Finance Committee Meeting - July 9, 2026

I'd like to call the Finance Committee meeting to order on July 9th.

Can we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

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, for liberty and justice for all. Indivisible, to liberty, and justice for all. Thank you. Please note that this meeting is in person and we are being recruited.

Okay. Gary. So, welcome back. Welcome back, everyone. I know it just felt like we just left town meeting, but as customary, this time of the year is when we do line item transfers. We wait for the books to be closed with the town accountant, and we try to see where there's some shortages of some accounts. We're able to make transfers and some. See where there's some shortages in some accounts. We're able

to make transfers in some other accounts. As the committee is aware, we need the finance committee to vote for those items, and we also need the select board. So the select board meets on Monday, so the timing of this is perfect. If this committee votes on them, we'll forward them off to the select board, and then we can adjust the books accordingly. So the first one that you have in the packet

that was sent is for $3,300. And this was for accounts on aging. $300 and this was for Council on Aging and what happened here was there was some I guess positions that were not once they added but some time that was needed for work mainly for like the councils that they have in the resource offices they have so they went a little bit over their budget

and not having any other line item in their budget to transfer from we're taking all these from the ban account we have a ban account that has about two hundred and thirty one thousand two hundred and fifty one thousand dollars in that account so we're able to transfer from any $251,000 in that account. So we're able to transfer from any shortages from that account to supplement these four online items. So

it was basically the it was additional work. The last Council on Asian meeting, I never heard any of this. Yeah. Well, a lot of times when we're when we're finishing off the fiscal year, the the department head may or may not know that they're short on those budgets. We we we send out reports every month. So it was the case where in this. in this instance,

it was the resource officers that worked on there, you know. Gary, just for educational purposes, can you say what the bans account is and why we can transfer furniture?

So that bans account is for short term borrowing. You know, as the committee knows, we haven't done any borrowing in the last few years. So but if in fact we ought to start to do borrowing next year, like for the school rule, short term borrowing initially and then go ahead and bond it, we would then be using that account. So we have the luxury of this year having that money available. and

bond it, we would then be using that account. So we have the luxury of this year having that money available. So we're allowed to transfer money? Yes. We can transfer from any general fund account to general fund account with the committee's approval. So the ban account is considered to be a general fund account? Yes. It doesn't have to be specific to capital? No. Okay. And you have $251

,000 left? $251,000, yes. Okay. Make a motion to approve. Second.

Motion by Patrick. Second. Are we ready to vote or do we have a lot of questions? for Gary?

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. How many people do we have here? Five. So the next one is for $8,000. It happens to be in my account, and the reason for this is we just sent out, and I really wanted to do this in 27, but I thought it was precedent that we do it sooner than later. So we go through the tax title. Preceding

that we do it sooner than later. So we go through the tax title. We go through the process of someone's delinquent on the taxes. They get a demand notice.

They then get advertised in the paper. So this is the next step in the process. This has not been done in the town in quite some time. Prior to even me being here and to Greg being here, if you remember the word Tallage, the company Tallage, they used to send those parcels off to Tallage while there was a lawsuit with Tallage in communities in Massachusetts and around the country, quite frankly, that

took Tallage to court because they found it was Quite frankly, that took TALIS to court because they found it was unconstitutional what they were doing. They then went to the Supreme Court. The courts ruled that. So now we actually do tax title in -house. So we do all this in -house where we have control over contact to the residents. We're not calling them at 6 o 'clock at night, 7 o 'clock

at night as collection agencies. We're working with them through payment plans. So we sent out a round of letters through our tax title attorney who we use, who's the number one tax title attorney in the state, quite frankly. Who we use, who's the number one tax title attorney in the state, quite frankly, Coppola and Coppola. And he

works with communities through Massachusetts, working with us, working with the residents. We then spent $25,000, which in essence, I was short by $8,000 in my budget. But to let you know, we only sent out, we've only had the letters on the street for one week. So these are predominantly foreclosure letters telling the residents, come in,

speak to us about a payment plan, or you risk losing the property for foreclosure reasons. So we spent the $25,000. property for foreclosure reasons. So we spent the $25,000 to send those letters out. That's a lot of money. But in one week, we've already brought in $103,000 by just that. So the point of that lawsuit was that people were losing the equity. Yes, they were losing the equity.

So now the rules are, if we had to take the property, we have to now give back that equity to the homeowner. I have a question. Yes. Oh, sorry.

So you said this year, as opposed to last year, this is the first

year. This is the first year in quite some time that we've actually threatened with foreclosure. And I would say threatened, I don't want to be so harsh about it. We've sent out letters that... You mean that the town has done it?

Or the other company has done it? No, no, no, we have done it. Oh, okay. In general. So how many more threats of foreclosure have gone... How many have gone in, I guess? Well, 300. 300 letters. 300? But totaling 800,000. So when you think about... 300 letters, but totaling $800,000. So when you think about the liability is $800,000, but when you think about our commitment

of at about $78 million, that's really a low amount of delinquency, if you will.

So these are like the last folks that are either struggling, can't make payment, but we are working with them to make it through tax tax. It's past tax years, probably like the last two, three years, but we, I mean, we're allowed to keep them on the books. and generate interest. But we, you know, the issue here is, just as you can see, in the first week, we've already brought $103,000 of that $800,000. So it works.

It works. The thing is, we don't want to own property. We want people coming in, making payment plans and working that out with them. Yeah, absolutely. But I like the way you're cleaning things up, Gary. I think to, you know, address this to conclusion is important. Yeah, and if you remember the company that we had used, like I mentioned, Tallinn. It's important. Yeah, and if you remember the company that we had

used, like I mentioned, Tallage, they were picking the cream of the crop. They were living the town with all the properties that really we couldn't do anything with, wetlands, blah, blah, blah, on and on and on. So it's more intimate for us to work with the residents and work one -on -one with them instead of sending them to pretty much a loan shark and have them knocking on people's doors at all

different hours of the day. But you mentioned a third party, right, not after somebody else you're working with. No, we work with a tax title attorney that works.

with us. So my question is, our in -house attorney cannot be doing any of this? No, initially we did ask attorney Savastano, but that's really not, I don't want to say it's not, he can't do it, but it's really not his niche. You know, it's really a specific. It's more effective for us to hire. Yeah. You know, Anthony and Brian are very intelligent. It'd probably take them longer because that's not what

they do every day. So it's more efficient for us to hire someone that just, that's all that. That's all they do. What is that? Coppola and Coppola. Yeah, Coppola and Coppola. Yeah, that's all that. That's all they do. What is that? Capole and Capole. Yeah, Capole and Capole. That's all they do. They do nothing but tax data.

It's much more humane. That company was people were losing their houses and losing their assets. Yes, it was really, really bad. They couldn't go anywhere. They were homeless. Yeah, it was really bad. Now, if you do get to the point where you do have to take a home into foreclosure, does the town become the owner of that property? So what happens through the tax data process, and it's changed since last November,

we would have been the owners of those properties, we would then now get the deed, have to now market that property. We're almost like the real estate. We would then now get the deed, have to now market that property. We're almost like the real estate agents now. So it's like the town brokerage to then just to get your taxes back in any expenses, and then the rest has to be returned to

the previous owner. Correct. How are you doing? Yeah, I mean, it's not a bad thing, right? Because the idea was equity theft and the Supreme Court ruled that you can't do that. Yep. Yeah, ultimately, we don't want to own the property. No, it just puts a lot more work on your plate to then just get the taxes.

I mean, at least it gives you the avenue to do it if you really have to. The avenue to do it if you really have to. Yeah, we essentially, you're right, we act like the broker. Yeah, everything's changed, we even have to send out a sheriff now. I mean, the whole, all the rules have changed, it was like 180. Yeah, we've had conversations with Chris Markey and Mark Antigney about this because,

you know, there's some good things that change with this. There's some not so good things that change with it. For instance, I'm not sure if Gary mentioned it or not already. We collect 14 % interest on an unpaid bill, right? So if you don't pay, that's the state law, we collect 14 % interest. Unpaid bill, right? So if you don't pay, that's a state law, we collect

14 % interest. And before, when you put it in a tax title, you continue to collect that interest. So it actually goes up to 16%. Oh, to 16 % it previously went up to. Yeah. Now with the reform, it goes down to eight, right? So the concern from municipal government professionals is, if the economy gets tough again, which we kind of are heading in that direction,

or someone falls on tough times, are you going to pay a 25 % credit card? or an 8 % tax bill? Because now it actually drops down when we put it into tax title. So, I mean, we're not opposed to the fact that, you know, it's not as burdensome on the residents. We don't want to create more burdens on the residents.

At the same time, we do want to collect our taxes. So somebody, suppose the house, somebody buys it from the town, do they assume the tax bill? We get all the money. So we own it at that point. We get all the money.

So we own it at that point. If we foreclose, we own it. We have to get a broker now, go through this process. Let's say it sells for $200,000. We are owed 50 in taxes and then we have another 20 in fees.

We get the first 70, the remainder goes to the former owner. At this point, we're only recouping taxes. And any fees that we get along the way. So any Coppola and Coppola fees, any time that we spend on it, we can keep track of, but it's minimal.

which back in the day we used to collect I mean for the interest I mean think about 16 % on a delinquency it was a budget it was a really helped us on the budget so now we've got to really think about what we're how we're going with this you know when most of this money gets a return back to the homeowner and now we've got a lesser you know lesser rate

of interest so but again the focus is we don't want to we're not in the business of owning property we want the tax bills paid we work with the people that are coming to our office and try We work with the people that are coming to our office and try to just help them out. And we've never, the town of Dartmouth has never had, at least in recent years, the philosophy of

foreclosing on homes that people live in. Some communities were doing that, which is why the Supreme Court ruled that way. The town, we have never thought, that's just not the way to kick people out of their homes. Yeah, we go way above and beyond. We were foreclosed on land or vacant homes, foreclosed homes, you know, vacant homes, but we were not kicking people out of their homes. Yeah, my philosophy is

if they come in and at least make an attempt. We're not taking people out of their homes. Yeah, my philosophy is if they come in and at least make an attempt at making a payment and are on a payment plan, that's good enough for me. They're trying. Make a motion to approve the transfer.

Second, from Jerry. All in favor? Aye. Just a second. Any opposed?

Abstain. Okay, no problem. One abstention. I'm too late. No worries.

Gary, do you want me to just sign these at the bottom, by the way?

Yeah yeah.

one, Madam Chair, is now this is a larger one. And so obviously we can't get away from this as a Medicaid payroll tax. And it's been around, I believe last year was around this amount like 50, 60,000. And probably because we had an issue with, not an issue, but we had a significant number of buyouts this year. So that raised it. And then as the payroll increases also, so does

the tax. So as we're increasing payroll, the tax along. So does the tax. So as we're increasing payroll, the tax goes along with that. We cannot get away from not paying the Medicare payroll tax. So this is something you see every year. And at the end of the year, I do my best to try to budget the amount in there, but it wasn't enough. Can you say what you mean by buyouts?

People retire. Retirement. So different contracts have different benefits that people are entitled to.

So pretty much

sick time and then there's some contracts that are older where people are grandfathered into higher amounts and then we obviously have to pay our vacation time so that's I mean we have an account for that but we don't account for the Medicare tax and that because you're paying them more money than they would have gotten you it's

a Medicare tax is higher than with collective bargaining and other increases you you can't really predict where that's going to go yeah I try You can't really predict where that's going to go. Yeah, I try to keep this as lean as I can because I don't want to stop putting erroneous numbers in this budget for payroll tax.

So it's kind of like, do we put more in and then we don't need it or do we come back for a transfer? So it's always typically around this amount. Sure. Any more questions? Make a motion to approve. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? favor aye aye any opposed and so the last one madam chair is a small amount of five hundred dollars a youth commission it's a combination of I went back and looked it was to do also with the split week we had a split week in there and there wasn't enough in the combination of salary and expense and but this year Um, but this year that's been corrected.

$500. Motion to approve. All in favor?

Thank you very much. Coming into doing that. So you also have in front of you two sets of minutes, which I sent out April 30th and May 7th for approval. And then I can have those posted and post those online.

And post those online. Somebody want to make a motion? I'll make a motion.

To approve which means? April 30th.

Do we have a second? Me. Thank you. Any questions? Ready to vote?

All in favor? Aye. I'll abstain. I was not present. Okay. Thank you.

Motion to approve the.

mean I mean read the date half of it do we have a second okay perfect ready to vote all in

so I just while we have the group here I just wanted to mention a couple things you know we'll stop the scheduling for the fall town meeting and I'll have CIPC stop meeting usually I send the the notice to the department heads typically around the middle of August beginning of August and so that will get sent out we'll start getting their requests in so we'll start

meeting with them so I just want to make I want the committee to know that we're working So I just want the committee to know that I'm going to be working on that, so we'll start scheduling some of the meetings so we can go through the warrant. Obviously not yet, but just to keep it on our radar.

In September, you mean? Yeah, I mean, if we have something that's... Probably do like a late August for a preliminary review. I mean, we already have a good idea of kind of what the warrant will look like. The earlier the better for me.

I just have a lot going on right now, so it'd be great to know early so that I can work around it. I'll send out the schedule for CIPC so we have that. And that is it. Schedule for CIPC, so we have that.

And that is it for me. Anybody else have any? I do have a question, though, about the budgetary advisory group. Uh -oh. What is going on with that, pray tell? Anything? Right. We had a meeting about a month ago,

and we put forward a very preliminary plan

going through. And part of the plan was a, well, I'll just leave it.

We put a plan together. And so we have another meeting coming up.

We had one scheduled. Unfortunately, one of our employees passed away. And it was, the time was of the employee's week, so I think we canceled it. One of our DPW employees, Chris Canario, he passed away in a car accident. Oh my God, that's awesome. Was that the kid that was in the accident? So we're plodding along.

Oh, I see. Going a little slower than I would like it. And we've not heard of any tentative plan to reschedule a meeting? Well, I mean, we'll get it together. Probably sometime, it won't happen next week, but we'll be in a position to talk about it. Sometime, it won't happen next week. No, but we'll be reaching out to get one scheduled. This month. It'll be this month. Was there a timeline on

the original charge of the committee? I don't have it in front of me, but I think the idea was... Yeah, I mean, it's really supposed to be an ongoing thing. We didn't anticipate a ton of results, I'll say, before this first town meeting because we just got going really in December. But I would think there'll be, I would hope there'll be a lot more tangible results prior to the next

annual town meeting. I would hope there'll be a lot more tangible results prior to the next annual town meeting and as we go through the budget process and that's the realistic so and that committee will submit a report to the select board and the Finance Committee or just a select board I mean technically it's a it's a committee that the select will put together but I mean it's fine I'm

just curious I mean it would be something that we it would go to the

Two of us are members, so whatever happens, we'll be here. Yeah, yeah, the idea is to bring all the groups together, so yeah. Okay, good. All right. Do we have a motion to adjourn? I make that motion. Do we have a second? All in favor? Aye. Thank you.

Enjoy the rest of your summer.