Finance Committee Meeting February 5, 2026

I'd like to call the finance committee meeting to order on Thursday, February 5th. Can you please join me in the pledge of allegiance up there?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Please note that this meeting is in person and is being recorded. Um, I apologize in advance. I've had a cold, so I won't be giving any long monologues tonight because I may lose my voice.

Thank you, Terry.

Anyway, also um we also may have one member on Zoom. So, if that if he does happen to show up, then the meeting will have roll call vote, right? We will note he comes in on Zoom because then we do have to do a roll call and then we would have to do any voting we do would have to also be done by roll call.

So um to start off [clears throat] tonight's meeting uh we are now in the thick of it I guess if you would call it. We're in the middle of our FY27 budget season. Uh we'll be meeting with the bigger departments first uh starting tonight with police uh DPW and then schools. Uh we're also in conjunction with that meeting now with CIPC. uh the calendar which I'll put up again at the end just to remind everybody we're

actually as again one month early from last year which is good. Uh we're also meeting with budget advisory group so there's a lot going on right now with all these different with the different committees in town but tonight we're um here with police uh Chief Brian Lec to uh go over his FY27 budget request.

Chief, please join us.

All right.

Okay. All right. Good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Evening.

All right. So, here's a uh summary of the operating budget showing an overall increase of 1.6%.

Um I do want to highlight that the So, that sounds good. However, the uh Brotherhood and the DTA have not yet negotiated FY27 contracts. So, that figure does not include any contractual raises that they would be entitled to uh upon the successful negotiation of that contract.

And I'll just kind of go over some of the I guess some of the highlights. U the biggest variance you'll notice is with the dispatchers 12% increase. Um in addition to you know the normal things that cause increases like the um cost of living, step increases, any kind of college incentives due to degrees. Um this particular increase 10% of it uh was due to the addition of a dispatcher. We made

that decision um about midy year we we've been having we've been really struggling in dispatch over the last few years due to a number of reasons. um mostly due to injuries, illnesses and unfilled vacancies.

And these these issues go on for months.

Um take an unfilled vacancy for as an example. If it if it takes us it can take us two, three, four months to fill the vacancy. Once it's filled, it's another three, four, five months to train the person. Um and we do have it's a very difficult position to fill. we have people who are interested in doing it, but not everyone's cut out for it.

Uh, and sometimes we don't find that out until they've been, you know, halfway through the process and so forth. The other advantage to this position is we we positioned it so it's it starts at noon and it goes until 8:00. So, if we're fully staffed, we're able to then staff that noon to 8 position, which is not only our busiest time for calls for service, but in addition, it allows the

dispatcher to cover two different meal break periods. Um, so the dispatchers obviously get break time. They would leave, go on their break. We're still able to have two dispatches working during that meal break time, which is also our busiest time. Um, so there's there's a lot of advantages. is I think that was a long time in coming and adding a position like that. It came recommended from the dispatch supervisor

and um and the town supported it for all the reasons I just gave. Uh we've had people on military leave for I think it was eight months at a time. Um there's just been a lot a lot of issues and I'll be honest the u the dispatches they stepped up. They did a great job but they were they were getting burned out and we were getting to the point where we were going to probably start losing

some dispatchers. They just couldn't they just couldn't handle it anymore. um which would put us in a really bad position. Um unlike police officers, we have flexibility. We can we can move them around. We have specialized positions. Dispatch was essentially staffed perfectly and that's that's fine as long as every there's no problems, but once there's an issue, um I think it was three years in a row we had

significant issues in dispatch and that's a very very important part. Um so I think those are the highlights. Uh, I know there was, you know, during the budget I presented, we don't anticipate any requests for additional funding for the remainder of FY26.

As a matter of fact, we anticipate significant turnbacks. Um, we'll talk about it more as we go along, but police officer staffing continues to be difficult to fill those positions, which is the main reason for the uh for the turnbacks at the end. we have basically vacancies um in those positions and I'll go more into detail in some future slides. Also low gas prices um coupled with the fact

that we have a majority hybrid/electric uh fleet of patrol cars. Um so I'm anticipating maybe as much as $20,000 in fuel being able to turn back as long as the uh prices stay low. So any questions on this uh this slide?

Just one question. Um, so you said that the 1.6% doesn't include collective bargaining. It does it include any assumption for a raise.

We handle that internally. That's you won't see that in any department requests. We have built into projections um what we think it's going to be.

So the only thing that'll be then that's what I'm asking. So so it does include a does not the department level requests do not. So what you see from the departments do not where where we build in the back end and look at the budget have included those things. We can't put it in administrative.

Yeah. We can't put it in department requests because that gives up the bargaining position of the town. You can see what what we're building in. Um so we internally, you know, we have an idea of what the market is and what we can afford. We've built that into our projections so as we go forward we know we can afford it or not. Um but you won't see that in any department request. The only thing that they

request is what's contractually been approved. So none of our collective bargaining agreements have been approved for the fiscal 27. But if there's steps, steps would be in there. So those aren't aren't a contractual cost of living adjustment, but the steps are built in.

Are any non-union like contractual agreements?

So excuse me. There'll be some type of uh more accuracy by the time we get the spring meeting as far as the uh numbers go.

I hope so.

Okay.

Yeah. It all depends on how bargaining goes. We're going to begin bargaining very soon.

Okay, question, John.

So, Chief, I don't know if I missed it, but the um 12.1% in dispatch, that was for added new positions or an increase in salary for those positions. What did What was the 12% increase?

Sure, it's a combination. So, about 10% of it was the new position and the remaining just one new position.

One new position. The 2% was just regular step increases for the existing employees.

Y Okay. Thank you.

Yep.

Anybody else? No.

Okay.

Uh next is a focus on expenses. Expenses make up about 8% of our uh total operating budget.

I've submitted a level funded expense budget for this year. Um, I do anticipate and I went into more detail in the report I submitted. Um, software software materials line item increasing in the future. Um, so I'm anticipating that kind of announcing that now. We've done the best we can to keep those costs down. Some of the software we're evaluating and we're going to decide what what works for us and what we're

going to keep. Um, but basically the the software costs have risen quite a bit and we've also added software and I have additional information as we move through. But that's that's become a big part of uh what we do is is software related expenses and it's not uncommon to see them raise their prices by as much as five or six% in a year. Um, and so it it's been difficult. We've managed

it. We we've kept it uh pretty much under control, but that is our as far as line items and how fast they're growing.

That's that's the one that's been most difficult to uh kind of contain.

Question. Chief, do you have any uh software that's expiring license or otherwise that may need an update that may not be included in your figures?

No. So, the software expense that I'm referring to essentially uh is an annual expense. So we have to pay annually for the service and maintenance agreements which includes all the updating and the latest versions and stuff like that. Um so that that line item covers the expenses that we're talking about related to software. So it's not so much purchasing new software, it's it's maintaining and updating the existing

software that we have.

Okay.

Could I ask a question with respect to other capital outlay? Give us an example of what other capital outlay might be.

Sure. So, I don't make up the names and and I would agree that it's kind of a strange name, but um that was added to our budget a couple years ago and what it basically covers is the cost of our body warn cameras.

Thank you.

Um Yeah.

Thank you.

Um just to just to note too, I did go back about um nine years to FY18 and I kind of looked at how how expenses have have grown over time and the compound annual growth rate for our expenses has been just over 2%. So it's it's been it's been I think very reasonable considering the inflation that we all experience. Um, however, looking at software alone, that's that's over 12 and a half% that that's been growing,

you know, pretty much year-over-year during that same time period.

All right. Um, just to kind of highlight what we do with grants, we um, we don't have anyone specifically assigned to grants. I've got a couple different people in the department who try to keep their eyes open for these grants and apply for them. Um, so I've listed the um, the ones we've been awarded, the biggest one being the 911 grant. That's an annual grant because of some of the

things our dispatchers are now doing.

Um, mostly to do with cell phones, we take the cell phone calls direct. This this goes back uh a few years now where when you call 911 from your cell phone, it basically bases it on the location you're at and sends it to the proper jurisdiction. Prior to that, they all went to the state police. um and departments who signed on to that willingness to take those calls um got additional grant funding. If you didn't

want to, they would still go to the state police. So, we did that. In addition to that, um we have a uh we utilize a mobile crisis unit and our dispatchers call them out for uh people in need that need that service and they actually respond out to the scene with our officers do kind of a joint response and 911 has a lot of additional monies based on the fact that the dispatch now has to

make that call, coordinate with crisis center and get them out to the scene.

So, we're we're kind of maximizing the uh the grant funding from 911 that we can uh obtain. The bulletproof vest grant is also um it's a state and federal grant and combined it covers the total cost of replacement vest for officers and there's always certain amount expiring yeartoear and we've been doing a good job of obtaining that grant. Municipal road safety is for officers to go out and based on um you

know basically targeting from the state whether it be texting when driving. They do different pedestrian crossing stuff like that. They have different campaigns they run. Um click it a ticket. You you'll see them advertised usually and that funding uh pays for the officers to go out and uh do that kind of enforcement. And the last one listed that we actually have been awarded is $15,000 towards purchase of electric

vehicles and that's a state grant. It's $7,500 per vehicle and we we owe to two vehicles. So that's a significant savings on the cost of those vehicles.

And the cost of the vehicle themselves has has come down dramatically in the last year. And it's actually right now priced the full price of it, the electric vehicle is the same price as the uh the gas vehicle.

So, with that grant, we're actually saving $700 uh in in the vehicle purchase. Um, and that doesn't account for the the lower maintenance cost. They don't need oil changes, stuff like that. Um, and the savings would the fuel the fuel difference would. Right now, the cost of gas is pretty low, quite honestly. So, I don't anticipate a huge savings with fueling, but at some point, I think the

electric price has been more stable than that the gas prices have, and that could change at any time. There's a lot going on worldwide, as we're all aware. So, um, so those are the grants we've been awarded. Uh, in December, we submitted a grant for the body one cameras. It's it's significant. Uh, we just checked again today. They're still reviewing it.

We're anticipating hearing back in the next couple weeks on that. If we did get that, that would be significant. Um, and it would certainly help out with that line item um about other other equipment or whatever it was.

Capital outlay.

Capital out.

And, uh, the final one is the cops accreditation grant. We uh we did apply for that. It assists with accreditation related expenses and we did not get it.

We asked them why we didn't get it. We haven't heard back. So, Brian, who gets the RFPs? Do you get them or do they come from administration?

Uh a lot of times the cost of the of the um purchases we make, they don't require RFPs. We buy a lot of things off the state bid.

Okay. Um so but for the grants I'm thinking though I'm thinking that um who how do you find out about these grants I guess is a better oh the um websites federal websites state websites stuff like that um we've worked with the town's energy manager assisted with the u the EV grant.

Okay.

So yeah number of sources however it comes sometimes vendors bring them to our attention because you know they want you to make purchases so they'll they'll notify you of grants that could help with the purchase.

That's good. Uh, Chief, as far as the uh body one camera storage goes, how what's the length of time that you have to retain the video? Um, because it's relatively new program, so I assume as time goes on, you're just going to build up more and more storage until it kind of like revolves at a certain point that you don't need to keep them anymore.

Yep. All right. So, [clears throat] there's no state uh standard on storage.

What we did is we um we kind of mimicked what the state police were doing at the time. And depending on the type of call the officer went on dictates how long we store it for. Okay. Some the shortest time is one year, some could be over 10 years depending on what's going on with the case, what's happening in court.

Um, as part of the uh program we have with our cameras, the way the video gets it's called tagged. It's it's autotagged basically based on the dispatch call type.

Sure.

So otherwise it would be a lot of work for the officers because we make a lot of video. So, I think you kind of alluded to that.

Um, and we've got terabytes of video stored and that's luckily for us that's part of the cost of our body worn camera program. It includes storage and it it's a it's a ton of storage. Um, and I'll talk a little bit later about but we just recently upgraded we haven't switched over yet, but we've upgraded our our internet connection. We had basically a Comcast Xfinity connection, regular cable connection. Um, the town

we kind of followed their lead. We upgraded to a dedicated fiber connection because we're uh this video gets uploaded onto the uh onto the servers and store it online essentially in a secure server. But um we're we're just transferring a tremendous amount of data and uh the cameras do it automatically as the officers come into the station over the wireless. The video starts going up when the cars pull in. We have

car video from 18 cars. Uh that gets uploaded as well when the car is pulling and and tagged uploaded and then saved for the required length of time.

Sure. Thank you.

Y cool.

Yeah, it's a good program. It's been working out great. The officers appreciate having that protection of having the cameras.

Absolutely.

Um and the transparency we get we also [clears throat] get a lot of requests, public requests for video. And so um the only the only part that's a little bit difficult for us is we have to before we can release a video we have to go through the video review it and redact it um and that's it's timeconuming um we have some automation with it and it's getting better over

time but um it is timeconuming to you know redact video sometimes we can charge for it a lot of times we can't.

The next thing uh I'll go into some detail on some of the capital improvement requests uh for this year.

So, a couple of the the reoccurring ones um would be the four cruisers, four police cruisers is a uh a regular request. The price increase um I had built in and we're going to stick with is 3% higher than last year for the cost of the cruisers. Cost does go up. It's it's gone up kind relatively significantly. However, we can offset some of that with with the electric cars we're talking about. So, I was able to

maintain what I had predicted um last year as far as the price goes. Um every other year we purchased two administrative vehicles. So, that's on that's that would be this year. This would be one of the other years where we have that purchase um set up for two of those cars.

Next item would be the tasers. We [clears throat] have um when we signed up with Axon for the tasers, this is the newest version, the Taser 10 that they have. Um it's basically a five-year lease to own program. So we're in year two of that and that's what that funding request is for is to pay the the second payment of five. After the five years, you own the tasers. Um the cost does

include all the cartridges. We have to train with it each year and expend cartridges and training as well as you know live use stuff like that with them.

So, it includes basically any costs associated. They're fully warranted during that five-year period. So, there's no other costs other than that um that payment that we need to make each year. And and the final request would be the newest one. That would be for a staffing study. I don't believe we've ever had a staffing study, but staffing does the police officer salaries line item does make up 70% of

our budget. Um, not only does it make up a very the largest portion of our budget, but essentially it has a direct effect on on our response time, officer safety, quality of services that we can provide to the town. So, this is essentially a professional study to determine the optimal police staffing um for Dartmouth. And they come in and they look at the size of the town, our calls

for service, what kind of calls are they. They take into consideration all those factors and then they get back to us with what they think the staffing should be. I don't believe in our over 100year history that that's ever been done. We have a number that we present as far as our staffing. I'm not exactly sure. I mean, there's some guidelines available, but they're very, very general. Um, there's no way without a

study like this you can come up with the exact right number of offices that that we should have here in Dartmouth. Um, yes.

So, why did you decide now to have a study?

Well, I mean, been doing this now almost nine years, right? And I've actually wanted to do this for a while. I was a little hesitant because of the cost. It's a it's a expensive. I looked around.

That's an estimate. we wouldn't know until we would we would have an RFP and a purchase like this. So, I don't know what the exact cost is going to be, but looking around at other studies that have been done, that's a cost. So, it is a big expense. Um, the number we have, which is 74 offices right now, seems to be working for us. However, there's there's more scrutiny now on town

budgets. And I always want to come from a defensible position. And when I'm asking for funding, which is 70% of my budget, I want to be able to say with confidence that I'm asking for the the right number of officers. And the only way I can get confidence is with a study like that.

I guess I'm curious if you were familiar with another community that did it.

No. No. I mean, other communities I'm familiar with communities that have done it. Not nothing specific though, like around here or whatnot. That I just figured you may have been familiar because of someone else's study.

No.

Yes. Dear, thank you. Um, in regards to that study, that's I think I saw it as a $60,000 study. Yes.

And the data exchanges would be a massive part of that analysis as would uh the town's infrastructure. Um, do I understand? We talked about this. I was at the department head meetings and we were chatting about your uh difficulty in hiring and then the fact that we're turning back hundreds of thousands of dollars each and every year because we can't hire the officers that we desire to hire. Uh your civil service

comes out Jan uh July 1st. Um you've got a budget that we couldn't hire the officers ending June 30th turning back a couple hundred,000. That same budget is in July 1st.

I don't know what suggestion I can make or recommendation I could make but I would do that study right now and identify the appropriate level and then raise an appropriate the appropriate level whether that's 78 82 74 60 whatever it is because I just think the turning back of hundreds of thousands of dollars raised and appropriated for a particular purpose that we know that we're challenged about and then have the

study done might be a nice recommendation to the town as a whole to move the department forward. So that was a kind of recommendation thing.

Uh question chief, how long has this been trending where you we've been actually turning back monies back into uh the town? Is this I can't remember. I know you've done it in the past, but I just refresh my memory. And also, uh, how much has your overtime expense gone over from say last year to this year because of the shortage of of staff?

Yeah. So, uh, good points. Um, as far as the turnbacks go, they've been almost every year for quite a while, but the reason the reason there's two different reasons. So, there's the reason we have now, I'll go back to the original reason is first. So, when an officer would to leave with a retire, um, we weren't we were at full staffing basically. So, we couldn't fill that position until the

officer actually retired. and there was a lag in between when one person retired and we hired somebody that replaced that person. It might be multiple officers in in any given year that retires. So that would cause a bit of a turnback. Nowhere near the extent we're talking about now, but it would cause some limited turnback in just that gap in retiring and hiring people. What we're dealing with now is I

want to say it was maybe two years ago, uh we had 10 officers retire in one year and a lot of them were were unanticipated. They weren't like the officer who's done their 32 years and retired. These were younger officers, some with 10 and less years on who just decided to change careers. Um, you know, it's a tough climate out there for policing, quite honestly. And that's why we're we're seeing this issue. I mean,

when I got hired, there was a line, okay? It was it was very, very difficult. I waited years to get hired.

Um, it's not like that anymore. It's a very competitive environment and there's there's not the appetite to to want to, you know, be in the field of policing.

you know, we all see what's going on out there and it's a difficult time in policing. So, the reason what we're doing now is we haven't recovered from losing 10 officers in one year. We we've we've put some back in, but not at the rate we're losing them and and [snorts] that's what's causing the additional turnbacks each year is just the being under staff with police officers. So, it

does have an effect on overtime. We have been going over on the overtime. Um I'm anticipating uh certainly going over this year on overtime. It could be 50 to $80,000. You know, it's it's hard to predict overtime because there's a lot of things that are out of our control with overtime, how often officers go to court, how many, you know, the calls they have, sometimes they have to work late, stuff

like that. Um, the amount of time off they take that create shifts to backfill. So, but yeah, we're we are going to go over this year on overtime, but you know, as a net, we will be turning back because of the this, you know, the savings and not having officers, those vacancies.

So, other communities must be going through the same thing as D All right.

Yes. Yep.

I think that just to follow up the critical shortage area in policing and in public safety and in DPW we talked when we were working with you'll hear about DPW staffing and in licensing and CDLs and professional level employees with the amount of lensures. I mean Gary and Cody are their own critical shortage area. So I think that we'll find the struggles as a town as a whole as we look to staff our professional

departments.

Ryan, who would do such a study?

There's there's uh various companies.

There's a lot of companies out there.

Are they police officers? Are they um um I don't know what their background is. I'm I'm sure a lot of them came from policing. Um but they focus on like government type studies. So not just police departments. Okay.

But um but yeah, there's a I was looking around. I I came across probably six to eight companies that would do that.

Okay.

Yep.

In terms of your uh your capital, so with this swapping to the EV um type vehicles, do you have capacity at the station for charging all those once they all switch to EV or is that going to be something that comes down the line?

So, we have a limited capacity right now. Um, we have one one patrol vehicle currently that we purchased to kind of test it and see how we made out with it.

And we installed a charger to go with that. Um, now it's a level two charger.

It's not it's not one of the the fast chargers.

Um, it does a decent job of keeping the car charged up. Uh, with that being said, with the purchase of ordering, we've ordered two additional cars. Um, and we have one charger installed. We're going to have one additional charger installed. So, we'll have three charges for three cars. Um, but are they fast enough to keep up with using the cars the way we use them? I don't think so.

So, what we've also done is we've um opened an account at the uh Tesla Supercharger um and we're able to charge our cars there. So, we're fortunate here in town to have that supercharging capability right especially right near the police station and the officer could go there for about 10 minutes and charge the car back up versus it could probably take about six hours on our charger. So if the car has

on the road on Route six, have him sit there while he's charging and watch that traffic.

We did try a couple years ago. There was there was money available to put some of those fast charges at our station. We we did um apply for it. Um we were denied the first time. They said there was going to be a second round. We haven't heard back, but they're they're about 200 $250,000 per charger. And um our plan, our proposal was for about $500,000 to put two charging stations

that could be utilized by the public um when we weren't using them kind of a thing. And um that was a great idea, but we didn't get funded for it. And I'm not asking for funding for that because it's such a huge expense. And you know there's many I mean we're fortunate that we have like a gas fueling station at our police station, but many departments including the state police, they use

commercially available gas stations. So you you could pull up to the pump and have a state trooper beside you fueling up their cruiser. Um and so you don't have to pay for all that infrastructure, maintenance, upkeep, you know, all the licensing that goes along with it. Um so like I said, we're just fortunate that we have those not only in town, but actually right down the road from the police department. Yeah. So

you don't foresee the need to at some point in the future as you switch to EVs upgrading the infrastructure at the police department to charge them in house versus it works for you to be able to it works right now and and what I want to do is I want to get these three cars, put them into service and and just really see over a longer term. Um I'm really not looking to commit to any more

of them at this time. I want to see how these go on a longer term basis how reliable they are. officer feedback, stuff like that before I I commit any further. So, we're going to be good for a while with these cars. Um, and then we'll have to talk about potentially adding uh but it it is a huge cost to add and uh and not only add it, but you've got to you've got to maintain it

and all that stuff that comes along with it. Um, but um it would be cheaper as far as the actual fueling up of the car because we're paying, you know, a premium to uh to fuel it up. Luckily, we have officers who work around the clock and um if you're familiar with the superchargers at all midnight to 8:00 a.m. there's a heavy discount on the on the rate. So, that is the shift that

would be asked to to charge the cars to to get that boost so we could maintain them with the other charges.

Yeah, so the patrol fleet is almost exclusively hybrid. Um what we do is we do have some gas cars. There was a time, if you recall, around COVID, it was very difficult to get cars at all. So we had to kind of just take what they had and and at the time they they had more gas cars. So when we had to incorporate additional gas cars into the fleet, we um selectively place them. And the

biggest savings we see with with the hybrid cars quite honestly is in the patrol division because the savings come from idling idle time.

When you're actually driving them around, it's not a huge savings to be honest with you. But the patrol division, we had done a study even years and years ago. Their cars idle between 60 and 70% of the time. And that's to keep, you know, the climate control system working, keep all the computer equipment up and running if they're at the scene, to keep the emergency lighting on. So, the cars kind of have

to run. Um, but when they run on battery, they're able to turn off for quite a while, run off the battery exclusively, the engine starts back up, charges the battery as needed. Um, and there's a significant savings in in fuel with the hybrid vehicles. So the patrol fleet is very close to 100% um hybrid hybrid vehicles and now they have an electric vehicle and soon two more.

And the total electric vehicles what kind of experience you getting in this cold weather? Are they reliable? Are they Yeah.

a problem uh during these periods?

Yeah. So, in the last couple weeks, we all know it's been extremely cold and we were interested to see as kind of part of our testing um how we made out and the feedback was good on them.

Um you know, the good part too is they can they can preheat they can heat up before you even get in them very easily.

Um so the officers kind of they they kind of like that fact of them.

Um and they heat up like right away versus a gas car and this kind of cold as you probably all know right in the morning you're trying to get the car heated up. It could take 15, 20 minutes to get these things heat up within like a minute or so. Like the heat is almost instantaneous. So, um, and the battery life, there's been no complaints on You've been in this cold weather.

I've got no experience with it, but I be Yeah.

You know, cuz, you know, it's sucking up a lot more energy during this cold weather. And yeah, the range does decrease, but it hasn't been to the level where it's becomes a problem.

Exactly. Yep. Hasn't been a problem.

Interesting. So, that's great.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah, [clears throat] I guess we were fortunate to get this cold weather so we can do our test.

There you go.

Love it.

All right. Um, so some goals [clears throat] talked about this. The biggest one is is recruitment and retention of officers.

And um, you know, there's a lot of that stuff that that I think we have control as as a town. And um, the biggest thing being really the compensation package.

We're all competing for the a very small pool of qualified officers these days and we're competing against other cities and towns. Um so that compensation package is really important and it's nice to see that the town is is uh in the process of uh finalizing a study.

It'll give us some idea of you know where we are compared to other comparable towns. Um in addition working conditions, the kind of equipment we provide to officers, training and the opportunity for advancement and specialization. Those are some of the things that that attract police officers. Um we we've got a beautiful new station.

Uh I think we have very very good equipment. Um we get good support from the town to purchase these new vehicles, constantly turning over our fleet, things like that. I think all those things are factors. We're, you know, a decentsized agency. Um we're not a city, but we're a big town. And the um the benefit to applicants essentially is we can offer specialization chance for advancement um more so than a smaller

town could. So I think I think Dartmouth would be a very desirable place for officers to come. We're working now to advertise opening positions um look for laterals outside of civil service.

They've allowed us some flexibility because they also understand a difficult time that departments are having in hiring. Um so we're able to hire 50% of officers outside of civil service. we've signed on to that program. Um, now it's just a matter of attracting those candidates and and hiring them.

The next thing is operational efficiency. So, we we're down officers now. We're hoping it's going to get better, but we have to have another plan. And even if it it were to get better, you know, with more efficient operations, it would allow us flexibility to do more things, right?

Um, and we're relying heavily on technology, which goes back to that software line item that continues to increase as not only the cost goes up dramatically, but we we add technology.

Um, we're in the process, as you know, of switching over our CAD RMS system.

Um, we started that process in October.

It takes about a year, sometimes longer depending, to get that up and running.

We're hoping that makes us for more efficient once we get proficient with with using the the new software and the capabilities that it it has with it. Um, artificial intelligence is something we're looking into. There's so much information now for officers to understand. We've got hundreds of policies that we work on. The laws are constantly changing. There's a lot of them. We've looked at products that you

can have a conversation with. And and these are closed products, not like the not like the free ones you see available because there there's some serious concerns with using those in policing, right? Sometimes those software are known to make up things. We can't have that. Uh, and you also really don't know where it's drawing the information. So, these are closed systems designed for law enforcement. You feed it in

information and it it gives you back the information from what you fed in. It cites where the source is and it would bring you right to the part if you wanted to verify, hey, is it did it interpret it properly? You can then look exactly at the source of the information. So, we're looking heavily at products like that to make officers more efficient and less likely to make an error, which we have, you know, it's

a high liability business. If you make an error, there can be substantial uh costs associated with errors. Um, drones, right? We've had a drone program for a number of years. We're looking to expand that into a program called drone as first responder. We're in the process of uh finalizing that. the snow has kind of put a little delay on that because it's actually um a unit mounted on the

roof of the police station where we can remotely deploy the drone and within minutes it could be on scene which has been proven to be very very beneficial.

A lot of times it would beat the officer to the scene, provide real-time feedback most of the time talking to witnesses, you know, they they've got a lot going on. They're not trained to report things and and they're usually in a in a critical situation. So the information we get back a lot of times is is not that accurate. Um we have people who flee while we're in route, stuff like that.

So we think this will be a very beneficial program um to get up and running, but it increases our efficiency once again um to the point where the officer safety factor alone I I think is tremendous. Um fires, fire department has uh has requested our drone in the past. Um I recently saw a story where a fire department and police department jointly had a a DFR program. um the drone getting over the scene right away

basically allowed the fire department to call in the proper resources and they saved the woman's life who was in the fire. So, it's stuff like that. It's getting that information back immediately. Um having station supervisors being able to see that live from the scene. We we think it's going to be a real valuable tool. So, we're going to we're going to try that program out and uh and see how we make out. But

based on other departments, we're not the first by far. Um we have high expectations. Um, and then LPR, which is the cameras, the plate cameras. We have some of those around town. Um, those those have been very beneficial as far as, you know, we I guess we didn't even realize how many stolen cars and plates there are out there. Um, it's you'd be surprised. I mean, we get we get alerts multiple daily on these, you

know, and some of the same car. We just haven't caught up with them yet. But, um, yeah, it's it's amazing the amount of people driving around with stolen plates. And some of them are like if you had your plate stolen for instance and then you just for whatever reason decided to keep driving around with it.

People do that instead of getting new plates. Uh it's not a good idea. It's not legal um because you need to have two plates on the car. But um those are a good amount of them. But we've also recovered stolen vehicles and we found vehicles with stolen plates attached, different things like that. Um sometimes we get hit unwanted people. You know, they've been uh they've been very it's a

force multiplier essentially. It does things that that helps us work with less officers but maintain the same level of of service and in solving crimes. It's a tremendous tool. Maybe somebody gets a partial description, partial plate of a vehicle and and we're able to go back and then find and identify that vehicle.

So, it's it's been a great tool for for that as well.

And then finally is just back on the staffing study. You know, we talked about how much of the budget, 70% of the budget we dedicate to to hiring officers. We want to make sure we have the right number of offices aligning our staffing without without workload. Um they'll evaluate efficiency, performance, assist with budget planning, which is a big part of what we're talking about. And and just

enhance accountability and community trust because like I said, going back to me being able to make a request for a certain number of officers and knowing that that's based on actual data specific to Dartmouth, I think is an important thing where it is, you know, a large expense.

organizational chart. Overall, the organization um the design didn't change much from last year. We've pretty much maintained the same uh operational design. Um there is some differences in staffing.

We've increased uh five officers from last year. Last year would have been the year after we lost to 10. So we went up five. Um, and the way that happened, the breakdown is this year we had one officer retire. We had two that we hired and then there were four cadetses in in the last last year that graduated the academy and became full-time police officers. So overall, we're up five. Um,

we don't have any cadets, anybody in the academy right now. So we're, you know, we're we're going to try to basically enhance our advertisement of the opening positions that we have is the point we're at now. um part-time officers known as special police officers, work details. Uh we're down three. There's a lot of new um training requirements that they need to basically follow through

with each year to maintain that status.

A lot of training and they do that on their own time. They don't get paid to do it. So, we did have a number of officers decide to basically resign.

They just didn't want to keep up with that. Um what we're looking at doing now is adding a another a new position basically where these officers former officers could work details in a civilian role. A lot of departments are doing that as nearby as Westport's had that they've had a lot of success because it's important that we fill these details. You've got contractors coming into town. They've got important

work to get done. Sometimes it could be replacing gas lines, fixing, you know, utility work, stuff like that. and uh we need to be able to fill these details.

So, uh it's unfortunately we we lost those three officers, but I understand why. And so, we're trying to work around that. And um if they could if they could become civilian direct traffic, they wouldn't need to meet all those same training requirements. And obviously, they're very skilled at directing traffic.

They've been doing it for years and years.

Aren't the training requirements the same across Massachusetts for police officers? Yes. Yes. So all police officers are required to do this safety training every year as and do other departments typically pay them or not usually.

You just don't.

Yeah. Not no one does.

Yeah. All what they do for us is is they work details. And so the way you know towns and cities view it is that's that's the benefit they get is to be able to work those details and what and what we expect in return is they meet their minimum requirements. They do all their training stuff like that. Um but even now with post, they still have to follow on the post um which is the

police officer standards and training that was established a couple years ago as part of police reform. Um there's just there's a lot more training now than they than there used to be for police officers that we need to do. They need to go to the range twice a year, qualify with their firearms. It's really a lot of stuff that isn't necessary to work a detail quite honestly because

we're we're not going to utilize them for anything other than traffic details.

Um, so I understand why they they they they've left and uh but we still it wasn't it was nice to have them available. So I'm looking to establish a new program where we could get them or other officers back in that in those positions and uh remove the reason that they they resigned from them.

Uh and then finally staffing wise the other changes uh the addition of two two dispatches. So we had a vacancy we filled the vacancy and then we also added the other position. So that would be the two additional dispatchers. Any questions on [snorts] that?

I have a question, Chief, if I may refresh my memory. Is there still a resident requirement to be a police officer in this town? You have to live in Dartmouth.

So there's a residency preference, you know, we give we give preference to people who live in Dartmouth, but based on civil service, they just need to live within 15 miles of the town.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yep.

Most we found that most employees that we we hire as police officers if they don't live in town uh they live they live very close by and most of them also grew up in town. So we we've had a lot of success with you know you hear a lot when I talk about I introduce them that they graduated from Dartmouth High School stuff like that which I think is nice to have that connection long-term

connection with the community.

Um so we've been able to maintain that very well whether they live in town or they just grew up in town.

Okay. But they don't they don't have to though by based on civil ser 15 miles and I don't think you'd want to drive much much more than that because it's like border to border of the of the towns. So it's drive a lot more.

Yeah.

Right.

Just to follow up in regards to uh graduates from Dartmouth High School. I love to hear that personally. Um the criminal justice programs is that where are your local criminal is that Bridgewwater State or where do you find your graduates from criminal justice programs going into policing? Yeah, I mean there's a number of them. Roger Williams has a very well program [clears throat] for um criminal justice.

So there's there's a bunch of them out there.

Thank you.

Yep. Quick question. So we have a residential preference and a 15 mile requirement.

The class and comp study that we're doing is going to be with municipalities outside of the 15 mile radius. Right.

Okay. So, is that going to give us good data for where our pool of candidates come from?

Yeah, because that's just one piece. Um, and there's also several departments that are non-ivil service that have other requirements. So, I mean, generally police likes to have have the officers in the general vicinity, but if you leave civil service, there can be various um requirements. That 15 mile radius is because we're in civil service and that's just a lot of departments are leaving. So um you can't you can't

really compare us particularly in police even in the comp and class there's been a lot of work done because our police department is very unique even to our comparable communities because we are surrounded by two cities right we're we're a town but we're surrounded by two cities um and a lot of our crime is associated with residents of of those cities not actually of of the town of Dartmouth so um the the

candidate pool that's one piece of it and it's definitely we'll look at part of that but it kind of goes further beyond that. Um, so the class and comp study is going to be like in pardon me I don't know what like the civil service is that like our officers is that we're talking so like our like we got 66 officers out of 87 total employees that's that is that the civil service component?

Yeah, the officers are a civil service.

Correct. and they so the class and comp study is going to have enough specificity for that major component of our police department to give us good data of how we stand locally in our 15 milei radius to an extent. Yeah, that that is when they look at comparables that's one thing that is considered u but there's many other things that are considered.

the chief kind of touched upon the different opportunities within the department structure of the department u because you can't compare you know our department to Westport's department um or you know even New Bedford right different um so those are all things there there isn't one specific piece I guess is the answer to your question but but we are confident that they'll consider all of those pieces where we'll

get a good um a good look at our comparables I mean I think I think to your point Nathan is um you know [snorts] most likely you know the people we attract are going to be within 15 miles right I think that's what you're basically saying is you know we need we need to we need to be concerned about the departments around us and I I agree 100% with that because um that's where our

candidate pool is going to come from that's the competition that's the competition however um just from my experience with these studies back in 2019 the town did a study and um what they look at and which I would agree with is they They focus heavily on the on the town's financials, right?

Because it's your ability to pay in essence. So whether you want to pay more or less or whatever it is, what what is the town? It might be out of your ability to pay that. So although the comp study might come back if we looked at a different town, Marian, Matapoet, wherever it might be, and they say, well, based on this, you should pay this, but they didn't consider Dartmouth's financials. So the study I

saw, I don't know if this will be similar. I haven't seen it yet, but it it really when they identify comparable towns, it was based heavily on the on the financials of the town. They were looking for towns that had similar financial situation to Dartmouth because that that really comes down to your ability to pay. Um so that adds any insul. But I agree, we need we need to look at our neighbors too because that's

probably the people we're going to attract. Mhm.

Um just a quick question on the um like recruitment of experienced officers. I know like at one point a lot of people that I knew were trying to lateral from different places, but both chiefs had to sign off. So it was difficult because a lot of chiefs said, "I can't afford to lose you. I can't sign off on it." Like everyone wanted to flee a taunt at one point because they had a great contract.

Y but then I know a lot of people that went outside of civil service went to towns that were doing things like giving them credit for say vacation or sick time based upon total years of police service. Um, obviously the seniority, you can't just jump over everyone you come into a new place, but have we done anything like that with vacation time?

Yep. We're doing all that.

Okay.

Um, and uh, actually there's a recent agreement that just allowed us to do the vacation time prior to that. We're able to give credit for the years of service.

Okay. So, we have, you know, the steps that the officers get paid. We're able to bring them in at a higher step based on how many years they've served. Sure.

Um, and that was a that was a good addition though was the vacation because that was like one of the next big things with laterals is they may have you know we've we've had we've had a couple laterals and um sometimes they have five years on three years you know and they've they've built up some of that and yeah we can't give them seniority because that wouldn't be fair to the officers we have course

so they kind of get stuck on whatever shift they get stuck on but we're doing as much as we possibly can to make them whole when they come over kind of make it appealing to them to to get a seasoned officer is a huge benefit to us and um you know we invest a lot in the officers and sort of other departments so to not have to go to the academy hope

they get out of the academy all the field training goes into it just such a small pool you can't you can do what you can do but you can't make them so yep thank you all right so the uh the metrics that we look at each year calls for service looking over a 10-year period it's It's been fairly consistent. Um, so calls for service, there's two main components to it. There's the external calls when the

public calls us for help. And then I'll call them internal calls is when we initiate, the officers initiate a call.

Could be a cost stop, could be a property check. There's a million different call types that they would selfinitiate.

Um, so the external calls we don't have any control over, but the internal calls we have a lot of control over. And that can be good or bad. And I just say that I don't I don't put a lot of weight on calls for service when I compare departments because a department could easily mandate what we call property checks. Okay? So overnight the midnight shift they drive around and what are

they doing a lot of times? They're checking on property, right? But they don't necessarily call it in and generate a call unless we ask them to because there's certain properties we want to make sure they're checking on for different reasons and be able to verify that they did check on it. But for the most part, they're checking on hundreds of properties per night. And if we had them

generate calls for each of those, which we could do if we asked them to, our call volume could could go up dramatically. Um, and that's what departments have control over is is those internally generated calls. So, I put it up here. It's good to look at.

It's good to for us to have a feel of what the calls are. Um, but at the same time, I I don't put a lot of emphasis on it. We rely heavily on the FBI crime data because um that is an actual situation where an officer not only went to a car but they generated a police report and it had charges on it. Um so it was investigated, it was verified complaint and they actually char they

wrote down some type of charges and that data is submitted to the FBI by each agency and we'll we have that data available too. But I I stress that a lot more than I do um calls for service but it's interesting to look at so I put it up here.

These are some uh over a fiveyear period reports in uh different activities that we do. Um just to take a look at any trends, things that kind of stick out.

Uh a decrease in citations is one thing I had noted and an increase in offense reports. So those two potentially could go hand inand the more time officers are spent, you know, writing reports. And when you're writing a report that started out with a call for service, you had to do an investigation and then you write a report. So it can be timeconuming when you see you know offense reports going up like that and

that that basically reduces the amount of free time they would have to do traffic uh you know violations and and we're also down officers. So for instance our our traffic division um we're shorten officer in that division.

Patrol is our main focus. So we can't always make some of these specialized uh appointments until we get more staffing to do that. And traffic focuses heavily on you know traffic enforcement. So, there's a few reasons why we we see the trends that we see, but um most things are relatively consistent year-over-year.

Chief, a quick question. How many uh cars or patrol cars do you have on the night shifts and I say like for 12 to say 8 in the morning?

Yeah. Uh well, there's a couple of things with that. It's hard to say because every day is different to be honest with you. We do have minimums. I can talk about the minimums. Um that's the that's the least amount of cars we would have before we would call in for overtime or force an officer to work overtime. And depending on the day of the week, um Monday through Thursday,

it's four and then it goes to five over the uh Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you know. Um but there's a lot of times there's more than there's also at least one supervisor working um as well as the office is on the street. Uh many times is more than that if everyone comes into work, but we have to a lot for days off and time off and stuff like that.

This is a five-year comparison of crimes against persons. These are all categories set up by the FBI. They're official categories. Certain crimes fit into these. Um these would be the more serious crimes, assault and battery, stuff like that. Um pretty big increase this year. That's a little depressing.

Well, when we look into it, this is this is kind of why we look into this stuff because then when things stick out, we want to say, "All right, what what is happening? What can we do about it?"

Right? Um a big a big increase that we saw was from South Coast Behavioral. Um we get called there frequently. Um it could be two patients fighting, a patient and you know, medical provider.

Yeah, our call volume there for that for crimes against a person has doubled in the last year and it was it was high before and it's doubled. Um, additionally, assaults at the uh motel in town have also increased.

Okay.

So, those are that's really the majority of uh the increase that we've seen is is based on those two things.

Mr. Okay. Is there any provision to um charge a fine uh or mandate? Hey, hire your own security to handle these little skirmishes. Uh we'll come when it's really big. Um can you dictate that? Does the town have the right to say or continually go to the same place for these kind of skirmishes? Get your own security.

Right. Um I believe they have security there. They don't necessarily call us to deal with the problem. They have called us. They've had some serious incidents and they have called us to deal with that. Um but a lot of times we're responding after the fact because the person they want to they want the other person charged. So we're just basically going there taking a report and filing

charges. Um I don't think we have any ability necessarily to you know deal with that.

Um the charge that's a big increase and when you're when you're there you're not right. There could be another emergency that's even more important that one that you're late or you couldn't get to. It's um information come up to the select board when they're looking at their license.

I've I've heard some conversation around, you know, should we be doing something about the license for this place?

The problem is the select board actually doesn't oversee the um most of the ins that we have challenges with. Those are all those are all issued through the board of health um that you don't really have a lot of discretion. So that we we did do that as part of the renewal process this year and the um three that are within the the select board's jurisdiction were the three least problematic.

[clears throat] So we do submit upon request information. They did request information on on the motel in particular. So we submit that when we're asked and um and I think they they use that to the best of their ability.

I think in relation to behavioral health, I think it's really important that we have a good partnership with our, you know, with our healthcare workers and and that they feel like they're supported and that, you know, when they need backup that they can get it just like with the schools. I mean, I know that we don't pay our, you know, community health workers, but it's important that they feel like they have support.

Yeah. And they've had they've had a couple of serious issues over there, too. So, it's it's it can be dangerous.

Yep.

For sure.

But at the same time, and we see it daily, that there are a lot of people who who need that kind of assistance. I mean, we we need these places and probably more of them quite honestly because um you know, it's it's it's something that we've seen a dramatic increase in.

Absolutely.

Over the years.

Yep.

Next category is crimes against property. Um, this is something that in town we we've always had uh significant numbers based on the amount of businesses shoplifting uh being one of the biggest issues that we deal with.

Um, this year we had an increase of about 88 shopliftings.

So, that boosted that number up a little bit. It's actually the highest it's been since 2016 looking back at our data. Um, in addition to the shopliftings, it's not just that scams, email, texting, online. We're getting and you know, a lot of the scams aren't even reported because people are embarrassed. So, I'm sure the actual number of scams is much higher than we even know about.

Um, there's still unemployment scams going on. I mean, there's just it's just getting worse and worse. And I think with this artificial intelligence, they're getting better and better at this stuff, too.

Um, and and they they target, you know, elderly folks. It's really sad sometimes when you see what happens. Uh we we're hopefully going to propose a bylaw this year at town meeting to ban the uh if you've gone into some convenience stores, they have the crypto machines.

Yeah.

Those are those are used almost exclusively for fraud. I've talked to the FBI about it. Um the fees they charge if you actually wanted to legitimately buy cryptocurrency, there's a lot better ways of doing it. I don't I don't think anybody legitimately uses those machines. um and and the companies are making money so they don't necessarily care what you use them for as long as you're using them. So

hopefully we can maybe ban those in town and it's just one less way that people can can be scammed like that. But we've we've had luck intercepting uh some of these couriers. They'll actually send them to your house to pick up money, boxes of money, whatnot.

Um when people do call us, if they call us early enough, we work with them and we've intercepted a number of them and and they're as far away as as New York City. they come all the way here to pick up this money that they've scammed. So, it's a it's it's a very complex organized crime network that does this and there's different people with different jobs and all that stuff. So,

that's also contributed to some of the increase we've seen.

30,000.

These are uh crimes against society, general crimes. Um, some of these increases are how proactive we're being because a lot of this depends on what we're detecting out there. A lot of it drugs and narcotics.

Um, we had 63 reports last year. 27 of them led to an arrest. Our community uh impact unit has been very active in in detecting and in going after people dealing drugs. Uh in addition to that, a lot of our calls for service when the officers on scene for something else, they discover narcotics and it leads to uh an increase in some of these some of these charges. So not a huge

increase from last year, but a little bit and the numbers are maintaining. But if you go back to the, you know, two years ago, you'll see a pretty big increase. And um I think we've maintained our activity and enforcement on on that.

No new information here. It's just all three categories put together on one slide.

You know, when when I see you present this, it makes me think that I support you doing that study even more because, you know, you see the increases in these categories and that's got to change.

You know, how much we we obviously the more manpower we have, the better we are at controlling this and meeting the needs of the community.

Yep. and the CIU, that's a specialized unit.

Um, I would like to put an additional officer in there. I just don't I don't have the staffing right. I can't pull any more out of patrol.

So, um, you know, they're running a little short-handed and they could be more effective if they if they had that extra person. So, yeah, [clears throat] kind of alluded to it. I think Cody might have stolen some of my thunder earlier, but you know, based on based on our location right in between the cities, I heard it talked about earlier. Yeah.

Um, you know, you can kind of see that.

Yeah.

New Bedford, we have more arrest of New Bedford residents than we do Dartmouth.

We're number two, you know, um, as far as that. And then Fore River and other jurisdictions comes in third.

When you add up just those three, it's 90% of our arrests, you know, um, with 45% coming from just Forever and New Bedford alone. You know, we're we're right in the middle um, there. So, it's uh it's kind of nice to see it laid out like that. I think it's it's useful and it and it certainly goes along what we've been saying as far as where crime is coming from and where

we're dealing with it. And um you know, the way we're set up, there's a lot of restaurants, commercial areas, it draws people from other towns into Dartmouth and sometimes some other people commit crimes.

Is it Thank you.

Is it um specifically related to one type of pro crime? So for example, I I came from the north, we had restaurants and so our increase for DUI arrests and those kinds of things from Salsbury where we're big.

Is it one type or is it just multiple mental health increases as we were kind of just alluding to? Yeah, I would say a couple of the biggest ones that would come to mind would be shoplifting.

Okay, people come here to shop and also shoplift and and then we're back on the motel again. In the motel, we deal with a lot of uh domestics, assault and batteries, narcotics, stuff like that. And a lot of those people, they're at a motel here because they don't live here. So, they're from out of town.

Um the motel are also used to um especially when it gets cold, mostly when it gets cold, um to house homeless.

So the cities when they [clears throat] run out of housing, they would they would basically they bus in the homeless to stay at the hotels. They have them stay there overnight and sometimes while they're staying there, they they commit crimes and and cause the services that we respond to.

Thank you.

Although homeless is a very small percentage on your chart.

It might be unknown though.

Yeah. Well, well, that only gets classified as homeless if they can't give us an address. Like they don't have it. But if they if they can give us an address, then we don't we don't call them homeless, I guess. So it it might not accurately represent homeless. Yeah.

[snorts] So we do a couple comparisons. Uh the first one is Bristol County.

Um this is this is an interesting one just because this is this is going to be the towns and cities closest to us. Um the ones in red have not fully reported yet this year. Um the deadline's March.

So um you can look at that data, take it for what it's worth, but it's not complete. It's probably pretty close. I would, you know, you normally report monthly, so I would think they're only maybe a month or two behind on that. So those numbers are going to increase for the uh the agent, you know, the departments in red.

Um we kind of fit squarely in the middle of New Bedford and Fall River, interestingly enough, which is where we're geographically located. Um and that's been it's been pretty consistent.

Now, it looks bad, but at the same time, I just want to emphasize that, you know, our crime type is different than the cities, okay? So, they're going to be dealing with more of the violent type crime, but we're dealing with more property crime.

Um, so just to put some shed some light on what looks really bad. Um, it's more property crime, less violent crime, which I think is is much different than the cities, but it's still, you know, it's still a high crime rate. Um, and it's it's adjusted per capita, so it it levels, you know, levels it based on the population differences in the cities and towns.

How do we possibly control that, though?

I know it's a rhetorical question. I'm just I mean, what do you even start to do?

Well, it's very difficult to control.

And you know, I just want to emphasize too, this this is reported crime and um we've seen times when it looks like shoplifting is decreasing, but really what was happening was some of the stores weren't having loss prevention.

And so the reporting of shoplifting went down.

Um and I think we have a pretty good reporting rate in town, which which is a good thing. You know, people feel comfortable calling us and and then when we get the report, we do the right thing with it. We categorize it properly and we report it properly. So there's two steps to reporting crime. And I think some of the reflection on us is the fact that, you know, residents and businesses

feel comfortable and confident calling us.

So they report it to us. So our our reporting rates high and our officers go do a good job and our crime analysts in categorizing it properly. So it gets counted. Now it gets counted against us in essence as a higher crime rate, but I think it's more accurate than potentially some other jurisdictions could be. Mhm.

I'm surprised Taton is as low is much that much lower than us to be honest.

I'm I'm very surprised too.

I'm looking at that going, "Wow, really?"

And that's why I emphasize the reporting component and there's two parts to it and I mean, yeah.

Yeah.

I don't I don't know.

I don't think that's accurate, you know. And Adelboroough is a city as well.

Yeah, Adel is another one that Taton, but it's it's still a city.

In between Fall River and New Bedford.

All right. [clears throat] there.

Good argument.

So, in addition to looking at Bristol County, we look at comparable towns and this was based on that 2019 study that I talked about where um Gov HR was a company hired. They identified those towns as being comparable um to Dartmouth. Um about half of them have not finalized their reporting.

Yeah. Um, but you can kind of look at that and we still stand out a bit. So, you know, our offices do stay busy. It's it's not only geographically large, we've got a decent population.

Um, and we've got obviously the, you know, UMass Dartmouth being in town, a lot of a lot of retail, a lot of restaurants, prison that's in town motel um, lot a lot of things that that keep us busy. Summer population increases, stuff like that. people complaining on the beach.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Let me throw that one in there for you.

So, um, and then we broke this down further [clears throat] by the type of crimes.

So, this this is the same same towns, comparable towns, same crime rates, but now you can get a little bit of uh little view into the, you know, the crimes against person, property, and society that we talked about based on the different colors. um just to see what kind of crime and you can see with Dartmouth the blue is the property crimes we talked about and you can see how that's the majority of the

crime that we deal with is uh is in blue.

Wow.

So that was a lot neat that was all I had.

Any questions?

I just have a question not budget related but the uh post commission what your relationship is with them. Do you meet with them or do you just submit data to them?

Uh we don't we don't really meet with them. I mean they have public meetings that uh I try to watch when I can just to see what what's going on with post.

Uh we have a lot of requirements to submit certain things to them.

Okay.

And they monitor officers as well and notify us if they see any any anomalies or if they have any um requests for additional information. So, they're more of an oversight um type of a a body um that we don't necessarily meet directly with.

Okay.

Anybody else have questions for the chief?

No.

Thank you.

Very nice job.

Thank you very much.

Not that crime stats are great, but it's interesting information.

That was really well presented. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

When they're updated, the other towns are updated in March. Can we see the statistics?

Yeah, we could probably tell if they fluctuate.

Yeah.

I also I want to thank you also for always, you know, being at the middle school in the morning and keeping that traffic at the it it makes a huge difference when you're not there.

It's not that I'm complaining when you're not, but when you're not.

And they're actually at all the schools, you know.

Yeah.

Um they kind of move around throughout the in the morning and the afternoon.

And I think it's worked out well. And and you know, initially they were getting a lot more violators, but now that we've been there, people know we're there and the vast majority know we're there and they slow down, which is really what we're looking for.

Most of them do.

So, you know, yeah, just to make that and they'll let you go, too, which normally they don't. Norally they'll run you right over, but they're like, "Oh, there's police there. We're we're going to just let this one go."

And you know, on Sloum Road, tremendous amount of traffic. I mean, we've done traffic out here. It's like incredible how much traffic is on Slokum Road.

Yeah. It's crazy.

Yeah. So your presence there makes a huge difference. Thank you.

Good. Good to hear. I'll pass that on to the officers because you know just to let them know they are making a difference and people notice and appreciate it.

Oh yeah.

Very big difference.

And your K9 officer too. Thank a K, you know, that's an officer at home. So really thank he or she um for that service too.

Yeah. No, she's great. It takes a lot of commitment. You know, you have the dog.

So, it's a big commitment when you're working and when you're not working.

Yeah.

I would want absolutely I'd want the um next on the agenda uh we as you know uh I had had the one-on- ones with the department heads um and uh was an open invitation for the finance committee. I know Dedra was there for every single one of them. So, she um was uh it was a whole week. It was pretty much the whole week. I know John had uh showed up for a

couple. Bill had showed up for a couple.

So, um it's a good opportunity to to hear what uh the the departments need.

Good night. Thank you.

More of a um you know, depart more of a a personal level for their for their departments. I know we look at the budget in whole, but uh whether they have staffing needs, whether they have um additional um you know, expenses. We talked about utilities and the rise of utilities throughout almost every single one of these budgets. Um, [clears throat] so, uh, I think it went well. Uh, this year was the same format

as we had last year. Um, and and I appreciate the departments getting that information to me a lot sooner. I mean, it was really done by the end of December, which is remarkable because, you know, um, it's a lot of information as you seen with this with just the chief's uh, presentation for them to get that done. So, I don't know if there's any specific questions on what was what

was um, maybe talked about, but it was generally the same format for each one of these uh, departments. that came in presented uh both on the expense and the um personnel side for the salaries.

Again, if they had contractual um uh increases that was built into their budget, but there was nothing else built into their budget. The majority of those budgets that we presented were level funded.

Uh there were no substantial increases to that. You'll see that when we present the entire budget. Uh there was some increases to software as the chief had just mentioned his in his um presentation and it's kind of hard to get away from that. uh you know we we're we're we're becoming more and more bound by these software vendors that we see four five six seven% increases every single year. So uh generally speaking

that was the overall um you know conversation with the departments. I don't know if Dedra wants to thank you very much. Um it was just very impressive. It was very I appreciate very very much the time uh that I was allowed to kind of take informally and ask questions. Um the areas of expenses were level funded.

The department heads knew exactly what they wanted to do and and Gary and Cody were discussing and working with the level funding of expenses. We talked about oneonss and oneoffs particularly uh in the uh town clerk's office for example the one ons or off are dependent on elections. Local elections we have more postage we have more label. state and local elections. We might have state

or local. We mailed the charter one year. So the postage that year was up.

So one ons and one offs are evaluated in the ad expense areas. So the department heads really came prepared to talk about what their expense areas needed. We talked about personnel. We talked about full-time equivalents FTEES and part-time FTEES. And so I started with full-time equivalent languages and healthcare benefits and things like that. So, it was very helpful to me to hear and meet our department heads.

They're a professional level group of committed uh staff. Um they're struggling as the chief had indicated as well with hiring professional level licensed staff.

You'll hear from DPW with respect to CDL and big equipment licensing to operate.

and we talked a little bit about how to train the trainer models kind of within some of those areas. So the opportunity that I received was almost a gift uh and allowing me to kind of represent that and and be part of that. Um so um those are the kinds of things that I was able to pick up.

Sounds like it was very educational, especially as you're new to the to the group.

No question about it and it was very very much appreciated. So thank you for that.

John, did you have comments because I know you went to a couple of them. No, no. Been to them before. They're always nothing to share.

Informative uh to me. Uh no, nothing stuck out.

Okay.

Uh as wow, you know, um I know John was a part of the DP the DPW conversation and the question there was uh you know, we're level funding utilities, right?

A lot of these apartments and we know that those line items are going to go over.

We look [clears throat] at we look at our own personal gas bills and electric bills and where they've gone. So, we're trying to mitigate those costs as much as we can. Even though we may say level funded, uh, essentially it's, you know, if they're overspending on those accounts, it's coming from other parts of their budget on the expense.

You know what I liked, Janine, when I was there, they're more or less adhering to the form and when they presented something, the form that Brian created.

Brian will be proud.

Yes. Yes. I'm thinking that seriously know I was very impressed in how well they were organized as good just as uh you know really back what deer said and John they they did a very nice job I thought and they called it the Brian form I was like what they called it the Brian I did cuz I'm new and I'm like what I called the Brian form so I think no one who's Brian somebody's still a

little edgy we still call it the Brian form those will be forwarded to you once we uh listen to the first three budgets right uh we get through bigger budgets, but those I'll forward those to the group as I did last year sometime uh early March.

Right. Was there any requests for staffing?

We have a couple We do have a couple um shifts and changes.

Okay.

Nothing nothing major. I would say it's not really No. One position in DPW um part-time position in conservation and uh one facilities position.

All right, makes sense.

All right, that's all I have on that.

Okay, good. Um, finance committee handbook.

Are you done, Gary? I'm sorry. Cut you off.

The finance committee handbook. I apologize. I sent out the latest version this morning. I don't know, 10 o'clock.

Um, because I didn't realize that Gary had sent out, and it's not Gary's fault, had sent out a version before it had been updated. So, um, rather than dive into it now, I would prefer that you had the chance to review it because it's, in my opinion, close to completion, I had polished off the rest of it at the end, you know, the Janine version, but I don't want it to be the Janine version.

Um I don't know if I feel like Janine can have her own handbook.

So, possibly depends how people feel.

All right.

Not going to review this.

No, I'm not going to review it because I want people to get a chance to read through it and come back with comments as they see fit. Um, so we can put it maybe on the next agenda if there's a spot for it. That way everybody's had a chance to read, review, and decide if there's parts that need to be fixed. Um, I had sent a copy off to the town moderator

way back in November when this version was done. I have heard nothing in return. So, I'm assuming it's a go so far. Though, we will when we finish it send I'll send another copy for review and make sure that she's had a chance to review it.

Can you check your email because I did not receive it.

I did.

Yeah, it came I need I think I sent it about this afternoon.

Yeah, this morning.

Oh, this morning.

Yeah, 10ish.

I got nothing from you.

I don't know. Do you have me blocked?

Did it go to John?

I'm on it.

Yeah, you're on.

I was going to say I have I have a list.

I don't just arbitrarily type in emails.

I actually have a FinCom list.

I'll send it to you, John, right now.

Yeah, I'll send it to John. I don't want John to be left out.

Let me look. I can look on my phone and see it. Actually, you sent it right, Gary.

9:58 this morning.

Yeah, I thought so.

Yeah, it's right here. I can see it too.

You're on the list. That's all I can say.

I just sent it to you.

But everybody else get it.

Y.

Yeah.

Okay. You did.

Anyway, so for next week, if we have a chance on the agenda, we'll take a deeper dive into it after you've had a chance to read it.

I'm sure you weren't adhered to email all day.

You said that nothing's come through.

So, uh, next on the agenda, we have u, uh, we had asked Cody to give a town min town admin, uh, traders update, but, uh, you know, we went to the MMA conference.

I thought that be a a good Oh, yeah. Want to hear about that.

Yeah, I was um, we can start there. I have a few other things to report on.

Um, MMA conference was, you know, overall good. [clears throat] There's a lot of, um, you know, it's it's heavily, uh, financial based, so which, which is excellent. Gary and I attended a couple of sessions by the Department of Revenue. Um, you know, there was some decent information in there. One of the the concerning trends that we're seeing or this I should say the state is seeing

while they think while they they're saying revenue growth um is decent, it's it's not. Uh at this point expenses are outpacing their revenue growth. So, um they're hopeful that in the next couple of months that turns around and if not, they didn't say this, but you know, in our conversations, if not, we anticipate probably some 9C cuts. Hopefully not that would hit the local level. You

know, you saw some last year from the governor. Again, didn't hit the local level. Hopeful that's that's the case again this year, but it's definitely concerning as we go into fiscal 27. Um the governor did speak. She said that a uh this is before the governor's budget came out. 4.4% increase in local aid um was generally what what was being expected in her budget. We got Dartmouth's numbers later that day after

she had left the meeting and Dartmouth's 1.7% in her budget. It just, you know, it's nothing. Um, so hopefully the the legislaturator's budget um considers Dartmouth a little bit more and and we're able to see more than 1.7% increase, but you know, that is what we're kind of working off of, which is highly concerning. Um 1.7%.

So, is that the rule of thumb? You think for most suburbs that it was a lot less than uh the projected?

It is. Yeah, it's it's definitely um it's definitely we're we're not unique to that 1.7% that this you know the cities and obviously goes there's formulas ability to pay things like that. Um, you know, we're a um minimum minimum age community, so that plays a role, too.

But even um like New Bedford, Gary and I were talking, you know, percentage- wise, it's maybe a little bit higher than Dartmouth, right? Maybe they're getting a $20 million increase, but when you have a $600 million budget, it is it's proportionate. Um so, across the board, we're I guess what we can say is don't expect the state to come around in fiscal 27 to to help um to help the

municipalities. It's just not it's not going to happen.

There's still different versions of the budget that come out. Yeah. So, this is usually the governor's budget is the most uh you know the they give the most out on the govern governor's budget, but this is like the least amount that we've seen in quite some time. Usually when it goes to Senate Ways, it means they'll do cuts, but um I don't think it's going to go up from here. I think that's

Yeah. Which is a scary thing, right?

Usually the governor tends to be um you know more liberal with the communities and providing more expense more more revenue and for us to start at 1.7 we'll certainly be advocating to our legislators that you know we we need more um but I I wouldn't expect even if it goes up it's certainly not going to be a lot more than 1.7%. They're doing a lot of work to cover the lack of um

uh funds from the uh federal government, right? There's some work in that. You um as part of her budget proposal, there's another significant investment in the MBTA. Um you know, they are making some strides with chapter 90 with the fair share amendment, which is the millionaire's tax. So, you know, there is some um benefit there, but again, generally it's it's it's small. um in

particularly for Dartmouth. So, it'll be interesting. This is the last year of the Student Opportunity Act. Um you know, we're hopeful that the legislature comes in and and at least provides for a little bit more because 1.7% doesn't cut it.

Yeah. And on the other side of that, um you know, uh the the spend the spend rate is at 4.4%. But the revenues are coming in at 2.9%. From the DO because the second half of the meeting in the afternoon was from the DO. So, you know, that's a little scary because most of the revenues, okay, will come in in the first uh quarter of of this calendar year. But the problem is if they don't

start realizing additional revenues, then they could have a huge budget gap between now and the end of June, which could be up to a billion dollars. So, again, like Cody said, do they come in now and in April and May and say, "Oh, but by the way, we're slashing state aid, right?"

Which can be done. Hopefully not, right? That's what we we don't want to happen, but we have to be we have to be conservative in the fact that we have to expect that in case it does happen.

So, you know, we we can't be jacking up the revenues for state aid when we was there any more conversation around the report from the AFTC in terms of restricted government funds? Is is there any legislation that you know? Nothing.

No, I mean the the MMA um you know and the the finance committee association they put out the perfect storm kind of report and then they followed up with a subsequent report kind of with a solution what what they what they thought would be and clearly that was not considered. Um just did a quick search inflation annualized is about 2.7%. So just take this going into next year it's really a

reduction of 1% in state aid right at not even keeping up with inflation.

Yeah. And if you look at the communities that if you track it, like I track the communities that have gone out for overrides, that has nearly doubled in the last couple years, attempted overrides, not successful overrides, but attempted. So the pressure is being put back on the communities to raise revenues.

And you know, it's it's because that there's there's no revenues coming down from the state as far as local is concerned. And that's that's where we're seeing unfortunately um proposals before the the legislature, particularly the governor had filed uh the municipal empowerment act.

It's really no more funding to the municipalities. It's a it's a vehicle for us to essentially tax our residents more and I don't know if that's the answer.

Um you know, one of the biggest uh revenue opportunities is to tax excise at a much higher higher rate. Three times the rate.

Yeah. Essentially three times the rate.

So, you know, if if you're spending if your excise tax is let's say $500 now, you would have the option to increase that up to threefold. It's a local option, but it but those are kind of the tools that are being presented, not not straight revenue and support from the state.

Yeah. And that's local receipts, so that's not going to be Yeah, it seems like they're doing the best they can under the circumstances, right? I mean, elections have consequences and we we're seeing what happen. Um I was just hoping that they were going to take some action on that report, but they it didn't sound like they were.

Yeah. No, it was moreformational, I think, than anything else. Not I mean that was more for communities as an eye openener to spread out to finance committees and select board members to, you know, get them on board on what's actually happening at the state level.

But the the most significant piece of this is that the revenues are not coming in to match the spending at the state level.

Health insurance continues to be, you know, like 12 or something.

Yeah. But we did um uh as part of this we have the Maya annual meeting. Um you know we don't get our actual rate at that meeting. We got a range the um the essentially not great news is that the top end of that range is 14.4%.

Obviously that's highend. Hopefully we don't fall at that you know at that range. Uh we should have our rate sometime within the next couple of weeks and then Gary did you say something about going exploring in another direction or Yeah. So we are we are doing that right now.

Okay. Yeah. And uh we have the health insurance steering committee that you know we've we've um started that. So we're we're exploring other JPAs, the joint purchase agreements within the area and also looking at Maya if we have to do plan design changes. So we're trying to get the liyken kind plans that we have now trying to mitigate the cost as much as we can but like Cody said

we're going to be waiting for what Maya comes in with and we can go from there make decisions from there and meet with the group.

Yeah. Unfortunately, not great financial news, but it it was um one of the things that we're certainly we're in a much better position actually than a lot of communities. You know, Gary mentioned the amount of greenies going for overrides. If if you take a three-year period, so look at um going back to 25 26 and looking into 27, it's about 50% of Massachusetts municipalities have either tried to go for an override or

will be going for an operational override. Um and and if not, they're looking at significant, you know, cuts.

It's so while we may not be able to fund to the level that we would love to right here, we're fortunate where we're able to even afford, you know, a 3% increase for the schools. Um Middlear is a community, they just came in, you know, that they gave their schools less than 2%. And this is this is what we're seeing around the Commonwealth. And so we're fortunate that we're in as good of

a spot as we are and a lot of that's due to, you know, the financial um policies that we have in place and conservative efforts that we've taken.

So dear, so just to kind of follow up on the 9C cuts, I think that you're going to see on April 15th is Massachusetts tax day is it is federal tax day. your third quarter revenues are going to kind of kick in. And so the state's going to be able to better say those 9C cuts fourth quarter could be X as you kind of roll into that.

Additionally, the Senate's going to take that as they typically do that type of year. And then when the Senate takes a look at their budget as far as education aid, does that 1.7 include education aid?

It does. Everything that's all that's all education aid. So your one your education aid may receive per pupil aid which is typically what you did when I started in 1862 per pupil aid was $5.

And so you can't really you can't change the formula, your chapter 70 formula, but they started to say, "All right, we'll give you per pupil aid. We'll give you per pupil aid." And I think it's up to maybe $75 per pupil. And that typically comes out of the Senate if you get any extra money at all in state aid for education at all. At this juncture, it's going to be your poor pupil,

particularly because you're losing some of your federal money in student um opportunity act. So just to kind of give you how this might roll out regarding 9C cuts, the last time we talked about 9C cuts, it was either Romney or Romney fall town meetings or something like that.

Yeah, that was many lc cuts.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's how that thing is going to roll. Um but quite frankly, a 9C cut on 1.7 million as opposed to what some of your others are going to get fourth quarter could be really difficult. So, as the guys or gentlemen have said, we're in a very, very good place in regards to that kind of opportunity.

Um, beyond that, Gary mentioned looking at other health insurance providers.

We're hopeful that uh by mid to end of March, we'll have an idea of of where where we can go if anywhere, if there's any opportunities to save. Um, budget advisory group has met a couple of times and actually, I think, had some really productive conversations. We've gotten a lot of feedback from the community that people have really enjoyed those conversations. So, if you haven't had an

opportunity to log on, they're recorded.

Um, spell binding.

Yeah.

And uh they've they've been um they've been pretty wellreceived.

Um you know, one of the things we addressed most recently is all of our fixed costs just to show how much of the budget we don't really have control over and and it's it's quite large, you know, on the general town side and the school side. Uh we're working our budget transparency portal um will be going live later this spring. Uh Gary's been working behind the scenes with our uh

financial team and our IT team. Um and they actually have uh all of our data uploaded which is excellent. And so we should be able to have something um online prior to the town meeting uh which will be excellent and we'll definitely want to promote that.

Yeah. I was saying to Cody ear if you if you haven't been to the west uh website lat lately it's been reorganized a little bit and you can actually find things that you're looking for unlike before we would put it in that search box and god knows what we get. So thank you for for that work. I know you said it was communications the team not me but yeah but you have a good team working on

that stuff. So yeah part of that is we have Jessica here. Jessica's our new communications manager. Oh, Jessica is um has been great. She's been here two weeks now.

Yeah. Going on three and has really jumped in um and been um a great part of the team. So, Jessica has about 10 years experience. Comes from a uh municipality in Colorado that had over 100,000 tourists a week going through the municipality. So, she has a lot of experience with kind of marketing, communication, um, and she has dug right in meeting with all the departments and we're, um, we're excited to kind of

implement several different communication methods. So, I say stay tuned over the next couple months for kind of that more transparent and, uh, more outreach. Uh, on Monday, the select board uh, will be reviewing a couple things that are kind of in line with finance committee discussions. One of them is a charge for an economic development task force. So, we're going to look to get that um those wheels at

least turning to focus more on economic development. And the second piece of it is a uh outline for a citizens academy.

So, one of the things that we want to work on is getting the public more aware. We're going to record those um probably start sometime in the spring.

Um the idea is about 20 or so seats and it's really a a civics 101 lesson about municipal government. Uh we're going to have about 10 different sessions. Uh, one of them, you know, public safety night, a finance night, a general government night, a DPW night, and we'll spend a couple hours where, one of the things we I really want to do is not just do it at town hall and actually try

to do it at the different locations. Um, we're still working logistically on that, but um, there was an outline that the board will discuss and so definitely making some progress there.

Will it be on the same like will there be some consistency? Like will it be the same night like say every like every first Wednesday or something like that?

We're going to try to do it on uh I'm aiming for Wednesdays right now because Wednesdays tend to be the night that there's not a ton of meetings.

Um but we're still finalizing kind of but yeah we want consistency for anyone that there people can schedule and plan. Hey, I need Wednesdays evenings or whatever it may be.

Yeah. Cody, is there any work being done on a state of the town presentation before the town meeting? Not not the town meeting night, but yeah.

Um, that's definitely one one piece we are looking at. Uh, I want to we want to do a um, you know, we've done a nice job over the past couple years of doing the the warrant reviews, but I would like to go take it one step further and do like a town meeting prep night and basically invite all town meeting members. um particularly anyone can come but invite all town meeting members and do more of

a in-depth review of what's going to be on the warrant and I think that could be a good opportunity to provide a kind of state of the town of where we are financially and the goal is is I mean certainly people can ask their questions at town meeting that's the point but if we can get ahead of a lot of those things and provide the clarity and the education ahead of time it just allows a town

meeting to go smoother and it allows for town meeting um members voters to be more educated and have an educated informed. Absolutely.

I think too there's just an opportunity there for um being positive about the town, talking about what's been achieved, the fact that there's much more planning going on now than there ever had been before and how helpful that is.

Yeah, we want to highlight all of the good things going on because the reality is there's so much good going on. It's um you know, social media and you know, the Facebook groups usually focus on the negative. Um, you know, no one's talking about the good stuff there.

And that's but we need to do a better job of that. We We haven't done a good enough job of doing that. The snowstorm is a good example.

Did some mailboxes get taken out? Of course. Were there a couple streets that maybe we could have been done a little bit better? Yes.

However, we cleared over 200 miles of roads and and we were one of the first communities that almost the whole community was passable that morning and we have some of the most road models, right? So, that's that's something we want to highlight. Yeah. Yeah, we're not perfect compared to New Bedford's plowing.

I was going to say I went to work in Fall River and when I got off the highway I was like, "Oh, yeah." Exactly. Whoa, there's snow here.

Providence as Providence.

Oh, yeah. I bet. Yeah.

Yeah. No, the city is So, I appreciated Reed Road. Once I got off the highway in Fall River, I was like, "Okay, these are main roads in Fall River. This this was a not so good driving.

It's all right, though." in highlighting um the dedication of our the team that we have here because most communities you have to use contractors. You you just don't have enough internal staff. We didn't use a single contractor this storm.

That's impressive.

That's that's and that's dedication of our staff. You know, the staff don't necessarily have to come in and work 18our shifts to clear the roads and pre-treat. Uh particularly there it was AFC Championship game. I'm sure a lot of those people would have loved to have been at home and watching a football game. Um, you know, prior to that we had a holiday where they were coming in and

um, yeah, not not a single contractor.

So, they clear the roads, then go to work afterwards.

Yeah, they still work a full Yeah, a full day. I mean, this storm, this past storm, you know, there's some time where, you know, depending on the the crew, they'd go home and get a few hours of sleep.

Um, but they were it was it was a longl lasting storm. And then we had that burst of snow Monday night.

Yeah.

Where they had to go right back out. you know, we thought everything was good and it was cold and then we got another two, three inches of snow and they were right back out. So, just highlighting something under that people don't realize and we want to do a better job. So, Jessica is going to be working um to make sure we highlight the good and and the bad, right? We're not perfect. We want to be realistic.

I have noticed on the Dartmouth helping Dartmouth that there are a few more people who are responding with rational kind of next steps. This is what you could do. You could call this department which is nice to see instead of just trash bags.

Oh dear god trash bags.

Yeah. Go and post on Facebook. We we don't even know about it. Right. If give us the opportunity to make it right. The biggest the most recent one was the box out front.

We heard complaints about that.

That's right.

And honestly as soon as we were informed our facilities team was out there looking to see what we could do. They made some adjustments.

Yep. And it was fixed.

And it's fixed.

Some good staff. It's amazing what a little phone call will do.

Yeah, we're responsive. I mean, you have every right to complain if you if you let us know and we don't do anything about it.

It's much better to rant on Facebook.

Come on, Cody.

Well, I mean, there's also a a you know, you can put in a polite ask versus uh Yeah, Facebook rant.

Yeah, we shouldn't be asking on Facebook either. There's phone numbers to call.

Yeah, we try not to get involved with the numbers they can call, right? We we have our official social media avenues and we post that as you know way to get information out but we we don't we don't do the back and forth on them. It's really us for to get information out there.

Um yeah. So Gary's been great working on the budget. We'll have a couple more meetings. DPW will be the next kind of big one that we look at. CIPC met this morning um to review preliminary uh requests for this town meeting and um the schools. Yeah, we met with the schools this morning.

Mhm.

I I just want to say that I really appreciate the fact that both of you are focusing on the town and not on yourselves and you're wrapping it around facts and you got started early. I'm kind of jealous of Janine because she's getting all this stuff, you know, a week in advance and I'd be the phone the night before saying where is it? So, it's good.

Yeah.

Very good.

Yeah. Yeah. So, as Cody just mentioned, we'll meet with the DPW to do talk about water, sewer, and trash on the 19th, and then um we're changing the what you see here up on the screen.

Uh the schools will be in on 35.

Okay. Oh, not till March.

I think they're presenting their budget next because they're not doing their budget until I believe Monday.

It's going to be on the 12th because that's the one I'm going to miss.

I thought so. I thought I saw their agenda for Monday night was the budget.

That's the first time they're getting it um presented to them and then they're going to have to give some direction to the and they're going to actually review it again um prior to this.

That's what I thought being presented to the but it's a look if somebody wants to get a chance of what's yeah the subcommittee did meet the the budget um and finance subcommittee the school committee did meet but Monday will be the first time it's presented to the full school committee.

Yeah. And I've this has been confirmed with uh 35 has been confirmed with Jim.

So on the on the 12th it'll be the school committee.

No, the tw the three on 35 March 5th.

We'll be we'll be talking to I'm asking is the finance committee agenda for next week?

Yes.

Uh next week.

Yeah.

Um we can we can do the uh handbook.

Okay.

Um uh I mean we could review some of the just smaller departments, not necessarily have that I was going to say we must have some department.

We've got I mean I've got all the departments to be honest. We can go we can almost like mimic what we did at the one-on- ones. Yeah, go over the numbers for the smaller departments. We can put that agenda some.

That's a good idea.

When are you planning on meeting having the one-on-one with the school? I know they postponed the preliminary one that we're going to have. Are you going to schedule anything prior to then when they were coming in front of us?

Uh, we can. Yeah, we can. They um I I think we were waiting. It was still that was still kind of early for the schools when we met with in January for the one-on- ones. So we can have a we can have a one with the if if we send the invitation out to the to the finest committee and have Jim come in maybe with the superintendent and just talk

about what they see for FY27 before we present it to the full committee and then um televise it also. So we can we can work with Jim on that.

Are any of the departments just uh dying to come before us besides three large?

I make the invit I send out the invitation. I mean I talked to almost every single one of them individually.

They're not they they unless there's major changes in their department and really there hasn't been uh they don't really see a need to come in front of the finance committee but if the finance committee had a request for a certain department we could have them come in but I think the the sheet the the one I call them keep calling it the Brian sheet um that's that's like really paired down a lot of the right

you know what what the committee was looking for over the years and reviews that and and if there's any questions on that we can have them come in right and there's no No significant increases in any department.

Yeah. If they were if they were if there were like expenses that were through the roof, we'd want to have them come in to maybe go over that, but there's nothing. It's everyone is keeping their requests to a minimal this year.

Yeah.

So, next week, will you have some of those uh Brian sheets for us?

I can send them to the to the group.

Good.

And uh we'll put the handbook on here also.

Yes. Yes. I think everyone will have a chance to have read it by then.

Yeah. And the Department of Public Works, are they coming February 19th? Is that what that is that accurate?

Okay. Because I know that there was um you know there was some concerns around water and you know so just honor me just quick thing. So um the enterprise funds I know are going to sort of get I sent some uh questions on that. we going to be able to sort of review those types of questions and would that be at the next the 219 meeting?

Uh for those applicable enterprise funds? Yes.

Okay.

Um so w you know water sewer and um solid solid waste we can review those.

Yeah. Great. And then you know if there's um we weren't planning on having in waterways um or necessarily DCTV but we can certainly if there's particular things that we want to look at we yeah those are smaller. I don't know if they they necessarily need to come in, but if we can get that same type of data in terms of what are the retained earnings and what are the

Yeah, we actually pres I when I kick off the uh CIPC meeting that we had this morning, I present that to them because that's really the basis of where we stop uh any available uh free cash from the general fund and then they retain earnings from the from the other uh enterprise funds. Um as you know, we went through um having to raise the rates for water and for for the water.

Uh you know, we have to be cautious on what we spend there. We're trying to build those balances back up again. And um you know, the bills will be sent out very shortly with the increase. And um we're hoping that we can capture as much revenue as we can uh from now till June.

That's really when we have to, you know, realize some additional revenue so that we don't have the issue that we had last time. But we can review that.

That's my concern. That's what I We can review what the balances are next week. Yeah, I think I had like a series of like five questions or so.

Just sort of just good information over time, you know, just to help us gauge so that we don't end up in a situation like we did with the water enterprise funds. If we can see that sort of trend longer in advance, you maybe we could head it off before, you know, we get a 13% increase in our right kind of looking at a fiveyear plan on I have historical data from uh previous

years on what that those numbers look like.

Yeah, that would be great. I have to take off though. I'll catch the rest of the meeting on uh on YouTube. Thank you.

That's all I have.

We're close to being done.

Okay. Um does anybody have liaison reports?

Dear, I know you're surprised.

Your council on aging.

Okay. Sorry, Bill.

Excuse me. Can I talk?

Yeah, please.

Thank you.

I met with councelor. Well, it was council on aging meeting that I attended. Cody was there and I had concerns about the kitchen expenditures.

as long as they keep uh close reigns on or work with the project committee and uh Amy said they're more or less being taken care of by the town. So I just want to keep make sure that they stays, you know, more or less in step with what they estimated for their uh for their kitchen expenses.

They have concerns that they wouldn't be in step.

They didn't have concern as I did.

Oh, okay.

That was my concern. Okay.

So we don't want any surprises at the end of the day that they [snorts] said this and it's that. So, as long as we keep tight rings on it or somebody does and that's fine as we go along.

Good dear, just really quick um my liaison report is Rob Alme. I met with Rob Alme who is the chair of the board of public works.

Yes.

And he is quite brilliant. Quite brilliant.

I'll have to tell him to watch this. So, he um I I I just wanted to introduce myself. He's a neighbor, but we spend about an hour and a half just talking water, water water rates, all sorts of wonderful things. So, I appreciate his time tremendously. I've also been watching the DPW meetings. Um, and so I've been keeping track of anything engineering, anything engineering study that probably will be

shovel ready at some particular point.

So, that's kind of what I've been focused on. Um, I've been watching some of the board of health, but that gets somewhat confusing to me. But I I'll still hang in there. But I was able to introduce myself to Tim Barber and to Chris Maron, and I introduced myself as I am your liaison and I've been watching you. So they um appreciated knowing that they're being watched. Uh, but I also was able

to say hello and and you know, introduce that concept to them as well. So that's the report, right? anyone John um CPC um is getting a number of requests this year um and it's going to be interesting and challenging how much can we fund this year and what will the recommendations be to town meeting so stay tuned we haven't uh discussed any I think we got five or six applications that come in so great

all of a sudden wham like is that the two full 2% A full 2% CPC.

We are not.

What is it? What percentage are we for CPC?

1.5 C.

CPA fund. Is that at 2% of the tax?

Yes.

Is that is that it's fully at 2%.

It might be.

Thank you.

I think it's up to uh you can vote up to Yeah. Right.

I don't think we do. I'll look.

Good question.

You stumped us.

Sorry.

Yes. Did you have something?

Um I don't like um Dra here. Um I've been listening on the board of health, but there's really nothing finance related that I need to bring back to the table and the school committee I think is you know we're waiting for the budget.

So nothing else with that that I can think of to share with everybody. So and parks I have not I might have missed their meeting or maybe they didn't have one. I sure when the last meeting I think it was a week ago or was it that soon?

Next meeting is March 10th though 5 p.m.

I'll be there if you want to be there too.

I would like to be there. Thank you.

Putting it on the calendar. Thank you very much.

Um I want to make one comment about the budget advisory group um in that it was it's a good idea in the sense that you have three main groups coming together in one meeting. the fact that we have two finance committee members, two select board members, and two school committee members, of course, Jim Kylie and these two gentlemen. Um, but it's great to see an opportunity so early on for us to work together

as we all know. I mean, I've been on this, Terry, you've been here way longer, but this is the best way to bring everybody together now to have discussions and, you know, the discussions have gone very well.

I agree. Yep.

I agree.

That's my two cents on that. Um, anybody else have comments for liaison?

I'll just say long-term capital is working on a report.

Um, actually, you know, long-term capital, h Cody, is working on a report and it's going to be at the March select board meeting.

All right.

And then you will get a uh email from me. I know some of you already done the DPW facilities tour, but we're going to be doing that a little more in depth.

Um, I'll get you a formal email will follow, but right now it is scheduled for March um 3rd in the morning. We're going to start around 8 a.m.

We talked about that at the back.

Is that the same uh date that?

We were going to have the two We're going to have a meeting on 2:10, but then we we switched it to a tour and we had talked about that.

Yeah.

Do you have a tenative time by any chance?

8 a.m.

8 a.m.

And do you know how long the tour is?

Two hours probably right around there.

chocolate all day.

Like 8 to 10 because I'm going to I'm going to put it on the calendar. You said March 3rd.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I'm going to make time for the gift shop.

I'm going to try.

Got to make time for the gift shop.

Fabulous. Can we drive the truck?

Oh, that was public works, right?

Well, you're going to send out an email so all all of Fincom will be invited if they want to go.

Yeah. If I could go now.

No, no, of course. I believe I had conversation yesterday with them.

formal invite to follow to everybody.

Yeah. Okay, perfect.

That that would be amazing.

That'd be amazing.

Yeah.

Um and for those members that were on the school tour.

Yep.

Oh, that one that was pretty was really good.

It was really good.

Seems like it was so long ago, but that wasn't that long ago. That school tour was great.

That just happened. I forgot about that.

Yeah. No, that was that was excellent.

Two different schools. Um are we ready now to do we need to vote in any minutes?

minutes.

The minutes and there they are up on the screen. Does somebody want to make a motion to approve the minutes for November 13, 2025?

I'll make the motion.

Bill Bulls made the motion. Will someone second?

Second.

Okay. Seconded.

Any comments?

All in favor?

And um I have to abstain. Yeah. Terry and Terry. Okay. Abstain.

All right, we're good.

What else we got? Anything else?

That's a no.

Can I make a motion to adjurnn? That's what I like to do.

I'll second that.

Patrick, I'd like to stay a little longer. I'm just kidding.

You're welcome to yourself.

All in favor?

We'll keep the lights on for you. No, we won't. Too much.

No, we won't. He says,