[Music] good evening everyone today is March 20th 2024 is 700 p.m. this is a joint meeting between the board of selectman finance committee and school committee is there a motion to call the selectman's meeting to order move second all those in favor all I call a motion please to open tonight's joint meeting school committee finance committee and select board SAR second okay we'll take a roll call vote Jen Downing is present Mrs Gomes yes Mr hro yes uh Mr Hood yes and Mrs Cadera yes good evening everyone this is a meeting of the finance committee with the school committee and board selectman do I have a motion to open our meeting second all in favor we'll do a roll call as well Sue dogado yes py yes Eric Chu yes Robert Ferrera yes Kristen Flynn yes Eric mlen yes Robert S CH yes this meeting is being video and auto recorded for future cable broadcast please silence all cell phones for the duration of the meeting is there a motion to open tonight's joint meeting including the school committee and finance committee second all those in favor I I will now recognize the chairman of the finance committee Mike bue as the chairman of the joint meeting good evening everyone uh thank you for attending tonight and before we get into the school's budget I'd like to have our Town Administrator Mr Jamie Kelly uh just give us an overview of where the town is at right now financially thank you Mr chairman as you know in the past the way that the budget is put together is we look at the revenue figures make estimates for the next fiscal year and uh these estimates are based on the tax levy the state aid and the estimated local receipts this year the state a estimate is 8 milon 69 2,399 the tax levy is 22 mil 353,000 91 there are also additional Revenue available for appropriation that is $575,500 378,000 that is $778,000 22 for taxx Levy there was a 7.16% increase from going from 22 to 23 a 4.82 increase from 23 to 24 a 3.01 increase and from 24 to 25 the estimate is 3.08 other than one outlying year it's been fairly consistent your state aid from 21 to 22 is increased a half a 1% from 22 to 23 1.27% from 23 to 24 8.48% and from 24 the estimate to 25 is1 18% local receipts from 21 to 22 is 10.59% from 22 to 23 is 2.67% from 23 to 24 is 3.89% and from 24 to 25 is 2.41% the with 77836 21 available in revenue for fiscal year 25 the expense estimate right now is 2, 77,500 the budget is in deficit 1, 299,792,458 increases in assessments that's old colony Vocational Technical and Bristol County Retirement of 623,000 43,9 128 above last year so it is a serious deficit uh there Revenue has been restricted because state aid for education has been not funded at the normal rate but it's been increased by only a half a 1% so the budget is in deficit and you have to present a balanced budget to town meeting thank you Mr Kelly I know we're going out of order here but before the school presents their budget could be authorized to say pledge allegiance un United States of America thank thank Mr chair have a question yes are we going up in your planning are we going up to the full two and a half Levy Kevin you want to take that one there's what 120 on the table there is the unused Levy capacity is 120,000 does that equal 2 and a half% of the previous to uh budget no 120,000 no so you're not going up to the full two and a half Levy this year well the two and a half Levy we are as far as the fiscal year adjustment to the previous this tax levy so you're increasing from [Music] 524,000 is 542,000 you reach the legal Levy limit you are and then you take the debt exclusion and the unused Levy capacity you're at 22 m69631 25 uh the new growth figure that is what the assessors have notified that they're going to release no that's what the assesses have told us is their estimate they do not release oh okay they estimate that is it the full amount or they are they releasing only a percent a percentage of no the estimate is always a full amount I think you're confusing it with the overlay okay Mr H did that answer your question yes okay yeah going speaking on New Growth that that's obviously been affected throughout the state uh because of what's happened nationally over the last three and a half years horrible economy High inflation which in turn raises interest rates so that's really who's going to want to do any new construction or Renovations when you're faced with that so that's really restrict restricted our town uh to generate Revenue that's it's really been a hindrance and so we excuse me if we have had a drop off and in uh building permit is that really that's the main yes we have [Music] y Patrick do you want to you want to get into your your budget I will thank thank you for being here tonight um we're going to have a presentation and I would just ask that you hold your questions to the end okay so since we've presented this budget originally in February we've really all sharpened our pencils um and we reduced it significantly um we've met with the finance committee chair and vice chair with the board of Selectmen chair of course many many meetings with our budget subcommittee to get to this point in April we will have our budget public Hearing in May the school committee will vote to adopt the budget in alignment with the June 3rd town meeting so we're doing this strategically so that we can leave the budget open as long as we can in order to get clarity on the state's Aid numbers and also leave room for any other adjustments that may arise whether it's the town or the school so everything that we do with our budget goes back to our mission and our vision our mission with ACC cushion at Public Schools is in partnership with staff parents and and Community is to promote Student Success growth and learning in a safe and supportive environment and our vision is to be a high- performing School District where all students are afforded the opportunities to realize their potential so this is also in align with our district strategic plan in our district strategic plan we have three pillars that we focus on the first one is achieving academic Excellence for all students and we do this by having a Complete Staffing pattern which includes teachers parents coaches interventionists Librarians Specialists every single person who works for the school system contributes to achieving academic Excellence for all of our students and we know what we are doing is working as the scores in the middle and the elementary school have continued to rise and our cushion at elementary school was recently recognized at the national level as one of 55 schools in the country as a National Distinguished School our next pillar creating thriving social and emotional learning experiences an example of this would be the enrichment after school program at the elementary school and middle school sports and clubs um and those are things that our children really love and they come to school for it every day it's what they come to school for often times the third and last pillar is strengthening Partnerships with parents and the larger community so we send out parent and student surveys to encourage a sense of belonging for all students another example for this pillar would be field trips maintaining our facility so that a lot of our youth organizations in the community can access our facilities so these three pillars sometimes work together and overlap but we've had a strong focus on them now for a few years so now I'm going to try to explain Chapter 70 um and get in the weeds a little bit to share um sort of the overarching picture of our budget and I think I'll allude to some of the same sentiments that Jame Mr Kelly excuse me is made um in regards to the town finances um but essentially the state establishes our budget with a foundation budget and the foundation budget is essentially what the cost of doing business is what's the cost to educate a student in our community um so the state establishes the foundation budget based on numerous categories that you can see on the slides I apologize for the size but this is how it fit in um so there's Columns of administrative costs down to uh operations and maintenance and then that's based on enrollment from preschool all the way up and up through high school um so generally these rates year-over-year are impacted by inflation um so that's the the base rates on the left-and side um as we know inflation's been impact in the economy as of late um over the past 2 years FY 23 and FY 24 the inflation rate has increased significantly but the Chapter 70 formula caps that rate at 4.5% so that means no matter how high inflation rises in the economy the state's going to say we'll give you up to 4.5% as a factor in your foundation and we're going to leave it at that um some of the fallof in chapter 78 was in FY 25 they seem to think that inflation has stabilized and that inflation Factor has come down to 1 35% so versus 4.5% last year um I don't want to get into this topic too much but there's rumors of an inflation fix where AID could increase because again the cap of 4.5% last year they identified the real inflation Factor was 6.1% and they're saying hey we realize there's towns the deficit still so if we can make up that difference that we Capt you off of last year and add it to this minimal 1.3 this year potentially there's more funding opportunity in Chapter 70 to go out to the communities that's very preliminary right now um and I think when we come full circle we'll realize we don't want to bank on chapter 78 to to fund our budgets here um the other component of the chap uh Foundation budget in chapter 78 is the additional increment so the state identifies increments for English language Learners and low-income students um and they also multiply it by an inflation factor in a student Opportunity Act Factor so we talk about student Opportunity Act a lot um fy2 is stage four out of six of the student Opportunity Act and this is really where we see it pay dividends dividends through the English language Learners and the low-income students unfortunately for us from 24 to 25 our English language Learners decreased from six down to 1 so we were ly impacted by that and our low income students decreased from 384 identified students to 336 so a significant decrease there which again all factor into our Aid and our increments and I I'd like to just add that our SOA the student Opportunity Act has to be uh Rewritten every 3 years and it was just recently adopted by the school committee with the initiatives to address closing the gaps by developing a comprehensive approach to early literacy administer early literacy screening and support and this is all at the elementary school and then targeted academic support at both schools so ultimately this all comes together um for the state to identify that Acushnet Foundation budget should be $1,669 excuse me 15, 66,9 189 so that's our basis that's that's the cost of doing business for our students in the town of the Kush so that's you know that's not all right so here are the rates I just alluded to so you can see you get different rates for preschool students down to um low income students the rates all increased you know 3 to 5% year-over-year and the columns on the right I want you to remember um 53.86 and 46.1 4% that's the town and state share essentially of these rates um and we'll get into that more but you know we we wear the burden I guess if you will on the foundation budget so continuing further so this is the most complicated part of town and school Finance um and this is the determination of city and town total required contribution so again what the state does here right is they take you know an equalized valuation which is the total cash fair value uh let me read verbatim full and fair cash value of all taxable property in the municipality um they get a figure sometimes it's based on the prior year sometimes it's based on two prior years and then they multiply that by a uniform percentage factor which essentially weighs it comparable to income taxes they want them to have the same weight in this formula so equalized valuation is one factor and then income tax is one factor which they take straight from the Department of Revenue um income taxes by locality they put these two numbers together and they go Hey listen you know of that 15.6 million that we told you you need to afford the town should actually be able to afford about $12.5 million of that um and again they Factor this into everything there's there's some more factors I'm going to skip along but ultimately they say hey we we expect you to contribute 12.5 million you know we're going to do some things here and there to make sure that we give you some Aid instead of none and ultimately we've determined that there is a shortfall in your town and you're not going to be able to contribute the 12 but you're going to have to contribute 11.2 million and I promise you this all comes together um so trends that we've seen over the years so I went as far back as fy21 you know we can go back further and further but big picture right equalized valuation continues to increase so property value continues to increase income taxes continue to increase CU salaries continue to increase um our enrollment which we control fluctuates um well you know it's variable we don't control it it depends on how many students we report um as our October one numbers and all of these things Factor again towards this target contribution so if you look year-over-year and I'm having trouble seeing on that screen too so I'm going to look down at my notes Here the target contribution has increased again significantly over just these 5 years that I'm showing so 56% back in fy21 they expected us to contribute and now we're up to 63% some communities and they cap you at it but some communities contribute 85% and every year they want to move the needle closer and closer to the 85% that the town contributes so this this isn't going away um other factors are municipal Revenue growth factors which come from you know the town and state reports um and then you continue down again end of the day year after year we tend to have a shortfall on kushit and they provide a little bit of supplemental income or supplemental funding excuse me and then get us to a base that isn't our Target but it's a little closer to our Target year after year um the state holds you harmless to Aid so they're always going to give you as much as they gave you last year but they're always not going to give you the biggest piece of the pie either so they all these factors come together and they say hey we going to move the needle at some point we're going to get you from where you are closer to Target and that equals minimum a which is where we're sitting at this year3 $30 per student um so again required contribution $1.2 million so next slide is our portion of that $1.2 million across all the school districts um that were you know on the hook Flor so that's a kushit old colony and Bristol County Agricultural so you can see down here required contribution comes across total is 11.2 the town required to contribute 8.9 million to the town of or the school department of Acushnet 2.1 million to Old Colony and 224,000 to Bristol Aggie and it's understood that vocational agricultural schools you know are more expensive to educate their students because of the components um but just to paint the picture of what that alludes to if you take the foundation budget right here which we just went over and divide it by your enrollment a cushion Public Schools is essentially getting $133,000 per student old colony's getting $197,000 per student and Bristol eggy is getting $20.8 th000 per student so cushion of public schools again I'm not admitting that this is the most perfect comparison being a vocational in an agricultural school but per student basis with this formula we're getting $6,400 less per student as it is right off the bat so in summary you know we talked about the 11.2 we talked about the minimum Aid per student so we're getting $30 per student because they want to close that Gap they want to get us close to the Target and what that comes down to is the town's required to contribute 8.8 million the state's going to give us 72 million in Aid and both of that combined equals our required net School spending so not only do they say hey Foundation you should spend at least this but now they're saying by by the way we're going to require you to spend more than that as well um which again is net School spending and that's based on the education reform um but big picture again is they're going to continue to close the gap and we can't continue to rely on Chapter 70 funding but they're also going to continue to hold hold us to a higher standard of expenses for our budget to meet net School spending um and increase required District cost contribution so where does that all come together net School spending Trend since 2021 State average 126% meaning State a on average schools in the state spend 26% more than they're required to on their on their school budgets a cushion it in 2021 was about 10% High you can notice of all these comparisons we're lower on the chart um and by the way these comparisons are based on local districts in our you know in our region and then Dart schools so darkart schools are determined by the state and they're the most similar to ours in terms of grade span enrollment special populations and more so these schools weren't just pulled out of a hat you know it's who's around us and it's who's comparable to us as determined by the state so again I just want you to remember these these percentages 10% over net School spending fy22 we were 12% over net School spending while the state average was 27% over net School spending FY 23 we're getting a little leaner 8% over net School spending while the state's still up 26% over net School spending and then FY 24 the current year the leanest we've been 6% over net School spending while the state remains 25% over net School spending right now this budget that we're presenting we're forecasting about 6% % to 7% over net School spending the factors of net School spending are not straightforward Transportation costs do not count towards net School spending um Grant expenses don't count toward net School spending Capital uh debt interest none of those things count towards net School spending what it does capture isn't just our budget but it's the town's apportionment of employee benefits Insurance um allocations of uh you know accountant fees um accounting salaries we add all that together so this is Big Picture This this isn't just our budget this 16.9 represents all of the town's cost regarding the schools plus our operating budget less what I just discussed Transportation operating so on and so forth and again we're very lean and we remain very lean in comparison to all of these schools so our budget is not exorbitant at all it's 16, 693 984 which is um I can get you the the actual figure to that not right now but I can get back to you but in my previous presentations we're in the bottom quarter per of the state in net School spending compared to anybody else I'm just looking at some of those like Link in concr understood Y no expands before that those are pretty wealthy communities it expands beyond that um and like I said you know the 318 districts in the school I think we were 27 that's off the top of my head so we're we're in that bottom yeah I get that it would be good to get that because um just for my own edification and then look at performance metrics so one thing I do want to clarify though is the factors of net School spending is everything that we just went over right so they're they're they're factoring in the equalized valuation of property in these towns they're factoring in the income and they're holding these towns to a higher standard of found Foundation budget so it's it's Apples to Apples when all said and done so it doesn't matter if it's a more wealthy community than not that my question is being biased in any way know I'm just expanding to get a full full picture so I'm not making any snap judgments no but that's why we put the dark communities in as well as the communities in the region those the only dark those Paul I know you said you wanted to hold questions but this relates to real estate you want me to hold it you want me or can I ask it's up to you if you'd like to ask a question that's fine no it's just to to your point about you know the different communities and and their assessed values I guess how does that how does that come into it because I look at Lincoln conquer sorry um you know if Welsley was out there you're talking about an average $3 million home you're paying about $75,000 in real estate taxes which is not what we pay so how does that differential impact that Cal yeah so again I'm I can't get into the Weeds on that and you know odds are you know maybe Jamie knows more about that with the equalized valuation but that is the whole idea of you know this formula right here they find your equalized valuation and find a local effort from property wealth and then they find an equalized valuation from the income that people earn in those towns I think that would be that would be important for us to figure out because I mean I know what I've seen from my clients and you are talking about $75,000 real estate tax bills annually but Wiley wasn't on there right no but I but even Lincoln and con I mean I can fill up a client's house in conquer that was you know sold for $3 million I know she paid about 65,000 real estate taxes I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out how that how that is going to equate to us if we're comparing homes and their equalized value and all that other stuff $75,000 for a $3 million home is going to give me a lot a lot pie to pull from so like I said my understanding is the formula captures that through those Avenues and then they set the bar of your foundation budget accordingly you know now okay you're a more wealthy community we expect your contribution to be a little bit higher than the other schools hence why we see the lawrences and LS and new bedfords reap the benefits of the Chapter 70 Aid this year Well above minimum Aid and you know these other communities which I will get the report and circulated you'll see are at that 85% Target and are getting minimum Aid so they're contributing 85 % of their Foundation budget locally and the state's only contributing 15% otherwise and Patrick I just comment because it's pertinent to what we're discussing percentages are great M but when you're looking at a town like ours it's not just the percentage it's what the disposable income is left especially after the way the economy has been the past couple of years that the town can actually eat and I understand again I didn't create that formula and I'm I'm talking percentages say it's not just a percentage because you have to look at what the town's people have available somebody with a $3 million house has a lot more disposable income than somebody with a $200,000 house and that's why you know so this does allude to amount so when we say 6% over net School spending that's a million dollar you know 2% over net School spending is half a million dollar for Fair Haven not overnet school spending or 6% over net School spending is $1.5 million over New Bedford so they they there's more than percentages here it's a lot to digest and I don't want to get away from the picture but the whole point is our budgets lean as what's required by the state and they actually expect the town over time to continue to contribute more and pull back on chapter 73 so Patrick can you just discuss if we don't meet net School spending over time what will happen yeah so ultimately n school spending if we don't meet it again we're 6% over it right now there there's best practices we talk about you know free cash and you want to kind of land 3% of the budget things like that there's best practices of how much you want to be above net School spending but if you don't meet net School spending the state requires you to make up that deficit in the next fiscal year and not going to give you more Aid they're not going to make you return money but you're going to have to roll those funds over to the next year and build it into your budget and make sure you spend more which obviously could create a cliff for us too so now we're going to build more into our budget the following year with Chapter 70 funds from the previous year that a year after that aren't to aren't going to come to fruition because we're still making up for a previous year deficit um if you continue down that path you know they talk about ping back Aid and and penalties um I've never approached that in my career so I don't know what that looks like further than that Mr if there is a disconnect between that effort by Jessie I assume and the law of what we can raise under 2 and A2 and we get to a limit that we can't go beyond on taxation but desie keeps raising their mandate what happens again and I'm I'm just going to go back to the fact that if equalized valuation and income tax income is going up they're going to expect certain amounts of revenues to come back from real estate taxes income taxes and then they factor in your Municipal growth factor which if it's decreasing obviously they're not going to hold us accountable for more when they multiply that in that's going to help aid the community if that's increasing along with those other two figures of course the formula is going to say we expect the town to contribute more what if there's a conflict between the two and a half law and that's not my expertise and we can discuss it but you know I'm not to I think I think we're getting off track from what's happening right now right we're talking now we're talking about minimum net School spending and that 6% that were over minimum net School spending I don't think there's anybody in this room realistically that would say hey let's go back to net School spending so I just think we're spinning our Wheels we could all investigate net School spending and now the equalized valuations work we're 6% above net School spending that beside the point where a low bracking on above that school spending right compared to most other municipalities we're just talking about where we're at this current fiscal year where we're at what a budget for this current fiscal year even if we came in at zero we're still 6% above net School spending corre so net School spending is it's have a right now we don't need to have that conversation so why don't I go I think it's good to point it out it's important in I guess to that point you know it was 12% overnet School spending a few years ago we dialed that back to 6% so again what we're trying to say is we're doing our job we're keeping our budget down to cost and and we're teetering the line of net School spending point B yeah but that 6% translates to roughly a million dollars correct okay so our budget consists of salaries and wages uh right now our school district has approximately 145 full time employees many of our employees belong to a union and those who do not are typically in contracts um employed under 1 to sixe contracts so all of those agreements dictate in individual employees annual pay and benefits the next section is technology our district is a 1:1 District meaning that we have a ratio of one device for every student this allows Equitable learning for all students and also permits Verve learning gamification better engagement Blended learning environments and the ability for long-distance learning if needed with this comes fixed cost maintaining a strong and safe technological infrastructure that can support our devices of what our teachers and our students need curriculum this is the meat and potatoes of what we do each and every day it's the central guide for our Educators as to what is essential for teaching and learning so that every student has access to a rigorous um academic experience so without Core Curriculum teaching techniques would be disjointed and inconsistent from one classroom to another and we've been down that road before we're in a much better place now so in order to substantially save funing the curriculum is generally entered into as a 3 to 5e contract fixing it cost over that said period of time to save us money so special education out of all of the bunch that is the most volatile unpredictable and obviously it's mandated cost to our district on a per pupil basis special education costs are at a minimum approximately double of that of a general education day student to provide Equitable Services to all students our district must have funding for fixed and mandated costs which support early identification assessment related and social and emotional Services just to name a few and then finally in order to be eligible for supplemental special education funding a cushion at Public Schools must budget and spend at least the same amount of funds as the prior year which is known as maintenance of effort Transportation Massachusetts schools are legally mandated to provide trans itation to students who reside more than 2 miles from the school our school committee policy adjusts this threshold to require students who reside more than a mile from school to be transported the cost of transportation to the district is approximately 1.3 million both for general education and special education students and it increases regularly due to contractual obligations uh and just as a point of information we've had a 133% increase under the new contract for the fy2 school year high school tuitions because acrush at Public Schools does not consist of a high school for our students we are again legally mandated to pay tuition for Resident students attending High School traditionally this expense is covered in the municipal budget however in our town we have added we we have the added challenge of carrying this expense in our school operating budget so our high school tuition's costs make up approximately 20% of our overall budget and those are some of the most unpredictable costs so we currently pay tuitions from our local budget to Bristol agie Fair Haven High School and New Bedford High School and then facilities or operations in maintenance the district's parcel of land is approximately 54 Acres where building parking and recreational space cover the majority all of which require quite a bit of attention maintaining and operating our facilities is costly as our schools were conu constructed more than 50 years ago and much of our major equipment is out ofd and inefficient while we work hard to mitigate those costs uh the cost that we are able to many costs related to operations and maintenance are fixed and become sign significant budget drivers so yes before we flip the page yeah Transportation do we get reimbursed from the state we do not so vocational schools get reimbursed uh our school system does not get reimbursed there's minor reimbursements special ed you can get reimbursed via circuit breaker um it's not at the rate that other so that's 79 half% and then um mckin vento AKA homeless transportation you can get reimbursed for that's very minimal you um survey the families to determine how many students are with in that one mile radius and the two mile radi like is that that policy is that static that been you know when was that past and is that it isn't static um we actually just discussed it recently when we overhauled our transportation policy uh we do evaluate those numbers and we considered you know if we made those cuts would that be a bus uh or you know if we change that policy would that have be a bus if we charged these students would it be um you know impactful to our bottom line and ultimately right now it's it's minimal um it's still in discussion I they just GE the ridership right like you know I mean I used to do the drop off or pick up I mean it's always the most popular time of the day is cars rolled out there I'm just curious as to how many people are using the buses these days we look at it multiple times a year and the other you know the other piece of it is you know right people register because their intentions they want to have it available and then they we find out that they're not riding the bus half the school year and they took up a seat I guess what I'm going with these questions is you know we're doing it on the town hall side of things is really doing a deep dive in scrubbing our existing business models right we're this year more than ever we're take our mindset is not to do to look at things not how they've always been done and this year after year just becomes the same old thing and tell me that every year you examine that and you look at it as if you were day Traders right you know um then I think that's a good process we constantly and there I mean we've done that there's a bus that we cut that we weren't made mandated by law to provide to one of our our schools um and it's an unpopular opinion but again we're we're in tough budget times and it's something we want to offer but we don't require it other towns are accommodated by this school um so we've had we had to pass the BX so again we are we are looking outside of the boxs okay so again our budget is lean not exorbitant so as you can see from this slide salaries make up 62% of the overall budget and a 3.55% of the overall increase if you remove tuitions then the salaries of 78% of the overall budget we do not have a contractual obligation in um line will we back into Personnel salaries or raises later so what you see in the budget is what we're actually paying out if there was an employee who needed to be replaced and they come off the books at say $60,000 and we hire someone at $80,000 we make up that difference in our budget at least we have since I've been here that we don't go back to the town to ask for those funds we also do not charge any food service salaries in our local budget these are all charged to the school lunch revolving which is 100% self-sustaining transportation that is 8.26% of the overall budget and 1.19% of the overall increase there is a mechanism for us to be reimbursed with some of our special ed and homeless Transportation through circuit breaker um as we just discussed a little bit ago also in your detail budget you can see that circuit breaker funds are already factored in to offset our overall budget um so $334,700 of the overall budget um we've had a decrease in enrollment there's been no change to the New Bedford High School for General Ed or special education their Haven High School is down 18 General ed students and up one special education student so historically our budget has carried extra seats for tuition and enrollment unknowns so since we began this process in January and February our forecasts have already changed seven or eight times um but you'll see in this budget we did not buffer for any additional seats um because we know funds are scarce and are likely more valuable being available to the town at this point however if there's a move in or a change we will need to come up with a solution with you with the town as these can be truly budget Busters so overall these fixed costs which are highlighted in blue are 90.3 3 4% of the budget which is a result in an overall 4.24% increase and again that's fixed costs and so please note our overall increase is only 3.96% in comparison all other items represent a 99.66% of the budget and result in a 28% decrease included in here and many more mandated costs such as speci special education so here are teacher salary projections uh this year coming up so as we just stated 62% of our budget is salaries so to put this in perspective above is a summary of our Union teacher salaries which are all the unit a members so this chart does not show every single step and level but it shows the current categories where teachers fall 44 of 94 which is 47% of teacher salaries are at the top four categories shown here so you can see we're very topheavy uh the counterparts which nonunion get a 3% Cola so this chart really shows that it's really good that we retain our teachers and our students have consistency which is why we have a great team here in a cushion it and we've able to do the great things that we do because of our team but on the flip side budgetarily um you see that the longer a teacher is here they progress through the salary schedule which increases their pay in line with that we didn't have any retirements last year and again I'm not see I'm not aware of any for this coming year so that provides little opportunity for us to find Savings in the salary Department year in and year out and I know it's not you know a popular comparison but in comparison to the state our teacher average salary is still well below the state average that's right so Sr funds we did not put any operating expenses into Esser funds so nothing was moved from our local operating budget to the Esser budget everything in Esser was new you'll see the amounts on this slide for Esser Sesser 2 and Sr 3 so Esser that those uh funds reflect high dosage tutoring professional development summer program uh so summer programming maintenance worker enrichment at the elementary school late bus services since we've since cut covid cleaning and sanitation custodial services and some minor Renovations so mind you all of the expenses put towards Esser require Desi approval to ensure funds were spent in alignment for the purposes of these grants however some of the Esser expenditures now make sense in the local budget such as the maintenance worker and the enrichment program as you know there's a very with the maintenance worker it's a demanding Market the cost are up for outside help truck charges hourly rates Etc so the $60,000 that we have budgeted is the highest that we would go for a qualified rate as we want to get the most qual qualified candidate and you know we need we believe that we need to spend this money to to have savings because we think we would be spending as I mentioned before a lot more money to fix things as we have aging buildings enrichment this has been a very popular after school program the last three sessions at the elementary school we've had nearly 200 students at each session and also I want to be as transparent as possible we had a new website that was added to Esser with a strategic plan to bring it into local So the plan worked out because we were able to cut three other services because in the new website it's inclusive of a one call system our s'more newsletter can all be done in this new website and then the Civic plus which was the company for the old website um for the budget is a break even or slight savings at this point I'll just add one comment so to uh Mr W's point we are always evaluating everything every year multiple times a day uh year so we were able to catch that for the website we were able to along with other items that are okay so I this has been a very lengthy process I want to thank um lengthy and inclusive I will say I want to thank our budget subcommittee um he took many many hours and meetings and uh nights to get this to this point our leadership in the district as well as all of our staff um in the next steps of this process we will continue to uh have collaboration via input from the school committee our full committee the public as well as the town so every again every single item in the budget can be aligned to our strategic objectives in the district strategic plan and this budget that you have before you maintains level Serv and looks forward to growth opportunities and efficiencies so we strongly encourage staff all of our stakeholders really families the community to engage in the remainder of the budget process so just keep in mind that for every percentage in our budget that represents approximately $16,990 which is the equivalent of 2.25 teachers or two school buses or chapter 78 for 27 students all budget decisions have consequences and behind every number is a student or a teacher Etc so just because a need goes unfunded does not mean that the need goes away and just concluding here um you know ultimately again we're coming in a 3. 96% increase compared to last year $635,000 increase in dollar value um if we were asked to be level funded that means a deficit in level services to the value of 635,000 you know we can go down the list but ultimately what is this mean moving forward you know does it mean a reduction in Staffing does it mean significant changes in programming um you know do we entertain student fees and pass those on to families I know we don't want to do that to our community members via tax or other fees do we eliminate activities Al together um you know big picture there will be setbacks and you know ultimately we hear you we understand this is a trying time you know we've met with players all around this group and had discussions where you know we're pushing the envelope we're thinking outside the box we've shared all the detail that we can share you know there's nothing hiding um you know there there's plans Beyond fy2 to look at tuition contract changes to to benefit from savings um you know there's opportunity with school choice to generate some income regionalization let's talk about it you know is that going to save the town some money um we have an energy management service project going on you know we could have sat here every year and said hey we need this for Capital and find a way to fund it we've gone on this Avenue to to maximize tax incentives related to energy Energy rebates things like that it's going to give us a 20-year plan on how to address some of the significant capital in our in our school um we've changed policies we've increased use of facility fees to maintain our gyms to maintain you know keeping the lights on keeping the heat on um we're looking at preschool fees right now you know we charge preschool tuition $2,200 per student some of that we collect some of that we don't some of that's reduced some of that's full price well I just told you back at the rates well maybe I didn't but if you don't charge preschool tuition you get to claim them in your student enrollment for chapter 7 so that means every student that we charge tuition we do not get Chapter 70 funds for because of that we lost 20 preschool students this year if we let them come for free we'd get at least $2,250 per student from the state right now that's $50 more and that's less time for us to worry about collecting invoicing communicating um so we're considering that you know we're allowed to negotiate bids we just had a big bus contract come in there's talks to negotiate that price down lower via the chapter 30b rules um and then you know school lunch we we we're maximizing what we can charge to school lunch you know pest related Services cleaning related Services um equipment related Services Plumbing utilities you name it we're legally allocating that to school lunch to to avoid having it in our operating budget so we're doing the best that we can well thank you and at this time we'll end any questions thank you Dr Bary thank you Patrick and we appreciate the detailed line on of budget that you sent us to review uh I'd like to open it up any questions for fincom and B sorry for all of you I have I'm down on duty tonight so I got to go pick up my voice but I just want to say this before I leave um we always enjoyed a good work and relationship with the school committee and the elected body um and I think we're good place as far as our elected officials they know their responsibility not only to the the critical mission of uh education but also to the overall tax taxpayer and the overall fiscal Health um so I'm really confident in the process and in the system all thing I would just ask is that when we get to the process is that we all collectively honor the process of town meeting you know get pretty nasty on to me before I don't it might be a sugar rush a short term win but the longterm I think can be really damaging to the town and and you know so that's all I would ask said we have a process that the town has used for since it was since the Inception they ask we continue to to honor that process thanks leave up to professionals decide may [Music] they than so with the numbers that you guys gave Patrick you have your overall en enrollment down for 2025 48 FAL which is roughly about a 4% decrease in enrollment just wanted to make sure my numbers were correct on that um and you kept mentioning old colonies numbers and Bristol Aggies at like a $6,400 difference per student cost but one thing you don't mention with that is the town's budget picks up all the retirement and benefit costs of the teachers for the 145 full-time employees where Old Colony does not so that's not part of the budget that they're charging us but that's part of a hidden cost for our employees and to that point that's that's why I tried to paint the picture with that school spending so old colony is on the hook for their I'm using them because you mentioned them nothing targeting toward Old Colony but when you factor bottom line expenses to what's qualified to the State against net School spending that is captured in there bottom line to be 177% over net School spending that's also captured in our line to be 6% over net School spending but I'm I'm just addressing the number that you threw out to make it seem like our school is so much cheaper than what you're being charged there but in fact for student when we added the difference in for benefits and retirement it's not because they charge us for their portion of that expense Rochester does not pick up the town does not pick up those benefits for the school system and Old Colony pays it themselves so that's the difference plus of what the difference per student cost and then and then Old Colony assesses US based on those expenses as well right but our town doesn't assess you for the the school department for that it's picked up in the town's budget not in the school Department's budget right but if it if it was cut we'd be a million dollar we'd be at net School spending potentially below I'm not talking about net School spending I'm just trying to get clarification for the public and everybody else that the cost per student numbers that you threw out does not include the retirement number of costs that the town eats for you guys and the benefit cost no it does it does it does $1,000 take our enrollment that was the Chapter 70 rates but if you take our overall enrollment divided by our quality IED expenses which again now is makes it Apples to Apples we're still well below our our comparable talents the uh other thing when you you brought up the increase for Old Colony Old Colony has a 133% increase in ACC cushion at students that are attending in 2025 where we have a 4% decrease in our own enrollment so kind of tough to look at their straight numbers and the dollar figure saying well they've got this much increase it's out when they actually have a big increase in enrollment we have a decrease in EN yeah again I mean I wasn't necessarily trying to compare us the old colony I was just trying to show in a factor of Chapter 70 um you know our rates are reimbursed at a lower rate that that's all I was saying regardless of how much enrollment we have we're only getting so much per dollar per student while you know a vocational or an agricultural School are getting significantly more and because our share is split between state and local that that um you know factors in to the rate per student if you will but you know we have to offer for the kids absolutely no and again day have to pay it because our kids want to go and this rate set for a reason right again we're not comparable we don't have vocational equipment we don't have all these other things that a school does so it was just a yeah we're not in any way implying we're not going to pay for our kids to go correct and right now we still have a couple of years left on those High School contracts uh one has one year left the other one has two years left and after that we'll be looking at that we're starting to look at it very closely now okay if I go I just have a couple of questions um how many positions are currently not filled eight with an asterisk so two two of those eight were not filled because we could not get candidates um so those were contracted out so the service is still being provided in lie of the FTE so it needs to be carried with the intentions that we're going to fill those positions next year um of those eight there's also one ass which is the maintenance helper that we went over and then two night custodians which also is a necessity I mean we all know what just happened in the district and that we had to spend a significant amount of money to keep our schools clean um and that continues to be a need and you know we need to fund those positions um included in that group of eight is also a board certified behavior analyst which we pay contracted Services right now uh um at extremely high rates that we believe if we can bring that local factoring in the insurance costs that it's going to cost the town if this person were to enroll in Family Insurance you know worst case scenario we'll still get more bang for our buck we'll get a better hourly rate and we'll get to utilize them 37.5 hours a week versus what we pay for an hourly rate for only about 20 hours per week and how much do we pay um I can pull that up give me a few minutes and then and there's two interventionist positions that are vacant which ultimately we are again offsetting those needs via Esser with some high dosage tutoring um ignite reading is something that we just rolled out to address these needs but as we know you know they're here we try to fill the positions we want to fill the positions s is going to go away and we're still going to have those needs for students we also are doing math tutoring at the middle school at this point in time through Esser because the need is still there so and this isn't anything that's just unusual to a cushion it I think many school systems are having a tough time trying to hire certain positions are both mandated positions or are they some of them are um the special education ones are yeah um what was the uh I'm sorry that what was that last one that you said the bcba the board certified behavior that mandated through special education services and that one we pay $65 an hour for and we cap it at what we can afford which again is not 37.5 hours a week and I will say with that the needs have increased with the social and emotional issues that we've seen in the schools so definitely the need is there to have that position okay so if I've done the math right that's about $442,000 that we've Incorporated that currently isn't being expensed is that right um well if we don't include the pair of professionals that are contracted okay so what what is currently being so it's what is currently being contracted out so you've got an intervention interventionist the bcba the special education Paris and I believe that's those are being contracted out yes so it's the custodians the maintenance helper and the interventionists correct which to me is about $227,000 how much Pat 227,000 there's about 68 for the interventionist 100 between the two night custodians and then another 60 from me I've got a math interventionist and a TVD interventionist at AES for 67 so I've got two at 67 but one of those interventionists again is being addressed via contract well they both are because we have ignite and we have the math intervention at the middle school and again we're taking Sr funds right now to meet the needs of the students because the need is still there we just have not been able to hire anyone and did I hear correctly we've got 145 full-time equivalents right approximately yes okay and 94 of them are teachers uh they're Unit A members so yes the majority of that's teachers um I believe the unit a also includes our nurses that are on the salary schedule um so the other 50 are Paris 50 yeah so 145 full-time oh yeah sorry and then you have 94 ministration um custodial unit U par professionals so the par how many pars do we have um I'm just looking because a onethird makeup of non-teachers seems kind of high so I want to break that down into profession between special ed and regular Ed 21 and I guess P we've talked about this before Patrick too I guess the part that I'm struggling with I know we've talked about like the increase the contractual increases that we got back in January 500,000 M and then we've gone through various budgets reiterations that took it up to eight down to seven and I think now we're at five and change right and that is including just one custodian come up out of coming out of Esser into our budget right are you speaking to overall salaries or yeah it's just the contractual yeah so I think it's at 570 it's at 57 I don't I I can't recall preliminary numbers I mean that some of those were estimates at the time yeah but yes this is all encapsulating um any Personnel in the building 57,000 I mean there's a big fluctuation right we were at literally 600 in January December then we skyrocketed to 8 now we're down to s iy rocking into eight but again um in the this is a February budget when I pull the numbers but I guess I guess can you help me understand CU When I look at salary increases over the number of years Okay so we've never been that high just for standard contractual obligations um you know not including additions so not you off but we we analyze it if you take away all the contract all the union employees the year over-year increase for non-union employees is $71,000 so ultimately half a million dollars is solely related to Union increases the addition of the maintenance Helper and converting the bcba from a contracted service to a FTE otherwise 71% so Contra 71,000 is representative of everybody that is not a union employee so contractual increases from fy22 was 175 contractual increases for FY 23 was 22,000 contractual increases from and I know this is report at time Patrick but I can give you these are the print outs we got there was also reclassifications of where employees were included and things like that so reclassifications lines I don't know what level this no this is it this is just onepage summaries contractual increases um FY 24 contractual increases 161,000 and then now we've got contractual increases of 500 yep understood I I mean the numbers of the numbers if we look at this teacher salary projections not to single them out you can see you know some are receiving as little as a 3% some are receiving as much as an 8% um it was how the contracts were negotiated before my time um and this doesn't include the increase for step or does it this increase a step and level up it's the cola plus the steps and Lanes but so actually to your point so an FY 23 a master's 45 Step 11 was receiving 84,000 the next year they were receiving 86 which was a 3% the next year they were receiving 89 which was a 3% you know you go down to some of these other lines um m 2 was a 4% and now this year all sudden it's an 8% it's just a factor of how the contracts were negotiated um again and I have schedules I can I can share with you to prove so we can see how you know when the town gets $700,000 and increases are 775 there's the struggle right understood the 4% decrease in so you know I think we sit here and and I hear all the different towns and everybody pays at the end of the day we're just looking at it like what do we have and how do we fairly allocated to all the services because yes school's important and I've said this every year for how many years um my kids are in the school system we also need police we also need fire and how do we and how do we spread a $775,000 increase when utilities utilities alone have doubled for everybody right so you know all the struggles that you've brought up for the school system every Department in town has it so it's not it's not an issue that is exclusive to the school system but it's an issue we have to look at as a finance committee to allocate what little funds we have and if we're asking everybody to come back and be level funded for it whether we're only 6% over minimum spending or not there's only so much in the kitty so if you guys get your your punch list on your budget that means nobody else gets anything else in the town for their increases that they're going to show so where does the money come from that that's what we we're wondering the same way and you know again if you look at our February presentation to now we've we've come down significantly right but your February presentation was also significantly higher ask I mean right now you have the largest increase ever asked for the school system what it was like in February was close double that 1.2 4% wasn't the lest increase that no dollarwise I'm not talking percentage I'm talking dollarwise we're we're only talking dollars cuz we're saying this is how much money the town has keep in mind like Transportation alone we were predicting a 30% to 40% increase in that alone and it can't it was lower thankfully so again I I I hate to go back to the same points but you know 4% 4 and a qu% of our budget increases is a result of tuitions Transportation which we made Cuts within there in salaries so we can't cut tuitions the 4% doesn't have the benefits and the health and everything else that's factored into it so I can't look at a percentage number and say that that's accurate because the town is footing that bill somewhere else not in your what's the percentage increase on insurance costs well what was it Mr Kelly eight or n% increase this year on health insurance alone never mind the retirement increase that's the estimate right now and you know I mean if we Z Point that's out of our control too so but it needs to be part of the discussion because in the end of the days and it's something that I've brought up the past couple of years it's still an expense that's incurred by the school is just accounted for in somebody else so it doesn't show on your numbers if we look at the school department as a percentage of what our overall budget is it's 53% roughly is the school department for the town budget if we take the benefits out for the town employees that are being covered for the school department it brings it up over 60% so I've preliminar run preliminarily ran those figures because I want to ensure that combination of town and school we're meeting that school spending to your point I'm coming up after you factor in what seems to be the the trend in insurance and allocated costs to us $17.1 million budget so to your point it's higher but 17.1 compared to again previous years that's only a 200,000 an increase in the grand scheme of things so yeah guess you know however you want to shuffle it I we we understand and we've identified those costs without those costs we won't meet requirements and we'll lose Aid so it's all it's definitely factored in well we're still a million dollars over minimum requirements and and I'm not saying that we give up a million dollars and cut it down to that but I'm saying we have to be able to whittle something down because as it stands right now Mr Kelly what did you say we're still 600,000 roughly over what realistically we could do as a town it's going to come from somewhere not all from the school department but it's still going to come from somewhere and I have about 1.9 million of T of school costs that live in the town budget so again that's admin allocations that's insurance allocations but that's only for your and we're discussing J figures right and for see that again that's only for you figuring out in the desie formulas that's not which which is that's not in your budget here correct now just a quick question uh new positions or positions that are moving to salary Town employees how many new positions are those so I can the maintenance worker so I can figure out the a new estimate for insurance because everybody everyone who comes in C the potential $188,000 to the town so the maintenance record is one and then the bcba which again I I reached out to our previous Town accountant to get those rates to say Hey you know their salary plus their insurance maybe it comes in at 100,000 we're paying 100 and a quarter at at contracted services so there's a savings that isn't visible isn't captured But ultimately it's a $25,000 savings that we other need it for the estimate of insurance it's those two positions but you had eight unfilled so how are we down to two now two new positions two new but right now we're not paying those because F that are going to that you're planning to fill so eight 8 * 18 14,000 yeah round it up to I just would like to ask a rhetorical question the total revenue increase this year is 1.76% I don't like talking in percents you know that I like talking dollars but I'll go into your uh speak of percents total revenue increase is 1.76% school school cost increase is 3.96% well that means we've got to cannibalize someplace else to make up the difference and we calized everything else the last couple of years to balance the budget I think the thing to keep so do we have a sense of what the contractual increases will be next year no because the contracts will be negotiated this is the last year of the the contracts I think I think going forward when it comes to contract negotiations I think these unions need to be more mindful of the overall uh Financial stability in this town because we can only afford so much so to have unrealistic expectations from unions is is going to bankrupt this town at some point you you can't we can't afford big increases and there's a lot of benefits that go along out with these contracts yeah I can tell you right now nobody in the private sector gets any of that stuff and and to your point there's opportunity for a town representative to sit on the negotiation committee I think somebody from the fincom should be allowed to sit on those contract negotiations this next time around just my opinion just to follow up in my statement well you would be an observer well I i' i' gladly observe I think we're allowed one person from the town but I can check on that would be an observant no one person one voting person yes the vote at the end but just to continue my statement the fair way to do this if the total re Rue increase is 1.76% is that the school cost increase should be 1.76% which is $282,600 that's the fair way to get this done I want to I want to go back to three years ago when the school added I believe eight full-time employees two part times and two part timers and since then I think there's been another four two in3 a couple more full-time employees but going back to that those three years ago I should distinctly remember the finance committee we had our concerns and reservations about adding that many positions and how would it affect the town years later now here we are with the that salary line item increasing pretty big do you know those positions by title just my record since I wasn't I don't I just know from 22 it was a fulltime as two part- timers it would have included the third nurse it would have included so can I about that I just want to finish on that so you know our recommendation at town meeting was completely disregarded and it's like no matter what didn't matter what we said just with the nurse um there's a regulation that in an elementary school when you get over 500 students you have to add a second nurse I'm just I Patrick asked two no no no I know and I'm just I want to explain that cuz I know we had a lot of questions in the past about three nurses but we were also paying culture care an exorbitant amount of money to pay for substitute nurses when having the third nurse can cover for those two other nurses and I know we've talked about it in the past because we still had a high number of um substitute nurses because of maternity leave things of that nature so it really hasn't reaped the benefits just yet but hopefully it will cuz I remember asking the question it has the third nurse I mean we're mandated in the elementary school to have two nurses they do screenings those offices are filled with children each and every day um and we have one nurse at the middle school if the one nurse at the middle school is absent then we float a nurse over to the Middle School to fill in because the cost of substitute nurses is outrageous I and I'm just simply I mean I just I'm pulling my notes okay I I don't remember exactly who they were Patrick I didn't write everything down I do remember the nurse I remember building sub point but I but I think I think that thing is I think I can count one hand in the 14 years of like how many people we've added at the Town side right we added a full-time Librarian from a part-time librarian so we're thinking about the cuts we're we're cutting we're cutting we're really cutting do you see do do you see the difference and I'm not saying you know these roles are not necessary I'm simply sitting here from how do you balance something when you've got a deficit of this much when you've got 700,000 increase and 500 of that is to cover contractual obligations for one Department the math just doesn't add up no and you know bigger picture it's not a FY 25 problem either fy6 fy7 can't continue to rely on Aid so not only you know are we held to a minimum expense standard we have to meet but we also have to find you know other sources to maintain our services I don't disagree with you you're talking you're preaching to the choir about not not thinking not being shortsighted and having blinders and only thinking about one year that was our argument for a couple of years the ripple effect was going to catch up with us and so I I agree this year is going to be a struggle next year is going to be worse M and that's next year is going to be harder to balance the budget cuz whatever we're doing now just like last year JY pulled some rabbits out of house those rabbits are done we're we're out and that's why when we see eight positions to be determined and we're going to increase eight positions over what we currently have on the books whether or not you've it's in the budget as a salary position or not it's still eight positions which we're going to have to eat the benefits for roughly $200,000 moving forward minimum each year on top of that we have a 4% decrease in enrollment so how do we justify level Services if we've got roughly two classes worth of enrollment we're add some of the enrollment numbers that we saw tonight are are data corrections as well so again 20 of those students were preschool students in the past they claimed students in enrollment that were charged tuitions you not do that that's that's 20 that's 20 so that that 4% is inflated it's not really okay so it's 2% so we're still down 2% but we're add you want to add eight positions that we currently didn't have they not ask they've been there and they should have been factored into the budget for insurance purposes knowing that those could be filled at any time and we could be hit with that insurance cost but all that would have done was in the last budget inflated the budget numbers beforehand and asked us to fund them when we didn't have positions then either that's like saying I want to put something in the budget this year so that 2 years from now we've got space here we can hire somebody no they were needed in the year that they were added to the budget they just weren't filled and me it's it's it's difficult in the schools to be able to fund this we made it thankfully to Esser but you're talking about elementary school that's in the top 55 in the country and it did it without those positions so obviously we did something right we have contracted services that are filling in for these positions so the need is still there and we're meeting them because of Sr funding so double counting are we double counting we not double well I was just going to say that point so so s are supplements not suppliants so we're funding what would be a salary line let's call it $60,000 we're hitting that much in contracted Services instead of an FTE because the need's still there the service still needs to be provided but if it goes over that 60 it's being supplemented so okay so sorry so when we're looking at FY 205's budget when we see these tbds in the budget Contract Services should be down by the comparable amount because we're only paying one not both it's either Contract Services or we're paying that full-time equivalent salary we're not paying both so correct okay so Contract Services in FY 25 is down yes because it's not reflect it's not saying we need contracted services for bcba and an FTE for bcba it's a wash okay can you just tell me like where is that just so I can make a notation so like bcba goes where I'd have to name and again we can't call it a wash because at the end of the day those eight positions at $200,000 worth of benefits that don't show up in the budget but we still have to pay for but those should have been budgeted for last year when they were added to the budget knowing that these people are going to come with benefits and then that should be carried forward but again when we talk about last year and we have this sue you were onfilm with it when we talked about what do we do if we don't get the aid that we got this year next year what do we do we put you under the gun and I know it's there cuz we we went back and looked at the video you said we'll have to cut but we're not cutting we're adding eight positions that's the we're not adding Peter we're not we're not we're not we're certainly not cutting they're vacant they vant they're vacant but we've been paying for them under different funds they've just been allocated somewhere else correct not an ad you want to move them to a salar position which has hidden cost for the they were already there that's what I yeah but the town hasn't been paying benefits on that but did you budget for it it should have been budget knowing that these positions were expected to be filled Mr Kelly budget that we're up against no you take the population at it at may you weigh out a certain amount but those weren't included in the budget well so our budget was presented in May of last year but I'm say he's included so right that's you take the you take the budget on the Open Enrollment you take the N the population then you figure out how many new positions but we weren't told those were new positions they were they were in our budget Mr Kelly but we but it's not what's in your budget it's the question that is asked are there new positions anytime there new position presented during the budget hearings and that would have been of these eight one of them was a new position last year there was a reading interventionist that was the new position the seven existed the year before the reading interventionist for the middle school corre so again I don't know where the benefits come into play but this there there was one ad from 23 to 24 so that means seven existed in 23 and 22 so at some point I you know if if we I'm sorry let me just finish if we look at these eight positions to be determined right now they're being met by bringing in outside corre right and you said on the budget it's a wash then why don't we keep them as an outside and save the town $200,000 in benefits because s is running out because we can get 40 hours of service from an FTE in house for the same cost that we're paying a contractor for 20 hours a week of service so we're getting double the service at the same cost after you factor in benefits sorry I I think I need to go back so Dr Bailey you just said we need to do this because we're running out of SRA funds but I thought we weren't covering the supplement so again so our budget can afford $660,000 of an FTE knowing we're getting $ 37 1/2 hours out of those people that 60,000 doesn't convert to 372 contracted Services these these contracted Services charge you know $65 an hour whatever so we need for hours we can afford 20 with that 60,000 now we need to tap into Essa to get those other 20 unless they come to budget as an FTE and now we get them as a employee 4S wasn't that part wasn't clear so that to me tells me we are bringing in into our budget additional payroll that was covered by Esser no well we're capturing the service at a at a lesser cost right we can pay based on an hourly rate we can pay a an FTE half covered by help me understand half of it let's just use half so $100,000 employee let's call it right or excuse me a $50,000 employee we can get for let's call it $25 an hour right in house we need yeah this employee at $25 an hour up to $50,000 an hour but when that isn't nft and it turns into contracted services and they're charging us $50 an hour we have to pay $100,000 to get the value of a $50,000 FTE so we are now using that 50,000 that we had that we thought we were going to fill a position and then we're tapping into Esser to make up the difference of those services to be able to provide them so by bringing this and hiring a position as we hope to and adding the benefits of and adding the benefits again which we factored in we bring in your next savings is $30,000 yeah B and we get more hours or or levels excuse me we'll get level services but my my frustration is is a joint meeting a year ago mhm the specific question was brought up by Sue what do we do next year if these Esser funds are gone we we hire in house which is the vacant position the answer was we have to make cuts that was what was given to us so that's our expectation it isn't while we hire it somewhere else for there's no operating expenses in eser so there's no operating savings when Esser expires but that was our point because we were looking at bringing in services to to the point of you cannot supplant your local expenses into a grant it it's illegal so there will be no savings because we need to provide the same level of services that were budgeted in our local fund that we're extending to Esser I know I I so so when I look at the budget okay I see the the bcba MH where is the contract which is the account number that has the contract services that that is being paid out of now so it right so I have to go back to FY 24 to find that for you which I can do right now because that's where you're going to see the drop when you look at the comparison correct well first a correction if adding those positions the change in the health insurance be 18.4 service 10 to 11 20 CU his retirement is going to Beed yes but everybody's getting in the weeds you've got 778 th360 to divide among everything as far as he increases go everybody's got an Ask every everybody wants to have a certain level of service you can't afford it I'm going to say the words that no one wants to hear you've got to cut and lay off it's the only way you're going to balance the budget the way you prioritized on what I don't care how the priorities are if you've got a two a $2 million expense increase a deficit of of 1.3 million you've got to what do we prioritize the the Departments so we lay off police and fire which we give them a what 16% increase what they're UN in contracts we can't do that they're just all under contract now but it has to come from somewhere and we're actually looking to the town we KN we we know this is happening every single year right for years we're going to increase inflation costs increase every single year so we go to the town we have cut as much as we can to get the services for our children that we need and we've cut substantially since February which I said we were going to do and we' worked very hard doing it now we'd like to know what is the town going to do to help us bridge the gap what else can we do but Sarah we just look at the basic economics here 775 is the increase the school is asking for how much if we do nothing else at the Town level and don't raise a single dime we still don't have the money to give the school what they want with that said though what if the state does give so we we thought the state was going to give us a certain percentage and they were a percent and a half off correct we two and a half two and a half off what to say in April or May that they don't turn around and say you know what we figured it out we're going to get it and then we're right where we need to be right the town but I think the important thing that's one option that's right one particular option the other option is you know when does the town decide that this is a emergency and we need to get the funds from some somewhere else and again I will leave that up to the town but when do we say the sky is falling and and it's raining and and we have to fix this because we have because we have a you know 3 to sixe plan with potential regionalization or contracts coming up with high school tuition you know where's the plan and and that's what I'm going to ask you know the town as well as the finance committee like when is it raining and what can we do to to the SC you just add one fact excuse me that that hasn't been mentioned yet that uh a report that came out March 13th the State Department of Education in this formula and I think maybe Jason Kelly is the only guy that knows all about the formula but anyway that they underestimated inflation costs in the formula so therefore towns cities and towns should not get the inflation factor that they should have is you and actually the inflation factor for educational institutions was 7% one year and 8% the previous year so this State underestimated by almost half of what they should be reimbursing uh cities and towns is this a bump in a road or you know where where if it's a bump in a road now this is what we going to make some determinations here uh are they are they the state going to correct that that uh Mis Mis that formula mistake let me check my cryst no it's a real stump because every many cities and towns are in the same position that we are and we're talking right now so don't don't you know so it's the pressure is on but minut what we've got yeah if we've got to determine that if it's a bump in a road then that's what we have rainy day funds for if we determine we got to you know really that it's a longterm thing then that's another Factor but I think basically is this a oneye uh you know phenomenon of not the increase of in dealing with inflation you know is only half of what we should have been getting getting you know for the inflation rate in that forming so I just want to you know put a word of caution before we start you know saying oh we you know we we want to be you know joning cuts and and uh you know you know layoffs and all that sort of stuff I think we better basically well I'm just going cautious as far as how we going to plan this plan in meeting a balanced budget I'm just going to go back to something we talked about before which is in the stats the state expects us to put in a higher percentage into our net School spend and to our budget right for the schools and so the expectation I believe we asked the question the expectation was is we don't expect any significant increase in chapter 78 because we're still not footing the bill that the state wants us to fo Patrick I think we talked about this during one of our one of our meetings so I I guess just go to that point John and let me and and so I don't know is there something out that there saying hey we expect an increase in in two years from now cuz last time I checked million still in discussion but but but that's the thing so it's still in discussion so what do we do this year what we know is if it's a a dip and they're going to correct that that mistake that they made I it's only a onee phenomena therefore therefore we that's what we have rainy day money but wait a second so the answer would be let's play that forward okay let's let's let's take that and let's play it forward right so the rainy day fund is our stabilization stabilization has how much money in it right now Mr Kelly just over $3 million3 million so we're talking about using stabilization to cover to balance the $1.2 million de deficit that's going to take it down to $1.8 million we also need to figure out something for the school's ventilation system so we don't end up with the mold for that we have to bond okay we take out $1.2 million out of stabilization what happens with our bond rating Mr hcraft okay what happens with our interest rates okay so I am being mindful of that because I I was I'm sitting in those meetings I've sat there we need to do something with the schools because we'd be dumb not to to have to be put in the same position but for that we're going to have to bond chances are for that we're going to have to borrow from the state and we're going to have to pay interest rates which are really high do we really want to take money out of stabilization that's one we take out 1.2 million million this year tack on inflation what do we needan next year stabilization is gutted completely gone okay now I'm let me finish because let me tell you something Mr hust when Co hit I took a 35% pay cup okay 35% pay cut to sustain The Firm do you know what I did I didn't take my money out of savings I cut my expenses that's the difference between the private sector and the public sector but no the point I was making I said is this phenomenon a a me a bump on the road longterm I'm just saying let's advising caution not not running out okay we're going to you know going to send out sending out pink slips tomorrow this is what I seem to be picking out no and and we're not going to lay anybody off but even if it's a the road what she saying is if we fix it with a bump in the road like you want to and take it out of a rainy day fund it's going to cost us more money for the other things that we need to do as a town by Bing out things it's not a solution because it's going to hurt us somewhere else it's just not going to hurt the bud we look at what we we faced with we we we have the uh the student Opportunity Act which basically that we have to refine and and increase the the performance among certain class of students we can't Retreat and start now it may take a plan on our part as far as how you know you know reorganize you know job descriptions of you know per you know who's performing what and whether this you know in that be basically not for laying off but basically for efficiency but so we've got the demands of the school you know student Opportunity Act that we have to fulfill so layoffs will put us in a negative as far as those accomplishments well if that's the only thing we can do as a town if it comes down to the point where we've cut our budgets so much in all the different departments that people need to start being laid off then that's what what I'm trying to say it's not that shouldn't be The Simple Solution but if you look forward until we determine whether the State Department of Education is going to acknowledge that they made a mistake and they're going to reform they don't May one may be a onee dip yeah well if that's the case then then for the one year you may be affected negatively and you can be up the following year let me ask you Patrick a question because it's pertinent when we start looking at 2025 we've got your budget right what's 2026 going to look like when we start factoring in your salary increases and contractual increases with everything else staying extra because right now we know it's not going to stay extra how much of an increase dollarwise are we looking at for 2026 with the budget that you currently have proposed because that's the hole we've got to fill next year yeah and I that's a rhetorical question okay but again we don't have our contracts for 26 and our our Sal correct stabilization is at most two years and you completely got the town and what happens but help me understand something then do you know what happens when we I've John let me ask you a question what happens when we run out of money what happens when the town has bankruptcy question is not appropriate in one sense respect the that I'm talking about if the for the formula has been not accurate and we have going to you know and it's going to be corrected next year okay and this is where we got to be you know a one-year mistake hang on I want to say something that that's what I'm talking about it's not it's not going to be a oneyear thing I want to point out a couple things that's going on right now talk about in the state okay so the Massachusetts state pension fund currently has an unfunded Li ility of $35 billion that ranks us 40th in the country so we're at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to funding the state pension fund um pensions should be funded more in line with the private sector but they're not that's a conversation for another day the other the other elephant in the room is Opel other post employee benefits actual total op liability in state of Massachusetts as of June 30th 23 was .4 million the other factor is the $1 billion being spent by our state on illegal immigration so if you don't think those things are factors in state a they are those are definitely factors in state state aid is not going to Sarah we're not getting no increase in state aid I can tell you that not there's no bailouts the the bailouts are done Mr chairman may I speak so I I don't know where all this imaginary money is going to come from but I I talked about it when Mr Kelly gave us our Revenue projections and I called his 3% an ambitious number in the state eight right so obviously I know a little bit about the town's finances and if you look at chapter 78 we average an increase in the last four years of $80,000 this year we're going to get $35,000 last year they gave us an additional $700,000 they gave you the juice last year they're not going to give you the juice again Mr HC and if just went back to what we average we average bring in additional is $80,000 they're not going to keep pumping money into the system Patrick just made that comment that they want to get us 80% we're roughly 62 to 64% state aid we're all relying on the state to keep whipping money around we already know based on the conversation State a going down and they're going to be more dependent on the taxpayers of Acushnet to fund the school system is that the moral of the story Patrick that's what the formula they ain't coming in with the magic wands in the federal government the drunken sail is down here just whipping stimulus money out you got the Federal Reserve on one side raising interest rates trying to stop inflation but you got the drunks of the federal government throwing stimulus money in creating inflation so all you going to do is tell the left hand the right hand's going to tell the left hand stop doing what you're doing and I won't have to continue doing what I'm doing and create this problem right they're bankrupting America is what's happening that's what's happening before our eyes for everybody to understand exactly what's happening to us Americans right now they're bankrupting the middle class so theault to go to go back to the overall discussion of what the town has let's just call it a million dollars the town has if the school system is 40% of 50% of the budget then you would assume that you would get $500,000 not $700,000 if that was the Assumption being made we have a police the pment contract and it hasn't been resolved yet that's for tell me need to resolve okay there's there's there's an oblig there for Public Safety we have to do we also had a Regional School come in and I heard some discussion about it and I I didn't want to talk about it tonight but they came in with an unreasonable request of $450,000 as well so they give we have 200 students 198 students going in Old Colony in all four grades and they came in with a $450,000 increase we have an ACC cushion in public schools that educates roughly a th000 students a th000 students and do we really can we really fool ourselves to say if we just if we're going to give the Regional School 450,000 for 200 students as an increase this year should we be looking at giving nothing to a school that educates a thousand students right so I think from that perspective everybody gets that perspective there's got to be some level of funding that's going to be there we we're still moving around pieces of highes to figure out exactly what we need is the magic number I I don't know if there's a magic number to throw at school committee and say this is the the magic number I would hope that we're going to get to that the board of Selectmen hasn't seen a budget yet the border of Select going going to have to do some serious thinking and may maybe make some tough decisions on cuts to free up some money from some of the other increases that we're seeing I mean you just put the Police contract and you put Old Colony in that $778,000 Mr Elgato talked about history let alone the town's fixed cost nobody else no other budget impacted there's a lot for us to be considering the board of Selectmen got an exorbitant amount of work to do when we St looking at budgets it's not going to be an easy year of course not it's never an easy year we're going to do our best to figure things out I think the moral of the story is what we want is for the school committee to do the same um and we got to also remember this the more the town spends the more people pay in taxes in this town and I know that's okay for some people to say I'm willing to give an extra couple hundred bucks if that's what it means but you also have got to look at the way the town the composition of the town is made up with our seniors and the things of the like we got a pretty good percentage of our population that are on fixed incomes and our senior citizens we can't just sit here and kid ourselves and say we don't care about the senior citizens of this town the only one we care about is ourselves and what we want is what we want and I'm not saying that's what you folks are doing I'm saying for everybody in general I'm facing that with a regional school right now seems to be that mentality right there's plenty of people that want but we just can't give and I think we all need to be conscientious of what the composition of our community is made of and stop only caring about ourselves and start caring about Thy Neighbor right because that's what made America great and and I think we're just declining when everybody just wants to continue to spend spend spend and we don't give a damn about our next door neighbor the senior citizen or the single parent right we haven't talked about that single parents that have children in the school that can't afford their taxes to go up two or 300 bucks on top of the two or 300 bucks they're already going up on if you want to talk override which in my opinion would never fly and as a fly in any other community around here so I think we all just need to get back to the table I think fincom has got to look go back and look at the budgets that are up significantly and say you know maybe they listen to the board of selectman's recommendations what what are we going to do I mean whole Colony again bringing them up $450,000 increase unacceptable in my opinion totally unacceptable in my opinion and and I don't care about the 18 additional students that are going to a school because regardless of that you still need the same amount of teachers as long as you fulfill that classroom right so it doesn't matter if I have 400 students going to a school or I got 500 students going to a school staff is still staff you still need that staff right so that whole gibber row of oh I got 18 more students that's a bunch of BS in my opinion we need to figure that out with everybody all these different budgets we need to figure this stuff out and that's where we're at I want to just one quick one no hold on sorry to to that point though the way we get to the 600 or the 400,000 full colon is asking us is because they have fixed costs and they're spreading it over to students and we just have a bigger percentage of that pie pie hasn't gone up it went the pie went up 2.7 we just got a bigger piece of the pie so I'm thinking about it a little bit differently than you are we comp that on at that table we compare right we can compare we got to think about that there their increas is 2.7 we just got a bigger piece of the pie because we have that many more kids there so we got to think about about things one okay and the only other thing is the H I hear what you're saying okay and what if things reset next year but if we don't fix things if but if it doesn't we are now one more year behind being that is my concern and keeping in mind you know you've been here the recommendation is that stabilization have anywhere from 5 to 15% of your AR braing budget and that's how we keep that better Bond reading we are at 10 we take out 1.2 we drop drop it by what 40% we're down to what 6% our bond rating is is and we're now in violation of the state's recommendation we're balancing all of these pieces Mr H right it's it's about you're thinking about school and we're thinking about the town I I want to I could claim a personal privilege as far as uh Mr gpa's comments it's not that we want money the sense we want to educ the children of this community so they can have a better future in their lives and and and parent parents and nobody I paid my taxes so my child got a good education get education and they have a quality life that is why we're in the we all want for our kid a th% nobody's arguing that I take personal privilege that with somewhat uh you know uh looking for money just for some greed no where the if I had it I would valuable asset our children and so therefore what we have to do is is work cooperatively and long term in order to solve this problem I just I just said you know raised the issue that we may have a a dip not maybe a longterm but why do you think it's a dip when everything else seems to be indicating this is a trend and that's why we talked about like the state expects us to Pony more cash in because we have right we have more valuable uh real estate uh and more Rising income in this community that's the formula screwed up because the formula takes into consideration it looks at the Department of Revenue STA and says you know what's the income from anyone that has a z 027 kind of money can't even think of our own ZIP code here and says okay because this person makes x amount of money therefore somehow that's correlated to the value of my house and how much I pay in real estate taxes Mr hwra I've lived in the same house since moving to a cushion in okay when I was making nothing okay commuting to Boston on a daily basis I I make more than that my house value has not appreciated in in any sort of correlation to my salary this the number is different and when we talk about Trends we knew this was coming last year this was part of our discussions last year we said this was going to happen we're going to run into deficit we're getting ourselves in trouble and here we are so it's not a a blit because we've seen it coming and it was part of our discussion every Department s so just two comments to that every year we run as a deficit I've been doing this for nine years every every year there we run as a deficit at this particular meeting with the group of us and then somehow other figures are circulated and we all get to the to the end game in June at the town meeting most mostly except for that three-year part where again there was just a disagreement between our offices now with that said with you saying um Mr gasar that you know we're not increasing Revenue it is what it is you know we're trying to work every single year with what we have yes we seem to do that every year is there a plan Mr gasbar for the town to somehow generate other income moving forward sort of like a 5 to 10e plan of our town to generate more income so this doesn't happen every year with every single Department I don't I don't know if I have a crystal ball to be able to tell you where new Revenue can come from is there a plan from the town or are you discussing it Services where you're looking at I'm sorry I'm talking about no she's talking about bringing in more revenue is there a plan like we have as a school committee we have our goals we have we have our it plan we have our budget plan well not a budget plan but we have our superintendent plan is there something and I've never asked this question and I can't believe I hav't but is there a plan for our town knowing that we have to do this every single year and there's Cuts Cuts Cuts Cuts is there something to generate Revenue in the future has it is it being worked on from our Selectmen or our finance committee to generate the income so we don't have to do this every single year mind you there'll always be Cuts cuz we'll always want to run efficiently but is there is there a plan or will there be I don't know what a town can do to generate Revenue outside of New Growth with people coming in and developing land or developing commercial property right where else will you generate revenue from that would I think we talked about like the golf course having like a country club type situation yeah if there's so with the golf course though there the revenues can only be generated if you if you brought in extra money which that the business model there should be changed and we could be making a lot more money and if I if they did what I recommended 10 years ago we would already have two million dollars at the clubhouse would already be paid off and we'd be springing in money buying ambulances and fire trucks and police cruises all in the house with the golf course but the problem is that's never been done and it's Fallen apart so and and the revenues that come from the golf course there's only a certain category I think Mr Kelly right just you can't just you can't it's it's but it's Capital stuff right it's not operating so it's not Revenue that could be used in operating it's more for Capital purchases and and those Capital purchases would be IE like Fire EMS police cruises and things of the like but there's no way I mean even if you look at a commercial facility if you brought in you know even like a Walmart and not that anybody in the P wants a Walmart but it's just speak on y just I'm wondering any kind of plan to bring in Revenue I mean what do you do even if you bring in a Walmart what are you going to get in taxation from from a Walmart and then once that money is spent in year one everybody sucks that pie dry in year One what are you doing in year two or three and four it's the same thing with all our new growth everybody just thinks you know it's this it's this chemistry that goes on in people's brains that just think oh New Growth New Growth new growth and we have to keep developing but you bring in new growth in one year like the new growth that we always use say the 250 300,000 bucks once you spend that 250 300,000 bucks it's gone forever in that year so now the next year you're waiting to see what you do for New Growth again and once you spend that money that revenue is gone forever once you get sucked into somebody's budget it's gone forever that new growth doesn't just keep compounding over and over what does compound is the expense ones I give it that money to somebody that money is going to be compounding on as a percentage especially like we talked about with salaries you if you if somebody's position the janit a position 60,000 bucks or 50,000 bucks that's going to compound at a 2 or 3% 4% 5% depending on that step thing with your contract it could be up to 7% right so that 50 Grand will turn into 70 grand in 5 years and you have a sh ball because you only had 50,000 injection in year one and in in year five you're at 70 you to $20,000 sh on first injection that school of thought though this town would have been bankrupt like since its Inception a dozen two dozen times because you're saying that we're not the spending the spending has gone at a much more rapid rate in the last decade than what it has in the previous 50 years if you look at that there's a number of factors that fall into that right I me it's huge inl right so let's so you know we we talked we it's funny because you know you talk about inflation right but inflation really Peak somewhere the end of 2022 23 right and that was peaked at somewhere around 9% okay and now we're running probably a three three and a half inflation rate okay the fed's F Target the fed's Target is like 2% they're never going to get to 2% but we're running right around 3% excluding food and energy right which is the two biggest inflationary factors that are in inflation that's why the FED excludes it from CPI which is Bulls my mind right but they do it and and you know we last year when we talked about budgets we didn't have all that infl nobody was talk but that was that was the really the height the peak of inflation but nobody was really talking about it now we're we're we're down here on the slope and all of a sudden everybody's talking about inflation and I'm sitting there scratching my head going wait a minute if there was a year to talk about inflation really kicking you in the head that would have been last year to discussed that inflation thing which we did we talked about it I'm sure I'm sure that some people did and some people are just blaming this year on inflation and I'm I'm scratching my head because I look at other people's budgets and I go well if food and energy is the biggest one and I'm looking at a particular budget and I'm looking at it going hm yeah you're your energy cost really didn't go up and that's the biggest part of inflation but yet you're tagging inflation everywhere else in your budget saying inflation inflation inflation but energy is probably the biggest inflationary Factor there is and your budget ain't reflecting that hyperinflation there you want everything else to be tagged along right so again it's it's an extremely difficult process we don't know if if the deficit is you know whatever we say at 1.3 or it's 1.0 right there's that 300,000 whatever it is there's always that wishy-washy number like you just said about state aid we don't know where it's going to be maybe they come in and they give us the 3% I said to Mr Kelly three months ago when he first blurted that number out of his mouth I have it on my paperwork it's on film I said it's a very ambitious number because I know the 4-year trend is $80,000 a year and I think he put three which came out to like 240 or something like that on Chapter 70 they gave us the the 3% on unrestricted um Aid right but that's the peanut number that's not what you want the 3% you want the 3% on the 7 something million dollars that we carry in Chapter 70 right that's where you get the big chunk of money from we didn't get it maybe that number does come in Sarah instead of the 0. five where it's $335,000 increase which is a drop of 50 from our normal average um increase in out the 70 right so maybe even if we go back to the average and we get the 80 grand from the 35 it's only 50 Grand that's all it is you know it's it's it's it's not a lot and for us we can the board of Selectmen we we're doing everything we can to look at different ways we can do business right now because of the the economics of of hiring and everything else we're we're doing we're going to you're going to hear us do a lot of different things in be creative outside the box can everybody do that Sarah I'm not saying everybody can do that can everybody at least be mindful of it and look at the positions and say is it possible we do this with that person and that and we can do this that's you folks and still keep the objective in that's correct that's correct so right so you have a level of services and and we did it a couple of years ago with our conservation agent right we we had a full-time conservation agent I basically made the case you don't need a full-time conservation agent we ended up with a parttime conservation agent we split the salary 50 % and we made out better with a part-time agent than we did a full-time agent there's certain jobs that you look at in minicipal government at least I do anyway cuz I'm a businessman right and you the first thing I do when I go into a business is I cut all the fat right I look at the fat and I say where's the fat and that's how I make a business successful is by trimming out all the fat so what what I do is I look at certain departments that we have and clearly I can see that there's certain jobs that we have now as full-time jobs I I know I can make those time jobs and I can still give a level of service to the residents that they won't even miss a beat that's what we're doing right now as long as they don't miss a beat uh just just one I I want to get back to the so some of these line items because we have some questions and you know we're getting late here so before we go off on another tangent I want to get into some of this um contractual increases whether it's Union non-union now when OC came in I the superintendent was right there his business manager was there and I used their those two positions as examples right when they were sitting in front of me so I'm going to go I'm going to use the superintendent uh salary increase from FY 24 to fy2 to 12.4% increase year-over-year uh $21,000 curriculum director um 11% increase $111,000 in change those are big increases that the town cannot for big department head increases like that I I don't think there's any other department head in our town now correct me if I'm wrong uh Jamie or Kevin or Bob if if there are any other increases that there there isn't then never will be spr as all own so we what we're trying to do we're trying to limit we have to limit spending so when we see increases like that it makes us scratch our head now the another one that I'm going to highlight is is is a travel travel lineup is it necessary to spend $8,000 to go on an out ofate trip for a National Conference that could possibly be attended either online or remotely it's just it's just a question look we're we're trying to find every dollar we can in this budget so if I see $8,000 being spent it's I'm going to it's going to make me wonder what's going can be was there at what conference can be attended online I'm I think you're referring to the National superintendent conference that was not able to be attended virtually there was something that looked up like it was you know available online on a daily basis no but that's that that's still a that's a lot of that's that's taxpayer money funding that that's a lot of money to travel out of state I mean is that is that normal is that normal in C I know it's for two people is that normal and customary to to attend that every year yes it is 8,000 well I think that's something to look at I mean the school committee looks at professional development budget we really feel that it's important for our district to have leadership that is going to conferences like this where they're learning best practices staying ahead of the curve it's important for our students I mean at one at that conference that you're referencing Dr Bailey was able to discover a free curriculum for a district that has actually saved us money oh part of those things are really we do feel that that is very important for our students and for our teachers to make sure that our our leadership is well informed and you know ahead of the curve understanding best prac our school deserves that our deserve that we deserve the best I'm not saying they don't so sometimes we have to spend money to sa money in the long run so for example our middle school science uh program SED is an open source curriculum it's free we got that through a conference those things we have memberships we have memberships to um superintendent organizations there's two main conferences a year one is at the state level one is at the national level those are the best conferences and when we're leading a district of a th000 children and nearly 150 staff we need to make sure that we're doing everything we can for the best student outcomes um and it is money well spent because you know we're learning legal things Etc there's so many changes in education that if we did not keep up on it we would be in trouble it's kind of like when computers came out you know what do you do with computers now it's AI what do you do with AI I don't think Dr bu is saying stop all training I don't think that's what he's saying I think what he's saying is we have to look at it a little finer instead of two people going out of state for a con a conference for 8,000 maybe one person goes for 4,000 little things like that you still get the benefit of learning you get the benefit of absorbing all the knowledge and taking those tools home come back with it implement it for half the price little things like that is it's fully capable I would absolutely agree with that however this national conferences are huge so to send two people for the the amount of money that we are are paying for this they potentially could come back with $100,000 worth of savings for us which is huge this was the National Conference on education yeah and they've never been before so I'm sorry sah National Conference on education yes yes conference daily onlines no that is not correct no I'm I'm looking at I just so we looked into this we looked into this to there's no virtual part on that confence okay then it might be a different one I'm I'm looking at National Conference for that well I appreciate you looking at it take my word um there's no virtual National Conference I can tell you that I sat down in a group at a table with like maybe five of us and the attention I got from this National Google the national educator there were people there from Singapore China the experts are in in the field you don't get that number one in a virtual conference I attend a lot of virtual conferences and I think we learned from Co that we don't get everything we need to get when it's virtual the two conferences that um the state and the national one there is no virtual so I all going back to your your points where we're in a deficit every year yeah absolutely because we have X amount of money and people coming with their asks and then we compare that to and we need to save money any way we can okay in the 14 years I've been doing this in the 9 years you've been doing this has the it ever been at $1.3 million I don't I can tell you it hasn't and I've been doing 14 we've never been at a $1.3 million deficit that I can recall sitting here on March 20th at this point in time it has never been this large there it has never been this large what's the second have we been like 800,000 maybe six half so the thing is is I think we need to realize the rabbits are not going to come out of the Hat 1 1.3 I agree so we need to do everything we can to try to save money and that's what we're doing we're thinking outside of the box okay and that's what we're doing we're cutting what where we can cut we it's it's and so it's how do we share this one three how do we share the 1 three deficit I still have a really hard time and I know it's just me discussing doing all of this and possible cuts when the number in my 9 years has always changed in some way a month later so I know you hate to hear that Sue but it's it's true how do we how do we do what we need to do to get ready for town you okay because here's the thing remember three years ago we sat here we're like we need to cut we need to cut we need to cut and then you're right at the very last minute and the only people who hadn't presented was the school and all of a sudden we got an extra 500,000 and that extra 500,000 went to balance the school's budget and everybody else had already presented we literally said don't you dare ask for anything so we've been saying that to the rest of the town for a really really really long time we do we haven't added we have not added to anybody other than like I said we converted a librarian from part-time to full-time for the children's room for the kids like we haven't added anything the only way with inflation and not adding anything how are they even functioning these departments I guess that would be one of my questions I that how what did they do last year to make it so they only need they can still function this year without adding any we're not adding bodies that's a question that I have no we're not adding bodies we're cutting bodies we're not adding bod we're cutting look at Kevin's example what we did right that's what we have done in the past that's only a small example of what what do you want to do you want to cut the conservation aging completely we can't do that we also have to be mindful of we need to function as a talent right we need need people at the offices to collect revenues for the town we need people to uh inspect the buildings we need we need those right so how do you balance that you can't gut departments you can't like Kevin and I will agree to disagree with the town planner like Town planners pay for themselves guess what we've cut that and even though it doesn't because you we thinking of other things combining with maybe combining with other departments it's still not raining right still not rain it's you don't getting off well we're just talking about budget to find money so the town plan hasn't been cut but what we have done is we've gone out and advertised okay and that didn't work okay but is is do you really want to go out and just say okay so now I'm going to put a salary on a Town planner in town of aush we're going to pay $100,000 for some that's going to sit in an office and maybe put in two or three hours a day and pay him $100,000 and then we got the mentality of everybody else going wait a minute I work harder than that person and I'm only making $70,000 and that's the py who you get on so we we did bump a salary we went out to advertise quite honestly Mr Kelly I'll tell you I I watch MMA constantly just to see what salaries are doing and what other people are paying so that I can't get the Wall taken over my eyes when somebody's saying oh this is what they're paying no I already know what they're paying right and the reality is now where that regionalization thing we just talked about in our last meeting two days ago or yesterday or whatever the hell it was I go to so many meetings nowadays I I don't even know what meeting I'm in anymore we just talked about regionalization right we're we're going to we're talking when M po it the town play a position Sue just mentioned right so instead was saying hey you know what we budgeted $75,000 for a town planner we advertised for it couldn't find any we actually went out cuz I said we don't need a full-time planner we need a pot time planner as long as we got the pot time planner to actually work 19 and2 hours a week you be amazing how much productivity we get out of somebody as long as you made sure their butt was in that office 19 and 1 12 hours a week compared to what we had before right we did that to no Prevail we got hamburger flippers we don't want hamburger flippers we need somebody with some Grant experience right to come in and and get us grants and do things like that we don't have it so now Mr Kelly and the board of Selectmen are looking at talking with mat Poise it they have a shared interest maybe we do go up in the salary and we split the salary so it's a 50/50 split right that's what different ideas we're Haven's got a letter into us now as well they've seen what we were doing with matap pois with just the planers position they have an appetite cuz they know where they're at with their budgets they have an appetite they sent us a letter we're interested in talking with the board of selectman over some regionalization so maybe we have shared service with them as well right maybe it's the concom agent that we can't hire right now they have one we don't have one we'll split that salary With You Bing we're all set I mean that's kind of where we're at in today world of employment right nobody I don't care I don't care if you're a if you're a a hot dog maker or you're a garbage man or you're a school teacher you're a business administration person right now it's difficult to find anybody that wants to do anything I have plenty of people in businesses in the private sector they tell me you know what I do Kev I bring people in and they're here for two or three weeks and I'm waving them goodbye and and that's what I have to do just to see if I can manage that person and get them to where I need to fill that position but Kevin these changes you're talking about are a onee fix because then they become part of the budget and then to get then next year right everything gets adjusted it's a it that helps us for that one year when we can start sharing costs then it's part of the budget and the next year you can't get an increase that way again but but we what I'm saying is we the board of select the board of Select from our side is oh like equal time we're trimming everything that we can to right from our perspective to show people that with thinking outside the box I can't it's a Fool's game so I save a dollar somebody else spends $2 just the point being to what you were saying before it's a fix for one year you can't go to that well again that's the point I understand but we've done everything and demonstrated from the board of selectman side and the leadership side that we're doing everything we can think outside of the box CU that's what we're forced to do that's what real leaders do what I'm saying is I can't save 50 cents here and somebody else is going to take my 50 cents and spend a buck 50 and my point that's the problem Su I don't disagree with you all I'm saying is that we go to that well once you can't go to that well the next year correct and if you go to stabilization that has a very short sh shelf life if we're looking to that to to to balance the budget at most at a $1.2 million deficit that gets us two years that's it you try to spend $2 million so our average run rate if if you want to go back to that conversation our average run rate in in the total budget for the town of Kush we average $1.25 million year-over-year if you look at the last four years okay I always use three to four year Trends you look at what we spent over the last three or four years our average run rate is$ 1.2 million $11.25 million that's our average run rate right if if you went that route where he said hey let's just let's just pretend it's 1.2 let's say we go to stabilization and you get 800,000 everybody at home that's figure I know you didn't give a figure but but if everybody at home's watching this and they're saying well if you average $1.2 million Mr Gasper a year and this is what my tax bill did on that 1.2 million over the last four years can you folks imagine what's going to happen when I take 800,000 to make your point suit and stick that in the budget now we spend $2 million talking about one year de if we had a DI the more you spend the more you raise right so you can raid that part of gold and you can spend it but if you spend $2 million this year that's what your calculating to raise by taxation uh hang on I I want no hey wait a minute wait a minute he's had he's had a lot of time so let me just John excuse me why why are you uh shutting me off when turn I have specific I have specific questions the budget I have some specific questions relative to the budget okay we're running out of time right why why why are you uh shutting me off I'm not shutting you off you've had plenty of opportunity to speak tonight you can really I I've been trying to get your attention for the last 15 20 minutes well we I want to be specific and focus on the budget okay well I want to give you a little history all right okay I three years ago I was sitting next to you saying the same things Sue has been saying okay now I have to wear a different hat because I'm elected by the people to to serve the needs of of CH of the children in the education of children okay it was a very lonely road it was only Sue and I were speaking at the town meeting saying we're going to reach a collision point and so forth and so on okay I remember I watched it I wasn't there I was away okay the Selectmen were looking at us with their mouths open and very silent and a critical point that we had in in where we would be going in the budget the town meeting is the legislative body of this community they made a decision that they they wanted to have quality education and make and make progress of the schools that was their vote and this is what we I I had to have serve I have to serve what the taxpayers of this community have voted to do but I just want to raise the point about 3 years ago and soon and I was a very lonely road and and everybody yes I I I I brought this up okay and uh so so no you know I'd love to have L Day Saints but but it's but it's the time has passed for that I I want to move us along um Mr hcraft thank you for your comment I know it's getting late I know you still have questions so I want make sure that you get your questions answered so if we could just keep keep moving along focus on the budget please I wanted to know more about the the two positions the academic coaches like when when were they created and what are their roles so the academic coaches support teachers so teachers who need support on the new curriculum on teaching strategies and we've seen a lot of success so they're so they're not teaching students they sometimes they are they model but overall it impacts our students so when were they added I I don't know to be fair Dr bu like we had asked you for what your concerns were we never received that like I would have had that with the year that they were added I don't have it with me tonight but we I think it's 2020 or 2021 well that's fine I mean that when they were added was it was during Co I mean those positions are pretty well paid positions and I mean between the two positions it's costing the town about $200,000 right but we also have two just for perspective there's two one for each School typically a school district of this size has four so you know again we're we're being conservative conservative with the coaches that we have that it was at least scores are improvements I just think with the with the with the teaching staff we have which is definitely a veteran staff seasoned teachers um seasoned teachers access the coaches I mean I I just it seems like like a luxury item to me to have that look every Department in this town has wants and needs but it's not a luxury item please don't call it that it's not a luxury item so so academic coaches have been in the school system for how 20 years no the point the model has been around for quite a while um you know I would say you know for teachers who are struggling our first choice is not to terminate them or get rid of them our our choice is to always support them and build their capacity and that is one huge way that we do that they provide professional development they work with the students as well to model for teachers don't you have mentors in the in the budget only new teachers have mentors but that's I feel as a budget subcommittee member that we're sort of getting in the weeds here and us as a school committee and as a budget subcommittee working with the superintendent the business manager the ATA feel that these positions are needed they're not wants they're not luxury items so that you asked the question of do you think that we need this the answer is yes so can we move on to the next question so our pillar achieving academic Excellence it is because of our staffing pattern that we've been able to achieve what we have achieved and that includes coaches especially well you know unfor and unfortunately in Economic Times like we're facing right now a lot of times you have to do more with less right I mean that's how private businesses have to do it all the time you know if a private business were to run like a municipal municipality and I've said this over and over again I know Kevin has said it uh they would probably go out of business if they were forced to run like a municipality because you can't just guarantee like raises to your employees if if you if your business isn't making a profit you're not going to give raises the next year it's not going to happen I mean you might end up laying off staff unfortunately but we do have a profit here we have our children getting smarter and more intelligent every talk benit not a profit if we're talking if we're talking about a bus I'm talking about dollars right I understand that but again you asked the question about whether or not it was a need or a want or a luxury and the answer of our the answer is that it's a need and we need it to support our students well and I know our Fire EMS police they all they all have a lot of wants as well and they don't get they have needs or wants needs that they have they want things but they can't get them they can't get them all they can't we have a thousand children that need to be educated the proper way and we don't want our our parents and our our taxpayers to go to other districts because our education is sub I understand that and I I I I know the importance of having a good school system but our responsibility is to the entire town to all the residents in this town not just parents that have kids in the school system Mike I hear you but the point is is you're getting in the weeds of how Education Works here and that's our job and it is you're right it's your job to figure out how that money gets allocated 1,000% you what said about these positions and all we're saying here is the dollar amount is less specifics and and so we don't have to get into specifics and all we're saying here is the dollar a month that we have to allocate is less because we do have to pay insurance utilities and that's all we're saying so we need however it's CAU we got to we got to bring it down because at the end of the day if we're going we're talking about stabilization I have a I have a hard issue with that because of all the things we've just talked about because when our pay when our pay comes down or utility costs go up we're not hitting savings for that we're cutting other things maybe we're having Heat at 63 instead of 68 in the house those are the types of things so we're not at we're simply looking at it like if this was my home how would I do this okay okay and gutting stabilization gives me a whole lot of heartburn not just because it's not there for us you keep on saying s is this emergency is it raining at the same time Sue you're putting your heat down to 65 you're talking about us getting rid of one of our kids CU we can't afford it and that's what you're talking about when it comes to removing staff so we're not going to get rid of a staff we're not going to get rid of one of our children because our income came down 35 we're going to do everything we can should try to support it and that's why we're talking outside the box it's it's up to you to decide how it goes all we're saying is that dollar amount I hear you hear you is low the end of the day say everything that's in your budget is a need we're saying we can't fund all of the needs so you have to find out what's the most critical need that's for us to decide as a committee so any other questions Dr Bailey okay so we have been really trying to think out of the box we know this is an issue after all of our meetings we've talked about you know at our next school committee meeting we have on our agenda agenda to look into a possible regionalization study we're looking into our tuition contracts we know that's not a fix for this year or even next year realistic we said it was three years right Dr three to five years five years probably for regionalization um I think in order for we have to wait out our tuition contracts first yeah correct so our tuition contracts have one and two more years respectively right so we know that this is not an immediate fix so we're we're thinking long term we don't want to be here every year having the same conversation okay we know this is an issue getting too old for this I know to getting too old me too so you know ultimately I want to make sure you have all your questions answered and if if you do I'd like to get some clarification on where you would like us to be and then I'm going to go back to the school committee um CU we could be here all night going back and forth right that very fair question I would like to know what is the number exact ly and then it's up to the school committee to decide how to do it yeah does that make sense yes before you do that do you have all your questions answered that's that's that's a tough question for him to answer tonight for the simple fact that we don't the board of selectman haven't seen any of the budgets right we're not done with certain individuals um with their budgets okay so for Mr Kelly to try to whip out do that get back to would you got you guys not vote on your budget until when okay so we got we got plenty of time between now and then to to work on that I've got one caveat May 3rd we need to go into the process of printing and posting the warrant for June 3rd so things have to be done right around that time totally done okay which means we have we're on Pace for May 7th for our school committee to adopt the budget to to leave it open as long as we can or we have to call a special meeting okay we call AAL meeting May 3rd May 7th May 3rd May 3rd we we'll call a speci we need to go to if we need to go to print Mr Kelly we need to go to print understood I just was painting the picture we would ask that the school committee make some accommodation and how early does it need to be because we then need to vote it right but we need we need to get the number boards need to figure that out I need to walk into the may still need to do something with ready and when will the board Tom see budgets see after I'm going to start seeing budgets very shortly I mean some of the budgets we can like Zip right through right because they're small like we have some tiny budgets I'm not going to play games with those I'm not not going to strip you know uh Animal Control Officers and say oh look you have 500 extra dollars I'm going after that we'll bang out all the little ones Finn compin say okay we got those out of the way and we got really you know fiery Ms police DPW bigger budgets I want to revisit Old Colony too right there's things that we need to revisit and have another discuss I understand that but before then he's going to come down and figure out that our deficit is X instead of Y so then they can pass the knowledge on to us to if the house comes out with uh their figures because you're not going to get this which could be late April but you're not May 3d if we're lucky if the house exactly I mean you you know I was sitting in those chairs and there are many years we went to August or September before we voted on a budget which means our last meeting would be May 1st right but we can't have it last minute that close because if we're going to try to meeting 48 hours before the meeting is posted so we would need some I don't I mean if we're waiting to see if this all of this hold up is waiting going back to the earlier conversation of what is the state legislative body going to do with Chapter 70 going from a 05% increase to whatever the percentage increase I just told you what the fouryear Run rate's been an increase in chapter 7 is $80,000 a year right now at the 0.5 it's $35,000 so even if that is I told you it's $50,000 you know maybe they come up with a little bit more and you get 100 Grand versus the 80 grand so you're talking 70,000 bucks we don't know no but seeing all the budgets wouldn't you agree that it's easier to cut $500,000 over two years instead of all at once and still be able to manage your services what's that how I didn't get what you just say if the cut ends up being $500,000 and that's again this is hypothetical and you want us to take that cut right now versus if we wait and find out that cut only needs to be 250 now with the intentions that it's going to come down another 250 later we're going to be able to audible a little bit better take pie talking to Kevin okay the reality of it is is wherever you said your budget is 650 right now right you're talking to Kevin I would never expect the school department to come in at 150 that would be like an historical event I'd buy everybody a bottle of titos and we'd all sit here and have a grand old time if that happened I would praise you if you came in at 150 Happ that contest what's been said all you know it's not happening though Patrick that's what that's the point I'm trying to make to everybody and including the people that are at home like you know you have to sit back and look at it and I I think you've demonstrated that the school department is up you know 6% above net School spending that that's great you guys have come down right there still as Mr B said a million dollars right we get it but I just don't understand how the rest of us all the the fincom folks in the board of Selectmen are going to wrap their arms around certain other people coming and getting this big pie of money and we going to look at our school system and say no pie for you I I don't know if that's I could ever do that right I I do think that the needs to be some more trimming right 650s we know that we can't have 650 right I agree would you that you know what's that magic number we're going to try to figure that out right I'm constantly looking at the revenue recap sheet with Mr Kelly trying to figure things out um we talked about it in a meeting that we've had um p uh you know the the revenues that they're moving targets a lot of our revenues are are variable um to revenue lines right and we don't want to get breach a certain percentage of using that Revenue line because then you become extremely dangerous right some of them were at that level 75 80% of a of Revenue you're looking at that's a variable you're getting to a dangerous level where you don't want to exceed that level right so we're going to look at things with with constantly updating numbers if State a came in with another 50 or 75 you know woo we when I'm we're talking $650,000 I think that we just with I think we just need to look at everybody needs to look at their budgets all over again and say what can we actually do knowing what we have and the absolute bottom bottom line numbers what what we would look for you know and we'll figure it out from there I want to say one more thing we can manage um so yeah I mean the bottom line is we don't want to resort to to using any funds from stabilization we don't want to resort to overrides to fund the operational budget it's it's not right and we should not be doing that to our residents they pay enough in taxes property taxes have gone up quite a bit over the last couple years home owns insurance is skyrocketed for people energy cost it's out of control we can't put any more on the backs of our residents that's all the residents in this town not not just not just parents that have kids in the school system and I get it I was I was a parent my son went to these schools I went to these schools and and I think education is extremely important um but you know how much is the cost it's just it's get out of control not just for education but for everything right and this is a difficult job I mean being on this on this committee being on your committee for a selectman I I would not want to be any one of these gentlemen the these guys work so hard they spend so much time it's more than people know so people that are watching out there before you criticize our Board of selectman you have no idea how much effort and time and care and passion they put into this town I mean I I love this town I grew up in this town I live here I've lived here since 2005 I I I bought you know a a great home in a neighborhood that I grew up in I still live next to my my parents are right down the street for me I I I love it I you know I don't want to see other people have to lose their homes because they can't afford to to live here I mean it's it's getting tough I mean I don't i' hate to see another uh housing crisis right where you have foreclosures I mean something's got to change and I you know I hopefully things will get better at the federal level because everything trickles down right when you have good economic policies at the federal level it helps the state and then it helps the local levels right now we're all hurting because of failed economic policies at the top and that's and and that's no fault of our own here you know we're all in the same boat we're all trying to run a household and and and live as comfortable as we can you know take a vacation and enjoy life right and but it's got it's gotten hotter I don't think anybody would disagree with me on that um can I ask a clarifying question and honest question so you mentioned no stabilization no overrides at the same point you know best practice is 80 70% revenues right Kevin our run rate he alluded to is a million a million 2 a year where where's the Comfort level for that number to come down so that we're not closing out a million to free cash that could have gone towards a deficit and is that built into this deficit number right now is it are we at a $1.2 million deficit with the intentions to close out a million dollar like we normally do in my understanding it is correct so where where where can we get that number to I was going to say I can just speak over the last 3 years and especially since Mr Kelly came on board where our run rate may be 1 to 1.2 per year it would be a lot more if we weren't making the cuts and cutting and trimming the fat like our selectman said it' be a lot less right right no our our deficit would be no the Run rate is a million we're closing out a million dollars to free cash annually part of it is because we're not providing the services understood so we're not filling positions about no stabilization no overrides so where where's the Comfort level with that run rate number to come to to come down from a million I I don't think you're going to see free cash anywhere near that in the future do you have a forecast for the free cash in fy2 as up the bud I could definitely get it to you I've been playing around with the numbers Patrick I mean I'd be more than happy to sit down with you I do this crap every day I'm staring at numbers and studying numbers and looking at percentages constantly so I have an actual TR trust you understand I have a break down at home I can bring into to you and show you um what's been going on and the trends right that are going on and we I think the board of Select we're going to have that conversation with you know things like exi Stacks right so we talked about that a little bit right you look at a trend if the trend's going down you you want to just stay where you're at and maintain that level but if your Trend and revenue is gone up we were talking about exi Stacks then maybe you could steal a little bit more money from Peter to pay Paul right and use that for budgetary reasons which would then in return reduce free cash following year because now you're using a little bit more of that Revenue line it's it's all on a table this year right we Mr Kelly and I are constantly at each other's throat I'll just write this again I just want to we're constantly I mean I I don't know how much hair I pulled out of his head and he's pulled out of my head but we we're constantly disputing the recap sheet right where all the revenue is right in in the but you know let's 1/ half of free cash in the last 2 years are onetime fixes like we had 400,000 in uncollected taxes correct we col we don't need to get into I just I wanted to understand we threw up a run rate is generally around a million I want to understand that you're not going to get a number of those I think it's going to be substantially less so moving forward we don't expect it to be anyone near a million is what we're saying even even with our Cuts well because part of the million is coming through because we collected some uncollected previously it's not just last year but that's the thing and it's these positions that we haven't been able to fill for the same reason we're going to have to fill those positions and that's not going to hit the bottom line but you guys know you've seen it how many times do we get emails people are leaving like Town account left uh people are constantly leaving and so that's how that's how it ends up in free cash Pat right like and so that's how it ends up in free cash and that's where it goes to stable yes and no I mean I don't want to put Mr Gasper on the spot but he alluded to the fact that you best practice you don't forecast revenues at 100% to build your budget you forecast them at 80 70 so that you have some leftover by the end of the year to close out or if an emergency happens you don't end up in a to be fair I called it a a revenue variable right so like license and permits I told I talked to you about that as well right if you're doing 200,000 right now new growth's going down so you know your licens a per per Revenue line items going to Dr Plum it down because if you ain't got new growth on this side the only way you get new growth is if you're doing licens and permits so one one's telling me we're in trouble next year with that lineup That Revenue lineup when right now we're budgeting I think 76% of license and permits off the top of my head I think that's where we're at right and that's a a massive variable like that thing's that thing fluctuates 30 40% so again we're already with the threeyear trend line we're using 76% of that Revenue line line this that variable that's in there right we went without a Building Commissioner for a short duration of time and I can tell you this right now I was I drive around this town constantly okay constantly driving around this town with my co-pilot Felix okay not you Bob right and I seen things when we didn't have a building inspector I seen construction taking place that would have required a permit fee but we weren't collecting it in because we didn't have a building inspector in place for somebody to go and pull a and local receipts are at the most 10% of our total revenue no but I guess my point is we're not as a town right you're not budgeting to Breaking make a motion that would be dangerous has everybody said their pece tonight so far I think so motion been made and second do we have so we each have to I'd like to just take an opportunity Mr chairman to thank all our finance committee members our school committee my colleagues the Bo On The Board of Select Mr Kelly um look it's it's this is part of the process right we we we might not like it um but this is this is the process that we always have to go through right and you're are responsible I think Mr Miss Bailey you made a comment you're responsible for a thousand students the board of Selectmen are responsible for 10,300 individuals in the in the town of a chrush right um we're extremely passionate about children Mr Inkley's got two young daughters um I have a son that's gone through the school system I've gone through the school system make no mistake about it I don't think there's anyone inside of this room that doesn't want the best for all of our children right regardless if it's my child or somebody else's child we all want the best for our children that's absolutely at the Forefront of our agenda is the best for us students but there's there's got to be a level of of price that you there's a stop Gap right we can't just give I I wish I hit that Mega Million at $800 million and I could just come to the school and say it's $10 million have a nice day I solve your problems for the next decade I wish I could do that b chair motion was made and seconded all right so we had a we each have we each have to close out our own meeting so all right so I'll take I'll make adjourn the finance committee favor okay finance committee is ajour motion to board of Select sorry I'll I'll second that hi doing and I think we already had a motion on the table Mr I have a second to our meeting okay all those in favor I I thank you thank you everybody thank you everybody [Music]