Budget Advisory Group Meeting May 19, 2026

Honestly.

All right.

Interesting.

I'll call today's budget advisory group meeting together.

Tuesday, May 19th at 4:00. All the members are present.

And the meeting is being recorded.

[clears throat] So, I just I want to start by saying that we had a very interesting meeting last time.

Um and a lot of great discussion.

I did note that Mr. Oliver, man of his word, did go back to the school committee and talked to them about the concept of having a third party um review of the school department budget. And um I think Mike, after watching it, I think it went I think it went really well.

I think we had some really good conversation. too. I think that was uh It it it's further it's further than I thought it would be at this point. The concept of this Mhm. the fact that we're talking about it openly and engaging the public in these these televised open meetings is really really important. The fact that the school department has stepped up and and looked at this as an

option for us to try and get a better idea of how we're going to handle the budgets going forward in this town is is a huge thing. I I think you know, one of the problems that a lot of towns have when they look at budgetary problems and review of override requirements is that they don't have the open line of communication. They they don't discuss it well enough with their with their departments and the

department heads. And their board members. There's a little bit of there can be be ambiguity in exactly what's going to with the funding and and then they go down, you know, and and the override votes don't get passed. Um now again, you know, we're talking about an override because we see the trajectory.

I see the storm on the horizon.

Uh the fact that we're and I think we all do. Um I I think the fact that we're sitting here um and spending some time on this is very important because um you know, as opposed to crisis mode and being reactive instead of proactive is never is never a good thing.

So, um that said, um you know, I think anybody can go on and and see the the school committee meeting, the last one that was held, um with their consideration of an outside third party review [clears throat] in order to essentially do what, you know, the concept was was to try and get the general public and [clears throat] the taxpayer and fee payer in this town on board with facts.

Uh not, you know, dinner table discussion and innuendo and uh and um and things like that, but but back things up with with true fact um and answer some of the the outlying issues that are out there in the ether.

Um I think that's you know, that's where that's where votes go down in town meetings.

Um where not all the stakeholders are addressed. Um it's it's almost in some cases uh the ones that I've looked at uh some of them have have been almost a disregard for the people that actually pay the bill. Uh and that's just not going to work today.

Um so, I think that the fact that we're starting early, we're looking at it, the school department is um in in the school committee uh particularly is is looking at this um you know, with a a general sense of uh favorability is is good.

Um you know, we're we're a ways off. We're a long ways off. We've got to figure out exactly what the outcomes are that we really need for all those stakeholders.

We need to find out um who the third parties are going to be.

Uh we need uh third parties with experience uh in the school uh you know, arena, if you will.

Um we need to make sure that um that you know, all the stakeholders are represented and the biggest questions are answered during that process, but we also need to know what it's going to cost us. Um you know, we could we could do a lot of work on this and it gets to that that dies in in the dies uh because the cost is just too high. So, I'm going

to ask for an alternative uh from this group at that point to try and figure out, okay, um if that if that part doesn't work, then um how do we internally take care of some of the questions uh that are going to come forward from all those stakeholders and make sure um that, you know, they they have all the information that they need. Um May I?

Yes, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, yeah, I I think the School Committee, we certainly um had a a long thorough discussion, I think, about the the possibility and the the bene- if there if there really are any benefits to having an outside agency come in. I think that we still the committee as a whole certainly if if you if you watched it, Chris, certainly have a lot more questions as far as and please jump in

um if if I miss anything, but certainly the committee has a lot more questions about really what what are we looking for? What exactly does the town as a whole want out of this? Um because certainly as Mr. Kailey uh shared a few times last night is where there are and I actually have notes somewhere here that there are actually three audits um that take place for for the town I mean

for the school department. We have the the end of the year report. Uh we have our federal audits that are done.

And then we also have What else am I missing? The end of through the town the the the town audit through through the town. Um so as far as our finances goes we're we're already getting audited three times in three different levels. So as as far as you know the finances go I think through those three separate individual audits our case is pretty proven and pretty solid about the money is being

spent and you know in a proper way and I think that's never been a There's never been a doubt in my mind about that. I think and based on the conversations that we've had in this group prior I think what if I'm hearing everyone correctly is that we're looking or this group may be looking more towards a like an operational study as to our staffing levels compared to other districts, similar size districts. Um

and yes I certainly you know I'm try I'm doing my best here to look through the eyes of everyone in this town because I sit on the board, Beth sits on the board and we're like we get it. You can go to you can go to the school and district profiles in Duxbury.

You can find this information there. You can go to you know the the federal page and see how much money we're being spent being spent in federal money. Um but I'm I'm trying to the general public doesn't know well one where to go and two what what they're actually looking for and so we have certainly and our plan B could certainly be us putting together working together to put out some kind of informational flyer

based on that data if the committee one chooses not to move forward as a whole because I think that you know, we we got to put this up to a vote on the full school committee.

So, that's that's a consideration. If it doesn't if if the select board decides not to move forward with it because of cost or the school committee decides not to vote it through for everyone's individual reasons that I think a good plan solid plan B would be to look at the data that that we have through these independent sources and put something together so every single person in this town could

understand where where the money's going and how's it being used and I hate you I really hate using the term the best bang for the buck. I I don't want to use that because I actually think it's insulting in some ways.

But that our money is being used in a fiduciary you know, in a responsible fiduciary way.

So, I And ultimately, you know, Beth, if you want to do you have anything else you want to share before I continue?

Um I just want to say that yes, I'm fine if you want to do a third party, but I there the insinuation is is that the facts that Mr. Kylie puts before the public um aren't facts. They're dining room table talk. So, I still have a problem with that. Our facts are facts.

Um but my question would be maybe what we really need to do is find out what the questions are and then we may have the data.

Let's put it together and see if least everybody in this group believes the facts that we actually have now can answer the questions that we have.

Um I think we need to know what the questions are that that seem to be up in the air.

Yeah, a couple of concerns that I have when I when I think about this is number one, time and energy, right? How How are we going to you know, how much time and how much energy are we going to need to uh to have the administration work on uh gaining the data. Um and a lot of the financials I I think would would be easy enough to to ascertain. Um

one of the things that that Jim is probably not I maybe you do have an estimate on what the effect is going to be in 2028 going forward for the next 3 to 5 years after that uh from the projects in town, from the from the 40B um building, you know, construction projects. Uh we need to look at that. We need to have uh we need to have somebody uh get their

arms around exactly what that cost is going to be because I think in the last meeting I mentioned one of the concerns that I have is that we've got something growing within our budget that all of a sudden is going to hit and we weren't prepared for it. Um so we're not doing the school committee any justice uh if we're not at least looking at some of the things that could come up down the road that

um that could have a major impact because you have to assume that those special education requirements and and needs are going to be the same in that um carrel than it is throughout the whole system, right? So Right? Oh.

Go ahead. Go ahead. No, what I was going to say is that I know when we've worked with SRP to do our master plan that they do projections of what they're anticipating based on information what our enrollment would look like um because when they did our master plan, we didn't have any of these 40B projects on the books. It may be something that we can contact them and say, "Can you

give us this slice of what that would look like?" Because everybody uses a formula to figure those things out. It would be X, it would be Y.

Um so, it may be as easy not that necessarily easy, but For that particular issue.

particular question, it may be that. My other thought is um as you've said, what are the questions?

What are the questions that you think people need to know? And then I'm really curious.

Is there a third-party option out there?

Is there a company that does this?

And what do they look for? And maybe when we're we look at what they're looking for, we say, "That's not what we're looking for." We may find um before we even go and have to get a RFP and figure out what kind of money uh if it's something we need or don't need. If it's just a review of information we can find ourselves.

Um but again, I do um say the time and energy of admin when everybody else has already got, you know, several things on their plate.

This is not a time to add something to someone's plate. So, if it can be collated or culled from information that's already in existence. Yeah, and and the time is spent on on the ancillary things. You know, the the time is spent on the outcomes that um may not be in most definitely will probably not be in the town audit. I don't know if you've got if you've looked at that town audit, forget it. You know,

you're going to be Gary and half in order to get through that that mess.

But uh um you know, but the other information uh you know, hopefully we can save some time on it. One one of the things that that I look at uh from 10,000 ft is, you know, are we are we missing something? Are are we looking I I you know, is Jim is the school committee is the school department is the police chief uh you know, is Tim are they too close to their operation to see um

you know, just see the forest through the trees.

You know, when when I when I did these uh audits for myself, I I actually put myself through them and it it was never fun. Uh but, I always thought it was important to have somebody come in and smack you around a little bit and say, "Hey, listen, what do you know, why are you doing that?" You know, nobody else is doing that. Uh you know, maybe you should try this. Or, that's great. I

love the fact, let's expand that. Um the way that you guys are handling say in the school department uh special education. Um maybe you've cracked a code that the others haven't found. Um and that's worth explaining to the general public because where you know, they see what you're spending on special education, maybe they don't understand how much you're saving.

Um and you know, I don't know if regionalization comes into those things or not. I know you've got the uh the groups that you deal with on special ed. Um but, sometimes these types of overviews can illuminate things that you otherwise wouldn't see because you're too close to it. Um Yeah, I'd like to make [clears throat] a couple of comments about DESE data.

Um the DESE data, since we seem to be talking about it quite a bit, it tracks schools. It doesn't tell what happened to uh residents, what happened to their money, how the spending it on schools affects the town and their financial future. Those are two very different things.

Uh the financial context, [clears throat] DESI tracks schools spending in isolation. It doesn't calculate um the growth differential between school and non-school municipal spending, doesn't frame school cost growth against Proposition 2 and 1/2 revenue ceiling, and doesn't [clears throat] access what the school's budget structural share of the municipal expenditure means to fiscal

sustainability. DESI data doesn't show uh for the past decade and it and and what what means for Dartmouth to have for a financial future. An independent firm can do all of that. It also, as far as demographic and household data, DESI tracks enrollment. It doesn't tell you the percent of Dartmouth's [clears throat] total households who have children in school and those who don't and how things like senior and

fixed-income population has grown and how those trends project forward. The central demographic observation that most households for a school system that they don't use requires the data that DESI has no reason to collect.

Uh can I'm sorry, Brian. I'm going to I'm going to ask just to pause for a moment.

Um the last meeting we had that started out with the document that you and Chris created.

Um kind of flipped what I felt BAG was initially put together to do.

Sorry.

You lost me. Flipped what?

The Budget Advisory Group.

Advisory Group.

Okay. Um was going to be looking at the town as a whole, one Dartmouth, school included, and looking at all of our departments, and what do we need to run all of our departments efficiently.

you look at that document, it it goes outside of schools. What document? The first document?

Yes.

I wanted I want to say in the fine print, yes. What do you mean in the fine print? It doesn't say it in the fine print. It says it right in there.

It's It's secondary. I want to take a step back as a group, and I want us to revisit what we're looking at cuz now I'm feeling like this will be entering our like fifth hour of discussing what more information we want from the school department, and I want to know when we are going forward, what do we need at DPW? What do we need at the police? What do we need in parks and

rec? What do we need at the Council on Aging? What do we need at the libraries?

I want to know what everybody needs because I truly believe that an override that is overly fixated on what the schools and schools only need will be problematic. Just like when we talked about the DPW needing um the sewer treatment plant, Bass, who does not use water and sewer in town, said, "Doesn't impact me. Why would I vote for that?" We've got to look at all of these areas and say,

"You want to know why you should pay for the school kids that you don't have."

She wants to know why she should pay.

that.

Well, I'm saying individuals that do not have children or grandchildren in the school of people in this town Okay, but people who do not use the water or sewer system want to know why should they pay if we need to improve?

Who?

Who suggested they should pay?

An override No.

Yes, would go up on their taxes.

Yes, it would.

Why are you saying no? I'm saying that the override is once you vote the override, part of it would be how you going to spend the money. Right.

But, my house value and the override Sorry, your house value increases taxes.

It doesn't help you at all.

The person who sold the house moves out of town and increases your tax.

I don't know. Clearly, you think the argument is very easy and I think the argument is very easy and we're on different pages.

opposite sides Maybe maybe engineering can help.

Janine. May I?

I don't disagree that we need to look at one Dartmouth. I've never disagreed with that statement and I said it in the last meeting.

Um but I think you've diverted the conversation from what Brian was answering because we were specifically talking about what doesn't DESSI cover and that's what Brian was answering. Um and I know I know he has shared this data at least with Chris.

Um and I've shared similar data with Chris and I guess it wasn't shared with everyone and I'm sorry about that because it should have been. Um because that's how we learn is by all the research and Brian has done the majority of it.

That research should be shared with the entire committee. Agree or disagree, that's irrelevant because people need to understand some of the background because we're diving into conversations and everybody goes, "Well, where's this coming from? Or what questions should we ask?" And it's been shared.

All right, I'll I'll look at your I don't I don't recall what you what you had shared.

sure Brian has many more than I shared.

documents I received none of them.

Brian. Well, I I'm not suggesting that you have received them cuz I never received many of them except Brian does share stuff with me.

Chris. Okay, I'm going to be short and sweet here. It's already 4:23.

Mhm. I'm on a number of different boards and committees in the town, the municipality I work in, and here. Can we just get to the point? From the school committee's perspective, we need to know what is this committee looking for as far as the report. I'm hearing things tying I'm hearing tying what we're spending on the schools and how does that affect the senior citizens in this town and the people that don't

have students in this town. I need to know so we can Beth and I can take this back and have a fruitful conversation with our school committee members, the rest of our colleagues, as to what does this committee want from us. Mhm. All right.

All right, well, the first want to, you know, keep spinning wheels here. Yeah, well, the first thing that I go back to is that this was shared with everybody and I received um I I didn't receive any feedback. The DESE piece?

The original It was shared one day before we met. No, no, it was shared a couple It was a few days beforehand. And um it's been 3 weeks since and uh I understand that the school committee had to had to, you know, get the overall concept out there. Um so I'll go back to that point that for this particular group, no matter what the department uh does the option list make sense to

everybody. If it doesn't, then I'd like to know that. Um I think the uh you know, the the fact that the information, the outcomes, and and the request for information for the schools is heard um you know, we'll we'll try and put something together with with Gary and Cody to try and get it all back to you um in I don't know if it's going to be a mock-up RFP or what,

you know, however we'll do it. but it will go out to everybody so you can mark you can mark that up. So, we'll know at least what information we're getting, uh you know, what what information we're requesting. So, let me just bring up another point. In this original document, uh the school committee schools were not singled out. What it talks about is a whole bunch of different things, and it

talks operate spending smarter, it talks about consolidating IT departments, HR consolidation, facilities and maintenance, uh bringing consulting work in-house where staff capacity exists, reducing outside contracts, uh shared services with neighboring towns, regional whole read I'm not going to read them all to you, but a whole different uh bunch of things that could be done with sharing uh services with

different towns, uh controlling uh which we discussed in the first meeting, uh the cost drivers of the schools, uh polling for uh town employees uh on money-saving ideas. Option three uh was uh bringing in money, uh new local taxes, payment in lieu of taxes, economic development, state advocacy uh it talks about a whole bunch of things.

Yeah.

Let me finish on this part with with something that Heidi just mentioned, that um I'm not sure who you referenced, Heidi, but somebody said something about the sewer and water, I don't need it. Um it doesn't it doesn't affect me.

It's the exact same thing that I'm trying to get to with the schools.

How how do I get that person who is going to pay uh more in their taxes for the sewer and water system uh when they don't have to take advantage of the sewer and water system?

I'll be 1 second, Beth.

Um so, it's the same thing with the schools. How do I convince the 70% of the people that don't have kids in the schools that the investment that we're making in these kids is good for them also.

So, it's the exact same argument.

And that's ultimately what I'd like to do with all departments in order to get what they need to run an efficient department. Go ahead, Bess.

Um So, I appreciate your questions for the school.

Um I do feel that this document is dividing us. It's not unifying us.

And I really appreciated at last our last meeting that Deirdre brought up that the driving cost is personnel. And that goes through all departments. And I just think that if we could change the wording, um you know, it's uh non-school services quietly shrinking.

Well, the school services are too.

And the biggest driver of that is personnel and their wages. And I would like to point out here that we here in Dartmouth have a very low tax rate. We are 253 out of 351 communities here in Massachusetts. So, the question is if the biggest driver is personnel, do we want our town employees to have fair wages?

And then we could ask after that, do we want good schools?

Yeah, it's a it's a valid point, right? One of the things that I keep coming back to is how do we, you know, in all departments, are we comparing ourselves to other communities? And I hate comparing ourselves to other communities. I don't care what other communities are doing, to be very honest with you. I honestly don't care. As long as I'm competitive with the salaries and the benefits with

the employees so I can attract talent, that's the only thing that I'm worried about as far as some type of comparison.

When that comparison is negative and it affects us being able to hire good quality people. That's one of the biggest things.

Um I'm less concerned about um certain service deliveries when we are compared to other towns cuz there's a there's a myriad of things that can be different between different communities.

I'm I I want to get us to a point where we have a presentation at town meeting and we explain exactly this is the type of town that we want or if we don't then this is the town you're going to get.

There's the difference. Right? Um so I I'll pledge to you that we include the other departments in this.

Um we'll we'll massage that to make sure that uh that all facets of the town are are included in this to some degree. Um obviously the schools are a great percentage of the budget. That's and we've got two people on the on uh school committee you know on this particular um um committee. So So to your point, Mr.

Chair our last the last figures that were run, our teachers are 12% under the state average for for salaries.

Actually if I could clarify. So So um you know, following the compensation study that was done for the town, um we did uh conducted [clears throat] using the exact same communities average teacher salaries. And interestingly enough, you know, the town side I think was about 12% under on average about overall in terms of compensation and so was the teaching staff.

So um you know, we're in the same boat that the rest of the town is in terms of compensating our staff at less than comparable communities using those same communities. Can I make a comment about that?

Mr. Chairman? Go ahead.

Uh I don't think it I think what we spend should be geared to what we want as outcomes.

Not comparing us to be whatever you I think it was 200 and what did I say 230th?

Uh it's what we want if you want if we have to pay more then we should pay more.

But it's to me it's a material that we're 230.

We need we need or whatever the ranking was. What we need to do is present a case to the people in town about the value they're getting from the school system and let them decide uh whether it's a um a uh compensation study or whatever.

Uh what they let them decide on what they want to spend uh to reach the objectives uh that they need for the town in terms of the school system.

Well, I'm going to say then that should be insert any department.

I'm sorry. Insert any department.

Insert? What does that mean? Insert.

Instead of saying school department Yes.

insert Yes. DPW. Insert the library.

Okay.

So when you're speaking because again when you're just including school department No, I'm not just including school But you just did.

No, I didn't. But you just did. It's 60% of the budget.

Regardless you just it's the elephant in the room.

going to break protocol and take public comment in this particular case because she has a brilliant idea. Terry, please.

I'm not breaking any decorum. I can't wait to hear it, Terry. I have such a great idea. What would happen if instead of doing this we ran a I don't know what it's called but some kind of a model of the budget development for FY 28 right now and then send it out to everybody and say well, this is what we have this is what we can afford. What can we

cut and then go back before we're in an emergency situation and ask department heads how will you deal with this? Would that be one way of getting at having everybody weighing in?

Um as I said the last meeting, I just think another outside report is going to be like, okay, so who believes that? You know, you can put a lot of facts out there and people still don't believe it.

But it What a way to deal with this I I mentioned list of things we could lose instead of us making that decision saying this is the $12 million gap that we have, whatever it is, and um how do we So I guess it wasn't as great an idea then.

No, it is, but but as part of this ultimately what we would what I'd like to see is I'd like to see exactly what the estimates uh for any savings from uh program changes within the town um uh regionalization uh sharing work, all the things that are included in this that we haven't even gotten to yet. So I I'll make a comment again. So I think Could I ask Cody just to respond because

what Terry just suggested is done at the department head meeting in advance of going into creating budgets.

Yeah, well I mean we we have projections um we're you know, we're we're hesitant to start talking projections [clears throat] more than a year in advance publicly because so much changes. Um you know, we we haven't had a chance to review needs with every department. Um on the general government side for instance, we're still collective bargaining, right? We don't have our our bargaining agreements

even for the coming year settled. Um but we're we have those ongoing discussions uh regularly with the team. But I mean, if you're talking more generally, I can tell you we're looking at a deficit next year, right? If you if we look we we had a deficit this year, right? If we if we were going to accommodate all of the requests that came in, we had a deficit.

We worked through those requests, we paired the requests down, and we were making it through with a balanced budget with some consensus.

But, um I Yeah, I don't even need to look at projections to determine that.

So, so it's a it's a valid point, and there's so many moving parts to it.

Cody, can you just um on that text that I just sent you, Mark Wattenburg sent me something from the floor of the Senate about um what he's attempting to do to alleviate some of this pressure. Um Yeah, we're seeing um you know, if it goes through, the unrestricted government aid is going to see a record increase um well, the the Senate um recommended a a pretty healthy increase,

almost 7% for Dartmouth compared to last year. Um state aid, if approved as what Senate has proposed, is is a almost uh it's over a 5% increase overall for state aid, which is good because the governor's budget was 1.2%, right? So, really the opposite end of the spectrum.

It's a good It helps. It doesn't solve the problem.

Yeah, it doesn't solve the problem, but but becomes a big part of what we're ultimately trying to do.

It does. It definitely helps. But, when we're talking you know, you hear an extra 300,000, which hey, $300,000 is great, we're going to take it. But, when we're talking a $113 million budget, 300,000 isn't going to cure it um cure the problem. Before um you let Brian speak, if I can just clarify a couple things that have been said. The first is we got to be careful about water and sewer, comparing that to schools,

because water and sewer are enterprise funds, and they're all ratepayer funded.

So, we would we typically would never ask the general taxpayer to take on anything for a water or sewer department project or operations. They're primarily funded through their rates. So, any debt that they incur is paid through their rates. Uh their operations are paid through their rates. So, unless there were something um really catastrophic, we would we would not generally fund them out of the general out of the

general fund. You're you're taking away from where else we would would So, I just want to make that distinction. It's It's hard to compare.

things that we might have to increase with the DPW. Yes, not enterprise funds though. So, so highway So, for highway department anyways, is is general fund.

Yeah, all roads, that's all general fund. But, the the utilities, water and sewer in particular, are are not funded through the general taxpayer. So, if you have a well and a septic, you are not paying for anything to do with water and sewer. So, I just I just want to make that distinction.

Right. Quick, and then we got to We got to get into revenue and expenses.

I'm sorry. We We have to get into revenue and expenses. All right. So, the core part part of this document in the beginning was talking about the town spending roughly 3.3% over what it takes in.

And then a 2.5 cap on what it can raise in terms of override.

So, we still have a structural deficit.

We're spending more than we're taking in. And the way we make up for it is by taking it away from other services in town. And it I can't help it that the schools are 60% of the budget. Um and we had agreed at the last meeting to in to include the other sources of revenue.

All right? Yes.

I want to talk about the 2.5.

of the budget should be looked at very seriously. And we are.

Um Cody, can we can we get into um some of the ideas on revenue and expense also?

Yeah, absolutely. I I think um we need to look at that.

Also, just want to remind the committee as a whole that this is an advisory group. This committee has really I mean this with all due respect, no authority. All right? So, this is an advisory group of the select board. So, whatever this committee is whatever the consensus is of this committee, really needs to go back to the select board for them to make the final request, since they are the they're the policy makers

of the town. So, I I just want them Whatever is agreed upon here should really just be a recommendation to the select board. And the select board actually needs to be the one to to make that formal request.

Um when we look at revenues and expenses, I I think this is the area we should really and I guess in in speaking with Gary and even some conversations we've had with Jim, um this is the area we we thought would be a good place for the group to dig in and start looking at that and it's across the board um and and try to develop consensus with the idea being Yeah, right. May Are

there things that we're not looking at and are we looking at everything? We're looking at efficiencies.

Uh and I think we need to highlight the things that we're doing cuz there are a lot of good things going on, general government, schools. And then I mean, I think we can all agree there's probably things we could we could be doing more, right? And And sometimes that takes investment, right? So, for instance, this year in the school department budget, I know you have a Is it a job coach or so position there

that's going to essentially create more efficiency, it might save you some money. Those are the types of things I think we need to talk about, but we also then need to look at what are those other things that that we can look at.

Um So, you know, we, Gary and I, at least on the general government side, have have started looking at what that may look like over the next year for us.

Um and even with um Dr. Sam Maguire and Mr. Kylie, we we've talked about, you know, human resources has been an ongoing thing, looking at what a consolidation of that actually looks like. We've talked about communications.

That's something that there's some ongoing discussions on.

Um I previously mentioned to the finance committee that DCTV is funded through cable revenues. Those are decreasing.

We're going to need to make a decision on how we fund DCTV going forward.

Uh and we think that may be an area that we need to explore regionalization. Not Not that we plan to send the services out, but do we look at providing the services to other communities? It's going to require greater investment, but it's a good example of that. You may need to invest at first, but is the long-term outcome worth it, right? Does Does it benefit Dartmouth? Um we are in

the process of assessing our custodial services. We have an outside contract.

We spend about $100,000 a year on that contract. In FY27, we're planning to bring that in-house, uh and our anticipated savings is about $40,000 a year.

Um assessing services, we've been using consulting at the tune of about $120,000 a year to do a lot of that assessing work. We've also only had a couple of actual individuals over the past 25 years that have looked at how we're doing our evaluations. Um we're looking at a combination of bringing some of that in-house and also some other consultants. We anticipate thousands of dollars in savings there.

Um we've also in this group talked about doing a survey to all of our employees um for any revenue generation ideas or just operational efficiencies. Uh after town meeting, we'll begin drafting that survey.

Um you know, I think as has been mentioned here tonight, we're we're all for looking at these things, but you know, it's a very busy time of year. Um I don't have an assistant town administrator right now. My HR director just gave her notice, and we're you know, we're we're working hard to get these things done, but they do take some time. Uh and then we're also planning to engage with some of our large nonprofits

on payment in lieu of taxes uh agreements.

So, I mean, those are those are just some of the things that I think can begin to um have further discussions in this group beyond what we've discussed thus far, and I imagine you know, what Mr. Kylie has probably lots of the you know, similar ideas.

But I think that that's a good place for us to build consensus um on top of these other things. I think it's great conversation, but I don't I don't this the core of what we're looking to do maybe has been lost recently, and there's been some contention. And if that is what the group is going to be, I don't think it's effective in all honesty. I mean, I would We're busy. Um

if we're going to be collaborative, which is the whole point of this, and come to consensus, great, that's what we want. Um, or at least an understanding.

We might you might not agree, right, everywhere, but hopefully an understanding of why, you know, we're coming up with these things, and make recommendations to the select board for them to make the the final request of what these things are.

Um, but I think those are good places to start, and then as we look at identifying other areas to study, you know, the school operational study may be something. We're looking at DPW.

We're looking at police.

Um, and then identifying exactly what it is what we're looking for. Whether it's using that information to develop scopes of work, which we'll need if we're going to hire consultants, and also identifying what makes sense to bring in a third-party consultant, and what does not make sense, cuz I think there is a value to bringing in a third party for um, a credibility standpoint, right, if

we're going to bring an an override forward. We have to be careful, but and I'll use the rate study um, at DPW that we brought in. We paid We paid a third party quite a bit of money um, to do a rate study, and 2 years later, we were running a deficit in our water department, and and it was almost based on the rate study that was provided. Gary and I, you know,

we're we're pretty smart, but I don't think we're that smart. We did it in 10 minutes, and we came up with kind of exactly what we needed to do. So, consultants are good, but us working in Dartmouth every day, this being our career, sometimes, depending on the topic, can know a little bit better, depending on what the topic is. Um, but I do think there's also a value to third-party consultants for credibility

and some other things. Some of the points that Brian brought up, um, those are those are right That's not something we're going to be able to develop, but a third-party consultant may be able to develop something like that.

I think the survey, the operational survey from uh, from actual employees is would be interesting.

You know, I I know that uh, I mean, I had a small shop, but I always got probably two or three things that are actionable out of um, the people that are actually doing the work.

Um so so that would be interesting if we can you know when we start getting into that sooner the better I think that would be that would be a good thing.

Um Anybody else?

On revenue expenses uh things that we need to look at uh do we bring I mean we we have the ability to bring others in.

Yeah, I think that's the you know that that the one of the benefits of this group is you all bring as Dartmouth residents in different perspectives and backgrounds.

If we're going to move forward with the override at some point, you really are the eyes and ears and are thinking what the residents are thinking. And so we should be ironing out the things that you're thinking of um on the draft report that that was um distributed last month where we there was some areas for like regionalization.

We can go through those. Some of them yeah maybe we do need to explore some of them more. But but then internally we've also talked about um some of them that doesn't it just it wouldn't make sense for Dartmouth. We don't need to spend the money on a study to to do that.

Well, I mean we've got we should have a list. We should have a working list of things that we're we're looking at on the revenue side, expense, regionalization.

Um you know we we should start to compile uh those and check them off as a group, you know agree that we either follow certain things up and we let others we let others go by the wayside.

Um either because they just don't produce enough savings or they don't produce enough income. I know the seasonal revenue from seasonal homes you know initially I don't think it's going to it's going to be worth the administration of it. You know a lot of these things are are great on paper but when you have to build in the administration and it doesn't it doesn't make sense to follow it up.

Regionalization is also a challenge um because we're a large community. You see smaller communities do will do more of their just services regionalized because they don't necessarily need a full-time building inspector, right?

Maybe they can share with another community. The other challenge we have in in addition to workload of being a larger community is the geographic bounds of Dartmouth being so large present a challenge in regionalization.

We just had this conversation with, um, animal control. Westport is in need of some animal control. Hey, is this an opportunity for us to regionalize animal control? Well, there was a call over in Westport.

A call that would have taken them 10 minutes if it were in Dartmouth was 2 and 1/2 hours because it was on the Little Compton line in Westport and they had to, you know, leave that it was an after hours call, leave their home, come get the van in Dartmouth, drive over there, do what they needed to do. I think they needed to bring a dog to a shelter or something.

Do that, come back, and now is it really worth it? And then if another call comes in in Dartmouth, and now are we sacrificing our service levels? So, those are the things we have to look at, but being a large community in in just the volume, but also the geographic, um, the large geographic area that we make up can present challenges in in certain circumstances.

Um, but there are but I'm not saying there aren't opportunities to at least further investigate. Mr. Chairman, the this, uh, document listed those things as a all inclusive with just the idea that you were talking about. Some of them, regionalization, may not suit Dartmouth. So, but at least we've taken a look at it, checked it off, and that's the end of the discussion.

And again, the original point was it's about it's about letting people know that we've discussed it, we've looked at it. It either makes sense or it doesn't.

Uh purchasing for schools as well as the rest of the town with a unified purchasing office help us. Check it off. If it won't, it won't.

But to go through all of these things so that the people in town can then realize that we've done our homework.

And that we're doing everything we can possibly be doing to avoid going to an override. But an override might be still in the cards, especially if we want to fund the schools the way we want to fund the schools. Whatever that means uh in terms of how individual residents in Dartmouth perceive that. The people that pay the taxes.

I can I can believe it.

out that we are really under spending and that we need an override to fund the schools.

That's fine, I think.

If enough people agree the town. Fund the schools that are part of the town. I So So I would say yes, that is true. The The schools are a large part of that.

They're 60% of it. They're more than a large part.

I just said yes.

I'm agreeing. Okay. Um I just want you to see it from their perspective that if we don't get more resources, possibly from an override, um it's we might pay people okay, but we are going to lose personnel and the people we live that live in this town.

think you can make the assumption that if you pay more, you're going to get better results.

I don't think you can do that.

No, you can't, but you could say that if you can get $10,000 more from going two communities away, you're going to lose some of your best employees for that bump in pay. That's part of the entire uh package that this group should be recommending to the select board. Is to say these are the trade-offs. These are the positive. These are the negatives.

You represent the people. You decide or we decide together that we have to put it on some kind of vote or whatever.

They have to decide whether it's worthwhile or not cuz we're an advisory committee.

Yeah, one one of the things when it comes to competitive to your point, Beth.

You know, employees.

Uh you know, the the comp and class study it's it's all great. We we've seen it, but a lot of people in this town have not seen They don't realize what the numbers do and how how that affects our ability to hire.

You know, I'm I I'm not fully aware of of the school department and the trouble that they have or are they having trouble filling certain positions?

I know that we made changes to some of the compensation as as [clears throat] we have on the town side in order to make those jobs more competitive. That's a That's a key point for every taxpayer in this town to realize that we have to stay competitive. We just do. If not, then then we'll peeling back services, period. End of story. We can't fill the seats.

Um so I thought we just went through a job not for the schools. Sorry to say the word school.

Um but for the town you did a compensation study. So you must have an idea about I realize it's not public or hasn't been made No, no, it's public. It's public document. Yeah. Okay. Well, either way, you know if people are being paid as they should or they're not. So that's been resolved.

It But the key the key is are you filling the positions? You know, you can you can have a number assigned. Um and it may seem it may seem competitive, but are we are we able to fill the positions?

I would assume I'm after I don't know. I don't hire people.

I mean, well, it's it's there's multiple facets of it because the the municipal and and when I say municipal, I mean schools and everyone in municipal. The the marketplace has changed significantly even over the last 5 years. You the the day to best his point, there used to be a commitment to the community that you were in, whether you were a teacher or a finance, you there was a commitment. You

you As long as you were paid adequately, you stuck to that community. I would say it's rare that you have that commitment anymore. People are going to go where they're going to get paid the most and get the most benefits within reason.

Um and then there's just certain positions where there there aren't a lot of them out there. Um municipal finances is a big um issue.

Um HR, you know, in assessing assessing is a huge one. There's not a lot of us assessors out there. So, we may be we may be competitive to a sense, comparatively speaking, but if you only have a small pool of candidates, um you may still not be able to fill those jobs. And so that's that's part of the the issue. Um and then and then you essentially have to decide, do you pay even more to then

attract people? Maybe something you you have to do. That you may be able to pay This is what the market's paying, but in order to attract someone to Dartmouth, we may need to pay a little bit more than that. Um that's not unusual that people are paying above market now to to recruit these these key positions.

So, it's it's hard.

the turnover rate?

Well, it's hard because we we we had a significant turnover rate about 3 years ago.

Um and I can say in the past year, we filled 20 24 25 of those vacant positions in town. So, the turnover rate has significantly decreased. Mhm. Um we don't have great data on the reason for the turnover rate. I mean, we exit interviews are conducted most of the time.

You only collect so much data from those. So, you know, some of it's compensation, some of it's people move.

There's all all different reasons.

reasons why people switch jobs and it's not because they didn't make X. Yeah, no, no, no, not always.

Sometimes it is.

I'm not saying it's not. But on the school side, my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong, the retention rate is very high.

And that's on Dashley. It it is, but we're finding it hard to attract.

hire in certain specialties.

Um but yes, there I believe there is a loyalty to the Dartmouth schools, but that doesn't mean that as prices go up, that they can't But we're having a difficult time um hiring police officers. We're eight and July 1st we'll be 10 police officers down and they're just not coming to Dartmouth.

Um You just added a very good one, actually. Right.

One.

But he was excellent.

was a Yes, that was a lateral transfer police officers. Okay. But in the past few since I've been on the board, we've sent I think 11 to the academy and we had two join the force.

Wow. So, when we like you know, bring them across the stage and you know, give them conditional employment, it looks great, but in the end I agree, but I would want to know I would want to hear from the chief as to what his challenges are. Yeah, that police is a little bit different, right?

And and this goes to the global issue of people don't want to be police officers anymore. I mean, you see kind of the the climate out there. Being a police officer, it's not the most desirable job right now. So, that plays into it. We're we're still we're civil service community still, which means Uh, well, we just we're hybrid now, but primarily being a civil service community, you

have to pull from the civil service exam. People There are not as many people are taking the civil service exam, and then the people that are, you don't necessarily want everyone on there, or you select them, and they're going to other communities, or you bring them in, and maybe they can't pass the physical fitness test. There's a lot that goes into those things.

Um, police is actually a good example where, per our compensation study, we actually pay a little bit above market average um our police officers. Um, but that's one of those positions where, you know, we need to look at, okay, well, maybe we maybe we need to pay a little above market average. That's, you know, but every every everything's a little bit different. So, it's hard to assign a specific um

methodology to every to every department because the the climate has just changed significantly across the board. And and same with the schools and the different positions that you have.

It's It's It's changed. I think for the, if I may, I think for the school department, yes, we have a high um retention rate, but I think a lot of that comes down to uh we we have I I would have to guess somewhere between 40 and 50% of our staff live in town, and they're taking the hometown discount, and I really do believe that if they if it wasn't for seniority, right, and it

wasn't for the years and the accumulated benefits that they have that they want to retire from Dartmouth and not lose their seniority and go to another district, that they would be jumping ship. They absolutely would be jumping ship to go to other districts. What's keeping them here is the fact that is their seniority. Uh I I firmly I firmly believe that. And as far as um attracting new staff, the staff that we

are able to attract, uh we're hiring them not at step one bachelor's, we're hiring them at step 11, the top step with a master's plus 15, a master's plus 30. That's what That's the the pool of candidates that that we're hiring from.

No longer are we hiring with bachelor's step one. That happens on occasion, I'm sure.

But we're hiring, you know, certainly at top step for a lot of for a lot of these. Switching gears is going back to regionalization. Has there been any talk with at the county level? I know some counties there's a lot of regionalization.

I I work in Barnstable County. We Barnstable County has an IT department that services a number of a number of municipalities in Barnstable County. They have their regional dispatch center. They have emergency management. They have a lot of things.

So, I'm just curious with Bristol County, other than the retire other than the sheriff's office, the retirement board, the you know, the court system, is there any other kind of regionalization that Bristol County does?

No. No, I I mean, in all honesty, the the services that we have in Bristol County are slim to none. I mean, they operate Bristol County the high school and our county the our cultural high school. Well, Gary and I were just having this conversation today and and it's something I think that that the group should continue to discuss.

Like collection, right? Most of the country county taxes, right? Taxes are collected at the county level.

Taxes are assessing is done at the county level. It's incredibly efficient.

It's way more efficient than operating every single municipality. We'd love to see that, in all honesty.

It would require so much legislation to change. Per law, every town is required to have their own board of assessors.

Right. Every town is required to have a collector. That's not a bylaw, that's not a charter. That's a Mass General Law that you have to have that.

Um those are if we're talking long-term kind of regional efforts, it would make sense. I mean, it totally would make sense to do those things. And like I mentioned, right? Assessors. You're not finding assessors out there anymore.

Um so it's going to become even more difficult. That would be the prime thing for for the council to start looking at.

sorry. Go ahead.

Uh one of the things we had talked about previously was we have an assessor. Mhm.

And because other towns don't have an assessor.

No, every town has an assessor. You have You have to have an assessor. Okay, but don't a lot of towns uh use outside consultants? Um well, we've actually learned we're using more outside consultants than most communities.

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So, I was going to suggest since we had an assessor We're actually looking to do the opposite. We we want to stop using so many outside services and bring it in.

So, that would be something to check off. We can't We can't because of that law, we can't make assessing services available to us.

Yeah, those are the topics that at least and I don't want to speak for Jim, but Carrie and I have talked about would be beneficial coming from the group because again, we're working in it every day and and we do think about these things, but like you've brought them up, we've thought about them, we've thought them out, and okay, we put them over here.

We're not purposely, you know, not being public with it, but it just it's part of the daily routine that we're doing. So, as those things come up here, they're good conversations to have and keep record of. Um so, we can talk about them. And some of them, yeah, may need to be ironed out.

of the whole thing. We we need to make sure before, you know, any of us go to the town taxpayer and tell them, "Listen, you know, we're we're going to need $328 more in taxes every year." We need to make sure that they understand we flipped every rock in this town. I mean, I I feel like we're wrestling.

We're between We're between these ideas and concepts and I I think, you know, I'm better with lists, uh checking them off. Um so, uh I I think the next meeting will will come will come before you. Uh we'll distribute the list to you um beforehand. Who's making the list?

I think staff, myself will work on it.

Um and I need ideas on cost savings and revenue.

Um even if you think we've talked about it already, send it to me. Um we need to start to get to action items. I think the survey is a great idea for for the employees. I think we'll be we'll be kind of shocked a little bit as to as to what comes out of that. Uh we might have some action items there.

Um Assessing's long-term, very long-term.

But um Is that something you're looking for the school department as well if if possible? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. If if uh you know, I mean we touched on it I think in the first meeting, things like naming rights. Uh yeah, I don't care what it is. I I just need to make sure this guy knows we're doing whatever we can uh to mitigate what the budget what the budgets are in this town and um

you know, where we're getting the revenue from. And I think May May I speak? And I think when we get through with that, that will give the taxpayers a pretty good understanding of whether or not we need an override or not going forward or number of overrides.

I I will define the fund school the fund operating budgets for the school as well as for the town.

I will not be a proponent for an override unless that happens. Exactly.

Because you know, it's just impossible uh deliver meals on wheels.

You'll see the issues in the town. That's right. We got people turn over every rock and you still find can't find enough money, Yeah. then you have to go to an override. But then you have to explain to everybody uh in a verifiable way that you've turned over every rock in every department and it still comes up short or it doesn't come up short.

Right.

Agreed. And I think at the end of the day the taxpayer is going to make their mind up one way or the other. One way or the other and you're going to have you're going to have a a number of people that are just going to say no to prop two and a half. I see the signs in Fairhaven. Yeah. I saw one in Dartmouth.

There's one in Dartmouth.

Right. There's one in Dartmouth, yes.

Dartmouth. And you know what? I I'm not I'm not going to try and change that person's mind.

Exactly. We're never going to There's some people that we're never going to change.

But but we've got a lot of people on the fence that want to make sure that we we're doing what we need to do uh in order to in order to ring out what we can. And not just for next year. I I'm I don't know. It's a concern. Maybe maybe next year's number is a concern for for these people, but my my concern is three years down the road, four five

years down the road. We're never going to get the bite at the apple again if we come up with a number that um that that doesn't address some of these major the structural issues that we have. So, I would like to bring up another couple of issues here. We also should be pressing uh the school uh the um select board to be after our state representatives to change the funding formula. That's already happened. Like I

said today, Mark Mark's already gotten back to us about the increase in chapter 70 money. He's gotten us some money for Jim for the the bus. But I'm talking for I'm talking about working through MassMutual uh association uh where they're putting together a number of towns to go to the legislature. So, instead of having two towns, it's 250 towns.

Oh, the calculation you're talking about.

Right. They're going to say 250 towns are saying we're being short shortchanged uh for the money you give us.

Well, that goes back to the original issue that um that calculation, they won't look at that because our tax rate's too low. So, we're chasing our tail again on on the issue. We we need we need That's my point of saying 250 towns or whatever it is saying exactly the same thing. They're not going to be able to turn that back. Yeah.

Well, we'll we'll join the chorus. Well, listen. There are groups at MMA that are looking at um joining forces. Every community that has a state property.

So, which comes down to state colleges.

We're looking at the pilot for the um payment taxes and what that formula is to look if we can get a better formula.

I believe one of the suggestions that Gary came up with was talking to the uh about the land State owned land, yeah. State owned land, yes.

And that they should be paying us a lot more than they currently do for the fair value of that land. Yes.

another thing to check off and talk about if things like that make a difference where we won't need overrides or even despite doing all of that we do need an override.

Yeah, but it would be a hell of a lot smaller. Sorry? Well, it could be. It might It might be Who knows? I have no idea.

Potentially. I you know, the whole idea of asking people to pay in lieu of taxes uh for the uh different companies in town, the churches, etc.

So, it They derive benefits, they should be paying. Go ahead, yeah. I think I think um you know, maybe as we wrap up here today that maybe we we're set we're set like you had said uh Chris, we go back, we look at different alternatives for revenue, different ways we can maybe be efficient both like uh on the school side, and we come back to the next meeting with those lists, and we talk start talking about

those because you know, this document is more factual I think as far as like the revenues and and and everything else uh as being like the you know, the total budget. We have these numbers in here and these are these are numbers that are that are pretty accurate. But, I think that when we go to for you to say that is very important.

Yeah, and and I think that make this up.

Right. When we look at when we look at like when we look at and Cody and I have looked at this, you know, the um you know, what what the budget are what the budget is, you know, revenues in the in the future. But, putting this together into one document, I think what's going to have to happen is we're all going to have to be on the same page because if we're going to go to the

residents, they're going to want to know that we've all agreed on this is a good document to send out. And whether it's for an override or whether if it's for to build budgets in the future, we want to make sure that this is as clean as it can be as the boards and the committees look at this and then use it as a tool going forward.

But, you know, Cody and I as I said, we've we've looked this over.

There could be tweaks to this. We could continue to tweak that. But I think getting those getting those lists together and then building that into a document and then then then submitting that I think it's going to be 100% and now we're not just talking about the schools. We're talking about every single department. We've Cody and I have talked about a group that we can develop

maybe going on with as far as revenue is concerned, maybe looking at every quarter every every every two twice a year cuz this evolves. I mean, you know, we want to make sure that we're competitive. We want to make sure that we're not charging the most. We want to make sure that people still doing business in town and that we're not showing people away. So it's a balance.

I mean, this is a real balance and it's and it's you know, we've gotten by because over the last year we've been collaborative with the schools I think more than ever. You know, the last three four years. Absolutely.

look at these other communities that have fallen by the wayside. Look at New Bedford. I mean, closing a fire station.

So there's a there's a tug of war in a lot of these communities that haven't had that collaboration. So that's I think the reason why we're able to get as far as we have been. We're not perfect. We're not going to you know, the schools need an additional 2% this year. We couldn't do it. But maybe next year if we become more efficient, we can give the schools another extra 1%. We

you know, that's something that still Cody and I are still talking about. We talk about this every single day.

So you know, these other communities that you see that are all going for overrides fails. It's it's by the week now. We see these things by the week every community. We need you know, I think the collaboration is I'm just getting at it's it's it's important.

This group has brought all that together. It's it's an eye opener. I mean, we live we live this every day, but when you start talking about in reality, it's it's a real eye opener.

And to your point, Gary, anytime that on the town side that you know, there's good things that are happening. I brought it up at one of our meetings. I thanked I thanked both of you and the select board for exploring other health insurance options.

let me look at the health insurance.

Yeah, that's a perfect example and that goes that goes a long way not only to the school department but the entire town. So, thank I mean there's a lot of good things That's a lot of Yeah, agreed. There's a lot of good things happening.

Um in in the in the lobbying effort just just to finish on that. You know, the those are the two things that basically been seen from this committee and the work from these guys.

Uh not only uh the health insurance and reviewing that again and making sure that we're on top of it but also lobbying the state legislature. We had them in this building together, told them exactly what we needed to do. They went back, they made their list, tried to figure out what was doable, what was not doable.

Mark came back, he's on the floor today.

Uh you know, trying to trying to get some money back uh back through uh through chapter 70 and in the unrestricted and in uh you know, those those are only coming through with this dialogue.

I'm convinced of that.

You know, there were other things.

There's proposition 2 and 1/2 reform that says that 2 and 1/2 is not big enough. It should be 5% and that Mass Mutual I always get Mass Mutual Association and municipality Oh, okay. the betting parimutuel. They they they agree and so instead of Dartmouth doing this all by itself, we should be urging the select board to be after these people our representatives constantly and to join things like Mass

We are. So, so Gary and I and and the select board Well, but I mean there's more than that lobbying them. General government aid and this proposition 2 and 1/2 reform. Right and So, MMA when we have our regional meetings and when we have our annual meeting up in Boston, that those things were discussed and they were asked for, you know, we Dartmouth signed on to a number of these

things that we want them to look at.

be saying, "Hey, what are you doing mess with MMA?

Are we contributing enough?

Is there anything else we could be doing? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, on a proactive basis, not relying on state representatives to when they feel like it reply?" The other piece [clears throat] that we asked um directly to Mark Montigny and Chris Markey, um and then through MMA as well, is that the um Massachusetts looks at their funding formula for our out of our um school choice

kids, cuz school choice, when it was initiated, uh was a $5,000 stipend per student. And so, we've asked them to increase that. Yep. And even if they increased it $1,000 a year until it got closer to the state average, it would give us that much more money. And you know, And that comes no money comes out of them for that.

They would be passing that on to municipalities. Right. Uh But I mean, it has to be no movement.

That exactly. It has to be proactively done. People have to make us think when there's no movement, and you can't do it individually, you have to do it through the select board, and then try and join forces with as many of these communities as you possibly can to get the reform.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, in the spirit of collegiality, I'm looking, you know, we had write a check for 2 million?

You know, if I had it, I would.

Um we had a good half an hour discussion at school committee yesterday about this potential operational look over, whatever you want to call it.

Where would you like us to What can we bring back to the school committee? Cuz they're going to be looking for answers as to, you know, because this isn't This is not a short process. Obviously, if we were going to do this, we should look to get the ball rolling soon. I'm open I think both of us are open to exploring this option and bringing it back to the school full school

committee, but we we just need to know what are we taking back? All right. So, I I'll sum it up by saying that the the biggest hurdle was the discussion, in my mind, uh in in making sure that the school committee um kind of has an idea of of what the goal would be um and what and who the audience is that we're going to uh have to communicate to.

Um so, uh what I can do is I can go back and get more clarity on exactly what, you know, we can go through, you know, five RFPs until we get to one that we all agree on.

Mhm. Um and um you know, I can stop I can stop doing that part of it. Um the the big the big point was Monday. You know, if we've got some uptake and, you know, some collaboration uh with the board, I I think that's probably one of the most important things that the public sees is that we're we're trying to we're trying to get to a point down the road uh to

stabilize these budgets and we're all working uh in the same direction.

Right. Well, let let's do a little bit of work on um on what that would look like for you guys, what the uptake would be. I I'm very considerate of Jim's time and, you know, the number side I think will be a little bit easier. Uh what other things um have been asked for in the past in some of the other towns that have done something like this?

Um Did they make sense? Were they helpful?

Were they not?

Uh let me let me see if we can put something together for you, get it to you so you can you can review it, look at it, bring it back to the committee, give them an idea of exactly what what the ask would be, initial ask would be, right? My only question is are you going to be looking at um RFPs or work of actual companies cuz I do know when you go on something like this

and just ask AI it spitball something that may not be even possible. Well, a couple of you have asked in AI is So, I'll tell I'll tell you what. I will be more than happy to reach out to I've actually shared this with Mr. Kyle Lee and Dr. Sabin Maguire.

I will I would be happy to take some time and reach out to the New England School Development Council, NESDEC. They do a lot of consulting work with schools across New England and planning I'm looking on their website right now.

Enrollment projections, special education trend reports, demographic studies, long-range facility planning, strategic planning, special reports and audits. I can give you three companies that actually exist that um do this kind of work. Education Resource Strategies uh based in Boston. Renee Center for Education Research and Policy.

Send me an email, please.

Excuse me? Send me an email.

Send me an email with the information.

And also School Resource Beverly.

Yeah, that so that that type of information also would would be obviously very important for you.

Um All right. Um Public Yeah, go ahead. So, just on that subject, I mean Brian went through this trouble to make a list of questions. Um if that could get emailed to all of us so that we could see what he's interested in and like on the revenue side where we're brainstorming if any of us have other things that we think that this study should have. I just like before we even

contact an agency, we should have some idea of what we're what we're looking for and if we agree on what we're looking for.

Agree.

Yeah, and then on revenue and expense side, you can send them to me directly if you want. I can sit down with everybody and and try and put them together, get rid of the redundancy and and get it out to everybody.

Go ahead.

like that should be agreed upon versus a email thread type thing.

It should be agreed on by the whole committee.

Oh, it would be.

Yeah. Yeah. Before the schools go to any trouble. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. What are you not like he was getting it ready for your next meeting somehow. You said to bring back [clears throat] to the school committee.

I think it's going to take a little bit of time.

it's going to take some time. Timing expectations.

why we're not doing it next July. We I have all the time in the world. We have all the time in the world.

It's our money, doesn't it? I'm just saying we should have that in a public meeting. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Um What else? Public? Any comments from the public? Questions? Concerns?

Please.

Hi, Heather Noiseux at Sorry I came in at the end. I was at Run Club in after school program, so I'm also dressed like a hot mess. Um just I want to make it aware that even though there's not a bunch of people sitting here, it's a little hard for a lot of parents especially during this time of day with all the sports for us to get here at 4:00, but there's many people that have watched

and are listening to what's happening.

I'm going to speak for myself right now and um, I missed the first part of this meeting, but in reviewing of last meeting, I just want to make a general commentary on building a community.

And I can say that as part of this community, I felt like it wasn't community building last week. It didn't feel like there were solutions that were brought to the table.

I personally felt defensive as a parent about my kids' education and about the purview of um, everyone else's opinion about what the school department is doing.

Putting on my employee hat, I've stood at this mic many times over the last couple years and invited anyone to come and see the work that we do. And I think that that is important before you start passing blame or appointing fingers that everyone gets a sense of what is actually happening in the buildings and with the children and with the employees, DPW, anywhere that your feet are on the ground and you're seeing

what's happening because the work that's done in those buildings is no is no short of magic. And if you haven't experienced it, I think maybe you need a little bit of it in your life because it is something special. Um, I think we do a really good job of making sure that we are doing the best with what we have.

And I think we're all behind our town having every facility it needs to have. Um, but I think there's a way to do that where you're not tearing down one singular department. Um, where you're looking at solutions for all departments and bringing the community together as one so that we can all stand as one.

Pointing blame at um, state reps is one way, but we have a voice and we can build a community of grassroots movement to make it important and to stand behind what you're presenting. But I think that that has to be formed in a way that it feels like everyone has a seat at the table, not that one specific group of people isn't included at the table. Thank you.

Hello everybody. Can you hear me okay?

Um, I'm Zack DeMars, um, town meeting member. I'm going to do my best, bear with me. I have a lot of notes that got changed throughout the course of this meeting. So, I want them to be relevant.

Um, I do want to first just thank the committee for doing this work genuinely.

Um, I think as muddy as maybe as it has felt sometimes, uh, this sort of trench work I think is going to go a really long way and I really appreciate public comment because I think this is all just part of it.

These are discussions people are having.

So, I'm very happy that there's a forum for it to happen now.

Um, and so, with that said, I don't want to dig up some things that have already been discussed, but um, there were a couple points I wanted to make. One is about the value analysis framework that's been discussed here um, in terms of the goal of the study.

Uh, on that part, I fully disagree. Um, I think this idea of like shareholder and corporate thinking for running the town and thinking of efficiencies that way just doesn't translate um, to what we're trying to do here.

Uh, I think it would be an incredible waste of taxpayer money and a and a waste of time to demand that a study provides value and worth to a segment of the population because the spending feels like a lot and because the schools only serve a certain percentage of the population. Now, again, I think it's just how this has been framed.

Uh, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be considered.

Um, what I'm saying is to do it for that reason seems a little bit reckless.

35,000 is I think what was said tonight was that we need to figure out the outcomes that we want as a consensus of the town.

35,000 residents, in my opinion, are not going to agree on what we want as outcomes collectively. I I I just don't see that happening in that way. I think that's a an impossible thing to define.

I also think it's a little out of bounds, again in my opinion, to speak for 70% of the non- school population. All right, that might literally be true, but there are a lot of people in this town who are caretakers, seniors who are caretakers. There's a lot of that population that is part of that 70%, and it's it's sort of uncomfortable or scary for me to think that that a small group is

speaking, or an individual speaking, for what that whole population feels. That might anecdotally be true, but we don't know that.

Um the second part I want to make is about just anchoring this in the economic reality a little more.

I've heard the words like school spends too much, it's a it's a lot more than it used to be. You know, any analysis looking back 20 years is going to show a a a rising tide of inflation. I mean, this is not unique to Dartmouth.

I would argue that looking past even 2020 is is sort of uh exercise in futility. I mean, the economy permanently shifted post-pandemic.

And we acknowledge this in our daily lives, and we acknowledge it on the town side, that there are simply costs that are out of our best management controls.

But we don't apply that same logic when it comes to measuring the school's need.

Um the last thing I just want to say is I I agree with um Mr. Hadad about the point of this should be determining some sort of consensus to recommend, and I just want to echo that to the to the select board.

It can't be endlessly debated. We should be able to say at the end of this, the schools have demonstrated an accuracy in their budget. The data supported by XYZ.

Um that should be a goal that we can clearly understand at the end. I know a lot of people have said that, but I want to echo it. And and then just the last thing, and thank you for the time, seriously, is that there kind of kind of what Heather said, there are a lot of citizens ready and willing to support you. I mean, genuinely. So, please give us something clear and actionable that

we can support and cooperate on to move our collective goals forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Zach.

Anybody else?

Nope.

All right.

Uh no minutes to approve. Any other questions comments concerns?

Motion to adjourn. Motion made. Second.

I just want to make sure we know our next meeting is um on my calendar is June 9th, Tuesday, June 9th.

And so, my question on that meeting is uh is it going to be an 8:00 a.m. or a 4:00 p.m. meeting?

I I enjoy the public uh being able to to come in. I think probably 8:00 is 8:00 is is not doable. Okay, so we'll put it back on everyone's calendars for 4:00 is fine. 4:00 is fine. The 4:00.

4:00 p.m. on June 9th.

Tuesday, June 9th. I think as we go on, we're going to we'll probably have more um public participation also. So, I think the later one is best.

Oh well.

Uh 4:00 4:00 p.m. on June 9th.

One second. One second.

So, you want Tuesday.

Oh okay.

How about All right. Yeah. Could we change it to the the Wednesday the 10th that for that week?

Does that work? I think so.

That works.

Oh.

I can't. You can't?

make it work. Do you want to move it to the 16th?

I won't be here. You won't be here?

I'm here in the summer.

Uh do we have to do it on a Tuesday?

Thursday, okay. What about the 11th? No.

Um the We have a ZBA meeting in this room at 5:00.

Oh, on the 11th?

On the 11th.

So that You can't.

Um That Monday you don't It's no select board meeting, correct?

The 8th we could do. We have a school committee. We have a school committee meeting.

Um We all have so many meetings. We could. I don't have We don't have a We're The select board meeting it's fifth grade D'Amelio School's fifth grade graduation. This gets a little dicey cuz of eighth grade graduation and uh the different school graduations.

Who's using the stadium, which would impact um Don't park on the parking.

The 15th is a possibility.

[clears throat] Monday, the 15th. Yeah, for me. I'm not here this week, but Cody will be here.

You're not here that week?

Cody will be here.

Yeah, I'm going to drive Gary crazy between now and then anyway, so he doesn't have to be Gary's used to it.

So I'm sorry, did we decide on Monday the 15th? Monday, the 15th?

Monday the 15th.

4:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m.

Gosh, the only thing happening that day is my water bill is due. I guess Thank you, guys. It's good that you know that.

Everything's in my calendar.

Not me.

As you can see.

Okay, all in favor of the adjournment.

I.

I.

Thank you.