Somerset Selectmen - July 9, 2026

Auto open session or continue it at the Somerset Public Library Cucinata Community Room, 1464 County Street, Somerset, Massachusetts. This meeting is being recorded. First item is Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, next item is citizens input which is limited to items under new business on the agenda. Next, we had a public hearing scheduled upon an application of Somerset Marine Inc. to store gasoline at 3828 Riverside Avenue,

Somerset, Massachusetts, as follows. One 2,000-gallon above-ground tank, one Class B 5,500-gallon boat storage, and and Class 1B 30 gallon maximum quantity portable tanks. We're going to postpone that hearing until next week. If anybody was here for that hearing, I think there was only one person that I already spoke to. We're not sure if it's going to be at 5:00 or

at 6:00. We have to talk to SATV. There's a zoning board hearing on Flatiron next week that they want to broadcast live. There's only one government access channel that they have three channels, but only one is government access. And per the agreement with the town, they're required to broadcast the Board of Selectmen meeting. So it'll be on the town

website under Agendas, Board of Selectmen. And you can check if you're interested in attending that meeting. Next is a license application for change of officers slash directors filed by AMF Bowling Center, Inc.

doing business as AMF Holiday Lanes, located at 231 Riverside Avenue. Do we have a representative? Yeah. Good evening. My name is Dawson Cooper.

I'm an attorney at Upton, Connell & Devlin. I'm here on behalf of AMF Bowling Centers, Inc. AMF has applied for a change of officers on their alcohol license. There will be no operational changes at the license premise. This is simply a record-keeping transaction. The change applied for is to remove Brett Parker as the Secretary, Treasurer, and Vice President. The licensee

has added Robert LaVaughn as CFO, Secretary, and Treasurer, and previously approved Officer Thomas F.

Shannon remains CEO and Director. Again, there will be no operational changes at the licensed premise, and with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. So same manager, right? The same facility manager. The same manager of record at the location is staying, yes. That's not changing. These are just corporate individuals. That was the one

question I had coming in. I reviewed the paperwork. I don't have any questions. Again, it's just changing corporate officers. Okay. if somebody wants to make a motion I'll make a motion to accept the application for change of offices slash direct is filed by AMF bowling center Inc doing business as AMF holiday lanes located at 231 Riverside Avenue Somerset Massachusetts second all those in

favor all right thank you very much Okay, under new business, we have discussed an act on a presentation of the Declaration of Independence by Representative Justin Thurber in recognition of the nation's semquantennial anniversary. Rep. Thurber, appreciate having you here. Thank you very much. Good evening. So in celebration

of the nation's 250th anniversary, the nonprofit Revolution 250 created 351 authentic handmade reproductions of the original 1776 Ezekiel Russell printing and they wanted us to hand it out to every one of the towns in the Commonwealth and that's what I'm going to be doing here tonight. This statewide initiative perfectly replicates what Massachusetts did

250 years ago when it became the only colony to rush over 300 printed copies of the Declaration of Independence to every local parish to be read aloud and inform the citizens about the birth of the new nation. These replicas that I'm going to show you in a second were meticulously produced by historian Gary Gregory at the

Museum of Printing in Haverhill using traditional 18th century techniques, handset movable type, and historically accurate linen and cotton paper. And as a state rep, I'm proud I have the honor to personally deliver these special replicas to all the towns I represent. We did ask the senator to come, but he was up at the state house today, so

unfortunately him or a representative of his office couldn't make it, but he sends his regards. So without further ado, I would love to present you with this. I don't know where we want to... showcase it for a little bit maybe well maybe in the library for a little bit and then i'm thinking maybe the town hall in between like the senators in my office we can just put it up there so

people on the first floor can actually look at it it's actually pretty cool so here it is i don't know if uh you want to come up yeah it's actually the main thing is if you look at a lot of things look like an f and they're actually s's like when in the corp or some human events or whatever I got a big headache. You want me to tilt this so it

doesn't flip off? Awesome. I know you want to give it to me. There you go. You're welcome.

It's awesome. You're welcome. Yeah. I got the frame.

If you need a better frame, I'll buy it.

They'll actually be outside the TA's office on the second floor. I'll fight you for it. I'll fight you for it. Thank you, Justin. Thank you very much. Thank you, Justin. Thanks for coming in.

Thank you. Juani, do you have any questions? All right, perfect. Okay, next is to discuss and act on the appointment of Melissa Gifford of Westport, Massachusetts, to the position of administrative assistant/finance. uh treasurer collector Mr.

Alucci uh thank you Mr. Chair through the chair um the town recently we've we've done some restructuring we've had these positions uh filled by what the town is called floaters in the past and the floating position is to me an antiquated one it was the ability where a person would work full-time but they would float and fill in where needed when necessary uh the different offices and the different aspects of the

jobs have become so technical that every time someone visits an office and then is removed after several months and has to go to another one they're relearning the position all over again and if they're going back the cycle continues so one of the things we did to try and improve things is morph this into an assistant to whichever office it's going to in this case it happens to be finance and the

treasurer's office so uh melissa gifford came in she had two rounds of interviews she did outstanding on both of them separated herself from everyone else she has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to finance and municipal finance and we very much look forward to her we're very happy that she was agreed to joining our team we think she's going to be a very big addition a positive addition to the town

of somerset Melissa, you want to come up? We need more Irish names. Yeah, just right up to the podium would be great. Good, how are you?

Thanks for coming in tonight. You know, certainly appreciate your interest in coming to work for the town of Somerset. I've reviewed your resume. Definitely have a great deal of accounting, senior accounting experience, so I don't really have any particular questions for you, but open it up to the other members of the board see if they have any questions I don't have any questions of Ms. Gifford I mean her

resume is quite impressive I do have solely though one question on the process i think this is outside of the police and fire department i know these are handled completely different this is the first time that i'm appointing somebody that works in town office or one of the other departments besides public safety and my question is is do we do reference checks and do we

do personal background investigation on employees in any of these positions yes okay so with all the references have been checked and I don't know if all the references listed have been checked I can find that out but we go through the references we go through I know they haven't called every single job, but I do know of some of the employers. I'm sorry that I'm blindsiding

you, but I've been doing some research on different HR things that have been coming up, and that seems to be a common practice in municipal government is that potentially – excuse me, the word is escaping me – review a six-month probationary period sorry um none of which i am presenting in this case because um you know i think at this stage of the uh hiring process i don't think

it would be fair to the applicant or that we change the rules as we're going along but i'm just saying that this is the first time i've encountered this um and i know you know my experience with the police and fire department all this is done and it's documented prior to appointment. Yeah, and you know in the appointments that we've done in the past outside of police and fire, all of the checks are always done. It's

Corrie and those types of things are done on all employees. They're all subject to the regulations within the bylaw, you know, which is different than police and fire which are under collective bargaining, but They're all subject to, you know, the things that are in the Bible, which I believe has the 90-day probation. I believe it's six months in the Bible. So, you know,

again, I know they go through that process. You know, obviously, we don't include that information in the packet that we get. But, you know, there's the HR process that, you know, they have to go through. Yeah, we kind of, and to the Chief's point, there's no set, if there's a list on, certainly police and fire is much, delved into much more than other positions. But as far as like a list

that said, okay, this, this, this, nothing like that. So it's not... it may be, it may not have the depth. Each person may have a different depth as to the history and how much they were vetted. But one of the pieces we do recognize, and we've had the conversations of, you know, we're taking on someone that could be here for 30 years. So it was why we added another level, another layer

of interviews. It gives us the ability to continue background checks, to talk to people, to find out, you know, what the contacts are. So it has certainly grown and expanded from where it's been, but it's probably not as codified as it is on public safety side. Is it documented anywhere? I mean, we don't even need to continue this conversation. This is a jumping on point for a further discussion. It really has

nothing to do with you, trust me. I understand. But I'm just sitting here going through all this stuff in my mind, and I only have a couple of days to digest all of this stuff. Yeah, sorry. I would say maybe we could have the administrators separately kind of go over it. you know where we are now and if you feel there's a need to expand that then we could always discuss it

at a later time so I've had a chance to review the resume and it's it's absolutely fantastic I have no questions to ask so at this time I'm all set all right somebody want to make a motion I'll be happy to do it since I site swiped it a little bit I'd like to make a motion that we act to appoint Melissa Gifford of Westport Massachusetts to the position of administrative assistant finance

effective 7 20 26 7 20 26 second all those in favor all right all right I look forward thank you Thank you. I'm really excited about the food and just-- Thank you so much. That's a publicatory picture. Thank you. I look forward to-- I look forward to seeing you around town. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Congratulations. Sir? I can imagine. All right, next we'll discuss an act on open meeting law complaint filed by

Patrick Higgins, dated June 25th, 2026, acknowledged receipt and reviewed the complaint, authorized a response by the town administrator. So we received open meeting law complaint form from Patrick Higgins, PO Box 290 Northport, Alabama.

The complaint says the Somerset Board of Selectmen violated the open meeting law as follows: Since the town administrator, Mark Yalucci, has directed the cable access camera operator to keep the microphone off until the meeting begins, the chair, be me, did not announce that the meeting was being recorded live as required by section 20F of the open meeting

law. The video was live for 20 minutes before the meeting began, but the microphone was off until the middle of the Pledge of Allegiance. So if the chairman attempted to state that the meeting was recorded, the microphone was off and the announcement was not memorialized in the video. The video can be watched and he lists a hyperlink address for YouTube. So I will be asking

the board to authorize the town administrator to respond. I believe he already sent members of the board his response to this. Just so everybody knows, I did go back and watch the meeting. I am on at the beginning of the meeting saying the meeting is being recorded, which the people who are there publicly heard me say that the meeting was being recorded. But you can go back,

go to YouTube for Somerset Access TV. It was caught on the microphone. It just catches it right at the beginning.

But nevertheless, we need to respond. I would, if it needs a motion, to authorize the town administrator to respond to the open meeting log complaint. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Next is discuss and act on a vote to sign a contract with Energy Management Services for the project known as Somerset Town Hall Variable Refrigerant Flow, VRF, heat pumps for the second

floor. Mr. DiLucci? - So yes, this is the part of the HVAC project for the Town Hall, a contract we put into place last year.

This is the second level. and this is the program we're using where we're going through a company that is able to lock into the incentives on the state side and we can spend up to three hundred thousand dollars in a particular calendar year on a building without doing other procurement requirements and take advantage of any type of

energy incentive savings and in this particular one i believe it's thirty nine thousand nine hundred meaning sixty dollars or something like that but that's that's exactly what so the board signed one last year there's this one and there'll be one more next calendar year with the same company that we've been using for this for the incentive program so yeah we did phase one last year this will be phase two

and then we have one more yes they're they're individual projects themselves but they are all kind of part of different phases any questions no why is my name spelled wrong I'm so upset places but that's a spelling isn't my forte no I'm excited this start seeing some relief given to you guys upstairs and you get you we got past all the hot days air conditioning it'd

be nice to it'd be nice to see you guys regain use of the windows again that'd be oh my god i'm very much looking forward to that well you know i mean the window project is something that will come along once but it is yeah it is rolled into it because the windows are old and if you're in there during the winter i mean you know yeah i used to sit in

your seat and you'll feel how cold it can be in that seat i'm just going to the fact that um You know it's a nice historical building and to have all these window air conditioners hanging out really doesn't do it any justice Well on the efficiency of it too, and it's interesting because I talked to the contractor who's going to do the installation on this and I said well you know Because

you can use it for heat and cooling I said you know it'll be great during the shoulder months to you know, use that for heat versus the boiler. He said, no, no, no. You want to use it all the time for heat versus the boiler. He said, even in the coldest months, that will heat the whole building.

And, you know, that really old, inefficient boiler that we have that at times trips out and, you know, it's cold when they get there in the morning. We won't, that could more or less be our backup so I think the COA is already recognized a serious efficiency in their heating and cooling costs since they have installed the split systems as well so I think it's a no-brainer so if

somebody wants to make a motion I would make a motion to vote to sign the contract with energy management services for project known as Somerset Town Hall variable refrigerant flow BFR heat pumps for the second floor second all those in favor aye all right next is to discuss an act on a vote to adopt designer selection procedures mr. Lucci through you mr. chair the anytime we do some type of designer selection

construction similar to the schools or anything else and right now we have the feasibility study that we want to do for the fire department and that's kind of what spurred this so in working on that feasibility study which is only up to about $150,000 future construction costs could be in the millions so there is specific procurement laws that regulate designer services and that's what that feasibility study

is tied to. Part of those mandated regulations include a designer selection procedure that the town has to have adopted. The town has adopted one. It was first adopted in 1985 with one change I want to say in 1993 so it hasn't been updated or revised since that time and there have been a lot of procurement changes so this this particular policy checks the box

on the mandated legal side the law obligation that we have to have this and it also incorporates all the changes that have taken place in 30 years since we've we've looked at this or to have any questions I spoke with Mr. Iulucci about this. You know, I'm a policy and procedure guy, so I'm in favor of it. We did have a conversation about, you know, making any such policy and procedure

that the board passed reasonable. with a set review date so that we don't go 30 years without looking at another one of these things and it serves as a good reminder i know in the police department we had a system management for that where it would pop up and say it's been x number of years since you reviewed this policy and we would then review it to make sure it's current with

all the current thing and i would just ask that if we could add something to this we also talked about the potential of exploring some software that might aid in the overall process of this so I think it's a good point I mean you know you go as long as this is gone without you know getting looked at doesn't really make sense so the software is the way to go versus your calendar on your computer huh

You're having trouble hearing me. Okay. How's that? That's much better. Okay. But, yeah, so I would definitely look into the software. I already started. That's all. I don't have any questions. I think this is going to be a good procedure policy. Somebody wants to make a motion? I'll make the motion. I make a motion that we approve the designer selection procedures.

- That's it. - Second. - All those in favor? - Aye.

- Aye. - All right, next is to discuss and act on a vote to approve a price increase for town trash bags and use of the transfer station. Mr.

Eugene. - Through you, Mr. Chair, we look at this in maybe two different votes, one being small bags and large bags going up each by one dime. and we had conversations as as the town knows we roughly put about 1.3 million dollars of taxation towards the solid waste program we spend over 2 million dollars a year on the on the solid waste program we make up about nine hundred thousand dollars in selling of bags and

we hadn't increased the bags in a few years and then I believe it was a quarter or 50 cents was the last time we looked at it but the conversation of should we be doing those jumps or should we kind of do it small incremental levels every year and that's what we have done on this we're just asking the board to consider increasing those bag prices by 10 cents

on both small and large yeah I personally would have Just increase the large bags just slightly more because as a percentage increase, you know, we're increasing the small bags, you know, a higher percentage than we're increasing the large bags with the goal of being at 10 cents. I mean, I'm okay. I agree. You know, look, nobody likes to see the price of the trash bags going up. I know there are certain

people that don't even like the trash bags they'd rather have the barrels, but there are communities that have the barrels that you gotta pay for an annual sticker to put on, you know, your barrels, and that's like $250 a year. But, you know, I think the trash bags are a better program, you know, i feel better increasing 10 cents every year than hitting people with a you know 50 cent

increase in any one year because it just hadn't been addressed for a period of time so i'm okay with the increases yeah i'm fine with reviewing them manually as well if we have to increase i'd rather do it in smaller increments if we don't have to increase then you know WE DON'T. BUT THAT'S OBVIOUSLY GOING TO BE FORECASTED. AND WE HAD THIS CONVERSATION. I AGREE WITH MR. SMITH. I'D RATHER GO UP--

AND THE TOWN ADMINISTRATOR-- I'D RATHER GO UP SMALL AMOUNTS THAN ALL OF A SUDDEN HIT SOMEBODY WITH A 50%, 60% INCREASE, IF NOT MORE. same the only the only issue I'm having getting some feedback from some of the small stores and towns that pick these up and sell them they actually when they buy and sell these bags they actually lose money on them because of processing fees so

maybe next next time we review this we try to take into consideration maybe some map pricing so stores can at least break even on these so this is the price to the customer it's the same price of the stores again you know but we would have to I guess I look at it a couple ways, right? Like, you know, when I'm looking at a stop and shop not making money,

you know, it's bringing people in, even the smaller stores. Again, just had a conversation, you know, CVS eliminating cigarettes. They didn't make any money selling cigarettes really, but it brought people into the CVS store. So, I mean, there was an impact on their business when they did that. So, I mean, this does bring people in. I don't I'm not sitting in a store watching what's happening.

I think most people come in, besides buying the trash bag, they're buying a few other things. They're getting gas. So, you know, there's a net positive impact to them.

So the downfall to this is I've been getting some feedback I get from constituents is they go to stores, they can't find bags. Mm-hmm. I asked the owner of the store, "Why don't you have any bags? What's going on?" "We don't want to carry bags anymore because we lose money on this product." So they just kick them out of the store completely. So they lose money because people use a debit or

I mean, maybe that's one of the people you spoke to, but... Yeah, I mean, it's something we can review in the future. Yeah, it's been no different than if you went and bought a lottery ticket. You know, there's no additional fee. If it's a $2 ticket, you paid the $2. Just kidding, it's a credit card or a credit card. Correct. But they make a service fee off of that $2 card that

you're purchasing. If it's only associated to credit cards, well, we can look at it.

The problem is it sounds like they're asking us to put the cost back on the resident. Yeah, well they want us to lower the price to them. And I'm not saying that they want you to lower the price for them to make money on it. It's just to recoup their credit card processing fees is what I'm getting for feedback. So I think the credit card fee is around 4%. So on

an $18 large roll bag, that's a 72. We'd have to increase the residence cost by 72 cents. For the whole roll? For the roll, for the store to break even. I don't think that's a thing. I mean, I don't look at doing it this time around, but I don't think that's a large ask to help some of our small businesses out. I tend to agree it shouldn't cost a business anything

to sell something for the town. If we don't use convenience stores, if they were all to decide that they're not going to pay the fee, then how would we get them out to the residents? So I think it's definitely something that needs to be looked at. I mean, if they wanted to band together and say, we're going to stop this, then we'd be in a pickle. Okay, we wouldn't. So we don't

require the convenience stores to sell town trash bags, correct? No. not that i'm aware of no so town hall sells them highway department sells them stop and shop sells them that's right so we you gotta remember too mr smith we don't want to inundate our quirk in our our highway department with bag sales all day well the yeah the bags are sold down at the highway department uh i don't believe we

sell them at town hall anymore so highway you know yep i mean stop and shop is a large business cumberland farms you know large corporation So, I mean, definitely next year, you know, we can talk about that. So, to Ms. DiUcci's point, we'll do these as two separate votes. One on, you know, the increase in cost of town trash bags, and then we'll follow up with a different vote

on the transfer station after this. Somebody wants to make a motion? I can make a motion. Make a motion to approve the rate increase on the town trash bags for July 6th of 2026. As written. As written.

Thank you, Mr. Costner. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Mr. Ucci, the transfer station...

The transfer station itself, so there's obviously the highway superintendent put some information in here.

He just wanted to establish to the board or kind of paint a picture of here's where the costs are, here's where I arrived at this 30 cent per pound when it comes to the scale and how they'd be charging things. with so many different moving pieces in this memo my suggestion or my ask to the board would be to consider just authorizing prices to be termed to be determined by

the town administrator when changes need to be made the there are a lot of moving pieces to it as opposed to hey televisions went way up when's the next meeting we'll ask the board to increase the price of recycling a television well tile just went up so this the with all the moving parts it to me it makes more sense to be able to make those decisions to costs on the

fly the board always has the ability to to pull that back if they if they wanted to but just because the scale itself if 30 cents isn't enough and then we you know we would have to we might have to postpone a transfer day until we can get in front of the board i'm just looking to capture this in the easiest way because mattresses a lot

of this stuff changes all the time so what we have listed on this is uh the thirty dollars uh 30 cents per pound and then mattress is $35 each to dispose of and $475 for a pickup. They want to change the mattress to $75 $35 each times 22 mattresses, which was the last pickup, equals $770, plus $475 for the pickup, equaled $1,245 divided by 22 mattresses, cost the town. rounded $57 per mattress to pick up.

So only charging $35 per mattress, we were losing money. And so everybody understands this is a change in the way that we're managing the transfer station. Now that we have a scale down at the transfer station, we're losing $175,000 a year. on that transfer station a few years ago? So a few years ago, it was probably taking in around, if I, probably

around $25,000 where it was spending $100,000. It was completely upside down. $75,000 it was often. So, you know, and somewhere that bill needed to be paid.

The bill was being paid through taxes versus the people that were actually using it.

And in speaking with Chris Simons, our highway superintendent, we had, you know, contractors who were doing construction projects that were bringing their contractor waste to the transfer station because, you know, it was $20, you know, for a truckload of versus them having to order a roll-off dumpster and pay those fees. And the reason why I throw

out that suggestion about the prices, and if it's something that the the board wants to pause on grab additional information we could always table it but when I see that we're gonna charge 30 cents per pound there's no delineation of what those products are so the same weight for two different products is going to be recycled or removed from the town think the

costs could be completely different yeah and it so that the prices are completely different at the mall I work at, a trash compact that can go out, you know, if it's got a lot of food waste, it can go out up to 11 tons. If it has mostly, you know, dry waste, it goes out at about four and a half or five tons. So, you know, it definitely, somebody's, you

know, throwing away a bunch of bricks in there. I mean, it's going to be very heavy and costly to dispose of. So, to come up with the $30 a pound, did they look at like prior invoices similar to what he did with the mattresses here? Well, it's the example he used right above is where he did a generally speaking the number of dumpsters, the cost it takes to remove a single

dumpster, and then how that would be captured by, okay, if he has it, you can see it there at the end as.27, so 27 cents, and then taking it to 30 for 3 cents more than the actual cost. He also has manpower in there as well to monitor the drop-off. Yeah, I mean we're trying to get to the point where the transfer station is a break-even. You know, it's a service

to the residents if they choose to use it. You know, they need to help cover the cost of using it. For the residents who don't use it, you know, they shouldn't have to pay for that through their taxes. So, I mean, i don't know i i would rather see this come back to the board if they're going to change rates um rather than you know because at least this way here you

know the public has an opportunity to comment you know uh it's televised they you know are made aware of it um you know versus you know they're hearing this and it's like oh it's 30 a pound to dispose of my trash and then they get down there and it's 40 cents a pound 30 cents 30 cents My only concern is you're you're charging about 10% more For for by the pound but

you're you're probably closer to 20 25% more over cost for mattress With the point of the transfer station is try to keep it affordable for the resident as well I can see having a little bit in there to cover some of the operational costs but I I have some questions about where we came up with the $75 cost when it's only costing the town about $57 per mattress if

I'm reading that correct? I agree with Mr. Bednarik. I'll check with the highway superintendent. We can get further details on the mattresses themselves but it again the it's always there's always overtime associated every time we run that so any of these other costs that are associated to having that transfer station opened are brought into the bottom line of what someone might be getting rid of. Because he's not

figuring any labor cost into the mattress. Well, I see, I get that, but we have no way to see the labor costs to mix into that mattress either. I think what he did is included the labor cost in the tonnage portion of it.

And essentially, it was just easy enough to break down because it's the same employees doing both, but the charges are different in the way that the town is charged. So I think he incorporated the overall labor cost into the 30 cents. So the labor is being recouped in tonnage and I do know I looked at comparables I'm just some towns read $100 and stuff like that I'm just

and I understand that that needs to be there or that probably should be just a little bit of wiggle room but you know if it's only cost in the town 50s you know let's just round everything up you know $57 to dispose of a mattress then why should we charge as much as 75 My only question, and if we can justify that, then that's not a problem, but we're

not running a business. We want to break even. My comment to the board on that is I don't Just my opinion, transfer stations should not be designed just to break even. The Attleboro one operates at a profit where they pay their salaried employees vehicle purchases all out of how they run that transfer station, which is very impressive. And we talked about if we could turn some money turn that

into a positive where we're making some money on it then we could hire a part-time solid waste inspector that goes around and issues warnings or violations when someone is not recycling so that we're kind of policing it but the great - we're not trying to hurt the the resident but the majority of people that are using the transfer station it's a lot of items that they're trying to they

have to get rid of they just can't keep so they could dump them on the side of the road they do a great job of that as well and that is a concern there should be a concern that if you stop increasing this so much that you could potentially see more of the that conversation is always had and where That's probably, that may be one of the reasons we still get the

illegal dumping and we're still, we were still in the negative for how long. So if the illegal dumping goes up, that's something that we have to find a path for, whether that's pressure on our law enforcement side or we come up with ways to deal with that and then issue fines. But I don't think we should... It's just my opinion. I don't think we should operate at a consideration of what someone's

going to do illegally and we're not going to be able to capture the money to run a transfer station because of that. Well Mr. Oluchi, the, the, the, when they, when they came up with this, when the Highway Department came up with this cost, when we pick an illegal mattress up on the side of the road, doesn't it just get mixed in with the rest of the mattresses? Oh yeah. So this

is already calculated in this cost? The number of ones that have been illegally dumped?

Yeah. Yeah, because he doesn't take that out of his equation. No, he's assuming that he's making, collecting $35 on 22 mattresses. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's correct. And then the pickup cost, so that equals $770 plus the pickup cost of $475 equals the $1,245. This might help him out a little more. If he knows how many were illegally put in that dumpster, the illegal ones were put in the dumpster. He's not

counting any illegal ones. Well, no, he's not. That might be what's keeping the cost low. Right. that might help help justify where he needs to be he's the illegal ones aren't being considered no they're not but if there was one in there it would it would it would do what it would increase the if it there actually was one increase there and you didn't pay the $35

it increase the cost so we didn't charge anybody there was no additional pickup fee so the number doesn't change it would be a pickup fee because when they pick it up off the side of the road they put it in the pile of mattresses so then when the company comes to pick up the mattresses there's a a mattress in there that wasn't paid for so technically it could inflate the cost

no because the pickup fee is 475 dollars we didn't make any money off that mattress but we didn't lose any money well he's he yeah he's looking at it plainly. Like if I have 10 mattresses, this is how much it costs to get rid of 10 mattresses. In his example though, they came up with the $56.59. There were $35 per mattress times 22 mattresses equals $770 plus $475 per pickup equals $1,245. If there were

10 more mattresses that were illegal mattresses, the number doesn't change.

Of course it has to change. What changes? Our cost changes. The cost changes. It's all factored into it. So the $770 is added to the $470. So if you're not recouping, as it's written here, the $35 per mattress, the cost does go up. So we're being billed the $35. I see that. Hold on. That's me.

So we're being billed 35? We're being billed 35 for each mattress we dispose of, which is why we charge 35, but we're not recouping the $475 for the pickup fee. Correct. All right. So, I mean... I think we just need a little better breakdown of what costs are. I mean, is the board comfortable with the $30 per pound? and voting on that tonight and then we can get more information on the mattress I mean we

could we could adjust the mattress to $60 for now and then Mr. Yohuchi can come back with more information I don't have a problem with that I just I would like to see the total finance like a spreadsheet on the entire process and you know how we're arriving at the final numbers that were arriving if that's available it would be helpful I just I don't know I just feel that and again

if we can justify that we need to make this much money on a mattress in order to keep this solvent or even more than solvent just you know offset costs or have a little extra in case we run short or whatever then that's fine I just don't think we should be up charging that much and that's coming from ignorance because i don't have all of the figures in front of me and

and you know again looking at the figures and having you or mr simons explain to me you know how this increase works and how you're arriving at that 75 fee all right so if somebody wants to make a motion to approve the uh transfer station fees just adjusting the mattress fee from $75 to $60 a mattress. I can do that for you. I just want to clarify

Mr. Chair. It's 30 cents a pound not $30. Is that correct? 30 cents a pound. Understood. I'd like to make a motion to adjust the transfer station prices at the Somerset transfer station to 30 cents a pound for trash and to $60 per mattress. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Next is discuss and act on a vote to approve the fiscal year 2026 year-end budget transfer request. Mr. DiIulucci. Mr. Chair, through you,

we had, we're requesting 20 transfers and I'll run through them for the board. From the reserve fund to the town office wages full-time $2,053.87. From the reserve fund to the town buildings fuel $3,405 From the reserve fund to the wiring inspector salaries $1,930 From the reserve fund to the wiring inspector dues $21.25 From the reserve fund to the harbor master public safety $2,635.12 From the reserve fund to

the graves salary $750 from the reserve fund to the historical commission office supplies 30.25 bless you thank you from the reserve fund to the computer department fourteen thousand six hundred fifty five dollars and thirty nine cents from the board of health concom wages to the board of health line $82.05 the town administrator consultant line to the town administrator expense line $15,497.20 from the

retirement account to the diamond regional high school $76,414 the retiring retirement account to the somerset berkeley regional high school the uh two dollars From the retirement account to the street lights account, $75,700. From the highway account to the motor vehicle parts and accessories, $39,270.89. Building and grounds to wages, $585.68.

Building and grounds to non-scheduled overtime, $878.80.

Wages full-time personnel to dispatch overtime $23,104.18 Wages from full-time personnel on the police side to dispatch stipends $10,546.96 Wages full-time personnel to dispatch part-time $1,090.93 and the E911 support and incentive for dispatchers to the dispatch overtime account, $14,158.46. i'll go through uh each one of those uh just on the description side the first one i read off where it was reserved

to the town wages full-time we had an employee leave on june 24th so they had completed the entire fiscal year there was time that had to be cashed out that included vacation time and any other compensatory time that we owed them and that's where that amount of two thousand fifty three dollars comes from the so i think it'll be easier to discuss them one at a time in case

the board has questions certainly going through the whole list going back through so anyone have any questions with the payout of vacation time for an employee that left on june 24th oh i'm good all set okay next one mr og The next one was the reserve fund to the town building fuel. This is the old town hall. We had not been budgeting expenses for

old town hall. We did not know when it would be reopened. It reopened this fiscal year or last fiscal year. And the oil costs from the winter came out to $3,405. Any questions by the board? No questions. All set. Next item, reserve fund to wiring inspector. The both number of inspections as well as whether it was a school or an increase on uh

what is that program that they they're signed up for they receive information annually on any dues international wire inspectors association that's the one thank you sir uh so that particular line with those inspections again we still when it comes to the inspections themselves any inspections that run over what we budgeted for we're still

recouping back because they're charging the person so the this can be a combination of over inspections any money that was there was also a training they went to a training too so the training and the fees the dues and any other inspections went over that line by that amount one thousand nine hundred and thirty dollars questions no thank you okay oh sorry next line i mean it's twenty one dollars and

twenty five cents yep that was the annual membership one okay any questions on that no questions on that okay um Next one, Mr. Uji. There was work done on both the dock and the Harbormaster boat that we had, which came to $2,635.12. Questions? I take it something broke on the boat and wasn't encumbered, or more service was needed than had been budgeted

for? Well, no, there... It's every year that the boat is, I'm not sure on the dock side, I think there were, I don't know if they had to repair any of the cleats or any of those items on the boat side, general maintenance that I don't know if it wasn't something specifically broken, but when they're cleaning it, when they're getting it up and running, when they're repairing the stuff down on the

dock, all those expenses exceeded that line by that amount. Yeah. And this is, Yeah, we exceeded the line. So it's not a question of like we had at the special town meeting that, you know, didn't get encumbered. This is just, there's not enough money in the line. So we have to pull money from another line. Any other questions? I'll say. Okay. Go ahead, Mr. The next one is the reserve fund to

grave salaries. So we, Last year we appointed a veteran graves person, which is mandated by law, and we've always paid a stipend of $750. Now that we have a veteran grave stipends person, we will now incorporate, which is in the FY27 budget, the stipend they receive.

Questions? No. No. Next one's $30.25. I don't know if this questions.

No. No. nothing there okay next miss zioji yep this one and i i apologize this one i thought was all associated to we had recently received a grant from the state where it was 50 laptops, 10 desktops, and a lot of equipment. Some of the equipment is still coming in. The value is probably anywhere from $75,000 to $100,000. We've already set up a computer lab here at the library. We intend on

setting up a second one over at the COA. It goes towards our digital program that we're working on with our digital navigators. Not only will they be able to teach people one-on-one, they'll be able to host classes. We intend on making these classes on some nights bilingual or trilingual. So we did know that we were going to get a cost associated when we receive the grant to IT services because

the state does not provide those. I did a bill we received from our IT. It was received on June 26th and it was for $19,000. So that bill incorporated some of these costs and some other costs. and it exceeded that budget line by $14,000, $655.39, and that is on me.

I consider that that's a line that I monitor, not a different department head. So I own that overture, but that's where that cost is associated to. Computer consultant, while great at computers, is not great at... getting invoices out in your time. That is very true. That is true. They're not timely. We are working on that. Yeah, I think it's just one of those things that, you know, once a quarter, somebody needs to

be reaching out to them and saying, look, we need the invoices. And this number, if you recall, last year, it was a lot higher. I think it was close to twice that. So where we've almost corrected it completely. Any questions on that? No questions. All set. okay next one uh 82.50 uh increase in dues questions no questions next one mr og um this one here is associated to there's um a consultant line in the

ta's budget for twenty thousand dollars um but it's for it's it's under payroll not expense and you cannot use payroll lines to pay expenses the board of health utilized Roo for services associated to the work that was being done at Brayton Point not to exceed that line. So we knew we had that money in there. We weren't going to hire anyone to come in and pay them off the payroll. So this was something that we had

planned for a while where okay we have $20,000 in there at the end of the year when Roo's done we'll make that transfer and the cost the total cost of Roo assisting the town came to that $15,497.20 and that's the purpose for that. And this is applicant is going to be reimbursing those costs? No. This particular line is what the Board of Health requested that go beyond what was what's mandated or connected

to what they're obligated to pay. I was always under the assumption that Rue was doing a review for the Conservation Commission and not specifically for the Board of Health? It's well yes and no. They were they were in fact doing it yes for conservation but there were items that the Board of Health wanted to see that went outside what you could charge to the applicant and we did not

want to we made sure we were careful that they were only being charged with what was appropriate. So I don't remember seeing the report on that. Does anybody... And I could be wrong, but I don't ever remember seeing the report on... Well, the reports kept coming through and you might recall, Chief, at one point I had sent an email to Rue saying, you're getting very close to this line, please don't exceed it, because

they had kept coming back with, here's the information we have. I do recall that.

And it's captured by this amount of money. and they didn't go beyond that.

Yeah and they said actually don't worry about it we're not gonna we're not gonna exceed that even. Correct I think there was yeah when they were getting close to like I do remember that and now this it ended up coming at 15 but it was all all revolved around what they were what the work was that they were performing on behalf of the town. Any other questions?

Next one Mr. DiLucci. The next one was the safety complex building and grounds going to building wages. This one was the total amount owed to the employee at the end of the fiscal year was not the full amount that the employee was entitled to. So that is what the employee was still owed, the $585.68. Questions? Just run that one quickly by me. Was he being underpaid or... I don't understand. I

don't know. I'll have to check on that. Because there's... I don't know if that's the one associated to overtime. No, because the next one is...

Was it the next one that has that? Excellent. Yep. Assist with the storm. Because that's the only thing, like, what happened. My own. It's a small question, but why wasn't he being paid? I'll have to find out on 11 what that total comes from.

Okay. Next one is overtime associated with the LA-6 for the safety complex. Yep. So that one is the number of hours that the custodians worked when they were working non-scheduled overtime related to the blizzard.

Questions? No, thank you. Nothing there. Next. The police wages to dispatch overtime. So over time within the dispatch is a constant issue something that we are working on right now negotiations are taking place with the union body the biggest issue with our dispatch center is i think it was 2012 chief where the town agreed to have the dispatchers work at five and two i'm not familiar with um any other

town that exercises those types of hours and the problem comes up when you're giving all the full-time employees the weekend off and you're relying on part-time employees to cover what potentially are the busiest days of the week they're either not coming in or they're not competent enough to stay within the job or that it's just not for

them so we constantly are paying overtime whether it's on the weekends or if someone's you know old time and they're off and we have to make that back up so the police wages on went to the dispatch overtime because the total amount of overtime to dispatchers for 2026 far exceeded what was in there Part of it, when we looked at prior year, you know, they were, we under budgeted 26

as well compared to 25 actual. When I look at that line over just the last couple of years, it's been budgeted $80,000 every year, which is interesting because if we give an increase in pay every single year, how can that line stay stagnant if we have a value that we associate to what becomes usual for the entire year. That, so that to me again and when I looked

at FY27 and this is always the tricky part the end of year transfers come in after we've already done the budget so it kind of becomes a fingers crossed and then I go in FY27 and I see look at this we budgeted $80,000 again so we already know that's going to be an issue. So the line itself is not budgeted you know to the level that it needs to be and We

as we need to fix the issue when it comes to overtime being expended within the dispatch center. Questions? No thank you. Okay next Mr. Seelich. The next one police wages to dispatch incentives. Like many of our union bodies there are educational incentives that are assigned to based on what you might have whether it's a degree, a credit, or a class, a certificate and that number that was included. There

were a lot, there's only six dispatchers, but more of them are leaning on the educational incentive and the number of incentives that were all the dispatchers are eligible for exceeded the line by that $14,158.46. So I would assume that people picked up new incentives during the course of the year that weren't budgeted for or couldn't be budgeted

for because Correct. They weren't realized and now this person receives those incentives. I have a couple ideas on that. Okay. Joe? I have nothing on that. Okay. Under calculated expense. Next one. Sorry, I was reading it.

Next one, Mr. Hughes. Under calculated expenses to part-time dispatchers. Oh, I'm sorry.

I was looking to the left. Under calculated expense for part-time, yes. So there were additional dispatchers that were hired. All of them need to be trained or shadow someone. And one of the things that the chief is, in his efforts to try and curb overtime in there and bring some semblance of of even keel if you will is to bring in additional part-time dispatchers so they're not always relying on the

same ones if they say no and increase what we pay part-time dispatchers we had done that last year so that particular $1,090 is associated to those training costs of bringing in five additional part-timers And it's always difficult. You train a part-timer for several weeks and before they even start they're like, you know what, this is not for

me. This is awful. Goodbye. Or someone comes in, they're part-time, they're like, oh my God, every weekend, Saturdays and Sundays, I'm going to be called every weekend. It's the summertime. Goodbye. And now we've invested in something. So it goes to the overarching issue of, well, then how do we structurally address everything when it comes to the dispatch center? Questions? All set. Okay next line Mr.

Uchii. The next line overtime from police dispatch exceeded the budgeted amounts that's the second half of basically number 13 so $23,000 that we paid from overtime wasn't enough so we grabbed some of it from the police wages and then the other one we grabbed from dispatch incentives to dispatch overtime with that $14,158. Also that I had that backwards. They had extra

money in the incentives and we took it from incentives. Correct. Yes.

I should have said wages. I'm sorry. I had that backwards. I had that backwards. All right. Questions? Again, I don't know if any money was cut from the part-time budget on the current fiscal year.

i don't believe so because we've increased that budget in order to offer a higher compensation to attract part-timers all right i still have yeah some ideas on that point mr lucci says i mean you have all the full-timers work monday through friday and then we're counting on just part-time people who are less dedicated than our full-time people

to work saturdays and sundays you know So we're always having to pull our full-timers in on overtime to cover the shifts that are uncovered. And the rates of, you know, a 12-year dispatcher receiving overtime on the weekend is far higher in overtime than a part-time, even a part-timer working overtime at the rate that we send out. And like you said, we adjusted the part-timer rate to try to attract, you know, better

caliber of people. Correct. This is a universal problem. I drive by the sandwich police department. Uh, I think like every weekend and they've had a sign out part time dispatchers hiring part time dispatchers. They've had the sign flashing for 34 years already. I know it's universal. The amount of training that it takes to um, to become a dispatcher number one isn't

already up into the hundreds of hours and then in order to train to become proficient and competent to work a shift unsupervised or even as a second chair it takes a long time and if you're not able to provide the hours or you know there's some other issues that i want to talk to you on the outside which kind of complicate this

a little bit because they potentially could be addressed through collective bargaining so remind me that's what i wanted to talk about okay no problem next line mr the next line is the retire uh retirement line to diamond regional So Diamond reached out to us several months ago at the start of spring and they had not locked down the last bond rate for finishing the high school and they were working on completing

that so they didn't know what the final number would be with their assessment for all the communities that are part of that school and So when we receive the assessment at the beginning of the year, like we've received the one for 2027, we don't anticipate that number to change mid-year in the next calendar year. This past calendar year it did. And they said, hey, we were not able to assess you correctly.

This is the amount owed. So that money, that $76,414, I don't expect it to ever come up again. But it is a one-time amount. amount of money that we owe Diamond based on what we're assessed at now that everything's locked in their bonds are locked in and their true costs for completing the middle school are all done so this is something that has affected all the communities there was a bump an

increase that all the communities had to make up questions and I know we have mr. Dibiase come in and speak to us about this that is correct yep yep he came he did come in with the superintendent The next one is the...

$2. We just weren't assessed. And then we received a bill and it was just kind of odd because usually those are spot on, but it was just $2. Next one. The retirement line to streetlights. And I did look that up. So we did receive a solar credit of $35,000 to...

be applied to that. So it is apparent that the town has never appropriately provided the money needed to capture the street light cost. And I anticipate a similar problem now in 2027 now that we're looking at this but certainly moving forward we'll dive into it and get granular to see why is this why has this always been like this why you know hasn't

been appropriately changed and I think one of the things I just want to throw out there if I may is a lot of the department heads in general and in municipal budgets and finance They're often looking at the bottom line, and that's kind of a misstep. It's always good. And that's the thing about these transfers. They're not coming out of an account like an article or something else. This is all money

that's within the fiscal budget. So whatever we're transferring because there was a line that was exceeded, it's an amount that doesn't go back to free cash. But I just don't want people to think that well, where's all this additional money coming from it already exists It's in that fiscal budget and now we're closing the lines that that

exceeded that had an exceedance except the money that was already there except for a couple I just don't want you to there are a couple that are coming from the reserve fund, right and No, no, no. The reserve fund in the, which is the $150,000, not the, yes, the one we put in the actual fiscal budget reserve, not the reserve account. Okay. That is a great distinction, though.

That's a great point. So, yes, the streetlight piece, there was not enough money to capture that, and we need to, We, as a town, need to determine what is the actual cost of running that. So the $75,700 is being paid to the utility company? Yes. So this is an bargain for replacing lights? It's part of it because they conflated into one line. So I don't

know what the cost of replacement is separate from what the cost of those lights are. Yeah, because I would hardly think. that even in our worst years that we wouldn't have noticed something. It has to have something to do with the installment of the LEDs. It could have been, there could have been a large uptick. It is expensive to replace a light bulb pole, whatever it is. And there could have

been an uptick in the number of bulbs we replace. However, when these budgets come over, all of that stuff should be taken into account. And on this particular line, it wasn't. They typically just replace that whole fixture, right? Not just the head. Just the head. Not the arm, just the head. Yeah, just the head. But right now

I know National Grid's coming through town and Mr. Oluchi, he's struggling with when National Grid replaces a pole, they put the entire arm on the ground. So I think a lot of the cost isn't coming from repair, it's coming from reinstallation that National Grid's taking the light fixture down. Yeah, that's a good point. you know again they replaced a bunch of poles you know when we did riverside and they're not

putting the light back up so we're we're incurring the cost to put the light back up okay next one mr the next one is the transfer from the catch basin which is the ms4 to snow removal parts and accessories Every winter, every time you plow, pieces break on those, whether it's the trucks themselves, the plows themselves, all the different equipment that make it up. This past winter, there

was a lot more snow. There was the blizzard. There were a lot more breaks.

These... repairs so that repair line was not enough to capture the blizzard of 26 and all the other snowstorms that we had and it exceeded that line by 39 000 so we had money that was in our ms4 program uh which which we know where we're state mandated we're in year eight of a 10-year plan that the feds i'm sorry not state the federal government has mandated because we're a coastal community

and how are we dealing with all our runoff? So the money that we had in there is what we're able to transfer over to cover the cost of equipment that had broken related to the winter. Yeah, and I mean the 41-inch blizzard storm, I mean, we had equipment trying to plow that that's not designed to plow that kind of snow, so I'm sure that contributed to a lot more breaks. I do

have a question, though, with regard to the... possibility or why it was this not eligible for reimbursement under the disaster declaration that we submitted or did so there's a couple pieces to that the we have to bring that line into order The money we are submitting for, there's two things. There's a WREP program, which is the Winter Recovery Act that

the state puts out. And that is what the legislators have assigned. I believe it was $80 million. We are receiving $226,000 of those dollars. And there is the... Before you move on, was that the total that we asked for? It's a formula. Okay. The money coming, so we had no say in that. They sent it out as a formula based on the total mileage of roads that we have

in our community. So, which is at least a fair way of distributing it throughout all the communities when you see the different, the varying amounts. So the WRAP program is something that exists year after year within the state, and then you have the declaration, the emergency declaration that we asked for from the federal government. That's somewhere, I'm

not exactly sure where that is at the federal level, but that's something we're going to have to wait on. It could take months before we receive that money back.

Is it too late to apply that? I mean, technically that's associated with the cost of the storm. Is it too late to include that? Everything that we associated to the storm, everything that we possibly could on the declaration, we've included. But the line itself still needs to be adjusted. It needs to be adjusted now, so potentially we could be re- We could end up receiving all of that back. Okay. That is

correct. Thank you. Yeah, I do know that Rhode Island, I just looked it up again, but I read this yesterday, Rhode Island got denied for a disaster declaration for the blizzard. I did see, I don't know if it has anything to do with campaign commercials that are calling out the president when these declaration disasters are on his desk, but probably not the, hopefully that's not what happens to

us. Again, there's a number of politicians who are blasting another politician over denying the disaster declaration. Great. See what happens. Through the chair, Mr. Costa, going back to that safety complex number 11, you are correct. Looking at that, there were two lines for it. The $878.80 was associated to overtime on the snowstorms. The $585.68 is associated to their salary

amount that didn't capture, we didn't budget the complete amount that they were owed. So we didn't. It's not that they were being paid the wrong amount. We budgeted not enough. Correct. So they were being paid, but we budgeted $585 less than what was needed to cover their full payroll. Correct. All right.

Does anyone have any other questions on these? No, sir. Again, I think the number of transfers is higher than what we normally have. Obviously, a couple of those were outside of our control, like the diamond. like the Blizzard.

I guess the only thing I was thinking, Mr. Diogio, is rather than leaving everything for year-end, like Diamond, we knew about, you know, maybe we address that, you know, in a particular month, so we're not leaving all of these. Certainly.

And look, so one of the things I expressed to the board when I was sending over the explanations for these transfers is... It's never great to have transfers.

It kind of indicates well, why are we going over these lines and and I think Internally, it's a good lesson for us when I sit down with department heads It's a it's a good reminder for them They need to be watching these lines all the time and it allows us to take advantage of something like that We put in additional guardrails where well now we're gonna meet Every day if we have

to if you if you need assistance in monitoring your lines so there are certainly things that i have to take on and and make sure that we're covering down on so that we don't bump into this again next year how many police officers 34 including the chiefs forgive the chief i mean not getting them 34 including the chief 34. how much overtime is paid to the police department We don't have

that handy, Jerry. Trust me. The budget for 2027 is $265,000.

In overtime? In overtime. There's 30 police officers. How many are on a shift? Six. Six officers? Are you sure it's that many? Yes. And there might be seven on one, but that was when I was there. But it's six per shift. I think we had one extra. Plus there's detectives. school resource offices, etc. I understand all of that. But why is the overtime so great when you have six offices out

of 30? Why is the overtime so much money? So there's a lot of reasons for overtime. Kind of when in detail during the budget review on their overtime. We actually cut their overtime by a total of $40,000 this year, Mr.

Ilochi? Correct. So we cut their overtime by $40,000 this year.

You know, some of it is, you know, you'll get... With the $40,000 cut... They're down to $265,000. There's $265,000 budgeted.

budgeted for overtime. So, if we have that many police officers, why in the hell was paying 200-- Without going down the rabbit hole, Jerry, without going down the rabbit hole, there's a lot of considerations. There's unanticipated sick leave where an officer-- there's a minimum staffing, okay? So, you're not going to have less than three officers working on any given day. So, if somebody's out sick and that

only leaves two people, then you're going to have that back filled with overtime. And sick can also be an injury that they're out for a longer period of time. This much overtime money spent when you have this many officers. There is discretionary overtime. There's anticipated. There is anticipated. You've got 37 police officers, right? I think we're a little bit out of order

here. I missed this. Forget the detectives, forget the officers, I mean the guys who are lieutenants or sergeants, forget them. How many officers do you have that can do patrol work? Well, technically all 34 of them could do patrol work. That's not what I'm asking. So, a full compliment. depending on the day, would be four offices. That's a full complement. Four offices is a lot. But that happens very infrequently

due to contractual obligations. Everybody has vacations to fill. Everybody has, there's training. That has to be, you lose an officer roughly two weeks out of the year just for training. on top of vacation and it has to be done, Jerry. I mean it. Part of the challenge is we don't have extra officers. So we have offices to fill all the shifts that need

to be filled. We don't have extra officers that somebody's out sick, somebody's out injured.

Oh hey, you're the backup person to be able to fill the shift. There are no backup people. Everybody is part of the deployment. But we also have firearm inspections that need to be done. That's at a cost of $20,000 a year for firearm inspections. The point I'm getting at is why is there so much overtime? And that's why we've got this many police officers. And again, that's why we're digging into it.

That's why we cut it $40,000. Some of it's discretionary. There are certain programs that are funded through overtime. Those... unfortunately had to be cut, all right? But they were cut. But there is just a lot that is funded and has to be funded through overtime because we don't have extra people. And like I said, you lose an officer for a minimum, and I'm saying a minimum, I'm being conservative, for two weeks

just to have him receive his annual training. He's not available to be, or she is not available to be used. Unless you have extra people, you have to pay for that training somehow. Right now we have two officers out on long-term disability.

So you have to fill their shifts. I'm not going to win this argument.

I'll sit down with you and go over it with you. We are cognizant of it. We are cognizant of it. We've started addressing it. We cut it by $40,000 this year. So it is something that we're looking at.

Okay, if nobody has any more questions on the budget transfers if somebody wants to make a motion I'll make a motion that we approve the budget transfers as listed and explained and discussed second All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Next, to discuss and act on a vote to sign the plan to comply with the Cannabis Control Commission equity mandates and post-community agreement policy. So, we

first discussed this at our last meeting. We had literally just gotten this information. You know, I spoke to Mr. Irucci.

passed out to the members of the board. Update from our law firm, KP Law, regarding the Cannabis Control Commission regulatory amendments impacting municipalities. This was prepared for the January 2024 MMA business meeting and trade show. This ties back to legislation that was passed at the state level by legislators that mandated social equality, social equity business, and social equity

program for communities and for individuals that were adversely affected by what was cannabis that was previously outlawed. I know Selectman Costa at the last meeting had concerns about providing preference to people who previously violated the law. I've read through this. I absolutely hate this policy.

Again, it's been pushed down from the state through the Cannabis Control Commission. The equity plan, host communities are also required to establish an equity plan to promote and encourage full participation in the industry by individuals from communities disproportionately harmed by cannabis prohibition and enforcement. As above, this plan must be established by host community

at a conspicuous location at its offices and on its website. The plan should encourage applications from businesses and individuals that would meet the definition of social equity business, social equity program participants, and economic empowerment priority applicants as determined by the Cannabis Control Commission. It must include goals, programs, and measures the host community will use to

promote and encourage participation. The Cannabis Control Commission has not, this is coming from KP Law publication, has not yet provided, issued a model plan or guidance for municipalities on this topic. Again, you know, we have prior to this act being passed in 2023, Somerset has a cannabis facility here in town. I think to mandate to municipalities how we are to be regulating the businesses that

are coming into Somerset is something the state should be staying out of, something the Cannabis Control Commission should be staying out of, and to, you know, put forth a program that they basically tell us you have to pass this within the community, otherwise we're going to start fining you is, you know, in my opinion, unconscionable on the state's level. Well, I couldn't agree with you more, Mr. Smith.

I just look at the evaluation metrics for new applicants. Now, they provide you with the evaluation metrics, and according to KP, if you deviate from any of these metrics, then you're essentially not in compliance. So it's not a suggested metric, right? The one metric that you do have to comply with is that 25% of the points have to come from... Right,

so I was just going to just so that people understand what we're saying. So, you know, if they get 7.5 points if, you know, the applicant has a complete business plan and management operations, it's great, right? You get 7.5% if they have a plan in place that prevents the sale to minors. So a lot of this stuff makes sense. You know, when you come in before a business and you have a

checklist of different things. The part that I have a problem with is and most people should have a problem with, obviously not most people, but equity applicants, and I'll go down the line on this, applicants meeting one or more, one or more, and every one of these check marks, every one of these points, 7.5%, 7.5%, 7.5 points, 7.5 points. The equity portion of it is 25 points. So, and I'm just

going to pull one, and this is the one that really sticks in my craw. The applicant or pre-verified individual or entity has a prior marijuana-related criminal offense or conviction.

So essentially, having violated the law when it was illegal, having violated that law gives you a leg up on somebody else who didn't violate that law. I can't vote for that. I said it already. I cannot vote for that. I'll get off the soapbox and figure out how we're going to handle this. Selectman Van Derik. Thank you. I appreciate everybody's, my other two selectmen's comments on this. However, this was passed. The

Cannabis Control Commission came from a ballot vote from the Commonwealth. The people voted for this. Whether we like it or not, this was put in place by the general public. So the people voted to legalize marijuana. The people did not vote for the state legislation that mandates the social equality. No, but the people voted to create the Cannabis Control Commission, so the the cannabis control commission is

only putting forth what the legislature passed under 935 cmr exactly so again you know it's the legislature is you know pushing forth this and you know again speaking of soap boxes the legislature can't even properly fund chapter 70 and unrestricted aid to communities that cause the taxes to go up for every resident within this town. Because when you live in a state that has Proposition

2.5, that you can't grow the tax levy by more than 2.5%, and they grow their state aid to education by 1.01% a year, the difference is being picked up by the residents of the town.

The money that they collect from this marijuana is not helping to go fund education. It's going to earmarks so that they can say, "Oh, I got this town this money and I got that town that money."

This is helping them get re-elected. You know, and when they talk about, when they talk about, we haven't, You haven't increased state taxes in however many years?

No, because you keep coming up with new taxes. You know, the meals tax, the cannabis tax, you know, the millionaire's tax, which was supposed to go to help fund education. So, again, I have a huge problem that they won't take on their obligation when it comes to funding education in this community, but they want to tell us who we have to provide preferential treatment to to

open a business within this town. That's my soapbox. Thank you.

I'll dust it off for you when you get down. Sherry still didn't hear you, sir. So, you know, I mean, again, I'm reading through information that we received from KP law under consequences of non-compliance. It says any interested party can file a complaint with the CCC alleging a host community's non-compliance with social equity requirements. If a host community is found in violation of the

CDC, CCC may impose fines equal to the total community impact fees for all marijuana businesses in the host community during the prior calendar year. Are we getting money for host community agreements from solar therapeutics?

I thought that was all going to the state now. All we're getting are the sales from it. So the 3% that we were once receiving, we are not receiving anymore. And I'll check with the county to find out. If a host community is in violation, the CDC may impose fines equal to the total community impact fees for all marijuana business so the state

is sending us money the the state does send us money back we're not getting we're not getting it twice is what it comes down to right so do we know how much money the state is sending us back i'll i'll have to get those figures for the board all right so I mean, my feeling is let's hold off on this for another meeting. So moved. You know, because I'd like to

know what the potential negative impact could be. And it sounds like it's only if an interested party files a complaint. So let's just see how much we're getting from the state.

And I'd also like to know from KP, has the Cannabis Control Commission imposed any fines to date on any communities? All right, so the next one is to discuss an act on a vote to establish submission review fee for application for a host community agreement for a marijuana establishment or a medical marijuana treatment center. So this is primarily, Mr. Ucci, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we're

just establishing fees. That is correct, sir. Does this go hand in hand with the first... To me, they're totally separate. One is establishing fees, the other is establishing the...

THE EQUITY MANDATES AND HOST COMMUNITY AGREEMENT POLICY. WE CAN HAVE FEES WITHOUT HAVING THE EQUITY POLICY AND THE--

So, in reading through this and looking at it, my only recommendation, I think the town planner did a nice job on this, but the application marijuana establishment retail cultivation manufacturing testing and transportation application. I would bump that up to $5,000 from $2,500, which is, that's the predominant fee through most communities. I agree with that, Mr.

Chair. I was going to make the same recommendation. And then same with the next one, the medical marijuana treatment center, I would bump that up to $5,000 from $2,500.

Agreed. Any other changes that the board, or any discussion that the board would like to have? I mean, you can even bump the special crime fee up as well, I believe. But that's just a modification to an existing special permit. So if I came in tonight for AMF, you know, if they're looking for a modification, they already have a permit. We're just going to modify it. I have no problem

bumping that up as well. You know, they're here to... You want to make that $2,000? I will. I'll make the motion if you need it. No, we'll make one motion. $2,000 or $2,500? I think you can go for $2,500 on that, if you like. i could i could potentially see a lot of modifications with some things that are on the back burner that i've been hearing about on the

state level with this that i don't i don't keep track of marijuana as much as you do it's tough getting you know good product these days i got to stay up on it that's a joke ladies and gentlemen all right within um are there any other um So we're just setting the fees. So if somebody wanted to make a motion with these revised fees. So I would make a motion to establish the review. I'm sorry. I

would make a motion to establish fees for application for community host agreement for marijuana establishment and or medical marijuana treatment center as required. amended second all those in favor aye mr. Smith you have the topic to the figures to amend that I've got it yes sir you got it yep Marijuana establishment retail cultivation manufacturing testing trans

transporter 5k medical marijuana treatment center 5k modification to exist in marijuana special permit $2,500 renewal and administration amendment stays the same 500 peer review escrow deposit stays the same initial deposit of 10,000 legal advertisement above and notifications actual cost perfect I have nothing on the other anybody else other yeah I would just like to say thank you to the

community thank you to our sponsors um and thank you to our town employees for all of the efforts that went into the um somerset 250 celebration i'd also like to thank my fellow committee members for the outstanding work and very hard work that they put into making that in my opinion, a resounding success. I haven't really heard anything negative about it. It was a great day, a

great way to bring the community together. I'm very appreciative. And I gotta say, you know, our fire department was there on the day of the event, as well as our police and highway departments. They were getting paid for that event. However, especially when it comes to the highway department, they were many, many, many, many times that they were working to assist us with this event. during their regular work

hours and they were taking on that extra burden without complaint with enthusiasm and doing a fantastic job so I wanted to give them an extra special shout out because I was on the phone with Chris almost every day can you help me with this can you help us with that and it was always yes and when I would be there and you'd see the guys they're never complaining they're just doing it

and you know chugging right along so I wanted to make sure I gave them a special shout out. Joe? No I have nothing. Again it was, to Todd's point, it was a fantastic day. You guys did a great job out there. Yeah. I mean can't say enough about the committee again. You know, I know you took the lead for the board on that. I greatly appreciate it. Definitely not my forte. So,

but a lot a lot of work. to pull something like that together and seeing, I mean everybody I saw or everybody I talked to loved the event and was happy with it. We're still not done fundraising. If anybody wants to send over a check, we're still not done fundraising. And we still, yeah, so where's that for sale? The t-shirts, hats?

Currently it's for sale at every concert. And at all clairs still. And Somerset Grill. And Rogers, I'm assuming? All of the original locations. So Somerset Grill, Rogers, all clairs. And then at the concerts. I got one question for you guys. Will you have a 251 sticker for that ship next year? we're going to sell them all mr ben all right no no i'm hoping for another i'm hoping for another event like this next year

it was great mr costa okay i have no topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours in advance of the meeting mr uchi town administrator updates nope just uh same as what um select mccosta stated uh thanks to everyone that may be event great success and it was a great time. The parking lot at the highway department is finished so now we've completed the parking lot, the

new gas tank, and the transfer station scale. All of those things are now complete and we have a list of other projects that we're still moving forward with. I have no reminders, citizens input. Hi, this is Pat Skalski. I'm here to talk about the home rule exemption bill that's at the State House. I had a nice talk with Kevin Conlon today to find out where that bill is. And it's in

the, since May 18th, it was passed in a House Steering Committee on May 18th. It was passed on to the third reading committee.

which consists of three people. Representative Walsh is the chairman, Representative Ash, and Representative Ferguson. They've had the bill since May 18th. According to Kevin, Representative Thurber sent them an email yesterday and like a month ago. So we have until July 30th, which is three more Thursdays, the Senate meets on Thursday, So anyone's watching, Liz Smith, hopefully, if you don't know by now, we need

to step it up. Stop writing to these people, the representatives, calling them, and see if they'll pass it. Thank you. Thank you. I had two things.

First, there were some complaints, Todd, about the event.

And those complaints were that there were no bangs.

Oh, I couldn't help that. The second thing is something that I want to talk about. It's on a serious note. The Advisory and Finance Committee met last night to review the proposed reserve transfers. And I won't bore you with the details. You can watch the meeting. But the essence of it was that they did not take a vote on any of the reserve transfers. I presume

that the committee chair is going to call another meeting for advisory finance to review. There were some questions they wanted, some people wanted more information on some of them. That's fine. I just wanted, the reason I wanted to bring it to your attention is first that that hasn't already taken place. And secondly, you know, I asked myself the question, so what happens if there's a, if there's

a difference of opinion between the Board of Selectmen and Advisory and Finance with respect to the approval of any of the transfers. I believe that state statutes say that if a reserve transfer request fails in either body, then it fails. And there is no remedy, there is no process for remedy. So I just wanted to bring that up. I don't know if anyone is familiar with that. But I was not as a member of

the advisory finance committee, I was I was not particularly happy with the outcome of the meeting last night. And I just wanted to make you aware. So Mr.

Irucci, did anybody reach out to you today about another meeting? No. Asking for you to attend? No. I attempted to call the chair, but I did not get an answer. Because, I mean, my understanding is it was kind of a last minute invitation last night. That's correct. for the asking if the town administrator was going to be able to attend which that's correct right so the meeting itself was last minute so

and and i i do under i do well at any rate i just want to make you aware of yeah i i mean i did i did watch part of the meeting i didn't get an opportunity to watch the whole thing but um certainly thought that a two dollar transfer could have been passed um by the committee um understand you know again I thought there was some

legitimate questions that were asked but to your point I mean we have to the 15th to get this finalized or we have to find out find another path to getting this done just want to make you aware of it thank you good evening Denise Jordan selectman Costa selectman Smith thank you so much for your position on the marijuana facilities and what the state is trying to mandate. I just did a little bit of looking today

and I didn't see anything for fiscal 27, but I know that in fiscal 26, there was approximately $26 million in loans available for people who want to start these businesses. It's highly unfortunate that the Cannabis Control Commission the governor and whoever else has a say doesn't look at the negative side effects of drug use on the families especially the children the partners the spouses and the community at large

it is not a good thing so thank you very much anyone else - Mr. Smith, the only thing I'll add, if anyone from advisory and finance is watching, the door is always open, the phone is always on, the emails are always received. I know members of that board have said, had asked for more participation and things, I've asked for what is it, how can we collaborate, how

can we capture that? I haven't received anything. I wasn't aware of the ANF meeting until the day before, and then as indicated, I was asked to attend two hours and 45 minutes before that date. I was surprised that one of the members said, oh, well, I saw him in passing, and I'm surprised he just didn't stick around to answer questions for us. That was at five of six. So I understand when

14 hour work days are not enough for that one particular individual. My youngest daughter is 15 today and I haven't seen her yet. So I'm not complaining, that's this job. But I didn't appreciate the tone from one of those members indicating that it wouldn't have been an inconvenience to find out with a two-hour notice why couldn't I have been there at that meeting. I try to attend anything

that I'm invited to. I have never been asked to go to that meeting. Even the message I received stated, "Do you have anyone from Town Hall?" So again, the door is open. I'm happy to collaborate. I'm happy to meet with any members as long as it's not a quorum. and I'm putting it out there again.

I don't know how else to breach that. It's fairly ridiculous to have that member assume that you have nothing else going on in your life besides sticking around for the A&F meeting that you were told about two hours and 45 minutes before the start of the meeting. So, again, you know, you have a family, you have obligations. I've never seen anybody who attends... More events in this

town more, you know board meetings, you know Joe you can attest how many water and sewer commissioner meetings he's attended school commissioner meetings Hiring committees for the water and sewer commission school school meetings, you know, I you know, whatever he's been outside all outside of you know his normal responsibilities, so You know, I

think you know again I would have thought that the chairman of that board would have reached out to you first thing this morning to find out your availability to hold another meeting. Again, there's been meetings on Saturdays that you've had.

We're dealing with an issue with the middle school. You offered, hey, Saturday, Sunday, whenever everybody can meet, I'm happy to be there. So it's not the fault of the town administrator that he wasn't there.

Okay, I'll take a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Thank you for watching.