Hey, it's Ryan.
Our colleague Imani Moise is here to guest host today's episode.
Here it is.
About an hour outside of Boston, there's a picturesque small town surrounded by forested hills called Belcher Town.
That's where Lisa Lessard Pearson lives.
My spouse and I affectionately call it Belcher Town or B-Town to get around the Belcher Town connotations.
Lisa sits on something called the select board.
It's a small-town version of a city council that serves Belcher Town's 15,000 people.
And after years of saving up reserves, the town had finally scraped together enough money for a few key infrastructure
projects, like repairing the roofs and the lights at the schools and updating the senior center.
These are basics.
This isn't like fun, sexy projects.
This is like the real work stuff that needs to be done to keep the town going.
But then came a surprise invoice.
I got a phone call from the town manager.
It came to him first, and he immediately reached out to me.
The bill was from the town's health insurance administrator.
It said Belcher Town owed an additional $900,000 in health insurance premiums.
Which is a major fiscal event for a town our size.
What was going through your mind at first when you saw these numbers?