Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[0:00] Speaker A (unidentified): It's still learning. Roaring.
[0:04] Speaker B (unidentified): Great! Well, thank you everybody for being here to this lovely science committee, our last in September. So, I guess I'll start with the more difficult thing. We still have not heard from the consultant as to the status of the reconciliation and the piece that they're moving through. One of our previous meetings, they've noted they're through May, which is pretty close to the end. But we've had three pushbacks of the deliverable for seeing the work product after that. I think the latest was a delay until September 30. At that point in time, me and the finance team had some discussions and really felt like this was a pencils down moment with the consultant and that's been about five or six days I still haven't heard back from the re -building this to that 30th deadline so I'm waiting product to date then comes in by the 30th you know adding the reconciliations and right in this process so that's what the request for pencils down was to date City Council in the community at large unacceptable finance director that really the signature effort that the city is designing a lot of its internal resources to start attacking internally for FY26. We need to know where we're at today and I hope to have one. It might not be a better one in terms of it's great, we're done with the reconciliation for 25, but by the next meeting... It
[2:45] Speaker A (unidentified): seems to make sense that September 30th is the end date for the transition, whatever they've been able to do. I think that's a smart move.
[2:56] Speaker B (unidentified): And then on to, we have Tabitha, you had something I'm thinking of the crim on the Hancock County grant for PD camera equipment. I checked, and this was police, I know we recently migrated to a new PD camera equipment both for the body cams and for the cruiser cams. It was two fiscal cycles ago to not wait for grants to come in on that and to proceed forward with that project due to some of the legal liability of not having the cameras is you know we see some security liability police side but also for the citizen side to know what's happens in those interactions so we decided to move forward with the PD camera purchases then even knowing that the Hancock County grant could be coming at some point in time that I believe that's that's now they do have a grant for that 's ongoing I've been told by the PD it's not necessarily settled yet though even though it's available but what Ellsworth PD is looking to do, essentially, is to be able to get to a swap for new product when that grant might be available. So essentially, we'll just be extending the life and creating a little bit, even more room for us on the decision to add the cameras, and then the replacements will come sooner, so essentially we'll have to replace them as soon as. So that's where we're at on that. And then lastly, it's just been great to have Chris here these last month and a half. I've really felt much more confident, not just in our system, we're still got a long ways to go on getting our system confident before I'm confident all the numbers and all those other pieces, but that we're creating a system to attack this problem that will be with the city for a long time. To me this is the final piece of a lot of the business processes of me, Sarah, all of our department heads have been going through department by department by department. We've done some great things in finance, even Counselor Howler and acknowledged in the previous meeting that this is the best the finance in the time that he's been here has ever been. Three folks, they're all been there around a year. We've had this, Chris is my third finance director and less than three years, so we need some stability at the top piece. It's kind of a final portion that we're getting to that level of my favorite types of finance departments when I worked in for the governor of Massachusetts, administration and finance was the scariest secretariat and was the most powerful secretariat. You had to start there with anything, if you didn't have their sign off or blessing on it, you weren't going to get anywhere close to the governor's office with it. The governor actually was a former administration finance secretary, the youngest ever I think in Massachusetts history. To me that's like the best sign of an incredibly fiscally responsible but also effective organization, that finances at the front and center of everything we do in decision making, and a real cultural shift. And I just think about that in a lot of the project management team things we're doing with the workshop. New citizen requests is we got to get a lot better at budgeting how much time is available of staff hours, and then how much funding both the staff time will cost, but also a project, and it's, oh, it's a grant that's going to have match, or what's the time commitment, what's the future financing, that's going to be much more baked into the front end of all of our projects going forward. So I'm really thankful to Chris and the team for making some big progress. Got a lot of ways to go, but I think we're on a good track to a new culture in finance, so thank you, Chris. And that's it for me.
[6:39] Speaker C (unidentified): Alright. Gosh, thank you for that. I think from where I sit that's a little bit of a generous assessment of my start, but I guess I'll take that also. If my greatest aspiration is to be feared and loathed, I guess I get the same thing at work and at home. My kids are alternately upset with me, but if I can spread the discontent around, I guess that's the best that I know. We'll shoot for respect. With respect, yeah. So, you know, we had a kind of a big discussion last time. I've had now two more weeks in the job. I want to just give you a quick update, and I prepared that I'll walk through that really quickly. And again, after the meeting, this will be available to people. I'm not sure we've posted things externally, but I'm, you know, I feel like there's no reason, as long as we caveat them, to say, you know, take them with a grain of salt, and some of the numbers may change a little bit kind of going forward, but directionally I think they're right. But I guess the other thing that I would just say through this, feel free to ask me questions, or if you want to write them down even at the end, you know, I'm happy to add answer kind of any questions on that. I don't need to be right or 100% right on all this stuff or whatever, and I'm happy to debate it and kick it around, but it's, I think it's better for me to at least say, hey, here's what I'm doing, or here's what I observe, or here's what I think, rather than I don't know for whatever reason to reserve all that. So with that, this is kind of building on what I presented last time, and sort of an update of either I find some of these observations, or here's what I've done in the last two weeks. So again, I think you'll remember that, you know, the two big things for me that kind of, I guess, I guess when I show up every single day, the main two things on my mind are these two things, like how do we clean up the financial house? And then at a bigger level, what are we doing financially to pull the financial situation of the city out of the ditch? So those are the two big things, and I think I'm working on both those things. And then in the middle of that, you know, I try to wolf down a quick lunch, but that's really what I'm doing all day every day. On the cleanup, cleaning up the house, if you remember, I had a handful of priorities the way that I saw it. So I said, get a handle on what we have and bank reconciliation. Then there was budgets and reporting. Then there was rigorously prioritizing projects and treating it all like our money. And then communication and collaboration was the last one. So in terms of, Charlie mentioned this, but we're struggling in terms of right now, in terms of the bank reconciliation, just understanding the status from the consultant. With that said, whatever that turns out to be, I'm not going to do nothing and sit around and just hope. So we already have in process, I think I mentioned this last time, but I think we have good talent in the finance department. What they had been working on, from my perspective, we're kind of underutilizing that talent. So I'm trying to free up some critical resources. So there's two pieces to that. One is we have begun to restructure the work, and by that, mostly I mean some of the hands-on data entry, and think about this in terms of accounts payable, invoice, entering invoices into the system so they can hit the warrant, and we can, you know, process those now on an every-other-week cycle. cycle. We had really talented people that can help me with the bank rent, but they're doing the data entry. And that's a problem not only in terms of I don't have the horses to help me fight this thing, but also I think just in terms of the way that we operate the town it takes the visibility and the management kind of control of expenses and so in some ways that sort of removes them one step from the people that are actually managing those departments so getting them back in the hands department I think it's the right thing to do and then it's gonna free up the resources that's that's one thing that We're working on, we have decided to launch that effort with a police department, so we're kind of piloting it with police. They have some very talented people over there that are really kind of on top of the administrative side, let's say, of that operation, and they're very enthusiastic to take it over. So our people, we cleaned it up, we packaged it up, we produced SOP, standard operating procedures, training material essentially, and we are piloting that the police department. Assuming that goes well, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't, that I think we're gonna next step would be we're gonna roll that out to all of public safety, and then after that I think once we do that, then we're in a position I think to roll it out in general. So we'll see, so that's in process right now. The other thing that we've done is we have posted a new position for financial, finance analyst. We are gonna go through an interview process for that. However, we think that we have some, like I mentioned, we have some really good candidates internally, so ideally to be able to do this without adding anything to kind of the cost would be the key. It's like if we can, if we can restructure roles and responsibilities and people, that would be a, that'd be a true win. So that's also going on. Meanwhile, to Charlie's point, we're hoping that we get some response and visibility from the consultant to say hey, we have to start at our own goal line, or can we use any thing that they've been working on, can we actually start at midfield, or what do we have to do? But while we're waiting on that, we're restructuring on our side to get ready to do it. So that's underway right now. And pulling that work back in-house is just every day that I come to work, it's more and more clear that 's really, it's got to happen. In terms of the budget and reporting, and this is for my friend Ray, who asked me every time I see, but the one of the big focuses for us right now is we're doing the work to close the books on FY 26, the actuals, and so in order to do that we have set up, and we're in process, we've already had a handful of them, but we're with the bigger departments, we're setting up meetings where we're actually reviewing what are the numbers, what happened, what are the variances, both good and bad, and making sure That we're able to cover any light item overruns within the department, or where not, then I guess the protocol is we need to come before you to say, hey, if we have to go between departments, here's what the plan is, and then you would have to approve that. But so far, I think we've been okay in terms of this internal reallocation to date. So that's one thing, like the dollars and cents, which is the most important thing. But I would tell you those discussions, and I'm curious if you agree with this, Charlie, but I think they've been invaluable, even apart from that, just in terms of getting smarter about, yeah, you know what? In the past we've been budgeting this way, we've missed either up or down, here's why, and what does that mean in terms of going forward? Is that the right way to be breaking it out? Should we be more conservative in the budget next year? Should we not? Should you even have that expense, or does that actually live someplace else? Just in terms of the knowledge, and almost, I talk a lot internally about developing a stronger financial intuition because once the numbers come out, let's say you know the other year, they are what they are, but if we can be smarter and have stronger intuition about, yeah, you know what, I think that's gonna work out better, or we're gonna be able to bring this in if we manage these three things closely, like, how does it work? I think these meetings are good for that, and I think, I think the other reasons, again, I don't have visibility to my predecessors at all, but I think it's good for me, the more I spend time in working sessions with our people, the department heads, for them to just develop a little bit of trust in me. On one hand, to Charlie's point, maybe I'm the evil empire and scary and whatever, but for them to trust me that I'm not trying to catch people or expose people or embarrass anyone or whatever, I just want to know how it works, and then I want to work together to make this thing work out while I'm wearing the taxpayer hat. This is sort of the idea, so would you say they've been productive? Yeah.
[17:29] Speaker B (unidentified): they've been the ones that I've attended many of them they're extremely productive just in talking about the what how the mechanics and then how we see compliance with charter requirements I mean I know actually when we really locked down last year I'm like you want a line item between let's says it has to I can do that as a city manager transfer the lines as long as you're not gonna go over your budget as a whole here's the form where we created that process I know Chris in some ways like some of the administrative ease I think as you called it of these things as can be cumbersome and the why behind it you know we need to me it's all about getting to kind of a level of fiscal accountability that was kind of broken a while ago in terms of the dysfunction of the system for tracking things like there just wasn't a traffic and the wheel breaks entirely when we switch from units to Cassell there's like a year-long dark period where there's like no prior your actuals at all the system then and we get to some prior actuals a better budgeting but there's I've been saying for a while that revenues and I haven't quite trusted it wasn't until this last budget cycle when we produced a new budget for the future year based on that organization structure when i was able to like look at department by department and their line items and trigger that but to me all that's like that's just really bad system we're expecting the city manager in january when he gets a print a draft print out of the budget for the next year and year-to-date actuals to be the kind of mechanism for, hey, this department's in trouble in public safety or overtime is through the roof, you're not going to make it to the end of the year, that's a problem. So we need that, those types of things need to be surfaced by the departments themselves, by the finance department, by the city manager, or a collaborative approach. But if you don't have good data, if you don't have good mechanisms, it's not clear on like how those things go. It's nobody's fault necessarily, everybody's working within a broken or a dysfunctional system. So how do we get this to be functional for the purpose, which is public trust?
[19:28] Speaker C (unidentified): fiscal accountability one thing that he said though that I want I 'm a little nervous saying this to you guys because you know maybe you'll flinch when I say this but one of the things that I question when I meet with these departments and kind of go through and to Charlie's point like some of the a protocol that we need to follow. Something that I question a little bit. There's a standard of professionalism in terms of financial controls for GAAP accounting and GASB accounting and kind of getting through the audit. There's state statutory things, so we need to be fully in compliance with that. but we have a another set of restrictions let's say imposed by the Charter for the town in a lot of many of them I have no problem with at all they make total sense to me but there are some where I start to question a little bit are we blindly following something that actually doesn't protect the taxpayer at all and actually makes the administration of how we're tracking and reporting and financial control let's say for the town are we part of it are we making it more complicated than needs to be? Well, like as an example, so, and by the way, before I give this example, there are a couple of things where I'm not even sure that the way that we've been doing it and sort of the conventional wisdom for the staff actually is exactly what the charter requires. So there's the charter, and then there's our interpretation of the charter, which in some cases is even more restrictive. So as an example, like in the water and wastewater, water departments, those are user fees, so in some ways that they're not general property tax commitment dollars, as you guys know, right, they operate these businesses, and yet we are requiring them to follow the absolute, the same protocol when we review their year-end actuals to budget, to say, listen, we're gonna go through every single line item, and if you're over on any of those line items, and there's a million line items, they're in red, Literally in red, like our red toner is wearing out. We circle them, and then we say, listen, you need to identify where we're going to move the overage from every one of those line items to some other line item. I have worked with literally hundreds of businesses, and if I would have ever said that to any of the CEOs that I was working with at these businesses, they would have laughed me out of the room and said, well, Chris, what value is that? What are you talking about? So either at a department level or sometimes at the company level, they're like, no, what are you talking about? I'm managing to make sure that all of our expenses are fully covered and absorbed by the revenue of the business, right? Other than that, how much more do you need? Now, it's different, I think, and again, take it with a grain of salt, because you will have much more municipal experience than I do, but I can 100% see that it's different for other departments when you're spending taxpayer commitment dollars because then it's not just, you know, we need to be budget responsible. We do, but that, those dollars, it's an issue of accountability and we keep using, you know, the counsel at Howland keeps saying, oh, you keep talking about transparency, but I think that's what it is. So the game there, it's not just to, on the one hand, we need to be smart and frugal. But on the other hand, that commitment is a commitment. It's saying that we as a town, we as an apartment, we're taking those dollars in because we're going to do this with it. And so on the one hand, financially, you could say, well, it's good to save money. On the other hand, did we save money because we didn't do what we said we were going to do? It's a different level of transparency, different expectation financially that I did to look at it by line item because those are all activities they're all commitments let's say but when you're talking about a business like water and wastewater as an example I literally from a taxpayer perspective I don't see the value in having to go through an artificial exercise where every single line item they're over in color copies by $47 and then they have to go find it someplace else or whatever for me it's some strange theater exercise that has no connection to what accountability to fiscal responsibility to business acumen to it just doesn't have any use other than it creates a bunch of work it's it's
[25:33] Speaker D (unidentified): being involved in the budget process at the state for the Bureau you didn't want to go over budget that's a big no-no so in order to track all that stuff you have to make sure that each one of those things are covered and if you misstep on two three items that are listed in what you had sent forward to the director and the director put to the commissioner, yeah, everything has to be covered, you see what I mean? It's different from private sector, okay? Because if you didn't expend all the money that you budgeted for, you weren't gonna get it next year or more when you add, you see what I mean? So it's like, but then when you have surprises like a machine blowing an engine, and it's a primary piece, that could very well slide you into the red on such a small department that I belong to. You see what I mean? So where do you find your cost savings? Where do you find the money? You see what I mean? And then you're going along and things are going pretty good, but then all of a sudden you get a directive down from the governor's office. We better help out this other department in millions of dollars. And they're looking for paper clips. And then they jump into contacts. You see what I mean?
[27:44] Speaker B (unidentified): I would say to Chris's point and to kind of bridge that, I'd say our systems are kind of designed and built when you look at them for an organization that is 40% smaller in population that, you know, as a police and fire department that are less than half of the size that they currently are now. A public works data set that's pre-being an urban contact and all of our administrative systems under intense strain, police and fires are actually probably some of the best, public safety needs to improve a lot, finances need to improve a lot, and we need to kind of design a system that is appropriate for the type of business, but the current constraints of what we're operating, like I know we have talked about this, Chris, it's like very similar to my budget process. I use YNAB, an app every single thing I have is categories by type, every expense I make goes or something, if my weekly lunches amount for eating out is over, I need to pull that from, you know, a vacation bucket into that in order to be able to free up funds to do that. If I don't do that, I can't go out to eat, and that's like a natural constraint. I think in some ways we're twofold, like that's maybe not exactly the right system to be applying, it's a similar one we have here, and we don't have the right controls like we do in my Accounting where I can't, like, I just can't do that piece. Like, well, we can't not pay the police officers. We had a lot of public safety time. We had all these protests that happened this year that blew some of our line items. We had these unexpected things come up with legal, with the council. Like, we can't not do these things, right? And we don't have the greatest mechanisms to catch them in real time that you're about to go over your line items. So, like, we need, there needs to be a little bit more of a systematic approach to is this the right system to be the changing system? And maybe there's, well, I think our procurement policy is a great example of this. Like, we're modernized with your practices, a huge policy that Leah and the finance team, myself and Sarah been working on, finalizing it shortly, and it's complicated and it's long, and but you get that direction, it can kind of train you how to do it. We need the similar things with our financial departments as we go to AR and AP as the system gets to train what is the highest value finance can do, not just to publish reports like we did last year. People, oh, you're publishing those reports, but not just trying to have the city manager or rotating finance department traveling around trying to smaller controls to we have some performance reviews this cycle is going to be a fiscal and HR checkup kind of indicator on there, and talking to the finance teams about how department heads are doing in those areas. Some obviously things are uncontrollable, it's a line item or a budget overage that they had no anticipation. Other ones is like, hey, you're not getting your X amount in on time to finance or HR. So I think all of these things a better process overall, better internal controls, and then
[30:41] Speaker A (unidentified): better compliance is kind of the ballgame here. So to I think respond to a little bit of this, when you talk about your lunch budget, I'm assuming we're talking about business lunches with professionals that you need to do?
[30:55] Speaker B (unidentified): No, just personally. If I want to go across the street to 86 this, and I get to a level that I've gone too much over the month, it's my personal budget.
[31:03] Speaker A (unidentified): OK, that's the clarification I thought we needed. It's either business lunches, or you're talking about your personal budget.
[31:09] Speaker B (unidentified): That's my personal. That's how all my personal budgeting is done by those nine items. And I got to pull from vacation to-
[31:13] Speaker A (unidentified): So just because I wasn't hearing that, and as people are listening to this later, just clarify, you mean your personal budget.
[31:18] Speaker B (unidentified): But in many ways, we operate a similar type of budgeting structure for the city for that transfer from the line item. Yeah, but these departments are so huge and they're doing a zillion things and they're not actually getting to their line item amounts until the end of the year. So it's basically like instead of if I had those controls on a month-to-month like the way we structure it is, well, it's really not until you get in 5% below your line item budget that you really start to start working about asking the
[31:45] Speaker A (unidentified): city manager to transfer to the lines. And I think that's where what I'm looking forward to in budgeting the next fiscal year and we've talked about in these reports that come out not just taking the annual budget and dividing by 12 when we know that it actually is different, particularly when tax revenue comes in and certain, you know, salt and sand. We know that if we're, you know, we're below budget in November, we know exactly why, because it isn't over the 12 months. I think that's going to make it smoother and we've discussed too, I think in the future there are protests, rallies more than protests, and the parades and things to actually budget that in. That is part of the work that we do with part of being this city. So a question, Chris, if you're seeing the water and wastewater as separate, as different from the rest of the budget because of the origin of the money, do they have what process will they use, because they still need to track and respond to their year-to-date? So I understand what you're saying about you as the city finance director don't need to get into a level of detail because this is separate, but it's still user fees that are accountable to the people who pay them. So do they have the financial expertise and what will they be doing if not this line by line reconciling that's expected elsewhere? It's a great
[33:16] Speaker C (unidentified): it's a great question, you know. So a couple things, one is if I had my brothers for an operation like that, it would probably be slightly higher level. We would still, I would still peel back the onion and work with them to understand, okay, listen, if you're over as a business, we need to peel it apart and say, where did, where does those over just come from? Because to your point, that's not great. It's real money at the end of the day, irrespective of what the origin of the money is. So we would still peel it apart. It's just, what is the protocol for approving it and then putting that fiscal year to bed in the books? Do I need to go through and justify and account for every single one of the overages in isolation, or do I say, listen, my number one concern is that you brought that business in the
[34:21] Speaker A (unidentified): black versus the red, in the black, achieving the activities and the goals that have been outlined, to your earlier point. Well, for water, it's slightly
[34:29] Speaker C (unidentified): different, like, you know, did we deliver the service, except that for them, you as a business, you could argue, and I don't want to get too sidetracked in this because I could talk for a long time about just water. And by the way, I could talk about water, and I never yet, I haven't had the opportunity to actually go visit and see it for myself. But it's a complicated operation, but as a business model, it's not that complicated. They got a bunch of people, they have a bunch of infrastructure, operating expense,, and then they set fees. What are the rates? And then at the end of the day, we just want to make sure that the rates were sufficient to cover the cost of what they were expected to do. Everything below that. Now, if there's a problem, or if we're analyzing it for the next budget cycle and we can make improvements, I want to peel it apart and understand it and whatever. We want to make sure there's no fraud, waste,
[35:28] Speaker B (unidentified): right, like, be able to have good controls on that aspect of things, but do I care if I'm a
[35:32] Speaker C (unidentified): taxpayer, to say, well, they brought it in forty thousand dollars under, we were sufficient, and by the way, we're gonna now create a reserve, which maybe we don't have to raise the rates as much going forward because, but oh my gosh, they, there were three line items that were in the red or whatever because of, to Counselor Shay's point, something broke that we was unanticipated, and then, and then when I'm looking at, when I was in the water meeting, Counselor Smith, what I was really thinking was, we had all these red items, meanwhile they're in the black as a whole, yeah, and I'm looking around the table, I'm like, what is the cost of all this staff time to go through all these individual red items for stuff that's not really property tax money anyway?
[36:25] Speaker A (unidentified): We can pick this up later, but there's no accountability to the users who pay the user. So I'm not there yet, and we can put it off for the next time.
[36:36] Speaker B (unidentified): I remember very early on in my cycle, six months, eight months a year, I was in conversation with some counselor, and it was like a small thing on this, and we had like six meetings on it, blah,, blah. In a level of frustration, I was like, this is why our accounts aren't reconciled. I've had so much conversation on this piece, I had almost none on reconciliation with any counselor whatsoever. whatsoever. And it's such, like, in all this piece, like, new projects, new this. So we're really, like, we do the micro, but the macro things, which take so much time to get right, are kind of left behind. Same thing with solar credits. We lost probably 300 grand in, when those went down for maintenance and other pieces. Like, that project went forward, and all the administrative pieces behind it are really difficult. The water department's another. Like, we've caught so much on the micro, but we almost missed a $2 million forgivable grant on bond that wasn't applied for four years ago so there's like all these pieces that are like the business gets so there's the staff constraints and the turnover and then sticking within the micro systems takes so much time I'm all
[37:41] Speaker A (unidentified): for prioritizing where people's time should go absolutely the thing that I'm just reflecting back is there's still a hundred percent I'm looking forward to
[37:56] Speaker C (unidentified): And the last thing, you know, again, I hesitate talking about the charter because I'm the least qualified person. But I think all I'm saying is that, and it's not my call, but I want to feel free that I can at least bring some questions or observations to you guys. Absolutely. And then just say, hey, does this make sense? Are we, is this the best process? and then for you guys to say either gosh Chris you're so naive that maybe in the private sector it works but you know in municipal government there's no chance or for you to say yeah Chris I can see how that would save time but you know it's not exactly there's bits and pieces of the private yeah that can into
[38:53] Speaker D (unidentified): I worked in the private sector for a long time before I went and became a public employee. And so there's a whole different set of rules and little differences, but a lot of it can be intertwined.
[39:09] Speaker C (unidentified): Yes. You see what I mean? Yeah, I appreciate that.
[39:12] Speaker D (unidentified): So, I mean, but overall, they're like apples and grapefruits.
[39:20] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah. You can rest assured, however, that I was not very popular in the private sector either, so.
[39:25] Speaker A (unidentified): I was going to say, what do you think, Tabitha? Sorry, yeah. Tabitha, go ahead. Yeah,
[40:39] Speaker C (unidentified): It's such a good question. And you know, I only have myself to blame because I asked for active questioning through this thing, but it's a, it's a, it's a good question. So I guess a couple things: my goal is not just to offload finances problems to other departments, that's not the goal at all. So a couple things, in as I've been going around meeting with each of the department heads, I would, I've made a point to bring this up as one of the major things, main things that we talked about, and there hasn't been a department that to your point, I think despite their resource constraints, there hasn't been a department said oh no, that's a good idea. Some of them said oh gosh, you got to give me time to think about who would do it, how we would manage it. In some cases there are, there are one or two open recs or like finance is trying to do, there may be some staff transitions where those apartment heads have said hey listen, I think once we're able to move such-and-such to this new role or we resort the work a little bit, I think we'll be able to manage it, but they need some time. So that's part of I think why we've sequenced it the way we have. But I would tell you with that said, if I just take, let's say in the worst case public safety, to your point that actually, you know, is much better resourced. If I just take them, and maybe for the foreseeable future, given staffing and workload and while we're sorting, cleaning things up and whatever, if that's all we can accomplish, that might be enough, at least, you know, on my watch, because that's a ton of invoices there. Ideally, if I could get public safety and public works, in terms of the number of invoices that's probably 90% of the problem right there, and then everything else after that I think is gravy. Although I do think that for those department heads to have the right visibility, be able to manage their apartments, the best answer, the ideal answer would be that they're able to take it over, but my intent is not going to be, I don't want to just move the problems and then make things worse and take a step backwards. So I think it's a good question. I don't know if that answers your question, but that's the way I think.
[43:32] Speaker E (unidentified): Well, it's incredibly thoughtful and I appreciate the face approach and even like how, if we have public safety doing it, is that enough to kind of go for it, and I also agree with you that having the department heads being the ones that are keeping track of their expenses, Sharper to the trends that are happening.
[44:17] Speaker B (unidentified): And Tabitha, I just say, I think this is why we have to really consider this holistically as an organization. Not just in terms of that piece, but how do we free up the time for those departments to focus on what is 100% the most important. I think Governor Baker also has a lot of experience in turnarounds. He used to say the first rule of the turnaround is focus,. And that's why I think for me, like, it's a little activating when we're talking about food sovereignty and even something as small as that, it's time, it's resource, it's follow-up and see the other pieces. And I'm almost like in a no new until reconciled, or at least we need a better system for, like, here's how many staff hours of art we've already been deployed to more projects and possibly do so. What suffers when you do that is paperwork on previous projects, getting the other pieces. So we need to if you think about it holistically, like, how can we free code's time up, planning's time up, assessing Roddy's time up, all these other pieces as we work to resource finance so that we can get fully reconciled and all of the backlog on all of our current tasks and responsibilities said done. And if we think in terms of that lens, when things like food sovereignty or other pieces come up, it can be like, that's a nice idea. Let's put that on the backlog, log, and until we get a good work plan together with this financial turnaround piece is front and center and everything considered in that, how can we free up time in each department to really focus on this? Because it is going to take a lot more work.
[45:49] Speaker C (unidentified): I'm worried a little bit about time. I should probably keep moving on.
[45:53] Speaker A (unidentified): Anything on the summarized debt and debt service? I was curious seeing that.
[45:57] Speaker C (unidentified): Well, there is the catch up on the general ledger entries. So I have sent to you in preparation for this meeting, and I'm not sure I have printouts of it, but I can certainly get it, but the current state of the year to date, both for July and August, budgets to actuals, I would put an asterisk on that, however, that we're still cleaning that up, most notably with catching up on the payroll entry from paychecks and that data into the GL and properly allocating it and sorting it, you know, etc. So there's a big asterisk on that. So that is not, that is not accurate and by the way that's a that's a big number so but on the other hand I just I saw no reason to withhold it 's it's the current state of where we are on that clearly mark yeah the debt and debt service I've been working on that I can tell you maybe I'll give you a couple high-level things it's a big issue for me to properly understand again just like so many things we've had things in different states of progression we've had a couple of different systems that we've been using but none of the data is up-to-date in those things and it's scary for me because while I'm trying to figure that out we continue to issue new debt I'm close on that I can tell you that from where I sit right now I believe that when I add together the municipal the school and then public works so really with a water focus so you talk about the enterprises yes exactly right exactly right yeah school and then the enterprise is exactly right that the current outstanding principle for the town is something like 25, 26 million dollars, and that we have, and that we're on the front end in terms of applying mostly through the, water for another roughly 26 million. So that would bring, let's say the total outstanding principal to about 50, 53 million dollars, roughly something like that. To give you some perspective on that, the statutory limit borrowing limit for a town like Ellsworth is as a whole 15% of the current valuation. So if our current valuation is $1.8 billion, then that amount would be the maximum that we can borrow is $278.8 million. So even once we get all of the debt that we're talking about right now through, and we get to $53.9 million, we would be sitting at something like 19 percent. So 19 of our borrowing limit. Thank you. Because I was
[49:34] Speaker A (unidentified): going, no, the limit is 15, and I'm saying 19. So 19 of the allowable 15 percent just today. That's
[49:40] Speaker F (unidentified): right, okay, that's right, I'm sorry. Is that another thing we're over on?
[49:43] Speaker A (unidentified): No sense to me. It's like the lunch budget. No, he's talking his personal budget, not the city. Okay.
[49:51] Speaker C (unidentified): Thank you, Nancy. So that's at a macro level. And if you're OK, I'm going to work more on this. And at the next meeting, I might go through that in a lot of detail. Because apart from the macro numbers, for me, it's very important to understand, well, OK, what does that mean in terms of the debt service? What are the terms? What a life? When do some fall off? What should be our, if we have this big overhang of pending infrastructure needs projects, what should be our plan around that?
[50:27] Speaker A (unidentified): Well, is that what the CIP is? That's the purpose of the CIP, is prioritizing.
[50:33] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, but I'd say, and Sarah, I can just see, like, the one thing that's really missing from the CIP is the financing plan.
[50:38] Speaker A (unidentified): Understanding, yeah, these are the priorities, but then how much can we do this time?
[50:43] Speaker B (unidentified): So if you've got $20 million in year one backlog, then you've got to figure out, you've probably got $100 million of your total liability.
[50:50] Speaker A (unidentified): So that's the foundation for the next steps.
[50:53] Speaker D (unidentified): When you capital improvements, you've got to look beyond this year and next year. You've got to look way further down the line. Exactly. You've got to see the whole big picture way down the line. Yeah. If we do this,, and this in the next two, three years, how are we going to cover it 15 years from now, 20 years from now? You see what I mean? And to get our weed through on our behalf as counselors, we have to weed through the wants and the actual needs.
[51:32] Speaker B (unidentified): And I would say, I think from the macros, which has been my, like, special part of boom and gloom, my number one last budget was, like, We're increasing by about a half a million dollars in new businesses and new growth, but our increases in public safety alone exceeded that this year. If you include the infrastructure, like the long-term financials and economic development are not monetizing in a way that cover that. So then it's a much longer conversation, but once we get the full scope of the debt service, the day-to-day, the budgeting pieces, all these things can kind of come together to give a better roadmap. Can we attack our capital? Do we need fundamental changes on the state level for this now?
[52:12] Speaker C (unidentified): And what could we afford? What would that debt service feel like? Is that too much too soon? Can we live with it in the real world for another year?
[52:20] Speaker A (unidentified): So I'm going to... I look forward to really digging into this one, and maybe this is a council workshop rather than a finance committee or a finance and then a workshop. You know, we've got the spreadsheet of when the debt is falling off, but to really understand how that fits in with the capital investment plan. And, you know, Charlie's one of the strategies is just keeping that debt load consistent as we're trying to balance all of that. So let's keep our own. Thank you. All right.
[52:49] Speaker C (unidentified): Getting back to basics, what I call treating like our money. I sent out this past week what we. I hesitate to put this on the slide, but what the Charlie and I have called the austerity email. So I drafted an email that I sent out to all the department heads, and I'm going to go through it at the next management meeting. Here's a screenshot of that email. In a nutshell, I just said, hey, listen, I appreciate everything that people are doing, and I know it's been difficult. However, financially, we're in a tight spot, and I need everybody's help. And by the way, I said I'm not looking for obligatory compliance. I'm looking for something more than that. I'm looking for a kind of proactive participation and let's collaborate on this because we I think we can manage this we can absolutely and I will talk about that in one minute but right now we need to double down on being really tight financial control so one thing I said I'm gonna ask that we leave the budget freeze spending freeze in play discretionary spending freeze in place through the balance of FY 27 number two we're going to take another hard look at scrutinize any special incremental projects even that have associated grants tied to them and really look at well are those projects and grants are they direct offsets to expense budget items meaning can I if we if we undertake that and I accept that grant am I going to be able to look at taxpayer in the eye and say you know what if we take that grant and utilize it I'm going to be able to relieve on some level the tax burden such as the camera grant exactly and it's not to what extent do we can we actually defer that because maybe it's a lot we have a ton of like things there's again I finished this last time I don't come up from you know I'm not in meetings right like oh gosh it's a horrible idea or that would be amazing if we make it happen but given where we are right now some of those things we may need to defer them and so I'm just being really upfront about that and setting the thing And then I said to be extra rigorous and mindful about things like vehicle usage, town vehicle usage, overtime, credit card charges. I know that you reached out to me about credit card charges, all that kind of thing. And what I'm asking for in this email, and what I'm going to stress at the management meeting, is that what I'm asking for is maybe even incremental to what the point of policy is on vehicle use, on credit card charges, on all that kind of thing. More than that, I need your participation to work with me to figure out how can we actually tighten our belt right now given where we are.
[56:07] Speaker B (unidentified): To make this like a budget game changer, but I think it's important to have the austerity aspect and just like the constraints we're living in, you know, my contract has goes into my contract that I'm supposed to be given $2,000 a month, I start $2,000 a year to people to dinners and staff to dinners and business potential folks coming in, and since we entered as discretionary freeze, but there's the net one charge a success and I personally been reimbursing that one, we just need to consider that's. Not going to change the budget, but you've been for something that micro that may be allowable to move forward with, like we're in a budget freeze, we can't be taking people out for lunches at this period of time. And then on a larger level, like in Tabitha, they take your kind of point, like how we free up, how do we an already stress system is like, you know, even on some things like grants management system, it's really important to me, like we keep having these issues of the grants not being cleared on. Previous administrative backlog, we don't have a good system for tracking it, how many grants have been done, you look at these financials over the future, like getting more grants from a variety of measures to offset budget stuff is wildly important. On the flip side of that, like we're at administrative max capacity doing a digital modernization of the water department, doing a digital modernization of procurement processes, doing a digital modernization of the parks and rec department. And like the. Grants management system in the near term costs money. We budgeted for it, sure. We've had big discussions at council meetings, the council authorized me to report with this, but I'm working to see if we can not deploy that system.
[57:44] Speaker A (unidentified): I saw that in the handout and wondered about that.
[57:49] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, just because right now we need, until finances are procured and those other pieces, like those, you know, public works needs about digital modernization, that's going to cost money in the near term. Anything that's not getting us to financially even though it might be a wildly needed operational improvement I'm really trying to reconsider the deck so much absolute critical prior than anything else if it's not related to infrastructure or not maintaining operations so
[58:20] Speaker A (unidentified): It's nine o'clock how are you okay Tabitha can you stay another ten minutes It's, is
[58:29] Speaker D (unidentified): That okay? Oh yeah. Okay. I took the day off, thank you.
[58:34] Speaker C (unidentified): Well, then I'll use the long presentation.
[58:38] Speaker D (unidentified): I'm kind of like the bottom line, up front kind of guy. You know what I mean? And, but, we can sit here and discuss.
[58:47] Speaker A (unidentified): All right. This next section, we can dive into it with.
[58:51] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, I will spend a lot of time on this, but in terms of, you know, I am trying on the communication and collaboration side, but it's early days I could use more public interaction honestly I had some initial meetings with various public members and every one of them in different ways has been very helpful for me so let me let me skip that for now pulling ourselves out of the ditch is the second obviously big focus and if And if you remember, there won't be a pop quiz today, but if you Remember this little equation that taxes or property taxes, the cities, on one of the lists, it's pretty straightforward, despite all the complexities of assessment and mill rates and all the rest of that. But essentially, we get to that number. We back into that number. And by that, I mean first we try to understand, OK, to run it, what are the expenses going to be projected expenses for the year and then we understand what other types of revenue can we generate whether it's from the state reimbursement whether it's from departmental fees whatever it is and then we understand what's the gap what's the shortfall of that and that's how at the end of the day we calculate how much we need to raise from projects so we back into that number and because of that for me to really be serious about seeing if I can help to manage property taxes. I focused on the right side of that equation right now, what's the expenses, and I mentioned this last time that the 86% of expenses when I fully load them into the departments come from school, public safety, public works, not surprisingly, and they're the most labor intense and to sort of capital intense. But the challenge there for me is that wedge, like I mentioned last time, now is it much bigger than everything else, but it's growing faster as well. So what I have done, I mentioned this, but I going around meeting with the departments and I'm starting with the big ones, you know, and go kind of going in order. I am, I am summarizing out of my notes and this is after just, you know, month and a half, and by the way take this with a grain of salt, this is really my notes. I should have had draft plastered all over this thing. So this is just me not to lose some of these discussions and ideas or whatever, but I am highlighting and making a note of improvement areas both on the east side and on the our side, on the expense side and on the revenue side, and wanting to put them on my radar and then work with these people to figure out to what extent we can move them down the road fast enough that maybe we can actually begin to bake these into the upcoming budget. So it's kind of my version of how do I squeeze the lemon and figure out what we can do. And so you can see there's an initial handful of things from my, you know, initial month of discussions to date. I have estimated the impact of, you know, either is it a one-time cash improvement benefit or would it have a run rate lasting kind of opportunity. I was gonna ask you to
[1:02:29] Speaker A (unidentified): clarify those column heads because I was trying to figure it out. Yeah, some are
[1:02:33] Speaker C (unidentified): just like a one-time, like if you have a, yeah, I don't know, an asset you sell it, okay, we get the cash for that, but it's one time, you can only do that once. If I take expense out, I'm eliminating it. If I lower a lease cost for instance, right, Wow, I'm gonna save that money ongoing. Exactly, that's what the difference is. So you can see from my first month of, you know, initial discussions, some of the big ones, by the way, I haven't, you can see there's some gaps there in yellow where I haven't been able to Yeah, I'm like, you talked about the debt and the debt service. Well, I'm looking into the detail of that. Well, how did we structure it? What are the interest rates? Is it reef the refinance of all? Essentially, what would that mean? It's, and then I can begin to plug some of that stuff in there. So there's some questions about it, but this is my first, my first take. The next one is that only, I did the same, I'm doing the same thing on the revenue side. It's a much longer list, the revenue I mentioned before. But the revenue model for the town is much more complicated than the expense side of the town. But even then, both in terms of one-time benefits as well as run rate benefits, in my first month there's something like, you know, a million and a half dollars there. So when I add up the expense, the expense side opportunities and the revenue side opportunities, it's something like between two and a half and three and a half million dollars. What I did then, however, is that I said, okay, on the revenue side. Especially what are the types of opportunities, and that's over to the right, and so I quite a group them. Some are, if we can, for instance, get rental income in terms of the facilities that we have right now, like the Moore Center is an example, or Knowlton Park example. Some have to do with, you know, state and maybe county reimbursements. So that would, that's kind of in this world of, you know, lobbying and is there some kind of a public campaign to begin to apply, you know, some visibility and pressure. Some has to do with grants, some has to do with maybe could be regionalized some of the services and infrastructure that we have, and then a bunch of them have to do with what I just call this monetizing the growth. If we have this kind of growth and traffic, what are we able to do? What opportunities does that afford us, and how can I capture the value of that and then get that to the taxpayer? I know that I'm gonna need help in terms of some of that stuff, and so I think this would be an amazing. Opportunity for me to find ways to engage, to engage, not only the council, but maybe the community. And I initially thought that maybe we could put together, you know, in the world that I come from, it'd be something like a task force, or I don't know what we would call it, maybe there's a steering committee or something, but I think there are opportunities where we can actually mobilize and figure this stuff out and take action on it. Because at the end of the day, I think there could be big opportunities there. By the way, some of the biggest opportunities, and I circled some of these as an example, three and a half million dollars is great, better start sticking the eye, but you know, even that is probably not enough, I think, when I project forward. So let me say one thing about that just to put that in perspective. What I'm talking about right now, if you go to the federal government's website, Department of Economy, and look at projected inflation. So let's take the simplest kind of inflation, CPI. They're projecting 2.7% over the next decade, 2.7% a year. What does that mean in 10 years because of compounding? That would be 30% increase over ten years, 30%. So if you think about for a second, it's actually thirty point five three percent. If you're a taxpayer and you think, you know, gosh, my taxes are higher, just CPI alone, that would be 30% more. How are you gonna, especially people that are on a fixed income, how is that gonna feel? But you know what, I mentioned this before, when I go back to this slide, that is the things that this red circle 86% buys. It's higher than, it's higher than CPI. If when the government studies healthcare as an example, they're projecting more like 8% a year, if you're lucky, if you're lucky. And when I was in Surrey, it was 9% a year. At 8% a year, if you project out 10 years, that is 115%, 116%. It more than doubles. So again, if I'm a taxpayer, struggling, and I'm on a fixed income, what's more than doubling? And by the way, when I actually study that red square, over the last two years, it's been more, it's slightly more than 8%. Over the last couple years it's been 19% growth for that red square, yeah, for from 2025 through the budget for 2027, 2025. The total, when I load in all of the benefits and employee taxes, when I fully loaded and look at the cost, what does it cost to deliver school, public works, public safety, something like 40, 42 million dollars in 2025. Budget for 2027 is just north of 50 million dollars. That's a 19 percent increase from 20 25 to 20 27. And again, 10 years, if it were just 8 percent, 10 years at more than doubles, 115 percent. Okay, so what I'm trying to say is, I'm, we're squeezing this line. We are, we're feeling the rumbles. People are nervous, fearful. There's a wave that's coming, because to the extent we have these services, Tom, they're expensive, and just the growth both. We need to be ready. How do we prepare for this wave that's going to hit the beach? So this is part of it. I think the revenue side, because expense side I can squeeze one six out. Revenue without the yellow ones, maybe another one six out or whatever. But I believe that we have a couple of them. It's not a lot, but we have a couple that could be game-changer, game-changing potentials. So this, for me, is the equivalent of this wave's going to hit the beach. We're moving our encampment back from the shore as much as we can. But I think we have a couple where we can actually build a life raft or something. It's not a lot, but a couple. I mentioned the state revenue share, big numbers. But, again, you know, I know you guys are looking at me and I am woefully naive, and I probably am. It's going to be difficult. It's going to take a long time, and we may not even get enough out of that. But for me, given the scale of it, we need to try something. I think we need to do something. But the other one, I was in a fascinating meeting, and I've heard a lot of talk about Meryl Lane and the courthouse project and whatever I know the even the word courthouse in this town you know you know there some people else the best that other people you know it's triggering when I looked at the potential purely from an economic perspective in terms of developing that plot that segment of the town and what it could mean that one for me could be a game-changer for the town and so purely in terms of my financial perspective in terms of modeling it out to the extent that you know I want to understand more about it my understanding that cost of it you know whatever the way that we've figured out you know these take things take a long time and whatever we always remember human beings you always remember the lowest number you've ever heard whatever so fine I don't have a dog in that fight but whatever the costs are even the potential of what that could be and the fact we don't have many life rafts as a town financially I want to pay more attention to that and really understand and what would it take to really make that work because apart from that and maybe you know I get some bluebird from the state and whatever I'm worried and I know I'm not alone the staff you know they're feeling you know some anxiety and worry and fear and I know you are and certainly the taxpayers are but to the extent we can work together on something that's right in front of us that could have That kind of potential for me, it's really worth of serious collaboration and trying to understand.
[1:12:26] Speaker D (unidentified): See, on the short-term levels, people looking at that is there's a parcel of property, it's going to have a building on it, and it's going to be providing services, but they're taking the parcel of property off the tax rolls. So everything around it is going to have to make up the loss in revenue from taxes. Sure. Okay? The water and sewage that they're going to use, you know, that's fee-based. Yeah, agreed. You see what I mean?
[1:13:00] Speaker B (unidentified): Agreed. And then... Agreed. Yeah, we'll go down a much...
[1:13:04] Speaker D (unidentified): That's, that in a nutshell, that's what people, a lot of people out there are looking at. Yeah. You see what I mean? There are groups of people over there on one side of town and over on the other piece, they're going,, yay, we don't have that in our neighborhood. Which really, it ain't no sense to have it there anyways.
[1:13:26] Speaker B (unidentified): You see what I mean? Well, I think we'll have a much larger discussion. 17 acres are being taken off the tax rolls for this new project. But that's mine. In one part or the other, it's in some ways where it's gonna spur additional development. It's gonna spur us. And we're the only time that the City of Ellsworth has actually invested in infrastructure projects that has a return on investment is roads. Commerce Park, all the building, all the businesses that are in there, the taxes they're paying that are based on that road exceed by a huge factor the amount of city investment that went into that. Same thing with Myrick Street, that project in terms of the tax investment. But I'm also considering about like what, and this is the other piece of the holistic topic that I think to, like how we think of things, and even a project level of does this have, potentially be monetized as good for the city. Larger housing expansions is a source of revenue in perpetuity that we have a lot of housing that's actually pretty good. I've been thinking about it more, but what monetizes for the state and I was opposed to the RV campground moratorium, that's also ultimately a policy decision, but I actually agree thinking about longer that RV parks in terms of allowing them in the city of Ellsworth are very good monetarily for the state. They get lodging tax revenue, not great in terms of a property tax base expansion for the city, same thing with but they hold them home to suites. 9% lodging tax. And the same thing with, when I looked at the retail revenue, going from 300 million a year in Ellsworth with only 9,000 people to 540 million a year, that's 10 million or more dollars that the city of Ellsworth is sending to the state of Maine and we're not capitalizing the return on those investments. So really thinking about the types of things we do as a city that in some ways growth is a burden upon the city and a financial boon to the state. And there's other things that can be growth for the city that can be financially beneficial to the city and help offset the property tax.
[1:15:17] Speaker C (unidentified): well to be clear and i said this a couple times and i think staff flinches a little bit you know i 've said a couple times that i don't really care as a finance person that much about the courthouse per se i don't know it could be a squirrel museum or it could be a i don't know miniature golfers I don't care but to the extent it galvanized an effort for us to create infrastructure a road water sewer to create a developable district a parcel that is one of our few life rafts for me that's what I care about if there are other ideas that people have that have that kind of magnitude that are easier or cheaper or more controllable or faster or whatever I will have the same amount of interest enthusiasm I don't care about the courthouse per se I don't but economically I look around at this list and again I've only been here six weeks so maybe I'll you know it's my me with my own ignorance and I'll learn other things but right now I don't see it so the ones that I circled here in terms of these reimbursements and then this Merrill development project or whatever, I guess what I want to say is we can have a healthy debate as a town, but before long, we got to put that aside and figure out, listen, if we don't have another life raft and this wave is hitting, we need to figure out how to make it work because this one is right in front of us and it's under our own under our own
[1:17:06] Speaker D (unidentified): power it's going to work I mean it's going to the plots around that the street going up it 's going to work we're going to it's going to watch it up there in a cell once everything we've done you got to get the take that situation and move on it will happen they'll be big and they'll be more
[1:17:34] Speaker A (unidentified): Growth to that point that Pat is making, I'm glad that you're embracing the idea of what this narrow, excuse me, Maryland extension can do, because the key is housing. Is that it does a lot of great things for the city, especially if it's where you can be efficient with the infrastructure, and that's the idea with the Maryland extension, is it's within our urban core and we can definitely work with it. So I'm excited to see that. If you check the, what was I, the BDM today, there's a story about Freeport having spent years getting their zoning ordinances in line, and they are finally deploying, and there are housing projects replacing unused parking lots. So there's great potential there. The other thing I want to hit on in that, there were a number of items you had where the extra work that's needed is campaign and lobbying, and I think I've mentioned to both of you off to the sides, there is a mayor's coalition and a service center coalition, and I'm getting preliminary information the mayor's coalition, and this is for statewide advocacy. I don't know what it does at the county level, but the mayor's coalition has 11 cities, the service center coalition has 27 communities. So I'm gathering information about what they do. I got a list of what their priorities are. This came in on the weekend, so I'll coordinate this and get information out to folks. But this is going to be one of those, if we're taking this seriously, the only way it happens is in a coalition. Ellsworth screaming from the from the cupola is only going to get us so far. But if we are with other towns, and even looking at the League of Towns, I love that you're looking at regionalization, that can be a powerhouse as well. So I'll get you more information about what it takes to join, how would we manage it, how would we staff it, all of that. I don't know yet, but if we are serious about the state revenue sharing in all of its pieces, continuing to look at, we have improvements of state funding for education, but there's more coming and some of it didn't happen. Those things are going to have to be in coalitions beyond, we're already members of MMA, so the service center coalition is a subset of MMA, so I'll get more information so that we know what's ahead and who else, what other cities are struggling with these ideas and want to work with us to see what we can do to rebalance who's winning from the growth in Ellsworth, to Charlie's point, a new governor obviously
[1:20:12] Speaker B (unidentified): Coming up, and I've talked to League of Towns, and you continue to talk about that piece, I think, the service center coalition, because whenever you create rules and lines on who gets what, there's winners and losers. And I think one of the problems for Ellsworth is we're on the losing end of this growth stick in so many ways. Just the lodging piece alone, thousand Airbnbs, hotels, the 9% on that, like we are sending millions of, and I just, when you have that lens, it makes me, we look back on it, I rue the day that we put cannabis on the ballot, because we've spent so much time as a staff on that piece. Lawsuits, this, council meetings, workshops, an insane amount of staff time, all to what? To send millions of dollars a year to the state? It takes 14% of the cannabis recreational tax. Yes, we're going to get some businesses here, and they're going to redo some properties, and there'll be a little bit of base increase. But if you look at it in that frame, recreational cannabis is a disaster for the city in terms of the time spent by staff in resourcing that project versus the revenue we're going to receive back from it. And I think can start dictating how we think of a lot of projects going forward. But also, we need to change the equation. Why don't you give us back some of that 14%?
[1:21:29] Speaker A (unidentified): And they, again, it's a decision that we made, part of those expenses will be funded, probably not enough.
[1:21:36] Speaker B (unidentified): $20,000 over a lifetime. The state of Maine will make that $300,000 in one year.
[1:21:41] Speaker A (unidentified): So again, I think working in coalition on this kind of thing is worthwhile, and the regional.
[1:21:46] Speaker B (unidentified): So the city of Ellsworth gets $20,000 and the state gets $1,000,000 plus a year, every year, in perpetuity.
[1:21:51] Speaker D (unidentified): If we can attract better paying jobs. Lodging, they don't pay much. You see what I mean? Retail, they don't pay much. Restaurants, they don't pay much. That's why, but if we could have a better, you know, more manufactured, because we used to have a woolen mill. Even if, like out at Washington Junction, granted that's in Hancock, but a lot of those people that worked out there at Salem Forest Products, a car box company, wholesale distributors, there was a machine shop where print places, okay. All of those, yeah granted, they're in, but those people made great money and could afford the housing that, there's houses right now coming onto the market. And it's just outrageous prices. I mean, really, you know?
[1:23:08] Speaker A (unidentified): Yeah. It's a great group.
[1:23:11] Speaker B (unidentified): Well, Construction and Trade is one of those ones, you know, Hancock County Technical Center, we're trying to get a new building for that. Amy Bowes, our superintendent, is, you know, laying it for some of these.
[1:23:19] Speaker D (unidentified): The state will cough up a huge chunk. We need to educate the young people to get into the trades.
[1:23:29] Speaker A (unidentified): So what else do we need to cover? We're not going by the P&Ls, I didn't have time to review them, and knowing that they're still loose, it's good to know those are going to come back at least quarterly.
[1:23:39] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, and to that point, I may put in front of you, I don't know if I can have it for next time, but a kind of a summary level report format that would be more like a dashboard, I think, that might be more useful to you, but I'll let you decide that or whatever. But I 'm a little concerned that the format that's that we spit right out of the system it's a lot of pages it's cumbersome and I'm not sure it tells the
[1:24:15] Speaker A (unidentified): cleanest story let's say so one of my questions each time is what should we
[1:24:21] Speaker C (unidentified): actually be looking at and then for a ray I just want you to know that for closing out FY26, I probably need... It won't even be complete by the next Finance Committee meeting, but maybe the one after that is one I'm going to shoot for.
[1:24:39] Speaker F (unidentified): I was listening to everything you said. When you started off today, Charlie started off talking about, you know, because I think you were thinking, the last meeting that was going to be a week from the 23rd, I think you were looking at it, and Charlie says the 30th. I knew where you were going with that and I have just had one question this is completely dumb on my part probably on this chart here you have you know which chart this is so the one with the pie chart the pie chart and also the expenditure and revenue things you have this column over on the right that says is used, UR slash PD, and when I see PD, I think police department, but I figured out that it wasn't, but I can't figure out what either one of those are.
[1:25:28] Speaker C (unidentified): I'm so sorry, gosh, I probably even shouldn't have.
[1:25:31] Speaker F (unidentified): Probably everyone knows, or at least Charlie and... I don't know.
[1:25:38] Speaker C (unidentified): So, this is my shorthand, I shouldn't have probably even been on this, but I'm saying to myself if I can free up those funds are they unrestricted you are for purpose-directed meaning some of those are risk that if I can free up let's see well this charts not a very good representation but like for instance TIF funding for instance I can do better on kind of TIF funding you know revenue new whatever I can't spend that's not unrestricted money it has to be then spent on specific economic development things that are identified. So for me, it's just if I, what is the money that we could just use to just generally apply across the town, because often set taxpayer tax dollars, or is it purpose-directed? Is it specific and has some restrictions to the use of it? So
[1:26:43] Speaker F (unidentified): that's, that's all it is. That answers my question, because I can go through here.
[1:26:48] Speaker A (unidentified): It's terrible. No, it's great information, just fewer abbreviations that are in your head, nobody else's. I confuse myself. No, but we appreciate having all the
[1:26:58] Speaker B (unidentified): information out there. Sure, I think I've gone over. Yeah, I think this is a great place to land. I think it's also just relative to like, how do we use these meetings and future meetings to highest purpose too? I know with the budget stuff, how many meetings we do on that, we go line by line by line, but some of these like bigger macros policy-wise for the council to be kind of larger direction.
[1:27:19] Speaker A (unidentified): I love being able to get to this level. This is fantastic. Tabitha, did you have anything else? Pat, do you have anything else?
[1:27:27] Speaker D (unidentified): No, I, it's a work in progress once you get the issues that we've talked about so far. Okay, actually given 11 all have a better morning fuzzy, you know, you know, they all share the same concerns, all
[1:27:56] Speaker A (unidentified): right, see. We'll see you all in two weeks. Thanks a lot, Chris. Bye, Tammy.