In a second. All those in favor please say I. All those opposed, no. And we will proceed to article 24 uh to see if the town will vote to amend the Ashland code by deleting there from section 282.43 43 water supply protection district in its entirety and separate uh and substituting in lude thereof a new section 282.43 which I will not read. I'll ask Steve Krillin to u summarize for us. Uh I have been given [Music] a a substitute motion from the planning board with regard to section H the permit fee section only which I will read because it's short. uh section 8 permit fee. A fee shall be collected by the um [Music] SPGA on the date of the hearing. Such fees to be determined by the SPGA based upon the relative complexity of the project and the proposed scope of work. Said fee schedule shall reflect the cost of administration and management of the peritting process and shall be placed on file with the town clerk.
And um so what we typically like to do and what we've tried to do ever since I started as town manager is use uh opportunities like tonight's forum to answer any questions people might have about the warrant.
Write a goal. You would create some data based on a needs assessment. And then you would uh present it to a team, an outside uh visitation team. That team would then make a recommendation if you were accredited or not. And while that did help uh with some of the processes in Kansas, it did not really focus in attack on some of our student outcomes or increasing student achievement. uh which is now kind of a pronounced factor that our legislature would like for us to look at. So now as we go into the reiteration of KISSA for two KISSA 2.0 is we have three main components that we're going to have to look at and we're going to have to look at number one we're going to have to write an action plan that does increase student outcomes of uh learning on the state assessment. So increase our student achievement.
All of that kind of falls under um miscellaneous. We don't have any tuition right now. We're hoping maybe with with bringing in one of our programs next year that maybe we'll have the ability to do that in a couple years once that's established, but right now we don't have tuition revenue coming in for any of our programs. Um, our state aid makes up 42% of our budget um at just over $8 million and that includes like special ed aid, transportation aid, security aid, um extraordinary aid, uh things of that nature. Semi a that's the Medicaid program. um if falls under uh special ed. This is a substantial decrease from prior years and again it just comes from the state. Um these are expenses we have to have anyway. So um so we're getting less but every district in in the state is actually getting less.
career plans. When love grows up, she wants to be a police officer. Congratulations, love. [Applause] Y Another round of applause for love. [Applause] Congratulations to Victoria Sagura. [Applause] Victoria's school subjects. She loves music class because she loves to sing. Her favorite hobbies, she likes playing with her brother. And her career plans, I want to be a teacher because I love to read. Congratulations. [Applause] Congratulations. [Music] Another round of applause for [Applause] Victoria. So, congratulations to Oliver Ludwig. Oliver loves gym and math. favorite hobbies to play soccer at his grandma's house and his career's plan is to become a famous soccer player. [Applause] Congratulations. Another round of applause for And next up we have Miss Cahas for Lafayette [Applause] School. Our second grade student of the month is Landon Cardinal. [Applause] Landon is in Miss Patel and Miss Reese's class. He has eight siblings. His favorite school subject is math because he likes doing math equations.
So that's where the majority of our appropriation go. The regular education salaries administration our health benefits and dental the health benefits are going up 9.5%. Dental is going up three. Transportation is in the area of about six. Uh it's a 3.57 increase over last year for our transportation cost through MOESC and it's 6% of our budget. Is that is that strictly transportation that we utilize or is that like the refunds we give for district um for students that live in Burell that go to a different school? that encompasses all it would be gened um students are whoever lives within the distance two miles two and a half miles to the high school special ed students are always the most because between the route the aid on the route and then any aid and loo for students going to a non-public that qualifies and then special ed is any resource any OTP speech any related services for those students as well.
Okay, this one's got a hole in it, and I just burned myself for the second time. So, pay attention, my kids. But there better be some flowers along with that. You know, Mother's Day. A pot holder. Gee, thanks. That's almost as bad as getting a vacuum cleaner for Christmas or an iron for my [Music] birthday. What do you mean you've been in the dog house for two weeks? All right. Anyway, we're almost done here. We'll have to test the bow tie pasta, which I think is almost done. I thought you were making the garlic nuts from scratch. Listen, I'm good. And if I had time, maybe I would. But I don't bake. I cook. And wouldn't you rather have something nourishing with vegetables than a garlic nut bread and Yes, you will. Maybe we can we can all these vegetables into this. I don't think I'm strong enough, but These are all the ve all kinds of pasta.
The fee schedule may be amended from time to time by the SPGA. The finance committee uh recommends acceptance of article 24. I'll call upon Steve Kurin. Steve Steve, can you uh take a microphone? On November 15th, the plane board held dually posted an advertised hearing on the proposed groundwater protection bylaw. The hearing was posted twice in two newspapers, Middle Sex News on October 27th and November 3rd and the Ashlin Tab on November 1st and November 8th. Mailing notices went to all budding towns, the OCD and the MPC MAPC. These were returned via certified mail return receipts. A brief history, we have on the books a water supply protection bylaw. The basic difference between that and the one we have before you tonight is that the bylaw that was on the books was a drafted version from the comprehensive plan committee to consult land use. It was revised based on the comments from the water Massachusetts water resources authority.
we do have some people in the audience and on Zoom and then that way you're a little bit more prepared hopefully when you walk into town meeting and again hopefully you do come to town meeting but you know hopefully you'll be a little bit more informed a little bit more educated about the issues and uh again I'm here to answer any questions that you might have uh along with Jen here um related to any of the items on the warrant and what we'll do is we'll just go through them one by one and uh This year we have what 20 20 actually that's a little bit more than what we what we have had recently. Um so a little bit longer warrant than what we typically have in May but uh that's okay. We got a lot of business to do. Um so that being said I won't waste any more time.
Second is make sure that we're in compliance with all uh federal laws and state laws. and then make sure we're meeting all regulations, things like uh fire drills, things along the lines of uh all students have an individual plan of study, that students are u provided with an opportunity to take the ACT uh for free each year, things like that that we're going to have to make sure that we can provide our students uh to prepare them for their life after school here at Clearwater High School. And so KISSA 2.0 is where we're at. And so some of the things to set KISSA 2.0 apart is how are we going to do this? So there's four fundamentals and those fundamentals uh center around different activities such as structured literacy and high quality instruction and we're able to select one of those fundamentals and some lead measures to really talk about how we are going to be able to change uh some of the actions that we do at school that will increase student um achievement.
So it's less than 1% of our budget anyway. Uh surplus is $575,173. that's um excess surplus from prior year as well as money that I can look at a budget and say at the end of this school year we're going to have this much money to fund to balance our budget. Um so if we had any shortfalls between state aid and the tax levy, we have the ability to kind of, you know, take a little bit of money that we anticipate having at the end of this year and plugging it into balance next year. And then our federal grants are over $376,000. That's our ESA, which is title one, title two, IDA. Um, that's substantially down from years past, but that's because we're no longer getting all those COVID funds and things of that nature. So, we're back to just our basics that we've gotten um over the year.
His favorite thing to do is watch TV and he watches a you a YouTuber that plays Roblox. He wants to be a firefighter because it's better when you can go in a firetruck and spray at the fires. Well, Landon, come on back for a picture. Landon, you're going to hold that. We're going to take a picture. Another round of applause for [Applause] Landon. Our third grade student of the month is Dominic Januzi. [Applause] Dominic Dominic is in Miss Espazito's class. He has three siblings. His favorite school subject is every subject with Miss Espazito. He likes drawing and imagining things. And when he grows up, he wants to be a teacher. Congratulations. Hey, do I do a good job? All right. Congratulations. Another round of applause for Dominic. And next up from Smallley School, we have Mrs. Winter. [Applause] Congratulations to our fourth grade student of the month, Steven Navas Zapata.
And then this gives you more detailed numbers. The regular and special ed that includes the gened students going to manuan vocational and any special ed out of district students. The regular ed instruction encompasses here employee benefits, special ed, building maintenance. These are all within bell whereas the top line is pretty much Nasquan and any other district students. May I just say something about Nasquan quickly? Yeah, go ahead. So you you know sometime sometimes what happens that number gets people upset sometimes. you know, it's it's it's a large number and and it's you know, it's expensive and but but there we you know, if you know you know our our population our population in Manisquant High School something something around something around 30 30%. They they are our our BL kids. Yeah, we're next to Manisquan if I'm mistaken with the second highest. We're very close.
We chose the bow ties today. However, you you can have different vegetables. Um, and because we're cooking for a crowd, you know, or if any of them are like Dan, they don't like this, they don't like that. But most people like everything. So, they have their choice. U They rather have a carrot and a red pepper. Good. Then you can take those. We've got broccoli. We've got asparagus. We've even got We've even got peas, which reminds me, Robin, put the peas in there. I also generously salted the vegetables. You definitely need seasoning. That's the best part of cooking. If you want everything to taste good, there you go. I like to see happy faces when they eat my food without bribing them. Okay, the asparagus are a little overdone, but that's okay. I think I'm going to drop. They were very thin and I should have put them in later.
However, the mass water resources authority uh version was not strong enough for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. And in order to get some of the agreements with the well, the Spring Street well online, a new new version of this bylaw had to be adopted, which is what you have before you tonight. The basic changes are some simple ones. Changing the title, adding language on the scope of authority applicable activities, tightening the burden of proof for district alienation, tightening uh adding permitted uses, expanding the definition of a recharge area into zone one, two, and three. Six, rewarding prohibited uses, including restrictions on storage of liquid petroleum products and earth removal. Seven, specifying special permit uses by performance standards and criteria for special permits. Eight, adding wording on violations. and nine annability. Those are the basic changes. The other things that we can comment on is at the hearing there were two areas of concern.
Jen, you got anything you want to add? No, you good. Okay. Um and so again the way we'll do this is I'll go through each warrant article, describe it a little bit. um give you the details. Uh I'll open it up for questions and hopefully we'll have the answers. If not, we will find it and uh get that to you rather rather directly. So uh without further ado, I will start with article one which is town reports. Um this is an opportunity for different uh stakeholders within the town to just give an overall report. I should say an overall very brief report according to the moderator uh on issues that might be happening in town. Do anticipate to have two or three um reports this year. Uh I will be uh giving one just on the overall status of things in town and then I'll have a special budgetary message.
And in doing that we also have to set measures of progress which give us a sixmonth and a one-year target. So our uh KISSA accreditation day was March 26th of 2025. So we have to and we're currently in the process of writing our goals and our action plan, but we are in the process of uh creating those six-month and one-year targets and we're going to have those due on March 26, 2026. So we have a representative from KSD that we meet with. Uh we share that information. We provide updates as to our work towards that. And then ultimately a year from now, we'll turn in our data to support the um reaching of our goals. The state will then review the data along with our action plan plus our new action plan that we're going to have to write with a new goal for the next for the following year.
As you'll see, our revenue and expenditures match. Um, the total budget is 20,857,000 and 30 $857,352. um our budget expenditures, our tuition, this is um I'll get to all these breakdowns when we get further into it. So, but we have tuition, we have employee benefits, um regular ed, special ed, administration, maintenance, transportation, and then our grants. Again, you also see down the bottom debt service that's included on both sides. That's a that's for our bonds that we have from many, many years ago. Um and the township is solely responsible for um putting that in. That's over and above the tax levy. and the 2% calculation on our tax levy does not apply to that. That's separate. So, I'll go through the budget expenditures as we move um further. So, here's just a little pie chart of what our budget looks like and the different percentages.
Yeah, Stephen. Stephen has two sisters, younger twins. His favorite subject's math. That's a popular one today. His hobbies are playing soccer and he also wants to be a famous soccer player or a YouTuber. Yeah. Another round of applause for Stephen. Congratulations to our fifth grade student of the month, Eric Alonzo Maha. Eric, I guess Eric couldn't be here, but I'll share a little bit about him anyway. He has one brother at CMS and he has a sister at Smallley. His favorite subject is math, a popular one at Smallley. He likes to play with his toys and he's not quite sure what he wants to do when he grows up. Yep. Our sixth grade student of the month is Sophia Oario Oario who's joined here by her teacher who nominated her, Mrs. Kadabid. Sophia has one sister. Her favorite subject is math. She her hobbies are playing volleyball and when she grows up she wants to be a flight attendant.
Exactly. students. I budgeted for 214 14 students going to Madison from Belle all grades 9th through 12th and in previous years we were the were higher I know when our daughters were there so yeah again transportation we're expecting an increase just in costs and other expenses. This is where we had to cut, right? So, right, in order for us to stay within the 2% cap, right, when certain things are going up by a certain percentage, we obviously have to move some things around and take things out of other lines. So, you will see down at the bottom, and I'm going to talk to this a little bit. So, I'm going to talk specifically about district goals and how this budget supports it. and some of our district goals are what have allowed us to make those cuts in certain areas. So, um you know, we do see some things going down there because the cost of other things are going up and we're working within the 2% cap.