Good evening.

Welcome to the Finance Committee meeting.

It's February 24th.

As you know, we're meeting under the mass regulations of remote meeting.

We'll be broadcast on Sharon Television.

And we will have a busy agenda this evening.

we'll be reviewing some of the warrant articles and reviewing a priorities committee meeting and we'll uh dive right in because we have a number of guests with us this evening to discuss those articles so let's begin with uh

The first article on the agenda to discuss Community Preservation Act, the annual funding and projects.

And with us is the chair of that committee, Corey Snow.

Welcome.

Thank you, Ira.

Amy, could I share my screen?

Corey, you are now a co-host.

Fabulous.

Thank you so much.

Hey, can folks see my screen?

We can.

Fabulous.

So I sent this out to the committee.

I hope everyone got the link.

This is the quick version, the executive summary.

If you have this document, I've embedded in it a lot of links to the details.

You can sort of trace it down to where all these numbers came from.

This is the 20th year of the Community Preservation Act in Sharon.

So Aaron and I were talking about that earlier in the night.

So I thought I'd bring that up.

We've been at this for a while.

Just a few kind of just quick updates on the way that we operate.

So this is obviously for the 2025 Annual Town Meeting.

We're doing budgeting and funding for fiscal year 26.

We do draw from fiscal year 24, so the closed out fiscal year.

There is money also being accumulated within fiscal 25, which hasn't ended, and that's a moving target.

So as a matter of practice, we generally look to the closed fiscal year, and we use that as the available monies and draw from there.

Just want to clear that up front because that can be a little bit confusing.

For fiscal 26, we are recommending these two projects.

So the first one is the inventory of historic properties.

This was proposed last year at a much higher number, and the Historical Commission has come back with a different consultant, a different approach, and

a different sort of scope of work and they've been able to reduce this to a $98,000 request.

The committee unanimously supported this lower amount for this fiscal year, upcoming fiscal year.

The second project is a collection of Lake Massapog water quality projects.

And it's a relatively sort of lengthy list of mitigations that are being performed related to the water quality at the beach.

The first sort of categorically is grading and nutrient runoff mitigations at Memorial Beach.

This is in partnership with the DDPW and does include some state grants.

There's also a request for some dock components and some erosion matting, and this has to do with reducing cyanobacteria growth.

The non-floating docks are apparently better for cyanobacteria, so that's a small request there.

And then there are three different lake water quality monitoring and measurement initiatives

that in total are $43,000.

If we add all of this up, they're really asking for Community Preservation Act funding, and that's about 10% of the total budget.

And there's a lot of matching grant here in many of these cases.

The Community Preservation Act funding is supporting 10%, and the state is doing the 90%.

And in the case of the beach work, there's town funding in there from the DPW for $336,000.

There's some grant funding from the state, and then there's some CPA funding as well to augment that.

So it's a lot of parts, but it's all about the water quality.

I'm happy to dig in further, but if you have this document, you can sort of click here and see that breakdown in a number of different ways.

Corey, just for you to know, I didn't go to the links and I distributed that, so the members know that.

Great.

And then there was a third project that was put forth and this was for support of the athletic fields.

This project was withdrawn and our understanding is that this is to be funded by Capital Outlay.

So those are the projects.

Any questions?

Oh, I see a question from Chris.

Go ahead, Chris.

Yeah, I think I saw something about the...

paving the parking lot?

Is that part of that effort?

Yes, it is part of the effort, and I think... And if so, do you have any details around how that helps?

I'm sure it does.

I'm just wondering if it might make sense to share that, because that is kind of the big kahuna, I think, in terms of the bill, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, I think it is.

It's mostly going to be funded by the town and DPW funding.

Then there's also some state grant funding and a little bit of CPA in there.

But the point of it is mostly focused on the parking lot across from the high school, which is used by high school students to park.

and the idea is that if the parking lot is paved there'll be less erosion and less runoff from that property so this is something that the uh town is planning to do um and then there's a state grant and then there's some some supplement from uh community preservation act there's probably someone on the call who knows more about this project than me i'm just gonna guess

Yeah, Corey, I could.

Can you guys hear me okay?

Yeah, Josh, go ahead.

This is Josh Filiberto, conservation administrator.

So right now the parking lot drains pretty much to the channel that then goes through a pipe into the lake and

Paving it would allow a much more organized parking.

And so the sediment erosion control actually fits within an area that's used for parking now, a detention basin, kind of like they did over by the boat ramp.

So all of the storm water would flow to a detention basin.

where any sediment and total suspended solids they refer to would settle out.

And then any overflow from that overflows into the wetland area, not directly to the water channel that goes right to the lake.

So it really is a huge water quality improvement for the lake.

And because it would be more organized parking, they were able to keep the number of spaces the same.

Thank you, Josh.

Sure.

Anya, you have a question?

Yeah, my question was about the athletics fields.

So it was withdrawn in total.

That said, you know, in order to relocate the community gardens, we do expect that there will be some costs involved.

$50,000 to $75,000 roughly, I think, was the latest estimate without that being final numbers.

And so that's not budgeted right now anywhere.

And I thought...

that that was potentially supposed to be coming out of CPC.

So I'm a little surprised that it just says the entire project is withdrawn because the project had two parts, to turn the community gardens into the athletic fields, but then there also the relocation of the existing gardens.

And while the...

the buildup of the athletic field is funded by capital outlay.

There's currently nothing budgeted for the relocation, which we will need money for that.

So again, I'm not sure whether that's kind of got, maybe Fred would know.

Yeah, I was gonna say, yes.

Because I'm a little concerned.

Ideally, this would come out of CPC.

And I think Fred, the latest number was, I don't know, 50 to 75,000.

Yeah, Phil, I'm gonna go to Fred next because I think he can shed some light on this.

Go ahead, Fred.

So we don't have a firm number yet.

We're still discussing with the trustees what's needed there and doing an assessment.

Josh and Linda Berger have been working with me on it.

We're not in a position to do that.

Our intent would be that if we're able to pinpoint a dollar amount to bring it to the FinCon by the end of March and appropriate whatever we need out of free cash.

Okay.

Okay, so we're not trying to get it out of CPC because wouldn't this be actually a great project for CPC, the community garden relocation?

One of the challenges are that it would be investing on non-town land.

I don't recall whether that's even allowed under CPC, but it's certainly, we try to keep those funds on town property.

Okay.

All right.

Well, that's definitely a valid point.

Did not think about that.

Okay.

All right.

So yeah, that answers my question.

And by the way, when it comes to the runoff basin, that made total sense on the other side, because I pass the boat ramp almost every day when I walk my dog.

And I have to say, I'm very impressed on how much that basin fills up after rain.

I

That's not my area of expertise, but as a layperson, I'm always very impressed on how much water is being caught in that basin.

That certainly seems to be working.

A very good project.

Thanks, Anya.

Phil, go ahead.

Yeah, I basically have two questions.

Following up on Anya again, I know as a town we're looking for money everywhere.

and we haven't said exactly why this was pulled in Fred, would there be an opportunity?

I understand we don't want to use CPC money towards the new land, but what if we use CPC money towards the field and then we redirect money from the fields to cover the money for the new gardens?

I mean, it would take a little bit of stress off the town budget.

So again, we've got a couple of factors, one CPC,

projects can only be voted up or down as a recommendation of the committee they can't be amended so we have to go through the committee and be proposed.

Second of all it would be a secondary vote we're already approving at the capital a article borrowing for the field so that would be a two thirds vote and then a separate vote would have to come after the vote I think you're expecting people to stick around and vote on this and voted twice I think it would create some confusion and lastly there's limited funds available on the recreation side

And they had asked for some funds primarily because there was some concern originally that the combined project, as you know, was like $2.3 million that if we're going to stick with the original plan to move the gardens on town land, that we'd have to reduce the borrowing and then try to leverage those CPC funds.

So given that we've abandoned the plan to relocate the gardens on town land, it's definitely going to be a short ask to provide some support

And free cash is appropriate given that we're well over 10% in that area.

Yeah.

I should also add that, even though obviously it still has to come up for vote before FinCom, that, you know, the...

that the community gardens board voted in favor of relocating, but I think they did it because they were trusting that we had indicated we would give them money to relocate in that amount.

I personally would feel like, I would feel bad if we don't come up with the money, because I mean, I think they're really relying on, I wouldn't say we gave our word on it, but we certainly strongly indicated that we would help them with the relocation costs.

So,

I really feel like we have a moral obligation to somehow then also find the money.

I'm trying really hard not to get out in front of this.

We did some research on it.

I provided information to their board.

They voted for it.

I don't know if it was unanimous or if there was dissenting votes on it.

It's very preliminary.

And like I said, I'm really hopeful we'll have a number that's reliable enough for the FinCom to make a reasonable appropriation.

And clearly, if it's from free cash, if we don't need it all, it'll return back to free cash.

Brett KenCairn, But I want to make sure we do something that makes some sense and.

Brett KenCairn, Is going to make the project work.

Brett KenCairn, And not just.

Brett KenCairn, Yeah, is that in time for this town meeting or a future.

Brett KenCairn, Oh no, the goal is to hopefully pin down a number and.

have an outline, if not a signed lease, an outline of a lease because the gardeners are still pursuing a 501c3 status.

Although at least some members of the board are happy to have the rec department take over and manage the program.

I don't know if that's unanimous.

So we still have some legwork to do with that group.

Okay.

And just a follow up question on the parking is the junior law at the fall, I know, currently the lots kind of a mess with paving and lines, is there an opportunity, do we need more spaces, is there an opportunity to create do we have a deficit for the high school.

As josh said the.

Creating the detention base and it's taking away land now that was partly parking spaces.

We're able to replicate the number that we offer to the students.

I imagine there'd be demand for more if we could provide it, but it's not the primary focus here.

So we're trying to help it stay status quo to the extent we can.

Okay.

I didn't know there was an opportunity to get a few more slots in.

Sounds like they did a good job saving what they had.

All right, Corey, back to you.

Yeah, I do want to comment a little on what I just said.

I think it would be allowable for Community Preservation Act funds to be used for non-town land or non-town entities.

It does come with a complicator, though, because in order to do that, we would have to apply some sort of permanent conservation restriction, which could run into

some concerns from the trustees or the Audubon or wherever it's headed.

I'm not saying that's insurmountable, but it is a bit of a bit of a complicator when funds are used on non-town properties or private entities usually comes along with a permanent conservation restriction, which sometimes is a bit of a non-starter.

Okay.

Moving on.

Moving on.

So for sort of regular appropriations, this is for our budget.

Unlike any other budget in the town, any unused funds just are returned.

So it's not a use it or lose it kind of budget.

And our expenses are typically around the $5,000 mark.

We like to allocate a little extra in case we need any legal services if something complex comes along.

that we need to take action on.

And then in terms of debt service, we're in the midst of a 20-year borrowing for Rattlesnake Hill that started in 2021.

We have a very low interest rate on this bond.

Unlike a mortgage on your house, the payments do go down over time and they get quite a bit lower in the second half of 2021.

of the 20 years.

But this year, that would be the 339,450.

And so if we look at the kind of overall And thinking about the categories we're using up the each of these categories that the historic community housing open space.

Those are every year 10% minimum is is allocated from all of the funds that come into those categories so

In the case of open space, that's all going to the payment on Rattlesnake Hill.

That's why there's no kind of reserve in the open space category.

So these things draw from the sort of 70% that goes to the undesignated pile, which can be used for any of these purposes.

So if we look at overall, this is our starting balance from the fiscal year 2024 end.

This is what we're recommending for fiscal year 2026.

That's our ending balance based on the 24.

um ending date and um this is just sort of more details on that and then i think you can you can see here kind of the the trending over time what's been coming in each year the state match um and what you're expecting for revenues within fiscal 25 which hasn't ended in fiscal 26 which obviously hasn't come yet so just gives a little bit of an idea on the trending across the arc of time

And this is a very kind of short year with only a couple of projects.

So that's the meat of it, really.

Questions?

Yeah, I just have a couple.

Is there any idea of how much the match could be going forward?

Is there any discussion on stabilizing or increasing the match?

It's tied to the isn't it the county registry of deeds still?

Yeah, so most of the funding comes from fees at the registry of deeds.

Initially, that was the only funding for the act.

It came from the registry of deed fees.

In 2020, they did increase those fees.

So the sort of match funding has gone up.

But, you know, if you look at the, if we saw the longer arc of time at the beginning, there were very few towns participating in this pool.

We were able to get 100% match.

It was pretty nice.

And then as more towns across the state joined, there were more towns driving from the same pool of funding.

So those matches have gone down.

We have seen the legislature appropriate pretty sizable kind of leftover extraordinary funds in here.

And so we've had some years with good bumps on what the state provides.

And there are other ways that funds can go in now.

There's some proposals for lodging taxes and things like that.

But it's still mostly registry of deed fees.

Got it and the last question I have is the community housing.

Is there any future thoughts on how that would be used?

Is that being.

Yeah, historically, the community housing usage has tended to be for the low-income housing properties that are within the town.

There's one, the old Pleasant Street School, and then there's the Housing Authority properties up off of North Main Street.

And historically, the things that we've funded have been within those properties.

There was one case where we,

Purchased an affordable home.

It was part of a land acquisition project over on billing street.

But other than that, it's always been for support of existing low income housing properties within the time.

Right.

And there was some discussion at 1 time that it wasn't allowed to do regular maintenance.

I thought there was some, some problem with that.

But then I think we got over that.

How is that?

transpiring now?

Are we using some of these funds to keep up those properties?

I think it's probably better to think of it more as a capital fund.

So the repairs have tended to be pretty extraordinary, like full roof replacements, substantial replacement of windows or doors or things along those lines.

I don't think we've ever had applications that you would call

kind of maintenance well that's what i meant by maintenance the yeah those major expenses and so do we know if there's any of that coming up in the near that we're planning for for that

I've not heard of any requests from a housing angle this season or last.

So it's been a little bit quiet.

We've definitely been building up some funds here.

We did have some pretty large expenditures, especially at the Hickson Farm area.

There was siding, there was roofing, there was windows.

So we had some large expenditures all at once.

And then I'd say that category has been

in recovery for a few years.

Okay, great.

Any other questions for Corey?

I want to thank you for the detailed financials.

Very refreshing to see all that information in a very organized manner.

I think we all understand exactly what your situation is.

Thank you.

Yeah, I hope it's all easy to follow.

Reach out to me with any questions anytime.

Thank you.

Good to see you.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Moving on to the next item, the town clerk and elections and registration budgets.

And with us is Mark.

Mark Hogan, do I see you?

Yes, you do.

I'm right here.

There you go.

Okay.

I just switched to sharing my screen, but I don't know what you actually see.

We see the screen.

Do you see the... The revenue report.

That's all you see, though.

Right now, yes.

That's fine.

Just wanted to make sure.

I haven't used this in a while.

All right, so revenue report.

Without further ado, the 2024, this is a full year, not a fiscal year.

um and that's why 2025 is next to it that just shows what we've taken in um through a week ago uh for in just january basically alone a little bit of february uh but the 2024 shows a full year's worth of uh revenue i preface this with there's not much that we can actually do to affect revenue that we take in in the town clerk's office as i cannot convince people that they want to buy more voter lists or put a telephone pole in

But a lot of that's just whatever is needed at the time.

The two things I do want to point out, though, is dog licenses.

We are at a record number of dog licenses that have been actually paid for on time by this time of year.

But if you notice, you'll see that every year since 2021, well, I guess since 2022, that number seems to drop off a little bit.

But if you look at 2019, you'll see it's actually much higher than in 2019.

That is because we have an animal control officer that is doing their job to the extent that we're not getting as many people paying late.

And

paying for extra late fees and things like that.

But it's higher than when we didn't have this animal control officer in 2019, when the dogs weren't being checked on and actually being collected on.

So in a way, it looks like we're losing a little bit every year.

But the fact that we have someone doing their job is why we're like five, $6,000 up on when we didn't have the person doing that.

So it's actually a good number.

And then the other thing, the one thing I really kind of have some control over is the marriage intentions.

We've been doing really well with those since COVID.

Every other town around us pretty much that I'm aware of switched to a system where you need to make an appointment to come in and fill out your marriage paperwork.

And then they make like three or four appointments a day or something.

So we've been picking up

the overflow from other towns that don't want to wait a couple of weeks to fill out their paperwork and have heard that they can just come over to Sharon and fill it out in person.

So that does bring in a little bit of money.

And then it brings in a little bit more later too, because every time they come through us to get them.

So it adds up a little bit here and there over time.

It's not too much money, but it is a boost.

Does anyone have questions about revenue before I switch over into the actual budgets?

All right.

Quick question, Mark.

Just with Verizon, putting files in town, they're on polls all the time.

Does that bring you any revenue?

Only if it's a new poll.

Putting things on an existing poll doesn't do anything.

Okay.

I'll start off with the easier budget here.

So you should be seeing the town clerk budget.

Let's see.

wider for me to see.

Okay, so looking at the town clerk budget, it is down this year.

You want to blow that up just a little more?

I don't see what you see.

Is that a little bigger?

A little more.

You got room for more.

Say when.

More, more, more.

Keep going.

One more.

One more?

All right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sorry, you won't let me see exactly how you're seeing it.

All right.

One more.

One less.

One less.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Perfect.

Okay.

Great.

So the main reason that the budget is lower for the town clerk this year is because we have a new assistant town clerk and the previous assistant town clerk had been with the town for over 30 years.

So that's a big drop in salary and a big drop, a smaller drop, I guess, but in longevity.

So that is the main reasons for those, why those numbers are down.

Earn time is also down for that same reason.

It's less money if we're paying through earn time on that.

My salary is up the standard 3.5%.

When we get to the items that aren't salary, for the most part, it's just minor adjustments to be made based on like the rising cost of postage.

The telephone amount is at 30 bucks because it turns out that we estimated 30 bucks off.

So that's the actual cost.

The one of the bigger numbers to jump is printing printing is the line item where the dog licenses go in, and they are charging $2 more per dog license now that when when it's done online.

And so that raised that a little bit.

It's still, unfortunately, the best company to do them with.

I'm continually looking for another one, but the benefits of using them still make it worth it.

Although I don't actually enjoy working with that company, but it's the best bang for the buck.

Let's see.

Mark Toneyard, Travel that is up as well, because I accidentally did not adjust the last time when I adjusted to be able to have the town clerk go I didn't I did not adjust the out of state travel budget for for a conference so i'm fixing that now.

And as I said, everything else is just like a 10% increase for like office supply raising prices and that sort of thing.

Does anyone have any specific questions about items in this budget?

Questions on that?

You mentioned that the salary increase was a standard.

How is that the standard?

How do you designate the standard three and a half percent?

I reach out to Fred and I ask him what the rates are for a department head because mine is set differently than all the other department heads being an elected official.

So I make sure that I don't go over what they're getting.

Okay.

Okay.

Anya, question?

Yeah, I had a question.

Mark, do you think that when we add up the total cost relating to dogs, not just the printing of the licenses, but also the animal control officer, that the income from the dog license covers it?

Meaning, is the fee per dog still the right fee?

Because I think it's supposed to obviously carry itself.

Well, I don't know if it's actually designed to carry itself because...

the money technically just goes, the money just goes all into the general fund.

So I ask for money for my budget so I can buy the stuff, but it's not like it comes back to reimburse the money I spend on it.

It goes into the general fund, which eventually then goes to fund my budget.

So to be honest, I'm not sure I could sit down and work that out.

I haven't done that.

No one's asked for that before, but we have not raised the fees in a long time.

That's, that's,

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm asking.

I mean, obviously, it's not technically a revolving fund.

So I hear you about it not being sort of obvious that it's supposed to carry itself.

And I understand that I'm sure the animal control officer, it's not just dogs that they deal with.

But I think it would still be, given that we haven't adjusted the fee in a long time,

be useful to know how close are we that it's sort of that the costs to the town are actually covered?

Right.

So I will say it costs $15, assuming you pay on time and you have your dog neutered, it's 15, 20 if the dog hasn't been fixed.

The amount that we pay for each dog license when we do it online to the company in order to do it,

does not equal that amount.

I believe we pay them less than we make on it.

So I do think it still brings in more money.

But one of the reasons why increased cost is people are now seem to be, every year more people seem to be buying them online.

So whereas when they buy them in person,

We take $15 or $20 and we hand them a license.

And basically, it's the cost of the printing of the piece of paper.

But when they do it online, we pay fees to the online company.

So when more people start using the online system, it ends up going up in cost because we don't really have any costs when they do it in person.

Yeah, no, I mean, that's understandable.

I'm not suggesting we should take away the online option.

I'm just that's what I'm saying.

I think it might just be time to sort of at least see some numbers on where we are at.

I'm not also saying we necessarily should increase the fee, but I think because it's sort of a bit of a black box right now, it may at least make sense to have some numbers so that could be evaluated.

Maybe not for this budget year, but maybe for the following budget year.

I was going to say, I'd be happy to make a note of that.

Then next year when I come back, be able to let you know how much gets spent on the dog licenses versus how much they actually make.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thanks.

All right, Don.

Thanks, Ira.

Hey, Mark.

How are you doing?

Good.

You too?

Pretty fair.

Thank you.

I want to follow up on your sort of beat me to the punch.

I had exactly the same thinking, the same question.

I think it's really important when it comes to fees, and this is something I think we need to see throughout the town, that we incrementally go up each year instead of after five years, suddenly throwing in a 10 or 20 or 30 or 40% increase.

So I'd like to really encourage you.

Do you have authority on your own just to raise the fee or do you need select board permission or anyone else's permission?

I honestly don't know.

I haven't risen a fee since I got here and the fees haven't been risen on these on this or pretty much anything else we charge since before I got here for a long time.

Yeah.

So specifically then with the dog fees and I would encourage you to look at the others.

I mean, I'm sort of treating this kind of like a revolving fund.

I appreciate that the money goes into the town account, but then we.

provide you the money you need to run your operation.

So I would really like to see the dog fee go up.

I don't care if it goes up $2 or $3, but we should not be absorbing a $2 increase.

In fact, we should be encouraging people to do business online.

And if it costs us $2 more per, then let's jack up the fee $2.50 or $3 or $5 or whatever.

And I would like you to look at your other fees with the same idea in mind.

I'd much rather see an incremental increase each year than suddenly after five or 10 years, suddenly say, oops, we haven't raised the fees.

Let's go double them or something.

I think that's just bad business for all of us.

But I do appreciate very much the detail that you're providing us and the clarity with which we can see your budget.

It's very much appreciated.

Mark Benthien, ECA- Right, thank you and i'm more than happy to take a look at our fee schedules and next year come back with comparing to other towns and things like that what.

Mark Benthien, ECA- would be some reasonable fees.

Mark Benthien, ECA- Right thanks phil go ahead.

Phil Kleisler, yeah I kind of lost if we're losing money on dog fees, because the revenue was 35,000 and printing for 7000 so I would think it's turning in profit but i'm also reminded with.

When you pay a bill for the town online, if you pay with your checking account, they don't charge you a fee.

You pay with a credit card, they charge a fee.

You're telling me it costs the town $2 if they do it online.

Do we just change the fee schedule where they pay more to do it online?

Now we're raising the fee and we're covering the expense that way, but we keep the fee the same.

And if they don't want to pay that $2, they go into town hall and can have it for the same fee.

That is certainly an option to add to what I'm looking into.

Good suggestion.

Okay.

So we'll see that next year.

Yep.

All right.

And let me switch over to the other budget.

All right.

And I'm assuming you want me to make this one bigger too.

Sooner we see it.

I just made it the same size as the last one.

So when it pops up.

All right.

Can you see it?

Not yet.

No.

I think something went wrong, Mark.

You may want to close it and reopen it.

I'll cross it out and I'll leave it and come back in again.

Hold on.

We see column A. That was it.

That was weird.

All right.

Hold on.

Let me try that again.

Well, we'll wait for that.

Fred, would you mind?

Did the select board control fees?

Is that town meeting?

Do you have a hearing on that or how does that work?

One of two things.

The select board can do it based on a public notice or

It's a bylaw.

I'm thinking the dog thing may be part of the bylaws because we have an article down the list involving standardizing fees.

There's a conflict in the bylaws.

So Mark and I can chat about which fees we're talking about and get an opinion from counsel to make sure we make changes that we do in the courts of law.

Right.

And get it on a calendar so we can get it done for next year.

Can we see it now?

All right.

We see it now.

Is it big enough?

OK.

Yes, perfect.

So this is one of those years where this budget is actually relatively small.

The election budget fluctuates based on the number of elections we have in a year.

So last year, we had three elections.

This year, we have one, hopefully, assuming there's no specials.

So this budget is broken up the salaries.

Those are down a lot because I have less elections.

I have to pay people to work.

So the salary section includes the elections and registration secretary along with the people who end up working at the actual elections.

But as I said, one election versus three elections makes it a lot cheaper.

The elected spot is up $100 because of a state law that depending on how many registered voters you have, every time you hit another thousand registered voters, there's an extra $100 that goes into that salary.

And we hit that threshold this year.

Let's see.

It also, for the record, if we lose those voters over the next year, then you'll see me come back next year and take the 100 off.

So that's what that is.

All the other stuff that you can see has dropped down.

That is the PA system has dropped down a lot.

we have reduced the PA system is basically the sound that we use at the town meeting and we've been reducing the costs for sound because we've got the new high school we stopped hiring the more expensive person and we use the high school students so that's why that's going gone down the voting equipment

That's gone down because you pay per election on some of that stuff and we get two less elections.

I see what you're doing.

That's not your game.

No, let's go.

The postage, we have only the one election to send out this year.

So that's gone down.

I'm hoping that we won't have to spend that amount.

But I don't know what's going to happen this year.

This is the first year that we're having a town election after a really big group of people becoming aware of the fact that you can vote by mail in a town election from last year.

So I budgeted to cover it, but I'm hoping we don't actually need to use that amount of money and I'll be able to turn most of that back in.

printing that is based on actual costs of warrants and things like that.

And let's see, office supplies, 10% increase estimate.

All right.

Any questions from the committee on this?

Phil, go ahead.

dealing a lot of problems in this town or in every community with cost escalation and by dropping the budget we're going to give you less money then we're going to use that money elsewhere and then next year we have a the following year we have a congressional electric election two years later we have a presidential is there an opportunity here to start budgeting those over four years knowing you won't spend it then turning it back to free cash so then in the

subsequent years when we have those higher expenses, we'll have the money set aside rather than having ebbs and flows in the budget.

I'm open to ideas.

Are you suggesting that we budget for the three elections every year and then return the money that we don't use?

No, like 25% of a presidential election.

So that's tougher to do because they've changed.

I have not run an election on the same election laws each year since I started.

So I have no idea four years from now what it's going to cost.

Because if you had tried to do that before I started, you would have been spanked pretty hard on the vote by mail and postage and stuff that we weren't planning for.

So I don't know what the legislature is going to roll out next.

So it's hard to guess one year in advance, let alone four.

Ira?

Yes.

I don't see you, Fred.

Go ahead.

I'm not sure Krishan is prepared, but we could look into it.

What Phil's suggesting is almost like a revolving fund because

We can't budget a quarter and then it doesn't carry forward from year to year if it's part of the main budget.

We certainly want to tax people and turn money back.

So we have to figure out whether there's a mechanism, whether it's an evolving fund or some other fund where we could even out the cost of elections and accumulate them.

So in heavy years, we draw into the fund, and in down years, we don't.

Right.

That would be great, but as we do the budget right now, I turn in whatever I don't use.

Yeah.

yeah that's what i'm saying we get returned to free cash and then we can pull it from free cash right and i believe there are some years in the in the past we've done that we know there's a cycle when there are presidential elections you know every four years and every two years but uh

When it comes down to it, my town clerk budget is pretty spot on to what I actually spend.

My election budget, I have a cushion in everything because every year something goes up that we're not expecting.

So I've turned in a ton of money every year on the election budget.

But the fact that there was a cushion there that one year when it really spiked, it's

It made it so I didn't have to come back to you and find money we didn't have, you know.

So that's why I create more of a cushion in the election budget than in the town clerk budget, because I can guess what's happening with the town clerk budget a lot easier.

Okay.

Anya, you have a question.

Actually, not a question, because Phil actually beat me to it.

I had the exact same thought about it.

So my worry here is, Mark, and maybe that's not become so clear.

The worry is not so much you and your budget.

The problem is, you know, the FinCom sector budget is very small to begin with.

If it drops by 62,000 this year, the basis for next year is going to be the lower basis.

And we have these distribution keys between select board, school committee, and FinCom.

And so then, you know, if we get our set increase based on the key, because it's starting on a lower basis, that's what's causing the problem.