dumas as the alternate to the board of directors of the crossroads veterans service district seven thirty will be looking at the alcohol license renewal affidavits at seven forty the year insurance loss program will be discussed seven fifty five we're going to go over the fiscal year fourteen budget goals and at eight fifteen we're going to go into executive session for nonunion personnel negotiations  forgot to mention we also have a bunch of action items to follow the agenda items as well under citizens input is there anybody that would like to speak and see nobody chairman's update i want to talk to you about a topic that is probably one of the it's probably one of the most important ones that i've had to deal with since i've been a selectman several weeks ago i started getting phone calls and requests to put some on the select means agenda to deal with was somewhat quiet because they didn't have the details and then yesterday it got more of a request and started coming in from the state newspapers so i kind of wanted to explain how i feel what the where the selections role is on this whole thing and initially in first and foremost the investigators in the attorneys are working on this and they started in rightfully so without the input of the board of selectmen has nothing to do with us and we're not investigators so that process is going under the criminal process the board of selectmen have jurisdiction over the police and we do provide guidance to our town manager to deal with litigation both against him from the t own right now it's not in anybody's best interest for the selectmen to talk about the details even if we had it it's an ongoing investigation and that process will work its way through one thing i i was starting to get aware of and i'm hearing from people that because it wasn't being talked about maybe a perception that it's intentionally being quieted or swept under the rug i want to make one thing clear that absolutely clear that i will make it a priority for this board under whatever is under our jurisdiction to go towards the truth in to go in any direction that we need to go to get to the truth in general i've spoken with superintendent spinelli and i've spoken to our chief at all larry has spoken a little bit to our tom integer a recreation department a town council and specifically from our superintendent our police chief they are turning over whatever rock and whatever file cabinet they need to do to get to the truth and the reason they need the truth is to help one help the victims that have been affected they were our residents and many of them still live here in two so it doesn't  again to the kids that are here today if somebody wants to reach out you're certainly welcome to jump to the selectmen but i would first suggest goes directly to the police chief larry suggested going to our police officer to malaria who is dealing directly with this he's very in tune to the florida issue and to helping the victims here secondly the y m c a is working with the town to present  and educate the public in the prevention of sexual abuse of children they've had one and i think they have one thursday night at the ahern school so if you're interested you want to come and listen to participate please reach out to the y and they can sign you up in give you the details i do want to read i put a statement together and this is a statement that i gave to the press today and mostly because i i was afraid that if we were quiet it would be on the people get the wrong perception i told the press it is i see absolutely no benefit whatsoever in putting up roadblocks in determining what happened back then to our kids victims simply did not get the respect they deserve during those days and i will do everything that i can as a selectman to make sure that it does not happen to them again as adults by covering up anything or being less than completely helpful if a community failed a child back then the worst thing that we can do now is to is not to address it openly to get the question in to get the questions answered this is somewhat early in the process and i know few details however if the flag that's a civil selectman have to wave hi says if you are a predator in our community we will make it as difficult as and as miserable as possible for you to exist here or anywhere then that is what i want to do step one starts with getting to the truth and there is no other way in my opinion i am confident that our town and our leaders will do the right thing and there's nothing i have seen so far in the contrary to that notion so i hope it's very clear that the town is in front of this we will continue to be in front of it as much as we can and please if there's anything that you know or you want to get involved just go to the police and they can pick it up from there thank you had something she was and i was a little worried form but this is the really really ugly sharon with some facilities some communication computers etc foxboro took the lead on doing the the actual formation documents another town took the lead on doing the innovation that we didn't get it so this year it was fox opposed to take the lead on getting the grant so we're going to get it it's about one hundred ninety one thousand dollars if it's managed well it's renewable for a second here and it's called community innovation challenge grant and it is technology based through the state and it is looking for innovative services to regionalization a district so we fall right in there the stuff we're asking for was going to help  the three vs zero serving that the four communities to communicate through to telephone services that are going to be on the go so wherever we are in the district we're going to be able to provide  connected computer services that we could be on the fly with with cloud storage memory that we all share sold three vs those four communities all connected and that's what this grants about to move us forward that next step you know i think we're in a good position to apply for this the four district board members have all signed of they're given their nod and signed this but the state has says that you know this is a four tonight i got another e mail that you know it's specifically mentioning that in services as well as regionalization things going for grants for those things so maybe veteran services has given the nod to a properly formed veteran services districts if they're approved through the state and the structure that has been laid out for this particular district with four towns with tom town halls all within about twelve miles of each other i mean where geographically we were set up in a good position we've got three strong via so i think we're at least destruction no not so much efficiency and workings as of yet but the structure is laid out so far is starting to be used as a model so if you're really reaching out to legislators you know i think that's something keep in mind that they're touting that this is and what's going to make this work is that we have some kind activity computer wise and phone wise and that's a lot of what this is about and like you know if they hadn't mentioned you know cutting some grants for regional projects you know i wouldn't even mention it but they did so it's mostly one time cost the one thing you see is some support services but the one time cost of the setting up is that the computers the cloud storage  there is also some project management because right now we are absolutely delusional and work with buried so to get this going part of that grant ask for a project manager that's a one time that will go away after where in motion things like things like that most of it is one time there's a little bit of ongoing and as i said if we get this and it's managed correctly on a month to month basis this pays out ahead of so  start off we get a months or quarters pay and then we prove that we've managed it well and then we move into next quarter and so forth if we manage that well through the first year it is a renewable grant but mostly onetime yes not entirely  just reading through this and seeing the improvement in services that have come about as a result of the consolidation or the regionalization efforts to date is very impressive and you know i marring very good very positive for the board the motion to interest the application for the community innovation challenge grant for the crossroads veteran services motion to have a signature page there  and we did actually already send this to the state clappy they have it because it was because it was due the thirtieth we've sent it and and they understand that it was it was going for a vote in signature tonight so we have made the deadline we go on some assistance from from an alternate no we don't have any agreement there really isn't a provision for that but we checked with the other communities and they understand the circumstances so paul's appointment is basically affected only so long as  needed until bob is it will go to space we get a board meeting coming up very soon which is critically important to get the agreement re approved for submission of the state and the grant and all that so it's kind think we're going to do is in the new agreement we're going to make it a minimum so that there's a permanent provision to appoint alternates for all the times this is just we didn't think of it when we put it together that's all so he'll go he'll be an alternate thousand and thirteen alcohol license for no affidavits has given us enough  which was given to us in our packets but exclude my think he said for us to do it rather the time period just so we get it in our packet we've got piccadilly which we can approve the fortunately i had to choose between two projects and the other one is the one is going to be an executive session so i can get involved on what you have the report and suffice to say what this committee does is basically all the department heads who have employees and what they do is they look at every insurance claim workman's comp property casualty and liability and and go through them and manage the claims you know get folks back to work as quick as we can find out what caused an accident do preventative things organized training that our employees and we are extremely active in training would probably boys are probably turning thirty or forty classes a year no not every employee goes so may go to chainsaw training so may go to you know some other kind of training but we've got a lot of stuff going on and because of that we've been extremely successful successful in reducing the claims experience in the various lines and as you noticed wash ratio on the back chart is the ratio of claims dollars  ten percent and then fiscal fault line so those three years ten ten and twenty one of the most recent years they get used to calculate a premium so what we can expect is in the area probably casually we should do very well with our premium next  year in fact probably get a substantial reduction on that is really an outstanding record a sixty percent six zero percent loss ratio is considered industry standard so it ten twenty one is extraordinarily good i'm not going to tell you that we'll continue with that level of success because that really is really extraordinary but if we can keep that you know under twenty five percent we're doing a really tremendous job and area of workers comp again it's a pretty good record away it was forty four percent on nine it was one hundred eight percent i don't know what happened but we'll own nine seem to have been a train wreck of the year and all lines of insurance for some reason on the fiscal ten twenty three percent now that's the year we started the last control program eleven thirty two percent in twelve twenty seven these are moving numbers because as claims mature in dollars get paid out ratios can go up or down so these are the ratios as of a moment in time and that moment was i was already at the this year in the area worker's comp good loss ratios are even more important because they affect something called experience modification factor and all that is is the surance industry has an expectation of what we're going to have for claims so we're government so for a government entity they have a profile of what we expect and it's all done by five so if you're having poor claims you can pay fifty percent more than what you should pay or as much as forty percent less than what you would be rated wash ratios of twenty three thirty two and twenty seven a going to result in a reduction in our mod factor and we're going to save a substantial amount of money in a premium on july one of next year so that is the distilled version of this giant memo and kudos to the people whose names you see on here  that calculation and the good yeah that's the combination of all the different things we did that piled up to a pretty impressive savings and that's the difference think of it in terms of that's what we would have paid it not for the combination of all these various things that's really payment credits that's the credits that we get for the for the edge of for the training that we do the employees the los control work it's a combination of all those things and hundred twenty grand is not a i'm not a bad record of accomplishment that's for sure and i'd be happy to answer any questions i know it's a lot of technical stuff  year and involved a school teacher who is playing you know you know how the schools at the end of the year have recreation activities involving the parents of the kids and all that and they'll take one of the teachers had an unfortunate accident and suffered a broken leg that's a very very expensive claim obviously and that was a big big piece of this the other was a d p w worker who stepped in the whole world is ankle and broke it now we probably haven't had to fractures in ten years and we had two in one year so that is the context in which you look at this because absent of those two very unusual accidents neither one involved either employee doing anything on or unusual in any way have normal but absent those two we would have had for a year in the single digits a loss ratio so we're hoping for a much better year the insurance industry is a lot more interested in the total number of claims you have known as frequency than they are in the total dollars paid out known as severity so the reduction in claims that you saw in those charts which is we cut it by almost fifty percent that is something that really affects that modification experience modification factor far more when they look at those big claims you know a single claim of a lot of dollars it doesn't hurt in the rating formula very much but frequency hurts you a lot logic is one in every six claims is going to be a big one and so if you're reducing claims the logic is statistically over time you're going to have small losses even though you might have one or two bad ones in a in a freakier so that's the real news and you notice that comp claims in fiscal eleven were forty two and in fiscal twelve we cut it isn't exactly that and half down to twenty so that's the real big piece of news then and the next page it says  fiscal year twelve there were two claims filed but no payments and you already were already have two claims filed for the fiscal year thirteen were you there jim going to be just three halfway down it says in fiscal year twelve there were two claims filed but no payments made yeah the  claims put in but we don't have any indication yet as of the writing of this report number this had been written in october so at that time a couple of claims had gone in for fiscal twelve but we didn't have any indication yet what they were going to pay  those were liability claims yeah one of those liability claims was in fact closed down with zero and he other one is  i have to look at one of the be sure but i think that also was closed out as a zero however in thirteen we've got the civil rights claim which is a mega claim is on the liability side we'll see what happens on that claim that could be that could end up as also a zero or could end up being a big blockbuster we don't know yet kevin thank you for everyone that worked out that's ok talk about a fiscal year fourteen budget falls this is fairly simple this is just to ask the board i know last week i kind of asked if it was any particular guidelines for the budget on well into it at this point  the schedule calls for it to be done in january i'm hoping to actually the end of general hoping to be down again this year the guidelines i've given out right now consist of no wage coal yet because you haven't voted anything will do that later through article six we have put some numbers in the forecast i don't want to say publicly what those are because of the labor negotiations and implications we are on new employees what i've said to the departments is on target of you as the priority and in the library not the kind of got some conflicting information about the library and i'm trying to sort that out i assume logically much better library going to need to staff i've been told there was a commitment made that indicated there wouldn't be energy accounts electricity is kind of fluctuating we have a bit in place but that bridge only governs the cost of electricity at the point of generation it doesn't cover distribution you know as we send across country and it's something around town called distribution and transmission those charges fluctuate and natural gas i'm repeating it right now so i don't know how that's going to come out but probably not so great because natural gas is starting to go up unfortunately this happened to be our big year go figure so those are the only real instructions i've issued in terms of general guidelines and if the board has any other thoughts i'm got plenty of time that you can tell me that and i can use those thoughts to shape the budget so you know it's not that you necessarily have to do anything but i want to give you an opportunity if you did want to do anything and what happened this year is we caught some funny because they didn't need much custodial were there in the least quarters right now and what we wanted to be sure of was that we didn't reduce it and then this year when we put it back again when they open for this summer sometime in early fall that was seen as a big budget spike so we wanted to be sure everybody understood what was going back to that we used to have but there was a reduction for this year so that i've come back as i understand it they are yes ye musician were that to yield a conclusion where the board was interested in proposing additional liquor licenses there's a mitigation package which i've communicated to them would be needed and that would involve police officers and potential for patrols that picture place there's a very strong possibility i may propose a real going to say sion of the police department involving some restructuring of the officer corps and that could have implication with us and substantial savings which could translate into extra police officers trading management for for troops and as a third initiative that we're kind of looking at that could also potentially result in having the resources to increase police officers it's an enormous priority frankly i know it's no secret we are stretched very thin most schiff's we start with five or four in a supervisor but very often we're down to three and a supervisor which is very thin the chief does a great job managing it all the time budget we give him the budget and he manages to it and he never exceed the problem is in order to do the hype there's a lot of times when we have less than adequate resources out there on the road now that's always a bit of a risk and we've been fortunate but it is a risk for community our size and with a stadium and patriot place makes us totally unique there isn't another town really like us at all we need more police officers plain and simple i know the board's aware that there are nights particularly thursday friday saturday sunday is when it is the case that we are sending all of our resources to patriot place and that is because the detail offices can rest but they can't transport and so we then outstrip our transport ability that we've got up there on the transport truck but there's times when we have multiple arrests and let the sun cruises and i mean their assets for the rest of the community are up there and spirited times when coverage is not adequate here i'm being a little retro a little of a circus i don't want to get into too much detail publicly but suffice to say there there is a clear and obvious need for additional police resources i'm desperately trying to do that in the context of a budget that's already very very tight as you know and i'm hopeful that we can make some inroads this year we did one two officer last year if you're will we did one new the year before come hoping to do two new offices of a social worker those are all things where there's a clear need blood they have to take second priority to do police officers as far as i'm concerned so again i think those are purdy's but we're not going to do all staffing already already been there already looked at it and they have a pretty robust capability there for you no doubt about it they have a very robust capability as at least four years already looking for some assistance at the senior center yeah this is the same position yes it is it's fascinating because i've not worked in a community where that ran a social services department that's unusual but primarily because of someone usual housing that we haven't followed for which is not common on a lot of that is the motels and hotels up on  we have a population which is greatly in need which is disproportionate to communities of our size typically don't have that i don't see it that's a part partial contributing factor but it's not the whole story so the community a long time ago on the stood that need and establish a social service capability paired along with the council on aging and vicki actually runs both capability and big actually has a stronger capability in social services than senior over she's pretty much considered you know one of the best of both having been the c e o way director of the year last year but vicki has indicated and it's and it's ironic because the identification of a real need didn't just come from vick saying it course she had been saying it but the board talked about succession planning as one of your goals and when i sat down to dialogue with all the department heads about succession planning vicki very quickly identified the fact that you know there are there isn't a capability there is a real need so we sort of said well i can't say exactly one budget was sources allow it but i certainly concur it's something that's needed and some of you has broken to me as well so it's  it's a it's an area that we're going to have to make some improvement and if we can't do it next year i wouldn't it's a paid in next year or two hopefully we'll make a move but definitely going to be a priority did not yield a candidate that we were comfortable putting in the position having ties it again and we're actually right in the middle of taking our resumes right now and do an interview so i'm hoping to have it filled rough and tough positions where you know they're they're not they don't cost they're into they're not a really really expensive position but these are your new young folks that are kind of groomed for the future to move up the ladder and folks that can do a lot of good good hard work so you know i agree with roger in the town in the past it hasn't had labor as we've had pretty much nothing but light equipment operators on up and we haven't had those young good strong backs you know to do a lot of the manual work that every d p w has to do so last year we we hired one and you know the hope is that we can get a few more but it's subject to budget constraints and i you know i don't know how much we can do but hopefully we can do something we'll say we're also looking at some officials seize by bringing the d p w together and if we can create those efficiencies and we may have less need to do that before able to move people around a little more liberally and we can do right now yeah i mean this is gone back to you know the whole plan that we were and you know liz introduced to safety was a major concern right now i think that's what we are told kevin and you know it and it's still my major concern and i think any public safety on this side but taking the water the sewer the park putting them together under d p w it was under the auspices that we were going to get more whether it's right less people or more efficiency by doing more things with the same amount of people and i agree but i think you i think you start to see that now i think by getting it all together and that work in progress now is in a position where i think the next fiscal year you really can see that efficiency you know it's like merging two companies p w you know jeff anderson so he'll be sitting with that because now it's in this what the second going on the third year so that should be should be showing up on the books now with the department together with all the staff in the line items and compare that to what it was two plus years ago but it is more of the i guess the checks and balances do you see where where the efficiency is but what i think what would not be in that spreadsheet is what they're you see the cost and the staff and expenses on the equipment but you won't see the productivity so if they do in two and three times as much work with the same amount of people you won't see that so that's probably the dialogue that you'll have with them day it's going to be but we had a saturday in the past to put the question out there where we're going with budgets and level spend at a level services same thing i think that was a great exercise anyone remember when we did all last year i think larry was involved with larry so far right before you came right but i thought that was terrific you know once we got through the posturing of you know judges first putting names and faces to it it was a little touchy at the beginning but i thought we i was thinking we did it right after the let's say the election but right after the may and we got through that there was i thought there was a benefit to doing it at that time well enough to give me a benefit because things can change or stay the same so yeah i didn't think about the election season either so i think is it was a fresh start of that not the fiscal year very least called the political year or something to put everything together now that discussion i thought we had done it in march we do much but it was before you guys it was me it was before because we were talking about that preparation that budget that was actually being prepared at the time it was the figures which are we have more definite revenue figures yeah you don't give house one local a proposal till february first rough and tough that usually sets  the floor we get at least that we don't i don't ever remember getting cut below one so any time at the house one the last big component generally comes in on the budget so after that we usually have she made a second for the discussion with the tremendous appreciation a letter from the walpole board of selectmen if you read it it's a request for us to send a letter to our legislative delegation seeking support to pass legislation that would delay the effect date of the question three which we all know is the medical marijuana law basically what was paul saying in the letter is they do not have time to look at it from a perspective of addressing it presiding when these stories come in where they're going to be the plan of what would be looking at zoning changes the i think not to be critical of anyone but i think there's some concern about control of marijuana use and who would be at these clinics and things like god and i'm not sure that's really founded because on the part of public health is putting out some stringent regulations about this obviously in other states where it's allowed you know very tightly controlled for obvious reasons so i'm not exactly sure what the fear is here and so i would honestly recommend to you that unless somebody can articulate something less effective i think sending a letter and just sort of car blind saying don't implement it against the similar to an adult entertainment district but it's not zoned they can go anywhere michael that the plane would tackle this look at our zoning and see where it can and can't go if they want to address it that way is that what the request is for though is to give towns the time to take a look at the zoning go through that process before this goes into effect so that you have in place what you want or need so well i mean that's one reason why i'm going to some kind of a good idea they're not to they're not going to put it into effect until the state until there's regulations d p h regulation and that's and that's going to take some time so on this time it's not the case the law passed and so next week you know there's going to be six marijuana clinics open ups not going to happen anyway so there's going to be probably a substantial amount of time for cities and towns to deliberate on do they want to have zoning but since we've never had this before it's going to be a lot of work done  in constitutional rights and things like that so i you know i'm not exactly sure what's even being asked for other than the obvious which is this has got to be thought out which the legislators are the first tuesday of every month tend to noon is the morning session here and is it five to six then yeah it's obviously it hasn't worked out so if people want to request by going to the office say you know what so i'm really getting out we'll see what yeah make an appointment that way we're not sitting here because waiting for all the things to do to you know