##VIDEO ID:muBlVNq1y0g## restart right uh and I'm gonna share the uh latest budget draft that we got um that Susie shared with us which I think is dated January 16th everybody see that okay all right um so I think Caitlyn I think the the way we've done this uh I think the last couple years is we've sort of had you just kind of do like a high level uh overview of the budget and kind of you know just giving us context information about any kind of significant changes from the previous year or any sort of important issues that you want to flag for our attention is that work for you you yes that works for me okay great so um I'm just going to kind of scroll through your draft here and uh maybe we can start with this budget summary sure so the budget summary is everything compiled together and we the the reason why you'll see the revenue sources appearing as zero is because we have um under kind of desie guidance and um what makes most sense in transparency removed the grants and the revolving funds from the budget so what you're seeing is just what the budget summary is for the Appropriations for for the town of shsb so it's our general operating budget it does not include any grants it doesn't include our revolving funds um so we're in a bit of an awkward year of getting to that point and um then next year moving on you will just see it as you've seen it before but just with the grants and revolving funds in a different page continuing on all right so so just to be clear um so what we're seeing here is the the portion of of the school's budget that is being spent on budget lines that are um associated with the town's appropriate and then later in this presentation there's a set of um planned expenses that are being the proposal is to pay for those through grants and other Revenue sources not uh not related to the town's appropriation is that so I have that right yes so they're all pulled out you'll see the school choice spending and spending in a different page okay so this is just what this the town Appropriations what our our operating budget is okay got it all right and so bottom line here is that we're looking at a 5% increase in our Town's appro plan proposed appropriation from fy2 to FY 26 um before we look at like the detailed budget is there anything you wanna alert us to um in terms of kind of what some of the bigger biggest drivers of that of that increase are no we can get to those in the the presentation portion I'll I I'll um identify them by their accounts and then um if we can go back to this page if you'd like to then it kind of summarizes everything that I'm about to share okay great all right so I'm going to move on then um okay so this slide looks like it it actually gives the kind of larger picture of all uh spending proposed spending including the town appropriation and then grants rural Aid and school choice yes this is our total funding with everything included our the town Appropriations the school choice the rural Aid the other grants and here's how it looks from one year from fy2 to FY 26 there's a town appropriation percentage that goes up slightly um and that the majority that has to do with the school choice which we can get to um when we get to the grants page okay but okay um all right so I guess maybe just before we um before we move on um I know that Susie alerted us to this but there's uh a slight small reduction in the amount of rural Aid that's been um flagged for for this proposed budget uh can anybody speak to that is that that's that's um is that a is that a an assumption that we're making or is that a confirmed piece of information in terms of what we're we're going to be receiving that is a confirmed amount so the this year we don't get R Aid numbers until October and November of the current fiscal year that we've um that we've already budgeted for so the rural aid went down a little bit this year uh they had a couple extra districts that they they first gave us the amounts and then they said no there's a couple EXT districts involved and since it's one pot of money that gets divided that is a decrease in what we are anticipating what we were receiving in in rur a this year and what we'll probably receive next year yeah okay Susie and um the school committee accepted the projection of um 880,000 for Rural Aid um they had been at 65 and so um we talked about what would happen if the state didn't come through um the state basically came through in fact they came through at 82 and then said oh we forgot um Martha's Vineyard and you know Williamsburg so then the number went down to 76 so um it's safe to say as much as we know anything is safe that 76,000 something is the FY 26 projection okay all right we're plugging in 75 for this budget but yeah it's G to be in that uh neighborhood okay got it all right I'm gonna um next page here okay um all right Caitlyn how do you want to do this do you want do you want me to um sort of pause at each page for you to um provide any important context sure so I can go over sorry I got kicked off a second ago but I'm back I hope it doesn't happen again okay um so for the administrative Administration subcategory most of those lines are union 28 lines which are there was an increase for shuberry based on their increasing enrollment which is a great thing there's more there's more students there's more kids in the town uh but it does impact your appr your um allotment of the Union 28 budget a little bit so you did go up more than any of the other Union 28 schools which is why there's an increase slight increase for all of the Union 28 lines lines 6 through 28 uh and there was no change for any of the lines that have to do with the specifically to the shutesbury budget got it okay for the instruction lines there is an increase in line 31 for the just contractual copier maintenance um and most of the other increases for the instruction line um category are all due to the teacher and um other units contract so we went through a full contract cycle last year um and then then we settled this past fall and so we're now having those lines meet what the current agreement is with the association got it can can you do a do me a favor and just unline 35 through 37 which assum kind of the bulk of your instructional uh uh Personnel um C can you talk a little bit about kind of sort of why why we have kind of large increase on teacher salaries I'm sure some component of that is are the negotiated increases in the contract and um but then we see like fairly large reduction on 36 is that are you sort of moving is there some moving of people around from one line to the other yeah so those are are lines that we may have had one year a teacher covered by uh school choice um another year with um with Title One and so it's a little bit um it's a little bit hard to read right now as we transition to what we're doing with having all of the grants and other funding pulled out because it looks like there's a large increase in one line and then a decrease but it just how we're allocating some of those salaries uh whether to Grants or um to the revolving funds but the staffing has stayed the same there are uh there are not any um increases in any of the staff all right so like the the FTE numbers are essentially staying the same from essentially staying the same got it all right uh I see a couple hands up so I'm gonna ask Susie is your hand up from your earlier oh I'm sorry yes no problem let me go to Bob and then Jim hey Kaitlyn Bob Groves uh I'm I'm confused by the the way this is constructed I with the marginal quotes that sort of obscure or make it impossible to understand what's going on in the line I don't I wonder why we can't just have the actual line with the actual amount of dollars in it and have the funding in a different place uh with these marginalia uh you know you as you just said we can't really tell whether the line the spending is going up or down or staying the same so it's hard for us to see what the budget represents uh truly so what why can't we have it done more clearly I think moving forward it will be more clear and that's why we're having the budget change so that we're able to pull those things out of it so that moving forward you'll be able to tell year to year to year how it changes Line to Line when we were in the previous years we'd say we're gonna use 25,000 from Title One well you didn't know where that was coming from which line it was coming from and now we're giving specifically which you you know which line it's going to come from so that but it looking back as compared to last year it may looked like there was um an amount budgeted and then when we remove some of the funding it I I hate to say it it's not what you want to hear it there are no changes to what the current Staffing are uh except for the change in the formatting of the budget and some of the reductions in school choice that we've chose to do so for teacher salaries uh that was a there was a decrease in school choice what was last year we budgeted we budgeted more in school choice for some of the salaries this year we're budgeting less so for next year what you'll see is the consistency of what we're doing a little bit better well I guess for me Caitlyn it would be better if you just put the monies that from Grants and so forth as supporting the budget and just show us what the actual budget is I don't know that's what all the other budgets we look at how they appear and it's easy to understand what you're recommending or what you're whereas see for example one of the things I'm concerned about is if I'm trying to evaluate the budget for the taxpayer is uh you know whether we're whether we're following the the the policy of the finance committee which is for level Services I can't really see whether we're having level services in this budget I can't tell that's makes it hard for me to do due diligence on it so uh I hope that this year we could have a clearer a representation of what what you propose so that we can see what it is uh that's is that going to happen or is this we're talking about next year talking about next year I think because some of the changes to where we're funding with school choice and where you would have uh last year and the years before seen not seen where it's coming from this is actually moving forward towards transparency of this is exactly the way that we're going to be um seeing those lines well I appreciate the fact that you now show school choice as supporting the budget that was a struggle that we had I've been around this committee for nine years so uh I that was an issue that we we did a lot of discussing about and I see that as a as a positive thing that you show the school choice as a revenue Source supporting the budget and you show how much you're using in a given year uh that helps me uh but I I again I'll just I won't repeat myself but I would prefer to see a more clear representation of what your budget represents than what I see in front of me okay well I can go line by line to um so for line 35 the teacher salaries we are using some we're using the Early Childhood revolving and you'll see that further down in the grants page but there's also that's where the decrease in school choice is going to appear most is that well we were funding more with school choice we are going to be we're hoping to budget for Less use of school choice because our school choice numbers are amounts are not coming in to make it a sustainable account for line 36 teacher specialist regular education salaries that is going down um we're also using school choice for that and Title One funding and for Teacher Specialists special education salaries that's also a decrease there based on um change in personnel and Staffing and one other thing I'll be be quiet for at least for a while how many of these positions are positions that were introduced during the covid and uh is it for example the inclusion specialist are these things that were part of our policy your part of your Staffing requirements or were they things that were introduced during the covid crisis and then have just stayed in the budget as permanent I I I didn't work here when um around the time of covid I don't know when it was introduced but we've had that position which we've slowly kind of scaled back on I don't know when it was when it began though in the budget uh thank you so that that position being line 38 the inclusion specialist that yeah so this as long as I've been there I believe there has not been an inclusion specialist but we've used that line for uh contracted services around inclusion for students got it and so the the reason why that's being reduced by $30,000 is because there's it's been determined that there's less of a need that's not that's not a line where you're utilizing other grant funding or school choice funding uh that that uh to support that that position is that correct no right okay that is just um yeah identify that there is a reduced need okay and um and we really needed we looked at every line and where we could save and that was one of the lines that we decided we could reduce in order to um get the budget as as clean and lean as we could okay got it uh Jim I see your hand up yeah yes Caitlyn I was wondering in the past uh we have um not spent um as far as school choice money is concerned we've we've only spent a portion of it or a percentage of it maybe 60% is that true for this year as well or are we spending it all we're overspending school choice overspending okay by a fair amount and we can get away with it for a couple years and then we're going to drive down the account to where it's not going to be a able to be budgeted for or to be a resource if when we need it I see thank you could you give us a rough idea I don't I don't think it's represented anywhere in the budget here but what the um what the balance in that fund is and and maybe kind of what um like what you know what what Revenue came in um uh on that line and maybe last year just to give us a little yeah so I believe in then have to check with the town but I believe we have about 200,000 in the school choice account we last for the current year fy2 we have budgeted and we're using um $161,500 got for next year that's going up to I think about $105,000 there's a slight increase but we're still going to be overspending it by using um 38,2 $1 so we're not doing it we can't do it because then that would mean too much in the town Appropriations we can't do it all at once but we need to really think about longterm not even longterm the next five years how we're going to match what we're spending from school choice to what we're receiving in school choice yeah and you there's no information you can share at this point that about kind of what direction you expect that school choice receiving amount I mean like is is our sort of best guess that that's going to be fairly stable at the around the amount that you described there like 900,000 I don't I I don't have a best guess it depends on a lot of it has to do with the Dynamics of the classrooms and the class sizes we don't you know with with shsb it's one class per GR so there's a limited number of spots and some of those um if the principal and superintendent decide that there's you know four spots in for school choice students or two spots or 10 spots or and what kind of applications we get in that then um it kind of really has to do with the dynamic of the classroom and what the the school can can have so could we have a year where we have 300,000 in school choice probably not not because we this school can't absorb that many students so I wouldn't expect a huge increase and I hope to not expect a huge decrease in school choice students okay all right great um maybe I'll move on to the next uh page in this budget okay anything on this page you wanted to highlight so we are this is a kind of second portion of the instruction categories most of these um well some of these still have to do with the the contract that was negotiated and um then the last portion are union 28 lines um do you want me to go over anyone's in particular uh Bob kit I want to ask you about line U uh 71 uh it I wanted to ask you whether that was a recurring expense whether that was a short-term expense whether that was going to be and also whether it would be uh reimbursed to to us uh from some Source from feds or somebody else that pays for that that kind of thing yeah so line 71 the special education transportation we will have that expense for the next um few years I don't know um exactly which and I try not to know uh specifics about this students involved in tuition and transportation but I believe that is not an expense that's going to go away in the next year or two what we've done is try to budget our um circuit breaker to cover some of that expense is that re ured by the state after the end of the fiscal year so that's if you and we'll kind of get to the grants and other um other revolving accounts but for circuit breaker out of District transportation we're budgeting for $2,549 so you come from circuit breaker which is the state giving us some funding towards um for needs for students that have um larger larger costs associated with tuition and transportation so we're showing that in the budget as supporting the budget the grant sheet so the the amount you'll see for special education Transportation line 71 is what is remaining after we've used $2,549 in anticipated circuit breaker money funding okay thank you uh I had a quick question just on lines 43 and 44 um so uh I think you already but I think you essentially already said this earlier but just want to confirm that in terms of like FTE counts on par par Educators we're uh not expecting a change in F FY 26 is that is that right yeah no changes to the Staffing we have in the building okay got it all right uh any other questions on any individual lines here on okay all right Susy um Caitlyn I know that you said you got a lock on the fuel cost um contract or whatever it's called and and how's that looking at at this number here which I forgotten what line it was I think it was on the last page previous page line 75 on page five 75 okay so no change anticipated there change we uh we went over budget last year we have a slight decrease of about I think 11 cents per gallon we locked in back in January uh so we'd like to keep it the same knowing we have a little bit of a decrease in what the per gallon cost is but we also have run over that line the past yeah okay okay uh any questions on uh page six here all right um okay oh Jim yeah I I was going to say as as far as fuel cost is concerned this winter is promising to be the fifth coldest on record so it cons we should be using or the school should be using probably a lot more fuel this year and significantly more than than for example last year which is one of the warmer uh Winters on record but I think we're in for a a fairly tough role all of us here in shutesbury coming up this [Music] winter I agree I definitely feel when every time it's it's cold it's really cold I walk my dogs and it's 12 degrees out I think about the heating cause of some of the buildings because they're large buildings and it is a extraordinary cost yeah maybe the new roof all right uh all right so this is your kind of grant school choice section so um maybe you can kind of walk us through the The Proposal kind of how you're going to utilize These funds sure so this is how we've pulled out all of the um the funding that was kind of smashed together in our overall use in the presentation and so now we've separated it so you can see exactly what we're using all of this funding for so that's been removed from the presentation and from the summary for title grants we are budgeting for $116,000 for uh toward words of reading specialist supplies and some other expenses title four contracted services and supplies and contracted services and title two also for the Ida grants that's the individuals with disabilities and Education Act Grant um we are what we were using it for student support we would now be using it for out of District tuition and you won't see that amount in the budget Pages previous because we're using a grant this is going to be Grant funded it should live separate and outside of the operating budget for Early Childhood we also receive a small Grant through idea and we'll continue to use that we're going to use that towards um partial par professional for special education salary the reap Grant which is the rural um education Federal grant we'll be using it towards our MLL or multilanguage learner teacher for $1 16,39 and again a lot of the grants we get we don't know the amounts until the fall and we like to think that they will increase they usually they might increase a little bit and sometimes they decrease so the we are looking at the numbers we're receiving this year to budget for next year for circuit breaker we like to use that amount and the the decrease is what we anticipated for this F 25 budget but what we actually received in fy2 was not $3,747 was $2,549 so we can only budget for what we actually received and that will go towards out of District transportation for Rural Aid uh we are going to budget for the par educator salary $40,000 uh instrumental teacher stiens $122,000 for curriculum support we were uh doing 10,000 but we're not going to use it towards that this year school power and building maintenance is where we would like to use it we're decreasing the amount for Ral aid from 880,000 to 75,000 based on the amount that we received this year and the Early Childhood revolving fund we would like to increase uh from the FY 25 budget of using 30,000 of the revolving fund to 35,000 again this is just an effort to offset the budget and the town Appropriations if can use a little bit more of our revolving counts and our revenues then we can decrease as much as we are able to what we're asking of the Town school choice that's where we have the biggest decrease and I think we talked about that a little bit um those are the positions that we were using school choice for uh for the MLL teacher essential skills teacher speech and language pathologist math coach and instructional assistant uh We've modified those amounts a a little bit we're moving the MLL teacher to being funded through um I think rural Aid instead and no through oh there we go through our reap grant instead so that that will come off of school choice because it school choice should really be used for every for things that are accessible to all students as because those students are coming from other districts the money should go towards things that are accessible to them and we like to reduce the amount that we are depending on school choice from 161,162 to 138,139 multilanguage learner teacher so that teacher for fy2 was supported through school choice and the reap Grant but for FY 26 we're only use utilizing that same amount of the reap Grant so I'm assuming the balance of that position is funded the operating budget is that is that right I think so I think we we cover a portion of that teacher salary yeah so that right because so that that position still exists at the same uh at at the same level um it's just being supported uh partially through the operating budget this time okay got it and we're lucky to have a teacher that it's hard to fill such a um um a small role because we share uh that teacher through three different districts if we were to uh try to hire someone at just a 33 or3 it would be really difficult to fill it in our rural areas um so that's why we felt that using the reap grant that is you know partially given to us so that we can try to tackle the challenges of having a rural District that was a good use of it okay um any questions from the committee on uh these various kind of Grant funds and school choice funds and what they're being applied to Susie and I want to say that in some ways having these broken out and assigned different budget lines if uh let's see the the um American relief budget that the Congress passed in December did not put the reap Grant back in it we have our reap money for fy2 but we don't know with the chaos that's going on how that looks for FY 26 and if you've been uh listening to the news there are tons of attacks going on on the budgeting so the title grants which are federal um and the IDE a which is federal um we have to write to our legislators and our um Federal legislators to say these need to be sustained I whether the state administers these with Federal money or the feds administer them these are the these are exactly what's on the line right now you can see them Kathy just um what is the reap acronym stand Caitlyn gosh I rural education I can look it up hold on sorry all new to me yeah there's a lot of acronyms in education it's our srss grant that we have a reap and I I just srss small rural schools um Reap is rural education but I will look up exactly what it is it's a good question thank you just curious um Caitlyn you said an interesting thing that I hadn't considered before when talking about the decision on not utilizing the school choice funds this year on the for the MLL teacher and I think you said that and it sounded like this is kind of a policy um s of issue that that the district ought to utilize school choice funds on items that will can that service the entire School population as opposed to like a specific sort of special population within the school and so I guess I just want to confirm is that is that kind of is that a sort of policy decision that the school committee or district is as is making or and and that we should keep in mind in the future that anything that we see being funded through school choice is going to be a for an expense line that in theory Services the entire School population yes you don't want to you don't want to Target something like you wouldn't want to put your school choice towards funding after school or funding kind of Select groups or things that aren accessible to The Wider group of students that you serve okay got it and I do have it is the rural education achievement program is reap thank you you're welcome okay uh any other questions on this page okay I mean that that is the budget uh maybe I'll pop it back up to the uh first kind of overview page and see if there are any kind of general questions that uh committee members wanted to to ask at this point Bob yeah hi Caitlyn I just want to make a recommendation for myself I've seen another budgets uh uh an accounting of the school choice account the revolving account over time and it's very useful to see what the state of that is because that's very essential to uh to to a large degree to funding this budget so you know if we knew that the balance was 100,000 and that this year the school was going to be allocating 50,000 and then expect then we would know what the balance was and how to how to expect how to anticipate what be happening in the coming years that's that's one thing that's that's good the other thing to be good for us to see is enrollment over time uh when the budget's presented because that's another critical uh piece of data that really helps us understand what the school is doing where they're headed and uh you know if enrollment is going up or if it's going down or if it's staying level those are all important considerations when we're studying your finances so those are just two recommendations I did send out the enrollment numbers okay uh Jim yeah uh Susie mentioned this uh unfortunate topic but could you give us a rough idea of how much we would how much of the grant monies would disappear if Washington really heads in the wrong direction uh in the upcoming year it seems to be a lot of um trouble ahead for uh School support from Washington I was just wondering if you had thought about that or had any idea of what we might be facing sure so we don't know that's I can't offer um I know which areas might are um have come up in the news I haven't seen anything concrete around any of it I mean everything is is changing especially recently day by day um the areas that I grow most concerned about are especially our re funding um which isn't a lot but it does help with our budget um but then we do you know we do hear things about title idea and other Federal funding sources and we don't know Shannon might have a better um idea or better more political response to that than I do tonight I don't think anyone wants my political response but um I'm the superintendent of schools for those of you who I have not had an opportunity to meet um the guy it's it's incredibly fluid um we are getting updates every day um the only thing that we have been told that federally is probably not on the table to be impacted is anything to do with um school lunch programs but we have heard everything from as she said the uh uh title grants um to idea we really don't know um and I wish I had a better answer for that but I would say other than school lunch probably everything's on the table to be considered from their Vantage Point thank you yeah I I wish I had a better answer for you I do know and I shared um uh with my leadership team today um there was a um right now it's been ended but we know that that's temporary um a bunch of States um under the opice of New York but Massachusetts is included in them um have filed to challenge that anything that Congress has already approved cannot be touched um which might get us through another fiscal year um and there seems to to be some precedent for that that um May May remain intact but um there's really all the groups from the school committee Mass school committee Association to the mass superintendents really has no idea it's been so unpredictable they can't even gauge what could be next Shannon could could you verify though that like at least for fy2 I'm assuming all these top three categories right are all title grants Ida and reap are all kind of federal either sort that are block granted to the states or directly administered by the federal government are all of those like forward funded like where we've already received our fy2 like we've already drawn down our fy2 amounts Kaitlyn would actually be better able to answer that because that's our current year um so I'm I'm actually going to defer to Caitlyn for that sure so for these grants um often it's a reimbursement so we spend the money and the grant um in our grant lines and then we ask for reimbursement and they um give us a reimbursement for what we've spent I have not seen any indication that we are going to not be funded for fy2 um especially with a support from the state and federally uh to continue with the funding for fi25 it's already been allocated to the schools it's already been assigned and I don't believe that we will find any challenges with getting reimbursed for the funds we spent okay so I I know that freeze was was they revers course on that but but it if that had gone through um it does sound like um some of these uh reimbursable items would have been threatened if like if if if if that freeze had I think if that freeze had come through we would have been looking at new funding this funding is already in and Caitlyn you can correct me if I'm wrong but is already in desie hands so it's already in state hands I see um we're just because that's how we're getting reimbursed um but I don't think it would have impacted this um but any funds that hadn't been dispersed sure could have probably been on the table okay got it okay uh any other questions from the committee okay the only the S final question I had Caitlyn was just just for sort of planning purposes for us is there anything is there any line in this budget that was sort of like a temporary placeholder where you're sort of waiting on some some piece of information that we might actually get between now and like when we need to prepare our final budget in let's say in a month um or can we go ahead and utilize this number right now as um kind of the total uh appropriation for for FY 26 I think we're at the place right now that we have all of the information that we've been waiting on and this is about as refined as we're going to get okay got it and the school committee has already like approve this this budget or or is that happening they had a preliminary approval of the budget all right great all right um okay well I don't see any other questions from the committee so I just want to thank you for for joining us and um and walking us through this and then I think also you know I know I just want to say I know you know kind of through cz's role as a liaison like we we ask a lot of sort of questions and we ask for a lot of kind of refinement of this budget and I just want to kind of publicly thank you for always being really responsive to our requests when we have questions or we ask to like can we see this other thing in the budget and I know it's I I know it's kind of a work in progress and we've kind of made some important changes this year but it sounds like we now have a kind of budget a format that we're going to now get used to seeing uh in future years that'll kind of help make it um sort of easier for us to sort of wrap our heads up but anyway I just I just want to thank you for always being such um such an accommodating uh colleague and partner on this I really do appreciate it I want to thank you all because if every town operated this way and had a Suzie to to be the person between the school and the finance committee then they would all operate way more effectively and efficiently so um I want to thank Susie and thank you all because I appreciate your questions I know you're doing your due diligence for the town and for the taxpayers and we appreciate it yeah when we're at Union 28 they always ask what our model is and we tell them but nobody seems to adopt the SU model of school committee meetings it's at their detriment agreed for sure um yeah and Susie just has like it's not just that she does a great job as a liaison but she's kind of been in this role for a while and she knows like she just she knows the issues um really well and um that that helps our committee a lot so thank you Susie um okay well thanks to to everybody who joined us um on the the the elementary school and side of things and from Union 28 we really appreciate it right thank Youk you thank you thank you thanks Susie you're welcome thanks Susie so AJ for some reason I can't raise my hand oh okay sorry George so yeah um you should just shout out then okay yeah I don't know I I don't know how else we'll get did you did you have any questions that no mik the questions I had were asked y all right sounds good just raise your actual hand George that'll work that's the only problem with that is that when I share a document all of a sudden my windows it's not a big deal I just thought maybe it was a setting or something no big deal okay got it all right um let's see why don't we kind of quickly just look at January 21st meeting minutes and then we'll talk um uh we'll go on to the next item see so George sent us minutes this weekend Saturday or Sunday from January minutes oh good George they're really excellent minutes I really appreciate it you're welcome thank you I appreciate that I do work hard on it but you know this is a recording of what went on you know yeah it's important yeah we're in the same business as you know I do the MLP minutes and and um and our styles are fairly similar oh good you know and I have had experience because I did it for the Personnel Board for a number of years they but they look great they're they're wonderful thank you I appreciate that um does anybody have any questions for George or any suggestions or corrections I like them I'll make a motion to approve them as written Second Great any other discussion Aran say Roes I Hemingway I casu I moer I Salvador I and Stein I great thanks George you're welcome Okay so we've got a choice now um I think we we we've got two sort of big topics to discuss one is just take our sort of first kind of rough look at um the FY 26 budget kind of using uh George has done a lot of work with Gabe to kind of plug in the various pieces of information that we've gotten from our meeting with different department heads and also I think from a preliminary cherry sheet estimate um so we got a we're going to take a look at that tonight um and then we've also are gonna discuss um the upcoming four towns meeting and talk a little bit about kind of latest updates that we've gotten from the regional district on the direction they may be heading in so I guess question is is do we want to do the big picture budget review first because that might inform some of the some of the thoughts we have about what what we can afford to do what our position would be going into four times okay I'm seeing some some headon so all right sense George um can I how would you want to do this should I share the document you um um no I think it'd be better if I um you did it okay yeah if I just showed it on my screen I could just walk through it okay I'm going to make you co-host temporar yeah I had some trouble with my PC and I had to reboot it wasn't Lo letting me log in here so things are a little discombobulated but I've got it up now so I just made you co-host so I'm assuming you can share your screen if whenever you want to pop that okay can you see that yep yep yep okay so so Gab worked on this on the weekend and um she was not going to be able to work today or yesterday um so I haven't really been talking to her much we have communicated via email so I took the budget she gave me and there was a lot of there were still a number of things to be done and she hasn't had direction from us in a number of areas so I went ahead and made some assumptions I documented everything so that she and I will be in complete communication about what's going on and I documented everything for you folks as well and hopefully we can make some decisions or not today but the the assumptions that are underlying this right now is the EXs Levy capacity is unchanged we don't really do anything with that until we decide you know to what extent we are it's usually one of the last things we do Gabe came up with $35,000 in New Growth and I've got that as an open item over here these are the open items I want to talk to her more about that to see how she actually determined that um state aid from the charity sheet which is the governor's um came out last week and so I sent it along to her she probably already had it but she put it in um and it's an additional $10,000 and then local sources is still in progress uh process I think um Gail is helping Gabe with it so we'll have to see but there was one item was increased by 2700 I think it was I think it was pilot money I we'll we'll see when we go down and then none of the cash was applied there's been no cash applied to it like we did last year so these are the revenue assumptions that we're going by um you know the two and a half is in there which I didn't write here but it's the two and a half is already been added um on the expenses um basically all the budget all the department budget amounts are what the Departments presented to us right we didn't make any decisions to cut any looking at inflation and the cola calculation I did a rough estimate of it we'll have the numbers in another couple days when the FED issues the January CPI but I did through December and I came up with 2.92 and so I rounded to 295 because no doubt it'll go up a little in the month of January so salary increases are all in here at 2.95 with the exceptions of contracts and the positions that are currently being negotiated and the ones that ask for changes like the assistant administrator the police chief um the police Staffing those are not subject to this percentage because those are being recalculated based on restructuring if you will um um on George on that point so for for those um staff positions that are um have negotiated contracts did you have access to the the right numbers to put in for FY 26 well um no that's that's um going to be up to Gabe and I gave her the list of those okay got it so that's something to that she may have done some of them already there's not that many because the Town Administrator is under negotiation the police the police chief is under negotiation the union for the school is already in the school budget the police Union is irrelevant because if we go along with what's been requested that's all been recalculated for us by the chief um I don't know who that leaves um Highway and fire well Highway was negotiated this year so they gota I'm not sure what what where that number appears but we did so those are probably the two let me write those down I'll definitely follow up on those Highway superintendent and um fire she may have already done those maybe we'll see as we go through I don't remember okay so that's the question thank you um you know we have an amount that we transfer to the capital stabilization I put in the full amount usually it's that amount gets decreased by the amount of The Debt Service but we don't have any Debt Service numbers right now so debt service is not funded at all and the full amount that we would pay for the transfer plus debt services in here and once we figure out the debt service this line will be decreased but I wanted to make sure we had the full amount in the budget for the C is 170 112 112695 okay got it yeah and we know there'll be interest for sure because if and I hope this decision isn't made but we can talk about another time if Bond Council tells Ryan we should wait another year for those three items and just pay the interest then we know we'll at least have that in The Debt Service and this number the 112 will go down by that 113 really we go down by that but we you know there's a whole another conversation because we can't keep delaying paying these things off then we're going to have other Capital purchases and we're going to have all these assets but conversation for another day um I had to make a decision so I took the first option for the regional school and we can talk about that but it's you know AJ mentioned in an email it's a fairly conservative number I think it is um at 4% we're at 66 $66,000 increase um so this is a little higher than that but this will kind of help us for our next conversation so this is subject to change you know once we anything we decide to change right now here today I can easily make the change and we can see what the impact is I'm sorry did you was okay there's a new line was not funded but it was added and it's a pfast mitigation um so that's something we might want to talk about and then the other question I had was the town building repairs maintenance fund I left it at $10,000 um but I I you know we have to talk about the policy we did for that so these are these are the underlying assumptions on the numbers that you're going to see as far as what's still open I want to ask Dave about New Growth there was an amount of for 14 $15,000 for um this particular line veterans benefits on the cherry sheet that she did not put in revenue and so I want to ask her why she didn't um she may know something we don't so I didn't want to touch it so I just left it at zero potential pickup there um the preliminary cherry sheet 76599 um that's the governors there'll be more coming along 1% increase um local like I told you local sources are still in process and then um expenses that we still need to talk about for some reason we were told that the assistant Town Administrator would be 41,600 increased her two lines by 10% just I can tell you by looking at I've seen the surveys from furog they came out two weeks ago and our police chief is she's paid a lot less than many others in the in the area and um so I just put in a conservative number again so that we can see what our deficit might be um also for the fire department and um the fire department rep might be able to speak to this Gabe had put these two numbers in for these two lines zero was requested at our meeting I went back and looked at my minutes and I went and looked at the document we have from the fire chief gab gab's notes said that these were requested from the fire chief to her so we need to figure that out and then she had not uh she doesn't have numbers yet for these next two so I just put in 10% increases and these are the numbers that I put in again this this is placeholder so these are the numbers I actually use in the budget so Gabe was going to have to research and find out about these and that's what she mentioned to me in an email but I just put in 10% increase given all that we're seeing going on um you can see a 10% increase wouldn't be a substantial amount of money but being conservative Elementary Transportation she hadn't entered it for some reason so I added uh last year's number with 5% um she didn't put in the high school debt I assume she hasn't got that yet from the region um I put it in at 36,000 is a little more than what it was in FY 25 remember this is also a revenue Source because it's dead exclusion override so it's in the revenue as well as the expense so whatever number I use it's not going to have an impact on the deficit and then um fire mitigation we had them in there last year for $5,000 these two lines and she wasn't sure what to do with them she left them blank I threw the $5,000 back in and we need to talk about that and of course we need to talk about this for some reason she didn't have inspector of animals in there so I threw it in I'll ask her about this and then uh for the retirement she actually showed me the letter she received from from the agency that um bills us for retirement and it shows that next year's bill is 181,000 but we budgeted 270 and we've spent all but 15,000 of it this year and she looked at last year's letter and last year's letter was also a number much smaller than what we budgeted so there's something going on and she doesn't know what it is she had put 181,000 this 18927 in the budget I put in 270 I overwrote it because that's more likely what it's going to be um but she's still going to research it and then for some reason Ryan I went back at our notes and Ryan told us health insurance is 598 but Gabe entered 624 he said 15% she haded 20% so I need to follow up with Gabe and find out what's going on with that I maybe should have left the 624 in to be safe but I figured I was bumping this up I don't know and if you want me to I can certainly change it back but that's what I've done for now and then um Town Building Maintenance I talked about already and then this is the number for the capital transfer to Capital stabilization and that's subject to change like we talked about earlier so those are all the things that underly the numbers that I'm going to go over with right now and so I'll yeah let's pause for a second before we look at what this all translates to um Bob George how you doing I just wanted to mention to you a couple things that were on my mind uh thinking forward one of them was the legal line which we've always we had a difficulty uh you know getting a handle on that last couple of years so that's something to think about this year too Gabe has we'll see it when we go through expenses yeah the second one was uh you know the fire hose uh uh you know uh new fire hoses and the gear that was something that we folded into the equipment line in the budget a couple years ago so I think Lenny was counting that so maybe we did used to have as a separate Road revolving account but but then we decided to eliminate that account and have it as part of the recurring budget so something I think is the way it worked out uh the other thing was uh so one so one second so should Gabe ask him is the fire hose replacement cost included in his maintenance line no in equipment Line Equipment line I'm sorry I know that that's that's the way we budgeted it when we when we changed it but the other thing I want to ask was on the Transportation isn't that in the school budget or no no that's sped Transportation okay buses are not yeah you see when we go through the expense lines you'll see that there's a separate line for um the transportation the rank and file Regional and elementary school kids the final thing is the town building um repairs you know that's something we can talk about as you know last year we funded it out of out of of reserves I think and you know there's a good argument to be made I'll probably be making it that we should have that Capital as a capital expense not a recurring expense but uh anyway we'll see what the numbers add up to but that's what I mentioned that yeah as far as that goes yeah we did we funded 40,000 we'll see it and um we put 10 in the operating budget from tax levy and 30 from free cash with the plan to slowly ramp it up but I think Gabe has a note on that I think that some people don't think that's necessary but I don't know what like you said that's got to be talked about at Capital planning if we ever do meet yeah um so I'm just going to slide this over a little just so we can see it better um so there's our there's our property tax levy limit and the 2 and a half% is that number right there and then Gabe came up with 35,000 in New Growth so our new limit it would be 6704 as I said earlier the high school um budget um High School um Capital plan and sorry in the dead exclusion override item is 36,000 is what I used we'll get another number but again it balances itself out because we'll see it also in the expense side and they'll always be equal and then access Levy capacity right now we're assuming no change um of course that changes Auto atically um and to the extent that we decide to use it to fund this budget this number will decrease or increase I should say and be a smaller negative and then the overlay 40,000 is what we use every year for our estimate overlay just for everybody's information because maybe not everybody's familiar you have to assume that there's a certain amount of your tax levy that won't be collectible and so it's been safe to use 40,000 so what we do is even though the tax levy is um how does this work is 5877 um yeah yeah yeah I we just balance our budget on a smaller amount because we know that there's a certain portion of this tax levy that won't be collected so we just take 40,000 out which is usually has historically been more than enough by the way this also covers some of the not only abatements that people will file for because they might they might convince the assessors that their house is overvalued it also is some of the exemptions like veterans benefits U veterans exceptions that the common wealth allows it's not the means testing though so anyways um a little too much talk there um and then the cherry sheet this is the to the right here I've got the I cut and paste the cherry sheet information from the web but just so I could get these numbers in here and make sure that Gabe got them in there right and she ended them all she got them I I just have one line that I disagree with her on and I got to ask her about the veterans yeah it's $320 it's not huge and then why isn't she including and the reason I didn't put it back in is because I noticed that it's not in the recap and it's not here so she knows something I don't know that we don't know so we'll find out so anyways the the the bottom line on the cherry sheet is right here and you can see you know state aid goes up by $110,000 Under the governor's budget now usually the house ways Means Committee comes up with better numbers for us but even if you know how much more could they come up with and then local receipts are still a working process the only one they changed was the payment L taxes I'm sorry about that not sure why but um it might have to do with their agreements with either temov or the town of ammer or serious Community it's probably not what related to what they're expecting from the state because the state probably hasn't really published that information yet and so when you take um the amount that we need to raise from the tax levy this number here and then you add in the the cherry sheet amount what we think the local Aid will be this is what we think our revenue is going to be 1.24% increase $90,000 increase and the reason it really in the upper section is a 200,000 increase but right now we haven't applied any free cash to this budget so this 117 basically goes away and everything that we funded with that last year is now got to be funded by the tax levy to the extent that they're in the budget still George I have a question where is the um Airbnb Revenue isn't it that's in local receipts and did you see it um just carrying it over right other other excise room right there line room okay so I thought um that number went up so what they're carrying over last year was last year's up from the previous year yes yeah 22 Yeah from four to 22 and that's yeah if you want Susie I can put it on open items and ask gab No No I um I know that we were surprised the first year that it was doing but I couldn't I I see it's called I remember yeah we were all excited it was a big bump AJ what I I I think you should put it on your open items just to see if if there's any development kind of up or down on what that looks like for this year okay all right I'll um I'll get back to that but I got a note here to at least remind me okay so again um so that's our revenue and again the lack of cash means that we've got really not a lot of not a lot of new Revenue it's really okay expenses just moved over a little so Gabe has pretty extensive notes in here Gabe and I have extensive notes in here I put in the salary increases um 2.95% like I talked about earlier for some reason we had so this particular line the administrative secretary which is going to be changed to Administrative Assistant um we were told 416 gab's got 44 265 so we'll have to ask her about that um I think we I don't know where this 85,000 for the Town Administrator came from but I did see that [Music] somewhere boom and and and AJ this might be a good time for people to just let people just jump in as they have questions yeah sure uh April well yeah I was just wondering if gab's uh prediction of new growth is low um given you know when is the the substation when is that um several million dollars worth of upgrade du to happen I thought it was for this year which would be significant new yeah I agree April that's why put it on here it's in here as an open item this is something I'm going to address with her and ask her to look into did your brother ever figure it out no I'm I'm I I will ask him I he I thought he he said this year was it was gonna happen yeah I know there's something going on this year we talked about it in the accessor it's separ million dollars yeah so I've got it on the radar okay and also the Town Administrator that that $85,000 is what was being bantered around um and I've been thinking that that was pretty low and it looks pretty low given uh the FY you know the last this year budg Sur the fog W survey I I notic the same thing there are many of them that are making over $100,000 in Franklin C and I'm not talking Greenfield and orange no Sunderland FYI the position is being advertised at that level okay okay that's where I got that number is the is the Personnel Board um making a recommendation at all on we will be okay but that we will be has happen yet yeah it'll probably be a negotiation with the person who they want to yeah offer the job to how close is that process to ending oh we're we're in the middle so we we've still got people to interview before we make a recommendation but the candidates look pretty good right we got candidates okay supposed to start warm warm bodies sentence no that's it's it's yeah we can't talk this is the right time to talk about this but how's the line looking for the TA this year this fiscal year with all the changes we went through um I can bring it up if you want uh I can just show you real quick I mean departments we can look at the expense I looked at the expense today it looked like it was a little was like spent more than the other departments so I didn't know if the new money was added in to that line or not um it looks like it was yeah 94,000 is definitely added in yeah and we're at 56% in February that's that's about right yeah that is about right but we might have some overlap so we might have you know we might have a problem but yeah remember we do have a hefty um vcom Reserve number uh and this is causing one of our problems year to year that's weird I have to look into why yeah I was G to ask you about that one too it's like only shown about 60 it didn't show any additions I don't think I don't know what's going on with it oh go I think maybe they bring it to zero I have to look I'm gonna have to make a note to look at that fy2 24 vcon Reserve make sure that that number is right so yeah remember we we budgeted 55 and at special town meeting we had it 25,000 and we funded it with cash right one of the things that's contributing to our problems here so I don't know who's going to be able to decide on the independent audit number the actual spent in fiscal 24 was 14 Grand and I think everybody's aware we build this lineup over year over year over year so it's we don't spend on this annually if it was 14,24 then it's seems to me 9,000 a year is is too much is it every other year or every three year I can't remember what it is I think it's every other year I could be it is it is every other year and remember that the MLP pays for a rather good chunk of that yeah so this one might be too high yeah I think it is yeah I'm wondering who we is that something to talk with about or yeah I mean I don't know who engages the Auditors usually it's probably the Town Administrator or the account yeah it would be Gail I think Gail might be yeah Gail might be the right one I'll talk to Gabe um I think Gabe um Gabe will know what to do and if not you know I can contact Gail or I don't know we can talk about that George is um is FY 26 the year when we collect big bucks for for um for property taxes on all those new three-phase polls that um National Grid has been putting in I think did that happened last year yeah that that last year that's already yeah if you look at new growth where is it yeah look at last year's new growth that was 200,000 121 121 this number right here yeah and so and that goes down rather rapidly right y um the depreciation are the depreciation is is 10 or 20 years I'm not sure yeah it will go it will go down it won't be New Growth nope no no now you know now it's in the tax base yeah it moves to the tax base the next year but under personal property not real property yeah right okay so I got to keep this thing moving um so the assessors this is just based on the budget the assessors gave us um oh yeah right and we asked them if they could lower it they said yeah sure fine um yeah no certification that's right that was um you remember that conversation with David D yeah so I'll keep moving here then and now we're adding $ thousand dollar for the treasurer for his certification now that he is certified we have to pay that every year tax title we talked about making changes to that for the uh you know and so those are in here T the tax collector information and what she requested is now in here this is um Bob referred to the legal line and this was um her comment she thinks 20,000 is too low if recent history is any guide it is it's a different fight now so yeah it's always a fight somewhere so you know some for us to think about um town clerk I guess she collected information from the town clerk yeah I I can verify that because I I got a email that I saw today that um From Grace there were just some small changes in the proposed expense budgets for the Town Clerk and for the border of registrars but and those numbers look to have been plugged into this okay good yeah perfect and yeah in the registar number I typed this in because when I looked at it my assumption corre me if I'm wrong AJ um is because of the election year yes that's right did that 8,120 is what Grace had put in her proposed budget for so that's the right number okay okay um back to Legal I just want to say that we've only spent 35% of it so far this year since you have that handy what's the actual dollar amount that we spent so far I have that handy I have is spent is 14,566 and started at budgeted allocated was 41,000 I yeah 41,021 spent all right well we're going to be looking for expenses I can tell you that so George yes um I I just I should have mentioned this a little while ago on the independent audit because of the library construction it's every year while that construction is going on otherwise it'd be every two years so you that's probably what those you know we we were wondering about the 9,000 or something like that but I I think you know we have to come up with an independent audit every year for at least because of the size of the loan yeah yeah because because we're getting State money and they it's a requirement that's why that line will shoot up a little bit thank you all right that's good to know I'll put that in the minutes too um case I wonder if the 9,000 is enough because yeah there you go yeah it's a b was 14,000 last time we did it right that does put that in that well let's leave it for now but yeah well here I just want to before I move on um I just want to add that to this yeah I'll be real quick confirm that this will be annual and for how much all right hopefully Gabe can do some leg work on that too um and you know I'll work with Gabe to the extent that she wants help but Gabe did tell me that she will be sticking around for a while so she's going to be able to continue to work on the budget we don't have a hard stop for her I think that'll change when April and May comes around but she said she was pretty good through the winter that's good news well we'll be we'll be finished with the budget by then so yeah it sounds like she'll be here through the completing of the budget which is great it would even be better if she could make it to town meeting but you know let's not get carried away so she put in these numbers too for the dam she got that information the land use clerk um yep she got could I check with the dam there's there's a a company that's work uh Dam manage consult that is a contract right how much 35,000 wasn't it Susie is I recall 3500 3500 okay well I think it's ongoing so I I just didn't know if I see over working out yeah we budgeted for last year 3500 oh I can check what we spending on that you got the spend up right Susie I got the spend up yeah damn that be you taken to uh interesting um yeah so they spent half of it well at the consultant they spent a little over half 55% oh okay you might have a more current one they must have paid something because the one this is the one it's dated the 6th of February okay yeah yeah and it's posted out there Susie okay yep oh so you weren't looking at this one I no all right so legal is it 62% spent 62% 40 okay I should put that on my screen okay I just want to fix my note here yeah okay are we all sub with the Dam dam yeah I guess I don't know what's going on with concom I think these numbers came from from Gabe no they sent it to us and I sent it to her oh okay okay good planning board as well I assume oh yeah that's right you know what I did see that email yeah all right so here's a number she's putting in for all these different things now she's got comments here on the right for these Town expenses all right she doesn't have a note on supplies but it seems like everybody we've met with has told us how paper is gone up and ink has gone up and so so do you know if they if the town is getting a bid for oil and can lock in a price is she handling that no but let me put it on the list yeah negotiating or locking in a price we'll find out all right the other George might be insurance for the same reason uh Insurance costs are very Li Dynamic right now too they're crazy insurance cost are my cars are getting older why do my insurance keep going up I need the money George to put some more Scots yeah that's right they're antiques that's right I wish they were worth antiques they're not um okay is is that it for the town expenses we all set oh yeah you asked about the all right yeah where is Insurance oh we'll get to it it's on here it's it's down lower um okay other General government not much here in terms of increases you can see her nut Microsoft getting their share and then um the police chief I just I took last year's number and I just bump both these up by 10% we'll see how that negotiation goes and of course we still need to review what we've decid you know what's been presented by the police but right now this is what the chief presented to us asking for that Staffing to full-time a full-time Force um and her expenses and then this is an open question like we talked about earlier yeah yeah sorry sorry about that yeah because the the line 118 it says expens equipment which is where we think it is yeah so we might be double counting for those expenses but I don't see let's see we called it maintenance um and the other line that we talked about was called repairs and that didn't get in there and that's a $5,000 line yeah that was the one for those like annual uh no the maintenance is for like annual service things yeah yeah the service versus repair right um two open items here I think I mentioned these earlier I hate it when I do that sorry um two open items here lines 122 and 123 um hopefully gab will she she mentioned in an email that she's going to be working on those I bumped them up by 3% just to be conservative um they haven't had a huge increases is year to year so I did not use a big increase of course everything's different this year interesting um on the tree Warden she um we transferred quite a bit of money as everybody knows $5,000 so really their budget for this year is $9,500 9477 and Gabe is taking that and running with it and you know seems high to me but yeah potential area for um cutting I'm gonna be talking to Dave about that I didn't get a chance this week but when we review this budget we'll we'll talk about it okay good good to know that's right that was in the minutes from our last meeting okay so um education um the number that we talked about today um the budget that was presented from us today is that number right there um this is option one of the Regional School which is $92,000 increase and so and as you can see it's 55% so obviously something we need to talk about more um and then um yeah Elementary Transportation I increased it by 5% somebody's got to research that I don't know who has the answer um and then we talked about the debt exclusion override um funding for the capital projects that are at the school at the region um Highway Department it's the budget yeah now see this is this yeah so the note is here that's not under negotiation it's already negotiated yeah we hired him it's a new contract yeah oops my ear okay let me let me just throw that down here real quick I'll fix my spelling some other day yeah I also just double checked while while we were talking that um the the maintenance line that you have in there for the fire department does include those two separate lines that we were talking about with Lenny the year the yearly services and the repairs is 16,000 the total of those two lines on his budget was 16,400 and and that's what seems to be in there so he gave you those details yeah I it looks like Gabe just put both of the the sum of those two lines into this maintenance line that's true so but if I heard you correctly those are already included in so so the number the number is correct because on 184 that line is 16,400 and that and the the two lines that he discussed with us was 11,400 for yearly services and $55,000 for repairs okay we're good on and George just took out that what we thought was maybe duplicating equipment costs yeah right um give me one second I just want to make a note of that yeah and his budget did not I mean I think we already have said this but it did not include the the the um replacement tanks and I just need to put these in here to balance my uh because I'm keeping track of all the changes for Gabe and I need to tell her about this so I'm just yeah okay good got it all right that's good to know we just saved $5,000 um again open items that Gabe is going to look into oh that's right we already saw that um where were we oh yeah we were at the schools the schools yeah oh no the superintendent actually so the highway superintendent ask Dave to look at the contract I think she knows that yeah it you know on our contracts many times the first year of the contract is negotiated and then it's stipulated in the contract that years two and three are are going to increase at the same level as the colas okay yep standard Cola exactly so that's probably what's going on here um but I'll ask her to double check um so yeah so this is the budget that you know the highway superintendent had presented to us um including the snow removal um the salaries were increased by 9 uh 2.95 but um he said keep materials level and then this I don't know who knows what's going on with that I mean if Gabe does it who does and I talked to Gabe about it a little bit um I called at the gas problem at the fire station she said what gas problem at the fire station and I and so here's the part of having a 20h hour interim fill in for one person that was doing 80 hours so um so what's interesting to is does this get to fall off the radar of D that'd be great yeah if nobody's talking to was right and the other way around we're not talking to them so you know I think it's going to be picked up at some point um I'm not sure if we will I think they would start talking to us if things got too far behind that's wishful thinking I was going to suggest that I would call the engineers that worked on that for us that put in the that were that oversaw the wells and the testing they would know what was going on with that uh the order that was because they got a cc at least on the order that from the state department of uh the LSP should know yeah yeah who in town be able to tell Gabe who they are I think it's and somebody no I should know I can I can go in and show her where that not Ty and bond I thought it was them no I don't think it's Ty and bond it's um I think it is or it's um Jeff Springfield h Riley talber and Oaken yes yeah I don't I I think we're not dealing with them now I'm gon have to look through the minutes because it'll be in the minutes somewhere I think but that that is who was we were working with originally with the um yeah but I think we thank you Kathy and so would the highway Chief a fire chief know no not he had to dance around to to um allow things to happen but he's not driving the thing what's the name of the company I believe it's tigan Bond and it's Jeffrey Arps but I'm not sure I I'll go and talk to Gabe um to show her where that information is in the office okay that's great Susie that'd be great yeah and then there's the past mitigation which you know to be determined I don't know when and how and why but you know so I have a question about that would we go ahead and budget um the interest on the debt on a reg as as what should be on a line I mean uh that would go in Deb service okay so it's not there yet and we might do that um we'll only put in there when we know that we have to pay it so I don't know when the B when when the payments start so that'd be a question for um Ryan right yes yes I think that the loan is interest free and part of it is I think I thought it was uh but still the principal has to be in The Debt Service but pay would deferred so I don't know till when right well either way we should find out I'll I'll ask Ryan what they know about that because it's it was a process of getting a letter and and getting the bonds and he was looking for that and I know that part went forward so I'll ask him about that yeah and Susie you we really should talk to him about the whole debt situation because I am concerned that if they bond councel because interest rates aren't coming down Bond councel says you should wait another year we've got these three items that are getting old and they're going to soak up all our debt service and we're delaying them is just going to not give us flexibility for other Capital purchases now the good news is we've been building up Capital stabilization because we haven't had that service but still I I I that's a concern of mine I'll tell him that and then you two should talk sure I'd be happy to uh you know I just noticed that she didn't put anything in for water quality does anybody know what this is about is that the testing uh it's not the P fast I I think on about was it it was the wells that we had oh yeah 163 Susie oh yeah fruit you think that's done I think it's done yeah I don't even know if they're still being monitored uh for level and water quality but those were we had five test Wells or oh yeah deep and three shallow is that something I could ask Al Warner yes' be that yeah oh I didn't think that was water quality it was not it was water quantity yes right it was to monitor the the water table Yeah for groundwater I think is it possible it's that situation we had by the highway department a few years ago remember we had a neighbor with a well that was contaminated right we drill new well yeah I'm wondering if this was related to that ah maybe this is where we need to invite Becky to a meeting pay her we need to pay her to consult yeah she's a she's she can volunteer she's a citizen of the town okay um moving on all right looks like um we made a gab made a decision here fine um like I said we don't I we'll have to research this but it looks like the actual SP spend in 24 was this we budgeted it there I don't know if we spent any this year but that's an open item um is everybody okay with this veterans benefits I think oh yeah oops Yeah we talked about that we talk Ryan about that right yeah yeah that's right that's right that was good point all right moving on um Library budget that was submitted Debt Service is wide open this it comes in every year but it also is in revenues and whatever we put here we put in Revenue so this doesn't count towards Deb service Ryan told us 2000 in interest on short-term notes um but as far as oh sorry sorry sorry long as far as long-term financing goes we've got these three items that we have been kicking the can down the road on oh and so that's the conversation that I I would like to have with Ryan um then gab put 180 in here because that's what she was told by fog or whoever f frr is um I brought it back up to last year's because that's what we've been spending in fact this year we've also spent um substantial portion of the 270 so you know the letter she has is 180927 I don't believe it yeah somebody might have died no well they were getting a lot of money well I guess I don't know I thought well I thought with this sorry I'm getting serious I I missed the joke um I think we don't fund pay as you go for people as they're retired I think it's funding a fund that retirements are paid out of right right kind of like what we're trying to do with opip um so again like I said earlier Ryan told us 598 for insurance I'm sorry for health insurance Gabe put in 624 I brought it back to 598 she was at that meeting and said yeah 598 is a good number 15% is right so I don't know why she changed it but I do have it on the list of things to ask her and then we talked about um the town buildings maintenance and then I put back the 112 695 and this number will decrease as we add to Debt Service I just double check the treasurer's budget which I'm sure you had already done George but the number I'm seeing there is 598 as well yeah I think that is the right number yeah so $320,000 short that is our deficit good response ug yeah ouch yeah that's a big one when I first saw him like okay let's see what revenues look like and then I realized she had put in the two and a half and the new growth it's like oh no but the new growth is a a pretty conservative number right I mean that's that is my cense yes yes no the these are conservative numbers I don't think it's $300,000 worth of New Growth though for sure so I'm going to filter on all the items that are over $10,000 in the difference column and you can see where the big items are and the big increas is the biggest increases of course are at the school 220 between the two of them and they're a little less than last year's increases I'm sorry they're less than last year's increases those two items that's right last year was 6% and the other one was almost 6% okay right Y and so 220 I'm clicking on that I'm also clicking on 78 that's the insurance and those two things combined are $298,000 all right that's the Lion Share of the overage in of course we have you know the the salary line for the Town Administrator the administrative assistant and the Chief look like they're probably going to go up more than standard 3% that would be my sense this is kind of like this is just a summary of kind of where the the big things are yeah we should change that line item from administrative secretary to Administrative Assistant yeah I'll do that because that that it's a different job yeah there's got to be a conversation with um there's there got to be a conversation with um the town accountant to do that on the books okay hired anybody have we hired anybody into that position the advertisement just went out for that okay so I highlighted in blue the lines that have the big increases with the exception of school I just highlighted the total School excuse me so that's the story all right a starting yeah George this a huge amount of work I'm really grateful um yeah that you did this and and I think you know I'm gonna try to take some time also just to look at the the department I'm sure you did this but I just I think it's a good idea to just have a second person just look at all of the department budgets that we've been yeah um reviewing just to make sure that there those numbers being in are consistent yeah well the first thing I'd like to say and I know I've said in the past is you know the liazon should look at the budgets for their towns and make sure they're entered properly yes and of course I think everybody should look at it I mean you can't trust one person to do all this it's just too much not only that you can't trust one volunteer okay these are all volunteer hours and volunteer thinking and that's the process well I'm retired and I have been working on the bud you know I've been involved in the budget for quite a long time so I'm happy to help it makes sense that I do so and I think you know gab's done a great job she got she took this very far yeah um she's coming in here very green she certainly understands how it all works but she doesn't know you know this is a different environment so but we definitely have a challenge on our hands yeah so I think um I Bob I see your hand up uh just before we get to you I think we should um it's getting fairly late so I think what we should do is we should all sort of think about this Gap number see what happens to it after Saturday's um four towns meeting um and then I think we should kind of start tossing around some ideas at our next meeting about how to address that um what are some of the different strategies do we wanna utilize any free cash if so for which which line all all of the I think we need to like start having that discussion um yeah the sped that's where we applied a lot of it last year yeah Bob I just want to say very briefly uh one of the ways to address a budget Gap like this is to look at the Department's request and to see if that is something we want to support or not I think we seem to we made an assumption for purposes of this document that we accept the request as written that's not necessarily what the most potential thing to do is so we should all look at it if we have time I certainly will and see if I can justify the support of all the different requests from the town and whether they reflect a policy which we pres presumably is still uh have which is that of level services so you know the taxpayer has to be brought into consideration in this too it's not just a matter of spending whatever is requested it's a matter of budgeting what resources are available yeah yeah and we certainly like we'll have a process where any fincom member can can identify a budget line here that they want to discuss and you know make a case one one way or the other so we we'll certainly make sure that that kind of discussion happens all right um I have one question um I would want uh going into Saturday if we said to say we sat there and said oh well right now we're wrestling with a $320,000 hole that means nothing to towns that have bigger budgets so what's and this percentage number doesn't make any sense to me I don't know how to read that but I guess that's the kind of we need a way to put a handle on it well I mean I think one one one thing we can say right is that this that our our current assumptions I mean maybe the more meaningful number is that we we have at this point right now we are projecting a 5.72% increase in our operating total operating expenses that's a big n you know the three I agree the $323,000 Gap is not a number that's particularly meaningful for other towns because the scale of everything is so different but as a percentage you know increase 5.7% is a big number it's bigger than amoris is contemplating and I think that kind of communicates the the struggle you know the challenge that that we have right I imagine all the other towns are going to come to the meeting Saturday with a very similar struggle you know we're not alone yeah I think the I think the outlier though quite honestly is going to be ammer because they you know they they at least in terms of their kind of rhetoric they really do have this like hard and fast kind of they they talk about this kind of hard and fast guideline that they apply across all their you know Department all their units and you know sometime eventually they kind of but but so I I'm sure whatever their whatever their current assumption is right now about what their overall budget is is going to look like I bet it is not a 5.7% increase one quick question AJ uh qualifier to what you said when we if you're going to be mentioning a 5.72 increase on our expenses you're going to note that that includes option one yes of the most recent yes good good point yeah right so so um so we should I think we should talk about this now so I'm gonna um unless there were any questions for George before we move on okay all right so I'm gonna pull up I sent this around I think yesterday um where where that letter a letter to the Town Council but the uh no the options that Shannon y oh yeah has um had had shared with us and she's given us uh given me a deadline of tomorrow to ask for any other kind of you know information or models that we want to have her hold together before uh Saturday's meeting but maybe I'll just briefly kind of walk through through this really quickly um so again this was prepared by Shannon the um Finance director for the district uh it includes essentially five different uh budget models that I think presumably they're going to share at Saturday's meeting and ask for feedback on and it starts from kind of a baseline model which is this one right here which basically assumes that the budget gets fully funded so no cuts no at all and the modified statutory method is applied to determine each Town's um assessment so again I don't think anybody's contemplating this as a as a budget that is going to be uh and she didn't even she didn't even describe it as one of the options it's it's more like the Baseline um to to have the back of our head so this would if we were to fully fund the budget and apply modified statory we'd be looking at a 12% increase all right so now that brings us to our like the first of the different sort of models so this one here is one that applies the statutory method the modified statutory method um after a total of 1. $254 million are cut from the budget and that number is the amount of cuts required to keep ammer increase at 3% using the modified statutory method okay so that's what this model is um of the cuts oh 1254 okay yeah 1254 so in this model again we're doing modified statutory where ammer it's being sort of driven by capping ammer at a 3% increase that would result in a 5.5 uh percent increase for us this is the number that George plugged in preliminarily to our budget it's an increase of $ 91,5 for Sheets Berry again and it's a 5.5% increase yeah okay next model all right is a kind of hybrid um sort of method that uh let's see I remember now so again it holds emmer at 3% but what it does is it it's it's she's calling it it sort of helps um Leverett and pelum uh well I guess it's really more than it helps yeah it helps both those towns by okay I'm going to try to say this it's it's really I finally figured it out today what she did was she said she took the last year's approach of you know when we did a 4% guard rail if we did something like that okay um that results in ammer paying 81% of the total assessment versus what the 9.9% that the modified statutory method would have them paying right so basically what she did was she said if um since emmer is already talking about increasing their assessment by 3% right that's that was their sort of starting position um let me think about this I just had this earlier today okay uh right okay so uh wait a second I just have this okay yeah so what this does is it um it uh it helps actually pelum Leverett and shuberry um by essentially increasing the deficit to $1.4 million so the amount of cuts now is1 1.4 million as opposed to 1 point2 million it still holds amoris at 3% but then it basically applies all of the the the sort of um the savings um by increasing the the total amount of cuts um to each of the three towns um so essentially what this leaves us at is a $50,000 increase or basically 3% for us as well um that's kind of the bottom line uh the this does obviously have a bigger amount of cuts required again it be 1.4 million as oppos to 1.2 million okay option three applies uh the modified statutory method this time uh it assumes that ammer is can increase by 4% so the amount of cuts required then gets reduced to just 1 million as a as opposed to 1.2 million okay um but again applies the modified statutory method to everybody based on fixing ammer increase at 4% so this would result in $111,000 increase for shutesbury or 6.71% increase okay what was that percentage again sorry what was the percentage again percentage change is six 71% okay thanks okay this is the only model that that Shannon shared in this document that has us a higher assessment than the number George has P plug already plugged into our budget so what it's worth okay by by about $20,000 yeah okay didn't use that same method and and in bumping Amor up to five which 5% yeah and that would shift everything anyway yeah so if if if um if she did that what it would mean is you know larger larger assessments for the other three towns uhuh and but a significantly reduced amount of cuts required right that's that's what that would do it's the lowest cut too yeah yeah yeah low okay um so now we've got one of these hybrid methods that she's discussed um or presented and this one um this is a weird one it basically it pins it it it assumes Amor is increasing 4% and then uses um that their um savings savings essentially and applies it to the other three towns which actually would result in a decrease in our our Not Gonna Fly that's not gonna it's not but it would it would reduce our assessment by $2,493 okay so it's option it's the same as option two except for that with 3% for amest and this one is with 4% for amest otherwise everything trickles down the same way yeah exactly y exactly and it's a $1.4 million cut correct both are yep two and four are 1.4 million do cuts and actually the last one we're gonna option five yeah okay and so so all right this one okay this one essentially her attempt to remedy the what we saw in the last the problem with the last model which is that we're actually having a getting a cut in our assessment and it bumps us to 2.45% and it essentially applies that savings to help pelum and leverate but again this is this is the same it's going to have the same challenge which is that it's a big $1.4 million for the region all right could you describe that one more time just for the notes how do how did you spr that so this essentially builds off of option four but it says since under option four shots Berry is actually not increasing our assessment but actually decreasing it it saids say um it essentially bumps us to 2.45% this this this morning I knew why she and now it's totally escaping me at this moment how she got to that particular but it essentially bumps us up to 2.45% keeps amoris at 4% but uses that that money that is now being applied to shutesbury and applies that to um pelum and lepr so that's a modified modified yeah modified yeah she's using the term hybrid for for three of these budget it's a mutant hybrid it's a mutant hybrid I found that summary page at the end the next page I found that helpful looking at this is right so the these are the um these are the end results for each Town under these five different options yeah it'd be nice to have those in percent increases but that's yeah well the percents are on the pages they put the dollar values on all the pages and that's right I I have them if you have a question about like I know I can tell you right now because I wrote them down for shutesbury option one is a is um a 5.53% increase option two is a three 3.04% increase option three is a 6.71% increase uh option four is a 76% decrease and then option five is a 2.45% increase and which of those options are the 1.4 million def dollar deficit it's two so right here it says it two oh yeah yeah yeah there four and five okay yeah say something AJ yeah please Bob go ahead sorry just to say I have a very very strong uh view that we should stick with the stat the modified statutory method and the reason is twofold one we worked hard because we thought this was the most Equitable Fair way to distribute the cost of of Education down there and two the further we go with these modified methods and these hybrid methods not the modified the hybrid methods the further we get away from the real assessment that would be indicated by our modified statutory method and the further behind we get and the more difficult it will be to reestablish it so we should just do it now and decide what budget we're funding I would support any of the three options where we use the modified statutory method I don't like uh some of the increases that that two options Bob it's option one and option three are straight statutory modified statut method options the other three are these hybrid methods option one and option two uh is a modified statutory uh with this um option there that's option two option two is a hybrid model but down here it says modified scenario with with the percentages but uh it's still a 3% for amoris but maintaining the percentages but I think I could support that it's close to the Dory and then option three uh and option three has the lowest cut of the three options and it has a I think what 6.71% but really that's the cost of US funding the budget if that's we decide to support that level of budgeting we should support in my opinion we should support an increase in our spending and ke and get on the even keill that we are trying to get on with allocations and pay the price uh for you know for supporting that the region I don't know if that budget with a million dollar cut will be acceptable to the other towns but I would support us going along with whatever budget we decide as a as a as a region to support let's allocate the expense fairly that is the stat the modified statutory method all right Bob I think I'm thinking in a similar way to you I think we should leave like the purpose of these Hybrid models are really to help pelum and Leverett so let's leave it to them to advocate for them if they you know like I don't think I don't think we need to take um that position and so I tend to agree that um option one and option three are the ones that we ought to contemplate I think you know we've already got option one plugged in I guess a question I have is do we having just looked at our to you know the gap of using our current assumptions um do we think we could support option three um which which would really help to reduce the amount of cuts required for the region but you know would bump us up to uh what did I say a six 7% 71% something yeah uh Suzy um so I was trying to find like some ballpark ideas and and for me 1.4 million is too big a cut I could see going for 1.25 million as a cut but I also could see an option one to change ammer percentage not 3% but suggested it be 3.5% um I think they don't need to be uh just choosing between three and four um the problem with three um is it's a ammer at four um so if we went with option one and ammer went to 3.5 instead of three then either that savings could be applied to reducing the cut from 1.25 or it could be a applied to the small towns who all are paying more than 3% uh four 3.5% and so we could we could sort of justify where we're at in that suggestion and I bringing this up because if we want to talk about it we need to send it in to Shannon tomorrow and there's one other piece I want to say which is I checked into whether the region is calling their rural Aid in their revenue and the answer I got is no they are not but we pressed our local school to include rural Aid as a revenue um that they're using and I think we can press the region to do that and if that if they put that money in it could go towards making our share less or making the cut to the budget less you know what their amount for fy2 was yeah um um I asked does the Regional School receive any rural Aid funding um I I see on the chart Amis pelum listed at 248 515 and she said we do receive RSA at the the region over the past few years it was once rounded at 80 to 90k they have slowly increased it but it's always a question as to what it'll be next year depending on the governor's budget blah blah blah she never goes back to give that number it's clearly more than 80 or 90 because it's increased over time the chart that you can look at rural Aid distribution for fy2 said um 200 48 515 so I I just feel like the rationale is yes the state is a very unreliable dance partner but we pushed our local town to do that to use that Revenue in their calculations and yep nobody likes to get uh cut at the end but I feel like they need to come up with something it's not in any of the numbers yeah so they don't so it's not in any of these it's not buried in any of these Revenue no I also asked her to check the interest Revenue which has been flat for since 2000 I know 2004 was 32,000 i' like I don't know that that number should be flat people's interest Revenue has been doing better and she agreed that she should look into this with the treasurer got it okay uh um so here here's my feedback on like whether we should ask Shannon to put together a mo some a new model that splits the difference between one and three by assigning emis a 3.5% increase is you know my my my feeling is that ammer should figure out a way to support a 4% increase and I know that they're gonna fight and they're gonna they're going to present arguments Saturday but like every other community in this district is is contemplating increases that are significantly higher than and and I know Amis always likes to point out the ways in which they their sort of circumstances are different or their communities substantially but I I'm just I never find them particularly persuasive those arguments each Community is unique yeah and um you know the school committee as as you saw from that letter that which I you know which it's a draft but um you know they they really are are pushing pretty aggressively um emmer to to be to not kind of fall back on this idea of a 3% so I think my instinct is I'm sort of reluctant to even give ammer that yeah that that little wiggle room of you know half percent but I don't know that that's just my opinion Bob I just want to somewhat expand and Echo what you're saying AJ that is I think we have no power or nor should we even contemplate influencing amoris and how much they're willing to pay they're could under a lot of pressure from their own community from the school committee and from members of of various boards to spend more and they're not going to listen to us at all so I think that this three and a half percent might very well organically come up Saturday at the meeting as a compromise because Amis is going to come out and say three and then someone's going to demand four and then we're going to play the usual back and forth so I wouldn't be surprised at all if this compromise emerg from the meeting but I don't think we can make it happen it's going to come out of the interaction between amoris and its taxpayers and its uh its stakeholders and the school so and we're still you know we're still Small Potatoes compared to them there's no way around that where's the timeline do you think we're going to have this is uh February do you think there's going to be another negotiating discussion or what's gonna happen um um I'm I mean I'm I'm sure that that the super superintendent and the school committee wants to come out of this meeting on Saturday with uh a model like um and I think I think they're gonna take I look I'm not so naive to think that we're gonna talk for two hours on Saturday and we're all gonna agree yeah option three is you know is the one let's move let's move forward that's not going to happen probably but I think they're going to get a bunch of feedback and and I think they're going to take that feedback into account and they're going to they're going to build a budget and they're gonna do kind of like what they did last year which is sort of build a budget vote on it and say this is you know we we we did the best we could to reconcile the different feedback we we heard from different towns and this is where we land but so I I I don't think there's going to be another four towns meeting um after this one at least maybe that's not true but I think they're gonna I think the the the school committee is going to put together a budget and that and they're gonna move forward with it and they're gonna say this is our budget that we intend to vote on and maybe at that point there'll be a four towns meeting but no but hopefully we don't end up with the same same kind of surprise we had last year right because that really screwed everybody up well yeah and I'm concerned about it because you know because you know I think I mentioned at our last meeting some preliminary suggestions they made about what a $1.2 million cut is going to mean for the district and you know it was 24 positions and only five of those were central office positions you know um you know 19 of them were uh 14 of them were were instructional staff teacher eight teacher six parents and then there were five clerical so people are gonna people are going to hear that and you know it's going to be a lot of the same voices the same concerns as last year so but well we and we saw we saw the letter from the emmer Regional School to the council Town Council so you can see the pressure that they're going to be under yeah um Cy so do you I would like to have some um bottom lines for us and one is that I would not endorse a cut larger than 1.25 and I also would endorse that they go back and look at their revenue picture and include rural Aid and I I think if we don't say those things I think those are our things to say I think we could say this yeah I agree uh now the question then becomes would we support I think it's highly unlikely but would we support option three as it's laid out here um is that too big uh is that too large an increase for for us to to be able to endorse this point so yeah well look at look at where we are one more K our deficit was what again 320 320 yeah and that was using the $91,000 increase be another option one yeah it's a 5% increase Amis is capping themselves at three under option three Amis would increase by 4 per. that's right uh Bob I just think I don't know I I personally depending on the what happens on Saturday I been prepared to support that I know that it's going to put a lot of pressure on our town in our budgeting process I'm concerned like April is that the from the tone of the letter that was written to the Town Council uh was kind of uh very passionate and very sort of Hardline it seemed to me so if they want to if we go ahead and support something like option three and then we find we're in a fix still that would be extremely upsetting to me because that's a that's that's a hard lift for us to get to to fund that with our budget concerns that we we all know about so again I I I I would rather hold off on that and keep that in our vest but support option one openly uh but and also raise our concerns about the cuts so again my main thing is to not see us slide into one of these hybrid things and get away from the statutory because whatever budget we decide on as a region I think we are obligated to support it you know uh Susie I have a problem with the idea that these are five options and if we don't talk about it maybe in we send them tomorrow um the option that amers goes to um 3.5 then I don't know that they will go outside these options these are the options that are sitting on the table I feel like we could not because of how we want to negotiate with ammer but the way it if the choices seem to be these five I'm afraid they're only going to see these five and I don't think that's a great um thing because option one is only ammer at 3% and option three is ammer at 4% right yeah yes correct so I I just feel like it's still worthwhile putting out in our letter tomorrow that um options one has um the largest amount of cut we would tolerate and we suggest that there's another option that Amis goes between three and four and and we're using the statutory that's our that's our other bottom line all right uh any other thoughts like so here's what I'm here's what I'm hearing is I think I'm I'm hearing um General support for option one with um an important caveat that Susie makes and I and Susie I think I'm gonna count on you on Saturday to to actually raise this question which is that we we think there there may be an option to reduce the amount of cuts required by applying rural Aid support to the budget but otherwise you know we could end we could endorse or I I guess we we we would we can communicate that we are amenable that option one is amenable to to our town um so that's one I sounds like there's not um enthusiasm at this point in Us coming out at and saying we would be willing to support option three um that's potentially a back pocket thing but that's not something we're prepared to communicate right now and then there's an idea that Susie has raised which is that we ask Shannon to produce a sixth option which um applies the statutory method and pins emmer to a 3.5% increase those are the sort of three kind of con and AJ we and we are against the hybrid and the mutant hybrid yeah well no mutants we don't no mutant hybrid and we don't support anything that's 1.4 million yeah thank you that that's an important P too um I think I think nobody has advocated for an option that would result in a the the larger than $1.25 millionar deficit or or cut yes so that's I think that's another position that we can take so just want to test that with everybody does anybody have a different opinion about those ideas so so I'm just going to go over real quick from the minutes so we we we support option one um we would like rural Aid to be calculated and applied to some extent yes specific and specifically used to further reduce the amount of cuts required right thank you yep to reduce um cuts and then we shb does support the use of does not support the use of a hybrid method does not um support um any um methods that cut or cutting a 1.4 million and then the the final thing was we would like yeah so that so on this last point I think I just want to see are folks keen on me asking Shannon to produce an option five that does this three you know this thing where we we have ammer set a 3.5% increase so basically option one using 3.5 yeah it's it's kind of splitting the difference between option one and three but yeah yeah uh any any push back on that because I will go ahead and and uh and and send Shannon an email tomorrow and maybe another piece to say in the minutes is um our percentage our percentages for um one and three are way over 4% okay and so somehow this their magic for and everybody else needs to go long is I just think we should note what our percentages are as as being over four yeah under every method but one right yeah no one is 5.5 no everyone except four option four I think it was yeah but we're not even we're not talking about four or five or two wa those are hybrids and we're not talking those but your point is all of those methods I'm not looking at the numbers all those methods um every method amounts to a greater than what' you say 4% increase for shutesbury with the exception of one method well only the ones that we're endorsing yeah so I would yeah I think the way to say it George is that all of the the methods that we've we supporting um result in oh got it that's the point yeah okay resulted in um an increase of greater than 4 per. yeah got it I see what you're saying okay got it I can definitely get that in the minutes Bob just FYI the reason that we can see these numbers the way they are laid out is because we had the guard rails in place and that provide that made Amis pay more that it shair under the statutory method so now all the other towns using the statutory method pay more than amers because that's the way the math works so if we can reestablish the statutory method whatever the increase is we'll have a more fair distribution and there won't be these kinds of jumps yeah we're going to see this year so just FYI for that yeah and I think we should we should take as a win that none of the options being presented here do what was done last year which is apply a blanket increase to all four communities so even these hybrid guard rail things they're all differentiating you know increases in in in some way that tie back to statutory method so so that is a win I think we' we've kind of clearly moved beyond that let's hope so so one thing one thing I was thinking about I think Bob something Bob said made me think of it and I have been thinking one thing that would be really helpful I know it's hard for the region to do but I thought in the first meeting they actually did some long range planning and they showed some long-term impacts yeah that would be I understand that um there's a lot of work that the finance director is doing and that would be asking for a lot but I'll tell you it having an idea of what all these increases mean for us in the future years would be really helpful yeah I can mention it but that that uh yeah because P dream in that letter they were trying to stay away from they were sort of pushing back from that yeah but actually they were staying back cut pushing back from limitations they weren't staying back from the reality yeah yeah I mean last year yeah all right another thing that I I was kind of amazed by in that letter and I don't think I realized it is that emmer when they build their budget they plan for a 5% Surplus yes that's not that's not something that we do we don't we don't make a budget and assume I mean we we have a surplus sometimes because we have certain lines that are UND spent but those are you know those are because of vacancies and whatever it's not like we go into the budget and say okay let's now assume uh you know a 5% Surplus a plan for a 5% Surplus well I give them credit for that because I've always thought it's kind of absurd the way the state of Massachusetts has Town building free cash it's basically Serendipity you know we build a budget we hope that people don't overspend and we'll have some cash to help us with things in the future yeah I give them credit for trying I wonder if they're counting their rural Aid in that 5 per. yeah but people got a lot of heat for all the extras that was building up you know so like that money should be uh counted for accounted for yeah and they clearly you have used it to address you know big kind of capital issues like yes imagine we did that like like we've got um you know you know we've had some big capital expenses imagine we planned every year built into our budget a surplus that we then knew we could apply to these these projects like I I think I also agree with the point that if emers is planning on building in a 5% increase in cash they're getting more than 5 percent yeah because there's going to be unspent lines there always are it's all the towns generate cash so they're really padding their CA their free cash by doing that's a good point right yeah because if they're planning for 5% then they're gonna yeah maybe they have some lines that overspend but they're probably gonna have a lot more lines that UND spend yeah well that's why they got a fincom reserve right okay I think I've got a kind of clear direction from you all um Susie did you uh yeah the other thing I thought that was revealed in that letter is the whole way where people's health insurance is placed B and comparing the town's budget to the school's budget and where Health it's like really that's apples and oranges and if you didn't already know that then you got to get a new Finance director it just I because we're busy trying to manage our ship it just struck me that letter I I'm counting on it being honest and true there's some stuff they do need to straighten out but um anyways we have a it makes sense that they can calculate the health insurance for the staff in the building and charge that through the school budget if Northampton doesn't do that I don't know if they're a regional school or not but that's that doesn't that's not relevant I think the way they're doing it ERS is probably more accurate more correct what they were saying is that ammer tries to keep the four quadrants of their budget raise rising up at the same rate but the ammer town health insurance isn't in the town quadrant it's in something called miscellaneous that's what I read out of that oh I see it's like yeah you guys got this idea everything has to rise the same I don't see that as a a lot well they challenged that notion in the letter too didn't they yeah right and I I would challenge it too especially question F right anyways I think if we have our pieces um then AJ are you prepared to send that to them tomorrow yeah yeah so I'm gonna send an email tomorrow just um uh just based on kind of these these four or five points that we've sounds like we have a consensus on it will be certainly will be an interesting morning yes so everybody got for some reason I think uh I had it on my calendar initially at 9:30 but everybody saw it's a nine o'clock start time so uh yeah that's sop right yeah yeah and the the other thing you can do is thank them for getting information to us before the meeting yeah in copies that we can read I mean shanon did a great job I she really did a great job yeah um I I I will do that um and I did post a meeting uh I think I think the select board's gonna need to do that I'm gonna talk to Gabe about that tomorrow I think I think they're gonna need to post a meeting assuming oh I know Rita is not there but they might have missed it because hours before 9 o'clock on Saturday I thought today's Tuesday yeah I think I think oh yeah sorry I think they got time don't tell suie I thought it was Wednesday already this is another retired person well this meeting has brought us to Wednesday it's we're it's feels like we're at Wednesday AJ you said you're gonna talk to Gabe in the morning yeah would you let her know that I'll I I I'll send her um the budget back but I may not do it for first thing because I got to make some changes to it but I'll definitely send it to her she can expect it pretty early in the day okay I'll I'll let her know thank you okay all right uh it's past nine so I'm gonna assume that there's no other business for us to discuss and I'll make a motion to adjourn our meeting I'll second that okay George RI Roes ey Hemingway ey cashew ey Celtics Cleveland and Salvador I Einstein I thank you all right thanks for hanging a great meeting see you on Saturday we'll see you all on Saturday okay bye unless there's snow oh that's true