Good evening, Sealman.

Welcome to the town council meeting of December 15th.

I'm your chairman Kathy Stacey.

Right now we're doing a workshop session before our actual meeting with New Hampshire Municipal Association.

Mr.

Devine.

So we've actually asked New Hampshire Municipal Association to come and give a presentation on the role of the Board of Assessors.

You guys, just to kind of give you some more background in assessing and how we do things.

So NHMA has sent Christine Johnston and Tammy Luston here tonight.

And I'll turn it over to Christine.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Do I need to do anything else with this microphone?

Nope.

Nope.

Closer to you.

Okay, great.

We sent our presentation last week, and we thought we had two hours, but we only have one hour.

So we will adjust accordingly.

But despite that fact, if you have questions, please feel free to ask them as we go along.

So I'm Christine Johnson.

I am legal services counsel with the municipal association.

And I'm gonna start and then I will turn it over to Tammy, who is our government finance advisor.

I'm gonna talk more about the legal side of things, and she's gonna talk more about the practical numbers side of things, which is not where I shine.

So I'm gonna start with whoops.

This is not rolling.

There we go.

Okay.

So I'm gonna start with some really bottom line basics about abatements and how they work.

And the most important thing about anything else that underlies everything else that both of us are gonna talk about tonight is the authority that towns and cities have to act, which is not intuitive, and most people are shocked when they hear about it for the first time.

If you have ever heard me speak before, you have already heard me say this, but I'm gonna say it again because it's really important.

Um in New Hampshire, unlike many other states, towns and cities don't have any inherent authority to act at all.

They get all of their authority from the legislature through statutes, and that's because of the way that New Hampshire's constitution is written.

There are other states where the constitution says uh the state does these things, towns and cities do these things.

There are other states where their constitution says the state does these things, and everything else is left to towns and cities.

New Hampshire says the state does these things, and that's all it says.

So that means that a town or a city and its employees and officials and boards can only do something if there's a law that says that they can, which is completely backward from the way most people think about the law.

Usually we're thinking, is there any law that says we can't do it that way?

And that's backward for municipal law.

So if you start with that thought that whatever it is that a town wants to do or a town council, um, it's not enough to say there's no law that says we can't do it that way.

You have to find a law that says that you can.

And more than that, um, so when you're talking about taxes in particular, since we're talking about abatements, um towns and cities have to be authorized by the legislature to tax real estate.

They can't do it unless there's a law that says that they can, which there is, and they can only do it in the way that the law provides for, which the New Hampshire Supreme Court has been pretty clear about in the past, and that is not a new thing at all.

Um the flip side to that is that towns and cities can only relieve taxes if there's a law that says that they can, which there is, and they can only do it in the way that the law provides.

So there are a bunch of different laws, and I'm gonna talk about or touch on several of them that talk about how taxes can be relieved.

But the power to grant abatements it comes directly from the law, which is this governing body, that's you, for good cause shown may abate any tax.

That's essentially what the law says.

And the point of an abatement, which is the key thing here, um, which has been the case in New Hampshire for a really long time, is that the idea the idea is that granting abatements is supposed to be a way to fix things that are wrong with taxing.

It's not always perfect, it doesn't always get done perfectly the first time.

Um it should, but it doesn't.

And there are also extenuating circumstances that sometimes will make it unfair.

So it's supposed to eliminate any irregularity or illegality in the way that a tax has been assessed.

So the critical issue with an abatement is whether the taxpayer has been unlawfully assessed or unjustly assessed or taxed, as between them and all of the other taxpayers.

That's what the point is supposed to be.

And that can take a bunch of different forms, which I'm going to talk about.

So the law doesn't say anything about what any of that means.

It just says for good cause shown.

That's all it says.

And traditionally, the New Hampshire Supreme Court and the other courts in New Hampshire have upheld abatements for two basic categories of things.

One is disproportionate assessment, which means that a piece of property was assessed higher than all of the other similarly situated properly properties out of proportion to the rest of the property when you take into account everything about it.

And I'm going to talk about what that means a little more.

Or poverty and inability to pay.

And the point of that one is that it would be unfair in certain situations to ask somebody to pay the same tax load as everybody else.

And that's a policy decision, but courts have generally upheld that.

But, and they've said actually rather recently, it's not explicitly limited to those two things, but it's pretty much only going to be those two things.

And the reason for that is they say it's supposed to be remedial justice.

We're going to go in and fix something that's wrong with the way the taxes were assessed.

And so what they're supposed to do, abatements, is correct an unfair situation somehow.

And there are different ways that you can define that.

So one of them is disproportionate assessment.

So the New Hampshire Constitution requires that taxes be assessed proportionately.

Everybody gets taxed the same way across the whole state for some things for the statewide education tax or across the whole town when it's town taxes.

And each citizen has to contribute their fair share, and you're not supposed to be taking money from one person to pay somebody else's share when it's unfair, which is the key thing.

Because if you reduce one person's taxes, everybody else is go up, right?

Because the total tax burden is going to be the same, no matter what.

So the money has to come from somewhere.

So if I'm going to pay $10 less, everybody else has to make up that $10 somehow.

And when it's not fair to have me pay those $10, that is okay.

But when it is fair, and I just don't want to do it, or if my property is actually worth less than other people's, I should pay less.

But those are pretty much the only situations.

That doesn't mean every single piece of property because every property is unique, if you've ever bought real estate, you know there are no two pieces of property that are exactly the same, even if they're the same size and they're sitting right next to each other.

But there are a lot of ways that assessors can do it so that it is even, it's supposed to even out all of the variables between them.

And the standard is that all property is supposed to be assessed at its full and true value.

So if the assessed value of any one property is wrong and it's not being assessed using the same standards that are being used for everything else, then the taxes that are assessed on that property are also gonna be wrong, and that taxpayer is gonna pay more or maybe less than their fair share, which means everybody else is gonna pay more or less less or more accordingly.

So when someone challenges their assessment or their taxes, it's the burden is on them to prove that they are due an abatement because if they're arguing disproportionate assessment, they have to come in and show you as the board that's gonna grant abatements.

They have to show you that their property and therefore their taxation is wrong, and because it is not proportionate to everybody else.

And the way that that happens, um there are three major methods that are used, and with apologies to the assessor sitting behind me who knows this much better than I do.

There are three major methods that are used to assess property.

One is replacement costs, less depreciation.

And I'm not going to go over these very specifically because this is something that your assessor can explain to you.

But there are these three basic basic methods.

No one method is going to be right in every single case.

Sometimes you need a combination of methods.

This one essentially is you take the value of the land and how much it would cost to reconstruct the existing buildings, less depreciation, whatever that might be.

And this one you'd really only use when other approaches don't really make any sense, or it's a really unique piece of property, there's only one like it.

And if something happened to it, it would be reasonable to expect that that owner is just going to try to rebuild exactly what they have.

In a lot of other cases, that's not gonna work.

Another one, and this will be really familiar to anyone who's ever bought property is comparable sales, the market data approach.

You look at comps all the time.

If you're ever buying or selling a house, this comes into play in a big way.

So you look at the property and you compare it with other pieces of property that are similarly situated somehow.

Since every property is unique, you have to adjust for a whole bunch of different factors.

Is there a half bathroom more in this piece of property?

Does this one have a little bit of wetlands over here that makes part of it not buildable?

Um there are so many different variables that they look at.

I couldn't begin to touch on them all.

But the actual sale price that has the actual price that a piece of property is sold for is not necessarily indicative of the real full market value.

Depends on the sales, not all sales are created equal.

Um it is a piece of information, it's usually not the only one, and an auction sale is not typical.

Um that's not necessarily going to give you anything close to it.

So that might not work at all.

And then the third method is the capitalization of income approach, which essentially looks at a piece of property that is an income generating piece of property, a commercial commercial property that has tenants in it, retail tenants, um, or an apartment building, something like that, where you're making money off of it, and it will it will assign a reasonable rate of return to the property, and you're looking at the capacity for that piece of property to generate income rather than the actual income.

But um, and this one I will admit that math is not where I shine.

So I understand the theory of how this one works.

Um, but this one works well with income generating property, and they're looking at the capacity for generating income rather than the actual amount of income that it generates, because sometimes you can make a bad deal as a property owner or manage property poorly, and that might artificially lower the value if you were using this method.

So any one of these three might be the right one.

No single method is right in every case.

Um, and whatever method the town might use to assess a piece of property, the court or the BTLA is not required to use that method.

They don't have to say, well, you used it, so we'll review it based on that method.

And actually, when there is an abatement appeal that goes to the BTLA or to court, a lot of the time there's an argument over which method should have been used instead.

There's a lot of argument back and forth about that.

Um which one is correct, which one isn't correct.

Um, they don't have to, they don't have to use the method that either of the parties says is the right one.

They can use a different one.

Um what they're looking for is was there a reasonable basis to use that method.

So that's where a lot of the fight is.

And um, and there are lots of gradations in that when someone is arguing about being disproportionately assessed, they'll say, if it's the comp method, they'll say you used bad comps.

You shouldn't have, you shouldn't have included anything in that neighborhood because they don't have public water.

It's not the case in Salem, but um, or you shouldn't have used any property that has um that's along this river because it artificially increases or decreases the value because of XYZ.

Um and that's part of what you would end up hearing about from your assessor in a report.

Um, is it too high?

Is it not too high?

Also, so as I said, the point of an abatement is to try and correct something that's wrong.

Um if it's about a disproportionate assessment, but there are other reasons that things might not be fair.

Say there was a mistake somewhere.

If property was taxed to the wrong person, and they can come in and say, I I only owned three acres of that parcel.

I had actually sold off one acre of that parcel to somebody else.

You taxed it to me when you should have taxed it to them.

You may or may not at that point be able to tax it to that other person.

But if the person who was taxed can come in and show you that they actually didn't own it anymore, then that would be unjust.

That would be a mistake, and an abatement would be the right way to fix it because it would be unfair to ask them to pay taxes on land that somebody else owned.

This has happened.

If property is granted an exemption, say they are it's a charitable organization and they requested and were granted an exemption, but then they got taxed anyway.

As soon as they received that bill, you can bet that you would get an abatement request saying, please abate this tax because I already told you I was exempt and you said I was exempt, and then you taxed me anyway.

And the court has said, yes, that is a perfect example of a mistake where you need an abatement to fix that problem.

You shouldn't have taxed them.

And then there's one that's really more of a fairness thing.

There is a statute now that talks about what happens if a piece of property is destroyed after April 1st.

Um there's a specific statute that allows someone to get a prorated taxation if their property, say you have you have a house, it's completely destroyed by fire in September.

Should they be taxed for the whole year on a property that they were only able to enjoy from April 1st to September?

The law now says that that person has a certain amount of time to apply to get their taxes prorated.

It's one of the only situations where you can do that.

But if they miss that window to apply for it, as happened in this New London case in 2017, the court said, well, it still would be really unfair to make this person pay for the whole year of taxes when their house was destroyed in September.

So that's also good cause for an abatement.

That's one of the only cases in which the court has said really specifically that something that wasn't disproportionate assessment or wasn't poverty or inability to pay was a good reason.

It's a really narrow thing.

So then the other major category is poverty or hardship or inability to pay.

And this one has been around since at least 1854.

Um, the way that it was phrased in 1854 is that the person who has lost their health or their wealth due to misfortune to save them from the cold charity of the workhouse has good cause for an abatement.

Essentially, they were saying this is really unfair, this person is in a terrible situation, and although we think that everybody should pay their property taxes, sometimes it just doesn't make sense.

You can't get blood from a stone, if they can't pay it, they can't pay it.

The Supreme Court has also and relatively free uh recently said if a taxpayer who now remember if someone's getting paid, if someone is getting assessed real estate taxes, it's because they own a piece of real estate, right?

So if they own a piece of real estate and they have any equity in the property, and they come and say, I can't pay my taxes, you should give me an abatement for poverty or inability to pay.

The BTLA and the Supreme Court have said kind of harshly, if you've got equity, you have to show that it's not reasonable for you to relocate or refinance or get some other kind of assistance.

And even if you're using all of your income to pay your daily expenses, that's not enough to get an abatement for inability to pay and hardship.

You should be doing more.

You should be taking out another mortgage on your property, you should be selling it because you're living in a house that you can't afford, which is harsh.

But the Supreme Court said it really clearly, and the BTLA, as recently as a couple of months ago, is still using this case from 1978 and saying this is the standard, this is what it is.

Um, and another one, if the taxpayer actually pays the taxes that they are asking to have abated for poverty or inability to pay, the BTLA is almost certainly going to deny it and say, if you can't afford to pay the taxes, how come you paid the taxes?

If you can't afford to pay it, then you can't pay it.

So it's it's very kind and very harsh at the same time.

This Epsom case from 1992 came about when the select board created a policy, they were the ones granting abatements in the town.

They decided that they were at tuition town.

So there were there were families sending students out of the district for school.

And they decided that it would make sense for them to grant up to a it's up to a thousand dollars in tax abatements to any taxpayer who pays to send a student to school out of the district.

And the rationale for this was that those taxpayers who are paying to send their students somewhere else, are reducing the cost of education in the town and therefore reducing the overall tax burden on everybody in town.

So they should get a break because if they're gonna pay the same amount of taxes as everybody else, but they are the reason that the overall tax burden is going down, that's not fair.

They were using all of the right words in making this decision, and the Supreme Court said that is not enough.

Um that a taxpayer is not aggrieved.

So if you want to apply for an abatement under the law, you have to be an aggrieved taxpayer, which means you have some reason that you have standing essentially to file for an abatement.

And the court said, you are not aggrieved, and you cannot ask for an abatement just because you don't personally add to the taxes that you are being asked to pay.

Um, which it makes sense when you think about it.

Um, a person who doesn't have any children, a property owner who doesn't have any children doesn't pay any less in school taxes just because they don't send any kids to school.

Um people who do have children in the school system don't pay any less the year that their kids all graduate.

So sending the kids out of the district, the court said that doesn't make any sense.

That's just part of living in society with everybody else.

Just because I never call the police department doesn't mean I don't have to help pay for them.

Um then the court said, even aside from that, you can only do things when the law says that you can do them.

And there are these two really obscure old statutes that say you can get a tax break if you do these couple of little things that benefit the town.

One of them is provide a public watering trough for everybody's sources, or plant shade trees.

Tiny, tiny tax break.

Um if we didn't need those exceptions, if you didn't need to have a statute that said you could do it, and you could just make them up on your own, why would we even have these statutes?

You can only do it when the law says that you can.

But they didn't.

That's what I said when I read it though.

Um I've seen this in some other places.

There's no statute and there's no court opinion that says that an abatement can be granted under the umbrella of good cause as a method of encouraging development or to encourage particular behavior by taxpayers or discourage particular behavior by taxpayers, you know, what what you might want to do with your property.

Um, it is a really deep-seated long-standing kind of thing to do in the United States is to use taxes to influence taxpayer behavior.

The problem with it is that in New Hampshire, towns and cities can only do things if the law says they can do them.

And there isn't anything that says that an abatement can be used that way.

There are a whole lot of other things that can be used that way, though.

Um there are some which are mandatory.

There's a list here.

Um, some of them are specific to the person, where the legislature has said we think that it would be either unfair to ask these kinds of people to pay exactly the same amount of taxes as everybody else.

So we're gonna give them a tax break that's specific to them, not to their property, but you know, because they are the owner.

Um service connected disability, blind, disabled people, um, the elderly or disabled tax exemption uh deferral.

Um, and then there are some more there are some tax advantages that are given as a way to encourage people to do certain things.

So charitable, religious, educational exemptions for those kinds of organizations, current use taxation, which is an encouragement to not develop land and to keep it open, or discretionary preservation easements, which are to encourage people to preserve certain features of their property.

All of those things are mandatory, and towns and cities have to offer them and honor them if somebody asks for it.

And then there are a whole bunch of other optional ones that a town or a city can decide to grant if it wants to.

And within these things, there are a lot of a lot of there's a lot of flexibility about how much of a how much of a tax break you might grant for these things.

So more veterans' tax credits, the elderly tax exemption, reducing assessments for qualifying barns or historic structures.

There's the solar wind and wood heating energy system credits, no exemptions, sorry.

There are, and then the bottom two I'm going to talk about for a minute, incentives for commercial and industrial construction and the community revitalization tax incentives.

And these are relatively recent ish.

The first one you actually have adopted in the last couple of years here.

So it's an option for any town or city now who wants to adopt it.

And the purpose is to encourage businesses to build or rebuild or renovate or increase in a community by offering them reduced taxes for a specific period of time for that new construction or new building or renovation, if it is for commercial or industrial purposes.

And it can exempt up to 50% of the increase in assessed value that's attributable to that new work, the new construction or addition or renovation or whatever.

And the legislature specifically said right in there that they decided that this kind of development is going to create a public benefit for everybody.

So it doesn't create a purely private benefit for the property owner, even though they're the ones who are getting the tax break.

And it can apply town wide or just in specific areas.

And I think you have four areas here.

Is it you have specific areas here?

Where that applies, I'm pretty sure.

Maybe I was looking at a different town.

Yeah, we're any commercial.

Any commercial?

Okay.

And it doesn't change zoning though.

So it would still have to meet whatever zoning requirements you have.

It's just that where it would be allowed, if someone does it, they can get this tax break.

Yours phases it out over a certain amount of time.

Like the biggest part of the benefit is right up front in the first year, which is fine.

You can you can structure it really any way that you want within the parameters in the statute.

It does only remain in effect for five years.

So it's supposed to be a jump start on things, but any of the applications that you grant within those five years, the actual tax benefit will continue on through the end of whatever the term is that you've granted it for.

It's just that you don't grant any new ones after that.

And this is to encourage rehabilitation or renovation, and in some cases replacement of existing buildings.

So this it does a very similar thing tax-wise.

It exempts the increase in the assessed value that's attributable to whatever that renovation, rehabilitation, or replacement was.

And it's being used pretty successfully in some places in the state.

So it's not just any renovation, it's substantial rehabilitation, which generally the project, whatever it is, will cost at least 15% of the assessed value, or $75,000, whichever is less, and you can increase either or both of those numbers if you want to.

It can also be used for replacing a property or placing a structure if it doesn't have any historical, cultural, or architectural value.

Sometimes replacing is the better way to go.

And that will make more sense when you look at some of the purposes.

But you can you can designate zones, which can be, you can have more than one.

There are multiples in several communities.

And there are additional add-ons that you can use.

For restoring buildings that were destroyed by fire within the past 15 years, housing units in a housing opportunity zone, obviously, housing is a major, major push around the state at this point.

And buildings in an office conversion zone being converted to residential use.

There's a lot of empty office space around the state.

And in order to qualify, the project has to meet one of the public benefits that are listed in the statute, which is why this is constitutional.

The legislature has said providing these benefits benefits everybody, not just the property owner who's getting the tax break.

And you can read those.

But basically, it's meeting some kind of some kind of development or rehabilitation or housing or historic purpose.

It lasts up to the tax treatment lasts up to five years for rehabilitation, and that starts when the work is finished.

If it's rehabilitation in a housing opportunity zone, it can be up to 10 years beginning at the certificate of occupancy and replacement of a structure up to five years.

And then there are extra extra years of tax breaks that can be added on to that for adding on other things.

More housing units, affordable housing, and rehabilitation of historic structures.

And this would be adopted the same way.

Oh, sorry, charter towns.

You would have a choice.

This could either go to voters or or the council could do it the way that you adopted that other tax incentive.

In case you're interested, here are a few communities that are using it right now.

There are many different sizes, they're all over the state.

And Claremont is the only one I could find that has bumped up those minimum requirements, but that's an option for anybody.

Does anybody have any questions?

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm going to turn it over to Tammy to talk about numbers.

So numbers might not be Chris's thing, but they're mine.

So now this is the part I know not a lot of people like.

So you have to bear with me here.

So I'm going to talk first about your fund balance, just give you a very brief recap over what fund balance is.

Fund balance is the accumulation of your revenue over your expenses.

So not your budget, but the actual of what came in.

If you make more money, that increases your equity, your fund balance.

If you've lost money that year, you deplete it.

So that's your difference between surplus and deficit, and it's the accumulation from the beginning of time is your fund balance.

Within the fund balance, you have five components as to what fund balance can be.

Restricted, non-spendable is easy.

That's what we cannot spend.

You have it, but it cannot be spent.

And whether that can't be spent because it's not cash, like your inventories, your tax-deeded property, or it's restricted as non-spendable because it's the grants or the not your grants, but it's it's donations you've received that come with you cannot touch the principal ever.

That's what they mean by non-spendable.

Restricted says that this can only be used for a very specific way, such as some of your grants that come in, especially when they prepay you money, which is very unusual in today's day and age, but there are still a few left that prepay you.

So for your warrants for your setting up your budget, or you're going to use fund balance to offset something within your budget.

Then there's something called emergency spending.

And emergency spending is Mother Nature is a terrific example of emergency spending.

She's been just slightly persnickety over the past decade.

Um, and when she's in a bad mood, she can be vicious.

And we don't have in our budget the cost that it takes to offset repairs that she has has rained down on us.

So you have the ability to go to DRA and say, I need to spend this money that's outside of anything I have the right to spend in another way.

So can we dip into that fund balance and utilize it?

Um the third portion, the third way you can utilize it is when you set your tax rate, you can lower the tax effort by saying you want to dip into your unassigned fund balance, and that just brings what the taxpayers owe you down.

You guys do have a fund balance policy.

Um Salem has it, and you are looking to retain six to ten percent of the amenit the your municipality's gross appropriations that includes the school tax net commitment and the statewide enhancement education tax and your share of the county appropriation.

All of this is measured at your tax rate setting time, um, and then you want to make sure that your fund balance falls within six to ten percent.

So this particular year, um, when you set your tax rate, you left that your fund balance is at 9.62 percent.

So you're a little on the upper side of that fund balance, which in my personal opinion is an awesome place to be.

This is where I would recommend that municipalities sit at.

So now we're gonna get into the actual taxes that we just discussed.

And within the taxes, taxes are balanced.

Our budgets are supposed to be balanced.

So when I talk about balance, it's what is your appropriations plus the war service credits that Chris just talked about, plus overlay, and I'm gonna get back to what overlay is.

This equals your tax effort plus all the other revenues you've brought into the city beyond your taxes, plus any use of fund balance.

It's balanced, it needs to stay even.

Wrong controller.

Um, and within that, another way to look at it.

This is the way DRA has us look at it through our tax rate.

It's your appropriations plus the war service plus overlay, less those other revenues that you've been able to pull in, less the use of fund balance, that's your tax effort.

Two ways to look at that same mathematical concept.

For you guys this year for 2025, you are balanced the budget by using 39,000 almost 40, sorry, million, 40 million dollars worth of tax effort.

So you've asked the city to pay you, the taxpayers to pay you just about 40 million.

Now remember that that is covering the county, the school, and the the city, the the town.

You did in using that, you did say you wanted to use $5 million, $8,000 worth of fund balance.

And that's a healthy chunk, and and kudos for using that much to to try to offset the tax rate.

But you also said raise and you probably said a half a million, and then DRA rounds it to make everything look pretty down to the down to rounded dollar amounts.

So you use just shy of $500,000 for this item called overlay.

Now what overlay is, and and here this is actually I forgot I added this slide.

Um this goes through your numbers yourself to come up with what your taxes are and what your tax rate is.

Um so you ended up with five dollars and 90 90 cent for the tax rate.

Um overlay though is what we want to talk about.

Overlay, you are granted the right to raise a little extra money within the taxes because you think you want to off, you think that there's mistakes, and you want to issue one of these abatements under the ways that Chris told you you can issue an abatement.

So this is the amount of extra money you're asking the taxpayers to raise to be able to offset those abatements.

I'm gonna shut this because I keep trying to forward my laptop, not yours.

Um so for you guys for the years 2022 through 2025, you had started with almost a million dollars, 900,000, just over a million, you were able to drop it to 700,000 down to the half million this year.

And if you look, we've broken out how much that is in taxes, part of your tax rate.

So I've also told you how much of that you've spent.

So if we look back at 22, 22 is the year after your your reval.

So a lot of the abatements that you granted in 22 were from applications to do with the revaluation.

And I don't care how good anybody's assessor is, um, every uh every reval has a decent amount of abatements that come with it.

Um so the next year you brought it way down.

That was pretty good.

You had only 300,000, 323,000 worth of abatements that you granted out of that million dollars of overlay.

So it looks like the following year, seeing that you said let's cut back.

You spent most of that.

This year out of the half million, do keep in mind my figure is only good of the abatements through September of 25.

So I'm sure that that number has increased.

Um, the last column on this, just for informational space informational purposes, is how much this overlay cost for your average house, which according to Zillow or whichever one I had looked up at the time, whoever came up first on my Google search, says the average house cost in in Salem is $600,000.

So this is how much money your taxpayers have paid you on that average $600,000 property.

So now what does an abatement do to your finances?

And we're gonna come back to those two subjects that I just went over.

Three, your fund balance, your taxes, the overlay.

So what does an abatement do for your taxes?

So every time you issue an abatement, it reduces your tax revenue.

So a reduction of revenue, remember that is a reduction of what goes to your fund balance at the end of the year.

If the taxpayer has onpaid bills, it reduces just what they owe you, the receivable.

If they've paid the bills, it reduces your cash because you have to give it back to them.

If they have paid the bills, not only do you have to give them what you are granting them for an abatement, but you also have to pay them 4% interest on what they've paid you and what you've abated.

So an abatement doesn't just cost you the dollar figure you might see on that paper in front of you.

It's going to cost you a little more because of that interest.

Nice thing in RSA 7617A does say that if I own two properties and you grant me an abatement on one and I've paid that tax, but I have not paid it on my second property, you don't have to give me back the cash.

So it's just not cash out the door, is what that RSA gives you.

Abatements though, you have to remember have a long-term effect.

Abatements, when you grant them, and you're granting them not on the poverty that Chris told us we could do, but on saying that the value is unjust or a mistake or there's something wrong, you have to change the assessment for that property.

So not only are you granting that abatement in the year you're granting it, but you're basically granting it for every other year that you're giving an abatement until either the the taxpayer makes a change to that property that allows the assessor to reassess it, or until the next town wide reval is performed.

So an abatement is not just an abatement that year.

If you grant it for the first year in the reval, you're granting that abatement for five years because you're reducing the value of that property both in year one and in the next four until another reval is done.

And keep in mind that what you do grant to that person, you still have to raise the same amount of taxes.

So everybody else in town is now paying a little more for that abatement you've granted.

So I had asked about an example, what's one of the highest abatements that you guys have granted?

And so I was given an example for this town.

Um, that in 2024, a a taxpayer came and was granted a val granted an abatement that reduced the value of their properties by 3.2 million.

That reduced their property by 37.72%.

This was a big decrease of the property.

That abatement, the value of it in tax dollars, was 56,500 rounded figures.

If you had granted that in the first year of the reval, you're not just granting 56,000.

You would have granted 282,500 for that one taxpayer because their value was reduced for all five years.

So again, these are figures to make you remember, it's not a short-term one-year decision.

So by granting that abatement, the those abatements, because it was three, um, the average person, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it might to the homeowner.

The average person in Salem paid an additional five dollars and ten cents in 2024 and would have paid an additional five dollars and two cents a year.

It's not a lot when we think that that's what came out of my pocket was ten dollars, but that's ten dollars that came out of my pocket because it didn't come out of somebody else's.

So we were expecting two hours, so both Chris and I flew.

We apologize, we didn't realize we had it, and we had only an hour.

Um, but do you guys have any questions for either of us?

Ask away.

For just an example, an elderly man living on a picture, still has a mortgage.

The mortgage, the taxes insurance or escrow through the through the bank.

And if the taxes increase because of any other reason, does he not be able to apply for an abatement because of the fact he still has the ability to pay?

He might not qualify for an abatement, but there is another option that might be available to him, which would be the elderly deferral, right?

You would not collect that until they no longer live there.

Any other questions?

You're welcome.

Thank you so much for having us.

If you do have other questions, um, Joe knows how to find us.

To the December 15th, 2025 town council meeting.

Would you join us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States in America.

And to the Republicans under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Introductions.

To my far left is Councillor Stramalia.

Good evening.

His right is Councillor Sweeney.

Good evening.

His right is Counselor Betancourt.

Good evening.

To his right is Counselor Bryant.

Good evening.

To my immediate left is the vice chair, uh Jeff Hatch.

Hello, Salem.

To my immediate right is Counselor and uh Secretary, Lisa Whithrow.

Good evening.

To her right is Council Pelletia.

Good evening, Sheel.

To his right is Counselor Wright.

Hello, Salem.

And to her right is Tommy Shircho Vine.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Okay.

Meeting minutes.

I would move the December first, 2025, public session minutes.

Second.

I have a motion and a second by Counselor Bryant.

Any discussions?

Seeing none, all those in favor?

Unanimous.

That is all.

That is it.

Jam and comments.

There are none for this evening.

Uh approval of the cons consent agenda.

Mr.

Bryant.

Madam Chair, at this time I move to approve the December 15th, 2025 consent agenda.

I have a motion by Counselor Bryant, a second by Councillor Hatch.

All those in favor?

Unanimous.

Okay.

Additions and a request from the public.

Please go on down.

State your name and address, please.

Brian Thornock Five Brookdale Road.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

I I know that the majority, if not all of you, are aware of some changes to the tax credit for service connected permanent and total uh disability.

That's pursuant to RSA 7235.

I spoke to with Counselor Hatch a few weeks ago, and he said maybe there was a lack of clarity on who the who qualified for that and what the impacts might be.

And not only the impact on on the revenues for the tax revenues, but uh the impact on the on the veterans.

Uh, because there is going to be a significant impact because of the change.

So bottom line is the the legislature passed uh uh an amendment to to the RSA, which increased the potential from four thousand dollars to unlimited.

So basically wiping out uh a veterans uh taxes for um further home.

Currently, Salem has voted two thousand dollars in.

That's more for the public than kind of all of you know that.

In addition to that two thousand, some veterans who qualify for that also qualify for the uh the all veterans or the standard veterans tax credit, which is 750 in Salem.

So who who qualifies for the the disabled veterans tax credit?

That's a veteran who's uh determined to be a hundred percent permanent in total, uh just disabled by the veterans administration.

They have very specific categories, it's very complicated.

Not a lot of veterans as a whole get that, uh, and and uh even in a small percentage of those veterans who um who are disabled are rated 100 percent permanent in total.

Effectively, the permanent in total just means that the the VA doesn't ever anticipate that that those conditions will improve to the point where you're not getting um compensation on medical treatment.

So, how is this going to impact veterans?

Unfortunately, when they increased it to um the unlimited, they we could no longer uh take both credits.

So now veterans who are 100 percent permanent in total will have to decide between the current 2000 or the 750.

Really easy decision.

Bottom line is our veterans, the the 72 that are in town, uh actually not even 72, because I believe only 67 of them collect both, they're gonna lose 750 in in credit if this uh if our policy doesn't change.

So I am putting along with the the Veterans Council, we are putting together a petition to to increase it.

Um we found that it maybe it may have been a little bit higher than some people were comfortable with, and and we'll have to address that.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to be able to address it here.

Um I would invite the council to, you know, I know you've had discussions on this if if it's outside or inside the realm of possibility to consider um at least basically uh putting in a warrant to restore that 750 so so we don't have veterans who um unknowingly, and because a lot of them just aren't aware that uh this change occurred.

I mean I we tried to get the word out the best we could so they were prepared.

Uh it didn't it didn't impact us on this year's taxes, but it will on next year's.

So I invite any questions.

Any questions?

No.

All right, I think you're thank you, Brian.

Okay.

Claudia Di Fioria.

Do I pronounce it properly?

Yes.

Good evening.

I am a member of Salem's consequence.

Claudia, can you state your address, please?

Nine South Policy Street.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I am a member of Salem's Conservation Commission.

I joined so I can help protect Salem's green space.

As you know, there isn't much undeveloped land left, and our green space is limited.

I feel that we should protect it at all costs.

I respectfully ask the town council to vote against the proposed warrant article that would change the land use tax of 100% funding the conservation commission to a 50-50 split with a general fund.

As I feel this would be a step backwards for our town.

I also feel it would put our limited green space in further jeopardy.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Donald Morat.

Donald Morat for Oshauna Sea Lane, past member of the Conservation Commission.

Mr.

Devine, could you possibly bring up the warrant article on land use change tax?

Sure, go ahead.

Okay, on the um presentation that you had last meeting.

You put up why it matters.

Now that I assume was your selling point.

Your first one listed was increased transparency and accountability in the land use change tax.

The conservation commission at each meeting always lists funds coming in going out in their bottom line.

It comes no more crystal in this.

So there's no reason to have that listed as an issue.

Your second point was continue strong support for land conservation.

You're planning on removing 50% of their funding.

So I don't see how this applies either.

This one I understand.

You want a slush fund to use for a project not related to conservation.

This one I understand you want a slush fund to use for a project not related to conservation, which um I think at this point I'm gonna have to list why it matters in my point of view, global warming, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, wildfires, droughts, floods, glaciers and polar caps melting.

Yeah, we definitely have some problems around Earth today.

And I know there are some in our government today that say all this is a hoax.

Those scientists around the world are calling for action on all these issues.

But here in the Northeast, we've been spared a lot of this.

For how much longer, I don't know, but it's sooner or later it's going to happen.

If somebody came up to me 20 years ago and said, well, we have to cut back on conservation funding, I would have said, Oh, that's a bad idea.

Today it's even more critical than that.

So please, let's not set an example for other towns to look at.

And I can assure you wholeheartedly, your grandchildren's future depends on this.

And I repeat, your grandchildren's future depends on these votes.

Thank you.

Is there any questions?

No.

Thank you very much.

Ruth Isaacs.

Thank you.

Um my name is uh Ruth T.

Isaacs.

I live at 13 Norwood Road in Salem.

Um, and I'm a member of the Conservation Commission.

I think the principal question here about the funding is not necessarily the funding itself, but for the reserve of the reserve of the funding which is maintained by the Conservation Commission.

We have to keep in mind that the Conservation Commission has a reserved funding for particular properties which are advantageous to the town and advantageous to the population in the town.

The Commission at this particular point has a rather large reserve.

But that large reserve is necessary, and I think it is the large reserve which is really being questioned in this particular motion.

We need to keep in mind that the large reserve is there for two purposes.

One, just plain simply to have the reserve there so that when a particular property becomes available, a particular property that we are interested in for the town of Salem becomes available, the funds are there so that we can immediately we can immediately act on that particular sale.

It's somewhat analogous to buying a house.

Now I realize that sometimes when you use an analogy, you get yourself in a considerable amount of difficulty.

But I do think it is analogous.

If you are waiting to buy a particular property, if you are living somewhere and you want a particular property in a particular area, you are looking at the value of that property and how much it's going to cost you.

And if you want to be ready to buy that property when it becomes available, then you have to have the funds available.

You have to have the funds sitting waiting to be used.

Now it may not be one year, it may not be two years, it may not be three years.

But if that particular property is of particular interest to you for a particular purpose, then that money that you have in reserve is exactly what you need.

Now not only do you need that money in reserve, you also need other funds so that you continue to maintain the properties you currently have.

So when we look at the when we look at the fund, now in Salem, there are possibly two or three interesting properties which are not available at this particular time, but would be very important additions to the conservation effort in Salem.

These particular properties are choice, they would certainly be properties which would be uh which would uh be of interest to builders as well, which means that if we want that property for conservation, we are going to compete with the with the builders as well.

So our money for that particular property has to be immediately available, and that may be money which is we have had in our fund for at least the last two or three or four years, because we knew that when that property came on on for came up, it's a very important property for Salem.

What is a very important property for Salem?

Well, I think we can first of all look at the look at the town forest in terms of an important property for Salem.

And not only is it important just in in terms of its land and it's and its use as such for recreation, but also for water storage for Salem.

In other words, the the wetlands which are there are extremely important.

Why are the wetlands important for Salem?

Because that's where the water is held.

If the water is not held in the wetlands, then it has to go somewhere.

And sometimes it is just plain simply come into Salem as forms of a flood.

The properties that we are looking at and are and have considered, and properties which are important for Salem are those kinds of properties which are really important for the wetlands.

The wetlands hold the water, the wetlands are there, and they also are advantageous to the wooded areas and also to the wildlife.

But though it's the water that it holds there, and if it doesn't, if it is bought by for development, those that water has to go somewhere.

And if the if the wetlands have been uh have been used, then that water has to go somewhere, and one of the places it comes is in Salem.

So we look at the wetlands in many ways as a storage area.

In order, in order to, in order to have that kind of a strategy, it means that you basically have two funds of money, if you will, two pockets.

One is just like in in owning a house, owning other properties.

In one, you have the reserve, you're ready to go when that is ready, when that is put, when that is put up and ready for you.

The other is you have to have funds in order to maintain and continue to maintain the properties you already have.

And one of the properties that was in that was uh indicated in a letter to you from our chair was of course the town forest.

But the town forest, though it can it consumes a considerable amount of money for for maintenance for for Salem, it's a very extremely important piece for Salem.

And there are other pieces which are as important.

So money has to be available not only for maintaining the town forest, but also the other areas, the other pieces of property that are under the aegis of the Conservation Commission.

So there needs to be the fund sitting there waiting.

Though it looks very attractive to say, well, we can just sort of use that, you're not really using it, and it needs to be there.

There also need to be the funds, the funds that we can that we can use to maintain our properties at this particular point.

And it's and for the uh for the town allocation to the Conservation Commission.

There have been years in which there has been no allocation.

And so there it isn't as if there was a constant flow of money and a specific flow of money into the Conservation Commission fund.

There is not.

So that even though it looks like there is a substantial amount of money there, there is, but it's needed in two separate parts.

One part sitting there waiting.

And of course accumulating interest.

We have an exceptionally good interest count.

And the other is funds that we can use and possibly even funds that we can use what other parcels, smaller parcels that may come up, which are also important to sale.

So I would like to encourage you to really consider whether or not you want to reduce the allocation to the preservation commission.

I think because it looks like there's a sizable fund there, but that fund is a very active fund, and it's there ready to go when the property is also ready to go.

Super.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

One other comment I'd like to make, if I may.

Quickly, please.

Yeah.

The note from Fish and Game is don't feed the deer.

People are feeding the deer, and they're asking us not to feed the deer.

The deer regular, just sort of regular food, that the deer are doing very well right now.

And you're feeding them in many ways is somewhat detrimental to them.

So enjoy them, but don't feed them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Very good.

Wonderful.

Okay.

So I'm going to uh jump in the agenda, and I'm going to have the uh town treasurer, John Seitek, come up, please.

Good evening, Councillors, and thank you for taking me now.

Um I uh, as you know, they let me out of the back room every year to uh sort of the financial groundhog to make the recommendation regarding town uh investment policy.

This is a town practice, and I'm happy to do it.

Uh I would like to just start with very quickly a word about the uh function of town treasurer.

When I started this, I thought it was basically the uh financial equivalent of a hood ornament for the town, uh no heavy lifting, and well it was kind of nice.

But uh guess what?

When Tuscan Village opened, I'm spending more time in the town office.

They've actually invited me to the Christmas party.

But to the business at hand.

Uh we uh the investment policy of the town has st uh has there's really has stood us in good stead.

There's been no change in legislation, no change in real opportunities in the financial markets.

They haven't really changed much despite all the political shenanigans at the Federal Reserve.

Um we don't have long-term money available, but we do our bank is very adroit.

We have there are no more overnights, that's gone.

The days of 5 percent on overnights, that was luscious, but that is gone.

What the bank has done is given us the equivalent by dispersing our funds among corresponding banks so that we have the the advantage of long term, but we can pull it out on demand.

So it's very nice.

We can meet our demands without without uh committing the whole thing either to an investment or leaving it uh in the bank, not accumulating interest.

Our money is working for us.

So with that said, I'm going to recommend because of the no change that we uh that I urge recommend readoption of our existing investment policy for the coming year.

Super.

Councillor Bryant.

Madam Chair, at this time I move that the Salem Town Council hereby adopts the 2026 town investment policy as presented by the town treasurer.

Second.

I have a motion by Councillor Bryan, a second by Councillor Whitrow.

Any discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor?

Unanimous.

Thank you.

Thank you.

John Muy of the month.

Great.

Uh so the December recipient of the employee of the month recognition program is Scott Sullivan.

Uh, Scott is a building inspector here with inspectional services.

I would invite Fire Chief Lamir to come up and say a couple of brief words.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Craig Lemaire.

I'm honored to serve as a fire chief.

I thought I'd come to you with a brief uh description uh the perspective of the community side from it for Scott.

When Scott Sullivan was announced as employee of the month, the response from the residents and the contractors was immediate and very telling.

One resident wrote that Scott is very informative and always willing to work with folks.

Another shared that he takes the time to explain things and help find solutions.

This is all through our social media.

Those comments reflect someone who is fair, consistent, and focused on getting things done the right way.

Scott doesn't overcomplicate things.

He applies the code consistently, communicates clearly, and treats people with respect.

That approach builds trust and that trust matters in local government.

Scott, thank you for your steady work that you do every day for this community, and congratulations being named Employee of the Month.

Thank you, Brad.

Okay.

Would Tom want us to come around?

Tommy.

If you want to come around the front, yeah, because he wants to take a picture of the number of things.

Oh, he wants us to come around.

Oh come around.

Yes.

Come around.

No.

No, I wouldn't do that.

So I'll guide it.

No, that's not the council has.

All right.

When we yield down the right?

No business by missing us, Scott.

All right.

Thank you very much.

No problems.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Don't you have a lot of people like two rows?

Yeah.

Sure.

Hey, by the way.

Okay.

I already made fun of myself.

I'm doing a video saying happy holiday salon for everybody.

So reading.

Happy holidays.

All right.

Yeah, well, we got people who are, you know, happy Hanukkah, so you have some terrible things happening this next week already.

Thanks, Tom.

Terrible things happening.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my God.

It's terrible, isn't it?

Okay.

So moving right along.

Conservation commission interviews and appointments.

Mr.

Devine.

So we've received two applications for um open positions.

These are both alternative members on the conservation commission.

Uh the first one is going to be from Corinne Gordon.

Corinne currently serves in the recordvisory committee, and the council should be aware who she is.

So we did not have her come to tonight's meeting.

The second one is a new applicant, um, Mr.

Resident Glenn Reynolds.

Uh, Mr.

Reynolds has not previously served, so we have invited him to this meeting to come forward and speak.

Welcome.

Hi.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Glenn Reynolds, live at 28 Hawkins Glen Drive.

Um I'm very conscious of the ecosystem and the wetlands and the forests that we have.

Um at the I'm the uh vice president of the HOA at Hawkins Glen.

And I do um I'm the one in charge of taking care of the pond, the ecosystems, the forests, as well as the roads.

So I have pretty good background in doing this stuff and understand a lot of what needs to be done.

Um my background in in um in work was uh Rolls Royce Naval Marine.

Um I have a degree in uh marine science as well as a degree in business administration.

So I feel I've been doing this for a lot of years.

Um and um I think I'd be able to um give some advice and help with uh the needs of the uh commission.

Any questions?

Questions.

No.

No, he gave us the experience or yeah, absolutely.

Yep, okay.

Thank you, Mr.

Reynolds.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That was easy, wasn't it?

Yeah, Council Bryant.

Madam Chair, at this time I move to appoint Corinne Gordon has in alternate member of the Conservation Commission with a term ending April 2027, and further to appoint Glenn Reynolds as an alternate member of the Conservation Commission with a term ending in April of 2028.

Second.

Second, I have a motion and second by counselor Wright.

Any discussion?

All those in favor, unanimous.

Congratulations and thank you.

Thank you for your service.

We appreciate it.

Okay, continued discussion on the budget committee reduction to the budget.

So I'm happy to kick it off for you, Madam Chair.

So again, at the December 1st meeting, we spoke about the reduction uh that the budget committee made to our operating budget for two million dollars.

Um staff prepared two scenarios basically, we call it option A and option B.

Option A was to remove the sidewalks from the budget and then an additional five thousand dollars, and then option B is to actually remove a um full two million dollar reduction.

Um and speaking to staff, I I think we still feel our opinion, um the actual full two million dollar reduction is the best way to go.

Um and I think one of the major reasons we're leaning towards that is because we're fearful of a possible default budget if we went with the sidewalks.

Um I think the reason we're thinking that way is even with the two million dollar reduction, we are still moving programs forward, we are still doing things within the budget to move the town forward while it's going to hurt, while there is going to be ramifications as we move into the 2027 budget because we didn't fully fund things and we are aware of that.

Um being able to still add staff for let's say the building maintenance position at the new police department, things like that are still included in this budget, uh, even with the two million dollar reduction, and so we want to be able to still implement some of those things.

So I would have to be happy to answer questions for the council if they have any from Councillor Hatch.

Okay, I'm gonna speak in favor of option two.

Uh okay, reason being just as the town manager just pointed out is choosing option two still allows us to move forward, not as fast as we'd like.

However, we are still moving forward in the process.

Uh for those of us that are saying, well, we had a plan, we should follow the plan.

I understand that, but no plans should be set in stone or so rigid that we can't uh adapt and overcome and adjust as things happen.

And this budget being reduced is things that happen.

Um and lastly, and really huge for me, is that even though the wording of the cuts wasn't the greatest, even though it wasn't done in the greatest of ways, right?

The intent of making those cuts was clearly stated.

The intent was clearly stated to cut that tax rate from eight or nine percent down to something like three point four or four percent.

And there's no doubt about that.

Mr.

Gardew said that several times.

That was the intent of that tax rate because the tax rate at 9% was too high.

So I think we should be obligated to follow that intent because it was such clearly stated.

It wasn't said the motion wasn't done correctly.

Well, I won't say correctly, it wasn't done nicely, however, the intent was clearly corrected.

Uh clearly correctly stated.

And it's what the town manager says now you all know I'm not really a politician, I'm more of an activist.

And I'm gonna tell you if I was on the other side of this fence, and as putting my activist hat on.

And we my town council goes for option one.

I'm gonna rally every troop I can to vote no on everything I can.

And that's what's gonna happen.

Because you know me, I'm gonna go for the throw.

And that's what they're gonna do.

They are gonna rally every person they can, they're gonna drive out every no voter they can, and that's exactly the chance that we're taking.

They're not only gonna vote no on the budget and give us the default budget, but they're gonna vote no on all those spending articles also.

So I am urging you to go ahead and vote for option two.

So I will say that I'm gonna vote for option two because that's a 3.98% increase overall in the budget, versus option one brings it to 8.11%.

Versus option one brings it to 8.11%.

So for me, um, I obviously want to keep the taxes lower for the people in this community.

And um, as you said, we're still moving forward.

Um, I just think I think we need to keep moving forward.

Yeah, I do I like the way it it all came apart.

No, I don't.

But it you know, we got to deal with what we got to deal with.

And so um that's really the basis for my support of option two, counselor Sweeney.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to echo the comments from Councillor Hatch and Councillor Stacey.

I could try to claim that I'm not a politician, but I think the ships probably still on that one for me.

Um, but I believe option two to be the more realistic, responsible, pragmatic approach.

Would have been nice for the entire process uh to have that same approach.

But I want to thank the town manager and the staff that prepared both options, uh, but for also acknowledging here that option two is the true intent, and while none of us want that, it's the best path to move forward under the circumstances.

So thank you.

Counselor Betancourt.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So, as some of you may recall, at the last meeting, I had pressed the town manager about the opportunity, the possibility of an option three, and I appreciate the work that he and the staff did to see if there was another option available to us.

And unfortunately, we are finding ourselves back in the place where we've got fairly binary choice.

And I had stated at the last meeting that if given the two choices, I would choose option one.

And I will freely admit to you that occasionally I make a mistake.

My wife will tell you I make them a lot.

And I will say that I changed my position in one of two ways.

One is new information comes to light, or the second is that I have a better understanding of the information that was presented to me in the first place.

And so I have no objection, I find no fault in how the options and the details of that of those options were presented to us in the last meeting.

But I give counselor Hatch a lot of credit, who I think articulated it to me in a way that I was able to better understand it.

And while option one initially seemed attractive because it was not going to throw us off course in a number of long-term plans that we had had, uh, in reality, it wasn't a true actual two million dollar cut, whereas option two is.

But the other thing I'll say is, and madam chair, I believe you said it a moment ago, with the as a result of this reduction, the tax rate increase goes to what?

3.98.

So 3.98, is that right?

Correct.

Well, I will say that it's fairly extraordinary to me that the budget committee focused on the municipal budget to bring it down to 3.98.

Uh but last week they approved a school district budget, which as I've discussed before, represents approximately 67 to 68 percent of the tax impact of this town.

The budget that they recommended to deliver a session was 5.5.

So it's a bit disappointing to me, to be frank, that there was so much focus and so much emphasis and scrutiny, though I have no problem with accountability.

As you all know, I'm a supporter of the budget committee.

I like the idea that there's a second set of eyes that go through all of this and bring scrutiny and accountability.

Uh but to take it to the degree that they did on the municipal budget and then allowed a 5.5% increase to go forward on the school district budget.

Uh that seems to me as though the priorities there if we're actually looking out for the taxpayer in the impact of those two budgets in terms of the tax hit that residents face, seems to be a bit misaligned.

Thank you.

Councilor Pelletia.

Yes, thank you, Miss Madam Chair.

I uh had a reconsideration.

I had originally opted for option one due to the fact that I didn't want to make any cuts for our municipalities by police municipal and administrative.

And uh I didn't want that in any way, shape, and form uh making this town work in the backwards position.

But due to the understanding from town manager Joe Devine, uh how he can work that out with the with the solid two million uh dollar cut and not hurt, not hurt our town and keep it moving forward.

The only thing I regret, I'm not sure, Mr.

Devine, if we are going to lose the grant for the sidewalk or not uh in the now or in the future.

It is it is a reduction as of right now, but we will try to work and see if there's money we can find, whether it be in fact fees and things like that.

If if we're awarded the grant again, we haven't even received the grant, so there's still a possibility that we wouldn't even receive it.

But if we were, we're attention, our attentions are trying to find the money to be able to still move forward with it.

All right, thank you for that clarification.

All right, so therefore I I will opt for option two as well.

Counselor Withrow.

So I'm so torn on this, right?

I mean, I went into a whole thing last meeting about how option one is the better way to go because I don't believe their intent if they had clear intent, they would have chosen where the money needs to be cut.

What you know Paul said he was at meeting, they're looking at line I'm saying, nope, can't cut it there, can't cut it there, can't cut it there.

Yet they did a blanket two million dollar cut.

I have a big issue with that.

I do, however, take you, you know, seriously when you say you're worried about the default budget and you don't want to put the town, and the last thing I want to do is be responsible for putting the town in a position like that, which I don't believe we did.

I think this is gonna set us back, and I think the budget committee has to own it.

And I'm gonna touch on the point that that you made, DJ.

So I came in here tonight thinking the same exact thing.

They made a hundred thousand dollar cut to a budget that's what, 25 million ish more than ours, um, after they took the time to go through it and felt it was a solid, solid budget, and I'm not criticizing the school budget, it might have been great.

I'm not familiar enough with it to say one way or another.

But their five percent increase was greater monetarily wise for every homeowner in this town than our eight percent increase was.

So it's still gonna be a good amount more, you know, much more now that we're gonna cut it back.

But for them to not even think about a blanket cut there, when you know the school bo school board knows their budget better, not even thinking about it, but imposed it here.

I question why.

Having said that, I'll support option two, but I don't like the tactics that we used across the board on this one.

Councillor Bryant.

Before I make the motion.

I would have to uh commend Joe and the uh directors and many of them on here, but the chief, Chief Dolan, all the people for what they did, all the work they put in to make this all work so that option two works without setting us too far back.

I will make the same two comments that everybody else made or has attempted to make and maybe has not made clear.

We gave them an invitation, the budget committee, to come down here to the meeting, sit with us in a joint session and go over the budget piece by piece, and they refuse to be here.

We'll do it ourselves.

Well, what they did shows no research, shows no effort, and shows no consideration whatsoever for the directors and the town council and the taxpayers of Salem to just arbitrarily take a number.

Let's say two million dollars.

We have never allowed a budget committee to do that before without begging them to come up with where do you think you see the cuts.

So I will commend the staff.

I'm gonna commend the council for what we had to go through and what we have attempted to do, and I will uh state again for the record.

Your invitation was to come here and come down and speak with us and join us in trying to effectively manage the budget and the tax rate, and you refused.

Maybe next year we'll be different.

Thank you, Councillor Bryant.

Counselor Bryant.

Madam Chair, at this time I make a motion.

I move that the town council reduces two million dollars from the 2026 operating budget among multiple line items, as identified by town staff to reach the two million dollar reduction in the budget as voted by the budget committee, and that would be option two.

Second.

I have a motion by counselor Bryan, a second by counselor Wright further discussion.

Seeing none, others in favor, unanimous.

Thank you.

Mr.

Devine.

Next on the agenda will be a first read waiver, it's gonna be referred resolution 2025-38, which is the municipal service department, uh, which is to adopt the annual road program.

I should sum our first meeting.

Um Deputy Director John Cliffall was here to speak to the road program.

Um Director Wayne Amaral is here as well.

If you have any further questions, um we're happy to answer them.

Uh Wayne's here.

Yeah, just Wayne.

Good evening.

I'm gonna hopefully answer any questions you might have remaining from last uh meeting we had.

Um the roads program.

The only question I have is about the roads that I spoke about, as I had told you before.

Um my concern is that we have roads that since 2024 were priority roads to be done.

And they still haven't been done.

They're not on the listing.

People in this community voted, because at town meeting, we list the town, the roads that are gonna what's gonna happen and which roads.

These are roads that were not taken care of, and other roads that weren't even on the listing anywhere were placed onto the list in 2025.

So I mean, obviously, I'm it's a concern to me, as I told you before.

Um, and that's that's all I'm gonna say.

I mean, I I just think it's it's unfair to people who have been waiting who have low, you know, lower PCIs than some of the ones that are on the list.

And the re rationale as to why they haven't been done, I I you know, I mean, obviously, Mr.

Clipveld couldn't answer as well.

Um, and I know that stuff gets swapped out back and forth.

But the other issue is the uh gravel roads in this community, people pay a lot of them top dollar because a lot of them are on the lake, and they're you know, they're paying good money for their taxes, and they'd like to see those roads done.

And obviously, what's happening is when now they're not even being considered.

So it's just a concern.

That's that's all.

Thank you.

Council Chair, I totally understand that, and obviously the budget limits what we have to do, what we have the availability for.

Just to keep a note to that these aren't locked in, even the list that you have right now, because we still have to send it back out in the spring, late winter, early spring.

So the list you're looking at right now isn't really a the official list until April when we come back to you in April with the with the official official list.

So even this list isn't the 100 percent accurate.

I think you gotta be careful.

I think you have to be careful because I think that when you give the voters a listing of these are the time, these are the roads that are going to be whatever's going.

That the assumption is these are the roads because I'm voting on these roads.

So unless you want to change the way you're presenting it at town meeting, the thing is I voted for certain roads to get done.

My expectation as a taxpayer in this community is they're gonna get done.

That's that's all I have to say.

Council Bettencourt.

So, Madam Chair, I will once again echo that sentiment that there's a transparency implication there, that when those roads appear on the warrant, there is an expectation that those are the roads that are gonna get done.

That being said, I do appreciate that things come up that are completely outside of your control.

And that can sometimes cause there to be a need to adjust things.

I think again, madam chair, to your point, if a road does not get done a particular year for a particular reason, and again, there are many legitimate ones that we cannot control.

There should be an expectation that that road will be done as soon as possible, and so we should not see particular roads being put off two, three or more years.

You know, if it can't get done in one year, understandable.

There are circumstances that occur.

But we shouldn't see it keep getting punted farther and farther away.

Council, that's a reasonable request, or at least have the excuse why it was bumped from year to year to year to year.

So be up front and say that uh James was on last year, it should be on next year.

Then when next year comes around, we say why it's not on next year, and not just have it erase off the plan so it disappears, which is it being very true transparent.

I think that'd be very helpful.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Councilor Bryant.

Wait a minute.

Oh, I'm sorry, Consul with road.

That's okay.

It's okay.

Um I share your concerns, and maybe we should be listing it a little bit differently on the warrants.

There is a little bit more flexibility, because while I agree with you, sometimes the things you know, sitting in on some of these meetings.

Depends on what's under the road, you know, what's there for pipes and when that can be done, and sometimes that bumps it, and that's beyond control, and some of the roads just end up costing way too much money, and it's either that and one other and nothing else to fit in the budget.

So there are legitimate reasons, as you said.

I do share your concern, but maybe we need to find a way to word it a little bit differently.

Yeah.

Yeah, some madam.

Sometimes it's just geographical.

They're doing five roads in this poor road in the middle wasn't listed, but they're there, and it's 20,000 to just code it, and so it gets done, and that takes it from someplace else.

I agree.

We we we are working out with legal language to basically say that the list of subjects change, however, the the the legal ease they want to use for that.

Um and then if you remember last April, we uh John actually came before you guys and gave an update on what roads were being done, and so that's our plan moving forward is to get that language on the warrant so people know that it could be subject to change due to factors, and then after they finalize the bids to come back before the council and say this is the final list, this is what's gonna be completed in 2026.

Super, thank you.

Council of Bettencourt.

And that just opens up the door for the quick 30 second annual PSA.

I understand that the wording of the warrant articles is miserable.

Unfortunately, the law requires it to be written in somewhat of a legalese way.

Trust me, I wish we could write it more clearly.

I wish we could put some of this into plain English.

The law simply requires it to be written the way that it is.

I wish we could do something about that.

We are where we are.

Thank you.

Council Bryant.

Now, Madam Chair, I move that the Salem Town Council hereby adopts resolution 2025-38 and further to waive the requirement for a second rating reading.

This resolution shall take effect upon its passage as follows.

Whereas the town council adopted the 2023 PCI report as presented by the beta group at their September 25th, 2023 meeting, which is used as a management tool to help develop future planning for the road program, including the cost thereof.

And whereas each year the road stabilization committee assembles a list of roads for maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction for consideration of a warrant article to be presented to the voters.

And whereas the road stabilization committee discussed and endorsed the annual road program at their November 24th, 2025 meeting, and whereas the annual road program was presented to the town council at their December 1st, 2025 meeting, with a discussion on allocation of three million dollars to be used for funding the 2026 portion of the program.

And whereas the funds will be used for the improvement, reconstruction, maintenance, crack sealing, drainage, and associated attributes as necessary for complete streets engineering and construction of roads as outlined in the annual road program.

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Salem Town Council that the annual road program will be brought to the 2026 warrant for consideration as described, shall the town vote to raise and appropriate the sum of three million dollars to be added to the road capital reserve fund previously established in 1990 for the purpose of repair and or reconstruction of existing roads, associated drainage improvements, right-of-way work as necessary, and engineering.

Second.

I have a motion and a second by Council Withrow.

Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor?

Unanimous.

Thank you.

Moving right along.

Our second resolution is going to be 2025-39, which is from the fire department, which is the request of the use of fire department public safety impact fees.

When you look at your agenda, you're actually going to have two different memos and two different resolutions.

So we're gonna be looking at option two at this point, uh, which is going to be the relates to the 150,000 dollars towards repairs to fire station number three.

Uh Chief Lemir is here to speak to that.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, so option the option we're looking to use 150,000 of public impact fees to um move along with the next phase of South Fire Station Three that we've talked about.

This was the top scoring project in the CIP this year, and um we we also have expiring public impact fees, so we really wanted to make sure that we use those before the end of the year.

Um we do have the the funds available to to get this project um uh encumbered in 2025 if we're able to do that.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Any questions for the chief?

Which one?

Option two, the uh fire station three.

Self-fire hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

These look that I haven't seen Council Bryant Madam Chair.

At this time, I move to the town town council votes to approve.

Excuse me.

I move that the town council hereby adopts resolution two thousand twenty-five-39 inferred to the way of the requirement for a second reading.

This resolution shall take effect upon its passage as follows.

Whereas the town of Salem has established a fire department public safety impact fees to support capital projects necessitated by community growth, and whereas the town fire department has utilized approved funding to complete the conceptual design for the replacement of South Fire Station No.

Three, and whereas the next step in the project development is phase two, which includes schematic design, design development, civil engineering, wetlands assessment, and associated consultant services, and whereas, as of November 30th, 2025, the fire department public safety fee impact fee account has an available balance of 1.4 million five hundred fifty-five thousand one hundred and thirty dollars and thirty-eight cents, and sixty-five thousand four hundred and twenty-nine dollars of that amount is scheduled to expire at the end of uh FY29.

And whereas applying the impact fees at this stage aligns with their intended purpose and ensures timely utilization of expiring funds while advancing a critical public safety capital project.

Now therefore, be it resolved by the town of the Salem Town Council that the funding amount of 150,000 from the fire department public safety impact fees shall be authorized to advance the South Station number three replacement project.

Second.

I have a motion and second by Council Stomalia.

Any discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor?

Unanimous.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, Chief.

Moving right along, Mr.

Devine.

We're gonna be in a new business now, and we're on item number two, which is considered the SCTV 2026 budget.

In your packet is a memo from SCT TV director, uh Tom Giorosso with some supporting documents.

Uh, here is here to speak to his budget tonight.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Uh I'm Tom Giroso, Executive Director of Salem Community Television, and I'm here to present the 2026 Salem Community Television budget to the Salem Town Council.

The council are trustees of the station, and the town manager oversees the day-to-day uh duties within the station.

So if it's okay, I'd like to talk about the highlights of the station as accomplished over the last year, and then go into the budget.

That's okay.

Sure.

So um 2025 has been a busy year for SCTV.

Uh we welcome some new faces.

Uh Maya Gerard started with us in July, hit the ground running as our public access programming manager, working on the 275th anniversary shows, Salem Fest, and directed our Carols and Cocoa coverage this year.

She's also done a number of short videos with local groups and town department events and social media, so I'm excited that she's helping us get SCTV's message out in information to the town of Salem.

Also, I want to uh introduce Joey DeRubis for as a part-time production engineering assistant.

He's in the control room right now running audio uh with Kenny right now, who's back from uh college, which is again Kenny.

That's awesome that he's back first.

They both helped on the parade.

Uh uh Joey's gonna be learning the equipment of the nightly meeting room soon.

He's gonna be help us with meetings going forward.

He's a junior here at the high school, and he's been volunteering for us for a while.

He helped on this year's parade coverage and with the Carol and Coco uh the tree lighting that was going on.

Uh this year SCTV covered the Salem elections with candidate interviews, created an election website uh with links to all our candidate coverage.

We also help with candidate forums with the Southern New Hampshire Chamber of Commerce.

We also uh helped cover the old town hall open house, which was nice.

They did the renovations, and we partnered with them for a new film series we're excited about.

It's been a great addition for their offerings at the museum on Mondays.

Uh we ended up uh I'm gonna say it was kind of fun.

Howie Glynn did a show in 2007 doing the history of the Arlington Pond.

And it was interesting to see it while Howie was there in 2025, watching him watch himself.

And there was a dozen and a half local residents there.

So they've been getting more and more people to go.

Right now they're they're probably they're quiet for the winter, but they're gonna be coming back in January and February.

So it was kind of cool to watch that, and it's gratifying to know.

Not only do we have a nice new museum, but also there's opportunities and specific things to do at the museum, other than just well, here's what the museum is like.

Well, no, here's a show that you that you covered that we have done, and we have the old shows here.

So let's reset it up so they can actually play them back at a specific time.

And it's generating some good uh feedback from the community.

Um I'm excited that that's going forward.

We we did 22 co-presentations this year there, and we're hoping to do more next year.

So uh we got three.

I think the next one's gonna be in January.

They're doing like one January, February, March, and then they'll probably start back up in their their normal routine.

Uh SCTV was at the Ganley Awards luncheon, the Field of Dreams concert series, the Historical Society Lecture Series, the New Hampshire Philharmonic performances.

We've also tied in a bunch of events to the Salem 275th anniversary and covered five hours live for Salem Fest in August.

That included bands, a car show, reenactments, and local residents celebrating the town's birthday.

It was a very well attended, and we're excited to be a part of that.

Uh I can keep going down the list, but we presented uh a number of different shows and segments about Salem and its residents in 2025.

And we also did about 115 municipal meetings this year.

We just presented the premiere of the Salem Holiday Parade on Saturday.

That's our large-scale production that joins volunteers staff, the Salem School District, and many community members for a fun parade that shows off what the Salem community can do.

The theme was the Salem 275th anniversary, coincidentally, the celebration that was going on, and we had a multi-camera production, including a drone, and we're making it available to other stations in the country, tied in through our NHCCM group, which is the other peg access stations in New Hampshire.

Previous uh years, we've had it available so that anyone can download it and they put it on other channels.

So it's been on other channels in New Hampshire, in Maine and Massachusetts, and one time in Yuma, Arizona for some reason.

We're excited that they wanted to watch us, so we we can show everybody what Salem looks like, which is great.

Uh we had an original uh show that started in September, which was an exclusive.

President Gerald Ford visited Salem in 1975.

And Bob Berthel uh did interviews with Salem residents who were at the event, also re and he also, as a separate show, he's been remastering the Salem holiday parades that Bill uh Loffler did on Superate films, and those have been doing Salem holiday memories during the December months.

It's just crazy to realize that that material is still available.

He's been able to remaster it and get it up as shows.

It's um it's a labor of love for him, and it shows that he's put a lot of effort into those shows.

In addition to that, he also did a series called uh Salem History on Tape, which digitizes our regular archives that are going on to a new generation to watch.

One thing I'm really excited about is uh he's digitizing soon some of the oldest tapes we have from the 70s and 80s.

We had they were on a shelf on a but it played back on a machine that doesn't exist anymore, and it was broken.

He was able to about 10 years ago find a version of the machine that was broken.

In 25, we're able to find somebody who actually could fix it, sent it out, it came back this summer, and now this winter he's going to start trying to remaster those tapes.

And I'm just really excited.

I I equate it to like it's like the town found a photo album that's been lost for decades.

I'm really excited what we're going to find from those footage.

So that's that's us going forward.

Uh we also continue to create new episodes of the What's Up Salem podcast with the town manager Joe Devine, former planning director, Ross Muldoff, and support from community development program manager uh Creighton Brupaker.

They were uh it's a group effort include interviewing uh local guests and staff about what's going on in Salem.

And it's a tie-in with the the Salem CTE program loans us the use of their podcasting facility upstairs.

Uh over 20 Salem CTE students have worked as line producers over the years for for the show, and SCTV coordinates, edits, and publishes the show every two weeks.

We schedule tomorrow to do four more episodes, including the town assessor, the town finance director, and the conservation commission chair.

I also wanted to be remissive, I didn't say uh thank you to the school department.

Uh they've been housing us here since I've been here in 2003.

Uh it's appreciated, and uh they've been great to work with, and it's a win-win setup for the for the town and for the school.

Um thank you for indulging me.

I'm sorry if I talked a little too long.

I just I'm proud of the station.

I'm excited about my staff and what what they've done.

Uh Susan Maya, Sean, Brendan, uh, all our crew and all our volunteers.

They've worked hard to make the station what it is.

And um we appreciate it.

I want to brag.

I appreciate what they do, and they help us go forward.

So um now the budget.

Uh Salem Community Television is going to request that the Salem Town Council allocate $543,724 towards the 2026 SCTV budget.

This is a reduction of about $65,000 from last year's budget.

It's in response to the decrease in revenue from Comcast.

In your packet are the numbers, and while we were expecting the trend downward, the last quarterly check that came in just in November was disappointing.

It was down over 10 percent year-hour, which we were not expecting.

Usually it's a small bump between Q2 and Q3, and it went down considerably.

So because of that, I felt we have to be fiscally responsible and to drop expenses the best we can to match revenue.

Uh we're attempting to get there over the span of a few years.

In the 2027 budget, we may need to lower expenses even further, depending on the decreases from the revenue, which right now we we just don't know what they're gonna come in at because they're lower than we were expecting to begin with.

This plan will get us through 2026, but it's gonna be a very tight budget.

Uh to balance future budgets, I plan to ask the town manager if we can get help to reimburse SCTV for some of the expenses to cover the meetings for the 2027 budget.

So this would be for next year's budget or two years' budget.

The 26 budget's already set in stone.

We couldn't do anything, but next year we're hoping to pay for some of the crew covering the meetings and some additional costs related to the government channel.

I wanted to get the blessing of the board to start this conversation to help us cover those costs.

This would give us a way to keep the meetings on the air in case there was this disruption in revenue to the station.

I also wanted to update you on the SCTV fund policy.

We will be in compliance even with all this, the policy for 2026.

As it is currently drafted, though, we do not control the revenue side of the equation because of federal limits.

And we will have issues maintaining compliance in future years.

Our current budget doesn't include roughly $50,000 in equipment we're going to need to buy in the next five to six years to upgrade the old equipment that's basically dying or going to be end of life.

So we're going to need to update that and that's it's hampers our ability to run the station forward.

So it would be at the pleasure of the board if they wish to modify or eliminate that policy, but that doesn't need to be done tonight.

I just wanted to make you aware of what was going on.

So we're currently in compliance in 26.

Most likely we'll be in compliance in 27.

And it depends for future years what we get for revenue as to whether we're going to need to modify that.

I can answer any questions you've got.

If there's any additional well, there's additional information in your packets, but it's basically the same as last year.

The decrease in the budget is to help us balance out the revenue loss.

We're hoping to keep current services intact for 2026, but future years depended on what we got coming in.

So bottom line, it's going to be tight.

Minimal equipment purchases for next year and in 27, we're going to have to see what the number is make it going forward.

The numbers that came in November really were dispressing that that happened.

And we're sure it's from cord cutting.

It's not anyone, it's not just us, it's across the st you know across to all the stations.

It's New Hampshire, it's all New England.

It's across the country because there's people are cutting the cord.

And we're directly getting funds.

They're streaming, right, Tom?

They're streaming.

Yeah, they're streaming.

That's why.

So I I felt like I had to be proactive and to give you a heads up of where we're going.

Do you think, Tom, in the future would be able to access any grant money?

I would like to find some.

It's difficult for this.

Uh because usually grant money is not unrestricted.

It's for a specific event or a project.

Uh they don't specifically have anything for that.

This type of uh we also were looking for community-based.

We might be able to find some, it'd probably be more for equipment side of things than it would be for staffing side.

But I mean we can definitely explore that option.

Um I think that would be a great idea if we could do that.

Council Hatch.

Yeah, just you know, thanks, Tom, for at least planting the seed tonight and getting us really thinking about the future.

Yeah.

Because you are our only lifeline with the public.

Well, it's not like we have any other way to communicate with the public except for the services that your station provides.

So please everybody keep in mind in 2028 that situation.

Right.

Because it's gonna be awfully hard to say no if we know that's the only way we can communicate with the board.

Right.

Correct.

I mean, obviously we have the website.

I mean, obviously we have the website, we have you know, salem and life.

We have some other, you know, but I mean, obviously, everybody likes to watch the repeats on the TV.

You can go online, you can watch whatever you want to watch, which have a meeting to listen to what people had to say.

Um, so I mean, you are a huge resource, Tom.

You know that, I know that.

I think the people in the community realize that as well, you know.

So any other comments or questions?

Councillor Bettencourt.

I would just echo what's been said.

You know, the town town manager and I were chatting about this when we were marching in the Christmas parade together.

And you know, it really arkens back to that great line in the movie Apollo 13, which is one of my favorite lines of any movie, which is we've got to work the problem.

Failure is not an option.

Uh we need Tom, we need his team.

We need the services that they provide to Jeff's point.

We have no weekly bi-weekly newspaper anymore.

We're lucky to catch the attention every now and again from the Eagle Tribune.

This and um for all of its considerable faults, social media are really the last two outlets that we have to be able to communicate with the public and for the public to look at what we're doing and to stay up to date as to what's going on in the community.

So we're obviously going to have to get innovative in reaction to this trend that we're seeing.

There's a certain irony that people are cutting the cord to these streaming services and they get so many of these different streaming services.

I think it equals the bill they were gonna get for the cable anyway.

But nevertheless, here we are.

And so I think, as I said to the town manager, it'll be incumbent upon all of us to really put on the thinking caps and figure out how we can uh get creative.

I don't think there's gonna be one single solution.

It's gonna be a number of different things, and they're gonna have to be some changes that'll be made, and some of the organizations that benefited from this service are gonna have to perhaps contribute to its operations.

I think that's going to be a critical part of the solution going forward.

So what that looks like, thankfully, we have some time.

This is a very unfortunate situation that they'll be running so lean for 26.

But uh if they can get through, it buys us some time to figure out and work with Tom and his team to figure out how we make the model going forward sustainable.

Absolutely.

Council Pelletia.

Thank you, Mr.

Madam Chair.

I do want to thank you, Tom and your staff for everything you do for the uh for the town and for the uh the production.

I was I did I was watching the uh the Christmas parade last week of 1973, my year of graduation.

Yes, I'm old.

And uh don't look at me when you say that comparing comparing the experience the the experience and the technology that advanced from then to now is unsurpassed.

I mean, I was watching that super eight film that it was jittering around and I was getting seasick trying to watch it where where today you incorporated the drone and the drone uh in the crit this year's Christmas parade was of surpass the way it just scooped down and watched everybody in the row and come back up.

The technology has grown 100%.

And I know you and your staff are staying on top of that all the time to make it more entertaining.

And so I want to thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, councillor Bryant.

Madam Chair, at this time I move to the town council, votes to approve the 2026 SCTV budget in the amount of 543,724 dollars.

Second, I have a motion and second by councillor with any discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor, unanimous.

Thank you, Tom.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Mr.

Devine, moving right along.

So next on the agenda is going to be the 2026 Warren articles.

Um, Madam Chair, just so you're aware, I did receive a request from an audience member who'd like to speak.

Um to one of the warrant articles.

They weren't aware you had to sign up to speak ahead of time.

Um so it's up, it's up to you if you want to allow that.

Um it's two members of the conservation commission.

Two more members.

Well, I've already heard unless it is you're gonna give me new information.

We've already heard from three members and two current and one former member of the conservation district.

So if unless you're gonna give us some new information, I'm not gonna entertain it.

Okay.

You're okay with it.

I'm sorry.

Are you are you okay?

Yeah, if it's new information, absolutely.

If you want to come up and give us your name and address, please.

Yep.

Hi everyone, I'm Caitlin Fitzpatrick.

Uh my address is 62 Hawkins Glen Drive in Salem.

Um Kathy, thank you for no problem allowing me to speak.

I really appreciate this.

Uh Georgia and I have put a lot of thought thought into this.

Um, and so I just want to summarize quickly.

Um we did submit um a letter to you all in your packet, um, which I will now be quizzing you all on now.

No, no, no.

But I just wanted to go over it really quickly with you guys.

Um this was uh we were we were a little taken aback when we saw the Warren article, but we understand, especially after that budget conversation that we all just had, right?

Like that's um it makes sense.

We gotta we gotta find the pennies everywhere we can, especially now that they don't print them anymore.

Um but it's uh it's one of those things that um you know uh we were do we dug into a lot of this, right?

Like Georgia and I kind of had like a little bit of like uh a ride through Salem's history looking back on all of this, and it was pretty fascinating and about how much folks really care about this this conservation commission um as much as we do today, right?

Like we live in an absolutely beautiful town.

I think it actually says it on the police officers' badges that were the gateway to the White Mountains in Salem, and that just like cool, we're gonna live there, like you know what I mean.

Like it's like uh it's it's a lot of the US's first impression, especially coming in 93.

So we want to keep it as beautiful as possible, right?

So um just something I wanted to clarify uh is that the budget um or I guess our budget, as you guys all know, comes a hundred percent right now from the land use conservation.

Other folks have said, you know, it's not consistent every year.

Some years we get a lot of land use that um that would get some money in our budget, and now the years we don't.

Um, but one thing that's kind of jarring is that once all of the land use in the town uh has been converted, right?

And I think someone requested somewhere, I think one of you requested how much money is actually left.

And I think once it all shakes out, it ends up being only about six million dollars in funds left.

But once that's done, uh the conservation commission no longer has any more funds coming in unless we come back to you guys and we ask to be added to the budget from the town from the taxpayer funds.

So right now, this 100% going to us.

Yeah, we got a we got a nice little chunk in the bank right now, and we can really think the interest rates for a lot of that.

Uh, and I think as someone said, you know, as Ruth said, you know, we we're gonna use it to to buy the land when we can, but at the same time, um, you know, we also are responsible for um the overseeing of the town forest and all of our conservation land and those sorts of things.

And in the uh package that I provided to you guys, we really dug in on a lot of statistics specifically for New Hampshire, um, as well as the adjacent towns about how much it actually increases property values, increase property values, increase taxes, yay, and then we get more money.

Um, you know, so it's so it all kind of shakes out.

So I guess that is um just some things that I want you all to keep in the back of your mind is that again it's it's kind of a volatile budget.

It isn't solid, it isn't set every year.

It only comes about when someone wants to when a developer wants to change the use of the land, as you all know.

Um, and that we're we're pretty pretty careful with our current budget, knowing that our time and our funds are limited when it comes to to um to being able to use these in the future and you know, not having to eventually put a little uh or come to you guys and and ask for for funds one day out of the town budget, which is already stretched so thin as we're as we're growing.

Um so other than that, that's kind of the summary of my comments.

Um that I just wanted to make sure that I got those points out there for you guys to have a think about um before you voted.

Um so I really appreciate your time.

Thank you, Caitlin.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you.

I love how festive you are.

Great personality.

I love it.

I love it.

Mr.

Devine.

All right, so we're gonna discuss the 2026 warrant articles.

Again, these are proposed warrant articles.

The council has the ability to say yes, no if they don't want to move forward with these.

These are all just again things that I've heard throughout the year, people have mentioned, so we've included them as possible options for the council.

So again, we we use that 3.82% number.

That is the tax increase with the operating budget.

And if every warrant article that is on this slide passes, that is the tax increase that we're all looking at.

It's 3.82%, which is roughly 23 cents on the town side.

Uh so you do not need to vote on this one tonight because it's a lease payment, but I just wanted to keep it on your radar just so you knew it would be coming.

Uh, this will be voted on in January when we do uh the lease payments, but this is for the fire engine pumper, uh, which is 1.3 uh million dollars for a 60 month lease.

Um the tax rate impact is roughly four cents on that if we move forward with that.

Do you want me to read the article tasks?

Do you want to read them?

Do you want me just to explain each one?

How do you want to proceed?

No, you can just give it a little explanation.

Perfect.

So a little explanation, Joe.

Okay, so Article 8 is the operating budget.

We've already heard and beat that one to death, so I'm just gonna move on from it.

Uh so Article 9 is the road program.

You guys just heard about that one as well and also already passed it with recommendations, so I'm gonna move on from that one as well.

Uh so Article 10 is going to be for collective bargaining, and this is for the Salem Police Employee Association.

Uh so the article amount uh is 247,906.

Again, this is the actual warrant text.

Um that is the increase each year for 26, 27, 28, and 29, primarily due to the 3% salary adjustments every year for COLAS.

Um Article 11 is going to be for the another collective bargaining agreement.

It's for the Salem Public Administrative Associations or SPA as we call that.

Uh, this is for majority of the department heads who are part of unions and for higher level positions.

Uh the the tax the uh warr article amount is for 141,582 dollars.

Um that tax impact is two cents on it.

Article 12 is for OPEB.

Um, we're recommending 50,000 again for people who aren't aware.

That's other post-deployment benefits.

That's for money that we would pay out in the event somebody separate service and we have to buy buy back vacation time, sick time, things like that.

Um 45,000 comes from um is gonna come from unassigned fund balance is our recommendation, and then 5,000 from water funds, so there is no tax impact on this one because of the way we're funding it.

Article 13 is for the town facility maintenance and improvement capital reserve fund.

Again, this is for $50,000.

Again, we are recommending unassigned fund balance for this as well, so there is no tax rate impact on this warrant article either.

Article 14 is the land use change tax that we've talked about tonight.

Uh, this would be to change the amount from 100% going into the conservation fund to 50% going into the general fund and 50% going into the conservation fund.

Councillor Wright, and then council Stramalio.

Up to now, I like everything.

I don't like this one, and I'm hoping we can remove this one from our list.

Okay.

Same thing.

I wanna remove this one from the list also.

Do we have a reason?

Do you have a reason why?

Did is there a rationale?

That you have, especially Miss Is it Ruth?

I think Isaac's Isaac's Miss Isaac.

Her pitch really hit me.

Um all of the arguments that we've been hearing all night are hitting me.

Okay.

Keith.

To reinate what they said.

The concept of bridge community buys land now.

It takes a while to get the money back in to buy land.

If we're taking half of that out, it's gonna take even longer to get that fund build back up.

And like she just said um we're gonna have to start asking taxpayers to start helping us to keep up with the town forest and other stuff.

And I don't think the taxpayers should have to fund that when we have our own, the commission has their own way of doing that without taxpayer money.

So a couple things.

I don't know how much money's in this fund.

Is it six million dollars that's sitting in this fund?

It's not six million.

Oh, it's not it's one, yeah.

I'm gonna say one point.

One point I like how you think about interest.

Okay, so one point nine.

But if we're talking about 50, you know, put a split, it would be now forward.

It wouldn't go back and take money out of that account.

That is that is correct.

So I had our GIS manager kind of go through and look at the properties that are left just to kind of get an idea of how much we're actually talking about.

There's essentially essentially 600 1600 acres still under current use at this time.

Um of that um about 475 are owned by the town for conservation purposes.

If we look at the lots that are available looking at setbacks, things like that, there's essentially 772 buildable acres, which translates to roughly 566 house lots.

So if we're looking at the land value of a property selling for between 200,000 to 275,000, um we're roughly looking at about a little over 11 million dollars worth of money that's left in current use.

That could that could, if the property became available and was sold, that's how much we'd be looking at.

So you're looking at that 11 million dollars, and that would be with the the split if it was a 5050.

Again, some of these properties never be may come for sale, some may, but that's kind of where we're sitting right now in our current makeup.

Councilor Hatch.

Okay, during the presentation uh and especially during the when the people came up to speak, I should say I I wrote down some questions.

And my first question was is one of properties and and current use.

And this really hit home a little bit when we were getting the abatement class because when a piece of properties in current use, they're getting a tax break.

That means they cover that tax break.

Somebody else is paying more money on their taxes to cover that tax break, correct?

All right.

So when a land piece of property comes out of current use, my thinking is originally you should say that why shouldn't the taxpayers get some type of tax relief for that piece of property coming out of current use.

They do.

They do because it's a ten percent figure based upon the purchase price of the lot.

For example, where Mr.

Betancourt bought his property up off of Dustin Road when they went in and bought the property, all those lots, every single lot based on the purchase price of that law paid a 10% premium.

But did that go to the general fund or that go to them?

No.

That comes to the that goes to the town.

That goes to them.

Well, the 10%, I'm sorry, yes.

The 10% goes to them.

Goes to them, not to the town.

Right.

So it doesn't really go to the taxpayer tax relief.

It goes to the conservation commission.

Let me go.

Just hang with me.

You win in here.

Okay, okay, okay.

Okay.

So I'm sitting here thinking that well, what's the benefit of them or not doing the split?

So to me, the benefit of not doing the split is one, we do get property that everybody in town can use.

They can walk through it, they can bike through it, they can hike through it, whatever.

That's true.

Is that true?

I don't know.

Every piece of property.

The wetlands, you certainly can't.

We don't.

Okay.

Well, that's my impression anyway.

So then now this fund, the conservation commission, to me, becomes self-funded by this.

And they're not going to ask the taxpayers for any money.

So I looked at the list that Joe provided, and it did state on there that this money would be available if they were all sold at once.

However, which never happens.

The money slowly trickles in.

And usually, but if you know it's usually sold off by a third or fourth generation that doesn't want to deal with it, and they they just want the cash out.

So you know the money is just slowly trickling in.

And I think what we end up really talking about is realistically, we look at a six million dollar bunch of land, but it's not going to be six million dollars as it comes in, and it's going to be ten thousand here, five thousand here, or however they split it, whatever that ten percent number is and whatever the lot size is.

So to me, it's not worth taking a cut out of that if this is going to remain self-funded for a great number of years.

I think they should just at this point just keep it all.

We do have the available availability to request their information, how much money you got, whatever you spent it on.

They're very forthcoming over the years answering those questions.

It's not like they're hiding anything, and they maintain the town forest and those other pieces of property without asking us for a dime.

So I I think it's I think it's wrong if we go ahead and split this.

Council With Row.

Um I have two quick, I think they should be quick questions and a and a comment.

So they also come off the tax rates, right?

I mean the tax the taxable property, so we're no longer getting that taxable property, so the town actually loses money.

I got it.

Um they want to buy property.

I don't know if you can answer, is it at their own discretion?

Is there any process they need to go through, voters, town council, anything, or is it just 100% their discretion?

They have the ability, they go they actually do non-publics and negotiate and and go that route.

Okay, and what was the last thing bought?

You do, yeah.

Um we have you want to come?

Yeah, yeah, please Georgia.

Ever identifying.

The last parcel we had purchased, I think we had to come to you when it was in the town forest was due.

The easement uh that was about a year and a half ago, I would believe.

Okay, and then whenever we do purchase land, we have to come uh to you guys before the funds are released.

So thank you.

That answers that.

Yes, thank you.

That was all council Bettencourt.

So I had a procedural question first and then a substantive one.

So counselor Wright had mentioned that she wanted to take this one off.

From a procedural standpoint, are we able to take an article off?

Okay, yes, I just didn't know if we were able to do that tonight or if we were merely at the point where we were providing a recommendation, but that these were go forward to deliver such a you're kind of doing both.

You're you're saying yes, we want to put it on it, and by you voting or five of you voting, let's say yes, we want to put it on it, that's with recommendation at that point.

So there wouldn't be without recommendation because it just wouldn't be.

All right, fair enough.

Correct.

So my substantive question is I hear about this list of potential properties that could be bought, appreciating the fact that that list is never gonna be static because properties can come on the market at any time.

So of what is the current list, what is eligible for commercial versus residential development on that list?

Joe, broadly speaking.

Probably not much.

Not much at all.

Not much in terms of commercial, commercial correct.

So we're talking about is a lot of potential residential development.

Yes, yes.

And that I think councillor Hatch has made a lot of good points that I do find uh quite persuasive, but I'll say as well that in terms of residential, this town has done more than its part to address the housing troubles that are in New Hampshire.

Now I'm not saying that we need a residential development freeze by no means am I suggesting that.

But I do think that we need to be more mindful about balancing residential development versus maintaining our current environment and the assets that we have in our environment here.

You want to be a community known with a lot of uh diversity of opportunities to enjoy the town and not just a concrete jungle.

Uh and so I don't know.

I I'm having a hard time seeing why we need the change at this time.

I mean, obviously I don't want to see us in competition with the conservation district because we all know my thing is we need recreation property.

We need property for the kids in this community to recreate.

Um there's nowhere near enough.

And you know, I mean, obviously I would never want to be at odds trying to get property and and bidding against the conservation district because some of this property, because I I've looked at that chart, some of this property could easily be great property for recreation for children.

Council screening.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm gonna throw a question out to my friends that are on the conservation commission and it's not procedurally accurate for you to speak up or or say an answer.

But would the conservation commission be willing to work with the town council to identify the lands that you guys already own to turn into more active recreation that the town could benefit from.

I think that's the crux of this.

It is really the question is finding more recreation space.

Julian, um, in her uh creating that position, we have definitely been looking at more parcels that we can use for recreation.

Um some of them that have easements don't allow us to do certain things.

Um, but there's a lot more that we can do in the town forest.

Um over in Valentine, there's a lot more that we can do.

Um Hawkins Farm, we're trying to work on doing a new uh walkway through there.

Um so if you're talking about building like a jungle gym or pickleball courts, I'm not sure how that's allowed on conservation land, but doing more recreation that's walking or bird sighting platform.

I'm talking about football fields, which we're talking about soccer fields.

Yeah, I and I've mentioned this to Joe before.

Um over or Mr.

Devine's um right over here, the Lord family conservation up on Briar Wood.

There is a uh couple acre parcel that's upland that I've mentioned, I think to a few people that we could convert over to baseball fields and whatnot.

Just nobody's picked me up on the opportunity.

So that's been a good thing.

Yeah, I'll pick you up on that too.

I don't know who needs to look into that further.

Absolutely.

That's up there right across from the school and everything.

I figured that'd be a good lot.

Uh yes.

Just because we're always looking.

This is one of the conversations we've had for now a couple of years now.

Because you know, after the whole debacle with the Salem Rams being pushed out to Pellham, um, which didn't really sit well with me as a member of this community.

Um, you know, obviously we want to do something about it, and we really want to push towards that because these kids have to have places to be able to to to do their thing.

And there's just I mean that what the fields we have are wonderful, but we need more.

Yep.

No, I agree.

Uh that's uh the Briar Wood conservation area, so it's right across on Veterans Memorial.

There's even a spot when we were looking at before where we can carve out a parking area over off of Veterans Memorial.

So that's an option to you guys and you want to pursue that further.

I'd be that's I think a lot of us would be.

Well, that's great.

That's that's a good answer that you want to work with us.

We appreciate that.

Very good.

Is there any other any other questions?

I'm good.

Thank you, Georgia.

Thank you for letting us speak tonight.

Okay.

You can make whatever motion you'd like.

Thank you.

Um I make a motion that Article 14 be removed from the list from that.

Second.

I have a motion and a second by Councillor Hatch.

Council Sweeney.

I just want a moment to just speak my mind.

Sure.

So I I came to the meeting tonight.

I was gonna support it.

And it wasn't Georgia, I wasn't missing your call.

I was busy with Mave.

It's something totally different.

Okay.

Better return that call, Joe.

I it's about nice to get money but differently.

I love it.

That sounds great.

Let's build more parks too.

To me, it's all taxpayer dollars.

Right.

Right.

Like and and I I get like this is you know, land use tax going to conservation commission that they can then go use to to buy up more land.

You know, I I I I'm not in agreement with my buddy here.

Like I I'm not of the opinion that we should stop development or we should buy up land in the effort to stop development, because I think there's second and third order effects to that that we're not gonna get into tonight because this is gonna get removed from the budget.

But I I think it's you know, as somebody that I thought I knew what our availability or our powers were as a town council, I had no idea that we could do this until Joe brought it forward.

I'm not throwing it back on Joe, but I think it's uh it's not something that's gonna happen tonight because I can read the room.

Uh I'm not gonna be campaigning for it or pushing for it.

But I do think it's as more conservation land goes up and as the value goes up, it's gonna be significant amount of dollars.

I do love how great the conservation commission is about using the interest to maintain itself.

So it's like you have this great nest egg that you can use to get your monthly maintenance to take care of all the conservation land.

That's the perfect model, because you don't have to come to the taxpayers for it.

So for for that reason, I don't want you buying up more land because you're gonna eat into that nested that will eventually run out to zero, and then you're gonna have to look to other places for the the maintenance funds, right?

So I would if I had my druders I'd say freeze the 1.9 and just live off the interest and use that as your operating um before you go and you buy up more land.

I just think it's interesting that we could do this.

We're not going to do it, uh, but I think it is interesting that we could do it.

I think the the voters, uh we heard from conservation folks, but we didn't hear from anyone else besides that's on the conservation commission.

Caitlin, Caitlin.

No, I I I totally get it.

I totally get.

I was I was 11 years old in 2004.

So I don't I didn't vote for that.

Um but uh yeah, I know I just you know not anytime soon, but I think it's an important conversation to keep have to make sure that conservation efforts have the funds that they need in the town to maintain while also balancing the recreation needs of the community.

Right too, which I I you know it was just 50% to the general fund, you know, a one-time expenditure comes into the town, it would be something that we could use towards recreation or towards any other way to relieve property taxes, which I think is just always the goal whenever we're trying to do something is to send some relief back to folks.

But that's my two cents.

I'll support council right's motion to withdraw it.

And wave the white flag, even though it's whatever.

I'm with you, Joe.

Okay.

Okay, last word.

Yes, last word if I might.

So Madam Chair, I think you brought up a very important point that threw a little bit of a curveball for me, not such that I'd change my position on this, but you know, when we're talking about recreation, I think hopefully, as a result of this conversation, the conservation commission has heard what a priority that is for us and the reasons why.

And I would say as well, as we think about this more in depth and more comprehensively.

I think it was last year we were talking about the refurbishment or the building of the new tennis courts over by the Mary Queen of Peace slash Michelle Park complex.

Yep.

And I had made a comment, you know, is the school district contributing any money to that project because the tennis program uses those courts.

And some people thought I was trying to be petty, but it really wasn't.

What I was trying to do is start some sort of a conversation about whether or not we can contribute to the maintenance of some of the school district fields, and vice versa arrangement where they use some of our resources so that we could truly bring all of those ball fields at the elementary schools and at the Woodbury and the high school online in a significant way.

And I and I think a lot of it at this point involves potentially a contribution to the maintenance of those fields.

And I think that's probably part of not not the whole solution, but part of the solution as we think about this recreation space issue uh as we go forward.

Thank you.

Okay, so we have a motion on the floor to eliminate uh Article 14th.

All those in favor.

That's unanimous.

Thank you very much.

Okay, moving right along.

Uh so Article 15 is going to be um to transfer funds from the anniversary, the 271st 275th anniversary into the anniversary celebration trust fund uh for 28,753.

There is no tax impact on this warrant article.

Uh next is it's a two-part question.

It's Article 16 and 17.

The first part of it is a municipal transportation improvement fund.

Uh, this is to establish a trust fund uh that funds going towards transportation can be deposited into there is no tax impact for this.

Again, this is just to establish the fund.

Okay.

So this ties into 17.

So let's go right to 17, please, because that's a an increased tax to people.

Yep, so our Article 17 is a five dollar fee for when you register your motor vehicle that would go into that transportation fund that is part of Article 16.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Devine.

So I'm I am absolutely opposed to this.

I mean, uh obviously we all know we we had the town clerk here last meeting talking about all the increased charges and fees that people are gonna be paying to register the vehicles on the state side, what have you, even our fees of what they get they get for their fee.

For me, I mean, I know you know, people say five dollars is no big deal, it's five dollars.

I don't want to be funding in addition to what we already have in the budget, by the way, for local transportation system.

So now everybody has to pay in addition to that, which I'm already paying on my taxes another five dollar fee.

I I I just I don't I don't I don't support it.

Councilor Betancourt.

For the reasons you've articulated and some that I'll share at this time, I would move that Article 17 be removed from the ballot.

I have a motion and a second.

Any other discussions?

Councillor Hatch.

For what it's worth.

Um with Article 16, I think it's written too broad.

I think Article 17 here, if it's used correctly, we wouldn't be having card in the operating budget.

We could use this money to pay for cart.

We could use this money to pay for sidewalks or you know, anything but bypass if you ask me, but you don't like bugs.

No, I the rail trail people will be in here getting mostly so to me I'm looking at the the big picture of cart, because I know cart is $50,000 this year.

It was $50,000 last year, but we all know next year, the year after, and shortly it's gonna be $150,000.

So I I'm torn here.

So if 16 is written a little better, you know, to with my school, I'd definitely be for this, but Councillor Withrell.

Sorry.

Um first of all, I think we should be negotiating cot way better than we do.

Yeah.

Um maybe you can work on that a little bit there.

Um I don't like the idea of implementing anything new because right now it's five dollars, and I'm like, fine, okay, but who's to say it's not going to be 150 in two years?

And I don't like to impose if we could limit it if it can be maxed out, I'm on board.

Other than that, I can't do it.

So this is established by state RSA.

So unless the state legislation changes the fee amount, it's it's it's at five dollars.

But they could, right?

They could.

They could.

And then we would have to go back and amend it the same way we're doing it right now.

Can it be less than five?

It can be.

Council Palatia.

Thank you, Madam Cair.

I second this uh uh motion due to the fact that uh to me this is just another way to dig deeper into people's pockets.

Um seem like a lot of money, but it's two cups of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.

So you'll have a coffee argument.

We have no idea.

Or a half a cup of stuff.

Yeah.

So so that's what I thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

I think the Council Betancourt.

Thank you.

Yeah, the coffee arguments rough.

I'm about two kegs of coffee in on those arguments at this point.

Exactly.

Um I would mention in addition to what the the chair has said, which I thought was well put, the timing of this couldn't be worse.

The the state is increasing its side of the fee, so people are going to be seeing that.

There's a little bit of I think a misperception, because as I think we all know at this point, the state is doing away with the annual inspection requirement.

And so unless you're uh auto-body shopper auto repair guy, everybody's a little bit happy about that, save a little extra money.

But that what they don't fully appreciate is that they're not gonna get the full benefit of no longer having that as a cost obligation because this the state is increasing its fee.

Yep.

And so I think to come along at this time, I mean, I'm I'm against taxes as much as the next person, and then some.

Uh but I think, you know, in principle I'd be against this, but I think especially at this time, it makes it uh a bad proposal to go forward.

Thank you.

So I'm just I I'd like to comment about CART because I understand it's in the budget, which we have the ability to say zero.

We have that ability.

And I think this year we're pretty close to doing some of that with some of these extras.

And and during the presentation during the budget with regards to that entity, to find out the little bit of money that people have to pay.

I mean, they're driving people to work to their work.

They're paying only a couple of dollars.

You know, my thing is for me when we're talking about that entity, the buy-in should be more so the people who are using it versus the taxpayers in this community who are gonna subsidize, right?

I mean, I don't want to, you know, hey, I you know, I I pay my taxes, I do what I do, I you know, and and and but I sit here and I say, what do I want to subsidize when I look at the what we call at the county, non county specials, right?

Stuff that doesn't necessarily pertain to the to the town itself in the in the general budget, but is outside entities, right?

And I think we were we took a real hard look this year, and I think we'll take probably a harder look next year.

And we should.

We should, because we really need to know what's being spent and how it's being spent, right?

We gave that message to human services because we want to start really following what is being spent in these entities, right?

But for me, I mean, I just I can't support this.

I I just you know, it it you know sixteen is very broad, what it's gonna be used for, and I you know I understand Transportation Improvement Fund.

I mean, I mean this is like another road program.

You know, another another fund that we can't access monies that are gonna be sitting there and I just um I I I I just I don't support it.

Counselor Bryant.

Just really quick.

If we're taking off 17, you gotta take up 16?

Because you gotta fund it.

It wasn't me mentioned in a motion, so I just if we had this, we could have had money in the past.

We would have had money for Irma Road or something like that.

Um it could be used to help sub supplement the road program.

If they say we really need another thousand dollars to not go over budget on the road program, we would have it.

I like it.

I'm not sure five dollars is good.

And Joe just said we can reduce the five dollars.

We can put it down to one dollar or two or three.

Um but I I don't think that this fund, the purpose of this fund is to supplement the road program.

No, it is not.

It is not okay.

It is a total different animal.

It would it would be most likely use a conjunction.

Obviously, the town council would have the the duty to expend, it would not be we'd have to come to you to go out of that reserve fund.

Um I think a lot of it would be used to work with impact fees, things like that to help offset when we have those matches is where a lot of it would be coming into play.

So Article 16, can that be it on and move forward without being funded?

It can be.

Okay.

That's why I didn't blend the questions.

Right, right.

So we have a motion in a second.

Jeff, do you have a question?

Yeah, what would be the purpose of keeping Article 16 if we're not gonna pass 17?

You might as well get rid of them both.

I mean, I can read the room.

And bring it up when you need it.

Exactly.

Bring it up when you need it.

Yeah, I mean, the the only reason you would keep it there is if you wanted to explore this in future years.

Okay.

Then you then you would have the ability to not have to put both both questions on the warrant.

You'd only be putting one question, and it would be the actual how much are you raising?

I'm happy to amend my motion to remove both Article 17 and 16 at this time.

That's what I would do.

And who's a second for that?

Second.

Oh, I'll remember my motion to add to the both together.

Thank you.

So I have a motion and a second to eliminate articles 16 and 17 from the warrant.

Any further questions counselor just sweeney?

You know, educational purposes.

If it were to come back in a year or two years, is it the sort of thing where we want to see a dollar for dollar replacement?

Like a dollar reduced in budget spending replaced by the dollars that are generated by this fee.

Is that how the count because I you know I don't know.

I also read the room.

But I don't know about that.

Yeah.

Sure.

I I'm thinking of like, you know, what if it comes back down the line?

Better mechanics on it to make it so that it's reducing taxpayer funded activities that are already in the budget.

So that we're, you know, taking a little relief off the taxpayers who most register their cars, but there are a lot of people in the community that aren't direct taxpayers that also register their cars.

So it kind of captures a little bit of that skin in the game.

But I think it does I I think I think it goes back to the broadness of that article Article 16 because I mean a lot of a lot of those, some of those things I think that you can get grant money and things like that for.

A lot of those things too are like 20, 80 federal grant provides.

Correct.

Right.

Right.

So for a little bit, a little bit, 20 percent on the town side, you get a tw 80 percent funded from the federal.

But but remember, depending upon that, you got recreation impact fees that you can pull from.

Yep.

Right?

I mean, because we're talking that to me is a lot of that is recreation stuff.

And so you would be able to pull recreation fees if it was an 80-20 match, and hopefully there's there's there's money in there, and there usually is.

Um, but I mean I'm just throwing it out there.

Yeah.

Just throwing it out there.

Anyway, um, I'm gonna move on the question.

All those in favor of removing.

I have eight yeses and one is there no from uh council right.

So I'm gonna remove both of those.

I wanted to amend it, but we're gonna remove them.

So just that wraps up the warrant articles then.

We'll be removing 14, 16, and 17 from the selections.

Um that's what will be published, and then we will have a public hearing on January 14th at 2026 for Article 7, which is the fire engine.

Okay, will they be renumbered?

They will be, we'll have to renumber them, yes.

Um can we get votes on the other ones just saying with recommendations so that we can push those forward?

Sure.

So give me give me the numbers, please.

Sure.

Uh so Article 8.

We've already done, which was the operating budget.

Article um nine was the road program, which you've already done to recommend.

So Article 10 is going to be the Salem Police of the SPA collective bargaining agreement for the police.

Article 11 will be SPA collective bargaining.

Article 12 is gonna be OPEB.

Yeah, Article 13 is for the town facility maintenance and improvement capital reserve fund.

We are removing 14.

So the new 14 will be the anniversary celebration trust, and that's it.

What's that?

That's the motion.

Oh, you want me to do this now, madam chair.

At this time, I move the following articles to the 2026 annual town warrant ballot with recommendation articles number 10, 11, 12, and 13 and 14.

Second.

I have a motion by Council Bryan, second by counselor with row.

Any discussion seeing none, all those in favor?

Unanimous.

Wonderful.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Mr.

Devine.

Uh, to wrap things up tonight, we have the town manager report.

Uh so just so people are aware, we do have some closures, operation hours changing, things like that.

So on Wednesday the 17th, town hall is closed 11 45 to 2 o'clock.

Uh that is for a town um how Christmas party.

Uh, the transfer station typically has extended hours on Wednesdays.

We've moved those to the Tuesdays for the 23rd and the 30th due to Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

So we're still trying to give them the extended hours, just doing them on a separate day instead.

So Tuesday we have 7 a.m.

to 6 45 on the 23rd.

The town hall senior center will close at noon on the 24th, and the transfer station will close at 2 45 on Christmas Eve.

Uh town uh facilities are all closed on the 25th, with the exception of emergency personnel.

Uh 26th is normal business hours.

Uh the 30th again, transfer station is gonna be open from 7 a.m.

to 645.

Uh town hall and senior center will be closed at noon on New Year's Eve.

Uh transfer station at 245.

Uh January 1st, town facilities are closed, and then on January 2nd, we are back to normal operations.

Council Hatch.

Just a question.

The extension of the the movement of the long day for the transfer station.

Wouldn't that be better done on the 26th?

Oh, yeah.

I was just gonna say this.

Oh, yeah.

Versus before.

I got three kids, Joe.

That crap's gotta go somewhere.

I mean, to me, I sure I was gonna say that.

I can I can run it by municipal services with the hours that they they provided, but I can definitely talk to them and see if they want to amend that to the 26th and to the second.

You may find you have employees who have other commitments and don't want to be on a Friday night, they'll 6 45.

So if we'll we'll talk to them and nominate it.

I can't promise anything, but we can we can definitely try to see what we can do.

Just a thought down there on time like there was exactly get there and wait like all of us get out a little earlier.

Yeah, get up a little earlier, Jeff.

Mr.

Devine.

All right, so this is a big one.

Uh Bridge Street Bridge Road Closure.

So this is gonna be happening on Monday, January 12th.

It's gonna be closed for approximately 10 months as we do the construction.

So finally, we will be putting portable message board signs out in the next week or so.

We'll be hitting social media doing press releases, things like that to make the public is a public is aware.

Obviously, emergency personnel already know about it.

Um, but that will be a hard closure.

There will be no going over Bridge Street Bridge after January 12th.

So we're just trying to get the message out there now so people are aware.

Was there any discussion on uh opening up the road at the water tower up the top of the hill for uh to bypass that?

No, I brought that up like last year, and uh nothing happened.

If that road was opened up at the top of the hill, water tower, then they could go up the hill and back down the hill and come out uh Hampshire Road for people needing to go uh to not Salem or we can we I I can have staff look at that, that's not a problem.

Yeah in January, I'm gonna go off.

Well, you can cut through the the development on right off the fluff road.

You can too also that'll that'll cut you right across.

I mean, I'm sure they're not gonna be happy I said that, but I mean that's that's an awesome.

I mean the people the people who travel this are gonna get used to it very quickly.

It's gonna be the people who aren't aware of it.

All right.

But we want to get it out there that it is happening.

We are starting construction, it'll be a 10 month.

Oh, you're talking about the road over to Methulan.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Oh, okay.

That's a good idea.

So it drops you right into Hampshire.

That's a good idea.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm thinking about the tower on this road.

That'd be sorry.

So we have taken delivery of a new fire engine.

We we are doing a push-in ceremony.

Uh the council is invited, the public is invited.

It's gonna be December 22nd.

So this is an old fire tradition where they used to take the horse drawn carriages and the apparatus and push them into the stalls.

We're not so we are going we will not be actually.

But we are having a push in ceremony, so it's December 22nd uh from 2 30 to 3 30.

And because uh this is going to be housed to station three, we're gonna be doing it at Lawrence Road as opposed to Central.

So everyone is aware it's gonna be on Lawrence Road at Station.

Oh, okay.

Not at Central Fire.

Okay.

Okay.

So we had a Civics Academy that we one day thing that was well attended.

We were happy with that.

Uh so we are rolling out a local government academy again.

So feel free to register.

It's on our website, it's on Facebook.

Um registration is gonna be by January 5th, it's gonna close.

We're doing six Thursdays in February and March.

Uh, you will go around from each town department, every building, get tours, learn about how each department runs.

Uh, we would encourage the public to come out.

Um we hope to wrap it up right before town meeting.

So it's a good opportunity just to hear about what's happening.

So feel feel free to register if people are interested.

Uh we are limited to roughly 25 people just due to some of the size constraints we have with the nightly meeting room, and specifically with the temporary PD space, just because there's not a lot of room in there.

I want to thank uh Ford Flower Company again for donating wreaths for our town buildings, they look great.

Um, if you look we actually lit town hall up this year, it's a little something different to put some lights on it just to see a little more festive.

Nice jump.

Um, Southern New Hampshire Tour Lights is back.

If you go on our website and if you go on our Facebook page, there's two different Salem routes participating now.

So there's a lot of houses that you can go out and take a look at.

So you can take a QR code, it gives you the map, it takes you house by house.

You can go kind of look at the houses that are registered to show off the nice scripts lights.

Uh so there's a local concerns meeting coming up on December 17th.

Uh, this is for the CMAC grant.

This is going to be for phase four and phase five of the rail trail.

This is the area specifically in front of Tuscan Village.

So we are moving forward with engineering and the CMAC grant process for this.

So this is a public hearing to come out and hear about it and what we're gonna be doing.

Uh the economic development committee is also doing a commuter consensus survey.

Uh, this is going to be closed on December 20th.

Uh it's on our website again.

Feel free to go on and register and give us your input on how you use transportation in Salem.

We've added a new portion to MapGEO.

You can actually look at building permits now in real time.

Um, we used to actually every week publish who pull building permits, and it was very a lot of work that went into it by our staff.

Um since we're already putting it into the system, we decided to make it live so people can just go on.

You can click on a part property, see view permits, and you can see any permits that that property is pilled.

So for people who are looking to maybe buy a house or if they're looking to do research, that's all available online now for them to go and take a look at it.

Um we are in the process of starting the reevaluation.

So people may see vehicles that they aren't familiar with, people walking around the neighborhoods.

They will have um vision on their cars, is what the name of the company that's doing it that we partner with.

Um they will have an official ID, they are registered with the police.

If you have questions, you can call the assessing department or call the police department.

Don't call 911, please call the non-emergency line.

Um, but they will be able to verify where they're working and if they are in your neighborhood that day.

And then uh under that, we're talking about current use.

Um the DRA, because we're doing a reval has to audit all of our current use parcels.

So we are gonna be reaching out and sending letters to every parcel that's currently under current use for them to update their maps uh so that we can get all that ready for the DRA for them to be coming through.

So if you have a property that's under current use, anticipate a letter coming out by the end of this year or the first part of next year.

And that's what I have for tonight.

Any questions?

Oh, counselor Bryant.

Uh just a quick update.

Uh, we had a uh police building meeting.

We are still under budget.

Nice.

The uh roof of the steel showed up on time, so steel was on time.

We have experienced no product delays of any kind due to tariffs or whatever.

Uh the big tent on the left is the Sally Port entrance where the jail will be eventually, and uh the um the gun ranges is uh up and you know, operational, not operational, but you know, the walls are up.

We're getting rid of the roof, so roofing will be done middle of January, so it'll start to look really nice and tight and clean.

There'll be a sample of the material that we picked that will be under a tent outside if anybody wants to go take a look at it.

Um and like I said, we're uh we're under budget, so that should be ready for next Monday.

Great news, great news.

Council hatch.

Okay, madam Chad, I got three items, so please bear with me.

Uh the first item.

Uh the first time veterans tax credit for the disabled veterans.

Can you get us the true number on that?

Because I know when I looked it up originally, it did say max uh there's just find out what the max number is for sure.

There's there's two different credits that they're they're discussing right now.

The one that Salem has adopted is it's just changed to five thousand dollars, and it's just it's a five thousand dollar exemption is the max.

All right, so that's one.

Um the other thing I read this week that uh Massachusetts governor is given the uh their transportation authority a ten million dollar grant, and so how does that affect us?

Well, apparently the Merrimack Valley Transit Authority is going to expand their bus service into Salem, New Hampshire.

Now it's gonna it's a it's a test right now.

It's gonna be a test year.

They already do this from Hayverle Plast out.

They used to do it, yeah.

And so I part of the reason why they want to do this is because when Mass General moved into Tuscan Village, a lot of Massachusetts people that were going to the doctors in Haverill, those doctors now relocated to Salem, New Hampshire.

So that's one of the main reasons.

Nice.

So we know right away that one of those stops is going to be customers.

Sure.

And from there, believe it or not, they can get on that little cart bus for the Manchester Authority and go to Manchester if they'd like.

Um the other thing, how so how does this affect us?

I'd like to get Clayton, EDAC committee involved and find out what number of stops they're gonna do, were they planning on what other locations?

So we've already started tabulating that.

We were gonna actually bring it to the next meeting.

Okay, so and I you know, because I know I'd like to see you know, a couple of stops.

I know one right over the state line where I see a lot of people from walking down the sidewalk to Massachusetts.

I need to buy cigarettes and go to all these or whatever, you know.

But in Massachusetts State Liquor Plaza, it would be good.

Target would be good, other than just the Tuscan village.

I think I think it could be great economic development for us.

And the bonus for us, what's in it for Salem?

If you want to take the bus to the T station, this is the most direct route to go to the T if you want to leave the car in Lawrence.

Right.

So there is some benefit to us also.

So if we could get that on the agenda, get Clayton working on that, that'd be great.

And the last one, hold on to your hat, sit on your hands.

Oh boy, okay.

So motion to limit debate.

No, no.

The I think now that some of the emotions have settled down, and especially by today, uh the vote that we took earlier.

So I'd like to make a motion that we reconsider the vote that we took for the warrant, the warrant article to the charter change to dissolve the budget committee.

And I just I would like to have another discussion on that.

So I'm I'm asking for a motion to reconsider.

So I will second it for discussion purposes.

So, what's your discussion?

Okay.

Now that my emotions have settled down, at least a little bit.

I've stayed off Facebook, stopped talking to those guys.

It's always helpful.

And I I think you know you know, in my profession, I'm in somebody's house every day.

And I mostly work, I do mostly work my in Salem.

And over the course of the last two weeks, I've had a lot of customers that just say no.

Now's not the time.

They are we depend on them for the transparency, we depend on them to look at the budget.

I I heard it all.

And I just don't think the votes are there.

I don't think now's the time.

I and let's face it, the optics are bad.

And it's bad for both them and us.

And I I don't think it does us any good to dissolve the entire committee.

And when really it's one or two people that's really causing all the issues.

And the way they approach you know approached us and approached their job and did and did what they did and said what they said.

So I I just don't think that again the act is of this part, it's gonna come out in me here, and I'm just gonna say, you know, nobody wants to get rid of that budget committee more than me.

I've been trying to do it for 20 years.

And I I just don't think that now's the time.

The votes ain't there.

It's just it it again it may drive out the no voters and just no voters on everything.

So I you know, just the fear that I have, just throwing it out there.

Council Withrow.

So I'm gonna disagree with you, surprising lately.

Um I because I think there's a better way to do it.

I think if we did, I think I think Joe is the one that that had come up with the idea of a finance committee that will work more productively with the town manager with the finance, with the different departments earlier in the process, so you don't get knee-jerk reactions from people who honest to God, I swear, and I hate saying this, some of them don't understand what they're doing, they don't understand the process and they don't understand where the money was coming from and grants money and this and that.

There's a better way to do it.

And I think we can come up with the I I think we need to commit to it, which I'd be willing to do, but if we commit to a finance committee that starts working earlier in the process with the departments, I think it's better for the town.

It'll be benefit transparency because they'll be there the whole time, they can be there at the end, and everybody knows more about the whole process.

Councilor Betancourt.

Thank you.

I really appreciate the sentiments that Jeff has expressed, and I tried at the outset when we debated this a few weeks ago to encourage everybody to separate a little bit of the heat of the moment frustration that we were having with some members of the budget committee from the overall question as to whether or not the budget committee should still exist.

Um you know social media is always dangerous, of course, but the only there was a comment, and I've obviously engaged on this to make my argument as to why it should be preserved.

But one of the only comments that really bothered me, and I will say for social media, I thought the debate overall was very positive, very substantive.

There were no cheap shots or anything like that.

So that was a pleasant surprise, and I appreciated that.

But the only comment that really I will say kind of hurt me a little bit was the idea that uh by sticking up for the preservation of the budget committee that I was condoning how the this particular budget committee went about doing what they did.

I think I've taken those guys out to the woodshed a couple of times as recently as tonight, and and kind of explained why I didn't agree with the approach that they took.

So I think Jeff highlighting the fact that now that we've been removed from some of that heat of the moment might bring things into uh a different light, if you will.

But I would say, in I think Joe had brought up the concept, Lisa, that you just highlighted, and I think that if we were talking about this in the context of a repeal and replace, where you had something on paper substantive that people could look at, people could understand how one is going to transition out as the other transitions in.

I think that would be a lot more helpful so that people can understand that they're not giving up the accountability and the the transparency, that extra set of eyes that can go through everything.

Uh, it would just come in a different and perhaps better way.

I think that might put some folks at ease, but as it's kind of presented now to Jeff's point, I've seen nothing but pretty staunch.

I mean, the vast majority of the feedback that I've seen has been pretty passionately and staunchly against getting rid of the budget committee.

And um, you know, I think I had mentioned to a couple of you when we were again getting ready to march in the holiday parade.

My fear exactly is Jeff just articulated that uh there'll be a lot of people who will come out because they're passionate about that particular issue and might just start shooting down a whole bunch of other things on the ballot that we might need.

Now I'm not saying that you know that's automatically going to happen, and I think the fact that we don't have votes on this particular ballot that need three-fifths, two-thirds probably is a good guard against that, but you just never know.

Elections are uh very funny things.

I think we've all experienced them sometimes in multiple ways.

Um so is there a discussion to be had about how we can do this better?

Absolutely.

I'm all for that.

Uh, but just an outright repeal of the budget committee.

I think that would be mistaken to Jeff's point.

I'm just not seeing a lot of support for it.

Council Pelletia.

Thank you.

A lot of people don't realize, too, that maybe they're not aware of it.

That uh my my whole thing is how many hands in the soup do we really need?

This uh this budget actually starts off every year by the Capital Improvement Committee, and the Capital Improvement Committee is the ones that uh look at all the look at the budgets, looks at all the wants and the needs of every department in the town, and with and through the voting process makes a decision on what is needed for example the present 2026, 27, 28, and everything's in category.

That comes back to us to the council.

All we need from there is some kind of uh another advisory uh administrative advisory to guide that budget.

Uh the to me, the budget committee itself, yeah.

Like I think it's just a little uh a little strange that Council Bentoncourt will call them the watchdogs of the of the town, and uh I have a different feeling on that, I won't bring that up, but uh it's more or less it's more or less uh uh uh just another avenue of not experienced enough people in that committee to make a decision to make it stick to make it come back to like to come back to us and say, hey, you need to cut two million dollars off the bottom line, and that's and that and that has to stick now, and we have to find that two million dollars, and Mr.

Devine has to find that two million dollars where the budget committee is no longer just an advisory committee that we consider their their input, and they make it and then the council makes a uh final decision on that.

Uh yeah, so that's what I mean.

The the CIP committee is very, very intense, uh very uh close with the close with every department, and they're the ones that see the the immediate decisions from our department heads, which are the experts in their field, and so there's nothing nothing that's not transparent about this.

There's nothing that's uh behind the scenes or anything.

It's it's right out in the open for everybody to see.

But a lot of people don't see that meeting, they don't you know but they'll see the budget committee because they know about it, but they won't see the CIP committee meetings, and I think that's more important, councilor Wright.

Um opposition to what Mr.

Hatch and Mr.

Betancourt said, my world is a different group of people than yours, and I'm hearing a lot of support to remove the budget committee.

Councillor Hatch.

Okay, just further we have to remember that our system when we go through the budget system.

The system is the department heads hand, they get their budget together, they hand it to the town manager.

Once he gets it, it becomes his budget.

Once he presents it to us and we voted vote on it, it becomes our budget.

Once that budget goes to the town, I mean the budget committee and they vote on it, it's no longer our budget.

It's not it's no longer our baby to protect.

That is their budget at this point in time, and then once you go to deliberate session, that budget belongs to the people.

It's not no longer the budget committees either.

So and I'm gonna tell you the number one comment, and I really didn't want to bring this up because the number one comment I heard from the people that I basically work for, and I'm talking about my customers, not my constituents, is this is just one more step closer to a city that I don't want to be by getting rid of that committee.

And those are the people that are gonna be driven out, those are the people that are gonna vote no.

And I'm telling you, there's a lot more of them than there is a lot more of us.

Council Bryant.

I'm just I've always been fascinated by the fact that the budget committee is an advisory board.

That's number one, and that they get the final decision, and that's what goes to the townspeople.

I've always had a hard time rectifying that in my head.

We're the town council, we're elected, and we're elected to make sure that that budget's legit and it's in favor for the taxpayers, and and we still get the departments to all run the way they're supposed to run, and an advisory committee takes that and just does what they did this year, just two million dollars.

I don't know how you can justify that, but that's just my thought.

Council Bettencourt.

So two final points.

The first um, you know, Paul's argument about the dangers of too many cooks in the kitchen.

That's the metaphor that I use.

It is not an illegitimate one.

That's a it's a fair point.

The problem is is that the decision that we've made as it regards the budget committee also has an impact on how the school district's budget is reviewed.

And I don't know the full you know, square one to square whatever process that they undertake, but I I'm confident in saying it does not have the exposure that some of the other committees do that you have described, Paul, even though people might not be aware of them nor take advantage of the opportunity to review their work or tune in to see those meetings.

And I think that that has a lot of people concerned that what accountability is based in the system for that aspect of the budget and what that ultimately means for taxes.

Again, I think everybody here is frustrated by the blanket two million dollar cut, as I've said before.

That's never the way I approached it when I was on the budget committee with one example, with one exception, excuse me.

And it is an example of the safeguards that are in the system.

So my last full year on the budget committee for whatever reason.

The Board of Selectmen at that time was feeling particularly antagonistic towards the budget committee.

I I don't to this day know exactly why.

And so we would have, by the way, jumped on the opportunity to partake in joint hearings.

Um that was the basis for a lot of our frustration that we were asking the selectman and the town manager at that time to provide us with some specific information so that we could try to make some strategic targeted cuts, and we just couldn't get that information from them.

And so at that point, we had to do a flat back of the budget cut along the lines of what we saw this year.

We didn't want to, but we weren't given much of a choice.

And the Board of Selectmen's reaction to that was to bring forward a number of restoration articles.

So they brought forward articles to replace all of the funding that we had cut one by one.

That was at deliberative session, it ultimately went on to the ballot.

We were able to resolve a number of the conflicts before election day, so that it was all right for people to vote for those restoration articles without having a huge explosion in the tax rate.

But it is an example that if the budget committee really were to get out of control, you still have the backstop of deliberative session and the process of putting on restoration articles.

We chose not to.

We chose to do right by the budget committee.

They wanted a two million dollar cut.

The town manager and his team worked their tails off to make that happen, and ultimately we've approved one of their two approaches here tonight.

But that's not automatic.

We didn't have to make that choice.

We could have made a different strategic decision.

And so there are those safeguards that are built into the system in the event that the budget committee were to really get out of control and turn around and say, well, we're just gonna do a flat ten million dollar back of the budget cut.

Well, at that point, I think we'd be having a very different conversation along the lines of what do we want to do at deliberative session to restore some of those funds.

So I do think that there are checks and balances and safeguards in the current system that um address, I think, some of the concerns that have been raised.

So I'll have the last word.

So obviously I supported this motion when it made it two weeks ago, however long it was.

And yeah, probably because of what ended up happening with the two million dollar cut.

But you bring up a good point because I am concerned about what's going to happen on school side.

And if there is no oversight.

I mean, granted, I don't think there was too much oversight this year, right?

100 million dollar budget, and they cut out a hundred thousand dollars.

I mean, please, you know, I mean, come on.

Um, you know, but that is concerning to me because just that fact.

I think we do a very good job.

And I'm not to say that the school doesn't, but their budget is much larger than ours and has a much bigger impact.

And if they if there's no oversight for them, once we get rid of the budget committee, because the fine if we set up a finance committee here has nothing to do with the schools, nothing at all to do with the schools.

All back in in the meeting.

And and I am concerned about that.

So I'm I am gonna support Jeff's motion.

Just because of really because of that.

So currently the motion is just for the reconsideration.

Yeah.

So then I have to make another motion to resolve or that remove it.

I don't know.

Yeah, whatever that number was.

Right, right.

Okay.

So I'm gonna when it comes up.

I'm gonna uh so we got the motion to reconsider.

All those in favor.

There's four of us.

So Stramalia.

Oh, and Barney.

Wait a minute.

Motion to reconsider.

Just motion to reconsider.

Reconsidering.

To reconsider.

So I have one, two, three, two, two, three.

Just did.

So that the it and against.

So against the motion is Sweeney, Bryant, Withrow, and Pellet.

You just voted twice.

Can't vote twice.

You can't vote twice.

Can you check?

So we want to just reconsider it.

Doesn't mean it takes it off the belt.

It's not reconsider.

No.

I change my vote.

So sorry.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

All those in favor reconsidering.

So I have Stromalia, Bettencourt, Hatch, and Stacey.

All those opposed, I have Sweeney, Bryant, Withrow, Pelleteer, and Wright.

So it fails.

I try.

Thank you.

Oh, that's fine.

So it fails.

Perfect.

Are you all set?

I'm done.

I got one.

On our favorite topic.

At a recent budget committee meeting.

There was talk about the town council presenting a 14% increase.

And it blew me away because that was a brand new number to me.

Can do you have information on that?

And can you elaborate?

So what I can say is the 14%, the there was during a budget committee meeting.

Um mentioned that with the current um budget and warrant articles that the budget could be up 14%.

Um we met with the chair of the budget committee to discuss this to kind of figure out where he was getting those numbers from because um myself and the finance team could not figure out how he was coming up with the 14 percent.

Um he did come in, we had a meeting about it.

Uh what I will say is um his his math was correct in the way he was trying to uh formulate the budget, but it's not how we formulate the budget.

Um when he came up with his 14 percent, essentially what he did was he um we're talking more specifically option one if we're going back to the budget the the sidewalk piece.

Um he removed the revenue piece of that for the budget and left the expenditure still there.

So that brought it up to that 14 percent that we that he was talking about.

Uh when he came in, he actually had two other spreadsheets with him.

Um and they actually were at the 8% to the 4%, which is what we presented tonight.

Um so he was able he was able to calculate it the same way that we did.

That 14% though is not how we would calculate math.

If we we have to take out that we have that revenue that we're removing, we have to remove it, and we have to remove the expense side as well.

We can't just leave one side or the other to make it sure it balances.

Um so by removing both is where we came up with that eight percent because he did not remove the actual expenditure and just remove the revenue, it stayed at 14 percent.

So you're saying he did as he did his addition and subtraction correct.

Is math was correct.

The the way the town has to do a budget by by law.

It's not possible.

Thank you.

Yep.

Wonderful.

Okay.

Okay.

Any oh this would be very quick.

Just to Jeff to speak about where the bus will be stopping.

Um it stops at Aldi as well.

So it does have one other stop in New Hampshire, so it stops at Aldi just over the line and then stops at the Mass General.

Um, and then there's a stop just on the other side of 213 as well.

As it comes up 28.

Thank you.

That's great.

Super.

Uh anything else?

Council Sweeney.

Second.

Oh, well, I want to do my upcoming meetings.

Wait a minute.

Got away from Bob.

I'm not no, I'm not recognizing that motion yet.

I'm sorry.

So I I want to um let the seniors know that I'm gonna be doing a presentation this Thursday morning at the senior center with regards to property fraud and property fraud alerts.

So uh anybody who's interested, please show up.

It's at 9 30 at the senior center.

Upcoming meetings, January 12th, January 14th, and January 26th.

Oh, no problem.

I have a motion and a second.

All those in favor, unanimous.

Happy holidays, everybody.

Happy who in New Year.