this government meeting is brought to you by eastworks and our local cable subscribers okay I'm going to call to order the meeting of the select board for April 3rd at 6:00 and if we could please stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation God indivisible liy and justice for all thank you okay all right well and we have a finance committee with us we don't yet have a quorum so when you do have a quorum we'll have you call that meeting to order okay so this is going to be a joint meeting tonight um is there anybody here for Citizens speak formally called open time for the public uh for anything that's not on the agenda okay seeing nobody then our first new business uh town clerk Lucy you've got something about the town caucus [Music] please Lucy do town clerk 10 strong Road um I just would like the um select board to sign off on the warrant for the town caucus That was supposed to be last night um due to some scheduling errors and some personal things um this was not posted so it is posted for tomorrow and the caucus has been changed to next Thursday April 11th so if you can sign it for me that would be great what time is the caucus 700 p.m. so 9:00 p.m. in this room in this room yeah and people who are listing we need at least 255 people to come to have a quorum have a quorum for the town caucus so please do come there's some people that have pulled their papers for being on the ballot so thank you those that have and have turned them in y um this is an opportunity I know we still got various open slots that people have not pulled papers for so this is the occasion uh for people to nominate folks from the floor uh to be considered at least for the ballot whether they accept to accept nomination or whether they want to accept that nomination is up to them after that after the caucus Lucy will be talking to those folks is that the V yeah yeah okay pass it around so yeah why don't we just do that I do need I'll make a motion yeah to take a motion to uh authorize the town caucus to meet uh on April 11th at 7 7 7 p.m. please 7 p.m. um and that uh that's my motion okay there's a motion yeah second by Dan okay motion by John second by Dan okay all those in favor I I I okay I also have a second thing sorry real quick um the board of registers had met on on March uh April 2nd and we discussed the early in-person voting for the May 21st election and we discussed opting out of early inperson voting because at the March 5th 2024 primary the um turnout was extremely low we had 15 people here um that come came in we had a worker here from 9:00 to 3 on Saturday we had I think five people come in so um we do have early mailin voting which is fine um and we have over a th000 applications and ballots that we're going to mail out but we are asking the board register is asking if we can opt out just for early in-person voting for the annual Town election okay so and it's just for this one Chanel just for this early election we're going to be having it for the state Primary in September and the presidential in November um but we're asking to not have it for May how many how often yeah how long is the normally the early inos in person voting time period is it usually it's two weeks really that long yeah okay and with that very few number of people that came in last time we had 15 people coming for the primary okay yeah I'm not assuming that the town elections are going to be a a barn burner to draw in a lot of people so this seems to make a little bit of sense in terms of the you know the time and effort I can tell you for um for the town election we don't have that many papers taken out um we have one paper taken out for finance one paper taken out for select board um there are all the seats are open for finance MH so um Personnel you know I mean there are a lot of seats open so and that's where yeah as we do this we have to double check on some of these things I don't know why we would have had something normally these should be I mean select board is staggered but I don't know why all the finances although we've had a couple of appointees rather than El that's why and that's partly why they are all expiring at the same time that wouldn't normally be the case staggering okay so we have uh a request to consider canceling the idea of early inperson voting May 21 Town election only y I'd like to make the motion that we cancel the inperson voting for in town only voting all it's just the in I have a second please second second by stepen okay any discussion yep so I'm I'm going to vote against it only because there's a potential debt obligation on the ballot and I'd rather I don't don't want to be seen as trying to sneak a dead in by limiting I don't think there's going to well well there's a I mean let's we it won't be it can't be on this this particular ballot there's not enough time it's got to get through time well yeah so we're going to meet so all right so we're going to vote at town meeting to but it's got to be 35 days it's got to be 35 days right and we were talking about moving the election and somebody was going to find out whether that's even possible now before the ballot get order we haven't we haven't found that out yet I don't think Town election no no we haven't you're speaking ahead you're speaking ahead yeah yeah so so so I I think I think it's I understand that uh there's a cost Associated I also understand the state usually sends US money for it I'm just not in favor of limiting access to the polls and I think some people even even if it's only one citizen that comes down here and does it I think it the new covid era forward is there a chance to I mean make just certain hours I mean how much leeway do you have set hours or days we have to have it during business hours so 8:30 to 4 every day for two weeks it is yep and then we have to have it during our business hours and then on the weekend yep so we have to either have it Saturday and Sunday or for um one day for six hours mhm so but you will have the mailin Ballance regard absolutely everyone who ordered mail in ballot is going to get a mail in ballot for the local election all right so any further thought I mean if we can hold off on this if there's discussion to change the election which I was unaware of then we can hold off on this we'll be meeting again on the 9th so if that's not too late for you to do whatever you need to do for ballots and whatever um it'll be right before the caucus so you won't have any new names to put on the balance I won have any Nam yeah okay well why why don't we I would just suggest maybe we hold off that would be an idea we can hold off on this you don't mind your motion I pull back my motion all right okay and then that'll give us time I don't think we've had a time to to really that's fine think about the idea it came up as an idea but okay trying to figure out all of our Logistics and you wouldn't be ordering ballots prior to the caucus anyways correct no but right after the caucus is because we have to get them out and if we don't get them out right away so with us meeting on the 9th we'll have a little bit more information perhaps so we can determine whether that's going to be necessary or not and then take it from there okay okay that's fine thank you so the first one is is good signed on the warrant and that's fine all right thank you for the caucus all right perfect thank you yep can I just do one more thing I'm sorry I just wanted to um show everybody the new oh bylaw oo uhhuh this is a new bylaw manual I don't know if anybody can see it whatever um for the general and zoning bylaws it's not filled yet but this is what it looks like I have just I have to put them in there um and the general bylaws are on the town website they're on my page if you page all the way down did prop oh no they're on the they're on the government page sorry if you page all the way down go down to General zoning bylaws yeah after you're done I have a question I don't want to interrupt um just page all the way down click on General and zoning and they're all there um there is a link that says login do not click on it it's going to go away um but this is the hard copy it will be in our office there'll be a copy in Scott's office and there'll be a copy in the library so so these are this is a result of finally three years of work pretty much putting together bylaws and getting this e360 code yeah that's awesome that answers my question I think I just checked too early so I'm going to go out and check it out now for later just go to the town website and hit the government button and scroll or even in the search button just put in bylaws and it will take you right there so and you can search by keyword um it's pretty user friendly honestly so I think hopefully people when you've got questions you can look at it online or if not we do have a couple hard copies as reference okay right thank you thank you Lucy appreciate it all right okay I'll set all right good okay so basically the purpose tonight uh is our 25 budget discussion to continue on that we've had had a couple of budget hearings in the past but um we're going to continue on especially uh with Hampshire Regional tonight and I think I'd like to just have that with Tom being here Tom clear um if you'd like to indulge us and be on the uh the front end between that before we would jump into the big overall budget just to understand where Hampshire Regional is coming from that may ease our discussion into the overall do you have specific specific questions you'd like me to answer or do you want me to kind of walk you through the budget budget because we've got people at home and so forth so yeah people haven't people know that Hampshire regional's had some issues but people haven't seen any budget all the finance people haven't seen the copy of the budget so our finance team so hey Becky welcome I think um the business administrator has forwarded the budget to uh the town of South I have a few copies here before we do that one more thing uh we just have a quorum now for the finance committee if you'd like to call your meeting to order please call meeting order at 612 okay thank you very much okay Tom I know we we have electronic copies but they probably need two copies not everybody and I emailed it to yeah and I think we can present them up here yeah you can show them whatever that is so so no it's we've got electronic we'll just look from this up here too probably as as you likely know there have been a lot of uh changes at Hampshire Regional and uh questions about the finances um I'm just State your position I'm sorry uh my name is Tom Clary I'm the chair of the Hampshire Regional High School uh school committee thank you and so in terms of uh Town assessments uh this is what we're looking for from Southampton 5 million 7274752830 from their perspective but realizing the town's uh concerns and so in terms of uh Revenue sources we have state money uh there's tuition from Worthington and from M Clark School uh there are existing funds which is what's represented here with reserves uh there's grant funding and then there's the towns which makes up the bulk of the the funding for the the schools uh the town funding has been drifting down slightly over the past few years but uh it's been around 60% of the the funding sources there have been a number of changes which have been going on and have been uh coming to the surface uh over the past couple of years um accounting practices are currently being updated uh there are a lot of variations from uh generally accepted accounting principles that uh we've been learning about and we're looking to improve upon we expect that this is is going to take several years to get through this this process and so what you see in terms of reports now and what will be happening over the next few years will likely have significant changes um the significance of that is and there'll be there's an instance of that in the numbers here it can be challenging to compare one year to the next um and there are a lot of unknowns that are being faced by the the schools and then as a consequence by the towns at the the present time um Reserve funds or the existing funds that are available to the school fall into uh four significant uh categories the first one is excess and deficiencies which is somewhat similar to free cash that the uh towns have available to them the past practice of the high school has been to keep this uh close to 5% in conversations with desie recently uh uh they're suggesting that at least 2 to 3% is required for the school to to operate uh right now the end fund uh it hasn't been certified but it's estimated to be significantly below that that 2 to 3% and so the recommendation uh from the administration was to not um go into the the endd funding school choice revolving is another uh area that the school has and historically uh it's the goal has been to keep that number at about 150% of what the incoming revenue is and so the budget we have uh presented uh Keeps Us in that that range the next one is something which has historically been called uh outof District revolving fund that's a misnomer there are a lot of different things which are in that and that's being currently Unwound by some uh consultants and financial professionals who have come into the the school and so we expect that there'll be a lot more information that we learn from that there are grants and other uh Financial um funds with within there and then there's the transportation revolving fund uh which is uh the current recommendation is to use the entire balance um in there so just one question on some of these things that you're talking about is this some of the errors or whatever that you're finding are simply things that have been misclassified into wrong categories you think or is that there are there are variety of uh challenges some things have been misclassified some things have been double entered some things have not been entered uh it's but I think it's safe to say that at this point there's been no evidence that the district is running out of cash or or that um there's cash missing if anything there there's a there's a surplus once the grant the grants and all that get unwounded right according to J suin there's there are a lot of unknowns and so committing to whether or not there's a surplus or there's not a surplus is no but at this point there's no there's no there's a lot of work to be done but there's no there's no document before us before any Committee Member that says hey there there there's there's no there's no report that I have seen indicates that there are dire consequences at the Forefront uh question on sorry yeah go ahead reserves how much money you've gotten split into four categories but of the total 1 million something see or will you get into that when you get into the special Pages or um but we can just from the high I can we can have the business administrator send uh the reserve balances to you so you can see what they are I can tell you on the on the previous slide that he had going backwards the transportation one you have to you have to spend the money this year and then next year you get reimbursed in theory we're supposed to get 100% but the state does that so you want to leave you leave at least one one year's worth because you got to spend it and it gets reimbursed the out of District I think is supposed to be restricted to if all of a sudden you have somebody move into the district right that you didn't have in your budget and you've got to place them out because they came in with an IEP that would be the out of district is a misnomer it's not uh so what is the purpose of about a district it's inclusive of a number of different funds that are in there and that's something has to be Unwound and they're working to understand what's in there and why it's in there and how to appropriately use it going forward so my to summarize you're going to use a million something of Reserves towards this budget coming up so there must be more than a million in there for those yeah so so there's there there's about so the the school choice revolving has about 1.4 million um and the rationale behind keeping that at 150% is that the numbers for school choice often times aren't published until well into the the school year has already started and there can be wild swings as to uh where that goes and even once you get to December things can change significantly by the time you get to June at the end of the fiscal year um and so in order to be able to manage that and not go back to the uh the towns keeping that at 150% has been found to be beneficial can I ask you a question you mentioned there's a lot of unknowns and uncertainty in these figures somewhere do you have like a a list of which numbers are known and which ones are unknown which ones are uncertain so we know what our confidence level is with this information being presented so in terms of the fund balances there are a lot of unknowns that are in there uh we don't have fiscal 23 right now has not been closed we're in fiscal 24 and we are still waiting to get information in terms of what's been spent to to date okay uh the expense lines in terms of what we anti at for costs uh we believe that those are a reasonable estimate as to what uh should be asked for but that is one of the the challenges we face in terms of confidence in so are you saying overall that this amount of money that you're asking for could increase or decrease we believe that this is uh accurate request to cover the services that are anticipated for the year have you already taken your final vote we have taken a final vote Yes so the numbers can't go up any higher they can't go up any higher thank you yeah okay okay all right so we'll we'll come back around on some other questions maybe on end and whatever as you go through but why don't you go through the so there there are uh 12 cost centers that are in the report uh school committee costs the significant increase in this is related to Legal costs uh that went up this year central office uh is where a lot of the attention is being focused right now in terms of positions there and how that that's structured uh we've broken out the costs related to central office in terms of the temporary uh lines so that towns can see what we anticipate is the ongoing costs versus what are the the fixed costs related to the uh the current challenges and it's expected that's going to take two to three years to work through uh the administration line uh there was a reserve amount of 50,000 put in there this year the cost for laptops went up significantly and then there were some new hires who came in at a higher rate on the uh step lines compared to who they were replacing in there staff salaries is currently under negotiations so we can't really talk about that um other than to say this is our best estimate as to what the costs will be going going forward uh Athletics the change there is related to uh change in accounting things were put into that line which uh weren't necessarily appropriate to be be in there and so it's transferred out but it's not a change in overall cost uh buildings and grounds the school was able to negotiate uh 31-month uh fixed rate and so significantly decrease the cost of electric uh to the the school and then transportation out of District I think is what um one person was alluding to in terms of uh their significant changes uh related to educational costs when people are transported out of the district um and the the school's responsibility for surrounding that um State assessments is primarily focused around school choice out and Charter out um and those are that's pretty much the the major changes that we've we've seen from the budget this this year Tom do you know if uh within this budget that we have where we have the detailed lines is is 100% of the cost of uh staff and admin in there or are there partial or whole salaries hidden within school choice accounts as previously done partial or right like it this like if you have a headcount of 78 employees can I bet can I get all 78 salaries here or are some of them funded by the school choice account do you want Margaret might be able to speak a little more to this um hi Margaret Larson n David and member of the Hampshire Regional school committee and the finance subcommittee um so historically the only people who have been funded through grants or school choice have been some of our adjustment counselors so we're no longer do doing that um all of our teachers have always been shown in the budget and that is the case now going forward so much as we did with the Southampton school budget we are making sure that we're showing everything coming in and we're showing everything coming out and not assigning certain roles to certain grants okay okay all right so are do you have the the spreadsheets that we got I mean that's what I think we ought to try to walk through those if you have them y That's what I think okay I think let's move into some of the detail unless that'll prompt more questions perhaps um because not everybody has gotten the the actual budget so okay that's why we need to be able to project it yeah can we project it up there do we have it yeah um where he came from Micky bu are you going to drive it okay well actually for you y thank you there you go thank [Music] you okay there we go good mhm great thanks cat okay so this is kind of where you started out so recap yeah go ahead so the there's some folks that haven't haven't s so so in terms of what presented we I kind of went through the major cost categories so school committee central office administration and gave you the verbal of what those changes now want here like three communities are getting a credit I understand why that's happening but you might want just touch on it okay so the we recognize that there's a significant amount of uh existing funds that we be using for to cover this budget and the consequence of that is that there's a lower than historical increase in the budget there's the rationale behind that is we have a lot of unknowns you had a question about the confidence in the numbers so there is significant concern about that um if the the recommendation to the school committee was that if we want to ask for some type of increased funding or have some type of an override we need two things one is we need confidence in the numbers and that is a significant challenge for us at the present time the second thing is that we need uh strong leadership to help drive that forward and there's a lot of change going on in the administration right now and if the budget were to fail in any way of the towns with the change in leadership going on it would be very challenging to move things forward and it would significantly affect the ability of the school to operate effectively and so there was the recommendation was that we uh move on a budget which used Reserve funds to try to lower the risk to and and how do how do you allocate the 10.2 million to each Community yeah I mean the have gone down that because of fewer students or Okay so uh there's a fiveyear rolling average calculation that is broken into two parts each Town based on certain numbers that the state calculates has a required minimum contribution and it varies based on the the town separately from that there's an over the required uh contribution and so that total pot is divided out amongst the the five towns based on the five-year rolling average of the students at the the school and so there's been some change in that where Southampton has seen more students and as this displays Chesterfield Goan um have had a decrease in the number of of students okay that's clear okay um sorry um one of our other considerations is that we know that Goan has to do an override for their operating expenses so they have some dramatically increasing costs at the elementary level they have an out of District student who is going to cost each of towns about $880,000 8 80 80 okay and they sorry they have to split those between two towns unlike when we have an outer District student at the regional that's split amongst Five Towns so they have to split that amongst two towns and and in addition to some of the other expenses that all the towns are seeing um in terms of insurance costs ambulance costs Etc we are we know they have to go to an override and that is considered a no until it becomes a yes and their town meeting isn't until I mean there vote wouldn't be until June 17th so we we also have that as a consideration as we're building our budget to make sure that this is something that the other towns can pass okay got it okay and you can proceed with one no vote but not two no votes that is correct yeah okay all right so that's the overview so yeah go ahead okay y so this is our Revenue y okay so these are the revenues and then expense wise uh yeah going be a little bigger Scott yeah there we go too big uh sorry very sensitive here somewhere even a little bit better again I don't know there we go getting better thank you yep and you're getting revenue from from Clark School yes there's the school has an agreement uh in all the grades although it looks like the Middle School may be stopping their program which would likely phase out the Clark program in the long run mhm okay so the amount are we down at the uh this Chapter 70 money is that where we are okay so there's been a slight increase in chapter money but nowhere near what we had thought there might be I guess we we'd kind of hop that there might be bigger chapter money coming in yeah we're looking for the pot of gold yeah so I mean yeah just again for people listening it that have a clue what we're talking about so try to no knows nothing there there are various States for sources of funding there's chapter 78 uh there's uh reimbursement uh for when students go out to Charter Schools there there's school choice when students uh come into the district um and then there's Regional Transportation Aid which is something which we hope it would be funded at 100% but historically has has not been um there's an agreement that the district has with the town of Worthington to accept uh their students it's at an increased rate from what the school choice uh numbers are and so that's been found to be beneficial U and then there's a Clark School where there's a a program where uh clerk rents space and provides services in the the school um southampton's cost per student compared to Worton how does how does southampton's cost per student compared to worthington's cost per student I can answer that thanks good okay um so depending on which measure you're using uh it's anywhere between $6 to $18,000 for a Hampshire Regional student coming from the school sorry I'll speak louder Worthington at this point pays well for fiscal year 25 they will pay approximately $10,700 per student that will continue to be negotiated however Worthington also pays their own transportation and they pay their own sped costs so their actual cost per student is can range from $155,000 per student to to $22,000 per student one year they had an out of District or a couple years they had an out of District placement and they have to be the only ones to absorb that so if it's a $200,000 out of District placement they have to pay for that whole thing so there have been years where they paid more per student than any of our our towns did however they do know that they're that the costs are increasing they we will renegotiate that within 2 years they are also open to us asking for money for Capital expenditures as well okay are there any talks about them joining the school district they I mean they left a Regional School District okay so they at this point yes at this point they aren't inclined to if they see a need to do that or if we as a district look further into K12 Regional ation that would be an option so um that that that's like a three-year process that we would like to begin but we don't know where that will end it's good conversation to have yes and maybe following on Dan's question just to inform of just the the per student cost if it exists for the charter school and the school choice in in terms of what that whatever money that is that we get um School choices fixed at $5,000 and then adjusted upward hasn't changed in number adjusted upward for IEPs or 504s corre from the C districts yeah same Charter is similar school choice out is at the mercy whatever school it's going to and last year they did a N9 9 or 14% increase the commissioner did to the May Institute the what white oak or you know whever daies yeah yeah if I if I try to take a high level view with this the numbers that would make me feel comfortable is the cost per student against the other towns that have to pay being relatively equal that's that's the the data I would like to see that makes shows me that so and we can certainly give that to you so with the fiveyear rolling average the cost per town in our district is astonishingly close it's you know 16 to 18,000 per student depending on the Year great um no matter what town they come from correct how however so caveat here that is based on Chesterfield having had 42 students 5 years ago they now have about 20 so in the next year not FY 25 FY 26 that 40,000 that 40 students drops off and their contribution is going to be smaller so I don't know how that will impact the per student cost in general cross the student body the cost depending doesn't their town which they come from does not depend their does not drive the cost I mean so much of it depends on the chapter 78 so our assessments being based on a 5-year rolling average and based on the percentage if you just look at the additional beyond the minimum contribution they're equal based on percentage it's that Chapter 70 money that we do not control that makes the difference very good thank you okay good anybody else questions no okay go ahead keep on sure um these are the same allocations that you saw before in terms of the Y the towns so just back onto the um anything on the circuit breaker rural aid grant all of that stayed somewhat similar a rural aid grant has stayed the same that's fairly new right for the last couple years yes the grants are something that are receiving a lot of attention in terms of the accounting practices MH Tom did you already talk about Transportation revolving uh we talk about using that okay funding source yeah so Reggie did your question the excess and deficiency get answered there in terms of what you were talked about so we've looks like we've got uh there's nothing for with this with this budget proposal there there still you still have a minimum of of two existing pots of money to fall back on in the event that you end up coming up short right you're not you're not utilizing 100% of all your reserves for school choice school school choice revolving fund exists there are certain limitations as to how that can be used um and there is a small amount about a little over 1% of uh funding in the the end that could be used but you're not putting anything in end this year correct okay okay it so I guess it kind of goes without saying that eventually you're going to have a really big step up when because you're using the reserves this year it won't be available the reserves is not the the use of reserves has been stepping up over the past several years and it's not a sustainable trend to be continued okay all right next page guess that was so this is a summary of the 12 different uh sections that I was talking about before in terms of school committee central Office Administration staff salaries and what those changes are primarily representing if we go down to the next section you can see uh more detail into those different um changes so for example the first one the lines above go down to the Gray Line where it says school committee and uh the line legal is where the the bulk of that that change is um same thing central office is the next one and so it's broken out into two different lines uh the first one is the overall central office and what's anticipated to run the school and the the second line represents the immediate uh efforts that are being undertaken in terms of fixing the accounting practices that have been shown to be challenging so that second line is the one you anticipate two to three years out going away we go away right and we want the towns to be able to see that this is not just a not getting biger it's not a bigger bigger bigger number it's something which is specifically targeted but your your Technology support is going up and that's the laptop issue the or the the 22,000 so so the the challenge with a lot with a number of these different numbers is that looking at one year to the next isn't always a good comparison but in terms of the explanation for this yes the um the laptop cost going up um is the primary one there as well as the reserve for contingencies line and this on the administration's salaries does that reflect the possibility of a new business manager or you're Outsourcing the business manager uh goes up into the central office core costs and so that would uh that encompasses the the biggest change there is around the superintendent where the school has uh district has felt that it uh could be beneficial to have a higher salary line in terms of attracting more qualified candidates M can ask a question yeah um who controls the reserved contingencies what's the how does that money spent who who is the control over that budget I guess my concern is when I I've seen from the previous administration's ability to manage and control spending seems not the best so why would I trust them with any money when there are changes in light items they're supposed to come before the school committee for approval as to if appropriate okay than so one of our challenges with central office is that we don't have a documented mechanism for situations where it needs more money or it UND spends so at the moment when it UND spends in central office any remainder goes into the Hampshire Regional end which isn't appropriate for an entire system if we go over then we need to go back to all the towns and ask for additional money so this is a way to compensate for that knowing that we have a lot of unknowns this year and so the $50,000 I don't know that that's the amount that will continue but because we have this number of unknowns it seemed prudent yeah to let me say it this way it could have said $2 in there and I would ask the same question corre because I want to understand what the mechanism is for that money the control of that so our all districts committee approves additional expenditures um which then goes to the individual School committees and they also approve that so there are funding decisions that are approved regularly okay anybody okay so for example the 50,000 suppose you had a leaky roof tomorrow does that 50 is there are there Li because that's Central central office is for administrative purposes across the district if we have a building issue that would be separate and so we do have a mechanism uh using end or school choice to fund problems like that which is why we want to form the capital account this year we're not funding it but we want to have that so that in the future we have a way to deal with issues like that okay all right anybody let me know if you guys question just all yep okay go ahead y the staff salaries like I said that's under negotiation so we can't get into details about about that um but as you said this so therefore you're carrying everyone at a step increase we we we look at step increases and this is our best estimate as to what we expect yeah it's not a zero it's your best estimate given that negotiation correct and it also includes existing step increases yeah so that is always you know we know what our Baseline is for the next three years which includes already contracted step increases thank you it's just worth saying again and so the negotiations are ongoing and do you expect to have them concluded before so we are currently in mediation and that's where we are right now um we're meeting again next week and Hope Springs Eternal all right okay all right substitute m is to get substitutes uh there have been some changes in terms of how substance subes have been used in the past year and yes there was a a the school committee approved an increase in the substitute uh day rate in an effort to attract more subs to manage the challenges we also have two permanent building substitutes who are on staff and so they're there every day with 80 some teachers it is not uncommon every day to have teachers out and so having the building substitutes means that we don't need to worry as much about that but every school in our district as well in the region has a difficult time attracting substitutes so we have consistently had to raise that a little bit every day the Athletics the integrative sports that was one of the areas where I was talking about there's a change in accounting um in there so that's that line actually hasn't changed significantly in terms of the costs for the district um this here you can see the biggest change here is related to Electric um which was the uh fixed contract that I talked about before that the administration was able to to negotiate anybody um transportation is uh basically the buses and out of District Vans uh to send students to various programs how long is your your your um bus contract does that due up anytime soon or is that it's uh 5e contract we're in the third five year and we're in the contract three or two years left it's a three it's a three-year contract with two one year renewals yes so you're partway you're halfway through it or something like that we're in the third yeah um yeah outer District tuition is you know what we talked about students going to uh other programs when they they can't be served by Hampshire Regional um staff benefits we saw significant increase in Insurance costs uh this year and then the state assessments is related to school choice out as well as uh Charter tuition out and as you can see there's this illustrates the um benefit of having the uh Reserve fund uh for school choice at 150% there a big swing here in terms of U that expense and it can go either way MH going back to uh programs out of District was a huge increase two years ago or a year ago yes is it is it always just a function of who the students might be yes it's yeah so what we often see is what we often see is that the elementary schools are taking you know a hit in terms of numbers and then that comes to the high school and so some of our new programming related to adjustment counseling and tier 2 interventions have enabled us to keep some students that we ordinarily might not have been able to keep so that is always top of mind for our Administration is how do keep these students in District because the cost can be exorbitant but it is not always possible so like Norris is going down this year because we have a sixth grader that's going to seventh grade they're going to pick up Hampshire Regional will pick up the cost correct not only for that but because it's an IEP that student will stay past 12th grade right in 13th and 14th it's like 22 uh I think they go to 20 21 or 22 yes mhm so some you can anticipate because they're already at Norris others move in this the district right next year's budget we're going to benefit from it but they're going to take the hit if they don't have people aging out on the flip side M MH I think that's the last yeah okay anybody else have comments questions yeah Scott I mean Scott Bradley you guys are the numbers guys go for it um somewhat related but the uh the request for the capital project stabilization fund to be put on the warrant maybe we can just talk about that a little bit so the school now well actually Mark maybe this is probably oh you're most involved in this um so this has been something that probably should have been done 10 years ago or so um in particular we know we have a capital plan and historically we've been able to fund most of those items from our operating budget or rural Aid so this year in particular we are repairing the gym floor there's some change repairs to our Auditorium the theater stage that we're able to use R relayed for the exception to that over the past 10 years was when we needed the new HVAC system and so we did come back to the towns and ask for something what we would like to do is have a capital fund that annually we put a certain percentage to be determined from school choice or other revolving funds and that goes into our Capital fund so that we can be more self- sustaining in that area we have some very large capital projects coming up so that will not cover all of that but if we can be more mindful in advance of our future needs um including our field floods and we need to do a feasibility study on that and that could be $1.5 million we don't we honestly don't know between that and repairing our track so there you know there's probably going to be a combination of some Bond issues and coming to the towns and using some of our Reserve but that is a place to start and we really feel we need that place to start and so we are hoping that that um gets to come to town meeting and that that is approved does does the Lang I read it but I forget now does the language put a cap it does not and would Hampshire region will be opposed to us amending it on the floor no here you know a percentage of I mean it should never exceed a percentage of whatever the operating right you know I I think probably different towns have different ideas about how that should be managed there are some towns who have their own Capital fund that they expect to go to the school if they want and they would like to control those funds so we need still need to work through some of those issues with each town and how they are currently navigating their own Capital expenses as well as future Capital expenses for the schools I like the idea of empowering the school board to have the authority of the with that money I think that's a good checks and ballot over the school administration like we talked about with the other fund yes um to that to that point you talked about some of the capital building improvements that that seems to be an area that if there was an Ask of where we would spend other money that that's where that would go our our that's the one part I we don't see when we look at budgets we don't see what isn't in the budget what what would have been there if we had more money is it capital things it's Capital it's all capital building improvements and and also I think we always it is one of the most challenging parts of being in a decentralized regional school because we have to be aware of every Town's ability to pay yep and so in a certain year would we might like a slightly larger budget in order to accommodate some of the needs that we have that are either longterm or short-term yes but we always have to be aware of what our towns are able and willing to do with us so if it is capital related then building up that buffer of the capital fund may allow for towns to account for that over periods of time to contribute to yes and we know that that it can often be more palatable if it's a longer term bond issue or debt exclusion or something as opposed to put into the annual operating budget and so we are sensitive to that as well so just to be clear Margaret you mentioned this the reserve for contingencies the 50,000 that's being asked for that's in central office that's central office thing so but having that kind of Reserve fund is for labeling the same it's listed it's listed Administration oh it's Administration I thought there was one for Central did that get go okay that's different yes okay so that's Reserve fund for those kinds of continu but you're saying that right now you have nothing for like a capital reserve fund traditionally we have said that our school choice revolving fund which we are try not to dip into too much every year so we we use all of the incoming school choice but we try to be very judicious in how we use our school choice revolving and that has always been our source for potential Capital needs now working so closely with desie over the last couple months um it has become very clear to us that doing so actually changes the budget and so we need to come back to the towns to ask for permission to use additional monies if it is not something that changes your assessment or changes the amount you are contributing then it is considered passive approval so you can not bring it to the towns the select board can say we're going to take no action on this this is fine with us if in fact we had an an emergency like the HVAC system which fortunately com coincided with the budget season a couple years ago but if it didn't then that would mean that we would have to return to the towns and then that would have to go to a social town meeting in order to approve that additional expenditure so we are trying to avoid those type of situations so working with the amount of money that we have and being more thoughtful about what we see happening in the next 5 years or so we've had a capital plan for a long time but we haven't had huge expenditures like we're expecting for the field and replacement of our track which we have to do every 10 years and a lot of this started a year ago when there when whatever happened with the end certification for the number to be what it is right because the other piece and and Tom Tom mentioned it but only mentioned the number of the 5% if end comes back at 7% anything north of 5% that that Del Delta needs to go back to the communities under under statute which is what happened last year so then that started the conversation about the future plans and what they need and can they create this so instead of at least I know from this the body that was here at this time there was a lot of push back of you know you can't just take the money and put in there so I you know I think they're taking the The Logical approach let's create let's see if we get the policy passed first then we'll figure out the funding but under our agreement through um when Southampton joined the um there's nothing that prevents the school commit Hampshire Regional school committee from putting forward a capital request project for all the towns to vote on debt overrides and or pay from some other source they want I think they're just trying to get the policy in place sounds like more intentional long like our operational stabilization that's what we're hoping yes a little bit more of that yeah okay all right yeah have about yeah great general question do you budget like a balance sheet or statement condition is part of this for us to see so we know kind of I'm kind of back to my question about the reserve funds I don't know what's in them I don't know I I know the toll they're going to be used but I don't know what's going to be L at the end of the day we can give we have we can get you a sheet that shows what those balances are yeah so I think um Tom said that you'd already talked about the transportation revolving and the fact that we're using all of that um this year that is a fund that is supposed to be used up every year so that historically has not happened school choice is something that can go over multiple years uh circuit breaker has to be used over 2 years so we are um there's still some of our revolving accounts that need a little bit more investigation but we are happy to give you what we have in our balances school choice we have about 1.4 a little over 1.4 little 1.4 and so we we feel that we needed to use that Transportation revolving in order to be compliant um with mgl but going forward we would be more judicious with that an issue with the books being close too that yes and those books include you know the works it's kind of current balance sheet and revenues for the year that it's been the F FY 23 is imminently closing we hope we hope yes so and that is partially the reason why we didn't use end year because we weren't confident in that number and we want to be confident before we we come to you in part of closing those books means squaring away the outstanding uh Grant questions that are holding upad books yes which is holding up our books too which is our Challenge and we you know even though you all got the extension from desie we ended up getting one from DLS too but we really had no intention of going until the 99th hour at midnight to do that so you know given that Southampton is the largest contributor to the budget I would hope that there would be some priority given to getting our books yes figures challenges that Bradley has talked about with Mickey or whom El both our regional schools have yes getting those out of the way because we really need to close this budget yeah sooner rather than later I mean I don't want to be here on you know April 29th saying okay no I think all hands are on deck for that right now there's a lot of effort okay hope so we need to do that just one quickie I I just was noticing you mentioned circuit breaker briefly why is the the circuit breaker request down quite a bit from um going from 24 400,000 down to 255 what what what influencing that see that's on the uh Revenue Source Circ the definition of circuit breaker is to make up the difference of an unexpected special education cost so you you have to have the cost and it has to be 125% greater than your budget okay then you can apply for a circuit breaker and you'll get a you won't get 100% of that money back but you'll get that money back from so if you don't if you don't have the needs okay so last year so it's fewer kids needing so part of the reason that we made some decisions last year in terms of using excuse me additional endd is that we knew that our budgeted expenses for fy4 were fairly extraordinary and so we expect to get more back in circuit breaker this year that M that has not been certified and so we chose to be fairly conservative in how we use that um you know it's the same end Transportation revolving there's another you know there's a few questions and so we decided to use for transportation reimbursement what we got this year it could very well be more but we don't know that and so we're trying to take as conservative approach as we can and again Transportation supposed to use it the next year and circuit breaker you can allocate over two years carry it out yeah yeah two years for circuit Breer right okay good okay anybody else other questions thoughts all right good I I think it's a good budget dep based on everything that's going up yeah I mean honestly having having been to the preliminary hearing this is a a bit of a relief I will say and I would well yes yeah that's Tom start you off with 1% increase like 177% there's a lot of effort put it a lot of people Tove I'm sure be very thankful to Margaret for Chris on that end with the cockus coming up I believe there are three open seats on Hampshire region over in Southampton so anybody wants to really dig into this next year yeah let us know we'll write your name in on the ballot yeah exactly we need some people on the Hampshire Regional school committee for sure so uh no thanks and thanks to everybody in the teams and various people that have been involved involved on the finance committee and everybody else that's been involved in at least getting it to this far so and and if as you Ponder this if you come up with more questions snow and together we'll do our best to but I think if you can get around um you know the sheets that Reggie was talking about send them on to Scott and we'll get them distributed that would be fine coming off the board good all right she's on the nor Tom has been an excellent Steward of our board this year pleased to have all right well thanks much appreciated office now okay uh thank you much and so I guess uh open to Scott and Bradley to give us the big overview of where where things stand in terms of the big picture now with I assume you've built this figure into the into the budget already so that was great just to have a a bit of clarity in terms of how they look at things and I think that helps us understand it a bit better so give us the overview whatever you got there Scott and this is maybe different than the ones that Bradley sent around yesterday right it should be pretty much the same pretty much the same okay okay um so this is the um way let me know okay so currently we're at uh $2,231 th000 with the budget one request from all the Departments and there was a few placeholders that we had to put in just because we didn't receive the information but it was minor things um you know a few hundred here or there so nothing that was really extraordinary um the updated projected revenues are a little over $21 million right now uh we've been obviously watching what the state's doing we've been checking the Cherry sheets um as you know yesterday the governor announced that the uh state will be having a hiring freeze yeah so is there an expectation of much more probably not at this point um so it does leave a difference of $230,000 uh between the revenues and and the budget one requests uh many of our budgets year were submitted as Budget on or was n't really a lot of wishlist items on budget number two uh a few here and there but most of it was really consistent and um there really wasn't a lot of uh quote wish list items um the revenues have been updated you know we're constantly checking that um we had a good meeting with Brett uh last week for the water superintendent uh for the water department indirect cost to going over that it's been a few years since that's been updated um we don't expect there might be some changes but it probably won't be a drastic change um the Colin Center draft was expected today um but I have not gotten anything as of right now surprise surprise that's that's $75,000 we spent not to get a report in 18 months 75,000 uh no 35 they got 35,000 still okay it wasn't that South South Hy will probably have theirs before we have ours and they just started two months ago well we were told it went to the the uh overall super visor to sign off on or something that's what we were told the the the um cins oh yes yes so um the draft went to the supervisor today who was in professional development that's what the email I got I could suggest some courses I can do it quick I can do it in a few hours if you want me know don't disagree but in all fness to I don't know that we know exactly when everything went to Collins 2 I mean I there's delays all over the place but yes I I there's there's you know yeah I know slowness there but I think there was some slowness on our side as well but anyway go ahead um and then the fy22 audits um they should have everything the last bit was from the school lunch program which uh they should have received all the information on Monday and I double checked yesterday and there might have been one or two things but hopefully by tomorrow all that should be squared away okay knock on wood that would get that um just to put in perspective um so we're looking at about $22.2 million for our draft budget this year our expected costs um you know and things that you know are pretty stable like insurance and benefits uh at that at this point we're not going to be going out to bid for our our insurances right now I think it's a little bit too late our our benefits the same thing as well um if we're going to do any plan design changes I mean that is right now past that so they're pretty much all set um the wages um education and core services um thing you know our Library Council on Aging Highway Department police and fire um there's not a lot of additional departments that that Southampton has you know we don't have a sustainability director and we don't have uh you know a a seore department or things like that like um other municipalities so really everything that we have is really a core service for for the citizens um the debt is obviously you know again it's a little bit too late to think about refinancing everything but we did have a pretty uh pretty steep drop in the debt this year um I have to get the number but some of a lot of the stuff did come off uh and then we have a lot of contractual obligations everything from you know the HVAC to the copers to um transfer station stuff um all of that so you know those are really expected costs that that are a little bit more difficult to find money from uh the other cost which is in the red things like you know maintenance I don't like to for maintenance or things like that overtime uh other expenses you know copy or paper things like that um those total just a little bit under $3 million and then our current stabilization funds um are as shown yeah so let me the uh with the uh expenses in there um are they all just showing budget one and and and so where where we made the changes on budget two for certain like specifically I'm thinking the Board of Health right we're going to take out the costs associated with the contracted Services PR that are revolving so that would pull what 46 or 60,000 um we probably still need to seed that a little bit so to make sure there's enough money to to started right no we we right now it's still in technically the the 42,000 so it's it's all budget one through the whole workbook okay yeah um so in this I sent this around as well um so the green sorry before you go back on the on the various stabilization fund so that pre so this is this is what we have or this is what we want to do when we get free cash this is what we have prob what we have right now with fisal year 23's ending balances and the current activity in fisal year 24 that's those current balances okay as of well the revenues haven't been updated since December 31st I'm updating [Music] that interest that flow into some of these accounts yep every few months okay so we have 95,000 in capital now now without doing any new stuff that's more and we and we operating is understated by the 356 that we borrowed that we need to put back in6 back into operating y capital really low to me okay not really a stabilization yeah yeah yeah okay it's the percentage we're supposed to put in from free cash right no right no I wouldn't call it a stabilization but I mean it falls in the in the it's outside the general fund right right yeah y okay yeah and just everybody just be sure you're speaking up loudly enough so we can hear everybody yeah um okay go ahead and cut sorry so just going through the budget really quickly um you know there's not a lot of access to it to begin with um but right here and I sent this around a little bit earlier um so I just put in green things that would fall under the traditional wages contractual agreements things like that uh yellow is things that we might you know possibly take a look at and red is some items that I think may be underfunded uh for the budget this year um one of the things I did also is but just a percentages so you can see that in the um this column right here which is shows it's a comparison of the amended budget to the fy2 budget if it's above 100% then that's an increase if it's below 100% that's a decrease so that's just to show everyone um one of the first things I think are underfunded is uh legal expenses this year um we have a lot of transactions going on potential for another town meeting um you know I think with the city clerk and a lot of uh properties in the Board of Health that they're looking at um that's one of the the I guess the danger areas for underfunding um there's a few areas that we are kind of looking at to make sure that are a little bit you know a little bit out of the ordinary past 100% like the assessor software report is 116% uh but that was because of an increased cost for vision um Bradley's actually checking the independent audit number um I reached out and they gave me that number but that's for the fiscal year 23 wait not 20 they're currently ating 22 they're still not done when they were supposed to go on to 23 I thought the plan was they were going to do 22 and then 23 was going to be like January of this year and that was the $47,000 number but they haven't started that yet so I'm not sure when they're going to start F year 23 so that's the amount that we have to pay for the FIS year 23 audit but for the F year 24 audit I don't know have that number but usually we budget for the next year that remind me we send we signed a contract for just one year or three years did we go back I thought we did the three years did we do a three years subject to town approval we didn't have enough money to do it right so we put the caveat subject to approval yeah we might just have to go back and just double check on that contract but I would think you'd have to if that's really for 23 audit and they haven't dug down on to it yet it seems like we need to be looking to put something in there for 24 at the same time so that's a definite bright red line I think and I think too legal I mean I think we've kept it at about 25,000 year after year after year and you know we've we've managed to either not do some things or you know do some you know do it as minimally as we can I think we've been very judicious about how often we've had to contact the uh I think it also we've had a lot of unusual expenses in the last few months yeah but like I don't think that line item should be hit for anything related to um legal work related to the public safety building or the Council on Aging like those those are project costs that should be within those buckets that yeah I think we can if we can find those kinds of yeah but I think like a lot of things that are happening now with the Board of Health and certain properties that are you know they're having issues with and so forth we've had to go back and forth with fair amount some of that too though may get absorbed by whatever settlement happens or the auction of a property or whatever that may it may all come out but we just to say that we've had more unusual expenses and many more of them this year I think than we've had in the last couple of years so I'm looking at this way too we do have Scott who has I look at it this way too that we do now have Scott who has elite law degree so although he's not going to represent us in the court of law he does have that background so I think that that will provide a level of support in that area that we haven't had before yeah no and I I think you know we'll continue to be judicious in terms of when we need to consult KP but uh thank you John um I think it's like Insurance uh you hate to pay the bill but you need to pay the bill yeah you need it when you need it so it you you you avoid a greater expense yeah so that may be something you know as we you know if we can find a few extra dollars to top that up to 30 wouldn't be a bad idea frankly but something like that so I guess overall what's what's the goal I mean we're I looked at that the cover sheet the big story says we're within we we got a balance we got a we got a balance we have to present a balanced budget to the town in less than you know to the warrant in a couple weeks so that's the challenge so anything in yellow is something that we've got from what you're saying Scott the way I'm hearing it is a little bit of wiggle room to to look at not not a lot but yeah that's if you want to maintain you know without talking about wages other things like that um so here's what I would re the process I would go about is with anything you have highlighted in yellow if you can put a priority number associated with them as as to how you would go about cutting them then we'll start with that so if you can put I don't care if it's high medium low or put them in in order which way you want to cut them well and I think to just to say um there may be a couple things I don't know on this list but from time to time uh I don't know I'm just thinking of the ms4 storm water thing or the mosquito control program or whatever at some point in time we've we've managed to pull them aside from the general budget and fund them somehow else whether it's we've used arpa a couple times for a onetime expense or you know we're a little low on doing too much there but anyway just to say if there's anything like that that would lend itself to not being in there that could be kind of a a separate find a separate funding source that might be one way to look at it too but so the the third coln go ahead Scott yeah Noti that the uh Conservation Commission expenses is the same as lection registration expenses that's a mistake on my end it should be 6,000 for the Conservation Commission defenses so uh my question was if you add up all the yellow lines does it cross off enough money to balance our budget no probably not that it's not that easy yeah unfortunately uh I mean like for example like the the Conservation Commission wages there's still about a little under $16,000 in arpa money that we can use this year so that's you know that's a little bit here or there um so we might not need all that 25 right like the planning board um they can usually cover that $5,000 and they're revolving funds they you know they're rationale as they wanted it just um you know just in case um but you know it's something that we can discuss with the planning board to maybe make a little bit less before you get off of that the top one on the cyclical accessor go up a little bit that's something that's required no is that is there is that a fix figure the 5700 is that um we must be coming up on the cyclical there usually there's annual but there's we may be up for I forget now if it's a is it a three or is it a 5 year now didn't they change it to a fiveyear evaluations evaluations I thought we put a even amount in every every year yeah but I think yeah I'm not sure we'd have to check that maybe with the assessors on that one yeah but um yeah it was um 7250 a couple years ago then it but I can't remember if it's a threeyear or a 5year cost differential there you're saying cyclical inspections equals 5year revaluation expense I'm I'm not sure I'm not sure that's what the mean well I I don't I don't know where the 5700 comes from except that if that's bigger is that because it's time now to do more evaluations because it's that time to do threee or 5year evaluations I don't know what that refers to that was my question I don't know in the budget narrative which if you would check that because hopefully they put something in their budget narrative that would help us understand that um I'm just wondering if there's really that much to play with in there in terms of wiggle room there may not be so here we go thank you anything there not much no okay so I think that's a question just you know how how did that change on that particular one yeah it's just something that sticks out to it's 250% so even though it's a smaller number you know if it goes from $250 to $500 it's 200% but still is something that we want to look at yeah please do follow up on that my susic being the liaison to the board of assessors is that that reflects the intention to go out and record more new growth and get that onto the permanent tax roles and that would be periodic checking to see that you know there are things Beyond building permits that need to be added to the valuation mhm yeah and that may or may not be a contract expense or a current current assessor or uh it has recently been managed by a contractor and so it's not a salary expense yeah okay I kind of look at this as a pretty easy exercise you can't lean back with sorry try to talk to you guys all right so if you take out the salaries everything remaining if you take an evil an even haircut on all those items that seems like an an easy way to arrive at the budget we need it's 1% it's going to be less than 1% once uh I mean you get down to it so um I I I think that's pretty easy way and we we shouldn't be having to spend too much time on this item with that approach yeah but I think we need to understand where some of the where the some of the things are anomalies compared to what we've sent before so I mean something that's a big small amount of dollars but it's a big percentage increase so what what's the rationale behind some of that so yeah but I I guess I would I look to our accountant to identify any anomalies in our budget yeah well that's what we're doing I mean isn't that the accountant's job right I wouldn't be cutting any of the utility cost because those are always going up and know people always in to pay those fin bills yeah exactly so yeah go ahead Scott continue um so going down like like Bradley just mentioned some of the uh the building maintenance stuff um you know our built town hall building expenses is going to be really tight this year and you know things are breaking on a regular basis I know the heat in the Council on Aging is now acting up um so I that's one of those levels I I do think might be a little underfunded and then uh Gas and Electric just being carried over from last year um being level funded is always a little bit a little bit cautious for me um technology Services that's the that reflects the new service agreement that we have uh with Nova so it's essentially an IT department that we that they do on on a regular basis most of it remote uh but we do have inperson uh support every every second Thursday and that's been really helpful uh even though we just entered into that a few weeks ago um one of the things that we will I will be putting in the uh annual town meeting is for this year is just a transfer of about 15,000 to do uh the Wi-Fi which is actually part of what novas recommends in their contract to get it up to up to speed so everything would be redone um it would Sol the Wi-Fi in the aging and it make a secure make a secure Wi-Fi for the town hall which we do not have right now so if I ask this question if if you cross out the salary you can cross out the the the expenses that are fixed what is what is remaining that is variable that we can we can change or hasn't been set by a committee or a town department so if a town department is coming and said I want to be level funded and it's in there that's their prerogative um so what do we have to work with here 2.9 okay so which items are those usually it's a lot of them it's the majority I mean if that's what we're going if we're going to solve this right I don't want to wait until the end mon we solve it all but this is the first discussione to Sol solve it part we are let's just get those items those are the ones we can address right if we can yeah I mean there's still some negotiations those are the ones we can adjust right we can so we have to know what the list is of what can be adjusted and then we'll sure we'll look at those so it's simple yep uh Public Safety is another one there's obviously some contractual uh bargained um increases uh you know the Quinn bill is pretty you know if the wages go up then the Quinn bill is going to go up as well along with that uh same thing with overtime so if there's a more expensive base rate then every hour of overtime is going to cost more money um one of the things you know we can look at is um you know building expenses for the police station um obviously we don't want to put too much money in but you know the even the best casee scenario uh if everything goes smoothly we're still probably about 3 to 4 years away in the best scenario to get a new place for our fire department or police department um one of the things I did put in was the communication expenses and I did offset that uh as Revenue by the Grant and that's one of the cautions that we have is because that's going to be reduced year after year until we don't get a subsidy anymore so next year I think it's 50 % or 75% no three years where the grant would pay 100% then the fourth year so this is our dispatch that's now managed by East Hampton um the fourth year I believe we have to pay they pay 50% then 20 25% and then year six we have to pay the full amount of the dispatch so this is essentially setting up a quote unquote reserve line anticipating that we'll have at least something built up so when we're ready and have to pay pay it ourselves rather than getting it um through this grant currently um that will be something that's there so that was what we had talked about at the last meeting so the 175 is it yeah right so from the spreadsheet is there an identifier that we can use to filter on which items we have the ability to be changed well any item can be changed it's it's a matter of prioritizing so so based on the on the method of we one wouldn't want we want to avoid affecting salaries we're we're pretty close with within 1% we've identified in your original pie chart um that there are uh expenses that that are variable so we get rid of the Cross up the fixed expenses can you produce that for us for next meeting uh yeah we should be able to right yeah okay um you know Public Safety of fire is still is relatively level M um and does that include the uh the new hire so the W being the wages so the new hires that we don't have yet the new paramedics that we don't have yet okay um and all the wages do include any vacant positions right yeah okay all right um education which we just talked about um Norris and the uh Hampshire Regional uh Public Works is going to be a little bit um a little bit of a question mark going into the budget you know going into next year uh there are some salaries there's some negotiations that we have to do both with the um the superintendent uh and the union so um that's not built into that but that's something that once we sit down and get a better idea hopefully we can get a contract settled for at least maybe next special town meeting uh to maybe just add it on for the funding uh for that or to transfer or figure that out um I don't expect it to be a huge cost there's only four employees currently employed go up to eight um but something to keep aware of um and then yellow I have to talk to Randall you know is it possible to shave a little bit off of the road Mach Machinery expenses which I'm a little bit wary of cuz you know when you look at our ms4 Sturm Water Management the reason for the increase is for because we have to hire out a street sweeper cuz our street sweeper uh is not functioning right now right so it's balancing today versus tomorrow um so I'm always a little cautious on that um and then Cemetery expenses um you know they did uh provide a justification for the increases for like a lot of the projects uh things like plot software um which I don't know much about so don't ask me anything on that uh and then you know tree maintenance and things like that so it's tiny getting into the the Board of Health um so we did talk about doing the revolving fund um for that uh I did talk to the director and um there you know she's going to be able to take out the additional hours or I guess the um changes to salary out of the septic um Improvement fund yeah um so she should she committed to that so that should lessen it by about $5,000 um I haven't talked to the council and aging director but I know that the counceling agent really wants to fully fund the director's salary out of the general um General Schedule or general budget um I'm not sure if that's possible so I know last year was it was um it was uh helped by about $2 to $33,000 so that's one just one area just off the bat and you know veterans agent expenses I really would not want to cut that mean $700 to $1,100 it's $400 and that's it's just a you know it's just an increase I wanted to just show the increase but um you know I think is doing a really great job and a lot lot of positive feedback on her um and she's doing things you know just basic office supplies and things like that you can actually see it upstairs right now so a real positive uh positive change um culture and recreation as as Johanna had mentioned a lot of this is you know minimum funding for to maintain the library grants um there isn't a lot of uh changes to it the biggest driver is obviously the the books and materials uh for for the library and then employee benefits um this is something I need to dive into a little bit more next year uh just I just you know I'm just a little bit you know in the eighth ending right now to talk about any changes or anything like that um so essentially we're just continuing with what we have now and going into next year so most of our insurance is done through Maya or the Hampshire trust um and those are kind of uh set for us so I have a question I just don't know how this works but the town has a huge pension obligation and and other expenses as well is that is that done kind of regionally through this count Hampshire County something yeah hire County Retirement so they tell us so the idea is that eventually we catch up we fully fund those or is that the way it's supposed to work eventually we have to we have to set a minimum ount each year to it um Hampshire County the regional trust manages the funds for us they do all the paperwork they're like a third party administrator but they're not giving do we have an obligation to fund a certain amount every year and who sets that you're talking about retirement not Insurance correct yes I'm I'm talking about retirement retirement that's different than the the group Insurance trust does the health insurance the retirement system is the Hampshire County retirement system and they have an Actuarial calculation done every year I can send you um I'm was just going to look it up the last report with all the towns that participate they basically tell us what fix I think some of that is set yeah through them and it's based on the salaries that are paid it's based on uh the number the retirees and what you're pay you know there's like all kinds of things that go into that so so is is the goal to to get rid of the liability over time or the liability is just it's always going to be there yeah so it's not it's not fully funded no it's Bas it's the same as the state system it's just that the state has different retirement so hamen county has their own and Hampshire County has their own but it's it's everything is calculated the same as if you were a state employee but but very we huge obligation that we don't have the funds for yeah no it's a big chunk wages and um health insurance for retirees too so that's another thing to remember yep um for Debt Service obviously there's not much flexibility on this unless we try to restructure our debt which is going to take a while but um so a lot of the items uh the dump truck these items right here came off of the debt this year so I would assume the rate on those obligations is as low as it's going to be for a while M if you refinanced anything as it goes down yeah other stuff will be coming up I'm sorry the rate decreases or the payment is a decreasing payment schedule well as more debt comes off we're able to add more on um we don't have to add on but with a lot of the uh Capital expenditures you know the buildings police Vehicles DP you know DPW equipment we're going to see that coming back on quickly our bonding capacity will increase as old Deb is retired yeah m is is the rate on that new stuff today quite a bit higher than what it might have been two years ago or 3 years ago uh in general yes but I don't want to speak for Jen uh she would be the uh the expert on that so she would have the actual rates yeah what your question just the rates have gone up so much that as old debt comes off yeah you replace it the expense is going to be should be a lot higher because are higher mhm and then finally we have our our debt service interest as the final piece of it mhm okay one thing I have on my file that Scott file Scott's files does not have is a transfer to the transfer station oh yeah Enterprise fund they requested $3,920 on my file so where would that yeah that that we talked about in terms of um we have the the monitoring of the the capping of the the old landfill the old whatever that has to it it has to be done and we've talked about it as one way to help out on the U sort of the the red ink on the transfer station right now would be to take on that as part of the Town budget rather than putting it into the transfer station or Highway budget so somewhere around 30,000 and where where is that Bradley and it's you've already built it in this or um Scot file but it would be under transfer to stabilization so above the debt service so that's something we need to think about whether why would we want to why would we want to accept that without some commitment from the transfer station to come up with a plan to break even over the next number of years well I mean we might but I mean that's part of what we we talked about was you know how can we there's no way that they're going to be able no matter how much they increase bag fees that with the the Lesser revenue on uh recycling they're not going to be able to break even anytime soon this year by the looks and this 30 or 35,000 whatever it is on an annual fee basis is really whether whether that landfill or the transfer station was there or not the town has to pay this monitoring fee year after year after I know I was the one who brought that up so why not make it a town responsibility not dump it on one Department to the whole the the whole transfer station needs to be addressed and I wouldn't peace meal the that part of it uh which is part is is a a a part of it that needs to be solved but I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't break that off and just solve that one part because it doesn't get to the root cause root of the problem which is really the the transfer station is not a profitable Enterprise mhm okay I I know that um Randall did have the DP out trying to amend the permit to allow other municipalities to bring their trash it he's working on different solutions to to do that right and I think the way to go about working on different solutions and we can talk about working on this over a number of years I brought the concept of having committee that would address this I want to I would like to see a plan put in place to have this solved uh so one one something efficiencies cost efficiency could could take up this as as one idea yeah absolutely what one thing on on um taking out the monitoring fees I I talked to Jerry uh really quickly and she did a little bit of research so um back in 1991 it was actually supposed to be a landfill Enterprise fund that was established to pay for the monitoring costs which to me doesn't make sense because the landfill isn't generating any money by itself so the only generation was the transfer station so um H the one of the things that she caution cautioned is taking that out we just might have to talk to DP just make sure that we're 100% okay uh I think it's actually fixing where the way it was supposed to be intended back in 1991 rather than taking that in 1991 was landfill accepting trash at that point uh I don't know because at that point it wouldn't have been capped yeah that's something we need to terine yeah I'm pretty sure it was closed at that point um yeah we do we'd have to be sure we're in RS with d for sure y mhm okay all right so where do we go from here I mean we've got a couple obviously we've got some unknowns that we've got in terms of the highway department some Union negotiations some other salary negotiations to work on um I mean this is all without touching like there's money in the ambulance um ambulance receipts money uh yeah and you know the stabilization fund things like that but um it all depends what the site board wants to go forward with okay yeah so I think we're obviously going to have another in terms of the balancing the budget here too but any any thoughts and comments advice from the Financial finance committee in terms of where we would like to um where we should be looking I mean I know we've there are certain funds that we don't usually want to want to touch we don't want to use free cash to balance our budget and all those good things um so you know any any thoughts from you guys as to how you would recommend we try to close the gap a little bit Dan had an idea but we so this right now is not allowing for any any real issues with the Collins report coming in so that's another unknown impact you know if we if we've got wages in that are just people have just put in their their one step increase and that's all they've done which is what I think their instructions were told the instructions were to take every where people are on the current current w scale and move it one step which is equivalent to about a 3% 2 and 1 half to 3% but we don't know how far off we are when we get the Collins report to see if we're really way low or some might be right on On Target so that doesn't right now the 229 or whatever that you're showing as a gap does not take any of that discussion in into play correct so some some departments did do the increase as Ed had asked them to some did not so it's not very reflective like the like just picking on the building department really quickly U so he level funded his salary so so that number actually doesn't take into account any call and Center changes um I mean one suggestion that we might want to do is once we get the report depending if we do have available funds we might want to think about level funding um salaries but then taking a pool of money and allocating a a cola for everybody and then the people that are furthest away from where they need to be we might want to add a few percentage points points every year so it's might be a three to a 5e plan process it may not all in one fail swoop yeah know and I think we we know we tried to make a a stab at that about two or three years ago where we tried to do some adjustment to the lower paid employees in particular um but really just basing it on on not anything in terms of real Market rates so that's where I'm hoping that we'll get some some real figures to look at very soon that can help us figure this out because we may have a bigger bigger little bigger Gap here or figure out how we can then take it one step at a time to make those adjustments but um any any um thoughts you got over there please go go ahead ju just a general question is it appropriate to to charge Scott with making a recommendation that balances the budget and have present that to us and that's kind of what Dan's talking about I think but is that within roles within his role is can he be charged let me explain what what I'm asking for I'm asking him to categorize the the line items here are they fixed salaries which if we put some heuristics around some rules on how we would go about um balancing this budget then it's very easy to we can we can start segregating down to what areas which which Lineum we would um Target to adjust I think that part of what the green lines are is the the fixed pretty much the fixed cost yeah that's pretty much level funding everything yeah yeah yeah there's there's about $100,000 difference between last year and this year well okay so back to your the the pie chart you had you mentioned that there that the red portion was those were our the other costs that we may change if we avoid touching wages and our debt and things that we really can't so I my question is really if can is it possible in that spreadsheet to highlight the red items that's what I wanted to see yeah I can go through that a little bit more I'm not asking I'm not asking him to identify to to make the cuts I'm asking him to help us parse the data so it's so we're not spending I would say wasting our time in this meeting trying to figure out which lines we need to attack right so you want to see all the wages all the expenses maintenance yeah let's let's just filter it down to what we can actually adjust yeah what do we have the ability to to actually adjust and what what can't we tou at all because of you know certain set costs are contractual things like postage is a lot easier to touch than contract $10 I don't know how much post may not help us balance the budget 175 yeah Steen go ahe so expanding on Scott's observation he's already flagged uh a couple of dozen lines where he thinks that there is flexibility having had a conversation with the department head having received their request he's identified things small and large where there's not a contractual limitation there's not a well understood escalation in the cost of insurance having done that analysis you could sort those yellow items by absolute magnitude not percent deviation because some of those with a large percent deviation were just pocket change correct yeah some of those with a small deviation add up very quickly so thank you Scott I think the suggestion for Scott to further sort this and say Here's the scenario here are the things that make me particularly uncomfortable about the scenario to close the gap so I'm I'm in support of that yeah so I'm going to may I ask a question Scott and Bradley please include Bradley of course Scott just got here he wouldn't have any numbers if it wasn't for Bradley exactly uh no Bradley's Bradley's my main man uh I wanted to ask about the um wages for the Regional School System they're in mediation I understand that means the timeline is indefinite does the budget approval process for the Regional School System hold harmless the communities until fiscal 26 or might they come to us having mediated out an agreement and say please write another check I don't know that process yeah not totally clear I don't know if anybody else has any into that the question I asked is this the maximum they said is it right now it's not like John said too it's not supposed to go up they voted on it so it shouldn't go up is what they've told us tonight but that's you know but it does not reflect any range of negotiation it's no no I mean it's mediation so you don't know where that's going to end Donna go ahead sorry I was just going to say that I would think if negotiations don't go as you know as they budgeted for and it's higher then they would have no choice but to come back I didn't know if implementation would have to be delayed until a new fiscal year when each of the towns got on board I just yeah cuz I was asking the very specific question of what things are uncertain and if if the salaries for employees are uncertain at this point I would include that in saying something that wouldn't increase because I want to understand what is the variability what's the range which things could increase and which items could increase so we know what we're dealing with here if we're if it seems like there's a lot of uncertainty if there's uncertainty in the budget what is the what is the range so but these are the figures we have to go on right now so we'll have to work with this and yes see where they end up but um I think you know this at least gives us a place to to go forward so I think with you know and I think too with the budget uh narratives I guess which we haven't had a chance to really look at in great detail but should there be I know you said there weren't too many that had put in something on the wish list column but to the extent in the budget narratives they have said hey you know this is something that you know we understand it may be a challenge but this is what we would really like to see and and here's why I mean to the extent we can accommodate a few of the things on the wish list that would be great I don't know if we can do that or not but at least look at that as you're also going through some of this in case there's something that stands out as a real a real need not I mean a stronger wish than a just a hey I want this but it's we need this really and if we had this it would make x amount of difference in whatever we're doing um that would be helpful if we knew that but I think next year I mean I would probably suggest doing a level fund an actual level fund to budget one that is a budget that maintains Services yeah and then one that has additional things to improve efficiencies like if whether it's a staff member or software or whatever it is so it might be something we want to look at next year yeah it's a good idea I was going to suggest a methodology to get us through the rest of this year in in terms of what you're talking about of things that may increase the the the nice thatav the the things they may not have included in their budget but we we could add so along with that list of areas where we may reduce use which you can we can you can help us parse that list down to that area also making that list of areas that may we may want to that may increase right if we just look at if we had those two lists the things that can go up and the things that can go down I believe we can arrive at a number yeah okay any other thoughts or questions for tonight I don't know that we can go much further on this this is what we what we have but at least thank you for putting all these figures together and giving us the the overview uh and see where we can take it from here but Stephen I wanted to add my thanks this is um a substantial refinement over the last thing we saw and it's bringing it all together um so we got Department by Department views we had a general Mala about how big the total number was going to be uh but this is something we can wrestle to conclusion thank you it's a lot of detail work and triple cheing the numbers yeah that's yeah there's nothing nothing to be lost in saying thanks there say you I would also I see this we're very close we're within 1% we don't have a long way to go here okay so I think Bradley any thoughts from you in terms of what you would like to focus on or is this uh sounding more more doable are you feeling relatively comfortable with this or I'm going to review all narratives and see some people say rates are going up or like their obligation is is going up so going to be able to cut those right I'll see like oh they want a new cop or new something yeah we'll look into saying like can you hold off a year something yeah exactly yeah okay now that's good I think it's really important we ask people to put in a fairly good narrative this year I don't want to Discount those so um you know we've seen I think a lot of them as they came in but you've probably got the bigger package uh with everybody's requests so um that's really helpful to understand how people got to some of their thinking here okay all right then if there's nothing else I think we'll probably call it for tonight where we have our regular select board meeting on the 9th next Tuesday and so we will probably see if there's some updates at that point in time we'll we'll take a look at those and see where we go from here but um thanks for everybody great so with that uh adj second yeah so let's have Finance would you like to motion to adjourn first and we'll let you do that tojn at 7:5 all right good and select board motion second yep Sten okay all in favor I all right perfect we are right on the heels of finance committee we're also adjourned at about 7:50 yes so if they establish that e