Agenda – Plymouth Select Board 1-10-23 Agenda

Official Minutes – Plymouth Select Board Minutes 1-10-23

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

Dick Quintal:

The Plymouth Select Board meeting, Tuesday, January 10th, 2023. Happy New Year to you all. And please join the board in Pledge of Allegiance. Greetings from Tennessee.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic–I’m not hearing them now. There we go.

Yeah, I don’t know if I can hear them. Good evening, everybody. I’d like to call the meeting to water. And the first order of business is going to be Public Comment. And I can’t see all that are there in the meeting tonight, but if there’s a large public comment, we have to end it by 6:05 and we have two other votes. So, they’ll be limited definitely to three minutes and we will not be corresponding back to anyone speaking on the Public Comment. Is there anyone there wishing to speak under a Public Comment? Please make sure the green light is on and identify yourself for the record.

Pat McCarthy:

All right. Pat McCarthy, Precinct 18 town meeting member.

Harry Helm:

Excuse me. I need to interrupt procedurally here. Dick, I need to read the Preamble or whatever that thing is, the paragraph.

Dick Quintal:

I’m sorry, yeah.

Harry Helm:

Yeah, it’s required so I’m going to read that. Sorry, Pat.

Dick Quintal:

One minute, Pat. Yeah, sorry.

Harry Helm:

In accordance with State Law 2475, and pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means and in-person. Members of the public who wish to watch the meeting may do so in the following manner: tune in to PACTV government cable access channels Comcast channel 15 or Verizon Channel 47 and watch the meeting as it is aired live or watch the meeting live via the PACTV website at pactv.org. Members of the public who wish to participate in the meeting may do so in the following manner:

In-person: here at the Great Hall at the 2nd Floor, at Plymouth Town Hall, 26 Court Street here in Plymouth.

Remote: go to the town website under the Select Board page and click on the Zoom webinar link or simply type in- I’m not going to read it it’s not simple to type, but it’s a very long thing you can type in.

There we go. We’re all set.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you, Mr. Helm for that.

Pat McCarthy:

Okay. Pat McCarthy, Precinct 18 town meeting member Vice-chair, and I’m also a member of the Plymouth Area League of Women Voters Board. I have a question, Dick. Will you allow comments after the presentation of the budget or should I make my comments now?

Dick Quintal:

I’ll allow comments. You mean pertaining to the budget, Pat?

Pat McCarthy:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Yeah, absolutely.

Pat McCarthy:

So, I can make them after the presentation then?

Dick Quintal:

Yes, you may. Yes.

Pat McCarthy:

Thank you very much.

Dick Quintal:

You’re quite welcome.

George McKay:

Yeah, good evening. my name is George McKay. I’m the Precinct Chair of Precinct 8, but tonight I wanted to speak as an individual taxpayer and a retired individual taxpayer that’s on a relatively fixed income. About 12 years ago, I moved here from a town North of Boston and we moved into what was our summer house here, and I was very happy to only have to maintain one home. And I was particularly impressed with the school system that seemed to be operating very efficiently at that time. The cost per pupil in Plymouth was lower than the average cost per pupil for the rest of the State of Massachusetts. In fact, it was typically about $500 less per pupil in Plymouth versus the rest of the state, and this was an FY 2014.

in FY 2015, the disparity closed so that the cost per pupil in Plymouth was equal to the state average. At that time, I spoke to a joint session of the Select Board and the School Committee expressing my concerns about what had happened.

[0:05:05]

George McKay:

Although everyone listened very politely, nothing was done to look at that situation. In subsequent years, the disparity continued to grow so that in FY 2019, the cost per pupil in Plymouth exceeded the average cost per pupil in the state by over $1,250. So, in about five years, Plymouth increased its cost per pupil by about $1,750 over its previous level and this is compared to other cities and towns in the State of Massachusetts.

In proposing the current budget by the school, it shows how much geography they serve currently and they have a map when they overlay Plymouth on other towns and cities in Boston and surrounding Boston. They also talked about state mandates that affect their budget. I just want to make two comments here that are counter points to that. The geographic size of Plymouth has not changed over this 5 to 6-year period. It’s exactly the same as it was when the school was running, in my opinion, very efficiently.

And in addition to that, the school talks about state mandates driving its expenses. Every city and town in Massachusetts have state mandates and Plymouth has the same state mandates as other cities and towns.

Harry Helm:

You have exceeded slightly three minutes.

George McKay:

Can I get one more minute?

Harry Helm:

Dick?

Dick Quintal:

Yeah. We have one more minute. Go ahead.

George McKay:

Okay. Recently, the Select Board asked the town to fine-tune itself to provide a level funded budget, and the Town Manager complied with that request. The Plymouth School said no. What a disappointment to me based on the fact that the Plymouth school system seems to be running an inefficient operation compared to other cities and towns in the State of Massachusetts.

In my opinion, this highlights one part of our current form of government as somewhat dysfunctional, which the Charter Commission chose not to address. The proposed new charter simply carries the school budget as one single separate line item during town meeting rather than allowing debate on the town meeting floor. As I said, these are my personal comments and opinions and I want to thank everybody for listening. Thank you very much.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you. Before I take any more public comment, in view of, we got a 6:05. That we have to start at 6:05. I’d rather move on to the Community Preservation Committee Warrant Article Request at this time and the agreement with Claremont. And if we still have time between those two in the 6:05 then I’ll open it back up. But if not, we’ll definitely have more public comment later but I have to keep that timeline of 6:05 with a joint meeting that’s very important. It’s advertised that way. So, Mr. Brindisi, if I can put you on, Derek for the Community Preservation Committee update and let’s see what we have.

Derek Brindisi:

Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, back in front of the board for a second week a row is the discussion relative to the article request by the CPC. This morning, we received a memo from the CPC and I’ll read it into the record.

The Community Preservation Committee met on Monday, January 9th. The CPC took a vote to recommend 16A to the spring special town meeting warrant and move 16B and 16C to the fall town meeting. The CPC also agreed regarding 16D that if it is a pledge of the Board of Select and if it can be legally placed on the spring annual town meeting warrant, the Community Preservation Committee has no objections. So, that’s what’s before the board for discussion this evening.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Question to Mr. Brindisi, what did the lawyers say about this concept that although the CPC, they originally said only the CPC can recommend to town meeting not the Select Board. Yet, in their email they are saying that regarding 16D, if it is the pleasure of the Select Board. I’m a little bit confused.

[0:10:14]

Derek Brindisi:

Through the Chair, to Selectman Helm. So, as you all recall, the reason why this issue was tabled last week, it was brought to our attention by the Finance Director that there may be a possibility that the Select Board could not overrule a recommendation by CPC. So, we did a little bit of research on that very question and what we found was that CPC recommends to town meeting. There’s no language relative to the Select Board or the Board of Selectmen in the statute. So, it’s legal’s opinion that again, it’s the CPC recommendation to town meeting.

As it relates to 16D, it’s also legal’s opinion that CPC had taken an affirmative vote. I think it was a unanimous vote on December 22nd to send article 16D to town meeting. So, it’s the opinion of counsel that based upon those facts that they would suggest to the Select Board that they could in fact put 16D on the annual town meeting warrant.

Dick Quintal:

Any other comments or questions from the board? Is that you, John?

John Mahoney:

Yes, it is, Mr. Quintal. I’m sorry. So, the CPC had a very unusual Monday night meeting last night. I believe there was one absent and the other eight were in attendance and we had a very robust discussion over the four potential articles and what has occurred over the last month, and we got a unanimous vote out of that. Basically, what the Town Manager just read into the record and the thought of the committee was that if the Select Board sees fit that article 16D should go on the April spring town meeting. And I’m inclined to make a motion that we do put article 16D, which obviously is the routine set aside set up accounts so that all the financials continue into July 1st as they have for the prior 21 years in a row. This would be 22 years in a row, but I like to make a motion in that effect.

Harry Helm:

I’ll second for discussion.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Second by Mr. Helm for discussion. Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Yeah. I have a couple problems with this. One being is that we set a policy. They did not meet the deadlines for that policy. I guess, a question as part of my comments to the Town Manager, are we willing to give this same by your leave around our set policies to anybody who wants to put one in tomorrow, any resident of the town, any department, anyone? That’s a question.

Derek Brindisi:

I think that’s a question for the board to answer. But the policy is a policy that’s in place to try to provide a framework and left and right limits to the work that we do. The CPC came last week to ask for consideration for those articles. And so, I guess, again, it goes back to the board.

Harry Helm:

Okay. So, in other words, we would be voting against a policy that we set. We would be voting for an exception to a policy that we set. Also, I have a little bit of a problem in this case because your concerns are valid about what could happen with the inability of the CPC to spend any money and projects could come up. The CPC last week seemed to indicate that contrary to their vote on the 22nd that they were okay and in favor of allowing 16D to move to the fall town meeting. That was clearly what was communicated to us. I’m concerned that we are basically being put in a position because they’re not saying please let us put 16D on the spring warrant. We know we missed the deadline, but please in this case. They’re saying if it’s the pleasure of the board, which is an equivocation. Okay? It is not a statement saying that they want it to be on the spring special town meeting warrant.

[0:15:09]

Harry Helm:

So, I’m a bit at sixes and of sevens and I’m going to take into account last week’s statements from the folks from the CPC who are here that they don’t really think that 16D needs to be on the spring special town meeting and that they’re willing to wait until the fall town meeting.

Dick Quintal:

Okay.

John Mahoney:

Mr. Quintal?

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

So, we talked about potentially going against a policy that we just implemented. So, a few months ago, the board implemented a flag policy. We put the flag policy up. All of a sudden at the next meeting, the room is filled with individuals who are offended that a certain flag was flown I believe for the month of June and then all of a sudden, this policy shows up and it’s going to forbid any other entity from flying a flag on the front of Town Hall. So, we did provide a one-time waiver to that policy. We provided an entity with the ability I believe to fly a flag out in front of the Town Hall I think for five days the week of Thanksgiving, I believe. And I know it might not have come up publicly when we discussed it, but talking to a couple of my colleagues after the meeting, it was basically if anyone else came up after that and looked for relief from the flag policy, they could go out and seek legal counsel because it was one and done. I think this is a similar situation.

The CPC, obviously, there was a little bit of consternation over the rollout of the policy. Apparently now about six weeks ago, we had a good discussion last night with respect to 16D. I have faith in our Finance Director. I know that it is in the best interest of this community in the committee to be in the best position we can be financially, and that’s to put 16D on the annual for the 22nd year in a row and make sure that this community can respond to anything that potentially comes down the highway.

Charlie Bletzer:

Mr. Chairman?

Dick Quintal:

Any other? Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Yes. Last week, CPC came before us and they wanted to have the articles on the annual town meeting. And then after conversations, they decided they came before us and said that they didn’t want to violate the policy that we set. So, they said they could wait until the fall town meeting. And the board at that time spoke up and saying that we wouldn’t be fiscally responsible if we did that. And I asked the question, do you need any money because you’re not going to be able to spend money till October? And they said, “We don’t need money. Everything we’re doing, we’re all set.” So, I was prepared to vote as they wanted. Let’s put it on the fall. Let’s adhere to the policies that we set. Other board members mentioned that we wouldn’t be fiscally responsible. So, now, I’m coming back tonight and saying that, okay. Let’s put it on the annual. And I’m hearing again, now, it’d be violating that policy. So, which is it? I don’t get it. We have to do what we think is right for the town. You convinced me last week and it sounds like CPC wants certain articles annual and then I think D is going to go on the fall. So, I’m prepared to vote for what they’re requesting and support that committee.

Dick Quintal:

Mrs. Cavacco? Betty?

Betty Cavacco:

Yes, sorry. And please excuse my voice because there’s not much of it. But the letter that we received today that says it would be at the board’s pleasure. This isn’t the board’s pleasure. This is what we want, if CPC wants to move these articles forward then they say to us, “Let’s move the articles forward,” and if we would waive the policy. I understand the new policy. There have been other questions about the new policy that people aren’t aware of. We’ve made accommodations for other issues even like Mr. Mahoney said. So, I don’t want to move forward with a vote that says it’s at our pleasure. If CPC wants it, then they say that’s what we want. If they don’t want it then we move it on to wherever it needs to go.

[0:20:06]

Betty Cavacco:

But I’ll tell you something, this whole thing with these articles, and the policy, and the back and forth is a disgrace. We have way more important things that we need to concentrate on instead of this back-and-forth ridiculousness. And if the CPC wants it to move forward, I want to hear from CPC asking to move it forward. And if they don’t, then they don’t and let’s be done with this.

Dick Quintal:

Are you all set, Betty?

Betty Cavacco:

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. I tend to coincide with Betty on that. I mean, CPC has been an option roughly approximately 20 years. And we’re not going to go into all the projects whether I like them or not. That’s not what this is about. It’s about what they do as a committee and what they do to town meeting. Their case gets a nod from us and it’s going to go to town meeting and that’s where some more debate can happen. So, as far as the policy goes, I understand it. And somebody’s absolutely right, we did make an exception and us as a board, if the board feels that way, that’s our right to do that. There could be different circumstances. I mean, I personally don’t have an issue but we’ll vote the way we vote. So, is there any more comment?

Harry Helm:

Chairman Quintal, we have Russ Shirley at the podium. He’s a member of the CPC.

Russell Shirley:

Let me just clarify.

Dick Quintal:

Excuse me. We got a motion on the floor right now. Is there any other board members that would like to comment on this? Okay. I don’t think so. Anyone on the board mind that Mr. Shirley speak on a Public Comment? Seeing none. Mr. Shirley.

Russell Shirley:

Thank you.

Dick Quintal:

You’re welcome.

Russell Shirley:

So, there’s four articles that we’ve considered. One of which is a land acquisition that falls under what we would typically do under the special town meeting. Special town meeting warrant is open now. So, we do want to proceed forward with that article. As far as the other three articles, we’re willing to wait till the fall. We took no vote that requested this but if there’s people that are in the Select Board or in the finance department that want us to proceed and have money available from July to October, we have other methods for making sure that we can have appraisals done during that period and we’re not worried about not having the money.

Dick Quintal:

Okay, thank you. Back to the board, back to Mr. Mahoney’s motion. What was the motion again, John, please?

John Mahoney:

To put article 16D on the spring annual town meeting in April.

Dick Quintal:

And we had a second by Mr. Helm?

John Mahoney:

Correct.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. All those in favor? Mr. Mahoney?

Derek Brindisi:

Mr. Chairman, can you call a rollcall vote given that two of our members are virtual?

Dick Quintal:

Yes, I am. I’m talking with John though.

Derek Brindisi:

Sorry.

Dick Quintal:

That’s okay. Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Yes. Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

No.

Dick Quintal:

Mrs. Cavacco?

Betty Cavacco:

No.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Yes.

Anthony Senesi:

Please speak into the microphone.

Dick Quintal:

Charlie?

Charlie Bletzer:                                                        

Yes.

Dick Quintal:                                                

Yes. Myself, no. Three no’s and two yes’s. Mr. Mahoney and Mr. Bletzer. Motion does not carry. Moving on to the agreement with Claremont. Mr. Brindisi?

Derek Brindisi:

Okay. Through the Chair, so again, this is second week in a row for the Claremont Agreement. I spent a lot of time last week outlining to the board the Claremont Agreement. Just in summary, this is an agreement between the town and between Claremont with the town through the Board of Selectmen as Water Commissioners would waive any water fees, water and sewer connection fees and then as the Select Board would waive any building permit fees for the Claremont Development.

[0:25:04]

Derek Brindisi:

In return, Claremont has agreed to construct a water booster station in the West Plymouth pressure zone at approximately $3 million. Pending any questions, that’s all I have.

Dick Quintal:

Yeah, I believe that Derek that some of the members needed more information, correct?

Derek Brindisi:

That’s correct. So, I sent out the ZBA decision and the appeal to the board over the week.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Thank you. Any comments from the board or questions for the Town Manager? John, do you have your hand up?

John Mahoney:

No, I do not.

Dick Quintal:

Well, put it down. It’s very hard to see on the screen here, so I apologize. I’m doing as best as I can. No questions from the board?

Charlie Bletzer:

Nope.

Dick Quintal:

Await a motion.

Charlie Bletzer:

Mr. Chairman?

Dick Quintal:

Yes, Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

I’m ready to make a motion that we approve the agreement with Claremont.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Do I have a second?

John Mahoney:

Second.

Dick Quintal:

Second, Mr. Mahoney. Discussion? Okay. Now, we’ll do the vote. Mrs. Cavacco?

Betty Cavacco:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

And myself, yes. Unanimous. Thank you. Let’s move on. We still got a few minutes here, let’s move on to the Administrative Notes. Any questions? There’s five of them on the agenda tonight. If not, I’ll accept them as a whole unless there’s objections or questions. No questions. Do I have a motion?

Charlie Bletzer:

I make the motion.

Dick Quintal:

Motion by Mr. Bletzer.

Harry Helm:

Second.

Dick Quintal:

Second by Mr. Helm. Discussion? Seeing no hands, I’ll call for the vote. Mrs. Cavacco?

Betty Cavacco:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

And myself, yes. Unanimous on the Administrative Notes. And we have one on Bertucci’s change of manager is requesting a change of the manager from Richard Mooney to Adam Rameaka.

Charlie Bletzer:

Move that.

Dick Quintal:

Do I have a second?

Harry Helm:

Second.

Dick Quintal:

Second by Mr. Helm, motioned by Mr. Bletzer. Discussion? Excuse me? Mrs. Cavacco?

Betty Cavacco:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Yes.

Dick Quintal:

And myself, yes. Unanimous again. Thank you.

Derek Brindisi:

Mr. Chairman, whenever you’re ready, we can recess for five minutes so everybody can take their places.

Dick Quintal:

Absolutely. The board will now recess for five minutes. Thank you.

I like to welcome to a joint meeting, a budget meeting with the Advisory & Finance Committee and the School Committee. I’d like to welcome you all and thank you for joining us. And at this time, I’ll wait for their chairs or designated person to open their meetings.

Kim Savery:

All right. It’s 6:11 and I call the meeting of the Plymouth School Committee to order.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you, Ms. Savery.  Welcome.

Kim Savery:

Thank you.

Kevin Canty:

Thank you, Mr. Quintal. The time being 6:12 and a quorum of the Advisory & Finance Committee being present, I will call to order at this time the January 10th, 2023 meeting of Plymouth’s Advisory & Finance Committee.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you and welcome, Mr. Canty and all your members. At this time, I’d like to turn it over to Mr. Brindisi for a quick update of where we all left off last week. And then we’ll be hearing from Mr. Campbell. Mr. Brindisi?

[0:30:07]

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. We’re just going to pull the slide deck up and we’ll start in a few minutes.

Dick Quintal:

Take your time but hurry up. Just kidding.

Derek Brindisi:

All right. We’re ready. Can you see the slide, Mr. Chairman?

Dick Quintal:

No, I can’t but I have everything printed out in front of me, so. There we go. Now, we got it.

Derek Brindisi:

You got it, okay? So, this is an updated presentation from December 13th when we made our original budget proposal. And so, the board has already seen this but I think for the purposes of the folks that are in the audience, administration of finance and the School Committee, I think it’s important to go through some of the data numbers. It’ll help I think put things in perspective as far as some of the financial conditions that we’re in today but most importantly how the revenues are generated and where the expenses come from.

So, as folks know, each and every year, we can increase the budget by 2.5%. And so, these are the 2024 revenue numbers. And you can see at the top here, let me see if I can get the pointer, that this year’s 2.5% increase amounts to about $5.1 million. New Growth is another revenue source and this is a projected number each and every year. Lynne, our Finance Director, she looks at this conservatively every year and looks at previous years’ trends. And initially, we plugged in about $3 million we’re projecting in New Growth. So, a New Growth for those that aren’t aware is new developments, new construction projects, new improvements to the community that increase the tax base.

I’m going to skip all the excess levy capacity for a minute here. As you all know we got state aid, so that represents about $1 million dollars. Local Receipts, so those are all the receipts that we bring in such as building permits, things of that nature, beach stickers and others. Our indirect is about $190,000.

And so, I’ll go back to the Excess Levy Capacity. So, you’ll hear me talk a little bit about Excess Levy Capacity later on the slide deck. This year, we have plugged in a number of about $2 million to use in order to balance this year’s budget of Excess Levy Capacity. Now, again, I’ll talk a little bit about it but a lot of communities don’t have access to Excess Levy Capacity. Most communities are at their full Levy and the only way they’re able to increase revenues on this slide would be the 2.5% in their New Growth and their Local Receipts. So, we have the distinct advantage that we have the ability that when we have a weak revenue year that we can tap into this Excess Levy Capacity.

And so, Excess Levy Capacity comes from unused Levy in previous years. So, if we had a banner year and our revenues outpace our expenses, we wouldn’t raise to the full ability and we would put this in what I call like a line of credit and then you can use at a later date.

So, as you can see from here in order to balance the budget, you’ve all heard the story. We’ve had a really challenging year as far as looking at our town operations and our school operations and trying to balance that. So, this year’s budget recommendation is about $1.2 million increase to the town side and about $4.1 million increase on the school side. And we all share this Fixed Costs of health insurance and pension at $3.2 million. So, I think this year was at 8% increase in our pension and 7% increase in our health side. So, again, those two numbers far outpace 2.5% that we can raise each and every year. Debt Service is about 495,000.

And so, again, you guys have all seen this. Again, when we look at the budget drivers, a lot of the things very difficult to try to navigate around because a lot of them are fixed costs. So, our salary is a fixed costs between steps and lanes and collar increases, our benefits, what I just mentioned, our health insurance. Debt Service is a fixed cost. Utilities has become a growing problem the past couple years. So, again, we’re really limited to this like 16% as far as like how much ability we really have to change. But in these expenses, this is our training light items. This is our equipment line items. Again, a number of other things that we need to do for our job’s day in and day out.

[0:35:06]

Derek Brindisi:

The point is there’s not a lot of meat left on the bone when you start looking at the overall budget. These are the sources of funding. Again, 77% of our revenues are derived from the property taxes. 13% from state aid, local receipts represent 8% and 2% other.

So, again, this is just a snapshot when we look back to where we were last year to where we are this year. The town operating budget went up at $1.2 million as I mentioned, which represents about a 2% increase. The school operating budget went up about $4.1 million dollars, which represents about 3.8% increase and a fixed cost at 4.6%.

So, again, New Growth. You all know this better than I do. Plymouth has over the last few years has seen a real surge in construction and new development projects and that continues to push up our new growth. So, again, we plugged in $3 million on the last couple years again, trying to have a conservative number even though this past year, we had about $5 million in New Growth. So, we had a difference of on the positive side of $2 million. The last thing we want to do is plug in $5 million of New Growth projection and then only get $4 million in New Growth. And now, we’ve already started with a structural deficit of $1 million dollars. So, again, this is why we always try to budget conservatively with the New Growth.

So, Excess Levy, we currently have an Excess Levy Capacity of about $9 million. We’re proposing to use $2 million in this year’s budget, which would drop us down to $7 million dollars. Under today’s revenue projections and expense projections, you can see very quickly that in less than three years, our Excess Levy Capacity would probably disappear. Again, unless we have like banner years and New Growth that can help kind of keep a surplus in the Excess Levy Capacity. But again, when we think about Excess Levy Capacity, it has an effect on our taxpayers, right? So, what we’re recommending today is a $2 million increase using that excess capacity, which represents to the average homeowner approximately $66.

Legally, if the Select Board, A&F or even town meeting decided they wanted to use all $9 million in one year, legally, they could do that. We have the ability to do that. Although, we wouldn’t recommend it. If we were to do that, it would increase the average homeowner. I think it’s $367 or $307 if we were to use the entire $9.2 million in excess capacity in just one year. So, again, there’s been a lot of conversations over the last few weeks about this $800,000 that’s kind of the difference in discussion. The recommendation that I had made to the Select Board didn’t include this $800,000 for the school. The Select Board’s recommendation to A&F did not include the $800,000 to the school. From what I understand, the recommendation by Dr. Campbell to the School Committee didn’t include the $800,000 in order to maintain their existing operations.

So, what is that $800,000 mean to the average homeowner? That’s approximately $26 to the average homeowner to raise that $800,000. So, we went through three different rounds of budget cuts. Ultimately, what happened on the town side is we did not fund nine positions in FY ‘24. Those were public safety positions both in fire and police, public works positions, positions here in Town Hall, a number of positions here in Town Hall as well, and that’s how we were able to help balance. That was one of the things that we did to help balance. We’ve taken another substantial reductions in some of our operating line items that are going to have a severe impact especially to our summer operations. So, oftentimes, we get a lot of requests during the weekends to increase our staffing for public safety at our beaches or increase our staffing on our beaches and ponds for public works. We cut over a half a million dollars just in overtime costs alone. So, we know when those requests come this coming summer, we’re not going to fulfill those requests. So, we know that we’re going to have a substantial negative impact on especially last summer operations because of the reduction in overtime.

[0:40:00]

Derek Brindisi:

Like the school and like the town, we had to cut some of our necessary equipment and other expenses as well. So, this isn’t going to change, and I would argue that we’re going to continue to see difficult financial conditions over the next two to three, four, five years unless we start thinking about some of our fixed costs. And one of those, as you all know, is our health insurance. We plan on starting PEC negotiations, Thursday, working with all the unions who are hoping we can make some substantial improvement on benefit changes and maybe potentially even premium changes as well. But quite frankly and quite honestly, if we can’t make any headway with our health insurance negotiations, I think we’ll be having this conversation next January but I would predict that it could be far worse than it is today.

One of the positions that we were able to restore was the HVAC Technician over at our Facilities Management Department and that was only because we had a number of contracted services that we were already outsourcing our HVAC. So, we basically reduced that amount in order to restore our position. So, it was a net zero proposition to the budget but it brings somebody here full time to the town.

The same is said with the Assistant HR Director, there was a number of those three-line items for consultant services that we were able to produce that was able to then fund that position as well. Outside of that, everything else was a status quo. And I guess, I’ll end with that. We’ve talked about consolidation. It’s been brought up a couple times, and that’s one place we think that maybe it’s not this year but it’s something that we’d like to keep on the table for a future consideration with the School Committee. Pending any questions, I’m going to turn the rest over to Dr. Campbell.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you. Dr Campbell, welcome.

Christopher Campbell:

Good evening. Thank you very much. Chris Campbell, Superintendent of Schools. This is my third year as superintendent. For those who don’t know me, I’ve been here for 15 years and a proud resident for almost 23 years now in Plymouth. So, thank you for having me this evening. I really appreciate the opportunity to present to you the proposed FY ‘24 budget for the School Department. We continue to face challenging times as a School Department with students post pandemic really experiencing some heightened challenges and the need to support students with academic social, emotional and behavioral needs certainly is not subsiding.

So, tonight, I will present the proposed ‘24 budget for the School Department. I’ll also be sharing information regarding the School Committee’s commitment to keep costs down, our efforts to reduce overall expenses as well as our concerns and priorities for the coming years. As we advocate for our essential needs, I’ve always said we’re obligated to consider the economic climate and present a budget that is both responsible and responsive. Responsive meaning responsive to the needs of our students and responsible to the taxpayers particularly during economic conditions that are challenging. My administrative team as well as the School Committee have worked very collaboratively to try to keep costs down and reduce our budgets over the last few years. In fact, FY ‘20 budget was the last time that we operated under a level service budget. You may recall a few years ago, I believe the meeting was facilitated by Mr. Canty. In fact, we had a meeting in this room, a joint board meeting so much this evening when we talked about the fiscal cliff of ‘24 and how we could reduce costs, and there was a lot of brainstorming that night. Similarly, very shortly thereafter, we had a joint meeting, School Committee with the Select Board to talk about what we could do and commit collaboratively and collectively to curb our costs so that we wouldn’t be in the situation down the road where we’d be seeking an operational override for an operational budget. So, we committed at that time to reduce our overall expenses after our constructional obligations to reduce our overall expenses by 1% annually. We committed to really try to do to work with our unions and all of our contracts to settle very modest contracts with our bargaining units as well as our unaffiliated staff, which we were proud to say that we successfully did the last go-around. Again, I want to stress that the School Department has done its due diligence to try to reduce its budget every time requested by the town.

[0:45:01]

Christopher Campbell:

So, just to sort of go to a timeline kind of bring us back in FY ’21, you may recall, this is really in the height of the pandemic. This is when town meeting was delayed until August. The School Committee was asked in April of that year to reduce its uh originally proposed budget by $1.9 million, which they did. This was due to the loss of revenue. Again, the pandemic had an impact on this community as well as other communities. At the August town meeting, town meeting members overwhelmingly voted to add the $1.9 million back for Covid expenses specifically. I do want to stress that the School Department in that budget did reduce its expenses. That money was put again towards Covid expenses. It wasn’t in our operational budget. I believe we reduced 15 positions through attrition. We also reduced our supply line; I believe by $200,000 but that operational budget was reduced that year.

We were able to return funds in FY ‘20 at the peak of the pandemic, I believe about $2.9 million that year. When we closed our doors on March 13th, there were some contracts that we didn’t have to see out at the end of that year. So, we were able to return about $2.9 million. In FY ’21, largely due to the availability of CARES Act funding, we were able to return over $3 million. In FY ’22, the School Committee reduced its level service budget by just over $1 million. That was after removing the $1.9 million that was reinstated by town meeting members for Covid expenses. And in this fiscal year FY ’23, School Committee reduced its level service budget again by $770,000. The proposed budget that was voted on December 19th by School Committee reduces its original level service budget by over 2 million dollars and I’ll get into that in greater detail momentarily.

I know this is hard to see on the screen, but this is just a sort of a timeline of the process that we went through this year. So, every year, we collaborate with the town to try to get what the guideline is based on the existing revenues and availability of funds. So, this year, unlike in years past, the original guideline was a level service budget. And as you all know, a level service budget assumes the same services moving forward into the next fiscal year assuming that your costs are going to go up because contracts go up and the cost of doing business goes up. And so, in November, in mid-November, our budget was developed with our cost center managers. Our initial service budget was coming in, our level service budget was coming in at 6.56% over current year or over $116 million, which is more significant than in my 15 years here in Plymouth.

We met with Town Administration on November 22nd and we had a we had a conversation and the request there was to try to get as close to 4% as we possibly could because of the things that were mentioned by Town Manager. So, right after Thanksgiving, we met with our Administrative Team, all of our principals, coordinators, directors, my central office team to see what we could do to reduce that budget and get it as low as we can without layoffs and we reduced again that initial level service budget by just over 2% or $2.2 million. We communicated that revised budget on the 30th to Town Administration and we posted our budget proposal to Electronic School Board. And mind you, we have a timeline to follow. Our School Committee presentation was on the 5th. So, that budget was presented December 5th.

We reviewed that budget with our Cost Center Management on December 2nd and then that Friday afternoon, we were contacted by the town to say that we were at that time approximately $2 million dollars short still. We presented our budget on December 5th. Again, that was our initial presentation, had a meeting again with Town Administration on December 6th where the shortfall as was mentioned earlier of $1.6 million existed and we were asked to see what we could do to split those costs 50/50 and reduce our budget by another $800,000.

[0:50:04]

Christopher Campbell:

At that time, I said I would present something to the School Department. I couldn’t certainly guarantee anything, but I would present what those options would be to our School Committee because our next meeting was on the 19th. Right before that, on the 13th, Town manager presented his budget to Select Board, which included that $800,000 and explained at that time that we had not met yet with the School Committee, but we would be momentarily. We met on the 19th and after that presentation, this as has been mentioned previously, the School Committee voted to support the original FY ‘24 budget, which is up by just over 4.5%. I think it’s important to note that the budget that has been supported by the School Department thus far has reduced nearly $400,000 greater than the last two fiscal years combined. So, this is the most significant reduction that we have made in recent years.

So, this is a slide on the 19th that I presented to the School Committee. You’ll see the first column that’s starred there that is the budget that was ultimately voted on by the School Committee on December 19th, a budget of $114,290,770 and that is a 2.2 million dollar reduction over our initial level service budget. In order to get to that number, we are forced to reduce 15 active positions through attrition both certificated and non-certificated. So, those are teaching positions and non-teaching positions within the district. So, that is necessary. We’re also taking a chance with anticipated retirement savings. Two years ago, we were very successful with retirement savings and we’re able to meet that short file quite significantly. It’s becoming very difficult to get much retirement savings with new hires these days as much as we did in previous years because the competitive nature of hiring. We do not pay for our initial teacher salaries are lower, in the Lower Side where you can go 15 minutes north of here and make $10,000 more in some cases. So, we not only have a hard time attracting new teachers at lower rates, but we lose people to more competitive salaries.

The budget that was ultimately approved by School Committee on the 19th also in addition to those positions being reduced, we do have an additional I think 10.9% reduction in supplies. And our goal is to use some grants to offset some of the contracted services that we can to reduce some of that as well. So, I also presented two scenarios to the School Committee on the 19th. One showing if we reduce our budget by an additional $450,000 and then again if we reduce it by the total of $800,000 that was asked by the town. If we were to cut another $450,000 in addition to the reduction of those 15 active positions, my recommendation would be to cut four administrative positions. I’ve been here for 15 years and in my first year here was actually during the peak of the recession and we’ve been through this quite a bit. When we look at reducing staff and reducing costs, we always look at positions that have the least direct effect on the student.

So, my first recommendation would be to cut four administrative positions, which would certainly hit us, would create a lot of work for a lot of people. If we were to cut an additional $350,000 to reach that $800,000 reduction in addition to the 15 positions mentioned, in addition to the four administrative positions, we would be forced to cut an additional seven certificated positions or seven to ten additional non-certificated positions or a combination of those two.

So, when you look at our total proposed budget that was approved by School Committee, $114,290,770 – 77% of that budget is comprised of salaries while the remaining 23% goes towards non-salary expenses, which I’ll break down in the next two slides.

This chart breaks down the total proposed budget by object code or simply the categories that describe the nature of our budget expenses. So, as you can see, certificated salaries, these are our teaching, our specialists that educate our students, makes up the largest portion. Clerical salaries is just over 3.3 million. Other salaries for other positions is just over 14 million.

[0:55:04]

Christopher Campbell:

Contracted services is almost 22 million. This is contract services for special education programs that are outside of our district as well as transportation costs, which I’ll get into greater detail. Supplies and materials for the entire district, this is all supplies and materials is under 3 million dollars at this point and other expenses which gets into professional development and other expenses is just over a million dollars.

This chart shows our operational budget when insurance for active employees is included. And I think this is something that was already mentioned this evening, but insurance is something that really drives the costs certainly of the town’s budget. And certainly, represented here just over $16.6 million for active employees. Health insurance, I believe for the active employees in the school side is up almost 18% over the last time that I looked at it. It was mentioned during public comment this evening that the per pupil expenditures compared to the state is up in comparison in Plymouth. I don’t have the slide this evening but I did present to the League of Women Voters at a public forum recently here a slide that showed our appropriate pool expenditures. And they compared communities of similar wealth. And what you see and I would encourage anyone to go to the Department of Education website to look at this and you can Google Radar, and it will analyze school department budgets and their expenses. And when you look at where we’re spending our money, it’s not in administration. We’re average in administration. We’re below for teacher spending. We’re average for professional development instructional materials, guidance and pupil services. Where we are above is in benefits and fixed costs such as transportation, and that is something that is unique to Plymouth certainly. And I think our geography certainly does play a role in that.

This chart here shows the percentage increase by object code. So, you can see it over prior year. As you can see, our overall salaries are up a very modest 2.41% with the greatest increase found in contracted services 13.54%. Contracted services accounts for over half of our budget increase for FY ‘24. Last year, our contracted service line was up by only 2.64%. This is a significant increase for us and I’ll get into where that lies momentarily.

This graph illustrates the percentage budget increases over a prior year and goes back from FY ‘15 to the most recent proposal. So, in the last 10 years post-recession years, we’ve averaged 3.57% increase over prior year with the year we implemented full-day kindergarten being the most substantial at 5.8%.

So, what’s driving the cost of the budget this year for us? So, the rate of inflation I think is something that we’re all familiar with. And while inflation has been historically high in the past year, I believe last December of 2021, it was a low of 7% and as high as 9% in June. The major drivers of the School Department budget far exceed those inflation rates. Approximately 20% of our budget is comprised of very fixed costs such as transportation, contracted services for special education programs, placements and utilities. Only 2.5% of our operational budget goes towards all supplies and materials. So, some of the major costs are here.

Transportation is a significant driver in our budget. Fuel escalation is up over 900% since last year. Our fuel escalation costs are anticipated to be $280,000. This is significant. Special Education, OSD tuition rates increase of 14%. I’ll get into that in greater detail momentarily. Utilities, the cost of utilities is going up. Oil is 206% over our highest rate in FY ’21. Supplies and materials just to kind of put in perspective while it’s a small amount of our budget, just as an example, a pallet of paper a year ago was costing us $975 is up to $1600 for one pallet of paper. One increase that we have added to our budget, we are very fortunate we have a wonderful relationship with our Police Department here. We’ve had four SROs in our secondary schools for as long as I’ve been here, which are a great addition in partnership with our schools.

Last year, we initiated two school resource offices that support our eight elementary schools.

[1:00:03]

Christopher Campbell:

The police department was able to absorb those costs last year. The budget moving forward for FY ‘24 does assume a 50/50 split of those two positions so that is in addition to our budget. School security is something that we’ve been very concerned with for quite some time. So, we’re committed to that.

This was mentioned earlier. I shared a similar image with Mr. Flaherty for the League of Women Voters presentation and he actually made it look much nicer than the one which you see here. It is a great challenge for us. Our geography is a great challenge, which leads to some of our greatest expenses. This community is over 100 square miles. I believe we have 400 miles of roads and many of our roads don’t go east to west. Most of them are north to south, so it makes it very difficult to reduce our transportation costs when geographically we’re so large. So, Plymouth size does impact our transportation. It makes it very difficult for us, as I said, to collapse runs. As a result, Plymouth spends over $11 million transporting students annually, which is extraordinary. It’s something that we’re committed to trying to resolve in any way we can. One thing that’s important to note that Plymouth does not receive special reimbursement that Regional School Districts get despite being quite larger in size than those Regional School Districts. These are just some of the expenses. You can see the breakdown of where we’re spending that money to transport students.

One thing that a lot of people don’t know is that we’re also responsible for transporting students in charter schools that reside in Plymouth. I mentioned previously the operational service division of the OSD. So, for those who aren’t familiar with OSD, the OSD is an executive branch agency of the Commonwealth. It falls under the Executive Office of Administration and Finance and they set the tuition prices for the approved special education programs in the Commonwealth. So, there are there are there are over 200 approved special ed programs in the Commonwealth that serve some of the most vulnerable students. These are students with significant neurological, cognitive, behavioral disabilities that require specialized instruction. And many communities are forced to send a lot of students to these programs in order to educate them because they do not have the services within the district. So, every year, by Statute, OSD is required to notify superintendents typically in October of what that OSD rate increase will be over probably a year for those programs.

The estimated rate of inflation for FY ‘24 has been set at 14%. Statewide, a conservative estimate of that increase is over $92 million, and for Plymouth, we would need an additional 1.2 million to pay for that increase for the private special education tuitions. The OSD rate alone accounts for 1.13% of our budget increase. This is more significant than it’s ever been in the history of the OSD rate.

Just to put that in perspective, this slide highlights the inflation figures from the last 13 years for OSD. So, as you can see from FY ‘11 through FY ’23, the average tuition increase for these programs by OSD was 1.87% with a low of 0.75% percent to a high of 2.72% in FY ’21. So, to put this in perspective, the OSD’s proposed increase is 550% percent over FY ’23, which is crippling to communities.

One significant change certainly in my 15 years here that we’re seeing is the demographic of our School Community is the percentage of English language Learners here in Plymouth. This chart illustrates the number of EL students by school. Those receiving services, those that are in kindergarten that aren’t receiving services yet but will next year and then families that have opted out currently to those services. And the last column shows sort of what we call the percentage of students that are beginners. These are non-English speakers that really have no command of the English language. As of December 5th, when I did the initial presentation to School Committee, we had 351 students that were considered receiving EL support. It’s at 354 as of January 4th.

[1:05:08]

Christopher Campbell:

We have 433 students whose first language is not English and we anticipate this number to rise at the end of this month. Most of these students are from Brazil, speak Brazilian-Portuguese. Brazil gets out of school in the summer, in the end of January and we see an influx of families at this time.

Last year, we were providing services to EL students in five schools. We’re now currently providing students services in seven schools, and I strongly feel that we need to expand to an eighth in the near future. Another thing to point out in addition to the increased cost to educate these students, there’s an increased demand for translation and interpreted services for their families where we’re obligated to provide. So, this is something that is considerable.

This graph illustrates the number of EL students’ receiving services over time. In FY ’09, which is the first one, it’s hard to see there. This is the first year that I came to work in Plymouth. We were supporting 42 students that were non-English speaking. Presently, we’re supporting 274 students. We’ve seen a 22% percent increase since last year and a 222% increase since FY ’19.

You may recall from last year’s budget presentation our discussion in how we were trying to reduce some of our costs. We reduced our budget by $770,000. One strategy that we approached was in actually increasing our EL services in order to decrease transportation costs. A few years ago, we expended just over $36,000 to transport EL students. We are obligated to provide those services to students regardless of whether or not that service is provided in their school. So, that’s when we end up transporting students. This number rose exponentially as EL students rose in our community. So, last year, we found ourselves spending nearly 430,000 to transport students to other schools to provide them services. So, our approach this year with the addition of 2 ESL teachers in two different schools by expanding services, we are able to reduce our transportation expenses by nearly $280,000 and our overall expenses in EL by $170,000. So, this is just an example of how we’ve tried to provide a better service but also try to reduce our overall expenses particularly in an area where transportation, I refer to it as the non-educational dollars. So, trying to do everything we can to curb those costs.

Everyone’s familiar with Chapter 70, which is state aid for education. This graph just simply illustrates Chapter 70 Aid to Plymouth since 2013. It’s been relatively flat in the last few years with an increase of only 1.75% percent in the last three years. Again, our greatest increase was the year that we implemented full-day kindergarten.

We’ve talked about this before, the underfunded and unfunded mandates and this is certainly something that affects us as a School Department. A report was released this past October in October 12th by State Auditor Suzanne Bump who examined the unfulfilled promises and a variety of state laws of state aid to municipal government. This report compared State Appropriations to the actual spending of existing mandates and identified nearly $1.2 billion in unfunded mandates. The report looked at several categories and identified $711.4 million in unfunded mandates related to school, 448.3 related to school transportation alone. Some of the examples are circuit breaker, which is state aid reimbursement for special education, foster care, transportation, vocational school transportation, charter school transportation and Chapter 70 Aid.

As I mentioned before, transportation is a significant driver of our budget and we do everything we can to try to curb costs. So, in an effort to reduce some of our expenses, we’ve committed some of our extra funds to purchase additional buses which will allow us to manage some of our charter transportation as well transportation for our alternative high school program. So, this chart, the right side shows what we spend currently to transport students through our contract, which we are ending next year by taking it over internally in district where it’s estimated to save annually of approximately $151,000. So, we’re trying to do our part to curb those costs. We really are.

[1:10:00]

Christopher Campbell:

In an effort to reduce our overall expenses, you may recall the School Department entered a solar leasing agreement several years ago, which has allowed us to really lock in at a very low rate for our utility expenses. So, as a result in the last eight years, we’re very happy to say that we’ve reduced our electric expenses by over $6 million. Again, we’re trying. We understand that we’re a large portion of the town’s budget and we’re doing everything we can to reduce again those what I refer to as the non-educational expenses.

One thing that I’ve heard over the years and our enrollment is down and it’s been down particularly in the elementary level in the last 10 years. Although we’re seeing it going up with the new developments coming in, we’re seeing younger families moving into Plymouth into these new developments, which is creating a concern for some of our school communities. But as our enrollment went down over the years, in the last 10 years specifically, we have invested in our special education programs in district. You may recall earlier when I mentioned these collaborative programs in private day school programs, which a lot of districts are forced to send a considerable amount of students to. So, when spaces were available in our schools, we committed to creating programs for students with significant cognitive, neurological, physical and emotional needs. We’re currently educating 281 students that 10 years ago would have been outside of the district. We spend approximately $5.4 million to do that and that averages about $19,000 per student.

The average collaborative placement, which is the lowest expense that you would see for students for their services is approximately $64,600. If we were to educate those students outside of the district, we’d be spending over $18 million in comparison to the $5 million. Even after projected circuit breaker reimbursement which is extraordinary relief at the state. By investing in district with the spaces that we currently have, by educating our students in our district, we are still reducing our overall expenses by almost $9.6 million dollars annually. That projected savings doesn’t even include transportation costs that would be incurred by transporting students far away to other communities as well as other contracted services that come with a lot of those placements. So, now, more than ever, we’re always thinking of ways about being more efficient while trying to prioritize the long-term needs of our students. Some of the ways that we’ve tried to do that is by becoming more energy efficient. I mentioned the solar leasing, taking advantage of lighting upgrades, sensors to reduce unnecessary usage, upgrading our heating and cooling systems, trying to maintain our buildings to make sure that they’re more efficient so we’re not spending money unnecessarily. Being electronic as much as possible to reduce paper and tonnage. Preventative maintenance as I mentioned by keeping our facilities running as smooth as possible to try to keep costs down. And again, I’ve already mentioned this but investing in our in-district special education programs. It’s right for kids but I think it’s reduced our budget significantly over years. And again, one thing that we continue to look at is transportation. It’s very frustrating that we’re spending so much money, but we do everything we do to curb costs, analyze our roots and to try to oversee small components of that transportation in-house as much as possible.

So, just moving forward, some of our concerns, again, reducing our needs for contract transportation. I mentioned before we’re not eligible for reimbursement like smaller regional school districts. So, this is something that we continue to look at to try to reduce our costs whenever possible. Very concerned about our increased need for early intervention in preschool services. Head Start which refers a lot of students with developmental disabilities, our referrals are through the roof and we’re seeing a lot of students coming in with complex needs. I’ve already mentioned the increased needs for EL students as well as translation and interpretive services. Our continued academic recovery post pandemic while we’re out of the pandemic certainly the academic recovery, the social-emotional needs. We have a lot of students that are hospitalized for behavioral mental health issues. Unlike my years in Plymouth. I am concerned about the competitive nature of hiring and retaining staff. This year has been very challenging to not only retain staff but to attract staff.

[1:15:01]

Christopher Campbell:

As I mentioned before, our initial salaries for our new staff is quite low. It gets better as you go along in years, but initially it’s hard to attract staff. I am concerned moving forward with contract negotiations. We settled very, very conservative contracts with our bargaining units but I’m concerned about that moving forward.

And as I’ve mentioned previously, facilities and capital needs, we have very, very old buildings and this is something that I’m very concerned about moving forward. So, with that, I’m happy to answer any questions anyone may have.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you, Dr. Campbell. Any questions from the Select Board. I don’t believe I see any hands. Ms. Savery, any questions from your board?

Kim Savery:

I think Mr. Mahoney has a question.

John Mahoney:

Mr. Chairman, thank you. Geez, Chris and I missed the whole presentation but just a couple of baseline questions, Chris. I think we’ve talked a couple of months ago with respect to infrastructure. We know we have eight elementary schools that are between 46 and 113 years old.

Christopher Campbell:

Correct.

John Mahoney:

Okay, thank you. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there’s no place in the future or something is less expensive than today and there’s a massive issue there. There’s a bottleneck. So, I know you’ve hired a consultant so can you just update everyone with respect to where you are in that process and if and when any report will be available to not only the Select Board but the public?

Christopher Campbell:

Sure. So, thank you for that question. So, we’ve done two studies. We did a facilities condition assessment back in 21, July of ‘21 which sort of speaks to what we already knew. Our buildings are old and they require a lot of capital improvements. As you mentioned, I think we have four elementary schools that are 50 years old, we have two that are 70 years old and then we have two that are over 100 years old. And with aging buildings come aging facilities. So, we also had a contract with Ai3 Architects to look at not only the facilities condition assessment but to look at from an educational standpoint what would be in our best interest moving forward. I would very much advocate to consolidate our facilities and to go for a new building eventually. I think that that would be in the best interest. I think we would eventually reduce costs. I do anticipate in the coming months to get that final report from Ai3, which we will ultimately present to the School Committee first and then to any board that would be happy to see it.

John Mahoney:

Any report like that, they’ll outline a few different options. They won’t just come back and just say—

Christopher Campbell:

Yes. I can tell you that um my initial understanding is that they would make a recommendation that this community would go after a new building for North Plymouth based on the agent and the conditions of those buildings as well as some renovations for some other buildings. But primarily, a new build in North Plymouth.

John Mahoney:

Okay, thank you.

Christopher Campbell:

You’re welcome.

Dick Quintal:

Any other questions from board members? Seeing none, I just have a few questions. Thank you for your presentation, Chris. And I have a question and I don’t even know if it’s legal or not but in like regional transportation, years ago, we had the North High School and I don’t know how many elementary schools and Carver had their high school at the end. But is there any thought ever been given or is it a good idea for maybe a neighbor in town such as Carver or maybe Kingston, I’m just throwing it out there, if we needed say an elementary school and they needed one, would it make any sense to build it right on a line, a town line? And would that cover us or make us eligible for regional transportation? I mean, we don’t have the answers. Just so I’m thinking.

Christopher Campbell:

Yeah. Thank you for your question, Mr. Quintal. The only way we would be eligible for regional transportation is if we regionalize. So, if we went back to being for example Plymouth-Carver Regional School District, that would require both communities to move in that direction and I’m not encouraged by the idea of that. I don’t think that’s something that Carver certainly would go for.

Dick Quintal:

No. I just was wondering. You answered my question. Thank you.

Christopher Campbell:

You’re welcome.

Dick Quintal:

And I do um strongly believe with the children, the younger students especially have emotional mental health issues.

[1:20:07]

Christopher Campbell:

We’re seeing it at all levels. As I said, we have more times than I’d like to admit we have had to call for an ambulance for emergency safety assessments of students at young ages all the way through high school. Mental health is it’s always been an issue but it’s been profoundly impacted in the last few years. Profoundly.

Dick Quintal:

Yeah. I’ve seen it in my own family. Also, the SRO officers. So, we have, I forgot the numbers you use for and then they were splitting it with you. Do you feel that sufficient for a community outside?

Christopher Campbell:

I do. Mr. Quintal, I think that we’re very fortunate to have the relationship and the support that we have with our Police Department in terms of school safety. We have an existing Safety Committee that meets on a monthly basis: police, fire, emergency operations. We have dedicated school resource officers in each secondary school and we have two additional that split the elementary schools, which people may say why is that necessary but I think if you read the paper or you look at the news, you can see why that is now. But it’s also been a great benefit when domestic issues arise or there is an issue that arises within the home to have that relationship with the police department to support us back at the school. So, I do feel very supported with that number.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Well, I do too and the reason I’m asking the question is I would even support a larger number. Just to be clear on why I asked the question. It wasn’t to cut. It was actually to add. And the last thing I’m going to comment on is on the salaries and the contracts, and I’m not going to go into all the details but I was fortunate enough to sit there on all the school contracts this year. And believe me, that was a very busy time. And I must say that, there are areas in the school system just like the town had that are very much in need, and I’m not going to go into detail on that but I think that if you’re going to retain the workforce that we’re looking for in this town and for our children, I think that’s going to change. And I know nobody wants to hear it, but that’s why we did it on the town side especially going through Covid with the label movement or what it is, everybody’s moving around. People are finally the last of them are finally coming back to work. A lot of people are retiring for whatever reason but to keep the people the employees from leaving, that’s the position we took with the town. But I will say as I sat on the school board meetings, I was very impressed and I thought they were a very good group to work with. However, in saying that, I think it’s going to be a little different the next time. I’ll love it sitting there but they were very, very easy to work with, I thought for my set seeing what I’ve seen over the years. And it was my first time there and I commend them all but there’s areas in the school department they’re definitely going to need some help.

Christopher Campbell:

Thank you for your comment, Mr. Quintal. And I may have mentioned, in addition to being concerned about contract negotiations moving forward, we do. We tried very hard to settle very modest contracts. I’m also concerned with the idea, if we are laying off teachers particularly, I’m very concerned about what that long-term impact will have on our school department. There are many communities that have been forced to have a reduction enforce in the teaching profession and what happens typically when you see that is you see a massive Exodus and people start looking elsewhere to work. As the superintendent of the Plymouth schools, I don’t want to be in a situation where people don’t want to come and work in Plymouth. As I said earlier, we don’t pay well or comparable I should say at the starting salaries for our new teachers and I certainly don’t think that we will attract new teachers if they feel that they may be laid off a year or two into their tenure.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you.

Christopher Campbell:

Thank you.

Dick Quintal:

Ms. Savery, is there anyone on your board that would like to comment or have some questions?

Kim Savery:

Thank you. Mrs. Heywood?

[1:25:00]

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

I just want to thank both Mr. Brindisi and Dr. Campbell for your presentations. I just have a couple of questions. One, with the presentation in terms of the 9 FTE reductions, is this through attrition?

Derek Brindisi:

No. So, most of the positions are vacant positions. So, we implemented a hiring freeze in December, and that hiring freeze led to these positions being unfunded in FY ’24.

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

Okay. Thank you very much. And so, it was also presented that there was one admin job that was I guess reinstated, the HR position.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. So, one of the positions that’s new to this budget is that the Assistant Human Resources Director position, it’s not being re-instituted. It’s never been in existence. And so, this was a position that we were able to find contracted services and apply those contracted services to a salaried position.

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

Okay, thank you. And just for a point of clarification, Dr. Campbell. So, the initial budget that the School Committee approved included 15 positions?

Christopher Campbell:

Correct. Those are active positions that we would reduce. Ideally, we anticipate that we could fill those with resignations and that sort so, but those are active positions that we would be reducing our FTEs by 15.

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

And so, with the next graph that showed the 450, so that would be 19 positions because it showed—

Christopher Campbell:

Correct.

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

–the 15 plus. And so, the last graph included and this is where I need the point of clarification, it looked like anywhere from 32 to 36 positions or it was more?

Christopher Campbell:                                                                                                                            

The budget that was approved or supported by School Committee would reduce 15 active positions. We would do that through attrition most likely because we anticipate that we would have openings or resignations. The additional $450,000, my recommendation would be to eliminate four administrative positions because I’m trying to stay away from the classroom as much as possible. If we had to go deeper than that, if we had to cut another $350,000, we’d be looking at 7 to 10 additional non-certificated positions or 7 certificated positions.

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

So, it’s and/or?

Christopher Campbell:

Correct.

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

Okay. So, it would be the 19 from the previous with an addition of 7 to 10?

Christopher Campbell:

7 to 10, correct.

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

Which we are looking at close to 30 positions.

Christopher Campbell:

When you add that all up, yeah.

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

Okay. I guess, another question that I wanted to ask, it was stated on the school district side the impact due to increase in salaries, which was I guess between 2.4 and 2.5% and I don’t know or I guess the question is, is what was the impact to the budget like on the town side?

Derek Brindisi:

Can you repeat that question one more time?

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

I said, I guess what was the impact of the budget on the town side? Just for clarification because I think in watching some of the meetings, there’s a narrative that’s being placed that we as the school district are not sharing the wealth in terms of these cuts. And what I’m trying to kind of just to clarify in my mind is that we are a town. These impacts whether they’re done on one side or the other, they still impact town employees. And so, those loss of jobs, the loss of services, they impact our students and in our families. So, I just want to be clear that all of this in terms of the budget and this specific cut, the $800,000 is quite detrimental. You noted or you stated or it’s been stated by previous that we are not making a fair or we’re not doing our fair share, but the initial budget that was our level service budget was 6.5%.

[1:30:12]

Vedna Lacombe-Heywood:

My understanding is that you worked with the town to bring that under as much as we could. And that was previous to it being presented to us by $2.2 million. And so, the ask is now for three in total essentially, which is an under-level service budget.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, I would say that when we look and this is on one of the slides I presented, the town’s increase this past year represents a 2.06% increase. The school’s increase was 3.8%. One thing we haven’t reflected on in our presentation were all the positions that have not been funded since the Covid cuts. So, we have approximately 5 positions in facilities that aren’t even on this slide deck because they were a part of previous year’s cuts. We have positions in the DPW that were cut during Covid that have never been reinstated. And so, these positions that I again cut this year only mount even more of the problematic services that we’re going to have to experience in FY ’24. I mean, I know there’s been a lot of things that I’ve said about the School Department’s budget versus the town budget, the bottom line is I agree, we’re one community and we have to solve this together.

Kim Savery:

Does anybody else have anything, questions or comments? No. We’re all set, Mr. Quintal.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you, Ms. Savery. Mr. Canty, any questions or comments from the FinCom?

Kevin Canty:

Thank you, Mr. Quintal. So, the Advisory and Finance Committee as everybody knows is going to start after we received the budget tonight from both the Select Board and the School Committee. We’re going to start meeting and budget subcommittees. We will distribute that schedule for folks that are interested in attending those budget subcommittees to see us digest and analyze the budget in those groups, which will then culminate in the hearing by the entire Advisory and Finance Committee on the whole budget town and school side on February 15th. That will be when the Advisory and Finance Committee makes its recommendation as to the entire budget to town meeting. But we are just receiving the budget at this meeting, so we haven’t undertaken that budget subcommittee process yet. We are about to start it. So, many of our members may not have questions yet, but you will see questions coming up. Those budget subcommittee meetings are going to be happening entirely via Zoom so that PACTV can air them on television. Many will be live broadcasted, some will be recorded and broadcasted later in terms if there’s a conflict between two meetings or something else is airing on PACTV at that time. But with that significant caveat and explainer out of the way, any members of the Advisory and Finance Committee have any questions at this time for either the schools or the town side of the budget and their presentations? Hearing and seeing none physically present and—Mr. Cabana, I see your digital hand is raised.

Louis Cabana:

Yes. Thank you, Chairman. I do have a question. It’s more of a clarification. I’d like to get a little bit more understanding of the 14% increase in the OSD budget, and if there’s anything that could be done to address that.

Christopher Campbell:

Thank you for your question, and I hope there is. Collectively, as you can imagine every superintendent in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is very concerned about this because this is a crippling cost. It’s something that we’ve never seen before. I have met with Senator Moran’s office and Senator Moran. I have sent letters to our state legislators as members of the Superintendent Association. We’re hoping to get, we have a new governor coming on board so there will be a delay in that budget proposal but we’re hoping to get to our state to try to see some revision to that. I think when you look at that cost and I didn’t get into this, but I think 5.8% of that 14% is for cost-of-living adjustments, and the rest of it goes towards recruitment and retention which wouldn’t that be great if we could all have 8% added to our budgets for recruitment and retention.

[1:35:06]

Christopher Campbell:

That’s something that, in my opinion, should be reduced from that. So, we’re trying hard at the state level to get in front of those who ultimately are going to pass that budget. So, I think any communication with state officials regarding the concerns is certainly appreciated and hopefully we can see some adjustments to that.

Louis Cabana:

One other question if I could, please. You spoke to some of the costs are not reimbursed versus school districts that are regionalized. Is there a potential path through the legislature that could change that and impact it?

Christopher Campbell:

That’s something that we have tried in the past with Mr. Muratore’s support on more than one occasion. The problem is every time that we’ve tried that, it’s really Plymouth is unique in that regard. There aren’t any other communities that are as large as we are. So, unless there’s some kind of revision to transportation reimbursement for all communities, I don’t see where something will happen in that regard. But I think that’s something that really again, the motivation behind regionalized transportation reimbursement was to try to encourage small communities to regionalize, to reduce costs. There’s no incentive now by those communities to reduce their transportation costs because they’re going to get reimbursed at a significant rate unless there’s some revision to that, unless there’s some kind of revision to reimbursement at the state level for communities regarding transportation.

We also transport students that are in foster care placement. We transport, I didn’t get into this this evening, we transport students that are homeless. We average over 100 students annually that are homeless and we’re transporting them many times to communities very far away back to the ascending districts, which could cost us $20,000+ per student. So, these are extraordinary costs. So, again, this is an underfunded and unfunded mandate by the state. So, unless there’s something done at the state level to alleviate that, this is something that’s going to, in this community particularly because of the unique geography of Plymouth, it’s going to continue to cripple us financially.

Louis Cabana:

Thank you.

Christopher Campbell:

Thank you.

Kevin Canty:

Any other questions from any other members of the Advisory and Finance Committee at this time? Hearing and seeing none, I’ll turn it back over to Mr. Quintal but I believe somebody on the School Committee would like to speak.

Dick Quintal:

Okay, thank you. Ms. Savery?

Kim Savery:

All right. Ms. Badger?

Michelle Badger:

Sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on that original question. I know that—gosh, I think it’s probably been four or five years now that every year I work with Representative Muratore, we write or we reuse the same legislation. We try to kind of sneak it into the budget hoping nobody will notice and they will fund us as the largest town in the state. It’s been written so that it only applies to us, but we’ve got some ideas moving forward to hopefully if we can bring some people together who also have large towns and maybe have substantial number of votes, maybe we can do something. If not to actually get it covered, but to make people see and realize that it’s something we need to consider. It’s not a problem that’s going to go away. Look at the fuel costs, so if we can just put it on more people’s radar, I think that’ll be helpful but it is something we try to do every year.

Kim Savery:

Thank you, Ms. Badger. I can actually add a little bit to that too with both of your questions with the OSD. I’m on the Directors for the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and this is not unique to us. Every district in the Commonwealth is feeling this cut. And I know that our association, I know Dr. Campbell mentioned his association, we’re all advocating for it. We’re writing letters. We’re doing what we can. Ms. Badger is taking a step further with what she’s proposing, but we’ve been fighting on the state level for both of those situations for a few years now. And we all know how quickly things work, but it’s definitely hit a critical point for us.

Christopher Campbell:

Through the Chair, one thing that I forgot to mention this evening too is these OSD rates and transportation, Dr. Blaisdell has been inquiring with communities that are initially proposing their budgets at this time. Plymouth does it early, much earlier than a lot of communities but those communities that have initiated their budget process on average, they’re coming in at 6.5% upwards to 11% in some communities.

[1:40:09]

Christopher Campbell:

So, we are not alone in these costs.

Kim Savery:

Yeah. I was with them all this weekend and it’s everyone’s concern. It’s on the top of everybody’s mind. Does anybody else have anything from the School Committee before we turn it back over to Mr. Quintal? We’re all set, Mr. Quintal.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you, Ms. Savery. Any other questions from the Select Board or Comments? Seeing none. I’ll bring it back to the Chair of the FinCom, Mr. Canty to adjourn his committee.

Kevin Canty:

Thank you, Mr. Quintal. So, having concluded the purpose of our joint meeting at this time, do I have a motion from Mr. Dunn to adjourn for the evening?

Brian Dunn:

So moved.

Kevin Canty:

Mr. Howard, would you care to second?

Bruce Howard:

Second.

Kevin Canty:

It has been moved, it has been seconded. Any objection to adjourning for the evening having concluded our business? Hearing and seeing none. I will call for the vote. Alphabetically through the roll, yes, no or abstain when I reach your name. Mr. Cabana, how do you vote as to whether or not we should adjourn for the evening, yes, no or abstain?

Louis Cabana:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

Thank you. Ms. Butler?

Gail Butler:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

Mr. Dunn?

Brian Dunn:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

Mr. Howard?

Bruce Howard:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

Mr. Keith?

Steven Keith:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

Mr. Lalley?

Joseph Lalley:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

Thank you, Mr. Lalley. Mr. Lawlor?

Timothy Lawlor:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

Ms. Richards?

Christine Richards:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

Ms. Strawn?

Evelyn Strawn:

Yes.

Kevin Canty:

And Mr. Zupperoli:

Robert Zupperoli:

All right. It is unanimous. We are adjourned for the evening as the Advisory and Finance Committee at 7:24 p.m. Thank you to the Select Board and to the School Committee for the joint meeting.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you. Ms. Savery, you can have your board adjourn.

Kim Savery:

Great, thank you. We do not require a motion for that. So, it is 7:24 and I call the joint meeting with the Plymouth School Committee adjourned.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you. Thank very much. We’re just going to give it a 5-minute break and then we’ll bring it back to the Select Board. Thank you.

All right. Continue on with Public Comment. Is there anyone wishing to speak under Public Comment?

Anthony Senesi:

Mr. Chairman, if you don’t mind just holding off in a couple of minutes just to pile out? Thank you.

Dick Quintal:

Absolutely. Okay.

[Break]

Paul Quintal:

All right. Thank you for your attention. My name is Paul Quintal. I am here tonight to speak to a situation where we have potential of a very large cruise ship coming into Plymouth that may happen on a regular basis. My history is I’ve been running passenger boats in Plymouth for 50 years. I have been a member of the Plymouth Harbor Committee for 25 years. I’m also associated with Mass Lobstermen’s Association and the Plymouth Lobstermen’s Association. But passenger boats have been my gig for the last 50 years. And my comments here tonight are regarding the bringing of an American Cruise Line passenger vessel, which would be 241 feet x 56 feet wide ship to regularly enter into Plymouth inner harbor and secure dockage at the Town Wharf. These are my thoughts alone, not my group.

I just want to give you an idea of the size of this ship. We are in a square room here tonight. This room measures 43 feet x 43 feet. It would take five and a half of these rooms butted together and that still wouldn’t make up the length of this ship. The width of this ship is 56 feet wide, and if you take the wall where our Select Board is right now, the port side, that’s the stabbed side of the ship, the port side would end up in the town meeting members room next to us, all the way through the hall. I have questions about the disruption, the total harbor impact and the safety concerns to potentially bring this large ship into Plymouth inner harbor. Now, during the Fall of 2022, a preliminary draft contract between the Town of Plymouth and American Cruise Lines was created but was never shared with the public interested parties or abutters.

[1:45:07]

Paul Quintal:

The lack of communication between the Town of Plymouth and the Plymouth Harbor Stakeholders raises questions about the transparency of this plan. It was only when the Plymouth Harbor Committee and the Plymouth Lobstermen’s Association requested a meeting on December 15, 2022 allowing some stakeholders an ability to share ideas and ask questions. That single meeting included two representatives from American Cruise Lines, Town Manager Mr. Brindisi, Chad Hunter our Harbor Master, Plymouth Harbor Committee Subcommittee and the Lobstermen’s Association representatives. I personally welcome American Cruise Lines to make Plymouth a port of call, but to use alternative options to land their guests ashore, myself and others would like to share our ideas and thoughts to help solve this issue.

I’m asking my town officials to seriously consider the options of Industry professionals, local fishermen, businesses, recreational boaters, the Plymouth Harbor Committee, the Plymouth Harbor Master before moving forward on this concept of bringing this ship in. Thank you for the time in making special effort to get our public comment back opened after this very important night tonight. Thank you.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you, Mr. Quintal. Anyone else wishing to speak on the Public Comment? Please identify yourself for the record.

Tom O’Reilly:

My name is Tom O’Reilly. I’m going to try to skip around. I don’t want to repeat what Paul said, so it might get a little bouncy here. I’m a commercial lobsterman, a commercial fishing rep to the Harbor Committee. So, everything that I’m saying right now is coming from the lobster industry too. So, first of all, the commercial fishing industry, the Harbor Committee are not opposed to the general idea of a cruise ship coming to Plymouth, but we have concerns regarding the logistics of how a vessel such a size is going to operate in a proposed space and channels.

One of the big concerns is how will the ship safely navigate the limited available space while having to share the waters with other vessels entering and departing the harbor at the same time or other activity going on in the harbor. The only option for this, talking to the Harbor Master and he agrees with this 100%, the only way this is going to work is to shut down the channel every time that vessel transits from the end of Beach Point into the harbor, and that will be approximately once they’re going it’s 50 times a year. It’s unacceptable. Okay. I’m going to skip that. How will the current dock, which is 200 feet be suitable to accommodate a 240 foot x 57 foot cruise ship that is also three stories high? Also, by tying up this vessel, you are taking away a lease space from the commercial Lobstermen’s Association that we leased from this town already, a winch. So, they’re going to displace us from that. Also, another problem with that is the boats that are tied up to the dock now, when that vessel comes in, they’re going to have to move those vessels over to where the old Harbor Master’s office was. Now, we lose another winch, so that brings us down to one winch with 57 lobster boats. If the harbor is to be closed with every departure and arrival, how can those who depend on the limited window of time for unloading live product get to the dock before starting losing wharfs or other fresh seafood because of the warm water that occurs from Beach Point, which I don’t know if people realize once you get to bug light, you go from 68-degree water. Once you get through all that at Bug Light there, it jumps right up to 74 to 76-degree water. Now, if the boats have to wait because of this vessel coming in, they’re going to start losing product and that’s the big time of the year. You start losing 300-400 pounds of lobster a day. That’s a lot of money. How is that going to be compensated? The other concern is a few other business, how will businesses such as–

Harry Helm:

Excuse me for interrupting. Mr. Chairman, we have reached three minutes for this speaker.

[1:50:00]

Tom O’Reilly:

All right. Just 30 seconds.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. O’Reilly, how much longer do you need?

Tom O’Reilly:

30 seconds.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Go ahead.

Tom O’Reilly:

All right. Now, the other things we have to worry about are the party boats, the whale watch boats, the paddle boats and the charter boats. They’re all going to be set off their schedules, they’re on schedules. What I want and in my mind is you have the Harbor Committee built up of people that are professionals and work down there. You have Zoning Board, you have Planning Boards, you have all these boards in town that you’ve listened to. We’re there to help you with these problems, and these things that come up. We voted seven to two against it, because of the size. Not to stop a cruise ship from coming in, because of the size. And I just hope that the Selectmen really take into account what the Harbor Committee has to say because that’s what we’re there for to help you with these problems and give you the correct information and pass it along to you. Thank you.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak on the Public Comment?

Pat McCarthy:

Hi! Pat McCarthy, Precinct 18, town meeting member vice chair and also, I’m on the board of the League of Women Voters and past president of the League and also, a past education chairman person of the League. And I just want to thank all the boards for the presentations tonight and all the effort and hard work that goes into presenting budgets and bringing the information to us, the public, town meeting members and moving forward to town meeting.

As a taxpayer and citizen and elected town meeting member over the years and a parent of two sons who went to Plymouth Public Schools, I’ve always been a proponent of good education and services for all the people of Plymouth. And in light of that, I just want to read in to the record a couple highlights from the education position of our local League of Women Voters. We have a state and national positions on education also. So, I just wanted to read that into the record, and then make a final comment on this upcoming situation.

The education goal of the Plymouth area league is to advocate for a school system that will effectively educate all students to meet high academic standards and prepare them to become responsible citizens in the 21st Century. This includes advocating for appropriate funding to ensure that our local schools are able to provide high quality, well-rounded education. Services should include small class size technology music and art programs and staff such as classroom aides, nurses, counselors, mental health providers and librarians to enhance the lives of youth in our community. Education should be fair and equitable for all students. And we’ve heard tonight a lot about our unfunded and mandatory mandates that we have to provide education especially for our special needs students, but all students deserve a quality education.

And I did want to highlight because there’s a lot of misconception running around the town about how much this $800,000 to be kept in the budget would cost the average taxpayer, and I’m a senior citizen so I’m on a fixed income, so I’m on one of those poor taxpayers that you hear about. So, anyway–

Dick Quintal:

You’re looking great, Pat.

Pat McCarthy:

Well, thank you. So, are you down there with your hat. I like that. Anyway, it’s going to cost the average assessed home tax bill or the homeowner with the average assessment based on 2023 assessments, and that was spelled out very well in Lynne’s presentation, and I’ve gone over these presentations a few times now and watched them on TV a few times.

Harry Helm:

If I might interrupt quickly, Mr. Chairman. Pat has exceeded three minutes.

Dick Quintal:

Ms. McCarthy, how much longer do you need, Pat?

Pat McCarthy:

15 seconds, 15 seconds. It’s going to cost the average person taxpayer $26.52 on their tax bill and I think most taxpayers in Plymouth probably have a cup of coffee a week maybe outside of their home that costs more than that. Thank you very much.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak on the Public Comment? Please identify yourself for the record.

[1:55:10]

Virginia Davis:

There we go. Ginny Davis, Precinct 4. I’d like to speak in support of Mr. Quintal and Mr. O’Reilly who were talking about the cruise liner. I’m not against small cruise liner, but I am a small boat person. I row boats. I’ve paddled. Our channel, when you describe the boat and how large it was, it’s like I don’t even know if our channel is wide enough for something that big. And all I could picture is when we see those boats going into Venice and you see Venice and then you see these liners and they shouldn’t be going in there either. They’re destroying Venice. So, yes, cruise lines but no, not to anything this size especially where it affects our fishermen and our lobstermen. Thank you.

Dick Quintal:

Anyone else wishing to speak on the Public Comment? No one else? Okay. Seeing no one else. Mr. Brindisi, Town Manager’s Report.

Derek Brindisi:

Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, just some quick updates, a few weeks ago the Emergency Management Director held a pre-storm meeting with the various departments as we prepare for the winter season upon us. And one of our deficiencies we identified was if we were to open up a shelter, would we have enough trained staff in order to man that shelter. So, the EMD identified that as a deficiency. He went ahead and organized a shelter training. We offer that training to all of our town employees and we held a very successful shelter training last night with a bunch of volunteer employees from the town. Again, our focus has been over the past year to really engage our employees and invite them to be more participatory in all the things that are happening in town government. So, congratulations to our Emergency Management Director for putting on a very successful shelter training and so, we do hope to continue that down the road so we can have a large contingent of well-trained sheltered staff.

There’s been a lot of conversations around the Brewster Stairs project. As you know, we had put out to bid about six, seven months ago a project that will construct stairs from the West Main Street extension area down to the Brewster Gardens. It was held off by approximately two months because of some issues. We received word today that those issues have been resolved. So, we’re hoping to award the contract so that we can begin the construction as soon as possible to get those stairs opened up for the summer season.

Just as a reminder, as we talked about a few months back, the South Meadow property has gone out to bid. We received a bid award for $1.2 million. We now have a set closing date for February 15th. So, moving steady on closing on the South Meadow property as well. The next on the list will be Mr. Brothers is working with procurement on the former Station 7 to put that property out to bid as well.

I wanted to just relative to some special legislation, we have received word that the legislation that has changed the Plimouth Plantation Highway to the Patuxet Highway has passed. We’ve also received early indication that the special legislation for the PILOT agreement with Holtec is moving forward and will pass soon. And the same is to be said with the legislation we filed this fall for parking fines. So, as you all know, we filed special legislation to allow us to increase parking fines in parking districts that require a beach sticker. So, that gives us the first piece of strategy so that we can start to take back some of our neighborhoods where our beaches and ponds reside.

And then I wanted just to bring the board up to date, the ice-skating rink that we talked about last week will be constructed this year at the Sever Street Park. Weather hasn’t worked in our favor for ice skating rink. So, as soon as the temperatures drop, we’ll be constructing that ice skating rink.

And then I just wanted to bring again one more time to everyone’s attention that our census forms this year will have remind us for our dog licensing. So, folks that have dogs, please be aware of that in the census from this year, we will have an application to seek your dog license off this calendar year. That’s all I have pending any questions. Thank you.

[2:00:08]

Dick Quintal:

Thank you, Derek. Any questions or comments for Derek? Seeing none. Derek, I’d like to–

Harry Helm:

Dick, Mr. Quintal, I have a couple questions.

Dick Quintal:

Go ahead, Harry. I’m sorry, I can’t see you too well.

Harry Helm:

Okay. Not a problem. I totally understand. Derek, a couple questions, where are we with the updated and accurate redline version of the charter revision?

Derek Brindisi:

That’s a great question. So, we wanted to bring this back to the Board last Tuesday. The Procurement Office working with the Finance Director had asked the question about what is the best course of action as it relates to disseminating this redline version. So, according to the statute that was written in the 60s, the statute requires a copy to be sent to every home. We did the math on that. It’s approximately $100,000 or thereabouts to issue that. So, the Finance Department thought, is there another way to do this. And so, we asked the question to the Attorney General’s office whether or not we could send out just a postcard that gives all the different instructions how to access this whether it’s on the website or call the Town Clerk’s Office for a manual copy, QR code kind of the 21st century way of disseminating information. We planned on bringing this idea to the board last week, and then I received a phone call from the chairman of the Charter Commission who wanted the Charter Commission to review this proposal before we brought it to the board.

They were supposed to meet last night. They didn’t meet last night. So, we’re waiting to hear back from the Charter Commission on their thoughts on this different course of action.

Harry Helm:

Okay. That’s well and fine, and I totally understand why if it’s available is it not up on the website under the Charter Commission Charter Revisions. There’s a whole list of them. It’s not there. That’s a great way to disseminate it, put it on the website. That doesn’t cost anything.

Derek Brindisi:

I’d have to follow up with the most recent version.

Harry Helm:

It’s October.

Derek Brindisi:

But as we know, when I had gone through the chapter–

Harry Helm:

Just so you know, the most recent version of Charter drafts is October 24th, 2022 of red line, okay? And that was problematic. It was not a true red line as we discovered. So, my question would be I don’t think there should be anything that prevents it from being put on the website while figuring out. I mean, that’s a another more economically suitable way to get people to know about it. I would think that at some point at the very minimum, you can send out postcards, they have to be able to go somewhere to get it. So, it would be put on the website and I guess my question, it sounds to me like there actually is an updated red line version.

Derek Brindisi:

I’d have to follow up to see if they completed, because as you pointed out, the redline version that was originally submitted wasn’t true red line version. They were going to go make those corrections. Anthony, have you seen an updated version since that October email?

Anthony Senesi:

I believe I have. Currently, on the website, you are correct, Mr. Helm that the redline version is the older redline version and not the newer one and we can remedy that immediately.

Harry Helm:

I’d appreciate that because I’m–

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. We can follow up on that.

Harry Helm:

Yeah. All right. Cool. Second question. Thank you for the updates on what our legislative group is working on, Derek. Is there any word at all on the horse racing home rule petition request from the last town meeting?

Derek Brindisi:

I haven’t seen any email traffic on that one, no.

Harry Helm:

All right. Okay. Thank you.

Dick Quintal:

Any other questions from board members or comments? Seeing none. Derek, I’d like to schedule a docket item for discussion and plans for the future cruise line. Was it American Cruise Line? Correct me if I’m wrong with the approval of Mrs. Cavacco, but I don’t think Betty will have an issue with it. And I’d like to have some of the stakeholders there, the Lobstermen, the Harbor Master, Environment, David Gould. Let’s get all the players in a room because I also have some concerns. Naturally, I did reach out to Paul and I heard his concerns and my biggest concerns is the safety as well as a hardship on the lobstermen.

[2:05:08]

Dick Quintal:

I believe and I don’t want to write it down until we have this meeting that if it was docked out off the pier that it wouldn’t create an issue and they could bring the people in. But I mean, it’s going to be a topic for discussion. I know you have some hours into it but safety and livelihood of the lobstermen is definitely important with me. So, I would like to see it put back on the docket and let’s revisit this and see if it’s all what we thought it was. And I also reached out to my son and on the spot, I’ve never done that and I don’t know. All he is I’ve done this but he’s an avid fisherman as my cousin Paul. For the record, he is my cousin and that’s not why I’m saying this, because we’ve disagreed a lot but that’s just a family nature. But I think we need to check the safety and the shutting down of the harbor. There’s a lot of things that I don’t think we’ve really vented. So, I’d like to check it all out if that’s okay with you all and the town manager.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, if I could just respond. Just for the record, we’ve held multiple meetings through the Harbor Committee. In fact, there’s one meeting in this very room where I would say there’s probably 25 to 30 mariners in this room and we’ve heard their concerns loud and clear. We’ve had follow-up meetings in this building with just the lobstermen alone and their association. We continue to try to work through those issues. So, it’s a concern on their end, I’m optimistic that we can solve all their problems though. But yeah, we can certainly bring that in front of the board as well.

Dick Quintal:

I mean, unless the board feels any different, Derek. I’m not trying to get it vented out there unless you can get everybody at the table and work it out and bring it back to us and reassure us that everything’s worked out. I mean, I’m fine either way but I do have concerns, safety concerns of the width that I’m going to call it. It’s probably the wrong word, the channel, when it comes in there, my son said, “Dad, if you don’t come in there perfectly,” and he means perfectly, “We have problems.” And if we have a problem, my question is who’s responding? Probably the Coast Guard. I don’t know the answers, and where were they? And I know the fire department has one or two boats or Harbor Master but when you’re talking a cruise ship, we got to have things available to us in an emergency.

Derek Brindisi:

Agree. I just wanted to be clear to folks because this isn’t a Caribbean cruise line that you see in these huge ports. I mean, this is a small vessel. I mean, it’s a big vessel in our harbor, but compared to these large cruise lines you see, Caribbean and others, it’s very small compared to anything like that. I mean, there’s been vessels in this harbor that have been of similar size. But again, we can talk about it.

Dick Quintal:

I mean, the reason I never questioned it really myself is because I said, “Oh, we just dredge the harbor.” And I guess, that’s going to be some of my questions and concerns now. I know we just finished that, but there’s only X amount of feet on each side of that coming in and that’s the concern I have if there’s a problem. And it shuts down the harbor for five hours or it’s going to shut down the harbor for five hours and the schedules of the boats in and out of there. I mean, I do have a lot of questions now. And I’m very surprised to hear that the Harbor Committee voted against it, 7-2. I mean, that’s sending a message right there. So, I think it definitely needs some questions.

Charlie Bletzer:

Mr. Chairman, can I add something to that?

Dick Quintal:

Sure. Go ahead, please.

Charlie Bletzer:

I agree. We have to respect the Lobstermen and respect their position. They’re definitely stakeholders, but this is a work in progress. And I think the reason why they voted against it is right now, there’s a lot of questions unanswered. I think we have to get together and answer the questions. They brought up some very valid points. I was in the room when they were all here and they brought up some points. Paul and Tom brought up some more points tonight. But I don’t think first of all, there’s as many trips as they’re talking about. I think they talked about five times a year. And I don’t know. Maybe they can work it out with the Harbor Master and the fishermen if they have enough advanced notice to be able to work it. But if you’re going to have the stakeholders in the room and they are absolute stakeholders and I respect them and respect their position, we should also hear from our tourism people too just to see if it’s worth it. What kind of numbers can it bring in?

[2:10:08]

Charlie Bletzer:

We had this harbor dredge $2 or $3 million to dredge that harbor. There was a reason for it, to bring in small cruise lines, to bring in some business for the town. And so, I think it’s a work in progress and hopefully it can be resolved and everybody’s happy. And I don’t know what that plan is, but I’ll leave it up to the experts to work it out. But hopefully, we can do that. So, thank you.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Thank you. Derek, you see fit to do as you need to do. I mean, if you think you can resolve it and come back and answer our questions and our concerns and the lobstermen’s concerns, you can do it either way. I’m fine with either way.

Derek Brindisi:

Will do.

Dick Quintal:

Okay. Any other new business? I can’t see you folks. So, there we go. Anything for letters?

Harry Helm:

No.

Dick Quintal:

Old business? Okay. Seeing none. I think we’ve covered everything. Just double checking. Yeah. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Is that a motion, Charlie?

Anthony Senesi:

Please speak in the microphone.

Charlie Bletzer:

Motion to adjourn.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you. Do I have a second?

Harry Helm:

Second.

Dick Quintal:

All those in favor?

Harry Helm:

Aye.

Dick Quintal:

Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Aye.

Dick Quintal:

And myself, yes. Thank you for watching. Have a wonderful night and week and we’ll see you next Tuesday. Thank you.