And oh thirty.

Well, is that again?

And he told you that we're moving over when they come up?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Welcome to the North Kingstown Town Council meeting for April 21st, 2025.

Pursuant to Rhode Island General Laws 42-46-6C.

Notices meeting has been posted on the Secretary of State's website.

He was not North Kingstown's senator, but he was also but he was the Senate President.

And I'd ask that um after we slit the flag, we uh take a moment of silence in uh passing of Senate President Dominic Ruggerio.

So thank you.

Congratulations to the flag of the United States of America.

Thank you.

Okay.

So the um the purpose of tonight's meeting is really public comment, hear from the public on the proposed um missile and state uh I mean municipal and school budgets that have been passed on a preliminary basis.

Um by the town council and the school committee.

Um we will hear from the municipal side, uh, from our town manager at six thirty, and hopefully at seven or whenever we're finished, uh we will hear uh from schools.

Um I'd ask uh my fellow counselors to refrain from engaging the public because we just want to hear from them, and if they have questions, we can uh uh direct to the town manager and we'll get the per we'll get the public answers.

Uh for those who don't know, um we have to by charter.

We have to pass a budget by the first Wednesday in May.

Uh and that this year is May 7th.

Uh so we have a meeting scheduled for next Monday.

Uh we'll deliberate and we may we'll attempt to pass our final budget at that point.

Um with that, uh, does I don't know if anyone has a question?

If none, uh we'll turn the uh microphone a little bit and the time manager, Mr.

Ralph Mollis to talk about the admissible budget.

Thank you, Ralph.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Good evening, everyone.

So in accordance with our town charter tonight, we are holding the public hearing on the fiscal year 2025-2026 annual budget.

We'll begin with the municipal portion of the budget, followed by the school department public hearing, which will immediately follow us at seven o'clock.

I'm going to begin tonight's public hearing with a brief brief summary of the budget, which I'll be accompanied by a PowerPoint.

Uh that'll be followed by the availability to answer any questions from the public regarding this budget.

I want to thank and acknowledge our tremendous team of department heads who are here tonight, not only for taking the time out of their schedule to be here to answer any particular questions that may come up, but also want to thank them for their hard work and their dedication in addressing this challenging budget by proposing spending plans which continue to provide the outstanding services and initiatives that we've come to enjoy here in North Kingstown, but also by doing so, keeping in mind the impact on our taxpayers.

I also want to point out that tonight is the opportunity for the public to ask questions.

And while this is the public hearing, uh the town council has been actively involved in this budget process.

They began by accepting my proposed budget on March 10th, then met with each department head in each department to review their budgets on what was a work session that lasted almost 12 hours on March 18th.

And then they proceeded to follow up with my office with further questions on the budget, which brought us to this evening.

The budget process in a budget book, which can be found on our website, has been recognized by the Government Finance Officers Association for its format, for its transparency, and for its wealth of information.

I want to thank Kate Glass of my office along with our my finance director, Deb Bridgem, for their work on this budget.

I say this because I want to encourage the members of the public to take time and view this budget book, which can be found on the website.

It is a wealth of information.

The presentation that I made on March 10th and this evening really are just summaries of what this budget is all about.

But I really encourage you to go through this budget, look at it.

It explains every single expenditure, all of our revenue, a lot of statistics about our town.

So while tonight is a summary, I do encourage you to take time to take a look at that budget booklet.

So as I anticipated, as we talked about, this budget was indeed a very, very challenging one.

There's a lot of reasons why it became very unique and very challenging.

There was the state mandated statistical property revaluation, which saw property values in North Kingstown rise to record levels.

We saw the state deficit, which has made it very challenging as far as providing state aid and state revenue to our towns.

We saw a reduction in state aid to education, which becomes very challenging when you realize the costs of education today.

We have the impacts of an increase in minimum wage.

So many of our positions are seasonal, from our Gulf course to our summer camp to so many more.

And so as as minimum wage goes up, it has a significant impact on our budget.

We had labor negotiations at our time at a time when our employees were earning less than their peers, which made the negotiations very challenging.

As you know, we have two significant bond projects that we're beginning to finance in this in this budget.

And then something I'll touch on later that came up after we prepared our budget for March 10th was higher than anticipated increases in health care costs, which again I'll mention, I think in about a half a dozen slides after this.