save the cost of that benefit. And that technically would be discretionary. We have a small amount of money in a reserve account for the council. That's technically discretionary if you wanted to make a motion here tonight. We've talked about over years people having the opportunity, councilors, to make motions to amend the budget. of that, and that's where the discretion lies. That's where you'd like to say, we'd all like to say, okay, here's the $2 million pot of discretionary income that we could put our own pet, not pet projects, but a project, something that we're passionate about, to say I'd like to put some money there or some money here. And in some ways, the free cash is somewhat discretionary if we didn't have a financial policy to use. 80% non-discretionary, and there is a percentage of that that is discretionary for us to use on certain things. You know, if we chose to do an infrastructure project and did it within the capital budget, we would have to find discretionary funds, non-discretionary funds in that budget to support that. And that's when you talk about if you don't have those funds, that's when you talk about a debt expense or whatever it happens to be.

So, bottom line is, can you give me more?

I can't give you a number. I mean, in the past, consulates have made motions for, you know, money for the schools, money for inspectional services, money for DPW, because we feel the money could be better used. And it's just a question of, you know, you could choose to take it from another line. But not if it's required.

I mean, to me, not if it's a fixed cost. You can't take it from another line. You only can take... Anything that we have is discretionary to another line. Am I wrong about that?

Yes, like supplies. The schools have said in many years, we're getting tight towards the end of the last quarter. We're not buying any supplies. We're not buying any paper or pencils or such like that. And that's small, discretionary money that they choose to use for other line items. You know, we put money in snow and ice that by law we have to put a sum of money there. Now we can underfund that legally because we do. We don't know what that amount is and then we have to make it up at the end of the year. We put money in for health benefits that we think is pretty much accurate. Could we potentially say, you know what? We think there's 100 grand more in there than we're going to need because over the last three years, for example, you know, we've been over 200,000 every year. And that's rolling the dice a little bit if you did that because, again, at the end of the year, you have to be rolling.

There isn't a lot of slush if you're asking me if there's slush anywhere. I mean, we had... Department has asked us for more money. Sure. And we couldn't, we didn't have it. And so Tony and I went through the budget and there were a lot of cuts that we had to make. So this, this is a lean. Yeah.

That's what I meant because truthfully, when this, this, this committee talks about the budget, if indeed Most of our budget is fixed. Most of the time it's locked in because we've already had a negotiation with sellers. We already know that we have contracts with outside agencies. We already know that. So I'm just asking, how much really are we talking about in terms of our deciding about budget? Because if it's already fixed, Sarah, and we're already lean, we don't really have a lot of work to do here, is my point.

To be honest, I would say no. We're running a very lean, level service. That's all I'm asking. We didn't cut services. Thank you.

Councilor Tassinac, thank you, Mr. President.

I think, in terms of discretionary funding, it's almost all discretionary. And that's why we asked the town manager and his team to appropriate to organize it appropriately, in terms of what we have agreed as a town, the service level that we want to provide. I think that this year, and I gotta say the last every year that I've seen the manager's budget, it's been very lean, very poignant, very straight to the point. to provide the services that we are accustomed to. And to be totally honest, I think our departments go above and beyond what we fund them in terms of commitment to the town. So discretionary, non-discretionary, we can make a motion to move things around if you see a place that you'd like to fund, but also you'd have to defund something else. I think, thank you again, because there's not a lot to work with. There's not a lot of slush. I don't think there's any slush. There wasn't any slush from what I saw. There's some healthy retained earnings accounts that are good to have. There's one retained earnings account that still needs a little bit of work that we'll have to do some more work on going over the next few years. But, I mean, THIS COUNCIL IS SUPPOSED TO DECIDE WHAT GETS FUNDED AND WHAT DOESN'T GET FUNDED BASED ON THE MANAGED RECOMMENDATION. THAT'S WHAT WE'RE DOING TONIGHT. I DON'T HAVE ANY AMENDMENTS TO MAKE TO THAT BUDGET. SO THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY FOR THIS MOTION. MR. PRESIDENT, THANK YOU.

And I think that's a good one. I guess if somebody said, put a number on it, put a number on it, I would have to go back and say, OK, in the last three years, we've averaged whatever, $1.8 million in free cash. And I say, OK, there's your discretionary money. Now it comes at a price, too. And I think it's depending on what you're looking for. you know, adding individual-led inspectional services that maybe goes out and maybe takes for itself in ways that we're looking at problem properties and stuff like that. And then I worry, you know, you worry about expenses, whether they're one-time expenses or recurring expenses because then you have to look for next year's already okay you know but if you're looking you know potentially we're looking at something that will not only be a betterment to the town because town better cleaner and such it also basically pays for itself in terms of making sure that things are being run properly in terms of so that's something i mean you can look at technology for an increase in that for our budget, you know, in terms of IT and such. You know, we run pretty lean, and that's something that, you know, there were things like, I'm sure it happened to you, that, you know, you go over budgets, and once you've been going over them for a while, you kind of hear the same things coming up over and over again, saying, okay, you know, we have to pull the trigger sometime. But when, and not just when, but when most cities little bit for the betterment of the future but at the expense of something because the money's good because there is not like a pot that is okay we're just going to use a couple thousand this year um like the schools and user fees have fought for that for years thinking that you know user fees bring in such a small percentage of the overall cost of athletics like it's got to be a way to try to alleviate that pressure off now it's not nice but um So I think that that's what you're talking about looking to try to get. But I think that the first thing is to get the thought of what you feel. And again, this budget is a process here. We can always make adjustments and ask for transfers throughout the year. But the first thing is to come to a decision. police officer? Is it an additional person at ISD to be able to have better control? Is it to create a parks department, which is something that we've talked about maintaining? It's probably that, you know, we're not getting outside contractors, so people just kind of trying to fill in and trying to alleviate some pressure from You know, I know council test now. We just talked about this in the past, too, when we tend to build stuff, and then there's not that plan for maintenance after, and I think a pocket bottle would be fantastic for something like that. So I think that that's really heavy.

Yeah, I'm heading for that, and then I have just small issues in the budget because I didn't understand them. So I don't know if this is a perfect time.

Yeah, if you have any discussion on anything within that $64 million.

Property insurance. FY 26 was 614, and FY 27 was 414. Tell me about that.

Yes. The property insurance, we have had good claims. And because we've had good claims history, we actually get a benefit from our insurance company. And so Maya, as long as the premiums that we pay them, you know, they want to have a small amount over the amount of claims, but our claims have gone down. And so, and then the other thing is they were insuring us for some other categories that we Couldn't get insurance for, and so we had to go outside of Maya to get our insurance. And so now we're hoping to go back into Maya because we've had better claims experience. So they're giving us a lower premium.

So we had other insurance last year.

Yeah. Well, not for the whole town, just for a small piece. Okay, but that's still a cost. Uh-huh, right. And now we don't have that. Now we're going to put it under the Maya umbrella. And so it's still, it's a lot less. Right, exactly. And so we thought we were going to have higher claims last year and higher premiums. And so we increased it, but then they didn't come in as high. So we had some savings last year. So we didn't spend as much as we thought. And then now we're getting lower premiums. So the combination of what we thought were higher increases last year that we didn't use, and the savings this year, we now have lower costs.

Is this all property insurance? What is this? Yeah. By the way, just as a point about special ed. That's not my bailiwick. I understand, but you know that special ed promised, when they did 94-142, that they would fund 40%. They're now funding 10% to 15%. And that's why our situation for special ed is unbelievably difficult. And so if we're good at it and we have more kids, then we spend 30% of our budget in special ed.

It's a lot. It is, yeah. And I've talked to Lisa about it. And she's explained to you, I think, when she came. I know. Yeah. It's a lot of money.

We're a little under 30%, but it's a substantial amount of money. But that's when you look into people is technically middle school and then the high school. And we have a CET, which is basically the chair of special ed, so kind of like the principal of special ed in each building. And thought has always been for years, people, and I was one of them, they used to say, well, geez, I think we could do this with just one chair. Why do we need four chairs? However, I have the experience and understanding what Lisa's she thinks and how it's worked out so well is that when you're able to have chairs in each building they're able to go to services and maintain having children stay within the district which is great for the kid because they're more um and it's it's a lot less expensive at the time so that's where you try to but and that goes all to the unfunded mandates that are provided and the lack of money that they will never really

us for or any other city exactly transportation is there any way we can collaborate with other communities transportation for the schools yeah transportation yes that would be a question for the superintendent yes because i mean it's it's significant it is transportation costs are very expensive yeah and they're they've been going up

Their increases are very high. And some of that transportation cost is within the town. And some of it is going outside. It is a homeless population that not necessarily is without a home, but displaced in such a way. And we are responsible to pick up those children and bring them to us. So transportation costs are huge.

Huge. Tell me more about the rink. 30K in the rink has 30% parks and recreation.

Oh, yes, that's subsidized from it, yes.

We've always done that.

We haven't always done that, but we have done that in the past. For the last four years. Years and years ago, we used to do $100,000 a year for this, for Oxfam Rec, for years. And then 2008 came, recession came, town manager at the time said we can't do this anymore. Now, it's kind of like a misnomer in some respects because there are also other, well, there are also charges from the town to the enterprise funds, which are more than that, and indirect costs, right? So if there's, if you have whoever works at Boxing Rock or the Rink or any of these enterprise funds, they get a paycheck. That paycheck is drafted in town hall. So we take a percentage of that payroll person's job and we change it and make the expense come from the enterprise fund itself so the enterprise fund is paying for the services that are rented for whether it's insurance or health benefits or payroll or whatever treasurer for taking in payments and you know for our accounts payable person paying the bills you know so they have to as an enterprise fund is technically self-sufficient sorry i interrupted no no no but i mean we have you know The rank and taxing record, what you're talking about, also the trash. It's a bigger one. You know, trash up until five years ago, the town provided 100% of plenty, so it was basically $1.2 million and change. And then the contract went up 50%, 47% in one year, and it went to $1.8 or $1.9 million, which made us, the enterprise fund, it made us have a trash fee. So that $1.2 million is now down still more than what I would $480,000 that is in the operating budget. That's what the town is supplementing. You know, I think, in terms of trash fund, I think we should get to the point where the town is getting a bill for their trash and they pay that. The schools are getting a bill for their trash and they pay that. Senior centers should get a bill for their trash and they pay that. And then we could go to senior housing and we could talk all about that. People should be paying what they're

Well, we've now skipped to the solid waste enterprise fund. But we're paying $80,000 more on the enterprise fund. That has to be discussed in this town council. We can't continue this. I don't know what the problem is here. If we're going to have to pay more, we need to at least discuss it.

The major problem there is if you look at what we're paying for tonnage between mainstream trash and recyclables. It used to be $37 a ton for recyclables and $87 a ton for mainstream trash. Now it's both over $100 a ton. And that's just uncontrollable. And that changes. That's not like we have a contract for a year. That's month to month to month. So we'll get a bill and say, you used X amount of tons. Here's your bill for your solid wood. For your mainstream trash, here's a bill for your recyclable trash. One of those uncontrollables that you're talking about. And it could change in the blink of an eye the other way. But this past year has been a big trouble in terms of, you know, paying for trash.

Yeah, so I'm just saying, I don't think the town understands what we're facing here.

And, and the cost that that we're now we're either paying and they're charging, or we're charging them.

So that's, I don't think that's clear. The harbormaster fund I was very excited about the fact that we changed the way in which we did it. And now I see that we have still an increase. We are still paying more. I thought we were going to be paying less because we were getting more revenue. Am I misunderstanding this comment?

No, we are. They did increase. their budget um but the revenue i think there was some past revenue that hadn't been collected and so we've collected that and now it's kind of leveled off um as far as the revenue is concerned they're still getting more people are dropping their boats in the water now so our water rankings were coming in a little bit slow but they're they're coming in better now um but The chief is the harbormaster, and so he's taken over. And they're also trying to make some improvements down there.

But the bottom line is we're paying $116,000 more. That's something. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We're paying $47,000. Because we were very excited about the fact that the Harbormaster was put in a different location and we thought because we were being more efficient that we wouldn't see an increase and now we're seeing an increase in that. So I'm just saying. So I'm hoping that the revenue will offset this. One final note. You're right about renegotiating health. I believe that when we hired the superintendent, she did not take health insurance. And I believe that in her contract, there is something about her contract. So because she doesn't have health insurance, she gets a different situation. And I don't know if that could be applicable to others. or if you're thinking about a different way to negotiate. And I saw that in the commission report, and I think that's a great idea because health insurance is tremendously important. And I'm not sure we don't have to renegotiate that in the next contract because 85% is pretty high.

There's a public employee commission that needs to be put together. That's by state. legislature, and it's union employees and a retiree rep. And then they all get together, and then it can be worked out. There's different . But I think as the superintendent mentioned when she was here, too, that it's part of the whole employee package. So that if employees of Winthrop don't earn quite as much money as neighboring towns or other comparables, but we do have a favorable health insurance plan. It's a nice benefit. Thank you.

And we should have negotiated that two years ago, and I was on that committee, and we talked about it, and we didn't do it. So that's a really important notion. And finally, I was interested in the recommendations from the commission that says measurement outcomes including time savings, cost reductions, and service improvements, and I just want to see those in writing. for every single department in this next budget, because I didn't see it in this budget. And that's not up to you. That's up to every single department, and it's up to the town manager. But KPIs are important to me, and I'm not seeing it. Thank you so much.

OK, there's a motion to approve the operating budget as

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

for fiscal year 2027, pursuant to Mass General Law, Chapter 44, Section 32, and in accordance with the Charter of the Town of Windsor, I move the Town Council authorize the continuation of all revolving funds in accordance with General Laws, Chapter 44, Section 53E and a half.

Okay, is there a second to the motion for the day? Second by Councilor Lano. Discussion on the revolving funds. No comment.

Councilor Costigan. Yes. Councilor Tassinari. Yes. Councilor Malab. Yes. Councilor Dimes. Yes. Councilor Romano. Yes. Councilor Reardon. Yes. Councilor Fink. Yes. Vice President Swope. Yes. President Luteri.

Yes. Councilor Tassinari.

Thank you, Councilor President. Adoption of Annual Capital Plan for Fiscal Year 2027. appropriate to meet said appropriations, the town shall

Can you tell me the difference between maintenance and capital?

Anything can be considered capital based on what you're working with, based on what the cost is, and based on if you're extending the life of the asset.

So this is not anything to do with improvement, right? It has nothing to do with improvement of what we're doing. And so tell me, what's the advantage of not putting the maintenance issues on the regular budget versus a capital plan on capital, you know, like the firehouse, as an example, would be certainly a capital plan.

I mean, any vehicle purchase is a capital purchase, too. The life of the asset is greater than five years. Okay, fine. Vehicle maintenance can be considered... capital funding, we usually do it out of operating, but that will extend the natural life of the fixed asset.

Okay, so if I go through this, there are no maintenance on this. This is only...

There's some maintenance to the capital, you know, the larger buildings, like there is $10,000 in there for roofing repairs, you know, things like that. I mean, we could certainly roll it in and add, but remember, the benefit of what we do here is we take a chunk of free cash, which is savings from the prior year's budget... to argue that we're using general fund monies on some of the maintenance and then the other funds come out of the capital stabilization will be for that. So we're technically doing what you're doing. We're just doing it a different way. I mean, we could put it in the budget, but you tend not to want to use free cash to fund your general fund budget. So if we were to do that, we'd be short and we'd have to probably put some free cash into that. But that's sort of frowned upon.

You tell me that there is some financial benefit.

There is. It helps with our bond rating. Yeah. Yeah.

what I consider to be maintenance versus capital. I could appreciate that, so I just need to understand it better because when I look at all of this, I see a lot of maintenance.

Any maintenance to a capital asset is a capital expense.

Is that true?

That's how you look at it. Is that the way in which everybody...

buying large things, doing, like Jim said, major roofing projects, and then a little bit of maintenance. But again, it's the same where I've always worked. It's always the same style of funding. And the funding and the bonding agencies like that. They like to see the free cash being funded to the capital plan. They like to see a healthy amount of capital being done that way.

So it helps our monitoring. If we can find funding sources that would agree with you, I'm more than happy to understand that.

I looked at it just yeah so but it's not just public finance either that's how they do it in private business too it's like you're if you're doing a maintenance of a manufacturing facility that's an investment in capital of asset that's a capital expense that gets depreciated over 25 to 50 years It's not just us. It's not just the town of Winthrop. It's not just municipalities. It's not just the state or the federal government. That's capital versus operating expenditures and investment.

And Ural Beach Sand is a capital.

Absolutely. And that's still what I add. That's why it's highlighted. That wasn't in the original plan. That's why you highlighted. I'll let Steve talk about the Sagamore. Tree purchases could be considered capital.

Are they? Well, it's long-term.

I mean, if they plant the right in water, they're going to last 50 or 100 years.

I'm just asking, are they?

Yes, that's capital.

They're in my capital budget at DCR.

Well, these are all one-time expenses, and we're using free cash versus one-time funding. So that's why you don't want to put fixing a roof in an operating budget because you're not going to fix the roof every year. And it's not revenue that you're going to use that comes in every year. It's one-time money that you're using for a one-time expense. Does that help? Okay. Sometimes.

If you think about maintenance. If I look at all this.

If you think about maintenance and the daily activities that go on to just do small repairs or the janitorial services around, that kind of maintenance, that's operating expenses. Yeah.

I live on Sagamore.

I've noticed that the pathway's been dug out, but is indeed the stairs going to get replaced? I just wanted to make sure.

We've got a grant, a small grant, this year that we used for the flat work between the walkway between Summit and Sagamore. We stopped about two feet short of the stairs. Right. Because that stairs would have, we were only about a quarter of a block away now. So we wanted to complete that. And then Tony added this to the capital plan that we could put it out to bid and get those stairs back. That's great because there's been so many complaints about those stairs. There's a lot more to that path, as you know, because all the way down to Hutchinson. So.

And there's been a lot of falls. You've seen them. I mean, they're like funhouse to us, you know? So I think it's great that it's in here. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Appreciate it. What was the cost of capital?

Capital?

Capital. That's the cost again.

Yes.

That's the test, Mary. Yes. That's the law. Yes. That's the dimes. Yes. That's Romano. Yes. That's the rear. Yes. That's the thing. Yes. Vice President Swope. Yes. President Letary.

motion to adopt motion for adoption of lawson rank enterprise fund budget for fiscal year 2027 from from the town manager i move that the town council vote to appropriate the following sums for the operation of the rank enterprise fund budget for fiscal year 2027 personnel and benefits costs 204 $13.74 operation and maintenance, $128,778, totaling $332,993.74 with indirect costs of $35,481.45. $368,475.19 as follows. For user fees, $338,475.19.

Now, the rank is subsidized by its users, right? And there are three major users. The users are the public schools, you know, they call it the quote-unquote beer league guys, the people that rent ice on a monthly basis over the last 40-plus years, and then winter youth hockey. So that accounts for about 80% of their revenue. Now, we charge, and I believe the rank is going up, and they're ice charged, right? You rent ice by the hour, and hour or you can get a 60 minute hour. So our rates will be going up to $270 an hour. So that's for a 60 minute hour. Now the difference with our rink is other rinks, the next cheapest rink that you'll find is $350 an hour and other rinks go up $400 an hour. The reason why of our major you know we're all being served by with the community basically right so we're trying to keep the cost as low as possible because it's the children of the town and the citizens of the town but the other reason is the amenities Hopefully going to be bringing something before the council in the near future for new locker rooms, which will have handicap accessible bathrooms for the patrons, for the public, which we are not at that level right now. That was built in 1973 and I'd say the fixtures are the same since 1973, but the setup is pretty close. So we are trying to, you know, not having the amenities that other leagues don't want to necessarily come into Winthrop, not because of the rink itself. We have some of the best ice in the state, but it's the amenities. So, you know, you can't have a game and then take a shower after the game, which is what most high schools want to do. We're fortunate enough to be connected to the gymnasium from the middle school, so the high school is able to use those showers, which are integrated themselves. for the 60s. So, you know, we're only able to get a certain rate for our ice. I think the management down there does an incredible job. We are pretty much 80% booked between November and March once the high school season starts. I want the public schools to pay the same price as renters. So winter public schools pay approximately high 40s to around $50,000 a year in fees. Winter youth hockey pays about $102,000 to $103,000 a year. And the guys that rent on a regular basis, guys and girls on a regular basis, those quote-unquote family people, they pay roughly $60,000 a year. So that's where the vast bulk of your revenues are coming. My thought is once you have Passport used to have leads and all these other businesses, the IRS used to have a lead income, but they want to have, they need to have showers available so they can go and skate for a couple hours before work and then they go to work. So once we have these amenities, we'll be able to book that other 20% of the hours that we really don't have anybody to use between 7 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon when the kids get out of school. with the auditorium coming down. It's amazing. I'm still there. I know there's meat. I'm 90% sure that everything is meat.

Everything is meat. They do get...

Councilor Tassinari? Yes. Councilor Malak? Yes. Councilor Dimes? Yes. Councilor Romano? Yes. Councilor Reardon? Yes. Councilor Fenn? Yes. Vice President Swope? Yes. President Letary?

Yes.

The motion passes.

Councilor Tassinari? Yes. Thank you, Councilor President. Motion from the Town Manager for the Adoption of Recreation Enterprise Fund, budget for fiscal year 2027. Motion reads, I move that the Town Council vote to appropriate the call-in sum for the operation FISCAL YEAR 2027 PERSONAL BENEFITS $258,105.08 OPERATION MAINTENANCE $115,404.45 TOTALING $373,509.53 WITH AN INDIRECT COST OF $36,490.47 AND AS FUNDING THEREFORE THAT THE TOWN VOTE TO RAISE THE $410,000 AS FOLLOWS. USER FEES $380,000. SUBSIDY FROM GENERAL FUND $30,000. SECOND BY COUNCILOR LOVANO. DISCUSSION ON THE POXIMAC.

IF THE USER FEES DON'T MATCH OF $380,000, COUNCILOR

That's a good question for the town manager. Ultimately, the town is responsible for any enterprise run we have, whether it be the rain, the pox and wreck, trash, water, and so on.

So in the last three or four years, have they met those needs?

For the most part, for the services, but sometimes with the maintenance on the buildings, we've had to supplement, like this year with the gym and a few other times we have to supplement some of the expenses that go along with it. But I have to pull those numbers. But yeah, we've had to in the past.

Sometimes some of the issues with pox and wreck in relation to other enterprises

for you okay user fees yes really what do you think user fees for the creation i think that's realistic that we can collect that we've discussed it i mean we're hoping to i mean it was difficult this year because they moved um they lost some membership because of where they were and the point charlie building and things like that yeah so now we're back getting back in the gymnasium and

right there's other groups out there that are offering services the schools offer after school you know summertime services so but sean's done a really good job with it so we think we'll hit those numbers and part of what we did there too is remember we took half of sean's salary out of paid for another general fund and took it out of there because sean does a lot of stuff that's not involved with the park and rec program for the town like the maintenance of the fields and all the other the ancillary stuff that he does um it's not really tied to parking rack and he does a lot of project work and things like that so we took in fact this is the only town i've seen that we're have to hire and things like that. He manages the Massport program with all the employees that come over there. We hire all the summertime help that gets farmed out to a lot of different departments and a lot of his stuff. So I mean, that's the logic behind taking his salary cut in half in front of the general fund. So that will help with the expenses and help to do what you're saying so we don't have to subsidize it and have to make sure the fee is covered.

And if we don't make the 380, then we subsidize it?

Well, they have retained earnings, but it's been slowly kind of whittled. down every year. So our first take is to go to the retained earnings if we need to, you know, if there is a shortage. I mean, it's been tight every year, but we've been reaching it. So they've been, you know, making it. The other thing that they can do, too, at an enterprise fund is they slow down their spending. So they try not to spend as much because basically the revenue has to equal the expenses. So if they don't and they're a little under, if they're under on their expenses, it's still okay. So they have met this target that you proposed? Well, they, previously. Yeah, but it's, if they don't meet it exactly, if their expenses are less, it's still okay.

All right, so.

Your side.

Yeah. That's fantastic. In terms of the gym, though, right?

yeah for the time anyway so if any any contribution from the enterprise fund is it is a is a plus i guess for the general money it is but it's also you know a lot of those things have come from the usage from the pocket right program in there so some of those are directly directly kind of that so you know whether it's you know when they use the additional heating and the lights and the water usage and stuff that all inside there so it's all on that operation of maintenance

Thank you, Council President. Parks and Recreation, I mean, that was one of my first jobs as a councilor for Sean Driscoll, so I just think it's very important to get this money and really trust Sean. You know, my son does it, all his friends. There's a large amount of our community that that benefits from, so.

Discussion roll call, please.

Council Costigan. Yes. Council Tassinari. Yes. Council Malak. Yes. Council Dimes. Yes. Council Romano. Yes. Council Reardon. Yes. Council Finn. Yes.

FOR THE ADOPTION OF THE HARBOR MASTER'S ENTERPRISE FUND BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2027, SUBMITTED BY TOM ANGEL MARINO. I MOVE THAT THE TOWN COUNCIL VOTE TO APPROPRIATE THE FOLLOWING SUM FOR THE OPERATION OF THE HARBOR MASTER ENTERPRISE FUND BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2027. PERSONAL BENEFITS, $187,850. OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE, $80,600. TOTALING $268,450. $210.92. And it's funding, therefore, the town vote to raise the $343,660.92 as follows solely through user fees.

It could be health insurance. I'm not knowing that. Hold on. I think there's a lot of the treasurer's costs. I'm not going to start throwing here. right they do get they're charged a little higher percentage than the other um i think it's because of all of like the treasurer he has four percent of his time and it's only two and a half for like rink and parks and rec because you know they've got boat excise coming in they got the waterway fees there's a lot of And they have a higher percentage on the senior accountant, on the AP clerk as well, as well as assistant treasurer. And a lot of the treasury, they're like 5%. The other ones are 2%. percent is allotment for the assessor assistant assessor and assessing clerk that all gets in there ten percent for them yeah so how many how many people are hired here well they're paying a portion of a general fund people so a piece of tony's salary piece of my salary a piece of because when we do work for them or with them So when I help with the budget, some of my time gets charged to them. So the treasurer is collecting their revenue and balancing receivable reports and balancing the cash with them. That gets charged back to them. So how much does the ? As far as the salary is the chief, but we don't charge, I think, The chief salary isn't in there.

So it's not a percentage of that salary in there? Not on the indirects. The indirects would be in there. No, no, no. On the language.

No, we have Daniel Stone, the detective, is going to be assigned down there. So we have his salary in the $65,000. And then Kevin Janellis is in there as well. As everyone knows, Dennis McCarney is paid for by the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office. So that's the other staff member. Then we have some part-time employees that we bring on board as well.

But the actual hyperpass?

It's the chief.

Right. None of that.

We didn't put anything in the share. I mean, if the council wants, we can add something next year, but we didn't put anything in there because the chief tends to, a lot of the stuff is what Detective Stone's doing down there and managing the day-to-day and the deputy harbormaster takes care of a lot of it for him as well.

So we don't, there is no salary for a harbormaster because it's the chief.

Correct. As far as, yeah, he's got the title.

Salary as well. Roughly, yeah, 175. 175. I'm

The chief salary? Yes. 190.

190?

For the chief, yes. That's for the staffing chief.

So there's no percentage of his salary in this, currently. But the rest of the Harvard master was 187,850?

Well, that's seasonal employees, too. So we have to have employees that are helping out, because they need staff, not just two people.

So we have a lot of college kids we bring in to run the pump-out boat. We've got other .

So how much percentage of the salary is that?

So there's roughly, I think, two main salaries, which is about $125,000, and the other $55,000 to $60,000 is from . And some portion of .

Let me ask the overall question. I know that the assistant town manager talked a lot about putting the harbor master in under this place. And so the question I have is, did we save money?

What do you mean, did we save money? as far as our budget.

It wasn't the goal of that wasn't to save money. The goal of it was to make sure we weren't collecting a lot of the waterways fees because we didn't have a good system in place. So now we're collecting the waterway fees and we're doing more in the way of enforcement, which we weren't doing before. was the benefit of having the police officer down there having police presence out on the boats you know protecting our harbors we weren't doing a lot of that stuff wasn't you know getting done at least to my satisfaction so that was the benefit so it wasn't about cost savings it was about providing a better service down there so given you know we're on the budget so given what we did did and we have better service did we save any money or are we spending more money matched up the revenues with the expenses so we're providing the services that we're charged for you know if we would have to make a decision you know we'd probably have one time with the chief down there we have to have a lot of like if the you know Suffolk County Sheriff decided to pull Dennis the county out of there then we'd have to make a decision you know and decide how to reallocate those funds but I would say we're we're actually collecting the Harvard waterways fees that we're supposed to now and we're providing the services to a better level.

So if you count the number of fees that we're getting that we didn't get before And the salaries that we have applied to the position. Where are we in the balance of that?

We're not allowed to charge for services. We can't make a profit down there. So the revenues have to match the expenses. We can't show a profit. If we have a little bit of budget turnbacks, that'll fall through the retained earnings. But we can't budget a surplus. We have to budget.

Councilor Costigan? Yes. Councilor Tassinari? Yes. Councilor Malak? Yes. Councilor Dimes? Yes. Councilor Romano? Yes. Councilor Reardon? Yes. Councilor Payne? Yes. Vice President Swope? Yes. President Letary? Yes.

The motion passes.

Councilor Tassinari, Water and Sewer. Thank you, Councilor President. Adoption of Water and Sewer Enterprise Fund by the fiscal year 2027, submitted by Town Manager Marino. OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE, $9,618,844.58. TOTAL COST, $11,442,706.73. INDIRECT COST OF $402,807.77. AND AS FUNDING THEREFORE, that the town vote to raise the $11,845,514.50 as follows, and that is through user fees and title.

Second by Councilor Romano. Motion that's on the table, discussion on water and sewer.

Please, you all. Okay, water and sewer. If Steve could actually improve the work that he's doing by 200% instead of doing 100 whatever he does for every year, we did 200. Can we reduce any fees here? Or is it because are we losing water? What's going on?

I'll defer to Steve on that one. I will say I lost water. I know it's down. 25% down to almost 12 and a half. Okay. So we've done an incredible job reducing unaccountable water. And that's a result of several things. It's a result of council and the town manager recommending to the council to make immediate infrastructure improvements. We've got to do these projects.

Absolutely.

It costs us more money not to do infrastructure upgrades than building. We've reduced our unexpected water main breaks exponentially. I know this year we had an issue during that blizzard where we got six of them in a day, but we used to get 20 to 25 water main breaks a year. went down to you know well below you know 10 a year so and that's that's a direct result of fixing the aged replacing the aged mains we've been committed you've been committed to keeping the lead line replacement you know uh go now of course that's a dep mandate but getting lead out of the system because not only benefiting, you know, the health and safety of the users of the water, but it's the lead that results in service leaks, primarily. If the service leak, you know, is on private property, or whether it's on public property, that's unaccountable water. It's unmeted unaccountable water. So, I would love to see more money, you know, we have a lot of projects going on, but yeah, I would never say no to additional funding. I mean, there's so much work still to be done.

I guess what I'm asking, if you double, if we double, if we change money around and gave you money to double your work on would we reduce the costs significantly, or does it matter?

But again, we're not given any money from the operating budget. Right, so this is, we look at Steve and we just think DPW, right? So, you know, we, we are not giving Steve, we're not giving water. So any tax payers would give, I mean, unfortunately, the taxpayers are paying. What we do, you know, is come up with, you know, a plan.

utilize zero interest loans from the NWRA. And that's how, you know, we've primarily been doing our infrastructure improvements, taking zero interest loans over 10 years. Pretty soon, you know, we had utilized what we did in the Senate Business District. project up until 2028 so we're coming up to a point where we'll start being able to utilize that money again what we've been typically using each year what we've been not typically but regularly using is the lead line replacement money that they offer which is again is the 10 year zero interest loan and that's how we've been doing our lead line replacements and It's a great program because it doesn't cost the resident anything except the loan amount. So a lot of communities will just replace up to the property line and then the whole owner gets charged for the private side. We haven't been doing that.

In some instances, I think private citizen has been paying to the road. Sorry? The private citizen has been paying the pipelines to the road.

I thought that's incorrect. I mean, every private citizen is paying the watering.

But if the pipe breaks in their house, it goes to the road. They're paying that cost to make that work. Is that not right?

It's right if they're not on the roster yet. So right now, we're doing all tier one services, all right, which is a tier one service is a full landline replacement from the main to meter. That's what we've been utilizing this program for. If the town is already, you know, in 1972 has done copper from the main to the property line, and the whole water gets a and they're not a full-line service, yeah, you know. And then on this year's roster, they can wait for us to make the repair, but there's no guarantee.

So is there any way that we could do this or not?

I don't believe so, no, because enterprise funds are self-sustaining. So whatever he spends, he has to raise in revenue. It has to be balanced. So when you say double the work and save money, no, double the work and double his expense budget, we have to double the revenue budget, right?

Sorry. Councilor, speak. Councilor, maybe I'm hearing you maybe a little different, is if we put more money in to fix things faster, will the rates go down? Is that what I'm hearing from you? Okay. And generally, because we have so much to fix, it wouldn't be for years to come. The more I've looked into this, it's, I mean, all of the taxpayers would love to see their water bills go down. We just keep seeing it go up.

Unfortunately, we have to borrow money for a lot of those capital projects. And so if we have to borrow millions of dollars to be able to increase this work, to fix the pipes, to make it better, now we have to pay the debt payments on the money that we borrow.

the lack of maintenance and the unexpected breaks. Yeah, I agree.

That's what I, that's why I was trying.

So there is some savings there, you know, so.

We have a rough time now.

If you correct me, 47.

We don't have a stormwater enterprise fund yet. I strongly urge that that come about because that would help these drainage projects. But again, it's another fee. No one wants to talk fees, but it's reality. These things don't fix themselves. Most municipalities do have a stormwater enterprise fund. Again, there's a lot of unfunded mandates from EPA for stormwater management, and those continue to go up.

We're not finished about this discussion. Later.

Any other council testimony?

Thank you, Council President. Question for the chair.

The manager, maybe Derek wants to jump in.

The line here for operation maintenance, that includes the cost of the water to the town, cost of goods sold. That includes the debt service payments on the zero interest loans that we've already taken out. And then it also includes all those other maintenance costs that we have to pay. Anytime we call out a contractor to help us fix any water line breaks or to use contractors to do installations. operation and maintenance budget. And that's how they borrow from this fund to do that work without having to use general fund money to cover that.

Council Costigan. Yes. Council Tassinari. Yes. Council Luff. Yes. Council Dimes. Yes. Council Romano. Yes. Council Reardon. Yes. Council Fink. Yes. Vice President Spolt. Yes. President Letary.

Yes. Council Tassinari. Thank you, Council President. Adoption of the Solid Waste Enterprise Fund Budget for Fiscal 2027, submitted by Town Manager Marino. I move that the Town Council vote to appropriate the following sums for the operation of the Solid FISCAL YEAR 2027 PERSONNEL BENEFITS $96,973 OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE $1,807,324 TOTAL OF $1,904,297 INDIRECT COST OF $58,592.99 AND AS FUNDING THEREFORE that the town vote to raise the $1,962,889.99 as follows. for user fees of $1,442,889.99, subsidy from the general fund for $480,000, and the retained earnings of the enterprise fund for $40,000. Okay, motion made. Seconded by Council Romano.

Discussion? Council President.

Thanks, Council President. This was the... We kind of, I just touched on this one. I thank everybody. This is the one where we're drawing down from the retained earnings continually. This is what year? So that's something that we have to start working on those retainer retain earnings just because of the way the Department of Services is going to treat enterprise funds. But it's an issue that the town manager knows. Johnson knows. We should all be aware of it as council members.

What's the replacement? How many are we replacing on our weekly basis? Steve, how many are we replacing on a monthly, weekly basis?

Trash. Barrels right now, we're probably repairing or replacing about 15 barrels a week. We're trying to repair. You know, we have, you know, replacement is a last resort. Barrels that we have out, about? How many barrels do we have out?

And again, just for everybody's knowledge, this is for town pickup, trash pickup, recycle pickup for one family, two family, and three family only. Anything over three family is required to have a private contractor.

Other discussion? Vice President Swart?

Sorry.

At Highland Avenue, they just have announced that there was going to be a four family unit there. So I take it you're not picking up at 148 Highland Avenue. Please check the roster. About every unit that has more than three. So we are not picking up there.

There are some four families that are grandfathered.

How many?

Eight or seven, eight or nine. It was a small amount. Oh, no, there hasn't been.

Right. So now that we just put another four family in there on Highland Avenue, make sure you don't pick up the trash there. Thank you. And then the other thing is...

I'll pick up the trash. But I'll pass it on to the boss.

And why not? And so... This is an enterprise fund ticket. And those, we have to... end up finding ways to make sure that we pay for that. I mean, we shouldn't be paying for that as a town. We're going to have to assess that fee, and I know it's unpopular, but sorry. I don't think it's right that we are paying for this. So I'd like to actually at least cost this out and see what it would mean. Thank you.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Okay, and this is a fund that was created a couple of years ago. taken out. So discretion is incredibly important. We want to maintain as long as possible.

One quick question for the account manager. The balance of the fund after this appropriation is going to be? We've got some interest on it, so it's higher than the two numbers.

1.5 change yeah education stabilization is now a million 582 917 as a

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

this thought you guys did a really good job and finance commission did a fantastic job as we said i think earlier in public comment it was incredibly important and so much knowledge is gained by going to these meetings you know take a look and really understand and i think my president's role mentioned before about what these departments do on a day in and day out um operation and it's you know we're

pretty much bare bones in a lot of ways, but we do a lot with what we have.

You know, we don't have the assistant department heads and the assistants and the assistant department heads and the junior executives and this and that. I mean, we run it lean, but we run it well. So I just want to thank everybody in all the departments. And I was too even about it.

cell.

Thank you.

They needed a public hearing notice that was going to be advertised on paper because we only had a week. These agreements are a way for municipalities to collect funds from nonprofit groups and other state agencies that are utilizing our land and town, but are not subject to traditional real estate taxes due to their nonprofit status. One of the things with a pilot agreement, mitigation funds, so any impacts Mitigation funds need to be tied to a project, similar to how we receive funds for the Winter Foundation monies for the new parking garage project and new parking lots. When they did those projects, they gave us large sums of money that went into the Winter Foundation. That's what mitigation is funded for. does. And then Massport's charter dictates that they are required to have a pilot agreement with Winthrop, but it doesn't mandate an amount. It just says that they have to have a pilot agreement. It does not, at least, mandate any amount. The timeline, like I said, the current contract ran from July 1, 2018. in 2025. Payments during that time frame when it first started were $900,000 flat with no increase. This agreement was amended in 2018 to increase to payments of $1.2 million in FY 2019. And then finally, a $2 million payment was paid in FY 25 when we wrapped up. We signed a one-year extension with them last year as we were continuing negotiations. So what we've currently, with the Council's guidance, currently offer to negotiate with Massport if this is approved. This will be a 15-year deal starting on July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2041. Payments will increase by 1% for the first 10 years and then 1.5% for the remaining five years, culminating with a payment of $3,517,217, $3,517,217 in FY41. One trigger in that, given the length of the contract, one of the things that council pushed for when we got them to redo is in the last five years of the contract, the amount the payment goes up every time will increase by 2.5% instead of the agreed upon 1.5%. So that will increase if inflation does increase over 5% during the last five years. Next slide. And then this is the proposed payment plan. And then it goes up 1.5% for the last five years. And then again, we end at the $3,517,217. Now keep in mind, one of the things that we push for, we try to get the more money up front. The initial offering from Massport was $2.5 million in the front with a slightly higher inflation rate. as getting additional money up front ended up being beneficial time value of money, right? That $3 million is worth more today than it would be in five years. And we ended up getting, by doing it this way, we ended up getting about $2 million more on the long haul over the 15 years if we had gone with the original Massport term. The council, when we met on this, You know push for you know they want to talk about mitigation so obviously we I think that I sent out the email stuff to run off everybody got them or not, but um we did get on the particulate. collectors, we do have one in place, we thought we had to the second one is coming and they promised that by the end of the calendar year, but it's not yet. Um, the cost of each one of those is about $15,000, but we have one appoint surely. And we, I sent you an active link and we'll put that active link up on the website. People can monitor that and see what it's collected. And then what I also sent out to the council is, um, there's a summary by their consultants on that. And that email, you know, it talks about when that, when those, those particular numbers rise, you know, it has a lot to do with when the winds are coming from Logan airport and when they're not and things like that. But one of the things that council pushed for us, we want to talk about mitigation, but again, we have, You keep monitoring those numbers. numbers that we got you know parking is you know little spikes here and there but actually this year is trending slightly lower and last year was down a little bit for the parking numbers and then the flights obviously continue to go up but those are all things again mitigation numbers but the council has tasked me to make sure on an annual basis that we come in and we give an update to the council in public on exactly what's going on with flights exactly what's going on with parking out and mass port And again, some of the things Massport has done, which we talked about, is they've got those remote terminals now. Two of them are coming online. One in Framingham is already up and running on a limited basis. And then the one in Braintree will be opening up soon too. And those are basically, you can go to the airport, go through TSA, check your bags, get your boarding passes. You get on a bus when you leave there and then they take you to the airport. So you have a special spot where they drop you off and you just go right to your gate. So the thought process in there is you don't have to, you know, it's a remote site, all the baggage stuff and the checking in is done at the remote site, then you get there, it just streamlines the services at the airport.

That's one of the things Massport's doing to try to minimize the traffic flow down there.

You know, compared to what Boston does, Boston's got an agreement. I mean, if you, like we were talking, the council president mentioned, you know, if you look at the acreages, just on the airport alone, keep in mind, Massport has all the properties in Charlestown that they operate in Boston and down by the port. has 192 acres out there. So based on the $3 million payment, that would be roughly $15,625 per acre versus the payment that Boston gets now for their 2,192 acres at just the airport. And again, their final payment that they get includes much more acreage than that. But just that acreage alone, Boston got last year $23 compared to what they used to land over there. So that was one of the things we talked about. Certainly open to questions. I mean, this was a couple of years in the fall. We were certainly happy with the agreement, the 42% increase. roll into the general fund, but possibly to set up that stormwater fund and maybe put some money in there so we can use these funds to maybe pay for some of the debt on the projects that work that we have to come up. And I'll certainly keep that over to the Council President to talk about that. That was one of the things I wanted to say is an issue.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation. You know, 42% increase is good.

15 years is a long time, but I look at it as a 25% reduction in what the last agreement was, a 20-year agreement. the most important thing about this is the present value of money, the common value of money, and how you use that money, my thought would not be to have you use this in an operating budget. My thought would be to leverage this as best we can, the vast majority of this, to enable us to do a significant amount of infrastructure projects that would eliminate the need of having to go out for a debt exclusion for some of these projects. And that I think is incredibly important for the taxpayers in Winthrop. And I think if we leverage this money properly, it could help us in so many ways, especially in this first fiscal year. So it would not be, I would look at it and I love the 42% increase, but I don't think that that's something that we're going to say, okay, now we have But by leveraging this money properly, it will be a benefit to taxpayers for not having to be forced, not forced, but having to look at the possibility of debt exclusions that

president uh yeah and just looking at all of this and and having the brief discussions we've had i mean two 30-minute sessions basically um yeah what's presented to council tonight was negotiated uh i believe exclusively by the town manager no offense uh but i don't believe it involved the consultants if i'm correct or if it did it was very very But you know we're here town council just this past month itself The two 30-minute sessions with various numbers and years of the contract as well to look at briefly very briefly amongst the discussions You know when they count out the the time the council has had to discuss this was very very limited. So I I feel at least tonight the council can't really make an educated decision based upon the limited information and time provided to review this overall proposal. We talked about 5, 10, 15. I mean, tonight's the first time I've actually heard it was proposed to be a 15. So I'd be standing to be corrected there as well. you know if not passed uh relatively before the end of this month by the 30th i believe uh we stand to lose anyone for five to nine hundred thousand dollars so uh again the pressure is on the council here uh to uh not uh object to this proposal at least that's my feeling i'm looking at the numbers presented to the council i i believe we should have to go to negotiate for more At least 500,000 in the 10 year if we're going to take that and at least an additional million to this proposal tonight for the 15 And I'll get into the the just of why that is and my beliefs are I believe we should have note negotiated that At least in the first year of all of these proposals 10 15 that should be the starting point increase those numbers by 500,000 for the 10 a million for the 15 and Let's remember this contract is exclusively for the three square miles, or I should say the 3.3 square miles and 190 some odd acres of winter property used by Massport, again, under the pilot, This doesn't address any compensation for the health-related issues here in town, as I mentioned during some of these two brief meetings. Increased cancer, asthma, noise pollution, so forth, so on. And looking at some of the numbers that are going to be presented to us in the future here, just in the next seven years, if I land 40 plus million people per year, you can solve this by 30% here. Estimated property value of Massport with the 2,384 acres, they're close to $2 billion, Massport is. Depending upon the numbers you run online, as it relates to the property value and the revenues collected by Massport using our property, can vary anywhere from 50 to 150 million dollars in value uh to that land itself so again people get uh can uh object to that number as well but it's very very valuable property they're a mass point um and again they're utilizing winter property for their profitability as far as i'm concerned uh in continuing on Frankly, I'm not comfortable with a 15-year contract unless that million dollars is added to it. I can tell you that right now. With additional conditions as it relates to the health of Winthrop residents, as I mentioned in some of these meetings as well, and examples of that are the monitors, the particular monitors as well, very, very important, and the placement of those monitors as well. also rubber burn residuals these are all carcinogens to the residents of winter pier we should be compensated for all of the pollution generated by mass port and many of the Winthrop residents some of them affected negatively by by these health issues themselves and a lot of them who have no longer with us who unfortunately have passed due to cancer again can't be directly But Winthrop does have elevated cancer rates beyond the national level. So that's suspicious to me. How long are we going to kick these analyzers and additional issues with Massport down the road here? I recommend that Tom purchase a multitude of these particulate monitors, and we control the data as it relates to Massport and the pollutions. Again, 75% of the winds are from the west, and all of that residual comes over the town itself. If we own that data, we can then prove to Massport that there are elevated cancer rates based upon the particulate numbers that we collect. It's like pulling teeth with Massport to get any health data from them, let alone 20 years ago, we had a plant-wide, I should that no longer with us so in conclusion it's my opinion that we should be that we would be approving this proposal under duress whereas failure to approve it now will cost the town potentially five to nine hundred thousand dollars so again we're at the eleventh hour here we have to make a decision if not the town's going to be out money sounds familiar doesn't it it's a terrible position to be in as a counselor I'll tell you that I would have liked to be involved more with these negotiations over the last year as a council member, contributing to this proposal 15, 10 years. I think there was a lot to be offered by many councils here tonight. And again, we're at the 11th hour, and I think the council needs to be more involved negotiating with agencies and for town-wide issues that should be discussed and brainstormed amongst the Town Council. There should be more involvement and more transparency as far as I'm concerned. So I will advocate for that as we go forward, maybe enhancing that somewhat as well. So it's time to act and I'm tired of kicking things down the road. Thank you Town Council President and Town Manager, Mr. Maria.

Thank you, Council. Council. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Council. Council. Council. That's those. It's really poignant, especially with the health concerns. They're extremely valid and they're extremely personal to every resident who lives here because we're the ones who are going to live with who live every day with the ramifications of of the pollutants that really are driven by airport activity. I think where we don't want to lose sight of though is this agreement we're discussing tonight is a pilot agreement versus those health concerns are something we need to start piling on to the next mitigation agreement. Because that's where we can use that as leverage against the airport for better terms in the mitigation agreement. And we can tie the next mitigation agreement to the next two parking garages they're putting up now that we're working on. Especially when it comes to the Byrne Roadway particular that blow this direction because of the jet stream. But tonight I think we want to really focus on what we're working on tonight is the pilot agreement. I think the nine of us sitting here who are going to vote really need to focus on that. And that's payment in lieu of taxes. And really Without the enforcement of Massport's own charter, they don't have to negotiate with us on pilot. They don't have to negotiate with us on the pilot. That's my first question to the town manager. What leverage does the town have over Massport negotiating pilot agreements? We can't go and throw them off the runway and rezone that for redevelopment.

No, and we can't sue them for it. You're not allowed to sue for a pilot agreement. So, I mean, they have to have one with us, but they could just sign, keep signing another $2.1 million, and that would be all they're obligated to do. But they want to be good partners with us. And Rich Davies and, you know, Elena Coppola, the people I've been dealing with, they've been very happy that they want to work with us, but they have their restrictions and limits. And, you know, like I said, going up $900,000 is a substantial increase. I mean, that's...

I agree, I'm not in love with the 15-year term, but I don't want to leave $900,000 on the table today that we could have for our FY27 budget and then increase every year after. One thing I would like you to do for us and for the public is if you can, you walk us through the process that you and the town president and the council president went through to engage the advice of the consultant what they were used for, how they did help and inform what we could do to renegotiate.

Yeah, that was last year. It was Ron Rakow. I know there's been some discussion about that, but he basically came in and, as we talked about during the second session and whatnot, is we did an analysis of where we were, and basically his general consensus was that the adjustments that we made in 2018-19 was really 2.1 that was basically and all they talked about is the consumer price index and inflation right those were the numbers that they use as the barriers and if you looked at that analysis and I gave it to the council which I have here from around papers but that basically said that we were pretty much in line with you know keeping up with the how the property it down by cost per acre and basically the value of the town of Winthrop overall broke it down on the per acre cost and that's what we came up with our initial offering point to them was you know we thought we think it's worth five million you know maybe that was a pie in the sky number we went to and said yeah we need well I did too but um you know they pushed back they had their numbers that they wanted so that was where they you know the compromise started but essentially you know what we have to do sorry you know, basically what the consultant said is, you know, we look at the, uh, you know, the Massport pilot agreement over the timeframe from 2005 to 2025, you know, the, um, that went up 6.1%, you know, and again, with the game changer being, it was all $900,000 payments up until 2019 when it went 1.2 and then 1.35, 1.5, 1.65, 1.95, and then ultimately 2 million in 2025. Um, so that went up and then went through property taxes, went up the same percentage, 6.1% over that same timeframe. And then inflation was actually a little bit less than that. Inflation was only a 3% increase over that time. And then the mass port revenue lined up. Their revenue went up about 5.1%. So basically everything said, if we hadn't done that, the $900,000, we definitely would have been off pace. But the negotiations that happened, and again, remember, that was in the middle of an agreement. So I mean, while we say we don't like the 15-year agreement, that was... 10, 15 years, you know, 10 years into that agreement, we said, or whatever it was, a little longer, we said, hey, we don't like in these terms, we want to go back. I mean, it's not going to stop us from doing that later. We can go back and say, okay, this has impacted us and and we try to tie it so we can go out to the pilot. Maybe it's parking, maybe it's something else, but we can certainly look to do that as we get into the agreement. But basically what it said was we were pretty much in line based on the factors that MathSport uses. Now, we use a little different math. Like I said, we took the value of the town. We said it's worth $5 million, and I think that's the argument we made to get to the ultimate $3 million number. You know, we would have still got to, you know, where we are starting at the two and a half. But, you know, the council president and I said, well, let's let's hit them up. So we know we want we want the money now. We need the money now. So that's why we went for the little less on the inflation rate and inflation rate rather. But get that three million dollars now. So, you know, we have that money earlier rather than later.

Absolutely. I think that was the right move by you and the council president to get more funding up front. projects we need to do now that we can't wait for. I thank you for walking us through that process and I appreciate the due diligence your office did with the consultant and I appreciate his help and his analysis on that. I don't want us to lose sight of what Councillor Costigan pointed out though for the health concerns and maybe we could use some of this additional funding to fund some of our own particulate readers? Is that what they are?

Particular readers, yeah. The gentleman that came in with, I forget the name of that gentleman, who was the master, or the winter president, I forget. No, no, the gentleman that's on the MAC command. They came in and gave the presentation with Aaron Toffler, I forget his name. Jerry Felper, right? Yeah, so Jerry came in. I mean, the information, I reached out to him directly, and that's who gave me the link and all the additional data, because that's done, you they call it. So they gave me the additional data, but he said we could buy them ourselves. They're about $15,000 and then $500 additional to get the monitoring service.

I was going to ask though, if we were to get those particular readers ourselves and the monitoring service, would that group help us basically compile the data in a useful way in order to go back and use that for our next mitigation agreement? No one's going to admit, no one on the Massport side of the FAA is going to admit that airports have a negative health consequence, but we're all living it. So I just, it would be a good use of some of this additional funding to go and make those purchases and try to expand our partnership with that Massport CAC. We definitely can certainly ask. That's what the council wants. We can try that and put that data together in a usable format that we can no one else wants to really admit. My last thing, I want to go back to, kind of circle back to where the council president left off. I'm wondering whether the town manager, your office, and council president in this body would be willing to adopt a policy regarding pilot receipts to basically set aside a certain percentage of those pilot receipts as dedicated debt service so that we could really prove and we could bond off of that funding annually to prove that we have a recurring revenue source that can be pledged for those capital assets in that improvement investment. Is that something that we'd be amenable to? Is that something we should table for further discussion?

is to have a financial policy in place that an X percentage of money over a certain amount, whatever it happens to be, is used for, you know, obviously that are very on everybody's mind now in the last few years that we're getting to the point where we would like to start them. I mean, that's the final point of this is to try to, you know, nobody, I can speak for everyone on the council, nobody wants to go on with that exclusions or anything. leverage this money properly and use it correctly, I mean, it would be a huge benefit to the whole town. I mean, you know, you don't want to pit one part of the town versus the other, like, oh, I don't want to pay for an infrastructure project over here or over there or over there. And this helps everybody in a lot of ways. And it proves that you've got the financial wherewithal to be able to use the money we have in a good way that saves us money. And getting that additional funding this year in FY27 will allow us to start that process. Well, it helps tremendously because, you know, if you're looking now potentially in to bond for an infrastructure project that we might be doing, the first payment of that is going to hit the tax rolls probably until fiscal 28, or the end of fiscal 28 towards fiscal 29, and that gives you a couple of years to pad that up. And then you just go, and it's pretty easy to look at what a potential cost of a project would be, and it's pretty simple to figure out what the debt payment on that would be on a daily basis, so you get a really good idea of where you are.

absolutely thank you that's that i know that most citizens in town uh i think we can just try and keep asking for money and there is some misunderstanding on what the pilot is of mitigation

you don't have to negotiate you've said that multiple times and we really don't um and to be able for the pilot to get the percentage that we got i think is beneficial not comfortable with the 15-year agreement i thought they should have been shorter but i know with the negotiation with it with five years with that we got, yes, I think contract negotiations and everything, it would have been nice to have more understanding as it was going along. But then again, if you start putting too many people into negotiations, you've got too many cooks in the kitchen, and could potentially make it worse. that's why i do understand not everybody on the council being on this kind of negotiation thing um and utilizing uh consultant was good i do wish we had a little bit more time just to kind of go over it get maybe more details on things um i i still like i think it's beneficial the amount that we could have really lost because they could have just said, no, sorry, we're not going for it. So I think at this point, like Max has said, this out front money to start things going, basically, right? We need that money for projects. I don't think it will hurt us because we can go back to them as proven that it was done already once.

Thank you, Town Council President. I don't want to repeat everything that has been said, but I do appreciate that this is a payment in lieu of taxes and a 42% increase is substantial. We desperately need money in this budget and I do support this negotiation. I think that on the flip side, we need to continue building this relationship. It sounds like Town Manager Marino has had a great starting, we're building some good rapport with Massport. Maybe continue to build upon that and we get moving in the direction with the parking garages and other mitigation monies for our parks, for the pollution, for the new windows, for the soundproofing. And we really move forward and hit that hard. So let's take the money and run to begin with, but let's really hit it hard on the other end and these other matters. And let's see what we can get out of mitigation with Massport for these other topics. Thank you.

with how that process works. So my understanding is when there's a project that we have to go and manually ask for mitigation, right?

Correct. I believe, I wasn't here the last time, but the last week they came to us and we had to negotiate when they did the parking garages and the money ended up getting funneled to the Winter Foundation.

Correct. So when we get mitigation money, it goes directly to the Winter Foundation, not to the town council?

That particular one, but not generally. I mean, to me, if there was... to me if there was health mitigation that we're looking for for health to me either the majority of that funding to me would be funded to the health department right so we could address the issues that it's causing so we're not using it to do something that's not being caused I mean to me mitigation money is to circumstances that's arising, right. So to me, I would not personally want mitigation money for health related issues to go to the window foundation to go to the town, town and window health department. So we can use that money to properly try to address the issues that it's caused. So yeah, I guess the answer the question is, all the monies do not directly have to any potential future mitigation

In the past, is that how it's been negotiated?

I haven't done the, the mitigation was before my time. So, I mean, I think that went to the Winter Foundation, I don't think. But again, we haven't articulated the, I mean, like Councilor Costigan said, you made a good point. We have to get our data together and we got to start making a point on the health impacts. And I don't think that's been organized enough. And that's one of the things I want to start working on is with hopefully help from many council members that we start doing that and addressing the health concerns, addressing the impact of the traffic and the noise and all.

I am a little concerned about the elevation. I think that's the term percentage 1%. It's not going to keep up with inflation. As we all know, I know that it's more, it's the way that we get the more money up front. I do appreciate that. I understand time value money. And you did mention that Boston's contract, it's more as of right now.

Right now, well, every year it's a little different. They do on consumer price index and the math, but I think last year's they went up about 1.5%. And then this year, you know, if so, they went from 24 million, 600,000 or 24 million, 900,000. It wasn't a huge increase based on the numbers, you know, based on the impact. Again, we took the inflation rate down a little bit to get the 3 million up front. You know, we ended up collecting $2 million more in the long run. And then obviously the value of that money to us, you know, every analysis I did, it's just better to get that money up front, even with the lower But on the second last five years when they said, okay, we'll do the $3 million, but we want to go to 15 years, that's obviously offset some of their expenses. But they did give us the 1.5% with the fact that if inflation goes over 5%, it'll go to 2.5%.

And when you say $2 million more, do you mean present value $2 million more or $2 million more? Disgrowth.

vary anywhere from you know 10 to 25 boston's i'm not 100 sure exactly when there's ends but i mean i got the data wrong over there at today so they didn't give us the whole copy of the contract which we can ask for but i'm not sure when boston is up we can find out that that's just something else we're looking into and i have a little concern about the timeline of this i mean i feel like this was presented rather late to the council i know that we've been taught that we signed the one-year extension about a year ago from now and on this was the only

We just got to look at it twice, had to give it back during two executive sessions, and now we're being asked to vote on a 15-year contract today. It does get me a little nervous, just to be honest with you. I mean, this could be the best mass support contract. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying I would have liked to have more transparency with the numbers. Like, I thought you did a fantastic slideshow today. I would have liked to have got that in advance in the future. Slideshows like that, I think, would have been really beneficial for all of us to look over.

Sure.

I do have a pause with the 15 years, but mine's more related to obviously 10 years from now, we're not going to be dealing with the same administration in basketball. I'm concerned with the health issues. I know they've said to you that they're targeting putting another particulate in. Two issues, I think our health department should have major input where these things We shouldn't leave it up strictly to Massport where they're going to place these sensors. I think you said it was $20,000?

$15,000, and then there's a $500 monitoring fee or something like that, yeah.

And that's what's making more than that every hour of every day in parking. So I think they can pick the tab up for the extras, particular sensors, even if it's through a grant to our health department.

They are going to put a second one in by the end of the year. It's just taking a little longer than we thought, and they should apologize for that.

I just think, I know they like to do their mitigation through grants. Right. I'd like to see something in writing from the current administration that they're committing to putting some type of program together with our health department, because I think we should have at least equal control over this. So we're seeing the raw data, not something that they've manipulated. I don't want to say manipulated, but we're seeing the numbers the same as they're seeing the numbers. And I'd like to see a grant, like you said, I think it should be targeted directly to the health department, because I think they're going to need to put a kind of thing. I don't want to take someone away from another project to do this because it is a major issue. I don't have a problem with the numbers. I know fighting with them to get the numbers. I can understand why I'd get the money up front and the dollars are worth more. I do have concerns with the 15 years and as I said, I think 10 years from now if we go back to them, we're not dealing with the same people. So I don't think we need to keep that in mind that relationships and promises made today, unless they're in writing for mass book, don't exist 10 years from now.

Right.

Which is going to be the importance of making sure we maintain that relationship with whether it's Rich Davies or whoever it is.

I understand, but I think I just have a feeling that once this pilot is put through, health issues. I, you know, if we go back to them right after this with looking mitigation money, I'd like to see something from them ahead of time, at least a letter maybe of intent saying that, yeah, we agreed that, you know, we should open negotiations for some type I don't know if that's possible before their board votes it in. I don't know if it comes from Davies or from the board. Yeah. At least, not saying that they're going to do it, but at least they commit to having talks with us.

I can certainly ask, but I mean, like I said, with this agreement, they're held firm that the mitigation is not going to be- Oh, yeah.

No, I'm talking- It's not like that. I don't see the delay. I think these things should be going quicker. I know they're saying it's an issue, but it's not a supply chain issue. No, I get it.

I asked them. I said, well, you said they were going to already be in, and that's when he apologized and said, you know, it's going a little slower than we wanted, and we are going to get it in before the end of the calendar year.

Yeah, and I definitely would like to, I think we should pick the locations.

Yeah, because we talked about that on the court road maybe.

Yeah, I mean, where you put these things is going to affect the numbers. If we leave it up to them, they're going to pick the place they want.

Yeah, so there's pros and cons to this, you know. A lot, every counselor before me. I've stated valuable information and great input, which I agree with every single one of them. It's something, the 15-year thing scares me. It does, but then again, you know, the money up front, you need it, and I get that. So it puts me in kind of a hard place. But in the numbers you came up with, do I think they can do better? I think they can.

And you're saying they don't have to negotiate? They have to have a pilot with us. They don't have to, like, they're not locked into any amount. You know, they can give us, you know, it's a payment of legal taxes, but they're not locked into any sort of an amount. They have to have an agreement with us in their charter, but there's no amounts. Same thing, you know, with Chelsea and Boston and everything else. They fair in 2019 I mean I'm sure back in 2005 the $900,000 made sense you know they probably thought they were being fair then but you know they've been more than fair as far as working with us anyway and trying to you know get that number up like I said we went back and forth a bunch of times with it but I think given the percentage increase the you know the value per acre I just think this is you know this is something percentage isn't that's another thing you know given the length would be after how many years does it go uh 10 percent yeah yeah again when we did the analysis based on where they were starting we actually you know get to a little higher number there and we end up getting more money overall than we would have even if we got a higher inflation rate and started at their numbers you know we would have we ended up getting two million dollars more than we would have gotten you know with what they were offering so with the higher inflation rate and um

Like the 20-year contract, when you came in before the 20 years was up and renegotiated. It wasn't me. It was my predecessor. Your predecessor. But the town manager. How does that process go?

Can that happen with this contract? There's language in that. There's triggers, right? So you go back in. If we find something that's impacting it, we can go in and make the case. No guarantee they're going to do anything, but we certainly made the case before we were able to make it. We can try to make it again. No guarantee they'll They'll do it, but that would certainly be on us to have the data and the backup to do it. But they did do it twice within that? They did it once. Once? Yeah. For 2019, they redid the numbers to get to the end of 2025. Okay. All right. Thank you, Dr. Marino.

Thank you.

So if the base case is unchanged, if the real value because of inflation. We only get 1%. Inflation goes to 3%. We actually only get $2.34 million. Is that right?

Where did the 2.34 million go?

Because if we're only getting 1%, inflation is 3%. We get $3 million now. We're not getting $3.5 million in today's dollars at the end because inflation is eating into that, so it's about 2.34 million, as I understand, by year 15.

I'd have to check your numbers. I didn't run the math that way, but that's based off of what they did on the 2.5, where they started with a 3% inflation rate.

Yeah, and that, the worst is, the kicker about the last five years at 5%, let's say inflation is 4% in the last five years. Now it's even worse because we don't get the kicker. And now we're even paying. It's even worse if that happens in the last five years. I'm not saying it would, but I'm just saying. So 3%, I just think it's a bad deal. And I do think that if we could, if you could, the Federal Reserve says 2%. So I don't know why. We're not getting any better deal than we got before, really. We're going to get about the same issues as we had before. It's not that we don't get any money from them. I appreciate any money. And if you tell me, if you and your consultants say that we can't actually get any money from them, i'm just saying i think it's a bad deal and i don't think that it's fair about a one percent increase when we know inflation even federal reserves say it's two percent so i'm not sure why we're settling for this well again it's the benefit of getting uh additional funds these are four hundred thousand five hundred thousand actually up front you know right the difference between two point five and three Because it looks as if what we got before, what we're getting with them, and what the inflation rate is, is three different trajectories. And I'd like you to do the data on that, because I think we're not in good shape on this.

Just a couple of things. And we tend to, and I too, I guess, we tend to always think like, hopefully we can tip and we'll get more money You just don't know. I mean, everything we're assuming is just that. It's an assumption. I look at if we, you know, again, if we're to pass this 42% increase, if we take that money for the first two years, that we hopefully won't be using the vast majority of it because any infrastructure projects that we do that would require a payment wouldn't come in until two and a half years later. If that's properly invested and put into Fiscal 27, we do know what $3 million is worth in fiscal 27. We know what $2.5 million is in fiscal 27. You know, somebody came to me and said, I'll give you a million dollars now, and I'll give you a 1% a year, or I'll give you a 500,000 now, and I'll give you a 3% a year. I'll take the 1%. If I won the lottery and they said, here's the cash payout, here's the money over 30 years, I'll take the cash payment and take my chances. You know, you can only, and it goes back to the beginning of the whole budget conversation with Vice President Swope about what you can control and what you can't control. What I can control is the money we have and what we can do with it and how we can best use it. We've been, again, very financially prudent in terms of our retirement system, which enabled us to put our share of the new vocational school and Like other communities, we did not have to work with debt exclusion because we leveraged the money from median financial improvement and how we paid our retirement system off. And I think we can do the same thing here in terms of infrastructure. It's going to enable us to knock off three things potentially, three things on this capital plan right here that would be one of the funding sources that says debt exclusion. $20,000, $40,000 car, it's not financially prudent. They go out and buy the car that they can afford. It is. So if we manage this money properly, if we're financially conservative with this money, I think it's a very wise thing to do. But again, it's nine people, nine opinions. Anyway, thank everybody for participating in this. Thanks to the town manager. And thanks to Matt. My concern with particular matters and the stations there is, I think it's great that they want to do it. It's like the health studies, I think Councilor Costigan talked about at the beginning. It's like, great, they could have 10 main stations for them. If we don't get the proper information, you know, those stations are only as good as the information we're collecting. I'd much rather be collecting the information and able to make a case for mitigation on that than wait for them to say, you know, we already have one station going on. We asked for... and I don't know how to understand it, but I mean, if they were in control, if they had somebody that knew how to understand it, they could make the case. And being able to put them in the location that we want is beneficial also. But I think the mitigation is a totally separate subject. And something that we have to maintain and not drop the ball on because, you know, they came through with the foundation and again, it's, you know, to go to It's like creating the foundation and non-profits like that and putting medication money to that. I think if we get back to health concerns where we're able to put the money in our own health department that just lost a lot of money in grades over the last four years that their budget basically was cut in half. We're able to address the issues that we're being hurt on. So I think that's very important. So to not drop the ball at all is important. And at this scale, as it stands, 2.5 over five years, and then they re-opt it.

2.5 over five.

Yeah, they give basically $500,000.

A $500,000. Okay, and then they opt it to what?

No, they re-opt it. So the five years is over, and they continue.

Right.

And there was a year where they didn't pay them because they didn't have the money, and then they paid them the following year.

Well, they stopped the parking garage programs on hold during COVID, and they just paid the parking.

And how would you negotiate that? So it's a wither foundation with Nashville. Is that right?

No, I think it was negotiated through the town. But it was created, they created with the payment was to create a nonprofit for that. So the tech, you know, it's basically pick on the schools, but it's like us giving schools $100,000. They don't have to do. We have a bottom line budget. So they use that. We don't want it going to the town and have the town use it in any which way and language. We want it going to a non-profit that's going to control it and make sure it's going to the benefit of the town or whatever substance.

And so do we have any control over that?

With the foundation? We don't. I'm sure that we've discussed with them. the gymnasium, the middle school gymnasium, and looking for improvements on that and see if they might be able to help us. So they're always willing to listen to us and talk to us, but they've also helped other areas of the town. I know they've helped teachers. I know they've helped children in other programs. They've done stuff like that. They've helped us with the pickleball courts. They've done a lot, yeah. So they have done a lot, and they are willing to listen. Anyone can go to a meeting and get on their agenda and ask them to bring an application for a grant and then see what happens.

Okay. Yeah. But in this negotiation, what I think is what they've done in the past is what they're trying to do in the future. And I don't think we will get any more money than we have in the past, essentially, because of inflation at 1%. That is not at all real. If we could get to 2%, I would be a lot happier. And I don't understand why. I mean, 1% seems... Because there's nothing in the data.

It was the initial payment up front that was the 1% handoff. Getting more money earlier rather than later was what we were trying to do.

And if we didn't get more money, then it would be 2%? No, 2.5.

We were at 3%. We started at 2.4 or 2.5. Yeah, 2.5 at 3%, which got us to the 10-year market. It's almost the same number.

Got us to 30. Well, the 15-year market would have got us to 37. The change in the way we're doing it now gets us to 30.

But because of inflation, it doesn't really. I mean, it would go at 1%. I'm just saying, whatever the number is, at 1%, it's... Councilor Tessimer.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mayor Marino, do you have the chart that you showed us and take a touch in front of you? Mm-hmm. So... If you look at that chart, you look at those two agreements, the only way we were getting, what is it, 2.5 or 3% on the 2.5 million? That was only on a 10-year deal, right? That was only a, what's the percentage of that escalation on that?

The 2.5 was at 3%, correct. And there was a 15-year for 2.5 somewhere, wasn't there? No, we calculated the numbers out what it would be at 3, but they didn't, yeah, they weren't willing to grab it.

Okay, so they weren't, so if you look at the 10-year agreement with the 3% escalation on 2.5 million dollars, versus the $3 million 15-year agreement at 1% escalation, how many years would it take that $2.5 million at 3% to catch up to the $3 million we're gonna get today? You don't hit $3 million until FY34. So that's seven years. So it would take us seven more years just to get to today's dollars. To get to the 3 million, yeah.

3,074,685.

Discounted for time value money wouldn't even get us near 3 million. So we could get 3 million today with the 50 million deal at a 1% escalation instead of waiting seven years. Right. So 3 million in real dollars versus 3 million in nominal dollars.

the time value of um money points i wish that we had both contracts were given to us before this meeting side by side so um we could have all made those calculations ourselves and all could have been more clear about those numbers instead of trying to calculate them on the fly now because there's a lot of percentages that we're all trying to use and now people are getting mixed up so for future negotiations just keep those you did get those we all saw them twice yeah

He had both charts. Both charts are right there. You can see it. It takes us seven years just to get to today's number with the two different agreements.

All right. That's the time. Thank you all. Very good discussion. Points.

I will ask for a roll call. This is a motion. Motion. Motion by council. Second. Second by council. All right.

Council Costigan?

No.

Council Tassinieri?

Yes.

Council Malab? Yes. Council Dimes? Yes. Council Romano?

No.

Council Reardon?

Yes.

Council Finn?

Yes.

Vice President Spoke? No. President Letary? No.

A couple weeks ago, we say, no, I don't want to be appointed. Yes, I would like to be appointed on not responding. I will then ask town clerk to go to chair people of the committees because. point to look at attendance and such. So these, there are still more people that have terms expire on June 30th. These are people that either have asked to be reapplied or have been asked by us, by the chairperson to reapply. So these are the appointments that I have made effective June 9th. Air pollution, noise, and airport hazards committee, Hannah Belcher and Colin Kennedy.

advance to a full member instead of our junior member our board of assessors peter dale council on aging linda cronin council on commission on disabilities andrew carr john morgan scholarship committee anna belcher and vanessa flagel well following to our policy making um appointments SUBMITTED BY COUNCIL PRESIDENT LATERI THAT THE TOWN COUNCIL ACCEPT THE APPOINTMENT MADE BY COUNCIL PRESIDENT LATERI OF CHRISTIAN BANAPANI TO THE BOARD OF LICENSE FOR A TERM TO EXPIRE JUNE 30, 2029 OR TAKE ACTION THERETO. DO I HAVE A MOTION? SECOND.

DO I HAVE A SECOND?

SECOND BY COUNCILOR TASSINARI. DISCUSSION ON THE MOTION. SO I JUST KEEP

Thank you for the charter. Okay. So, according to the Town Charter Policymaking Multi-Member Bodies under Section 2-10, the Council President shall submit to the Town Council the name of each person the Council President desires to appoint as a member of one of the Policymaking Multi-Member Bodies, which are enumerated in Section 3-2. The Town Council shall investigate each charter candidate for appointment and may require any person whose name has been referred to it to appear before the Town Council or committee thereof. to give such information relevant to such appointments as the Committee or the Town Council may require. Appointments made by the Council President to the policy-making multi-member bodies, enumerated in Section 3-2, shall become effective if approved by a vote of five or more members of the Town Council. Now Section 3-2, which as I just read to you, are the enumerated policy-making multi-member bodies. The Council President shall appoint to Section 3-2, Council President shall appoint, subject to the approval of such appointments by the Town Council, as provided in Section 2-10, which was the policy making I read, members of the Board of Appeals under the zoning ordinance, the Board of Assessors, the Cemetery Commission, the Conservation Commission, the Board of Health, the Historical Commission, the Licensing Board, the Planning Board, and such other multiple member bodies as may be provided by ordinance. So as you can see, that Board of License is on that list. one of those today, I would like the town attorney to look into those.

I mean, for example, you said the cemetery commissioners, which we don't have any more. The one that is on here that I did ask, and we can get a legal opinion is the Board of Appeals. I personally always thought that that was possible before.

I was told that that's not a policymaking board, but we can withhold that Board of Appeals one until we get the

This is false.

Yes, it is. I just wanted to affirm that. And the reason we know what the policymaker is because of Section 3-2, which lists the policymaker. The Charter has it enumerated. They use the word enumerated in Section 2-10. So I think we all should be able to understand what the policymaker is. And also, not just Board of Appeals, the Board of Assessors is also a policymaker. what you call the application for Mr. I wish we had applications for all the appointments, all the reappointments. We don't have that. I would like to see applications in the future, especially because these are usually, if I'm not mistaken, three year terms. I don't think there's a single counselor beside yourself that's been on here for more than three years. So I think it's also, I know it's a separate issue, but it kind of isn't. We need to keep track of meeting minutes as well, which I know we talk about again and again. But for this specific appointment, I am in favor of it.

Any other discussion on the appointments, Mr.

meetings he did really well and I'm glad to see him get further involved in town government that's not I don't think that's the issue I think when we all leave the council I think we should have an application that

and someone who has presented him or herself to the council and why they want to be on it, and to make sure that there is no conflict of interest in terms of certainly the Board of Appeals and fiscally related. So we have a record of that. That's all I think we've talked about before. As in, Terry, it's not a question of your judgment about the people. It's a question of making sure that we have a record of everyone that we have voted on, that we have accepted, and that there's a record because if they do really good work, we'll take credit for it. But if there's a problem, then that's an issue. So I think in the future for anyone that you are reappointing or you are appointing, I would like to see the record of it. Thank you.

Okay, so any more discussion around Mr. Bonaconda?

Council Costigan?

Yes.

Council Tassinari? Yes. Council Malak? Yes. Council Dimes? Yes. Council Romano? Yes. Council Reardon?

Yes.

Council Finn?

Yes.

Vice President Swope? Yes. President Letary?

Yes. Council accept the reappointment by Council President Latteri to the following policy. If there are any other actions that are in favor of the due consultation committee, Stephen McChinsey is second. Second by Council Dimes.

Discussion? Yes, and later what I have just said about I would like to see applications especially for reappointments. I'm going to be using my Council privilege today and I hope we can get these applications in. I don't do this just to be inconvenienced.

I think it's

OK, Councilor Romano is . Is this for all? No, this is for this one. Just for . And I do want to clarify, too, to make sure that we get an opinion on the Board of Appeals and on the Board of Assessments, which is also one of that .

OK.

would also ask for that it is enumerated in what is considered by our council rules by our charter the policy making committees whether that's no longer true from the time the charter was written or whether it is true it's still in that enumerated section so we should probably that's

I'll double check. Yes. And see and bring it back and then we can discuss it.

And the question is all set. The other one is on the next agenda. Just a couple of events we have upcoming on June 13th, 12 to 4 at the Dean's House on Shelby Street.

We have the Strawberry Festival, which is an incredible event. I encourage as many people to attend as possible. They do a fantastic job.

Also on June 13th, competing event at 2 to 6 p.m. Mr. President, we didn't have a second session of public comment.

Yeah, this was a special meeting. It was not on the agenda. We only had one.