Good evening, everyone.

This is January 27 edition of the Finance Committee.

I thought what I'd like to do to start is put up the agenda just so folks have an idea of where we're going tonight.

And there you go.

We're going to start off with

the town meeting Warren article that we are sponsoring.

Then we're gonna go over the list of Warren articles and try and get some folks to sign up so they can be in charge, be responsible for keeping an eye on those presenting to us and then writing recommendations of updates from town administrator and finance director.

We'll have an update from chair of the school committee where we are on the financial reporting and budget format.

And then we'll go through liaison updates and be thinking about we've got a request to have a liaison to the Council on Aging Advisory Board.

And we'll do the minutes.

And so it's a full agenda.

So we do want to take a minute.

I want to let you know that our administrative assistant, unfortunately, regretfully, has resigned due to some family responsibilities that have popped up.

We've had that happen a bunch on our committee from time to time.

So we are seeking a new

John Gerstle, Administrative Assistant and hopefully that'll be not too much too long to get that so we're going to ask our our able clerk to take the minutes this evening he's graciously.

said that he would do that for us.

Just one second.

If folks, when they make motions, can go slow because I'm juggling a lot of stuff here, so I want to make sure I get everything right.

So, thank you.

We'll make sure that that happens and we'll repeat motions for you.

Thanks, Don, for doing that.

So, first,

David Fekete, Ph.D.:

: article of business is to discuss.

David Fekete, Ph.D.:

: The submitted 2025 annual town meeting Warren article to amend the bylaw to set a quorum of finance committee and the majority of appointed members in the set a timetable.

David Fekete, Ph.D.:

: Fulfilling of vacancies and we're fortunate to have a member of the Finance Committee nominating committee here as well to weigh in on that David fixer so thank you Dave for coming.

So always good to see everybody.

Always.

I redistributed that article.

And I think also I have a copy we can put on screen.

See, we have that comes

Okay.

Is that being shared yet?

And you see the amendment?

No, we actually see in the chair.

Yeah, I think I got to stop the old one.

I was gonna get the new one.

Sorry about that.

How about that?

That's fine.

Okay.

So we've seen this as committee.

In essence, what it does is

Let's start with the Section 12 , which talks about filling vacancies, the change, and I'll just read it with the suggested change that we're proposing.

In the event of any vacancy on the finance committee, the nominating committee shall solicit candidates within 30 calendar days of such vacancy and consider all submitted applications and present such candidates to the finance committee within 30 calendar days thereafter.

So that's the first change that we're talking about.

And I think that's the one that you're interested in, David.

Since yeah, in 12, in 12, six, and also a corresponding change somewhere in 12, seven.

Right.

Okay.

So let's take the let's take six first as we go through it.

And I think what I did, David was kind enough to show us what he's suggesting.

And I'll let you read that change that you're proposing, David.

Sure.

Thank you.

And thanks again for the committee to allow me to speak.

Very minor suggested edits, just to marry it to what we all talked about the last time.

As written before my edits, this would conceivably require us to present candidates that we don't think warrant any kind of consideration to the Finance Committee.

So what we propose is to have some very minor changes over there, and it says consider all, delete the word and, consider all submitted applications, which is what we would do, and present suitable candidates, if any, to the finance committee within 30 calendar days.

And so we'd be deleting the word such, adding the word suitable,

putting the words, if any, after candidates.

That's the gist of the change.

It just sort of codifies what we've been doing or what we did the last time when this happened.

Okay.

And is there any comments from the committee on these changes?

Anya, we'll take you first.

Yeah, I think these are actually important changes because, you know, we've had this discussion in the past.

The Finance Committee is different from a lot of the other committees that it's really important that you have financial background.

What we do is it takes a long time to ramp up anyways, even if you have a financial background.

I mean, I deal with numbers every day, and I remember it took me a year, if not two, to get up to speed after I joined the Finance Committee.

I can't even imagine if you don't have a finance background.

So I do think...

making it clear, suitable candidates, if any, meaning that people can be rejected if they don't have the right kind of background.

I do think this is really important because like I said, it is definitely very complicated to begin with.

And without the financial background, I don't really see how somebody would become an effective member within a reasonable amount of time.

Thank you, Anya.

Anyone else?

Any other comments before I go to

Judy, no one from the committee, okay.

Judy, comment.

Thanks, Zyra.

So two things.

One, Anya, I fully agree with you, but I want to be super clear because I've actually attended these nominating committee meetings for, I don't know, the past three to four years.

Multiple people on the nominating committee, including Mr. Fixler, regularly point out that you don't need financial background to be on FinCom and that, in fact, it's completely unnecessary.

So I wanna be clear that I think FinCom has unfortunately a basic mismatch with the views of the nominating committee.

And that's probably something FinCom should take up with the moderator since the moderator currently still appoints the nominating committee.

Separately on this language, I'm glad something's going to be done because I don't like the situation we've had where the nominating committee has just chosen to sit on its hands and not solicit folks.

I do think since soliciting candidates is literally an email to the clerk that then gets posted and then you post on social media, I'm unclear why they need 30 calendar days to send an email.

I agree that they need an amount of time after they solicit the candidates for the applications to come in.

So I have no problem with the second 30 calendar days, but I'm not understanding why it takes someone 30 calendar days to send an email to solicit for a vacancy.

Because under this language, they can literally wait till the 30th day after the vacancy occurs.

And of course the vacancy only really occurs when the person resigning turns their letter into the clerk.

And the nominating committee chair, who presumably would be the one to solicit,

can wait until the 30th day after that happens under this language to post the vacancy.

And I don't see what that gains us.

Like I agree they need some amount of time, they could be on vacation, something could be going on in their life, but it shouldn't take the chair a month to post a vacancy.

Thanks.

Okay, thanks, Judy.

I'm sorry, I missed Phil.

I think I didn't see your hand might've been up.

Phil, and then I'll come back to you.

I put it up a little late.

I have two questions, two comments, questions.

The first is, I'm not sure the purpose of the 30 days is that applications are open for 30 days, in which case they can't just have somebody apply that

let's say a friend of the nomination committee, and then immediately shut the process down?

Is it that they're accepting nominations for 30 days before they meet so that people don't have to literally respond to the email the day it gets put up, the posting?

I'm not sure if that's the purpose.

And the second question is, what's not clear to me is after 30 days, if nobody applies,

Are they relieved of their duties?

Is there another 30 days?

Does it roll over?

Or say they get 30 days, they get candidates, they don't accept them.

And then do they have to start another process and open it up again?

Or does it just die?

That's an interesting point.

You would.

hope that the initial advertising would seek it.

But what if there were none?

David, can you shed some light on that?

Uh, sure.

Uh, well, that goes to the point, which I don't want to relitigate, which is that that's why, that's why our point was, what if we get nobody?

Why are we forced to do all this?

So I don't know what to tell you.

I could tell you that, uh, what happened the last time was we got, we didn't get anybody, then we got somebody.

And so we, we, we interviewed people and we, we put them up.

So,

I don't know what to tell you.

That's the problem with this, is that once you start messing around with a bylaw, you get them having unintended consequences.

So I think Philip's question is a good question.

But I want to go back to Judy, because once again, Ira, you let Judy completely mischaracterize things that I've said at FinCom nominating committee meetings.

And there is no mismatch.

So let me correct the record.

And I really wish you would

You would ride herd on people who are saying, you know, who are, again, making attacks and saying negative things about people who are doing volunteer work.

So first of all, yes, I have said that not everyone needs to be – has a financial background.

I certainly didn't when I was on the FinCom.

What we try and do is we try and get people – you need a certain amount of people with a finance background, but you also need people who know how to ask questions.

You also need people who know how to read complicated documents.

You need people who are willing to work hard.

If you had all – if you had 11 accountants on that – or CFOs on that – on the finance committee, you would have an unbalanced committee.

So there is no mismatch.

There is nothing to do.

You want to talk to the moderator, you can.

But I'm very proud of the fact that we don't automatically just say – unless you have a finance background –

You know, don't bother applying because there's been many, many members of the finance committee over the past decades that don't have a finance background that did very, very well.

And there are people on this committee that did not have a finance background that we put on that are doing very, very well.

So, you know, I just think that was a complete mischaracterization of what I said.

I didn't say nobody should have a finance background.

I said there needs to be a a mix.

So to me, this is a simple fix.

And this is the way it works.

If there are good candidates, we will move them on during this interim period when it's a vacancy during the year and not in the regular cycle.

But remember, the regular cycle starts here.

It's starting now.

So we'll be interviewing in a month anyway.

So at some point, it's a diminishing return to have to continue to go on and do this when we're already interviewing for the term that begins after town meetings.

Okay, I think that's fair.

Okay, we're going to move on now to the next section, because I want to cover this.

I want to move things along.

And you can come back when we talk about voting.

But Anya, do you have something different to say?

I mean, I think the point that Philip made about, you know, that we should maybe have some language in there that the application period should be open for at least 30 days.

I think something like that makes sense, whether the number is 30 or whichever number.

I think because it would help.

I think it would help even what David was saying, because at some point there's diminishing returns if there's nothing happening after 30 days.

I think there are no applications at the moment.

And I think that's also the answer.

It could be reopened later, but if you have it open for a certain amount of time and nobody applies, which, while it may not have happened recently, I remember in the years, this is my...

eighth, ninth, something like that, eighth year on the committee.

We've had years where essentially nobody applied.

This is not standard that when we put it out there that we get applications.

It's not uncommon that we get zero applications.

So that's not a question of, are you qualified or not?

There's literally nobody interested.

All right.

But I think that David, thank you for that.

But I think that is covered with the way the language is right now.

No one's forcing anybody to go out and pull people from the street, right?

And it will be a cycle that will return where people, the posting can remain, et cetera.

So let's go to the next section.

If I just may, Ira, a quick one on that.

Oh, go ahead, Dan.

I do think we should have language, though, to address what the discussion is in the event that there are no candidates moved forward.

I don't know if we need to have that tonight.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, Well, I mean, tonight we're discussing.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, So now we're discussing it tonight.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, Yeah, so we have to discuss it tonight.

But the thing is, if there are no applicants and then applicants and the position can be filled.

Well, the posting, excuse me, the posting can always remain up if there are no candidates.

It's the consideration and it's implied and I believe it's incumbent on the committee as it exists if there are applications to act upon them to go when there are, when we fall into that situation.

David Ensign, So there is some responsibility on the members of the committee to follow through.

David Ensign, This is the intent of this change go ahead, Dan you have something more.

Okay all right let's look at seven.

David Ensign, So in section seven.

David Ensign, we're changing to a.

the finance committee shall meet at the call of the clerk.

Within two weeks has been the bylaw.

And that's been something that we really haven't held to for a variety of reasons.

But one of the things is that after town meeting, there's all sorts of,

Burt Lazarin- burnout and things that we're waiting for to schedule our meetings to reorganize and what we've sort of put in as a 45 calendar day instead of the two weeks um.

And it's within.

So we certainly don't have to wait and I don't think we've always waited 45 but that sort of takes us past the period of post town meeting and up until a time when reserve fund transfers have to be done, etc.

So there's usually a meeting anyway before that.

But we wanted to become more aligned with what was written in the bylaw.

So that's why we changed that to a larger amount of time to pass.

The next thing as we go down where the finance committee shall have the power to fill vacancies by vote.

of instead of on, that's just the language change.

By vote such candidates must be considered and selected from a list of those recommended by a vote instead of to be presented by.

So again, this is detailing some more action oriented instead of be presented of the nominating committee and follow an attested notification of appointed members shall be sent

a copy of which shall be sent.

So just cleaning language there by the clerk of the finance committee.

Again, cleaning the language.

Any member so appointed by the committee.

Again, language.

So the main issue here is changed to 45 days.

Any comments on this section, the changes here?

Don?

I'm fine with this, but I think you skipped over the quorum requirement that was above this in C. Oh, I'm sorry.

We missed C. Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I guess this was a little cleaner.

We'll go back to that in a sec.

But is there any comments on those language changes or the 45-day?

I have a technical question.

Sure.

which is what if the clerk resigns or we don't have a clerk at the moment?

Should it be like a clerk or a designee or something, just a technicality if for some reason at that time there is no clerk?

The town clerk?

No, the clerk of the finance committee.

Oh, well, yeah, I think as long as we get the information to it, that would be the

by the clerk or... Yeah, I got one, Destiny.

I guess we can add that.

Sorry, I don't think the situation can happen because if one of the officers resigns, we, at the next meeting, always vote immediately as somebody new.

So there can't be really a situation that... Because this notification would have happened after a meeting where we took a vote.

So a meeting would have taken place during which we would have appointed a new clerk.

We always do that.

Somebody resigned.

It was the same when Anne resigned.

Next Finance Committee meeting, we appointed Ira and then shuffled everybody around.

We always do that.

So I don't think, while it's a valid concern, Phil, it can actually happen because, again, the notification is of a vote we took at a meeting.

So in this case, if there would have not been a vote at that same meeting, we would have appointed a new clerk.

Okay.

Well, it depends on timing and notice.

There is a small chance it could happen.

Not a big deal, but... Okay.

Any other comments?

All right.

Let's go back to the majority right.

The finance committee shall consist of 11 registered voters.

That was a new change.

A quorum shall be defined as a majority of the members serving.

That is according to mass state law that we need to define what a majority is.

of the members serving so that in the event there are vacancies of the 11, a quorum would remain at 11.

The number would be six, even if we only had eight members in the event that we were short some members.

So this is according to mass law gets us out of that sticky situation.

That makes total sense.

I mean, it would make no sense to have a fixed amount of quorum.

It should be a majority of the members.

I think it's the whole idea of a quorum.

I actually sent a comment to Fred on that today that it's something we might need to look at town wide, especially with like select board and standing building has a fluid number of members too that a lot of our committees in town probably need this sort of language because otherwise they could have, if you have multiple resignations, you could technically have committees that don't have quorums.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think that's a good point.

All right.

That's good.

I just sent it back to Phil.

I think this is a fair point.

I'm going to ask town council if there's language we could use that would compass all the appropriate committees for that topic.

We'll get back to you on that.

Okay.

That'd be great.

Let's just jump back down as David Fixler said, there was another section on 12.7 that would be impacted by what we did up on six.

David Ensign, And it's down here candidates must be considered and selected from a list of those recommended, if any, in the event that the candidates were considered and none were.

David Ensign, considered suitable that's what he feels and i'll let David.

David Ensign, chime in on that.

It's just typical statutory drafting.

You want to have it consistent.

So this just, the way it reads, again, it would be a strained reading regardless, but I think we know people, there are certain people in town who like to read bylaws with a strained reading.

So this just makes sure that, you know, we're not forced to recommend anybody.

And that's all that this does.

And I think the change by a vote to present it is actually a good change.

All right.

So I took it down.

Does anyone need to see those changes any further?

Are we comfortable at this point?

taking a vote would entertain a motion.

But Judy, you have a quick comment?

Yeah, I think you ignored some really important comments from Philip and from me.

As drafted right now, it says it's going to be advertised within 30 days.

That doesn't mean it's going to be advertised and then up and open for consideration for a specific amount of time.

When you change a bylaw or when you draft a bylaw, you have an opportunity to do it right.

I get that you want to get it done, but you're not doing anyone any favors with this language.

It should, I strongly recommend additional consideration and involvement of the town council to ensure that the points about

how soon you have to advertise it, how long it needs to stay open, and what happens if there are no candidates or if there are candidates and the nominating committee decides they're not suitable.

All of those things should be addressed in this bylaw.

And saying, well, we'll just trust the committee to do it.

Ira, that's how you got here in the first place.

That's why you're proposing this change.

Because the committee didn't want to advertise and didn't want to meet for some period of time because they didn't think it was going to be fruitful.

That's literally the reason behind the change.

So if you're going to do it, please do it right.

If you're not willing to do that, if Fred doesn't think it's worth legal time, I'll propose an amendment from the floor of town meeting.

But really, we could save everyone time and do it correctly now.

All right.

Thanks for your comment.

Fred, has town council had a chance?

I don't think it's been reviewed since the changes that No, I have bombarded Harris with all the proposed articles.

We'll certainly ensure that those comments tonight will be part of the review.

All right.

So there's no action that we need to take this evening.

I would just like to say again, Ira, you let Judy mischaracterize something again.

This has got to stop.

What did I mischaracterize, Dave?

All right.

Hold on.

Hold on.

You need to stop her before she talks.

It's so simple.

It was a mischaracterization again.

That's not exactly what happened.

The record will speak for itself.

And that's all I have to say.

I understand you don't like me, but this is extreme.

Listen, I'm going to pull the mics if we're not going to.

I don't like being mischaracterized.

That's all.

Okay, we're going to move on.

And listen, we're for all open discussion here.

But once you make a point, no matter what the point is, let's not have back and forth.

Let's address the chair.

And I think you both made your points.

Let's move on.

so uh i'll turn it over to you fred for uh presentation of the list of the submitted town meeting warren articles for the 2025.

fred you're muted

I sent out a schedule as part of the PAC information yesterday morning and then sent a follow-up this afternoon that includes a potential article from the school committee regarding the school bus monitoring law.

On that list, it has also a list of the meeting dates that have been common, which the articles are proposed to be discussed.

I thought that would be useful for folks who might be worried about their own schedules and what workload they can take on.

But the purpose is to go through these articles and identify

member of the finance committee going to be responsible for doing the write up.

I will say that ones that don't have a meeting date on that schedule are typically those that are perfunctory articles that either the chair will take last year's version and edit it and save everybody writing time.

So there's seven or eight of those that fall into that category.

But the balance, you'd have an assignee on substance.

so do we want to uh go through and just give people an idea of what we uh have on the list fred if you can put up on the screen and then people can walk through it um all right if you can ask questions on the article itself i can give a very brief description if that's necessary

All right.

All right, are we there?

Yeah, that's fine.

All right.

Take it away, Fred.

Okay, the first one, first two are those perfunctory artists we talked about.

Three, that's the non-union pay plan that'll be presented by the HR board on March 17th.

That's a pretty short write-up.

And again, I sent a link yesterday to the members of the committee who may not be familiar with the length or the substance of these write-ups from last year's warrants.

You get a sense of those, particularly the repeat articles.

Property tax exemptions, there are some new ones this year, including acceptance of the HERO Act and raising the asset income limits for qualifying residents.

Again, I don't remember who did it last year, but it should be a short lift.

I put that on the February 24th agenda.

Revolving fund authorizations is also a perfunctory article.

The report of the nominating committee of FinCom, that we typically just, the write-up is just a recitation of the process.

There's no endorsement by the Finance Committee of candidates.

So that's also a perfunctory article.

Compensation of elected officials, that's a very short article that sets the salary for the Board of Assessors, Select Board, Town Clerk, and Moderator.

Capital outlay.

In the past,

Your representative to the committee has taken that.

Is that something, Anya, you're willing to do this year?

Hello.

You're muted, Anya.

Oh.

Apologies.

Yeah, I'll keep it out there.

Right.

Right.

Thanks, Anya.

Thank you.

The next one is a petitioner's article that would rescind the turf field moratorium that was voted last town meeting.

I'll do that one.

I'm sorry.

Is that done?

Done.

Thank you.

Uh, the budget article using the chair and the vice chairs do that together.

Right.

Um, with a lot of help from Sean and me CPA, um,

Who's our liaison to that?

Is that Chris?

Keith?

It's Keith.

It's Keith.

Yeah.

I got it.

This one is a corrective to fix a place where there's two different rates set in the bylaw for dog handling fees.

Should be short write-up.

Anybody?

I'll take that one.

Sorry, who's that?

Jonathan.

Jonathan, thank you.

The next one is just a formally transfer one school street from the select board of library trustees for the new library.

Also short and sweet.

I'll take it.

Thanks.

The community septic management program.

This is, um,

Mark Warren, Adding money to the fund that was adopted at the 21 annual town meeting that would be a pretty easy lift to cut and paste that right up I don't know if anybody who stole the committee wrote that back in 21 but.

Lisa Smith, Also, anybody remember writing this.

Mark Warren, I can take that.

Lisa Smith, Can you scan down because we in the public, we can't see the new.

Lisa Smith, Thank you.

Don Nottoli, A the next one is the pair of bylaws we just discussed for the fincom who wants to do those write ups.

Don Nottoli, During some of this came from me, would you like me to do it.

Don Nottoli, Absolutely.

Okay.

Don Nottoli, The one mark number 17 the prudent investor rule.

Don, you want to do that.

Don Nottoli, i'll do that great.

Next one is to permit citizen initiation for removal of appointed members.

If you recall at the last town meeting, the recall provision has that in where the public can initiate it.

This was suggested by Judy.

The select boards agreed to insert it subject to town council review of how it can be done without limiting the appointing authority of the select board.

Anybody remember who did the write-up on last year for this article?

Who did that one?

I did, Keith.

I did that.

I can take that.

Great.

Thanks, Keith.

And I certainly talked with Judy.

She has a lot of the arguments for it.

The next one would put it to limit elected officials from only serving on one board at a time.

It eliminates the potential for folks running for multiple offices and trying to serve in both.

I'll take that.

It's Anya.

Anya, good.

The next one would transfer the current library to the select board and authorize the town to either lease or sell the property.

I'm sorry, Olga.

Yeah, I'll take both sides of it.

Great.

And then the next slur zoning bylaws, and I'll caveat this by saying that it's up to the planning board about whether they consolidate some of these into a single article, which I hope they will.

This first block

Uh, 21 includes the zoning map and amendment to zoning district a. So I was planning to do all the planning board articles, but if somebody else would like to help out, I'm fine with that.

All right.

Donald will put you down.

So those two together, we'll get your partner done.

Both on it.

I'm happy to help with that one.

I'm sorry, is that Chris?

Yeah.

I'm sorry, for which one, Chris?

For the zoning bylaw, revised zoning bylaw.

The solar energy.

Which number is that?

21.

And 22 has some solar.

22 should be all basically sort of corrective things.

So...

Hopefully those will be batched together the next 4 items all number 22.

So that should be short left because it's all reconciling bylaws and tables.

Can you please scroll down again?

All the zoning bylaw changes from 21 all the way down to 25.

Oh, that's great.

Right.

I've been paying some attention.

Chris will help you out if you need an assist, right?

They said he'll do the solar one, which is great.

I mean, if someone else has an interest in any one of these, but I have no problem with these.

Chris has expertise.

All right, Chris, you'll do 26 on the solar authorization?

No, I was going to, I talked to Chris.

I can do 26.

Oh, okay.

Right, right.

Arnie's going to help on that one, the solar one.

All right, 27 involves a request to potentially lift the cap from 2 to either 3 or 4 of the loud number of marijuana retail establishments.

I can do that one.

Thanks, Jada.

The Wetlands Protection Act, again, this should be a short lift.

If you remember last year, we submitted a special act to try and change and allow for web-based notices rather than direct mailing.

The state passed it for sharing, and this would amend

sharon's wetlands bylaw to correspond to the state law change i wrote that last time i can handle this great thanks dan thanks dan would you scan down again please yep coming down okay uh 27 i'm sorry uh 29 rather um

This involves establishing a historic district for 228 East Street.

They don't have all the paperwork yet for the abutting property, so that'll come back at a future timing.

This, I believe, is the Deborah Sampson House that's owned by, again, Dan Argonbeau.

Doesn't a write-up for that exist because that was an article in the past and then it got pulled?

I got pulled, but I don't know if we did a write-up.

I can look back to see if there was one, but again, it's one of the two properties.

If there is something in the hopper, we can share it with whoever wants to do the write-up.

I don't recall that.

Well, it was definitely, I don't know.

It went fine for a write-up, but this was definitely an article that got pulled.

Oh, yeah.

It got pulled in early March last year and the year before.

Right.

I just don't know if there was a write-up, but I'll look.

I think Anne was on that one.

At some point, she was on that one.

And once I think so, OK, well, then that won't help this year.

I can take it.

Find the document takes it.

I'm sorry, Olga.

Thanks, Olga.

And the last one is pending a vote from the school committee.

This is to accept Chapter 399 of the acts of 2024, which permits school bus violation detection monitoring systems on school buses.

So in other words, if someone passes a standing school bus,

the data will be transmitted to the police department and the individual who did that will get a ticket.

I'll take that one, Jonathan.

All right.

Okay, that's the list, Ira.

Thanks.

That's the list.

Wow, that was penis.

Very nice.

Ira, can you send it out?

We'll fill it out so we know what we have.

I will do that tomorrow.

Okay.

Okay, thanks.

That was very

Easy going.

Thanks for everyone who's contributing.

I provide one clarification on Article 21.

The planning board at their last meeting discussed that they're not just amending or they may not just amend Business District A. They want to consider the uses they're adding and whether they should be added to any districts in town, not just A. So that may be a broader article.

I can handle it.

Yeah, I know you can.

All right, thank you.

Thanks for that information.

Yep.

All right.

Let's move on to the next item, which are updates from Fred and Krishan.

Let me do.

Krishan, go ahead with the free cash.

Yeah, let me do the free cash update quickly.

All right, allow me to share the screen.

Absolutely.

Please.

Thank you.

Amy will let you.

Is it okay now?

It's still not allowing me.

You should be able to.

Should be able to.

All right.

Now it works.

Yes.

Thank you.

10 second delay.

That's okay.

All right.

Let me know if you can see it, please.

We can't.

All right, I'll try to make it bigger also if I can a little bit.

Sorry, going the wrong direction.

So as you can see, the free cash has moved from 2017 from 2.7

million, now we are at almost 10.8

million.

Between 23 and 24,

it was 10 million two and now it is 10 million eight.

So that's where we are.

If you have any questions on that, please ask me before we move anything else.

Can you give us a sense of what led to the increase?

Is there anything you can point to?

Sure, sure.

Basically,

Audit report is being finalized.

It should come out within a year or two.

What you will see is a combination of better revenues and turnbacks from the town departments.

Okay.

So once the audit report is out, I'll be more than happy to dwell on that.

Okay, but those are the two categories that are the reason for the increase.

Yes.

As you know, when we project the revenues, we always try to be conservative on the revenue side a little bit.

Sure.

And we try to be, you know, with the town departments as conservative as possible in terms of, you know.

And the turn back right from the towns.

Prashant, since it's on the same sheet, is there a significant drop for free cash for the water fund?

Is that because of the water treatment plan?

Good question.

You've got good eyes there.

Must appreciate that.

I was going to move on to that also.

Essentially, the water treatment plan has been granted $15 million interim loan from the SRF, and they are yet to submit their

reimbursement requests.

So what happens in the process is that even though the water department has retained earnings of almost $4 million, but the DOR calculates the free cash or retained earnings for the water department, they offset it against any shortages of capital accounts because reimbursements have not been received yet.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, Okay, so this will clear itself up once the rain.

Okay.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Phil.

Phil Kleisler, i'm more concerned about the health insurance fund and what's happened in healthcare in the state and consolidation moving to our higher cost health care with some of our more cheaper health.

facilities being shut down and bankruptcy, that health costs are going up at 10 plus percent a year and seeing that number drop, if we continue on this trajectory, that's gonna go to zero.

Yes, I mean, you're absolutely right.

And healthcare costs have been going up and I've been talking to other towns on an average, every town is projecting pretty much somewhere between 10 to 12% increase for 26.

And that's where we are also heading in that direction.

So basically it's always a kind of a catch up in that sense that, okay, in 24, in terms of costs, we know that costs are up, both in terms of medical procedures and pent up demand and all this ozone peak and everything else going on.

So all those things really add up to the cost of healthcare.

So for 26, I mean, we're not certain yet, but we're trying to project somewhere between 10% to 12% increase in the cost there.

So hopefully, we'll be all right.

Given the numbers are six months old, has it gone from there?

Yes.

We are monitoring the situation.

We are hoping that we'll be able to close out the year within the budget.

But we'll have to see at the end of the year what happens.

We're in the process, Bill, of reviewing our stop loss amount.

We're looking at some prescription plans that buy at a collaborative that would reduce some costs.

We're also looking at plan design, potential plan design changes to match the GIC.

So those are all things that we'll be talking about towards the spring.

Again, we're monitoring the claims experience this year, looking at the trend.

And you mentioned stress on the system, Norwood,

is hosting a meeting on Thursday evening.

We have staff attending, trying to support the state relicensing Norwood Hospital and having one of the major entities to take over the Stewart facility and restore having a facility in that part of the state.

Yeah, well, that might help our ambulance if Partners takes it over, the cost of care is gonna go up dramatically there.

So that might not always be the best thing.

I think Stuart is gone, isn't it?

I mean, it would not be Stuart.

The license for that facility, I believe, expired on December 1, so it's not even a licensed facility.

Correct, but Norwood is pressing.

They don't want the state to let it close and put a hole in their downtown.

And also, it's had a huge impact on all of the surrounding towns with our ambulance service.

If we pick somebody in Sharon and can't take them there, it's either Brockton or into the city, which ties up the ambulance, takes it out of service for Sharon, forces us to bring in backup

staff on overtime to run the alternate ambulance if there's calls for service while it's going in and out of downtown Boston.

So there's a lot of effort being put in this region to try and have a full service hospital there.

And I know there's a number of hospital systems interested in the facility if the state will allow it to be purchased and the insurance claim construction work that's ongoing, have it continue so the hospital can reopen.