Ways and Means Budget Meeting April 23rd 2025

001Um, I'm going to call this meeting again to order. Uh, Ways and Means fiscal year 2026 budget discussion meeting, Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025. This meeting is being recorded by the Ways and Means Committee. If any other persons present or doing the same, you must notify the chairperson at this time. I'll do a roll call of members. I'm here. Uh, here. Councelor Master Tero. Yes. Councelor Browns here. Councelor Barry, I'm still here. Wow. Second verse, same as the first. Look at that. Um, all right. Uh, so we have approval of minutes, which there are none. We have public comment. Is there anyone? I didn't see anybody sign on that sheet. Um, do you want to do public comment? No. Oh, no, no, no. Right. It's brave, but yeah, it's a smart choice. Um, anyone on line

002that I see a comment there from Matt Conway? Thank you. Um, I guess we'll address that when it comes. I don't see anybody online. Put your hand up on the Zoom thingy if you want to do public comment. Going once. going twice. Sold to nobody. Thank you. All right, public comments done. Uh there are no public hearings or motions and we will go right into budget discussion because that's what we're all here for. Um I think you will love that this is in reverse order this year alphabetically. Veteran services, please. Veterans come up first. First and foremost, you have you have endured many hours of waiting. So, it's I think it's only worth it. All right. Hello everybody. Um, so we're on page 164 and 165 and 166 and the budget book. Um, our our

003biggest changes this year. Um, we're actually going down in our uh ordinary benefits. Um, last year we upped it quite a bit because we expected to gain more people because of the Hero Act that was passed that actually made more veterans eligible for Chapter 115. But even though they were eligible, they didn't come in to do on the paperwork. So, uh, we knocked it down another $15,000 this year because, uh, we're actually going to be pretty much over for this year. That's our our major change this year. Um salaries right around 3%. Everything else pretty much stayed a little bit stable. Um it's just the the bottom parts that you see on our expense on 165. That's the stuff that fluctuates. That's all our chapter 115 benefit stuff. Everything else pretty much stays the same.

004This is the only department that has a a net a minus before its number to start with. It was a it was a chapter 115 that did it because like I said we we expected a big gain and it was a nothing. We actually unfortunately we lose veterans when they pass away and spouses to pass away they come off the roll. That's how we actually got lower. We've had some people pass away on us. Yep. But in theory, we should have people joining the ranks if they know about the program. Yeah. Yes and no. Yeah. Yeah. So, the big change was u council Perry was last year uh something that was a um not honorable are now eligible. It was a big change to kind of match things with the VA the state did. Um,

005and then the other reason too is we've gone down is the inflation rate isn't as bad as last year. So, we didn't have to raise it up as much as we always do every year. So, it actually kind of brought it down. So, but we got the word out there. We did a thing with uh GCC TV to talk about um Chapter 115. Anytime a veteran comes in our office, we're always talking. They It's funny their reactions. We say, "Well, how much money do you make?" And they're like, "What are you asking that for?" Because we want to see if they're eligible for a full game. Did did you say that non honor non-armorable discharge is no longer eligible? They are eligible. They were not before you had. Okay. So now like if you have

006a a disarmable discharge, you're not. But if you have a general or just under honor under other than honorable conditions, they're now eligible, which they want. Are there any other questions on this budget? Thank you. Appreciate it. Sure. I'm glad to be able to get you out of here. I can't stay for the beginning of Thank you very much. Thanks for coming. We'll see you. I guess we're moving on to treasure collection. It's a weird says treasure, but okay. Yeah, treasure collector budget. If there's anyone who wants to speak on that, it doesn't look like it here. He's not here. You want to? All right. Well, I mean, if you want to pull the sword, by all means. This is long a fight. So, uh, treasure collector. Um, as you know, they've been in a

007lot of flux over the past year and a half, too. Uh, we finally found, uh, someone to actually take the job as treasure collector, uh, Mandy Whitten. So, very happy about that. uh FDEES have not changed in that office. However, um due to the need for uh due to the high traffic and the high public contact uh within that office uh we have a treasure assistant treasurer uh right now uh to kind of well when one wants to take a vacation the other one will be there. So uh that that helps. Um and frankly not much else has changed in that department. Uh we are working to improve customer relations. I think you'll find that when people go in there now, they're a lot happier. Yeah. They smile this now. So that's that's a good

008thing. And um and then we pay their taxes. We try to make it pleasant for them, you know. And uh and then what we also have been trying and we're working on with that department is to bring them into the 21st century. uh a lot of the processes in that department are very manual, very um uh clerical oriented when we don't have to do that. We could bring that in the 21 into the 21st century. So we're we're working on that. This is page 81 to 85 for anyone who's looking for it. Um, as far as in the in the budget book, whether it be here or in the ether know if you could answer for looking at the past history. Yeah, I know. The expense line used to really high. like 52, 61, 45,

00922 through 24, and then there was a huge cut back in 25 and then it's got gone up a little bit again, but it looks like it's kind of been all over the place with expenses. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that history uh right there, especially um right turn 24 to 25, but the there has been a tremendous amount of turnover, right? And I noticed that it's gone up. Well, oh, never mind. It's it's not even worth it headphones. Never mind. But you don't have any insight onto that that like expense line. I mean, obviously with these type of departments, we only deal with salary, wages, and then expense line. Mhm. Um, and with an expense line going from over $60,000 two years ago to now 27 and then 35 uh last year and then

010now into this year. Do you you don't have do you I mean it because on paper it looks like a 33% increase this year which is really not. Yes. If you look at 2022, 2023, uh those were I mean it's almost it's like a 40% decrease really. Um it's almost half of what the budget was in 2023 for this department. Is there do you know of And I'm you know I'm totally throwing you on the spot here. Oh no, it's okay. Um is there any do you do you have any knowledge as to why that that has almost gone in half? Not off the top of my head. Uh, from 23 to 24 to 25, but I I can find that out for you. Yeah, I'll let you know exactly what's going on with that

011because mayor have just say this. I entered this one for Mandy because everybody was brand new when we were putting this in. Yep. So, I know that I went up on her printing charges because she was up. Mhm. And the other expense I believe were for um like bonding etc expenses and I don't think that we were taking that right out of that um line item. So do they get because I'm seeing I mean I know you've only been here for for the last two cycles. So let's just say while you've been here the budget for the expenses has been significantly lower. Uh-huh. Um, do you know why they were much higher earlier or was it just something that got shifted to a different I don't actually remember, but I think it had to do

012with the borrowing. And what I do remember was because I told her she was brand new. I'd entered. So I went back and looked at what we'd used for the last three years, which is what I always do, right? Go into the little things and look at the boxes and see what whatever people put in there, did they use it, right? And so that's why I went up on the printing and the other one. So I I feel like I had to I had to come up here. I'm actually the person that entered that budget. Okay. No, I think it's important to to like point out again the reason I'm saying this is is to have some sort of clarity on that. And of course that would be relitigating the past. But also for folks

013to know of course this year with with some I don't know what word I want to use here controversy in in how we're going to spend our money. Yep. This one showing a 33% increase is not actually a 33% increase at all. It's it's it's only reflecting what was last year which was already a dramatic decrease from the other years. What was the do we even know what the other chart was from the year before? I kept to get the other three was 61,000. Yeah, we had to do that 52 61 and then it went to 45 and then all the way down to 27 and now we're looking at 35 which is still lower than it was four years ago. Yeah. So I mean with a look back like that I think it's important

014to point that out. We can get that I can get that answer to you by next. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. I know this is finance but the customer service part is very important. So thank you for mentioning that. You know people walking into the office that's the first impression they get. So it's important to have a cheerful friendly customer especially when you give them the money. Exactly. Yes. No, it's they're a good group down there and they uh they're genuinely pleasant to be around. So, it's all right. I'll work on that other question. It would just be good to know. I mean, it's I don't think it's like, you know, worth writing home about. But, um we got retirement next. I believe that's 181 to 186. That's that's grouped in with insurance and Medicare,

015I believe. Who wants to handle that one? Is that would that be you, Mayor? You want to handle insurance and retirement? Oh, sure. Sure you do. Yeah. Insurance. It's my favorite all third subject. Okay. Of course it is. So, um, insurance costs for the second time in a row are up 16 and a half percent. Um, and the reason for that is because we're outspending the premiums that we take in. We've had a lot of meetings on this. The premiums that the city pays for health insurance I actually know by heart $9 million and the expenses are $9.3 million which makes us not um like a community that anybody else would like to give health insurance to because we're outspending what comes in. So the insurance company isn't making money on us. So um we

016met last year with the IA that's abbreviation for the insurance advisory committee like the head of each union to see if we could if anyone was interested in changing the uh you know balance of how we pay that because the city pays 80% of health insurance and um the employee pays 20 which is very very good compared to like a lot of other comm um And you know, we uh you know, we had some unions that were interested, but we needed everybody to be interested in that. And they asked us to go and look at other insurance companies and I forget what the names of them were actually, but none of them want us because of that. So, um that was the best that there was. We have a lot of, you know, people that

017are they're sick. So, there's like 10, you know, 10 folks that they're having their worst year ever. and the really costing the city a lot, but we're hoping they we have a medium age of the workforce. I don't actually know that, but I'm sure that somebody could find that. Um, and then yes, older workforce, and we are not the only municipality that is dealing with that, right? Um, so additionally, you'll actually see that it's in the book. It says it's up 20%, not 17. I'd like you to note that that wasn't um what was entered last year actually wasn't the full amount that went up. So, we had to cover for that as well and we are in the minus right now this year in health insurance which is unusual. You know, we're you know

018you do the whole budget and we hope at the end that it all balances out but in that one particular thing in health insurance we're in in the finest. You give me some less free cash this year. That's what you're saying on that. Yeah, we don't know how it's going to be. I don't I don't know how all of it comes about but most of it and and then so that's why that's up as high as it is and then on the retirement um you know we have this uh it's like an actuarial scale so every municipality is supposed to be finished I think by 2035 paying for their retirement and you know that was up about I don't know half million I think a little goes down that page, whatever it is. So, we're

019we're essentially being like penalized because some folks are above the limit of infirm. Well, no, I like I mean that's what it sounds like like No, it's they're they're drawing down on the insurance. It's you would have just a three or like for years for 10 years I think they said this is the health insurance person. our insurance went up about three or 4%. Right. And then when you know when people when people having bad years that we're we're using all the insurance the all the money that goes in plus. So that's why the premium went up. I I have a question. Health insurance. Okay. Um there's other municipalities and and obviously corporations that do this too. A buyback program. We t we did talk about that. Um we about three or four or five

020people brought that up to us and um actually I can't explain all of the reasons why we were not going to do that but um I asked about it because other people asked about it. you had to have a big pot of money aside to be paying all the people if they weren't going to do that. But I think the attorney thought that wasn't the best thing to do to and I actually don't I can write that out better than I can say it but because I remember asking Diana about that why we weren't you know and the answer was no that wasn't that wouldn't have worked for us and I can tell you why. So in theory the assurance percentage could drop next year. It could it depends on you know how the users

021how much of the premium the users use. I guess that would be the best way to say that right. I think that's one question I get asked from folks. Yeah. You know, at times are like I mean and once you go down, you're never going to go back up is what I keep telling them. Like we have a pretty good a really good system in Greenfield where we're we are covering 80% y right of our employees health insurance which is almost unheard of nowadays. Um, and so there, you know, there are some folks who who will say to me, well, why don't we drop it? Why don't we go to 75 or 70 or whatever, and that would make up for the the increases? And, you know, I I have to talk to them about,

022you know, well, that's a a citywide position. You have unions that are involved in it. Um, uh, it's not as it's not as cut and dried as as it may seem. Um, and that is to be frank with some of our positions that we have in our our municipality, we don't pay the highest rate, so our benefits become a reason why people would want to work here. Um, even if our wage rates aren't as high, they at least know that they get that part of it. Um, so it it's almost like, you know, I remember going to to, you know, restaurants at certain points. It's like, you know, every so often the the cost has to go up on the dish you get, but they were doing they were increasing the cost and then like

023lowering the portion at the same time. I'm like, you can't do both. Like so that's what I feel like we would be doing is increasing the cost and lowering the portion and giving someone a smaller meal at a higher price um to come and work here. So, I I understand why we don't, but that's a hard it's a hard nugget to like to send home to folks when they're asking that when they see that the costs of everything's going up. And then, you know, we're running into things with this 20% inflation on uh on on health insurance that, you know, folks are concerned about schools. They're concerned about services and where are we going to find the money and all this stuff. It's it's I think it's important for that to be um more of

024a a public knowledge because I don't think a lot of people get that part of it. I don't think they understand how it works, so to speak. And and I don't know if as a city, as a council, as a mayor, like if if how we can make that more forthcoming with the dissemination of the information. We have really good health insurance. We have really good health insurance. We cover like our employees very well. I'll make a little announce right now. We're all watching out there too. When we hire next year, when we hire an employee and if they're on a family plan, the city will be paying $28,000 of their health insurance. It's just them plus one person, it's $20,000. So, so um that is a really good benefit that we give um to

025the employees. That's why I, you know, every time that we're adding another full FTE or someone, you know, who is going to be taking the benefits, I I think long and hard about it. Um, and um, additionally, in this economy to get, you know, all unions to vote for a change, I couldn't even ask. I thought when eggs are $10 a dozen, I can't ask for a different, you know, ratio of the health insurance people's they're to go to try to buy food right now. It is it's unbelievable. So, um, so anyway, so I just think it's I like I said, I I appreciate it. I I think it's important for people to hear those type of things like this isn't this isn't like 1 plus 1 is two. No. you know, um it is

026difficult. It's difficult to navigate the finances for for a city. So, it's um it's not it's not, you know, swapping cars for for kids or whatever people want to say. Um there's a lot more ingrained in that. And so I appreciate what you do um ahead of time presenting this budget and and the work that you and you know Stephen do to to really like solidify you make like you're making critical decisions. Um and I'm sure that none of them are easy. I have an answer to the uh the increase in accounting. So the mayor's right, that was the bond issuance cost. So in uh 23 it was as high as $25,000. It went down to 15, it's down to 10 now. And the reason is is because we use a lot of bond premiums

027in order to pay its cost of bond issuance. So we're getting money bond like bond premiums. So that and that is that a normal place for that money to land in that in the colle treasury collector department? Yes, that because they're doing they're the ones doing bond issuance, but if you look back in the past years like when it was 25,000 Yeah. I think only uh only about 2500 spent out of that. That's just like a weird Yeah. weird pocket that that has to be set in. Even though that's not really their department that's being funded. It's just to fund the bonds. Exactly. Okay. Well, you learned something in your fourth year, right? Do you have any other uh questions about the retirement insurance and whatnot? All right. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Stephen. Uh

028can't not do this. It's parks and wreck, man. It's parks and wreck. There's a whole series about it. It's hilarious. Can't do recreation parks. Uh but anyway, thanks for joining us, Chrissy. Of course. I am also happy that you're going in reverse order. Yeah, I know you you you have set out for a long time as well. Yeah. So, I mean, mine's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Uh we have people and we have a few supplies. I don't know if you have any in-depth questions, but um I just want to thank you because I know you guys do a lot of good old and but the morale that you guys provide to the city and to the public who come to your events is just it money can't buy it. You got even though you guys

029are operating on a shoestring budget and you know breaking piggy banks to find a couple pennies to help pay for stuff, you do a great job. Thank you. You have a great team. Yeah. Couldn't do it without them and our commission recession. So, is there anything different in this year um that you want to point out to us? Um the only thing particular um the mayor and I um found a discrepancy. So we're working on um an error with our because right now it says three and a half or 3.49 people. Um we're correcting that to get it four to four. Okay. Oh yeah. It looks like you lost 51 person. Yeah. Very specific. Otherwise, um all the expenses and everything are exactly the same. And are those seemingly um working out, I guess? um

030like do you do you notice um obviously the salaries we can't really speak to because they're just they're salaries but uh as far as the expenses you guys have incurred to do what you're doing have you seen it let's just say in the past two three years uh it's it's been covered well enough we um we do have the revolving so if there's something that is not covered There we we have um the revolving to cover some stuff. Um but this is just like mostly the office expenses that you see that are in here. Um each program is self-sufficient to cover its cost of operation for like T-ball which is starting um those individual programs. Okay. And special events. And just for folks to know the revolving uh comes from is funded by all of

031our program programs and then cycles back through. Cycles back through. So, they're essentially paying for themselves. Exactly. Okay. Like right now it's getting higher because camp enrollment is happening because camp is just around the corner. And then, you know, we pay all our staff out of that and then it comes back up when it's time for upper school enrollment. But I imagine there's certainly not a surplus at the end of the year. No, I can definitely more operating here. We definitely pinch pennies and reuse and get a lot of donations as much as possible. Yeah. All right. Do some of the fundraisers make an eight, but the dawn thing this winter and the uh cornhole thing that's actually come up to that is eight. Yeah. Well, thanks for the um push for cornhole. Cornhole, which

032I hope you all will be registering. Um, cornhole tournament is not this weekend but next weekend and that's a a fireworks fundraiser for the fireworks. Um, and last month, well actually I guess it's still April, we did the mini golf and then in June we're doing a trivia um tournament, I guess you call it tournament. We're doing the botchi tournament. Yep. Um, I think that's later in the summer. I don't have I don't have this little book right here quite all moonrise but Cool. All right. I like that it's at the front and it's short and sweet. Thank you guys again. Thank you very much. Um, all right. We're moving on to planning. 95. I believe 95. Yeah. Thank you for being on top. It is. Yeah. to 102. Put anything here. I said I

033I would cover planning. We have to hear from you again. Any questions about it? Do you folks have questions on planning? Yeah. Well, it's more of a statement. Understand. How ironic. Yep. What you got? We have a there's a wonderful new Jessica's the um new conservation person and she's she's fabulous. I just want to tell you that. Very nice and hope you all get a chance to meet her there sometime. Yeah, Chris. No, you know, the accomplishments and the goals are impressive. So, it's nice to see that department turning stuff out and doing good work. [Music] Guess I'll ask the crazy elephant in the room on this. Uh the same as we were running into with the U treasure collector. Why is the do you know or can you speak to why the expenses are

034down um well it says 38% this year but it's actually like I don't know like Jesus like 50 almost 50 yeah it's less than 50 it's like it was 13,000 in 2023 and now it's 3,800 uh do we know what yields I think pretty much across a lot of budgets that expenses are have been decreased. Um I think that is like pervasive through them we um the the department heads themselves and then me also helping with that. Yeah. Right. I just go back and look. I can't I actually can't remember each one, but Sure. Um I go we go back through and look at if they hadn't used something in three years or it was less than that amount. Yeah. You know, um it would go down a little bit because we don't want to

035be having that if we we don't want to be taxing the taxpayers if we're not going to use that. We want people to have enough, right? But well certainly can't speak but um I I don't think that I had anything to do with Eric's because he entered his so that he must have seen the same pattern himself and done that you know by himself because I didn't have anything to do with that one and nor did I have to make a reduction there that I recall. It certainly makes sense with the timeline because I'm I'm remembering uh like I said in my four years here when I'm seeing actuals from FY 2022 and 2023 and 2024 and I'm seeing this gigantic almost a doubling of the expenses line from 2022 to 2023. It's not surprising

036to me why we had like almost 4.8 8 million in free cash was we were severely overt taxed during that time period and so we all paid for it. Um, and then it came back as free cash and then it's like everyone's like, "Yay, free cash. We can spend it somewhere." But it's like you you essentially drained us, not you, the city itself, like irresponsibly spent, I think, needs to be pointed out during that time period. I mean, that's that's almost double. And then we're and then coming to, you know, sorry to use the term, but a come to Jesus moment like two years later, three years later, we need 3,800 to run the expenses of this department, which was half the amount of 2022, which is a less than a quarter of the amount

037that was put in in 2023. Like that's I think it's very important for people to know that that's that's the history of where our money's gone. Um, and I don't think it should be it shouldn't be forgotten or left out without without being explained that our uh our tax rate could have been a lot lower three years ago than it was and we still would have been able to cover a bunch because I'm certainly not in the business of having my taxes raised, paid for, and then looking at a $5 million free cash uh in October. Like I never want that to be $5 million um ever again because it's not that's irresponsible uh budgeting in my opinion. Um you want to budget a little bit over. Uh everyone does because you want to plan

038on unexpected things, but when it's that high like I'm glad to see that's what all that to say. I'm glad to see that we're back down to realistic numbers because we shouldn't be overbudgeting just for the sake of of doing that. That's that's irresponsible fiscally to, you know, all of us who are taxpayers in the city. So, if I see that with the rest of the other departments, I I'll be happy every time. And some of them were tough and I I said if they're behind I I don't want people to ever do without. We can always come back to you if you know something else or if there's some way to transfer something because I did a couple and like I don't know if I'm going to have and I thought we we're all

039working together to make sure the the wonderful departments have had what they need but also that it's responsible. Yeah. Thank you again. I bet you'll be seeing you here. Back up. Why did you move? Because you're probably back up. Uh, licensing. Yeah. 9395. Hi there. I'm uh Matt Conway, communications director. I work uh closely with the board of license commissioners and the licensing commissioner. So, I will be presenting the budget for you this evening. Uh the biggest increase you'll see is the licensing coordinator position had an increase in salary. Uh it pretty much is more in line of of par with other administrative positions of this ilk. Um advertising expenses is for legal notices in the paper for board of license work. Office supplies for general office supplies, there's about a third of it as

040a cushion in case there's any uh major expense like a printer or something like that. Uh and then the mileage reimbursement, that's something that can probably be cut. The coordinator said it was used more frequently during the pandemic. Sure. Very small potatoes when it really comes down to it, right? Yeah, for sure. So this was so the salary part was an increase because of did you say because of like um putting it more in line with what folks make or was the the hours increased or uh yeah more the former category uh more parody for what other kind of administrative type coordinators make? Um and you can kind of see the increase through the years and what the the previous salary was. I welcome. Anybody else have questions on this budget? All right. Well, thanks

041Matt. Appreciate it. Thank you. And we'll move to the library. I actually prepared a PowerPoint presentation. Oh. I am going to put it in. Um, unless you want it. I don't know if you can show it on the screen. I can share it with you at another time. 169. Um, yes. Sorry. We are 169 to 73. 73. Really like this table of contents. Super cool. Helps. So, thank you for the people don't know what a table of contents is. Well, that's true. or the Dewey decimal system. Or the Dewey decimals. Do I have to read the whole book? No, I need to use the index in the table of contents. Okay, we need right. Um, so one of the slides that I had on my presentation was our funding sources for the library. So our

042large contribution of course is the municipal allocation. Um and then we get state aid through the master support of library commissioners. We have the friends of the Greenfield Public Library who provide the sponsorship for all of our programs. And then of course the foundation that was created um to help source funding for the new building and they have decided to continue fundraising and they are supporting um professional development for the staff as well as any uh tech needs for the public. Um the city allocation does not cover expenses for um technology that is used by the public only what is used for staff and every five years as I'm sure many of you know you have to upgrade the technology and that is very expensive. So we are very grateful to have um the foundation

043looking at ways to help support that. Otherwise we use funds from our state aid. Um, the reason I bring up state aid is because my budget every year has to be also taken into consideration the requirements for state aid which is um through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and we have to see an increase of at least 2.5% in our um allocation in order to be eligible for state aid. In addition to that, we have to be open x number of hours, x number of days, x number of evenings. So there's quite a range of requirements that we have um in addition to trying to balance the books. Um, and there is an option for us if we do not receive um, if we're not able to meet that 2 and a half% increase,

044we can apply for a waiver from the, uh, master sporting library commissioners. They only allow you to apply for that four times before they descertify you. Descertification is huge because that means we lose access to the consortium. That means our patrons, our community members cannot use any other public library in central western Massachusetts without paying out of pocket. So there are a lot of things that are contingent upon our budget. Um I neglected to pick up a budget book. Oops, I have forgotten. But I have gone online and I printed my pages. Okay. Um so I do know what is there. Um, when I was preparing the budget, I went a little bit higher than normal, uh, with a hope that perhaps we could have an additional staff member. Um, I request partline. I also

045requested an increase in our substitute per DM budget. That's the temp wages. Um, we are seeing huge numbers of people in the library. We're over 13,000 a month at this point. And when you have people who are sick or on vacation or personal time, we don't have enough bodies to help everyone. We call in our temp um staff. And those are people who are just paid on an hourly um basis. They're not part-time nor full-time. They're just temporary and uh staff members. So, uh I know that this is a hard fiscal year. It's a hard then of course after we did the budget then the federal government cut the Institute for Museum and Library Services. I was going to ask you about that. So we don't receive direct federal aid but many of the um

046funds that are shared with the state of Massachusetts through that organization have been cut which means it's all going to trickle down to to us that TV land. Trickle down economics see how it works. Yes. Yes, very very rural libraries. The very rural and you might have heard that on the radio yesterday. There was actually something on uh the public radio about the rural and small libraries. We are considered a rural and small library. Um even though we are a population of close to 20,000, we are still considered rural small. So um I think in general terms the budget is very fair for us. I did work with the mayor. I did not want to lose staff. Um so I made some big cuts to our materials. Um the one that's really going to be

047hit is the electronic resources which sadly is going to affect folks who are living on a tight budget. That's for ebooks and audiobooks and uh streaming platforms. Those are very very expensive. Everything is going up as we know. Go away all together. It is not at this point. It's just it's going to be cut back. Where is that? 15 173. 173. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I went through with the mayor and we did what we thought was um reasonable. I if I've done my math correctly, and math was not my forte, um I and we are still going to meet our requirement for state 8. Fortunately, um the FY26 state budget is level funded, which means we should be okay for FY26 with our state aid because of course, if the trickle down effect

048happens, everything gets cut and the state is going to cut, which then will cut money to the MBLC, and it goes on and on. So, I think we're going to be okay for FY26. Um our friends are busy, really busy fundraising. Uh the numbers through our door really we can thank the programming as well. We get a lot of people coming to the library for free programming and so I'm really grateful to the friends for all their hard work fundraising um to support those programs that are free to the public and they are all ages and that's great. Um, I think that's it. When you were here last year, you were talking about some of the building issues that were left over from Oh, we still have some building issues, but they're getting resolved. Okay.

049Are you concerned about or is it just going? No, I think we are good. Um, those panels get replaced that we talked about. Most of them have been replaced. I'm waiting for another issue. Those were put in. Those were put in. That's been good. Um, we are doing signage in internally. We had gone out to bid and that was a disaster. Um, and we decided that we could do it inhouse for under $4,000 versus almost a h 100,000 for an outside firm. So, we now have signs telling people what's on what floor, where to find the bathroom. That's the biggest question we get is where is the bathroom? Um and uh and it's going to be fantastic. There are a couple of other projects that are close to conclusion. Um so yeah, and you know,

050it's a very heavily used building, so I feel like it's already falling apart. And that's not a criticism of the city. That's just the way things were made these days, right? Um so it's been kind of a quiet year, but there have been a few controversies. When you cited the numbers, did you include some of the uh visitors who stayed there for other Those are based on door count. So we actually probably the best investment we ever made was in an electronic door um count system, software system, and it tells us by the second. Um and you know, we're we're open to everyone. That's part of the mission. That is the mission of libraries in general. Um we I would say 99.9% of the time everything is fantastic and then there's that time when it's

051not and I think you know we we all recognize that there's a lot of um uncertainty in in the world and you know people who have a more difficult time than others and honestly that is not a problem until it's a problem and you know um we have the wonderful who come and help us when it becomes something that we can't take care of. We do a lot of training on deescalation, but it's hard. I I won't deny that it's hard. And the thing about the library is that it affects every single person who's in the library. And I like to say that we serve ages zero to 100 plus. And when something that can be scary happens, it affects everyone. Um, and that's really hard. We want to maintain a safe and enjoyable environment

052for everyone. I only mentioned because it came up at the community relations uh committee meeting months ago where people representing that community uh were empowered to talk about it in a proactive way. In a positive way. In a positive way, saying that they understand the issue and they raised a few issues that they thought maybe they could intervene. But so there is discussion going on which is encouraging the police department. Sure. and and so what we see in our library is no different what what any library sees across the country. It's just I think because we're a new library and I think there's becoming more need in our community rather than less need it and we our doors are open and it's a big space and and people know that they can come in and

053out and that's fantastic. Like I'm happy for that when there are issues. You know, sometimes there are issues because folks want to come in with their dogs on a cold day and rules say state law we cannot have pets that are not service dogs and that is not an emotional support animal. That's a service dog. And and I totally understand with folks, where are you supposed to go when it's freezing cold and you're temporarily living outside and you have pets and we're open to the public, but and that's when sometimes conflict happens. So I'm like, I'm sorry you can't have your pets here and that sometimes makes people upset and I agree with them. It's upsetting, but it's also upsetting for people who might not like pets to have pets in the building, right? So,

054we have to find a middle ground and I don't think that um I think it's a community issue and it's a community solution. We can support during our opening hours people as much as we possibly can and outside of that I think really as a community we can work together to to find solutions. Um every time I go in there customer service is excellent. People are caring, people are concerned, people are asking in day out, that sort of stuff. So, it's it's a nice customer service is like the number one thing when we we get a lot of applicants for our positions and we get people with PhDs and MDs. I'm not kidding. And to do like a part-time evening job and they all say, "I love books." And typically what I look for is

055someone who's had customer service who knows who's done uh you know working in a shop in a restaurant um in a hospital places that you where you interact and a quick you have to be quick on your feet and you have to be able to serve all different populations and that is so much more important than you know I mean loving books is great too but it's we don't read on the Um, a lot of people find that they're like, "Oh, it must be nice to sit read books all day." It's like, we actually don't do that. We select a lot of books. Oh, yeah. Books. It's been a year since I read a book. I listen to books. I listen to a lot of audio books while I'm making dinner or walking my dogs.

056But, um, so that's the situation library. And I feel confident that, um, we're going to be okay. And in fact, I think we're going to see higher numbers. I'll be perfectly honest. If if you know, if things if people start experiencing harder times moving forward, econ harder economic times, I envision us becoming even busier than we already are. And I I hope we're ready for that. I'm really pleased that the mayor did increase our temporary line budget line because we need to know that we can get people to cover when some I also think it's important to point out that um I mean a $35,000 cut to your expenses is is not not nothing, right? I mean it's it's about 20% Yep. of your overall. So again, one positive for the folks out there, just

057just wanting to say like when we're when we're talking about when we when the cuts are being made to certain departments, they might be overshadowed by the the hyperbole and the narrative that that wants to get put out there, but these are things we're talking about. Like you just lost 20% of your expenses budget like that. And and and you're saying we'll make it work. And that's what we're encouraging all departments to do. Nobody wants to have to take a cup from what they think they're going to need. But this is how it works as a whole is, you know, unfortunately, yes, it's $35,000, which is a lot of money to me. It's not a lot of money on the, you know, $67 million budget or whatever, but like, you know, I think that's what

058we spoke about also is that the human capital for me right now is more important to be able to serve people. And I think that because we're part of a consortium and we share our materials, just like Christy said about the rec department, if there's a group of people who knows how to use a little bit of money to go a long way, it's libraries. Um, we're used to this, right? when it's like, you know, what gets cut in schools, it's usually the music, the library, the arts, right? So, we're we're kind of used to that. Um, I think what we need to remember is that we have to have a community mentality and not a me mentality. So, if we need to reduce the number of we need to reduce the number of ebooks

059you can borrow, then we have to do that, right? Because it's for everyone. It's not just for you. And yes, it may impact you. It might make you upset, but in the grand scheme of things, we'll all get something, right? We may have to wait a little bit for it, but we'll all get a piece of the pie. We just might not have a bigger piece of like you were saying before, like the bigger charge for a smaller amount of food, right? We're just trying to to find the balance for everyone. And we just did um the Masters Board of Library Commissioners just shared with us a way to calculate our return on investment. And I know that's a real financial term ROI. ROI. ROI. But we plugged in all of our numbers from fiscal

060year 24. And that was actually on my slide. I will send it to you all. Um our return on investment is 604%. Wow. And the amount of money we get from um tax dollars is very small compared for each person. Right. Do you want to repeat that number just for you know the the the haters the haters out there? I actually had to send it to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to make sure we had done the math correctly. I was like this is the formula. Oh and it came out and they said oh yeah that's really really good. 604% in return on investment. So we, you know, everything is going to go up. Books go up every year. Paper better than the NASDAQ's doing. So yeah. So and actually just as an aside,

061one of our biggest advocates to reinstate the Institute Museum of Library Services is publishing houses. Why do you think that is? We're their biggest purchasers, libraries. And if we lose budgets and we lose money, they lose a lot of their clients. So they are active active pushing pushing pushing to get the um that department reestablished. So we'll see what happens. And thank you for the bumpers. I community community. Yeah. Thanks everyone. All right. Thank you. 80 seconds. You didn't even need your slides. Look at that. I'm gonna send them to you. They're good though. It's cool. 87. All right. We got it on 80. Would you say 87, Mike? Thank you. Deacon, you're going to take this over right away, aren't you? No, I am not. We got a Fernando here, but No, he said

062he couldn't come. He's not in TV land either. Mayor, would you like or Stephen, would you like to which one of you would like to fall in the sword of it? Fernando Fernando's doing a great job. He was one of the two um departments that did get um a an added person back. I had cut that last year and I think um many people throughout the town will be glad that we're adding a fourth person there. They were a three medium team for 18 almost 18,000 people and you know he works from um dawn till dusk. he would do a better job presenting on himself. Um but you know he gets a lot of things accomplished and um you know helped with uh you know dispatch and moving those things around and um he's working

063on cyber security this year and he was just fabulous because we had all kinds of new people and you wouldn't realize how much time that takes to get everybody uh you know up going with their computers. So that's why there was an increase there in in the um wages and um then there was something I could actually the worst person to be talking about it. So I just like is the fourth is the four is the fourth person the support administrator like the let's just say the lowest paid position that's listed here. Okay. So that's added. All right. Can I look on your book? Uh yeah that's person that that that we're that hasn't been filled yet but we're Well, yes. I eliminated it last year and they really need it. He is they're quite

064behind the age. They're you know he's working as hard as they all teams they're all working I know we want the library to have their it up so we can use it for these meetings. That's true. But you know this what we actually all need is like more hours in the day. Yes. So um and then all of these things you know the equipment, the hardware and the software whatever it was um you know uh they needed all those things. The only thing we eliminated the training there because they don't even have time to go to the training. See I eliminated that. He's gave that one up the training line for 5,000. But all the softwares and everything they're expensive and I shouldn't be explaining about them. The other two is under communication. Gotcha. And

065me. Does anybody else have any? just I'm just I I don't know why it is why it is but uh the internet communication down $2,000 is do you know why I did that or I went I actually I was on everybody but I cut this one I cut there I said so why did I go down but is it you or him? Yeah. No, me. was you obvious they put it on the left and then I went I said yeah that one I I tried to reduce a couple of other ones and I really couldn't so that one I think it's just two line items there I don't actually communicating if there's a decrease I can't tell you exactly what it was it was that I looked back three years I thought you're not going

066to go over there and we're going to try to make it with that and there was one other line item that he said no you you should not do that. And I thought I'm just going to agree with him because he knew a lot more than I did about this. Obviously, it was a great the whole team does a great job. We were all in a training today. AWS. Oh, I don't even know what that stands for. I don't want to pay them any money, but that's just the world. I don't know what it is. Okay. But if there's anything specific that you have a question, I'll make sure we find out the answer and write it to you. I don't know what AWS Jeff Bezos will send you the bill. He does. That sounds

067like root beer. The way of it. Um, are there any other questions for it budget? How about human resources? Who wants to handle that one? So, um, yeah, Diana, I'm her 85. 85. Can we share the book? I know I have my book up here, but we might as well be in this together. Um, they still have the same number of people. Um, uh, salary line increase, just commencement with the level of work that they have to do. They did three contracts this year. um police, you have no idea police, fire, and um dispatch, just the work that they do for negotiations is unbelievable. And it's one of the I actually wasn't expecting this. It's one of the things that you spend the most time on or is HR issues. It's enormous. And um they're

068fabulous. They do every eye and cross every tea. and they're, you know, Diana will be the one that's helping me with the response on that health insurance. Um, they work a lot with that with all of our benefits and they make sure that everybody's taken care of if they're, you know, they're out, you know, they're injured or this, that, and the other thing. She make sure that everybody's taken care of. And now it's open enrollment time. And so their expenses, um, yeah, their expenses are down so much that I'm hoping that that they can manage with that. I I've told everybody if they don't think they can, you can come to our office for paper slips, but share like we're gonna figure out whatever it is. So, and that's their salary. Can you tell me

069because I've seen this multiple times. What's the 26.1 acral? I've never seen that. And that's like 0.1 short of a a marathon. So this the person last year the when we were all entering our uh budgets in the year you know you have to enter it into munness then you don't put in just 26 times whatever it is you enter it 26 one there's a few extra days spills over what is that a cruel mean because like the other one had like an a line through it like in it. There was nothing in that acrruel line, but this one has I mean it's only $1,73, but like what what would that be? Diana showed me how to do mine when I first got in that she told me there's like a little there's a little

070formula. You got to account for the leap year or whatever. There's a little formula and that's what you're supposed to put in like where the dollar per hour. Yeah. Where it doesn't come out exactly times 26.1. But why is it only in certain budgets and not others? I would just tell you those people are very they're exact and they know the formula. Um not that you know that's why really that's I think so I actually think so I learned from her some people just okay some people put it into the normal FD salaries. Okay. Yeah. Well hey I mean I'm um because I'm all for the extra transparency. That's fine. really really good. You know, she gets a A for the day. Yes, she really does. Let me tell you. Yeah, great job there. Great.

071Cool. Uh, there any other human resources questions on this budget? 150. You want to stick around for help? Oh, help is here. Right here. Oh, look at that. Hey, Mike. How you doing? How we doing everybody? Good. Good. Welcome to the party. It's riveting. Glad to be here. Yeah, it's the best part of my day right here. You can't top. What uh what what would you like to tell us about the health budget? Okay, so in my budget um most of my staff was staying the same. The only thing was we had an issue with a um it was part of the staff that got left out in the last budget. Um there was a couple people dealing in it. I believe they thought it was a grant position. Somehow it was left out of

072the budget, but it was a green field position that was for part-time inspector. Um but we changed the part-time inspector position into an admin assistant position for part-time. Um the only little difference there is going to be though the number is higher. I believe it's 42,100. Um since it is going to be part-time, that is going to drop down to about 27,000 a year. Um so there will be some savings on that one. Um the higher number got put in, I think we we were hoping to get a full-time, but we're going to we're going to do a parttime 27. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll do a part-time admin instead. So that will go down to about 27,000. Um, other than that, the staff um will remain the same. Um, just adding that admin for part-time.

073And then, uh, the only other changes that I made were our legal expenses went up 8,000. So, now we're at, uh, 16,000. Um, pages and telephone stayed the same, office supplies stayed the same, nursing medical supplies stayed the same, uh, clothing and uniform went up 500. uh because I'm hoping to have some more staff, so they'll need more clothing and uniforms. Uh the meetings and seminars went up 1,500. Uh that's also because I'm hoping to have a full complement of staff, so they'll also need to go to more seminars and meetings to get their CEUs up. And then we went up $300 on the dues and memberships of mostly for the same reason. If we have more staff, uh there'll be more dues and memberships to pay. Uh other than that, those are pretty much

074the changes that we made for this year's budget. Right. So, so what was submitted and what I'm seeing here, you were saying the 42100 position, the clerical one is only going to be 27 grand. So, it will be about $28 an hour. Okay. So, we're looking at like possibly reducing this this uh uh salaries and wages budget by 15,000 or so. Yeah, it'll be about 14,436 I think I have. Okay. Is there any way before our May meeting where we actually have to do the the the tabulations on the paper that we do uh when we go for the full budget? Is there a way could you send us what that adjustment would be? Because right now all we have is what's in the book which would have been 421. But if if there is

075a place to save, you know, some money and, you know, there's going to be savings, it would be, you know, behooving to all of us uh to know what that is and not have like a a roundish number. But if you knew what that salary was going to be, um, we would know exactly what we could drop that budget. Um, which would be off of the to because we have to do it off the total 60s something million, you know, dollar amount. And even though it's only going to be 15 grand or or roughly around there, um, it would be helpful to have that so we're not shortch changing you either on what you you expect. Uh, certainly I can uh I can work with Stephen and get you an exact number and get that

076out to you guys. Super. That'd be awesome. How's it going in general? Uh, it's good. Uh, we're busy. Um, we're getting through our licensing season. Um, so everybody, we're trying to get everyone on a renewal uh every January to get all the license and food permits renewed. Um, so we've been working through that. Uh, I have some stragglers, but other than that, it seems to be going good. Um, we've been collecting a lot more fees this year, so I'm happy to say that we've pretty much doubled what we've taken in last year already to this date this year. Um, so that's looking good. Uh, and I'm hoping to get those in the inspector position and the admin position posted after the budget gets approved and hopefully I can get staff in there. Um, and then

077I'll have a full compliment to staff, which will definitely be helpful. And out of my ignorance, I want to ask you, um, do the fees that you collect go into the general fund or do you guys have a revolving account that that goes back into? So, most of our fees go into the general fund. Um, the only revolving fees that we kind of keep are any kind of tobacco violations. Um, they they go back into tobacco enforcement. Gotcha. Cool. Anybody else have any other questions? All right. Anything else? Cool. Well, thanks for uh thanks for joining us and hanging on for as long as you had to. No problem. Uh if you have eight, so you're like in the middle of the the department. Yeah. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach

078out to me and I will get that change number to you as soon as possible. Super. Thanks so much. All right. Thank you. All right, Carol. I know you're chomping at the bit over there. Oh my god. Come on. Join us now. The party can start. That's right. 108. My god, what's a different view here? So, I guess if if I can I was doing some calculations which seems to be the bane of my existence. should be count but um trying to calculate how much money has been saved by the projects that we've done and it's I that I always say that's the only place I'm conservative because I don't want to overpromise things or whatever but we're over $5 million in savings since the energy department or since we started doing these types of

079projects. A lot of it's the solar farms and and the street lights were huge. It's like two million of it. But it's just uh something I think worth highlighting. Did you say it's like a 600% increase or No, I'm just joking. Yes. 604. What's it 604? Yeah. 604. Those numbers. Stay with me. I can't remember my phone number. And so I I also have some other news. I guess you know, one of the things the mayor asked us to level fund I have to say wasn't easy. But um it's level funded within $100 I think which was kind of a surprise but um as you know we pay all the utility bills and so some of that is at the whims of mother nature and uh but we also are continually working on different projects

080and things are changing that can increase or decrease. But, uh, the one thing I do want to say, you know, these are always made and I challenge myself to get as close as possible. So, I did just do a checking in today and we're doing pretty good overall. There there are definitely some issues and I'm spending more time on on uh like I track all the energy, but I don't operate the buildings. So, it's a uh has to be a collaborative effort and there's different people involved depending on what what's going on. But um I would say that's almost 100% of my time these days is just trying to get on top of things and get them back in to where they should be. And um and I guess the other thing I just want

081to say is if did I say that? I don't think I did. But but in checking through the the budget, I was very excited to see that we're we're kind of on target with everything else. There were no surprises, which that's always a good thing. And um and the other thing I just want to say is I know the rates because I also um procure the energy, but both of our contracts uh electricity and gas will be coming up at the beginning of 2026. And I just say that I don't need to gamble anymore because that's like nerve-wracking enough trying to predict and you know contract. But um especially given the market right now is incredibly volatile. So even our brokers are sort of like So, just going to do the best we can. And

082again, with electricity, it's for the whole Greenfield Light and Power. So, there's a um not that it's not already high stakes, but it's for the whole community. So, uh we always do the best we can and and I guess I I don't know in the budget I'm seeing, it just shows what I don't know, you you can see what it was last year. And if you have any questions, I'll be as ready as I can. One thing I'd love to see is completing city vehicle fleet inventory. Oh, good god. So, does that mean that that all vehicles in the city would come through you when they're talking about purchasing a vehicle? That's already a policy. Okay. And we just sent out a refresher on that because there have been so many uh personnel changes. But

083just to remind everyone and I'm I'm here as a resource, but we also have a commitment to the state as a green community that we have to uh comply and they're not they don't play. So we have to make sure that anything we buy uh meets the minimum fuel efficiency requirement. And now the next stage is to to start replacing which we've already started with zero emission vehicles which are in our case electric. We have two, another one coming hopefully July. I calculated the amount of savings based on the actual usage of that car that that'll be replaced with electric. I wish I had that with me. Sorry, it's been one of those days. But the amount of money each year that we're going to save just in fuel, even though we're paying for the

084electricity or whatever, it's it's it's dramatic. And that's actual that's real numbers. So those those kinds of things tend to play out and so hopefully we'll just continue. Is there um I noticed there's a lot of um dashes with no information on on multiple buildings. I don't know what like like Federal Street School has no electricity anymore or I I hate newness. Sorry. Yeah. No friendly man. We all hate it. Every year I try to take things out that are no longer in existence. So, for instance, the old fire station had oil. The new fire station does not. Correct. So, that should be Yep, that makes sense. Propane for the fire station, which is listed later. Again, wood pellets. I I've I can't tell you how many years I've been taking that out, and every

085year it shows up in the budget book. So, not Well, there's there's also like electricity at Federal Street, at middle school, at this building. Solar credits. Solar credits. So, they're just offset completely. And that's where we And that's where we put them. I look or just Yeah. Yep. So I keep on top of that. Okay. It covers a same thing with the library. 114 main. 114 Main should definitely be out of there. I mean, we haven't been in there since what? Nobody's been in there. Nobody to clean it either. It's nasty. This place is a a shopping mall. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like I mean the old library is still here. So I I apolog I mean I I did my part and I just defaulted to whatever they call it a

086full list or something. That's fine. It I mean it happens every year and if this is the worst of this budget book then that's not actually bad because we've had really shitty budget books sometimes. It it underplays the fact that we have several accounts that could we should pay nothing on because the solar credits cover the whole bill. Sure. No, that's that's that's positive news. Are there any other questions on energy budget from you folks? Just thank you very much. I know you're taking a lot of incoming from hungry and all this stuff. So, thank you. You're doing Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you. What? What? Yeah. I've had unfortunately a lot of practice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sarcasm doesn't hurt. Thank you, Carol. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you. But if if you do

087have any questions, I'm just around the corner. We'll find you. All right. Uh council on aging 162. Hi everyone. Hello there. Hi. Um thank you for inviting me. I um I greatly uh respect and admire your process and I know it's a tough year. Um I'm happy to answer any questions. Our budget is small as you can see. Uh the 2% increase reflects contractual obligations um payraises for staff uh level funded for the um operating expenses and um I will say well I'm so proud of my staff because they do a great job. Um we all cover for each other. We're operating uh with with 2.8 eight FTEES. Um, not that many years ago, we had five FTEEs. Um, and we are, um, our productivity is really good. I I I don't know how we

088do it, but um, we're doing all those jobs even though we lost a couple of of staff along the way. Um, I welcome any questions. Uh I do like to if I could just take the opportunity to talk a little bit about the department. I know that ways and means understands what we do but I think folks may be watching at home. Um the senior center is in the organizational structure. The council on aging is in the human services division. So we're alongside the health department, veterans, human rights, disability access. Um, and we approach our mission through that lens of human services. So, just to differentiate, we're not a culture and recreation department. And, and that informs how we go about providing our services, there are over 5,000 residents age 60 plus in Greenfield. And

089we're seeing, and this will not surprise you, um since the pandemic, and it's been escalating, um increases in economic concerns, um related to housing, food security, healthcare access, and cost, transportation, um all of that relates to being able to safely age in place, which if you are an older person or you know an older person, we all want to stay at home. we none of us wants to go off and live in a facility. Um so that's sort of where we come in and we're helping people stay at home with those supports around the edges like our lunch program. So you know we had 40 people in for lunch yesterday and 30 something in today. Um a free meal. Uh we are about to launch our um our farm shares program. It's 10 weeks of

090fresh pro produce at a dollar a week. Um, and that does include eggs. They get fresh eggs in that which totally makes it worth it. Um, last year we distributed $7,000 worth of farmers market coupons. And so that's that helped the seniors, but also that's money that goes directly to our local farmers. So um you know elder law consults, bereavement support, of course we do a lot of fun things, too, but the nuts and bolts of what we do are those supportive um services. Digital literacy has been a big push for us in the last year and we are just launching a service to help people figure out their online social security portal. There's a lot of buzz about that and we're addressing that need. I think we're the first senior center to be doing

091that, but I could be wrong. So, um, so that's sort of a thumbnail of what we've been up to at the senior center. I think you already did, but do you want to respond to the letter to the editor that was in the paper last week? Uh, I actually didn't read it, but some of my seniors have talked to me about there was a question maybe about bingo and dances. Yeah, they're just complaining. They were complaining that there wasn't enough services. enough services. Yeah, w services at the actual physical building. Okay. Um, you know, I think for the number of staff we have and the amount that we do provide, I think we're doing okay, but we always like to hear from our constituents. And the best place for me and the best way for

092us to address that is a phone call, a sit down and have a dialogue. Uh and most of the programs that we have, a lot of the peer-led programs came to be because someone came and said, "Hey, how come you don't have this cribage, canasta, maong, ramy cube, um chiang class, pilates, um and we said, hey, that's a great idea. Let's see if we can make that happen as long as it's financially feasible." Thank you. Thank you. I did have a question. Do you know how many people applied for the uh senior tax work? Uh that changes every year, but lately it's been between 50 and 80 that apply and there is room for just 20. Um so I I'm noticing that uh bring more on a financial thing because that's what we're here for.

093um is the some portions of of your staff is paid for with grants. Some of it says just other and I don't know what that means if it doesn't say exactly what the source is. Um but are you running into I see some is through CDBG which is Fed, right? I don't know what the COA formula grant is if that's a federal thing. Are you are have you seen any changes or projecting any changes to uh with the with the feds right now for the next you know year as far as anything that you've heard having to do with these? Right. Sure. That's a great question. So um the other is um is is a roundabout. It's the block grant. So the block grant CDBG um was actually a partnership with Lifepath. So Lifepath applied

094for the block grant. Um then we would that's for our food services coordinator who I don't know how he feeds all those people at only 12 hours a week, but he does he has a lot of good volunteers. Um that money has been discontinued. Actually, Life Path will not, as far as I know, will not be getting that block grant because that is really that Yeah. So, that could be a change. Um, we may been be able to finagle away because it is only 12 hours a week um to cover that um maybe through the state formula grant. So, that's the um the um formerly called Executive Office of Elder Affairs. They're called age now, aging and independence. Um those funds we are optimistic that the FY26 will be pretty stable. It's the FY27 I

095think that we're all really worried about because it's a big question mark. Who knows? And will the state have to make up some of the losses in the federal funds? And then is that going to then spread across all the different areas whether it's our department or libraries um schools what have you? So what the other part that I'm mentioning is the the council engineing formula grants that that are a portion of uh your activity director and your fiscal office manager. And then the part that's not sourced that still says other is I believe part of your salary. Um are those do you know that those are are are going to be funded through the that is that is the state formula grant and um so far as the state budget moves to the legislature

096that's line item 9110-9002 in the state budget and that looks to be funded uh level funded as as um as in the current year. Uh, so that looks okay. Perfect. That's good news. Yeah, fingers crossed. Good news. And it's time good news. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. Anyone else have um any questions for home? All right. Well, thank you for attending as always and uh we look forward to uh you know all of the uh all the services that you you help provide to the community and and keeping that funding there. Um we're going to skip past community economic development. It was already not until 8:00 at night. See, it's always it's it's nice to have fun at these really boring meetings at 8:00. No, 71. Page 71. Um, so even 71 is a boring number. jokes.

097I'm not feeling the love tonight. Um, my budget is pretty self-explanatory and straightforward, but I will flag a couple of things. Um, since you have was talking with Hope about grant funded positions, you'll note that my staff, um, we have three of us whose salaries are paid either all or in full through CDBG funding. Um, one is paid 100%, one is paid 50% and mine is paid uh 60/40 split 60% to the city uh 40% to CDBG. We are feeling um very confident about that for FY26 because it's uh there are federal funds that get paid from HUD to the state and that payment has already been made. Um, as Hope said, FY27 is um just the big question mark and I'm This feels like a a unlikely program to be cut, but I feel

098like every day something unlikely happens. So, um, anything is possible. Uh, another thing to flag for you just in this, uh, graph of salary and wages and expenses. I think there was a typo because it makes it look like I requested like $300,000 worth of expenses. Um Oh, that I had them. No, we didn't. Um so I'm I just didn't want you to look at that and think I don't know. I was doing something crazy. Um what I will say about my expenses, the the what the mayor and I sold on was 20,000. Of that 20,000, the vast majority of it are um required fees that we pay. So my department pays all of the the licensing and annual fees for the kiosk on the common. We also pay it for visit greenfield ma and

099we pay an annual um d fee for the lunt property which has somehow wound up as a line item. I think planning and my department have sort of tag teamed um and so it's been in my department for a couple of years. So, um I think we cut sort of all of the extraneous dollars, but there are certain things that um are coming out of my department that were just uncutable. Um what? Sorry, what the um kiosk what the kiosk? Um it's we it's a small annual fee. What I call the giant cell phone. Yes. Sorry. The giant cell phone out there. Yeah. Um I I would have to get you the exact breakdown. I have it in my budget but there is I believe an annual fee and then we set aside some dollars

100so that when things need need upgrading or they break or whatever um there is a line item that's just for that kiosk similarly a line item just for visit greenfield ma yeah that's okay you'll be unsurprised to know Christian was the first one to catch it um and I guess I would also just highlight that I have a wonderful team who brings in a lot of grant dollars um both to our department and to a lot of the departments across the city through CDBG funding and other um grants and I'm just proud of the work that they do. So happy to feel else were so easy after such a rocky start. Um the clerk I think she actually told me she was not going to present anything anyway. 88 but it's 88 88 to 93.

101Um, I didn't particularly have anything coming out of this department. Um, I know they got a couple hits um on some services, but it seemed uh no stamps for them this year. You get stamps printing it. Yeah. Yeah. They they they they got stamps galore. This they can't print. There's no ink. But I I know Kathy said she was going to come tonight. Uh if anybody has any questions, I guess we could we could grill the mayor a little further if we want to. Put up enough with us. She doesn't have to come. All right. And uh we can move on to the inspections. And hey, Mark, I see you up there. How you doing? You're still on mute. 122. Thank you. I think you're still on mute. Yes. There we go. How about now?

102Hey, there you are. Hi. How's everybody tonight? Well, thank you. Um, uh, tonight uh, talking about the department of inspections and enforcement budget that is actually broken down into three parts. Uh, the first part is the building inspections which is found on page 122 through 125. building portion is page 123. Uh you can see there is an increase for salary and wages that increases to cover contractual agreements between the city and the union. Um the expense items you'll notice there is a 43% reduction uh that came out of one one line item which was the legal services. Uh the mayor feels that uh if the building department needs legal services that uh they can cover the attorney fees from other places than than that budget. So there's a $3,000 reduction there. Um so the budget

103is pretty straightforward. Um do you have any questions on that portion of the budget? I do only on the expenses. Um I'm just looking back at like the four-year look back, so to speak. Um even if I were to eliminate the $3,000 in legal from right now, that would make it, you know, $5,300. Well, she dropped $2,700 off there. Um overall, only is 3,000. Maybe it's just misprinted. It's misprinted at the top. Okay. a typo. Yeah, it's a typo at the top. Um but um I'm also looking at I I I'm seeing uh last year's budget had 8,300 um which would have been the same as this year's ask, but why was that a a $6,000 jump from 24 actuals, 22 actuals? 23 had somewhere in the middle there. It was in like the $4,600

104range. But what do you have any idea about why there would be such a a drastic uh influx in in the the expenses request to begin with? Uh I do not have that answer. Uh what I can say is is that it's difficult to budget uh for cases that we may have to take to court for enforcement. So it is difficult to uh budget for those, right? But that would be what I'm saying is that that would be taking legal out all together. So if we were to drop three grand off of I mean obviously 2024 and 2022 they were only $2,000 in actual expenses. But even with dropping three grand off to $8,300, that would still be $5,300. Is there is there a reason have the like I don't I don't know what your

105your obligations are in here but have like the meetings and seminars gone up significantly or the uniforms or what what would have caused the what I'm saying is to eliminate three grand from the legal part from the conversation. um the ask still would have been $5,800, which is a significant it's it's more than twice what the actual expenses were in all three of the the the prior years, but almost double what the actuals were for 22 and 24. 23 being a slightly higher year. But um I just didn't know if you had like like what what changed in the rest of that um uh budgeting even if we took legal out of the the question. Um I don't have that answer. I can look into it further. Okay. You can get back to you on

106that. Um it uh the expense line items have been pretty uh level funded for the last few years. We have you know we do have uh clothing allowment. Yep. Um meeting and seminars to continue our education for uh certifications. Yep. And then office supplies, things of that nature. just the the daily office uh materials that we need to operate. Um but that essentially that essentially the reason I'm asking is if I take those three line items together that's $3,700 just on supplies, uniforms, and meetings. And that's $3,700 without anything else. But the actuals in 24 were 2,300. The actuals in 22 were 2,000. The actuals in 23 were a little bit higher. They were 4,600. So that's why I meaning did did those things go because I'm not I don't have that part here um

107listed as to what the asks were the prior years. So that's why I'm just wondering did those things significantly go up as opposed to previous years? Because I would I would literally look at this and be like wow well we're at least going to need $3,700 straight away. Um, and then when I'm seeing the actuals from 24, it's only $2,300 for the whole year. So, it's one of those things where is it is it overbudgeted or is it because something changed, I guess, is the question. Well, I don't believe it's over budgeted. Okay. What I can do is I'll look into it and uh get you that information. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. Any other questions about the building inspections portion of the budget? If not, then I'll go on to the second part, which is

108weights and measures. Sure. Weights and measures. Uh that's a contractual agreement between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the city for inspections of weights and measuring devices. If there's no questions on that portion, then I'll go to the third, which is for the Furcog. Uh there's contractual agreement between the city of Greenfield and the Furcog for electrical, plumbing, and gas inspections. I I have a question regarding uh yeah you obviously do the building inspecting inspecting in town the plumbing and electrical. Does the town get any of that income generated from the inspections or is it go for for it's just them. We don't get any of that for the electrical, plumbing, and gas. Yeah. We collect all the fees associated with those permits and the city keeps those fees and it goes to the general fund.

109Okay. So, the inspectors So, we try I So, how does it work? Obvious we don't we don't supply those inspectors. for top outs, right? Correct. The they have to get paid those guys, right? Or those people doing the the wiring plumbing and gas inspector. The plumbing and gas inspector are the same same uh inspector. Uh those are county employees through the county inspection program. The city of Greenfield contracts with the county for their inspectors to perform the inspections for electrical, plumbing, and gas work. Right. I get that. But we collect the fees. We collect the fees. We do all the data entry, process the permits, data entry, and the inspectors do the inspections. Off the top of your head, and you know, I'm putting you real on the spot here, Mark, but off the top

110of your head, um, we're, you know, we see 103 grand we pay to Furcog do the inspections for us. Do you roughly know what we generate in permitting fees? Or maybe I'll throw Stephen on the the the line here on what we collect on on inspection fees. Like, I mean, is it a worthwhile investment, I guess, is what I'm I'm asking. No, it's a very good question. Uh, I don't have that information with me right now, but I can get that uh information and get that to you as well. Great. As well as yours. But you, you know, surely it's I know that and you can so you can look on the computer. correct me if I'm wrong, but so far they they've done a great job building inspection, plumbing, and electrical because we're actually

111working on sorting that all out financially. They're up um they're like I think 100,000 more so far this year. That's for the three. I'm thinking those are through the city, but I don't know if we separate out Mark. Um, the ones that we do with Hurac 29. Oh, great. Really? Yep. Holy crap. Never had this before. That's why I was just asking. Oh, cherry sheets. Look at that. Receipts. All right. Where is it? Is this and that and that in but is that only inclusive of the building department or is that I mean are we talking now board of health licenses? It's everything right. So it's it's not parsed out. No, it's not right. So we're looking at roughly like a half a million is expected building inspections, health and right now. I just looked

112today. It was $429,000. What? What we've generated so far, but not that's that's not revenue. That's what we've taken in but not what we've expended. We've taken Right. Okay. I can't tell you the other part. Sure. Let's put it here. But maybe not. Right. That's why I'm like like are licenses and purposes that also include like dog dog licenses like No, that's in a different category. It is. Yep. That's in That's under goes under the clerk that closes to the general fund. That's not under But this is under local receipts. Oh, maybe it's under local receipts. So local receipts. That's what I mean. Like I mean I get it. Like I don't I don't really I guess I don't really I do know that much. Just for the building inspection. Just for building inspections, plumbing

113and electrical so far this year. 429 which is up significantly from Okay. Yeah. Cool. No, just good to know that we're, you know, if we're investing 100 100 grand into a county inspection program and we're actually, you know, still benefiting from financially from having them there, not just, you know, uh, personally, I guess you'd say. Again, I can get you some figures and, uh, get those to you to help you out. Yeah. That' be cool. I mean, yeah, if you have a moment sometime, I'm sure you're very busy and working hard over there. I know it's uh so it seems like a a silly ask in a way, but we all try to do our due diligence as we can, right? We'll get you those numbers. Sweet. Right. Thank you. You're welcome. While we're on

114this page, I just have a Oh, yeah. curiosity question regarding Yep. because maybe I should know this but I don't. Um mar we don't get any revenue for mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar marijuana anymore. We don't do that. Um that's a good question. Go ahead. Somebody else answer. No, I think we don't. So marijuana we don't do that. Um there's one part they used to have those little agreements with the what do they call those little HCA agreements I think with each municipal that's over right so we don't get that I think that there's still and I don't know this could be wrong so I'm not sure about the answer to this I think there's still something where we were

115taxing the sales the actual sales over the amount that um you could that didn't go away. Now, where that goes, like does that just go in like as tax and come in? I haven't seen that separated out. So, I don't know that. I'm actually watching that one myself. But, um, that marijuana revenue that we used to be getting from each one of those, I forget what it was called. What was that? It was We had a little through like the through like the host agreement. Yes, host. I knew it was Yeah, host agreement. those they decided that really wasn't great. They it wasn't quite kosher in the state and they they they didn't want people to be doing those with the because they couldn't find the impact that that actually had on the community. But

116you could tax a little bit over whatever the regular tax was for purchasing marijuana. What pot that goes into, I don't actually know, pun intended. Yeah. And we can try to find out. Try to find out. But but we all can we're collecting an extra tax. Yeah. Yeah. I just I that those three um and you know we have all there's three things that we're watching to see exactly where it goes that will come from the state and you like you can't tell exactly where it comes from. the meals tax, the lodging tax, and that one it's like trying to there's sending it to try to try to have it come in and to post it to the right thing is a little tricky. So, but I'll try to find out. I don't know. I

117don't know who we are with that or what we got. We're going to hit assessors here. Anybody on on for them? Where's she at? I don't see anybody once you're hidden. You want to do accessories? All right. Part of Randy will be played by Stephen Half. Have any larger version of Randy. I just sent an email out. It's not Randy, but it's not Chuck. Yay. in the assessors department. Yet again, they've had a lot of flux, but thank goodness Randy has stayed with us and done an amazing job um uh re-evaluating and and finding uh value that uh we didn't know existed before. So, kudos to him. Uh the FTEEs have not changed in that office. actually he just uh was able to hire a um a clerk uh to help out. Uh so not

118a lot of changes in the budget except for the expenses. Um you can you see that uh property assessments went from 55 to 35. Uh because he has a full slate of folks, he won't need as much RRG um contracted services in the future. Uh so you know he's he's done a fantastic job with that. I was going to gripe on the amount their elected officials get uh stipens like higher than ours but I won't I mean it's pretty this this is like maybe the easiest budget like literally across the board. It's one of the easiest ones to look at. Be like, "Yep, the engine of the city." Yeah. You get a $20,000 cut to generate more revenue. I don't really know how we say no. Think I'm next. You next. Accounting. Oh, you're not

119even listed on here. They didn't they didn't they didn't even get it on the agenda actually say anything. I don't know. I don't know if like by by open meeting law if I'm even allowed to entertain you talking about it because it's not on the agenda. Oh that I will Yeah, we'll sit down. Uh John, I know you've been here a while. I know the public safety folks have been here a while. I'm going to ask if we can do like a five minute break to stretch our legs. Wait, what? What? You want to hit pause on there? Can you hit pause on there? Can we hit pause on? Stand up. recording. Well, all right. Welcome, John. Hi. How's everybody doing? Better than before. Um, so just before we start, just a little quick bookkeeping

120thing. GET, I don't know why it's been the same since GET started, pays our retirement directly. So, when you look at our total expense number, you need to add $175,470. Last year, you all did two orders for GET. It doesn't really matter to us if you do them or combine them into one. That That's your prerogative. But the proper way 204 to 206. And if you look down, hold on. At the bottom of 206, it says that the budget for GEID is $2,215,000356. That doesn't include 175,470 for retirement. So the full number is 2,390 826. And it's the way it's been done. It's been some years the council has voted separate orders. some year they do it together. It doesn't matter to us, but if you want to do it separately, the the number is

121175 or 70. So 2,390 last year was 2,326. It's about a 64,000 increase. There's a lot that's sort of looped around for that. The biggest issues we have are like everyone else in town, retirement and healthcare has gone up. For us, it's around $35,000 in total increase. The other really big increase we have is if you go to OSP Group, we are at I can't $84,000. That's um a pretty big increase and it is because we have very old trucks and the maintenance cost to keep them on the road is getting to be heavy. But, uh, a specialty truck like a splicer truck set, even used, can run $130,000. So, it makes sense for us to continue to work to repair them and keep them on the road. Uh, at some point, maybe next year,

122maybe the year after that, we're going to come and say this is a bond issue for us because we have to, like anybody else, access capital for different things. But at the moment for this upcoming year, we are instead choosing to handle that out of operating funds. Um even at 2,390, you can see that um we are projecting to have a really good year. Um the total number up on top uh is uh what I would say is it's 2 million. I'm jumping back and between the two. 2 million 547350. I will say last month we took in um we had net invoices, not the cash in net invoices of 204,822. That there's two things about that. That means we are now officially doing over a 100 times as much business per month as we

123were when I started. And it also means our annualized from this going forward before any new business, before any price increase, before anything is 2,457864. So we already have the revenue to cover the 2,390 at 2 months before the year even starts. We've had very few years where we've ever had it drop. We've grown consistently since we've started since I've been there seven years ago and we'll grow about 90 something,000 in this current fiscal year versus the previous and we're not projecting more than that even though if you were out on um the roads today uh Berneston Road you would have seen a police detail and she said people out working on Berneston Road headed up north. So make ready is a nightmare and I will never say anything different but we're How is it

124going up on I know it's not a financial question up in the meadows. The Meadows is actually the farthest I don't know if you remember we have to start at Seance Street which is the the house we have there. So we're going to go up and then work our way over to the Meadows that we have put a bunch of strand which is just wire essentially. So we've done that work there too. There still are a few holes that we have to figure out. Are we going to go through the make ready process or are we going to actually just drop down and and dig a conduit to to bypass them because the make ready process is incredibly time consuming and expensive. So e even however that works out we we have to go Berneston

125Road and work our way over to that area. So, we're going to go up Berneston, then we're going to go out to Bon Road, and we're going to do um East Log Plane and I can't remember road West Log and I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the others. It's all good. No, no, you're going But you're going to go the Barton Road route from 5 and 10 and then the Meadows. Now, we're going to start, but the first thing we need to do is go to the what we call the local convergence point because that will drive a huge portion of the north. We will then after we get that set up and the laterals pulled there, then we will go to uh and build out from Colin um and uh build up to the meadows

126and then up beyond the meadows up Green River Road up to Arnold Lane and that area too. So, how far do you go? right now just out of curiosity. I know it's a little bit I'm giving a little bit of brevity here. Uh we currently go uh just beyond the route 2 interchange and we get up to like Stonley Burnham School and just How about on the western edge? On the western edge we get out to the road beyond um whole rain but we haven't gone pretty much GCC there pretty much. Yeah, but we haven't gone north from there. Yeah. Um, we also will go out east Log Plane Road, but we've found a way to pay for that with a grant as well that will connect over to like Lamp Black and Adams Road.

127And then down Adams Road and down to the Greenfield Office Park. And that same grant will actually get us out. It will be a Stark. It's not everything, but it'll get us out um Wisdom Way and down towards the uh we're set to connect up the uh recycling center, the transfer station, and we'll be able to pull off of that. In addition to that, we are um soon to start with the Weldon. We found a way to not do make ready work for the Weldon, so we're going to start that soon. And we've just met with MAPC which is who have been deputized from the Mass Broadband Institute and we are working on uh full coverage grant covered programs for the Winslow for all of GHA which would be Morgan Allen House. It would be

128the Winslow house. It would be we already cover Elm Terrace, right? But we would be able to do f we would be able to connect to every place on Elm Terrace. There's digital equity money um that would allow them to have two years of free internet. Yes. Um and then we also have internet out at Oak Courts, but we'd also be be able to do everyone at Oak Courts, too. So between Oakarts, Elm Terrace, the Winsslow House and Morgan Allen added onto the Weldon, we're capturing, we've really been trying to work not just for low mod income, but senior low mod income. And that really gets us a really good It's in total, it's about it's almost 400 dwellings. Yeah. Apartments. Oh, for sure. I know GJ has like 300 on their own. Yes, they

129do. And if you add that to the 105 at the weld then you get So um again financially for us we uh we're going to finish this year in the black. Put some money into retained earnings. Next year we have a chance to finish well into the black. We need to do that. We need to build up our retained earnings. That's something we know we need to do. That's something we know that EO is interested in enterprise funds doing. So, we feel that operationally we're we're set for a good year. Part of that is because this year we have about $517,000 of primary debt service. This is the last year of a three-year stretch where there was a little bonding error in FY22 that led to us having to pay back the bonds in three

130years instead of the normal 15. That was that added about $120,000 a year of expense. that goes away. So we are at uh 382,000. Hold on. I can tell you the exact number is 3822. Yep. So that's a a nice drop down. We um that is what's left of the principal and it should drop generally speaking by about 11 or 12,000 a year as we really get to the point where the original 5 million bonds and early bonding we did are getting paid off. So we're at that point now where we've grown like I said to a point 204822 last month is actually higher than the first projected month of next year. So, we're getting to revenue goals a little faster. Um, we there are quite a few people up north who we know want

131service. So, once we get service up and running as we go, we will pull laterals, which means going from the main road pulling off into neighborhoods. And we anticipate that we will have some really good new customs next year, which would is not particularly reflected in this. So, I think it's a pretty conservative budget and after years of work, we paid this year. We started a year early doing indirects. We're paying indirects next year, but we don't have indirects plus the elevated bonds. That's really helpful. That was going to be my question was having to do the indirects. I know this is a new addition to your budget. Um, we pay it in fiscal 25. We're paying it this year. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. So it's a it's a well it's a new addition to me

132being like by me saying that for four years. Yeah. It was it was something we knew was going to happen but the city was covering for a period of time right and we had talked about that previously. So the and maybe Stephen maybe you can answer this better. The 175470 he's talking about in retirement is that already reflected in the retirement budget. So it's not an addition to anything that they've already put in there. Perfect. And I worked with the mayor last year I believe indirects were 143 and just everybody's in the same boat when you get a huge increase and that went up to 165,000. No, I just wanted to make sure that like what we got what we got for numbers even though I know you're saying it's it's adding to what your

133number is on on on page 206. It's already been included into other one. That's why I was That's why I just want to confirm that that it wasn't going to be an addition to No, the 2,398.6 includes both of the indirects. That's also included in the 2,250 and 356. You just don't see the retirement, right? Because that goes the other we pay that directly. So, it shows up in retirement, but it doesn't show up in the budget book. I don't know why we pay it directly. It just means is not the other two enterprise funds. It just comes out of their indirect. So I did subtract it because I didn't want to charge the taxpayers for something that we were getting. Sure. No, and that makes sense. I just want to make sure it was

134already covered before is and this is something where that's good. We're comfortable. Whatever you guys think best way to do it, this is fine. So great. So it sounds like something Hanks got down. I think everybody's working hard trying to work together and I think everybody wants we save Greenfield people a lot of money. We save them we think about $1.2 million a year. Uh we have worked with the city and added a lot of BLS. We haven't changed what we charge Greenfield for seven years because I think that's part of our mission eventually. I'd like to see us work that down from where we are now. But I I think we've we're at a point where everybody knows people are working hard and on all sides. So that's a good thing. So in a

135few years you're going to be buying fire trucks, right? We actually want we have to right we have to figure out how to uh address how it works. Sorry. Sorry. I was just um so any other questions? There's a few other things that have gone up and down. We last year we had merchant account fees which are what we charge uh for we we get charged for credit card fees. Last year we thought we could offset that as an expense but we've worked with the state and what we have to do is leave it as so that is bumped up a little bit because now what we do to be in compliance with the the uh division of banks directives about how you can pass through fees. We leave the fees in total and we

136reflect it. it's up uh we have a line on it called processing fee and we do that and that means when it happens the our third party can take out the process fees we don't see it geek gets none of that money it's a complete pass through of processing costs we did offer people an option to not pay any processing fees by switching over to a electronic checks and hundreds of people have taken advantage of that we do talk to people regular ly about because we're trying to do everything we can to keep every portion of internet and internet and TV as inexpensive as possible. That's all I have. Any other questions if people have? Thank you very much. Thanks for hanging around. Have a good night, folks. All right, fire's up. Second guy, public

137safety. Oh, public. Right. Right. Never mind. I'm going to need you to put on your real eyes before you ask me those questions. Uh before we get going, uh uh I've asked uh Deputy Macgyver uh who has taken the role as deputy chief as of Sunday this week uh to join us uh so he can be a familiar face to the council. Um I grew up next door to him. I don't So I'm super thrilled to have him here uh with me. Uh just a couple things. Uh there's a there's a couple things that may be a little bit confusing within the budget book that I want to just point out. When we submitted our budget, uh it is on page 116 and 117 for the part that we're talking about. Um when we submitted

138the the budget book, uh we do it in like December, January, we have to finalize it by that time. So things change within that time frame. One of them being is the deputy chief. So, if you look at the at our staff, our staff is a chief of department, a deputy chief, an office manager, uh an administrative assistant to fire prevention, and then uh it has um uh one, two, three, four, five, six, seven captains listed. One of those captains is the deputy chief's job. So, it's six captains. So there are four shifts that work uh uh an average of 401 hours a week over an 8week schedule. Each shift has a captain, each shift has a lieutenant. So that so that deputy chief is one of the captains combined, right? So you add that

13925 correct to the 90. That's correct. Right. Okay. So basically take the last captain and add the deputy chief's line and that's the deputy chief's line of if that makes sense. And then uh the the um that upgrade we are not replacing the captain um we will still have uh a captain in charge of fire prevention. Uh and then an administrative captain that uh basically is there's a bunch of stuff that he does including training and assists with fire prevention and a lot of other other things. Um so that's our our command staff and then you'll the the list of firefighters there uh with two firefighters now coming out of the revolving account. We are for the first time um uh in a very long time at what we used to be 20 years ago.

140Um I will point out and I point out this every year uh when I do my budget presentation when I first got on the department 30 years ago now uh u you know we were running an average of between 800 and a,000 calls a year. We are on track for this year this year uh 2025 to be uh over 37 to 3,800 calls. Um that's a dramatic shift. And when I first started, we had seven on a shift. We still have seven on a shift and we're doing a tremendous amount more volume. Um, you would think that it's the ambulance and you would be right in that regards that the ambulance has seen a big uptick in in the amount of calls, but we are still averaging um, you know, shy of 2,000 fire calls

141a year. Um, that's everything from car accidents to what we call smells and bells. Those are your your smoke detectors going off u uh to structure fires. I'm chirping downstairs by the way to take a look at it. Uh so um so that's our that's our staffing. Um now what is as important uh as the amount of firefighters and staff that we have is that because we are such a small department and we strive to have a fire truck available when you call it. um our overtime is is always comes into question. And so um we were in in excess of $300,000 in overtime. Uh our budget this year uh reflects a decrease from last year's overtime, which was a decrease from the year before's overtime. And so our goal as staff increases, overtime does

142decrease. However, I really need to make this clear. we were way over budget with our overtime. The fact that we've been trying to come back in line with overtime um uh we have reduced the amount of overtime considerable um based off of the numbers and then you add in the contractual increases. Every time you give a raise, the overtime goes up. So, uh overtime is a challenge. I have a breakdown of overtime. Um I we track every penny we spend on overtime and the majority of of of stuff that we do is emermergency um related. It's either covering shifts that are short or it's recall which means pulling back firefighters if they get committed on a call. If we're going to be committed for 15 or 20 minutes, uh we recall firefighters to staff the

143firehouse. If we go out of town, we were staff firefighters. Um, and then if we have a a larger event, uh, we we we bring in more help. So, a structure fire for us could be anywhere from a an additional group recall, uh, uh, to the whole department recall. And I have it broken down uh, and and I'm happy to share uh, but basically uh, you know, our shift bills uh, we we did about a 702 hours worth of shift bills. We were up in the thousands for that when when the staffing um we've seen an uptick in the last couple months because I have three firefighters that are out injured. Um uh one of them that's been a long-term injury. One of them that uh u lucky to be here with us. Uh uh

144he was involved in a uh structural collapse where the building fell on him. Uh he still hasn't returned back to work. We're hoping that that's going to change. And then we have a health mental health related uh firefighter that's been out for a little bit. So our overtime's crept up a little bit with that. Um to offset that, we have hired two new firefighters. They're in the training process. They're going to the academy. Uh and when the summer's over, hopefully we have just about everybody up to speed in in our in our shifts staff. Yes. Um I had asked you this and I don't see it in here. Maybe I Okay, look. um receipts or trips ambulance. Yeah. I sent it to the clerk's office. Okay. Uh maybe I got I didn't see it. It

145was a while ago. Do you know copy ahead what you brought in? Uh so our ambulance receipts, not what's in the account, but our receipts has been averaging somewhere around 325 to 350. Some years it's been more, some years it's been less. Um, we were really conservative about that revolving account. Uh, I um because we knew that that there's there's challenges with predicting emergency calls. And so I didn't want to build out an account where we we put have a lot of things um that that are charged to that and we don't meet the revenue to support that. And so we we've kept that um we've kept that uh pretty well in check. I will tell you that we are spending more than we're bringing in uh more than we're bringing in now. Uh with

146the budget that we're going to uh which means that that's going to deplete over over a year or two. We've taken $300,000 out of that for the the fire apparatus. I'm happy to report I'll change the subject real quick on that. The I'm happy to report that the fire truck came in at 1.83 83, which means the savings is going back to the city to for the city. The mayor has a bunch of projects she wants to get done uh that may help out with a project. In addition to that, the sale of the ladder truck is going to go the the funding for that is going back to the city. Um so there is some positives uh with that as well. But to go back to the ambulance revenue account, uh we are taking

147two firefighters out of that position. When you take the firefighters out of that position, you take the whole firefighters out of that, which means you're paying their holidays, you're paying their uh fringe benefits, you're paying you're paying everything with that. Um, we have some accounting stuff that we're working on uh for this fiscal year. Uh, you you if you look at it, we really haven't touched that account. Um, we're going to do that at the end of the year because one of the things that we didn't do is when you when the contract was signed, we didn't come for a financial order asking for that increase into our budget. And um, uh, the mayor wanted to do it uh, rightfully so, right away to show it. I asked if we could wait because uh in

148my opinion I I just I didn't want to go back and ask city council for two transfers if we were short another way. Uh and she reluctantly uh agreed to that, but she wanted to have it seen right away that that that account is being used and it is is being used appropriate as it was budgeted for. Um, so, uh, I will follow up and get the, uh, another up to date for you. Um, we get, we get it monthly, but Yep. Yep. And, and the private ambulance services charge substantially more than you guys do. Um, that could be true. Yes. So, we have no control over what what they charge. Well, my point is is why don't you guys charge more? So that's a great question. That's a very lengthy conversation that I'll try

149to narrow in two seconds. Uh the you have to understand the difference with service. Well, this is a great question because people have have it all the time. The primary ambulance service is what we call an ALS service. They are paramedic service, which means that they can issue medication. They can do things like uh a doctor or a nurse can do out in the field. We provide a basic level. Uh, and you'll notice when we get to talking with that, we call in a lot of intercepts. That is ALS support for us. So, it's a usually an out of town ambulance that comes in and assists us. Uh, and and they charge us a fee and we charge for the overall fee, but their fees, long story short, their fees are what they charge. They're

150a private ambulance company. We have a zerobased contract with them, which means that we don't subsidize them at all. Um, what we do do is for us to be able to have that zerobased contract, the workload is shared with the fire department and the fire department does collect revenues and pays for the ambulance, most of the ambulance portion of it. Obviously, not salaries, but it does help with the salary line items. So, hope I answered that. Yeah, we just looked for interrupting, but so far this year, Stephen, look at the revenue thus far this year is $335,800. Is that from January? For the fiscal year. So, we're going to be a little bit higher this year, but year uh which goes back to what I said at the beginning, our call volume is everly increasing.

151And so, you know, and one of the positives, if you will, is that you do see an increase in revenue when the ambulance is more active. Um, uh, if we were to take that over full-time, we would have to talk about staffing, increasing staffing, and there's just not enough budget capital right now to be able to even talk about doing that level of service for us. But, it's definitely something we've run the numbers, and it just doesn't work out right right now. Is is some of the overtime pay a judgment call whereas you think you're gonna be over in terms for two hours and it turns out you're only there for a half an hour or something like that or so does it happen a lot? It does happen. Does it happen a lot? It

152doesn't. So yes, it is a judgment call. Um for example, uh last week we had multiple fires on the railroad track. Um, and so I got on the air and I pulled the hook and I had the whole department come back. Uh, and we used everybody and we used mutual aid. Um, but it was it was the guys were so quick they got it over. So, you know, it it's a little bit yes. Simple answer. It's it's a judgment call. We're really good about predicting what we need for resources. Um, the mutual aid part of it. We are talking with our uh uh some of our neighbors about automatic aid. Uh and we couldn't support from an overtime standpoint going out of service every time if we're going. So, we're talking about different different options

153with that. Um but but yes, sometimes it's a judgment call. My f my captains are very cognizant about the budget and uh but at the end of the day they have my authority to say hey we're we can't leave this emergency right that means the city's uncovered right and so um you know people talk sometimes about call fire departments and why don't we use call and and and the reality is is what's acceptable time limit to get an emergency apparatus an ambulance or a fire truck to your house Right? Because that's what it comes down to. So if we don't recall people during an emergency like and we wait for the next emergency, right? Well, take me I live on Berneston Road. How long is it going to take me to go from Burner Road

154to the firehouse, grab a fire truck, and then go to the next emergency? I don't think the citizens in the in the city expect that kind of response because that's about a half hour plus response at that point. So they expect when they call 911, an ambulance or a firetruck or a police officer is going to show up when they call. They don't like when they're pretty good at that late. What's that? They don't even like when the pizza gets delivered that late. I haven't scrutinized the contract because it's just, you know, prints too small. Do you guys what you have when you call somebody in? Is there a minimum? three three hours. Yep. But again, we we are we're very cognizant about we have different levels of what that recall looks looks like, right?

155So if our ambulance goes to Springfield on a patient transport, we call two people in to staff that ambulance if if they're down staff, right? If they have if they have seven people working, those two two firefighters go to Springfield. We don't call anybody. It all depends on how many people are working. And what we do is we maintain an engine company of three and a second piece ambulance of two. Um, and so if they're committed for like a a motor vehicle accident where they're extricating somebody from a car, they can't leave that and they're not going to be able to leave that for 20 minutes or so. The officer may initiate an engine recall, which is three firefighters back to staff the next engine. So I it it it it's complicated uh but it's

156been fine-tuned over the years. When I first got on the department, if we went across this certain line in town, which was Silver Street in North, you would automatically go committed and they would recall firefighters back. If I did that today, it'd be close to $500,000 in overtime, which is that just doesn't make sense. So what we do is we we know we have call back when we know that we're going to need it, right? Instead of waiting to say, you know, there's a report of a fire in a building, we're getting multiple calls on that, we don't wait to have people come back. Sure. Because when you show up with three guys on a fire, there's not much they can do by themselves. Um, so that's why they need that's why we depend heavily

157on call back and our call back isn't really So our mutual aid we spent 279 hours of overtime uh in a in in a half a year. Um, our call back, our regular call back outside of what we call a box alarm um is about 300. So, it's about 600 hours of overtime a year for our regular call back to make sure that that firehouse is staffed. And that's really our goal is to make sure that when you call 911, you have a fire truck or you have an ambulance that's going to be headed your way right away. So, it's a model that we've we've strived since I've been there. It's something that I I I I continue to this day. What would be the um only because these are very like generic terms. Um,

158but and I'm sure that they I'm going to hear the contractually obligated, I'm sure, answer, but uh there's a line item here for incentive pay. What is that incentive? So, we have education incentive. Education incentive. Yep. That's primarily what that incentive pay is for. Okay. So, we pay firefighters um similar to um the our our brothers up on High Street. Uh if they have higher education, there's an incentive for that. Great. Okay. No, that makes sense. It's just when you get it's like a blanket term. So, I'm like, what is that incentive? Yeah. No. No. Great. Any questions on that? Oh, I will show out uh that our expenditures, we did have a major line item uh moved to another uh revolving account uh for this year. Um um the the it's uh being charged

159to our firerevention account. Um that is for this year and next year it's going to have to we're going to have to figure out a way to get it back in the budget because I don't I don't project that that account will be able to support it for You talking about $80,000? It's Yeah. So, the the the computer program that we do, and it's all-encompassing. It's one computer program. It It's $42,000 for everything. Um that's being uh uh um taken out of one of the revolving accounts this year. Uh which, um uh I support the mayor on on on that move. Uh um we had to make some changes. uh was um um you know a necessary move that we had to make. So, but next year it's it's we're going to we're going to

160have to be aware of that. So, other than that, any questions on the overall operating budget? On that, does anybody have anything else on like we got the ambulance and the fire and the enterprise fund? Yeah, it's separate. But yeah, so we have two accounts. The fire prevention account um uh that's listed there. That's where that 41 uh 41,000 has been transferred over. That's why it's at 86,000 this year. Uh our revenues for I believe it was last calendar year was 40. Yes, sorry about that. 61. uh revenues um according to our records uh that we brought in for that account was 46,000 last year. Uh we're going to be spending 86,000. I think there's 90,000 in there right now. Um so um um and then the ambulance revenue account, we've uh we've talked about

161that. We uh we've increased that to almost 400,000. Um, so we're going to be, you know, spending about equal to what we're we're taking in for that and we're we are going to have to go back to that account at the end of this fiscal year um because we are going to have some overages within the department because of the contract. But we're trying to make that very very minimal as possible. Right now we're I mean budgeting even right but you're saying there's right now about 90,000 in the account before this next budget year. Is that what you just said? I believe there's 90 90,000 in it,000 from software 5,000. That's not listed in here. It is. It is. So the total budget that we're going to be using out of that is 86,000. 86,

162right? using out of that is a revolving account,000 but it was a way to offset I'm not this so this is I'm seeing 61 and I'm seeing like the funding source of 393 grand uh the top of 61580 for fire oh fire prevention okay sorry I was I jumped out ambulance it's okay That makes that makes a lot more sense to me now. So, the third I'll just get to tell you real quick the line items with that. The overtime self-explanatory. There are uh every time there's an event in town uh and they're all on the weekends, every food truck, every event needs to have an inspection. Um so, uh that's primarily what that that overtime is used for. Contractual services is a computer program that we talked about. Uh supplies are self-evident. And then

163the uh fire department vehicles are leases currently. There's two leases uh for the smaller vehicles. Uh that this account uh for the last 15 years have paid for all the smaller vehicles, all the administrative vehicles that that we have within the department. Yeah. Someone asked that question about last year. So leing is cheaper than buying. Depends on when you do it. When we did it, yes. If you were to do it now, I don't believe that that's going to be the case. So the you know as interest rates fluctuate or whatever and that's why when we you know when we talked about the truck u and and the mayor was adamant uh about purchasing the truck versus leasing it just didn't make any sense. The interest rates were were too high and and the cost

164would have been too much. So um we we've been able to like I said been creative and and and and save some money off of that purchase. But yeah, then the last one is uh 1585. You'll see that there's two firefighters that come out of that. Um there's uh training overtime. Uh so every firefighter that's in which they're all EMTs except for one. Um they all have to maintain their certification. The certification's a minimum of 20 hours per person uh a year for training. Uh that's where that uh training comes from. Uh overtime, we talked about the overtime. if if uh that's primarily when the ambulance gets committed for a long period of time such as they're taking a patient to Springfield or they're taking a patient uh to uh um North Northampton or if

165we go mutually uh with our ambulance which we go uh we go you know probably 40 times a year out of town. These are fire related fire or car accident. What's that? That's it's related to a car accident or a fire. If you're transporting someone, you're not just transporting someone because they asked for a ride. No. So, uh I want to make it clear for the gut public. No. So, it's an emergency call, right? If you are um what we call a STEMI or a heart attack or whatever, you may back past Franklin and go right to the appropriate care facility, which is Springfield. If it's a trauma call, you're going to the trauma center. You're not you're not even going to Franklin, right? uh that it doesn't happen that much, but it does happen.

166And then um based off of medical need, patients have requested to go to Northampton versus Franklin. There's a whole process that they need approval. It gets complicated, but that does happen. Yeah. Yeah. So, you were saying the training portion I'm seeing like on the second on 62 there's an EMS training there line and then there's the training overtime on the first page. Is that what is the differentiation between those two? Um, yep. Hold on one second. EMS training. The the overtime is the overtime. The training is we have a thirdparty vendor that provides the training and and data collection like a contracted service. Correct. Okay. Specifically for training. Gotcha. So um happy to answer any other questions on that. Uh the last thing I'll end with is uh mutual aid is always a discussion. So

167we always try to prepare to have that um because we do do a lot of mutual aid. So uh our mutual aid uh out of town for fires uh was 48 times means that we assisted anybody from Bradboro, Vermont to anybody in Franklin County for for mutual aid. We did it 40 48 times. We received mutual aid 45 times. Here's the here's the caveat that we've added. When it's a fire and we have something Uh like the fire we had, I'll take the last fire we had on School Street that went to a second alarm. When we go to a second alarm, that's two different alarm levels. That's a first alarm and a second alarm combined together. That's 14 mutual aid companies that are moving throughout the county when we have a second alarm. So

168it may sound like we give a lot of mutual aid out. We receive a lot more in because we take a piece by piece, right? We're sending one piece out of town. We don't send multiple pieces. When we have a fire and we're moving 14 companies throughout Franklin County and the surrounding areas, we get a lot more in than we give out. So, for example, with that Turner Falls comes and assists us with a fire, we're taking an engine company and back filling falls and it just, you know, it just it's a it's a very complex system, but it it works well to get the resources that you need up. Is that computerized? I mean, is there a formula? How does that work? I mean, we have alarm cards uh that we update regularly. It's

169kept at Shelurn control. They are the mutual aid coordination center. And all we have to do is call our dispatch and say, you know, transmit the second alarm for uh structural and they have the list of who we predetermined of what we what we have uh coming in. Now, the last fire we had, we went to a second alarm before my second alarm assignment was there is when the when the structural collapse happened and injured a couple of firefighters. So, we were scrambling a little bit because uh our our our mutual aid components weren't weren't in place yet. But, um uh and that fire uh it sounds like a lot of resources were there, but everybody worked um on a cold Sunday morning at 5:30 or 6, wherever it was. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's

170a lesson uh for us in the fire service that um things go bad quick and uh you know we're hoping that our firefighter will make a speedy recovery and come back soon. Don't I have other questions? I don't know. Any others either with our budget going next year, just so you know, I've already been in talks uh and we are going to be going through the process again of looking at what we can do to eliminate some of the overtime. It's going to be really tight next year for the overtime as it is every year. And we are looking at possibly making some adjustments. I don't know where I because any adjustment we make with overtime at the end of the day comes down to coverage of the city. Thank you. Last but certainly not

171least for hanging out, guys. At least you guys are warmed up now. Yeah. I mean, you got first last year, so yeah. These are just the list of things we have accomplished in the last year and what we hope to accomplish in the coming year. I didn't need to read it over. You guys can read back on that. We got a We got another week to We're on page 112. Yes, sir. Yes, we are. Um, in referencing some of the earlier conversation, you'll look at the budget and you'll see that it absolutely looks like I swung for the fences on this. Um, what you see though is actually I had put a request for three cruisers in the budget request. That's the biggest increase that was ultimately removed and went through capital. So, that was

172the biggest thing we did add. I added or at least hoped to add in several areas of expenses um simply because over the past several years we had been cut quite a bit in a lot of different areas. So trying to rebuild some of those funding sources for um training equipment things of that nature. But you know and again the mayor and I talked I'm not opposed to any part of this. I think in terms of expenses for next year, it's definitely going to be tight, but I think everybody's doing their part and we usually do our part as well. Um, a a concern I have, and the mayor's aware of it now, is if you look at the expenses, you guys can direct me as you will, but I'm jumping down to expenses. The

173vehicle repairs and maintenance line, which is the first one, I put in for $32,000. The reason why I put that in there is I don't have the ability to change the titles. So, vehicle repair and maintenance is says vehicle repair and maintenance, but it actually includes in it the substation rent. So, what happened now was the substation rent being about $12,000 leaves us about $6,000 left of cruiser maintenance, which I believe we're over budget on already at the $20,000 for this year because we have super old cars that we're trying to replace. I don't anticipate our maintenance is going to get much better next year because the cars continue to age. We will have five new of a 12 marked unit fleet. There's still seven well over five years old. They'll be moving into six

174years old. They're better. Um we're we're battling it, but we're getting there. I do believe our crews are taking much better care of the cars. They understand where we are. Um we make sure they're cleaned and maintained regularly. Um but they're m they're machines and we're going to have to keep up with that machine. So, um I I think we know, we have a plan, we'll figure that out. Um but that was one I want to point out in particular because that's we're it highly likely we're going to go over on that one only because it combines the uh substation and a cruiser man. So in in terms of salaries at the top, not to jump you all over the place, but the salaries are are really just contraction bit of that is a contractual

175number. So um and I believe one of them and I HR reached out today the court administrator is actually a little low for what he'll be getting next year. So that's going to have to be a slight adjustment. I don't know. Wasn't there a third um wasn't there a third uh patrol uh person with the the cops grant or has that just not been filmed? That only seen two on there. It's two two WTE on the bottom. So when you see patrol step three with grant there's two. Yep. That takes into account both Porsches. That's about all we have left on that grant. You're going to see this year it's over. Okay. And in fact, I think after putting in for next the next quarter, that's about all we're going to have left. Oh, yeah.

176It's going to be about it for 26. So, we'll exhaust that in FY26. One of those one of those is covered as step seven with the grant. They don't really care about the steps. I take it from their overall salary. Gotcha. It's just the balance of what you're seeing there. Gotcha. And again, they are. So one of them, Officer Baron, who's covered by the grant, we hired him. He was a 10-year officer from Ammer PD. So we start him commensurate with his experience. He started at step seven. Right. So So we So we paid him and then the other 40 grand was from the grant. That's right. To supplement. Yep. Yep. And we've done that for the last two plus fiscal years. We've gotten about 90,000 per fiscal year towards officers salaries, but again, um

177that will run out in the next fiscal year. I I'm not sure. I haven't seen it reposted yet, but we'll be definitely energetically looking for that. The the crew right now is, you know, they've been put on notice with with deputy chief as well is we're going to be looking for grants to offset our expenses. We've done a pretty good job finding money like that. Um I had written a lot of grants in the past. A lot of the speed signs and things of that nature that you see around town in the trailers are grants that I had written previously. We just got two more of those speed signs delivered today. Um the deputy chief took over doing grants and he's got some of those. Um so we're going to continue to keep working on

178traffic enforcement stuff. Uh and and those signs work well. I think it works better and I get yelled at all the time is the the cars that we put out in the middle of the road. I think it works. I'm gonna hit that with a slow down. It works. It works magically and this city pays nothing for that enforcement. So it's great. Yeah. Um so again, expenses are are down, but I think everybody's expenses are down. Like I said, um Carol talked a little bit. Um, we did order, we started the conversation today about three new cars that we appreciate this crew approving for capital. Um, one of them will be a an electric vehicle. So, that's going to be a patrol car. It'll be a patrol truck. Truck. It's going to be the Ford.

179Yep. Yep. Yep. We already talked about that. MHQ doesn't have it in stock. Uh, but what we what we heard from them was only going to be about a month longer than a normal car. I believe they do have some hybrids still in place. I'm not sure. Um, they're not really recommending them at this point. There's been a really heavy increase in maintenance required on these hybrids. I think they put the cart before the horse a little bit on the hybrids. Um, particularly when you're talking about upfitting all the police accessories into them. I think that's where we really run into the problems is it really burdens the system. So, um, in fact, the last two we got were were straight gas cars. That was my fear when I was bringing this up at the

180last council meeting is I'm happy to hear that one of the three that we're going to purchase is going to be, you know, electric vehicle. However, that is something we ran into not only in this industry in a lot of industries is, you know, putting the car before the horse like we we we want it to work. And you know, so when I said there really isn't the technology there and you know, it was alluded to that like well Stampton has one. I'm like, yeah, but E has one. Like if we have one car and we try it out, great. Has one. I don't want to I don't want to put our three purchases of new cruisers all into a hope like, okay, we do one out of three. That's that sounds reasonable to me.

181And if it if it ends up we find out great that works out, we go to purchase ones in the next year or two years uh to replace our fleet and it and it actually is functional. But we ran into that with hybrid cars there. We've run into it in so many other um so many other parts of like business and parts of the world where our aspirations are are bigger than what we can actually attain. And I'll say this for anyone listening out there who thinks they're going to bring the goddamn gas blower ban up. That ain't happening. It's not going to happen. It just doesn't exist for for that exact reason. Is is I I like this method of trying out with one of the three purchases that we have. But if we

182all of a sudden invest a bunch of money and getting three electric cruisers and we find out they're now we have three shitty cruisers for the next $300,000. And again, so when I was approached on this, I've never been, contrary to what many have said now, and there's many on both sides of this issue. Yeah. The vast majority will come to me and say it'll never work. I can't I'm not going to say that, right? I I won't say that. And and some say it's the only way. It's the And I'm not going to say that either. What I need to do, and Carol and I worked very well together on this, was give me one. Yeah. Give me one. We will put it through the paces. legitimately like we're putting through any other patrol

183car and we're going to report back to you. This one's going to be a truck, a pickup truck pickup truck, but it'll be used exactly like any other car, right? It's on an F-150 frame, but it's an SUV. It's it's it's what it is. So, what we're going to do is we're going to hopefully create in the midst of this without any other people, we're going to designate a person per shift to basically own this truck as a road safety unit. And and if there's been a lot of incidents over the years that we've been on that people although they think they want to see, they shouldn't see. And so we've spent a little bit of money again on grants where I bought through grants what we call our scene our scene um screens. I

184see. Right. We can put these up around major traumatic accidents or we had a person pass away in his car on the side of Federal Street. We don't want people driving by and people don't want to see that. I can assure you. So the individuals assigned to this truck, the road safety truck, will be responsible to bring that stuff to these scenes. When we have a micro burst that shuts down 40 streets in Greenfield, this will be loaded with police tape, stansions, you know, folding road clothes stuff, all the stuff required, flares, the whole gamut. They'll be the first to go. They'll they'll set this up. Now, we do have DPW. the conversations have happened in the past, but they usually like like the fire chief said, "Call a firefighter." Well, it's even slower for

185DPW. And that's not a criticism. They're home watching TV and they're called, they have to come in, get to the DPW, grab their truck, put the stuff in the truck as they empty their trucks at the end of shift. We're already out there rolling. So, in safety, in scene safety, this truck and the the the individuals in the truck will be spreading out the safety stuff to to secure the scenes of these things. So, we have a plan for the truck and at the end of this I want to give an accurate report, a straight accurate report as to whether or not electric vehicle actually works for police departments. I want to see it in the heat. I want to see it in the cold and it's going to be deployed just like every other

186car. Um, Carol's working with us. She's hopefully going to secure some funding to put a twoplay charger at the PD. Uh, we'll do that on High Street side so that we're not trenching across the driveway to put a charger in our sal. It doesn't make any sense. We'll park this right along the high street side of the yard and they'll have two places for it. So, it'll start our array maybe and if this vehicle works, we already have a second that we can do if we acquire enough. So, um we're doing everything in in my opinion, we're doing everything to try to make this police department match the city. Uh I take I've taken the entire last year, we've reflected upon things that we've done. Um, one of the very first things I did was

187not replacing myself as the lieutenant. I dropped that position. We had three lieutenants. I dropped that position. I said, I want to put that on the bottom out on the ground out on the road. So, that's where we started because what we wanted to create was that downtown business district person. We wanted to create and expand on our community impact unit stuff. And that's what we've done. And and again, some of the expenses that I requested in here was to augment those operations, right? So, um I'll give you one example was um this one that's down it's it's under uh prisoner meals. So, I had asked for $2,500 in prisoner meals. That again, I can't change the titles of them. Um but what I was what that was actually for was for the CIU, the

188community impact unit. Um, now Lieutenant Batinsky set up a lot of initiatives throughout the course of last year that got us really involved with um, the unhoused um, children all over the place. We did trunk or treat and I ended up sending one of the lieutenants with my debit card to BJ's to buy more candy because it was bigger hit than we ever anticipated it was going to be and I certainly didn't want to run out of candy, right? So, we're doing all kinds of things like that. So, I put that in there. But I understand again we're all doing our part. That was cut down to 500. We're not going to hit the taxpayers with that if we could help it. But um a lot of the requests were quite simply because we're trying

189to expand on those services. I was kind of hoping to to pull on more civilians as the civilian liaison thing that we could have maybe pulled from some of those um areas there. That would have been people sitting in the substation or walking around with our downtown business district individuals that we have working. Um, so again, it was very responsibly reviewed and cut and this is where we're at. I did, like I said, I did shoot for the fences and you know, we ended up where we ended up. We'll get through it. Sure, we can get through it with this, but expenses will be paid. Okay. Every department, it's happened to every department. Mhm. have a question. There's a pretty big cut in the schooling tuition. If you could talk about that from 25,000 to

19010. Um, I know what the mayor did on most of these things, she's going to look at where we're at right now on our current budget year with respect to those items. Um, and again, I don't have the actual wording of what's in there. I'm hoping that means schooling and tuition. Um my assumption was everything keeps getting more and more expensive, but we likely didn't we didn't spend to that extent this year. So she cut again it's that's fine. We we can we do pursue as much as we can the online training that we get. So, we have to do uh each officer must do at least 40 hours of inservice training a year and then on top of that they have to do the firearm, CPR, defensive tactics. So, we got quite a bit

191of training that we do. I'm a proponent of getting out of the building to do it. Um there's a lot to be said about um being present in other venues with other police professionals. Uh the problem with that is if you do it that way that cost so you're driving there um they have to pay for the venues, you're paying for the classes. Um the alternative is sitting behind your computer and watching those 48 16 hour online drag on classes. I don't I I personally don't think most get most out of it. Particularly if you can imagine yourself as a patrol officer. They're shooting back and forth in between calls. So they'll have this video on. They'll pause it. They'll run out on a call by the time they get back and shut them down.

192So they have to log back in and restart the entire So again, my plan was to try to spend a little bit more money on good training and get these individuals out of the building. But um we'll do what we have to do. We're going to live. We're going to make it. So, I actually have good news. Really? You want to share that one? You want to leave with that? Well, two good things. So, the the MPTC Mass Police Training Commission increased the rate for an academy. Um, they doubled it. They doubled the rate, right? So, we budget for that. If you see academy training 32,000 um that was for the way it works, you've seen that we offer that sign on bonus. That worked good for about five minutes. So, we already can't get

193anybody else. Um but the academy tuition went after these numbers were written down doubled. Well, the delegation went to work and managed to offset it. it went back to what they were charging us. So, we're safe there. Um, the only other concern we have is co-response. Uh, for any of you up to speed on the co-response program, co-response is really a jail diversion program, but it's more than that. It's actually a hospital diversion and a jail diversion, it's really um it it combines civilian um crisis technicians with police officers. And right now we live that program off grant money. $300,000 a year total. 200 to CSO, 100 to us. Um what we're able to do with that money is buy all the gear and equipment we need. Um the deputy chief buys a lot of

194those little knickknacks we give young people, the little squeezy hats and all that kind of stuff. What that we also do at the truck or treat. That grant pays for a lot of those things as long as you have a little thing on it that says full response on it. So, we put everything in our world says co-response. So, the grant pays for it. Um, but they're threatening a massive cut. That's too bad. Massive cut to the tune of 18. Right now, it's 18 million and they're going on to 2.8 million, I think. Wow. The state. So, the delegation is working hard on that one. We'll know in the next uh few months. I think we would continue to do this program. Uh I think cso would continue to do what we're doing like you

195know come on up anytime and take a look. We have an office dedicated to our corresponders. They have their own room. They mix with us and and if anybody knows how our culture was historically you don't let anybody in the door and and they are part of us. They are in fact a part of our agency. Uh in fact officers on a regular basis are calling for them. So this is not something we need we should go backwards on. No, I really not agree. And we should add to it. I think CSO would continue to keep it going and we'd certainly be able to do that. I think so. Not all is lost if the grant funding is gone. We just probably wouldn't be able to do as many shifts with them as we're able

196to do right now because that's overtime stuff that people. So, any question? I was just thinking about last year when we were sitting here green. Green. No, he's green. He's green. A few incidents have happened in the community in the last few weeks and it just shows how far and it's mostly because of you guys, you know. So, thank you very much. Just the culture is different, the attitude is different. You don't hear as much negativity to still those who can't help themselves. But in general, it's a more positive, you know, hopeful growing uh atmosphere for the city because of the concussion. I appreciate I appreciate all those who care and who have reached out. I appreciate the contact. We really are we really are trying to do the right thing. There's no I said

197it day one and taking this position. I have no ulterior motives. I don't. the city spends a lot of money on a police department and as a result of that they deserve a police department that does what they need it to do. Um I don't believe we're wasting money. Uh we're doing everything in our power to save money. One example was the dispatch center. You know, as we're out there smiling and waving and hanging out with people and doing our walks on Main Street, we actually went to work and that you can notice I don't leave anything alone. I'm beat up on everything I do. But I look like that when we were tearing the dispatch center apart, too. So, uh, we we brought our tools in. We went to work on it. Um, when

198when things happen that you're sort of suggested, it's hard. I'm a human. I take things personal and I know he takes them more personal than me. We'll be in a funk for a week that I got to rub his head, but I bring him back. It's hard. I got I got I don't know if everybody here I have seen that dispatch center and it's looks like freaking Star Trek in there. Anybody please come up and take. We're very proud of that. We're slowly trying to make the rest of the department look at least something similar to that. It's not a quick process, but we're definitely proud of the dispenser. Does look good. So, what on that on that note, um I know you're you were you were around uh during the let's just say the

199uh capital needs request of, you know, three years ago or whatever that had like a a five phase plan or or whatever it was. Um and so we we funded part of that to begin with uh amid amidst contention. Um the second year we had asked for an update and nothing had even been spent. And so it was essentially like well if you're not doing anything with this we're not going to approve you for any more money. Um and then we that kind of obviously got lost with the last uh uh gentleman who was in your position. Uh what as far as that assessment that was made by those architects going forward? Do you do you foresee or what do you foresee of those needs that were at the time being uh realistically put forward

200like next year, the year after or whatever? or or are we just going to do like a a a full revamp of the capital needs assessment? I think as far as the grounds the physical grounds are concerned, it's probably going to we're going to have to revisit it. I think um what I can say in all fairness that was not the past chief's it wasn't his fault. It was not his fault. Um engineering the actual firm dragged us out over two years. Right. So what happened was he had a very good plan of how we were going to proceed. We were I I was put in charge of trying to coordinate all that stuff and I got to the point of having screaming matches. Like come on, right? I get that you have these other

201big projects going on, but we're also in that position where we need these things done or we're going to lose our opportunity to do that, right? Um and then of course things just got worse, meaning we finally got the engineers to drop the plans and then no one would build it. So, we just kept getting hit from every direction we we could go in. What I can tell you is this. It that was not his. I know he took a lot of public beating for that. And in all fairness, I will say it was definitely not Rob Hay delaying that project. Okay. Um it was 100% the engineers not putting it us on the top of their list at all. Right. Um so what we did is we did do the drainage there. the detectives

202offices, which are the the basically all the offices that are along the bank in the back of the PD, had water infiltration in there. So, we had to do a water infiltration mitigation. So, they ran um drainage around the back of that. That didn't go without issue. So, they pulled up the entire generator wire and that caused about $25,000 worth of additional fund for us. So, but it got done. That part got done. What we really need I said what we really really need is that sally port that's off the back of our building. It's so far out of it's horrible. It's out the door just fell off the other day. Like it literally just fell the person door fell out into the it's gone. Um central maintenance came up and put a new door

203on. But it shouldn't have got put there in the first place. It's a metal building on asphalt. You're not supposed to do that. It's it's it's in violation of code. birds fly in and out of it all the time, even if the doors are closed because it's not really sealed to the building. Um, it's not it's not really as safe. Um, snow when the winter comes firing off the side of that. Um, I've been trying to get a um a cover over the entrance way, but some officer is going to get taken out some year. I just crossed my fingers every year that they they haven't yet because on metal roofs, if you're aware, they come down in a blanket. Yeah, corrugated metal. They're coming down in a blanket. When they want when that snow

204comes, it comes all together and it's a tons of snow. So, uh, but these are things we're going to have to talk about. What we are doing was we're going to take that money and kind of continue on the report station area. So, the report station area, and I welcome any of you to come up and hang out. Um, he's been up quite a few. He knows where we're at right now, and he knows what our building is all about. We haven't touched the vast majority of this building in over a quarter century. Working on 30 years. So Chris and I were in the academy when we did the transfer to this new building. And look how old he is. And he was a young B. Just keep taking it from he'll get it back.

205Yeah, we're at we're at like 30 years and we're working with the same countertops, the same report stations, the and they're all the edging on them are peeling off. And so we have a plan again, we took it, we didn't go to an engineering firm. We drafted this up oursel on graph paper and we have a plan to enhance and sort of to add a little bit of pride for for the officers redoing their reports they should. and we're going to try to mirror a little bit of what we did in dispatch in terms of the aesthetics there. Uh it's not going to be as cutting edge, but it'll be fresh. Um so we're going to take we're hoping to use a little bit of money from that capital to do that. Not a lot.

206Um and we're also now looking at part of the original capital was redoing the lockers. That was a much bigger process. There's a couple million dollar capital requests to tear down walls. Re sort of re like we were going to make like three lockers and hallways, one big locker, one big genderneutral locker. There's no way we're going to be able to get that done. But the lockers, I call them, they're tin foil now, right? So, we're accredited. We have to lock them. They secure their weapons in there. They secure a lot of gear in these lockers. and you can walk up to any of one of them and just grab the handle and plink it open because it's been ripped open for 28 29 years. Um, so we he just met with the locker supplier

207who was part of that original capital and we're getting prices to replace at least just the lockers. Not tearing walls down, not redoing HVAC, not doing any of that. Just getting ourselves some safe lockers. And it's likely that's it's a six figure ask. We have 40 plus lock, but the rest of it I think we're gonna have to start from scratch, right? Sally port. We really do need a new sal like a three bay. Deputy the retired deputy chief put together what we would definitely find to be a worthwhile sally port for that building. It was there was a bay that was heated so we could wash and maintain our cruisers in the winter. There was a bay that we had storage in. And then the third bay was one that we actually could safely

208bring um arresties in and out of the building. Right now where we bring arresties in and out of the building is also storage. It's also the cleaning area and it's also where several individuals have gotten hurt because they got thrown into that stuff by the arrests. I think it's going to speak a lot of volumes to have a newer presentation for that. Um, not only has the maybe the temperature gone down nationally right now, but certainly locally. Um, with that, I think there's a lot more, as I think you were alluding to, there's a lot more trust um, and and a big difference in uh, in public response in the last year or so. um that I think that that would be something that would be that would be good to see is is a

209fresh look at that and a fresh um kind of presentation on what what is actually needed. Um there was a lot of course I' I've cautioned a lot of folks um and I I have to remind myself of this often as well is you know we're not in those departments. we're not in the departments. We shouldn't be making those um logistical decisions. You know, we we rely on our uh the directors of certain departments or whatever, chiefs in this in this department um to make those calls. And ultimately, yes, it comes down to a financial thing. And that's where we come in. Um I I wasn't a big fan of where some of the talks went a few years ago. Um they seemed a little spiteful. Um they seemed a little bit self-motivating. Uh but

210I won't say well I say that without without um not saying that uh the the response uh from from the previous uh administration if you will didn't help. Um and I think that that's something that we've all um gained uh now. And I I think that it's a it's like I said, it's a good at a good time and uh it's good good place to do like a good start over. Um, and so having a fresh look at those whatever those capital requests might be because we all we all know, I'm sure you know more than anybody else. Um, there's not going to be a new building. There's not going to be a new building in this town for like at least 10 years. Because that's fair point and and we did talk about that.

211the committee came off to look around and and essentially the common sense approach to that is I wouldn't anticipate putting millions into this building if even in 10 years they're going to buy it. Right? But what I said was only put into it what you can get something back from. Right? So if you put an addition on this building, I'm assuming it increases its market value. So you it's not a loss if if you do that, right? Um and and certainly if those areas that you enhance on those building aren't super like exclusively police type things like a three bay garage isn't just something a police department could use, right? So I and again I said that's something we would have to look at. You know it's already got a cell area that's our police

212thing. It's got a booking area that could use some enhancements in it. But if if and again what we talked about was like an outdoor moving the sally port from against the hill to the middle. Yeah. Right. So, so cruisers pull in and go through and then come out the other side, right? Um, my proposal on that, although when I talked to Carol about it was I'd like to do that but with a solar array, right? So, get it away from the mountain. Put it out there and now we can run our chargers through that system a new but again capital would that have a value to something other than a police department in 10 years when the police department vacates to a new building. So I think I think common sense would have to

213go to work and say only the city shouldn't spend all this money unless it's something they can get a return on their investment and that's fair right and and lockers is probably not that although what I said was we can move lockers right yeah yeah yep is great terms we love in fin you guys and and uh it's sheriff's book you have two different booking systems Correct. Used sheriff. Yeah. Like for inance, if you make an arrest and you got you bring an arresty through your salary port, when he ends up at the Elm Street College, he's going to go through their sal. So they they spoke him a whole other different way. So it's well I mean there's a heck of a lot more cutting edge. But yeah, but I guess my point is

214is for you guys to bring them directly to the to the Elm Street Sally port makes no sense, right? I No, no, actually I I spent years fighting that fight and the plan has finally came into alignment with certain administrative changes up there and I finally got my way whereas they agreed to do direct books. We call them direct books. So, we're not doing what you're saying anymore because that's a waste of time and a massive amount of liability. Every time you put somebody in a car and take them out and put them back in and take them out, that's a problem, right? So, the jail finally agreed just bring them straight to us. So, we actually set up a computer system in their facility so that officers if they they make an arrest in

215the field, they put them in their car and they drive straight there. We had to go to our house first all the time. Right. So, so basically just you have your own little like it doesn't work. So, that was good. Um that's not there yet. So, they try to log onto that computer and it takes you about three days for the home screen to finally show up. So, we scrap that. But what they do is we do the paperwork, we'll call for bail, we leave the person with the jail, and then the officers have to go back and do the reports at at PD because our software simply will not process fast enough in their facility until we get the right tech in place for it to do that. Um, but we're working with the

216sheriff every day on a million different issues, all of which I think are going to benefit the city. Part of it is that and and she's more than willing to put the technology in to make that work. So, we're working together more and more. Great job on that one. Good job. It's been good. They're everywhere. I mean, you guys work hand to hand. Oh, we're doing they're they're part of us now, too. Chefs. Cool. It's a positive note to land on, isn't it? If there is no other questions um then uh our next budget meeting will be a week from today, April 30th at right here 6:30 and on Zoom unless something else happens we have to post it differently. Um we're going to do uh it looks like tech the Franktown Tech School will

217be able to attend this one. Um we're going to have a brief presentation from the mayor on the operating budget and then we are going to do our deliberations and recommendations to bring to full counsel in May. And if spoiler alert, if we can get all that done next week and Tammy, if you're listening, don't give me anything else for May. We might just be able to skip our regular meeting in May and go straight to full counsel. So, and that also goes for you too, your financial. So, hold off until um or at least make it like so pedestrian that we can just give it a full. And uh with that I would take a motion to adjurnn. You're doing that second. All right. And all in favor? I All right. Well done. Opposed?

218Any abstensions? [Laughter] And we are journ [Music]