Let's call this meeting to order.

Pursuant to Rhode Island General Laws 42-466C.

Notice of this meeting is been posted on the Secretary of State's website.

I'd ask everybody to stand and join me to salute for the flag.

Thank you.

Well, uh sorry for the late delay.

It's only five minutes late, but nevertheless, we try to start on time.

I do apologize for that.

Anyways, tonight we are here really to hear from the public.

It was as presented by the town manager.

Tonight, though, is the opportunity for citizens to uh you know say what they think, and we certainly welcome their input.

Um I do have the public sign-up sheet.

I've only had three people sign up.

And as those people go, I will ask uh if anyone else wants to sign up, uh please let me know.

Uh the first personal per portion of our um uh budget public hearing tonight is going to be really about the um uh town municipal budget.

And that is gonna run from 6:30 till done.

And at 7 o'clock, we will uh have a public hearing on the school budget.

Uh and so um we ask you to keep your comments out of respect for others to three minutes.

We certainly accept a written confirmation, a written uh uh testimony.

If you do go over the three minutes, you know, we'll certainly be somewhat flexible with you, but we ask you to bear in mind to be uh respectful of others.

With that, uh the first person who has signed up to I'm sorry?

Oh, is a I'm sorry not did you want to say something in the bottom to ask you?

We can go in any order you'd like to normally I would present the budget and they can speak on it, but it's your call.

No, no, no, I I admitted.

No, no, it's why don't you present the budget?

Sure, okay.

No, not at all.

We can do it either way, but that works.

So uh so thank you.

And welcome to the public hearing on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2023.

Um anybody who hasn't received a handout, they're in the back on the table, so please feel free to grab one if you need one.

Uh this tonight continues the process where I submitted my proposed budget to the town council on March 14th, followed by the town council publicly reviewing each individual budget with department heads and myself on March 18th and March 21st.

The next meeting after tonight will take place on Monday, April 25th, where it is anticipated that the town council will vote on the final budget.

Um while I introduced the budget on March 14th.

Tonight I will summarize the budget for the benefit of the general public, and then the council will then open it up to any questions.

And the slides that you see on the TV match the handouts, so again, please feel free to follow along on the handout or whatever is easier for you.

Um I want to recognize and thank the department heads who are here tonight in attendance.

Um again, they've been at both public hearings, and I want to thank them for their work.

As I mentioned on March 14th, the departmental budgets have been compiled with an assessment of what is necessary to provide the outstanding level of services that our residents have come to expect while ensuring that the services are provided in a cost-effective manner.

The result is a budget with a moderate increase of 2.36 percent.

And this is at a time when costs and inflation have increased at record levels.

So keeping it at 2.36 percent is something that I'm proud of, and I want to thank the department heads for their hard work in doing that.

Uh the budget in detail can be found online on our website.

It's been put together in a detailed, informative and transparent format, and as a result for the second consecutive year, we've received the Distinguished Uh Budget Presentation Award.

The 113,787,282 proposed fiscal year 2023 budget can be broken down as follows.

60.7% of the budget is funding for our school department.

18.5% of the budget is funding for our police, our fire, and our dispatch.

14.8% of the budget is for all other governmental services, including our public works department.

4.6% of the budget is debt service, and 1.4% of the budget is our is for our library services.

On the second page of the handout, or what is probably slide 4 on your handout, you will see a summarized breakdown of the entire fiscal year 2023 budget.

Now, this summarized breakdown is by department, but please know that individual summaries of each department can be found online in the budget booklet on our website.

The breakdown that you see here is in line with the chart that I just showed on the prior page and prior slide showing the percentage breakdown of the fiscal year 2023 budget.

The proposed budget that we are that you see in front of you provide services to our senior citizens, our students, outstanding public safety, municipal operations, maintenance of over 150 miles of town of paved town roads, state of the art parks, playgrounds, and recreational services, coastal management, economic development, snow removal, maintenance of over 200,000 square feet of municipal office buildings, and much more.

While the budget proposal is conservative, and while we've encountered some unprecedented challenges over these last few years, we have accomplished a great deal within this past fiscal year, and we're going to be utilizing multiple funding sources to propose many exciting initiatives in the upcoming fiscal year.

The fiscal year 2023 budget includes a road repaving appropriation of $750,000, continued improvements to our parks, our playgrounds, and our recreational facilities, a new summer camp for teens, funding for a personnel human resources division, electric vehicle charging stations, a refresh of our website, multiple projects recommended by our asset management commission, additional funding for our library, funding for a full year of the four platoon system for our fire department, the anticipated reopening of 80 Boston Neck Road this summer, and much more.

The fiscal year 2023 budget I am proposing for our school department allocates $68,542,225 of municipal and state funding towards our school department with an additional $500,000 of funding towards the request of capital.

While this allocation is $492,173 less than their requests, it does provide an increase in municipal funding from last year to this year of 2.5 percent.

In addition, we received some good news yesterday from the Rhode Island Interlocal Trust as they are proposing a virtual level funding of the health care rates and a 10 percent decrease in the dental rates for fiscal year 2023.

This is much less than the school department and the town budgeted for in the fiscal year, and so we're hoping this results in some significant savings over what was requested both in the school department budget and in the town budget.

The school department budget presentation will follow the town's budget this out this evening.