Agenda – Plymouth Select Board 12-13-22 Agenda

Official Minutes – Plymouth Select Board Minutes 12-13-22

Please note this transcription is unofficial. If you find an error, use the contact page to notify Plymouth On The Record.

All:

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.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you. Our first order of business is the Fire Department Badge Pinning Ceremony. Welcome Plymouth firefighters and their families. I love these events because they’re happy. Mr. Foley.

Neil Foley:

I’d like to thank the Chairman and the board for allowing us to come and share our good news and to recognize the hard work that these individuals put into their profession that allowed them to rise to the rank that we’re going to bestow upon them officially tonight.

First, I’d like to bring up our Chaplain, Fire Department Chaplain Gary Blume to have a quick invocation.

Gary Blume:

Let us pray. Gracious God, we come to you with great pride tonight. Pride in two wonderful young men who are so willing to serve our community so ably and so well. We ask your blessing upon our fire department through the command staff down to all enrolled as firefighters. We ask your blessing upon them. Keep them safe as they keep us safe. We ask this in your name a blessing upon our new officers, our new battalion chief and lieutenant. Be by their side as they face all kinds of manner of things in this life, be with them and their families. In your name we pray, amen.

Betty Cavacco:

Amen.

Neil Foley:

Thank you, Chaplain. There are not many professions that openly display its history and traditions much like the fire service. One of these traditions is the bugles worn by officers that designate their rank. In the time before radio orders and direction, the officers on the fire ground would speak through what would be called a megaphone, I would suppose, but it was more shaped like a bugle. It was the chief who used these bugles at fires and it became very ornate and a symbol of their authority. In today’s fire service, the bugles have long been replaced with two-way radios. This symbol of authority is still a part of the modern fire service. The bugles are now used to designate the rank of fire officers. One bugle designates a lieutenant, two bugles, a captain and crossed gold bugles represents a chief officer. The chief of the fire department has five cross bugles.

These gentlemen before you tonight, with the support of their families, studied long and hard earning the respect of their fellow firefighters and were able to pass demanding tests to be able to achieve their accomplishments that we are recognizing tonight. Lieutenant Larivee is a veteran who served in the U.S Navy from 2005 to 2010 as an Aircraft Electronics Technician. He later graduated from Bridgewater State College obtaining his Commercial Drive Pilot’s license in 2013. Lieutenant Larivee was appointed to the Plymouth Fire Department January 2nd, 2018. He has earned his Firefighter I, Firefighter II, Hazardous Materials First Responder Operational Level Certification. Lieutenant Larivee is now been assigned as the Engine Company Officer for Engine 1 Headquarter Station. Tonight, his son Liam assisted by his wife Casey and daughter Cameron are going to pin Lieutenant Larivee with his badge. Please go in up.

This is a good photo op.

[Applause]

[0:05:10]

Neil Foley:

Now, I’d like to introduce our Town Clerk, Kelly McElreath to swear in the oath of office for Lieutenant Larivee.

Kelly McElreath:

So, if you can face me so you can speak into the microphone and raise your right hand. I, Patrick Larivee, do solemnly swear and affirm that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as a lieutenant of the Fire Department for the Town of Plymouth according to the best of my abilities and understanding agreeably to the rules and regulations of the Constitution and the Laws of the Commonwealth, so help me God.

I promise to impart to my profession standards of quality and integrity so that the conduct of the affairs of the department shall be above reproach and merit public confidence in the department. We go when duty calls.

Patrick Larivee:

I, Patrick Larivee, do solemnly swear and affirm that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as a lieutenant of the Fire Department for the Town of Plymouth according to the best of my abilities and understanding agreeably to the rules and regulations of the Constitution and the Laws of the Commonwealth so help me God.

I promise to impact to my professional standards of quality and integrity so that the conduct of the affairs of the department shall be above reproach and merit public confidence in the department. We go when duty calls.

Kelly McElreath:

Congratulations.

Patrick Larivee:

Thank you.

[Applause]

Neil Foley:

Battalion Chief Jeff DeLappe. Battalion Chief DeLappe worked as a Firefighter Paramedic for the Town of Hingham prior to being appointed to the Plymouth Fire Department 16 years ago on November 20th, 2006. He was promoted to Lieutenant April 28th, 2010, promoted to Captain April 7, 2015 and Battalion Chief on October 12, 2022. Battalion Chief DeLappe has earned his Firefighter I, Firefighter II, his Wildland Firefighter Red Card, Fire Instructor I, Fire Prevention Officer Credential I, Fire Officer I Certification and many other additional certifications along with an associate’s degree in Fire Science. Battalion Chief DeLappe has been assigned as the Shift Commander for Group III.

His achievement tonight has been made possible by his wife Dari, his daughter Mia and his son Benjamin. Would you please step forward and assist with pinning?

[Applause]

And if I can again call upon the Town Clerk. Thank you. He’s been practicing by the way, Kelly.

Kelly McElreath:

Yeah, I heard about cheat sheets. I, Jeff DeLappe, do solemnly swear and affirm that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as Battalion Chief of the Fire Department for the Town of Plymouth according to the best of my abilities and understanding agreeably to the rules and regulations of the Constitution and the Laws of the Commonwealth, so help me God.

I promise to impart to my profession standards of quality and integrity so that the conduct of the affairs of the department shall be above reproach and merit public confidence in the department. We go when duty calls.

Jeff DeLappe:

I, Jeff DeLappe, do solemnly swear and affirm that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as Battalion Chief of the Fire Department for the Town of Plymouth according to the best of my abilities and understanding agreeably to the rules and regulations of the Constitution and the Laws of the Commonwealth, so help me God.

I promise to impart to my profession standards of quality and integrity so that the conduct of the affairs of the department shall be above reproach and merit public confidence in the department. We go when duty calls.

[0:10:05]

Kelly McElreath:

Congratulations.

Jeff DeLappe:

Thank you.

[Applause]

Neil Foley:

Thank you again for sharing some time with us so that we can recognize these newly promoted officers. It’s very important I think with the sacrifice that is displayed by everyone in the fire service but I have to point out that our newly promoted Lieutenant not only has to wear Christmas but due to staffing levels is also going to be working Christmas Eve. So, he is the new the new lieutenant now and he’s feeling it and I feel bad for his family, but at the same time, that is what we’ve all done throughout our careers. It’s part of the sacrifices that we make for the job that we love to do. So, thank you again.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, Lieutenant, I think there has to be a special letter to Santa. Maybe there’s got to be something special that can happen for you there and we do appreciate all your service. So, for all the Fire Department, we have such an amazing group of police fire. I’m just honestly impressed with everything that you all do. Our DPW, all our employees, they’re so well recognized now under the tutelage of Mr. Brindisi, our fairly new not really new anymore Town manager. But I think it’s very important for all the folks to know how much we appreciate not only as the board but the Town of Plymouth appreciates your sacrifices, so thank you. Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

I’d like to congratulate both of you officers and we’re so lucky to have you. We have a great department. In a testament of your leadership is look at the guys in the back, the guys that you supervised are here to support you tonight and that shows a lot. And you have great families that support you and working through Christmas I guess is part of the job. I guess, you don’t have to work Christmas, Jeff if I didn’t hear that but there’s a testament to your leadership right there, the guys in the back. Anyway, thank you for your service.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else? Mr. Quintal?

Dick Quintal:

I would like to echo Charlie and Betty and all the men that serve in our department and women and their families, we always stand behind our fire department. We’ve moved some big hurdles in the last couple years. Do and well deserved and we still have a little bit more to go. And I’m sure we’ll probably seeing be after my time, I’m sure a water tanker may be flying around, and we got the guy here with the license, right? We’ll be looking for that line item. But anyway, congratulations to you all and thank you for your service to the town.

Betty Cavacco:

Are you good? All right. Well, thanks again so much for allowing us to be a part of this very special thing. And it is, it’s happy and it’s such a gift to be able to witness something like this, so I thank you both and everybody. You’re welcome.

We’re going to take a two-minute recess to allow people to take some pictures or a five-minute recess.

[Recess]

Betty Cavacco:

Welcome back. We have an agenda and we’re going to move it around a little bit because we have a budget presentation and we’re going to allow the Town Manager and the Finance Director to present that first. Yes, please. Unless you–that can go first.

Patrick Farah:

Good evening, everyone. Just an update regarding Plymouth’s Community Choice Power Supply Program. So, back in 2020 October, we signed a contract for three years. The standard rate at 9.807 cents per kilowatt hour. I know I’ve been before the board but in case anyone in the audience doesn’t know. We have a three-year contract. The state allowed municipalities to go out shopping for a third-party electric supply, and that’s exactly what we’ve done. We’re actually in our second contract. We started this back in October of 2017. So, the standard rate is at 9.807 cents per kilowatt hour and we have a 100% green energy rate at 9.897 cents per kilowatt hour. As of December, of this year, as you can see on the board, we have just over 21,000 meters on the program. There are roughly about 24,100 or so residential meters. So, we do have a vast majority of them. We still have about 4800 to 5,000 meters still on basic service or having another third-party supply program.

So, just want to show you from June through December of this year, the six-month rate through Eversource through basic service is 17.8 cents per kilowatt hour. And as of January of 2023, through June, we’ll jump up over 43% to 25.6 cents per kilowatt hour. This anticipated savings with the number of meters in Plymouth through the Plymouth Program from January through June is over $15 million and since we have started back in October of 2017 through the anticipated program savings in June, the town will save as a community over $38 million. So, anyone in the audience that can see this slide, anyone who was on basic service and you want to opt-in and the one nice thing about this program is that you can opt-in or opt-out at any time throughout the contract with no penalties, no fees, no questions actually. So, just dial the 866-220-5696, the number on the screen. You’re going to reach DYNEGY, that’s the company that Plymouth has contracted with and just asked to be put on Plymouth’s Community Choice Power Supply Program and you can ask to be either put on the standard program or on the 100% green energy program.

It’s really that’s all I have. I just wanted to leave that up for a second so people can take down from home and I’m happy to answer any questions.

Betty Cavacco:

Does the board have any questions?

Charlie Bletzer:

Yeah, I do.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Can you explain the increase of why it’s jumping up so much the class?

Patrick Farah:

Can I?

Charlie Bletzer:

I know it–

Patrick Farah:

No, but you know what? You’re in luck because we actually happen to have a representative from Eversource, Ryan Earle. He’s our Community Relations Specialist and he is happy to answer any of those types of questions.

Charlie Bletzer:

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Patrick Farah:

Thank you.

Ryan Earle:

Good evening, everybody. Like Patrick said, Ryan Earle, Community Relations Specialist on behalf of Eversource that serves the Town of Plymouth. So, to answer your question, this rate that was approved by the DPU that will go into effect on January 1 is the supply rate.

[0:20:05]

Ryan Earle:

This is no profit to Eversource. This is the fee that we pay on behalf of the customer to acquire that power, which we then pass off to each residential home. So, we buy it at the rate that’s out there. So, I’m here more tonight as a partner to help the town promote opportunities for residents to look at other options to where they get their power. We have energy efficient savings, finance programs and any information that you need to put on websites or social media are here to help and assist customers during this time.

Betty Cavacco:

Great. Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Patrick, a question for you. As the State of Massachusetts expands opportunities and subsidies to residents for solar power arrays on their property, are people who opt into that in a rental situation or outright purchase situation? Are they able to take advantage of the aggregation?

Patrick Farah:

Yes, they are, yeah. Any additional type of incentives or programs does not have an effect. You can still join in and opt-in and be part of this program, absolutely.

Harry Helm:

And then you would save even additional moneys?

Patrick Farah:

Correct.

Harry Helm:

Okay. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else? Boy, I wish we didn’t deregulate.

Ryan Earle:

If I could, Madam Chair, could I just leave a card with everybody just in case there’s any questions?

Betty Cavacco:

Sure.

Ryan Earle:

If any residents reach out, I’m the point person on anything Eversource related. So, any inquiries that come in, I’m happy to speak with them individually.

Betty Cavacco:

And Patrick, could you please send that to Anthony and put it on the website?

Patrick Farah:

I sure will. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you. And Mr. Quintal?

Dick Quintal:

Thank you. Ryan, around town, there’s a lot of street lamps out. I know it has nothing to do with this presentation but you said anything to do with Eversource.

Ryan Earle:

No, it’s true. I offered it up there.

Dick Quintal:

I mean, quite a few. So, I know they used to be pretty good about it so when we noticed that what should somebody do like in front of their house?

Ryan Earle:

I don’t want to off it up to–yeah, if you want to call DPW or Patrick. Patrick has been handling the streetlight list and we communicate often on this.

Dick Quintal:

Okay, cool.

Ryan Earle:

Because there are so many, we are running into supply chain issues regarding replacing them. So, anytime a street light is called in, it will trigger a response from one of our trouble men to go out there. They’ll take a look if they can fix the light on spot, they will do so. If not, it gets added to our queue for a replacement when inventory gets–

Dick Quintal:

Put on a list?

Ryan Earle:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Okay, thank you. And Patrick, if it may, I really think this is helpful but I would like to know what your plan is. I mean, we basically see the same thing presentation-wise, rates and what you can do and I’m grateful for all that but I’d really like to see something more aggressive. You know how I am. I’m going to ask you the same thing I always ask you, the headlight, the lights I was just talking to the gentleman, street light program and I know Plymouth’s missed the boat because whatever reason it just didn’t happen but it’s a new era now. And do you have any plans to–I heard they were waiting for some bills. So, at that time, it was Mr. Malamute. He was waiting for several bills this committee and I was told that you have that information shortly so I just don’t know if you’re still looking at that or what are you looking at and what will be on the horizons next couple years for the community? Do you have anything or is there anything we should be planning?

Patrick Farah:

So, we submitted our application to become a green community and we received confirmation from the state that we submitted a complete package. We are now waiting for I guess the award or so, but it hasn’t happened yet but we are in the queue, so to speak. So, we’re being cautiously optimistic. With regard to street light acquisition, it’s a great idea. I advocated for this for years. Right now, through Eversource, if we were to purchase the lights or acquire the lights, Eversource has an amount of probably approaching quarter million dollars. Now, we were told last year to kind of hold off from going to town meeting because there may be an incentive program, another incentive program from Eversource that has not happened yet, at least that I’m aware of.

[0:25:00]

Patrick Farah:

So, again, keeping our fingers crossed being cautiously optimistic, once that happens again, there will be a short timeline, we would have to go to town meeting. We have to acquire the lights and then go for a capital request to convert them to LED. The program that was available about a year, a year and a half ago was Eversource would have given the lights to the town for free and paid for the retrofit at no cost at a town but we were not in a position to go to town meeting. So, hopefully, we can be a little more reactive if or when that does happen. If the town wants to move forward and is willing to spend that type of capital, which will be probably close to a million or so for retrofits, that is a discussion that we still have to have.

Dick Quintal:

Now, we’ll just use that just for talking purposes. You say a million dollars, is that something that could be phased over a two-year period? I mean, this town is so big. I don’t see it–I mean, or maybe I’m wrong maybe they retrofit it all in a week, I don’t know.

Patrick Farah:

Well, it would take a couple months to retrofit all. The concern that I have is–and phasing is an idea we can definitely talk about but technology changes so much, and my concern is light fixtures that I’ve purchased for the town through our Energy Efficiency Budget, half of those type of fixtures are no longer available because manufacturer’s gone out of business or specs change or whatever. And I think it would be a great idea to do it all in one fell swoop. And again, it’s all about the money. So, I definitely would love to see it. And again, I reached out to our Account Rep Brian Mello through Eversource every couple month and ask him if there’s any change in that incentive, if they’re going to put it back so it would be available. If it does happen, just to let the board know, if it’s like in the middle of summer we would have to have like an emergency town meeting or a special town meeting so that we can go ahead and vote on this because we have to vote to acquire the lights. And if we acquire the lights and don’t retrofit to LED, we have a lot of streetlight repair requests coming out every week and we’d be responsible for that. If we convert everything to LED, the chance of repairs goes way down. So, something to think about.

Dick Quintal:

And you’d also know your rate at savings, your rate of return, correct? I mean, I would also hope that if it happens in one of the boards is sitting here a former government.

Patrick Farah:

So, the analysis that the calculations I came up with six years ago at least was approaching 200,000 a year. And I’m sure it’s probably more now. Well, it would be a lot more now especially with some of the smart lighting technologies where after one or two o’clock in the morning, the lights would go down to 40 or 60% illumination and that would save even more. So, there are a lot of factors that we could look at but it requires management making a decision, so.

Dick Quintal:

No, I understand. I know the schools went on a lot of big-time savings years back. I don’t know when it was but I’d like to see the town as a whole if they’re doing these projects and they’re saving let’s just say talk and say they save a million a year plus, that they take a portion of that million dollars every year and reinvest it into something else because that’s how I really think that you really get your savings and your town green. I mean, that’s what I’m hearing all the time.

Patrick Farah:

I would not disagree with that.

Dick Quintal:

But just to take the savings and spend them in another department doesn’t really serve the purpose of the taxpayer or the green, right?

Patrick Farah:

I understand.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Thank you very much for your time.

Patrick Farah:

All right. Thank you very much, everyone.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

Patrick?

Patrick Farah:

Yes?

John Mahoney:

You referenced having to call a special town meeting. I missed that. Why?

Patrick Farah:

So, right now we don’t own the lights, we rent the lights.

John Mahoney:

Correct.

Patrick Farah:

So, it would be a two-stage or a two-step process. If Eversource were to come or approach the town and say, “Listen, we can give you the lights for free or some really reduced cost and will pay for the retrofit to LED technology.”

[0:30:01]

Patrick Farah:

What has to happen is the town has to take over the lights. We have to acquire the lights. So, we become responsible for it and that requires town meeting action.

John Mahoney:

Okay. But you don’t have to call a special town meeting. We can go to April or October.

Patrick Farah:

Well, the thing is, is last year or a year and a half ago, we missed that boat because they only gave us like 45 days or two months. Well, exactly. So, the thing is–

John Mahoney:

Ryan can’t help us with that?

Patrick Farah:

We found out in October and it was due by December, that’s the problem.

John Mahoney:

Yeah, I understand now.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Patrick, first of all, thank you for all the work you’re doing with the electrical aggregation program.

Patrick Farah:

Thank you.

Harry Helm:

And everything you do in general day-in, day-out. In regards to the street light, the street light issue and buying them and as opposed to renting them and moving forward with that, I’ve been in town government for nearly 10 years and it’s one of those evergreen topics for nearly my entire time. It keeps coming up and nothing ever happens. So, at the discretion of our Chair, I would like to request that because I think that it’s a complicated subject and clearly there’s going to come a time when hopefully we’re going to have to act fairly quickly, I’d like to request that at some point in the future not immediately that this concept of purchasing the street lights and moving forward be an agenda item so that not only we are updated on it but the residents of Plymouth who tune in can be updated on what this concept is particularly if we have to do it very quickly so that they can understand how much money we could save if we do it and have to call a special town meeting.

Betty Cavacco:

Absolutely.

Harry Helm:

Okay. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

We can put that on a future agenda. And just one more thing, are we seeking grants for maybe something like this and maybe we can have our grant writer look into that? And Mr. Earle, if you know of something that we could go after, that might be–

Patrick Farah:

So, there are opportunities. And once we become designated as a green community, there will be some funding available. Probably not for the whole project. Again, if we can kind of coordinate with that, with Eversource also that could happen.

Betty Cavacco:

Great. Thank you.

Patrick Farah:

Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else? Okay. Now, Mr. Brindisi?

Derek Brindisi:

Okay.

Betty Cavacco:

And this is a Recommended Fiscal Year 2024 Town Budget. I knew I should have taken the night off.

Derek Brindisi:

All right. So, while we wait for that to get loaded–is it loading? Oh, it is. So, to the board, you should all have a three-ring binder. Say again?

Betty Cavacco:

I’m sorry? Yes, and we’ve moved it to after this presentation.

Derek Brindisi:

So, while we wait for this to get loaded, so everyone should have a three-ring binder. This is the detail FY ‘24 Operating Budget and Enterprise Funds. So, I’ll spend hopefully about 10 minutes walking through it. I don’t know how many folks are dialing in from home, but hopefully we have 162 town meeting members who are listening to today’s presentation. So, these are the items we’ll discuss. We’ll just talk about the annual changes. We’ll talk about what’s driving the budget these days, the revenues as we talked about in the past. We’ll talk a little bit of new growth and what excess levy capacity is in the history as it relates to the town and the effect by using the excess levy capacity and how that will hit our taxpayers. And then we’ll go over the final budget recommendation.

So, before I begin, I just want to thank Lynne Barrett, our Finance Director and Brad Brothers, our Assistant Town Manager. We have spent countless hours looking at these numbers over the past four weeks and if I spent 40 hours, I think Lynn spent 160 hours looking at these numbers. So, a lot of work went into this and I’ll tell you why.

[0:35:00]

Derek Brindisi:

So, you can see here the final budget recommendation at the bottom. Let’s see if this works, $278 million of thereabouts. That is an increase from about $9 million from last year. So, this just kind of gives you the $40,000 foot flyover of what we’re presenting today. So, again, today represents a balanced budget. It took us a lot of time to get to a balanced budget. We went through I would say at least three rounds of cuts in order to get to you a balanced budget today. So, keep in mind, I know this is the first time you’re hearing this information on January 3rd, the board will vote a budget recommendation to the Advisory and Finance Committee. You can see Mr. Kevin Kenny who’s here today, who’s the chairman of A&F.

Betty Cavacco:

Quickly, Derek, just one quick thing.

Derek Brindisi:

Sure.

Betty Cavacco:

Can we shut the light that reflects off of there, so people at home can see it better?

Derek Brindisi:

So, in a lot of these numbers here, the 2.5% will go over on the next slide but again, this is a 40,000. I guess, what one item is important to note here is just kind of how we calculate the year over year revenues. So, you see this number here, this 207,000? That’s based upon the levy limit from the year before, and we use that number to then calculate the 2.5% in the following year. So, you’ll see them in the next slide but this column is really important because this is how we get to this column here for the following year.

So, again, $278 million budget or thereabouts. To try to streamline the conversation, what I try to focus my discussion on is really the year over year new revenues and then the year over year new expenses. And so, you can see here at the top as I just pointed on the previous slide based upon last year’s tax levy, we have new revenues about $5.1 million, and that’s another prop 2.5% increase. That’s we’re allowed to increase year over year.

Every year, so we have the opportunity at least I would say in the last five or six years, we’ve seen some substantial new growth. And so, looking at historical trends, Lynne conservatively budgets about $3 million a year. You’ll see on a future slide that last year’s new growth was $5 million, a little bit north of $5 million. But again, we budget conservatively because we want to make sure that we come under what we would historically see.

The excess capacity that we’re using this year, we’ll talk about that in a little bit, in order to balance this year’s budget is $2 million. So, what is excess levy capacity? Again, it’s unused levy from prior years. You don’t always need to use excess capacity if you carry enough revenues that covers your new expenses. But this year given the new expenses, we’re recommending we use $2 million in excess levy capacity.

State Aid is projected at a 3% increase of $1 million. Local Receipts, so that’s our fee structures. So, budgeting $630,000 and then Indirect is $190,000. This $2.5 million, this represents one-time monies that was used last year, $2.5 million. So, a free cash was used last year to carry the budget. We don’t want to do that if we can avoid that this year because what ends up happening is when you use free cash or one-time funds, you start the upcoming fiscal year in obviously in a structural deficit, and that’s what happened this year. We started this past year in FY ‘23 with a $2.5 million deficit. So, we’re trying to cover that.

So, factoring all that into this year, we have about $9.3 million in new revenue that we can use. Now, the slide you don’t see here is after we asked the town and the school to submit their budget request for this year, we asked for a level service budget submittal, when we factor the $9 million of new revenue, it was $16 million in new expenses. So, we had $8 million budget deficit. So, that goes back to the point I was saying, we spent many iterations of trying to bring to you tonight a balanced budget. So, again, just for the sake of the conversation, we started with an $8 million budget deficit.

So, here we are today, what we’re recommending is a $1.1 million increase on the town side, $4.1 million increase on the school side. Fixed costs, again, can’t do anything about fixed costs. That’s our health insurance, which was 7% increase this past year and our pension obligation was another 8% increase this past year. Again, when we think about our costs and we’ll go to the next slide.

[0:40:08]

Derek Brindisi:

So again, this is just a recap of what I just discussed but this is what I wanted to cover. These fixed costs total represents a 4.7% increase. But again, when we break down the health insurance at 7% and pension at 8%, you can see those numbers far outpace our ability to raise 2.5% each year.

So, again, this is the breakdown of our revenues. You can see and this came up last year, both Anne and Lynne presented last week when we discussed this under the tax classification hearing that 77% of our revenues every year come from property taxes. We only get 13% comes from state aid, local receipts at 8% and then other is 2%. So, again, heavy reliance on property taxes.

And so, here’s some of the budget drivers. This is what I was talking about in the two slides prior. So, when we look at salaries, when we look at that $278 million budget, half of that budget is salaries alone. So, again, that’s a fixed cost, right? So, that’s a 2% COLA and our steps and lanes for our collective bargaining staff. And then the pension obligations, the health insurance represents this 25%. And then this, the Debt Service is another 8%. Fuel & Utilities 1%. And so, this 16%, these are the other expenses. So, those are our training line items for our fire and police, equipment line items, uniform line items, all encompasses very small portion of the pie at 16%.

So, again, when we think about building the budget every year, folks need to realize that there’s not a lot of flexibility in the budget given the fact that 70, 83% of the budget is already fixed before we even start those conversations.

So, the new growth. Again, I mentioned earlier that the new growth–

Harry Helm:

Derek, can I ask you a question? Can you go back to the–

Derek Brindisi:

Yup.

Harry Helm:

When you say Plymouth budget drivers, just for clarity for those watching at home, you’re talking Town of Plymouth. This is a Town of Plymouth; this is not town and school?

Derek Brindisi:

This is town and school.

Harry Helm:

This is town and school.

Derek Brindisi:

This is a combined budget presentation.

Harry Helm:

Okay, combined. Thank you.

Derek Brindisi:

Yes. Anytime. So, I talked about new growth a little bit in a prior slide. And like I had mentioned, last year’s new growth was certified at $5.2 million. We budgeted $3 million last year and we budgeted $3 million this year. But when you look at this historical trend, I mean, clearly you can see in the community that we’ve had an explosion of new construction for the last five or so years, right? And so, that’s why we continue to see this upward swing.

Now, you can look down here what happened in 2009, we all know what happened 2009 when the recession hit and the bubble burst. So, new growth was hovering around $1 million. Now, if we only had $1 million in new growth this year, we’d have a substantial deficit which would impact our ability to provide public education and other public services to this community. So, again, we’re enjoying this time period right now with substantial new growth but given what’s going on in the economy today and rising inflation and interest rates, we do expect that this number is going to flatline at least in the next couple years. So, again, that’s going to have an impact on our future budgets.

So, the excess levy capacity. So, the way I describe excess levy capacity and the finance people probably wouldn’t agree with me all that much, but I look at as like a line of credit. So, we know that there’s money available that if we need to use it, we can go and access it, but once you access it, you have to start to pay the bank, right? So, this is similar to access capacity. There’s about $9 million up until today’s budget presentation of excess capacity. This means there’s been $9 million that has not been taxed to our residential taxpayers and commercial taxpayers. So, it gives us a little bit of a cushion. So, when we talk about using $2 million of this this year to help balance the budget so that number going to drop to 7, but it’s in essence it’s an override without having to ask for an override.

[0:45:01]

Derek Brindisi:

Because again, by law, we can raise two and a half percent which we’ve done and then new growth, which we’ve done, we still haven’t balanced the budget. So, we’re recommending this evening to use an additional $2 million of this excess capacity in order to balance the budget. And again, we’re trying to be conservative knowing that every dollar we raise on the excess capacity is going to be a cost associated with our tax payers, and we’re trying to be really smart and mindful and be good stewards of their money.

So, this is the effect by raising this excess capacity. You could see here that by raising this $2 million number and again, this is what we’re recommending, it’s going to have effect on the average homeowner about $66. So, again, that $2 million represents the $66 for that annual payment from the average homeowner.

Now, again, we have $9 million that’s in this line of credit, that I like to call it, that’s still available. So, what would happen if we raise all $9 million? Here we go. So, if we raise the full $9 million, which is not what we’re recommending but just as for example, we want to show a comparison. If we were to raise a full 9 million, it would increase the average taxpay about 300 and I can’t see the number, $370. So, again, we’re not recommending that. Under the state law, town meeting could raise that full amount if they chose to. But this is just as we think about in the future what this all means that right now when we look at what we’re recommending with only a $2 million use of excess capacity, we’re recommending that we do not fund 10 FTEs. So, we have a current hiring freeze that’s currently in place right now. In order to balance the budget, there’ll be 10 positions throughout the enterprise on the town side that will not be funded for next year. This cut does not represent any reductions on the school side. That presentation was made by the school superintendent two weeks ago.

Part of these reductions is we’re going to see a reduction in overtime for our fire and police departments. We’re going to see a reduction in some of the training line items, the department equipment and other expenses. So, what is one of the consequences that come out of when you start reducing overtime and other equipment and training is you’re going to see a dip potentially in your free cash because one variable in free cash is it’s any money that’s returned at the end of the year goes into your free cash and given the fact that we’re cutting overtime we’re not going to see in training, we’re not going to see any money returned in those two-line items. So, again, it’s going to have an impact on our free cash.

Some other ways we’re trying to balance this year’s budget is we’re going out to bid for our property and casualty and other liability insurances. We haven’t done that in I think quite a number of years so hoping to realize some savings there. We also plan on negotiating the PEC negotiations starting in January. So, hopefully, we are successful in those negotiations with some minor plan design changes that’ll have hopefully a big impact on the FY ‘25 budget. So, again, these negotiations are going to have zero impact on the FY ‘24 budget but we’re leaning forward because we know that if we can’t correct this situation in ’24, we’re going to be looking at a very similar scenario in ‘25 and beyond.

We are recommending to hire a full-time staff person as an HVAC Technician. We were able to restore that position through contracted services. So, we looked at how much we were spending to subcontract the HVAC work and realize that we could actually save money by hiring somebody full-time to do that. And then we’ll save money on the contracted side. In addition to that, we looked at the human resources budget and we cut a number of different areas that we’re outsourcing some of this work and that number amounted to hiring an additional Assistant HR Director in order to shore up a lot of the things that they’re doing on that end.

Some other items that are still in discussion, no real plans at this time, but we do think it’s time to talk about consolidation. There are a number of different areas that we think are optimal to consolidate but those conversations are still not much to say public at this point given the fact that those are just at an entry point at this level.

[0:50:07]

Derek Brindisi:

So, that’s the overall budget. Again, you have the detail in front of you this evening. I’d ask that you take a look at it. If you have any questions, both Brad and myself and Lynne and I are here to meet with you to go through each one of those detail pages in front of you this evening. Pending any questions, I’ll turn it back to the board.

Betty Cavacco:

I have questions. But do you–Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Sure, yeah. While that slide is up, Derek, could you explain to folks who may not know what you were talking about what are the PEC negotiations? That’s not something I think that most residents watching would actually understand what you’re talking about.

Derek Brindisi:

So, the PEC negotiations are in short are negotiations with the Insurance Advisory Committee around health insurance. So, the health insurance existing PEC is expiring at the end of FY ’24. So, according to the last agreement, we have to start negotiations in January ‘23.

Harry Helm:

So, this is the health insurance for our employees?

Derek Brindisi:

That’s right.

Harry Helm:

Okay. And also, a question you may not be able to answer. Way back on one of the slides, I noticed that the school operating budget increase is significantly higher as a percentage than that of the town, I think. Do we–yeah, there we go. 1.9 for the town operating versus 3.8 for the school operating budget. Why is that?

Derek Brindisi:

That’s a great question. I don’t want to guess but Lynne, do you have any inside information on why?

Lynne Barrett:

Yeah. Brad may be able to help us also on this one, but they had a significant increase in SPED tuitions which is drive by a certain factor that’s established at the state level. I believe that went up alone like $1.2 million. Also, transportation which is a very large part of their budget approximately $11 million went up significantly obviously because of fuel and surcharges and that kind of thing. So, in this school budget number here is slightly different than the number that you see in your book because we’re recommending when we last met with the schools, Derek talked about how we’ve been working on this for about four or five weeks now and going through different rounds of cuts. And the most recent number that we sort of had to share was 1.6 million in cuts. So, we cut 800,000 and then this school number actually represents another 800,000 cuts from what the school committee and school superintendent discussed at their public hearing a couple weeks ago. So, we’re sort of waiting to see. They’re going to be voting finally on their budget next week. So, we’ve been in conversations with them and in hopes to try to meet on the same page.

Harry Helm:

If you don’t mind, Lynne while you’re up here and maybe Brad on the second part. I’m going to take a touch into the weeds on some concepts that I think you touched upon Lynne and maybe you can explain to people as you did so well at the League of Women Voters the impact of unfunded mandates. You mentioned that the 3.8, the difference between town and school is largely fueled by SPED, Special Education mandates from the state. Could you talk a little bit about unfunded mandates and the significant impact that they have on the taxpayers of Plymouth?

Lynne Barrett:

Sure. I think the superintendent specifically was talking the other night about SPED tuitions, and we are required by state law to educate all students that reside in the Town of Plymouth no matter what their abilities are. And there are certain costs I think that the school has done, has reduced because they’ve educated as many students as they can in our schools but there are some that they have to send out for private tuition to other private schools. And that’s where that cost has significantly increased.

[0:55:04]

Lynne Barrett:

He talked about the percentage under normal circumstances being like between 1 and 4% a year that they’ve seen historically. But the other night, he said it was, what was it?

Brad Brothers:

Yeah, they’re projecting right now a 15% increase.

Lynne Barrett:

Yeah. So, I mean, it’s crazy, yeah.

Brad Brothers:

And a little bit more detail on that is the state if you’re some private schools that we send Special Education students out has to get approval by the state of what percentage they can go up every year. As Lynne just said, it’s usually 1 to 3 sometimes I’ve seen like 5 in the last 10 years I’ve been around but I think it’s representing either 12 or 15% increase the request in this year and that drives the budget by another 1.2 million. So, there is a funding mechanism to get reimbursed for a portion of that if you meet your–there’s usually a set dollar amount. Usually, it’s around like 45,000 and then after that you get 75% of your reimbursement back for any cost above that. Before, that was never fully funded. With the Student Opportunity Act that’s in place now, the state is not only catching up on that to try to fully fund it at 75%, they’re also adding in transportation costs because people forget if we have a one-off student going up towards Boston Way and there’s not another student with them, not only are we paying just to say a hundred grand for the tuition placement, transportation is another 45 that we were not getting reimbursed before that the town was absorbing. So, through Student Opportunity Act, the town is now getting reimbursed a portion of transportation and the plan of the state is to keep adding in money to that so it is eventually fully funded but it’s not right now.

Harry Helm:

Do you feel that the recent passage of the ballot initiative on the millionaire’s tax is going to have a positive impact on the towns and the residents of the unfunded mandates? You may not be able to answer that. I mean, but–

Lynne Barrett:

I guess, it’s a wait and see.

Harry Helm:

Wait, and see? Okay. Really quickly also on school transportation and I know that it’s been a problem from my time on FinCom. I don’t know Brad, Lynne, do you want to speak a little bit about the impact on the residents of Plymouth that our school district transports students over 100 square miles of the town and our school district is larger than many if not most Regional School Districts but Regional School Districts once again at the state level, those responsible for unfunded mandates handed to us, are they still refusing to look at some sort of the creation of a special exemption for Plymouth?

Lynne Barrett:

Yeah. So, I know that we continually ask our legislature for that. And as you said, it’s another unfunded mandate because you’re required to transport students that are more than a mile from their school that they’re going to. And I wish we had the slide that showed–okay. Anthony’s going to put it up on the screen. If you look at the size of Plymouth and you overlay it on top of like Metro Boston area, it was a slide that we included in the League of Women Voters presentation the other night. It’s significant, the size of Plymouth. And I think sometimes people just don’t realize the size that we are, and we’re not a regional school district. So, under state law, Regional School Districts are provided a reimbursement for transportation because they are bringing students from different towns to a school and whatever the provisions are under state law to be able to provide that for Regional School Districts. But Plymouth is on our own. We have schools that are just as far or even further than some of these regional schools that are getting reimbursement and we don’t receive any of those funding dollars.

Harry Helm:

So, for example, am I correct in believing that the Silver Lake School District for comparison for people watching if they want to take a look at a map once Anthony puts this up. That’s made up of Pembroke, Halifax, Plympton and Kingston receives subsidies for their school transportation and we are ten times larger than that land mass get nothing?

Lynne Barrett:

That’s correct, yeah.

Harry Helm:

Okay.

Lynne Barrett:

So, Anthony’s getting it up there. It’s a little small but–

Brad Brothers:

And just add on to, Harry, that reimbursement is only consistent for regular Ed transportation. Like Special Ed is a whole different.

[1:00:05]

Lynne Barrett:

Right. So, that purple line overlay is the size of Plymouth when you look at the Boston and Metro Boston area. I mean, it’s significant. I mean, I think Plymouth is quite unique in a lot of–I mean, it’s the largest municipality like east of the Mississippi I think you know we’ve been told. So, it was just a lot of unique challenges that we have. And it is reflected in the budget numbers.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else? Is there anything that we can do to try to become regionalized? We used to be Plymouth-Carver.

Harry Helm:

Well, let’s take them over.

Brad Brothers:

So, yeah. I mean, part of the transportation reimbursement was to incentivize districts to actually regionalize. That was the big push when they were trying to get districts to. I mean, you think about you cut out your overhead on a lot of different levels of rather than one district, you’re able to capture three districts, four districts into one. So, that was the big push. The problem is it has to be a two-way street. You have to be willing to take someone on and someone has to be willing to go in there with you. And without looking around, it may not make sense for someone to join with Plymouth.

Betty Cavacco:

Got you. Okay. Charlie?

Charlie Bletzer:

We’ve been talking about consolidation with the schools and I know, I guess–

Betty Cavacco:

Five years.

Charlie Bletzer:

What’s that?

Betty Cavacco:

Five years.

Charlie Bletzer:

At least, yeah. But I know in my time which has been over a year, we’ve been talking about it. And I’ve listened to–it just makes so much sense to do it. I guess, when we meet with the School Committee, maybe we can have a conversation and find out the reason why we’re not doing it, but can you estimate or guesstimate the savings that the Town of Plymouth could have by consolidating with the schools, the town buildings, the school buildings, everything under one purview of a facilities manager? It may be an assistant facilities manager but utilizing the resources for the schools in town to work together under one budget? Any idea how much we can save? Because we keep talking about it and I think it’s a lot of money and it’s something that we really should really try and get this done.

Derek Brindisi;

Yeah. I would start by saying I think there’s two different philosophies on consolidation. And the first philosophy is let’s look at each organization and see who does something better and then by consolidating, we become strong as an organization, right? And that doesn’t really have a cost of savings with it, but there’s a savings in efficiencies and not having to do things more than once, right?

Charlie Bletzer:

Well, the reason why I became aware of it, when I was running, I toured the fire stations and all I heard about was the shape of the buildings in the town, how bad they were. And all I heard about was well the school buildings are in much better shape. They’re maintained much better. What’s the reason for that? Well, they have carpenters, they have electricians, they’ve got plumbers. And I toured the fire station and they said when they have a leak, they can’t even get plumbers to fix it. And why can’t we call, you know, the school has plumbers, why–so, it didn’t make sense to me because the Town of Plymouth, we have the schools and the Town of Plymouth, it’s like two separate entities and to me, it doesn’t make sense. Yeah, efficiency saves money. The more efficient we are, the more money we’re going to save. So, if we could put a number on this, people would be aware of how much we really have to get this consolidation done. So, I don’t know if you have any idea.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, at this time, we don’t have a number associated with that. But I can tell you that if we did consolidate, I think we’d see some short-term savings by a meeting consolidation but as those entities grow and become more efficient, they’re probably going to require more resources especially when you talk about one department managing the 32 town facilities and how many school facilities? I’m not even sure.

[1:05:16]

Derek Brindisi:

But you’d probably talk in close to 60, 50 facilities. So, I mean, that’s going to take a large volume of staff to be able to do all that. But those are the conversations that we’ve started to have. I do think that this is something that should be on the agenda when we have the joint school committee meeting.

Charlie Bletzer:

I was talking, the Memorial Hall recently had some work being done and they had electrician, a new hire. I think you had an electrician and a carpenter, I believe, new staff for the DPW and they were down there working and the manager down there told me it was fantastic. The work they did was great. We didn’t have that last year. So, that’s working already on the town side but the school’s already doing it and I would just like to see us combine resources and work together. So, hopefully, we can get that accomplished.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. And like I said, I think that we have some weaknesses in our game on the town side. They have some weaknesses on the school side. We do some things better than they do and those are the areas of opportunity I think that we can start those conversations. That’s kind of the low-hanging fruit.

Charlie Bletzer:

We have mechanics that could maintain vehicles, the school vehicles. The DPW, that’s one of their big assets right there.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Quintal?

Dick Quintal:

It’s always me, right? I mean, I think one of the concerns is in the short conversations I’ve had is who would be in charge? In other words, you have a sink leaking in the intermediate school in the cafeteria and you have something in one of the restrooms here not working right. Who does the facilities direct the answer to? Is it Derek? Is it the superintendent? And I think that’s where, and let’s face it, the school’s been doing this for quite a while so they must have a good budget. Brad, could probably talk to it a little bit. The town doesn’t really have a budget.

Brad Brothers:

That’s sitting here saying to myself it’s all about the investment you make.

Dick Quintal:

Exactly.

Brad Brothers:

And that’s really what it comes down to. And Charlie, to answer your question before, I really don’t think to do it right, I don’t think there’s an immediate savings. Yeah, you get the short-term savings, but long-term, in order to get up to the quality that we view the schools as, we have to make a larger investment on our part through our budget and say, “This is what it’s going to be to get it all under one umbrella.” And I think if you look comparatively staff wise, we’re probably a little bit short on our side compared to what the schools offer.

Charlie Bletzer:

Well, I just think that–

Dick Quintal:

Excuse me? Can I finish?

Charlie Bletzer:

Okay, go ahead.

Dick Quintal:

So, thank you, Charlie. That was one of the concerns because I did talk with this briefly with them. I think it’s that grading system in how the capital projects go and we’ll save that for when the time comes but the town really doesn’t, you know, if you tell them, it’s like $5 million, they don’t want to do it. We’re going to skip it. We’re going to do something else. And in their mindset, they’re saving money. A perfect example is the Manomet Fire Station, I think. It failed. Everett brought it back up and they considered it. I mean, the reason that we’re spending millions of dollars in some of these buildings is because you haven’t put a penny in them since you built them. And this is a good example here. This one’s brand new and you have all the road work laid out, I hope so. But I hear and I don’t know how true this is Memorial Hall, the heat is going 24/7. There’s no controls to it. So, I don’t know how true that is but I hope it’s not true. And it needs to be fixed. But we don’t maintain buildings like the schools do. And I think in order for this town to do what they do town wide, you’re going to have to spend some money, some big money.

Betty Cavacco:

Actually, as Harry sits next to me and we sat together for two years on FinCom. So, we’ve been talking about consolidation for seven years that I can remember and probably before we even served together. So, one of the things that we hear about who will they report to.

[1:10:01]

Betty Cavacco:

If you really think about it and you do like a true organizational assessment, facilities should be a standalone department. We should have a department head and then everybody underneath that goes. If there’s something in the school, they speak to the school. If there’s something in the town, they speak to the Town Manager. So, I don’t think it’s as difficult as people are making it out to be because if it is a standalone, that means the town and the school divert money into this standalone facilities department. And we try to find all the funding sources that we need.

I actually think it’s that simple. Maybe the funding’s not that simple but the organization itself can be very simple if it’s a standalone department and we have–I mean, the school department has a fabulous facilities manager. I’m not saying that ours isn’t, but they have a great facilities manager. So, I think those are the conversations that we have to have. I mean, seven years, it gets a little tiring and we’ve been talking about it for so long. And I know Mr. Quintal and I were supposed to meet and we were supposed to talk about it and we were supposed to move through and it just never happens, so.

Derek Brindisi:

I mean, that’s a great point that we can put together any type of organizational structure, but resourcing it I think is going to be the challenge moving forward. I mean, you saw the last slide. This year alone, the town side is freezing 10 positions. That’s public safety, that’s public works, that’s community resources. There are positions that aren’t filled today. We’re just not going to fill them moving forward because we don’t have the revenues in order to meet the needs. So, I do believe that we’re going to have to make some very difficult decisions in the next year to two to three years. And so, I can come up with a laundry list of needs. The hard part is coming up with how I’m going to fund those needs. So, we have to start to prioritize. We have to start to think about what’s important to us. And if facility is important to us then as Brad pointed out, we have to resource it and we have to make some tough decisions.

Betty Cavacco:

Correct. Mr. Quintal and then we’ll go to the folks.

John Mahoney:

Just a few things. So, back to the transportation reimbursement on regional schools. Obviously, I don’t think this community is not going to go back to regionalization but there’s a flaw in that program at the state level and this is where politics gets involved because obviously, the community is lodging in the Silver Lake Region, the Whitman-Hanson Region, maybe in the outer Cape Nauset Regional High School, you know five to seven communities are larger than Plymouth. But regardless, I think the reimbursement rate, Lynne is still 70% in the regional level. I mean, that’s significant.

Brad Brothers:

When it’s fully funded.

John Mahoney:

Okay. So, what happens is hypothetically if you asked Ms. LaNatra to go up to Beacon Hill and advocate for this change, if the bucket of money that is funding this reimbursement is not expanding, she’s actually pitting one of the communities she represents or Kingston and Halifax against another one and same for then going over to Whitman-Hanson and asking those reps because you’re just lowering the level of the bath water by giving it to Plymouth but you’ve got to take it away from one of those other communities unless you figure out or increase that funding mechanism for that reimbursement. And that’s what it all comes down to. So, just a couple of questions on the budget, Lynne and we just got the packet. And so, part of the problem with this year’s budget is that we’re dealing with the offset from one to two years ago of a one-time revenue stream. One-time revenue source was “put into.”

Lynne Barrett:

Yes.

John Mahoney:

And now, we’re paying the penance for that.

Lynne Barrett:

Yes. So, the last couple of years we offset the reduction of the Holtec PILOT tax payment because what happens when a commercial entity like that, their payment goes down so much then it just shifts to everybody else because we still live under the rules of prop two and a half and new growth. So, what we did was we sort of infused a little bit of free cash into the budget to help offset that. But telling everybody at the time that that’s what we were doing and that we’re going to have to at some point we can’t do this anymore.

[1:15:07]

John Mahoney:

And the ramifications didn’t permeate the body. They approved it and now, we can see what happened today, correct?

Lynne Barrett:

Yeah.

John Mahoney:

And you’re not advocating for any more one-time revenues, correct?

Lynne Barrett:

No.

John Mahoney:

Not that you ever did.

Lynne Barrett:

Yeah, no.

John Mahoney:

But there’s nothing in there.

Lynne Barrett:

We have free cash funding half a million of our OPEB trust fund. We’ve done that every year. So, that’s the only funding source from free cash that’s going in to this budget that we’re recommending.

John Mahoney:

But that’s a standalone outside the general fund?

Lynne Barrett:

Yeah, it’s just the trust fund, yeah.

John Mahoney:

Which I’m okay with. So, Derek, you’re talking about freezing 10 full-time employees on this town side.

Derek Brindisi:

That’s right.

John Mahoney:

And what did the school do would respect to bodies? did they expand? Did they add any bodies? Did they stay neutral? Did they subtract any? Do we know what they did as far as human resources?

Lynne Barrett:

I mean, in communications with them, we know that they reduced their budget already through like attrition through retirements and those kinds of things. As far as any layoffs or anything like that, I’m not aware. They haven’t communicated that to us yet.

John Mahoney:

Okay. But we have the final first pass presentation, correct? In the budget book and you’re looking for a vote on January 3rd?

Derek Brindisi:

January 3rd, that’s correct. And just as a reminder, as Lynne pointed out that the budget that for the schools that was presented this evening was not what was presented by the school superintendent. So, the number that we have this morning represents a reduction of $800,000. So, the school superintendent’s office, they know that they have another $800,000 that we’re asking them to locate within their budget. So, what that means just personnel and equipment and other expenses will not show you.

John Mahoney:

Okay. So, I’m just looking forward and through the chair hopefully in the near future we do have that joint meeting with the school department and school committee. So, I’m looking forward to that.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Quickly, in reference to your last statement, Derek. We’ve requested reductions of $800,000. Have they agreed to reductions of $800,000, the school?

Lynne Barrett:

They haven’t met again since their budget meeting of December 5th, I think. So, they’re meeting again next Monday.

Harry Helm:

Okay. Did they kind of shake their heads up and down like we understand or there was no response whatsoever?

Derek Brindisi:

I would say, I think that they’re taking this budget very seriously and they understand the constraints we’re under.

Harry Helm:

Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay. Now, we have a few folks on Zoom.

Anthony Senesi:

I believe we have Alyse Bruneau and then Al DiNardo. Alyse, you can unmute yourself.

Alyse Bruneau:

Hello. I’m Alyse Bruneau, Chair of Precinct 18. Anthony had mentioned that each of the Select Board members had received a three-ring binder with detailed information on the presentation. I was just wondering if that would be made available to the public and when that would be.

Lynne Barrett:

I mean, we can put it on our website tomorrow.

Betty Cavacco:

Yeah. We can put that on the website.

Alyse Bruneau:

I appreciate it. I took screenshots but they’re blurry. It’d be easier just to have like a PDF.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, we can post it. We just want folks to be aware that this is the Town Manager’s recommendation and the Select Board may have a different recommendation before it goes to A&F. So, as a precinct chair, you may see an entirely different budget by the time it gets to you.

Alyse Bruneau:

Okay. Thank you. That works for me. I appreciate it.

Betty Cavacco:

Great. Thanks. Now, Mr. DiNardo?

Al DiNardo:

Hi! Good evening, Madam Chairman. Al DiNardo, Vice chair Precinct 17. I want to bring back to this report and the Suzanne Bump, who’s the outgoing auditor, has identified these deficiencies and it’s well over a billion comments. So, as I heard the presentation from the manager tonight, we don’t have a town hall problem because we have a Beacon Hill problem and it was talked about last week at the meeting with the League of Women Voters. You talked about transportation.

According to Suzanne Bump’s report from October, it’s almost a half a billion dollars. That’s the bad news. The good news is other communities are going through this and they’re struggling with this.

[1:20:01]

Al DiNardo:

The auditor’s report says here this report confirms that cities and towns are facing deep financial pressure and we see that. And I don’t think the politicians at Beacon Hill see that. What can we do? If we really wanted to take it to the next level, have regional meetings with other communities without delegation. Let them be aware of this. Let’s face it, it’s politicians. They’re going to play this game until they can’t play it anymore.

The medical is going up 7 or 8%. We may have a future problem with the pension liability if the stock market keeps being flat so that there are a lot of forces that are at play here and I think it’s great that the board of the administration is identifying this stuff now. But I think this is the time for us to take action at the next level. Unlike the federal government, the town has to balance its budget, the state has to balance its budget. The town had the option years ago of the local option meals tax and hotel tax, which has helped keep our budget growing. The sales tax goes right to Beacon Hill. We don’t get a portion of that.

So, in closing, I want to say Beacon Hill needs to have its feet held to the fire on this now. The citizens said in the early 1980s that they wanted a limit on local property tax with prop two and a half and I don’t see anyone asking that to be removed statewide. To me, this is an end run that the politicians on Beacon Hill are getting around and we’re paying the price for that. And sadly, on the federal level, I look at that $31 trillion that we’re leaving our grandkids and it’s sad. But something needs to be done at the next level. Maybe have the delegation in and maybe have a regional meeting. All the towns are going through this. And until we lead the charge to tell Beacon Hill frankly to knock it off, it’s not going to change.

And one other point in closing, last year, we supported the unions of this community, okay? Nobody was against that. The unions are very strong in this state. They have a lot of power on Beacon Hill, so they have to step up to this too. You can’t run for public office without a union stamp on your material. That’s fine. And in a perfect world, you want to pay everyone a hundred thousand a year. The question is where do we get the money? So, the unions need to be a part of this that we could sustain this for our employees. It’s important that it’s sustainable that we have employees that can live in this community. So, this is a big issue you that needs to be discussed statewide. I just hope we’ll get to that point. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you, Mr. DiNardo. Mr. Quintal? No? One of the things that you mentioned, Derek was we’re going to go into negotiations for the PEC. I believe the board has to vote to enter into Section 19. I don’t know if that’s–I mean, we could take that vote tonight or do you plan on having that on for January 3rd?

Derek Brindisi:

That would be January 3rd.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay. And to make sure that’s part of the agenda?

Derek Brindisi:

Yes.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you. Okay. Anyone else for Mr. Brindisi or Lynne Barrett, our Finance Director? No? Okay, moving right along. Do you have a Town Manager’s Report and on top of all that?

Derek Brindisi:

I always have something to say.

Betty Cavacco:

That you do. Somewhat like myself.

Derek Brindisi:

So, just a couple quick updates. You’ve asked a couple of times about getting a Stephens Field update. I think the last time I reported, the town staff was at about 75% design. And so, before they went to 100 design, they went and presented a 75% design to the Stephens Field Design Committee. And so, they got a great job of the DPW in their presentation. A couple modifications to the design, just so you’re aware. In the original concept plan, there were four tennis courts, they reduced that down to three tennis courts. They have now included a bath house in this design. There’s the old storage facility on that site was supposed to be saved that is now being removed in this design and being replaced with a more contemporary storage facility.

[1:25:03]

Derek Brindisi:

And then, they believe if there’s money available as alternates, they’ll then have money set aside to repair the ball field, the basketball court, the lights around that and the fencing around that. So, I just wanted you to be aware that’s some of the program changes and it’s been supported by the Stephens Field Design Committee.

So, moving on, let me know whenever you’re ready, Anthony, if you can pull that up. Just as an update, the ZBA held their hearing last week where they approved a special permit for the Claremont development. That’s 202 units, that’s a 55 plus apartment building. So, more to come on that. There will be an administrative note at our next meeting for the board to approve a development agreement with Claremont.

The hybrid special legislation has finally been approved. The moderator has convened a meeting for next week with the town clerk, myself and others like PACTV and OTI, so we can start planning for a hybrid annual town meeting in April.

Today, the lieutenant governor was in this room. She awarded, not she but the Seaport Council awarded the town $1 million dollar grant. That $1 million will be used towards a $1.6 million rehabilitation of the town boat ramps. So, as you recall, town meeting approved about $600,000. We have the $1 million dollar matched by the state. So, we plan to go out to bid I would say within the next couple weeks and to break ground on that boat ramp in early March time period.

And then, I just want to let folks know that we are in the process of adding four more EV charging stations right here on top of the hill. So, we have I think four already. We’re going to add an additional four that the public can use. As you know, we’ve acquired three electric vehicles that various town departments are using as a pilot. Assuming that goes well, we’ll be able to then further expand our fleet in the electric vehicle field.

Are you able to pull that up or no?

Anthony Senesi:

Are you looking for the plan? Is that–

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. The images that Nick Faiella sent us today.

Anthony Senesi:

You’re talking about Allerton?

Derek Brindisi:

Yes.

Anthony Senesi:

Okay.

Derek Brindisi:

So, I asked if Anthony can pull it up. At our last meeting, the board voted to use approximately $400,000 of ARPA funds to renovate the Allerton Street playground and park. We have some early images and I just wanted to share that with the board. These images would be posted to the website. We’re hoping to have a sign made so folks know what will be coming this spring over up in Allerton Street. So, I’ll show those to you in a minute.

And then while we’re waiting for that to come up, the annual town election is upon us in May. You can pull papers at the town clerk’s office effective January 2nd. Right, Kelly? And additionally, I want folks especially those listening at home, so the town clerk’s office is switching up a little bit how we send out the applications for dog licensing. So, in the past, you would get a direct mailer. This year, to save a little bit on postage, we’re actually including that application in this year’s census. So, for those of you that have dogs at home, just know to look far in the census there’ll be the application for your dog re-licensing.

And then last, I’ll just let folks be aware that station two is moving towards construction. Right now, we are on time, we are on budget and we’re expecting a completion date of December 2023. So, that is looking well. So, I’ve danced enough for Anthony to pull up the slide. So, that’s the early image of the Allerton Street playground. This will be on the opposite side of where the existing playground is. That’s correct, right, Brad on the opposite side?

Next slide, you’ll see where it’s going to be placed. There we go. So, there’s the Allerton Street playground you see the playground is moved to the opposite end of the existing parcel of land. So, we’re moving forward with that. Expect in the next couple weeks, you’ll start to see the tear down of the playground equipment and the fencing and then the rebuild will start thereafter. So, that’s all I have this evening pending any questions.

[1:30:01]

Charlie Bletzer:

Yeah, question, Derek. On the playground, what’s the rest of just going to landscape it?

Derek Brindisi:

Yes. So, that’ll be landscape. That’ll be a play area. Yeah.

Brad Brothers:

And just add on to that, to the Chair real quick, is around the playground there will also be a four-foot fence. So, it’s not going to be open. It’s not going to be free green space. There’s going to be an area where if you have young kids, they’re in the inside of it.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else? I do have something. Derek, is there anyway or Brad, can we add a wheelchair swing?

Derek Brindisi:

I can double check with Nick but I know that what you see in front of you is 100% ADA accessible.

Betty Cavacco:

No, I understand it’s ADA acceptable but there are children that can’t get out of the wheelchair to get into a swing. And I have seen it and I can’t even remember what town it was in. I think it was somewhere down the Cape that the wheelchair actually goes into the swing, clicks in and a child can be swinging in his wheelchair and happy as can be. So–

Derek Brindisi:

We are happy to follow up with Mr. Faiella on that, yup.

Betty Cavacco:

Please. Yeah, if you would, please. Anything else for our Town Manager? Okay. we could go to License and Administrative Notes. Has everybody seen them and if anyone has an issue with them, please bring it in now or I ask for a motion to be moved as a group.

Charlie Bletzer:

There’s a question on the Plymouth Ascend Incorporated. What business is that?

Betty Cavacco:

Plymouth Ascend–

Charlie Bletzer:

Number one on the licenses.

Betty Cavacco:

A restaurant in Colony Place. Am I correct?

Charlie Bletzer:

It is a restaurant?

Betty Cavacco:

Derek?

Derek Brindisi:

What was that again?

Charlie Bletzer:

There’s no DBA on it.

Dick Quintal:

Common Victualler. Hong Chen.

Charlie Bletzer:

On the licenses. Plymouth Ascend Inc. 300 Colony Place, Hung Chen, owner is requesting a Common Victualler. It’s a new license. I just want to know what business that is.

Betty Cavacco:

That’s not in our packet either. So, why don’t we pull that–

Derek Brindisi:

We’ll have to delay that one then, okay.

Betty Cavacco:

Yeah. So, for everything else, could you ask Chris–and actually, could you ask Chris to send out the information on that right away?

Derek Brindisi:

Other than it being a restaurant, you want more detail obviously?

Betty Cavacco:

Correct.

Derek Brindisi:

Okay.

Harry Helm:

Yeah. Usually, we see an architectural drawing of the plans and that sort of stuff. And usually, the person applying appears here to talk to us and we’re able to ask them their thoughts and also, the Chair is also able to ask if there’s anybody who has an issue with it.

Derek Brindisi:

Right, okay. We’ll have to move that to January 3rd.

Charlie Bletzer:

Well, I just hope I’m not holding up this business. If it’s a time issue, I don’t want to hold them up. I’d just like to know what business it is.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. I mean, the only thing I know at this time is that they don’t have a DBA and it’s for a liquor license, but I think we’ll just have to delay it. I think we’ll get you more information. You don’t have enough information tonight.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay. Anything else? And if not, is there someone who’d like to make the motion to move it as a group?

Harry Helm:

Motion to move as a group.

Betty Cavacco:

Do we have a second?

Charlie Bletzer:

Second.

Betty Cavacco:

Discussion? All those in favor? Unanimous. And we can go to–we can go to Public Comment and then our New Business. Anyone here for public comment? Mr. Serkey?

Richard Serkey:

Thank you, Madam Chair. Rich Serkey, Precinct 2. I’m here to respond to the comments made by the Chair about me at your last meeting.

[1:35:01]

Richard Serkey:

The Chair blamed me for the fact that the town incurred $30,000 in legal fees to defend against the Open Meeting Law and Public Records Law Complaints that I in behalf of many citizens filed against the Select Board within the last 12 months. What the Chair failed to mention however, was the reason why I filed those complaints in their behalf. I filed those complaints because this Board as then constituted voted in secret to use taxpayers’ money to buy out the contract of the former town manager to the tune of approximately $350,000. As I’ve stated before, if the board was so dissatisfied with her performance even though she had received nothing but glowing performance evaluations and even though the board did not fire her for cause the board, as then constituted, could have simply let her serve out her term, which would have expired in July of this year and then appointed a new town manager, which would have cost the taxpayers nothing. No prudent business person when faced with the option of paying an employee $350,000t to leave 21 months early as opposed to merely letting the employee serve out her term at no cost would have made the decision the board made.

And the fact that the board did so in executive session made it all the worse. The board used the old trick of having your attorney present at the executive sessions so that the board could later claim that every word uttered was either a request by the board for legal advice or the rendering to the board of legal advice thereby rendering the contents of the executive session undiscoverable because of the attorney-client privilege.

So, at the end of the day, after the board wasted $350,000 of the taxpayers’ money in pursuit of the board’s vendetta against the former town manager, the Chair blamed me for the fact that the board then spent $30,000 more to prevent the public from witnessing what the board was doing. This is like an arsonist who complains about the cost of the fire rescue made necessary by the fire he set. The Chair claimed not once but twice that I lost the cases I brought under the Open Meeting Law and the Public Records Law. I didn’t lose those cases. The board just got away with it in both cases.

At your meeting last week, the Chair also claimed that I wrongfully attended an executive session that the board had held at your November 29 meeting to discuss the sale of the thousand acres. I attended the open portion of the board’s meeting that night in order to share with you what I knew about the title problems that bedevil that property. And after I spoke, I left. At no time while I was there did the town hold a roll call vote to go into executive session as is required by the Open Meeting Law. The chair’s claim that I attended an executive session that night is false.

Finally, I need to say that I’m disappointed by the silence throughout all of this of the other members of the board. Your silence leads people to believe that you support the Chair and the actions she has taken and, in the words, she has spoken in the board’s name or that at the very least, you acquiesce in them. If neither is true, then you need to speak up. And that’s all I have to say. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone? Although your statement is riddled with misinformation.

Richard Serkey:

What is the misinformation?

Betty Cavacco:

Well, first of all, 350, 000. 21 months in advance, the town manager asked to be released from her contract.

Richard Serkey:

You didn’t have to agree.

Betty Cavacco:

So, you would keep someone on that didn’t want to work for you?

Richard Serkey:

She’s bound under a contract to work for the remainder of her term.

Betty Cavacco:

That wasn’t my question.

[1:40:01]

Betty Cavacco:

She asked to be released out of her contract. Why would anyone anywhere want to have someone work for them that didn’t want to be there?

Richard Serkey:

Because it’s common knowledge that when a person’s position is made so uncomfortable for her to continue in that position, there comes a time when she has to seek to get out of it because the water is just too hot in the pot.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, I don’t know what about uncomfortable you’re talking about because we certainly made it very comfortable for her and protected her. So, and $350,000, I don’t know where that information is coming from.

Richard Serkey:

I’ll be glad to supply it to you.

Betty Cavacco:

Yes, please do. You know what, Mr. Serkey, I hope you have a very happy holiday.

Richard Serkey:

Thank you. Same to you.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Mr. Serkey, I was brand new on the board and I was in this process. And I can assure you that everything was done above boards. There was too many executive sessions, I agree but that’s because of continuance that the town meeting–I mean, the town manager wanted but I can just assure you that everything we did was above board. And I was really kind of taken back when you filed that complaint, but it was on behalf of 40 of–I know they were my opponents when I ran for Selectman, okay? The group led by four of the last candidates that didn’t win elections in Plymouth. It was that whole group and you were part of it but I just thought when you filed it, it was kind of a vindictive thing and it had no merit. And in the end, the Attorney General found that there was no merit. They dismissed the complaints. So, you keep saying they dismissed it on procedure and not on merits.

Richard Serkey:

Pardon me?

Charlie Bletzer:

You said they dismissed it on procedure?

Richard Serkey:

Yeah, they–

Charlie Bletzer:

Can you explain that? Because–

Richard Serkey:

The next step that I would have had to have taken would have been to appeal the decisions by the Attorney General and the Secretary of State to a court and had a judge then determine whether what I was seeking in the way of minutes from executive sessions were or were not privileged. I’m retired. I can’t do that at the present time. Everything I did was as a volunteer. But the decision that the Attorney General made and the decision that the Secretary of State made was that I couldn’t see the minutes of what was discussed by the board in executive session because the minutes were privileged because you had your attorney present. And what I wanted to do was to have the Attorney General or the Secretary of State take a look at those minutes without sharing them with me and then determine on the basis of the contents of those minutes whether the claim of executive privilege was valid or not. I was willing to put my faith in the hands of the Attorney General or the Secretary of State. That’s what a judge would do if the case had been appealed to court, but for the board to say through their attorney that everything we discussed was the rendering of legal advice or the seeking of legal advice, that’s self-serving and I have no way of challenging that.

Charlie Bletzer:

Well, I could just say that we had legal counsel representing us through that whole process.

Betty Cavacco:

And so did she.

Charlie Bletzer:

And so did our former town manager. So, as an attorney, you’re saying that our attorney was wrong.

Richard Serkey:

What I’m saying is, is that the minutes should have been examined by somebody who is neutral. There was a possibility if the board had agreed to it to have the minutes examined by the Attorney General so that she could look at the minutes and determine whether or not the claim of privilege was valid or not. But she chose not to do that.

Charlie Bletzer:

But you put dollars and cents over the operation of the Town of Plymouth, management of the Town of Plymouth. In the private sector, if you have a CEO that comes to you, comes to the board and said, “I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be here anymore.” What do they do? What do they do in private sector?

[1:45:03]

Charlie Bletzer:

They buy him out, and the CEO is gone.

Richard Serkey:

You don’t have to buy that. You didn’t have to.

Charlie Bletzer:

Yeah, but you’re putting dollars and cents before the Town of Plymouth, okay, to leave her in place for the next year or whatever was left in a contract. Instead, what we did was we expedited her departure. We gave her a fair buyout and we brought in our next town manager, okay, who we think is going to take us to the next level and he’s already starting to do it. But you are putting dollars and cents and then at the same token, you accuse us of wasting money and then you take a frivolous complaint, and it is frivolous. It was frivolous because it was thrown out and we had to spend money to hire attorneys to fight that. So, I don’t get it. Okay? I don’t get where you’re coming from.

Richard Serkey:

Okay. I’ll explain again. It was not thrown out. What happened is was that the Attorney General refused to exercise her discretion to look at the minutes and see whether your attorney was correct or not and not letting me see them.

Charlie Bletzer:

If she thought that it had merit, they would have gone forward with it. And I asked you before to apologize to us publicly.

Richard Serkey:

Apologize?

Charlie Bletzer:

To the board, yeah. I asked you to apologize to the board and you refused to do that. Believe me, if we had lost, we would have apologized to the Town of Plymouth as well as you. We would have taken an ad out in the paper and apologize. We would have done it at a public open meeting. Okay? That’s what we would have done. So, again, I wish we could just stop this. Can we move forward and start fixing the problems that we have in Plymouth? You’re a very smart guy. I respect you. You’re a good lawyer. You’re retired now. See, a good time. Can you put your energy, join some committees and volunteer your time? I know you do volunteer work and other, and I respect you for that. But how about doing it for the Town of Plymouth? Okay? Volunteer in some committees and do some public service for the good of the Town of Plymouth. And stop coming here week after week, Richard and just saying the same thing. It’s like the same thing over and over.

Richard Serkey:

I don’t owe an apology to the board. I think the Chair owes an apology to me after what was said about me last week.

Charlie Bletzer:

Well, what did you accuse her of doing? You came in here, and I’m worried about you. I really am. I wish because I think you’re a smart guy, can you move on? Can you please help us in a positive way, this town, okay?

Richard Serkey:

Okay.

Charlie Bletzer:

I respect your opinions but not on this. And I think it was a political thing. I really think everything, this whole thing was done because of politics.

Richard Serkey:

I can assure you that my position as the complainant was not motivated by politics.

Betty Cavacco:

Excuse me for a minute. Mr. Serkey, I will apologize for raising my voice at you, but I will not apologize for what I said. And for you to claim that it’s not political when in fact you said today to people, if I said that I wasn’t running in May that you would not say a word and I don’t take well to idle threats. Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Well, Mr. Serkey is leaving but since he did express disappointment that other members of the board have not spoken out, I do feel the need to say the following. First of all, I’m not going to weigh in on this mud fight, food fight, crapola fight that is going on between you and our Chair. That is between the two of you. I will tell you that I do have problems with three things that you said today and they do relate to what happened in executive and what was dealt with in our moving on from the former town manager. I need to point out that out in the world where multi hundred-million-dollar corporations operate and I know that there are no other in Plymouth, so our experience here is limited. But regularly, the boards buy out CEOs to move on. Regularly. Happens all the time. You said no one in their right mind would do so, but I would just like to point out in the world maybe they’re not in their right mind but they do that regularly. I have a bit of a problem with your characterization of our use of lawyers as some sort of dark and nefarious plot to keep things secret.

[1:50:02]

Harry Helm:

From my understanding and my belief and my experience during all of those meetings, the lawyers were there because we were discussing contracts and none of us are lawyers. And certainly, as you understand from your work in real estate that it is not a good idea for non-lawyers to presume to act as lawyers. And that from my standpoint is why they were there. Not some sort of dark Byzantine plot that down the road we would use this is an excuse to not deliver the minutes of those meetings. So, I just wanted to point that out. And that is from my perspective of my experience during this, just so you know.

Also, I’ve heard this and this is why I’m addressing it and it’s not specifically about something that you mentioned but you did mention it. The belief that and I know that it it’s not just you, Mr. Serkey, I’ve heard this. And when I hear it and I’m talking to somebody, I try to explain what my reasoning was because it comes to me as it did tonight that we were acting out a vendetta. And I do understand where that may come from, that perception and I can’t speak for the other members of the board that was involved, but I had no vendetta in mind on that. My concept was that after nearly 10 years, we needed to move on, that we needed to bring in a town manager who would bring us a strategic plan and unite the department heads and the directors in creating that strategic plan and then moving forward with that strategic plan because I felt that after 10 years and many of those on the FinCom, and this is the reason that I ran, I was deeply concerned that no strategic issues, none of the major things that we’re facing in our town now and through the next 10 years in the next 20 years were actually being addressed and that was my concern. So, regardless, I’m not arguing with you about what you said. I’m just clarifying from my standpoint. So that it is clear to everybody that and I do not believe that the board was acting out of vendetta. I do think it was for real desire for this town to move forward in a very strategic and intentional manner to begin dealing with some of the major issues.

Richard Serkey:

Mr. Helm, isn’t it true that she received positive performance evaluations at all times?

Harry Helm:

I was not here for those positive and I’m not–

Betty Cavacco:

That is not true.

Harry Helm:

Well, regardless. I can’t speak about and I’ll be frank with you, I had a good working relationship with the former town manager but I did understand that her strengths were very much in the let’s say turning of the cranks, keeping the machinery of keeping the town in operation. I did not believe that her strengths were strategic and that we’re about 10, 20 years in the future. That comes from basically being on the FinCom for eight years while she was town manager and that’s what I brought forward. So, it had nothing to do with my involvement in any of her reviews.

Richard Serkey:

And what basis though was that discussed in executive session rather than an open session?

Harry Helm:

I’m not exactly sure what that question is.

Richard Serkey:

Why was the discussion held in executive session rather than an open session?

Harry Helm:

Because we were dealing with her contract. And I would just like to point out that the former town manager by right had the ability to move it into open session and she never did.

Richard Serkey:

Okay. If you were the head of a company that had the choice with respect to a chief executive of keeping that chief executive on for a couple of years and serving out her term as opposed to spending the corporation’s money to the tune of between $350,000 in order to buy her out, if this was a small business, I question whether anybody would make the decision that the board did, but it’s easier to spend the town’s money than you would spend your own money.

[1:55:18]

Harry Helm:

Well, I would argue that the Town of Plymouth is a small business. We just reviewed the budget. It’s not looking like a small business to me, just FYI. Also, I felt because I can’t speak for the other members, I was elected to change things and I felt that two years was a long time to wait while the clock had been ticking for–I mean, you saw one of the graphs about the growth of Plymouth, about the–I can’t remember the–hold on, new growth trends. Okay? If you look at the new growth trends, all the way back in 2005, our new growth peaked at nearly $3,390,000. That’s up from two years before of 1,400,000. And then we had the recession, okay? We’ve resumed that. So, from my standpoint as a resident and as a member of the FinCom and somebody who was elected to the board to try to deal with the change that’s going on, the impact that it’s having on the finances of our residents, it was very apparent to me back in easily and I’d go earlier than that, but if you if you want proof you just look at the new growth trends graph that they presented tonight, it was obvious back in 2005 that this town was facing tremendous growth. And the consequences of that tremendous growth have never really been addressed. Okay? They weren’t from my standpoint. That’s my opinion, Mr. Serkey, that they were not being addressed, they had never been addressed and that it was time to start addressing them.

And I just felt that given that the red flag was raised in 2005, and it was now 2021 that plenty of time to begin being strategic, begin thinking about the future, begin thinking about things like how are we going to pay for all this building maintenance? You know, all of that sort of stuff, was not something that was really done at the town. I’ll be honest, I can’t say that it was the former town manager on her own, okay? It’s a cooperative event here. I mean, the board instructs the town manager how to move forward but– sorry to go on so long, but I just wanted to address these so that it would be clear because you mentioned that you were concerned about why other members of the board had not responded. But I am not responding to the battle that’s going on between the two of you. That’s between the two of you.

Richard Serkey:

I appreciate that. Let me just mention what hasn’t been mentioned thus far, but all of us know, and that is that the former town manager made a mistake in her last year in office. And I believe that the squeezing of her out in 2021 was payback for that mistake. I’m not saying that I’m acknowledging that she made a mistake but the fact is that the consequence of her mistake should not have been what played out. She was basically told she wasn’t welcome here anymore and you wanted her out and she said to you, “I’ll leave, but it’s going to have to be for this amount of money,” and you agreed to pay it. At least that’s what just my impression was.

Harry Helm:

Yeah, just really quickly and then you can go because I just need to clear the timeline here. Understand, and Dick could speak about the beginning of the timeline.

[2:00:08]

Harry Helm:

Okay. Let’s go back to May of 2021. Okay? And the election in which I was elected. Let’s all remember the very first Board of Selectmen meeting and what occurred there, okay? A board member who was closely aligned with Melissa resigned abruptly, beamed out of the press the leave button on the Zoom meeting said basically I’m resigning effective immediately. Boop, gone. And I believe it was within a week afterwards and Dick can correct me if I’m wrong that the town manager came directly to him as the chairman of the board and asked to be removed one year early. So, she started the process of, I want to leave early. So, the beginning of the process had nothing to do with this vendetta that you speak of. So, I would just like to be very, very clear about the beginning of this entire process.

Richard Serkey:

But you didn’t have to agree, Mr. Helm because it would cost the town too much money. And so, you only had to say, “No. We’re not going to buy you out for that price and we’re going to hold you to your contract.” And she’s a professional. She would have understood that.

Harry Helm:

Mr. Serkey, you and I will probably disagree throughout time on this because I don’t know about the dollar figure. I don’t know. I think you’re a little high but I’m not going to argue that one.

Richard Serkey:

She was appointed as special assistant to Mr. Brindisi.

Harry Helm:

Yeah, that’s fine.

Richard Serkey:

It was a no-show job. You know that.

Harry Helm:

Yes, but understand what I said, I regardless of that, what I said was that corporations regularly buy out the CEO’s contract particularly when the makeup of a board changes, and that’s what happened and that’s what the former town manager read. She came to the board and asked to be out of, take a year off of her contract. And yes, you are right. I did not have to agree to what happened after that. I didn’t have to agree to that. Okay? But I’m telling you, I did and I’m telling you the reason that I did was not about a vendetta. It was about my honest evaluation of having sat on the FinCom for eight years prior to my election and not seen anything change. The decorations change, the problems changed but the total lack of any solutions to the real problems for nearly eight years influenced my decision to believe that sitting with this executive for two more years was not worth the price. That 350,000 and I’m not going to argue about the money but that amount of money was worth taking two years and getting somebody in here who could actually do the job of town manager that was needed and had been needed for quite some time.

Now, I’m sure people are going to come out of the woodwork and disagree with me on everything I’ve said, but what I’m explaining to you and anybody who’s still listening what my thinking was during that period. And I just want to be very clear that never ever in my thinking was a vendetta.

Richard Serkey:

Just two points I’d make, Mr. Helm and I appreciate your comments and the sincerity with which you’re voicing them. We’re dealing with not a corporation’s money actually here. We’re dealing with the town’s money. And I think that an extra special frugality needs to be applied when we’re dealing with the taxpayers’ money. The second thing I want to mention is if you look at her performance evaluations, my understanding is correct me if I’m wrong that she received positive performance evaluations notwithstanding the mistake as I said she made a year before this was done.

Harry Helm:

To the two points that you just made. Number one, residents regularly ask that their government act more like businesses like private businesses. In this case, here’s an example of what happens when government does act like a private. You have elected the board members to make this determination. This board member felt that that money that we would be paying her to buy her out of her contract was worth the two years that she would no longer be in place, and that we would have a new town manager place. That was my evaluation.

[2:05:15]

Harry Helm:

Your second point about the positive evaluations, I’m not going to argue those. I’m not sure if you’re correct or not, but I would just like to point out once again, I was not on those boards and involved in those evaluations. You can extrapolate from that statement how you think I may have acted if I were on the board but that’s up for you to do. But what I’m saying is I was not there.

Richard Serkey:

I understand. There has to be some institutional continuity though where a person sitting in your chair today respects the decisions of the people who sat in your chairs before at least in terms of evaluating somebody’s performance. But I hear you.

Harry Helm:

Okay. Yeah. We can agree to disagree. All right.

Betty Cavacco:

John?

John Mahoney:

So, you mentioned the word institutional. When I got elected years ago, the board had a lot of institutional memory among its members. One of which is to my left. One of the things that I was taught is what happens at public comment and this is an indictment of you, Richard but the public as a constitutional right to come in here and speak, you have that right, anyone does. But typically, it’s a mechanism by which a taxpayer, resident of the community gets up there and they want to bring something to the attention of the board, and that institutional memory taught me that it’s probably best practice or a good policy that 99 times out of a hundred we don’t reply. We take that data. Typically, I think it would be handed off to the town manager, to have department staffs look at whatever various issue it was that was brought to the board’s attention. And I just think that the Chair got to tighten this up. This should end now. We’ve effectively just had a 20 to 30-minute agenda item on the prior town manager’s performance and whole other things that you’ve brought to light, and that this shouldn’t be. We have another member out in the audience, Mr. McKay I think he’s going to get up and bring something to our attention. This has gotten out of control. I don’t disagree with you but some of these things are in the past and I just wish that going forward, we can get our hands back around Madam Chair on public comment and not letting this get off the rails.

Betty Cavacco:

I’m going to respond to that Mr. Mahoney because if this body whether it’s me or any member on this board and whether we agree with something that Mr. Serkey has or anyone else has, we shouldn’t stay silent. That’s our job. They’ve come to us with an issue. We should respond if we’re able to and I guess if you don’t like that process, we don’t even want to go back into your time machine and how many issues that caused for quite some time. They want to be heard. If we have answers, we give them answers. If we don’t have answers, we say, “I don’t have your answer. I’ll get back to you.” And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I think it’s much more transparent now than it ever has been. So, I will strongly disagree but respectfully with your opinion.

Richard Serkey:

I think that one of the reasons for the need for public comment to include things like what I said is the fact that we have a local news desert as we all know. There’s no newspaper that covers these meetings. Yes, they’re visible to the taxpayers at large through technology but there’s no newspaper that reports it.

John Mahoney:

If it’s going to get to the level of discourse that we’ve just witnessed in the last 20 to 30 minutes then put it on as an agenda item and let everybody come in. This shouldn’t have happened.

Betty Cavacco:

You know what, Mr. Serkey, I would like to offer–if you would like to sit down with me and maybe the town manager or other selectmen and you want to ask a bunch of questions that you feel that you need to ask, you just let me know. Set up an appointment. Derek can put it on my schedule and I’d be more than happy to do that.

[2:10:07]

Richard Serkey:

Okay. I appreciate it.

Charlie Bletzer:

Can I just say one, Madam Chair? You keep asking the question about her evaluations, the town manager. Now, I get my colleagues here we’re on the board and did that evaluation. What was their evaluation?

Betty Cavacco:

It was a 68.

Richard Serkey:

Pardon me?

Betty Cavacco:

It was a 68. The last evaluation she had was a 68. And before that, they were supposed to have evaluations every year and Mr. Mahoney can either confirm or deny that they never happened. And the reason why we evaluated that year that we did is because we basically forced the hand of the previous chair to do an evaluation because we were actually violating her contract if we did not.

Charlie Bletzer:

So, I haven’t been in school in a few years but that used to be a D when I was in school.

Richard Serkey:

Used to be what?

Charlie Bletzer:

That’s a grade of D.

John Mahoney:

We need to move on.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay.

Charlie Bletzer:

He kept asking it over and over and saying that we’ve fired her and she had good evaluation so it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Betty Cavacco:

Yes, Mr. Quintal?

Dick Quintal:

I think it’s time to change the subject and move on, Madam Chair. But in doing that quickly, just because I am not going to sit here and talk about any town manager and what was in those documents and those negotiations because I don’t believe that it’s legal for me to do so. And you know what? Out of common decency, for me to sit here and talk about something maybe I didn’t like, that’s a cheap shot to her and her tenure here.

Richard Serkey:

I’m sorry?

Dick Quintal:

It really is. I can tell you as well as I know, she’s not going to like this at all if she’s watching or catches wind to this. John’s right, it shouldn’t have happened. And you may have not liked the process and there’s probably some others that didn’t but sometimes that’s the way it is. There’s a lot of things maybe you don’t know that you think you know. And I’m just going to leave it like that. I’ve served on the board many years. I work with Melissa side-by-side. I was actually here and drove Melissa around when she was hired for the job. Okay? And she held accounting in my word and my say and I seem to think that I saved the community a bunch of money and that’s all I’m going to say on that back. You keep hopping on 350, it could have cost a lot more if things didn’t go right. I’m not going to say anything else, but I will tell you this in closing, I was here for two other dismissals maybe three. I’m sitting here trying to think of it and they were done the same way. I don’t know where you were as a town meeting member then–

Richard Serkey:

This was not a dismissal.

Dick Quintal:

But I don’t remember you–I’m not going to go down this path because I’m legally bound not to, but I’m telling you I’ve been down this path several times and I never had anybody or seen anything like we see here with this. And I’m not going to fall trapped to that. And more than that, I respect Melissa. I really do and I wish her the best. I haven’t seen her in a while but I’m not going to air dirty laundry here.

Richard Serkey:

I’m not here in her behalf. I haven’t talked to her.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Yeah, well, I think this is very disrespectful to her. When she was an employee, if you were to sit and do this to her, she has the right to be here. She has a right with her attorney. I don’t know all the laws. I sell apples. But I’m just saying, I’m not going to sit here and talk about her. But I don’t want you to think it’s in silence. I’ve been down this road with other managers in my tenure here and I’ve never once talked about it.

Richard Serkey:

This was not a dismissal. This was an agreement for her to walk away.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. And like I said–

Betty Cavacco:

And I think she’s thoroughly enjoying her retirement.

Richard Serkey:

Well, the point is, is that she’s far more richer today than she would have been if she retired this July.

Betty Cavacco:

I don’t think so.

Richard Serkey:

Well, the numbers say otherwise.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, your numbers.

Richard Serkey:

The numbers of the terms of the agreement that you paid her.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. McKay?

George McKay:

On a lighter note, I just regret that I didn’t get ahead of Mr. Serkey for my public comment. In 2020, the U.S Postal Service decided to produce a stamp showing the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor and that was about the middle of 2020.

[2:15:10]

George McKay:

They produced 25 million of these postage stamps, and most of these have been consumed by people Like us in the last couple of years. The postal service has now decided and made an announcement that any of these residual stamps that are still in the post offices will be destroyed if not purchased by December 31st of this year. So, they produced 25 million. We believe that most of those 25 million have been consumed by consumers and either put in a drawer as a collector’s items or put on envelopes for greeting cards. But the good news is there’s still about 40 sheets left in Plymouth that are for sale at the local post offices, and they’re available to the public. If they’re not purchased between now and the end of day on December 31st, they’ll be destroyed. So, I make a plead to everybody in Plymouth, if you want some of these, they’re currently available but they won’t be available very much longer. So, thank you very much for your time. Pardon? I got up, I tried. And thank you very much for listening to me.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you. So, Select Board Open Discussion – New Business/ Letters/ Old Business. Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

The Massachusetts DEP is in the process of examining amendments to Title V regulations. These amendments would require folks who own property, they’re on a septic system currently, in certain areas of environmental concern to install or upgrade rather their septic systems to nitrogen reducing septic systems. Basically, the number that keeps getting thrown around is that that would cost each property owner $35,000. The other option would be that the towns involved in the environmentally sensitive areas involved and it’s not all of Plymouth by any means and it’s definitely going to impact if these go through, it’s going to impact Cape Cod immediately and they’re talking about the South Coast of Massachusetts, not the South Shore. The other option is for the towns to install sewer systems in those particular areas. And I would like to request that we put on an agenda for–I don’t know. The comment period ends at the end of January. It was supposed to end at the end of this month but they moved it a month. I would like to request that this be an agenda item and that we ask our health director to come and who appears from a conversation I had with her to be extremely well versed in this to come in front of us and kind of update us on what’s going on with this.

Betty Cavacco:

Yes. Can we put that sometime in January?

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. It sounds like it would make sense to have that conversation prior to the comment period ending. So, we’ll do that.

Harry Helm:

Yeah. I would agree. Thank you very much.

Betty Cavacco:

John?

John Mahoney:

I just wanted to let the board two things. I was able to attend the Stephens Field, I guess you would call a subcommittee last Thursday night over at the basement of the Arts Center. And I know the Town Manager was there with multiple other department heads. You had to leave early because you had another forum but I was pleased by the outcome. It was a unanimous vote from the subcommittee to take the advice or the suggestions from predominantly the DPW Director with respect to the bid package and giving staff the flexibility to add or subtract a couple of variables over there so that we could get it under, God willing, a certain cost, which I think was $4.6 million. But I do know that in a perfect world, I think the core of the construction would happen during the season of ’23, but actually might spill over and into 2024 and not be technically 100% complete until the Spring or early Summer of ’24, if everything goes well.

[2:20:15]

John Mahoney:

And the second thing, Mr. Town Manager was we received a letter earlier tonight with respect to I think it was a communication from Rep. Muratore’s office on the state-owned dam down on State Road in Manomet. And for some reason that the importance of that was deactivated I think just at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. So, I was just wondering if you could share that letter with the other board members, but I would certainly be interested in getting that project reactivated at the state level. I don’t know why they would have put that on the back burner, but I don’t know what that–if that requires a vote or a future agenda item, I don’t know but that project needs to get done.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. I think that would probably make most sense to be a future agenda item, but I can forward that message along this evening.

John Mahoney:

Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Quintal?

Dick Quintal:

Derek, I’d like to thank you and Nick and the DPW Department for getting the lights back on in the North Plymouth area. I don’t know if there’s any damage done on another part but I know there’s been a lot of graffiti tagging going on everywhere. So, I’d like to know in the future if we could have Chief Flynn come in off maybe a captain or you meet and have them come in and I think it’s time to put some cameras here and there. And I would go about doing that or if there’s any grants, but I think the community–they cut every single wire on the electrical post and along with the tree across from Saint Mary’s and it went one step further, the church, St Mary’s. They went into the church and stole the gold crown on one of the statues and took a cloak, I guess, which is awful. It needs to stop. So, I would like to very much get something going but we have some cameras throughout I know PGDC in the past has put some in in different places for us, but maybe between all our resources, we could start a plan and get some out there. I think it’s a good security thing to begin with anyway. When we had the 400th town committee at the time just for a short time, I know that the lamp posts on the waterfront were all wired for cameras. I was told they were because I was bent on something happening and so, I think it’s time we look at a plan. And a lot of these things you can get sponsored even off businesses. I know I would help and I’d lead the charge if you need a place to put them but you see these whoever they are, I’m not going to say kids because you don’t know if it’s kids right. I don’t know what possessed them and to take it into the church that was even another bold step, really bold. So, my phone was ringing and people were like [makes noise]. I said, “I know. It’s awful.” So, I think it’s going to be a town-wide issue, thing has been going on over here too.

Derek Brindisi:

That’s right.

Dick Quintal:

They’re always tagging the buildings over there or graffiti, whatever you want to call it but it’s time to try to get some bitches and get them on film and maybe they have and we don’t need to talk about it if they are, you know what I mean? We just want some ideas where it would help the enforcement police, whoever to take some of these people.

Derek Brindisi:

To the Chair, I’ve often talked I feel like half of my town manager updates have talked about graffiti in particular. Just this past weekend, we had another one of our vehicles tagged. So, we had a conversation this morning with the chief and other town departments on cameras. So, we’ll definitely take a deeper dive into that and see what we can do but you’re right, resources will be one of our constraints. So, we are looking at the issue and I know the police department about two, three weeks ago they had arrested three individuals, two on a foot chase for tagging and they’re not children. In fact, I think the youngest of age was 22. So, we’re dealing with adults who are making these decisions for whatever reason and they’re still out there. So, more to come but I think maybe putting some type of task force together to look at this issue I think probably makes the most sense.

Dick Quintal:

Great, thank you.

[2:25:00]

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else? I just have one quick thing. There has been a little bit of scuttle but somebody sent me some screenshots of a conversation that’s happening on social media about the CANZ Chairman resigning and why didn’t we take action. And John, I believe we didn’t take action because you had asked for more information. So, yeah, the water, yup. So, maybe you can go back I believe it was Miss Sheehan that had some–but Miss Sheehan had made the comments.

John Mahoney:

Are you talking about the Water Committee or the other–the one–

Betty Cavacco:

The water, sorry.

John Mahoney:

Okay. What happened?

Betty Cavacco:

They are saying why didn’t we act on that. And I believe Mr. Bletzer actually said because we were looking for more information. Yeah.

John Mahoney:

Yeah, okay. I’m not up on this.

Charlie Bletzer:

Yeah, you asked for more information.

John Mahoney:

Well, there were three recommendations from the committee and one of the most significant one was we need to certainly get that data if we were going to go to some sort of change.

Derek Brindisi:

In the rate, the rate change.

John Mahoney:

Yeah. So, that’s a big one. We just can’t go into that blind.

Betty Cavacco:

Right. Well, they were upset that we didn’t take action. So, they don’t seem to understand–

John Mahoney:

Well, on that recommendation, even if the board was inclined to do something different, that doesn’t occur until May anyways, May or June when you set the rates for the next fiscal year. And obviously, if we did what recommendation number three was a little surcharge to finance an in-house individual for conservation and recommendation number one, I mean, the Chair could put this on for a future agenda if you wanted to take. Certainly, I think there was–Mura tore’s it 15 million gallons a year, Derek? Was that the first one? They wanted to save X amount 15%, I can’t remember. I don’t have it in front of me. But anyway, they should come back in a month or two and we–

Betty Cavacco:

Yeah, but that’s the point that we needed more information and that is the reason why we didn’t act on it.

John Mahoney:

So, am I better off because I haven’t been on Facebook in five days?

Betty Cavacco:

Probably. Although I don’t go on much anymore myself.

John Mahoney:

So, I think the board knows that it’s very important on that issue and that presentation from–was that last week? Yeah, hopefully, we’ll circle back and revisit that in a month or two?

Betty Cavacco:

Yup.

John Mahoney:

Okay, thank you.

Dick Quintal:

And my issue with that was the 3% on the rates, the way I understood it and it wasn’t that I didn’t like what they were proposing but I thought if I’ll just choose the business people, if that be it, shouldn’t be paying a certain amount like the 3% flat. I mean, if they’re using that much water, it’s for a reason. You know what I’m saying? That’s what I didn’t think was fair.

To give you an example, when I went to town meeting and everybody was mandatory to hitch up in the sewage system, I was one of those individuals.

John Mahoney:

I remember that.

Dick Quintal:

Oh, yeah, you were on the board. Okay. So, I had to come before you because in Covid, you couldn’t get anything, anybody to get it all done and I kept getting letters from the town that I was going to. So, I know the foresight was for that, but sometimes when we move quickly like that, what the town does then this little you know, but if you are getting a $15,000 say water bill because that’s your business and you’re washing dishes and you’re washing. I believe conservation and I don’t think there’s a business person in the world that would say, “Oh, I’d love to save some money in water but I don’t think they should be penalized just 3% on their bill for a user of that magnitude.” So, I mean for the residents maybe so but I’d have to have more information but–

John Mahoney:

Absolutely.

Dick Quintal:

That’s all.

John Mahoney:

I’m sorry. Derek, through the Chair, Derek, obviously it doesn’t make sense to have that as an agenda item in my opinion until we could have some sort of baseline of how that rate shift would–what those numbers are, so.

Betty Cavacco:

Correct.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, and I had talked to the DPW Director the following day relative to the issue around rates and he had said to me that he thinks that the data is already there and that’s something that they could analyze in-house, that they wouldn’t have to go out and contract that out. So, we’ve already–I mean, it’s been less than a week and so, we’ve already started those conversations.

[2:30:07]

John Mahoney:

Okay. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

All right.

Dick Quintal:

Madam Chair, while we’re on water, I know you touched in the town manager report, Derek and I don’t know, was it Clearwater? Is that what you call it?

Derek Brindisi:

Claremont?

Dick Quintal:

Claremont, all right. When do they plan on doing that and do they have a finished date? And then what happens? Are they going to turn that over to the town or is it too early to be talking out here about it?

Derek Brindisi:

So, the development agreement will come before the board at our next meeting. From talking to our Planning Director, once the vote has been recorded, there’s a 20-day waiting period for any appeals. Assuming there aren’t any appeals, that’ll take us into the January 3rd time period. Relative to the booster station, that’s kind of the crux of the agreement that Claremont would go ahead and build the booster station. They would then engage in environmental deposits on the design. So, the booster station hasn’t been designed yet. So, I would imagine they’ll engage environmental deposits in January then that goes through a six-month design period. So, honestly, we probably wouldn’t see breaking ground at the booster station probably until mid to late summer.

Dick Quintal:

Okay, thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

All right. So, one more thing, I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season and we will be back right after the first of the year. What? What?

Dick Quintal:

I’m sorry. I texted Lisa Johnson when we were talking and asked about the Common Vic license. She said it’s Commonwealth Law and I also Googled it to check it that when you open a restaurant, you have to have this license. But the reason they don’t usually come in, they don’t usually and I was trying to say that but I want to make sure first because it’s not an Alcohol License. It was a Liquor License. That’s when you see the drawings, the bar, the entrance and all and we read the hearing. If they or whoever they are go to that whatever they’re opening then they’re going to have to come in. But right now, it’s just common business. I just don’t want to hold a guy up or even if the board was fine with doing a Zoom quickly if we are, if that’s all it is. That’s all it is.

Charlie Bletzer:

No. I knew it wasn’t a Liquor License. I just didn’t know what business is it.

Dick Quintal:

It’s for a restaurant. And if you Google it, it says it’s a Commonwealth Law.

Charlie Bletzer:

What restaurant?

Dick Quintal:

Well, with the name like Hung Chen, I’m going to say some kind of Oriental. I only say that because Hung works for me a different one.

Charlie Bletzer:

So, it’s an Asian restaurant. I just don’t know what is it. I just want to know what the name of the place was. That’s all.

Betty Cavacco:

It is. The name is on the–

Dick Quintal:

No, it isn’t.

Derek Brindisi:

So, if I could while you’re thinking about that. I just want to bring to the board’s attention that I have been communicating with Senator Moran’s office regarding the legislation around the PILOT legislation. The department of–DLS, Local Services, they’ve weighed in on that legislation. We’re waiting to hear back from them once some minor modifications to that legislation. The reason why I’m telling you this is that we may have to have a very short meeting so that the board can approve any amendments to that legislation and that would have to get done in short order, because the session closes on December 31st. So, if we missed that window, we’ll have to start that PILOT submission on January 1st all over again. So, again, I don’t know when we will get that information from them but we may have to post a short meeting even as via Zoom to approve that.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay.

Charlie Bletzer:

Do you want to approve this?

Dick Quintal:

Well, I mean, it’s just standard.

Harry Helm:

For me, it was acting under the–there was mention that this was beyond a Victualler License, a Liquor License.

Betty Cavacco:

It’s not.

Harry Helm:

Okay, which it is not. And I really don’t care what kind of restaurant is being opened, quite frankly, I really don’t. It does not matter to me. So, I mean, if we were to bring this up, I don’t know how we do it and re-vote it, I would vote yes.

Betty Cavacco:

Just make a motion.

Harry Helm:

Okay. I make a motion that we revive the license conversation under item number one under Licenses, Plymouth Ascend Incorporated, 300 Colony Place, Hung Chen, owner is requesting a Common Victualler License.

[2:35:02]

Harry Helm:

I move that we reconsider our hold on making a decision and go ahead and vote on this.

Dick Quintal:

Second.

Betty Cavacco:

Discussion? All those in favor. Unanimous. So, now, let’s get back to wishing everybody a happy holiday and we will reconvene on January 3rd. And be safe and enjoy.

Dick Quintal:

Merry Christmas. Feliz Navidad. Happy Hanukkah.

John Mahoney:

Motion to adjourn.

Charlie Bletzer:

Second.

Betty Cavacco:

All those in favor? Unanimous. Merry Christmas.